“Kitten,” he says with a low bow, but I’ve no time for his gallantries and drag him by the arm to the inn. Azelma looks at us dead-eyed and tells me to scrape the wax from the tables into the pot so we can melt it down for new candles. When she slips out the back door to speak to Femi, I tiptoe to the kitchen and climb onto the tall red stool I sit on to wash the dishes. I can just make out the tops of their heads through the window. They’re standing pressed against the wall.

“He is coming for you,” I hear Femi say.

A long silence follows. When Azelma speaks, her tone is bitter. “Father will bargain. He always does. While they are occupied, you must take her. They will not notice that she is gone.”

“We can run.” Femi’s voice rises in desperation. “We can hide.”

“Who has ever escaped him? How far do you think we’d get before he found us? Even if by some miracle we could escape now, we’d damn her if we brought her, for he will surely find us. And if we leave her behind, then who do you think will taste my father’s rage? Have you thought who he might throw at Kaplan to appease him? Or to punish me?”

Azelma shakes her head, then turns to the window, as if she senses me watching. I duck so she won’t see me.

“Whispers and sweet stories you have given me, Femi Vano,” she says, and I lift my head in time to see her gently touch his cheek. “But words will fade where I am going. If I am lucky, I will not remember anything. Give me your oath in bone and iron that you will find a protector for her.”

Femi raises his hand, and with a single gleaming movement of his knife, his opposite palm is marked by a long, dark line as drops of blood begin to bead like black diamonds.

“My word, my blood,” he says. “I give you my promise in bone and iron.”

She rests her head on his chest, and her voice softens.

“Do you care for me?”

“You know that I do.”

“Then do not cry for me,” she says. “I am already dead.”

“No, not dead. The dead, at least, are free …”

When Azelma comes back inside, her face is a mask. Femi trails behind her. Like his Maghrebi ancestors, who hailed from northern Africa, he wears his thick hair in coiled braids. No matter the weather, he is always swathed in a heavy brown cloak streaked with rain marks and frayed at the edges, giving him the impression of having large folded wings. His dark skin is like burnished copper, his nose is slightly hooked, and his eyes burn fierce and golden—and right now, they are rimmed in red.

Azelma beckons to me. I take her hand; mine is small and hers is cold as she leads me back up the stairs to our room.