Chapter 3: Sealed Move
Sealed Move- to prevent unfair advantage, the players can agree on the next move being secretly recorded in a sealed envelope.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Aleksander Kostelnik, 7, Hansport
Aleksander didn't know what to do. He had been waiting in the lobby of the expansive, sleek Allens airport for at least ten minutes, and his legs were starting to complain. Not that he wasn't used to it, of course—years of working in the gardening industry had strengthened his body and his mind. He looked down at his best pair of pants, an oversized pair of worn-out khakis that he couldn't quite scrub clean of dirt marks and mud splotches, and his designated "fancy" shoes, too-big dress shoes that were passed down from his father. Alek's shoddy stitch job peeked out from the seams of the shoes, and he sighed. Soon, I'll be wearing the most dashing suits. If only the staffers would meet me here on time.
"Aleksander Kostelnik?" a sharp female voice cut into his daydreams, and he started.
"Ah, yes. That's me. But, please, it's Alek. I swear to God, my name is so outdated. Hi, I'm Alek Kostelnik," he said to the tall, stern-looking blonde approaching him. Next to her stood an equally tall man with broad shoulders, dark brown skin, and kind eyes.
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Kostelnik. My name is Aiden Gaines, and this is—"
"Taliya Lockheart," the woman cut him off. "We are the executive co-advisors for their majesties, King Edmond and Queen Natalia. Please, follow me." She started to walk briskly in the direction she'd come from and didn't look back to see if Alek was following her. He hurried behind her, and the tall man caught up with him in three long strides.
"Sorry about her. She can be a bit blunt sometimes," Aiden explained with an apologetic grin.
"Sometimes?" Alek asked skeptically.
"Well, no. It's all the time, really. But she'll grow on you." Even he didn't look too convinced by his own words. Alek sighed. Oh well. You can't win them all, can you?
Pretty soon, the two advisors had escorted Alek onto an explicably lavish private plane, complete with soft reclined seats and ample foot space. The windows glistened like crystals, which, going by what he saw, might have well been. He grinned as he sank into a soft seat near the front. I could get used to this.
Unfortunately, his moment of bliss was quickly interrupted. Not a minute after sitting down, another man, presumably one of the other Selected, boarded onto the plane. He was so tall he had to crouch to avoid banging his head on the airplane ceiling.
After getting seated (right across from Alek, no less), the man held out a hand.
"Antonin Marwell. And you are?" he asked as they shook hands. Antonin's blunt, business-like words surprised Alek, but he recovered quickly.
"I'm Alek," he replied. Antonin leaned back in his chair.
"Just Alek? No surname for the competition?" he drawled. Alek pursed his lips. He didn't want to tell this stranger, this prying stranger, his surname. After all, it was a dead giveaway of his heritage.
"Not today." There. Hopefully, Antonin Marwell would get the hint.
"Mysterious, huh? All right, I guess we all have our strategies." Apparently, he was not a very observant guy.
"What do you mean, 'strategies'?" Alek cocked his head.
"Well, why else would you hide your surname from me? I get it, you think Princess Fleur will like a mystery. Unless, of course, you're hiding something?" the sandy-haired man purred. Alek gritted his teeth.
"If I was, that would be none of your concern, Mr. Marwell."
"Ah, but it would. And it is." Antonin leaned towards Alek, who drew back slightly. "Better make sure you don't have any secrets, Alek. Those can be dangerous, especially if I'm here." He gave an insidious grin and leaned back.
"You don't scare me, Antonin." Alek rolled his eyes. He tried to stifle the rising anger bubbling in his chest.
"We'll see, Aleksander." Alek whipped his head to look at Antonin. His throat tightened. He'd just met this guy, how did he know his full name already?
"How did you know that." It came out more like a statement than a question. And, in his moment of shock, his words were tainted with a hint of his native Russian accent.
"Let's just say I have a couple helpful connections." Antonin smirked. "Careful, your accent's showing," he teased.
