Ozai and I were married for almost three years before I got pregnant, and our marriage changed and grew and strengthened so much as we grew up and learned and fought and loved.
Being a princess wasn't as suffocating or stifling to my spirit as Ozai feared. Royalty was a cage for him, but it wasn't for me because I always had him. I didn't even have to deal with organizing any events for "the season" because Azulon decided to end the practice until the war's end. No one really mourned such a decision, seeing as unmarried noblewomen and girls soon found ways to meet more men, throw more parties, and show off even more.
Still, there were burdens that demanded to be felt. The duties and responsibilities could weigh heavily, especially when they made Ozai feel helpless. Just as Azulon had ordered Lu Sen to serve him tea whenever he felt like it, he called for me to do the same. Ozai viewed each summons as a reminder to him about who had all the power and control over his life and over me. I didn't mind it at all, seeing as I never had to drink the awful stuff, but each request-that-was-not-a-request affronted Ozai to his core. Once or twice, a servant had to wake me, which also meant waking the prince, and he flew into a rage that nearly scorched the poor messenger. I calmed him down and, somehow, convinced him not to set his father's hair on fire, but I doubted I could've prevented a confrontation it happened again. To my relief, Azulon had enough consideration not to ask for tea after sunset and before sunrise again, leaving Ozai to fume inside rather than out.
Azulon and I had curiously honest conversations when I did serve him tea. I never said much, but he didn't seem to care. He'd hurl old memories, deep observations, and strange confessions at me for no reason other than to have someone to listen to them. He knew I wouldn't tell anyone because they were never quite something I could retell or would want to retell. I had a feeling that, at least when we were alone, he would always view me as a stranger he could project himself onto and be unnaturally raw with for few minutes and never see again.
Either my tea-making skills or my listening skills, the latter being far more likely, must've been enough for him to like me well enough. His wedding present to me had been pretty much anything I requested so I asked for him to repeal the archaic law that nearly forced me to marry a man I didn't love. Since then, he'd also permitted me to make any changes I liked to the Royal Fire Academies, which included increasing the minimum self-defense training and expanding other subjects, convinced him that not allowing women into the Yuyan Archers was a terrible idea, and so on. This also allowed me to meet and befriend some amazing women, including Lo and Li. The twin widows had been married to two of the greatest firebenders in our nation's history, and they'd learned so much from them. The sisters had forgotten more about firebending than most benders actually knew, and I placed them in charge of firebending for all the students at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.
Ozai couldn't have been prouder, especially when I explained that, should we ever be luck enough to have a daughter, I wanted our country to be a better place for her, I wanted her to feel more empowered and freer than I had growing up. After all, the Fire Nation had always prided itself in being more advanced, equal, and progressive than all the others, but that did not make it perfect or incapable of improvement.
I didn't realize quite how true that was until I spent an afternoon losing myself in the Royal Libraries. Ozai had an all-day war meeting to attend, and I'd satisfied all my other duties. The palace's almost endless collection of scrolls was probably my greatest perk and privilege as princess. There were more than I could ever hope to read in a thousand lifetimes, but I didn't expect there to be so many histories I'd never been taught or told of. There were almost as many scrolls on the other nations as there were on ours, which was amazing to someone who'd only had a couple classes on them. It was a whole world I never knew—
And terrible acts I'd been lied to about all my life.
A messenger risked interrupting the war meeting in order to tell me about Ursa, explaining in a whisper so low even I could barely hear it, much less the other advisors, that she'd locked herself in one of the library's restricted rooms and refused to come out. Only royalty was permitted to enter those rooms, and they feared she might be injured from the way she was weeping.
I nearly forgot to excuse myself in my rush to get out of there, but she wasn't in physical pain.
"How could we?" she asked the second I entered, unable to peel her eyes off of, or release, the scroll in her hands. "Ozai, how… how…?"
I sat down next to her, reading over her shoulder, and couldn't help but sigh a little relief.
"Oh. The airbenders."
He was practically shrugging.
"They were pacifists," she growled in my face as though I'd ordered the attack.
"I know."
"No one else does! No one in the Fire Nation has any idea what that monster…" Sobs overcame her righteous indignation. "We slaughtered them, Ozai. We slaughtered them.
He turned my chin up and forced me to meet his gaze.
"We did not do anything, Ursa. They did. We are not our grandparents anymore than—"
"My grandfather was right," I realized aloud, covering my mouth as I gasped at the truth. "Roku was right, and Sozin… SOZIN—"
"Is dead."
"But Azulon isn't! He knows. Oh, he knows, and he lied about it, and I hate him. I hate, I hate—"
Ozai silenced me in one look.
"Ursa, you cannot say that again. You know you can't. Even if it's true. And you can't tell anyone about this scroll."
"I cannot lie to my people—!"
"You must," he insisted, wrapping his arms around me. "I hate it too. I do. But it will not change anything, and it will not make things better. Only we can do that. We are the future of the Fire Nation, Ursa, and we will make this world a better place."
I softened because he held me, because he whispered in my ear all the things we used to whisper. We'd stayed up so many nights when we were little, talking about the way the world be after the war ended, once there was peace again, talking about all the different things we would do, how we would change everything once Iroh took the throne…
They were children's dreams, but I didn't realize that. I still needed to believe in them. Naiveté was the only protection I had in that palatial prison.
