Page 70 of The Scarlet Star

They each took a cart and fled down the halls, the metal wheels squeaking and rattling from the weight. “This way!” Xerxes veered into an unlit passage.

Ryn’s heart raced; it would be one thing if the King was caught stealing from the kitchens, but it would mean something else entirely if she was caught. She grinned as they veered around a bend and came to the foot of a spiral staircase.

Xerxes grabbed the baskets from his cart and two from Ryn’s, and he darted up the stairs with them. Ryn took her remaining baskets and chased him up, their tapping footsteps echoing through the narrow space.

They emerged at the top of an outlook tower. Heavy winds stole Ryn’s breath, tossing her hair from her shoulders. The storm hadn’t let up yet, and rain pattered over the glass palace below.

Xerxes dropped his baskets, letting them spill over the ground, and he grabbed a cookie. He hurled it into the storm. “This is for you from your King, Per-Siana!” he shouted. “Enjoy it!” He grabbed a basket and flung the whole thing from the tower next, sending a sprinkle of soggy chunks onto a glass roof below.

Ryn sighed and took a cookie from her own basket. She bit it while she watched him release his wrath upon the baking.

Xerxes unleashed a roar over the city, a spiteful laugh mixed with a victorious sound that rivalled the thunder crackling in the heavens. His navy coat fluttered in the wind as he staggered back, his chest pumping while he caught his breath.

His face changed when he noticed Ryn. “Don’t eat them.” He walked over and tried to flick the cookie from her hand, but she maneuvered out of the way, and he huffed. “They’re cursed. I told you that,” he said.

Ryn raised a brow and licked the crumbs from her lips. “But they’re delicious.”

Xerxes’s mouth twisted in contemplation. “Fine.” He took a cookie, stared at it, then he ate it in two bites. “But the rest of them must die,” he said from a full mouth. He lifted two more baskets and dumped them down the side of the tower where they smacked the same roof below and melted in the rain.

Ryn leaned against the rail on her palms. She could see the whole Mother City from this high up. She could almost spot the hills surrounding the village she grew up in with her mother and father too. Her gaze dropped to the spoiled cookies littering the palace roof when she thought about that. Her home village was a harsh reminder of what she was, and that the King beside her hated Adriels.

A slow, ferocious urge lifted through Ryn’s chest. She eyed the baskets of cookies. She found herself grabbing one and throwing it with all her might into the rain like Xerxes had. Sheimagined it splattering against the faces of those who would see her dead, all those who continued to persecute her people in the kingdom, and all those she had to hide from in the palace. She didn’t mean to imagine Kai among them, but the moment she pictured her cousin out there, she grabbed a handful of cookies and threw them at him, one by one. He’d sent her here. He was the reason she was in this position. He hadn’t stopped her from coming back to the palace even though it could mean her death. He chose the Priesthood over her. Divinities, heabandonedher. Ryn threw a cookie with every ounce of strength as a tear broke loose and warmed her face.

A silent sob escaped, dissolving into the noise of the storm. Because she didn’t hate Kai. She loved him.

That was why it hurt more.

As she watched her last cookie descend over the side of the palace, she traced the trajectory and gasped. “Oh no…” She looked around the tower for a place to hide and dropped to her knees behind the rail as the cookie splattered onto the head of a passing Folke guard.

The guard spun around far below, drawing his sword, and Xerxes’s coarse laughter erupted through the tower. Ryn giggled, smacking a hand over her mouth as she peeked over the rail from her hiding place. The guard started running through the garden like he was chasing someone and disappeared into the orchard.

Xerxes tossed the last basket away. He breathed a long sigh of relief and leaned out the opening, sticking his head from the cover of the tower just enough for rain to drizzle into his hair.

“What were those cookies for anyway?” Ryn asked.

“You don’t know?” Xerxes panted, drawing himself back. He dragged a hand through his messy, damp locks. “Every Weylin knows why we make ginger cookies in the seventh month. Didn’tyou ever have to sing that terrible ‘ginger song’ for the King’s prosperity when you were a child?”

The blood drained from Ryn’s face. She turned toward the city, away from Xerxes. “Ah. Right,” she said, her fingers gripping tight to the rail.

She heard him chuckle behind her, his foot scraping over the stone floor as if he was nudging cookie crumbs around with his toes.

“Ah. That relieved more stress than even the drills I’ve been doing with the Folke,” he admitted.

“What are you training so hard for?” Ryn asked.

When he didn’t answer, she dragged her gaze back to find his smile vanished. The lightness that came with destroying the cookies had left, replaced by the dark look he had before in the hall. “I did a bad thing,” he said. His throat constricted. “And I think very soon, I’ll pay for it.”

Ryn’s toes curled in her sandals. She never dreamed she’d be standing this close to the King of Per-Siana in her lifetime back when she first heard the rumours about his wife. She was too afraid to ask now—too afraid to learn the truth and have this image of the boy before her be destroyed. But she knew she couldn’t go on anymore without the truth. Divinities, he’d asked her tosavehim. Whether it was what El wanted or not, how could Ryn do that if she didn’t know who she was saving?

“What happened, Xerxes?” Her voice came out dry even with the humid air. “What did you do?”

Xerxes closed his mouth. For a split second, Ryn regretted asking, worried he was angry. He pulled his gaze off her and settled it on the city. She thought he wasn’t going to answer, but after several moments where the only sound was the rain slapping over the glass roofs below, he said, “I never went near my wife. Not once. Not even at the wedding. I didn’t care what the people thought of me.”

Bumps formed over Ryn’s arms, and she hugged them to herself.

“I hated her,” Xerxes whispered. “I hated everyone. She was working against me, forcing my hand at every turn. She thought I didn’t know she was manipulating the council, pretending to be my voice to get what she wanted, having anyone who stood in her way executed in my name.” His throat bobbed. “There are times when I think she deserved what happened to her. I just wish it hadn’t been me who did it.”

A gust of wind slithered through the tower. Ryn shivered and tightened her grip on her arms, trying to keep still. Trying not to draw attention to herself as the weight of this moment pressed upon her like a boulder inching its way down from the heavens.

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