Her foot still hurt when she walked on it, but she ignored the pain and limped out of the room, keen on confronting her husband once and for all.

“Seungcheol!” she called out to him, who was further down the hall. He stopped and turned to her.

“Yes?”

“What is wrong with you?” she sputtered at him. “Why are you treating me like I’m not there? Why are you ignoring me?”

He looked taken aback by her anger. He lifted his head towards her and calmly explained: “Forgive me if I’ve offended you, princess. I never intended to ignore you. I just don’t know how to act with you anymore. And I did come by your chambers last night to give you a proper greeting, but you were asleep.”

She suddenly felt silly for snapping at him like that and for assuming he was purposely acting cold towards her.

“Is your foot okay?” he asked her.

“It’s fine,” she replied sheepishly, still embarrassed by her outburst.

“Do you need a guard to help you walk?”

“No,” she insisted.

He took a few steps towards her and held out his arm for her to take. “I’ll walk you back to your room,” he offered.

She did not want to go back to her room; she had planned to stay with Wonwoo for a longer time. However, she also did not want to turn down this opportunity for time with Seungcheol. There was unresolved tension between them that was driving her crazy, and she wanted to resolve it as soon as possible.

She took his arm and they started walking (limping in her case) wordlessly for a minute.

Eventually he spoke up, his eyes on the floor: “I’m sorry for what you had to go through because of me.”

“I forgive you,” she said quickly, her mind set on resolving the tension.

“Princess, I caused death and devastation to your country and mine. I should give you a lot more than just an apology to earn your forgiveness.”

“It’s in the past now,” Yewon replied. “You can’t change it, and so you shouldn’t dwell on it.”

One look at him and Yewon could see that there was no light in them at all. He was drowning in sorrow, regret and self-loathing, dwelling on an unalterable past that he wished he could change.

He was such a sad person in almost every way, Yewon concluded. She had always known that, but now she realized it more clearly than ever before. Two of his lovers were murdered, he had to marry an enemy against his will, he had to carry the guilt of leading the most disastrous battle his country had probably ever seen­. He could never catch a break. Sorrow seemed to follow him wherever he went. Small wonder he had a reputation of being cold and unapproachable; small wonder he never smiled. He had no reason to be happy.

The more she knew him, the more she realized this deep unhappiness that somehow characterized him, the more she understood him, the fonder she was of him, the more she wished she could change him…

She remembered when she first met him: she thought he was a callous man with a heart of ice. Somehow she thought that he was insensitive and incapable of feeling, a pure politician per se.

It was he who taught her the distinction between ‘passion’ and ‘politics,’ a distinction that was now clearer in her head than ever before. Seungcheol had often claimed to be a politician– never letting his emotions influence his decisions, never letting passion get in the way of ruling the country. However, increasingly, she began to understand that Seungcheol was so far from a politician. He was the embodiment of the darkest side of passion. His heart of ice had never been built on apathy, rather it was built on the unspeakable emotional suffering he had experienced in the past years, suffering that she could never begin to imagine.

As she walked she felt pain in her swollen foot and asked that they stop walking for a bit so she could rest it.

“I’ll ask a guard to bring a chair to carry you,” Seungcheol suggested.

“That’s not necessary,” Yewon told him. “I’ll just sit on the floor.” She knew that suggestion did not sit too well with Seungcheol because of his obsession with honor and propriety.

“Your highness, with all due respect,” he began to complain; however, it was too late and Yewon sat down on the floor before he could make his case.

“You can leave if you’re too embarrassed,” Yewon said to him when she saw that it made him uncomfortable. “But I really need to sit down right now.”

“At least walk a little bit more to my room around the corner so you can sit on a proper chair,” he appealed hopefully. Yewon smiled slightly at the way he said it, realizing that his attitude towards her had changed so much since the last time she had seen him. Past Seungcheol would have frowned at her and lectured her about the way a proper princess should conduct herself, but present Seungcheol was offering it as a suggestion and not an assertive demand.

She nodded in agreement, and he took her hand and helped her up from the floor, asking her to put her weight on him if walking with her hurt foot was too painful.

As he helped her to his room, Yewon realized that it would the perfect opportunity to finally consolidate their marriage. She began to plan how she was going to ask him to have with her; she knew that she had to be the one to ask him to do it as he did not look like he was intent on anything like that at all.

The guards outside his room opened the door for them, and when they were inside, Seungcheol pulled her towards the seating area with the chairs. However, she resisted going in the direction he was pulling her, and instead pulled him towards the bed. He immediately understood what she was trying to do.

“Princess, you shouldn’t be doing this. You’re still recovering,” he told her as she pulled him.

“I’m alright,” she insisted. “And I really, really want to be pregnant right now. And you also really need me to be pregnant too…” She took a seat on the bed, taking his arm and pulling him beside her. “Please, Seungcheol. No more delays.”

Seungcheol sighed softly and said: “you’re right. I really do need you to be pregnant right now. The entire country needs you to be pregnant. But you can be pregnant without me.”

“What?” she narrowed her eyes.

“I know what you feel for Wonwoo. I know that both of you are attracted to one another, and I know that I am in the middle of it all…”

“This has nothing to do with Won–”

“Let me finish,” Seungcheol cut her off. “I have been thinking a lot lately, your highness. And I don’t want to do this with you,” he said while signaling towards the bed. “So, I’m not going to block your chances at happiness with someone else.”

