Revenge12 min read
The Plum Wine, the Wooden Hairpin, and the Promise I Kept
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I waited ten years because he once said he would marry me.
"You said you'll marry me," I told him that night in the hall full of candles and woven banners, offering the plum wine we had buried together when we first left home.
Alonso Garcia smiled, polite and distant, and raised his cup. "Try it, Brianna. It is Mei Blossom wine from the south. Penn brought it back."
"I remember," I said. "You buried it with me when we left." I poured a small taste into his cup and watched him lift it.
"You wanted something of me," he said. "Tell me what."
"I wanted you to marry me," I said, and the words fell like a dropped coin into a quiet pool.
Alonso set his cup down without finishing it. "I will make you a general," he said instead. "Thirty thousand soldiers under your command."
"Good," I replied.
He did not answer the thing I had kept like a small, loved stone in my palm for ten years. He did not even touch it with his voice. At his left sat Alicia Hanson. She leaned on his shoulder as candles burned, smiled like a soft moon, and made the hall seem less dangerous.
I stood then, drunk on the wine and on a memory that kept its light, and I left the banquet.
"Drink too much?" Penn Byrd muttered when he found me outside, in the cold night.
"No," I said. "I am done."
I had told myself to be done many times. The promise—the childlike promise I believed when we were both too young—had lived inside me a decade.
Alonso would not marry me. For ten years I told myself that I would be at his side through war and peace, because that is what we had planned when our world was still small and cruel. We rode out together then. He fought like a wind, and I fought like steel. We buried the plum wine together in secret when the autumn sky turned to ash.
Now that he would sit on the throne, Alicia Hanson would sit beside him on the raised seat. I would be a honored warrior with a name and a title, but not a wife.
"Do as you please," I said to him that night. "You decide."
He laughed, and in that laugh I found the cold part of a king.
The next morning I left with a small kit and a feeling like a hollow inside me. I did not go to the capital to take a title. I did not want the title. I left because everything I had believed in had moved like a tide and left my shore bare.
I went north to see what other land held. The north has a wind that tastes like iron. There I met a man at a roadside teahouse.
"Sit," he said. "The sun is mean today."
He was younger than me by a handful of years. He had a face that bent light. "I am Travis," he said. "Travis Feng."
"Call me Brianna," I answered. "Or call me by no name."
He laughed, then rescued a woman from a bunch of men who meant to hurt her. He saved me once more when his horse went down in snow and he lay in the road like a monk cut open.
"You have bad timing," I said, and he smiled like a boy who tasted candy for the first time.
"Then I will ride with you to fix my bad timing," he answered.
So he rode with me. We walked in winter and through market dust, and I ate his soup when my throat burned from wine.
"Call me sister?" I teased once, in a quiet inn, and he blinked, startled and soft.
"Call you Brianna," he said. "Call you whatever makes you smile."
He made me laugh in small ways. He wore his kindness like a coat. He boiled tea at dawn, fed me soup when my hands were too brittle, looked after my wounds with water and small hands.
One day he asked, "Brianna, what would you do if the man you loved stands with another?"
I did not look away. "I would not call him mine," I said. "If he chooses another, I will make my own road."
But I did not know that this road would lead to him—his hands, his trust, his close presence—and then to a revelation that cut like a knife.
He told me his name was Travis. He told me stories of a distant lord and of a vengeful boy who lost his family. He did not tell me the whole.
"I will keep you warm," he said one night, his words small as a child's promise. "I will keep you safe."
"I am too old for love," I said. "I am too old to be tender."
"Then be my old," he said, and laughed.
When he said he wanted to be my husband, I let myself believe him, because his hands were steady and because I was tired of holding my own head up alone.
We married simply, a shack and two small vows. He bought red cloth from a market stall and hung it at the door. He turned me around and spun me like a thief who had stolen a festival.
"Stay," he said, his eyes damp and foolish.
"I will try," I said. "If you beg me, I will stay."
But there was a sickness growing inside me like frost in a well. It came in fits—once on a sun-beaten road, once in the press of a market. It froze me like ice. My body betrayed me. I bought a small house among plum trees and a slow stream. I told myself I would keep living.
