"Bang Seok will be named Crown Prince, but the throne is Bang-won's. Do not doubt it, it won't change."

The madame's words seemed to echo in her skull as she watched him stroll away through the courtyard after the break up of their little meeting. Her eyes seared into his retreating back with such focus that she only barely registered the gentle sway of his open po robe around his legs, a blur of deep, dry red at the edges of her vision which she could fancy as a visual manifestation of the heat of her fury surrounding him like a corona.

"What is it about him that upsets you so much?" Hwa-wol wondered aloud, though her musing tone suggested she did not expect to receive an answer.

Hui Jae thought of his eyes across the table as he held out the wine cup. The set of his mouth had been sardonic, as if he were toying with her, and the loose fringe at his hairline had fallen across his forehead in meticulously haphazard wisps too perfectly dishevelled to be natural. The deliberate air of insouciance he cultivated was belied by the very direct challenge in those eyes. He was testing, measuring, wanting to know if she would be as brave and impudent in the tea room as she had been in the forest. If she would dare to disdain him now that he was a prince.

It had burned her, lit a fire under a rising tide of churning bile in her guts which threatened to spew out in dangerous words. Truth be told, it had already boiled over. Her indignant speeches could have brought down wrath on the entire household. She'd been rash, emotional, had even promised to kill him- to spill his sacred royal blood. She wanted to show him how much she dared.

He'd seemed entertained by it. That made her fires burn more hotly.

She couldn't see the fan as he walked away, but she could just detect the gentle undulation of muscles shifting in his back beneath the shine of fine silk fabric garments which told her he was waving it slightly against his chest. A study in nonchalance. His shoulder did not move, the relaxed set of his posture was controlled and undisturbed.

He wanted to be unflappable, to pretend nothing could arouse him to genuine emotion. But one could be without depth of feeling and still utterly impetuous.

"I'll beat him," she said. "I'll win."

Hwa-wol blinked at her in surprise. "Win what?"

"I'll win," she repeated.

Having said it out loud, she felt ready to do whatever might be necessary to achieve it. Her determination hadn't changed at all, but perhaps her squeamishness and naïveté had. There was none now, there couldn't be after what she'd already been through. She would not wound her honour, but she felt she could allow it to be dirtied. Mud would wash out, only blood would stain. Madame Seol's methods were still distasteful to her, but they could be employed without drawing any blood.

If she'd learned anything from a life at Ihwaru, it was that men were astoundingly simple. They could all be strung along if one could discover the correct appendage to sink one's hook into. You never had to let him catch you; in fact, all the better if you had no intention of allowing yourself to be caught. They never wanted anything more than what they couldn't quite have. The chase was the end itself for most, they became quickly bored with possession. And she could certainly inspire a chase while evading capture, it was one of her specialities.

This was the lesson of General Jung Sa Jeong, both his assault on Ihwaru in life and his ignoble death. She needed to use the tools nature and her station had afforded her, to put herself in a position to predict the prince's next move as she'd told the Queen they must. And only when she had the necessary leverage to overcome strength and status would she be able to exercise power.

Madame Seol could still be wrong about many things even if she was right that one needed power before one could expect or demand justice.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

Taking up Bang-won's offer to be a spy did not much assist her in her schemes as a double agent. His dogs were not close to him, even the ones absolutely convinced that they were, so there was very little to be learnt about him by moving among them. She noticed the prince's bluntness and occasional intimately personal confessions made the men believe him to be candid and honest, but she doubted he was revealing anything except his own contempt for them. There must surely be some limits to male arrogance, though she could not say she had seen any herself.

Hui Jae let some time pass, putting clear water between the confrontation and the beginning of her plans, meanwhile collecting a few misleading anecdotes about the Queen to sate him before attempting anything more risqué. It was already a substantial risk to invite him to Ihwaru at all. It would put him on alert to be summoned to any place, particularly one outside his influence and on her own home territory, to say nothing of the obvious connotations which could tip her hand.

He'd seemed annoyed by her token efforts but not any more suspicious than his habitual paranoia warranted. It was time.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

She approached him with trepidation in the garden of his city residence, his soldiers scattered around standing guard or running drills, some in clusters laughing and eating. The prince had assumed his habitual sprawl across a high-backed chair in the middle of the courtyard, leaning on the arm and dangling his closed fan from limp fingers. There were faint bruises spanning his knuckles and along the meat of his palm. You wouldn't notice them even from this distance were it not for his very fair skin, the slight tan on the backs of his hands only a hint of honey against their whiteness.

He was conversing jovially with a straight-backed, no-nonsense looking man at his side, but his attention was on his surroundings, eyes scanning over the walls and the guards. He was not a layabout despite his reputation for merrymaking, that was certain. His efforts to help people confronting him to forget that he was a deadly swordsman until he found it convenient for him to remind them did not extend to ceasing to hone his skills every day. There could be no illusion he was not in condition.

