Sweet Romance14 min read
We Died on the Mountain, Woke Up in Silk: My Life as a "Palace Eunuch"
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"I can't believe we both fell off that ridge," I said, coughing and tasting mud.
"You always had the worst balance," Elke said, coughing back, then she smiled that crooked grin she used when she wanted me to forget anything sensible.
"I told you—stick to the path." I rubbed my bruised head and laughed. "We made it through worse in our old life."
"We did," she said. "But we did it together."
The rain came like a curtain, like a last curtain. One second we were slipping, the next we were falling, and then there was bright white, and then nothing.
When my eyes opened the second time, the world smelled like smoke and oil and old wood. My knees were cold and my hands were bound. A man shouted something I did not understand at first, and someone clapped a rough hand over my mouth.
"Whose is this prisoner?" a voice called.
"She stole from the palace!" another cried.
"No! No, I didn't—" I tried to answer, but the hand tightened.
They made me kneel on cold stone. The sun at noon was flat and unbearable. The executioner's blade flashed close enough to write a reflection on my face.
"Stand aside!" a crowd leader cried. "The hour is upon us. Noon."
I had no idea how I had ended up at an execution ground. I knew one thing: the last thing I remembered before the white light was Elke's hand in mine. The next thing I felt was the rope against my wrists. Confusion boiled into fear.
"Spare me—" I whispered, not that it meant anything. My throat was dry as a clay bowl.
"Last chance," the officer said, and the blade rose.
I closed my eyes and said nonsense, words I thought were only dreams: "Odd changes, even constants, read the signs. Palace wine, one hundred and eighty a cup—" I kept speaking, ridiculous lines I'd never known I knew. "Love the way you walk in shadow, love you for not kneeling—"
Murmurs went through the crowd. The blade stopped mid-air.
"Who—what are you saying?" the guard barked.
"She's cursing the prince!" someone shouted.
"Enough." The official's voice was angry. "Who dares—" He looked toward me with more offense than interest and his face twisted when I said the last comedic line I'd chosen: "Thanks... to you... Elke and family... thank you."
"How dare you name the prince!" the chief shouted, beet-red.
I blinked. My mouth dried. "Elke?" I mouthed. "Wait—"
Then someone shouted, "Prince approaches!" and the crowd parted like a sea.
A familiar silhouette barreled through the crowd, the same loping run I had seen a thousand times on our childhood street. The figure was smaller than the palace guards, but there was a command in the gait I hated and loved at once.
"You're alive," she panted as she reached me, hands on her knees.
Elke—no, the prince—blinked down at me. "I heard a fool singing nonsense in the square," she said, like it was nothing.
"Elke—" I couldn't stop the tears. "You came—"
"You're a fool," she said, and the first lady in the court looked like she wanted to leap forward. Then the prince straightened, voice hard as iron. "Let them be. This is my subject."
The guards froze. The blade lowered. A hand lifted and the crowd thinned. The executioner looked like he had forgotten why he was holding a blade at anyone's throat.
Later, safe in the shadowed hallways of the East Palace, Elke explained with a breathless anger I recognized as hers.
"I never said anything about a big bathhouse," she snapped.
"You didn't have to," I admitted. "I wanted a job. I wanted to be useful. I wanted to work at Yangji Hall."
She stared.
"You said yes," I added.
"I said anything you wanted, Clarissa." She used my name like a second skin. "If you wanted to be a lowly servant, fine. But a bathhouse?"
"Not just any bathhouse," I said. "Yangji Hall is... practical."
"You mean 'a public tub for dozens of soldiers,'" she said.
I shrugged, and she huffed. She let me be foolish and still loved me. That was the peculiar gift of friends who become royalty.
"Try not to be seen," she said after a moment. "If anyone notices, I'll sort it."
"I'll be careful," I promised.
I walked into Yangji Hall with a wooden bucket and a badge from the prince. The steam hit me and I almost melted. It smelled of herbs and men's sweat. It felt like a hundred summers crushed into a single breath.
"Pipe down, new one." A voice low as gravel said.
