It broke her heart and healed it over again to see him alive but so harmed. The Maha’s death may have released him from his vows, but the bond between them was still hot with his pain. After all he’d suffered she wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure, that he would recover from what had been done to him.

She wanted to lie beside him and feel the warmth of him beside her. But there was no time. Instead she placed a hand on his chest, on the place where the scar of their marriage vow lay. She leaned forward and kissed him, a bare brush of her lips against his own. The light of their bond was a golden knot binding them together, so bright it burned her fear clean away.

“I’m going to survive for you,” she whispered. “Please, survive for me in return, my love.”

She left him there. She had no choice but to do so.

She walked back down the stairs and made her way toward an exit that led to the desert. The doors were flung open. Mehr stopped and stared at the lashing dreamfire, the waves of sand rolling as swift as water with the wind. She had never seen a more awful storm.

The Maha was dead. His mystics were in disarray. Mehr would not have their prayers running through her to guide her or give her strength. Amun would not be with her, performing the rite at her side. She had no partner. No ritual clothing. No kohl around her eyes, no ornaments wreathed through her hair. She was just a woman, thin and hurt and tired. She was no more than human, no more than that, and that would have to be enough.

She kneeled down and took off her boots. Then she sucked in a breath, straightened her shoulders, and stepped beyond the temple walls.

The sand wasn’t smooth beneath her feet. It didn’t even cling to her strangely, as it had when she’d left her mother’s clan. Instead it kept re-forming into new shapes beneath her, collapsing into hollows, then re-forming into jagged edges that made her stumble and struggle for balance. Around her the wind transformed from blistering heat into bitter cold. In the cracks between the dreamfire, the sky was a cavernous void, then a seething mass of pale things. It was as if the shape of the earth were constantly altering.

Mehr bit her lip and kept on walking.

The daiva surrounded her fast. They swept around her, not harming her, their golden eyes blinking in and out of sight between the gouts of dreamfire. Mehr took strange comfort in their presence. They made her feel a little less alone.