Princess Carmina la Satura smiled at her reflection in the mirror as she brushed her dark brown hair, her blue eyes shining. Her sweet mother always told her how beautiful she was, but she’d never really noticed it until today. Perhaps it was because, as of this morning, she was on her way, accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting, to wed the man she’d been affianced to from the time she was still wet from being within her mother’s womb, or perhaps she was just now noticing it because she was actually happy today. Either way, as she stared at herself in the mirror, she couldn’t help smile brightly.

She picked up the tin of teeth-whitening powder off of her vanity, pleasantly surprised that the rocking ship hadn’t caused it to spill yet. She dabbed her finger in it, then put the powder up to her teeth, scrubbing her teeth vigorously with the powder. She smiled at herself again, ignoring the metallic taste of the powder to admire how pretty she looked today. She sat the tin back down and gave herself another good look before standing up.

She carefully scooted her stool underneath her vanity and looked around the room again, like she’d done so many times already. It was rather small room-- no bigger than ten feet by ten feet, as far as the princess could tell, with an extra little alcove for her wardrobe and her vanity. For a bed, there was a firm, brown-colored cot the floor and a flattened, yellowed pillow on top of it. The thin green blanket that she’d had draped across her as she’d slept now lay crumpled up on top of the cot. Last night’s sleep had been oddly comfortable in this cramped room. Perhaps it was just that she was so exhilarated that her body was confusing her circumstances for others.

She stepped two steps over to be able to access her wardrobe again. She opened the sturdy, chestnut doors and examined the contents. She’d chosen her dingiest dresses to keep in the wardrobe for the voyage to Audere. She didn’t want to risk her nice dresses getting saltwater on them. She didn’t know whether or not saltwater would actually affect her dresses, but she didn’t want to risk it. Her many other dresses were stored in trunks and were safe in the storage room on deck.

She scanned the dresses, then found the one that she was looking for and pulled it out. She ran her hand over the front, trying to smooth out some of the wrinkles. It was one of her least favorite dresses. It was a long, heavily-layered peach-colored dress. One of her maids’d left it in the sunlight for too long and the dye had gotten sunbleached, but she hadn’t mentioned it to her mother. She’d known that her mother would’ve taken it too seriously. She’d tried to casually discard the dress many times; her mother had caught her every single time. She’d given up and just decided to keep it as a dress that she could get dirty in if she had to.

She looked down at her underthings, smoothing out her knickers out and adjusting her stockings before pulling the dress on over her head. She wouldn’t bother with a corset right now, as it was just she, her ladies-in-waiting, and the sailors on the ship with her, but she felt the need to go all out otherwise. She wanted to look pretty today, even if just for a few people.

She struggled to lace up her dress, but she finally managed to get it done up all of the way. She tied the ribbon in the front, then smiled at herself in the mirror. She felt pretty even in this dress.

She slid on some yellow slippers and opened the door as she stepped out of her cabin, picking up the lantern hanging in her doorway and using it to light her way through the hallway until she found the door closest to hers. She knocked on it gently, and, when she heard the loud, nasal “COME IN!” be called from inside the door, she turned the doorknob and pushed into the room.

Carmina smiled when she saw her beautiful, blonde-locked friend seated crosslegged on her cot, brushing her hair.

“Good morning, Mariana!” Carmina greeted, walking into the room and shutting the door behind her.

Mariana smiled back at Carmina. “Good morning, Carmin!” she saluted.

“Mind if I come in and talk for a bit?”

“Not at all-- but didn’t you just awaken?”

Carmina shook her head. “No, I awoke few hours ago, at least.” She walked to the edge of Mariana’s cot and plopped down on it to sit crosslegged as well. “Just would like to talk to a friend of mine.”

Mariana giggled. “You seem really giddy, Carmina,” she commented. “Are you truly that excited to be meeting your prince?”

Carmina laughed and nodded. “Mmmhm. I’m excited to finally be wed to him! It feels like this is long overdue.”

Mariana smiled at her friend. “I bet he’s just as enthused... I hear he’s as homely as a hound’s anus.”

Carmina snorted. “Oh, keep your peace, Mariana,” she said, rolling her eyes. “When I last saw him, he looked far from the tail end of a hound.”

“He was six and you were four, Carmin. Perhaps he didn’t age well.”

Carmina laughed, then paused, her face contorting in deep concern. “You’re lying, aren’t you? You haven’t actually heard that he looks like a hound’s anus, have you?”

Mariana looked serious for a moment, then broke out in a fit of giggles. “Of course I’m teasing, Carmin! Ah, you’re so gullible!”

Carmina rolled her eyes but laughed despite herself. “Oh, keep your peace, Mari. I don’t want my future husband mocked before me.”

“Oh, so I have your authorization to mock him behind you?” Mariana teased.

Carmina laughed at that. “I shall neither agree nor disagree.”

“You’ve no idea what you’ve just allowed me to do, dear friend,” Mari said, jokingly rubbing her chin to appear as if she were plotting. She laughed, then paused. “Okay, so did you come in here to just chat, or do you want to talk about something in particular?”

