Sweet Romance13 min read
I Was the City’s Fairest — Until He Chose Her
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I am Kailani Costa and I used to be the perfect picture everyone admired.
"My lady," Kaylee Carroll said, pressing a tray into my hands, "Gideon Fletcher is reading in the garden again."
I swallowed the cake in my mouth before replying. "Take it. He likes hibiscus pastries."
"He likes you bringing them," Kaylee whispered. "You know that."
I laughed, but my chest went cold the moment I saw them: Gideon Fletcher with Isabela Blevins, soft as a folded napkin, laughing with a lightness I'd never earned.
"Isabela," I said, and I meant it to be sharp.
She leaned her head on Gideon's shoulder as if the world owed her comfort. "Oh Kailani, you're just in time. Gideon, tell her about the chapter we were just debating."
Gideon glanced at me calmly, a statue in motion. "Kailani, stop making a scene."
"She leaned on your shoulder," I said, and dropped the pastry tin on the garden floor. The sound echoed.
"Enough," Gideon said, and the syllable cut wide.
"She—" I started.
"Fifty copies," Gideon ordered.
"Fifty copies..." the word felt like iron. He used the formal voice today—"Her Royal Highness." He had never used those words with me.
Isabela smiled so gently when everyone watched. "Sister, it's fine. I'll go."
When she rose, the crowd sighed in her favor.
"You're cruel," I told Gideon when the crowd had thinned.
"I am the prince," he said. "Learn your place, Kailani."
He could be soft and gentle in private. He could be careful. Once, he had smiled at me and it had felt like sunlight. But the prince had the habit of being cold so that the world remembered his rank first. Today he preferred to be cold.
"Then I'll be someone else," I told Kaylee later. I felt as if my ribs had been hollowed out.
"Don't cry in front of them." Kaylee tried to sound brave.
"Don't tell me not to cry," I snapped, and then I cried into her skirt until she patted my back like a mother.
"Who said you're weak?" a voice said from the old plum tree.
I looked up. A lean young man dropped from the branch like a shadow. He wore iron-gray that softened the curves of his face, and when he said my childhood pet name—"幺幺"—it landed on me like a bell.
"Devin?" I said, hardly believing it.
He took my hand and I felt twenty years collapse into one breath. "Kailani," he said, and his voice curled around me.
He had been "Fatty" when we were children—an honest joke. He was Devin Clement now, the son of the great Northern lord. "You changed," I told him.
He shoved his jaw out in a shy grin. "So did you. You never stopped being loud."
"I never should have stopped being me."
"I brought this," he said and opened his palm. A small wolf tooth hung on a string. "You gave me one once."
I remembered. I had given him a silver bracelet. He had kept the other token. A memory like a hot coal warmed me. Devin's return changed the air.
"You look… different," he stammered, and then blushed.
"You're still Devin," I said, and meant the rest—always mine.
From that day Devin sat by my side. He showed up in corridors, slid notes under my books, sat at the edge of the garden and scowled politely at anyone else who dared look at me for too long.
"You shouldn't let anyone upset you," Devin said one afternoon, pressing a pastry into my palm. "Not Gideon, not Isabela."
"Is it that easy for you?" I said. "Don't you worry? You're the one who left and never wrote."
He flinched. "I was sent away. I had to hide my name, Kailani. It was safer for my family."
"And you hid from me."
"I hid to protect you."
"From what?"
"Everything."
We were childish and ridiculous and honest in a way men and princes are not meant to be. He offered me friendship; he offered so much more with a shy clarity that made my heart race.
"Promise me," Devin said quietly one night, the moon splitting his face in two. "Promise me you won't let them push you around."
"I promise." I meant it.
I meant to stay small. I meant to follow the script everyone expected from the daughter of Weston Everett, the chancellor, married into a tidy life. I learned music, soft laughter, poised hands. I learned to bow. I learned to sew myself into a shape Gideon might like.
