Vivia froze. This was most certainly not what she’d expected. “The dead birds,” she answered carefully, “are because the water is poison.”

An audible swallow. “That was twenty years ago.”

“And the imperial witches were thorough.”

“You mean my witches were thorough.”

Vivia didn’t argue with this. Instead, she moved to another window on Vaness’s other side. “The empires have always crushed what they could not control. We were the last nation to resist, so they … you allied together to ruin us.”

“We failed, though.” Vaness withdrew from the window. Her eyes fastened onto Vivia’s.

“Did you, though?” Vivia stared right back. “Look at this cove, Empress. Dead birds, dead fish, no trees for miles. People can’t live here, so they live in Lovats, which…” She swiveled her head to rest it against the frame. “Lovats cannot sustain. Because after you’d ensured we could not live on our lands, you impoverished us through trade.”

A soft sigh. “We did, and I cannot even pretend otherwise.”

“Is that an apology?”

“Would you accept if it were?”

“No,” Vivia admitted. She had spent her whole life hating the empires. Hating Vaness and every leader like her. A hate nurtured by the constant death, constant hunger, constant need surrounding her. That she and Vaness were allies now—that there were even aspects of the Empress she liked—couldn’t erase what waited outside the window.

She shoved the cheese into her mouth. Hard, strong. Then she chewed and chewed, her gaze shifting to the barren shore.

Vaness also returned her attention to the window, and for several moments, the only sound to interrupt this graveyard was the high tide whispering and lapping against the hull. And Vivia’s smacking mouth. She should have grabbed the water.

“I am sick, you know,” Vaness said eventually. “It is a disease of the blood. One I have always had. In Marstok, I had healers attend me, and I regularly bathed in the Fire Well. But it has been a month now since I was able to heal.”

Vivia swallowed her cheese. Then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Because no one but my healers and my Adders have ever known. It was a weakness I could not let free. A weakness I’ve hidden since childhood.”

“Yet now you’ve shared.”

Vaness opened her hands. “Now I’ve shared. Which places my future—once again—squarely in your hands.”

It did, and Vivia of a year ago would have reveled in that. Vivia of two months ago too. She would have rushed to tell her father, and they would have schemed how best to use such information.