Hot tears pricked at her eyes. She’d felt so angry about her past for so long. This was different, and she wasn’t sure what it meant. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

Phalue squeezed her hands. “I know it’s true.”

Why did crying make talking so much harder? She looked to the ceiling and took a few shuddering deep breaths. “Every time I look at Ayesh, I see myself at her age. I don’t know how to trust her because I couldn’t trust myself back then. I know you care about her. I know we said we would adopt an orphan, and she seems a good candidate. But how can I be a parent? Even you had a better example than I did. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, or how to do it right. I can help you take over Nephilanu, but I don’t know how to talk to a child.” She was talking in circles; nothing she said made sense.

Phalue’s callused thumbs wiped the tears from her cheeks. “We’ll figure it out together.”

“If you come back,” Ranami said.

“I’ll come back,” Phalue said. “What could keep me from you?”

Imprisonment, war, death. But Ranami didn’t say any of this out loud. Giving voice to these fears would make them feel all too real. So she focused on something else. “And what of Gio? He’ll try to take Nephilanu.”

“I can’t stay,” Phalue said, running a hand through Ranami’s hair. Ranami leaned into her touch, wishing it could last for ever. “You know that. If he takes Nephilanu, he takes Nephilanu. I’ll leave some guards. If Gio comes for the palace, there’s not much that can be done except closing the gates and hoping for the best. Take the back way out. Stay safe.”

“So the Shardless Few get Nephilanu in the end?” It was the fate Phalue had unwittingly spared herself from when she’d convinced Tythus to free her from the dungeon. Now she walked into that fate with clear eyes.

“Watching my father and reading and listening to you… if there’s one thing it’s all taught me it’s that if I try too hard to hold on to power at the expense of everything else, in the end that’s all I’ll have: power.”

“But that’s like winning the battle and losing the war.”

“I have to stand by my convictions. I won’t pick and choose when it’s convenient for me, not like Gio.”