I shook my head. If I told her we’d agreed to be friends it would raise more questions.

“He slept on the divan,” I said. “I left before he woke.”

“How chivalric of him,” she said and, setting the glass down on the table between us, came to her feet. “Now that he knows who you are, the next few weeks should be easier for you.”

I flinched as if she’d struck me. “What?”

“You will take my place beside him during the celebrations at M’Gaadir.”

“No!” The word burst out of me without thought. My whole soul rebelled at such a thing.

“No?” she repeated, her voice dangerously flat.

“I cannot play-act you for the duration of the celebration—that’s two months,” I choked out.

“Why?”

There was a dangerous tenor to her voice, and yet I could not heed it, raw from last night, reeling from the shock of such a request.

“This may come as a shock to you,” I said, fighting back my anger. “But I do not enjoy being you.”

Something like a shudder went through Maram, as if she were trying to rein herself in.

“You are admirably steel-spined for someone who has committed treason.” Her face seemed to go through as many emotions as I was feeling. Rage. Fear. Grief. Did she mourn what we had been before this as I did?

I tried to take hold of my emotions. Maram was not a girl to be manipulated, but she didn’t trust me and I needed her to, for both of our sakes.

You are stronger than her. You can bear more.

“I don’t know what I expected—why would anyone want to be the focus of a rebellion’s assassination plot? Better to side against her and eliminate the problem entirely.”

I didn’t close my eyes as I wanted to. This was not a problem I could look away from. This was not a belief I could allow to endure. I set aside my pain and came to stand next to her. Against my better judgment, I laid a hand on her arm. She flinched.

“You joined them,” she said without looking at me. “You said that we were sisters, and then you joined them. And now—”

“Before I was kidnapped—”

“I didn’t order your kidnapping,” she interrupted, and I squeezed her arm.

“I know,” I said softly. “But I was kidnapped. And before I was kidnapped, the Imperial Garda burned down my village’s only source of food. Half the village is either dead of starvation or has moved on to experience poverty in another city. During my kidnapping my best friend was shot. And when I arrived in the Ziyaana I was beaten, isolated, and attacked by a hunting raptor. My joining the rebels was not about you. It was about the Vath. About your father.”

Still, she wouldn’t look at me.