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His heart was screaming.

No—his mouth was screaming.

The images of Ryn stabbing a Vafat as they swarmed her on the platform, her sword being kicked from her hand, her body being dragged down the slope, and her dark hair disappearing into the hoard, were the last things Xerxes saw before he slammed into the water and was consumed by the river.

He couldn’t breathe. The water pushed him down. His lungs burned, but he shouted beneath the water anyway, thrashing even though the current pulled him away. There wasn’t another splash; no one else entered the river with him.

His cloak was jerked left like it caught a branch, but he realized it was a hand when he was torn out of the river. Cold wind hit his cheeks, and strained, heavy breaths filled the air around him. He realized they were his own breaths.

Norkin was coughing up water a few feet away.

Xerxes’s fingers touched sand.

He dragged his eyes up and looked into the face of General Reza. Reza blinked his saggy eyes and released a sound of relief, his gray-brown beard tickling Xerxes’s cheek. Xerxes didn’t know what his own hands were doing as he reached for Reza’s bicep—feeling to see if the man was a ghost, maybe. If he was actually there. He hugged Reza’s solid arm.

“We have to go back.”

His mind was saying it, but his mouth would not. Reza would die if they went back. Ryn’s burn division soldiers would be executed if they went back. Xerxes gripped tighter to Reza, using the old man to support himself.

And then the screaming started.

“Ryn!!”

He screamed her name into the desert. He screamed it until his chest turned to fire and his lungs threatened to explode. He screamed it as Reza hugged him back, as the General shouted with his raspy voice for the men to take Xerxes. As Xerxes was lifted to his feet, as he kicked sand back at B’rei Mira, screaming her name. He wanted her to hear it. He wanted the gods in the sky to hear it. He would scream her name until it bled from his soul and watered the desert.

21

GEOVANI

Her prison wasn’t really a prison. It maybe looked that way to a certain young, possessed Chancellor, but Geovani preferred a view. She wandered from end to end of the large, gaping window that let in wind, rain, and every once in a while, a forgiving flicker of sun. She kept her old eyes on the city below where all sorts of interesting things happened. Things that were far more exciting than anything going on inside the palace.

Her modest space had a bed, but not much else to speak of. Just a white room with four walls and a large window that had the glass removed so it could never be closed. Another form of punishment she didn’t mind at all.

“Still muttering to yourself?” Chancellor Damon said before he even swung the door open.

Geovani felt the cold of the creatures with him entering her room. She didn’t turn around though, even though the sensation crawled along the walls like an untimely frost. “I never mutter to myself.” Her gaze narrowed on a man in the distance in a beige outfit, charging down the Navy Road with words on his mouth Geovani couldn’t quite read.

The dragging hem of the Chancellor’s Intelligentsia coat should have been silent as it slid over the floor, but for whatever reason, Geovani could hear it. Almost as if the coat itself was gloating.

“Since you haven’t jumped yet—” Damon appeared beside her and leaned to peer out the window, down the long drop of the palace wall to where the garden was speckled with colours below “—I suppose you aren’t lonely enough in this cold, rainy isolation.”

It wasn’t possible for a woman with the God Original at her side to be lonely, but this fool wouldn’t understand that. Joke was on him.

Geovani brushed a wild lock of white hair out of her eyes and tucked it snuggly behind her ear. “Have you been out in a while, Chancellor?” she asked in all innocence, hugging her arms to herself. “The streets are buzzing.”

Chancellor Damon’s black eyes settled on her, his head tilting in a serpentine way. “You have been a thorn in my side all these years. You have challenged the Celestial Divinities, challenged my predecessors, challenged me.” His purplish lips curled into something that might have been intended as a smile. “Are you going to jump, High Priestess Geovani? I wouldn’t want you to go mad in here and jump.” He dragged a step closer, and Geovani tightened her arms around herself. She scooted an inch the other way. “It would be a shame if someone pushed you, too.”

“My days are numbered by El Tsebaoth only. He has decided how many I have left before I meet him.” She turned toward the young man so deep in his orchestrated darkness, he wouldn’t have found his way out even with a map. “He has decided how many days you have left, too.”

Offense, resentment, rage—all sorts of things grew ripe in the Chancellor’s eyes.

Damon’s cold lips thinned over a horrible smile. “I don’t think your god will keep you alive much longer.” His pale hand came around and grabbed the back of Geovani’s neck, her hair shaking out of its coil and falling before her eyes as he jolted her toward the window. “You’re old, High Priestess, and you’re lonely and cold and hungry. If you don’t want to jump yet, then watch a little longer. Watch me from here as your Adriels are crushed beneath my boot, as the name of your Gold Maiden and precious Adriel god are tarnished by the heralds. Watch as the power of the Celestial Divinities is combined with that of foreign gods, and watch how I use it to unleash pain and death upon your beloveds. You will be so distraught, you will leap from this window and fall a long way to your death, and the whole kingdom will see the fall of the High Priestess Geovani.”

He let go with such a thrust, Geovani shook on her heels, grabbing the window ledge as her weight tipped back and forth. She caught her balance with her head out the window, her hair hanging down and blowing in the breeze. She stared at the garden far, far away.

Lazy footsteps receding over the floor told her the Chancellor was leaving. The door slammed a second later, and the unseen frost on the walls disappeared.

Geovani dragged herself back inside, her fingers shaking with age as she reached into the pocket of her ministry dress, pulled out a ribbon, and retied her hair. She hugged her arms to herself and resumed her pacing, watching out the window all the while.