“She had known she would be asked, she had decided what she would answer, and without the slightest hesitation, she had moved her hand to the right.” In his head the suitor wondered, can he trust her?

His heart racing, Henry cautiously shifts toward the right. As the anxiety inside him builds up, he raises his hand toward the door. You can hear the audience hold its breath and feel the tension in the arena. This is it- the choice between life and death. The princess sits uncomfortably in her seat wondering, hoping that she made the right choice.

The common man’s hand grips the door knob, it’s unusually cold. With hesitation he slides back the enormous door. He hears nothing, not the slightest noise, just darkness. The spectators in the audience, quiet as a mouse, crane their necks to see inside the door. The king sits tall and mighty, clearly delighted to watch and find out the common man’s fate.

The common man’s eyes strain into the darkness. Then suddenly a noise comes from the blackness. Is it beads or chains, the beads of the lady’s dress or the chains restraining the tiger? The common man looks at the princess and holds his breath like it is his last. He closes his eyes and hears a steady pit, pat on the loose dirt. He peers out of his half open eyelids. Slowly emerges an angelic lady. The common man lets out a sigh of relief and shoots up a glance at the princess. Her face was full of hatred and pain, he grows a lump of guilt in his throat. The crowd is still cheering as the common man plasters a fake smile on his face to fool the lady and the audience. The common man examines the lady, who is without a doubt beautiful, covered with one of the most lavish dresses he had ever seen. The off white fabric, covered with jewels he couldn’t recognize, draped over her body in a wave of beauty.

It wasn’t enough, for she wasn’t as beautiful as the princess he loved. Nothing would fill his heart but her. As the wedding begins, his eyes sneak up to where the princess had been watching, only to watch her leave the arena. He moved his glance to the right to see the king with a big evil smirk on his face. The king knew that if he had set the tiger on the common man, his daughter would hate him. So no one but him knew that behind the other door was another lady.
The princess laid in her room, too tired and betrayed to cry. She had hated the lady behind the door beyond belief, but her love for the common man was too much. He was the love of her life and her soul mate. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to stand to see him with the other lady. Something had to be done. The princess was just a little bit barbaric, but that was all it took to completely change the way she was looking at things. She was a princess; she knew people and who would know and who would tell if the lady from the arena never woke up the next morning?
So that night she made two calls; one to an assassin and one to the common man. The princess and the common man met at the city gate at midnight. The night was cold; they both stood close to the horse that would be their escape from the city. They were both wrapped in heavy cloths, draped over their heads, hiding their faces in shadow. They waited silently for the signal; the only noise was the horse, anxiously shifting his weight. A scream sounded in the distance and off they went into the night.
Little did they know that high in the tower was a pair of big eyes watching their every moves. The barbaric king was heated in anger. He was horrified because of the betrayal of his daughter against his own law. He summoned his best knights and gave them just one command, “No one betrays the King’s justice, and they should be the ones to meet their fate now.”