Still—whenever I tried the Ray, the rulers collapsed in pain. They had grown to respect me. Like me, even. But despite the hours we swayed in that tent, our minds suspended in the musk of kuso-kuso . . . the warm affection of the three rulers did not, even once, spark into love.

The ojiji scolded me as usual, flaying me with headaches, ordering me to do more, and scolding me not to give up.

Earn the trust of the rulers, they chanted. You will not be happy until you do. Be the empress Aritsar needs you to be.

My stomach churned when I remembered what the first ojiji had said—the boy who had murdered Thaddace: For our purposes, your image must remain unsullied. You must retain the trust of the Arit populace.

What purpose, I wondered, was that?

As the days blended together, and my headaches intensified, I stopped wondering, and did instead what it always took to quiet the voices: I kept my head down, beat myself with righteous guilt, and worked harder.

My progress with one ruler crept along more slowly than all the rest combined. Zuri of Djbanti had missed four invitations to my sky-blue tent in the palace gardens. At first, I simply assumed he despised me as the other nobles did. Perhaps, I thought worriedly, he was as fickle as he was empty-headed, and had changed his mind about getting anointed.

Yet instead of returning to his home realm, the king remained at court: a phantom in the corridors, and a perfumed shadow at the edge of my thoughts. He appeared often at banquets, where he made a drunken show, but was mysteriously absent whenever I tried to visit his villa. I felt his eyes on me often when I held court in the Imperial Hall, a piercing gaze at odds with his pretty, vapid smile.

Only once did I dare approach Zuri in public. I came upon him one morning in the palace gardens, alone in a fragrant rosemary hedge maze. He saw me before I saw him. I squirmed, wondering how long he’d been watching me.

The curving rosemary walls were short, barely coming up to Zuri’s dark, tapered waist. Lush blossoms and small, gold-tipped onyx statues dotted the maze, making Zuri appear as a giant. His signature gold cuff glinted on his arm, and he smirked when I noticed him, raising his hands in mock surrender.

“That’s quite a scowl, Tarisai. What in the Twelve Realms have I done to deserve it?”

“It’s Lady Empress to you,” I said. “And you’ve been ignoring my invitations. Why?”

He watched me for a moment with that inscrutable, thick-lashed gaze, making my cheeks grow warm in the interim. “I am not fond of kuso-kuso,” he said at last. “And while I’d love to peek into that ravishing head of yours, I’m much less eager to have you see in mine.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s hypocritical.”

“Very.” He flashed that flawless smile. “Also, I was curious if you would force me to meet with you. Was looking forward to it, actually.”