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The grin waiting on Amaranth’s face slides into something knowing. “Right.”

“Then I am yours to command,” she says, lowering her eyes again.

“Good. Now eat, and then go with me this morning to the Moon-Eater.”

Iriset bows and touches her eyelids—in respect, yes, but more to hide her shock at being invited along.

Anticipation flares in rising force, heating her cheeks again, and flow pushes faster at her pulse.

She can’t wait to witness Her Glory’s morning conciliation, however it’s allowed. This is a rare honor.

Amaranth tells Sidoné to invite the tailors back to dress her in something else, and Iriset moves to the breakfast table with her coffee and kneels, eating a little and attempting to balance her forces without letting on she’s nervous at the prospect of visiting the temple.

Her Glory strips, tossing the scarves to Sidoné, and apologizes to the tailors.

They demur and quickly remove clothes from a chest. Shades of purple and red and orange soon cover Her Glory’s body: sheer sleeves, a vest laced to cup her breasts, and strange trousers that are more like a skirt for each leg, wrapped ingeniously and low around her hips, falling in folds all the way to her ankles.

But when she walks, a slight flash of inner thigh appears, and Iriset realizes with a flush that if Amaranth spreads her legs, she’ll be fully exposed.

The tailors finish, and a jeweler replaces them.

First this new woman brushes gleaming red dust down Her Glory’s neck and collar and shoulders to burnish her skin even redder than mirané brown, then adds more along the lines and folds of her exposed belly.

She wraps Amaranth’s waist with a thin chain of bronze, clipping the jeweled end to a ring pierced through her navel.

Complementary rings cuff her ears and wrists, and another girl plaits Her Glory’s hair at the temples and slides a bronze band with an attached cloth mask over the top, covered in tiny embroidered crescents.

Finally, Menna, the royal architect, arrives to paint Amaranth’s lips and eyes, and she stripes black and purple down her left cheek, slashing across it all with a thin arc of white.

Sidoné stripes her own eyes and bridge of her nose with the thick red line of a body-twin, and wraps a wide red sash over her black robe to hold her force-blade.

Her hair an attendant braids simply and winds into a crown, then tucks a short black cloth mask over the whole of it with combs that can be removed to draw the mask over her face.

Menna somehow paints Iriset’s cheek to match Amaranth’s while also ignoring her completely, chattering at Amaranth about mirané politics.

An attendant fits a ceramic crescent mask over Iriset’s forehead, with the tips aimed down.

From those tips, tiny red beads fall against her cheeks.

It echoes the crescents in Amaranth’s cloth mask.

Beside Her Glory and her body-twin, Iriset is a less elaborate doll, a little sister.

Then, nearly an hour after Iriset arrived, Her Glory is ready to depart.

They leave the women’s petal for the palace proper, there joined by Seal guards for the walk to the Moon-Eater’s Temple.

Iriset has seen the temple from the palace, of course, from the windows and the Sunset Garden, and has heard and read descriptions of it, but has never been inside.

A plain building, it’s merely a huge square of stucco carved with the entire Word of Aharté in gilded sigils. A single column stands at the gaping entrance (a black oval like a mouth), painted with bright red shapes: crescents, half-circles, full circles. They are phases of the old red moon.

Beside the red-moon column, a Silent priest is always posted, wearing a black cloth mask that covers them crown to toes and is opaque enough no face nor outline of shape can be seen. Impossible to know their gender, or sometimes if they even breathe.

Amaranth strides through the door, and Sidoné nudges Iriset to be certain she follows. The guards remain outside.

Inside, the morning sunlight cools immediately, and Iriset smells water.

A basin of it waits in the alcove. Amaranth touches her fingers to it and flicks them before her to bless and cleanse the path ahead.

The alcove is plain stucco, though two tall candelabras frame the archway, which is shut off by a lattice of wood. “Go with me, Iriset,” she says.

What can the young apostate do but follow? Surely the god of apostasy will welcome her.

Overhead the ceiling vaults on a foundation of blue-white honeycomb into a broad, shallow dome mosaicked with the darkest blue that ceramic fire can produce.

No windows offer light, but four forever lamps burning with fire and rising force create deep shadows.

In the center of the mottled marble floor rises a granite altar, upon which nestle seventeen tarnished ivory-cream teeth: ribbed molars and curved, sharp fangs as long as Iriset’s hand.

“Come,” Amaranth says softly, holding her hand out for Iriset.

