A waiter arrived, bearing the entrées for the evening. Ryu eyed his plate apprehensively. It appeared to be sliced chicken, zucchini and eggplant, arranged in a delicate pyramidal structure that he was sure was going to collapse the instant he touched it. What he wouldn’t give for a simple bowl of rice with grilled fish and mushroom soup. Instead, the palace chef seemed to have been experimenting of late, coming up with more and more weird and wonderful creations.
Unfortunately, his mother gushed her praises over each and every one, which was probably why the chef kept doing it.
“Now, Ryu, sweetie,” Elise began, tucking into her entrée. Somehow she managed to pick out each individual sliver of vegetable without destroying the rest of the stack. “We need to talk about the program for the Festival of the Goddess. The Priestesses at the Temple of Selene have been asking for the final program, so they can make sure the prayers to the Goddess are all completed at the appropriate times.”
So that was it, then? No more discussion about a bunch of lunatics trying to kidnap him? No questions about how security at the Festival was going to be handled when pro-democracy agitators probably wanted to disrupt the celebration? The Festival of the Goddess was the most important holiday of the Galandanish calendar, paying appropriate homage to the Goddess Selene to ensure her blessing over the coming year. The Festival consisted of a full day of ceremonies at the temple, interspersed with banquets at the palace, performances of music and dance, and a formal ball in the palace gardens to round off the evening.
The second deity of Galandeen was Odin, and while Selene was credited with humanity’s creation, Odin was the guardian of its destruction. He received their souls into the afterlife and was responsible for winter, for decay and death, and for the darkness of the night. All things in balance, Ryu had been taught from a young age, though ironically, there was no equivalent festival to honour Odin in their culture, as there was for Selene.
“We’ve decided to include the traditional Dawn Celebration this year,” his mother went on, oblivious to Ryu’s disquiet. “I know we haven’t done that one for a while, but the Crown Princess of Iderheil is going to be visiting this year, and Iderheil has always seen the Dawn Celebration as a pivotal part of the day. You’ll need to be up bright and early, as we’d like you to read the dawn prayers and proclamations, along with Her Highness.”
Ryu fought not to groan, at the exact same time as he tried to take his first bite of chicken and watched the miniature tower of food collapse all over his plate. A Dawn Celebration meant he was going to have to be up and dressed by no later than 4:30 – an absolutely hideous hour for someone who was most certainlynota morning person. And aside from that…
“You do realise that putting me and Princess Jasmine on a podium together is going to start a dozen rumours about me and her being soulmates?” Jasmine had recently turned nineteen and had not yet announced her soulmate, leading to plenty of speculation about who the lucky gentleman might be.
“Her and I,” his father corrected him immediately. Ryu was only partially mollified to see that he, too, had failed to eat his vegetables without making a mess.
But his mother just rolled her eyes. “You’re seventeen. You haven’t announced your soulmate yet, and this is, after all, the Festival of the Goddess Selene, who gave us our soul marks in the first place!Everyonewants to know who she’s gifted to you as your life partner. At this point, I could get you to stand on that podium beside pretty much anyone in the world and people would still speculate about that person being your soulmate.”
“You know, here’s a crazy idea,” Ryu said, knowing he was treading on increasingly thin ice. “How about I just register my mark with SoulWorks, and they can tell me who my soulmate is, and then everyone can stop wondering about it.” SoulWorks was a massive multi-national company that had shot to fame some thirty years ago when they’d managed to create a computer algorithm that automatically checked and matched the soul marks each person was born with, providing results in as little as twenty-four hours after a mark was registered. Ryu’s own mark was small and simple, looking much like a stalk of clover, with three curving leaves and a small stem arching away from the centre. It sat on his hip bone, conveniently hidden by both trousers and underpants, so there wasn’t the slightest chance of anyone outside his immediate family ever having seen it. According to the teachings of the High Priestess, the mark was placed there by Selene herself at the moment of each person’s birth, and there was exactly one other person in the entire world with a perfect match to the mark.
Elise automatically put her hand to her right shoulder – her soul mark was located just below her collarbone. “We’ve had this discussion, and you know exactly why we’re not allowing you to register before your eighteenth birthday. You have quite enough pressure on you already without trying to fit yourself into the box of whatever your soulmate expects you to be,” she said, though Ryu had heard their reasoning dozens of times before. “You are being trained to be a king and a noble and every aspect of your life will be subject to the scrutiny of the nobility, the media, and international governments. We simply want you to have one area of your life where you’re allowed to just grow up and learn how to beyou. Please, Ryu.” She placed her hand over his. “You don’t need to rush into everything. You’ll have fifty years or more to spend time with your soulmate, when you eventually meet them. Try to just enjoy the time you have now.”
Ryu pulled his hand away. “You and Dad found out you were soulmates when you were only fourteen. And you moved out of your family home and into the palace when you were sixteen! And you still manage to spend an hour a day crowing about how generous the Goddess is and how blessed you and Dad are to have each other, so where the hell do you get this idea that meeting my soulmate is going to be such a terrible thing for me?”
“First of all, you are going to watch your language at the dinner table,” his father said. “And aside from that, we are not going to discuss this any further. Your mother and I have made a decision, and until you’re an adult and responsible enough to make your own decisions, you are going to abide by it.”
