(Disclaimer & Warning: I don't own Digimon, its characters, nor the plot. Take note that this is MIMATO so if you're not a fan, don't read it. I respect those who are not fans of this couple, but I will not tolerate spamming and flames from them.)

(A/N: Yoshino is from the latest season of the show, Digimon Savers. Matt's three knights are from Digimon Frontier, and you all know Takato and Jenrya from Digimon Tamers.)

THE MAIDEN

Chapter 7
The Maiden

Mimi leaned against a tree, her ribs heaving from her run. It had been a week since Hiroaki's death and, except for the burial ceremony, she had not left the women's field. Over Hiroaki's deep grave she had looked up to see the man who was her husband glaring at her, but he had quickly turned away.

Turned away, she thought with anger, that's how everyone was reacting to her. The guardswomen looked at her with hooded eyes and their whispering stopped when she approached. Three days after the Honorium the trainees stopped obeying her. Yoshino, a high-tempered, vain girl who dreamed of commanding the guard and who had fought very hard to win Matt, had sneered at Mimi with contempt and said that she had been discarded by the king, so why should they give her their respect? Mimi had been faced with ten young recruits, each staring at her with defiance.

Her impulse had been to pull a knife on Yoshino but Mimi was not stupid enough to pit herself against ten strong women. With as much dignity as she could muster, she had turned and left the field.

There seemed to be no one on her side. The guardswomen believed she had lied about not wanting to win and had deliberately knocked Sora down. As for Sora, she lay in her chamber, her body slowly healing, and refused to see Mimi.

Now, as Mimi leaned against a tree, she knew she hated this Yamato who called himself king.

Her anger was so great that at first she didn't hear approaching footsteps. The man was almost upon her before she drew her knife. It was one of the knights who had accompanied her enemy to Draconia.

"Put that away," he snapped. He was a young man, dressed in long foreign robes, and he was scowling at her. "My lord bids you come."

"I do not obey him," Mimi said, her knife at the ready.

The man took a step toward her. "Go ahead and threaten me. I'd love to remove a little of your hide. I don't have much use for your people and even less for you."

"Takuya!" said a deep voice to Mimi's left.

She turned, knife ready, toward the voice. Another knight stood there, a more mature atmosphere about him.

"Kouji," Takuya said in a low tone.

This young man turned toward Mimi. "My lady—" He stopped in anger at the snort from the other knight. "King Yamato wishes you to come to him."

"I have work to do here," Mimi said.

"You bitch!" the knight, Takuya, said, and took a step toward her.

Kouji stepped forward. "It is not a request. Please come with me."

Mimi saw the warning in his eyes, letting her know that there would be consequences if she did not go with him. She knew the time had come to pay for her crime of winning the Honorium. She sheathed her knife. "I am ready."

She followed Kouji, Takuya behind her, to the edge of the forest. A saddled horse waited for her and a pack animal was loaded with what she recognized as her meager belongings. She did not comment on their presumption but rode with the two men toward Drakengard.

She had been isolated since her marriage and had no idea how the Mistheart people had reacted to the separation of her and Matt, but the people soon let her know. They laughed as she rode by and called her the Maiden Queen. They loved the idea of this beautiful young woman, who so many had lusted after, being rejected by the king.

Mimi held her head high as they rode into the walled city then through the inner walls to Hiroaki's castle. Inside, the castle was much cleaner than when Mimi had lived there and she snorted in contempt. Such a waste of time on frivolities.

The knight opened a door to a room that Mimi knew well. Hiroaki had used this room for planning his war strategies. She walked inside and the door closed behind her. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness.

Matt sat at one end of the room, the lack of light making his hair appear dark. "You may sit," he said.

"I will stand," she answered.

She could feel his anger, but it was no stronger than her own.

"We must talk," he said through his teeth.

"I have nothing to say that has not been said," she answered.

"Damn you," he raged. "This is your fault for enticing me to believe you wanted me."

For all the man looked nothing like Hiroaki, he sounded like him. Hiroaki never believed any wrong had been caused by him but was always others' fault. "One does not confuse lust with wanting marriage," she said calmly. "I may lust after a well-formed blacksmith but I would not wish to marry him."

"I am your king, not a blacksmith."

