The morning sun did not bring warmth to the guest quarters of the ?ba’s palace; it only brought the light, which was worse.

  Ehi Osawe woke as he always did: to the sensation of his own skin trying to divorce itself from his flesh. He lay still beneath sheets of imported silk, breathing in the scent of kola nut oil and old blood. The oil was there to mask the smell of the rot. The blood was a memory, twenty two years old but fresh as the dawn.

  He pushed himself upright. The movement cost him a gasp.

  He looked down at his chest. Once, the Golden Lion had prowled there, a masterpiece of living ink that marked him as a scion of the Eighth House. Now, the ink was the color of a bruised sky. The lines of the lion’s mane had ceased to flow; they had hardened, cracking open into fissures that wept a clear, foul-smelling fluid.

  The spirit bond was not just a gift; it was a pact. Betray the blood, and the blood rejects you.

  "Good morning, my lord."

  The servant, a boy named Iyamu with the bronze-stud markings of a house slave, stood by the door. He held a basin of warm water and a tray. He did not look at Ehi’s chest. The servants of House ?ba were trained well; they knew better than to stare at the living corpse of their master’s greatest victory.

  "Is it?" Ehi rasped. His voice sounded like grinding stones.

  "The sun shines on the Bronze Empire, my lord," Iyamu recited, placing the tray on a low table of carved mahogany. "The ancestors smile."

  Ehi laughed, a wet, rattling sound that ended in a cough. "The ancestors are screaming, boy. They have been screaming for a decade."

  He allowed Iyamu to wash him. The water turned grey as it touched his skin. Ehi refused the mirror. He knew what he looked like—a man hollowed out by grief and eaten by his own magic. A ghost haunting a palace of red clay and polished bronze.

  On the tray sat a bowl of ogbono soup, thick and dark, served with a mound of pounded yam smooth as an egg. It was a lord’s meal. Ewuare the Bronze did not starve his pets. He fed them, clothed them in velvet, and kept them in cages of exquisite comfort so he could point to them and say: See? Even the Golden Lion bows to the Leopard.

  Ehi picked up a lump of yam, dipped it into the draw soup, and forced himself to swallow. It tasted like ash.

  "News," Ehi commanded.

  Iyamu hesitated. "Lord Osaze has returned from the hunt."

  Ehi stopped chewing. The Cold Heir. If Osaze had returned, it meant the hunt was over. A cold dread, sharper than the pain in his skin, spiked in Ehi’s chest. "And?"

  "He returned alone, my lord. With his trackers."

  "Empty-handed?"

  "Empty-handed." Iyamu lowered his voice, though the walls of ?do had ears of bronze. "They say the trail went cold at the water's edge. They say... they say the ghost has gone to the Labyrinth."

  Ehi closed his eyes. ?k?. The boy, the man, now had gone to the city of lies.

  Ojie lived.

  For years, Ehi had told himself the boy was dead. It was a necessary lie. If Ojie was dead, then the line had ended on the night of the fire. If Ojie was dead, Ehi’s betrayal was the final tragedy, a closing of the book.

  But if Ojie lived... then the book was still open. And the pages were being written in blood.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  "Leave me," Ehi whispered.

  "My lord, the physicians are scheduled to—"

  "Get out!"

  The shout tore something in his throat. Iyamu bowed hastily and fled, the heavy cedar door clicking shut.

  Ehi slumped back against the pillows. He looked at the far wall, where a bronze cast of the current ?ba hung, watching him with empty, metallic eyes.

  He lives.

  Ehi remembered the night clearly. He remembered the heat of the fire consuming tapestries that had hung since the Age of Binding. He remembered standing before the great gates, the heavy timber bars in his hands. He remembered the thought that had driven him: ìgbàrádì has gone too far. He is reaching into the dark. If I do not stop him, he will break the world.

  "Brother," Ehi whispered to the empty room. "I tried to save us."

  Liar, the silence answered. You wanted the crown. You wanted the roar.

