Sweet Romance15 min read
Glass Heart, Unfit for the Crown
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I had every reason to suspect the Grand Tutor was out to tangle my life, but I had no proof.
"This time you will give me a husband, Brother," I demanded, slapping the screen until the ink-streaked lacquer trembled.
Bruno Davies looked up from the papers, a smile hiding reluctance. "Emersyn, you're still young. No hurry."
"Young?" I snorted. "I'm nearly twenty. I am not 'too young.'"
"Too young for a statesman's wife," he said, as if the difference mattered.
Godfrey Bernard stood to the side like a mountain carved from marble—always still, always correct. His presence prickled at me. "Brother thinks she should wait."
"Of course he thinks so," I said, with fiery sweep. "You two are in cahoots."
Godfrey's face did not change. "I have the realm's peace to consider, Princess."
I slammed the door and left the hall like a storm. "Fine. If you won't help, I'll do it myself."
I had been told to keep my eyes open for a match. I had watched many parades of young men, and I had liked some and turned my head from others. I had liked Fionn Acosta at first sight—tall, steady, a new champion in the capital. I had worn a fan and arranged a chance meeting to make my case, and I had been refused.
"Refused? By the emperor?" I had demanded of the air.
"Not by him. By my brother. By Godfrey." I cursed the two like a pair of stubborn trees.
That afternoon I stormed into the palace kitchens, told my maid Gracelynn Oliver to take two plates of jade chicken, and marched away to show my anger by making a scene.
I nearly crashed into Godfrey by the lotus pond. He stood, hands behind his back, wind flowering the fringe of his sleeve. He was like a painting come to life.
I had no time for his studied silence. I walked past him. He called me.
"Do you like Fionn?" he asked, like the question was a blade laid neat on a table.
"Yes," I answered without thinking.
"Why?"
"Because he's handsome," I said, blunt as a slap.
Godfrey paused, then asked, quiet, "Am I not handsome?"
I looked up at him. He was, but that had nothing to do with the thing in my head. "You're handsome," I said. "So? What has that to do with me? I'm busy."
He watched me go. I wanted to stamp, but pride stopped me. The jade chicken grew cold as I schemed.
I staged a meeting the day Fionn entered the palace for the first time as the new champion. I hid my face behind a fan, let every flutter and glance be placed by design. Gracelynn gave me a look that said she understood and she arranged for a small mouse trap—meant to scare, and for me to fall into Fionn's arms. It was a silly plan, but what else did a princess do when two men took her patience?
"Fionn," I whispered, and my voice was a drop of honey.
The two of them froze. Of course Godfrey was there too.
I stepped between them, let my fan fall in a coy motion. "See? Fate."
Fionn bowed. His hands were trembling like a reed. "Your Highness."
"I have a little pouch," I purred, and offered it to him. He took it like a man who expected a warning.
Suddenly a mouse skittered away. Gracelynn had done her part, but a quick eunuch struck and crushed the mouse before my scream could work the scene.
I stood there, the plan ruined. So I pretended to swoon. I fell—into Godfrey's arms.
"Are you well, Your Highness?" Godfrey asked, voice as cool as winter water.
"I'm fine," I said, which was a lie. He guided me up. I wanted to move, but something in him felt steady and warm in a strange way. Fionn backed away, alarmed, hands at his chest. He left.
I gave Fionn my pouch anyway.
"You'll remember me," I said, softly.
He fled like a startled hare. I stared after him, heart doing a small, unhappy jump. Godfrey stooped, picked up the pouch, dusted it with fingers that seemed too careful for a man who seldom touched anything.
He put the pouch into his sleeve, then left like someone who had not placed a single thought into the afternoon.
Days passed and any man I fancied either married or fled. I decided to try again. There would be the general's birthday feast, and I insisted on delivering the gift myself—if only to see the city and its handsome men. Bruno consented only if Godfrey came on the carriage.
I rode with Godfrey standing next to me. He tried to take my hand to help me down; I pushed it away. He warned me, quietly, "Behave yourself."
"Don't call me 'princess,'" I hissed. "Call me 'master' for once."
In the great courtyard the young men were everywhere. I disguised myself as a young man. Gracelynn wrote names, I pointed, and I was a busy collector. A new man, Dane Fischer, passed like a moon. I chased him with a ridiculous flourish until I fell into his arms. He was kind but embarrassed—someone had told him I was a woman.