That was it. Even him, the trademarked middle-man for arguments, couldn't help but be gently triggered. Alek felt piping hot anger rising into his throat, spreading like a wildfire through his body. Angry words sat at the tip of his tongue. He opened his mouth to speak—
"Oh, uh, hi. I'm Benjamin Winston, but people call me Ben. So, I guess I should've introduced myself as Ben… um, hi, I'm Ben." In the heat of the moment, neither Alek nor Antonin had heard the lanky blonde enter the plane. They both looked up to the newcomer in silence. Ben fidgeted nervously.
Alek snapped out of his stupor first. "Hi, Ben. I'm Alek." Ben grinned, looking a bit relieved. He turned to Antonin.
"What's your name?"
Antonin just stared at him and then looked down to his open laptop, typing away.
"Oh." A dejected-looking Ben sat to the right of Alek, turning to him. "So, Alek," he started, "what do you do for a living?"
Alek smiled at the goofy blonde. "Well, I'd hardly call it 'living', but I'm a gardener." He saw the expression on Ben's face. "Yeah, I'm a 7. Don't worry though, I'm not too touchy about it. What do you do, Ben?"
"I'm a construction manager from Allens. I'm a 4," he added quickly, as if to clarify that he wasn't high on the caste system either. Alek chuckled. Ben was quite likeable. At least all the guys aren't as wicked as Antonin, he thought.
"I really don't know how I got the position, though. I was always dropping stuff and bumping into things and knocking stuff down when I had to do field work. I guess that's why they promoted me; to stop me from getting near the work sites!" Ben expected a laugh, but Alek only grinned politely. He was, in fact, distracted by something he'd noticed. Ben's words seemed to have a curling lilt to them, an almost imperceptible change in the way he pronounced his vowels. To anyone else, it would've just sounded like a typical Allens accent, but Alek knew from his own experience what a poorly masked accent sounded like.
"Might I ask, where are you from? I noticed you have a bit of a foreign accent?" Alek asked cautiously. He knew what it was like when people pried about his accent, so he didn't want to be rude. After all, Ben might be one of the only nice men in this competition.
Ben cocked his head to the side. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. I had a lisp when I was younger, maybe that's what you're hearing." He let out a laugh. Alek inwardly cringed and made a mental note to not make any more assumptions.
"Ah, sorry. Didn't mean to pry," he apologized. Ben smiled.
"That's alright." Just then, the overhead speakers crackled.
"Gentlemen, please sit back and put on your seatbelts. We are preparing for liftoff."
Alek clicked his seatbelt in and turned to look out the plane's oval windows, down on the shrinking plot of land that was Allens. When they were high enough, he could see Hansport like it was a distant dream. In this luxury plane, his life there may have well been one.
When he could no longer see through the mist of the clouds, he turned back around and braced himself for Angeles.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Princess Fleur Vanderbilt
The Palace
"I'm telling you, Fleur, it wasn't random!" Alex paced around Fleur's large bedroom, her feet slapping on the cold marble floors. Fleur sighed.
"Alex, what makes you think that the lottery wasn't random? From what I saw last week, the pool of Selected was pretty diverse. In caste and otherwise," she reasoned. Alex shook her head.
"No, no. Come on, do you really believe Mother wouldn't want to have a say in who you might marry?"
"Well, of course, but—"
"Exactly!" Alex exclaimed. "She chose some throwaways to appease the public, sure, but can't you see a trend in the upper castes? Men with connections, men close to the government, high profile men in film or in theater. That wasn't a coincidence, Fleur, it was Mother."
Fleur sighed. "Alex, you sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist right now. Mother has plenty of influence once the guys arrive and the dating starts. She may be a bit controlling, but I believe her when she says that the lottery was, in fact, a lottery."
Alex huffed. "I'll believe it when I see it." Then, her eyes lit up in a way that made Fleur's stomach roll with dread. Alex's ideas meant one thing: trouble. "Why don't you sneak into Mother's study and find some proof?"
