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Xerxes… was at war? Fighting for his life every day? Raising a sword against B’rei Mira soldiers in the desert mountains? Ryn clutched her chest when it grew tight.

It wasn’t her concern. Xerxes had cast her out of his life forever.

“I don’t know what a burn division is,” she admitted to Heva.

“It’s a military term,” Heva explained as she started walking again. “A kingdom at war will sometimes make divisions of throwaway soldiers and send them to the frontlines where it’s the most dangerous. They use common criminals they’re comfortable ‘burning through.’ It means no one cares if the division dies. The burn divisions will pave the way through an enemy line or be a distraction, or bait, or whatever else the commanders need in the moment.”

“That’s heartless,” Ryn murmured as they entered a large cave with three dozen tables. A group of women at the back eyed them, shovelling rice into their mouths with flat spoons.

Heva took Ryn’s shoulders again and looked her in the eyes. “It means we might go to war, Ryn. It means the Intelligentsia will decide any day now if they want to use us lowlifes for thewar.”

Ryn stared at Heva as that settled in. As she imagined the Intelligentsia in their gaping hoods, sitting around a table in the Room of Knowledge, penning their ‘infinite wisdom.’ She rolled the word over in her mind. That ugly word grew heavy, sinking into Ryn’s stomach.

War.

War was something from a dream. It was a word only used in history books and told as entertaining legends before bed to remember great heroes of old. War was something priests did in the shadows with forbidden swords and priestesses fought on their knees.

War was the hands of wrathful gods at work.

It was smoke, fire, and chaos.

It was harps, prayers, and songs.

War was such an ugly, beautiful, complex word.