Sweet Romance13 min read
A Necklace, A System, and a Sickly Prince
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The thunder cracked over the sea like someone slamming a great iron door.
"I remember the hiss," I said aloud to myself, though my voice was thin and strange in my ears.
"Hold on," the black band around my wrist whispered—no one else could hear it—like something small and careful. "System online. Trade System activated."
I blinked. The necklace had slipped from my palm when the wave hit. It flashed, a white blade of light, and then the world was a sucking, turning thing. When I came back to myself, my body was heavy as wet cloth. My fingers refused to obey. I tried to move and the effort was a mountain.
"What's that sound?" someone asked close by. Their voices were ordinary—women washing clothes, gossip floating on the air.
"Ma's over there again," another replied.
I tried to lift my head and heard a thin voice in my skull that was not the river nor the women. "System: owner detected. Nearby villagers: non-threatening."
"System?" I mouthed. My throat was full of sand.
A middle-aged woman with hands like work and a sun lines on her face peered down. "Oh my, she's alive," she cried. "Paula! Paula, come!"
"It looks like a girl," someone else said, cheerful and surprised.
They carried me, like a sack of grain, to a courtyard where a slow, sick man sat in the sun with more shadows than muscle in his face. He rose when they brought me in.
"Paula," he said, and the word trembled like an old bell, "what is that?"
"This is the girl from the river," Paula Clark answered. "She will be our matchmaker."
"Matchmaker?" I tried to laugh and it came out like a cough. "No, I—"
"Shh, let her rest," a stout woman said. "We must make her our daughter-in-law. The old fortune-teller said—"
"I heard," the man said softly. He held himself like someone who'd lived under wind. "Archer Conway, eighth prince."
I didn't understand the titles and their weight then, not at first. I was still trying to remember the necklace. The system's voice—dry, efficient, a little amused—answered when I thought the question.
"Welcome, Owner. I am the Transaction Trade System, integrated via your wrist device. Commands accepted."
"A shopping system?" I managed.
"Yes. Purchases via points. Points rewarded for tasks, for good deeds, for completed missions. Owner, please note: you are in a parallel era—the Huan Dynasty. Your modern belongings remain with you. System can procure items; items will be delivered to your backpack."
There. A ribbon of explanation. I tried to make a joke. It came out like a promise.
"If I wake up in someone's house and the village thinks I'm a bride, should I… play along?"
"Suggested course: adapt. Points available for medical services and acts of service."
I closed my eyes and let the world settle. The women fussed, the old prince watched with that fragile hope, and the village smelt like woodsmoke and river mud. My training kicked in. I had been a field agent, a doctor, a soldier. I had survived worse than drowning. Surviving this place would be another mission.
"Wake me when food is ready," I told Paula, because hunger arrived like a second self.
She smiled like the sun peeking from behind clouds. "Eat, child. You'll be our good luck charm."
"Good luck charm?" I repeated, and the black band at my wrist flashed, the system humming softly: "Owner: tasks available."
They dressed me in their clothes, which were strange, and the next morning they wrapped a red veil over my face and brought me before a small hall to marry Archer Conway while I pretended to sleep.
"You are prepared?" Paula asked the prince in a whisper.
"I—" He coughed. The cough was all there was to him—an honest, ragged cough. "For you, do it."
They bowed, they made the motions, and at noon I found myself a wife by ritual rather than by choice.
When I finally peeled the red cloth from my face, they clapped and laughed like the world had been fixed. I sat on the bed, dizzy. My system answered my whispered questions about where I was, about the necklace, and about whether my things were intact.
"Everything you had on is with you," the System said. "Backpack intact. Black band present. The necklace is not detected."
"Good." I sighed. "Then perhaps it's safe to be a drowned bride."
Paula fussed. "Eat. You have been saved. This is good for Archer."
"Archer Conway?" I tried the name aloud, hearing how it folded in my mouth. "Your name?"
He lowered his head in that patient, dull way. "Archer Conway. I am no hero, I am no trouble. I am happy you are here."
"My name is Emmalynn Gerard," I said. The syllables surprised my own lips, and the room quieted around them. "I was a doctor—"
"A doctor?" Archer sat up straighter then, for a breath of a second whole again. "A female doctor? In this land…"
"Yes," I said. "A surgeon. And other things I don't boast of now."
"Then help me," his voice was small. "Please. I do not want to die."
"You are the eighth prince," I said. "What happened to make your life so small?"
He bowed his head and the light fell across his profile like a careful hand.
"Some took a slow poison," he said. "The court—" He stopped, and the room tightened. "It is complicated."
