Bae Jinye: She was recruited for her beauty. She seduced Prince Wonwoo in order to get information on the war resistance within Solen, and also as a female accomplice to get information from the more exclusive female gatherings. She pretends not to know how to read so that Prince Wonwoo would be less careful in guarding important documents in her presence.

The main reason that Lady Solbin’s family was targeted: Solbin found out that Jinye could read and was starting to suspect her identity, and so the spies decided to eliminate her before she relays that information to Prince Seungcheol.

-

Soonyoung and Yewon needed a few hours to come up with their next course of action. They decided, after some careful deliberation, that the letter had to be presented to the King so that he could take action against the spies. They also realized that it should not be made public how the King got access to the information about the spies as to not endanger their own lives; they knew they were playing with fire and carried dangerous information that would lead them to their death like it led to Solbin’s.

The letter would be presented to the King in private, and the King would never disclose that Soonyoung was the one who received that information.

When the King read the letter, he took immediate action to detain every single name on that list. It sent quite a shock amongst the palace that these people with whom they worked and spent years were actually doing horrible things to their people and their country.

It was a shock that would take a very, very, very long time to recover from. Seungcheol and Wonwoo were especially effected.

Yewon heard the story from people who witnessed the scene: when Jinye was grabbed by the guards from her room and dragged through the halls towards the dungeons, Wonwoo had been walking by. He hadn’t heard of the betrayal, and was confused as to why there were guards treating her like that. He had reasoned that it perhaps had to do with the fact that her father was refusing to send funds to help the war. He was horrified.

“Stop!” he yelled at the guards, who were quite rough with her as they dragged her.

“Your highness, the King has ordered…” the guard began to explain.

“I don’t care what the King ordered; release her this instant!”

“Don’t bother,” she told him as she was being dragged by the guards. “They know the truth about me; you’ll find out the truth soon too…”

“What?” Wonwoo was confused. He was the kind of person who had to reason his way around everything, but this was something that he could not seem to fathom at all. How could the guards know something about her that he did not?

She was dragged along and Wonwoo followed, asking the guards what she had done so that he could finally understand.

“They say she’s a Galacian spy,” said one of the guards, and Wonwoo still could not fathom it.

“What? This is ridiculous!” he yelled. He was angry, very angry. Angrier than anyone had ever seen him before. He couldn’t understand the truth of that claim. It couldn’t be true. He’d known Jinye for years, loved her for years; they shared their lives with one another for years… there was no way that was true. No way…

But even as the guards relayed those accusations towards Wonwoo, Jinye only lowered her head and complied as the guards dragged her. Wonwoo’s rational side was telling him that this was true; if it weren’t, she would have denied it. But she didn’t. She accepted the accusation without protest.

“Jinye, is this true?” he asked her, still following the band of guards. He needed to hear it from her own mouth before he could reasonably accept it.

They said that she had tears in her eyes when she confessed her crime in front of him. She also told him that she loved him, and asked him to visit her once before she was executed.

Ever since then, Wonwoo locked himself up in his room, refusing to see or speak with anyone.

-

Seungcheol, on the other hand, was most distressed by the revisiting of Solbin’s murder. With the new information that was revealed, it was like she died all over again. He became dark and cold again, barely approachable at all. And he lost his smile once more…

Yewon was similarly distressed. The letter contained revelations that made her blood run cold. It changed her perception of a lot of people: of Seokmin, of Jinye, and most of all, of her own brother, whom she realized was an absolute villain.

She hated him now. She hadn’t thought it was possible to truly despise a blood relative, especially one that she knew did care for her, but she really, truly and deeply despised her brother now. He killed Solbin. He killed Seokmin. And he was planning to kill everyone…

She remembered the years in which she loved and respected her brother. He was an honorable prince, they said. Galacian people revered him. Determined and strong-willed future King of Galacia. Yewon had thought of him as an inspiration. How clueless she had been: behind the brotherly affection he showed for her, he plotted the murder of an innocent girl, thereby causing so much pain and suffering to so many people.

Jeonghan had the right to hate Galacia. She had never imagined the scene in which Jeonghan had to see his sister in pain until Seokmin described it in his letter. If it were traumatizing for even Seokmin, who did not know Solbin or her family, how much emotional wreckage would Jeonghan have suffered because of it? It suddenly made sense why Jeonghan was so brutal to her people. He associated them with that trauma, and so he waged war and destruction on everyone.

