by S. K Munt
‘You’re so cruel,’ I said one day while he and I were playing Kelia and Kohén in a game of Basket-Racket doubles. It was a freshly-invented game and an addictive one, and since the king had installed his own court, I’d practically had to be dragged from it every day.
I wasn’t happy to be there that day though, because Karol had challenged me to a game, and where he went, his avid audience went, which meant that they were now ‘our’ avid audience and they were throwing me off.
‘Why don’t you just go out there and converse with them, or shut the blinds and stay inside so that they find another way to pass their time?’
‘If I go out there, they will start stomping on one another and if I shut the blinds and lock myself away, not only will I lose my tan, but they will just go to the other side of the common,’ he ambled past me and returned a serve from Kelia. ‘And none of us want to live in darkness because I have to shutter the whole damn house.’
‘You could lock yourself away and none of us would mind, and you can’t exactly lose your tan,’ I pointed out, lobbing a ball back to Kohén. ‘Your South American slash Native American genetics make that sort of impossible.’
‘I like to be darker, and if I’m to impress President Camden’s daughter Ora in a few months, I need to be darker- they tan well down under!’ he joked, pounding the ball back at Kelia who returned it so well that it flew past me and just made it into the line before going dead against the fence. ‘Besides, anyone stupid enough to assume that I’m going to pick a bride through an open window deserves to be made an example of. I may be a prince but this isn’t the sixteenth century- I will marry someone who makes the most sense as my wife, not someone who is devoid of all sense but has many ribbons.’ Kohén tried to ace us with a serve right to the hoop between and behind us, but Karol intercepted it and sent it thumping past Kelia, winning us a fast point. ‘Anyway, they’re attracting single men to the common like bees to honey. They may go home without me, but they ain’t all going home alone!’
‘Did you say wife?’ I asked, incredulous. ‘As in: you would give us a queen at last?’
Yes! Yes yes! Get married NOW! If you marry before I’m released, you can’t touch me! Oh, God- PLEASE!
Karol winked at me. ‘If a girl can steal my heart the way you have Kohén’s, or has a chance of scoring as high in every exam as you have, then yes!’ he declared, and then turned to return another serve from Kohén, lobbing it directly down the centre line, and then into the basket between him and Kelia- winning the game for us. ‘But if I do… it probably won’t be for years yet, you know?’ He wiped sweat off his brow then turned to me to pat my shoulder. ‘Probably like, five years…? I need sow all of my oats first!’
The women watching cheered crazily, and I rolled my eyes, slumping a little in my dejection to understand that I was the oat he had the needle stalled for. I wanted to cuss him out but even if I’d had a snappy comeback, not only would it be unwise to hurt his feelings while Lindy’s life was still in his hands, but his fans were cheering so loudly that he wouldn’t have been able to hear me anyway!
It was sheer pageantry, and if I hadn’t been cured of the desire to have a family or raise a son before then, I certainly was after! Who wanted to be a bee or a honeypot when you could be the keeper of something worthwhile? And regardless of Karol’s sudden and unexpected good intentions, they were still just intentions- if I knew him at all (and I thought that I did by then) he’d end up marrying the hottest piece of ass in Calliel regardless of where she came from or what she could bring to the forty-seat dining table in Eden’s grand dining hall. We’d be stuck with a queen who ruled that every Thursday would be sparkling sandal day, when what we needed was a queen like Martya! Someone strong, proud, razor-sharp and observant. Someone who didn’t care how she looked, only about what she did. Amelia-Rose Choir had potential according to everyone- everyone outside of the two eldest brothers that was, who’d met and had already taken a dislike to the intellectual noble girl. But she couldn’t be the only one amongst them who had both looks and a mind, could she? The only one who could win the nation’s heart?
A girl in my position shouldn’t dream, but I did- I was rebellious that way, so I dreamed of princesses…. the kind who I might be lucky enough to love as a sister one day.
