“Promise me,” her mother had said. “Promise me you will abide by my wishes. Swear it on the Six Soldiers.”

“I promise,” Makhi had whispered.

Yerwei had heard it all. He was her mother’s longest-serving adviser, so old Makhi had no idea how many years he’d been on this earth. He never seemed to age. She’d looked to him, to his watery eyes in his wizened face, wondering if he’d told her mother of the work they’d pursued together, the secret experiments, the birth of the khergud program. All of that would end with Ehri on the throne.

“But Ehri does not want to rule—” Makhi had attempted.

“Only because she has always assumed you would.”

Makhi had taken her mother’s hand in hers. “But I should. I have studied. I have trained.”

“And yet no lesson has ever taught you kindness. No tutor has ever taught you mercy. You have a heart hungry for war and I do not know why.”

“It is the falcon’s heart,” Makhi had said proudly. “The heart of the Han.”

“It is the falcon’s will. That is a different thing. Swear to me that you will do this. You are a Taban. We want what the country needs, and this nation needs Ehri.”

Makhi had not wept or argued; she’d only given her vow.

Then her mother had breathed her last. Makhi said her prayers to the Six Soldiers, lit candles for the fallen Taban queens. She’d tidied her hair and brushed her hands over the silk of her robes. She would have to wear blue soon, the color of mourning. And she had so much to mourn—the loss of her mother, the loss of her crown.

“Will you tell Ehri or shall I?” she’d asked Yerwei.

“Tell her what?”

“My mother—”

“I heard nothing. I’m glad she went peacefully.”

That was the way their pact had been formed over her mother’s cooling corpse. And how a new queen had been made.

Now Makhi leaned her arms on the balcony and breathed in the scents from the garden—jasmine, sweet oranges. She listened to the laughter of her niece and the gardener’s boy. When she’d taken her sister’s crown, she hadn’t realized how little it would solve, that she would be forever competing with kind, oblivious Ehri. Only one thing would end that suffering.

“I will see my sister wed. But first I must send a message.”

Yerwei moved closer. “What is it you intend? You know your ministers will read the note, even if it is sealed.”

“I’m not a fool.”

“One can be foolish without being a fool. If—”

Yerwei’s sentence broke without warning.

“What is it?” asked Makhi, following his gaze.