Page 99 of The Scarlet Star

“Everyone, leave us!” he shouted at them. The Folke bowed and fled; noises of pattering boots carried them back to the stairs. The prison door squeaked when it slid shut.

Xerxes waited for several more seconds before he moved. He came to the bars where Ryn was, but he stayed just out of reach,staring at her with a gaze empty of life or warmth. The same heartless being he’d been when she’d first arrived at the palace.

“I trusted you,” he said. “You became the reason I smiled here.”

Ryn shrank behind the bars. She cleared her throat. “King, did it really seem like I was pretending to you?”

“No!” Xerxes growled. “Which is why I’m so impressed, Ryn!” He bit his tongue like he was mad at himself for using her name. “Your acting was impeccable. You really fooled me.”

Her breathing hitched. “A…acting?” But she realized she couldn’t deny it—that to say she hadn’t tried to fool him would be another lie. Her lips grew numb, her tongue heavy. “I really did want you to be free—”

“You’re an Adriel!” he said through his teeth, and she slammed her mouth shut. Xerxes grabbed the bars on either side of her. His mouth thinned as he drew in just an inch, no more. “You deserve to die for deceiving me.” Ryn could hardly meet his eyes, even when a flicker of remorse crossed them. “But you cured me, like you said you would. And for that, I’ve reduced your sentence to lifelong imprisonment in the Mother City jails instead. This is theonlymercy I’ll show you. We’re even now, and I owe you nothing.” He flexed his jaw. “I don’t ever want to see you again. I hope we never cross paths.”

Ryn backed away from the bars, thankful, for the first time, that a prison wall separated her from him.

Xerxes swallowed. “I will lose my mind if I see you again,” he rasped.

Without another word, Xerxes turned his back to Ryn. She watched him march out of the prison. She watched until he disappeared up the stairs. The loudthudof the door slamming followed.

The jail grew quiet. Ryn slumped back against the far wall and slid to sit. She didn’t move for hours. The sky grew bluer, the sun got brighter, then the heavens fell to ashy shades of gray.

It was nighttime before Ryn made a sound. She stood to her feet.

Her gaze crept up, taking in the chipped ceiling.

“El,” she croaked. “What is this?”

Silence.

She screamed. At the ceiling, at the nearby guards, at El. “Is this what I signed up for?!”

She grabbed a loose rock off the floor and hurled it against the far wall. It smashed into the stones and rolled away. She kicked off her boots next, then she picked them up and hurled them out of the prison cell. She slammed herself against the bars. “Let me out!” she screamed at whoever was listening. “Let me speak to the King!”

How could Xerxes have said all those things and not given Ryn a chance to reply? How could he not have at least let her process all he’d said before leaving? She’d never see Xerxes again, and her last memory of him would be of him calling her a liar, all because she’d done what everyone else had asked her to do.

“You’d better not let them find Kai!” she threatened El next. She pointed at the heavens. “If this is the end for me, at least don’t let it be the end for him!”

“This is not the end, Adassah. It’s only the beginning.”

Ryn laughed. It was a cruel, cynical sound that burned her throat on the way out.

“You tricked me! I believed you! I…foughtfor you!” She clenched her teeth, her moisture-filled eyes drilling the ceiling as her legs lost all strength. “We’re done! I’m done with you!”

She fell against the wall and sank back to the floor where she belonged. Tears dripped off the end of her cheeks, hitting her bound hands. She looked at the cuts still there from her fight at the Priesthood Temple, and in the First Temple, and in the street. A sliver hid in her pinky from cutting down the pear tree too.

“I’m here.”

Dust floated around Ryn’s cell. She coughed.

She imagined what Geovani would say about this. Probably something outlandish like,“There’s more than one path to the end, Adassah,”or“The God Original works in mysterious ways.”

Ryn had always known deep down the woman was crazy. Thinking about Geovani’s ‘wisdom’ now only made her hands ball into fists. She’d trusted Geovani just as much as she’d trusted El, and now she was headed to the place where her mother had died of thecinder plague, likely to meet the same fate.

“I quit,” she whispered into the silence. “I quit, El. El Tsebaoth. Whatever your name is.” She laid on the ground and curled into a ball. “Leave me alone.”

She stayed that way for several more hours until she fell asleep.

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