Revenge14 min read
He Forgot Me, So I Played Along
ButterPicks13 views
I never thought being forgotten could feel like a second life.
"You said the warlord is back?" Katelynn burst into the courtyard, her cheeks pink and her eyes wide.
"Again?" Finley yawned, ruffling the tiles with her fan. "Does it matter?"
"Yes! It matters a lot," Katelynn said. "He didn't come alone."
"He didn't?" Heather's chopsticks froze mid-air.
"No way," Cecilia whispered, as if the very word might summon him.
I put down my cup, looked at the three of them, and let the corner of my mouth lift into a lazy smile. "If the warlord came back, why should we change our mahjong game?"
"You never cared," Finley said, but her voice trembled a little.
Katelynn planted herself like a sentinel. "Anna, you should be ready. They say he brought a woman."
"A woman?" I felt my fingers go cold around the porcelain cup. "A woman?"
"Yes," Katelynn breathed. "A noble woman. She looks like the old stories."
"Like the moon princess?" Heather scoffed. "That's impossible. He doesn't play with live women."
Ryder Richter had always been something of an odd legend at our house. A warlord younger than many generals, called a king in the field for how he moved and conquered, he was also a figure between rumor and rumor. The court said he loved a dead girl from another time and so never truly loved any of the women in his house. I was his legal wife in name only. I, Anna Bauer, had learned to treat that as a blessing.
"Come on," I said. "Let's see the show."
We went to the hall because curiosity is a loud thing. I thought I would see another brief parade and a false scene, then go back to my quiet life of counting coins and practicing calligraphy.
"Anna!" A strong hand caught me before I reached the doorway.
I looked up and found myself lifted, scooped, heart in my throat. My skirts fluttered. I felt strange and ridiculous—my arms hugged thin air; the world tilted.
"Ryder—" I began.
"Anna," he said into my ear, and his voice trembled like a flag in a wind I could not name. "I thought I'd never see you again."
I spat a laugh into his armor. "You lost your way to the road, messenger boy?"
His hold tightened. He did not let me go.
"You're heavy," I managed, more surprised than angry.
Ryder turned his head. A woman in white stood at the entrance, raw as a wound. Her face was pale and perfect like carved bone, her eyes full of a wild grief. My mind knew the old stories. My body did not care.
"Is that her?" Finley mouthed.
"Who?" I asked.
"Genevieve?" Heather whispered, and the name sounded like a bell.
"She's supposed to be dead," Cecilia breathed.
Ryder set me down with surprising gentleness and did not answer. He said something else under his breath, soft enough that only I heard it. "Stay with me."
I bit his ear in shock.
"Ow!" he said, and actually seemed startled. Then he laughed, quick and bright. "My wife bites."
My teeth had found a strange courage. I pushed back.
"Let go," I said. "This is public decorum. What pretense is this, Ryder?"
Ryder glanced at the woman in white. "She is the lost moon princess," he said like someone reading a script, and then his gaze fell on me, strangely unmoving, and he added, "And you, Anna, have always been my wife."
I felt the world tilt again, but this time the tilt was not from being lifted. It was from understanding a new play.
"Ryder, don't be ridiculous," I said loud enough for the four small women around me to hear. "We were never close. You slept in your study the whole wedding night."
Ryder's eyes darkened, and for a heartbeat, I thought he'd return to the solid man I had known—blunt, distant, and a swordsman by habit. Instead, he reached and lifted my face with careful fingers, as if discovering me for the first time.
"You and I are bound by vows," he said. "If you give me this night, I will keep you warm."
I laughed then and spat. "Is this a jest?"
He was serious. So serious he seemed to forget the script we all knew. Something had come unstitched in him. Ryder claimed a fall from a horse and a blow to the head. He said memories slipped like water through his fingers, but he trusted a woman named Denver who had claimed him like a sister. Denver Yamada—introduced to me as a loyal deputy, a friend from his command. I had for years called her a sister in game and cards and had believed it. But the new worry came when Denver said she had made a book of memories for him in the dark night of the campaign, a book that told of me and him as children, inseparable and married by fate.
