Disclaimer: The characters and situations in the following story are the intellectual property of Megan Whalen Turner and her publishers and does not belong to me. (The standard of writing kind of gives it away.)
Her name was Agape. Perfect, unconditional love. That was what everyone expected her to be. Sweet, kind accepting, loving. Another girl with an empty head, sitting quietly in the shadows. (She knows plenty of these. Everyone of her foolish cousins who only cared about their appearance and gossiped all day long. She supposes that girls are to be like that. She even heard that the Attolian queen had once been like that. Attolia had grown out of it fast enough though. Agape, on the other hand, thinks that she will be trapped like this for the rest of her life.) She does not want to be like that, to be kept in the corner like a treasured pet until someone comes along and makes her a trophy wife. She thinks that she deserves something more. Even if she is just an unimportant girl.
She watched the people around her everyday. Her brash cousins, turn from young boys to young men, become new spears and brag around, engage in frivolous activities. Her female cousins embroider and giggle uselessly over inconsequential things. Her older sisters, each as beautiful, or more so than she was, had allowed a certain shrewishness of character to distort their good looks. (Everyone scorns those like them, those who were not pleasant. They praise Agape in comparison for being such a kind and witty girl. She does not dare to tell them that she is not at all like what she seems. Her sisters had only been this way to survive in this place. She does not think that she can hang on any longer this way, behind this facade.) She sees more than lets on though. She watches as the three young princes die, quickly followed by the king. The plague does not take as many people as it did in the lowlands. But its effect was felt too. She watches as her cousin Helen become the crown princess, and fights the protocols laid on her by the grief-ravaged queen quietly, before sneakily cover up her defiance.
There is one boy in particular that she watches the most. She had not known him well. He was slightly older than she was, but not much. Eugenides, though everyone called him Gen. It was a strange name, uncommon yet familiar after it had been passed down along his family. She liked the way it rolled off her tongue. She was not sure why. Perhaps because it was a novelty. He was small for his age, about her height, and she was petite even by her countrywomen's standards. He had bright, almost doe-like eyes, with dimpled cheeks and a childish smile. A pretty child, though not so innocent after all his pranks, but they were amusing though; not much was these days. A spark of mischief danced around the glittering orbs, a perpetual grin was painted on his face. He was charming, no one could deny it, and he most certainly had a silver tongue. Bright he was too, saucy and cunning at the same time, making him a brilliant jokester. Then, things went down hill. First his mother had died, and she saw how hurt and betrayed he looked, but he masked it carefully. His cunning had an edge added to it. She found that she did not like it.
Then his grandfather had died, not three months after his mother had. In his boiling anger with the world on general, he had not wait to declare to his father that he was going to be the next Thief, everything else be damned. Her uncle had not taken this too kindly. They drifted further apart, and she was beginning to see who he considered to be his allies. One was Helen. They had been good friends for a few years, (Agape always found that strange. She might have been only a toddler then, but she always adored Helen, and watched her closely. One morning, after a discreet hunting trip, Helen had a sudden change of heart and took an interest in Gen, observing him as one would observe an intriguing specimen; with caution and interest. Gen could melt anyone's heart though.) They were inseparable nowadays, joined at the hip. Another was his elder brother, Stenides. Stenides, unlike his younger brother Temenus, or Gen for that matter, had a rather soothing temperament, and infinite patience to deal with the monster Gen could become. He taught Gen how to read, and was responsible for Gen's attachment to that musty, old library.
One day he had disappeared mysteriously again, only this time, he did not come back for a whole year. Helen, and quite a few of her uncles, (even some of her aunts), had fretted over this. Soon, however, most were resigned to the fact that Gen probably went gallivanting on one of his adventures again and has decided not to return yet. This gave them a certain measure of peace. Only her select few of her uncles, as well as the queen, seem irritated and frustrated. Perhaps they have caught on to what he was doing. Agape could not say that she did, but she definitely knew something was dodgy. Then, he appeared at court out of thin way, much the way he had vanished. This time, though, he was clinging on to a miserable little rock, but from the surprise and delight on Helen's face, she supposes that it is valuable. Gen looks pretty cut up, with a degree more jaded youth evident on his face before he collapses on the spot. She cannot help but wonder what good a stone will do, especially if Gen would sacrifice so much for it. She wonders if she wants to know.
When she first catches a glimpse of him in his father's arms, minus an arm from his latest excursion in Attolia, she rushes off to heave out her earlier meal. She heard of the outcome already, but it does not make it any less sickening to see him finally broken, defeated. Bile rises at the back of her throat, and she feels a hard lump in her stomach; she does not quite recognize this horrible feeling, though she knows that it is directed at the Attolian queen, and thinks that the closest word she can put to this nasty emotion is not quite anger, but hate. She surprises herself even with her vehemence, but in that instance, sweeping her eyes around the room, she thinks, knows, that everyone else has the same capacity for this sentiment.
Every now and then, even when he is delirious, she walks past his rooms silently, little more than a ghost, but she always peeps in to look at him. She thinks that he is getting better. Sometimes, she hears him shriek when they try give him lethium. His determination does not seem to have shrunk away yet. But that is not the worse. It is when she walks past the library, lurking round the corner, and hear his hoarse screams when he thinks that no one else knows. They pierce her heart, and she can hear the blood dripping. There is blood everywhere; her fallen cousins' painting the walls, her country's soldiers' splashed across the vast prairies, his wounds, (old ones), still gushing, and the fragile organ in her chest, palpitating and spurting tiny droplets of blood. For everyone. (And maybe a bit more for him. She wonders why.)
She sees him more often now. He has changed. His bright, liquid eyes have hardened, becoming shiny glass beads, devoid of life. Some sort of ruthless calculation had entered his countenance, and she finds herself cringing whenever she sees him. It is hard to watch her cousin utterly destroyed. At dinner, he is quiet, hardly anyone recognized him, and he has taken to alcohol. She knows he snuck off with unwatered wine later. That is what they all do, when they start to waste away. She hopes that he does not end up like that. He is smiling perfunctorily, she notices, at someone further out; she cannot remember a time when it became so empty, or plastered on.
Helen wants her to marry him. She does not know whether to shout in jubilation, or weep in her revulsion. She realized quite awhile ago that she loved him. (Who didn't?) But not when he seems quite determined to relegate himself to the cobwebs. He accepts graciously, as she has been taught to, but secretly hopes that Gen has not changed so much that he would acquiesce.
Gen's gone off to marry her. She would not say her name because it tasted terrible on her lips; bitter with her anger at her, sour with her disappointment, and metallic with all the blood spilt. She will never quite look at him the same way either again. No, he changed too much; she feared for Eugenides, and was in fear of the king of Attolia. It was best of she just remembered Gen, her childhood friend.