Mehr gripped one of the clawed hands that had pinned her to the ground. It was hard, but it had a brittleness like sandstone. As she dug her nails in, struggling to shift its hold, its surface crumbled a little against her skin.

She dug her fingers in harder. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. She couldn’t escape it. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to focus on her body. Turning her wrist laboriously in its grip, she clumsily shaped the sigil for banishment.

The nightmare shuddered above her, then crawled slowly away from her. Mehr struggled up onto her knees, keeping her gaze fixed on the nightmare, on its lidless gaze.

She’d escaped, but it was no good regardless. Her lungs were heaving; her hands on the ground felt raw and abraded. The storm was too big and far too furious. The nightmares were inching in closer again. She couldn’t do this.

It didn’t matter if she had already failed. She still had to stand. She still had to try.

She was just beginning to rise to her feet when a hand reached for her own. The hand was pure smoke, dark and full of shadows. Mehr looked up. A daiva stared down at her. Veiled, its eyes glowed through the mesh.

The world around her was suddenly, blessedly silent. The howl of the storm had faded away. Daiva wings rustled, producing the barest, whisper-soft susurration. A circle of daiva surrounded them and, beyond it, the nightmares hovered like hungry scavengers, carefully held at bay. The sand beneath them was still and soft, and the howl of the storm seemed like a faraway thing, ancient as a childhood memory. The daiva had hollowed a place within the storm for Mehr to kneel and for the veiled daiva to watch her. For a moment, at least, Mehr could not feel the weight of the dreamfire, and the respite was desperately sweet.

The daiva was still holding out its hand. Mehr took it. The hand felt as solid as the nightmare’s flesh had, cool and silken, no brittleness to it at all. Its veil was dusted with stars.

“You,” Mehr whispered. “I gave you my tears.”

“Yes,” the daiva said. “You did.”

The voice did not come from the daiva alone but from everywhere around them: from the air and the sand, from somewhere deep within Mehr’s own soul. It rattled in her head, filling her with glorious warmth.

Mehr flinched, stumbling back.

“You spoke in my language,” the daiva said. Its voice was a chorus, a hundred familiar voices—Lalita’s, Amun’s, Arwa’s—bound together in an inhuman song. “Your master’s control has shattered. Now we are stronger and can speak with your words.” Mehr had a sense the daiva would have smiled, if it could. “Words aren’t so hard.”

“He’s not my master,” Mehr rasped.