Page 5

Xerxes scowled at him. “Do you want me to leave you behind?” he threatened, and Reza shut his mouth.

Clouds overhead disrupted the moonlight. Xerxes glanced in the direction of their camp hidden by darkness, then back to where his men were eliminating the rest of the archer spies. Many body-shaped shadows still moved upon the cliff. He readjusted his grip on Reza, his fingers warm with Reza’s blood.

“You can’t really be thinking about taking me back yourself, Xerxes,” Reza said, and Xerxes’s lips twisted a little. “By the Divinities—it’s dark and you’d only have me to look out for you the whole walk. Stop being so reckless.”

Xerxes sighed. He released Reza to see if the man could even stand on his own. Reza wobbled but he kept his balance, his blood-speckled boots shaking in the sand.

“Get him!” a shout tore through the night.

A man in scarlet and bronze crested the steep cliff, leaping off the peak and sprinting into the desert. Shadows and starlight rippled over him as he darted up a dune and sprang off the other side.

Xerxes’s legs jerked into motion—he yanked Reza’s bow to himself and scooped an arrow off the ground as he soared back over the dune. Wind flooded his ears as his feet hit the sand, and he raced across the valley, eyes trained on the spot where the spy had vanished.

“Xerxes! Don’t go alone!” Reza’s voice was a distant echo, lost to the flood of predatory instincts channelling through Xerxes’s veins.

Sand liquified around his ankles as he reached the next dune and clawed his way up, then fell to a knee at the top and swung the loaded bow around. He aimed into the dark, peering down the end of the arrow at stretches of shallow sand dunes for miles beyond. The arrow tip wavered with his deep breaths, and he blinked, trying to get a sharp focus past the sweat tickling his eyes and the warm desert air mocking him.

At least three hills stood between him and the B’rei Mira spy, three walls of sand shielding his prey. Xerxes lowered the arrow and climbed to his feet. He let the bow slide from his fingers and hit the dust as he weighed the danger of chasing after the spy—alone. He glanced over his shoulder toward the cliffs, smoky and dark now apart from the burning tree. No Per-Siana soldiers were close by; only the imprint of footsteps he’d left behind stared back at him.

“Ahhhh,” he growled, tugging at his hair and spinning back toward where the spy was a speck on the horizon now. Xerxes might have been able to catch him. He might have had the endurance to last longer than this soldier. But he would be far from his division and worse, he might run himself right into enemy territory.

He turned his back to the desert. The slope of the dune was harder to conquer on the way down than it had been on the way up. The sand felt colder now, the air nipping at the back of his neck. Xerxes’s flesh tightened into bumps, and an unsteady trickle of disgust crawled into his stomach.

The lines of the desert teetered on the climb back to Division One as it settled in that, after months of running, hiding, and evading Alecsander of B’rei Mira, soon the whole desert might know exactly where he was.

Curse the Celestial Divinities.

There was a time not too long ago when Xerxes had walked glittering palace halls with floors swept clean by celestial magic, sat at a table that never ran out of food, and passed by sparkling windows that revealed glorious provinces of temples, artistic moonbeam statues, and magnificent spindled buildings. But out here, sand found its way into everything. It was a constant thorn in his side when all he craved was a sandless bed, a sandless bath, and a sandless pair of boots or sandals.

Before he came to war, Xerxes had spent eight days recruiting the best stealth hunters from across the provinces to form his personal division. He’d devoted ten straight days to intense training in the desert afterward, training that involved memorizing a list of rules: Never mention the King’s titles in front of the enemy. Never let a written report mention the King’s location. Never tell a soul where the King of Per-Siana hid within the ranks of his soldiers. Even though Division One suffered constant discomfort in the sand, the inconvenience became secondary to the strictest rule: Never fail to silence the desert.

