Amun shook his head. “He taught the woman with whom I performed the rite, from time to time. But not me. He trusted her to teach me.”
But he didn’t trust Amun. More than that, he didn’t trust Mehr. She was too green, too clumsy; she was not an adequate tool. He’d used his blade to hone her. The thought left her feeling raw.
“We were lucky he didn’t find out the truth about my vow,” said Mehr. Now that they were back in the privacy of Amun’s room, she could be honest. She could feel the weight of their shared secret. She knew how easily she would have revealed it if the Maha had cut just a little deeper.
“You did well.”
“Of course. I didn’t have to lie.” Mehr pursed her lips. “But if he’d asked me the right questions we would have been ruined.”
“You did well,” Amun repeated.
He was nearly vibrating with energy. She could see the tension in his shoulders.
“Let me fix your hand,” he said abruptly.
“The cut isn’t so bad.”
Amun didn’t move. He was so tense she feared he would snap. So she sighed and relented.
“Go on then.”
He moved immediately, looking for a clean cloth and water. She understood that he wanted to help her—that watching the Maha hurt her without being able to interfere had been agony for him—but there was little he could do. The cut was shallow and would heal with time, but the wound the Maha had left in Mehr’s head wasn’t so easily fixed. And that had been the Maha’s intention, of course: to give Mehr a long-lasting hurt without compromising her usefulness. He was a clever man, and all the more terrible for it.
She let Amun take her hand without complaint. He turned her hand over gently, lowering his head to take a closer look at her skin. His fingers were warm as coals. She realized suddenly how cold she was.
She looked away from him, forcing herself not to stare at his lowered face or the blue whorls that swept from the nape of his neck down under the cover of his tunic. Instead she looked at the bare room around them. Red-gold light filtered in beneath the cracks in the shutters.
When had Amun’s bedroom begun to feel like home? She didn’t know. Here was the only place she felt like the Maha’s eyes were not on her. She still had uneasy dreams, still woke reaching for the blade that was no longer under her pillow. But within these bare walls, these shuttered windows, she feltsafe.
“The Amrithi he spoke of,” Mehr said slowly. The cogs of her brain were still turning, sifting through the Maha’s words for a pattern, an answer. Knowledge. She had to seek knowledge. “The man. Gaur. He wasn’t the one who trained you, was he? You told me you were trained by a woman.”
“There’s only been one Amrithi pair in the temple, in my time here,” said Amun, his attention still focused on her cut. “The woman who trained me, and myself. Then you and me. No more than that.”
Mehr thought of the Amrithi pairs who had come before them. She thought of the great effort the Maha had gone to, in order to acquire Mehr—the way he had twisted the sacred institution of marriage, sacred to his Empire and to his people, in order to control one single half-Amrithi woman with theamatagift.
“The Amrithi, our gifts, our people,” Mehr said softly. “We’re fading, aren’t we?”
Amun let out a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps. I try not to think of it.”
Mehr closed her eyes and let out a breath. She thought of the Empire. She thought of the Maha. She thought of all those dreams that had never touched either of them. She thought of dreams of aging and death.
Death and decay followed humans with every breath, every heartbeat. Skin could be cut, and skin could heal. Bodies could hunger and be fed. But the Maha no longer hungered as humans hungered. She’d seen the light under his skin, the strangeness of it. She wondered if he could even bleed any longer.
He’d used the rite to make himself something not quite human.
Somewhere, immortal dreams of his death lay, crushed beneath the weight of the mystics’ prayers and the rite. If he had managed to twist himself into something so utterly inhuman through the power of the rite, what had he done to the Empire? What had he done to the world?
A shudder ran through her. The emotions she’d been so careful to push away drew in closer. She clasped Amun’s hand in her own, taking comfort in him. He was here. His hand was in her own. What a small thing that touch was, and how utterly vital it felt to her in that moment.
She heard his breath catch.
“Mehr,” he said.
She should have let go of him then. She knew that. But he was so warm. She waited for him to speak again, but when he was silent she clasped his hand tighter, leaning closer to him. Under his shadow, she didn’t feel the need to hold on to the iron in her spine. She could breathe.
Amun didn’t move noticeably. But she felt him relax, increment by increment, until they were leaning in to each other.
As the seconds ticked by, she realized a line had been crossed between them. The careful distance they had worked, without words, to maintain all this time had been breached. She was glad she couldn’t feel right then. She was glad not to be ashamed. Perhaps she would be later. But not now.
