“How easily you tell lies,” said Maryam. A look of absolute bitterness flitted across her features. “I know what you did. Filling her head with heathen madness is not asmallthing, Mehr, and I won’t stand for it. I have worked so very hard to ensure that Arwa is better than her mother’s low blood. I have raised her with all the care I would have shown a child of my own flesh, if I had been so blessed. And I have done well, Mehr. She isgood.”
“She is,” Mehr said softly. This, at least, they could agree upon.
“Because I have made her good,” Maryam said sharply. “Because I have raised her and molded her, and taught her to be grateful that she is a noblewoman of the Ambhan Empire.”Unlike you, Maryam did not say. She had no need to. “Did you know, Mehr, that every night before she sleeps, she kneels by me at my altar to worship the Emperor and Maha and give thanks to the mystics for their prayers? No? Of course not.” Her voice was a blade. “You know nothing about her, because she does not belong to you. She ismine.”
Maryam paused, then, to make a faint gesture at one of her servants. The servant filled her glass to the brim with a murmured apology. Maryam waved her away, her gaze still fixed on Mehr.
“Tonight, no doubt, Arwa will ask me about your blood and your knife and your shadow monsters, and I will have to shame her for believing your heathen lies. She will be grieved, and that will be your doing.”
Mehr bowed her head. She was not ashamed, not of what she had done, but the thought of Arwa suffering because of Mehr’s foolishness … Oh, it pained her.
Silence fell, and as the quiet deepened around them, Mehr realized that Maryam was waiting for her to apologize. An apology would not be the end of it, of course. No matter what Mehr said, Maryam would continue to vent her fury. Mehr had faced Maryam’s anger often enough before to know that.
If she apologized now, if she groveled and pleaded, Maryam’s fury would settle—eventually. The punishment she would inflict on Mehr would be lighter. Mehr had played the part of the remorseful child often enough in the past to know that.
But the memory of the daiva’s prayer-bright eyes—and Arwa’s tears—wouldn’t leave her be. She couldn’t do it. Today, with dreamfire rising and a storm hovering on the horizon, she couldn’t allow Maryam to belittle everything she held holy.
“They aren’t monsters,” Mehr said quietly. So quietly. In the silence of the Hall, her voice carried far enough.
The air grew tense. Along the walls, Maryam’s attendants went very, very still.
“Is that all you can say?” Maryam asked. “I give you the chance to apologize, and all you see fit to do is offer me more nonsense?”
“Not nonsense. Just the truth, Mother.” And because it wasn’t all she could say, because she had already fanned Maryam’s fury into a wildfire and groveling was no longer an option, she went doggedly on. “They are the Gods’ first children. They’re ancient, elemental, sacred—”
“Do you want me to believe your bloodletting is sacred too?” demanded Maryam.
“It is,” Mehr said, and watched Maryam’s beautiful face twist in revulsion.
Maryam visibly restrained herself, drawing in a deep breath, straightening in her seat. When she spoke, her voice was tight and controlled.
“Your father may allow you to indulge in your mother’s heathen customs, but you willnotinflict them on Arwa.” Maryam touched the seal hung around her throat. Inscribed with the Governor’s genealogy in ancient Ambhan script, it marked Maryam as his other half, his partner in all of life’s duties, his bride and his property. It was a reminder of the power Maryam had that Mehr did not. “When I married Suren I vowed to raise you both as proper Ambhan women. I wanted to help you rise above your roots—bothof you. But I knew from that moment I first set eyes on you that your mother had already rotted you with her barbarian ways.” Maryam leaned forward, intent. “I have failed to save you, Mehr, but I won’t fail Arwa. I won’t allow you to drag her down with you. Is that clear?”
“Very,” Mehr said. “I won’t disobey you, Mother.”
“If only I could believe you,” said Maryam.
Maryam took another sip of her drink. She watched Mehr over the rim of the glass, her eyes sharp. She was ready to pass judgment.
“No more contact, I think,” she announced. “When you’ve shown me you understand how to obey your parents, Mehr—as a true Ambhan daughter should—you’ll be allowed to visit Arwa again.”
Mehr felt her own rage rising. This was why she should have groveled. This was why she should have held her pride in check. Wielding truth had unpleasant and unavoidable consequences.
“I have the utmost respect for you, Mother,” Mehr said.Lie.“But if Arwa needs me, I won’t turn away from her.” A beat. “She’s my blood, after all.”
Maryam flinched as if she’d been struck. Mehr felt an ugly rush of satisfaction tangled with shame. Maryam could claim Arwa as her own as often as she liked. It would not change the truth. Maryam had never borne the child she’d so longed for. As the years had passed, it had become clear there would be no little Ambhan daughters carved in Maryam’s image, and no sons to carry on the family name. There would only ever be another woman’s child to raise and mold into her own as best as she could. For all Maryam’s efforts, Arwa would never be the child she truly craved.
“You value blood ties far more than you should,” Maryam said. “Blood wasn’t enough to make your birth mother stay, after all, was it? No.” Her voice trembled. She swallowed and held her head high. “Like it or not, we are family. And you will obey me, as is your duty.”
A wound for a wound. Mehr supposed there was some fairness in that. She sucked in a breath and held on to the iron in her spine, refusing to relent or apologize.
Maryam’s mouth thinned.
“Leave us,” she said to her attendants.
The servants filed out obediently. At the wave of Maryam’s hand, the guards closed the doors.
“Stand up,” Maryam said. She stood herself, smoothly adjusting the heavy weight of the silk shawl draped over her shoulders. She stepped down from the dais.
