Threading the Flower Needle (10)

Having just finished breakfast, Munhui signaled for the table to be cleared.

In truth, she had barely touched the food.

She was always sparing with her morning meal, but today she hadn't even gone through the motions of eating. Ilhwa still hadn't come.

Which meant things had not gone as planned. If they had, Ilhwa would have come running by now, breathless with excitement, chattering away even as she gasped for air.

There was something Seoin, so proud of her grasp of the harem's inner workings, did not understand.

The snake and the smoke sent into her chambers had not been mere childish cruelty. They had been the beginning—of driving a person slowly, patiently, mad.

But Seoin hadn't even flinched at the sight of the snake; she had simply caught it with her bare hand, and so the whole affair had collapsed before it could even begin.

First the snake. Then the people.

The raw materials of nightmare smuggled into their chambers kept the consorts sleepless and raw with nerves. No matter how earnestly a woman insisted a real snake had appeared, that a ghost had tried to strangle her, no one would believe a word of it. The women, stretched taut and fraying, would lash out and commit grave mistakes—slandering Yu Munhui with not a shred of evidence, or doing something as stupid as choosing to end their own lives.

More than a few women had left the palace that way, cast out before ever receiving a consort's title.

Munhui considered this a form of mercy on her part. This way, even a woman of humble birth could leave with her family intact. Had she properly received a consort's rank, that entire family would have gone down in flames with her. What Munhui gave them was a rope thrown before the fall—the chance to walk out alive, whole.

A few foolish girls, weaker than she'd expected, had taken their own lives instead, but Munhui considered that, too, a kindness to the families they left behind.

Then, unbidden, one of those girls rose in her memory.

"Your Highness, this is not the path that serves the Crown Prince. Could you not try, just a little, to understand his heart? I only wish to bring him comfort. If I displease you, then surely you, my lady, might comfort him in my stead."

The tiny thing who had come to her, so brazenly, to scold her.

She really hadn't known the girl was so frail.

"My lady."

At Ilhwa's voice, Munhui surfaced from her thoughts.

"I beg your forgiveness."

Munhui found the apology odd. She could tell something had gone wrong, but there was none of the usual trembling guilt in Ilhwa's voice. Normally, at moments like this, Ilhwa would hesitate to speak at all, her lips quivering.

"So there's been some new complication."

Ilhwa lifted her head and answered with a short sigh. "Yes, my lady. This attempt has failed. For some reason, the snake was found this morning, fallen from the ceiling of her chambers."

As she said it, a smile curled across Ilhwa's lips.

"But on my way here, I found something. Used well, it will serve you greatly, my lady."

No sooner had the uproar in Seoin's quarters been settled than another commotion erupted there.

"I had no idea you relied on me so desperately, Princess!"

It was Ju Segwang, venting at full volume.

"I'm sick to death of your face, too," Seoin shot back.

She was astounded by him, in several different senses.

"Then why did you summon me at all? You should have just let me go! What is this spiteful obsession?"

"You dared to walk out and leave me behind?"

"For Your Highness's sake, of course. I knew you couldn't stand the sight of me, so I was removing myself for your comfort."

"Hmph. All this devotion. You were planning to abandon your own lord alone in the tiger's den? I save your miserable life, and this is the gratitude I get."

Her adjutant—this man—considering abandoning her, his princess and his commander, and then having the sheer gall to claim he was leaving for her sake: it was so utterly, so characteristically Ju Segwang that it left her speechless.

"You're royalty now. What is there to worry about? Didn't you say you'd become the tiger that owns the tiger's den?"

"More like a fox cub that wandered into the wrong den."

"I know it. I saw the atmosphere in the great hall—hardly warm. But isn't it always like that? Who would welcome a princess of an enemy nation—one of a fallen kingdom, at that? They'll watch you, snub you, circle their wagons against you."

"And the man who knows all that tried to abandon me here, alone, so he could save his own skin?"

Seoin was beginning, finally, to feel a little wounded. How she was being treated in this place, how she had writhed in anguish only the day before—it all came back to her, and she felt like a child suddenly throwing a tantrum she couldn't help.

"It's all settled the moment you produce an heir. The honey trap worked, didn't it? The King is a fine figure of a man by anyone's standards, so really, everything turned out well, didn't it?"

"What did you say?"

"A man that handsome isn't easy to come by, even for another man to judge. You've taken to your bed the very man you used to dream of, Your Highness. If you ask me, you're blessed."

"You lunatic. Do I look like a woman who's lost her mind over a pretty face?"

Perhaps because the jab landed a little too close, Seoin flared up without meaning to.

"Why the coyness all of a sudden? You fled to the battlefield rather than marry an ugly man back home."

