Tying the Flower Needle (3)

No consort's patent had yet been conferred on Seoin.

That would likely come on the day the king ascended the throne as Emperor.

But the shackles that had bound Seoin's ankles were gone. Nothing was forcibly holding her in place anymore, and yet Seoin kept herself confined, refusing to leave her quarters. Part of it was that his instruction to show patience gnawed at her; part of it was that she had no desire to go out and hand her enemies a pretext for nothing.

Several days had passed since she returned from the Grand Hall.

Ever since the king had declared he would make her his Consort, the way the palace servants treated Seoin had changed. Fresh clothes to change into were brought to her every morning—she who had lived practically in rags. The soft garments did little to warm her body, but they were not inferior to the ones she had worn as a princess.

In the Danya Kingdom, a princess scorned could never dress better than her older sisters. If anything, the luxury she enjoyed now might surpass even what she had known as a princess.

Every meal was set with fine food. The room was warm, and the bedding changed daily was warm and soft.

And yet Seoin was not satisfied.

This was all the splendor afforded to the body of a woman who might carry the king's seed. No one spoke to her, and the room was always left with her alone in it. Seoin was utterly, completely alone.

As if to teach her exactly what situation she was in. Whose will this was, she couldn't say—but it didn't seem like the king's.

He is on my side.

Only a few days had passed since they had tied the flower needle on the bed. And so Seoin trusted him, and waited.

She hated to admit it, but in this isolated palace of a strange country, there was nothing else to lean on. It was a foolish thought, she knew. He had said he would wed her and make her his Consort, but she could be discarded before the patent ever arrived in her hands.

No one understood the fickleness of men better than Seoin. Her father, her brothers—every last one of them took women easily and tired of them just as fast. The hearts of men who held power were especially untrustworthy.

So she should not be leaning on the king—and yet here she was, anxiously waiting for him. Not only with her heart, but with her body, too.

The longer the hours alone stretched, the more desperately her body ached for him. Sitting blankly on the bed, Seoin clenched her fists tight and pressed her knees firmly together. Only this much let her bear the restlessness even a little—in place of that slick, clinging feeling of his fingers prying into her soft inner flesh.

She truly could not fathom what he had done to her body.

"Biting down so prettily."

Merely recalling his voice made that day's act rise vividly before her. No—she chased the memory, imagined it, followed the sensation, but that straining fullness she could not feel. Remembering the strange sensation of him pushing deep against her inner walls, Seoin curled her toes and trembled just as she had then. The place below that had gripped his fingers clenched hollowly around nothing.

"Haah…."

Her broken, heated breaths were full of frustration. The emptiness inside her, which squeezing her thighs could not fill, pressed in all the more darkly. The fist gripping the blanket crept, sly and slow, up along her thigh. Seoin shut her eyes tighter and bit her lip. The hand that wriggled its way between her legs could not bring itself to push any further in; it simply pressed down hard over her sex.

The skirt of her dress bunched into fierce wrinkles beneath her fist. And the center of those wrinkles grew damp.

"Haah, haah—"

She exhaled, and her stiff, rigid shoulders came down. She pulled her hand away, but the shamefully rumpled folds of her skirt remained as a telltale mark.

With nothing to do, cooped up in here, you've taken to whiling away the hours on filthy little things like this.

Spending the whole day alone like this, of course the idle thoughts would come.

Seoin found herself resenting him. He said he would make her his Consort, yet he hadn't come to see her once—what exactly was he scheming?

Is it the ministers?

Seoin recalled the words the ministers had pressed on him at court that day. After the king had laid out all matters of state and moved to close the assembly, the ministers had lingered with lukewarm expressions, refusing to leave their places. Then someone spoke.

"Your Majesty. What do you intend to do regarding Noble Consort Yu's elevation? The Prime Minister himself is present, and when Your Majesty left the court empty to wage war, it was the Prime Minister and the Consort who kept the realm in good order, within and without. The people already regard Noble Consort Yu as their queen—what could she possibly lack?"

The way the ministers invoked the Prime Minister and Noble Consort Yu in the same breath made it easy enough to guess that the two were father and daughter.

"Quite so. The war has ended and the four quarters have at last found peace—now is the time to enthrone a queen, establish the dignity of the royal house, and secure the stability of the realm."

One minister after another urged that the Consort be raised to queen, yet the Prime Minister never said a word—which only made it more certain.

