And yet, I wanted Tilly to keep talking because Tilly drowned out the perilous thoughts in my head.

I had spent the last two weeks struggling to metabolize the hard truth that my sister Aryana and I had traded places. While I was alone for the first time in my life, she was no longer a solitary twinkle in the night sky.

Kismet. Qismat. My story, written in the sand.

Tilly traced the rim of her glass with a finger. Her eyes weren’t just green. They were all the colors of an old world, unburied, with flecks of gold and copper. She looked impervious, as if she’d never had a bad day in her life. She moved as if she didn’t know her age.

Though Antonia and Tilly were nothing alike, these two women did something I’d not seen strangers do before. When most adults looked at the world, children blurred and fell away. But Tilly and Nia looked at me as if the rest of the world had fallen away and I was the only person left standing.

Sometimes it’s when people are silent that you hear them most clearly, Boba had told me.

In the silences, Antonia had made me a bed and given me space to breathe. And as I sat beside Tilly, she looked over at me with misty eyes that crinkled in the corners.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight and tried to picture Boba’s face.

If I was going to survive this qismat alone, I needed to trust someone, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to trust Antonia.

I twirled the stolen ring on my finger and traced the chiseled faces of the gemstones. The kingdom of Ai-Khanoum, Lady Moon, had been buried twice—once where it had been erected and a second time in the basement of Arg.

The ring had become a talisman for me, a key to my survival. Against the scarred pink of my palm, the red of the garnet deepened. It was the color of the carpet upon which I’d read stories, the color of my father’s wool sweater, the color of pooled blood. The turquoise body was smooth as the inside of my mother’s wrist. It was the color of heaven-bound minarets with veins the color of shattered evil eyes.

I had the ancient world wrapped around my finger even as the modern world I lived in curled its cruel fingers tighter around my throat.

Chapter 12

Two days later, I emerged from the bathroom, my face still damp. I’d been hot since morning and tried splashing water on my face to cool down. I found Antonia sitting at the small dining table in the corner of the living room, with her ear pressed to the radio. She had the volume so low that I’d not heard it until I opened the door. As soon as she saw me, Antonia shut the radio off.