Rebirth11 min read
I Woke Up as the Side Consort — and I Refused to Die Silently
ButterPicks10 views
I never wanted to be a villain. The book said I was one, and the book had my fate all tied up: schemer, failure, lonely death. I learned that on my wedding night.
"I am Anastasia Krueger," I said aloud to the dim room. "Not 'porridge' or any nickname. Remember that."
Roberto Abdullah, my brother, closed his ledger and looked at me like I was a small, stubborn bird. "You should sleep. There is court tomorrow."
"I am not tired." I hugged the blanket as if it were a shield. "I will not beg for pity."
Dale Gross, my husband by duty and the man I had not loved, stood outside the bedchamber like a statue who had learned how to shift his weight. "Rest, Anastasia."
"I will not rest until I know everything," I answered. "Tell me what comes next."
Roberto's eyes softened. "Little stubborn one, you have read too much. Sleep."
I did not sleep that night. I went over the ledger of events in my head and wrote the most important things on a tiny book I hid under my pillow. The rules of the world had names, and I had three vows: no pointless schemes, keep peace with the woman everyone calls the real heroine, and live.
"My little book," I whispered, tapping the pages. "We start again."
*
The first time I saved the queen, it was by accident. She fell into the lake and I did the only thing my body knew to do—dive.
"Queen!" I sputtered, clawing at cold water that tried to swallow my breath.
There were hands that pulled me out moments later. A chorus of exclamations, a little hush of panic. Dale's face looked like marble with a crack. "Save the side consort! She cannot swim!"
The queen, Marina Buckley, bobbed beside us with a fish in her hand and the exact calm of the woman who had no reason to fear death. "Someone had to catch dinner. Is she all right?"
I coughed. My chest stung. "I want sour fish with chili," I croaked.
Marina laughed and patted my back as if I were a child. "You are alive. That's enough for tonight."
I wrote that line down anyway.
"Anastasia," Roberto said later that evening, when the court lamps burned low, "do not antagonize the wrong people. If you can be a sister, be a sister."
"I can," I said. "But I will also be clever."
He touched my hair once. "Live. That is all I ask."
*
Days passed, and the world rolled like a slow barrel. I practiced smiling and practiced silence. I kept Marina near, fed her tea, and fixed her sleeves when they slipped. People watched, and I liked to think I made the right choices. Friends were fewer, but better. Marina trusted me. That trust felt like a wedge of sunlight.
"Why are you so kind to me?" I asked her one night while we drank tea.
"Because you are not who you used to be," she answered, eyes soft. "Because kindness is a choice."
"I choose—"
"To survive." She smiled. "And to be friends."
We were friends in a way that the book had not written. I liked that. I liked Marina. I liked that my strange destiny might be altered by being decent.
Then came Coleman Luna.
He appeared in a storm of sand and wild charm, and the moment he spoke his name I felt a chill that was not cold. "Coleman Luna," he said, like a knife scraping a bowl, "you will not be safe."
"Who said that? Me?" I snapped.
He smirked. "Me. The one who will always want what is not his to have."
"Go away," I said, and meant it.
He did not go. He stayed like a weather front.
"You are not the girl I thought you were," Coleman told me once in a garden when the pond frogs croaked their midnight complaints. "But you are interesting."
"Keep away from us."
He pressed his forehead to mine like someone checking a tool. "You are stubborn in a good way. You make me want to stay."
I wanted to shove him into the pond. Instead I warned the queen. "Watch him," I told Marina. "He will cause storms."
"All right," she said. "I will watch him. We will be careful."
She was always careful. That carefulness saved us again and again.
*
The court is full of men who love lines and papers. Among them was a man with soft shoes and sharp eyes: Aldo Lefebvre. He knelt with a smile that never touched his eyes.
"You are graceful," he told me the first time he bowed. "Do not be hasty."
"Thanks?" I said.
He was a spade under a silk glove. He smiled as if he planted flowers and staked a claim. He whispered into corridors, he set small fires under pots that would boil other people's dinners.
