“Uncle!” Samara exclaimed.

“Uncle?” Leonidas echoed, feeling the air move in his lungs instead of dying in his throat.

“Uncle Bastian, you came!” she continued, pleased and excited all at once.

Leonidas took a few more breaths.

Of course, Samara’s God had not orchestrated their escape, given him a divine bow and a furious tiger with the strength of an angel to let them die.  If it was Samara’s Uncle come to their rescue, all would be well.

King Bastian put up two fingers, ordering lines of soldiers into the throne room Leonidas and Samara had just vacated.  After issuing his orders, he turned to his niece, “Samara, are you hurt?”

“No.  No.  I’m fine,” she insisted.  “This is Leonidas.  He saved me from Ignis, the rebel.”  She explained as much as she could of their story.  How she had been married to the previous king for eleven days, staying with Leonidas’s family, and how she came to be caged with the rebels.

Leonidas was very interested in hearing that part, but she was interrupted by a reporting soldier who brought word from the throne room.  “My Lord King, the rebels have fled.  The false king and all his generals are dead.”

“Dead? How?” King Bastian questioned.

“They were slain by a marksman.  The arrows are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.  One of my men attempted to pull one free from the chest of a lesser general.  The arrow disappeared in his hands.”

“Is that so?” King Bastian pondered, looking at the bow in Leonidas’s hands.  “Are you the marksman?”

Leonidas nodded.

King Bastian led his men into the throne room, but when they arrived, all the arrows, except for the one in Ignis’ chest, were gone.  King Bastian knelt in front of the dead man and looked at the arrow without touching it.  He pointed to the orange feathers like flames that were used in the fletching.  “Tiger feathers,” he observed.  “If you look at the shaft, it says in God’s language, ‘My shaft shall come before you.’  Leonidas, you have been blessed by my God.”  Then he turned to Leonidas and Samara and smiled, “Isn’t that convenient?”

***

Alone with King Bastian, Leonidas stood in the royal chambers of the palace.  King Bastian’s servants scuttled about, turning the room from Ignis’ to Bastian’s.

Ignoring them, Samara’s uncle took a seat on a plush red chair and offered a lesser chair to Leonidas.  “Let us talk and be like family,” King Bastian said easily.

Leonidas sat but glanced at the servants.

“Please, pay them no attention.  They do not speak your language,” the King explained.  “We have much to discuss.  You are going to marry my niece and turn her into a queen.  Or rather, I should say, I will make her a queen and she will make you a king.  Does that suit you?”

Leonidas did not know what to say.  He already knew that a life like his father’s was not his fate.  He had seen that path burn up and blow away like smoke, but to become the king himself seemed like too much too suddenly.

“I… I didn’t rescue her to become the king,” Leonidas tried to make clear.

The King laughed.  “You think you can marry a princess and become something other than a prince, something other than a king?”  He wagged a finger at Leonidas.  “Humility is good.  Always show this side to my niece.  Always show her humility.  Get on your knees for her.  Stay there… But do not let others know that she is your queen and you are her subject.”

“What are you saying?” Leonidas asked cagily.

King Bastian placed his chin in his palm and looked at Leonidas with an amused expression.  He cast his spare arm out to point toward the city.  “Be their king.  They need a king—a strong man who has killed giants, who has talked with God, who has fought with a holy tiger by his side, a man who is an army of one who can vanquish all foes with his divine bow.  But to my niece, get on your knees… and stay there.  Lick her boots, kiss her feet, and remember forever who it is I love and who I will bring an army to protect.”

Leonidas understood.  He nodded.  Then he dropped to his knees and kissed the ring on King Bastian’s middle finger.

***

Leonidas had no army.  God had given him one.  He had been the highest-ranked military man left by the old regime, but he had no connections to royalty.  God gave him a connection.  He hated the old king but had no thoughts to replace him.  Yet now, he would become a king.

***

Everything happened so quickly, that it was hard to keep up.

The story in the streets was that Leonidas had killed the rebel army single-handedly.  That was not true.  Though just as he had before, he had slain the new generals and the new king.  The remaining rebels were quickly snuffed out by the troops of King Bastian.  A new army loyal to Leonidas was recruiting.  They needed new soldiers on the wall.

King Bastian said Leonidas earned the throne through force of arms.  He sent a proclamation throughout the land inviting the old King’s sons and daughters to return to the capital.  He said that if any of them wished to challenge Leonidas’s claim to the throne, they were welcome to challenge him in a duel.  Otherwise, to stay quiet.  If they wanted to be the King of Lower Mirracarda, they had to come forward within the next moon, or they could never legally call themselves a prince or a princess again.  In the future, anyone claiming such a thing would be executed.

With the stories of Leonidas in battle circulating, no one would come.  The sons and daughters of the old King were afraid to come forward.  Leonidas would be unchallenged.

King Bastian was annexing their kingdom and making it part of his empire.  He was calling Leonidas the King, but it was because he needed a man in the palace.  He would rule, but only on the terms of King Bastian.  In the absence of her uncle, Samara would rule, but Leonidas was the face of it.

Leonidas finally understood what the tiger said when he told him that he would never rule Samara.  Slowly, he understood it all.

He had been a coward.

Leonidas could have been the king of a kingdom of his own.  He had squandered the opportunity.

When he rescued Samara from the rebels, he had exactly the same resources as he had the morning after the first coup.  He had a wife of the former king, his own self, God’s blessing, and a tiger.  Whether God’s blessing had been in the form of a divine weapon or just the pressing of Samara’s hand to his forehead, it was the same power.  It was the same sort of blessing.  He could have taken the capital back himself.  Then, when Samara’s King Uncle arrived, he would have been prepared to greet him on different terms.

