CHAPTER SEVEN: SOLACE

Princess Valance opened up the door and looked into the hallway. She stepped out of her chamber and walked up to Reed's door, which was directly across from hers. The room had always belonged to a house servant, but after King Valance killed Klaus, he moved the servant down the hall and gave the dwelling to Reed. It didn't make sense to the princess though. She was suspicious of the games her father was playing.

"Reed?" she knocked on the door. He did not answer, so she knocked again and was still met with no response. The boy had to be miserable in there, and as much as she hated to intrude, she opened his door anyway.

He wasn't visible—not at first, anyway. After a couple seconds the princess realized he was slumped beneath the blankets on his bed, unmoving and silent. Knowing how much the death of his father troubled him, it was possible Reed had smothered himself in his sleep last night. The princess wondered what that felt like—not the smothering, but loving one's father so much that their death is heartbreaking.

She pulled the covers off of Reed. He wasn't smothered, but it wouldn't be accurate to say he was alive, either. His eyes were open and he was breathing fine, but he was obviously traumatized by what had happened.

"Reed?" she said. "Are you alright?"

"No."

"I'm sorry. Do you want breakfast? I can bring it to you."

"No."

She stood there for a while. Reed was acting broken, like an animatronic toy who lost a gear and now did all its tricks wrong. Just like the toy, something deep inside him was missing.

The princess broke into tears and collapsed at the side of his bed. "I just want you to know," she told him, "that I am not like my father. I hate him."

And so she wept a little bit until she felt better. When she looked up at Reed later, he seemed to have a new expression. It was one of sympathy, as he realized they were both tortured by the same man, only the princess was unlucky enough to have lived with him for the past twenty years.

"What was that you were saying about breakfast?" he said.

The princess wiped at her tears. "I'll bring you some if you like. There are eggs, toast, and pancakes. Juice too."

"I like pancakes."

She nodded and walked out, careful to close his door silently. She still didn't know how her father viewed Reed—she only knew the king felt some degree of remorse for killing his father, which is why he invited him to stay at the castle. But she had no clue if she would be punished for associating with the boy, despite him living across the hall.

The princess went downstairs to the meeting hall, where she had feasted with the Newarks days earlier. The table was filled with a buffet of breakfast dishes ready for the taking. She grabbed a plate of pancakes and a glass of apple juice, and started off for Reed's room. She found him still in bed when she returned, though he was out from under the covers, so he had made progress at least.

He accepted the food and gobbled it down in no time at all.

"Would you like to see a play with me today?" the princess asked.

"A play?"

"Yes. You liked Builder on the Roof, so you should like this one too."

"What's it called?"

"Bloque Lightning."

The princess didn't know what the play was about, and really, could not have picked a more inappropriate one to see. Bloque Lightning was part comedy, part tragedy. It was about a man who unlocked the power of lightning and could spawn it at his fingertips, and how it turned otherwise mundane situations into hilarious challenges. But it also showed how he struggled with morality, when he wielded so much power could kill anyone in seconds. There were multiple death scenes in the performance sure to disturb Reed so soon after his loss.

They went to see it anyway. Reed accepted the princess's invitation and they snuck downstairs, where they exited through a service door and found themselves outside of the castle. Chrome Capital had its shifty neighborhoods, where the king would never park his carriage at night, but none of them were within miles of the castle. The princess would be safe on her walk to and from the play. They went to the nearest theatre, which was not far. There were plenty of theatres within walking distance of the castle in fact, since it was where the highest class citizens in the entire Empire lived.

Even though Reed had just eaten breakfast, it was nearly afternoon. They caught a matinee showing of Bloque Lightning and settled down in one of the front rows, using the princess's royal status as a free pass. She enjoyed the show very much, thought its story was magnificent. She glanced over at Reed a few times and saw him laughing at the jokes too, and he seemed to enjoy himself for a while. But when the tragic parts of the story occurred, and innocent characters died, she noticed a strong shift in his demeanor. He went blank-faced and showed very little emotion, only letting subdued frowns slip out.

Night was creeping over the capital when the play ended. The air became frigid, and hundreds of miles away on the outskirts of the Empire, zombies emerged from their dark caves and scoured the land. But the princess knew next to nothing about that—she was aware zombies were a problem, but had never seen one in person. She had never seen what was left of the victims either.

"Would you like dinner?" she asked Reed.

"Sure."

So she took him to a restaurant she hadn't visited since she was young. The last time she had been there was way back when her mother was still alive, and King Valance didn't lose his temper so easily. They served the greatest meals, all of which cost a small fortune to anyone but the super wealthy, although the princess again used her status to get their food for free.

When the meal came she dove right in. Being away from her father was good enough, but the warmth of the meal in her stomach topped it off. It was like icing on the cake. She was nearly finished with her food when she noticed Reed hadn't touched his. He sat there, just looking down at the salad while tears dripped into the greens.

"What's wrong?" She knew it was a dumb question, but wanted to pinpoint the exact thing bothering Reed.

"My dad," he sniffled, "made terrible salads."

Reed began to sob there in the restaurant. The princess got him up and they left, returning to the castle minutes later. She knew something that might make him feel better, although she had hoped to save it as a last resort. It was something her father didn't know about, a secret kept between her and the gardener, who didn't really approve either but allowed it nonetheless.

The courtyards throughout the castle were populated by beautiful plants. Some of them had flowers, some had fruit, and some had bushes. One of the yards near the princess's room had one flower in specific, the fyrole, that possessed hallucinogenic properties. If its petals were consumed, it acted as a drug in the host's system and elated their mood. When crying and eating food failed to comfort the princess during her darkest hours, she would sneak down to the courtyard with the fyroles and eat a few petals. They never failed her.

