Face-Slapping13 min read
"I Woke Up Beaten — I Made Them Eat Shame"
ButterPicks17 views
“Stop! You'll kill him!” a thin, frightened voice cried.
I opened my eyes to the taste of iron and a world that bled around the edges. My body folded under a pain I knew too well. My head said one thing and my bones another.
“Gunner— I mean— answer me! Are you awake?” Alana Chaney's hands shook as she gripped my shoulder.
“Alana,” I said, and the name felt strange and safe on my tongue. “Pack quickly. We go to the capital tonight.”
She blinked, wet eyes bright in the half-light. “But— the master—”
“I'll be dead if we wait,” I said. “Do not call anyone. Just get my things.”
I had died once at twenty-seven. I remembered the flames after the power change, the court room, the rope that took everyone I loved. I remembered being taken into the palace and the poison cup that should have been my last. It was a clean end that spared my shame. I remembered nothing after that—except a tight, cold gratitude for the silence that saved my name.
Now I was sixteen again. I sat up and felt the old scars that hadn't formed yet. My life rewound and handed me the one chance no one in my line ever got.
“Why leave tonight?” Alana whispered.
“Because I was beaten,” I said. “Because if I do nothing, they will break me in every way they can.”
She nodded. “Then I will fetch the carriage.”
We left under a thin moon. I held a single silver hairpin Alana pressed into my palm. I kept my face tucked in the shawl and watched the manor shrink away.
Two nights later a man with a black face-covering and a quick knife jumped aboard our carriage.
“Hands up!” he said.
Alana's arms went around me, but I moved first. I pressed the silver hairpin—held for a child's quick stab—into his temple. He screamed like a struck dog. He slumped. I stopped before he fell. My breath left me in a long, hot line.
“Brave thing,” a voice said from outside the curtain.
A tall man stepped in, his hair slicked and his clothes too clean for a roadside thief. He had no beard and a long, neat face that might have been soft if not for the way his eyes kept flicking to danger like a hawk listening for a mouse.
“Hayes,” the man said.
I froze. Hayes Bergstrom’s name was a rusted blade in the capital. He was the man who rearranged lives from behind screens and silk. He had saved and killed men like a farmer thins wheat.
“You two get down,” Hayes said, and his quiet made the thief's blood run colder.
I clung to Alana’s wrist until we were ordered down. He looked at me and smiled like he had read a page. “You drove these people to the city?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am Adriana Jensen, eldest grandson—”
He cut me off with a raised hand. “You are injured. Poor thing.” His fingers slipped to the wound at my collar. His touch was clinical, not friendly. “A good lie saves you here. Tell me you were defending your house.”
“I— I told them you chased the thief off,” Alana said.
“Good.” Hayes folded up his sleeves. “You will do as I say. You, boy—”
“My name is Adriana.”
“Adriana.” He looked at me with a tilt of study. “You will come with me. I will take you to the capital surgeons. You will drink my medicine. And you will remember to keep your mouth shut about what you saw tonight.”
I wanted to spit fire. I wanted his neck. I wanted breathing and a promise of safety for my mother, Elisa Snyder, and our house. I wanted to use this second life to fix what I had failed.
“If I go with you,” I said, “you cannot reveal my sex. No one must know.”
Hayes's laugh was thin in the road air. “Are you scared of me or ashamed of your skin?”
“Both.” I didn't flinch.
He smelled faint like bay leaves and something old. “Follow me.”
---
“Hayes being merciful?” Alana hissed later when I could sit.
“He gives out mercy like crumbs,” I said. “But I will use them.”
He sent me paperwork, silk bandages, and a small written favor—the kind you only earn by being useful. The favor said: Hayes Bergstrom recommends Adriana Jensen for special aid from the palace. It was like a small sun.
“You used the favor to get me a heal and a promise he won't expose me,” I told Alana.
“And you will go to the exams,” she said. “You said you would.”
“I said I'd do whatever it takes to keep our name,” I said.
She bowed her old head. “Then do it, master.”
I nodded. The capital smelled of wood smoke and wet stone. I wore a face that belonged on the wrong side of songs: too soft for a man, too rigid for a woman. I practiced the silence like prayer.
The day before the county exams, we were stopped at the gate.
“Take off their outer robes,” a guard barked.
My heart rasped. Around me, men undressed under their commands. The guards pressed and touched as if searching for sin in cloth. My hand went to my chest. I thought of my mother.
“Hayes,” I whispered into the wind. “Don't let them do this.”
Hayes was there, leaning against a pillar. He watched the line as if watching ants crawl.
“Adriana,” he said. “Be my instrument. Behave, and I will keep you from being shamed.”
“Instrument?” I spat.
“Your face,” he said. “Your name. If you make me look like a fool, I will make your name be the tree that falls on your family.”
I saw the world narrow to a cold coin. I had no choice. I had to bow.
