Alone in Prince Hemi’s room, Her Majesty huddled under a thick shawl, shoulders facing the coffin and head turned to the window, but her eyes had glazed over. Not seeing the snowflakes dancing outside the glass, or the coffin gleaming from the firelight. The coffin I’d looked at for the first time in my existence, after Ilyas had ‘fondled’ it.

I hadn’t meant to look. I’d only stepped into the room to escort Prince Haori away before Ilyas proved a danger. Prince Haori was too curious for his own good, and too loose with his words. He’d called me Hemi, although he’d known since he was a toddler that his elder brother was dead, and while I may look like him, and even inhabited his flesh, I was not him. Only the shell left behind.

Ilyas would describe me as the slave left to tend to this body while waiting for its true master to arrive.

I thought Ilyas would understand. No, no I hadn’t. He wasn’t like me at all. His thoughts had always been rife with intrigue, and in the few moments they weren’t, they were filled with lust he slaked in his harem. Ilyas had never known what it was like to be expendable. He’d never known anything but joy to be alive.

He’d railed against me, thinking I was Hemi, the one giving the orders. I wasn’t. I had my orders from the former king years ago. I put the pieces into place. I waited for the Dark God to arrive. That was all.

Then he’d stormed out of Prince Hemi’s room, and I’d waited to give him the space he needed to rage against his captivity. Or at least that was what I’d told myself I was doing. Instead, I’d flicked my eyes to the metals that had entranced Ilyas. The very thing I had no right to look upon.

The day I, Jem, came into being, Her Majesty had lost her son. She still mourned him, and every day she had to look upon me, she had to see her son underneath the white skin and black swirls, knowing it was not him inside.

Ilyas wondered why I would sacrifice everything for people who refused to even look at me. He’d never understand, no matter what words I used to explain. His life was his own.

Her Majesty cleared her throat, and still standing against the door, I started. It was her way of summoning me, without having to use the name that didn’t belong to me, or the name that didn’t fit her son’s body.

I crossed the floor, holding out the clay tablet. Ilyas would call us backwater, but we didn’t have reeds and rushes to beat into pulp for paper. Only the Dark God had owned paper, and only because He wanted books celebrating His glory in every castle across His empire. We only had what we brought up from the earth, and clay lasted so much longer than reeds.

The bottom of the tablet was still damp, and I held it away from my body. She accepted the tablet, holding it carefully so as not to smudge herself with clay. I stayed silent. She knew what it said, and why.

My fingers tugged at my scarf, wrapped over my head and around my neck, crossing over one cheek. If Ilyas had noticed, he hadn’t mentioned it.

Her Majesty drew her finger through the wet clay and signed my responsibilities away for the few remaining days, as if they had ever been my responsibilities. Her Majesty had always taken care of Lumi, before and during my journey.

Only days now. Only hours. Time slipped through my fingers.

“How is your exotic prince?” Her Majesty asked.

Since Ilyas had returned to the tower room, he hadn’t spoken one word. All he’d done was perch on the windowsill and stare at his enemy, the ‘boring nothing’. The silence had raised goose pimples down my arms. “Despondent, Your Majesty.”

I’d tried to cheer him, or at least distract him. I offered him my very last biscuit, a feast in Lumi, but Ilyas hadn’t even turned to look. Then I’d stared at him from across the room, waiting for another idea for a diversion to spark, but we were thousands of miles away from almond cakes and coloured silks and his harem.

My eyes dropped to the flagstone.

Her Majesty shifted her foot. “You have to do something.”

I could devise a new scheme, give him hope that he would escape his shackles. Escape me, like everyone else wanted to. But would Ilyas even take the opportunity? He’d dragged his feet back to the tower room, eyes downcast, but he hadn’t stepped one boot off-course.

Had I done the impossible and quenched that fire within him?

“The Dark God will not be pleased with a despondent offering,” she said.

I jerked away from her. The scarf slid back on my hair, and Her Majesty gasped. I quickly fixed the scarf, but the damage was done. If I could have punched myself in the stomach and curled over with nausea and pain in recompense, I would have done so gladly.

That wasn’t a sight any mother should see on her son’s body. And yet, I’d let it happen because I’d forgotten about the Dark God’s desires.

The Dark God wanted an exotic creature, yes, but a defiant one. I’d known the moment I’d heard Ilyas in the throne room, his strong and confident voice daring his brothers to try to take him, that he was the one. The Dark God wanted to break that defiance.

“Ilyas knows,” I said.

Her Majesty made a pained sound.

“He knows he’s the sacrifice.” I didn’t add that he remained ignorant of how the Dark God would arrive. Would knowing kindle the defiance within him, or would it shatter him completely?

She breathed deeply. “How?”

“The ambassador, I expect.” Although how she’d managed to approach him without my snow demons noticing, I hadn’t yet figured out. “He’s being completely…” I jerked my hand, unable to put a name to his state. Asking me to decipher complicated emotions was like asking a goat to explain the Nuriyite court.

She tilted her head, lips clenched. “How did you think he would react?”

“Ilyas is selfish,” I snapped. “If it were his people, he would let them starve to save his own life. And it’s not even certain the Dark God will kill him. Only…”

Only my death was certain.

“Few people can be like you.”

She meant no one. No one else had their father explain why they weren’t his real son anymore, their fate set out for them with a defined deadline. One of my earliest memories was being told I would die and that I didn’t have to if I could stomach watching all those people who didn’t even look at me die clutching their distorted bellies with bone-thin arms.

“Your exotic princeling regards his life as precious—” Her Majesty had started to say.

“My life is precious as well!”

The words rang in the otherwise empty room. My eyes tugged towards the coffin, my coffin — Prince Hemi’s coffin.

I shook my head. “My apologies, Your Majesty. I spoke without thinking. I did not mean it.”

“Didn’t you?” she asked.

“Of course not. It’s always been my pleasure to be…” My voice cracked. It wasn’t pleasure. I’d walked through this life like a ghost, keeping everything I touched to a minimum.

She lowered her head, folding her arms across herself. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

My hand rose to the scarf, to press against the tattoo parasite hidden beneath, but I stopped myself. “It won’t be long.”

“The scriptures say—”

“I know what the scriptures say.” The tattoo burned. I took a deep breath. “I apologise, Your Majesty.”

Her chin moved a fraction, in as much of a nod as I would receive. “It isn’t you, these feelings. It’s only the bleed over.”

I closed my eyes. But what was me? The boy who waited to die, I supposed, whose room was already empty, his presence already washed away. No one to miss me when I was gone. No one to care either way.

Well, one person would care. Ilyas would curse me long after I was gone. He would dream about me, about wrapping his brown fingers around my neck and strangling me. My lips turned upward in a smile. He would remember me.

“Hemi,” Her Majesty started to say.

I blinked my eyes open, my heart squeezing in my chest. Her Majesty jerked.

She’d said my name – my former name.

“M-Mother.” I gasped, then wrenched myself down into a bow. The familiar motion grounded me. With a stronger, flat voice, I said, “My apologies.”

She winced. “Maintain your focus. Do not let anything distract you.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” When had my focus ever wavered? But it didn’t matter what I thought. I just accepted the signed tablet and bowed out of the room.