And he did.

  The King searched for the Princess for two years.

  At first, it was just questions. Then, it became questions with a blade. And finally, it became accusations: "You are a liar. A traitor."

  Heads rolled in the streets.

  After the first year, the Princess grew quiet.

  One of the kids entered the room to give her the daily meal—a bowl of broth. He set it down and walked out, leaving the door cracked slightly.

  He stepped into the hallway.

  “Did you hear what happened?”

  The guard, a boy named Sam, leaned against the wall. He glanced at the door. “No. I was busy cleaning the waste buckets. Damn high-born... she can't even clean her own filth.”

  “She is a Princess, after all.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “You know Errs Town?”

  “Yeah. I ate my first apple there. And my last.”

  “Well... you won’t ever eat an apple there again.”

  “Why?”

  “The King burned it. The whole town.”

  Inside the room, the Princess went pale. She pressed her ear against the wood. "No..."

  “You’re lying,” Sam said loudly.

  “No. Not a single person was left alive. Except one old woman. She managed to run away.”

  Ruther stepped out of the shadows. He signaled down the hall.

  Heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor. Two boys dragged an old woman toward the door.

  “Come with me, Grandma. Easy now.”

  “They burned them...” The Princess heard the voice of the old woman, cracking with age and smoke. “They burned them all. The King... he burned them all.”

  The Princess ran to her chair, covering her ears.

  The door flew open.

  Ruther entered the room. With him was the old woman, so frail her face looked like it was melting off the bone.

  Ruther smiled, crouching down to her eye level. "Grandma, do you know who she is?"

  The old woman squinted. "She... she is the Princess."

  The Grandma’s face went pale. She tried to lunge at the chair, but age—and the guards—held her back.

  "Your father!" she screamed, spit flying from her mouth. "He killed my husband! He was eighty years old! He did nothing but water the dirt!"

  The Princess fell to her knees.

  "Mark didn't kill a bird in his whole life! He didn't hit a child! And your father butchered him like a pig because of you!"

  The Princess opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

  "I watched both of my sons burn! I heard my grandchildren scream in the fire! Because of you!"

  The old woman collapsed, sobbing into the stone floor.

  "Come with me, Grandma," one of the guards said gently.

  "Don't look at that heartless monster," the other guard spat, dragging the old woman from the room.

  They closed the door, leaving Ruther and the Princess alone in the silence.

  Ruther stood there for a minute, watching her.

  Then he opened the door.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He nodded toward the hallway. "You can go now. I don't have a use for you anymore."

  The Princess sat for a long second, looking at her hands. They were shaking.

  Then, slowly, she stood up.

  She walked toward the door. But before she crossed the threshold, she stopped.

  She turned to Ruther. She reached out, took his rough, blood-stained hand, and raised it to her face.

  Ruther's eyes went wide.

  She pressed her lips to his knuckles.

  "I want you to burn him," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Burn him as he burned those children."

  She kneeled down, not letting go of his hand.

  "My King."

  They stayed in silence in the dim light. But outside... it was a different story.

  In the next room, pressed against the thin wall, the kids were listening.

  They pulled away from the wall, eyes wide.

  "That Ruther..." Malik whispered, shaking his head.

  "He told you," Andree grinned, wiping sweat from his forehead. "He told you he would break her."

  "I couldn't believe him," another kid muttered. "Damn, he's smart."

  "So now we have the Princess on our side?"

  "No," Andree said, staring at the wall. "Now we have the Queen."

  "We are going to burn those soldiers down."

  The whisper started low.

  "Burn them down."

  Then it grew.

  "BURN THEM DOWN."

  They shouted together, their voices echoing through the sewer pipes, carrying the promise of fire to the surface.

  "BURN THEM DOWN!"

  An hour later, night fell.

  And the little soldiers started to sleep.

  Ruther rested his head against the wall, near where the Princess is now sleeping.

  Ruther smiled, “Who thought I would be sleeping the same room as her highness.” he said, letting his head lean on the wall and giving his eyes what they wanted.

  Sleep came fast. But peace did not.

  ***

  On the night of December 26.

  The cobblestones have no pity for twelve-year-old knees, And the wind bites harder than the village curs.

  He stands before the third door this hour, A shadow thin enough to slip through the cracks, But solid enough to be despised.

  He knocks—knuckles raw against iron-banded wood. The latch lifts.

  A slice of golden hearth-light Spills onto the mud, painting his shivering ribs. Inside, the smell of roasted fowl and burning tallow, A paradise of warmth that halts at the threshold.

  "Please," he whispers, the word a ghost of steam. "Just a sack. A ruined cloak. The wool you shear from the dead."

  The face above him is a cliff-side of indifference.

  The heavy oak slams shut. The bolt slides home with the finality of a coffin nail.

  He is left with the silence of the alley, Where the only thing that embraces him Is the frost settling on his skin, Weaving him a coat of white that burns like fire.

  The door remained shut, the bolt drawn tight, And the world became a tunnel of grey and white.

  He stumbled away, his feet became blocks of stone, Into the drifts where the winter winds moan. The shivering, violent and racking and cruel, Suddenly ceased.

  Silence.

  It started in his chest—not a spark, but a roar, Like the opening of a furnace door. The biting frost that had gnawed at his skin Was replaced by a fire that blazed from within.

  "Why?" he laughed, his voice thin and light, "It’s summer here, in the middle of the night."

  The rags he had begged for, the tattered wool sacks, felt heavy as iron upon his back.

  They stifled him, choked him, a sweltering weight, Sweat—phantom sweat—began to bead on his face, fumbling with the ties, While the snow fell softly into his eyes.

