Mirage (Mirage #1)(72)

“Please, Maram,” I tried again. “I took your place and risked my life for you. You know that.”

I watched her turn that over in her mind. She knew I was right—that whatever else she might think of me, that whatever had come before it, I had protected her today as sisters did. I was her friend and I knew she wanted that to be true. She didn’t want to go back to the way things were any more than I did, and if I could just make her see—

“I told you not to converse with her without a guard present, Your Highness,” Nadine said, sweeping into the garden. She laid a pale, ringed hand on Maram’s shoulder. “She saved a rebel, a person hired to kill you. Andalaans—and this one in particular—are untrustworthy to the core—what might have happened if she attacked you?”

I knew it was my fatigue and lingering horror that made it seem as though the hand on Maram’s shoulder were threatening, as if at any moment she might wrap her fingers around Maram’s throat. Maram looked up at the stewardess, her eyes wide, nearly pleading.

Please, I thought, understand who the viper is.

The hesitation disappeared bit by bit from her face, the wide-eyed shock and horror was shuttered away. Nadine’s smile spread just a little, became just a bit sharper. I watched as Maram methodically closed her heart, as her face smoothed and turned to stone. When she looked at me, the girl I’d come to know and care for was gone. In her place was the Imperial Heir I’d met months ago, rigid, furious, and isolated.

“She behaved in a manner I never would have,” Maram said, not looking at me as she spoke.

I held my breath, terrified of what she would say next. So far, Nadine knew only what she’d seen at the coronation. Would Maram reveal what else she knew to Nadine? Would she tell her I was a rebel?

“Confine her to her quarters. She is not to leave that wing. Ever,” she said, turning away from me. “And punish her as you see fit.”

Nadine inclined her head. “I serve at the will and pleasure of Your Highness.”

“Maram!” I cried out, but she was already walking away.

Nadine’s smile bloomed into something fouler as she signaled to her droids. I was forced back down to my knees, with my hands behind my back. Maram had disappeared into the greenery of the aviary. I had neglected my duty to the rebels to save her—how could she not see that? Whatever other loyalties I had, I’d protected her.

“Please,” I tried a second time. “Maram!”

But my cries were swallowed up by the foliage and cut short by the angry shriek of the roc as it launched itself into flight.

*

Back in my rooms, I wore myself out pacing, waiting for Nadine to return and enact whatever punishment she saw fit. Fear at what would slow her approach preyed on my mind. Would she bring the roc into the courtyard again? Or was I to suffer some new Vathek form of punishment I hadn’t imagined? I had survived the fires of my first week in the Ziyaana. I knew I had the strength to survive nearly anything. And yet, I was afraid and could do nothing to quell that fear. I found the poetry Husnain had gifted to me on my majority night, but even its evocations of peace and endurance could not calm my heart. Every platitude sounded hollow.

How had I failed so thoroughly? I’d condemned a rebel to death. I’d lost Maram’s trust. I had likely doomed the rebellion.

Eventually I took a seat, where I fell asleep. The sitting room was dark when I jerked awake, and found Nadine standing over me. She looked like a phantom, with her silver hair gleaming in the dark, and her black gown melting into the shadow. She was as impassive as I’d ever seen her, and I could not fight the wave of fear that swept through me, hot and nauseating.

“Get up, girl,” she said. Her voice cracked through the air like a whip. “What was the single command I gave you when you first arrived?”

“To be Maram,” I said, my throat tight.

“Is there something in your breeding that makes all you Andalaans so stupid?” she hissed at me.

I couldn’t stop myself from shrinking from her.

“You will look at me when I speak to you,” she said.

When I looked up at her, her face was twisted into a sneer. But it was her eyes that terrified me, flinty and calculating, as hard as they’d been the night we met. I’d gotten used to seeing her approval, not the undiscriminating hate practiced by the Vath. She made a noise in her throat, as if disgusted, and threw a cloak at me.

I had experienced Nadine’s hatred, which to me seemed a far worse thing. My kidnapping had been her doing. All her actions were borne not out of the circumstances of her birth and how she had been raised, like Maram, but simply because she believed she was better than me. She had no reason to hate me—I had done nothing to her. And yet, as I put the cloak on with shaking hands, I could feel her revulsion radiating off her in waves.

“Put that on and follow me.”

The halls were empty so late at night, lit by flickering sconces. Every shadow seemed to hide a ghost, and more than once I imagined an eerie, pale face disappearing around a corner just ahead of us. Nadine never reacted, but I clutched my cloak tighter around me, and my breath quickened behind my veil. The droids who lined the halls like so many corpses jerked awake at our footsteps. Their eyes spun, widening to take in the little light we provided, and their heads moved, following us as we passed them by.

We descended into the underground rotunda together and then emerged into a dark, empty room with an enormous screen at the far end. For a moment, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My mother looked out at me, her face blown up over a holoscreen, larger than life—but they were the same eyes, the same wrinkles, the hard mouth. I hadn’t seen her face in months, and the sight of her nearly made me burst into tears.