“Your Highness…”

“Leave!”

The doors closed with a dry sound, leaving me there, sitting on the mattress, with my hands hanging on both sides of my body. I was sick. And tired. Sick and tired in body and mind, unable to find the right path to go down on. I was feeling… powerless. Powerless to save my wife, powerless to have her heart over the one that was nothing more than a mere general. And I was tired of having the same fight over and over again, being afraid of what tomorrow would bring to me.

I laid down, resting my head on the pillow. On my left, the wind was blowing coldly on the covers, highlighting the emptiness. Now it was all a matter of being a good player:respect the rules and you might win with the perfect strategy; break the rules and you might win with just one ingenious scheme.

I had to win.

And bring her back into my bed.

♃~✵~♃

“My head is spinning.”

“Kyuhyun,” Yesungs voice sounded low and threatening.

“What? It does! My eyes are not made to read all these lines, you know? They are made to see the enemy’s movements and to…”

“Kyuhyun!”

“What?”

“Shut it or else…”

“I found it!” The words that escaped my mouth made them stop fighting. “I finally found it! Yesung, come and take a look at this,” I raised my eyes to look at him as he rushed towards me, trying not to hit the piles of books and official papers that were filling the room’s floor. “Don’t you think this could work? It’s actually something they forced on us when my father as still the king of this nation.”

“I don’t know what to say, Sire,” his eyes followed the dark and thick lines of the ink, frowning his eyebrows.

“It will work, trust me!”

♃~✵~♃

They say that the king is a cold person, acting emotionless most of the time. Well, that’s wrong. As the royal convoy approached the high walls of the imperial palace, I felt my heart tremble inside my chest. It wasn’t only the fact that I was going to see Ae Ri again, but the anticipation of the game itself too.

“I would have never expected for the king himself to come visit me.”

“And I would have never expected that the emperor himself would steal another’s wife.”

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter