"No, I don't need to think. It's just that, to be honest, I expected you to simply present me with a fait accompli. Or write to your father without telling me at all, and then Lord Ozai would be the one to announce our engagement."
"Perhaps that's what the Fire Princess would have done. But there's also Azula the girl. And I still haven't heard your answer..."
"You already know what it is..."
"Damn it, can you just say the words?!" the lady flared ever so slightly, blue flames enveloping her for an instant.
"All right." I dropped to one knee and took the princess's hand. "Azula, I love you!" And... it wasn't a lie, whatever else you might say. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman with a will of steel. Sure, she had one hell of a temper, and I had a feeling we'd be arguing and fighting often and with gusto, but it would be foolish to deny that I liked this lady a hell of a lot. The "catlike" portrait had kind of hinted at that... "Become my wife!"
"There, now that's how it should be." The princess nodded in satisfaction, though her eyes did dart somewhere up and to the left. "Completely against etiquette and protocol, but to the Pits with etiquette!"
"And now I haven't heard your answer..."
"You already know what it is." Now the princess's smile radiated smug superiority. And the unmistakable satisfaction of a Prank Well Played.
"Using my own methods against me is underhanded! And cheating!"
"What can I say? You're a terrible influence on me." She continued smiling smugly. "But, I suppose..." And now she was drawing out the dramatic pause. "I accept."
"Finally." Springing back to my feet, I reached for the girl and pulled her into my arms.
Training was over, our relationship had been sorted out, so a few kisses were exactly what the occasion called for. The firebender responded enthusiastically and threw herself into the process, this time without triggering any phantom sensations of unreality or burns.
It still gave me one hell of a case of the jitters, my heart galloping wildly while my hormones battered away what remained of my common sense, trying to drown out the sensations coming from my lips and palms beneath a flood of emotion, but it was still just an ordinary kiss... As ordinary as your first real kiss with the queen of the world who had just said "yes" to you could possibly be. And in Azula's case, that title was practically a statement of fact.
Besides, there was one other little fact keeping me from losing myself completely in the moment—the realization that the better I performed during the kiss, the better the girl's mood would be... which meant discussing Suki's situation would be much easier.
Sure, that too was apparently perfectly in keeping with tradition, and the warrior herself had said as much, but we still needed to talk about it and resolve the potential problem right away. Hmm. Perhaps it was a good thing we hadn't left the training grounds yet. I had a suspicion our "debate" might get genuinely heated.
***
I was wrong. And for once, being wrong was actually pleasant. In the sense that my cautious attempt to test the waters resulted in an approving, "Yes, a good choice. She's strong, and her status as a Kyoshi Warrior will give you, as prince consort, additional credibility in the Earth Kingdom." And... that was basically it.
No, really, that was all.
She looked like if I'd told her I was also planning to take Toph as a concubine, she would've just nodded approvingly again! Like, "Of course! The girl is an extremely powerful bender. And the sole heiress of one of the wealthiest men in the world." Or something along those lines.
And while I understood that this was normal for the Fire Nation in particular and this world in general—I'd personally brought pretty concubines back from the North for Lord Ozai, and my own father was hardly a monk—it was one thing to understand all that in the abstract and quite another to see Azula react that way! The very same girl whose entire demeanor screamed that you should expect the fiercest, most intense possessiveness imaginable from her. It made my head spin. Literally!
Anyway, I had no idea how I made it back to the airship after revelations like that. I only more or less came to my senses in the mess hall, where Iroh poured me some of his precious White Dragon tea, practically tearing it away from his own heart.
"Yeah, thanks." I nodded.
"You don't look so good," Zuko observed, his arm already habitually linked with Mai's. "Like you fought some horrible monster and then found out you'd been sentenced to death."
"Actually," Azula folded her arms beneath her chest, "we were simply training, and afterward I decided he was going to marry me!"
"Kh—kha—khgh..." The poor Fire Lord's brother choked on his tea.
"And he agreed?" Ty Lee leaned forward eagerly.
"Of course he agreed," Azula replied majestically. Though she did close her eyes and very deliberately avoided looking in my direction.
"Weeell..." The prince looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "That's pretty much what I sa—ow! What was that for?" The guy rubbed his ribs where a sharp elbow had just struck him.
(End of Chapter)
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