Sweet Romance12 min read
The Reluctant Bride Who Stole a Secret
ButterPicks11 views
I woke into silk and cloud and a name that made my ribs ache: Daniela Crane, White Lotus Divine.
"I am not good at dramatic names," I told the mirror and it only looked back with its usual indifferent beauty.
"You're ridiculous," Mila Blackburn said, nudging her teacup toward me. "You were born ridiculous. Now sit—there's mooncake."
"I'll sit," I said, "but not because of the name."
"Of course not." Mila laughed. "Because of the mooncake."
I had crossed over into this world like a foolish comet. One moment I was a woman in a small city with a library card, and the next I was Daniela Crane, daughter of the Heaven Emperor and the Heaven Empress, a born immortal with a palace and an opinion. I had legs that went on for too many pages of compliments, eyes that were always described as "clear as a spring," and the wrong kind of destiny.
"White Lotus, wake," Finch Barber called from the doorway, his voice patient as a tide. Finch was my small junior—he called himself a kirin but had more patience than any kirin I'd ever met. "You told me to call you at dawn."
"I told you to call me at noon." I pulled the silk over my face and refused to move. "Dawn is for people who want to accomplish things."
"Lots of people accomplish things at dawn." Finch pushed a small tray within reach. "Also, you promised to help open the peach wine."
"Fine." I sat up. "But only because you whispered that the wine makers in Peach Blossom Valley invented a flavor that tastes like old summers."
"That's very specific." Finch put a hand to his chest as if wounded. "And you said you'd go to Ling's palace tonight, remember? He's returned from his mortal trial."
I stopped.
"Who is Ling?"
"Colton Fontana?" Finch blinked. "You can't be serious. He's your—"
"Fiancé?" I laughed before I meant to. "Since when do I have a fiancé?"
"Since your father and the Master Bodhi arranged it," Finch said with the faintest smirk. "Because you're an imperial daughter and Colton is a prodigy."
My fingers pricked in annoyance. I had the palace, the privileges, and the title. I also had a plot.
"What's the problem?" Mila asked, because Mila always asked the world what its business was and expected a clean answer.
"Because I remembered a book." I felt ridiculous admitting it. "I remember a book where... I remember being the second lead—the kind who plays with the lovers' fate. She became consumed by jealousy. A woman like me once pushed the heroine off an altar called the Pillar of Judgment. The heroine almost died. Then the man—Colton—killed the woman. Everyone cheered."
Mila's fork froze midair. "You were in that book?"
"Either I was in that book or the universe is cruelly self-referential." I rubbed my temple. "Either way, white-lotus-in-a-book does not survive. I do not want to die."
"You could avoid him," Finch said, naive like a lamplight.
"I tried." I stood, then sat, then stormed toward the window and then the tea table. "I tried to avoid public events, but there's a banquet at Ling's palace today. My mother insists." I hissed. "And my father very much hopes for an alliance. But if Colton returns to the heavens with... with a heart, I will be the one to get sliced into the sky in the end."
"Then don't go as the same Danielle who flirts with bad luck," Mila said, serious for once. "Go as someone who steals a treasure."
"Which treasure?"
"That dragon-etched jade amulet," Finch said. "Your book said he gets a defense amulet in a deep secret realm. That thing saves him three times."
"You mean I should go on a treasure hunt?" I smiled despite myself. "Use the book advantage? I like the phrasing of that. It sounds like someone who reads spoilers but acts live."
"Exactly," Finch said. "And I will come. I can drag your stubborn old master out of the grass to help."
"Your master is a bum who naps in a wicker chair," I said, but the truth was in my words. "But yes. I'll take whatever help I can get. And—" I squeezed my eyes shut. "If I take his jade, he can't use it to save himself from things I do."
Mila gagged on a mooncake. "Do not say 'if I do.' We are not villains."
"We are survivors," I corrected. "And survivors survive."
Two days later I slipped into the peach valley, pretending to smell blossoms while actually sniffing out gossip. The banquet glittered like a small, arrogant constellation. Colton Fontana returned with a quiet gravity—an answered rumor. He wore his usual calm, as if the world paused politely to let him by.
"Daniela," he said when our introductions reached the point of clinking tea cups. "You look... well."