She stared at him. "You are not my king. You are a foreigner who, because of some cruel jest of the gods, has been made my husband. There are ways for our marriage to be dissolved."

Matt got up and walked to the narrow arrow slit that passed for a window at the far end of the room. "Yes," he said quietly, "I have looked into that, but I'm afraid it will not be possible. At least not yet, not when the Honorium is so fresh in people's minds." He paused and Mimi saw him hunch his shoulders together. "I curse the day my father met my mother. I wish she had married a serf rather than a Draconian. Always, being a prince has been a grief to me, but this is the worst." He spoke so low that she barely heard him.

He turned back toward her. "I am going to unite the tribes of Draconia, and I fear the Misthearts will not follow me if I set aside the half-sister of their old king's son."

Mimi smiled at him. "Unite the tribes of Draconia? And will you also move the Mugen Mountains? Perhaps you would like them a little farther south. Or maybe you'd like to move the rivers."

His eyes shot blue fire at her. "Why did I allow my body to rule my head? Why did I not have one minute's conversation with you before calling the Honorium?"

"You called it? I thought Hiro ordered it to give all the tribes a chance at the foreign prince."

"Fool that I was, I called it, as it was the only hope I had of obtaining you. I was sure you would win."

One moment Mimi was standing still and the next she was leaping at him with her hands made into fists. "You injured my best friend Sora merely for your lust?" she screamed at him. "You broke my engagement to Tai because of your japing lusts?"

He caught her as she flew at him, his back hitting the stone wall. He was so angry at her, insanely angry, viciously angry, but the moment he touched her, his anger turned to desire. He enveloped her in his arms and his mouth crushed down on hers, and Mimi responded to him, her body seeming to try to make itself dissolve into his. Her arms went around his neck, pulling him closer as her mouth opened under his. Her anger, her despair, her loneliness turned into desire for him. She was his to do with as he would.

Suddenly, he pushed her from him and Mimi went sprawling onto the hard stone floor.

"We must talk," he said through his teeth.

He was panting like a hard-run horse as he looked down at her. A beam of sun came through the arrow slit and lighted the back of his head. "I curse you, Mimi," he said, his jaw hard. "I made a vow before God that I'd not touch you and I will not."

Mimi was trying to recover her senses. "We are married now," she said. Whatever problems she had with his logic, she had none with her wanting of him.

"Then you must beg me," he said.

"I must what?" she asked, rising.

"If you want me in your bed, you must beg me."

Mimi blinked at him. "Is this one of your foreign customs? Do you make your soft women beg? Is that a way to further humiliate them and to make yourself feel powerful? Draconian men need not make their women grovel. Draconian men are men."

His anger was back and he took a step toward her then moved away, rather like one did when one moved too close to a fire. "I made a vow to God and I will not break it. Now, we have things to discuss."

"I have nothing to discuss with you," Mimi said, and started for the door.

He caught her arm but released it instantly. "Sit," he ordered.

With a shrug, Mimi obeyed.

Matt turned away from her and began pacing. "However it happened, through what mean turn of fate, you and I are married. I could dissolve the marriage if the circumstances were different, if I were not a half-breed and therefore suspect or if you were not related to Ken. But I cannot release us from this marriage; therefore, we will have to make concessions. Tomorrow I leave to go to the Blackheart tribe to talk with their leader and you must go with me."

Mimi stood. "I most certainly will not."

Matt stood in front of her and leaned down until his nose was nearly touching hers. "I do not trust you to not try to gather an army to put that arrogant brother of yours on the throne. I will have you near me—both of you—so that I can see what you are doing."

"Or is it that you do not want the people to think you cannot take your wife's virginity?" she said softly. She could feel his breath on her lips.

His eyelids lowered. "I can take it all right, make no mistake of that." He glanced down at her lips and back to her eyes. "But I will not."

She moved away from him. Whatever his stupid reasons were for rejecting her, he was doing just that, rejecting her. It was another reason in her long list for hating him. "I will remain here and—"

"No!" he said loudly. "Whether you want it or not, you are my wife and you will act as such. If you do not share my bed, you will share my room, or tent, as it may be. I will let nothing stand in my way of uniting the tribes. If the people want to see me with my virginal wife, then they will see me—and I will be able to see that you do nothing evil behind my back."

