“I had a duty, Mehr,” said her mother. “My clan needed a Tara, my mother had passed on, and I …” She paused, then continued, slow and deliberate. “I chose to leave for your sakes, yes. But I also left for my own. For my people. My clan. Your father told me if I left, I could never return. He thought he could use you and your sister as a weapon, as chains to hold me. But I would not be caged, Mehr. I had made him no vows and no promises. I told him: I am Amrithi. I know the price of freedom.” Her voice was flint, all its richness hardened to a fine edge. “I don’t ask you to forgive me, Mehr. I have thought of you and your sister every day since I left the city. But I will not say I regret my choices. I believed that I left my half-Ambhan daughters well protected, and far safer than they would be in my care. I thought his blood would keep you safe; our gifts are so rare, after all. I never thought one of my daughters would inherit mine.”

All Mehr could think of, as she listened to her mother speak, was of the grief she’d felt when her mother had left: the weight and the greatness of it, the way it had shaped her into what she was. She thought of her father’s guilt-stricken face. She thought of all the things Arwa had never experienced, the love she’d never had and the stories she’d never been told, and now never would be.

“Now that you’re here, I’ll keep you safe. Whatever the Maha has done to you, whatever hold he continues to have on you, you will be protected,” Ruhi said into the silence.

“Will you vow it?” Mehr asked.

Her mother’s answering look was steady. “We don’t make vows, Mehr.”

There were many things Amrithi didn’t do that Mehr had done. Mehr had made vows and manipulated the dreams of the Gods. She had done things that Ambhan women didn’t do too. Knowing that she stood on the distant edge of both the world she’d been born to and the world she had always wanted to belong to left her heart cold. She lowered her head.

“Mehr,” her mother said, her voice soft. She reached out a hand as if to comfort her.

“I can’t look at you,” Mehr said sharply. Her voice was full of all the bitter things she couldn’t allow herself to think, feel. “Don’t touch me. Please.”

Ruhi dropped her hand. Mehr saw her hesitate, saw her clasp her own hands together, as Kamal shifted angrily in the corner.

“Lalita was right,” Ruhi said ruefully. “You are very like me after all.”

In the end she left with a promise to return, taking Kamal—and the lantern—with her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE