Sweet Romance15 min read
They Thought I Chased the Prince — Wait Till They See the Duck Deal
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I. Rumor and a Ruler's Scale
"Have you heard?" one boy at the front table said, bouncing a book on his knees. "They say the prince could command an army with a glance."
"Really?" I leaned forward. "Which prince? Which book? Who measured it with a ruler?"
"He can speak three languages," another piped up. "And stand and—"
"—and pee three meters?" I cut in, grinning.
There was a ruler on my head before the laugh left my mouth and a thin voice behind me—my tutor's—said, "Kiana Meyer, explain how you interpret this passage."
"I—" My eyes moved like a guilty fish.
"Page four, line six," a classmate whispered.
I read aloud, trying to sound wise. "My wife's beauty is mine alone." I blinked. "I mean—'My wife's beauty is admired by me'—"
"Say something serious," the tutor said.
I brightened. "If someone prettier than my wife appears—private message me."
Silence. Then I was shown the door.
Luke Mendez was shown the same door at the same time. We sat on the academy steps, angle our heads forty-five degrees so tears wouldn't fall.
"At this precise moment, Kiana, what do you feel?" Luke asked solemnly.
"I am worried," I said, very dramatic. "Do you think the prince can actually pee three meters?"
He snorted. "How would anyone know?"
"Exactly. That is why this rumor matters."
That was my life: blunt, loud, and careless. I was fourteen and the general's legitimate daughter. My name had been misspelled on a form at my birth—thank the clerk—so people called me Kiana Meyer and I answered to it. I was called a wild child at home because my mother had died when I was small and no one taught me courtly niceties. My father was Baptiste Koehler, a man who smelled of gunpowder and honor. He shipped me to the academy because he feared for my safety among boys when I was a girl. I became the classroom's small tyrant.
Luke was my ally. When school ended we hunted trouble. "Want something exciting?" he asked one afternoon, eyes gleaming.
"I live for it," I said.
We found a box of firecrackers and thought of games. "Minefield," I said. "We bury them in the yard. Step wrong and kaboom."
"Brave and stupid," Luke praised.
We made a crude mine of firecrackers. We hid it. Then commands arrived: "Search every corner! No hiding places!"
We froze.
"Run!" I said. We climbed the wall and heard a thunderous boom. My heart planned funerals. I imagined my funeral dress—embroidered swans maybe—and found I liked the swan idea.
At home I ate three drumsticks, two pancakes, a small fish. My appetite alarmed my father. He seized me at once.
"Tell me why you are quiet!" he asked. His beard shook like a curtain.
So I told him: the boom was our doing. He glared and then, against every expectation, laughed. "Why didn't the academy build more yards for my brave child?"
We had been lucky. The boom exposed three spies from the neighboring Zhao kingdom. Instead of punishment I received a golden decree for "catching spies." They even beat drums and paraded me for a reward. I could not believe it. My father clapped people who came to congratulate us. "Same happiness!" he boomed each time the official said "Congratulations!"
The reward? The Minister Mustafa Black bowed and gave my father a letter. "To the general's daughter, who revealed enemy agents," he announced. "By imperial order, one request granted."
I considered the choices like a queen choosing a horse. Gold? Land? A handsome young man?
My father leaned in with a conspiratorial frown and whispered, "Ask for a marriage alliance."
"No," I said, sharp as a whip. "I will not be married."
"You must obey," he said.
So I improvised. "Father, I cannot marry. I already have a heart. I will only marry for love."
He blinked. "Who is the man?"
"The prince," I said, fearless and small.
Silence. It was as if I had struck a gong on purpose. The rumor began to breathe.
People were dumb. The rumor turned a corner and people ran with it so fast the whole capital thought I was chasing the prince. The story grew teeth: I had followed the prince into enemy camps, I had captured spies singlehandedly for him, etc. Luke and I tried to keep our distance from the growing tale, but politicians love fairy-tales.
II. Kidnapped, Boxed, and a Black-Eyed Man
Then Luke was taken. The kidnappers tossed us into a wooden crate and drove. I touched a hand and it felt like cold marble. The man beside me—black-eyed and too calm—kept me from panicking by keeping a fire-lighter.
"Let go," he said at one point, dry-eyed when I had my hand on his face.
"I apologize," I said, feeling like an idiot. "I am Kiana."
