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XERXES

“So, you’ll let me go? Once you’re cured?”

Xerxes heard Ryn say it to him in his sleep, over and over. A never-ending nightmare.

Xerxes spent most days surviving. From dawn to dusk was a slow passing of time, hour to hour, leaving Xerxes searching for the next escape or a place to hide. But this day was not like most days.

Xerxes found brief pockets of enjoyment sprinkled amidst the dark moments.

He wasn’t exactly happy per se, but he didn’t spend the whole morning and afternoon frowning, either.

The cooks were in an uproar, the council was restless, and even the Intelligentsia had opened an investigation—complaining and questioning what had happened to all the King’s Prosperity Day cookies.

One Folke guard swore a cookie had fallen from the sky and struck him over the head as though the Divinities were angered.

He showed leftover crumbs in his hair as evidence.

That had sent many of the highly religious to their knees, begging the Celestial Divinities for mercy.

The temple had been full of wailing and weeping all morning.

It was astoundingly hilarious.

But the fuss had become too much to bear after a while, so Xerxes spent the afternoon training with the Folke.

His men were getting better, but they weren’t ready for war.

In fact, he could hardly imagine them being able to handle the sight of war, should it come their way.

Though these men and women guarded his palace, they’d never seen the secret reports that made their way into Xerxes’s hands from his Per-Siana spies hiding in B’rei Mira.

They had no idea of the slaughter and horrors taking place just outside the kingdom borders.

The Intelligentsia refused to let the Per-Siana people find out that even the neighbouring kingdom of Messa had been overtaken by Alecsander of B’rei Mira in the last six months.

Per-Siana had closed its borders—no news or people in or out.

It was the Intelligentsia’s way of preventing panic.

Xerxes had rolled his eyes at the command, wondering how the legendary sages could be stupid enough to think that if they closed their eyes and plugged their ears, Alecsander’s armies would suddenly no longer exist and Per-Siana would be safe.

Xerxes had once visited Messa alongside his father when he was young.

He’d marvelled at the kingdom’s glasswork which his father claimed ‘almost matched the skill level of Per-Siana’s’.

It was impressive for such a small nation.

Xerxes had made a friend there during the weeklong visit; a seven-year-old Prince named Norkin.

Norkin was the second Prince of the small kingdom and had the lightest hair Xerxes had ever seen.

The Messa Prince had reached out to Xerxes with letters a couple of times over the years, but due to Xerxes’s illness, Xerxes could never bring himself to offer a response.

Xerxes assumed Norkin was dead now. That the impressive castle filled with crystal artwork was a heap of rubble and shattered glass.

The air strained in Xerxes’s lungs when he thought about it.

His grip tightened on the sword in his hand, and he waved forward his next partner to spar with.

He would force the Folke to practice twice as long today.

They would hate it because they didn’t understand why they needed it.

Like all of Per-Siana, they were clueless.

“Ten more rounds,” he called over the field. “Then we’ll break and do ten more.”

Not a peep rose from the Folke, but Xerxes knew they probably grumbled under their breath when they looked at him who, even though he was King, was younger than most of them by at least several years.

A feminine squeal lifted from the garden across the field, and Xerxes spotted maidens there.

Only three of them—the fourth was missing.

It was clear they came to watch the Folke practice, or had come to watch him practice, by how the two nameless ones clapped.

Xerxes’s gaze landed on Calliope a foot away from the others, wearing a gown twice as rich in colour as the other two’s.

She was scowling in his direction, standing with her arms folded and her hip jutted out.

Xerxes grunted and went back to his spar partner.

He cared not for the maiden’s mood, though, he understood why she resented him.

But any woman with an ounce of grace would have let things go by now.

“We’re hungry.”

In three swift moves, Xerxes batted the sword and shield from his partner’s hands.

The blade rolled across the grass and the Folke jogged after it.

Xerxes sighed and shook his head. He’d been intensely trained in the art of swordplay since he was strong enough to lift a sword—but he still should not have been able to overtake every Folke so easily.

Who had trained these idiots? Blind, mute cave goblins?

The next Folke stepped up, and Xerxes glared at him. “I thought I told you to stay outside Ryn’s door,” he said and then added, “ Matthias , was it?”

