“It feels like I’m being strangled,” she found herself whispering. “Every moment of every day. Sometimes I look at her and—”

“You don’t want it to end,” he finished for her. “What you must decide—what all of us who live in the Vath’s shadow must decide, Maram, is whose hands you would prefer around your throat.”

Maram returned to the double’s suite in a daze, Idris’s words echoing in her mind. The sun had set and Amani was back at Idris’s side yet again. It seemed all her meetings with Aghraas were destined to be dreamlike. She sat in the central tower, haloed by the silver light of the moon, a single brass lantern at her knee. It cast stars and moons as shadows across her face—she looked like a woman out of legend and myth.

Aghraas sat cross-legged on a floor cushion, her cloak draped over the low couch. An unpainted clay bowl sat on the low table at her right elbow, and every few seconds a soft ping would sound as a gold ring was pulled from one of her braids and deposited into it. Maram stood perfectly still on the last stair, watching her from the shadows. It was so rare that she was allowed to look her fill—it seemed Aghraas was always aware of her, always knew where she was. Always caught her when she tried to observe her quietly. Privately.

You can remain in the shadows, a voice said to her. Remain beneath the cloud of doubt and fear and loneliness.

She struggled, her hand pressed against her ribcage, her breath caught in her throat.

Remain shackled to the empire.

Another ring dropped into the clay bowl, and Maram stepped forward. Aghraas did not notice her until she stood over her.

“Maram—”

Maram said nothing, only sat behind her on the couch, and pulled the braid out of her hand. Aghraas went perfectly still under her touch. She did not move as the pile of gold rings in the bowl grew larger.

“Do you do this every night?” Maram asked.

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“At home my mother or a cousin will do it for me,” Aghraas said.

“They are so inclined to help you?” Maram was on the last braid, the ring held between her first finger and thumb still on the braid.

“They are,” Aghraas replied. “Maram.”

When Maram didn’t move, Aghraas pulled the braid from her grasp, slipped the ring down its length, and deposited it in the bowl.