*
Kohén continued to make my life in the harem easier on me by keeping his dalliances with the other girls low-key, and his feelings for me either concealed or maybe even by getting over me entirely. I couldn’t be certain which it was, because I didn’t dare broach the buried subject now that I’d finally gotten some good-sized sods of normalcy on top of it, but something had changed between us since I’d gotten my results and after that day, Kohén finally found a way to keep his promise to spend time with me- without reaching for me or letting flowery, sentimental words cross his lips. It annoyed me to realise that he clearly hadn’t thought I’d do well enough to actually qualify for the Academic caste before, but he was taking my ambition much more seriously now, so that was all that mattered. And for my seventeenth birthday he gifted me with two things: his brilliant, cheeky smile- and a ruffled green bonnet folded up in delicate tissue paper.
‘Um…?’ I took the satin bonnet and turned it over in my hands, curious beyond measure. It was a small gift, but Kohén was not a man of small gestures, and I knew it was liable to mean something larger than the intent to keep my already balmy temperature up. ‘Is this one final attempt at domesticating me…?’
He laughed. ‘No. And I know it’s not quite as lavish as the statue, or the binoculars that I got Emmerly,’ he said. ‘But it’s a genuine artefact from the mid-nineteenth century.’ He took it from my hands and put it over my head, fastening the bow beneath my chin and met my eyes so that I could see his delight. ‘Karol has read Gone With The Wind too,’ he explained and his radiant smile could have been his big brother’s. ‘And he said you’d appreciate this.’
I melted, took his face in my hands and kissed his forehead. ‘I do!’ I said, thrilled not only for the reference to my favourite novel, but because I finally had a REAL antique! ‘So much! But not half as much as I appreciate you.’
Kohén was radiant. ‘I thought you’d look silly but… I hadn’t noticed that there were shades of green in your eyes until now. Larkin…?’
‘Yes?’ I asked, swallowing down a sudden surge of panic, because I didn’t want him to kiss me, but if he did, I would kiss back and passionately.
He sighed and finished as though stating a dull fact: ‘You’re beautiful.’ He stepped back and kissed my limp hand. ‘Happy birthday, friend.’
I swallowed again. ‘Thank you.’ I touched the bonnet gingerly. ‘I’ll treasure this.’
He walked out, and I stayed in- in my room and in my bonnet. Later, I went out into the hall to show Kelia, and bumped into Karol getting into the pool, which was referred to as ‘the spring.’ He had pants on thank goodness and appeared to be settling in to converse with Adeline rather than fornicate, and when he saw me, he grinned.
‘I knew it,’ he said, his smile smug. ‘I love being right and Miss Scarlett, but you do look ravishing.’
‘Fiddle-de-de,’ I said, but I smiled at him as I did, and that was as much of a thank you as I could muster to the man who truly had me bound.
The reprieve from Kohén’s open affections was both welcome and difficult. I began to sleep more easily at night, without dreading that my door knob would suddenly turn, or that he’d start a huge fight with me over some imagined slight (as he’d been doing since his hormones had kicked in) but every time I saw him leaving to sail with Emmerly and returning with haphazardly-buttoned shirt or glazed over eyes, or painting MY statue with Elfin before ‘helping’ her carrying her things back to the room (which he wouldn’t come out of for a few hours after) I’d be attacked by jealous spikes from the inside out. Then I’d have to spend days hiding from him so that he wouldn’t see the anguish in my eyes, and I’d do so in Martya’s garden, s
o that I could pretend to work when really, I’d do little but gaze out at the fence in the hope of seeing the golden man so that I’d have an excuse to scream at someone and vent my many frustrations.
But it was better to be frustrated than scared, and easier to deal with anger than heartbreak, so I let Kohén cast a wide net in the hopes of keeping myself out of his butterfly one, and for the most part it worked. We were friends again who did not dance, or kiss, or talk of wanting, and Basket-Racket court was a great way for us to spend time together without getting too close. It was new too, so we were both learning and so, there was no teacher/student dynamic on the court when we played- just a lot of laughter and a lot of falls.
