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“It’s not like I was going to win.”

Heva’s lips thinned. She smacked her hand flat against the rock wall beside Ryn’s head, amplifying her damp smell. “Something happened to you back at that palace every time you held the sword of the God Original, remember? Remember how you started beating me in simple fights? Remember how you fought gods?! I’ve stayed quiet about this long enough! You have the power of the God Original inside you! Wake up!”

The words scathed Ryn’s ears, and she blinked, sure she hadn’t heard correctly. “No, Heva, I had the power of the God Original inside me!” she shouted back. How difficult was it to stop mentioning the Adriel God’s names? Why couldn’t Heva just forget about him? She wasn’t even an Adriel.

“Stop embarrassing yourself—make yourself right with your God! Humble yourself and pray, and seek his face, and turn from your stubborn, closed-off, wicked ways. Cry out to him, and he will hear you!” Heva said.

Ryn’s gaze narrowed, warm blood flooding into her veins. “Are you joking?” she rasped through her teeth. “Don’t you remember what I went through?” How could Heva even suggest such a thing? “Have you forgotten, Heva?”

For three and a half months, they hadn’t talked about this. After Ryn told Heva what had happened at the palace, how every noble had looked at her in the throne room, how Xerxes had cast her out, how she’d barely escaped execution, Heva hadn’t brought it up again, and Ryn hadn’t bothered to explain why she was no longer following El’s leading. She shouldn’t have had to after how things had ended.

Ryn had fought for El Tsebaoth like Geovani had asked. And she’d been ousted and tossed away like garbage for it. “El promised to always be with me, and where is he now?” Ryn blinked through a layer of dust. “Where was he when I was thrown out of the palace? Why didn’t he intervene and rescue me before I was dragged into these caves? Where was he when Matthias was killed, Heva?! If El is on my side, then he should have stopped me from being taken to the palace in the first place the day the Folke showed up at my front door in the Mother City!” A sob hiccupped her words. “I don’t belong to anyone anymore. Not even to myself while I’m trapped in these caves against my will, forced to eat cold rice and endure the bullying of these men.” Heva’s face faltered as Ryn inhaled a sharp, shuddering breath. “Curse me for it, but I… I really cared about him, Heva,” she rasped. A thousand memories she didn’t want of shared smiles, deep blue eyes darting in her direction, and a trapped boy letting her past his wall of trust burst back into her mind like a cruel poison, like the crack of a whip over an old wound. Maybe Heva already knew Ryn’s feelings for Xerxes. Maybe this was wasted breath, but Ryn couldn’t stop the confession from breaking away from her soul and filling the stale air between them. “I thought things would be okay if I saved Xerxes like El wanted. I thought… I really thought Xerxes would save me back. But I didn’t know how much I cared about him until he was gone.” The pain grew behind her eyes as she refused to release tears, the pressure scratching, cries trying to claw their way out. “You’ve got to be joking. How can I trust El again?”

Muted cheers rang through the tunnel as another Fall Order match came to an end. Heva’s damp smell faded as her hand slid off the wall, and she balanced on her crouched legs. The guardswoman who once wore an orderly, fitted Folke uniform looked like a beggar off the streets now. It was a wonder how she still had any hope left.

“It’s okay to be sad, Ryn. It means what you felt was real. But I’m not joking at all about this Fall Order,” Heva said. “I’ll prove it.”

Every thought drained from Ryn’s mind when Heva tugged Ryn to her feet and pulled her back into the feasting cave, pushing through loud, oily prisoners. Just as a round ended and the cave quieted down, Heva shouted, “I’m calling in a substitution!”

Muttered conversations halted around the room, and Ryn blanched. “Wait… Heva!” she tried.

Heva dropped her wrist and went to the Fall Order board. “You can do this,” she said back to Ryn as she yanked her own name out of the slot and grabbed the handful of eliminated ones. The names she didn’t want made a clatter as she tossed them aside.

“I can’t!” Ryn called back. “Heva!”

Heva pulled out the card that said: ADASSAH. She slid it into her spot.

Soldiers shook their heads around the room, one rolled his eyes, but none of them did anything about it. Ryn turned, taking in the faces of prisoners as they smirked and exchanged glances. “I’m going to die here,” she rasped.

Heva grabbed her shoulders, her thumb ring pressing into Ryn’s skin. “If you do, then we’re all going to die. Get it yet? It has to be you, Ryn!” Heva dropped her hands and they slapped her sides. “I know you’re hurting. But open your eyes.” With that, she headed back to the tunnel, leaving Ryn alone in the feasting cave among the men watching the Fall Order rounds.

The next match started, the substitution already forgotten. Ryn fell onto the nearest bench, her knees shivering. She wondered if Kai would ever find out if she died. If Xerxes would be notified, if he would even care. If any of her old neighbours would learn about what had happened to the girl they now must have learned had been an Adriel hiding in plain sight.

For one terrible, single second, Ryn wondered if Xerxes knew she was going to war. If he maybe wanted her prison to be drafted. If this was the end to her existence he’d hoped for—a sweet revenge for her lying to his face.

She bit down hard on her lips, cursing herself for thinking about Xerxes again, for uttering those broken words about him to Heva. A quiet, pitiful laugh rolled off her tongue a second later as she remembered the look on his face her last day as a Heartstealer in the palace—after he found out what she was. How dare she think about the King of Per-Siana now, especially all the way down here in this hole? How dare she have thoughts of him when she was just a poor peasant with no future, no home, and now a criminal record? His enemy. Xerxes must have been so disgusted when he realized who it was he’d smiled at and even kissed.

No wonder he never wanted to see her again.

It was time she accepted her fate; that she’d die a prisoner as her mother had. This was what the King of Per-Siana wanted. It was what everyone she’d ever known wanted. If her neighbours had realized she was an Adriel, they would have been the ones to send her down here themselves, regardless of the apples and vegetables she’d given them from her garden over the years, all the medical treatments Kai had supplied, all the kind words and smiles and nods to say good morning.

Only Marcan, her former artist, hadn’t cared that Ryn was an Adriel. Every other Weylin in her life had proven to be evil and hateful in the end.

Heva didn’t count. She was an Adriel in every way but by blood—that was clear now.

“Time for a break,” a soldier called over the cave minutes later. “We’ll resume in the morning.”

Ryn didn’t even realize it was nighttime.

The moisture along the cave ceiling grew thin through the night. It thickened again when morning came and sounds of footsteps, impatient growls, and muttered chatter lifted through the tunnels. The scent of fresh rice wafted into the caves along with buzzing nerves over the morning Fall Order matches.

Ryn hadn’t slept. She assumed Heva hadn’t either since the cave hadn’t been graced with her usual snores.

Neither of them spoke, not even when Heva sat up and stretched her neck and arms, cracking her back and knuckles. They both climbed to their feet and headed to the feasting cave in silence. After two bites, the rice made Ryn’s stomach roil. Heva devoured hers though, getting every last grain into her mouth.

It wasn’t until the soldiers reset the room for matches that Ryn realized how angry she was. She smacked away the unshed tears that threatened her eyes as she watched the tables be pushed aside and a fresh coat of paint be smothered around the circle. How could Heva ask her to do this? How could Heva even suggest she trust El after that god let everyone Ryn cared about be taken away? After he’d let her father leave, her mother die, Matthias sacrifice himself, Xerxes cast her out, Kai become a wanted man, and Ryn’s life come to this?

It was El who let her mother die, wasn’t it?