Xerxes looked out over the ships waiting to wage war the next day. They should have been anchored, but he glimpsed their sails unfurling, the white fabric catching the
feeble moonlight. “Mardonius! What is going on?”
His cousin rushed toward him. “The slave of a Greek named Themosticles just came to us. He reports that the Greeks are in a frenzy and planning to retreat. His master is
secretly on your side, and so he sent the advice that we should surround the island now, in the dark, and cut off the enemy. They are disunited—we can defeat them easily.”
Trusting the word of a spy was always a risk—sometimes it yielded great reward, sometimes tragedy. Xerxes leaned back on his heels.
A flash of light caught his eye. He turned, expecting someone with a lamp to be nearby—but even as he swung his head, he sensed the shadows of night swallow up the flash.
He obviously needed more sleep. He shook it off and turned back to his cousin. What was the worst that could happen? They would fight, as they had planned to do tomorrow
anyway.
Well, then. He nodded at Mardonius and turned back to his lonely tent. He would sleep—and hopefully dream of Kasia’s arms around him. Tomorrow . . . he would worry about
tomorrow when it got here.
Thirty
Sardis, Lydia
Artaynte kept her pace sedate as she left the hall, forcing herself not to crane around and look at him again. Look at them. But she could not stop her hands from fisting in
her garment, from twisting the linen until it was a web of wrinkles.
How could he? She had thought it nothing that afternoon, when she saw Darius lift Kasia high and spin her around. Excitement—understandable. Yes, she had heard the whispers
that the prince spent more and more time with his father’s wife—who had not? She had thought that nothing, had even been glad of it. Glad Kasia had someone to talk to.
Why had no whispers warned her that he was falling in love with her? He looked at her with the same desire he did all the other maidens that ended up in his bed, but not so
simply. No, there was nothing simple about wanting the concubine of one’s father, was there?
Nothing would come of it. Darius would surely not try to seduce her, and even if he did, Kasia would refuse him. But that was not the point. He could lose his heart to her.
Since her arrival, he had paid attention to no other women. She had even heard he turned away his own slave girls. Could it be any clearer that he was in love?
Which left Artaynte exactly where she had been for years—in her mother’s shadow, watching him give his beautiful smiles to someone else.
She turned down a corridor and rushed into a darkened alcove so she could cover her face with her hands and let the tears flow.
A hand landed on her shoulder. She jumped and spun, hand to her heart. When she saw it was only Haman, she let out a gust of breath. “You startled me.”
Her father’s dearest friend gave her a kind smile, as he always did. “You did not hear me over your tears. What distresses you, lady? I feel as though, in your father’s
absence, I must try to put it to rights.”
Artaynte wiped at her cheeks. For as long as she could remember, Haman had been a close friend of her family often traveling to their home in Bactra. But to tell him this?
She shook her head and gazed at the floor behind him.
Haman dipped his head into her line of sight. “I have daughters of my own, you know. And I believe the timbre of those particular cries denotes trouble with a man. Would I
be correct to guess it is the prince you sigh over?”
Was she that transparent? Her sigh leaked out more like a groan. “It is hopeless.”
“Nonsense. Everyone knows you are the logical choice for his first wife.”
She blinked back fresh tears. “I want to be the one he loves.”
“But you see the way he has been looking at the Jewess and worry.” He nodded, no longer looking amused. “I confess his attention to her troubles me, as well. I hope he
remains above her devious ways.”
Her chin snapped up. “Devious—Kasia?”
He pressed his lips into a grim smile. “I pray the prince does not succumb to her so-called charms. I would hate to see her lead yet another of the king’s trusted men into
such a dangerous situation.”
“Another?” She shook her head—but still a rock sunk into her stomach. “She loves her husband.”
“Of course she does.” Yet his tone said the opposite. “But surely you know how things work within the palace. There is love, and there are lovers.”
The rock burrowed deep, made nausea churn. “Not always. My parents . . .” The look in his eyes stopped her. She swallowed. “Surely they . . .”