Page 48
The numbers were all wrong. He couldn’t count anymore.
Sand and dust met Xerxes’s eyes as he raced past the Per-Siana mountain border and entered the third province. Flowers embellished the streets, their scent a wave of powdery fragrance clashing with the heat and sweat on his body from the desert. Per-Siana citizens on the road wore silk starlight gowns and fitted silver jackets, some carrying large bouquets of pink roses. Xerxes had no idea which Divinity’s Day the third province was celebrating as he tore down the main street. People whirled, shrieked, leapt out of the way. Most didn’t recognize him as their King. They pointed at his armour, they pointed at his horse, they pointed at the glowing violet marks encroaching his face.
He made it through the third province in the blink of an eye and into the Mother City where the roads he used to gaze at from the lookout tower in the palace shone with scattered gems and blue glass. He ditched his horse on the Navy Road, sprinting through citizens, winding around glass carriages until he reached that curve in the road he’d thought about for so long.
He came around, spotting two prison guards with swords at their hips sitting at the mouth of a black iron gate. “Open it!” he shouted at them, startling them off their stools. The guards looked at him in awe, then at each other. “I said open it!” Xerxes screamed again, slamming his palm against the bars in his way when he reached them.
“Y… Your Maj… Majesty?” The guard fumbled with a large key—the sound of the lock clicking booming against Xerxes’s mind. He thrashed the gate doors aside and flew down a set of stairs into utter darkness, cursing his eyes for not adjusting fast enough when he reached the bottom.
Faint orange torchlight sharpened into view overhead. Then a wide cave with holes everywhere. A truly miserable, despicable room, and his heart rolled over in his chest. He went further in, entering a wide tunnel, and he spotted an aged woman leaning against the wall. There was another inmate with only one leg, hunching on a crutch.
“Your Majesty!” the guards called as they scrambled down the stairs after him.
Xerxes went back to the lobby cave and looked down three sets of hallways. “Where are all the people?” he rasped as the guards came to a sliding halt behind him. He whirled on them. “Where are all the prisoners?!” His voice whipped through the cave, echoing into the corners and holes in the walls.
The guards cowered before him, raising their hands. “They went to war,” one answered, fear flashing across his eyes like he’d heard every dreadful rumour about the monster-king and what happened when he grew angry. “No one came back,” he added.
No one came back…?
Xerxes shook his head. “No… that’s not…” He lifted his hands, his fingers showing him numbers. He’d counted all the days. He knew how many days… His chest pumped, a strain of unfamiliar pain tightening around his lungs and dragging him down to the floor. He barely caught himself on a knee while his fingers dug into the fabric at his chest, yanking his breastplate away as he gasped. As the cave spun around him. Somewhere in the spinning room, he saw the blue and silver of Folke coming in. Muffled shouts rang over him, but he couldn’t hear them, couldn’t decipher the words.
His watery gaze dragged over to the old woman at the side of the cave. Then to the inmate with only one leg. People unfit for war.
Xerxes slammed a fist over his mouth as the cave shook, threatening to tear apart and crush him in the rubble. No. No. No. The tunnels grew smaller.
He’d seen the list of prisons that had been drafted into the war on that scroll the messenger delivered to the strategy tent at the oasis. He thought his eyes were deceiving him when he read in clear letters: THE MOTHER CITY PRISON. It was the third one on the list. He’d read it over six times, believing he’d only tricked himself.
But it was true… The prisoners were all gone from their cave cells.
Why were they all gone? He’d told the Intelligentsia… He’d told them not to…
He inhaled a shuddering breath as he replayed what the messenger had said—that all the burn divisions were wiped out. Only one had survived, and it wasn’t one from this prison…
Oh, Divinities, it wasn’t one from this prison.
Xerxes sprang to his feet, pushing past the guards, pushing through the Folke on the stairs, and stumbling toward the light to a street of blurred, spinning colours and watered down sounds. He staggered onto the road, forcing a horse to lurch back and the driver to redirect a carriage. Xerxes blinked. He saw moving people, bodies. Pointing people. Whispering people. Yet…
One person he did not see.
Ryn was not here.
Ryn, who couldn’t properly hold a sword, had been sent to war in a burn division. After all he’d seen in the desert, he knew she wouldn’t have lasted an hour out there.
Divinities, Ryn was never coming back.
Xerxes’s lashes fluttered, his skin pulling tight and turning gray. He felt moisture forming over his flesh, certain his face was growing horrid, until a woman made a loud remark about his handsomeness, and only then did he look down at his hands and find them normal.
He tripped as he stepped forward, falling to his knees again where Per-Siana citizens pointed and watched their King lose the last sane grains of his mind.
Was Ryn really… dead?
His only friend, gone? He’d done the only thing he could to keep her safe. He’d sent her to this prison instead of the Execution Hall.
“Your Majesty!” a familiar voice sailed through the chatter. It was the clinking sound of Joshua’s celestial bells that brought Xerxes back to reality, that made him realize where he was.
He looked around in surprise, grasping for the first time that he was in the Mother City because he’d ridden all through the night and day without stopping. He didn’t even remember passing the mountains.
Down the road, nobles in glittering blues and silvers leaned toward each other to whisper. They asked if he was the King. They commented on his tan, on his armour. No one spoke in hushed enough tones to spare him from hearing.
