Sweet Romance15 min read
He Called Me "A Little Fool" — Then He Carried Me Through Arrows and Lies
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I remember the first time I realized Deacon Blevins liked my sister more than me.
"Small miss cries ugly," he said once, crouching by a lantern stand as if it were the truest fact in the world.
I wiped my hands on my skirt and glared at him. "Who told you that?"
He smiled with a devil in it, not a bad smile, and answered, "Your sister is beautiful."
That should have been a small thing. It was only a few words, only a tone. But I kept hearing them for days afterward, like a pebble dropped in a pond. Ripples.
"My name is Ayla," I told my mirror that night. "Not ‘small miss.’"
"You're cute no matter what you are called," Corinne would say when she teased me. She always teased me tenderly — her fingers light on my cheek, her eyes fast and knowing.
"You are a little stubborn," she said, and patted my head. "Ayla, be sensible. The world rewards cleverness and polish."
"Is that why you learned the dance, the poetry, every little thing?" I asked once on our way to the temple. The carriage rocked; the sky smelled like incense.
Corinne's smile was a little tired. "You think I did it for myself? I did it to survive. And to make this family survive."
I told her, quietly, what I wanted. "Does it matter who I like?"
She lifted the cup to her lips as if tasting an idea. "People like you are allowed to like. You have a sweet face, not a court face. Keep that. Feed yourself, sleep, make sweets. The rest will be made by others."
Deacon listened when we spoke of her.
"Your sister climbed the world with every step," he said once to my back, his voice low as he walked the courtyard wall. "No one will stop her."
"Then why don't you say that to me?" I asked him, angry, foolish.
He shrugged. "You will eat candy. You don't need the world the way she does."
"That is insulting," I blurted.
He walked up to me then and, brusque as he was, did the strangest thing: he lifted me in his arms and flew, for no reason, to the top of the old walnut in our garden.
"Stop!" I laughed. "Deacon, put me down."
He put me down when I stopped laughing. He looked at me like a thief who had taken more than he planned.
"You fall too easily," he said. "You bruise easy too."
"That's not a very delicate thing to say," I answered, but my heart had gone thick in my throat.
He said nothing more, and that was how the first of many small moments passed: a quarrel, a flight, a rescue, and a look that lasted too long.
"She'll be the prince's wife," people said. They said it like it was a hymn. That night in the great hall I watched Corinne dance and the prince — Felipe Stevens — stood and asked for his hand, and the whole world applauded.
"How wonderful for you," Deacon said to me afterwards. "I am happy for her."
"You sound like you mean it," I whispered.
He looked away. "Of course I do."
Everything that followed was a hinge that turned faster than I expected.
When our father, Conrad Bowman, arranged for palace protection, Deacon came to me officially. Corinne had three female guards — Leticia Bauer, Bristol Cox, Kayleigh Carter — and I had him.
"You have three for beauty and one for bread," Deacon said wryly when he was introduced as my guard. "That is horrible balance."
"At least you're here," I said.
"Only because your father asked," Deacon answered. "They wanted me somewhere useful."
"Useful to someone," I said. I tried to mean myself. But when he bowed and said, "I will protect you," his eyes kept finding Corinne's silhouette at the window.
Things were small and bright: I made sweets, and I gave them to Boden Franklin, the boy who had been my friend since we were small. Boden would climb the wall and hand me a necklace he had found in his travels, or he would bring an odd book wrapped in paper.
"Stop saving things and give them to me," I told him one dusk.
He smiled and, quietly, put a small jade bracelet onto my wrist. "Keep this," he said. "Wear it when I am away."
"And if you never come back?" I teased.
"Then you will say I was a fool and so was the world," he said.
I laughed and said nothing. Boden's hands were always steady and honest.
Deacon's hands were not steady — they were practiced and quick. Once, thieves ambushed us on the lane as Corinne and I returned from a temple. Men in cloth masks sprang at the carriage. Corinne's three guards drew blades, but men were many.
Deacon tucked me under his arm and ran. He ran like I had been his duty and his guilt.
"Why did you carry me?" I asked as he set me down in the estate yard, my heart banging like a drum.
