Maram laughed but, as I’d expected, did not offer to take her place back. Truth be told, I was surprised she’d even summoned me for this. We were reviewing the estate ledger, along with the aforementioned rooming assignments and meal plans. When I’d said as much, she’d scoffed. You’re not a princess, she’d said. Unless you know how to run an estate on your own?

Now, her eyes moved from mine to the doorway behind me.

“I take it you’ve come looking for your wife,” Maram said. I moved aside—Idris stood in the doorway watching both of us. It was the first time, I realized, that he’d seen us side by side.

“My wife has been absent since the wedding,” he replied smoothly. “I’ve wondered if she lives. Maram—”

She raised a hand to forestall him. “A conversation for another time.”

I resisted the urge to fist my hands in my skirt as she approached him. The two of them watched each other as if waiting for the one to strike. It seemed almost as if they were strangers, seeing one another for the first time. I felt as if I’d disappeared from the room. They’d known each other so long, certainly long enough to have a conversation without speaking.

“Maram—” he started. Something in his voice made me come to attention, and when I looked at him more closely, I felt something in my stomach drop.

“What’s wrong?” I asked without thinking.

Maram whipped herself around, her expression torn between surprise and frustration. But Idris raised his gaze to me, and I knew what he would say before he said it and felt my fingers clench in the folds of my skirt.

“‘Adil has been taken by the garda,” he said, voice flat.

I took a step back and closed my eyes. Dihya—he was so young. Innocent.

“What happened?” I said when I opened my eyes. Maram had moved to the side, as if to clear the space between us. “Who told you?”

“A messenger arrived from his parents’ quarters a little while ago,” he said. “He took one of the horses out after dark, beyond the city limits. Someone met him and offered him money for it and he agreed. A garda droid caught the interaction—the buyer was on a dissident list. ‘Adil never made it back to the estate.”

People disappeared or were taken under the shadow of the Vath regularly, among both the makhzen and the very poor. None of us were safe from random raids or abductions. But ‘Adil was ten—a boy with no power to make change and certainly no inclination. He’d been brought up in a cruel world, but he understood the rules. He would not have sold the horse to a rebel willingly—not after growing up in Al Hoceima, in the shadow of the Purge.