Page 2 of The Scarlet Star

The man looked Xerxes up and down. “She’s about your age, I think,” he guessed.

“Then what does she want with a midnight rose? Aren’t flowers for little girls?” Xerxes didn’t know why he was asking. This man should die. Any moment now.

“Well,” the man huffed an odd laugh, “it’s been a while since I left to find her a rose…” he admitted, and Xerxes raised a brow.

“How long? Hours? Days?” Xerxes folded his arms, imagining a father vanishing for days on end for a silly flower. “Weeks?”

“Years.” The man clasped his hands behind his back and dropped his gaze to the floor.

Xerxes blinked.

He blinked again. “Years?!”

“Seven years. My daughter was… uh, let me see…” The man looked off and scratched his head.

“Don’t say twelve.”Xerxes thought he said it in his mind, but when the man snapped his fingers and pointed at Xerxes, he realized he’d said the strange plea aloud.

“Yes, that’s it! She was twelve!” The man made a face after. “How did you know?”

Xerxes stared at this man who had a daughter exactly his age. Who left the same year Xerxes’s own father had, only this manleft his child by choice. Also, he’d clearly made up a cowardly tale for his daughter about going to find her a rose so he could flee from her forever.

No wonder Xerxes sensed this man was evil.

“Never mind. Let’s make a deal,” Xerxes said. “Give your daughter to me and I’ll let you leave this room alive and unscathed. I swear it by the Celestial Divinities.”

It was a shallow deal no man would accept, Xerxes knew. Because what sort of father would trade his own daughter for—

“Deal! She’s beautiful! Anda noble—” the man emphasised the word ‘noble’ too strongly “—and she’d be a great prize for a distinguished palace guard like yourself! You can have her if you’d like!” The man’s expression changed, his eyes going wild as he nodded and smiled. “If you let me go free, I will happily give her to you!”

Xerxes’s mouth tipped down at the corners. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt like the least crazy person in a room. He’d nearly killed men for lesser crimes than this man’s impulsive self-preservation.

At the thought, his flesh turned cool and moist, and this time, when the voices took over, he found it more difficult to stop them. He perhaps didn’t want to.

“Fine. Write her name on this stone.” Xerxes tapped a cobblestone with his foot. The man nodded quickly and grabbed a nearby pebble to scrape the information at Xerxes’s feet. And as the man handed over his daughter, the thing that should have been his most precious possession, Xerxes began to laugh.

“You fool,” he whispered as the man finished, tossed the pebble aside, and glanced up in question. Though Xerxes didn’t have his sword, he was sure he wouldn’t need it. The man’s face fell at Xerxes’s expression.

“Don’t you know who I am?” Xerxes asked the most foolish father in the kingdom.

The man looked hard at him and squinted. And so, of Xerxes’s two identities, he decided to admit the worst one.

“Haven’t you heard of the manic beast that’s been spotted in the palace gardens?” Though his faulty evenings were rare, Xerxes knew rumours had trickled out of the palace and into the city streets these last years; all of Per-Siana must have heard by now.

Across the room a shattered mirror was pegged to the wall at exactly Xerxes’s height, and in it, Xerxes saw his vilest self: his flesh sinking to ashen purple-gray, slick and damp, and dark crescents forming beneath his eyes, stealing away his handsome, youthful face. His muscles grew tighter, his body, colder.

The man took a shaky step backward toward one of the arch exits, his own face paling at the sight of the creature before him. “You said you’d let me leave this room!” he reminded. His throat bobbed. “You made me a deal bound by the Divinities!”

“I did. And now your precious daughter is mine,” Xerxes agreed. He inhaled, ignoring the scent of the golden pears just an arm’s reach away. “So, go ahead and leave this room untouched. And then start running.”

Soil and dust puffed over the feast table where Xerxes dropped the unearthed cobblestone with a loudthud. The renowned sages of the Intelligentsia looked up, their long navy hoods casting shadows over their repulsed faces as they eyed the dust breathing over their dinner plates from the dirty stone. Flames spurted to life over charmed candles at Xerxes’s end of the table, as though the candles expected he was there to eat, anda cloth lifted from its folded state to polish Xerxes’s dinner plate before fluttering through the air and folding itself in its place again.

Xerxes dropped into his chair and slouched back against it. A second later, he kicked his boots high up onto the table and crossed his legs, ensuring even more dirt spoiled the tablecloth. And his freshly cleaned plate.

Two seats down, Belorme, the esteemed Chancellor, slowly set down his cutlery and raised a cloth to dab the remains of dinner from his mouth. It was a drawn-out spectacle, and Xerxes folded his hands on his lap to wait. He licked the taste of pears from his lips to keep busy so he wouldn’t speak first.

Finally, Belorme turned in his seat and faced Xerxes. “What isthis?” He nodded to the cobblestone resting between them all. His voice remained cool and calm, as always.

Xerxes tapped a finger against his chin, thinking about the fool in the vest he’d chased out of the palace. The man had gotten away. Barely. “It’s number four,” he informed the Intelligentsia.

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