His foot was poised against the leg of his chair and she was slightly shocked to see that it was bare, an abandoned sandal kicked aside. It felt almost like an impropriety to have noticed this glimpse of flesh and she quickly looked away.

She bowed as she drew close. "Your Highness."

Bang-won's left eyebrow lifted slightly at her obsequious tone and his eyes narrowed as he tilted his head up to regard her. He made the expression both an open interrogation and an incidental squint against the sun behind her head. She thought he liked to see you floundering to guess his true mood, to keep you from being comfortable in his presence.

She remembered in the forest, when he had asked her who she was, the way his tone was so discordantly casual in spite of its insistence. As if he didn't much care to hear the answer, but saw no reason he should not be immediately indulged in an idle curiosity.

She remembered watching him, his sword always loosely gripped between his hands and his eyes usually half-lidded or closed. He projected an aura of amused boredom with their entire precarious situation, as if it counted for nothing in particular to him if death were at his heels and the lives of women and children were in his hands. Even when he was fighting, he swirled through his opponents with an efficient but unhurried grace as if he were following the measured rhythm of a ritual dance.

The tension she had felt with every breath, taut as a bowstring, was completely absent from his body and his movements.

But just as resentful anger built almost to breaking in her guts, that missing tension had shown itself.

With his hair loose down his back and a tiny rivulet of blood rolling over the curve of his cheek like a tear, he'd looked possessed by some wild spirit when he turned a burning gaze towards them, four men dead at his feet. The fire in his eyes still smouldered for a time after the danger had passed, his attention darting around the clearing and then resting on Hui Jae from behind the shadow of messy forelocks which still veiled his face. It seemed she had never been truly studied or truly seen before; the preternatural force of that gaze was like he could read her whole life in her eyes.

She would never admit, even to herself, having feared him no matter how fleeting the moment might have been. So she had then treated him with increased brusqueness to reassure herself that she did not fear him.

She remembered this and refused to let his disarming tactics make her question who she knew he was: the vessel of ambition and covetousness and nothing else. He was simple, though he put forth such effort to seem contrary, and she would prove his simplicity to both of them. That long gaze revealed more than it had learned.

"Your Highness might be interested to know that Nam Jeon attended tea at Ihwaru three nights ago."

His index finger drummed against the arm of his chair and he tipped his head to one side, exposing the steep curve of his jaw so he could begin tracing along it with the edge of the folded fan. The gentle rasp of paper against skin seemed strangely loud in the midst of her complete focus on his reaction. "Do you consider that exclusive information?" he finally asked.

"I don't."

He smiled slightly and she thought his amusement was likely in earnest, for once. The bow of his upper lip curled upward, just a fraction, showing a tiny flash of white teeth. When he mocked, it was with a grin or a smirk, never this impish little moue. "Very well," he said, gesturing for her to proceed, "I am waiting to discover why I might be interested in this non-exclusive information."

"If Your Highness were to attend tea in that same room at Ihwaru, the answer could come to you unexpectedly." Her heart seemed to beat in her throat rather than in her chest as she waited to see how he would take such bait. Whether he would call her bluff in front of all his retainers and laugh in her face.

The prince lounged back against the chair and considered her while she suppressed the urge to wipe her sweaty palms inside her sleeves. It felt to her like a deafening silence had fallen over the courtyard.

"We would need privacy, of course. Quiet. For thinking."

"Oh, naturally," he agreed. Hui Jae could not tell if he was being sarcastic.

"Will you come?"

The glitter in his eyes said he counted her sudden blurted demand a victory, noting her impatience and inability to stick to the dripping civility with which she'd begun the conversation.

"Your Highness?" she added belatedly, knowing it was too late to save face but too stubborn to concede the point.

He stood, abruptly very close to her, and it took all her willpower not to retreat instinctively from his overwhelming presence. He glanced down just as his breath stirred the fine hairs at her temple and she knew he'd seen her shiver.

"Very well," he said lightly, in that same almost teasing cadence from the forest. As if he were still asking 'who are you?' in both delight and suspicion.

She'd show him who she was. He'd never see it coming.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

Hwa-wol bowed out at the door, tipping forward on her knees before sliding it closed, just far enough to attract Hui Jae's attention and shoot her a look of profound misgiving. Hui Jae had told her she feared Bang-won too much, even if most of the men of the palace didn't fear him enough. He was a man, too, and he'd let his fleshy weaknesses become very well known. He liked his drink and his games too well. She was calm, she was in control; he would have underestimated her just like every other patron of the tea house ever had.

Just like the man who killed her mother had.

