“It’s an Alanga artifact. Like the sword,” I told her. I couldn’t believe it was a coincidence that the mural’s eyes had opened on that day. I doubted it was my bonding with Thrana that had done it: the eyes had opened several times since. That left Jovis’s appearance at the palace steps.

A knock sounded at the door.

I hastily put away both sword and flask but kept the statue’s face in my hand. “Come in.”

It was Jovis, Mephi on his heels. He strode into my room, the journal in his hand. My two handmaidens passed behind him in the hall, giving him sidelong looks as he shut my door. We’d been spending quite a lot of time alone together. They would talk. The guards would talk. I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was Emperor. Let them talk.

“He never says how Alanga are created. All he talks about is Ylan Sukai and their philosophical conversations. It’s as dry as the historical textbooks I had to read at the Academy. Ylan is angry about the Alanga’s conflicts causing collateral damage. Dione likens their conflicts to storms – things that cannot be contained or stopped. They eat, they go fishing, they drink tea and they talk.” He tossed the journal onto my desk. “If I flip through farther, it seems like Ylan changed Dione’s mind somewhat. They work on something together – I can’t tell what. And then there’s a betrayal.” He tapped his staff on the floor – a gesture I’d come to associate with his agitation.

I curled my fingers around the statue’s face. “When you first arrived in Imperial, did you use your magic to fight off my father’s construct?”

Jovis blinked. “What?”

“Did you use your magic to fight my father’s construct?”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “Yes, of course I did.”

I looked to the open porthole, the light rain and sea spray dampening the wall. My thought, half-formed before Jovis had walked in the door, solidified into a theory. I lifted a hand, felt the tremor in my bones, my awareness of the surrounding water sharpening. And then I crooked a finger, lifting a sphere of water from the ocean and bringing it floating through the porthole.

Jovis frowned. “Why are you—?”

I hefted the statue’s face and let the water splash onto the wooden floor of my cabin. Nothing. The eyes stayed closed.

Jovis fidgeted. “Were you in the middle of researching the applications of Alanga magic in cleaning floors?” He gestured at the door. “I can go if you’re busy.”