“It’s been difficult to get him to talk, your highness. Unless you want us to use some… slightly more barbaric tactics. I’m sure… well, that’s just the problem. He won’t even talk to his own lawyer. He just sits in the questioning room and stares at nothing. So we haven’t been able to get anything out of him except the moments he needs to relieve himself.”

Jihoon closed the brown file and put it back down on the desk. “…let me in to see him.”

“Your highness, that would be totally inappropriate.”

His highness looked up from under his brow with a terrifying glower that even made Wonwoo break out into a cold sweat, never mind the head detective. “Do you want him to talk?”

“…yes, sir?”

“Put me in that room.”

Jihoon was led through corridors, but was barred from entering the questioning room until Wonwoo had ascertained that the assailant had been properly tied to his chair: both wrists and ankles.

Jihoon paid the mirror in the room no mind, nor the microphone or the cameras.

He was, however, the center of attention. The skittish little man chained to his chair looked at the Dark Prince as if he were the grim reaper, there to take away his soul for all of eternity.

Jihoon stared back.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Jihoon glared back. Wonwoo stood behind the glass, hairs raising on his arms and chills thrilling down his spine uncomfortably. Jihoon was a difficult man to anger in every-day life, but when he got mad, he sure did go for it. Jihoon was scary enough to make his bodyguard of ten years shudder at the idea of being in the same room as him.

Jihoon glared some more, making the skittish man even more skittish.

With every step Jihoon took towards the man, he fumbled some more: he began to mumble bits here and there.

Jihoon stood on the other side of the table, and leaned in. “You killed my family,” he whispered darkly.

“Alright! Alright I’ll tell you everything!” The man sat there, frozen stiff under the Dark Prince’s glower as he explained the whole thing. Where he had gotten the poison from. How he sneaked in and out of the palace. How he had administered it. How he had planted bombs. And how he had stabbed Jun in the chest, and then poisoned him with castor root when the stabbing hadn’t proved fatal.

When Jihoon came out, the scowl didn’t diminish at all. “I just didn’t get motive,” he muttered to the chief.

“Well… to be honest, your highness, we brought in a psychiatrist. He thinks the assailant is… well, mad, sir. Not in control of his own faculties. He peed twice in there.”

“His highness is a little frightening-”

“I’m sorry,” Jihoon growled out from behind a clenched jaw, interrupting his bodyguard. “Are you trying to tell me that my entire family was murdered because somebody’s brain went ape on him?”

“Now, your highness-”

“Wonwoo!” Jihoon turned away. “We’re leaving. Get the car.”

This is a terrible time to be thinking about one’s secret florist lover.

“I swear all this, by the right that is mine, until I die.”

Something heavy went onto his head, and Jihoon could only think of the last time he was crowned. Complete with your coffee-filter crown. It’s kind of cute on you. The crown Seungcheol had given him was lighter. Held less responsibilities.

This crown was made of gold, and it proclaimed him King for now until he died.

And if Jihoon was any sort of lucky kind of guy, then he wouldn’t be king for long. After all, Kings were kind of getting their asses popped off to heaven or hell around here lately. But no. Jihoon wasn’t any sort of lucky guy. They’d caught the murderer. Jihoon wasn’t going to die, or be let off the hook. He was stuck in the one place he’d hoped to never see again, unable to get out, being crowned King for the whole nation to see.

And all he could think of was an absolutely abysmal florist somewhere downtown Hongdae, about a minute away from a café, who was going to see on the TV in his shop how the man he loved more than his own soul was selling away his freedom for his country.

For Jihoon, however, it was just another terrible day. He stood out on the balcony and waved at his people, who were astoundingly less happy with his coronation than anybody else’s. After all, he was a Dark Prince – or Dark King, now – and he was an omega. After the official greeting of the public and the press there was the greeting of the council and the parliament, and then Jihoon got to sign documents.

Lots and lots of documents.

“And this,” his new secretary Eyoung told him as she put the paper down, “is the release form to order the civilian reserves to be called in, trained and taken to the front.”

The King’s hand wavered, hovering over the dotted line before he put his pen down. “Get me the list of the civilian reserves. Pronto.”

“Of course, your majesty.”

Wonwoo pursed his lips, but even from behind, the gesture wasn’t lost on th