Sweet Romance11 min read
The Year the Emperor Broke the Door
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I remember the way the birthing room smelled—of wet linen and smoke and a panic that moved like a living thing.
"I can't—" Indie Foster said, her hands white-knuckled around the linen. "My lady, the child—"
I was on the other side of the curtain, the housemaid who had pulled the curtain aside telling me every small movement as if it were a prophecy. "Indie, tell me plainly. Is he breathing?"
"Yes. He's breathing, but—" Indie hesitated, then whispered, "He is very small. He is not strong."
I felt a cold settle under my ribs. "Bring him to me."
The midwife frowned. "Her Majesty, the emperor—"
"Then bring him to me now." I cut her off, and my voice surprised even me with how steady it could be.
They carried him. He smelled of vernix and milk and the thin iron tang of blood. His tiny fists kept opening and closing like he was making promises to a world he had barely seen.
"He will be named?" Indie asked, eyes flicking to the doorway as if expecting a herald.
"He will be my son," I said. "His name will be Emmett."
"We must warm him," Indie instructed, tucking the child against my chest as if his heartbeat could be transferred by skin. "We must not let him go."
Outside, the palace breathed politics and cold strategy. Inside, I held my son and wondered how a kingdom could be so loud and leave so little room for one small life.
"Wait," Indie said suddenly. "Your Majesty—there are complications. The rooms are locked. The midwives are blocked. Someone—"
A thudding then, a sound like a hammer on the gate, and boots slamming on wood.
"I will not lose him." That was the voice I had loved since we were young and foolish; it was the voice that had stepped onto fields and into councils. It was Alejandro Ellis, and he was charging through a door.
He did not ask permission. He did not ask why. He only burst in like a man hurling himself at the world, and for once the world made way.
"You came," I said when I could look up. "You came."
He had his hands on the small doorframe, the wind of his entrance unsettled my hair. "I promised I would always come," Alejandro said. "Did he cry?"
"No." I laughed, which sounded nothing like laughter. "He sleeps like a river."
Alejandro knelt beside us, and for the first time in years I saw him as only a father would—untamed, ashamed, magnificent.
"His fingers are warm," he breathed, touching Emmett's cheek with the reverence of a man who had learned to fear his own strength.
Days became stitches in a cloth of careful routines. Emmett fell ill in ways that no one can predict. Three days a small fever; two months a great tide that pulled him under. We moved like two halves of a single promise—one set of hands for the palace, one for our child.
"You should rest," Alejandro told me once when Indie stepped out and I had not blinked in hours.
"I will rest when he rests," I answered.
He watched me and then watched our son, and something in him loosened like a belt. "You are tired," he said simply.
"I am always tired," I said. "But the tired that matters is the one that keeps him breathing."
When Emmett turned three, the season had been unkind. Alejandro's hair had threaded into gray at the temples from worry and late nights. I watched him at court, a man with a thousand masks, and I watched the way his shoulders bowed when he thought no one was looking.
"Did you remember to attend?" Bodhi Patterson asked Alejandro at the council that morning, pages rustling like distant sparrows.
Alejandro's hand tightened around a paper until the edges creased. "I am needed at the northern supply lines."
"Your son's birthday is tomorrow," Bodhi said flatly. "He—"
"I know." Alejandro looked as if he had swallowed a stone. The council had tens of mouths and one mind, and he could feed them all with decrees. But one voice—mine—was the only one he feared disappointing.
"You promised," Bodhi said.
"I know I promised," Alejandro's voice cracked like thin ice.
When he arrived at home, it was like a tired king trying to step back into a world of bowls and blankets and a child's laughter that did not line up with any of his directives.
"You forgot," I said, not angry. Curious as to how a man could forget a single breath he had pledged to keep.
"I—" Alejandro's hand went to his throat. "I did not forget on purpose."
"You have been gone for weeks," I said. "You have been gone for years."
He looked at the curtains, then at Emmett sleeping in the shade. "I thought I was keeping them safe," he said. "I thought the world I built for him meant I could be absent for a while."
"Absence grows teeth," I said. "It bites."
We had learned to speak in small truths. They were safer.
"Will you forgive me?" he asked and, as always, said forgiveness in his own clumsy way—by offering all he had and asking for less.
I kissed the curve above his wrist. "I already forgave you when you left to feed more mouths than ours."
He kissed my forehead in return. "You are cruel to make me a better man."
"Not cruel," I told him. "Realistic."
He laughed, a sound like a bell muffled in velvet. "Then come up. Sit. Rest."
When he lay down beside me that afternoon, it felt as if the palace had folded itself smaller so there was room for our three breaths—mine, his, and our son's. Emmett slept untouched by politics. He dreamed, and sometimes he muttered in his sleep.
"A fruit," Emmett mumbled once, and Alejandro and I both started laughing.
"Fruit?" Alejandro asked. "Which fruit?"
"A meat bun," Emmett corrected in a child's voice.
"Ah," Alejandro said and, like a fool who loved to be chastened, patted his own belly. "I see the heritage."
He had kept a costume from the days before the throne—when he could walk without people watching. It was ridiculous on him now: a tunic that had seen better winters. But when he pretended to be a man who could be silly, Emmett believed he had a father who belonged to him in whole measure.
