His words cut through the numbness like a knife, leaving Mehr stripped bare. She sat down abruptly on the bed, curling her legs beneath her as if reducing her size would reduce the weight of the knowledge. A vow. Unbreakable. Gods, what had she walked into?

Amun hesitated visibly. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed. Mehr was glad he left a large distance between them.

“This gift,” Mehr managed to say. “This—curse. You think I have it?”

Amun nodded. “You wear the vow on your skin,” he said. “You must have it. No doubt if your mother had known your strength, she would have warned you.”

“No doubt,” Mehr agreed. Or Lalita would have. But even Lalita had left Mehr in the dark.

More softly now, he continued. “Half Ambhan, raised hidden in this place, you should have passed beneath the Maha’s notice. But you revealed your strength, didn’t you? You did something foolish that drew our Maha’s many eyes.” He hesitated. “Something in the last storm.”

Something foolish. Yes, Mehr supposed dancing with dreamfire in the storm, barefaced and alone, qualified. It had been an act of pure desperation. All she had wanted was to save Lalita. Instead she had drawn the attention of the Emperor’s eyes, and with a swiftness that terrified her, his mystics had appeared, the name of the first Emperor a terrible prayer on their lips.

Mehr nodded silently.

“Well then,” Amun said. “Once he knew of your amata gift, he knew a vow could bind you. And here we are.”

“What do you want me for?” she asked. “Why marry me?”

“I didn’t want you,” he said bluntly. “But I made vows to the Maha. I do as I’m bid.”

Against her will, her gaze lowered to his arms. Those marks were vows, she realized. Every single one of them was an unbreakable promise, limned in deep blue against his skin.

Amun followed her gaze and smiled humorlessly. “I made too many vows,” he said. “And now my burdens are your burdens too.”

Oh. Mehr saw the cleverness of it, even as she recoiled from it. The Maha had ensured that his mystics bound Mehr by both her Ambhan and her Amrithi blood. Because she was an Ambhan woman, her husband’s burdens were her burdens. She had made an Ambhan promise, but her Amrithi blood had turned that promise into unbreakable chains, a vow like a noose around her neck. Panic wanted to grip at her insides. She couldn’t let it.

“If you could look away, husband, I would appreciate it.” His own vows, she realized, climbed up to his hairline. Her eyes followed them with a helpless kind of horror. What had become of her own flesh? “I need to see my mark for myself.”

Amun stood and walked to the corner of the room without a word. He turned his back on her.