Sweet Romance12 min read
I Said Yes — Then I Burned the House Down
ButterPicks10 views
"I won't be sold."
I said it to the hall, to the carved beams, and to the woman who had just broken my only mirror.
"You dare answer me?" Anastasia Friedrich spat, wiping coral pins from her hair. Her face was pale under the rouge. The servants around us stiffened.
"I said no," I said again, and I meant it. My body still hurt where they'd beaten me, but my voice did not.
Anastasia laughed like a sharp knife. "Then you'll go look fine for the commander and die with a pretty face, and you'll thank me for the honor."
"Then I'll make sure the commander's house burns first," I said.
Three servants stepped forward. One reached for me. I hit back. They froze.
"You hit a lady," Anastasia shrieked. "Guards!"
I hit her again.
The room went very quiet. For a moment I thought I would faint. I had been a field medic and a sniper in a jungle far from here. I knew how bodies failed. I also knew how they could survive.
They called me stubborn. They called me cursed. They called me brave later, but not then.
"Leave," Anastasia hissed. "Go. If you go, you are dead to us."
"Fine," I said. "I will go."
They expected me to be a frightened thing. They did not expect me to walk out with a crooked smile and the coral pin in my hand.
They did not expect me to take a whole commander's house with me.
"Magdalena!" the woman who had scrubbed the kitchen called after me. "Magdalena Jaeger, don't—"
I tossed back over my shoulder. "Call me Magdalena, if you please. I'll send you a beam of fire."
They threw stones at my pride. I answered with a plan.
...
"I saw you from the lookout." He said it like a fact, dry and steady. Sven Lawson never put more words into danger than he had to. He looked like a man who had slept with his armor on and still kept it tidy.
"You saw a burning house," I said.
"I saw a woman drop from the upper balcony, then land in a pile of straw," he corrected. "And she stood up."
There were six men at the tower with him. Fielding Beck, lean and loud, had a grin that kept trying to be a knife and ended up a smile. Brecken Sun, the old general, smelled of iron and tobacco. Sawyer Reyes sat with a bandage on his leg, propping his foot, and when he saw me he smiled like a boy who'd been given back a toy.
"You should have stayed under the straw," Sawyer said. "It looks flatter on you there."
"I nearly died for your army," I told him.
"You did," Sven said. "And you patched my boy because you knew how to stop people from slipping away. For that, I'm indebted."
"Then collect," I said. "I want a bed that is not a foam-stuffed sack. I want a bowl that does not come from an empty pot. I want to sleep without planning how I will steal a crust."
"A list as plain as a ledger," Fielding said. "Done."
Sven watched me and didn't smile. He seemed to count me like one counts a weapon. Not like something to hold, but like something to trust.
"I want to help," I said, finally. "My hands can stitch. My eyes can see a hairline in a map. Keep me and I'll earn my keep."
He tilted his head. "Then stay. We'll use you."
Stay was less romantic than I expected. It felt practical. I said yes.
"Help me check a map," he said the next morning.
"I can," I said. "But one of your men is a traitor."
He did not look surprised. "Who?"
"I think Abraham Cruz," I said. "He spat when we spoke of moving forward. He has a weight of reasons in his pockets. Watch him."
Fielding and Sven exchanged a look. Fielding leaned forward. "Show us."
I did. I pointed where the scouts would have snuck, where a river narrowed, where a town could hide an army in ruins. When I spoke of the angles and the time, the men who had lived on paper maps all their lives fell quiet.
"You're not a lady," Brecken Sun said, approvingly. "You're a soldier who learned to sew."
"I was a doctor and a sniper," I said. "Two jobs that make good hands."
That afternoon the court folded like an old paper fan. Men who would have laughed at a girl with a bow began to move their boots differently. They listened.
"You're bold," Sven said later, in the private room where he drank his wine like it was a map too.
"I'm tired," I said. "Bold feels like another word for desperate."
He held the cup near my face. "Then rest. Let us take care of the desperate bits."
