When Yewon woke up the following morning, Seungcheol wasn’t there, but Haein was.

“Good morning, your highness,” Haein said. Yewon sat up, feeling a bit disappointed that he wasn’t there to wake up with her like last time.

“Good morning,” she replied meekly.

“You sound upset. Did it not go well last night?” Haein asked curiously.

“No, it went well,” Yewon answered her.

“Then why do you look upset?”

“I confessed,” Yewon told her. “But he didn’t react. I don’t think he believed me.”

Haein smiled briefly. “Confessed? So you finally fell for him?”

“What’s the point if he doesn’t believe it?”

“Why does it matter if he believes it or not?” Haein replied, still smiling happily. “You love the person you’re bound to for life; it’s a wonderful thing for you. Enjoy it, and be happy. And if you truly love him, it will be impossible for him not to sense it eventually.”

Yewon nodded, feeling a little less lousy than before. But still, there was something awfully unsatisfying about the whole situation. Even if Seungcheol did happen to believe her, it was all so far from the ideal that she wished between them.

“I’m so happy to hear this,” Haein said, “but Wonwoo will be upset to know that your heart has completely moved on from him.”

Being reminded of Wonwoo suddenly made Yewon feel lousy again. She remembered the difficult time Wonwoo was going through, and how Seungcheol was so jealous of him, and how the two deeply resented one another now. She figured that if Wonwoo knew that she had fallen for Seungcheol, he’d hate Seungcheol even more than he already did.

“Don’t tell him, please,” Yewon requested.

“I won’t, your highness. But he’s going to realize it whether I tell him or not.”

-

Yewon wanted to go to the hospital that day. She had received a message from the head nurse there telling her that the patients were all shaken about Jinye’s sudden execution, and that there was a widespread illness breaking out that they needed funding to cure. She had to go and oversee that, but Seungcheol had ordered her to stay in the palace, and she didn’t have the chance to argue with him about it.

And so she went to him that morning. She found him in his room, working, looking stressed as he studied maps and military reports. She figured he was having a hard time filling Wonwoo’s shoes and making the decisions that Wonwoo usually made.

“What are you doing here, your highness?” he asked her as he lifted his head from the map he was analyzing.

She still couldn’t shake off how she felt the previous night, when she told him that she loved him but he showed no reaction at all. Him not reacting to the confession was almost worse than if he had rejected it, thought Yewon. It was like it had no bearing on him at all, so he couldn’t even acknowledge it.

She cleared and told him: “I’m going to the hospital today. Please send an order for a carriage to take me.”

Seungcheol sighed. “No,” he said.

She frowned. “Why not?”

“Just obey my orders, your highness.”

“No,” she replied with a frown. “Until you give me a convincing reason, I’m-”

“What are you going to do?” he cut her off curtly. “You can’t do anything if you don’t have an order from me.”

“Why are you acting so cold all of the sudden?”

“Because you aren’t listening to me,” he replied, suddenly frowning.

“I’m not going to listen to someone who just orders me to do things without giving me a proper reason for it. You don’t own me, Seungcheol, and I want to make sure you know that,” she snapped.

“Be that as it may,” he continued, “you are still not allowed to get out of this palace.”

For the first time in a long time, Yewon felt a deep sense of anger in her chest. He was suppressing her against her will and taunting her for not being able to do anything about it. He was acting cold and selfish, and it reminded her of the awful first few months of knowing him, where he treated her terribly. It was like suddenly, that old Prince who hated everything to do with her was back, glaring at her as if she were a liability he would rather not deal with.

She remembered that this had happened before: he forbade her from going to the hospital again, and she threatened him with her own life. Although circumstances then were so much different, she decided to do the same this time, as she had nothing against him but her life.

“I’ll kill myself,” she threatened. “If that’s how you want to treat me, I’ll kill myself.”

She could tell that the words made him tense and anxious. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he stammered as he tried to come up with a response. The firmness in his voice faded, and instead he spoke as if her were trying to reason with her: “If you kill yourself, you’ll destroy the only link that we have with Galacia, one of the few things that gives us hope for peace. If you kill yourself, your father will blame me and rage against us like a madman, and restart the war that we’ve been trying so hard to subdue. You wouldn’t lead to that.”