One night, a rumor: "There will be an accident in the gardens. Someone will fall. Ensure the right people are near."
I felt my gut gnaw. "Who said that?"
"It was Aldo," said a guard. "We heard in the east corridor."
"Keep your distance from him," I told Marina.
She nodded. "We will. Live, Anastasia."
I did not sleep well.
*
A public ceremony came, the kind designed to show the kingdom's face. The Thousand Carp Pool shimmered like a large eye. Dignitaries leaned their weight on their palms and watched water that did not belong to anyone.
Aldo showed up with a procession and a pleasant face. I watched him. "What are you watching so intently?" Dale asked, beside me.
"Nothing," I lied.
Aldo moved like oil. He handed small notes to some men, a coin to another. He laughed like a child who has found a new toy.
"Who is that man?" Marina asked, gripping my sleeve.
"Watch and see," I said. "He will overplay his hand."
He did.
It started as a simple misdirection. Aldo whispered that the queen's carriage had a fault and needed oil. Men ran to fetch tools. Others were sent to light lanterns. The pool, always calm, had someone drop a jar of pungent herb into the water. It turned the edge slick. It was a trick intended for drama: a slipped foot, a scream, a dishonor placed on Marina in the wrong way.
"I told you," Marina said. Her face was calm like a blade. "Do not let him near you alone."
"I will not," I promised.
But Aldo's plans are not cheap. He had power and friends. He had planned for more than a jar.
That night, I caught him moving toward the side of the pool with a lantern and a bundle. He looked like a man who takes pleasure in tiny cruelty.
"Stop!" I stepped in front of him.
He blinked. "Anastasia? What an odd time to be so brave."
"Put that down," I said.
He smiled, slow and awful. "You think you can command me?"
"Yes," I said. "Under the king's protection, I can."
Coleman had been watching us from a distance. He stepped forward and laid a single hand on Aldo's sleeve like a commander checking a box.
"You forget where you are," Coleman said. "Hands off."
Aldo's face changed. He stepped back—just a little. The servants had begun to notice. People swelled at the pool bank and whispered. I felt the ocean of eyes.
"Anastasia," Roberto called from the far side, his voice thin, "stay composed."
I stayed composed like a stone that does not move when a child kicks it. But inside my ribs, a furnace flared.
Later, after whispers and narrowed glances, Aldo tried to force a confrontation with Marina. He wanted a scandal. He wanted to show that the queen was careless, that she might be unfit. Aldo wanted the crown to bend in the way he would direct.
We had to stop him. The palace must show its teeth.
*
The punishment had to be public. The rules of the world shockingly favored theater. If a bad man had poison in his hands, he must be stripped of his mask in the same room where he planted it.
So I planned a scene.
"Prepare the eastern hall for a reading," I told Roberto the next morning. He raised his eyebrow.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because Aldo needs an audience," I said. "And because truth, when placed under a crowd's torch, scorches better."
Roberto looked at me for a long moment. "Anastasia, are you ready to stand where your voice might shake?"
"I have cried enough in secret," I said. "I will cry on the stage where men can see. I will be louder."
The eastern hall filled: courtiers, guards, merchants with their gleaming tokens, and even men from the west, where trade crosses the border. Marina sat at my side, calm. Dale sat a stiff silhouette. Coleman leaned at the back, silent as a shadow.
When Aldo arrived, his smile had that stillness of a man who thinks the world is clay. He bowed, that practiced motion.
I stood.
"Aldo Lefebvre," I said, and my voice did not tremble, "you are accused."
He blinked like a cat. "Accused by whom?"
"By those who saw you — by the men who carry oil, by the servants you paid, by the ledger you signed."
Aldo's mouth tightened. "This is slander."
"Then speak," I said. "Tell us why you slipped herbs into the pool. Tell us why you gave orders to sabotage the carriage. Tell us why you whispered to the men by the eastern wall to be ready to laugh at a woman's fall."
There was a hush like a cloth dropped in a fast room.