"Father, you are foolish," Emmett said, and then, as he was prone to do, he hurled himself at Alejandro like a tiny storm.
"You are mine," Alejandro said, and the world learned that there are two kinds of kings—those who rule from a marble chair, and those who rule with a child's laughter on their lips.
We played the small games of a family that had been learned on borrowed time. Alejandro made ten paper kites one morning, tied with thin reeds and dyed paper.
"Ten?" I asked.
"Ten," he confirmed. "He asked for ten."
He bound them clumsily, his fingers big and stubborn. "The sky will be full of them," he said.
"It might be," I allowed, "but you must promise the palace will not report a missing official for every kite lost."
He smiled. "Then I will make better knots."
We took Emmett to the courtyard. The sun was a heavy coin in the blue, the courtyard buzzing with servants and the few children who belonged to the palace staff.
"Father!" Emmett ran, his small feet churning dust. "Fly them! Fly them high!"
Alejandro launched each kite with exaggerated care, guiding them like small squadrons, and Emmett clapped at every motion.
"You are tall," Emmett said at one point, eyes upturned, his small hand tucked into Alejandro's.
"A king must be tall," Alejandro said with mock sternness.
"Are kings tall because of milk?" Emmett asked suddenly, the logic of children slicing open our meaning.
"What?" Alejandro feigned offense. "Who said milk?"
"Our cook," Emmett replied. "She says you were fed the best meat bun."
"Only the best for the future monarch," Alejandro said.
I watched them and felt a tautness inside me loosen. They were simple moments like these that built our life, beat by small beat, into something that could stand against the storms.
Later that day, however, Emmett announced with the callous honesty of children that would never be allowed in court, "I peed."
It happened as all childish accidents do: simple, sudden, and thunderous to a man's vanity. The damp spread from his collar down Alejandro's robe in a steady, mortifying ribbon.
Alejandro stood like a statue with a trickle staining his back. He looked at me as if for war.
"You will bathe," I told Emmett. "And you will apologize."
He pouted, then said, "I didn't mean it."
"Of course you didn't," Alejandro muttered, half angry, half amused.
"I will take the robe," Alejandro said formally. "I will not be seen in the courtyard like this."
"Leave it," I told him. "I'll help you. And you will laugh later."
"Later?" Alejandro looked as if he found my optimism absurd.
"Yes, later," I said. "When you can remember your clothes are not your armor."
He bent and swept Emmett up without ceremony. "You are mine," Alejandro said to the boy.
"I know," Emmett replied, then added, "You smell like cow."
Alejandro nearly dropped him. "You will say such things to the general and see what happens."
The general—Mario Christiansen—stood too nearby, a man who wore his loyalties like a second skin. He coughed, eyes shifting between father and son. "Your Majesty," Mario said with officiousness, "the northern roads—"
"Are being repaired," Alejandro finished for him, "and your reports are being read." Then softer, "'Do not worry about the smell of cow. I do not."
The palace has a way of making private things public. But some mischief cannot be governed by edicts. Later that night, when Alejandro undressed by the fire, I helped him out of his robe and tended to the damp stain.
"I am foolish," he said.
"You are human," I answered.
He studied me, and for a moment the emperor in him melted away, leaving the boy I had married. "Stay," he said. "Do not ever leave."
"I won't," I promised, because promises to a man who had weathered hate and storms were too small; instead I offered my life like a simple cup of tea, warm and available.
There were days I wanted to be angry at the court that made him miss birthdays, at the supply wagon delays and the men who came with empty hands and full mouths. But anger is a noisy thing and our child needed quiet.
"Why do they whisper?" Emmett asked once, small hand lost in mine.
"They whisper because they are afraid of what you might become," I told him.
"Will they be afraid?" he asked.
"They will," Alejandro answered behind me, then made a ridiculous face. "But you will be kinder than they fear."
He taught Emmett how to knot a kite string like a lesson in patience. He taught him how to eat with his hands like an art. He taught him, most of all, how to keep a promise by returning to a room he had left open.
One afternoon, Bodhi Patterson came to see us. He stood in the doorway like a man bearing a verdict.
"Your Majesty," Bodhi said to Alejandro, "the northern grain has been delayed. We will need to redistribute."
Alejandro pressed his palm to his mouth for a moment. "Do it," he said. "But ensure the granaries are fed first."
Bodhi inclined his head. "Yes, Your Majesty."
When Bodhi left, Alejandro sat down heavily. "I'm sorry," he said to me in a voice only I heard.
"You have been apologizing a long time," I said. "Stop apologizing and go do one more right thing."
He looked at Emmett, who was building a small tower of blocks, and then he kissed my forehead. "You make me better," he said.
"I make you remember what matters," I told him.
The life of the palace is one of small rhythms. We found our way through them by making each other the anchor. Alejandro could be a terrible father at times—absent in body and present in guilt—but in the small spaces between war and council, he was exactly what he promised: a man who could break a door down and then sit on the floor and let a child climb over him.
