Sweet Romance11 min read
My Marriage to My Father's Nemesis' Son
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"I married the son of my father's longest enemy."
"I know," I said, smiling so wide my cheeks hurt. "Isn't it perfect?"
He did not smile back. Elliot Ivanov sat across from me in his dark robe, face as calm as a stone lid. He had always been that way—strict, exact, many years older in the way he held himself. From the day I first met him, at three years old, he'd been unmoved by my drama.
"You married me because you're proud?" Elliot asked.
"Because I'm mischievous," I answered. "Because you can be maddeningly serious, and that makes it fun."
Finch Daugherty laughed so hard when I told him. He clapped his hands and paced the study like a boy. "Wonderful! Finally the house will have some noise. Let the old censor know his peace will be disturbed."
"Father," I said, tipping my chin. "It will be lively."
Elliot's expression did not change. Bowen Dodson, the old man at council, had argued with my father for years. He was a man in white beard and sharper words. I had watched them fight from the sidelines, thought they were both stubborn—then decided to be more stubborn than either.
"All right," Elliot said finally. "If the princess insists."
"I insist," I said. "And you will obey."
"I shall," he answered.
We married with a folded ceremony. I wore red, loud and foolish. Elliot wore his formal robe—the same calm man, taller now, the stoic presence I had hated and wished into my life.
"Do you mean to be cruel?" I teased him on our wedding night.
Elliot's answer was a tilted head, a slow inhale. "I meant to be responsible."
"Responsible?" I laughed. "For what? For my pleasure?"
He moved to hand me the cup of wine. "Drink."
I took it like a dare. The wine was warm and sweet. I drank to the rim and then, because I could not be tamed and because I wanted to surprise him, I said, "If you kowtow to me three times, I will let you off easy."
"You said that before," he said. "You said many things. Do you remember?"
"I remember everything." I kicked a small stool. "I will not be the one to bow."
"Not everyone must indulge you," Elliot said simply.
"Then I'll make you," I said.
That night he held me. He said later that he would not break his line. He followed his rules. But he also believed in responsibility. He told me, near the pillow, "If you are mine, I will take care."
"I didn't come for care," I hissed. "I came to annoy you."
Elliot's touch was steady. I thought I would be furious, and I was, and then I wasn't. The first time he kissed me properly, I laughed and cried at once. "You are impossible," I gasped.
"You're impossible too," he said, and there, he used my childhood name—"Faye"—softly. It was the wrongness of hearing his mouth on such a private syllable that made my chest go cold and warm at the same time.
The next morning I tried to be grand. I refused to go to his father's house, to the stern Bowen Dodson, to the hall where respect is paid in practiced lines.
"Go," Elliot said. "It is proper."
"Proper is boring," I said. "It's also what you think of as living."
"You need not worry," he said. "Bowen will not eat you."
"I will see him eat me alive," I said.
At Bowen's hall, I stuck to my mischief like a stubborn burr. I fed Bowen the first chicken leg. "Father," I said, sticking my chin at him, "First feast."
"Thank you," Bowen said, approving of my manners. He was, for all his severity, delighted by attention.
Elliot watched me with an angle of amusement I had never seen before.
"Wash," he said suddenly.
I flashed him a look. "What? Who told you to be fastidious?"
A servant brought water. I watched him wash his hands and noticed the small attentions: the way he peeled the meat for me, the way he left the bitten part for himself. "You are so proper," I said.
"Food is not to be wasted," he said.
"Nor is affection," I thought, and surprised myself by saying it aloud. He blinked.
"You persist," he said. "You are troublesome."
"I am your trouble," I said.
Weeks passed—weeks that could not be counted as ordinary, because Elliot's presence made ordinary strange. He would leave at dawn to the council and come back at midnight to stand beside my bed. Sometimes he would lay a hand by my cheek and say, "Sleep well, Faye." The name again—my name, not princess—and every time he said it my face turned a bright and ridiculous red.
