He speaks well, the words smooth as syrup.

Mother shows her teeth, but the grin doesn’t meet her eyes. “It may indeed. Come, Iris,” she adds, beckoning to me.

If I had no restraint, I would take her hand and run. But I have restraint in spades, and I keep an even pace. Almost too slow, as I follow my mother and sister through the black flowers, the blue-patterned halls, and onto the sacred ground that is the queen’s personal temple in the Royelle.

Adjoining the royal apartments of the monarch, the secluded temple is simple, tucked away among salons and bedrooms. Tradition stands in the usual trappings. A gurgling fountain, waist height, bubbles away in the center of the small chamber. Worn faces, bland in their features, both strange and familiar, look down from the ceiling and walls. Our gods have no names, no hierarchy. Their blessings are random, their words sparse, their punishments impossible to predict. But they exist in all things. They are felt at all times. I search out my favorite, a vaguely feminine face, her eyes empty and gray, distinguished only by a quirk of the lips that could be a flaw in the stone. She seems to smile knowingly. She comforts me, even now, in the shadow of my father’s funeral. All will be right, I think she says.

The room isn’t as large as the other palace temple, the one we use for court services, or as grand as the massive temples in the center of Detraon. No golden altars or jeweled books of celestial law. Our gods require little more than faith to make their presence known.

I lay a hand against a familiar window, waiting. The rising sun filters weakly through thick diamondglass, the panes arranged like spiraling waves. Only when the doors of the sanctum close behind us, locking us in with no one but the gods and one another, do I breathe a low sigh of relief. Before my eyes adjust to the dim light, Mother takes my face in her warm hands, and I can’t help but flinch.

“You don’t need to go back,” Mother whispers.

I’ve never heard her beg. It is a foreign sound.

My voice sticks. “What?”

“Please, my dearest one.” She switches deftly back to Lakelander, favoring our native tongue. Her eyes sharpen, darker in the shadows of the narrow room. They are deep wells I could fall into and never climb out of. “The alliance can survive without you holding it together.”

She doesn’t let go of my face, her thumbs running over my cheekbones. For a long moment, I linger. I see the hope bloom in her eyes, and I squeeze my lids shut. Slowly, I put my hands over her own and pull them away.

“We know that isn’t true at all,” I tell my mother, forcing myself to look back at her face.

She clenches her jaw, hardening. A queen is never accustomed to denial. “Don’t tell me what I do or do not know.”

But I am a queen too.

“Have the gods told you otherwise?” I ask. “Do you speak for them?” A blasphemy. You can hear the gods in your heart, but only priests can spread their words.

Even the queen of the Lakelands is subject to such bonds. She glances away, ashamed, before turning to Tiora. My sister says nothing, and looks grimmer than ever. Quite a feat.

“Do you speak for the crown?” I press on, putting distance between us. Mother must understand. “Is this what will help our country?”

Again, silence. Mother won’t answer. Instead she steels herself, shifting into her royal persona before my eyes. She seems to harden and grow taller. I almost expect her to turn to stone. She won’t lie to you.

“Or do you speak for yourself, Mother? As a grieving woman? You just lost Father, and you don’t want to lose me—”

“I cannot deny that I want you here,” she says firmly, and I recognize the voice of a sovereign. The one she uses in court rulings. “Safe. Protected from monsters like him.”

“I can handle Maven. I have been, for months now. You know that.” Like her, I look to Tiora for some kind of support. Her face doesn’t change, maintaining neutrality. Observant, quiet, and calculating, as a queen in waiting should be.

“Oh, I read your letters, yes.” Mother waves a hand, dismissive. Have her fingers always been so thin, so wrinkled, so old? I’m struck by the sight. So much gray, I muse, watching her as she paces. Her hair gleams in the dim light. So much more gray than I remember.

“I receive both your official correspondence and the secret reports you send, Iris,” Mother says. “Neither fills me with confidence. And seeing him now . . .” She heaves a ragged sigh, thinking. The queen crosses to the opposite window, tracing the swirls of diamondglass. “That boy is all sharp edges and emptiness. There is no soul to him. He killed his own father, tried to do the same to the exiled brother. Whatever his demon mother did has cursed the king of Norta to a life of torment. I won’t curse you to the same. I won’t let you waste your life at his side. It’s only a matter of time before his court devours him, or he devours it.”

I share that fear with her, but it’s no use lamenting choices already made. Doors already opened. Paths already taken. “If only you’d told me this sooner,” I scoff. “I could have let him die when those Reds attacked our wedding. Then Father would still be alive.”

“Yes,” Mother murmurs. She studies the window like a fine painting, so she doesn’t have to look at her daughters.

“And then, if he were dead . . .” I lower my voice, trying to sound as strong as she does. Like Mother, like Tiora. A queen born. Slowly, I move to my mother’s side, put my hands on her narrow shoulders. She’s always been thinner than me. “We would be fighting a war on two fronts. Against a new king in Norta and the Red rebellion that seems to boil all over the world.” In my own country, I curse in my head. The Red rebellion began within our borders, under our noses. We let their rot spread.

Mother’s eyelashes flutter, dark against brown cheeks. Her hand covers mine. “But I’d have you both. We’d still be together.”

“For how long?” my sister asks.

Tiora is taller than us, and surveys us down the length of her arched nose. She folds her arms, rustling the blue-and-black silk. In the cloistered, small temple, she seems statuesque, towering next to the gods themselves.

“Who’s to say that path doesn’t end in more death?” she says. “In all our bodies at the bottom of the bay? You think the Scarlet Guard would let us live if they overthrew our kingdom? I don’t.”

“Neither do I,” I mumble, laying my forehead against our mother’s shoulder. “Mother?”

Her body stiffens beneath my touch, muscles coiling tight. “It can be done,” she says flatly. “This knot can be untangled. You can still stay with us. But it must be your choice, monamora.”

My love.

If I could ask one thing of Mother, it would be to choose for me. To do as she has done for me so many thousand times. Wear this, eat that, say what I tell you. I begrudged her wisdom then, how she or my father would take the responsibility from me. Now I wish I could cast it away. Put my fate in the hands of the people I trust. If only I were still a child, and this were all a bad dream.

I look over my shoulder, searching for my sister. She frowns at me, heartsick, and offers no escape.

“I would stay if I could.” I try to sound like a queen, but the words tremble. “You know that. And you know, deep down, that what you ask is impossible. A betrayal of your crown. What is it you used to tell us?”