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Adassah lifted her sword, but she paused as the other woman with her followed suit and pulled off her helmet for just a moment, wiping her face with the collar of her shirt before pulling her helmet back over her head. The two continued to spar. They erupted in laughter when they tripped each other and fell at the same time. And that laugh sailed into him like she’d walked across the sand and driven her blade into his heart.

Xerxes pulled himself backward, shuffling out of the opening, going flat against the rock wall out of sight. He could still hear them, their swords, their chuckles.

For a moment, he saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing. Forgot where he was. Because he must have been back in the palace. He’d just seen the Folke guardswoman who was assigned to protect Estheryn Electus at the Heartstealer trials. He wasn’t even sure how he’d recognized her when he was so terrible at remembering faces and names. And if it really had been her out there, sparring with Adassah in the desert, then he could believe what else he’d just witnessed with his own two clear eyes.

He just saw Ryn.

Adassah… was Ryn.

Xerxes’s fist came slowly over his mouth, crushing his lips. He didn’t know what sorts of sounds might come out if he let go. Ryn’s smile, her mannerisms, the way she scrunched her tiny nose when she laughed. The face he’d seen in his dreams and had imagined behind the gold mask. He was right all along—he wasn’t obsessed with a thing he’d created, or trying to distract himself out of fear of things to come. He wasn’t crazy like the soldiers assumed when he’d thought his dream of her in the medicine tent was real. It all was real. His instincts had been spot on.

A horrid huff of breath escaped his mouth, slipping through his fingers.

The maiden he wanted was alive.

Every last bit of meat and fruit left in the camp was pulled out. The fancy desk chair was dragged from the strategy tent for Xerxes to sit in. Trumpets were blown, drums found, and star bells and tambourines clattered to a beat. Another great bonfire was erected as soon as night fell. Xerxes didn’t join in the celebrations, but the soldiers hooted and hollered anyway, raising their victory songs to the heavens. Praising the Celestial Divinities and turning the campsite into a widespread Weylin revelry.

There were more than a few soldiers who didn’t partake in the dancing or sky worship. It made it easy to figure out who the practicing Adriels were. It was the first time Xerxes realized just how many Adriels were in his army, though he supposed some of the men were simply too tired to dance as they lounged around in the sand.

Ryn was back in her mask, but she fashioned a lighter outfit now; a spilling white robe that followed the movements of the night breeze yet still hid her size and frame with its layers. She walked around the fire, sparkling in the golden firelight even though she didn’t have her armour on. Still deceivingly tall in her heels. Xerxes’s cheek was slumped against his fist as he watched her find a seat on a flat rock amidst a few Division One members. Her guardswoman was with her in the same scratched-up helmet, and the two of them took up the whole rock, balancing to fit.

Xerxes sighed and sat up straight, smoothing his hands down the robe of nobility he’d worn throughout the Heartstealer trials. That he’d worn for most of his youth, actually. He wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to wear it tonight, or the signet ring on his finger, or his crown.

Xerxes was going back to Per-Siana. Soon these items would be his everyday wear and he’d quickly learn to hate them again.

Reza’s coarse laughter boomed over the revelry. The General was viciously eating a meat skewer, the juices dribbling down his chin into his beard. Joshua laughed with him, clapping and going red in the ears, and Xerxes swallowed, wondering if he would ever hear those laughs again.

His gaze drifted back to Ryn twirling a gold flute in her fingers. He’d heard from Reza that Commander Adassah had decided to stay in the desert. But of course she would. He pulled his stare off her and settled it on a pair of loud men singing a common Weylin tune a few feet away. He knew as well as Ryn would that if she returned to Per-Siana, as Estheryn Electus or Adassah Cahana, she’d be a target of the Intelligentsia. The Gold Maiden would be murdered, and the Intelligentsia would chalk it up to an accident. She was better off staying in the army with three meals a day and a cot to sleep on. In fact, she’d be a lunatic to ever come back to the kingdom for any reason, even if the rules claimed she’d paid for her past crimes. Legally, she was free now until she was found guilty of new crimes.

Such as… hiding her identity from the King in the desert. Divinities, he couldn’t believe Ryn was still hiding, even now. He couldn’t believe they’d stood side-by-side against Alecsander, faced death, and even after that, she didn’t think it necessary to tell him who she was with her own mouth.

Xerxes bit down on his lips. He sprang from his glorious chair a second later and marched around the fire. “Do you want to dance, Commander Adassah?”

The question shot out before he could stop it, causing several Division One soldiers nearby to glance up at him. People around the fire leaned to watch, turning their ears toward the King asking one of his esteemed commanders to dance with him on the final night before he left the desert.

Ryn’s hair slid off her shoulders when she looked up. She dropped the flute to her chest where it rattled on a thin chain. Her dark hair blended into the night around her, her brown eyes looking at him through the holes of her mask.

He extended a hand. He didn’t smile. It wasn’t a request.

It didn’t get past him that the last time he’d danced with Ryn, he’d asked her to cure him of his voices.

When Ryn didn’t move, the guardswoman beside her shoved her off her seat. Ryn yelped and Xerxes caught her arm out of the air, tugging her up in the same motion. Their other hands collided when they reached for each other, and Xerxes wrapped his fingers around hers. He walked backward, bringing her to where dozens of men and women danced beneath the moon. The fire’s warmth brushed his back as he reached around her baggy robe and pulled her to him, finding the real shape of her waist, and her brown eyes darted up to his. If she wasn’t wearing a mask, she’d be close enough to kiss like this.

Twice, he had kissed her like this.

Twice wasn’t enough.

He swallowed and glanced at the fire. He wasn’t foolish enough to try and convince her to come back to Per-Siana. If she already decided she was staying in the army, that meant she didn’t want to come back. And she’d made that decision knowing who Xerxes was, even if he hadn’t known for certain who she was. It would be a miracle if she didn’t hate him for everything at this point—the palace, the prison, the burn division. She was alive, but she wasn’t still breathing because of him anymore.

“You remind me of someone,” he said as he tugged her into a glide. It wasn’t much of a dance, but he knew she hadn’t a clue about the dance routines of nobles. “It’s driving me crazy.”

Ryn’s throat shifted, and Xerxes smirked. He lifted a hand and brushed a strand of her hair away from her mask. He had to be honest with himself about her intentions back during the Heartstealer trials. Even if she had shown up to kill him back then, she didn’t want to kill him now. Her screaming his name by the oasis pool had proved that.

“I’m leaving tomorrow, so there’s one last thing I want before I go,” he said. Ryn stared, hardly blinking as she moved along with his steps, her hand tightening around his fingers and making his shadowy heart twist into knots. “I want to see you. I don’t care if you have something ugly to hide.” The corner of his mouth tugged, but he fought the impulse to smile.

It was the truest test. If she showed him who she was at this point, she must not really hate him.

His finger slid beneath her luminous mask, feeling her face. The one he saw already in the cliff opening. “You don’t have to fear me, Adassah,” he whispered. “I don’t care what you are beneath this mask you wear.”