Equally terrifying, the Ladies of the Infinite possessed the political will to knife any foe, and smile while doing it.

 

Chapter 6

Seoul was easy enough to hide in.

Bastion of the Lords of the Infinite for centuries, the city had been shaped by their will since its founding. On its face, the city was everything anyone would want it to be, a large, gleaming monument to everything that the Empire promised — wealth, affluence and security.

As the capital, it lived under the direct shadow of the Emperor and his court, and as such, most serious crime had been eradicated. It was true, for the most part, the citizens of the social, political, and economic nerve center of the Empire could live without fear of victimization.

There was an underside to the city though, one that law enforcement was more than aware existed. They were loathed to admit it though, save for the circumstances where they were forced to face it directly – and then they would crush it with an unrelenting tide of oppression.

With twenty million people calling Seoul home, it was only natural.

Namjoon liked to consider himself a part of it, it certainly was the stock that he came from. He had always found that life in the epicenter of the counterculture fit him to the letter, like a glove. Born and raised in a family of thinkers, he was brought up like so many of those around him were: to question the way of things. Kim Namjoon was taught to question all authority, he was taught to completely distrust any trapping of the so-called authority that the Empire wielded.

He was also taught to adapt.

It might have repulsed him to adopt the mentality of a loyal citizen of the Empire — but he, like his parents, understood that to subvert, and eventually, destroy the system, obedience was needed. Obedience in the form of belief in what it meant to be a loyal citizen. To that, Namjoon had always interpreted that as blindly following whoever sat on the throne.

The blind leading the blind.

Throughout his time in high society, that meaning had changed.

Namjoon nominally knew Jimin, he knew him passing. His loathing wasn’t placed in what he personally knew of the man. It was more for the title that he held, for the idea that he represented. If one good egg had to be cracked to achieve the greater good, than he was willing to make that sacrifice. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that happened in pursuit of the goal.

As he proceeded down the street, he tried to reconcile the fact that he was being put in this position.

The go-word was something that everyone who thought like him dreamed of getting. Issued by the unit leader, it was the code word that would send all assets of the unity into position. That was under the assumption that all the units were in a proper position.

For Namjoon, it meant that he, directly, was being called into service.

Throughout the entire history of their organization, no one had ever risen as high as he had. No one had ever gotten so close to the core membership of the Imperial Family. If the dream order, the go-word was finally being given, it was almost a given that he would be involved and critical.

As he neared the center of the street, and the club came into view — he took a steadying breath. The risk that was taken to give him the code word at the ceremony was enormous. Part of his mind still had trouble comprehending the fact that it was here.

The Stargazer was as nondescript a name as he could fathom, but Namjoon had always worried that it was too obvious. It was the set meeting point, if ever that word was given — the members of the unit were to meet at the club and receive their orders from the leader.

As he took another breath — he hoped that they hadn’t spoiled everything, because the difference between success and failure in this circumstance was indeed life and death.

Sojung had worn many masks in her life. It had seemed that he’d known her his entire life, and throughout that time, he’d seen her adapt her very personality to whoever her audience was. The addition of the woman to the unit was a novelty, but the deception that the Princess carried out hadn’t earned her any friends.

Which was why Namjoon was irate when he’d received the code word.

Standing in the doorway of the small room, he tried to ready his brain in an attempt to decipher what he was seeing.

While the unit rarely enjoyed contact with each other, he knew it was comprised of dozens of members.

But only Sojung was present.

Dressed in form fitting blue-jeans and a brown leather jacket, her long, angular face bore a smile. With her brown hair tied back into a tight bun, she hardly looked like the portrait of a Princess of the Infinite Empire.

But then again, her true self rarely met that qualification — it was merely an accident at birth that she possessed such a title.

“Joonie,” She beamed.

Namjoon scowled, “Your Royal Highness.”

Sojung scoffed and waved him towards the table she sat at, “None of that, we leave our titles at the door.”

“Then what good are you?” He asked.

Her laugh was a tinkling, light sound — and it sounded patently false to him. “We both know that you wouldn’t enjoy the position that you currently occupy without me.”

Namjoon preferred not to dwell on such technicalities.

Displeased expression firmly painted on his face, he bowed his head and proceed to the small table she sat at.

“The risk you took, passing me the word at the ceremony,” Namjoon groused. “It must mean you’re ready?”

She was normally deviousness incarnate, but there was something in her expression that reminded him of a cat that swallowed the canary.

“Everything is ready,” She answered.

Namjoon raised a brow. “Is that so? Because the last time I checked, Jimin is quite secure on his throne.”

“Jimin thinks he’s secure,” Sojung mused in that insufferably smug tone that she’d perfected over the years. “He also has surrounded himself with people that think they’re much smarter than they actually are. That doesn’t concern you though, all you need to do is report.”

Seokjin was crucial to all of it.

He wouldn’t be truthful if he’d said that he hadn’t attempted to sway Seokjin into their way of thinking. The task itself was daunting, and while he had, over the years, swayed his thinking towards being more sympathetic towards democracy, that did not mean that he’d turned Seokjin.

