Sweet Romance18 min read
The Veil, the Glass Blossom, and Two Princes
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I woke to the sound of a door being shoved and then—after a long, dreadful silence—the heavy slam that closed the courtyard world out and left only the warm, curtained room and my own pounding heart.
"You're awfully quiet for a bride," a voice said close beside me.
I kept my lips together like a sealed gate. The red silk over me was heavy with embroidered phoenixes; my face was hidden beneath a veil threaded with tiny pearls. I could make out nothing but a pair of red boots by the bed.
"Don't be like that," the voice went on, softer now. "You're meant to be mine tonight."
The veil came up in one light motion and the room became a small, private universe. His face looked even more severe in the candlelight than in daylight pictures—angular, pale, and calm in a way that made people think he had no warmth. He smiled once, but it was not a smile that reached his eyes.
"Am I interrupting a bad mood?" he teased.
I felt every color inside me rush. "You wouldn't really expect me to drink the wedding wine—alone with you?" I said, trying to be clever. "There is no other person here; you don't need to be troubled."
For a second his expression softened. Then color leaked from it like spilled ink. The cup in his hand slammed down on the table so hard the liquid splashed.
"And why would I not drink with my own wife?" he asked, voice like winter.
"I—" Heat and stubbornness tangled in my chest. "I thought—I thought you might be thinking of someone else."
That tiny idea slid into the room and stuck like a thorn. He threw the cup down as if it were an accusation.
"If your heart is elsewhere," he said coldly, "then the wine can wait. I don't want a wife who keeps another man in her thoughts."
Then he left. The door shut and the room was sudden and perfect silence again.
I sat and stared at the place he'd just been. I've never liked hiding. "Miss," June Bittner whispered from the doorway when she finally came in, "you made the Fourth Prince angry."
"I didn't mean to," I told her. "I didn't."
June's eyes were kind and worried all at once. She left, and I lay staring at the ceiling until the candles burned low.
That night, I began to understand how small a presence one could be even wrapped in red silk.
"Tell me everything," I whispered to the empty room. The room, of course, said nothing.
*
Months earlier, there had been an imperial edict that changed my life: the emperor had decreed my family must marry into the royal house for the sake of alliances and honor. "Grace Shaw," the proclamation had called me—a name that had sounded like applause and prison at once. The city hummed and people pressed their faces to the windows of the carriage that took me to the palace of the Seventh Prince. I had been fourteen then, and the world grew very large and very small all at once.
The Seventh Prince—quiet, golden-haired, soft-voiced Brad Parker—had been generous even before we spoke. He had sent a lacquer box and a silk hairpin to my household as a sign of favor. A few months later, as a rumor goes, he came into the yard and found me dressed as a boy, chasing a thief down the street. He had helped with good humor and then, when I disappeared, kept looking for me in a way that made me think he had not meant to marry a stranger at all.
But the world is a machine of obligations. I hatched pet plans: a hidden garden where I could breathe if I ever felt trapped in the prince's household. I practiced the courtesies two step, and vowed I wouldn't let my life be merely a string of duties.
Then there was the Fourth Prince—Christopher Andersson—whom I had met by accident, like rain on a dry day. He had been standing alone under a plum tree, not wanting to be seen, when I slipped. His hand had been warm, which surprised me: noblemen were supposed to be cool, blunted by palace life. I remember his jaw tense as he snatched a handkerchief from me and started packing it away.
"You're imprudent," he said then, as if calling me to account.
"You saved me from an embarrassing fall," I said instead, scandalized at his lack of ceremony.
I carried that brief meeting like a secret jewel. He had disappeared again, and my life had moved on. Or so I thought.
One humid night months later I found him in the back garden of my father's house, watching the courtyard as if he belonged to its shadows. He looked at me with surprise, like a man who had forgotten a detail and then remembered it was important.
"You?" I said. "You looked badly hurt the other day."
He had indeed been hurt. The story was absurd: a riding competition, a spooked horse, a hand torn and bleeding. He had gone to a pavilion and had a small girl—only a child—tape his wounds with her handkerchief. He'd remembered her face the way one remembers the shape of a lost book, and he'd never stopped hunting for that face.
