"Im by your side Huck, if you abuse your power I'll just break all your bones to show you the true lesson: Without structure, there is no system..." Aiko's words stuck in my mind, distant yet familiar, as the factory walls around us crumbled away to an ebony blackness.

I blinked hard, trying to focus as the rubble and smoke were suddenly replaced by plush emerald carpets and gilded archways-- A vivid and lucid memory I couldn't escape pulled me momentarily backward in time to its grasp.

I felt my mind retreating into the past, the way it tended to do when boredom or anxiety struck it. Just like that, Aiko's fiery gaze blurred to nothing, her voice morphing into the nasal tone of my childhood foreign tutor. The Svet woman's cheeks flushed crimson, tendrils of dark hair falling across my face as she dragged the scissors close to my ear...

"I don't want to be here..." The razor-sharp scissors she used always made my curly tawny hair uneven...The silly unending foreign rules never ceased to make me look more stupid somehow. If my ancestors could see me from the afterlife they would have thrown up on me for the way I was manicured so hideously by an agent of our oppression.

I knew that the glorified lackey they called a tutor would have something to say to my remark. "It doesn't matter what you want--You are the future monarch Huck." Her azure eyes met mine as she now held the scissors dangerously close to my left eye for several moments.

"We both know you're full of shit." I knew she wouldn't dare to really harm me no matter who's random second cousin she was to the throne of Svet...They would likely have us both executed though, once the long elitist trails of the north took hold.

"Why can't you be like your sister?!" Her angular face twisted scornfully, The woman's shrill voice always reminded me of Buriti Cacti. It had a certain nasally cadence that made the inflections of her voice unbearable. If I spent any more time having my head primped I was going to guillotine it myself...

She shuffled for a moment as she grabbed my nappy hair by the fist full. "I'm not a genius with an addiction to--" My jaw clenched, my words snapping from them like a common alligator, I felt a chilly shift in the room as the Svetlan delegates' blue eyes widened in what I assume was horror.

Small sand particles flowed through beams of sunlight as I turned my face to see my father, his flame-sigiled robe dragged on the floor effortlessly behind him...I never understood why he HAD to wear our riches like they were nothing, to run ragged even the finest silks of the embattled lands of our people. Sickening.

The skinny pale woman bowed low, some mockingly horrendous display of our traditional greetings "Oh, your Highness I didn't know you were here." All the bravado left her voice now that my father was present. I felt her bony grip release my head, small black curls fell to the ground near my feet.

My hair nearly disappeared in the raven-colored tiles lining the parlor room's tiled floor--How long must we bend our will and act as surrogates to these backward snow monkeys?! "He is always predating the shadows..."

My voice cracked causing me to rub my neck, being an adolescent was the worst time of my life. I did not scream authority, slouching in a chair and getting my hair cut like a juvenile hyena in a circus. Yet I knew I could say anything around him, I stuck my tongue out teasingly to my father quickly before pretending to have something in my eye. "Leave us...now!"

He seemed to be in a fairly bad mood as the deep creases on his face made him look like an overly ornate obsidian sculpture. His regal Buritian moldavite crown hung on his head like an ornament on an old mud hut, a reminder of a rule plagued by placation and predation of young tail...

"But Huck still-" Haige began to speak but I thew her a bone, not wanting her presence but also not particularly desiring to see her decapitated for insolence.

"I wouldn't challenge him or his depth perception even at this age...He's still a raging-" and then she threw me one, her thin flat lips parted making her trembling almost comical.

"My apologies King Vasca...The hot Buriti air is very different than the snowy stepped cliffs of my homeland. I will attempt to further his Svetlan studies in proper grace and nobility to the best of my abilities later this evening." The delegate's blue-tasseled dress swayed as my father's command was law here in the palace.

Her gate reminded me of a tamed rat as she attempted to make herself small passing my father. His crimson eyes raked over her figure like a rabid hyena in heat...

Once she had made her way fully through the golden archways my father's voice rang out. "You make everything difficult Huckle...why do you pester the Svetlan delegation?" He placed his hand on his sweat-covered forehead, rubbing his large eyebrows together unhurriedly.

"I don't see any reason why I need to bend my knee for money just because you do." Stupidly I spat out the first thing I thought, His red eyes flashed with anger as always in reaction; I had upset him deeply no matter how much he told me otherwise.

"Boy, I do not do what I accomplish for my own wealth--We have allied ourselves with our past oppressors...IN ORDER to bring us somewhere in this fight against the rebels!" He clenched his fist and shook it angrily, forgetting this wasn't a planned speech to the uneducated masses.