Aldo's face flushed. He was used to quiet complicity. He tried to laugh. "You have no proof."
"Then listen," I said. "We have witness after witness. We have the jar found near your robe last night. We have the men who retrieved the lanterns at your command."
"Those men were my servants!" he barked.
"Your servants are men of this court." I looked at the crowd. "This is not your private stage. This is the king's hall."
Roberto stood then. "Aldo, you stand accused of conspiring to disgrace the queen and of attempting to cause harm to the royal household."
Aldo's eyes darted like a trapped bird. "You have no right," he sputtered.
Marina rose. "I have suffered mockery and a plan that would have ruined me. He wanted me shamed, because shamed queens make weak allies. He wanted to prove something. He will be judged."
Guards moved to encircle Aldo. He tried to force a grin. "You cannot just—"
"You can," Roberto said. "The evidence is clear. You will confess now, and the hall will decide your fate."
Faces leaned forward. The merchants whispered like wind through leaves. Aldo's shoulders trembled. He tried to deny again; then a houseboy stepped forward, voice small but steady. "He gave me coins and said keep the lanterns away from the pool. He said 'make a trick with the herbs.'"
Aldo's composure cracked. He lunged for the houseboy to silence him. Guards seized him.
"Let him speak," I called. "If you cannot face your deeds, let all see you cannot even silence a child now."
Aldo's mouth worked. "I—" He swallowed. He looked at the crowd. Sweat turned his hair dark at the temples. "I thought— I thought a scandal would move the court. I wanted favor."
"You wanted power," a councilor said. "And you used poison and lies."
Aldo's voice collapsed into a thin plea. "Please. I can give accounts. I can repay. I can—"
"Repay?" Marina's voice was cold like ice on a blade. "Can you repay the humiliation you tried to throw upon the queen? Can you repay our fear?"
The hall watched him change. He went from small lies, to bluster, to panic, to pleading. He begged for mercy, then tried to bargain. "I can serve. I can be your servant," he said, voice fraying. "Take my possessions. Take my title."
Guards laughed quietly. People took out their notice-books and scribbled; some took notes on which courtiers had been seen with Aldo. A few laughed; some clucked their tongues; others fixed their faces in unreadable masks.
"Public confession," Roberto ordered. "Stand on the dais. Speak what you did. Tell the truth. Then suffer the judgment of the hall."
Aldo was led to the stone dais in the center. He stood like a small man on a large stage, suddenly the one with nothing to hide behind.
"Tell them," I said.
He inhaled. "I planned a scandal. I thought I could weaken the queen. I thought I could make her seem unfit. I bribed servants. I placed the herb in the pool. I arranged for a lantern to fall. I meant to make her fall, to break her poise."
Silence.
"And why?" a voice demanded.
Aldo's eyes found mine. "Because she is favored. Because you are favored. Because I wanted to take from your light."
"You wanted to steal our light," Marina said softly. "And you thought you could do it with tricks."
The crowd began to speak, quietly then louder. "Shame!" some said. "Punish him," others urged. A merchant spat on the tiles in disgust. A young scribe stood up and shouted, "This is treachery!"
Aldo's face went through faces: alarm, disbelief, then a brittle, sobbing smallness. He tried to scrub at his mouth as if he could wipe his words away. "I did not mean to hurt anyone," he wailed. "I did not mean—"
"You meant to ruin a life for power," I answered. "You meant to make a scandal into your stepping-stone."
Coleman stepped forward and lifted his chin. "You have used men," he said quietly. "You have used fear. That is a coward."
They made him stand in the hall as a spectacle. The punishments the hall chose were not blows, but a public unmasking. Aldo had to confess, and then be escorted through the market with a placard explaining his crime. Men spat at the placard. Children laughed. A chorus of scorn followed his step.
For the worst measure, the hall removed his title and ordered him to return every favor he had taken. He was banished from attending court and ordered to serve in the docks, hauling stone for a year while the merchants who had trusted him learned to see his true face. The final humiliation came when a band of the court's scribes published his confession, and the pages were nailed to the market gate for all to read.
