Sweet Romance12 min read
Married to the Eunuch: My Unlikely Throne of Safety
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I married a eunuch.
"You're so lucky," I told myself when they lowered the veil. "No children, no fights over heirs, only him and his kindness."
"Is she really happy about it?" someone whispered behind the silk curtains. I heard it like a pebble dropped into a pond.
"Of course," I said, and smiled till someone might have thought I'd been born with a grin stitched on my face.
When Deacon Johansen lifted my veil, I tried to make my pleasure obvious without being foolish. "Am I too eager?" I asked, craning my head.
"You look like a woman who found a new life," he said. "Do you truly think you married a usual man?"
"I married a perfect match," I said, and felt my chest puff proud like a chick that thinks it's a swan.
He glanced at me, then to the corner where the attendants hovered. "This is how you behave when you marry a eunuch?"
"It is how I behave when I marry my husband," I answered, and leaned closer to touch the rough edge of his sleeve. Even though silk lay between us, I felt the strength beneath and flicked my fingers at it like a child testing a new toy.
He flinched at my forwardness and then—without warning—pushed me gently but promptly onto the bridal bed.
"I will be patient," I murmured, remembering the whispered warnings that eunuchs could be different. I unlatched a small box and offered it.
"What is this?" Deacon Johansen tilted the lid with thoughtful fingers. His face shadowed and flushed in strange currents as he looked at me.
"You are too kind," he said with a dry tone. "A thoughtful wife."
I bowed my head. "A wife must be useful."
He touched my cheek like he was checking a candle's flame. "Dawn Cole, you are full of surprises."
I became the first of his wives to survive the wedding night.
"Let them stare," I told myself when I returned home weeks later to my father.
"Father, look at me. I'm the Nine Thousand's wife." I looped my fingers through Deacon Johansen's and danced with a ridiculous lightness.
"Does the house not welcome me?" Deacon asked flatly when my father stepped inside and drew himself taut.
"Of course," my father Dario Burgess stammered. "How could we—"
Deacon's lips curled once. "If you brought me a fool, is this meant as an insult?"
My heart dropped. "This is my father," I whispered, shocked that Dario had thought he could buy his way into favor. "Why would he—"
"My wife is not to be insulted," Deacon said. He took my hand and led me inside with calm, as if he were placing a vase where no one could topple it.
I was proud. "My husband," I told him under my breath. "So strong."
He patted my head and said, "Then be as lively as you like."
I led him by the hand, reeling with joy. "Let's go. I'll show you my room."
On the way, my stepmother Loretta Sandberg attempted to speak confidences. "Dawn, your behavior—" she began and then reached for my cheek with a pretended affection. I returned it with a slap quicker than she could blink.
"You dare—" she hissed.
"She started it," I said, but Deacon was already there, a shadow between us and the woman. He tilted his head and said quietly, "Is my wife being scolded?"
"She is ours to guide," Loretta said with a practiced softness.
"You took a fool and cast her out," Deacon retorted. "I married a woman to call my own, not a puppet for others."
I felt like I could laugh then. "My husband protects me," I told Loretta. "Do you not see?"
Loretta's expression crumpled like old paper. She had thought to use me, and instead I had come back alive and better off.
Later, when the servants carried in the gifts, Deacon whispered, "We will set things right. But you must do as I say."
"I'll try," I promised. "I never dreamed—"
He smiled, a rare, small thing. "Then be that surprise."
At the time, rumors circled like kites in wind. "Watch out," said Jaylin Nasir, my friend. "They say he punished wives who disappointed him."
"Let them say it," I said, stacking my chin like a child daring the world. "I am not like them."
"You are fearless," Jaylin said. "Or foolish."
The city still hummed. The brothel I knew best—where Joan Xiao ran things with a leathery laugh—was a place of gossip and refuge. "Bring him sometime," I told Jaylin. "He'd be strange there, but he will make me proud."
"Don't lead trouble to my doorstep," Jaylin grumbled. "Bring me food instead."
I was proud, so proud I took gifts and fussed over Deacon's sleeve. "He is not like other men," I told anyone who asked. "He's kind."
Deacon shut his eyes and breathed once. "Dawn, who do you keep in your heart?"
My cheeks grew hot. "You," I said, without thinking.
He looked at me long and answered, "Then keep me safe."
