Sweet Romance15 min read
I Bought My Freedom, Then Bought a Kingdom's Heart
ButterPicks13 views
I never planned to be anyone's tragedy.
"Gabriela, they're saying the general has returned," Jolie said, breathless, standing in the doorway of my little study while I moved beads on my gold abacus.
"He has what?" I clicked a bead and let it rest. The beads made the soft, comforting "clack" I had known since I was a child in my father's shop. "If it's Jaxon Box, what's he doing here? He left two years ago."
"He's home, and he brought... someone," she said. Her eyes were wide and a little guilty. "They're setting off fireworks in the front yard."
I smiled without humour. "Fireworks are loud. Money is quiet."
Jolie's face fell. "Miss, you really don't—"
"I do," I cut her off, slow and careful. "If he brings a concubine into his house, that's messy. If my stores are safe, that's fine. I'd rather stack coins than fight with people who don't know how to count."
"Still," she said, "they sent for you to dine with Lady Elaine."
"She always says women of the inner court should not meet strange men. I will wait in the Frost-Painting Suite, then."
It felt strange to be called "Mrs. Box" in the first place. My father, Lord Ellison, had given me a fortune in shops—silks, cosmetics, jewels, inns—so when I married Jaxon, people called it a good match. He had the title and the discipline of a soldier. I had gold and ledgers.
I counted coins so often that the weight of them in my pocket felt heavier than any husband's promise.
The wind stripped the plane trees in the courtyard until their leaves fell like old receipts. The Frost-Painting Suite smelled faintly of snow tea and lacquered wood. I put on a dress that said wealth without screaming it—cloud silk edged with fine embroidery. I locked my bracelets; jewellery was armour.
When I walked into the main courtyard, smiles turned thin. Lady Elaine gave me a smile that never touched her eyes.
"Gabriela, come greet your sister," she said, and there he was—Jaxon Box, war‑scarred, tall, with an arm around a girl whose cheeks were pale with strain and whose hair had been braided by hands that did not know fine oil. She looked fragile; she looked scared.
"This is—" Jaxon started, proud as a cock seeing sunrise. "This is Yelena Werner. She will be staying here."
"A soldier's patience goes well with the foolishness of bringing a stranger to the house," I said lightly.
Yelena's face crumpled. "Sister, please. I love Jaxon. He loves me. Don't blame us."
A dozen eyes turned to me like scales. "How could you?" someone hissed. "How can you be so cruel?"
I set down my tea. The steam curled from the cup, clean and sharp. "Jaxon, why bring her here?"
"She is with child," he said, voice low like thunder. "She is carrying our child. I will not hide this."
"Pregnant?" A soft murmur, like wind across coins. "How convenient."
"Mrs. Box," Lady Elaine intoned as if officiating at a market price, "she shall be taken as a concubine. It is only proper."
"You will make her a concubine because a belly shows? Lady Elaine, is my body a ledger?"
Jaxon looked at me as if I were a ship he had once sold. "If you are so eager to be difficult, maybe we should be done."
There was a silence like a closed shop. I placed my cup on the tray and felt the china go cold under my palm. "If that's what you want," I said, "then sign the papers. Take them to the magistrate and put my name down. I will not live under the same roof as a woman who was born on the road."
"Do you ask for a divorce now?" Jaxon asked, one eyebrow arched. There was a kind of triumphant cruelty about him, as if he had expected my shame and instead found my calm.
"Yes," I said plainly. "Let us divide property like good merchants. Let the accounts be clean."
He left that night like a man satisfied. The house returned to its old quiet; the servants hurried about with new nicknames carved into their routines.
I thought that would be the end of it.
"You're making a mistake," Jolie said later as we sat by the abacus. "Your silver will carry you comfortable for ten lives. Why press it further?"
"Because money is useless if it will someday hang off the arm of those who spat on me to get it," I said. "Besides—" I let myself smile. "I have better plans for land than for jackets."
So I bought fields. I gave Jolie a stack of bills ambidextrous in their shine and told her, "Take everything we can west of the city. If anyone asks, buy more."
"Miss," she breathed, eyes shining. "West hill? The almond orchards?"
