“I don’t have a clan, Amun,” Mehr said, finding her voice somehow. Somehow.

“I would have been your clan, then,” he responded, so soft. “I would have loved you without vows or seals. Just my heart for yours, as long as you willed it.”

“Ah,” she whispered back. Words seemed too far away, too hard to grasp when there was no air in her lungs.

This, not her past, was the perfect dream, the mirage hovering on the horizon, always out of grasp: a love given freely, without vows or seals, chains or guilt. She ached for it. What he dreamed of was all she’d ever wanted, and could never have.

If she could have been free. If she could have been born a woman without duties to bind her, if she could have chosen anyone in the world to love …

“Mehr.” He said her name in that low, solemn voice she’d come to know so well. “You must know that I love you. I know you can’t love me in return, but—”

“Then you know nothing,” Mehr said, more harshly than she’d intended. She bit down on her lip, hard enough to sting.

“Please go, Mehr. I can’t …” His voice was a sudden rasp. He winced, closing his eyes.

Mehr lifted her free hand and touched one sigil at his wrist. She could feel the heat rising from it, burning him from the inside. He was so brave. Brave to have survived, brave to have shown her kindness, and braver still now to keep fighting the Maha’s orders, even though it clearly hurt him beyond belief to do so.

“If I had been born a free Amrithi woman, I may have loved the man you described, that free man, without vows or fear,” Mehr said, carefully shaping the words even as her insides shook. “But this is the only life I have, Amun. The only one, and I can’t … I can’t simply pretend I might have met you in another, kinder life.” She swallowed hard, searching for words. “But in this life, this one I have … perhaps because we are trapped together, you and I—or perhaps because you’re so kind and gentle, and difficult, and sly and …” The few words she had caught in her throat.

Amun said nothing as she tried to muster up the dregs of her courage. He waited patiently for her to speak. That was the kind of man he was—the kind who waited for her to find her small, inconsequential words even as a pain far greater than she could understand tried to eat him whole. A good man. The best man she’d ever known.