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Guards grabbed Ryn from all sides. They yanked her wrists forward and slammed heavy metal cuffs over them. “King…” It came out a near-silent rasp. Ryn’s throat was too thick to shout for Xerxes. She waited for him to intervene as the Folke took a strong hold of her shoulders.
Xerxes didn’t move.
“Additionally, all those who aided you in your crimes will also be punished. The Adriel Priesthood shall be hunted across the kingdom, destined to live out the rest of their days in prison. And Kai Electus, the traitor who fooled us all, shall similarly die by execution once he’s caught.”
A tear rolled down Ryn’s cheek, leaving a hot trail on her skin. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. She had betrayed Xerxes. She had fooled all these people. She had committed crimes. She knew she would be in trouble, but she thought she’d at least be able to explain herself to Xerxes.
The Folke pulled her backward, and Ryn shook her head. Was he really going to let her die like this? What about Kai—where was her cousin? A well sprang up within her. “I thought we were allies!” she shouted at the young man sitting on the throne. “ Xerxes !”
A hundred horrified gasps filled the Throne Room.
“How dare you?!” Damon growled. “You should have your tongue removed before you die!”
Xerxes’s eyes opened slowly.
Dozens of people held their breath as Xerxes lifted his gaze to Ryn. She closed her mouth. She hadn’t meant to use his first name, especially not in front of all these people.
Xerxes stood. The silence remained while he descended the dais, every step echoing through the room. He kept his cold blue gaze on Ryn as he walked over the golden carpet. Her knees weakened, but the Folke held her up until he stood before her.
He stared. Ryn searched his face for hidden smiles, for a spark of assurance. For anything.
Xerxes’s brows tilted in. The corners of his mouth tipped down. Every movement was so slight, almost too small to see.
Then he said, “Liar.”
…
Time stopped.
Ryn no longer felt the rough hands of the Folke as they dragged her back from him.
Liar .
Xerxes was left standing in the middle of the Throne Room as they pulled Ryn through the vaulted entrance and into the hall. She didn’t fight them, even when their fingers dug into her flesh. Her gaze drifted down to the metal cuffs binding her wrists, weighing down her arms. It was nothing.
Nothing compared to the weight of Ryn’s heart sinking to a place she’d never find it.
All sound was muffled and distant as she walked, like she was standing at the bottom of an ocean. Like none of this was real, and soon she’d wake from a terrible dream and colours would return and she’d be able to hear again.
She was hardly aware of her feet moving. Of the halls changing. Of the stairs she descended.
Cold enveloped her in the dungeon below the palace. Only thin windows allowed any light inside. The cells were empty apart from one at the back where Ryn spotted a man passed out in a green robe. She didn’t recognize the priest.
She was shoved into a cell. The loud ringing of the door slamming shut behind her filled the whole prison. When she turned around, the Folke were already walking away.
She tried to inhale a deep breath, but pins and needles scratched her lungs. She placed her bound hands against her chest.
Liar .
Yes. Ryn was the biggest liar of all. And now, everyone knew it.
For several moments, she didn’t move from where she stood, staring at the cell bars. Her knees began to shake, her breathing thinned. She thought she would die standing up.
Execution.
Immediately.
A commotion sounded at the prison doors. Heavy footsteps echoed down the hall.
“Your Majesty!” someone shouted.
Ryn lifted her eyes. She came to the bars just as Xerxes marched into view, his navy coat quivering behind. Three guards chased after him with their hands on their sword hilts.
“Everyone, leave us!” he shouted at them. The Folke bowed and fled; noises of pattering boots carried them back to the stairs. The prison door squeaked when it slid shut.
Xerxes waited for several more seconds before he moved. He came to the bars where Ryn was, but he stayed just out of reach, staring at her with a gaze empty of life or warmth. The same heartless being he’d been when she’d first arrived at the palace.
“I trusted you,” he said. “You became the reason I smiled here.”
