But Mehr couldn’t think of Lalita. Usha’s death was a splash of red across her memory. Every time she closed her eyes she saw it all over again. There was no room in her tonight for anything else. So she kept her eyes open. She listened to one of the mystics pacing the edges of the camp, his booted footsteps crunching steadily against the sand. She listened to Amun’s steady breathing, her own breath warming her hands, which were clasped in front of her.

Then she heard another sound. Light footsteps. Chimes.

“Are you well?” Amun asked.

Mehr realized that she had sat up.

“I’m fine,” she said. All was quiet again. She had thought she had heard a dancer’s tread, a distinctive way of moving that reminded her of Lalita and her mother, and made her yearn for a home she’d never had. She must have imagined it. Her mind had begun slipping into sleep, perhaps, chasing dreams. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“You didn’t.”

Mehr didn’t have to look at Amun to hear how alert his voice was. All this time he’d been wide awake, and she hadn’t even known it.

Mehr lay back down. She ached all over. Her body was one long bruise. She tried to imagine getting up and packing away the tent and doing this all over again in just a few hours. Even the thought exhausted her.

“How many more days of this?” she asked. “How long until we reach your Maha, husband?”

“At least a week,” Amun said.

Gods, a week. She had no idea how she’d make it through so much time in the company of these men, with Kalini’s eyes always on her, with Amun a constant, silent shadow at her back. She shivered and curled up tight.

She would just have to find a way.

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

Mehr would have liked the days to pass in a blur, but every hour dragged by with torturous slowness. The desert was unrelenting. The darkest hours of the night were bitterly cold, and the brightest hours of the day were scalding hot. Those were the hours when they rested, setting up their tents at nighttime or crouching in the shade of dunes when the heat of the sun rained down. In the hours in between, they walked. And walked.

Mehr was deathly tired of walking.

Worse still, she knew it was her slowness that was lengthening the journey. She wasn’t equipped for desert travel. Whenever they stopped she slept like the dead. She was constantly thirsty. Her ration of water never felt like enough to sustain her. The ache in her limbs hadn’t lessened over time, only deepened from constant exertion and lack of rest. She would have given absolutely anything for her own bed and a night of uninterrupted sleep.