When they finally collided with B’rei Mira warriors after training, Division One was unstoppable. Their victory stories fuelled the Per-Siana army across the desert, giving a fresh breath of hope to the army’s weary lungs. Other divisions weren’t allowed to know where Division One was at any given time, but the reports went out after every success, finding the armies in the furthest wasteland regions and telling them about Division One’s accomplishments. At least, that was how it had started. After only six weeks, Xerxes’s division was forced to go into hiding, avoiding the enemy instead of confronting them.

“No enemy escapes. Leave no witnesses.” It was the anthem chanted at every Division One training session. Secrecy was the thing Xerxes’s division was best at, even when hope had started to slide through the army’s fingers with the stalling of victory reports.

For months, Xerxes’s location had been a mystery. By now, Alecsander of B’rei Mira would have heard that King Xerxes, son of the late King Draco, had come to lead the armies in navy blue. Alecsander would have heard of the great advancements Xerxes had made and of all the B’rei Mira warriors that had fallen at the King of Per-Siana’s hand. It had taken Xerxes less than four weeks to drive the B’rei Mira armies back out of Per-Siana and into the desert. Rumour claimed that citizens were singing Xerxes’s praises back in the Mother City, using his name in ballads, writing his war stories in odes upon temple walls. For such a young king to chase a powerful army away, to take back villages and enforce the kingdom boundaries, it left much for theatrical storytellers to work with. Per-Siana was a modest kingdom in size and population in comparison to the B’rei Mira empire made of accumulated riches, advanced weapons, and stolen kingdoms. Against such a force known for their vicious conquests, Per-Siana was vastly and cruelly weaker.

It was the reason Xerxes woke up every morning expecting his luck to run out.

King Alecsander hadn’t come for Xerxes himself yet. Maybe it was because Alecsander wasn’t even in the desert. Maybe his messengers were reporting back to him while he sat in his palace, feasting and sleeping upon a bed of feathers. Maybe Alecsander didn’t even consider the Per-Siana army a threat worth climbing off his throne for, and that’s why Xerxes hadn’t crossed him yet.

Unless Alecsander of B’rei Mira was just waiting for Xerxes to be found. Waiting for an opportunity just like the one Xerxes had now given him—where a spy could point to the exact part of the desert Xerxes was hiding in.

Either way, Xerxes planned to make himself a threat worth climbing off a throne for.

Whispers rippled through Division One on the march back to camp. Xerxes spat the taste of sand from his mouth as he listened to the distress in the men’s voices and caught them stealing looks at him. He could feel the questions in their eyes. He picked up speed, marching around a scattered forest of dry trees and onto a path through twin rock peaks. The rest of the division caught up with him at the small city of navy tents hidden by black rock structures lit with flickering torches and giving off the scent of roasting meat. Every soldier guarding the camp stopped what they were doing and stood at attention when Xerxes appeared through the peaks.

Whispers died down, leaving only the sound of the wind slipping through the rocks and quivering tent flaps in camp.

“We need to move locations!” Xerxes shouted the words he’d dreaded saying since they found this sheltered spot to settle in weeks ago. Every time his division moved, the men grew more weary. And this time it would be worse—they’d be running. “Right away. Right now!” He glanced over at his soldiers as he yelled, but he didn’t see General Reza’s droopy eyes or unruly beard. “A B’rei Mira soldier has escaped into the desert.”

Soft inhales lifted from soldiers along the path as suntanned faces changed from curious to worried. Thankfully, the camp guards had cooked the last of the meat so they could eat during their escape.

The last of the meat. Their water supply was dwindling too.

Army physicians jogged over, herding injured soldiers toward their medicine tents, every movement slow and careful like the soldiers were made of glass. Xerxes’s hands tightened into fists at his sides, urgency scraping against his nerves. Time for medicine, or stitching up blade wounds, or extracting arrows, or anything, was a luxury they didn’t have. He hated to do this, but it was for their own good—hopefully they were intelligent enough to see that.

“Pack your weapons and ready the horses. We set off within the hour.”