“Let me help you.”
She turned to him. Froze.
He looked nothing like his old self. No longer swathed in a heavy robe or ill-fitting tunic, he was tall and strong, his blackened eyes otherworldly, his expression serene. In Amrithi clothing he looked like the self she’d seen flashes of, through his usual garb of hunched shoulders and self-loathing. He looked clear-eyed and strong.
The sight of him—oh, it brought a lump to her throat. What could Amun have been, if he had never made vows to the Maha? What kind of man could he have grown to be among his own people?
A kind man, a voice inside her said.Just as he is now.
Mehr held the kohl out to him wordlessly and he took it. She closed her eyes as he applied ash to the lids, fanning the color out. “You remember everything I taught you?” he asked.
“I remember.”
She heard him let out a breath.
“Then I suppose we’re ready,” he said.
They were followed outside by a procession of mystics, who sang in bright voices for the Empire’s glory. She didn’t try to look into their faces, which were concealed from the sand by low hoods. She didn’t wonder if the Maha stood close, or if Hema followed her in the procession or kneeled praying inside the temple instead. She and Amun, exposed as they were to the burning light and sand, had other things to worry about.
The mystics nearest to them carried weapons. Mehr tried not to think about that either.
She covered her face with her hand as she walked, her eyes closed tight. She could feel the shudder of the dreamfire, as if the earth were reshaping around them. The sand should have abraded her bare feet, but instead it smoothed beneath her footsteps to a slickness like glass. She wished she could open her eyes and take the sight of it in, but she was afraid the storm wouldn’t be as kind to her vision. She took small breaths, too, to protect her lungs.
There was song in the air. The prayers of the mystics. The cries of the daiva. Mehr shivered and went still. The dreamfire was falling. The storm was here.
For a second her eyes snapped open. She looked at Amun, suddenly panicked. She couldn’t do this. She was afraid. She couldn’t.
But it was too late. Mehr saw the dreamfire shower down over Amun’s form, saw his steady, blackened gaze, the trust in his eyes.
The light swallowed him whole.
The storm Mehr had experienced in Jah Irinah had been nothing like this. Jeweled light consumed her body, as it had in Jah Irinah. But the way this storm cloaked her—swallowing her flesh, turning her body to pure flame—terrified her, made her body instinctively flinch from the promise of agony. But there was no agony. Instead she felt a crushing pressure, battering her from all sides, stealing through her blood.
Thiswas the power of the Gods’ dreams, in the very place where they slept and dreamed. This was the power Mehr was expected to turn to his will.
Right now, that task felt utterly impossible. She crumpled to her knees. Amun. She needed Amun. But there was too much light, too much for her to even see the mystics she knew stood all about her. She needed him, but she couldn’t speak, couldn’t reach out.
She sucked in breath after desperate breath, not caring about the sand any longer. She pressed her hands into fists. The cut throbbed.
Slowly, slowly, a calmness welled up inside her.
She didn’t need Amun. Not for this. He’d already taught her what she needed to know. It was up to her now to find the strength to stand up and perform the rite. It was up to her to survive.
She stood up, held the fragments of that calm close, and stopped letting the power crush the strength out of her. Instead she let the power pour in.
Amrithi danced with dreamfire, Mehr knew, because it was as close to the divine as any mortal could come. Falling into the immortal place inside herself, Mehr realized in her last moment of clarity that she was committing an act forbidden to mortals for good reason.
When we dance with dreamfire, we dance with the Gods.So her mother had told her. She’d been right. But this was no Rite of Dreaming. This was not dancing with the dreams of Gods. This was being consumed by them.
Dreams roared through her. Her mind, so fragile and mortal, could make no sense of them.
She was human. She wasn’t meant for this. The dreams of Gods were too huge, too beautiful, simply too much. They were everything that lived and everything that died: a great, weaving circle, the cycles of creation and destruction that molded all things. They were a knife to the hand and a field of metal and blood. They were glass and flame, earth and water, the way birth feels and a blinding tightness akin to dying. They were creation. Creation, in its headiest, purest form. She wasn’t made for this. She was small, far too small to survive.
But Amun had survived this. Over and over again, he had survived. Other Amrithi—the man Gaur, with his missing finger, the nameless older woman who had taught Amun the Rite of the Bound—had done it before him.
And died, a voice said in Mehr’s head.They all died, in the end.
Not Amun. Not yet. And Mehr would not die either. She had to live to find a way to set them both free.
