Emperor Palpatine's fingertips spark blue in warning when Princess Rey of Coruscant meets her betrothed for the first time. The princess notes her grandfather's sparking hands and schools her disgust into faint enthusiasm, too dim to power her smile but bright enough to fool Lord Hux, that simpering buffoon. As he bows to kiss her hand, Rey forces herself not to flinch and watches her grandfather, ruler over the Seven Sectors, nod in satisfaction.
His satisfaction comes at a price, Rey has learned over the years, a price she pays by gritting her teeth and pushing through the pain. When he demanded she give up swordplay with the blacksmith's boy in the training yard, she acquiesced although the loss stung worse than the bruises from their training swords. When he named her heir to the throne, she allowed him to place a heavy crown on her head in front of the whispering court which questioned why the emperor saw fit to anoint a girl too young to rule. When he declared she must take a husband, she curtsied so low he couldn't see her frown. But meeting Lord Hux three days before their wedding ceremony leaves Rey unsure that she can pay the price this time to keep her grandfather content.
Hux grins at Emperor Palpatine, the corners of his mouth stretched artificially wide. "Your majesty, I must say you understated your granddaughter's beauty." He finally releases Rey's hand; she fights the urge to wipe his sweat on her skirt. "Princess, you'll make a beautiful bride."
"If the Force wills it," Rey replies, her steady voice and hands concealing her rising distress. Hux takes her words as a blessing and grins that smarmy smile that sends goosebumps skittering down Rey's spine. After a lifetime of her grandfather's smiles, which precede all kinds of madness, she can predict what a lifetime with Hux might entail.
But her misgivings cannot stave off the inevitable: her future as a bride of nineteen years old—too old by today's standards, her mother declares in her reedy voice reserved to cheer Rey up after receiving another demand from the emperor. Rey knows no good will come out of complaining to her parents, who bend at the emperor's every whim, so she sews shut her lips and stiffens her spine as Lord Hux leers at her from across the dais. His eyes trace her bodice's low neckline and cinched waist, carving up Rey like slabs of meat at the butcher's. For the third time that evening, she curses her mother for forcing her into a gown so revealing and an alliance so unwelcome.
The gown, with its tight bodice and long train, fights Rey as she stands to take Hux's proffered arm. He pays no mind to her struggle, painting on another ingratiating smile and remarking on the pleasure of her company. That's how she knows he's a liar, or a fool so wrapped up in his own fantasies that he can't see what's at his elbow: an unhappy girl hiding behind a mask of courtesy and rouge. She takes no pleasure in his simpering manner, nor his sickly sweet odor that reminds her of her grandfather.
Hux's retinue trails them to the great hall, soldiers armored in gleaming steel and stiff red cloaks. They flank the couple, driving Rey closer to Hux. She tries to remain placid as his breath tickles her neck. "Today is the beginning of a new era," he says. "Soon our two houses will unite in power. And I do look forward to that… uniting." He watches the insinuation wash over Rey, frowning slightly when she doesn't react. Then he winds his free hand around her fingers clutching his bicep, tugging her closer and digging crescent moons into her knuckles.
The contact, the innuendo, the sickly sweet smell—it all becomes too much. Rey knows she'll pay for it later, but right now she needs to put distance between herself and her fiancé. As she tears away from his grip, she stumbles into the nearest soldier. They clatter to the floor in a tangle of skirts and cloaks and clumsy feet.
Rey hardly stutters out a proper apology before the soldier leaps to his feet and pulls her up from the floor, but the damage is done. The emperor looms behind them, distaste etched across his wrinkled face.
"Your Imperial Majesty," the soldier begins, but Palpatine reaches toward him, closing his fist around air as indigo smoke pours from his grip. The soldier gasps for breath, clawing at his throat as the smoke encircles his purpling cheeks. He slumps to the floor, still clutching his throat in an indigo plume that reeks of rotted plums and bitter malla petals. The stench of death.
Lord Hux exchanges the briefest glance with Rey, startled like an ash-rabbit spotted too close near a snare. Then he turns to Palpatine and lets out a guffaw that drowns out the dying man's wheezes. "Datoo always was a clumsy fellow."
Palpatine's lips curl. "See that none of your men jeopardize my granddaughter's safety again, Lord Hux. I want to be certain she will be kept in good hands. After all, she is the key to Coruscant."
"Indeed she is." Hux's smile grows teeth, and Rey discovers the man at her side is no fool, but a man with the appetites of an emperor. She can't think of anything else as she chokes down the welcome feast.
Once Lord Hux's retinue departs the great hall for their chambers and Rey retreats to the privacy of her tower, she bats away her old nursemaid's hands and tears off her gown. It sags to the floor, a silky imitation of the murder that's sure to haunt her dreams tonight. She sinks into bed, her own throat tight with unshed screams. Soon she'll be forced to sleep alongside a stranger who laughed when one of his guards was slaughtered in plain view.
Choking back her sobs becomes a futile endeavor once Maz perches at her side and runs a gnarled hand through her hair, unpinning the intricate buns marching down Rey's head. Only once her hair and tears flow freely can she breathe again, inhaling the familiar cinnamon and apricot cloud that hangs around Maz. It overpowers the lingering stench of decay.
