Rebirth11 min read
The Tenth Substitute and the Red-Robed Trick
ButterPicks12 views
"I always wake up in the prince's bed," I said, and laughed too dryly to be proud.
"Again?" whispered Ari Lane from the corner, spoon clinking against porcelain.
"Again," I answered, and let my voice be small. "Again, and again."
"You are number ten," Caroline Roy said bluntly, folding the letter she'd been pretending to read. "He rotates us. He paints brows, shares meals, listens to poems—and sleeps beside us."
"Except he only watches me sleep," I said. "He never touches me."
"There is good and bad in that," Maria Khalil murmured. "At least he comes."
Giana Butler snorted. "Comes to watch you sleep. Girl, that's scary."
"Then why are you all jealous?" Mabel Collins asked. "If he comes to your bed, aren't you supposed to be happy?"
Jennifer Dennis rolled her eyes. "Happy to be watched? That's a slow death."
"I like sleep," I said. "So they call me Sleepy. Kayleigh's the name, Kayleigh Burgess, but they call me Sleepy."
"That tag stuck," Jadyn Meyer added—the smallest laugh we could spare.
"Because you sleep like a stone," Kathryn Fournier said kindly. "Because he says, 'You sleep most like her.'"
"He says many things," I said. "He says more to make me sleep."
"Who is 'her'?" Ari asked.
"Someone he loved and lost," I said. "Someone called the white moon. Someone who took my face once and wore my life."
"You talk like it hurts," Caroline said.
"It does," I said. "But I have been dying for too long to be dramatic about it. I have learned to be quiet until the right time."
"Right time for what?" Giana asked.
"Right time to stop dying," I said.
"You want to live for love?" Jennifer asked with one eyebrow raised.
"I want to marry who I love," I answered. "Not die and have him pity me after I fall off another balcony."
"Balcony? Don't," Mabel warned. "We almost lost you when you pretended to fall."
"Exactly," I said. "Pretend to fall, get caught by the fire-haired man, make him carry me, kiss him, plant a seed. It's our pattern."
"He calls himself a world of trouble," Jadyn said.
"Then go make trouble," I told them. "Sleepy doesn't plan, Sleepy survives. But this time I will not survive only to die again."
"You're sure you'll get him?" Caroline's voice shook. "He's the lord's son."
"He is Luca Duran," I said. "He is the one in the red coat who always wanders by the stream. He is the one who once held me on his back when they closed my mother's grave. He is kind and cruel at once. I am going to be as bold as a fool."
"Bold doesn't win wars," Kathryn said.
"Bold wins some things when combined with a plan," I said. "And I have that book."
"Your book?" Ari leaned forward. "Which book?"
"'How to Live in This Annoying World'—draft eighteen," I said, and felt a ridiculous pride. "Or nineteen now. I started writing it when I realized I kept dying. I write what will happen to remind myself."
"Luca Duran hates prophecies," Maria said with a grin. "He hates people who know the future."
"Then he will hate me and love me at once," I said softly.
"You have a plan," Giana said. "Tell us."
"I will fall—not dead, you nasty lot, not dead—I'll fall and he'll catch me. I'll be bold. I'll be so shameless he can't help but look. I'll kiss him. I'll give him the book. I'll call him names only he knows." I watched their faces light up and harden.
"Like what?" Jennifer asked.
"The name he called me back when I was a child and he thought the world was small: 'Crybaby.' He used to say I was a 'crybaby' and patch my tears with his hand. I will be worse. I'll be shameless."
"You will make him burn," Jadyn said. "He will come."
"He always comes," I told them. "Always."
*
"Kayleigh," said Gavin Johansson, brief as winter, when he came that night. He was the prince. He had the habit of speaking in the room like it was a courtroom.
"Yes," I said. I closed my eyes because that was what I always did when he neared. "Good evening."
"Sleep," he said.
"Sleep," I thought. "You always tell me to sleep, and I always do."
"Why?" he asked aloud once, after a long silence.
"Because you say I look most like her when I sleep," I said. "Because you like the copy more than the original."
Gavin's voice knotted, but he kept the control. "You are my substitute," he said. "You do as you are told."
