Mehr was silent. Arwa swallowed, and thought of how hard she had fought to be a worthy daughter. To build her parents a future. She thought of how impossible it had been for her to dream of another world, one not shaped by the Empire she had grown up in. She thought of her father, who had fought to save his daughters, and been broken by the Empire for it. Even sick, even disgraced, he and her mother had tried to carve a space for her in the Empire. A future. It had been cruel of them. They had probably thought it a kindness.
“He was trying to protect me.”
Then her sister said, gently, “Yes.”
She looked away from her sister, then almost immediately looked back, afraid that Mehr would vanish like ash before her. But Mehr was still there, whole and dark-eyed and a woman grown.
He wanted you to be safe.
She had been molded and erased and silenced for safety. She had been denied the truth for safety. Her history had been cleaved in two, for safety. They had almost broken her, for the sake of making her safe, for the sake of their love for her, and she would carry the wound of it all her life.
Love was not always kind.
She curled her own hand against the beat of her heart against her ribs. The heart Zahir had saved; the life he’d bought with a piece of his own.
“Arwa,” Mehr said quietly. “I cannot put right the past. I cannot change the forces that have shaped us both. Whatever horrors you have been through, I cannot wash away. But I can offer you a home here. I can offer you time. I can tell you that I will defend you with every breath in me.” She cupped Arwa’s face, utterly tender. “I have family here,” she said. “And you do too. If you will meet them, they are yours. And if you will not, then know that I have loved you and missed you every day since we were parted. I have always been your sister, Arwa—no distance, no time, no grief, has changed that.”
They were both weeping again; both wiped tears from their faces in the joyous, ugly, miserable way of people who hadn’t planned to cry and didn’t care for it.
“Mehr,” Arwa said shakily.
“Yes.”
“I lost your blade.”
Mehr laughed through her tears.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Oh, Arwa, it doesn’t matter at all.”
The tent canvas—and they were in a tent, Arwa realized now—rustled. Drew back a little. She saw the shape of a man, silhouetted to shadow by the sun behind him.
Mehr curled her hand over Arwa’s, salt-damp, then released her.
“We’ll talk more,” she said. “Of everything. I promise it. But now I should let you rest.”
“The man I came with,” Arwa said. “Zahir. Will you send him to me?”
“Yes,” Mehr said. “Of course.”
She saw Mehr touch her hand to the man’s wrist, saw her lean against him, as if he could hold the weight of all her feeling, her joy and grief alike—and then they were gone.
“Well,” Zahir said. “We’re not dead.”
“Hello to you too,” Arwa said.
He exhaled. He was bruised, sunburnt, and—in the realm of ash—a thing run through with dazzling light. His eyes were gray as ash, deep and endless dark, no matter what realm she looked at them in. He kneeled down beside her bed and she placed her fingertips against his cheek. Their roots were no longer twined, but one seamless weft of lace, a whorl of rose without end.
“Did my sister treat you well?”
“She saved our lives out in the desert, she and her clan, so yes. Well enough, although her men were suspicious of me, and wouldn’t allow me near you until you asked.” He kneeled down. “I love you too,” he added. “In case you were wondering.”
“Oh no,” she said, curling her fingers around his. “I knew. Why else would you have given up part of your life for me? Fool.”
“I don’t regret it,” he said. “I have no interest in being a mystic order of one.”
“Very funny.”
He smiled faintly. Then the look faded to something… lost.
“In truth, Arwa, I don’t know what will become of us. I have been exactly the kind of fool I loathe. We may die early, or not. We may always walk in the realm of ash and the mortal world at the same time or… we may not. It will be telling, when we leave Irinah, and see what becomes of us without its power.”
“You think the bond between us may break?”
“No, Arwa. But I think we may feel a little more—human.”
“Really?”
He paused, but only for a moment.
“No,” he admitted. “I think we’re—changed.” He held his hands before him, pale brown, knuckles bruised. Dazzling white glass, fingernails like points of light. “We walked too far. I am sorry, Arwa. I wish I could have saved more of you.”
“You saved all of me that matters,” she said. “And I regret none of it.” She could feel the realm of ash within her and without her. Iria, Ushan, the daiva with their great wings—they whispered within her. Her family of the dead.
She had the possibility of a family of the living now too. Amrithi who were not decimated. Amrithi who had their own clans, and lived within Irinah’s desert, and carved out a life from the Empire’s control. This was her heritage.
“Perhaps one day we’ll simply walk into the realm of ash together,” she said quietly. “Step into the realm, walk to the end of the path, and see what lies beyond even ash.” She sat up, wincing a little. “But not now. Now we have a plan, and I’d like to see it through.”
“Of course.”
“But I would like to stay for a time. To recover. To know my sister,” Arwa admitted. “And… there are other Amrithi. Here. In her clan. Perhaps they know everything I gleaned from the realm of ash. Perhaps. But I would like to return the knowledge regardless. It’s their own, after all. And then…” She looked at him. “I’d like to see what we could do, you and I. I’d like to bargain with the Hidden Ones. I’d like to teach others like me the Rite of the Cage. I’d like to spread the knowledge of prayer, and grind Parviz’s reputation to dust, as I promised him. I’d like to walk the breadth of the world, before I walk deep into the ash again. Zahir, would you join me?”
He looked at her and smiled—a true, real smile that blazed on him like light.
“Arwa,” he said. “I’d like nothing more.”
Her marriage had been a heavy thing, a yoke of hurt and unknowing and duty, and it had smothered her. She hadn’t thought she would ever want anything like it again. But this, hands upon hers, the curve of his smile, the trust of him.
That, ah. That she would have. A lifetime of bravery. A lifetime of this.
All the rest, she thought, could wait.
Two days later, Eshara arrived. She limped into the tent after Zahir, her face bruised and swollen, gait heavy. When she saw Arwa, her face—ah.
Arwa worried, for a moment, that Eshara would weep.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Eshara snapped by way of greeting. “I tripped trying to get your damnable retinue to safety. I would have stayed to protect you, but it seemed pointless for all of us to die. Sohal was angry about it, though. He said he would have stayed and protected you, when the widows started blubbering at him.”