I looked to the guards and servants surrounding me. “Have any of you been around long enough? Did Wailun come back changed from her trip to Imperial? Have you talked to the servants of her family members who live in other houses? Did they notice their masters don’t seem the same?”

I saw them exchange glances. Of course they’d noticed. But none of them had the power to say or do anything about it.

Chala was looking at them too. “Please, do tell me if this is so.” He spoke to them kindly. He’d lived nearly half his life on the streets; he knew what it was like to have no power.

One of the servants licked her lips. “We didn’t think it was our place to say anything,” she said.

“And she adopted you as heir – that seemed a step in the right direction,” one of the guards said. “So what were we supposed to do after that if we wanted you to stay? Who were we going to tell?”

I studied Chala’s face – the delicate curve of his jaw, the large ears, the trembling lip. He was doubting now. This was my chance. “I can prove it,” I said, my voice cutting through the murmuring of the guards and the servants. I caught a glimpse of feet on the stairs, thinking I recognized Jovis’s boots and Ragan’s slippers. Good. They were close by. “My father taught me his magic. I can prove that what I’m saying is true.”

I saw a thousand emotions flit through Chala’s eyes. Fear, consternation, anger, sadness. He would want to think I was tricking him, that I’d done something insidious. But he had to know – I’d planted the seed of doubt and now he had to know for sure.

“Do it.”

I approached cautiously, the guards still flanking me, coming to stand in front of Chala’s uncle. The man regarded me suspiciously. “I know I’m real,” he said, scowling.

Oh, so had Bayan. And so had I. And that thought made my chest ache. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing here was a good thing. I was stripping away reality from Chala, but I was stripping it away from these constructs too. They’d done nothing wrong; their only crime had been to exist, which meant they drained the life from living people. And it was my father’s fault for creating them, not mine.

I plunged my hand inside of him and the world around me erupted into chaos.

The other members of Hualin Or’s royal family reached into robes, pockets, sashes. They all pulled out weapons of various assortments – some more dangerous than others. They must have all had the command written into their bones: When you are discovered, fight. My father wouldn’t let them go quietly into obsolescence. That wasn’t his way.

They leapt to attack hesitant guards and servants.