Our hosts just stand there, slack jawed. The room is so silent you could hear a pin drop.

Roze leans into me, and for a moment I think he's going to kiss me again. I'm shocked to realize that I wouldn't mind if he did. Sholu tastes like sin, like desperation and regret and a passion so bright it burns me. Roze, though... Roze tastes like rain in the desert, rare and sweet. But he just whispers something in my ear.

"I'm glad you have such 'big fuckin' balls,' because when they tell Sholu we've kissed, he's going to geld me."

I stifle a laugh. Hevorah stares almost accusingly, Floryn is curious, but Isarhet... Isarhet is smiling now. She's amused, and she's looking at me like I'm a puzzle she's trying to figure out. I want to tell her that, if she does, I'd like to know, because lately I don't quite know what to make of myself. Or my family. Or Sholu. Everything that used to be simple is so messy now.

"This is a rare day indeed," a gravelly voice remarks. "We spotted a Qistri at dawn, and now at dusk I find a dimarastisi who's actually interesting." I spin around and find a man speckled with blood leaning against the doorframe. He's forty or forty-five, and though he's not particularly tall, he's thick, each muscle defined and flexing subtly as he walks towards us. That walk alone tells me who he is: he moves like he owns the room and everyone in it. Like he's a scion of the goddess herself. His wavy hair's copper undertones harmonize with the blood smeared through it, and crimson splatters mar his ruddy cheeks and sun-darkened chest.

"I expected to return to you making small talk over tea," Jana Semiroth laughs, "but it seems you've found another way to occupy your tongues."

"This felt more creative," Roze replies gamely, flashing Jana a cheeky grin. I choke back a laugh. Stupid, adorable bastard. "And it just felt better overall."
"It had better feel better, considering all the creative ways Sholu Verlaina is going to hurt you when he learns you've touched his war prize. I can't imagine he'll be pleased."

I stiffen. "There was no war, nordeme, and I am no one's prize. And let me see to my husband's pleasure or lack thereof. We well understand each other's tastes and depravities."

"Tell me, then, of your depravities," Jana says conversationally, walking towards me and stopping when he's just a little too close. I don't step back, though. He could walk right into me and I wouldn't give an inch, because I know if I do, he'll take a mile. "Tell me of being sworn to the prince and breaking his trust. Tell me of planning the murder of your family and then watching as they were gunned down around you. The noraya is ruthless, dizsa, but even we balk at slaying our own kin."

I flinch, and he sees it, his smile widening. Fuck me, he's scented blood and now he's going to dig in. Make it flow freely between us, a river for me to drown in. I want so badly to tell him that I didn't plan their murder. That I would never because I loved them. I ache to tell him of Sholu's fatal bargain and how much I sacrificed to keep Shira safe. I want to scream these truths at him like they're weapons, but I'll slit my own goddess-damned throat before I tell the Chalnori that Amshira is alive.

You think, a dark voice whispers in the recesses of my mind. Sholu could be lying. Maybe he found Shira and killed him. Maybe he never found Shira at all. In the end it doesn't matter, does it, because you're never going to gamble with his life. Not when your own is such good currency.

But I don't say any of that, because the Chalnori will not be sympathetic to a loyalist. They will not pat me on the back, wipe away my tears, and march back to Arzsa with me to wrest the stolen crown from Sholu Verlaina's brow and restore Amshira. The Chalnori believe that royal blood is only good when it is spilled, so I'll keep my lips shut tight. I'll continue to play the traitor and swallow the truth.

I ache with it, though. Suddenly I want nothing more than to pull Roze Marithan against me for another searing kiss. He could chase my demons away as his lips stole whatever sense I have left. I'd surrender it willingly, preferring oblivion to the truth that I must inhabit a lie to inhibit a madman's schemes.

In the end, I decide to tell half of the truth, knowing sometimes that is the most believable lie.

