Three hours.

It had been exactly three hours and the rain didn't seem like it was going to end in a minute, not when it was still raining cats and dogs, the wind was a lot too, Anne-Marie could literally hear Ivanka's gritting teeth from behind her as she shivered and rubbed her arms profusely to create heat, not that it was helping. Aiden's bodyguard was cold too, especially since he had given up his jacket to Anne-Marie to keep her warm, thanks to Ivanka constantly eyeing him to until he finally did.

They knew how important it was for her not to get a cold. The queen wasn't going to let them keep their heads. The cold was the least of Anne-Marie's problems however, it was him, Aiden.

Three long hours and he still stood there, under the rain, as firm as a tree, not wavering for a second. His entire body was wet and he had water constantly dripping from him from hair to toe. It was his only way, the only way he could think of to get through to the elders and he was not going to step an inch away from the rain until they gave him an audience.

Elijah was right behind him too after a failed attempt to beg him to join the rest in the shelter. Anne-Marie and the rest still felt so cold even under the protection of the roof but what about them? Only God knew how cold they must have been.

"He's still here," Anne-Marie could hear some of the villagers whisper as they peeped through tiny spaces from their windows.

"Is he really not going to leave?"

"What if he gets a cold? Aren't we going to be in trouble with the king?"

"The prince is still here."

"What are we going to do with him?"

"Looks like he's pretty determined to die."

"Should we just leave him? Is it right?"

Aiden kept his gaze focused on the houses in front of him. He could see the children and women that stole glances at him from their windows, his legs were starting to hurt and his muscles were stiffening due to the cold but it didn't move him. He managed to keep his shoulders broadened and his mind at ease while he just stood there, hoping he was attended to sooner so he didn't have to stay there for so long because that was the only way he was going to leave.

Why was he doing this? Why did he really care?

Anne-Marie couldn't quite wrap the reason around her head. Just watching him stand there put her in a lot of thoughts. What if she was wrong? What if she had always been wrong about him? About Aiden? Maybe he wasn't the man she thought he was, maybe he wasn't like his father, maybe, just maybe he was different from the father, different from every other king she had read of. What exactly was he trying to do? Why did he care so much what happened to the people of Niyagra? Why did he care so much about proving himself to them? About mourning with them and getting them to accept him? Why?

"Don't worry about the prince Miss Vutron." The bodyguard behind her said, causing her to turn slowly to face him. "He's not going to break, he has done worse trying to get the attention of the elders ever since he was thirteen. Don't ask him to stop too, he's never going to listen. He's just going to keep coming back every year till he makes them listen."

Was that true? Five years? Aiden had really been visiting Niyagra for five long years? She slowly traced her gaze back to him the moment she started to hear footsteps approaching the pavement of the house in front of him.

The elders were coming and their presence had caught a lot of attention, including Aiden's . He let out a relief exhale when they got close.

Finally.

Were they ready to listen now? Were they finally going to listen to him now? The old people formed a straight line on the pavement and focused their attention on him. Aiden let himself smile just a little bit. It was hope, he had hope.

"Five long years," A woman said. "Five long years and you've not given up yet. What more do we have to do to make you understand that we want nothing to do with you?"

"I'm never going to stop," Aiden yelled at the top of his lungs so not just them, but the rest of the villagers could hear him amidst the noisy rain sounds. "I'd keep coming back every year, heck, I'm never going to leave this rain until I get you all to listen to me, to listen to my true intentions-"

"Which is?" The woman went on. It looked like she was the leader of the village. "What is your intention towards us your highness? We are only a small village, what does it matter to the royal family? Why do we matter to you? Why is it so important that you gain our trust and respect? Our forgiveness? Give us one reason we should ever listen to you-"

"Because you are Breton." He cut her off, causing her and everyone else to hold back their words. "Because no matter what happened in the past, no matter how you feel the rest of the other world has abandoned and turned their backs on you, you're still Breton, you're still my people and I can not give up on you! I would never turn my back on this village for as long as I live. My father didn't send me, he never has and never will, I'm here on my own, allow me to mourn with you, allow me to share your burden with you-"

"Why?" A man from the elders asked. "So you can own us? Control us? wipe us out like your father did?"

"No," Aiden said. "I would never!"

"Even if we listen to you," Another woman said. "Even if we pretend to believe your intentions towards us were true, it doesn't change the fact that you're still one of them, one of the people that took everything from us, that killed our people, raped our women, treated us like animals, burnt our sons and daughters, grand children alive, you're still a member of the royal family, you're still the son of the King-"

"I am not my father!"

"Your words don't mean anything, they are just words-"

"Yes, king Albert is my father, yes we have the same blood running through our veins but our hearts and thoughts for this country are not the same. I do not walk in the same footsteps my father did-"

"But you do everything he asks you to, you're going to join the royal family with the Vutrons with your marriage to the the prime minister's daughter, the same man that proposed our destruction, I don't see how that is supposed to be beneficial for us."

Aiden turned slowly to where Anne-Marie was standing, she was in a lot of shock, too dumbfounded by what was going on to even speak. He exhaled and slowly turned back to the elders.

"I know I can never make up for what our parents did to your people, I can never take it back. What my father did does not deserve your forgiveness but I would like to spend the rest of my life trying, trying to make things better for the people of a Niyagra, trying to give back what you lost to the best of my abilities. All I want to do is try, but I can only try if you let me, I can only try if you don't judge me for the sins of my father, if you only judge me for my own sins."

Anne-Marie turned a little bit when she heard a creaking sound from behind them as the door to the shed opened and a lady walked in holding a bowl filled with water and a lot of handkerchiefs in them, while she had another hanky wrapped around her nose. That was not all she noticed, she could hear the coughing sounds from inside the shed, that was what caught her attention.

Not just one or two, not just three. Were they people in there? How did none of them notice up until that minute? She slowly started to find her way to the door before the lady with the bowl tried to close it and froze when she did.

She couldn't believe her eyes.

"I'm sorry, you're not allowed inside-"

She walked in anyway. Not that she intended to, her legs just did what they wanted. Anne-Marie could hear her own heartbeat slow as she narrowed her gaze to the sight in front of her, to the sick beds with people in them, sick people , they all seemed to be coughing too. She placed her hand over her nose immediately.

"What on earth." She heard Ivanka exclaim behind her. She looked like she was surprised. Why wouldn't she be? She had never seen anything like it. The room was packed and they all had pale skin and looked like their pupils had disappeared completely from their eyes She slowly turned to Ivanka,

"Get the prince."

Ivanka rushed out of the shed immediately.

"Your highness!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, causing Aiden, Elijah and the Elders to turn to her quickly.

"Y-you!" One of the elders yelled at her, pointing towards the door but Aiden squinted his eyes. He needed to know what was wrong.

"Please your highness, you have to see this." She announced

"You're not supposed to be in there!"

Aiden ran to the shed as fast as his legs could take him, Elijah too and the elders. He stormed in and froze when he saw. Anne-Marie turned around to face him from where she sat, in front of one of the women in the bed, Aiden rushed to her immediately. The woman looked like she was in her late forties but her skin looked so pale and her eyes were so white, it was hard to find a pupil, she looked like she had lost a huge amount of weight too, she looked so weak but still summoned the strength to cough dryly every two minutes.

"It looks like some kind of disease." Ivanka said from over them. "I've never seen anything like it in my entire life."

Aiden scanned the room with his eyes, there were a lot of them going through the same symptoms. Ivanka was right. It was nothing he had ever seen before. Just the sight of all those people, gave him the chills.

"It's the plague."

He retreated his gaze to Anne-Marie who just sat still where she was, her eyes focused on the dying woman in front of her who looked like she was struggling to breathe.

"The plague?" Ivanka asked her just to be sure she heard her right. "You mean the plague from the nineties? The V Virus?"

Anne-Marie held her breath. She placed a hand over her other trembling hand, to stop it from shaking so much but Aiden saw, he could see how terrified she was.

"Get away from them!"

They turned the moment they heard the loud voice from the door. The elders rushed in just as the leader started to find her way to them as quickly as she could.

"Don't touch them, or you might get infected."

"Wh-what happened here?" Aiden slowly turned to ask her. "What happened to all these people?"

"The virus happened."
The youngest of the elders said as she walked towards them too.

"The virus?" Aiden asked. "How's that possible? The V-Virus was completely eradicated in Breton seven years ago. There has been no other cases up until now."

"We thought so too, until a year ago, when we experienced our first case. She died after two months, we lost seventy other villagers so far and the number keeps getting worse. We've isolated everyone with the disease and we're trying to contain it."

"Why- why didn't you report this to the royal court?" Aiden asked like he didn't already know the answer. He froze and then shook his head, he was trying to get that thought off his head.

"The royal court?" Anne-Marie scoffed, not taking her eyes off the bed. "Report it to the royal court?" She slowly turned to Aiden,

"Miss Vutron," Ivanka called her name softly in surprise when she saw the tears in her eyes. "Of what use is reporting any of this to the royal court? What did the royal court do when the first case of an outbreak was found? What did the king do? He sealed the imperial city so it didn't spread and kill all the rulers, while the royal family partied and dined, people outside the imperial city were dying and what was worse was that sixty percent of the infected people were the poor masses. The poor masses that couldn't even afford to get themselves treated because the selfish government did not care enough to provide affordable medicine for her people. Nineteen thousand." She chuckled faintly.

"That was how much it cost in the least to get treated for the V virus, how on earth were the poor people who were mostly affected by the disease ever going to afford it? What happened to poor families with more than one victims? What did the royal court do then when entire families were wiped out from the disease? When parents lost all three of their children to the disease? When children lost both their parents to the disease-"

She paused.

It was so emotional for her, talking about it because it reminded her of her own parents, of how both her parents had died from the disease. Thinking about it and seeing all those people go through what they went through broke her heart and she was doing a bad job at hiding it, she couldn't. It reminded her of everything, of everything about her ugly past. Of how she cried when she lost her mother and cried again when her father died shortly after, of how she had to do everything on her own after they were gone, how she and Abel were kicked out of their house six months after their father died, everything.

Aiden just stood there, too embarrassed to speak, too shocked to speak. He didn't know what to say.

"I-I had no idea,"

"How could you?" Anne-Marie added. "You'd never know what if feels like, thanks to the fortune you were born into."

"Things are even harder now." The leader of the elders said. "This is just one shed, we still have about three more filled with infected people. It's even harder to get them treated especially now that the treatment for the V virus has increased to twenty five thousand since the disease was completely eradicated."

Anne-Marie sniffed and cleaned her eyes as she got up from the chair quickly.

"We should get them to lie on their sides first." Anne-Marie told them. "Lying on their backs would only make it harder for them to breathe, also turn off the heater, we need to get the room temperature as low as we can, it would weaken the activity of the virus when their bodies are cold."

"Really?" Another woman asked. "How do you know this? Did you ever know anyone with the virus?"

Anne-Marie thought for a while and shook her head, forcing herself to smile a little bit.

"I just happened to read a lot about it, so I know a few things."

"Your highness." Aiden slowly turned to Elijah. "We have to tell the king, we can't let the V virus spread in Breton again."

"Our stance on accepting help for the royal family still remains." The leader said. "We would not be accepting any help from the royal family, we would take care of our own people your highness, so you can please leave."

"No," Anne-Marie walked a few steps towards them. "You can't do this on your own, obviously." She gestured to the beds behind her. "You've lost enough people to the virus as it is and you're about to lose even more. They are dying, can't you see? Now is not the time to be blinded by your stubbornness. The government needs to step in, the king needs to know about this, that's the only way we can save them."

"And you think the King is going to care what happens to us?" A man asked. "We've never done anything he asked us to do, we kept showing him our arrogance and lack of interest in being his followers and he made it pretty clear over the years that he has abandoned us too, do you really think he's going to save our lives?"

"Of course he would, you're still his people, you're still citizens of Breton."

He scoffed.

"We can never bow down to the king." The leader went on. "Not until he apologizes for what he did to us, we can never be ruled by him,"

"No one is asking you to bow down to the king," Aiden said. "All we want is for you to let us help you, allow me to talk to my father about the situation here and he would be more than glad to help you. He would."

"You have so much faith in the King your highness, too bad he's going to disappoint you. The king is never going to be at the losing end of anything, he'd never belittle himself for anyone, until Niyagra submits to him, until we pledge our loyalty to his administration, he's never going to help us."

"Not when he knows that the future of this country is at risk." Anne-Marie added. "He's going to want to protect the rest of the country from this disease, he's going to do all he can to make sure it doesn't spread-"

She shook her head.

"He's just going to kill every sick person in this room, I'm afraid but we can't risk that-"

"Please, let us help you-"

"The people of Niyagra would never be indebted to the throne, we would never accept king Albert as our king and we would never accept his help. We would take care of our own people the best way we know how,"

"What if I find a way?" Aiden asked her. "What if I find a way to help your people, to get the king to help everyone of you eradicate this virus, if I get the king to help without him asking for anything in return, without you submitting to him, to the royal family, would you let us? Would you let us help you?!"

The elders exchanged glances amongst themselves, Aiden crossed his fingers in anxiety, hoping they said what he needed to hear. They turned to him,

"The people of Niyagra would take care of their own." The leader repeated.

Aiden let out a weak exhale. Anne-Marie too.

They weren't listening, they weren't listening to them at all. He raised his hand on his wet forehead and rubbed it gently. He needed to think, he needed to find a way to handle this situation and not lose them in the process.

He exhaled.

There was only one thing he could do, only one thing he could think of. He had to see the king.