They Wrote Me Fat and Doomed, So the Judge Paid My Fine novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Jug
A size 22 woman wakes holding a wine jug over a girl's ruined gown at the Queen's garden party, apologizes for the wine and not for her appetite, and the cold Lord Justice seats her beside him.
I woke up with a silver jug in my hand and red wine running down my wrist.
The jug was tipped over a girl's lap.
She sat very still on a bench in a garden full of orange trees.
Her white silk gown was turning pink from the hem to the waist.
Forty people were looking at me.
I knew the girl's face.
I knew the garden, the long table with the lemon cakes, the Queen at the head of it in her pearls.
I had read this scene on a bus, going home from the billing office, with my thumb on the page.
Chapter One of The Flower Girl of the Orange Court.
The villainess pours wine on the heroine. The Prince calls her a sow. Everyone laughs.
I looked down at the hand holding the jug.
It was a plump brown hand with three rings on it and a dimple at every knuckle.
It was not my hand, and it was exactly my size.
[VILLAINESS DETECTED. Welcome, Ximena Ardaval.]
[Survival odds: 3 percent. Points available for nerve.]
"Ximena," a man said.
I turned my head.
Crown Prince Alonso stood beside the girl with a hand on her shoulder, tall and golden and pink with outrage.
"Look what you've done to her," he said. "Apologize."
"I'm sorry about the wine," I said.
I set the jug on the table.
I meant it. I had done it, or the woman who used to live here had, and the girl's gown was ruined.
"Inés, I'm sorry. I'll pay for the gown."
The girl, Inés, stared at me with her mouth a little open.
Alonso stared too.
Nobody had ever heard the old Ximena say sorry.
"Good," the Prince said, recovering. "And now you'll apologize for the rest of it."
"What rest of it?"
He looked me up and down, slowly, from my hair to my shoes, and the garden went quiet to watch him do it.
I am a size 22 and five foot seven.
I have a soft belly and wide hips and thighs that touch when I stand.
I had put on my best green silk that morning, or somebody had.
"For this," Alonso said, and flapped a hand at the whole of me.
"Look at the plate you've made. You took three lemon cakes before the Queen had even sat down."
"You embarrass your house, Ximena. You embarrass me."
Somebody tittered.
I looked at my plate.
There were three lemon cakes on it, and a pat of butter, and a fig.
I was starving.
I had been starving in a way I hadn't felt since before I started working nights.
"Those are for me," I said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The cakes. I took them because I want them."
I picked one up and ate half of it in front of forty people.
It was the best thing I had ever put in my mouth.
[+10. Refused to apologize for your body.]
[+10. Took what you wanted.]
I swallowed.
"I'm sorry about the wine," I said again, "and I'm not sorry about the cake."
The titter died.
Alonso went red from the collar up.
"Then I can't marry a woman like this," he said, loud enough for the back of the garden.
"Our betrothal is at an end. I break it here, before my mother and the court."
He waited.
I realized he was waiting for me to cry.
That was the next line in the book.
She cries, she begs, she throws herself at his boots, and that is how the reader learns to hate her.
"All right," I said, and reached for the second lemon cake.
A gasp went round the table.
At the Queen's right hand, a chair scraped.
A man stood up from it.
He was the tallest person in the garden and the only one in black.
His robe of office was buttoned to the throat, his dark hair was tied at the nape, and his face was a shut door.
Lord Justice Bastian Orrelo.
I knew him too.
In four days he would read my sentence in the Plaza of Justice.
He would have my hair cut off in front of the city.
The book said he enjoyed it.
He walked down the length of the table without hurrying.
Courtiers leaned away from him.
He stopped behind the empty chair next to the Queen's, the one nobody had taken, and pulled it out.
"Lady Ardaval," he said. "Sit here."
"Lord Justice," the Queen said, with her smile fixed. "That seat is for the guest of honor."
"It is for whoever I seat in it, Majesty."
He did not look at the Queen.
He was looking at me with grey eyes.
They took me in from my head to my feet, slowly, the way the Prince's had.
It was not the same look at all.
The Prince's had been a bill. This one was a hand laid flat on my back.
I picked up my plate and walked the length of the garden with every head turning.
Then I sat down in the chair he held.
His fingers brushed my shoulder as he pushed it in.
It was gone almost before it landed, and I felt it for the whole rest of the luncheon.
"Eat," he said, quietly, so only I could hear. "You were hungry before you came."
I stared at him.
He had already turned away.
[Next scripted event: The Assize, Day 5.]
[Survival odds: 3 percent.]
[Four days remaining.]
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend