Sweet Romance18 min read
Found in the Bamboo: My Prince, My Prison, My Promise
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I woke to the smell of wood smoke and the faint sweetness of rice broth. My head was heavy, my mouth tasted of iron, and when my eyes opened I met two black, steady eyes.
"You awake?" he asked softly.
I blinked. "Who are you?"
He smiled like someone who hid storms behind his calm. "Fox Brandt," he said. "Are you hurt?"
I tried to push myself up and a sharp pain bit my ribs. "I... I don't remember."
"You can rest." He sat back on the edge of the bed and watched me with a curious gentleness. "Eat. Drink. Then tell me what you recall."
"He told me to." I pointed at the bowl of rice porridge and took a spoon. The warm broth soothed my throat like a small mercy.
"You were on the road," Fox told me. "You were in no shape to walk. I carried you here."
"Why would a man like you—"
He laughed, a soft sound that didn't belong to men of stature. "Why wouldn't a man like me carry a woman who can't stand? There is no reason. The world is all reasons."
I had no family name. I had no past. I had a thin robe and a single jade hairpin in my pocket, carved with a tiny stamped character I could not read. Whoever I had been was shuttered behind fog.
"You should not stay here alone," Fox said, watching me fumble with the hairpin. "The bamboo hides many things, not all of them kind. If you are willing, come with me to my house in the city. I will find you clothes and answers."
"I do not know you."
"I am Fox Brandt, the crown prince."
The words fell like a bell. Crown prince. The title made my heart hammer in a way that startled me—then I laughed, ridiculous and surprised.
"You expect me to be impressed by titles when I woke in a bamboo hut?"
Fox blinked. "Whoever you were, no title should matter, Jaliyah." He said my name with a strange softness. "Jaliyah Ruiz. Does that sound wrong?"
I did not know it sounded right. "How do you—"
"You carry the scent of salt and wild peaches," he said, very matter-of-fact. "And the jade is shaped like the duchy's mark. Your name came with the first truth of you."
I let the name settle like a piece of clothing I had never owned but somehow fit. "If you are a prince, why are you so... kind?"
He shrugged with a half-smile. "I have my reasons. Come."
We walked through the bamboo as the sun climbed. I watched Fox move—quiet, sure, as if the forest was a room he had memorized. He helped me into a simple robe he'd brought, iron-gray and plain. The city must be a place of noise and gold; his plainness surprised me pleasantly.
At the market he watched as I looked at sweets and cloth. When I paused at a stall of candied chestnuts, he handed me a hot one like a secret.
"Try it," he said. "You're safe with me."
"It is hot." I held it with both hands. He laughed and wrapped a cloth around my hand.
"Eat slowly," he advised.
"You always talk like an old man," I grumbled with a mouthful.
His eyes softened. "I speak as someone who remembers what is worth keeping."
"You remember things, then?" I asked, curious.
"More than I let on."
We touched each thing lightly—his notice of small comforts, my hunger for the simple. The day widened. He walked me into the city as if escorting a treasure, and I felt both guilty and oddly proud.
At the clothier, I changed into a blue dress that fit nearly right. He watched for my comfort and then, in private, told the truth of palace danger.
"The court is a nest of vipers," he said. "My father, Emperor Avery, is weak. The eunuch Bryant Vazquez pulls strings. My brothers angle at a throne that is neither safe nor kind. I went missing a month ago; people whispered dead. My return is cause for cheers and plotting in equal measure."
"You were missing?"
Fox's smile thinned. "Yes. Poison in the ravine. A plan I only half understand. I woke with no memory of the last days. I could have been buried."
"Someone wanted you gone."
"Hush," he said, gripping my finger. "Let's not dress this market with court talk yet. Sit. Eat. Tell me about the mountain."
I told him only scraps. I told him I had been alone in the bamboo for as long as my head allowed. I told him about peaches and a hut and a night when stars went cold and everything slipped. I told him I woke to cold light on my lips—then Fox told me he had found me limp and carried me to safety.
"You said my name as if you knew it," I said. "Why?" I touched the jade pin in my palm.
"Because I remembered you once. In a life that made me greedy." He hid something in his voice, then smiled again. "You are very stubborn."
"I prefer 'curious,'" I shot back.
