Revenge15 min read
Half a Year to the Wedding: The Hairpin, the Lock, and the Prince
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1
"I married Marcus Dupont when we were five."
"No—no, you don't," I said, but my voice was the small, stubborn thing it had always been.
"My grandfather arranged it," Father said. "It's decided."
Marcus's eyes were calm then, like the surface of water. He handed me a tiny silver lock—his long-life lock—and smiled once, like a rare sunburst. I kept that lock for fifteen years as if it were a map.
2
"I will not be quiet forever," I told my sister one afternoon, handing her a cake I had baked.
"Gabrielle," Boston Howell said with a gentle scoff, "he's Marcus. Your life is secure. Be sensible."
"I don't want sensible," I said. "I want honest."
3
Marcus always protected me.
"Don't worry," he would say, and his voice would be soft as wind. "No one will scold you unfairly."
He never said he loved me.
I loved him like a fire you keep on cold nights—steady, stubborn, unquestioned.
4
Then Beverly Jackson came back into our house after years of mourning. "My aunt sent me," she said quietly the first day. "I'm so tired."
Beverly was prettier than a careful person should be. She was gentle and bowed her head in the way everyone praised. I brought her tea. Marcus gave her a small box once and smiled the way he had once smiled only at me.
5
One snowy evening I found them beneath the old oak.
"They're just talking," I told myself.
"They're not," my heart said.
I walked toward them and Marcus kissed Beverly. He kissed her like a word he preferred saying to me. My cake box dropped; the sound of it hitting the frozen ground felt like a bell tied to my ribs.
6
"Gabrielle," Marcus said when he finally turned, his face steady. "Beverly is with child. We... we can arrange it so you are the family's main wife and she is secondary. You will still be honored."
"You will still call her your wife," I said. "You will still make promises to her. Why did you break me for her?" I spat the words.
Marcus put his hand out for me like he would soothe a wound. "Please, be reasonable."
I struck him. "Then let the ceremony end the engagement your way. If anyone leaves, I will leave first."
7
Beverly knelt before me, eyes wet. "Please, Gabrielle," she said, voice trembling. "I can bear him a child. Have mercy."
"Mercy?" I laughed. "You came here on purpose. You wanted this."
She bowed lower. "I didn't mean—"
8
"Enough," Marcus said sharply, and he took Beverly's chin. "Gabrielle, you're highborn. Be magnanimous."
"Magnanimous?" I repeated. "You ask me to swallow my life for your convenience?"
"Be sensible," Father said later, in that same cold tone that silenced me when I was a child. "We must think of the house."
9
Half a month later he told me to be quiet.
"Say no," he said, and the look in his eyes was not soft. "Say no and we will end this quietly. I'm going to ask for forgiveness on my terms."
"Marcus," I whispered, "we were supposed to be married on my birthday."
He reached out and touched my hair, as if that small motion could mend the fault line. "We still will be married," he said, "with her as a concubine. It will be orderly."
10
On the eve of my fifteenth birthday, I delivered my family's platter at the imperial banquet myself. The Emperor tasted three rounds and seemed pleased.
"Gabrielle," someone whispered. "Your cake is excellent."
Then Beverly fell ill and vomited the bowl I had filled. She collapsed like a broken bird. Everyone turned to me as if my hands had blood on them.
11
"She was poisoned," Marcus said loudly in front of the throne. "Investigate Gabrielle Santoro."
"Marcus—" I tried to speak, but his face was a mask.
"She has motive," Marcus continued. "Who better to remove a rival? She is jealous. She is reckless."
12
"Stop!" I remember thinking I would scream, but the word that left me was different.
I took Marcus's hairpin—one he had given me years ago—and I drove it into my chest so hard I felt the world tilt.
"Stop accusing me!" I cried, the metal hot and cold at once. "If I die, see what you have done."
13
They carried me away and I woke months later, the days swallowed and stitched. I had traded breath for bargaining. I had traded nearly everything for a single, small fact: the inner court eventually found the court favorite had poisoned the bowl. The baby was gone. Beverly lived, but the stain on me remained.
14
"She framed you," Boston Howell said, the first night I could sit up. He set a small box on my lap. "From me. From everyone."