"She rewrote his past," I hissed later to the three concubines in my sleeping room, the one I decided to keep. "She told him I was his true love."
"Wasn't that what you wanted?" Finley asked, looking at me with honest greed.
"Yes and no," I said. "I want to be free, but I do not want my freedom stolen by pretending to be beloved."
"We can use this," Heather said. "Let him believe. Let him give you a place. Then you ask for a divorce and leave. Come on, Anna, you built your life on getting out."
I thought of the plan I'd made since the first day I had married into the house: gather wealth, mind my own, wait for the right document—a divorce—and leave to enjoy a long quiet life. To my frustrated surprise, fate had different measurements. I had been a character in a story I knew well. I had read how the original wife lost everything because she made enemies and got cast aside. I intended to avoid those traps, yet here I stood, a willing actress in someone else's game.
That night, Ryder's attention turned to me in ways that made my stomach flutter, for all the wrong reasons. He tucked me in like a sister, like a wife, like a lover, and later pressed the touch of a general who had never learned gentleness.
"Anna," he said when he thought I slept, "I want a child."
"A child?" I sat up, adrenaline bright as fire. "Ryder, what are you—"
"You are my wife," he said. "We deserve a son."
I could have screamed. I had not planned to be trapped this way. Yet his earnestness struck something soft in me. He had, in his fog, chosen me. That was a power I did not expect.
The next morning, I packed light. I would not let the night be used as proof. I would go to my parents, sign a divorce, ride back with my chest still mine.
"Where are you going?" Ryder asked, as if the word 'divorce' was an odd, unknown coin.
"Home," I said. "To sign things off."
"Fine," he said blandly. "Go then. But my manhood returns today with arrows and drums." He smiled, a small dangerous smile. "And if you come back and do not warm my bed, I will be offended."
I left with a swagger that masked a pulse that stuttered.
At my father's house, Anna Bauer of the tall house of Bauer, only married in name, was treated with a tenderness that made me dizzy. My parents fussed, fed me, pressed herbal soups into my hand. They declared that I had been mistreated. My mother announced that she would not allow their daughter to be used.
"You return to that warlord?" my father demanded, in a voice like a door slamming. "We will not be shackles for a fool's game."
"Let them call for a divorce," I said blandly. "I will sign the papers. Walk away, end the chapter, retire to a quiet life."
Soon the court had other ideas. Genevieve Bergmann—the woman in white—was acclaimed in the palace as the lost moon princess returned. The court rejoiced. The empress arranged an audience and placed Genevieve where a princess should sit. I sat opposite, watching the actors rehearse a scene for our whole country.
"You look pale," a lady said beside me.
"Because I am," I said. "Because I will not be a pawn."
Ryder sat near her and spoke to the emperor with the easy grace of a man who had been the nation's shield for years. I watched him and felt both pride and a spike of sharp bitter anger.
At the banquet, a servant spilled a bowl and everyone murmured. In the hush, I stood to leave.
"Anna," Ryder said softly and followed. He caught my arm. "Where are you going? Don't run."
"I am going to sign a divorce," I said.
"And then?"
"Then I'll be free."
"Will you be happy?" he asked.
"Probably," I said. "Happier without you."
Ryder laughed, not cruel but like a man surprised at his own luck. "You cannot run from who you are."
Outside the palace, voices rose. "They are announcing his promotion!" a guard whispered.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Ryder is to be made the emperor's right-hand," Katelynn had said earlier. "He will be made a prince in court terms. The moon princess's return would secure their alliance."
The talking became real trouble. In the midst of that, I heard a rumor, like the whisper of a blade: "She is a spy."
"A spy?" I looked at Genevieve and felt something curl cold in my gut.
"You must be tired of all these dramas," Denver said when she visited my parents. Her face was thin as paper. "But there is no time for rest. We have to play along. We must probe. You will help us find out who she is."