Two heartbeats later, a shout tore across the market. "That is him! The crown prince!" A cluster of city men pointed. Faces turned. Heads craned.
I felt his hand tighten on mine. He lowered his voice. "Stay close," he warned, and led me down a narrow alley.
Someone reached for my arm. "Hey! That girl—"
Fox's voice cut like a blade. "Back away." He flicked his wrist and a soft, almost dangerous motion sent the man stumbling and blinking. People watched. An older woman spat out a warning: "Keep your hands off the prince's guest!"
"Prince?" I whispered.
"Not just mine," he murmured, lifting me slightly off the ground to duck beneath a low eave, "but yours now, if you'll have me."
I did not yet understand the shape of this bond, only that when he looked at me the world narrowed. I allowed him to lead me.
That night in his small house (which was quiet as if someone had taken the city's noise out and stored it), he told me of palace threats. "Bryant Vazquez has a friend in the East Ward," he said. "Magnus Ferreira spreads coins like rain. They will not stop."
"Then why save me? Why anyone? Why me?" I asked, honestly.
"Because when I saw you a month ago, I thought you a portrait come to life," he said. "Because when I woke in the ravine, missing a month of court—when I saw your face again—some part of me closed. You were my calm."
"That's a fine reason," I said, though I felt a strange tug of something raw at the base of my throat.
The next days were a cottage of small pleasures. Fox taught me how to sit with the dishes without making a ruin of the tableware. I tried to teach him how to bake bread from a recipe I remembered in flashes—half a song, half a smell. He laughed at my clumsy fingers and kissed my flour-dusted nose with a softness that shocked me.
"I have something to ask," he said one afternoon as we sat beneath the peach tree at the edge of his courtyard.
"What?" I asked, nearly dropping the dough.
"Will you come to the palace with me?" He leaned forward like a supplicant. "There is danger I cannot face if you are left outside it. There is scandal if you stay in a village and are hunted. Come with me as my ward, my guest—my chosen."
I blinked. "Chosen?"
"In a way that will place you in my protection." His smile turned a little mischievous. "And because I would like everyone to know you belong by my side."
"And if I resent it?" I asked.
"Then I'll keep trying until you forgive me."
I wanted to say yes and shake my head at once. The future appeared both wide and terrifying. The palace was a place that had swallowed more than gardens and courtiers; it had swallowed princes' mothers and reputations. Still, I had nowhere else to go. "Alright," I said at last. "I will go."
He stood and pulled my hand up, sheltering me like a small thing. I felt it then—how tightly fate could hold.
At the palace, life changed like the tide. My days filled with strange lessons, with servants and silks and more eyes than stars. I learned endless rules with a small child's impatience; some stuck, others slid from me like oil on water. Fox watched everything from the corner of his mouth, laughing at my confusion and catching my mistakes before they broke the porcelain of court life.
"Smile at the emperor," he whispered once before we entered the great hall.
I obeyed. The emperor, Emperor Avery, looked as if he had been painted a long while ago and left in the sun. He smiled with the languor of a tired man who kept the kingdom like a trinket.
"You brought someone home," he murmured to Fox, eyes sliding to me. "Is she..." He blinked, searching.
"She is Jaliyah Ruiz," Fox answered smoothly. "A guest who saved my life."
Emperor Avery's gaze flicked to Bryant Vazquez at his side. The eunuch's smile was practiced, narrow, and cavernous. His fingers moved like a spider over the tablecloth.
"Interesting," the Emperor murmured. "Bring her to the receiving room. We shall see how she carries herself."
The receiving room felt like a netted gorge. Ladies and lords drifted like waterfowl—pretty, dangerous. Charlotte Cummings, a girl with an unkind sparkle and too-much hair, recoiled when she saw me. Her smile froze like a knife.
"Prince, you flatter the people with a new bird," she said, loud enough for many to hear. "Is she market-born?"
"She is of no title," Fox replied, always so composed. "But her heart is hers."
Charlotte's tongue bit. "We shall see how honest that heart is."
Fox's hand found mine under the table. "Ignore them," he murmured. "Eat the cake." He fed me a piece of honeyed cake like an ally.
The courtiers watched me with the hunger of people who eat on other people's missteps. They were curious, bitter, hopeful. Someone from the audience—Magnum's man—started a rumor as easily as a woman lights incense.
