Chapter 11:

She managed to hold it in during the pre-dinner break – which was basically hours of sitting in the lounge outside her dorm saying nothing while the other princesses talked with each other around her – but during the meal itself she muttered something about feeling sick, and left early. Rihani went with her; thank the rock-god, though, she was as silent as usual, and disappeared into their dorm without a word. Mayah was able to go straight to the door with the N on it. At her knock it opened, but the woman who opened it wasn’t Sukren.

Mayah almost burst into tears. “Where’s Sukren?” she demanded.

“Are you feeling sick? He’s in here –”

Mayah couldn’t wait any longer. She pushed past the doctor-priest who wasn’t Sukren. Inside the room she saw Sukren getting up from a table in the back. “I’ll help her,” he was saying to the doctor-priest at the door. He gestured Mayah to a clinic bed along the side of the wall. “Come here, sit down.” She did as she was told, sniffling a little as she watched Sukren pull a privacy curtain closed around them.

“Let me take your temperature,” he said.

Mayah began sobbing. She didn’t want her temperature taken, she wanted Sukren to hold her and make her feel better. No, not even that. Mayah wanted to go home. The greenhouse village, that was what Mayah wanted, with Ajante and Beia and all her friends, not this stupid castle where Mayah had to pretend to be sick to even talk to Sukren, who she hadn’t seen all day, all day!

“Ganithe,” Sukren called loudly. “Can you give us a moment?”

“Of course,” Mayah heard the other doctor-priest say. Mayah heard the door swing shut; a moment later, she let it all out. “I want to go home,” she wept, hands covering her face. “Sukren, I want to go home, I want to go home!”

She felt Sukren put his arms around her. She reached out to him, nearly falling off the clinic bed. Sukren caught her and pulled her onto his lap. He didn’t say anything, but it was okay, at least he was here. She didn’t have to feel these awful feelings about how nobody was her friend all by herself. Sukren would feel them with her. He always did, no matter how bad it was. He was like that.

Slowly her sobs quieted. She accepted the water bulb Sukren handed to her and gulped it down. “Tell me what happened,” she heard him say, his voice soft and tender.

“I just can’t do it right. I can’t figure out how to do it right. I don’t know anything. Their paintings all look different from mine, more real, and I didn’t know I was supposed to do it that way! And there’s this book, Letters of Sarana or something that everyone was talking about, and I didn’t even know about it –”

Mayah stopped and took in a shuddering breath. “Can’t we go back to the village? Ajante and Beia will be wondering where I am. They’ll be really sad I’m not there!”

She watched Sukren exhale heavily. “Believe me,” he said. “I wish we could go back too. But the bad people looking for you are still out there. We’re safer in the castle.”

Bad people, what bad people? The bad people were right here, they were the other princesses and princes being mean! Oh rock-god, and now Mayah was crying again, and getting the front of her nice new frock all wet. “Everyone keeps staring at me,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Whenever I say anything. I said thank you to the serf giving me food and everyone stared at me. And when I said it was gross because Qat was talking about cycles she looked at me so weird and said if we didn’t get our cycles there’d be no way for a queen to be born and that then the bio-dome would die.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Oh, Qat’s talking about the Night of the Dome, that’s all,” Sukren said. His hand was on her back, it felt nice and warm. “Remember, only queens can wield the Dome Ring because it’s gene-locked? And every Night of the Dome a queen touches the Dome Ring to the bio-dome to give it enough power to last through the rainsoon season?”

That was right. Mayah did remember. The whole village had stayed up for the Night of the Dome last year. Mayah had forgotten that that was the point of the Rajas; giving birth to queens was what they did. If no queens were born, nobody would be able to power the bio-dome, and then the bio-dome would die. Mayah just hadn’t realized that now that she was a princess, trying to give birth to a queen was her job now.

“Do I have to?”

“Have to what?”

“Try to give birth to a queen?” Mayah made a face. “I know how it works and everything, but it’s kind of wet and yucky.”

“You don’t need to think about that right now,” Sukren replied. “Not for a while yet.”

“But everybody else is!”

“Everybody is?”

“It’s like nobody’s talking about them, but it’s also like everyone’s talking about them. Like today, we painted all day long, but before we painted we talked about the Eternal Queen Sarana and how she did such a great job setting up the bio-dome, and then our painting was supposed to be all about her, and then at lunch all that the other princesses wanted to talk about was how Queen Jroya and Queen Pal went to a Houseparty last night, and even the exercises were all about how to be good daughters of the Eternal Queen Sarana and good mothers to any future queens. Queens queens queens queens queens I’m sick of them!”

Mayah jumped when Sukren slapped his hand over her mouth. “Never say that again,” he whispered. “Nothing bad about queens again, you hear me? Not even when you think nobody is listening.”

Her heart was pounding. Let’s shut up about it. Let’s shut up about it. Mayah nodded, Sukren’s hand still on her mouth. He slid it off. Quickly, before Sukren could say anything else scary, Mayah began talking. “What are Houseparties, Sukren? Did we go to one the night we came to the castle? Was it a Leaf-Vein Houseparty?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Can you ask someone?”

“I suppose I can. Why do you want to know?”

Good, Sukren was talking normal again. Mayah kept her chatter up, just in case he stopped. “Qat said she sneaked into a Houseparty and everyone thought she was amazing, so I want to tell them about when I went to one too!”

“But… we didn’t really have a good time there, did we?”

Mayah thought about it. Well, it was true that the Rajas had taken Mayah from Sukren… and then they had acted like it was the end of the bio-dome that Sukren had touched one of them… and then the Eenta soldiers had hurt Sukren…

“Yeah, nobody was very nice,” Mayah said. “But I don’t have to tell them that part.”

“Why do you want to tell them about it at all?”

Sometimes Sukren could be very silly. “So they’ll like me!”

“But do you like them?”

He sounded so serious, it made Mayah giggle. Sukren clearly didn’t understand how making friends and becoming popular worked. “I’m not important here. It doesn’t matter whether I like them or not. So can you find out for me? Which Houseparty I went to?”

“I guess.”

He didn’t sound very excited. But Mayah felt a lot better. Sukren would find out, and then Mayah would tell the other princesses, and then they’d all like her, finally. And she’d figure out how to paint right, and how to do right all the other stuff that the Rajas did. It was a perfect plan!

Mayah yawned. Crying always made her feel sleepy. And she was still pretty tired from traveling all over the castle the other night. “Is it okay if I go sleep now? Even though the other princesses aren’t? Except for Rihani, she’s in the dorm, but she’s a little different, she never says anything, she’s even quieter than me.”

“It’s okay.”

Mayah threw her arms around Sukren’s neck and hugged him. “Thank you!”

“You’re – you’re very welcome, Mayah.”