Hema gave her a careful look, with none of her usual sly humor in it.

“Tomorrow night, do you think you could slip away from your husband?” Hema asked. “Rena and I, we’ve managed to get our hands on a good few bottles of spiced wine. The strong kind.” Her eyes twinkled. “We need something to make us all smile again, don’t you think?”

Mehr could hear the coaxing note in Hema’s voice. She didn’t want to agree with Hema. She wanted to stay with Amun and practice the rite, find the sigils they needed to demand that the Gods break their chains and set them free from their vows. She and Amun had spent the night before trying to refine their copy of the map Mehr had seen in the scholars’ tower. Mehr hoped it would help them when they escaped the temple, but the task of creating it had consumed time they could little afford to lose.

They had to be prepared for the next storm. What Mehr didn’t want or need was Hema’s misplaced pity, or the pity of any of those other green girls, with their unshakable faith in the Maha and their sure, steady fear of Amun.

But Hema was looking at her with sad eyes, knowing eyes—eyes that had read Mehr’s bruised face, her failing appetite, and had come to a conclusion that was almost, but not quite, the truth. Mehr had been hurt by a man, hurt over and over again, and she was holding on to her strength by a thread. Hema’s look said: I want to save you, and I’m not going to stop trying until you let me. Mehr didn’t have the energy to break herself against that look.

“I’ll consider it,” Mehr said, and knew she’d lost.

“I shouldn’t go,” Mehr said. “I know I shouldn’t go.”

Sweating, sore, she was curled up on the floor with her head in her hands. Amun sat across from her, legs stretched out across the floor, looking equally exhausted.

“You should know by now, Mehr. I have nothing to say.”

“I’m asking you to say something.”

Amun shrugged.

“Go if you want to go,” he said.

What did Mehr want?

She wanted to practice the sigils. The sigils they’d strung together were almost coherent enough to be of use when the storm came. They were so very close to finding the secret to freedom. But she also knew that neither of them had anything left to give. Instead of practicing they were collapsed, exhausted, doing nothing.

“I’ll achieve nothing by going to them now,” Mehr said. The sigils were far more important than anything the women could give to them.

“It’s your choice.”

“They think you hurt me,” Mehr said. “Do you realize that?”

Amun shrugged again.

“You don’t care?” she asked.

“You know I don’t,” he said levelly.