When the tremors grew worse, when my fingers could not hold a comb, I saw the same man waiting for me at the edge of a fall, hardly a hero and wholly devoted. He held me close when my skin chilled to the bone.
"Stay with me," he begged. "Don't leave."
I wanted to tell him I could not promise stars. I wanted to tell him that my heart kept a hollow where another name still lived.
"Travis," I said finally, "I love you enough to try."
He loved me with a clean, pure wanting. He made soup and mended my shirts. He held me while I slept and told me ridiculous jokes. When he said, "I want to be with you forever," I did not know then how much he carried in his past.
We thought our house, our small garden, would be ours.
Then the capital found me again.
Alonso came back when war was over, crowned and grave. He walked into my small court like a man not used to lightness. He found me with my red cloth still drying in the sun and lifted me into memory with a single touch of his voice.
"Brianna," he said, and he looked at me with a storm under his eyelids. "You are well."
"I am married," I answered.
"You married?"
"Travis," I said, and he turned his face away for the briefest of times.
Alonso's eyes were tight then. "When did this happen?"
"A year past," I said. "I had a small wedding. It was mine."
He held my hand, and for a moment I thought I would be that old thing again. He bent as if to whisper a promise, and then his face hardened.
"Leave your husband with me," he said suddenly. "Bring him to the palace. I must know him."
"Why?" I asked.
His jaw moved. "Because he may be a threat."
I had been careful not to tell him about Travis's past, but now the truth broke like glass.
"Travis Feng," I told Alonso in a low rush, "is a man who loved me and has kept me warm."
He looked as if the word "loved" made him cough. "Bring him."
Travis had walked into the palace like a man willing to be seen. I had not told him that my past had fingers that still gripped the throne.
When the guards seized him, something in my chest fell.
"You betrayed me," Travis hissed later, when he could not move his wrists. "Who are you to bring me here? Who are you to make it worse?"
"I wanted him to know who I became," I said. "I wanted him to see."
They did not let me see what they wanted with their eyes. They took him to a dark room, and men with iron voices told him he had attempted assassination.
"I didn't—" he began. "I never—"
"You tried to kill the king," the captain said. "You were found with a blade."
I remembered a moment—Blinding light, a slip, a man on a balcony, a rush of hands. The truth shoved its fingers into my ribs.
Alonso's face was unreadable when I begged him.
"Please," I said. "He is my husband."
He tasted like ice. "He is an assassin," Alonso said. "He came to kill me. He wanted to take my life to avenge his own."
"Then let me see him," I begged.
"You will not," he said. "Not yet."
They kept him in the yard where the old punishments happened. He was bound to a post when I arrived. His back was raw, his breathing a ragged thing.
"Travis!" I screamed.
"You are mad," Alonso told me, with that quiet you only reserve for broken things. "You cannot save him."
But I was inside a storm. I refused to be ruled by the calm of crowns. I pushed past the guards.
"Stop," I said. "Stop!"
"You are in the way," the captain said.
I took the wooden hairpin from my hair—the old one carved with a single word of joke carved long ago by hands that once meant me well. I held it like a small knife. "Let him go," I said.
Alonso watched me then, and his eyes softened and then closed. "You would cut me for him?"
"No," I said. "I would cut for life."
I placed the hairpin at his throat. The wood puckered under skin. He did not flinch. He only said very quietly, "Would you kill me for him?"
"I could," I said. "But I won't."
He smiled then, a small thing like a wound sewing itself closed. "I wanted to see if you would."
His order came after. "Continue," he said to the captain.
They whipped. They hit the flesh. I could not look away. Every strike was a bell toll in my chest.
The public punishment lasted long. The yard was full of people—soldiers, servants, a handful of curious merchants, a maid with a baby, two boys who had never seen such a thing. They watched with a thousand small faces. Some pointed. Some took coins from pockets to buy better views. Some covered their mouths with fingers and whispered prayers to quiet gods.
"Stop!" I cried to the crowd. "Stop watching as if it is a play!"
A man near the gate spat. "She is a soldier's whore," he hissed. "Why should we spare her husband?"
"You do not know him," I screamed. "He is no murderer!"
Travis looked up through the rain of lashes. His eyes were steady like iron. He did not cry. His mouth moved as if tasting words and finding them strange.