I bumped into the nearest opening and nearly dropped the bucket. A silhouette hunched over the far bath lifted its head. His shoulders were wide, sun-darkened. His hairline was stern. When he spoke again, his voice reached through the steam like a blade softened by warmth.
"You are the new water-runner?"
"Yes, sir." My voice shrank.
"Bring it to the innermost stall. The commander prefers privacy."
"Commander?" I said, and my hands almost let go of the bucket.
"Commander Hudson Cannon," someone answered from behind me.
Hudson Cannon had the kind of face poets fumbled for, the kind other men pretended not to notice. He had the quiet of someone who had seen worse than a thief and still chose kindness. When I poured the scalding water into the pool, my fingers brushed his leg and I felt a burst of heat that had nothing to do with the water.
"Careful," he said.
"Sorry," I whispered. The bath water hissed and let off a little cloud.
"You're not from palace service," he observed quietly.
"East Palace," I replied.
He moved closer and his hand closed on my wrist. His eyes found mine. "You are the prince's retainer," he said. "Clarissa of the East Palace."
I choked back the laugh that wanted to bubble out. He looked surprised, then oddly pleased.
"You're a woman," he said.
"I—" I had never felt so exposed. "Yes."
He tugged a robe over me, more care than any stranger had afforded in a long time. "Put this on." His voice was firm and soft at the same time.
I fumbled the robe onto my shoulders and watched him look away. "For your safety," he added.
That should have been it. I should have dressed and left. Instead, I clumsily followed him down the corridor like a stray lamb.
"You're following me," he said.
"I—" I tried to appear innocent and failed spectacularly. "I was afraid of being swept up again. Can I... stay until the heat cools?"
He snorted, but only to spite a small smile. "You will get in trouble for disobedience. Follow me if you value your ribs."
He led me to a tiny room that smelled like iron and dried herbs and better weather. "Stay," he said, "until I say otherwise."
I stayed.
Days passed. I learned the rhythms—how to carry coal without tripping, how to lift buckets without shuddering when I saw blood, how to keep my hands clean in a world that expected stains. I learned Hudson's small rules: no smiling at the wrong soldier, no sympathetic glances toward the men who had been ordered too far, no gossip about the court.
"Why are you kind to me?" I asked once, late at night, when he came back from a patrol and left blood on his sleeve like a map of worry.
"Why not?" he said simply.
"Because you could be cruel and still be respected," I said. "You could rule with iron."
"And be lonely?" he countered. "No thanks. Spare me loneliness."
We made ridiculous bargains: I would lend him the last grape from my purse and he would bandage the stranger next door. I would speak loudly in the hall to distract guards, and he would stay up late to map the palace's blind spots. He called me names that were soft—"Beebe" especially—and I called him worse.
"You are in league with trouble," Elke told me once. "Stay close to the prince. Do not fall for the commander. He will break your heart."
"Then I will get a better heart," I said.
"Better? For you? We'll see," she said.
The palace simmered the way sentient cities do: rumor warmed like soup and then if left to its own devices would bubble into danger. The woman who shared a title with the prince—Cataleya Costa—arrived from her family's lands in silk and carved smiles. She had been gone for a season and returned with a retinue of flatterers who kissed her hands and cheered her arrival.
"Who is that?" I asked, watching Cataleya's carriage take its place in the court.
"The prince's consort," Elke said. "Remember? The one I promised not to meet if I could avoid it."
Cataleya's eyes found mine that first week. She smiled a smile made of knives and tulle. Her head maid—Edith Dominguez—was the woman who'd slapped me in the yard, the one who orchestrated rumors and shuffled letters like cards.
"Keep your head low," Elke warned.
I kept mine low until the day the head maid marched into our work yard with accusations like a list of crimes.
"She steals," the maid declared. "She hides items under her robe. She takes jewelry."
"That's a lie!" I said.
"To the guardhouse," the maid ordered. "Drag her out!"
The soldiers dragged me barefoot, my steps ringing on the flagstones like someone trying to run in a bowl. Fear made my voice small and fast.
"Where is the prince?" I cried.
"Not here," the man at the gate said. "We have a thief; the law will have her."
