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A grunt escaped Xerxes’s lips. “Yes, well… making friends is not a skill I have.”

Something hit Xerxes’s platform with a tap. A small stone rolled to a stop at his feet.

“Catch.” Norkin flashed a broken-lipped smile.

Xerxes picked up the stone and turned it over. It looked like it had been chipped out of a wall; none of the surfaces were smooth. He tossed it back, and Norkin caught it out of the air. A moment later, Norkin pitched the stone high into the ceiling heights, and Xerxes reached to catch it when it came sailing down.

“Where is Prince Mansour?” Alecsander’s deep voice rippled across the Throne Room with a chill. People halted what they were doing, and Norkin sat up quickly.

“Hema have mercy,” he swore in a mutter. “The King is mad. Don’t make eye contact, Xerxes. He hates you the most these days.”

A guard bowed low, his crimson kilt fanning out, his curved sheath scraping the floor. A bronze spear glistened in his hand. “We haven’t seen him in several days, Your Majesty,” he said in an airy voice. When Alecsander said nothing in return, he dropped his spear with a clatter and bowed lower until his forehead pressed the floor.

“I said you had two days to find him.” A chill swept through the room, and Xerxes’s flesh tightened over his arms. He shivered, teeth chattering as he watched Alecsander turn his head to the Vafat. He didn’t move his mouth, but words sailed through the room, low, loud, and rumbling.

“Take the museum pieces back to their cells.”

Xerxes choked as he tried to determine if it was Alecsander or the Vafat who spoke, or something else.

Alecsander stood from his stone throne, and the man on the floor shook. The royal hostages around the room dropped their gazes, some turning away, but Xerxes watched as Alecsander stepped down the dais, his sandals slapping the stairs—the only sound left in the Throne Room. Xerxes’s chains tugged; he was pulled into a hallway and yanked around the corner mere seconds before Alecsander’s voice boomed, “Toss him into the Outer Rings” and the man’s shrill shriek rang through the palace.

The Outer Rings. Xerxes had heard minimal gossip about them. Most of it he’d ignored, but the labyrinth around the palace was quickly becoming the most interesting thing to study. So far, he’d memorized two sections of it; the one he could see from the Banquet Hall and the one he could see from the Throne Room. He figured he’d get beaten for asking questions, but he asked the servants about the Outer Rings anyway. Most of them didn’t speak the common language, but one of them did.

“They’re a maze of circles surrounding the palace, laden with statues of the Cobra and the Sphynx. Creepy things happen in the rings. Sometimes people even get exiled into the rings. A Ring Cobra is said to dwell there, and that’s why people often go missing.”

Xerxes tapped a finger against his bent knee as he sat against the cold wall of his cell. As if he didn’t have enough reasons to dislike B’rei Mira, now he had to worry about a mystical creature’s feeding ground on top of everything else.

But at least Per-Siana wasn’t taken. At least there was that.

He picked Norkin’s stone up off the ground and rolled it over his fingers, the cool rough surface grounding him. He’d witnessed Alecsander’s growing infatuation with the Gold Maiden ever since Ryn had cut him open, drawn his sacred blood. It wasn’t that Xerxes was upset she’d done it—on the contrary, he wished he could watch her do it again—but there was something about Alecsander’s behaviour that left a weight in Xerxes’s belly. Perhaps it was that Xerxes recognized the monster in Alecsander’s eyes. Maybe it was because he knew the feeling of relentlessly hunting prey he could never seem to catch. It was how Xerxes had felt about Alecsander for six months. But now, Alecsander had his sights set on Xerxes’s maiden.

Divinities, he missed her. He missed Ryn.

“Adassah,” he whispered, imagining her here in front of him. “Ah-Das-Sah.” What would he say to her if he ever got to see her again? He felt a strange flit of fear and hope at the thought. Curse his frail, wandering mind. The last time he’d touched her, she was being strangled by a Vafat in the Per-Siana palace. He hadn’t even been able to say goodbye when he was taken. Maybe after witnessing her pass out in a Vafat’s clutches he’d forgotten she could defend herself. But then she’d drawn the War King’s blood.

Xerxes smirked, his fingers dragging over the skin caging his slow-thudding heart.

“El Tsebaoth?” he called into the empty space. He waited for a moment, then looked around at the damp stones and moss. “Hello? Adriel god? Are you a deaf god?” He grunted when the only response was a squeaking cricket in the hall. His royal temperament didn’t possess the patience to wait around—not that he had anything better to do in this dark, gloomy cell. He kicked a pebble and watched it bounce over the floor. Then he tossed Norkin’s stone after it. The tiny clink of it hitting the door echoed through the space.

“Have you abandoned me now, too?” Xerxes guessed. “You forced me to watch that battle, and then you abandoned me. How fitting of the gods.” He stretched his neck back and forth, wincing as it cracked. The hard floor wasn’t a sufficient bed; his muscles were being tortured from sleeping on it each night. And it was outrageously cold—the servants here hadn’t even thought to bring him a blanket. He was a King, for Divinities’ sake.

“A hated King,” he said aloud to himself. “An unworthy King, perhaps.” He flicked a grain of dirt off his knee. “An unloved King.” Per-Siana hadn’t loved him. Even his own council despised him. A dark chuckle slipped out when he thought of how the Intelligentsia were probably secretly rejoicing in their Room of Knowledge at his capture.

“You are loved.”

Xerxes looked around the cell. He scowled. “And how would you know?”

“You are loved, Xerxes.”

An extra beat hit his heart, and Xerxes lifted his fingers to his chest again. “Stop uttering nonsense. I know what I am.” He tilted his head, a lock of dark hair sweeping into his eyes. He pushed it back and blinked up at the rocky ceiling. “Who are you to me, anyway? I know your name, but I know nothing else of you except that you’re the god of my grandparents’ enemies.”

A drip fell from the ceiling and Xerxes barely moved his leg in time before it would have pelted his cold flesh.

“I’m a father. I’m a friend—”

“A father?!” Xerxes snapped. “How can you be a father to me?”

Silence.