Even though the King’s ultimatum caught her off guard in that moment, it was not surprising at all. It would have happened sooner or later. The consequence of being unable to conceive had always been going to come back to bite her eventually, and it was actually surprising that it took so long for that bite-back to appear.

It was something she had always dreaded and always dismissed whenever it came in passing thoughts. What would happen if I am never able to bear a son? she would wonder every day after seeing signs of her first blood since she started spending nights with Seungcheol. The thought of the King ending her marriage with Seungcheol and kicking her out of Solen had always been there in the back of her head, but never spoken until now.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Yewon asked Seungcheol when the two were dismissed from the court and finally alone.

“What did you expect me to say?” Seunghcheol asked with sigh.

Yewon narrowed her eyes. “I expected you to say no,” she answered, surprised he even asked that question.

“How?” he hissed. “You expected me to oppose His Majesty’s decision by saying ‘oh no, she is the love of my life; I refuse to obey you and I will stay married to her no matter what!’ Your highness, that only happens in your fantasy novels. Real life is very different.”

Yewon felt shut down. He was acting so cold again; it’s not like she wasn’t used to it, but she really wished he would be softer with her now that he found out that she was very likely going to be forced to divorce him. And he seemed to be taking so much better than she was.

“So you’re okay with this?” Yewon asked, gulping in her emotions. “You’re okay if I leave and we get divorced and probably never see one another again? Is that what you want?”

“It’s not about what I want, your highness,” he snapped, clearly riled. “That doesn’t matter in the end, because right now, I’m not in the position to want anything. I’m a prince, and I have to do what’s best for the country, and not for myself…”

“Do you even care about me at all?” she cut him off. He wasn’t acting like someone who cared. If he cared, how can he be so okay with the King’s decision?

“Your highness, why do you always mix passion with politics?” he asked her. “Get your head out of the clouds and stop thinking our relationship is some ideal fairytale. It’s not…”

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” she said before he could continue. The truth was she felt like she was about to burst into tears, and she didn’t want to do it in front of him.

So it was a lie? Was that what he was telling her? Was this whole illusion of loving her just a fairytale setup he made for her? Fine. If that was the case, then maybe it was better that she would leave him and his frigid heart.

-

Yewon had been tossing in her bed thinking about what Seungcheol had told her. She hated how he sent her so many mixed signals. In novels, it was always so clear when the man loved the woman; he would tell her a million times, and he would never even imply once that he didn’t; he also never called their relationship a “fairytale.” Seungcheol was nothing like this ideal character in her novels; unlike them, Seungcheol was unreadable and frustrating.

It was not even an hour since that encounter with him that Seungkwan was knocking on her bedroom door with a letter in his hand.

“Your highness, I have something from Prince Seungcheol,” Seungkwan told her when he entered.

She accepted the letter from him and saw that familiar royal seal she used to get in the first days of her arrival at Solen. It brought back a wave of memories, the small note Seokmin wrote her, the taste of the sweet Galacian bread that always accompanied that note, Seokmin’s bright smile and ceaseless optimism, even in the face of his unhappy life. So different from Seungcheol’s bitter realism and aversion to smiles.

“Prince Seungcheol told me to ask you to read it immediately, and asked me to wait until you reply, so I’m just going to stand here and wait for you to read it,” Seungkwan said.

Yewon nodded, and opened the letter.

My dear Yewon,

As you very well know, I am not good with words when I speak. I feel like I express myself a lot better through writing, and so I decided to write this to you, especially because some of the things that I’m going to ask you to do in this letter, I will never be able to tell you to your face.

I might have said some things that confused you, so let me clarify: of course I care about you, and of course I would never want you to leave, and least of all because I want you to be Queen of this country. When I told you to stop making our relationship into a fairytale, I was rather referring to your commitment to monogamy.

I always told you that you were free to sleep with any man, and I will claim any baby that you carry. My reasons for giving you this option had purely been so that you can be pregnant and so that we can avoid what had just happened with the King.

Princess, please do not abide by any conviction of loyalty towards me. As ideal as it would be, loyalty not working in our favor. I never pushed you toward having extramarital relations before, because I still had faith in my body’s ability to bear you a baby, but I lost that hope now. I am crippled and sterile, and if you commit to monogamy, we cannot continue to be married. The prospect of ending our marriage makes me want to explode, because I cannot imagine being married to anyone but you.

So please, find someone. I don’t care who, and I don’t want to know either, because if I know, I feel like I’ll want to kill him.

So I will keep visiting your bed, and when you’re pregnant, I’ll make myself believe that it’s mine. I’ll claim it happily, and treat it as if it were mine and love it all the same.

I understand that I’m asking something difficult, and I can only apologize to you for not being able to provide you with everything. It’s difficult for me too, you know. It’s hard on my honor and my heart to be asking my sweet, beautiful princess to do this, but your presence in my life if worth a million times more than my honor. I pray that my presence in your life is worth more than your honor too.

I’ve sent Seungkwan to you. You can keep him for however long you desire, but send him back with at least an acknowledgement that you’ve seen the contents of this letter. And please also burn it as soon as you finish reading. It would be such a scandal if it came out.

With love,
Seungcheol

Yewon put the letter down, feeling all sorts of emotions all at once. This was so hard, she thought.

The thought of yielding her body to someone other than Seungcheol made her feel numb and soulless, but she understood the reasoning behind it, and for the first time, she began to seriously consider it. Like Seungcheol said, her honor and her body were worth much less than his presence in her life. She would sacrifice it all if it meant she could stay with him.

Yewon could read between the lines of Seungcheol’s letter; she understood what Seungcheol was implying when he said that he had sent Seungkwan to her, and that she could “keep him for as long she desired.”

With slightly trembling hands, she put the letter to the side and turned her head to him.

