Nyxis cursed as he urged the dagrine to go faster. Xalim couldn't wait. Who knew much time she had before the King slaughters the purged people this time around?

The moment the words left Tobin's mouth, Nyxis had been on overdrive. He had managed to borrow the only dagrine in Tobin's farm, much to the shepherd's father's dismay. Nyxis promised to return it in prime condition or even replace it with a better breed. After a few minutes of pleading, he finally relented.

Nyxis had never crossed the distance between Tobin's farm and the Resthen's bakery as fast as he did. When he got there, he found the bakery ransacked and a defeated Furloth kneeling among the mess. He remembered grabbing the man by the shoulders and demanding, "What happened?" in a tone he had never used before.

The baker looked up at Nyxis with tears in his dark eyes. "They took my Xalim," he said. And that was it. That's all Nyxis needed to hear.

"Stay put," Nyxis had said to Furloth. "I will save her."

Which was a promise he wasn't even sure he would be able to fulfill.

The sun had come and gone. Nyxis passed the estate where the assessments would take place. He paid it no mind. Only Xalim's face flashed in and out of his mind. He should get to her. He has to. She didn't deserve this, out of all people.

Nyxis cursed himself again the moment he tore past the nobility region at around the last hour of the third quarter. The sky looked lonely now, with only Crozal's dominant crimson rays and Noglea's weak green light accompanying him on the road. Only one sight mattered to him—Crozal. Her appearance could only mean good fortune or bad luck. Nyxis uttered a prayer to the gods he didn't know to be there for it to mean the former.

Why hadn't he known? Xalim wasn't the type of girl to divulge her secrets to anyone she didn't trust so it was a huge blow on Nyxis's heart when he hadn't even known the biggest and the only secret that mattered. Because of that, he wasn't able to protect her. He wasn't able to do anything and might have been the cause of this horrible thing happening to her.

The moat surrounding the Palace whizzed past, the murky waters reflecting Crozal more than it did Noglea. The rancid smell of wet fur, corpses, and earth filled his nose. This was why he didn't like going out of the Palace through this. He preferred the emergency tunnels. Then again, he couldn't exactly fit a dagrine inside. So, the bridges connecting the Nobility region and the Royalty region, it was.

The walls and spries of the Palace had never felt so foreign and suffocating. The dagrine neighed in protest but Nyxis urged it to go the last mile towards the dungeon. It hadn't even fully cantered to a stop when Nyxis jumped off its back and took off running the moment he saw the shed marking the vast underground caverns composing the dungeon. Just a few distances away lie the courtyard where people would meet Pidmena.

The image of Xalim being decapitated flashed in his mind and the tea he drank in Tobin's shed threatened to spill out of his gut. He held it in. Not now. He had to save Xalim.

He dashed towards the shed, startling the Civil Knights standing guard in front of it. "Open it," he hissed. He had been using this tone a lot—one that was able to command respect and force people to listen to him. "Now!"

The Civil Knights sprang into action, each piece of their armor clanking with each other. One man fished the keys slung in his belt and slotted the key in. The door of the shed swung open without a sound. All the other doors in the Palace squeaked but this one was surprisingly well-kept. It's no wonder.

"You," Nyxis nodded to the other Knight without the key. "Carry the torch behind me."

Without waiting for their response, he turned and tackled the slim stairs and the endless steps into the darkness. After some time, a flint hit the stone walls and a torch flickered to life, casting dancing shadows against the walls like a faulty puppetry show. His heart pounded in his chest, his ears, and in his temples. It was the sound accompanying the ringing in his ears, seemingly the only one echoing in the darkness beyond him. What would Xalim say to him?

Nyxis jumped from the stairs as soon as the stone walls became the cavern's ceiling. The wind pulled his hair back, a shocked gurgle echoing behind him. The Civil Knight probably panicked in seeing the second prince jump off like that. He didn't find it amusing as he muttered a spell under his breath. The air shimmered below his feet just as they were supposed to collide with the dungeon floor, cushioning his fall. He didn't waste any more time. He tore through past the grated cells lining the dungeon, searching for the familiar girl with dark hair.

