Candy was still processing her encounter with the Ministry of Domestic Reclassification and Integration (MDRI). She could be Cameron again, through redactable letters, for another nine months. That was it. Then he’d be declared missing in action. It technically left the door open for him to return, but in practice, it was a quiet erasure... a slow, bureaucratic death, portrayed tragically, but quietly. So, a good news, bad news situation.
It hit harder than she expected. The quiet erasure of Cameron wasn’t theoretical anymore. It had a date, a countdown. And then, without warning, Marcus handed her a scroll over toast.
Candy didn’t expect much. Most mornings in Paddlewick began with a little breakfast, a lot of rigid conversation, and the quiet dread of being legally corrected for some mysterious violation of The Ten Wifely Duties. So, when he passed her the official-looking parchment with a casual, “This came for you,” she didn’t even look up.
But then she did. And her eyebrows slowly crept skyward.
NOTICE OF MANDATORY TRAINING
To: Candy Elwood, Wife of Marcus Elwood
As per the Paddlewick Wifely Safety Act, established by royal charter, women must receive instruction in self-defense beginning at age fifteen, with an intensive twelve-week course scheduled after marriage, then followed by monthly training until age fifty-five. This requirement exists to ensure each woman's ability to preserve her safety, dignity, and bodily autonomy under all sanctioned circumstances.
Your assigned introductory sessions will take place every Wivesday morning at the Paddlewick Women’s Defense Hall. Attendance is mandatory.
Failure to participate may result in disciplinary action.
Signed,
Lady Bertha Sternwell
Head Instructor, Paddlewick Women’s Defense Academy
Candy balked. “Wait… this is real?”
Marcus sipped his tea, the picture of innocence. “Yep.”
“So let me get this straight.” She glanced between the scroll and him. “They force women into marriages, treat them like decorative handbags with opinions, and also want them to know how to throw a punch?”
He shrugged. “Paddlewick is weird.”
Candy reread the letter. A class. One where no men would be barking orders. One where she could, perhaps, punch something and not get a week of corner time and post-spank affirmations for it.
A wild, unfamiliar feeling stirred in her chest.
Excitement.
“…Okay,” she muttered. “This actually sounds… decent.”
Marcus smirked over the rim of his cup. “Glad to hear it. I’ve arranged a carriage to take you.”
Candy narrowed her eyes. “Really? You’re not dropping me off yourself?”
He shrugged. “You think I want to be anywhere near a room full of women legally encouraged to hit things?”
“…Fair.”
The Paddlewick Women’s Defense Hall
There was one more surprise before training began: the clothes.
Paddlewick’s laws typically required skirts or dresses for all women, but the Defense Hall had its own allowances, tucked deep in legal footnotes. Each wife wore loose, cropped workout pants beneath a pleated, lightweight training skirt... functional, modest, and blessedly breathable.
Candy ran her hands down the fabric of her leggings like they were spun gold. Pants. Real pants. For the first time in what felt like forever.
She nearly wept.
Candy had expected something stiff. Maybe a parlor with lace curtains and dainty padded sticks. Something designed more for feminine giggling than actual bruises. What she got was a stone-walled gym echoing with the sound of fists hitting wood.
There were sparring mats. Training dummies. Weapon racks. And a thick, sharp scent in the air...like sweat and sawdust and fresh determination.
But the real surprise was Lady Bertha Sternwell. She looked like she’d fought a dragon and made it apologize. Towering, broad-shouldered, with a jaw like a chiseled anvil and arms built for tossing logs, Bertha paced the front of the room like a general inspecting her troops.
“All right, ladies!” she roared. “You’re here to learn how to keep some bastard from dragging you into an alley. This is not etiquette hour. If you faint, I’ll let your partner slap you awake.”
Candy loved her immediately.
“If a man puts his hands on you,” Bertha growled, slamming her fist into her palm with a bone-jarring crack, “your job is to make him regret it.”
There was a rustle of nervous giggles. Some women looked like they might bolt. Others whispered behind nervous glances. Candy? Candy leaned forward. Finally.
She’d been here before, sort of. But everything about this was new. The room, the body, the audience, the stakes. What used to come by instinct now demanded adaptation.
Candy wasn’t starting from zero. Not exactly. As Cameron, she’d had years of experience in the National Guard. All men in the Cone served, from nineteen to fifty-five. She’d been trained in combat drills, squad maneuvers, grapples, and takedowns. But that had been in a different body. A different life.
Now, her arms were shorter. Her legs, too. Her center of gravity felt unfamiliar. She weighed a wiry one-thirty soaking wet. And the brute-force tactics she'd once relied on no longer applied.
She needed to learn the tricks, the angles and pivots, the balance shifts, how to use an attacker’s momentum or weight against him. How to break a hold when your wrists were slim and your hands were small.
Candy had trained before.
But this time, she had to train smart.
“Lesson one!” Bertha barked. “If someone grabs you, make them let go.”
She demonstrated with a poor, unfortunate assistant. A wrist grab. A twist. A sudden, brutal jerk of the elbow...and the woman was free.
“Don’t pull back. Step into him. Take the space. Then break his hold and move.”
