Sweet Romance11 min read
"The Starry Night That Saved Me"
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I woke with a mouth full of cold air and the memory of a dream like a knife.
"You promised," a man's voice had said in the dream. "What was done to you will be repaid a thousandfold."
I sat up and found my room still dark. My heart thudded in my chest like a caged bird. The dream felt like a warning and a memory at once.
That morning, Father, Gunther Brown, and I rode to the academy together. The carriage slowed when it struck someone on the road. A pale, pretty face looked back at us, eyes bright and quick.
"Who is this girl?" my childhood husband, Forrest Hayes, asked after a pause.
I glanced. The blood drained from my face.
"This is—" I couldn't finish. The face matched the woman in my dream, the one I had seen beside Forrest in the future: Jules Murphy.
"You'll have to excuse me," Forrest muttered in a tone that always sounded like a blade. "She is of no consequence."
"She looks like a healer," I said. "Is she hurt?"
"No," came his clipped answer. "But leave her to me."
I had found Forrest on a winter morning years ago, left beaten at the foot of a mountain trail with his sister clinging to him. I had offered help and a bargain: shelter in our household in exchange for him becoming my betrothed—my childhood husband. He had accepted with the look of someone insulted and traded. I had given him food and education; he had given me cold courtesy. He never used my name affectionately—only in the formal way proper to a contract.
"You will come to the capital with me," I told him once, pretending not to notice his thin veil of contempt. "If you are my betrothed, you will learn."
"If I must," he said, and that closed the matter as if it burned.
At the academy, a new student arrived with the brightness of a summer smile. "My name is Drake Schulze," he said with casual charm. He glanced around and, for an instant, his gaze lingered on me.
"Who is that?" Forrest asked, his voice like ice. "Another one to be mocked?"
"He's of a good family," I said. "So do not speak for me."
"You're always confident, Elizabeth," he sneered. "Delusions of a sick girl's heart."
"Don't," I told him, but he only gave a dry smirk and left.
Drake was different. He teased, but his eyes were sharp. He seemed to read things I tried to hide. He said things like, "You have a stubbornness like a stubborn flame," and "Eat more, you're wasting away." He annoyed me enough that I sometimes found myself smiling.
For three years, I endured Forrest's coldness. When I couldn't hide my cough, when my hand stained the handkerchief with blood, he turned away with a look of disgust. His sister, Cora Patterson, was unkind. They treated me as if I owed them everything.
Then Forrest changed. He began vanishing from the academy to the western quarter where a healer's clinic stood. Rumors said he visited Jules Murphy. He went with the soft voice he never used for me. I followed once and saw him there: gentle, attentive. To Jules, he was soft as spring; to me, he was winter.
"She's only a medical girl," he told me when I asked. "What harm is there in that?"
"A lover's harm comes in small things," Drake said later when he found me brooding. "You let the wrong man ride your mercy."
"Then, what would you have me do?" I asked.
"Let me teach you to be selfish," he shot back, grin bright and deadly. "And let me be the one to ask."
I did not mean to be cruel. I desired a child, a guarantee that my family line would not vanish when I died. I had always known that illness knelt at my door. I thought a marriage of convenience useful. I did not imagine how dangerous the bargain would become.
One winter day my carriage was attacked. Arrows split the air. Men dragged me into a rough cart. They cut my sleeves, left me half naked, and struck a blade across my shoulder. I lay with the sky above and wondered who wanted to shame me so publicly.
"Who are you?" I croaked, but my voice was small under a sky full of cold stars.
From the road came the clatter of horses. "They're coming," a voice hissed. "Move!"
Then a stranger's cloak fell over me. Warmth blazed across my chest.
"Drink," he said quietly. He removed the gag, and I coughed blood onto his sleeve.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, noticing the smear.
"Don't be, Elizabeth," he said, holding me steady with a strength I never expected. "You made a mistake once. I won't let them take that."
Drake Schulze had chased them down sixty miles through snow. He carried me back to my house, wrapped me in his cloak, and refused to leave my bedside. He spoke in odd ways, sometimes like a man who had rehearsed his lines and sometimes like a soul who had been awake for ten years waiting.
