Sweet Romance14 min read
I Married the Emperor for His Pork Belly (and Accidentally Became His Consort)
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I am a side consort. I tell people that straight away because being honest about your title makes life easier, and because I have bigger priorities than palace etiquette. My priority is food.
"You're marrying the crown prince," Father said once like it was nothing more than a piece of news. "Your 八字 suits him. It will be good for our house."
"I care about the kitchen," I told him. "Is the cook good?"
"Salvador," my father — Chancellor Salvador Hall — answered without looking up. "We will secure alliances. You will secure our household's place."
I went to the wedding thinking the same way I always do: which dish will be at the banquet, and can I be back at the hall in time to get the slow-braised pork. I had read a hundred novels pretending to be a noblewoman with secrets and schemes, but the truth was simpler: I, Kiara Michel, was a plain woman who loved a plain dish very much. I had been a concubine to a prince for three days when the world turned.
"Your Majesty!" someone shouted, and the courtyard filled with panic. An arrow tore through the air, aiming for the prince's chest. It all happened in a sprawl of color and motion. A black-robed figure moved like a shadow, cutting the arrow's path. Then another arrow veered wild and hit a palace maid by my side, and the world shrunk to the sound of her scream.
"Hans!" The man who had saved us called out to the other guards, but his voice trembled like the rest of us.
I froze. "Help!" I didn't actually run — I made a point of not making a fool of myself — but instinct pulled me toward the nearest shelter. A hand grabbed me, big and warm and fast. It wasn't the prince who saved me. It was a guard; a strong, silent man with a scar I guessed had a story. His name I learned later — Hans Gilbert — but in that instant his hand felt more important than any silk sleeve.
When the shouting stopped, the prince looked at me, and his eyes found mine through the mess of banners and people. He didn't look at the dead messenger. He didn't look at the councilors. His hand motioned, slow and deliberate: "Come, my consort."
I went. I went because of the hand; I went because the palace was suddenly a place where I wanted to be near a warm hand; and I went because the prince, Prince Cody Hernandez, wanted me near him. That was the start of everything that wasn't about food.
"Are you hurt?" he asked once I sat, like it was a small secret between us.
"No," I lied. "I am fine. I just want to... go home and eat."
He looked at me as if I had said something important. "Eat," he repeated. "Then rest."
I did as he said. I had expected cold formality, the distance of those who sit on thrones and think in policies. Instead, he made space beside him at the meal. "Why are you staring?" he asked, very quietly, as if the question had gravity.
"I'm just looking at your bowl," I admitted. "It looks different from mine."
"I don't like others serving me," Cody said. "Do you?"
"No. I like serving myself," I confessed.
He considered this. "Then eat."
And eat I did. I remember thinking three things as I ate: the rice tasted like home, that he looked absurdly handsome even in court robes, and that a man who was an emperor could be absurdly patient about other people's appetites.
We did not become a storybook couple overnight. We became, slowly and with many small moments, a pair who knew the best place to catch each other's eye was over shared food. He gave me bowls. I emptied them. He would scold me about gluttony in a way that was half-serious and half-amused. I would glare; he would give me a look like he'd caught a thief and then he'd smile.
"Try the porridge here," he said one afternoon when the palace felt like an oven. "It's from the new delivery."
"You're testing me," I accused. "If it's good, I will demand you open a stall in the palace square."
"Open one yourself," he dared me. "I'll come and inspect."
He did come. He came more than once. He asked me once, suddenly, in the quiet of the hall: "What's your name before all this? Before you took the title?"
"Kiara," I said. "Kiara Michel. Why?"
"Because I want to remember," he said. "Because the throne is big and memory is small."
We had our foolish, warm flirting. He would tap my chin, an odd, soft motion, and call me "my consort" like it was an inside joke between him and my stomach. He would watch me eat with something like hunger in his eyes — not for the food but for the way I ate. "You eat with earnestness," he’d say. "It is... honest."
There were darker things in the palace. There were the stories of the late emperor, of a woman who had fallen and a family that had been broken. Cody once took me to a high place called the Star Pavilion, where the city glittered below like a bowl of lanterns.
"My mother died from falling," he told me, voice thin. "My father called it an accident. He built walls and bars to keep his children safe from themselves."
"Do you think he meant it to be cruel?" I asked, still holding his hand. We both pretended our hands hadn't brushed, but we had no pretenses left between us.
"I think my father wanted control more than he wanted my mother's life," he said. "But I cannot only hate. I must be an emperor."
"You don't have to be cold," I said. "You can be angry and still be... gentle."
He laughed. "You speak like a writer."
"Because I was," I told him. "Before this life."
He did not ask me to undo my past. He asked me to stay. "Make me something," he said suddenly. "Make me a bowl I can remember."
"A bowl?" I blinked.