"Denver." I had trusted her for years. She had been my card partner in the quiet nights. "What did you do?"
"I did what had to be done," she said. "He must remember who he should. I only gave him the memories that mattered. I gave him a place to anchor to."
"You lied."
"For his good," she said. "For the realm's good."
I didn't know then if she meant the realm or herself.
War came, as it always does to those who swing great swords. The enemy marched and Ryder drew his banners. He left with a thousand prayers in his wake, and I stayed behind with a secret in my belly. Months later, he returned triumphant, legs still bruised by campaigns, eyes dark with a hundred battles. The streets were ablaze with lanterns. The city sang for him.
"Anna," he said as he re-entered the house, "I have something to tell you."
His eyes were steady like a man who always knew where he was. "You are with child."
I laughed and then choked. "No."
"Your belly says otherwise," he whispered, finally letting a real smile happen.
Rumors reached me in the middle of the night—about the woman in white's origins, about troops at the gate. I did not want to believe it. Then came the day of capture. The woman who had called herself princess, who had once drawn my name into her plans, was dragged to the execution place.
"Look," a soldier said. "They have her."
We were escorted to the public square. The city smelled of iron and dust. People packed close, a great sea of faces. "Let her be unmasked," someone snarled.
The stage was built, a crude wooden thing with a high scaffold. The crowd hummed like a wasp nest. I had not wanted to see a head fall. Yet I found myself stepping forward because the kingdom demanded proof and my life demanded truth.
Genevieve's wrists were bound with new ropes. Her dress was still fine, the white sullied but proud.
"Would you speak?" the senior officer asked, his voice booming like a bell. "State your true name."
"I am the moon's shadow," she said with a quiver that tried to pass for dignity. "I am—"
"Say it," the soldier demanded.
"I am not who you think," she whispered, and in that whisper there was a woman remembering a life staged for her. "I am Genevieve Bergmann."
A ripple moved through the crowd.
"Is she guilty?" someone asked nearby.
"She killed the real princess?" another voice insisted.
Ryder stood among the officials, his face unreadable as stone. He had been given the task of execution. He had done the battlefield's hardest thing: to command men and cut through the fog. Now he had been given the duty of separating lies from life.
"You staged a fake return to unsettle the court?" the officer asked.
Genevieve laughed once, bitter as bile. "They gave me a face and a plot. I played the part. When the real war came—" She choked on the next words. "I did what I was given."
Her gaze found mine and for the first time in the whole strange season she looked like a human being. "I did it for family. For my father's promises."
"Shame," someone called.
She closed her eyes. "I thought it would end with a crown. I did not expect a blade."
"Do you have final words?" the officer asked.
Genevieve's head lifted with a sudden bravery that made people gasp. "Tell Ryder to remember the woman who loved him even when he could not."
He flinched. Her words stabbed him. A tremor ran through him.
The executioner raised the axe. The blade was heavy and bright. The crowd leaned forward. There should have been screams. There was mostly silence.
When the blade fell, the sound it made was absolute. People roared. Some prayed. Some clicked their tongues in satisfaction.
I felt nothing at first. Then the world shifted into color. I thought of all the times I'd planned a peaceful life, all the ways I'd built an exit. Now the city had chosen differently. A head lay still and the world kept turning.
The sentence was correct, and yet my heart was a rag. The crowd turned, some toward me with look of heroic triumph. Others with pity.
"Good riddance," someone muttered.
But I could not say they were wrong. She had been a spy. She had come with a plan that might have undone our defenses. She had let my name stand as a ladder in her design. The public spectacle satisfied a hunger in many hearts.
Yet justice is not the same as healing.
The aftermath was complicated. There were those in the city who spoke of me as a fortunate woman, carried along by events. Others whispered of manipulation, that I had played my part and not relinquished the script. Denver Yamada came to me one evening with a face like a blade.
"You played well," she said. "The war is over, Ryder's house stands larger. But people will question how you got him to stay."
