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“I should have examined the body myself,” Asahi said.

“General Kacha was a patient man. A man who created strategies that took down nations.” I tried to breathe through the memory of Kacha telling me how patient he was, how much he looked forward to my pain. “We thought he was dead.”

“That does not negate my failure,” Asahi said.

“Enough!” I snapped, and Tallu looked over with a frown, dropping his arm. His servant stepped back, seeming to fade into the background as he turned. I tried modulating my voice, but I was panting. “Enough. We both failed. I was taken by men I should have been able to kill. I let a man like Kacha enjoy the pain of torturing me.”

I stopped, feeling my hands begin to tremble, my knuckles white with the pain of clenching my hands. But Kacha hadn’t tortured this body, he hadn’t injured me while I was wearing this skin, so why did I still feel the pain of his foot pressing down on shattered bones?

“I should have been smarter. I cannot expect you to have predicted what he would do, when I didn’t,” I said. Because I was going to forget him, and he had been the reason I had this body, which was the body that would help us win over the world.

“If I had killed him back at the Mountainside Palace, I could have saved us all grief,” Asahi said harshly.

“And if I had killed him when I first met him at that party, I could have,” I said. “But then we both would have been strung up for treason, and I enjoy your company too much to want to die on the walls of the Mountainside Palace. There is enough guilt to go around. Let us both be free of it.”

I pressed my hands flat on my legs. Asahi finally raised his head, and I nodded when I saw his eyes. Across the room, Tallu let his servants finish fitting him.

When they were done, the clothes were no longer the extra garments of a dead man. They were an outfit befitting an emperor.

Lord Mutali arrived the day before the goblins with a representative from the local tribe. Choethei accompanied them, and his horns shone with polish, the gold gleaming. Empress Koque stood on Tallu’s other side, General Saxu to her left. I followed her lead when greeting the guests.

She nodded, just low enough to be an acknowledgment but not low enough to say they were of superior rank or even offer them respect. I tried to keep my own nod at the same angle and mostly managed it.

There were few things I wanted less than to be standing up in front of so many people, playing at all the politics and courtesy that Eonaî had learned and I slept through. But if I didn’t, Tallu would worry more and Asahi would feel guiltier, and none of my problems would be solved.

So I bumbled my way through, doing everything that Empress Koque did. She realized almost immediately; she was far too smart to miss it. I thought I did manage to keep the whispers in my head, managed to keep myself from reacting to their suggestions.

By the time we got to dinner, Koque was seated on my other side, rather than Tallu’s left, giving that position up to General Saxu. Then her hand was on my wrist, and I followed her lead exactly, laughing when she did, letting myself fall quiet and nod when she spoke.

The goblins here were not from the deep desert, were not from the animalia’s hidden waters. They did not know what I was, what the animalia had wanted me to become. It was safe, at least in comparison to what was coming.

After dinner, Empress Koque excused herself, and I bowed my own way out of the postprandial entertainment. Koque laced her arm through mine, leading us down the hall toward our borrowed rooms.

When we were far enough away, she asked, “How bad is it?”

I thought of lying: It was nothing. I was fine. There was no need to worry.

But she had been a useful ally. More than a useful ally. I would be a fool to ignore the help she was offering.

“I am tired,” I said. I didn’t dare tell her about the voices, not when I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Tallu. “I’m still unnerved at being made helpless by General Kacha.”

Koque frowned, then opened the door to my quarters herself. She dismissed Nohe with a soft, “Bring us some tea.”

When we were alone, she sat in a chair, waiting until I took the one across from her. She studied my face. We had barely interacted since she’d returned, and I felt more exposed under her gaze than I did when Tallu had seen me in the direct aftermath of Kacha’s work.

“That is the hardest thing, being made helpless. I have years of experience with it, and each time, you remind yourself that you are not submitting. You are not agreeing. You are not the cause.” Koque’s lips pulled into a slight smile. “I’m sure I am not telling you anything that Tallu has not already said. Are there times it makes you frozen in your own body?”

“Yes,” I had to admit. “I feel like I am a puppet sometimes, and it makes me angry how weak I am.”

“Not weak, never that. To survive that torture with your mind, your self, intact? That is a strength of spirit that small men like Kacha and Millu will never know.” She said the last so confidently that I remembered who had poisoned the emperor. “It took weeks in Krustau before I could believe he was gone. Longer still to believe he would not come back, that we had left him behind at last. Do not castigate yourself when it has been only days. Tallu is here, your dragon is here, your countryman as well. Kacha cannot touch you.”

“Of course. He’s dead,” I said. Though I felt the truth she was trying to explain, knowing he was dead didn’t change the feeling of the ground shifting under my feet, the understanding that he could come back, since he had done so before.

“He is,” Koque said. “And I will tell you as many times as you need to hear it.”

It was easier after that, the reminder that I was not alone. I was never alone. The goblins from the deep desert were arriving the next day, and Tallu was strangely calm.

“This is our chance,” I whispered in bed. If we could make peace with the Ariphadeus tribes, we might be able to fulfill the requirements of the prophecy.