I do not own "Fable 3" or any of its characters. Based on the 2010 XBOX game.
Rated M for Explicit Adult Content.
This story is based on a wonderful suggestion by Fallon-Idalia. We both want to explore the idea of a 'forced marriage' and here is one possible result in the Fable-Universe!
When the Princess begs her brother, King Logan, to spare the villagers and her childhood love, he decides to honour her request – but she must pay dearly.
Love By Decree
"We cannot allow this to happen! Amaleigh, talk to him! You're his sister; he may listen to you!"
Elliot's desperate whisper enveloped Princess Amaleigh in a cloak of cold dread. Of course she would attempt to dissuade her brother from executing the villagers who had demonstrated their disapproval of his labour policies just outside the Castle, but how could she do so? Logan was the King and he had been a harsh ruler for years. She did not know of any instance where anyone who had begged for leniency received it. She pressed her perspiring palms on the heavy oaken door and pushed it open; too quickly, apparently, as she and Elliot burst in awkwardly and almost fell over each other in their haste.
They had just heard her brother order his guards to start shooting the protesters beginning with the leaders, and then, if necessary, fire into the mob. They had to stop him!
"Logan!"
Her brother's name tumbled quickly and desperately from her lips before she could even formulate what she would say to him; if he even deigned to acknowledge her at all. Logan was not a man who would necessarily pay heed to anyone who attempted to speak with him, especially if he had already given an order.
Her brother's head jerked around and his piercing dark eyes bored into hers with an almost palpable intensity and an unquestionably hostile glare. Amaleigh gasped at the unnerving sight and momentarily lost her footing, but she quickly found herself steadied by Elliot's warm and sure grip on her arm.
"What are you doing here? The War Room is no place for a child!"
Logan's angry gaze swept over her and his lips curled in disdain and annoyance. "I have serious business here, Amaleigh. I suggest you return to your rooms at once."
"I am not a child, Logan; I am a woman grown! I have come in here to stop you from murdering those people!"
Logan's steps as he slowly and purposefully strode toward her thudded eerily on the carpeted floor. His sunken eyes raked over her form appraisingly but his expression did not reveal his opinion of her. When he turned his gaze to Elliot, however, contempt effused from his every pore.
"Murder? I beg to differ, dear sister. You and your 'friend' have no business here. This is a matter of civil disobedience and violence. Leave now else risk finding yourselves in a position you will both regret."
"Saving lives is not something either of us would regret, Logan."
"Indeed?"
The King stroked his chin thoughtfully, and then raised one black-gloved hand and clenched it into a fist. Instantly harsh and heavy hands of two guards clamped down on both Amaleigh's and Elliot's shoulders and gripped them fiercely.
"Take my sister and her 'friend' to the Throne Room. Let us make this matter more... official, shall we?"
"Please, we never wanted anyone to get hurt!"
"I just want to go home!"
"We'll leave, we promise!"
The desperate sobs and pleas of the villagers who had headed the demonstration in the Castle Courtyard now stood off to one side in the Throne Room. Three men and two women stood quivering and huddling together in abject terror.
"This is monstrous!" Elliot whispered, his tousled honey-brown hair clinging to his damp forehead. "I can scarcely believe this is the same King Logan of several years ago!"
"Neither can I!" Amaleigh replied, appalled. Her brother was once a King whom the People had loved. What had changed him so? Why had he, a few short years ago, suddenly became a harsh man who over-extended himself, exhausted himself into a constant ill temper, and was utterly merciless in his policies? Where had her fair and loving brother gone? The man before her on the Throne was a mockery of the man she had once adored and idolized.
The King shifted on the Throne to lean forward and his dark eyes locked with Amaleigh's green ones.
"Come closer, my dear Amaleigh; my dear, dear sister."
The words were slowly and very deliberately uttered. Every sound in the room ceased as Amaleigh's lips parted in sudden fear and her half-boots shuffled on the carpet. Elliot reached for her hand as she slowly moved forward. She barely felt his fingertips brush to seek hers. With heart-dropping regret, she continued her slow and unsteady journey toward the Throne.
"Do not touch her, boy!" Logan hissed. "Guards, force that miserable spy to his knees and keep him there!"
Elliot was brutally shoved to his knees, but neither he nor Amaleigh dared to protest.
Logan's gaze fixed on his sister's mouth as her dry tongue attempted to moisten her fear-parched lips.
Amaleigh was now within his reach. Logan seized her hand and pulled her so close to him that when she stopped she was standing almost between his knees.
"My dear Amaleigh, today you have both disappointed and hurt me beyond measure. You have not only betrayed me, but you have used our blood-tie to wound me to my very heart. How am I to endure such a thing?"
"How can I wound a man who has no heart?"
Someone gasped.
Logan's eyes narrowed in surprise.
Amaleigh inhaled sharply in shock at her own audacity.
"Heartless, am I?" Logan asked, gripping both of her small hands in one large gloved one. "Well, you will allow me to demonstrate to you that you are mistaken, will you not?"
"Yes, Logan," she said softly, but everyone could hear her regardless. She felt the very air still in anticipation of the next words to be spoken. "Please, prove me wrong!"
Would he? Would he possibly show mercy to those trembling in fear for their lives before him?
Logan rose, and still holding his sister's hands, walked her a few steps toward the leaders of the demonstrators.
"These, my dear sister, are the leaders of the violent mob outside. Behind us is that friend of yours who has proven himself a spy. You are no longer a child and I shall no longer treat you as one. You are, as you say, a woman grown. You are the Princess. I shall therefore allow you to decide how punishment is to be apportioned."
