Page 83 of The Scarlet Star

Xerxes’s blue eyes settled on Ryn standing there. She gaped back at him.

“Your pie tastes salty,” he remarked. “I almost spat it back out.”

Ryn closed her mouth, biting hard on the inside of her cheek and feeling warm beneath so many pointed stares. “Liar,” she finally said. “My pies are delicious.”

“Go back there and eat a bite.” Xerxes nodded toward her pie on the table. “It’s fit for cattle, not kings.”

Ryn made a snorting sound and tried to pull her arm free, but Xerxes stood, keeping his hold on her wrist. He turned and shouted at the room, “This trial is over. I’ve chosen the winner.”

Visitors clapped and cheered in an explosion of noise, but the Intelligentsia leapt from their chairs at the back. It wasimpossible to see their expressions beneath their hoods, but everyone in their section was rigid, their hands balled into fists.

Ryn managed to yank her arm free from Xerxes, thinking only about the cover of backstage. She forced a smile across her face. “What are you thinking?” she asked Xerxes through her teeth.

He flashed the room a smile, too—one a little more gloating that glided right to the back of the room where the Intelligentsia stood.

“I was thinking I’d like to end this before Calliope’s turn,” he murmured back.

Ryn released a doubtful grunt. “I thought you liked Calliope,” she said. She wasn’t prepared for the look on Xerxes’s face when he turned his head toward her. His wild, accusatory, horrified eyes nearly made her jump.

A hooded man nudged someone out of his way halfway through the crowd. Ryn’s gaze darted to the movement, taking in the man’s pale face that didn’t belong among the tanned Per-Siana skin tones.

Her stare lifted to someoneelseat the back of the gathering, far behind the pale man, positioned in the oval archway where he was mostly darkened by the hall. Someone Ryn knew from the years they spent together growing up in the same house. Someone who’d lit candles so she could see at night and had put bread on the table for her in the mornings. Someone who had left her in the palace all this time.

A small gasp escaped her lips.

Kai.

She thought it was an illusion.

Her cousin’s green priest robe was gone. Instead, Kai wore a sleeved cloak that brushed the floor. Ryn wanted to scream,“What are you doing here?!”but she realized Kai’s gaze wasn’t on her. It was trained on the pale-skinned man in the hood pushing through the crowd.

And the pale-skinned man’s eyes were set on Xerxes’s back.

Ryn’s stomach dropped when the man reached for something beneath his cloak. “King!” she screamed, grabbing Xerxes and shoving him behind her as the man lifted a loaded crossbow.

He fired.

B’rei Mira.

Assassin.

They came. After everything. They came.

Ryn’s breath stalled as the arrow spiralled for her chest. She braced for it as a streak of blue fabric flashed in the corner of her eye—a Folke leapt into the crosshairs. The Folke took the arrow instead.

Visitors screamed and pushed as they raced for the exits. Folke guards drew their weapons, a unanimous ring of metal around the room. Ryn felt her sword be taken from its sheath at her back. But she only stared down at the blond Folke shuddering at the foot of the stage with an arrow through his body.

She was vaguely aware of the pale-skinned man loading another arrow and aiming his weapon.

An arrow from somewhere else plunged through him first, and Ryn jumped as the pale-skinned man was thrown to the floor. He rolled over once, then went limp.

Kai stood several paces back, bow raised, his arm pulled back from releasing the bowstring.

Guards leapt upon the B’rei Mira assassin, yanking his lifeless arms behind him.

No one rushed to help the blond Folke bleeding out at the foot of the stage.

No one tried to save her friend now that he wasn’t moving.

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