Sweet Romance16 min read
My Red Dress, My White Horse, and the Two Princes
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I rode a white mare into the capital like the wind, and I remember the way the city seemed to tilt a little to look at me.
"It is not the right place for a show-off," someone had said that morning when I tightened my braid. I only laughed and drove my heel into the mare's flank. The streets were full of wheels and banners. Carriages parted. People recognized a band of escorts by the way they sat: tidy, disciplined, nothing wasted.
When the big carriage did not slow, I did.
"Hey!" the coachman barked, but I had already jumped down, patted the mare, and vaulted up the steps.
"Good horse," I said to the mare. "Be patient. I'll be back."
I pushed through the curtain and found a woman reclining inside, all pale silk and soft eyes. Her hair smelled of camphor and her smile looked like it had been folded carefully for years.
"You're late," the woman said, amused.
"Not late," I said and sat cross-legged like a rogue on her cushions. "Just dramatic."
A maid next to her tittered. "Miss, you mustn't jump onto people like that. It is not proper."
"Proper? I'm not the proper type," I said. "I'm Emma. Remember? Emma Feng."
The woman laughed. "Felicity Cross. You caused all the commotion again, Emma."
"You will call me Emma if we are close," I said. "You are my cousin in mischief if you allow me."
Felicity's eyes softened. "I will allow you a great deal."
Mathilde Aguilar—our household nurse, who had the tone of someone used to being obeyed—took my wrist and wiped sweat off my brow. "Emma, your gallivanting will be the death of me. This dust is not for your lungs."
"It smells like home," I said. "Home smells like dogwood and trouble. I like that."
Mathilde made a noise like hunger in her throat and handed me a cup. I drank. The Persian rug made my back warm the way a crowd's applause warms a throat. For a moment I pretended I belonged there, that silk was a skin I had always worn.
We were coming to the capital because Felicity was being presented to the emperor. Everyone spoke of it as a ladder made of promises. My father—Forrest Mancini, lord of the borderlands—was the man who built roads and broke enemies. He had his reasons for bringing Felicity to the capital. I had my reasons for slipping away at dawn.
"You will be safe with us," Mathilde said. "You are not to risk yourself."
"You say that like I asked permission," I told her.
Felicity glanced at me with the small, quiet fear of someone about to be moved like a precious vase. "Emma," she whispered, "what if the capital is cold to us? What if they do not like our kind of laughter?"
"They will learn to like it," I said. "Or they will learn to fear its absence."
Her cheeks went pink. "Do not say that in front of the elders."
"Too late."
We arrived in the capital while the sun was high. The streets of Cornelius Cardoso's city were a throb of commerce and coy power. Soldiers passed like a carefully arranged chorus. Men with names and titles marched their ribs out. Lanterns hung like silent witnesses. I walked like a woman who had no wish to be seen beyond what she was: a low-born girl with mischief in her pockets and skill in her hands.
"Have some grace," Mathilde said. "The palace is not a playground."
"Palaces are playgrounds for people who forget they were ever children," I said.
At the market, I saw a scene that made my blood slow to watch. A tall man with rough clothes—one could call him an outsider by the cut of his coat—was being blocked by a blunt-faced guard. The man was not a merchant; he had the narrow, hungry look of someone carrying too much in his head. The guard smirked in that way rich men do when they believe a poor man is easily broken.
"Move," the guard said. "You have no right."
"Then give me a right," the man answered, calm as winter.
There was a ring of boys, rough as walnuts, who had cornered the man and turned their small fury into blows. They meant harm. They meant to make his ribs like the backs of bad debts.
"I will not stand and watch," something in me snapped like a spring. I stepped forward.
"Mind your own," one of the boys snarled.
"You hit him. You will answer to me," I said.
They laughed at the height of me and the dress I wore. I laughed back, and I could have kept it at a glare. But they moved to strike.
"Stop!"
The voice came from a soldier's mouth like a sword, and the world slowed. A man in fine armor stepped into the ring and drew—a movement that had weight and did not boast.
"Who are you?" the tall outsider asked, voice brittle with surprise.
The soldier smirked. "I am Ramon Cochran. I am nothing to you."
"Then I will be something else," the outsider said. He moved with the soft certainty of someone who had not been taught to be small. He was tall and thin and had the look of someone who had ridden a long way. He was a foreign prince—the kind of person who is measured and found interesting. I had seen his type before in the stories of border campaigns: bright eyes, hard jaw, and a quirk that said he enjoyed life because it amused him.
