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The brass helmet glittered as the man bowed. “Yes, Prince Mansour.”

—Prince?

Xerxes raised an eyebrow, fixing his full attention on the black-haired fellow in the coronet instead. In the desert, he’d learned Alecsander had offspring, but he hadn’t imagined the War King’s son to be so… delicate. Prince Mansour looked like a pristine doll with Alecsander’s features, all the roughness of the War King smoothed out and filed down.

The bowing man waved toward the hallway where four palace guards in crimson dragged in a thrashing, limping figure with the lightest natural hair Xerxes had ever seen on a man—pale and blonde. The guards dropped him at Alecsander’s feet.

“How far did you get this time, Prince?” Prince Mansour turned in his seat. He kicked the blonde fellow, even though judging by the bruises, the fellow had already been kicked several times by palace guards. “You’ll never get past the Outer Rings. Why do you try? To torment yourself?” Xerxes’s gaze flickered back to the curved walls outside. “Do you want to face the Ring Cobra, Prince? I can grant your wish if you’re so desperate to be out there.” Laughter rippled down the table, blotting out sounds of tinkling cutlery. “Perhaps you should ask my brother if the Cobra is worth facing.” Prince Mansour’s red-lipped smile grew hideous. “Haven’t you heard how Prince Emad was sent to the rings as punishment when he was young? The boy was so terrified of the Cobra, he was never the same. Why do you think he’s so timid and useless now? Do you want that to be you?”

Dozens of heads turned toward someone else at the table with the same black hair, pinking cheeks, his gaze stuck down on his plate. The boy had to be younger than Xerxes, and when the nobles chuckled again, a pang of unease twisted Xerxes’s gut. Alecsander raised no defense for his youngest son, even as every noble at the table mocked him.

Apart from the white-haired woman, that is. Xerxes noticed Sigil-Serene steal a look at the younger Prince, her claret lips frowning as she took a fast drink of water.

Prince Mansour invited the blond fellow to eat the scraps off the floor around the table if he was hungry. But Xerxes’s thoughts flittered back to the youngest B’rei Mira royal instead, the blushing one who hadn’t eaten a bite since everyone had looked at him. The only soul at this long, decorated table who looked utterly alone.

A singular burst of laughter tore Xerxes from his thoughts. The blond South Prince was a basket case on the floor, his muddied scarlet robe and pectoral sweeping up dust. The shoulder of his robe was even torn. “I’d rather starve than eat something your filthy mouth has touched, Prince.” His light blue eyes settled on Prince Mansour, and the B’rei Mira heir’s smile wavered.

Chuckles ceased around the table, and Prince Mansour sniffed, adjusting the coronet atop his head. “Very well,” he said, picking up his bread knife and turning it in his fingers. “Take him to his cell. Feed him nothing for the next two days. Make him too weak to attempt another escape.”

“Not that it’ll matter,” a grey-haired man piped up as he lifted his goblet toward Prince Mansour in some form of salute. “No one has ever escaped the Outer Rings.”

The South Prince released a bitter laugh on the floor, a hostile smirk tugging at a swelling bruise over his lips. It was that smile that made Xerxes freeze in his own skin as the guards dragged the South Prince to his feet and yanked him toward the hall on a limping foot.

That boyish, calculated smile.

Xerxes took a step after the tetrad of guards, his chain stopping him at the pedestal’s edge. But his eyes remained on the mouth of the hall where transparent red curtains rippled as a breeze sailed through the opening across the room.

A memory filled his mind of shaking hands with a boy who had a smile like that. One with features as light as a sun-creature in a fairytale book, in a castle of colourful glass beads and detailed mosaic artwork. From a kingdom that was smashed to pieces and turned to rubble.

This couldn’t be that same Prince. But as Xerxes thought back to the great maps he’d studied, the ones that placed B’rei Mira to the northeast of Per-Siana, his mind’s eyes drifted down to a kingdom south of the great B’rei Mira empire.

The South Prince.

By the Divinities. It was Norkin—Norkin of Messa.

Xerxes nearly tripped as he took a step back, chains rattling. His childhood friend was here, the one who’d written him letters during their boyhood. Letters Xerxes had never responded to. He thought Norkin was dead after the collapse of Messa.

Xerxes sank to the ground, drawing the attention of a Vafat across the room. Guilt trickled over him; the guilt of being a terrible friend, of never reaching out to the ally of his youth, of never investigating Norkin’s whereabouts after Messa fell. How long had Norkin been trapped here? The boy Xerxes knew was a man now.

Xerxes stayed that way for the rest of the mealtime. He didn’t look up from his hands as the lyres began pushing sweet tunes through the hall, nor when nobles commented on him sitting. Xerxes became the exact sort of statue museum piece his enemies wanted, a frozen stone, until the moment a low, watery voice lifted by the table. “The armies are frustrated, Your Majesty. The Gold Maiden is becoming an irritating problem.”

Xerxes’s eyes dragged up. His dense heartbeat sounded in his ears as every other sound dissolved around the room, apart from one; the one of that watery voice adding, “The men can’t get through her into Per-Siana.”

Xerxes thought his own mind was blotting out all the noise, but he realized everyone had gone quiet when nobles leaned closer to listen and the lyre music faded out. He sprang to his feet, the clatter of his chain drawing eyes toward him. But not Alecsander’s.

“Who’s the Gold Maiden?” Prince Mansour piped up from his seat as he stabbed a grape and twirled it on the end of his fork. “Sounds like a circus performer.”

Xerxes’s heart raced, his beastly eyes narrowing on the man turning and performing a low bow to the heir. “She’s the Per-Siana Commander who let our armies go free when our goliath was killed.”

Murmurs trickled down the table, and Prince Mansour’s gaze lifted slowly. He set down his fork with a clatter. “That woman? The one who insulted us by sending our men back here with a threatening message?”

Alecsander leaned back in his chair, and Xerxes’s eyes tore over just as his dark gaze flickered with gold. Cold flittered through the room, making two or three nobles shiver. And suddenly, Xerxes realized why Alecsander had been avoiding looking at him, why the subtle hint of frustration was adorning his brows.

Divinities.

Divinities.

Per-Siana wasn’t taken yet. The Gold Maiden was alive—Ryn was alive—and was keeping B’rei Mira from entering Per-Siana.