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She hadn’t spoken to her parents in seven years because once they saw what she had become—her lost fingers, her pure white hair, her painted face—their eyes had filled with horror. Sigilene thought they couldn’t accept her new identity, so she’d blocked them from her thoughts and heart. But now, looking back, she understood maybe they just didn’t want her to destroy herself. And she realized she missed them greatly.

No one in the palace had ever truly known her except for a god she’d never met until now. A god of distant lands who’d seen her whole life and knew her heart deeper than any of the gods she’d sacrificed for. A god who had given her back her hands in full.

A god who knew that her name wasn’t Sigilene at all.

As the tree crumpled to a pile of cinders, nothing but a great stain on the basement wall, Sarai felt the magic slip off her neck like a cut noose—those bronze stamps on her throat—and for the first time since she was eight years old, she felt like she could breathe.

27

ALECSANDER

The first shift had happened in the desert. A great sweep of heat had washed over him, the desert sun prickling his shoulders and cheeks. Alecsander had lurched his horse to a halt, reaching up slowly to touch his forehead. He brought his fingers down and stared at the mark of glistening sweat upon them.

The constant cold in his blood and bones had not permitted him to feel heat in many years, even in the desert. He glanced back toward the empire he had left behind, curiosity flittering across his thoughts. But the dark, twisted corners of his mind were too full to consider possibilities. Full of raging gods demanding he return to his throne built on crushed nations and power. And so, he’d ignored the rush of heat, the warnings of his gods, the curiosity at the unusual shift in the atmosphere that made him worry about his snake deity. And he had continued on to face the Per-Siana King who had escaped his clutches for the last time.

Now, King Xerxes moved so quickly, spinning and slicing the air, stabbing with inhuman speed, that Alecsander barely saw it happen. The young King got three hits in before Alecsander had a chance to take a full breath. Alecsander looked down, marvelling at the bright red that slipped past his armour. A drip of it fell to the Per-Siana Throne Room floor.

“Enough. Kill him. We want him dead. Kill Xerxes, son of Draco.”

The red glow magnified on his sword as he raised it. Strength of the gods pulsated through his arm when he plunged it forward, and King Xerxes sprang back, hesitating for the first time since he’d come down from his dais. Crackles of red tore over the floor from Alecsander’s feet, crawling up the walls and smashing together when they reached each other on the ceiling. Sparks rained down over King Xerxes, and the young King raised an arm to shield himself.

Alecsander drove forward, his blade an ancient power meant to destroy kings and thrones, a tool of conquering nations and holding them in the grip of the snake. A tool to crush King Xerxes, who was young and fiery and insulting, who had held off Alecsander’s great forces in the desert so long and forced Alecsander to climb off his throne and venture into the sand himself.

His blade met King Xerxes’s breastplate, the glowing tip splitting metal over the young King’s heart. A sound escaped Xerxes’s gritted teeth as his hand flew around the blade, but there was no stopping the wrath of the gods as the blade sailed in—

Something jerked through his spirit and Alecsander lurched to a halt, his knees nearly colliding with the King before him. King Xerxes’s chest rose and fell, the boy’s piercing blue eyes wide, his teeth barred, his fingers still around Alesander’s blade. Alecsander looked around, his snarl fading. He waited for the gods to tell him what that shift in his spirit was. It was as if something had been torn away or melted off. Alecsander looked down at himself, at his armour still intact.

He released his grip on the Per-Siana King and tore back, staring at his blade where the red blood spell had vanished. He blinked at his feet, feeling heavy and slow. He patted his chest where something was missing, blinked his eyes where the tunnel vision was no more.

And as King Xerxes took a slow step after him, lifting his sword, a flit of terror moved through Alecsander as he realized…

He was just a man.

The voices of his snake did not come to him, the power of his tree shrivelled to sand in his body; he felt the slithering away of everything all at once. But who would have dared… who could have possibly touched his sacred tree?

Alecsander’s eyes slid up to the oncoming King whom he had tried to conquer just as Xerxes’s blade slid through him, flesh and bone, no longer a spirit, piercing even his armour with a clang as it came out his back.

It happened so fast. The end of him.

When King Xerxes retracted his blade, the force brought Alecsander stumbling to his knees, kneeling before this King. Or perhaps this King’s god. The one Alecsander’s own gods had tried to warn him about.

Alecsander’s head tilted to the side as he pondered. King Xerxes had been afraid when he’d first arrived at B’rei Mira as a hostage King. He wasn’t afraid anymore. Had Alecsander been gifted more time, he might have been driven mad trying to figure out what had changed, and how the young King had broken his soul tie marking and set himself free from the strongest magic Alecsander had discovered in all his years of hunting deities.

But… Alecsander had been too curious. Too obsessed. Just a little bit too hungry.

These were his last thoughts as he fell at the feet of King Xerxes, as his face hit the cold Throne Room floor of Per-Siana, as the lifeless body of the man he was went still.

28

EMAD

The news came by chariot warriors striding into the Throne Room. When Pyriwell learned their King had been slain, they wailed in the streets and tossed ash into the air. They pounded on the outer walls, demanding the palace issue justice and ride into war against the Per-Siana King who had killed their sovereign.

Emad had watched from behind the curtains, had listened to the stories flooding the palace and drifting from mouth to ear. All sorts of rumours arose in the beginning. Rumours that the voice of the Ring Cobra had ceased in the city—Emad had hidden away in his room when that one made its rounds, worried guards would storm his chambers and drag him out after he’d fired that arrow into the snake himself—and rumours of a palace fire in the basement that had magically turned all the sacred leaves into dust in the bottom of their barrels. Gossip speculated why the breeze off the city was warm, why they could smell the fragrance of the ivy blossoms, and where the blessed smoke had all gone. People asked why the Vafat had left without a trace. Some claimed Sigilene had fled the palace in the night, and fingers pointed at her for being responsible. Priests of the Sphynx claimed King Alecsander was not truly dead, and this was just a trick of their enemies to force the capital city into a scramble. Citizens of Pyriwell hid in their homes, afraid a Per-Siana army was coming.

For ten days this went on, and Emad wrote little notes in his journal, keeping track. He remained a quiet Prince, out of sight, only leaving his room to spy and make tea when no one was around. He kept tabs on the news and listened carefully to what people were saying so that if anyone realized what he had done to the snake, he might be ready to run for the hills. But when loud knocking on his door brought him out of sleep one night, he cracked it open carefully to behold three grim-faced Cobra Priests on the other side. Their makeup was watery, chapping over deep frowns.

“We have just received confirmation that our King is, in fact, dead,” the High Priest said.