The Nechi's Wife

✣ prologue ✣

this chapter has been redone and edited! ^_^

In one day, I was to be wed.

Several years ago, when I'd initially been told—told that this arranged marriage was a "ground-breaking" union between two warring communities—I'd felt a raging fury sear through my heart and tinge my insides. Was I only a puppet? A mere pawn, in my parents' desperate foreign diplomacy scheme?

I didn't even know how to feel when those three, horrid, horrid words slipped from my mother's tongue:

he's a Nechi.

A dark fear had washed over me as I remembered all the kingdoms that had disintegrated into chaos when the Nechis stepped onto their soil. Their monarchs' souls burned with greed and their fingers knew how to do only one thing: pull the trigger.

In a distant past, I'd assumed I would choose my own fate and decide my own husband. But that sort of life seemed so ancient and naïve. Now, as I stared out the massive glass panels of my quarters, I felt a stone-hard finality. This was my new destiny: to be a Nechi's wife.

Through my window, I could see the lush, jade trees upstanding in the gardens. Their thick branches swayed slightly in the breeze, but they remained strong and rooted. They were there to stay—forever—until their leaves darkened and turned brittle. Until they withered, became bare, and their ripe fruit emaciated into dust.

But I would never grow old here like those trees in my beautiful kingdom of Mereti. Because in one day's time I would be shipped off to the Nechi's land in a deal to fulfill our alliance. I would be forced to bear a stranger's children, to support his endeavors, and to live with him in a foreign land. Away from my family, away from my friends, away from my home.

"You mustn't feel disillusioned," My mother had insisted. "You will grow to love him in time."

She was speaking from her own experience with Father. Neither of them had met until their wedding. However, as they'd grown to know one another, they'd fallen deeply in love.

The only difference between their marriage and mine was that they were both Meretian while my future husband was a Nechi who probably wished I was dead.

"Perhaps," I'd answered through thin lips.

With crystalline tears hanging at the corners of her eyes, Mam had embraced me tightly. Knowing that after I was married in Mereti, as promised, she would never see her beloved daughter again. Her only child, gone.

A fragment of me knew that perhaps there wasn't another way. Knew that I was the only pawn who could be played if it meant the safety of the kingdom. But the rest of my consciousness still shook with anger at the sight of her tears. How could I feel sympathy when she was the one who had conspired this marriage to begin with?

Often, I wished I didn't have to look into their faces every morning at breakfast. That I didn't have to smile during lunch time or kiss them after dinner. That I didn't have to acknowledge the orchestrators of my doom any longer.

But still, the thought of never seeing them again left a dull ache in my chest. And it was a difficult ache to ignore.

Small tears began to fall down my cheeks and as I tried to wipe them away, I heard a loud knock on my door. "Your Highness?"

I winced at the familiar female voice. I couldn't bear for her to see me like this. She thought too highly of me. As I approached the door, I made sure to answer in my most regal and collected voice. "Good morning, Omo."

"Good morning, Princess. Are you ready for your dress fitting?"

I took a deep breath and opened the door. No more tears. "I am."

"Your eyes, your Highness. They're a little red," She murmured with a concerned glance.

Of course my façade didn't work. Omo knew me too well. Fortunately, she wasn't one to pry.

She led me to the Dressing Hall where I was to try on my wedding gown. The maidservants and dressmakers fussed over me, measuring everything from the circumference of my waist to the length of my legs.

"You have a beautiful figure!" One dressmaker chirped as she held a white cloth by my torso.

I wondered if my future husband felt the same misery as I when they sized and prodded him.

F-l-y-n-d.

That was his name.

I could only imagine what he thought of me. I was probably nothing like the Nechi wife he envisioned himself marrying. But there was nothing we could do to return our lives to the paths we thought they would take.

Tomorrow he would be bound to a Meretian princess.

Tomorrow, I would merely be a Nechi's wife.