Mehr didn’t respond. Something at the corner of her eye had caught her attention. She let her head loll back, looking behind Bahren at the fading dreamfire behind him. Tangled with jeweled light was a creature as brittle and pale as bone, its eyes the flat silver of a sharp blade. It skittered behind them, flickering in and out of life as the dreamfire wavered with it.
She remembered the feel of the pale flame inside her, tracing her bones. She shivered. She’d felt this one rise out of suppressed, leashed dreams. She’d felt this one being born.
“There’s a nightmare following us,” she slurred out.
Bahren did not look. But she felt his grip on her tighten.
“I don’t like this,” Bahren muttered. “I don’t like this at all.”
The mystics around them said nothing, but Mehr could feel their unease. She swallowed. Her mouth tasted of ash and blood. She kept her gaze fixed on the nightmare until her vision grew hazy again, and the blackness gently retook her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
She woke with the feeling of silk underneath her cheek. Groaning, she turned onto her back and took in her surroundings. She was on a rug, a floor cushion tucked beneath her head. To her right she could see a divan surrounded on all sides by a curtain of gold gauze. Lamplight flickering on the glittering cloth. She hadn’t been surrounded by such opulence since leaving Jah Irinah.
Am I home?she thought. No. The memory of her old room had faded, but she knew it hadn’t been quite like this. The divan was too large, the curtains made of far finer cloth than Mehr, the illegitimate daughter and disgrace, had ever earned. And she wasn’t dreaming either, she was sure of that. The ache of her muscles was far too sharp, and her head hurt—a clear, pounding ache that told her in no uncertain terms how awake she really was.
She sat up. She was still wearing her Amrithi costume. There were fine grains of sand under her fingernails. She touched her grainy fingertips to her chest. Through all the other aches and pains, she had barely noticed the way her scar was burning softly beneath the weight of her seal. She knew suddenly where she was.
The Maha’s room.
Where else? She had seen the rest of the temple, with its high walls and honeycomb corridors. Nowhere else had been so luxurious. And the Maha loved surrounding himself in finery. She knew that. Cold dread unfurled in her stomach. Where was Amun? Why was Mehr here alone, without him at her side?
She clambered to her feet. Her legs felt unsteady beneath her, but after a moment of uncertainty, where she trembled on the spot, she knew they would support her weight. She took a few tentative steps forward, skirting the edge of the divan.
Through the doorway beyond she could see a man’s silhouette, his back turned. The scar flared hotter. Mehr swallowed. She thought of turning back.
“I’m waiting,” the Maha said.
Mehr kept walking. The Maha was standing by a window, one of Edhir’s strange contraptions on the table beside him. Its dials gleamed.
“I know you are weak, Mehr,” the Maha said. He turned to face her. “But I expect to receive my proper respect.”
It took her a moment to understand him. Then, cheeks burning with a rush of humiliation, she got down onto her knees. She bowed to him, her head pressed to the floor, her hands flat. She felt dizzy. She could hear the beat of her own pulse in her ears. He made her wait far longer than he usually did, but finally she heard him speak again.
“You may stand.”
She stood, her legs trembling with her own weight. The Maha looked at her, his expression unreadable.
“How do you feel, Mehr?” he asked. “The storm appeared to be brutal.”
“I feel well, Maha.”
“The truth.”
“I am weaker than I usually am,” Mehr admitted, because how could she hide it? “But I am still well.”
She certainly felt better than Amun had looked. She remembered Amun’s gray face, his closed eyes. She held back all the questions clamoring inside her. The Maha wouldn’t appreciate her asking how her husband fared. He wanted her obedience, her soul, her silence.
“If you are well, you’ll be prepared to speak. So tell me, Mehr,” he continued, his voice silken. “What did you do, out in the storm?”
“I performed the rite Amun taught me, so the prayers of the mystics would be heard by the Gods.”
The Maha shook his head. “No, child,” he said. “I want to know how you erred.”
A blackness opened up in her chest. Fear without edges.
This will not end well, a voice inside her whispered.
