Revenge12 min read
I Was Born Alana Burch, Not a Fairy Tale
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I woke up in another life with my hands stained by cold dust and my cheeks wet from tears that weren't mine.
"Don't call him my son," my father snapped as if the words could carve a separate world.
"I will not!" I answered, but the voice felt thin in my mouth.
Someone pushed, someone shouted, and I remembered the two struck palms between my father and that ragged man — the pact not finished.
A hand came down toward my face. I shut my eyes and fainted.
When I opened them, a quilt smelled of lavender and money. "Father, Mother," I murmured.
"Don't call me father!" Clayton Walter barked. He was a man who wore office like armor.
I forced myself up, knelt before them, and let the sorrow spill out like a broken jar. "I agreed two slaps for love, but the third I cannot give. I am their daughter. I will not disobey."
They wept. "You were foolish," Delilah Lindstrom cried, but she hugged me. "You were a filial daughter to return."
Hattie Bergstrom fussed at my hair and fluffed my robe. "Miss, Master Kai waits every day outside the gate," she warned.
"Let him wait," I said. "I have changed my mind."
That was how Alana Burch returned to the Clayton household — a prime minister's daughter, pampered and wrapped in silk. Hattie worried. "Miss, you told me you'd marry Kai Kozlov, you said nothing else in this life would do."
"That was before." I smiled like a lamp lighting. "Now I am the lady of this house. You will follow my words."
Kai Kozlov had been patient. He waited beneath the porch for sunrises and sunsets. When he could not endure, he stopped coming. Hattie brought messages and tears and excuses. "He promises to make silver, to be worthy," she offered. I looked at the jade bracelet on my wrist and answered with a sharp laugh. "Let him promise. Let him try."
I went to the cold kiln where Alana in the old story had wasted years waiting. I changed into a plain skirt, hid my hairpins, and stood so thin a passing wind might sweep me away. When Kai found me, he rushed, eyes wide and raw. "Alana, I couldn't live without you!" he cried.
"I nearly won't live without you either," I said and coughed softly. He wrapped his arms, not noticing the plan in my chest: make him pity me, make him feel unable, make him leave of his own shame.
Hattie fed the story: "Miss refused to eat, Miss begged with tears until her parents relented, she must be weak." He bought expensive herbs, then fewer, then cheap substitutes. He did the shabby hero — day jobs, callused hands, a hope that sweat could buy honor.
One evening I asked, "Did you bring anything from your home when you left?"
He looked surprised. "My life," he said. "Only my life and work."
"Did you ever think of pawning something?" I asked like a little bell.
He swallowed. "You mean—" He spoke like a child on a cliff. "I... I had this jade since my youth. I couldn't pawn it. It might tell my blood."
I watched him tighten his jaw. That night he paid for medicine and left with a promise: "I'll earn silver and come for you properly. Wait for me."
Years in the book turned like a slow wheel. He left. I went back to silk and sun, and the world unfolded differently under my feet.
"Alana," Hattie said once, "he will come back and he will be a man."
"Or he will never come back at all," I murmured, and watched the koi in the manor pond flick their tails like impatient fingers.
One day a thin letter arrived. "I will go to war," the handwriting said. "I will earn fate and return." I balled it and tossed it in the pond. The ink blurred. The koi fought for crumbs.
"I never saw that letter," I told Hattie. "Throw stones at the paper, not at my time."
After a long absence, men came with grand stories. Kai Kozlov had risen under banners I had not given him. He had married for power once, for alliance, and for a crown changed with a foreign princess. He became a king where his name was on coins and his face on standard.
I kept my life and built another one.
I was married off — not to a villain of the story but to Bernabe Ball, a solid man who loved me in a way that was quieter than the songs. At first the marriage was ice and needles. "You are mine by law," he said. "I own your name."
"I am not a thing," I replied.
We fought and scolded. He once tried to force me and failed in a way that broke him as much as me. I stitched a plan of safety, demanded a dowry equal to my sisters', and asked for guards. He sulked. He hated me for the day he lost power; I taught him to run a house and to keep accounts. He used to be a swaggering boy; time and some shocks softened him. We learned to make a life together that was not the soft chain of storybooks.
