Sweet Romance17 min read
The Lotus Pond and the Two Princes
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I was a side concubine in the Crown Prince's house. My name is Amy Conrad, but everyone called me "Liangdi" in whispers that never fit my mouth. I had been here three years. For three years I lived between a laughing prince and a smiling princess, eating the scraps of their happiness like stale mooncakes.
"They always sit together," I said once to Josefina Barker, my maid, when the prince and princess praised each other like a pair of matched lanterns.
Josefina smiled, "They are made for each other, milady."
"Then why am I the one who keeps their table warm?" I asked. "Why do I get five-cent mooncake filling?"
Josefina only bowed. "You are gentle, milady."
"Am I gentle?" I laughed. "I'm a woman who likes meat."
One evening the Crown Prince, Ely McCormick, called me with one hand on his sword hilt and one amused in his pocket.
"Amy," he said, "get out."
"Get out?" I said, surprised.
He laughed, very human and very cruel. "Go. For a month, no meat. Learn to simmer rice like a nun."
"You're petty," I said.
"You like meat."
He signed an order that night. The kitchen stopped sending me roast chicken and goose. The prince thought hunger would mend my insolence. I thought hunger was an inconvenience. I bribed Hugo Ricci, a fat, clever cook, and for two gold coins he smuggled me a roasted chicken at night.
"Lady, this is dangerous," Hugo whispered as he passed me the steaming thing under a moonless sky.
"Then make it three," I said.
Josefina watched me with that look house-servants keep for things they cannot change. "This is wrong, milady."
"Wrong?" I bit into the drumstick. "Josefina, you sound like the Crown Prince."
A month later, three women arrived at our gates — a dancer, a singer, a talented poet who caught every courtier's eye. Josefina had brought them in, claiming they would teach me. They taught me nothing but created trouble. Within a month they were made consorts: Kataleya Dunn, Jessica George, Silvia Coffey.
"You did this?" I hissed at Josefina when the three women bowed outside my rooms, thanking me for their fortune.
"I didn't mean it," Josefina cried. "I wanted you to be...better."
"You wanted me to be better," I said. "You wanted me to be less of a stomach."
She fell to her knees. "Amy, I am sorry."
"Don't be."
When the prince saw how the house changed, he found it amusing. "Amy," he said one night, pulling at his sleeve, "you pretend to be nothing, but you are troublesome."
"You love trouble," I said.
"Sometimes I love you," he answered, voice flat as a blade.
"You love to starve me," I said.
Then the hunting invitation came. "Come," Ely said. "I will let you ride."
"Why would I go with you?" I asked.
"Because I like your company."
"Do you?"
"Yes." He smiled like a folded fan. "And because I don't want you to wander around eating stolen pork."
We rode into a wide forest. The sun shone. He shot and missed. He became determined. He scolded me for laughing.
"You are cruel on purpose," I told him when he missed his tenth arrow.
He snorted. "You are a strange woman."
At dusk we were lost. "This was a bad plan," I said.
"Lost is an adventure," he said.
We argued, we swapped stories, we found ourselves alone with nothing but each other's company and bruised egos.
"Tell me why you like me," I asked at one point, as we sat on a hill and the wolves howled a long way off.
He looked like a boy who had swallowed a moon. "You ask too much."
"Say it anyway."
"I...I like how you eat."
"I eat properly," I said.
"Not just that. You are honest," he admitted.
We returned late. Stories spread. Some said I had gone with a Ninth Prince; some said I had eaten with cooks and sailors. Rumors are small flames; they grow fast.
One afternoon the Crown Princess, Megan Bergmann, called me and struck me with a board — twenty strikes. "For the proprieties," she said, and expected applause for moral law.
"You cry badly," Ely told me afterwards, sitting on the edge of my bed. "You will keep your wobble."
"What wrong did I?" I asked, raw.
"Nothing serious," he said, "but you did make the household uneasy."
"Do you think I wanted to be a scandal?" I asked.
"Sometimes," he said, "you make me think things."