She guided Reed into the courtyard by hand. He gave her a strange look when she got down on her knees and pulled a flower apart, handed him some pieces of it, and began to eat her share.

"What are you doing?"

"Trust me," she said. "These will help."

She ate a couple more petals and fell back into the grass. Reed swallowed his bits and followed her example, lying down. The courtyard had no roof, and light pollution was low in Chrome Capital. They were able to see the stars perfectly.

Fyroles were not just hallucinogens. They had anti-depressant abilities, and anyone tripping on them would usually come down in a much better mood. Princess Valance, for example, would trust her father a lot more after that night. After all, she hadn't seen him the entire day. Maybe he was trying to give her some more space? Maybe he really was trying to become a better person?

Reed would be affected similarly. He came to the conclusion that Princess Valance wasn't lying earlier, when she told him she was different from the king. He also realized that death was an inevitable stage in everyone's life, and so was loss. His father had to die eventually, and just like every other person on the planet, Reed was grieving from that.

Both of them had poor thought processes, of course. Their decision making was skewed by the effects of the fyroles—the princess had every right to hate her father, and Reed would not have accepted the reality of the situation so quickly unless he was tripping.

These drugs would damage them in the long run. But for now, they were fine. The two of them fell asleep in the courtyard.

• • •

During the night, servants found Princess Valance and Reed strung out in the grass. They were horrified at first, clueless as to what they were tripping on, and ran to get the king. King Valance took one look at them and decided no medical treatment would be required. He didn't know that the fyroles acted as drugs, didn't even know the flowers existed, but he knew the young adults would be okay. He had the servants carry them to their rooms and put them to bed.

Princess Valance woke up after Reed, but she was the first one to step out of her room. She went across the hall and found him fully dressed, looking out the window.

"Good morning," she told him.

"Morning."

"Care for some breakfast?"

"Not hungry." He stepped away from the window. "But do you know if there's anywhere in this castle where I can—" he did not finish his thought.

"Where you can what?"

"Well, I was a printer, you know. Before . . ."

"Right. Before what happened, happened."

"Yeah. Is there anywhere I can print?"

She nodded. "Yes there is. Why though?"

He shrugged.

"Well okay then," she said. "Follow me, I'll take you."

They walked up to the next floor, and the princess led Reed through a maze of corridors to one room in particular. He didn't understand how she could tell each room apart, none of them were marked, but somehow she knew that one room had printing supplies. When she opened up the door he found it was filled with more than just equipment for printing, but it had general art supplies too—canvases, paints, and mosaic tiles, just to name a few.

"What are you going to make?" she asked him.

"Some art."

"May I watch?"

"I want it to be a surprise."

Reed walked over to a low table, a printing station, and grabbed a print gun off the wall. He put a flat brick on the table, and in seconds was plastering letters and numbers on the plate in some sort of arrangement, an arrangement only he knew.

The princess, not wanting to be left out, went over to a different table and examined its contents. Mosaic tiles were scattered about, inviting her to put them in order—any order. So she joined in, and the two of them spent the day making art. They were a lot like Talia and Lou in that respect, despite the distance of thousands of miles between them. Both pairs found comfort in art, they loved how free it made them feel.

Hours later, the princess decided she was done arranging her tiles and grouting them together. She lifted up her work, an abstract piece dripping with shades of blue and purple, and got Reed's attention.

"Take a look," she said.

He turned around. "Wow. I like it."

"You do?"

"Yeah. It seems melancholy, but lovely at the same time." He was exactly right. That's how the princess felt when she was making the mosaic, but wasn't able to put it into words until then. Reed was able to though, and he did it in a way that made her feel secure about her art. She had confidence in it.

"Are you finished with yours?"

"Just about." He turned back to the plate and fired the print gun into it a few dozen more times. The woop sound it made had surely engrained itself in her brain at that point. She'd listened to it hour after hour, and already it droned in her ears. She could only imagine how bad it must be for Reed, considering he was surrounded by the woops for his whole life as a professional printer.

"Done," he stated, and pulled it off the table. The plate was as big as him, but he didn't have trouble standing it upright.

"Reed," she said. "It's gorgeous."

He had spent the past few hours coating the plate in thousands of characters, to the point that they all meshed together and formed the illusion of a flower field. Asterisks represented flowers, while 'I's were their stems. The background of the plate was an almost solid green field of letters laid overtop each other.

"My favorite scene from Builder," he said.

• • •

That night they collected more fyroles at Reed's request. They took the flowers up to the roof of the castle and ate them, then stargazed the rest of the night. During his trip, Reed imagined himself meeting King Valance and slowly forgiving him for killing his father. They weren't on amiable terms quite yet, but after the fyroles wore off, Reed felt less anguish over what the king had done.

The princess imagined herself lying in a field of flowers, much like the one Reed had printed. In her trip she imagined a fine young man next to her, though she never saw his face, just basked in his presence. She imagined he was the kind of person who nursed her self-esteem back to normal after all the years her father treated her poorly.

Beneath their wonderful drug-fueled dreams, Reed and Princess Valance were growing addicted to the fyroles.

• • •

The little fucks were on the roof. King Valance could hear them up there banging around, doing Golden Brick-knows-what. He had to fight his anger to keep from going up and throttling his daughter's neck and killing that orphaned boy she seemed to like so much.

But he reminded himself he was a better father now. He didn't hurt his daughter anymore, and he wouldn't kill an innocent person like Klaus again. He was in total control of his temper. He would be a good father to the princess.