Sweet Romance12 min read
I wrecked his wedding and kept a laughing thief
ButterPicks11 views
I didn't expect that one bad night and two drunk words would pull so many things loose.
I woke with someone else's weight at my side, sheets tangled, and a man's breath warm against my neck. I sat up too fast, fingers fumbling for armor I hadn't bothered to put on before sleep. The man beside me—unannounced, uninvited—rolled over, eyes half-lidded, and for a second I almost laughed at myself.
"Canaan?" I said.
He blinked, smiled like a cornered animal turned charming. "Sister, you left without paying. Will you redeem me today?"
"Redeem you?" I hissed, one hand on my sword's hilt though the blade was across the room. My voice had that flatness that stops jokes. "You have the wrong person."
He slid upright, caught my waist with both hands like a person refusing to be ignored. "No, no. I remember. You said—" He leaned in so close I could hear the scrape of his breath. "You said, 'We're a pair.'"
I felt the hair rise on my neck. "What did I say?"
He ducked his head, voice suddenly small. "You said you were shy when sober and honest when drunk."
My cheeks warmed without permission. "Canaan, stop."
"Which time was it?" he asked, as if lining up trophies. "Was it the first when you whispered it? The second when you tipped your cup? Or the third when you—"
"Enough." I pushed him back. He pouted, wounded but still ridiculous, and for half a second I forgot the confusion, the mess the morning after a banquet always brings.
This was how it had been since he followed me north: a scraped, brazen little man who claimed to be a low-born entertainer, who insisted I once spent a night with him and used that as the vow that bound him to me. He refused to accept I hadn't even left the north for weeks. He carried a carved jade pendant with the character "Snow" and would always glance at my belt as if that small piece of carved stone proved everything.
"You think I look like that woman?" I asked the first time we met by the north gate. He had been waiting with a ledger and the kind of brazen face that had ruined more men than gold.
"Your hands, your gait, your look." He said it like a prayer. "You were mine that night."
"I am the general of the north. I know how to use a spear. I don't belong to the kind of people who buy and sell promises." I had my spear leveled at his throat then. "Leave."
But his eyes were too open, too honest. He wasn't a thief of money; he stole pity and made it into a bedrock. He carried my carved jade as if it were a claim. "Give it back," I demanded.
He blinked as if the world had tilted. "You gave it to me."
I had no memory of it. Names run around a city like stray cats; sometimes something pretty is picked up without thinking. I tilted my head and saw how naive the man looked: not just the face of a street crowder, but someone who'd been bought and sold as a child and hardened into a kind of survival sweetness.
"Fine," I said, because cruelty that ties up the helpless isn't a thing I do for sport. "Stay the night. I'll look into who took my pendant and why they're signing contracts with my name."
He smiled like dawn. "Then I shall stay."
He stayed. He asked for redemption as if it were a daily prayer. "Sister, will you redeem me today?" he would ask every morning, each time wearing hope like armor.
My patience frayed. I had other things: a father too old to be burdened by truth, sisters who were polished with court favors, and the memory of my mother's land where people starved while banners in the palace fluttered like silk without care. I had been named for snow because the palace gave me a name that fit nothing of them. That snow hardened me.
But he was like a stuck pebble in my boot—annoying, impossible to ignore.
"You're not right for me," I told him once, and he would blink and say, "Maybe you're right, but I'm right for you in the ways you don't want."
I didn't like him. I liked a voice that had once written me warm letters and vanished—Simon Hoffmann. The day his courier announced he would visit the north, hope pulled at my sleeves like an old friend.
"You're nervous," Canaan said while helping me ladle porridge. He praised every burnt corner like a treasure, and for that I was grateful.
"I'm going to see Simon Hoffmann." I told him. "He will be here tonight."
He froze, and his eyes shrank into something like a well. "Will he like your cooking?" he asked. Then, with dangerous tenderness: "I'll try to make him like you."
"You—" I started, then stopped. He really would try. That thought made my chest, that stubborn thing, hurt.
