“Good morning, Lei,” Baekhyun greets Lei when she arrives at the table for breakfast. He shoots her a quick glance before lowering his eyes to his steaming soup.

“Good morning,” Lei announces to her brother and Baekhyun. Kai raises his eyes from his phone, but he doesn’t say anything—and for that, Lei is the gladdest person in the world. “It’s a wonderful first Monday, isn’t it? It doesn’t feel like July.”

“I suppose.” Kai shrugs. “What are your plans for today?”

“I’m probably going to explore the basement and the catacombs.”

At the sound of this, Baekhyun chokes on his soup for some reason, and Kai glances up from his phone again.

“The basement is relatively uninteresting, first of all. There’s nothing there but passageways. But the catacombs?” Kai draws his head back and makes the face. Lei knows why; Kai, for a good three months, thought a demon was haunting him because he stepped on a skull by accident while exploring the infamous catacombs. “Lei, that’s not a smart idea. No one knows what’s down there.”

“Then I’ll be the first to find out.” Lei smirks as she spreads butter across her toast. “And it’s better than going out and destroying library wings, isn’t it?”

Kai shakes his head, sighing and putting his attention back to his phone. “I suppose. Don’t forget to bring Baekhyun.”

“Am I really obligated to watch her in the catacombs?” Baekhyun looks over at Kai in protest, but the latter pays him no attention. “It’s not like we’re endangering anyone if she does manage to burn something down there.”

“Oh, you never really know.” Kai raises his brows. “There were,” he pauses to take a bite out of his scrambled eggs, “instances when some of my advisors informed me of homeless people coming out with a few bats chasing them.” He looks up from his phone (there may be an interesting article on the news, but Lei can’t know since she’s on a temporary detox of media) and shoots Lei and Baekhyun a wicked grin. “And maybe there’s legends of demons down there.”

“Lei.” Baekhyun shudders and turns towards her. “Is it possible for you to select a different activity for the day?”

“Hm,” she hums, amused at how soft Baekhyun seems considering his birthplace being Yosul. “Baekhyun, I’m not a boring person. In fact, I’m the least boring person living on Helios. I’m not going to settle for less. If I want to be entertained, then I shall.”

“What’s with the pretentious language?” Kai buts in. “Did you hide a body in the catacombs? Is that why you want to go down there that much?”

“I wouldn’t need to hide a body.” Lei flips her hair over her shoulder, and she catches Baekhyun smile at that. “Please. That’s so proletariat. I would hire someone. Or I’d just burn the body.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Kai shivers and curls his lip upward in one corner. “Lei, I’m worried about you.” Lei shrugs, giggling. She makes eye contact with Baekhyun who also laughs. Kai catches this exchange, and he finally puts down his phone. “Whoa. What’s going on here? Did I miss anything? Last I checked, you couldn’t even look at him without wanting to set him on fire.”

“Lei and I have come to some sort of middle ground,” Baekhyun answers for the both of them. “Rest assured, there won’t be any trouble.” He gives her a sideways glance. “At least, not for today.”

“That’s correct.” Lei wipes the smile of her face and pretends to be interested in her toast. In truth, she doesn’t know where she stands with Baekhyun. While he is tolerable and relatable now, there are still some parts of him that irk her in incomprehensible ways. “There won’t be any trouble.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Kai nods to himself as if he’s the one who accomplished their coming together. “Keep up the good attitude and you may be allowed to have a radius.”

Lei narrows her eyes at the term. “A radius?”

“You’re still confined to our surrounding property.” Kai takes a sip of his water. “But, if you act accordingly—as you should have in the first place—then you might be able to wander around Ouesce with a three-mile radius. The castle being the center.”

“Oh.” Secretly, Lei is elated to hear that there’s a chance for freedom, but she isn’t amused to hear such a term used on her. She isn’t an animal, after all, and she definitely doesn’t like the mental image she has of herself chained to their castle. “That’s…great to hear,” she says anyways. “I would like that to happen soon.”

“As long as you keep up the good behavior, then I don’t see any reason for delay.” Kai gives her a final smile before directing his attention back to his phone. (Something really important must be on the news.)

