Author's Note: One of the longest chapter. I'm such a fail at foreshadowing stuff but please do pay attention with the wonders here. Hahaha, it's been a long time since I last updated so this is to pay you. I might be on hiatus afterwards due to school (again) and my finals are coming up. Enough about me, just read on and don't forget to leave comments!

Chapter 6: “I did not ask for blue tea”

He smiled so confidently, as though expecting that the princess would react as so. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I have danced with you once,” Yoona recalled, trying to remember years before. She was just nine, really. How could anyone possibly remember something so distant in the past, something that had happened 10 years ago. “But I do not know. I do not see most of the princes I have met.”

There was no sign. With a smirk, he moved his arms around her quickly, pulled out a knife from one of his pockets and swiftly laid it by the princess’s neck. Yoona’s insides were yelling by instinct to shout, scream call out for help, but nobody else seemed alarm about her state. She resorted to yelling, as wide as she often was teased when she was younger, and later she started kicking him from behind but the guy, the so-called prince did not even flinch. She continued to struggle on her own, shouting and shouting for help but nobody turned their heads. From afar she could see her dearest sister, dancing with a man she had just seen. Seohyun appeared so happy, laughing about a joke her new friend had told her. Yoona tried grabbing her attention, getting her ears to hear her squeal but there was nothing. Nothing seemed wrong to them. Why was it so?

Yoona, unaware, reached for her ring involuntarily, as though it was necessary to do so, thinking that this action could help.  Her mother had once told her there was magic inside it without her even comprehending its meaning. She held it tightly, tears already in her eyes as the grip tightened.

Before she knew it, the knife dug deeper now to , slowing slashing her porcelain skin. To her surprise, there was no pain.

“No, no, wait! Why can’t they hear me? Why isn’t anyone helping me? Why aren’t they turning their heads? Wait...wait..this isn’t right...”

“There are no waits when you’re a royal blood,” he whispered to her evilly. “What has been destined to happen must therefore come true...”

“Wait, stop...what do you want? Please...wait....I can’t die yet! My sister...she has to have her eyes back, please...” Yoona kept muttering, trying to lengthen her time to think of a way out.

“I want you,” Kibum said, eyes glimmering at her. “I want you Byungmi heiress...dead.”

“Yoona!”

-_-_-_-

“Don’t wear the ring to the feast,” Yoona ordered her, Seohyun’s eyes widening in surprise. She had never took it off, never in her life, because it was her mother’s last gift, last piece of memory she could attain from her mother.

“Why, unnie?”

Yoona shrugged, placing the veil over her face. “Just don’t wear it. I should be the only one wearing it tonight. You can wear it tomorrow.”

“But umma said that---”

“I know what umma said, Seohyun-ah!” the princess yelled at her dongsaeng irately. “Mother is not around. In honor of her, don’t wear the ring. She has to be with me for the rest of the night. She is mine for the rest of the night. If you wear the ring, we are sharing her. For now, I need all the luck, magic and mother I need. So don’t wear it. If Mother says it’s as magical as it is, then I hope what she says works. You can’t wear it now. I need it more than you do. Keep it. Someone might try taking it away from you. You don’t know the people here, arasso?”

“I understand, unnie,” Seohyun bowed her head, untying the necklace and leaving it by the dresser.

“Where is unnie?” Seohyun asked worriedly, as though a missile amidst the background music of the band playing. Kyuhyun turned his head from left to right, trying to find the queen. His eyes fell on the woman somewhere near the large windowsill, nearly falling on her knees, holding on to a man, his eyes worried ever so anxiously at the sight of the princess falling frail. The man, the one who had held Yoona, didn’t know what to do, eyes widening as the crowd now turned their attention towards the two of them, guards quickly approaching the two.

Without any more hesitation, Kyuhyun dragged Seohyun towards where the commotion had beaten them, the princess, holding on to him tightly.

“What’s happening? What’s going on? The music stopped playing,” Seohyun silently whispered, trying to feel

“Your majesty! Your majesty, wake up!” called her partner, the one she had danced with before fainting. He was more than perplexed, his expression too surprised. What was going on? Yoona was already on the ground, the guests surrounding at the two of them, starting the rumors that were untrue. She lay there, helpless, unconscious, and completely still, until seconds later where guards paraded towards them, breaking the wide circle and not long after the King and Queen themselves came to see her being carried by the royal family’s personal doctor, nurses following swiftly from behind.

“What’s happening? Tell me or I’ll have you out! Tell me what’s going on!” Seohyun begged him, her fingers tightly on Kyuhyun’s shirt that it had woke him up.

There was truly something wrong in the area. He knew it, felt it himself. The bad aura, as though he too was trapped in the same trance as Yoona that all the sounds around him disappeared into a thin line of nothingness. It scared him, shaking his head and wondering why he could actually feel such dark energy while the others were panicking, fretting. Were they truly so numb not to perceive it?

