I just got home from school and both of my parents are home, which is weird. Dad is always working. One step farther in the weird zone was they are both waiting for me in the study.
Our butler Kuern is telling me that they wish to see me in there. I try to think of what I did wrong that they would've found out about. There were a few little things, but nothing big to get me a meeting in the study. I quickly run up the stairs to my bed room, drop my backpack off, and run back downstairs towards the study. I stop a little ways away from the door and paused to catch my breath.
I knock on the door and wait for dad to answer.
"It's open!" dad's low voice booms through the thick door. I turn the heavy brass knob and push the large door open.
Dad is sitting in his big dark brown leather chair with his feet up on his always cluttered desk. Mom's sitting across from him in one of the visitor chairs. Both have this look, troubled and thoughtful on their faces. I'm still wondering what is going on when I say
"What's up?" Mom and dad look at each other as if to see who would go first, mom nods and starts talking.
"Honey, we need to have a talk. Sit down." She pats the arm rest of the leather chair next to hers and looks up at me. I close the big door behind me and slide slowly into the chair looking back and forth between my parents seeing who would speak next. There's a uncomfortable silence where the only noise is from the tick tock's from the grandfather clock that sits outside the room in the hallway. I looked at dad and ask
"Is there something wrong?" Dad smiles and answers
"Depends on what you consider wrong" Mom gives dad a hard look and starts to talk.
"There are some things you need to know. We haven't told you before because you weren't old enough, but we believe that you are mature enough to know now." Dad picks up where mom left off.
"Let's start at the beginning." He lifts his legs of the desk and puts them down to the floor and continues on.
"When gramps was the president there some threats and attacks made on the family from... Some... Opponents of ours."
"But gramps was picked ____ by the council, everyone loved him. He was the one who kept us from going to war with the Than Ryu" I respond, dad just smiles and explains further.
"Everyone here was happy with him, except for the Than Ryu people. They want our land, not a piece of paper with peace words on it. They are war people, they always fight and they always win." By now his arms are up on the desk and he is leaning on his elbows.
"The Than Ryu's have this strange power on their side. When they are attacked their eyes turn this black color and they can kill all that is a threat to them. When that happened they are untouchable and nothing, I mean nothing, can hurt them. I could order fifty bombs to be dropped on their heads and it wouldn't affect them. The bombs wouldn't even leave a scratch on them."
"okaay... so if this is true and they hate the treaty why don't they break it and attack us?"
"They they tried to, but the academies got in the way. The intellectual academy for young men and the intellectual academy for young women stopped them."
"But dad, you just said that the Than Ryu people are pretty much impossible to beat, why would they be afraid of these schools?"
"Because they are not normal schools. They get children who have no place to go and they train them to be fighters. There are courses on hand-to-hand combat, sniping, and espionage."
"Not all courses are about killing fighting and killing though," mom says looking at dad,
"Some of us would get put into courses on healing, only those with a talent for it though." The fist thought that comes to my mind after mom said that was us? Did she go there? Is she a spy? I don't really respond well because I am freaking out at the thought of my mom being someone completely different that what I thought. So of course I start yelling at the top of my lungs.
"Some of US? What do you mean us mom?"
"Do not raise your voice at me young man, you know way better than that, and yes I did go there. I lost my family when I was seven and had no where else to go."
"You're a spy?" I ask.
"Yes honey, I am."
"So you're sent on missions and stuff? Like you travel around fighting bad guys?"
"Actually, " mom takes a deep breathe and looks at dad, dad nods his head and she continues.
"I am on a mission, as you call it, right now. I have been for the past twenty years. My job is to protecting your father. After you were born my job grew to include your safety too." I am staring in dumbfounded. There are a thousand questions running through my head right now and I don't know which one I should start with. Mom starts talking again before I can come up with anything to say.
"I know this is a shock to you honey, but don't think that I don't love you or your father because I do. I love you too very much."
"So you were assigned to be with dad. To protect him.From the Than Ryu people. huh." Dad looks me dead in the eye and holds up what looks to be a letter.
"We got a letter today from the headmaster and the headmistress of the two schools, Orders and Icemist. They have decided that you are at a age were it will be harder for your mother to protect you, you will be going to collage next year and she cannot be in two places at once. They decided that it is time to get you your one guard. The threats they have gotten for you from the Than Ryu leader have been clear. He wants you dead. He believes during an attack that I called on him his youngest daughter was killed. Her body was never found. You are the same age as her so he believes that killing you will be justice. Son, it will be in your one interest to not fight this. When I was in your place I tried to refuse the protection of your mother, I almost got myself killed doing that."
"Wait a second, I am getting a personal body guard? Like mom is for you." My head is starting spin from all the information that is being crammed into it and I'm starting to feel sick.
"Yes you are"
"And do I have to marry her? Like you married mom?" I feel llike I'm going to puke any moment now.
"Yes, yes you do."
"I have no choice in the matter."
"No, you do not have a choice in the matter. When Orders and Icemist decide on something there is no fighting it. To honest with you I do not completely agree with how they handle situations like this, I don't. But as long as they keep us safe from the Than Ryus', then I can deal with their methods."
"So you are saying that you are okay with being forced to marry someone you do not know and you are perfectly fine with me being forced to marry some random girl I don't know." At this moment I don't know what to think, other than this has to be a nightmare.