"Yes. Almonds in spring, apricots in summer. Build an inn on the path, a proper road from the city up to the hill. We will let people pay for the view."
She smiled like a business partner about to pocket the first profit. "I like the sound of that."
Profit came quick for me because I knew names of spices and how to make tea taste like money. People with coin liked to spend it on things that felt rare. "Do it," I said. "Don't save for pity. Spend to make more."
Then the day came that tore the thin comfort of anonymity away.
"The emperor has demoted Jaxon," a man in the tearoom beside mine announced as if reciting the latest prices. "He favored the concubine and wasted the rewards. The court heard. He is a count now—no longer a marquis."
"Needed?" Another voice asked. "I heard she might be a spy from the border district."
"Impossible."
"Rumor says—"
I stopped listening. My chin lifted. If Jaxon had disgraced himself, his family would scramble. If the court suspected Yelena of dangerous loyalties, they would put her out like rotten fruit. If the emperor intervened... the house would tremble.
That evening Jaxon came with clenched hands, whispering threats. "It wasn't me," he insisted to Lady Elaine. "The prince targeted us; he is jealous."
"Enough," she snapped. "You're a broken ledger. If the emperor cuts you down, so be it."
"Gabriela," Jaxon said to me later, after everyone else had retreated, "I will fix this. You'll see. Stay."
"Stay for what? To be looked at like a curiosity? To be told I am lucky to share his roof?" I laughed. "No. I signed for my own name the day I paid my dowry. I will not pretend to be grateful for the crumbs you call honor."
He stared like a thirsty man at a locked well. "Then leave."
"I already have plans." I packed my things while he made a show of anger. I moved out quietly to my father's townhouse. I took my tailor-made beds, the trays, the abacus and my head full of accounts.
"You're leaving without filing for divorce?" Jolie asked as we loaded trunks.
"Why wait?" I said. "I will keep my name. I will keep my shops. I will put my gold where land grows, not where promises do."
And I did. I opened the Frost & Almond Inn at the foot of West Hill. I hired cooks who could make a fish taste like spring, chandlers who pressed linen like fortune, and a manager who could count his change while holding a sword.
Word traveled as coins do. Travelers tipped, mothers came to eat apricot jam, nobles came to admire the view. I sold small jars of candied apricots people carried like jewels. My ledgers grew thick with the same happy weight I'd always loved.
One spring morning, a man in a purple coat stood at my terrace looking down at the orchard. He had the posture of a man used to being obeyed but the face of someone curious rather than cruel.
"Gabriela Ellison," he said, nodding in a way that was polite and dangerous. "Your inn smells like money."
"My apricots smell like profit," I replied without turning. "Can I help you?"
He laughed, a sound like clean coins. "You can stop me from bargaining for a slice of pie."
Grayson Costa stayed longer than any guest should. He showed up at odd hours, always with a question—about soil, about transport, about why I used a certain glaze on my teacups. He sent a steward to ask, to observe, to measure. He would watch me in the market, pretending to read a paper, and when he left he would walk beside me as if the slope of the road needed companionship.
"Prince?" Jolie whispered one afternoon as he helped me tie a banner. "Is he—?"
"He's more than a guest," I said, smoothing fabric with hands that smelled of sugar and steam. "He is a collector of trouble and beauty."
He asked for nothing at first but time. We would talk until the lamps were turned down and only the moon made a ledger in the sky. He did not patronize me. He did not look at my past like a stain. Once, when a wind blew off the awning and rain fell on the pastry table, he shrugged off his cloak and used it to shelter the young apprentice.
"Why would you do that?" I asked, embarrassed at his care.
"Because you would have been soaked," he said simply. "Because your cakes would have drowned."
Tiny things can sweep a person. When he offered me his wall over a freezing night, when he laughed because I corrected his accounts, when he placed his coin on the tray and refused to take any change—those were small revolutions in my chest.
"Do you like this place?" he asked another night, sitting close enough that the heat from his coat warmed both our knees.
"I like what it earns," I said. "I like what it gives others. I like that I can sleep with the window open and not be asked permission."
He looked at me as if I had named a new constellation. "Gabriela," he said softly, "you are honest."
"Honesty is the best strategy when coins can be weighed," I said.
He smiled. The smile was quiet, unexpected—"I think," he said, and the world tilted careless and bright, "I think I would like to see you at the palace."
"At the palace?" I nearly choked on the syllables.
"If you would have me," he amended, dark eyes nearly daring me.
"I am a merchant," I said, and the words tasted like paper. "What would a prince want with a woman who counts profit and loss like prayers?"
He took my hand, small and warm. "Because you count not only coins but chances. Because you build markets where people can smile. Because your mind is not gilded. I like that."
There were three moments in the span of a week that felt like a secret fire.
The first was when, at the opening of my road to West Hill, he took a shovel and, laughing like a child, pretended to dig as if a prince could break ground rather than order it. He smiled at me, and he was the only one who smiled like that—open, silly, honest.
"You're ridiculous," I told him, but my cheeks burned.
The second was a rain-soaked afternoon when a courier came with a false decree that tried to seize my land for some nobleman's whim. Grayson stepped between the riders and me. He held back a lengthy speech and instead took the papers, read one line aloud, and then said, "The law is clear. This lady bought these fields in good faith." His voice had the force of thresholds opening. My knees forgot how to be steady.
"Why do you..." I began.
"Because you were wronged," he finished. "And you shouldn't be paid back in lies. Besides, who else will teach me how to price an apricot?"
The third was at the harvest festival, when he arrived in plain clothes and, ignoring the glare of courtiers, buried his face in a basket of apricots and then handed me one with juice on his fingers. "Try this," he said. "If it's good, I will say the thing I cannot say in the palace."
I took it. "It is very good."
He grinned, until everyone nearby blinked. "Then I will say it properly later."
He kept his word.
Meanwhile Jaxon convalesced in shame. The court's disfavor had left him hungry for respect. He sold small things, pawned armor, tried to keep his title with borrowed smiles. I watched him in the market once, haggling like a pauper while his coat frayed at the collar. His mother, Lady Elaine—cold, proud—still cared for rank more than children. She sneered at my success but had no funds.
"You're doing well," she spat when she visited the inn one day. "But tell me, what do you want with more land?"
"To plant roots," I said. "To make something that will not be carried away with a general's redeployment."
"Your father's money bought you that," she said. "A woman cannot build reputation."
I poured her tea. "A woman can buy it, plant it, and sell it back with interest."
She left with a face like thunder. Jaxon watched the door close as if the sound had cut something inside him.
Then the night came when the banquet was set in the city square for the Lord of Ceremonies to hand honors. I was there to deliver a gift: one painting on behalf of the merchants. The crowd was dense and whispers came like ghosts.
At the head table, Jaxon—still on uneven ground—sat with a group of nobles who pretended not to recall his downfall. Beside him, Yelena walked like a woman who had never learned silk. She smiled publicly, and that smile made my spine ache.
"Look," someone beside me whispered. "He dares to sit like a man who has a new favor."
The Master of Protocol stood to read the imperial writ. It was a day of small cruelties—the kind that coat your throat like sugar until it turns to glass.
"By imperial will," the Master said, voice rolled like drum-skins, "any house in the city suspected of harboring agents of the bordering state shall be investigated."
Then a new voice. A voice I'd heard before—Grayson.
"I have with me evidence," he said. "Proof that one of those in attendance conspired to hide a foreign agent in the house of Colonel Jaxon Box."
The room went silent enough to hear spoons shift against plates. I felt the air change. All eyes turned to Jaxon. His face drained color like cloth left in the sun.
"What proof?" he demanded.
Grayson laid a single folded letter on the table as if he were laying a price. The seal belonged to the border district. The script was clumsy, the ink smeared with rain. But the signatures were there—on orders to ferry messages south, and the signature of a woman who had lived under Jaxon's roof.
Yelena's face twisted. "This is—"
"An accusation," Grayson said. His fingers rested on the paper like a judge with a scale. "The crown asks for answers."
"That's impossible," Jaxon stammered. "She's mine. She's the mother of my child."
