The nightmares were following her. They drifted after her under the cover of the dreamfire’s light, their brittle bodies skittering along, their flat, lidless eyes watching her. She didn’t have to look back to know they were there. When she’d stumbled she’d felt their fingers reach inside her skull, settling darkness inside her. So she ran faster. Around her the dreamfire grew wilder and wilder still, its howls a cry of fury.

In the dark inside her own mind, Mehr saw Amun and nothing but Amun, his sigils livid, his face warped with pain. Her own scarred chest ached. If she closed her eyes she could see the vow tying them, golden and strong. If she let it, it would lead her right back to him.

But she wouldn’t go back. Amun had asked her to run, and she would. She had.

Eventually she stopped running. She kneeled down on the ground, hands flat against the sand, and struggled to breathe. The nightmares had faded bodily behind her, but Mehr could still feel their darkness clawing at her skull, threatening to drown her. She breathed shallowly, and oh so carefully pushed the fear away.

Beneath her the sand rippled softly, like water.

Her fear was not misleading her. She was sure now.

The storm was wrong.

Mehr had danced with the dreamfire enough to know what it was supposed to feel like. This storm was far too fierce, far too bright. It was as if the storm had thinned the wall between the world of spirit and the world of flesh, bringing the Gods and their fury close to the surface of the world.

She had not danced the rite. Amun had not danced the rite. The Gods were dreaming around her, dreaming freely, for the first time in centuries. Their nightmares crept around her, within her, their rage made brittle flesh. The world around her—sand, sky—wavered around, fragile and weak as glass.

Mehr lowered her head to the ground. Tears stung at her eyes. She cried because she was tired and she was afraid. She cried because she had left Amun behind. Breathe, she thought. Breathe. Be strong. Don’t stop running yet.

The world rustled again. She heard the nightmares draw back even farther, skittering under the cover of the light. But it was the silence that followed—deep as the beat of a dream—that made Mehr look up.

A veiled woman sat before her, hands folded primly on her lap, legs crossed neatly under a skirt of voluminous white silk. Her veil fluttered in the breeze of the storm; beneath the thin mesh of cloth her eyes were the only features that were visible. They glowed with the steady constancy of prayer flames.

It took Mehr’s fevered mind a moment to realize the woman was no woman after all.

Daiva.