I grabbed at the guard's sleeve. "Ask Hudson Cannon. He knows me. He is a witness."
Hudson arrived like a storm. He came with a handful of his men—no crows, no crowd—and his eyes were dangerous.
"You will strip her," Edith cried triumphantly. "The proof is on her. She will be exposed for what she is."
"Strip her," the guards said like it was an instruction and not a human plea.
I wrapped my robe about me and froze. The head maid was already narrating my life like it was a script. The soldiers came toward me.
"I—" I reached for Hudson's sleeve, and without considering propriety, I grabbed his ankle, clinging like a toddler. "Please."
Hudson's face didn't change much, but there was an undercurrent, a tide turning. He bent and that simple bend of a back was a promise nobody could look away from. He stepped between me and the women and spoke in a quiet that felt like cold steel.
"Is there evidence?" he asked.
"Yes," Edith crowed. "There is."
Hudson looked at me, then at the head maid. "Search her yourself," he said. "If you find something, present it."
They stopped. The court froze into a tableau. Edith's face was a mask; she expected glory. Instead, she lifted her skirts to the sunlight with a flourish and found only the plain robe I had been given and the single glass bead Elke had tossed me the first day I arrived.
"Is this the jewel?" she demanded of the crowd.
"It is Hudson's," I said, louder than my fear. "He gave it to me for a small kindness."
Hudson didn't look embarrassed. He didn't look proud, not in the way of men who display trophies. He looked steady.
"Does he?" Edith mocked. "Why would a commander give a trinket to a palace servant? Answer, cannon!"
"He did," Hudson said quietly. "He liked the way she stirred the heat without burning her hands."
The words were simple but their meaning crashed through the orchard of lies. Edith's jaw tightened. She had been counting on my silence.
"How can you—" she snapped. "Cannon, you have no proof."
"I have been present at Yangji Hall," he said. "I will stand with her."
Edith's composition cracked. Her cheeks flushed the color of a storm.
"You are the prince's spy," she hissed. "You conspire with renegades."
Hudson's mouth twitched. "Better a supporter of the crown than a flatterer of villains."
Edith's face collapsed into a slow, furious red. She lunged for my throat, but Hudson's hand came down on her wrist, rough as a net.
"Stop," he said.
"Let me go!" she shrieked. "She stole—"
"Confess now or be judged by the court." Hudson's voice was colder than the water in the hall.
Edith paused, then, in front of the shocked and watching staff, in front of the sentries and the idle noblemen who had sauntered by for audience, she fell into a fit of fabulism. She began to reveal the truth in jerks and snarls.
"It was Cataleya's order!" she cried suddenly, pointing at Cataleya Costa, who had been watching with a thin mask of amusement.
"She wanted Clarissa out of the way. She told me to plant things on her to make the prince suspicious. She thought the prince would be forced to act—force to a consort—they would separate the prince and the retainer!"
Silence dropped. I felt the floor tilt under me. Cataleya's skin went dead white. Her smile failed at last. The crowd moved like a wave, a low thunder, hungry for truth.
"Is this true?" the senior eunuch demanded.
Edith's confession was the first strike in a chain. The court called for evidence, for witnesses, for a public accounting. The head maid's voice cracked as more details spilled: gifts solicited, letters forged, bribes exchanged for false testimony.
"It is impossible," Cataleya said, voice a thread. "She slanders—"
"Then speak," the official shouted. "Speak where everyone can hear. You, noble Cataleya Costa, are accused of manufacturing a theft to eliminate the prince's loyal retainer. What have you to say?"
She opened her mouth like a puppet.
"I—" She gathered herself, trying to look royal. "This is slander. I am a lady of the court. I would never—"
"Who gave the order?" the official demanded. "Who benefits from the removal of Clarissa Graham?"
Cataleya's eyes darted, and there was a moment of real terror. The guards closed the circle. Noble faces leaned in like flowers toward sun.
"You!" she finally hissed at Elke. "You, disguised as a man, have taken my place in the prince's favor. You are jealous of me, therefore you set this play in motion."
Elke laughed. "Me? Jealous of you? That is the sincerest compliment I've had all afternoon."