"You shouldn't have done this for me," I told him one night while fever burned off like a storm.
"I couldn't not," he answered. "Besides, I like that you told me to mind my own. I'd rather mind you instead."
He called me "my wife" long before the formalities were complete. He arranged gifts and sent a hundred and eight suitcases of dowry to my household. He presented petitions and asked respectfully to be called "son-in-law" to my father.
"You're mad," my father said when forced to listen. "Why would you let a young man of the barracks into our house?"
"Because he chased a cart twenty leagues to save me," I said simply.
People gossiped. Cora and Forrest whispered. Forrest had eyes like nails. He smiled thinly and watched us with the same cold contempt that had always lived behind his polite face. He played his part in public—courtesy, deferential words—but his hands were always folded like an accusation.
Then everything rushed to a head.
Drake had been tasting the threads. He dug into the attack by the road and the paper trails around the western quarter. "They don't want you dead," he told me. "They wanted to strip you of pride and property. They wanted a stain on the family honor, and to use it as a lever."
"Who?" I demanded.
"Forrest Hayes and Cora Patterson," he said. "And the one you saw in my dream—Jules Murphy. But the final strings come from higher. Nicholas Chambers hoped to tie your father's fortunes to his own and then bleed the house dry."
I was not surprised. The court had always smelled like a wolf. My father weighed two destinies—and had refused Nicholas's demand. So Nicholas had hunted in the dark.
When the spring festival came, the royal house invited many to the Palace Garden. It was there Drake chose to break the thread. He went like a man who had rehearsed a confession. He made no speeches; he made sure the right ears heard the right words.
We stood under a canopy of lanterns. The Seventh Prince smiled and received his guests. Forrest and Cora arrived in silk, triumph clinging to their shoulders. Jules moved among the ladies like a lily. The court thrummed.
"Isn't she pretty?" Cora said when she saw me. "A frail pretty thing."
"Forrest, are you sure she will hold up your name?" Cora teased. "You know how people talk."
"I will not hear my betrothed insulted," Forrest said, and his voice carried.
"I told the truth," Cora called. "She was a bargain. She wasted three years eating our bread."
There, in the midst of the music, Drake stepped forward. "You speak as if you own everything," he said. "But the evidence is a poor cloak for greed."
Forrest's face went white. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Meaning," Drake said calmly, "that the men who took my wife were agents of the names that profit from your schemes."
He produced bundles of papery things—letters recovered from Jules's trunk, a receipt, a silver hairpin. "Here is the ledger from the clinic. Here are bribes. Here is the list of those who benefited."
Forrest flashed a smile like a blade trying to pass for a flower. "Accusations without proof," he said.
"Then, we will get proof," Drake replied. "Guards!"
The guards were Drake's men. He had planted them, quiet as winter, patient as stone. The hall erupted: men gasped, ladies shrieked, and the Seventh Prince's eyebrows narrowed.
"Forrest Hayes," the chief guard pronounced, "you stand accused of kidnapping, conspiracy to defraud, and falsifying state matters by fabricating an uprising to gain favor. You will be detained."
Forrest's composure cracked in a hair.
"This is slander," he spat. "You—you have no right—"
"This is evidence," said Drake. "You hired bandits to make a story of enemy brigands so your master could gain favor. You conspired to have my wife's name sullied. You thought cheap ignominy would do what swords could not."
Forrest's throat moved. Cora's face crumpled like thin paper. The guests leaned forward, drawn like minnows to a knife.
"What does your family think?" Cora wailed. "We have been loyal patrons to this house!"
"You," Drake said softly, "were loyal to a ledger."
Then the chief guard pushed forward. "By order of His Majesty and the Seventh Prince's involvement in exposing this fraud, Forrest Hayes will be removed to the city lock barracks for trial, pending immediate execution if proven treason. Cora Patterson is detained on charges of accessory."
Forrest, shocked at first, tried to claw at the papers. He laughed—a dry, brittle laugh that had no humor.