"Please, Logan, free them all! They have learned their lesson!"
"I disagree; not in that they have not learned, but in that allowing them to go free they shall set a dangerously bad example to Albion. Freeing them will only encourage others to behave as they did."
"No, please!" a man begged, his voice shaking so badly he could scarcely be understood. "We won't do or say anything!"
"We'll never breathe a word, we promise!" one of the women squeaked in terror.
"You see?" Amaleigh whispered softly, "just let them go, Logan! If you still harbour any love for me at all, won't you do this one thing for me?"
Logan's breath hitched violently. "Love?" he whispered harshly back at her. "What do you know of love? You have betrayed me! You have never once spoken to me of any concerns you have obviously had and you have long ago stopped even seeing me! Why should I listen to, much less believe, a single word you say?"
There was a flash of unmistakable anguish in her brother's eyes, but it was gone in an instant. However, shame flooded through Amaleigh. He was right in that, at least. She had indeed not spoken to him nor even approached him for almost two years. In fact, they barely ever crossed paths; and that was her doing, not his.
"I..." she stammered, completely bewildered, humiliated, shamed, and afraid all at once. "I don't know what to say, Logan, except that I am sorry! You are right. I should have spoken with you! I should have been a better sister to you."
Logan raised his head and nodded toward the captive villagers, indicating that their private conversation was over.
"You wish to prove to me that you are someone I should listen to? Very well, decide then who shall be executed; the leaders of the mob, or that piece-of-filth spy on his knees!"
Amaleigh whirled around in horror and saw Elliot's face blanch. His large doe-like eyes were wide in fear and he shook so violently that he looked as if he were in immanent danger of fainting.
"Decide who dies?" Her voice rang disbelieving and almost disembodied from her pale parched lips.
"You are the Princess; choose!"
Logan moved behind her as silent and eerie as a shadow and placed a hand on each of her shoulders. "You want the opportunity to spare the villagers, now you have your chance. Allow the boy to die and they shall live. Allow him to live and they shall die. It is quite simple."
"I won't do it!"
His hands squeezed her shoulders painfully and Amaleigh winced.
"Really? Fail to make a choice and they will all die."
"You can't let that happen, Amaleigh!" Elliot cried out desperately. "You can't allow them all to die! Choose me; you must choose me!"
"Shut up!" Logan snapped at him, and Elliot fell silent.
"You can't mean that!" She attempted to turn to face Logan but his grip was too solid. He forced her to remain facing the onlookers and shook her to force her mind back to the matter at hand.
"I can and I do. Choose now!"
"Logan," she whispered, "please, allow me to beg a boon of you!"
He spun her around and pulled her so close to him that her forehead nearly brushed his nose.
"Be quiet and quick about it, then! And also tell me why I should allow you to beg anything at all of me!"
Amaleigh swallowed and tilted her head back to look up into Logan's fierce and menacing visage.
"I know I don't deserve a boon, but I beg it nonetheless! Please, spare them all! If you do, I shall do anything you ask of me!"
He leaned down to whisper in her ear.
"Anything, you say?" His voice was low and silky, and his breath ghosted over her ear and the nape of her neck.
Goose-flesh erupted over her entire body and Amaleigh's throat constricted so tightly with fear that she could scarcely breathe. She knew that he must have something positively dreadful in mind to speak to her in such a tone.
"Yes," she whispered, her voice so low and choked that she did not know if Logan had heard her.
Apparently he had, for Logan turned her back around to face the onlookers. Amaleigh had been so frightened that she had not noticed that her mentor and surrogate grand-father, Walter, was in the room along with a handful of ever-present nobles, the Royal Secretary, and of course, the purple-clad 'King's Guards.'
"My sister has successfully negotiated your freedom," Logan announced. "Return to your homes and keep your promises. I will tolerate no further protests or acts of sedition of any kind. The boy shall also live. All of you; leave at once!"
As everyone save the Secretary and four guards hurried from the room, Logan bent down to Amaleigh's ear once more and whispered to her.
"I shall exact a price from you, Amaleigh, and you will either make the best of it or suffer from it; the Choice will be yours."
"What... What do I have to do?"
"You will marry a man of my choosing."
For the first time in her one and twenty years the Princess understood first-hand the meaning of the saying 'the blood ran cold.' Her very blood indeed seemed to chill in her veins and a vise of steel mercilessly clasp her furiously pounding heart.
"But Elliot..."
"Is a foppish boy. You had best forget him, Amaleigh, for you shall never marry him."
"But I love him!" Hot stinging tears pricked her eyes and she barely managed to choke out the words.
Logan now moved in front of her and seized her arms. "I love you, Amaleigh, despite your treachery! That, and that alone, is the reason I granted you that boon. Will you now go back on your word?"
"No, of course not!" If she did, all of the accused, and perhaps Elliot also, would die. Even if she had to live the rest of her life without Elliot, she could not bear to be the cause, however indirect, of his death. Nor, as a woman of honour, would she ever go back on a solemn vow.
"Good, you have scruples and hold to them."
"Who must I marry?" she asked, her voice hollow and defeated as she looked into Logan's sunken, but glittering eyes.
"I shall decide that later, dear Amaleigh. You can trust me that I shall not marry you off to a beggar or a common man. I am, as I have just proven, not heartless."
"But now I no longer have a heart," she heard herself whispering forlornly. "It is dead."
"Then you shall not mind over-much your lot in life once I have decided it," Logan replied. He kissed her cheek, his lips warm and moist.
Amaleigh was so stunned and heart-sick that she barely noticed.