Sweet Romance10 min read
Every Evening at Court I Saw My Beloved — and I Tried Not to Die
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"No, the Emperor came back holding a woman who might be alive or dead," Jessica whispered, eyes wide as coins.
"Oh? And the allegedly dead have no opinion?" I said, smiling as if I were reading a joke.
"Madam! You'll lose favor! You can't joke now!" Jessica's small hand trembled on the hem of my robe.
"Then what should one do, according to you?" I asked, tilting my head.
"Follow the old way—arsenic," she said, producing a tiny packet like a conspirator.
"I think I'll take care of it myself," I said, and before she could protest I tossed the powder into my mouth.
"Madam! What are you doing?" Jessica's scream filled the room. "No, no—"
I sat very still while she made the scene she always made: wide-eyed, louder, more urgent.
"I hope you'll die quick," I said, and waited.
I had good reason to want to die this time.
"I was a famed beauty once, the face everyone remembered," I told myself when the room spun. "I fought and failed for the Emperor's favor. He never touched me. I grew bold and foolish. I died at thirty-three, with triumph still out of reach."
Then the world went black. Then it opened again.
"You're awake!" Jessica cried at my bedside.
"What year is it?" I croaked.
"Thirteen," she said.
My heart soared. I gave a thumbs up in a fit of joy. "Remarkable."
She blinked. "I'm joking. You are twenty-three. You didn't die, Madam."
My hands clawed at the quilt. "No! I wanted to die!"
Her tearful face softened. "Madam, we got you back. Don't speak like that."
I pressed my forehead to the bedboard. "Damn it. I didn't even get to change my shoes."
I could not explain the strange gift: some rule of fate that rewound me—resets if I died. "If I die again," I thought, "I go further back. If I made it to thirteen, I would never enter this palace again." From then on, my plan was simple: if palace life broke me, I would break it first and restart. Live by trial, reset by disaster.
For days I tested methods—poisons delicately applied, staged fallings, dramatic fainting. Jessica guarded me like a hawk. Each attempt failed in ridiculous ways. The whole court got wind of it. Word spread: the beauty who could not be loved wanted to die. The Empress Dowager sent gifts and silk, thinking it a stroke of melancholy art. I sat on piles of luxury like a dragon on treasure and made small jokes that landed flat.
One evening I went to the imperial garden with one bright, ridiculous aim: to hang myself from a crooked old tree beneath which the palace women had built an entire performance ring. Women strummed instruments under the branches; others recited poems; some favored new and dramatic stunts—an autumn-swing pulled by attendants, or a string of lanterns to sway under the moon.
"Who takes the tree?" Claudia said, footsteps crisp. She always wore that look, the queen of petty. "That tree is mine."
"Why?" I asked. "I came first."
"You with your sleeve-dance and white silk," she said, simpering. "You don't need a tree. I prefer an autumn swing. I'll swing until the Emperor descends."
"You can have it," I said. "I will find another."
Another tree, another rival. Another stunt: a woman tried to hang herself near my intended spot moments later. I backed away. "My life is cheap but not clumsy," I told the would-be suicide.
By dusk I had found a secluded grove. This tree would do. I climbed, slid a white sash over a branch, and prepared. My foot caught. For a stupid second I lost my grip and, instinctively, held on to the trunk.
"Hurry up! Either die or don't!" I yelled into the empty leaves.
A white-robed figure passed beneath. "Help!" I shouted.
She did not look up at first. "How can I help? Count for you?"
"Help me down!" I bawled.
She paused, amused. "You are not doing pull-ups, are you?"
I was losing hope. "Pretty lady, help me!"
She looked up then, as if seeing me fully for the first time. The sunset painted her face in bruised gold. She walked under me without haste, flinched at my precarious position, and finally—without a tremor of drama—caught me when I slipped.
I fell against her like a puppet with broken strings. Her arms were solid. I found myself on my back looking up at a face close, almost too close. "You have very strong arms," I gasped.
"Do I now?" she said, smiling small and cool. "Who taught you such stunts?"
"I am trying to die," I said, because I told her everything then—everything blows up more if you keep it hidden.
"Then why come to a tree where everyone else hangs their pride?" she asked.
"I'm the palace's forgotten top competitor," I said. "This is my small rebellion."
She studied me, and the word she used stopped me. "You look determined to throw yourself away."
I thought: either she didn't know palace life or she had seen more than she let on. "I wanted love," I said, as if unburdening. "I thought dying would keep the story tidy."
She made a small sound and put a hand on my cheek. "You deserve better than anguish," she said.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
She leaned very close and teased, "Look properly. Harder."
"I can't," I said, embarrassed. "I'm straight."
She blinked. "You are bold."
Soon, the white-haired gossip of the garden had a new fixture: me and this stranger, who smiled like someone who kept a secret and knew the exact moment to reveal it.
