“Then you’ve lived a terribly sad life,” Gulshera said, not mincing her words. “You’ll learn that we have to look after one another here. We’re not like the noblewomen you left behind, we have no need to play political games and tread on one another for the sake of our husbands or children or even ourselves. Our time of power and glory is finished.

“Perhaps you don’t understand yet,” she continued, “that when your husband died, the part of you that shared in his world died with him. We all came here, by choice or by necessity, because we Ambhans hold our marriages more sacred than the lesser peoples of the world, and we respect our vows beyond death. We are the ghosts of who we once were, and accordingly we must take care of one another. No one else will.” Gulshera’s gaze was fixed on Arwa’s, her voice unrelenting. “You’ll think me dramatic, Arwa, but I assure you I am a realist. You must be one too. For your own sake.”

Fine words. Strong words. But Arwa could not let the bare-fisted blow of them mislead her.

“I know what I know,” she said. She raised her head higher, jaw firm.

Her mother had tried to teach her subtlety. But the art of folding secrets inside words and smiles, and hiding the knife of her anger until it was already in someone’s gut, too late to be escaped—those things had never been Arwa’s strength. Flighty, she’d been called as a child, and mercurial. She wore her heart, fierce and changeable as it was, right on her skin.

For a handful of liminal years, she had learned to feign a veneer of placidity, for the sake of making herself an attractive prospect as a bride. She’d learned to smile and to be soft, to say gentle words when sharp ones came far more easily to her tongue, and in the end her hard-won calm—and her youth—had granted her the older, powerful husband her mother had hoped for her. For a time, she had been better than her true, barbed self. She’d been a commander’s wife. She’d been a noblewoman worthy of respect.

But that was before the circle of blood and the eyes like gold. Before Kamran’s death.