There were small things—small proud things—that stitched days together. He held my hand in court where others dared not touch me. He teased me in the marketplace. He let me drag him to the largest teahouse, the flowered lane, the places where a girl's laugh could get lost in twilight.
We enjoyed stolen evenings. "Take me tonight," I pleaded once. "Let me show you the city."
He lifted one brow. "The city will see you as you are."
I pulled him laughing into a crooked back street, into the not-quite-noisy teahouse where Joan Xiao's girls sang. We sat and I fed him sweet wine; he pretended to complain when it dripped, but his grin softened like candle wax.
"Do you like it?" I asked.
He reached across the table, pinched my chin, and said, "I like whoever you are when you laugh."
When I first met Xavier Bryant—Fu Xin—I had believed in another life. He had been the bookish sort, thin as a reed and earnest like a prayer. I bought him from the auction once, I told myself like a silly girl, because I couldn't bear to see him slide into the cold arms of the brothel.
"Keep him safe, will you?" I had begged Joan Xiao.
"Keep him away from fireworks," Joan had said. "Men like him will burn."
He followed me like a shadow at first. "I owe you," he would murmur. I expected gratitude and little more. Instead he studied the world until his eyes were leveled and deep.
Later, at a festival, he walked up straight-backed and announced a marriage proposal that made every woman's fan drop halfway to her lips.
"Will you keep me?" he asked with the awkwardness of a man who had never been taught the language of flattery.
I said yes because he asked too sincerely to refuse.
When he married someone else, I thought we'd be done. But I had been foolish—my own small trickery had led to mischief. I had sprinkled a little laxative in their ceremonial wine to teach them a lesson. When they fell ill that night, tongues wagged and the city lit up like paper lanterns with stories.
"You did this?" Deacon asked, one morning with jagged patience. "Why would you humiliate them?"
"They were cruel," I protested. "They deserved to learn."
"Not public shame," he said. "Not when you sit in my shadow."
"Then tell me how to fix it," I demanded.
He turned his head and drew a breath sharp enough to cut silk. "You will go with me to settle it."
We did. We walked through streets so loud I thought the world might fall apart. I told stories, silly and light, to mask the tremor of fear in my chest.
One evening, word came that my father had been banished—Dario Burgess shipped to a distant post as Deacon's decree. "For your family's insolence," Deacon said. "He will learn."
I felt a spasm of guilt and also a curious relief. "Isn't he my father?" I asked.
"He mistook your marriage for a bargain," Deacon answered. "He will learn his place."
Rumors swirled that I had fallen from favor. Hazel Herve—the polite and pale woman who now wore my old feuds like perfume—began to flatter me for favor. She said, "Dawn, you should teach me how to please your husband."
"Has he asked for more interest?" I teased.
"No," Hazel said. "But prudence is prudent."
In the quiet between tea and candlelight, Deacon would sometimes show a mood like winter. "Who have you loved?" he asked once very low.
"Only you," I said. But I had once loved safety, then a thin scholar, then a life that promised something else.
"Do you trust me?" he pressed.
"I do," I said. "Because I know what you are. I have seen heaven fall and men fight. You have fought for a country. I would rather be safe in your arms than proud with someone else's embrace."
He closed his eyes. "Then forgive the parts of me you do not love yet. I cannot become gentler by magic, and I will be as I am for the good I would do."
The city turned. The court's wheels ground slow and heavy. Deacon's enemies pooled like mud; the nobility had not forgotten years of relentlessness. Houses fell to his inquiry: rotten ministers, grafted papers, corrupt magistrates. He took them down in a measured way, but the roots were deeper than his hand.
"People call you cruel," I said one night, light over our bed.
"Power can be clean," he answered. "But sometimes clearing rot leaves a wound."
"When the wound bleeds, will you bandage it?" I asked.
"I will," he said. "If you tell me where I have hurt you."
We had a small dog that always sneaked under the folds of Deacon's garments and barked at protocol. "He likes the way you carry yourself," I joked one time, watching my husband's fingers smoothing the dog's back.
A day came when accusations coalesced in the square. "They say Dawn used herself to shield Deacon's acts," a merchant declared as we walked the market.
"Is that what they say?" I asked calmly. "What nonsense."
Jaylin warned me, "They will look for a reason to tear you down. Remember who stands with you."
"I have him," I said, and squeezed Deacon's hand.