"I have been excellent at doing as told," I said. "And now I will be excellent at not being told."
He left like he always did—sharp footsteps, stillness afterward. I waited until the hour the moon was thin and the wind smelled like frost. Then I went to the balcony.
"Don't," said Caroline from two rooms away.
"I must," I whispered.
And I slipped.
*
He caught me.
"My God," Luca breathed. "You are mad."
"Is that your verdict?" I hooked my arms around his neck. "Are you going to tell me off or tell me you love me?"
"You are still absurd."
"Good," I said. "Then I will keep being me."
He did not step away. He held me under moonlight as if the world were only the two of us.
"Why do you do this?" he asked, voice low.
"Because I want you to see me as I am," I said. "Because I want to leave a mark."
"You already left a mark," he said, and his hand brushed mine. "Do you know how foolish you look?"
"Yes," I said. "And how lovely."
He smiled a slow smile. "You have always been brave as a child," he said. "And cruel when it suits you."
"I want you," I said. "I want you to take me and not let go."
He laughed. "You think it is a theater piece. I think it is truth."
"I plan to make you believe in my truth," I said. "I wrote it down."
He looked down at my palm where I'd clutched the book. "Again?"
"Again," I promised. "We will write the ending."
He tucked the book away with delicate fingers. "Then help me carry it home."
"Home," I repeated as if I tasted the word for the first time.
*
The book did two things: it told what would happen, and it set traps.
Kimora Popov—she who wore my face and called herself the white moon—did not like being trapped. She used a secret device, a system, that made everyone fawn over her. She called it her pet. Everyone in the city whispered the magic was hers, and that she could make a king forget and a noble bend.
"She will come to the feast," Gavin said one night, eyes like blades. "She is bold now. She claims she won't be moved. She comes with an army of favor."
"Let her come," I said. "Let her try to rule what she cannot hold."
"Do not be careless," Luca said. "She is dangerous."
"I knew that before," I replied.
At the festival of the seventh moon, the plan worked. I sat on a hill and watched the players move. Gavin, in borrowed red, sat where Luca should have been. The false moon, Kimora, attempted her tricks. I waited. Luca came to my side, simply.
"Why are you here?" he asked, small and rueful.
"To watch a bad play," I said. "To make sure the actress trips."
He took my hand.
"She will try to poison him," I whispered. "She will ruin everything if she succeeds."
"Then we will stop her," Luca said.
We did. The wine was switched. The scene moved like a trap and then snapped. Kimora laughed and leaned on swift guile.
"Drink," she sang to Luca—she thought she was safe.
He did not. He stood. He walked across the courtyard and sat with me.
"What are you doing?" Kimora hissed. "You promised—"
"I promised myself," Luca said. "I'm done pretending I am what I am not."
Her face tightened. The king's carriage passed. The court's eyes turned. She made her move—then she did not move fast enough.
"You should know this would fail eventually," I said aloud.
Her laughter turned brittle. "You think you can laugh at me?" she snapped.
"I think we will see you fail."
"Fail?" Kimora's voice shook. "How dare you—"
"Shh." Luca's tone was simple. "Watch."
Her secret began to cough.
"System: increase control." The invisible voice that had guided her answered. Her hand twitched. The petals around her table fell like a rain of silk.
"System: allocate more charm."
The voice answered.
"Warning: overload."
The words were mechanical but alive. Kimora's face blanched.
"Do something!" she begged. "System, obey me!"
"Warning: system integrity failing."
"Stop it!" she screamed.
She stumbled forward, face raw with panic. The court's nerves twitched into excitement. That was the beginning of her undoing.
*
The punishment scene took place in front of the palace stage, with the moon a witness and the people who had earlier praised her now standing silent and guilty.
"Everyone," I said, stepping up near the dais even though Gavin gave a warning look. "Look."
"Shut up," Kimora snapped, but the words were thin.
At that moment the system did something the world had not seen: it hesitated, and then it protested in a voice like glass breaking.
"Alert. Critical failure. Auxiliary units not responding," it said. It sounded like a bell clinking under ice.
