She went out into the living room, bare feet silent against cool marble. The weight of her hair brushed softly against her shoulders. Through the perforated screen she could see clear skies and sunlight. How strange, that the world still looked so normal when Mehr’s world was collapsing around her.

She stretched her limbs, which were stiff with tiredness. She took slow, even breaths, moving her body through gentle exercises to warm the blood. Then she raised her hands above her head and began to dance. Even though her body had grown unused to activity, even though her muscles were sore and her heart was sorer, falling into the first stance felt like coming home.

Before the storm, she had danced every morning and evening, keeping each rite that Lalita had so painstakingly taught her fresh in her memory. Dancing again made Mehr feel like the girl she’d been before the dreamfire and the blood. She missed that girl. She missed her old petty worries, her confidence, her strength.

But she wasn’t that girl anymore. She moved from the first stance into the Funeral Rite.

She should have danced for Usha on the night she’d died. By now Usha had been cremated as was Chand custom, her ashes scattered to the desert winds. Mehr had failed to honor her for long enough. She whirled, head lowered. She moved like grief moved, in endless circles that felt like they had no beginning or end, circles that swallowed up her senses until there was nothing but swirling grief and weightlessness. Her hands shaped sigils that spoke of life and loss.

She remembered the first time she had met Lalita and Usha, when she’d been nothing but a child and her mother had been focused on newborn Arwa’s care. She remembered Lalita’s beauty, the sheen of her hair. Her gentle voice. Lalita had dressed like a Chand woman, hair loose with a sari draped neatly around her body, but Mehr had known what she was.

I am your mother’s friend, Lady Mehr. And I would like to be yours, if you’ll accept my teaching.

Of course Mehr had said yes. She’d been a lonely child, and her mother had already begun to fade away from her, steady as ink stretched thin with water.

She remembered how Usha had hovered, at first, nothing but a silent presence at Mehr’s early lessons with Lalita. She’d terrified Mehr—so large and scarred and strong, with that armor and that hard face. It had taken Mehr a long time to see how warm she was, and how kind. She’d been so very kind.

Good-bye, Usha. You dream with the Gods now.