Iriset opens her mouth to argue but stops. It’s true, after all. “Sidoné won’t let me see my father.”
“Oh, I heard about that, you fool.” Amaranth snorts. “Or my brother is the fool for agreeing in the first place. It’s better this way.”
Seething, Iriset bows her face. From a distance, she’ll seem soft, demure. Singix. “He’s going to hear that I’m dead.”
“That can’t be helped.”
“Amaranth,” she grinds out, barely keeping herself still.
Her Glory’s hand brushes Iriset’s hair. “This is too plain for Singix, you know. This braid.”
“Amaranth,” Iriset repeats, twisting her fingers up in Singix’s thick skirts. “At least let me send my father a message.Please.”
Amaranth sighs. “Then you’ll go to the temple, peacefully, and give yourself over to marriage preparations?”
Iriset shudders. There are so many reasons to say no. Apostasy goes against Aharté’s most basic tenets, but to lie like this at the joining ceremony will make a mockery of the Holy Design itself, of the entire tradition of the marriage knots. Iriset might wonder which Lyric would judge more harshly, but then, he’s already told her, hasn’t he?
There is no shade to brutality.
None to apostasy, either.
That’s the reason to agree. The only one Iriset ultimately needs. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? From the moment Amaranth said her true name.
If Iriset, as Singix, marries Lyric, she won’t only have performed the greatest act of apostasy imaginable, but will do it from the bed of the Vertex Seal.
“I will,” Iriset says, condemning herself to glory.
Amaranth nods as if she expected nothing less. “Will your work hold up? The design egg is said to be made of inner design, and the priests make it by seeing through all pretense and lies.”
“Do you doubt me now?” Iriset snaps, offended.
“No small amount of my reputation and power is on the line here, as well as your life,Singix.”
Iriset grits her teeth. “I will manage.”
Her Glory studies her.
In a sort of counterstrike, Iriset says, “Are you prepared to do this to your brother?”
“It is necessary,” Amaranth answers immediately, which means she’s already thought about it. “Not only for the pursuit of justice, but to preserve the alliance between the empire and the Ceres Remnants. If the murder was an attempt to interrupt it, we can only win by seeing it through.”
“Would your brother agree?”
“Do you truly care about that? About his consent?”
Iriset pauses. She does care but isn’t sure she wants Amaranth to see it too clearly. Because it isn’t principle that makes her want Lyric’s consent, or even fear for her own life. It’s that she cares what he thinks of her. She wishes otherwise—wishes she could slice out this treacherous, caring piece of her inner design. She herself—Iriset—is dead to him, his murdered royal arguer, and Lyric wouldn’t even consider granting her father mercy. Why should she give any to him?
Iriset lowers her eyes to the pulsing lattice snake. Its scales ripple and it opens its small mouth to reveal teeth like tiny ferns—harmless and soft, ruffling in the pops of ecstatic force shimmering off Iriset.
“I thought so,” the Moon-Eater’s Mistress says. “Now stop distracting yourself before what will be the greatest test of your skills. And write your note for the Little Cat. I will see he gets it. Only, make sure it doesn’t implicate anyone, all right?”
“Yes. And—”
“There’s more?” Amaranth drawls.
“I want Shahd for my attendant. I need someone I trust even if she doesn’t know it.”
“Fine,” Her Glory says easily. “Now come here.” She draws Iriset nearer. The snake shuffles deeper into Amaranth’s layers. “What you’ve done here is truly magnificent, you know. Your beauty would distract anyone.” Before Iriset responds, Amaranth kisses her on the mouth.
