^^ The Dagger King

A boy with violet hair, the color of a ripe plum, lets out a sigh as he dips his spoon into his parfait. He takes a bite of the creamy, sweet dessert, then melts his spoon down until it's a liquid blob of metal.

He molds it to form a sharp dart which he twirls it between his fingers.

The Dagger King smiles lazily, and finally looks up from his parfait.

"So what's your move?" he asks. Across from the table is a boy with silver hair and emerald eyes brimming with tears. One of his tears drops onto the chessboard in front of him as his shackled, shaking hands hover over the chess pieces, unsure what to do.

"Ugh, please don't cry. You're so ugly when you cry," the purple haired boy says.

"Please, please just let me go home. I have a family," sniffles the boy with green eyes.

"Eve, it's your move. Don't make me bored," the Dagger King firmly replies with a dangerous glint in his eyes.

"My- my name is Lucas," Lucas stutters.

The dart flies out of his hand and stabs the green eyed boy in the chest. He lets out a scream and blood drips down from the wound, staining his white shirt. Lucas has several other darts lodged in his torso and one in his shoulder.

"Eve, I'm getting bored. You still haven't finished your turn," says the Dagger King. The boy picks up his knight with shaky hands, and takes the Dagger King's pawn. He smiles at this victory, taking the Dagger King's piece off of the chessboard.

The Dagger King's black metal rook moves forward on its own toward the edge of the board. Lucas makes another move, capturing one of the Dagger King's pawns again.

The Dagger King captures Lucas' knight with his own knight.

"No! No! Please, your Majesty! Please don't do this!" pleads Lucas. The knight the Dagger King captured begins melting, and it turns into a dart.

"What did I say about crying?" says the Dagger King frowning. The dart flies forward stabbing Lucas in the neck. He slumps forward, choking on his own blood.

"Aw, now I'll never no who will the game," pouts the Dagger King.

"You played too hard as usual your Majesty," says a blue haired man who seems to be in his late twenties. The aide bows to the Dagger King in greeting. He continues, "We're running out of children for you to play with. Now many are changing the hair color of their kids if they have silver hair or their eye color if they have red eyes, out of fear you're searching for them."

The purple haired boy lets out a sigh, "Well, all of them are poor substitutes for her anyway. How are the plans to bring her to me going?" he asks.

"As you can imagine it's been quite difficult. She has these two f*cking monsters guarding her all the time. Not to mention how adept she is at killing even when we manage to get her alone. Besides, even if we were to abduct her, it could very well start a war," explains the aide.

He hesitates, looking nervously at the Dagger King, "Your Majesty, if you don't mind me asking, why are you so interested in Eve?"

The Dagger King gets a faraway, dreamy look in his eyes, "Grey, do you believe in love at first sight?" he dips his finger in the pool of blood seeping onto the table from Lucas' corpse. "Well it's like that," he explains while he writes Eve's name in blood on the white tablecloth.

He continues, furrowing his brow as if working out a difficult math problem, "We have to get her. She needs to be here with me," he looks up and smiles, painting a heart around Eve's name in blood, "After all, a fairytale princess can't be without her prince."

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"Eve! Eve! Are you listening?" asks my father.

"Yes!" I say, paying attention to my father again.

He sighs, places his elbows on his desks, "Ahem... so as I was saying, the crown prince of the Menda Empire is coming today. He's a good marriage candidate for you, so I expect you to be on your best behavior. It's important you don't blow this, because a joining of our families could be very beneficial," he explains.

"Alright, alright. I already said I'll be on behavior befitting of his highass," I reply.

"His name is his HighDaemion Fognod the Third," he sharply corrects me, "This juvenile behavior is exactly what I'm afraid of."

"I've told you countless times, I don't want to be a queen!" I tell him. My plan is to flee the Callisto dukedom with a ton of cash, buy a house, and live out the rest of my days in luxury after I save my sister. Being a crown princess would just cause me to have more enemies and attention, which would make it harder to achieve my goal.

"It doesn't matter what you want!" he shouts. He buries his head in his hands, "Nobody can just do whatever they want. Everyone has to bow to somebody. Except the King. But, it's all about trying to bow to the least amount of people as possible. The less people you have to bow to, the more you get what you want."

"I don't want to marry some weird person I don't even know just for power!" I exclaim.

"What does it even matter? It's a political marriage, plenty of nobles have them. If you don't love him, just get a consort. Many queens have them. That's exactly what I was saying, the more power you have, the more you get to do what you want," he says.

"But I would bring a lot of enemies on myself if I became crown princess," I protest.

"You already have tons of enemies since they all expect you to be crown princess anyway," he says. He leans back in his chair and sighs, "I don't say this often, but I love you. You're strong and smart. Even though you aren't the most obedient daughter at times, you've made the Callisto family proud. You've already gained some loyal followers who have and will always sacrifice their life for you. You have everything it takes to be a queen, and I just don't want you to waste your potential."

He gets up from his chair, and looks out the window, "I know you don't want to be a queen, but as much as I love you, you have a duty to this family. We all do," he turns back to me with a sad look in his eyes, "You know when I married your mother, it was for love. She was only a maid with no political power. My father arranged for me to marry a count's daughter which would have given us more financial power."

"However, I wasn't satisfied with that. I ended up eloping, which made my father strip me of my successor title. I didn't care about becoming Duke, but I had to. When he took my successor title away, it caused a power struggle. I had no choice but to kill all my brothers and father or I'd be killed myself. I loved some of them too, but I had no choice. Just like you have no choice. The Callisto family is so powerful that we now rival the imperial family."

He sits back down into his chair, "Do you know what that means?" he asks.

"It means that we are a threat to the imperial family," I respond.

"Exactly. We have three options now. We either be crushed by the imperial family which would probably result in all of our deaths, join the imperial family by means of marriage, or surpass and crush the imperial family," he says.

"Do you mean revolting?" I ask.

"Yes, that's precisely what I mean. You are clearly dead set in not joining the imperial family, so that leaves rebelling against them," he states, "However, we need more financial and military support to overpower them. If you were to marry Menda's crown prince though, it would strengthen the alliance we already have with them, and give us the necessary power to defeat the imperial family, something they've also wanted to do for a long time."

I sigh, and run my fingers through my hair in frustration. What he's saying makes some sense. It seems the original Eve had no choice but to chase the Jackson, the crown prince, since it would be the least bloody choice. Still it was all for nothing since the marriage with him fails because he falls in love with the female lead, Helen, and the rebellion also failed.

If you look at it from her perspective, she's the hero, and the protagonist is the villain, who forced her family to have to rebel or die, costing countless lives that could have been saved had the prince just stayed in the political marriage with her.

But, she lost the power struggle, and so she's the villainess, because the winners write history, and her perspective isn't considered.

"Alright, I promise to try to make this work," I say. I feel guilty since I actually plan to run away, and it will ruin all his plans. It may ruin the Callisto family, resulting in the deaths of all of them.

But, like my father, I have someone I love more, and I'd trade the Callisto family's lives to have a life with my sister here, just like when my father traded his brothers' lives for marriage with my mother.

If I marry the Menda prince, it may be enough to change the plot of the story, saving me and the Callistos, but my sister will still be separated from me and struggling in my world.

Maybe that makes me a worse villain than the original Eve, since she at least she stayed and fought, trying to save the most lives, instead of running away like a coward regardless of the chaos left in her wake.

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