“What?” Mehr’s voice was shaky. She took a step forward. “How—?”
“Your mother,” said Amun. “When you were a child, did she tell you why Amrithi don’t marry?” Mehr shook her head. “Amrithi are descended from daiva, Lady Mehr.”
“I know that. But I—”
“Daiva have great strength. Great power. But their vows are binding. Their vows are unbreakable.”
“I don’t understand,” Mehr said, even as dawning knowledge ran cold through her bones.
He looked at Mehr with something like pity. “We don’t marry because we don’t make vows. To do so is to risk binding ourselves permanently.” He gestured at the mark on his chest. “When I bound myself in marriage to you, the vow marked itself on my skin. It will be there for the rest of our lives.”
She clutched the new seal. Clutched it so hard that the edges bit into her palm.
“I didn’t know that,” Mehr said faintly. Her voice came from far away. Shock had made her numb. “Why didn’t I know?”
“Few Amrithi are afflicted with enough of our ancestral blood to have the gift ofamata, the gift in our blood that allows us to be bound,” he said impassively. “Perhaps your mother neglected to tell you because she thought your Ambhan blood would protect you from inheriting the strongest of our gifts.”
His words cut through the numbness like a knife, leaving Mehr stripped bare. She sat down abruptly on the bed, curling her legs beneath her as if reducing her size would reduce the weight of the knowledge. A vow. Unbreakable. Gods, what had she walked into?
Amun hesitated visibly. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed. Mehr was glad he left a large distance between them.
“This gift,” Mehr managed to say. “This—curse. You think I have it?”
Amun nodded. “You wear the vow on your skin,” he said. “You must have it. No doubt if your mother had known your strength, she would have warned you.”
“No doubt,” Mehr agreed. Or Lalita would have. But even Lalita had left Mehr in the dark.
More softly now, he continued. “Half Ambhan, raised hidden in this place, you should have passed beneath the Maha’s notice. But you revealed your strength, didn’t you? You did something foolish that drew our Maha’s many eyes.” He hesitated. “Something in the last storm.”
Something foolish. Yes, Mehr supposed dancing with dreamfire in the storm, barefaced and alone, qualified. It had been an act of pure desperation. All she had wanted was to save Lalita. Instead she had drawn the attention of the Emperor’s eyes, and with a swiftness that terrified her, his mystics had appeared, the name of the first Emperor a terrible prayer on their lips.
Mehr nodded silently.
“Well then,” Amun said. “Once he knew of youramatagift, he knew a vow could bind you. And here we are.”
“What do you want me for?” she asked. “Why marry me?”
“I didn’t want you,” he said bluntly. “But I made vows to the Maha. I do as I’m bid.”
Against her will, her gaze lowered to his arms. Those marks were vows, she realized. Every single one of them was an unbreakable promise, limned in deep blue against his skin.
Amun followed her gaze and smiled humorlessly. “I made too many vows,” he said. “And now my burdens are your burdens too.”
Oh. Mehr saw the cleverness of it, even as she recoiled from it. The Maha had ensured that his mystics bound Mehr by both her Ambhan and her Amrithi blood. Because she was an Ambhan woman, her husband’s burdens were her burdens. She had made an Ambhan promise, but her Amrithi blood had turned that promise into unbreakable chains, a vow like a noose around her neck. Panic wanted to grip at her insides. She couldn’t let it.
“If you could look away, husband, I would appreciate it.” His own vows, she realized, climbed up to his hairline. Her eyes followed them with a helpless kind of horror. What had become of her own flesh? “I need to see my mark for myself.”
Amun stood and walked to the corner of the room without a word. He turned his back on her.
Mehr unpinned her veil and struggled with her wedding silks. She had been dressed by multiple maids, and the costume was far too elaborate for Mehr to remove it without assistance. There was no simple sash at the waist for her to unknot. She had an inkling that Amun was supposed to help her undress. The idea of it made her stomach knot with sickened anxiety. She struggled to shift her robe just enough for her to see the mark.
It lay just above her breasts. Unlike the deep blue marks all over Amun’s skin, the scar from his seal on her chest was pale, whitish. It was an ugly thing.
She adjusted her clothes, covering the scar back up. Then she raised her head. Amun was still standing with his back to her. She was thankful for that.
She leaned forward. The sound of her wedding silks rasping against the bed made him tense visibly. His hands were clasped behind him and clenched; the muscles in his arms stood in relief.
No wonder he went to such lengths to keep himself entirely covered. His voice was a good mask, but his body was painfully expressive.
