Page 49

“No. No one leaves my Museum of the Living alive.” Alecsander’s frown sank, his eyes dipping to black. “The Per-Siana King is my war prize.”

“Fine, then I demand that my soldiers be released in three days after negotiations for our King are finished,” she said. “And I require my soldiers to be treated as guests. Take them out of your basement and let them be free here.” A muscle flexed in Alecsander’s jaw, but he tilted his head as if thinking it over. “It’s not like they can escape anyway,” she added.

Xerxes glanced toward the Outer Rings. “What are you up to, Maiden?” he whispered against the cloth in his mouth as he shook off the guards. He waited for Ryn’s brown eyes to glance his way, for her to give him a sign of assurance that this was all an act. He waited as she walked to her bag of armour and slung it over her shoulder in one heave. The unsettling feeling in his stomach rose when she walked around Alecsander’s throne without making eye contact and tried to walk past Xerxes’s pedestal. He tore out his gag.

“I told you that if I live, you’re going to be my wife, and have my heir, and be my Queen.” His words sailed out, slowing her walk, but they weren’t enough to bring her to look over at him. “Don’t avoid me, Ryn. Don’t do this to me.”

Ryn adjusted her fingers on the string digging into her shoulder from the weight of her armour bag. She looked ahead, and before all their enemy witnesses, she said, “And in the desert, I told you to forget about me, Xerxes.” It was a punch he didn’t quite feel.

“You’re scheming,” he whispered.

“I’m not.” She finally looked over at him; her brown eyes filled with a look he couldn’t interpret. He had the horrible thought that maybe she wasn’t scheming at all.

Ryn turned back for the hallway and left, the tiny claps of her armour in her bag following her down the hall.

Xerxes’s bitter laughter started quiet and airy. It turned to despicable chuckles, making servants and guards turn his way. And then it boomed through the Throne Room until every eye was looking at him the same way people used to look at him in Per-Siana. Like he was crazy.

18

KAI

Wind whistled through the dark chamber beneath the Tower Inn where Kai carried a table across the dugout and shoved it against the wall. “There—” he nodded to it “—you can use that as a bed, right?”

Kristin eyed the table with unease. Her gaze dragged up to Kai as if she wondered if he’d still be here when she tried to sleep on that table, and he blushed.

“I stayed with you all in the temple,” he reasoned. “This is no different.” He scratched the back of his head and went to peer out the two-inch slit Heva was using as a window. The sky was dark with the angry black storm that never went away, and occasionally a patter of rain wetted the roads. They’d only found three priestesses who’d wandered to one of the meeting places Geovani had once set up, and they hadn’t come across Nebulin yet who was much too young to figure out the streets on her own. Kai tried not to notice those worries etched into the lines of Heva’s face as she stared toward the palace like she’d done yesterday, and the days before that. She’d said nothing about Seeda since they left. She’d said nothing about Geovani either. And Kai wasn’t sure whether her brave face meant she was better now or if she was wearing a flesh-coloured iron mask.

“You should be resting,” Kai said, eyeing the spot on her side where her flesh was still healing. “And Kristin thinks I’m going to attack her in her sleep or something. I wonder if I should sneak upstairs after dark and sleep in one of the beds at the inn.”

“You’re not leaving, Priest,” Heva stated. “You’ll be discovered up in the inn, and I need to keep you safe. For Ryn.” She tilted her head as someone rushed past on the road. No one walked leisurely in the streets anymore, too afraid of crossing a Vafat. “It’s worse for you than it is for the priestesses anyway. They can get over having a man wandering around their room. But you’re afraid of women.”

Kai dragged his pointed gaze back to her. “I am not afraid of…” Heva’s finger smooshed against his lips as she turned to face him. She pushed a little, nudging him backward with one finger as she watched his face so carefully, he thought he was being interrogated by the Folke. With the colour returned to Heva’s face, her hair pinned half back in a clip, and the white field dress she’d fashioned since they escaped the First Temple, she looked like an Adriel gardener—except when she did things like this. This made her look like the sort of thing that would give him nightmares. She suddenly smiled, melting his abdomen, and Kai swallowed as she pulled her finger off his mouth.

Kristin began clattering around on the other side of the room where it was almost too dark to see, but Kai could just make out the fence she was building around her bed. He tried not to feel insulted, but he kept his thoughts to himself as Heva folded her arms and tapped a thumb with a silver ring against her bicep. Her height was several inches shorter than Kai’s, and even with her muscular physique, she was still smaller than him in size, too. But when she did this—when she stood mere inches away and stared like she was reading his soul—he felt like she was ten feet tall and the size of a dragon. He twisted his lips where he could still feel her finger pressing even though she’d dropped it.

“Are you trying to seduce me, Heva?” he asked.

Heva burst out laughing, making the other priestesses glance over. They cast her looks but went back to their bed making and fort building. “Don’t be disgusting.” Heva shook her head, but as she walked past him, her hand slid up his arm to his shoulder and lingered there a little too long. Heat spiralled into his cheeks just as her gaze darted back to him in a way that made his insides turn over. “You’re just really easy to frazzle. And it’s nice seeing you off your high horse for a change where you’ve been floating so high above the priestesses for years.”

Kai’s jaw dropped. “That’s how you see me? Stuck up?”

Heva’s lashes fluttered with an eye roll. “That’s how everyone sees you.” She dropped her hand and headed for the loose board they used as a door, but he followed her and grabbed her wrist, whirling her back.

“God Original have mercy, Heva—you don’t get to say something like that and just walk away—”

Heva snatched his collar and brought her lips level with his, not quite touching, her smile gone, stealing every word Kai might have said. A sound like a slow drum filled his ears, coming from somewhere inside his body. When her smile returned, slow and ridiculous, she batted her eyelashes. Kai’s face contorted as she shot her eyebrows up and down in some gut-recoiling display of ‘trying to get his attention.’

“Seriously, Heva, you make me want to throw up in my mouth.”

She laughed, and that… that did it. Kai’s stomach tightened at the lovely sound and he nudged her away.

Heva shook her head slowly and patted him on the shoulder. “See? It’s just too easy.” She turned for the door again, slipping right out of Kai’s fingers, and she took one of the two black cloaks they’d come by in the last week.

He pointed at her back. “I’m a priest!” he called after her, and one of the priestesses shushed him from across the room. “Do you know what it means that you were just that close to me?”

Heva shrugged as she slipped the cloak over her shoulders and pulled on the hood. “Probably means you have to marry me now or something stupid like that. Don’t bother trying though. You’re not my type.” She took hold of the board and wiggled it out.

Kai snapped out of his daze when light spilled into their underground room. “Where are you going?” he demanded. Not that she had to answer to him—he realized as soon as he said it.