“We need to talk,” Selius said to Rucille as they stepped out from the restaurant. His tone was surprisingly calm considering the icy expression that he wore, but if he thought that a glare was all it would take for her back down then he was sorely mistaken. She had probably pressed a few of his buttons already while carefully probing her way through their recent discussions, but the unveiled attempt to poke fun at him during lunch was quickly looking to be the final straw.

“I’m all ears,” she replied with a smile that seemed to annoy him just that little bit more.

“Not here,” he said as they turned onto a main road that ran around the mountain. Despite being quite far down the slope the people around them were still both well dressed and clean, and now the summer breeze weaved through the trees that lined the paved streets. The scent of the ocean that seemed to permeate through even society itself here drifted around them, and Rucille soon found that she was walking close to the side of the road so that she could maximize her time in what little shade the buildings provided her with.

While it was hot, thankfully it wasn’t too humid. Enough to irritate her slightly, sure, but it would be irritating Selius even more considering his choice of borderline formalwear. She could only see a few small patches of white in the sky through her newfound world behind the sunglasses, but even a small scattering of cloud was more than what she was familiar with.

Social standings on Areinis, on the surface at least, seemed to be nothing like back at home where the gap between rich and poor was noticeable. Rucille, however, had her own guesses. She had already seen the boardwalk communities that stretched between the fountains during their descent, and the series of messy mazes built from sea-stained timber didn’t seem to be like a particularly pleasant place to live. She would find out eventually if she needed to, especially if Nina was there, but for now she walked in the direction of the shop which would help them organize a place to stay for a short while.

“She is alive, right?” Selius asked her as they approached. Without waiting for the answer to his question, however, he climbed the short flight of stairs before pushing the door open and strolling through to the shop’s interior.

Rucille sighed when he didn’t hold it open for her, but she also knew that she shouldn’t expect anything from him to begin with. Unfazed, she simply followed him into to the foyer to see that Selius was staring blankly at the man behind the counter. He had weathered bronze skin like every other local and a small square tattoo beneath his eye, but what had caught Selius’ attention was the light snore that escaped from his lips.

“Probably,” Rucille finally answered. “Her escape ruined all the variables though.”

“We’re killing her, not collecting test results,” he reminded her before knocking on the counter. The attendant, who was probably quite familiar with the process, quickly snapped out of his light snooze before wordlessly turning a screen on the desk around so that it faced them.

“Have a look,” he said with a face devoid of emotion as he dropped a mouse on the counter for them to use. “You can filter it by the number bedrooms and the price in the bottom corner is weekly. You can’t rent for less than a week and everything is paid for up front.”

Rucille hadn’t known if Selius was even familiar with how to use a computer, but it seemed that he was as he reached for the mouse. He skimmed over a couple of pages in silence without bothering to look at any in more detail, but as he reached the end of the second page he stopped.

“Has anyone else rented a place in the last couple of days?” he casually asked the attendant. Rucille’s ears pricked up at the question, although the attendant frowned in response.

“That’s private,” he slowly replied while eyeing the rifles that dangled over their shoulders. “I’ll lose my license.”

“That’s fortunate isn’t it?” Selius smiled as he drew his pistol before placing it on the counter. “This is also a private conversation.”

Rucille sighed before she picked the pistol up and dangled it from her finger in front of Selius. “Stop it. You think the authorities will just leave us alone if you decide to wave your gun around like this? Do you want to go to another fountain this evening because you burned all your bridges here within a day?”

Selius stared blankly at his pistol which was dangling before him. It was almost as though she could see the gears whirling in his head, but before she could come to a conclusion he had already taken it back with a sigh. At least he had some intelligence, so she hoped that the issue would soon be forgotten by the attendant as Selius resumed browsing through the available places to stay. Everyone else’s opinions were unnecessary, of course, and while she had wanted to see what was available just to satisfy her curiosity, Selius’ broad shoulders were hunched over the display.

