“Let it happen?” Sanjeet finished bluntly. “Yes! Sometimes! Tar . . .” He ran a large square hand through his curls. “Have you ever considered that most people weren’t born to save the world? Most of us are lucky just to find a home, a family to protect, and that’s enough. More than enough, even. Sunshine girl . . . everyone can’t care about everything.”

“And you think I’m a fool for trying.”

“I think,” he said heavily, “that your life should not be a means to an end. No human being should be reduced to a function. The day we do that—it’s the beginning of the end.”

The words jolted me, ringing true like a song. But they jumbled in my head with a dissonant tune, one no less true than the first.

The only thing more powerful than a wish is a purpose.

“You’re right,” I said slowly. I looked again at the vast twinkling city, watching my sprites mingle with the star-studded sky. “My life doesn’t have to serve a purpose. But really, Jeet . . . would it be so bad if it did?”

Night wind whispered through the salon curtains, making them float like the ghosts above my head. He stood there beside me for what felt like an eternity. I shifted my feet. The bells of his mother’s anklet chilled against my skin. I reached for his mind, and felt the grit of hands clenched tight, desperate to keep the ones he loved—mother, brother, Dayo, sunshine girl—from slipping through his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was low, and resonant as the heart of a griot’s drum.

“I once promised,” he said, “that I would never ask you to be less than who you are. But if you set yourself on fire to warm a frozen world, I will not stand by and watch you burn.”

“Then don’t watch.” I traced the stern ridges of his features, clearing a curl from his hooded brow. “Stand with me.”

He rested his face against mine. I couldn’t tell whose tears fell first. Salt stung our cheeks, prickling, gumming our features together like mortar. He whispered against my lips: “I can’t, sunshine girl.”

I nodded, smiled, and let my heart grow numb as an empress’s sunstone. Then I stepped from his grasp.

“Then stand back, Jeet.”

CHAPTER 13

He was gone by morning.

Ai Ling bustled busily around me and Dayo, trying to lift the pallor that had fallen over the suite halls.

“Sanjeet would have had to leave for Dhyrma anyway,” she said in a pleasant singsong, drawing away the mosquito curtains from where I lay side by side with Dayo. We were propped, uncomfortably, on a grand, fur-draped dais. “Just in case an alagbato makes trouble. And then there’s the new opening to the Underworld to look for. But he’ll come back, Tarisai.” She patted my cheek consolingly. “I’m sure of it. Now remember to look sleepy, Imperial Majesties.”