"Same to you," I said, watching him. "You look like you took a long walk and learned patience."
"I'm not patient," Colton said. His eyes had the kind of steady that made people ask questions. "I'm careful."
"Careful people make careful enemies," I offered.
He smiled like someone putting an edge back in its sheath. "You've been avoiding me."
"I prefer to avoid drama." I meant it. "And you—"
"I've been away with—" He paused, glanced at a veteran master who had escorted him, then at me. "I've been sorting my trials."
I left the banquet early. I had a better plan: I took a jar of peach wine, told Mila to fetch her clouds, and drifted toward the valley. The books always made secret caves and relics dramatic. They did not prepare you for the smell of stone and wet moss or the way the world grows very small when you press your face to a hidden river.
"How does one find a secret?" I asked Finch while we drifted on a slow cloud. "Is it by being pure of heart or by being annoying enough to break the world?"
Finch's laugh was very soft. "Neither. It's by being stubborn and ignorant at the same time. Like a child who keeps throwing a ball until the tide gives him a toy."
We found the cave because I threw an old peach core. It vanished into a stone mouth, like a coin dropping into a wishing well.
"You're lucky or cursed," Finch observed.
"Both," I muttered. "Come on."
Inside, it was not stones and dragons as I expected. It was silence and a man holding half an apple, cheeks hollow from hunger. He was like a poem I hadn't read: thin, precise, with smoke wrapped around his shoulders like a misbehaving shawl.
"Fruit?" I offered.
He peered at me with quiet eyes. "Hunger."
"Name?" I asked, playing the part of charming sovereign.
"Finch," he said.
"Finch," I repeated and nearly laughed. "That's what my junior calls himself."
He blinked. "No. I'm—"
"Wait." Finch the kirin gave me a look. "You already have Finch."
He smiled then, small and sad. "They called me Finch too."
We called the man Finch for convenience and because names are small things in dark rooms. He knew the caverns like a map lived under his skin. He showed me where to step, where magic hummed like bees, and where the jade might blink like a green heart.
"Would you take a fruit?" I offered again. "I have plenty."
He shook his head then, eyes watchful, and for the first time, I saw a trick. The beam of the cave was narrow; once we stepped inside, the mouth closed like a lid. The cave narrowed into an archive of stacked books, a library like the belly of the world.
"This wasn't in the book," I whispered.
"Many things aren't," Finch said. "Some one has been here."
We stayed. The man—his name, I learned later, was also Finch, but everyone in that cavern was called Finch by someone—read and read. He spoke slowly, like a person tasting chapters. I made him pastries, which he ate with a kind of nervous ritual.
"Why hide the jade?" I asked.
"Because some things choose who carries them." He looked up. "And because some keepers are afraid to leave."
"Afraid of what?"
"Of being seen," he said.
Later, when the moon built its perfect circle above the valley, two lights opened in the stone and swallowed us. I had the jade in hand—a squirming, bright thing like a fish—and then the world fell sideways. The cavern changed its clothes and blurred into halls.
"It moved," I breathed.
"It didn't," Finch said. He held my hand, like a boy who had learned to steady a lamp. "We did."
We walked into a place that had the smell of old craft and dust and the careful arrangement of things someone meant to keep. Books lined the walls with patient faces. "There are sixty-eight thousand, six hundred and thirty-one volumes," Finch murmured, as if the number pleased him.
"You're counting," I said.
"I'm a book boy." He showed me a volume with runes and told me the story of some ancient method. "You like people who like books," he said.
"That would be news to me," I said.
"Do I look like someone who lies?"
"You look like someone already honest in ways I can't buy," I replied.
We piled books into a nest and slept like people trading stories. He drew pictures in a small, careful hand—my silhouette, the way I slept, minor things that I had not known mattered. He was only a face you saw after a long winter: familiar before you had a right to call it so.
I was not surprised when I learned his truth. After the cave battle of the old stories, when heroes fought and relics blinked, he had been a cloud. It felt simple in words, like saying "he was rain." He'd been a thinking cloud, a small loneliness with a mouth like weather. He became a person from spiral light and patient lore.
"You're made of cloud?" I demanded.