"Why did you come looking for me?" I asked, catching the note of something like loneliness in him, something not at all royal.
"Because you were in my thoughts," he answered simply. "And because I could not find you anywhere—except here."
His words sounded like a promise in a foreign language.
Later, a band of black-clad men tried to spill blood in the orchard where I walked. I thought I would be a story in the grass, but Christopher came like thunder and, without a moment of ceremony, put himself between me and the blades. He fought like a man who hated being helpless and hated the idea that any danger might reach me.
He wore the wound from the fight like a badge of honor—still bleeding at his sleeve, still smiling weakly when I offered a bottle with my name on it. I remember the way his fingers brushed my wrist and the sound he made—small and disbelieving.
"You carry medicine with you everywhere?" he asked.
"It's foolishness," I said. "And maybe pride. My family keeps small bottles with our name on them so people know where they came from."
He studied the bottle until the candlelight turned his gaze almost gentle. "Grace," he said at last. "Tell me your last name."
"Shaw," I replied.
He repeated it like a coaxing. "Grace Shaw. Hm."
"You're the Fourth Prince," I said, biting the inside of my cheek. "You dare—"
"I dare," he answered. "And yet I ask for nothing. At least, not yet."
*
Brad—the Seventh—arrived like a bright morning. He had a laugh that made crowds feel like warm rooms. He pulled me onto a ship once, whispered nonsense to make me laugh, gave me a tiny glass hairpin shaped like a plum blossom and called it foolishly perfect for me. I kept it.
"Will you come with me this evening?" he asked once, all openness and sun.
"If you mean walk the lantern avenue and pretend nothing matters for the time it takes to float a paper light, then yes," I said.
We watched the lanterns and he wrote wishes on a little paper boat and set it on the river. He told me his wish—"to have one true heart and keep it forever"—and my chest pinched because his words were honeyed and wild and simple as a child's vow.
There were nights when Brad would teach me to make incense.
"Come, say the old recipe with me," he told me, bringing boxes of herbs and resin.
I had no business at first making anything so precise, but I learned. We mixed sandalwood and rare herbs, we laughed when our hands smelled odd, and he pressed a handkerchief to my palm once, laughing at a blot of glue.
"Call it 'Sweet Sandal,'" I said, and he said the name without mocking, which made my heart turn a light color.
He taught me little things: how to sit when the shade fell a certain way, how to enjoy small silences. There was a warmth to him that felt safe. But when the war at the border pressed close and Father went north, Brad announced he would answer the call to service. He told me with a steady voice that stiffened something inside mine.
"You must be brave," he said, taking my hands. "When I am away, let the sweet sandal keep you company."
"Promise me you'll return," I said.
He smiled, and the world tilted. "I will return," he vowed, "and I will marry you properly when I do."
He left at dawn. I watched his horse vanish into the road dust and felt small beside my own silent fear.
*
I had a dozen more scenes—temples and lanterns and silk and one rogue evening at a tavern where, owing to too much wine and foolish pride, I stumbled and said words in all directions that should have been kept in my breast. I woke with the taste of metal and memory thick as curdled milk: I had kissed Christopher's cheek when I thought no one watched. Or had I? The next day the Fourth Prince's silence was a presence; he watched me leave and his face was a well I could not name.
"Did you... do you remember anything?" June asked me the morning after, palms pressed to a steaming basin.
"Only that I was very foolish," I said, letting the water run over my hands. "And that I was warm in ways I didn't expect."
June pursed her lips. "Don't make games. Men like the princes keep such things pinned like moths."
"I know," I said. "But sometimes even moths fly."
That was the trouble with court life: one never knew whether the light was causing the moth to burn or to turn.
At the palace's orchid pavilion, where princes made small offerings and watchful eyes studied the world, I walked with my sister Giselle Barrett—my older sister in the palace, where she had been given a gilded room and the awkward crown of favor. She looked thin to me in the way of those who smile in front of others but sleep with a hand over their mouth.
"Grace," she said softly, "if you find kindness, take it. If you find cruelty, run."
"Which is which?" I asked.
"You will know," she replied. "You always do."
She lived a life wrapped in patience and the careful trimming of disappointment; she was a quiet harbor. I wanted to be both the harbor and the storm.
