Sweet Romance13 min read
The Little Guest, the Roasted Leg, and the Emperor's Promise
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I was fourteen the year I came into the palace.
The first time I saw him properly, he looked down at me like a storm had decided to rest its shadow on his face. He was darker and rougher than the paintings suggested. He swung his arm and slapped a eunuch so hard the whole room flinched. He grumbled, loud and blunt, "I'm short one empress, not short one daughter."
He was Clifford Barrett. He was old enough to be angry about everything and kind enough to be careless with his temper. He was also the only man in the palace who made lamb smell like heaven.
"You're not hungry?" Ute Conley asked me that first night I was assigned to my small palace room. Her voice was gentle, but I could tell she worried.
"I am," I lied. "I am just... not used to the food."
She tilted her head, pity soft on her face. "If you want something, child, tell me. I can fetch you anything in the kitchens."
The truth was simpler: I wanted the roasted leg the palace smelled of from across the compound. Smells are dangerous things for a small and hungry girl. They grow teeth and follow you.
Late, I couldn't sleep. I slipped out, shoes on, the moon for my lantern. I crept like a cat, and for a while I thought the palace had nothing I wanted but soft ropes of silence.
I found him squatting by an open flame, turning a leg of lamb. He cursed at the kitchen staff the way a man curses at a bad horse. "These cooks are rubbish. Can't even roast a lamb." He grunted, turned the meat with his knife, and added, "If I don't, it won't get done right."
I tried to leave quietly, but a pebble betrayed me. A small stone hit my calf and I went down like a felled reed.
"Who goes there?" he barked. A second later, the hem of his dragon robe swept before my eyes. He loomed, terrifying and unexpected. "What are you doing out this hour?"
I blinked up at him. The fury that had been on his face softened—like someone taking a breath and deciding to be something else. "You're too young to be wandering the palace," he said, and his voice, though sharp, had a thread of something less cruel. "Why are you awake?"
I thought of the first time he had spoken to me properly, the first day I entered his hall. He had stood from the throne and come close, "Fourteen?" he'd said, incredulous. I had answered politely, and he had thrown his temper right then at a eunuch. "I'm short one empress, not short one daughter," he'd roared, and then, bafflingly, ordered that a small quiet chamber be made for me.
The lamb smell swept between us. I could not help it. I stared.
He watched my face, and then he smiled—small and crooked. "Looks like a greedy cat," he said, and beckoned. "Come closer."
He handed me a strip of lamb. I ate, and felt my world fill up. "How is it?" he asked.
"Delicious," I said. Tears surprised me, and I could not stop them. "Delicious," I repeated.
"Don't cry while eating," he scolded like someone who scolds because he does not know how else to show he cares. "If you cry, I'll—" He pretended to think, then said, "I'll have you dragged out and killed."
I choked, then laughed at his ridiculous threat. He laughed too, a sound like gravel rolling, and then, puzzlingly tender, he ripped a chunk and offered it to me. "You're the first who dared to eat with me since I took the throne."
That night, by the heat of the roasting pit and the taste of lamb, my fear, for the first time, softened.
For the months after, the palace swallowed days whole. I was tiny and quiet and called "child" by everyone. Helene Dixon, the empress dowager, called me in once and said, "When you come of age, we'll have your wedding." Her hand was steady on mine. "You will be an empress."
I didn't want to be. I wanted roasted lamb and the freedom to pick it properly from the spit. But then I heard the stories of Clifford Barrett—how he had been a general who walked into enemy ranks like a walking doom. How he had taken heads and borders and respect. How he had once been a wild northern hawk and now wore a crown he'd never asked for.
"I'm not a bird to be caged," my brother Johan Collins had said before I entered the palace. "So don't let them cage you."
And yet here I was, in a gilded cage that smelled of roasting meat and secrets.
Weeks passed with small, bright pieces: his late-night raids on the kitchen for perfect lamb so he could roast it himself; the way he slapped a eunuch when he was amused; the way he fussed at the cooks and then quietly moved a plate closer for me. He was blunt in speech, rough with his hands, a man who thought force fixed things. But underneath his roughness he had a precise touch. He brushed ashes from my cheek once and I felt like someone very small being held very carefully.
"Why do you keep looking like you swallowed the moon?" he asked once, watching me from across the table.
"I just... like good lamb," I said.
"You're greedy," he said, and reached out and patted my head. I wanted to smack him and hug him at the same time.
He introduced me to Ayako Cortez—"the pretty sister" he'd called her first, the one suggested as a favored concubine. Ayako was anything but plain. She came from a fierce land and had a hush of a smile that could sharpen into steel. Clifford made mirrors for her, gifts, and the court sang of their laughter in the gilded halls.
Then things darkened. Court is a place of small wars. Behind perfumed smiles, knives were sharpened. Giselle Kovalev—who came into the palace with fine clothes and finer manners—watched me once with a look that suggested my existence was a splinter in her eye. She made courtesies that were all teeth.
"Pay attention," Clifford told me once while we were quietly playing games in the audience hall. "Keep some of your cleverness for yourself. Behind all that tea and silk, women will try to twist what you are into what they are not."
"And what am I?" I asked.
"A handful of trouble," he said. "But the kind I like."
When Ayako became favored, I felt an ache I could not name. She was like me—small, fierce, clever—but her laugh went to places my laugh could not. Clifford spent nights in her rooms. I ate my roasted leg alone and watched smoke fill the moonlit peeks between corridors.
One day Ayako fell ill. Symptoms came at midnight, and someone whispered poison. I had heard the court murmurs—there were eyes that disliked her sudden favor, and the palace turns on its new favorites with knives. That day, Clifford stormed into the Liang residence like an arrow released.
"What happened?" I asked. My voice was thin as a thread.
"Giselle denies it," Clifford said. "She says she's innocent."
"She?" I echoed. "But—"
He didn't wait for my verdict. He gave the order with a voice like iron. "Bring them to the hall."
They were dragged into the great court the next dawn, Giselle and her kin, shoulders hunched, faces powdered white with fear. People filled the courtyard—attendants, eunuchs, lower nobles, even some officials who thought themselves untouchable. Whispers snagged and crawled like lizards.
Clifford stood on the dais. He did not wear the emperor's courtesy smile. He wore the old general's face: cold, hard, used to seeing throats and decisions.
"You poisoned her," he said, and his voice carried like an arrow. "You tried to take a life to keep favor for yourself. Why?"
Giselle lifted her chin with practiced arrogance. "I would never—"
"Then why did the cup that touched her lips have the same herb only found in your family stores?" Clifford asked.
Giselle's eyes flicked to the gathered crowd. Around us, faces turned. The air tasted like a storm before thunder. "Those are lies!" she snapped. "Plots by your enemies! You will not listen to slander."
Clifford's hand tightened on the railing until his knuckles whitened. "Do you dare speak to me of slander?" he asked. "Do you forget who I am?"
The magistrate brought out testimony—servants who spoke with shaking tongues, a chambermaid with a splintered nail who had seen a hidden vial in Giselle's room. The evidence, small and human, made a net. The crowd leaned in with a sound like a tide.
Giselle's posture wavered. I watched her face go from arrogance to confusion to a thin thing called panic. Her breaths came faster. "You cannot—" she began, then stopped.
Clifford stepped down from the dais and did something no one expected: he spoke plainly, not as an emperor speaking from ivory but as a man who had once been on the battlefield. "You will face the court," he said, and his voice had a terrible kindness in it. "Not for the people you think you control, but for the woman who died trusting the palace's mercy."
The courtyard hushed. A younger noble whispered, "She will escape. They always do."
"We will see," Clifford murmured.
I remember the exact moment the punishment began—because it was thorough, and because it was meant to be a lesson carved into stone. It lasted long enough that no one could walk away thinking it a private matter.
They brought Giselle and three of her relatives to a raised platform in the palace square. The emperor's banner hung above like a black sun. People came forward and gathered; even the hands of the cooks and stable-boys were smudged with flour and stable-dust as they leaned close. The scent of roasted lamb was gone for that morning; all that remained was copper and the cold smell of fear.
"Let the witnesses speak," Clifford said. His command was soft, awful in its precision.
First, the chambermaid came forward. Her voice trembled but she did not break. "I saw her hide something in the sleeve," she cried. "I watched her move like a fox. I kept quiet because I was afraid."
A eunuch who had once been docked a coin by Giselle's household for refusing a bribe spat, "I saw the vial. It was in her boxes by the cloth. I wrapped it in linen."
