“During the height of the civil war, Najat believed we would lose. My brother and his daughter Moulouda seemed unstoppable. He’d found a tesleet—or it found him—and they rode to war with its blessing. They’d captured Cadiz, and were moving across the islands, and controlled the Strait of Qurtan and the east continent.” She closed her eyes. “She was a foolish girl in love—so she married the boy she loved, thinking we would lose the war and she would never sit on the throne. Thinking that the decision would not have political ramifications.”

Maram blinked back her tears, and stared up at her grandmother in disbelief.

“But—”

“Her marriage to Mathis was necessary, but illegal. Neither Andalaan nor Vathek law recognizes bigamy. You must understand—if Mathis could not secure his hold on the planet legally, he would wipe out the makhzen, all our governments—everything. He was willing to make a concession with the understanding that his heir would inherit, and that he would be regent of the planet until her majority. Najat ensured the language of the treaty secured your position, not his.”

Maram frowned. “I don’t understand.”

The dowager leaned forward. “The treaty states that Najat was the primary ruler—even if that was not the reality—and that in the event of her untimely death her husband would be regent to her first born. Mathis is not her husband, which renders the occupation illegal. But it’s a plan that works only if Najat is alive to enforce it and to plead to the galactic senate for aid.”

“He killed her,” Maram breathed, stumbling to her feet.

“He poisoned her so that no one could accuse him of killing the rightful ruler of the planet. She died slowly. And her husband was executed on charges of treason. Yabnati—”

“He killed my mother,” she said again.

She couldn’t breathe. Every day of her life had been wracked with guilt—guilt that she wasn’t enough for her father. That what she had become would frighten and disgust her mother. She struggled every day between the two—running from one disparate shadow to another. But a dead woman couldn’t provide comfort, and her living father had no desire to.

Her head snapped up to look at the dowager. “Is—is Mathis my father?”

Her grandmother smiled sadly. “I don’t know. But I do know that his custodianship of this planet is illegal because he never married your mother. And now, with the rebels as strong as they are and you of age—if the world found out … If the galaxy found out—”