She let her breath out very slowly as she turned from the door back into the room. The prince was arranging himself against the cushions where she had ushered him to sit, the drape of his robes across his upraised knee and the loose posture of his shoulders artfully casual. Dressed in pure white like some benevolent sage, his complexion appeared almost luminous against the sumptuous fabric, the framing black showing at his collar and sleeves setting off his every gesture. He projected carelessness with a deliberate and overwhelming confidence that always seemed like a challenge. He clearly wasn't worried she'd brought him here for a secret ambush, physical or otherwise, because even the fingers which trailed over the edge of his kneecap were obviously relaxed.

He didn't pretend to be disinterested in the proceedings as she'd seen him do many times before. No, the full and unwavering power of his attention was focussed on her. She felt it like an immense weight settling over her body, the penetrating cunning of his gaze seeming to pin her momentarily in place.

But cunning was no match for true intellect, paranoia no equal to honest curiosity- that's what she believed. That was her talisman. The cultivated, generous mind was the superior mind.

She caught a twitch in those fingers now and they turned over to beckon her forward, his other hand holding out a cup. "I know you're not a kisaeng, but you are a host." He smiled slyly, more on the right side of his mouth than the left, as if asking if she would take offence this time.

Hui Jae nodded once, sharply, and moved to fill the cup. She leaned across the table from her knees, as far away as she could remain while fulfilling the task. She tried to keep her face expressionless, tried not to think about the previous encounter where he had instantly burrowed under her thin veneer of calm. Probably deliberately. Things must remain in her control this time.

He curled his hand around the wine, actually using only two fingertips to lift it by its edge, his delicate grip hardly seeming to touch the porcelain. The cup appeared to practically float to his lips, swept away again just as the surface of the wine was disturbed.

This was an affectation of his, it must be, because his upbringing had been rougher than such ostentatious manners. It meant something in the scheme of him that he was performing for her this way, but she didn't know what. He had very shapely fingers for a soldier, very few scars. Gifted or careful- likely both.

He sipped again and was staring at her over the lip of the cup with troubling intensity.

"Nothing comes to mind," he announced with a sudden short laugh, disorienting in its warmth and friendliness. The prickle of a trap that usually lay behind his smiles seemed absent, the flash of a dimple in his cheek rendering him surprisingly boyish as he reclined against his cushions.

It took several seconds for her to realise he was referring to her suggestion that the room itself would grant him some insight into his rivals in the palace.

"Or am I too eager?" he asked, pointedly. He was inviting her to play, to lay her scheme before him.

Hui Jae folded her hands in her lap and tried to smile enigmatically. Patience, patience. She must have patience.

Giving him true, if boring and of limited usefulness, intelligence seemed to placate him as she tried to stall for time and allow the wine to become her ally. She made him draw every scrap of information from her a fraction at a time, pretending to be oblivious when he did so with increasing sarcasm. He did not directly comment, but he did not seem to drink much either. If she were not watching carefully, if she were not the one pouring and only pouring his cup, she would have thought he'd had at least three times the amount actually gone from her pitcher.

She filled the cup again, topping it up even though it was less than half empty. She got a little closer to the table, leaned a little further over.

"I am building to something, Your Highness," she told him in her best conversational tone as she sensed his exasperation beginning to mount. "I'm sure you've learnt as a courtier the importance of a balanced picture. The minister I have spoken of has a country house, this country house has figured in Nam Jeon's intrigues before."

"I'm familiar."

Wrong-footed by this frank declaration that he was still several steps ahead, she glanced up. A close-lipped smile played over his face and he studied her from beneath lowered eyelashes. His eyes were almost black in the dim light, glistening darkly.

"Did you put yourself next to the Queen just to get to Nam Jeon, or is there something more pedestrian behind your ambitions?"

She startled, her mouth going slack in shock for a split second before she could recover her placid manner. "Of course it's pedestrian. What else would it be?"

"Oh, I can imagine the options are many. I wonder if Madame Seol still believes you'll ever learn to be practical, it's not like her to be so optimistic. Was there something he did to offend your honour? One might think so since you decided it was worth dying for the chance to get above him and work your revenge, but perhaps you merely took a dislike to him on principle. As you did towards me."

Speechless at the extent of his insight, she felt her lip tremble as she groped for innocuous words to deflect his attention.

"Are you so thirsty for blood?" his tone was still playful, but there was steel behind the question. Relentless, implacable steel seeking for knowledge. "It seems very ambitious indeed for you to be after us both."

Hui Jae tittered uncertainly and immediately regretted it. She cleared her throat awkwardly as if to brush aside the attempt to be coquettish, and Bang-won glanced at her with something uncomfortably like mercy. She was perhaps not built for this, subterfuge was perhaps not her strongest suit.

Then Bang-won pursed his lips, crinkles of amusement forming around his eyes. He was clearly entertained by her miserable showing so far in the battle of wits, and he seemed to be taking the fact that she was trying to lead him somewhere by the nose very good-naturedly for someone so religiously mistrustful.

