Page 1 of The Scarlet Star

1

XERXES

The human mind is the most terrifying thing in existence.

It’s a powerful marvel capable of altering the heavens and the earth, yet it believes lies. Therefore, it’s easily manipulated and 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 iseverything.

He should have never gone outside.

Xerxes slammed his palms over his ears, hot moisture pooling into his eyes as he stumbled down the hidden staircase to the palace basement. Had anyone seen? Would reports arise of a rampaging beast in the courtyard? He knew better than to walk through the gardens this close to his hour of hunger.

His pulse pounded against his mind, muting out the many voices that told him to do terrible, unthinkable things. Voices he refused to obey, ever since…

Since…

Xerxes swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut. His boots scraped over the basement floor from uneven strides as he rubbed his temples, willing himself to think aboutanythingelse.

He stopped short at the arched entrance to the oval room. He blinked twice, forgetting where he was for a moment as he beheld movement.

Someone was in there.

Who woulddaretake a step into this place?

Xerxes’s hand came against his belt before he realized he hadn’t brought his sword. He eyed the middle-aged man in a worn vest examining golden pears dangling from the great, crooked tree in the centre of the room. After a moment, Xerxes shook the clouds from his mind and pulled his eyes shut again. When he opened them, the man was still there.

Xerxes tilted his head. If this man wasn’t a figment of his imagination, he’d be the first person in almost ten years to set foot in the oval room apart from Xerxes himself.

“You should kill him,”one of the voices said, and Xerxes smacked his temple.

“Quiet!” he whispered, demanded,begged.

The middle-aged man in the vest reached for a fat pear hanging from the nearest branch. His fingers curled around it, turning it right and left. He tugged, and Xerxes’s stomachdropped. But the man’s fingers paused before they could do the unthinkable.

As if sensing he wasn’t alone, the man glanced over his shoulder into the shadows circling the room—the space where moonlight from the oval skylight didn’t quite reach—and Xerxes ducked behind the arch. The pear held to the tree by a mere thread.

A second passed by. Two. Three.

The man turned back to his task.

Xerxes slipped into the room, his boots a whisper over the floor, his black cloak transforming him into a shadow himself. He came up behind the thieving intruder, and he spoke in a voice low and dreadful, “Entering this room is forbidden.”

“Kill the trespasser!”all the voices in his mind pleaded at once.

The man’s hand went still on the pear. When he spun around, his wide gaze drew up Xerxes’s body, stopping on Xerxes’s face several inches above his and mostly obscured by darkness. The man’s eyes grew rounder, his thieving hands sliding behind his back.

Crumbs littered the man’s chest, making it obvious this thief had helped himself to the baking in the dining room on his way down too. He wasn’t dressed as a servant or a guard, or even a noble. In fact, grass stains covered his clothes and the salty scent of his skin indicated he hadn’t bathed in a while, which was practically a crime for anyone who belonged in the palace.

“You’ve entered the palace grounds, you’ve trespassed into a forbidden room, and you’ve stolen from the King,” Xerxes informed the man. “I’ll have you killed.”

“Yes, let’s kill him!”the voices agreed.

The man dropped to his knees. “Please!” he begged. “I… I came here only because…” He glanced around and scratched his head. “Because I promised my daughter I would find her amidnight rose!” he shouted with a clap. “It’sherfault, really. If she wasn’t so greedy for a flower, I never would have come here!”

Two seconds of strange silence rang through the room.

Xerxes was used to overhearing the murmuring taunts of the palace dwellers: “crazy,lunatic…evil” they’d say. But as he looked upon this man, Xerxes recognized a different sort of evil. A duller, less exciting one, maybe. But evil, all the same.

“How old is your daughter?” he asked. The sensation of cold water tickled over his flesh, creeping along his fingers, prickling behind his ears, and threatening to take the rest of him and bring his mind to another state. Xerxes shook it off.

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