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I didn’t want to marry Clarke Griffin.
The scroll which rested in the cabinet outside my parents’ room had not been touched by human hands for generations. I had known about the betrothal from the day I was born. The way you enter the world knowing the sound of your mother’s voice, the way you know your own name and the truth of who you are, I knew about the betrothal. Like every new thing which adulthood is said to bring, I ignored it and fashioned sticks into swords before I was handed the first of my very own, and I fought friends and the trees and the air without a care in the world.
I knew the day would come when I would be at the center of the ceremony. Where just like the month after my birth, the people would come and watch as the bishop spoke my name. I expected the day to arrive after many forevers of play time, after all my games were done, and I tucked away the knowledge of it like a secret note I would forget to retrieve and I tumbled in the grass and was soaked by the lake and was muddy and bloody and bruised, but smiling.
The first day I dropped my wooden sword in battle was the day Costia Brooks came upon our game without warning. Anya, Gaia, and Lincoln froze, eyes wide as I looked past them, afraid of what horror could have seen me disarmed. They laughed for days that it was ‘just a girl’.
She was never just a girl.
I was twelve years old and I had read nearly every book in my father’s library, but I knew nothing that day besides the way it felt to hear my heart beat inside my chest and the sensation of my blood as it rushed through my veins. She made me aware of what it felt like to be alive.
I broke the cabinet six months later. My parents were out for the evening, a grand affair at the manor across the lake, one children were not permitted to attend. That, or they did not care for my presence. I had spent all day with Costia. We had met shortly after sunrise, Indra packing me a picnic, and we had walked and bathed and run, and sat, and talked our way through every hour of light the day was willing to give.
The scroll was in my bleeding hand before the staff arrived, Titus more concerned with the blood on the scroll than the cut in my skin.
“You have made a terrible choice, Alexandria. If your parents are informed you can expect a punishment like none you’ve seen before. This parchment was never to be touched.” Titus laid the parchment out and assessed the stain as I bled on the carpet runner which lined the hallway of the second floor. “What were you thinking, child?”
He pressed a clean white cloth to the parchment before rolling it back around its spindle and placing it in the cabinet’s cradle. He removed a portrait from the wall above the cabinet and dropped it to the ground before pulling on the hooks which had held the frame in place for decades. It was a cover for my mistake.
How could I tell him I was looking for proof that I had to marry Clarke Griffin of Arkadia? How could I tell him that I wanted proof that I was not permitted to choose? I wanted to marry the girl whose dark hair sprung from her head like a halo. I wanted to marry the girl whose eyes were the colour of chestnuts and I wanted to gaze into them forever. They shone when she spoke, and my heart broke in two, when she told me her parents had died and she had been sent to live with her uncle, Gustus Brooks III. It was his grand affair my parents were attending. It was he who allowed her to row her way across the lake each day to attend lessons with my myself and my cousins, and to play and play and play. How could I tell Titus I wanted to marry the orphaned girl instead?
Clarke Griffin had travelled by boat to make our union, and was staying in a town nearby. The laws of tradition stated I was not to see Clarke until the day of the ceremony. The laws of tradition had broken my heart every day for six years and I had cursed them before falling asleep every night since meeting the girl I loved.
I spent the night before my wedding with Costia in my bed. We held each other, and cried, and made love, and cried again. We did not live in a world where choice was afforded to those who were born into lives like ours. Costia was betrothed to a boy back home, a five-day ride from the place I was to live with Clarke after our marriage. Costia had only weeks until her own ceremony, but it was mine which was putting an end to the life we wished for.
When I awoke with sore eyes on the morning of the ceremony, Costia was gone from my bed. I buried my face in the pillow she had slept on and shouted my hatred of Clarke Griffin into the fabric which was soaked with our tears. After bathing I vowed not to cry again. Costia would be forever in my heart and I would not let a day pass without a thought of her, but I would not cry again for the life I could not have.
I did not look at Clarke as I recited the vows which had united strangers for a century. I looked past her, through the giant windows which were still adorned with pictures in the glass from traditions long forgotten, and stories no longer told. I was unsure as to whether she looked at me at all. I did not care.
I did not speak with her for a week after the ceremony.
It was a month before she smiled at me, but stubbornness and hurt caused me to turn away.
Eight months after our marriage, seven after the date Costia would have walked the aisle herself, Clarke touched my hand as we parted ways in the hall, heading to our separate bedrooms.
“I know I’m not what you wanted, and I’m sorry for what you’ve lost.” Her thumb skirted across my skin and left a chill at my back. Her lips pressed together in a smile tinged by sadness as she dropped my hand and walked across the hallway.
I went to bed that night with blue eyes on my mind and a stirring in my chest, but rolled onto my stomach and willed it away hoping only not to dream.
Three weeks later I learned of the boy she had loved. The son of her father’s footman who tended to the horses, Finn Collins had been Clarke’s Costia. They had grown up together and, although from different lives, they had dreamed of a day when they could change the words inscribed on the parchment to allow them to be together.
Her sadness was a mirror of my own, but unlike our marriage, it was sickness which stole Finn from Clarke. He had been gone from her life for more than a year before we met, but had still been in her heart on the day
We spoke of the loves we lost night after night. Each evening we ate our dinner in silence at opposite ends of the table, watched by our staff, and each night Indra set two drinks on the table by the fireplace in the library and we talked.
“I saw you looking past me. I saw you wishing you could say those words to another, but I have to say, I couldn’t help but look at you. I’d never seen a girl so beautiful as I did that day, Lexa.” Her voice softened then, and I could not help but look at her. I felt warmth in my cheeks at her words, and hoped the heat from the fireplace before us was enough to fool her
Our chairs had drifted closer since the first night Clarke spoke of Finn. That we had carried two other people’s memories inside us for so long without speaking their names, had been a burden neither of us were aware of.
I felt lighter each time we spoke of them. Both of us laughed for the first time with each other as we shared story after story of mishap and discovery. We cried, too. Though I had vowed not to do so ever again, the words Clarke encouraged me to speak brought them forth unexpectedly and, again, I felt her hand on mine.
“I’m beginning to think I could have done worse than to have married you, Clarke. You have been very kind to me despite the heavy heart I have lugged into each and every room since we have been here. I do not feel as though I deserve the smiles you offer.” I looked away from her then, as I had the day we were married, although the reasons could not have been more different.
While I looked at my lap, she stood from her chair and crossed the room. Moving two chairs which were the same as those we occupied each night, she fiddled with something I could not see. She stood proudly and looked at me with a grin on her face for a moment before the music started and she approached me where I still sat.
“May I have this dance?” Clarke offered me her hand, bowing as she did so, and I could not stop my face from morphing into the very same grin I had seen on hers only moments before.
It felt different as her palm slid against mine. Different to the few times her fingers had touched the back of my hand. Again, I blamed the fireplace for my blush as she pulled me to the space she had cleared on the other side of the room.
We began with space for another between us, her hand on my waist and mine at her shoulder. As she led me around the floor, I could not take my eyes off her. We were too far from the fireplace now, but still I could feel my skin burning under her gaze. When the track changed, she stepped closer and pulled our joined hands to her chest. Her head rested against mine and the music was the only sound I heard besides the crackle of the fire for some time.
“Is this okay?” I felt her breath against my ear as she whispered her words, and I found myself unable to form any at all. I nodded my head and felt as though I was waiting for something else. My stomach tumbled as it had when I was a child and knew it was a day free from lessons and all about play. I had never drawn a line between Clarke and my childhood before.
She kissed my fingers, then. “You deserve each one of my smiles. You deserve so much more, too. Perhaps, in time, you’ll allow me to give you more, Lexa. I’m beginning to think I like that my odd path led me to you.”