"No. No, no, no, no way, Alex."
"Why? It'll clear everything up! Besides, I'm pretty sure she's in Likely right now to quell some angry 7s."
Fleur sighed. She knew that Alex wouldn't give up until she did as she said. And, as scared as she was of getting caught by her mother, Fleur was already starting to get annoyed by the pestering.
"Fine," she grumbled. Alex grinned and clapped her hands. "But if I'm caught, I'm blaming you."
"Yeah, yeah, just go!" She practically pushed her older sister out the door. "Don't come back without answers!" she hollered.
Fleur rolled her eyes with a smile. As irritatingly persistent as her little sister was, she was still such a sweet girl.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Ten minutes later, Fleur found herself gingerly rifling through her Mother's overcrowded file cabinet as she sat at the Queen's desk.
"Why did I agree to this, why did I agree to this, why did I…" she mumbled under her breath as she searched. She groaned as she flipped through countless yellowed papers depicting policy changes, news from the provinces, travel arrangements, official correspondences, and…
Her brow furrowed as she pulled out a thick, dark blue manila folder simply labelled "NFBT" in barely visible black Sharpie ink. What could this be? Fleur carefully opened the folder. The first page was blank, except for a fresh-looking label that read, in bolded letters,
"CONFIDENTIAL. HANDLE WITH CARE."
She hesitated. How much trouble would she get in if she opened it? What if her mother found out? But Mother's in Likely, she reminded herself. With a cold fist of nerves in her stomach, she flipped to the next page. Her eyes widened.
Before she could take in what she saw, the sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor and funneled into the cavernous study. More specifically, the unmistakable click of Queen Natalia's high heels approaching the study, where Fleur sat among a pile of her mother's most confidential files. Her heart gave a jolt, and her stomach turned cold.
As Fleur rushed to frantically put the files back where she found them, her mind raced at a thousand kilometers per second. How is she here? I thought she was in Likely. She was supposed to be in—
Her eyes zeroed in on a memo from one of the government officials. Words that had blended and meshed together in a dull black blur just minutes before seemed to pop off of the paper.
To address the ongoing turmoil among the lower castes during this mild food shortage, the Cabinet of Advisors request that Her Majesty Queen Natalia of Illéa make a brief appearance in the province of Likely on the 29th of April of this year.
29th of April. One week from then. Fleur bit her lip and forced herself to resume shoving papers into the cabinet. Each click of her mother's heels down the hall reverberated through her bones and sent a fresh wave of fear coursing through her.
Finally, all the papers were back where they were, and she gently closed the cabinet and backed away…
…only to trip over the mysterious blue folder from earlier. Crap. There was no time left to reopen the cabinet. No, that would be too loud, and the Queen was too close. With a rapidly pounding heart, Fleur slapped the closed folder on top of the Queen's mahogany desk and darted underneath it, curling up in fetal position as to go undetected.
Queen Natalia opened the door to her study. She strode over to her desk, dangerously close to where Fleur sat, trembling in fear. Her jaw was clenched so tightly it began to ache.
Luckily, her mother's visit was short. Fleur heard her rustle some papers on her desk, and then watched the skirts of the Queen's gowns swish towards the door and out into the hall. She only came out when she could no longer hear the echoing footsteps.
The princess let out a breath of relief and rose, shaking out her numb limbs. Too close for comfort. She scurried towards the door, eager to leave. On a whim, she glanced back to check that everything was in order. Her eyes fell on the Queen's desk.
The blue folder was gone.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
A/N: Here's chapter 3. I hope you liked it!
This chapter, we got to meet Alek (certified cinnamon roll, in my humble opinion), Antonin (highkey jerk), and Ben (also a cinnamon roll). Can't wait to hear your thoughts! Also, for all of you on Discord, I included "gently triggered" just for you. :)
Next chapter, if all things go as planned, the men will be arriving at the palace. See you then ;)
-Cel