He had one of those faces that said he would prefer not to explain. "Because they came for the high seat first," he answered. "I thought I could save both."
"So you saved me instead," I said. "That's clumsy."
He grinned, and my heart bunched oddly. "You fall better than you argue."
We did not know yet that every rescue would cost us.
Corrupt men at court had been watching Corinne like wolves. Someone — a name whispered like a cold wind — Vernon Hofmann, with smiles that were suits and favors that smelled of wet money, began to move pieces on the board. Conrad Bowman, my father, was larger than a man, a minister who had placed his trust in systems courts could not see. He had made enemies. The week the prince promised one of Corinne's golden dreams, the same week our carriage was attacked, the sentence of "treason" was prepared.
"Father," I cried when the red seals were read. "Father, this is wrong."
"They will not listen," Corinne said softly. She was quiet in a way that meant a thousand plans. She put my hand over her heart and said, "Ayla, I have prepared for this. Do not lose hope."
"Who would frame him?" I demanded, but the court answered in steps and papers: a forged letter, a hidden courier route, a name on a page.
The gates slammed. Men in black came to the house. Conrad Bowman was taken with iron on his wrists.
"Do not cry," Corinne told me. "We will clear this. There are pieces."
Pieces were fragile. Corinne had pieces: she knew how to move people, how to promise and buy time. Boden found evidence; he rode at night, bringing scraps. Deacon found ways to move in shadows, and one night he returned with a sealed letter — found where no one but an enemy would think to hide such a thing.
"Who gave you this?" I asked, hands trembling as I tried to open it.
"Not yours yet," Deacon said. He was pale and distant. "It is for Boden. Give it to him tonight; take him to the old walnut tree."
Boden and I met there, beneath the carved branch where someone long ago had scratched a name. Once, when we were children, someone had hacked letters into wood: "Ayla — Huai." I had laughed then. Now, I traced those cuts and learned the truth.
"Deacon got it," Boden said, breathless. "He stole it from where they hide things."
"Who?" I asked.
"Benton Hofman?" I said that wrong, and we both laughed, and he corrected, "Vernon Hofmann. That Vermon — he's not content with money. He wants what our houses own."
We had never seen the full face of the politics. We were children hiding behind skirts and shields. We did not know that Vernon would plant the last seed that would kill our father on paper.
That night, the treason charges were used like knives. Conrad was taken to the prison. Corinne's wedding finery was ripped away and replaced with a plain robe. They told Corinne she could be spared only if she went to the palace as the prince's chosen. She went. The throne's hand weighed heavy on us. Boden and I were set free, but only because the prince's anger and the court's spectacle required some faces to remain.
"Who did this?" I asked Deacon quietly in the kitchen, the fire making his eyes dark.
"The hand that benefits," he said. "Vernon Hofmann does not like those who stand in his light."
"Then we must show his face," I said in a childish way that surprised me. "Bring him to the light."
Deacon looked at me like I'd spoken an impossible thing. "You would make a public accusation? That could kill us."
"I would rather die trying than sit and watch my father dragged in a chair," I said.
He reached out, and for once the smile was honest. "You are ridiculous," he said, and then, softer: "All right. We'll do something. Quietly."
We moved like torches in the dark. Deacon found old friends with debts and sharp tongues. Boden found a courier who had been bought by Vernon and freed him with a bribe. Corinne—who had gone into the palace—worked her delicate plans, and in the gaps she left messages like crumbs. The world was fuller of hungry eyes than we guessed.
But the worst man of all was Clyde Floyd.
"That man," Deacon hissed once, "has hands that belong on other people's things."
He told me of a night at the lantern festival. A nobleman in silk had tried to take advantage of a girl in the crowd. "A girl who had had the misfortune to look pretty," he said. "He was drunk on money and thought words were for taking; she was in danger. Boden came. I came. We all did our small thing."
"The nobleman's name?" I asked.
"Clyde Floyd."
I felt my hands grow cold. I did not remember it. But Deacon's face said everything.
"He took advantage of girls before," he told me. "He thought himself untouchable. He thinks the world is a platter. I promised — I promised I would not let him touch ours."