"It was not an easy decision," I confess, letting a little brokenness creep into my voice. "For so long, I loved and trusted my family absolutely. They were my whole world," I sigh, and I know there's heavy sorrow curving my fine brows and darkening my sea foam eyes. "I realized over time, though, that that was the problem. My trust blinded me to their sins. My love excused their theft of my birthright. And I never found it strange that we held ourselves apart from the rest of the world. I thought that was what it meant to be holy."

"And what do you think now?" Jana asks.

"I think that we were gods about to be crushed to death by our own temples. That is the only reason I can live with what I did," I lie. I've been dying every day since. "We were dying already. My actions only sped the process up. The world was changing around us, and we refused to change with it. We would not bend an inch for the vasayaste, and I knew that over time, that inflexibility would break us like a green twig over a strong knee. At least this way it was a clean break. No wound festered. No protracted civil war. Change came, and it came softly as far as these things go."

Zsavina should strike me down for speaking such pretty lies. I almost wish she would, because these words deserve punishment. These words are punishment in and of themselves. Not just because I'm admitting to a crime I didn't truly commit, but because they're half true.

We were fallen gods, even then. Our treasury was empty after the droughts, our queen had the title by virtue of blackmail, and though I never met him, Sorzsa's ghost haunted us all. The more godlike we pretended to be, the more ridiculous we made ourselves. Sholu might be a worthless son of a whore, but he's told me the truth of my family's past, and it tastes like ash on the back of my tongue. Like truth I desperately wish I could unmake.

We clung to the past and it cost us our future. Sholu was the fatal blow, but he was not the reason we were on our knees. He was not the reason the common people turned their faces away from us and embraced a new prophet who came like rain in the desert. I hate the vasayaste, but we still should have worked with them. Scorning them, attacking them... it just weakened us further. It fed the noraya and left our own plates empty.

"It is all a matter of perspective, isn't it?" Jana muses. "You could say this was almost a bloodless revolution. That your actions brought us closer to peace. Or you could say that you betrayed and slaughtered your kin for power. Each is true and each is a lie, too. I wonder which you will ultimately prove yourself to be?"

"So do I." I admit flatly. The future is uncertainty as vast and wide as the sea, and I could drown in it as easily as I've drowned in the pain of their loss.

Jana Semiroth throws back his head and laughs. "Like I said, a dimarastisi who's actually interesting. You are nothing like I thought you would be, dizsa."

"I am nothing like I thought I would be, either," I reply with a small smile. "But I find the world rarely asks for our thoughts on such matters. We just... become, sometimes regardless of our inclinations or opinions."

"And what have you become?" the nordeme asks me curiously. "Who are you?"
"I am the queen of Shikkah," I reply simply. "Who are you?"
He just laughs again. "Oh, yes. This visit is going to be much... livelier than I anticipated."

"Did you expect a corpse to come riding up to Alu Oshana clothed in fine silks and a crown?"

Hevorah snorts. "That would still be livelier than many dimarastisi I've met."

"They've no fire," Floryn agrees with a sharp nod. "And you..."

"You burn like a comet in the night, my Queen," Ambroz Marithan's soft voice says, "and we all profit from your light."

I blush scarlet. I blush worse than I ever blushed reading his Wild and Wicked Ways, which is saying something. And not something good, I think to myself. No, not something good at all.

"Well, for now, we could all profit from a hot bath and a good meal, not to mention rest for the weary," the nordeme announces with an amused sparkle in his dark eyes. "Floryn will show you to your rooms."

***

Manit and Kaza insist on checking the room before I enter it. Manit practically strips the bed checking under the covers, and I sigh from the doorway.

"Do you think there's a stonesnake tucked in beneath the blankets, Revanas?" I ask snidely.

"There will be when you're sleeping in it tonight," he returns, just as snidely.

I glare at him. "If you show dissent in our ranks before our gracious hosts, Captain, I will make you share a bed with a poisonous scorpion. Perhaps in your death throes you'd finally find an expression other than neutral."

"There's no one near us," he grunts.

I pointedly ignore him, even though I know he won't give a damn. My claws won't scratch him. Still, it feels good. Like scratching an itch.