As it was, he would never get independence from King Bastian.  He would loom over Leonidas’s shoulder like a vulture who choked down dead men’s bones.

If Leonidas hadn’t been afraid… If he hadn’t thought in such a small way, he would have listened to Samara.  She said their fates were intertwined on the mountain.  She was already in love with him.  She could already see what was in store for him.  She knelt before him on the road to his father’s house.  She knew he would be king.  Even then, he could have turned back, returned to the capital, made a plan, and been the man he should have been.  There were six months' worth of time when he could have turned everything on its head, but he did nothing.  His mind had been full of small thoughts as he reduced Samara to the exact shape of her skin and bones, never once seeing her as more.  Everyone told him she was the daughter of a god and of royal birth.  He did not listen or understand.  Not even when she used God’s power as if it were her own.  Instead, he thought of his own purity and what he thought that purity ought to give him.

It was disgusting.

He had not been pure.

As a soldier, he had been waiting for someone else to raise the banner.  There was no banner because he was the one who was supposed to raise it in defense of the people in the capital.  Not for himself, but for others.

He thought of the kind of ruler he would like to support.  He didn’t think of becoming that ruler himself.

His mind had been so small.

Yet, all was not lost.  The Lord God of Samara had not cast him off entirely.  The bow did not disappear like the arrows.  Instead, he was given a wife who knew God’s paths.

Leonidas spoke his wedding vows to Samara, and the moment she became his wife, she gave him more love than he had ever known.  Nay, more love than he had ever seen any other woman give her husband.  Her commitment to his comfort and safety was so total that he heard soldiers whisper about her.  Leonidas knew a lot about whispering soldiers.  He used to be one of them.

They said, “I wonder if I can marry a woman who loves me that much?"  She would do anything for him.”

“She should open a school.”

“Is that what they used to teach in the old harem?”

“No,” Leonidas interrupted.  “It wasn’t.”

As they settled the kingdom, King Bastian left more and more in the hands of Leonidas and Samara.  She would watch and then slip Leonidas her advice, given sweetly, it could not be ignored.

“Promote that man,” she would whisper as he organized the new troops.

Leonidas glanced over his shoulder.  “You’re asking me to make him a general?  I have already sent for Ciphas.”

“You were going to make him a general?” she asked her new husband slowly.

He nodded.

“Don’t.  He’s mine.  I’ll need him with me,” she commanded, undercutting Leonidas’s choices.

“What for?” he asked in confusion.

She touched her belly in reply, and Leonidas took a step back before forgetting everything he was supposed to be considering and pulling Samara off her feet and spinning her like the whole of the cosmos had suddenly become as small as two people in each other’s arms.  As he slowed down, the universe expanded to include everything around them.

There was so much to learn.  He needed to learn to love like her, have faith like her, and be willing to give up what he wanted for something better.

Like other things Leonidas was suddenly understanding, he also understood that nothing had been his fault when his past marriage arrangements always fell through.  Nothing had been wrong with him.  Those arrangements did not work out because those were not the paths God had laid out for him.  His path was one of power.

He hadn’t sought power, but once he had it… He had the hateful harem burned down.

He set the flame himself and watched it burn.  The smoke rose in the air like a sweet savor, and Leonidas knew the whole kingdom would be blessed during his reign.  There would be no harems.  He would have only Samara.

She stood next to him, and he clasped her fingers between his.  Their wrists grazed, and he thought for a moment that their pulses and hearts beat together as one.

At that moment, out of the flames of the burning building, bounded the tiger.

Leonidas had not seen him since he had attacked the soldiers in the throne room.  Now, he leaped from the flames like such flames conjured holy beasts and approached Leonidas like an old friend.

“Have you come to change my fate?” Leonidas asked the tiger as he and Samara greeted the holy predator on their knees.

The tiger yawned, but Leonidas heard him in his head.  “I’ve come to confirm your fate!”

Leonidas bent and, from his knees, he put his arms around the tiger.  “If you’re a sign of God’s favor, will you stay?”

“Sort of,” the animal said wordlessly as Leonidas hugged him like he was a person.

When Leonidas pulled away, he saw the fierce face of the tiger, like a mask of black and white with piercing blue eyes that saw through everything.  Having such an ally by his side was terrifying… For his enemies.  For him?

He turned to Samara, her red hair fell around her face like unquenchable flames, with her bright eyes observing everything.  Perhaps she was just as dangerous as the tiger but in a different way.

“What shall I call you?” Leonidas asked the tiger.

“As if I’d let you call me by my real name!” the tiger laughed, stretching his jaws wide to show his fantastic teeth.  “Give me a nickname.”

“Feathers,” Leonidas decided with a snap of his fingers.

“We’re going to name the tiger ‘Feathers’?” Samara asked at Leonidas’s side.  She didn’t seem to hear the tiger’s side of the conversation.

Leonidas stroked the tiger’s side.  “It has the word ‘eater’ inside it if you play with the letters.”

“Oh!” Samara exclaimed.  “If Feathers stays, what will we feed him?”

Leonidas laughed.  A tiny question like that was beneath his notice.  There would always be something that needed eating.

At the end of the story, Ciphas held Leonidas and Samara’s daughter in his arms.  The tiger, Feathers, yawned as he napped in the sun.  Leonidas looked out onto his kingdom.  He made a list of what needed to be done next... And Samara?  She kept her eyes on God’s path and, in her eyes, nothing was ever brighter.

The End.