Ryu hadn’t expected the result of his objections to be any different. He’d had this same conversation with his parents a dozen times over the past two years, and each time the answer had been the same. He tried to console himself with the idea that he only had a week and a half to go until he could find out the answer to the burning question… until he remembered that that time would likely now include a dozen media outlets spouting nonsense about his impending marriage to Princess Jasmine of Iderheil.
“Now, back to the Festival of the Goddess,” his mother said, brushing her perfectly straight black hair over her shoulder. Ryu knew it only looked that way because she got one of the maids to spend twenty minutes straightening it for her every morning. Naturally, it had a slight wave that he privately thought was far prettier than this rigid attempt at perfection. “The Celestial Dragons will be performing the Dance of Water and Light at midday,” Elise said, picking up her itinerary where she’d left off. The Celestial Dragons were the most famous dance troupe in Galandeen, and it was entirely expected that they’d be performing at least one of the dances throughout the day. “Then there’ll be lunch in the palace gardens. We’ve got special guests coming from Iderheil and Biermarg, and there are eventwo ladies coming from Arctesia. They’re the daughters of two of the President’s advisors, and I would like you, Ryu, to make them feel welcome.” She fixed him with a sugary-sweet smile. He smiled back, making it deliberately insincere, as his entrée plate was taken away.
“Then, of course, the wedding ceremony will be held back at the temple at three o’clock.” The large, joint wedding was one of the highlights of the day, three or four couples chosen to marry in the Temple of Selene on the day of the Festival. It was widely believed that such couples would be blessed throughout their marriage with peace, harmony, and plenty of children filling their lives.
“First up, we’ve got Viscount Eguchi’s youngest son marrying Amaya El. That was a bit of a drama, when they found out his soulmate was a commoner,” Elise informed them, her eyes wide. “But thankfully, they decided to trust the Goddess’s wisdom in the end. Then next on the list is the Second Duke of Pardeeg, marrying Sir Kazake’s daughter, Irian.”
“Oh, they decided to go ahead with that, did they?” Sou asked. “I thought his parents were barring the marriage because his soulmate isn’t nobility.”
“It’s not just that she’s not nobility, though being the daughter of a knight is one step above a commoner,” Elise said. “She’s also abeta,” she added, with theatrical distress, as if it was the most awful discovery in the world. “Of course, with modern fertility treatments, it’s entirely possible that she could end up having children some day, but they initially felt that their alpha son deserved an omega mate to continue the family line. I believe, in the end, they agreed simply because the Duke was quite taken with the young woman and wouldn’t even consider choosing someone else.”
“This is all rather ironic, isn’t it?” Ryu said, knowing he was likely to get his ear chewed off again. “The nobility prattles on about the divine wisdom of the Goddess and the holy duty to marry one’s soulmate, until someone realises that the Goddess has paired them up with a commoner, and then suddenly all bets are off and everyone’s scrambling to find someone more suitable.” Heaven knows what would happen if his own soulmate ended up being a commoner.
“There are still those who believe in the sovereignty of the Goddess,” his mother replied. “And as you know, only true soulmates are permitted to marry in the Temple. Now, I had hoped that Lord Gee would allow his alpha son to marry Duke Kirian’s omega son,” she went on, as if the interruption had never happened. “But he’s decided that if the marriage does go ahead, they’ll have a private ceremony. Despite the recent advances in omega rights, there are unfortunately still those who believe marriage to an omega male is a slight on their family name. So instead, we’ll be having Chie Harada join the ceremony. She works in the palace kitchens, and she’llbe marrying her soulmate, Dai Isa. He’s the son of a wealthy businessman from Green Bay.”
“That’s rather a lot of commoners to be participating,” Sou said. “The nobles prefer to see a few more of their own in the ceremony.” Again with the irony. Ninety-nine per cent of the Galandanish population were commoners, but there was no consideration as to how they might feel if not a single one of their own class was included.
His mother shrugged helplessly. “Is it our fault if the Goddess has chosen common soulmates for the eligible nobles this year? I’ve done my best to chosesuitablecouples; dignified, respectful folk with no skeletons in their closets.”
Sou scowled, as the butler returned with the evening’s main course. “I miss the days when we could count on three or four marriages between noble alphas and their perfectlysuitableomega mates.”
A tense silence met the declaration, and Ryu glanced sideways to find his mother glaring daggers at his father.
“Not that an omega mate is everything,” Sou amended hastily. “Betas have to marry as well, I suppose.”
His mother rolled her eyes, but then forced a smile as the next plate was set before her. Ryu looked down, dismayed to find that for this course, the chef had prepared a traditional Arctesian dish – beef heart with roast vegetables, the plate almost drowning in gravy. Selene help him, but couldn’t they just have the traditional Galandanish rice and grilled fish one day?
“Once the wedding’s over,” his mother went on, “we’re back at the palace again, for dinner and the garden ball.” Thankfully, the palace was only a short, ten minute drive from the temple, and a fleet of shuttle buses would be on hand to ferry the guests back and forth. It was a common occurrence, with plenty of royal ceremonies including some sort of blessing from the temple priestesses, and all of the nobles were accustomed to the minor inconvenience of switching locations.
“Perhaps, during the ball,” Ryu’s mother said to him, that saccharine smile back again, “you could dance with a few of the young nobles and see if anyone catches your fancy.”
