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Iriset cannot disagree aloud. Nor tell Amaranth she has fifteen days.

Speaking slowly to keep her voice from trembling, Iriset says, “This marriage is secure. Your reputation is intact, and you won whatever you were playing with the Silent priests. I’m not going to have your brother’s heirs, so if you want them, he needs a new wife.

You have had plenty of time to arrange things so that when Singix vanishes, or dies, you can manipulate events to your favor. Tell me when and it will happen.”

Her Glory snorts. “We still don’t know who poisoned that candy.”

“That’s irrelevant now,” Iriset says as the gnawing in her stomach sharpens into rising anger, too.

“It’s been almost three quads and nobody else has tried to kill me.

You wanted another attempt so you could track the evidence better?

Well, it isn’t happening. If someone powerful had wanted to murder Singix to stop the marriage, we thwarted them already.

Maybe they gave up, maybe they can’t get to me anymore because of the extra security. Maybe they’re dead!”

Sidoné looks around at the guards and attendants with a frown. She angles herself to hide Iriset and her low fury.

“Is there something you aren’t telling me?” Iriset demands. “Have there been other attempts I’m not aware of? Other forms of sabotage?”

“No.” Amaranth studies Iriset, peering so boldly that Iriset takes a few deep breaths, needing to calm her inner design or Lyric will come here. Lyric will want to know why his sister has upset his wife.

The thought makes her laugh, a slightly hysterical giggle that she does her best to swallow.

Everything nearly rained down around her today, if the numen hadn’t stopped her.

Iriset cringes. She cannot let herself be accidentally discovered.

The only way to survive the brutal look in Lyric’s eye is to control the situation.

To explode it. To be reborn as Silk, Iriset mé Isidor, on her terms. Not have this pretty identity stripped away before she’s ready.

She has to wound him on purpose. He’ll never change his ways without a brutal awakening.

She knows him too well, now. Every thread of his inner design.

It reaches for her, and she can’t help reaching back, thanks to the cursed marriage knot.

Thanks to all the toxic longing she’s had for him since the moment they met.

But she can’t tell his sister that.

The same sister who is frowning heavily at Iriset now. “I’ve never seen you so thrown, even when you were in prison, or on the pavilion watching your father die. You’re shaking.”

Iriset wishes for once her dominant force wasn’t excited ecstatic.

She could really use some inherent flow or falling right now.

“Your Glory, what matters now is that the threat to this entire plan—your entire plan—is discovery, not murder. Discovery. There is only so much luck, so much genius, so many threats I can remove fast enough. I will do everything in my power not to let myself be revealed, but it’s inevitable the longer I stay.

You might want me forever, but that’s impossible. Don’t you see that?”

“You don’t sound like the arrogant apostate I know,” Amaranth says, intrigued and unbothered. “What changed?”

Iriset sucks air through her teeth, clenches her jaw, and lifts her chin with all the arrogance she can summon.

The summer sun glares and Iriset wishes she could feed on that rising force instead of sweating.

“Nothing changed except I achieve my apostatical glory, Amaranth, every time I fuck your brother.”

Amaranth narrows her eyes and shoves up the leather curve of Iriset’s mask. Silk strands caress Iriset’s cheeks and lashes as Her Glory leans in as if she can see through to Iriset’s thoughts.

“You’re a mess,” Sidoné says.

“I’m definitely not myself,” Iriset jokes, but it comes out hollow.

And then Amaranth abruptly leans away, adopts a stance of disinterest. “I don’t want to let you go. I want you to complete your transformation. Become Singix well enough you cannot be discovered. Not a mask, but real apostasy. I know you can.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it’s enough for me that my brother is easier to manipulate when he’s happy.”

“Amaranth.” Iriset doesn’t know what else to say. Has she ever used Her Glory’s name like this before?

“He’s in love with you.”

When Iriset’s knees tremble, she reaches out and Sidoné catches her elbow. She shuts her eyes and pulls free. Amaranth is the only person who’s ever called Iriset a bad liar, but she only thinks so because the Moon-Eater’s Mistress sees right through everything.

Amaranth says, “You’re in love with him, too.”

Iriset shakes her head wildly, hanging on to her whisper by a thread. “That doesn’t matter. How I feel about any of you doesn’t matter. I’m going to leave, so figure out what last thing you want from this puppet consort you created, and I’ll try to give it to you before I go.”

Her Glory watches her sadly, somehow more magnificent than she’s ever been here under the bursting sun, sweat at her temples and golden paint smearing her lip. Beside her, Sidoné grips too tightly the hilt of her force-blade, unwilling to agree, unwilling to deny.

Stepping back, Iriset nods once. She steps back again. “While you’re thinking about it, remember that even the red moon fell from the sky.”

She turns, and before she’s gone more than a few paces, to her surprise Shahd slips her hand into Iriset’s, squeezes, and leads her away.

“What does that mean?” Shahd asks later, while she combs oil into the ends of Iriset’s stolen hair. “Even the red moon fell from the sky?”

“What do you think?” Iriset returns the question, eyes closed, doing her best to luxuriate in the lavender flower steam from her too-hot bath. The skin of her fingers and toes is wrinkled.

“Anyone can fall?”

“That’s right.” With her eyes once more drifting shut, Iriset says, “All design degrades over time if it isn’t supported.

The water clock must be refilled, the arc of rising adjusted to the season’s wind or the shift of the earth due to yearly floods.

Ribbons sewn up from ice damage. Everything in this world must be maintained.

And everything dies. It’s possible the old red moon’s fix in the sky simply eroded over time thanks to a bad maintenance plan.

” Then Iriset smiles rather slyly, glad to feel such things again after the day she’s had.

“But it’s more efficient if someone makes it happen. ”