Page 53

XERXES

A breeze rolled into the lookout tower, fresh and clear. Xerxes shook as it brushed along his skin. He stared, not really seeing the sprinkles of dawn lighting the Mother City.

Silent tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping off his jaw, hitting the ground at his feet. He couldn’t stop them. He simply stood there as they came.

The quiet was overwhelming. Birds sang softly in the distance, whispers of the wind brushed over his ears. He heard it all, and yet, he heard nothing he didn’t want to.

So, this was what freedom felt like.

He’d spent the whole night in the basement, sure a hole was growing inside of him. Waiting for the voices to come back and fill it. But they never came. Nor did the hunger. Xerxes felt nothing when he thought about the pears, even now. It was an empty feeling, and yet…

Xerxes almost smiled.

After he’d finally picked himself up off the basement floor and came upstairs, people had tried to speak to him. But Xerxes hardly heard them. They’d said things like, “The palace is haunted!” and “Everyone is going mad!” and “Belorme has been found dead!”

Belorme.

Xerxes finally found his voice. “You kept me in bondage for over a decade,” he rasped, though he knew no one, especially Belorme, could hear him.

“You lied to me. You must have known that tree was keeping me ill.” Xerxes dragged his gaze up to the morning sky where pale blue was beginning to form.

“How could you do that to me?!” he shouted.

Weakness took his knees. He nearly lost his balance, but he grabbed the rail for support and leaned against it.

“I hate liars,” he whispered.

Belorme was gone now. Xerxes couldn’t even yell at the man in person. It didn’t feel fair.

“Xerxes.”

Xerxes’s hands tightened on the rail. He looked behind him at the stairs. When he saw they were empty, he leaned out the balcony and looked down at the palace, wondering if someone had miraculously scaled the wall. No one was in sight.

No. That could not be…

A voice .

Warm wind brushed along his white knuckles. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt warmth; he’d been ice cold for so long.

Perhaps he’d imagined it. Perhaps it was a side effect of being set free from his torment.

“Xerxes,” it called again, and Xerxes inhaled a sharp breath.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I have many names,” the voice said. “Do not be afraid. I’m your friend.”

Xerxes released a raspy huff and swiped the tears from his cheeks. “I’ve been told that before.” Though, only one person spoke this time, not many voices. Even so. “I want no part of you,” he said. “I’ll never trust a god again.”

“I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

Xerxes swallowed. He closed his eyes, willing himself to create a shield around his mind to block the voice out. Waiting for the voice to spew more nonsense. For a flood of voices to join it and take over…

Xerxes peeked an eye open after a moment. He looked around.

“Where did you go?” he asked warily.

Only the quiet breeze and the warm sunlight responded.

He grunted. “Am I still crazy?” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair and rubbing his eyes.

He glanced down at his clothes, noticing he wore a mangled shirt with holes and old dirt stains on it.

He hadn’t been paying attention when he got dressed.

Someone might mistake him for a gardener if he wasn’t careful.

He smirked at the thought. Then he bit his lips, his smile fading.

“I don’t want you,” he said to the new voice, just to be sure it was really gone. “Don’t waste your time with me—I won’t listen.”

Exactly ten years ago Xerxes had responded to the call of a voice in his head. He’d been lured by promises during his most broken moments. He would not make that mistake twice.

No, he wanted nothing to do with voices. There was only one thing Xerxes wanted now, and it happened to be the one thing he’d been sure he never wanted again.

Ryn did what she’d promised, and whether it was by her power or her god’s, Xerxes was cured.

She might leave him now. The thought sent a different sort of fear into his body.

For all his utterings of not wanting a wife, of refusing to marry ever again, he was ready to announce himself a fool.

Even when he’d made the deal with Ryn at the dance, he knew full well he couldn’t actually give her half his kingdom—not without her becoming Queen.

At the time, he told himself he would just go back on his promise if it came down to it.

But now he wondered if he’d always hoped to choose her since that day.

Ryn didn’t know yet that Xerxes would choose her.

That was… if he could convince her to stay.

Xerxes left the tower, descending the stairs and coming into a dim hallway lined with useless unlit lanterns. Thankfully, pockets of early sunlight crept in through the glass at the end of every hall.

Only now did Xerxes hear the wailing through the palace.

Only now did he notice the miscellaneous items scattered over the floor like people had dropped things and fled.

Even some of the windows were shattered and glass was strewn everywhere.

It crunched beneath his boots as he marched around the bend into the atrium, trying to guess what had happened.

The atrium was in shambles. Xerxes raised a brow at the destroyed chandelier, its crystal pieces scattered from one end of the floor to the other.

He wondered what fool had been swinging from it to have made it fall.

But his attention tore to the entrance when a series of men raced in from outside. Soldiers.

Soldiers who were battered, bleeding, and breathing heavily as though they’d sprinted a great distance. They shouted for all to hear, “The B’rei Mira armies have attacked!”

