Chapter 103 – Are You Happy, Princess? (10)
Day Five: Sunlit Cruelty
(Olivia)
He had not brought her here to shop.
Olivia knew that now.
At first, stepping out of the false storage house into Meltèn's blinding brightness, she had thought: Ah. Of course. The Sun Cult.
Helios banners burned from half the visible rooftops. Gold-on-white cloth snapped in the dry wind, stamped with the old sun sigil: a circle with sharp rays, more like blades than light.
Helios. The old god.
The one the priests of Vastriel always spoke of carefully. Reverent and distant, like a relative you did not invite to dinner but kept a spare shrine for anyway, just in case.
The only reason the Church of Vastriel hadn't crushed the Sun Cult entirely was the story. The myth that Helios was Vastriel's father.
To grind his name into dust would be to risk grinding away her own.
So a compromise had been made.
In Meltèn and Northern Meltèn, Helios was "tolerated." The Cult could keep its temples and its rituals, so long as it didn't spread farther. So long as it stayed here, contained, like a fever in one limb to save the body.
Every map she had ever studied, every report she had read as part of her training, had carried some version of that phrase: local cult, tolerated by necessity. Sometimes softened further: particular regional piety.
Looking at the banners, it was very clear who tolerated whom.
She watched a group of robed worshippers pass, white cloth trimmed with gold, their throats exposed to the sun like offerings. A priest moved among them, staff in hand, metal sun-disk glinting.
So this is why he brought me, she thought. To see them. The Cult. To show me how they twist things. To justify whatever he wants to do to them.
She felt him glance sideways.
"You are frowning," Erynd said.
"Am I?" she answered without looking at him, eyes still following the Helios banners.
"You are thinking about Helios," he added, and of course he was right. "About the rumor that he fathered Vastriel, and thus the church refuses to annihilate his worship completely, lest they amputate their own origin myth."
She hated how easily he reached inside her head.
"You brought me to see the Cult," she said anyway. "To see what happens when you let something like this survive on the edge of doctrine."
He made a quiet sound that was not quite a laugh.
"That is not just it," he said.
She turned then.
"Then what—"
He didn't answer.
Instead he jerked his chin toward a narrow side street. "Come."
***
The motel was not impressive from the outside.
Whitewashed walls, cracked in places but thick. Wooden shutters half-closed over narrow windows. A faded sign under an awning that offered shade to whoever happened to pass.
Inside, it was cooler.
Olivia felt it immediately. The drop was not dramatic like stepping into one of the palace's fully enchanted rooms, but it was real. The air didn't clutch at her lungs as tightly. Shadows collected in corners. Somewhere, she heard the trickle of water.
Her shoulders loosened without her permission.
She looked around.
The walls were thick enough that the heat had to fight its way through. The inner courtyard opened to the sky only in a slit, with cloth stretched across to break the direct sun. Rooms faced inward for shade. Windows opposite each other were propped open so that any stir of air could slide in, cross, and escape, dragging heat with it.
She didn't have the words for it, but she could feel the pattern. How everything was arranged to make the temperature kneel.
"Why is it… different in here?" she asked. "There is no cooling circle. No visible crystal array."
"Natural cooling," Erynd said. "Architecture, colors, courtyards, airflow. Old problems, old solutions."
"You say that like it is obvious," she muttered.
"It is obvious here," he said. "They had to understand how to live with the sun before they ever learned how to sling spells."
He moved behind her as he spoke, almost without her noticing. One moment he was gesturing at the shuttered windows, the next his presence was at her back. Not touching, but close enough that she could feel the ghost of his body heat even in the slightly cooler room.
"Do you know why your chambers never feel like this?" he murmured.
"Because I am a princess," she said lightly, because it was the easiest answer.
"Because you sleep," he corrected, "wrapped in cooling arrays."
She froze.
His breath brushed her right ear as he leaned in, voice dropping.
"Gentle magic woven into the walls," he said. "Mana-fed conduits under the tiles. Crystals imported at obscene cost so that every night, no matter how hot the summer, your bed is agreeable." His tone turned even softer. "Even when you are lying awake at the end of someone else's."
Heat surged to her face for reasons that had nothing to do with Meltèn.
"Erynd," she said, warning in her voice.
He ignored it.
"One little chamber," he went on, "with enough enchantment to make the climate forget itself. Do you think anyone in this building sleeps that way?"
She swallowed.
"No," she said. Her voice came out smaller than she liked.
His hand settled on her waist.
Not possessive, exactly. Steady. Fingers splayed over the fabric of her borrowed desert outfit, thumb resting just under her ribs.
She didn't move.