"Is she the lost border princess?" a whisper coiled through the room. "The one from the east? The one who disappeared years ago?"
I flinched at the idea. Fox squeezed my hand. His eyes shadowed with worry that had little room for softness.
"Stop," he said quietly to the whisperers. "She is Jaliyah Ruiz, a guest of the crown. No others' tongues wander in court."
A flush rose over many faces. The greedy and ambitious part of the court did not sleep; it plotted even in laughter. The more my presence became known, the more teeth the room showed.
Weeks slipped. I learned the dance of etiquette, the rules of the head, and how to avoid the knives in conversation. Fox and I shared small rebellions: he would slip me roasted chestnuts when lessons bore me, and I would steal a laugh from him, which felt new and dangerous.
There were pleasures I had not known—an embroidered robe laid across my shoulders, a comb that smelled of pine. There were punishments, too: insults slung like stones, curious eyes when I turned my head. But in his presence I was allowed to be soft and clumsy. He was not a prince alone; he was my sanctuary.
Then the court began to circle.
It started with a whisper from beneath the table: "That Bryant Vazquez seeks to control the grain routes. Magnus Ferreira has been hanging around the western markets. The fourth prince collects soldiers like women collect pearls."
Fox's face was a mask of evenness. "Then we'll make sure those soldiers have no place to muster."
"How?" I asked.
He took my hand. "By telling the truth. By being ridiculous enough to make the liars show their ugly masks."
He smiled wickedly. "And when they do, we will make them pay."
"Pay how?"
"Publicly."
The words felt like a drumbeat. Public punishments in the palace were rare and dangerous; they made blood and rumors into instruments. But Fox looked like a man who had weighed and sharpened his blade.
The first to fall was a petty lord who had sold court favors. Fox exposed him by reading aloud letters that matched the lord's handwriting—a thing no one would dare if not certain of retribution. The lord's face drained, his supporters muttering. Fox had the justice of small, merciless strikes. It felt like sunlight and like thunder.
"Who taught you to do this?" I asked.
"Necessity," he said. "And memory. I have been taught to be cruel for a cause. I learned when I was small." His eyes were dark for a moment. "I will not let them carve my world into pieces."
Then Fox looked at me as if he had read something dangerous in my silence. "Would you help me?"
"How?" I asked.
"By being yourself in front of them. There is nothing more dangerous to liars than a clear face."
"You think my face can be a weapon?"
"You are the weapon I choose," he said. "Not because I want you to harm, but because when people see you—true and unedited—they cannot pretend. Truth is harder to lie around than we think."
I nodded, feeling the strange steadiness of being used for truth.
The tension mounted. There were dinners rich with wine and men who laughed too loud. Magnificent gowns and soft hands that prodded wounds left by other people's ambitions. I served as Fox's companion, his proof that he could choose his own life and not the one written by others.
Then the night came when it had to break.
Fox had us invited to a public tea in the palace garden—a garden bright with lanterns, with rose and peach scents that woke old memories like songs. Guests arrived festival-fine, voices like silk. The emperor smiled from his seat, as if the world might once more be persuaded into simple delight.
Vera Bray, the chief consort, sat nearby in a robe like a cloud of smoke. Her face was a map of favors bought and couched cruelty, and when she saw me seated beside Fox she stiffened like an arrow.
"Prince," she said in that sleek tone only the high-born use, "you parade a village girl as if she were a jewel. Does the court have no shame?"
Fox's jaw moved, but he did not answer immediately. I saw something old and terrible in his eyes—something like hunger and like grief.
"Tell us," he said finally. "How did you first meet our guest?" He looked at me, inviting truth as if offering a noose. "From your heart."
I drew a breath and told the small tale: the bamboo, the ravine, the chestnut, the pale sky. I spoke of simple things until the lanterns dimly reflected true faces around me. People listened. Some men shifted; some women folded their hands as if meditating on new patterns.
"She saved me, my lord father," Fox said suddenly loud enough that the hush tightened. "She did not ask for titles. She asked for kindness." He turned to Vera. "You know what is kind, Vera. What you do behind the curtains and call it virtue is poison."
I saw her reaction: from calm to a mask that almost snapped. "You would disgrace this hall with rumors," Vera whispered. "Do you think you can judge from a word and a smile?"
