Sweet Romance13 min read
Snow, A Small Rabbit, and the Boy Who Told Stories
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I watched the first flakes fall and thought the whole world was being wrapped up in white cloth.
"It looks like a painting," Cadence said, her breath puffing as a ghost of warmth in the cold air.
"Don't you have to get ready?" Jemma asked, fussing with my cloak.
"I'm not going," I said.
"Not even for the New Year's Court?" Jemma blinked. She stood steady, hands busy as always. "Your Highness, the feast—"
"I said no." My voice was quieter than I felt. The palace smelled of wood smoke and sweet cakes. Outside, the courtyard lanterns swung, red against the white. Inside, everyone expected me to be a bright ornament, but I wasn't bright today.
"Why?" Jemma crouched to my level and looked at me like I mattered—a small, sharp kind of look that chased away other people's casualness.
"Father praised Cadence and our little sister more for their recital than he praised me," I said. "He smiled at them like the sun. At me, he—" I stopped. The words were bitter and slime-thin when tasted alone. "I don't like it here."
Jemma touched my sleeve. "Maybe he forgot. His duties—"
"It isn't the first time." I let myself squint into the falling snow. The palace seemed to have been sewn with thousands of small stars.
We walked to the great hall together. I took my place among carved chairs and velvet cushions, watching the court in my heavy gown like a bird caught in a lantern's light.
"Princess," someone said next to me. Cadence had a secret, mischievous face tonight. She was smaller than I was by only a year, but she had a way of making sunlight rest on the spots where she stood.
"What are you doing under the table?" I asked when I saw her peeking through the banquet bench with two glittering eyes.
"Shh," she whispered. "I'll give Father a surprise."
I could not help smiling. Cadence always won people with that smile.
When the music came, when the court cheered, Cadence danced—awkward and bright—and the room laughed with the kind of warmth that made the flames higher. The emperor patted her head, and I watched a single small ribbon fall from the emperor's hand to the table beside me. He placed a jeweled toy there, and a hundred eyes turned to the child as if she were a new constellation.
I picked up a piece of cake. It was sweet enough to make my teeth ache. I saw my mother's look—Jacqueline's face thin with something like disappointment.
After the banquet, the cold was closer. I took a quieter road home, one that skirted the servants' stairs where the snow still lay like something living.
A crowd gathered near the gates. I frowned. "Who are they?"
"That is Master Gene's son, Calhoun," Jemma said softly. "They say he was born with a mind slow to hurry."
I looked. He wore white, and he stood like an off-key note among the other boys. He hugged a small iron warmer to his chest like it could save him from the world. I felt another small tug in my chest. The boys with him were loud and cruel.
"Land's son," said a leader with a voice like a snapping whip. He pushed Calhoun and laughed. The boy shrank back.
"Stop!" I called. My voice cut a strip through the laughter and the cold. The gang recognized the palace banner and stilled. They kneeled flimsy as old mops. Only Calhoun looked up, eyes shining.
"You are kind," he said, his voice small and clear as a bell in a quiet hall.
"It was nothing," I lied and my words sounded like frost.
Calhoun's face twisted from sudden pain as someone shoved him. I moved faster than I thought I could and pulled him away. He tasted of cold and old bread and something sweet.
"Do you hurt?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, and there was a sincerity that hurt me more than any bruise. "But I must not tell. Father will be—"
"Tell me. If they push you again, you tell me," I ordered. I meant it.
He nodded like a sleeping child angry with lamps. "If they hit me, I cannot hit them back," he said. "Hitting is bad."
I blinked. I did the same as any child who is used to living with words that fail: I laughed out loud. "You're foolishly kind," I said, and I hated that I meant it.
Jemma whispered stay. "If your Majesty asks, he is a guest of Gene Montgomery."
So I brought him in. Jemma cleaned him and clothed him in thicker robes that puffed at his arms. He sat on a rug and watched the flame holler and jump. He looked small and clean, like something found and brought home.
"You may stay," I told him. "But if my father asks, say you came to visit for the New Year."
"Thank you," Calhoun said. He smelled of plain tea. His hands were rough from something I could not see. He grinned so openly that his cheeks curved like a child's.
Gene Montgomery arrived to fetch his son. He was polite and bowed low. "Thank you, Your Highness. I owe you—"
"Nonsense," my mother said, but she let the two small ones stay together a little while longer, and I watched the way she smoothed Cadence's hair with fingers that had once ruled a storm.
Calhoun kissed my hand before he left, a clumsy, earnest thing, and said, "Gwendolyn, a happy New Year."
"You are the first to say it to me," I said before I could stop and my voice was a laugh that almost cried.
