“He is always looking for more Amrithi with the gift,” he said abruptly. “Your people’s blood may be spread thin, but he will find more. You understand?”
Mehr said nothing, because she knew what it sounded like when a question didn’t actually require an answer.
“When he finds more like you, he won’t be so kind to you or the boy in the future,” Bahren went on.
Mehr did not want to listen to him. After what she had suffered—after what she and Amun hadbothsuffered—she did not want to consider the idea that the Maha had treated them … kindly.
They had their own room, food and water. They had clothes and small creature comforts—Amun’s needle and thread, sweet soap Mehr had wheedled from a kindly elderly mystic. They had their limbs and their lives. Things could be so much worse.
Mehr had seen the darkness in the Maha’s eyes. Felt it. She knew the Maha was capable of a great many things, and if she was lucky, she would not survive them.
“You should learn to be obedient,” Bahren said.
“I will try,” Mehr said thinly.
They walked a little longer. Then Bahren spoke again.
“Make no mistake, little sister—I chose to be here. Our people could be weak instead of strong.” His voice softened as he spoke of the Maha’s purpose. Like Hema, he believed in the Maha’s work. In the Maha, who was beloved and terrible and had built the glory of the Empire out of nothing but sand and dreams.
Sand and dreams—and the blood of Mehr’s people.
“The Maha has ensured that our Emperors are always strong and brave and wise. He has ensured that we will always be prosperous.”
Mehr had significant experience in keeping her head lowered and her mouth silent. In that moment, she chose to put the skill to good use.
The Maha was waiting.
Mehr bowed low to the floor. Waited until he told her she could stand. She raised her head to meet the Maha’s eyes—looked into them for a sharp, painful second—then fixed her eyes on his chin. His eyes hurt her. She felt his presence, sharp as a blade, right through her chest. For a moment it choked her; she parted her lips, catching the air until the pain settled.
“Well, Mehr,” he said. He sounded pleased already. “Bahren has told me you obeyed. But I want to hear it from your lips now. Have you obeyed, or must I be more specific?”
She swallowed. “We had intercourse. Amun and I.”
“Finely put, my dear,” he said mildly. “That will suffice. Now show me the mark.”
He hadn’t asked to see it before, but Mehr should have expected it. She felt nothing at all as she loosened the sash, as she showed him the scarred skin where his mark sat.
He crossed the distance between them and placed a hand firmly on the sigil. He didn’t ask her permission. She supposed he didn’t feel that he needed to. She was his possession. Not a true person, or citizen of the Empire.
The touch of his hand was terrible, terrible. It burned through her free will, leaving her hanging suspended in her skin, surrounded by a maelstrom of darkness. The nightmares that haunted the storms, the nightmares that filled his eyes, were suddenly boiling under her own skin. They were part of her.
“Are you able to lie to me, Mehr?”
“No, Maha,” she said. Her voice like winter. “Not at all. Not anymore.”
“You’re bound to me,” he said.
“I am.” There was no question in his voice, but she answered regardless.
For a man who had recently slit a woman’s throat, he’d looked remarkably relaxed even when Mehr had first entered the room. Now he looked positively delighted.
“I should have realized why you so enraged me,” he murmured. “I didn’t quite have you. But the bond by marriage is a new creation, a thing of necessity, and I thought perhaps it simply felt strange to me because of its rarity. But now—ah, yes.” The satisfaction in his voice made her want to recoil. “I have you now.”
He didn’t let her go. Her skin hummed where his hand touched her.
“Everything will be so much better now,” he told her in a voice as tender as bloodied meat. He gave her bruised face a long, leisurely look. “You will no longer be flawed, my dear, by your weak blood and your weaker heart. Your blood and your heart are mine now—and I will shape them into a tool worthy of the great honor of service to my Empire.” He stroked a hand along her cheekbone. “You will be worthy of my love, and glad of it.”
She thought of how he had looked after the storm, with his riven skin and eyes shattered from within. Now, stroking her face with terrible tenderness, he looked more like the man who had greeted her when she had first arrived at the temple. His eyes and his skin glowed with inner light. The fractures in his eyes shone like pointed stars.