"Noble Consort Yu has attended Your Majesty since his days as heir apparent, and her virtue is widely known. We humbly hold that she should now be enthroned as queen, and on the day Your Majesty takes the throne as Emperor, be elevated together as Empress."

Though the ministers vied with one another to elevate the Consort, the king deflected the answer.

"Ah—my apologies, I neglected to announce it. Raising the Consort to Noble Consort is only proper, and I had simply forgotten to say so. Even with the seat of queen left empty, the Consort and the Prime Minister have kept the realm in such fine order; how weighty can that seat truly be? Pressing matters abound, so we shall take the matter up again once the weariness of war has passed."

She wished it had ended there.

"Ah—and who knows. Should someone bear an imperial grandchild, she would rise to the seat of Empress."

Thanks to the way the king's gaze had settled on her, the glances of wariness shot at her from every direction had stung fiercely.

"Hah—"

Seoin sighed and shook her head at the memory of that uncomfortable assembly. A woman who had been with him since his days as heir apparent—what else could those words mean?

She didn't understand the politics of the Museon Empire well, but she had heard that the present king had all but been cast out of the palace as a child. He had brought in the benefactor who had stood by him since then and seated her in the rank of Consort. That much made her near enough a destined match; the woman would hardly stoop to seeking Seoin out in jealousy.

Only, the king's intent baffled her. Was there truly a reason he could not raise so devoted a woman to queen? What was the point of declaring he would seat her as Consort, kindling a war within the inner palace?

Is he checking the Consort and the Prime Minister?

Had the benefactor of his darkest days become a burden to him now? Was he a man more faithless and calculating than he looked?

Then she, too, could not simply trust the king.

Being used and thrown away—once is quite enough.

Seoin looked down at the wrinkles in her skirt and frowned. Was she already being used?

I have to do something.

She realized that sitting like a fool and waiting on fate was nothing like her. As her gaze swept the room, it caught on a shelf of books. She had never cared much for reading, but there was nothing else to be done in this room.

"However I turn it over in my mind, this cannot stand."

Geumwijang Gwon Beom said, troubled.

"So it cannot."

The king answered, snapping a branch of yellow cornelian cherry blossoms from the garden that Noble Consort Yu Munhui tended with such devoted care.

"If you know it cannot, may I ask why you persist in doing so?"

"They're pretty."

"Pardon? Since when did you so adore cornelian cherry blossoms, that you insist on breaking the branches here of all places?"

"Was that not what you were asking about?"

"Then what did you take it to mean?"

"The matter of taking the princess as my Consort."

Gwon Beom shook his head as he answered. "The matter is already decided. Will it change if I point it out now?"

"You've been wearing that sour face for days, so I assumed this was what you wished to discuss."

"Honestly, I cannot make sense of it. My conviction that she is a dangerous woman in every respect has not changed. For someone who was a princess to cast aside her pride so utterly… And that subordinate of hers—whether he thrashes about in disgrace on purpose, I cannot tell. Can a general who serves a princess really be so shameless? It must surely be a scheme to deceive us all."

Gwon Beom frowned, recalling how Segwang had clowned about at court.

"Did you see the princess's face as she glared at that subordinate of hers?"

"Pardon? As far as that…"

"The expression of a commander dying of shame over her own man. Truly, it was lovely."

"…Then what you called lovely just now was…"

"Jin Seoin."

"…."

"The princess's name, was it not? Dressed up like that, she was even lovelier, no? Worth playing the fool and falling for a honey trap."

As he said it, Seon Wiyeon snapped off another branch in full, tempting bloom.

"I am in no position to pass judgment on beauty, but the Noble Consort is likewise exceedingly beautiful. Knowing Your Majesty is not a man to be swayed by a woman's looks only deepens my puzzlement. What is it about the princess that so draws you…"

"If a man isn't swayed by a woman's beauty, he ought to shave his head and go copy sutras."

"That is not what I mean, and you know it. I do understand why you named the princess as Consort. I grasp full well the intent of checking the Yu household, which swells larger by the day. But what power does the princess actually hold? If that is the aim, better to take the Grand General's granddaughter as your queen."

"The Grand General's granddaughter is barely sixteen."

"Your late mother bore you at eighteen."

In royal houses, marrying girls off at fourteen was commonplace, and an age gap of thirty years was no flaw at all. A king's marriage was politics—nothing more than a means of protecting power and privilege.

And the king Gwon Beom knew was a man adept at precisely such calculations.

But there were things Beom did not know.

"That's why I refuse."

That there were even things Seon Wiyeon could not bring himself to calculate.