"Like what?"
"That I am alive."
After that he stayed with me in small ways. He ordered meat for me again. He stole me back the chicken I had bought in the night. When the rumor mill ground louder, he stepped in — not to stop it, but to shape it.
"Make her eat softer," he told the cooks. "Show her she is safe."
The palace whispered. "She stole meat," they said. "She bought favors." I heard their tongues like dry leaves.
Then came a strange day when a white-clad man at an inn paid my bill. He asked to know Josefina's name and then called me "Madam." He was Jackson Fitzgerald — the Ninth Prince — with a grave, slow smile.
"Have we met?" I asked him in the moonlight once.
"You were drowned once," he said. "I pulled you out."
"No," I said. "That day, someone else came."
He looked at me, amused and unreadable. "Perhaps you misremember. The world is full of missing things."
Later Ely told me a secret. "You are safer if others think you carry my seed," he whispered one night. "I will have the physician tell the court you are two months gone."
"You will lie for me?"
"I will," he said. "If the court stabilizes, certain men stop plotting. You give me a peacetime."
So they declared me with child. The palace rejoiced as if the sun had been born twice. The Empress, Diane Novikov, smiled with a teacup and sent baskets of ginseng and rose wine.
"Amy," she said, holding my hand like a banker checking a bond, "you must rest."
"Yes, mother," I answered, my palms sticky with fear.
News traveled like birds. Men came with advice and temples. The cook, Hugo Ricci, fretted over porridge recipes.
"What will you do when the truth comes out?" Hugo asked me, his hands stained with sauce.
"Truth?" I stared. "I am the truth."
He laughed. "You say that, but truth is like a roast—we cut it when it's needed."
I practiced learning to cook nice things, to look as if I carried life. I learned to pretend a little every day. The Crown Prince watched me with his arrogant look and a softness in his eyes that sometimes made me sick with longing.
"Why did you do it?" I asked him quietly once, when the moon was a clean coin.
"Because you are mine in small ways," he said.
"Do you love the Princess?" I asked. It was a dangerous, tiny question.
"Sometimes. She is my friend," he said. "But you are different."
"Different how?"
He leaned forward. "You make me feel like an animal that wants to be petted."
I thought he might chuckle. He did not. He kissed my forehead like a man giving a trinket to a child. "Will you forgive me for my roughness?"
"Maybe," I answered.
Meanwhile, the palace spun a web. The three women who arrived became consorts because of courtiers' whispering teeth. They courted Ely in gilded ways. Kataleya Dunn, Jessica George, Silvia Coffey bowed before me one day and said, "Thank you for your blessings."
I smiled. "You are welcome."
They smiled back, but their smiles were made of glass.
Then came the day of the true test. The Ninth Prince's men were seen on the roads. The entire court felt a tremor. Ely disappeared for days. The Empress grew thin, like a candle burned wrong. The Ninth Prince stood on the street and called to the world with a loud voice.
"Where is justice?" he shouted. "If they take a prince, who will speak for the people?"
He had begun to become a rallying point. Men flocked to his shadow. Factions moved like ink in water.
The palace blamed me. Springmaid Josefina Barker, who had once knelt by my side, suddenly spoke in the hall and fingered me in public.
"She and the Crown Prince planned it," Josefina cried. "They invented the pregnancy to save the Crown Prince's seat."
The room hummed like an angry hive. I stood, and the Empress ordered physicians. They poked, they listened, and one of them said what they wanted to hear — that I was not three months gone.
"False!" cried the crowd.
Josefina's accusation rang sharp. I had expected betrayal, but not such precise venom.
"Josefina," I said later, when the trial by rumor cooled and the Empress summoned us both, "why? Why did you do this?"
She lowered her eyes. "Because I wanted something else for myself," she said. "Because Jackson favored me once, and he offered the world."
"You sold me?" I asked, feeling a coldness.
"I used the only card I had," she said. "I wanted to be more than a maid."
"Did he promise you titles?" I asked.
