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“Why does he have that bright mark on his face, Mother?” a nearby girl asked. “Is it because he’s cursed?” Xerxes glanced at the little girl in surprise. He fought the impulse to touch his face, to cover his radiant violet marking.

Behind the girl and her mother, a large banner hung down a white stone building. A figure was stitched into it: gold armour, dark hair, a familiar gold mask. Xerxes’s eyes narrowed on the words, “The Gold Maiden” and “The Adriel Queen” written in clear Weylin script at the bottom. Xerxes stood to his feet. Past the banner, another image of her took up the full side of a grain tower. The painting made Commander Adassah look as tall as the gods when she wasn’t. He blinked at the golden images, wondering what sort of news had been making it back to the kingdom about the wars. A flit of jealousy moved through him, and for a moment, he resented that her burn division from the seventy-fifth province survived when Ryn’s didn’t.

Folke in blue and silver appeared at the end of the road with swords drawn. They looked at him like he was mad, the way they’d been trained to. They raised their hands toward him, trying to herd an animal into a cage. Xerxes’s set his jaw. Then, to Joshua, he whispered, “Keep them away from me.”

The shrill echo of Joshua’s sword drawing filled the street. Right there in the middle of the Mother City, ten Per-Siana army soldiers held weapons to the Folke, and people screamed. A nearby herald began writing on a news scroll, carriages came to a halt.

Xerxes drew his sword too. And when he began walking, the army and Folke alike moved out of his way, Joshua shoving Folke back to make a clear path. Xerxes marched down the Navy Road to the palace, listening to the uprising of curious and startled people the whole way. Two or three citizens threw rose petals at him that he trampled. Someone tossed glitter and Joshua snapped at them to stay back.

The front gate of the palace wall was swung open for Xerxes as he arrived, and servants cleared the garden, some even running. No one expected the early return of their monster King.

Xerxes broke into a run when he reached the palace stairs. His heart twisted into knots as he passed the front door, stormed through the bright atrium, rounded the curved hallways, and bashed in the door of the Room of Knowledge with a loud thud that made everyone inside jump.

A dozen sages looked up from their table, their books. They blinked at their King.

Xerxes went for a painting of Nyx first, one he knew Belorme had commissioned a famous artist to make of the goddess in a garden of pink Damask roses. Shards of the tattered painting flew around the room as he sliced it to ribbons, listening to Intelligentsia gasp and leap from their seats. He went for the table next. He jumped onto it, making Yelenos shriek as Xerxes kicked every book off apart from the last one—the one in front of Damon. That one, he stabbed. His sword sliced clean through the book and the table below it.

Damon flinched as Xerxes dropped to a knee on the tabletop before him. He pulled his sword out slowly, the scraping sound echoing around the room, and he held the silver blade that had spilled so much enemy blood these past months at the sage’s throat.

“I said no burn divisions.” Xerxes’s cold words came out an inhuman growl. “I am the King of this kingdom, over every province all the way to the mountains. You—” Xerxes nudged the tip of his sword against Damon’s neck. A slim drop of blood leaked down Damon’s pale, thin throat, disappearing behind the collar of his glorious sage coat. “—should be killed for directly disobeying an order.”

Damon’s black eyes flickered up. Something raced across them; a shadow of hatred Xerxes knew too well. The Chancellor was undeniably insulted that the King had flexed his authority. That Xerxes was the true King, and Damon wasn’t. It was like looking into the eyes of Belorme’s ghost.

“What’s gotten you so riled up, Your Majesty? Are you upset about losing someone?” Damon’s smooth, hissed words were ice on Xerxes’s skin. His purple mouth curled up at the corners, and he added, “I hear everyone in the Mother City prison tragically died. But isn’t it better we make space for new prisoners in that overcrowded prison with all the Adriels we’ve been forced to arrest lately?”

Xerxes’s mouth peeled apart and hung open. He would kill him. He would kill Damon. He drew his sword back to strike, his hand tightening on the handle. This was the day Damon would finally learn the limits of Xerxes’s patience.

A hand came around the end of his sword. Xerxes almost didn’t behold the navy army leathers, register the bright reds of Joshua’s ears. “Your Majesty,” Joshua said in a hushed, desperate tone. “The Intelligentsia aren’t the enemy!”

