King of Hearts (Part 2 of Finale)

Gerik?

But…why was he here? After five years, why did he resurface in my life once again on the most important day of my life to interrupt the most important event of my life? If he was on one of his 'jokes' again, I swear that by the time I had finished dealing with him he would wish he had never been born.

More importantly, how did he know where and when I was getting married? Did Kai not recall that messenger at the gate of Carcino? Did he not hand that invitation to me with a frown? Did I not throw the invitation into the fire and watch until every last scrap had been licked by the flames? Were the ashes not collected and the fireplace swept clean the next morning?

"Who are you?" Kai held my hand tightly, his voice stern and unwavering. "And why do you seek to interrupt my wedding?" He drew his sword from the jeweled scabbard hanging from his belt in one fluid sweep.

The crowd looked scandalized by the sight of a weapon in a holy place. Someone screamed.

I had thought it had been part of a ceremonial sword. As the blade gleamed in the light, sharp and deadly, I could not help but marvel at the state of preparedness Kai was in all the time. The weight of my trusty daggers, hidden within my stockings, suddenly felt lighter.

If there was a need for weapons, I could always borrow Kai's…

"Hey, hey, hey, chill," Gerik's eyes widened at the sight of a blade longer than his own. "I come in peace, as a friend of the bride."

"Is that true, Marisa?" Kai asked me, sword still poised in the air, eyes trailing Gerik's every movement. "Do you know this man?"

I nodded, but did not let down my guard either. "He was a friend from the past when I was still a mercenary. I was under his service."

Kai relaxed instantaneously, but did not sheath his sword, merely lowered the point of the sword. "If you are a friend of my bride, you are welcome to enter and join the ceremony. Please take a seat. Whatever well-wishes you have for my bride, it can wait till the ceremony is over."

"I did not come to wish her well-wishes," Gerik said. "I've come to ask her to reconsider before she makes the most fatal mistake of her life."

I gasped, as did many in the crowd. Beside me, Kai coloured slightly, the redness nearly invisible on his fair skin. The sword in his hand trembled violently, and I knew that he was resisting the urge to commit a sacrilege in the vicinity of the church.

"I beseech you to rephrase that accusation in a less offensive manner to both my bride and me," Kai said in a cold fury. As one of the lords of Carcino, no one had ever insulted him more than 'my lord, I have another, differing viewpoint that I beg you to consider'. "Otherwise I may not be so compassionate as to let you walk out of these grounds unscathed."

Gerik ignored him. "Marisa, Joshua's coming." He said, looking at me straight in the eye. "Joshua's coming."

I daresay the effect was instantaneous. I was certain that everyone in the church heard my sharp intake of breath. The bouquet of roses almost slipped and fell from my hands. My legs lost their strength and I leaned on Kai for the necessary support so that I would not collapse there and then.

Why? I could hear a muffled buzzing in my ears, growing louder and louder.

After five years of running away, why had the past caught up with me again? Why can they not just let me go? Why must he keep me enslaved to him for the rest of my life? Why can I never seem to cut off all threads from him? How in the world did he know I was getting married?

The crowd stirred uneasily. A murmuring passed from year to year. Speculations arose from every corner of the church regarding this mysterious 'Joshua'. I could hear L'Arachel boasting at the top of her voice about how she knew a particular Joshua who had awful luck whenever he played with her and that she had once won games of chance ten times straight while betting with him.

"Silence!" Kai shouted, effectively shutting everyone up. He pointed the tip of his sword at Gerik. "You claim that in marrying me, my bride was making a mistake, on what grounds do you make such a seditious statement?"

"Because she won't be happy with you!" Gerik retorted. "You don't love her, she doesn't love you; how would you ever make her happy? Joshua, on the other hand, would be able to make her happy …"

The crowd gasped and turned to stare at Kai, as though Gerik had just revealed one of Kai's deep dark scandalous secrets.

"Well, nothing wrong with that…" A plump elderly lord said in a wheezy voice. He was sitting in the front row, taking enough space for three men. "I did that too…"

"Shhh…Boris…" A young woman, his wife I presumed, silenced him. She was young enough to be his granddaughter.

