Page 16

His smirk twisted into a sour scowl at that. Belorme was like an uncle to him; a cruel, arrogant, overbearing uncle. Even so, Xerxes could not stand the thought of that man winning.

He sunk his teeth into the pear, the savoury juice sweet on his tongue.

A spark of greed moved through him, an obsessive pull.

He devoured the entire fruit in seconds.

Then he glanced up through the skylight tunnel, and he hurled the core as high as he could, seeing if he could beat his record.

The core slapped against the stone overhead, leaving a juicy mark just below the stain from yesterday’s fruit.

He grunted and brought his gaze back down to the luminous tree before him.

The branches whispered an invitation as his restless night of sleep caught up with him, and Xerxes found his eyelids growing heavy, his breathing slowing.

The next Heartstealers event wasn’t taking place for another few hours, and he didn’t exactly feel like being around the nobles, the council, or the servants until then.

So, Xerxes took hold of the lowest branch and pulled himself up.

He climbed into the tree’s rafters, his coat of nobility hanging down like a navy curtain as he laid back along a branch. He fell asleep.

He awoke to the voices screaming in his head.

Xerxes fell from the branch, his robe catching a twig and filling the oval room with a tearing sound as he landed on the tree’s protruding roots.

He moaned, glancing down at his sleeve where a four-inch rip across his shoulder sliced through the face of the white dragon.

Then he rubbed his eyes and tried to remember where he was and what he was doing.

The voices in his head were all laughing now.

He blinked the sleep away and looked around, seeing a hundred golden pears within reach.

He wanted to eat one, desperately. He reached for the closest fruit when a beam of sunlight spilled over his hand from the skylight as though the sun had discovered his hiding place.

His hand froze there as he thought about that. Thought about how he was hiding.

As he realized he had somewhere to be.

Xerxes scrambled from the roots and leapt to the cobbled floor.

He swatted twigs and emerald leaves from his robe as he marched for the arch and sprinted up the winding staircase.

He had no idea what time it was, if the Heartstealers event had already begun.

If the whole palace was in a frenzy looking for him.

He swallowed as he broke from the staircase door into the bright hallway, stopping only to tilt his ear toward the atrium and listen.

He didn’t hear the organizers announcing anything.

He didn’t hear a crowd of voices, or any evidence of a gathering.

He breathed a sigh of relief, his shoulders relaxing as he resumed walking toward the Hall of Stars.

Toward the event. Toward the maidens he hated.

He meant to stop by his room on his way to change from his torn robe, but a man in an organizers’ coat swept into his view. Xerxes couldn’t recall what the man’s name was, even though they’d spoken many times. He thought it might be Cornelius. Or Corninaeus. Or…

Whatever.

“Organizer,” Xerxes called. “What time is it?”

The man’s face lit up when he realized Xerxes was there. “Your Majesty! Where have you been? The Initiation Ritual of the maidens is beginning in just a few minutes, and everyone is waiting in the Hall of Stars! We assumed you were…” the man swallowed “… ill .”

Xerxes closed his mouth. He imagined the Folke scouring the gardens with spears, looking to herd a beast inside. He tried not to feel disgraced, though the assumption was likely already a palace-wide series of whispers by now.

He set his jaw, annoyance bubbling deep within him.

“Someone should die today, don’t you think?”

“I’m fine. Take me to the Hall immediately,” Xerxes said. He reached across himself to smooth down the tear in his shoulder, and he brushed a hand over his hair to ease it down. Then he shook his robe to straighten it out.

The organizer—Cornelius or Corninaeus or whatever—bowed in obedience and rushed down the hall to lead the way.

Xerxes followed, thinking he might lose it if he reached the Hall of Stars and there wasn’t a drink available for him.

A dull thudding beat against the inside of his head, and he rubbed his temples.

Intelligentsia members turned their long hoods toward him when he entered and crossed the dais toward his gold chair. He imagined them breathing a unanimous sigh of relief.

Music began to play across the Hall the second Xerxes sat down.

“Are you ill?” Belorme had the nerve to ask from Xerxes’s side.

