Amun took a tentative step forward. There was only room for breath between them, but he didn’t touch her. He tilted his head, speaking low and soft, his breath against her hair.
“I was trapped with vows as a child. I was told I would never escape them. So I served and I suffered, and I never allowed myself to dream of anything. Not of freedom, not of family, not of happiness. I accepted my lot.” A deep exhale. “Then you came, and I began to dream again.”
Mehr looked up at him then. His eyes, oh. The way he looked at her was like a brand to her soul.
“I imagined what it would be like to court you, if we were free.”
“I know,” Mehr said, remembering the night when they’d held one another, when they’d made their bond. “I remember.”
“And now I’m free,” Amun said. “I’m truly free. Because of you.”
“Because of you,” Mehr cut in, her voice fierce. “You were the one who tried to show me mercy. You were the one who risked your own soul to set me free. Amun, if it weren’t for your courage, the world would still be in chains.”
“You said you’d let me speak, Mehr,” Amun said mildly.
“I didn’t promise to let you speak falsehoods.”
“True.” He looked at her as if she were his moon and stars all at once. “Both of us then. We saved one another. And now, perhaps, I can have my dream.”
It took Mehr a moment to understand.
“You want to court me?” she asked.
“If you’ll allow it,” Amun said.
“We’re—we’re married. We’re vowed, we—Amun,” Mehr said helplessly. “You don’t need to court me.”
“But I’d like to,” he said, his gaze clear, his voice steady. “I want to court you every day. I want to choose you and ask you to choose me, and know that we are bound because we have chosen each other. I want to know we are bound because we continue to choose to belong to one another.”
Mehr raised a hand. Amun took it. He twined his fingers with hers, a touch that made light shiver inside her.
“I don’t want to see the world,” Amun said. “I want to see our future. I want to seeyou.”
She looked down at their interlaced fingers, at their strength and their scars. Her heart ached. Amun had saved her, and she had saved him in return. Mehr had chosen him, over and over again, and Amun had chosen her in return.
Choices. Choices were sacred, and Mehr had made hers long ago.
“No more,” she said, her voice shaking. “You’ve courted me enough for today, I think.”
When he began to pull his hand back, unsure, she held on more tightly.
“You’ve won me completely, you see,” she said.
“Ah.” A long exhale. “That’s … good.”
Mehr laughed. There was the taciturn Amun she knew so well.
“You can court me again tomorrow. And the day after that. And after that.”
“And so forth?”
“Yes,” Mehr said. “I’d like that very much.”
She looked up at his face. She’d seen the promise of a better future in the daiva and their growing strength, in the growing presence of Amrithi, no longer hidden and afraid. But in Amun’s face she saw something more: a future of love and of kindness. A future spun from the very best of dreams.
She reached her free hand up and finally pushed back that curl that had so vexed her. She cupped his cheek.
“Now,” she said, “let me court you.”