"I will judge by deeds," Fox said. "You have let men die quietly and have counted it charity. You have bartered away our people's safety. You lied." He pointed to her. "And I will prove it."
The music died. A servant brought a small chest with wax seals. Fox lifted one piece of paper after another, laying out records like a trail of breadcrumbs. The papers had names, shipping ledgers, lists of soldiers, dates. Voices around me murmured. The names aligned. Bryant Vazquez's hand moved not in panic but in a practiced calm.
"Your ears are ancient," Bryant said smoothly. "You take paper and learn to accuse. Do you think paper tells the heart? You have turned into a judge who plays with little lives."
Fox's expression was small and terrible. "We will not play. We will do justice openly."
Now the punishment began.
"Guards!" Fox called. "Bring forward the Duke of Westwood and the eunuch who pressed his counsel, and the merchant who sold secrets."
Hunters of the court pushed through. Two men—one the Duke, one Bryant himself—were led forward. Fox had them bound in thin silk cords, not for death but for shame, and he dragged the net of truth into the open.
"All who have been wronged by these men, speak now," Fox proclaimed.
A chorus of voices rose. A soldier who had been sent to drown in the north stepped forward, shaking but speaking. "They sold our men to the borders! They called that 'lesser treasure'!"
A widow came forward and wept, holding a scrap of letter. "My husband never returned. They said he vanished. They told me to forget. They said forget was mercy."
The crowd's disgust frothed. People who had eaten in silence began to clench. Fox had given them permission to notice.
Vera Bray's face lost all color. She opened her mouth, closed it, made a dozen gestures of denial. "You lie," she spitted. "You have no proof!"
Fox turned to the emperor as if to offer him a mirror. "Do you want the empire to be run on lies, Father?"
Emperor Avery's face twitched, then hardened. The old man had been awoken from indifference.
"Bryant, step forward," Emperor Avery said, voice shaking like the bell of a village church.
Bryant bowed with the servility of a snake. "Your Majesty—"
"Speak the truth," Fox ordered.
Bryant's slick face twitched. For a breath he looked small. "I acted as I was told. I thought—"
"Your duty was to the throne; you betrayed it for coins," Fox interrupted.
Then more accusations followed—chains of evidence Fox had carefully placed like traps. Each testimony added a stone to a wall. The crowd's mood shifted from polite curiosity to righteous fury. People remembered wrongs they had swallowed. They remembered sons and daughters gone. They saw in Fox not a boy but a man who had chosen to name what was hidden.
Vera Bray tried to protest. "You cannot punish in the garden," she shrieked. "Custom forbids public shaming without the emperor's decree!"
Fox had a paper in his hand—the emperor's seal on a request for an inquiry Fox had thrown into the fire weeks earlier. He now placed it on the table.
"This is the emperor's order," he said quietly. "I had it written when they tried to bury the truth. I saved it for the day we would need the light."
The emperor nodded. "So it shall be," he said with a voice like a falling curtain.
The punishment was public and precise—two men, Bryant and a merchant, would be stripped of rank and placed under house arrest. They would repay their gains to the state; their names would be hung for a year on the city gates. The double humiliation of loss of status and public naming hit them like winter.
Vera Bray's fate was worse. She would be stripped of her title for six months and confined to the outer pavilion, where she would see the court flourish without her influence. She would be subject to a public apology—an action that would be recorded and made to echo. For those who watched, the humiliation was a bell ringing: power can be taken in daylight.
Her reactions were a map of a fall.
"No!" she screamed, her silk slippers scuffing the pebbles. "You cannot—this is treachery."
"You brought treachery under your pillow and called it peace," Fox replied. "Now you will live in the open air you have so cruelly abused."
I watched her crumble, watched her change like a mask slipping. She went from rage to denial—"I am loyal!"—to bargaining—"We can make amends!"—to frantic grotesque pleading—"Please!"—and finally to stunned defeat. The court murmured, some in satisfaction, some in disgusted pity.
Around her, people pulled out parchment, hands trembling. Some recorded what they thought would save them. A young maid took out a sketchbook and drew the scene with furious care. Fingers took pictures; tongues wagged words that would become gossip. The crowd's reactions swung from shock to cheering to cold satisfaction—the sound of justice liked by many who had so often been denied it.
