Like a gentle tiding waves, a smooth glide can be felt beneath his feet. Helios is sure something opened underneath them. A secret passage perhaps: a room hidden and filled with the unknown. But where is the entrance? How could he find and access it?
He twirls back around with his brown heels, his cloak moving smoothly following him and steps towards Lise. Underneath the soft moonlight, he could see the small shaking body had calmed down, though still appearing curled against the ground made of stones and gravel. "The lever opened up a secret basement, right below us." He whispers, embracing Lise. She nods, strands of her short messy brown hair moving limply.
"I know. I feel it too." Was her small meek response.
Helios pursed his lips close together, feeling it colder due to the night air. "This cannot do. We found the X, but now I have to try to find how to access the secret room." He stood up and turned to Cyril, his eyes now filled with a steady clarity and determination. "Cyril, bring us back to Yerville. We need to get Lise home safely."
"I'm better now, better." Liselotte stands up and took Helios's cold hands in hers. "We don't have to go back now. If there's anything else we need to find, I will help."
He scoffs, but a tender and playful one. "Oh Lise. Don't worry we're done for the night. I have to figure out an entrance to gain access to the basement. It's probably a hidden structure, but I'm sure it's connected to an accessible room somewhere. Once I find it, I'll..."
'Will I be able to see her again?'
"I'll come find you. In our usual place. In our usual promised time."
'I will. I will. I'll make sure of it.'
"I see..." Lise looks at him and then looks at the ground. He noticed she had been doing that sometimes, and then she would play with her feet. Helios wondered how it feel to be a little more fidgety as a person, but he knew his father would definitely scold him.
The three walked back through the thinning crowds of Riveria, the vibrant energy of the market now feeling like a distant dream. They found the discreet carriage waiting where they had left it with the coach waiting for just anyone willing to hitch a ride and pay him some pennies. The journey back to Yerville was a quiet affair, the rhythmic clatter of hooves on cobblestone the only sound between them.
Click clack
Click clack
Helios leans his face outside the small window on the carriage. Beside him, Liselotte is sitting quietly, picking on her finger nails and Cyril, sitting opposite of them, watching silently. Helios knew Cyril wanted to be discreet, yet he failed quite miserably. He made a small note on his mind of their interaction today while he watches the passing trees with an indifferent expression.
At last, after the long quiet journey, the carriage came to a halt. Cyril helped Liselotte stepped off and Helios hopped last, after giving the coach some silvers as his pay. They are now in Yerville, just on the outskirts of Lise's neighbourhood. Here, the silence was deeper, broken only by the occasional bark of a dog or the cry of a night bird. They moved through the sleeping village like ghosts, their footsteps soft on the packed earth.
"We'll walk you to your home."
Lise yawned and then smiled, "Thank you. Sorry for troubling you."
"No, I should thank you for coming despite your circumstances. It's been a fun adventure today." He smiled softly, the moon's glow allows both of them to observe each other's smiles.
When they reached the small, worn-down cottage Liselotte called home, she paused at the door, its wood splintered and bleached by sun and rain.
"Thank you for the food, Helios," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "And for the adventure."
Before he could form a reply, she had slipped inside, the door closing with a soft, final click, swallowing her into the darkness.
Helios stood there for a long moment, staring at the humble dwelling. He had known, abstractly, that she was poor. But seeing the stark reality of it: the patched roof, the worn-down walls made of wood splintered with time managed to lodge a cold, hard knot in his chest. The memory of the night market flashed before his eyes: the wonder on her face as she tasted spiced wine and honeyed pastries, the way she had cried from the sheer, overwhelming joy of a simple lamb skewer.
'She didn't even know how honey taste like until I showed her...'
A fierce, protective urge surged within him, so sudden and powerful it stole his breath.
'I'll meet her again.' Helios eyes flickered, unknown to Cyril who gently guided him back toward the path they had took earlier during the day. 'I'll see her underneath the tree. Yes. I will make sure of it.'
The thought of her, a girl who shouldered the weight of the world, with a sick mother, working every day to provide food that he wouldn't dare to eat or try. 'Does she even have any dolls at her disposal?' He thought to himself as he walked with Cyril to a path leading to the fringes of the neighbourhood, down to a forest.
'So many poor people suffering, where is the wisdom and magnificence in all of this?' His eyes wandered to the modest houses they walk past, 'How is this fair? How is this noble? While nobles parties and change gowns every weeks and go to salons to fret and waste their wealth all the time.'
The tender smile Helios wore faded with each step away from Liselotte's door, replaced by a dark waking of class injustice and tragic inequality, triggered by none other than the small girl whom he now holds a very dear friend. The path back was swallowed by the deep silence of the sleeping town, the hoots of owls, and the quiet murmurs of the forest blown by the cold night breeze. Their footsteps the only punctuation in the quiet.
Finally, Helios spoke, his voice low and cutting through the dark.
"Your reaction to her was inappropriate, Cyril."
