Mehr’s stomach plummeted. “Oh.”
Amun straightened. “No. You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly,” she said, cutting in. “I never, ever wanted our vows to chain you. I didn’t make those vows to trap you in a new cage.”
“Mehr, no.”
“Our vows set me free. Do you think I’d want any less for you?” She shook her head. “I love you enough to want to see you unchained, even if that means I remain here alone. I mean that, Amun. I want you to go.”
Amun looked as if he wanted to argue. He held out a hand, reaching for her. He began to say her name—
A daiva flickered at the edge of Mehr’s vision, just beyond the window. She turned her head sharply.
“What is it?” Amun asked.
“I’m not sure.”
He followed her to the window. They both looked out.
An armed group of people was approaching the temple. Amun tensed at her side.
“Those are not mystics,” he said.
“No,” Mehr said, looking at the figure leading them. Her face was exposed, her body wrapped in dun-colored cloth, her braid whipping out behind her. “That’s my mother.”
The daiva were waiting when Mehr and Amun walked out of the temple into the sunlight. They clung to the temple walls and circled their feet. A few swooped through the air high above them.
The Amrithi were a small group. All adults, Mehr saw. They looked nervous, but not afraid, exactly. Their expressions were perilously close to hopeful. Only Ruhi’s face was unreadable, her eyes shadowed.
Mehr saw Lalita standing just behind her mother. She smiled at her, tears threatening to overwhelm her again. “Welcome,” she said.
“Ah, Gods,” Lalita said. Her smile was watery. “It’s good to see you alive, Mehr.”
“Likewise,” Mehr said, somewhat foolishly.
Mehr made eye contact with her mother then. “Why have you come?” Surely they hadn’t come for her. Mehr didn’t think her mother would have put the clan into such clear danger, not even for Mehr’s sake. Certainly, Lalita wouldn’t have allowed it.
“We saw the storm,” said her mother. “We felt the nightmares come, the earth shudder, and we thought the world was coming to an end. But the storm ended, and we did not.” Ruhi looked at the daiva flying above them. “The daiva came for us,” she continued. “They beckoned us. We knew then that we had to take a risk and follow them.”
“We didn’t know they would bring us to the temple,” Lalita said. “That was a pleasant surprise.”
“The Maha is dead,” said Mehr. An audible ripple ran through the Amrithi. “But I danced his rite, his anathema rite, which was never his to begin with. I reclaimed it, and I kept the world whole.” Mehr felt Amun encircle her wrist. She took strength in that touch. “I don’t regret it. I regret nothing I did for the sake of our survival.”
Her mother’s face remained expressionless. “Will you take his place?” she asked. “Rule the Empire as its quiet master, sequestered here among your worshippers?”
Mehr could see the same doubt in the eyes of some of the other Amrithi. She understood that her mother spoke not only for herself but for her clan.
“She has saved us all,” Amun said, his voice rich with utter conviction. He looked at them with clear, cloudless eyes. “Tara, Mehr has ensured that no one will be bound to the terrible service the Maha demanded ever again. No one will wear the scars I wear. She is nothing like him. I know, better than any living creature, that she is the best of us. She is hope.”
“The daiva wouldn’t surround her if her path was evil,” one of the Amrithi said. A woman, her face weathered, her hair pure silver. “She acts with their blessing.”
“They have asked me to keep the balance,” Mehr said to her, to them all. “And that is what I have chosen to do.”
In response to her words, the daiva swirled up around her—somewhat ostentatiously, Mehr thought sourly. Still, a symbol was a symbol, and the joy growing in the eyes of the Amrithi was desperately beautiful to see.
“All I ask,” Mehr said to her mother, as the daiva settled around them, “is that you don’t try to stop me.”
Her mother took a step forward, then another. In one swift motion, she kneeled.
