I sat back down and she came closer. An ocean wind blew in, and her braids swayed in the breeze, her cloak moved like a living thing about her hips and legs. Where in the world had she acquired such a beautiful thing?

“Has Amani taken your place, then?” she asked, a wry twist in her voice. “Again?”

I did not grin—Maram would not grin. But I could not keep the small smile off my face. “You sound critical.”

She sat across from me, on the other side of the shatranj board, and shed her cloak. I was hard put not to gawk—every movement of hers was fluid, easy. Idris had the makings of a warrior in him, but this woman was a warrior. There was confidence I’d only ever seen in veterans in her body and its limits and capabilities. She sighed.

“I’m not critical, Maram.”

That gave me pause, nearly enough to disrupt my stream of thought. Few people called Maram by her given name. In fact, in all the time I’d known her, the only person I’d ever seen refer to her by her name was Idris. Not even Nadine spoke to her without her title.

The woman continued, as if she hadn’t crossed a line of decorum, as if she regularly was so comfortable with the Imperial Heir of several star systems.

“Dihya knows I shirk my duties often enough to see you, but…”

“But?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” she said, and glanced at me. “Eventually, the world will force you to make a choice.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “But not yet, it seems.”

She smiled. She was entrancing, I thought. There was a flicker in her dark eyes, like flame. And I found myself reaching forward to tilt her face so that I might look at them more closely.

A mistake, of course.

Maram touched no one, if she could help it. The woman’s smile, and all the warmth she’d exuded, sloughed off her like water.

“You are not Maram,” she said, catching my hand.

I pulled it out of her grasp and smiled.

“You are the answer to a mystery.”

She did not smile back. “There is no mystery.”

“So Her Royal Highness has not been neglecting her duties to keep a standing shatranj appointment with a very tall and handsome woman?”

There was a shift in her expression, and I remembered the scuffs on her vambrace and stepped back. I could not believe it. It made sense that Maram would wish to avoid her marriage bed if she had a romance of her own—but I would not have imagined it possible. She loathed vulnerability and feared how one might use it against her. To lower her guard enough …

“Who are you?” I asked.

She eyed me for long seconds before she spoke. “My name is Aghraas—I am the master of falcons.”