"You're a woman?" he asked, surprised.
"Indeed," I said with a bow. I told him my name like a secret. He accepted my tongue-in-cheek confidence and left quickly, rabbit-footed. I made Gracelynn write everything down. Dane went on my list.
I walked farther, hearing music, and found Godfrey sitting with a pretty girl. Arabella Bradshaw danced, smiling like summer. Godfrey's fingers moved across the strings of a zither. He laughed.
I felt something sharp inside, like a bee escaped in my chest. He was laughing—and not at me.
Gracelynn hissed, "Princess, be careful."
"I don't care," I muttered.
The music and Arabella's silk made me jealous in a way I didn't expect. I watched them, and the world narrowed to the curve of his cheek.
I could not stay. I ran back to the palace, opened the door to Bruno's hall and demanded, voice too loud, "You will grant the marriage!"
"Fionn is not suitable," Bruno said softly.
"He's not the one," I said. "I'm asking for Dane Fischer. He is the general's grandson."
Bruno sighed. "Emersyn, you have no idea what marriage means."
"Then make him leave," I snapped.
Godfrey entered as if the day's sky followed him. "I disagree," he said. "I do not think this is right."
"Why not?" I sprayed pain. "Why are you against everything?"
"Because you are capricious," Godfrey said, and something in his face hardened. "You love what's bright and passing. You have no steadiness."
"My steadiness has never been tried!" I cried.
"Do you love Fionn?" Godfrey asked, as if he had a right to ask.
"Why does it matter to you?" I said.
"Because I—" he cut himself off, surprised at the sound of his own voice.
That was the last straw. I stormed away and announced I'd find my husband on my own.
At the banquet Dane Fischer sat diagonally across from me. I sent him a note, a small smile. He raised his cup. I drank the wine Bruno forbid me to, the pear wine Godfrey had the steward bring him.
"This wine is dangerous for the princess," Godfrey's attendant murmured, handing me a cup of clear pear wine. "The Grand Tutor forbids strong liquor."
I sipped, and the world tilted. I had a plan: get Dane alone, make him believe I was helpless, and he'd carry me home. But plans change.
That night I walked through the festival and was led, by my own mischief, into a quiet chamber. I meant to find Dane. Instead, Godfrey was there, his face furiously pale in the candlelight.
"Get out," he ordered.
"Where's Dane?" I demanded.
"Out," he repeated.
The door closed. A draft stole the candlelight. I tried the latch. Locked.
"Someone put a drug in the wine," I whispered. "Did you—did you also—?"
Godfrey's face shifted. His skin was hot. "I'm not well either."
"You're not—" I started.
"Don't say anything," he said. "Stop moving."
The room spun. I toppled and woke up against the heat of him. His hands were strong, an animal's warmth.
"Emersyn," he breathed. His voice sounded strange on the edges. He smelled of sandalwood and something like old rain.
We were trapped by a fog in our heads—my hands trembled, and I thought of Fionn, of Dane, of Arabella spinning like a ribbon far in the garden. I thought of the foolish plan that had placed me here. I whispered, "I am scared."
"Don't speak," he said.
We woke naked in the quiet of morning, shame and anger and a strange relief standing in the same circle. I dressed in tremors and told myself to leave. Godfrey sat like a statue, wounded and quiet.
"You will not leave like this," he said suddenly, as if the truth had taken a hard breath.
I glared at him. "Why not?"
"You will not play at this and then walk away," he said. "If anyone questions, I will stand with you."
The words were small. My heart bumped at them.
"Are you—" I began, but he cut me off.
"Let us marry," he said simply, the kind of talk that should never be so plain between such different people.
It took a long time to understand him. In the days that followed, I replayed that night and how his hand had steadied mine, how he had been gentle when the world was wrong. I told myself the drug had melted everything between us into dust, that truth would wake me and the memory would be ash. But it did not.
A rumor reached me like a splinter: Godfrey had asked for me before I did. I laughed until I wasn't laughing.
At a quiet hour I found him by the inner garden. The moon made his shoulders silver.
"I do not wish you to marry Arabella," I blurted.
He looked at me with a slow, steady face. "I never intended to marry Arabella," he said. "I intended to marry you."
"I told you I despised you," I confessed aloud, my voice small.
"You said you hated me when you were young," he answered. "You were hurt, and you stopped letting me in."
