Sweet Romance13 min read
The Engagement That Broke, The King Who Stayed
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I was sewing when the gossip arrived. The needle slid through, and I pricked my finger—small, bright pain—and a drop of blood landed on the embroidered pair of ducks I was finishing.
"Those are ducks?" Izabella laughed from the doorway. "You call those ducks, Margarete? They'll call them anything if it makes you worry."
"They're mandarin ducks," I said, and I meant it. I turned, pinning the hem with a small, wounded dignity. "Get out. I'll break off with her for two days."
Izabella pushed the sleeve aside and sat, still smiling. "Your father already did it this morning. He tore up the betrothal papers at Clark Garcia's house while you were still asleep."
I set the needle down like a slow drum. "He told me he'd bring a pregnant widow back. He—he said it was a soldier's widow. I thought he was teasing."
Izabella's mouth went small. "You never thought he'd do it, because soldiers never bring wives to war. You really didn't see this coming?"
"No." I felt a hot spot in my throat. "I didn't."
That night the whole table felt like a stage. Even the usually loud brother, Foster, ate with his head down. I set my chopsticks down and said, flat as a plank, "Father, call off the engagement."
The bowl in front of Foster fell and scattered rice like white resentment. "I didn't say anything!" he whispered, panicked.
"Of course you didn't," Izabella said softly, as if to a child. "Who would want to take credit for this gossip?"
I had once chased Clark Garcia. Two years before, under paper lanterns, he looked like a god in armor and I chased him like a foolish dog. He let me—the city thought I was the one who sought him, and he allowed the match.
I told my father yes once, and he went to Clark's hall and slotted the betrothal papers in the time it took to drink tea. When I wanted out, he did the same again—tore them up without asking me to stand. I woke to find myself unbound.
"Are the lanterns still talking about me?" I asked the housemaid Aurora when she passed by the embroidery stand.
Aurora shrugged, busy with water. "My lady, you always make the topics stick. The ladies won't let you be boring."
I pricked my finger again and pretended annoyance.
Izabella visited while I was threading the last birds. She peered and smiled. "Your needlework has grown. See—these moths—"
"Butterflies," I corrected.
"All the same," she said, and leaned in. "They say Clark brought a pregnant woman home."
"I know," I said. "He told me he would—"
"You don't seem surprised." She was searching the thread for something that had been cut.
"I'm surprised he would dare," I said. "He told me she was a soldier's widow. I thought it was a joke."
"Maybe it is a bad joke." Izabella's eyes were kind in a way that made me want to hide.
The woman Clark brought came in a purple gown. She knelt in my courtyard with the poise of someone who'd been practiced in humility. "My lady," she murmured, "the general cares for you. For the engagement—perhaps you might think again."
"Think what?" I laughed, throwing a grape into my mouth. "If I change my mind, who will carry the child you wear on your belly?"
She looked up, startled. Her face—wet with rain, or shame—was terribly familiar.
"You're the one that General rescued in the market a year ago," I said suddenly.
Her lips trembled. "No one asked me to come. He said—"
"That he would bring you as proof?" I finished for her, cold now. "To land in my doorway and beg while wearing her belly? Is that a favor or an insult?"
She tried to explain and I heard her whisper sharpened by desperation. Someone from the house dragged her up and she staggered—convulsed with grief or with something worse.
"Why did you come to my house?" I demanded when she stood again. My voice went high, and for a moment the entire court in our house seemed to listen. "Did he send you to beg forgiveness, or to humiliate me?"
She reached for me, and the world did that strange tilt it does when something is very wrong. I grabbed her and went down like a leaf off a branch, landing hard enough that a stone bruised my side. My voice broke then. "I've given you a space and you strike. Do you think our house is open season?"
The woman babbled and the thrown maids hauled her off the grounds. Aurora spread the story and by night half the capital had it stitched into a new rumor: Margarete Robin had been assaulted by the general's mistress at the very gates of the home she had once been promised to.
"You're hurt," Izabella said a day later, sitting by the window with her hands folded. The marigolds outside were stubborn and orange. "You shouldn't be so sudden in anger, Margarete. They will talk."
"They already talk," I said. I had been awake one entire night earlier, sitting on the roof and drinking until the stars blurred. I could still remember throwing Izabella's wine cup at the rooftops, thinking the moon would hold the sound.
That night, when I heard the imperial messenger come, I hid between the quilts. The Emperor had chosen me and Flavian Reed.