There was another man in the court who did not like us. Amir Huang had been an active nuisance since youth. He had once trapped Elliot in a narrow alley and left him bruised. I remember puffing with rage, brandishing a cane. Elliot looked at me, and he did not push me away. There is kindness in restraint. It becomes its own shape of love.
"Let me handle it," Elliot said the afternoon Amir insulted me in the market.
"No," I said, stamping. "I'll give him a beating."
He only smiled that small, unreadable smile. "Not appropriate."
"Why are you the judge?" I demanded.
"Because I married you."
The first time a real crisis came, I would have to learn what his words truly meant.
Word arrived from a southern town—rich, proud, called Qin or Gu—about banditry and vanished relief. I had sent silver to help flood victims; I counted every coin and watched it leave the treasury. When we reached the afflicted region, the sight was worse than I feared. Bodies lay along the road; carts stood empty; children stared with hollow eyes.
I was sick with guilt. "I gave them money," I told Elliot. "Where did it go?"
He listened. "We will find out," he said.
We arrived at the county seat where Governor Neil Alvarado, a nervous man with cheap taste, had been accused. He was arrested. The mob called for my head. "Kill the princess!" some cried. "She wastes our grain!"
"Shut it," Elliot said in a voice that made the crowd flinch. He mounted the dais like a general, though he was a man of words, and he started to speak without a hint of softness.
"Listen," he said. "We will sort facts from rumor."
"Why?" someone yelled. "She is the emperor's princess."
"Because this is not about rank," Elliot said. "This is about who took what and where it went."
He did not sweep in with swords. He used documents, a map, a mind sharpened by years of law. He traced routes, he read manifests, and he demanded accounts. The more he asked, the more the truth unwound.
"It was diverted," Elliot said quietly at dusk. "Someone paid off men at the docks. The relief never reached the canals."
"Who?" I asked.
He set his jaw. "I will find out."
The trail led to an old merchant and then to one man who enjoyed shadows: Travis Booker. He was a local heavy, a flatterer and a dealer in favors. He wore perfume and spoke loudly. He had been seen moving coin. People murmured. He smiled at men by the river.
"Arrest him," I told Elliot, my voice thin.
"Not yet," Elliot said. "We need a net."
He made a plan: split up the men, secure the routes, cut off escape. He coordinated with Ford Blackwell, the general, who brought disciplined men. I watched him work, watched the way his mouth hardened the minute a plan formed. He wore weary lines on his face that I had never seen; when he bent to speak to soldiers he was steel. When the trap was laid, men arrested Travis Booker's goons like caged birds.
That night the scuffle came. I hid behind a curtain. "Don't—" I whispered to myself. "Don't run in."
Barn doors crashed. Shouts. I heard a blade sing and then a groan. Light splattered red on the straw as men fell.
Then the door burst. Travis Booker himself charged at me, sudden and stinking of cheap wine. He grabbed me like a man who thought he had earned ownership. "Nice princess," he hissed.
I bit. I screamed. He spat abuse. Then Elliot was there in front of us, face a mask of fury I had never known. He moved as if the world obeyed his will; he fought with hands that were not trained like a soldier's but were terrifying in their accuracy. He disarmed, he struck, he took the madman down.
They dragged Travis to the square alive. I followed, shaking. My heart beat like a trapped bird.
"What will you do to him?" I asked.
Elliot's jaw was set. "We'll let the law decide."
We put Travis before the magistrate. People had gathered—locals, the poor, the hungry—faces peeled with sunlight and sorrow. They had names for men like Travis: thieves, venal. Bowen Dodson stood behind Elliot like a silent sentinel.
"Travis Booker," Elliot said into the hush, "you stand accused of organizing the diversion of relief that starved our neighbors, and of claiming the princess's name as cover for your schemes."
"What proof?" Travis sneered.
Elliot opened a bundle—ledgers, rolls, receipts. "Here, signed with your mark. Here, receipts showing shipments diverted. Here, witnesses noting men unloading bales into your storehouse."