"Some of me," he admitted. "And some of me is not."
"Do clouds feel lonely?" I asked, absurdly.
"They do," he said. "And they like to eat fruit."
We slept that night with the library watching us. I woke to the sound of Finch's whisper.
"White Lotus," someone called, and my heart kicked like a startled bird. It was Colton, who had come with a small retinue that smelled of thunder and old wars. "You and I must settle the matter of our betrothal."
"I settle nothing," I said, voice too tidy. "Leave me be."
"You haven't answered my letters," he said. "You haven't read my mind or my intention."
"I have no intention of being entangled in tragedies," I said.
"Is that what you think this betrothal is?" He stepped closer. "I thought this would be companionship, not a script."
"You thought wrong," I said. "I thought the same. We can end it, here. If you want the sky, take it. To hell with the scripts."
"Then be candid," Colton said. His patience was no longer mere habit; it was a force. "What do you want?"
"To keep living," I answered. "To avoid the place where novels end me poorly."
He studied me for a long time, like someone reading the margins for a secret. "If you must leave, leave on your terms," he said softly. "Give me a condition."
"I will demand nothing," I lied. "I will demand only that you say only the truth."
"Very well." He looked up at the clouds. "Then I will respect your choice."
"Good." I felt a small victory. "Then let us go back and say 'this engagement is ended.'"
We left under a sky that watched like a jury. Old officials observed with their quiet papers. Colton spoke to his master in a tone that meant this was more than annoyance: it was judgement.
"I ask you to accept my terms: end the betrothal." I said plainly, handing the matter into the hands of the palace, of ritual and paper.
"I will," Colton said. "Tell your father I will let it be gone." His face was unreadable as a closed book.
I walked away feeling lighter and curious. Could I have just avoided the inevitable by saying a sentence and asking a favor? My heart was foolish enough to hope.
We reached the great sky path and the great palace, and there he stopped us. Colton's hand rose—(my breath hitched)—and he asked a question that I had not expected.
"You will not leave the sky empty," he said. "If you leave this betrothal, will you promise to stay safe?"
"I promise nothing," I said lightly. "Promise is something people overuse like coins."
"Then give me a condition: you will not go alone again to a place in darkness."
I laughed. "You can make conditions now?"
"Yes," he said. And he added, very quietly: "Because when you go alone, you vanish in certain ways I don't like."
I found myself blushing at a thing I had no right to care about. "Fine," I lied. "I will not go alone."
He smiled once, a soft curve. "Good."
We stood then under the Nerine gate. My father, the Heaven Emperor, accepted Colton's acknowledgement with polite relief. The Emperor's civil smile was always a little like a curtain falling on a favorite stage.
After the speech I was suddenly aware of eyes. Thin, underlined glances. A book I had read came back to me in pieces; in the book, I had been cruel. I had been grateful for my beauty and careless with another's fate. The memory made my stomach twist.
I sought Finch. He stood by the books with my jade tucked under his collar like a stolen star.
"You lied to me," I said, because trust between us had been made of smaller things.
"No," Finch said. "I kept it safe. I did not want to see you go where I may not guard you."
"You hid the cave closing," I accused.
"I did," he said. "I wanted you to stay."
"You could have told me," I said.
"I know," he replied. "But you looked like you would break on the branch."
I had been frightened, yes. The story in my head had a merciless arc. But Finch's refusal to let me become a footnote—Finch's single small theft of the jade—was baked into the day.
Back at my courtyard, my little staff of friends and maidens—led by Mila and the bright-eyed Mila's chatter—rearranged cushions and brewed sweet tea and whispered new things into my day. The world had rearranged itself around me.
"You're going to survive now?" Mila asked.
"I'm trying," I said. "And I'm stealing green trinkets."
"You are the most dangerous kind of survivor," Mila replied neatly. "You are the one who smiles and keeps a hammer."
I had my hammer—the Black Dragon Hammers that, in all the bazaar talk, had such a fierce name. I felt ridiculous wielding heavy arms like a joke. But when a person knows she's on a stage, sometimes one takes props. I swung them for practice and found it oddly satisfying. The hammers didn't ask me about the book.
Days passed. Finch and I read together in the library cave. Colton came and we talked like two strangers who've survived a long ferry. We ate roast boar and watched a city celebrate fireworks until the sky surprised us with a thousand small lights.
Then the world cracked its seam.
A storm of lightning wrapped around Finch like a question. He had never been powerful in the measured way I was supposed to be, but neither was he small. Without warning, his breath changed, skin going pale, and the thunder above him called his name.
"Stay still," I told him, though my hands shook. "I am here."
"You're here," he said, and he looked at me with a tired old thing like gratitude. "You stayed."
"Of course I stayed," I protested. "I didn't come here to lose a cloud."
The lightning came down like a hand made of glass. It wrapped and wrapped and tried to take him. I beat the clouds with my hammers. I asked the Jade to help. The air itself stung my face.
He took crowns of storm after storm. I felt helpless and furious in equal measure. Each strike burned a little off my patience. I shouted at thunder, hammered at the sky, and then, in the middle of the last collapse, I felt something wrong with the center of it.
I found myself running. I found myself leaping into a rain of electricity and slamming my hammer into the face of a god of weather. The thunder would not be fooled.
"Who let you order the storms?" I asked, voice rough as a rope.
"Who do you think you are?" Thunder boomed like an annoyed old man. "I follow orders."
"Whose orders?" I asked, half-laughing at the absurdity.
"It is time," the thunder said sadly. "This is your test."
"I don't take tests from anyone who names itself 'test,'" I said. I raised both hammers and drove them down until the thunder coughed and the cloud was only noise. The last flash struck and scattered like a flock startled.
It was not grace that ended it. It was the simple, ridiculous way a woman with two hammers refuses to be quiet.
When the sky finally buckled and released Finch, he was raw. He sat and he breathed and he took the world back into his small, patient chest. He had changed.
He rose in rank of powers. He walked the path of one who had tasted being more. In a matter of days he surpassed me and then rose higher, until even the heavens had to adjust their volume.
At the court that came to greet him, Colton watched with a look that admitted nothing but asked everything. He came forward when the sky's official welcome arrived.
"Congratulations," Colton said. "You're someone now."
Finch bowed, cloud-soft and boy-stiff at once. "You were my anchor," he said, voice low, to me as much as to the crowd. "You held the place where I could stand."
Then everything that had been quiet turned loud. Colton's servants, the officials, and my own family gave speeches that had the precise tone of a nation folding a letter into an envelope. The world welcomed Finch like a new tide.
But I had not come to this story to fade into background. The book that had haunted my waking days had another passage waiting for me. I remembered the woman in the old text who did terrible things, who pushed and broke the world for love that burned too hot.
"Colton," I said to him that evening, in the place where the palace lamps were like boats afloat, "I will end our betrothal. I do not want your future embroiled in my mistakes. Go where you will."
He didn't argue. He had that habit—exact as the book, with a different, softer edge. "If you need anything, say it," he said. "Not as a demand, but as a promise."
I pressed my lips into a line I'd kept for days. "As a promise. Then I promise the uninteresting thing: I will live."
He smiled once, small and resigned. "Then live."
We said those simple things, and the world obeyed. Or we ordered it to obey, which was a nicer way to look at it.
"Now," I told Finch and Mila later, over a plate of sticky rice, "we go take the dragon amulet back before the book writes itself into us."
"Or he gets it before you," Mila said, mischievous. "Colton has people who find things."
"Then we take him to tea and steal his amulet while he blushes," I said.
Finch sighed, which was his version of a war cry. "Many plans," he said. "All small and ridiculous. Perfect."
We left under a sky trimmed with lanterns, each flame small and stubborn. I understood then that in a world filled with scripts and prophecy, the only thing I could choose was the way I moved.
"Don't forget," Colton said once at the palace gate, "you are not alone."
"I haven't forgotten," I answered. I wasn't the heroine of that cruel old book anymore. I was someone who read spoilers and still found ways to laugh.
I clipped the jade to my dress like a secret, like a small green heart that was not entirely mine. I would take what the story gave me and turn it into something kinder.
"Come on," Finch said. "We have a library to finish."
"Yes," I said, smiling. "We have a life to rewrite."
The End
— Thank you for reading —