Now that she had begun thinking about it, she couldn’t make herself stop. As the evening of her wedding came, as her maids dressed her, as they marked her with scent and lined her eyes with kohl, as her lips were daubed red, she thought of the night ahead. She was going to be intimate with a stranger. Not only would his duties be her duties, his burdens her burdens, but his body would become an extension of her own. Marriage was a matter of the soul, but Mehr had willfully forgotten that it was also a matter of flesh.

It’s too late to run, Mehr reminded herself.

Nahira didn’t hug her good-bye. She pressed Mehr’s hands between her own, her grip firm and her mouth thin.

“Good-bye, Lady Mehr,” she said. Her voice trembled. She swallowed. “Take care.”

Mehr nodded, unable to speak. She had to be brave, and if she spoke she would cry.

Guards guided her to the Lotus Hall. Rather than slipping behind the partition screen with the other women, Mehr was led to the main entrance. Through her veil, she could see the vastness of the room and smell the sweet perfume of the flowers wreathed along the walls. Noblemen watched her from the edges. Behind the partition screen, the women watched Mehr too, their bodies reduced to blurred shadows. With all eyes on her, Mehr began walking to the center of the Hall, where her groom awaited under the wedding canopy.

Mehr was drenched in gold. Flowers were wound through her braid. The weight of her robe was ridiculous. But Amun was dressed in the same dark, heavy robes he had worn the entire time he had been in Jah Irinah. All the mystics, who stood in a ring around the canopy, were dressed similarly. It shouldn’t have surprised Mehr that they were making a mockery of her marriage. It was no different from what they had done so far, after all.

Before she could reach the canopy, her father stood in her path. He took her arm.

“Blessings on you, daughter.” His voice was rough.

“And you, Father.”

Holding on to her, he guided her last few steps toward the canopy. Then, reluctantly, he let go of her arm and stepped back into the crowd.

I release you, the act said. You belong to another man now.

The act was only symbolic. But Mehr, of all people, knew that rites and rituals had power.

She did not want to belong to Amun or to the Great One he served. But she stepped under the canopy regardless.