"Yes. Just once. Make me a bowl. If you can, I will take it as a sign that you belong here."
So I made him noodles the next day. I did not know how to use a brush or write the calligraphy of the court, but I knew how to boil water and pull dough. In those long strokes of steam and hand, I found something like authority. He ate it slowly, and when he finished he stood and looked at me with an expression I had not seen from him before.
"You have made me very happy," he said simply. "You will be honored."
"Honored?" I asked, half-laughing. "For boiling water poorly?"
"For making something that felt like home," he corrected. "I will give you a title."
"A title?" I repeated. I had imagined more complicated things like the palace maps and the council. "Something with the word 'star'?" I suggested stupidly.
"It will include 'star,'" he agreed. "I will call you Consort of Star, Kiara Michel, my... my Star Consort."
We laughed, and the title came and people spoke of it as if they'd planned it for years. I thought the war of etiquette had been won with a bowl of noodles, and life would proceed in slow, delicious bites. I thought wrong.
One night Katelyn Bartlett — my older sister from the mansion — came like a cold wind. She looked at me as if I'd stolen something from her. "You think you are different now?" she said, the words polished to a blade. "Don't forget your place."
"What do you mean?" I asked, honestly. "I made him noodles."
"You are a consort. You have little claim. The family needs loyalty. Do not forget what you promised Father."
"What promise?" I asked, panicked.
"Do not pretend," she said. "Remember: if your true nature is discovered, it will be your head."
It was the first time someone used a word that meant danger. I did not know what she meant and later learned she had not said it alone.
"He has a secret," she whispered over tea to a cousin. "If she unravels it, it will be trouble. And if the right people know, she will be a dagger at the prince's throat."
I listened to these whispers like one listens to a rumor about weather. The sky did not fall then. But doors closed differently when such talk drifted through the halls.
I grew ill during a feast — too much wine, too much laddering up and down of servants, too much cold wind on the night air — and I stayed in bed. Emely Simon — my maid, who had been with me through small good fortune and small grief — brought me bitter medicine and sticky honey. She looked at me one night with a face I didn't understand.
"Madam," she said quietly, "they say the court is not safe. The deputy prince is making moves."
"Who?" I asked.
"Jagger Dunlap," she answered.
"Jagger?" I repeated. The name had not yet meant much to me beyond the rumor. "But why would he—"
"He is close to the old faction," she said. "Some say he will move when the snow falls."
I should have listened. Instead I nursed my pride along with the honey and got better. Time passed. Cody and I shared small rebellions of joy, like sneaking into the cold kitchens for an extra dumpling and locking eyes like conspirators. He started to show me documents, to let me see the world as a burden on his shoulders.
"Do you think of leaving?" he asked once, exhausted. "I don't know if I am fit for the yoke."
"You are," I told him. "You are tired, not wrong."
He smiled then, something like a child's relief. He trusted me to say plain things. He trusted me to make him food that tasted like his mother's hands.
But the world had other plans. Snow came. Messages ran like small birds. Men in the court moved with quick knots of quiet. One afternoon the guard Hans Gilbert — the man who had saved me on the first day — came to fetch me. "You must come," he said. "Now."
"Where?" I asked.
"South," he said. "For a while."
"I won't leave his side," I blurted. "Call to him."
"It is worse to stay," Hans said. "Please."
I remembered a sudden step, and then darkness stroked the edges of my vision.
When I woke, it was by a river that ran like a mirror. The town smelled of citrus and wood smoke, not of incense and council. The black guards had taken me away for my protection. They told me that trouble had come to the palace and the emperor had been struck down. The word "dead" fell on me like frost.
He was gone or so it seemed. Snow blurred memory. I clutched a box he'd given me — a small piece of jade carved with the tiny character he had chosen for my title — and slept long on the river beds.
Days folded into one another. Emely took care of me. She coaxed me to the market and to the river. She told me simple stories: "You will get better," she said. "He would not have wanted you to waste away."
One night, on New Year's Eve, the air full of lantern smoke and the sky full of sparks, someone stood before me with a lantern made of paper and wit.
"May I present you this," he said softly. The voice was too familiar. I froze.
"Who are you?" I whispered. My heart, which had been a battered drum for months, began to pound like a child running.
"Remember the Star Pavilion?" Cody asked. He was there in the lantern light, alive. He reached out and held my hand the way he had months ago at court. "Happy New Year," he murmured.
Tears came out of me like a flood gate. "Cody," I said. "You—"
He laughed, quietly, like a man who had survived a storm. "It's a long story," he said. "But we are here now."
He explained that in the winter's turmoil he had been struck down but not killed. A faction had tried to claim the throne: Jagger Dunlap, who had raised banners and claimed the succession, had taken the capital in the belief it would be a clean usurpation. He had support in council and gold in pockets. The palace had danced with betrayal.