"Enough!" the senior eunuch banged his staff. "Let the court be clear. All accusations will be aired. Witnesses: step forward."
A line of servants and minor officials stepped up. They told what they'd seen: Cataleya's letters, the head maid's furtive meetings, the slipped coin, the names whispered in corridors. Each testimony was a small nail hammered into a coffin.
Then, the worst blow: Edith produced a piece of embroidered cloth, the same cloth that Cataleya's lady's sleeve had worn the week earlier when she'd met a merchant near the north gate.
"That confirms the pattern," the eunuch intoned. "The court sees a conspiracy."
Cataleya's composure shattered. She began to plead with an intensity that had nothing to do with innocence and everything to do with fear.
"You cannot—" she gasped. "My family—my honor—"
"Stand," the court demanded.
"Have you no shame?" the crowd hissed. "You have sown discord in the palace. You tried to exile a loyal subject with lies. You used your station to strike at the prince's household."
Cataleya's face moved through a horrifying slideshow of emotions: the initial smugness; the startled confusion; the desperate rage; then an implosion into pleading. "Please," she begged, voice falling into an animal whimper. "I beg the prince—"
Elke stood, her face the color of flint. "You tried to destroy my friend," she said, and the room held its breath.
"By what right did you trample another's life?" a noblewoman demanded.
Cataleya's father, Gaspard Bradshaw—once a powerful minister—tried to intervene. "This is a matter for private arbitration!" he cried.
"Public," the eunuch declared. "This was a public fraud. The penalty is public, too."
They stripped Cataleya of her insignia in a ceremony that felt like a funeral for pride. The crowd watched as the embroidered sleeve was pulled away. She was ordered to kneel on the marble, her silks traded for a plain gown, her hair unpinned and loosened. The head maid Edith leapt forward with a triumph that curdled into instant horror as the court turned its focus on her second.
"Edith Dominguez," the eunuch said, "you have borne false witness. You have perjured yourself to the court. What do you say?"
Edith's face unmanned. Tears streaked her cheeks but the voice that came out was flinty. "I was paid. I did what I was told. I thought—"
"You thought you could protect your mistress?" the crowd mocked.
"No, my lord—" she stammered, then began to break down. "I acted for my family. I was threatened if I refused."
"Enough," the official said. "Public truth is the only end here."
They compelled Edith to kneel and confess each deception aloud—each bribe, each planted item, each written lie. The crowd recorded every word like scribes with knives. Children pointed. Ladies in fine robes whispered like birds. A few men took out little slates and drew the moment as if it were a stage play they had been given front-row seats to.
Cataleya's shifts of expression were a studied calamity. She had gone from glossy princess to a woman reduced to a child in the sun. She tried to scream at first, to rally her father. Then she realized no one would shelter her.
"Look at her," a merchant said. "She who feigned virtue is now stripped of it."
"Shame!" someone else yelled.
"Let her be made humble," another cried.
The punishment was not violent—there was no bloodshed—but it was crafted to unmask, to dismantle. Cataleya was led through the main concourse, barefoot, wearing a plain wrapper. The crowd leaned out their windows and leaned out of the banquet halls to watch a woman of silk walk like one stripped bare. They forced her to recite the wrongs she had done: the letters she had penned, the coins she had spent to buy false testimony, the promises she had made to head-men who would have benefits.
At the end of the procession, they had her kneel before the prince. She had to beg forgiveness in public while merchants and guards and chambermaids watched. Her voice trembled from fury to pleading and then to a small, almost unnoticed shame.
Hudson stood near me, face blank as a cliff. I put my hand in his, and he did not pull away.
Edith was not spared either. The court ordered her to an easier penance: she would lose her station, be sent to the far quarters for re-education, and publicly apologize before she left.
"As for Gaspard Bradshaw," the senior eunuch finished, "since his house used the court for private revenge and salacious gain, he will be stripped of certain privileges and reevaluated."
The crowd roared like a wave. Some clapped. Some sneered. Some wept for the spectacle of justice served.
When the dust settled, Cataleya's face had collapsed into something that might have been repentance or merely resignation. Edith's back was bent but in a way that suggested she would not long be able to stand in court again. Gaspard's mouth was a thin line of undone pride. All of them had been humbled—each in a different way.
