She forced her eyes to snap open.No.
She wouldn’t be destroyed.
Mehr gripped one of the clawed hands that had pinned her to the ground. It was hard, but it had a brittleness like sandstone. As she dug her nails in, struggling to shift its hold, its surface crumbled a little against her skin.
She dug her fingers in harder. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. She couldn’t escape it. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to focus on her body. Turning her wrist laboriously in its grip, she clumsily shaped the sigil forbanishment.
The nightmare shuddered above her, then crawled slowly away from her. Mehr struggled up onto her knees, keeping her gaze fixed on the nightmare, on its lidless gaze.
She’d escaped, but it was no good regardless. Her lungs were heaving; her hands on the ground felt raw and abraded. The storm was too big and far too furious. The nightmares were inching in closer again. She couldn’t do this.
It didn’t matter if she had already failed. She still had to stand. She still had totry.
She was just beginning to rise to her feet when a hand reached for her own. The hand was pure smoke, dark and full of shadows. Mehr looked up. A daiva stared down at her. Veiled, its eyes glowed through the mesh.
The world around her was suddenly, blessedly silent. The howl of the storm had faded away. Daiva wings rustled, producing the barest, whisper-soft susurration. A circle of daiva surrounded them and, beyond it, the nightmares hovered like hungry scavengers, carefully held at bay. The sand beneath them was still and soft, and the howl of the storm seemed like a faraway thing, ancient as a childhood memory. The daiva had hollowed a place within the storm for Mehr to kneel and for the veiled daiva to watch her. For a moment, at least, Mehr could not feel the weight of the dreamfire, and the respite was desperately sweet.
The daiva was still holding out its hand. Mehr took it. The hand felt as solid as the nightmare’s flesh had, cool and silken, no brittleness to it at all. Its veil was dusted with stars.
“You,” Mehr whispered. “I gave you my tears.”
“Yes,” the daiva said. “You did.”
The voice did not come from the daiva alone but from everywhere around them: from the air and the sand, from somewhere deep within Mehr’s own soul. It rattled in her head, filling her with glorious warmth.
Mehr flinched, stumbling back.
“You spoke in my language,” the daiva said. Its voice was a chorus, a hundred familiar voices—Lalita’s, Amun’s, Arwa’s—bound together in an inhuman song. “Your master’s control has shattered. Now we are stronger and can speak with your words.” Mehr had a sense the daiva would have smiled, if it could. “Words aren’t so hard.”
“He’s not my master,” Mehr rasped.
“Of course,” the veiled daiva said mildly. “Dead men master no one. Hewasyour master.”
“No,” Mehr said, shaking her head. “No, no matter what he did, I always belonged to myself.” She spoke reflexively, but in that moment, she knew it was true.
The circle of daiva rustled around softly, a whisper running through them that sounded like the chime of bells.
Mehr knew that sound. She’d heard it. Dreamed it, long ago.
“I have watched you a long time,” the veiled daiva said.
Mehr thought of the daiva that had haunted her dreams, the chimes she’d heard in the desert, on the first night she and Amun had shared a tent under the stars. She shivered, not quite from fear.
“Why?” she asked softly. “Daiva, why me?”
It cocked its head to the side, quizzical as a bird. “You were a tool,” it said slowly, as if grasping the words from a long distance. “You were in the right place. Near the one you call Maha, but not yet his property. We haunted the edges of him, the man who made immortals small. Years and years, we haunted him.” The veil rustled. “And there you were.”
“I see,” Mehr said. “You saw that I was a weak link in his armor.”
“A strong one,” the daiva responded. “A strong link to us. Your blood is our blood. You were still ours.” The daiva held a hand toward her. Its hand transformed back into wisps—coiled, gently, against the edge of her jaw. “There is a little of my blood in that flesh of yours,” the daiva said. “And in the flesh of your mother, and the flesh of your beloved. Blood has power.”
“So I’ve always been told the daiva believe,” Mehr said shakily.
“So humans believe too,” the daiva responded swiftly. “The one you call Maha came to the Salt and bound his first Amrithi for the sake of his bloodline, after all. All this, he did for love of his children. He wanted an Empire for his progeny. He wanted to bless them with an everlasting throne.”
An image bloomed in Mehr’s mind through the daiva’s touch: the shadow of the Maha from time long gone, an arrogant and charming commander of men with unflinching eyes and overbearing charisma. She saw a small hand in his own, saw the terrible love in his eyes. In his child he’d seen himself, seen his glory stretching eternally into the future. His love was selfish and overpowering, a monstrous thing.
He would not have cared about the price he paid or demanded the world to pay for the sake of his own blood. He’d died sure of the glory of his own purpose.
