She knew touch was the best way to teach a rite. Hadn’t Lalita taught her by taking her arms and legs in hand, directing her like a doll? Hadn’t Mehr’s mother done the same before her?

There was a difference, of course, between this lesson and the ones of the past. Mehr had wanted to learn, when her mother and Lalita had taught her. But Mehr didn’t want to learn the Rite of the Bound. She didn’t want to relinquish control of her own flesh. She didn’t want to commit a heresy against the Gods. When she thought of sinking into the immortality within her, she remembered the tales she’d been told, as a child, of the fate of Amrithi who didn’t show reverence to their ancestors.

She didn’t want her soul to pay the price for her survival. In her heart, she feared that when she found the immortality within her, she’d find the punishment that awaited her also. The scar on her chest ached at the thought.

“Relax if you can,” Amun said. “I can hold you.”

He was strong. She knew that. It wasn’t his strength that worried her. Heart pounding, she gave a small nod.

“Trust me in this,” he said.

She closed her eyes again. In small increments he eased the weight of her body, tilting her until her feet skimmed the ground and her head was thrown back, heavy with the weight of her own hair. His palm was hot against her back, his fingers outstretched. Every time she breathed she could feel the shape of his fingertips.

“Try again,” he said.

It should have been hard to forget her flesh, with Amun so close to her, with her own fears stretching their bleak hands behind her closed eyelids. But without having to hold herself upright she felt dizzy, weightless. The rush of her own pulse soothed her mind to something akin to silence.

She breathed.

The place beyond flesh. The place mortal minds drifted to when they dreamed. That was the place she had to go to. She could trust her body to his hands. She could leave it behind.

She remembered how it felt when she’d moved through the storm in Jah Irinah, and the dreamfire had held her wrists and ankles, guiding her through the storm. She’d been driven by desperation. But during the next storm, she wouldn’t be unwittingly begging the Gods for guidance. She would be purposefully compelling their dreams, using sigils to force their dreams to give the Empire the good fortune it needed to expand and conquer and grow as close to immortality as an Empire could. She would channel the power of the Gods through all their fire, and all their strength.

And she would choke their strength too. Suppress their dreams. Crush them back into sleep and darkness.