  He had opened the gates to Ewuare’s legions believing in a clean transition. A surgical strike. Ewuare had promised. The bloodline will be preserved. Only the madman must die.

  But as the bronze-armored warriors poured through, Ehi had seen the truth. They did not come to arrest. They came to erase. He had watched them butcher the household guard. He had watched them hunt the children. He had stood frozen, the "savior" of his house, while his house burned around him.

  And now, the consequences of his cowardice were coming home.

  He rose, trembling, and walked to the window. Below, the city of ?do spread out in concentric rings of red earth and thatched roofs, centered on the palace. It was a city of order, of tradition, of bronze that endured.

  But to the west, the sky was dark.

  If Ojie was in ?k?, he would need money. He would need allies. He would need hate.

  "Do not come here, boy," Ehi murmured, his hand pressing against the cool clay of the window frame. "Run. Go to the desert. Go to the sea. Do not come back to this grave."

  But even as he said it, he felt a flicker in his chest. A sensation he had not felt since the night the house died.

  A pulse.

  Deep beneath the layers of rotting ink and dying skin, the Golden Lion stirred. It was faint, weak as a dying ember, but it was there. It was not responding to Ehi. It was responding to him. To the true heir. To the blood that remembered.

  The lion knew its kin was coming.

  Ehi laughed again, and this time, there were tears in the sound. He turned back to the table, to the food he could not taste and the luxury that was his tomb.

  He went to his writing desk. He pulled a sheet of parchment from the drawer, dipped a reed pen in ink. His hand shook, the tremors of the nerve damage making the letters jagged.

  He did not know if he could get a message out. Ewuare’s spies read everything. But he had to try. Because there was one thing Ehi knew that Ojie did not. One secret that had terrified Ehi enough to destroy his own world.

  The ritual did not die with your father, he wrote, the ancient script of the High Houses flowing from his memory. The unbinding was not a theory. It was a map.

  He stopped. The door handle turned.

  Ehi shoved the parchment beneath a stack of scrolls just as the door opened. It was not the servant boy.

  It was Osaze.

  The Cold Heir stood in the doorway, dressed in hunting leathers stained with the dust of the road. He wore no jewelry, no coral beads. Only the bronze-hilted sword at his hip and the terrifying stillness of a predator that does not need to roar.

  "Uncle," Osaze said. His voice was flat, devoid of mockery or respect. It was simply a sound.

  "Prince Osaze," Ehi said, keeping his back to the desk. "I am told the hunt was... unsuccessful."

  Osaze stepped into the room. The air seemed to drop in temperature. His spirit bond, the Leopard, did not manifest visibly, but the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to stretch toward him.

  "The prey is elusive," Osaze said. He walked to the table, looked at the uneaten soup, and then turned his amber eyes to Ehi. "He moves like a ghost. He kills like a soldier. And he travels with the speed of the bonded."

  Osaze tilted his head. "Tell me, traitor. When you were boys... how did your brother teach him to hide?"

  Ehi gripped the edge of the desk. "My brother taught him to stand. Hiding... hiding he learned from the night I opened the gates for your father."

  A flicker of interest crossed Osaze’s face. "Perhaps. Or perhaps there are old paths we do not know. Paths a Gate-Opener might share."

  He took a step closer. The threat was palpable, a physical weight in the room.

  "You want him dead," Osaze said softly. "You must. As long as he lives, your betrayal is incomplete. As long as he lives, you are just a murderer, not a savior. Help me find him, Ehi. Help me finish what you started."

  Ehi looked at the young monster standing before him. He thought of the letter hidden beneath the scrolls. He thought of Ojie, swimming through the black waters of ?k?.

  For the first time in twelve years, Ehi Osawe did not feel like a prisoner. He felt like a player in the game.

  "The Lion does not hide," Ehi lied, meeting the prince's gaze. "If he is moving, he is hunting. You do not need to find him, little prince."

  Ehi smiled, and the scars on his face twisted into a mask of ruin.

  "He is coming for you."