She was still wearing it.

But the girl inside the soft embrace of the Fallen Isles’ finest silk was different now. No longer straight and tall, bright with cosmetics and focused lighting. No, here she was bound and gagged, her shoulders slumped and her head hanging toward the floor. Her skin looked gray, and if she was aware of the crowd of government officials staring at her, she gave no indication. She appeared like an empty vessel, all the life of her poured out.

Another woman came behind her, older, and just as wrung out. The bindings had cut into her wrists, leaving the skin there red and raw. Her gown was simpler than the other, but just as elegant and expensive—or rather, it had been once. Now, it was torn and stained from everything that had happened to them since Val fa Merce.

Soft gasps fluttered throughout the room as senators and matriarchs and Mother recognized Elbena, the last surviving Luminary Councilor.

And the girl with her . . . Tirta looked enough like me to fool some people, especially from afar. But here, she just looked like herself, dressed up in someone else’s clothes. No one here would confuse us.

The guards marched them to the center of the floor, where the high magistrate and the speakers had stood before. They faced the crowd, and Tirta looked up just long enough to find the space everyone had made around the dead senator. Just long enough to see the blood seeping off the front of the desk and onto the chair on the tier below.

Tirta made a small, strangled noise. She tried to run, but the guard near her clamped down on her shoulders and held her there, and she had no more strength to fight.

“Oh, seven gods,” someone muttered.

Another person reached to clasp my mother’s hands.

Someone whispered a prayer.

“What have you done?” a matriarch asked.

::We need to go,:: Aaru tapped. ::You can’t stay here.::

But I couldn’t move, either. If I drew attention to myself, someone might look up here and see me—the actual Hopebearer.

“Before you stands Elbena Krasteba,” the high magistrate announced, “and the Hopebearer: Mira Minkoba.”

No one here could believe she was me, but as I gazed around the room, I saw people’s hands fly to their chests and more prayers fall off tongues. They did believe, or they were playing along.

Mother was. She pressed her hands over her nose and mouth, and her shoulders trembled. She was a good actress, my mother, but part of me wondered if this was all acting. Because there was a girl who looked like me, wearing my clothes, bound up and held under guard. There was a girl who wasn’t me, but could have been. Would have been, if I’d given that speech in Bopha.

I swayed a little, reaching for a noorestone to help steady me. But the lights didn’t flicker; not this time. I was too numb now, too caught up in shock to feel anything else.