Sweet Romance13 min read
I Woke Up on My Wedding Night — Then Everything Changed
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"I set my teeth and opened one eye."
"You dare scheme against me, Julieta Ziegler? You dare think you'll be my wife and not pay for it?"
"I—who are you?" I croaked, my throat feeling raw and strange.
"You still ask? You plotted and plotted. Today you get your prize. But do you think you'll keep the title of Duchess? Hah. Not if I can help it."
"I don't even know where I am," I said, though my mouth tasted like iron and the candlelight turned the stranger's face into a beast. The room smelled of lacquer and incense and other people's money. Silk banners. A phoenix robe. A heavy crown. It was all wrong.
"Wake up," the angry man snarled. "Open your eyes fully, Julieta."
I did. My hand refused to obey me at first. My head hummed like a badly tuned lute. When the stranger leaned closer I saw the red flash in his gaze, the vein under his temple like a coiled wire.
"Who put you in my bed?" he demanded.
"My bed?" I repeated. "I—"
"Don't play coy," he spat. "You drugged me, didn't you? You plotted to make me sleep with you and then cram a husbandly title down my throat."
I tried to laugh. The sound came out like a cough. "If this is some sort of theater, then you have terrible timing."
"You are less funny when you are lying," he said, one corner of his mouth crooked in a sneer. "Get up. I will not be fooled."
I slid the blanket back, discarding the silk mask of whatever life the woman whose body I inhabited had been wearing. My fingers found the cold edge of unfamiliar fabrics, my brain fishing through someone else's memories like a drowning swimmer grabbing for a rope. Names slid into focus.
"Julieta Ziegler," I told myself aloud. It felt wrong and right at once. The family, the title: a Ziegler daughter married to a bound prince of this impossible, impossible world.
"Cursed," the man muttered. "Every rumor true. She was loud. She was foolish."
"He's—" I began.
"—Eugene Foster," someone else said from the doorway. A stone voice. A presence like iron and powdered snow.
"Eugene Foster?" I whispered. The name meant nothing. The idea of being wed to an "Eugene"—one of the most powerful men I did not know—made my stomach drop.
"Do you even realize what you have done?" Eugene's voice was flatter than a blade. "You poisoned me? You thought to make me a prisoner of gratitude? You thought I'd sit and become your puppet? You think you can sit and claim the honor of duke's wife and feed on the family's shame?"
"Stop," I said. "Stop with the dramatics. I don't remember anything from last night."
"You don't remember? Then prove it. Prove you are not a poisoner."
"I wasn't there. I swear I wasn't—"
"Save it."
Garrison Hu, his lieutenant, stood beside him like a loyal shadow. He stepped forward, expression blank. "By order of the Duke, escort the Duchess to a safe place."
"Safe place?" I laughed—then choked on the cold in my chest. "You mean exile. You mean a cave. You mean anywhere away from the man who now calls himself my husband."
"You'll go," Garrison said. "By His Grace's orders."
"Then tell him this: I won't go alone."
"No," Eugene said, like a knife. "You will go. Now."
They hauled me away. Hands rough as winter weather bundled me into a carriage. Someone had the decency to tell me my maid, Franziska Dell, was missing. They called her "absent." They said she vanished the night the accusations flew. Someone else, a shadow in the hallway—Adam Jacobs—moved like a ghost, neither friend nor enemy, but too close to ignore.
When the world blurred, I found new memories unfurling: strange knowledge that belonged to Julieta Ziegler—a life of raucous parties and worse whims, a girl who had made a habit of being noticed but not always liked. I had skills, too: medicine, business, memory of how to bargain with people who thought themselves untouchable. The truth tripped out like a wire: I had been born in another time, I had run a hospital and a couple of companies. I had, by bizarre luck or cruel fate, landed in Julieta's body and in the middle of a marriage I had not chosen.
Four years later, I stood in the muddy air of a roadside village. The man who had brought me back—Garrison Hu—blinked hard when he saw what I had become.
"You—"
"What do you mean 'you'?" I said. I was wearing a patched coat, a broad hat, and boots that had seen too many roads. I hefted a hoe on my shoulder like a badge. My son's small hand squeezed mine. He wore a ragged cloak, his hair sticking up like a little field of wheat. Pax Dietrich—Pax, my son—waved his fish to any passerby with pride.
"Julieta," Garrison whispered. "You were supposed to be a lady. This—this is—"
"A farmer?" I supplied. "Yes. I farm. I also count coins."
Garrison's face folded in worry and a little pity. "The Duke—Eugene—he went to war, then he..."
