"My brother is dead." I pressed my heel closer to his pulsing carotid, glancing ever so slightly to the now closed empty tomb.

I made sure he wouldn't choke, but I made sure he knew I could make him. As he struggled a little, feeling my weight now over his torso and hips, my feet to his face, the lights dimmed. His face grew a tad eviler with the darkness he let in.

My eyes still couldn't believe it. There were no wires, no propane, no holograms, and the candles were from the queen.

The Onus were real. Their abilities were real, and this person struggling under me was real. I wanted to kill him, but I needed answers. I needed to find the true emperor of the throne I was keeping warm.

"No..." He raised his eyebrows in a show of innocence, his hands flailing in the air. "He's alive and well and a pain in the ass." In the candlelight I saw his impeccable suit was already torn and his curly hair ruffled over his forehead. Why did he fight me?

The camera. It was still recording. It saw everything - his fire, my skin stitching itself back together. I cursed myself.

I looked back to him.

He could have easily killed me. The Onus could do that, right? "He's dead. He's right there, you disrespectful fascist." I pointed at his empty tomb.

His hands went to his pocket, and I pressed my heel closer to his neck. No way a gun could fit in there, but still. "Here." He opened his palm to me. "He said he kept his corsage from the night he was taken. This is what's left of it." He handed me the wilted, crisp crimson petal. "You can test it, it's probably six years old. Said it was from Monte Carlo, that you had a big garden there behind a church in one of your palaces, and that you liked sneaking out and jumping to the sea from a museum."

I rolled my eyes. "You read the tabloids." Ilyaas and I jumping over a cliff was the headline for a few days now. Me in a car barreling towards trespassing photographers was also a famous photo.

"I saw them, but I don't like reading about you and your hot bodyguard." He rolled his eyes.

Liar. He had to be lying.

"Then what floor do we jump off from? Me and Kaz?"

His brows furrowed, trying to remember... if he had anything to remember. "The first floor." He blurted. "He said your mom found out about you guys and told you there was broken glass on the second."

Broken glass and broken bones. That's what mother said. She knew deep down she wouldn't be able to stop us if we wanted to so her only request was to avoid death.

He wasn't lying. How could he not be lying?

"Then where is he?" I shouldn't have said that. Now he knew I had doubts.

He shrugged. "Long story." He wrapped a soft hand gently around my ankle. "Would appreciate it if I could tell you... over a cup of coffee maybe?" He cocked his head to the side, trying to avoid my shoe. "Or tea. Tea works. I saw a Jasmine Dragon outside-"

I pressed harder, his face turning a bit purple. "You're Onus and you're dumb enough to tell me you're a Raven. You must be heavily optimistic to think I'll let you out alive. You'll kill me if you could."

He shrugged. "I could and I would have... but I won't." He shook his head giving me a smile he couldn't have learned from anyone but my brother - the quick, unamused, sarcastic smile that reached no one's eyes. "Scout's honor."

Placing some weight on the ball of my foot, I felt him choke. "Murderers have no honor."

"Was..." He cleared his throat. "Sent to protect you... from the real murderers." He wrapped both hands on my ankle now, trying to pry me off. "Not us."

Maybe I was convinced, I wasn't sure, but I slowly pulled my leg from of his neck. Maybe it was just so he could preserve his vocal chords to tell me the truth... or lie until he could no longer.

What I was sure of was that I wanted to know everything he did.

"Where's my brother?" I repeated, hearing the desperation leaking into my voice. All I wanted to do was run to him. Ask him to save me. It's been so long, me saving myself, why couldn't anyone do it for me for once? "Tell me!"

"He's gone." He smiled.

I kicked his head.

"God!" He screamed, his voice filling the tunnel."-dess... he frickin sent me. They caught him, alright?"

I stood and adjusted my stance to counter him as he tried getting up. But before I could cut him, he stood up with his hands behind his head and started kneeling. Horrid move.

He knew my brother, that was sure now.

It clicked then, even as I tried ignoring it for the last few minutes. I still couldn't hurt someone who surrendered.

"Let me explain." He said, sinking back into the ground, slowly healing from the cuts and bruises I left him. He looked to be still in some kind of pain. I hadn't felt pain since my grandfather died. Maybe being painless wasn't a universal Onus trait.

I bit my tongue. I was Onus. No going back on that knowledge. I felt my breath hitch at the realization. Something was wrong with me. I can't be empress, not like this.

He crossed his legs, opting out of the kneeling, and patted the ground next to him asking me to sit. Did he really think I was that dumb? Instead, I just stood across from him, my back to the wall, my hand wrapping around the tiara still dripping with his blood.

Under the hazy cloud of dust and the dim lights from the Queen's candles, his eyes shone. From further away like that, it was like I saw his face for the very first time.

He was tall, yes, maybe even taller than Ilyaas, and lanky, but from what I learned in the dark, he couldn't fight for crap. His clothes were expensive, all white, but lacked taste. Probably on his country's bank account as most sons of dictators had. He wasn't handsome or beautiful or conventionally attractive.

But he was like art.

It was written that the Onus looked like angels and I didn't know how to describe him better than that... angel. A fallen angel with hell for eyes. He was so different and yet... familiar, like a reflection of me through a distorted lens.

He took my breath away.

He could still take my breath away... by killing me. I snapped out of it.

"My name is Koa Emilio Zabdiel Mateen Guinto, call me Zab. Not Zabdi." Zabdi said. "No, I'm not royalty, I'm just the son of an autocrat who likes pretending he is." He swallowed. Most names were two to three words long. Four was for royalty only in Eurasia but I guess rules were different outside. "My father he's... he likes Onus... even married one for her genes. When he got word that Kaz was one, he made a deal with your grandfather and took care of the heir problem."

He noticed my breath catching. The heir problem. Is that what Upapa thought of Kaz? Of me?

"Yeah... being tortured while you're human is good. Death is an option." He continued, oblivious to my horror, rambling on. "But when your brain is being tampered with and they don't give you anesthetics because you heal... well." Zabdi sighed. "Kaz got away one... two years later I think... he joined the White Ravens-"

My brother was a terrorist.

"I don't believe you. I'd kill you if it wasn't for the camera." I told him. But I did. I did believe him. I didn't want to because if he got out all those years earlier, Kaz... he would have come back for me. Wouldn't he?

I decided to keep my walls up. This was not the time for self-pity. I continued my charade. "But if you are telling the truth then... Your father tortured my brother, and you expect me to trust you." I faked a grimace. "I thought Onus were supposed to be smart?"

Zabdi bit his lip, his jaw clenching. His breath sharpened a bit at my words. Then he changed from the rambler into something else entirely. It was like a hood came off.

That was when he looked me straight in the eye... and in them fire met gasoline.

"He wasn't the only one tortured." His plump red lips whispering an echo.

A snort. "You?" I regretted it the moment I said it.

His tone was different now. "I watched my mother die. Watched my own little sister get cut open... and die. Unlike them, he and I survived so..."

I wanted to leave. He could have been telling the truth or none at all and I didn't want to know the consequences of either.

"The Ravens are in the islands?" I asked, envisioning the forces I sent to China helping the Imperial Navy create a blockade at the West Philippine Sea. Maybe the Islander Expansion was a bigger problem than all of my advisers cared to admit.

"We're everywhere." He said, an evil pride shining through. "You killed some of us, the humans. Not us." He said the word 'humans' like an insult. The way he separated himself and his people from the others was apparent. Zabdi might have convinced himself that he was unlike his father, but he was much closer than he wanted to be.

"Did I..." I gulped down a blob of dread. "Endanger my brother?"

Zabdi shook his head. "I joined a few years back and trust me when I say I don't think he can die."

I rolled my eyes. "Why would you tell the truth?"