"Which child, Lord Box? The one you claimed in the night?" The Master of Protocol's eyes were like a blade. "If you can prove her innocence and loyalty to the crown, the matter will rest. If not—"
At that moment the square filled with murmurs. Several of the emperor's watchmen rose and approached. Hands reached for Yelena's sleeves. She started to cry, a thin, helpless sound.
"How could you?" I said out loud before I remembered myself. The words came from somewhere raw.
"Gabriela," Lady Elaine hissed. "You make a scene."
"I tell the truth," I said. "If she is innocent, let the law decide. If she is not—"
"Be quiet," Jaxon said.
The watchmen opened Yelena's bundle. Papers, letters, and a ledger of payments spilled out. Judging by the stamping on the paper, those letters were not only to a foreign handler but to officials who took bribes. The crowd surged closer, faces hungry like market days.
"She was carrying funds," an officer said. "This ledger shows transfers to out-of-state agents. Under the law, that is treachery."
Yelena's face crumpled. "No—no—"
"Then why do these names match your signature?" Grayson asked gently, but there was a hardness to his voice that felt like iron.
The Master of Protocol looked toward Jaxon. "Lord Box, did you know?"
He turned paler; sweat gathered at his temples. "I— I told her to be careful. I thought she would be loyal to me."
"Loyal? To you?" someone laughed bitterly. "She used you as a shelter."
The crown watchers did not wait for the long, polite process. They put a red ribbon on the ledger as evidence, and in that instant the entire square changed. Jaxon crumpled in stages: first indignation, then shock, then denial like someone trying to hold water in his clenched hands.
"You cannot—" he began, throat raw.
"Step forward," Grayson said. "Tell the court what you knew."
"I knew nothing!" Jaxon barked. His voice broke. He tried to stand tall, but the crowd's eyes were heavy as verdicts.
"You lived with a foreign agent," the Master pronounced. "You took her as your concubine. You neglected your duty."
The murmurs turned to proper anger. People who had once spoken kindly about his campaigns now spat words like coins tossed away. "Traitor," someone yelled. "You sold us out."
Yelena, held by two officers, sobbed and then went blank. She crumpled as if a wind had taken her. Jaxon staggered, the world tilting.
"Please!" he cried suddenly, voice thin with panic. "She loved me! She loved my child! She didn't—"
"Save your pleas for those who govern," the Master said, voice flat. "This tribunal will consider evidence. For now, your house is sealed, and you will be confined."
The public notary moved in to mark the verdict. Paper rustled like a curtain falling. The crowd, a living ledger of opinion, started to clap. At first it sounded shocked, then louder—an ugly, triumphant sound. Phones—people's hands that recorded everything—lifted like banners. They photographed the fallen man. The market's glares felt like long-term debts called in.
I stood with my hands clenched, but my heart did not leap with vengeance. I felt hollow, as if the last of a weight I had been carrying had been set down. He flailed in a new way—first with rage, then with a terrible seeking. His eyes found his mother.
"Mother! Mother, tell them! She is not—"
Lady Elaine looked broken in more than one place. Her face had learned new lines these months watching her family's coin scatter. She could not look at him with the same pride.
"You were careless," she said flatly. "You brought this on yourself."
His expression collapsed then. The triumphant look became incredulous. He searched the crowd as if for a hand to hold, for an ally to step in and say the world had been wrong.
No one did.
Those who had admired him now pointed fingers. Children in the crowd laughed because they had never liked soldiers. Merchants clapped because they had always wanted justice with their tea.
"Do you beg?" someone shouted—a man who had been fleeced by a merchant and had not been repaid. "Do you kneel for mercy like the rest of the lessers?"
Jaxon made a last attempt—reaching, choking. "I swear—"
"Save the oaths," the Master said. "The Empire hears them as storms. They pass and are gone."
He was taken away to be questioned. Yelena's face went from pleading to vacant as if the ground beneath her had been pulled. The crowd's reaction moved like a wave, gathering bile and pity in equal measure. Some cheered; others just stared. A few people took out small ledgers and made notes: "Soldier disgraced. Land prices may shift."
I stepped forward before the tapestry of judges. Grayson watched with an unreadable calm.