Xerxes dragged his gaze over to the soldier. Blood dripped out from Joshua’s fist where he held tight to Xerxes’s blade, saving Damon’s life. And Xerxes released a quiet huff of disbelief when he saw the desperate look in Joshua’s eyes that made it clear he thought Xerxes was confused. Because of all the battles, maybe. Joshua perhaps thought Xerxes was seeing Damon as a B’rei Mira enemy. But Joshua had no idea how much worse Damon could be than any of those B’rei Mira warriors Division One had faced.

Still, to his own enragement, he couldn’t hurt Joshua.

Xerxes lowered his sword and stood on the table, looking down at the Intelligentsia in disgust. He felt more beastly than ever—heartless, even without his voices telling him to be violent and terrible. But he was just another monster among many in this room.

He dropped from the table and marched for the exit. He shouldn’t have come back here. He shouldn’t have seen with his own eyes how absurd the Intelligentsia had become. He shouldn’t have gone to that prison and looked upon the empty caves. Maybe… Maybe Ryn wasn’t dead. Maybe she was out in the desert somewhere, lost and alone. Maybe he could find her before…

Before he met Alecsander and was either captured or killed in front of the whole Per-Siana army.

He’d barely made it out of the Room of Knowledge when Choi’s voice cut through the tense silence in the room. “Are you back for good, Your Majesty?” he asked. “We’ve been discussing the resurrection of the Heartstealer trials. As soon as you’re done entertaining yourself with this war, we’ll be sending out invitations to…”

Xerxes stopped short outside the doors. The flesh on his body tightened as fire and ice battled in his veins. He turned with rounded eyes, searching for the fool that had said such an outrageous thing.

Only now did Xerxes notice Choi’s new sage robe and those of all the others in the room, upgraded since the last time he saw them. Money spent on rich silk threads and polished gold buttons that could have been spent on food supplies for the army, supplies that might have kept them going for days or even weeks. Choi’s hood was off, allowing everyone to see his face as he bragged of the Intelligentsia’s accomplishments regarding the trials Xerxes wanted nothing to do with ever again. It gave Xerxes a clear view of the look Damon was shooting Choi that had made him stop talking.

Xerxes ventured back, a curse on his tongue, a scream in his shadow of a heart. “What…” It came out through his teeth, and a hooded sage jumped in surprise when he looked over his shoulder and saw Xerxes standing right there. “…did you say?” Xerxes finished, nailing Choi to his seat with his gaze.

The lead pen slipped from Choi’s hand and bounced off the table, clattering to the floor into a pile of crumbled lead.

“Finish that sentence,” Xerxes warned. “What did you just say you were planning while I’ve been entertaining myself in the desert?”

Choi looked down the table at Damon, at Yelenos. Then back at Xerxes. “The Heartstealer trials?” he guessed.

Xerxes was at the table, slamming his fist down and shaking everything. “You think the Heartstealer trials matter while just past the mountains of this kingdom, Per-Siana blood is being spilled in the sand?! You think it matters more than the deaths of hundreds of Per-Siana soldiers leaving behind young sons who must grow up without fathers like I did?!” His gaze tore down the table to Damon. “Do not make such plans while my men are dying! Do you understand, Sage? Do you understand this order? Do you understand what I’ll do to you if you disobey me again?”

A modest smile curled up the corners of Damon’s mouth. “Your Majesty,” he said in a voice laced with poorly portrayed shock as his wretched eyes widened. “I wonder if what you’re really upset about is the reported deaths of the Mother City prison inmates who left for war with the first wave. I’m afraid we received a report that none of them survived—I thought you’d be relieved.” He lifted his hands calmly and folded them on the tabletop. “But if you’re truly upset about our kind gesture of sending you aid in the war, though I suppose we might feel a little offended, we can refrain from assisting you further.”

Xerxes stared, the spoils of the room—the rich wine scents, the cool air, the page-flipping noises of those brave enough to keep studying—all melting together in his vision. He saw only Damon there. Damon, whose purple lips twitched with a slice of something Xerxes couldn’t decipher. It couldn’t be gloating. It couldn’t be satisfaction. Because that would mean he’d won at something. And if Damon won—that meant he’d gotten confirmation that Ryn was dead. That meant he’d mobilized the Mother City prison in the first place specifically to eliminate her. He did this to her. He did this to Xerxes.