Revenge15 min read
The Earrings, the Lie, and the Place That Wouldn't Return
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I learned to pretend before I learned to sleep.
"Do you know what you are to him?" Matthias McCormick asked me the first time he called me his daughter.
"I know enough to keep my place," I said, and bowed.
He laughed, a loud sound that filled his study. "Good. Then learn to be exactly what they expect. Learn to be the mirror of some other woman's face, and you will have everything."
I was seventeen when I answered the emperor in the great hall.
"Nicolas Eaton asks, if you would forsake everything of the McCormick house to stand beside the heir, do you agree?" the emperor said, his eyes steady on me.
"I do," I said. My voice did not tremble.
"You would leave your father's house, your father's wealth, your name?"
"I would leave it," I said. "For him."
Polina Adkins, the empress, blinked once. Finn Cline, the heir, watched me with that soft, unreadable look that had ruined more ordinary women than I could count.
Afterward Matthias clapped his hands and called for wine.
"She said it," he told his captains. "Ten years, and she said it for me."
I had lived in the McCormick manor for a decade. They said he had saved me from the river of mud and death outside my village, that he had lifted me from ruin to the hall. He called me daughter and taught me the gestures a lady must keep. He taught me how to bow, how to answer, how to stitch fine hems so the seams did not betray my hands. He also taught me to read the faces of those who could hurt me.
"Is your loyalty real?" he asked once in the garden, where the armies in his banners looked like toys.
"My loyalty will look real," I said. "And that will be enough."
The plan was simple. Finn admired a young lady from the opposite house: Valentina Dennis. He had followed her like a shadow when he was free of court demands. He loved the cold, pale poetry of her. He did not notice what she hid behind her eyes.
Matthias had a plan: present someone who could wear Valentina's likeness and beg for no favors. He told courtiers he had a daughter who had been sent to the countryside to recover as a child. He called me by his name, gave me her station, and taught me everything Valentina would like. He bribed servants, spies, and gardening maids to learn Valentina's tastes—the food she favored, the way she placed a cup, the poems she admired.
"You will not be loved by everyone," Matthias said. "But you will be chosen."
The first time Finn saw me properly was at the spring feast.
"Do you know Valentina Dennis?" he asked, not looking away.
"No," I said.
"You look like her," Finn said after a long moment. "But there is a mark between her brows. Like a lotus."
I let him think I was a stranger. "I only just returned to the capital," I said. "Is she absent this day?"
He told me she had avoided him.
"Not many women are worthy of meeting you," I said with a small laugh. "Why would anyone refuse a lord so kind?"
That day he listened. After that, he returned.
He began to bring me food that matched the recipes Valentina loved. "Try this chestnut chicken," he would offer. "It is from the palace kitchen."
"I prefer the chestnuts removed," I said with a light smile, because I had watched her steward once and learned her small dislikes.
He was startled once, then delighted. "You eat like her," he said. "You are like her."
I was practiced enough to be charming. I had rehearsed the tilt of the head that coaxes sympathy. I had practiced how to appear surprised, how to appear honored. The palace fit me like a second skin.
"Do you read?" he asked, one evening, handing me a scroll.
"A little," I said. "Not like Miss Dennis. She paints."
He smiled. "Come show me some day."
I did show him paintings—small sketches of fields and a woman at a window. I learned to paint while I convalesced. I learned to let him see talent just enough that it lit him.
Once I sat across from him and he asked, "If you had two women of equal face, equal wit—one who loved me openly and one who refused me, who would you choose?"
"The one who loves you openly," I said without pause.
He laughed. "So do I."
We were careful. We were honest in small measures. I kept the jade orchid earrings—those quiet, pale blossoms of stone—around my ears every time he was present. It was the same pair he sent when he felt guilty about some small insult Valentina had flung at me. He wanted to make amends. The earrings were a key—matters of sentiment matter to princes.
Valentina came to a glittering party the first time I met her face-to-face. She spoke and the room grew colder. "Those are the prince's gift," she said in a way that meant the gift belonged by right to the one he favored.