The day Simon arrived, everything tightened. I wore practical things—sheathed sword at my hip, a simple braid—and waited in the hall with bowls of plain fare. He came like a noble should, composed, polite. "Veronique," he said, and for a moment the world rearranged itself.
"You haven't changed," he said, a half-smile at the corner of his mouth.
"I have," I returned, voice flat as the plains. His courtiers snorted and exchanged glances; they didn't expect a woman to answer so plainly in a world of bows. One of the women at Simon's side, Mariah Busch, went blustery with laughter and then jealousy. "You could stand to groom yourself a little," she told me aloud, soft cruelty like a well-aimed stick.
"My armor is clean enough," I said. "We can talk of other things."
We did. He spoke of city plans, of trade, of something he called "our mutual advantage." When he reached for my hand to show a gilded token and speak of marriage as an arrangement, something in my chest folded.
"You're coming to take a wife," I said.
"To strengthen ties," he answered. "Veronique, I can be your shield in the court."
"Is that why you sent me a pendant when you were a boy?" I asked, because childhood mattered, the way a carved charm had once made me breathless.
He hesitated. "It was a foolish, soft thing."
At that, I walked the table to him and did what fools in songs do: I shoved a warm spoonful of hand-grabbed rice into his mouth. Then I pushed further. My sword rang as I cut through the table in an angry demonstration. "Leave me be," I said, and tossed the plate. His face—usually so composed—wet nearly with rice, took him by surprise.
"Get out of my sight," I told him. I wanted him to go and never come back with gilded tokens.
He left, stunned and a little shamed. The room watched.
"You were cruel," Canaan whispered later, his hands busy mending a strap. "But I liked it."
"You liked seeing a noble man shoved?" I challenged.
"I liked seeing you do what you do best."
Canaan's presence was dangerous in another way. He knew the edges of me, and he kept returning until the line between pity, protection, and something else blurred. He took my thrown-away hairpin, that old tarnished thing with a small red stone that had belonged to my mother, and wore it as if it were a pennant.
Word got around.
The imperial wedding in the garden—Mariah Busch's sister's wedding—was the kind of hall where courtiers swapped glances like small knives. I arrived late, as my nature went: armor hidden under travel clothes, hair tamed by habit. My arrival turned heads because I never dressed as the court liked. Mariah's pavilion was full of glittering guests and perfumed gossips. I kept myself small.
Then the whisper rose: someone had stolen my jade and used my name at a pleasure house. The accusation had been whispered like a candle at my back; the name linked to me was a rope. Mariah—ever bitter, ever eager—lifted her voice too loud for the garden.
"You used Veronique's name, didn't you?" she cried to Simon in the crowd. "You gave her a pendant and let her be seen. Who else would dare?"
The courtiers turned like a chorus. "Shame," said one. "Scandal," said another. I could feel a thousand eyes on me, weighing, measuring. My mouth tasted empty.
Simon tried to deflect. "Mariah—"
"She ruined me!" Mariah shrieked. She ripped off her ceremonial veil to make a spectacle. "He bought me things! He gave me a pendant! He promised me!"
"It is a lie!" Simon wavered. The dinner fell quiet like a net. A hush like snowfall.
I stepped forward. The silver hairpin in my sleeve chilled my fingers. If a man treats women like tokens, he'll see what tokens can do.
"Is this the girl you gave a pendant to?" I asked, holding the jade up in the lamplight for all to see. Simon went pale. Mariah's eyes widened.
He stammered. "I—this was only meant—"
"You gave her a promise in private and a pendant in public?" I asked. "You thought pledging two women made you a clever man?"
"It was—" He tried to find solid ground. "We had an understanding."
"It was a lie," I said. "And you'd use that lie to shame other women."
I drew my sword and let it sing through the air. "Open your mouth," I told Simon. Before he could react, I shoved a bowl of food at him, the same way I'd shoved food into his mouth earlier, but now the crowd had seconds to see him choke.
"Eat!" I commanded, my voice colder than any storm. "Eat and see what your promises taste like."
The hall exploded.
"She can't—" someone murmured.
"This is unseemly!" another hissed.
