As with a breaking of my bones,
My enemies reproach me,
While they say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
“No,” she whispered.
“He told me I could not love the Lord with all my heart if any of it was filled with hatred. I had to first forgive, then I could seek Jehovah and be filled with his understanding.”
He, too, would tell her to forgive him? He, who had been stripped of his firstborn because of Xerxes’ anger? “Perhaps that is the problem, Pythius. Perhaps I loved Xerxes too much, gave him what should have been Jehovah’s.”
“Oh, sweet daughter.” He blinked, and in his eyes glistened the shards of a broken heart. “You belong to Jehovah completely. You know that. He led you to your husband, put you beside the king to be his heart where the burden of rule would forbid him to have one. Do you think Jehovah is finished with you, just because you fought with that stubborn man you love so much? Do you think he wills you not love your husband? You must not give up.”
She curled her fingers into her palm. “What more can I do?”
“You can pray for him.”
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
“He forbade it.”
“And you will obey
that
? When you would challenge him on anything else?” Pythius shook his head and covered her fist with his strong fingers. “That is not the Kasia I know.”
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
The wind whipped around her, blowing her hair into her face and drying her tears to a salty residue. The scent of the bronze fennel growing at the border of the palace garden teased her nose, the trill of a bird filled her ears.
Her soul—it rose as if pulled by a gentle, powerful hand, and as it tugged upward, her knees buckled.
Pythius fell to his knees beside her, his eyes closed and his lips parted. “He is back. Your God is back.”
“It is the Spirit.” Shivers chased each other down her spine, her arms.
Xerxes’ face filled her vision.
Pray
.
Every muscle went tight. She would pray.
Dear Lord, be with Abba and Ima
.
The wind whipped the other direction, and something shook inside her. She could see her husband, smile fading into a frown—she squeezed her eyes shut against the image.
Be with Esther, Lord
.
In her mind’s eye, Xerxes held out a hand, the lion torc gleaming on his wrist.
She staggered to her feet and spun away—but how to escape one’s own heart?
Jehovah, please, not for him. Do you not remember what he said? Why should you hold him with your strong arm, when he will only deny its power?
Her own words to him over the last six months echoed back at her.
Without him is defeat . . . you
are Jehovah’s concern. You are the caretaker of his chosen
.
But he had made his choice, had refused her God. She knew he would not bend his will to the Almighty, so why bother praying for him? He was too proud, too arrogant. Too determined to do everything by the strength of his own hand.
Let him
.
The wind swirled away, sucking her breath along with it. Then all was still, and she stood there like an empty vessel, useless and fragile.
Desma slipped an arm around her waist in support. “Mistress, what just happened? That is not how the Spirit usually visits you.”
She could only shake her head.
Pythius appeared at her side, opened his mouth.
Before he could speak, Darius appeared from around a hedge, face stretched in a smile. “We have victory! My father has burned Athens to the ground.”
Had there been anything left within her, it would have evaporated then. Without prayer, without anything from her, he had won. Now he would never be convinced that her God reigned over his.
Darius did not seem to notice her lack of response. With a joyous laugh, he twirled her around.
One rotation was enough to make her head swim. But at least lightheadedness was
something
. She chuckled and pushed away so he would put her back on her feet. “Enough enthusiasm, Darius. I get dizzy easily these days.”
He laughed and put her down, eyes alight. “Forgive me. It is such good fortune though—the Athenians had fled their city like cowards, and Father marched in and took it without any resistance. We are feasting tonight! Bring your whole house, Pythius.”
Pythius looked pained. “I thank you, my prince, but these old bones are weary. My sons will come, I am certain.”
A feast, without her one friend. All the nobles in Sardis in one room, eyeing her with disdain even though they knew nothing of her argument with their king—thrilling. “Darius, I am exhausted too. I think I shall just—”
“Nonsense.” Authority draped him, making him look so very like his father. Then it vanished behind a grin, and he reminded her instead of Zechariah. “Rest now, then dine with me, Kasia. There will be pomegranates.”
He said that last in a singsong, earning a snort of laughter. She had not been able to get enough of the juicy red seeds since they ripened a week earlier. No one else outside her servants cared enough to notice—she supposed she owed him gratitude enough to show up at his meal. “Very well.”
“Excellent.” The prince turned away and all but danced back toward the palace. So confident he would get his way in everything.
She clamped down on her thoughts before reflecting on Darius could make her miss Xerxes—she would
not
need him anymore—and headed for her room with a bare farewell for Pythius.
She had a feast to prepare for.
~*~
Salamis, Greece
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 . . .”
Haman sighed and patted her shoulder. “Your mother has protected you from this truth too long—it will only hurt you to realize the nature of princes once you are wed to one. Darius may very well choose to have an affair with the Jewess—and he would surely not be the first.”
No. Not Kasia. She would never . . . not with Darius . . . not with anyone but the king, surely. Surely.
So why did her heart already ache as though she had seen her friend betraying her?
~*~
Salamis, Greece
Xerxes cursed, then cursed again for good measure. Artemisia had been right.
He
had been right—they should not have met the Greeks at sea. His quicker vessels had no advantage in these straits. The smaller, heavier ships of his enemy rammed them continually.
He watched Artemisia’s trireme flee a band of Greeks only to find her way blocked by Persians. A moment later she turned, ramming the vessel by her side.
At least someone was learning from their enemy. “It would seem my women are becoming men, even as my men are becoming women.”
But the others? Groans tripped over curses as he watched the battle play out. The problem was that the idiot sailors had not learned how to swim. Each time a ship sank, the men went down with it. The Greeks swam to shore, but his men? He did not want to count how many drowned before his eyes.
The longer the day dragged on, the worse it got. He sat, he paced, he watched, he turned away. And he knew. He knew as dusk crouched behind them that the Greeks had the upper hand. He knew it before he heard that his troops stationed on an island had been slaughtered. He knew it before darkness fell and the commanders gathered again.
Mardonius spoke the loudest. “We know their tactics now—we can regroup, and we will win. We have the manpower.”
But what did it matter?
“We will never defeat them on the sea,” Otanes said. “We should build a pass to the island, then march across and defeat them on land.”
“I say set the rest of our forces toward the Peloponnese and let the Athenians starve on their island.”