She did not look sorry.
She looked satisfied.
“Step back,” Madame Constance said softly, as if Amara were the dangerous one.
Amara stared at her, coughing, unable to make sense of the calmness in that voice. “Why?” she whispered, though the word came out broken. “Why would you do this?”
Madame Constance looked past her toward the burning dress, and for the first time, her smile showed itself.
Small.
Thin.
Cruel.
“Because by morning,” she said, “no one will need it.”
The words landed inside Amara like stones.
Outside, the village of Oduja was still sleeping beneath a moonless sky. The flame trees along the road stood like dark guards. The river moved in its slow black path beyond the compounds. No one had yet heard the drums. No women had wrapped their ceremonial cloth. No children had run barefoot toward the palace gates hoping to see the royal procession.
But everyone knew what morning was supposed to bring.
A royal wedding.
The first one Oduja had seen in forty years.
For six days, the village had been preparing. The market women had spoken of nothing else. The elders had polished old walking sticks. The drummers had practiced until their palms grew tender. Mothers had whispered over cooking fires, “Amara, daughter of Elder Obiora, will marry Prince Chidi.”
Amara.
Not Nana.
Not Madame Constance’s daughter.
Amara.
The poor girl with quiet eyes, careful hands, and a back bent too early by work that never should have been hers alone.
The girl who had spent eleven years being treated like a servant in her own father’s house.
The girl who had never asked to be chosen, but had been chosen anyway.
And now her dress was ash.
Madame Constance crossed the room slowly, careful not to let the smoke touch her face. She crouched beside Amara, so close Amara could smell palm oil on her skin and the faint perfume she wore when she wanted people to think she was kind.
“You are going to the river,” Madame Constance whispered. “You will sit there until the wedding is finished.”
Amara’s hand tightened around the scorched fabric. “No.”
Madame Constance tilted her head.
It was almost pitying.
Almost.
“You will,” she said. “Because if you come back, if you speak one word, if you try to disgrace this house in front of the elders, I will show them the papers your father signed before he died.”
Amara froze.
The smoke seemed to stop moving.
For years, those papers had been a shadow in the house. Amara had seen them only once, locked in a wooden chest beneath Madame Constance’s bed. She had never read them. She had only known that her stepmother guarded them like a knife.
Madame Constance saw the fear move through her and smiled wider.
“Yes,” she said. “Those papers. The ones that prove this land, this house, and even that loom you love so much are not what you think they are. Your father was tired near the end. Confused. You know that. The elders know that. If I tell them you stole from this house and tried to ruin your sister’s wedding out of jealousy, who will they believe?”
Amara’s throat closed.
Madame Constance leaned closer.
“The grieving orphan?” she whispered. “Or the woman who has managed this house for eleven years? The woman who greeted the elders with palm wine? The woman who raised two daughters under one roof while you walked around acting like silence made you holy?”
Amara did not answer.
Because the worst part was not that Madame Constance was lying.
The worst part was that people might believe her.
People had believed Madame Constance for years.
They had believed her when she said Amara preferred work to school.
They had believed her when she said the land income was being saved for the household.
They had believed her when she smiled and called Amara “my daughter” in public, then locked the loom away in private.
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