To my delight, the duchess got addicted to the game as well, and after Elijah’s return, I often saw her and the king go down to play at night alone together, which gave me even more hope, not for myself but for the twin’s continued faith in their parents’ union. The sight of her crumpled on that dock, as she had crumpled in the Collection Room in my first day in Eden had haunted me until the king had returned, and though I didn’t like her, I didn’t want her or her family to suffer for Elijah’s roving penis any more than necessary. In four years’ time, Kohén and Kohl would turn twenty-one and so the legal union that they’d been conceived within would be dissolvable, and no one wanted to see it dissolved. Never before had a King and duchess of Arcadia split up after fulfilling their obligations to one another, but from what I’d learned from castle gossip, never before had a duchess been so miserable before either so her obvious distress over her spouse’s philandering was a bad sign… as was the way she had ghosted the palace halls in his absence, twisting the gigantic rock on her right hand while staring down at it abhorrently.
Kohén did not like talking about his mother or his parent’s relationship, but I had learned from him that that ring was an engagement ring of sorts- a promise that Elijah had made to marry her when their Joined relationship had commenced, regarding what he would offer her when it ended. No one knew for certain if the king really would follow through on that promise, but if she took it off, it would be a clear sign that the situation was hopeless.
Ideally, I would have loved to see her dissolve the union and take him back only if he agreed to be married and commit to her physically (as she never, EVER went off with other men even though it was her right to seek out a male Companion), but I couldn’t see that happening unless it was the king’s idea. She had a strong backbone, yes, but he’d kept her at heel for so long that I couldn’t conceive that she’d get her footing beneath her enough to stand her ground now. That was a shame because I thought it would have done Karol’s character wonders to see his father as the one doing the chasing for once! And if Arcadia got a queen through her then Karol, well, we’d be that one step closer to equality!
I wanted to believe that Elijah loved Constance regardless of what he did with Resonah behind the harem doors, but who could know, really? And how could I put any stock in the chances of redemption for him in her eyes, when I doubted that I’d be able to forgive Kohén for a year of affairs with other women, let alone the thirty-two years of it that poor Constance had had to bear?
And even though I continued to resent Kohén for going to the other girls, I stopped resenting him for it on their behalves, for they were so much happier now that they were earning gold (and let’s be frank: getting their own hormonal needs seen to) that they became better company. Maybe it was because I was coming across as less special to him now, or maybe it was because they were just genuinely happy with their lot in life, but they stopped treating me, and one another, as though we were all rivals.
In fact, one day while we were catching some summer rays out by the pool, Elfin and Emmerly found a way to admit (grudgingly) that they were impressed by my examination results, and agreed that it was a shame that I was in the harem with them. Not because I was ‘better’ than they, as Kelia and Emmerly had once foolishly stated, but because I WANTED to be less. Glamour, adoration, praise and beauty were like drugs to most girls, and these things were offered to Companions in fistfuls, so the fact that I didn’t value such things made me less of a threat to them, and that made them generous enough to cheer me on- and out of their sight so that I wouldn’t get in the way of their goals.
But they continued to believe that Kelia was a spoiled brat with unfounded airs on herself, and that her shyness was a smokescreen barely veiling her contempt for them and her feeble brain, and so they couldn’t understand how someone as smart and strong as I was, could stand to be around her so often. I tried to come to her defence, but they waved off my insistence that Kelia was just scared and sheltered and in need of our support. And when I pointed out that she was a great Basket-Racket player and had a lovely singing voice, which she used to soothe me to sleep when I was in a bad mood or feeling unwell- they merely bubbled their lips and rolled their eyes.
That had been an awkward twist in the conversation but luckily for me, Resonah, Rosina, Adeline and Karol all came out for a swim at that exact moment, so I had excused myself without pressing Kelia’s redeeming qualities further, and they waved me off the golden chaise that we’d all been draped upon, for they knew that I didn’t like the older prince, and welcomed the chance to whisper about his body without me making gagging motions and spoiling their fun.