"He died?" Pax asked, bright-eyed as a candle. "Is he gone to where the dead have cookies?"
"No," I said, and my voice shook in a way I had not intended. "Not dead. Not really. But a man went out to war and never came home as he was meant to."
Garrison produced a scroll: a piece of paper with ink that told of a letter, official orders, and the other thing—a signed document that would allow me to leave, to be free in name if not in wealth. He said the Duke's counsel had done their best. He said the Duke had been cruel, but the paper—"a deed of separation"—was merciful.
I read the words and felt the weight of four silent years: hardship, freedoms sneaked under moonlight, and the careful ledger entries that had transformed me from a laughing fool into a woman with assets. I had a box: deeds, maps, silver, and a small medicine kit. I had built a small fortune in secret—no one expected Julieta Ziegler to be a merchant.
"Keep it quiet," Garrison said. "For your child's—"
"My child's sake," I finished.
"Exactly."
"Then we'll play the widow. We'll play the grieving mother with a secret ledger and a head full of practicalities."
"You will go back to the Duke's house?" he asked.
"It'll be fun to see him choke on his own pride," I said, and my mouth curved.
We returned. Night fell over the Duke's house and cast its shadows like a tray of cold silver. Blue lanterns and the scent of cooked meat could not mask the formal cold of that place. The gate opened and I stepped back into a life someone else thought they owned.
"Julieta," Eugene said when I entered. His voice was a winter river, deep and dangerous. "You come back as a widow, then. How quaint. I suppose you expect to take your place, keep the title."
"I come as the mother of Pax," I replied, and the air between us shivered. "I'm also an honest woman with a ledger. Give me what is mine."
"You want to divide the estate? Bold."
"I want what will support Pax."
"Then we shall divide."
"Half," I said, deliberately.
"Eugene," Garrison tried, uneasy. "That is..."
"Done," he snapped, and his eyes cut like glass. "I will consider what I owe. For now, you shall remain in the Duchess' garden."
"And young Pax?" I asked.
"He will remain with you."
"Then we will be comfortable enough." I smiled, but inside I felt the steel of many futures. He might be a pretender to my peace, but I had a secret that could tie him in knots he did not expect: I had businesses and cunning and a tongue that had learned to slice through men like bread.
That night, when the pale moon watched and the servants hummed like a hive, a pale woman staggered into our yard—a soft creature with a voice like bells and eyes full of hunger. She called herself Amira Rivera. She smiled like a cat and clung to Eugene as if their fates were a single thread.
"Julieta," she said, fresh as a painted doll. "How... unexpected to see you in the garden."
I narrowed my eyes. "You are new to the city."
"I just returned from abroad," Amira said. "I was lonely without one I love."
"Oh," I said. "A compliment to my husband, perhaps."
She moved like a reed in the wind, and I watched her like a farmer watches a storm cloud. There was a wrongness in the way she lingered near the Duke.
"She is a guest," Eugene told me with a flatness like cold iron. "Do not forget your promise to rest."
"I promise nothing."
"Enough of this. Speak with me in the pavilion."
He left us, and Amira's smile shrank into something thinner. She pursed her lips. A sound like a small animal escaped from her.
"You disgrace yourself, Julieta," she said quietly. "You throw words like stones."
"I prefer building bridges," I answered. "Stones trip people."
She made a new plan, I saw it in the small, quick motions of her hands. That night she threw a trap—a pond, a staged fall, a shriek and a performance. She leapt, pretended to be pushed, and called for help in a voice trained to cut hearts. The spectacle worked on the soft and gullible.
"She threw me!" she cried to Eugene, eyes rimmed red like they had been wept upon for days.
"She pushed me!" I retorted, and the yard held its breath. The Duke considered us both as if weighing coins he didn't want to spend.
"Enough," he said. "We will have order. There will be no more shouting in my yard."
But the queen of acting takes a fall and then plays the martyr. The house servants were torn between the picture of herself Amira painted—weak, fainting, needing a hero—and the raw sight of my son sleeping against my chest, the small evidence of what mattered to me.
"What will you do?" I asked, amusement and steel braided together.
Eugene's face tightened. He wanted me gone, but he also wanted nothing to rock his future plans. He proclaimed calm. He gave orders. He told the household to behave, to remove the trouble. But a seed had sprouted: his eyes tracked Amira with a new hardness.
Time twisted. People in the house began to fall obediently into the pattern we expected now: rumors, allegiance shifting like weather. Servants whispered. Amira whispered as well, to the right ears. She pretended to be meek and blamed me. She wagged stories to the nursemaid and wept to the chamberlains: how the Duchess had insulted her, how she'd struck her maid with a spoiled child's arrogance. The more she spoke, the more certain the Duke's men became that I was cruel and unfit.