I look at Roze, then at the sumptuous bed in front of me, and think of another itch I might like to scratch. Then I blush the color of the blood staining Jana Semiroth's hair, and whisper to myself that I'm as rare and capricious as the qistri he hunted this afternoon. The kiss was a game, but it's a game I want to play more of. Because it dishonors Sholu and feeds my lust for petty revenge. But also because his lips were soft and pink like the inside of a shell. The freckles dotted across his face looked like constellations that shine at night near the glittering comet he compared me to.

Comets burn bright then burn out. Shooting stars all crash in the end, leaving only craters and stardust behind. I wonder if he was thinking of that when he flattered me, or if it simply slipped his mind. Slipped right out of it the way his slick tongue slipped into my mouth- wild and wicked and impossibly sweet-

I'm just begging to crash and burn a hole into the dark earth, aren't I?
I'm stupid and reckless and hungry. And I think Roze might be the same. The thought thrills me more than it should.

Idiot, I admonish myself with a disgusted sneer. You do not pant after a vasayastisi, even if he is your friend. Even if he's good with his mouth. You certainly don't imagine everywhere else that mouth might go, recalling vividly certain passages from a pornographic novel and several snapshots of Sholu fucking you senseless. Of course you don't. That would be absurd.

But what about this situation isn't?

"The bath is drawn, My Lady," a lithe attendant with bronzed skin informs me softly, her voice ringing like the chiming of Isarhet's decorative bells. Pretty and artistic and useless. "Do you require assistance to undress? Should I call attendants to bathe you?"

I roll my eyes, knowing my back is to her and she can't see me. Sarusha is nothing if not attentive. Earlier she asked me if I wanted her to call a woman to sit beside my bath and play soothing songs on the asenah. If I'd like milk added to the water, or aromatic talmari petals. So far, I've only taken her up on two of her many offerings: a warm bath and a hot meal.

I can smell the food nearby, waiting. Travelling has made me hungrier than I realized, and it takes everything in me not to shove it all into my mouth at once.

But Sarusha would see, and that wouldn't be at all proper or queenly. She told me she's to be my go-between for the duration of my visit. If I want something, all I have to do is ask and capable Sarusha will see it done.

A fickle, impish part of me wants to make my own ridiculous requests just to see how she reacts. No, not a woman to play the asenah. A twenty-person orchestra to serenade me as I bathe. No milk or petals, thank you, but could you fill the tub with virgin's blood? It keeps me young. Oh, and call Roze Marithan. He can attend me plenty well enough.

Perhaps I just have an unhealthy interest in terrorizing my inferiors.

I soak in the bath until the water turns not just tepid but cold. Sarusha placed a wooden board across the tub so I can eat while I bathe. And eat I do- delicate slivers of fruit, blue-veined cheeses, and crusty bread slathered with honey butter all chased down by a floral wine. There's a small piece missing from just about everything because Manit insisted on having a food taster, which, to be honest, is a good idea. We're among strangers, and they're carnivores. I find it unlikely they'll tamper with our meals, but there's no need to take unnecessary risks.

I step out of the bath and wrap my dripping body in a fluffy towel, then curl up in a broad backed chair and rest my eyes, and my mind, for a moment. I've not had a second alone for five days. Privacy has consisted of having everyone else turn around while I relieved myself on some distant dune. It's nice just to relax and savor the silence.

I have to walk a fine line with the Chalnori. I must support Sholu enough to uphold the lie that I love him and am an equal partner in his revolution. I can't be a loyalist here if I want to keep my head, and Amshira's, firmly on our shoulders. And as much as I hate it, I know that if I am to survive in this strange new world, I need the protection of his name. At least for now. Far too many people would be happier slitting my throat and letting the last of the dimaraste bleed out at their feet. But as his wife, I am offered a great deal of protection. Jana Semiroth will exploit any weakness I show, and if he knows there's a crack down the center of our supposedly loving marriage, he'll seek to widen it. I don't want Sholu in power, but I also don't want him to lose power to the Chalnori. At least Sholu wants to keep me alive.