From that day, Calhoun came often. He would slip beneath the palace walls with a small, careful gait, always carrying a story. He said he had practiced with a storyteller from the town. The stories spilled out of him like coins from a broken purse—fragments of gossip and heroics, the map of an old market woman's life, the tale of a tofu seller's pride.
"Do you like stories?" he asked once while we shared the last of a pastry shaped like a snow hare.
"Yes," I said.
"So I will tell you all of them," he promised. He set his palm to his chest and gave a sworn little bow. "I will tell you everything, so you don't have to be sad."
"Then tell me about the scholar and the ghost," I insisted.
He began and stopped and began and forgot, and I loved him for every small stumble. "He becomes a top scholar," he said finally. "But the ghost—she goes away. She is gone."
"That's not a story," I scolded, but my chest swelled because he tried.
He told us the names of every pastry at Spring & Sons. He told us the sound of the bell outside a doctor's shop. He told us where the best dumplings were hidden at dawn, and every single tale was new to me. Cadence listened more than she did anything else, and sometimes when Calhoun looked at me, he looked like a gift held tight.
"Why don't you stay with the prince?" I blurted one day. "You could be at court, learn, be—"
"I do not fit there," Calhoun said with a shrug. "It becomes noisy, and I cannot say the right things. I'm good at stories."
"You could do anything you want," I said.
"I can tell stories," he repeated simply. "Because stories are safe."
One winter evening, after a tale about a fox who traded shoes for bread, I caught Cadence watching him with two different faces: adoration and a little envy. "I also want your hare cake," she said. She was a small storm, sudden and demanding.
"Take it," Calhoun offered without thinking, and handed Cadence the pastry with the solemnity of a prince giving a crown. Her face brightened and she ran off trailing crumbs.
Calhoun looked small then. His face went a shade darker. "Did you have to give it away?" he asked me, as if I had asked him to trade his shadow.
"Yes," I said. "Because she is my sister."
"She will come back," he said.
He did not look happy when she left. I felt a small shame for being the cause. "If they ever hurt you again," I told him, "say it. I will make them stop."
He smiled and his whole face lit as if a small lantern had been set inside. "You are very good, Gwendolyn."
Days turned like pages. He would arrive with pockets of bread and the smell of boiled herbs, and a new broken tale. He confided little things: the storyteller's nickname, a rhyme the market girls sang, the sound of rain on a metal shop. He was simple and he was complete in his simplicity.
The boys who first shoved him stayed around sometimes. Grant Larson led them—tall, cruel, with a tongue that could peel velvet off a heart. He laughed with Knox Kozlov and Mariano Gilbert, and whenever they saw Calhoun, they circled him like foxes.
One morning, I found Calhoun's sleeve torn and his cheek a purple bruise.
"Who did this?" I demanded, and the hall doors shuddered at my voice.
"They did," Calhoun whispered, like a leaf. "They will mock me. They say I will be nothing."
I felt something bright and dangerous wake in me. "Show me where they gather tonight," I said.
That night, I walked the guard path wrapped in two cloaks, Cadence safe inside the palace rooms. Jemma would not let me go, but my mind had the stubbornness of iron. I found them by the old quay near the western gate, where the moon made the snow into a trembling mirror.
Grant Larson swaggered, Knox and Mariano behind him. They had been drinking and their laughter was loud.
"Look who it is," Grant said and sauntered forward. Winning the crowd with his arrogance was like wearing a coat he had not earned.
"Princess Gwendolyn," he said with mock bow. "What a surprise. Come to see the common show?"
"You will stop," I said. "I will not ask again."
Grant smiled like a dog that has found a new toy. "Or what? Your father will punish us? Your mother will be cross and then forget?"
"You will stop," I repeated, and this time my voice did something it had not done before. It reached across to the men nearest and held them like a hand.
Calhoun stood behind me, a breath away, small and still.
"Grant," I said, "you strut and hurt people to make yourself tall. Tonight, you have chosen the wrong person."
Grant laughed harder. "A princess threatens me? The prince's tutor should have taught you better."
"She is not a fool," Calhoun said suddenly, and the sound of his voice—unpolished, true—fell like a stone in a pond. "You brag, then you beat. You hurt those you can hurt to show you are brave."
"Shut up, fool," Mariano spat. "Or we'll—"
"Enough." I stepped forward. "You will apologize. You will swear never to touch him again. Or you will confess to the whole court what you do when you are alone, and let them judge."
The crowd around us hummed as if the palace itself were awake. Grant's face changed. First amusement curled in his lips. Then an eyebrow, then a flash of real worry.
