The brightness of the dreamfire was growing, growing. Beneath the howl of the daiva she heard the creak and skitter of new limbs. Fear, animal and raw, crawled down her spine. She heard the prayers of the mystics rise, somewhere far below them. The Maha turned to listen. His expression was hungry, utterly starved of the power that had kept him blessed for so many years. When the light filtered over his face, his skin looked as thin as gauze.
“Without the dreamfire, you’re nothing but a man who likes to hurt people,” Mehr murmured. “I see you, Maha. I know you won’t deny me this bargain.”
Kalini was looking at the Maha too, gazing at him with eyes that drank him in, that consumed the new hollows of his face, the thinness of his skin, the turn of his thin, starved lips. Her gaze never wavered. Her mouth was slightly parted, her hand soft on the Maha’s arm.
The sound of screaming rose suddenly between the prayers. Bahren cursed, startling from his place by the door. Abhiman began to unsheathe his weapon. “What is that?” he shouted.
“Nightmares,” said Bahren. He sounded sick. “They’re here.”
“I won’t act before I see Amun’s vow broken,” Mehr said.
Abhiman wrenched Mehr to her feet with an oath. Mehr bit down on her tongue to stop herself from making a sound. She maintained eye contact with the Maha. There was nothing he could do—nothing she could hear—that would make her relent.
“Bring Amun here, Abhiman,” the Maha said. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Bahren, you stay and watch the girl.”
The Maha looked at Mehr, his fractured eyes full of fury and helplessness. “You have a bargain, Mehr.”
Abhiman was stammering, protesting, but when the Maha snarled, “Go,” he stumbled swiftly out of the room.
Mehr felt suddenly as if she could breathe. She tried to hide her relief, tried not to appear triumphant. Nothing had been won yet. First Amun had to be set free, had tosurvive. Then Mehr had to dance the Rite of the Bound—alone—without being destroyed by it. She had to face the nightmares without allowing them to coil their way inside her head and heart. Easier said than done. But Mehr would find a way. She would have to.
“Maha,” Bahren said, into the bitter quiet. “Maha, our brothers and sisters are dying. I hear them. I fear for them. Please, give me leave to assist them—”
“No,” the Maha said, his voice sudden and savage. “No, you stay here and protect me. I am your master. I am the reason the Empire stands. You stay.”
“Maha,” Bahren said respectfully. He spoke no more.
Kalini had bowed her head. She raised it then, looking up at the Maha with eyes soft with light. Mehr saw her touch her fingertips to the Maha’s wrist.
“Maha,” she murmured. “Are you in pain? Do you suffer?”
“When the storm proceeds as it should, my pain will ease,” he responded, his voice gentler, now that he was speaking to his beloved one. “Everything will be as it should be.” He smiled at her, beatific. “I am not an old man yet.”
“No, Maha,” Kalini agreed, looking up at the gossamer of his face. “You will never be old.”
Her hand was still on his wrist, soft and tender, when she drew her scimitar from its scabbard and slit the Maha’s throat.
It was a dance, almost. She moved so beautifully, so economically, that she could have been moving through the steps of a rite. She drew the scimitar in a fine, clean arc. Blood poured from the gaping maw where his throat had been. He was dead before he even had the chance to scream.
Mehr was frozen. Kalini looked over at her, cocking her head to the side. The blade was still in her hand.
Bahren made an awful noise behind her, choked and heartsick. “What have you done?”
“He wasn’t a God any longer,” Kalini said to him, her voice terribly calm. “Surely you saw the mortality creeping over him. The taint of it. I spared him from suffering the foulness of begging scraps from a slave.” She leaned down and gently brushed his eyes closed. “I gave him a merciful death. I’ve kept him pure. You would have done no less, if you had been brave enough, Bahren.”
“How could you, sister?” Bahren whispered, uncomprehending.
“I’m not your sister,” Kalini said. “I had a sister. She died for no less than a God. Now that will never change.”
Kalini stood and walked calmly toward the door. “Let the world burn,” she said to Mehr as she passed. “None of it matters any longer.”
Bahren let her go. His hands hung numb at his side. Mehr listened to Kalini’s measured footsteps fade beyond the doorway.
“The nightmares had her,” Bahren said, his voice full of grief. “They must have forced her to do it.”
Mehr pressed a hand to her face, breathed in her own skin deep and slow to blot out the smell of blood, and took him by the shoulder. “Bahren. You need to go.”
He looked at her. His eyes were wet and shocked.
