Biting Her Tongue

by ShanaStoryteller

Summary:

Yona sees her father get murdered, but manages to sneak back to her room unnoticed.

Soo-won then takes the path of least resistance to becoming King - marrying the Crown Princess.

Yona is so sure she can change her father’s mind, so sure that she can get him to see reason. She loves Soo-won, and he’s a good man. He’s of their tribe and her father’s nephew, and he has been there to comfort her for all her worst moments. What man could be better for her, for their country, than Soo-won?

She’s always been so good at getting her way, at getting what she wants. She wants Soo-won, and so she’ll have him.

The door to her father’s room is open, and she pauses. It shouldn’t be, and where are his guards anyway? Actually – where are any of the guards? She hadn’t seen any when she was walking over. She pushes the door open just a crack further, and peeks inside. He might be having a meeting, or talking to a general, and she doesn’t want to interrupt. He’ll send them away to speak with her, he always does, but she wants him in a good mood for this, not inconvenienced by her.

There’s a bolt of lightning, and the room is illuminated. Her father’s not alone, Soo-won is there. She’s about to call out to him, but then he raises a sword – and what on earth is he doing with a sword? Especially in her father’s chambers, he knows he doesn’t like them.

He plunges it straight through her father’s chest, and the king falls dead to the floor. She takes a step back, eyes wide.

Soo-won doesn’t see her.

She’s hidden by the door, and she watches, hands over her mouth and tears spilling down her cheeks. Soo-won kneels by her father’s body, and gives a prayer. He’s trying to sound stern, but he just sounds sad, “If you hadn’t needlessly killed my father, your own brother, maybe I wouldn’t have done this. Maybe it would have just been rebellion, or patience, or – I don’t know. But it may not have been this.”

Yona doesn’t understand – her uncle died in an accident, her father would never kill anyone, especially his beloved brother. But Soo-won thinks he’s alone, and has no reason to lie. But – she can’t think of this right now, can’t worry about this right now. She has to leave, before she gets caught, before she gets a sword in her chest too. She’s no good at dancing, but she knows the basics, she is a princess after all. So she pretends that’s what she’s doing now, thinks of her dance instructor’s harsh voice and narrow eyes, and pretends she’s as light and graceful as a feather as she tip toes away, so softly that her footsteps are silent.

She doesn’t take the main hallways, doesn’t trust them with all the guards gone. She uses narrow passages she can barely squeeze through and back doors that no one but she and her father know about.

Her father. Who’s now dead.

She’s still got her hands over her mouth, and she doesn’t know what to do, where to go. This castle is all she’s known, and – and she didn’t kill anyone, no one has any reason to hurt her. But she doesn’t think her father killed anyone either, but he must have, Soo-won wouldn’t lie about that, would he? She doesn’t know. She wouldn’t have thought her beloved Soo-won could raise a weapon to her father, but she was wrong. Oh so very wrong.

Yona’s trying to sneak through the garden, there’s a back path that leads to her rooms, or if she goes the other way it will take her to the large doors at the corner of the grounds that merchants use. She still hasn’t made up her mind which way she’s going to go, what path she’s going to take.

Someone grabs her elbow and she screams. She attempts to twist away, trying to punch whoever it is even though she’s never thrown a real punch in her life. Except her fist is caught, and she tries to pull away, but can’t, and she’s so stupid, she should have just run away, but she didn’t, and now she’s going to die.

A familiar voice says, “Princess! Princess, it’s me!”

Oh.

It’s Hak.

She looks up at him, and he seems scared. He’s never scared. He lets go of her, and she wraps her arms around herself, tries to stop shaking.

She bites her lip, afraid of what she’ll say if she starts talking, and by the warm tang of blood in her mouth she can tell she bit herself too hard. “What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?” She keeps starring at him, wide eyed, and he grabs her upper arms, clearly about to start shaking her if she doesn’t answer him. “Princess, talk to me! Usually I can’t get you to shut up.”

“Are you one my side?” she asks, a whisper and a sob. She doesn’t even know what she’s asking, not really, but surely Hak would never betray her father. But she would have said the same of Soo-won, and she was wrong, so. She needs to know.

“Always,” he says with a seriousness he rarely lets her see. “On your father’s request I pledged my life to yours. I am always on your side. Now please tell me what’s wrong.”

She looks to his glaive, to the gleaming blade at the end. Hak is a better fighter than Soo-won. If she told him what he did, Hak would believe her, and he would fight for her. But this is more than Soo-won, it’s all the missing guards, it’s – more, and it’s bigger, and Hak would fight for her, but Yona doesn’t want him to die for her.

She doesn’t want Soo-won to die either, she doesn’t think. If those two fight, it will end in someone’s death, and she thinks there’s been enough death. She’s already lost one person she loves tonight, and she doesn’t think she’ll survive losing another.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I just – I had a nightmare. A horrible nightmare, and it – it was real, I thought for sure it was real, and I didn’t know what to do.” That’s it, just think of all this as a nightmare, it’s not real, and it didn’t happen. If it’s just a nightmare, she can do this, she can survive this. But she can’t stop the tears from coming, and she buries her face in her hands, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m just so scared.”

Hak hesitates, but then he places his arms around her, and after a beat she clings to him, holding him as tightly as she can, holding him to her so that no one can take him from her. “It’s okay, Princess. I’m here, and nothing can hurt you as long as I’m by your side.”

“Come sleep with me,” she whispers, “Hak, please, I – I know you must be tired–”

“I am your bodyguard. Keeping you safe is my job,” he smiles and pokes her forehead, relieved and trying to hide it, “Even from your dreams.”

Please, please let this just be a dream.

~

It’s not a dream.

The next morning the king is found murdered in his bedroom from a sword through the heart.

Hak is looking at her, grief around him like a cloak, but also a question he doesn’t dare ask. She had a horrible nightmare the night her father was killed, thought she saw someone the day before. But he doesn’t say anything, won’t, not while she’s like this.

Everyone whispers about her, numb in her grief, glassy eyed and frail. Min-soo dresses her and feeds her, and propriety shouldn’t allow it, but she refuses to let anyone else touch her. She dismisses her handmaidens, because Min-soo had broken down crying at the news of her father’s death, and so she knows she can trust him.

Soo-won is there. He cries, and he’s sympathetic, talks of losing his own father. He hugs her and wipes the tears from her eyes, and she lets him. She has to let him. And he tells her he’s sorry, like so many other people have, but every time he says it she has to make an effort not to flinch.

She feels like a traitor, because she still finds him comforting, she still loves him. That’s something that should have died with her father, but it didn’t, and now she’s lost. Sleep eludes her. Every time footsteps are by her door she tenses, fearing it’s Soo-won come to stick a sword through her heart.

She attends her father’s funeral with bags under her eyes, so weak she can barely stand. When it’s done, she excuses herself from the banquet as quickly as can, doing her best to get away from prying, judgmental eyes. Yona collapses in a hallway, her vision swimming. Min-soo yells and helps her up, and Soo-won is on one side and Hak is on the other, just like it’s been her whole life.

“Princess, please,” Soo-won says, taking her hands, what she thinks is real concern filling his face. “You can’t do this to yourself, it’s not what your father would want.”

He’s warm. He shouldn’t still be warm, not after doing what he’s done, but he is. “I’m afraid,” she says, looking him straight in the eye for the first time since her father died. “What if they come back for me? What if one night someone runs a sword through my heart?”

