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Heva’s face filled Ryn’s mind. Bastone’s. Faro’s. Dolem’s. They would all die for her deceit. They’d suffer the same fate as Kai if she didn’t get them out of the army immediately.

“I’m leaving, King,” she told him. “I apologize for appearing before you when you said you never wanted to see me again.” Though sarcasm bit at her words, it was a far less cruel farewell than the one he’d given her.

Xerxes’s eyes rolled back. He blinked rapidly as a glaze came over them, and Ryn’s tight shoulders dropped when his grip loosened. She released a quiet huff of disbelief, wondering how severely intoxicated he was by the physicians’ tonics. He might not even remember this moment when he woke; the moment she’d finally unleashed all she’d needed to say.

So, she straightened herself as Xerxes’s fingers slid off her wrist and weakly hit the cot. And she added the last thing she never got to tell this boy she’d once stood with on an island, “You really are a monster, Xerxes.” She bit her lower lip. “I cared about you. I might have even loved you. But you never loved me back.”

The reality of her own whisper settled in her ears. She slid her mask back on, fastening it into place as Xerxes shook his head like he was trying to make her stay, trying to keep himself awake. But his eyelids dragged halfway down his eyes and his head fell back on the cot.

“Don’t fight your sleep, King. This is just a dream.” She turned her back to his bed, deeply inhaling the spicy, potent smell of medicine as she headed for the opening and pulled the tent flap aside. Light spilled over her breastplate.

“I missed you.”

Xerxes’s cracked words were a knife at her throat, keeping her from escaping even though her whole being knew it was the right thing to do.

She pictured how Xerxes had looked when she spotted him in the Final Stand battle wearing his disguise. He was strong and healthy, his focus on taking down B’rei Mira unwavering. All this time they’d been together he looked like he’d never had a second thought about her or the Heartstealer trials.

“Don’t lie to me, Xerxes,” she whispered back.

She left the tent with a hand pressed over her heart, fingers splayed against the metal of her breastplate. The sound of Xerxes’s quiet snores drifted after her, and all the physicians waiting outside separated to make a walking path between them like the Gold Maiden was the King of Per-Siana, not the tormented young man lying in the tent at her back.

Xerxes slept for the full day and night under his potent sleeping medicines. A full day and night he didn’t have to spare. In that time, hushed gossip raced through the camp that back in Per-Siana, the new Heartstealer trials were being advertised on the palace banners. Xerxes had reportedly been getting updates about it and hadn’t shut the event down.

At first, Ryn couldn’t piece together why the King she knew would ever allow himself to partake in the trials again after his behaviour during the last one. She wondered just how much he must have changed in the army to be willing to have his future paraded before the kingdom like before. But after a while it occurred to her that there was one version of it all that made sense.

Maybe Xerxes knew his end was coming. Maybe that was why he didn’t care this time around. After his stunt with the deathstalker, Ryn was beginning to wonder if Xerxes actually planned to live after the meeting between kings, or if he didn’t see himself returning to the palace at all.

Ryn was spinning a dry twig around in her fingers in the burn division tent the second morning when Heva jogged in to report that the King had finally woken up. Ryn was glad she wasn’t there to see his face when the doctors broke the news to him that he only had one day left.

“I missed you.”

The words of a highly medicated Weylin liar.

Despite herself, Ryn smirked. The King’s behaviour was a tale for the legend books. No one would have believed it if she told them what Xerxes had said in the medicine tent. How hard he’d tried to lie; like a little boy begging his friends not to leave so he didn’t have to play in the sand alone.

They were both liars though. Two liars under the same hot desert sun. Two soldiers fighting two different battles.

She thought Xerxes would spend his last day strategizing with his commanders. She thought he’d train with General Reza for the worst-case scenarios. She thought he’d eat and nourish his body before what might turn into the greatest fight of his life.

The one thing she didn’t expect was for him to come charging into the feasting tent with bloodshot eyes and glistening with sweat, his torn nightshirt hanging off him in strips. He knocked a serving table by the entrance, sending a full platter of rice into the sand as he stumbled. A cook wailed in alarm and dove out of his path as his blue eyes tore around the soldiers, flickering from face to face, white knuckles gripping the edge of the serving table. Conversations around the tent died off, everyone looking around to see what had startled the King and who in all of Per-Siana he was looking for.

But Ryn knew. Even before his gaze landed on her across the tent. Even before he released his hold on the table and staggered over the sand, tipping from chair to chair and grabbing anything on his route for balance.

“By the Divinities,” Bastone muttered. He and Heva both stood, but they could do nothing as Xerxes reached Burn Division Twelve’s table, shivering, his lips nearly as purple as the ink veining over his neck and chest. A physician chased after him extending a silk jacket, but Xerxes waved the physician off with a swinging arm that almost struck him.

The King caught himself against the burn division table with his knuckles, staring across at Ryn as the whole tent held their breaths.

“Your Majesty, your medication hasn’t worn off yet,” the physician squeaked, gripping the silk jacket with shaking hands. “You’re not well!”

“Was it really a dream?” Xerxes asked. There was no mistaking who he spoke to as his dark blue gaze burrowed into Ryn, saw past her armour, found purchase on her soul. Her cheeks warmed behind her mask when she stood. She was all too aware of Heva’s and Bastone’s questioning looks at her sides. All too aware of the rest of her burn division watching and wondering what was going on between their commander and the King.

Her mouth dried, and she swallowed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Your Majesty. Can you be specific?” she said. “Did the deathstalker venom give you a delusion yesterday?”

Heartless. It’s what he’d been once. It’s what she had to be back. All the people at her table in beige garb were the evidence she still had something to protect.

Xerxes didn’t move. He waited like he thought she might change her mind. But when several seconds passed, he released his grip on Burn Division Twelve’s table. He staggered back, nearly bumping into the physician, and rubbed his forehead with his bandaged hand.

A soldier nearby murmured something indecipherable about the King’s marking. He was too far away for Xerxes to hear, but Ryn heard. No one said the word ‘crazy’ aloud, but it rang through the silence, grating against Ryn’s nerves.