She nodded and he came to his feet. She worried that he would impart some last piece of advice, or that he would try to comfort her. But it seemed that with age had come wisdom, and he bowed deeply and respectfully, then left.

When she was eleven, she’d stood on a cliff in the mountains on Luna-Vaxor. The air so far up was thin and there were moments when she felt as if gravity’s hold on her was so little she might jump and simply not come down. That was how she felt now—dizzy, weightless, waiting for the rest of the room to lift off with her.

Her mother’s likeness lay in the box on a bed of old frayed velvet, secure in a gilded wooden frame. Not a holofilm, or projection, or even photograph. Someone had painted her mother painstakingly in her youth. It was the smile Maram recognized, sidelong, as if she had a secret and you might know it. You certainly desperately wished to when she looked at you so.

Most of the data in the holosheets was degraded, but enough of it wasn’t. Enough to tell they were love letters written by her mother. Enough to see the dates on them—Maram had been five when they were written. Enough to see that her mother had written back, and this person, whoever he was, had kept them.

She braced her hand against the desk. A filial daughter would feel rage on behalf of her father. A dutiful daughter would wipe these holosheets clean and erase any evidence of her mother’s affair. But more and more recently she had realized she was neither. The chains of duty and honor tightened momentarily around her heart, then fell away. The weightlessness returned, as if the chains had held weights and now with them gone, her body might float away.

The state does not own my heart, her mother wrote. This I swore to you in Khenitra, and I renew that oath now.

The world swam around her. The state. The Vath. Contracts and vows.

“Maram?”

Aghraas stood in the doorway to the receiving chamber. Her braids were bound at the back of her head with her customary silver clip. And hanging from her shoulders was the velvet mantle she always wore. The wind was blowing in through the windows from the ocean, and as the fabric rippled Maram saw the indent of feathers, their edges touched with gold.

“What’s wrong?”

What do you want?

She didn’t cry often—a sign of weakness that could not be ignored would have served her poorly in all her years at court. But she felt them rise now and one roll down her cheek. Aghraas’s eyes widened in alarm and she started forward. Her fingertips were soft as they swept beneath her eye, wiping away tears.

You must decide which hands you prefer around your throat.

“What is it?”