“This is my responsibility,” she said, and swept a thumb over Aghraas’s cheek. “And if—if I stayed, would you stay with me?”

Aghraas hand came over hers. “Do you remember what I said to you at your estate?”

“Tell me.”

She kissed the palm of Maram’s hand. “Wherever you are, so too shall I be.”

28

The morning of our departure from Ghufran dawned and Maram and I met in the double’s suite. These meetings had become routine by now; an exchange of clothing, jewelry, and information. While I had taken the first days in Ghufran, she had taken the latter, and now that we were in transit once again, she wished to retire while I handled the makhzen.

I didn’t have a courtyard as I’d had in Azaghar and Khenitra. Instead, there was a modest sitting room, with low couches piled with cushions. A table was in the center, and from the ceiling hung several brass lamps. The windows were covered with wooden trellises and Tala had passed through earlier and opened them so that the sounds of the Ghufani harbor poured in, along with the hum of sky-cars and transports. Maram stood framed against one of the windows and its trellis, her hands held in front of her, her gaze distant.

“Your Highness?” My eyes widened in alarm when she looked at me. It didn’t look as if she’d slept at all. “What’s—is everything alright?”

“My grandmother arrived last night,” she said, and gave me a tremulous smile. “It has altered my reality a bit.”

I laid a hand on her arm. “In a good way?”

“That remains to be seen,” she replied. “I can tell you want to tell me something. Out with it.”

I wanted to ask her about her grandmother. She’d avoided meeting the dowager in the summer, and I knew she hadn’t been on the official invitation lists. A last-minute addition, done in secret. Perhaps Maram was ready to embrace this, to stop fearing her relatives and take control of our planet. But I didn’t have time and I hated that the rebellion would have to take precedence over our friendship for the next few minutes.

“I’ve received an assignment.”

Her body, already motionless, took on a preternatural stillness.

“What?”

“They’re going to kill the king,” I said softly.

Her laugh was half hysteria, half the soft, foreboding laugh I’d learned to fear in my earlier days in the Ziyaana. She turned away from me and shielded her eyes with a ringed hand.

“Dihya,” she said, walking a few steps away. “Isn’t that how the Kushaila swear?”

It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected from her, and I was at a loss for what to do. Reach out to her? Comfort her?

“Maram—”