The fact of the matter was that Seokjin was every bit a member of the Imperial Family that his cousins were.

They couldn’t all be like Sojung, and even Namjoon couldn’t say that the elder woman was fully in it for the cause.

The plan, as far as he knew it, ended up with a sympathetic Seokjin as the face of their movement.

That was the idea.

Taking a seat across from her, he nodded. “I believe he is, very much so.”

Sojung leveled him with a look that scrutinized him down to his very core.

“Are you being truthful with me?”

“Are you?” Namjoon shot back.

The two became locked into an unmistakably tense stare-off.

Namjoon vaguely remembered that they had the same goals. Cutting out motivations, they both wanted to see change come to their society. They wanted the same end-game.

It was Namjoon that took the initiative and broke away.

“He’ll be ready,” He relented.

Sojung smiled and nodded.

Somehow, he got the distinct impression that he’d just walked into a web.

She allowed herself to drift into her thoughts.

It had been years in the making – and it was so close to the end that she could taste it on her tongue. At the core, the Infinite was rotten, and she had always known that it would take someone with her mind to excise it. It wasn’t a simple matter of her loathing for her cousins, or for the fact that she could never inherit the throne because of what was between her legs.

Sojung believed in the Infinite.

She believed in the supremacy of the Empire that her family had spent centuries building.

It was the greatest political creation that mankind could ever fathom, and the political hegemony that it had cast over the world could only drive the world towards the inevitable conclusion: unity, peace and prosperity. What had held it back had been the cause of many failures of humanity, men – men who thought with their and played with them too much.

So, it occurred to her one day to think like they did.

And she set in motion a series of events that would culminate in her goals.

It was merely a coincidence that she would drag others along for the ride.

When the dust settled, she would deal with those that thought that she could be manipulated into destroying her family’s greatest creation. When she was Empress, she would make them all see what she was capable of, and she would restore the Empire to its glory days.

“What did you think?” She asked him.

She’d felt him slip into the room only a few moments after Namjoon left it. Sojung had gotten the distinct impression that Mark had been listening to the entire exchange, she wouldn’t pretend to know how he operated, all she understood was that he was not to be trifled with, at all.

It was almost as if a shadow had passed over her.

“He knows nothing,” Mark hummed, and she turned her head to find the spy slide into the seat next to her. “Which is all the better for us, Seokjin is necessary to initiate changes.”

And if Seokjin was made aware, all their planning would amount to nothing.

“And Hoseok?” She asked.

She watched as a terrifying smile flitted over the man’s lips. It had long been said that Mark Tuan was a beast – his razor-sharp canines had earned him that nickname. Of all Jung Hoseok’s demented little creatures, Mark was the deadliest of the bunch, but he had his uses.

Jung Hoseok might have headed the Praetorian Guard.

But the Praetorian Guard belonged to the Imperial Family.

“Hobi sees so many enemies that he doesn’t stop to look for his friends,” Mark looked positively beside himself with glee. “I’m counting on that as leverage, and I assure you, it’ll work.”

“And your insurance?” Her question was light.

Both had been careful to never name names.

Mark’s smile turned into a frown and reached up to run a hand through his blonde hair.

“I’m working on it.”

She didn’t like to hear that.

“Will you be ready in time?” She asked.

Mark nodded, “Have I ever disappointed you?”

There was a first time for everything – but she withheld that from him.

Sojung would teach this one a hard lesson when all was said and done.

Kim Junhoe wasn’t sure what to do.

It was his first deployment, and it was a well-emphasized fact in basic training that any new guardsman would see things that shocked them from the people that they swore their lives to protect. He accepted that as a fact of life, it was something that all who aspired to become a member of the Imperial Guard had to accept, it was written into the very foundation of the guard.

But what he saw before him was truly something else.

It was his first direct interaction with a member of the Imperial Family since being assigned to the Winter Palace detachment. Though Prince Taehyung had visited his graduating class, and inspected them, this was his first, real taste of what it would be like to be around him.

And as far as he knew, this was his normal routine.

There were countless rumors about the Prince, and by extension, his brother, The Emperor, that would feed into what he was seeing. As much as he was rather reluctant to admit it, and as much as he would never put it into actual words, the behavior fit his profile exactly.

Prince-Imperial Taehyung was doing his morning regimen of yoga, something that he had been told in advance to expect from the man whenever he came to stay at the Winter Palace.

It wasn’t the yoga, though, that had captured Junhoe’s attention.

It was the fact that Taehyung, Prince-Imperial, was performing the regimen without so much as a shred of clothing on his lithe body. It was also the fact that each pose he assumed seemed to grow in its explicit ism, and each seemed to expose more and more of his body.

Yes, completely and utterly .

By his count, it had been an hour since he assumed his post on the entrance to the Grand Portico. The portico itself overlooked the main courtyard of the massive palace complex and provided a stunning view of the solid green mountains that surrounded the grounds on all sides.

Taehyung had gone through the litany, all on his mat, all for Junhoe’s gaze.

He was comfortable with himself.

If someone was attractive to him, he was more than willing to admit such a thing. Prince Taehyung, on the other, he was, by all rights, one of a handful of peo