Author's Note: Finally, I can post this here. I hope you enjoy. This was also inspired by the same historical TV show FMV of 'Walk Through the Fire'.
Soo's eyes widen and she looks up in confusion at the third prince as he takes her hand, saying nothing, a neutral expression on his face. There's a ring in his other hand, golden and ornate, with a shining red stone set into it.
Still silent, Yo slips it onto her ring finger, his eyes flicking up to hers, a small, involuntary smile tugging at his lips.
"Your Highness?" she asks.
What does this mean?
"It's a ring," he says flatly, as if it were not immediately obvious. Yo draws back from her, carefully eyeing her face for any sign of fear or rejection. He finds none, and the small smile is back again. "Your ring."
"Thank you, Your Highness. It's beautiful," she says, looking down at it, glinting in the sunlight between the columns. "I'm honored."
An arrogant facial expression replaces that of gentle amusement. "As well you should be," he says pompously. "It is much too fine for a lady of the court."
Soo tries not to glare at him.
That was Wang Yo – he couldn't go without saying something unpleasant for more than five minutes.
He smirks at her displeasure. "This kind of a ring is fit for a queen."
Again, her eyes widen. "Your Highness…" her voice shakes slightly.
His jaw tightens. "You know I cannot divorce either of my wives," he says. "But I swear to you-" he cuts himself off, trying to look arrogant once again and failing. "You could be the queen of Goryeo," he says, looking into her eyes. "So just marry me." Yo winds an arm around her waist and pulls her close to himself, eyes momentarily darting down to her lips.
She smiles at him. "I accept, Your Highness," she says.
The relief in his expression, in the set of his shoulders, in his eyes – it is almost heartbreaking. Wang Yo is a man who does not show uncertainty, it would be fatal. The fact that he seemed to be almost expecting her to reject him…- Soo blinks away tears.
"Oh, good," he says with false lightness, but a true smile across his face. When he leans down to kiss her, she tastes tea and the promise of better things to come.
When had everything changed?
When his mother was so adamantly against the marriage and he tried to convince her instead of defying her?
When So collapsed, blood leaking from his mouth, and Soo desperately called for help – then was taken away to the palace dungeons?
When Yo came to see her, swearing revenge, but not knowing that the execution would be the next day?
Maybe it wasn't then.
Was it when he stood on the wall top in the rain, watching her kneel below?
Was it when he saw So standing over her?
Was it when Queen Yoo appeared beside him and almost dragged him away?
When she is a water maid, she still wears the ring, on a rough cord around her neck, underneath her threadbare, ragged dress. He comes to see her in secret, under the pretense of visiting the gyobang. Every time, she tells him to go back; that it is not allowed, that it could not be. And every time he says, "I will come back again, and again. I will bring you back into the palace as mine."
She wants to believe him, but she simply ducks her head and brushes past him, holding her basket tightly and limping away. It would be better for the both of them had they never met.
Maybe she should have sunk into his embrace for a few moments, something to remember on the cold days when her knee ached something terrible and the other girls laugh and jeer, throwing her clean laundry onto the frost-covered banks of the river. But she does not – and she regrets it.
When she regrets it, it is too late.
When she limps painfully through the forest after the guards and So and Wook, she finds Yo standing there on the edge of the cliff. She bursts into the clearing and everyone looks at her, a pale water-maid, panting, around her neck a cord with an expensive ring.
So does not see her, his back turned towards her.
Yo does.
His eyes meet hers and his mouth opens, maybe to call to her, to say something…
But he has left himself open-
Taking advantage of the lull, and ignorant of the reason why, So lashes out with a roar-
And Yo is pierced with a sword, blood darkening the front of his black tunic. He looks down, disbelieving, then back to Soo, who dashes forward, even as So, still full of battle rage, drives his older brother back, right to the precipice.
Yo nods slightly, a strange smirk tugging at his lips, making a move to pull back, but So lashes out again, slashing him across his chest and stomach.
The third prince's eyes look blankly at his own blood, up at So with wide eyes, shocked.
He had the eyes of a man looking his own death in the face.
He looks past So at Soo, who suddenly can't breathe.
So's eyes were also wide and he stared back, shaking slightly, realizing that he was capable of killing his own brother.
Soo is almost there, but her knee collapses underneath her and she falls to her knees. Her voice dies in her throat and she wants to call out to him, but she cannot. Tears build in her eyes.
Yo meets her gaze again, terrified, then sad. He looks as if he is going to say something-
Then he falls backwards, off the edge of the cliff.
So dumbly reaches forward, but he is too late and his lips tremble with horror.
Finally, Soo finds her voice and she lets out a pained, sobbing cry of sorrow, nonverbal in its' anguish.
The ring glints mockingly in the light of the setting sun.
When had everything changed?
Author's Note: Please tell me what you thought.