Face-Slapping11 min read
The Jade Hairpin and the One That Would Not Bow
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I woke gasping, hand over my chest, because the dream still had breath — full of arrows, a shouted name, and the rotten calm of someone deciding my death like choosing fruit. I sat up on my narrow bed, the wooden slats creaking beneath me.
"Kelsey?" my mother's voice outside the door sounded smaller than usual. "Kelsey, are you awake?"
"Yes," I answered. My voice was thin. I slapped my cheeks hard. Pain flared; it proved I was alive. I kept my eyes open because if I closed them the dream would slide back in.
My mother, Karin Berg, came in wiping her hands on her sleeve. "You were shouting," she said. "You woke the neighborhood."
"I'm fine," I lied.
My father, Yale Dougherty, stood in the doorway with that look — the magistrate look he wore like armor. He doesn't say much when his face takes to being stern. "Do not make trouble," he said to my mother. Then he looked at me. "You look like you didn't sleep."
"It was just a bad dream, Father," I said. "It's nothing."
He didn't soften. He never did. The dream was not nothing to me. I remembered hands, rough and foreign on my skin, and the name he kept calling like it was a prayer — Fabian. He kept whispering a woman's name I could not be, and he used me to quiet his fever. When I had the courage to say so, he had the courage to look away.
Fabian Fernandes came to see me the day after. He behaved like a prince should — measured, polished, efficient at appearing kind. He sat opposite me and watched me with those eyes made of cool stone.
"You must be better," he said finally. "I have petitioned for an award on your behalf. What would you wish for?"
I pressed my knuckles to my mouth and did not answer quickly. "You mean... a gift?" Tears came before I ordered them not to. He took a cloth and wiped one away.
"It is my gratitude," he said softly. "You saved me."
I swallowed and said, "I did what needed doing."
He smiled in a way that should have felt like warmth. Instead it made me cold. I had trusted this boy once; I had leaned on him for ordinary kindness. The dream had shown me his future shape — neat cruelty. He would wear courtly smiles and cut hearts like paper.
"A reward," he said, "is owed."
"Then ask the Empress," I said, and to my own surprise I bowed to a plan. I was going to ask for freedom.
He held my hand like an owner holds a pet — short, possessive. "Kelsey," he murmured. "You are cold. Are you sure you mean this?"
"I'm sure," I lied again. I had already decided to die in ten smaller ways before I died in one big one.
It did not take long for the court to move. The Empress, Margherita Crouch, sent for me to the palace and made a garden of my humiliation. "You are fragile in public, my dear," she said. "A future daughter-in-law must be made of finer stuff."
"Your Majesty," I said, "I only ask not to be a burden."
She laughed like a coin tossed down a well. Fabian stood at her shoulder like a suntanned relic. The Agonizing Noise followed — gossip, hope, petition. Later that week, an edict arrived and my name was bound to a fate like a stamp on paper. They meant to marry me to Fabian. They meant, perhaps, to put me on a stage.
"I will not marry you," I told him later when he tried to corner me in the corridor.
"Why not?" he said. "We are suited. You are calm, I am... not."
I lashed out in a voice I didn't often use. "I do not want to be your convenience."
He went white. "You were the one who crawled into my arms when I was struck sick. You would throw that away?"
"I was protecting a life," I said. "I will not be used as a footstool."
He smiled, and the thin smile was steel. "The throne does not like footstools that refuse their place."
Days blurred. There was a man named Carter Ortega — a man with a bookish smile and a secret-engineered grin. He spoke softly in a room of boys. He spoke more softly to me once, when he pretended to be a friend.
"You must allow me to show you gentler things," Carter said as we stood by the lake. "You don't have to be alone. You don't have to..." His hand brushed mine. He was a snake with manners.
I was not interested until the ruse was already woven. He whispered lies. He arranged favors. He set a woman at my house and taught her my sister's manner. The woman — Birgitta Sousa — came home and slipped into the place once held by my real sister. Every time Birgitta smiled like my sister, it felt like a knife shaped to my face.
