For a long time after that confrontation, Yewon’s head was up in the clouds. She kept replaying those words in her head over and over and over again. “I don’t think I can lose someone I love for the third time.”

She analyzed every aspect of that sentence. He was afraid of losing her? He didn’t want her to die? And her favorite part: “someone I love.” He loves her. That’s what the phrase implies, right? There is no other way around it, no other way to interpret it. “For the third time.” First was Solbin. Second was Jeonghan. And third was her?

She backtracked a little and realized that maybe Jeonghan was the third, Solbin was the second, and the first could be someone she did not know about. Maybe Seungcheol was seeing her as Jeonghan again?

That made a lot more sense, she thought.

She remembered that Seungcheol had told her that Jeonghan always insisted on going to the hospital no matter how much Seungcheol said that he couldn’t. Maybe Seungcheol saw Jeonghan in her when she insisted to go herself, and was saying “someone I love” to refer to Jeonghan.

Yes, that must be it, she reasoned.

Or… or… or… he just said it to shut her up. She was defying him and not taking no for an answer, and he knew that she, being the romance-obsessed fool that she was, would stop complaining once she heard him say that. Yes, that made more sense. He was just manipulating her. Yes, that made a lot more sense.

The more she reasoned with herself and tried to understand what had happened, the less convinced she was of her initial conclusion that he loved her. She felt stupid for believing that he did, and scolded herself countless time for being too far up in her delusions, unable to separate fact from fiction.

-

Yulhee had just recently started her first cycle, making her moody and even more talkative than before, if that was even possible.

Within hours after the first blood, all of the guards and servants, male and female, had found out, as Yulhee could not stop talking about how gross it was and how much her belly hurt. The maids tried to tell her to be quiet, to tell her that it’s not proper men to know about it, but she wasn’t convinced.

The maids and nurses who were teaching her about what this blood meant could not satisfy her raging curiosity. And so Yewon decided to help them and explain to Yulhee exactly what the blood coming out of her body meant.

“It means you’re not a girl anymore. You’re a woman, and you’re ready to have babies,” Yewon told her.

“Really?” Yulhee asked with wide eyes.

“Yes! It’s like laying eggs. But you need a man to help those eggs hatch.”

“But why does it hurt so much,” she whined. “If the eggs hatch, does that mean it won’t hurt?”

“It means the egg stays inside of you and you become pregnant. But if you don’t have a man to help them hatch, the eggs will go out of your body, and it will hurt a little.”

“Then I need a man as soon as possible, because the stupid eggs hurt.”

Yewon laughed at that, but her laugh was stifled when Yulhee asked the next question.

“But Yewon, you have a man. So why aren’t your eggs hatching?” Yulhee looked genuinely curious, but the question stung Yewon a little bit.

Yewon shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t know why her eggs weren’t hatching either.

“Maybe it’s because you need to be in love for the eggs to hatch,” Yulhee suggested. “Because it hatched with Solbin and…”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh,” Yulhee covered . “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that!”

“Solbin was pregnant when she died?” Yewon asked; this was news to her.

“Don’t tell anyone I told you that!” Yulhee begged. “Please. Oppa would kill me! He told me I’m not allowed to tell you!”

This revelation amplified that stinging feeling in her heart; Solbin could have been able to give him the child that he wanted so badly, but Yewon still couldn’t do it. It has been months, but her body was unable to provide him with the one thing that he desired from her.

Of course he didn’t love her, she concluded again. How could he love her when she couldn’t even do her only job as a princess? How could he love her when she had offered him nothing since she came to Solen?

-

By the time night came, Yewon was completely convinced she misheard that he loved her, and she found that a part of her resented him for manipulating her to believe that he did.

When he visited her that night, she wouldn’t even greet him or look his way; she just began to undress herself so that they could finish their task and he could go away.

“Why do you seem so angry?” he asked her, taking her arm to stop her from undressing. “Is this because I kicked you out from my room?”

She didn’t answer him. She wasn’t really angry about that, but she realized that she should be.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I won’t do it again.”

She still didn’t answer him.

“And I’m also sorry about how I was ordering you around without giving a proper explanation, and I’m sorry about how I challenged you. You have every right to be angry. I regret the way I handled the issue.”

She took that as an acknowledgement that he really did purposely make her think that he loved her. She lifted her head to look at him; he looked sincere about his apology, and so Yewon decided to break her silent treatment.

“I don’t like being manipulated,” she told him. “Don’t ever take me for a fool and say things you don’t mean ever again.”

He nodded briefly.

“And I will go to the hospital tomorrow,” she avowed. “Whether you like it or not, I’m going.”

