Yewon had been too young to really think about being a mother. She had only ever wanted to get pregnant because of the pressure that everyone had exerted on her, and because somehow being pregnant was posed as the royal solution to all of her problems. The act of actually having the baby and raising it was something she didn’t really dwell on.

But somehow, motherhood was the first thing that came to Yewon’s mind after Soonyoung’s shocking revelation- she thought about cradling a baby in her arms, a baby that came from her own flesh and skin. Her baby. Raising it. Seeing it laugh. Hearing its first words. Seeing it take its first steps. Loving it more than she could love anything in the world.

You don’t know a blessing is until you lose it.

As Yewon processed what Soonyoung had revealed, she just felt empty, like something extremely precious had slipped through her fingers, indefinitely lost and irretrievable.

Soonyoung, however, did not really understand what she was feeling at the moment. He thought she was upset that this meant she couldn’t stay in Solen, that she couldn’t carry out her royal duty as a princess. So he tried to comfort her by saying: “look, I have an idea. I don’t know if it will work but it’s the only thing I can come up with right now. Haein is pregnant with my baby. We could somehow pretend that you’re pregnant, put a pillow in your belly or something…”

Soonyoung continued talking about his idea, but Yewon’s mind was completely blank. She sat there frozen as she processed that she had a lost an essential part of her femininity and an essential part of her nature.

“Hey,” he said when he saw that she was unresponsive. “Come on, talk to me.”

“W…why did you wait until now to tell me this?” Yewon stammered as she lifted her head to face him.

“To be honest, I forgot,” Soonyoung answered regretfully.

“That’s ridiculous!” she lashed at him furiously. “How could you forget something so important?!”

“I didn’t really ‘forget,’ because I thought you knew already. I didn’t even realize that was on the page I took away!” he defended himself, as if that somehow excused him.

“Why did you even take away that stupid page in the first place?!” she asked him frenziedly. Yewon felt like she wanted to strangle him. She was so frustrated at that moment, and she needed to release that negative energy somehow. She wanted someone to blame. Seokmin was dead, so all she had was Soonyoung right now as a target.

“You need to calm down,” he told her, and that only made her want to hit him. All those months of tireless and futile attempts at becoming pregnant could have been avoided if only he wasn’t such a fool; she could have faced this bitter realization much earlier. She could have been over it by now, and this fresh heartbreak she only now started to experience would have healed.

“I hate you!” she yelled at him through gritted teeth, clenching her fists.

“That’s not necessary,” he said calmly.

She threw her fists at his chest, unable to control herself. “I hate you!” she said again, and she finally broke down and began to cry. “I hate you,” she said through her tears, still crying.

He grabbed her wrists to stop her from hitting him. “Calm down,” he said again, leveling his eyes with hers

“I hate you,” she said more quietly, pulling her wrists from his grip and using it to cover her face.

She silently cried by herself, trying to calm down. As she did, Soonyoung circled behind her to where his dresser was. He opened one of the drawers and he began rummaging through it. Yewon then heard paper tearing, and before long, he was in front of her, presenting her with part of the missing page of Seokmin’s letter.

It was three quarters of the bottom part of the page. The top part was torn off. She took the page from him, and read it for herself.

Four: Prince Jihoon wanted to end your lineage once and for all. He thought you all were disgusting, and that there was filth in your blood, because he was aware of Seungcheol’s love affair with Jeonghan. He therefore ordered that we poison your women. This is why your mother could never get pregnant after she had Yulhee. Yulhee will probably never carry a child either. And her highness, Princess Yewon, should also be permanently affected too. A woman has to take the elixir in a large dosage for it to have a lasting effect. Yulhee and her Majesty have been taking the poison for years; it’s in the food that they eat, but her highness could only start as soon as she came to Solen. We therefore put large doses of it in everything she consumed, mostly in the sweet bread that I sent to her in the early stages of her arrival here. And I repent. I know that she badly wants to be pregnant, and it kills me to know that I was responsible for this. I’m so, so, so sorry to her.

-

Yewon stayed in Soonyoung’s room for a long time, rereading the letter and processing it. When she had calmed down, she felt well enough to leave. She didn’t say a word to him though, still angry and frustrated with him, but she made a mental note to apologize for hitting him as hard as she did.

It was time for dinner by the time she came out, but she didn’t want to go to dinner now. Haein would be waiting for her in her room to change her and get ready for the meal, but right now, Yewon only wanted to be alone.

She realized that she also had to break it to Yulhee and the Queen that they also would not be able to bear any children, because stupid Soonyoung would probably ‘forget’ to do that himself. It was a daunting task; it was hard enough having to deal with her own infertility, and now she had to break it to the other women as well. As she didn’t have the drive do it right away, she decided to skip dinner and go to the library to hide for a few hours.

