Page 209 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

“Can you—”

“Come in,” she said, stepping aside. “Quick. And stop yelling before you alert half the district.”

INTERLUDE

It’s not that hard to topple a kingdom.

It is already poised to collapse. And a slave is the perfect person to knock out those final remaining supports—privy to the most intimate parts of the castle and yet utterly invisible. The slave marvels at the fact that it had never even occurred to him to do this sooner. It’s so easy. So well deserved. So much more elegant than the blade driven through his master’s chest that he always had dreamed of.

He passes information to that promising Hiaj contestant throughout all four months of the Kejari. He feeds him guard schedules, castle layouts, fortification weak points. He watches the measures that his king takes to protect himself as the days pass and his paranoia grows stronger, and he feeds those along to the Hiaj contestant, too.

He is careful. He never reveals his face. He never reveals his name. He never whispers a word of it to anyone, not even the queen in their secret daylight meetings. The knife he drives into his captor’s back is so slow and silent, he doesn’t even feel it at all.

Weeks pass, months. The Hiaj contestant, as everyone knew he would be, is victorious again and again. The king grows more cruel, vicious in his fear. The slave’s hatred becomes a quiet obsession.

And then, at last, the night has come.

The final night of the Kejari. The night the future king and the slave alike will offer up their final, devastating blows. The Hiaj contestant’s will come in the form of a blood-soaked victory and a wish from a goddess. The slave’s will come in the form of a letter overflowing with secrets, passed off in exchange for the guaranteed safety of those closest to him.

It is eerily quiet in the moments before the world changes. The sunset is still and stagnant. The slave has made his final move. Now all that is left to do is wait.

And in those quiet moments, he finally tells the queen. They had spent the evening hours together, her head against his chest, his hand rubbing her shoulder as he stared sleeplessly at the ceiling, thinking of all the ways everything will soon change.

He wakes her gently as the sun slips below the horizon, only an hour remaining until the kingdom collapses.

The words pour from his lips. He feels like he is offering her a precious gift that he has been saving for a very long time. And then, finally, he intertwines her fingers with his.

“We’ll need to leave tonight,” he tells her. “Right after the Kejari ends. He’ll be distracted, if he’s even still alive by then. We can get out of Sivrinaj before the worst begins.”

He expects joy. Instead, she is horrified. She shakes her head.

“You have to undo it,” she says. “This can’t happen.”

He doesn’t know what to say for several long seconds.

“It’s already done,” he tells her. “It’s already over.”

Her face crumples, like she knew he would say this, but the truth still hurts just as much.

“I can’t,” she says. “I can’t go with you. I need to stay here.”

His heart sinks.

He spends those final minutes of their old life begging her—begging her—to leave with him.

And right up until the end, right up until she is prying her hands out of his, she refuses.

They have no more time. The final trial is about to begin. And at last, she grabs his face and kisses him fiercely.

“You go,” she whispers. “But I cannot leave him. Not now.”

For centuries, the slave would think about this moment. Why? Why would she choose to die in her cage rather than find freedom?

Everything within him rebels against the thought of leaving her. But he has worked for this for too long. As he sits behind his master in the colosseum stands for that final trial, he stares at the back of the queen’s head and imagines carrying her out over his shoulder when he goes.

He is not watching the battle. But he knows when it is over by the scream of the spectators, deafening, bloodthirsty. The sky shifts, fragments of unnatural light circling above. The air holds its breath, anticipating the impending arrival of a goddess.

The king rises, his eyes locked to the sky.

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