"He promised me his hand," Josefina mouthed. "He promised me a life out of the dust."
Her face changed then — from guilt to a hard rush of greed. "He said if I could give him a reason to remove the Crown Prince, I would be set."
My chest turned. My hands trembled, not from rage, but because the truth felt like a blade placed lightly against a throat.
"You betrayed me and the prince for a promise?" I whispered.
"I did what I had to," she said. "I was tired."
The Empress declared an inquiry. They recorded testimonies and gathered witnesses. The court filled like a kettle.
Then Jackson Fitzgerald came, smiling as never before. "Did you think I would not plan?" he said softly to the tapestry.
He smiled at everyone as if the whole world were his.
And then the fire.
The night the palace burned, I was asleep in my chamber. A scream — high and sharp — woke me. The room smelled of pitch and fear. Guards shouted. People ran like colors scattered by wind.
"Get out!" someone screamed. "Amy! Amy!"
I grabbed a cloak. I ran. At the gate, a woman — a servant I had never seen — shrieked that she was Amy. She lunged forward and a soldier plunged a hidden blade into her belly.
I watched as she collapsed. I watched the soldier's hand wet with red. No one stopped him.
I ran through smoke and saw a shape at the pond. Jackson stood at the edge, face pale under the moon.
"Who did this?" I cried.
He looked at me as if I were a small, foolish bird. "Everyone chooses," he said.
A blade reached from behind, a hand tried to find my belly. I stumbled into the lotus pool. The cold was a shock like honesty. Underwater, I saw the reflected flames, the dark shapes of men, and a face that cut through: Ely, in black, reaching.
"Amy!" he shouted, but I could not hear.
I fought the water. I felt branches claw at me. The lotus closed like lids. My thoughts went to Josefina's small face when she was a child, to Hugo's clumsy hands, to the Crown Princess's laugh. I reached for Ely's hand, and his fingers closed around mine.
After that, the world blurred.
When I awoke, I was in a dim cell. Josefina was brought to stand before me, eyes hollow.
"You saved me," I murmured. "You did."
She laughed, small and brittle. "Saved? You? We made bargains you could not see."
Later, the court made its sound. Words like "treason" and "arson" were thrown into the air. Evidence was brought. A spy, a blade, a hidden cord — each piece showed the Ninth Prince's men had tried to burn the palace and kill those in certain rooms.
I asked the Crown Prince, "Is it true? Jackson set the fire?"
He looked at me, gaunt and deep. "He wanted to force my disappearance. He wanted to take the throne."
The public punishment came on a cold morning with a sky like a sheet. The Emperor and Empress sat like stone. The city thrummed; merchants closed their stalls, and commoners gathered to watch. The hall filled with soldiers and scribes and women who had once whispered in private.
Josefina was led in chains first.
"Why are you punishing the maid?" a woman shouted.
"Because she was his tool," Ely said.
"Because she lied," the Empress said. "Public trust was broken. She deceived the court."
Josefina trembled. "I did it for a life," she said, voice small.
"Did you think you could bargain with a prince's ambition?" the Empress asked. "Did you think small hands cannot burn?"
They had designed her punishment to be public and terrible, but not lethal. Josefina's punishment began with denial: she tried to sink back, to tell them it was not true.
"It was his idea!" she cried, "Jackson promised—"
"Stop," I said. The crowd turned.
I walked forward. My voice was a calm knife. "Josefina," I said, "you were a child I loved. You learned to be a woman by being cruel. You sold me for a promise."
She bowed, "Amy, I—"
"No," I cut her short. "Stand and tell the people why you did it."
She swallowed and told the crowd the whole thing like a book opened wide: how Jackson had courted her; how he promised a new name; how he had sewn letters and given her coins; how he asked her to smear me so a scandal would give him a moment.
When she finished, the hall was still.
Then the first part of her punishment began. The judge asked her to kneel. "You will be taken to the public square," he said. "You will wear a placard that reads the crime: 'Treacherous servant.' You will walk the path of shame at noon."