"I can't lie... not to Onus. Eventually you'll read me like an open book once we work on you, so no point in lying." He shrugged, his hands rising behind his head. Even though I knew I could take him, his camera was recording, and it was transmitting. Even if I got over my internal moral code, if I killed him, at least one person would know. That might as well be the entire world. "Anyway... you were in the military when he looked for you so he couldn't touch you."

He looked for me. I almost cried in happiness. "Where is he?"

"We lost him about a month ago... my dad caught him."

So, the Islanders were not Ravens.

"How are you a White Raven if it's against your father's ideals?"

"Eh... when tyranny is law, rebellion is a responsibility." He shrugged as if he'd memorized that a long time ago as a justification for his actions.

I shook my head. "Now you're lying."

He cocked his head to the side. "What? You believe me when I say your dead brother is alive, but you can't believe I'd stand against my own father? The frickin' dictator? It's not that hard."

"When tyranny is your birth right, your will is utopia." I've seen enough of those leaders to know how they thought of themselves angels as they razed their countries liked demons. I was guilty of not doing anything too, but I rolled my eyes at him as if I was better. That's how Upapa saw things. A great ruler. A horrible man. "You don't sound like the son of a frickin' dictator."

"You'll read me soon enough." He opened his arms to the sky in desperation. Zabdi looked at me for a few seconds, blinked as if he remembered something and said "But... your brother told me to find you, protect you, and train you if he didn't get out in three months."

"You said it's only been a month."

"But I'm already here. I'm one of your thirty, remember?" He shrugged. "He got caught about a month ago. After your grandpapi was killed. I'm here to keep you alive."

"Why do you care about the Eurasian throne so much?"

"Because I'm already the son of a dictator. I don't want to be the son of a hegemon."

As if the Islands stood a chance.

"I don't need you."

"That's what your brother said before he got thrown in prison." He nodded condescendingly and snorted. "I see the resemblance now."

"You rebel against your father, and he still sent you?" I rolled my eyes again. The more I interacted with him, the more the possibility my eyes were going to have permanent damage grew. I hated how I believed him.

"Rebellion from inside the system is much more... effective." So, he was a traitor. "He trusts me."

"You mean to say he doesn't know." I wiped the tiara's blood with my hand and placed it back, crooked on my head. "You're a spineless traitor, and you expect me to trust you?"

He chuckled... and I wanted to decapitate him. "I mean to say he doesn't need to and neither do you."

"I still don't believe you."

"You do." That smile again. "Otherwise, I'd be dead already."

"I still want to kill you."

"Intent versus action. The difference is will. You don't have will." He boosted himself up and picked the camera off the floor. Ilyaas said something similar a while ago. "We can find your brother. We can stop my father. We can't do either if I'm dead."

I already knew it was impossible, but I still said it. So dumb. "I can-."

"I can do the same." He interjects and points at the camera. He smiles. "Desperate times, diwata."

×+×

Twice in a week I'd been blackmailed into keeping boys in the house, not that I even had any plan of pushing them away at the beginning.

I mean, I would have kept Theo or might even have chosen him to marry me if he had not blackmailed me with incriminating information. He seemed to be the best choice at first, and he was charming and diplomatic but then he showed.

And Zabdi... He looked good enough to keep for a while, if not for marriage, then for eye candy. Somehow, I also found him a bit funny, his confidence gave way to ignorance, but maybe that was because only ignorant people can be confident. Turns out he's a terrorist.

"We should get your traini-"

"Shh. Ears." I gestured around the elevator we were taking to my room, my brows furrowed in confusion. He was supposed to be the cautious one, not me.

He apparently wanted to make sure I got there safe as if the whole palace was not my house.

"Nope. No ears. I blocked your whole elevator." Zabdi's smug smile made me want to punch him again.

"And you did that before you went to the party." Not a question. It was the only time my elevator was unused.

"Yep." He popped the 'p.' "I also did your bathroom. The rest of the suite's rooms were way too big, and the radius of the blocker was just enough for the tub area."

That was impossible. "How?" I crossed my arms. Now he had to be lying.

"There were no guards since you don't like them around, right?"