"Forgive me," he said once, to me alone. "Forgive me I brought you here."
"Forgive you?" I laughed, a dry sound. "You have no idea what you have done, do you?"
The first phase of the punishment was meant to break the body. Each lash struck with the weight of a season. The crowd shifted like a storm cloud. A woman near the wall began to weep openly.
"Do you feel proud?" a soldier asked Travis between lashes.
"Not proud," Travis gasped. "Just tired."
They brought out buckets. A boy threw water over Travis's bare back. He convulsed. His voice came thin from his throat. He called my name and then called no name and then his own name like someone who is trying on a coat and does not know the fit.
When the lashes stopped, they bound him more tightly to the post. The captain called for a public statement. He read it like a man reading a market list.
"This man," the captain announced, "attempted to murder the sovereign. As proof, we present his blade and the confession of him who tried. He will be punished for treachery."
"Confession?" I shouted. "You mean your own men wrote it down and called it true!"
Travis's expression cracked for a moment. He laughed, small and sharp. "They will say whatever gets them supper," he said. "They will put words in mouths that do not speak."
A child in the crowd leaned forward and asked, "Is he a criminal?"
"No," I answered, even though my words shook. "He is the man who loved me."
"Then why do they beat him?" the child asked.
"Because a king thinks he must," I said, and my voice was cold as a blade.
Then they placed a block of ice near the post, a strange ceremonial thing. "He is a traitor," the captain said. "He is given to the law of cold and fire." They did this to frighten and to make the story bitter and lasting.
The punishment lasted into the afternoon. People took tokens away from the sight and told the story in different tongues. "The woman who loved the general's husband clashed with the crown," a merchant said to his friend. "It is good for business."
Travis did something that none of them expected.
"You will tell me now," he said to a man who had struck him. "You telling my tale will not wash away your fingers."
"What?" the man barked.
"I will ask you to look at me," Travis said. "Look at me and say I did this. Look me in the face."
The man refused. He kept fining jokes and shifting his weight. "We do the orders," he said. "We get a coin and bread."
Travis's eyes were full of something else. He asked not for mercy but for a witness. "Say my name," he told the captain. "Say that I tried to kill or say I did not. Face it."
The captain's lips tightened. He spat into the dirt. He did not answer.
A middle-aged woman, a washer who had been at the edge of the crowd, stepped forward.
"This man," she said, "is my neighbor." She wiped her hands. "He helped me carry water. He barked at my dog. He cracked jokes on a slow afternoon."
Travis looked at her. "I borrowed your cart once," he said. "You gave me bread."
The woman nodded. "He is cruel with some words, but he never struck a child worse than a dog. He came here for a thing I do not understand. He came with a longing I have seen in boys. Do not let the king make a play. If he meant to kill, he would have done it then and there. He is not a traitor."
The crowd moved. Someone murmured. Alonso stood by, his expression flint-hard. I saw his hand tremble once. He had given the order. He had looked at me and thought to test my weight.
"Do not play martyr," a soldier whispered at me. "You will not save him."
But the washer woman's words had done something. They made the faces in the crowd into a thousand small judgments. A handful of men shifted and looked ashamed. A couple of women crossed themselves.
Travis, after hours of lashes, now began to speak differently. He told stories—stories of a father who laughed and a mother who mended, of a boy who learned swordcraft behind screens, of a house that once had laughter. The crowd saw a child then, a wrongness that was not simply malice.
One man from the back shouted, "He killed a lord's heart! He killed a man's father!"
"He killed a man who stood on walls and fired," another cried. "He did his duty."
Travis's face changed as the charges ebbed and flowed. At one point he smiled, small and sad, like someone who had tasted wine only to find it sour. "I do not ask your pity," he said. "I ask memory. Remember a wrong. Do not make it into a play."
The captain yelled for silence. "Enough," he snapped. "This is not a story hour."
They dragged him away when the sun fell shallow and then returned him to a cell. The crowd thinned. They would talk for days of the day the woman tried to stop them from breaking a man.
The punishment had shown the city a truth: that cruelty wears many faces. Some applauded the lashings. Some whispered that the king was unbending. A few even thought the woman foolish to have tried.
I left the yard with mud in my shoes and the imprint of lashes in my mind. I had tried to save him, and I had only made the cruelty heavier.
