I’d been young when Nisong had died – an unfortunate ailment, I’d heard. I hadn’t understood until I was older the extent of the Emperor’s grief. He’d shut himself away, burning all her portraits and putting her maidservants to death. It was a thing spoken of in whispers, tales told in drinking halls late at night. My lips fumbled one word: “Tried.”

“By the time he discovered he could create replicas, he’d already burned her body, so he couldn’t grow her anew like he did with himself.” She took a deep breath. “Instead, he built her from pieces of his citizens. He built me. He sewed me together and placed me in the pool beneath the palace to grow. The water there has special properties; I’m not sure why. But he didn’t need shards to bring me to life.”

She lifted her gaze from the floor, and I knew. Her eyes didn’t just look like Emahla’s; they were hers. I couldn’t breathe. He’d killed her. He’d taken her eyes and stitched them into another body. One I’d kissed. One I’d held, wishing circumstances were different. How… how was she any different than the shambling corpses out on the battlefield? I felt sick with horror.

And she was reading it all on my face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This must be painful for you.”

“You should have told me,” I gasped out, even knowing as I said it that of course she couldn’t have told me, that even telling me now she was risking everything. All because she wanted to be honest with me. Because she wanted my trust.

Mephi’s head was still in my lap. I pushed him away and staggered to my feet. He made a small, sad sound but gave me space.

“Jovis,” she said, and then stopped. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know until he told me. He tried to instill me with her memories, but it didn’t quite work. The blood of Nisong’s relatives didn’t work the same way her blood would have. So all I get are glimpses. I’m not him, and I’m not her.”

“And after he told you, you killed him.” I’d never said it out loud, though I thought she knew. We’d met in the hallways of the palace soon after, when she’d still been tattered and bloodied.

“It was that or let him into my head again. He wasn’t a good man,” she said. “His daughter died when she was young. He hid that and told me I was his daughter; everyone believed it to be so. And I could change things for the better as Emperor.”

“A fine job you’ve done.” I wished I could swallow the words as soon as I’d said them.