She’s searching his face for any flicker of emotion, any sign that she’s just described her future. His mouth parts, and his eyes get wet. “That won’t happen! Don’t say such an awful thing!” He truly sounds wretched at the thought, and something relaxes inside her.

Maybe she’ll die by a sword through the heart. But she doesn’t think he’ll be the one wielding it.

Hak’s fist slams into the wall against her head, and she jerks away from Soo-won to look at him. His chest is heaving and there’s a fierceness in him that she’s never seen before. “They would have to run it through my heart first! You are my princess, and I will never let anything hurt you! I – I’m sorry I couldn’t save your father, that I wasn’t there to stop who did this. I failed him, Princess. But I will not fail you.”

Yona smiles for the first time since her father died, breathless with an emotion she can’t quite name, and cups the side of Hak’s face. “Will you move into the room next mine? I know it’s a lot to ask, but I think I could sleep, if I knew you were there beside me. And it will be more comfortable than making you sleep in my room with me.”

“Yes,” he says, almost before she’s finished speaking. “Of course.”

His eyes are intense, and she never wants to look away. Hak is strong, the strongest person she knows, and he cares for her. She can feel the tension draining from her body, tension she hadn’t even been aware she’s been carrying before it was gone.

Hak makes her feel safe, when she thought she’d never feel that way again.

They take her to her room, and tuck her in, and Soo-won holds her hand until she falls asleep, just like when they were kids, and when she smiles at him it almost doesn’t feel like she’s cutting out her own heart. “Sleep well, Princess,” he says, tucking her hair behind her ear. He still makes her heart flutter. She wishes he didn’t.

Hak is there, sitting in the corner of her room. If Soo-won tries to hurt her, Hak will stop him.

~

Soo-won can’t help but worry. Watching Yona collapse in on herself, seeing the blank look in her eyes, her trembling hands – it almost makes him regret what he did.

Yona is childish, and ignorant, but she is kind. She’s not fit to be regent, but she wasn’t raised to be, wasn’t pushed to be. Another of the late king’s sins, leaving his daughter unprepared to rule the kingdom he knew she would inherit. Maybe he’s supposed to hate her, but he can’t, he’s never been able to.

As children, he couldn’t help but love her, younger than him and imperiously demanding in a way he’d never mastered. Even as a little girl, when Yona gave orders, people wanted to listen to her. She was someone that people wanted to indulge, and he remember all manner of nobles and servants bending to her pouting commands.

He’d never figured out how to do that. People listened to him because he was kind, because he made them think he was someone they would like. Even when people didn’t like Yona they still felt compelled to do as she asked, and not just because she was their princess. He’s smart and calculating, but he’s never figured out how to make them glad to listen to him, not like Yona did it, unconsciously and as easy as breathing.

After his father died, he wanted to hate her, to resent her. But just as he was there for her when her mother died, so she was there for him. She wasn’t good at comforting words, at knowing what to say or do. But she pulled him from his darkness, again and again, demanding he spend time with her, play with her, pulling his mind from his grief and putting it on her sweet smile, her laughter.

He wonders what would have become of him, if he hadn’t had Yona to pull him away from the darkness.

Someone who would have killed the king long before this, he thinks, and not for any sort of defendable reason, not because he was running Kouka to ruin. He would have done it out of a pure revenge, he would be a bitter man, half mad in his grief and betrayal.

Yona saved him from that, and in return he’s killed her father. She saved him, and he’s thinks he may have ruined her.

It haunts him more than the king’s blood on his hands ever could.

~

Yona wakes up the next morning, and she feels the sun on her face, feels warm, and she hasn’t forgotten anything, she knows she’s playing a dangerous game that could end in her death at any moment. But right here, right now – she feels just a little bit of peace.

She opens her eyes, and blinks. “Are you finally awake?” Hak asks flatly. From right in front of her. She then realizes that she’s curled herself around his arm, plastering herself to his side. Before she would have been embarrassed, or screamed, but she doesn’t have the energy for that now.

“Yes. I thought you were going to sleep against my wall?”

He scoffs, but then grows quiet. “You woke me up. You were crying in your sleep, and you were saying Soo-won’s name.” He hesitates, but barrels forward. “You sounded scared.”

“I am scared,” she answers, and thinks not for the first time of telling Hak everything. But his honor wouldn’t allow him to say nothing, to do nothing. He’ll challenge Soo-won, and then she’ll be right back to two people she loves trying to kill each other, to a coup of her kingdom. To actions that will cause a civil war that she won’t have any idea how to stop. So instead of answering the questions he hasn’t voiced, she asks, “Why am I holding your arm?”

“I tried to wake you up, but you grabbed me, like an octopus. And, uh, you – stopped crying,” his mouth turns down at the corners. “I didn’t want to wake you, even if you were being annoying. You’re in serious need of some beauty sleep, Princess.”

Yona pulls the pillow out from under her head so she can beat him with it. He’s clearly not expecting it, which means she gets a few good whacks in before he grabs his own pillow and returns the favor.

Hak leaves when Min-soo arrives, looking wide eyed at the two of them lying together. But Hak is smiling, and so is she. It makes her cheeks hurt. It feels good.

Min-soo has brought her breakfast, like he has every day for the past three days. Today, she eats it. Slowly, to avoid it coming back up, but she eats. She’s halfway through her bowl when she hears sniffling, and she looks up, startled. “Min-soo! Are you all right? Is something wrong?” She abandons her breakfast to kneel next to him, concerned.

He rubs at his leaking eyes, and he’s trembling. “You slept last night, and you’re eating, and you were playing with General Hak and – I’m just so grateful!” he wails. “I was so worried that you were determined to join your father, and then where would I be? Who would I be, if I’m not your servant?”

“Min-soo,” she says softly, surprised and touched. She hadn’t known he cared so much. She lifts his chin to look at him, and wipes away his tears with her sleeve. “I am sorry for worrying you. It was not my intention.”

“Everyone is worried,” he confesses, “They – Princess, I don’t want to burden you, I do not want to worry you, but people are talking. They ask what will be of the throne, when you are only sixteen, when you are – when grief closes around you like a cage. We have no one on our throne, Princess.”

“The throne,” she says softly, and she’s stupid, she’s so stupid, why can’t she ever think? Maybe Soo-won killed her father just for revenge. But – he spoke of rebellion, of patience, and she doesn’t have to think of complicated things often, but she can, she’s just as educated as any other noble, more so even, because her father prized her education so greatly.

Soo-won wants to be king. He’s having patience now, he didn’t kill her. But he’s of royal blood too, his father was the eldest son, and the whole castle knows that she loves him. Loved him. Loves him. She doesn’t know.

But it’s so obvious that he expects them to marry, and if she hadn’t seen what she had – she wouldn’t hesitate. She was never meant to rule, she was meant to be pretty and learn her manners, she was meant to marry a man who could rule for her. And she’d been so convinced Soo-won was that man, that he would do it gladly. Her name was his name already, he would marry her and become king and she could focus on being happy, on being pampered, on all the things she’s focused on her whole life.

Soo-won killed her father to become king. He didn’t do it alone, he had support, people who helped him. Which means there are people, powerful people, who expect him to become king as well. And maybe Soo-won won’t kill her to get what he wants. But those other people? They definitely will.

She could refuse, could run, could die. But then there will be no one who knows the truth, no one who matters, and dying or running means Soo-won will win it all, will have taken her father’s life and his throne, and will rule uncontested.