I let him. I let the broth soothe the raggedness under my ribs. I let himself watch me like a man who was studying a tree for the exact place to tie a rope.
The first test came sooner than comfort.
"We've been hit," Fielding announced mid-dawn. "A small party was caught before they got a full view. They say the name that fell was... Zhanluo."
"The prince?" Sawyer's voice was small. "The prince of the red band?"
I found my bow before I thought. "Then he is here."
We found them at the river lip. It was fog and screaming, and red eyes under helmets. A handful of prince's men, scouting. Their leader had blue-green eyes too sharp to be local.
"Don't look like royalty, do they?" Sven muttered.
They called the leader "Benito" in the shouts that followed, and later I learned that the old stories called him prince. When the blue-eyed man landed before me on a horse and smiled, I thought about a man on the border in a different life who had fired once and died twice.
The battle was too close; it was a child's first storm. Arrows bit the air. I kept shooting. I felt old marks on my shoulder where bullets had taken muscle. I felt the world thin to a tube and a sight line.
Someone tried to kill me with a curved blade. A tall man in front of me raised his sword like a promise, and I almost tasted the end.
Then a hand struck the wrist, a hammer rose, a man in plate came through like a living wall. He is big in a way that does not announce itself. The family guard held the blade up and took the strike.
"Stay behind!" he barked.
After the fight a horse rider called him "Earl's foreman" and laughed; the man spat it away. He had a name—Earl Dell? No, that was not his name. He introduced himself to me as a house guard who hated waste. The point is that on that day, he saved me.
Later that night, the boy Sawyer sat on a bench with a bandage on his leg and looked at me like I had pulled a coin from a well.
"You almost bled out," he said. "If you had—"
"I would be gone," I said. "And you'd have to find another person to get you into trouble."
He smiled. "I want you on my watch."
"I'll be on watch for you," I said.
We fought more. We found a traitor who had sold maps. Abraham Cruz swallowed the knife and the shame. He slit his throat in his quarters. The men who had been paid to stall a march were dragged out. The camp made noise both ways—men praising and men sweating—that evening under the canvas.
The commander who had marked my life for sale—Gunner Bogdanov—was dead. They said I had killed him. They said I had lit his house on purpose. The court chewed on the story like hungry dogs. I did not deny it. He had made rooms where women were collections. He had bought little girls as ornaments.
"You burned his house," Sven said once, in the low light of his chambers. He looked at me like a man who had put two pieces together and liked the picture.
"I lit the lamp," I said. "I pushed the match. I used the window."
He nodded. "And I will call it a quiet accident."
We kept our faces calm, but our hands changed. We drew lines on paper and moved men. We moved the army toward the cliff they had wanted to catch us on, and we learned that the enemy wanted us to die where they could take our banners.
"My father hasn't woken in ten years," Sven told me one night as we looked at maps by a small lamp. "They have tried every man. I have no healer who does not use words like 'mystery' and 'ghost.'"
"What's his illness?" I asked.
"Head hit," Sven said. "A blow when he was young. They say he cooks like a bell that lost its striker. He sometimes breathes and sometimes doesn't."
I thought of the man lying in a valley far from home who had stopped answering names. I thought of the hands that had sewn faces back together. I thought of all the books I had read for soldiers on stretchers and broken backs. I thought, "I can try."
"Bring me to the bed," I said.
The house of Lord Lawson smelled of tea and old silk. A woman with thin hands—Hedda Barber, a wife's patience tucked in her voice—stood with a rosary. The younger sister, Gianna Carter, had the look of a woman who arranged other people's grief into tidy rows.
"You ask much of a child," Hedda said kindly. "But try. If there is hope, we will hold it."
I laid hands on the old man like a surgeon who listens for the secret place where alertness hides. I took pulses and watched breath. I did not whisper prayers. I watched, and I fixed what I could.
"We will do a test," I told the court. "I will manage his fluids. We'll use heat and keep him fed slowly. I need herbs of ginger and ale. Tea won't do."
