“You had no problem helping me—” she burst out.
“Before my family was beaten in your name?” I asked.
Her mouth hung agape in shock for a moment, and then to my horror I saw a glimmer of tears. None of them fell, but I remembered a different girl who had come to me, desperate to do right by her mother’s legacy. Who had been terrified of all the things that were expected of her, of the two worlds she had to straddle to avoid death.
She swallowed. “I didn’t do that.”
“Someone did.”
“And so I should pay the price?”
“Someone should,” I snapped, then took a deep breath.
“I liked things before,” she said softly. Here again was the girl I’d come to know in the last days before her coronation, peeking out at me again. Not gentle-hearted, but frightened and in need of an ally.
“Before I made things difficult with my split loyalties?”
“Yes.”
“But they aren’t split at all,” I told her. If the girl I’d known for an instant would come back. If she would trust me again. “I risked my life for you, Maram. That is where my loyalty lies.”
“If that’s true, why won’t you do this for me?” She looked so frightened, and I knew it wasn’t of the marriage bed. I knew her, though she wanted to pretend I didn’t. Something else was at play here. If this had been about her marital duties, she would have sent Nadine in her place—what an easy thing it would have been to do, and for Maram in particular. I will not bed down with savages.
I took another breath and closed my eyes. It was an unfair thing she asked of me, but she didn’t know the half of it. But I knew her well enough to know that she would not show this side of herself to me unless her need were truly dire. What that need could be, I could not begin to imagine. But Maram showed the softest, most vulnerable parts of herself to no one.
“I will not sleep with him. Not even for you,” I said to her. “And if he asks me why you are missing, I shall send him to you.”
Relief washed away her fear and doubt and brought forth the girl I’d known briefly, bright-eyed, beautiful, and happy. Her head dropped and she braced her hands against the bench as if to get herself under control. When she came to her feet she didn’t look at me. Instead she walked to the glittering outfit hanging off the wardrobe. She raised a ringed hand to it and trailed a touch down its center.
“What would your wedding have been like, Amani?” she said. Her voice was blank, even—there was none of the emotion I’d heard only moments ago. Not even the cool, slightly amused charm that normally preceded her anger. It was as if she’d wiped it all away in an attempt to return us to what we were—master and slave. As if she abhorred that she’d had to ask me anything at all and wanted to erase the moment.
“I won’t have a wedding, Your Highness,” I said, struggling to control the sharp spike of anger.
“Oh?” she said without turning around.
“Unless you are in the habit of allowing your body double the luxury of a personal and private life,” I said, my voice at last even and flat. “No, I will not.”
I rose just as she turned away from the gown. I imagined we were mirror images of each other, faces carefully blank, bodies held in tension.
“No,” she said at last. “I suppose you won’t.”
She gestured to the vanity.
“I’ll have the gown sent to you. And this, too.” She lifted a necklace from her jewelry box and laid it against my neck. “It was my mother’s.”
It was beautiful and more complicated than any of the jewelry I had worn to date. Eight strands of pearls gathered on each side of the necklace with a gold nugget studded with emeralds and met at the center behind a circular brooch that just barely fit in the palm of my hand, it was so large. The brooch itself was several discs of gold layered over one another, etched with Kushaila designs ringing a large emerald.
“It matches you,” she said softly, fastening it behind my neck. Her mask slipped. “Us.”
I examined her carefully, though she avoided my gaze now. There were dark circles under her eyes, and a strange, haunted look about them. If I knew less about Maram, I would have guessed she was in the grip of some illness.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
The mask dropped back into place and the necklace went back into the jewelry box.
“Tala will collect you when it’s time,” she said coolly. Her eyes met mine in the mirror briefly, then skittered away. “Go.”
I rose to my feet, then paused in the doorway. The urge to comfort her for some invisible thing lay over me like a weight. It was absurd—I was the one being forced into an impossible position. But I could not help but wonder how much we mirrored each other—what impossible position was Maram being put in, that she would ask this of me? And how much of a fool was I that I had agreed to it?
But whatever Maram thought of me, I was her friend, and loyal to her besides. And I knew something she would never admit: I was the stronger of the two of us. I could bear up under this single night. I was not brittle, like she was. And I knew, soon enough, she would come to understand that. To understand why she had come to me first and not Idris with this fear.
5
The royal bedchamber was beautiful. Lushly carpeted, dark wood paneling, tapestries depicting moments from the Book and from history. The bed was wide and large, stacked with pillows, and hung with light curtains that lifted on the ocean breeze. I sat in the center of it, my eyes fixed on the window open to the ocean, and waited. Brass lanterns hung from the ceiling, and two more sat on the floor on either side of the bed.
I’d entered the bedchamber from the side door that led to the dressing room, flanked by three serving girls, including Tala. A hand held mine as I climbed the few steps from the floor and up to the mattress, and was settled in its center. The trail of my gown and mantle were arranged around me just so, and I was bid to fold my legs beneath me, instead of pulling my knees up to my chest as I wanted.
“It will be easier,” Tala said to me gently, “for the Salihi tradition.”
My eyes widened in alarm. “Salihi tradition?”
“Be calm,” she said. “A rosewater ceremony.”
I stared at her bewildered, but she didn’t expand and so I waited with my hands in my lap. The lamplight glinted off the rings on my fingers and the bracelets on my wrists.
Earlier, Tala had ringed my eyes with kohl and arranged my hair so that my curls hung over my shoulders and down my back, threaded with gold chain. I wore heavy earrings with green stones, rings, a necklace, and several bracelets of Kushaila design. I tried not to think about why I wore them—to be taken off—so late in the evening. I wore a simple, flowing red gown, belted at the waist, and an even lighter black mantle, stitched with gold.
It’s just a play, I told myself as voices singing Kushaila song rose up outside the door. You’re just an actor. It’s not real.
Two of the serving girls walked to the double doors of the suite and pulled them open. Sound flooded in—they were singing unaccompanied by instruments, though many clapped their hands in time to the song. The sea of people—no more than a dozen, though they sounded louder—parted and there was Idris in their center.