But I have to distance myself from him enough to show that I am more than his puppet. That I am a queen in my own right and make my own decisions whether or not my husband agrees with them. I need to define my relationship to the Chalnori, because there might come a day when I need to play them against Sholu, or even ask Jana to help me destroy Sholu completely. Sholu and I must seem united enough not to be an easy target and separate enough for me to have my own agenda.

It's barely sunset, but I'm tired from five days in the saddle and five nights listening to Manit and Dakara bicker. I pull the sheets back to check for stonesnakes, even though I know I'm being ridiculous, and then I slip beneath the cool covers. There's a small knife strapped to a sheath I wear on my upper thigh, hidden by my slinky nightdress, and two knives under my pillows. Manit and Kaza guard my door, trading off with Emris and Roze every few hours. Before long, I fall into a catatonic sleep.

***

And wake up to a blunt object hitting my face. It's the damned wooden practice sword. I groan and open bleary eyes to see Roze standing above me, already dressed and sporting a shit-eating grin. The light filtering in through the window is weak, and I know it's barely dawn.

"If you don't get the fuck out of my room, Marithan, I'm going to start screaming."

"Well, aren't you perky in the mornings," he teases. "Come on now and get up. You went to bed early and slept plenty. It's cooler now, but if we wait too much longer, the sun will heat the sands enough to burn our feet."

"We're not practicing. I'm here to negotiate with the Chalnori noraya, Roze. I have better things to do."

"The negotiations began the second you stepped into this building, O'otani," he counters with a little more sass than is strictly necessary. "Every interaction is part of the parlay. Let them see you fight. They'll respect a warrior queen far more than Sholu's dimarastisi pet, and Jana Semiroth is a man who loves nothing more than to be surprised and entertained. So put on a show."

"I am not a showman. Let me sleep, Roze, for fuck's sake," I groan into my pillow in a distinctly unqueenly way.

He chuckles low in his throat, his mismatched eyes shining like rare coins in their sockets. They're heavy eyes, I realize, and the weight of his gaze falls entirely on me. "You used me to put on quite the show earlier, O'otani. That kiss was theatrical."

"Do you expect me to apologize for using you? If you do, you think I'm a much better person than I am."

He leans over me, smiling devilishly, and murmurs "I never said that I minded being used. I probably should, given your husband is going to murder me, but I enjoyed our little show."

I flush, groggy and disoriented by his flirtation so early in the morning. Not entirely displeased, though, I notice to my chagrin. Yes, this is me being very, very stupid. But I can't bring myself to regret it. I enjoyed our little show, too. Almost too much.

"Now get up, dizsariza," he commands, hitting the top of my head with the practice sword again.

"Damn it, Roze! That hurt!"

"Cry me a fucking river," he purrs. "Now get up before I push you off the damn bed."

"You wouldn't dare!"

He just raises a dark brow. "Try me, O'otani. Just fucking try me."

Something about his tone and the intensity of his gaze makes me flush scarlet. Groggy and embarrassed and harassed, I complain the entire time it takes for me to pull my tired, saddle-weary body from the bed and snatch the wooden sword from his outstretched hand.

"Slave driver," I mutter, stretching. I pull my soft blue nightdress up higher because it's gaping. "Now get the fuck out."
He sighs, exasperated. "I told you that we're sparring, and I meant it."

"And am I to spar in my nightdress, then?" I ask derisively. "Imagine what a show that would give the Chalnori. And everyone else, for that matter. Now," I continue, "leave so I can change. If you don't, well, I remember a certain someone who once tried to take his pants off in front of me because he had to take a shower and apparently had something against shutting doors. But between you and me, I think he just wanted me to see him naked."

"Are you... flirting with me?" he asks.

"Me? A married woman? Never!" I exclaim lightly. Roze just smirks at me, clearly amused.

