“Cancers eventually kill the host. I refuse that reality,” I said, shaking my head. “We have a chance—”

“We have never had a chance,” he interrupted me. “Not when they first came. Not when my family and the Wattasis stood during the last siege.”

“So what would you have us do? You have noted it yourself—there is no relief, no help under the Vath. We cannot even keep ourselves fed!”

“You don’t understand the cost—”

A cold rage took hold of me, spinning up from the base of my spine and out through the rest of me. It stilled my shaking hands, my trembling voice. It obliterated the fear I felt at his discovery.

“I don’t understand the cost?” I hissed. “My mother is the last of her siblings. Of her family—all of them killed during the war or taken by starvation and disease after. Before I came here—before I was brought here—the Vath burned my village’s only source of income and food. Every year we worry if they will come and burn our houses or take our boys or our women. I was taken”—I was shouting now, and shoving at him so that he stumbled back—“from the only home I’ve ever known, my dignity stripped away, beaten and tortured and forced to watch my family pay the price for any dissent.

“Do not tell me I do not know the cost, Idris ibn Salih. I have paid the cost three times over.” My hands were still on his chest, bent like claws. For a moment I stared at them, then drew them away and covered my face.

“Maybe…” I started, then paused and drew in a tremulous breath. “If we cannot agree on this … maybe we were a dream.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. “This is not about ideology, Amani. This is about your life.” His hands came to rest on either side of my face. “I cannot lose you.”

“And do you have me now, Idris? Am I yours? Do I live?”

When he laid his forehead against mine, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to look at him knowing what would happen in the next minute. All my hopes for the future, the vague uncertain imaginings of what we might be to each other turned to dust.

“Why is this not enough?” he whispered.

For long moments the only sound in the room was our breathing. But I could not give him what he asked. My pride and dignity were all I had left.

“I am half of what I ought to be,” I said softly, and drew myself away. “And I would rather be dead than a slave.”

19