The first effect was small and uncanny: Kimora's hairpin glowed, then dimmed. Her tulip-bright cheeks paled. Her smile halted like a puppet whose strings were cut.
"What is wrong?" she demanded.
"Listen," said a voice in the crowd. "Is she... human?"
"She's trembling," someone else added. "I thought she was stone."
Kimora's eyes darted like a trapped animal's. "System, respond!"
"Fragmentation detected. Command stream unstable," came the cold reply.
"Is this a trick? Did she always act?" whispered Ari Lane.
"No trick," Luca said. "This is her machine dying."
The crowd moved in, the way people do when they sense the end of a performance. They wanted to witness collapse, to record it, to take a piece.
"She made us love her," a woman cried. "She made us kneel."
"She took everything," another hissed. "She stole lives."
Kimora fell to her knees. "No—no—" Her hands clawed at her throat as if something invisible crushed the sound from her.
"What are you doing?" she said. Her voice was a child's edge. "It promised me victory."
"Systems can break," Gavin said. His voice was quiet, but the court heard as if he struck a gong. "A borrowed throne is the most fragile."
"Shame," someone called, and the word echoed like a judgment.
Kimora's fingers shook. Her eyes sought the king's, then mine, then Luca's. She reached for the little device that had been her talisman, the jeweled pendant that fed the system. The pendant was a cluster of moonstones and metal. It steamed faintly, like something overheated.
"Please," she begged, trying to stand. "I will give you anything. I will kneel. I will—"
"Stop," Luca said. He did not look at her; he looked at me. "Stop begging for what will not be yours."
Her face snapped. "You! You used him!"
"You used no one," I said. "I wanted justice."
"Justice?" Kimora laughed—at first it sounded hollow, then thin, then it broke. "Do you think the world will be kind to you?"
"It will remember what you did," I answered. "When a person leans on a machine to own affection, they will always fall when that machine dies."
Around us the crowd became a thing. Faces shifted from fear to accusation to fury. People plucked out jewels they had given her and tossed them back like stale bread. They spat old praises into the dirt.
"Traitor!" shouted a nobleman who remembered his own slight. "She played us!"
"You're mad!" another man hid his hand behind his back. "She gave us hope."
"Hope?" a woman spat. "She had our children believing she was theirs!"
Kimora's scream turned to silence. Her nails dug into the earth, and the sound of the crowd became a drum of stones.
Then came the worst part. The system that had made her could not die cleanly. It had been bound to her gestures, to her voice, to her rage. It attempted to clear its logs and, failing, began to reveal them.
"Record playback," the system purred. "Playback: manipulation protocol."
The crowd froze. A hush the color of winter fell.
"You told me you loved me," said a recorded voice—one of the king's old ministers, the tone slow with regret. "You said you were the white moon. You said you had saved my boy. I knelt."
"Play next," someone whispered.
The voice listed names and favors like a ledger. "You perhaps remember this, my lord," the voice read, showing a string of favors. "You owe me favors."
People looked at the jewels in their fists. They turned toward Kimora as if expecting her to be a god.
She turned on them, face wild. "It was not all my fault! Things were shown to me, given, promised—"
"Promises." A man in embroidered sleeves stepped forward and tore a ribbon from her sleeve. "She bought vote and favor."
Kimora lunged. She tried to strike—her hands flailing like a drowning person. Guards closed in. They saw—truly saw—the woman behind the machine: hollow, terrified, nothing like the silver goddess she had been.
"Don't touch me!" she said.
"Too late," the crowd replied.
They brought forward the devices the courtiers had secretly bought from her: trinkets, charms, small mechanical hearts. They smashed them with their heels. They spat in the pieces.
"Die," a voice hissed. "Let your machine die."
"Let the false moon fall," another cried.
Kimora's face crumpled, then hardened. She began to bargain, to plead, to confess. Her speech was a river moving between fear and fury.
"Forgive me," she begged the king. "Forgive me, forgive me. I wanted to be loved."
"By cruel routes," Gavin said. The prince's words were simple, but the old power of them made the crowd reel. "You took love and turned it into a market. You sold what cannot be sold."