The Macchonesi-style house is built around a square courtyard, and that's where Roze leads me. The delicate silvery leaves of an ayamah tree rustle overhead. The sound is comforting. It reminds me of sitting on the rooftop with Shira and watching the sunset. Our favorite viewing location was right above the west gardens, and on summer nights, you could smell the spicy bite of qarakim bushes floating up from below, their pale blue flowers opening to the moon.

The thought brings unexpected tears to my eyes. What I wouldn't give to go back to one of those nights, sitting next to him on the roof, hands intertwined like the roots of the plants below us. Inseparable and perfectly at peace. I wonder if I'll ever feel that way again, or if stealing moments of mindless oblivion in Sholu's arms is all I have to look forward to.

The thought makes me angry, then, chasing the sad tears from my eyes before they're shed and instead making them burn like the rising sun peeking over gold-burnished sands. Or perhaps like the sands themselves when that sun has had all afternoon to make them so hot you can't walk on them barefoot. Not that it ever stopped me.

"Come back to me, dizsariza," Roze murmurs, brushing a strand of hair back behind my ear. I jolt, both at the way his words make me feel fluttery like the windswept ayamah leaves overhead and at the suddenness of the touch.

"What are we doing?" I blurt out, tactless. I cringe the second the question leaves my mouth.

"Fighting."

"It doesn't feel like fighting."

"What does it feel like, then?" he asks with a lilting grin. His words are soft, harmless... but they hit me harder than the damn stick he kept bashing me over the head with.

I contemplate kissing him again, just to see the look on his face. But this is a public courtyard, and while I can explain away kissing Roze in a game of dominance with the Chalnori, I can't justify kissing him when we're alone. I don't actually want him to die. Which is a strange realization considering he's vasayastisi and ex-norayasti.

I actually like the man.

So I drive my wooden practice sword into the soft skin of his side, hard enough to bruise, just to push him away from me. Just because I want to see what he does when I hurt him. If he runs or if he hurts me back. I don't know which I'd prefer. One means he's a good man. One means he's got a streak of darkness wide enough to play in.

I realize a moment later why I'm acting this way. It's the distance from Arzsa and Sholu and our fucked-up arrangement. Every mile between us makes me feel a little freer, and I'm acting out. I can't help it. I've been so lost in my own powerlessness, even with a crown on my head, but here? Here, I'm treated like an honored guest, and there is no one holding my leash. There's not even my family looking over my shoulder, ever ready to judge my conduct.

So my self-destructive instinct? Test my limits. Test his. See what happens when they collide, and who's left standing.

He grunts in pain, then strikes back without a word, as fast the stonesnake I joked might be under my covers last night. I block him, then strike out again, but he drives his heel into my instep and at the same moment sweeps the sword behind my knees, buckling them. I go down hard.

He catches me, his touch soft, a strange contrast to the violence of his sword only a moment before. I'm breathing fast and hard, practically panting in his arms. He just watches me with a faint half-smile on his lips and a question in his eyes. It's one I don't want to answer, though, so I just lie still and look right back up at him, daring him or me or both of us to do something particularly reckless.

So I arch in his arms, back bowing gracefully before I snap forward, using the momentum to headbutt him. I'm rewarded with a supremely satisfying 'thunk' sound. Now I'm the one smiling smugly as his hands fly to cover his soon-to-be-bruised face and a string of pretty expletives fall from his lips like rain. I could water the whole world with those eyes, that anger. It makes me strangely hungry, and I think to myself that maybe Sholu is right. Maybe I don't have any softness left in me. Maybe I never did.

But that's a fantasy, isn't it? If I'm hard, nothing can hurt me; or if it does, I can repay the favor in kind. But here? Right now? I'm starting to realize that Roze is just as dangerous as Sholu because he feels safe. It'd be all too easy to forget the rules I've been forced to live by, the rules Shira will die by if I fuck up. I've assumed that means trying to murder my beloved husband or his ilk, but something tells me starting a relationship with his ex-brother-in-law won't go over any better.

