"Come on!" she says and smiles.
I have no choice but to follow her.
Her-my goddess of beauty and grace.
Her.
She is wearing a pale colored dress, maybe a white or a very soft cream?
Oh.
It's a wedding dress.
I run through the garden after her, hoping she slows down soon. I have a stitch in my side and I can't comprehend how she is running so fast and far in those heels.
As we leave the garden and enter the grove of trees surrounding the back of the palace, I notice that we are going very deep into the dense forest.
Finally she stops and I see what she wanted me to. And what she wants me to see is not what I was expecting to behold.
It is a waterfall.
Her hair is pulled back into a beautiful bun, and surprisingly it is still perfect from her wedding. Her dress is still picture perfect, which is weird because she was going top speed through the trees and brambles of the forest.
Then again, I am unhurt and my suit, which is decorated with medals on my chest, is spotless.
But I digress.
Who did she marry?
She takes my hand and leads me over to the gentle spray of water. As she giggles at what must be an awestruck expression she says, "Do you like it my king?"
Oh, it's me.
Yess!
"I love it, my dear!"
We walk back to the castle after the long trek, or in her case, sprint, up to the water fall. I take her hand as we walk and she relaxes and leans her head onto my shoulder.
"Hey, Maxon?"
"Yes, my queen?"
She shakes her head and smiles, but quickly becomes very serious.
"We'll always be together, right?"
I answer in complete honesty, saying simply,"I will always love you, no matter what happens to either of us."
She begins to cry and smiles as she kisses me lightly, laughing through her, hopefully, joyous tears.
"Maxon, I love you."
I smile and say, "I love you too, my dear."
We walk back slowly, conversing quietly and lovingly as only a couple in love may speak. As we enter the garden again, she begins to get nervous.
"What is wrong, my love," I say to her. I am concerned and uneasy at the look on her face.
"I just feel as though someone is watching us. You know? Like something bad is going to happen to us soon."
The uneasy feeling intensifies and I try to brush it off with a quick," I'm sure it's nothing, my love."
The haunted look on her face remains, but she quickly composes herself and smiles at me.
But something's…off.
Maybe her smile is too bright; borderline plastic.
Maybe it's the way she's holding herself, as though the very ground underneath us could burst open and swallow us whole.
Maybe it's the look in her eyes- the look that I know that I'll never forget as long as I live and breathe.
Fear. Pure and undiluted fear shines in her eyes like a parasite that threatens to tear her apart.
Somehow, in that moment, I know that something bad is going to happen to us. Or me.
Or her.
At the thought that something bad could happen to her, I start to panic. I try to keep it in for her sake, but I know that it shows in my facial expression.
If I can't convince my own wife that everything is alright, then how will I convince a country that everything will be okay in times of trouble?
As I am having these thoughts, I seem to walk slightly ahead of her without thinking about it.
And in that moment, it happens.
I hear a female gasp and turn to see a man with tattered clothing holding her with a knife to her throat.
I run to her but the man slowly pulls up a gun and aims it at me. "You have 10 seconds to back up before I cut this beautiful girl here. She's quite a gem, isn't she? I bet I could put a pretty price over this pretty royal head, couldn't I?" He says this with a mocking, almost sarcastic tone to his voice.
The feral and sadistic look in his eyes tells me that he's not kidding.
I walk backwards slowly, with my hands out to show that I'm harmless. That beautiful dress is ripped in too many places to count, and her formerly perfect hair is now everywhere.
First I'm scared, and then I'm mad.
He'll kill my girl.
No way.
I see a drop of blood run down the knife and all I see is red after that. I try to keep my cool and not permanently hurt this man.
But who does he think he is? To take my love from me in such a ransoming way.
I take deep breaths so as not to kill one of my subjects.
And to not have one of my subjects kill both mine and their new queen.
No.
He presses the knife deeper in with an almost gleeful expression as I take a step forward when more crimson droplets run down; staining her pure white dress. The red drops on the background of white fabric make me dizzy when I think about whom the blood belongs to.
She cries out with such agony that it breaks my heart.
And that's not the only thing that breaks.
I do.
I finally snap and run at him, which surprises him because he wasn't expecting me to actually act. Just as fast though, he holds the gun to my chest and smirks.
"What were you thinking, Your Highness," he says mockingly," You know what will happen now, right? Little girl, do you know what will happen to you and pretty boy here, now?"
She lets out a little pained sob and shakes her head no.
"Good," he says happily," then I can show you!"
As if in slow motion, like he is enjoying every moment of this, he swipes the knife across her neck in a bright red smile. I see the light go out of her eyes slowly but surely as he pulls the knife away from her neck dripping with blood.
I let out a scream that could break glass if it was any more pain filled and heartbroken.
He runs away, the coward, and disappears into the woods. I drop to my knees as she slowly fades into eternity, sobbing as she goes. The last thing she says as she dies makes my heart permanently broken. It splits into two parts as she utters those three words that changed my life the first time and the last time that they were said.
"I love you."
I let out a scream as she's taken from me, piece by piece until there's nothing left except a cold, lifeless body covered in blood.
