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Ryn had never been more relieved to be wearing a mask. She had no idea what her face was doing as Xerxes noticed them there and inspected her and Bastone curiously, his sharp blue eyes flickering from her to him, then back again.

“Sorry to interrupt your…” He pointed between them with his sword. “…whatever this is.”

Ryn sucked in a gasp of horror, holding her breath against the urge to snap back at him. For a moment, the chittering bugs in the tall grass around the pool were the only thing that dared to reply.

Bastone’s cheeks flushed a deep shade of pink. “We were doing nothing of the sort, Your Majesty. I would never… get distracted by a fellow soldier.”

Xerxes raised a brow, then glanced down at where Bastone still held his sword out defensively toward the King. Bastone lowered the weapon quickly, sliding it back into its sheath with a sharp sound that rang all the way around the oasis.

“I didn’t say what I thought you were doing.” Xerxes dragged his arms up to fold them, his sword swinging idly at his side from his fingertips. He frowned, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Now I’m curious—what were you doing? You can’t be here for a bath in that armour piece, Commander Adassah. The Divinities know you’d drown if you jumped in like that.” He nodded down to Ryn’s breastplate.

Ryn’s tongue moved, but her lips drifted closed. The bugs by the pool sang again, and a breeze murmured through the grass.

Adassah. Her real name sounded foreign coming from Xerxes’s mouth, like a forbidden curse he was never meant to utter. He said it so casually, reciting simple facts. But he must have known it was an Adriel name—everyone else did.

Her fingers peeled off the rock wall at her back. She didn’t even realize she’d been gripping a ledge. A stone beneath her boot made a scraping sound as she stepped forward. “K…” She bit her words, heat surging back in with a vengeance when she realized she’d almost called him ‘King’. No one called him that. No one but Estheryn Electus, the Heartstealer maiden. The second that word escaped her lips, her guise would be over.

So, she closed her mouth again.

After a second, Xerxes sniffed, scratching at the bright purple paint on his neck, nearly a light of its own under the setting sun. “Whatever. Carry on then.” He waved a hand at them.

Bastone bowed, his knee hitting the grass. “We’ll leave you to the pool, Your Majesty,” he said. New sounds of chatting guards lifted through the stone alley, and four Division One soldiers appeared with the King’s white dragon emblem on their leathers. Bastone grabbed Ryn’s wrist like before. Xerxes’s gaze flickered down to it as Bastone turned her toward the alley.

“Wait.”

It was spoken like a command, and everyone in the oasis slowed, even the Division One soldiers. When Ryn looked back, she almost yelped.

Xerxes stared right at her.

He angled his head, blue eyes squinting. Then he said, “Everyone leave us.”

Bastone’s face came around, his bright gaze finding Ryn, his lips pinched dismally. All the words he’d said about their dual execution flitted through Ryn’s mind, pulling at the skin on her arms.

“Bastone,” Ryn pleaded quietly. “Don’t go.” But Bastone released his hold, his fingers sliding off in stiff movements. He turned away and followed the Division One soldiers up the path without looking back. They were all blanketed in fresh night shadows as they disappeared between the rocks.

Ryn turned just in time to see Xerxes drag his gaze off where Bastone had gone. A small crease rested between his brows, and he looked at her from lazy, half-closed eyelids that made her wonder if he was glaring or tired. He tossed his sword into the grass, not hiding a tiny, fluttering eye roll well enough.

Ryn swallowed as Xerxes sauntered over, dragging a hand through his hair and brushing it out of his eyes as he looked her over. His gaze snagged on the braid Heva had carefully knotted, then her loosely fastened breastplate, her slender legs in the same Folke tights she’d worn the day she was sentenced. They were vastly different now; mangled, dirty. He wouldn’t recognize them.

Xerxes folded his arms over his tunic and tapped his bicep with his signet ring finger. He looked like a servant in his mangled shirt and messy hair. Strangers couldn’t have identified him as a king if he took off that ring.

“K…” Oh, Divinities, she almost called him ‘King’ again. “Your Majesty,” Ryn forced out, voice cracking as she took a step back at the same time Xerxes took another step toward her. Her hand reached behind her back, slapping the rock wall and finding purchase on a jut. She could hardly take in a full breath when he drew in closer until his body was inches from hers.

Xerxes kept his arms folded as he leaned in and squinted, peering through the slits in her mask, his lips tugging in subtle, small ways. She inhaled the fragrance of his medicine creams and a rich floral soap that reminded her of the palace.

Ryn held her breath. She didn’t move, wouldn’t breathe in and risk their bodies bumping into each other. She’d imagined this moment a thousand times, the moment of coming face to face with Xerxes, of having a chance to speak her mind. But she never thought she’d be wearing a mask if she ever saw him again. In fact, she’d already accepted back in the caves that they’d probably never cross paths, that maybe both El and the Celestial Divinities were working in their own ways to ensure they didn’t.

But here he was, looking right at her.

A hiccup escaped her lips when Xerxes leaned in, his cheek almost brushing her mask. He tilted his face toward Ryn’s neck, and something fluttered across her stomach as he inhaled, sniffing twice.

Xerxes’s brows furrowed when he pulled back, his mouth tipping down at the corners. “You’re mortal,” he said, more to himself. “I thought you were a goddess, but goddesses don’t smell like…” He reached up and plugged his nose. “You need a bath, Maiden.”

The flutters in Ryn’s abdomen fell flat. Her jaw dropped, prickles of heat pushing up her cheeks when she realized what he’d been doing. It was as if the breeze in the oasis changed directions. All her nerves vanished, replaced with the same heat beneath her breastplate that made her want to plunge into the nearby pool and disappear from existence for a while.

Of course she smelled bad; she was living in a desert.

“How do you know what a goddess smells like? Have you met one?” she shot out before she could stop herself. Then she bit down hard on her tongue when his face twitched at her tone.