Carmina shrugged. “I’m not certain, if I am entirely honest. I kind of wanted to go on deck and see if the other girls are up there so that we can meet in the little room on deck to talk. We agreed last night to do it this morning. All of this candlelight and eternal darkness below deck just gets me in a gloomy mood.”

“Ah, I understand, I understand.” Mariana stood up. “Why did you sit down then? You simply could have asked me if I wanted to go on deck.”

“Because I understand common etiquette,” Carmina laughed, standing up.

Mariana grabbed her candlestick off of the stand that stood beside the door and exited. Carmina picked up her own lantern and followed.

The floors creaked as the two girls walked towards the ladder on the gently rocking ship. Carmina held her lantern between her teeth as she walked up the ladder rung by rung until she reached the deck.

It was bright outside, and Carmina assumed, by the position of the sun, that the sun had just risen. The sea glittered with the early morning rays, and the ship rocked happily along. The Catiz emblem, painted on the huge sail, waved proudly from its place on the mast.

Carmina smiled cheerfully. This was the kind of morning that made her feel like a little girl-- not a seventeen-almost-eighteen-year-old princess sailing thousands of miles to wed a nineteen-almost-twenty-year-old prince.

Mariana groaned as she came out from below the deck, shielding her eyes and squinting. ”Ugh. It’s so bright,” she grumbled.

Carmina laughed. “Yes, a big change from the dark cave you hibernated in,” she teased.

Mari rolled her eyes. “Hush up, Carmina.”

Carmina laughed again and looked around the deck until she spotted a room and a door on that room. She walked over to the door and pulled it open.

Three happy-looking girls sat at a round table within. They stopped the last of their chatter and turned to smile at her. One had sun-kissed, flawless skin. Her chocolate brown eyes were the exact color of her chocolate brown, naturally straight hair that settled around her face to make her look like a perfect portrait. The one beside her had bright green eyes that glowed in an almost magical sense. Her black, kinky hair was forced into a tight bun that made her look much older than she actually was. The final one, the one sitting nearest to the door, had the bright red hair that shined as if it were polished and light hazel eyes with small flecks of gold in them. She had freckles flecked all on her face.

“Carmina!” the brown-eyed brunette and the black-haired girl greeted simultaneously.

Carmina smiled brightly. “Good morning to you, too!” she laughed, sitting down in the empty seat beside the brown-eyed brunette and placing her lantern before herself.

Carmina watched Mariana blow out her candle, shut the door, and sit next to the redhead. “It’s so bright today,” Mariana complained.

“You always look at the negative things,” said that raven-haired girl.

“You’re one to talk, Valeria,” retorted Mariana.

Valeria laughed. “Ouch. Someone’s sourrr today.”

“It’s too early to be awake.”

“Oh please,” laughed Carmina. “You were wide awake when I came in your room.”

“Hush up,” Mariana huffed.

All six of the girls looked at each other, staring for a tense moment before Valeria burst out laughing, causing all of the other girls to laugh as well.

When everyone finally calmed down, the brunette with the brown eyes said, “We’ve been waiting for quite a bit. We were beginning to think that you two weren’t going to show up.”

“Fashionably late, Isabella,” joked Mariana, seeming to be in a better mood because of the laughter that they’d all shared.

Isabella laughed, paused, then looked at Carmina. She smiled. “Oh, Carmina, aren’t you excited that you’re finally on your way to meet your prince?”

“Mmhm,” said Carmina, smiling.

The redhead smiled softly. “I’ve heard from travelers that the Prince is quite the adventurer,” she said gently. “He’s been in battle, climbed mountains, went on year-long hunting trips, traveled across the nations on horseback, sailed all of the seas, traded with almost every nation, jousted, sword-fought, and done all kinds of adventurous things.”

“Really?” asked Carmina, intrigued.

“Oh, yes! He once lived in a cave for four months! Isn’t that wild?”

“He’s a wild child; Adora’s got that much right,” said Valeria. “But I’ve heard more about the adventures he’s had atop goose down mattresses.”

The girls all looked at Valeria with curiosity. A light smile spread across Valeria’s face. “I’ve heard he’s got plenty within his trousers, and he knows how to wield it. He keeps a record of all of the lovers he takes, apparently. He writes them within a journal. Every last detail.”

“Who’d you hear this from?” asked Mariana incredulously.

“One of my maids that worked for me back at the castle was once an Audererian. She’d served the Prince, she said, and she’d had one or two bouts with him.”

Carmina could feel her face heating up. They were talking about the man that she was going to be marrying like he was a character in some kind of novel or like he was nothing more than a filthy man of the streets. They were talking about his sex life so casually, like it was a thing to be public, like everyone should know it!

“Oh, really?” asked Mariana. “What’d she say?”

“What I just told you-- that he’s got quite the endowment and has a lot of tricks up his sleeves to--”

“Enough,” interrupted Carmina. “This is enough.”