"I am ambitious," she admitted roughly, hoping to salvage things with a shock of honesty.

The prince chuckled as if she'd said something obvious.

"But I'm not bloodthirsty, Your Highness."

"Oh?" He wasn't dismissing her; he was interested.

"No."

He lifted his wine cup, drained it, and then held it out. He jerked it towards her, twice, beckoning. "I must mistake you very much, Miss Hui Jae."

She shuffled forward to comply, this time moving to the end of the table perpendicular to his place, and remaining there as she set down the pitcher. She blinked down at the rich food arrayed before her, pretending to covet the expensive dishes he had not touched. Double feinting as if she wanted him to think she'd positioned herself to reach the service better while hoping he might invite her to dine.

Bang-won watched the entire manoeuvre, resting his cheek on his fist. He looked unimpressed, but that could just mean it was working.

"This certain minister..." she began, intending to regain control of the conversation.

"Because to me," he went on, ignoring her feeble entrée, "a woman who walks the countryside fomenting unrest in disguise as a man, who flouts the law, who puts herself in the path of a revolution without asking any immediate payment, who was ready to stab a child for the sake of a stranger's honour, that woman who has twice threatened my neck… I think, and perhaps you are right that I mistake, but I think such a woman tastes blood from the first hour she wakes until the moment she sleeps. I think her mouth is parched for power." He sipped the wine she'd poured for him. "You don't agree?"

Hui Jae did not know if she was ashamed to hear herself described thus, or if she was proud. Whatever else he might be, he was shrewd, and it could certainly be taken as a kind of victory if he respected her. She wanted to believe that gave her an advantage, but he was looking at her with terrifying perceptiveness and she was faced with the daunting prospect that she was in well over her head. That she had badly misjudged him.

"When justice isn't given, it must be taken, Your Highness," she said cautiously. The sincerity seemed to land.

He snapped his fingers and leaned closer, pointing at her as if she'd made a brilliant deduction. "And so it must, Miss Minister-in-the-Skirt! But is vengeance justice? Should I worry what your intentions are by entangling yourself in my step-mother's schemes? I'm sure you realise Nam Jeon is using her and her blind avarice for the sake of her sons to build a puppet throne whose strings he intends to hold. But how far do your own desires extend?"

"I don't know what you mean."

He pouted at her in disappointment. "That's unworthy of you. Playing the fool doesn't wear well on those righteous shoulders- only your earnest foolishness is charming. Tell me: what is your country? Surely you dream of it, or you wouldn't have spent so much time risking your head to criticise the old one."

Seeing no reason not to, she told him the truth, "I just want a place for those of us left behind and discarded, a good life for the people. I want cowards like Nam Jeon held to account. I'm tired of corruption."

Time seemed to slow as he turned his head to the side, squinting one eye sceptically as he popped a sweet from the table into his mouth and chewed contemplatively. "Did someone tell you to say that?"

"No."

Her genuine confusion must have shown on her face because he just made a non-committal noise under his breath.

"Why would someone tell me to say that?"

"It sounds very like something I would say. And what does Nam Jeon need to be held accountable for?"

Hui Jae's head was nearly spinning trying to stay ahead, but she decided to press the one advantage she seemed to have- he really was curious about her. "His cheating and plotting kills."

"Swords kill," Bang-won said flatly.

She conceded the point with an unfurling of her hand, but she also shook her head. "A sword can be honest if you hold it, never if you force another's hand."

The next time she filled the wine cup, she lingered at his elbow. Her knee was a mere breath away from his thigh.

"And whom did Nam Jeon kill that you cherished?" he asked it delicately yet without pity, pushing a dish of candied nuts towards her with the tip of his finger.

She took one and savoured the flavour, sucking sweetness from her skin. She did not check to see if he was watching. "Someone who let me have a moment of childhood and someone I owe a debt."

There was a hint of a frown in the way his eyebrows quirked together as he mulled this information over. "A moment of childhood. Someone you recently met? How could that come about, one wonders."

Hwi's guileless smile and puppyish exuberance flashed before her mind's eye and she sighed to herself. That day with the kites had given her something she hadn't had since her mother's death, and seeing Hwi with his ailing sister had moved her heart with an intimacy her righteous indignation over the sufferings of the country at large had lacked. Finding out who his father was had just seemed a divine sanction, an oracle warning her to cherish that glimpse of ordinary domesticity and tenderness the like of which she had never experienced. "He represented something to me."

"Innocence?" There was no censure or judgement, in fact, Bang-won seemed to perfectly understand.

"The possibility I could have another of life, I suppose. A simple one."

He closed his eyes in acceptance of that, a moment almost of reverence. He opened them again with fresh inquisitiveness. "Why were they targets?"