"I won't apologize to a parlor puppet," he sneered. "Tell me who you think will care enough to punish me."
I did not need to answer. In that instant, I pulled from my sleeve the small cake wrapper Calhoun had once given me—a scrap of evidence of small kindnesses that meant more in that moment than anything heavy and carved.
"Are you the one who takes?" I asked slowly, loud enough that the others near the quay bent to listen. "You who mock and push. Is it not true you go to the teahouse and buy rum with coins you take from others' purses? Is that the game?"
Grant's lips tightened. His hands, which had been relaxed and cruel, moved like a trapped animal's. "You slander me," he said.
"Prove me wrong," I said.
"In front of who?" he asked, and his voice was smaller.
"In front of the court." The words slipped out. I had no right to drag the court from their warmth, but my anger had a plan now. "Tomorrow, at the noon audience. You will be called. Bring your friends. Bring your accusers. If you prefer, I will bring the witnesses."
The following day, the great hall was full in a way that made breath short. Servants cleared the pathways. The emperor sat like a rock at the head of the room. Courtiers arranged themselves like ordered feathers. I sat where I always sat, but I did not feel like an ornament this morning.
"Grant Larson," the usher called. "You are accused by Princess Gwendolyn of petty theft and of encouraging harm to a ward."
The whispering was a storm. Grant came forward, features practiced smoothness.
"These are lies," he said. "The princess seeks to ruin me."
I had prepared my witnesses. Small market women stood with mute faces. A teahouse girl had brought a ledger showing coins missing on nights Grant visited. A guard testified he had once seen Grant slip a purse into his sleeve.
"You claim evidence," Grant said. "But I am a noble. Guards and records will bow to me."
Jemma walked forward then, steady, and produced a scrap of cloth—my scrap—showing the pastry's mark where Grant had mocked a beggar who had offered Calhoun the remainder. The room quieted to a single breath.
"Is this yours?" the usher asked the market woman.
"Yes," she said. "He buys for himself and for no one. When he is drunk, he takes from others' trays."
Grant's expression began to break. First his face tightened, then his jaw fluttered. He tried the denial stage. "This is theatre," he said. "You have tricked me."
Several nobles shook their heads. "You have been over-brave," a councilman said. Faces shifted like a flock startled awake.
"Enough," I said. "We will hear the guard's retelling."
A guard stepped forward, recounting a night when Grant had slipped a coin among the plates and then pocketed a woman's purse while she distractedly laughed at his jokes. He stood and pointed, calm as a bell. "I saw his hand take and his sleeve hide the treasure," he said.
The witnesses multiplied. Each small voice stitched a common truth. Grant's bravado leaked away like light from a cracked lamp. He moved from rage to surprise.
"These are lies!" he shouted. "You are witches. You will burn me with words!"
A nobleman laughed and a few courtiers began to murmur. Grant's knees trembled. He looked around for support, but the faces he had expected to see were distant and cold. His friends, Knox and Mariano, tried to step forward and scoop him back into bravado, but they had to swallow their own unease.
"Is it true?" the emperor asked, his voice a slow and final wind.
Grant swallowed. For a heart-stopping second, he couldn't form the practiced words. His eyes flickered to the entrance where the market women stood—faces harsh and sharp. He was used to the warm light of allies, not the cold mirror of truth.
"You're finished," Knox muttered under his breath. He saw what everyone saw: the slow pealing of a bell announcing the end of a parade.
Grant tried to run then, but he found his limbs clumsy. "You have no right," he snarled at me.
"You are the one who chose to make others small to make yourself tall," I answered.
It was a slow collapse. First came denial, sharp and loud. Then a flurry of excuse-making, then the pale flash of desperation. "I do not steal!" he insisted. "I—it's work, it's—it's practice!" His voice became thinner. People in the hall started to nudge and lean forward like plants toward sun. Cameras of a different time—messengers—took notes with hungry eyes. A few servants snapped pictures with quick hands the way birds take shiny things.
"Look at him," a noblewoman said aloud. "All swagger, and now he trembles."
Grant's face changed color. He pleaded briefly—"I can pay back! I can—"—then realized his pockets had nothing of value left that could undo the damage. The hundred small acts of cruelty had turned around and shown each like a mirror.
Knox tried to drag him away. Mariano bit his lip. But the court had already chosen its mood. Murmurs hardened into a chorus of scorn. Someone near us clapped once—soft and final. Cadence pressed her hand to her mouth.
Grant sank to his knees. For the first time, his arrogance spilled into something naked and small. "Please," he whispered. "Please, I beg—"
Around him, the women who had been wronged began to speak. The teahouse girl told how her savings had been taken. A guard showed old bruises where men had been encouraged to start trouble. The crowd's opinion hardened. Where once Grant had been an oblong of confidence, he now crumpled, all his sharp edges dulled by public shame.