"Marry him well," my father said once, "and he'll keep you safe." I did not want a life of safety only; I wanted work.
I opened a tea shop with my own dowry. "One Cup," I called it — a shop that would become many, each storefront a small flag of my independence. I traveled for tea, brought back leaves, and sold warmth by the cup.
Years passed. The city called out with word that Kai Kozlov had come to Long An. "He is back as a crowned man," the papers said. "He claims a lost heritage." It turned out the general who had once pressed his face into dust was actually of royal blood. The pieces of fate had settled in a different order than any tale I had read.
The court called, and one autumn evening I found myself summoned to a private hall.
"Alana," said a voice low and raw behind me. I turned. A figure in yellow, a dragon embroidered across his breast, looked as if the years had dragged a map across his face. "I missed you," he murmured.
"You will speak officially, Your Majesty," I answered, cool as a winter pond. "You should have sent a summons through the proper channels."
"You look the same," he said, but his voice slid. "You are as beautiful."
"Her Majesty is splendid," I returned quickly. "I could not compare."
He smiled like a man who had rehearsed a thousand lines and had none that meant anything now. "Come back. We could be—" He faltered. "We could be a pair."
I stepped back. "Your Majesty," I said flatly, "it is Alana Burch, wife of Bernabe Ball. You must call me Lady Ball."
The Emperor—Kai Kozlov—paused. "Why didn't you wait?" he asked with a child's hurt. "I left you because I would be too small. I went to make my name for you. I wrote and sent letters. Did you not receive them?"
"I never saw them," I said.
He searched his features; a shadow shivered across his brow. "Then something stopped them." He turned to pace and returned with a tone that wanted to be tender. "Let the past be past. I can give you wealth and rank. Live in the palace. Leave the tea and the work."
I laughed and it sounded like breaking glass. "Give me riches and expect gratitude? You left me to rot in a kiln out of shame, then you married another for power and came back wanting me as a plaything?"
He lost his color. "Do you know what I endured?" he demanded. "I fought for years! I earned banners and titles!"
"And married someone else for cloak and rank," I answered. "You used me in your youth and now you want to tuck me into the corner of your triumph."
The palace paled. He reached for me and I darted away. "You cannot order this," I said. "I am the wife of Bernabe Ball."
"Then I will make you my consort," he whispered fiercely. "I will arrange a divorce."
He kept me in a side hall for days, a gilded cage. He came and spoke at length, offered titles, promised safety. He thought fame would drown stubbornness.
"Why won't you let me go?" he asked one night, voice tight.
"Because," I said, and I surprised myself with the truth, "you are asking me to be the treasure on your coat. I am not your final prize." I laughed. "You cannot buy the life I built."
He grew angry, then frantic. He brought me gifts, brought me silk, brought me servants. He told me he had sent letters. He insisted on making me his.
On the day when the court would bless some other ceremony, I walked into the inner hall and stood straight as a spear. Behind the screens, a figure watched and then stepped out.
"Alana," the Empress said, voice like cold water. It was Sofia Smirnov, a woman who had learned the long art of keeping crowns polished. Her eyes were wet, but furious. "You are Alana Burch. Stand."
The door opened and a thousand cloth hems and boots whispered like wind. Candles trembled. The chamber brimmed with courtiers, concubines, ministers — the whole court came as if for a festival.
"Majesty," I said, kneeling as the custom demanded. "I come of my own will."
Her Majesty turned to the Emperor. "You declare yourself wronged because she refuses you, yet you married another. How does that honor you?" she asked. Her voice cut into the room. "If you have a charge, bring it before the court."
"Her Majesty speaks sagely," I answered. "If the Emperor wishes to question my conduct, let him speak before those who swear service to the realm."
He opened his mouth and shut it. The hush in the room spoke. This was the moment I had not planned. Yet plans yield to what truth can do when it stands upright.
"Why did you send your letters?" I asked him openly. "If you loved me so, why did you marry for rank?"
"I—" He tried to smile. "I had to secure a place—"
"For what?" I demanded. "For pride? For a name? For a daughter to call you father?"