Her wish to be alone with her thoughts was not granted, because, as she should have probably known, Wonwoo was there, buried in his books. When he saw her, he didn’t even greet her. One look at her and he knew she had been crying, and she was made to sit with him and explain what was wrong with her. In no mood to talk, she just gave him the torn piece of paper, explaining that it was the Galacian kitchen boy that had written it.

Wonwoo read it- more than once, it seems. He lifted his head, looked at her sympathetically, and then read it again.

He put the letter down and sat pensively for a minute.

“Wait right here,” he told her many second later. He left the letter on the table and walked toward a specific shelf. From one of the top rows, after scanning some spines, Wonwoo brought down a large book, thick book of many pages. He flipped through the first few pages until he got to the page he was looking for. He placed the book in front of her, and asked her to read out loud from the top.

"The Fundamental Maxims of Alchemy

1. Every poison has its antidote."

“This was written by a foreign sage from Arabia,” Wonwoo explained after she read it. “He mastered alchemy, and he came up with this book after years of studying elixirs and poisons. According to this maxim, the poison that you took would definitely have an antidote. We just have to find it.”

Yewon looked at Wonwoo with fascination. Seokmin had made the sterility seem so terminal in his letter, and so she had not even considered that there was a way to reverse it. What Wonwoo was giving her now was hope; she felt like she wanted to cry again all of the sudden

“I will do the research to identify the poison and discover its antidote,” he assured her. “I will do everything I can, Yewon. Don’t lose hope.”

And Wonwoo started this research instantly, and he started off by copying the exact words of Seokmin’s letter. He told her that there were a couple of hints in the letter that will help him identify what kind of poison Seokmin used, notably: “A woman has to take the elixir in a large dosage for it to have a lasting effect.”

“This means that the poison’s effects are gradual and not immediate,” Wonwoo explained. “That narrows it down a lot, because most poisons are immediate. Seokmin also said that it’s in the food that you ate, which would make it tasteless. If it’s in the food, that also means it doesn’t affect men, because the royal family always shares meals. Therefore, the poison must only impact female organs. And if it’s in the sweet bread, then that means that the poison is unaffected by heat, because bread has to be baked.”

Yewon listened carefully, fascinated by how much he gathered from the small snippets of information available to him. The more she listened to him, the more hopeful she felt. Maybe this will work after all. Maybe Wonwoo will find the cure. Maybe everything will be okay.

“I’ll ask Haein for help,” Wonwoo told her as he took notes. “I’m sure she’ll think of hundreds more clues that I missed, and she’s read a lot about alchemy. She made a copy this entire book, actually.”

“Thank you,” she managed. “Thank you so much, Wonwoo.” She said with heartfelt sincerity.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Wonwoo replied. “I might not succeed, and if I do, it will take a while. And by that, I mean more than four months.” He had an apologetic look on his face as he said this, for he was referring to the King’s timeline. She wouldn’t be pregnant within four months, and if the King carried through with what he said, that would mean she would still have to leave Solen.

She nodded in acceptance, lowering her head in dismay. She didn’t know what to do. It felt like everything was coming apart all at once for her, and she felt helpless.

“Look,” Wonwoo began uncertainly. “There’s something I want to say to you, but I’m afraid of how you’ll react.”

She wiped her eyes and turned to hear what he had to say.

“I know that you’re afraid of going back to Galacia, because of your hair and because of the vile gossip surrounding you. I know you would much rather stay here. This is why I want to offer you a way out,” he began, and she nodded along to what he was saying. “Please know that all I’m doing is presenting you with an option,” he continued. “You can choose whether or not you wish to take it...”

“Just tell me,” she entreated him, tired of his careful disclaimers.

“Marry me,” he said suddenly, making her freeze. “You’re not going to be able to stay married to Seungcheol,” he quickly explained, “the King isn’t going to relent. You’re going to have to leave Seungcheol, Yewon; there’s no way out of this. But just because you’re leaving Seungcheol doesn’t mean you have to leave Solen. If you marry me, you’ll be able to stay.”

Yewon lowered her head and refused to catch his eye. Wonwoo shouldn’t be saying these things. He shouldn’t even be thinking about this.

“It’s just an option,” he told her again when she saw how unresponsive she was. “You can decide when the time comes. And if you decide not to, or if circumstances change, you can forget I ever said it.”

“For now, I going to forget it,” Yewon told him quickly, not daring to catch his eye. “So please, stop saying these things.”

“Okay,” Wonwoo said. “For now,” he added.

Yewon cleared and stood up, feeling like she couldn’t stay in his presence anymore when he was making comments like that. “If you would excuse me, I’m going now…”

“Wait no,” Wonwoo took her arm before she could. “Stay, I have to ask a few things that will help me with this research.”

She couldn’t say no to that. She took a seat, and Wonwoo began asking her questions about the bread Seokmin sent her, as well as a few questions about her cycle, and then he went on to ask very personal questions, starting with the first time she had .