But trouble found its way through the cracks. When I was taken to the midwives, they announced to the hall, "The lady is pregnant."
A silence came like a curtain dropping. "Impossible," someone gasped.
"Is it true?" Deacon demanded.
"I don't know," I said in honest panic. "I only know I'm ill and the pulse—"
"Then bring me every physician," Deacon barked. His face turned hard as flint.
"Do you mean it?"
"Bring them all," he repeated. "Court and folk; I will have a truth."
The physicians came. Their faces were complicated masks: duty mixed with fear. Finally the head doctor bowed and said, "There are signs of pregnancy."
"Who? Whose?" the hall cried.
"Is it Fu Xin?" and voices pushed like a tide.
"She is my wife," Deacon said. "Who else would be the father?"
"Then she betrayed you," someone shouted. "How cruel."
"I didn't—" I mouthed. My voice shook like a reed.
"Who would do such a thing?" Deacon asked and for a second I saw in his eyes a hurt far darker than I had ever seen.
I looked toward Hazel. She hid a smile behind a handkerchief.
"You are sure?" he asked the physicians.
"Yes," they said, "The signs are clear."
Everything around me blurred. Hazel's lips betrayed a laugh like a breaking twig. Jaylin gaped. Joan Xiao's face turned to stone. Xavier—my old foolish scholar—stood like a man seeing a play he never meant to act in. My father hid behind hands that were too small.
"Do you believe an alliance like this would shelter lies?" Deacon asked slowly, the sound cold.
"If she is with another man, then—" a noblewoman began.
"Let it be known then," Deacon said, "that if anyone claims I am a fool to trust my wife, I shall put to test every whisper and stain them with light."
He stood then and, in a voice thick with steel, commanded a public reckoning. "Bring those who slander here, in the great yard. Let the town see what lies are spun."
They lined the courtyard: market women, clerks, minor gentry. I stood in the doorway like a paper doll on a string.
"Bring the mother of the false rumor," Deacon ordered. "Bring the one who waved the slander, and the one who cheered. Let the world see who loves truth and who prefers gossip."
Hazel pushed forward, red face and false modesty. "I—I was worried for him," she mouthed, then turned scarlet.
"Speak!" Deacon commanded.
"She's—she..." Hazel faltered. She looked at me as if I were a stranger in her story.
"Let us hear all," Deacon said, and his voice was a blade made of winter.
One by one, the merchants and ladies recited the whispers they'd heard. "She tends him too much." "She goes to the brothel." "She used Fu Xin to hide what he did." Each sentence was like a small knife.
I wanted to cover my ears. "Stop," I cried. "What good comes from this? I am your wife—we have our life!"
Deacon walked before the crowd and put his hand on my head. "Whoever spreads malicious lies against the household of the Nine Thousand shall be shamed," he declared.
"Shamed?" Hazel said, feigning outrage. "By what right?"
"By the right of those you slander," Deacon replied. "We will do this openly."
He ordered that Hazel stand on a small platform in the yard. "Tell the truth now," he said, "so your name will not be burned forever."
Hazel's mask slipped. Her defiance curdled. She tried to declare, "I only spoke—"
"You lied," Deacon said. "You twisted idle talk into a blade."
Around us, the crowd leaned in. "Let her explain," someone said. "Why would she lie?"
"Because she wanted favor," Jaylin whispered to a woman near her. "To climb and take what was not hers."
Hazel's face changed. First it was a scarlet flare of pride, then it went pale and then hard. She laughed once, a brittle sound. "You cannot prove a whisper," she spat. "Who will say I lied?"
"Those who earliest spread the lie will say it now," Deacon said. "And they will face the public shame of retracting before you all."
A woman who had started the rumor—an old market gossip—was dragged forward by two guards. Her face collapsed. "I heard it from a seller," she croaked.
"From whom?" Deacon demanded.
"I cannot—" the woman whimpered. She was trembling like a leaf.
"Hear now," Deacon said. "You will recant. You will say the words you spread were false. You will name who first told you. If you refuse, we will brand your words as malice and strip you of your licenses to trade."
The market's hum held its breath. To be stripped of trade in this city was to die by a thousand small cuts.
The woman sobbed. "It was Hazel. She told me." She turned toward Hazel and pointed like a dying thing.
