“And you?”
“I was the baby, of course.” Mehr had done so many ridiculous things when Arwa was small, just to make her little sister laugh. “Children like to play pretend. I humored her.”
“Just like you’re humoring me?”
“Exactly like that.” She placed her fingers on Amun’s sleeve. “What are we doing, exactly?”
“Playing pretend. Pretending we’re somewhere else.” He took her hand, threaded his fingers with her own. “Somewhere out in the desert, perhaps.”
It was a nice idea. Mehr wanted to allow herself to believe the illusion, to think they were out under the cool star-flecked night sky, in a tent all their own. But she couldn’t.
“We’re too old to be so foolish,” Mehr said sharply. “We are where we are. We can’t change that.”
“We can’t,” he agreed. “But we can put aside the burden for a little while.”
“I didn’t think you were the sort to lie to yourself.” The words were harsh, and Mehr regretted them as soon as she’d spoken.
But Amun didn’t tense, didn’t grow defensive. Instead he made a soft hum of agreement. He released her hand and brushed a hand through her hair, traced the line of her jaw, until his thumb came to rest against the edge of her lips.
“I never see you smile anymore,” Amun said.
“I smiled earlier.”
“I know what a real smile looks like, Mehr.”
Mehr pursed her lips. “I never see you smile either.”
“I’m solemn by nature,” Amun said, and oh, hewassmiling now. She could hear it in his voice. “You are—”
“What?”
“Not,” Amun finished. “Not solemn.”
Mehr said nothing. She could almost feel Amun’s smile fading away. His hand moved away from her jaw. “You don’t sleep well either. I know.”
“I don’t have many reasons to smile anymore,” Mehr said softly. “You know that. I can’t help it.”
“I know. But I’m asking you to try to put your burden down. Just for a little while.” He was warm and close. He took her hand again. “Mehr.”
There was so much in his voice, in the gentle way he spoke her name, like the world was suspended inside it.
“I suppose it feels like we’re somewhere else,” Mehr said grudgingly. “A little.”
Amun laughed softly, and Mehr felt herself melt.
Their mouths met, and Mehr felt that light inside herself again—that brightness that had built inside her when they’d kissed, on that awful night of blood and darkness. She felt the emptiness inside her ease, just slightly.
She didn’t know how this light would survive their future. But for now she didn’t need to know. She just needed to feel the stubble on Amun’s cheek beneath her fingertips. She just needed this make-believe, this man, and the dream of somewhere else.
The storm was coming, and there was training to be done. Training that was made infinitely more difficult by the constant presence of a rotating selection of mystics on watch duty, marking their every mistake or success for the Maha’s attention. Mehr was grateful for the reprieve offered by a visit to the scholars’ tower.
Edhir was there in the tower, bent over one of his spheres covered in golden dials. Mehr watched him work, turning each dial in painful increments, comparing his movements to the near incomprehensible lines and numbers on the charts unfurled on the table in front of him. He looked tired and thin.
Mehr knew that her and Amun’s failure in the last storm had had consequences for all of the Maha’s obedient servants.
“Three days,” he said to Amun tersely. “Usually you’d get more notice, but this time things are moving—differently from usual.” He scowled at the sphere in front of him, as if its numbers and dials had betrayed him.
“Not very accurately put,” one scholar mystic piped up, disapproving. “A day is hardly a precise measure.”