Inside was the long-life lock—mine by right, his by chance. I pressed it to my chest. I was not the same person.
15
The year after I nearly died I began to change.
"You look like a different woman," my mother, Alicia Barnes, said. She was careful and thin-lipped. "Better rest."
"I can't rest," I answered. "Not while Marcus walks free with his lies."
16
So I learned the roads. I went with my brother to the famine relief and the ruined towns. I saw houses split and people working with cold hands. A prince came there on a relief mission, quiet and serious. He rode up like a dark arrow and did not speak more than necessary.
17
"Are you Gabrielle Santoro?" he asked one afternoon while I was helping wrap bandages.
"Yes." My breath showed in the frosty air.
"I am Elias Mendes," he said. "You are staying too long in the cold."
"Who told you?"
"My grandfather," he answered. "He is a friend of your grandfather."
I looked at him. He had no song in his face, but when he glanced down at my cut hands he frowned and—this was the first of small things—I felt it like warmth: he slipped his cloak over my shoulders without thinking.
18
"Thank you," I said, surprised at my own quick pulse.
"Rest," Elias said simply. "Don't stay out so late."
19
That was the second small crack in my armor. The first had been when he had saved me on the hunting field, when masked killers pushed through the trees and I had tumbled down the slope. He leapt after me and caught me before the cliff. His hand on my ribs was heavy and sure.
20
"You could have told me your name," I said later when we walked.
"I did," he said. "You did not ask until I had left."
He smiled once—soft and rare—and I felt my heart lift, foolish and incandescent. "Why did you come back?" I asked.
"Because I could not let you die like that," he said.
21
We wrote letters. He was careful with his handwriting; he learned to shape the strokes into a slow, steady pattern I studied by moonlight. I began to wait for his words like a child waits for a treat.
22
"Three months," I told him once. "Give me three months. Make me a hairpin with plum blossoms. Bring it to my grandfather's birthday in spring. If you do, I will wear it and show everyone you are not a stranger to me."
"I will," Elias promised. He was a man of few theatrics. "Three months."
23
"You're impossible," Marcus said months later, arriving at our courtyard out of breath.
"What do you want?" I asked, setting a pot aside.
"To talk," he said. "I saved your grandfather's life once. I fought for him. I—"
"You saved him," I interrupted. "You were at the right place, Marcus. Put down the pretense."
He looked at me with something like regret. "If Elias hurts you—find me. I'll stand up for you."
I could have laughed then, but instead only murmured, "He won't."
24
The months filled with rebuilding, letters, and small, stolen touches.
One night Elias slid his hand over mine and, in that small, warm gesture, took my palm like a promise. I felt him breathe close and say, "You do not have to be brave for me."
That was a heart-throb moment of its own—minute, intimate, enough to make the world dim to the circle of his hand.
25
Spring came. My grandfather, Zaid Rivera, held his great birthday and the palace filled with silk and noise. The long feast rolled; ancestors were toasted. Marcus stood in the crowd with a stiff smile, Beverly at his side.
26
Then the hour came I had planned. I stood and walked into the courtyard and felt Elias's hand close around mine.
"It's time," he said.
"Now," I whispered, and I stepped forward and told the whole truth.
27
"Marcus Dupont," I called. "Beverly Jackson."
A thousand heads turned. The grand hall quieted like a pond closing over a stone.
28
"Elias," I said, "give them the papers."
29
Elias lifted the papers he had carried in secret: letters Marcus had written that admitted the arranged lies, and a confession from a palace maid who had been paid to drug a bowl that night. I had given Elias the last piece—the small scrap where Beverly had grazed her finger on the seam and dropped a thread of blue from the sleeve she wore that night.
30
"You can't possibly—" Marcus began, voice smooth as lacquer at first.
31
"Before the Emperor and every witness," I said, "listen."
32
I read then the words Marcus had written to Beverly in secret, the paper edges soft and greasy from his hands. "You will be mine," he had written. "I will keep you safe if you bear my child." The paper smelled like his cologne when I held it. The court leaned in as if together we were pulling a rope.
33
"Beverly did you conspire to claim I poisoned you?" I asked.
34
Beverly's face, suddenly stripped of its polite composure, crumpled.