Ryn shrank behind the bars. She cleared her throat. “King, did it really seem like I was pretending to you?”
“No!” Xerxes growled. “Which is why I’m so impressed, Ryn!” He bit his tongue like he was mad at himself for using her name. “Your acting was impeccable. You really fooled me.”
Her breathing hitched. “A… acting ?” But she realized she couldn’t deny it—that to say she hadn’t tried to fool him would be another lie. Her lips grew numb, her tongue heavy. “I really did want you to be free—”
“You’re an Adriel!” he said through his teeth, and she slammed her mouth shut.
Xerxes grabbed the bars on either side of her.
His mouth thinned as he drew in just an inch, no more.
“You deserve to die for deceiving me.” Ryn could hardly meet his eyes, even when a flicker of remorse crossed them.
“But you cured me, like you said you would. And for that, I’ve reduced your sentence to lifelong imprisonment in the Mother City jails instead.
This is the only mercy I’ll show you. We’re even now, and I owe you nothing.
” He flexed his jaw. “I don’t ever want to see you again. I hope we never cross paths.”
Ryn backed away from the bars, thankful, for the first time, that a prison wall separated her from him.
Xerxes swallowed. “I will lose my mind if I see you again,” he rasped.
Without another word, Xerxes turned his back to Ryn. She watched him march out of the prison. She watched until he disappeared up the stairs. The loud thud of the door slamming followed.
The jail grew quiet. Ryn slumped back against the far wall and slid to sit. She didn’t move for hours. The sky grew bluer, the sun got brighter, then the heavens fell to ashy shades of gray.
It was nighttime before Ryn made a sound. She stood to her feet.
Her gaze crept up, taking in the chipped ceiling.
“El,” she croaked. “What is this?”
Silence.
She screamed. At the ceiling, at the nearby guards, at El. “Is this what I signed up for?!”
She grabbed a loose rock off the floor and hurled it against the far wall.
It smashed into the stones and rolled away.
She kicked off her boots next, then she picked them up and hurled them out of the prison cell.
She slammed herself against the bars. “Let me out!” she screamed at whoever was listening. “Let me speak to the King!”
How could Xerxes have said all those things and not given Ryn a chance to reply?
How could he not have at least let her process all he’d said before leaving?
She’d never see Xerxes again, and her last memory of him would be of him calling her a liar, all because she’d done what everyone else had asked her to do.
“You’d better not let them find Kai!” she threatened El next. She pointed at the heavens. “If this is the end for me, at least don’t let it be the end for him!”
“This is not the end, Adassah. It’s only the beginning.”
Ryn laughed. It was a cruel, cynical sound that burned her throat on the way out.
“You tricked me! I believed you! I… fought for you!” She clenched her teeth, her moisture-filled eyes drilling the ceiling as her legs lost all strength. “We’re done! I’m done with you!”
She fell against the wall and sank back to the floor where she belonged.
Tears dripped off the end of her cheeks, hitting her bound hands.
She looked at the cuts still there from her fight at the Priesthood Temple, and in the First Temple, and in the street.
A sliver hid in her pinky from cutting down the pear tree too.
“I’m here.”
Dust floated around Ryn’s cell. She coughed.
She imagined what Geovani would say about this. Probably something outlandish like, “There’s more than one path to the end, Adassah,” or “The God Original works in mysterious ways.”
Ryn had always known deep down the woman was crazy. Thinking about Geovani’s ‘wisdom’ now only made her hands ball into fists. She’d trusted Geovani just as much as she’d trusted El, and now she was headed to the place where her mother had died of the cinder plague , likely to meet the same fate.
“I quit,” she whispered into the silence. “I quit, El. El Tsebaoth. Whatever your name is.” She laid on the ground and curled into a ball. “Leave me alone.”
She stayed that way for several more hours until she fell asleep.
Table of Contents
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- Page 55 (Reading here)
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