Maram shook her head, as if she were still undecided. I couldn’t undo a lifetime of conditioning at her father’s hand. But I would not shy away from the truth, either.

“At any rate,” she said, looking at me. “Well done. And they were good choices besides—I’timad is fascinating.”

I grinned. “She makes one almost believe that training horses might be a personality trait.”

I watched her, Aghraas foremost in my mind. Had a change come over Maram and I simply hadn’t noticed? Or was she so practiced an actress that there was no way for me to know?

Did she love the woman I’d met?

It was not hard to imagine that she loved someone or that someone might love her. I knew her well enough to know that. And I could not imagine that she’d turned her back on the duties she’d carried on her entire life and avoided what had been set forth as her destiny since her return to Andala for a new friendship she’d cultivated. No matter how novel that friendship might have been.

“What?” she snapped at last. “You’ve been staring.”

I curled both my hands around my tea glass. There was no diplomatic way to say it, and I knew she would have the answer from me one way or another. Worse, if I withheld what I knew and Aghraas told her we’d met, it would go poorly for me.

“I had a visitor today,” I said carefully. “She came looking for you.”

Maram’s hand tightened on her tea glass and she lowered her gaze.

“Who is she to you?” I asked gently.

Her eyes met mine with a flash. “I haven’t broken my wedding vows, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But she prevents you from keeping them?”

I imagined few people had the patience to wait for Maram to open up, and if anything it made Aghraas more intriguing. How deeply must Aghraas have felt for Maram that she’d followed her to M’Gaadir. And how deeply Maram must have felt in turn to have arrived in my suite of rooms panicked at the prospect of carrying out her marital duties.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “I’m trapped.”

“We could have planned,” I said.

“There is no solution,” she snapped, and rose to her feet. “By Vathek law I must marry befitting my rank—we are not Kushaila. We do not absorb freely of those below us. We do not marry commoners without noble blood.”

My eyes widened. “Is that how you see us?” I asked.

“Furat’s mother was a merchant’s daughter, wholly unconnected to the makhzen,” she said. “And her father was of an ancient and noble house.”

“Some might argue that to be a member of a Kushaila tribe is to be of an ancient and noble house,” I countered.