She dropped her arm to her side. “I need to bathe,” she said, her voice hoarse. “We’re running out of time.”

She went to the bathing room, undressed, and kneeled down so she could pour clear, cold water over her hair. She had to let go of the jittery energy that hummed inside her. She needed the numbness back. Instead she was alive inside—as bright and fierce as the storm building and building beyond the temple walls. But the brightness had nothing to do with the dreamfire, and everything to do with the softness of Amun’s mouth.

She heard a sound. Looked up.

Amun was there.

It was as if her thoughts had conjured him, with his soft mouth and his dark eyes, and his hair that curled just a little at the ends. He stood in the doorway, not moving. Just looking at her.

“Mehr.” The way he whispered her name—oh.

Mehr stood, and beckoned him in.

There was no holy sweetness this time. It was hunger that brought their mouths and their bodies together. In the quiet of the bathing room, all Mehr could hear was his breath as he took her long dark hair into his hands, as she rose onto her tiptoes and fanned her fingers out against his shoulders to draw him closer.

“Don’t slip,” he murmured against her lips. “The floor—”

“I know you can hold me up,” Mehr murmured back.

He could. He raised her up in his arms, and she held on to him, trusting him with her weight. It was a dance of a kind: her legs wrapping around his waist, his arms holding her steady against the wall, their bodies meeting. She remembered the weightlessness she’d experienced when she’d first learned the Rite of the Bound, the terror she’d felt. She felt no terror now. She trusted him too much for that.

She felt like she was flying.

After, they washed each other clean. She laughed a little when Amun poured water over her hair. “It’s cold,” she said.

“Sorry.”

Amun worked the tangles from her hair, fingers ever so gentle.

“I made vows to you, Mehr,” he said. “And you made vows to me.”

“I did. You did.”

He turned her and lifted her face to his, mouths almost touching. “I vowed to hold our vows above all others. To love you above all others. To belong to you, if I belong to anyone.” There was a curious urgency in his voice. “Remember that.”

“I will,” she whispered, and kissed him. How could she possibly forget?

They dressed in their Amrithi garb. Amun threaded wooden flowers through her braid. She smudged kohl around his eyes when he closed them and stayed still beneath her fingers, trusting her utterly.