He looked away. He was tall, pale, and had a breath that smelled faintly of sandalwood. There was something about him—order and disapproval mixed.
We were placed with other boys. At night I passed by one sleeping twenty-year-old with a rash or drool. I touched his sleeve. He woke like someone who did not expect warmth and grabbed me, face heavy with sleep, expression fierce.
"Do you mind?" he hissed.
I stifled a laugh. "Sorry. I had to."
His nose wrinkled as if offended by the world. He had no name but a habit of sniffing like that and so I dubbed him "Snot." He pretended to be above it.
The next morning, light broke through the crate and men outside argued over poultry. Guards cooked roasted fowl, and I said into the plank, "We are all poor souls. My mother died. But once, I found a jade and a secret space inside. I will tell the whole tale if you feed me."
They laughed. I spun a yarn—space, prophecy, riches—and stirred their interest. They were thieves, but thieves enjoy fine stories. Their guard withdrew and a fight broke out in the courtyard: bandits versus masked assassins. The brawl freed us. I took a chicken leg in my sleeve and gave Luke half. He wept at the taste.
We fled into mountains and found a little wooden house. Inside was a secret door that opened to a trove of gold. "We are rich!" Luke squealed, stuffing his pockets.
"I am smarter," I said. "We hide it until we can move it."
We argued over pigeons to send messages. We argued over food. Our little party of three—me, Luke, and a fat frightened boy who claimed his name was Yahir Tanaka—moved like bad weather. The masked men returned. Luke shoved me at the attackers: "Go! Save yourself!"
"I love you, Luke," I yelled as I rolled down the slope.
Then I saw soldiers—led by the black-eyed man—storm like a tide. He lifted me gently, not like a stranger rescues a stranger, but like someone lifting an heirloom.
"You're alive," he said.
"You're noisy," I said. "But thank you."
He carried me home and my father wailed in a useless way. "My child!" he sobbed.
Luke? Gone. A letter said he was taken north, by Zhao captors. The whole city buzzed like bees in a jar. I felt tiny in the center of a storm. The court bestowed rewards again. The Minister Mustafa Black declared me a national helper—this time not for causing trouble but for ending human trafficking rings. The Emperor said I could ask for anything.
I considered again: gold? Land? The prince? My father rubbed his hands together and eyed the Minister. The Minister eyed the Emperor. The political machinery spun.
I could have used the Emperor's favor to rescue Luke. But my father, methodical in his stupidity, asked that I be married instead. "It is for the kingdom," he said. "A marriage pact with our neighbor ensures peace."
I groaned. "No."
But the court liked solutions that smelled like chain-mail. I had a plan: tell them I loved the prince. It made the court laugh and then tremble because I had insulted no one and yet asked the impossible. To their faces, they liked impossible things.
III. To the Forbidden Country in Disguise
I stole money and rode to Zhao country. In the big city I saw a wanted poster: "Very valuable youth; reward five hundred silver." I nearly fainted. The face on the poster looked like mine in a bad wig. They wanted me? I skulked into a house of women and stole a dress. I put it on and thought myself a ghost.
"Come," a woman urged. "An official has arrived."
They pushed me into a great hall where a young man played a pipa. He was exquisite—hair dark, a peculiar calm, and a face that had memorized moonlight. He stared at me.
"Hello," I blurted. "You! The sandalwood man!"
He froze. He was the black-eyed rescuer. He pushed me away with heat. His cheeks reddened.
"You are—" he said. "Wrong place."
"Help me into the palace," I said. "I must find the prince."
He shrugged. "No."
The explanation would be long—but the truth is, he refused because the danger was real. Later that night I crawled into the wooden chest of his retinue. I crawled out in the palace and stood among dancing women with my borrowed sleeve sweeping the floor.
One step and I locked eyes with him—Emil Nicolas—the palace's quiet shadow.
"Who are you?" he asked, voice like a cool coin.
"You are my old savior!" I cried, and grabbed his hand to prove it.
He pulled away and his face went measured. "You are a woman."
"So are you a prince," I said.
His name was revealed later—people called him many things: a guest, a noble, a steward. He called himself dryly "Emil" in private and then, when the truth spilled like a cup, "Emil Nicolas, prince."
