“Maram.” Mathis’s voice was equally strong and clear, but there was an icy edge to it. I thought of Maram’s tone often as one limned in frost, but Mathis seemed to be able to take that to the extreme simply by existing. I felt it sink into my bones, and I marveled at Maram for not reacting at all.

She rose to her feet gracefully and looked him in the eye. “What would you have of me, Your Eminence?”

He rose to his feet and came down the steps so that he was close enough to touch her. He dwarfed her—Mathis was a warrior and he looked the part. Broad-shouldered, tall, large enough that in the days of antiquity he might have wielded a broadsword or a double-headed axe.

“You look well,” he said.

“Thank you. I am well.”

“We have heard reports,” he said.

Maram’s face barely moved. “Reports. You are having me watched.”

“You’re surprised,” he replied. “Don’t be.”

“What do the reports say?” I marveled at her tone—even as far as I was from him, Mathis’s voice set a chill in my bones. But Maram sounded as if they were having a polite conversation over tea.

“That you have gathered support among your mother’s people.” His tone didn’t waver toward anger or violence, and yet the air changed. My muscles clenched as if my body prepared to be struck. “That you have allied with the makhzen.”

Here lay the difference between Maram and me. She did not shift her footing, nor did her expression break. She betrayed no fear or anxiety. She only folded her hands in front of her and raised an eyebrow.

“It seemed prudent to mitigate what has been a constant threat in my life, especially after the attempt at my coronation,” she said. “I did as I have been taught—I found strength. I neutralized those who would be my enemies.”

“I didn’t know there was such strength among savages.” His voice betrayed no emotion. No amusement or rage. There was only the cold.

“I am here because you sent me here,” she said. “To live among savages. I have done what is necessary while I abide among them.”

I shivered. I knew it wasn’t true, that I saw the real Maram and that her father saw a facade, a necessary mask to ensure her survival. And yet her tone chilled me. In what world did a girl learn to lie so easily about her peers?

I almost laughed—the same world I lived in. The world that had taken me from my family, stripped me of my daan, taught me to be Maram. That world demanded a cruel, unforgiving mask. And both Maram and I had learned to wear it well.