Page 8 of The Scarlet Star

Ryn had no interest in being beautified, and she especially had no interest in standing out. Maybe Marcan would keep her look simple and she could stand at the back until the King chose a wife and the fuss would pass over. It occurred to her that when the Folke had come to her house to collect her, the man reading the scroll had said,“Should you fail, you will be returned home to this location at the end of the period.”

So, there was hope. If Ryn couldn’t find a chance to escape, all she had to do was blend in, stay quiet, and keep out of the King’s sight. Maybe—maybeno one would ask questions about her, and she could make it through this trial period alive.

“Do a simple mosaic on a dress, then,” Ryn said to Marcan with a shrug. “If that’s what you’re good at.” The suggestion was the least she could do for a fellow palace prisoner. Though, thinking about wearing any kind of‘maiden dress’made her stomach turn.

Marcan scowled like it was the most absurd idea he’d ever heard. But after a moment of walking, he tilted his head and tapped his chin.

They entered the room at the very end of the hall—furthest away from the others. Heva grabbed a torch from the hallway and began lighting candles when she came inside. “Wow,” she said as she looked around.

Silk furnishings filled the living area, and a great spoked bed covered in dangling pink-blossom ivies rested at the far side of the room. But while every piece of furniture was meant to catch the eye, all Ryn saw was the wall of windows. She moved for the closest window, and as dusk consumed Per-Siana, she stared out at the city that didn’t feel all that far away, at a particular temple just a few blocks from the palace with a domed gold roof, straight in her view.

“Do any of these windows open?” she asked with a dry voice.

Marcan grunted as he clattered around with his suitcase and began setting up a station in the living area. He murmured, “How should I know?”

Ryn looked down the row of sills, her heart fluttering when she spotted a lever. She rushed over and cranked it, gasping when the window opened with apop. She turned until the window was a wide, gaping doorway, inhaling the wind and filling her chambers with the sweet fragrances of fruit and the flower gardens outside. She slapped a hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t let a sob escape as her eyes filled with tears, keeping her back to the room where Heva and Marcan were.

A long time ago, Ryn had a mother. She never had a father she cared to speak of, but she did once have a mother who loved her. A mother who used to brush her hair so it never grew tangled the way it was now, who used to wash her dresses so she didn’t wear stains like she did now, who used to whisper beautiful, loving words so that Ryn didn’t feel alone the way she did now. Onething her mother always said was, “When a door closes and traps you in, the Adriel God will open a window.”

Ryn bit her lower lip and held her breath so she wouldn’t reveal that her heart was screaming for her mother, for her home, for her people. She didn’t believe in the power of an Adriel God, not since her mother died. Nevertheless, the saying proved to be true. Perhaps her mother’s spirit was out there, watching over her. Maybe her mother had been checking in on her from time to time and had sensed Ryn’s distress.

Ryn laughed, tasting the metallic flavour of blood from biting her lip so hard. She lifted a hand to her punctured lip, not caring if Heva and Marcan were exchanging strange glances behind her, wondering if she was crazy.

The King could have his fun with the three girls who wanted to be here. Ryn would be long gone before he ever learned any of her names—her false one, or her real one. What a fool he was to have tried to take her hostage in the first place when in her very room she had a doorway to freedom.

3

XERXES

Apart from being disgusted at the sight of how happy everyone was, Xerxes was relieved the palace workers had something else to focus on for a while. He watched from a high balcony above the lobby, blanketed in the darkness he belonged in, as the first two maidens entered the palace and gazed at the great artwork of the atrium. If only these maidens knew how they would be paraded among the citizens, talked about, painted onto tapestries, and worshipped like the Divinities themselves. Howunforgiving the people were about their stardoms. He could have warned the maidens if he cared. As it was, he imagined he’d play along for a bit to keep the Intelligentsia pleased and then disappear until the excitement died down. After Belorme chose the woman he foolishly planned to make Xerxes’s wife, Xerxes could ignore her the same way he ignored…

The first one.