"This is a sham!" he cried. "You—who are you to judge me?"
"A man who loves the one you betrayed," Drake said.
Forrest's expression slid from sneering to venom to panic. His voice faltered. "You—this will not end with me. I will—"
"You will," Drake said, "have to answer to the court."
They led Forrest and Cora away. I stood very still. My chest felt hollow. Around us, the guests whispered, cameras of gossip—tattlers and servants—clicked like teeth. Some sneered. Some looked shocked.
"It was all a setup," Cora cried. "We were friends of the house."
"Friends who planned a kidnapping," Drake replied.
The crowd divided—some hissed; others clapped softly. The Seventh Prince rose, a judge in courtly clothes. "We will have truth," he declared. "Let the law run its course."
Over the next days, the city boiled. Drake's evidence moved fast: lists, receipts, witnesses. Public outrage grew: the idea that a noble would stage murders and blame them on a village outraged the common people. Forrest's proud supporters disappeared like fog when the sun comes.
Three days later, the punishment was public.
They brought Forrest and Cora to the eastern square at noon. The sun hummed like a coin. Market sellers paused. The square filled—citizens streaming, nobles on the edges, soldiers standing like columns.
The scaffold had been built: not to cruelly parade, but to let the city witness. I was brought forward. "If this is to be your doom," I said quietly, "then let there be truth."
Forrest stood accused beside Cora. He tried to raise his head to the crowd, screaming that he was noble, that he had served the crown’s interest. Cora shrieked, then fell silent. They had practiced their outrage, but practice cannot hold under the weight of evidence.
"Do you deny your crimes?" the magistrate asked.
"Forrest laughed. "I deny nothing," he said at first, voice brittle as glass. "I did what I had to do for my future. You would blame me for wanting better? You would not have had my courage."
"Then you confess you conspired to stage the massacre, to brand innocent people as brigands, to secure favor with the Seventh Prince?" the magistrate pressed.
Forrest tried to twist words. His eyes darted to the nobles. "We were—" he began. "It was strategy!"
"Strategy," Drake repeated, voice flat. "Strategy that sold blood for a title."
The crowd reacted. Some cried out, small hands clutching at stalls. "How dare you," a woman shouted. "My cousin's fields—"
Forrest's mouth thinned. He leaned forward as if to speak and then looked small under the noon sun. His bravado flickered and dropped. The first stage of his change showed as confusion—he mouthed, "No," then tried "It's not true," and then the sound of terrified pleading. The crowd shifted closer like a tide.
"Look at him," Cora said suddenly, her voice thin with fear. "They painted me the thief." Her voice dissolved into sobs. "I didn't—"
"Those were your letters," Drake said, holding them aloft so every eye saw the seals with Cora's handwriting. "You signed the bribes. You took the money."
Cora went white. Her knees buckled. She clasped her hands, eyes wild. "No, no! I—"
"Bring forward the commoners they used," the magistrate commanded.
Men who remembered the night took the stand. "We were hired to act like thieves," one rasped. "We were paid and promised safe harbor. Then they turned on us and told us to run. Many of us were killed."
Forrest's expression collapsed. He began to rock, muttering to himself. "No—no—"
The shame came next. In the square there were faces: people who had once bowed to Forrest, who had smiled at Cora, who had seen them as respectable. Now they stood with incredulous eyes. Then the anger rose. A merchant spat in Forrest's direction. A woman slapped Cora. Someone shouted, "For the dead!"
Forrest begged. The sequence of his reaction unfolded like a bad play: anger's flare gave way to shock, to denial, to bargaining, then to collapse. "I did it for my family," he croaked. "I needed—"
"To take from others?" the magistrate said. "To tear apart families for your ambition?"
A child in the crowd had his mother pulled down. "My uncle—" the child cried. "He was taken. He wasn't a brigand."
The crowd's voice rose to a chant, not of bloodlust but of justice: "For the truth! For the truth!"
