Sweat pricked at her brow. She looked towards Mount Ipyeda, and imagined Kanifa looking back – a ghost of him, always present, like the worn strand of rope she kept at her wrist. She thought of Nikeya, always somewhere in her mind, tucked there like a splinter. And she knew it would rip her apart, in the end – this yearning that pulled at the seams of her being, and the duty that sewed her tighter by the day, into the robes of the Empress of Seiiki.