Travis laughed, then mocked, "You have crocodile tears and paper. Do you think men die for paper?"
"They died for your greed," said a woman in the crowd, and many others nodded.
The magistrate raised his hand. "This court will hear testimony. Travis Booker, you will stand answer."
The trial lasted until the sun rolled away and the moon rose. Witnesses came forward with names and times. A dock-foreman described men carrying crates at midnight to Booker's yard. A clerk produced ledgers. The pile of evidence grew until Travis's smirk faded like wax.
"You're blind," Travis said at last, voice raw. "All of this is set up!"
Elliot stepped forward. "We traced your men, your routes, and your paymasters. You used refugees like you would use tools. You watched their children starve."
Travis's face flickered—first anger, then a mask of denial. He pointed a trembling finger. "You're lying! The princess—she bribed me!"
The crowd hissed. "Liar!" "Shame on you!" their voices braided into a terrible chorus.
Travis's reactions shifted—he tried to charm, then he raged, then he begged. He grabbed the magistrate's gown, pleaded for leniency. "I didn't know! They promised me protection. Let me go! I can pay! I will give back the silver!"
"Give back what you did not own," Elliot said. "You will be held to account."
They led him out, bound. The people wanted more than prison. They wanted spectacle. "Hang him on the wall," someone spat. The cry rose.
"Do not be savage," Bowen said. "Law must be law."
"Then let the law have its sight," Elliot said. "Let the people see justice done."
The square filled. Torches lit faces like insects. I stood on a bench and watched Travis Booker walk between two guards. He was unbroken, swaggering at first, but there was a tremor in the hands. He glanced my way, and in that glance I swore I saw the last of his courage crumble.
"You promised comfort," he snarled at me. "You thought you could buy men like me off. Now you call for my blood."
"You thought we were weak. You misjudged us," I said. My voice shook with anger that had been cooking like a fire.
The officials read the sentence aloud. "For theft of the people's relief, for conspiracy to murder by starvation, for fraud and violence—the court sentences Travis Booker to execution according to law."
Travis's face went through the sequence we had been taught to look for when men meet ruin: smirk, defiance, disbelief, pleading, collapse. He grabbed at his collar. "You can't—" he rasped. "I'm not the only one!"
"Name them," Elliot said coldly.
"I will tell—" Travis started.
"Speak now," Bowen ordered.
Travis spat again, then his voice broke. He pointed outrageously, naming men higher than him, muttering craven things. The crowd hissed and spat back. For a while he tried to bargain: wealth, secrets, promises of power. Then, when the magistrate would not be swayed, he pleaded.
"Please," he begged at last, his bravado stripped. "I have a life, children—"
"Where were your children when the river rose?" someone shouted. "Where were they when the granary was emptied?"
Travis's face crumpled; he tried to smear the dirt with his sleeve. The crowd reached for him—some with hatred, some with greed, some with the plain hunger for retribution. They wanted to see a wrong righted.
They bound him to the post. I watched Elliot not flinch. His hand found mine and squeezed. "It is done," he said. "It is a thing that had to be."
I remember the moment the blade fell. There is a sick, ceremonial cleanness to execution performed in public, and a cold that went through my bones like iced metal. A few people vomited. Some applauded. Some turned away.
Travis's body was not simply taken away. It was displayed—hung on the city wall facing the road by which the grain had come. They left him there for a month. People came in crowds to spit on his memory. Children pointed. Old men shook their heads. The punishment was not merely for the body, but for the warning that corruption would not be safe.
The magistrate then read the official proclamation. "Let this be a lesson," he said. "Let the greedy know their place."
Travis's reactions were now farcical: at first he had tried to be haughty; then to bargain; then to curse; then to beg; finally, he fell to silence. He cried once, a thin, broken sound. He tried to smile and failed. The crowd recorded it with whistles and with cameras—no, not cameras here, but hands and mouths and talk. They photographed him in their heads, repeated his name in taverns, told his story to children as a cautionary tale.