"Tell me, Princess," he said quietly, almost against the shell of her ear. "It is cooler here, yes. But what happens when it gets too hot? When the summer is worse than usual? When the wells run low and the nights don't lose their teeth? Do you imagine a crystal falls out of the sky into their hands at random?"
She tried to answer.
Nothing came out.
"Do you think they can afford one," he continued, "if they somehow stumble over it in the sand?"
The answers were obvious.
No.
No.
She had spent enough time in the palace treasury to know what a cooling crystal cost. Enough to feed a street like this for months. Enough to commission an entire block of buildings like this motel, designed correctly.
She knew, suddenly, exactly how many nights of her own comfort equaled an entire quarter's chance not to boil alive.
Her stomach twisted.
"You are… so spoiled," Erynd said, and the words should have sounded cruel but they didn't. They sounded like diagnosis. "You think of what you want and nothing else. Like that time you came to the academy, remember?"
She tried not to.
"You walked into my lecture in the middle of a lesson on supply lines," he went on. "Sat yourself on the edge of my desk, leaned in, and kissed my cheek while I was explaining why moving grain matters more than shiny armor."
Her face burned.
"I do not— it was not—"
"Half the class forgot how to hold a pen," he said. "And you walked out again without once thinking that the logistics we were discussing kept people like this from starving."
He let go.
The air felt colder where his hand had been.
"I brought you here," he said, stepping back, "to see what your comfort is built on. Not just Helios. Not just the Cult, or the rumours about old gods. The ground."
He turned toward the door.
"Come. Outside, where it is honest."
***
They didn't have to walk for long before the honesty started hurting.
The streets outside the motel were harsher than the ones by the false storage house. The shade was thinner. The buildings were closer together, but less well-kept. Cracks in the walls. Fabric patched more than once. The smell of too many bodies and not enough water.
Erynd walked like he knew where he was going.
Olivia followed.
"At the top of the city," he said, not quite looking at her, "they pour water into fountains, for beauty. Here, they ration it."
She passed a line of people holding clay jugs and skins, standing under a sun awning, eyes squinting. A woman fanned the face of a child already too quiet. A man licked his cracked lips reflexively and then winced when his tongue met raw skin.
"Wells?" Olivia asked. Her own throat felt dry just watching.
"Some," Erynd said. "Deeper than most of your father's engineers know how to find. A few springs, jealously guarded. And then everything else has to come in by carriage. Wagons, overland. Barrels strapped to the backs of beasts. Every drop that arrives is precious."
"And expensive," she said.
"Of course," he replied. "Merchants do not drag water through the desert because they like the view."
The air felt thicker with each step she took.
Sweat slid down from under her headscarf, tracing a line between her shoulder blades. Her lips stuck together every time she closed her mouth. She found herself thinking of the milkshake, then of the enchanted coolness of her bed back home, then of the line of people waiting at the awning.
It made her stomach clench in tight, guilty pulses.
After a little while, she realized she was walking slower.
Her feet felt heavier. The streets seemed to stretch. Each breath pulled dry heat into her mouth and gave little back.
Erynd glanced at her.
He said nothing.
She stubbornly kept going.
Another street. Another corner. The taste of dust grew stronger. Her head began to ache behind her eyes.
Her tongue felt too large in her mouth.
She swallowed, and her throat complained.
So this is what it is like, she thought, to feel thirst and know there isn't a fountain one corridor away.
Her steps faltered.
Erynd stopped.
He didn't sigh. He didn't say "I told you so." He simply uncapped the flask at his belt and held it out to her.
She stared at it.
"Drink," he said.
She took it and gulped before her pride could argue. The water was not cold, but it was wet, and the first swallow was almost painful in its relief. Her body latched onto it like a creature.
After a few mouthfuls, she forced herself to stop.
"You should finish it," he said.
"Others here need it more," she answered.
"They are not here," he said. "You are."
He watched her, eyes unreadable for a moment, then added, "See? When you thirst, when you are tired, I am here for you, Princess." His voice softened, but did not turn kind. "Always thinking of your well-being."
She wanted to hit him.
She also knew it was true.
He had cooled her burning tongue. He had held her hand in a screaming train. He had brought water to her lips now.
And in the same breath, he had dragged her out where the sun stripped the lies off her education.
"You are infuriating," she muttered.
"I have been called worse," he said.
He took the flask back, capped it, and they walked on.
***
The sound reached her before the sight.
A low, uneven roar. Not train noise. Human noise. Shouts. Murmurs. The sharp bark of someone giving orders. A scrape of wood on stone.
Erynd's stride did not slow.
Her feet did.
They turned a corner into a square.