The Empress set a hand on my shoulder. "Tell them the truth," she said.
So I did. I told them about the cold kiln, about his little promises, about herbs bought and then swapped, about the day he left with a jade in his pocket and a vow in his mouth. I told them how he had married a princess for alliance and had the gall to return and claim me as his heart. I told them that when love asks a woman to wait in darkness for the sake of a man's uncertain future, it is not love but vanity.
The court listened like a field listening for thunder.
Kai Kozlov's face changed in a way that made people look. At first he blinked as if at a bad play. Then his jaw tightened. Then he flushed. "You slander me," he said. "You make the court laugh."
From the galleries came a murmur. Some leaned forward. A minister, Penn Camacho, whispered to his neighbor. A general, Elias Johansson, pursed his mouth. The Empress stepped forward and with a hand raised like a judge, she commanded the crowd to silence.
"An Emperor is judge and father of his people," she said. "But he must not be allowed to make a private hunger into public ruin. This court will examine the conduct of an Emperor whose behavior causes unrest among those whose loyalty it requires."
A gasp cut the air. "Examine the Emperor?" someone croaked.
"Let inquiry begin," Sofia said. "Summon proof of letters. Call for witnesses. We will not let rumor carry the crown."
Kai looked stunned. For the first time his authority did not flatten the room; it bent like a reed in wind.
"Do you demand proof?" he asked, voice shaky.
"I demand truth," the Empress answered.
They searched. Messengers were questioned. Servants of old days were brought. A clerk produced torn pieces of letters that had been found in an archive — some lost, some soaked. A courier from years past was summoned and, trembling, explained that he had been paid to deliver a letter that never reached a certain house. A man in the crowd — a retired sailor who had once carried words between provinces — stood and said, "I remember a jade and a promise. Some things get lost when a household opens its doors to power."
Kai's face went through the stages of a collapsing man. Pride, to shock, to denial. He muttered, "There were obstacles. You cannot pin this all on me." He looked to the ministers. Some kept their faces mute. A few, like Ricardo Deleon, glanced down as if to hide a twitch of shame.
The Empress's voice — steady, not cruel — swept the room. "The court punishes not from malice but to right wrongs. An Emperor who uses love as bargaining chips will pay a cost in trust."
"Your Majesty!" he cried. "You cannot—"
"I can," she said. "For the peace of the realm. For the people who watch and the children who learn."
They named the punishments: a public confession placed on the palace steps, the Emperor commanded to send a formal apology to those households wronged by promises unkept, a public redistribution of funds he had appropriated for private projects to the poor, and three days of open court where any who felt slighted might speak. It was not the harshest of penalties — an Emperor cannot be flogged — but it was ruinous to the part of him that lived on reputation.
The crowd watched his face crumble. At first he tried to laugh. "You would humiliate me for love?" he said, voice thin.
"You asked to hold me," I said coldly. "You have held the crown. I hold nothing now but my truth."
He tried to deny. "I tried to protect my legacy," he said. "I had no choice."
"You had a choice," I answered. "You chose. You chose titles over the woman who waited."
He staggered, eyes wet. "I am emperor," he whispered. "I cannot be treated like this."
"You are treated honestly," Sofia said. "You will go before the people, and they will decide how much weight your promises should hold."
A murmur of delight rose like a small tide. People took out papers, scribbled, whispered. They had seen an emperor humbled and a woman speak without fear. It had become a lesson.
Kai's face shifted through fury to disbelief to a hollow begging. "Forgive me," he said, voice cracking. "You do not understand the trials—" He began to sputter apologies, attempts at reasoning, then self-pity. "I fought, I bled!" he shouted. "You do not see the nights, the hunger—" His voice dwindled.
A young courtier near me — Calhoun Wagner — made a small, audible sniff. An old maid called Abigail Bauer clutched her pearls and whispered, "So that's how the mighty can fall." Someone in the back laughed. Another whispered, "He used love like armor."
Then the change: people who had once bowed to him now turned away. A few noblewomen clucked; a handful of men crossed arms and muttered. Courtiers took out brushes and began to inscribe records of the proceedings. A minstrel near the door started a mocking tune, barely a few bars, and it caught. The tune spread as if a smile had become contagious.
