“He was trying to protect me.”
Then her sister said, gently, “Yes.”
She looked away from her sister, then almost immediately looked back, afraid that Mehr would vanish like ash before her. But Mehr was still there, whole and dark-eyed and a woman grown.
He wanted you to be safe.
She had been molded and erased and silenced for safety. She had been denied the truth for safety. Her history had been cleaved in two, for safety. They had almost broken her, for the sake of making her safe, for the sake of their love for her, and she would carry the wound of it all her life.
Love was not always kind.
She curled her own hand against the beat of her heart against her ribs. The heart Zahir had saved; the life he’d bought with a piece of his own.
“Arwa,” Mehr said quietly. “I cannot put right the past. I cannot change the forces that have shaped us both. Whatever horrors you have been through, I cannot wash away. But I can offer you a home here. I can offer you time. I can tell you that I will defend you with every breath in me.” She cupped Arwa’s face, utterly tender. “I have family here,” she said. “And you do too. If you will meet them, they are yours. And if you will not, then know that I have loved you and missed you every day since we were parted. I have always been your sister, Arwa—no distance, no time, no grief, has changed that.”
They were both weeping again; both wiped tears from their faces in the joyous, ugly, miserable way of people who hadn’t planned to cry and didn’t care for it.
“Mehr,” Arwa said shakily.
“Yes.”
“I lost your blade.”
Mehr laughed through her tears.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Oh, Arwa, it doesn’t matter at all.”
The tent canvas—and they were in a tent, Arwa realized now—rustled. Drew back a little. She saw the shape of a man, silhouetted to shadow by the sun behind him.
Mehr curled her hand over Arwa’s, salt-damp, then released her.
“We’ll talk more,” she said. “Of everything. I promise it. But now I should let you rest.”
“The man I came with,” Arwa said. “Zahir. Will you send him to me?”
“Yes,” Mehr said. “Of course.”
She saw Mehr touch her hand to the man’s wrist, saw her lean against him, as if he could hold the weight of all her feeling, her joy and grief alike—and then they were gone.
“Well,” Zahir said. “We’re not dead.”
“Hello to you too,” Arwa said.
He exhaled. He was bruised, sunburnt, and—in the realm of ash—a thing run through with dazzling light. His eyes were gray as ash, deep and endless dark, no matter what realm she looked at them in. He kneeled down beside her bed and she placed her fingertips against his cheek. Their roots were no longer twined, but one seamless weft of lace, a whorl of rose without end.
“Did my sister treat you well?”
“She saved our lives out in the desert, she and her clan, so yes. Well enough, although her men were suspicious of me, and wouldn’t allow me near you until you asked.” He kneeled down. “I love you too,” he added. “In case you were wondering.”
“Oh no,” she said, curling her fingers around his. “I knew. Why else would you have given up part of your life for me?Fool.”
“I don’t regret it,” he said. “I have no interest in being a mystic order of one.”
“Very funny.”
He smiled faintly. Then the look faded to something… lost.
“In truth, Arwa, I don’t know what will become of us. I have been exactly the kind of fool I loathe. We may die early, or not. We may always walk in the realm of ash and the mortal world at the same time or… we may not. It will be telling, when we leave Irinah, and see what becomes of us without its power.”