"When I asked for her hand, I told her that it was a marriage of duty and she accepted," Kai enunciated clearly, as though he was talking to a child. "That proves that she understands what this marriage entails and she accepts the terms that come with it so-"

"So she's making a mistake!" Gerik interrupted. "Joshua would be able to make her ten times happier than you would ever be able to and-"

"Chie-Gerik," I found my voice, at long last. It was unbelievably painful to say everything, but I had to, to close that previous chapter and move on to a brand new one in my life. "I chose to marry Kai. He can make me happy, he-"

"He can't make you happy!" Gerik shouted, pointing his sword at Kai. "Sure, you'll have a comfortable life, maybe you'll be satisfied, but will you be happy staying at home all day long looking after a brood of children like a contented mother hen?"

"We have certain…affections…for each other," I said, silencing him. Beside me, Kai tightened his grip on my wrist. "But we will make each other happy, and Joshua cannot give me-"

"Joshua can, he loves-" Gerik started.

"He cannot, he loves-" My vice was growing shriller by the minute, drowning his out.

"He loves you and he would thank everybody very much if all of you would stop speculating and give him a chance to explain."

My mouth fell open.

A hush fell over the crowd.

Five years had passed, five long years, but he still looked exactly the same. He had the same nose, the same eyes, the same smirk, and even his hair was roughly the same length.

The sound of rushing blood thundered in my ears as I stared mutely at the swordsmaster who had just stepped into the church.

"Marisa…" he walked down the aisle towards me. Stopping before the steps to the altar, he nodded at Kai.

"King Joshua of Jehanna," Kai bowed. I could feel the unwillingness rolling off him in waves. "It's a pleasure. If you would take a seat and watch this ceremony…"

Joshua pointedly ignored him. "Marisa, he loves you, he really does," he said. "And he would be eternally grateful if you give him a chance to explain before you become another man's wife."

My mouth was still open, but I could not find my tongue. Mutely, I stared at him, traced every line in that countenance with my gaze. My heart throbbed painfully, as though someone had just stabbed it with a sharp dagger. Why? After all these years, why must you come and look for me again? Why could you not set me free from the all the pain that I had suffered?

"Aren't you…married?" I refused to believe that he was still unmarried. In the five years that had passed, he could already have had two children with Natasha. My heart clenched at the vision of him and Natasha playing happily in the desert with two miniature versions of them.

"No." He shook his head lightly. "I couldn't find the person I wanted to marry, so how did could I marry anyone?"

I stood still, staring at him, trying to understand his words. Did he mean that Natasha ran away from him? What? What was he trying to say? In its confused state, my brain had stopped all logical thinking and analysis.

"King Joshua," Kai tightened his grip on my hand and encircled one arm protectively around my waist. "I must ask you to please leave my bride so that the wedding ceremony can carry on and anything that you wish to say you may wait until-"

"If I am supposed to wait until the ceremony is over then there is already no point in saying anything." Joshua silenced him. Catching my gaze, he took a step forward.

Swallowing nervously, I took a step backward.

He took another step forward.

I took another step backward.

"Marisa…you look beautiful today…" He said hoarsely. "I know that you don't trust what I say, but…I have to tell you this. I was never in love with Natasha; what you saw that day forest was a mistake. It wasn't what you thought it was." He paused, watching my reaction. Seeing none, he continued. "She…thought she loved me, but I didn't reciprocate her feelings. I knew that she couldn't love anyone in particular, that her love was devoted to the larger of mankind, to the poor, to the impoverished, to the sick…She was above all of us. She was more saint than man, and I knew that no one would ever have been able to actually retain her love."

"So you were in love with her, but she didn't love you and that is why you shifted your affections now to Marisa." Kai continued simply. "And so you wish now to use my bride as your rebound so as to preserve your dignity and your pride as a man."

Joshua rolled his eyes. "Didn't you hear what I just said? I was never in love with her. Do you know the meaning of never? Or do you want me to spell it out for you letter by letter?" He sighed heavily. "I admit that I embraced her, but it really wasn't what you thought it was! I talked to her, and she finally saw that she had been in love all along with an illusion of me. She thought I was this hero of Magvel whose life-long ambition was to save dying people but obviously, I am neither a hero nor a humanitarian. But it was difficult for her to accept, indeed it would be difficult for anyone, to realize that they had been in love with a fantasy, and she was crying. She asked for a gamble before she left. If she won, I was to give her a single hug. I agreed, and she won. And the end result…well, you saw it, Marisa…"

Was he telling the truth? Admittedly, he seemed sincere, but the words I heard that day…I had not heard everything, and whatever I had heard did not fully suggest that they were in love…so was everything my speculation? The perfect picture of bliss…the tender exchange of words…the intimacy of their embrace…it was all influenced and overwhelmed by my personal opinion? It was never what I had imagined it to be?