Four years… tick tock! Ugh, Karol! Lose Adeline already, find a wife and spare me your slimy lips and their belief that I am a threat after all!
*
Kohl and I continued to exchange books via the mail, and every two weeks, without fail, I’d find a letter from him inside one. In late February, he wrote to tell me that he’d scored a 90.4, which was incredible given the fact that he hadn’t had half of the education that Kohén and I had, and in March, he wrote to respond to my letter about my own score, with the pledge to grovel at my feet accordingly, in due course.
‘I always knew you were a goddess, and every day you prove that you are more than that. I miss you so much, Larkin, and every day, I grow that little bit more resentful of my life, and the fact that Kohén was the son that got to stay in Eden, and share an existence with you.’
I wrote him back:
‘You both have me in very different ways. And every time I hear from you, you make me so happy that I find myself wishing every single day of my life away, not so that I can make my dreams come true, but so I can find a way to share a life with both of you: He as my dearest friend; you as the boy who made me believe in romance and love.’
‘Do you love me, Larkin?’
‘In so many ways. But what that means for us I do not know, for I am questing after a love that will consume me entirely and right now, I am not complete in myself enough to give any real part of me away.’
‘Then I will find a way to consume your every thought and dominate your every wish as soon as you are at liberty to wish for something of your own again!’
Our correspondence was so much more than an exchange of ink and paper, but an on-going conversation, which served to escalate the stakes between us. I could be open with Kohl in a way I had never been able to be with his twin, and I was the only confidante that Kohl had ever had and so his hopes, dreams, fears and emotions poured out of him like liquid gold- every one as poignant and moving as the next. And because we trusted each other so, we did not keep secrets from one another, well except for the pact I’d made with Karol-because I figured that was my horrid business alone.
But aside from that, Kohl understood that my feelings for Kohén ran too deeply to be discounted, and he confessed to me that he found Kelia’s crush on him flattering, even though he was not attracted to her- the attention was nice after so many years of feeling like an invisible discard. I did not feel even slightly threatened by Kelia’s crush, but when he wrote to me after my seventeenth birthday to tell me that one of the island girls had taken to leaving shells on his windowsill, and that he had gone on a moonlit walk with her just to tell her that she had to stop, and that he�
�d had to kiss her a few times to get her to agree to leave him be, my heart could have turned green from jealousy, and suddenly, the ocean separating us seemed twice as wide as it had before.
‘I don’t know how my brother does it,’ he wrote once. ‘Has you in that harem and keeps himself on the other side of your door, I mean. I always thought that the thing about Barachiel men’s hormones was a load of pineapples, but now that I’m almost fully-grown, I’m starting to understand that yes, sex is a need, not just a want, and when I get frustrated over missing you, the rain starts falling.
I would never, ever sleep with another girl, Larkin- not so long as there’s a chance for us, and you have to trust me on that. But I will admit that I get excited easily and often, and that even though I was not attracted to Lokina, it hailed after I left her and her eager kisses. I sleep with my window shut now out of loyalty to you, and I brush her shells to the sand to discourage her even though I know that a few of the other guys in the Corps have found sneaky ways to get their needs met with the native fawning flora... But sometimes I wonder if I’m trying to keep her out- or me in- and I can’t stop the thunder from rumbling when I awake from lustful dreams of you in my cold bed alone.
Please don’t hate me, I just want you to know that… Kohén is stronger than me. I probably wouldn’t have touched the other girls in the harem, but I would have had to find a way to get you banished so I wouldn’t rip your dress to shreds. Because the way I feel about you makes me want to swim home, just to bury my face in your hair and experience Heaven with my hands, tongue and… well...I think you can work out the other thing for yourself.
Please, don’t be scared of me or think this means that you can’t trust me but God, Larkin… I want you. I want to be inside you every way a man can be, and if we get a wedding night, I WILL nail our own window shut so that you cannot escape my passion once you have consented to want it, and I will rain kisses upon every inch of your golden flesh!’