Vera Bray's fall was a bookend that would be read for months. She looked small beneath the lanterns. The shock in her eyes was the most pitiless thing of all; she had not known that anyone would watch when the lights were turned on.
After the public pronouncement, Fox came to my side and tucked my hand in his. "You did well," he said softly.
"I only told the truth," I answered, with a trembling voice and a strange warmth in my chest.
"You made them show who they were," he said. "People cannot stand to be forced to confess when they have worn lies like coats."
There was a triumph in the air, but also a clear warning: power can fall, and when it does it can crush or free people. For me, it meant the palace had changed shape. I had stepped into a current I did not fully understand. For Fox, it meant enemies would sharpen knives for his back.
Weeks later, because the court had been riled and because truth had a tendency to be messy, another conspiracy arose. Magnus Ferreira—fourth prince—was angry. He had long wanted a chance to flex power and had been quietly gathering men at the western posts.
"You will not be allowed to throw soldiers against the palace," Fox told him bluntly in the council chamber.
"Who are you to command the course of a prince?" Magnus sneered. "You are a rumor with a crown."
"I am more than rumor," Fox said. "Do not test me."
Magnus left the room with a smile that showed all his teeth. The next morning there was news: a band of Magnus's men had been intercepted on the road. The soldiers found with them were generic soldiers, but the letters on their arms matched the names of supply merchants who had been named in the garden as collaborators.
A trial was called—and this is where the worst men found they had mismeasured the length of their own courage. The trial was public. Fox demanded a public reckoning and presented the evidence as if he had been putting a puzzle together while others slept. The crowd watched. Whoever had been complicit felt the air of the capital shift toward contempt.
When the sentence was handed out—soldiers demoted, captains publicly stripped—the onlookers erupted. The punishment tasted like a feast for those who had been wronged. Magnus's face was a study: gloat, then shock, then fury, then silence. He sputtered denials, offered bribes, and finally threatened.
"You will rue this," he hissed, but his voice was small in the garden.
Fox's eyes flashed. "Not if I have a say," he said. "I will not have my kingdom made of corpses and bargains."
The crowd's reaction to Magnus's fall was varied: some cheered with glee, others watched with nervousness. Some who had supported him moved on like crabs sliding back into tight shells. Their whispers would not die overnight.
After these events, the palace felt different. It felt like another animal, one that sharpened teeth when needed but could also shelter.
One night, as fireworks burst over the river and painted the sky like blood, Fox took my hand and led me to the palace wall. He pointed to the lights throwing color into the dark.
"Will you stay?" he asked, folding his question into the stars.
The world was glitter and thunder, and my heart felt a simple answer like a miracle. "Yes," I said, quietly.
He took my face in both hands like a man who meant to hold the world together. "I will make sure no hand steals you," he promised. "You are mine to defend."
I did not know what 'mine' meant then, only that in his arms the world felt like a place of soft edges. Around us the noise rose—the court alive with gossip and celebration—and I understood then how a little honesty could cleave men apart.
Days turned into weeks. The palace grew used to my presence. I learned to curtsy with a wrist that might flirt with mischief. I learned to read faces like books whose covers gave away secrets. I leant into the small pleasures human beings make for themselves and found Fox's companionship like a steady stone.
But not everything was peace. Bryant Vazquez, confined but not destroyed, still had influence. He circulated rumors that tried to poison the well; he called clerks in the dead of night and told half-truths. Magnus plotted in the shadows. Vera Bray simmered like a wound.
Fox prepared in countless small ways. He held councils that were thinly veiled traps for those who owed him debts. He placed loyal men like Evren Coffey and Dieter Burks at posts to watch movement on the borders. He acted tenderly toward me in the public as if to mark me with an invisible banner.
"You are not to leave the palace alone," he told me one dusk as I prepared to walk the gardens.
"I am a woman," I replied, smiling. "I will flout danger like a child's game, as you do with your swords."
"You will not be used like a pawn," he said gravely, and then softer. "You are my truth. I will not let them carve you up."
Months passed in a manageable happiness. Fox's protection was a shelter I took for granted. My memories returned in shards: a palace once far away, a laugh by a river, a name like a song. Once, I thought I remembered a childhood complaint and wept for a feeling that had no place.
And then there were the nights when a shadow crossed Fox's face—a memory of a time when his mother had been wronged and removed. He would speak of it sometimes, in low tones. "They poisoned her house," he told me. "They said a pie was safer than a crown. She paid with breath."