Iriset obeys, sliding her hand into Her Glory’s.

Amaranth squeezes it and draws her to the altar.

Though until this moment the lines of power between them have always been too sharp to cross, Iriset feels something turn: shared respect and awe for the place in which they have arrived together.

It feels so right, Iriset doesn’t even think of how to use it for advantage.

Every advantage is Amaranth’s here, exactly as she intended.

Her Glory says, “You may touch, if you like.”

Pressing her hip to the altar, Iriset reaches out, but hesitates.

Does she wish to know the weight of that massive molar?

She’s seen diagrams of mammoth skulls with teeth this resembles, though much older than the art, and…

Iriset touches its surface with the tip of a finger.

Dull, cold, dead. Rock. It’s a fossil. Ancient monsters dropped these teeth, not a god.

What to say? She bites her lip and looks to Amaranth guardedly.

Her Glory watches her, clearly amused. “My uncle, who was the Mistress before me, told me once he believed they were not from the mouth of the Moon-Eater, but a great apostatical creature designed by the Moon-Eater.”

Iriset is shocked. Not at the idea—though it is wrong, these teeth are older than even the age of apostasy—but at the Moon-Eater’s Mistress voicing it. She tries to look politely surprised.

Rolling laughter answers her look, and Amaranth’s face bends with merriment, almost ugly, but very human. “Oh, Iriset. You are so bad at lying.”

“I didn’t say anything, Your Glory!” Iriset insists. It isn’t true : She can lie. Oh red god, she hopes she can lie.

“You didn’t have to. But listen.” Still chuckling, Amaranth puts her arm around Iriset’s shoulders.

“It doesn’t matter about the teeth. What they are or where, or what mouth dropped them—probably different kinds of mouths, really, unless it was a monster of the Apostate Age, to have such tearing fangs and such grass-eater teeth, too.

What matters is that when I perform my conciliation, I feel him.

This place and my role, they matter. They pin the power of the empire in place.

Maybe he is not a dead god, maybe he is only energy, a spark of design chaos, but he is real. ”

And that makes my power real , Her Glory means. Iriset understands clearly. Amaranth never says directly what she can say from an angle. Just like her hypothetical on Iriset’s first night in the palace. Just like the costume of scarves she’s commissioned and letting Iriset see Nielle’s workshop.

Playing her demure role, not the apostate, Iriset ventures, “And so must Aharté be real?”

Amaranth shrugs. “My brother believes it—balance, after all. The answer I meant, though, is that the empire is real. Our mission, our purpose. Whether any Holy Design dictates our paths or histories or choices, the empire is a knot that has lasted and is meant to last. I know it, because every day I feel evidence of it.”

Iriset nods slowly. It’s not worth fighting against the Vertex Seal, Amaranth means. The empire is all, the dominant balance of the world. What is Iriset, or any undermarket king? Amaranth wants Iriset to belong to her. “Your Glory,” she asks slowly, “why did you bring me here?”

“I like you, and want you to feel it, and to trust me. Someday you will give me the truths of your inner design, kitten.”

It feels to Iriset as though Amaranth is the Vertex Seal in that moment, not her mysterious brother: Amaranth is the center of the Holy City.

This room, this woman. The falling force that dominates Her Glory’s inner design is a drawing, lilting energy that tugs toward her center—even Iriset, who knows it’s happening, is pulled to trust Amaranth.

But the Little Cat’s design is dominated by falling force, too. Iriset has to keep her mind clear. Hold her own. She swallows and touches her fingertips to her eyelids.

“Now leave me as I wake the Moon-Eater.”

As Iriset darts away, relieved to be outside Her Glory’s attention, she glances back to see Amaranth slide free the lace tying her robe closed over her breasts.

Sidoné leads her to a dark wooden screen that Iriset hasn’t noticed, it blends so well into the wall. Behind it wait stools and a pitcher of water with several plain clay cups. “Here,” Sidoné murmurs. “When she wishes to be alone, I return to the alcove, but she wants you here, to share.”

Iriset sinks onto a stool, her body melting a little after the strain of resisting Amaranth. Sidoné remains standing, shoulder leaned against the wall in a relaxed pose, and her eyes drift closed. She seems to go immediately to sleep.

Relaxing is impossible for Iriset, though no matter how intently Iriset strains to hear, nothing echoes from the chamber.

Then comes a long sigh, and Iriset parts her lips to set the tip of her tongue in the air to taste it, and the forces.