“You’re leaving,” Mehr said softly. “And when you return, I’ll be gone. You’ve won. She’s yours.” She kept her gaze fixed and her head high. They weren’t reluctant mother and daughter any longer. As of now, they would be nothing to one another, and as close to equals as it was possible for them to be. “Let me talk to my sister,” Mehr said.

Something flickered in Maryam’s eyes—an emotion Mehr couldn’t read, or name. She raised her hand and gave Arwa’s cheek a brush with her knuckles.

“Come and take her,” she said. “Bring her back when she is calm.”

Mehr walked up to the dais. Maryam took her by the shoulder and drew her down, fingers digging hard into Mehr’s skin. Her breath was soft against Mehr’s hair.

“You won’t need to fear for Arwa,” she whispered, too softly, Mehr hoped, for Arwa to hear her. “I’m going to raise her as my own. She will be my good Ambhan daughter, loved and sheltered, and one day she will forget she ever had a sister. I promise, Mehr: I will make sure she doesn’t miss you at all.”

Maryam’s grip loosened. Not meeting her eyes, Mehr took Arwa into her arms. Arwa was too heavy to be carried easily, but she wrapped her arms and legs around Mehr, and that made it easier. Mehr could feel her tears dampening her shoulder. She turned and walked out of the Hall toward her own chambers.

“Hush now,” she murmured against Arwa’s hair. “Hush, my dove, hush.”

But Arwa would not hush. So as Mehr walked down familiar corridors to her own chambers, she began to sing an old lullaby, the kind that had always comforted Arwa when she was very small. Her voice, along with Arwa’s sobs, echoed through the corridors.

As Mehr slipped into her own chambers, her sister still held in her arms, she heard Arwa’s voice pipe up. “What are you singing?”

“A lullaby,” Mehr said. “Our birth mother used to sing it to us.”

Mehr carried Arwa into her room. She sat down on the bed. Arwa didn’t let go of her, but she began to hum a shaky copy of Mehr’s song. Then she stopped. “Am I singing it right?” she asked.

Mehr sang the lullaby over again and Arwa’s voice followed hers. Her little sister’s voice was hoarse from crying, but she had a good ear for music and picked the tune up quickly. By the time she’d mastered the simple lullaby, she had stopped weeping entirely.

“I don’t want to go,” Arwa said.

“Maryam will be with you,” Mehr said. “You’ll be quite safe. And it will be an adventure.”

Arwa sniffed and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “I still don’t want to go,” she said. “Why can’t you come too?”