Inaya completed the letters and folded them neatly. She held them in her lap until dinner came, and with it, her female jailer. The woman took away her letters.

Inaya stared at the plate of curried saffron rice and flat bread. Hunger gnawed at her. What did it matter now what she ate? If she tried to starve herself, they would see. Everything in these cells was watched and recorded.

She gave in and scooped up a bit of rice and curry with the flat bread. The smell of saffron was usually so overpowering that it made her nauseous. But this time, the food went down more easily. Perhaps she was getting used to it.

She stared at her empty plate. Look to what you devour, Khos had said. She turned over the plate. It was a simple platter, made of fired clay. Unmarked. She set it back down. Drank her water. Examined the cup. Nothing.

That night, as she lay awake staring at the filtered light of the moons coming through the skylight, thinking about her children, she remembered Khos baring his tattoos, and wondered if he had added her name there, and the children’s. Was that all she was, now, a footnote in someone else’s story? There was a time when that would have been enough. Wanting something more still felt sinful. She was prepared now to meet God as a terrible wife and mother, but to have given up so much and gain nothing for it would destroy her.

In the morning, she was stiff and sore. She had lost weight, and when she sat up now, there was no proper cushioning between her vertebrae and the hard floor.

She was surprised when, several hours later, the woman jailer came for her again. She was shepherded back into the twisting corridors and installed in one of the organic, windowless cells. This one had a large round table at the center. She walked around it, wondering if it was some new trick. Garish light swam beneath the skein of the ceiling.

The Angel entered. It was the same one who questioned her before.

“Will you release me now?” Inaya said. “Surely you realize I’ve done nothing wrong.”

The Angel carried a slim portfolio. From it he pulled a single sheet of creased paper. He set it on the table before her. She peered at it. It was one of the letters she had written to her daughter, Isfahan.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

He pulled out a second sheet of paper. It was a different color; soft green, organic. The edges were browned, as if it had begun to rot before being saved from its fate by some skilled magician. He set it next to her daughter’s letter.

She had signed her daughter’s letter “Maman.” The letter beside it, in the same neat, controlled hand she had learned in school, was signed “Madame de Fourré.”