Only Governor-Advisor seemed to relish these meetings. He stood by the throne. “Yes.” His worm tail would twitch while the boy’s eyes would glaze over. “Yes, yes.”

“Here.” Governor-Advisor would press parchment into the boy’s hands. “This requires your signature. And this. This, too. Remember the shapes we would practice? Sign here. Sign here. Your seal. Sign here.”

What was in these papers? The boy didn’t know, but how dull it was to keep making the same shapes over and over.

“No, that’s not right,” Governor-Advisor would sometimes hiss. “Those shapes are not… how have you still not learned—” But then he would catch himself, nod, twitch. “Yes, my king. Any mark from your hand will do. Just there.”

The one thing, the only thing, really, that brought the boy comfort was that he might ask, anytime, for whatever he wanted. He tried it one day when a peasant was blubbering on the floor about how thieves had stolen his stores of honey. The word honey drifted through the murmuring, cut through the drone of abhorred, abhorred, and reminded him of the honeycake served at the first feast.

“Honey,” the boy said. “Yes.”

“My king?” The peasant lifted his head.

“Honeycake. I want some.”

Only the briefest of pauses. Speaking in undertones, Governor-Advisor leaned over the arm of his throne. “You are scheduled to hear the supplicants through aftern—”

“Tell Cook,” he said. “Honeycake. Now.”

And lo and behold, wasn’t there a scurrying forth, much like the leaping of frogs poked with a stick. And lo, didn’t the honeycake appear forthwith in the boy-king’s hand while he sat on his throne. And with it, a chalice of cream, all frothed at the top.

As he ate—golden bite after golden bite, great swallows of cream to wash it down—the sweetness dampened the noise of the supplicants and, for a moment, at least, muffled the oracle’s echoing words.

“Yes.” His flat, blank face hovering over the dish nearly smiled, nearly softened. “Yes.”

But when his mother entered the chamber, all the sweetness was gone; the cake turned to ash in his mouth. She moved as though she still resided at the swamp, as though she were still burdened by heat and trailed by mosquitoes. She did not glance once at the boy. As she walked across the room, her gown now truly round over her middle, each footfall whispered the words of the oracle: The sibling will bring you no joy.… The sibling will bring your own fall.

The boy-king felt his cheek harden, felt something sharp by his brow. He passed his fingers over his forehead. Yes, something jagged and cracked, he was sure.

“The child cannot be,” he found himself murmuring as he watched his mother cross the chamber.

At once, Governor-Advisor lowered his ear to the boy. “Something you desire?”

The boy felt the words again in his mouth. He felt perhaps he should not say them, something about them seemed wrong, but the ache in his brow, it reached all through his cheek, even into his teeth. He stared into the cavern of Governor-Advisor’s ear. “The child cannot be,” he finally whispered into its waxy folds.