"Do you not see?" I asked my father quietly. "She is not the same. She does not flinch at the same cold. She calls herself my sister, but her answers are wrong."
Yale withdrew into his sleeves, a man who had to choose public order over private patience. "Find proof," he told me. "I cannot act on a child's whisper."
So I found proof. I had my little plan of making the House of the Empress unravel. The wheel I turned was small — a theft in a brothel, a trick with a ledger. When I faked a lead into Boston Briggs's house — a man like a cliff with the weight to topple — the game began to move.
"Carter," I said to him, one damp morning when he thought me still his and docile, "did you ever love anyone without asking for anything in return?"
He blinked like a clever man surprised by honesty. "You make wild accusations, Kelsey."
"It's not an accusation." I set a jade hairpin on the table between us — my sister's hairpin, the one that matched a lock of childhood hair. "Explain why Birgitta Sousa has a matching hairpin to the one my true sister always owned."
He started to smile, then that smile cracked. "That hairpin? That proves nothing."
"It proves a lot." I let him squirm. The plan was a string of small lights leading to a bonfire.
Everything came to a head in the imperial courtyard, under the open sky where the emperor's chair caught gold and the city watched.
I walked in with Yale at my side. Beside the dais, the Empress presided in a silk of thunder. Fabian stood with easy control on his face, like a well-polished seal. Carter Ortega had thought himself invisible; he was not. Birgitta stood tremulous, heels too high, eyes like the prize of a hunt about to be taken.
"Your Majesty," my father's voice rang. "We petition to present evidence."
Margherita's smile was slow. "Evidence? From the Dougherty household? Very well. Let it be heard."
I stepped forward. "Your Majesty," I said, and even my voice found teeth. "I was given a sister by the household — she came home after being lost, and she had my sister's hairpin. She ate things my sister could not. She knew words only a crafty woman would know."
"What are you saying?" the Empress asked, flat as a blade.
I met Carter's eyes. "I will show you every lie he told."
"Who? Me?" Carter's face had the small panic of a man who has been found that he is a fraud. "You speak nonsense. Kelsey, think—"
"Silence," I snapped. I turned to the crowd. "Ask Birgitta Sousa to remove her sleeve."
A hush fell like a hand closing on breath. Someone laughed nervously; someone pulled out a phone to record. The crowd leaned forward. That silence became the stage.
"Take it off," I said.
Birgitta's hand shook as she removed her sleeve. On her arm were scars — not the small flares of a sickly child, but the cut marks that matched the scent of a lie. Yale had already arranged for a midwife to stand near the dais. She took the hairpin from Birgitta and placed it against a ribbon. "This ribbon is sewn with a stitch unique to the River District," she announced. "I have seen it before."
"You are saying..." the Empress's eyes narrowed.
"Yes," I said. "This is not the clothing of my sister. She was taken as a child. The woman who returned is an actor. Carter Ortega conspired to insert her into my household. He used her to break favor for me, to make me appear unfit, and to secure opportunities for his patron."
Carter's cheeks drained to paper. "You slander me," he whispered.
"Then deny it," I said. "Deny it, now, in front of all."
He tried to. He said: "This is a conspiracy. I acted for the nation. I acted for the good of the realm."
"Boast and die," I said. "You stole my sister's fate and gave me the blame."
At that, the Empress tossed her head like a queen scattering petals. "If such is the case," she said, "we shall allow the court to judge."
The courtyard filled with noise. People murmured. Some prayed. Some drew cameras. I expected whispering, but not cruelty. What happened next was more public than any private killing: a trial staged as spectacle.
They made Carter stand. They made Birgitta stand. A midwife, a trader from the brothel, and a keeper of household ledgers were summoned. The ledger Carter had used, with payments and entries, lay on a table like a plucked heart. I had missed nothing; my plan had many tiny teeth.