Why hasn't she told him what she was? Was it because he was a royal? Why would she choose to become friends with him in the first place, knowing of the danger he posed to her? Why did he appraoch her, out of all people, in the first place? Whose fault was this now?

He speared past a cell and stopped in his tracks. He looked back to find Xalim sitting with her legs to her chest in the corner. Her head was pressed against her knees."Xalim!" he dashed to the ground, his fingers wrapping around the bars separating him and his friend. "It is me, Nyxis!"

Xalim raised her head and bared her teeth at him. "How did you get here?" she clicked her tongue. "No, never mind that question. What are you doing here?"

Nyxis blinked. Was...was Xalim angry? At him? "I will save you," he said. He had never heard his voice sounding so empty apart from now. "I will get you out of here. I have the keys. I will help you escape and get back to Furloth. I—"

"Do not bother," the simple flatness in Xalim's tone got Nyxis to stop inserting random keys to the lock of her cell. "It makes no difference anyway."

Nyxis frowned. "What do you mean?"

"It means that I will be captured again, no matter how many times you save me," Xalim's eyes were as hard as the stone walls around them. "Because of the stupid decree legalizing half-blood purges, nowhere is safe. Not Cardina. Certainly not Lanteglos and the other fairy territories. I am better off dead."

He shook his head. "I will protect you."

Xalim's eyes narrowed. "With what power, Nyxis?" she said. "If you have the will and half the courage to stop this, you would have stopped all of this even before it got me. Why did you not?"

Nyxis opened his mouth only to close it again. He had no answer except that maybe he was too much of a coward to do anything. Xalim scoffed. "Thought so," she said. "That is the reason why I did not tell you I was a half-blood. It would not have made a difference anyway."

"Xalim, I—"

"Save me the apologies, Nyxis," she laid her palm in the air to his face. "I know you feel like nothing is your fault, but in a way, everything is. Because of your family, the Commons are suffering and the fat-assed Nobles are reaping the wealth we needed to simply survive."

Nyxis frowned. "What do you mean?"

Xalim scoffed. "Have you been in the Commons lately, Your Majesty?" she said the title with so much derision it drove a hot pike in Nyxis's heart. "There was not enough to go around for workers. The business take everything to the Nobility region and what comes back to us are either stripped off with so many taxes and payments until there was nothing left. Are you aware of that?"

He had to shake his head.

"Do not get me started on the hybrid projects," Xalim continued. "Those poor animals being beaten and forced to live in musty underground prison like this. I could not imagine how hard it was for them. They are pushed to reproduce beyond the healthy reproductive age just for the profit."

Xalim threw her head back and laughed without much humor. "And do you know what the most absurd thing I would learn while being imprisoned here?" she said. "It is that you are the one supplying them with their needs just so they could function."

"Xalim, it is not what you think," Nyxis's voice was nothing but a weak whisper now.

The girl wasn't finished. "And what about the imports from fairies? The trade with them?" she said. "Do you know what your father had done?"

Nyxis knitted his eyebrows. "What did he do?"

Anger colored her face red. "He cut off all ties with the fairies. We couldn't earn more versallis because there was no demand," she said. "We could not buy anything either since there were no merchants passing through the Magic Road to bring us the goods we need to keep churning out the things to support this godsforsaken territory. So imagine my fury when I learned that the Royal palace has been conducting illicit trades with the fairies in the shadows. Would you not feel betrayed? Gods, I hate this so much!"

"I am sorry," he blurted. He didn't have enough arguments to set Xalim straight.

She hummed derisively. "What would that do? Will it bring back all the half-bloods you killed?" she said. "Would that do anything more than absolve you of all the guilt?"

"I am trying, okay!" Nyxis shouted back. "If I had more power, I would hear what everyone has to say. If I had more power, I would turn this territory around for the better. I would have done so many things for your benefit if I had more power."

"And you do not," Xalim said quietly. "It best for you to go, Nyxis. You cannot do anything here. You are not even the rightful monarchs."

Nyxis pressed his head into the bars. "What do you mean?"

Xalim met his eyes then, brown against green. "The Helgase family isn't the real ruler of Cardina," she said. "It looked like treachery, greed, and thirst for power ran in your veins for far longer than I thought."