Yona has always hated letting other people win.

She must marry Soo-won if she wants to stay in her castle. If she wants to keep an eye on him, she must be near him. It’s what everyone expects her to do anyway.

So – fine.

But she’s going to do this on her terms, her way. She has always been so very good at getting what she wants. She’ll just – have to apply that skill a little differently, from now on. That’s all.

“Princess?” Min-soo whispers, “Are you okay? I’m sorry, you’re just getting better, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, thank you,” she says, then pauses, considering him. He cares for her, and cried at the news of her father’s death, and feeds and dresses her. He shoulders the work of three servant without complaint because she asked him to. “I trust you, Min-soo, you know that don’t you? It’s why you’re now the only servant who’s allowed in my room. It’s why only you can bring me food, you who can watch me undress.”

“Yes, Princess. I am honored,” he says, blushing. He is the only man who has seen her naked. She should be embarrassed. But before she was too numb to care, and now it doesn’t matter, she’s decided it doesn’t matter. She’s going to trust him, who cares if he’s seen her naked.

“I want to know what people say,” she says, “and you must always tell me the truth, do you understand? You must never lie to me.”

He nods, throwing back his shoulders in pride. “Yes, Princess! You can count on me!”

She stands, holding out her hand. He hesitates, he shouldn’t touch her like that, but he can’t refuse her either. So he takes her hand and lets her pull him up. “Gather the generals,” she says, “They’re right. I’ve put this off long enough.”

~

Yona stands before them, dressed in plain clothes, her wild hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’d spent a long time choosing what to wear, trying to choose something that would make them trust her, like her.

Those aren’t the type of things clothes can do, not in this situation, not to these people. So she’ll just have to do something else instead, and she’d thought long and hard about what she could do to get the generals on her side, to get them to trust her when she knows next to nothing of how to run a kingdom.

She bows low, something she’s obviously never done before. She’s the princess. She bows to no one.

There’s a sudden silence so loud it deafens her. She doesn’t think any of her generals are even breathing.

“Thank you,” she says, speaking to the floor, because it intimidates her less. “Losing my father so suddenly and violently has been … difficult. But you have allowed me time to grieve, when perhaps you shouldn’t have, and I am grateful for it.”

This is hard, it’s so hard, she thinks of the poetry her tutors forced her to read, of court antics and saying things you don’t mean, of moving people like game pieces. Her father must have done this, but he never taught her how, and all she has to go on are old stories she was never very good at paying attention to in the first place.

“You don’t need to apologize, Princess,” Hak says, voice strained with something that almost sounds like panic. “Please – do not bow to us. It’s not proper. We are you servants.”

She straightens, and smiles. She hopes she looks competent, but knows she doesn’t. She’s a grieving sixteen year old girl, who wasn’t taught to lead, who’s making this all up as she goes. The best she can hope for is that they don’t think of her as damaged goods.

Joon-gi of the Water Tribe looks at her with calm, calculating eyes. “Why have you called us here, Princess?”

“The throne of Kouka is empty. It needs to be filled. I am my father’s only child. So I ask you, generals – will you support my appointment as queen of Kouka?”

There’s a beat of stunned silence. They had all expected her to marry first, then to be coronated, but she won’t allow that. If Soo-won wants to be king, then he shall be king – but on her terms, not his. She’s been getting her way her whole life. She’s not going to stop now.

“The Wind Tribe supports the ascension of Princess Yona, the only heir of the late king,” Hak says. He has that same fierceness to him, and she can’t look at him too long, otherwise it will steal her breath away. Has he always looked at her like that? Impossible. She would have noticed.

Wouldn’t she?

Joon-gi gives her a long, measuring glance. She doesn’t flinch, or look away. She pretends she’s fighting about what dress to wear to a banquet, and doesn’t give an inch. He almost smiles, catches himself, then says, “The Water Tribe supports the ascension of Princess Yona.”

The Earth general Geun-tae snorts and crosses his arms, “Fine, whatever. Better than watching you go catatonic.”

Hak tenses, but Yona catches his eye and shakes her head. She bows again, and says, “I am honored by your trust, General.”

When she looks up, he seems surprised. He snorts again, but he’s more relaxed. “The Earth Tribe supports the ascension of Princess Yona.”

She looks to Soo-jin, the Fire general. He’s older than the others, unwilling to let his son take his place. “No disrespect, Princess, but I worry about you leading alone in this difficult time of transition. Perhaps someone to stand by your side, someone to help you? Do you have any thoughts to taking a husband?”

Traitor, she thinks, but doesn’t say. She doesn’t have any proof, doesn’t have anything at all. Maybe he is just genuinely concerned for their nation. But she doesn’t think he is. She thinks the Fire Tribe is the one that conspired with Soo-won to kill her father and take his throne.

“Perhaps,” she says, and it’s a good think her pride died along with her father, because otherwise she doesn’t think she’d be able to survive this at all, wouldn’t manage to look at the man who conspired to kill her father without flinching. “But talks of my marriage can come after Kouka has a ruler again. One problem at a time, General.”

“Do you know of another child of the king lying about?” Geun-tae demands, and Yona is surprised at the contempt in his voice. Contempt that is not of her, but for her. “She is the lawful heir. Our king has been murdered right underneath our noses. Do you intend to sully our duties and traditions even further by denying our rightful queen her throne?”

They’re glaring at each other now, the tension thick enough to cut. But Soo-jin looks away first, and when he speaks he sounds sincere enough that she can pretend to believe him. “Of course, my apologies. The Fire Tribe supports the ascension of Princess Yona.”

~

“You need to keep an eye on her.”

Soo-won looks up from his book, and raises an eyebrow at Soo-jin. “On who?”

“You know precisely whom I mean,” he snaps. “Princess Yona is dangerous. She’s taking the throne unmarried. I agreed not kill her because you said it would be better to marry her, that the people would take to you better as her husband than as a new line of kings.”

“Yes,” he agrees mildly. “That’s all still true.”

He’d planned to suggest their marriage to her carefully, covertly, in a way that would make her think it was all her idea. But she was so frail in the days following her father’s death, withdrawn and frightened, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. She seemed as if she would waste away in front of his eyes, and there would be no point to a marriage then, he’s the next in line after her, after all.

But she has life in her eyes again, is pulling herself back together again. She’s gathering her broken pieces and making herself into something new, something he hasn’t seen from her before.

“Yet here we are,” Soo-jin says, “with the princess unwed, and you not on the throne.”

He sighs deeply, “If I proposed to her today, she would accept. But it’s better to have her come to me. Better that the country sees her come to me. Don’t worry,” he says, and tells himself he’s not lying, “if necessary, I’ll kill her myself.”

~

Hak watches Yona make preparations for her coronation, and he’s so relieved to see her moving again, to see her eating. She makes him taste the menu for the banquet and complains about the tight schedule, about how big events shouldn’t be rushed, and she sounds so close to her old self that a lump settles at the base of his throat.

It’s not all genuine, a lot of it is performative, acting like how she acted before because it’s all she knows, because her other option is drowning. But she’s trying, she’s fighting through it, and he’d been so worried that he would lose her too, that he would be without his king and his princess.

He closes his eyes, and Yona is arguing with the seamstress over her coronation dress, eschewing tradition for style. It’s probably pretty messed up that hearing her making ridiculous demands is enough to put a smile on his face, but it is.

She’s his princess, and she’s not planning on dying on him. That’s all he needs. Everything else is tolerable, as long as she doesn’t die.