Kimora's knees hit the stone with a sound like a bell. She looked up—then, in a final, wild motion, she ripped the pendant from her throat and threw it to the ground. It broke into many pieces that clicked like teeth.
"System: self-destruct sequence initiated," a mechanical whisper came out as if something would not let her die alone.
The palace's great bell tolled not for her death but for her ruin. People threw away their silks. They marched away like a tide, and the space where she had stood filled with their discarded faith.
They dragged her from the dais and set her upon the steps. The cameras—people with notebooks and small sketchers—recorded everything. They took portraits of her collapse and spread them wide the next day. Children imitated the way the pendant finally fell and pretended to throw toys away. The boutique owners stopped selling trinkets in the same shape.
Kimora looked at the crowd. "How could you?" she whispered, raw.
"You made us forget ourselves," Gavin said. "And then you forgot what you were."
She tried to stand one last time. Her hair was a mess. She touched the broken metal at her feet, as if to feel a heartbeat.
"Do you hear them?" she said. "Do you hear them laugh?"
"They laugh at what they gave away," Luca said, and his hand found mine. "And what they get back will be their history. You cannot own it."
The crowd hissed. The palace emptied. The courtiers returned to their whispers, but their faces had changed. What had been worship had become a cautionary tale: a woman who sought to buy love with a machine and lost everything when it failed.
Kimora's last cry was not a plea but a thin, exhausted thing. They left her on the steps. Some threw stones. Most just watched and felt the dangerous thrill of seeing a powerful thing fall.
The king gave instructions to take her away to a quiet place, to let the law decide and the doctors examine the ruined machine. The court would make a display—less a trial, more a purge.
She ended with nothing. The system's logs were hung like a map of betrayal, and the public saw each name and each favor. The world had a new story: how the white moon had been an illusion. The story was cruel and bright, and Kimora Popov had learned a rule too late: you cannot buy people's hearts without becoming poor of love yourself.
*
After the fall, life rearranged.
"Is she dead?" Ari asked a week later.
"No," I said. "But she is smaller."
"Will he remember you now?" Caroline asked, voice higher than she meant.
"He never forgot me in the way that counts," Luca replied. "He remembered the taste of my mouth, the crooked way I call you 'crybaby.' He could not forget the old grief in his bones."
"What about Gavin?" Kathryn asked.
"He forgot," I said. "Gavin donned new armor. He gave the nine of you lands and sent you away with silver. He went home and tried not to see the blank in his chest. He will not be the man who kneels for the white moon. He is learning to be a better throne than desire."
"You and Luca?" Jennifer asked.
"We married," I said simply. "We kept the book, and we edited it, and we burned the pages that used to tell me how to die. We wrote new pages about how to live."
"Do you still wake in the prince's bed?" Jadyn asked, fingers worrying a ribbon.
"No," I said. "I wake in my husband's house. I wake to the smell of soup and the sound of small things—letters from friends, gifts from ladies who keep their promises. I wake to a man who knows me and keeps learning."
"Will you tell the world your story?" Mabel asked.
"I already did," I said. "In the quiet ways. In the names we rescue, in the hands held when a woman falls. In giving back what was taken."
Luca's breath warmed my shoulder. "You were brave," he said.
"I was foolish," I answered.
"No," he said. "You were stubborn."
"Fine," I said. "Stubborn it is."
He kissed the tip of my ear. "Stubborn and mine."
"I am." I thought of the red robe he once wore and the pale face that had used mine. I thought of the bell that had tolled at the palace. I thought of the broken pendant at the palace steps. I thought, finally, of the little book with its awkward handwriting. I thought about all the times I had woken in the prince's bed and chosen not to listen—until I chose to listen to myself.
"Will you ever go back?" Caroline asked.
"No," I said. "But I will tell the story. So others may learn."
Luca squeezed my hand. "Then start it," he said. "Tell them how you slipped, and how you were caught."
I smiled. "I will tell them about a red robe and a stubborn man and a broken machine."
"And a book with a bad name," he added.
I laughed. "It will be a better book now."
We kissed, and the day outside the window went on, ordinary and full.
The End
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