Mehr nodded. She grabbed the hem of her robe and slipped it off, covering Usha’s body in its dark weight. Usha murmured a thank-you, but her shivering didn’t abate. She pressed her face against the long, fanned sweep of Mehr’s skirt. Mehr pressed a hand to her forehead and Usha gave a sigh. The feel of Mehr beside her seemed to comfort her.

I’m sorry, thought Mehr. I’m so sorry, Usha. I don’t know how to help you.

Mehr said none of it. It wasn’t Usha’s job to give her absolution.

“Where is Lalita?” Mehr asked quietly.

“They came,” Usha murmured. “Knew they would.”

“Who came, Usha? Please.”

“Salt,” she whispered, and closed her eyes. “Tired.”

She didn’t pass away then. It would have been easier if she had. But she said nothing more over the hours that followed. Her breath rattled in and out of her lungs. Her lips foamed blood. Mehr watched as she gritted her teeth against the pain, her eyes glassy, all her attention focused inward. Mehr thought of her dagger, thought of ending Usha’s suffering. It would have been easy. It might even have been kind.

As the dreamfire quieted beyond the haveli’s walls, as Mehr kept vigil, Usha’s breath finally faded into silence. Mehr stayed with her until the very end, her dagger a heavy presence at her side.

It didn’t take long for her father’s men to find her. Ever since the storm had calmed and the sky had lightened with morning, Mehr had been walking listlessly through the streets of Jah Irinah. In her blood-spattered Amrithi clothes, her feet bare, she was a hard sight to miss.

They surrounded her on their horses, their steel armor gleaming sharply in the light. Their commander dismounted. His gaze flickered over her, taking the sight of her in.

“Lady Mehr,” he said. “Are you injured?”

She shook her head.

“The blood is not mine,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse to her own ears. She swallowed. “I’m unhurt.”

The commander nodded, mouth thin, and looked away from her. Around him, his men were wearing identical expressions of embarrassment. Noblewomen rarely showed their faces to men outside their own families. They wore hooded robes in public; they traveled in veiled palanquins when they left the safety of the home. For Mehr to be barefaced before them, before everyone, was a breach of her dignity. Worse still, without the protection of her veil, dressed in her Amrithi garb, she was painfully, undeniably foreign. Half Amrithi. Heathen. Outsider.

The sight of her shamed them. It should have shamed her.

She was too numb, and too tired, to care.

The commander arranged for a palanquin to carry Mehr home. She was met at the women’s quarters by a group of grim-faced guardswomen, who ushered her inside without words.