Promises are curious things. They are both anchors and swords. Deacon's promise pulled him deep into the dark places of this city: alleys, guest houses, rooms that smelled of wine and secrets.
It was Deacon who found the letter that would break Vernon and Clyde — a scrawled note of plans, a ledger of payments, and a list of girls Clyde had crossed like a breeze. Deacon came home with it, breath coming quick as a hawk. He laid it on the table between us like a ransom note.
"This will do," he said. "If the right eyes see it, the right ears will ring."
We set a trap. Corinne let the prince's ear bend toward the matter: she whispered of "proof," of letters smuggled in butter bowls. Boden leaked just enough rage to invite the right men who owed him. I sewed fragrant sachets and hid the letters inside, passing them to the housekeepers who would slip them under the palace dishes.
If there was a single spark in this plan, it was Deacon. He moved without witnesses, with hands that never shook, carrying secrets between our hearts and the court's throat.
When the letter was finally plucked in the prince's presence, the court paused like a body drawing breath. Vernon Hofmann stood flushed, a smile fixed, but his hands had fingers that trembled.
"Who wrote this?" he demanded.
"Men with names," Boden said, his voice steady as he walked into the hall.
Vernon laughed like a man who believed laughter could slice a sword. "You call me liar in my own house?"
We had more than words. We had men who had seen Vernon pass coin. We had people Clyde had threatened like flaps. The prince read and frowned. He sent for Vernon, and when Vernon came to the dais, the room smelled of the things men whisper in corridors: The prince's favor, the judge's coin, the smell of a thunderstorm.
"You have accused a man of treason unjustly," a voice said then. It was Vernon speaking, but his voice was false as a painted face. "Watch this. I will not be undone by broom-carriers."
He had never thought of public humiliation as a weapon against him. He had trades and dues — but not shame. He had not known how quickly faces can change when the audience is the court.
"On what grounds did you have Conrad arrested?" Corinne asked, stepping forward in a gown she had changed into for the audience. She smiled, a bright and dangerous thing. "On forged letters and trickery?"
The court leaned in. Felipe Stevens frowned, his brow becoming a cliff. "Bring evidence," he said.
That is when we began to peel the bark from the liar's tree. We presented witnesses who had been paid to forge signatures. We showed stamps that matched Vernon's seals. We produced the ledger that showed Clyde's bribes and Vernon's hand in moving papers.
Vernon first showed rage. "This is slander!" he barked.
"Then answer," Boden said plainly, "why were these payments made?"
"I paid for favors," Vernon said. "Business favors."
"To falsify a treason so you might take the chancellor's place?" Corinne's voice was like a blade in the hall. "Is that business?"
Faces shifted. People leaned from the walls and whispered. Some clutched fans, some wrung hands. "Is this true?" a noblewoman asked.
Clyde Floyd's name came up next. A girl in the palace had recognized his scent from before. A dozen small people — servants, merchants, and one bold soldier — spoke of a night he had harassed a girl at the lantern festival. A woman in the gallery pointed at a cloth where he had thrown her shawl. It was the smell of money and power, and people had tolerated him because he had coin.
Then Corinne did something she had been planning: she arranged a public testimony. She invited the city market to the court — merchants, beggars, street performers, boys who sold sweets, anyone who had seen Vernon hand off a coin or Clyde pull a sleeve. The court balked and the prince agreed, for now the case had ripened like fruit.
The market filled the courtyard. Horses stamped. People chattered. There was a breeze that rolled like a rumor. I stood by the rail and felt like sea glass on a beach, small and shining.
When the first witness — a courier who had once carried Vernon's letters — stepped forward, he trembled. "He paid me to change the seal," he said, eyes on Vernon. "He threatened my family."
Vernon sneered. "Lies. This man is a drunkard."
"Then show where you bought him," the courier said, and named a tavern. "You left a coin with a dot, like this."
A merchant came. "And why did you bribe my clerk to change the date?" he asked.
Vernon tried to compose his mask. "I did not bribe. I paid for services."
