“What would your wedding have been like, Amani?” she said. Her voice was blank, even—there was none of the emotion I’d heard only moments ago. Not even the cool, slightly amused charm that normally preceded her anger. It was as if she’d wiped it all away in an attempt to return us to what we were—master and slave. As if she abhorred that she’d had to ask me anything at all and wanted to erase the moment.

“I won’t have a wedding, Your Highness,” I said, struggling to control the sharp spike of anger.

“Oh?” she said without turning around.

“Unless you are in the habit of allowing your body double the luxury of a personal and private life,” I said, my voice at last even and flat. “No, I will not.”

I rose just as she turned away from the gown. I imagined we were mirror images of each other, faces carefully blank, bodies held in tension.

“No,” she said at last. “I suppose you won’t.”

She gestured to the vanity.

“I’ll have the gown sent to you. And this, too.” She lifted a necklace from her jewelry box and laid it against my neck. “It was my mother’s.”

It was beautiful and more complicated than any of the jewelry I had worn to date. Eight strands of pearls gathered on each side of the necklace with a gold nugget studded with emeralds and met at the center behind a circular brooch that just barely fit in the palm of my hand, it was so large. The brooch itself was several discs of gold layered over one another, etched with Kushaila designs ringing a large emerald.

“It matches you,” she said softly, fastening it behind my neck. Her mask slipped. “Us.”

I examined her carefully, though she avoided my gaze now. There were dark circles under her eyes, and a strange, haunted look about them. If I knew less about Maram, I would have guessed she was in the grip of some illness.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

The mask dropped back into place and the necklace went back into the jewelry box.

“Tala will collect you when it’s time,” she said coolly. Her eyes met mine in the mirror briefly, then skittered away. “Go.”

I rose to my feet, then paused in the doorway. The urge to comfort her for some invisible thing lay over me like a weight. It was absurd—I was the one being forced into an impossible position. But I could not help but wonder how much we mirrored each other—what impossible position was Maram being put in, that she would ask this of me? And how much of a fool was I that I had agreed to it?