Revenge15 min read
"I Spit Blood and Swore Revenge" — A Rebirth and a Debt Paid
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"I spat blood onto the floor."
The taste of iron filled my mouth. I blinked and the room came back: the cold wood, the thin curtain, the dull light of morning. My body pulse-stepped, and a warm current ran through my veins like a small flood.
A voice in my head said, "Countdown complete."
"Who—" I tried to speak and coughed another thick mouthful of blood.
I pressed my palm to my lips. The blood felt real. The pain in my head eased. The ache in my chest was gone.
I laughed, a small wet sound. Tears slid down my face. I had come back.
"Breathe," I told myself. "You are alive."
I had died once. Twice. Ten lives of blood and training had been poured into me and taken away by a system I had trusted. The system promised a reward. The system promised rebirth. I had obeyed. I had gone through ten worlds and learned what ten lives could teach—a hundred ways to fight, a hundred ways to hurt and heal.
Now the system had left. Only the space remained: a hidden pocket in my soul filled with tools, medicines, patterns, and a red token carved with a secret mark. I knew how to use each thing. I also knew why I had come back.
"I will take it all back," I whispered. "You will pay."
I slid off the bed, wrapped a handkerchief around my mouth, and walked to the door.
"Miss? Miss, are you awake?" came a voice from outside.
"Who is it?" I answered.
"Akiko," the voice said. Akiko Peng. My maid. She had always been faithful. The memory of her small face in the old life made my chest ache like a waking wound.
"Come in."
She pushed the door open, saw me standing steady, and froze.
"Miss—" She stepped forward, then stopped. "You look different."
"Akiko, have breakfast sent in," I said. "And tell no one else."
"Yes, Miss." Her hands trembled when she bowed.
We ate in silence and I watched the east window. The house belonged to the Carvalho family. Bernardo Carvalho was my father. He had a taste for the soft and the loud, and he favored ease over truth. My half-sister, Brynlee Sokolov, had the laugh of a girl who liked taking. Brynlee and her mother, Bella Daley, had been the teeth that bit my old life to death. They had tricks and friends and smiles full of knives.
"Miss?" Akiko touched my sleeve.
"Tell me," I said, "what has been done to you in the kitchens?"
Akiko flinched. "The steward... he said—"
"Who did it? Name her."
She pointed. "Patricia Barron—she said her son likes a pretty hand."
The matron's son had lusted over Akiko and bruised her. I clenched my fist until the blood in my palm burned.
"Show me where," I said.
We walked to the main kitchen. Steam and noise met us. Women moved like careful machines over pots and baskets. In a corner sat Patricia Barron, eating seeds and talking too fast.
"Look who came to taste the food," Patricia said, loud and nasty. "Did the princess come to beg?"
I stepped forward. "You will answer me."
She spat a seed at my shoe. "And you are who? A noble brat with no spine."
"Patricia," I said, and my voice was flat, "who let you talk like that to my maid?"
The kitchen fell quiet. A dozen faces turned.
Patricia rose like a frog on a log. "I serve this house. I will speak."
"You lied to me in the first life," I said. "You sold truth for a crust. You hurt women under the cover of duty."
"Bold," she said.
I reached for the cleaver on the board. Fingers closed on the wooden grip like an old instinct. My hand did not tremble.
"Ah." Patricia's face changed. "You'll beg—"
"Shut up." I threw the cleaver. It embedded into the wood at her shoulder.
For a moment, everyone screamed. Then I spoke.
"Say this now. Say you attacked Akiko. Say you touched her without permission. Say it was you."
Patricia's back was to me. She made a small sound like a wounded animal. She opened her mouth and managed, "I—I—" Then she coughed and the light in her eyes went out.
Someone screamed. Akiko grabbed my sleeve and shook.
"Miss—what if they tell? What if they say—"
"They will tell what I want them to tell." I stepped forward, calm as a blade. "Say that you lunged at me and I defended myself accidentally. Say it was a kitchen accident. Say you were struck in the shoulder and you will be taken to the guest rooms to recover. Say you will not speak of anything else. Say this now."
Patricia's breath came fast. She spat a little blood. Then she spoke the lines I had taught her to say.
The room buzzed. Heads bowed. Tears started. Women whispered that the lord would be angry if the wrong word left the room. They left, moving like ants.
