The return from the Esimirin River was a journey through a world remade. The vibrant, untamed life of the forest—the shrieking monkeys, the humid breath of the earth, the dazzling, indifferent beauty—now felt like a prelude to a sentence. The cool, green whisper of the river spirit echoed in Moremi's mind, a chilling counterpoint to the pounding of her own heart. The words, "Your victory will be your everlasting sorrow," had woven themselves into the very fabric of her being, a cold thread of fate stitched alongside the warm, living memories of her family.
She slipped back into the palace as the sun began to bleed its final, defiant streaks of orange and purple across the western sky, a mockingly beautiful end to a day that had condemned her. The familiar scents of the palace—woodsmoke from the cooking fires, the beeswax used to polish the bronze, the faint, floral note of her own chambers—assailed her with a painful sweetness. These were the smells of a life she was about to betray in order to save it.
She did not go to Ọranyan immediately. First, she went to the quiet chamber where her son, Ela, slept. He was a boy of seven summers, all long limbs and quiet curiosity, his features a perfect, heart-wrenching blend of her own and his father's. He lay tangled in his linens, his breathing a soft, steady rhythm in the twilight room. The scent of him—of warm, sleeping child, of the faint shea butter rubbed into his skin—was a physical ache in her chest. She knelt beside his bed, her hand hovering just above his brow, not daring to touch him, as if her newfound pact with the spirit might taint his innocence.
The bond that ties you to your son.
A hot tear escaped, tracing a path through the forest dust still on her cheek. She watched it fall, a dark spot on the clean, white linen of his sheet. This was the price. Not just a political sacrifice, but the severing of this profound, biological tether. Could she do it? Could she look into this trusting, sleeping face and choose to become a stranger to it?
The image of the child in the courtyard, the one with the vacant, shock-wide eyes, superimposed itself over Ela's peaceful face. She saw not one child, but hundreds. She heard not the soft rhythm of his breath, but the collective whimper of a terrified city. The Queen rose, pushing the mother's heart down into a deep, locked chest within her. She pressed a kiss to her own fingers and then, with infinite gentleness, transferred it to the air just above his temple.
She found Ọranyan in his strategy room, a place that had once been a hub of confident energy and was now a tomb for defeated plans. Maps of Ile-Ife and its surrounding territories were spread across a large, low table of dark mahogany, held down by polished river stones. Little carved ebony figures, representing companies of soldiers, were clustered defensively inside the city walls. There were no pieces to represent the enemy. How do you map a nightmare?
Ọranyan stood over the table, his broad shoulders slumped. He was still in his day clothes, a simple tunic of russet cloth, stained at the cuff with what looked like ink, or perhaps dried blood. The lamplight caught the silver threads at his temples, and Moremi's heart constricted. When had they appeared? She saw the weight of the past few moons not as a temporary burden, but as a permanent etching on his face.
He looked up as she entered, and his eyes, shadowed with exhaustion, flickered with a momentary light at the sight of her. "Moremi. You were gone. I was… concerned." His voice was rough with unspoken fear.
"I needed to think. Away from the walls," she said, her own voice sounding strangely distant, as if it were coming from the far end of a long, dark corridor.
She moved to the table, her eyes scanning the futile defensive formations. The air in the room was stale, thick with the smell of spent lamp oil and male anxiety. She picked up one of the ebony soldiers, its form sleek and strong in her palm. It felt like a toy. A child's pretense at a war that was all too real.
"The raids will continue," she stated, her tone flat, factual. "They will come again, and again, until there is nothing left of Ile-Ife but a memory, a story mothers tell to frighten their children."
Ọranyan's jaw tightened. He slammed a fist onto the table, making the ebony figures jump. "Do you think I do not know this? I have scouts roaming the forests until they are half-mad with fatigue! I have consulted every priest, every diviner! What would you have me do, Moremi? What magic do you possess that I have overlooked?"
This was the moment. The precipice. She took a slow, deep breath, drawing the stale, heavy air into her lungs, giving herself one last second within the golden cage of her old life.
"I have been to the Esimirin River," she said, her voice low but clear, cutting through the stagnant air.
A profound silence filled the room. Ọranyan went utterly still. The Esimirin was not a place one visited casually. It was a name spoken with reverence and fear, a place of last resorts.
"You did what?" he whispered, the words laced with a dawning, horrified understanding.
"I spoke with the Spirit of the river," she continued, her gaze fixed on the ebony soldier in her hand, unable to meet his eyes just yet. "I bargained for the truth."
"You bargained?" The word was a roar, exploding in the confined space. He strode around the table, his body vibrating with a fury born of terror. "With one of the old powers? Moremi, by the gods, what were you thinking? Their games are not for mortals! Their prices are… are pieces of the soul!" He grabbed her shoulders, his grip firm, almost painful. "What did you promise? Tell me you promised nothing!"
She finally looked up, meeting his frantic gaze. Her own eyes were dry now, two pools of dark, unshakeable resolve. "I promised what was asked. And in return, I was given the path to our salvation."
She laid out the plan, her words precise and chilling. She would allow herself to be taken in the next raid. She would go willingly into the heart of the enemy, a spy in the camp of the Ará Ọ̀rùn. She would observe them, learn their nature, discover their origin, and find their weakness. She would not fight them. She would study them.
