“Tara,” Mehr repeated. Stunned. “I hadn’t expected that.”

“She’ll be very glad to see you, Mehr. Of that, I’m sure. But she will have questions too. We can’t truly trust that you’re free of the Maha. It isn’t a thing that can be done, the breaking of vows.” Lalita’s voice was gentle, slow, as if she wanted to soften her words. “The vows we make are inviolable. When they are made, they bind forever.”

Mehr shook her head. “In my case, the Maha made an error. He couldn’t risk the ire of the nobles. To simply take me—my father would have revolted. It would have offended his honor. He realized I could not be bound as Amrithi are, although I have the gifts, without causing fury among the nobles. So he bound me the way Ambhan women are bound: marriage.” She heard Lalita’s sharp inhale. “He wed me to the last Amrithi he had, whom he’d bound as a child. That man … Amun. Amun is the reason I’m free.”

She told Lalita about her life among the mystics: about the endless rote prayers and practice, about the Maha’s cruelties, large and small; about Hema’s kindness, and Hema’s brutal death; about Amun and the mercy he’d shown her. She spoke until her voice cracked, then stopped to take a sip of water. When she paused she realized how heavy the silence was, and how closely Lalita was hanging on her every word.

Then she began speaking again. There was so much to tell, and the telling was an act like forcing poison from a wound: painful but utterly necessary. She told Lalita, haltingly, that she and Amun had made their own vows to each other. Vows of love and flesh and choice, more sacred than any other vows they’d ever had inflicted upon them. And Amun had known: Amun had risked everything to set Mehr free.

“I ran,” Mehr finished, when she had no more words. “In the end I ran, and you know the rest. You found me.”

She didn’t mention the daiva and her strange fever-dream of its veiled face, its humanness, its hunger for her tears. Somehow, despite the fact that she’d bared her soul to Lalita, the daiva felt like a secret. Even the thought of speaking of it made the words wither on her tongue.

“I want to believe you,” Lalita said.

“Do you think I’m lying?” Mehr demanded.

“I think you believe your own words. But trusting that the vows you made to the Maha are shattered—Mehr, it’s more than I dare hope for.”