“Tell me what you did,” he demanded again. His voice was savage. Gone was his gentle malevolence, his elegant cruelty. He was no longer full of clean, pure light, the dreams that had so long fed his immortality. The dreamfire, full of the brittle and bone-like dreams he’d so long suppressed, was inside him. The nightmare shuddered behind his eyes.

She couldn’t help but think of her unformed vow, in that moment. She tried to force it from her mind, as panic bubbled up inside her. And yet the truth was there, on the tip of her tongue, like a bird with its wings stretched for flight.

“Nothing,” Mehr said again, instead. She was not above pleading; no, she was not. She wanted to hide the truth, and she wanted to live. “Maha, please.”

He raised his free hand and she flinched from him. For some reason this seemed to calm him. She watched his hand go still, then lower. When he spoke, a tinge of reason had crept back into his voice.

“Perhaps your Ambhan blood has flawed you after all,” he said. “And yet, at first, you seemed so perfect.”

He took her chin in his hand. His other hand was still tangled in her hair.

“I must remember to be gentler with you,” he said. “You’re willful, but a little careful correction will guide you. And if it does not …” He sighed. But his expression was cold. “You must understand, Mehr: I have no use for flawed tools.”

She could taste blood in her mouth. The urge to spit in his face was overwhelming, but some deep-seated, primal instinct made her swallow instead.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

She looked obediently into his nightmare-flecked eyes, which were terribly, inhumanly wrong—shattered within, like broken glass. His face was no longer smooth and timeless. Instead, his skin was like a fissured painting, cracked and faded. When she blinked it almost seemed to shift, ever more human, ever more fragile. Decay and mortality had come for him, reached for him out of the darkness of chained dreams. They’d left their mark.

Monster, her mind whispered. I see you. I know what you are.

“Speak, Mehr.”

“I understand, Maha,” she said. She swallowed again. Her mouth tasted hot, tasted of metal and salt. She realized her cheeks were wet with tears. “Please spare me, Maha. I serve you with all my heart.”

She watched as his mouth widened into a smile. Her face hurt. Her stomach hurt. Oh, how he loved to hurt her. How he loved to see her small.

“Now,” he said softly. “Now you begin to fear and worship as you should. I am finally as a God to you.”

“Yes, Maha,” she whispered.