One morning, a small venomous incident exploded. Amira's maid, Maria Dupont, who had swaggered once too often, called the boy names in the yard and struck him with insolence. I keep my temper like I keep my accounts—carefully, with a margin for error. When that swagger turned to cruelty, I said one word too many. The daughter of Amira struck back, and chaos ran like spilled grain.
Later that day, the house convened in the flower hall. I had been accused of slapping the maid. Accusations flew, voices rose and fell. I could feel the tilt of the room. White silk faces watched like gulls above a fishing harbor. They looked to the Duke to deliver justice.
"Eugene," I said softly before the crowd could grow a hand too quick. "I will agree to what you decide, if you will decide quickly. I would rather leave with dignity than linger to be chewed."
"You dare use separation as a bargaining chip?" he hissed.
"A woman accords what she can," I replied. "You asked me how to punish me. I told you: separation. Now speak."
The room breathed as if waiting for a storm to break.
He smiled dangerously. "You ask for money with threats. Very well. We will not have words here. We will have consequences."
He had many eyes around him—the courtiers, the guards. They wanted spectacle as much as law. He wanted an answer that would serve him and teach others. So a punishment was ordered—not for me, but for the maid Maria, who had been loud, insolent, and whose habit of insulting others had become a flame in a dry house.
This is where the public punishment happened—the thing that would ripple through the court for years, the part of our story people will remember and retell.
"Bring her," Eugene said.
They dragged Maria forward. At first, she wore a smirk as if she were on stage. Her mouth formed quick denials. She threw her chin up. "I did nothing wrong," she cried. "I only spoke the truth. She deserved it."
"You spoke truth?" a steward asked, voice sharp as a whip. "And is the truth dangerous, Maria?"
"I—I did only what my mistress instructed," Maria faltered. "I was only—"
"You were insolent," the steward snapped. "You insulted the young master."
"Garrison, cut the theatrics," the Duke commanded coldly. "This is a matter of order. The household must not be a place for slander and violence."
"Then do it," Maria spat to the end. Her arrogance flashed—now she was the villain of the tale, and yet she showed the courage of the truly stupid: to think cruelty had the last word.
"They will record this day," someone muttered. "Word will be carried."
"Bring the rack," said another voice. "If she is to be cleansed of sin, do it openly."
The crowd pressed forward. The hall's threshold swelled with servants, pages, and a handful of high-born ladies who had come to witness the correction of someone beneath them. They wanted to see strictness, to watch the breaking of an affront. A dozen torchbearers peered like sentries.
Maria's expression shifted. Her smirk flinched, her eyes darted from face to face. It was the first step of the downfall: smugness.
"Smug smiles don't help," I said quietly. "They only mean more to punish later."
She stiffened. "You think you can shame me before the whole house? I'm a guest's maid! I belong to Amira Rivera, who—"
The steward's hand tightened around a cord. "You are in our home. We decide."
Maria's second expression arrived: shock. Guards tightened the ropes. A weighty silence fell.
"No," she said, a whisper that turned to a higher pitch. "No, you cannot—"
"Shut her up," someone ordered. "Let the Duke have his justice."
They bound Maria's hands. Her eyes widened. People started murmuring: "She looks pale," "The Duke has turned on her," "What did she expect?" The first cluster of observers were servants who had owed favors to Maria's mistress; some watched with folded arms, others with nervous curiosity.
"How do you plea?" the Duke asked.
She lunged at denial. "I did nothing! She—she taught him to lie! She had him call the child by another name—"
She grasped at the jury of faces, but the crowd had shifted; the favor was in the other direction now.
"That is enough," Eugene said. He stepped forward, and for the first time his presence felt vast and terrible. "You have misused language and teeth. The house has rules. You will be punished so no one dares the same."
The third stage: denial. Maria pounded the floor with her heels. "It is a lie! They are lying! Lady Julieta is a liar!"
The Duke's face did not move. He listened, then ordered the first element of public shame: the cutting of the tongue. The crowd gasped; even those who hated the maid felt the chill of seeing a woman silenced in such a way.
"No," Maria whimpered. The smirk was gone, shock moved into denial, and denial curdled into fear. "You can't—"
"Hold her steady," the steward snapped. "This will be a lesson. In this house we keep tongues useful."
They bared the small blade like a priest seeing to a ritual. The knives glittered and the torchlight made the metal look like a line of pale moon.
Her eyes were the next show: they bulged, the bravado breaking. "You will not—" she managed.