I kiss her with tearstained lips and a broken heart as I say the final parting between me and my lover.
"I love you too, Kriss."
I jolt up with a tearstained face, covered by my hands. I try not to cry too loudly, as I don't want to wake the queen.
The queen.
It should be "my queen", but I never wanted this queen. So I don't claim her as my queen when we are alone, but I have to in public.
I look to my left and stare at the red hair of the girl that now shares my bed.
I don't love her.
I never have. I told her I did, but that was to make my mother happy. She loved America before she died at the ceremony, at which I would have chosen Kriss regardless of America's poor decisions. That just gave me a reason to not choose her.
Despite the fact that I told America that I wanted her and would choose her, I still didn't care.
I only ever wanted Kriss.
I replay that fateful night over and over again every night, which is why I don't sleep as much.
For once my dreams are almost worse than reality.
Almost.
Because, you see, I go to sleep dreading seeing that look in her eyes, only to wake to the reality that the dream creates.
She's gone.
My love is gone, taken from me like a toy from a child.
The sad thing about that is that she was so much more than a child to me.
To me, she was my everything.
And now she's gone.
Every night I see her, and every night I have to say goodbye again.
But tonight, something is different.
I can't seem to form the words needed to say goodbye to my one and only true love.
Suddenly, I am hit with a pang of grief that strikes me so hard that I double over. I jump out of my bed and mine and America's room, running down the stairs and out the grand doors that lead to the garden, Kriss' final resting place.
I run deep into the maze-like garden to the place I am searching for. When I reach it, I see the most precious possession that I own.
Kriss' rose.
The day after she was killed, a rose grew up from where she died. Ever since then the rose has stood as stoically and as gracefully as the person from which it came.
The gardeners said that no one had planted a rose, and that they had no idea how it got there.
But I know.
It was Kriss.
She always wanted a garden of her own, so she planted a single rose in the very middle of the garden, away from everyone's watchful eyes.
Her blood, the very life source of her being, fertilized this cursed ground to form a beautiful yet strange flower.
And just as the blood that flowed out of my love, so is the rose a deep, blood red.
This rose does not die in winter, nor does it die in the sweltering heat of summer. It is simply a perfect rose, almost as beautiful as the one who it reminds me of.
But tonight, something is wrong.
When I reached the rose, I did not notice its state because I was thinking of Kriss.
But when I do notice its state, I begin to sob silently, not believing my eyes.
The rose is literally losing its color. Like, the actual red color is pouring from the rose onto the ground.
This rose has lived for five years with no care, and when earlier in the day I went to see it, it was as healthy as can be.
But now…
The rose is turning a grey color. I fall to my knees as the apparent life source of the rose drains from its petals.
Then I realize-
Its blood.
Blood is flowing from the rose.
Kriss' rose.
My rose.
As I watch, the only piece of my love that I have visibly wilts into nothing but a pile of charcoal dust, already being swept by the wind.
"No," I sob, as the rose floats away," why does this have to happen to me? Why can't my love come back?"
I look down to see one petal, as red as the blood that flowed from my love, sitting on the ground.
It's as if it is waiting for me to pick it up and carry on with my life.
Without Kriss.
"How can you just expect me to do this, Kriss? Live without you but die a little more every day? How could you leave me to this life without you, knowing that I was and am in love with you when you left? I can't live without you in my life, my love!"
"I'd rather die than live without you, Kriss."
As I am drowning in my grief I do not notice that someone has walked up behind me.
"Maxon?"
I cringe at the sound of her voice; so rough and sharp like a knife cutting right through the small amount of love that I still have inside of me.
And it all belongs to Kriss.
I compose myself and stand, not even trying to hide my tears before I turn to see the thing I hate the most in my life.
"The Replacement" is what they call her; they being everyone in Illea that feeds on my misery and heartbreak like a meal that has not been had for several days.
They relish in my defeat.
In my hatred.
In my agony.
And that is fueled by this one red-haired young woman who thinks that she can easily steal my heart after one has already taken it.
America.
Suddenly, I feel the way Kriss must have felt on that night.
That pure, unbroken fear, as though the world will collapse on top of you at any time.
That's how I know what is going to come before I even hear the bullet click into the chamber.
"Maxon- Maxon I'm sorry. But we both knew that it would come to this."
I don't have to turn around to feel the presence of the cold metal resting near my skull.
And oddly enough, I don't care.
I'm ready to die. I'd rather die than spend another minute without Kriss.
Didn't I already make that clear?
America must have heard me, somehow.
She had to have heard my thoughts and decided to act upon my wishes.
I don't care, though.
I'm ready.
"I'm sorry it had to come to this, Maxon. I really am."
As her finger twitches ever so slightly to release the bullet, I hear her last comment.
"I always loved you, Maxon. And I always will."
And then- darkness.
Goodbye, America, the sole purpose for my hatred in life.
Hello, my love.
My sweet, gentle bride.
She reaches out her hand to me, reaching.
Reaching.
"Long time, no see," she says shyly.
I think she's never looked more beautiful.
"I waited for you, Maxon."
And I grasp her hand and enter into the light with my love.
Kriss.
I'm home.