He could afford to be tender now, cruel, sadistic animal that he was. Now that he had her—truly had her—he did not have to hurt her. His presence alone was pain enough. His touch was agony. Even his voice clawed her ears. How had Amun survived this horror since childhood? Mehr couldn’t fathom it.
“Speak to me,” the Maha prompted. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That my pain brings you joy,” she said promptly. She had no control. None. The words poured out of her. “That you are far older than any mortal man has the right to be. That you have single-handedly crushed my mother’s people to dust for the sake of the Empire, for a throne you no longer sit on and I can’t—I don’t know what you are, but you aremonstrous—”
He gripped her hard, holding her jaw painfully shut.
“Stop,” he ordered softly. When she fell silent, breathing hard through her nose, he patted her cheek and let her go. “Good girl.”
She stayed very still. She thought he would beat her again then. She had failed so thoroughly, to be what he had demanded. Her scar throbbed painfully. But he only shook his head and smiled, a terrible soft smile.
“Now,” he said, satisfied. “Now you begin to understand true awe, and true worship. I am so pleased with you, Mehr. So pleased.”
“I wish I could kill him,” Amun said.
When Amun had returned from the physicians and found her sitting in their room, he’d only had to look at her to know she had faced the Maha without him. He’d listened without comment as she’d told him what had passed between her and the Maha. When he spoke, his words were without inflection, without rage. They were just truth.
“You’re not a murderer, Amun,” she said.
“Every man is, when he has to be.” He sat touching distance from her. The gap between their bodies felt heavy, significant. “I chose this fate. I can manage the burden of—what he does. But you, Mehr …”
“I can cope,” she said swiftly. “I’m stronger than I look.”
He exhaled. Gave her a swift, sidelong smile. “It’s not your strength I’m worried about. Seeing someone you love being hurt, knowing their pain so perfectly … Mehr, it’s hard.”
Her own heart gave a pang in her chest. She leaned against him, breaching that distance between them. Her pain eased as he wrapped his arm around her and pressed his face into her hair. These small things. They had to be enough.
“I don’t want to talk anymore about what he said to me.”What he did to me.“I want you to tell me a story. Tell me more about your childhood. Tell me how you grew up.”
And haltingly, gently, he did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
What are you supposed to do when you have lost the war and every possibility of victory has been absolutely, thoroughly annihilated?
Mehr had always fought. Sometimes in big ways, but usually small: carefully calculated rebellions, little victories won under a thin veneer of obedience. Now all the fight had left her. She couldn’t rebel any longer. She wore the chains of her servitude under her skin and her bones, in hersoul. She and Amun could no longer alter the Rite of the Bound and ask the Gods to set them free, or compel the daiva to their will. Mehr’s small measure of freedom had been the key, and now the key was gone.
So Mehr did the only thing left to her: She obeyed. She and Amun practiced the rite. They prayed. Mehr did not try to seek out Hema’s women. She didn’t track down Anni and claw out her eyes. She did her duty and kept her own eyes lowered, her body at work. She allowed herself to become colorless.
It was only when she and Amun were alone that Mehr felt like herself again. Amun didn’t ask her for intimacy, and she didn’t ask him either. Instead Mehr would lean against him, safe in the circle of his arms, and listen to his voice. He would talk to her—more than he’d ever talked before—about his Amrithi childhood, and his life among the mystics in the long years before Mehr had joined him. There were no more halting silences, no more tales cut short to hide their true brutality. They’d suffered together, survived together, made their own soul-binding vows to one another. There were no more walls between them now, and Amun’s company was the one comfort Mehr had in her newly bound life.
Kalini came for her when she and Amun were training in one of the spare halls, a guard watching them as always.
“Mehr, you’re needed,” Kalini said sharply from the doorway. Mehr startled, stumbling. It had been so long since she’d last seen Kalini.
“And me?” Amun asked.
“Just your wife,” Kalini said. She sounded bored. “Come on now.”
Mehr didn’t question. She drew her shawl tight over her shoulders and followed Kalini from the room. Kalini was the Maha’s favored mystic; what she ordered, the Maha ordered. So Mehr obeyed.
She still cried out, shocked, when Kalini shoved her hard against a wall, hard enough to knock Mehr’s skull against stone and make her ears ring.
“Silence,” Kalini ordered—but it was the blade she held point first to Mehr’s neck that truly made Mehr hold her tongue.
Mehr froze, barely daring to breathe. They were too far from the hall for Amun or the other guard to have heard them. Kalini had waited until they were alone, hidden from sight in the nook of a dark corridor, before cornering Mehr with her blade.
“I told you to leave Hema alone,” Kalini said. “I told you.” Her grip on the blade was steady, her eyes resolute. “You should have listened to me.”