"Slow poison?" The System chimed. "Indicator: chronic toxin present. Source unknown. Points achievable via diagnosis and treatment."
"Well then." I laughed, soft and sharp. "We have work."
"How will you pay?" Archer asked. "We have little. The county allotment has dwindled."
"Then I will earn points," I said. "And I will get you your medicine."
Archer watched me with something like awe. "You'd do that for me?"
"You're my patient," I said. "Besides, you're not hideous." I grinned because I could feel his gaze settle on me, and for an instant he looked young and unburdened.
That first ginger moment—him attempting to protect me by asking for help, me seeing that tiny courage—was the first of many times my heart, for reasons I couldn't rationalize, kicked in a different rhythm.
"Twofold plan," I told the small circle of household. "One: I will work at the county apothecary part-time. Two: the System is connected to a Trade Market—items for points. I will earn points to buy the antidotes."
"Antidotes?" Archer blinked. "What are they called?"
"Kirin Pills," I said. "They exist in the System catalogue."
"How many cost?" Paula asked, practical and immediate.
"One hundred points a pill," the System replied.
I sat very still. "One hundred points. How fast can I earn points?"
"Tasks, medical care, helping others, combat missions when available."
"All right." I swallowed. "We'll start tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" It was silver-haired Dr. Ernest Rinaldi, the oldest physician at the apothecary, and when he looked at me his old eyes sharpened. "Tomorrow? See for yourself, girl. Show me. If you are a doctor, come to my shop."
I did not hesitate. I traded the rest of that day for sleep, and the next morning I walked into Dr. Rinaldi's small apothecary like a soldier entering a new mission.
"Can you diagnose?" he asked bluntly, and I answered with a cool, methodical list of symptoms and tests, more modern than his world.
"You are a doctor," he murmured. "Then help us. We can pay."
He did pay—two points for a woman with a sore throat—and five points for a more complex case. The System's bell effervesced at a soft chime after each diagnosis.
"Two points," I said under my breath.
"Two! Two!" a voice boomed in my head like laughter. "Owner: you have earned two points."
By midday I had accrued a hundred and thirty-four points. I laughed out loud in the back room, where pigeons might have nested once upon a time.
"That is fast," Archer said, watching my face as if reading scripture.
"It takes me three months to earn that much where I'm from," I said. "So this—I am winning."
He reached across the low table and, without courtly ceremony, pressed my hand. That small, human reach—when he wasn't a prince in my head but a person who needed help—was the second heart-kick. "Thank you," he said, simply. "For staying."
"I haven't promised to stay," I replied. "I'm just… trading favors for antidotes."
He tried to joke once. "Then marry me for the long haul."
I smiled and slapped his arm. "You wish."
As days blurred, we trained the performance of his illness. Archer learned to slump and cough at the right hour. Silver Tiger—Warren Stein—even perfected a near-mournful gaze for when people visited. Gold Tiger—Alvaro Mercier—kept watch, always grave, always steady.
I learned how the world looked from a different angle. I learned the rhythms of a village: how people bartered, how grudges simmered. I found a stubborn little throng of villagers who had the sense to be loyal when loyalty mattered. Atlas Smith, the village chief, and his wife Johanna Holmes listened. "We'll sign," Atlas said. "If you can make our fields yield every season, we will stand with you."
That was the beginning of a plan larger than antidotes. We would buy land, grow vegetables, sell to the local inns and kitchens. We would create value by being practical, and that would let Archer remain safe without begging for coins that never came.
While we moved on practical measures, a quieter threat braided itself through the town. Nicolas Durand, the manager of the foodhouse across from the inn—whom everyone called "the steward"—had always been watched. There were whispers that he was more than a manager. He kept his head bowed, but his eyes were black coals. He liked to be in the center of things, like a spider at the hub.
A thief—dirty and nimble—lifted one of Archer's little pills from his chest when Silver Tiger and I were momentarily distracted. The thief vanished like a shadow.
"Stolen?" I snapped. "When?"
"Just now," Archer said, voice small and tight. The moment the loss was real, an ugly, pleased hardness settled behind Nicolas's quiet face. I had seen people like him before: men who wanted a future that belonged to someone else.
We played a dangerous game. I placed a fake vial in Archer's pocket to bait the thief. "If someone is watching, they'll steal the fake," I told Archer. "We need to know."
They did. They took the fake and scurried. I smiled at Archer with a pressure that felt like thread. "We will not let them get away."
That theft would be the thin string that began Nicolas Durand's unravelling.
