“If I had, I wouldn’t have asked you.” Anxiety gripped me by the throat. There was another Alanga here. On Imperial. They would know I was one too. They’d see Thrana and they’d know. The only thing I might count on was that the other Alanga would be reluctant to reveal themselves too.

Jovis took the proffered piece of statuary and stuffed it into his satchel. “I can take Mephi out into the streets, look around,” he said.

“After we’re settled back at the palace,” I agreed. “It can’t hurt.”

I composed myself enough to see Jovis’s mother off at the docks. My father would have thought it beneath my station, but she’d been kind to me. Ongren handed me a basket before she disembarked which included salted egg yolk cookies and a packet of herbs.

“What are these?” I asked, holding them up.

She leaned in conspiratorially. “For tea. They’re good for fertility. The Empire needs an heir.” She patted my cheek and smiled.

Heat flushed my chest, rising to the very tips of my ears. When did I even have the time to think about heirs? “I, uh, thank you.”

“Watch over my boy,” she said, and then she turned to say goodbye to Jovis.

Despite the rain that finally broke through the clouds, my mood lifted as I set foot on the cobblestones of Imperial’s streets. Here, at least, was home. I wanted a couple of nights spent in my own bed, Thrana curled beside me. I wanted a bath. I wanted my favorite steamed buns the way the palace’s head cook made them. Ikanuy had sent a palanquin, which I gratefully settled into, brushing droplets of rain from my cloak.

I’d intended to take a bath as soon as I’d returned, but instead found the palace in an uproar. I knew servants gossiped – it was one of the reasons my father kept so few – but even in the short walk from the gates to the entrance hall, I could hear their whispers trailing me like the waves in a wake of a ship.

Ikanuy greeted me in the courtyard, her hand drawing back the curtain of my palanquin. “Forgive me, Eminence,” she said, her face pale. “But there have been a few developments since you left.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Tell me.”

“Everyone knows.”

The world around me seemed to stop, fear freezing my limbs. They’d discovered my father’s secret rooms. They’d found I was not who I said I was. They’d found I was created, not born. Why hadn’t they torn down my palanquin as I made my way to the palace? Called me out for the impostor I was?