Aldo's expression followed a clear path: first, the small triumph of denial; then the forced smile that could not hold; then hard panic as witnesses came forward; then a brittle, choking denial; then bargaining; then terror; then collapse into pleading. The crowd's reaction mirrored this shift: curiosity, shock, anger, applause, laughter, disgust.
"You thought the court would hide you," I told him when his eyes met mine one last time as they dragged him out. "You thought private tricks make a private victory. But we live in public. You have been exposed."
He made a last effort to stare me down, but it was thin. "You will regret this," he hissed.
"Regret?" I put my hand to my heart. "I already did. I regretted being cruel. You will regret being stupid."
The dockwork and the public shame broke him in ways a private execution would not. He had to look those who had once bowed to him in the eye as he hauled stones. He had to meet the ledger of his own papered life and see his name crossed out. The market gate grew a notice of his crimes until his name was a thing that other men used to warn young courtiers.
From that day, the court was kinder in its visible cruelty. People saw that scheming required not just stealth, but a stomach for being seen and judged. Aldo's fall was a lesson that in our world of lanterns and ponds, public truth could be hotter than a sword.
*
That punishment lasted many days. Men who once sought Aldo's favor now folded their hands and looked away. Women whispered in doorways about how even small cruelty finds a public end. Aldo himself learned, slowly and painfully, how empty a smile looks when a crowd has turned.
The rest of our lives moved on like a river. Dale and I found a new measure — not love at first touch, but respect that grew from shared evenings and quiet strategies. Marina and I became unshakeable. Coleman, wild as wind, turned from a storm of threats into a steady companion in strange ways. Gavin Hahn, who had once admired me from afar, learned to stand when the world turned heavy and not to expect my heart as payment for favors.
"Do you love him now?" Gavin asked me one night as we watched lanterns on the river.
"I do not know," I said. "Love is not a map I can read. But I know I will not die because of a book."
"Then it is enough," he said.
"Enough," I repeated.
*
There is a moment marked on my tiny book: the Thousand Carp Pool, the jar, the lamp, the market gate. It is the day I realized the story will not be what the book promised. I had been given a dangerous gift: knowledge. I used it to stop pain.
"Are you happy?" Roberto asked me once, watching the court's slow repair.
"I am alive," I said. "That is all I wanted."
"And now you have friends," he said. "And even a strange lover from the north."
"I have many strange things," I answered. "But most of all, I have my voice."
I kept my book on the small shelf by the window, and when wind pushed against the paper, it sounded like a small applause.
*
The end, I thought for a long time, would be quiet. But the world has an appetite for endings with echoes.
One spring, the colony of caravans sent by Coleman to the far north returned bearing news: a rebellious faction had been crushed by unity. It cost him in ways none of us could understand.
"You did what you could," I told him quietly as he sat by the hearth, the fire throwing odd light on his face. "You did not let them take it all."
He put his hand over mine. "You saved me more than once," he said. "When I came here a wild thing, you tamed me without tearing me. That is a kindness I cannot repay."
"You already repay by not killing my soul," I said.
He laughed, a sound like a knife sheathed at last.
When I went back to the palace, Roberto reached out and squeezed my shoulder. "You have changed this story."
"I have," I said. "And so I will keep changing it."
Marina walked into the hall, smiling. "Anastasia," she said, "do you remember the fish you asked for that day you fell in the lake?"
"I asked for sour fish with chili," I said.
She reached into a small box and took out a jar. "I kept it," she said. "A tiny jar. To remind you: some things taste better when shared."
I opened the jar. The smell made my mouth water. "We will eat it at the Thousand Carp Pool one day," I said.
"We will eat it there with a crowd that remembers justice," Marina answered.
The pool shimmered like a promise outside the window.
I wrote the final line in my little book: I was a woman who woke up knowing the end. I chose to write another. The last word I wrote that night stood alone and bright: Alive.
The End
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