My charge, Anastasia, always says, “People do crazy things when they are in love.” Her impromptu trips to Earth turned her into a hopeless romantic. She always brings back these hologram movies where the girl is stuck in this impossible situation, and her true love can save her.

I’ve always assured her that her husband to be would cry and run away before saving her ungrateful behind. He signed a contract. An organ in his chest didn’t compel him to be with her. Ana would laugh and say, “Someone will make you understand one day. ”

Now, I’m sitting in a dungeon with rusted chains binding my wrist. The room is dark, and my nose stings with the scent of salt mixed with urine. The guards chained me up like a bad dog of the Lunar Navy, and the only way to tell the passage of time is the growing cobweb in the corner of my cell, which covers the entire back wall of my cell since my arrest this morning.

It doesn’t inspire me to break out into a love ballad as I hear footsteps coming down the hall. I can only imagine that it is my executioner coming to escort me to my fate. I choked myself as I tried to imagine the rope digging into my neck as the guards kicked my feet out from underneath me.

Starlight came in from the windows across my cell. Would I even have time to pray that it would end soon, or will I be one of the lucky ones whose neck snaps instantly? I peered down the dark hallway. This was one of the last faces I would see. I would memorize every inch. The slim figure walked toward me, their eyes shielded by a large red hood. I rolled my eyes; the slim figure tucked their pants into dress shoes. The shoes bent in front as if they were a few sizes too big for them. They rolled up the sleeves of their red robe as if they were a child playing dress up with their mother’s clothes. There was the unmistakable dark brown hair of my little sister Mila.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as I rubbed my forehead to keep away the ache I could feel starting in the middle of my forehead. It was dumb, but I’d rather not spend my last few hours of life without a headache. I would have a broken neck in a few hours, anyway.

“I came with Taiki,”  She said like she was talking about a new pair of shoes she ordered.

“What about school?” I asked, worried that Taiki helped her ditch school again. My mind filled with images of Mila dressed in clothes that resembled rags hanging off of her body while the men salivated over her as if she were a snack. The men starved.

“Hideki, are you listening to me?” Mila’s voice cut through the sea of dirt-caked fingers, “Hideki,” Mila said as she shook the rusted bars of my cell.

“What?” I said as I tried to ignore the throbbing pain that seemed to grow with each breath.

Mila rolled green her eyes, and I smiled. She looked so much like our mother. “I don’t know what she sees in you; everything will be fine, just go with it.” She huffed throwing up her hood again as the sound of distant drums echoed throughout the jail. “Well, that’s my cue, don’t mess this up,” Mila whispered before she walked away.

I fell to the ground as my legs gave out. No final words for your big brother? Mila walked out with the thud of a large metal door, but I swore I saw her shoulders slump a little.

The next thing I know I’m tossed over someone’s shoulder and carried out of the dungeon. The only sound being the rattling of my shackles that echoed off of the stone tunnel that led to the front of the palace.I saw hundreds of people looking at the top of the palace’s stone stairs.

“You’ll have to walk the rest of the way, pretty boy.” My guard said as he put me down, but was kind enough to steady me by yanking on my shackles.

I looked forward as they played the typical execution music you would see in movies on Earth. I guess the Queen thought it would be the last gift to my charge.

I scanned the crowd from the corner of my eye for a puffy ponytail, and a pair of warm brown eyes when a tomato hit me in the side of the face. The sticky juice ran down my cheek. I heard someone yell, “Maybe I’ll do a little deep star diving into your pirate girl’s caves.” The crowd laughed, and I cursed Dria for putting a light coat of moon oil on the rim of the shackles, so my powers didn’t work.

I had to settle for imagining how good it would feel to rip that man’s throat out and watch the mob scurry away as his blood ran the streets. I smiled to myself as my trusty guard pushed me up the stone steps. A low chuckle escaped from his mouth, his hot breath stale with alcohol as he slid up next to me, and whispered, “Only the best for Queen Dria’s boy.”  

My eyes felt like they would explode as I looked in front of me at a wooden structure polished to perfection. It looked like a clock tower with a large blade that sparkled in the light reflecting off of the stars in the sky. My face went bone white as the guards pushed me to my knees. My body, numb as they shoved my hands, and head through the appropriate holes at the bottom.

Then my guard stood up and read from a scroll with the letters D.G written in the elegant sapphire script .The letters sat perched on a golden crescent moon with an amethyst star hanging off of its tip.     

The guard’s voice booms as he read, “Hideki Niche Geneomene, You stand accused of aiding the escape of Captain Julian Coventina, wanted an enemy of Her Majesty, Queen Alexandria Geneomene.” I hear a rustle in the crowd as someone tried to push their way to the front. “Any last words?” The guard asked, his fat fingers gripped the handle.

“Long live the Pirate King, wherever he may be,” I said smiling as a curvy young woman pushed her way to the front. Her brown heart-shaped face streaked with a mixture of sweat and tears. She wore a long rose-colored gown with dirt caked at the bottom, and her bare feet visible. She had her curly black hair pulled back with silk rose bow. A muffled sob was the last sound I heard before everything went black. 

Love makes you do crazy things, but was it worth it? Ask me in millennia or two.