Each testimony landed like a hammer. The crowd's murmurs turned into a roar. Giselle's smile had flecks of sweat. Her hands clawed at air. "This is—lies!" she cried.
Clifford's eyes were stone. "You can lie to me. You can lie to the Empress Dowager. You cannot lie to a dozen frightened witnesses and expect the truth not to wake up and bite you."
He had them brought one by one to the center of the square. First her steward, then her sister-in-law; each told similar stories. The more they spoke, the thinner Giselle became. She first blanched, then paled, then her face flooded with color—an ugly red of rage and fear. "I didn't—" she kept saying, but the words were muffled.
Then the worst part of the punishment unfolded: a public unmasking of riches and favors. Clifford had men haul chests onto the platform—gifts, expensive silks, secret letters, bribes. He read aloud where each had come from and to whom the favors were owed. "You thought you were clever," he said. "You thought gifts bought silence. They bought guilt."
People leaned forward and took to recording every detail in their minds. A woman near me muttered, "Look at her hands. How they'll tremble when the imperial ledger is opened."
Giselle's expression was a theater of decline: first haughty, then panic, then a plea that was almost animal. "My family—" she cried. "This is false. Please—"
Her relatives shouted back and tried to pull at the ropes. The crowd hissed. A young officer spat, "You poisoned her for favor. You poisoned the wrong woman."
Clifford did not shout. He only unrolled a decree and read it. "For crimes of poison and betrayal, for attempting to end the life of a woman placed under imperial protection, by decree of the throne, your titles are stripped, your estates forfeit. You will be led from this place. You will not be spared the eyes of the people."
The crowd's reaction was a mixture—some clapped, some whispered, some bowed their heads. There was a woman with a child who whispered, "Justice," and a man who shook his head and said, "Too cruel."
Giselle's composure collapsed when the soldiers physically put ropes around her wrists. She looked at Clifford. "You can't do this!" she shrieked. "You are not a god!"
"You were trying to be a god on a smaller stage," he answered. "And in this court, gods do not poison the weak."
They dragged her through the square. People crowded forward, and voices rose like a flock of birds. Some spat. Someone else took a cloak from their shoulders and flung it at the hated woman. The humiliation was public, precisely arranged. It was not a secret arrest; it was a lesson by stage-light.
At the city gate, they halted. Clifford stepped down from his horse and faced her. "Look at them," he said softly, and gestured to the throng. "Let them see."
Her face was a high, white mask of panic. She began bargaining, then pleading, then screaming. Her voice changed pitch as her world unraveled. "I did not! Please, your Grace. I can give more. I can—"
"Silence," Clifford said. He did not shout. He only lifted his hand, and the crowd stilled, because the same hand had once broken men in battle.
Then he turned his back and walked away.
The next day, the edict was public: the Kovalev line was to be stripped of rank; their lands claimed by the crown; five of its leading members exiled from court and put to menial service; the head of the household to be humiliated in the market for three days. The rest of the family would be subject to interrogation and, where guilt was established, execution.
People gasped. There was a murmur like wind through reeds. The punishments were not all the same. One cousin—found directly handling the poison—was executed in the presence of the magistrates; another merely had his rank stripped and was sent to hard labor cutting wood at the palace gate. A third begged for clemency and was forced to watch their home be burned.
When the head of the Kovalev family was paraded through the main market, people spat and huddled back. He went from a lord draped in silk to a figure in rags, forced to kneel upon the cold stones. Children pointed. Merchants took coins from his pockets while officials looked on, hands discreet. The woman's screams when her own man was led off to death were a sound the market would never forget.
The official punishments, especially the public ones, played out over days, because punishment in that palace was theatre and warning. Each scene built the point: no one in the palace could poison or scheme with impunity. It was not only a legal punishment; it was social annihilation.
As for me, I watched with a sick sense of victory twisted into grief. I did not enjoy the spectacle. I felt its necessity. I felt the old part of me, small and hungry, glad that justice had teeth. I felt Ursula Conley's hand squeeze mine. "You watch," she said, voice low. "Let them see what happens."
He watched too—but his face changed as the days went by. At first it was stern. Later, at night, he would sit beside me and sigh. "I hate it," he murmured once, and for the first time I saw the weight that a crown could be.
"Sometimes cruelty is the only language the palace understands," I said.
He looked at me like someone startled into tenderness. "You make it sound pretty."
"That's because you give me roasted leg and mead," I said.