  He cast off the tunic, the trousers, the vest, Baring his ribs to the north wind’s test.

  He lay in the drift as if it were sand, On a sun-drenched beach in a distant land. The ice held him close, a lover, a friend, And he smiled at the warmth as he met the end.

  He didn’t see light again and the snow betrayed him. It covered him layer by layer until he was just a mound in the alley. When the sun rose, they didn't find a boy. They found a statue.

  Morning came. The friends he had fought with the night before found him. They were the ones he left to prove he could survive alone.

  And their knees hit the ground.

  They cried, but the sound was muted against the wind.

  Muted to Ruther.

  He looked at his hands and he walked towards the boy’s body touching his smiling face.

  He turned to his friends his face full of tears.

  He bit his lip so hard that blood ran down his chin, staining the white snow.

  "Let's bury him."

  They raised him towards the graveyard where at its back buried friends and parents and even lovers.

  Ruther walked barefoot.

  He had taken the boots off his own feet and placed them on the smallest boy, letting the snow touch his feet until it became blue.

  The little boy saw his feet.

  “Take Ruther.” he said, giving him a rag.

  Ruther looked at him, but Ruther’s legs were shaking, the little boy got down and wrapped the rag around Ruther’s leg.

  He smiled to him, and continued the walk.

  His head lolled side to side, too heavy for his neck.

  They dug with rusted spoons and broken wood. The ground was harder than iron. The tools broke before the earth did.

  They put him in a shallow hole.

  And they started hiding his face with snow and dirt.

  The mound was low, a blister on the white, Hardly enough to hide a soul from sight. Ruther stood, his feet two blocks of ice, Paying in pain the leader's heavy price.

  He did not shiver, though his blood ran slow, For the coldest thing was not the winter snow, But the warmth of the shoes on the living feet, And the silence where a heart used to beat.

  He wiped the blood from his lip, a smear of red, A vivid stain in this kingdom of the dead. "We move," he croaked, a sound like tearing cloth, Turning his back on the altar of the frost.

  The silence had been their armor for years. To be quiet was to be safe; to be unseen was to survive. But the shallow hole behind them had broken something in the pact.

  It started with the smallest of them, a boy with soot-stained cheeks.

  He hummed a low note, a vibration that cut through the wind.

  Then another joined, and another, until their voices melded into a rough, discordant dirge—a street shanty they usually whispered while huddling for warmth.

  Now spoken aloud to the grey sky.

  “The Lord has his castle, the Priest has his bell, But we built a kingdom right here in hell. No roof for the living, no bread for the head, But the earth is a pillow... when you are dead.”

  Ruther didn't sing. Or maybe he couldn’t.

  But he listened. The sound of their boots crunching on the ice kept time like a slow, heavy drum.

  “So, sleep now, brother, the cobblestone’s hard, But the frost can’t bite in the old graveyard.”

  “You’ve paid your penny, you’ve paid your toll, And the snow is a blanket... to cover your soul.”

  The wind had shifted. It was no longer biting their faces but pushing at their backs.

  Ruther still walked in silence, the snow melting against his frozen, blue skin, leaving trails of water that looked like clear blood.

  But behind him, the humming grew. It was lighter, a rhythm that matched the swinging of their arms.

  Then the words came, drifting up like smoke.

  “The stones below are hard and cold, The rich man’s heart is bought and sold. But up above, past cloud and air, We hope there’s something warmer there.”

  The group picked up the refrain, their voices cracking.

  “He doesn’t need a coat no more, He doesn’t beg at the merchant’s door. The city gave him ice and stone, But God won’t leave him all alone.”

  Ruther’s head bobbed slightly. Just a fraction.

  “We don’t know prayers, we don’t know rites, We only know the freezing nights. But God is big, and he’ll give a boy a place to sleep.”

  They looked up at the sky, which was breaking just enough to let a single, pale shaft of light touch the horizon.

  “Maybe it’s dark, maybe it’s dim, But surely God is kind to him? For if the world gave only pain, there must be some gentle rain.”

  “So, rest your bones, and close your eye, You’ve said your last and long goodbyes. The cruelest part is done and past, You’ve found some mercy... at the last.”

  The song faded as the city gates swallowed them, but the boys didn't look down this time.

  Ruther stopped at the gate. He looked back one last time at the white expanse. "Lucky brat he was.”

  ***

  Ruther gasped, his eyes snapping open.

  He scrambled back, clawing at his legs. In the flickering light, he thought they were black.

  He rubbed them frantically until he realized it was just shadow.

  He looked up, chest heaving.

  The Princess was sitting on her cot. Her eyes were wide, watching him.

  “Are you alright?” she asked softly.

  Ruther swallowed the bile in his throat. He forced his breathing to slow. “Yeah. I am.”

  The silence stretched for a moment. The only sound was the drip of sewer water.

  “You were talking,” she whispered. “While you were asleep.”

  Ruther shifted his gaze from the damp floor to her face.

  “You said... 'I killed him.'”

  Ruther inhaled, a shaky, rattling breath. Then he exhaled slowly.

  “I did,” he whispered.

  “I was the one who started the fight. It was over a piece of bread. He was proud. He said he didn't need us.”

  Ruther let out a dry chuckle. “He said he could survive the night alone.”

  He looked at his hands.

  "He was wrong. But by the time we found him... he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was just a statue."

  He wiped his face with his trembling hands, smearing the cold sweat. He took a deep breath.

  “Sorry if I woke you up.”

  He turned away from her. He closed his eyes.

  But this time, he didn't sleep.