"You are mad," Ọranyan breathed, his hands dropping from her shoulders as if she had become red-hot. He took a step back, shaking his head in disbelief. "This is the counsel of a river demon? To deliver my wife, my queen, into the hands of those… those things?" He began to pace, a caged leopard, his agitation fueling the heat in the room. "No. Absolutely not. I forbid it."
The word 'forbid' hung in the air, a spark on tinder. Moremi placed the ebony soldier back on the map, precisely in the center of Ile-Ife.
"You forbid it?" Her voice was dangerously quiet. "Ọranyan, look at me. I am not one of your regiments to be commanded. I am your queen. And my first duty is to our people, not to my own safety."
"Your duty is to rule by my side! Not to throw yourself to the wolves as a piece of bait!" he thundered, gesturing wildly at the window, towards the unseen forest. "Do you have any idea what they might do to you? Idowu's description was not of benevolent spirits! They are monsters! They will tear you apart! Or worse!"
"And if I do nothing, they will tear all of us apart!" she fired back, her own voice rising, meeting his fury with the cold steel of her logic. "Piece by piece, compound by compound, until your kingdom is a graveyard and your crown sits on a throne of bones! What is one life weighed against thousands? What is my safety against the survival of our entire people?"
"It is everything to me!" The confession was ripped from him, raw and anguished. The king vanished, and in his place stood only a man, terrified of losing the center of his world. "Do not ask this of me, Moremi. I cannot… I will not sanction it. I will not let you do this."
"You do not have to let me," she said, her posture straight, her chin lifted. The indigo and silver of her wrapper seemed to deepen in the lamplight, the royal patterns asserting her authority. "I am telling you what must be done. This is not a request for your permission, Ọranyan. It is a statement of my will."
He stared at her, his chest heaving. The air crackled with the tension between his protective love and her devastating resolve. He saw the woman he loved, but he also saw the queen he had always known her to be—a mind sharper than any spear, a will stronger than the city walls. And he saw that he was losing the argument.
"And what of Ela?" he demanded, striking at what he believed was her most vulnerable point. "You would leave your son motherless? You would let him grow up with the memory that his mother walked willingly into the arms of demons?"
The blow landed, and she flinched, the pain a fresh wound. But she did not yield.
"I would rather he grow up in a thriving Ile-Ife,perhaps with a mother who is a stranger to him, than die in a smoldering ruin clinging to a mother who did nothing to save him," she said, her voice trembling for the first time, betraying the ocean of emotion she was holding back. "This is for him, Ọranyan. For his future. For the future of every child in this city. My love for him is the very reason I must go."
He turned away from her, his hands braced against the wall, his head bowed. The silence stretched, thick and heavy as a funeral shroud. The only sounds were the sputtering of the lamp and the ragged sound of his breathing. She could see the battle raging within him—the husband against the king, the man against the ruler.
When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow, defeated. "What was the price, Moremi? What did the spirit demand for this… this 'truth'?"
She closed her eyes. This was the final, cruelest thrust. She could not lie to him. Not about this.
"The spirit said…the price for the knowledge is the thing I hold most dear," she whispered, the words ash in her mouth. "The light of my life. The core of my happiness. The love that binds me to my king, and the bond that ties me to my son."
Ọranyan spun around, his face a mask of horror and comprehension. "No…"
"I will become a savior to our people," she continued, the prophecy falling from her lips like stones, "but a stranger in my own home."
The fight drained out of him completely. The color left his face. He understood now that this was not just a dangerous mission; it was a spiritual transaction, a fate already woven. His opposition was not just futile; it was irrelevant. He was watching the woman he loved walk towards a cliff, and he was powerless to stop her.
He staggered to a chair and sank into it, the weight of his crown, his kingdom, and his impending loss crushing him. He looked at her, and for a long, terrible moment, she saw not a king, but a boy about to be left alone in the dark.
"When?" he asked, the single word laden with a bottomless grief.
"The next raid," she said, her voice soft now, the fire of their argument banked into the embers of sorrow. "I will be in the Oke-Aro quarter, among the people rebuilding. I will make sure I am seen."
He gave a slow, weary nod, his eyes glistening in the lamplight. The reluctant blessing was given not with words, but with this silent, agonized acceptance.
He stood and walked to her. He did not embrace her with the passion of their earlier conflict, but took her hands in his, his thumbs stroking her knuckles, memorizing the feel of them.
"You are the bravest person I have ever known,"he said, his voice thick. "And the most stubborn. And the most… everything." A single tear escaped, tracing a path through the dust and worry on his cheek. "You will come back to me. You will find a way. I do not accept this 'stranger' prophecy. You are Moremi. You defy fate."
She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against his, a gesture of intimacy they had shared since they were young. She breathed him in—the scent of sandalwood, of sweat, of king, of husband. She committed it to a memory she prayed would survive whatever the spirit planned to take.
"I will return," she whispered, a promise she had no power to keep, but one she made with every fiber of her being. "Wait for me."
"Until the rivers run dry and the stars fall from the sky," he vowed, his voice a low, fervent prayer.
They stood like that for a long time, in the quiet strategy room, two rulers holding back the night, their love a fragile, golden cage that one of them was about to shatter forever. The maps on the table were forgotten. The war was no longer out there. It was here, in this room, in the terrifying, magnificent resolve of a queen's heart.