IV. A Night of Dancers, a Slap of Fate
They ordered dancers to perform. I tried to move like them. I failed. They thought I was funny. The Empress pointed at me: "Keep her."
"Stop," Emil said. "She will lower palace standards."
"She is perfect for our selection," the Empress said.
Emil, who had been watching me like someone holding a brittle leaf, then surprised everyone: "Give her to me."
"What?" I thought. "Why would the prince want me?"
He later explained, to anyone who asked, that strange people made a palace safer because no spy would come disguised as someone plainly weird. He protected me by queer logic and by fierce attention. At that moment his expression softened in an odd way. He called me by a name only to himself—"my Kiana"—without saying it out loud. That was a breath-stopping moment.
"You're giving a low-skilled dancer to me?" Emil said later in the small dark.
"Yes," I said, proudly.
"Because?"
"Because you are the prince," I said.
He shook his head, laugh small. "You speak as if I asked."
V. The Trap, the Bedchamber, and the Beam
I was dragged into a royal bedchamber with sorrows of late-night consequences. The Emperor came drunk; he approached with clumsy hunger. I was tied and unable to protest. Emil perched on a beam like a cat. He had a silver hairpin tucked in his sleeve.
"The women were assassins," the Empress cried, and the palace erupted.
Emil's hand found a hidden pin and he did a thing that froze everyone: he rescued the scene with such quiet force that the Emperor was stunned into sobriety by the possibility of being stabbed. Guards seized the conspirators. I was released. The Emperor bowed to his savior—even called me "guest's kin"—and asked my wishes.
"You stopped an assassination," the Empress said with tears. "You are honored."
"You're the one who missed your steps and fooled us," Emil said softly to me, but his hand did not leave mine.
"Why did you help?" I asked him later.
"I know the shape of danger," he said. "And you made people fight for you like a flag."
VI. The Truth About That Fat Boy
It turned out—the fat boy who had roasted my pigeon and been stupidly roughed up and sold—was Zhao's own little prince, thought lost by his court. He had traveled, been tricked, and then was rescued by my foolish tomboy friend. He sent a letter. The Zhao Emperor smiled and then, in a series of very strange diplomatic minutes, signed a treaty: trade, cities returned, and yearly tribute of three thousand—no—thirty thousand—eight-treasure ducks. I laughed so hard that Emil looked at me like I had a new light in my eyes.
VII. Three Heartbeats and a Recipe for Tenderness
"If I must list the moments I paused just now," I would say these were mine:
"He smiled in the study." One time I was juggling excuses about a book and Emil closed the book and smiled like the world had shifted. "I saw a smile out of him I had never seen."
"He draped his cloak." Once snow surprised us returning to the carriage. "Here," Emil said, slipping his cloak over me though his shoulders shivered. "You are warmer." He refused to say it was for me, but his hand stayed.
"He tested my courage with a question." In a quiet garden, he asked, "Can you really shoot straight?" and then let me try his bow. When my arrow quivered a hair, his eyes brightened and he walked closer than decorum allows.
VIII. The Public Reckoning: Knox Durham's Fall
When the rings of kidnappers were finally traced, they led to a man who had always smiled too smoothly in taverns and too often in court—a man named Knox Durham. He had bribed clerks, used daughters of officials as payment, and sold children across borders. People had whispered his name; now they wanted a spectacle.
"Bring Knox forward," the judge commanded on a spring morning when the whole capital had shuddered awake to watch. The great hall was packed. Merchants, concubines, soldiers, my father's captains, and even some of the men who had once sold a child stood to gape. "Bring the accused."
They dragged him in with his hands bound. He was still neat—his waistcoat uncreased—and the smugness that had been his armor showed cracks like thin ice.
"Knox Durham," the Chief Judge intoned. "You are charged with trafficking, bribery, murder by negligence, and forging imperial papers."
Knox raised his chin. "I served the city," he said, voice oily. "I conducted trade—"
"Silence!" Mustafa Black bellowed from the bench. His face was a tight drum. "You sold children you did not own."
The crowd leaned in.
"Knox," I said aloud, to myself and to the whole hall, because I could not keep my tongue. "You sold names and lives. You sold a pigeon and a boy and a thousand dead mornings."
He blinked. His smile faltered. "You are a child who meddles," he said, trying the old shrug that once soothed a captain.
