The waiting room felt overly self-aware, as if the building knew when not to intrude. Beyond the glass wall, the corridor was noisy with nurses moving briskly, their soft shoes whispering on the floor. Orderlies slowed as they passed Kosi, heads dipping before they caught themselves. Nurses smiled too quickly or hid grins, murmuring as they hurried on.

Esiri noticed the exaggerated courtesy and finally looked at him properly. It annoyed her that he drew such attention without being ostentatious. Kosi’s appearance and confidence made people instinctively pay attention to him.

It wasn’t just his looks, which she would never admit to aloud, that were quite pleasing. Instead, it was his charm, wit, and confidence, and the way he looked at her, as if he saw her in ways no one else did. If he wasn’t such a stubborn believer in shrines and gods, they could have been friends… or more.

She clicked her tongue softly. “So that’s what all the giggling is for.”

His mouth curved faintly. “I can’t help other people’s lack of professionalism.”

“Don’t be modest,” she said. “You enjoy it.”

“I tolerate it.”

“That’s worse.”

He didn’t rise to it, and even that didn’t surprise her. He stayed where he was, hands relaxed, gaze on the far wall.

“What is it?” she asked again. “Because you don’t shut down officials and pull strings for free.”

This time, he looked at her, and his stare lingered just long enough that she felt it in her chest.

“Why do you do that pause?” she demanded. “That thing where you wait, like if you stretch the silence long enough the question will lose interest and wander off.”

“It never does,” he said. “Neither does the truth.”

“Then stop guarding whatever secrets you’re keeping from me like state property and say it.”

He drew a breath, and glanced down the corridor where another nurse slowed, then sped up again when she realised they were being watched.

“Not here.”

Esiri let out a laugh. “You dragged me across a city that’s still on fire, told municipal officials to watch their language, and now you’re pretending this hospital corridor is too sensitive for honesty?”

“I’m pretending nothing.”

“Then enlighten me.”

“I want you upright when you hear it.”

She stepped closer. “I’ve been conscious all night.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” His gaze darted to her soaked sleeves, then to the dark prints her shoes left behind on the polished floor. “You’re sustaining yourself on momentum and anger, and that only works for so long.”

“There you go again,” she said. “Deciding who I am and when I’ll fall apart.” A humourless huff escaped her. “All you had to do was tell me what you know about the fire.”

“I think the Assembly will try to bury it before we understand it.”

There it was.

She folded her arms. “Ah. So this is crown business.”

“It’s everyone’s business, Esiri,” he said. “A city was erased.” He paused, choosing his words with care she did not appreciate. “The Assembly will want a story they can tie this up nicely. Infrastructure failure. Environmental anomaly. A clean narrative to file under relief budgets and condolences.”

“What about the crown?” she shot back.

“The crown watches what doesn’t fit into reports,” he replied. “We track these events. We intervene when we can. When we can’t, we limit the damage.”

She let out another laugh. “Did your shrine warn you about this one?”

His jaw set. “Aiyilẹ̀yìnàbà was built around those shrines long before there was an Assembly to argue about jurisdiction. You keep dismissing the foundations of your own lineage, and it’s starting to sound less like principle and more like avoidance.”

She bristled. “I don’t dismiss them. I just know where they belong.” Her eyes held his fiercely. “Law, justice, and order do not live in shrines.”

Before he could answer, she moved.

She slipped past him, shoulder brushing his arm as she crossed the threshold. The door to the inner wing chimed softly as it opened, lights shifting to a calmer spectrum as the system registered her presence.

“Esiri,” he warned, turning.

She didn’t stop.

“Add it to my list of offences,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m done waiting for permission to see my grandmother.”

The doors slid shut behind her, leaving him standing in the corridor with the sound of her footsteps already pulling him after her.

He swore under his breath and followed.

The room was quieter than the waiting space, dimmed by recessed lighting that adjusted as she entered. Her grandmother lay small under the covers, chest rising shallowly, silver hair wrapped in gauze threaded with monitoring filaments. Transparent screens hovered nearby, numbers scrolling in indifferent patterns.

Esiri stopped at the foot of the bed, her legs threatening to give way for the second time since Idanre.

She caught herself against the frame before they could fail. With white sheets and whirring machines surrounding her, her grandmother looked smaller than she remembered.

Her right arm, exposed over the covers, showed burn marks with a translucent healing mesh luminous as it knitted the damaged tissues back together. The Med-bot had done its work well, cooling the burn, repairing what it could, and classifying the injury as superficial with no scarring expected.

“She’s sedated,” Kosi said quietly behind her. “Smoke exposure. Shock. The doctors don’t want stimulation.”

Esiri nodded without looking at him, her eyes fixed on the rise and fall of her grandmother’s chest, counting each breath as if numbers alone could keep it stable.

