I didn’t remember the ceremony. I was conscious of the fact that Idris never let go of my hand. That we knelt side by side as the ceremony progressed. That at some point the wreath was drawn from my head and set on a pyre. I knew that I looked up at him and recited Vathek and Kushaila vows and that he repeated them gravely. I knew that I saw the same pain at this final separation in his eyes that I felt in my heart. Neither Vathek nor Kushaila custom demanded a kiss, and for that I was grateful. I could not have endured it.

But at last the applause and cheer of Vathek and Andalaan nobility both pierced my mind, and I looked up as if waking from a dream.

The next I knew, the veil was lifted and at last I could breathe. I was alone with Tala as she touched up the kohl around my eyes and replaced the pins on my shoulders with Kushaila brooches, preparing me for the feast.

She was straightening the folds in my gown when the doors opened. Mathis, King Mathis, stood framed in the doorway, his tall and broad form blocking out the light of the other room. Tala dropped to her knees instantly, and I joined her a little more slowly, as Maram would.

“Your Eminence,” I murmured.

He flicked his hand at Tala, who shot me a quick glance before all but fleeing the room. I couldn’t blame her. There was a malignance to the Vathek king’s presence, as if terror spawned in his wake. I didn’t know if he’d been informed I would be taking Maram’s place, and I would not risk the discovery of a plot that would anger him. Instead, I remained perfectly still, waiting for his leave to rise.

Instead, he came in front of me and slid a gloved hand beneath my chin.

“You are the image of your mother,” he said, his voice low. “Without her softness or her doubt.”

Nothing he said was a threat, and yet I felt the threat of violence in the single movement, in his refusing to give me leave to stand, in the way he spoke of the late queen. And I feared, viscerally, what he would do if he realized that I was not his daughter.

“You will suffer a Kushaila spouse as I suffered a Kushaila spouse in order to do what is necessary,” he said quietly. I felt a spark of rage rise up in me on Maram and Najat’s behalf. If anyone had suffered it had been Najat, whose marriage had robbed her of her life. She’d survived the civil war that predated our conquest, and all the ills and difficulties that came with it. She’d survived the war of conquest, the occupation, the siege of Walili. Her marriage had sapped the life out of her, or so public opinion believed.