"We were not fooled," Cody said. "We went quiet, we watched. We let them hang themselves on their own rope. We let them make mistakes."
"Why did you let them?" I sobbed. "Why not come sooner?"
"Because the theater of politics needs an audience," he said, half joking and half cruel. "Because sometimes a man must see his enemies twist themselves into knots before the truth is clear."
He kissed my forehead. "But now the truth will be told in the daylight. Come with me to the capital. Let us go together."
We did go back. The capital smelled of smoke and old snow. Jagger Dunlap had proclaimed himself the new lord, a cold smile like a blade in his posture. He held trials and banquets and parades, trying to stitch legitimacy into the rags of his claim.
"Watch," Cody told me in the carriage. "Let them parade. Let them be loud."
I remember the square filling with people like a tide. Jagger stood on a raised platform, his robes bright and his mouth practiced. He beat his chest with claims against those who had opposed his rise. Katelyn Bartlett was near his side, her face a sheet of composed satisfaction.
"Why is my sister there?" I hissed to Cody.
"Because she made a choice," he answered. "Because some chose gold over family."
We entered the hall. I walked beside him feeling like a thin reed in a storm. Then Cody had them bring forward the men who had planned the coup. He had them called by name. "Jagger Dunlap," he said, voice carrying like a bell. "You have done many things in my name. Tell these people why."
Jagger laughed. "I took what was necessary for the realm," he said, loud enough for the crowd to feel the sting. "The old line had failed. I did what must be done."
"You set bombs," I said, because I had seen the evidence. "You arranged arrows, you planted men. You sought to kill me and to push your claim by blood."
At that, the murmurs shifted. The square pressed itself forward like a crowd listening to thunder. A yellow ribbon unrolled at the edge of the platform and men opened a chest: documents, correspondences, the signatures of those who had supported Jagger. The crowd saw the handwriting of the treacherous. There were seals and stamps with Jagger's mark.
"You will pay," Cody said to him. "Not because you fought, but because you lied and tried to kill a woman who stands before me."
"She is the consort? The food-loving consort?" someone called, and there was a smattering of laughter like thrown stones.
Katelyn's face went sharp. "You reveal only now because you must," she said to me, venom in her example of civility. "You think you are clever."
"I think I was hungry," I replied. My voice trembled. "Hungry for truth and for equal bowls. But I was not hungry for betrayal."
Then Cody did something quiet that made the square hold its breath. He spoke the name of every man who had hidden in the administration to provide Jagger with funds. He read letters that Jagger had sealed and mailed with instructions. He produced a witness: Hans Gilbert stepped forward, once a shadow at our side, now a man with a scar and a steady gaze. He spoke of how Jagger had recruited men to attack the prince and had promised titles and lands to those who would help.
"You promised lands and we saw instead blood," Hans said, voice low. "You promised safety and we saw the palace open its gates."
At last, it was not only a legal unmasking. It became a slow, deliberate punishment, staged in daylight for all to witness.
"You will not be killed," Cody declared. "Killing would be merciful. Instead, you will live with what you have made."
They dragged Jagger to the center of the square. The crowd closed in so tight I could not see his expression at first. He tried to laugh, to stand tall, but his laugh became thin. Men pointed out to the crowd the trials he had set in motion. They brought forth those he had betrayed: soldiers whose families he had ruined, merchants whose caravans he had looted in secret, servants who had seen the arrows bent toward the prince.
"Look," a woman screamed, pointing at Katelyn. "You sold your sister's life for a promise."
Katelyn's face broke like a porcelain mask. She had the first crack of many. "I did what was right for our house," she said in a voice that sounded suddenly very small.
"Right for your house?" someone shouted. "Whose house? The houses of the dead?"
They stripped away his titles publicly. They took the seals from his robes and displayed them like tarnished coins. They cut the ribbons from his banners and fed them to the fire. The crowd watched his dignity burn. He tried to bargain and bribe with promises of land, but this was not a hall to be bought. The people booed him. Children spat. Old men spat wisdom.
"You thought to dance with men of blood," Cody said, standing very still so his voice carried without any echo. "Now dance with the truth."
First came confusion. Jagger's face shifted from bluster to contempt. He spat. "You cannot do this." His voice wagged like a flag in a gust.
"Why not?" a soldier called. "You poisoned our bread!"
He sneered and turned to the crowd. "You see but this day how many I commanded. They loved me! They would have..."
He stopped because he saw their faces. The crowd was not with him. The same faces that had once drunk from the cups he polished now turned aside. A handful of men whistled. A woman began to clap slowly, the sound numbing all at once.
They made him walk the length of the market and then the length of the temple, a man once proud exposed to the judgments of ordinary faces. They demanded he apologize to those he had wronged. He tried to say the words, but they stuck and turned to stone in his mouth. He reached for anyone to bargain with, but everyone had a story and none were for sale.