“I need to know how long you waited,” Wonwoo explained, “so I know how much time the poison had to take effect.”

Yewon was very reluctant to answer that. Wonwoo didn’t know about what had happened with Soonyoung before she was shipped back to Galacia after the battle, and Yewon wasn’t sure she was comfortable telling him. At the same time, she recognized that she shouldn’t lie to him, or it might compromise the study.

Noticing her reluctance, Wonwoo added: “please be honest. And you can trust me, Yewon. With anything.”

And so, Yewon came clean to him about the affair with Soonyoung. Wonwoo seemed slightly surprised at first, but he was able to mask it well and feign his indifference, although Yewon noticed the tighter grip on his quill as he made note of a few things. She noticed the serenity fade from his face, and how he would not even look at her after she confessed.

He asked a few more questions, all of which were awkward. “How many times?” “How often?” “How long did it last?” “Positions?” Some of Wonwoo’s questions, Yewon wondered if Wonwoo actually needed to know the answers, or if he was just asking because he was curious. Whatever it may be, Yewon answered honestly.

Wonwoo didn’t comment on anything she said. He just asked her questions and took note of her answers like a true, dispassionate detective. She wondered what was going through his mind. Was he shaming her? Did he resent Soonyoung, who slept with the two women that Wonwoo loved? Yewon could only guess.

When they finally moved on from talking about Soonyoung, Yewon was so relieved, and even more relieved that Wonwoo didn’t ask the same details about her experiences with Seungcheol, just the general timeline and the frequency. That made her suspect that maybe Wonwoo pried more than he needed to about Soonyoung.

Wonwoo’s next question was regarding Seokmin’s letter. “Where did you get this?” Wonwoo asked her, pointing to the letter.

“Soonyoung had it,” Yewon answered. “The letter was addressed to him.”

“Why did it take so long for that idiot to tell you?” Wonwoo muttered, clearly indignant.

She shrugged.

“What was in this top part of the page?” Wonwoo asked, pointing at the torn part.

“I don’t know,” Yewon answered. “It’s the reason he took out that page, and ‘forgot’ to tell me I was sterile until now.” Thinking about it made her blood boil again. Had Yewon not told Soonyoung she needed to bear a child, that fool wouldn’t have said a thing.

“I was just thinking that it might have more clues to help me find this poison,” Wonwoo told her. “And I’m curious: what was so important that he felt like he had to take the page out? A page that included information like this?”

Yewon was also suddenly curious about it. It was true. Soonyoung’s mother, his sister, and his sister-in-law were all revealed to be unable to produce children, meaning that their pure-blood lineage was at the risk of being cut, and Soonyoung completely neglected that just to hide the information that was at the top of that page? What was so important about that information that it rendered the potential termination of their family’s lineage so inconsequential to him?

If there was any chance that what was written at the top of that letter would help Wonwoo in his search for the antidote, then she was going to find it.

-

She left the library eventually, walking back towards Soonyoung’s room, determined to get the rest of the page from him. However, his door was locked when she got there.

Seungkwan, who was standing one room away guarding Seungcheol’s room, told her that he went to dinner and wasn’t in his room.

“Do you, by any chance, have the key to his room?” Yewon whispered so that only Seungkwan could hear.

“I do, your Highness,” Seungkwan answered. “But I am only to use it in emergency situations.”

“Give it to me,” she extended her hand.

“I can’t,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’ll be disobeying orders, your highness! I’ll be fired for sure!”

“This is an emergency situation,” she pressured him, and she could see him squirming uncertainly because of it. He wasn’t allowed to give her the key, and she was putting him in a very uncomfortable position asking this of him, but she was desperate.

“You highness, please don’t make me do this,” Seungkwan whined. “I can’t say no to you, but I also can’t give you the key.”

“Give it to me,” she insisted.

He gulped and reached for a chain around his neck that was under his armor. He pulled out a mass of keys and took out the one that belonged to Soonyoung’s room and handed it to her. He was very easily manipulated, Yewon noticed. She felt bad, but she was too apprehensive to care about that now.

“Please don’t get me in trouble, your highness,” he begged. “Please don’t tell him I gave it to you…”

She eagerly took the key and opened the door, storming inside to Soonyoung’s dresser where she remembered he had kept the letter. After rummaging through masses of notebooks and racy art, he found the piece of paper, hidden safely in the corner of the bottom drawer under many books.

Without sparing a second, she read it, unprepared for the kind of information she would find.

Three: I don’t know why you did it, but I know that you were the one who killed Sir Jeonghan. You probably didn’t notice, but there were drops of blood coming from the scene of the murder and it led to your room. I cleaned it up to clear your name; I didn’t want you to be executed.

A/N: I’ll just get my popcorn and watch you guys react to this lol