Chosen Bride of the Seven Dark Princes

Mattheus strode forward, seeing nothing but raging red splotches and streaks in front of his eyes.

"Oh my gosh! Matt!" Poppy yelled out and jumped up from her seated position at the table. In seconds, she had run up to Mattheus with arms open wide.

"How in the world did you know I was here?" She laughed and threw herself into his arms.

He stood perfectly still as she hugged him, trying to control his raging emotions which were threatening to explode from his body. He didn't know whether to be furious or euphoric.

With great restraint, he wrapped his arms around her and gave her back an awkward brotherly pat.

It wasn't because he didn't want to do more than that. It was because he was afraid if he did, he would end up crushing her into his body and kiss her until they both fainted from lack of air.

"Come! There's someone here I want you to meet!" She laughed with excitement and pulled at his hand, leading him towards the table at the center of the gazebo.

Growling with internal rage, Mattheus followed Poppy as she pulled on his arm, rushing him to get to the table where the elf was sitting at.

"Ash! Look who showed up!!!" Poppy yelled out with cheer. "This is my closest family member, Matt."

She turned to him with bright eyes. "Matt, this is Ash, my new fencing friend I met here on Marakaran."

Matthew fixed his eyes on the pale blond man with the pale blue eyes and the pale pale skin. His name suited him quite well. What an ash!

"I'm glad you're here Matt, because I need your help." Poppy chattered on, oblivious to the probing glances the two men threw at each other.

Without waiting to see if he was even willing to help her, Poppy pulled him down and made him sit next to her.

"Here is a fountain pen. And here are a stack of invitations." She was already prattling on and on without even bothering to see if he was listening to what she was saying.

Of course Matthew was listening, but he was also wondering what in the world she was asking him to do.

In a matter of seconds, Mattheus had figured it out.

"You see how Candace signed this first invitation?" She pointed to the one that was on the table in the middle of the stacks and stacks of unsigned invitations.

"Try to copy the way she signs as closely as possible. We have thousands of invitations to sign, so do the best you can, but not too 'best'. We need to get this done as quickly as possible."

Across the table, Mattheus could see Ash struggling not to laugh.

It made him even more furious, but he could not explode in front of Poppy. She had done nothing wrong. She had merely asked him to do some trivial thing to help her out.

Mattheus sat holding onto the pen, staring at the invitation. What in the world had just happened? He had come here for the expressed purpose of—

"What are you waiting for?" Poppy interrupted his thoughts. "We have to send these invitations off by the end of the day. Start signing!"

Mattheus nodded and began signing.

As he began copying Candace's flowery signature, he pressed his lips together and tried not to think about all the official court documents that were still waiting for him to sign on his desk. Some of those had to do with the governance of Emporia and some had to do with the governance of pirate space.

He had abandoned all that work to fly half-way across the galaxy to this world just to sit here and forge some woman's signature on thousands of wedding invitations.

Worse yet, he was sitting in the middle of a gazebo across from a pale blond elf who had not stopped making goopy eyes at his woman!

As the male elf and the merman sat forging Candace's signature on the invitations, Poppy called the attendants to bring cucumber and BLT* sandwiches along with lemonade and club soda. Ash had made his preference known and Poppy already knew what Mattheus liked.

As for Poppy herself, she wasn't too picky of an eater and could comfortably flutter between the elven vegetarian preferences and the bacon-lover pirate king.

As they worked, the red haired princess kept up her non-stop chatter about nonsensical bits of news and tidbits of gossip to the two stoic silent men sitting alongside her.

"You know, the two of you have really nice looking longhand script. I can write, of course, but my handwriting is not very pretty." She wrinkled her nose.

"I remember my brother Byron telling me something about this." Poppy laughed, shaking her head.

"Hmm? What was that he said?" Ash prompted her gently.

She raised her eyebrows and gave him an incredulous look.

"He told me that he once spent an entire summer as a child with a script tutor doing nothing but sign his name according to the prescribed methodology so that when he signed important documents, it wouldn't look like chicken scratch."

Ash and Mattheus both burst out laughing. It was so very true. They had both been subjected to the same rigorous scriptwriting training as young Crown Princes.

"You two are laughing, but I assure you, it's no joke!" She grinned. "I wonder what other strange oddities that he had to learn to become Crown Prince."

Of course, neither could tell her of the various things they had to endure as Crown Princes so they both wisely kept their mouths shut and their heads down, scribbling out Candace's name, over and over and over.

By the time lunch arrived, the three of them had cleared out a fourth of the invitations. Those that were done were immediately hand-carried to the delivery pods and sent off to the most far-flung places like Avalia, where delivery time was at least three days.

"I'm glad to see you were able to arrive safely to Marakaran, Matt." Ash smiled as he ate his cucumber sandwich.

"Thank you." Mattheus picked up a BLT sandwich. "The space around this world has stabilized quite a bit due to Slate's warships prowling everywhere."

"I hope you are okay with BLT. I know you like them." Poppy smiled.

Mattheus nodded, feeling a streak of pride that Poppy knew his preferences and was taking care of him without needing to ask.

"It's interesting that bacon looks and tastes like bacon everywhere I go, from here to Emporia, and even pirate space."

Poppy laughed. "Pirate space? I thought you were still trying to stabilize Emporia."

"I was. Still am." He bit into the sandwich. Had he not felt this urgent need to be with her, he would be on Emporia still, trying to keep it from crumbling into hundreds of warring nations.

"I know you have been invited to the wedding but it's two weeks away. What are you doing here so early?" Poppy asked as she sipped her mixed drink.

The fortunate happenstance of being around one man who liked lemonade and another who liked sparkling water meant she could drink sparkling lemonade.

"I came because I was worried about you." Mattheus admitted grudgingly.

Poppy hid her smile behind the BLT she was munching on. It was so sweet that he worried about her.

Ash looked up, his crystal blue eyes gleamed. "She is here with all seven of her brothers and a new sister-in-law. What is there to worry about?"

Mattheus put down his sandwich and looked around.

"I see nobody here but you and Poppy. Had I not arrived, it would have been just you and Poppy. That's what I am worried about."

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A BLT is a sandwich consisting of bacon lettuce and tomato slices.

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