“You should never have kept me and Arwa,” Mehr said. “You should have sent us away with our mother. We don’t belong in the Empire.”

Her father didn’t flinch. But it didn’t matter. Mehr knew she had struck him a blow.

“You’re confined to your chambers indefinitely,” he said. He looked away from her. Mehr squeezed the seal tight between her fingers.

Maryam looked at Mehr with a hard expression on her face and clasped her husband’s hand tight, in a gesture that was both protective and possessive.

You’ll be gone soon, Maryam’s eyes said. I’ll make sure of that.

“Go now, Mehr,” she said, in a voice far softer than the look in her eyes. “Your father and I have a great deal to discuss.”

Mehr stood and left without another word.

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

Alone in her chambers, Mehr lay down on her divan and wept. She thought of Usha and of Lalita, of blood on her clothes and the sand beneath her feet; she thought of the dreamfire clutching her wrists and ankles, of awe and terror and the absolute helplessness of watching someone die. The tears poured out of her uncontrollably. She wept and wept and wept. Eventually exhaustion dragged her down into a restless sleep. When she woke, hours later, she felt as fragile as glass.

Earlier she had flung her seal to the other end of the room, too heartsick and furious to look at it. She collected it now, threading it onto a length of silk and hanging it around her neck. She washed her face clean with a damp cloth, rubbing away the salt and sleep marking her cheeks. She looked into her mirror. A worn, tired face stared back at her.

The seal was heavy. It had to be, to carry the weight of her family’s history. It was marked with dozens of names, minuscule carvings that traced Mehr’s lineage back over three hundred years, generation upon generation, to the first soldier who had followed the Maha from Ambha into the neighboring lands of Chand and Numriha and Hara, conquering them all in turn and forging the Empire. One of those ancestors had been at the Maha’s side when he had conquered Irinah and made it the seat of his everlasting temple.

She touched the grooves on the stone with gentle fingers. She understood that in giving her a seal marked with his ancestors, her father had tried to show how much he loved her. Illegitimate daughters had no right to ancestral names. Yet here against Mehr’s skin was a heritage lovingly offered, the unspoken right to call herself a daughter of Suren, a granddaughter of Karan, a child of many men and as many nameless women.

She knew her father loved her. But Mehr knew, too, that love would not be enough to sway him from his decision.

Mehr would have to marry.