At night, Emmett would sometimes wake and call for me, and Alejandro would answer as if the sound were his command. There was a tenderness to him I had never seen at court. He would sing songs in a voice that shook, then steady, and Emmett would fall asleep to the sound of a king who was only a man.
"Do you think they talk bad about you?" Emmett asked once, sleepy and honest.
"I think they have always had words," I said. "But we have more important work."
"Like kites?" he said.
"Like kites," I agreed.
We kept the small rebellions of family—stolen bread, secret naps in the sun, laughter not scheduled on any page of a ledger. And in the quiet after, when Alejandro fell asleep with his head on my shoulder, I would weigh the years and feel gratitude like a small stone in my palm.
"You carry the kingdom on your shoulders," I whispered to him, echoing a phrase he had used once before to shame himself.
"And you carry our son in your arms," he replied.
We both laughed then, low and soft, like two conspirators.
Sometimes I wonder which of us saved whom. Was it that he came bursting through doors to find his son alive? Or was it that I learned to forgive a man who thought the throne was all that mattered?
"Promise me," Alejandro said in the dark one night, "that when I am old and the paper grows too heavy, you will be the one to tie kites with him."
"I promise," I said.
He smiled and for a moment the whole palace felt like a room I could close a door on and keep safe.
There were many storms after that. Supplies failed. Men plotted. Rumors tried to gnaw at our edges. But every time the world leaned in, Alejandro came back—sometimes with his paper creased and his hands bleeding from signing decrees, sometimes with a laugh and a ridiculous hat for Emmett.
"Why does Father wear hats?" Emmett once asked.
"Because he wants to be funny," Alejandro said solemnly.
"It is a bad hat," Emmett decided.
"It is the best hat," Alejandro argued.
I would watch him and think of the man I had chosen—who could destroy a door for a child's first breath and then stand humbled at the sight of a wet robe. He made me safe in ways no wall ever could.
There are nights when I still wake, feeling the ghost-echo of doors being broken and the rush of feet. But I wake to a child who sleeps curled like a comma against my side, and a man who carries burdens like armor and sets them aside when he enters our small room.
"Do you love me?" Alejandro asks, sometimes in the bright afternoon, sometimes in the small hours when the moon leaks like milk across the floor.
"I always have," I say, and sometimes I add, "I always will."
"Then stay," he whispers. "Stay until my beard turns white."
"I will stay," I answer, because promises are bricks and I have built a house of them.
When Emmett grows older, he will know the story of the day his father broke the door. He will know the absurd heroism of a man who chased a promise through hammer and wood.
"Father," Emmett will say to him one day, "you are strong."
"I had good teachers," Alejandro will answer.
"I mean you were brave," Emmett will insist.
"I was scared," Alejandro will confess.
"Fear makes you small," Emmett will say with the certainty of children.
"No," Alejandro will say, leaning into the child's chest as if to feel the rhythm there. "Fear made me careful. You made me brave."
When I tell that story to him—because I will—I will tell it as simply as I can. I will tell him how a midwife begged and a man kicked down a door and how a child was cradled in arms that smelled of smoke and salt.
"He stole the door," Emmett will tell his friends as if it were a simple theft of property, and they will laugh.
"It was not theft," I will say. "It was love."
We will look at Alejandro and he will turn red and pretend to sleep.
The palace will always have its councils and its buzzing mouths. Men like Bodhi Patterson will walk through its halls balancing numbers and people and papers. But when all the paper is folded and the ink fades, there will be a small boy who once peed on his father's robe and called him cow-smelly, and a man who broke a door to make sure the boy would live.
"Do you regret anything?" Emmett asked once, his head tucked under my chin.
"No," I said. "Only that I did not see sooner how much we needed to hold each other."
"Then don't let go," Emmett said, and his small hands tightened.
I looked at Alejandro, who held a kite string like it was a line to the future, and I thought of all the things he had mended by being present—small things, awkward things, the kinds of things that show up in the shape of a child's grin.
"Never," Alejandro said. "I won't let go."
I believed him.
If the chronicles record anything of our household, let them record that the emperor could be both a man of state and a man who would kick in a door for his child's first breath.
And let them also record that every evening he came home and sat on the floor and let his son tie kites, and that on windy days the sky wore ten small colors and a king's laughter rode them like a flag.
I would not say we were perfect. We were ordinary in our imperfect ways: he tired, I worried, the court whispered. But we were stubbornly gentle with each other, and in that tenderness everything else found its place.
"Tell me a story," Emmett would demand at dusk.
"Which one?" Alejandro would ask.
"Tell me the one where you broke the door," Emmett said.
And Alejandro would tell it with exaggeration and shame and pride. He told it so often that Emmett came to believe there were doors that could be bribed with kites, and that every man could learn to be kinder.
Sometimes the best parts of a life are not the great victories recorded for banners; they are the little, ridiculous moments when a robe gets wet and a father still holds his child.
When I pat the blankets at night and the fire whispers low, I think: this is how a kingdom survives—not by edict alone, but by small hands and iron doors and men who learn, at last, to come back.
And when the years fold like paper cranes and the kites are memory, Emmett will know that once, a man kicked down a door and the world was kinder for it.
The End
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