It was an unhinged rant to an ignorant teenager who gave no fucks. I folded my arms while playing over my next words. "Rebels Rebels Rebels, you talk about them like they aren't our people you run around shooting--Excuse me, pay our soldiers pennies to pay Svetlan mercenaries to run around shooting." My hands came up to mimic an old Buritian rifle aimed at his bad eye.

A golden ray of sun nearly blinded me as I faced my father, backdropped by the sandy dust and glow of the mid-day sun. "I warn you to be more wise with your tongue child...I have seen more combat than you have 'love warts'."

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He was glaring at me with such intensity I swallowed a lump of air into my stomach, grimacing like he had shot me and acted out my own death dramatically before resting on one of the many oversized plush sitting pillows. "I didn't know you were the most storied hero in modern history Dad."

My arms flailed preceding me getting off the pillow and quickly moving back to the hard brown stool. I mocked as if it was a throne, brushing the hard Svet-wood seat off for him to sit upon. "If you had any mind for leadership as you did useless wordplay and drinking--we wouldn't need to be prepping for Dennis' Grand Regency."

I flinched as he moved toward me with no warning. He seemed to begrudgingly sit down letting the weight of his crown slant slightly on his brow's garden of red hair. Fucking Dennis...That boring old bookworm spent more time harassing me than actually DOING anything.

I bared my teeth while speaking slowly. "Why do I care if my cousin has power, as soon as Kash is old enough you'll probably marry her off and we will lose the crown regardless..." I moved to a lounge chair placed by an open window.

The sweet smell of figs hit my nose as I looked over the Capital, reminding me of Aiko, far from here and most likely not thinking of me at all. Merchants were selling shitty wares with the new paper money my father got from our colonizers while our own people still were starved of resources, peddling terribly made goods to cowed citizens of the Mauve Palace's bordering slums.

"What makes you so sure that we will lose the kingdom?" His booming voice had an unusual waver that I had not heard in the ogre since he told my mother he was taking a second wife. I forced myself from laughing before spitting forth the words.

"My 'tutor' is very loose with gossip. Im guessing in Svetlan the nobility gets a rise from their backstabbing ways..." Gaze to gaze my father stared me down for nearly twenty unbreaking seconds before finally speaking to me.

"What did the nasty little pagan tell you I planned to do with MY daughter?" I smiled as he ended the sentence knowing I had the king's almighty attention--How powerful I must be to have such unworthy fatherly companionship! The mere mention of Kash, his favorite, caused the man to flinch vexingly.

I argued in my own head if I should worry him further for a moment before closing an eye while speaking. "Mother has been in talks with the Svetlan courts wanting to make us a puppet state by selling Kasiha's hand to the 'Messiah'..." I pulled my hand straight and clicked my tongue.

"I would imagine you would know--Oh, I forgot. Since we forgo our culture and now send intelligent Buriti-Vasco women to play courtiers 100's of miles from their home country." I stood again...I had the worst habit of pacing and getting overly involved in my own arguments I wished I could break.

My father chuckled gruffly. "I do not believe they have a place in our court so why would it matter if they politic with fools in shiny powdered wigs?" His bravado was back after he dismissed me suddenly, what a snide remark from the man who sent my mother away to be plowed by foreign dukes in his absense by her side.

"Kash is more than an advisor or a delegate...She deserves the throne more than me, especially more than Dennis." My father's face remained unchanged like I was being potty trained again--A simple godamn welp with no meaning to my utterances.

He waited for several moments before he began talking in a ridiculously firm tone. "Huck, you are lucky...you are the heir to the throne--I would have you burlaped for such blasphemous disregard of our own culture you claim to love so much." My stomach turned, the smile he now dawned was ear to ear.

"I never said I love our culture, I merely detest the dogmatic hypocrisy of Svetlan more than I can ignore the changing tide of your simple worldviews." I didn't hold my contempt for the old ways and my father's anti-feminine agendas he held onto them like he wasn't born of a woman.

I felt my face wrinkle into a frown as I waited for some kind of stupid response. "Your grandfather fought tooth and nail to preserve our people's faith against the crusade of the north." His eye didn't blink as I could see waves of internalized trauma ripping at the royal seams that stitched my battle-hardened father.

I gave him no pause."Grandfather sired thirty-four illegitimate children and had them all jailed under the palace as 'vassals', you obviously understand each king is allowed to take certain 'liberties' for what is best for the people." I cast my stare directly at his crown as my sarcasm hit him.