“Arti went today,” Seungcheol informed her, obviously trying to get her to change her mind. “He told me that the patients are well. I’ve already provided unlimited funding to try and treat the illness, and Arti will be the one managing it.”

“So that’s it? You absolutely won’t let me go?” she asked him with a frown on her face.

“Why do you want to go? I took care of it. It’s not going to make a difference if you go or not!” Seungcheol replied, looking frustrated that she wasn’t complying.

“Why? Because it’s the only useful thing I’m doing with my life right now!” she replied, equally as frustrated as he was. “Otherwise I’m just sitting here as some pretty ornament, eating good food and wearing pretty dresses, doing nothing for this country or the people I’m supposed to protect. I can’t even bear a child, for crying out loud. I’m a useless princess, but I don’t want to be useless,” she blurted, and her lower lip began to tremble. She gulped in her tears though; she didn’t want to cry in front of him again.

Seungcheol seemed a little startled by that, his expression showing signs of surprise at her outburst. He then took a deep breath and nodded his head. “Fine,” he resolved with much difficulty. “If it helps you feel that much better, then you can go. But your highness, please know that you’ve done more than enough for this country. And if there’s anyone to blame for your childlessness, it’s my own body and not yours.”

“But you’ve impregnated someone before,” she began to argue, but was immediately cut off.

“Wait... what?” Seungcheol interceded with narrowed eyes.

Yewon bit her lips, remembering that she promised Yulhee that she wouldn’t tell anyone that she knew.

“Who told you?” Seungcheol asked.

“Not important.”

“Yulhee, right?”

“No,” she lied.

“I’m going to kill her.”

“Why does it matter if I know or don’t know anyways?” Yewon quickly came in defense of Yulhee. “Why are you so adamant that I don’t know this?”

“You tell me,” Seungcheol replied. “What good does knowing do to you? Yes, Solbin had been pregnant. But be honest, knowing that only made you feel worthless, right? I didn’t want you to feel like that, your highness. That’s why I didn’t want you to know.”

That was true. Knowing that Solbin was pregnant before she died only made Yewon feel useless, both to him and to the country. But Solbin was not useless like her. Solbin was the angel. The sun.

Meanwhile, Yewon was only the barren moon.

When Yewon kept silent, Seungcheol took a deep breath and said: “it’s only been some months,” he told her. “Sometimes it takes a while, and that’s okay. We’ll keep trying. And even if it never works out, it wouldn’t be because of you. It would be because of what your brother did to me.”

Oh.

For some reason, this was something she had never considered: Seungcheol’s condition could very well be the reason that she was not pregnant, and it could be the reason she would never be pregnant.

“Why did you think I wanted you to find someone else?” he asked her, noticing that this was something she was only just starting to consider. “I don’t take pleasure in giving my wife the freedom to e. But I need a child, and I think that my pride and honor are secondary concerns to that.”

Yewon lowered her gaze; she didn’t know what to say anymore.

The atmosphere was heavy in the long silence that followed. Seungcheol broke it by saying: “if you absolutely insist on going to the hospital, then go. I would rather take the risk then have you hate me. But please try to reconsider, for my sake,” he requested. When she lifted her head to catch his eyes, she saw that he looked very earnest about that request.

“Why are you making this about you?” Yewon managed, not wanting to be guilt-tripped by him. “This isn’t about you at all.”

“Of course it’s about me,” Seungcheol replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “If you die, what do you think will happen to me?”

“If you’re afraid of my father then you don’t have to worr…”

“Yewon, this is not about your father,” Seungcheol stressed through gritted teeth, looking suddenly frustrated and upset.

He also called her by her name again. Whenever he did that, Yewon felt like he was targeting her personally, uninhibited by all the strings that were attached to her- being a princess, a future queen, his wife, a Galacian. When he said her name, it did not feel like he was talking to her through any one of those identities, rather talking to her self, pure and unfettered.

“I thought I made it clear,” he explained with a low, abashed groan.

She waited for him to explain further, but he didn’t. He just lifted his hand and softly pulled the short strands of hair behind her ear.

Yewon knew what he was talking about, but she didn’t want to say anything for fear of being wrong.

“I didn’t make it clear?” he asked her, still her hair.

There was something very intimate about the way he was touching her. She felt so bare in front of him at the moment, and her entire body consumed with chills she never experienced before.

He closed the distance between their lips and kissed her, and it felt like her first kiss ever for the way it made her flesh crawl.

She got the message from the way he kissed her and how that kiss made her feel, but she still wanted him to confirm it. She pulled her head back away from him and asked him to stop being elusive and come out with it.

“I love you.”

A/N: this chapter actually went much differently than how I initially planned it but I hope yall still enjoyed it ^^