"Services that sent men to rot," Boden said.
"Orders," Vernon spat. "Orders from men above you."
"Those orders came when you paid for them," Corinne said.
The crowd grew loud. Small people spat and clapped. A girl in the second row shouted, "Shame!" and many echoed.
Then the woman who had once been touched by Clyde walked to the center. Her dress was plain. Her hands shook. She looked at Clyde straight in the face and said, "You touched me at the lantern fair."
"You are a liar," he hissed.
"Other men saw. I hid my face. You used your position. You thought no one would name you."
Clyde's face changed first into arrogance and then a look I will never forget: the look of a man whose map has been burned. "You would ruin me," he said.
"Do it," the woman said. "Tell everyone."
She told the story. She spoke of the silk, the hand, the force. People cried out. A baker near me dropped his tray and held his hands over his mouth. It was a shame scene the city had never seen: small people telling the truth and the great man in the middle like a punchable balloon.
Vernon's mouth moved. He began with denial and moved to fury, then to coughing pleas, then to a brittle, silent collapse.
The punishment I had imagined in secret — the one where the villain's face is unmasked before everyone — arrived.
The prince had the men stripped of honors. Vernon was publicly humiliated: his seals were removed and his ring broken. They made him stand in the market square on a platform, robes removed, hair loosened, and read aloud the names of those he had harmed. People spat. Children threw rotten fruit. Vernon tried to smile. He could not. He begged for pardon, then tried to spin a tale about "orders" and "necessary measures."
"This is all a plot!" he cried at one point.
"Then tell us who ordered you!" Corinne snapped.
He faltered and then, because human nature is cruel, sought to sell himself yet again. He tried to blame those higher — but men above did not stand in the market that day. Only faces of merchants, soldiers, and servants did.
"Shame," a voice called, and a dozen hands slapped together.
Vernon's reaction climbed through stages, like a man falling down invisible stairs: smug, furious, frantic, dishonored. He tried to get the prince to intervene; Felipe stood aside. He tried to buy mercy; the coins fell from Vernon's hands and were not touched by anyone. A messenger read the ledger entries; they matched faces in the crowd. He twisted and pleaded and finally his voice broke.
Around him, the crowd's mood shifted from curiosity to vindictiveness. Some cried for legal justice. Some wanted worse. An old woman in the back lifted a broom and swept dust at him, and others laughed. A young scholar read his misdeeds aloud, making a mockery of the lies Vernon had woven. People took out small mirrors and held them up to Vernon's face, like a tiny execution of reputation.
Clyde's punishment was different. He was paraded to the same platform later that day, but instead of a slow humiliation, he was given a chance to confess. Corinne offered the woman who had accused him the right to name his fate under palace law. The woman looked at Clyde and chose public shaming and loss of title: his seals were burned, his silk cut, and the people who had tolerated him were encouraged to spit at him as they wished. He was forced to stand under a bell in the market that rang every hour — a sound to remind people of his shame. Farmers who had once greeted him politely spat on his boots; a group of women knitted his name into a banner and hung it from a pole for everyone to see.
Clyde's reaction had stages too: first denial and anger. Then he tried to laugh it off, but the sound broke and left him hollow. He pleaded to the prince to show mercy. When Felipe only shook his head, the man's composure crumbled into wet, ugly begging. He tried to bribe a merchant, who turned him away. He shouted, then begged. The crowd moved like an ocean; some hissed, some took out sharp words, some photographed him in their own crude way with memory.
By the time the sun set, both men had been changed. Vernon sat, head bowed, and the marketplace had a new smell: triumph mixed with the raw edge of justice being served with neither law nor torture but with social currency. Clyde had been stripped of everything that made him think himself above people; he had been made small and ridiculous and unable to find the favors that had helped him skirt consequences.
I watched both men and felt an ugly pleasure, and then shame. I had wanted my father free. I had wanted ruin for Vernon. But I also knew that seeing destruction is a bloody thing to witness.
"Do you feel better?" Boden asked me later, when the crowd had broken and the moon was up.
I had his hand. "Not entirely," I said. "It is not a feast; it is a loss and a lesson."