The guards stopped their search when he arrived. They nodded like dogs. Hayes walked up close to me, his hand on my wrist like an ownership token, and smiled in a way that made my skin crawl.
“If you win for me, I will not ruin your house,” he said.
“You will not set me up,” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “If you win, I will take credit, and I will put a shield over you. If you lose—” He didn't finish.
“You won't hold me to any bargain that hurts my mother or my family,” I said.
“Not unless you make me a fool in the capital.” He tapped my shoulder with the flat of his hand. “Now go.”
I went. I studied like someone who had swallowed the past and burned with a need to remake it. I learned the judges' likes and dislikes, folded answers into the shape of their tastes. Hayes's warning was a narrow window and I worked inside it.
On the day of the exam Hayes came in green silk and lacquered shoes. He crossed the threshold like a dark wave. He looked at me and his eyes said the capital had weighed me and found me not worthless.
“Adriana Jensen,” he announced in a voice that made silence. “You are my patron's chosen guest. Let no one touch him.”
I dropped to my knees and took the exam. I wrote like a man trying to bury a storm.
When the lists came, my name was at the top.
They called me First. They called me a fraud. They called me a miracle. They called me whatever they wanted, but my name was the first, and the capital couldn't swallow it.
Hayes came back to the house with a grin that distorted his face. He watched my family fill the rooms like birds finding grain. He leaned in and said, quietly, “You did well.”
“Why help me?” I asked.
“Because you amuse me,” he said. “Because you are clever. And because a useful thing in my hand grows value.”
I laughed then—soft, and without joy. “If I'm useful, then you want more.”
He tapped his lips. “Not yet. I will want later.”
---
Trouble arrived like rain. The concubine, Lana Mendes, made a scene. She was pretty in the way some dangerous birds are attractive: bright, loud, always asking for attention. She cried and accused me of the worst things: of touching her, of breaking her child.
“Lana says you forced her to kneel on shards of her own bowl,” my father, Bryson Bruce, barked.
“I did not!” I snapped. “She lied at your door!”
“You lie to save your skin?” Bryson growled. He had a mean mouth when it suited him. He loved the idea of a throne more than his son.
Hayes swept into the hall with the quiet of a judge. He picked up a broken cup from the floor and slapped it against Bryson's hand.
“What are you doing?” my uncle shouted.
“Lana who?” Hayes asked.
“Lana,” Bryson said. “My— my concubine.”
Hayes ignored him. He took the woman by her hair and dragged her before the household and a smuggled court scribe. Lana screamed and revealed a name she thought would save her.
“Gunnar Romero's daughter!” she cried. “I am— I am of good house!”
There was a silence like an animal frozen.
“Is this true?” Hayes asked the man who stood behind the curtain.
Gunnar Romero's seal was on the table. He had been a minister, a man whose family span power like a net. If true, Lana's name could become a rock to drown a small house.
“Tell us,” Hayes said. “If she is yours, speak now.”
A courier arrived that afternoon. The court took bread and took bodies. The capital watched the family of Gunnar Romero fall like a row of frightened men. Hayes's men had their evidence: contradictions, a runaway servant who remembered Lana's origin, a woman named for the wrong birth year.
Gunnar was stripped of his post on a breath. He was led away. The scaffolds whispered their lettered names, and the city turned.
Lana had lied— or she'd been the pawn of a man who wanted her to be. Either way her claim made my family look small and cruel at first. Then the court opened its mouth and bit.
I stood and said, “I found her with Mr. Houston Fischer in the green lane. I saw them.”
“You saw them?” Bryson shouted.
“I did. I stopped them.” I said the words in a hard whisper. “Then she lied in front of you to save herself.”
Hayes sat back, his fingers steepled like an odd god. “Good. Lies will bring their own justice.”
The consequence came fast. Gunnar's house was searched. His goods rolled out into the street. The city gasped at the naked truth. The house that had wanted to buy our goodwill had been made of rotten timber.
Bryson's face went paler than any cloth. The man who had leaned on other men's names now had his own name burn. He picked fights and demand respect, but when the wind came that removed his cover, his knees trembled.
“Adriana,” my grandmother, Lucille Owens, said softly in my room later. “You saved us by lying too.”
“I did what I had to,” I said.
“You smacked a powerful man in public,” she said.
“He was rotten,” I said. “But I did it with words he could not answer.”
Lucille's hand found mine. “Be careful. Mercy from Hayes is not mercy; it is a balance you will have to keep.”
“How long,” I asked her, “before the man who saved me tries to collect his coin?”
“Too long or too soon,” she answered.
---
Hayes was not a man of soft bargains. He pushed me in public and smiled like a man who liked seeing rats on a plank. When a whisper reached him— that my father had been the briefed source to sell my mother— he came like frost.
