I should have felt more terrified than I did, but I knew she couldn’t kill me, though she was possessed of a murderous rage. And I had suffered worse—I would not allow Nadine to frighten me.

I met her eyes, my throat still in her grasp. “It isn’t my fault she now runs her own house,” I rasped.

“I have done things that would turn your blood to ice, village girl,” she said. “The Ziyaana, Maram—the world—was under my thumb until you. And I will not shy from doing what is necessary to secure what is mine by rights.”

“And what is yours?”

Nadine froze and at last released me. “Your Highness,” she said, and sank to her knees before Maram.

There was a tightness to the princess’s face I had only ever seen once—the day we’d met. She had not undressed after the day’s events and looked every inch the Imperial Heir, her chin raised, her eyes ringed in kohl.

“How dare you,” Maram said.

“Your Highness—”

“Be silent!” Her footsteps rang out in the quiet tower as she came closer to Nadine. I did not forget myself, and sank to my knees, waiting.

“Is that what you have imagined this entire time?” she asked softly, coming to stand before Nadine. “That through me—what was it you said? The world would be under your thumb? That in my fear or youth I would give over my inheritance to be ruled by an upstart, a woman of low birth?”

“No—!”

“I thought Amani unfair in her estimation of you,” she continued. “I defended you.”

“My only thought is to serve the crown.”

“I am the crown,” Maram said. “Look at me when I speak to you.”

Nadine’s face was pale but for two red spots of anger on her cheek. Few people liked to be upbraided, and for Nadine I imagined being upbraided by an eighteen-year-old girl she had raised would sit poorly with her.

“I will never trust you again,” Maram said. “Get out of my sight.”

Nadine rose slowly to her feet and walked to the staircase. She paused and looked at Maram.

“Beware, Your Highness. I am not the snake the villager has led you to believe.”

“No,” Maram replied. “You are a foot soldier who believes herself to be a general. Get out.”

I didn’t move until the sound of the doors to the suite boomed shut.

“Are you alright?” I asked Maram as I came to my feet.

She flashed me a false smile. “I should be asking you.”

“I’ve suffered worse,” I assured her. “Though I think she split my lip, and I will have bruises around my throat.”

Maram sank onto a divan and put her head in her hands.

“We should call you a physician,” she said without raising her head. “Or a medi-droid.”