Deacon, who had been at my side the whole time, rested his forehead against mine. "We did good," he said.
"You did it all," I insisted.
"All of us," he corrected. "Even you."
We saved my father. Conrad Bowman was released when new evidence — the ledger and witnesses — proved he had not ordered treason. The prince's anger cooled into a brooding, exact kind of justice. Vernon Hofmann was exiled from the capital and stripped of his honors. Clyde Floyd was publicly shamed and his titles revoked. People talked, and reputations rotted.
In the quiet after, when Corinne left for the palace and the wedding bells replaced the court's cries, some things changed in the small world I lived in.
Deacon stopped calling me "small miss" as a joke. He began to call me by my name sometimes, when we were alone. "Ayla," he'd say, and if I looked up, his eyes would be steady as a spear.
Boden prepared to leave for the border. "I will come back," he promised at the gate. He pressed a small jade coin into my palm. "Wear this," he said. "It is my life until I return."
"I will wear it every day," I promised. "And I will bake you the worst luck if you don't."
He laughed and kissed my forehead, the way only Boden could, like a boy and a soldier both.
Then Deacon and I faced what we had kept from each other all these months.
"Why did you not go after Corinne's happiness?" I asked one evening, tired and sweet from the kitchen's steam.
He looked at me, his face thin in the light. "I thought I was protecting her by protecting what made her survive," he said. "But she had her own arrows. She does not need me to cut them."
"You lied," I snapped. "You said you liked her."
"I did like her," he said. "In the way a man likes the sun on a cold day. I thought her light could warm the whole house. But you—"
He stopped. He reached for my wrist and brushed the jade bracelet. "You are softer. You are a thing I do not deserve."
"Then take your hands away," I said.
He laughed softly and then, in the middle of that laugh, he kissed me. It was both clumsy and precise, like a blade finding a seam in cloth and opening it. I felt something in myself open.
We married quietly. Corinne shone in the palace. Boden rode to the border with tears in his eyes and a grin on his mouth. Conrad came back to the house, older and quieter, but alive. Vernon went into exile and learned what it meant to be without favors. Clyde lived in a small house and learned what it meant to answer for his hands.
Deacon was not a prince. He did not learn to sit in silk. He learned to make me laugh and to fight for small things like a good crust on a tart. He stayed on the wall at night and watched for trouble. He watched the carved letters on the old tree and sometimes traced them with his fingers.
One winter, under thick snow, I surprised him on the old walnut branch. He had been practicing his sword on a wind that smelled like cold and dirt and something sweet. He put down the weapon and smiled.
"Do you remember the first time I called you small miss?" he asked.
I nodded.
"I meant every bit," he said.
I rolled my eyes. "You did?"
He took my hand, rough and kind. "You were small in the best ways. You still are. But I like that. I like you, Ayla. I will guard you until the end of wind."
I looked at him, at the man who had called me ugly when I cried and then laughed with me in the snow. "Then guard me from anything," I said.
He laughed and kissed my palm. "I will," he promised.
On the carved branch where once someone had cut the letters "Ayla — Huai," the word "Huai" had been smoothed over, but the mark remained. Deacon put his palm over the old carving and whispered, "You were always mine."
That is not the end. We had more trouble after — wars at the border, gossip from the palace, a child who took my sugar bowl and hid it in a nest of blankets until I thought the world had turned cruel. But the worst bad men had been pared down. The worst lies had been shown in the sun.
When I open a drawer now, I find the small jade bracelet Boden gave me. I smell the sachet where I once hid the ledger. I sometimes catch Deacon talking to the tree in the dusk, as if it were an old friend.
"Did you see him today?" he will ask the branch.
"No," I will say, and he will grin. "Then why talk to it?"
"Because it remembers," he says, stern and soft.
And sometimes, when the wind is right, I can hear the faint sound of the market bell that once rang over Clyde Floyd's shame. It is a sound that means the city learned to give its own justice, however imperfect.
"Want some cake?" I ask him. "I made your favorite, spite-sweet."
He takes my hand and squeezes. "Always," he answers, and I know he means it.
The End
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