Head spinning, I leant back, hand on the altar for support, as I pondered everything that Joshua has just revealed. So everything…everything that had driven me away from him…was a figment of my imagination?

"Father Moulder," Kai turned to the altar. "As you can see, my bride is not feeling well. Would it not be best if we could conclude this ceremony and allow me to bring my bride home to let her rest?"

Moulder's mouth was still opening and closing like a goldfish. "Su-sure Lord Kai," he mopped the sweat on his forehead nervously. Clearing his throat, he feebly attempted to announce, "And hereby I pronounce you hus-"

"Wait!" I recognized that high-pitched squeak as L'Arachel's voice. "You can't do that! You're supposed to wait till all objections to the marriage have been resolved before you can continue." She fluttered her eyelashes at her bodyguard. "Right Rennac?"

"What? Uh…yeah…yeah…whatever…" Rennac hastily stowed away the skeleton key he had been playing with.

I heard Kai swear quietly, a break from his usual gentlemanly behaviour.

"I'm fine," I disentangled myself from his arms. "Joshua, if everything was true…why didn't you find me earlier?"

He lowered his head. "I wasn't sure, see, I thought…that maybe you really didn't love me at all, you know…you were acting so distant and aloof…so I decided to just let you be…Then after I became king and everything ended…Gerik came to find me one day with Tethys and he told me about your conversation with Tethys…the dates and places somehow connected…and I realized…" He looked up in anguish. "But then…you were already gone, gone somewhere that no one knew. I tried asking, I really did! In fact I asked everyone that could have known you. I even went to Renais just to ask Princess Tana if she had any idea where you could have gone. But no one knew, you had disappeared without a trace." He held up a cream coloured card. "Then three days ago, an ambassador of Grado came over on a bilateral visit, and he showed me this card. When I say your name written there, Marisa, the first thing I did was find a horse, grab Gerik and ride for Carcino. You cannot imagine how relieved I am that Gerik managed to intercept your wedding in time, after worrying for three days and nights that we would arrive just a little too late."

Lifting his hand, Joshua threw the wedding invitation card at Kai. "And now I would like to know why did the kingdom of Jehanna not receive an invitation for this wedding." Amidst the gasps from the guests, he unsheathed his sword in one swift motion. His eyes were narrowed, his red pupils blazing. "You know the new bilateral rules, don't you, Lord Kai? All members of nobility were present that day to agree on policies to resolve further conflict between nations," he whispered, soft but menacing. "Should I remind you? When a member of the nobility gets married, all royalties from all over Magvel have to be invited so as to promote peace and harmony between states, am I right? The invitation must arrive one week beforehand, is that so? So why didn't Jehanna's invitation arrive, may I ask?"

Everyone stared in mute horror at the tip of Audhulma, resting lightly against Kai's chest.

"You do know the penalties for openly flouting the bilateral rules, right?" Joshua said softly, eyes pinned on the tip of his sword. He sounded like a predator, sleek and darkly dangerous. "According to the rules and regulations, the member of the royalty uninvited is given permission to punish the offender as he deems fit. Since I am the King of Jehanna, your crime is, no doubt, a great one. So demanding your life to avenge this sacrilege to my country should not be too unreasonable, right?"

Author's Note:

Finally, Joshua's back! To crash the wedding! YAY! In such a cool and suave fashion! (Yeah, compared to him, Kai is like o.0)

Yeah, the last part about the bilateral thing is a little sudden I know, but it makes sense to have rules and agreements such as these. Like, peace treaties and alliances and such, I'm sure they had something of that sort to try and uphold whatever peace and harmony they did have. Think diplomacy.

To be continued in the next chapter, which would be the grand of the grande finale! Hope you have liked this chapter, and the story, review please! Thanks!

Cheerios~