"Where were you last night?” Seunghceol asked Yewon the following morning. He had come to her room while Haein was fixing her bun, and he appeared quite angry with her.

“With Wonwoo,” she answered, not looking at him.

“Lady Haein, please leave us,” Seungcheol requested, and Haein bowed and retreated.

“Princess, you can’t just spend nights with men…” Seungcheol said.

“Why not? You do it all the time,” she snarled at him.

Seungcheol frowned at her, visibly quite irked by her statement. Yewon thought he deserved it.

“I’m happy for the friendship between you and Wonwoo, but don’t go overboard. Spending the night with him is going overboard.”

“Why is it okay for you and not for me?” Yewon asked him, as if challenging him.

“Because…” Seungcheol hesitated, but came up with a valid answer nonetheless: “I will be the King of my own country, and you won’t. I can’t be kicked out of my role as King, but your role as Queen is hanging by a thread.”

Yewon had nothing to say to that. Seungcheol was right: she was not in the position to jeopardize herself and do things that could undermine her honor. And yes, her role as queen was hanging on a thread. She was then reminded that the only way for that thread to become stronger was if she bore a son, and she was not even close at the moment.

Suddenly stressed, she turned to him and told him she needed a son.

“I know you need a son. And I need one too. And I was prepared to give you one yesterday, but you ran off with my brother…”

“Tonight,” she reassured him.

“Okay,” he said. “Make sure to be here.”

She nodded.

“One more thing,” Seungcheol added quickly. “Jeonghan’s going to the hospital today. Do you want to go with him or do you hate him too much?”

The idea of spending an extended period of time with him made her feel anxious, but she also did not want to abandon her mission of being a good example to Solenese people. She nodded hesitantly, but made a note to herself to not speak to Jeonghan at all.

-

Yewon and Jeonghan were in the same carriage on the way to the hospital, and Yewon made it pretty clear that she did not want him to say a word to her by avoiding all eye contact.

But Jeonghan did speak to her eventually, “your highness,” he called out to her, “I know you hate me, but hating me won’t help your cause. Please don’t make your aversion to me so obvious in front of the patients. They trust me far more than they trust you, so cooperate.”

She hated to admit it, but he had a point. She nodded her head towards him in agreement.

“I also have something to say to you,” Jeonghan said locking eyes with her, looking sincere for the first time. “Your husband is very, very dear to me. He saved my life and later gave me reason to live. You might think that our affair repulsive and unfair to you, but from my point of view, it’s my most precious thing. Please think about that."

For the first time ever, Yewon felt that he was vulnerable as he spoke to her. From the slight waver in his voice, she could sense how genuine his words were, how much he meant them from the depth of his heart.

"Please don’t turn him against me,” he added seconds later.

That was perhaps the most human she had ever seen him. He wasn’t smiling like he usually was, and his eyes exuded of earnest passion as he pled her not to turn her husband against him.

“I… I don’t think I have any power over Seungcheol to turn him against you,” Yewon told Jeonghan, still quite alarmed by his sudden sincerity.

Jeonghan smiled, but it was a sad kind of smile: “but you’ve already started to turn him against me, princess. You have so much more power over him than you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“He has been treating me differently ever since you married him,” Jeonghan said sadly, and for a moment, Yewon felt like he was about to cry. “Please don’t turn him against me,” he pled again. “Please. You Galacians have already taken away everything from me, please don’t take him away too.”

It was perhaps in that one moment that Yewon went from hating Jeonghan to feeling sorry for him.

-

The visit to the hospital was productive. The patients were becoming more accustomed to her, and she felt like most of them had stopped hating her. Of course, there were incidents of icy stares and rude comments, but over time, those incidents decreased. On the contrary, she found herself befriending some of the patients, most of all the boy with one leg, Dino.

She also learned more about the administrative processes, and helped Jeonghan take note of missing supplies that he needed to pay for and send. For a few hours, the two of them seemed to forget their differences and work together, and it felt pleasant.

She caught Jeonghan staring at her once while she was laughing at a joke Dino was telling her. When he realized he was caught, Jeonghan looked away and pretended to be busy doing other things. Yewon wondered what it was that he was thinking.

It was only on the way back that he told her what he had been thinking: “even the patients like you more than they like me,” he said, laughing sadly. He seemed truly hurt by it. “But it’s okay,” he added, “as long as you keep making them happy, I’m happy.”

-

When she came back from the hospital and made her way to her room to bathe and change, she found Haein standing over her desk, reading something.