*
At the temple of the Hidden Tree, where people looped red cords and tied tight wishes to the low branches, I found a piece of silk with my name on it. Someone had left the ribbon and written: Grace Shaw—peace and laughter.
"Who do you think left this?" June asked, eyes bright.
"Maybe a friend," I said. "Maybe a stranger. Maybe a prince who thinks the world is too loud."
A young nobleman, Gunner Foley, who had a smile like a child's dare, watched me from a corner and said, "You seem to have the light about you." He bowed like someone offering dessert on a tray. I bowed back because the world required it.
*
Days became a small string of ordinary things—threads of silk and hidden smiles. I learned to make incense; Brad helped with the mixing and names and silly ceremonies; Christopher would appear like an echo at the edges of my life, sharpening my days with the odd chill of his attention.
"Why do you linger?" Brad asked once, watching me standing by a tray of herbs.
"Because a life without edges seems too flat," I answered.
He laughed and kissed my forehead. "A life with me will always have a roof."
"Ah," I said, "but the roof may keep out the birds."
"Our garden will have birds," he promised.
I wanted these promises. I wanted a garden and a bird or two. But the Fourth Prince's steady, watching presence made me wonder about the shape of a promise when someone else was waiting on the other side.
At the horse-polo field one spring day, I rode as a man—to chase a ball and feel the wind and be honest to myself—and the world erupted with shouts and flaring color. The city had a way of becoming intoxicating when everyone gathered to be magnificent.
As I rode, Christopher, who had been watching, finally rode toward me. He had not smiled then. He nudged his mount and offered a rare olive of speech.
"Grace," he said simply. "Be careful."
"Always," I answered. "Even in the face of your cold eyes."
He did not smile. But later, when a startled horse nearly knocked me, Christopher was there and steadied me as if he had stood between me and anything a thousand times before. His arm was firm; when he held me, I felt shape and safety, as if his coldness were only a winter that masked a hearth.
"You sleep poorly," he said another evening, reading a letter under the porch of the library.
"I sleep enough," I answered. "You, Prince, look like you never sleep at all."
"I have not slept much since I first remembered a girl's hand over my wounded palm," he replied.
I almost laughed. Then I had to swallow it.
*
War took the city by the throat. Father and Mother rode to the frontier; carts left with linen and arms. Brad mounted with a bright grin I did not trust to himself—he was all light and surety. He promised again: "I will return."
Christopher did not promise anything. He merely watched the road, jaw set, fists clenched as if the words "return" and "safe" were fragile things he'd rather not break with his breath.
"Grace," he said one afternoon, voice softer than it had any right to be. "Do you know how a person stays still when so many are moving? How do you keep your place when banners shout for action?"
"I make a red ribbon and tie it to the oldest tree," I said. "And I speak a prayer inside it."
He looked at the ribbon I had tied to my wrist—the small glass plum hairpin nestled in my hair beside it—and then he said, "I will watch it for you."
I could not tell if this was an offer or a command.
*
On the morning when Brad left, the camp outside the gates was bright as if someone had painted the world to keep it from crying. He wrapped my gift—a tiny box of the incense we had made—and placed it in my hand.
"Take this," he whispered. "When the road is loud, breathe this and remember that I am certain."
"Promise?" I asked.
"Promise," he said, and blessed me with a look like sunlight breaking a long cloud.
He rode away, and I said to the sky, "Return."
Christopher watched from the palace wall. He did not say anything. He simply held his scarf like an argument between his lungs and his will. Later I would find that he had sent for the scent of that incense to stay on his sleeve.
There are hours when the world becomes a taut instrument. Love is a melody that needs choices like strings to sing.
*
I made sweets of small things. I learned to keep the loft quiet and to embroider small letters onto a sachet. I sewed a tiny "B" into a pouch and slipped it to Brad before he left. I tied my hair with the little glass plum hairpin and walked in the gardens until the city felt normal again. But normal is a fragile thing.
One night at a tavern, I drank too much because the wind smelled like dust and I felt like a carved thing that needed to be softened. I said things I ought not to have said in public—stories about my sister and the men I had known. I laughed until my head was light and then, between one laugh and another, I found myself leaning to the side and kissing the cheek of the man at my elbow—Christopher.
