C6 My Love

"Mate?" Arcadia is genuinely confused, "what's so beautiful about a Mate?" She snorts before returning to her tart, "I thought you were GOING to tell me SOMETHING better but instead you mentioned MATE." she snorts once more before filling her mouth up. Xerxes laughs at her innocence,

"What's wrong with a mate? It's a beautiful thing you know...." He is lost in thought,

"Oh please!! This whole mate thing is just a scam the elders make, there's no such thing as falling in the love with someone because it's destiny." She laughs at the stupid myth,

"And why do you say so?" Xerxes is indeed intrigued, "please do tell me more!!" He mocks her by mimicking her action,

"Master have you ever looked at mother and father.......do you really believed they're mates?" She directs her face to the sunset and into his endless blue orbs to search for an answer,

"Well—" he begins with the same answer he has told her for years,

"Be honest with me master.... Your answer could make or break my perception of love." Her gaze intensifies and he is forced to heave a sigh,

"No." He admits with a stab in his heart, "your mother was the last of her kind with the ability to perform Reiki but she was married off to your father after he won the war against her tribe. She was the prize, the sacrifice in order to make sure her clan was not completely extinct."

"So it was all just business....." They both stare at the sunset, "so father isn't mother's mate and vice versa....." She is confused,

"No, it was just all a business deal but—" he tries to change the topic before she asks another question but his words didn't come out fast enough as she had cut him off with a deep question.

"Then who is mother's real mate?" A question he didn't know how to answer.

The sun had set fully and the stars were already our, Xerxes was still in a deep trance while his student had began to doze off slightly,

"Arcadia, I wish I had an answer to your question but I'm afraid I don't know that. Maybe the goddess would be able to tell us one day, if she pleases." He turns to the princess and she is already swaying slightly with her eyes barely open, he smiles at her and pulls her to her feet, "come let me take you to your room." She nods slightly before following him inside the palace.

"Do you think I would find my mate one day? If he is even real?" She asks in her half awake state and he hums in approval, his mind was racing about his state, so many things he had done that were considered a taboo but have him joy.

Gave him his family.

Soon she's in bed rather early, he suspected she would wake up to steal dinner from the kitchen, he smiles to himself before his brain reminds him that he needed to see the Queen.

He sniffs the air and trails her to their hideout, and she was there gazing at the moon while she sat on the swing. She hadn't noticed his presence then,

"My love...." He hops on the swing with her making it away lightly, she's surprised and turns to him but there is a burden in her heart and it is visible through her eyes, "what is it Octavia?" He slips his rough fingers in her smooth ones.

"Arcadia would be 18 in a matter of hours, and soon she is going to have to find a mate....." She heaves a heavy sigh,

"Is that what's troubling you?" He kisses her on the cheeks to calm her nerves, "we talked.....she doesn't even believe in mates.....she is having this ideology after watching you and the king carefully. She thinks every relationship would be that way." He turns to the moon, "she asked me who your real mate was."

"And what did you tell her?" She expects an answer from him,

"What could I have told her? Do you want me to be beheaded?" He smirks a little which made her laugh,

"You know that would not happen, as long as I'm alive. It would only be possible after I die." She sours the atmosphere with her talk of death,

"What do you know so far about the dream?" He uses it to dive deeper into the matter, it must be serious if she kept ringing it into his ears to make him feel bad,

"There is going to be a war soon, and it would start from this palace, the king would die, and maybe I would die too. Arcadia would be greatly traumatized, and we would be separated." She summarizes everything for him in these few sentences. He is silent as he looked for the right words to say,

"Do you have any idea who would start this war?" His blue eyes cut though her magenta ones,

"I'm not sure, but someone would betray us eventually, and it would be the king. He would kill me." As blank as crackers.

Silence once more.

"Should we poison him then?" He places the suggestion on the table and she bursts info a fit of uncontrollably giggles, "why are you laughing?" He is finding it hard not to laugh too. Her laughter had already began to form a melody and nature began to sing with her, "Octavia calm down, you're using your powers!" He says between chuckles.

"That was a very good suggestion, maybe we should try it and run away never to be seen again." She wipes the tears from her eyes, "you ALWAYS know how to lighten up the atmosphere." She takes his lips in hers, "what would I do without you?" Her eyes are soft with love.

"Nothing." He says proudly, "but Octavia....let's be serious....why would the king do something like that? I don't think Magnus is that irrational."

Octavia heaves a very heavy sigh and brings out a stack of envelopes from underneath her dress, she hands it to him and he begins to check each and everyone of them,

"These are our love letters, when we started seeing each other, why are you showing them to me?" He kept flipping and flipping, not understanding what she was trying to prove.