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Geovani snorted. “I did say that, actually. It’s just not time yet.” Ryn spun on the rock, the breeze drying her wide eyes. “And don’t forget I’m a prophet.” The woman’s finger was in the air like she was giving a lesson as she headed back down the hill toward the border camp.

Ryn tsked. “Now isn’t the time for jokes, High Priestess,” she muttered, even though Geovani was too far away to hear. But her hand fell over her stomach.

Dust rolled over the desert, fogging the distant mountains and layers of gold where the sun was free to beat on them far, far away. The cloud only remained at the border—here, with her. She thought it would follow Xerxes, wherever he was. She thought the cloud was for him. At first, she’d hoped she could follow it to find him.

Ryn’s hand stretched in her gauntlet, her fingers feeling for a heartbeat she couldn’t hold onto. It had been three weeks since Xerxes was taken. El would have told her if Xerxes was in a rocky grave below the ground, wouldn’t he? Ryn swallowed, her chest tightening with the scent of smoking leaves as the enemy army drew close enough to start firing arrows.

“Where are you, Xerxes? Are you still alive?”

Her whisper was lost to the growls of thunder approaching, the rising shout of warriors coming to break through the Per-Siana lines, and the channels of swirling air washing in, pulling her hair off her shoulders and bringing it to life in the wind.

She slid her mask on. She wanted the warriors to see her waiting for them atop the knoll. She wanted their shadows to see the Light standing behind her even more.

3

XERXES

“Let us in!!”

Moisture pooled in Xerxes’s eyes, spilling over and dripping down the end of his nose where it fell to the cold floor of his cell by his fingers curling into the stony dirt. He breathed in, breathed out.

“You should kill him.”

“You want to kill him. You want him gone.”

“You want them all gone.”

“Kill him.”

“Do it.”

“We will help you have fun!”

“Someone should die today, don’t you think?”

“You want to kill him, don’t you?”

“Kill! Kill! Kill!”

“Slay him right now!”

“Revenge.”

“Seek revenge.”

“How dare the enemy cross you?”

Xerxes’s eyelids slid closed like a blanket over his vision, his nails biting harder into the floor. When he tasted the sharp, metallic flavour of blood, he realized he was biting his lower lip. “Quiet,” he growled, but it came out a whisper. His flesh pulled, a cool whisper of water trickling along his arms and legs, reaching up and wrapping his throat and face. His chest expanded and he tore his eyes back open.

It was what he wanted. More than anything.

But a small, quiet voice of reason kept tugging him back before he turned. There was no return from this. This would be his end if he ripped out of this cell and rampaged through Alecsander’s palace. He would die terribly, as a hunted and slaughtered animal. Half of his heart didn’t care.

But the other half still did, the sane half that rebelled, the half that had kept him going in the desert, that had kept him fighting in the war. The half that told him it would all be for nothing if he gave up now.

Though he saw reason in the bidding of his old voices, though he wanted to listen, he knew his old gods weren’t chanting to see Alecsander dead, but that the one they truly wanted to die was Xerxes. And perhaps that was the one thing that made him hesitate when he craved the feeling of being a beast and ending it all.

A ringing sound filled his ears, quiet at first, then rising to a volume that stole his breath. It sliced through his mind like a piercing sword, and he gasped, hand flying to his tightening throat as a deep, roaring hunger stole his belly and the sour smell of pears filled his nostrils.