Here was the moment when she was supposed to take another person’s hands in her own. She was supposed to part her palms and press one against a fellow Amrithi’s hand, catching the light between them. She was supposed to move with her clan in a seamless dance, a sharing of light and dreams and creation.

With no one to reach for, Mehr lowered her arms. Eyes closed, she held one palm out against the air. Wind and dust rushed over her skin.

Take me to my clan, Mehr thought. It was a desperate prayer. If dreamfire was the power of the Gods making and unmaking the universe, shaping creation in their great sleep, then perhaps they could create this small thing for her: a path through the chaos. A road.

Take me to Lalita’s home. Let me help her. Please.

For a long moment nothing happened. She felt the wind howl and rake over her, felt the sand bite at her face like a dozen tiny needles. She felt her own smallness. Who was she, to expect the dreams of the Gods to bend for her? She was nothing. A rich man’s daughter, an illegitimate get, a girl too foolish and too willfully strange to stay within the safe confines of a privileged life. Not an Ambhan, not an Amrithi. Nothing.

The dreamfire coiled softly around her wrist. And tugged.

Her first instinct was to wrench herself free, but Mehr resisted it. She let the dreamfire draw her along. Awe and terror clogged her throat.

The dreamfire was guiding her, for good or ill. She’d asked for this. Now she had to follow it.

She could feel the dreamfire begin winding over her limbs, clutching at her wrists and her ankles. It was all heat without the strength of flesh. It couldn’t force her to follow it, couldn’t drag her along if she resisted its urging. One wrong move, and the tenuous bond between her and the dreamfire would tear apart.

New as the Rite of Dreaming was, Mehr had been dancing all her life. She was very, very good at avoiding mistakes.

She whirled on firm, sharp feet through street after street. Her skin burned. Her eyes stayed shut against the ferocity of the wind. She shaped no sigils with her hands, no carefully chosen stances with her feet. But she followed the urging of the dreamfire, moving with each tug of light. Her whole focus was on the dreamfire and the dreamfire alone.

She could hear voices on the wind—the whispers of daiva. She felt the soles of her feet begin to ache, then felt the ache sharpen to agony. But she didn’t stop.