Her heart hurt. She’d known, always known, that he couldn’t break his vows, only shape his obedience. She had allowed herself to forget that. More fool her. Worse still, she had simply not considered what their shared secret meant for him.

“Does it hurt?” she asked. “The mark—does it hurt you?”

Amun said nothing. But she watched his fingers curl tighter, knuckles whitening, and that was answer enough.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t apologize.” Bitter blackness in his voice. “I will be my Maha’s faithful servant in the end.”

Mehr bit her tongue, holding back her own words for a long moment. It would do no good to tell him to be kinder to himself. He was what he was. And some part of Mehr shared that black despair she heard in his voice. Some part of her felt the inexorable pull of the Maha’s power, dragging her down a path she did not want to walk.

“We will find a way to be free of him,” Mehr said. “Amun. I promise you we will.”

“There is no way to be free of him. Not for me. I’ve told you, Mehr.”

“If you truly believed that, you would never have tried to give me time. You still give me time, Amun. You fight. If the Maha can’t be resisted, why do you fight?”

“Because I’m not so cruel as all that,” he said wretchedly.

“You’re not a monster,” Mehr agreed, although she knew he believed he was. “But you also have hope. You must have hope.” Her fingers twitched. She wanted to reach out to him. She didn’t. “We don’t have to be what the Maha has made us. We can try to be free, Amun. Just try.”

Amun shook his head. He said nothing.

The shutters rattled with the wind. Mehr took a deep, slow breath. Her hand had begun to throb. He’d told her, once, that hope would hurt him. She knew he feared that hope was pointless and came at too high a cost. But they couldn’t continue to live like this, bound and terrorized. They had to work together and find a way out.

“We’ll get through the storm first,” Mehr said. “And then we will find a way to escape, Amun. I know we will.”

As the Maha had told them, the mystics had all begun their prayers and their fasting. All other tasks were abandoned. The fires went unlit, food uncooked. Mehr and Amun, who both had no desire to fast, scrounged up some dried dates from the food stores. Neither of them was particularly hungry, but they would need the energy to face the demands of the rite.