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“You should go, Faro. Find your loved ones.” She placed a hand on his lean shoulder. He was warm. “I officially release you of your duty to this border until you return.”

Bastone’s mouth thinned, but he didn’t argue as Ryn slid by Faro and headed around the dune, back toward camp. She spoke to no one as she crossed the boardwalks, packed up her sleeping quarters, fetched her armour, and stole General Reza’s horse from outside his tent.

She fled into the night beneath a canopy of stars.

“I’m not abandoning you, El. I won’t do that,” she promised as her hood flapped against her chilled cheek. She clung to the reins for dear life as the creature tossed her around. “There’s just something I need to do.”

6

XERXES

The Throne Room was just as repulsive as the Banquet Hall. Large, brown-metal barrels lined the walls, and Xerxes finally understood why everything smelled of burning leaves. Eight Vafat carried in baskets of red leaves in a ceremonial way, raised high above their heads, keeping in exact pace with each other as they approached the barrels and dumped the leaves into the fire like a bizarre sacrifice. They chanted like lunatics as they did it, and Xerxes rolled his eyes.

He raised his chained hands to scratch an itch on his forehead, creating tiny claps of metal with the movement. A passing Vafat cast him a purple-eyed glare and Xerxes froze, then lowered his hands slowly.

The worst part about the Vafat was the shadows. Xerxes hadn’t been able to stop seeing them since the battle in the desert where Alecsander had failed to cross into Per-Siana. There were flickers of light too, here and there, but many, many shadows. They curled around people, shivering and swirling, some seeping out of the Vafat’s coats like mist. Xerxes had almost jumped out of his skin when he first spotted them slithering beneath the tables, climbing up people’s spines, and wrapping themselves around heads. Sometimes they spoke to him in voices like his old gods, waving him toward them with misty fingers, their backs arching and hollow, dark shapes forming like faces. The whispers were usually indecipherable, but every once in a while, they sharpened to a promise of something he wanted.

He ignored them. He pretended they didn’t exist. He hoped maybe if he did that long enough, eventually they’d go away and he’d stop seeing them everywhere.

Alecsander’s Throne Room was grander and larger than Xerxes’s in the Per-Siana palace, though, Xerxes had hardly ever used his, so he didn’t remember what all the details looked like now that he wasn’t there. Was there a star mural on the ceiling? Wasn’t the dais glass like in the Hall of Stars? Were there windows—there had to be windows. He didn’t remember sitting through all those boring trials by torchlight.

Regardless, he was sure it was nothing like this. Polished ivory pillars carried the most intricate carvings of stories and glyphs Xerxes had studied. A dark red carpet stretched down the middle, and, naturally, Alecsander had golden pedestals and loops coming out of the wall on either side of his throne for his Museum of the Living hostages. His throne had been skillfully carved out of one single glittering black stone. A big yellow painting of the sun took up one of the walls, and a giant stone statue of a rising snake that made Xerxes want to vomit everywhere was in the corner. Overall, Alecsander’s Throne Room was ugly. Like his Vafat. Like his personality.

“We extended another invitation, but I don’t think that Per-Siana woman is coming. Commander Adassah has—” the decorated warrior’s words cut short when he saw the look on Alecsander’s face. He glanced over at Xerxes for a moment, then stepped onto the stone dais and whispered the remaining news in Alecsander’s ear. Men had been arriving with reports all morning of trivial kingdom matters; the intricate network of waterways in the city were clogged, a certain garden wasn’t getting watered well enough, there were disputes among lords and ladies that needed to be addressed. Things that were so hair-pulling-boring that it was no wonder Prince Norkin had made a habit of napping.

The man finished whispering his report, and Xerxes’s chest deflated. But he nodded and breathed a sigh of… well, relief, he supposed. He knew Ryn would never come here unless she wanted to die in a gruesome way. Like all the Per-Siana spies Xerxes had sent into the desert over the last six months. Alecsander liked his theatrics; it was the reason he had enormous, glass-less windows and entrance openings toward the public in all his main rooms, Xerxes presumed, so his corrupted, classless people could all watch his daily horrors—and the Gold Maiden was certainly show-worthy. If Ryn ever showed up here, Xerxes would lose his mind.