Simon choked, red-faced, while Mariah wept for show and the courtiers babbled. I kept the sword at his throat, not to kill but to show that the blade could be real. I wanted his face, the face that had once sent me a token like a child's line. I wanted him to be small, mouth full of someone else's food and startled shame.
"Why did you give her your token?" I asked quietly, loud enough that the entire garden heard.
Simon swallowed, eyes like a trapped bird. "Because—because I intended to make a match. It was—an arrangement."
"An arrangement that treats women as land to be swapped," I said. "That is what you call honorable?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it. "Veronique—"
"You knew she was my—" Mariah started to wail. "You knew you had me!"
I lifted the pendant and let it strike the floor. "This was mine," I said. "He gave me this when we were children. He spread it like currency to buy virtue he never owned. He is the sort of man who sells promises."
A thousand faces sharpened. Somewhere, someone whispered, "What will the Emperor say?" The Emperor sat like a cold god, watching with interest rather than anger.
Simon tried to kneel to soothe Mariah and the room seethed. "No," I said. "You will not hand me your apologies. You will not buy my silence. You will leave."
His pride snapped like a brittle reed. He dropped to his knees in a different way—less a man of honor and more a man who had been tripped.
"Veronique, please—" he begged. I could have shown compassion. Instead, I unbuckled his belt in front of everyone—
—and smashed the carved pendant against the tiled floor.
It shattered like an old promise. Pieces of green jade scattered like coins; someone near me gasped and began to clap, half in shock, half in admiration. The courtiers whispered furiously. Mariah's face collapsed from triumph to horror. Simon's dignified façade flickered to panic, then denial, then a crumpling face like a man realizing his house of cards had been set on fire.
"How dare you!" cried a dowager with pearls like frozen winds. "You cannot—"
"I can," I said. "More than that, I will not be paraded like a curiosity. I will not allow men to think their tokens give them license to name me in taverns."
The crowd tilted. Forked tongues crossed, some muttered that I'd gone too far, some that I'd done exactly what justice demanded. Several guests in the pavilion pulled out small folding screens and waved them, whispering about propriety. A few people closer to me—people who hated the way the court crumbs fell on lesser folk—began to murmur support.
Simon had nowhere to stand. He staggered, voice shaking. "This is madness," he said. "You cannot—"
"Then hold still and be shown what the world sees of you." I shoved the spoon of food I'd used earlier into his mouth again. He gagged, then coughed until his composure broke. A dozen noblemen winced, some applauding out of a new, savage amusement. I fed him humility and he choked on it.
The reaction around us was a theater: some ladies clutched their fans and whispered, "How dare the general!" Others leaned forward, hungry for spectacle. Some gossips were already spinning crowns of rumor. A girl near me took out a notebook and scribbled, as if to record the exact unfolding of a scandal. The steward began to tug at my sleeve, but I shook it off.
Simon stopped trying to explain and began to beg. His voice hit the rows like a misfired arrow. "Please," he said to Mariah, who only sobbed harder. She looked at him with confusion—the kind of confusion women get when a man has shown both cunning and weakness in the same breath.
"Do you feel small?" I asked him quietly, but loud enough for everyone to hear. "Do you wish to be forgiven by those you insulted?"
He nodded, ashamed. "I—I don't know what I did."
"You used me as an ornament," I said. "You used her as a consolation."
The crowd's tone shifted. People love to see a man revealed as ordinary. Men in silk who had been smug at the beginning now looked at their cups like men who had misread the recipe of pride. A soldier near the gate—someone who had seen battle and known the grit of truth—clapped, half a hand, then another until applause grew like ripples. Some jeered. A courtly lady fainted halfway through the commotion; her attendants rushed out.
Simon tried to salvage something by speaking of alliances. "This is politics," he pleaded. "We had reasons."
"Politics," I repeated. "Then be a politician who does not hide behind bowed heads and broken promises. Stand and be accountable." I pushed him to his feet and cut his sash, an outward scar that would mark him in whispers for weeks.