I don't want a relationship with him. Or anyone, really. I don't want anyone that close again because it hurts to love the way I love, teeth bared, no holds barred, heart bleeding out in my hands. I want Roze to help me forget the decisions I've made in service to that love, the complications and sacrifices and scars I've been gifted or earned. I want to breathe him in like fresh morning air and dispel the miasma that is Sholu and his caustic touch, and the equally caustic wanting he kindles in my all-too-hollow, all-too-full chest. Roze is clean in a way we aren't. Innocent isn't the right word, but I can't think of a better one.

He's a growing, blooming thing, and when I'm near him, I feel that I am, too. I forget all about the thorns because the simple pleasure of what he could give me smells so damned sweet. I let myself wonder for a moment what would have happen if I had kissed him again instead of head-butting him, but it's pointless. I can't. I won't. For once in my goddess-damned life, I'll have a little self-control.

At the very least, I'll try.

"Goddess damn it, O'otani!" Roze curses, hand clutched against his face protectively. "What is your head made of? Rocks? Metal?"
I stand up, ignoring my own pain and the headache I've earned. "Something harder than yours, apparently," I reply. He rolls his eyes, but there's the twitch of a smile playing at the corner of his lips.

"If His Wild and Wicked Ways is to be believed, the hardest substance known to mortals is Thero's erect cock."

"That would be a different kind of head entirely," I murmur, blushing furiously. Roze laughs, suddenly delighted.

"Woman, you're a walking, talking contradiction. You've survived Sholu Verlaina, fought him, even, and yet the second I say 'cock' you're a blushing dimarastisi aghast at my crude tongue."

I blush a deeper red, remembering exactly what it felt like to have that crude tongue in my mouth. I wasn't aghast. I was gasping.

"We don't lose our innocence all at once."

His eyes have drifted from my face, but now they snap back, curiosity and scrutiny plainly visible. "No," he says after a heavy pause, "I don't suppose we do. The world cuts it away from us piece by piece, pleasure by pleasure, poison by poison."

I nod. "And we lose yet another piece when we realize that sometimes, pleasure and poison are synonyms. That you can covet something, love it even, and desire to destroy it in the space of a single breath."

"I think that's why they say 'if you love something, let it go.' Love unchecked is selfish. It wants, often ruthlessly. Love clutches its beloved so tightly that they bruise, and takes pleasure in marking them, even if by doing so, they lessen them." He grimaces. "True love, though? True love is giving your beloved their freedom without any caveats."

"He thinks he already has," I reply, voice suddenly thick, throat working the syllables as if I'm trying to swallow them back down before I can speak them. "He says he freed me from my family's censure and expectations. That he gave me back my birthright and made me the most powerful woman in Shikkah."

"And what do you think?"

"Honestly?"

He nods succinctly. "Honestly."

"I think that he doesn't know how to stop conquering and just... exist. And let those around him do the same. He's looking for something, has been for a long time, probably since he lost Lizsa. He thinks he found it in me." I grimace. "An end to his loneliness. He thinks filling my holes will fill his, but it doesn't work that way. Sheer force of will cannot overcome any obstacle. Especially if that obstacle is the other person's will. Their uncoerced heart."

"Do you want to know what I think?" Roze asks. I nod. "I think that you are searching for something profound and you think you've found it in Sholu's destruction. In revenge. They say love conquers all, but with you, I believe it's rage. Anger as flashy and brutal as a matador with a red cape taunting a bull makes it possible to convince yourself the pain doesn't exist when, in reality, it might be more real than you are. More honest." He pauses, and I'd give almost anything to be able to read the expression in his enigmatic eyes. To know what he's thinking, feeling, wanting. Do I hope it's me, or do I fear it?

Both, I decide. Definitely both.

"I think that you're fucking terrified, O'otani," Roze continues, voice soft but not caressingly so. "I think you'll be terrified every single day of your life until you confront what you lost and grieve it. Not grief tamped down and moored by rage, but the still and perfect silence of after. After they're gone. After you're not. After your worst nightmare becomes your truth. After you sell your soul for the one you love. After you decide you're unredeemable. After your enemy puts a ring on your finger and a crown on your head. After the dimaraste," he adds, gently. So, so gently. "Because that's what's happened, O'otani. Shira won't reclaim the throne even if Sholu vacates it."

