So Mehr did the only thing left to her: She obeyed. She and Amun practiced the rite. They prayed. Mehr did not try to seek out Hema’s women. She didn’t track down Anni and claw out her eyes. She did her duty and kept her own eyes lowered, her body at work. She allowed herself to become colorless.

It was only when she and Amun were alone that Mehr felt like herself again. Amun didn’t ask her for intimacy, and she didn’t ask him either. Instead Mehr would lean against him, safe in the circle of his arms, and listen to his voice. He would talk to her—more than he’d ever talked before—about his Amrithi childhood, and his life among the mystics in the long years before Mehr had joined him. There were no more halting silences, no more tales cut short to hide their true brutality. They’d suffered together, survived together, made their own soul-binding vows to one another. There were no more walls between them now, and Amun’s company was the one comfort Mehr had in her newly bound life.

Kalini came for her when she and Amun were training in one of the spare halls, a guard watching them as always.

“Mehr, you’re needed,” Kalini said sharply from the doorway. Mehr startled, stumbling. It had been so long since she’d last seen Kalini.

“And me?” Amun asked.

“Just your wife,” Kalini said. She sounded bored. “Come on now.”

Mehr didn’t question. She drew her shawl tight over her shoulders and followed Kalini from the room. Kalini was the Maha’s favored mystic; what she ordered, the Maha ordered. So Mehr obeyed.

She still cried out, shocked, when Kalini shoved her hard against a wall, hard enough to knock Mehr’s skull against stone and make her ears ring.

“Silence,” Kalini ordered—but it was the blade she held point first to Mehr’s neck that truly made Mehr hold her tongue.

Mehr froze, barely daring to breathe. They were too far from the hall for Amun or the other guard to have heard them. Kalini had waited until they were alone, hidden from sight in the nook of a dark corridor, before cornering Mehr with her blade.

“I told you to leave Hema alone,” Kalini said. “I told you.” Her grip on the blade was steady, her eyes resolute. “You should have listened to me.”

The flat of the blade pressed a shade harder against Mehr’s skin.

Mehr looked Kalini hard in the eyes, not blinking, never letting her gaze waver. This was an awful thing. Another awful thing, on top of so many others. Frankly, Mehr had had her fill of them. So she stared into Kalini’s eyes and did not flinch from what she saw in front of her. Kalini was hard and full of hatred, and she wanted to kill Mehr. There was nothing Mehr could do to stop her.