His gaze travelled across the sphinx carvings in the wall opposite him, the two barrels of leaves burning to crisps by the entrance that overlooked the B’rei Mira capital, Pyriwell. He’d been forced to attend a parade through that city of brass bells and constantly blowing horns, and he got to see firsthand what normal enemy citizens were like, draped in red silks and enough bare-chested men to make Xerxes cringe. Many B’rei Mira citizens were bald, hairless apart from their eyebrows—even some of the women. He’d seen bronze horns embedded into scalps, sticking out like bulls. People glittered with dark gold cuffs and bangles, large earrings, shiny pectorals, rubies, and black liners around their eyes.

Ugly. They were all ugly.

B’rei Mira was just outright, unfathomably ugly. Nothing compared to the elegant blue and silver of Per-Siana. The starlight robes and white dragon stitching, the pearly temples, and… a maiden back there.

“What are you staring at?”

Xerxes tore his gaze off the opening where he didn’t dare imagine a maiden in gold armour walking up those stairs.

“Nothing,” he said to Norkin. Norkin was lying flat on his back now, even after a palace guard had walked by and kicked him twice for it. He picked at the chain around his wrist and, occasionally, he whistled a song that Xerxes eventually realized was the anthem of the Hema Bird—Messa’s national animal deity. A children’s song.

A shuffle sounded at the entrance, and Xerxes sat up straight, eyes sliding back there. But it was just a servant sweeping up the remains of burnt leaves. He sank back down again, slouching as he noted the morning fog settling over the city just past the Outer Rings of the palace. If the fog was black, it would have looked similar to the mist that had covered the B’rei Mira army at the battle. Xerxes’s mind drifted to when his maiden had come springing out of the dark B’rei Mira hoard to everyone’s alarm and had slashed Alecsander’s thigh. Just to prove she could, maybe. Or maybe her god was trying to prove something to Alecsander’s gods. Either way…

“What are you smirking about?”

Xerxes glanced over at Norkin again. “Nothing.”

Norkin cast him a doubtful look. “You have too many secrets, Xerxes.” He rolled onto his stomach and faced Xerxes, his pectoral creating a clatter as he propped himself up on his elbows and rested his chin on his pale hands. His blond hair stuck out in every direction. “I heard you were ill back in Per-Siana. Actually, I heard you were more than ill. The rumours were quite frightening.”

Xerxes blinked. He chewed on his bottom lip and nodded down to himself. “Do I look frightening to you?” he challenged. But he swallowed and looked away when Norkin didn’t immediately answer. A second later, Xerxes reached up and brushed his nails along his violet marking. “Never mind.”

“Look.” Norkin nodded to where a young black-haired fellow entered the Throne Room, his golden eyes cast down to the floor, cheeks pink. His robe looked slightly too large for him, and his coronet sat off tilt. “I feel bad for Prince Emad. That’s why I made friends with him. I had to be sneaky about it though—he’ll get in trouble if the King finds out he’s been talking to me.”

Xerxes studied the younger Prince’s dark red robe, fastened so tight at his waist Xerxes wondered how he was even breathing. “Why do you feel bad for him?” he asked, even though he could guess.

“Because he’s hated.”

A muscle feathered in Xerxes’s neck.

“No one here likes him,” Norkin went on. “Because he’s quiet, and polite, and timid, and that’s just not the B’rei Mira way. He would have fit in well in the Messa court though. We weren’t a bunch of violent savages like these people.” Norkin rolled onto his back again, his hair splaying over his platform, and despite Xerxes’s mood, he smirked. “Anyway, I started talking to him in secret a few years ago. You should make some friends with the Mira nobles here, Xerxes. It’s really the only way to survive. If the nobles will speak up for you, Alecsander might show you some mercy.”