I look away from his heterochrome eyes. He's always seen too much of me. I'm torn. Part of me feels so validated, almost vindicated when he sees through all of my lies and masks. Some of which I've made for myself, some Sholu has forced upon me. Another part of me screams that this man is more dangerous than Sholu Verlaina ever was. Sholu feels like an ending. Ambroz Marithan, though... he's the first thing since the Founder's Feast that feels like it might be a beginning.

He's right. I'm fucking terrified. There's something about his brutal honesty delivered with careful words, his soft, clear eyes, that strips me to the bone. To my very marrow. He could pull my sparring leathers from me, lay me down, and fuck me in this courtyard and it would still feel less intimate, less invasive than the little speech he just gave. The truth hurts on its own, but Roze, he makes it ache.

I'm completely wrapped up in this moment. There's a release, more cathartic than orgasmic, in hearing these things said aloud. Like I was putting pressure on a deep wound to staunch the bleeding and now that the pressure's gone, I can move my hand and see that it's clotted and I'm no longer in danger of bleeding out.

Like Sholu said, I might be the most stubborn creature known to man, but even I am adapting. Healing. And I know Roze Marithan is a part of that.

"About Shira... I know," I say softly. "It breaks my heart, but I know. What's done can't be undone. He doesn't have the charisma to compete with Sholu, or the bitter ruthlessness. We were untouchable because we were the chosen of the goddess, direct descendants of Blessed Aramizsa Ketoi, and we had a thousand years of history on our side. It was a nearly unbreakable precedent, but Sholu broke it all the same."

"And you killing him won't unbreak it," Roze tacks on.

I sigh. "I know that, too. He showed me. It's the reason I fucked him the first time." I frown. "He made me doubt everything and acted like he was the only certainty and I caved. I used to think my deepest, darkest secret, my greatest shame, was that I betrayed Amshira with my silence and inadvertently helped Sholu seize power. But now?" I sigh. "Now, the thing I cannot stand to admit even in my own head is that I do want him. That wanting coexists with my need to destroy him completely."

"And what are you willing to sacrifice to achieve that goal?"

I pause. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it," Roze tells me. "The second you kill Sholu, the vasayaste will begin fighting like mad dogs for the title. The noraya will make a move because the vasayaste will be too invested in their own petty squabbles to stop them. Shikkah will bleed."

"Sometimes we need to bleed before we can heal," I challenge.

"I just want you to understand that if you kill Sholu Verlaina, you're essentially starting a civil war. The violence won't stay contained within the vasayaste and norayas vying for power. It will trickle down. Far more than one hundred and ten people will die. Sholu Verlaina is unstable and cruel, but he might more stable and less cruel than the alternative."

I blink incredulously. "You're asking me not to kill him."

Roze shakes his head. "No. That's not for me to ask. But I'm making sure you understand the implications of what you do before you do it rashly. I hate Sholu, O'otani, but I don't want more bloodshed. The massacre was bad enough."

"I vowed I would kill him. I promised it to him a million times, Roze, then a million more. Even when I fucked him, I told him how I was going to end his life. You want me to turn my back on that? On my family?"

"I want you to realize it isn't that simple. It never is."

"But I want it to be."

"I know you do," he agrees with a rueful smile. "You want yourself to be simple, too. Black and white and uncomplicated. It's easier. But you're one of the most complicated individuals I've ever met, all chaos and contradictions, and so strong. I think you could be good for Shikkah. I think that you've got the balls to stand up to Sholu, to temper him and make him keep the promises he's made to the people who put him in power. I think you could be a good queen, and I think there's a chance we could transition to something else. Sholu mentioned elections. I thought for a long time that that was just a carrot he dangled in front of us to keep us compliant, but now I'm not so sure. I think, for the first time in his life, he's trying to create something instead of destroying it. Or perhaps I should say he's using his destruction to create."