“What’s so important?” Baekhyun must have noticed Kai checking his phone too.

“Nothing,” Kai mutters. “Just news regarding my mother. And apparently the war in Yosul is…not getting any better.”

“What happened with mother?” Lei asks.

At the same time, however, Baekhyun inquires with, “What’s happening in Yosul?” He takes out his phone quickly and taps frantically at the screen. “I set up alerts every time Yosul is mentioned in the news. Why am I not getting anything?”

“I have private sources,” Kai answers cryptically. Lei shrugs off the matter because it’s a defining trait of her brother—to have “private” sources feeding him information. The fact that he has insider information has long stopped surprising her. However, Baekhyun doesn’t share the same knowledge because his eyes widen. “Yes, Baekhyun, I have insider information. But no, I have not been in contact with a Yosulian, so I can’t give you any word of your parents.”

“Okay,” Baekhyun accepts this piece of information nonetheless. “But what have you heard about Yosul?”

“What have you heard about mother?” Lei tries to work her way into the conversation, but the two princes are intent on talking about the Yosulian matter before her mother. Of course, they are.

“There’s a famine.” Kai scrolls through his phone, frowning as if it was hard to read. “The royals aren’t suffering, but some of the people on their side are.” He looks up at Baekhyun. “What do you know about the city of Areveola?”

Baekhyun’s skin pales. “That’s the city by our capital.” He seems to choke on his words, baffling Lei with how he can lose his seemingly ever-present composure within a few words. “Do you know what caused the famine?” As quick as he is to lose his cool, he regains it with a fiery tone. “How long has it been going on? Are there any estimated casualties?”

“I only received news of this today.” Kai puts his phone down again, but his eyes have narrowed as if he was withholding information. Lei knows that look of his; she played enough chess with him to know what his facial expressions mean. “Honestly, I wouldn’t worry myself about this. Your people are capable, aren’t they? I don’t mean this in a way that offends, but your father is one of the best war strategists in the world. Years of experience have taught him enough. I’m sure another war-induced famine isn’t troublesome.”

“In fact,” Baekhyun says without pause, “it is troublesome.” He abruptly stands up from the table. “I have to contact one of my advisors immediately.”

Lei gestures for him to sit back down. “Baekhyun—”

“Excuse me, Lei.” Baekhyun strides out of the dining room anyway.

Lei sighs and rolls her eyes. When she makes eye contact with her brother, he shoots her grin. “What?” she demands. “What’s with that stupid look?”

“Is there something I need to know about you two?” Kai proposes, raising his eyebrows up and down.

“You’re terrible.” Lei groans. “No, there isn’t.” She shudders at the thought of having some sort of romantic relation to Baekhyun. As not-entirely-terrible as he is, she can’t imagine herself affiliating herself with him in any other way as simple friends—if Baekhyun even considers them as such. “But you said there was something about mother. What happened with her? Is it about her new toy?”

Kai winces as if a word hurt him. “I don’t want you to ever use that word again.”

“What? Toy?” Lei would never make it easy for her brother. Ever. “You know what mother is like. She has hidden agendas. This is probably one of them.”

“Please, I need you to accept the situation here.” Kai’s tone of voice causes Lei to roll her eyes. Ever since her father went to prison, her brother began to use this strange tone more and more often. It’s the sort of patronizing, lecturing tone that she has grown to hate. “Mother has begun to move on. You can’t keep dwelling in the past about father. I know it’s hard, but you have to—for the sake of mother’s happiness. Because as you can tell, the world doesn’t revolve around you.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Lei brushes off his mini-lecture. “What happened with mother?”

“She was spotted leaving a hotel with her boyfriend.” Kai makes a face at that word—boyfriend. “I think you’re right. It is strange saying that.” Lei throws him a triumphant smirk, and it’s his turn to roll his eyes. “Never mind that. I found some facts about her boyfriend. I forgot his name, but let’s call him Mr. Zhang, okay?” Lei nods. “He has a son named Lay.”

“What?” Lei frowns upon hearing the supposed name of the supposed son. “A son named…Lay?”

“It’s a nickname,” Kai explains, “because his real name is apparently Yixing.”