Ramon Cochran lashed out and the man staggered. I hated that blow with a heat I felt in my bones. I struck Ramon’s arm with my whip—mine was a riding crop, and it cut like a question mark.
"You are not a woman to be caged," a voice said from behind me.
I turned to see Jackson Cabrera. He looked like a man who had been carved with polite hands but had been given fire in his chest.
"Miss, put that down," he said.
"Or what? You'll swoop in with your sword?" I said.
He smiled, and something loosened in my chest. He had a smile that did not scatter like coins. It folded like a curtain and made a room smaller and warmer.
"You know," Jackson said, "I don't often get to stop fights where a pretty woman starts the ruckus."
"There are no pretty rules," I said.
He drew his sword then—not to strike, but to meet Ramon Cochran halfway. The two men exchanged a six-breath dance. I watched, heart hard as a drum. When Jackson's sword flicked, the air tasted like iron. He moved as if the world around him were a chessboard and he had been taught how to see five moves ahead.
At one point, Ramon lunged with a cruelty I understood without knowing a man's name. A blade aimed for me; I felt the air cutting my hair. I did not expect to be rescued, but someone stepped in and crossed steel with Ramon. The blade bent. A hand—broad, unexpected—caught my shoulder and held me safe.
"Emma," the hand said.
I blinked at the familiarity. It was a voice like a memory that had come to find me. My heart did a stupid, traitorous thing and hopped. I recognized him instantly—he had been a shadow at the edge of town once, a small gambit in my life of thievery. He looked very different now: clean-faced, his clothes cut the way men who do not need to fight are given. But the thing that made him mine was the look in his eyes—the same sly boy from years ago, now lengthened into a handsome man.
"It is you," I breathed.
"You always were trouble," he said.
"Trouble? That is me," I answered.
Jackson stepped back, slightly amused. The fight was over. Ramon left with the look of a man who had been shamed. The boys scattered. The foreign prince kept his distance, watching the game like a man who had just discovered something rare.
Jackson Cabrera looked at me—at the red of my dress and the way my hair had refused to obey—and for a moment he smiled like the sun looked if it were secretly pleased by me.
"Emma," he said.
"Jackson," I said.
That was one of the first times my breath forgot how to come.
Later, when the city had slowed into a wash of lantern light, Jackson found a way to sit with me beneath a plane tree.
"Why do you move like wind?" he asked.
"Why do you move like iron?" I shot back.
He laughed. "Don't lose that edge."
"I won't," I said. "Someone has to keep it."
"You were reckless today," he said quietly. "You could have been hurt."
"I could have been bored," I said.
He looked at me then like he was measuring what was worth a risk. "You must walk carefully in the capital," he said. "There are many people who do not forgive."
"I do not plan to break a throne," I replied. "Only a boredom."
He reached out and brushed a thumb over my knuckle—light and deliberate.
"You're not like any woman I've met in the palace," he said. "You are more honest."
"Some would call that crude," I said.
"To me it is rare," he answered. "To me it is everything."
Another small thing in his favor: he did not treat me like a thing he needed to position; he treated me like a question he wanted answered.
"Promise me this," he added, then stopped. He did not say it.
I raised an eyebrow. "I will not be your thief," I said.
"Good," he said. "Then be mine."
Those were the kinds of moments that leave marks on you like a pressed coin.
The day of the feast came and the north mountain blossomed like a rumor. The palace smelled of cooked flowers and politics. Everyone was on their best face. Felicity was led before a crowd with the sort of hush you get when a brass bell is about to be struck.
"Felicity," I whispered, "look straight and plead like you are asking for a petal from the moon."
"Emma," she whispered back, trembling, "do not be silly."
"I am always silly," I said. "Everyone else will just be dull."
The emperor came with a slow favoring of his cloak. Cornelius Cardoso carried the weight and the light of his office with him like a slow tide. He spoke a little and the crowd listened like flowers turning.
Then the part I had not planned for happened. A slender man in foreign dress—Calloway Pohl, the prince from the south, who had been our captive turned guest—stepped forward and announced his favor for me. He had been generous in the market earlier and owed me a debt of curiosity. He said he wanted to wed me and give me the highest seat in his country.