“The princess fainted,” Kyuhyun revealed, Seohyun covering in a gasp. “She’s being brought back to her chamber. I’m afraid the party’s over, your grace.”

“Where is she? I need to follow---” Seohyun was stopped at her pace, Kyuhyun surprisingly holding on her sleeve.

She felt disturbed at this act. “Don’t. It’s not yet safe, princess.”

“What do you mean by that? I’m sorry but she’s my sister. Where are my nurses?” Seohyun pulled back her arm, bowed her head still as graceful and scurried, Kyuhyun shaking his head in irritation. Was he that underestimated that nobody even listened to him anymore?

The scent was familiar to him, not that it made much sense. It smelled like Nichkhun when he took a bath by the river downstream, where the springs spread their light wings. Fragrant, yes, but very odd scent occurred in Kyuhyun’s memory, doubting of course that it would have any connection to his faithful cousin.

Slowly, his hands slipped down his pockets, gripping the ring. It felt heavier, much heavier when he took it out. He searched the room, despite the horror that had happened, for his friends, noticing Victoria running to him quickly.

She panted, sighing when she saw her best friend’s grave face. She placed her hand over his shoulder, worried. “You felt it, didn’t you?”

Kyuhyun nodded, handing the ring to Nichkhun, who also was running behind Qian.

“Hyung, better keep this in your possession,” he suggested. “I smell dark magic.”

“You mean me taking a bath?” Nichkhun asked, also understanding his cousin’s keen sense of smell. “Yeah, I smelled something like that earlier when you were still dancing with Seohyun-ah.”

Kyuhyun pursed his lips. “It could be the same one that was after me years before.”

“Aish, Kyuhyun-oppa!” Victoria whined, the three of them already starting their way out of the palace. “What good will it do you? You understand that nobody believes in witchcraft anymore. You know that they’ve been banished from Sangdokchi long before. Even your own aunt disagrees. You know very well that they would not consider you even if you tell.”

“I’m not going to tell, Qian,” Kyuhyun muttered. “But you know I’m telling the truth, and hyung also knows. I don’t need anybody else to understand that until I am for certain of this sorcery business.”

Nichkhun twisted his lips, staring at the ring. “And if you never prove it real?”

“It’s real, hyung,” he retorted, almost as annoyed as a little child. “I will not forget the last time we crossed Baekham Bridge. Just before the chase, before we were discovered trespassing, I wore the ring around my neck...and that ghost came, cloak covering his hideous face, acting as though he was hyung, but he wasn’t. He talked to me in my sleep and he held a knife on my neck, untying the ring. I had nothing to do but hold on to it. I fought back the nightmare, and I would wake up back to the present time, where we were already being chased. If not for Nichkhun calling my name, I bet I would have been swiped dead into Byungmi’s dungeon.”

“Byungmi might know why the ring’s so important,” Victoria concluded. “What I don’t understand is why that sorcerer attacked the future queen. Was it...because she was from Byungmi?”

Nichkhun cleared his throat. Like lightning, he understood almost as perfect as he could of the situation. He could see it more evidently, that the so-called warlock was attacking the heirs to Byungmi’s throne. He knew this of course, because Kyuhyun was also an heir, however that had not entered Kyuhyun’s mind at all. How he wished he could tell his cousin of this, fake cousin rather, that he was a subjected heir. And yet, knowing now that more troubles are yet to come due to this idea, and the chance of losing Kyuhyun forever was still at risk, he decided to keep his mouth shut and wait along to see.

The mystery had yet been solved, because he still did not understand why the heirs were being killed.

“As far as I can see it, the sorcerer must be from Byungmi. And those men...that chased us ten years ago were after your ring, could it be though that they know about this? Could it also mean that they’ve been trying to catch this wizard since the dawn of time? The ring must be the bait---the one that attracts the wizard. We could be dealing with a very notorious person here. This is dangerous, Kyuhyun-sshi. Although now that I believe you, I can’t put the pieces together yet.”

“Or maybe you two are just overlooking it?” Qian added, scratching her head in irritation. “I mean, it could be that Princess Yoona was just tired that’s why she fainted!”

“No, Qian,” Kyuhyun denied, very sure of what he felt. “He was there. He was after me, but he touched the future queen instead. That...that is still what’s keeping me from putting a stop to this. This doesn’t even make sense at all. He only meets me in Baekham Bridge. He never crosses. Something or someone...had brought it in to the village itself.”

“We’re not even certain yet what he could really do,” Nichkhun jumped on with his thoughts. “For all we know, he could be listening to us talk. How did you escape it, Kyuhyun-sshi? How was it possible that you made it out alive