Bahren let her go. His hands hung numb at his side. Mehr listened to Kalini’s measured footsteps fade beyond the doorway.

“The nightmares had her,” Bahren said, his voice full of grief. “They must have forced her to do it.”

Mehr pressed a hand to her face, breathed in her own skin deep and slow to blot out the smell of blood, and took him by the shoulder. “Bahren. You need to go.”

He looked at her. His eyes were wet and shocked.

“What?”

“Run,” Mehr said gently, “while you still can. I don’t think the temple will be safe much longer, and I still have work to do.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The honeycomb corridors of the temple were dark, the lanterns snuffed out. Mehr could barely see. She walked slowly, tracing the walls with her fingertips. She was glad, now, that she’d worked so hard to learn the layout of the temple. She had nothing but her memory to guide her through the gloom. She saw none of the mystics, but as she walked she heard the occasional sobs and cries cutting through the howling darkness. She thought of the girls who had welcomed her and taught her karom, and shivered, dread for them coiling in her stomach.

Mehr was sure the mystics had marked the windows with Amun’s blood to keep the daiva out, but the Gods and their nightmares had made no promises on Amrithi blood. There was darkness in the temple now, a smell of iron in the air. Mehr heard a skittering, drawing steadily closer. She froze.

The nightmares were walking the corridors.

She closed her eyes. Stayed very still. You will not find me. Not now, not yet, not today—

The noise passed. Mehr waited a moment, then kept walking.

Mehr found her way to their old room by memory alone. She walked up the stairs. The room was bathed in the light of the dreamfire pouring in through the open shutters. Abhiman was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t know if Bahren had found him and told him to run, or if he had made the decision himself. She didn’t know if the nightmares had caught him. She didn’t really care.

“Amun,” she whispered.

Amun lay on the divan. He was thinner than he’d been before, bruised and very still. She saw water with a ladle on the ground beside him. Someone had gone to some effort to keep him alive, but his skin was gray, his body soaked with sweat. His sigils were as faded as the rest of him. It was only when she placed her hand against his lips, her own fingers trembling, that she was sure he was still breathing.