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Her brown eyes rounded, lashes fanning out around the slits in her mask.

Ryn tore backward, her body breaking from his hold, her hand sliding from his fingers. She collided with someone passing by, and two hands came against her shoulders to steady her. Bastone Issacs’s light hair appeared beside hers, reddened in the firelight. “Would you care for a dance, Commander?” he asked. Then, seeming to notice Xerxes there, he added, “If that’s alright, Your Majesty?”

Xerxes chewed his bottom lip, twisting his signet ring around his finger.

Duty to a king in war was one thing, but, Divinities, maybe Ryn really did hate him. They were blood enemies after all. Maybe that hadn’t mattered in the war, but it would when he was back in Per-Siana. Maybe she would never see him as that friend again—the one she stole ginger cookies with, or the one she ran into in the palace gardens every time she tried to escape, or the one who’d spilled water on her in the library on purpose and made her bite back smiles. The one who’d shared his deepest, darkest secret with her. Maybe those treasured memories were his alone now.

Xerxes nodded slowly, his stiff shoulders draining. He took in a deep breath and let it seep out, ignoring the way Bastone Issacs’s hands clung protectively to a maiden that perhaps was no longer Xerxes’s maiden at all. Then he said, “Take her. She’s not the one I’m looking for anyway.”

Xerxes headed from the bonfire, drifting across the plain toward camp, cold sand spraying up his legs and sneaking into his boots.

Ryn would be safest in the desert. And from the palace, he could make sure Damon never found out she was alive. It was how he knew, even though his shadow of a heart pressed down on his other organs at the thought of it, that her being far away was a good thing.

For some reason, he felt Ryn’s gaze on his back as he left.

24

XERXES

Xerxes glanced back at the cavalcade of horses hauling supplies. The space around the oasis, once a camp, had become an empty slate of trampled sand and debris. His Division One soldiers moved at his sides, his personal guardsmen until he was out of the desert and back in the care of the Folke.

The war was over.

Per-Siana was free.

Had someone said months ago that this would be the war’s outcome, he wouldn’t have believed them.

When they reached the mountain path, Xerxes’s gaze slid to the soldiers who’d remain at the border, protecting the Per-Siana boundaries. Men and women who’d fought faithfully all this time, spending months away from their homes, and had now committed to staying on even longer in rotating turns. Burn Division Twelve was mixed among them; the only soldiers without satchels of belongings because they entered the desert with nothing to begin with. He wondered if any of them would return home now that their job was finished. They were free citizens now, as per the rules. They had no reason to stay in the heat and fight.

The Gold Maiden stood at the edge of the group, decorated in full armour. Xerxes released a breath and let his gaze slide off, setting it on the mountains instead, the row of black stone monstrosities stretching far into the distance both ways against a pale-yellow horizon. He was finished with sand. He was finished with restless sleeps beneath a cold desert sky. He was finished with nightmares of Vafat finding him in his bed. He was finished with racing thoughts of strategy and looking over his shoulder to check for rising dust. He was finished with rude women who kicked sand at their King and refused direct orders and called him stupid with confidence. This was goodbye to the past. Now he had other troubles—king troubles. He would be a ruler again, and Reza would be restored as the army General. All was as it should be, and he would look ahead, grow up, and face the future like a man. Take a wife. Have a child. Keep the kingdom alive. He was a boy the first time the sages made him do it. He wasn’t a boy now.

Xerxes could hardly look Reza’s way when the General trotted over on his own horse, his wispy beard flailing against both sides of his neck.

“Safe travels through the kingdom, Your Majesty,” Reza said. The old man didn’t hide the sorrow in his voice well enough and it became the mud that dragged Xerxes into a pit.

Xerxes clutched his reins, staring out at the bright morning sun resting heavily in the sky. “Come with me, General,” he whispered too quietly for the rest of Division One to hear. “You know you can return to Per-Siana with me. I’ll find you a place among my guardsmen or even in my court.”

Reza tsked and folded his arms, hugging the ends of his beard to his chest. His droopy eyes had a scolding look to them, obnoxiously fatherly. “You know I can’t do that. What would I do there? Entertain palace guests? Eat fancy food?”

Xerxes swallowed and looked down. “You’re ill. You shouldn’t be out here—”

“Out here is where I belong, Xerxes. In the palace is where you belong.”

A breeze ruffled over the horses, drawing the beasts to snort and their manes to lap. Xerxes stole one last look at the desert. He’d accomplished much as a young king. Things his father never had. He wondered what King Draco would think of his son now. He wished his father could know that Xerxes hadn’t allowed Per-Siana to fall like Messa.

“Let the physicians treat you then, old man,” Xerxes directed, finding his voice. “Don’t be so stubborn about it.”

“I’ll be fine. Burn Division Twelve is staying with me at the border, and I have every confidence in my new recruits,” Reza said, and Xerxes’s jaw slid to the side as he imagined the wild band of criminals protecting the old General. He shook his head in disbelief, and with that, Xerxes slapped the reins of his horse and began the journey home.

The soft patters of hooves on pressed dirt filled his ears, and his mind filled with Alecsander’s deal. Even in his years as a beast, Xerxes had never felt so cold as he had on the platform for the meeting. Right in the middle of the afternoon heat too. His skin had iced over, his heart had screeched to a near-halt. His vision had blurred. He’d thought…

He swallowed as he remembered how he’d thought voices of his past were telling him to do terrible things. Telling him to turn and slay the hero of Per-Siana, the Gold Maiden, Ryn, standing at his side. The same way those horrid, obsessive voices had told him to kill her during the Heartstealer trials.

What were they so afraid of every time they saw her?

A pit formed at the bottom of Xerxes’s stomach as he entered the cliff paths that would take him through the curves of the mountains. Behind these mountains was where Reza and all the willing soldiers would stay. The border.

The border Alecsander had every ability to attack, yet because of some measly gold, silver, cattle, and spices, he wouldn’t.