The word hung in the air between us, as heavy as a storm cloud.

“Married,” I repeated.

“As soon as we turn eighteen. Our fathers have always wanted this, I think, for our two families to be joined. They’ve always felt like brothers, and now they will be.”

“But we can’t marry,” I blurted. “We don’t love each other.”

He sighed in exasperation. “Love isn’t a requirement for marriage, Nor. Do you think Zadie will love Prince Ceren?” He spat the name out like a bitter pip.

“My parents married for love, and so did yours. If we talk to them, tell them what Zadie told me last night, maybe they’ll change their minds.”

But Sami already looked resigned. “The elders made this decision, not our parents. It just so happens it’s what they wanted, too.”

I was too stunned now to cry. I hadn’t known what life without Zadie would look like, but I hadn’t expected this.

The boat rocked back and forth as Sami came to sit next to me. “It could be worse,” he said softly. “They could have arranged for me to marry Alys. And you could have been stuck with anyone. Would you have wanted that?”

I fisted my hands in my skirts. “No, of course not. It’s just all too much right now. I can’t make sense of it.”

“At the very least, you’ll be provided for. And when I’m the governor, I will stand up to the Ilareans, unlike my weak father.”

I shot him a look out of the corner of my eyes. “Careful, Sami. Your father isn’t too weak to stripe you like a sea snake if he hears you talk like that.”

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I knew then why we could never marry: because where he touched Zadie almost reverently, as if she were as fragile as a bird’s egg, he touched me like a brother touches a sister. It was too comfortable, too self-assured. A man was supposed to envy every wave that touched his lover’s body, not rest his arm on her shoulder like a cushion.

I shrugged out from under his arm. “I should find Zadie now. We haven’t had a chance to speak.”

I was relieved that he didn’t try to stop me, but I wondered about his true feelings toward our betrothal. Was it just that I was the next best thing to Zadie, or did he really believe he could love me the way a husband loves a wife?

I tried to see him not just as a best friend, but as an eligible young man. He wore his finest tunic and trousers tonight, and his hair was neatly combed and oiled—or had been, before he’d ruffled it. But when I looked at his face, all I could see was the mischievous boy from my childhood, the one who had dropped anchor without securing the rope and told Father it was my fault, who had once stolen my tunic so that I had to return from diving wearing my skirts as a dress. When his eyes, rimmed with long dark lashes that were the envy of many a girl, met mine, I didn’t feel anything but the same kind of love I felt for my family.

“I’ll come by tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “When your parents are out. Tell Zadie... Tell her the elders chose well.”

I managed a small smile. “You should tell her yourself. Good night, Sami.” I was reaching for the ladder to the dock when I felt his hand on mine.

“I didn’t ask for this either, you know.”

The coldness in his voice startled me, and I realized I had wounded his pride with my reaction to his news. Sami was kind and handsome, and he would make a good leader one day. Any girl would be lucky to marry him. But I needed him to understand how I felt.

“I am not my sister, Sami,” I told him as gently as I could.

“I never said you were.”

Our eyes locked for another moment before I climbed out of the boat, leaving Sami alone in the dark.

* * *

I was still grappling with Sami’s news when I went in search of Zadie. I found her surrounded by the other girls from the choosing ceremony, and I was happy to see she was smiling, her golden-brown eyes beginning to glaze over as she took another swig of wine. We weren’t normally permitted to drink, but it seemed like none of the rules applied tonight.

“You must envy your sister,” a woman my mother’s age said to me. “She gets to leave Varenia. She gets to marry a prince.”

As if I wasn’t aware. “Yes, ma’am, she is very blessed.”

“And to think, if you hadn’t saved her from that fishing net and cut your cheek all those years ago, it might have been you chosen tonight. It must be difficult not to blame her for your misfortune.”

I glanced again at the woman and felt that same strange sensation in my belly, like a writhing eel. It was Alys’s mother.

Contrary to what many Varenians thought, I had never once blamed Zadie for the scar on my cheek. It was a small price to pay for my sister’s life. That didn’t mean I had never envied my twin, or that I never wondered how things would be if the incident hadn’t happened. But I often consoled myself with the fact that if I didn’t have my scar, Zadie and I would have spent our lives competing with each other. The idea of viewing my sister as an obstacle, rather than my best friend, was unthinkable.

Alys’s mother was like a flounder stirring up sand that had settled long ago, trying to bring painful memories to the surface. I buried them back down where they belonged. To hold on to the past was as useless as trying to find the same wave twice, Father always said.

“I’m happy for my sister,” I said, then left to join Zadie.

We didn’t return to our home until late into the night, after the entire village celebrated with enough homemade wine to hide the fact that there was no feast, as there should have been.

Mother was half-asleep by the time Father led her back to our house, but the triumphant smile on her face never faltered. She relished every single congratulatory word, drank in the jealous looks of other mothers, many of whom seemed to know that Mother would now have a princess and the governor’s wife for daughters. Word traveled fast in Varenia, but it was clear no one had yet told Zadie about my betrothal, for while she was tipsy and exhausted, her mood was still riding the current of an entire village’s elation.

I helped her undress and eased her onto our bed, then carefully folded up our gowns. I tried to imagine my sister in a whale-bone corset and high-heeled shoes—things I’d never seen but heard about from Sami, who had encountered all manner of people at the port where he did his illegal trading.

Only Ilarean men came to the floating market where we purchased our goods, and they never spoke to us about life in Ilara. They were polite but curt, keeping the conversation on business in their clipped cadence. (Though we spoke the same language, I’d always thought it sounded more musical on Varenian tongues.) But over the years, I’d gleaned small details about life on land from their clothing—never ornate, though fine—and mannerisms. And while Mother haggled, I often studied the intricate carvings on their boats: people and horses, trees and rivers, and dozens of creatures I couldn’t name.