Kai's composure snapped. He fell to his knees before the Empress and then before me. His hands were the hands of a lost boy. "Please," he begged, "I will do anything."
There was a silence like after rain. "You will make a public apology," the Empress said, "not for grand words that will be forgotten, but for action. You will fund three healers for the poor. You will write a public confession of your mistakes and sign it. For a man who wanted to buy love with power to be redeemed, the path must be honest."
He did as ordered. People watched him bend and write and sign. He tried to keep dignity but lost it in the tremor of his hand. He lifted his eyes; some watched with pity, some with scorn. Cameras were not yet a thing in that age but every eye felt like a witness. Courtiers took notes, scribes wrote, and the memory of his pride bruised and faded like a leaf in cold wind.
He changed — from a man of steady ambition to one of broken apologies. He tried to deny, then deny no longer. He begged, then pleaded. The crowd recorded every shift. "He once said he would die for me," I said later. "Now he kneels before the people who will decide how to treat him."
It was not the execution of a tyrant. Rather it was the slow, public stripping of pride. He looked small and very human. The witnesses murmured and some wept for him, not for his deeds, but for what he had lost.
When it ended, the Empress turned to me. "You may go," she said. "You are no subject to be traded." She lifted a sealed paper and placed it in my hands. "A formal document of separation," she said. "Signed in the shadow of the throne so the world may read."
Outside the palace, Hattie waited with a carriage. "Miss, you have shaken a mountain," she said. "You were brave."
"I was honest," I answered. "And the world needs more honest women."
The years that followed were not quiet. Bernabe Ball and I rebuilt our life together. He warmed from sulk to steady companion to a man who would stroke my hair at dawn. We ran the tea houses. "One Cup" became thirty-four cups across the cities. I sent tea caravans down the Silk Road and traded warmth for horses. When the drought came, I sold tea for grain and set up porridge halls. The court took note; the emperor — the same man — had to call on my help.
"Lady Alana," a minister said once, "you give much." I shrugged. "I give what matters."
Years later, I knelt by my father's side at his sixty-eighth birthday. Clayton Walter raised his cane and crowed, "Who said daughters cannot outshine sons? My Alana has done more than any son could." The room cheered. Bernabe sat beside me, eyes bright. My tea — from my houses — warmed the table.
Time taught me that love was not a single unbroken story. Sometimes it was a slow, careful building. Sometimes it was a fight and a bargain and then a truce. The emperor's public fall became a lesson; his children grew distant, their private faces drawn. He remained a man of power, but people no longer believed the myth that his heart was inviolable.
I chose my life not by waiting, but by making. I traveled, I signed trade—"One Cup" ships set sail, the caravan left. I stood in crowded markets and unrolled leaves and listened to merchants talk of tea. I used my dowry as seed, and the seed grew into shade for thousands.
The palace incident remained a bright, brittle shard in the middle of my life. It had given me a strange gift — the knowledge that a woman's voice could unmake a pretended fate. I kept the sealed divorce paper in my chest. I told Hattie once, "It is a paper that smells of freedom."
Hattie laughed. "We will ship tea in its honor."
And I did.
Epilogue — Bernabe Ball's voice:
"I used to be a loud boy," he admitted years later while we counted coins in the office of our original tea shop. "I wanted the girl everyone wanted. I was jealous at first. She is beauty and storm both. I wanted to possess. But she made me work. She made me learn ledgers and patience. She taught me, in the simplest way, to be the man she could stand beside. When Kai came tearing in like a thief from old stories, I wanted to fight. But she needed me to be steady."
He smiled and shook his head. "I married a woman who turned a pretender into a cautionary tale and turned our tea into shelter."
Epilogue — Kai Kozlov's remorse:
He stood in a golden hall years later, wearing a crown that never quite fit. "I pawned nothing," he said once in private to himself. "I sought a name. I gathered banners. Yet I lost what I had needed most — the right to ask without having given." He had a house with a princess at his side and heirs at his knee, but the softness he had once owned had become distance. He learned, too late, what it was to trade a human heart for a story.
The End
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