Around us, the people reacted variously. Some cheered. Some cried. A woman nearby murmured, "My brother ate that bread." A child touched my sleeve and said, "My mother is alive because of you." I could not answer her. I buried my face in Elliot's shoulder and let the tears come.
"Did it change you?" I whispered once later, when it was over and the city smelled of damp straw and smoke and grief.
"It changed what had to be changed," he replied. "I would not have chosen this, but it had to be done so that you would not be accused and so that children would not starve."
"Is that the end of the men who did this?"
"No," he said quietly. "There are others in fine cloaks, with hands that never wet themselves. We will find them."
The vengeful moment did not cleanse everything. It did not put the dead to rest. But that public breaking of Travis Booker—his loud promises, his threats, then his final silence—was a turning point. It was a place where the town could say, with a small, raw voice, that such behavior would not be tolerated.
The afterdays were long. I stayed close to Elliot. He did not parade the victory; he wrapped himself around me like an armory. Bowen Dodson came and spoke sharply and kindly. Finch Daugherty—my father—stood proud and then, looking at me, became soft.
"You are mine," Elliot told me one night, later, with a tired smile.
"You are ridiculous," I said, and then I meant it in a new way.
We had scars. I had been accused publicly; I had been dragged through shame. I had looked into men's greedy faces. But Elliot had torn the rope out from the pit. He had not been clean in the doing; he had had to stretch the edges of law to save me. I saw him confess those private compromises one night by my bedside, eyes wet.
"I lied with papers," he said. "I hid things. I did what I could. It ate me."
"Why did you not tell me?"
"Because then I would have lost you," he whispered. "And I have no other way of living where you are not safe."
We argued. We apologized. We loved like thieves who keep favors between them, with too much heat and too much gratitude.
"I will not make you small," he said one winter morning, smoothing my hair with hands that had held other people's fates. "I will not be the man who puts you under anyone's thumb."
"You make me small with your scolding," I told him.
"We are both beasts," he said softly.
Later, when the frost melted and the markets brightened, the mandarins who had turned their faces away were called to account. Some lost their posts. Others fled. The public punishment of Travis Booker had been the first domino. The rest were smaller—shameful phone calls, the loss of favor, the cold shoulder of the court. Bowen Dodson smiled once when he saw the ruined ledgers of a man who used to sneer at him.
I thought about the long list of names that mattered now: Finch Daugherty, Bowen Dodson, Elliot Ivanov, Neil Alvarado, Ford Blackwell, Drew Evans, Galina Ma, Amir Huang, Travis Booker. I counted them like beads on a string. They had been characters in a dangerous play, and the play had ended with blood in the straw and a city that had learned to watch its doors.
In the nights afterward, Elliot would call me by my childish name and hold me, and sometimes he would make me laugh until my sides hurt. Once, when he returned from the magistrate's office, he sat down and said with great solemnity, "If we have children, they will have teeth."
"Why teeth?"
"Because the world needs them," he said. "And because you once bit a man's finger to save yourself."
I shoved him. "I did that? I must have been brave."
"You were foolish and brave. The mix is why I married you," he said, and leaned his head on mine.
There are seasons when a foolish heart is the only true compass. I had chosen him because he refused to bend to me. He had chosen me because I refused to be small. Together we found a strange balance—sometimes brutal, sometimes tender, always ours.
And the wall where Travis Booker's body hung for a month remained in the memory of the town for years, a grim reminder of greed and the consequences of cruelty. The crowd that watched had shifted through every shade of emotion. They had seen a man fall, they had seen a man beg, they had watched him gasp at his final hour. They took tea the week after and told the story as if it were a parable. Children were warned not to travel in the night without a trusted escort. Men who valued coin over people looked over their shoulders.
"Never again," I told Elliot once, fingers curled in his.
He nodded. "Never again."
We both knew that was a promise not absolute but necessary.
The End
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