I laughed first, dry as an old twig. "Why would he pick me?" I asked the pillow.
Izabella's hand gripped mine. "You were always the Emperor's favorite for mischief, and he likes what he likes."
Later, when I spoke to him about it, I was small and clever. "If he wants the marriage so badly, why not make you the monarch's plaything?" I asked Flavian when he finally came—this man who had always been called cold, who had built himself like a mountain with a face you didn't want to offend.
"Did you want him to be the sort of man who bends to wishes?" he asked, soft as a knife. "Or the sort who waits for what matters?"
"I wanted someone who would choose me," I said, and found my voice thinned by the past two years.
He sat across from me at night, unlit candles making his face fortress-dark. "Why did you chase Clark?" he asked as if he had all the time in the world.
"I thought he looked like a hero," I said. "I was seventeen and loud. I don't have the right to be proud of that."
He told me, later in a whisper that smelled like old paper, the truth I hadn't guessed: the paintings he had kept in his study, the ones I had assumed were of Izabella, were not all the same face. Some were of me—small, unexpected, in blush and reckless joy—painted years before he had anyone else to watch.
"You saw me and saved me from those years I did the wrong things," I told him one dusk, my head heavy on his shoulder. "Why did you never tell me?"
"Because you ran after men like fireworks," Flavian said, and the laugh in it made me ache. "Because you swore you'd have one and thought desire was a thing to conquer. You never let me finish telling you that sometimes I wanted to be the hand that finished the fireworks, rather than the one who tossed the matches."
He was not the man I had waited for; he was the man who waited.
We married because the Emperor willed it. The city had mouths full of predictions and gossip. In the procession out of my house, people whispered that the cold Prince had found himself a wife like the rest of his trophies. The carriage rocked and I looked at Flavian. He looked at me like someone counting a small treasure.
"Do you hate me?" I asked once, in the dim carriage, tasting sunlight and dust.
"Why would I?" His answer was as smooth as a stone thrown into a river. He reached and tucked my hair behind my ear. His fingers were warm and not like the chill I had expected.
We were married in a whirl of silk and song. That night Flavian left me in the bridal chamber and slept in the study. The city had a dozen jokes by morning.
I laughed then—soft, angry, fragile. I went on the roof and drank until I could not stand. I woke three days later with a pounding skull. Flavian's messenger had come and told me of an injury he had taken defending Izabella from an assassin.
"Why would he do that?" I asked Aurora when the tidings came.
"You think now you know the answer better," Aurora said, and I felt my face go cold.
It had been Izabella in the market that had been attacked. She had been targeted—and for reasons I could not name, Flavian had put himself between her and the blades.
When he returned to us two days later, he looked as if someone had carved out a small piece of him. He laughed low and bitter and went to the study, saying he needed to ask questions.
The wound made him braver for the things he did. He strode into alleys and drew the truth from men who preferred the dark. I learned then that people are sometimes brave not because they love a person but because the person is worth the trouble.
While he searched, I mended my feelings. We began, awkwardly, to learn what belonging felt like. Flavian's hands—rough at first thinking them for command—learned the soft ways of forgiveness. He would brush the sleeve of my robe and call me small names I had never expected to hear.
One night, months later, Clark Garcia returned to the public square—sonorous voice, gilded insignia—drunk on the belief that his stars had yet to set.
"I heard the Princess of the Capital was forced to marry a prince for favor," Clark said as he stepped forward at the harvest fair, smiling wide. "Is it true? Is our once-lost bride now a gamepiece?"
A hush gathered because I was there—standing with Flavian in the crowd after a minor banquet. I had come out because the city wanted to see us bride and groom as spectacle.
"Clark." I said nothing more than his name and the place made a thousand small knives.
Clark bowed too low. "Margarete," he cooed. "I only ever wished you the best. Is the Prince as cold as the court said?"
Flavian's jaw was a line. "You wished her what? Proof, perhaps?" His tone was flat paper.
Clark's smile tightened. "She is the one who dared to chase honor. I admired that. I only ever—"
"You lied to her." Flavian's next words cut off like a drawn sword. "You brought a woman to insult my wife and you paraded her as a soldier's widow."
The small crowd drew closer. A vendor dropping a basket made a bell-hop clatter.
"I—what are you saying?" Clark blinked, but his face faltered. He had expected the city to sing his praises for handling the engagement; instead the air broke against him. "I brought her because—"
"Because you needed an excuse," I said. My own voice went thin and clear like frosted glass. "Because you wanted to keep her and throw me aside. Because you thought you could buy favor and shame me."