Her name, she told me later, was Katalina. She came often to the tree. Each evening our meetings grew less strange and more like a private routine. We traded smallness for smallness: a knitting weft here, a stolen joke there.
"You're odd," Katalina said once as I worked on a scarf.
"You're the one who plucked a near-dead beauty from a tree," I replied.
She shrugged. "I don't do romance. I do muscle and patience."
"You stand there looking like a statue and then act like a lifeline," I said. "Who trains a body like that in the palace?"
"Work," she said simply. "And I like trees."
Days blurred into small joys. I stopped bringing the white sash. Instead I brought yarn. I taught Katalina how to manage two needles; she taught me how to climb without getting stuck. The palace women came and watched our strange pair like a new play: the famed Juliet Lam and her white-robed companion.
"You look oddly content," Claudia sneered one day when she saw us.
"I found a new way to be foolish," I said.
"Don't forget courtcraft," she said. "We are here to please the Emperor."
"The Emperor is a gentleman with peculiar tastes," Jessica warned me, gossip hot as tea. "Or perhaps he has none at all."
"Some say he is bored of women," I told Katalina.
"Then knit him something to cure boredom," she said.
We laughed and the laughter felt like plotting. I told her of the countless plans the women used to attract the Emperor: swings with flowers, staged fainting, poems carved into moonlight. "It's exhausting," I said.
"You keep coming back," Katalina said softly. "Why?"
"Because the reset is a promise," I admitted. "And also because—" I stopped, because saying that I liked her sounded too much like betting on fate. But I could not stop my hand from moving closer to hers. She let it rest there.
"You're dangerous," she said, and that was a compliment in her voice.
Then came the Emperor's birthday. The palace prepared a feast upon the new year's eve, and every favor, every smile, every wrapped gift hoped to rest on his shoulders. The scarves had become a palace craze: all the women knitted, then gifted their work. I had spun a long scarf for laughter; Katalina and I had spent evenings together weaving colors and jokes into one another's hands.
"Madam," Mateo Said, gin-clear eyes and the slow step of a palace favorite, proffered a bundle. "A gift for His Majesty."
"It is only a small thing," Jessica whispered. "They send wonders to win attention."
"Don't let them win," I said, but my voice trembled.
The hall shimmered with silk. Women knelt like a sea of frozen blossoms. The Emperor entered, sure and austere. He stopped, astonishingly, when he saw a certain face among the rows: Katalina. She did not kneel. She stood, quiet as a lamp.
"You drew my eye," I mouthed, but the sound was only for her.
The chatter around us turned. "Who's that in white? Why is she allowed—"
"You look pale," I whispered. "Are you well?"
She smiled that crooked smile. "Do not fuss."
When the Emperor sat, he took something from a servant and placed it on his head. It was not a scarf. It was a small, gleaming crown, green like a forest pool.
"Is that a crown? Whose crown—"
Then I realized, with the peculiar sick thrill only a woman who had thought herself excluded could know: Katalina was seated in a place of honor. She wore the crown. She caught my eye and mouthed, "Sit."
"Why—" I started.
He patted the seat beside him and, to everyone's hush and my own wide surprise, called me forward.
"Come, Juliet," he said. "Sit on my lap."
I moved by impulse, curiosity and that thread of hope that had not been killed despite my many attempts. I sat. He poured wine for me. Around us, faces brightened, whispered, flared.
"Is she his favorite?" one woman hissed.
"Who knits such a long scarf?" another asked.
He leaned close and whispered, roguish and utterly unbothered, "Where is the scarf you promised me?"
"This is for my wife," I said before I could stop myself. "For my wife, I have made it."
He smiled like a man who keeps a private joke. "I am your wife, then."
"What?" I said, and everyone laughed like a ripple across water.
"You taste of jokes," he said. "You are mine."
It went on like that: a small revolt of oddness and a court that loved puzzles. He took off his outer robe later and—without ceremony—tugged at one of the pieces I had left by my bed, the white sash I had once meant for something final.
"This is interesting," he said, examining it as though it were a curious socket of wood. "How does one use such a thing?"
"You can learn," I told him, with a boldness I had grown fond of.
He let me wrap the white sash around his wrist, three times, clumsy with silk and persistence. It looked absurd and intimate. He tried on a robe of my color and the court dozed between laughter and gossip at the sight of their Emperor in such a garb.
Later, in the privacy of my chamber, I found myself trembling not with fear of the next reset but with a new warmth. "You act like this is all a spectacle," Katalina said, working her needles.
"It's supposed to be," I said. "This is court."
She glanced at me, face open. "You told me you were straight."
"I did," I admitted. "I lied to spare you confusion. I only ever showed up to hang myself and somehow, here I am, tangled in this life."
She laughed and it was softer than any silk. "Either way, I like you."
"Do you mean that?" I asked, because I had no language for the stir.
She touched my cheek with a knotted finger. "I mean, I will keep catching you."
