Sweet Romance12 min read
Glass and Snow: My Years as Luca's Wife
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I remember the snow first.
"It's like the night I stood outside and waited for you to look back at me," he says, and his voice is a ribbon of warmth.
"We're not thirteen anymore," I answer, and he knocks my head lightly with the back of his hand.
"Luca," I call him by the name I used when we were children. He is Emperor now; his proper title hangs in the air like a decree, but his palm on my shoulder is still the palm that steadied a crying girl who had slipped on cold stone.
"You were the one who stood in that snow to watch me," he insists, and his smile is patient. "You were my anchor."
"That snow had a boy who looked like a snowman," I say, because truth belongs in small, stubborn details. "It was colder then."
"Then I'll go stand in it again tonight," he teases. His hand finds mine; he pulls me into the silk folds of the couch. "Before I go, I must send someone to sweep out the court. You shouldn't be cold."
"I told you your father would come with a knife first," I mutter, and he laughs.
"Luca," I whisper when he puts a lacquered box before me. "You shouldn't—"
He pushes it closer; inside, pearls pick up the candlelight like small moons. "They are yours."
"They are for an emperor's consort," I say, pressing my fingers to the pearls as if to check that they are real. He takes my hand and kisses my palm, tender enough to dissolve care.
"In my heart, Olivia, you are my wife." He tucks his face into my neck and breathes like he can keep the cold out by staying near me. "Give me another child. Let her be like our Delaney."
"Our Delaney," I repeat, and warmth and dread both tangle in my chest. "Do you mean it? She is not just mine—"
"She is ours," he answers, and then his fingers move inside my robe, and the room dissolves into smaller, private things: kisses that leave me breathless, hands like soft promises. He is not simply the ruler who governs armies and law. He is the boy who once stole temple offerings to eat a stolen rice dumpling; he is the man who knows the shape of my laugh and will go to the ends of the palace to make me smile.
We have been wed since we were children. He was a prince who had been starved of comfort and favor; I was a teacher's daughter—my father, Graham Omar, taught scholars and princes in the city. We grew up hand in hand: I, a puffed-cheeked girl who cried easily and tattled, and he, a thin boy with lashes dark as river water, who once pinched my cheek and made me swear vengeance for a childish snub.
I laugh as I remember holding a sticky rice dumpling between us in the temple courtyard. "I'll always give you one bite," I tell him now. He presses his lips to mine and calls me "my foolish anchor." That is how love worked in the quiet times: small promises and the theft of food.
Then the world shifted.
He rose to the throne and left my title smaller than it had been before. "You were my crown's queen in all but name," I tell myself, but the palace has its own appetite. The court needs alliances. When Claudia Mikhaylov was raised to Empress, the court's air changed. Claudia is graceful, composed, a woman groomed for that role by lineage and careful breeding. She keeps her illness private, hides coughs behind fans and sutures her world with duty. She is kind to me as a sister might be. She is not the cruel rival my imagination drew.
It is not Claudia who breaks us. The thing that bends our life into a brittle shape is the world beyond our courtyard: a pestilence in the southern provinces, famine in summer, and pressure from the northern tribes. Luca sits with petitions piled like winter leaves; he reads them until his eyes are red. He sends for Dante Clayton, a young physician who returned from the afflicted south and who knows more about plagues than court gossip.
When the southern doctor dies, the court whispers. The victory—"the plague is contained"—arrives with funeral shrouds. The doctor had been sent because he was the only one who could ease the dying; he returns as a corpse instead. Claudia weeps in private, and the palace's joy curdles.
"You asked what the doctor left?" I ask Luca quietly in his study.
"He left only four characters," he answers, and signs a small paper to show me: "Not failing in his duty." His throat tightens. "They were his last work."
"Was there a sign? A note?" I press.
He looks away. "No."
Then, in the sallow light, the hammer falls in other ways. I look to Delaney—our daughter—who is clever and small, her face a mirror of both our best features. One night, when the northern tribe's envoy offers marriage of a princess to secure peace, the palace choices become flesh-and-blood decisions. I am frightened in ways I could not put into language. Delaney is only a child with fire in her hair.