“Then call him that.” Lei shivers at the thought of having someone—a male, to be precise—who pronounces their name the same way hers is said. “Ew. So this Mr. Zhang. He has a son. That’s cool. But what does he do? Is a businessman?”

“He owns an IT company.”

“Great. A bunch of nerds.”

“Lei!”

“You know it’s true!”

“I don’t care.” Kai cuts his eyes at her. “You need to be respectful. What if someone called you a member of the mile-high club because father’s family owns an airline?”

“That would be a rude accusation.” Lei quiets her voice at the mention of something as obscenely ual as the mile-high club. When she was younger, she assumed it was a term for people who hallucinated on planes as a result of drug usage or the drinking of alcoholic beverages, but when she turned 16, Wendy told her, and she was scarred forever. “It would pale in comparison to being called something as common as nerd.”

“I suppose.” Kai chuckles, but he smirks at Lei’s warm cheeks. “Lei, why are you so embarrassed?”

“I am not embarrassed,” she lies. “It’s just weird, okay?”

“You know, I think we should have this talk now.” At the sound of that, Lei’s eyes widen, and Kai begins to laugh. The dimple on his cheek is more prominent than ever. “Look, it’s not that bad.”

“Of course, it is!” Lei hisses. “I am not going to talk to my brother about this! You’re crazy.”

“But Lei,” he says through his spurts of laughter, “it’s a normal thing.” He shakes his head and composes himself within a matter of seconds. “In all honesty, I just want to say that I’m proud of you for keeping a better reputation than me.” Lei freezes in her seat; she knows exactly what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t have the impression that she does. “When I was 16, I slept with Krystal. You remember her, right?” Lei nods slowly. “Well, it led to a lot of trouble—the same trouble I’m glad you didn’t get caught up in.”

“I’m glad too.” Lei swallows her suddenly dry spit. She’s not sure if this is Kai’s way of getting her to admit the truth or if he really doesn’t know that she knows. “I, um, didn’t know that.”

“Not a lot of people do,” her brother confesses. “Mother did an amazing job of keeping it a secret. Of course, Krystal had to move to America, and judging from how she’s not anywhere to be found online anymore, she probably moved to a farm or something.”

“That’s…terrible.” Lei wants to hide the fact that she already knows about Kai’s deviations, so she begins to ask question to deter him from realizing it. “Did you, um, I don’t know if this is weird to ask.” Kai raises his brows. “But um, you were 16. Was this because you were just, I don’t know, messing around and trying to stir trouble?”

Kai leans back in his chair. His eyes glance at the high ceilings in their dining room, recalling memories surely. “No. It wasn’t like that. In my young, stupid heart, a part of me really loved her. Now that I’m thinking about it, it wasn’t anything more than a fling. My idea of love,” he sighs, “wasn’t really love. It was more like infatuation. Temporary escape.”

“Temporary escape?”

“Of course.” Kai shrugs. “I was being trained for a lot of things. That’s why I was always gone during my time in high school, remember? I studied abroad because I had to learn at least five languages. And then there was that whole thing with that other war in Yosul.”

Lei nods, pretending that she knows what he’s talking. But she really doesn’t. She does remember the consistent absences Kai had during his years as a high schooler. Of course, she always assumed it was because he had a girlfriend, but she never knew that he traveled and studied abroad to learn five languages. In fact, this is the first time she’s hearing of it. It makes her feel somewhat guilty because when she was 16, she wasn’t up to any good—or interesting or extravagant or important. Her activities consisted of mandatory voluntary work and math problems that she doesn’t understand to this day.

“You’re the Crown Prince,” she states. Lei looks up at Kai when she says this to see if his expression changes, and it doesn’t. When they were younger, his eyes would always perk up; he was proud of being the nation’s future. However, now it doesn’t seem like the case. “How does that feel?” she asks anyways. “Aren’t you glad?”

“It’s a lot of responsibility.”

“But you’re loved by nearly everyone. People kiss the ground you walk on. Your smile disarms the cruelest hearts.”

“That’s not everything,” Kai murmurs. His eyes drift towards the food on their table. “Take our breakfast.” Lei glances at the several, food-filled plates. “Isn’t it extravagant? Don’t we have more than we actually need? I don’t want that. I just want…something simple.” He grabs an apple from a bowl of fruits. “I would be okay with a plate of simple foods. That way, I wouldn’t feel guilty if anything was wasted.”

Lei stares at her brother eying the apple. Of course, he would say something so humble like that. “You’re not serious, are you? You want to give up the throne for a simple life?”

“A simpler one,” he corrects. “I wish so much didn’t depend on me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” Kai rolls his eyes, and he places the apple back in the fruit bowl. “Anyways, Lei, I need you to be honest with me.” Lei’s heart stops. “Are you serious about Lucas?”

“What?” Lei lets out a silent sigh of relief, but at the same time, confusion punches her right in the lungs. “Where is this coming from?”

“I need to look out for my baby sister.”

“You’re like two years older than me.”

“But look how mature I am.”

“What?” Lei exclaims. She calms herself down, however, and scowls. “Whatever. But,” she makes a face, “no, I’m not serious about Lucas. In fact, I don’t even like him that much. He’s…” Maybe Lei should have paid attention in English class more. That way she can the right words without too much pause. “I don’t think he’s the right person for me. Why do you ask?”

“He talked to me during your party.” A breeze blows through the open windows and Kai’s hair shifts. He waits for it to pass before speaking again. “He seemed serious about you, and I wanted to know if you felt the same way.”

“Well, I’m not.” Lei shakes her head and stuffs her face with several bites of toast.

Kai twists his face at the sight of her puffed cheeks. “As unfortunate that is for him, I’m glad. I never liked him, and I don’t trust someone as turbulent as he is. The guy has a million faces—each directly related to who he’s talking to. You need stability in your life.”

“Stability?” Lei asks after she’s swallowed her food. “Why are you insulting me like this?”

“It’s not an insult.” Kai rolls his eyes, infuriating Lei. So, that’s what that feels like. “He’s not emotionally equipped to deal with someone like you. No offense.”

For the first time in her life, Lei answers with, “None taken.”

Her brother does have a point, after all, and maybe her brother can find someone—anyone—to replace the relationship she has with Lucas. If anything, her brother is the only one who can stand up to their mother and demand a different bachelor. Lei shudders at the thought. At the age of 18, she still isn’t used to this level of predestined ideal of a set marriage date (and location).

The door thuds loudly behind Lei, and when she turns, she sees that Baekhyun has returned from the corridor. He holds his phone tightly in one hand while the other is clenched into a fist. Upon his usually calm features is a deep scowl.

“Um,” Lei stammers, not sure what to make of him, “are you okay?”

He stares at her for a few seconds once he’s reseated himself. Lei expects him not to answer, so she looks back down at her food, ready to leave him and let him cool off, but then he says something.

“I’ll tell you later.”

In surprise, Lei whips her head upward to meet Baekhyun’s green gaze, but she doesn’t get the chance. The prince of Yosul has directed his attention on his food, picking at it, stabbing the eggs, and reducing the toast to crumbs. Lei looks towards her brother in concern, but Kai has his eyes narrowed at her. It’s that look again. A thousand games of chess have educated her enough to know what it means.

- - - - -

Apparently, a thousand or so years ago, Helios had the tradition of burying royalty and nobles in one jointed cemetery—now known as “the Catacombs of Ouesce.” It was supposed to be an exclusive burial ground hence the reason why it was tremendously close to the castle. Unfortunately, the excluded always find their way into exclusivity; the Plague of 1066 wiped out nearly three quarters of the population, and these bodies had to be put somewhere. In answer, the surviving nobles and royalty decided to extend the catacombs and bury the dead there as a symbol of how the poor and rich alike were all equal in death.

Years passed, however, and a simple burial ground began to hoard more than just the dead.

Floods devasted the catacombs, underground volcanic eruptions destroyed passageways, foreign intruders forced people to take refuge in the secret pits, and stupid “explorers” (more like unsuccessful conquistadors looking for gold) got lost in them too frequently.

In the early 1300s, there was a crusade—a holy “war” waged by foreign Christians—who believed that the Holy Grail might have been in the catacombs along with other Christian-related artifacts. Helians weren’t forthcoming with the idea