"They fell afoul of one of his plans. He needed to keep his secrets." Hwi's only crime had been to trust too much and remain too steadfast a friend. She knew her face was darkening as she thought of Seon Ho and the part he had played in the whole drama, at the ease with which he had betrayed the only really good thing in his life. The two of them had both been such disappointments to her at first, but understanding Hwi better had led to an appreciation for the way in which he saw the world. If only she could share that vision, knowing peace might be within her grasp.

"And why did you want me to come here today?"

The floor was terribly interesting all at once and she traced the lines of matting while she struggled to come up with a more tempting lie than the one she had prepared. It was obvious now it wouldn't be good enough. "I don't have to pit you and Nam Jeon against each other or infiltrate either side," she said, stalling and hoping to distract him with the reassurance.

"You did have to infiltrate, you've just done it already," he pointed out lazily, allowing her to weasel out of the question for the time being.

"I didn't infiltrate your side, you invited me to join you knowing that I'd be a double agent. Celebrating it, even. Do you have a death wish, Your Highness?"

He laughed, totally unperturbed. "Truthfully?"

It surprised her that he would say it wistfully, though she supposed it shouldn't. It certainly seemed in character for him. "But you're always so determined that you're right," she protested.

"In some things. Not in all things. I can regret without turning from the path I've chosen. Those regrets are all the more reason not to turn. Why regret in vain?"

That was enough to give her pause. "To not add more? Regrets? Shouldn't you doubt the path if it leads you places you wish it hadn't?"

His look was arch. "Are you that young?"

Hui Jae shocked herself by laughing. "No. I suppose not."

"I see why your madame praises your intelligence but not your tact. Do you think you would you tell me if Nam Jeon and the Queen managed an assassination plan that might actually work? You want my head for yourself, don't you?" He was impish again, tilting the aforementioned head in question as if to remind her of her lust to knock it from his shoulders.

"It would depend," she said coyly, finally feeling she could begin to play her part again. He was uncannily good at demanding sincerity.

This time when she went for the wine cup, she contrived to reach across his place setting, nearly across his lap, her hand hovering over his arm. As she withdrew after pouring, she allowed her trailing sleeve to brush his exposed wrist.

He picked up the cup and took a long, lingering drink before slamming it down, then abruptly lurching forward towards her and dropping his hand on her knee, right where it was almost tucked into his side. She froze in shock and before she could react his other hand had closed around her forearm, holding it stretched out along the far edge of the table where she had been reaching for a second sweet as an excuse to move closer.

They stared at each other for several heartbeats which felt like eternity, his skin touching hers and his palm through the thin weave of her clothes feeling unbearably hot. His eyes slid down to her arm, then slowly back up to meet her gaze, his expression neutral yet raptly focussed. She was being measured again, and now she understood his probing and testing were not merely games. The contradiction of his stillness and his explosive action were not propelled by unchecked whims or capricious moods, they were patiently calculated. He was always in control.

Then he said, "Do you think that I don't know what you are doing?" His tone was conversational, even playful, as if he had caught her in a harmless joke they were now sharing.

Hui Jae sucked in a breath, knowing her eyes were wide and feeling her cheeks heating in outrage that he'd let her carry on like this and humiliate herself without signalling that it was futile.

Bang-won looked both amused and surprised at her reaction, the dimple reappearing in his cheek as he pursed his lips. He seemed be talking around a chuckle when he said, "Did you imagine this weak little implication of yours could deprive me of my senses? Make me forget myself? I wouldn't impugn your charms, but I will impugn your judgement if you considered me base enough to be so easily blinded by them. By any. People have always wanted a piece of my father. The nation's greatest courtesans have targeted my brothers and me since before my voice cracked. I'm afraid I've resisted far more accomplished attempts at seduction than yours."

She knew her face was likely splotched with red, but she couldn't help pushing away and crossing her arms despite how petulant it might make her look. "Contemptuous snake! You look down on people as playthings for your sport, don't you? You baited me into doing this out of spite!"

He stretched far forward over his bent knee, placing his palm flat on the floor between them to support his weight, encroaching on her space, "It was you who swore to kill me for slights I have never known or questioned. In fact, I think I accepted such a vow with fairly exceptional grace! No contempt at all, neither for your person nor your goals, even if your goal is my life. In fact, I quite like you, Miss Hui Jae."

Reaching over to the table, he poured more wine and slid the cup close to her. "There were two options for what you were attempting here. The subtle, which it turns out you are not suited to and failed before it could begin, and the bold. I respected you chiefly for your boldness, but I have wondered before what its limits might be. What would be too far? What would frighten you? I don't think you lacked boldness on my account, worried as you doubtless were that I might reciprocate bluntly and force your hand, I think you feared yourself and the risk your stubbornness would carry you to the point you'd have to confess your bluff. Of course you wouldn't sacrifice your honour, victory could only come from perfectly baiting the hook to inspire clandestine pursuit. But you're too unafraid for subtlety and too uncompromising to be blatant. It was hopeless."