"Yeah, but Jazzy-"

"Oh, the cuddly muffin?" His cheeks ballooned as he gushed. "Yeah... she's a northern albino, haven't seen one before but I heard they were an Onus's best friend. Guess they were right."

He went into my room knowing a gigantic tiger was waiting for him. This guy had no sense of self-preservation.

I sighed.

And now I knew why I got Jazzy; another way my grandfather knew I was not normal. If the tiger killed me, I was human. If it didn't, I was Onus. Why was I not surprised? He would gamble with my life just to make sure.

All those years trying to convince people I was normal not knowing that the most important person was already certain that I wasn't.

"Anyway, we should start your training tomorrow." He said, leaning against the wall closest to me, uncomfortably close.

"I haven't even agreed to any training."

"As I said before; I'm sure my dad captured your brother, then most probably killed your father since we didn't and now, he might come after you." He counted on his fingers.

You didn't kill Abbu.

"Ah yes, he probably killed your grandfather too. I mean I have no proof, but it sounds like him."

"And so, I should trust his son." I said, deadpan. "Perfect logic."

He gave me a cheeky smile and slicked back his hair a little, still messed up from what I did to him. I probably looked just as flustered. This man was something else.

He looked rich, but his manners were not. New money. His hands were smooth, and his hair was overgrown so obviously no military training. He was lean, so maybe some exercise here and there, or maybe it was just how his body was. He didn't look like a terrorist... but then who did?

I started coming back my hair to vent my frustration with my hands when he came down to flatten the mass against my head. Before I could swat him away, the elevator opened at that second to... Tino.

"You're curly too." He chuckled to himself, perfectly oblivious to the furrowed brows and the tongue in cheek of the Prince of Spain who, despite his inability and inexperience, looked as though he could sumo wrestle his way through the Islander.

"Am I interrupting, your imperial majesty?" Tino asked his jaw clenched. His summer skies turning gray.

I bit the inside of my cheek. Fuck.

"No, not at all." Zabdi said, his hand outstretched to him. When it became clear Tino wasn't going to shake it, he put it in his pocket. He just shrugged it off. No shame, no offense. "Well then, I'll be seeing you tomorrow" He winked at me, and then I realized maybe he wasn't oblivious. Maybe Zabdi's every move was calculated. "Au revoir!"

And so, the mischievous son of a dictator pushed me out of the elevator none too gently and closed the doors, knowing he was no longer wanted.

The room immediately felt a few degrees colder.

"Tino-" I had my hands up in a pacifying gesture.

"You really weren't kidding when you said you haven't made a choice yet." Tino said, his eyes down, sidestepping me to get to the elevator. His hands in his pocket, his mask draping over his neck, he reached out for the down button.

"Tino." I grabbed his sleeve. "Hey Tino."

"Just send me home." He said, the first guy to ever ask that from me. His voice was small, barely a whisper. His frustration was apparent as he crushed a small green carnation, he brought for me inside his fist.

"No." Selfish. I cursed myself.

"Why?" He spat. "What's the point?" He ran his hand against his mask, adjusting it and turning away. "I came here because I..."

"What? What do you want from me?" I asked, actually asked. I wanted to know, and I wanted to give it to him.

He was the only one of all the tributes I met who actually felt real. I knew if I gave him anything of me, he'd be able to keep it. And yet I was not afraid of losing possession of myself if I were to be his. I knew that if the ones I met were a standard by which to expect all the others to be... then Tino was my only shot at being happy.

But I was his shot at a horrid life. I didn't know if I was that selfish.

"I came here because I... I liked you... because I never thought I'd have the privilege of liking you." But I'm Onus.

He vented; his sleeve still caught in between my fingers. "When I got the letter, I didn't know how to react, okay? Then when I got to the party, I realized I might have been important a few days ago but there, I was nothing. I am nothing. Compared to those people? I'm just a guy!"

"And I'm just..."