"I treasure small things," I told the room. "This one was given to me in kindness."
She left with a hiss. The rumors started at once. "She is a cheap mimic," people said. "She copies Miss Dennis." The whispers were a net—and Matthias knew how to let it hold.
"Punish her with silence," he said in the servants' hall. "Keep her inside for a while, let the talk die."
Finn frowned later when he learned of my punishment. "I should have stopped them," he said. He sent me gifts in secret after that—a pair of simple earrings and later a bracelet of white jade.
At a poetry gathering held by Gillian Flynn, I broke Valentina's undefeated streak. I wrote the poem that sang of wind and of empty roads. The hostess surprised everyone when she took my hairpin and pinned something more splendid in my hair—a jade-and-gold hairpin donated by the empress herself. She smiled at me as if she liked me.
"Let people say what they will," Gillian whispered. "Talents show themselves."
Valentina's coldness did not melt; it cracked. She began to play a dangerous game: to be both the proud beloved and the craving lover. She collected gifts from Finn as if they were trophies; she never gave him the warmth he sought. The more I reflected her quiet kindness, the more his affection deepened into something else.
"He is not a man to be toyed with," I told myself. "He will want what he cannot have less than what is freely given."
I let Valentina think I was nothing. I would hand the prince a piece of fruit and say, "You should not trouble yourself on my account."
He would watch me with a softness that made my chest ache in a way I had not expected. Love had found its place inside the plan and would not leave.
"Do you love me?" he asked in the dark the first time I let him hold me close.
"I have served at your side," I said. "I will be true to you."
"True like a sword?" he demanded, then laughed. "Then you must be mine."
We were married in a blaze of color. The court breathed a sigh of relief at the triumph of propriety. Matthias feigned modesty and took all the praise.
The years that followed were the shape of what I had wanted—power, a child on the way, a home that felt near to real. But Matthias had his hands on another plan. He had never meant me only as daughter and daughter-in-law. He spoke openly in the war rooms of the soldier’s loyalty and the emperor’s doubts. He counseled me for usefulness: "A child of your blood close to the throne," he said, "is an heir to my house."
I listened. I told him he was my true father.
"Is it a sin to desire more?" I asked him once.
"Only if you fail," Matthias said. "We do not fail."
So when he began to put strange medicines in the prince's cups, I watched. He favored small things to begin: a bitter tea here, a sleeping draught there. The prince grew thin under the weight of duty. The palace physicians said little because marching through court was like walking on glass. You cut wrong and you die.
I took each medicine and set it aside. I pretended to be the grateful wife and gave the prince the potions that made him rest but did not harm. I saved him, every time, and let Matthias think his plan would succeed. He did not know I was keeping his poison for proof.
"You do not love me," I told Matthias in a courtyard once, though I let him believe I did. "You only love power."
"Love is a convenient word," Matthias said. "It hides the things we are willing to build for ourselves. You are my tool, and you are my daughter."
I forged letters in his hand—the letters the season demanded. I wrote lines that traced the arc of treachery: talk of early pregnancies, talk of plots to make a grandson appear and to murder a prince. I made the script as his might write. I learned his way of dotting an 'i' because men like him leave their marks. I had practice copying other people's manner.
"You are playing something dangerous," Finn said when he saw the first letter.
"It is only proof," I told him. "If you doubt me, then I will make you never have to doubt."
He did not doubt. He moved with the swiftness of a man who had felt the knife in his back. He had soldiers he trusted, the kind who do not ask questions until the orders are given. Matthias was sent to war. His army marched into an ambush drafted by the prince's men and the palace's guard. Matthias' soldiers surrendered when their own families were presented—they had no love for a man who waged war to feed his own rackets.
Matthias was dragged into the palace under escort. He wore the same coat he had in the study when he taught me to bow. He did not touch me as they led him by.
"You did not think us fools," Finn said quietly when he came to the prison where I stood.
