“Well, you should. I’m no fool. Imagine what would happen if the Maha—”
“… opposite of our calling. The poor girl …”
Someone muttered a sharp word.Careful—the monster’s wife.Mehr heard the conversation stutter. Silence fell. She felt their eyes turn on her, one by one, and her face flushed hot.
When Mehr said nothing, the conversation soon began again. They turned to other topics, and her tension eased. The flush on her skin remained, though. Perhaps it was the influence of the wine.
She felt Hema come and settle down beside her.
“Some of us serve in a different way,” Hema said. Her voice was kind. “Some of us have to be brave.”
Hema touched her fingertips gently to Mehr’s arm. “I hoped showing you the glory of our purpose would help.”
She should have stayed with Amun. Here, among all these people, she missed his steadiness, his solidity. She resented the pity in Hema’s eyes: resented it, and burned at howwrongit all was, how little they understood of her suffering, or his.
“What has he ever done to deserve being so hated?” Mehr asked.
A sharp silence. “He’s like an animal,” Hema said. She continued, a careful edge to her voice. “You know. All men are not like him.”
Mehr tried not to laugh. “I was raised a noblewoman. I had no brothers. My father was the only man I knew before him.”But I know men aren’t all like him. They’re not as good. Or kind.
“The way he acts …” Hema’s eyes lingered on Mehr’s face. The fading bruise on her cheek. “The way he treats you … we’ve all seen it. We …” She stopped. Thinned her lips, then said firmly, “We know you do your duty. And we feel for you.”
“He doesn’t hurt me,” Mehr said.
“Mehr—”
“He doesn’t touch me. You don’t see, you understand. He doesn’t touch me, not like that, not at all,at all.” Vehement words. “He’s a good man.”
Mehr stopped, sucking in a breath, trying to calm the heat of her brain, her flesh. She was so addled that it took a moment for the reality of what she’d said—what she’d done—to hit her. Cold gripped her heart.
Oh, Gods.
She hoped for a moment that Hema wouldn’t understand the full meaning of what she’d said. Hema was not in the Maha’s inner circle, after all. She should not have been privy to the workings of his control over his Amrithi, and the details of the vow that held Mehr to Amun and to the Maha in turn.
But Hema was Kalini’s sister.
Hema hadn’t misinterpreted Mehr’s words. Not this time. Her eyes were wide. Her face had grayed, drained of color. She’d understood Mehr perfectly.
You shouldn’t have said it.The voice in Mehr’s head was dispassionate and clear.You shouldn’t have thought it.
Now the Maha will rip you both apart.
Rip them apart—and rip them away from each other.
Mehr rose to her feet and stumbled outside. She made it as far as the edge of the oasis before she was violently sick.
The wine. The wine had been a mistake, a terrible mistake. The wine and her own utter foolishness. Herweakness. After all the times Amun had protected her, after all the ways they’d both fought to hide their secret from the Maha—how could she betray him like this?
She squeezed her eyes shut. They were wet, streaming with unwanted tears.
She’d thought Amun had grown fragile after the storm. But she’d grown fragile too. If the storm hadn’t left her weak—and it surely had—then the sleepless nights, the nightmares, the Maha’s cruelties, had all done the storm’s work.
And now she’d failed herself. Failed him.
Mehr didn’t move when Hema kneeled down beside her.
“Drink from the oasis,” Hema said quietly. “It’s safe.”