"I don't know who you are." He confessed, a sigh escaping him. "I feel like you're toying with me, but I don't have any right to be pissed because you haven't promised me anything. And I can't promise you anything because I have nothing to offer!" Tino pulled away. I couldn't hear that thing again. Nothing to offer.

He was the only one offering what I wanted.

I wished he wanted something other than me, for his own sake.

"Tino-"

"Just send me home." He pulled away, his voice cracking. I hurt him. He pulled his arm out of my fingers.

As he did, I closed my arms around his shoulders, keeping him there, just as Ilyaas did for me a week ago. "I'm not toying with you. I'm sorry I made you feel that I was."

I felt him melt against me, just as I did last Sunday.

Tino couldn't hold a grudge... And I was using that against him. I felt horrible.

He turned around to give me a hug. How easy it was for him to forget how he hated me.

And I found myself adjusting a little, since I was used to being held by anyone else aside from Ly. I hated myself.

"You and I both know I don't have a chance here."

"I determine that."

"So, I just have to deal with you being with the Islander and all the other men and your Malak." He said, his chest vibrating against my cheek.

I'm using him. I thought. I'm using him to be happy.

I was too messed up in the head then to think straight.

My brother was alive. He was alive and my crown was illegitimate. The islanders were worse than I thought, and my life and my country were in danger. They didn't kill him, but I killed innocents for him... more than once. I was Onus, and my grandfather knew. I should have been killed at birth and now I was sitting on the throne that condemned things like me, and rightly so.

And yet here I was, absorbing the warmth of a vacation's human form, not knowing if I was ready to even think of loving him, but promising that I would. If only he knew how much of a liability loving me was, he would probably learn to hate me as I hated myself.

Letting go of him would be better for both of us... but I couldn't do that. Why couldn't I do that?

I was freefalling... grappling on to any outstretched hand dumb enough to reach for me. His kind intentions made him think he would be able to pull me back up. I was pulling him down to his death... and he was letting me.

"If I choose to marry you, I will promise you loyalty. I will love you to the best of my ability. I will do all I can to make you happy, and if I can't... You can leave me." I whispered into his chest. "I want to be good for you. I want to be that girl in your head. I'm not what you think I am... But I want to be, and I will try."

His hand came to brush down my hair. Up and down, his palm and his thumb flattened my curly hair gently against my head. How was he so kind to me?

Because he barely knows you.

"But even if I marry you, you'll have to deal with my Malak." I pressed my forehead against his chest, my tiara scratching his chin, the blood making it look like rose gold. Finding the words to say in my scribbling brain, I chuckled. "He actually likes you, you know."

"Doesn't change the fact that you'll gain nothing from being with me if you choose to do so." That's what Ly told me. Both of them were wrong.

I paused. I already knew what to say to that. I'd practiced it hundreds of times after Monaco, after I ran away from the one person I had no doubt I loved. These words were for someone else, but I said them for him.

"I'll gain you."

I got it then, my escapism.

Tino was a reminder of something better, a watered-down version of my running-away. I was stuck here now, but he was my getaway... if only for a few hours.

×+×

Tino and I decided to go down to one of the many galleries of the house, as a reliving of the first time we met. It was past midnight at the least as I walked barefoot on the maroon carpet of the halls covered with portraits of my family.

I made sure to dodge every picture of me, but Tino found them anyway.

"You were a marshmallow, love." He pointed at a chubby five-year-old me in a rust red taffeta dress rendered in extreme realism.

I hid behind his arm, groaning. "Oh God. Not that one."

"I think I was invited to that birthday."

I bet he was. The first day of the week leading to my birthday, several artists would paint me staying still for five hours, and I'd wear the same thing to my party. It was tradition they said. They apparently didn't know a 6D Camera existed. Later then after the paint and ink dried, I was allowed to pick an image of me I liked the most.

I had terrible taste when I was five.

The older I got the more fragmented my image became. Impressionistic, then Surrealistic, then abstract. Until it didn't even look like I had shape. I liked those ones the most. I felt like them the most.