"Yes," she cried. "I—" She threw her hands up. "I was desperate."
35
"Might I speak?" Elias's voice was low and terrible. "May I tell of what I have learned?"
36
"You may," Marcus said, far too easy, as if he had not already been found out. "Go on, Prince."
Elias lifted his chin and spoke slow as winter.
37
"This court will hear all of it," Elias said. "Marcus said he would take what he could. Marcus called me arrogant and cold, but I was watching. I watched him meet Beverly when no one else did. I watched him push the blame toward Gabrielle when the bowl poisoned her cousin. I watched them plan to use a court favorite's bowl as a trap."
38
Marcus's face shifted. The first line was disbelief.
"This is slander," he said.
"Prove it," Elias said. "Or admit your part."
39
Marcus laughed now, too loud.
"You expect me to bow?" he said.
40
"Everyone," the Emperor said, voice like a bell. "Silence."
41
I felt the room press down. Courtiers murmured, the Emperor's chamberlains fanned their sleeves. My grandfather's old friends exchanged looks.
42
"Marcus," I said softly. "You told me once you loved me."
He blinked. "I... I tried to do what was best for us, Gabrielle. I loved you as a duty."
"Duty does not excuse treachery," I countered. "You traded me for ease."
43
Marcus's expression slid from defiance to something like resentment to a slow, dawning panic.
"No," he said. "You can't—"
"Marcus Dupont," the Emperor said, "you will tell the truth now."
44
Then began the punishment.
45
"This is the part of the story you will not forget," I said later, remembering each face, each shudder. "There were many places that could have judged them, but we brought them here—into the Emperor's court—because the greater the stage, the clearer the light."
46
Beverly's punishment was first.
"You connived with a court favorite to poison another woman," the Emperor said sternly.
The chamber thrummed.
47
Beverly fell at my feet. "Your Majesty, I was pushed," she wailed. "Marcus pushed me. He promised—"
"Silence!" the Emperor struck his hand on the table.
Beverly was made to stand on the hall dais. A court guild woman came forward and stripped the small jewel from her hair and unbraided her ribbons. They took from her the garments that marked her as a lady of dignity and replaced them with coarse cloth. Courtiers gasped. A few young girls in the gallery began to cry. The long string of silk she had wore that night was cut and thrown aside.
48
"Shame her," a noblewoman whispered, and a ripple of approval ran through the crowd. Murmurs turned into a chorus of judgment. The palace servants, summoned from kitchens and stables, stood at the perimeter with hard eyes. The Emperor decreed her exile: she was to be stripped of any claim to the houses of the capital, and she would be sent to a distant provincial town with a small parcel and no title. Her name was to be spoken no more at court.
49
Beverly's face moved through phases. At first she was defiant, chin up, jewel-thief proud. Then a tremor—shock—fully arrived. She tried to deny it. "It was Marcus's idea!" she cried. Then the denial softened. "I did it for love," she said. The words seemed thin in the great hall. "I only wanted security." The crowd's faces hardened. Some whispered, "How could she?" Servants spat quietly. A young page took out a scrap of cloth and snapped a photo—no, there were no cameras, but the fact remained: the memory was there in faces, in scribes' notes, in the gossip that would spread. People began to clamor. "Shame!" a voice called. "Disgrace!" echoed another. An old woman in the back wagged her finger and said, "What a fool."
50
Beverly bent to the floor and begged for mercy. "I'll leave! Please, I will leave now if you spare me disgrace."
"No," the Emperor said, his voice like cold iron. "You must understand the weight of your actions."
The crowd pressed closer. A few courtiers stepped forward to record her exile in detail. The unfortunate woman who had once worn silk now wore coarse cloth, and they brought out a shovel. "She will work for a season to learn the value of life beyond convenience," the Emperor declared.
51
Beverly's reaction changed. Petulance turned to pleading, pleading to sobbing. Her voice broke as she called Marcus's name. "Marcus! Marcus—" She crawled toward him as if a chain had still bound them.
52
Marcus, meanwhile, had been listening. First his face flattened with anger. Then he grew pale. A man who had grown used to being praised in salons and given doors opened for him found those doors closing. He stood rigid, a mask crumbling.