"You are charged with conspiracy," the Empress said. "You arranged a false identity to manipulate royal favor. You schemed to remove heirs' prospects. You will answer publicly."
Carter's face was now a question. "You cannot do this," he mouthed. "You cannot—"
"It seems we can," the Empress replied. "You will repent publicly."
What followed was not a sentence of the law but a ritual of exposure more terrible because it was social and theatrical. First, the midwife described the differences in Birgitta's body and my sister's, the long-ago scars and a birthmark the wrong woman could not hide. People gasped; someone in the crowd shouted for blood.
"Then the ledger," my father said. He opened it like a trap. "Here: payments under Carter Ortega's seal, entries to the brothel, to merchants who procured false identities, a note 'for insertion' written in your hand."
Carter's denial died into a hundred recordings. Someone in the crowd began to clap like a metronome. "Explain this," the Empress commanded. "Explain your payments."
"I..." Carter swallowed. He took off his gloves. His voice was a rope pulled tight. "I thought it was for statecraft. I thought the girl would serve as leverage. I thought..." His eyes flicked to the Empress pleading silently. "I thought I knew what was right."
"You thought," I said, voice low and terrible. "You thought I'd be a pawn pliant enough to bow."
He crumbled then, not to me but to his stage, a man collapsing into the amphitheater of his own making. "I did it for power," he said. "I wanted to change the court. I wanted to make sure the right people got the right places. I wanted to save my mother. I—"
"Enough." The Empress's hand snapped the moment shut. "Your confessions will be recorded. You are stripped of office and honors."
People cried out. Some cheered. Cameras flashed. But that was not the end. For punishment surprising and absolute, the Empress ordered them to be marked by public truth.
"Let the whole city see," she said. "Let every merchant, every courtyard, know the faces of those who would trade in lies."
They dragged Carter to the square and had him stand upon a low platform. He was forced to read aloud every account, every excuse, every hidden message — a catalogue of his treasons. People photographed his papers. They pinned the deeds on the market walls. They shouted his name like a curse.
Carter's expression went through stages: bravado, then shock, then denial, then a pleading collapse. "You do not understand!" he shouted. "I was trying to fix things. I loved this country!"
"Is love what you call this?" I asked.
He fell to his knees then, begging me with the last of his pride. "Kelsey, please. Forgive me."
"You taught me how to count betrayals," I said. "I forgive many things. I cannot forgive being made into your tool."
The crowd had become a jury as well as an audience. They spat. They recorded. An old woman walked up and tore the ledger in two. "May your name rot," she said. That scene lasted like a slow storm. Carter begged. Carter promised. Carter grew small.
It went on. Birgitta's punishment was different. She was paraded for mockery first: the women of the market were given her false jewels and asked if she could guess which were real. They humiliated her with the petty cruelty of people given permission. The more dangerous ruin was left for Carter — the planner — but Birgitta was not forgiven.
And the Empress? She had saved herself by turning the spectacle to her will; yet the court does not easily forget what it sees. The Empress's part in the early tricks was revealed by ledger slips and a note found in a drawer. She twisted, then smiled, then grew pale in a way only very clever people do when their chess pieces turn to glass.
What we had done was not blood revenge. It was hotter: public failure. We dragged rotten things into the sun. People who had once bowed to Carter Ortega now said his name like a brand, and none offered to help.
"Carter Ortega," I told him as he knelt, "look at the sky. It is a clean blue. You thought you could hide your papers in the dark. This is what light does."
He opened his mouth and said nothing.
The crowd dispersed in ripples, some applauding, some sobbing. The story traveled by morning. Carter was disgraced. Birgitta was exposed as a fraud. The Empress's hand retreated from the seams where she had tried to stitch fate.
Yet punishments are rarely neat. They leave stains.
I stood aside afterward, with my jade hairpin in my palm. It burned like a brand. I thought of Fabian, who had once been warm and kind enough to wipe my tears. He came to the courtyard as we spoke. He looked at me like a man who had clung to the idea of owning a sunset.