Forrest tried to beg in a new voice—pleading to those he thought his friends—but where friends had once stood, the faces had turned. Men who had once nodded to him now stared as if they saw a stranger's sin. The merchants who had traded favors with him now called for the law.
"Justice," said Drake softly, looking down at Forrest. "Not revenge."
Forrest's knees gave. He sobbed like a child, "I did it to rise. I did it—"
"All your rise is built on bones," a woman cried. "How do you sleep?"
They took him and Cora beyond the square. The sentence was carried out—Forrest's high position stripped; his honors revoked. He was sentenced and taken. People took pictures with their palms, not technology but with gossip that would spread like ink. Some wept for the dead. Most turned away.
I stood with Drake. My hands shook. "Will you stay?" I asked him.
"I will stay," he answered simply. "I will make sure we fix what can be fixed."
Word of their fall spread like wildfire. Nicholas Chambers found himself under scrutiny as well. Evidence linked him to the motive, to bribed judges. He tried to maneuver, but this city does not easily forgive a common stain on a respected house. He lost his favor; his ledger turned empty. He had locked himself in rooms and screamed at his servants. The very men who had once smiled at him now crossed the street to avoid being seen.
For weeks the market barked with gossip. I heard people whispering that a woman they mocked had turned the wheel so that proud men were humbled. Some called Drake a hero, others a troublemaker. My father, Gunther Brown, finally allowed himself to breathe.
"You did well," he told me in private one evening. "You saved the house."
"I had help," I said.
"Drake," he grunted, approving.
Drake settled into our home as a husband in quiet ways but with grand gestures too. He told me one night, eyes very steady, "I am not from the same world as you."
"What?" I laughed, then stopped. He was so very serious.
"Listen," he said. "In another telling I read, you were the one who died young and your house fell. I could not bear it. I traveled, somehow, to fix that story."
"You read fate?" I asked. The idea was impossible, and yet his hand was warm in mine like a proof.
"Call it a plan," he said. "I trained at the guard, learned court ways, and came here to change the book."
It was comfort he offered I had not asked for. He told me as if apologizing for the truth. "I came because I love you. Because I could not read you as the one who dies. I wanted you to see stars, not a grave."
I had dreamed of stars when I thought death would take me: a handful of points that made the cold tolerable. He had given me the chance to look properly.
So we did the small things—shared warm bowls, had jokes that only the two of us understood, kissed before sleep when the house was quiet. He asked me to be his in a proper way: a ring, a small kneel, a promise to make a bright wedding later when the world was kinder.
"You and I," he said one night as he tucked my hair back, "we have a better ending than the one I read."
"Then let's make sure it stays that way," I said.
I still had to wake each morning and decide how to live with the memory of what was done—by Forrest, by Cora, by powerful men. But the public punishment had stripped their pride and left them small and trembling in the dust. The city watched, and justice in a public square carried a lesson more soluble than any private vengeance.
At night, when the house fell quiet, Drake would lift the little sugar candy from his pocket—the one he said I had eaten the night I was almost taken—and laugh. "You swallowed my plan with a piece of candy," he would say.
"Then at least the sweet part worked," I replied.
He kissed me then, soft and fierce.
"Come," I said once, pulling him down by his collar in a rare boldness. "Kiss me for real."
He laughed, full of the small, fierce joy he carried. "Always," he said, though we both knew not to use such easy words.
Under the open window, all the lanterns and stars watched us like witnesses to an ending no one had predicted. The sky held its usual sober countenance, but to me it felt different—lived in. I had seen what I feared and I had seen a man who refused to leave my side.
"Stay with me tonight," I whispered.
He answered by tilting my face up and kissing me until the world simplified into a small, star-shaped point of light. I closed my eyes and memorized the warmth and the way his hands smelled faintly of smoke and iron.
And when I thought of the dream and the carriage and the cold stars, I tucked that memory under the brighter one: of Drake's hand, of the ring that fit like the end of a sentence, and the sugar candy stuck between my teeth like a secret.
This was my ending—no longer the one written by fate. The stars were wide and real, and I would look at them as long as I could.
The End
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