Shiri hated haircuts.

And if she had a hold of her favorite set of matches, her maid would have no hair at all.

She sat plotting her newest form of revenge while the young woman circled her with scissors at the ready, pulling and yanking at her scalp like a vulture with a freshly killed carcass.

Shiri fiddled with her fingers, eyes focused on the door that her mother had strolled in through a few minutes before with a bright blue ribbon in one hand and the dreaded hairbrush in the other. She had lost count of the amount of times her mother had tried to untangle her mane of black curls, but by the time she'd gone through three brushes and lost a few pins, she'd resorted to chopping it.

"You need to stop fiddling with it all the time," her mother had chastised, tapping a finger under her chin. "That's what causes it to get all snarled and greasy. Maybe we should try that new lotion your Aunt was telling us about, that could solve some of the problem, yes?"

The maid had nodded while Shiri had sunk lower in her seat. It was a shame sinking into the floor wasn't an option.

    So fifteen minutes and half a bottle of lavender lotion later, Shiri was waiting for the moment she could tear out the coated curls herself. Although the only reason her mother was so adamant about it today was because she was meant to meet with the son of her family's rivaling kingdom. Because apparently at the age of fifteen she was supposed to woo him over to her side, even though she wasn't sure what side she was meant to be on.

    Finally having enough with her maid, Shiri tugged the brush from the maid's hands and stood to her feet, chucking the brush across the room as she flung her bedroom door open and stormed out into the hall.

    Two guards stood at position next to her door as she marched by, not bothering to ask her where she was going as her next meeting was with her parents in the throne room, even though her maid scurried after her in a storm of fabric and buttons.

    "Miss, you need to have your proper dress on!" The young girl squeaked. "Your father won't be pleased if you run inside looking like that. Not pleased at all!"

    Shiri shrugged, her eyes set towards the end of the hall where large diamond knobs decorated the golden doors of the throne room. "Do I look like I care what Father thinks, Portia?"

   The woman paused, jaw working overtime as she stuttered, "I.. I suppose not, Miss. But your father—."

    "Father will do what he pleases." Shiri glared at the guard in front of her and kicked him in the shin, laughing as he stumbled to the side with a groan. "Meanwhile, I have more important matters to attend to. How about you hurry along and warn him before I kick this door down myself?"

     Portia cringed, Shiri's dress crumpled in her hands. "But Miss, I don't think that would be—."

    Bang!

    Ignoring her maid's suggestion, Shiri made her way into the throne room, chuckling at her mother's exasperated expression as the doors closed and a throat cleared itself.

    Shiri stopped in the center of the room and bowed. It was a common courtesy to pay to the King, even if he was her father. He stood when she had entered, his expression completely unreadable, as he liked it to be, but Shiri enjoyed driving that dead look from his eyes.

    "Father," she called out, approaching the throne, "where is the Prince? He hasn't gone running at the mention of my name has he?" There was a small smirk in the corner of his lips, she could see it. She'd amused him. That had to be some kind of good sign, she hoped.

    The King raised a hand, shooing the Queen away from his side as a number of courtiers rushed to her side, papers and bills in hand. He lifted his staff from the throne and turned to Shiri, extending the obsidian-coated rod to her. "If you had paid more attention when you'd entered, Lave, you might have noticed the poor creature standing to your left."

    Shiri widened her eyes as a gentle clapping began. The cheeky bastard, she thought as she glanced to her left, holding back a snort as a gentleman adorned in frost white fur and a tall black top hat bent down on one knee at her feet.

    "It is lovely to make your acquaintance, Princess," the man said, his rat-like nose scrunching up as he smiled, yellow teeth flashing. "With such an entrance, I would be shocked if you did not hold every man's attention upon meeting as you do mine."

    "Holding their attention, Sir?" Shiri stepped to the side, scoffing. "I simply held the attention of their pockets, as I'm sure I hold yours now. " Reaching a hand into her own pocket, she pulled out a silver pocket watch. "As for my entrance, I need to show I have control somehow, and if I'm late for my crew's first inspection then I'd have to walk the plank, as I'd have lost a bet as well as some form of my dignity." She turned to her father and tossed him a thin brown bag, one she'd grabbed from her other pocket. "Am I free to go now, Father? I find that the little rat is boring me."

    The Prince's mouth gaped open as the King held the bag before his staff. The dark rock glowed, a deep, black light pouring from its depths as he then pocketed the bag and nodded to his daughter.

    "Your Highness!" The Prince shrieked, staggering towards the throne. "How dare you allow her to speak such things. And to be a Sea Captain no less! Was she raised and bred as a dog?"

    The King then pulled out a dark rectangular box, the edges of it foiled with gold as he threw it to Shiri, that smirk back again as she bowed low and smiled at the Prince. "As a seadog perhaps, but nothing of the feral purebred kind." She pranced up to the man and patted him on the shoulders, popping open the rectangular box as she whispered, "I'll leave that type of breeding up to you and your family."

    Before the Prince could utter a response, flames leapt from the box and onto his coat, igniting him in a spiral of fire and smoke.

    "You spawn of Satan himself—!"

His screams rose as Shiri dragged another match across the box, tossing it at his feet and strolling back to the doors of the throne room. She picked at her nails while a group of soldiers ran past her, in some attempt to help the poor burning mess, she assumed.