As long as he can be by her side, he can endure anything.

~

Everyone gathers for her coronation.

Grief and fear threaten to strangle her at every moment, but she won’t let them. Hak sleeps in the room next to hers, and Soo-won is gentle and kind to her as he always is, doesn’t seem phased at all that she’s getting coronated unwed. It almost makes her doubt herself, maybe this wasn’t his plan, but, no – she has no idea how to be a ruler, and he knows that. If she tries to do this on her own she’ll get overwhelmed, and scared, and she’ll go running to him like she always does. He only has to wait for her to fail, and the come swooping in to save her.

So she can’t fail. She has to do this, for her people, for Kouka.

Min-soo helps her get changed, arranging the dress against her shoulders and brushing out her hair. He puts it up in an elegant bun on top of her head, and secures it with the hair ornament Soo-won had given her.

Her dress is white and embellished with pearls. There’s the large pattern of a dragon stitched across it in red, the same red as her hair, red as blood, red as dawn. It’s a call back to the first king of Kouka, the famed red dragon who become human for his people.

If a dragon can give up his immortality for love of his people, can profess to love them even as they threatened to kill him, then she can do this. She can lead a people she doesn’t know, help a country she’s never truly seen.

She will pretend she is the red dragon king, foreign and ignorant of humans’ way, but desperate to learn, desperate to love them. He learned what he didn’t know, and she can too.

Yona walks out in front of her generals, her nobles, in front of all the important people they could manage to cram into the courtyard. Hak and Soo-won are front and center. Hak’s stare is fierce, a frown that would worry her if she didn’t know him so well, and Soo-won is smiling at her, gentle and open and honest. She wants to trust that look, but she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to trust him again, and that guts her.

Even still, looking at her two best friends helps calm her nerves, gives her the strength to stand tall in front of all of them.

The priest wraps the ceremonial cloak around her shoulders, announces her to the heavens, and places the crown on her head. “As the gods and your people as your witness, you are now Yona, Queen of Kouka.”

They cheer, and she hopes some of them mean it. She’s afraid, she’s always afraid now, but she pushes that aside. She pretends it’s her sixteenth birthday party and not her coronation, and she makes her voice loud, forcing a smile she doesn’t feel.

“Thank you,” she says, speaking so her voice cuts through all the other noise, and everyone quiets. She learned to speak this way to get people’s attention, to get what she wanted, and now – now she uses it for the same thing, she supposes. “This is a time of grief, and confusion, and uncertainty, for you as well as me. I am not as wise as my father, as strong as him, as smart as him, or as kind. But,” she sweeps her eyes across them, “I hope I can grow to be the queen that you deserve to have.”

She swallows, and this hasn’t been done before. It goes against every tradition, every rule, every bit of sense or propriety. It goes against everything she’s been taught, but what she was taught won’t help her lead her nation. No other ruler has ever done this, but she saw the effect it had on her generals. It’s just like pouting, or fake tears, or that certain whine when she wanted her father to do something for her.

Yona lowers herself onto her knees, mindful of her dress, and murmurs start. Then she presses her forehead to the ground, prostrating herself in front of her people, and it’s a struggle to make sure her crown doesn’t fall off.

“My queen! You must stand,” the priest pleads. “You are above us all, you must not kneel!”

She pushes herself upright, but stays on her knees. Everyone is looking at her in shock, in confusion. But she is not strong, and so cannot make a show of strength. She is weak, and so instead must make a show of faith. “I know there is much I do not know. I know you are depending on me to learn it. But one thing I do know is this – you are my duty. As queen, my people are my first and most precious responsibility. Please know that your value, how important you all are to me, isn’t something I need to learn.”

This part isn’t a lie, at least. She’d hate herself if it was. These people are hers, and she cares about them, she cares about them more than she fears for her own life. It’s why she’s here.

She stays sitting, and she doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. More cheering, perhaps.

But that’s not what happens. People get on their knees too, and bend forward. Her whole courtyard is bowing to her, her generals lowest of all. Soo-won has pressed his forehead into the dirt in front of her, and it shouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t affect anything at all. But it makes her feel better, settles her somehow, to see him bow to her.

“Please, stand!” she says, tears threatening to fall from her eyes, and for the first time in a week it’s not because she’s sad. Maybe they don’t trust her, not yet, but they’re listening to her. She’s speaking, and they’re listening, and that’s the first step. It’s a step closer than she thought she’d have. She pushes herself to her feet, then goes over to help the priest stand as well. He’s much too old to be bowing to her like that.

There’s silence, but it feels better than the cheers. Cleaner. “Soo-won,” she says, voice loud and clear, “come here.”

He rises from his place next to Hak, and climbs the stairs to stand in front of her. He’s looking at her differently than before, more contemplative. She wonders if she’s surprised him. She’s surprised herself.

He goes on one knee in front of her, head bowed. “My queen.”

“The night before my father was killed, I went to him, and told him I loved you,” she says. His head snaps up at that, eyes wide. He hadn’t known, then. “I said I wished for an engagement to be arranged between us, but he refused. He said I could have anything else in the world it was within his power to give me, but he could not give me you.”

His lips are parted, and she really has surprised him. She wonders if he’s thinking that he made a mistake, that if he wanted the throne he didn’t need to kill her father for it. Yona would have fought for him, would have demanded him. He could have been made king without shedding any blood at all. Yona’s heart is pounding, and she doesn’t want this, but she does, because she hates him, but she loves him too. Maybe this wouldn’t hurt so much if she just hated him.

“I want you as my husband, Soo-won. But I need to ask – can you think of any reason my father would deny me? You are kind, and good, and have been there by my side my entire life. You are of our tribe, and the smartest man I know. I can think of no other I would rather call husband, and yet my father refused. Do you know why?”

She looks for greed in his face, or perhaps for guilt. She finds neither. He does nothing for a moment that seems to stretch into eternity, then he shakes his head, “Your father loved you very much. I can only assume he did not want to lose you.”

“And instead I have lost him,” she says, and there’s a ripple of grief in the air. She didn’t need to do it like this, but she wanted it to be public. She didn’t want it to be something behind closed doors that could be twisted later, could be lied about later. If she ever tells the world what he did, she wants to be able to point back to this moment and say, look how he lied to you, look how he stood before not only his people but the gods themselves and lied. “So I ask you, my dear Soo-won, my beloved of royal blood, who is clever and strong – will you take me as your bride?”

He bows his head again, tears in his eyes, and she wants to believe it’s real, wants to believe he’s more than just her father’s murderer. She’s giving herself whiplash, how quickly she shifts from hating him, to loving him in the next breath. He says, “Nothing could make me happier.”

If this were different, she would be happy, be filled with joy. She would leap into Soo-won’s arms and kiss him in front of everyone. But she can’t bring herself to do that. So instead she turns away from him, turns towards her people, and says, “Witness my first act as queen – I give you a king!”

Now there’s cheering, but like the silence it feels better, more genuine.

~

Hak had always assumed that Yona and Soo-won would marry. Soo-won liked to pretend he was above such things, but he’d always loved her, found her charming and mesmerizing seemingly against his will, even though on paper she was nothing more than a spoiled princess.

He recognized those fleeting looks on Soo-won’s face, because they matched the ones he saw when he looked in the mirror. So he had always expected Yona and Soo-won to marry. She was the crown princess, he was a prince, they’d always made sense to him.

This doesn’t make sense.

