Jenine had been spending her days trying to decide if Garoth Ursuul’s wives and concubines would die. Dorian waited for her in the black rock halls that she usually lightened with her presence. But today, and for the days since he’d laid the question before her, that sunny presence had been clouded.

“My love,” he said gently, “we have to decide today.”

“Part of me hates you for making me decide, but this is what it is to be a queen, isn’t it? You are wise, milord. If you decided for me, I would doubt you either way.”

He breathed. When she’d said “part of me hates you,” his heart stopped beating. Every Godking for centuries had been cremated with his wives and concubines, save for a few concubines that the next Godking wished for himself. If Dorian kept his first promise to Jenine, every woman in the harems would be obliged to throw themselves—or be thrown—onto Garoth Ursuul’s pyre, with only the dubious reward of getting to spend all eternity as his slaves. The alternative was to claim all of them, which the Khalidorans would see as selfish and dishonoring to the dead, but a Godking was not expected to be selfless.

There was a third alternative, of course. Dorian could outright ban the practice of throwing the living on funeral pyres. In a few years, he intended to do exactly that. But he was already being painted as a soft southerner. The Vürdmeisters were sharks, and mercy would hatch a dozen plots against his life. What would Solon have told him to do? Dorian pushed the question aside: Solon would have told him to get the hell out of Khalidor.

“In some ways,” he said, “if we are to change what marriage is to mean in these lands, it makes sense to let them die. From there we have a blank slate.”

“So we throw away eighty-six women’s lives to prove that women have value?”

Dorian said nothing. He offered his hand and she took it. They began walking toward his apartments. “I don’t know how to take the cruelty out of the choice.”