"I did not keep him," I said. "I helped him remember what he had earned. If he loves me now, he does so by his choice."
Denver's eyes flashed with something I could not name. "Then keep him."
"Keep him?" I laughed. "I think you mean 'use him.'"
She took a step back, as though struck. "You are cold."
"I am practical," I said. "I don't want to be the wife of a hero as an ornament. I want my life."
She smiled, and that made the room colder. "You say that now. But you carry a secret."
"Do not speak like a spy who warns," I said. "Denver, you made him remember by lying to him. You gave him a false history so he would love the woman you wrote about. You used me as a prop in your book. You took advantage."
Her face hardened into a mask. "I did what I believed necessary for the realm."
It was time then. I had watched how men lost their honor to clever women. I had watched how clever women got more than they bargained for. I had learned the old story where the wife left destitute. I would not be that woman. I would not walk away with nothing.
So I decided to use their rules against them. I would be the wife in the story and the author of my exit. I began to ask.
"Ryder," I said one night, catching him in a moment of quiet, "I will not stay if you treat me like a treasure that can be placed. I will stay if you mean it."
He took my hands in his great palms. "I mean it," he said simply.
"You must mean it when the world is not looking," I insisted. "You mean it when you are nothing but tired and muddy and old."
He laughed, low and wondrous. "Then I will be tired for you."
Months passed and I learned to watch how power behaves. I watched how the court cheered, how the clever smiled and how the poor whispered. I kept my savings, pressed the key to our house safe into an inner seam, and took small, honest pleasures.
Then there was the final reckoning for Denver.
She had done more than rewrite a book. She had arranged testimonies, coached soldiers, and orchestrated the slow folding of Ryder's memory into a story that put her at the center. She had made me a character who could be played and discarded at a moment's sweet breath.
I could have left. I could have taken my money and walked away into a quiet life. But there is a certain sweetness in justice when it is done in the light.
I arranged for a council. The emperor was present, along with the ministers. Ryder sat stiff and commanding. I walked into the room and asked to speak.
"Speak," the chancellor said.
I bowed. "My lord, ministers, Ryder, I will be brief."
Denver had been promoted and honored for her work; her friends sat in the council with smug posture. I did not pull a sword or shout. I used the law, the court's appetite for evidence, and the one thing every conspirator fears: witnesses.
"You lied to your commander," I said. "You forged memories and wrote stories that changed a man's mind."
The chancellor leaned forward. "We must be careful, Anna."
"Yes," I said. "We must be careful with the truth."
I produced the book Denver had made for Ryder. It had her handwriting, her lies, the gentle polishing she had applied to my life. The chancellor took it with slow fingers. "How did you get this?"
"I read it for him," I said. "Because I wanted him to remember, yes, but when I saw it, I saw the lies beneath. I wrote the true passages beside the false ones. I collected testimonies."
The ministers murmured. Denver's face paled.
"Why bring this now?" she demanded. "You were always a schemer."
"Because if a woman can rewrite a general's memory to make a nation favor a traitor, then no man is safe from the pen. Because you used me."
The witnesses were called—soldiers who had seen the subtle changes in reports, servants who had overheard conversations, and a scribe who had preserved a false ledger. Each voice when measured was a small hammer.
The council decided on a public hearing. The punishment had to be public. Nothing private would satisfy the need for clear lines to be drawn. Denver had been cunning enough to move in the soft places; she must be exposed in the brightest daylight.
When the day came, the square filled. The line between curiosity and justice was thin but palpable. Denver stood at the center upon a low platform, the book beside her like an accuser.
"Speak," the magistrate said.
She began with a voice that tried to be proud. "I acted for the realm," she began. "I thought—"
"You thought for yourself," I said. "You thought of power."
The crowd's murmur turned into a roar.
"Tell them," a woman near shouted. "Tell them what you did."
Denver's face went through a shift—pride, then shock, then denial. "No," she said. "I did what was necessary."