"I can't do this," she tells her nursemaid. The Palpatine signet weighs heavily around her neck; she takes a grim comfort in its steady presence as Maz draws the covers over her trembling body.
"You can," Maz says because she's never sweetened the truth before and she won't do it now. "You can and you will. But dear child, I had such hopes for you."
"What can I do?" Rey asks long after the tapers are blown out and the thick kriin-wood doors are bolted shut. Maz hesitates so long to reply that Rey wonders if she's fallen asleep.
"Keep that hope alive." Maz glances pointedly around the room, her message clear: they don't know who's listening. Not when the emperor is scheming so. "You've grown so much, dear child. Only three more nights and you'll be a bride. Indulge an old woman. Let me tell you one last bedtime tale."
Rey longs to lose today in sleep, but Maz seems bent on sharing some message, so she agrees.
"You remember the tragedy of Sir Vader." Although Maz remains perched on the bed alongside Rey, her voice transports them to a bygone era. "Your grandfather had just ascended the throne after his father's untimely death. Many in the Naboo province wondered if a man as young as Sheev was ready to rule the Seven Sectors."
Maz's first warning radiates starkly like moonlight spilling through Rey's tower window: do not trust the emperor. But her warm tone betrays none of the warning as she continues. "Sir Vader fought by your grandfather's side to reclaim Naboo as it threatened to break from the Seven Sectors. His bravery and cunning on the battlefield saved many Coruscanti lives."
"Vader was injured in battle." Since the rest of the details blur in Rey's memory, she listens close for another message buried within the story.
Maz nods. "Sheev healed Vader, but at a steep cost. In order for the Force to give, it must take in equal measure." Rey remembers years ago urging Maz to get to the good part. She never contemplated the healing's price. "Vader lived, swearing to serve Sheev until the end of their days."
"Didn't Vader break his promise?"
"Only a few years later when he fell in love with Lady Amidala of Naboo. When he got her pregnant, Sheev looked the other way. But when the Bespin Rebellion broke and Sheev needed his knight, Vader refused to leave Amidala's side."
"For good reason!"
"Because Vader broke his promise to first serve the emperor, Sheev cursed Vader's posterity to serve the Palpatine line until the end of their days." Maz rests a hand on Rey's necklace. "To call a Skywalker in times of distress, a Palpatine must press their signet to the ground and thrice speak the Skywalker name. At least that's what they say."
Rey wonders how her old nursemaid's ramblings inform her current situation. She already knows her grandfather is dangerous, armed with the Force and a will to conquer all. What use does she have for children's tales of curses and broken vows?
She doesn't say any of that to Maz, who bids her rest well. But later that night, as sleep evades her and the moonlight taunts her waking nightmare, Rey stumbles from her bed to the stone floor. The cold seeps from the stones through her shift. As she grows numb, she also grows desperate. The legends about Sir Vader and the Skywalker line may not be true. However, Rey finds some solace in the act of calling for assistance. Futile, yes. But her own choice, unlike the marriage alliance waiting for her in the morning. She presses her signet necklace to the ground, and whispers the Skywalker name three times before she can convince herself that it's foolish to wish for a future without a scheming lord by her side. No one turns up to rescue her, so she falls asleep dreaming of an endless sea.
A knight in scuffed black armor is waiting in Rey's tower chamber when she returns from a fitting with the royal seamstress the afternoon before her wedding. With broad shoulders and a shield without sigil, he's no Order of the Storm initiate, yet no man outside of the emperor's private guard should have access to the princess's bedroom. She has half a mind to scream, but something about his presence resonates deep inside her.
He points to the Palpatine crest dangling from her neck. "You called me." While she gawks, stunned at the kernel of truth hidden in Maz's story, he crooks his black-helmeted head. "Ah, but you didn't expect me."
She hadn't expected the summons to work, but here stands a Skywalker made flesh. A ticket to freedom. His presence reduces her mind to a string of questions too knotted to unravel. "So the legends are true," she murmurs before realizing she's speaking out loud. She can't have him thinking she's foolish as she prepares to request his aid. Attempting to regain some control over her reaction, she asks, "What took you so long?"
"I sailed from Chandrila."
Something about his claim doesn't sit well with Rey. Perhaps because she knows that the journey across the Silver Sea should take two months, not two days. Perhaps because his gaze is a little too eager, his posture a little too hungry.
But what other option does she have? Refuse his services and she'll find herself married to Hux at sunrise. So she lets the door swing shut and nods. "I called you because I have need of your services, Sir…"
"Kylo Ren," he supplies, voice gravelly and low from within his helmet. He makes no move to remove it as Rey steps closer, peering at the fairytale made flesh.
"Well, Sir Ren, tomorrow I must marry a man I hardly know." A man who laughs at murder.
"Congratulations, Princess."
