Title: The Destruction of Atlantis

Chapter: The New Bride

***Atlantis***

The Prince... no, the KING of Atlantis walked down the corridors of his palace feeling euphoric and powerful. He was finally King though at the sacrifice of his own parents. He would have to make them proud, which was why he had chosen a bride so quickly. As he was thinking of whom to choose, he contemplated asking the Priestess who was best suited to be Queen but then he thought better of it. She had other duties to attend to, much more important ones than choosing a bride for him. He instead opted to find his own bride and then ask her if that bride was suited for the position.

He hadn't expected to start liking Lady Celena of the Schezar family. They had met a couple of times at various banquets (including the King's fifth birthday). She had been a snotty brat who threw beads into the King's soup and tried to trip him when he'd gone to collect his presents. After so much time she had grown into a beautiful woman who did not throw beads into anyone's soup and who did not trip anyone when they went to collect his or her presents. She was a bit shorter than he remembered (they had been the same height the last time Van saw her) but she was voluptuous and beautiful.

Not down-to-earth beauty like the Priestess, but rather the kind of beauty that could not be attained without the use of rouge and lipstick. Her hair was always beautifully styled, her skin wrinkleless and smooth from butter milk baths, her fingers always clean and carefully cut to perfection, her eyes framed by little crystals that were pasted in that specific place so that those same eyes appeared to be larger than they really were. And her dresses were, of course, the highest material. She usually wore either velvet or silk with either expensive beads, precious gems or pearls embedded into her dress. Van secretly didn't very much like the amount of wealth she was portraying through her dress but she made up for it in the dainty way she moved her body and that soft little laugh she always hid behind her velvet or silk glove.

Van had reached the courtyard of his castle where all kinds of flowers were being grown. He smiled at all of the red roses he had ordered to be planted to commemorate his fiancé and their upcoming wedding. She had made a delighted giggling sound when he had asked her to be his wife and he couldn't help suppressing a shudder when he went to tell the Priestess of this. The shudder surprised him though. He couldn't understand why telling the Priestess about his upcoming wedding was making him so excited.

So far he had managed to get on top of the Priestess and to see her naked.

Now he would lie awake staring at the ceiling and repeating those images over and over in his head, those beautiful aspects of her body that he had never imagined existed. He attributed all of this nervous energy to cold feet. After all, he was only going to get married once. Only if the Queen died would he be permitted to marry another. Why he was thinking this, he didn't know. Why was he thinking about Celena dying? Why? He WOULD ask the Priestess if he wasn't so angry with her. And if he didn't feel so embarrassed about the washroom incident.

He knew now that she had in fact been sick because she had not been able to leave her bed for a week after their confrontation. She refused to look at him anymore, turning her blushing face away every time she saw him. And she saw a lot of him because of the wedding. She was the Priestess therefore she had to plan out all of the ceremonial parts and both the King and Celena were forced to be witness.

What he hated most were the fights between the Priestess and Celena.

Every day they would meet in the palace gardens (where the wedding was to take place) and the Priestess would quietly (head bowed) explain that she would have to say a spell over their heads at one point to ensure prosperity in their rule. Or perhaps the spell was for bearing healthy children. Or perhaps the spell would ensure that neither of them would be harmed if someone tried to kidnap one of them. For each one Celena was quick to argue, making the Priestess, the calmest person that the King had ever met, red with fury. They would argue until they were both ugly with hate.

The spell of prosperity was vital to a healthy kingdom. But shouldn't wealth also be included in the spell? Did the Priestess want them to be working to have a prosperous kingdom where only the people benefited and the bourgeois received nothing for their pains? The spell for healthy children was also important. But shouldn't the spell ensure that the children would be male? There had to be a strong ruler for the throne. Did the Priestess want to curse her with a womb that only produced females that were healthy? The spell to make sure they were not harmed if kidnapped was important. Oh, so now she was saying that they WOULD be kidnapped? Why not make a spell that made sure they WOULDN'T be kidnapped. What kind of Priestess did she think she was; cursing the nobility with poverty, setting in stone that the Queen would only have weak daughters and prophesizing that one or both members of the royal family would be kidnapped?

The King dared not interfere during these fights for supremacy. He knew better than to get into this and then get nothing but screaming his way for his pains. If he sided with Celena, it was a guaranteed certainty that the Priestess would take it VERY seriously. There had already been reports that the seas were much more violent than usual; sinking ships and destroying a port (none were killed or harmed). If he sided with the Priestess, he would be marrying a bitter wife that would feel neglected. SHE would be Queen; SHE always had to be right. Celena always tried to drag him into the conversation but the Priestess always became icy when she did.

There was no doubt in the King's mind that Celena and the Priestess hated each other. Why, he was not quite certain. He would have to think on it.

As for his own feelings towards the Priestess, he found her rude and arrogant, but only to Celena. With everyone else she was a sweet, quiet woman that helped others and never raised her voice. To him, she was mute. She was defiant. She was bitter.

And for the life of him he couldn't understand why. Women, he didn't think any man could truly understand them. So to take his mind off of his "cold feet" symptoms and the fights that his fiancé and the Priestess had, Van buried himself in his work. He even went so far as to avoid his future wife because he was starting to realize that every time he was around her, he wished for her death. He just wanted things to be the way they had been before, when the Priestess was comfortable in his presence and when the weather did not betray the anger she had welled up inside her. He knew of anger, his temper was infamous. But the Priestess had far more at stake if she lost her temper. She had the lives of all those living in Atlantis.

Author's Note: thank you to everyone who reviewed and didn't review. Also, sorry for the delay but since some people were wondering what the King thought of all of this I thought I'd dedicate a chapter to him.