Yona is looking away from Soo-won, looking towards them, a smile stretching across her face. But he knows her, he knows her lovelorn sighs, her besotted little grins, he knows what she looks like when she thinks of her infatuation with Soo-won. This isn’t any of those looks.

His mind flashes to the fearful way she’d called Soo-won’s name in her sleep, and it was just a nightmare, likely she was dreaming of someone killing her beloved Soo-won like they had her father, and that’s why she sounded afraid.

Yona and Soo-won have been orbiting each other their whole lives, and Has was there to see it all. He’s being ridiculous, or possibly letting his long-suppressed jealousy get the better of him.

His best friends are getting married. This is joyous news, and he better start acting like it.

~

Once Yona is lead back inside from the ceremony, she excuses herself, says she’ll be down to the banquet in just a moment. Soo-won clasps her hands and kisses her cheek before being pulled away, and she hates herself for the way her skin warms at his touch.

She can’t skip this one like she did the one after her father’s funeral. But as soon as she’s alone she runs to the bathroom, throwing up everything inside her stomach. It’s a shame, when she just got used to eating again. She can’t cry, it will ruin her makeup and people will notice, but she does spend a full minute taking in deep, even breathes, and trying to stop her thoughts from getting ahead of her.

This is better, this is her best option. If she’d married Soo-won before the coronation, he would have gotten coronated too. Now he won’t, now his right to rule is from being her husband alone, not from being a king recognized by the gods. Functionally, it doesn’t matter, as soon as he’s her husband he’ll also be king. But it’s a bit of power she’s managed to keep for herself, not that she has any idea what to do with it.

She fixes her hair and wipes at her mouth, then steps outside.

Min-soo is waiting for her, a tray with a teapot and teacup in his hands. “My queen,” he says, bowing, and holds the tray out to her. “It’s ginger. For your stomach.” He carefully doesn’t say anything about her vomiting, and he keeps his gaze lowered, like he always has and like she wishes he wouldn’t.

“I would be lost without you,” she says, squeezing his arm before reaching for the tea. The pleased flush high on his cheeks lets her know she did the right thing.

She goes to the banquet, and Soo-won is seated next to her, of course, they’re engaged now. He looks like he’s genuinely happy at the prospect of being her husband, but she doesn’t think she can trust that. He’s probably just happy at the thought of being king.

The generals of have traditional places to sit at her coronation banquet. She’s stretched the boundaries of tradition far enough today, otherwise she’d insist on having Hak at her other side. She almost feels like she can keep her head around Soo-won when Hak is at her back.

It’s also tradition that she be the last to leave the banquet. She needs to speak to nobles and appointed lords, the latter the more important of the two, because they get antsy when a new monarch is chosen. She could reassign them if she chose, and maybe she will later, but she doesn’t know enough about any of them to be making any hasty decisions.

She spends most of the banquet quietly, not-so-subtly assuring everyone that she’s not planning on tearing the kingdom apart. It’s a little disheartening that they’re all so sure she’s going to mess this up, but it can’t be helped. She’s pretty sure she’s going to mess it up too, so it hardly seems fair to dislike them for vocalizing the fears she has about herself.

Soo-won keeps touching her, a hand on her shoulder, her back, and now he’s the only one who can, really. She’s not just a princess, she’s a queen, and touching her without permission is a capital offense. Her father had been kind, had been gentle, would have never enforced that rule – and yet Yona was the only one who touched him without permission, was the only one who could. Until she can convince the castle that it’s a silly rule, she better get used to only having Soo-won’s hands on her.

Three quarters through the night, her fiancé’s eyes start drooping, and she finds herself laughing in spite of herself. It’s hard to remember she hates him, when he acts like the kind, genuine boy she’s known her whole life. She kisses his cheek, and orders Hak to bring him to bed. Soo-won tries to protest, tries to say that he wants to stay with her. But she smiles and tells him to get some rest, says that Hak will keep him company if he’s worried about being lonely. Hak glares at her, but doesn’t protest, which is new. She hopes her becoming queen doesn’t mean he’ll actually start listening to her. That sounds – boring, and Hak was boring enough already without making it worse.

She misses Hak, but it’s easier to do this without having Soo-won’s eyes on hers. Fire general Soo-jin glares at her throughout the night, she thinks, but can’t say for sure because whenever she looks at him, he’s smiling. She wonders if she’s being paranoid, and what paranoid would even look like in this situation, and then decides to stop thinking about it entirely before she drives herself mad.

At the end of the night, Yona is seeing the last of her guests off, so exhausted she can barely stand. Geun-tae stops in front of her, a smirk at the corner of his lips. “Forgive me for saying so, my queen, but you’re not what I expected.”

“Is that a good thing?” she asks.

He shrugs, “I think so. You’re – stronger, than I thought you were.”

“Thank you,” she says, and her tiredness makes her stupid. “But I’m still being forged in this fire. I don’t know what shape I’ll end up in.”

She thinks that was a mistake, but Geun-tae is grinning at her, and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was the right thing to say. “Sleep well, my queen.”

People don’t stay long past that. She hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol all night, but pretty much everyone else who’s still there has, and she’s stifling her giggles as servants help her drunk guests back to their rooms.

Yona never really thought about what her coronation would be like, hadn’t thought about what being queen would be like at all. This is a sad start, a scary start, but – she thinks she likes the weight of it on her shoulders. It’s keeping her grounded, keeping her in here and now, which is what she needs most.

She finally stumbles back to bed, Min-soo by her side, just like he’s been all night. She’s still refusing to eat or drink anything that he doesn’t serve her. “You need a raise,” she yawns.

“Do you even know what I’m paid, my queen?” he asks, amused as he helps her out of her clothes and then turns her blanket down for her.

She’s in her father’s room. Well – it’s her room, now. It has her things in it, it’s been rearranged to look almost entirely different. But it’s still the room her father died in. The room her fiancé murdered her father in. But it’s okay. Hak followed her, is sleeping in the room to her right, so she’s fine. He’s just next door if she needs him.

“Good point,” she says, letting him manhandle her into bed. The rules on not touching her don’t apply to her personal servant. “Get me a copy of the household budget tomorrow morning. And whatever it is you’re paid, double it.”

“My queen!” he says, scolding. “Serving you is an honor!”

“Double it,” she repeats, snuggling into her pillow. “That’s an order from your queen.”

He scoffs at her, but she’s going to make sure it happens.

People she can trust are invaluable.

~

Soo-won heads back to his room at Yona’s insistence, his cheek still burning from where she’d kissed him. He’d meant to walk on his own, but after he almost trips a third time, Hak huffs and wraps his arm around Soo-won’s waist to steady him, a solid and warm presence all along his side. He hadn’t intended to drink. But people kept toasting to his impending marriage, and they understand why their sixteen year old newly crowned queen only takes demure sips from her water goblet, but they don’t allow the same of him.

He tells himself he’s celebrating. It’s all come together perfectly, the king is dead and he’s set to be married to Kouka’s queen, set to be made king. Just like he wanted.

But every time he blinks, he sees Yona lowering herself in front of hundreds of people, sees her staring at him, a stubborn set to her mouth like when she was a kid and didn’t want to share, and a fire in her eyes that he’s never seen before.

He thought he knew her so well, thought he knew every nook and cranny of her heart and soul. He’s not quite sure what to do with the thought that maybe he was wrong, maybe he knows her just as well as she knows him.

