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She dropped to a knee before him, gold armour clinking at her knees, navy cape brushing her back.

Guards drew their weapons in a loud scrape of metal, and the Vafat moved in unison; a dozen spirits slipping through people toward the Gold Maiden’s back, but Alecsander raised a hand and they became statues around the room. Xerxes dragged his horrified gaze off the maiden, stealing a look at a gut-curling glimmer in Alecsander’s dark eyes, the corner of his mouth tugging up ever so slightly. Xerxes knew that look. It was the predatory stare of someone who saw a thing they desired to hunt or break.

The Gold Maiden rose, and Xerxes blinked at a pair of brown eyes in the mask slits, stifling a curse and the urge to grab her hands. Ryn reached up and slid off her mask, and a thousand words of scolding burned on Xerxes’s tongue, but the only cracked whisper that came from his mouth was, “You foolish maiden.”

“You thought I wouldn’t come?” she said right back. Her cheeks were flushed where the mask had pressed her skin and familiar scattered freckles still covered her nose from her time in the desert. B’rei Mira’s most powerful beings watched as they stood there, as Xerxes gaped, as Ryn’s slender throat constricted. “I should have come sooner, but I didn’t know where you were.” She lifted the chains at his wrists and studied them for a moment. Then she dropped his hands, his chains rattling as they fell.

He could have shouted at his maiden for such idiotic, blind bravery. Whether she was Adassah Cahana, the war Commander, or Ryn, the maiden he wanted, or Estheryn Electus, the Adriel traitor—this place was not for her. “Why, Ryn? Why would you come here?” he whispered through his teeth.

“What do you mean, King?” Ryn asked, lashes flickering as her gaze darted up to his. “Obviously I’m here to save you.”

For just a split second, her attention flickered over to Prince Mansour drifting by, glaring at her with gold-black eyes, a touch of shock and recognition there. Xerxes glanced at the heir Prince as tension—thick enough to choke someone—filled the air.

“Do you have a death wish, Ryn?” Xerxes’s words came out articulate as he dragged his attention back.

Ryn returned her mask to her face. “I’m not afraid of death,” she said, and Xerxes worked his jaw. “Death is just a gateway to the ones we lost before us.” And then, “I welcome it.”

She stepped off the pedestal, flashing the royal Per-Siana crest on her cape to the room as she reclaimed her spot before Alecsander on the carpet. Xerxes hadn’t seen Ryn in navy blue since the first Heartstealer trials. It was so unbelievable that he wondered for a split second if he was dreaming this all up.

“Take King Xerxes away,” Alecsander stated in a hollow, detached voice as he glued his unblinking eyes on Xerxes’s maiden. “Take all the museum pieces away. Per-Siana’s Gold Maiden and I have things to discuss.”

“Discuss?!” Xerxes objected—too loudly.

Palace guards flooded the pedestals, boots and chains clattering. Norkin was staring at Xerxes with a wide-open mouth.

Xerxes’s shoulders were grabbed and pushed toward the hallway at the back, but he craned his neck, keeping his eyes on Ryn until he entered the hall and the vision of her was torn away.

“Curse the Celestial Divinities…” he released in a half-bitten whisper. He pursed his lips and cast the tiled mosaic ceiling a hateful look. “Curse you all. Curse you, Boreas. Curse you, Nyx. Curse—”

Norkin bumped into a guard up ahead; the guard whirled and swung at him, but the blond Messa Prince ducked and flashed a smile of apology before falling back into line.

“We need to talk, Xerxes.” Norkin’s loud whisper caught Xerxes’s ear just as his chain was yanked—he jerked forward. “Soon.” The guards squished the prisoners together to fit down a narrow hall, and when Norkin’s shoulder collided with Xerxes’s, cold metal brushed Xerxes’s fingers. He looked down to find Norkin extending a set of keys. “For old times’ sake.” Norkin’s light blue eyes shot him a knowing look.

Xerxes took the keys immediately and stuffed them beneath his toga. They pressed into his abdomen as guards ushered them into the foyer of cells, split everyone up, and shoved fallen royals toward their rooms. Xerxes faced the back wall as the sound of his door slamming boomed through the small space, rattling loose stones in the walls. He slid the iron key ring out of his toga and stared at the godsent tools that might give him freedom in this foreign palace.

Even after all these years, it appeared Messa was still Per-Siana’s ally and Norkin was still his friend.

Xerxes ran his thumb over the largest key, heavy black metal with notched teeth. He might be killed on the spot if he was caught sneaking out of his cell.

He looked down at his chest where his tan from the desert sun was rapidly fading, where the violet marking that had plagued him all through the war and second Heartstealer trials was no more. “So, she’s alive,” he said to the god of his enemies. Xerxes slid the chilly keys back into his scarlet robe in case guards passed by. He paced the length of his cell, sandals crushing moss as he pictured Ryn’s sun kissed, freckled face taking in the angles of Alecsander’s Throne Room like she was ready to burn it to the ground and race for the door with him. A slow smile curled over his mouth. He knocked a knuckle off the side of his head before it took root.

“Stop that,” he told himself. “This is not good. It is a terrible, terrible thing that Ryn is here.”

Curse his own mouth—he smiled again.

9

RYN

Ryn really was a guest. After a brief conversation with the War King, pale-faced servants led Ryn down an iridescent hall of pearly tiles to a room anyone else might have considered gorgeous. Vases of lush red flowers covered every surface, chiffon curtains surrounded an enormous bed, bronze floral artwork covered the walls, and a wide white-stone balcony was visible through a pair of open glass doors. Purple blossomed ivies wrapped the balcony’s rail that Ryn realized dangled down several metres, partially eclipsing the windows far below. She gazed down at unusual, layered walls around the palace, some covered in green moss, some cracking white stone, others solid dark stone. Beyond, screeching horns sounded from a city of torchlight, a landscape vastly different than the desert. Similar to the Mother City in some ways, but with all the wrong sounds, smells, and colours. Ryn shivered at the cold this high up and went back into her room, closing the glass doors and sealing out the noise.

“Leave me,” she instructed the three white-kilted servants bowing in a line. “I need no assistance. Don’t bother me anymore.” The servants stood and departed in swift, graceful motions, closing the door behind them with a soft click. Ryn’s heavy sigh filled the empty room as she leaned against a bedpost, crushing the transparent chiffons. She grabbed her breastplate and yanked it an inch away from her body so she could breathe, then ripped off her mask and fanned her hot cheeks. She’d thought it was best to leave her flute behind, but now she desperately missed its nearness. The subtle magic of this enemy palace weighed upon her chest and pushed against her ears. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to breathe for long, let alone sleep or eat. She didn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

Xerxes had been chained to a wall like a slave. Beautifully decorated but fragranced with nauseating Mira-ethnic perfumes. Ryn bit her lips as tears brimmed her eyes, the result of exhaustion from the journey across an entire sea of desert or the absolute horror of seeing her friend now a prisoner drawn on with liners, she wasn’t sure.

She caught her breath and drifted to sit on the bed, tugging her long braid. King Alecsander had invited her to a grand banquet in her honour, but the mere thought of food turned her stomach. Her legs itched to run, and she found herself on her feet again, pacing.

“Did I make a mistake coming here?” she asked through dry lips.