“I’m with Carmin,” said Adora softly. “It’s disrespectful to talk of the Prince in this light.”

Valeria laughed. “Oh, sorry, is this too mature for you?” she joked.

“I’m serious, Valeria,” Carmina said, giving her a stern look, and Valeria shrunk away.

“I’m sorry, Princess,” apologized Valeria. “I took it too far, didn’t I....?”

Carmina nodded, but she felt some excitement in her chest at the thought that the Prince may be so much of a rebel-- that he may be what they were talking about. That he may be a god within the sheets. This gave made the wheels in her head whir out of control. This was what excited her.

“...so what do you all hope to do once you reach Audere?” asked Isabella, changing the subject.

“I hope to meet a rich, handsome man to wed, hopefully one that’ll make me want to have children with him,” said Valeria.

“Of course you do,” scoffed Mariana. “What I wish to do is simply maintain my innocence when I get over there.”

“Maintain? Pah, you can’t maintain it if it’s already gone,” teased Valeria.

“Hush up,” growled Mariana.

Isabella cut the tension growing between them by saying, “I’d like to marry a far off prince. I’d love to be a princess.”

Carmina laughed. “Aww...!....I obviously just plan to marry the Prince, produce at least one heir, but hopefully more, and finally liberate my kingdom from the fear of Aellatia.”

All eyes then went to Adora. “What about you?” asked Isabella.

Adora shrunk back a little and didn’t answer for a bit. Finally, she simply said, “The Prince’s brothers are handsome, I hear.”

“That’s not an answer,” laughed Valeria.

Adora didn’t say anything else.

A silence ensued, and then Carmina got a notion-- one that she’d gotten a lot lately.

She stood. “I’m sorry to leave so soon after arriving--”

“You’ve only been in here for about five minutes!” laughed Valeria.

“I know, I know,” said Carmina, “but I really need to go do something that I forgot to do.”

“Which is...?” Valeria pressed.

“My own personal business,” said Carmina shortly. She smiled. “I’ll be back.”

Carmina grabbed her lantern and walked out, going back down under the deck and into her room. She sat her lantern on the lamp stand and shut her door, locking it. She wanted a moment alone, for she had remembered the letter again.

As she walked over to the vanity, she began to reminisce about the time that she’d visited the Audererian castle. She’d been very small-- four years old, to be exact-- and had worn her best dress. It’d been a rich, dark purple, she remembered, and soft as a puppy’s ear. She’d put on her nicest tiara; she recalled it to have dark purple sapphires places throughout it. Her father had fixated it to her head so that it wouldn’t fall down as she flopped about in the carriage, and her mother had given her dark purple, satin gloves so that, if she’d gotten her hands dirty, she could simply cover the dirt up with the gloves.

She’d run out of the carriage and into the castle, her parents calling after her. She didn’t remember much about the castle now, only that she thought that it was exactly how she’d imagined Heaven’s mansions to be.

The King and Queen of Audere had greeted she and her parents inside. She remembered nothing more about them than the fact that they were very young at that time. She knew that they couldn’t’ve been older than twenty.

The Prince had immediately run up to her and taken her hand, introducing himself as “Prince Vincent Matteo de Marquis” and asking her what her name was. She’d simply said, “Carmina.” She laughed to herself as she remembered the tone that she’d taken on-- one of a frightened, shy mouse.

The Prince had laughed and simply tugged her along with him as he ran up the stairs. He let her go and called, “Follow me!” He’d began to run, and she started to. But on one step her foot snagged her dress and she had fallen. She’d scraped her knee, and she still remembered how dark the blood had been. It’d fallen onto the stone floor and formed a puddle.

Rather than freaking out, the Prince had simply taken off his robe and tied it around her wound. She remembers how carefully he’d wrapped it, a gentle soul even at age six. He’d offered to carry her back to her parents, and when she’d accepted he’d picked her up easily and carried her back to them.

She didn’t remember the rest of the day. She knew that it was a mix of dancing and chatting and eating with his family, but she remembered how she kept looking at him and he kept looking back at her, both trying to steal a free moment so that they could continue playing again.

She laughed slightly to herself again and sat down at her vanity. She reached in the fifth drawer down and pulled out the only contents of the drawer-- a letter, the Audererian seal seemingly unbroken.

She smiled to herself. She’d undone it carefully so that the seal didn’t appear broken.

She gently pried it open again, careful not to mess up the seal. She opened up the three flaps and smiled to herself as she read the letter for what had to be the hundredth time:

Princess Carmina Luciana la Satura, future bride of the His Royal Highness, Prince Vincent Matteo de Marquis:

His Royal Highness requests you at His grand court to be wed to him by the end of summer. He understands that you are turning eighteen at the end of Guigno and requests your presence at His kingdom to be wed to you on the first of the following month.

A portrait of the Prince could not be enclosed, but He sends His highest regards and wishes you here godspeed. Please send correspondence before departing.

Signed,

Damiano Russo, scribe to His Royal Highness, Prince Vincent Matteo de Marquis