"Your Highness," Mathilde whispered in my ear. "Do not humiliate yourself."
"I do not intend to," I said aloud. "I intend to make him uncomfortable."
Calloway had the gall of men who have nothing left to lose. He did not notice the laughter that ran like cold wind.
"Enough," the emperor said, before the court could decide whether to choke on the moment. "The girl's fate will be decided by those who have the right."
Jackson stood then—calm as always. His fingers clenched at his sides a moment, and I saw his jaw set like a trap.
"She saved one of our own," Jackson said. "She will stand by me."
Something moved then. My name faltered into the air.
"She will be Jackson's," someone murmured.
My life, until then, had contained small privileges: a jump on a horse, a laugh stolen from a feast, the warmth of Felicity's hand in mine. But the emperor's voice settled something like a cloak over my shoulders.
"She shall be a consort to Jackson," the emperor pronounced. The crowd made the small noises of approval and the large noises of envy.
Felicity's eyes glittered with unshed tears and something like triumph. Mathilde's mouth set with the satisfaction of a woman who had quietly won a wager.
Calloway Pohl stared at me as if he had been struck. He had offered a kingdom and been given a look in return.
"Your Highness," I said to Calloway, because I had to say something to the man who had made me an offer I hadn't asked for, "I am honored you thought me worth the trouble. But I am also an ugly girl with a whip and a habit of speaking too loud. I could be inconvenient to a palace."
"Then be inconvenient to my enemies," Calloway said. "I would have you."
"Thank you," I said. "But I have no wish to be the cause of a war."
He bowed with an odd grace and backed out of the scene. There were eyes on me that I had never seen before—cold ones and hungry ones and tender ones all mixed.
Jackson took my hand then, in that small way you take something precious because you want to make sure it is real. "Come with me," he said simply.
I said yes without thinking.
That night I slept as if someone had finally stopped tugging at my hair. I slept like a woman who had been given a strange, heavy box and liked the weight.
But the court is a hungry thing. When people taste a crumb, they want a loaf. Rumors swarmed like flies. Some men whispered that Jackson had acted to gain a bargain with my father. Others said he had been moved by the sight of a red dress. Some said my father had sold me. Each whisper was a polite slap.
One of the worst of those whispers came from a man named Gerald Lindgren, a minister with a smile like a coin. Gerald had been polite to the Mancinis in public, but his politeness hid teeth. I watched him at the feast and saw how his eyes moved like a hawk when Jackson laughed at me. A seed of something malicious began to sprout.
I did not know how wide the conspiracy had been until Jackson uncovered it.
"There was poison meant for a cup," he said to me one night in the quiet courtyard. "Not for you—never you. For the one they meant to hurt."
"Who?" I asked.
"Power is a long hand in this place," he said. "And some hands want to collapse the house of others." He took my face, gentle as a thief of warmth. "They wanted to make a mistake and be rid of a throne."
We set a plan like a trap. Jackson and a few trusted men watched in the shadows while Clay—one of Jackson's men—went to find out who had petitioned the kitchens and the cupbearers. By the time the truth came out, the court was already thick with gossip and Jealousy had its teeth in the air.
Gerald Lindgren had been meeting with men who owed him favors. He had arranged for a cup to be sweetened with silence; he had planned to smear the reputation of men who might stand in his way.
"Why?" I demanded when we finally forced him into a room where the sunlight made him look small.
"Because I deserve more," he said. "Because those in power forget who built the ladder. Because a throne has room for anyone with the courage to take it."
"You call poison courage?" Jackson asked.
Gerald laughed—at first a thin sound like a coin skittering. Then his laughter hardened. "Courage is a word for men who can afford it. I have nothing but a name and a list of debts."
We took him back to the great hall. The emperor sat like a slow tide and watched as all the queens of rumor gathered. The conspirators had counted on private shame, not a public reckoning.
I remember the hush. I remember the way Gerald's face went from red to a green pallor like a rotten apple. I remember the way the room smelled of lemon and metal when the evidence was laid bare: notes, a servant's confession, a sealed letter that had been paid for with handshakes. Someone began to record the words, and the court became an assembly of watchers.
"Gerald Lindgren," the emperor said with a voice that was not unkind but unshakable, "you stand accused of plotting against the life and rule of this house. What say you?"
