The Maha’s voice grew softer, sharper. “The dreams did not obey as they should have. I should have felt their strength pour through me.” The blandness of his expression was shattering to reveal something terrible beneath: a monster Mehr had always known was there beneath his flesh, waiting for the chance to crawl out.
“Instead I felt the power try to slip through my fingers.” He held one elegant hand before him. “I felt darkness arise in its place.”
The nightmare. So the Maha had felt it too. Bahren had felt it when he’d held her. She’d seen his unease as he carried her, the tension in the mystics who had stood in the desert and watched the dreamfire fall.
“Amun has never failed me before,” the Maha told her. “So tell me, Mehr: What did you do?”
“I did everything I was taught to,” she said unsteadily. “I did as I was bid. I promise, Maha. Iobeyed.”
He took a step forward and struck her.
She felt the blow all the way through her skull. There was no pain at first. Just shock. She stumbled, raising a hand up as if to ward him off.
“What did you do?” he repeated.
He hit her again before she could respond. She fell to the floor this time, the weight of the blow sending her down with a crash. Her shoulder skidded against cold marble. She felt the cold through her hips, her knees, her elbows. Her head was ringing like a call to prayer.
“Nothing, nothing,” she gasped out. “Nothing, Maha. It was a nightmare. A nightmare tried to hurt us both. I did nothing. I obeyed you. I’m bound by my vow. Maha!”
He had a hand in her hair. Her curling hair, tangled and stained with sand. His grip was unyielding. He kneeled down beside her, his shadow consuming hers.
“Tell me what you did,” he demanded again. His voice was savage. Gone was his gentle malevolence, his elegant cruelty. He was no longer full of clean, pure light, the dreams that had so long fed his immortality. The dreamfire, full of the brittle and bone-like dreams he’d so long suppressed, was inside him. The nightmare shuddered behind his eyes.
She couldn’t help but think of her unformed vow, in that moment. She tried to force it from her mind, as panic bubbled up inside her. And yet the truth was there, on the tip of her tongue, like a bird with its wings stretched for flight.
“Nothing,” Mehr said again, instead. She was not above pleading; no, she was not. She wanted to hide the truth, and she wanted tolive. “Maha,please.”
He raised his free hand and she flinched from him. For some reason this seemed to calm him. She watched his hand go still, then lower. When he spoke, a tinge of reason had crept back into his voice.
“Perhaps your Ambhan blood has flawed you after all,” he said. “And yet, at first, you seemed soperfect.”
He took her chin in his hand. His other hand was still tangled in her hair.
“I must remember to be gentler with you,” he said. “You’re willful, but a little careful correction will guide you. And if it does not …” He sighed. But his expression was cold. “You must understand, Mehr: I have no use for flawed tools.”
She could taste blood in her mouth. The urge to spit in his face was overwhelming, but some deep-seated, primal instinct made her swallow instead.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She looked obediently into his nightmare-flecked eyes, which were terribly, inhumanly wrong—shattered within, like broken glass. His face was no longer smooth and timeless. Instead, his skin was like a fissured painting, cracked and faded. When she blinked it almost seemed to shift, ever more human, ever more fragile. Decay and mortality had come for him, reached for him out of the darkness of chained dreams. They’d left their mark.
Monster, her mind whispered.I see you. I know what you are.
“Speak, Mehr.”
“I understand, Maha,” she said. She swallowed again. Her mouth tasted hot, tasted of metal and salt. She realized her cheeks were wet with tears. “Please spare me, Maha. I serve you with all my heart.”
She watched as his mouth widened into a smile. Her face hurt. Her stomach hurt. Oh, how he loved to hurt her. How he loved to see her small.
“Now,” he said softly. “Now you begin to fear and worship as you should. I am finally as a God to you.”
“Yes, Maha,” she whispered.
He was not as a God to her. In his smile—even in his eyes—she saw his humanity like a blazing light, a harsh desert sun that illuminated all and left all secrets bared. So he fed on the power of Gods—so his mystics fell at his feet, worshipped him. He wasstillnothing but flesh. He hungered for power as a human hungered. He enjoyed hurting her as a mortal man enjoyed crushing another mortal underfoot. He was a man who took pleasure in hurting a woman. His evil was born from his humanity.
She remembered Maryam’s cruelties large and small. Maryam had been so petty, so utterly bitter at heart. She had punished Mehr for—what? Being another woman’s daughter, with another woman’s skin? Her hatred had made her small.
The Maha was no less small. He had shamed her, disgraced her, but through her fear and her pain she saw him finally with clear sight. The storm had made him angry, and his anger made him err. She had seen his true face now. He could not play at being the omnipotent master. She had his measure.