One blow, sharp as winter, and she screamed. The sound was terrible: immediate, raw, more animal than human. People hissed. A woman in the crowd fanned her mouth as if to faint. Another man lifted his hand because his fingers tingled at the horror.
The fourth stage: collapse. Maria's face flooded with blood and panic. "I didn't—please," she choked. "I swear—"
"No one came forward to stop you before. We watched. We gave you chances. The house sees now," the steward intoned. "Let no one believe they can trample the master or mock the young."
The throng pressed closer. The Duke said he was not content with a single punishment. Justice, he said, must be a lesson as muscle as well as silence. So they chose to sever what had been used to make trouble—the hand that raised a blade against the little one. The crack of bone and the terrible sound of a life altered echoed like thunder between the tapestries.
Her voice had thinned to an animal wail. She looked at the people, and then her eyes found me as if hoping I might yield mercy. The fifth stage arrived in a rush: pleading.
"Please," she squealed brokenly, "please don't! I will say anything—I'll kneel, I'll—"
Men in the crowd shifted. Faces that had been leaning forward brightened to horror. A woman held a hand to her mouth and cried. Another man took out a cloth and placed it to his mouth and forbore.
"Beg," the Duke said softly, like a judge who had seen too many follies. "Beg for mercy."
She begged. She sobbed. Her voice was tiny as grain sifting through hands. Her requests hung in the hall like torn banners. But it was too late.
"Take her," Eugene ordered. "Do not let her speak of this house again."
They dragged Maria away. People in the hall muttered. A small handful clapped, a few more hissed, and a dozen others simply stared through the smoke of the torches and the whirring of heartbeats. The steward told everyone to go back to their duties. He said nothing more.
The story of Maria's punishment spread like a fever through the corridors and the alleys. Servants whispered the five stages: she had been smug, then startled, then denied, then broken, and finally begging. For weeks people would reenact the scene in whispers in kitchens and behind curtains.
At the garden's edge, when the commotion had dwindled to a hush, I met Eugene's cold eye. He had ordered the punishment not in a fit of rage but as a deliberate spectacle. His face was unreadable.
"You will go now," he said.
"Go where?" I asked.
"Take your share, and go," he said. "Take what you will."
I took the paper he signed. On the way out I heard the gossiping ripples already forming—women trying to measure their own safety by someone else's suffering.
The punishment had been public. Maria had gone from arrogance to begging. The crowd had watched, some with approval, many with uneasy satisfaction. Her voice gone, her hand severed, the maid who once walked with insolence had left the hall a broken figure.
Later, as I packed the chest we had started four years ago, Pax at my side, I felt the strange sweetness of river water after a storm. The Duke had arranged a neat exit. He had been cruel. He had been careful. He had given me room to go.
"Will he come after us?" Pax asked, his small fingers entwined in mine.
"He might," I said. "But he also has bigger storms."
"Like fighting and men and drums?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "That and more."
We left at dawn. People would speak of that day for years: not just because of the wounds, but because of the lesson it taught. I had been humiliated and stolen; I had sand and seed beneath my nails; and in four short years I had turned disgrace into coin.
"He'll regret this," Garrison said once as we rode away from the gate.
"Maybe," I replied. "Or maybe he will only regret that he did not take more."
"Do you plan to go back?" he asked.
"Yes." I set my jaw. "When the coin is counted, when the papers are signed, I will go back, and I will not fall into the old traps. This time I will lead."
"Lead how?" he asked.
"With numbers and invoices and the right people," I said. "And if I must, with a sharper tongue."
He laughed softly. "You always did have that."
"Only now it is economic," I told him. "And calculated. I will keep Pax fed, keep the ledger clean, and keep a list of everyone who owed me a favor."
We traveled with a purpose: to take the deed, to draw the assets, and to make sure that when we left again, we left with a clear path to a new life. I had come to this body as a joke. I would leave it as a business plan.
The Duke and I had begun a negotiation that day in the hall of roses. I had walked away with the signed paper—what the law called a partition. He had cut a maid and silenced tongues; he had shown the house he could be feared. I had gained gold.
There would be more battles. There would be more rumors. Amira would continue to scheme. The Duke, inscrutable as ever, would walk the thin line between a soldier's honor and a man's hunger. I, Julieta Ziegler, born of a future hospital and commerce, with a child's laugh and a ledger in my pocket, would keep learning to breathe this world like smoke.
"Now," I told Pax as we crossed the river, "we build."
"We build?" he echoed, bright-eyed.
"We build a life on purpose," I said. "And we make sure the next time our enemies think to punish us, they find the ledger already paid."
The End
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