Mortification flooded her. What had possessed her to say that? She knew how much Amun hated to be noticed. She knew how he held his strength back carefully, how he tried to fade into the background. She’d let her words run away from her. She’d spoken without thinking.

Amun was giving her a level look, expression unreadable. His arms were held stiffly at his sides. She was sure she had offended him. She looked back at him blankly, trying to frame some semblance of an apology, when she saw his lips twitch.

He was trying not to laugh at her.

“I am what I am,” he said again, softly now, almost fondly.

The sound of a loud bell echoed throughout the temple. Mehr nearly jumped out of her skin. Somehow, for a single moment, she had forgotten where she was. She had forgotten how dire her circumstances really were. For a single moment, there had been nothing but her and Amun, and Amun’s smile.

Amun’s expression shuttered quick as lightning.

“Time for prayers,” he said. He stood and went toward the stairway.

Mehr grabbed her shawl and raced down the stairs after him.

It was Kalini who led the morning prayers, standing before the effigy of the faceless Emperor with her head lowered and her hands clasped. Mehr was glad that there was no sight of the Maha. Kalini’s voice didn’t have the power to curdle Mehr’s blood the way the Maha’s did. In her presence Mehr could contain her fear. She kneeled with her hands clasped and tried to ignore her aching knees until prayers ended.

Breakfast was not as elaborate as dinner had been. Mehr joined a queue of mystics and was handed a flatbread and a handful of sweet, dried dates, which were rich with flavor but tough as leather. Mehr ate hurriedly as she walked through the corridors by Amun’s side.

Amun led her up the stairs of another tower to a room where, he told her, Edhir would be working. Mehr had grown used to the bareness of the temple, so she took in the chaos of the room around her with wide eyes.

The room was crammed from end to end with books. Charts and maps covered every spare inch of space on the walls. Mehr’s father, wealthy and privileged though he was, had never owned so many books. Her fingers itched to trace the spines. Instead she took them in with her eyes. Books of alchemy, of weather, collections of maps of distant lands. Maps of Irinah. There were scrolls, too, laid out on a table and bound shut with long lengths of silk.