Gerald's smirk trembled. "I... I am a man in debt. I—"
"You plotted to poison," Jackson cut in sharply. "You arranged to place a cup meant for a prince in the service of treachery, and when the plan led to a death, you thought it a useful mistake."
Gerald's face went rigid. He tried to regain the smile like a man trying to pull back a curtain, but we were too many lights.
"I did what I must to survive," he said. "You would do the same."
The crowd hissed like wind in a reed bed. People who had once sat near him took a step back like a tide leaving a shore. The servants who had given statements pointed with shaking fingers. A dozen voices called for justice. A few whispered: "We suspected him."
This is the public punishment I promised I would see—because in a world where poison and whisper can take crowns, sometimes you must unmask the hands that shake the cup.
The emperor motioned. The heralds read the charges. Gerald's supporters tried to murmur protests like insects. Gerald's face moved from disbelief to anger. Anger then to denial. Then, slowly, he began to crumble.
"Do you deny your handwriting?" an official asked.
"I... I do not recognize this," Gerald said, and his throat worked. He looked around for someone—an ally who would step forward and say it was all a mistake. No one moved.
"Is this only theatre?" a woman in the crowd asked. "Or are we learning who the rot is?"
Gerald's face crumpled into lines. He heard the accusation, and for a brief moment he seemed to recall all the small cruelties he had done to get here. Then, as fear bit down, his face changed. He began with bright defiance, then moved to denial, then to pleading, then to the wetness of a man who has nothing and loses even that.
"Please," he said, voice thin as paper. "I—"
The crowd leaned in. Some took out small pieces of wood and began to write—there would be songs later, songs that made villains into cautionary tales. Others looked on with hard faces, faces that said: we have been safe from you for a while now.
Gerald, once a man of polished jokes, knelt then as the emperor declared Stern Justice. The crowd watched. A minister who had once smiled now begged with the smallness of a mouse. Men who had once dined with him turned to watch him like wolves watching a falling tree.
"Mercy," he begged finally. "I was only—"
"You traded lives for coin," the emperor said quietly. "You used treachery to move yourself into favor. The court will not be a place for such men."
The punishment was not a simple thing. The emperor ordered Gerald stripped of rank and public honors. His estate was confiscated. He was paraded through the square—not to be humiliated in cruel ways, but to show that no one who stains the blood of the realm may keep their silver. The crowd crowded the paths, and people took his name and spat it like a sour seed.
I watched Gerald's face as the crowd shifted from bemused to cruel. At first he tried to hold his chin high. Then he realized his allies were gone. He called the names of men who once promised, but those men had slid away like oil. He fell into pleas and hiccups. Someone snapped a painting from the wall. A servant turned away in disgust. A child in the crowd spat and then giggled because adults made strange noises.
"You deserve more than this," Jackson said to me later, but I replied only, "No. You wanted spectacle. Here it is."
I was not satisfied. Punishment did not undo the fact that poison had taken a life; it only painted the story a little cleaner. But maybe that is what justice is in a palace: clearing the stain and showing every watchman how the stain happened.
After Gerald was led away, I felt a thousand eyes on me. Some were searching; some were calculating; some were softer, like Jackson's when he smiled.
"You handled that well," Jackson said later, the moon overhead like a slow coin. "You did not scream, you did not tremble. You became a part of the court without losing yourself."
"Do not get sentimental," I said. "I still have a whip."
He laughed and, in a small thing that made my heart go soft like melted sugar, he draped his cloak over my shoulders because a wind had come down the alley like an old memory.
"You're mine now," he said, not as a command but like a fact.
"And you are not to be arrogant," I told him.
"I will try," he said. "But if I fail, you will have to keep me in line."
We had three small moments after that which I kept like pressed flowers in a book. Once he smiled at me when no one else did and it felt like a private blessing. Once I was cold and he took off his outer cloak and wrapped it around me, his hand lingering at my shoulder. Once, in a crowded room, his fingers brushed mine to steady me and a noble at the next table whispered, "Look—he never does that for others."
All of these were small thorns of joy that made my skin prick.
The days stretched. The court's machinery kept grinding. Jackson and I learned each other like two people assembling a tent in a storm: hands moving in practiced patterns, some jokes, some silences. Felicity's marriage was arranged; the emperor's favor did not lessen, but it made enemies.
Calloway Pohl—proud in a way that smelled like foreign spices—would not be content to be turned away. He came to me one morning with the brutal courtesy of a man used to winning.