"You sold Luke Mendez," I shouted. "You sent him across the border. You put children in boxes because they were cheap. You set fire to an academy and called it intelligence work. How many mothers' nights did you steal?"
A murmur ran like rain. Heads turned. Knox's expression moved across a stage of realization.
"Lie," he said. "I had partners. I was given orders. Blame the messenger."
"Who paid you?" the Minister Mustafa demanded. "Speak."
His teeth clicked. The hall could hear the shifting of a man trying on excuses like new gloves.
Knox began with posture—pride was his final comfort. He went through the steps: "I did what I was paid for. I served traders and nobles. I was efficient. If people suffered, it was unfortunate."
"Affirmation!" someone in the crowd hissed. "He calls it efficiency!"
He tried to bring up diplomatic protection. "There are names—important names. I only followed."
"Do you deny forging the emperor's seal?" the judge asked.
Knox looked like a man watching a stage collapse. "I do not."
At this, the crowd roared. Someone spat. A woman cried out, "Children!" Her voice broke. Her palms pounded the bench as if to crack the block of a man like Knox in half.
Knox's smugness curdled into thin horror. His eyes went small. "I—" he began to say something, then staggered.
"Look at him," I told people around me. "He has always been calm. Now see him crumble."
Knox's face changed. First there was astonishment—the realization that a man who traded children could lose everything. He turned defensive, shouting, "I'm innocent!" He swung between denial and the panic of someone caught in his web.
"How can I be expected to answer when there are so many names?" He began to list nobles, merchants—an attempt at survival by poisoning the whole well. He named men I had once seen at balls, men who nodded and drank that morning.
The crowd gasped. People who had often prayed with those names on their tongues stood mortified. Wives clutched necks. A merchant who had smiled at Knox denied him, stepping back like a stagehand who had never touched the props.
Knox's eyes landed on me. "You—" he accused. "You are a child playing spy!"
"I played games," I said. "You played with lives."
At once Knox tried pity: "I have a family." He spoke in a softer rhythm: pity, bargaining. "I was paid. I needed money."
A woman in the crowd—whose son had been taken by Knox—sprinted forward. "You sold my child," she screamed, and pushed her palms against Knox's chest. "You looked at his face and still counted silver!"
Someone filmed with a small box and the crowd cheered like a hunt. Knox stepped back, trying to ignore the eyes that had once invited bribes. He looked smaller. He denied, he begged, he recalled favors—then the past favors were thrown back into his face like rotten bread.
"You are finished," Mustafa said. "Public humiliation, confiscation of property, and imprisonment. You will be listed in the market squares to warn all."
The judge pronounced a confiscation of assets. Guards began to lead Knox away. "Knox!" the woman called, as if to pull his conscience out. "How do you sleep?"
"I—" he stammered. He had no answer. The crowd chanted as they escorted him: "Shame! Shame!"
Knox sank once, then regained posture. The sequence of his reactions was visible: pride, disbelief, denial, bargaining, panic, begging, then shock. Tears came, not the noble kind but the quickwater of a man who finally understood the depth of his loss.
"I was efficient," he whispered. "I had customers."
"You are efficient at evil," Mustafa answered. "You will be judged."
Around the hall, people took phones and wrote down names he had said. Some gasped as they recognized trusted merchants implicated in payments. Men turned their faces pale.
Knox, who had thought himself untouchable, was paraded like removed upholstery. He was forced to stand on a stage where the city spat its anger. Children who had been freed pointed him out. Mothers circled him like hawks. The judge ordered that the place Knox had once used as an office be razed and that his name be shouted from the market stalls.
When he was finally taken away, he did not scream. He was silent, hollowed. His last look was not of hatred but of recognition: the system that had fed him would now feed his ruin.
"Let this serve," I said quietly, and a woman near me sobbed and hugged me as if I had returned her lost coin. Outside the hall, people trailed Knox's cart and spat. He would taste humiliation for seasons to come.
That public punishment was not the swift end but a living reckoning. Knox's former partners turned away. Apprentices refused to be seen with his name. Men who had once smiled at his bribe now pretended never to know him. At night, when moonlight came, someone would stamp his name on a wall. His change was humiliation, not mercy, and people watched as he shrank.
IX. The Palace Unmasking of Annika Cash
The other villain—Annika Cash—was the leader of the female troupe sent to assassinate the Emperor. She had been planted in the palace, smiling thinly like a blade. Her punishment was different.