"Your Majesty's officers," I said, surprising even myself, "if she is indeed a spy, the law must decide. But I ask mercy for those who were used."
I had not planned these words. They came like measure and countermeasure. "And if the crown sees fit to compensate the injured, let the compensation go to rebuilding what treachery tried to starve."
The emperor's steward nodded slowly, and a murmur of approval went through the crowd.
That night the city hummed with gossip and the glow of lamps. Jaxon would face punishment within the walls of the palace. Lady Elaine's head bent low. Yelena had been turned over to the crown's custody.
What the crowd wanted was not only a fall but a lesson. They wanted Jaxon to be seen losing every public thing he had once bought with prestige. And so the punishment happened in fits and stops: the court stripped him of insignia, his title receded to a lower rank, and certain privileges were revoked. The merchants—once friendly—wouldn't sit with him at the same table. People who had once smiled in his direction now avoided his gaze.
I could have been cruel. I could have gorged myself on his ruin. I chose not to. But I did stand in public and make sure the facts were known: that loyalty is a currency more valuable than any title.
After the dust settled, Grayson came to the inn on a quiet morning. He pulled a chair close and didn't ask for titles.
"You did well tonight," he said, looking at me with that open, strange smile.
"I did nothing more than watch," I answered.
He shook his head. "You did everything a good person must. And you kept your head when others didn't."
He reached across the table, fingers warm on the wood. "Gabriela, will you come to the palace? Not as a title to peg, but as myself?"
I looked at him—at the man who dug with a shovel at my opening, who read my ledgers and dared to smile wrongly in a court of frowns. "Grayson," I said, and my voice was steady. "I am a merchant. I do not know if I am fit for velvet and tapestries."
"You are fit for me," he said. "And for more. I want you beside me, not because I claim you, but because I choose you."
"In the palace," I said with a small laugh, "do they have an abacus?"
"I can have one," he promised. "And apricots. And a quiet room where you can count."
I took his hand, the same hand that once held a shovel and now held the promise of something steadier. "Then we will see if palace teas taste like money."
He smiled, and this time his smile was my anchor.
The next spring, the West Hill road bustled more than ever. People ate apricots and paid to climb for the view. My ledgers were thicker, and under the light of a certain palace lamp, I taught Grayson to weigh coins. He taught me how to read statecraft.
We married later, not because of pressure or because anyone thought I needed redemption, but because the man in purple laughed like the day he picked up a shovel. At our wedding table, the old Lady Elaine sat across from me; her face was still proud, but gentler. Jaxon never returned to the public eye in the same way. He had fallen, and the city learned the measure of him.
As for punishment—public and real—it had been fulfilled: the man who had used people for comfort had been stripped of his rank in a crowded court; his name became neither curse nor celebrity but a cautionary note in gossip. He stood condemned in front of the city, sought by no one for sympathy. He had sought shelter in a woman's arms and instead found the law.
If anyone asked me later why I had shown him that day, why I had not turned away, I would say simply: because truth is a market, and you must show your goods openly for them to be valued.
There are still mornings when I walk the West Hill road, apron tied, hands fragrant with sugar, and Grayson beside me, sleeves rolled as if he might help a cook. He will sometimes say, low and ridiculous, "I should have bought the orchard next door."
I laugh. "You already bought the one that counts."
He squeezes my hand and tilts his head. "We are buying a future."
"And marking it paid in full," I answer.
We count coins together now, and sometimes, late at night, when the moon hangs over apricot trees and the city is a scatter of lamps, he takes my hand and presses it to his chest.
"Why me?" I ask sometimes, because old habits of questioning brides and bargains die slowly.
"Because you taught me that a good deal is not only what you win but who you protect," he says, soft and sure. "And because you laughed when I tried to market a palace tapestry as a tea towel."
I smile and tuck my fingers into his. "Then don't forget to sign the receipts."
He grins. "I never forget the receipts."
And so our days go: ledger, laughter, and an orchard that blooms in the spring like a private fortune that gives itself away. In the corners of our life there are always customers, always counts to make. But the difference is that now when I look up from the math, I meet a man who reads his own heart as carefully as I read my ledgers.
The End
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