"Ha! That was—that one wasn't ugly, that wasn't the problem—!"

"Yes, yes. He was a treacherous wretch besides, and you didn't want to be sold off in marriage regardless. I understand."

"You understand, do you?"

Segwang shrugged.

"What else am I supposed to think? You swore you'd die on the battlefield before marrying a man like that, and now you've slept with the enemy king because you'd rather live. Because he's handsome, obviously. Despicable. Would you have sacrificed yourself to save the likes of us?"

Seoin's fists clenched and trembled at her sides, but no rebuttal came to her tongue. And all the while, Segwang's mouth never stopped.

"I'd say we've handed you your justification, Your Highness. The justification to share the bed of the Museon king. Pardon my bluntness, but say Danya had won the war and you'd returned to the palace—where would you be now? You said you were searching for your freedom, but look at this. He would have betrayed you without a second thought. Guaranteed."

Seoin's brow lifted, but Segwang puffed out his chest with perfect shamelessness.

"Fortunately for you, Your Highness, our Danya is well and truly destroyed. A princess of a husk of a nation—what threat is that to anyone? No one needs to guard against a woman with no backing at all. So rest easy, and live out your hundred years in peace as the Consort of Museon."

At last the dam of her patience burst. Seoin's lips twisted into a sneer.

"You've humiliated me since the great hall itself. Is the throat of a princess of a fallen kingdom too sacred for you to sew shut?"

"Don't say things you don't mean. I can tell how much you need me by how tightly Your Highness is holding on to me right now."

"I should have corrected that particular delusion first thing, but your nonsense was so absurd it slipped my mind."

"And what delusion might that be?"

Just then—

Thud.

The sound of the door opening froze both of them mid-sentence, and they turned. Outside the opened door stood Gwon Beom, the Captain of the Imperial Guard, who had escorted Segwang here.

"It was at my command that he was left here."

It was not the Captain's voice.

As Gwon Beom stepped back half a pace, the King emerged from behind him.

Ju Segwang dropped to his knees as though his legs had simply given out. As the King entered, the Captain moved to follow him in.

"Beom. Stay where you are."

"But—"

"It's fine. Didn't you hear it all as well? A man who calls it fortunate that his kingdom fell. Hardly the sort of hero who'd kill me out of loyalty to his own country."

At the King's words, Segwang's shoulders, pressed to the floor, flinched.

How much of it did he hear?

"I shall wait outside, Your Majesty."

Gwon Beom, ever at the King's side, shot a hard glare at Segwang and Seoin both. He knew perfectly well that the two of them were exceptional warriors, and leaving the King alone in a room with only those two made him deeply uneasy.

Don't try anything clever.

Seoin met the warning glare with a scoff. What an unbending, insufferably rigid man. In moments like this, she'd far rather have the quick-witted coward Segwang—duplicitous was better than dense. Having someone like Gwon Beom at hand would only be exhausting.

The door closed, and the King approached.

"That touching bond of lord and vassal you displayed in the great hall, each of you protecting the other, made quite an impression. I came expecting a moving reunion. I find myself disappointed."

He said it not as though he were disappointed at all, but as though he found the whole thing fascinating.

"From what point were you listening?"

Segwang lifted his head—Seoin's question had been the very one he was dying to ask.

The King turned one hand over and rested it below his own chest, then answered with perfect shamelessness.

"The very man you used to dream of."

If he'd heard it from there, he had heard everything. The bit about losing her mind over a man's face, all of it—the mortifying talk of justifications for sharing the King's bed.

Seoin shot Segwang a look that could have drawn blood. Had his blathering really made her this pathetic in front of the King?

But Segwang, taking it as a blessing, answered in a voice swollen with pride.

"Your Majesty. I humbly report: our Princess was the finest beauty of all Danya, matched in both grace and talent. Museon surely has many splendid women, but you would search in vain for one so singular as our princess. I offer my deepest congratulations that Your Majesty has obtained the finest of all women!"

Seoin had discovered yet another of Segwang's hidden talents.

So this fool could actually flatter.

Then why had she never known? The fact that he had never once turned it on her was somehow the most offensive part.

"And this finest beauty of Danya—is that not the hollow, unremarkable princess you just finished describing?"

He really did hear all of it.

The instant Segwang opened his mouth to answer, Seoin cut the conversation off herself.

"Was it concern for this hollow princess that moved you to gift me that fool?"

"Watching him in the great hall, he seemed to know you well. I thought a far-from-home princess might want hands and feet she could use without a second thought."

He wasn't wrong—she had needed exactly that.

"Such consideration. I accept with gratitude."

Seoin looked down at Segwang, her new hands and feet, with glacial coolness.

There is no world in which I send that fool home.