"Annika," Emil said in the great hall, voice as cold as a winter river. "You tried to stab a throne for coin."
Annika's face had many masks. Now each one slipped. "You will be taken to a public prison," the Empress said, not unkindly. "But first, you will stand in the garden and answer every child's question. You will unmask, name the orders, and tell the names of those who trained you."
She broke like dry glass. Where Knox was broken by shame, Annika broke by being forced to speak. Children came forward and asked simple things: "Why did you do it?" "Were you scared?" "Do you have a bed?" She told them, halting. For days they gathered while she named recruiters and training grounds. Each name she said brought arrests, each name she said brought tears. Her attempt to destroy a life—ours—unraveled publicly as children saw the human who had been ordered to kill.
Her reaction traveled: first haughty disdain, then calculated silence, then pleading, then a small, bitter sorrow. People who once admired her dress now threw rotten fruit in the public square. She was not executed in a flash; she was made to confront each life she had threatened. That was cruelty by daylight: forced confession, forced repair. She was set to be imprisoned, and her supporters fell silent.
X. After the Trials
The city breathed again. Knox was carted to a far jail; Annika was removed from public roles. The men who had bought children had to answer for their coins. The Governor declared a reform to track traffickers, and teams went north and east to rescue those taken. I did not feel righteous; I felt tired. Luke remained missing for a while, but good news came: he had been found disguised as a kitchen help in Zhao and was sent home with honors—slightly thinner, but alive.
Emil and I—he who had saved a bedchamber and kept a dagger between the Emperor and a broken cradle—grew closer with glances, small things like passing a cloak, watching someone sleep, and teasing insults.
"You lied before," I said once. "You said you had fallen into kidnappers."
"I chose to fall," he said. "To learn their work. To find their webs."
"You are always twenty steps ahead."
"No." He reached for my hand. "Maybe twenty-one."
We married because the Emperor and the court liked the story. My father arranged the formalities, and the capital sung odd songs about "the brave girl who married a prince." I was a bride with no great expectations and many jokes in my head. The wedding night was not like stories; it was better. We laughed, we argued, we kissed, and he—who once sat on beams—now sat near me and let his fingers be small anchors on my hands.
XI. The Treaty, the Ducks, and Gold in the Ground
Our marriage created odd diplomatic treaties. The Zhao Emperor signed deals about trade and sent ridiculous amounts of eight-treasure ducks as tribute. People laughed and ate. Later, when famine struck our country, the stores sent by Zhao, the treasure found in that little mountain room, and the money from confiscations saved many lives. I gave the treasure to Emil to fund famine relief. He refused to let me be the only spender. He walked with me through markets and we set up soup kitchens.
Years passed. Knox rotted. Annika repented in a small loud voice and then quieted. Luke wrote a book about spices and taste. My father remarried the Minister Mustafa Black's old colleague—another strange, honest man—and we were all odd family.
XII. The End? No, the Proof
"Do you remember the mine?" Luke said once at a tea shop as we listened to gossip. "The one that got us started."
"I do," I said. "It taught me two things: luck and how noisy trouble can be."
He raised his cup. "To loud trouble."
"To quieter nights," I said, looking at Emil across the room. He smiled and raised his cup. The empire kept spinning. The ducks arrived on carts. The markets gave us life.
At night, when a child asked me why I had saved so many, I could only answer with things truthfully small: "I could not stand the idea of kids being boxed. I could not stand that someone would trade a morning for silver."
Emil laid his head on my shoulder and whispered, "You are loud and you are soft."
"I prefer 'loud,' " I said.
He laughed. "Fine. Loud, who keeps me honest."
We had the strange life: a girl who loved trouble, a prince who loved maps of quick danger, a friend who once called himself my dog and now wrote books, an empire that learned to sign treaties with food, and villains who were public examples. The city would not forget Knox's cart, nor the Empress's tears. It would remember, oddly, our bad dancing and the eight-treasure duck treaty.
I tightened the ribbon on the tea box he gave me, smelled the faint perfume of sandalwood, and thought of the little black-eyed man who had once carried me like an heirloom. I looked at him now—Emil—and thought, "Yes, I married a prince. And no, I didn't chase him. I tripped into him, jumped enough holes, and he caught me."
The End
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