She thought of Kamran. Of trying to be worthy of love. Of meals carefully arranged, and papers tidied; of his careful eyes on her, seeking to read her, to understand her, always finding the void where their natures could not meet.
It had not hurt, trying to be a good wife. Given the chance she would have done it all her life without considering how carefully she had to fold her true nature away—her fire, her biting tongue, the mercurial sweetness of her own joy—and how the folding erased her, piece by piece. Being a good wife to Kamran had felt like a success in its own right. She had won her family a future: reputation, a measure of honor. Bartered herself, but for an outcome she’d considered worthy of the cost.
“Yes,” she said finally, into the silence left by his voice. “I mourn him still. Just not as he deserves to be mourned. I loved him. Just not as he deserved to be loved. We weren’t well suited to one another. He was older and… he didn’t know me. I think in truth I knew little of him. We shared one soul, one duty, but we were strangers to one another.”
“Arwa,” he whispered. “I am sorry for that.”
Arwa shook her head.
“You shouldn’t be. It was my fault. I wasn’t—right, Zahir. I was too angry. Too mercurial. Too… Too much myself,” she said. “Kamran thought he was marrying an impoverished noblewoman who would love and obey him and instead he had… me. But he tried to be good to me. He did what he could. It was love of a sort.”
She swallowed. Ah, the way grief burned. “In truth, it’s my sister I still mourn. Ever since I saw the Amrithi dead in the realm of ash, her death has felt like a fresh wound all over again. Sometimes in the realm of ash, I’ve seen her,” Arwa admitted. “I know she is dead, and yet to me she looked so alive, Zahir. I couldn’t help but think if I reached out and touched her I’d feel real flesh and she would be right there, alive before me. But I knew she would have just turned to ash in front of me and it would have been like death all over again. So I just—looked at her. And loved her. And missed her. And it—hurt me.”
She felt warmth against her skin. His hand was pressed over her own, a silent, grounding comfort.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Entirely well.”
“Nonetheless,” he said gently. “I am sorry that love is so often unkind.”
There was a lump in her throat. He had lost people too. He understood.
“Just so,” she managed to say.
They sat, silent for a long moment. At some point they had turned to face one another, still sitting on the roof’s edge, unseen and alone, his hand warm upon her own.
“I know I have to do it,” he said finally, into the quiet carved out by their grief. His voice was soft. “I have to go to Irinah. I have to seek the Maha’s ash. And I will have to trust in the cunning and the strength of the Hidden Ones, and hope that their many voices are a better answer than the singular power an Emperor wields.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Arwa told him.
“But I want to. Arwa, all of this: the searching, the study, the deaths. Your deaths, and mine. They cannot be for nothing. I’ve set my feet on this path. I’ll see it to the end.” Faint smile. “Perhaps I’ll even find my lamp of truth.”
She swallowed. Ah, Zahir.
“Just… Promise me. Don’t give the Hidden Ones the knowledge of what the Amrithi can be used for,” she said. “If you find that the only answer in the Maha’s ash is more enslavement, more killing, please. Don’t give it to them.”
“Enslaving the Amrithi caused the Empire’s curse,” he said quietly. “And it was monstrous. For that reason, and many others, I would not.”
She should have agreed with him then. But she couldn’t. She drew her hand back, and looked down at it, at the paling silver of her scar.
“And yet, maybe you’ll discover in the Maha’s ash that there is no other cure to the Empire’s ills. Perhaps you’ll look at the Empire, at people dying in droves, and convince yourself the Amrithi are an acceptable price to pay. A small handful of lives, sacrificed for the many.” She let out a breath. “I would—understand the logic of it. But I am still asking you to promise me, Zahir. If the Amrithi are the price—if enslavement is the price—then let the Empire fall.”
He was silent for a moment. His shoulders tensed, as if he could feel the burden of it upon them: the choice to see the Empire end.
“I promise. Some prices should not be paid.” He shook his head, slow. “If the Empire falls—the blame lies at the Maha’s door, and his alone.”
“Good.” She exhaled. “That’s good.”
There was something tentative, inquisitive in the turn of his head toward her then: The lick of black hair against his forehead, bare as it was of his turban. The line of his throat. In the daylight he was sharp and mortal and hurt, and yet her heart softened at the sight of his bared neck, all the same.
“Arwa,” he said. He had not called her only Lady Arwa since the night they leaped from the dovecote tower and lived. “Will you come?”
Come with him to Irinah. To gold sand and a blaring white sky. To daiva and strange mirages that loomed from the sand. To the Maha’s grave, and the heart of her own grief.
“You may not need Amrithi blood, in Irinah.”
“I may not. Irinah may be a strong enough bridge alone,” he agreed. “But you are not a weapon made of your blood. You are a scholar and a soldier who has not broken herself upon her cause—only grown stronger and stronger with every blow the world has dealt her. You have been my partner, my fellow mystic. You are my friend.” His eyes blazed, as if he had trapped the sunlight in them, as if the force of his feeling could warm her skin and mark it. “You have sacrificed so much for this task. I would… it would be my honor to see it to the end together.”
I can go home, thought Arwa. The idea cracked her heart open like an egg. Home.
When she thought of home, it was not her father’s small haveli in Hara that came to mind. She did not think longingly of the sharp lashing smell of sea and citrus. She did not think of her marital fort, either: sticky, humid heat, books and soldiers. No. Instead, she thought of the cool marble corridors of the Governor’s palace in Irinah. She thought of her old nursemaid, a gnarled old Irin woman who had treated her kindly and firmly. She thought of her sister holding her, telling her stories, her curling hair and warm voice, rich as honey.
Irinah was home, once. Somehow—despite all her years of trying to grow beyond her roots—it was home still.
“We’re a mystic order of two,” Arwa whispered. “Of course I’ll come with you. I’ll come to Irinah.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The day before they left, Aliye offered Arwa her mirror.
“If you want to cut your hair, of course,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Arwa asked.
Aliye hesitated, almost imperceptibly. Her gaze flickered.
“I know many a woman who left her widowhood behind,” she said finally. “Courtesans. And—wedded women. After all, my dear, if you travel far enough from those who know you, and allow your hair to grow, no one need know you were ever wed before. It is very simple.”