The news dropped through Xerxes’s stomach like a hot coal.

“They’ve crossed the border! Our men can’t hold them off!” one bellowed. “They’ve already destroyed three villages! They’re coming for the Mother City next!”

Xerxes found himself waiting. Waiting for voices to tell him what to do. To tell him to rush into the battle, to hunt for King Alecsander and brutally kill him for daring to set foot in Per-Siana.

But the voices were gone now, and Xerxes realized he had to make the decision himself.

“Your Majesty?!” Folke guards appeared around him. One Folke drew his sword and fumbled it, dropping it to the ground. The commotion alerted the battered soldiers, and the moment the soldiers saw the King, they rushed over and dropped to a knee at Xerxes’s feet.

“Please,” a soldier begged. “Tell us what we must do, Your Majesty.”

Xerxes took in the crowd of men surrounding him, wearing his colours in two different uniforms; Folke and Army.

He glanced around the atrium where nobles clutched each other and servants’ faces were pale.

None of these people would survive if the B’rei Mira armies made it to the palace.

Xerxes would be a deceased King, his home would be shattered like the palace in Messa, and his people would become subjects beneath the vicious rule of Alecsander of B’rei, the war legend.

For once, every person in the palace saw the danger they were in.

“Arm the men, and gather our armies,” Xerxes instructed. No members of the Intelligentsia were around to object, not that he would have stood for it if they did. “Per-Siana will prepare for war.”

Gasps and whispers surged through the room; a councilman released a loud wail of agony. Xerxes turned and headed toward the Strategy Hall to prepare. He was sure he was the only one in the palace who’d seen this day coming.

“Your Majesty!” someone called after him. He didn’t stop, and whoever it was chased him to catch up. “The great white dragon has fallen from the sky!” the man shrieked. “It’s lying dead in the streets! The people are in an uproar—they believe the Celestial Divinities have abandoned us!”

And that was it.

Xerxes whirled on the man. He drilled him with his cold gaze, and he shouted, “The Celestial Divinities were never fighting for us. Can’t you see that?

!” The man drew back in alarm, and the Folke in the hall held their breath.

“The gods do not care about any humans. They don’t care for Per-Siana, or Messa, or even B’rei Mira.

Don’t you think the B’rei Mira armies serve gods too?

!” he growled. “The gods just want to see humans die. They want to see turmoil .”

Silence was thick in the hallway. No one dared to even adjust their weight.

Until someone else spoke. Xerxes hadn’t heard anyone approach, but he turned around when Damon said, “I have insight, Your Majesty.”

Xerxes’s fingers curled into fists. “Out of my way, Sage. I have work to do.” Xerxes pushed past the presumptuous Intelligentsia—and the other two sages standing there with him. His thoughts were back on the soldiers’ report.

“It’s about Estheryn Electus,” Damon said, and Xerxes stopped walking. He silently cursed himself for it—he had no plans to ask or show interest. But then…

“She’s an Adriel.”

Xerxes didn’t hear it. His ears were faulty. They must have been.

He glared down at his treacherous feet. Why weren’t they moving?

“She lied to you about her name and her heritage. She’s been hiding in plain sight all this time, Your Majesty.

” Xerxes heard Damon take a step closer to his back.

“I have evidence that she was sent here by a rebel group of Adriel priests responsible for a secret uprising. That maiden came here with a mission.”

Xerxes could not breathe in the air required to speak up and stop Damon from continuing. He fought the impulse to slap his hands over his ears and run.

But his ears betrayed him. His feet betrayed him. He stayed. He listened.

“Estheryn Electus came here to kill you,” Damon said. “On behalf of her people.”

The nerves in Xerxes’s body went numb. He wasn’t sure how he was still standing.

Ryn had come to the palace because Xerxes had made a deal with her father. Xerxes was the one who brought her here.

“You’re lying,” he whispered. But as much as Xerxes would have given his own kingship to ensure this moment wasn’t real, he’d always found it strange that Ryn appeared poor.

And her father had tried too hard to claim she was a noble.

Her cousin had been dressed for the streets.

She hadn’t known how to properly address him as the King, she’d tried to run away shortly after she arrived, she didn’t even know why ginger cookies needed to be made for a Weylin holiday.

Xerxes had helped Ryn escape.

But then she came back. She never gave him a reason why.

“I have a priest under interrogation in the palace prisons. He’s confirmed everything. I do hope this doesn’t bring you too much distress, Your Majesty.” The sage’s words were bland and detached. Deep within them, Xerxes was sure he heard the ever-so-slight tone of gloating.

Xerxes dragged himself around to face Damon. Trying to decide if he should kill him on the spot. There were no voices begging him to. After ten years of wanting desperately to be free, right now Xerxes wanted to slip back into that monstrous flesh he’d just escaped from.

Ryn.

Was.

An.

Adriel.