Xerxes couldn’t bring himself to think her name. His first wife, daughter of an esteemed lord of B’rei Mira. The woman was horrid and selfish, openly disobeying Xerxes’s orders since day one. It was why Xerxes avoided her and barely spoke three words in her direction since she’d arrived. Perhaps it was childish of him, but he couldn’t stand how she did what everyone else did—making every decision about his kingdom for him, whispering in the hallways with the Intelligentsia, plotting their next move.

Yes, Xerxes had brought the threat of war upon his kingdom all on his own. If the B’rei Mira kingdom ever found out that he was the one who hadmurdered—

Xerxes closed his eyes, letting the visions of the new maidens vanish from his sight, from his mind. No, he would never marry again. Belorme would have to tie him down and drag him to the altar.

“You wanted to kill her,”one of the voices reminded him.“You wanted her gone.”

“I didn’twantto. It was an accident,” Xerxes muttered. “I don’t even remember doing it.” But he knew it was no use arguing with the voices. If he couldn’t even convince the Intelligentsia sages, if he couldn’t even convince his kingdom enough to stop the gossip, then how could he convince the voices of his own imagination?

With that in mind, Xerxes left the atrium, not waiting to see the last two maidens who’d rushed from their comfortable homes to see him. To court him. Tomarryhim.

He headed down the long hallway, the late evening sun kissing his cheeks as he came beneath a domed glass ceiling. The Celestial Divinities were spying on him tonight, he could feel it. They must have known the maidens were the least of his true concerns. They must have realized that Per-Siana was a mere breath away from the greatest war they’d ever faced. That the second Alecsander of B’rei Mira learned that a noble of his people had been killed by the King of Per-Siana, the great warlord would sweep into Xerxes’s kingdom and destroy everything in sight.

Xerxes had hardly been able to sleep for the past six months—sincethe incident. Even with all their tricks and insight, the Intelligentsia hadn’t been able to stop the news from slipping out of the palace and into the Mother City. They’d chalkedthe incidentup to silly rumours. They’d claimed through their heralds that the former Queen had died of a highly contagious disease and they were taking measures to ensure the disease didn’t break out into the city.

Though Xerxes avoided their meetings, he knew the Intelligentsia would likely create a false disease with their potions, release it into the kingdom’s water supply, and call it an “outbreak” to ensure their story was believed. It would ultimately benefit the sages, too, since anyone with a sound mind knew that to control people, all one had to do was create a disease and strike fear into the citizens’ hearts about it. Months later, they would conveniently develop a cure, and the citizens of Per-Siana would line up to receive it. The Intelligentsia would look like heroes.

To Xerxes, it looked like diabolical madness. But he knew better than to utter the word “madness” from his own mouth when he was the one hearing voices.

He ventured down a flight of stairs, then another, and finally, two more, until he came deep into the palace basement where his oval room was hidden away. He walked around the hole in the floor where he’d unearthed a cobblestone, and he approached the bright tree of golden pears thriving with lush emerald leaves. The mighty trunk and limbs glowed beneath the evening light piercing downward through the circular skylight that stretched up all the levels of the palace; an opening to the sky cut off from everything. No one in the palace knew why there was a large pillar in the centre of the structure. No one apart from the Intelligentsia and a few select servants who had once come into this room—ten years ago—and had planted this tree and had made the room beautiful. The tree had grown on its own after that by Celestial magic.

The hunger had not begun yet, but Xerxes didn’t care to wait until the burning filled his stomach or the icy dampness covered his flesh. He imagined the pulls of it would be magnified this evening after he’d watched the spectacle in the atrium. If he got his mind right, maybe he could sleep through the worst of it. He plucked a pear from his tree.

Most days, one bite of spellbound fruit was enough to quell his starvation and keep him sane and alive. A gift of medicine from the Celestial Divinities and the single reason he was forced to rely on the great stars of the sky and the Intelligentsia. It was the same reason Xerxes could never take control of his own kingdom.

---