The show grew. At the apothecary, I pretended to dig deeper into Archer's poison, then I staged alarms big enough to make the city shrug. At the foodhouse, I barged in and demanded a hundred silver for an antidote to save Archer's life. Nicolas paled—he had been counting every coin for years. He gave the money like a man handing over another man's coin that he had no right to waste. He trembled and smiled and pledged his loyalty in small, oily words.
"Good," I said aloud, voice level as a scalpel. The System pinged and gave me three hundred forty-two points in silver and influence.
We were playing a dangerous kind of theater: every lie had to look like truth, every truth must be wielded as a blade.
Then I decided the blade must be turned.
"Tomorrow," I told Archer, "we will call a public assembly."
"I don't like being the spectacle," he said, but his voice held an unfamiliar firm edge. He had begun to learn the performance of command.
"We will not shame the poor," I said. "We will reveal the truth."
That was the moment when I planned the punishment.
A week later, the sun was an iron coin in the sky. The market square had more people than usual. I stood on the small wooden platform with Archer at my side, and Dr. Ernest Rinaldi at our shoulder, and Atlas Smith behind us with the signed land deeds in his hands. The entire village smelled of kettle smoke and curiosity.
"People of Rong Village," I called. My voice went out steady and clean. "Today we will ask your help. Today we will show what greed looks like in the open."
"Emmalynn!" someone cried. "Show them!"
Archer stood, not as the fragile man who had been propped on pillows, but as a prince who had learned the art of presence. He cleared his throat, and when he spoke his voice had the softness of a book being closed.
"Let us tell the truth," he said. "For too long, strangers have used homes here as cover for secrets. Today we will reveal one."
Nicolas Durand came forward, smiling like a man who owned the room, and he bowed. "What is this?" he asked, polite and crocodilian.
"This village," Atlas said loudly, "has struck a bargain. Emmalynn has brought work and coin. This man," Atlas pointed at Nicolas, "has run a public house and changed the course of our village with his games."
A murmur traveled across the crowd. Women clutched children. Men shifted.
I stepped forward. "I will say it plainly," I told the gathered. "He has been part of a network that took advantage of Archer Conway. They took coin and planned to take the reward for his death. They even stole medicine."
A ripple of shock. Nicolas's mouth tightened like a fist.
Archer looked at him with a new light. "You claimed to be a loyal steward. Yet records and witnesses show payments and secret meetings. You have taken from us."
Nicolas's eyes flicked to the crowd, to the land deeds, to the faces—each a blade. His face was the first page of his undoing: defiance thin as paper.
"These are accusations," he said. "You have no proof."
"Proof?" Dr. Rinaldi said, his voice iron. "We have witness records, the thief's confession, and the ledger from a courier intercepted yesterday." He held up a sheaf of papers. "And we have this: a man who traded in medicine for coin intends to profit from a prince's death. Who benefits? Those who control food and rumor."
Silence swallowed him. Nicolas's smile thinned like wax on a candle.
I leaned forward. "People of the market, we brought the thief here."
They brought him: a ragged man whose eyes were wet with regret and fear. He pointed at Nicolas like a small, frightened god. "It was Nicolas who told us to take it," the thief sobbed. "He said the pills were worth more sold than given."
Gasps rolled like waves. Nicolas's face drained. His hands—always so steady—quivered.
A woman in the crowd spat. "You greedy dog!"
Nicolas's expression tightened into a mask of practiced calm. "Lies," he said. "You twist words."
"Then explain," I said, and my voice was cold enough to cut. "Why did you direct your man to take medicine from a patient? Why did you plot to claim land and profit from a dying man's misfortune?"
"Because—" He started, and his voice broke like a twig. "Because I thought—" He tried to find the old oily cunning, but it slipped off him. "We were owed. The house ran at a loss. I—"
"You were building a fortune from the ruin of another," Archer said. "You were willing to let a man die if it suited your ledger."
Nicolas's face did not change at first, then he smiled thinly to mask panic. "You do not know the burdens of business," he croaked. "You are a foreigner—"
The woman who had been his confidante turned her back. The children started to chant: "Shame! Shame! Shame!"
As the crowd closed in, his bravado collapsed. He moved from arrogance to panic with heartbreaking speed.
"Stop!" he cried. "Do you want me to beg? I can make it right! I—"
"Beg," someone in the crowd said, hoarse with fury.
He fell to his knees because he understood the ritual of humbling. He crawled on dusty earth in front of the platform, clasped his hands in a borrowed plea. "Please," Nicolas begged, voice raw. "I ask forgiveness. I ask—"
"You should be judged," Dr. Rinaldi said, his old voice unflinching. "This is not private bandying. This is public harm. We must fix harm publicly so others do not follow."