Candy paired off with a pale-faced brunette named Marla. First try, she fumbled. Second try, she got free. Third try, Marla winced.
“Good,” Bertha grunted, walking by. “Do it again. Quicker.”
The next hour was a blur of movement. Wrist locks. Palm strikes. How to drive a knee into soft places. How to make just enough pain to make space...and run.
“You are not here to win a duel,” Bertha reminded them. “You’re here to survive a bad moment. And gods help the man who gives you that moment.”
Candy took to it like a duck to blood. She wasn’t strong. But she was fast. She wasn’t big. But she’d always been sharp. And gods, it felt good to hit something. She wasn’t helpless. She wasn’t ornamental. Not here. Not in this room.
By the end, she was breathless, slick with sweat, her arms trembling...but her grin wouldn’t leave her face.
Bertha clapped a calloused hand on her shoulder hard enough to stagger her.
“You’ve got fire, girl.”
Candy smiled back. “You have no idea.”
Most of the women had cleared out, murmuring goodbyes and dabbing sweat from their faces as they slipped out the door in pairs and trios. The hall was quieter now. Only the creak of floorboards and the occasional grunt from someone practicing in the corner.
Candy stayed behind, pretending to adjust the wraps around her knuckles.
Lady Bertha was coiling a rope back onto a rack, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, sweat drying into salt-stains across her collar.
"Can I ask you something?" Candy said.
Bertha gave her a sideways glance. "You’ve already shown you can throw a punch. Might as well throw a question."
Candy chuckled at that and leaned against the wall. “Why do they teach us this?”
Bertha paused.
“I mean,” Candy continued, “we’re supposed to be submissive. Sweet. Perfect. Obedient. We’re told a husband’s authority is sacred. And yet here we are...learning how to break joints and dislocate shoulders. Doesn’t that seem… contradictory?”
Bertha finished with the rope, hanging it with care, before turning.
“Course it does,” she said. “It’s one of the strangest parts of Paddlewick. Plenty of men hate that it exists. They’d repeal it in a heartbeat if they could. But they can’t. It’s part of the royal charter.”
Candy arched a brow. “And no one questions it?”
“Oh, plenty do. But not out loud. Not officially. The law’s old. Ancient, actually. It was written into the original Paddlewick Charter by the Founders and signed by the first king himself. Women must learn to protect themselves. Every generation. No exceptions.”
Candy blinked. “Wait...the original charter?”
Bertha nodded. “Right between ‘All wives shall be under male supervision’ and ‘Aprons are mandatory during housework.’ There it sits, bold as brass: Each wife shall receive instruction in personal defense to protect her body and her honor.”
“…That’s insane.”
“Welcome to Paddlewick.”
Candy crossed her arms. “Okay, so what’s the real reason? You’ve been around. You’ve seen the system.”
Bertha hesitated. For once, her booming voice softened.
“There’s the official version,” she said slowly. “That it’s for the tourists. The traders. Foreign men coming through with no regard for our customs. Or for wives who travel to places outside the city... where their marriage papers don’t protect them.”
“And the unofficial?”
Bertha’s gaze narrowed. “That giving men this much power over women...warps them. And not all men in Paddlewick are gentlemen. Not all men follow the rules. I mean, most do. It's drilled into them just as much as curtsying is drilled into us. But sometimes, a man starts feeling entitled. And he crosses a line. So every woman’s gotta be able to remind him. Fast.”
Candy stared. “You really believe that?”
“I believe a lot of husbands are decent,” Bertha said. “But I also believe some boys grow into men thinking the world owes them obedience. And a sharp elbow to the ribs does wonders for their education.”
Candy let out a breath, not quite a laugh.
“That’s… fair.”
Bertha looked away, her brow furrowed.
“But truth is,” she added, “no one knows why the law was really written. Not anymore. It’s older than the spanking benches. Older than the domestic vows. Maybe even older than Paddlewick’s godsforsaken dress code. Whatever the founders saw, whatever they feared...they locked it into law so deep no one could undo it. Not even the King. It's set legally and magically. Ancient blood magic.”
Candy’s skin prickled. The thought sat with her like a pebble in a shoe... small, strange, irritating.
Whatever the reason… it had been important enough to be permanent. And no one here knew why.
She left the hall in thoughtful silence, the last wife to exit. Outside, the day felt different, crisper somehow, like something internal had shifted and the world had noticed.
Marcus was waiting just beyond the gates, arms folded, eyebrows cocked.
“So?” he asked. “How was it?”
Candy rolled her shoulders, stretching her arms like a cat in sunlight. “I learned how to snap a man’s wrist.”
Marcus hesitated. “…Should I be worried?”
She grinned. “Maybe.”
As they walked back toward home, the sky above Paddlewick had never looked so bright. The air had never felt so good.
For the first time since the transformation, since the wedding, since the humiliations and lectures and spankings and rules...well, not quite the first time. The bathhouse had been a reprieve too, in its own quiet way. And the literary society, to a lesser extent, was a place where she could speak and be heard without being corrected mid-sentence.
But this was different. This wasn't borrowed peace. It was earned. She had something that was hers. Something no one had given her. Something no one could take away.
And for once… just this once… she was looking forward to next Wivesday.