Page 6

XERXES

Apart from being disgusted at the sight of how happy everyone was, Xerxes was relieved the palace workers had something else to focus on for a while.

He watched from a high balcony above the lobby, blanketed in the darkness he belonged in, as the first two maidens entered the palace and gazed at the great artwork of the atrium.

If only these maidens knew how they would be paraded among the citizens, talked about, painted onto tapestries, and worshipped like the Divinities themselves.

How unforgiving the people were about their stardoms. He could have warned the maidens if he cared.

As it was, he imagined he’d play along for a bit to keep the Intelligentsia pleased and then disappear until the excitement died down.

After Belorme chose the woman he foolishly planned to make Xerxes’s wife, Xerxes could ignore her the same way he ignored…

The first one.

Xerxes couldn’t bring himself to think her name.

His first wife, daughter of an esteemed lord of B’rei Mira.

The woman was horrid and selfish, openly disobeying Xerxes’s orders since day one.

It was why Xerxes avoided her and barely spoke three words in her direction since she’d arrived.

Perhaps it was childish of him, but he couldn’t stand how she did what everyone else did—making every decision about his kingdom for him, whispering in the hallways with the Intelligentsia, plotting their next move.

Yes, Xerxes had brought the threat of war upon his kingdom all on his own. If the B’rei Mira kingdom ever found out that he was the one who had murdered —

Xerxes closed his eyes, letting the visions of the new maidens vanish from his sight, from his mind. No, he would never marry again. Belorme would have to tie him down and drag him to the altar.

“You wanted to kill her,” one of the voices reminded him. “ You wanted her gone.”

“I didn’t want to. It was an accident,” Xerxes muttered.

“I don’t even remember doing it.” But he knew it was no use arguing with the voices.

If he couldn’t even convince the Intelligentsia sages, if he couldn’t even convince his kingdom enough to stop the gossip, then how could he convince the voices of his own imagination?

With that in mind, Xerxes left the atrium, not waiting to see the last two maidens who’d rushed from their comfortable homes to see him. To court him. To marry him.

He headed down the long hallway, the late evening sun kissing his cheeks as he came beneath a domed glass ceiling.

The Celestial Divinities were spying on him tonight, he could feel it.

They must have known the maidens were the least of his true concerns.

They must have realized that Per-Siana was a mere breath away from the greatest war they’d ever faced.

That the second Alecsander of B’rei Mira learned that a noble of his people had been killed by the King of Per-Siana, the great warlord would sweep into Xerxes’s kingdom and destroy everything in sight.

Xerxes had hardly been able to sleep for the past six months—since the incident .

Even with all their tricks and insight, the Intelligentsia hadn’t been able to stop the news from slipping out of the palace and into the Mother City.

They’d chalked the incident up to silly rumours.

They’d claimed through their heralds that the former Queen had died of a highly contagious disease and they were taking measures to ensure the disease didn’t break out into the city.

Though Xerxes avoided their meetings, he knew the Intelligentsia would likely create a false disease with their potions, release it into the kingdom’s water supply, and call it an “outbreak” to ensure their story was believed.

It would ultimately benefit the sages, too, since anyone with a sound mind knew that to control people, all one had to do was create a disease and strike fear into the citizens’ hearts about it.

Months later, they would conveniently develop a cure, and the citizens of Per-Siana would line up to receive it.

The Intelligentsia would look like heroes.

To Xerxes, it looked like diabolical madness. But he knew better than to utter the word “madness” from his own mouth when he was the one hearing voices.

He ventured down a flight of stairs, then another, and finally, two more, until he came deep into the palace basement where his oval room was hidden away.

He walked around the hole in the floor where he’d unearthed a cobblestone, and he approached the bright tree of golden pears thriving with lush emerald leaves.

The mighty trunk and limbs glowed beneath the evening light piercing downward through the circular skylight that stretched up all the levels of the palace; an opening to the sky cut off from everything.

No one in the palace knew why there was a large pillar in the centre of the structure.

No one apart from the Intelligentsia and a few select servants who had once come into this room—ten years ago—and had planted this tree and had made the room beautiful.

The tree had grown on its own after that by Celestial magic.

The hunger had not begun yet, but Xerxes didn’t care to wait until the burning filled his stomach or the icy dampness covered his flesh.

He imagined the pulls of it would be magnified this evening after he’d watched the spectacle in the atrium.

If he got his mind right, maybe he could sleep through the worst of it. He plucked a pear from his tree.

Most days, one bite of spellbound fruit was enough to quell his starvation and keep him sane and alive.

A gift of medicine from the Celestial Divinities and the single reason he was forced to rely on the great stars of the sky and the Intelligentsia.

It was the same reason Xerxes could never take control of his own kingdom.

He both needed and cursed this tree.

The light of the moon painted the garden in a milky white.

The relaxing aroma of the blossoms turned the air to perfume, instilling a temporary pulse of serenity to the quiet congregation of plants.

Xerxes lounged flat on his back over a stone bench, staring up at the sparkling souls of the Divinities in the heavens and the white dragon doing its slow dance across the sky.

Back and forth the dragon went. Never growling, never making a sound or moving off course.