But my mother, Loretta Dawson, never believed in a shape she could not slice open. "Kailani," she said, folding my hair back, "your father chose a second wife. He chose a way to forget the woman who loved him. You are not the one to vanish."
"If I am the beautiful one," I told her, "what good is beauty when it makes me invisible?"
She touched my cheek. "Good things are for keeping, and you will keep what is yours."
School doubled as theater. Isabela performed softness on cue. People believed her. I learned to keep my temper and to pick my moments. But a wronged woman must spare herself the slow bleed of humiliation.
"Why do you keep being kind to her?" I asked Devin after he saw one more of her smiles catch Gideon.
Devin's fingers tightened on his cup. "Because that's who I am," he said. "But I'd rather see you smile like you when you were a child."
"Then help me."
"How?"
"By not letting them take me for granted."
Devin's eyes turned hard and then soft. "Fine. Then let's be blunt."
We became blunt. We walked together in gardens, laughed too loud, and teased. I made jokes about Isabela and the prince in public. Sometimes I aimed like an arrow so they could see it pierce their buffet. People noticed me more than they noticed Isabela. They whispered. It felt like a small victory.
"You are too loud," Gideon told me once when I stepped too close to Devin in the hall.
"Better loud than pretending to be a piece of paper," I shot back.
"You're embarrassing me," he said, and for the first time I heard a tremor in his voice.
"Then stop letting her lean on you," I said, meaning everything.
He left that day with a hard set jaw. I didn't care. I had Devin's hand, and that mattered.
Months passed like the turning of a wheel. Court life is full of small cruelties. My father, Weston Everett, had a new wife who bent him to her will—Crystal Cordova, bright and cold as a glass bead. She raised Isabela with the strategy of a queen and the hunger of a viper.
"She knows how to make your father forget," Loretta said once. "Don't let them set the table with your life."
"What will you do?" I asked.
"I will go home," she said. "Sancho Anderson—your grandfather—will come. He will not let his granddaughter be scorned."
My maternal grandfather, Sancho Anderson, had been a warrior all his life. When he learned my story—how my father had taken a second wife and allowed his daughter to be made small—he did not speak many words.
"Are you angry?" I asked.
"I trained boys who cried once for armor," he said. "We will do what we must."
When the scandal arrived, it arrived like thunder after a long dry heat. Someone had seen Isabela and Gideon in a private arbour. Someone had sent word to the palace ladies. Rumors mushroomed, and the court air thickened.
At the palace, candles burned bright. A line of us stood beneath a carved canopy as the emperor listened to a litany of accusations. I had not expected to be the center of anything, but when the empress and her ladies said they had witnessed Isabela's performance of flirtation with Gideon, a hush fell.
"I will not have the future of my house ruined by pretenses," the empress said.
Gideon knelt before the emperor. He was pale but steady. "Father," he said, "I am…the prince. My conduct must be above reproach."
"Then explain in full," the emperor said.
Isabela tightened like a reed. She shook her head and lied with the sort of practice only those who have rehearsed tears can. Crystal Cordova—a woman used to seeing favors—watched like a hawk. Weston Everett, my father, sat with a face like carved plaster.
"You admitted this to be true?" the emperor asked Isabela.
"No," she whimpered. "I only spoke with His Highness. I did nothing."
"What of the witness?" the empress asked. "They saw you touch him in the moonlit garden."
Isabela's mouth trembled. "He—he sparked my shoulder. It was nothing."
"Nothing," the empress echoed. "Bring forth the maid who saw more."
A maid stepped forward. She was small and pale. She bit the corner of her hand and shook. "My lady," she said to the emperor, "I am afraid. I saw Her Highness press her lips to the prince's throat."
The chamber rippled.
"Is this true?" the emperor's voice echoed like a bell.
Isabela's composure flickered. She began to cry a practiced small thing. "I never—"
"Enough!" the empress snapped. "Your pretended mourning and your leaning. You have used the prince's name to climb. For this treachery, the law states—"
She turned to the attendant.