There was a platform in the center, raised a few steps. Not elaborate. Just wood and posts. A crowd ringed it, pressed back by a line of Helios acolytes holding staves crossed.
The heat in the square seemed worse, as if the sun was watching.
On the platform, three people knelt.
"Erynd," Olivia said. "What is this?"
He didn't answer.
A man in priest's robes stood near the edge, both hands wrapped around a staff topped with a sun disk. The gold caught the light and threw it back into the crowd's eyes. His white robes gleamed; his face looked like old leather left in the sun too long.
He raised the staff once.
The noise quieted.
"Faithful!" he called, voice rough but carried by practice and fanaticism. "We gather to cleanse."
Olivia's stomach dropped.
An execution.
The word landed in her mind with too much weight.
"Here stand three who have offended Helios, the First Light," the priest intoned. "The Sun who burned the path this city was built upon. We cannot let his radiance be mocked."
He gestured to the first figure.
A woman. Thin. Skin flaking at the corners of her mouth. Hands bound. Olivia guessed she might have been in her thirties, but it was hard to tell when thirst had carved her.
"This one," the priest said, voice rising, "stole water. Broke the rationing rules. Took more than her share for her own blood, thinking her family more deserving than any other."
The crowd murmured.
"She did it to keep them alive," someone near Olivia whispered.
"And if all did as she did," another snapped back, "there would be nothing."
The second kneeling figure was smaller.
Horns.
Curling back from her temples, just enough to break the line of the headscarf. Her skin had a faint, unnatural undertone beneath the dust. Tired eyes, but clear.
"A Demonkin," the priest said, making the word sound like filth. "Her very blood a stain. The line of the Enemy, allowed to walk among us only by soft-hearted foreign doctrine. Today we remember that the sun burns away corruption."
Olivia's breath caught.
The girl could have been Zoe, if you squinted. Not the same features, not the same easy smile, but the same markers: something not quite human written on her bones.
The third person was a man.
Middle-aged. Beard shot with grey. His clothes were plain but clean.
"This one," the priest snarled, "spoke against Helios. Called him 'a parasite clinging to Vastriel's skirts.'" Spittle flew from his mouth on the last word. "Blasphemy. In this city, in this light."
The crowd shifted.
Some faces looked angry. Some looked scared. A few looked bored, like this was another necessary unpleasantness before they could go on with their day.
Olivia wanted to look away.
She didn't.
Erynd's hand slid into hers.
His fingers curled, steady, warm.
The priest raised his staff.
"By Helios' light," he cried, "we send these stains to judgment!"
Ropes. That was when she saw them properly. Loops around necks, attached to beams she had mistaken for decoration.
Her vision tunneled.
The acolytes moved with practiced ease. Knots tightened. The condemned stiffened. The woman stealing water squeezed her eyes shut. The Demonkin girl stared at the sky. The blasphemer's lips moved in a prayer Olivia could not hear.
The boards under their knees shifted.
There was a crack of wood and a terrible, abrupt series of jerks. Bodies dropped. Ropes snapped tight. One pair of legs kicked. Another barely moved.
The noise the crowd made was not cheering.
It wasn't silence either.
Something in between. A shudder. A collective flinch. The sound a city made when it watched itself hurt someone and told itself it had to.
Olivia's gorge rose.
She swallowed it back with force.
Erynd squeezed her hand once.
"The Cult is still a cult," he said, low and calm in her ear, while the priest on the platform droned some comforting line about Helios' mercy. "It hates all Demonkin. Vastriel's doctrine technically says otherwise now, but here?"
His eyes were on the girl's slack body.
"If they see one," he went on, "no matter how kind she has been, no matter what she has done, she still dies if the priest needs an example."
Olivia's tongue felt thick.
"Why…" She had to stop and try again. "Why are Demonkin like Zoe still called that then? If they are… if they're allowed to live in the capital, to work, to…"
To share a bed. To laugh. To be held between the sheets while a princess watched.
"Good question," Erynd said. "Why do you think?"
"I don't know," she whispered.
He didn't spare her.
"Because when the Demon King came," he said, "their tribe couldn't fight. Outnumbered. Outmatched. They bent." His jaw tightened. "They helped him. Cooked for his troops. Guided them along safe paths. Did small, quiet things to stay alive."
"Survival," she said faintly.
"Your church wrote it as treachery," he replied. "Called them cowards who 'chose the Enemy.' When the war ended, it was politically useful not to clear that stain. Demonkin made a convenient warning. A way to teach the rest of the world: suffer nobly or be damned."
He looked down at her.
