She splashed her face again. The water’s chill was fresh and crisp, like green things, like life. She cupped a hand into the water and raised it to her lips. Drank. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. The water was sweet.

An old grieving Goddess, that was who had built the desert. So Edhir had told her. An old grieving Goddess had built the desert, and the desert had been named for her tears. Irinah. Salt.

But here was the oasis, old and bursting with life. Here was the oasis, and there was no salt in its water. Just sweetness, cold and pure. In the water Mehr tasted the promise of something more than bitterness. She tasted hope.

She heard footsteps. She turned, her face still dripping, the water in her lashes blurring her vision. She heard a soft intake of breath, the murmur of a curse. Her vision cleared. Bahren stood before her. He was looking at her face with pure revulsion.

She looked back at him. Was he judging her, or judging the Maha? His gaze made her skin prickle with unwanted shame.

Let him look, she thought. What does it matter, in the end, what he thinks?

“You were looking for me?” she asked, when Bahren simply continued to stare at her in silence. She didn’t ask him how he had found her. She knew there were always eyes on her.

“Your husband has woken up,” Bahren said finally.

She stood. She held her head high, unflinching. She was barefaced and bruised, yes. But she was a woman who had faced a monster in mortal flesh, and the bruises were a badge of the Maha’s shame, not her own. She was a woman who had felt the nightmare of Gods pour through her soul. She was not fragile any longer. She had moved past her own fragility into an animal stillness, a deep place inside herself where one piece of knowledge alone sustained her, and held her strong: She was going to ensure that she and Amun escaped from here. She was going to make sure they survived.

“Take me to him,” she said.

Amun was lying on his own bed, two mystics speaking over him in low, serious voices. From the stoppered bottles in their hands, Mehr guessed they were the Saltborn’s physicians. But they held little of her interest. Amun was the focus of her attention. He was awake, but only barely, his breath loud and unsteady, his skin bleached gray with exhaustion.

She couldn’t hold the sound of shock that escaped her lips at the sight of him. Amun flinched, his eyes snapping wide. He propped himself up onto his elbows, her name dying into silence on his lips.

She watched his jaw tighten, watched his dark eyes become somehow even blacker as he stared at her, mapping every one of her wounds with his gaze. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.