Page 38 of The Scarlet Star

Death was just a doorway, after all. Pain was just the consequence of carelessness.

“Will you lay down everything you have and follow me?”he asked.

“Yes.” She had nothing anyway.

“Will you learn how to love?”

“Y—” Ryn closed her mouth.

Love? What did love have to do with anything? She was going to be fighting against the gods, for goodness’ sake. Not throwing a tea party.

“You must learn to love even the most difficult people to love. Even your enemies.”

Ryn opened her eyes. She glared at that statue of El. “I knew this was a trap,” she said.

She climbed to her feet, sending a spray of droplets as she spun and stomped through the water toward the exit, wincing at the shooting pain in her side from her wound. She thought about offering a rude hand gesture to that statue on her way out.

She could have sworn she heard chuckling behind her as she left.

“Adassah.”Ryn was already in the hall when he spoke again. She slowed her steps, her toes squishing in her watery sandals.“Visit the First Temple in the city. Go see the priestesses.”

“Why?” she asked. Then she slammed her mouth shut and looked around to see if anyone might have heard her talking to herself.

“They need to be awakened. That’s where we’ll start.”

Ryn chewed her lip. She started walking again, around the turns, through the long halls, all the while imagining the trouble she’d be in for trying to sneak out of the palace to visit the ‘First Temple’—wherever that was. Didn’t this god know she couldn’t waltz out of here whenever she wanted? Didn’t he realize she had larger needs, that she didn’t even have clothes to wear? Did he really not have insight into her situation?

She sighed as she headed around the last bend to her chambers.

An arrow spiralled past her face, and she screamed.

Ten feet ahead, a body flew out her bedroom door. Heva marched out after him and raised her sword to stab. Ryn shrieked and slammed her eyes closed, spinning away, but a shuffling sound filled her ears and she peeled her eyes back open. She almost screamed again at a man in a black cloak before her, holding a curved blade inches from her throat. Rynstaggered back a step until she noticed theotherblade—the one coming out the man’s stomach.

Theotherblade retracted, and the black-cloaked man fell to the floor in a heap.

Xerxes stood behind, holding a silver sword. His navy coat was fastened, his hair was neat. But his eyes… His eyes went in and out of focus, not quite settling on what was before him, and his flesh had a slightly grey hue. He grabbed the side of his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Look out, Ryn!” Heva shouted.

Xerxes’s eyes flashed open again. He grabbed Ryn’s sleeve and yanked her toward him just as half a dozen Folke guards flooded the hall and wrestled the last man in black to the ground who, Ryn realized, had been inches away from sending a serrated blade into her back.

“Interrogate them,” Xerxes instructed the men. “Find out who sent them. I don’t care if it’s an esteemed duke or an Intelligentsia; imprison whoever paid these butchers to come here. Show no mercy.”

The Folke spoke all at once. “Yes, Your Majesty!”

Folke lifted the bleeding men and carried them off. Trembling maids rushed in with cleaning soaps and cloths, trailed by a few wet sponges that flew into the hall on their own and began scrubbing at the mess. Ryn pointed at one of the sponges, realizing her hands were shaking. She forgot to speak or ask a question, and her arm dropped right back to her side.

The servants looked ready to vomit as they scrubbed up the blood. Ryn took a step toward them, her mind spinning with thoughts of helping, imagining she was in her house with Kai and there was a mess on the floor and… The vision of her house snapped away, and she glanced up at Heva.

Heva was gaping at the King, not moving a muscle even as the maids washed the floor around her feet. Ryn dragged herattention back to Xerxes, realizing he still gripped a fistful of her sleeve.

Xerxes’s gaze fell to it, and he dropped her arm immediately. Then he looked around at the mess for a moment, and he put his sword away.

Ryn didn’t know if she should dare to speak to him in front of others. If she should ask him why he was here. Her gaze flickered to two pale-faced servants behind him pushing carts of clothes and shoes.

He’d brought her clothes? Ryn brushed a hand over the tear in her white shirt where the bloodstain had turned brown. Her tights were drenched from sitting in the temple too. How did the King even know she needed clothes? And why, by the Divinities, would he deliver them himself?

She glanced at the man’s body at Xerxes’s feet. If the King hadn’t been standing there, Ryn would be dead.

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