She stepped closer and took her grandmother’s hand. Her skin was warm as she pressed her thumb into the familiar curve of her palm.

“You should listen to them,” Kosi added. “If you push this—”

She turned to him then. “Do not tell me how to grieve.”

“I’m not.”

“Then stop talking.”

He did.

The machines filled the silence for him. Lines flowed across the screens in calming patterns, with soft pulses marking breath and heartbeat. Esiri locked onto that rhythm and held it, as if attention alone could sustain it.

Then her grandmother’s fingers twitched, just enough for Esiri to lean forward.

“Granny?”

The machines reacted before she could draw another breath, readings spiking and alarms blaring as her grandmother’s eyes opened, unfocused but alive.

“Ẹsírí,” she whispered.

“I’m here,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m right here.”

Her grandmother’s gaze drifted, then returned to Esiri as if by instinct. “Fire,” she murmured. “Too much fire.”

“I know,” Esiri said quickly. “Please. Rest. You don’t have to talk.”

Her grandmother’s grip tightened, flaring with unexpected strength. “Your brother.”

“What about him?” Esiri asked, the words leaving her before she could temper them.

“He ran,” her grandmother said, her voice weakening as the machines registered distress and adjusted. “Before the light came down.”

Light. What light?

Kosi moved closer to the bed. “Mama, breathe.”

She did not look at him. Her attention concentrated on Esiri with a sudden intensity that felt borrowed. “You must find him,” she said. “He was afraid, and he didn’t follow the others.”

Esiri’s pulse roared in her ears. “Where did he go?”

Her grandmother’s gaze wandered upward, losing focus again as if the ceiling held something only she could see. “The old road,” she whispered. “The one we stopped using.”

The lights stuttered, every panel blinking out at once, plunging the room into darkness. Screens vanished, machines fell silent, and bots froze as their internal lights extinguished, as if the power grid had been shut off.

Esiri felt the pressure in the room change, as her skin prickled. In a way, the silence and darkness felt like time was frozen.

“Granny?” she said into the dark.

As soon as she spoke, the lights came back on, and every alarm went off.

Her grandmother’s hand went slack in hers as the monitor erupted into a frantic distress alarm.

Ibáwì.

The whisper slipped through Esiri’s mind with chilling familiarity, and this time she did not question it.

Doctors flooded the room in seconds, their voices overlapping and commands snapping through the room.

“Step back!”

“Clear the bed.”

“Out. Now.”

Hands closed in around Esiri as she resisted, her grip tightening instinctively on her grandmother’s fingers.

“No,” she said, her voice cracking. “She was talking. She was fine.”

A nurse blocked her path. “Miss Adolo, you need to move so we can do our job.”

Esiri shook her head. “She was just speaking. You heard her.”

Kosi’s hand closed around her wrist, firm enough to restrain her without hurting her. He leaned in close, his voice low against her ear.

“Esiri. We need to leave.”

The whisper cut through her thoughts again, closer now, insistent in a way that raised the hair along her arms.

Ibáwì.

Only then did the sudden, humiliating realisation occur to her. She had no idea what it meant. She was Urhobo on her father’s side and only partly Yoruba through her mother’s line. Kosi would know its meaning, but her brother’s whereabouts were more pressing.

She turned toward Kosi. “My brother,” she said. “What do you know?”

His jaw tightened.

“What do you know?” she pressed.

“This isn’t the place,” he said.

“Then where?”

“The palace,” he replied. “Aiyilẹ̀yìnàbà.”

She let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Of course it is.”

“It’s the only place I can tell you what you need to know.”

“And what is that?” she snapped. “More prophecies and sacrifices?”

He stared at her. “Truth,” he said. “Whether you like where it resides or not.”

She wrenched herself free of his grip as alarms shrieked from her grandmother’s room. Orderlies rushed past them, their voices raised, and their eyes forward.

Her grandmother lay still behind the glass, and Esiri stared until her chest scraped.

“If I leave,” she said quietly, “and something happens to her—”

Kosi stepped in front of her before the thought could finish forming. His hand came up unexpectedly, as he cupped her chin and turned her face toward his.

“If you stay, and something happens to your brother, you will never forgive yourself.”

He was right; there was nothing she could do here.

With a deep breath, the kind that hurt on the way in, she nodded, and Kosi turned toward the exit like a well-oiled machine. Esiri followed silently, her mind elsewhere, as they headed to the skyrunner waiting on the platform outside.

She took one last look at the hospital, holding what little family she had left, then turned away.

“Take me to your palace,” she said. “And if you lie to me even once—”

“I won’t,” Kosi said.

She believed him, especially when his eyes shone with such seriousness. Though she’d always questioned his beliefs, she trusted his sincerity.

The skyrunner’s engines hummed to life as they boarded. Esiri decided to focus on her brother and hope her grandmother would hold on until she could get back.