My anger drained away. I slipped my hand in his, and he squeezed it tiredly.

“I asked Ai Ling,” he said after a pause. “If something was wrong with me.”

My eyebrows rose. “Why Ai Ling?”

“I don’t know.” Dayo squirmed, considering. “She’s just so easy to talk to. Have you noticed that? And she listens better than anyone, even when she pretends not to care. I wonder why she . . .” Dayo trailed off, looking sheepish, and picked at the grain of his wrapper. “Anyway. She’s pretty sure there are others like me. Some who can’t stand sex, some who like it but don’t feel drawn to anyone, and others who just . . . feel nothing.” He shrugged. “I’m the first kind. And I don’t know how to change.”

“Then don’t,” I said. “Why change for some dusty legacy? We didn’t ask to be Raybearers.”

“But we are, all the same.” He smiled ruefully. “You know what’s funny? I think I’d be good at raising children. Watching a brand-new person grow—what could be better than that? I’d never send them away. Not like Fath—” He inhaled and broke off again, hunching his shoulders.

I slunk against the wall beside him, letting the stones chill my back. “Dayo, if I birth an heir for the empire . . . I’ll be doing exactly what The Lady did. Having a child, just to fulfill some imperial purpose—one they didn’t even ask for. And that scares me. A lot. What if . . . what if I’m just like her?”

My palms broke into a cold sweat. I imagined cradling a small, sleeping creature with my coiling dark hair and Sanjeet’s tea-colored eyes. I imagined all the knowledge I would crave to give it. All the power and protection. I would want to polish every detail of its tiny life to a rosy gleam, and love would surge inside me, hot and domineering, curling in my breast until a song dripped from my lips, sharp as crystallized honey:

Me, mine. You’re me and you are mine.

No. No. I would hide myself away before it came to that. Make sure I’d never hurt it . . .

Just like The Lady had hid herself on the other side of Bhekina House.

Bile rose in my throat. “I can’t do it,” I told Dayo. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Tar. It’s fine.” He nodded as if trying to console himself as much as me. “We’ll just . . . figure something out. I know we will.”

“Keep moving, Imperial Majesties,” said Captain Bunmi, scanning the area. “It’s safer not to linger.” As we walked, Bunmi and her cohort traded signals with other Imperial Guard warriors, stationed at corners and on every rooftop.

I suppressed the thought of heirs and baby-making as we neared the center of the city. Here, the murals faded into a long, blank wall: space for future Raybearers and their councils.

“Have you seen it before?” Dayo asked with a nudge.