“Stop looking so serious,” Hak grunts as they finally make it to his room, breath hot on the shell of his ear. “This is a party.”

“Sorry,” he says. Hak tries to push him onto his bed, but Soo-won doesn’t let go, and Hak is just surprised and tired enough to let Soo-won pull him down. Hak lands on top of him, heavy and large, and after a moment where Soo-won can’t quite breath, he shifts so he’s putting some his weight on his arms instead.

Their legs are tangled, and Hak’s face is so close to his, looking down at him, and both of them smell like sweet liquor. The only light is from the moon spilling into his window, which is probably for the best, he doesn’t think he could get away with this in the harsh light of day. Hak says, “So, you’re going to marry the queen.”

“I am,” Soo-won says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Not everything growing up had been him and Yona, or Hak and Yona. There’s been a lot of it that was him and Hak, training and laughing and playing, and always, always bending to Yona’s whims, even when Hak dragged his feet and complained. “Is that okay?

Hak, his best friend, doesn’t answer for a long moment. Then he says, “It’s what I always wanted. You and our princess together, and me by both your sides.”

Our princess. Soo-won knows Hak doesn’t realize what he’s said, and he won’t call attention to it. “Stay,” he says, and it’s a dangerous suggestion. They’re so close already, and Hak is warm. Soo-won doesn’t know what would happen if Hak stayed, but he’s willing to find out.

Hak doesn’t answer, looking at him with his dark eyes. He licks his lips, and Soo-won resists the urge to do the same. He finally breaks the fragile silence between them. “I – I can’t. The queen is expecting me to be in the room next to hers. She’s only just started sleeping again.”

Soo-won is tempted to say that he could leave, after, but he won’t let himself beg for this. No matter how badly he wants it. “Yona comes first,” he says, and hopes he manages to hide his resentment when Hak makes an agreeable sound in the back of his throat and carefully climbs off his bed.

It’s so much colder alone.

Hak likes to complain, to roll his eyes and be ruder than he feels. But he’s loyal to Yona in an all-encompassing way that Soo-won doesn’t think anyone will ever be loyal to him. Joo-doh and the other follow him because of what he’s promised to do, but Hak would follow Yona anywhere, no matter the cause.

Yona pulls on all their heartstrings so easily, unknowingly playing them like puppets. He can’t decide whether that’s something he loves, or hates.

~

Yona pushes her wedding forward, makes it a small affair so it can happen quickly. She doesn’t need fresh flowers from the fields, doesn’t need a formal wedding dress. All she needs is a priest and Soo-won.

Before, she would have loved planning her wedding, would have thrown herself into it whole heartedly, and enjoyed every second. But whenever she has to take the time to do things like pick the color of the table linens, she wants to scream.

None of it matters.

She’s marrying Soo-won to prevent her own murder, to keep an eye on him and his allies, so that Kouka has a ruler that actually knows what they’re doing. Maybe she’s in love with him, maybe she hates him, she hasn’t quite decided. But either way she’s eager to get this wedding underway, because once it’s complete, once Soo-won is king, she can relax.

Once he’s taken care of, she can focus on what she really cares about – learning how to be a good queen, rather than just a spoiled princess.

~

Hak can tell whenever Yona is reaching the end of her temper, something that happens a lot quicker these days than it used to. So he sticks by her, and she doesn’t complain. It’s not much, in the grand scheme of things, but the fact that she feels safe around him, when she feels safe around so few, is such an incredible ego boost that he tries not to think about it too much, lest his head stop fitting through doorways.

“You’re really sure you don’t want a wedding gown?” he asks. Min-soo is reading aloud obscure trade laws while Yona sits with a seating chart in front of her, rubbing at her temples. It’s not like her coronation, where their seats were dictated by tradition. Now she must seat them according to alliances instead, something much more difficult to do. She’d sent a servant to the library three times already to double check the state of a few of the tribe treaties.

“A proper wedding gown will take too long to make,” she says, not looking away from her chart. “I’m to be married in a week’s time, and there are more important things to worry about. I’ll wear what I wore to the coronation.”

Min-soo’s voice stutters to a halt. Hak freezes, and she can’t be serious, can she?

She looks up at the sudden silence and frowns. “What?”

Yona’s naïve, but she’s not stupid. “If you marry Soo-won in your coronation dress,” he says, “then it will be as if you are marrying him for Kouka, and not for yourself. Out of public duty rather than personal desire.” Her weird proposal had already given people that impression, but wearing that dress to her wedding – that would cement it.

Hak’s watching her, looking for a flinch, for any sign of sudden realization. None come. “I like that dress. Don’t read too much into it,” she says, then look to Min-soo. “As you were saying?”

There’s a moment when it looks like Min-soo might question it, but he subsides, and continues reading aloud.

She knows, and she’s doing it anyway. Hak doesn’t understand. Yona has been in love with Soo-won since they were children, and of course the circumstances of this marriage are awful, but it’s still a marriage to the man she loves. Why would she try and sully that, diminish it, why would she imply that it’s a matter of state rather than a matter of the heart?

There’s something going on in her mind that he doesn’t know, and it unsettles him. Yona has always been painfully easy to understand, an open book that he could read as easily as breathing, but that’s not true anymore.

There are parts of her he doesn’t know, and it leaves him feeling unbalanced, like he’s walking on waves.

~

Soo-won tries to help with the wedding, but Yona just laughs and tells him to let her plan it. There’s gossip about the castle, about how she’s using the wedding to distract herself from her father’s death, from her heavy responsibilities as queen. They aren’t cruel whispers, not yet – she impressed quite a few people with her coronation speech. People who were initially wary about being led by an untrained child have warmed to her, are willing to wait and watch and see what unfolds.

People have started treating him differently too, as their queen’s intended.

Kouka is on the edge of ruin, and soon he will have the power to do something about it. He was going to save this country for its people, for his father’s memory, for himself.

But ever since Yona’s coronation speech, he’s been thinking. She wants a happy and safe Kouka, and he can give that to her.

 He can save Kouka for Yona too.

~

She gets married wearing the dress she became queen in, white silk embroidered with a red dragon. It causes murmurs when she steps into view, but she doesn’t care. Let them wonder at her motivations, let them say she’s doing this for them rather than for herself.

Even if Soo-won hadn’t killed her father, she would not be marrying him so quickly, so young. She loves him when she forgets that she hates him, but if it were up to her she wouldn’t be marrying him a mere week after being made queen. She does it for her people, and it only seems fair that they know it.

Soo-won walks towards her. She’s queen, and she belongs to her people, and so cannot give herself to Soo-won. Instead, he must give himself to her.

He’s gorgeous, of course, so achingly beautiful that it takes her breath away. Why couldn’t he be ugly, or cruel, or mad? Why must he still possess every trait that Yona loves so dearly? It makes him impossible to hate, even though it shouldn’t.

The priest speaks, his voice echoing in front of them all. It seems like more of the kingdom has turned up for her wedding than did for her coronation. Soo-won gets to his knees before her, but Yona doesn’t do the same.

She is the queen. She will not bow to him.

Let them look, let them see. She bowed to her people, but she will not bow to her husband. For them, she will lower herself, but not for Soo-won. When she inevitably messes something up, when she is less than the queen they need her to be, she hopes they remember this.

“Queen Yona,” the priest says, and she finally focuses on his words. “Do you take Prince Soo-won to be your husband?”

This is it, this is her last chance, if she doesn’t want this, if she can’t endure this, then this is her last chance to save herself.

