Honored Vow

certain,
    simply from his body language, that Shahid being that close to him was
    not welcome. Things had changed, and whatever everyone thought they
    knew of Domin Thorne was no longer correct. In the morning, the priest

    264

    Mary Calmes

    had said, Domin would need to name his maahes, his sheseru, and his
    sylvan. He would not go back to Nevada with us; his duty was to the tribe
    of Rahotep. They needed to meet their new leader, and the semel-aten
    needed to put his house in order.
    “You do understand,” Mikhail said softly, “that this will change your
    life, Jin, no matter what.”
    And I wasn’t sure what he meant until Logan put his hand on my
    thigh. I turned to look at my mate.
    “Baby, you do realize that Domin has to have people he trusts
    around him.”
    I was still lost.
    “And where do you think those people will come from?”
    It hit me like a sledgehammer in the gut. “Oh shit.”
    Logan threw an arm around me and hugged me to his side.
    “Who will he take to Egypt with him?”
    “We’ll just have to wait and find out.”
    I was afraid to know.
    Ebere presented herself to Domin, bowing low before he bid her rise
    and took her hand as was the custom, to show that she was claimed by him
    and under his protection. The priest pronounced her, again, mastaba,
    mistress of Sobek, as Domin had claimed her. She was considered the
    widow of the semel, but in giving her the title, he had declared her his
    until she chose to marry again or died. She could not be made to take
    another mate, as she, as well as any children that were hers, had been
    claimed by the semel-aten. Domin had granted her and her daughters
    safety.
    It was not as though Ebere even lived in Sobek anymore, but
    wherever she was in the world, she was mastaba and so was safe. The
    reach of the semel-aten knew no bounds. She came to sit with Logan and
    me afterward and thanked us both again.
    “I’m sorry for the loss of your mate,” Logan told her. “Please make
    sure your daughters understand.”
    “This was tribal law, semel-netjer,” she told him. “And we all live
    with the duality of our lives. We’re human and not, and so my daughters
    will grieve the loss of their father, but they will understand the law. Every
    semel can be challenged, every mate put to death or marked, every man,

    Honored Vow

    265

    woman, and child brought before their semel and judged.” She took a
    breath. “We all live by the same rules, and perhaps some of them, now
    that Domin Thorne is semel-aten, can be changed, but to say that my
    daughters would somehow not understand tribal law is impossible.”
    “It’s all well and good to know why something happened; it’s
    something else to be okay with it. They can still hate Domin for being the
    instrument of their father’s death.”
    “Or perhaps love him for releasing their mother from a nightmare,”
    she said, smiling through her tears.
    I had no idea what kind of horrors Ammon El Masry had visited on
    his mate, but from seeing the face of his widow, I no longer feared that she
    or her daughters would ever hurt Domin.
    When she left, I hugged her, and she made me promise to visit her if
    I was ever in Cairo. It was a vow I made wholeheartedly.
    After another hour, Domin rose, lifted a hand to Logan and me, and
    then pulled Yuri to his feet. They both bowed to the priest—it was the
    etiquette—and were gone seconds later. Yuri knew better than to ask
    Logan to leave; that was not how my semel ran his tribe, with bowing and
    scraping and rigid observance of tradition. And I was so glad; the rigid
    rules were one of the things that Domin had already promised he would
    change. I had seen the look of concern on the priest’s face when Domin
    had been talking to him at dinner about the list of laws he would be
    tackling first. His plan was to see the council of Ennead weekly, whereas
    Ammon had seen them only once a year when it was mandated.
    “You have changes to the law you wish to make?” the priest had
    asked him.
    “Oh yes.” Domin had smiled his wicked smile that made his brown
    eyes glow. He looked dangerous, like some sort of pirate king, and the
    priest shivered just once.
    Wine was swapped for vodka and airag, and the talking got louder
    and more boisterous before people started migrating into dark corners of
    the warm sandalwood-scented room. The lanterns were dimmed,
    musicians were ushered in, and the semel of Khertet thanked us all for
    honoring his house with our