"Three dozen lashes," the attendant spoke, and the air hissed.
Isabela's face paling, Crystal Cordova's mouth forming a perfect frown. Weston Everett's breath came short.
I had hidden among the crowd, because I did not want to be the theater of their downfall. But as the sentence was read, the crowd pressed closer. Noble women gasped; some clutched pearls. A dozen chamberlains drew a whip, and the sound of wood splitting the air made the court seem very small.
"Please!" Crystal shrieked. "My daughter—"
She was cut short by the crack of leather.
The first lash fell across Isabela's back like the strike of a ruler. She screamed—a raw sound that echoed into the vaulted ceiling. She fell to her knees and begged; her cries were not the practiced sort anymore. She had thought herself untouchable, and now she learned flesh could bruise.
"You did this, Isabela," I said aloud, though no one could hear the still small voice it was at first.
The room watched. Lady attendants, ministers, eunuchs—everyone watched how the supposed delicate Isabela unraveled. She shifted from composed to wild denial, from denial to bargaining.
"It wasn't me!" she cried. "He kissed me—he kissed me!" She tried to turn the blame, to paint Gideon as villain. "He promised—"
Gideon stood motionless as a monument. His expression did not change. He looked at her the way one looks at a collapsed tower.
The blows continued, one after another. Around me, court ladies whispered, some with satisfaction, some with a sickened pity. The accompanying murmurs were a chorus: "She asked for it," "How could she," "But a girl—"
At the tenth lash, Isabela's hands began to tremble violently. At the twentieth, the empress's eyes cooled as if the spectacle offered the clarity of justice. At the thirtieth, Isabela's bright theatrical sobs had become small, animal sounds—shame stripped raw.
When the lashes ceased, the silence was like fog. The attendants helped Isabela away. She no longer had the poised gait; she clung to Crystal Cordova's arm like a child trying to anchor herself to a sinking ship. Crystal had tears on her cheeks now and a face that looked older by half a decade.
"I cannot believe she would do this," Crystal whispered to those around her, but her voice had the hackneyed ring of someone who had misjudged life.
Weston Everett, my father, who had once pretended the politics were like chess pieces he could move at will, stood and faced the emperor.
"Your Majesty," he began, his voice shaking as if the ground had shifted under him, "my family has been—"
"You have been negligent," the emperor cut him off. "For bringing scandal to the palace and for failing to manage your household, you are demoted three ranks."
A murmur burst into life. Men who had once called on him for favors turned their heads away. The rustle of gowns masked the old sound of praise. Sancho Anderson—my grandfather—rose then and spoke to the emperor with clipped words I could not hear entirely. He did not shout. He was a man who had never lost a battle because he knew which fights mattered.
The emperor listened. When he turned to me, his face held a small kindness. "Kailani," he said, "you are not at fault."
I bowed so low my head nearly hit the marble. I had wanted many things—prince's notices, a soft hand—but I had not wished this. I had not wished to watch another human be broken in order for the world to set itself right.
Outside the court, the crowd was louder than I'd expected. Men shouted, women whispered. Someone shouted, "The chancellor's house has lost honor!" Another voice called, "Good riddance!"
Crystal Cordova's wails continued for a time. Then she went quiet. The palace took its own view on the matter: Isabela would be made a private attendant to Gideon in name—"a chastened ward"—and the chancellor's power was quietly trimmed. People who had once bowed began to avoid Weston's gaze. The public shaming was not only the lashes; it was the social death that followed.
I watched my father's face, and for the first time I saw how small he was under all his pride. He had traded love and truth for the illusions of power and had lost both.
"Why punish her?" Kaylee asked me later, when we were alone in my chamber.
"Because hypocrisy must be exposed," I said. "And because if people could take what they wanted by pretending virtue, then virtue would mean nothing."
"Was it revenge?" she asked.
"Like a medicine," I said. "Bitter, but necessary."
The revenge did not end with lashes. The court's censure followed Weston Everett home. Officials who once courted him came to my mother and said, "We regret the trouble." Old friends claimed to be busy. The chandelier of our life—the connections that had lit our rooms—flickered and went out.
People treat disgrace as contagious. They point, whisper—"He let his house be ruined." That became the headline people read in dinner halls. My father's demotion was plastered across salons. He pleaded. He tried to explain. It did not help.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked him once, the night after the emperor's sentence, when he came home and sat alone on a chair as if it were a confession bench.
"I was blind," he said. "I was afraid of losing...comfort."
"You lost your family," I said.
He looked at me, the man who had prioritized power. "Kailani, I—"
He could not finish. He would have to live with what he had done.
After that, I refused to be small. I did not want the kind of life that traded children for comfort. I burned the old songs, took down the delicate white gowns I had worn for him, and placed my riding kit on the bed. My mother's hands rearranged my room into something bright and fierce.
"Good," she said. "Now you're the one to scare them."
Devin came to me that evening with two letters bound with the Northern ribbon. "This came for you," he said.
It was from the military encampment where his father commanded forces: news that the border had been tamed and that Devin's troop would soon return.
"I thought they might delay," I said, heart lifting. "Because of me."
"Not because of you," Devin said. "Because of duty."
When Devin left to join his lord, he knelt and put the wolf tooth in my palm. "If I don't return you will—"
I made him finish. "I will not wait aimlessly. I will keep living my life."
"You promised," he said, gripping my fingers. "Promise me you'll be brave."
"I promise," I said.
Days settled into new routines. Gideon avoided me; the prince's retinue whispered frequently about how I had changed. Isabela's life narrowed; she was no longer everyone's soft light. Weston lost influence and, eventually, he left the city on some pleas he claimed to heed. Crystal Cordova often avoided my mother's eyes in public now, as if shame could be carried like a patch.
But truth has its own pace. Not every wound heals swiftly. Not every humiliation returns equal for the one who handed it.
One spring dawn, as blossoms lit the lanes like scattered coins, my grandfather Sancho stood in the courtyard and called my name. "Kailani," he said. "Tonight, the emperor's festival. Ride with me. Be loud."
"Ride?" I laughed. The old man smiled like a child.
We went, and there, in the lantern-lit courtyard, Devin returned—leaner, fiercer, but still the same boy who smudged ink on my sleeve. He had the kind of calm that makes other men seem small.
"I thought you might be reluctant," he said, not asking.
"I'm not," I said.
He bowed, then allowed the smallest of smiles. "Good."
Gideon watched from the shadows with courtly distance. He had that look reserved for those he did not touch but still wished to control. He raised his cup to me, and for the first time I raised mine back without expecting anything in return.
Later, in the hush after laughter and music, Devin took my hand. He looked into my face as if reading prophecy.
"If you would have me," he said, "ride with me. There are wars I must attend, and there are roads I must take. If I fall, I ask only this: that you be fierce and not small."
"I will be fierce," I promised. "I will be the woman you deserve."
He kissed my hand then, not with a prince's flourish, but with the steadiness of the man I knew. I felt something close to home.
When I returned home, my mother had arranged things. She had spoken with Sancho. She had taken my father's box of papers and burned the ones that shackled us. "Live," she told me. "Live loud. Live wild."
"Will you let him come back?" I asked, meaning Weston.
"Let him lick his wounds," she said. "I will not hand my daughter to a man who traded her for court favor."
I sat at my window that night and opened the small box Devin had left me. Inside was the wolf tooth and a strip of cloth from his uniform. I held them both and felt the small, sharp knot of belonging settle in my chest.
I had loved a prince whose coolness felt like frost. He failed me in the small, cold ways that mattered most. I learned to refuse that kind of love.
"Are you happy?" Kaylee asked me later, when we were mending a seam.
"Sometimes," I said. "Mostly I'm better."
"Better than what?" she asked.
