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Because now he was owned by a nation.
When before he had only had to answer to himself.
He had only ever stepped outside that one day into the desert. And then again onto the balcony.
But he had not gone out... Just for himself.
And that was how he found himself, in the late afternoon, stepping out into the beautiful courtyard garden. All white walls and mosaic. It was fragrant, just like he remembered from his childhood. Jasmine, orange blossoms and gardenia.
The air was thick with it.
And right by the fountain at the center, he saw Brianna. She was sitting there wearing a white dress, her shoulders exposed, her red hair like a copper curtain flowing over her shoulders, covering her face.
“Brianna,” he said. She looked up at him, and his heart stopped. And all he could think about was how he wanted her. Was that even surrounded by all of this beauty, like that which he had not seen for years, she was still the most beautiful, the rarest site of all. The most stunning beauty.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I came to see the courtyard, but that you are here too feels... Right. We are to be married in eight days,” he said.
“Oh, are we? You know, normally, you have to check the bride’s availability for the wedding.”
“You know how it is between us.”
“How what is? That you need a wife, and I happened to be standing there, not married to your brother, so it seemed like I was a decent option?”
“No,” he said. “You know that what we feel for one another is undeniable.”
“You’re talking about sex. Attraction.”
“Yes. I am. But as you and I have both never given in to that attraction with anyone else, it is significant.”
“Slightly more significant for the person who hasn’t spent the last sixteen years in a dungeon,” she said.
He looked at her. Honestly trying to figure out why she was pushing at him. Pushing against him and this. Was it that sitcom family she wanted? She was a smart enough woman to know that whatever a person wanted from their life, they were not guaranteed to get it. That did not mean all was lost. And he should know.
“I lived sixteen years in a dungeon. You lived fifteen with a man who did not care for you at all. We have both experienced long stretches of life that were unfair. That were not what we had would’ve chosen. Is it not good enough to feel this desire?”
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling choked. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to want anymore.”
“Who cares what we are supposed to do?” And in fact, he didn’t want to think about supposed to.
He wanted to get back to elemental. Back to what felt right. Back to what made sense. He wanted to get back to that space where there was honesty. Where that was what mattered.
And here he was, out in the sun, free to be for the first time in so many years.
“Do you not know,” he said. “All that matters is this feeling. This is real. You would trade it for something you may never be able to have? For a man in khaki pants who complains to you about his job, who leaves the dishes for you to do, who makes you feel as if you must do unequal work caring for your children? That is thisnormalthat you want? It is what you crave?”
“No. Of course not.”
“What we have found, it is something other than normal. It is honest, at least. Honest in its intensity. In all that we are. It is the truth. And can we at least live in truth if we cannot live in the reality that we have chosen? All of that... All that I must be when standing on a balcony giving a speech to my people, it is not the truth. It is what they need to see. A marriage to Ariel would have been what they needed to see. But I wish to marry you for all that we are when we are not in front of people.”
And he would keep her safe. From himself. He would keep himself under control, and keep her with him.
He could do both.
He was resolved.
And he had not yet failed when he was resolved.