The green moldavite jewels transfixed me, dazzling dark forest-colored sillica...pressed to perfection. "What are you getting at Huck?" My father's voice faded as a distant shell exploded me similarly back into the destroyed factory I found myself in. I splintered back to reality as Aiko waved her black-gloved hands in front of my face, My eyes clasping together rapidly as I went slack-jawed.

You have to be kidding me, Huck!" Her smooth yet sharp tone cut through the crumbling building. Underneath I sensed a festering inferno behind her short breathy words.

Aiko's brown eyes showed cracks in their persistent resilience. I understood the demons that haunted her still from Grandpa Aygu's torture of her family a decade ago. Similarly to our forced engagement, we had never spoken on the matter yet it was chained on both our souls, evident only in silent moments.

Maybe it was the stress or the way strands of dark brown hair clung to her scarred sweat-slicked neck. Small stress lines formed under the freckled brown complexion of her face. Seeing her vulnerability, I was overwhelmed by an unexpected urge to comfort her, to pull Aiko close...I don't know if it was the adrenaline or the realization everyone in that memory was dead except me but--

Without thinking, I reached for her, my hands finding the curve of her hip and the small of her back as she crashed against my chest. For three heartbeats we stood entangled, I felt her heart race in sync with mine. The fig-derived state shampoo boiled my sanities before she flexed violently backward, face upturned and rigid.

"What the FUCK are you doing?" Her forearm solidly crushed my windpipe as she slammed me into crumbling factory drywall, reeling from my touch yet firmly anchored into a painful grip she'd executed countless times on insurgent enemies and leering drunken comrades alike.

I had forgotten that I hadn't hugged Aiko--For the fucking matter--Anyone in years. It must have been as abrasive and jarring as the rebels storming the Mauve Palace's barracks in her mind, I saw the confusion swirling in her fiery brown eyes.

We'd never embraced in public, besides swift sibling-like nudges--Proper distance was engrained for a disgraced prince and the princess' Soul-Guard. She had been trained from the age of 7 to kill and maim anyone who came too close...Yet I felt nothing but an unfamiliar sense of belonging in the split seconds we shared due to a much more sordid past...

The comfort there had been an instant, an alarming spark of her strong calloused fingers twitched against my squishy throat, moving from her hold slightly. I could see the goosebumps on her scarred skin as her plump lips slightly trembled before speaking. "The infantry reported a rebel convoy deux miles out," she said coldly, regaining her composure though still on a hair-trigger...I noticed her spasm slightly as if I had possibly ignited old feelings left to rot.

"If you plan on hugging it out with Aygu I'll shoot you both myself when he arrives..." Or maybe she actually hated me now, without missing a beat she ended her jab. She stalked towards the back exit, rage, and disgust...or was it panic...emanating from each deliberately planted step.

Aiko turned to me as she stopped trembling to say something but the unspoken barrier I had shattered loomed heavily in the clay-stricken factory air. She tried to form words, to voice the maelstrom of feelings either my touch had unleashed or the very real threat of death.

Fury at my audacity to break our consecrated unspoken vow of distance? Confusion at the long-dormant yearning felt in those three heartbeats pressed, matching my own? Fear most of all--That she had failed in her sworn duty because a part of her had welcomed the comfort?

Wanted more? Most likely, I had projected these subtle emotions I had yet to stomach myself. Our time in the sands was over and all I was doing was fanning old fantasies.

Though we were similar we were from two different worlds. Aiko had been instructed since childhood to show no defect and obtain no fondness. She was a weapon, not a just woman. Yet I felt I had cracked through her marble exterior in one impulsive moment once again.

All her life she'd kept people at bay, hiding any vulnerability. The thought of letting someone in, giving them power over her...It was antithetical to everything she'd built her identity on. Aiko pivoted from me, facing the smoking piles of rubble and soldiers running in the chaos; The Rebels approaching made each passing moment more hectic.

I watched Aiko pull her bulletproof emotional armor back in place briskly, dusting herself off from the sudden touch between us like a stain of the attire. Would there be time later to confront what had resurfaced?

I needed to focus on not being beheaded and shown to the masses naked instead of standing here gasping for air three different ways. I laughed to myself in the moment knowing that we might be each other's last embrace.

She regained her normal stoic expression as she flashed a beautiful smile at me. Aiko was a titanium Buritian flag and even if I was paraded through the streets by my entrails minutes from now...I felt that moment had begun something I was meant to finish.