"We'll fetch what you need," Gianna said.
"This is no place for a girl," Hedda said to Sven under her breath. "You risk a lot."
"You risk a little more if you do nothing," he said, quietly.
We worked for days. I held his jaw and propped his chin. I warmed him. I used plasters and a crude tourniquet. I explained to the household that the silence might be part of a sleep that could be called awake. People waited like boats in fog, all hope on a rope.
When the old man inhaled deeper, everyone in the room jolted like a body pushed by a spring.
"He's breathing," Gianna breathed.
He opened his eyes like a door that had been closed. He did not speak. When he did, it was a name I did not know. I had given him water like a respect. He squeezed Sven's hand.
"You did this," Hedda said, looking at me. "You brought a ghost back to talk."
"I cleaned his mouth," I answered. "I warmed him. I kept him safe while his mind found the shore."
Sven looked at me like a man seeing a new tool and imagining new wars. He did not praise easily. He reached for my hand with both of his and held it like a seam.
"We owe you much," he said.
"You pay with bread and a warm room," I told him. "I will not take a title. I will take food and the right to walk at your side."
He smiled then—a short, unfamiliar tilt that did not match his usual stone. "Then I will see that you have both."
It was not courtship as the songs describe. It was more like two people who had dug a trap together and later sat in its shadow, agreeing to share the blanket.
The war outside thinned like a hard cough. The prince Zhanluo—Benito Yang—was said dead, but rumors spread that he had been dragged away. Men who once called me witch or thief now called me "doctor." The army called me "Magdalena the Surgeon." There were no crowns for that, only respect and the right to have a room in the courtyard.
"Will you go to the capital with us?" Sven asked one morning, while soldiers lifted tents and sunlight cracked like light on a bowl.
"I think so," I said. "Your sister has notebooks the size of children, and I want to see the books."
He laughed once. "For the books?"
"For the books," I said. "And because I do not like being alone."
He did not answer right away. He had the face of a man who did not know how to ask a favor of himself without sounding less like a commander. Finally he said, "Stay with us in the capital. Live on your terms."
"Your terms?" I asked.
"Will you accept... me?" he asked, clumsy and honest.
I studied his face for a long moment. I thought of the broken mirror, the coral pin, the fire, and the nights I thought bullets would take me. I thought of the way he had moved when danger came. I thought of how easily he took responsibility for a woman he barely met.
"I will accept you," I said.
"You are not some prize to set on my shelf," he said, voice small. "If you are with me, it is by choice."
"I know," I said. "So stay away from my mirrors."
He bowed his head. "Only one mirror. I pick the best place for it."
The capital was noisy and cold and full of voices that smelled of money. They gave me books and a yard with a tree and a room that had a window the size of a chest. I slept and read and stitched and walked in the gardens. Gianna—Sven's sister—taught me calligraphy. Hedda made me tea like a mother who was a little afraid her child would break.
People spoke behind curtained doors. Someone tried to use old rumors about the burned house to make speeches against us. Abraham Cruz's sons tried to buy favor with those who wore too many rings. The king—an old moon on a throne—wrote letters and sent men and reminded everyone that the war had graced them with a new scale of worth.
"You will have offers," Fielding said once, when we walked under the spring trees. "People will want the woman who defeated a commander."
"Better they want me for food and a book," I said.
Fielding laughed. "You'll have both."
Sven handled the politics like a man who knew the names of every nail in his house. He measured the danger and moved men where they needed to be. At night, when the work slowed and the world smelled like wood smoke, his hands found mine.
"Why did you stay?" he asked, once.
"I was tired of being someone else's plan," I said. "You didn't write me on a ledger. You asked me to be part of yours."
He squeezed my fingers. "Then be with me on my terms."
His terms were small and clear: he would not own me, he would give me a room and a name at his table, and he would ask permission before using the word "wife." In return I would walk beside him in the council and sit with him in the cold. We made no fancy promises. We made a quiet pact.