"What could a man like that possibly create?"

"A future without the dimaraste. One where people who aren't nobility have some voice."

"You think he'll give anyone their voice back? When all he does is wrap me around his finger with lies and promises and threats to keep me silent? If anyone should have a voice in this, it's me. Look at what he did to my family. Roze, look at what he did to me. He murdered babes in their mother's arms, and you believe him when he says he'll add some elected positions into his power structure in the next five years?"

Roze sighs. He looks so tired suddenly, and somehow, that helps. I'm not the only one who can't breathe around Sholu Verlaina. He's tangled us both up.

"I don't know what I believe," he tells me after a heavy pause. It's not a comfortable silence. "If you'd asked me three years ago, I would've laughed at the idea of Sholu fucking Verlaina acting the part of revolutionary hero. But he's made changes, O'otani. And not all of them are bad, even if he is."

"Oh, he is," I seethe. "You told me you would never ask me to stop fighting him, Roze, and now you're making the case that he's the best thing for Shikkah? How hard did I hit you on the head? Or were you lying before?"
His eyes flash. "I have never lied to you, and I never will." He sighs, running his fingers through his hair. "Goddess, O'otani, I'm not asking you to stop fighting him. I want you to fight him. Hardly anyone has the balls, and he's a vain creature with too much hunger for, well, everything. Violence and power and glory. He needs people around him who remind him that the man they call the Angel of Arzsa is human. That's most of why I'm still here even though I can't stand him. I'm not blinded by him, and I'm hoping I can force him not to be blinded by his own light. It's what Lizsa would have wanted."

"Lizsa loved him," I remind Roze, a little harshly. "Lizsa was not forced into his arms at gunpoint. It doesn't matter that he never pointed the gun at me. I would die before I'd let Halima or Amshira take his bullets. Damnit, Roze, I won't forgive him!" I feel the tears hit my cheeks and am surprised I've got any left to cry. "I won't protect him because it protects Shikkah or some fantasized nascent democracy! He took everything from me. Everything."

"I'd never ask you to forgive him, O'otani," Roze reassures me, resting his hand on my now trembling arm. "I'm just asking you not to kill him before you've become a ruler in your own right. Bide your time and consolidate your power so that if he falls, you still stand. I'm asking you to be queen."

"I'm already queen," I snap, but my voice is shaking like my arms now.

Roze smiles ruefully. "I know you are. Soon the rest of Shikkah will know, too. Soon they will see what I see."

"And what is it you see?" I ask, needing to know what I am to him. A monster? A weapon? A victim? A possibility? Maybe all four at once.

He smiles softly, tracing the contour of my jaw with his index finger. It feels shockingly intimate. "You. I see you."

"And who am I?"

His smile is a little sad. "A mess of meaningful contradictions, just like the rest of us."

I frown.

"I know," he says, thumb grazing my cheek. "I know you wanted me to give you some unifying principle, some philosophy you could apply to understand and accept all of yourself at once. But no one but you can tell you who you really are, so I'll ask you instead, who do you want to be?"

"It doesn't matter what I want. That has been made abundantly clear," I seethe.

"Maybe it matters to me," he returns. "Maybe I care far more than I should about you."

"Then you're a fool," I sneer, pushing his open palms away before they can grasp whatever strength I have left and pull it from me. I can't let him see how deeply he's affecting me, I tell myself. I have to pretend. I always have to pretend.

I'm so fucking tired of pretending.

I'm not Sholu's doll. I'm my own person.

I'm a woman who wants to run her hands through Roze Marithan's tangled brown curls and pull. Hard. I want to swallow his slight grunt of pain with a meaningful smile.

I want my smiles to mean something. And my tears. And my rage. And my grief. I think we all want that, really. We want to know that, when we scream, the world around us listens.

"Oh, O'otani," he says quietly. "Don't you know by now? In plays and in life, the fools are the ones who tell the truth."