"Let her be the one," Luca says one evening with a tired slant to his eyes. "If she goes, perhaps they will not raid the border. If she goes, perhaps lives will be saved."
"She cannot," I say, but I hear the quiet diplomacy in his voice.
"Don't scold me in court matters," he murmurs. "I have no choices I can say aloud."
Delaney kneels before us with a red dress and a small, stubborn chin. "If the people of the kingdom are saved, Delaney will go," she says, with a bravery that takes my breath away. "If I go, the north will be easier. If I go, the fighting will stop."
"Delaney—" I try to hold her there.
"Let the child decide," Claudia whispers. "If she wishes to go, her choice will be honored. It would be cruel to force her."
So Delaney goes. She is courageous and sly; the farewell is a bright smear of red and trumpets. She turns back once at the bend and calls, "Father, light fireworks. Four days."
The fireworks flash like sunlight on glass. For a singular, terrible hour, I can forgive my world its cruelty because Delaney smiles as if the whole thing is an adventure. She is my anchor when I am falling apart.
Then a storm of rumors throws a wet cloth over our lives. While Delaney is gone at the border, news arrives in the palace: brigands, rebellions, and soldiers down. In a single frantic night we hear that the palace envoy fell, that the northern city is smoke, and—worst of all—that Delaney is dead. Or at least everyone says so.
I do not believe it. I refuse to. I go to the cold courtyard where we once shared a stolen dumpling and listen to old women gossip. The palace fireworks still go off. The sound is obscene next to my heartbeat.
"Delaney is dead," an old nurse sobs. "They were attacked. The general's men were ruthless."
"That isn't true," I whisper.
I remember Delaney's last face as she ran back to me, cheeks flushed: "Don't turn against Father. Don't lose him." She was happy, daring, and full of mischief. The memory and the rumor wrestle until I feel neither light nor dark.
Then—worse—comes the revelation that crushes both my body and heart: Delaney's death was true. The cold court where I have been a girlfriend, counselor, and comfort is suddenly a room filled with accusations. People stare. They press behind hands. Fingers point at me as if I carried out a murder.
"You were there, Lady Olivia," a low-servant whispers in the courtyard. "You were at the pond when the prince nearly drowned. You have always been quick with your hands."
They mean years before, when I dove into the water to save the child Prince—a different child—who had fallen in the garden. I remember the cold water then, the way my stomach burned. I remember the smell of wet moss and someone carrying the child toward warmth. "Send her back to the Queen," they said then. Now that same panic becomes accusation.
When I collapse one night with a pain like iron through my belly, it is not just grief that steals my breath. Doctors come with vinegar and red string; they whisper about miscarriage—about a child lost to me that I had not known I carried. "Our child is gone," Luca says in a voice that fractures. "I thought—" He cannot finish.
I lie in the bed of glassed silk and watch Luca leave the room to attend to his eldest son—he leaves the bed, and for a terrible instant I think he has left me for the child he chose to must not die.
"Do you think I would hurt our child?" I ask him when he returns at dawn, hands shaking like a moth.
He kneels and takes my hand. "Olivia, I believe in you. I do. But the court—" He cannot force scandal to stop. He cannot make people change the shape of their gossip by fiat.
The palace closes around me like a lid. I decay into smaller days. I stop answering the petitions of high ladies. The little rituals of palace life continue: incense, perfumed tea, compliments traded like coins. Claudia comes to my bedside one dusk and kneels.
"I thought I would be your rival," she says softly. "I thought I would be the one who took more than my share."
"You were always gentle," I tell her. "Why do you look at me like I am the thunder?"
"I did not cause their rage," she says. "But perhaps the court chooses when to be cruel."
Soon the truth descends like winter: someone must take blame. The dead doctor Dante Clayton's passing is dug into like a wound. Secrets slip free in back alleys and corridors: the southern doctor had been murdered; his only rival had been asking for favors; men from powerful houses were angry about inheritance.
