Maram had dealt with enough emotion in the last week to last her a lifetime. She had no interest in dredging up old wounds or vulnerabilities. She especially had no desire to revert to her child self, though she felt the impulse rise sharply in her chest.

“Yabnati,” her grandmother said, and held out a hand.

She almost didn’t move.

The thing Maram hated the most about her grandmother was that she imagined her mother would have aged to look the same. Every time she saw her, she imagined her mother, a doting grandmother herself, looking over Maram’s children.

But come forward she did, and pressed a kiss against the back of her grandmother’s hand, and knelt at her feet. She thought she might retain her composure. She certainly had the strength for it. But her grandmother laid a hand on her cheek, and swept a thumb in an arc beneath her eye, and she felt the tears come.

The dowager sultana said nothing as Maram laid her head in her lap and wept. Her hand was warm on her back, though still.

“I can’t do it,” she said at last, looking up. “I can’t keep doing it.”

Her grandmother looked grim as she looked down at her. “Your mother felt much the same. She survived.”

“My mother was loved,” she rasped. “I am not.”

The dowager’s eyebrows rose. “Do you think I do not love you?”

Maram hated how her voice wavered when she spoke. “Few people will love the daughter of a monster—even if she is made in their image.”

“You are not a monster,” the dowager said. “You are my granddaughter. And you will survive this.”

Perhaps she was a monster. Every time she looked at Amani she remembered some slight she’d dealt her, some horrible violence. Her life was littered with the evidence of what ran in her blood—the things she was capable of. The things she’d done.

“Did my mother ever give him up?”

The dowager stilled. “What?”

“I was given letters by the scholars in M’Gaadir,” she said, and swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Her letters.”

Her grandmother leaned back in her seat, her old eyes shrewd. “I will tell you the story of your mother, if you answer me honestly.”

Maram nodded.

“Why did you write to me?”

“I—” She blinked rapidly, trying to stem the tears. “I know what I have to do. I know what is expected of me by—by the Andalaans. I know it’s the right thing to do. But I can’t do it alone. Grandmother—”

“Hush now,” her grandmother murmured, and laid a hand on her cheek. “Ruling is difficult beyond imagining. Understand this and you will never be surprised.”

“I can’t do what my father wants,” she whispered.

The dowager smiled only a little. “I know. That is why I have come.”

“My mother—”