He directly unravels the small note he tucked in his mind throughout their adventure together.
The man beside him did not startle. He walked a moment in silence, as if weighing his words. "My apologies, your Holiness," he rumbled, his tone respectful but layered with a thoughtfulness that was uniquely his. "It was… the girl's eyes. They are a peculiar color. A striking red."
Helios's own silver eyes narrowed. "And?"
At that moment, the echo of their foot steps against the ground of the forest was like a knife that cuts through the thickness of the tension.
"It reminded me of the Cathalans." Cyril admitted, the confession sounding pulled from him.
Helios felt like he accidentally stepped on a twig as they walked, startling some creatures lurking between the bushes and barks of trees. "Cathalans? You know that it is simply absurd, just by looking at her background?"
"Yes, my apologies. Seeing her home… the circumstance she is in… it shamed me for the thought. Perhaps it is only by chance, she have those eyes as well."
Helios contemplated this. He loved Lise's eyes. They were the warm, earthy red of autumn leaves or polished garnet, a stark and beautiful contrast to the cool silvers and blues of his own world.
"The Cathalans now mostly reside in Aerre. The only Cathalan living in Aeternus is Countess Sophie, and I don't think she has a child... If you see a person with silver eyes, a commoner, would you automatically assume that that person, somehow have ties with the Diomeres?"
"I- Well that had never happened before so, no..."
He stopped walking, turning to face the larger man. The moonlight caught the sharp, determined line of his jaw, and for a moment, he looked less like a boy and more like the lordling he was born to be.
"Do not be like that with her, Cyril," he said, his voice quiet but edged with steel. "Not with the one person I can finally call a genuine friend."
"Yes, it is my mistake. I apologies."
Helios could understand Cyril's concerns. The Cathalans aren't exactly on amiable terms with the Diomeres, the house of the Emperors and its been that way for so many years now ever since the Saint Augustus, a Cathalan and the 54th Crown Priest was replaced with Saint Ronulus, a Gothzak through the Emperor's Mandate. Now, the Gothzak holds major power within the Empire's papacy. Yet, to suggest that Liselotte is a Cathalan in disguise is simply illogical.
They walked on, leaving the humble confines of Yerville behind. The path before them seemed to draw them deeper into the embrace of a ancient forest, where the moonlight struggled to pierce the thick canopy. To any other, it would have appeared a dead end, a wilderness thick with shadow. But Helios moved with an unerring confidence, his steps finding a nearly invisible trail known only to him and his most trusted guardian.
The trees finally thinned, revealing their destination: a towering, alabaster wall that seemed to scrape the belly of the night sky. This was the southeastern boundary of the Saint's Palace, its private gardens a whispered legend of beauty. And there, almost completely obscured by a curtain of thick, flowering ivy, was a gaping hole in the foundation stones, just large enough for a determined boy to slip through. This is exactly how he had been sneaking out for the past days, through this gaping hole, and by walking trough the forest until he reached the hill by the lake.
"Home sweet home," Helios murmured, a ghost of an ominous smile touching his lips as he brushed the ivy aside. It was his secret, his umbilical cord to freedom. One by one, they slipped through the breach, leaving the wild forest for the impossibly manicured order of the palace grounds.
The shift was immediate. The air itself changed, carrying the scent of night-blooming jasmine and trimmed grass instead of damp earth. They moved like wraiths between sculpted hedges and silent fountains, their presence a secret stain on the perfect, sleeping estate.
At the base of a grand, ivy-choked wall beneath a towering balcony, Helios stopped. "Go and sleep in my private cabin, Cyril. Refrain from going to the Knight's quarter." he whispered, his voice a mere breath. "Thank you. For tonight."
Cyril gave a slow, deep nod, his form melting back into the shadows as he retreated toward the servants' quarters.
Alone, Helios turned to the wall.
'And now, for the most tiresome of all.'
From a hidden crevice between two stones, he pulled a coarse, knotted rope, its existence a testament to weeks of careful planning. He gripped it, his hands, still soft from a life of privilege, protesting against the rough fibers. He hooked his foot and thanks to its sturdy square heels, he was able to latch to the wall's coarse surface. He began to climb, muscles straining with the familiar, arduous effort.
Halfway up, he paused, catching his breath as he hung suspended between the earth and his gilded cage. He looked up at the distant balcony, a silhouette against the starry sky.
"If only I had divine power," he mumbled to himself, feeling his sweat trickling down his forehead. How simple it would be. To simply will himself from one place to another. To teleport, or fly even a little. But he was bound to the earth, to ropes and secrets and the exhausting, physical reality of his defiance.
With a final, weary pull, he hauled himself over the white balustrade, walked through the open large window and into the silent, oppressive luxury of his room. He began unbuttoning his shirt, ready to clean himself and unwind from the day.
As he gets ready to rest, his thoughts began wandering to murky sides of his insecurities.
'If only I had divine power.'