Her breath was coming quickly and the heat still rising through her breast was mixed with a chill of uncertainty. Was he throwing a gauntlet? Was he mocking her?

The lamp had burned low and now cast him in ruddy orange light which made his skin gleam, creating stark shadows over his chiselled features. He could look so soft despite the sharply defined lines of his nose and jaw, the exacting planes of his cheekbones and brow. Perhaps it was the plump bow of his lips and the broad apples of his cheeks which made him seem sometimes so serene and youthful. Even his eyelashes were casting a shadow and it deepened the intrigue of his gaze with a dark line of emphasis above the glitter of his eyes.

She'd show him bold. She wouldn't let him win.

Hui Jae surged across the small gap between them and planted a clumsy kiss on his mouth.

Her plan, such as it was, was to shock him and prove him wrong. The impulse was not to allow for the possibility that she'd be cowed, that she was at all afraid of him or what he might do. What she had certainly not anticipated and would not have anticipated even if she had given her own actions a proper moment's thought, was that he would part his lips the slightest bit and turn his head just enough to return the kiss. That he would do it tenderly.

Something hot which was not fury shot through her body like a shock. A racing quiver of stimulation spread from her lips and stung her senses, like biting into an acidic fruit with cracked skin. A tiny noise escaped her the like of which she'd never heard herself make before and the prince smiled into the kiss as his hand came up to thread through her hair and direct her jaw to better align with his.

After what felt like the entire lifespan of the universe but also merely a single blink, he pulled away and looked at her.

There was mischief sparkling in his eyes but it was in no way sinister, in no way at her expense. There was no triumph, no cruel laughter. He looked fond and slightly bemused, as if he had never expected things to turn out this way despite the ease with which he'd predicted every factor leading up to it.

When he started to withdraw, as if to leave this unforseen development where it lay and go back to their game of conversation, she reached for him before she could stop herself. Her fingers curled indecisively and her hand hovered there between them while she chewed her lip. It still tingled.

He looked at her hand, then at her face.

She shuffled closer. He waited.

She lifted her hand again, describing a small arc just beside his temple but not touching. Her eyes flicked between his and her own hesitating fingers.

"Hui Jae," he started to say, to perhaps take pity on her and her dubiety.

But she didn't want to be given a graceful exit. She let the backs of her fingers brush the side of his forehead along the hairline, the warm softness of his skin causing little crackles of sensation to fire along her nerves. Turning her hand over, she allowed the pads of her fingers to trace over his brow, down the bridge of his absurdly perfect nose and then across the fullness of his cheek. She touched his chin, then followed the slope of his jaw back to the curve just beneath his ear, and an indescribable thrill went through her to be putting her hands where her eyes had so often travelled.

Letting her palm rest against his neck, feeling the throb of his pulse and the tension in the cord of muscle which tightened when he tilted his head, she was filled with the buzzing of an unfamiliar energy that made her breath seem short- as if she'd been running. Tentatively, she kissed him again, chastely, keeping her eyes open even though his had slid shut when she was caressing his face. She inhaled in tiny gasps as she dropped kisses outward to the corner of his lips and then mouthed along his jaw, wanting to taste him for reasons she couldn't fathom. He was almost perfectly still, allowing this to continue, and she lost all sense of reality as her existence narrowed to only the perception of him.

When her hand slid under his collar and into the hollow between his chest and shoulder, the warmth and intoxication of it was so overwhelming it was like being suddenly drunk. The firmness of his pectoral under her questing fingers made her mouth water. She reached for the tie holding his outer robe closed and was already pulling the knot before she stiffened in belated shock at what she was doing.

"I..." she floundered, still staring at the exposed V of skin she had uncovered below his collarbone. "May I… touch you?"

He smiled at her hushed request with a somehow terribly poignant sweetness and nodded solemnly in permission, then he leant back on his hands leaving himself completely exposed to her whim with an expression that seemed to suggest he was still uncertain of her intentions despite his willingness to be so vulnerable. It was an invitation, and not one she could resist.

Timidly, she installed herself beneath the arc of his left arm, tucking her legs to the side as she rolled off her heels to sit on the floor flush against his hip. She finished pulling apart the knot on his po coat and opened it out of the way, letting it pool to his right. The inner layers of jeorgori were easy to tug out from his belt and loosen so that she could trace the hard lines of muscle which made up the flat planes of his chest. She could just see the first ridge of his tense abdominals leading down to his navel under the disordered folds of his clothes. Resting her hand around his opposite side to steady herself, she could feel the pronounced taper from his broad shoulders down to his narrow waist. She could feel more of his strength and firmness. His radiating heat.

It brought her some kind of prodigious gratification to kiss his brow and his closed eyes, to map the shapes and textures of his face with her lips and the pads of her fingers. To study what made him so painfully, sublimely delectable with every one of her senses. She moaned slightly as she sought out his mouth again, brushing his lips with hers twice in little bussing contacts that he reciprocated, before pressing the question and suckling on that tauntingly enticing cupid's bow which had fascinated her far more than she would ever be prepared to acknowledge.

He opened his mouth and moved her jaw with his, showing her how to exchange breaths. When he touched her with his tongue she thought her blood was boiling. Then he was in her mouth and she knew it was. She was so hot she was shivering as if with fever.

Her hand had found its way up to cradle his head and hold him with her in the kiss as if he might seek to escape if she didn't, the silken slip of his hair tantalising against her palm. She was contemplating whether he would permit her to unwind his topknot and comb her fingers through the strands when he slid his mouth away from hers, across her cheek, down her jaw, and started kissing her neck. She let out an involuntary sound of pleasure at the soft wet contacts which seemed to prompt explosions of sensation under her skin, then bit her fist in embarrassment. She felt him smile against her throat and almost giggled before he applied himself once more to the task and all thoughts of mirth fled her mind. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, both hands clutching him closer, ravenous for his touch.

As soon as she could bear to shift away from the delicious torment of his tongue, she immediately copied what he had been doing to her, pressing her nose into the dip of his shoulder to inhale his scent before moving up towards his ear with lingering, open-mouthed kisses. His skin tasted slightly metallic and she licked it eagerly to investigate the flavour more thoroughly, dazedly half aware of her rational mind's attempts to categorise this transcendent experience. There was a beauty mark on the right side of his throat she now realised she had spent an inordinate quantity of time staring at, but that seemed less of a transgression when she was gently sucking at it with her mouth and soothing it with the tip of her tongue. He hummed in approval and the purr of his voice against her lips made her see stars.

Hui Jae trailed her hand over his starkly defined abdomen, finding a swooping belt of muscle just above his hips and mapping out its borders through his dishevelled clothes, letting it point her… down…

There was suddenly space between them and his hands were holding her face, gently, so gently. They both caught their breath as his thumb traced a whisper of a caress over her jaw, his grasp preventing her from turning away or ducking her chin to avoid his searching look.

"Have you ever done this before?" he asked, his voice thick and very low.

"No," she said quickly. She was terrified by the concern in his eyes, the soft set of his habitually sharp features, and she focussed her gaze on his mouth instead. It was the most sensual mouth she had ever seen. The fullness of his upper lip was slightly swollen where she had laboured her attention, the captivating natural pout even more pronounced than usual.

"Yet you would do it with me? You want to?"

She wasn't thinking, was hardly listening, she was only watching his mouth. When he fell silent, she reached for the silver binyeo holding up his topknot and pulled it free. His hair tumbled down around them in a silky black curtain and she had never felt more certain of anything than when she plunged both hands in and pulled him forward into a desperately hungry kiss.

His arms came around her and drew her close, his fingers cupping the base of her skull to support her head, the flutter of his eyelashes against her cheeks sending shivers and shocks through her entire nervous system. Unbearably hot now, she broke away to yank her own jeorgori open, discovering when she leaned back that she was now seated between his knees, using his inner thigh as a back rest. It seemed almost instinctive, unconscious when she licked her lips and ran her palm across his naked chest, inside his shirt and down the sturdy musculature of his arm. She pushed half the jeorgori back and off his shoulder, fully exposing most of his upper body to her enthralled gaze.

He shook free of the sleeve and reached for her, tipping her jaw to kiss her again, and she responded eagerly even as she took hold of his wrist and guided his hand down over her body to the apparent centre of all this insanity at the apex of her thighs.

Shocked by her brazenness, or perhaps by the molten heat of her, he startled out of the kiss.

"You're soaking..." he muttered in what sounded like disbelief. "Just from this?"

"You- you- you make me…!" she grunted in protest as his hand moved and circled around to her back, but her irritation vanished into a pleasured gasp when he yanked her tight against him and her breasts were pressed into his unyielding chest. "Infuriatingly beautiful…! I've never felt this, I didn't think it really existed."

"Mmmm," he hummed, almost chuckling. "And you growing up in a kisaeng house."

"Surrounded by counterfeit, how could I know what the real thing was like? They talk of companionship and sweetness being all they want, free from... obligations. I thought... a woman just didn't feel such things like a man does. I thought it was an indignity to be endured for the sake of a regard."

He looked tender then, gently tucking her hair behind her ear even as he kept her clasped so near she could feel the searing heat of his skin through their remaining clothing and the lightning contact of naked flesh on flesh. Every time she inhaled, her breasts swelled against the resistance of his firm muscles and it flooded her senses with excitement. "Are you enduring now?"

She squirmed in his hold, struggling to get her hands loose from her sleeves and touch him as much as possible. She shook her head as she smoothed her palms along his sides and around to his shoulder blades, dizzy with delight. "I was never a kisaeng, my mother was a kisaeng, but I never had to... And I never knew this heat and this want, I thought desire was a little flutter and perhaps a- a- friendliness!"

The laugher shook his body and she could only resent him half as much as she would have liked because the feeling of the vibration against her skin was so magnificent.

"I didn't know what it was you'd awoken in me," she mumbled, still hating to admit it.

His bright gaze found hers as he pulled away, the light catching sparks of reddish gold in his irises now that she was close enough to see them. He smiled wryly all on one side of his mouth, looking slightly chagrined himself. "If it is any consolation to you, neither did I. Your dislike seemed very genuine."

"Oh, it was. I begrudged you terribly for having such an effect on me. Power over me. Until today, I thought you were quite a different sort of person and I hated the idea such a person could make me lose control."

"A scoundrel?" he reminded her, coy.

"And worse. But that's the way you like it, isn't it?" She looped her arm around his neck and traced a finger along his opposite collar bone from above, entranced by its graceful slope.

Bang-won was still, she could feel him watching her as she in turn watched her own continued explorations and caresses on his skin.

"What's worse than a scoundrel?" he finally asked.

She smiled, somehow having known he wouldn't be able to bear the curiosity. "Frivolousness."

"You hated me because you thought I was not serious?"

Hui Jae laughed a little under her breath and nodded. "Life is a very serious thing, Your Highness." She paused and really looked at him, finally meeting his eyes again and letting a raw openness build between them. There was a naked vulnerability running deep in him that she could now see, his mind might be an impenetrable fortress the key to which he would never entrust with a single soul but his heart was right there on his sleeve where no one had cared to look. They had more in common than she could have ever imagined those first few days on the run. He clearly hadn't had a childhood either. "But you know that far too well, don't you?"

That had cut him somewhere, drawn blood. His expression was one of muted shock and fiercely withheld emotion. She did not think withheld from her, but from the world in general.

"And now..." she trailed off, waiting for his attention. "Now that I recognise you, I can no longer hate to want you. Now I can only want you so much, so badly, I-"

He kissed her then and they both surged into the kiss with total abandon, her tongue in his mouth, even sliding along his teeth. She'd never imagined doing a thing like that, ever wanting to, but it was suddenly imperative to suck his tongue back into her mouth and coax his jaw even wider.

"Please, I promise I'll tell you if Her Majesty plans to move, if you'll only-!" she broke off to gasp, breast heaving as she fell back to mouthing at his neck.

"This is turning out the very opposite to your intentions, isn't it?" he observed, desire not entirely masking his amusement.

"I might have been lying to myself about my intentions." Hui Jae put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him back into the seating cushions, urging his knees to straighten so she could straddle his thighs and go to work on his belt. Her heart thrummed wildly, its beat echoing in her ears. She bent over him and pressed a wet kiss just below his navel, the sensation of his abdominal muscles twitching at the contact travelling like a bolt from her lips to her toes and making her eyes roll closed of their own accord. She did it again, lower, then whispered against his skin, "May I touch you?" while her hand slid to the ties of his baji.

"I have not the slightest objection."

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

She had lost count of the number of nights they'd had like this. It was best not to think of it or to try to place it in a context. It was best to simply relish the delection of his naked chest beneath her cheek and the sensation of his fingers stroking her hair. The rise and fall of his breath rocked her like a gentle wave, as if she lay on the bottom of a boat in a shady cove.

"The person who represented the simple life you could have had," Bang-won's husky voice rumbled against her skin, the vibrations pleasant and soothing even if his words raised a distant sense of alarm. "It was Hwi, wasn't it? You said Nam Jeon had killed him."

"I thought so, for a time."

He sighed and she sensed his uneasiness, perhaps his guilt. "How long?"

"I discovered he was alive the night he carried out your assassination at Ihwaru."

Hui Jae felt him stiffen slightly in her arms, perhaps shocked it had been so long ago. Before her disastrous attempt at incitement, not after. She began to run her palm over his shoulder and down his arm in long, comforting strokes. "I mourned for that other life I could have had, that other self I could have been. But I've begun to know the self I really am a little better, and I would never have lived that life he wanted. I wouldn't have been content with a full belly and eyes that never looked up to the horizon. I wanted to see a new sunrise, a new country. Justice. Glory."

His hand fell away from her hair and down to her back, his arm tightening around her. "He would have followed you."

"I know. But he would be far happier if I never asked him to. He could only be truly content with someone else."

Bang-won tucked his chin, trying to see her face, but she didn't lift her head. "And you? Are you content with someone else?"

"Content isn't the word I would use. I told you I was ambitious. I want to see your kingdom."