She looked up at him. There was a warmth in his face, a heat that made her think he knew just as well as she did that a line had been crossed between them, and could never be uncrossed.
“Mehr.” His voice was low. Regretful. “You should let me go.”
They were nearly sharing breath. Mehr did not examine the thrum of her heart, or the way the world felt as if it had gone slow and silent around them. She didn’t examine the desire his words evoked in her to hold on to him even tighter.
“You’re hurt,” Amun said. “You’re afraid.”
I’m not the only one who is afraid, Mehr thought. But she said, “Do you want me to let go?”
His nostrils flared. A small, ridiculous show of emotion.
“I do.”
He had always respected her wishes. So now she respected his, and released him. He pulled away.
As he stood, Mehr made a show of looking down at her hand. The wound was bound and clean. He’d done a fine job, but it didn’t seem right to tell him so now. He had his back to her. His hands were clasped tight behind him. He’d never learn to hide his heart.
“I won’t be able to fight the vow forever, Mehr.” The words passed his lips torturously, as if he were loath to say them. “I can delay it a little longer. I think. I hope. But I can’t … I can only bend my obedience.” His voice was rough. “I can’t shatter it completely.”
His vow. To make her his wife in flesh and soul. To take her to his bed.
“I know,” she managed. “I know, Amun. And I’m sorry for it.”
Her heart hurt. She’d known, always known, that he couldn’t break his vows, only shape his obedience. She had allowed herself to forget that. More fool her. Worse still, she had simply not considered what their shared secret meant for him.
“Does it hurt?” she asked. “The mark—does it hurt you?”
Amun said nothing. But she watched his fingers curl tighter, knuckles whitening, and that was answer enough.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t apologize.” Bitter blackness in his voice. “I will be my Maha’s faithful servant in the end.”
Mehr bit her tongue, holding back her own words for a long moment. It would do no good to tell him to be kinder to himself. He was what he was. And some part of Mehr shared that black despair she heard in his voice. Some part of her felt the inexorable pull of the Maha’s power, dragging her down a path she did not want to walk.
“We will find a way to be free of him,” Mehr said. “Amun. I promise you we will.”
“There is no way to be free of him. Not for me. I’ve told you, Mehr.”
“If you truly believed that, you would never have tried to give me time. You still give me time, Amun. You fight. If the Maha can’t be resisted, why do you fight?”
“Because I’m not so cruel as all that,” he said wretchedly.
“You’re not a monster,” Mehr agreed, although she knew he believed he was. “But you also have hope. You must have hope.” Her fingers twitched. She wanted to reach out to him. She didn’t. “We don’t have to be what the Maha has made us. We can try to be free, Amun. Justtry.”
Amun shook his head. He said nothing.
The shutters rattled with the wind. Mehr took a deep, slow breath. Her hand had begun to throb. He’d told her, once, that hope would hurt him. She knew he feared that hope was pointless and came at too high a cost. But they couldn’t continue to live like this, bound and terrorized. They had to work together and find a way out.
“We’ll get through the storm first,” Mehr said. “And then we will find a way to escape, Amun. I know we will.”
As the Maha had told them, the mystics had all begun their prayers and their fasting. All other tasks were abandoned. The fires went unlit, food uncooked. Mehr and Amun, who both had no desire to fast, scrounged up some dried dates from the food stores. Neither of them was particularly hungry, but they would need the energy to face the demands of the rite.
When the dreamfire began to fall, the first gouts of color drifting down from the sky, one of the less senior mystics, a boy Mehr had seen sweeping the corridors from time to time, brought them clothing that was a close approximation of Amrithi costume. Fanned cloth trousers, a blouse, and a length of cotton shot through with faded color were given to Mehr to wear draped across her torso. She dressed in silence, her back to Amun, allowing them both some privacy.
She missed her own Amrithi clothing. She missed the joy it had once given her to drape herself in cloth and mark the edges of her eyes with kohl. Mehr felt nothing but nervousness now. Nothing about this storm was as it should be. She felt drab and colorless in her clothes, her stomach filled with butterflies and her skull heavy with all the things she couldn’t forget: sigils, secrets, vows.
As she began to try to apply kohl to her eyes without a mirror to guide her, she heard Amun’s voice.