And as Seungcheol was reliving the mourning of Solbin’s death, Yewon felt like she could say nothing to comfort him. It was not just her people, but her brother, her blood, who had killed Seungcheol’s love. She felt so unworthy of even speaking to him, and wondered how he could bear to stay married to the sister of the one who murdered his sun.

She wouldn’t blame him if her divorced her. Somehow, because he had become so cold again, she expected that he would very soon.

-

It was three days after the shocking revelation. You’d think that the shock would begin to wear off, but it still lingered in the palace halls and in the expressions of its residents. Wonwoo was still locked in his room. Seungcheol was still cold and lifeless. Soonyoung was still more terrified of death than ever before. Even the servants became more cautious, less festive, and more aware of the gravity of this political conflict. The war which had taken place outside the palace walls was suddenly brought within it, and everyone was frightened.

Yewon noted that even the brilliant Haein seemed frightened all of the sudden. If someone as intelligent as Haein was anxious, then it was clearer than ever that there was something to be scared of.

“Your highness?” Haein asked one day as she was preparing Yewon for breakfast. “Can I ask a favor?”

“Yes?”

“Would you try and talk with Wonwoo please? He’s been ignoring me. But I don’t think he would ignore you. I just want to make sure that he’s eating...”

Yewon had not spoken with Wonwoo in a very long time, ever since that conversation in which Wonwoo professed that he did not give up on her, and that he was waiting for her marriage to end. She had been very angry with him, but so many things had happened since then that she had almost forgotten about the incident.

She agreed to meet him, for Haein’s sake, and also because she was worried about him too.

-

Wonwoo’s room was outside of the palace. Ever since he recovered from his shoulder injury, he had moved from the palace into his quarters, which Yewon had only entered once before when she snuck out to meet him behind Seungcheol’s back so long ago.

She knocked on his door and spoke “please open the door,” she called out carefully. “It’s me, Yewon.”

She had to wait a couple of seconds before he opened the door. She wasn’t surprised; even if he had absolutely refused to see everyone else, she knew that he would open the door for her.

He looked deathly tired, almost as bad as he looked when he had his injury. There were bags under his eyes, his clothes were dirty and his hear was an uncombed mess.

“Haein sent you, didn’t she?” Wonwoo asked knowingly. When she didn’t respond, he pointed with his chin to a tray of empty plates on his desk. “Tell her not to worry. I’m eating. Servants come to give me food twice a day.”

“I worry about you too, you know,” Yewon mumbled. “How are you?”

“Right now, I’m better than I was in days,” he told her as he gazed at her with yearning in his eyes. “I’m glad to see you again.”

Yewon noted that there were books around the floor in his room and papers and scrolls everywhere. It was a lot more cluttered than it was the first time she had come to his room so long ago; she remembered because when he had kissed for the first time that day, he had caused her to step back a few spaces and supported her against the wall. But now, there was barely any space to move, and the wall she had leaned against when he kissed her now had books stacked against it. Yewon had to awkwardly stand in one space, watching her step so she does not step on any paper or book.

“I’m sorry for the clutter,” Wonwoo said, clearing a chair from the papers on it so she could sit.

“What is all of this?”

“Jinye had full access to this room. I wasn’t careful with hiding the documents here because I thought she didn’t read, but…” Wonwoo trailed off. “If Jinye knew how to read all along, I want to see the kind of information she had access to.”

“Was it important stuff?” Yewon asked.

“Not really,” Wonwoo told her. “I’m confused, Yewon. Really. I’m nobody as far as Galacia is concerned, why would they send Jinye to spy on me? She could have easily seduced an important man who actually owned important documents… why me?”

“Maybe she did actually fall for you,” Yewon suggested.

Wonwoo nodded in agreement, a look of sadness washing over his face. “That’s the only conclusion I could come to as well...”

“It’s pretty obvious if you ask me,” Yewon said. “There’s no way she could be with you for so long and not harbor any feelings for you. And she looked genuinely heartbroken when you ended your relationship with her…”

He looked away and bit his lower lip. Yewon could tell that the entire situation upset him greatly.

“Are you going to meet her?”

“I do want to, and I requested to, but the King did not grant me the permission,” Wonwoo replied. “She’ll be executed tomorrow with the others,” his voice faltered as he said it; she could tell that he was distraught at the prospect.

“I’m sorry,” Yewon told him. “I can’t imagine how it must feel for you.”

“It’s a good thing that I fell out of love with her before I found out, because it would have been doubly more painful than it is now if I had actually loved her. Loving you now saved me from much greater heartache than I could have probably been able to bear, Yewon,” he told her.

Whenever Wonwoo brought up his feelings for her, Yewon felt. She wanted to shut him down because she did not want to encourage him, but now, she couldn’t bring herself to do so. His feelings for her were being used to help him deal with the shocking turn of events about someone very important to him; she thought it would be very insensitive to deny him that coping mechanism.

She fell silent and averted her eyes, and the atmosphere between them suddenly became tense awkward. It was Wonwoo who broke that silence by saying: “tell Seungcheol that I’m not going to attend the execution tomorrow. I know he’ll be angry, because as the advisor, I should be there to make a statement. But I can’t watch her be in that position, and I most certainly don’t want to see her headless body...” His voice trailed off again. The image appeared to have distressed him greatly.

Yewon nodded. “I’ll tell him.”

Wonwoo was a great politician, and so he was the kind of person who rarely showed emotions. But now, it seemed that he could no longer suppress those emotions of which he was almost always in control. He was now overflowing with them, and they manifested in his voice, in his eyes and in his body.

She understood that it made him uncomfortable to be witnessed in that state, which is why he locked himself up for all these days. And she knew that her presence made him self-conscious, and so she left him alone a few minutes later, giving him the space she knew he wanted.

-

Yewon never liked public executions, but attending this one in particular was very important. She was not allowed to skip it or even to close her eyes when the execution happened. She had to be there and watch her countrymen be executed, and she had to be strong about it. She had to show the public that she had no sympathy for the spies who had betrayed Solen; she had to show the public that she was on Solen’s side in this.

And so the spies came in, and were executed, one by one. Jinye was last in that line, probably because she was the only woman.

Even in tatters, with a dusty face and disheveled hair, Jinye still looked beautiful as she stood on death row. Even her eyes retained the innocence of a beautiful heiress who never learned to read. She was looking out in the crowd, trying to find someone; Yewon knew who it was, and she also knew that he wasn’t there.

Jinye eventually cried, realizing that Wonwoo did not come to see her off in her last moments.

There was something awfully disconcerting about the entire scene. A beautiful maiden, crying, looking out into the spectating crowd to find her old lover while she stands in the line to be executed. She looked helpless and defenseless, not devious or angry like you’d expect someone like her to be.

It was a setup that screamed injustice… she looked too innocent and helpless to deserve this punishment. It was hard for Yewon to watch her, Yewon almost felt sympathy towards her, even though Jinye did not deserve the sympathy. Yewon had to constantly remind herself that Jinye was one of the main reasons that Solbin was killed. Jinye was evil... she deserved this punishment.

And it was not just her that Yewon felt sympathy towards. A lot of the other spies also looked deathly scared and harmless. Yewon imagined that Seokmin would have probably in that line had he not been the one to betray them. It would have been so painful for her to see him in that position, and she figured it would have been equally painful if she known the others like she knew Seokmin.

When all the men were executed, Jinye finally ascended onto the execution platform. The executioner began to clean the blood from the previous execution, and that gave Jinye time to be able yell her last words into the crowd: “Tell Prince Wonwoo that I have protected him all these years, and I never disclosed any information that would jeopardize him.” She seemed to be aiming those words at Seungcheol, who was sitting there with a blank expression on his face as he watched her.

“And your highness,” Jinye turned to Yewon, making her stiffen, “how can you sit there and watch your people be killed right in front of you and say nothing? Have you forgotten who you are? We’re the people you’re supposed to protect! You betrayed us and your brother and your country. I’ve been protecting you for so long, but I don’t want to do that anymore,” she yelled.

Yewon felt horrified all sudden.

“People of Solen,” Jinye yelled at the top of her lungs so everyone watching would hear: “your princess was involved in a grotesque ual affair with Prince Soonyoung, and I know becau…”

“Kill her at once!” yelled the King, muffling Jinye’s last words with his thunderous voice. The executioner spared no second and carried out the command immediately.

A/N: sorry this is kinda late!