“Why?” Mehr asked. She bit her tongue, suddenly angry with herself. She tried to raise her hands, to speak respectfully in the daiva’s language, but it was already leaning back, shaping sigils with quick fingers.

Flesh. Blood. Tears. A fist held to the daiva’s chest. Heart.

The daiva shaped a circle, cinched with a flourish by fingers shaping a knot. Mehr knew that sigil. It was the sigil for that which could be made, but couldn’t be broken.

Vow.

Mehr nodded.

“Take my tears, then,” Mehr whispered. “I hope they are as good as blood to you.” She shaped the sigil for gift, laboriously, afraid her suddenly trembling hands would fail her.

But she needn’t have been afraid. The daiva leaned forward again, catching her tears on a fingertip. It held the hand in front of it as if marveling at it.

Gift, it echoed back at her.

Mehr felt the world shift again, sand reshaping beneath her. The storm howled fiercely, falling low upon them. She saw the veil flutter again, and the daiva reached out as if to hold her.

There was nothing after that.

Mehr woke up with the pale dawn sunlight beginning to pour across the sand.

The storm still swirled around her, dying as the sun rose. Through falling wisps of jeweled light she could see the horizon, set against a flat expanse of desert. Wherever she was, her feet and the storm had carried her a long way from the temple.

She climbed to her feet, scraping sand off her face. She was tired and thirsty, and the scar of her marriage seal hurt terribly. She touched a hand to it and felt a sudden, sharp pain run through her entire body. She heard the shadow of Amun’s voice in her ear again, all bitten-off agony and desperation.

Run, Mehr!

She snatched her hand away. Mehr would have wept again, if she’d had the strength. Instead she covered her own face with her hands and breathed. And breathed.

The vows she’d made to Amun, when they’d held each other and hungered through the dark night, had been sacred things. They’d been vows of flesh and blood and heart, vows made for mortals with daiva blood, but they had been vows of hope too. Amun had risked everything for the sake of that hope.

Amun had saved her.

Mehr lowered her hands. She looked at the desert around her. She could feel the pain still, a constant tug between her ribs. If she followed it she would find her way back to him. She wondered if he could feel that bond in return, that knot like a circle without an end.