“Sorry about that,” Hyora said, her expression tinged with guilt.

“What was that about?” the Duke asked, voicing the question that Seulhee had been too polite to ask.

“He lo…liked me.” Nobody missed Hyora’s subtle slip-up. “But he didn’t know that I was a noble, or that I was involved in the conspiracy. All he knew was that I was going to get married in less than a week when I finally told him so, and that was bad enough.”

So many secrets and lies. Was this what the conspiracy did to people? Making them into people who they weren’t, forcing them to live two lives? But Seulhee realized she had come too far to turn back, and perhaps that was what had happened to the rest of them.

“But that’s not important anymore,” Hyora said dismissively, though the look in her eyes said otherwise. “Pleased to meet you, Seulhee. Sungyeol told me a bit about you.”

“He did?” She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice. By her estimation, he had all but forgotten about her until he needed her help.

“Yes. He said he regretted ending your friendship, but he felt it was the best thing to do given the circumstances.”

“I see.” She would need to talk to him later. “So what do you need of me? Dongwoo told me a bit about my job, but nothing specific enough for me to figure anything important out.” He had been deliberately vague on the matter, which she suspected meant she would be taking some sort of risk with whatever she did.

“We have news that the palace is hiring a serving girl. A serving girl specifically to wait on the coalition of the council that we are trying to remove from power.”

“How do you know about this? It’s not like they can advertise such a position.”

Hoya—Dongwoo had told her about him and his relationship with Jaesun, and Seulhee realized this must be him—said, 

“We managed to bribe someone on their side to spill some information, and now he’s obliged to take on whoever we give him, and that person will get the job.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know how they had gotten him to “oblige” to their request, so she simply nodded. “So what do I do? Pour them drinks?”

“Well, that’s only part of it, and it’s the front for your information gathering. One of the requirements is that she be deaf and mute, so she won’t know what they are doing and can’t tell anyone,” the Duke explained. “So you will have to put on an act, and a convincing one.”

Seulhee knew an old man in the village who was all but deaf in both ears, and she remembered trying to communicate with him. She thought about how she might go about imitating that sort of behavior, frowning in concentration.

“Don’t worry, we will have someone instruct you in the basics, and the rest will be up to you to practice.”

“We’re expecting that they will treat you like furniture. They will already be underestimating you because of your gender, and then the fact that they think you are deaf and mute will further their thoughts of you as completely harmless. If you have concerns about anything, we have a friend in the palace in another position that can help you out a bit. He’s also the person you will be reporting to.”

At last, Seulhee remembered why she was there. “I thought you would be testing me to see if I was good enough,” she said.

“You passed,” the Duke replied, smiling at her. She stared, confused. But she hadn’t even done anything. “You may leave now.” Rather than question, Seulhee simply accepted that things were going in her favor.

She was wondering how she would do that now that Dongwoo had left, but Hoya and Hyora walked over to her. “We can show you the way,” Hyora offered.

“Thanks.” The three of them stepped outside of the room. As they did, Sungyeol came into view from down the hall. 

“Well that was messy,” he sighed. Glancing at Hyora, he added, “I told you not to get attached.”

Hoya was about to comment, but his twin cut in. “It’s too late for I-told-you-sos, Sungyeol. I know that more than everyone else, okay? Just leave me alone.” She stalked off in the opposite direction, almost immediately followed by Hoya, who shrugged at Sungyeol.

The hallway was now empty except for Seulhee and Sungyeol, and the silence that stretched between the two former best friends almost had a physical presence that weighed down upon them.

Finally, Sungyeol began walking to show her the way, and she followed. He deliberately went at a slower pace so she wouldn’t have to scurry to keep up.

At first, she didn’t know what to say. In the end, she just said what had been bothering her for the past few months. It came out in a long and rambling rant. “What is it that changed you? You said you wanted to end our friendship because you had changed, but you never said what you had been through. You didn’t explain anything. Maybe if you had actually talked to me about it instead of remaining silent and hiding everything from me, we could have worked something out. But instead you just said bye and kicked me out of the picture and closed the door in my face. I think I have a right to know. As your former best friend. As someone who cares.”

After Seulhee finished, there was a brief silence. Then, Sungyeol sighed and began his tale. “It started out not so horrible. Some of the nobles were worse than others in how they expressed their opinion of my presence, and those of the others like me. At that time, I still had the other commoners to associate with. 

“However, as we got to the magic lessons, that’s where everything changed. I excelled at it, easily rising to the top of the class. Sounds stupid, but people couldn’t handle that. The nobles, who had already resented me because of my status, hated me even more for doing well at something they thought was their right. They didn’t think it was right that someone like me should be able to do magic so well.

“At the same time, the commoners also hated me for being such a good student since a lot of them struggled. In their eyes, I was becoming one of them, one of the nobles, doing what they did, winning the favor of my teachers. They also feared me for what I could do with my magic, both the nobles and the commoners. So in the end, I had no friends, no one to turn to.

“I had a few people I knew outside of the Royal Academy, but I didn’t really know them that well, and it wasn’t really enough to negate the effects of the isolation at the Academy. One of these people was Dongwoo, actually. We didn’t become better friends until I introduced Hyora to him.” He didn’t bother to go into what had happened between Hyora and Dongwoo, but what little Seulhee had learned from the encounter in the library was plenty to go by.

“So basically I did what I could to shield myself from that resentment and retreated inward. Now here I am today, no longer the bundle of smiles and laughter I used to be.”

This entire time, Sungyeol had been alone. Seulhee fervently wished she had paid more attention to his troubles back in the day, back when they still talked. She wished she hadn’t let him distant himself from her. She should have demanded to know what was wrong, but she hadn’t. Instead, she had let him keep it all inside, let him become ostracized. In short, she had failed as a best friend. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me,” she said, knowing how insufficient her apology was.

“It’s all in the past now,” Sungyeol said, shrugging. “Things have gotten a bit better. I have friends now, within the conspiracy.”

“But why did you even join the conspiracy?” She remembered what Dongwoo had said about a friend inviting him. If he hadn’t had any friends, then how did that work?

“Hyora convinced me to. She was my first real friend at the Royal Academy, essentially. She’d been away at the Hwasung king’s court for several months, even before I’d attended, and then she came back, found that I had stolen her spotlight in magic class, and decided to barge into my room and talk to me about things. It just went from there, I guess.” He chuckled, as if remembering the incident.

Seulhee couldn’t help but feel a bit of jealousy toward Hyora. It felt like Sungyeol had replaced her, just a bit, and she didn’t like that feeling.

At last, they reached the front door, where they found Dongwoo waiting, standing with his back to them, evidently still upset about what had happened earlier.

“Dongwoo will lead you from here,” Sungyeol said. “Perhaps we will be able to talk again sometime. Good bye, Seulhee.”

“Good bye,” she answered. On reflex, her mind added, best friend…