Then the worst name becomes clear: Hector Tariq, the father of the Empress's household ally—the court's quiet man who had counseled the marriage between our houses. He had more than counsel; he had means and a will like iron. Rumor says he ordered, or hired, men to silence the doctor who knew too much about what had been done in the south. It was Hector Tariq who moved the pieces so the plague's story could be bent to his clan's favor.
I sit in the dark and hear the rumor swell. "They say Hector moved against the doctor," a maid whispers. "He feared exposure..."
It becomes public not because of me but because court enemies trade secrecy for charge. The scrolls are unrolled; incriminating letters are shown in the presence of ministers. An investigation is demanded. Luca, grief-struck and riven, cannot hide from what comes: law must be done, and the law will be performed where everyone can see it.
"What will you do?" I ask him in a dream, voice thin as thread.
"I will do what is right," he says. "Even if the right thing breaks us."
The day of judgment is bright and lethal. The throne room is full: ministers, palace ladies, soldiers, commoners pressed to the edges. A scaffold is raised on the main square for the reading of sentences. They bring Hector Tariq forward in chains. Hector is not the huge man rumor claimed—he is a man hollowed by fear, a bureaucratic face that once smiled at festivals. He wears the finery of his station, now dirty and torn.
"Bring forward the witness," one minister calls. "Bring forward those who saw the exchanges."
One by one, men step up. A scribe unfolds a piece of paper and reads aloud. The crowd presses in. The queen mother sits with pale face; Claudia weeps openly.
Hector Tariq lifts his chin. He speaks first not with denial but with an anger that is practiced. "I did what I had to," he says. "I protected my family. The doctor was meddling. He corrupted minds. I did what a father in my place might do."
"He killed a healer," someone shouts. "He stopped a man from helping the sick!"
"You thought your lineage gave you license," a noblewoman says, voice sharp as chisels.
Hector's face changes, and this is the beginning of the end. At first he is flushed with arrogance, then shocked, then a thin comedy of denial: "You lie!" he cries when a merchant produces letters with his seal. "Those are forgeries!"
Around the square, people murmur. "Forgeries?" "But look." A clerk steps forward holding the wax seal of Hector's hand. The clerk shows a ledger—Hector's hand hovers near other payments. The crowd's voice rises like surf.
"It is true! He paid men. He prodded patience into murder. He thought he could bend law by candlelight." A lady flings her fan down and points. "How many of you have friends who were once helped by the doctor? He cured the poor and the rich!"
Hector's breath quickens. "You will not make me a scapegoat for courtiers jealous of my house." He glares wildly, then steps backward when a former recruit shows how Hector gave orders. The recruit is a man with a face like old bread—hard and resigned. He lays out dates and sums. The watchmen there, who were bribed to look the other way, now wipe sweat from their brows and speak the truth.
I stand at the barred edge of the square in court robes and feel my hands go cold. My name is not on the charge sheet, but the crowd looks at me as if my grief were a flame that set the city alight. Luca is at the dais; his face is like carved stone. He must balance justice and mercy.
Hector loses temper. "You cannot do this!" he screams, then his voice breaks. He begins to plead. "I had no choice! My son—my house—do you think power doesn't require blood? You would have done the same. You would have sacrificed a man to save a name!"
A murmur like rolling pebbles answers him, but the crowd is not convinced. People do not like to be told that cruelty is necessity.
"Your plea is worthless," the presiding official says. "You used hired hands. The doctor could have saved many. You cut off knowledge for your gain."
Then comes the worst unmaking, and I watch it like a tired spectator. The official reads the sentence: public disgrace, loss of title, confiscation of lands, and parading through the market with the seal of shame. "Let your uncertain heart quake when the crowd mouths your shame," the minister intones.
Hector miscalculates his response. He tries to roar mercy, then suddenly collapses into silence. "No," he whispers. "No, no—this cannot—" He trembles.
The punishment is ritualized cruelty: his fine crest is taken and broken before the throng; his staff is snapped in two; his guard cast him out. They bind a placard to his chest with the crime scrawled in ink for the crowds. "He who kills the caregiver kills a city," it reads.
