Page 27 of The Scarlet Star

Xerxes blinked. “What?” he asked, wondering what he was doing here, wondering why he’d brought the maidens outside in the first place. Wondering why the voices wanted her dead so badly and were all shouting at once. He wanted to go back inside.

Estheryn’s mouth tipped down at the corners. She had a strange, hesitant look as she studied him. Then she said, “I wasn’t talking to you, King.”

A ball of heat dropped through Xerxes’s stomach. His grip loosened on her belt. He thought he might be sick as she stared. Just stared. And stared some more, like she’d torn open his flesh and could see all the things inside of him he had hidden away.

No, he must have imagined it.Neverhad anyone witnessed or heard his insanity.

But who was Estheryn speaking to then? Terror wrapped his heart. Xerxes thought to turn and march back inside, to run for his tree, until he realized… His mind had gone quiet.

Quiet.

Just his own thoughts were there.

His mouth parted. He lowered his sword from Estheryn’s side, and he pulled his other hand back to himself.

Was she a witch? Was she a divine sorceress or a Peri or a Jinn? How could she hear—

Estheryn kicked him in the stomach.

Xerxes flew back, the sword falling from his grip and smashing to the ground, his body slamming into the adjacent pillar. He gasped in shock as a fast, dull pain flooded into his abdomen.

“How dare you?!” Damon’s voice was a mere ghost in the back of Xerxes’s consciousness, the ringing of the sage’s sword being drawn a distant echo. The stomping of feet over the wet courtyard didn’t settle in until the sage was standing before Estheryn.

The sight of Damon slashing his sword at her shook Xerxes from his dream. The sage’s blade caught the maiden in her side, burning through her false armour and throwing her to the ground.

A Folke guardswoman appeared out of nowhere, blocking the sage off, her own sword drawn. She would die today, Xerxes was sure, as Damon’s cold glare settled upon her. “Know your place, Folke!” he said. He smacked her, but she kept balance even when her face swung to the side.

It was Belorme who cut in, walking to the scene slowly with his hands folded behind his back. “No need to make the situation worse, Damon,” he said in his collected tone. “This was supposed to be fun. You took it too far.”

Xerxes didn’t remember pushing himself off the pillar, or walking to where Estheryn was on the ground, or lifting a hand toward her. But he caught himself there, his arm hanging in the air as he wondered what he was planning to do. Help her up? Check her wound? Make sure she wasn’t going to bleed out?

He pulled his hand back, balling it into a fist at his side. He didn’t intervene when the guardswoman with her red cheek dropped to a knee and lifted Estheryn from the ground. The guardswoman wasn’t much bigger than Estheryn, but she lifted the maiden with trembling arms and carried her off through the rain. The blond Folke guard had rushed in, too. The fellow hadstopped himself the same way Xerxes had—Xerxes watched him slide back into formation as Estheryn was carried through the doors. No one noticed he’d moved at all.

Xerxes wasn’t certain, but he thought he heard the Intelligentsia membersgrowlas Estheryn Electus left. He’d never heard them growl before. It was strange—like something was happening in the air around him, but he couldn’t see it.

He was left staring at the doors where Estheryn had disappeared, wondering what it was about her that had gotten the Intelligentsia so worked up. That had gotten his own chest out of sorts. That made the voices in his head beg him to race after her and kill her immediately.

9

RYN

Ryn had made dozens of apple pies when she was young. She did it with her mother at the end of every month to signal a “fresh start” for the next one. The smell of spiced pie put a smile on everyone’s face and filled the house with warmth back when Ryn’s family was a family. When they all sat around the same table to eat, when her father told her creepy bedtime legends likeTheManticoreandGavaevodata, and her mother would scold him for it. When laughter wasn’t a foreign concept, andthere was nothing to fear. No enemies. Nothing lurking in the shadows. No fathers deciding they were unhappy for no good reason.

Ryn burnt her fingers on the oven during her first attempt at baking on her own. Once was enough to teach her forever to be careful around things that could hurt you. Pain was only a consequence of carelessness, after all.

Ryn’s flesh burned all around the gash. She clutched her side as Heva laid her on the bed in her chambers. “I’ll get the physician!” Heva said, but the door swung open and Marcan came marching in.

“I’ve already brought him!” he announced.

A white-haired man carried a bag of supplies and a weathered book over to the bed. Marcan and Heva stayed back far enough that the physician could work, but didn’t step out of arm’s reach. The man peeled away Ryn’s costume, layer by layer. Every movement felt like Ryn was being cut by that Intelligentsia’s blade all over again.

She closed her eyes and pursed her lips as whimpers threatened the back of her throat. If she broke down now, everything she’d just been brave enough to do would be for nothing.

That black-haired Intelligentsia’s face haunted her; the wild scowl, the sharp eyes, the purple lips. Ryn caught a glimpse beneath his hood only briefly while Heva had carried her off. She could have sworn she saw a dark hue rippling over his expression like a mask of smoke.

Even so, his face hadn’t been as shocking as the King’s.

Ryn swallowed when she thought of King Xerxes. There weren’t shadows over his face like some of the others. There wasn’t a mask or illusion of any kind, there was just… torment. Ryn couldn’t exactly decipher what she’d heard in that moment when he’d held her against the pillar and came in close. It was like a murmuring choir of sounds, no actual words. But she couldseeit on him, feel it even: the anguish. The oppressors. The sounds had twisted a muscle in her chest. It reminded her of her least favourite bedtime story about a boy trapped on an island where all the water around him was filled with poison. He only had two options: stay on the island and starve to death or brave the fatal water.

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