I watched the arc of his ruin like a slow winter road. He went from denial to fury, from fury to pleading, from pleading to a damp, desperate collapse. There were no blows thrown. The punishment was the fall—public, witnessed, and total. He watched his friends look at him with something like disgust. Knox backed away. Mariano's face had gone pale and thin.
"May he be stripped of his honorary titles and made to stand in the market to apologize," the emperor said finally. "Let him learn how common folk live when they have no power."
Grant's face crumpled. He had chased power so he might stand over others; now he would stand under their eyes. The surrounding crowd hissed. Some began to film the scene with quick hands. Others spat soft words of contempt.
"Look," someone said. "The bully has fallen."
"How did it come to this?" another whispered.
Grant's reaction learned new stages. At first, he clenched with fury. Then shame. Then denial. "You will not dare—" he said, voice a broken wire. "You will not let them—"
But the court had already turned. The guard removed his ornate sash and handed it to another. Grant lowered his head to keep the lash of faces from seeing the shape of his ruin. He begged and wrenched and finally, with slow, absurd pride, forced out a meagre apology in the public square the next morning. He stood in the market, hat in trembling hand, while vendors who had once eaten at his table pointed and hissed. Children threw small pebbles. A woman spat into the snow. His friends would not meet his eyes. He had to feel the sting of being small.
The punishment lasted long enough for truth to settle. He lost rank. He lost the casual warmth of the court. He learned the exactness of cold. Watching him shrink under the honest daylight made me oddly tired and oddly clean.
Calhoun watched from the window. He held Cadence's small hand in both of his. He did not smile. His eyes were steady, not joyful but not vengeful—only calm like a bowl of warm soup. When I turned to him, he said, "They cannot hurt me if I do not let them."
"You let me hurt them for you," I said.
"You hurt them with truth," he answered simply. "That is different."
After the court's storm, life settled into a gentler rhythm. Calhoun continued to bring stories. Cadence forgave his small offerings. Jemma hummed while sewing. My mother stayed near, quieter now with a new softness, and sometimes she would press her lips to my forehead and murmur, "You did right."
Calhoun grew braver. He stumbled through longer tales and offered a small, honest opinion on the world that made it larger. He tasted the sugar that pastry places hid behind their doors and learned to note the music of a city as if it were a line of a favorite poem.
One evening as snow began to fall softly like patience, Calhoun presented me with a small white cake shaped like the hare that had once made us laugh.
"This is for you," he said, and his smile turned the whole thing into a ceremony.
"I kept it," I said, and I took his hand and pressed the cake into my palm like a promise.
"You are the best story I have," he told me.
"Speak," I said. "Tell me something that keeps." He took a breath.
"I will say it again," Calhoun began, like a boy rehearsing his vow. "You are good. You make me brave."
"Then tell me a story about a hare who keeps watch," I teased.
He made one up on the spot—funny, small, and perfect. He told it like the market breeze. The palace felt warmer for it.
We ate the hare cake together and watched the snow. Outside, the palace roofs wore white as surrender. Inside, our small world hummed like a candle.
When later people spoke of that winter, they would tell of a princess who would not be only an ornament and of a boy who told stories. They would say his voice mended a girl who had thought she was too small, and she would say that the warmth staying under her ribs had been long found.
I do not know whether I changed the world. I know only that he taught me to laugh loud and to keep a story close. He taught me that kindness is a kind of armor. He taught me that the smallest pastry can become a promise.
And when the snow had melted and the gardens opened, I kept a tiny wrapper folded in a book near my pillow. Sometimes I took it out and smoothed it with my thumb. It smelled faintly of sugar and nights that were not all fear.
"Will you always tell me stories?" I asked Calhoun once, then realized I used first names because the court's titles felt clumsy when we were alone.
"Always," he said, and then, because he could not help himself, added, "I will tell every story until there are no more left."
I tucked my fingers into his hand. He was warm and true, like a lamp you could rely on in a long dark road.
The last piece of hare cake was a little flattened. I put it on a plate and left it near the window where the snow looked like an ocean. I liked to think that if anyone asked what mattered, I would have them taste its sweetness and remember.
That night, with Calhoun's head against my shoulder, I whispered the one truth I had learned: kindness is not weak. It fills and holds. It stands when the wind tries to make it small.
Outside, the palace clock struck, a clear sound like the first page of a new story. I folded the cake wrapper back into the book and let the snow fall, soft and patient as a storyteller's hand.
The End
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