"If I put a sword through you, it will be in your heart not in your back."

"I assume that is meant to ease my mind," he said dryly.

"Take it how you want," she said, glaring at him, then her expression turned to curiosity. "How do you plan to unite the tribes? Conquer them?"

Matt moved away toward the window. "In a manner of speaking. I want to marry them to each other so that in a couple of generations they will be so interbred they will not know which tribe they are. They will only be Draconians."

Mimi smiled at him. "And how do you plan to do this? Ask them to marry people they hate?" Her smile disappeared. "You know nothing of us. The tribes would die before giving up their identity. Why don't you go back to where you came from and leave us in peace before you cause a war—if you live that long?"

"And will you return with me?"

Mimi was aghast. "Live in your country, where the women must beg the men for their favors?"

Matt opened his mouth to explain but closed it again. "I will not try to explain to you. Your duty is to obey and nothing else. You are to go with me as I travel across Draconia and nothing else. I want no advice from you nor any comments. You are to be a proper wife."

"A mouse, you mean," she said. "You will find a Draconian woman not so easy to subdue as your pale dolls. I will go with you. What does it matter? I will be a widow by the next full moon." She turned on her heel and left the room.

As she moved along the dim stone-walled corridors toward the main hall, she thought of what a fool the man was. As if he could march into the main city of each tribe and ask them to please stop hating each other. She was right, someone would kill the fool within days.

And as for his not bedding her, that was truly puzzling. Was it that he did not desire her? That seemed a ridiculous thought or maybe all foreigners were as passionate about women as this one was about her. Or perhaps he could not consummate their marriage. She shrugged. Who could understand the thoughts of a foreign idiot?

"You are Mimi," said a small, breathless voice. "You won."

Mimi looked down to see the little son of Matt's brother. She suspected he was younger than his height indicated, and, to her, his pale skin and hair looked like bread that had not been baked long enough. The wall torch made the boy look as if his face were carved out of a pearl.

"What do you want?" she asked, looking down at the child. He was a young enemy now but he was indeed her enemy.

"I saw you," the boy said, his eyes as round as blue meadow flowers. "I saw you win. I saw you beat everybody. Would you teach me to run like you do? And wrestle? And shoot a bow?"

Mimi couldn't keep from smiling. "Perhaps."

The boy smiled up at her.

"There you are," said a voice at the end of the corridor. It was the young man called Daisuke and Mimi's hand instinctively went to her knife, but the young man was merely gazing at her in a way that Mimi knew was complimentary. Her hand relaxed.

"This is Mimi," the boy said proudly.

"Yes, I know," Daisuke said, and smiled. Mimi saw that he was going to be a splendid-looking man and she smiled back at him.

"What is this?" Matt shouted from behind the trio. "Daisuke, have you nothing to do but drool over my wife? No armor to clean? No weapons to sharpen? No lessons to study?"

"Yes, my lord," the boy said, but he gave Mimi another smile before he left.

Young Shin, at the sound of his uncle's shout, had moved between Mimi and the wall, his arms going around her thigh and holding on to her. Mimi looked down at the boy in surprise.

"Shin!" Matt said sharply. "What do you think you are doing?"

"This is Mimi," he said as if this were an answer.

"I know full well who she is, now come away from her."

Mimi smiled at Matt. "If you cannot control a child, how do you expect to control Jun and Koushiro, who rule the other tribes? And fat Junpei?"

Matt grabbed for Shin's arm but the boy slid behind Mimi and she put her body between Matt and the boy.

Suddenly, Matt straightened. "You have power over me," he said softly. "You make me act younger than my squire. I'll not fight you for the boy; no doubt you have bewitched him also. But remember, he is not my heir. There would be no benefit to you to harm him."

"Harm a child?" Mimi asked in horror. "Even a foreign child? You go too far. I have no need to harm any foreigner as you will do yourselves the most harm. We Draconians will tire of your self-satisfied superiority and someone besides me will remove a few heads." Her eyes narrowed. "And that Takuya of yours will go first."

"Takuya?" Matt asked. "Has he tried for your favors?"

"Get your mind out of your breeches. The man hates us and he lets it be known. Now, I am hungry and I smell food. Am I allowed to eat or have you vowed that I may not?"

