Mehr had no interest in playing at the rites. Her mind was far too full. She didn’t understand how any Amrithi could allow themselves to be willingly bound to this task, tied to the Maha’s whims for a lifetime. She certainly didn’t know how Amun could allow it.

“Are other Amrithi used by the Empire this way?” she asked.

“No.” Amun’s voice was curt. “Not any longer. Once, there were many Amrithi pairs here, or so I’ve been told. Now we are the only ones the Maha owns, and it took him years to find you.”

“That can’t be,” Mehr protested. She knew the mystics had tried to take Lalita. She knew Amrithi tribes had been vanishing. Where could they have gone but straight into the Maha’s searching grasp?

Amun shot her a look through lowered lashes.

“You recognize that what I do is heresy,” he said flatly. “It horrifies you.”

Mehr said nothing. It was true.

Amun took her shoulder. Mehr stiffened. To all appearances he was correcting her stance again. But Mehr could feel his breath against her cheek, hear his voice, as soft as the beat of a daiva’s wings.

“Heresy is a crime against our blood. Binding our souls, forcing us to bend the fabric of the world …” His breath was soft, so soft against her skin. “Death is preferable. Or so the Amrithi of the clans believe.”

“No.” Mehr’s denial was reflexive.

“I’ve seen it, Mehr. I know it.” He raised her arm slightly, his touch light. His voice became even lower. “We carry knives for a reason.”

Mehr wrenched away from him. Amun flinched back.

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be,” said Mehr. Deep breath. “I asked for the truth. I can’t blame you for sharing it.”

She thought of Usha bleeding and dying. She thought of Lalita. She thought of all the clans that had vanished. She thought of her mother.

The men were watching. The sand was shifting in the wind, golden-bright in the glare of the sun. And Amun was watching her, waiting for her, an apology shaped in every line of his body, his night-dark eyes.

“Be thankful you were raised without a tribe,” Amun said. “It will make this burden easier to bear.”

Mehr had never had a tribe. But she’d loved people, and now she had lost them all.

She wondered if the people she loved—Lalita, her long-exiled mother—had fallen to their own daggers. She thought of the way she’d pressed her blade into Arwa’s hands. How she had done it to keep Arwa safe.

She should have embraced ignorance. She should have been thankful for it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE