Page 31

“Don’t let them find you, Your Majesty! All of Per-Siana is counting on you to live!” Commander Malore yanked off his gloves and handed them to Xerxes last. With that, he slipped back into the shadows, and the cold, lonely night air rushed into Xerxes, colliding with the heat from the camp on fire.

Xerxes gazed out at the tents where Vafat moved by in duos, attacking Per-Siana soldiers before they were ready, most not wearing their armour yet. B’rei Mira warriors rushed in next, clashing swords against the Division One lookouts. Men were being dragged from their tents. Xerxes gritted his teeth when he saw Reza jerked through the feasting tent flap and thrown to the ground. The General drew his sword as he rolled. He came up stabbing, catching the enemy in the side, and Xerxes took the opportunity to race in and finish the warrior off.

The man in a scarlet kilt doubled over in the sand, and Reza blinked up at Xerxes in the scarf. The General’s drooping eyes flickered with recognition, but he didn’t dare speak the words, “Your Majesty” aloud. Instead, he scrambled to his feet and stayed at Xerxes’s side.

Those in red and bronze continued to descend over the dunes in overwhelming numbers. Every time an enemy was struck down, another stepped into its place. The first ten minutes were a frenzy, not giving anyone in navy time to take a full breath, let alone stop arrows and blades from finding them. Xerxes dropped to a knee and sliced in the gap beneath a copper pectoral, tossing an enemy aside.

A club struck Xerxes’s back. He rolled in the sand, his sword slipping from his grip, and when he looked up, a crooked smile spread across a brawny B’rei Mira man’s face until a Per-Siana soldier with rattling celestial bells swept in and stabbed him. Joshua glided into position before Xerxes with a shield raised, and the loud collision of an arrow striking it echoed in Xerxes’s ears as he stood, catching Joshua just as he tripped backward from the impact.

A smear of blood showed on Joshua’s cheek when he turned and shouted over the noise, “They’re taking our divisions hostage!” He pointed across the oasis where Per-Siana men were being dragged toward the hill and into the army in red, dots of navy smothered by a scarlet ocean.

Two pale Vafat in beaded masks appeared around a tent, bringing the fragrance of burning foliage with them. They paused, their purple eyes scanning faces, and Xerxes held his breath. The burning smell crept into his scarf, filling his nose and scratching at his throat—he coughed. The Vafat’s heads spun toward him, and his stomach dropped as he dragged his heels backward, his fingers padding over his hands, his neck, his jaw… He didn’t know if the ink was showing.

They rushed him. Xerxes shrieked as their blades brushed by his legs, arms, and neck in a dozen swift movements he barely had time to block. He backed toward the rocks, taking a shallow hit to his elbow and another thin slice over his knee. The monsters were shredding him to pieces—slowly—and he growled.

A silver sword gleamed at his right, and the sound of metal striking metal rang in Xerxes’s ear as General Reza’s green cape entered his vision. The Vafat retreated, eyeing Reza over their beaded face coverings. Xerxes inhaled a sharp breath and tugged the scarf away from his neck, his panting dampening the fabric as his wobbling knees threatened to give out. That smell—it was like a burning humid forest whose smoke crawled down his throat and stabbed his insides with tiny daggers.

The ground teetered. Xerxes’s gaze fell to the desert below his feet just as it erupted. A giant claw of sand came over him and pushed him down into a whirlpool, his boots filling. Reza leapt to try and grab him as he was sucked down, their fingers grazing each other.

All sounds of battle were replaced with moving sand in Xerxes’s ears. His lungs screamed as he refused to breathe it in, as he tried to swim his way back up.

“Help!” he screamed through his mind. But no one could hear a call for help from a mind—he knew that. But still… He squeezed his eyes closed against the grains. “Help…”

As King, he’d never asked another person for help in his life, apart from one single time at a dance. His whole reign of kingship had come to this, and now, no one could hear him below the sand. Xerxes’s arms stopped fighting as it dawned on him, his fingers stopped clawing, his chest roaring for air. Logic and panic waged a war within him, but logic won in the end. He’d already learned long ago that no one, not even the Celestial Divinities, could hear a cry for help from a mind.

“I can.”

Xerxes’s lashes fluttered as something plunged into the ground, pushing against the current. Warm fingers wrapped around his wrist, and Xerxes almost opened his eyes as he was torn upward. He kicked against the grains, breaking the surface with a gasp. He tasted dust, his nose plugged, his eyes burning. Reza knelt over him, holding tight to his hand, the aged man’s droopy eyes glossed, his brows pulled together. Ten Division One soldiers stood in a formation around them, battling the B’rei Mira warriors trying to break through. He didn’t see the Vafat from before.

Xerxes’s legs shook as Reza helped him up. He sneezed and blinked away the dust, his shoulders trembling as his vision adjusted. For a split second, he gazed down at the ground where he’d nearly suffocated. Had a god… saved him? It was an absurd thought.

Reza must have saved him.

His gaze caught on an abandoned boot in the sand. A body missing a boot laid a few feet away. A body in elite Division One leathers. He glanced to another one just past it. Xerxes’s dry lips parted as he beheld bodies across the destroyed camp in every direction, unmoving soldiers in navy. He saw the camp in ruins, burned to a crisp. He saw Per-Siana falling. He saw… Divinities, he saw the end.

This was it. The moment he was dreading.

“Keep fighting, Xerxes,” Reza’s low voice urged.

Keep fighting. Because this would all be over the minute he stopped. Per-Siana would be taken the minute he stopped.

Beyond the General, Xerxes saw a fleet of messengers tear away from the camp. Horses stampeded over the sand into the darkness. Red-feathered arrows sliced through the skies after them, taking down one, then another, and one more.

Only one messenger made it out.

12

RYN

Ryn’s father once told her a story about a giant creature named Hadhayosh, only mentioned in the vault of sacred Weylin scriptures he happened to know a few things about. The Hadhayosh dwelled with the Celestial Divinities in the sky, safeguarding nature and offering divine protection to the holiest. He was a great giant in the shape of an animal with horns.

It wasn’t that Ryn didn’t believe in myths and powers. She’d seen enough to know there were forces around her that couldn’t be explained. But when she thought of the Hadhayosh giant after her father told her the story, she’d always glanced up at the sky and shaken her head. Only a great white dragon had resided up there. But her father had always believed giants were real, even though the tale of Hadhayosh was part of the vaulted stories.

It took Ryn exactly ten seconds after arriving atop Sindahir Valley to realize what a “stalemate” was. Lines of Per-Siana soldiers in their coveted blue uniforms and silvery armour shook in their boots as they beheld the thing standing in the wide space between them and the B’rei Mira army. To the left was a sharp cliff edge before a steep drop into a cracked ravine. To the right was a shelf of rock blocking any path of escape except back through the valley where Burn Division Twelve came from.

“What is that thing?” Heva murmured in horror, lifting the visor of her helmet and staring at it with tilted brows. She pushed a matted chunk of hair out of her eyes.

The creature was at least three times Ryn’s height and as wide as two bulls side by side. Its metal helmet studded with rubies looked like it reached the sky from where Ryn stood. The rest of its hideous body was covered in B’rei Mira armour, its breastplate depicting a large coiling black snake.