As we walked further into the hall of faces, I knew I had to change things in the gallery. I wanted to install VR images, immersive ports where I could dive into Van Gogh's Starry Night. Maybe Tino could help me with that renovation, I thought, if there wouldn't be a war. If I stay alive. I sighed. If I chose him.

"Can we go to the older ones?" I begged, squeezing his arm. "Come on."

"Your hair looks like cotton candy there." He chuckled as I pushed him to the other end of the gallery, seeing a two-year-old Lizaveta in crimson.

Heading to the portrait of Lesya at the very end of the gallery hall, we passed by the blank spaces of dark gray walls where my mother's images once hung. They were all gone now. Seeing all their likenesses, I realized Arabella only had one painting left - the one in my grandfather's old office - since I saw no other ever. Uncle Hassan was nowhere to be seen either.

In the years to come those spaces will be filled eventually.

What history remembers is determined by the monarch. I wondered how many names and faces have been erased.

I looked down when I passed the areas where my father's image was, and Tino didn't bring it up.

But then he nudged me.

"You look so alike." He said, nodding to the big portrait of him, my brother, leaning against the railing of the great staircase of Caserta. "Prince Kazimir."

I stayed silent, hoping he would pick up on my discomfort. "This is a Nabu." Tino continued. "The family's been one of your royal painting lines, yes?"

The Nabu art house. They were a prestigious family of artists. Some of my portraits were made by them as well. Their brushstrokes looked like glaze. If you looked closer, you would realize how the color shifted to the next with perfect gradation. You would never see lines in their work, just gradients.

I nodded. Pointing to the displaced paint at the gray side of the steps of the painting, I said "They write in Sumerian. That says"

"Ka...zimir Niko..lai" He straightened, knowing the rest. "-Arata Philip Eurasia. Your brother's name." He beamed at me, happy I looked impressed. "I took a lot of useless classes." He shrugged.

"Well, I don't read cuneiform so that's good that you did." I smiled at him. He was so perfect it unnerved me.

I pulled him away from the painting before he started talking more about my brother, hoping space between us and Kaz's heather eyes would grant me a breath. We walked a little more towards the portrait of Lesya I liked. I wondered if he would like it too since it was made by the same artisan family. Maybe that would take the subject off the table for a while.

"Um." He scratched the back of his head. "Hey, do you like the Islander or can I talk shit about him?" Tino pressed his lips in a sheepish smile, sincerely asking for permission.

"Shit away..." I snorted, trying to suppress a smile.

He chuckled, remembering the painting we just left of my brother at fifteen, a year before he 'died'. "The fascist had the audacity to dress like your brother at your ball." Tino said. "I think it's a bit insensitive... I mean you wouldn't have been crowned if it wasn't for him..." He was reluctant to continue his train of thought.

"You can say it. Dying." So much for avoiding it.

"I'm sorry." He shrugged. "But yeah... not just that, I think it's inconsiderate to remind you of something that might still be painful at a time when you're supposed to be happy."

"I didn't even notice it." I lied.

"I shouldn't have brought it up, then."

"It's fine." I lied again, brushing my thumb across the back of his hand, now held in mine.

We were closer now. I pulled his hand and ran towards the smallest painting of a queen in the room. She was not in regalia. The country was too poor from war then to afford such luxuries. Just a simple lavender dress, with her blazing red hair curled in ringlets.

"This is..."

He walked closer to it, squinting at the cuneiform again. "Lisa Annissa Eurasia." He frowned at me.

I blinked. "That's what it says?"

"Yup." He hovered his hands over the sticks and wedged shapes. "Lisa Annissa Eurasia."

"But... that's Queen Regent Lesya. Lesya Eurasia."

He nodded, recognizing the iconic face. "So why did the Nabu write that, then?" He raised his eyebrows at me.

Maybe he read it wrong. But before I could tell him that I didn't know, muffled running footsteps came barreling towards us. Even as I was turned away from the source of the sound, I knew who it was.

"Your Imperial Majesty, you are needed in parliament."