“No.” She shook her head. “No, it isn’t.”
She thought of the life she had lived. She had tried to be a good and dutiful daughter, a pleasing and gentle wife. She had been exactly what was expected of her.
Until the daiva in the hermitage. Until the surface of her world had splintered. Until she had offered herself up for this task, and opened a new door onto—light.
“It is like… your lamp. Your Hidden One’s lamp of truth.” She spoke slowly, weighing her words. “We know monsters with teeth live in the darkness; we know ill things live in the warp and weft of our world, but they are… no more than children’s tales to us. They are hidden in deep shadow. We cannot see or feel them. To us, they barely exist. We need not acknowledge them at all. But thelamp, Lord Zahir.”
She looked at him, and at the glow of lantern light on his skin. The hollows of his face, carved by shadow, illuminated.
“The lamp of truth reveals the world.But when we lift the lamp we see—knowledge that cannot be unknown or undone. That is what your poems do not say, my lord. What do you do when you find the truth at the end of the path?”
She met his eyes.
“I cannot unsee what I’ve seen. I can’t unfeel what I felt in the realm. I know what was done to the Amrithi. More than death, more than exile from the Empire’s grace. I know what my sister…” She stopped. The words threatened to choke her.
“I had a sister,” she continued, finally. “A sister who was more Amrithi than me. Who kept our—her—birth mother’s traditions. She entered the Maha’s service, married, I was told, and then she died. And now I know what became of her. Of what became of so many like her. And I can’t look away,” Arwa said helplessly. “I can’t possibly look away.”
“Lady Arwa,” he said softly. His eyes were wide. He said nothing more.
And oh, that infuriated her. She took a step toward him, hands in helpless fists.
“You are so curious, Lord Zahir. You question everything with such care, but you surround yourself in such—suchdarkness. And I know it must be a choice. Your mother offered her knowledge to the Emperor and was executed. Your Hidden Ones work in secrecy because exposure would see them destroyed for heresy. You gut yourself for the Empire and the heir apparent names you adog.” She spat the words. “You say saving the Empire will save countless lives, but how can you bring yourself to do it, when the Empire eats its own people, when it gorges on the living and the dead alike? How can you bring yourself to sacrifice yourself for this Empire, which will only accept you when you are useful in the way it commands, when you crush your true self in order to survive?How, Zahir?”
She was not talking of Zahir anymore. Or not simply Zahir. She was talking of herself.
He knew it, just as she did. She could read it in every line of his face. His gaze was shattering soft, his face an open carapace.
“What did you see in the ash?” he asked, urgent. “What did it show you, beyond death?”
He did not deserve to know. He did not.
But perhapsdeservewas a pointless measure of the right to know. Did Arwa deserve the truth? She had been nothing, done nothing, saved no one. Not even herself. The truth needed to be known. That was enough.
In the night the bruises around his neck were deep and dark.
“We can go back into the realm of ash,” she told him. “If we had still had our roots twined together, you would have seen some of it. As I saw what you saw, the first time we entered the realm. We can go into the realm, and I can show you. Come with me again. Let me show you what the Maha did. Follow the lamp of truth, my lord.”
He exhaled, a low, shaky breath.
“I’ll begin the fire,” he said, and turned on his heel into the next room. Arwa sagged.
Their blood had barely touched the flame when Arwa felt the pull of it. As if she already slept, a void had opened in her mind. A door. She shivered.
But she didn’t tell Zahir. Only drank the tea. Only slept.
They entered the realm of ash fast. Arwa knew it better now. The red roots unfurling around her gossamer body; the new ash that clung to her dream skin. She turned to Zahir and reached her hands out to him. Stopped.
“Are you sure you’re prepared to see?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “Show me the way.”
They crossed the realm, through familiar shadowy trees, to the white sand, to the dead.
Arwa raised her hands before her. The roots rose with her. Ash gathered between her fingertips. Ash from her own path. Ash from within her own soul.
“I can show you,” she said. “But the choice is yours.”
He looked at her hands. He always looked at her hands.