“No.” Xerxes’s grip tightened on the armrests of his chair. He wasn’t exactly lying. He didn’t feel ill, but…

“You should have eaten a fruit!” the voices said, all together.

“We’re starving!”

Xerxes ignored them. He was fine. Never once had he needed to eat two fruits so close together.

“Then where is your crown, Your Majesty?” It sounded like Belorme spoke through his teeth when he asked. Perhaps the sage was humiliated by having to wait for the King, in front of everyone. Like a subject.

Xerxes fought the impulse to touch his naked hair. His crown…

Truly, he didn’t even remember where it was.

Ah, that’s right. He’d tossed it into the chandelier in his room. It was dangling by a candlestick.

He almost smirked.

The music magnified, and the arch doors at the end of the navy carpet swept open.

“I need a drink,” Xerxes said to whoever was listening.

Belorme refused to acknowledge the request, but Choi slipped away from the line of sages. He came back a second later with a tall glass of deep red liquid.

“May the Divine Eos bless you,” Xerxes said to him as he took the glass. Choi dipped his head before sliding back into line.

The maidens began to enter. Xerxes hardly cast them a glance of interest. He studied his drink instead, lifting the red liquid to watch it swirl around the cup. He brought the glass to his lips and took a sip.

His gaze slid over to the maidens performing an initiation dance as he drank. It was a traditional choreography meant to showcase a woman’s features and strength that ended with them drawing a pair of scissors and cutting a blue ribbon to signify the barrier between subject and King broken.

Xerxes spat his wine.

Belorme sprang away, and a noble or two gasped from the viewing area.

Two napkins tore up from the refreshments table and soared across the Hall; one patting itself over the floor to soak up the drips, the other aiming for Xerxes’s face.

He swatted it away, staring down at the maidens with his parted, liquid-covered lips.

Armour.

The maidens were dressed in armour . No longer were they in soft, sweeping gowns and feminine silks. Instead, metal plates studded with gems and thick leather belts covered their bodies. And were those… swords strapped to their backs?

Xerxes swiped his sleeve over his mouth to clean it.

He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or throw something.

They looked utterly ridiculous in their frilly versions of combat garb, and every soldier with sense knew that fitting a sword to their back instead of their side was laughable because it was difficult to draw.

Xerxes’s hands balled into fists on his armrests.

The women’s swords didn’t even look real.

It was a mockery. A statement by the Intelligentsia because of what he’d said at the last event.

“How will those dresses save them if B’rei Mira attacks?

Shouldn’t we be more concerned with finding a queen who can defend herself, rather than one who looks nice in a ridiculously large ball gown?

” His own words haunted him. It took every ounce of his self control not to glare over at Belorme, to demand to know what this spectacle was.

To throw the Chancellor off the dais before everyone.

A slow, cool, watery sensation moved down his arms, down his legs, into his toes.

He hated many things about the dynamics of this palace.

But what he hated more than anything was to be mocked.

And Belorme had a special way of going about that.

Xerxes tried to settle his rising heartrate, tried to calm the temptation burning through his mind.

Tried to ignore the strange suggestions of the voices.

He bit his lips together as he watched the maidens. The dance was one performed at the Festival of Stars each year in the Mother City, one of the most common noble dances. Three of the maidens were good at it. One of them was not.

Xerxes’s gaze narrowed on Estheryn Electus who had the look of a slender, graceful dancer, yet couldn’t seem to pull off the choreography to save her life.

The sword strapped to her back appeared to be weighing her down too, and Xerxes wondered what her artist was thinking, giving her a heavy prop like that.

The girl who liked to escape through the garden at night performed all the moves half a second after the other maidens.

Xerxes couldn’t decide if it was funny or cringeworthy.

The watching nobles hadn’t noticed her ever-so-slight delay—at least, no one was whispering about it.

Perhaps they were busy obsessively watching their favourite maidens.

He sat back in his chair as the music picked up tempo.

Xerxes also couldn’t decide if he found Estheryn pretty, and that bothered him. The armour fit her well, and she danced on her toes like a feather in the wind. Even her hair agreed with her movements as it swept around. Divinities curse him, maybe he did find her a little attractive.