Matt's nostrils flared in anger but he said nothing. "Come. Eat. Who am I to have a say in your life?" He turned and started down the hall.

Mimi meant to follow him but Shin tried to take her hand. "Draconian warriors do not hold hands," she said, "and straighten your shoulders. How can you be a Draconian if you slump?"

"Yes, sir," Shin answered, and Mimi did not correct him as the boy stood straight.

She smiled down at him. "Perhaps we can find you some proper clothes more befitting a Mistheart warrior."

"And a knife?" he asked, eyes gleaming.

"By all means a knife."

Long trestle tables had been set up in the main hall and servants were bringing in platters of meat and vegetables. Mimi started to take her place toward the end of the table but Matt, frowning, motioned to the place on the bench beside him. Shin followed her like a shadow.

"Shin." Takeru called his son from the other side of Matt, motioning for the boy to come sit by him.

"Mimi will let me sit by her," the boy said, his little spine rigid.

Takeru started to rise but Matt stopped him.

A priest blessed the meal and the fifty or so diners fell to as if they were starving. They were loud as they argued about weapons and horses and who was the greatest fighter.

A quarter way into the meal, two men made for each other's throats, each trying to strangle the other.

Matt, for all he had seen of Draconian tempers, was still unprepared for these outbursts. He was talking to Takeru and did not react immediately.

Not so Mimi. She jumped onto the table, took two steps across it, and launched herself onto the men, knocking them off balance so that the three of them fell to the floor amid the debris and the barking dogs.

She drew her knife even as she fell. "I'll have the heart of the next man who interrupts my meal," she yelled.

The men calmed themselves and got up off the floor. The other Draconians had barely interrupted their eating at the sight of this very ordinary event, but it was not ordinary to the foreigners. Mimi stood, dusting herself off, and met the eyes of matt and his three knights. Takeru stood to one side, his eyes shocked as he clutched his little boy to him.

Mimi had no idea what she had done to cause such looks on the faces of these men. Matt's face was as red as a sunset, the veins standing out in his neck, his jaw muscles working, while his three knights merely looked on in horror.

Mimi sheathed her knife. "The food grows cold."

Shin broke away from his father and ran to fling his arms around Mimi's thighs.

She put her hand on the boy's soft hair, smiled, then bent down, took his shoulders, and held him at arm's length so she could look at him. "What's this?" she asked softly. "Fear from a Draconian?"

"Girls cannot fight men," the boy whispered.

"True, but this was only Takato and Jenrya. They always fight. Now straighten your shoulders and stand tall and—" Mimi broke off because Takeru, recovering from his shock, grabbed his son away.

"How dare you," Takeru said. "How dare you touch my son and teach him your violent ways? He is just a boy! You aren't a woman. You aren't fit to be near children."

Mimi stood and took a step toward Takeru, her eyes cold and hard. Matt put himself between them. "Come with me," he said, looking at Mimi with an expression she'd never seen before.

By now the Draconians had stopped eating to watch this drama. A fight and Mimi leaping across the tables caused no comment, but they wondered what these odd foreigners were doing. Anger because a guard stopped a fight? That was their duty.

"Come with me," Matt repeated, his jaws clamped shut.

"I am hungry," Mimi said, looking toward the tables and the rapidly disappearing food.

Matt's fingers clamped down on her upper arm as he began to pull her out of the room. Mimi tried to jerk away from him but he held her fast, and she cursed him for embarrassing her before her people.

He pulled her into the first open doorway, a small chamber for the storage of barrels of ale and mead.

"Never," he said into her face as soon as the door was closed, "never will my wife behave like that again." He could hardly speak for his anger. "As if you were a common doxy, leaping on the tables and… and…"–he nearly choked—"throwing your body on those men."

Was this man crazy? "That is my duty," she said patiently. "The guardswomen are trained to settle disputes, and as Hiro's representative it was my duty. Had Ken been at dinner, he would have handled the men."

Matt's face was turning purple. "'Hiro' is dead," he said. "I am king. I will settle disputes between my own men. My wife will not."

Anger began to rise in Mimi. "I begin to understand. It is that I am a woman. Do you think that Draconian women are as cowardly and as useless as your pale dolls? I have more spine than that brother of yours."

He advanced on her. "Leave my brother out of this. I am telling you that you will not act as if you were my sergeant-at-arms. You are a woman and you will act as one."