Months went by. The old nobleman who had fallen in battle was awake more days than not. The army returned in waves and ribbons of men who had been away long enough that their names sounded like songs.
One evening, near the moonpond in Sven's garden, I pulled out the remaining shards of the mirror Anastasia had smashed months ago. I had kept a shard wrapped in cloth, because old things are like knots in a rope. I held the sharp little piece up so the moon would light its edge.
"You kept that?" Sven asked.
"It was my mother's," I said. "I couldn't let your house burn without bringing something of mine."
He touched the mirror with a finger and did not cut himself. "You made me promise to keep you safe," he said, with a softness that turned his words into something like a ring.
"You did," I said. "You also promised a lot to a girl who could have died in a straw pile."
He smiled. "I promised what I could keep."
He turned and took my hand, the same way he took it under the tent with the map. Then he bent and kissed my forehead, like a man who thanked a friend for a decision well made.
"Do you regret it?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I regret only the time when I didn't have this room."
He laughed once, a short sound that shook his shoulders. "Then we'll fill it with things you like."
We walked into the house together. The capital hummed behind the walls. The war fog was thinning. There were quiet promises between us, and there were noisy tasks that never stopped. I sewed under lamplight. I taught a field surgeon how to hold a hand steady with a straight needle. I learned titles and when to bow and when to refuse.
Anastasia sent a letter once. It said I had dishonored the family and they had moved away with their heads high. I said in a reply that I had burned less than their cruelty. She replied with words I could not forgive. I burned her letter in the stove.
"You didn't kill her," Sven said when I threw the ash away.
"No," I said. "I didn't need to. Letters can get you more than swords."
I learned to make peace with my old life because I had chosen this one. I learned to call my hands mine. I learned to accept a man who was not loud and not careless. Sven was solid. He did not sing. But he made plans and kept them, and he made room for me.
One winter night, after the courtyard had filled with the sound of distant drums and the city had quieted, he took me to the window and wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
"I do not expect a crown," he said. "And I do not need one. I ask only your name in my house, and your truth."
"You already have it," I said. "You have both."
He leaned in and kissed me then properly, not a hand on forehead but a mouth that told me what men can tell each other when they've both seen the worst the world offers.
"Magdalena," he whispered. "Stay."
"I already did," I said.
Outside, beyond the bright paper lanterns and the slow steps of men going home, red banners still shifted with the wind. There would be more trouble. There would be more soldiers to mend and more men to watch. There would be nights when I would sit with Sawyer and teach him how not to panic and mornings where Fielding would swear and swear and find the joke again.
There would be times when I would still want to run to the jungle and hide in a rusted foxhole. But I had a room now, and a bowl, and a man who would not put me on a ledger.
"Promise me you won't leave without saying a word," Sven said.
"I promise," I said.
He kissed me, and this time I tasted the warmth of stew and maps and late-night laughter. I tasted the future, not as some bright banner but as a path cleared by two feet walking together.
And when I put the broken mirror out in the window the next morning, no one called it a thing worth gossip. They called it a thing that showed a woman who had chosen to make herself whole.
In a few years, maybe people would call us a story: the girl who burned the commander's house and the young lord who kept her. I didn't care for the telling. I liked the doing.
For now, I had bread, books, and a man who remembered to tell me the truth.
"Magdalena," Sven said, quietly, as we sat with tea in the easy half-light. "If there is a danger you would not face, tell me. Let me stand with you, even if you are the sword."
"I won't feed you lies," I said. "If I am the sword, you'll be the shield."
He smiled and tipped his head. "Deal."
We kept the mirror because nothing about the world is tidy. We kept the scar across my knuckles because work leaves marks. We kept each other because we had chosen to.
And when the city called us to another frost and men needed bandages and a plan, I rose from my chair with a bow and a bandage kit and the taste of Sven's lips still on my mouth.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Always," I said.
We walked out together, and the city felt less like a battlefield and more like a place that held rooms, books, and the small kindnesses that stitch people into the same life.
The End
— Thank you for reading —