"You wound me with falsehoods!" Clark cried. "She was rescued by my men. I had—"
"You brought a woman who is not what you said," Flavian snapped. "You strung her across your lie and left her there when it suited you. You left a woman used, and you thought the city would call that honor?"
The crowd hummed and a murmur started—men, women, children peering. Clark moved like a fish out of water. He had power once in this city. That power looked smaller beneath the eyes of so many.
"People saw your arrangement," Izabella said, stepping forward. "They saw what you did last year in the market. We have witness and letters."
Clark's face went white. He reached his hand up as if to take something from the air. "You have no proof!"
"Do you remember your own speech in the hall?" Izabella asked. "Will you deny your words? Will you deny the note you gave your captain to fetch 'the widow' to your house?"
He swallowed. "This is slander!"
"Then stand here and answer in front of the crowd." Flavian did not raise his voice, but people leaned in. "You will answer what you told her—what you told this household."
The town crier, who had a love of spectacle worse than a gossip, cleared his throat on the central steps. People formed a rough circle. Children planted themselves to watch like little flags.
Clark's chest heaved. The first ripple of humiliation washed across him. He tried to laugh, and the laugh dried like old bread. "I loved her," he said. "I thought—"
"You loved a ladder," I said. "You loved a mirror. You loved the way a promise made you look larger. You loved power and used women as props."
At the word "props," a merchant spat. The sound hit Clark like a stone. He stumbled back, eyes wild, fingers clenched. "You speak as if you are wronged! You are the one who chased me!"
"I chased a face," I said. "I was a foolish girl. But you were not fooled. You used that foolishness, and when it didn't flatter you—"
"Enough!" he barked. "You have no room to talk."
"Do you deny taking that woman into your home and parading her as evidence of your virtue?" Flavian asked, voice low now, and precise.
Clark's lip trembled. The first step of his fall made him begin to shake. "I—"
"Then I will speak what people whispered," Izabella said. "There are letters: your captain's order, the merchant who delivered the cart that night. Do you deny an order that asked a widow be 'guided' to your presence?"
"Those letters—" Clark groped for a lie and found the rope of his own making. "They were forged!"
A roar of laughter rose from the crowd like a wave. "Forged!" a woman near the fountain cried. "Was it you who forged honor to cover a cheat?"
Clark's face drained until only eyes and bone remained. Someone in the crowd—an old woman with a history of never missing a scandal—began to tell the story in a voice like a bell. She had seen the cart, seen the purple dress, had told the butcher who had told the baker. The story crawled through the people and they chewed on it like meat.
"Do you see?" the old woman cried. "He brought a story and left a life torn!"
Clark reached for his sword and for a moment the scene threatened to turn. It didn't; the crowd made a ring and the city guards moved without drawing steel, faces like hard clay.
"Do not touch me with your memory!" Clark shouted. "I had right—"
"You had the appetite of a wolf," Flavian said quietly. "You thought you could eat what you wanted and the palace would applaud."
"You're a liar!" Clark screamed, and his anger detonated. He lunged forward, but an official—one whose favor Clark had thought he owned—stepped between us, and the official's hand was steady.
"Clark Garcia," the official said, almost politely, "by testimony and evidence of your actions, we withdraw your privileges." He spoke words that, in times less dramatic, were written with ink and signature—a revocation of honors. The crowd gasped, smelling the fall.
Clark's knees softened slowly as his status was stripped. People pointed. A neighbor, who had once toasted Clark's promotions, now spat and hissed. "You used a woman's belly for theater!" the neighbor shouted. "Shame!"
Clark went pale and then red and then pale again as the crowd turned. First there was disbelief, then anger. The children had their tongues out at his back. Someone recorded quick drawings in charcoal; someone else took a note.
"Please—" Clark's voice altered. It thinned and thinned. "I'm sorry."
"I never wanted pity," he said, and it was the wrong thing. The crowd's faces shifted: they wanted to see consequence. A man's life cut by rumor is one thing; a man who used others to prop his pride is another. They wanted him to fall in a way that matched his crime.
First, his friends—those who had stood too long on the flattering side—turned like weather vanes. They moved away, muttering about alliances. Then, women who had once giggled at Clark's jokes walked past with hands over their mouths. Someone flicked a pebble that landed softly against his boot; nobody laughed, but the pebble was a message.
"Take him to the magistrate," the official said. "We will recall what favors have been extended. We will see that he answers about the woman he made into a story."