The man was absurd. "I must sit and sew in order to prove to you that I am a woman? Do I look like a man?"

Involuntarily, Matt looked down at her body with her high firm breasts, long round thighs, and that short tunic of hers clinging to her curving backside. For the thousandth time he cursed his quick temper that had made him swear he would keep his hands off of her.

"You will obey me or you will regret it," he said.

"What will you do? Order me kept prisoner? And who will obey your commands? Do you think my Draconians will? You will never be allowed to leave the gates of Drakengard alive if you harm me. And that will be the end of your childish plans to unite the tribes."

Matt clenched his fists at his side. Never had anyone been able to get to him the way she did. He had dealt with his grandfather's stupid sons without once losing his temper. And never had a woman made him angry. Women were sweet, kind things who gave comfort to a man and listened to what he had to say with wide, adoring eyes. If a man went hunting, he was to return to tell his wife of the dangers of the hunt and she was to sigh and exclaim at his bravery. But Mimi might bring down a stag bigger than his.

"Have you no women's clothes?" he asked. "Must you wear such a garment as that?" He indicated her rather inappropriate tap pants with her high, cross-gartered boots. "Don't you have anything longer? A skirt, perhaps? Or a dress?"

"You are no older than the child," she snapped. "What does it matter what I wear? It helps me perform my duties and—" She stopped because Matt had pulled her into his arms.

"Your duties are to me," he said huskily. "You do not press your body against other men."

"Do you mean when I stopped the fight between Takato and Jenrya?" Her voice was slower and lower. She couldn't think clearly when he touched her.

"Mimi, you have done something to me. I do not recognize myself."

"Then I will tell you who you are: you are a foreigner in a country where you do not belong. You should go home and give the kingship to my brother."

He thrust her from him. "Leave me. Go and fill your belly and do not interfere between me and my men again."

"They are Draconians, they are not your men," she said as she left the room quickly and hurried back to the main hall. She would be lucky to get any food. The tables were being cleared and she sighed as she left the castle walls to go outside were she could breathe.

She was walking toward the men's barracks when Ken came toward her. "You were not at dinner," she said.

"Sit with my enemy?" he asked sneeringly. "I hear you are to live with him now."

"And to travel with him. The fool thinks to unite the tribes," she said.

Ken gave a derisive laugh. "He will be killed by the first tribe's territory he enters."

She could feel her brother watching her. "I have told him so but he does not listen. He will be killed soon and maybe it is better to get it over with. Some of the men like him. Ryou stays too close to him."

Ken moved closer to her and his voice lowered. "You are in a position to hasten his death."

She frowned. "I am no murderer. He will kill himself soon enough."

"So it is true that you have gone to his side. Sora said that you wanted him for yourself and that is why you knocked her down in the Honorium. Tell me, does your blood boil hotter for this pale foreigner than it does for your own people?"

Her nostrils flared at him. "Do you think that your sly insults will goad me into murdering him? Then you do not know me. I tell you that he is a fool, and he will do himself in with no one's help. You will be made king and you won't have the blood of your brother on your hands."

"Unless he breeds a child with you," Ken said.

"There is no chance of that," Mimi answered.

"He is not a man?" Ken asked in wonder.

"I do not know. He says he has made a vow to God that—" She broke off. "There will be no children during the short life of the man. Wait and be patient, you will be king soon enough." She turned away from him and walked through the inner gates into the city. It was quiet now, with both man and animals settling down to sleep.

Unite the tribes, she thought. Impossible idea, of course. The tribes hated each other too much to ever get along, and that stupid foreigner would never be able to understand that. One had to be Draconian to understand the Draconian mind.

Oh well, she thought, shrugging, it didn't really matter anyway since the fool was going to get himself killed before long. She paused for a moment. It would be a shame for him to die before she spent some time in bed with him. After all, they were married.

With a yawn, she turned back toward Hiroaki's old castle. Tonight she would be secreted in a room with him and perhaps tomorrow she would no longer be a maiden. She smiled and hastened her step.

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(A/N: I hope I didn't keep you waiting long. I was supposed to post this chapter at the end of last week but I couldn't get my thoughts together. I hope you like the read and please review! The more reviews the faster the update. Thank you!)