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.”
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.”
Her tone was light enough. Still, there was a shadowed, haunted look to her face that belied her words. She looked at Arwa’s shoulder. Looked up. “You’re still alive, then?”
“I told you I’d try my best,” said Arwa. “I’m glad you left, Eshara. I wouldn’t have wanted to mourn you.”
Eshara lowered her eyes. Zahir kneeled by Arwa’s side. She felt the roots between them, the sureness of him in two worlds, and held out her hand. He took it.
Eshara began to speak once more.
“After we made it to safety—after a full night hiding in the desert, by the way, and wasn’t that a thrill with a handful of hysterical pilgrims—we made it to Jah Irinah. The locals were restless, saying soldiers had angered the daiva, driven the spirits into frenzy. They said anyone who walked into the desert would be ripped apart. I tracked down the Amrithi guide we’d been recommended. I offered him all the money I had to take me back to where we’d last been. I thought at least I could…” She swallowed. “Well, I thought they might have killed you there. I thought I’d see you buried. He refused.”
Eshara bent forward. Tucked Arwa’s blanket around her legs, not looking up. “He came and found me this morning. Said his Tara had told him to find me, whatever that means.” She lifted her gaze. “I think your sister might be important, Arwa.”
Of course her sister was important. The other Amrithi deferred to her. She had amata. She’d survived the Maha’s service. She’d seen Arwa somehow in the space between worlds, in ash and dreams and desert, and reached for her. And she was Arwa’s family. That was enough.
“A Tara is an Amrithi clan leader,” Arwa said simply.
“Well, I’m right, then.” She hesitated. “I assume—you haven’t found the Maha’s ash?”
A pause. Then Arwa shook her head and Zahir said, “No. There was nothing to find. He’s beyond our reach.”
Eshara cursed, and Arwa met Zahir’s eyes.
She had asked Mehr to bring Eshara here not for affection alone. Eshara had risked her life for their task—for the bare scrap of hope the Maha’s ash offered.
“The world can still be saved,” Zahir said slowly. “And Arwa and I, we have a plan for how to do it. If the Hidden Ones are willing to help us.”
“We have a rite that will hold the nightmares, after all, and prayer,” Arwa said. “We have a path into the realm of ash. And we have… a hope. It will not be easy or quick or without danger. It will be the slow way toward the Empire’s survival. But it is still a way. Will you help us, Eshara? Will you ask any Hidden Ones you trust if they may want to ally with us, and share our knowledge and our purpose?”
Eshara looked between them for a moment. Then she scowled and rubbed her knuckles between her eyes.
“You two,” she said. “As if I haven’t almost died for the both of you.” She sat down. “Tell me what you want from the Hidden Ones, and I’ll see what I can do.”
That evening, still weak, shaking, Arwa walked out into the desert. The members of Mehr’s clan who had been tasked with guarding Arwa’s tent didn’t stop her, though they protested. Only Zahir nodded and said he would wait for her with Eshara.
Arwa walked out into the black of the desert, the cold sky above her. Arwa walked the realm of ash, crossing eddies rich in colorless light. She walked in two worlds now, held steady by deep roots, by the beat of two hearts.
She felt Zahir behind her. Her blood and life. He did not need to fear for her. He knew her like she knew him. It was like knowing the shape of your own breath.
She would learn how to survive here, in two worlds, in two skins. She would learn how to be more than a noblewoman, with more than her own foolish, fierce bravado to fuel her. And if her life would be cut short, if the sacrifice Zahir had made of his own strength would only sustain them so long—well. What a glorious life it would be.
She would bring Sohal here, if he wanted to be brought. She would show him how the desert moved, and teach him what she knew.
She would tell the truth to Diya. The widow had a right to that too. After all, she had faced an army with the strength of hope alone, with hands full of grief and her voice full of fire.
She and Zahir would leave the desert. They had nightmares to face. They had the teachings of the Maha’s heir to share: teachings of the power of prayer and grave-tokens against the dark. Perhaps she would go and see her mother and her father then. She would face them as the person she was now, with her ash eyes, her full heart, her spirit that walked two worlds, and see if they had the strength to understand her, and she the strength to forgive them.
She would seek out the nightmares with Zahir at her side. She, the widowed witch who was Amrithi and Ambhan both, who knew the secrets of the dead, and he the Emperor’s blessed son, who was called Maha’s heir by those who spun their hopes around him, and wore his knowledge like a blade. They would save what they could, she and him, one nightmare at a time. And they would see what new world awaited at the end of their path.
But first…
She stood still.
She waited.
A breath or two passed, and then the bird-spirits landed, surrounding her. Their eyes were bright in the dark. Careful of her shoulder, Arwa drew her hands together. A sigil for respect.
“Spirit. I’ve long wondered why you protected me, of all Amrithi-blooded people in this world. I have heard the whispers of the dead and now I think I know why you defend me.” She looked at it, soft-winged, dark and bright. “You were in Darez Fort with me, weren’t you?” she said, holding her arms out, her scarred hands outstretched, forming a question in her stance, a sigil on her hands. Follow? “You were there when the nightmare almost killed me. You were controlling it. You were its balance.”
Nightmare.
Lock?
A susurration of wings.
“The soldiers frightened you,” said Arwa. “Or perhaps the sight of me, at the lattice, shocked you. I only know you let the nightmare go, and very many people died.”
Hands turning. Unlock. Free.
“You made a vow to my birth mother’s people,” said Arwa. “To my sister’s people. And yet I was harmed. However unwittingly, you broke your word.”
Vow.
Hands against one another. Abrupt turn of them. Just so.
Broken.
The daiva splintered about her, smaller and smaller still, until the birds were like bursts of shadow against the greater night’s dark.
“Is that why you followed me from Darez Fort? Why you protected me there, and protect me still?” She shaped nothing. “Please,” she said. “Tell me.”
The birds wavered, drew together into one formless many-eyed being, as they had on the dovecote tower once before.
It shaped arms—hands like clawed spindles. The sigil for forgiveness formed in the air before her. There was a question in its stance, the wavering turn of its shadow.
It splintered back, once more, into birds.
It was like a creature cursed, she thought. Under a spell of its own grief, it could not leave her, and it could not be as it once was: ancient, child-shaped. A daiva of strange strength.
“You gave me wings at the imperial palace,” Arwa said, voice thick. “You saved my life time and time again. Of course I forgive you.”
How could she prove it? The whispers of the ash ran through her, roots and all. She swallowed. Steeled herself against the inevitable pain, as she aggravated her wounded shoulder once more.
The Rite of the Cage reversed. She would never be truly graceful, never truly know the rites in her bones. But she had learned them. She had thieved back from the abyss, and paid in blood and spirit and the life she’d been raised for. Every sigil she turned on its head, binding to freedom, hold to release.
When she reversed the lock the daiva chirruped. All its small birds chorused—then flew together, a flock that became a shadow, a shadow that became a child.
The child-daiva looked at her. Its eyes were soft prayer flames. Its hair curled around its face.
“Go,” she murmured. “Go with my love.”
It changed once more—this time into a bird of vast size. It rose into the air.
Arwa watched it. Her heart felt too big for her skin, at the sight of it.
Behind her waited her sister. Behind her waited Eshara, worn out and bruised, and almost-strangers who could become more in time, if they chose to.
Behind her waited Zahir. Her clever not-prince, her idealist, her fool. Her future.
She watched the daiva fly away, greater than any bird she’d ever seen, its great wings spreading shadows across the sand. Then she turned back, back across sand and ash, back to all her people, and began following the path that led her home.