“You overestimate my worth,” she replied. “If you don’t remember, my father disowned me. I mean nothing to Galacia. You said yourself that the reason you’re still married to me is because you want me to be Queen of this country, not because I’m a peacekeeper. I’m not a symbol of peace anymore, and you know it. And that rumor about me and Soonyoung probably reached my country already, and unlike you, the people there probably believe it. I have a bad reputation, Seungcheol, and Galacia does not claim me. I’m a traitor and a to my people, and to my family as well. So I will kill myself. Don’t try me.” Her own words hurt her, and she found herself choked up an on the verge of tears when she finished saying it. Suddenly, she reminded herself that she was stranded and that her home would not welcome her back. Even if her father did, her people would never. She already had a bad reputation before she married Seungcheol, but now, her people think she ran away and abandoned her country, broke the alliance with China, had relations with her husband’s brother, and watched her people get executed in Solen without saying a word. How the people there must hate her, she thought.

A tear strolled down her cheek, much to her dissatisfaction. She didn’t want to show weakness now that she was challenging Seungcheol, but she couldn’t help it.

Her crying did soften him, and the glare faded from his face. “Okay,” he conceded softly, “I’ll give you the reason why I don’t want you at the hospital: the illness that’s breaking out there is contagious, and some people have died from it. I don’t want you to be exposed to that. Is that a convincing enough reason?”

That was a reason she had not considered before. She thought he was just trying to guard her honor or something by not letting her out during a time of scandal, but it wasn’t about honor at all. It was about her life.

She wiped her eyes from the tears. “Why didn’t you just say that before?” she mumbled. “Why did you have to make me challenge you and get angry and emotional?”

He didn’t answer; he just avoided her tearful eyes and turned his attention back to his maps.

“I still want to go to the hospital,” she said with a sniffle. “If the patients are dying because of an illness, it would be wrong not to go and see how I can help.”

“No,” he insisted with both anger and despair in his voice. “No, Yewon. You are not going.”

The fact that he said her name like that, with no formality or title attached to it, made her sense that this refusal was coming from something beyond just politics. Not allowing her to go to the hospital was not about his duty as a husband or a prince, it was about something else altogether.

“I’ll wear a mask and gloves,” she assured him. “I won’t get sick.”

“Stop it, please,” he said, and it sounded like he lost control of his voice, for the firmness with which he wanted to speak faltered at the last word. Instead, it sounded like he was imploring her.

It was his tone that made her back down and not demand to go again.

He cleared his throat, probably embarrassed by how his words came out. “When the illness disappears, you can go,” he said, trying but failing to make his voice sound firm again.

“But they need me now,” she tried again to reason with him.

“This isn’t about them! Why aren’t you understanding?” he muttered under his breath, appearing very troubled.

“Then help me understand,” she told him. “Stop being elusive and just tell me what’s on your mind right now that’s making you act like this.”

He leaned back in his chair and began fiddling with the barbs of his quill.

“So, are you going to say anything?” she asked when she got no response from him.

His eyes remained fixated on his fiddling fingers, and eventually, some words came out of his mouth: “I don’t want you to go to the hospital, because I don’t think I can handle losing someone I love for the third time,” he admitted faintly.

Yewon’s mind went blank and her body went stiff. She stared at him with wide, confused eyes, but he was still focused on the stupid quill he was playing with.

“Leave me now,” he managed to say after a few seconds of silence. “I have a lot of work to do.”

She still couldn’t find it in herself to move, still processing what he was saying and what it implied.

“Can you repeat what you just said?” she asked him, still baffled.

“I was telling you that I have a lot of work to do-”

“Oh come on! You know what I meant!” she whined. Still, Seungcheol was focused on the quill, and Yewon knew that he was avoiding her eyes. He always diverted his focus when he was telling her something personal. “Would you look at me, please?” she requested.

He heeded that request and lifted his head towards her, but he didn’t say another word.

“Say something,” she urged him.

“I said all that I wanted to say. Now, if you would excuse me, I need to work,” he told her. “Leave, before I call the guards.”

“You can’t just kick me out after saying something like that!” she whined.

“Guards!” Seungcheol called, much to her frustration.

Seungkwan entered and bowed to the both of them.

“ the princess out please,” Seungcheol ordered, and Seungkwan acknowledged the order, took her arm and pulled her out of the room. Yewon didn’t complain and followed without making a fuss, mostly because she didn’t want to give Seungkwan a hard time.

She kept peering over her shoulders back at her husband as she was dragged out, but he focused his attention back to the maps in front of him, avoiding her probing eyes at all costs.

A/N: I told you I’ll update soon!