Farida, fool girl, could have told them that Lalita was likely to be on the roof, watching the storm approach, or in her study as she had been that morning, writing a message to Mehr. Instead the maidservant wept and claimed to know nothing, all the while begging for mercy. Lalita would have liked to believe Farida was showing her an astonishing level of loyalty, but it seemed far more likely that fear had entirely obliterated the girl’s mind.

Lalita closed her eyes. Controlled her breathing. There was a rhythm to maintaining a semblance of calm in the face of danger. It was something akin to a rite.

When Lalita left Irinah, for the first time, she was just fifteen. Her grandmother had given Lalita the last of her coin and taken Lalita’s face between her hands. Lalita remembered, still, her dark eyes and the uncomfortable curl of her lip, scarred from a decade-old encounter with a lowly Ambhan official who’d taken it in his head to make an example of an Amrithi woman who dared to attempt trade with a village under his purview.

Hala, she’d said. Little one. You’re the cleverest one of my blood, but your mind will only take you so far. No matter what you do, they will discover you one day. Don’t argue, child. Listen to me. When you make a mistake—when they find you—don’t try to save your money or your possessions. Don’t try to be clever. Save your skin first, Hala. Run.

Lalita was not Hala anymore. She had not been Hala in a long time. But she recalled her grandmother’s words, as she stood still in the hall of her haveli, dressed in her Chand garb and her Chand name, and thought of all the mistakes that had led her here, into a dark corridor, with nowhere to run to.

Lalita’s first mistake, of course, had been returning to Irinah. But homesickness was a curious thing. For a small handful of years, she’d basked in the comforts of Ambha, its distant white-peaked mountains, its lush lakes and sweet air. Its wealthy men. Then she’d begun to yearn, despite herself, for Irinah: for its dreamfire, its daiva, for the scents and sights of home.

Irinah was not a safe place for someone like her. She’d known that. There was too high a chance of her being recognized as an Amrithi, too high a chance of a daiva seeking her out for her ancestry, for her blood. And yet Lalita had come home.

She’d always prided herself on being a practical woman, but it was homesickness that had brought her back. Homesickness, and the feeling that she was losing herself, day by day: that somehow her hidden self was slipping, ever so steadily, from her grasp.

“Don’t you know who we are, girl?” said another voice. Male, again.

“No, my lord,” Farida whimpered.