53
"Marcus Dupont," the Emperor said, and the whole room inhaled. "You have not only conspired but also used your station to harm an innocent and to manipulate the court. You will pay more than exile."
54
Marcus's first response was to scoff. "You cannot—" he began. His voice quivered.
55
"Silence," the Emperor ordered. "You will be stripped of your title before all present. You will be barred from holding any office, and you will stand in the market square with a placard naming your crime. Your lands will be redistributed to those you have wronged."
56
You could have heard a needle drop.
"M-marcus," Beverly hissed, clutching at him for support. "No—please."
"Do it," Marcus said to the usher, and the words were not commands but a tremble.
57
I watched as the court's mood shifted from curiosity to appetite for justice. Men who had dined with Marcus turned away; some guards who had once followed his carriage began to look like strangers to him. A handful of his friends moved to his side; most kept away.
58
Marcus attempted a denial. "I did what I thought necessary for the house—"
"For the house," Elias repeated coldly. "You used the house as a scapegoat, Marcus. You tried to use Gabrielle as a pawn."
"She drove me—" Marcus started to plead, then clutched at his throat as if the words had turned to iron.
59
The crowd saw his expression change: from proud to scared, from denial to shaking. He began bargaining. "I will repay," he said. "I will surrender my lands. I will beg forgiveness."
The Emperor's hand did not tremble. "You will make public atonement," he said. "You will kneel and apologize where every merchant, craftsman, and guest can see. You will not be allowed back into court for ten years."
Marcus's composure collapsed. He staggered, stumbled, and then fell to his knees.
60
"Please," he begged, eyes wet now with shame. "Gabrielle—Gabrielle, I was wrong. I was a fool. I did it because—"
"Because you wanted comfort," I said sharply. "Because you wanted an easy lie instead of a hard truth."
He looked up, face twisting. "Forgive me. I will—"
"Shut up," someone hissed. "You do not deserve words."
61
The Emperor demanded Marcus recite his offenses aloud. He recited them in a cracked voice. He begged the Emperor and those present for mercy. The younger courtiers watched with wide eyes. The older ones nodded, satisfied that order had been restored.
62
"Let him go," Elias said at last. "Let the law take its course."
"Yes," the Emperor agreed. "Let the law teach him."
63
Marcus went from prouder to humiliated. His last face in the hall was small and thin, like wax left in the rain.
He was led out of the hall—no band, no ceremony—just a strap of rope, and then silence, the kind that came after a storm. People talked after; they whispered that his head had fallen low and that Beverly had been stripped of everything. Servants and children threw thorny barbs of gossip at them as they walked. Market sellers pointed and said to each other, "That's Marcus Dupont who thought himself untouchable." A few chroniclers scribbled down the scene; others told it like a joke, but the sting remained.
64
There were many reactions that day. Some wept quietly for Beverly; others couldn't stop talking about how the proud man had been brought low. An old woman in the gallery clapped once, a small, sharp sound. Someone else spat. A scribe leaned in toward my grandfather and whispered, "Justice was swift." A child in the back said, "Is that why men shouldn't lie?" and someone laughed, and the laugh had no malice, only a tired kind of amusement.
65
When Marcus was taken away, a few of his loyalists tried to make excuses. "He had pressure," one courtier said. "He is young," another offered. People shook their heads. The world had turned and left him behind.
66
I did not feel triumph, not truly. The whole thing had cost me months of pain and nights of fear. But there was a lightness after the judgement, like a narrow door opening in a long corridor. People came forward to apologize. My grandfather held my hand and said nothing for a long time. Elias stood in the doorway like a shadow and watched it all dissolve.
67
After the verdict, life reset itself. Beverly was taken away to the province where she had relatives. Marcus lost his rank and his land. The court spoke of mercy and of the public spectacle for years.
68
"Elias," I said once later, when the courtyard had emptied. "Did you always know you would come back for me?"
He looked at me, and for the first time his voice had softness that was not trimmed by duty. "I always knew," he said. "My grandfather and Zaid had plans. But plans do not save people. You did that yourself."
69
There were three moments in our small life where my heart broke open like a seed:
"That day you slipped a cloak over me," I told him. "You never smiled—until you did in the snow, and it felt like the sun."
