To Aurum With Hate

One Sirena             Here is what I know: my wedding is supposed to bring peace, but I want to kill my husband. I know nothing of him. He has been some distant image in my head since I was a girl. Well, not really a distant image. When I was younger, they brought a portrait. The image of the boy they brought is young, with wide, blue eyes, and curly, blond hair.             He looked innocent enough, but he was a boy. He’s from the country that has been hurtling bombs at us for years. “Do you like it?” my mother asked me when they delivered it. “He’s my fiancé,” I said.             “Yes,” she replied, “do you like it?”             “It’s a lovely portrait,” I replied.             I didn’t tell her the truth. I did not tell her that when I saw the boy with the curly blond hair and the blue eyes, I saw the news headlines that father had read at the breakfast table that morning. BOMBING IN CAPITOL SQUARE.             I saw the families at the hospital I visited, their eyes wide with horror. There was no love for the fiancé that I was arranged to marry.             I’m seventeen years-old, and I am supposed to spend a year with my husband, and I have thought of sixteen different ways to kill him in my head. Tomorrow, I will be put on a plane, and shipped off to our enemy country like I am a vase that his mother ordered on the internet.             At this very moment, I am awake, in my bed, trying to decide if it is worth it to sneak out the window and live my life as a waitress. The problem was I probably couldn’t get fast or far enough to actually make it as a waitress. They would have the coast guard and the royal guard and any other kind of guard after me the minute that stepped out of my room.             There was a knock on the door.             “Sirena,” my little sister’s voice calls me.             Neri is fourteen, with brown hair, and wide blue eyes. She’s the only one of us that has actually met my fiancé. It happened when she was on vacation with a family friend, and they happened across each other at one of those fancy races. For boats or cars or horses. I don’t remember which, only that their meeting happened by accident and the press was all over it like wildfire.             I got up from my bed and I walked over to the door, opening it for her. “What are you doing here?”             Neri smiled, and she showed off a plate of cake, and two cans of coke. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought you might feel the same. Food always makes me sleep.”             “And caffeine?”             “It’s decaf,” Neri said with a smirk.             I laughed, and let her in. Neri slipped into my bed with me and the two of us sat there picking at the giant piece of cake. It was left over from the bridal shower that had been thrown that afternoon in my honor. It had been several hours of me smiling as everyone told me how wonderful it was that I was getting married, and what an honor, and how gorgeous our heirs would be. I had smiled so much, and so widely, that it had hurt my teeth despite there being no real meaning to it.             “Are you alright?” Neri asked as we picked at cake.             “I don’t know,” I told her, “everyone keeps on telling me this is supposed to be the happiest day of my life. They keep on telling me that I’m doing such a brave, noble thing for the country. All I really feel like is throwing up. I keep on picturing that day we went to the town of Perdita after the bombs fell…. all of the bodies.”             Neri reached out and squeezed my shoulder, looking me directly in the eye. “But that’s why you’ve got to marry him. To stop the bombs and the bodies.”             “I know,” I murmured.             “It’s a wonderful thing what you’re doing.”             I groaned. “Don’t say that.”             “Why?” Neri said. “It’s true.”             “I know, it’s true, but that’s what all of the courtiers were saying today at the bridal shower. You’re my sister. If there’s one person that I can count on for the truth, it should be my sister.”             “What do you want me to say?” Neri asked.             “The truth,” I answered.             Neri sighed. “If I thought I could get away with it, I would kill your husband at the wedding reception.”             I laughed bitterly. “There’s my sister.”             “Are you really going through with it?” she said as she took a sip of the coke she had in her hands.             “What’s the alternative?” I asked. “Even if I didn’t go through with it, I would be disowned, or locked in the dungeon until I actually agreed.”             “Do you really think our parents would lock you in a dungeon?” Neri said. “We haven’t used it in centuries.”             “For me, it might be opened again,” I said, “and if they didn’t, you know that our brother would.”             Our brother, Galen, was the oldest and a stick in the mud. He hadn’t smiled since he was six, at least according to legend. I hadn’t been around to see it. He was ten years older. When our father died, he would inherit. He had been responsible for coming up with the idea to marry me off to the son of our enemy.      It wasn’t exactly original. Princesses had, for centuries, been used as bartering chips in war. But it was different this time, because the modern media didn’t have images of the dictator that I was marrying cutting off a soldier’s head that had gone viral on youtube.     “He wants what’s best for the country,” said Neri.     “He wanted what was best for him,” I said, “a quick and easy resolution, at his sister’s expense. Now I have to spend a whole year going to a boarding school I don’t know, dealing with a snotty prince, waiting until I get married. Then…. then I get married and wait until my husband kills me in my sleep, or I kill him.”     Neri smirked. “Here’s to true love.” She took a bite of cake, shoving it into her mouth. “I’m eating this whole thing.”     “I can’t eat it, cakes been ruined for me,” I said, “it tastes of forced marriage.”     “Now, that isn’t cakes fault,” said Neri, “don’t let this ruin cake for you.”     “I suppose your right.”     Neri smiled. “You know, I don’t think he’s so terrible.”     “You don’t?” I said. “You barely talked with him when you met him. The pictures of you at that event, you looked miserable.”     “Yes, well I was miserable for a different reason,” said Neri, “it had nothing to do with him. You know, I think if you gave it half a shot, you might like him.”     “The boy that cut off someone’s head on live video?” I said.     Neri sighed. “That was why he talked to me, you know.”     I frowned. “What do you mean?”     “Well, he wasn’t supposed to be at that event. I asked. I knew that he was around.  I wanted to avoid him. He showed up anyway. You know why he showed up?”     “To gloat about cutting off someone’s head?” I asked.     “To tell me he didn’t want to do it,” Neri said, “he said that his father had made him. That it wasn’t him that had decided to go on livestreaming and cut off someone’s head.”     I frowned. “Is this why you snuck into my room late at night before I was due to be shipped off to another country to be married?”     Neri nodded. “I should have told you sooner, but I didn’t want you to fall in love with him and then….”     “Then what?”     “I didn’t want you to hate me for not telling you about him,” said Neri.     I smiled. “Thank you, for telling me. It doesn’t change anything.”     “You still want to kill the pretty boy in his sleep?”     I nodded. “Slow and painful, for the fun of it.”     “My, you are bloody,” said Neri, “so much for the delicate little Princess.”     Bloody, indeed. The portrait of my husband to be was hanging on my bedroom wall. It had been for as long as I could remember. It was outdated. I had seen updated portraits of him, including the one Teen Vogue did with him on the cover.     The Boy Dictator, sitting on the throne, complete in his military ensemble.     “I never claimed to be delicate,” I said.     “Good thing,” said Neri, “I suspect delicate might Imperator Zale might dislike his women delicate.”     “I don’t care what Imperator Zale likes,” I said.     “Of course,” said Neri with a smile.     I rested my head on her shoulder. “Do you think I’ll survive?”     Neri took a breath. “You’re marrying the future dictator of Aurum. They make up most of the world.”     “I know,” I said, “but dictatorships fall.”     “Then you’ve simply got to make certain that this one doesn’t.”     “I’d be keeping the enemy alive.”     “You’re not keeping the enemy alive. You’re keeping yourself alive, and your country. You can do this. I have faith in you.”     “I don’t want to,” I said, “so maybe you shouldn’t have faith in me.”     “Have faith, so that future Princesses don’t have to get shipped off to countries against their will.”     I sighed. “I suppose I can survive it. For the Princesses.”     I leaned my head against her shoulder, and I managed to fall asleep even though my mind was wide awake.