Just a constant promise in the sky that the Divinities were watching and had infinite knowledge of the kingdom.

Soft buzzing rose from the bushes as the night bugs conversed, and the air turned chilly when the time crossed midnight’s threshold and the new, dark day began. It all tickled Xerxes’s ears.

He’d just closed his eyes to doze off when a girl broke through a cluster of bloom-bushes, nearly startling him right off the bench.

He lifted his head to watch her scurry across the garden, the wind stealing her long dark hair into a dance.

She jogged until she reached a tall, square water fountain, and Xerxes raised a brow as she stared at the great weeping pillar like she didn’t know what it was.

She turned to go right, but she paused. She redirected to go left instead, but she only took one step before hesitating again.

Xerxes couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you lost?”

The girl whirled. Her hand went out to grab for something like she wanted to defend herself or some other outrageous thing, but when her gaze found him, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Relief.

Xerxes was sure he’d never seen another person relieved at the realization of his presence.

He pulled an arm up behind his head to get comfortable. She’d disturbed his peace long enough; she could flutter off now. He tried to close his eyes and resume his almost-nap, but her breathless panting filled his ears, and he cracked an eye open to find her a few steps closer.

“Excuse me,” the girl tried, though—this close she didn’t seem like a girl . More of a young woman. There was dry mud on her dress, and her hair was a wild lion’s mane atop her head. “Might you point me in the direction of the outer wall?” she asked. “This garden is much bigger than I expected.”

It occurred to Xerxes only then that this young woman did not realize whom she spoke to.

He glanced down at his own garments, noticing his white shirt was covered in soil from when he’d tripped and fallen into the melon patch on his way out of the palace.

His hair was tousled too from tossing and turning on the bench.

She probably thought he was a gardener, or worse, a servant .

It served him right for never wearing his blue robe of nobility unless forced.

“Forget it,” she said when he didn’t answer. The young woman dipped her head in apology and headed back toward the square fountain. Xerxes watched in disbelief as she paused—again—and turned back to face him.

“Actually, I could use a hand, if you don’t mind,” she said.

She could be killed for asking the King of Per-Siana for “a hand.”

“With what?” Xerxes asked anyway, though he didn’t get up.

He was ready to announce himself at this rate, just so she’d draw back in fear and be on her way.

But he cast her a look when she crept in close like she was going to tell him a secret.

She came right over him, blocking out the moonlight, and he flinched when she brought her face within inches of his.

“You’re strong,” she commented, looking him over in a way that made him wish he was wearing at least seven coats. Then she whispered, “I need you to lift me over the wall.”

Xerxes stared at her for several moments.

He didn’t recognize this young woman, so he couldn’t guess why she needed to leave the palace, and over the wall , of all things.

He studied her build, her height, guessing her age.

She was undoubtedly pretty, but her dress made her look like a maid.

A poor one, too, incapable of keeping herself tidy even in the presence of nobles.

“Why would I do that?” he asked. “Just walk out the front gate like a normal person.”

“I can’t,” she said. She bit her bottom lip in distress, and Xerxes didn’t mean for his gaze to snap to her mouth when she did that, but it happened. “I’m one of the Heartstealers being trapped in the palace—”

“Trapped?” Xerxes couldn’t believe his ears.

“—I’m escaping.” The way she looked at him so desperately put an odd flinch in his abdomen, a flutter that may have been anger, perhaps, or insult, or…

Something else entirely. She reminded him of a rabbit in a snare.

Until she added, “You can’t really be that blind if you live in this palace.

You must see how the King has gathered these maidens, herding them all in like animals being led to their slaughter . ”

For a moment, the whole garden and courtyard swallowed Xerxes whole. He forgot how to blink. And then… the edge of his mouth tugged. He couldn’t help it; his misleading clothes, her abruptly honest words… This was possibly the most amusing thing he had ever seen in all his years as King.

He burst out laughing.

The girl’s face fell, and she drew back a step as her pretty lips pinched together into a scowl. She looked like she might run away from him now, as she should. She headed back toward the fountain, but Xerxes sat up, his eyes narrowing, his muscles flexing.

He should have her killed.

As the thought went through his mind, he became increasingly aware of the stillness of the garden. Of the quietness of the breeze. He looked around, waiting. He glanced up at the stars with a questioning face.

Where were the voices? Why had they not urged him to destroy this woman like they always did when he had a dark thought?

Either way, he should not let her leave. Something within him told him so, but… But it had been a while since he’d found something so outrageously funny. He’d forgotten the sound of his own laugh. He cleared his throat, finding it strained and strange.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have a terrible situation to escape from.” The girl bid him farewell as she finally chose which direction to go in and began heading that way.

“Wait,” he said.

She stopped, turning back to him one last time as he rose from the bench. Xerxes folded his arms and studied her.

Drag her back to the palace to be punished?

Drag her back to the palace to be executed?

Drag her back to the palace and force her to finish the Heartstealer courtship like he was being forced to?

Have the Folke kill her on the spot? It would be nice to be done with it.

There were too many options. And though he was a young man who often craved the power he’d lost forever, there were times such as this he wished someone would just tell him what to do so he didn’t have to think so hard.