“He wants you to be as skilled in the rite as I am,” said Amun. “He needs us both to be prepared, Mehr, or his rite can’t be performed. He doesn’t have other Amrithi to perform the rite as he once did. He just has us.”

It was strange to think of the Maha as fearful. It was stranger still to think that the Maha needed them: that without Mehr and Amun the great Empire, all its provinces and wealth and beauty, would fall to dust.

“You are prepared, Mehr,” Amun said into the silence. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Mehr lied. “Has he ever observed your training before? Ever demanded you perform for him?”

Amun shook his head. “He taught the woman with whom I performed the rite, from time to time. But not me. He trusted her to teach me.”

But he didn’t trust Amun. More than that, he didn’t trust Mehr. She was too green, too clumsy; she was not an adequate tool. He’d used his blade to hone her. The thought left her feeling raw.

“We were lucky he didn’t find out the truth about my vow,” said Mehr. Now that they were back in the privacy of Amun’s room, she could be honest. She could feel the weight of their shared secret. She knew how easily she would have revealed it if the Maha had cut just a little deeper.

“You did well.”

“Of course. I didn’t have to lie.” Mehr pursed her lips. “But if he’d asked me the right questions we would have been ruined.”

“You did well,” Amun repeated.

He was nearly vibrating with energy. She could see the tension in his shoulders.

“Let me fix your hand,” he said abruptly.

“The cut isn’t so bad.”

Amun didn’t move. He was so tense she feared he would snap. So she sighed and relented.

“Go on then.”

He moved immediately, looking for a clean cloth and water. She understood that he wanted to help her—that watching the Maha hurt her without being able to interfere had been agony for him—but there was little he could do. The cut was shallow and would heal with time, but the wound the Maha had left in Mehr’s head wasn’t so easily fixed. And that had been the Maha’s intention, of course: to give Mehr a long-lasting hurt without compromising her usefulness. He was a clever man, and all the more terrible for it.

She let Amun take her hand without complaint. He turned her hand over gently, lowering his head to take a closer look at her skin. His fingers were warm as coals. She realized suddenly how cold she was.