"Perhaps not," I said. "But you were the instrument of my survival. I did as I must."
The trial was not a trial at all. The emperor announced verdicts as one might catalogue a storm: "Matthias McCormick is guilty," Nicolas Eaton declared. The banners flew low.
Matthias spat at me. "You ungrateful—"
"You told me to be exactly what they expected," I said, and I took off the hairpin Gillian had given me. I offered it to him like a mockery of his benevolence. "You taught me to be true to you by being true to yourself."
They took him to the central square. There was a crowd of commoners and courtiers alike. "See what greedy men become," people said. "See what hypocrisy breeds." I stood in the window of the palace that overlooked the square. Finn had no words for me then; his face was set as stone.
Matthias was publicly stripped of his banners. He was declawed of his rank. Soldiers took his swords and laughed at him. Children in the crowd threw mud. The emperor's men read a list of his crimes and triumphs.
"Matthias McCormick, you took public funds," the herald intoned. "You stole food meant for the starving and called it your bounty. You sold out borders and sent men to perish. By the will of Nicolas Eaton, you are to be stripped of title, your lands seized, and you will be held to answer for the dead."
Matthias' face went from red to pale to the color of someone else's shame. He shouted and blamed me with throat-splitting noise, then tried to do what proud men always do: deny. He called my name and said I had betrayed him, that I was a traitor. The crowd hissed back.
"You had me taught to look like another woman," he said, his voice breaking. "You learned to be the other woman and used my plans to ensnare me."
I smiled then, thin and bright. "You loved the image of power, father," I said. "You thought a throne would make you gentle. It did not."
He reached for me, but the guards held him back. "You are a child I raised," he said. "You are my kin."
"A kin of bones," I said. "A kin of bargain."
The people around us changed as if someone had thrown a stone into a still pond. Once, soldiers had sworn loyalty to Matthias. Now they looked at him as if a monster had put on the face of their captain.
He begged at last, a sound like a broken bell. "I did it for family," he croaked. "I did it for you."
"You did it for your own hunger," I said, and the words were not mercy.
The crowd took pictures, as the custom had changed to this glass age; people whispered, recorded, broadcast. Some cheered. Some pelted the disgraced man with rotten fruit. A few old men shook their heads and said quietly, "I trusted you."
Matthias' face became small. For the first time in my life, I saw him reduced to the rawness of a man who could not rebuild his house.
Finn stood at the edge of the square, his cloak catching light. He watched. When the proclamation ended, he walked up to the podium and spoke.
"Matthias McCormick," he said, the voice like wind across a frozen pond. "You have used me as a step to the throne. You have shaken the empire's bones. You will face the law. I command the guard to bind you in the prison of the palace."
Matthias began to plead. "Your Highness, the soldiers remember me. I saved the border. I—"
"Our soldiers remember your bribes," the herald replied. The crowd hissed. "Let history remember."
Matthias was taken away in chains. He looked at me as they lowered him into the coach. The last thing I saw was a flash of something like hurt, less pride. Perhaps he had loved me, or perhaps the idea of me. Either way, it did not matter.
That was one public punishment. I knew the law would reach further. The other person to be punished was Valentina Dennis—the proud woman whose hunger for being adored had been the first flame that set many hearts to kindle.
She was not imprisoned. She was exposed.
I had kept a chest of her letters, stolen from her waiting woman. I had the proofs of her scheming: a chain of favors she had sought from Matthias, whispers asking him to promote her family and to find ways to secure a place beside the prince. I showed the letters in court not as a vengeance but as evidence of a heart that would not be true to a husband, a woman who would seat herself as the prize without ever intending to stand aside.
"Valentina," the empress Polina said when it was her turn to speak. Her voice was silk, but the silk had teeth. "You were seen taking the prince's gift and mocking a fellow lady. You do not hide your wants. You play games until someone is hurt."
Valentina's face had a mask for a long time. It cracked in front of everyone.
"I—" she said.
