A/n: Merry Xmas you guys! Thank you so much for the reviews. They really mean a lot to me. Keep 'em coming! :D

(Outside Cheondeok Hall, Songak)

~Yo's POV~

My brothers and I had readily listened when Choi Jimong advised us to return to our residence to patiently wait for our father the King to send for them. It was standard protocol whenever the King had fallen ill. Both Mu and Won had gone home, Wook was joined by Baekah, whereas Eun and Jung had gone off separately to their friends. I was about to leave too but it was my 4th brother So who stayed behind adamantly.

"Leave," I scowled at him. "You don't know how it works around here. You won't get to see His Majesty unless he asks specifically for you. Which he won't, because if he were to see your face, I fear he'd only fall even more ill."

"Thank you for enlightening me on how things work at Songak. I didn't even ask for it, but you, my 3rd brother, are the only one who'd be so kind as to offer it," he replied with a casual shrug.

"You have no manners at all," I declared. He was in need of a painful rebuke. He was asking for it and I was going to give it to him. "Is that how the Kang clan raised you in Shinju? And yet you wonder why our mother doesn't like you."

"And do you ever wonder why our mother loves you so much?" He countered dauntlessly.

That had me taken aback but I was used to not letting it show on my face. "It's only natural that a mother loves her son. It's just a pity she doesn't regard you as her son anymore. It's beneath her to be a mother to a wolf dog, wouldn't you agree?"

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," he said lazily, and showed no intention to leave.

I scoffed. "It would help me sleep at night if you were banished from Songak. No one here wants you around anyway. You have no place here at the royal court."

"That's what you think. I'm going to find my place here. I'm resolved to stay," he said coolly. "Or have you forgotten that I had slain my horse?"

I sneered at him. "It doesn't matter what you want or what attempts you make. If our father's Majesty wants to send you back to Shinju, none of your objections will have any bearing. I suggest you save yourself some embarrassment and do us all a favor, and crawl back to Shinju while you still can."

"What if it's you that His Majesty wants to send away?" He questioned. "You know that it would have been you as the Kang clan's hostage, if it weren't for this," he said firmly, pointing at his ugly face.

I gritted my teeth because I hated that he was right to say this, and every time I thought about this I'd shiver and dread the what-if.

"I do have a purpose here," he continued mysteriously. "You just don't like that it might contradict yours."

"I wouldn't count on you to stop me," I contended. "You should be a good dog and sit at my feet. Get on the winning team rather than try to oppose me."

"Or I could trip you. Bite you. Howl and bark at you," he retorted. "It all depends on your attitude toward me."

"You should watch your attitude toward me," I snarled at him. He ought to take my warning seriously, if he didn't want to end up like the horse he'd slain. I took a distasteful gander at him and went home.

(The King's bedchambers, Cheondeok Hall, Songak)

~Chronicler's POV~

By the time King Taejo was awake, both Queen Yu and Queen Hwangbo had retired to their own residences as they needed to rest too after spending many hours in worry. The other lower ranking concubines were still not allowed to visit the King yet, nor was Lady Dongsanwon back from Gameob Temple.

The astronomer Choi Jimong was by His Majesty's side, asking Taejo if he wanted the company of any of his wives or his children, to which the King simply responded, "send in the Sanggung," as he sat up on his bed. "And tell the guards and maids outside to get some rest. Surely they're tired too after waiting on me for so many hours," he added, though it wasn't that he truly cared if they were tired, Jimong knew. He just needed them to go away to give him some privacy.

"Your Majesty," said the Sanggung softly, bowing once she entered the room. These formalities were expected of Court Lady Oh as she was the Sanggung of the Damiwon who served and answered to the King directly.

"Sooyeon," said His Majesty affectionately, although his tone was firm.

She looked up sadly. It had been too long since he last called her that. "How may I be of service, my King?" She asked anyway.

"You needn't bring me anything. Just sit next to me and keep me company," he stifled a sigh and patted the spot next to him on the bed.

Stiffly, she went to him. She needn't feel uneasy, because it wasn't as if they'd never shared a bed before. They had once been so intimate, but now, every time she was in the same room as he was, it was suffocating. And right now he wanted him to sit next to him — she couldn't breathe, nor could she stop her heart from beating so quickly. When she became the Sanggung of the Damiwon she thought that this would mean that she'd be one of his servants and there'd be more distance between them, which could allow her to rebuild the walls around the heart that he broke. But when he was beckoning her over, she knew she had to let those newly built walls melt away.

"I have never felt this weak before," Taejo let out his sigh now, and confided in his ex-lover. "I feel as though the gods will come and collect me any day now."

"Your Majesty mustn't say or think that. You are the King, appointed by and blessed by the gods. You'll live a long life. Ten thousand years, actually. It's not for no reason that all of your subjects knelt and chanted 'mansae, mansae, man, mansae' at your coronation," said Sooyeon, repressing her worry.

"Do you really think so?" said Taejo dubiously. "I was hoping to hear something different from you. Something that my subjects, my courtiers, my consorts, my children wouldn't say."

"I don't think I know what my King wants," said Sooyeon plainly.

He eyed her in slight dissatisfaction but decided to let it pass for now.

"My days are short," he remarked. "But when I think about how I've lived, it stops me from dreading the inevitable. It's the time we spent together, the thought of it, that keeps me alive and sustains me."

"It does no good to dwell on the past or think about what could have been. We were different people then," she declared, wanting to scoot away from him but also remembering that this was probably the closest to him that she could ever get, considering she was merely his servant now, so she would not be the one by his side when he'd leave this world.

