A shiver tickled up my spine, digging in at the base of my neck. Nisong might not have looked like me, but it was like gazing into a dark mirror nonetheless. We both regarded one another, her head tilting to the side at the same time as mine. I was sure then: she was a construct and she was perhaps more Nisong than I was.

“We both know I have something you want,” I said.

The fire glinted from her eyes. “You are so very like me, aren’t you?”

I brushed past that reference, uncomfortable with the comparison. She was one of my father’s discarded versions of me. A precursor, filled with memories she didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure what she knew about me. Did her memories show Nisong’s real daughter? Was I what she’d expected? “I have terms to offer you.”

“You heard my terms already. Are you surrendering?”

I snorted. “Hardly. But let me make this clear. Shiyen is dead. What your spy saw in the palace was not him, but a replica he’d made. I’m offering him to you in exchange for you ceasing your attacks. Turn over your army. I’ll let you go – you and him, off to live out your lives together. And I’ll look for a way for you to exist without the shards.”

“And why wouldn’t I just take him when I take the palace?”

“I could kill him before you got there, but most importantly – he is not finished.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Not finished,” she said flatly.

“Shiyen stored most of his memories but didn’t have the chance to instill his replica with them. It’s a true replica of him, not a construct, grown beneath the palace without the use of shards. Once his memories are in place, he will be Shiyen.” I hoped the lies didn’t show on my face. My father had instilled me with Nisong’s memories and they hadn’t made me her. But they’d also been secondhand memories, taken from the blood of her relatives.

“So you’re offering me a chance to run away from all this, abandon the other constructs and live a normal life?” She said it scornfully, but I saw the tightness at the corners of her lips, the strain in her throat. She wanted what I offered. She wanted it very badly. “But I’d still be draining the lives of the people’s shards inside my body until you found a solution, if you ever did.”

“I can live with that, if you can.”

She laughed. “You sound like Shiyen.”

My spine stiffened. Did I?