"And then, years later, Zoe is born," he said. "Kind. Clever. Loyal. She saves lives on the battlefield. She makes your bed warmer when you invite her in. But the doctrine? The small print? It still calls her tainted. A tolerated corruption."
Olivia flinched.
"She is… she's nothing like—"
"She is exactly like them," Erynd said. "Born into a story written by people who needed a villain that wasn't themselves. Punished for someone else's impossible choice."
The priest's voice washed over them, talking about Helios and purification and how mercy sometimes took the form of rope.
"Here in Meltèn," Erynd continued, "Helios is framed as an ancestor of Vastriel. The Church of Vastriel pretends that makes him family. To crush this Cult would be to admit that even divine blood can be rotten."
He squeezed her hand again, harder.
"So they allow this," he said. "They sign treaties. They write careful language about regional exceptions. They look away when Helios' priests hang Demonkin for existing and mothers for stealing water."
His tone turned soft in a way that hurt more than any shout.
"This," he said, "is what your 'most caring and loving' goddess is aligned with on paper. This is doctrine, synchronized. This is what your father's advisors nod over and call 'necessary compromise.'"
The words went straight into her ribs.
"Tell me, my princess," he murmured. "Does this feel morally just to you?"
She stared at the platform.
At the swaying shapes.
At the Demonkin girl whose horns caught the sun one last time.
Her vision blurred.
"Are you happy," he asked, "that someone stealing water for her family dies like this? That someone is allowed to die because they were born a different race? That their original sin was survival?"
Her knees trembled.
Something inside her, something that had been carefully built over years of schooling and sermons and dinners with priests, cracked.
She thought of Vastriel's statues, all flowing robes and open arms. Of gentle hymns sung in cool halls. Of phrases like mercy and compassion printed in golden ink.
They felt like lies now.
Her throat closed around any answer.
She did not say yes. She did not say no. The words went nowhere.
The crowd began to drift away.
Life resumed its horrible normal.
The bodies remained.
Erynd didn't push.
He simply turned, still holding her hand, and led her out of the square.
She followed.
Her legs felt numb.
Every step was an effort. The sun pressed on her harder now, as if punishing her for seeing.
They turned a corner. Another. The noises of the square fell away.
Her vision tunneled at the edges.
"Erynd," she said.
It came out wrong. Slurred.
Her knees buckled.
He caught her before she hit the ground.
***
Being lifted in his arms should have embarrassed her.
He'd done it before, in other contexts. With other people watching. Carrying her from his bed to the bath when her legs were too shaky. Scooping Noelle up after she'd exhausted herself practicing leaps. Holding Tamara without comment when she'd bled through a bandage.
Now he carried her like that through Meltèn's streets. One arm under her knees, one supporting her back, her head against his shoulder.
She knew people were staring.
She couldn't bring herself to care.
Embarrassment felt like a luxury. Like the palace fountains. Like enchanted cool air.
He broke my world, she thought, dazed. Of course I can't care about looking fragile on top of that.
Her head lolled against his chest with each step.
She caught flashes.
A child watching her with wide eyes. A woman frowning in disapproval. A man looking away quickly, like it wasn't his business.
Erynd's heartbeat thudded steady under her cheek.
He didn't say anything comforting. He didn't apologize for showing her the square. He just carried her.
At some point, the quality of the light changed.
The sun dimmed, not because it was setting, but because something came between them and it. An awning. Then another. A narrow passage that smelled of dust and stone.
Cooler air brushed her face.
Not palace-cold. Underground-cold.
She forced her eyes open.
Walls held the shadows closer here. The noise of the street faded to a dull murmur. They went down stairs. Then another set. Then through a corridor lit by low, steady lamps.
It was a different kind of underworld than the station. Less industrial, more… curated.
Erynd set her on her feet at last.
Her legs remembered what they were for. Barely.
They stood in a small stone court. No sky overhead, just ceiling. The air was almost comfortable.
A single doorway faced them, guarded not by soldiers, but by a man in crisp clothes. Not rich, not poor. Somewhere in between. Servant, but not a common one.
He looked them over.
"Welcome," the servant said politely, eyes flicking from Erynd's face to Olivia's and back. "What might you be here for today?"
Erynd didn't hesitate.
"I'd like to have selectable lambs," he said.
The phrase made Olivia's skin prickle.
The man's expression shifted the smallest degree. Recognition, then deference.
"Ah. Young master," he said smoothly. "Of course." His tone changed, almost teasing. "Under what name shall I enter you today? And the lady?"
"Harbard," Erynd said. "And Ofira. New here."
The lie slid off his tongue easily.
The servant nodded, as if both names were perfectly ordinary.
"All right," he said, stepping aside as the door behind him unlatched with a soft click. "You may enter."