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He rolled his shoulders, loosening the bumps and tight skin across his back as a shiver raced down his spine. “Come out, all of you,” he said into the darkness.

Vafat spilled out in droves, filling the atrium as smoky shadows crawled on all fours along the ceiling, almost as if the cloud outside had reached its fingers into the palace. Their hollow heads angled as their nonexistent faces looked his way.

“How dare you come here?” Xerxes said to the creatures, shadows, gods. “How dare you set up camp in this place?” The Vafat’s purple eyes sharpened on his sword. Their long, slender blades slid out in a unified whisper of grating metal in return.

“Kill the King! We want him dead!”

“Kill, kill, kill!”

Xerxes’s head jerked at the boom of noise, his eyes slamming shut as pain blossomed in his ears. He heard other noises; bells, chants, screams, shouts, accusations.

“Do you think the gods will allow your return, Xerxes son of Draco?!”

“You have arrived to meet your death!”

Then… quiet.

Xerxes peeled his eyelids open to find the room glowing; the tiled floors, the statues of the Divinities, the mutilated wall murals. He glanced down at his sword, rippling white light moving right to the tip. Warmth surged through his limbs, and he glanced up at the intruders.

His body moved faster than his mind—sweeping across the floor on his knees and slashing the legs of four Vafat in his way. He pierced one in the stomach at the very end, then stood, looking the foreign creature in its violet eyes where the first flicker of realization filled the room as five Vafat fell to the floor in unison.

Xerxes swallowed, not sure how he’d done it. Not sure he had done it.

They sprang for him like insects, claws out, growls piercing the quiet lobby, and his eyes blacked over as shadows smothered his face.

23

DAMON

Damon wished to witness the moment Xerxes would finally fall. He watched from the dim balcony over the lobby, crouched in darkness, biting his lip in anticipation as the atrium erupted with the deadliest display of slaughter Damon had ever been allowed to behold.

Claws scratched down Xerxes’s armour and leathers, his skin tearing as he was smothered—he raised an arm to shield his face, and Damon burst out laughing, spit hitting the floor as he watched between railing posts. His fingers curled around a bow and he seized his opportunity, dragging an arrow onto the bowstring and lifting it over the rail, his sage coat fluttering at his back in the frosty wind of his gods as he aimed at the King of Per-Siana’s back. Hunger boiled in his stomach as he imagined Xerxes’s flesh splitting, the King’s startled blue eyes lifting to the balcony. He wanted Xerxes to look up and see who’d done it, he wanted Xerxes to know that it was Damon who’d stolen his life, his throne, his palace—not Belorme, or the fallen Intelligentsia who hadn’t been strong enough to stay alive—but Damon.

A slash of light tore through the hoard like an axe, and the Vafat to Xerxes’s left were cut in half, red and black robes shredding to pieces. Damon’s thin smile wavered, his finger faltering on the arrow as Xerxes rose from a bended knee, glistening cuts across his neck and hands. He did look up to the balcony then, and Damon dropped the bow at the deep blue eyes that found him; the bow fell off the balcony and clattered on the lobby floor below. Damon scrambled backward out of sight, his hands patting the floor to mark his way. He sat there for a moment as sharp sounds of fighting returned. Angry cries filled the lobby, and Damon jerked his attention to the entrance, scrambling forward on his knees to peek over the rail, spying dozens of soldiers flooding the atrium with swords drawn, charging the remaining Vafat.

Damon yelped when he spotted Xerxes standing in the middle of the commotion, still looking at him. The Vafat sped around the room at inhuman speed. One by one they were captured and pinned, their bodies bursting into a flutter of red leaves that scattered over the floor, hollow shadows combusting to dust as those in armour and beige garments destroyed everything.

Damon scrambled to his feet and fled down the stairs.

The hallways were too dark to see, but Damon’s hands fumbled for the wall beside him as he rushed, as he imagined that army searching for him next. He was the one who’d invited the Vafat in, after all. Surely, they didn’t think Damon had betrayed Per-Siana, sold it to the enemy… Surely, they weren’t angry with their own Chancellor, the last standing Intelligentsia of this great nation. He’d ensured all of Per-Siana’s citizens wouldn’t think for themselves; he’d controlled the narrative carefully.

Someone’s marching footsteps sounded behind Damon, and he shrieked, breaking into a sprint when he looked back and saw Xerxes’s dark hair and silver armour coming around the bend. Damon chanted his knowledge to his gods, casting spells and spitting curses as he raced up a staircase, and then another. He got so lost in the heights of the palace, he wasn’t familiar with where he was as he passed through a glass tunnel to an orbed balcony. Fear vanished, anger flooding him in its place when he looked around and found himself trapped. This was his moment to see the King die, and Xerxes was following like he owned the palace he walked through. Xerxes. Worthless, orphaned, hated Xerxes.

“Curse you, Xerxes,” Damon growled, his fingers turning crooked as his flesh sank to a sickly gray. Moisture trickled over his body, pooling at his collarbones as he climbed over the rail and inched around behind a pillar so he might leap out and kill the King when he arrived. He slid a dagger from his belt, his pale, graying knuckles shuddering with anticipation.

Xerxes appeared in the doorway, dark blue cape fluttering at his back, his face shadowed by the roiling clouds overhead. Damon’s icy lips pulled into a smile as he slid around the pillar, but when Xerxes’s gaze shot over, cold took hold of Damon’s body like a hand of ice had reached in and crisped his insides. He shuddered with his dagger in the air, and he slipped…

Damon’s feet skated off the narrow ledge, his moist hand hitting a pillar and gliding off. His arms reeled, hands clawing for anything. Xerxes appeared at the rail, watching Damon’s Intelligentsia coat take flight, the dagger tumble from his hand, his legs kicking air.

The Celestial Divinities above watched him fall.

And fall.

And fall.

Xerxes grew smaller, the balcony getting further away.

The wind washed through Damon’s hair and clothes as he turned his head, passing a great, gaping window where he caught a glimpse of a white-haired High Priestess inside with a peaceful, satisfied smile upon her lips. She gazed out at the city—his city.