Clark fell to the ground. The fall was not noble. He clawed the dirt as if to crawl under the world. His face changed then—first indignation, then confusion, then panic, then wet, bright pleading.
"Please," he murmured. "I can repair—"
Repairs in a town like ours are not always possible. People live on memory and stories, and Clark's stories had been burnt.
The crowd watched as he was led away in shame. A dozen voices imitated his stammer as a joke. Someone said they would not sell him bread again. A woman spat once more. Izabella turned away, embarrassed but steady. Flavian watched Clark go with a face like a set seal: calm, cold, and finally, satisfied.
"Is it finished?" I asked him later, when the square had emptied but for the sweeps and the last gossipers.
"For now," he said. "Public shaming fits the crime. You showed restraint; you let the truth be seen."
"And the woman?" I asked. "What of Akari Ortiz—the one he used?"
Izabella had already gone to her. "Akari will move to the healer's house," she said. "She did not know she was part of his game. She is ashamed but she did not choose any of this."
Akari had stood in the crowd when Clark fell. She held her belly—empty now, the rumor said the child had not survived—and her face was pinched, not with the shameless pride Clark had hoped, but with a quiet horror. She bowed to me when she saw me and I felt odd—part pity, part apology for the blow of my words, part fury at Clark.
"Why did he think he could do this?" Akari asked me later, voice small.
"Because some men think appetite is equivalent to right," I said. "Because this city will reward the brave and punish the foolish, but only if the brave speak up."
Flavian's hand closed over mine and squeezed. "You spoke," he said, simple as a bell. "You stood."
In the weeks that followed, gossip turned, as gossips will. Clark's fall became a lesson told to small boys about the cost of treating people like props. Some said I had been vengeful. Some said Flavian had been jealous. The truth—of course—was simpler: I had been hurt, and the one who hurt me had been proud enough to parade that hurt in public. The city had simply returned the favor.
Flavian did not let the lesson stand as only punishment. He tucked me close and taught me to walk in the palace like someone who belonged to herself. He lit small candles when I could not sleep. He brought me drawings—not the old stolen pages but new ones he made of me at ease—smiling in the corner where I used to sit on high roofs and drink away my nights.
"I'm still the same fool," I would say, and he would kiss the corner of my mouth and answer, "A better fool now, because the one who loves you is mine to be foolish with."
One autumn, months after Clark's disgrace, there was a feast in the palace. Lanterns hung like close planets; the Emperor laughed and ate like a man who had already won his day. People drank and spoke less of ruin and more of futures.
"You look pale," Izabella said, fussing like a mother. "You should be proud. They all saw him fall."
"I was afraid," I said. "Of being small."
"You are not small." Flavian's voice was a book opened. "You are dangerous in the right way. You stand for yourself."
I smiled—small and true. "Do you ever regret it?" I asked, suddenly serious.
Regret is a reasonable thing to ask of a man who had the power to punish.
Flavian set down his goblet and met my eyes. "Only that you had to learn it with pain. It should have been easier."
"Then promise me one thing," I said, soft.
He smiled, and it wasn't stiff. "What?"
"Promise me that if I chase another fool, you'll stop me before I make a fool of us both."
He laughed then, a real sound that pulled the corners of him out. "I will stop you, Margarete. I will be the hand that finishes the fireworks."
We married into a life that had been rearranged by rumor and mercy, by bruises and by paintings. We found each other again, not by accident but by steady choosing. The city calmed and even Clark found work in a far province where people had not yet heard the tale—enough punishment for him, perhaps—and Akari found quiet work, learning a business that made her smile without shame.
That was not a neat ending for everyone. The stitches from my first prank—the needle that bled on that first duck, that first foolish pursuit—still left a scar on my side if I pressed. But scars are maps you earn when you learn routes through storms.
"Do you like the embroidery?" Izabella asked one evening, washing threads at the small table.
"It's a little different now," I said, and the ducks looked less naive to me. "They used to be ducks and now they're something like two people who have argued and then sat at the same table."
"Then sew them," Izabella said. "Sew the story into the cloth."
I threaded the needle and pushed it through the linen, and there was a small sting on my finger. The blood welled and a tiny spot rested on the thread—nothing like the day it had fallen on my ducks, but enough to remind me of all I had been and what I had learned.
Flavian came up behind me and wrapped an arm around my waist. "We will stitch new things together," he said.
"We will," I answered, and I meant it.
The End
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