Hazel's features crumpled. Her earlier arrogance cracked into a thousand splinters. "I—" she began, then stopped. Her chest worked like a bird beating its wings.
"Do you accept you lied?" Deacon asked.
"No!" she cried, and the sound was thin.
"Then the town will hear the truth," he said, and nodded.
One by one, people who had nodded in the shade came forward, each time a different name had been used as the seed. Sometimes the seed sprouted from an ambitious junior clerk, sometimes from a jealous neighbor. The lines of truth converged and Hazel found she had no anchor.
The crowd's mood swelled. Some muttered, "How small a thing for such damage." Others whispered with satisfaction.
Hazel's colors drained. I watched her like an actress watching another actress break character. Her eyes slid to me, then to Deacon. For the first time, she was no longer in control.
"Do you beg forgiveness?" Deacon asked in a voice emptied of gentleness.
Hazel fell to her knees, hands scrabbling at the dust. "I am sorry," she sobbed. "I thought—"
"You thought to climb?" Deacon finished. "You thought to make your name by tearing another's down."
Around us, people recorded the scene with their fingers and their eyes. A market boy snapped a crude illustration in the dust. Women clucked their tongues. Some applauded softly. The sound of justice is not always quiet.
"Get her out of my house," Deacon said at last. "And the rest of you, consider how your words weigh on other's lives."
They hauled Hazel away, cheeks streaked with tears and dirt. The crowd watched, some shaking heads, some smiling like they had watched a play's final twist.
I felt my knees go weak. "Did you have to do that?" I asked him.
He looked at me like a man peeling off his own armor. "I did not want you torn by rumor. They will not be so quick again."
"But public shaming—" I faltered.
"It is not cruelty," he said. "It is a lesson. A small thing taught to many."
Jaylin folded her arms and grinned. "She deserved worse," she whispered.
I bowed my head and let the wind dry the last of my shame. The little dog that always followed Deacon wagged and sneezed, and Deacon picked it up and tucked it into his sleeve like a lucky charm.
After that day the city spoke softer of me. Some still muttered in alleys, but the loudest voices began to fold. For a while, peace settled like pollen on the porch.
But the world keeps turning. Xavier—Fu Xin—forgot his old griefs and returned once to my side. He stood before Deacon and me under the moon and said, "I came for you."
"Why?" I asked, both alarmed and strangely warmed.
"You kept my stubborn heart alive when I was nothing," he admitted. "I could not let what you did to me be wasted."
"In what way?" I pressed.
He explained slowly. He had learned, he had changed. His hunger for place had hardened into a steady will. "I am a man now," he said. "I was foolish then."
Deacon looked at him with a curious calm. "Do you repent?"
"I do," Xavier said. "I only meant to protect what was mine."
"Then go and live," Deacon replied simply. "Live as you please, but do not touch my house."
"Will you forgive?" I asked later, when Xavier had gone and the street lamps were embering low.
"He lived in my past," I said. "But I choose my present."
Deacon's fingers found mine in the dark. "I choose you," he said. "Even if the world calls me a monster, you call me husband. That matters."
We kept our days small after the public shame. We walked the markets, we visited Joan Xiao's teahouse in secret, we made the little dog a spectacle in court halls. People looked and judged and sometimes they smiled.
One night, in the quiet of our inner room, Deacon said softly, "If ever you feel used, tell me. I will handle it."
"Do you mean it?" I asked.
"I mean it," he said.
"Then I will keep telling you," I promised, and slipped my hand into his.
Outside, the city never stopped gossiping. Inside, we found a stubborn happiness. I had married an unlikely man and won in a way no one expected. The little dog slept between us, and the candle shadow on the wall shaped itself into two figures who had learned to hold one another without question.
I had feared the cold words others could spread, but even the coldest rumor unfurled when enough light showed its seams. Deacon had a way of bringing light. He could be ruthless with enemies, gentle with me, and sometimes the two were the same.
When Jaylin joked one evening, "You married a tyrant who reads poetry," I laughed and kissed Deacon's knuckle.
"Then let him be tyrant to the rotten roots," I said.
He grinned, playful and fierce. "I shall be both tyrant and loyalist, if you permit it."
"I do," I said.
And as the small dog snored and the moon slid its pale finger through the lattice, I thought: of all the strange luck that had led me here, the best was that I could be tender in public and safe in private. The rest of the world could shout; I would keep my quiet by his side.
The End
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