Rahel’s mouth fell open. “You can speak Pelagan,” she said, but Sera had no time to acknowledge that she had finally cracked the secret to communicating on the planet because she could see Rahel, see her whole life laid out in a veil that draped over her body, shimmering threads of gold and pink intertwined with a dark meaty red. Her eyes burned in her skull as she turned to Leo—his veil was different, a patchwork of greens and blues laced with sad stormy grays. But she had seen Leo’s memories before and would not think to intrude upon them again without permission.

It was Rahel she wanted to see. Without quite understanding how she was doing it, Sera plucked a thread from Rahel’s veil with her mind, one of the red ones, her fiery eyes locking the princess in place as the memory unfolded before her.

Rahel was a little girl, playing with a jumping rope in a large opulent room. Another girl her age, a servant, stood watching her.

“Be careful, Princess,” the girl said. “You’ll break something.”

“Who cares?” Rahel replied, skipping closer to a crystal vase filled with tulips. “This is my house, I can do what I want.”

The rope snagged on the vase and it fell, shattering on the floor. A matronly woman with iron-colored hair and small glasses bustled into the room. “What’s this?” she demanded, gazing in shock at the vase. “Rahel, what have you done? Your mama will hear about this!”

Rahel began to cry then, big heaving sobs. “It wasn’t meeeee,” she whined. “It was Hadley, she did it, she smashed it on the floor, I told her not to.”

“Hadley,” the woman snapped, turning on the servant, who could only quiver, unable to speak. Rahel’s tears stopped as soon as the woman’s back was turned. “This is not how a companion to a princess behaves!”

The woman made a gesture and Hadley held out her hand. The woman drew a ruler from her belt and slapped it against Hadley’s palm, so many times that it began to bleed, the skin turning raw and red. Rahel watched with greedy eyes. Hadley didn’t make a sound.

“Now clean this mess up,” the woman said. Then she wrapped an arm around Rahel, who instantly began crying again. “Come, Princess, let’s get you in a nice warm bath.”

Rahel felt a sense of satisfaction as she was led out of the room. And just before the door closed behind them, she heard Hadley let out an agonized sob.

They returned to the present with a jolt, the gilded room too bright against the darkness of the memory. Rahel’s mouth was opening and closing like a fish’s, but no sound came out. Sera felt herself growing taller.

“You are a bad person,” she said with no emotion, a statement of fact.