"You set a trap," he said slowly. "You set a dangerous one."
"I set a truth," I answered.
He laughed once, a short, ugly sound. "You must remember," he warned, "I am a prince. People will say you tried to unmake order. You will suffer for it."
"So be it," I said. "If truth makes me suffer, then let my suffering be true."
Days rippled out from that courtyard like rings in water. Carter's name was food for gossip and he was sent away from court with his honors ripped from him. Birgitta was kept under watch until they could decide whether she was a slave or an accomplice. The Empress could no longer push her favorite into my lap as if I were a blessing to be bestowed.
But the greatest danger was not the Empress. It was Xander Chapman — the foreign prince skilled at claws. He had his own hunger and his old grudge against me. He had, more than once, hunted me like a small creature because I had hurt his pride in a dream and in a real-life accident. He surprised me at the edge of the city when I left in a caravan, and he said, "You run a brave game for a rabbit."
"I am not a rabbit," I told him.
"You called me 'wolf' once," he said. "You had a bad dream. Did you know bad dreams talk back?"
He was odd. He was terrifying. Yet when the hour came dangerously close to the one in my nightmare, Xander did not join the crowd's hunger. He steered the archers' aim away with cold, sudden orders and his own men threw themselves between me and any arrow-shooter. He had his reasons, not all kind. He wanted control. To him, owning a life sometimes meant not destroying it so that later you could bind it.
"Why?" I demanded one night as we sat in his small tent under a roof of rumor. "You wanted to wound me. Why now stop a bullet?"
"Because," he said, "you told me once to be careful. You were right. I do not take orders easily. But there was that one night where you warned me and I didn't listen."
His face was not soft. It was not meant to be comforting. "And you remember me because I saved your life?" I said.
He shrugged. "I remember things I can keep."
So I had an enemy who could be a savior, and a prince whose hands could fold a person like paper. I had a father with legal chains and a mother with a soft, fierce grief. I had the knowledge that my real sister was dead and a fake had smiled in her place.
The courtyard had seen Carter fall. The market had seen Birgitta's confidence crumble. The Empress had seen a corner of her power gnawed away. The city changed the way it spoke of me.
In the end, the final scene I had feared in my dreams did not come to pass. I never hung with a jewel-studded rope against the city wall. There was no arrow with my name carved into it. Instead there was light and ledger paper and the noisy joy of witnesses who turned on a conspirator and recorded it for the future.
One night, alone, I took the jade hairpin and snapped it into two. The sound was small, like a match extinguished. I kept one half and left the other half on the sill of the room where Birgitta slept. It felt like setting two truths in the air: you can be broken and still keep a piece of yourself.
A month later, I walked past the market where the ledger had been posted. Someone had framed a photocopy and hung it next to a poem about tricksters. Children pointed and laughed. Carter's name faded as names do. People took their secrets into the corners where heat could not touch them and left the rest to the sun.
"Do you regret it?" Xander asked once on a night of heavy stars. "Turning the world to watch the fall?"
"I regret not knowing sooner who I was," I said. "I regret that I had to be so hard to be heard."
He made a small noise that might have been a laugh. "You were never quiet," he said. "You only learned to be a blade."
When I finally let myself look at Fabian again, he had lost some of his sheen. He lost a throne nearer his hand and a certainty he had traded for safety. I felt neither joy nor triumph. I felt the damp of a life that had been washed and left on a line to dry.
The jade hairpin stayed in my palm. It had held more than one woman's secret. It had been the hinge of accusations, the sign of a sister, and the proof of a lie. I had broken it, but I kept one piece.
"Keep it," I told the piece. "Keep the part that remembers me."
It is not the most heroic ending. It is not a tidy coronation. But it is mine. I learned the cost of truth: public light, private scars, and the knowledge that sometimes to survive you must break a beautiful thing and walk on with the heaviest piece in your hand.
The End
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