The falconer shot her a half smile. “My family traveled a great deal, Your Highness.”

“Is that your way of saying you’re not Kushaila?” Maram knew the Kushaila were not the only people who wore daan on their faces, but Aghraas’s were quite distinct. They looked like feathers, and she’d seen such markings in some Kushaila art, but never on a person’s face. Perhaps she had never met quite as dedicated a falconer as Aghraas.

Aghraas lifted a shoulder, a gesture she would have found both intolerable and profoundly rude on anyone else.

“I’m as Kushaila as you are, Your Highness,” she said at last.

Maram bristled. “What does that mean?”

She smiled. “I was not raised among them. I might have been born here, but as I said: my family are interstellar travelers. We do not stay one place for very long. We love the stars too much.”

“What brought you back?” she asked before she could think to pretend indifference. “It’s hardly a vacation destination.”

“Isn’t it?” Aghraas countered.

Maram couldn’t stop the sharp laughter from bursting from her mouth. “It’s a planet on the brink of civil war and has been for the last twenty years,” she said, her words equally sharp. “No one with any sense ventures here or chooses to stay.”

“Sometimes,” she said contemplatively, “all the paths lead where we would rather not go. Sometimes you can’t outrun home or destiny.”

For once, Maram resisted the urge to mock. “What destiny could possibly be waiting for you here?”

“That remains to be seen,” Aghraas said, and smiled. “And in the meantime, there is my work.”

“Your work?”

“I’m an ornithologist,” she said. Maram stared at her blankly. “I study birds,” she clarified.

“So you’re not a falconer.”

Again, that half-amused smile. “I am a falconer.”

“You have just told me that you’re an ornithologist.”

“We are far past the times of antiquity, Your Highness,” she said. “It behooves a falconer not just to train the birds, but to study and understand them.”

Maram drew her horse to a stop and stared at Aghraas. Had she ever had a conversation like this? With Amani, perhaps—few dared correct her. Idris did it betimes when she was relaxed and not on guard. For the first time she wondered if her future husband was afraid of her? She had never seen evidence of it, but now—

“Your Highness? Have I said something amiss?”

“Are you not frightened of me, Lady Falconer?”

Aghraas’s eyes widened in surprise. “Have you given me cause to fear you?”

“Surely you jest?” Her horse pranced beneath her, as if it scented her banked anger. “You may not have been raised here, but—”

“But I should give credence to every rumor and whisper I hear?” Aghraas said, raising an eyebrow.

“They are not just rumors—”

“Are you determined that I dislike you?”