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A servant girl carrying a basket of fresh blooms walked far around him up the stairs. Xerxes grabbed her arm and she gasped, looking up at him in horror.

“Where did the men go who were just here?” he asked her. The question came out strained, panicked.

The girl’s bottom lip quivered. “I… Which men?” she asked. The basket slid from her hands and the blooms tumbled down the palace stairs.

“The men in armour and navy leathers! The soldiers,” he said. He pointed toward the closed gate. “Where did they go?!”

The girl shrank, shaking her head slowly as if begging. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but they left. They were escorted out moments ago. I overheard them being told to go home.”

Xerxes released her arm and staggered back, looking out at the Mother City where thousands of people moved about, unaware of what had just taken place in the desert beyond the mountains. Clueless, apart from whatever snippets of news the Intelligentsia had decided to let the heralds speak of and whatever information had slipped through the cracks about the Gold Maiden’s achievements. A hand flew to his chest and he marked his slow inhales. His exhales.

Division One was gone.

Folke moved through the gardens stealing glances in his direction. He shrank back into the palace, looked both ways, then headed through the hallways toward his bedroom he hadn’t slept in for almost five months.

Xerxes flew up to a sitting position, terror flooding his veins. He tore his sheets off, his chest thudding as he scrambled from his bed, charged across the room, and tore the drapes aside, searching the mountains in the distance for smoke.

Crisp blue morning skies looked back at him.

He released a shuddering breath, the pulse in his neck dying down, his rigid muscles relaxing. He dragged a hand through his hair as he looked around for his bathrobe in the unlit room of scattered belongings from his childhood.

“The war is over,” he whispered to himself. “I made a deal.”

He stopped by his dresser and leaned his knuckles against it, catching his breath as his heart settled. He took in his reflection in the dresser mirror; his dishevelled black hair, the sweat on his brow, his parted lips, and a jaw stained with bright ink. When he inched closer to the mirror and caught a ray of the window’s light, he realized his entire left iris was purple now. If his natural eye colour wasn’t already blue, the purple would be starkly noticeable. He tugged down the collar of his nightshirt and swallowed at the sight of the foreign text symbols over his heart, the bottoms leaking into a jagged pattern of lightning that mimicked roots. As if the words were being planted there after all.

In the mirror, he spotted his robe on a hook by the door. He turned for it, yanking it around himself as he came out of his room so fast that the pair of Folke guards outside released squeaks. Xerxes ignored them as he moved down the hall toward the palace pools, rubbing his left eye that prickled and blurred.

The growls of waterfalls filled his ears when he came into the bath chambers, steam swallowing him as he tossed his robe aside and stepped into the nearest pool. He sank in slowly, moaning at the fresh warmth that was unlike the biting cold water in the desert oasis. He found soap on the ledge, so he lathered it up on his hands and scrubbed it through his hair.

When he was refreshed and clothed, he wandered to the kitchens to find breakfast, avoiding the dining room altogether. Kebabs of freshly cut fruit and unleavened bread with sugar sauce were spread out for the morning banquet. Xerxes took a piece of bread and headed out with it, making his way through the dark hallways where he noted several glass windows had been replaced. He veered into a hall with a cobbled floor then came to an archway that led into the library.

The smell of books and dust trickled into his nostrils, the eerie quiet of the space assuring him he was alone. The large windows at the end of the study were open, sucking in a morning breeze that dried his damp hair and tugged at his robe of nobility. He wandered through the shelves for several minutes, his finger dragging across the spines of books he’d read as a boy. The touch of a smirk found him when he spied a certain one. He dragged the strategy book out from the others and flipped it open to a page folded down at the corner. He’d folded the paper himself before he hid the book away many years ago. He’d even drawn a picture of a sword and shield in the margin with his royal crest upon them.

Xerxes drifted toward the window as he scanned the ink letters that spoke of strategy, plans, mapmaking, and identifying enemy weaknesses. The sunlight hit his eyes, and he lifted his gaze to the wide kingdom of Per-Siana with its sacred temples every few feet and silvery décor shining from polished buildings. A busy city opposite the desert’s empty wastelands in every way.

He wondered what Reza was doing out by the mountains. If the old man was still healthy or if he’d collapsed into the sand the moment Xerxes left.

Reza. The old General was the only reason Xerxes wasn’t four halls away, destroying the council room in a rage. Xerxes shook a hand through his hair. He thought he’d have more time before the Heartstealer trials began. Even though the Intelligentsia had made the announcement before he got back, Xerxes was sure it would take them months to get organized.

But days? What a cruel way to return to this life.

He flipped the page, gripping the hardcover book until his fingers ached. Muted sounds of servants milling about seeped in from the halls as he studied a diagram of a staged capitol city war. One that displayed the perfect way to perform an ambush. One that took the reader down the path of garnering the enemy’s trust first to get past their most fortified line, then creeping into the enemy’s base when the path was clear.

Act like an ally and then strike once their back was turned. It was the easiest, most obvious tactic for beginners. Frankly, it was the method Ryn had used when she came to the palace. Maybe her Adriel Priesthood had read the same strategy book.

“Sneaky, mask-wearing maiden,” he muttered, but his lips betrayed him and tugged up at the corners. He sucked his cheeks into his teeth and bit on them to punish himself. Then he sighed and slapped the book closed, shooing away all thoughts of that heart-snatching Adriel. He turned to hunt for the book’s spot to put it away, but his feet slowed to a stop at the end of the aisle.

Xerxes angled his head as a strange thought trickled in like water, filling up his whole body as if he were a teapot preparing to whistle a scream. An echo lifted from somewhere in the folds of his mind; the cry of hundreds of soldiers he’d lost in the desert calling out from their graves of sand. Xerxes stood before Alecsander, his toes curling against the library tiles as if it were a stone platform. He could hear the Vafat voices, hear the shuffling of their long coats, the drawing of their swords, the grinding wheels of the War King’s chariot.

Gold, silver, cattle, and spices? Since the moment the deal was made, Xerxes had been asking himself why, in the name of Boreas, Alecsander would bother with any of that. At full strength, B’rei Mira could come take Per-Siana, plucking it from Xerxes’s fingers like taking candy from a child. Alecsander had never shown himself in the desert, and maybe it wasn’t because he was afraid of Xerxes. Maybe it was because he wasn’t afraid of Xerxes. Maybe, even after everything, Xerxes wasn’t a threat worth getting off his throne for.

Xerxes’s feet jerked into a run through the palace halls, passing by servants, brooms sweeping the floors on their own, and rattling candlesticks on end tables. He burst into the Room of Knowledge and found eleven empty chairs around the room, candles unlit, windows sealed up tight. He sprang back out and sprinted to the dining room instead.

He was hit with the smells of sticky, fresh-cut fruits and hot jams as the Intelligentsia ate their morning breakfast. Xerxes went to Damon first. The sage had forgone his robe for once and wore his Chancellor’s vest. “I’ve made a terrible mistake. Per-Siana is in trouble.” Xerxes’s words came out dry.

Damon raised a black brow. Even when the sage finished chewing, he didn’t bother to ask Xerxes what he was talking about. He delicately placed another piece of bread into his mouth. Xerxes smacked a hand down on the tabletop, rattling cutlery and making a councilman gasp across the table.

“B’rei Mira isn’t done with us!” he shouted. The council members and other nobles of high status were all dressed up, the women eating around chiffon face coverings laden with beads. Xerxes didn’t remember their names, but he begged them to listen anyway. “Alecsander would never make a deal like that. I read his history of war myself before I went to the desert. He’s never made a deal like the one he made with us.”