She waited outside my bedchamber as I rushed through the room, performing ablutions and selecting clothes and jewelry for the day. There was no world, I knew, where I would have been able to spend the day in bed, mourning Idris. Even if I were still a girl living on Cadiz, my mother would have roused me to milk our goat, and then I would have been expected to return to the fields or the village kitchen.

The world never stopped for a single broken heart.

I finished pinning up my hair, then found a mantle with a hood and a veil for my face. Maram stood in the center of the courtyard, face upturned to the dim rays of the rising sun. Sometimes I marveled at how similar we seemed and yet so different, too. Maram was raised among royalty, and despite everything, was told the world would always bow at her feet. That reality was so different from mine, and it poured out of her no matter what she did. Even standing now, with no one to witness, she seemed a queen only in need of her crown.

She caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re just—you’ll be a fantastic queen someday. You know that, don’t you?”

She widened her eyes, bewildered. “Because I can stand still in sunlight?”

I laughed. “Yes. That’s what I meant. I assume you have a way for me to reach the gallery that will keep me hidden?”

Maram had thought well ahead, and brought with her not only a holomap detailing the hidden corridors of the estate, but a beacon much like the one Idris had brought along with him last night. It would allow me to pass unchecked through the passages.

“I don’t want the security log to show us both there,” she explained. “If people found out—”

“They’d accuse you of needing a crutch.” I nodded. “Clever. I’ll be close behind. I promise.”

I had never been in the diwan chamber when it was empty. I stood on the second-floor gallery level, a little to the left of the throne, and waited. Maram stood before it, her face blank, her hands at her sides. She looked entirely at peace, though I knew she wasn’t.

A moment later a sharp beep shot through the room and the air above the throne wavered. Mathis’s form came together like an image stilling in rippling water. He sat, back straight, one hand on the arm of whatever seat he was in wherever in the galaxy he was currently situated.

Maram sank to her knees prettily and inclined her head. “Your Eminence.” Her voice was strong and clear.