"You rewrote a man's history," I said. "You put words in his mouth to make him love you and to make him loyal to your story. You made me—Anna Bauer—a character for your benefit."
She tilted her head as if listening for applause. "You were part of it."
"I was never your puppet," I said.
Her defenses cracked. "I gave him comfort," she said, faltering. "He needed a story."
"Did he?" I asked. "Or did you need a place?"
The crowd watched her now like a beast at a den. I had not intended cruelty, yet cruelty crept in gentle as a tax. She had been smart, and smart people sometimes fall hardest.
She did not beg at first. She searched for allies. A few faces in the crowd shifted away. The ministers murmured. The emperor's consort had a flat expression.
"Therefore," the magistrate said, "her punishment will be public and varied."
She told them what would happen. Denver would be stripped of rank, her honors torn from her robe before the gathered city. She would be paraded through the market at noon with her book held above her head. She would be shamed by the singing of the minstrel, and she would not be allowed the comforts of her previous station. For a year she would not be permitted audience with the emperor; for three years she would be restricted from court. She would be forced to kneel before those she had used and ask for forgiveness. Her name would be noted in the roll so that no prefect might hire her in secret again.
Denver's face took a color that was not natural to her. "You will not do this," she said, voice trembling.
"It is decreed," the magistrate said.
"Wait," she whispered, and for the first time a hint of panic touched her. "I only did what I thought was right. Ryder is a hero. He deserves—"
"To be someone who chooses his love," I said quietly. "He deserved truth."
She tried to stand tall. She tried to say she had saved the realm. The crowd hissed.
"Now," I said, "kneel."
She did not kneel gracefully. She sank like a stone. Her hands trembled. The crowd leaned in. I felt the weight of what I had done, and also the sense that the small, necessary justice had been done.
Her reaction was a map of change.
First she was angry, then stunned, then denial, and finally, the slow cracking of a person discovering that the world did not owe her a story. She begged the ministers for mercy.
"Please," she said. "I can serve in quiet. I can..." Her sentences fell apart.
The city watched and recorded it all. People surged like the tide, some clapping, some taking coins. Women gathered to whisper of power and the dangerous games of wit. Men looked away.
Denver's final humiliation was to be made to stand at the fountain in the market the next day while the minstrels sang a mocking tune and children threw bits of bread. The book was bound to her as a sign of the lies it had sired. Men spat. Women hissed. I stood at a distance and watched the cruel justice happen. It was not a clean victory; it was necessary.
When it was over, Denver was gone from the court. She lived to tell stories at inns, but no lord took her in. She wrote letters to ministers in the dust of courtyards and received none in return. Her fall was a warning.
As for Genevieve, the public execution had been more absolute. The crowd had fed itself on the drama of her death. The head rolled. People cheered. The empire slept easier in some ways. For me, the world was quieter and gray.
Ryder came home after both punishments happened. He took my hands in his large palm and looked at me directly as if reading a simple ledger.
"You were formidable," he said.
"I survive," I said.
"You are mine no longer by decree," he said. "But by choice."
I thought of how I had written my own departure and chosen to stay. "Then choose every day," I told him.
He nodded like a man who had pledged a new oath. The months after were small and warm. He learned to bring me tea when I woke, to ask about the peculiarities of public accounts, to sit in my garden and listen when I loved to talk about nothing. He kept certain promises with a clumsy diligence that made me laugh.
When the year of punishment ended for Denver, she returned to town as a ghost of herself. People avoided her path. She begged forgiveness in the old way of those who had no power left. I watched and felt little of triumph and more of the seriousness of it all. People who play with lives often pay a heavy price.
Our child was born in green light and new spring. Ryder stood and held the tiny warm thing like a man who had held too much war and now held a new sun.
"You are his," I said softly to the small weight in my arms.
"He is ours," Ryder said.
I looked at them both, and something like peace slid down into me, not because the world had been made fair, but because I had made my choices and made my home.
The End
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