The court went on inventing ways to attract the Emperor. Claudia tried every contrivance—flowered swing, painted fans, staged fainting. Each attempt became louder, more theatrical.
"Do not become a trouble," I warned her one morning, stitching beside Katalina.
She scoffed. "I do not need your pity-laced charity."
"Then don't fall," I said, and perhaps that was cruel. But the palace teaches cruelty by degrees.
On one occasion, Claudia's performance faltered. She had set up an elaborate scene with attendants and petals. The Emperor, however, wore a bright grin and walked straight to the dais where Katalina sat, not because he was bought by petals but because he enjoyed the foreignness of it all. He lifted Katalina's hand and placed the green crown on her, as if gifting a silly token.
A murmur rose like wind. Some clapped. Some gasped. Claudia's face drained of color; she left, not in a dramatic collapse, but with the slow flame of humiliation. She walked through the hall while people turned to watch. Her steps were steady at first, then quickened; she tried to save face by tossing jewels to an attendant, but the coins looked like apology notes. She fled to a private corridor, and a few minutes later, a servant delivered a folded robe—her show had failed. People murmured and moved on. The public shift of attention was plain to see; no formal punishment, just the court's cold shoulder.
Katalina and I watched the whole thing from a corner where the tapestries muffled the gossip.
"That wasn't so satisfying," I said, more honest than kind.
Katalina shrugged. "Not everything needs savoring. Some people get what they plant."
The small rewards kept accumulating: a shared cup of tea, a private joke, the Emperor learning to wear a scarf I had knitted, and the way Katalina's hand fit mine when we walked beneath the cedars.
One night, when the moon had the slow patience of an old lamp, the two of us sat under the tree where first I tried to end it and where she first saved me.
"Do you ever regret not resetting?" she asked, voice low.
"Sometimes," I said. "But there is comfort in the scar you cannot erase. Every time I thought to kill the story, I found a different way to live."
She leaned nearer. "Then stay. Stay and see what you can make of a life that is stubborn."
I looked at her, at the soft silhouette of her shoulders and the curl of her smile. The palace had been a gauntlet; it had tried to break me. Instead, it taught me to choose.
"All right," I said. "But next time I try to be dramatic, catch me."
She laughed and, without ceremony, kissed me—quick, clear, and sweet as the thread we had been weaving for weeks.
"It is done then," she said, and curved her mouth like a promise.
Months passed by days filled with small, intimate rebellions. The Emperor kept his odd love for theatrics. One afternoon, during a smaller banquet, he escorted me into the room wearing a robe of my color. He offered me a piece of needlework and the court sighed in delighted confusion.
"Why do you let him do this?" Katalina asked, one hand in mine.
"Because sometimes the Emperor is a strange lantern," I answered. "He lights us all, whether by charm or by folly. I will take what light I can get."
We both laughed. The sound folded light around us and the palace felt less like a trap and more like a strange theatre where we had chosen to stay.
The white sash—a thing meant for endings—hung on a peg in my chamber. More often now it wound around Katalina's wrists when she worked. It had become not a noose but a ribbon of memory: a mock weapon we turned into ornament.
One night, the Emperor arrived with Mateo Said and a bundle. "For you," he said to Katalina, with an edge of mock solemnity.
She unwrapped it. Inside, a small crown, less elaborate than the one she had worn at the feast, lay cushioned on velvet.
"You are foolish," she told him, and yet the corners of her mouth lifted.
He shrugged. "I am pleased."
I sat on his lap, fingers idlyworking the long scarf I had made. "Do kings get lonely?" I asked him.
He looked at me from under the fringe of his sleeves and answered, "Loneliness is a royal talent."
"Then let us practice being poor at talents," I said, and the three of us laughed where the servants would not see.
I had tried to die at the beginning of this tale. I had expected a story of neat ends. Instead, the palace offered me a crooked life. It handed me a hand to hold when my fingers trembled. It taught me that some resets come from choices, not from poison.
Katalina would sometimes press her head to my shoulder and say, "You were always dramatic."
"Yes," I would reply, "but now I prefer to be dramatic in good company."
At the center of it all was the white sash, the tree that almost took me, the scarf that looped through winters of court gossip, and the peculiar Emperor who liked to wear my colors and call me his wife. They were my markers now.
Once, when a messenger delivered a neat folded paper with the palace seal, I read the line and laughed aloud until the servants peered with concern: "The Emperor asks you to teach him knitting."
I turned to Katalina. "Do you want to be my teacher?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes, but she handed me a needle and smiled. "It seems I always am."
We went on knitting our small rebellions. Every night, when the candles sank, I tied the white sash around her wrist and sometimes around the Emperor's, as proof that the place where I almost chose silence had become the place where I stitched a life.
I had been a wreck of longing once, a woman who thought ending would be mercy. Now I was a woman who had learned to catch herself and to be caught. The palace had not broken me; it had given me a strange and stubborn family. The rest of the world could wait.
The End
— Thank you for reading —