We argued like children and then like adults. He admitted, with a stiffness that broke him more than I expected, "I wanted you to be a woman of order. I thought you wildness would ruin you. But I have loved you since you were small."
I could not keep the laugh from turning into a sob. "You're a fool," I said, because that was safer.
He took my hand and asked, "Will you be my wife?"
"Yes," I said too quickly, the word a soft cliff.
We married. The city sang. The wedding room smelled of red silk and incense and pear wine. Godfrey's face was radiant as a struck bell. He led me to the bridal bed and asked, with a teasing softness, "You did say you were 'battle-tested' once. Do you still insist on that?"
"Maybe not," I said, and he kissed me with a joy that would not be contained.
It was not all laughter. I had made enemies. There were those who had noticed how I swooned into Godfrey's arms, how I had toyed with Fionn and Dane. There were whispers that I had tricked men into bed for sport. The worst murmurs were that I had been drugged—by whom, and for whose gain?
One night Gracelynn came in with a face like spilled ink. "My princess, someone knocked me senseless in the corridor. I heard the name of the eunuch, Christoph Burris."
"Christoph? He serves Bruno," I said. "Why would he—?"
"That's not all. Small Lin—one of the lower attendants—said he was paid. He said the order came with a seal."
My blood turned cold. The palace was a handful of secrets. If someone had drugged me on purpose, then my marriage had been planned in a corner where I was the piece on a board.
I demanded to speak with Bruno. He smiled at me in a way that did not reach his eyes. "There are so many petitions to sign, Emersyn."
I said, "Who told Christoph Burris to drug me?"
"We should trust the servants," Bruno said, smooth as silk. "They are loyal."
I felt dizzy. The idea that someone used me made my stomach hollow. I refused to be some story whispered behind cups of wine.
I arranged to have the witnesses called. Gracelynn and a trembling small attendant named Justine Espinoza told how they had been ambushed and how Christoph Burris had appeared in the shadow with a clean palm and a mean smile.
"Why would Christoph do it?" Godfrey murmured to me one night.
"To please the Emperor? To please himself? To tie you into the undercurrent?" I answered. "I will find out."
I followed the thread like a hound. Small Lin, scared and swollen-lipped, said that he had been promised gold. He had seen Christoph at the chamber door the night before I was drugged; Christoph had spoken into the ear of a shadowed man. The shadow had left a small carved bone with the imperial seal.
My first thought was Bruno's hand. His pleasure at my marriage seemed too much. But I had no proof and I would not break the palace's rules by accusing my brother without cause.
Yet the seed of suspicion grew like a fever. I watched Godfrey more closely. He, for his part, grew quiet the way a storm holds its breath.
The palace did not tolerate insolence—but it also could not hide its rot forever.
The trial—if one could call it that—happened during an assembly intended for the blessing of new governors. The court was packed. Noble families, ministers, generals, and the common scribes crammed the marble hall. I led in my small band of witnesses: Gracelynn, Justine, small Lin, and a clerk who had been at the gate that night. They stood at my side like lit torches.
Bruno took his seat, smiling at the spectacle. Christoph Burris sat among the eunuchs, composed and pale as bone china. Godfrey sat behind me with his jaw clenched like a drawn knife.
I rose, because the court expected me to. My voice did not shake. "My lords," I said, "I have been wronged."
"We have a complaint from the princess," whispered many. The cattles of gossip snapped.
"On the night of the pear-feast," I continued, "I was given wine unkinder than pear and then lured to a chamber where I was made to pass what should have been private into the keeping of Godfrey Bernard. I have witnesses who were attacked. I had my maid assaulted. I was drugged. Christoph Burris was seen near the chamber."
Christoph's smile did not leave his face, but his fingers twitched on the arm of his chair.
"Bring up the witnesses," Bruno said, complacent.
Gracelynn and Justine told their tales with trembling mouths. Small Lin recounted the seal and the shadow. The clerk read the ledger—Christoph had been seen buying a sealed scent-case days before.
The hall was buzzing: "A scent-case? The eunuch?"
Christoph stood, voice iron-smooth. "I performed my duty. The princess is mistaken."
"You were seen buying a case that produces the so-called 'love smoke,'" said the clerk.
"False," Christoph replied. "I have never manufactured harm."
"Then explain why the scent-case is accounted for on the ledger linked to your purchases," Gracelynn said, voice sharp as a blade.