“Seungkwan,” she began uncertainly.

“Yes, your highness.”

“Are you married or engaged or anything?” she asked him, feeling like it was important to know this before she asked him that scandalous favor.

“Not yet, your highness,” Seungkwan answered her, shaking his head. “But God-willing, I will be soon.”

“You have a girl in mind then?” Yewon asked.

“That’s right,” Seungkwan answered with a bright smile on his face. Somehow, that relieved Yewon, because it meant she was absolved from the expectation that she would push things further with him. She would not have known how to push it had Seungkwan not been attached to someone else.

Seungkwan told her about the girl, Soyeon; she was a beautiful singer in his town. As a young boy, he confessed his love to her, and she also confessed that she loved him back. The problem was that he had been a low-class farmer boy, and so her father disapproved of him completely. But he was determined to marry her, and she also promised that she would wait for him. He worked hard so that he can be worthy of her, and was thus raised to the rank of a royal guard in the palace, and was now collecting to buy a house and start a family with her.

It was a sweet love story, thought Yewon with jealousy. How nice must it be to have only one another, to be committed to only one another. How nice must it be to have a simple love story that would most certainly have a happy ending. She wished him all the luck, and sent him back to Seungcheol with the following letter.

Dear Seungcheol,

When reading your letter, I remember the time you were at war and we sent letters to one another. I think it was the first time that I ever felt like you didn’t see me as a burden, and that you didn’t hate me. You are much kinder when you write than when you speak. It’s like when you speak, you have all of these inhibitions keeping you from expressing yourself. You need to change that!

Anyways, thank you for your letter. I have acknowledged everything you’ve written.

But if this all fails after four months, I wish you would still fight for me to stay with you.

Love,
Yewon

-

For the past months, Soonyoung had mostly spent his time in the harem or in his room. He had slipped back to old habits, obsessed with women’s bodies and unable to go a day without tasting them.

Yewon had to keep away from Soonyoung because of all the gossip surrounding them since Jinye publicly outed them, and so Yewon had not seen him very often at all. But when she did, she always felt sorry for him. He seemed lost and confused most of the time, disenchanted with his life but stuck in this vicious addiction of his.

In the few times that he did speak with her in the past months, he told her that he really wanted to change his life, but he felt like no one was supporting him to do that. The King and Queen were simply disappointed in him. Wonwoo, who had once been the greatest help to him, now resented him for what had happened between him and Jinye.

“Wonwoo hates me,” Soonyoung had told her. “Whenever I run into him, he would glare daggers into me, and when he spoke to me last, he told me he could arrange another trip for me out of the palace in case I want to change my life again; I can tell he just wants me out of the palace. But of course I refused his offer.”

“Why though? Don’t you hate the life you have now?” she had asked.

“Last time he arranged a trip out of the palace for me, I was traumatized. There is no way I could leave the palace again after seeing what happened to Seokmin,” Soonyoung had replied.

It truly had been a scarring experience for Soonyoung, Yewon realized. Seeing a friend of his be killed right in front of him made him so afraid of death. The fear of death drove him even more addicted to temporary, worldly, fleshly desires, because it was those desires that distracted him from the prospect of his death.

His appetite for women was one of the many reasons that Yewon decided that he would be the person from whom she would ask that disgraceful favor…

Soonyoung was someone who would happily do that favor with no inhibition or embarrassment. He would also understand her situation, and she trusted him. Not to mention, he was someone with whom she had already shared that intimate experience.

As she walked towards Soonyoung’s room to ask the favor, she felt just as lousy as the time she was walking with him to her room the first time, after the King had suddenly asked them to sleep together.

The only thing that could make her feel better about the situation was disconnecting herself from her body completely. This body wasn’t her. Her body was just and instrument for her to get what she wanted, nothing else.

“What are you doing here?” he asked her when she entered his room. He was on his bed, writing away in that notebook of his, when he stopped to pay attention to her.

She drew closer to him and took a seat on his bedside, surprising him. The last time she sat on his bed like this was when she had with him.

“The King said I needed to be pregnant in four months, or I have to leave,” she told him. At that, his eyes widened a little bit, and he put away his notebook and turned to give her his full attention. “Seungcheol believes that he’s the reason that I’m not pregnant,” Yewon explained, “so he asked me to find someone else to impregnate me. He’ll claim any baby I carry.” She turned to see if he understood the implication of what she was telling him, but he still looked very surprised for some reason.

He froze and zoned out for a minute as Yewon waited for some reaction from him, but he didn’t give it.

“Say something,” she entreated. “You understand what I’m asking from you, right?”

“I understand,” he finally answered, turning to her. “And of course I would be thrilled to do what you're asking, but… I…” he hesitated.

“What?” she asked him, feeling nervous about his hesitation. “Please don’t make me find someone else.”

He didn’t reply, he just gulped and stared at her chest, looking like he was trying hard to tam his lust. But she didn’t want him to tame it, and so she reached out behind her to undress.

“No, princess,” he shook his head and reached out to stop her. “Please don’t do that.”

She stopped, feeling embarrassed.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Soonyoung told her, finally tearing his eyes from her body and catching her eyes. “Something very important that I should have told you a long time ago.”

She waited for him to come out with it, not realizing how important it would be.

“Remember Seokmin’s letter? I took out a page of that letter,” Soonyoung reminded her. “And in that page, Seokmin confessed something about you.”

Yewon narrowed her eyes and turned to him, “what?”

“The food and drinks that he prepared for you, they were laced with a poison that would make a woman unable to carry. I’m sorry, Yewon. Seungcheol is not the sterile one; you are.”

A/N: there’s so much I have to clarify about this, but it’s not too surprising, right? A lot of people guessed this already lol

There’s a lot more surprising stuff coming later :P