    "What a waste of perfectly good fire," she murmured, grinning at the sparks that danced and glowed against the dark olive hue of her fingers.

    She flipped her watch up again, the smaller hand resting on the one while the larger hand sat on the ten. Still about fifteen minutes before her crew expected her, even if she was a bit more charred than she would've liked.

    "Shiri!" Her mother called after her.

    "I'm sorry, Maman!" She replied, tucking the matches back into her pocket. "I have to go! Remind Father that I'll have another shipment ready for him by the end of this week!"

    "Shae Riala!"

    Cringing, Shiri grinned at her mother before racing down the hall. Fifteen minutes, she chanted to herself, that's all she needed, she was sure of it. Then she would be off, away from the kingdom and the struggles it brought her, or the struggles that her parents felt they gave her.

    She shook her head and glanced up, realizing that she'd passed the portraits of all her stiff, ugly looking relatives a few hundred feet back, meaning that the courtyard and her path to freedom was right around... there!

    Moving through the gardens, made up of vines, bushes, flowers and terribly placed statues, Shiri slipped out of the main gate and sighed. She dusted her hands off and grinned as she made her way out onto the cobbled streets. "Easier than taking a slice of cake from the kit—."

    Before she could finish her sentence, something sharp jabbed her in the back of the head, sending her to her knees. With her vision blurring, limbs slumped and head lolling, the last thing she saw before she faded into darkness was a pair of blue high heeled shoes.

~~~~~~~~~~

"I thought you said he would come after her by now?"

"No," a deep voice growled, "I said you were supposed to leave a ransom note and then he would come after her."

Someone let out a huff of air, the hair around Shiri's ear rustling with the power of it. "You're a terrible liar."

Where could she be?

There was a loud crunch by her left ear just as a hand caught her tight around the neck, wringing out whatever air had been left in her lungs.

"Almost as bad of a liar as this one is at sleeping." Blue eyes stared deep into her own as she lifted her hands in a lame attempt to remove her attacker's.

"P...P-Please," she gargled, oranges and blacks painting her vision again. "Stop."

The man choking her chuckled, "So quick to be rid of us, eh?" The man's accomplice stepped up, a woman, who looked just as pleased. "There is a price the King must pay first."

Shiri's head was aching when the man finally let go. She collapsed at his feet, retching while she fumbled with her coat pockets, her fingers twitching at the effort it took to even move them. Her fingertips had just touched metal when the woman returned and grabbed her by the roots of her curls, slamming her into the ground with a satisfied grin.

    "Oh, what a shame." the woman crooned, slapping Shiri across the face. She leaned in, her breath fanning over Shiri's reddened cheek.  "If your father and his men aren't here within the hour, Princess, expect to have your entrails hanging from one flag pole to the next, where all your men can see." She scoffed again, her hand digging into Shiri's pocket to pull out the silver watch. Her fingers glossed over the glass film before they clenched around the metal frame. "You were never meant to be on time in the first place."

    "Enough with the dramatics, Elise," the man murmured, pulling his sword from its sheath. "It appears the men have arrived, so all we need to do is bargain."

    "Bargaining is for fools, brother, let them watch her blood stain the very ground they built on our people's broken bodies."

    The man clicked his tongue, lost in thought, while Shiri focused on the waves that struck against the lava-lined shore she realized they were resting on. This was the edge of the Divide. The barrier that separated her people and lands from their sister continent, Aldriya, one that had been ruled by barbarians since the beginning. What was the purpose of bringing her here?

Magma boiled and rumbled across the landscape, where volcanoes of all sizes, shapes and intensities grew up from the sea. This was why the volcanic island had become know as the Divide, not only due to the treacherous nature of traveling through it, but the massive river of lava that cut itself deep into the earth and sea, separating the two continents from one another.

"Mamán," Shiri whispered, rising to her knees.

"Shut up!" Elise cried out, kicking Shiri in the stomach. She fell back, hands clutching her side as she watched in horror as the blue sails of her father's ships came to a stop and her parents figures shone from the opposite side of the Divide.

    Her father stepped forward, making his way down the ship's ramp until he stood on the opposite side of the falls, his staff glowing.

    The man smiled and flicked a hand towards Elise, who promptly grabbed Shiri and dragged her closer to their side of the island that overlooked the lava falls.

    "What is it that you'd like?" The King called out, the Queen still on the ship while soldiers gathered behind her.

    "Papa, don't do it!" Shiri shrieked, even as the cool metal of Elise's sword pressed against her neck. "Mamán, stop him! Do something, anything, but not for me. Not here!"

    "The newest trinket of yours, that your daughter hand-delivered to you," the man said, his finger twisting heavily on a slim ring that rested on his left index finger. "Unless you've already passed it on to your Council, your Majesty."

    Her father didn't move or even appear to blink at the man's words when Elise chuckled and nodded to the King. "Very well then, let's make things a little bit more fun."

    With a heel to the back of Shiri's knees, Elise tightened her hold on Shiri's neck as she threw her out over the edge of the magma falls. Shiri screamed, her legs flailing as Elise took ahold of her wrist and held her over a small pocket of land, when below her all she could see or feel was fire.

    "It's your choice," The man said, his arms held out wide in offering. "The trinket or your daughter?"

~*~*~*~*~*~