“Bring me the green silk,” Hayes said one night, his voice warm and oddly intimate. “Make me a handkerchief with a single H. Only a hand. No flowers. No chant. Just an H.”
“You want an H?” I said. “For what?”
“For my pocket,” he said. “For those nights you will remember I'm the one who lifted you out.”
“You could have anything,” I said. “Why a handkerchief?”
He leaned close. “Because a small thing holds a lot of promises. Because a hand is not a sword. Because I want to see you do work that is both delicate and true.”
I sewed the green silk by candlelight. I used thread so thin it almost vanished. I stitched a single H and waited. When I left the handkerchief on his pillow the question came without sound.
“You did this for me.”
“You asked for it,” I said.
He held it as if we had made a treaty. “You are a clever instrument.”
“You said that,” I said.
“Now,” he said, “we have a bargain.”
I had been traded once before. I did not want to be traded again.
“If you expect to sleep with me,” I said, “you will not.”
Hayes's smile sharpened in half a breath. “Do not be blunt, child. I do not want to make you small. I want to lift you. But you must know the rules of the court. To survive is to trade. I give you shelter. You give me a safe face to hold when I walk in the court.”
“I will be no one's toy,” I said.
“You will be my blade,” Hayes answered without flinching. “Useful, sharp, and kept where it can be wielded.”
I swallowed the rage like medicine. “Then wield me.”
---
Years moved like knots. I stood in courts while Hayes watched from the back. I rose in rank because I turned my pen to make promises people in the capital liked. I saved the names of my mother and sisters. I stomped the lie of heavy hands and dark men.
Brothers turned to foes. Bryson tried to claw his way back, but the capital had learned to value a man when he had nothing left to sell. He begged and sued and wrung hands, but at the end he was only a warning.
“I raised you to be useful,” Bryson said one night. “You repay me with ruin.”
“You raised yourself with my silence,” I said. “If you thought I would be small because you needed a son to look handsome— you were wrong.”
Bryson's eyes flashed with the old mean light. “You think yourself above me now?”
“No.” I said. “Just outside your reach.”
I wrote petitions that repaired my mother's standing. I arranged a match for my sister, Janice— we called her— with a small man who had more heart than coin: the scholar, Xavier. Janice laughed and cried and the house that once sneered at us came to dinner.
“You saved us,” Elisa said one night, cupping my cheek.
“I saved what you gave me,” I said. “Not your shame.”
“Your face,” she said, “is kinder now.”
“Because I give my kindness to myself,” I said.
---
Hayes never stopped wanting. He wanted names, loyalty, and sometimes the warmth of what he could not have. He asked for things in ways that were ugly and small and sometimes like a wound that would not close.
One winter night, he asked me in the palace garden, under a moon that did not belong to me.
“Will you stay by my side?” he asked.
“For what?” I said.
“For protection,” Hayes said. “For the payment of favors you owe me. For a name to hang on my coat.”
“You want me because I'm useful,” I said.
He looked at me, and I finally saw something tired in his face. “And you want me because I keep you alive.”
We looked at one another like a pair of very poor players who had learned their lines.
“Can you promise—” I began.
“That I will not touch you without your permission?” Hayes finished. “I will not threaten your mother. I will not expose you.”
“You can't promise to be kind.”
“No,” Hayes said. “But I can promise to be interested. Interest keeps men careful. Keep me careful and I might keep you alive.”
I took his hand once. His fingers were warm and callused.
“You will still be dangerous,” I said.
“So will you.” He smiled. “Now, wear the green H. I like to see it. It reminds me you bleed for me.”
“Then it will remind me to be sharper.”
---
Years later I sat on a bench that faced the little lane where I had once been kidnapped. It was quiet. Children ran and sold boiled chestnuts. Hayes found me and sat beside me.
“You are the magistrate now,” he said, almost proud.
“I am,” I said.
“You still hate me.”
“I do not hate you,” I said. “I distrust you enough to keep my hands steady.”
He laughed. “Always the scholar.”
“We were born wrong,” I said. “You, for your post. Me, for my body. We made bargains.”
“And what will you do with your bargains?” Hayes asked.
I reached into my pocket. The green handkerchief was still there, folded into neat squares. The H had frayed a little, but the stitches still held.
“I will use them to write rules,” I said. “To keep small men from abusing those who have no words. To make the city obey the law instead of a cravings list.”
Hayes looked at my fingers. “And me?”
“You will keep your place,” I said. “I will keep mine. And when you step too far into power that makes you forget law, I will call for it to be tested.”
He gave a small bark that could have been laughter or pain. “And if I forget?”
“You forget,” I said, “I will slay your pride with a strip of paper and a judge's stamp.”
He nodded slowly. “Then we are partners of sorts.”
“You do not get to own me,” I said.
He bowed his head. “I knew that.”
A wind lifted a paper on the bench. I smoothed it with my palm and looked at Hayes.
