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“A maiden.”
The water at Ryn’s boots offered to sweep her away, back out of the temple, back through the palace, back to her room where she should have stayed this evening.
He knew—he must have known. Why would Xerxes be waiting for her here of all places if he didn’t know who she was? All his smiles and the pointed way he said her name whenever he called her ‘Adassah’…
“What happened to her?” she asked quietly, cursing her own mouth.
Xerxes came all the way around and stopped before her again. In the dimness, his ink marking glowed, a faint light wrapping his neck. He tilted his head, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Then he said, “She died.”
A gust of night air rippled down Ryn’s flesh, and she wrestled to keep still under his gaze as confusion swam in. Did Xerxes have memories with someone else in the Abandoned Temple? Or was he… Did he really think…
She swallowed against her expanding throat at the idea that Xerxes might have thought she was dead. When the silence became heavy, she mumbled, “I’m sorry for your loss.” It didn’t sound convincing at all. But she turned for the archway anyway to leave him to his thoughts.
His growl came next.
“Ryn.”
Her feet halted. Her heart.
That name in Xerxes’s mouth…
“Divinities, don’t try to deny it.” Xerxes’s words were as clear as the sounds of splashing water filling the temple. Ryn whirled back, his piercing gaze shattering any hope she had that she’d misheard. “You gave yourself away back in the desert.”
Her mouth wouldn’t move to reply. Her gaze fell on the sheathed sword at his hip, and her hand fumbled for her own weapon when she realized why he must have brought it. Curse the Divinities—Bastone—would he even get out of the palace alive if Xerxes went after him for their deceit?
Xerxes’s blue eyes swam as he stepped in, closing the gap between them. “You know what gave you away the most though, Ryn?” he asked. “It’s that whenever I came close to you…” He reached an arm around her paralyzed frame and flattened his hand against her back, pulling her tight against him and stealing a silent gasp from her mouth. “You held your breath until I let you go.”
The low thumps of her heart countered the quiet song of the birds in the Abandoned Temple.
Ryn.
Adassah.
Two names. One identity.
It wasn’t just him saying her name, it was the look in his eyes. It was his bottom lip twitching, the anxious pulls of his face that made it clear now that Xerxes had possibly known for a long time who she was, even if he’d had his doubts.
Xerxes reached up and pulled her mask off, tossing it into the water as the chilly night air hit Ryn’s face. His other hand slid off her back, a crease forming between his brows and his frown deepening, giving no indication whether he was furious.
Ryn’s breaths shallowed. She inched backward, thinking of Burn Division Twelve helpless in the desert without her if a kill order was issued, thinking of Faro, Dolem, Kiran, Yusuf—
“Don’t try to run,” Xerxes warned. “You know I’ll chase you.”
She hiccupped, her boots turning to stone where she stood. She drew her sword.
Xerxes’s was out in a flash, and the collision of metal rang through the temple as he smacked her blade aside, the handle sliding out of Ryn’s weak hand. Her sword rolled through the water until it was swallowed by the stream with her mask. “You dare to draw your sword against your King?” he challenged in a whisper. He suddenly released a dark laugh that rumbled up to the ceiling heights and made her heart skip a beat. “Do you really think I would hurt you now, Ryn? I could have thrown you out of the palace when you first arrived. I could have ousted you back in the desert!”
Ryn closed her mouth, a thousand questions and excuses screaming in her ears. But there was no excuse good enough anymore. “Why didn’t you oust me then? I thought you wanted me dead. You sent me to prison to die.”
Xerxes slid his sword away and dragged his hand down his face as a stinging, warm silence settled between them. And then he spoke, slow and articulate. “Naive little Adriel. I sent you to that prison to live.”
“Die!”
“Live.”
He exhaled. “I’m used to being hated, so you hating me for everything that’s happened isn’t a new feeling. But why, by the Divinities, would I send you to die? You’re the only maiden I’ve ever wanted,” he said.
Ryn felt like she’d fallen into a well and hadn’t hit the bottom yet. Hadn’t woken up from the dream she was having where her heart was pounding in her chest—a dream that would end with her opening her eyes and seeing the moisture pooling on the dark cave ceiling in the Mother City prison.