He smiled, small and crooked.
Ayako recovered. She did not die, but the memory of being poisoned left her fragile in a way the palace air could not heal. People whispered that Clifford had loved her more than he should have. He did. He loved her like a soldier loves his banner—loyal and possessive.
Some nights, I learned how to be clever. I set small traps for the women who whispered, the ones who thought their tongues could sway the throne. I answered with small, precise deeds that unbalanced their plans. They would conspire and find their own schemes returned to them like boomerangs. I learned to make my quiet voice land where it mattered.
He gave me small tokens over the years. A carved rabbit for my fifteenth birthday. "You look gentle," he said. "But you bite when you need to." I bit my lip and smiled.
At sixteen, they made us wed publicly. I sat beneath the throne and felt the weight of a crown I had not asked for settle in a soft, ridiculous way. Later, alone on our bridal bed, he parted the veil and said, "Am I the old man eating young grass, then?"
"You might be," I teased. "But you're my old man."
"That is not flattering," he grumbled.
"It's true," I said. "You scolded the kitchen staff, you slapped men, and you baked me lamb. What else do I need?"
He laughed and, for a terrifying, beautiful moment, he kissed me. "Don't grow too clever," he murmured later, as the candle guttered. "I'm afraid you'll leave me."
"I won't," I lied once, and then said the truth. "Not unless you become something I can't live with."
We grew into one another like two rivers finding the same delta. There were seasons when he was away—campaigns, councils, the endless care of a realm—and I tended the palace in a way the dowagers could not fault. There were seasons when he was present, beating the drums that made the courtyard ring: he would roast lamb and read state papers on the same bench and call me "little nuisance" when I corrected some line of ink.
Once, attackers slipped into the outer garden. I was foolish and curious and walked into a trap. Men seized me with rough hands. The world ceased to be composed of polite lines; it compressed into one terrible instant. I thought I was done.
Clifford arrived like an avalanche. He stood before the captors and barked, "Give me your bows." The archers obeyed. He asked me quietly, "Do you trust me?"
"Yes," I said without thinking.
"Close your eyes," he told me. "Keep them closed until I tell you otherwise."
I did. The arrows whistled and thudded, and when I opened my eyes, he was there, blood on his sleeve and me safe. He said, "It's over," and I felt my knees melt. His arms clung to me that night like someone afraid to let go.
There were children later—soft, screaming, small reasons to let life continue. We had one son first, then another. Clifford turned tender like the coals of the hearth; his rough edges were still there, but they warmed rather than cut. He scolded our little boy for being timid and then tucked him into bed with a tenderness that made me laugh so hard I had to wipe tears away.
The palace learned to bend to our small household. The empress dowager sighed in a way that meant acceptance. Clifford joked that he had never expected to be a father; I joked back that he'd never deserved it.
Years hammered on. The Kovalev line's removal had consequences I never wanted to begin, but it left the palace quieter in a strange way. Without their plots, there were fewer midnight tragedies. Without their poison, there were more honest meals.
In the quiet after the storms, I learned how to pick lambs, how to roast them until they smelled like home, and how to make a ruler laugh until his eyes did not look like battlefields anymore. I learned that men can be both fury and safety. I learned that I could be a small, fierce thing and still be loved.
Clifford never let me forget the first lamb. Once, eating by the fire, he nudged my shoulder. "You always pick the best pieces," he grumbled.
"I do," I said. "Because I know where the fat hides."
He took my hand and kept it. "Promise me you'll keep doing that," he said.
"I promise," I answered.
We grew old in a way that looked like a storybook: small fights, mended with stew; tiny victories among the drums of state. The court would gossip about our odd pair—a rough general who once took heads, and the little empress who liked roasted meat and made trouble with a grin. They would be wrong, but they would be entertained.
Once, toward the end of a long day, I sat by the river that ran near our small retreat. We had nothing left to prove. He watched the fish rise and said, "Thank you."
"For what?" I asked.
"For letting me keep my life," he said. "For staying."
I smiled, leaning my head against his shoulder. "For letting me keep my lambs," I replied.
He squeezed my hand and looked at the sky. "Then let's count stars for as long as we can," he said.
We did. The last thing I remember before sleep took me was the small, steady sound of his breathing and the thought that, of all the things I didn't plan for, loving him had been the best stolen roast of all.
The End
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