"I'm sorry, love," my prince said once I could stand again.
"It's not your fault."
"I'm still sorry."
Serving tea to him was considerably more difficult after that, especially doing it with some appearance of politeness and respect. But like most of my princess duties, I completed it very well with almost no effort.
But most of the time, I didn't have to be naïve. Most of the time, there wasn't much for me to blissfully ignorant about. Most of the time, we were terribly, madly, wildly happy because we were terribly, madly, wildly in love. After so many years of telling ourselves absence made our hearts fonder, we never had to spend a night apart again. I could talk and laugh and simply be with my best friend every day, and we still found ways to surprise each other completely, to be totally breathless, even if we knew each other better than we knew ourselves.
Lu Ten was away at the Academy most of the time so we didn't see much of him unless it was summer or I was visiting the school. Iroh only came home during the summer, but we exchanged letters often, and it somehow felt like he was always around. Ozai and I visited Maylin and her family many times, which was always entertaining because of their cats. I adored the creatures, but Ozai was terribly allergic. Even if they were kicked out of the house during our visit, the remaining hairs kept my beloved prince—who'd never been sick a day in his life—in a constant state of sneezing. It also gave him an excuse to be even more cantankerous and irritable than usual, which didn't exactly help my cousins' overcome their still-lingering fear of him but entertained me immensely. Plus, it was fun to feel like I was taking care of him, seeing how he was usually the definition of inhuman health, muscles, and independence. He could grumble and mutter all he liked, but he could never get mad at me. Not really. I did feel a little bad about how many sheets and random objects we had to replace because he sneezed fire everywhere, but that's what our needlessly large allowances for Azulon were for.
One of our most vivid, cherished memories from those early years was when I visited Ozai in one of the indoor pools. It was one of many visits, but one in particular still stands out.
After finishing my sunrise forms, I swam laps. The pool was more of a sauna than anything else, given how heated it was to begin with and how much steam fogged up the windows the second I entered it. Servants stood around it, seeming to have nothing better to do than smile softly, and constantly, while waiting to hand me a towel I was unlikely to ask for at all. I ignored them, as usual, and swam as if I was alone.
I'd lost sense of how much time had passed once Ursa floated in, wading through the fog like the painted lady herself. Of course, Ursa was much more human, graceful and calm, but real, solid, walking with her a downturned gaze and air of humility.
While I breast stroked to her side of the pool, she requested a hairbrush from one of the servants. They adored their princess even more than Lu Ten, running to fulfill her every order as if she offered them life itself. She'd been able to select between seven hairbrushes and three combs by the time I reached her, and the servants fled back to their original positions in the corners furthest from me.
"Good morning, wife."
"Good morning, husband."
I opened my mouth to speak again, but she brought a finger to her lips and motioned for me to turn around. She sat at the edge of the pool with posture so perfect—rigid yet terribly elegant and even soft—it would've made her tutors cry from joy, and I obeyed, leaning back to rest on the wall and stretch out my arms to either side, watching her reflections in the water and a nearby mirror.
His hair had been tangled, for once, by the force of his swim, and I spread it out behind him as he relaxed, parting and separating it dried from his radiating heat. I'd always loved my prince's raven locks, so thick and lustrous, strong and silken, somehow both masculine and feminine, as if they could never look out of place on anyone as long as anyone was as perfect as him.
Brushing Ozai's hair was an act both innocent and intimate, socially acceptable only when we were either children or married, relaxing me more than any beauty treatment or massage I could ever receive. The act, incredibly calming, even sacred, felt like a combing ceremony—but better because I was allowed to do the combing. But as much as arranging and feeling its beauty soothed me, the rest of him did not. Each move of his shoulders and neck enlivened me, awakened me, and left me breathless. The water's shimmering sheen covered his skin in a layer that mystified and entranced, defining each curve and angle of his muscular arms as he spread them along the edge, his perfect paleness glinting in the skylight's rays.
He must have found something stirring in the way I brushed his hair as well, or at least in my presence and body being so close to his, for I wasn't halfway finished when he grabbed my brushing hand and brought it to his lips, kissing my knuckles and letting out a soft grunt of longing.
"You're going to get my robe wet," she laughed that Ursa laugh, still maintaining that perfect posture like she'd come out of some children's legend about inhumanly graceful queens.
"Swim with me," I said, neither pleading nor commanding as I kissed her hand again and splashed her sleeve.
"That will definitely get my robe wet," she retorted with a chin raised in cocky defiance, irresistible to even the most self-controlled monks in existence. "Besides, the water will scald me. You've practically boiled it since I started—"
Unable to restrain himself any longer, Ozai spun around and took me by the waist, pulling me into the pool milliseconds after the temperature dropped down to human tolerance levels as I laughed and laughed.
I silenced her giggles with a kiss that would have silenced thunder.
He tasted of steam.
I growled, "Out!" to every servant in the room. They obeyed swiftly, well-trained in following such orders by then, typically having to complete them whenever their prince and princess locked eyes.
"Sorry about your robe," he teased as his hands slicked back my hair.
"I love you, my prince," was all I could say.
"I love you, my princess."