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Damon glanced at the Mother City, noticing a great crowd in navy and ivory filling the Navy Road. “Who are all these people?! Where did they come from?!” he demanded of his gods, mind screaming. The people below pointed his way, witnessing him sailing down, down, down to…

He gazed over his shoulder, horror bubbling inside of him as he saw the tip of the tall pole where his Intelligentsia banner hung proudly over the Mother City for all to see.

And Damon released a dark, bitter growl as he fell. He growled at the gods until the moment it was confirmed that his last day was, in fact, numbered.

24

RYN

The human mind is the most terrifying thing in existence. It’s a powerful marvel capable of altering the heavens and the earth, yet…

Often, it believes lies.

The human mind is easily manipulated. Easily controlled. After hearing just a few words, a single mind can tear apart another, influence a hundred souls, or burn a kingdom to the ground. One mind can be the difference between peace and war. Between truth and a whole nation falling at the feet of deception. Between a great future and sudden death.

Therefore, the state of one’s mind is everything.

Ryn kept her eyes closed. Voices of men and spirits called out to her. Spit and dirt hit her veil and bruised skin as those on the roadside released shrill curses and kicked her palanquin, jerking her left and right. At first, when she’d risked opening her eyes, Ryn only saw hate. Hate for the B’rei Mira fallen bride, hate for her God, hate for her Per-Siana people. So much hate, it would have driven anyone to the brink of destruction had they made this ride alone.

Heavy chains weighed down Ryn’s legs, and thick ropes bound her wrists. She wasn’t given a seat this time; she knelt on the palanquin with a metal brace around her neck that connected four taut chains to the corners of the moving vessel. The parade, the final measure, the last goodbye, Ryn’s only taste of fresh air before her scheduled execution in the morning.

Vafat had tormented her all through the long nights, guards had resorted to physical intimidation, but Alecsander never showed up himself. The cuts on Ryn’s dry lips and the tender flesh at her shoulders were a reminder of her own strength as they’d demanded she deny the God Original. They threatened her with atrocities, broke her fingers, spat on her head, but no denial crossed her lips. Even when they starved her, she never whispered a curse against El’s name. Her heart sang the songs she knew, her lips whispering the scriptures nearly forgotten from that long time ago when her cousin sat her down and taught her to read Adriel letters.

Even as Ryn’s resolve faltered, her mind screaming the possibilities, the momentary lapses where her want to utter such a blasphemous rebuke toward her God nearly overtook her, she clung to the one thing that kept her mind intact throughout the persecution. And after days and days of it, she was absolutely convinced that if someone had entered such a period without the God Original on their side, such a mind would have been driven mad.

There were times El was quiet. There were times she wanted to scream back at her tormentors, there were moments she gritted her teeth and nearly did. But in the biting cold of night, shivering on the freezing floor, someone came and sat with her. A warm figure hovered by her side, ushering in the faintest music and a sweet fragrance of wheat fields.

After two nights nearly starving to death on the floor, she woke up feeling full. The wide stone cell with minimal natural sunlight was always empty in the mornings, back to its chilly state where Ryn was forced to hug herself to keep warm as her teeth chattered. Every morning, she pulled her legs beneath herself, closed her eyes amidst the dizzy spells, and folded her hands in front of her. She murmured, sometimes from her mouth, but most often from her heart. She stayed like that while the whispers of the guards outside guessed what she was doing. They couldn’t see that the floor had turned to warm water, that the air had changed with the soft afternoon glow of light spilling in the corner of a caved-in ceiling, and the birds singing in ivy-covered rafters above the crumbling pillars of the Abandoned Temple. Their blind eyes didn’t know that Ryn was not even in the cell with them at all.

Day after day, she’d prayed for those she left behind. For Burn Division Twelve, for Per-Siana, for her King. For Heva. Kai. She prayed for the priestesses, for Geovani, for the Adriels across the Mother City.

Those prayers made their way back into Ryn’s heart now as her palanquin bounced over the final stretch of the B’rei Mira capital while people screamed at her, throwing old fruit at her face.

Her veil was ripped off once they reached the Outer Rings. It was carried to the mouth of the gate and hung up there for all the people to point at, spit at, and mock. They would wrestle the Gold Maiden back into the filthy fabric for her execution; the guards laughed about it on the way through the gates into the palace.

Ryn was thrown back into her prison cell, knees slamming the floor hard enough to rip her skin against the stone. But she dragged her legs beneath herself, sat up, folded her hands, and closed her eyes.

Dawn would come soon enough. Ryn whispered old stories she’d been taught by a High Priestess, and she recalled bits and pieces of prayers she remembered being spoken over her by her mother. She was aware of almost nothing going on in the palace, in the space around her, except that Alecsander had not yet come.

“What’s taking him so long?” she muttered to El. “Will he not bid me farewell before I’m executed in the morning?”

Her eyelids peeled open, and for the first time in days, her gaze settled on the gray prison cell around her as she came to herself. The dizziness left, and thoughts of the approaching morning hovered. She was not afraid to die. She would see her mother soon. Matthias. All those Adriels she’d known who’d suffered unjust deaths over the years. She would be reunited with her people once she faced the end she should have met long ago in the Per-Siana Execution Hall. Xerxes had intervened to save her then, but no one from this land would intervene for her now.

But this was the lesson. Choices came with consequences. El had forgiven her for running off from her post after Heva was harmed, she knew that. But her end in a foreign kingdom was a result of her choice to turn her back on El’s plan, for rebelling. But even though she deserved it, that loving being who sat with her at night promised he held no hatred toward her for anything she’d done in the past.

Ryn was staring at the far wall when the sounds of briefly exchanged words and an odd struggle came from outside her door. The click of the lock was loud in the cell, and the sharp squeak of the door opening rang in Ryn’s sore ears.

A young woman with long white hair and frowning claret lips walked in. A dagger with a brown leather handle and a crystal in the blade was in her three-fingered hand. The disgust in her black eyes mimicked those out in the capital uttering curses at the Gold Maiden and calling for her death.

It was the look on her face that gave away what she came here to do. Ryn took in a deep breath and released it. “I’m scheduled to die in the morning. You would take my life early, even though it might cost you yours?”

The blade handle rolled over Sigilene’s fingers. “You’re so weak already, I don’t think they’ll even realize you’re already dead when they drag you up to your fate in a few hours.”

Ryn released a huff of disbelief. They would definitely know.

Her weak legs trembled as she pushed herself to stand, bare feet dragging over the uneven stone. “Do it then. For Prince Mansour.”

Sigilene glowered, the runes on her neck brightening. She raised the dagger to Ryn’s throat. “I’ve wanted to do this since the moment you appeared in the Throne Room in your hideous mask. I won’t let some measly execution guards steal this satisfaction from me.” Her lips stretched into an ugly smile. “King Alecsander left B’rei Mira. He crossed the desert as soon as your King escaped. He should be arriving at your kingdom soon to slaughter your people, starting with Xerxes. He will hunt down your loved ones, Adassah, and they will be the first to fall in the great kingdom purge. It will all start with the sacrificing of Adriels like you.” She leaned in. “It will happen because of you.”