I stayed and watched the matron carried out. My hands were steady. My throat hurt from swallowing.
"Miss," Akiko said, voice small. "You—"
"I killed a spider," I said. "A spider that bit my maid."
Akiko shouldered to me and sobbed. "Miss, you are different."
"Different," I echoed. "I have ten lives now. I am finished with being kind and empty. From now on I will be a woman who is enough."
We cleaned the blood with hot water and cloths. I burned what had been soaked. I put the cleaver back where it had been. I left nothing but a silence that meant threat.
That was the first small toll.
"Now we take the next," I said to Akiko. "We take the things that were stolen. We go see my grandmother."
The old woman who had saved me as a child was Claudia Moore. She had the kind of face that made people quiet. She had been my anchor, my real family. She kept the record and the memory of what was owed.
"Are you sure?" Akiko asked.
"I am sure," I said.
We walked to the old house. Claudia sat in her chair, thin hands around a cup, the sun like a weak coin on her lap.
"My lady." I bowed. It felt good to bow to someone I loved.
"Jo." Her voice was soft. "You came at last."
"Yes. I came." I sat on the floor at her chair and put my hands on her knees. "I missed you."
"You are not the child I knew," she said. "You are sharper."
"I have learned a few things," I said. "I have my own coin now. I have skills. I have a space." I let my fingers trace a hidden line under my sleeve. "I will not be small any longer."
She sniffed and smiled. "We will fix those who hurt you."
Claudia called in money men and housekeepers. She closed the house for a day and demanded the truth. She asked careful questions and put staff under oath in a way they could not avoid.
When the truth of the kitchen came out, it burned fast. Patricia's son was forced to leave the estate for a week of shame. The matron's servants were moved. Bella Daley, my aunt, sat at the far side and watched with wide eyes and a face as pale as money.
"Your father will blow hot and cold," Claudia told me later. "But he cannot stop what I do."
"Good," I said. "Then let him blow."
We took the things out of my old room. Old robes. A few embroidery cases. A trunk that smelled of sandalwood and herbs. Inside, among lacquered boxes, I found a set of papers and a map. My mother—Marina Barrera—had left more than love. She had left a ledger, a token, and instructions. A name in that ledger had been circled a dozen times. A dark, carved token lay under a silk cloth. The token had a stamp with the single word "DARK".
My chest ached. A time had come where I needed all of it.
"You have this?" Claudia asked.
"Yes."
"Keep it close."
"I will," I said.
That night, Brynlee Sokolov sent her mother, Bella Daley, to my grandmother to complain. She accused me of arrogance, of causing trouble. She painted herself as the wronged one. My father, Bernardo Carvalho, fumbled with excuses. He liked ease and hated storms. He liked Brynlee's gilded smile, and he worried about reputation more than truth.
Claudia listened, then swung the hammer.
"You will be taken to the house of correction until we find out more," she said. "And Bella, I will have your books and keys counted."
Brynlee's face was the color of ruined cloth. She tried to cry and only squealed. People watched it and hated the sound.
"You will learn to respect," Claudia said.
That night I slept in the old room, with the token under my pillow. The space in my soul hummed. I used small hours to draw a plan.
Two months of small games. Two fingers of threat. A dozen people moving pawns. I would not rip everything out at once. Revenge is like cooking; you must simmer and not burn the meal.
I used the token to unlock the space. Inside the space I trained. I bled slowly into the work. I rebuilt tendon and will. I practiced a dozen strikes. I studied the single line of an ancient doctor and re-learned how to sew a wound without killing a patient.
On the thirteenth night a messenger came with a letter folded and worn.
It was from Rowan Griffin.
Rowan.
My heart stopped. Rowan Griffin had been the quiet boy who had once sat under the same willow when we were children. He was the man who had always looked as if moonlight had carved him from marble. In my first life I had misread him. I had called his silence cold. He had been polite and distant. Then he had been a face of sorrow at the moment I died.
The letter read: Josephine, three days hence, the shrine at the East Temple. Come alone. —Rowan
"Akiko," I said, "pack nothing. I go to the temple."
"Miss," she said. "Is it wise?"
"Rowan wants to speak," I said. "I will meet him."
The East Temple was granite and old. A wind cut my coat as I walked. The presence of monks and candles made the world into a smaller, calmer place. Rowan waited by the lanterns, taller than the same trees.
He did not smile when he saw me. He only stood straighter. "Josephine," he said simply.
"Rowan," I said.
"You are hard to find," he said.
"I have been avoiding people who speak with knives," I answered. "You?"
Rowan's jaw stiffened. "You disappeared," he said. "They told me to stay away."
"They lied," I said. "They always did."
He looked at me for a long time. "You are different."
"I am reborn," I said. "I came back to finish things."
"And me?"
"You are the one I failed," I said. "I made you believe I left you. I lied. I blamed you for being distant."
His face changed like weather. "You thought I did not know?"
"You looked distant. I listened to lies. I wronged you." Tears came hot. "Rowan, forgive me."
He did not answer. He simply reached and took my hand.
"I will not promise to forgive everything," he said. "But I will promise this: I will stand with you."
That night he left a guardian in the willow—small men who would visit at odd hours to watch. He kept distance and protection like rhythm.
I learned Rowan had power. He was not a petty man. He had weight. He had enemies I had not guessed. He had been poisoned, slowly, by a quiet thing called red-fire—an internal poison that made the body burn inside. Rowan had kept the sickness hidden. He had kept his face a mask. I had seen hints of it: a cough sometimes; a hand that shook in winter. He had been weakening for years.
He did not tell me at the temple. He let me find it by accident. When I passed my hand along his pulse in a small test, I felt heat that did not belong. The small pattern in my medicine book told me the name.
"You have been poisoned?" I asked.
"Yes."
"I can help."
"You will risk yourself."
"Then I will risk."
He shut his eyes. "You cannot do it by halves."
"I will do it whole," I said.
He nodded. "There is one ingredient."
I knew what he meant before he spoke. "The fox blood," I said. "The jade fox."
"It is forbidden," he said. "It is rare. It is cruel."
"It is the only ticket," I said.
He swallowed. "I will not allow—"
"I will do it," I said. "Listen to me. I will not be small."
Rowan looked at me and for a moment his guard dropped. "You are dangerous," he said.
"Good," I said.
I did what I must. The fox was a hard price to pay. To fetch one meant a journey across the river where hunters kept sharp traps. To use it meant cruelty reserved for criminals in stories. I entered the wild and bought a fox pelt from a man who was not kind, and I found a cub hidden in a hollow. He looked at me with two young eyes. My hands shook. I put the token in the dealer's palm and he handed me a vial with less answer than I wanted. I put the vial in my space, purified it, and mixed it into a small needle—enough to trigger Rowan's system to accept the real cure.
I would risk my own thread to save him.
"Why?" Rowan asked when I told him, in the small house under the temple.
"Because once I thought I loved someone else," I said. "That made me cruel. I do not want to be cruel again."
He took the needle and did not resist when I placed the medicine. We held hands. He closed his eyes. I pushed through the work like wind. For a moment I thought his face would go slack and still and the world would harden.
Then he inhaled. Color returned. Pain passed.
Rowan glared at me, fierce and wet. "You idiot," he said.
"You said I was dangerous," I said.
"You are dangerous," he said. "You are also my reckless, stubborn woman."
We laughed. It was a short laugh. It warmed both of us.
The next step in my plan came quick. At the banquet of the city, the princes came to see the noble houses. Jaxon Davis—the third prince—had long courted Brynlee in the old story. He had been the crown of everything Brynlee wanted. She wanted him still.
I went to the banquet. I walked in red and gold, a color I had never dared to wear in the past. People watched as a woman who had been told to be quiet now walked through like a bell.
"Brynlee," I said aloud in clear voice when I passed her table. "Tell me, did you like the fox I gave you?"
"You are rude," she said.
"Is Jaxon coming tonight?" I asked. "He promised to come."
"Hush," she said. "He will not look at you."
"Will he look then?" I smiled.
People leaned in. Murmurs rose like small birds.
"Your father will hear," Brynlee said.
"My father will hear what he must," I answered.
The prince arrived. Jaxon took his place in the hall, a flash of silk and the kind of politeness that hides teeth. He saw Brynlee, bowed, and then his eyes slid across the room, catching mine like a small flint.
"Josephine," he said. "You shine."
"Prince," I said. It was easy to smile now that the plan had teeth. "You look well."
He laughed softly. "I hear your aunt asked me to bring a token for a promised marriage."
He looked at Brynlee and then at me. I saw the thing like a quick wind: he had been told to be kind, but his loyalty warped. He looked bored.
"Prince," Brynlee said, voice rising. "I told you to—"
"Shh," Jaxon said. He turned to the crowd. "There is a matter of honor to decide tonight."
The hall fell silent. I felt Rowan's eyes on my back like a cold hand and a warm one at the same time.
"Bring the lord's record," said Claudia. Her voice moved. "Bring the ledger."
The steward hurried. The ledger bloomed like a dark flower between hands. Claudia opened it. The records were precise. She read aloud the names, the months of coins, the mispresented charity.
"Here," Claudia said. "Here is proof that the house of Carvalho has been misled. The steward withheld the funds. The matron sheltered those who took more than their due."
Brynlee's color left her. Bella Daley hitched her breath and tried to laugh. The hall turned to watch Bella's face.
"You accuse Bella?" Bernardo moved, voice thin.
"I accuse the ledger," Claudia said. "And I accuse the women who lied to me. I accuse that this house was used to steal from its own daughter."
"Father—" Brynlee began.
"I trust my mother," I said. "I will speak now."
I walked to the center of the room and bared the small set of papers that had been in my trunk. I had copies of receipts, notes that showed Bella and Brynlee had been moving tokens and selling what was mine. I had the token found in the hollow. I spoke each name and each wrong, clear as a bell.
"You took my maid's bread," I said. "You stole a summer's pay to buy silk. You lied in front of the living and pretended to care. You made a plot to marry the prince and used gifts meant for a daughter. You poisoned the trust in this house."
A cough. A hush like a hand past glass. Heads bent. Jaxon sat like a struck thing.
"Is this true?" he asked.
"You can see it," I said. "Do you need more proof?"
He looked at me. There was something in his face like pity and also a small, burning anger.
"Brynlee, Bella," Claudia said. "Leave my hall. You will be housed outside until we decide. Bernardo, you shall pay all owed funds to Josephine this evening to restore her dignity."
Bernardo's face went pale. He fumbled on the carpet. He promised.
Brynlee screamed. Bella tried to clutch at the prince's sleeve.
"Do not touch the prince," Claudia said. "You are done."
They were marched away by servants. People whispered. Some looked pleased; some looked frightened to take side. Men who had laughed at my shyness before now gave me room. It felt like the space between a laugh and a psalm.
Later, in a small courtyard, Rowan found me.
"You did well," he said. He had the old quiet anger I had loved, the way glass can hold fire.
"I did what I needed to," I said. "I still need more."
"You want your mother found," he said.
"Yes," I answered. "And I want the ledger cleared and the token put where it belongs. I want to be more than a shadow in the house of Carvalho."
Rowan stepped close and his voice dropped. "You think vengeance will fill what you lost?"
"No," I said. "But vengeance will make sure others do not get lost to the same lies."
He breathed in. "I will help."
"Then help me now," I said. "Stand with me tonight when I return to the house."
That night I returned with a small party of loyal servants and three men Rowan had sent: Atticus Saleh, Doyle Battle, and a quiet woman named Patricia Barron. They had hands that could take a man down or stitch a wound. They knew when to cut and when to heal.
We sealed the rooms. We inventoried what was mine. We confiscated the list of houses in Brynlee's name. We moved boxes into my space. The tokens and ledgers and letters went into the space that hummed like a living thing.
In the months that followed, I schemed a little and struck a little. I made trades in the market for information. I used the ledger to trace men who had sold what belonged to my mother. I found a line to a house in the old port where a woman had been seen leaving with a child on a spring morning eight years ago. The trail cooled there.
I sent Rowan to the port with Atticus. He sailed at midnight.
I stayed in the house and taught men how to speak for themselves. I learned the little signals that keep a house from falling: who reports to who, who keeps keys in their mouth, who hides letters in loom boxes. I rebuilt my standing.
One afternoon, a black horse came up the drive. It brought a man in a salt-stained coat and a small child at his side. He was rough, with work hands, and his eyes had the look of one who had seen more than his share.
"Do you know this child?" he asked me.
The child's hair was Marina Barrera's.
I did not let myself hope before I saw the child's face.
"Yes," I said. My voice came thin. "Bring them."
The man bowed. He left the child in my arms. For a long, slow moment we stared. The child reached and placed a small hand against my cheek.
"Miss," the child said, "you smell like spring."
I looked and saw that the child's face was like Marina's. The child knelt and bowed. "Aunt Josephine," the child said—no, the child used our family term with a confidence that cut like a bell.
"Where is my mother?" I asked the man.
He told me what he knew. Marina had found trouble with men who smuggled goods. She had fled to protect her daughter. She had left letters that were cut out of hands. The man had helped her escape with a child and told her to go north where a house would hide them. He had been searching for years.
"She is alive," he said. "She wanted to see you when safe. But she feared for you. She asked that if you returned, find the ledger and take back what was hers."
We traced the north house. It had been burned. They had moved.
We found her in a small room over a river, with a line of old letters and a small garden. Marina sat thin and strong, her eyes like black glass.
"Jo," she said when she saw me, and her voice didn't have time to do anything but be my mother's voice. She kissed my forehead like a judge or a lover or both.
"I thought you were gone," I said.
"I made a choice," she said. "I ran so you would not be taken. I learned how to be quiet and to keep money in safe places. I watched their faces and knew which would betray."
"You were always brave," I said.
"No. You were brave to come back." She touched my hand. "You are not the small girl I left. You are a net now. You catch what is thrown."
We sat and sorted through letters. There were names and names and money and a plan to smuggle a token out of the city. The token had been taken to a man who lived under the river in the sprawl. We found that man and confronted him. He coughed and handed what remained.
When everything was returned, when the ledger was mended and the house cleaned, I turned to Rowan and offered him the token—the small carved dark thing—and I put it into his hand.
"Keep it," I said. "Not as proof, but as a promise."
He looked at the token like it was a blade that could cut promises as well as seal them. He put it away in his pocket.
"Now," he said, "we will do the last thing."
"Which is?" I asked.
"We will make them regret," he said.
We did not murder. We did not burn them as some would want. We made them face the court and the city, and there the ledger and the words we had compiled were read out. The aristocrats watched as the record of thefts and false speeches fell like rain on Bella Daley and Brynlee Sokolov. They were shamed. They were stripped of certain rights within the house. Bella was moved out to a small estate across the river. Brynlee was given a chance to apprentice as a clerk—humble work she had never imagined. My father was left to face the slowness of shame.
At the last, when silence fell and the crowd was thinning, Rowan walked me through the main garden.
"You did all this," he said.
"I did what I had to," I said.
He stopped. He took my hands.
"If you marry me," he said in a small, hard voice, "I will take you to a place of power. I will put you where no one can touch you. I will stand at your side in court and in war. But you must promise one thing."
"What?"
"Do not make yourself small again. Do not hide when they call you cruel. Let the world know who you are."
I laughed—a wet, honest laugh. "I promise."
He closed the distance and kissed me. It was simple and true. His hands were strong and careful. He kissed like a man who knows both how to fight and how to hold a child. When he pulled back, his eyes had something like softness and promise.
"Tomorrow," he said, "I will go to the palace. I will ask for a match."
"Tomorrow," I echoed.
We married months later in a quiet ceremony, not loud but true. The prince did not interfere. The city watched as the girl who had been told to be small took her place at the side of a man who would not let smallness come near her.
In the end I did not tear the world apart. I took power in small steps: the ledger, the token, the truth in the hall. I reclaimed my mother's legacy and found my mother. I found men who would swear to me and women who would follow. I did what a living thing does when it is given life again: I grew.
We stood at the window of our house on the first night when the city was quiet and the candles were low. Rowan placed the small dark token back in my hand.
"For holding," he said.
"For keeping," I answered.
He smiled—just a small curve—and pulled me closer.
"You are mine," he said.
"And you are mine," I answered.
Outside, the city held its breath and then let it go. Inside, I pressed the carved token between my fingers and felt the warm current of the life I had chosen.
I had come back to be a shadow no longer. I had come back to be the woman who kept score and paid debts. I had come back to love a man who had waited for me while I was gone.
We were two people tied together by a county of wrongs and a small space of tools. We fixed what we could. We left the rest for another tide.
When I close my eyes now, I see a small fox with bright eyes, and I think of the price and the cure. I see a ledger and my mother's hand. I see Rowan's cold face, then his quick laugh. I see Akiko with steady hands. I see Claudia with her steady will.
And I know this: I spit blood and swore revenge. Revenge became justice. Justice became a life. Life, at last, was mine.
The End
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