"That night when you caught me on the hill," he replied. "I thought you would leave me because I was owned by fate."
"Your letters," I whispered. "The letters you wrote and never sent until you knew my answer."
70
Elias's love was quiet. He fed me warmth like a careful hearth. He walked with me in market squares and watched me cook and write. He corrected my calligraphy with a gentle hand and taught me to read lines of a military scroll with the same patience he used to tie a bandage.
71
"Promise me something," my mother said once in a low voice.
"Do not demand it," I answered. I had learned a new stubbornness in my time. "I promised myself only this: I would not be someone else's pawn again."
72
There were people who felt sorry for Marcus; others thought he had been lucky the law was merciful. Beverly kept her shame and lived far away. The palace had its own way of erasing things.
73
A year later, in spring again, we celebrated a quiet marriage in the courtyard of my grandfather's house. The plum-blossom hairpin Elias had promised was not perfect—its gold work was slightly crude—but he had made it himself, threaded each petal. He placed it in my hair with a hand that shook like a man doing something rare and sacred.
74
"Three months," I whispered.
"I kept it," he said.
He had made the hairpin better still.
75
After the marriage, Marcus tried to come back. He came as a poor man to the square, hair thin and shrunken. He tried to speak with people who had once been his friends.
"Marcus," one of his old comrades said bluntly, "we remember the man you were. We do not remember you now."
76
We went on with small things. He once appeared in the market, and I saw the merchants whisper. I passed him without looking back. He fell on the pavement and begged one last time. A crowd gathered and watched him crawl. He begged forgiveness and made a spectacle of himself. Some people threw coins. Others spat. I turned away. This was the last time I saw the man who had once been promised to me as if I were a ship to moor.
77
On the very last day he came to the gates, he tried to kneel before Elias.
"Elias," he said weakly, "I was wrong. Will you forgive me?"
Elias looked down and said quietly, "You have already been judged."
Marcus held his head in his hands and wept; it was thin and bitter. Court chroniclers stayed away. The market whispered an old joke about debts and titles.
78
A small, precise thing remained between us forever—the long-life lock that Marcus had once given me and that Elias had kept as proof of first claim. I wore the long-life lock as a little inside laugh. I wore the plum-blossom hairpin because a man who had learned his hand and his heart had fashioned it for me.
79
"Do you still keep all the letters he never sent?" I asked Elias once, finding the stack while he slept.
He woke and smiled like a child. "Yes," he said. "Sometimes I read them and think of the route that brought us here."
80
Our life was not perfect. There were echoes of the past that came like wind through the trees. But I had a man who warmed my hands and kept a surprise—a step-sway hairpin I had asked him to make. He placed it in my hair one night by the fire.
81
"Hold onto it," he said. "If ever we forget what we promised, this will remind us."
"What if the world takes it?" I asked.
He laughed, short and delighted. "Then I will make another."
82
We learned to live between the hammered metal of truth and the soft threads of forgiveness. Garden parties visited us with new neighbors. People who had watched the great humiliation of Marcus spoke of it as if it were an old lesson. The long-life lock sat under my pillow at night like a small, stubborn treasure.
83
"I woke that night thinking if I died the world would know who broke me," I told Elias once. "It was shocking to be saved by a man I had only just known."
"You were never alone," Elias said. "You were never alone in the things that mattered."
84
I still carried the memory of the hairpin I once used to pierce the air for proof. I did not regret that I had shown the world how the heart could hurt. I did regret the long days it took to find clarity. But when I looked at Elias, when he touched my hair and tamed it with a small, pleased movement, I knew the world had handed me back my life.
85
At night, when the lanterns were low and my grandfather snored softly in his room, I would take out the long-life lock and the plum-blossom hairpin and set them side by side.
They were tokens of two lives: one that had been promised and nearly stolen, and one that had been quietly claimed.
I slid the hairpin into my hair and fastened the lock beneath my collar.
86
"Do you remember the first day?" Elias would murmur.
"I remember," I would say. "I remember how you covered me with your cloak without asking."
He would smile and close his eyes, safe and sure as winter's last light.
87
Sometimes I would wake to find the little hairpin on the bedside table, a tiny proof that he had been up, that he had watched over me.
It was nothing big. It was everything.
The End
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