What If?

What If?
By Misha

Disclaimer- Not mine. They belong to someone else, I’m just borrowing them for a while and will return them unharmed.

Author’s Notes- My entry for this week’s Choices Creates: “What if”. I had a couple idea of what to write for this one, but this one just spoke to me. It’s a reflective Kenna piece that takes place from the period before Book One right up to the end of Book 3. 

Pairing- Minor Kenna/Dom, Kenna/Raydan, and Kenna/Diavolos

Rating- G

Summary- Over the years, there were many times Kenna wondered “what if”. 

Words- 573

For as long as she could remember, Kenna kept wondering what if?

What if I had been born in the village instead of the castle? She was grateful for her privilege, but sometimes she envied the simple lives the girls in the village lived. She felt suffocated under the rules and expectations of royal life.

What if my future was mine to decide? She decided that if she hadn’t been born a princess, she’d be a warrior. She would much rather be fighting battles and defending the kingdom than sitting in a castle all day listening to people telling her what to do.

What if my heart was mine away? She loved Dominic, but she knew that she couldn’t have him. They could never be more than friends because it didn’t matter who she loved. Love wasn’t part of her future, duty was. Her fate was to be married off to some king’s son, no matter how much she might wish otherwise.

What if the attack had never happened? After her mother is killed and she is forced to flee Stormholt, she is overwhelmed with longing for the life she once found constraining and rigid. A life of an arranged marriage and the rigors of diplomacy didn’t seem so bad now that she was in exile mourning both her mother and her loss of her innocence.

What if I don’t go back? Sometimes she got overwhelmed by the enormous task that lay ahead of her and she dreamed about running away. Of just leaving everything behind and starting over as someone else. But she knew she could never do it. She owed it to her people, and to her mother’s memory, to reclaim Stormholt and liberate it from Luther.

What if I fail? Every time she got another step close to reclaiming her kingdom, she remembered what was at stake and how much she still had to accomplish. Failing meant leaving her people in the hands of a brutal dictator and that wasn’t an option.

What if I put my own needs first, just this once? Raydan was irresistible. Dangerous, seductive, loyal. He was the kind of man she had been told to avoid. But that didn’t stop her from wanting him and there was no one stopping from her saying yes.

What if we can’t win? Azura was powerful. The most powerful being Kenna had ever encountered. How could they possibly defeat her? Yet, what would happen to Stormholt, to the Five Kingdoms, if they didn’t? Somehow she had to find a way. Failure wasn’t an option.

What if I let myself love him? She knew Diavolos wasn’t the man for her. There was too much standing in the way and yet… She had never wanted anything more. Would it really be that bad to let herself fall in love with? Could they put aside the bad blood between their families and be happy together?

What if he had sided with his father? Kenna knows she would not have survived that betrayal. She might have survived physically, but it would have broken her heart and shattered her soul. Because they both belonged to him.

But he hadn’t betrayed her. He had stood with her, fought with her and she knew he always would. No might have been could shake her faith in him.

Maybe it was time to stop asking what if and to start thinking about what was, what could be.

• End