I woke the next day with pins under my skin. The world had a little halo of shame. I tried to say it was nothing. But Christopher watched me across the courtyard and his expression was not forgiving—it was melancholy, like a good song played wrong.
"Was it only the wine that moved your lips?" he asked the next time our paths crossed.
"It was emptiness," I said honestly. "And the thought that maybe I would not be so afraid if I were more foolish."
He said nothing for a very long time.
*
When I knelt in the palace hall before the elderly Empress and presented my humble gift of sandal and herb incense, she took the box with both hands and smiled like a woman who had spent her life ironing the world.
"A lovely scent," she said. "Keep making such things and come visit me often."
I left the palace that day with a bowl of favor and the soft glow of a woman's blessing at my back. I had a rare kindness and I felt it like a cloak.
Giselle—my sister—touched my sleeve in the carriage and said, "The palace is soft when the Empress smiles."
"Why do you look like you're hiding something?" I asked.
She only put her hand to my cheek and said, "For your sake, be gentle."
I wanted to be both wild and gentle and could not understand how to keep both.
*
Christopher would come and stand at the edge of the garden, watching the plum blossom hairpin in my hair catch the sun. He never made a show of it. Once, when I was returning from the temple, half-laughing with June and Kaylin and a bright-gartered friend, I looked up and saw him waiting.
"You tie a lot of promises into trees," he said.
"And you tie a lot of promises into your silence," I answered.
He reached out and, sooner than I expected, his fingers brushed the back of my hand. There was no fire. There was, instead, the slow knowledge that something had become true.
"Grace," Christopher said, very softly, "what would you do if I refused to be a prince?"
The question was simple and full of danger.
"I would tie a red ribbon to the plum tree in the courtyard," I said. "And I would hum a tune until my voice was hoarse."
He looked at me as if I had replied with a poem.
"Do not let the world teach you to be small," he said then. "If you are to be married to the Seventh, keep your heart because it belongs to the woman who owns it. Don't give it out by accident."
It was his kind of warning—gentle as frost and hard to warm. I wanted him to say more, but perhaps he was not ready to shape his words into promise.
*
War shuffled like a deck of cards. News came; families packed; Father, my brave but stubborn Buck Munoz, was taken. The casting of worry across our home made the house feel smaller. Mother—Helen Albert—left steps behind her like a drum beating. I did not sleep. I tied red cords to the tree and wrote my wishes on each one.
"Don't be reckless," June said, threading a stitch as if the needle could stitch fate. "You are not alone, Grace."
"I'm fearless when I must be," I told her. "But perhaps foolhardy at other times."
"Foolishness and bravery are two sides of the same coin," she muttered.
"Then let me have both of them."
Later, when the men marched and drums sounded like thunder, heartfelt hands, Brad sent a trove of comforts—a cloak for my mother, blankets for the men at the frontier, and a letter written in a small, trembling hand that promised: "I will return to you."
I kept that letter folded in my bosom until its edges wore soft.
Christopher watched me walk to the gate when the army left. He did not come out to the road; he did not ride beside the caravans. He stood on the palace wall like someone watching a constellation go; he said nothing aloud.
At the camp as Brad prepared to leave, he folded me into his arms and pressed his forehead to mine.
"Keep this," he said, pressing the small glass hairpin into my palm. "If my hand is absent, let this remind you of me."
I promised him I would not lose it. Then the drums sounded, and they were gone.
*
After Brad was gone, the quiet felt heavier, as if his absence made a room colder than it had ever been. Christopher moved like a ghost through the palace, attending to duties and then vanishing. He came to my garden once and left a plain white handkerchief on the bench, a small and startling piece of kindness.
"Why are you kind?" I asked him. "You are a prince of winter."
"I am many things," he said. "I am a prince who cannot make himself leave the thought of someone he saw once when she used a handkerchief to bind my bones. I am a man who remembers being helped."
He looked tired; the world was heavy on him. His hands seemed to know how to make a wound invisible with silk and thought.
One evening, when the moon was a blade and the palace made its own small province of soft light, a messenger arrived with terrible news: a high official had betrayed the border troops to the enemy, causing men we loved to be caught and taken. The emperor's face was a map of slow grief. People moved like mice in the corridors.