Her face drained. She tried to whisper. "I didn't think he'd burn—"
"Think!" I said, and the sound made more people glance up. "Think before you accept promises from men who light fires to warm themselves."
At the square a crowd had gathered three layers deep. Children pressed their faces to see the spectacle. Women with baskets stopped mid-step. Guards shoved Josefina through. They hung the placard about her neck. "Treachery," it said in bold strokes.
Once the placard was on, they made her stand on a block. A town crier read the charges loudly. "For conspiring to deceive the Crown Prince and the Empress, using falsehoods to endanger palace peace, you are sentenced to public humiliation, reparation, and removal of your status."
Josefina's hands cramped; she tried to cover her face with them. People began to murmur. "How could she?" "She was only a servant." Faces were hard. Some held pity; others had the old hunger for spectacle.
Then the city turned unkind. Some spat; others threw rotten fruit that missed and rolled. Children echoed the crier's cry. A noblewoman in the crowd laughed and clapped like an audience at a puppet show.
Josefina's eyes found me across the square. "I'm sorry," she mouthed.
"Sorry is a small coin," I shouted. "You can buy nothing with it here."
She began to plead, voice breaking. "Please—my parents—"
A group of women began to chant for reparation: "Restore what you broke! Restore what you broke!"
Guards dragged Josefina down a cobbled lane and made her clean a fountain that had once been used by palace servants. She was forced to scrub the steps where nobles stepped with sandals. On her back they tied a small bundle of chaff — a visible reminder of the lie she had woven with straw and smoke.
"Let this be a lesson," the judge declared. "Those who betray a house of trust must labor to mend the harm."
Josefina worked under the sun. People passed and pointed. Some spat again, and some dropped coins. Her neck remained marked with the placard. When night fell the town bell rang and the crowd dispersed. Josefina slept on a pallet outside the guardhouse, wet, humiliated, and alive.
It was a punishment that moved through stages: the pride of denial, the collapse into plea, the public shame, the slow reparation. Each day she showed a different countenance: rage, brokenness, bargaining. Once she tried to strike another prisoner who taunted her. The guard beat her palm until she returned to silent work. Later she would stare into nothing and whisper the name "Jackson" as if it were a prayer. Men brought her small scraps of bread, women sat a little away and said quietly, "Poor thing."
This was Josefina's punishment. It was public. It was long. The people watched the fall they had wanted to see and, when they tired of it, they moved on. Josefina remained.
But Jackson Fitzgerald's fate would be different and worse for him, because he was not a servant. He was a prince. The punishment for a prince must be a mirror thrown back at his court.
The council convened. The chamber smelled of oil lamps and old paper. Evidence was read aloud: a hidden cord, the testimony of a stable boy who saw strange sacks taken to a temple at night, a map with a route drawn in Jackson's hand. Witnesses who had once laughed under his shadow now spoke of him in trembling voices. The Ninth Prince paced like a caged animal, then tried to charm the room.
"Do you deny arson?" the prosecutor asked him.
Jackson smiled. "I deny what is false," he said. "Yet truth is a blade everyone uses."
The Emperor leaned forward. "The law is clear. Those who dare to burn the palace and remove a prince for ambition commit treason."
Jackson's face changed. The smile leached. "You cannot—"
"Watch," the Emperor said.
They took Jackson to the great hall where the market had gathered. This time the crowd was larger, for a prince's fall draws a bitter crowd. People craned necks and sellers hushed as he passed. He wore no chains at first; he was allowed the costume of a rebel: a simple robe, his hair unbound.
"Jackson," I whispered as he passed my seat, "why did you do this?"
His eyes fixed on me, not with fear but with something else: hunger. "Did you think I wanted the crown for itself?" he said. "It was the power to change things."
"You would destroy lives for a throne?" I asked.
"Change," he said, as if repeating a prayer. "Remove those who pretend and place the deserving."