She bristles instinctively at his dismissal, her title a taunt on his tongue. He sounds nothing like the heroes from Maz's stories. So she adopts an approach befitting a princess, hoping it conceals her apprehension. "You'll do well to remember that I called you here." Though she hates herself for letting him goad her into this line of reasoning, desperation propels her onward. "I need your assistance in escaping my grandfather so I don't have to marry the man he chose for me."
His feet remain rooted like mountains to her stone chamber floor. His helmet remains blank, unreadable. The only indication he hears her comes from his armored fists, clenching and unclenching with the rise and fall of his chest.
"What say you, Sir Kylo?"
"I can't cross the emperor." His abrupt denial conjures ice which fissures Rey's veins, but she brushes off the shudder.
"You're from Chandrila. He's not your emperor."
"Perhaps your mother didn't tell you this part of the story—I'm bound to serve him."
"To serve the Palpatine line!" Desperation drives her voice to the rafters, but it's too late for Rey to pull back. Fail today and she'll be married to that sniveling Lord Hux tomorrow. "I bleed Palpatine blood and I command you to help me escape the emperor to stop the wedding."
He waits, inscrutable behind his armor, which gleams dully in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the chamber windows. Rey worries that the sun will set before he responds. She gulps back her rising desperation and stares at his visor, imagining angry blue eyes the color of her grandfather's magic lightning.
"If I do this, my debt is paid." His voice is harsher somehow, insistent and metallic.
Rey nods, although the idea of giving up what little power she possesses turns her stomach. "I swear by the old gods and the new."
"So it will be." When he extends his hand, she stares at it in confusion, but it doesn't waver. So she grips it, letting the cold metal gauntlet meet her bare palm, sealing her fate in defiance of her grandfather's legacy. From their hands springs a thin gold rope, insubstantial and glittering as it threads between their fingers.
Rey has seen magic in her grandfather's court—periwinkle sparkling illusions that charm courtiers and deadly indigo smoke that snuffs out life. She's never been close enough to feel its cool burn against her palm, never seen it blossom such a bright shade of sunshine. It should scare her after all she's seen magic do, but it calls to a long-forgotten part of her soul. Then as fast as it appears, it dissolves between their fingers, leaving Rey gaping like a flukefish.
Maz's words echo through her head: "In order for the Force to give, it must take in equal measure." Although Rey feels the same after touching the thin gold thread, she wonders at its invisible cost.
Kylo shrugs it off as though it were nothing, unclasping his cloak and throwing it at Rey. It falls to the floor as she remains stunned by the brief display that united them. "Tonight. After dinner."
When she shivers at his declaration, he mistakes its source. "Pack warm." Under his helm, he must be smiling because a note of amusement creeps into his stern facade. "It's cold out there for a princess."
At dinner, Rey can't concentrate on her betrothed, nor the retinue of soldiers, wearing his white and red sigil, who line the walls of the banquet hall. Lord Hux sits by her side, prattling about the journey, his swordplay, his delight at allying their families. His chatter fades away as Rey schools her face into a perfectly passive expression, a small smile on her lips that doesn't light her eyes.
Maz notices her stoicism when she bustles over to Rey under the pretense of bringing more spiced honey cakes. "Sweet like my dear child," she says, patting her ward's cheek. Rey catches her in a cinnamon-scented hug, no matter who might be watching, and whispers something like goodbye in her nursemaid's ear.
Her grandfather notices her stoicism, too, his plum emperor's robes highlighting his gaunt cheeks. He nods, raising his glass at Rey as she pretends to listen to Hux. This is the way, her grandfather seems to say in the rattle of his cough that he drowns in wine. Rey returns his acknowledgement with a nod of her own and waits for the revelers to disperse before creeping back to her chamber and waiting to embark on a new way.
Kylo Ren smuggles her out of the keep easily enough under the cloak of night. True to his word, they encounter no resistance as they mount twin black mares and gallop out of the gates. The gatekeeper buys Ren's lie that he and his squire have been called back to Jakku on urgent business. Rey keeps her head down and her hood on, nodding deferentially when the gatekeeper commiserates about having to miss the upcoming wedding feast. "'Twill be quite the celebration," he says. "Emperor Palpatine won't spare any expense for his granddaughter. A pity you have to miss it."
"A pity indeed," Rey mutters before Sir Kylo can stop her, earning his scowl and an inquisitive glance from the gatekeeper. But they pass freely and Sir Kylo waits until they've put half a dozen dusty miles between them and the Imperial Palace before wheeling on her.
"You risked our cover."
"I didn't give us away."
"Too soon to know that." The grim certainty in his words, coupled with the thick fog rolling over the Coruscant countryside, sends tremors down Rey's spine, but she refuses to let him see her flinch. So she steels herself in the saddle, spurring her mount onward without waiting to see if he's keeping pace.
Written for the RFFA 2021 Valentine's Exchange, To Find Your Kiss, as a gift for dustoftheancients.
Prompt: "Medieval or fantasy AU. I'm down for anything! Maybe something involving a curse?"
Many thanks to my alpha and beta readers, astraea (master of continuity) and Padawan_Writer (master of characterization, inner monologues, and flow)!
Chapter Two involves some pining and angst, per dustoftheancient's tags request. :)