Christoph's countenance flickered. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. "There are mistakes," he said, too slowly.
"Who gave you the seal?" I asked.
He kept silent a long time. The court watched like a field awaits harvest.
"Christoph Burris was the one at the chamber," Godfrey said, his voice a steady bell. "He was seen, and he had the seal. He did not act alone."
Christoph's eyes narrowed. "You are accusing my honor."
At that, Godfrey drew himself up. "I accuse you of treachery. I accuse you of making the princess a thing to be bartered."
A murmur traveled like wind. Bruno's face flickered, but his voice remained honeyed. "No one here contrived to make the princess an instrument. Christoph, tell us—who ordered the sealed scent-case?"
Christoph laughed, thin as a winter branch. "The seal was presented to me by a messenger. I was told to deliver it. I do not know the mind of the sender."
"Produce the messenger," Godfrey demanded.
The clerk produced a small ledger. The name scribbled was not the emperor's but a private notation: a foreign mark carved in haste. Christoph paled. "It was a rogue. I was paid."
At that, something snapped in me. "Who paid?" I demanded. "Who sent the seal?"
Christoph's face crumpled, and the first change came not from stubborn denial but a way of someone whose table of lies had been overturned. "It was a payment marked with the mark of a gentleman: a kiss-stamp used by the household of one who seeks a promise," he said. He swallowed. "I was told it benefited the realm."
The court erupted. "What did he mean?"
"Who told you?" I asked, pressing.
Christoph looked at Bruno like a dog looks to its master, then at the crowd. He faltered. His next words fell like stones. "I was told by—by a servant in the Emperor's private quarters. I was told—told by one who passed the seal from a hand that bore the imperial sign."
Bruno's lips paled.
"Enough!" Bruno barked.
But the hall would not be quiet. Voices rose: "The emperor?" "Impossible!" "How could he—"
Godfrey moved like lightning then. "Bring forth the ledger and the messenger," he ordered.
They found the messenger in a corridor, frightened and small. He testified under oath that a man cloaked and handwriting like Bruno's had given him a sealed packet to deliver to Christoph. The man paled as he said it.
Christoph's confession swung like a blade between men. "I was told the Emperor wished to ensure certain unions to stabilize alliances," he said, the words scraping. "I was told I should help where marriage failed. I was given coin. I did not ask."
The room turned cold. To claim the emperor's hand in such a plot was treason. Bruno's face hardened in a way I had not permitted myself to imagine. He rose slowly, and the court hushed as if someone had called a bell.
"You say the emperor authorized this?" Godfrey asked.
"No." Christoph's voice cracked. "I cannot say who ordered me. I refuse—"
"Silence." Bruno's hand snapped down like a palm on a book. He walked to the dais, his eyes killingly calm. "Christoph Burris, what you claim is false. You have lied."
"I will not lie," Christoph cried. "I have blood on my hands. I sold poisons and scents. I accepted gold. I—"
"Enough of your theatrics," Bruno said. "Guards, take him."
That was the beginning of the public punishment, but the assembly demanded more than a private arrest. They demanded truth, and the truth needed a spectacle to be believed. Bruno, perhaps to put out the sparks of rumor, ordered that Christoph be brought before the city and answer openly. I insisted I would make the proclamation myself. If someone had attempted to use me as a pawn, the world would see.
They bound Christoph and dragged him into the central square. The market quieted as people felt the tremor of consequence. We assembled: ministers, soldiers, merchants, commoners with their children. I stood with Godfrey at my side, and Gracelynn and Justine behind me.
Christoph was made to kneel on the dais. He looked stripped of all pretense, face hollow. The herald read the charges: deception, attempted violation of the princess's person through forced intoxication, collaboration with illegal agents. Christoph, pale and sweaty, shook his head in denial until we put the ledger on the table.
"Why?" I demanded. "Why did you do it?"
He stared at me with eyes that carried a sudden, terrible regret. "I did it for coin and the promise of protection," he said. "I wanted to be safe from the hunger of palace life. I wanted more than the black-silks could give."
A woman in the crowd began to weep. A child asked, "Is this the same Christoph who fed our piglets?"
People remembered his small kindnesses and how he soothed a crying baby. He had once been a man of small mercies. Now he stood as an instrument of a shameful plot.