Her hopes of having a look afterward dried up when he eventually rotated the screen back around to face the attendant, placing a finger on the top of the monitor once he was done.

“This one.”

“Of course,” the man smiled after taking a quick look at the display, although it was a little more nervous than before. “For how long?”

“A week is fine.”

The attendant didn’t ask any more questions as he quickly took the payment and processed their application in what was probably record time. Rucille thought that it was because he wanted his eight fully-armed visitors to clear out before any of them had second thoughts on asking him some more questions, but that was fine with her. Nina was probably in no condition to go very far unless she’d miraculously recovered, so their hunt could wait until Selius took some time to practice being a little more civil. She herself had some exploring that she wanted to do, some new foods to try, and some relaxing to catch up on, so she wasn’t about to rush him into it either.

What surprised her next, however, was that instead of concluding their transaction and leading the group outside, Selius instead turned and looked back to them.

“All of you, out.”

His words caused a murmur of dissatisfaction to pass through the group before they all silently turned their heads and began to trudge towards the door. Even during lunch they had been relatively silent, and when they did try to have a casual joke with each other they were often interrupted. Selius had also now potentially landed them in hot water with the authorities purely due to his arrogance, but it seemed that they were still planning to remain silent. Was it only Rucille that was aware of how the title of second prince was meaningless once they had left Zaffre? Considering that there were six of them, they could easily tell him to get lost and there wasn’t much that he could do.

“Not you,” Selius said as he put a hand on Rucille’s shoulder when she turned to leave. His grip was surprisingly firm, and his equally firm tone told her that he was now trying to play the role of the second prince instead of the role of Selius Zaffre.

Inwardly, she sighed. The fact that he was acting like this told her that he was trying to rationalize whatever he had done, and if he needed to rationalize it then it was probably bad news. Anything was appropriate for the second prince as it was his right by birth if you asked him, so all he needed to do was put on the mask when he needed to. Was he going to confiscate their money, tell them that he wanted to live in a palace by himself, or demand that they become his soldiers and patrol the perimeter for him?

Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t going to be good.

“It’s a four-bedroom place,” he said after pausing. She noted that he hadn’t let go of her shoulder even when she tried to shrug it off, which concerned her. Before he had been instructed to oversee Nina’s kidnapping they hadn’t even met, so what was with this new sense of forced closeness? She didn’t see what was so ground-breaking about his statement either. He would take a room, she would take a room, and the final six would have to bunk in threes. They might grumble, but at least Selius was looking at the situation with a sliver of financial sense. Their journey was long and their money finite, so it was better to be shrewd about it.

“The guards will use three rooms,” he continued.

Wait, what?

“Your family owes me,” he added before she could find a reply. “I was supposed to marry your sister in a month or so, but this whole mess that you created has obviously changed things.”

Rucille quickly saw where this was going.

“I’m not waiting for that long to bed her, and I don’t want spoil myself over anything that isn’t Zaffre nobility either,” Selius continued as though it were routine. “I think its fair compensation to the Royal Family that you fill in the time before I can marry your sister, don’t you?”

“No,” Rucille replied curtly as soon Selius went to take a breath. “Don’t even think about laying a hand on me.”

“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you,” he growled in response with a cold expression. “Do you think your father is here to say no?”

It seemed that Rucille wasn’t the only person who understood that the world above them couldn’t do anything now. They were completely isolated where there was no quick way back home, so all they could do was band together and work with what they had. Anything could change now, and while Rucille knew that, she didn’t think that the pieces within the group would have already started to move.

Selius, however, had decided to reveal his true colours on the very first day. Cut from the leash that had been a combination of traditions and reliance on public opinion, it seemed that he didn’t want to bother playing games and was instead going straight to the heart of the matter. He was going to stamp his authority all over the group, and Rucille didn’t doubt for a second that he would remove any obstacles in his way as they arose.

“You belong to me now,” he said before releasing his grip on her shoulder and heading for the exit, leaving Rucille to stand in the centre of the empty foyer with a complicated expression on her face.