There were accusations and whispers and a sense that a monster had been uncovered among the government's own. Rumors flew like birds: someone in the court had given the enemy knowledge. Fingers pointed. Years of loyalty could be overturned by a single treasonous paper.
I listened and trembled because the world filled with sound is easier to bear than the world where the sound means collapse.
"Who did this?" I asked June one night, cowering in a small corner with my hands wrapped around a bowl of tea.
June stared at me like I had asked to hold the moon. "No one yet knows. But people are talking about someone in the palace with ambition like a hunger."
The thought made the hair on my arms stand up.
Christopher came to stand by the window that night. He looked older than his years. "If a traitor is among us," he said quietly, "they will be unmasked."
"How?" I asked.
"By their own hand," he said. "The worst lies often unmake the liar."
There was conviction in him, bitter and sharp.
*
At court a month later, the traitor's name was announced. He had been clever, a courtier with a silver tongue and a greedy hand. He had tried to sell secrets and had thought himself invisible. He had thought himself a needle.
They brought him into the central hall with the sunlight like a strict judge watching all. The crowd gathered; the princes stood in order on the dais. The courtier—an official who had boasted loudly in private and feigned loyalty in public—was flanked by guards.
"Your crimes?" the emperor asked.
The man’s face was a pale mask. He tried to stand tall but he was a reed.
"Conspiracy," they read. "Trading intelligence with the enemy. Betrayal of the realm."
"Why?" the emperor asked. "Why did you sell the blood of our people?"
"Need," the man stammered. "Fear. I feared being left out. I feared losing favor."
The hall hummed like a hive. I felt the air go brittle.
Christopher stepped forward. He had been the first to find proof—paper ledgers, letters, the signature of betrayal caught in the curve of a seal. He spoke clearly, with the cold clarity of someone who had watched light fracture.
"You hid behind medals," Christopher said. "You thought your teeth were sharp enough to cut fate. You were not. You built a scaffold of lies that collapsed."
The man tried to deny it at first—the familiar whine of a guilty animal—but when evidence was produced in front of all, his bravado weathered like paper in a rain. His voice cracked into denial, then slide into panic.
"You're lying," he said. "It was not me. I was forced! It was others!"
People in the hall stirred—voices like small storms. Some laughed with the cruel pleasure of the unoffended. Some put hands to mouths. Court ladies hid expressions, princes’ faces were carved. The man’s denial became a small, pathetic thing. He begged, wheedled, tried to trade one confession for another. He called the noble present to swear for him, but the proof was terrible and plain.
"The people at the border suffered because of you," someone cried. "Men died!"
"I was desperate—" he cried, "I was given coin—"
Christopher’s voice cut in like a blade. "You were given coin because you had sold your honor. You sold your honor because you chose to."
The man’s eyes flew to the crowd, then slid down, realizing the scandal had become a public spectacle. People leaned forward. The man’s demeanor fractured: bluster to denial to boasting to collapse. His final pleas were small and absurd—he offered to lay down gold, to be forgiven, to bind himself in service. But none of the offers offered a way past what he had broken. The emperor, old and weary, let the law do the rest.
That day the traitor was dragged from the hall. The public watched him crumble. The ambassador from the neighboring state who had been tipped off sat politely stiff. Women whispered into embroidered sleeves. I felt sick as if I had tasted too much salt. The man’s face changed shape: smug into terrified into pleading; the court’s laughter turned like a wheel.
When it finished, Christopher saddled his horse not as a prince of shadow but as one who had held the line. He rode away with the slow weight of a man who had done what he must.
I stayed that evening and tied another ribbon to the tree—this one for safety. The hairpin at my throat felt cool.
"That was justice," Giselle said softly when she came out and touched my shoulder. "But no joy in its taste."
"No," I said.
Christopher walked up the path as the light slid. He did not glance at the ribbon until we were close enough to feel the threads of each other's breath.
"You were brave," he said.
"Not brave," I corrected. "I only tied ribbons."
"You hide courage in small things," he said. "It is the best kind."
His voice broke like something relieved.
That night, when all the noise had drained away, Christopher surprised me by brining a small knot of cloth to my bedside: the handkerchief from the first time he'd met me, washed and pressed. "For you," he said, "so you will remember that even cold hands can be warm sometimes."