When they read the sentence, the sound of the hammer seemed to echo like a drum. For a prince, they could not lash him in public as they would a servant. For him they had to strip his honor. They announced: "Jackson Fitzgerald is stripped of title, his lands reassigned, and he will forever be forbidden from the court. His name will be read aloud as traitor and he shall be paraded through the city in an embroidered robe turned inside out, and the heralds will read his crimes."
He tried to speak. His voice came out like bark. "You cannot—my allies—"
The crowd's reaction changed. Many gasped; some whispered but others clapped like an audience at a play. Nobles who had been charmed by him now crossed their arms like blunted spears. The Ninth Prince's expression went through motions: first stupefaction, then a carved denial of the world, then fury like a blacksmith's hammer.
"Traitor!" someone shouted.
He began to shout back, "You are cowards! You let the Emperor—"
Guards tightened their hold on him. They put a hood over his head for a moment, then led him down the main street. At the palace steps the highest-ranking minister read every misdeed aloud. The soft-voiced Chancellor read his sins like a ledger: the plots, the false letters, the paid men. People lining the street hissed like summer flies. Children clapped. A woman near me threw a scrap of bread and hit the prince's robe.
When they exposed him, Jackson's mask cracked. His face flushed and drained in quick motions. At first he tried to posture — "I was correcting the realm" — but the words fell like brittle arrows. The crowd had been fed stories of his charm; now those same tales were used as proof. A stable boy testified to seeing him at the temple with a black-cloaked courier. A cook swore that sacks of oil were delivered to a place near the inner walls.
At the announced place, they displayed his emblems — banners with his crest — burning slowly under a guard's watch. The Ninth Prince's men were arrested and some were publicly bound. Jackson's expression moved again: from fury to disbelief, then to pleading. He shouted that his supporters were being bought, that the Emperor had broken the law.
"Stop," Ely said quietly from his place. "Stop whining."
Jackson's voice fell. Then he turned his eyes on me, as if measuring what he could take. "You helped them," he said. "You traded."
"No," I said. "I ate. Is that a crime now?"
He laughed, a sound like a cracked bell. "You are mine by favor."
"Not mine," I said. "You thought I was a thing to hold. You burnt a house for a thing."
His face went from a fool's swagger to a child's panic. He struck a guard once in helpless rebellion and was pinned. They dragged him to the place called "the Mirror." There they forced him to stand while town criers read the names he had used and the lives his plotting had harmed.
People came forward. A young widow said, "My husband was on duty that night and is missing." An old man spat: "You soured our grain market when your soldiers blocked trade." Each witness was a chisel on his statue. The Ninth Prince's reaction changed with each speech: at first incredulous, then denying, then bargaining, then finally cracking into dumb pleas.
"Please," he said at last, voice thin. "I was young. I—"
"Your youth is no guard for burning houses," the Emperor said.
They stripped him of his ring and knelt him on the stone. A herald tore his embroidered sash and replaced it with a rope of coarse hemp. The rope was not for hanging, but for shame — he was to carry it through the city and then be exiled to the frontier with a small retinue and no title. The crowd shouted as the rope was tied. Jackson's eyes widened with a new terror: the world he knew was being unwound.
As they sent him away a younger noble called out for mercy, but the Emperor sat unmoved. Jackson's face shifted once more—from hope to realization to collapse. He begged. Men in the crowd spat and some wept. The young prince, reduced, kept bargaining: "My lands! My retainers! I'll confess—"
"Confess," said Ely. "Tell the truth."
Jackson's voice broke. He spilled names and plots like a wound opening. He called others to the bar. His final expression was the shock of a man who had thought himself untouchable being touched.
This was public and harsh. It was not just punishment; it was a surgical removal of pride. When the Ninth Prince left the city, a small boy threw a pebble that hit his cheek. He did not flinch. Outside the gate he looked back once at the lotus pond where I had fallen and seemed to search for something that was no longer there.
After these punishments, the palace breathed. The Empress sat like a quiet lighthouse. The cooker Hugo Ricci cooked soups that smelled like forgiveness. Josefina scrubbed fountains until her wrists were raw and begged the crowd to be kinder. Jackson left like a man who had lost a country.
But punishment did not tie every loose thread. Nights later the palace still smelled of smoke when wind came. I still had the same stomach and the same small, stubborn heart. Ely and I had a strange meeting after — we stood at the edge of the lily pond where tall stems kept their silence.
"Are you well?" he asked.
"I am mended," I said slowly.
"Do you hate me?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I hate what men like you make me do."
He laughed, once, a small sound. "I am a poor craftsman of hearts."
"Are you a man who misleads for the greater good?" I asked.
He looked at the moon and then at my face. "I once thought that kings could be made without blood. I thought that placement could be quiet. I was wrong."
"I have seen men like Jackson plan like wolves," I said. "I have seen Josefina bent by promises. Do you think punishment heals?"
"It sets things," he said. "But not always."
We were quiet. The lotus leaves hung like green shields. The palace was a world with rules to be broken and mended.
Months later, after Jackson had gone and Josefina had worked through her shame, after the Empress stopped visiting so often and the Crown Princess found other joys, there was a day I will always remember. It was my birthday — I had long ago stopped counting how many — and Ely came with a small wrapped bundle.
"Open it," he said.
I opened it and found a simple silver ring braided into a knot. "A pledge?" I asked.
"A knot for our days," he said. "Will you be mine in truth, Amy Conrad?"
I looked at him and thought of the pond, of the fire, of Josefina scrubbing and of Jackson, gone. I looked at the prince who had smuggled me roast chickens and smacked me like a teacher and then saved me like a soldier.
"Yes," I said.
He smiled like light hitting a blade. "Then let us not be foolish," he said. "No more games."
"I cannot promise," I said. "I am fond of meat."
He kissed my hand. "Then I will pay the cooks."
Life moved on, with new rhythms. The palace learned to fold and mend. The three women who had come as gifts of talent—Kataleya, Jessica, Silvia—settled into their rooms, each a soft power. Sometimes they thanked me. Sometimes they did not.
And sometimes in the small quiet hours, I remembered lying underwater and seeing Ely reach. I thought of the dream I had where he was black-clad and pale, shouting to me to leave. I thought of the way he had put me in front of the world and then shielded me. I thought of the way he had laughed and said, "You like trouble."
When the Empress asked me once in the trembling light, "Do you want a throne?" I smiled and said, "No. I want a table."
At night I would go to the pond. I would sit on its bank and listen to the frogs like small drums. The lotus would hold the moon. Once I saw a ghost of flame across the water and I flinched.
Ely would come and slide beside me and we would not speak much. We would eat a bowl of soup that Hugo made and both of us would be quietly full.
One evening as wind came and the moon grew round, I closed my eyes and felt the world steady. I held the ring on my finger like a secret.
"You are mine now," Ely said softly.
"And you are mine," I replied.
"Except when you steal," he said.
"I will steal," I said.
He laughed and kissed me then, not like a prince to a debt, but like a man to a woman who had learned to fight and laugh and fall and be saved.
When I think of the burned night, I don't see flames as much as faces. Some of them are gone; some stayed. Josefina washed and learned to garden. Jackson left and, perhaps, learned. The Emperor forgave in ways his body would allow. The world shifted.
I place my hand on my belly where once a lie had been made a shield. I feel nothing but fire and cold and a stubborn steady warmth that is mine alone.
There are days when I fear the past will return. There are late nights when a shadow crosses the pond and I feel a hand reach and then vanish. But when Ely is near, the shadow always steps back.
I have learned to eat my roast quietly. I have learned to laugh when I am scolded. I have learned that a woman may hold a place not by being small but by being stubborn.
"Promise me," Ely said one dusk, voice very low.
"No more empty promises," I said.
"Then promise this," he whispered. "Protect this life as if it were your own."
"I will," I said. "I will protect it even from you."
He laughed, and the sound was a door opening.
We walked back into the palace hand in hand. The lotus pond behind us folded away like a page turned.
The End
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