The household was quiet. Suren had invited Mehr to eat dinner with him, and Mehr had accepted. They sat together and shared small dishes of rich, slow-cooked meat and lentil broth. As they ate, Mehr’s father told her there would be no time for celebration. She would have a simple wedding ceremony in two days’ time—all the time that the mystics, in their benevolence, had allowed. No poems would be recited, no music would be played, and no gifts would be shared between families. The ceremony would consist of nothing but a simple exchange of family seals. In time, Amun would remove Mehr’s seal from his own neck—when, exactly, her father didn’t say—but Mehr would wear her husband’s seal for the rest of her natural life.

Mehr could not understand why the mystics wanted the marriage to proceed so quickly. She had a terrible suspicion that they did not want to allow her or her father time to find a way to save her from the fate they had decided for her.

Her father spoke in stilted, awkward sentences that eventually petered out into silence. Usually it was up to a mother to tell her child about marriage, but Mehr’s birth mother was in exile, her stepmother was gone, and Lalita was missing. Mothers were in short supply. In their absence, her father did his best, but the responsibility ill-suited him. Feeling rather uncomfortable herself, Mehr did nothing to encourage her father when his voice faded and he returned to his meal.

Mehr wasn’t particularly hungry, but the meat was soft, the lentils faintly sweet, and it was easier to concentrate on her food than to consider what lay in store for her. She would have been content to continue picking at her meal in peaceable silence, but her father had other ideas. He looked at her.

“Your mother,” he began.

Mehr set down the dish she was holding with a thump.

“No, Father,” Mehr said. “I don’t want to talk about her.” They had never discussed her mother’s departure. She had no idea what he wanted to say, and she didn’t care. Whatever it was—an apology, an excuse, an explanation—it had come far too late. “I spoke about her to the mystics because I had no choice. Will you force me to speak like they did?”

She had never spoken to her father like this before. But there was no anger in her father’s expression, only resignation.

“Your mother,” he said, gently, “never told me why she feared and hated the Emperor. I thought I understood her reasons, but now I see I knew nothing.”

What little appetite Mehr had left was gone. But she ate another bite, giving herself time to get her emotions back under control.

“I will send a messenger to inform Maryam about your—marriage,” her father said.