Hudson squeezed my fingers. "You will be safe now," he whispered.
"Not entirely," I said. "There is always someone hungry."
He nodded. "Then we will feed them something else."
The palace had changed. The corridors smelled different somehow—as if the air had been cleansed, at least for a season. Elke's place was more secure; she walked with a little less fear. She came by the humble room Hudson offered me and handed me grapes like small planets.
"Do not let anyone tell you to leave," Elke said. "You belong here."
"Do not make promises no one can keep," I said.
Hudson listened to us laugh, and once he smiled in a way that felt like gravity: it pulled things nearer.
Weeks passed. The court breathed. Rumors of the regent's unrest came and went like birds. I stayed close to Hudson. I learned his hands better—rough, honest, warm. I found myself staying longer at the hall when he was away on patrol, waiting for the clink of armor like a child waits for a parent's step.
"Why me?" I asked him, one afternoon, when my hand found his as if of its own accord.
He did not answer immediately. He wrapped a bandage around a soldier's wound, careful as if the soldier were a fragile thing. "Because you were there," he said at last. "You placed yourself between a blade and another. Not many do that."
"Because I am a fool?" I teased.
"Because you are a friend." His voice was small, a confession.
"Then be a friend back," I said. "Be mine."
"Careful," he murmured. "You may ruin both of us."
"I like that threat," I said, and the way he looked at me made me blush to the roots.
When the palace tried to turn its wheels into chaos again—when the regent dared to move—the truth came like a blade in the night. Hudson, loyal in the right places, intercepted a plot and bled. He returned staggered and bleeding under cloak, and I—foolish, obstinate—helped pull a broken spear from his shoulder with hands that wanted to run away.
"It hurts," he said.
"Tell me where it hurts," I barked, like a surgeon and a coward all at once.
He tried to be brave, but his breath shook things loose in me. I gritted my teeth and pulled and felt a hot rasp and then an ugly gasp as the arrow removed. He convulsed and laughed in a high, strange way that made me think I had done something good.
"You're mad," he said later, when bandages were set and the hall smelled of boiled herbs. "You are either brave or stupid."
"I like to think of myself as cunningly heroic," I said.
"You are impossible," he breathed.
"Then hold me at least while I am impossible," I answered, and he did.
Time knotted and released. The regent's rebellion flamed and died. Hudson's name rose and fell on different lips. The prince's throne steadied. The world made its small bargains with us and sometimes kept its promises.
On the day it became more than a rumor, when the court announced Hudson's appointment to a safer post and then took it away and then gave him less than the court had promised, I laughed like a fool because I was jealous and terrified that the one who had kept me would be plucked away by fate.
"You're not getting away," I told him that night.
"Who says I'm leaving?" he said.
"You did when you answered to the emperor," I said.
He only smiled into the darkness. "You found a strange way to show loyalty," he said. "You put yourself in chaos for a friend. That is not small."
"Then be not small with me," I said.
He took my hand, holding it like a vow, not a contract. "I like you," he said.
"I like you more," I lied.
"That is impossible," he whispered.
A moment later, when the palace sang of victory and the people cheered for the prince who had stood, the tiny room Hudson offered me became a house. The prince walked out on her balcony and the wind smelt of orange blossoms and war and the kind of peace that comes from being wanted.
"Clarissa," Hudson said one evening, voice low as the sea. "Will you stay with me?"
"Where else would I go?" I answered.
Later, at the hall where everyone watched and wept and gossiped, when we wed, it was small and loud and real. Elke, robe flowing, clapped the loudest. Cataleya was gone from court; Edith was far away. The palace felt like a stitched wound that would heal in time.
Hudson and I sat with hands clasped that had once been rough and once had been near a blade and now were steady. He leaned close and whispered, "Do not tell the prince I robbed you of a kiss."
"I won't," I said. "But I will tell everyone I love you."
"And I will steal you away at night," he promised.
We laughed.
It was simple—then and always—the kind of joy that is a rebellion because it insists the world keep its small mercies.
The End
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