"You will be my bride," he told me plainly.
"No," I said. "I am already promised to Jackson."
He blinked. "You will change your mind."
"I do not like change," I said.
He made a face. "I will see you at the open ground. I will make your life interesting."
"That sounds like a threat dressed as a promise," I said.
He laughed. "Perhaps both."
I would have thought little of Calloway's posture, except that later his men were found bribing minor officials. When I heard about it, my spine tightened.
"It seems many men have decided they know what I want," I told Jackson.
"Let them decide," he replied. "They will be disappointed."
I remembered the public punishment of Gerald—how quickly men turned away. It is a strange comfort to know the crowd will do something more terrifying than steel: it will simply stop honoring you.
One night, not long after, there was a disturbance. A young woman shouted in the market that the emperor had been shorted a line in a letter, a small thing meant to mean a larger insult. Voices rose. Hands were shoved. Then—fate loves the dramatic—the man who had once been a far corner of my life, Jett Browning, walked through the crowd like a shadow sunlight found and decided to follow.
"You should not be in the square," I said, because not warning a person is bad habit.
"Why?" he asked. "It's lively."
He had always been oddly simple when he wanted to be, but there was a light in his face that said he had not always been what he seemed. He offered me a piece of stale bread as if it were honey.
"Eat," he said. "You look hungry."
I laughed and took it and then saw him stare at me like a man who had found something and could not believe it was there. I felt suddenly small and very large at once. Jett had been a curiosity once: a boy who played at being beggar and had the nerve to be kind. Now he was different—gone to the edges where dangerous things were learned. He bowed and said, "I will find out if they deserve you."
I only nodded. Sometimes, in the palace, one has to take a partner who matches you in mischief or you end up bored.
Months passed—a cruel phrase used to smooth over soldiers' steps and court gossip. Gardens turned to frost. Jackson and I learned how to stand in public together in a way that made others soften and, if I confess, made me proud. We had stolen glances, small arguments that ended in laughter, a touch here and there that told me more than any promise. He showed me he could be gentle without being weak; I showed him how to laugh at the things that did not matter.
And then the final thing came—an open scandal that would shape the rest of our lives. The conspirators Gerald had spoken to were only the first layer. In the aftermath, other men tried to buy favor through dark means: black letters, threats whispered under the alcoves. One of those men—Gerald had cohorts, and their names had been traded like cards—was a prince's minister who had tried to bribe for a title and had been caught with letters that promised betrayals.
We brought them out in the sunlight. We showed their signatures. The court cringed. The punishment was prolonged and public. Men who had once tipped their hats to power were now unclothed from favor.
I watched a man who had once laughed at me become small. He denied. He pleaded. He begged the emperor for mercy, in a voice like a beggar who had been given too much rope and now must be made to admit it was his own.
People around us whispered. Some applauded. Women who had once worn the same velvet as the traitor's friends took steps to distance themselves. The ritual cleansed the palace for the moment. It also planted a seed in me: even when you have nothing, you can still be dangerous.
Jackson pulled me close after—it was the smallest of rewards. "You were brave," he murmured.
"I was reckless," I said.
"Same thing," he replied.
We kissed in the dim corridor and the world narrowed to the press of his lips and the small-hours hush. I felt both belonging and a fear that prickled like nettles: the palace will always want something in exchange for kindness.
Weeks later, at the imperial gardens, light fell through the blossoms and, for a heartbeat, everything was quiet and right. Jackson handed me a flower like a question.
"Will you be my wife in the way you want?" he asked.
"I will be myself with you," I said.
"That's all I ask," he said.
We walked out under the trees; Felicity looked lighter than a ribbon at my side. Mathilde gave me a look that said she had always known I would survive. Calloway Pohl slunk away like a man who had lost the best bet he had planned to make.
And Jett Browning—he disappeared into the crowd the way a rumor does, quiet and impossible to catch.
When night fell on that capital, my white mare was waiting in the courtyard, and I knew that the mane of the horse and the sunshine would be there but that the palace would remain a hungry thing. I had a man who loved me, enemies who plotted, and a city that would not forget my name.
"Emma," Jackson said softly, "promise me one thing."
"What?" I asked.
"If ever they try to hurt you, stand on the white mare again and ride into them."
"I promise," I said.
And I will always remember the pressed silk of that promise: red dress, white horse, and a man who crossed his life into mine.
The End
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