Then the real change began. Christoph's reaction evolved from bluster to breakdown. He began to describe the scene: who had put the seal into his hand, the voice in the shadow that had said, "Make the match." He named a name at last—an insider's nickname for a courtier who coveted the approval of the throne. As each name was spat into the dust, faces in the crowd turned.
There was shouting. "Punish him! Burn the ledger!" "Arrest the accomplices!"
Christoph's voice became small. "They said the marriage would stabilize the north. They said the princess's heart was as glass—easily chipped."
"Glass?" the crowd echoed. "She is human."
A line of nobles walked forward, faces blank. They demanded a public stripping of honour for Christoph. The magistrate proclaimed that Christoph be cast from office, paraded through the capital with the ledger tied to his neck, and publicly beaten. Punishment should be hung with shame. It had to be seen to be believed.
Christoph's reaction changed with each blow of the magistrate's rod. He had begun defiant—then frightened, then pleading. He lashed out at the crowd, then crumpled. His cries echoed across the square. He begged for mercy, called the names of those who had paid him, then fell silent as the rope around his wrists burned a ring. People took out phones of very different sort—scribes recorded and whispered. I saw merchants take up the ledger and read the names with fingers stained in ink.
After the blows, Christoph was dragged to the pillory. They tied the ledger to his chest. The crowd's reaction rippled from outrage to disgust to a low murmur of satisfaction. A woman spat. "He made us believe in a palace where the emperor could only act for the realm," she said. "Now we know how low some will go."
The magistrate read his sentence. The worst punishment was not death. It was public shaming and the stripping of his office, and most painful of all—a proclamation that matches could not be arranged through secrets and schemes. The law would now require that marriages be public, and consent could not be bought in a cup of wine.
Christoph's face went through all the stages: the brief relief at the end of fear, the flaring shame, the small desolation that a man feels when his name is stricken from honor. He begged God and men; he denied the names he had given that morning. The crowd hissed when he changed his story. The magistrate ordered him to be carted away and to spend months in the labor yards on the edges of the city.
For me the scene was dizzying. I watched the public punish him, watched the shame reflect back like a mirror. I felt something else too: a terrible wonder. The palace was not above the law when a scandal touched a princess. I had faced it bravely, names shouted into the square like a finishing bell.
Godfrey took my hand then, when Christoph had been carted off. "You bore this with dignity," he said.
"Did I?" I asked. I felt hollow and oddly freed.
"You were not a pawn," he said. "You were a woman with her own sword."
After the public punishment, they could not claim ignorance. The Emperor—Bruno—had not ordered my drugging, but the fact that Christoph had accepted money and such a seal meant the palace had to change how it handled matters of marriage and treachery. If nothing else, the scandal forced honesty into a place designed for secrets.
The months that followed were quieter for me. I still loved my mischief, but I had learned how fear could be used as a tool, and how those who thought themselves steady could be cruel without a wall to stop. Godfrey and I were married properly with full blessings. He became my husband, not a prize taken by the whispers of men.
Fionn left the court to teach in the provinces, his hands always steady. Dane married a woman of his own choosing. Arabella married a merchant's son and smiled freely in the gardens.
Godfrey's love was a slow thing, like clay on a wheel. He kept surprising me with small mercies: a cup of pear wine placed without ceremony, a scrap of silk tied into a child's kite, the pouch he had once found at the pond tucked into my sleeve. Once, when the city bells tolled at dawn, he whispered, "You are mine." I said, "You're mine." Our laughter leapt like fish and the roof of our new house answered with a small, warm clatter.
There were three moments I could never forget that thinned my breath:
"That night you picked me up when I fell," he said one day, "I felt something. You are not like the others."
"You took the too-strong wine from me," I said another time, when the evening had soaked in like tea. He looked away and, for once, said, "I cannot let harm be done to you."
And once when I was cross and sulky he untied my sleeve and folded it back with a gentleness no one had ever shown me. He smiled and said, "You can be fierce. You can be small. Either way, I will look after you."
In the end, the thing that had been used against me—the pear wine, the sealed scent, Christoph's basket of coins—became a thread we used to tie our lives together in a way I had not imagined.
I keep the little blue pouch he once dusted and tucked into his sleeve. It sits at the head of our bed. When I touch it, I remember how a mock-swoon led to a true holding; how a public square could fling a man into disgrace; and how a man who had once been my enemy stood, finally, to be my husband. The pouch is small and fragile—like glass. It has to be held with care.
We built a life from that glass.
The End
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