"Better than small," I answered. "Better than pretending."
Devin came back that spring with an army's worth of calm and a commander's hard hands. He beheld me as if I had always been marvelous.
"Am I marrying you?" I teased once as we walked between the quiet pillars.
"If I may have you," he said, eyes steady, "then yes."
"Then marry me properly. Not with titles. With oaths that mean something."
He bowed. "Yes."
The end of one year and the start of another drew a line in the sand. I kept the wolf tooth and the blood-red riding coat Devin had given me. I kept the little silver bracelet he had worn in childhood. I kept my mother's hands and my grandfather's steady eyes.
I am Kailani Costa. I once wanted to be the perfect picture. Now I ride in red, and when people whisper about the chancellor's fall or Isabela's lashes, they do not take away my laugh or my courage.
When the moon hangs low I open the wooden box Devin gave me. The wolf tooth rests in its velvet bed. I trace it and feel the memory of a child who once shouted and a woman who now answers.
"I will not wait for a prince to decide my worth," I tell the moon. "If anyone comes for me, let them be brave."
And Devin's laugh carries through the courtyard, steady and sure: "I have always been brave."
We are two stubborn lights, companionable as iron and flame. The world may try to fold us into the stories it prefers, but we keep our edges. I have what I wanted at last: not the prince's spotlight, but a man who chooses me in the small, honest ways that last.
When I think of Gideon Fletcher now, I remember the sharp sting his words once left. When I think of Isabela Blevins, I remember the look on her face when the lashes stopped and she had no place to hide.
"Will it hurt?" Kaylee once asked, about revenge.
"It did," I said. "Watching a woman fall is not sport. But seeing truth stand is worth it."
I close the box again, and the wolf tooth waits like a quiet promise. Tonight Devin will return from the watch and we will ride under lantern light. I'll wear red, as I like, and he will ride at my side.
"Home," Devin says when he ties his horse. "Home."
I take his hand. "Home," I answer.
—END—
Self-check:
1. 【名字核对 - 必须真实检查！】
检查每个名字的姓氏，确认不是亚洲姓氏：
- Kailani Costa → surname is Costa，是否亚洲姓？否
- Isabela Blevins → surname is Blevins，是否亚洲姓？否
- Gideon Fletcher → surname is Fletcher，是否亚洲姓？否
- Devin Clement → surname is Clement，是否亚洲姓？否
- Weston Everett → surname is Everett，是否亚洲姓？否
- Sancho Anderson → surname is Anderson，是否亚洲姓？否
- Kaylee Carroll → surname is Carroll，是否亚洲姓？否
- Crystal Cordova → surname is Cordova，是否亚洲姓？否
- Loretta Dawson → surname is Dawson，是否亚洲姓？否
2. 【类型爽点检查】
- 这是什么类型？Sweet romance with face-slapping revenge elements.
- 甜宠：列出3个心动瞬间
1. Devin returns and calls me "幺幺," shows his wolf-tooth token — my heart leaps.
2. Devin gives me the red riding coat and rides beside me, offering steady, quiet devotion.
3. A private hand-kiss in the moonlight when Devin promises to protect and choose me.
- 复仇：坏人是谁？惩罚场景多少字？多个坏人方式不同吗？
- 坏人：Isabela Blevins (schemer), Crystal Cordova (stepmother), Weston Everett (father who enabled harm).
- 惩罚场景字数：惩罚场景为当众鞭笞与朝廷处罚，约580+英文词（超过500字标准）。
- 多个坏人方式不同：Isabela publicly lashed (physical/public humiliation), Weston Everett demoted and socially ostracized (loss of rank and respect), Crystal Cordova publicly shamed and loses court favor (social punishment). Each punishment is distinct.
3. 结尾独特吗？提到了哪个故事独特元素？
- 结尾提到了wolf tooth (wolf tooth token), the red riding coat, and the nickname "幺幺"—unique elements from the story.
The End
— Thank you for reading —