"You used me," I said into the open hall, speaking as a woman who had lived and breathed every small part of your life. "You wore a mask of cold and refused to love a man you once wanted. You let him worship from afar, then sold your honors for what you wanted."
Valentina's hands trembled. "I loved him," she said. "I needed—"
"A title," I finished. "You needed a place on the throne more than you needed him."
There were gasps. Someone caught it on their small rectangular glass and shared it. People murmured. Her supporters whispered. The proud host, Gillian Flynn, frowned as if she had been betrayed.
Valentina stood up. She tried to walk as if nothing had happened, to lift her chin and hold it tall. Her eyes were like knives.
"You taught me to be visible," she said, moving toward me. "You used him to get a place you were never meant to have."
"I used what I was given," I said. "You used him as a theater."
"Do you know what it's like—to be wanted and then to be told you must step back?" Her voice rose. "Do you know what it's like to have your whole life measured by someone else's favor?"
"Yes," I said. "I know."
And then the group outside erupted. Noblewomen who had once whispered at my expense came forward not to defend me, but because truth had a way of changing who the town favored.
Valentina's downfall was not a rope and a pit; it was a slow unwinding in the public eye. Her suitors left. A woman who had been the conversation of every room for years now found her letters quoted in the open. "She begged for gifts," one woman read aloud, pointing at the scroll I had produced. "She asked for positions. She promised favors to those who could place her."
Valentina changed colors. She tried to laugh—thin, brittle.
"This is slander!" she cried.
"No," said Finn. "This is proof."
She faltered. The crowd's mood changed from fascination to contempt. Friends who had dined with her no longer looked at her face. Children who had once been taught to bow when she entered now crossed to avoid the touch of her gown. She walked from the palace like a woman who had been stripped of songs.
That public humiliation was different from Matthias's. He was punished by law, taken by the state. She was punished by life—by being cut off from the networks she needed. The two were different and worse in their own ways.
When the court had decided, the emperor instructed Finn to watch carefully. "You have the right to your grief," he said, "and to your anger. But do not let this poison the realm."
"You know the risks when you take the crown's hand," Finn replied.
It was during the aftermath that I fell, truly, in love with the man I had used.
One night while the court still hummed with judgment, Finn came to my chamber and watched me as I patched my hairnet.
"Do you feel lighter?" he asked.
"I feel like a woman who has done what she said she would," I said.
"No," he said. "Do you feel lighter because something that pressed on you is gone?"
"I do," I said. "And heavier for what I had to do to make it go."
Finn took my hand. "I love you," he said plainly. "Not because you played at being someone else, but because you stood and did what you thought right."
"You love me as the wife you have chosen," I said, because I needed him to say it plainly, like a promise.
"I choose you every day," he said. "We will build a life. Let the past be a map of what we will not do."
In the months that followed, we had a son. Finn held him in his arms and kissed his forehead.
"What shall we call him?" he asked.
"Call him 'Shun'," I said, and the prince repeated it as if it was the tastiest word he had heard. It meant ease, luck. I wanted that for him.
"Shun," he said. "Let him be easy."
The palace sighed with joy. The child was ours, and I felt a warmth I had not expected, an ache that made me small before the world.
There are quiet days where I remember Matthias in a damp cell, calling my name. There are days when I see Valentina's eyes at a distance and know she is still a wound. But there are more days when Finn leans over our son's brow and hums a tune. There are mornings when Gillian Flynn nods at me in the corridor like a silent ally. The emperor, Nicolas Eaton, granted me titles in a way that made me both safe and feared.
I did what I had promised: I left the McCormick house in name and in practice. I carried no banners from Matthias. I let the lands be seized, for to keep them would have been to keep a noose. I kept the earrings that Finn had first sent me and later gave back, and the white jade bracelet, and the little wooden box I had carved with my hands in the hall when I was a child. They are the reliquaries of what I once was and what I became.
Sometimes in the night I feel guilt like a hand on my shoulder. But then I look at the prince asleep and feel the shape of our son near my ribs, and I think of a village where a river rose and of a man who once bought a child's life in exchange for titles. The world is full of bargains.