"This is more than a sentence," Cody said afterward. "This is a lesson. Let it be the lesson."
When he fell to his knees finally, it was not from remorse but from exhaustion. He had been wrenched from a podium and dragged through passages. His pride had been stripped and given to the crowd like bread. "I did what I thought was right," he begged at last, voice small as a child.
An old woman, whose son Jagger had had killed as a soldier for money, spat at him. "You gave my boy no burial and gave us your promises," she said. "Eat your granted baskets now."
That is the thing about public humiliation: some people beg, and then people laugh, and then they watch slowly as the proud man crumbles into a heap of things he no longer recognizes. Jagger's countenance ran a map of his fall: at first astonishment, then rage, then frantic bargaining, then a slow, awful slide into pleading. The crowd had watched his muscles clench and go slack; they had watched the color leave his face. They had seen him, in front of judges and market-sellers alike, turned from a man of cloth and opulence into a man who knew his miscalculations.
Katelyn stood separate from him, hands curled into fists. When people noticed her involvement, they turned. A merchant cursed at her. Someone threw a cup. Katelyn hit the ground with the sound of a plate. Her eyes were wide and horrified as people called her by name: "Traitor!" "Family turned." Her breathing came in shallow gasps. She tried to speak and then could not. In front of the crowd that had thought her a lady, she found herself naked of respect.
When the punishment ended — which is to say when the crowd, having had its spectacle, let the law take him — Jagger was led away in chains. He had been made to walk barefoot on the stones he had so often trod with arrogance. His armor was wrenched from him and given to those he had impoverished. The people took his banners and turned them into rags.
"Do you feel better?" someone shouted.
"Yes," a voice answered — not mine. Another merchant lifted his hands. "Our sons will sleep without fear now."
I held Cody's hand. "I didn't want this," I whispered.
"You did not start it," Cody said. "But we ended it."
Later, once the fire of the crowd had settled into remonstration, they called Katelyn forward. She kneeled, and people spat their old words. She had two outcomes: exile and the removal of any position. The chancellor, our father Salvador Hall, watched from the shadows with a face like stone. His house had been honored; it had been tainted. He had old debts and now older rumors. He came forward and, for the first time, held my hand in public.
"People will say many things," he told me, quietly. "We did what we could."
"Are you angry?" I asked.
"I am tired," he said. "But this is the way the world moves."
That night, the city felt cleaner and raw. Some people cheered in the streets. Some people hung their heads. A child came and pressed a flower into my palm. "For the lady of the bowl," she said.
I laughed — it was a small sound, but it was true. "For the lady who eats and stays," I replied.
We went home slowly, the snow like dust on the world. There were too many things to say and not enough strength to say them. Cody sat beside me, quiet, hands warmed by mine. "You did not want public revenge," he said.
"No," I said. "But it is done. People watched."
"It was good for them to see," he said. "And for you to understand what you mean to them."
"What do I mean?"
He smiled at me with a tired little grin. "You mean that even emperors can be human if they have the right bowl. You mean... you are my star, Kiara."
It was, as ridiculous as it sounds, one of the three moments I would remember forever. The first: when his hand pulled me back from the arrow and my life turned. The second: when he lifted my chin in front of a table and asked me to belong. The third: when we walked together through a crowd that had watched a usurper's pride burn and found we were not alone.
We rebuilt. We repaired things the best an emperor and his consort can. We fed the city with kitchens that had been empty. We welcomed those who had been wronged. And the most private thing of all: he learned to ask for one more bowl sometimes, and I learned to share it.
"Will you always be my consort?" he asked once, under low lantern light in our small private garden, where snow melted into the earth like sugar into tea.
"I will be your consort and the woman who eats his food," I answered.
He laughed and kissed me on the forehead, like a man who had been found and forgiven. "Then we will have much to do," he said. "There will be dinners and counsel and annoyances by relatives."
"Bring them on," I said. "And make sure the cooks are well paid."
He nodded solemnly. "I will. For the bowl, and for you."
For many things afterwards the court became a place of small absurdities that comforted rather than ruled. I learned to write with a brush for formal letters — badly, but with honest strokes. I taught the palace kitchen a new way to braise pork that became so famous people would travel for it. I wrote small stories in the evenings about a woman who came from another life and stayed because of noodles. Cody read them and pretended not to be moved.
When I looked back on the winter that changed everything, I remembered the small and the large — the bowl, the hand, the star, the punishment of that man who tried to make the throne his and the way the crowd found justice with stones and words. I remembered Emely's soft care and Hans's solid presence and my sister's collapse into regret.
I also remembered one last thing: how small mercies can become great things when held in a warm hand.
The End
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