"You're right. I'm a King now," he replied. "Every day, everywhere, I am reminded of that. But you, Sooyeon. It's only with you that I am not a King. Instead, I am just a man. An obscure colonel. That was where I started. That was where everything started. Do you remember, Sooyeon? Do you miss it? Do you still keep a token of we had in those days?"

"I could never forget being the young daughter of a pharmacist, naive and in love," she confessed. "But it feels less helpless to just let bygones be bygones. Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word. It would just be so much easier for me to let go."

"You have nothing to hold on to, then?" He questioned with a tone of disapproval, as if chastising her. "Does it cause you so much pain to just keep a knot with you?"

The knot. It was a true lover's knot, attached to a piece of jade, that the obscure colonel had given to the pharmacist's daughter many years ago, at the pinnacle of their love. He wanted her to keep it with her always as it represented his love for her. When he became King yet she could not become one of his Queens or even one of his concubines, she knew that they could never be together, and time after time he had disappointed her. In spite of that, 15 years ago when he invited her to his bed once more, she let him have her, completely. He was her love, after all, and she wanted to have him completely to herself too, even if it was just for that night. And when she left his bed the next morning, once again a King and his servant rather than two young lovebirds, she had left with his child in her womb.

This pregnancy was bad news. When it had reached the domineering Queen Yu, she sent a bowl of papaya soup to the Sanggung. This meant that poor Court Lady Oh would not get the chance to see her child grow up, ever. And the King knew that it was his most powerful wife who was behind this, but he showed no grief at losing an unborn child, and let his Queen get away with it. She was careful not to leave any traces of her crime, after all, and instead pinned it all on her other biggest threat, Queen Hwangbo. As a result, for a short period of time Queen Hwangbo and her two young children, the 8th Prince Wook and the Princess Yeonhwa, were exiled. Taejo did not issue any penalty to the true culprit and continued to allow Queen Yu to walk around with her nose in the air. This was what convinced the Sanggung, or as Taejo liked to call so affectionately, Sooyeon, that he loved her no longer. That his love for her had been repressed for so long that it had been grinded into dust. She had lost her child and his love, and she did not want any reminders of her losses. It made things just a bit easier for her to not keep the true lover's knot and that piece of jade — she was jaded anyway, and he no longer lived up to her expectations of a true lover.

Albeit her disappointment, she answered his questions anyway. "It pains me as much as the day I knew I could not raise our child," she admitted, suddenly emotional. "I know I shouldn't, but I think about it all the time. I think about how she would have turned out had she been allowed to live. I think about styling her hair and dressing her in her hanbok. I think about teaching her about the properties of each kind of herb and tea leaves. I think about watching her grow up and fall in love and do all of the things that I wanted to do but could never. And every time I do, I'm reminded of why I can only wish and speculate, not see with my own eyes."

"'She'? 'Her'?" He asked skeptically. "How do you know it's a daughter we had?"

"I just do," she asserted but with a shaky voice. Of course she had a reason for knowing, and it was beyond maternal instinct, but she could not tell him what that reason was, nor could she let him know about what she did with the true lover's knot and its accompanying piece of jade. It would be a secret she'd take to her grave. She'd never let him know what she'd done with the child.

In that moment he was filled with remorse and shame, but what could he do? The child was lost to him. "No doubt she's in a better place now, if it's a she," he said to her. He had meant to sound reassuring, but reassurance was the last thing she could get from him. "I don't have many daughters, Sooyeon. Only Chuja and Yeonhwa. When was the last time I saw Chuja? I don't even remember. It must have been some time before her mother died. And it's likely that I will never get to see my eldest daughter again. As for Yeonhwa, even if I give her absolute freedom to choose her husband, there's no way the Hwangbo clan that her mother is from will go easy on her. It is in a Princess' destiny to be controlled and used by others, I'm afraid. It's better that our daughter would not have to suffer like that."

"Is that how you justify it?" Sooyeon questioned, a bit spitefully.

"Now, that's something I wanted to hear from you," Taejo mumbled. Only she would dare stand up to him and challenge him, in private of course. It was when she did that that he wasn't treated like a King. It was ironic as he always chose being a King over anything else. He guessed it was because he had been treated as a King for many years and now that he could have the chance to just be an ordinary man, he thought he'd better take it. Although he would be buried and mourned as a King, when he'd die, he'd die like an ordinary man anyway.

It brought Sooyeon no happiness to be so close to him and to talk about the source of her suffering for many years. She didn't think she could ever find closure. She thought it would be best to take her leave now and hand him over to the women who had the fortune of giving him children.

She exited his room forlornly. The hallways were empty and cool, and she shivered slightly. Winter is coming, she thought to herself. On her way back to the Damiwon where her post and her chambers were, she wondered if her daughter had enough clothes to keep warm.

A/n:

Although Hyeong thinks of Wang Yo quite positively, he's indeed a bully to the Wang So that we all love. I hope to show different sides of Yo's character.

Don't worry, though, not everybody will treat So like crap. For instance, in the next chapter he will have a scene with another brother and it wouldn't be so hostile.

It seems like things didn't go to plan when Queen Yu sent that bowl of papaya soup to Court Lady Oh with the intention of forcing a miscarriage. We know that she did end up giving birth to a daughter, and she's under the impression that her daughter is alive somewhere. Is she right? We'll find out as this story goes...

I hope everybody's enjoying their Christmas holidays. Show me some love in the reviews! Love y'all. :D