“What are you saying?” she asked,

“I’m saying that you don’t have to suppress anything with Wonwoo anymore. If you want to be with him, then do it.”

“You make it sound like I can’t live without him,” Yewon replied, surprised at what he was implying. “What are you assuming that I love him anyways?”

“I know that you snuck out to meet him when I prohibited you from doing so. I also know that you kissed him,” Seungcheol revealed, startling her.

“How did you know about that?” she replied with a guilty expression on her face.

“He told me,” Seungcheol replied. “Before the battle, he admitted it and told me that he loved you and that you two had met behind my back. At first I was angry; it’s why I didn’t write to you. I felt disrespected.”

Yewon had not known that Wonwoo came clean to Seungcheol about what had happened between them. She was surprised that Wonwoo had told him, because she thought he would keep it a secret. And even if he did tell Seungcheol the truth, he should have informed her that he did. Why didn’t he? It was not like there wasn’t an opportunity for him to tell her: they were stuck alone together for two weeks with nothing to do. But he didn’t even bring it up. He should have told her, and Yewon could not help but feel like Wonwoo deliberately avoided doing so.

She made a mental note to interrogate Wonwoo about that later.

Seungcheol continued: “It’s clear that you want to have a romance with him, and after what you did for Solen, I feel like I owe you. This is why I’m offering you the chance to do what you want with him. I’ll claim any child that you carry–”

“Stop,” she said with a frown on her face, finding what he was saying absolutely outrageous. “Aren’t you the one who’s obsessed with protecting my honor?”

“Your honor will remain protected if no one knows about it,” he told her. “And I won’t force you to do anything; it’s your decision in the end. Right now, I only want you to be happy, your highness.” He lifted his head and held eye contact with her. “Do whatever would make you happy.”

What he said flustered her a little bit, and she was at a loss for words. His behavior towards really did change, and she felt that now more than ever. He had been so forceful towards her before, but suddenly, he was giving her the freedom to do one of the most dishonorable things a queen could do. She was not used to this; she was accustomed to having him impose his ideals on her and rebelling against him if she didn’t agree. Did his sense of indebtedness to her really change his attitude towards her that much?

As fond as she was of Wonwoo, the suggestion to have an affair with him was outrageous to her. Even though she imagined Wonwoo as the male protagonist in all her sensual novels, she never considered making reality any of the fictional occurrences she had so often imagined. There was a very clear delineation between reality and fiction that she was keen to maintain; her emotional attachment to Wonwoo would never amount to anything more than just that.

She remembered how dirty she felt after what happened with Soonyoung; her feelings for Soonyoung did not have anything to do with how dirty she felt. It was just the fact she had ual relations with another man that made her feel so disgusting. She would feel the same way with Wonwoo, regardless of how much she loved him, and regardless of her husband’s permission.

She didn’t want this scandalous arrangement; she didn’t even have to think twice about that.

She gulped and began her response: “I’m sorry about what happened between me and Wonwoo. It was a momentary lapse in judgement that I now regret. It’s over now, and I won’t let it happen again. And thank you for your offer, and for considering my happiness, but what you’re suggesting will not make me happy. I want to have a child with the man that is my husband. I want my son or daughter be raised knowing their real father. I don’t want my attachment to Wonwoo to get in the way of what really matters, and that is ruling this country by your side and leading it to peace and prosperity. I want to do it the honorable way, and I will not let these stupid romantic fantasies undermine that.”

Seungcheol gazed at her wondrously and nodded, “I see.” He shifted slightly on the bed, turning his body slightly so that he was facing her: “I’ve always known this, but every day I see it in you more and more: you are going to make the most remarkable queen, Princess Yewon.”

That was her favorite compliment. No matter who said it, she always found herself blushing when she heard it. But before she had a chance to properly react to Seungcheol’s rare compliment, he reached for the back of her neck pulled closer to close the distance between their lips. He kissed her softly, and she encouraged him by kissing him again before their lips had the chance to separate.

Yewon felt like everything was somehow right in that moment, like the stars were aligned and that the world was in order. There was no feeling of guilt or sense of impending disaster like she had felt when she was with Wonwoo, it was only the satisfaction of finally making progress towards something they both wanted.

Eventually, his hands were on her thighs, and the clothes on the bodies felt obstructive, but then he stopped and moved away from her, which disappointed and unnerved her. Was he going to do what he did last time and cut it short so abruptly and humiliate her again?

“I’m going to tell the guards to not let anyone disturb us,” he explained, and she let out a small sigh of relief.

As he went to the door to speak to the guard, she remembered that there was something she had to tell him before.

She sat up, and when he came back to her, she said: “there’s something you need to know before…”

“Yes?” he asked, taking her hand and pulling her up from the bed so that she was standing. He circled behind her and began untying the laces to her dress.

“I’m not going to bleed,” she admitted. He was behind her, and she couldn’t see his reaction, but she felt him freeze for a short second. “I’ll explain,” she prepared to lie and claim that the cucumber culprit, but he cut her off.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he said, “I don’t need to know.”

That was the last thing he said to her before turning her around and kissing her again.

A/N: ive got nothing to say i'll just let you guys react lol