He never spoke the name of the woman publicly, but the echo of that injustice followed him like a loose thread.
One day, a messenger arrived with news that made the palace ring: a man who had been a public enemy—Bryant Vazquez's key conspirator—had been captured attempting to flee. Fox ordered a festival of truth to mark it. People came out to watch as justice was served. The punishment was planned to be public, because Fox believed humiliation of the guilty should be a mirror for the rest. They called it a "lesson."
"Stand on the dais," Fox instructed the men who would recite the evidence.
"Do not let them spin," I said. "Remember how they cried treachery and borrowed pity."
"Yes," he said, squeezing my hand. "You're my witness."
He spoke with a calm that was almost prayerful. The guilty were paraded in front of the crowd. Fox named names, lined proofs, and recited the ledger as if reading scripture. The crowd listened, then began to hiss. The guilty men cried for mercy. The faces of their families turned to stone.
But the real punishment was not the shackles or the forced labor; it was the public sight of their names hung on the city gate and the knowledge that every passerby would whisper their crimes. They watched as the officials took the men away, as the market vendors spat, as the wives of the harmed took brass pans and banged them outside the captives' houses.
Vera Bray, who had once smiled like a queen, was publicly mocked. She walked the length of the hall in a plain robe, head bowed, and the court clapped her from chair to chair with the slow deliberate rhythm of denial. People who had once courted her favor now turned away, as if the taste of her poison had become unbearable.
She fell apart in the middle of the crowd. Her reaction followed a clear arc—first fury spilling into denial, then bargaining, then terror, then brokenness. Her hands trembled; she whispered all kinds of promises; she begged the emperor; she stomped. But the crowd watched and judged, not to avenge but to witness.
The sound of clapping died into a hush of pity. Fans opened and closed like the movement of a slow sea. Writers scribbled, vendors sold pamphlets. It was not blood that marked the punishment but memory. Their names would not be erased.
Fox stood beside me, and his jaw looked made of stone. "We called this daylight," he said into my hair. "We will choose when the dark can act."
"I am proud of you," I said, though I heard the ache in my voice. It shaded the words with the knowledge that power could be made fairer without being kind.
He smiled and kissed my forehead.
Then, ever after, we turned our eyes to the future, knowing enemies would watch for cracks. We moved through court life like dancers who had learned a new rhythm. Some nights we walked hand in hand along the palace gardens. Other nights we studied the maps of the city. Little by little, I learned where my old mistakes had fallen away and where new choices needed careful tending.
At the end of one year, Fox called the court to celebrate an anniversary: not of victory, but of the decision we had made to bring truth into the light. The emperor attended, the nobles whispered, and the people who had been wronged stood to be recognized. We invited the families of the lost; we restored some positions, lent money to those who had been cheated, and took responsibility in public.
As I stood beside Fox and watched him hand a ribbon to a soldier's widow, I felt a small, fierce joy. The palace could be terrible and delicious all at once. It could push men to cruelty and also make them brave.
Fox leaned toward me and rolled up the sleeve of his robe to reveal a scrap of faded needlework—my jade pin stitched into a small cloth scrap. He had kept proof that I belonged to no one but myself.
"You are mine," he said again, but softer than before. "Not like a claim, but like a promise that I'll keep you safe."
I laughed. "You keep saying that until I believe it."
He bowed his head and kissed the corner of my mouth. I felt a warmth spread through me like summer light.
In the crowd, Charlotte Cummings scowled as if she could put a frost over our light. Magnus Ferreira lurked in the shadows, nursing defeat into a plan. Bryant Vazquez still moved like a viper in private. But for the moment, the palace breathed differently. Men who traded in shadows had been shown in daylight, and the court learned a lesson about the cost of lying.
I put my hand in Fox's, and for once I did not feel afraid.
"Will you teach me to lead?" I asked him then, with a child's conviction.
"If you wish," he said, eyes alight. "You may be my teacher as often as you like."
We laughed and the crowd laughed with us. The night was long and bright with fire and the promise that daylight could be used as a weapon for the right.
And that is where I will leave this part of the story—by the palace garden, under fireworks, with my hand in the prince's, knowing the cost of truth and the warmth of a promise.
The End
— Thank you for reading —