“Your nkra . . . it’s so tangled,” she muttered in Kensiya. Afua pulled a goatskin from a pouch at her hip and switched back to Zirani. “Here, this is straight from Osei Nana’s personal vineyard in Osodae. I was going to give it to the cat, but you can have a sip or two if you want. It might help you feel better.”

Karina gaped, unable to recall the last time someone had touched her without her permission. She began to speak once more, but Afua glanced over her shoulder and grimaced.

“My mother will murder me if I don’t return soon. Goodbye, Your Highness! Feel better!”

Afua shoved the goatskin into Karina’s arms and scrambled beneath the hedge before Karina could ask what nkra meant. Karina stared down at the container, wincing as her head throbbed again.

Well, wine did always make her migraines feel better . . .

Ten minutes later, Karina teetered into the main courtyard, giggling at how her dress fluttered around her ankles. Afua’s goatskin was now empty, and she hoped the girl would not be too mad at her for drinking the rest of her wine.

People were too engrossed in watching for Bahia’s Comet to notice Karina’s reappearance, not that she minded. They were all going to have to deal with her eventually, because she quite literally had nowhere else to go.

“Farid!” Karina yelled, her voice coming out shriller than she’d intended. The steward was at her side in an instant, grabbing her elbow to steady her swaying form.

“You said you were going to the washroom,” he muttered.

“I did!” Karina hiccupped loudly. “Did I miss the comet?”

“Take Her Highness to her bedroom,” Farid ordered the nearest guard. Karina shook her head, and the world spun.

“Excuse me, I’ve been trying to leave all night”—she hiccupped again—“but right before the comet comes, you’re sending me away?”

“It’s time for you to go. You’re making a fool of yourself.”

“Because I’m not Hanane, right?”

Farid recoiled as if she’d struck him. “No one said anything about—”

“But you’re thinking it! Everyone’s always thinking it!” She stuck a finger in Farid’s face. “Especially you! You compare everything I do to her because you’re still in love with her, even after she rejected you!”

The musicians had stopped playing now, but Karina did not notice or care. Years of frustration poured from within her, and now that she had begun to let it free, there was no way to stem the tide.

“I can tell you this, Farid. Even if Hanane were still alive, even if she stood before us right now in flesh and blood, there is no way in this world or any other that she would want you.”

Farid stared at her, and Karina could practically see the wounds her words had opened up within him. Her breath caught in horror—she’d gone too far. An apology played on the edge of her lips, but before it could come out, Karina doubled over and vomited the contents of her stomach onto the ground.

Everyone who had gathered around her backed away lest they get some of the vomit on them. The Kestrel ordered someone to get her out of there, and then a guard had Karina by the middle and was half carrying, half dragging her from the courtyard. Karina fought the entire way, even going so far as to scratch the guard’s face, but she did not waver. The woman dragged Karina not to her bedroom but to her mother’s quarters, which were much closer, and opened the complicated series of locks to toss her inside. Then she gave a curt bow and left the room, locking the door firmly as Karina screamed obscenities after her.

Karina tried to stand, but the world fell away beneath her, and she sank to the ground with her face in her hands. Her migraine thudded, filling her ears with a dull roar, and her mouth tasted like bile. After what felt like two lifetimes, the door to the parlor finally opened. Karina drew herself up to yell at Farid, but it was the Kestrel who looked down at her instead.

For several long moments, Karina and her mother simply stared at each other.

“What was that?” the Kestrel asked.

“I’ll go apologize,” Karina mumbled. She recalled Farid’s pained face, and shame filled her anew. How could she have said the thing she had known would hurt him most?

“You will do nothing of the sort. You have just embarrassed our entire family, and I am ashamed of your conduct.”

Not for the first time, Karina wondered what had happened to the woman behind the regal facade, the mother she’d lost the same night Baba and Hanane died. The venom that had filled Karina when she’d fought with Farid returned, hotter than before.

“Send me away, then, if you’re so ashamed of me. Oh, wait, you can’t. Because we’re both trapped here together for the rest of our lives. I bet you love that, getting to see firsthand how much more perfect than me you are.”

“I have never asked you for perfection. All I’ve ever asked is that you respect the responsibilities being sultana entails, which is why I trusted you with the information about the Barrier today. Yet you’ve proven to me once again that you aren’t ready to inherit my role.”

“I’d be ready if you would teach me like you did Hanane! The two of you used to do private lessons together all the time. But now it’s just you and me, and we’ve never done anything like that.”

The lines around the Kestrel’s face deepened as they always did when anyone mentioned Baba or Hanane. “I was . . . too hard on Hanane. Besides, you’re not her. No one expects you to do as she did.”

This conversation stung worse than the wine turning over her stomach, but Karina didn’t know if she’d get a chance again to tell her mother how she truly felt.

“I can’t do this. I can’t be you, and I can’t live in Ziran for the rest of my life. Find another heir, make a daughter you don’t hate, I don’t care. Just, please, don’t make me do this.”

An emotion Karina couldn’t name passed over the Kestrel’s face.

“You think I hate you?”

She’d expected anger. Disgust. But the genuine heartbreak in her mother’s voice shattered something inside Karina. She looked everywhere but at the Kestrel’s face, as if she might find a solution for everything that had broken between them over the years.

And then she screamed.

A masked figure flew from the shadows in the corner of the room, in his hands a rounded midnight-black blade with a golden hilt. Burning hatred filled his eyes, and Karina stood frozen in fear as the assassin lunged for her.

The Kestrel yanked Karina out of the way, yelling for the Sentinels as the assassin’s blade cut a deadly arc right where Karina’s head had been. Pivoting on his heel from the momentum of his swing, the assassin swept after them as Karina and her mother plunged into the garden.

Branches tore at Karina’s skin as she ran through the tangled wood. Even in the dark, the Kestrel knew exactly where to go, but Karina could feel the assassin gaining on them. Her mother screamed for the Sentinels again, yet none appeared. Where were they? How had this man gotten past so many of them?

The assassin grabbed Karina by the collar, choking the air from her lungs. With a snarl, the Kestrel pulled a small dagger from inside her sleeve and stabbed it into the assassin’s hand. The man let Karina go with a howl, and the Kestrel shoved her into the underbrush, then swung around to deflect his next blow.

Karina slammed against the ground, pain blossoming above her ear in violent bursts. She looked up in time to see her mother feint left and slash the assassin across the face.

“Help!” Karina screamed. The ground rumbled beneath her hands, seeming to pitch toward where her mother and the assassin battled. She looked around desperately for something she could use to aid the Kestrel, but all she had was the wind howling in her ears. “Guards! Guards!”

It was her mother’s agility in battle that had earned her the nickname Kestrel to begin with, but Karina had never seen her fight firsthand. Even through the confusion and terror, Karina’s breath caught as she watched her mother twist in and out of the path of the assassin’s blows like a leaf in the wind.

Now she understood that the Kestrel had never hated her, for this was what her mother’s hatred looked like, and it was bloodcurdling.

Giving a primal yell, the Kestrel slashed violently at their assailant’s face. The trees around them shuddered, their roots rising up from the ground to wrap around the man’s ankles. Karina’s mouth fell open in shock. Was her mother making that happen?

With a twitch of the Kestrel’s fingers, the roots pulled downward, and the assassin went down with them. She twisted her free hand once more, and the roots released him over the same sunburst fountain that hid the entrance to the Queen’s Sanctuary. Karina’s mother took the assassin’s head and bashed it against the smooth marble, then kicked him once more in the gut.