His face went through stages: first color drained, then feverish heat as he looked for allies, then the denial stage—"You exaggerate"—then the shrinking panic. He tried to explain with his hands shaking: "I thought—" but his voice had no weight. The crowd smelled that weakness like a pack scent: they moved closer.
Mariah's supporters murmured. "She is mad," one called, and then, not daring to contradict the crowd, another said, "No, she's right."
Simon finally did what all men do when the floor becomes ice: he asked to be forgiven. He bowed; his begging was public, humiliating to any pride-frozen noble. People who had sat at ease now turned away or pretended to choke. The Emperor, who had been watching like someone scanning a map, simply sighed and sipped wine. The toast that evening was awkward. Dances resumed with a new, brittle edge. At the far end of the pavilion, a stooped steward recorded the event with earnest, quivering wonder.
When the crowd had dispersed a little, some called it spectacle; others whispered of justice. I walked out into the cold garden, snow-pale lanterns trembling, and found Canaan waiting.
"You did it," he said, eyes wide.
"I showed him a mirror," I replied. He reached for my hand as if to crow with victory.
"This is good," he said slowly. "You burned his token."
"Tokens are nothing." I kept my voice flat. "Action matters."
He smiled in a way I had started to like. "Then you'll not ask me to leave?"
"I asked once," I said.
He tilted his head, like foxs do. "Then will you redeem me? Today?"
"Not like that," I said. I almost laughed—at his persistence, at the way he still asked with the same soft voice, as if every refusal could be turned into a yes with enough time and enough light.
Days after, he caught a fever. He said sorry in his sleep and clung to my sleeve. I wrapped him, fed him bitter broths, and looked at the red-stained hairpin he had once taken. He slept like a child and dreamed of being bought back. I made bitter tea and listened to his murmur, "I will not lie again. I will not be a thief of promises."
"You swore a month ago," I told him when he blinked awake. "Why would I believe you now?"
"Because you said two words." He leaned into me the way small things lean into the wind. "Because you said them to me."
"What words?"
"I don't remember," he said. "But they were good words."
I thought of the ruined pendant in the garden, the broken promise, the pile of green on the stones. I thought of Simon's face as the crowd closed in. I thought of my mother, of the cold lands that named me. I thought of the way Canaan sat and mended straps with diligence he gave freely—no intent to impress, only to be needed.
"Speak plainly," I said, "or speak with your hands."
He did both.
He put his head on my lap, catching the braid of my hair, and for the first time I felt a warm thing inside that had nothing to do with pity or politics. It was small and stubborn.
"I like you," he whispered, like a confession or a prayer. "I liked you from the first time I saw you by the gate."
"You should have told me before you lied about debtors," I teased.
He grinned. "I tried. But I thought the dramatic route would be better."
"You're ridiculous." My hand found his hair and stayed. "But you're not wrong."
Later, the north was quiet. Simon returned to his gilded rooms to drown out scandal with petitions. Mariah's marriage continued but with a slow, bitter crack. The court would talk for months about the general who smashed a token in public. People would retell it at dinners as an amusement and as a lesson. Canaan, for all his tattered past and stage-born lines, stayed. He continued to ask, with daily ritual, "Sister, will you redeem me?" and I continued to brush him off, and then, sometimes, to answer.
"I will," I said one night, leaning in, tasting of bitter wine and clearer dawn. "Redeem you, in the only ways that matter."
He grinned until he looked like a child given sweets. "Then tomorrow I'll ask again."
The last thing I packed before leaving the capital for the north was the broken hairpin—the tiny red stone still set——and my sword with its tiny chip that always made me proud. I slipped the hairpin back into my pocket and let the world find a new story to tell: that the general named for snow had a thief of promises at her side, and that sometimes, when a man is made small by his own deeds, a woman can be cruel enough to be fair.
I rode back to the north with Canaan in the cart beside me, his head on my knee, both of us less certain and more resolved. The pendant had been broken and promises had been rearranged. The snow in my name would not be soft; it would be the kind that hardened ground and kept people alive.
That night, when he reached up and murmured, "Sister—today?" I smiled and let my hand cover his.
"Today," I said.
The End
— Thank you for reading —