“I’ll do as you ask,” she continued. “I’ll dance the rite. I’ll beg the Gods for peace. I’ll dedicate my life to the task, if I must. But I will not make a vow again. I will not bind my soul, not for anything. Certainly not for the hope of human glory.” She thought of Amun: his blue-limned sigils, the deep darkness of his eyes. “My last vows … I hold them sacred. I will never hold any above them. That was a promise I made to myself, and I will not break it.”

“You will face the storm with no promise of hope for the future?” the daiva asked. “You will face our mothers and fathers with nothing but your mortal hope?”

Mehr gave the veiled daiva a watery smile.

“Yes,” Mehr said. “And I am afraid it will have to be enough.”

Mehr bowed her head and made a gesture of thanks. Elder considered her carefully, then raised one hand up to touch the edge of her own veil.

“Then I will simply give you my blessings, little one,” Elder said. “My blessings on you, and your mortal heart.”

She raised her veil and pressed a kiss to Mehr’s forehead. Mehr heard the great sound of fluttering wings, and the daiva were gone.

The dreamfire returned, fierce as ever, and it was swallowing her whole.

This time Mehr did not falter. She let the fire of the dreams and the nightmares both take her. She didn’t fight. She yielded, with absolute trust.

She thought of the first time she’d danced with the dreamfire, in the storm when she’d tried to make her way across Jah Irinah to Lalita’s side. She hadn’t commanded the dreamfire then. She’d had no clan, no partner. She’d had no Rite of the Bound, no knowledge of her true gifts. She had pleaded with dreamfire, simply pleaded with all her heart for it to guide her to Lalita’s home. And it had.

This rite was not a terrible act of creation. It was a gift of hope. A gift of balance.

She thought of balance. Even nightmares had their place. She remembered the sweetness of Arwa’s laughter and Nahira’s brusque kindness, the bitterness of Maryam’s hatred and the loneliness of the women’s quarters. She remembered the suffering the Maha had inflicted on her, and the scars it had left forever on her heart. She ached with the memory of Amun’s love. All of these things had shaped her. They were part of her now.