“You saved my life once,” I said. “But I will not allow you to stop me from living the life I choose.”
He met my eyes and did not look away. “And I will keep you alive because I like having a person in my debt who can beat everyone with a pen.”
I laughed then, a bright small sound.
“You are a vicious man,” I said.
“And you are not a bad blade.”
---
The last face-slap came simple and clean.
My father, Bryson, tried to buy a favor with a lordling. He thought a gift of silver could buy back a life he had sold. He had never understood that names cost more than coin.
I called a hearing at the courthouse. The hall filled with people who had once seen my brittle bones and laughed. I let them sit.
“Bryson Bruce,” I said when he entered. “Do you remember the bowl you broke? Do you remember the woman on the floor?”
He stood and sweat matted his brow. “I— I was ashamed. I wanted to protect the house.”
“You broke a bowl to make someone else kneel,” I said. “You put my mother in danger. You sold your daughter’s face for gain.”
“My daughter—” he began.
“You have no daughter,” I said. “You have a name you used on the road. Today you will answer for where your favors went.”
One by one the witnesses spoke. A servant confessed how Bryson threatened her. Men who had been bribed told how he traded favors for promises. Each lie tied him to a public record.
In the end, the crowd did not roar for shame at me. They roared for the law. They roared because someone had untied a knot and handed them the rope.
Bryson left the court a poor man. The city did not kill him. It did something worse: it did not remember him.
He looked like a man whose skin had been removed. He pressed his face into his hands and wept like a child.
I allowed myself no satisfaction. I only felt the cold clarity of what had been done. I had used the law as a blade and the city as my witness.
“I will not raise a hand to you,” I told him as he left. “I will only do what is right. If you step out of the law again, you will find no mercy.”
“I deserve no mercy,” he said.
“No,” I said. “You do not.”
He walked away.
---
Years later, I stood in the old bathhouse where Hayes had once forced his way into my room. I had come with a small crowd—old friends and new allies. There was a small carved box on the table with one item inside: the broken docking stave used to beat a woman in our yard, once a symbol of our shame.
I lifted the stave and burned it until the wood blackened. I ground the char into ash and mixed it with silk and lacquer. I crafted a single small plaque. On it I carved one word:
“Remember.”
I set it in the house where my mother would see it. Not to hold a grudge— but to remember the vow.
Hayes watched me put the plaque down. He had his own seat like a shadow that had learned gentleness. His hand brushed mine once as if to make the contact last.
“You kept the H,” he said.
“I did,” I answered.
“Do you regret anything?” he asked.
I thought of the men we toppled, of the concubine who had made a choice to live a lie, of my father who had sold himself for a place that would not protect him.
“No,” I said. “I regret how much I had to learn by cutting others. But I am grateful to be alive. I am grateful to be the hand that can stop a strike.”
He blinked. “You are kinder than you were the first time.”
“I had to be,” I said.
He nodded. “And I— I learned to hold back.”
He reached for my hand again, steady and careful. He did not take, only offered.
I took it.
We did not marry. We did not need to. The world we lived in had no space for fairy tales. What we had was a compact: safety, interest, and a respect carved of sharp angles.
In the end, I rose through the ranks. I wore robes and sat in wooden chairs and stamped papers. I watched men who had used mercy as a coin learn that law could strip them of the currency they used. I saved my mother's home. I found a husband for my sister who loved her and fed her well. I kept my secret.
On the bench of the courthouse, I kept a little green handkerchief folded in my sleeve. Sometimes at night I took it out and smoothed its single embroidered H.
“Do you keep it for me?” Hayes asked once.
“For both of us,” I said. “So you remember a favor you made and I remember the day I chose to live with a bargain.”
He smiled then, the way a man smiles at a chessboard when he sees a good move.
“You are dangerous,” he said.
“You made me so,” I said.
He bowed his head, and I stamped a paper. The stamp echoed in a dry sound like a little gunshot. It was the sound of law. It was the sound of the city.
When I left the court at dusk I walked past the lane where the thief had once crossed our path. A child sold nuts in a basket. I handed the child a copper coin and a warm look and walked on.
I had woken beaten and small. I had chosen to be a blade and to learn mercy. I had made them eat shame and then feed the poor.
At the end of the day I leaned against the palace wall and felt the city breathe.
“Will they ever forgive me?” I asked Hayes once, standing where the moon hit the flagstones.
“Forgive you?” he said. “They will not forgive or forget. They will obey or rebel. You will make them obey. You did what you had to. That is enough.”
I folded the green H and put it in my pocket. The stitch was tight. The work was mine.
I had been born the wrong way into a cruel house. I had lived twice and learned to wield one life like a tool.
In the morning I would go to court. I would rule. I would make the law bite when it needed to. I would not forget.
That was my vow.
The End
— Thank you for reading —