"Do you want me to tell the magistrate?" Nicolas cried. "I will write my apology! I will—I'll pay!"
"Payment isn't all," Atlas said, steady as a plough. "You will restore what you took, and you will publicly recant your ties. You will hand over the ledger and testify to those you served."
"For every coin you took that belonged to this village or to Archer, you will return two," I said. "For the trust you broke, you will work the fields you thought inferior and seed them with your hands. You will carry water and feed those you wronged for a season. And the ledger—every page—will be handed to the village so justice is not sealed in a purse."
Nicolas's face collapsed. He sobbed, the sound fierce and thin. "No—no—"
"People of Rong!" Atlas cried. "Is this just? Will we permit greed in our midst?"
"Punish him!" cried a man who had a scar like a history. "Let him be known!"
Voices rose like a tide. The crowd circled Nicolas until he was less a man and more the sum of his misdeeds. Someone spat; a child hissed. He went through the motions—shock, denial, anger, bargaining, humiliation. He begged for mercy like a man who had misread the world.
That day, the punishment was public, measured, and humiliating. The villagers gathered as witnesses. A scribe—one of Johanna's relatives—wrote Nicolas's confession and the terms of restitution. He signed. The villagers counted the coins returned. He knelt in the mud, and for an entire day he worked in the fields he had scorned, shovelling, planting, moving stones. People watched. When someone recognized a face who had once been denied bread, they stepped forward and accepted the returned coin.
The crowd's reactions were raw: scorn, applause, gratification, the audible shiver of moral balancing. Some recorded his confession on paper enough for the magistrate if needed. Other youths took to mocking his old manner, and he flinched at each mimic like a lesson. He begged, he bartered, he pleaded—not at first with a broken heart but with the technical calculus of survival. Slowly, the math failed him. The villagers would not be bought. They had seen what greed did. They had taken the oath to protect the farm and to keep Archer safe. Nicolas had miscalculated.
By sunset, Nicolas was a man undone. He had gone through rage and plea and then the hollow look of someone who understood there was no clean return to what he'd done. He had lost his ledger. He had lost the sheen. He had lost the private vantage point he had counted on.
He returned to his foodhouse some days later, not as a man with assets but a man with a public ledger in his pocket and a reputation broken. He would recover coin with toil, with long work, but he would not recover the sanctity that had been openly taken. That was the point: public consequences left little room for conspirators to hide.
After the public day, life steadied. Archer's regimen continued; I placed the Kirin pills into his care, a bit at a time. He grew stronger in increments, like a dawn.
"Will you stay?" he asked one afternoon when we sat on the small roof and watched the rain begin a gentle tapping. The house smelled of boiled herbs and the world was somewhere I could keep.
"I will heal you," I said, and then laughed. "I have more than one reason to stay."
He turned to me then. "Why? Because I am a prince? Because I saved you? Because—"
"Because," I said, because the truth was private and small long as a secret between two people, "you handed me your trust and didn't hide it in a ledger."
"I will be responsible," he promised, and that second small, private moment was the third heart-lurch—the way his fingers slowly curled around mine as if he had always meant to hold them.
We marched forward with plans: the fields grew, the villagers learned the joys of new crops under my simulated 'thin-film' covers from the System. The apothecary thrummed. Points stacked. The System winked at my efficiency and offered better tools: a small modified firearm that dissolved its ammunition for security (I bought it with points because old instincts die late), a set of surgical instruments that fit in an ancient world. Each time the System delivered, I felt like a child with spoils.
Nicolas Durand remained in the village, working the fields under the contract we had set. He was angry, then bitter, then quiet. He came to the apothecary with me once, sheepish and small, his hands rough with labor.
"I will repay," he said. "I do not expect mercy. I have no excuse."
"Pay back with work, not words," I said.
He worked until the coin he returned would have bought him a new cruel beginning somewhere else. He left instead with the knowledge that the villagers watched and that trust, once lost, is heavy to bear.
As for Archer and me, the dizzying days folded into one another: tasks, remedies, the delicate discovery of one another's edges. He learned to laugh more. I learned to trust a person who had been taught to hide himself. We built a life out of barter and kindness, and when the necklace that had started my fall washed up months later on a distant shoal, it lay on my palm like a seed.
"Will you return?" Archer asked when I showed it to him in private, the small chain looping in the firelight.
"I could," I said. "But I have found a place to fight, to heal."
He closed his hand over mine. "Then we will fight together."
Outside, the village breathed. I opened the System for one last check. It blinked, patient and always hungry for points.
"Owner," the System said, "mission complete. New tasks: growth, defense, and love."
I smiled. "Then keep trading."
The End
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