“I do,” she says, and looks down at Soo-won’s bowed head. This is not how she pictured her wedding as a little girl. This is not how she pictured marrying Soo-won as a little girl.

“Rise, King Soo-won,” the priest says, and he pushes himself to his feet. “You may kiss your queen and bride.”

He didn’t hesitate to shove a sword through her father’s heart, but he hesitates now. He has a hand outstretched, but he’s not touching her, why isn’t he touching her? She’d been planning to do nothing, to simply let him do with her what he pleased. But he’s looking down at her, and there’s a question on his face, and this is what she gets for wearing this dress.

He won’t kiss her if she doesn’t want him to, but everyone is watching, their people are watching. And now she can’t simply let it happen, she has to do it herself, since Soo-won has apparently decided on here and now to have a conscious.

She closes the distance between them and locks her hands around his neck. She barely has the time to see the look of surprise cross his face before she pulls him down to her, locking their lips together.

Everyone cheers, but she freezes, not knowing where to go from here. Luckily, Soo-won does, moves now that she has. His arms encircle her waist, and he twists and tips her back, lips soft and warm on top of hers. He’s dipping her in front of everyone, kissing her in front of everyone, and she’s had dreams of this exact thing, and she can’t help but cling to him, can’t help but kiss him back.

Despite everything, there’s a spark of happiness inside her, of pure joy, one that she can’t extinguish.

He pulls back, and he doesn’t look cold or calculating, doesn’t look how he did when he murdered her father. He looks breathless and happy, he looks like he might love her.

It cuts deeper than any hatred ever could.

~

Hak is smiling and clapping with everyone else, but it feels like he’s taken an arrow to the chest. It shouldn’t. He’s been to weddings, he knew how it would end. He’d known this is where the three of them were heading since they were kids – Soo-won and Yona as husband and wife, as King and Queen, and him there to guard their backs and nothing more.

He’s always known. He has no right to either of them, there’s no reason that seeing them kiss should mean anything to him. All he should feel is happiness for his friends, should feel grateful that Yona won’t have to shoulder the burden of ruling alone.

It’s what he keeps telling himself, but it doesn’t change anything. If he could master his own heart, he would have done it long before now.

~

After her wedding, there’s another banquet, but this one she’s allowed to leave early. Expected to leave early.

She and Soo-won are shooed and jeered away, and her people seem happier. Her wedding has soothed them, whether because they like Soo-won or because they dislike her she doesn’t know. She walks to her rooms, and this time Min-Soo isn’t there. He won’t be the one helping her out of her clothes tonight.

Her new husband seems nervous. It helps her hide the fact that she’s terrified. “Have you done this before?” she asks.

He shakes his head, and she believes him. He doesn’t have any reason to lie to her. He bites his lower lip, then says, “Yona, we don’t have to – not tonight, your father only died two weeks ago, and I – I understand if this isn’t something you want.”

It’s tempting. It’s so tempting. But if she doesn’t sleep with him tonight, then when? How long can she put it off without it seeming suspicious? And until they sleep together, their marriage can be annulled. Until he has sex with her, his place as king is perilous, since it’s through their marriage that he is king. If she says no now, she’ll be tempted to do it forever, and she can’t do that.

“Do you not think I’m pretty?” she asks, trying to think about what she would have felt here before, if she was truly married to Soo-won for no other reason than that she loved him.

He steps closer, running his hand through her hair, and says, “I think you’re beautiful, Yona. I just – don’t want to push you.”

“You are my husband, and I am your wife,” she says instead of addressing any of that. It seems wrong for him to be so worried about her feelings now, when he clearly didn’t care for them when he started all of this. Her clothes have too many layers, but she makes quick work of them, pushing them aside until she’s only in her inner robe, so light that it’s practically see through.

She loves him, and he’s still so beautiful he makes her chest ache. This will not be too hard, which is maybe why it’s so hard in the first place.

“Don’t you want me?” she asks, but she doesn’t think he does. She’s his friend, maybe, but mostly she’s his way to the throne. She wants him, and he doesn’t want her, and she loves him and hates him, and he probably doesn’t care for her at all.

Is she truly going to be forced to live through all of her nightmares?

But Soo-won grabs her around the waist and kisses her, so differently than how he kissed her at the ceremony. She melts into him, and hates herself for it. “Make me forget,” she whispers, because she’s married her father’s killer, is going to have sex with her father’s killer. And she wants him anyway, still loves him even though she shouldn’t, and this is truly the worst kind of torture.

He leads her to the bed and climbs in beside her, gentle and slow. He looks down at her, and he could be lying, if nothing else she’s learned that he’s a fantastic liar. But she doesn’t think he is. He looks at her with tenderness and want, with love and desire, and maybe this isn’t a hardship for him. Maybe he kept her alive because he loves her.

Somehow, that hurts so much worse. Since she can’t hate him, the least he could do would be to hate her, would be to make this easier for her. His hatred would be so much easier to endure than his affection.

She pulls him down on top of her before she starts crying, and he’s soft and slow and it doesn’t hurt at all. It feels amazing, having Soo-won on top of her and inside of her is amazing, his mouth and tongue on hers is amazing.

She feels like a traitor for loving it, for shivering at his touch and the feel of his mouth on her skin.

Soo-won does his best, but Yona isn’t able to forget for a moment that the man she’s having sex with is the same man who has her father’s blood on his hands.

~

Every morning Soo-won goes off to do – something, she doesn’t know. Or at least she’s not supposed to. She doesn’t ask about what he does as king, and he doesn’t tell her. Min-soo keeps her informed, and brings her books and scrolls. She knows her history but not her war, knows her economics but not her finances. It’s like she’s been raised with half the knowledge to rule a nation, and all that she doesn’t know frustrates her. She reads the patrol reports, the requests for help, the summaries lords send of their lands.

She doesn’t like what she finds.

Her father had wanted peace, and he’d had it. But it’s clear his peace didn’t come cheap, it didn’t come without a price. People were suffering for his peace, and Yona doesn’t know how to feel about that. Her father had given aid when he could, offered kindness and sympathy always, offered to talk about it. But Yona doesn’t know how much good talking does when people are starving.

After Soo-won falls asleep, she slips out of bed to continue reading by candlelight. He wakes one too many times, staring at her with a gaze she can’t read, and it makes her shoulder’s hunch around her ears.

The room to their right is where Hak sleeps, but the one to her left is empty. She has it converted to an office. It’s the best idea she’s had so far. The books that had covered their floor find homes on shelves, and her notes are organized and bound and given their own space. A large desk is brought in, one big enough that she can unroll maps of the whole nation across it.

Min-soo oversees it all, and she jumps up and down and kisses his cheek when he shows it to her. His face turns as red as her hair. “My queen, that isn’t proper!”

“I’m the queen, I can do as I please,” she says, spinning in circles around the room.

He huffs, trying to sound irritated, but he’s smiling too wide for her to fall for it.

~

Soo-won hadn’t been prepared for this. He’d known Yona pulled at him, that he felt a connection to her that he couldn’t really deny, no matter how much he tried. But when he thought of being married to Yona, he hadn’t thought much would change, thought she would spend her time being as she had as a princess, thought that he would love her as he always loved her – small, and sweet, something easily suppressed if necessary. Or at least something he could lie to himself about being easy to suppress.

That’s not what happens.

He tries to be gentle as he can, even though he doesn’t know what he’s doing, not really, but he doesn’t want to hurt her.

