“You are not only Amrithi. You cannot eschew all vows and contracts as your mother’s people do,” he said, in that same terrible, soft voice. “I have raised and treasured you as an Ambhan noblewoman, and like all my countrywomen, you have the right to make one contract.” He closed her fingers around the seal. “The choice is wholly yours, Mehr. But it is a choice you must make.”

Mehr’s throat closed.

“Maryam has agreed to chaperone you,” her father went on. “She will accompany you to her family holdings in Hara. If no courtiers there suit you, she will take you to Numriha. Find a good man, Mehr. Give him your seal. Wear his proudly. I believe you will find a way to be happy.”

He spoke of other provinces of the Empire: Numriha, with its mines and its artisans; Hara, lush and green, fed by rivers and ocean alike. Mehr had heard of them, and knew guards and servants within the women’s quarters who hailed from them, but she had never seen them in person. She had never left Irinah.

Her father hadn’t mentioned Ambha. That, she understood. Ambha was no simple province. It was the jewel of the Empire, its beating heart, where the Emperor ruled. The greatest of the nobility, the old Ambhan bloodlines, all hailed from Ambha itself. No province had ever been ruled by a Governor who was not of Ambhan blood, born from the great Ambhan families who served in the Emperor’s court to this day.

It was certainly no place for a half-Amrithi daughter.

Mehr raised her head.

“I watched a woman die today,” Mehr said. Her voice sounded like a stranger’s. “A good woman. I held her in my arms as she passed. I watched her go. And now you’re exiling me? Sending me away from everything I know?”

“What you did in the storm, Mehr, the way you behaved, the rite you performed …” He paused, and shook his head. “I do it out of love,” her father said gently. “Beyond Irinah, you can begin again.”

“Begin again,” Mehr echoed. “I see.”

Leaving Irinah would place her beyond her tangible heritage. There would be no daiva to seek her blood, and no dreamfire to answer her prayers. Beyond Irinah she could hide her Amrithi heritage. She could give up her rites, her dagger, her dreams. She could claim to have a Chand mother, perhaps, to explain her dark skin and the distinctly un-Ambhan cast to her features. There would certainly be men willing to believe the lie for the sake of allying with the daughter of the Governor of Irinah.

She could begin again by erasing herself.

“You’re not safe here anymore, Mehr,” said her father.

Mehr looked hard into her father’s steel eyes, eyes that were nothing like her own.