“No one did.” Her mother looked tense. “There is a balance, Mehr, to the world the Gods have woven. Death and life, sickness and health, dreams and nightmares. The Maha has altered the natural balance through his rite, ensuring that the Gods dream sweetly for his sake. Without the Maha demanding imbalance, holding their dreams in his hands, balance inevitably attempts to restore itself. The daiva grow stronger. And the dreams he has kept at bay so long begin to take shape.” She sighed. “But he will find another Amrithi to wear his leash, as he always does. And everything will be as it has been all the years of the Empire.”

“What will happen,” Mehr whispered, “if he doesn’t find another Amrithi to perform the rite?”

The temperature almost seemed to plummet at her words.

“What does balance look like?” Ruhi shrugged helplessly. “Mehr, we don’t know. Who living can? But we fear that setting the world right will come at a terrible cost. The Gods have so much fury waiting to be unleashed. And …”

“Tell me,” Mehr prompted, when she saw her mother hesitate, still watching the darkness whirl on the horizon.

“We fear the full anger of the Gods,” she said. “We fear the worst: that they will awaken in their fury and shatter the world.” Finally, she looked at Mehr. Her face was gray. “But Mehr, you needn’t fear. Nothing will happen. The Maha will find another of us, as he always does.”

“And if he doesn’t, this time?”

“He has shaped the world into a place that is kind to him,” Ruhi said shortly. “He will.”

Mehr wasn’t so sure. She thought of the way word of the Emperor’s displeasure with “barbarians” had spread across the Empire, the way the Maha had stretched his eyes and ears across the Ambhan provinces, seeking gifted Amrithi far and wide, when he should have been able to thieve them from his own doorstep. She thought of the way she had been taken, despite the fact that she was Ambhan, and a nobleman’s child, and the Maha had risked igniting the fury of the Emperor’s most loyal followers. The Maha had been desperate when he’d claimed Mehr, and now that she was gone and Amun lay somewhere in an agony Mehr could barely contemplate, he would be more than simply desperate.

“If you truly believe he will find another Amrithi, why are you so frightened?” Mehr said softly.

“I’m not afraid.”

Mehr looked at her mother. She met those dark eyes, set beneath straight, serious eyebrows. Oh, she knew that look. “I know that you are,” she said.

For a moment her mother was utterly silent. Then, with visible effort, she held Mehr’s gaze and spoke.