“Once you’ve mastered the first step,” Amun continued, “I’ll teach you the sigils you need to make yourself into a conduit for the dreams of the Gods and draw forward or suppress their dreams as the mystics demand.” He hesitated. “It’s important to be confident in your technique because when the Rite of the Bound threatens to consume you, moving to one of the true rites may be the only thing to keep you whole.”

Mehr nodded without a word. She had nothing helpful to say, no real questions to ask. She wanted nothing more than to argue with him. This rite—the Rite of the Bound—sounded like utter nonsense. Rites were worship shaped by the body, by flesh and ritual and rhythm. To put the body aside was against everything Mehr had ever learned, and everything she understood the rites to be. Did Amun expect her to do nothing but stand still and will her body away?

“We begin with the breath,” he said. “Close your eyes.”

Mehr squeezed her eyes shut. Apparently he did.

It was the breath they concentrated on for a long time, and nothing but the breath.

Amun told her to look inward. He told her to look deep inside herself, beyond the rush of blood, beyond skin and sinew, beyond muscle and bone.

“There is a part of you that isn’t simply mortal,” Amun told her. “Reach for it.”

Mehr tried. She breathed carefully, slowly, as she’d been told to. She tried to see beyond her own flesh.

She believed in the soul. She’d seen its power in the marks on Amun’s skin and in the spidery white lines carved into her own chest. But to reach for it, to feel its presence and nothing but its presence, to the point of forgetting flesh—that seemed utterly impossible.

In. Out. Despite her efforts, her body was all she could think of. The cool floor, the darkness pressing against her eyelids; the sound of Amun breathing along with her, matching each inhalation and exhalation until it sounded like they were no more than one creature.

Her breath stuttered. She opened her eyes.

“I can’t feel it.” She didn’t say I’m never going to feel it because she wasn’t a petulant child, but the words were still there tucked away in her voice, frustration simmering under the surface.

“You will.” Amun’s own eyes remained closed. “I feel it in myself. You’ll feel it in you eventually too.”

“We’re not the same, Amun.”

“In the ways that matter to the Maha, we are.”

That was true. Mehr touched her fingertips to the seal around her neck, reminding herself what was at stake. Then she closed her eyes once again and tried to breathe her flesh away.

She tried to wind deeper into herself. To forget the cool air, the night darkness around her. After a moment, she heard Amun begin to speak.