The Folke, Matthias, scratched behind his ear. “Ryn is busy all day preparing for the trial tomorrow night. She told me to leave for a while.”

Xerxes’s next question should have been, “And why would you disobey my orders regardless of what she wants?” But what came out was, “What is she doing for the trial? Do you know?” and “Did she happen to mention which sense she chose?”

Matthias raised a shy laugh and shifted his footing. “She wouldn’t tell me.”

Xerxes huffed and glanced off, thinking about that. “Well, be off, Guard. You’re excused from Folke training today.”

“W… Why?” Matthias’s sword drooped at his side.

“Because I made a promise not to hurt you, and I don’t see you being able to defend yourself against me right now. Go read a book or something.” Xerxes flicked his hand back and forth, telling Matthias to get out of the way for the next Folke.

Matthias’s mouth opened and closed, but he dipped into a shallow bow.

After he left, the next Folke came to face Xerxes.

The Folke swung before Xerxes was ready, and Xerxes almost didn’t have time to leap out of the way.

He blinked up at the guard in surprise, and he almost smiled in his cold, strange way.

“Finally,” he muttered. He stood tall and said to the guard, “I’ll give you a thousand pieces of gold if you can make me bleed.”

The sun began to set in the late afternoon hours, glowing through the infirmary in sizzling yellow.

Xerxes propped his leg up on the medicine bed while the physician wrapped his arm in slow, delicate movements.

The grey-haired man had three pharmacopoeia tomes open as he followed several sets of instructions.

Even with all the knowledge at his fingertips, the physician’s hands still trembled as he worked. He wouldn’t meet Xerxes’s eyes either.

“Just do it,” Xerxes urged, wishing everyone wouldn’t be so careful and waste his time.

Coming to the palace infirmary was a mistake.

Xerxes originally wanted to train, bleed, and heal alongside the Folke to show they were all soldiers with the same flesh, blood, and ability to learn.

Now, he knew it wasn’t worth it to refuse special treatment.

Even being lonely in his bedroom with his personal doctor would have been better than having the physicians here too frightened to tie a knot or sew a stitch.

The medical students at their desks on the far side of the infirmary couldn’t keep their attention on the pharmacopoeia books open before them either, and Xerxes scowled at them.

Xerxes had driven the Folke to their knees in the yard.

A guard had even passed out from exhaustion by the time training was finished.

Xerxes suffered three minor cuts; one to his arm, one to his leg, and one along his side.

The pain was dull and unimpressive, and Xerxes welcomed it.

He was pleased the Folke were no longer going easy on him like they had in the beginning.

“We’re hungry.”

“WE’RE HUNGRY.”

Xerxes cursed and knocked his knuckles off the side of his head. If the physician noticed, he didn’t dare comment on it.

A few Folke were scattered around the infirmary, including the one who’d passed out. Maids brought them water and refreshments and offered them little words of encouragement upon seeing their cuts. Xerxes could not believe all the fuss taking place before him.

“You’re finished,” the physician said, sweeping away with his spare bandages and gently closing his books.

Xerxes rolled his sleeve down as he stood from the medicine bed and marched from the infirmary. He stopped paying attention to everyone he passed in the halls, forgetting faces as soon as he saw them. He slipped into the hall with slat windows and came to the door no one dared to enter but him.

Xerxes descended the spiral staircase into the basement.

His voices magnified as he drew closer to the tree—to his real medicine those physicians in the infirmary hadn’t the slightest insight into.

He breathed in the smell of fresh, crisp pears, muddied by the damp scent of the palace’s deepest room.

He stopped short when he saw a dark figure standing there, covered in a long hood. He would have recognized Belorme’s frame anywhere, even though the sage was growing thinner these days.

“What…” Xerxes drew a step in. Icy moisture tickled his flesh. “…are you doing here?” he demanded.

Belorme turned his head, but his face was cloaked in shadow.

“He’s trespassing. Kill him.”

“We would like to see him die.”

“Kill him and then kill the maiden upstairs.”

Belorme didn’t move, but his voice lifted from inside his hood, detached and ugly sounding. “I suppose I was just… hungry.” His hood tilted toward the tree.

A crawling sensation moved over Xerxes’s flesh. “Hungry?” he articulated.