My final act was not a murder, not a shout, but a quiet setting down of things.
One public morning, when the court had long moved on from Matthias' disgrace, the emperor called for a formal ceremony. I stood among the banners, the jade earrings in my ears catching the sun. Finn beside me was steady as a pillar.
"Madeleine Karlsson," Nicolas Eaton intoned, and his voice rolled like a river. "You have stood in shadow and in light. You have served, and you have sinned. You have also been faithful."
I kept my head bowed. The court expected me to be small.
"You will be more than the prince's consort," the emperor continued. "You will be guardian of the people's welfare. You will be overseer of charity to the border towns Matthias failed. You will not be the instrument he hoped for. You will be something fiercer."
Finn took my hand in public that day and squeezed.
I looked at Matthias in the little prison wagon that carried him to a remote holding. He was not a man exiled by fate; he was a man unmade by the choices he made. He was being led away publicly so that the people could see the cost of hoarded power.
Valentina was absent that day. I knew she had been declared persona non grata by certain households; others still watched her to see whether she would return. The sting of being cut off had changed her face.
When the crowd dispersed, when the sunlight warmed the stones and the camels marched past and children kicked their toys, Finn bent and kissed the crown of my head.
"We will keep Shun away from this," he said. "He will be free to be a child, and if I have any say, he will never know the weight I wear."
"I will teach him how to be kind," I said. "Not from my bargains, but from my better self."
"He has our better self," Finn said.
That is what kept me. That and the jade earrings that hung like white blossoms from my ears—the piece of theater that turned a life. The ornament that had once been a token of apology had become a symbol of the bargain that made a life, and of the bargain that broke a man.
I do not pretend I was innocent. I was a child taught by a soldier how to survive the court. I was a woman who learned to love the warmth the prince offered. I was a liar who turned lies into a ladder. I do not ask for absolution. I ask only to keep the child and the man who loves me.
"Do you regret it?" Finn asked me the first time Matthias was taken.
"I regret nothing that keeps Shun safe," I said.
"But—"
I looked at him. "Stand with me," I asked, and he did.
The court we live in now is quieter than before, stitched with new rules and new grief. The emperor watches, both a father and a king, and the empress smiles in a way that means she has forgiven me in her heart. Gillian Flynn still invites me to her salons where I teach girls who once would have been dismissed. Valentina sometimes passes in the market; we do not speak.
On the days I walk the palace gardens, I put a small stone on the edge of the river that runs through the grounds. It is not a memorial to Matthias. It is a stone for the people who drowned under his schemes.
"Do you think the dead hear us?" I asked Gillian once.
"Sometimes," she said. "Sometimes they sit with us in strange ways. We are lucky if they are quiet."
The last thing I did before Shun's sleeping whispers took me was lock away the chest of letters I'd used as proof. I left a note inside, addressed to anyone who might one day think of repeating what I had done.
"Power is a poison," I wrote. "It intoxicates. Remember who you are before you try to make others into shapes you prefer."
Shun slept and Finn hummed as he always did and the jade earrings caught the light and winked.
I am not proud of the way I broke people. But I am proud of how I built a life we can live in without being devoured by the hunger that once consumed Matthias.
"Madeleine," Finn says sometimes, when he hears the old songs of siege and ceremony and daybreak, "you will always be mine."
"And you will be mine," I tell him, because we both need the promise to keep our hands steady.
On the day the emperor gave me charge of the border charities, I put on the jade earrings and the white bracelet. I walked past the window where once Matthias watched me bow with his loud approving laugh. I walked past the little cell that had been his room in the house and closed the door for good.
"I will not let his hunger return," I said.
"You won't," Finn promised.
Outside, in the square, a child played with a little wooden boat. It bobbed like hope on a blue basin.
That place—the square, the earrings, the little boat—are mine, and they will not return to what they were. They are different now, and safer, and for that I give thanks.
The End
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