She jumped when Yewon entered, and when Yewon asked what Haein was doing, Haein pointed to the box on the table. It was the Galacian bread.

“I’m sorry for intruding princess,” Haein said, “but I found the note on this box extremely curious.”

Yewon glanced at the note. It was the same exact note she always got: “To my princess, from S.”

“If I may be so intrusive and ask, but who is S?” Haein asked.

“I don’t know,” Yewon answered. “Someone from the royal family though.”

Haein nodded, “yes, that is the royal seal.” Haein still looked like she was suspecting something.

Yewon took the box and opened it, eager to eat the bread she knew was waiting for her. But before she could put it in , Haein yelled to stop her.

Yewon, startled, put the bread back in the box.

“It could be someone trying to hurt you,” Haein said taking the box from Yewon’s hands, “you shouldn’t just eat things anonymous people send you…”

Yewon nodded, but then added slowly: “I’ve been eating this bread for weeks now, every single day, and nothing has happened to me. I trusted it because it had the royal seal, so I thought it must be someone from the royal family…”

“It’s not Seungcheol, your highness,” Haein told her frenziedly, seeming worried. “And it’s also not Soonyoung. I can tell from the handwriting.”

Yewon recalled that Haein was a scribe who copied books, and so it was understandable that she had expertise in different handwritings and calligraphy. Eager to finally have some kind of lead as to who it was that was sending the bread, she asked: “then who is it?”

“I don’t know,” Haein shrugged her shoulders as she looked at the note. “The seal is obviously legitimate, but this handwriting does not belong to a royal. You have to report this to Prince Seungcheol...”

“No!” Yewon said quickly, “no, please. I don’t want whoever it is to stop sending them to me.”

“But princess, what if it has some harmful substance in it?”

“I’ve been taking it for weeks. I don’t think it’s doing anything to me. This is Galacian bread, Haein. Whoever is sending it is giving me piece of my home, and I don’t want him or her to stop sending it…”

Haein shook her head, “but your highness…”

“I trust the sender, so please, please, let me eat it,” she reached out her hand for the box, and Haein returned it to her with a bow of her head.

As Yewon started eating it, Haein bit her lower lip, looking distraught.

“The person who sent this has simple handwriting,” Haein told her. “That’s how I know it’s not a royal, because royals learn calligraphy and write with more abstract handwork. So the fact simple handwriting is sealed with the royal sign is suspicious.”

This was new information to her. Yewon had not considered the simplicity of the handwriting, but looking at it again, she noted the lack of artistry in the words. “So, what are you saying?” Yewon asked her.

“Let me help you find the person sending it. Do you have other copies of the letter?”

Fortunately, Yewon had kept them all. She opened the drawer where the letters were piled and handed them to Haein, who looked through them one by one.

“It’s the same person,” Haein said as she inspected the writing. She then came to one particular letter and began inspecting it more carefully. “Look here,” Haein said, pointing to the seal on that letter: “the seal was damaged by someone’s finger.”

Yewon saw that the wax did not harden to the shape of the seal like it did on all the other letters, and there was the shape of someone’s fingerprint subtly outlined over it.

“This kind of wax is the kind we use in this palace, and it hardens within one minute,” Haein told Yewon, “so someone must have accidently placed their finger over it seconds after the wax was poured onto the paper.” She concluded. “It must be whoever’s sending them.”

Yewon took the letter from Haein and looked at the shape of the finger. It was a small finger, and one with relatively longer nails. A woman’s?

Yewon then put her finger over it. It fit almost perfectly.

“It’s my finger,” Yewon said to Haein, showing her how her finger and nail fit into the imprint over the seal.

“Then you must have received this less than a minute after it was sealed!” Haein concluded, “which is strange, because regularly, packages go through the head butler before they are delivered. And if you receive the boxes in this room, it is a long walk away from where the actual royal seals would be…”

Yewon narrowed her eyes as she considered this new information and what it meant.

“And given that your fingernail almost perfectly fits this means that this was recent. Have you recently received a note like this anywhere other than your room?” Haein asked.

Yewon thought for a while, and remembered: no more than three days ago, she received the box right outside of Seungcheol’s room, after she left flustered when he kissed her for the first time…

It suddenly hit Yewon who it was that sent her the bread, and how this person got ahold of the royal seal.

“Who delivers the boxes to you, your highness?” Haein asked curiously; she had figured it out too.

“The kitchen boy,” Yewon answered.

A/N: why did literally NO ONE suspect the kitchen boy who keeps appearing in the story again and again and says suspicious all the time???? lmao. Guess what the kitchen boy’s name is now? ;)