She doesn’t afford him the same curtesy.

Yona had been pliant and soft during their wedding night, but it doesn’t last. He has bite marks the shape of her mouth across his shoulders, welts down his back from her nails. It’s like she’s challenging him, he feels as if he’s being tested. The rougher she is, the more gentle he becomes, and he sees that slow satisfaction in her gaze.

He falls asleep not long after they finish, he can’t help it, sleep pulling at his eyelids. It doesn’t affect her the same way, but she always lies beside him, staying with him until he falls asleep as if he’s a child, like he used to do for her when they were children. He curls on top of her chest, his cheek against her breast, and she runs her fingers through his hair. She is softest in these moments, when he’s half asleep and naked, vulnerable in her arms.

He hadn’t expected to be vulnerable. He hadn’t expected that she would like him that way.

~

Hak knows about the office, of course, and is completely thrown by it. But the third night in a row he goes to bed and sees the soft light coming from the under the door, he sighs. He’s adjusted his schedule, patrolling later and sleeping in later, in an attempt to – avoid hearing things. It’s only been partially successful.

Soo-won is up with the dawn, and falls asleep earlier than either of them, although he knows Yona will lie in bed with him until he falls asleep and then get up to continue her reading. For some reason, that thought twists his heart in his chest even more than the knowledge of what they’re doing in that bed together.

He knocks on the door, then steps through. Yona has her hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head, her sleeping gown pushed up to her elbows as she pours over what looks like a hand written log of some sort. She glances up at his entrance, an instant smile lighting her features, one that still makes his heart beat faster in spite of everything. “Hak. Is something wrong?”

“I should be asking you that,” he says. He leans his glaive against the wall, and sits on top of her desk, deliberately messing with her papers. She glares at him, but says nothing. When she’d been made queen, he’d worried he’d lose this, that he wouldn’t be allowed to tease her anymore, or get in her space, that he’d be forced to treat her only as his ruler and not as his friend. But she stands on ceremony about as much as she always has, which is to say not at all. “It’s late.”

“These books won’t read themselves,” she says. “How does the Wind Tribe collect taxes? I couldn’t find any documentation on it. There are statements going back forever about you guys paying them to the throne, but not how you get it in the first place.”

He’s so surprised by her question that it takes him a moment to formulate an answer. “It’s part of sales. We tax merchants and other sellers based on the value of their product, and tell them to adjust their price when selling or bartering accordingly.”

“So the burden is on the seller, not the customer,” she says. She rifles through her stack of notebooks, and pulls out one seemingly at random, and flips to a clean page to write that down. “What about the poorer villages? The Wind Tribe has a stronger economy than the others, but there are always people who have less. How is their debt handled?”

There’s a rush of pride that fills him when talking of his tribe, of his people. As he’s Yona’s bodyguard, he doesn’t go home often. But he’s still their general and their lord, and he carries the name Son with pride. “If there are extenuating circumstances, like a drought or a sickness, we usually forgive it. Better they focus on recovering and having more money flow for next year, than strap themselves of their resources and struggle next year too. But sometimes it’s just bad luck, and in those cases a couple unmarried men or women are sent to our capitol to work for a year, and then half their wages are collected in lieu of tax, and the other half is sent back to their village.”

She stops writing and looks up at him, and there’s a warm admiration in her eyes that he doesn’t think he’s ever had directed at him before. “That’s a wonderful idea. This way both of you benefit, and the people of the village don’t suffer unnecessarily.”

“We’ve never had any trouble getting volunteers,” he says, and can’t look away from her.

He didn’t think he could love her any more than he already did. She was his kind, irritating, demanding, flighty princess. But this, watching her become something else, something more – a competent queen, using that kindness and determination to be someone better –

Hak loves her so much he fears his heart will burst. He thinks if it did, it would hurt less than this, to be so close to her and yet so far.

~

“I want to visit Geun-tae of the Earth Tribe first,” Soo-won says, pacing in front of his advisor and his guard. Yona hasn’t appointed an official personal advisor yet, although of course Hak has continued in his role as her guard. “If we are to go to war and win, then we’ll need them, and their economy is in shambles. We’ll need to do something about that. I want us to leave no later than the end of the month.”

Joo-doh nods his agreement, but it’s Kye-sook who says, “You should bring the queen.”

He blinks, taken aback. “Yona is preoccupied by her studies. I doubt she’ll want to take a break for such a journey.” Her studies are causing quite a stir, and he hadn’t decided what to make of them, how to use that stir to his advantage. Their advantage. He knew she could be single minded, knew that she could be determined and stubborn. He’d just never seen those traits applied to anything that wasn’t frivolous.

He had expected Yona to be a queen in name only, had expected her to stay the cheerful and carefree girl he’d known his whole life. But she hasn’t, is barreling forward into uncharted territory.

“Geun-tae doesn’t like you,” Joo-doh points out.

Soo-won doesn’t see how that’s relevant. “He doesn’t like anybody.”

“He likes Queen Yona,” the Sky Tribe general says. “Things will go smoother if Yona is there. She can speak and spend time with his wife, Lady Yun-ho, and between the two of them they should be able to soothe Geun-tae’s inevitable temper tantrum.”

He’s still hesitating, but he can’t tell them why. Yona has only just started acting like herself, has started laying in his arms at night instead of turning away, manages to look him in the eye more often than not. Hak agrees – Yona is getting better, is starting to settle back into her skin. He doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.

“She wanted to be a queen,” Ky-sook says, “let her be one.”

“Very well,” he says, because he can’t say anything else.

Yona was supposed to be his past of least resistance, the easiest way for him to get to the throne. But she’s his friend, and his wife, and – and –

He hasn’t brought himself to say it aloud yet, wants her to say it first. He doesn’t want to push her, doesn’t want her response to be anything but genuine.

He thinks he loves her. He loves her smile, how hard she’s trying, loves her bitten off gasps when he does something she likes in their bed. He loves when she pins him to bed, loves the soft smile she sometimes lets slip when she looks at him. She’s still skittish and uncertain around him sometimes, still cries in her sleep sometimes, but – they’re young, younger than Yona expected them to be when they married, when they took the throne, and if she’s having trouble adapting to all of it all at once, he won’t be the one to fault her for it.

Yona is so much stronger than he ever gave her credit for, and he loves her for it.

~

The librarians had glared at her before, but now they’re respectful, polite. Yona knows servants talk, it’s how Min-soo knows everything, and apparently people are talking about her, about how hard she’s studying.

It doesn’t feel like enough, it’s too little too late, these are all things she should have known already.

“People are starting to trust you,” Min-soo reports, “you said you’d learn, and you are.”

“It’s not enough,” she says. There’s so much for her to learn, and not enough time to learn it. Especially since Soo-won is planning to take a trip to the Earth Tribe at the end of the month. It’s a good thing he asked her to come along, because if he hadn’t she would have insisted.

“You made a promise, and you’re keeping it,” he says wisely. “That is all any of us want from our rulers, my queen.”

That makes her feel even guiltier, because she’s not just studying for the good of her people. Studying helps clear her mind. She desperately needs something to clear her mind.

Soo-won touches her every thought, and she still doesn’t know how to feel. They have sex at night, and she cries every morning once he leaves. She can’t help it, she loves him, she does, and she can’t deny it anymore, if she was ever able to. There are whole hours she forgets what he did, and her affection for her husband feels like it will flow out of her and drown her. