“Maram,” she said again, and turned around on the cushion to face her. Maram might have looked away, but she didn’t. Instead she watched the way moonlight made Aghraas’s eyes seem to burn with fire, at the way the lamplight struck her cheeks. She wanted to reach for her again, to sweep a thumb over her cheek. She wanted to be able to lean close as she’d seen Amani and Idris do over a sheaf of poetry.

She didn’t.

“Are you afraid of anything, Aghraas?” she asked, her fingers tightening around the fabric of her skirt.

Aghraas’s eyes widened.

“I think I’m afraid of you,” Maram continued softly, not waiting for an answer. Her eyes had lowered almost of their own volition, and so it was that she saw Aghraas reach for her hands. Aghraas turned Maram’s hand over and traced over the love line cutting through its center.

“Afraid of me?” she whispered. “Or afraid of us?”

22

The days passed. That was the most I could say of them—one began and then ended and then another and so on. It was difficult to take joy in the successes I’d enjoyed. I’d done the impossible, a thing not done since prior to the civil war that had wracked our planet: united houses against a common enemy, created a confederation. I’d saved my family, a thing that had seemed unimaginable to me only a few months ago. And I wanted to believe that my view of the world was not so small that the end—the true end—of Idris and me had so upended it in my mind completely and yet—

The sound of someone clearing their throat roused me out of my melancholy. Tala hovered in the doorway, wringing her hands.

“Her Highness has arrived and awaits you in the tower,” she said softly. “She is … temperamental.”

“Thank you, Tala,” I said, and rose to my feet. “I’ll handle it.”

We had a small kitchen here, and I found and loaded a tray with sweet pastries and a pot of tea, along with two glasses. Maram had gone straight to the tower room, and stood facing the ocean, the pins gone from her hair, her slippers tossed off somewhere to the side. She looked like a young girl, which in theory I knew to be true. But always she seemed to me—or rather, nearly always—to be an unassailable fortress, made of ice and stone. I had only ever seen the walls come down in her worst moments, and this was not one of them.

And yet and still, it seemed she was comfortable enough here and with me to let down her guard.

I set the tray down on the table and Maram did not turn away from her view of the sea, though she smiled.

“Am I a child to be pacified by sweets?” she asked.