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16
RYN
The week was unlike any other in Ryn’s life. She’d grown up in a small house with the curtains drawn while prayers were whispered, with a garden that provided food in the backyard, and neighbours who could never be fully trusted. Temples of Weylin Celestial Divinities lined the roads outside, and a dozen wild sumac trees speckled the edge of a forest across town. A bustling market appeared every weekend where Ryn had bartered for koloocheh and carried a small basket home to share with Kai when he returned from work. That was what she thought was normal.
Nothing about this week had been normal.
The B’rei Mira skyline turned sharp purple and red when it all began. Hail fell from the sky outside like enormous gemstones hurtling toward the earth, water basins turned red with blood before Ryn’s eyes, and reptiles hopped into her room off the balcony.
She’d never seen a god’s wrath like this. In the desert, she’d seen El’s white fire sweep in and drive shadows into the sand, she’d seen beings so great they shook the earth when they landed at her back, she’d seen the power of El at work in her own veins.
But not in the form of utter turmoil that turned a whole city upside down. Ryn opened her mouth to ask El about it once or twice, but it always fell closed again before she could utter a word. Watching Xerxes stand before Alecsander, insisting on freedom for Per-Siana, made her want to record every moment on a scroll for his royal legacy. A fire birthed in her belly with every demand he made in the name of El Tsebaoth. It warmed the edges of Ryn’s sanity, tugging at the sides of her mind. “Come back, Adassah,” it called from far away. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
“WE WILL NEVER let him go, Daughter of El, IF YOU DO NOT OBEY US!” A rage of grotesque laughter boomed against Ryn’s bones. It was like King Alecsander was in the room as the atrocious parts of his voice twisted their way through her body and mind like roots growing at rapid speed, strangling her thoughts and bringing a damp chill to her skin.
The hem of Ryn’s crimson dress dragged over the floor as she paced her room. She wrung her fingers, scratching at a painted nail and chipping the perfect artwork done there. Yesterday she’d overheard King Alecsander speaking to one of his advisors outside the Banquet Hall.
“The only way someone leaves my Museum of the Living is to die.” The whisper had sailed into Ryn’s gut. “It has always been this way.”
Ryn had kept moving into the Hall like she hadn’t overhead, but she’d stared at the grilled meat for the next hour while sitting at the table. She didn’t even touch her cutlery.
“We both know Alecsander doesn’t keep his deals. Even if he says he won’t kill me, he probably will once you give him what he wants.” Xerxes’s words from ten days ago.
Ryn crouched and dug her nails into her hair, pulling it away from her hot scalp. For ten days, she’d reasoned with fate, questioned whether this would work. And for ten days, she’d been absolutely miserable, watching plagues from ancient history books of the gods consume B’rei Mira. She stood and stared out the glass doors of her room where the burning red sky clashed with a wave of purple clouds. An occasional burst of hail still shot from the heavens, plunging into the city in the distance and bursting through a wall or taking a building out completely.
She was a foolish maiden. Xerxes had tried to warn her.
Xerxes. Her hand pressed over her heart when she recalled the look on his face after he discovered how his first wife had died. Deep down, Ryn had always known that Xerxes wasn’t a monster despite how everyone saw him, even back during the first Heartstealer trials.
A foolish maiden.
“I am a fool,” she whispered. What was she even still doing? The answer was right in front of her—Alecsander could never be trusted to let Xerxes go. Any deal made with the War King after all he’d done was madness. Despite how Ryn’s heart wrestled, she couldn’t go through with this. There was no hope for Xerxes to be freed this way.
Ryn jumped when she turned around.
King Alecsander stood in her doorway. His large silhouette blocked the lights of the hall and cast a shadow across her floor. An icy wind shifted through the room, ruffling the chiffons around Ryn’s bed.
Alecsander took a step in with a slow thud of his boot, and Ryn grabbed the bedpost beside her.
“The bride of B’rei Mira.”
Alecsander’s mouth didn’t move when he spoke. A dark crimson cape flapped at his shoulders as he drifted in, a glistening sword at his belt quietly tapping his thigh. His flesh had a shiny gray tinge to it, the gold in his eyes melting to a dark copper and black, and Ryn’s fingers strangled the bedpost.
“I’m no bride. I have not promised myself to your son yet,” she reminded him with fast words. “You said I had ten days to decide. It’s not yet midnight.”
The curtains ruffled at her back as Alecsander approached. He stood over her like a tower of stone. She could see his sunken cheeks this close, dark rings around his eyes that weren’t from liners.
He grabbed her neck.
Ryn’s strained inhale filled the room as he drove her backward and down onto the sofa by the glass doors. A raspy scream climbed from her throat that made little sound. He brought his face over hers, and Ryn blinked through blurred eyes at the twisted face before her, morphing between shadow god and man.
“We are Legion. We do not fear you, Daughter of El.” The voices channelled against Ryn’s ears like frost exploding inside her head, and she winced as cold pain ravaged her mind. “You will be married!” Alecsander’s mouth moved around the words, but the shadow god’s face remained, eyes flickering between black and gold, hollow and alert. “Ten days are over. Today I will parade you through my capital city as our bride.” His fingers dug in beneath her jaw.
A tear sprang from Ryn’s eye. “No. My God will decide for me. I won’t join with another without his consent.” Her own words shook her out of her trance.
“Your god?!—What can your god do that mine cannot?”
Ryn clawed at Alecsander’s fingers, scratching down his gray flesh as her crushed chest screamed for air. Her limbs grew weak, her body relaxing against the couch, and she realized Alecsander might kill her, whether by accident or the intention of his gods, she didn’t know. But he did not have control of himself.
