“I can smell it,” Mehr gasped out. “The storm.”
“Yes,” Amun said. His hand was still on her shoulder, soft and steady. “Not long now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
There was very little time for the usual preparations. The mystics attended their fervent prayers, all other tasks forgotten. Bahren came for Mehr and Amun, a dagger at hand. It was time, again, to mark the temple windows and doorways with their blood. Mehr was obedient enough, but inside she was cold. She had no room for emotions, for the terror threatening to creep over her. She had to be strong. And for that, she had to avoid feeling anything at all. She couldn’t think of the nightmares uncurling beyond those blood-marked windows. She couldn’t think of the way they’d seeped into her own dreams, ragged veils and flowers and all.
She moved through the day in a daze. Practiced when she was told to practice. Ate when she was told to eat. There was no cooking done, with the storm so close, as all the mystics were spared from their usual tasks for the vital service of prayer. Amun scavenged bread from the kitchen and urged her to share it with him. He broke everything in neat halves, placed bread and palmfuls of seeds into her hands. Mehr ate the food and tried not to think of how much she had hoped this storm would be the opportunity for her and Amun to break their bonds and escape the Maha’s service. All those hopes felt so far away now. She tried not to think about how she would make it through the storm at all.
Last time, her weak bond with the Maha had allowed the nightmares of the sleeping Gods to break free, to resist the demands of the Maha for the Empire’s unnatural fortune and his own equally unnatural longevity, enacted through Mehr and Amun’s speaking flesh. But now she was vow-bound. She would allow the prayers of the mystics and the Maha’s will to bend those sleepers’ dreams. There would be no room for nightmares. And yet …
Like always, like she had to, she folded the fear away, away, until she was entirely numb.
Amun watched her with intent, careful eyes. But he said nothing about the state of her, and for that Mehr would be grateful later, she was sure.
He wasn’t the only one watching. Even with the preparation for the storm at its peak, the Maha ensured that there were guards on both of them, watching them for disobedience or weakness.
The day came as fast as expected. The mystics prayed and prayed, and Mehr and Amun did what they were expected to do. They went to prepare. She took out the wooden flowered beads to string through her hair. The fanned trousers, the tunic soft, color washed away by age. She laid them out on the divan and stared at them. She could be strong. She could—
“Mehr.” There was a thread of worry in Amun’s voice that tugged at her like a physical thing wound up beneath her breastbone.
She didn’t want him to worry. So she smiled at him, even though she knew already that he would see right through her, that he knew her face as well as she knew the way he carried his emotions in his hands, his spine, the line of his shoulders. She smiled not to show him she was happy—he was no fool, her Amun—but to show him that she was still strong, still iron-willed, and the fear hadn’t broken her yet.
“Hush, Amun. I’ll be well when this is all over.” She swallowed. “We’ll both be well when the storm is done.”
Amun shook his head, and Mehr raised hers sharply. She looked at him, forcing herself to see through the haze of her own pain. She saw the shadows under his eyes, the furrowed line of worry between them. She walked over to him and reached up, rising a little onto her tiptoes so that she could smooth the crease away with the flat of her thumb.
Amun’s mouth parted, just a little. They were so close to one another. She couldn’t help but feel the pull of his dark eyes, remember the softness of his mouth. Her thumb fell to touch his lower lip. She felt the warmth of his breath.
A jolt of awareness ran through her.
This man. This man is mine. And I am his.
She dropped her arm to her side. “I need to bathe,” she said, her voice hoarse. “We’re running out of time.”
She went to the bathing room, undressed, and kneeled down so she could pour clear, cold water over her hair. She had to let go of the jittery energy that hummed inside her. She needed the numbness back. Instead she was alive inside—as bright and fierce as the storm building and building beyond the temple walls. But the brightness had nothing to do with the dreamfire, and everything to do with the softness of Amun’s mouth.
She heard a sound. Looked up.
Amun was there.
It was as if her thoughts had conjured him, with his soft mouth and his dark eyes, and his hair that curled just a little at the ends. He stood in the doorway, not moving. Just looking at her.
“Mehr.” The way he whispered her name—oh.
Mehr stood, and beckoned him in.
There was no holy sweetness this time. It was hunger that brought their mouths and their bodies together. In the quiet of the bathing room, all Mehr could hear was his breath as he took her long dark hair into his hands, as she rose onto her tiptoes and fanned her fingers out against his shoulders to draw him closer.
“Don’t slip,” he murmured against her lips. “The floor—”
“I know you can hold me up,” Mehr murmured back.
He could. He raised her up in his arms, and she held on to him, trusting him with her weight. It was a dance of a kind: her legs wrapping around his waist, his arms holding her steady against the wall, their bodies meeting. She remembered the weightlessness she’d experienced when she’d first learned the Rite of the Bound, the terror she’d felt. She felt no terror now. She trusted him too much for that.
She felt like she was flying.
After, they washed each other clean. She laughed a little when Amun poured water over her hair. “It’s cold,” she said.