I slept like a child with a secret that night. I dreamt of ribbon trees and plum hairpins and of two men who had both promised in different ways to guard whatever they could.
*
The months that followed were a net of small intimacies. Brad sent letters from the camp that smelled faintly of cedar smoke and incense. Christopher sent quiet visits that felt like winter letters: short, honest, and terribly attentive.
My life grew full of these half-spoken things—sachets of sweet sandal tucked into sleeves, jokes that taste of salt and lavender, a stolen kiss on a cheek that might have been a mistake, and a promise given by a man who went to war.
At the end, when Brad returned victorious and the war quieted like a body at rest, the city sighed and folded itself into brighter days. He came back and the air seemed to taste of honeysuckle. The Seventh Prince put his hands in mine and asked if I would take the vows properly now.
I looked at his face, tired and bright, and then at Christopher, who had not left my side the way people leave gardens to bloom in summers—he had been there through seasons and storms. Christopher's face was even then a study in restraint and loss.
There was no clear path that excluded anyone from. Love, I learned, is not a ledger with neat columns but a field where paths crisscross and flowers grow in odd places.
"Marry me," Brad said, sincere and unfaltering.
"And you?" I asked Christopher in a voice that had only half of the courage the world expected.
Christopher looked at me like a man who is willing to speak and then holds his breath.
"If you marry him," he said slowly, "then keep your heart safe. Teach him the things I taught you in bits."
"Do you mean," I asked, not certain what I wanted or feared the most, "do you mean you wish me well?"
"I mean," he said, eyes steady and bright, "that the world owes you tenderness. Don't let it make you small."
We stood between two histories of ourselves—one light and generous, one cool and steady.
I chose, in the end, what I had always chosen: a life that held room for both a warm hand and a watchful eye.
"Yes," I told Brad Parker. "I will marry you."
Christopher bowed slightly, like a man who had placed his card on the table and found it smaller than the thing he had expected.
"You will not regret it," Brad said and kissed my hand.
Christopher stayed at the edge of the crowd and, when the celebration dimmed and the candles guttered low, he came to me in the quiet and said two things at once:
"Go make that garden you promised."
"And, Grace," he added, with his old, terrible softness, "if you ever need someone who is more blade than blossom, I will be there."
I looked from the glass plum hairpin to his lined face and then at Brad. The choice was not a condemnation; it was a choosing of the life I wished to live: something filled with warmth and work and surprises, and a faithful memory of the man who waited—Christopher—like a lighthouse.
The ceremony that sealed our vows was full of laughter and old incense. The glass plum hairpin stayed in my hair. Later, when a courtier asked whether I had been well advised, I smiled and offered tea.
"That night you hid sorrows under silk," Christopher had told me once, "but you learned to make incense and to make a world where people bring each other back." He had been my shelter in more ways than one.
As guests left and the palace sank into its embroidered quiet, I tied one last red ribbon to the plum tree in my private garden. It fluttered in the evening breeze like a small flag of survival. The glass hairpin caught the last light and looked, for a moment, almost like a fire.
"Keep it," Christopher said then, voice close. "Not to forget. To remember that you chose with eyes open."
I slept that night with my hand on the cool glass and dreamed of plum blossoms and two princes: one who kept me warm, one who kept me steady. Both had saved me in different ways, and both had taught me what bravery could be.
When I left the palace for the last time as a maiden, I slipped the hairpin into my hair and tied a red ribbon to my wrist. The plum hairpin now had scratches—evidence of a life that had been lived, not merely preserved. It glittered in the sun like a little promise.
I turned and looked back at the place where Christopher had once stood so often, the place where he had looked upon me with all the things he did not say. The shadow of that silent promise stayed with me, and I knew that sometimes the fiercest protection is a presence that simply refuses to go away.
"Goodbye," I whispered to the plum tree and to the glass blossom that had seen me through.
He did not reply. He stood at the palace wall, perfectly still as a statue, and perhaps that was his way of answering.
It was a strange kind of ending—unique because of the plum hairpin, the red ribbon, the scent of sandalwood curling in the air—but it was mine.
The End
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