"The King is dead! The King is dead!" shouted a messenger as he rode out of the palace courtyard. Soon others started echoing his news and the cries of the city were replaced with the news of my husband's death. The great plague struck little over a month ago and already so many had died. In two days after the first death smoke from funeral pyres seemed to be a regular fixture over the marble city. The cries of loved ones never silenced, keeping me up at night.

My husband planned for us to move to the country palace in hopes we would be safe from this curse but by the time the royal household was ready to leave there was no safe passage out of the city. So we closed the palace gates and locked ourselves inside our chambers, hoping the gods would spare us. Servants wouldn't even do their chores under penalty of death, in fear they would be touched by the plague. The first death was a servant boy of mine. I would have nursed him but the king had ordered all who were touched inside the palace to be killed.

Down in the courtyard servants draped in black were already quickly building a pyre for my husband. Normally he would have been placed in an elaborate tomb, filled with tributes from all his lords and momentums from his reign but it could not be risked now. By his law all who died must be burnt imminently.

"My lord?" my most trusted servant Carlos nervously asked, "Are you all right." I didn't turn to look at him but continued to watch as the pyre was clumsily put together. I knew he was asking if the death of my husband had set in yet and if my heart was broken. But it was not. I never loved him, and he never loved me. He prized me for my beauty and the rarity of my gift. I was a hermaphoditous, a rare gifted boy, touched by the goddess of fertility, given the ability to conceive and bier children. The gift was so rare that priests were convinced that the gods meant for the Touched, as we are called, to be the consort of kings and bier their heir. I was taken into the harem when I was only three and crowned Prince Consort when I was eleven, after my courses began. So there was no love lost at the death of my husband.

But my mind was worried as I watched. Soon my husband would be put to the pyre, the old king would be gone and no new king to follow. I had failed to give him an heir. In my five years as Prince Consort I had been pregnant three times, two miscarriages and one still birth. He had left son to follow him to the throne, just a daughter, the princess Mercedes, from his first Queen and by law any sons from the harem were declared bastards and unable to become king. What was to be my fate I did not know.

"My lord?" he asked again as he laid a gentle hand on my shoulder for comfort.

"I heard you," I said but did not shake him off. He was my closest friend and I needed some normality now. "It's a strange way to hear that one is a widow. From a horseman yelling it threw the streets." Before he could reply there was a commotion in the hall, we heard people shouting and heavy footsteps getting closer. The doors burst open and Lord Rocque stormed in followed by ten armed guards.

"Seal off all the exists!" he shouted "I want guards posted at this door and on the balcony all the time. No one is to come or go without my approval!" They were quick to do as he was ordered. They bolted the doors leading to the servant passages and the door to the courtyard connecting my chambers with the kings. Two guards pushed past Carlos and I and took post outside.

"What is the meaning of this Lord Rocque?" I demanded, furious for both the invasion and the way he stormed in. He ignored me, continuing his search behind every sofa and curtain. "Lord Rocque!" I shouted. Seeming satisfied he turned his attention to me and explained.

"I apologize your highness but I do this for your own protection," he said.

"My protection?" I asked, disbelieving him. Lord Rocque had never made any effort to hide his disapproval of me and took every opportunity to slit me.

"Yes," he said more calmly than I had ever heard him speak, "The king, your husband, is dead and without a son. The throne is there for the taking if one has the right tools. By law whoever takes your hand in marriage will be king."

"You plan to marry me?" I asked completely shocked at the idea. I could not stand being married to this man for the rest of my life. Having him touch me in any way, bearing his children.

"No," he nearly shouted "Even if my nature would allow me to, but others would. I am here to make sure a man we do not want as king does not do that."

"You mean a man you do not want to be king," I corrected "and who would this man be?"

"Lord Hawk," he said "your highness I know we have not always been on the best of terms but I do care for this empire. I have worked hard alongside King Griffin to make sure it flourished and I will not have my life's work be undermined by a power hungry lord." His words made sense and I needed an ally right now, even if it was Lord Gustavo Rocque.

"Then who shall it be?" I asked, curious of who would be my future husband. The lords of the court raced through my mind. They were either all old and married or young and ruthless in their own way of proving themselves.

"I have not decided," he said sitting down on the couch and signaled to Carlos to bring him a drink. I sat down opposite him and took the drink Carlos offered me. "He would have to be a strong man," he took the drink from Carlos and took a sip "Not only in physical strength but strong enough to keep the empire from dividing." Just then the doors opened again and Gustavo's wife, Lady Kelly, came in followed by Gustavo's incredibly large bodyguard.

"Hawk reached Princess Mercedes before we could," said Lady Kelly as she sat down on next to her husband. "He married her to Lord Stetson." Gustavo jumped up and yelled as he threw his glass across the room. He stormed about, pushing Carlos down and tossing over a table.

"That bastard!" he finally shouted "This changes everything. We must act quickly," he said kneeling in front of me, "We must find you a husband very soon and then you must conceive a son."

"How does this change things?" I asked confused.

"Because he plans to kill you," Lady Kelly said, "the Law of Succession states that if the king dies without a son then the Royal Consorts next husband shall rule. But if the Royal Consort is to die then the husband of the king's oldest daughter shall inherit the thrown." So Hawks plan didn't even include me at all, I was nothing but a bug in his path to be squashed on the road to better and greater things.

"All our lives are at risk your highness," Gustavo said, "These are uncertain times we have been thrusted into. The future of the empire resides solely in your hands."

"Have your servants die your clothes black and dress you for the funeral. It will not be as is should be but he was still a king. You will not light the pyre as tradition would have it but instead watch from your balcony," Lady Kelly said as she placed a hand on my shoulder. She was not hard as her husband, she was loving and caring. She would have made a great mother if she was not baron. They left with parting words I did not hear and Carlos led me into the bath. Gustavo's words haunted me. The fate of the empire was in my hands, the future depended on the husband I would choose. But who? I am the Prince Consort. All of the lords are below me in station and I know their hearts to well. They are all corrupted by a lifetime of court politics. What the empire needed was not a new king but a new man. One who was untainted by the court, one who is good and true, and of honest heart. But who?

I thought those things as Carlos finished bathing me and wrapped a towel around my waist. He painted my face white and my eyes and lips black as tradition demanded. He and another servant, Camille, dressed me in a black robe and placed my golden diadem on top my head. When Carlos placed a black fur cloak on my shoulders I thought how pretty and soft the fur was. I remember the old fur trader that had sold it to me. He had gotten it from up north, in the Unclaimed Lands. I started to remember something he and told me.

A story of a young king whose father was a nobody, a mere peasant, who married a princess. His father and mother ran from her brother, the king, for years before king found them and murdered his father. He was only fourteen at the time of his father's death, and he sought vengeance on his evil uncle. He went out to the rural villages and raised an army of a thousand. They marched to his uncle's castle and laid siege and after only three days they breeched the walls and he took the thrown. The trader said it was a pity that he was born to the tribes of the Unclaimed Lands, otherwise he could have been a great ruler. That was the type of man the empire needed.

I watched as Gustavo lit the pyre and the priests sang the songs of mourning to help my husband's soul cross to the afterlife. Gustavo and the priests were the only ones close to the pyre, the other lords cringed against the courtyard walls trying to stay as far away from death as they could. Yes they were all cowards, I saw it then. None of them would ever be king and take my bed. We would have a king like the trader told of. No I thought We will have him.

After the pyre had burned down I went back inside and tossed my cloak onto a nearby sofa. The trader said it had come from a land called Minnesota. I sat down at my desk and wrote a short letter.

My husband has died and I have no son. They say that you could be a great king if only you had a great empire. Might you come and be my husband I will give you an empire. I would not wish to take one of my subjects as a husband... I am afraid.

When I finished the letter I folded it and marked it with the Royal Seal. I thought quickly of a way to get it to him. Gustavo had left instructions for only Carlos and Camille to come and go, I and the rest of my servants were trapped in my quarters.

"Carlos," I called, only having to wait a moment before he entered.

"Yes Prince James?" he asked as he curtsied.

"I need your help," I said, feeling the tears forming in my eyes. This had to be done now. It could not wait, "What I am about to ask you may be the most dangerous thing you will ever do."

"You know I will do anything for you Your Highness," he said, taking my hand in his.

"I must marry," I said "And I have chosen who it will be but he is not of the court."

"Who is it?" he asked curiously.

"King Kendall of Minnesota," I said.

"A foreigner?" he gasped, horror filled his face "A foreigner had never sat on the thrown."

"It is the only way," I explained "we need him Carlos. Our empire cannot service another king who only cares about himself. We need a man who will love his people as his children and fend off invaders as a mother lion protects her cubs."

"If it is what you think is best," he said "than so it shall be."

"Good," I said "You must travel north, threw the Unclaimed Lands and take him this letter," I saw him begin to protest, "No you must do it. Take my laundry out and go. You must leave tonight. Camille will pack you food for your journey."

"Yes my Lord," he said as he bowed "Anything for you."

"I will never be able to repay you," I said as I hugged him goodbye. He left an hour later and I watched as he made his way through the shadows in the courtyard and over the wall. That was it than, soons I would have a new husband and for the first time of the history of California a barbarian would sit on the thrown.