I paced the small sitting room, trying to still my mind, to breathe. My family and the Salihis were meeting for a small party, where the details of the marriage contract would be hammered out and finalized. And in two days I would be married. I’d spent so much time not thinking about this moment, so fearful was I that my family would never come. And now—I dreaded it. My relationship with Idris had always been a private affair, and it highlighted for me how much my life had changed. I was not only Amani of the Kushaila, Amani of Tanajir, Amani, Tariq’s daughter. I was Amani, the queen’s councilor, the queen’s shield, the queen’s liaison. I would never again be a private citizen, and I had opened up my family to public scrutiny as well.

Dihya.

“Amani,” Idris said from the doorway, and came forward. “You must stop worrying.”

“How can I stop worrying?” I said.

“My aunts and cousins love you,” he said, taking my face in his hands. “They will show your family the respect they are due. They will show you the respect you are due.”

I laid my forehead against his chest.

“What if they hate each other?”

“That is hardly likely,” my mother said from the doorway. “Unless the Salihis have changed significantly since I left the planet.”

My mother was dressed more regally than I’d ever seen her in a deep blue velvet qaftan. It was simple, with a high collar, and beading from her throat to her navel. She wore a single ring, and her hair was held up by a silver net, studded with pearls.

“Sayida—” Idris cut himself off and froze, his eyes fixed on my mother.

“What is it?”

“This is your mother?” he asked, looking between us.

I frowned. “Yes.”

My mother, for her part, smiled. “Idris ibn Salihi,” she said. “You are the image of your father.”

Idris looked as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Oh, don’t gape,” my mother admonished him. “It is not so easy to kill me, though many have tried.”

“What an alarming thing to say to your daughter’s future husband,” I managed. “On a day when I am already alarmed.”

“Your mother,” Idris began at last, “is the daughter of Mustafa el-Fatihi, the dowager’s exiled brother.”

“I am rarely referred to as such,” she said, clicking her tongue. “More often I am called Moulouda al-Farisiya.”

“Who conquered half the world,” Idris continued. “Before the tesleet abandoned her father.”

My mouth went slack. “That’s what the tesleet called jeddou to? War?”

My mother slanted me a sad smile. “You can see why I did not like talking about it.”