That night, in the low room where I had once been married to Travis, I sat and did not sleep. I felt the sickness climbing inside me like frost.
In the morning I found that Travis had left the cell. The palace had made a decision. He was locked until he could be judged. I thought of the small wooden hairpin burned into ash by a king's fingers, and I wished for a world where small things could remain.
They told me that the blade they had found on Travis had belonged to a man from the old house. They told me that they had proof of a plot. The paper stank of official lies and the ink of convenience. I could not swallow it.
Days later, I was called to the inner room. The king lay pale and cold like a man who had slept on snow. His skin shimmered with frost.
"Help me," Alicia said quietly, on hands that trembled. She looked at me as if the world had split open and left her alone with a decision.
"I will try," I said. "I will try with fire."
The court physician told me that the poison was the kind that comes from the west—cold like a winter sea. It ate flesh like a fierce frost. The only cure was in the roots and in a small portion of ash. The piece of wood we once took as a sign—a hairpin he had given me—had been burned. The antidote, they said, might be found only in what the accused had hidden.
"Go to him," I told the captain. "Give me five minutes alone with him."
Alicia did not flinch. She said, "Let her speak."
They took me to the cell.
Travis lay there like a broken thing. The man who had once warmed my bed looked like a carving in stone. He saw me and smiled as if the sight was sunlight.
"You came back," he said with a voice like grass.
"You told me the cure," I said. "Tell me how."
He coughed up blood into the cup the guard held. "We made a hairpin," he said, "of ash—" He broke off and looked at me. "Or of the wood around my father's house. I carved a blade that could drink frost. If you boil the black ash and take the bitter water, it will melt the cold like a knife."
I ran then, with my hands shaking. I boiled the black ash he mentioned, made a bitter tea, and drank it until my teeth clenched. The poison inside me felt like a winter storm unthreading. It chewed and it left, but it took a piece of me.
When the king awoke, he was not whole. His voice was less certain. He looked at me with grief the color of old rivers.
"Brianna," he said. "You saved me."
"I did what must be done," I said. "I paid."
"You burned a hairpin for me," he murmured. "You gave me the plum wine once again."
The palace reverberated with sorrow and with a new order. They took Travis from the cell and gave him something else—exile. The law could be bent if a king wished. They would not let the city keep a story of cruelty without ending.
At the funeral for me, Alonso pushed aside the curtains and looked at my face in the coffin. He sat on the floor and looked like a man who had been given the wrong weather. He said nothing, but he wept—hard and full.
Travis stood outside the gates, his horse waiting, the road open to a world I had once believed would be an enemy. He watched as they lowered me into the earth and he did not move, because something inside him had already moved.
He had punished me and he had healed me and he had confessed the poison. The city would speak of him as a traitor for a long time, and of me as a woman who loved too much.
Years later, when the plum trees were white, a man came and left a hairpin carved by a hand that trembled and a note that said, "Forgive me for the winter."
Alonso never rose from the throne without a soundless thing in his mouth like a regret. He never smiled the same way.
I thought often of the wooden hairpin and the plum wine and the way a promise can sit in your throat like a stone. I thought how I had traded a life for two others to be kept.
When my body went cold, I lay thinking of the words the washer woman had said: "Do not let the king make a play." I had wanted the play to end with a small, honest truth. I wanted the record of us to be clean.
I closed my eyes, and I tasted the plum wine again—old and soft and full of the years when we buried things together in the dark.
I died because a promise had been made, because a plan had hatched, because a man loved another man, and because a man who once called me his future king had decided that some things must be tested with blood.
I left the world with the hairpin in my hand and with a hope not so large as to be foolish: that someone would remember the taste of the wine, the feel of a warm hand in the night, and the way a woman can choose to give a life away rather than watch two men break themselves over her bones.
I had asked for one thing ten years before. I had, in the end, asked for it and given everything to secure it. The king and the husband loved me in broken ways. One loved me with a crown. The other loved me with a knife. I loved them, each in a different language.
My story is not soft. It is not laced and tidy. It is made of simple things—plum wine, a wooden hairpin, the echo of a promise. It is a circle broken and mended with the dark thread of sacrifice.
The End
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