“I can,” he said. “If there is one thing I know, Arwa—one thing at all—it is the nature of the soul and of sacrifice.”
“Those are two things.”
“You already sound more like yourself,” he said gently. He brushed his fingers over her face, the roots wavering between them.
“You don’t know what it will do to you,” she told him.
“Shorten my life, I imagine. We’ll keep a record of the outcome.”
“I saved your life,” she said furiously, “and now you want to part with it?”
“We know better than most that death isn’t an end,” he murmured. “And no. I want us both to live. That’s all.” His voice was so soft. “Arwa, if I am yours, then don’t leave me behind. Let me try to save you. If we are partners in this work, then trust me. Trust my will. Let us go together.”
She stared up at him, thousands of voices pouring through her, wearing her thin. But it was a strange truth: as they wore her away, peeled artifice away from her, she found that all that remained was the softness of his eyes. The promise she had made him.
You are mine.
She nodded. “Do it,” she said.
He closed his eyes then. Exhaled.
She had seen him consume ash. But she had never seen anything like this. She saw the surface of his skin shift, the facets of its glass surface moving. It reminded her of how the nightmare had moved—reworking its flesh in response to her fears, ferally clever.
But Zahir was not reshaping in response to her fears.
He was pouring his strength into her. His life. His blood.
The roots wound between them. Their hands—their dreamed skin—fused together. Beneath them the ground of the realm splintered and shifted. Their realms were melding too. Joining into one.
In the place where their realms were now joined she saw their roots coil and spread. He placed her against them, letting them bind her tight. Her soul was bound close to the mortal world, by his life and her own. Body to soul. Soul to body.
Just a tale, he’d called it. But she had seen this tree in the hermitage and the pleasure house and the House of Tears. Vast branches. Deep roots. A sacrifice written into the world.
She raised her hands to the sky, watching the light pour through them, dappled with shadow. She felt the roots, deep and strong, holding her steady: his heartbeat, his breath. His soul, his dreams.
He collapsed to the ground beside her. His distant lungs drew breath, and she called his name, and drew him into her arms. In the land of the dead, they were holding each other, and they were alive.
“Zahir,” she said, her voice a fading echo. “I thought the dead had me.”
“No,” he said. He was beside her, his soul ashen and glass-cold, his skin burning with warmth. “The dead can’t take you. Not while I am living. Not when I can guide you home.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
She heard a lullaby.
There were other noises too. The sound of conversation, low and distant. Wind on desert sand. But it was the lullaby that surrounded her like a halo of comfort.
Soft, familiar voice. Fingers combing gently through her hair. She was dreaming of being a small girl again. Of a better time.
Her head hurt. She could feel the tumult of the realm of ash eddying through her mind. She could feel Zahir still, in her roots, an echo of his own heartbeat an ocean in her ear. He was near. She knew he was near, and alive. Her shoulder still hurt, still ached, but the pain had dulled. Eyes still closed, heavy with sleep, she moved her other hand carefully, feeling along her collarbone, toward the wound.
Fingertips touched her own.
“Careful,” said Mehr. “You’ll move the bandages.”
Arwa’s eyes snapped open.
Mehr was looking down at her. Mehr’s eyes were damp and red; a faint smile curved her mouth.
“Ah, little sister,” she said, brushing Arwa’s hair back from her face. “My dear one. I have missed you.”
Her hand traced Arwa’s cheek. Her gaze took in Arwa’s ash-clouded eyes, her face, her shorn hair—and Arwa looked at her in return. She took in the softness of Mehr’s face, the redness of her eyes, the curl of her hair. Alive. She was alive.
Wound be damned, Arwa flung herself into Mehr’s arms. Mehr held her carefully, murmured that she should be careful, but Arwa did not care about pain. She wept noisily, fiercely. She wept like the child she hadn’t been for a long, long time, clutching her sister who was alive and whole and safe, and was not a ruin of limbs lost in a desert of dead. Her sister murmured to her, attempting to quiet her. Calm, Arwa, calm, all’s well. And then, abruptly, she realized Mehr was crying too, miserably and quietly as her shoulders and her voice shook, as she ran a tender finger over Arwa’s shorn hair, as if she could not bring herself to believe that Arwa was here before her at all.
“I thought you were dead,” Arwa wept. “Father told me, he told me you were gone and he—he wept for you. Grieved for you, but then he would not speak of you. I thought you had no grave, I could not mourn you.”
Mehr tensed, just a little. She wiped her tears from her eyes with her fingertips, then laughed weakly, and shook her head at her damp hands.
“No, Arwa. I’m alive and well.” Even though her voice trembled, it was as soothing as the desert at moonrise. “I’m not hurt. I’m safe and I am happy. I have a good life here, Arwa. A good life among our mother’s people.”
“You live with Amrithi?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all you ever wanted,” Arwa whispered, feeling small and flayed. Mehr’s hand stroked her again.
“Not everything,” she said. “But you’re here now.”
“How did you survive? You—the Maha took you.”
“He did,” Mehr said quietly. A faint shudder crossed her skin. “Ah, it is a long story, Arwa. But he died, and I’m free. I owe you the full tale. But not now. Not yet.”
“Did you ever look for me?” Arwa asked.
“Oh, Arwa. Yes.” Her tone was emphatic, gaze suddenly fierce. “I couldn’t leave Irinah. After the Maha… No.” She put a hand to her chest, as if she could press something brittle to stillness in her heart by touch alone. “But one of my clan—he searched for you. He carried letters. For you, and for Father.”
She remembered her father at her bedroom window. Hunched. His eyes wet, his face stricken, a letter crumpled in his fist. She remembered her mother, forbidding her questions, telling her they would only cause her hurt.
Arwa knew then. She knew what her mother and father had done. A part of her had known for a long time.
“Tell me,” she managed to say. “Please, Mehr. I need to hear it from you.”
“He found Father,” Mehr said, voice careful, weighing each word as if she knew the wound she struck. “The member of my clan. He gave Father my letter. And Father wrote to me. He told me he loved me. He told me he was—sorry he couldn’t save me.” Here, her voice wavered once more. “And he told me he would keep you safe, as he’d promised me, before the Maha took me. And he told me…”
Arwa knew. She knew.
“He thought I couldn’t be Amrithi and be safe. He thought I couldn’t have you and be safe. Not in the Empire. So he—lied to me. He lied to me.”