The crowd clangs pots and spits in noise that is meant to shame. People who have relatives lost to the plague crowd forward. "How many more must die under the boots of powerful men?" one woman wails. Others take out little daggers and scrape his clothing as an act of symbolic shredding. Children gather coins to throw at his feet; old women stamp their canes.
Hector's face changes in stages: first disbelief, then bravado; then frantic denial; then a sliver of anger as he tries to bargain; then a bone-deep terror as people turn their backs; finally, collapse into whining prayers. He claws at the ropes. "I was protecting my family!" he repeats when the crowd pelts him with words. "You would have done the same!"
"No," an usher replies. "We would not."
Ministers read, townsfolk accuse, and the humiliation is a slow, public unpeeling. People record the moment on paper, and scribes sell the pamphlets in alleys. Women in the market clap. Soldiers spit. Some in the crowd weep: some because justice is finally called, some because the palace has made a spectacle of private ruins.
Hector's last look as he is marched from the square is not a look of hatred but of obliteration; his face goes blank, as if someone has erased his name from their memory. He tries to stare at me as he leaves. For a heartbeat our eyes lock. He mouths something like "Forgive me," and then he is gone into the jail, a headless claim of disgrace.
People talk for days about the show, about the courage of ministers to unmask a powerful man, about how justice was done in public so no courtier could hide behind whispers.
I stand silent when it is over. Part of me wants to cheer that the man who caused Dante's death is punished. Part of me cannot forget the hollowness of public cruelties. Justice, even when correct, has the shape of a scaffold.
After Hector's punishment, the palace quiets. The outcry echoes in the city. Luca returns to the throne with a heavier gait. He has done the thing he believed justice demanded, and yet the price was felt in our bones: the punishment did not bring Delaney back. It did not pull the warmth of life back into my ribs. It only showed that the court could light a bonfire to burn a man, and that sometimes the bonfire still left ash.
My days continue to be made of small betrayals of my own body; I cough up blood and the syllables of life leak away. Luca curses the heavens. He orders ministers to distribute grain to the south, to pass out silver to the poor, to plant orchards where famine stalks. He stands in the great hall and reads edicts by lamplight, but he also kneels by my bedside when the fever takes a turn.
"Olivia," he says one night, hoarse and shaking. "Tell me what you want."
"I want the small syrup for my throat," I whisper, and he starts to cry like a man who cannot hold up a kingdom.
"You will live," he says fiercely. "I will not lose you."
But I am gone in slow minutes. The cold that took Delaney reaches into me. I hold Luca's hand and tell him that I forgive him for the choices he had to make, that I forgive the world for being cruel. "Forgive me," he says; "forgive me for thinking discomfort is currency."
"I was always your foolish anchor," I tell him. "You were always my hungry boy who stole dumplings. That will not change."
Then I close my eyes.
Afterward, I am a story told by others. There is an account in state annals about a good man—Luca—who won peace at terrible cost. They write that he was a ruler who mourned in private, who did justice in public, who passed his crown to a son who learned the value of mercy. They speak of Hector Tariq's disgrace and how it was proper that a man who took a healer's life should be unmasked. They speak of Claudia's grief and the way the Empress tended the palace garden to its brightest bloom.
There is one last memory: my father, Graham Omar, old and stiff at the shoulders, reads the scrolls of my life and cannot say "I told you so." My mother, Florence Davidson, holds a small pearl I once refused to wear. "She would have liked that," Florence says. "She was always a silly, brave girl."
My son—he who grew into the man who wrote this later—sits at the window and tells me with a voice that is a mirror he is placing to my past that his father never stopped trying to make the world softer in small, human ways.
He writes of snow and fireworks, of a woman who loved a ruler who loved a country, and of how sometimes love and duty do not fit together.
When the firework sound of the city fades and the palace windows close, the truth that pains me is simple: glass is beautiful and it is fragile. Snow is radiant and cold. We loved and we paid the price the only way our time allowed.
The End
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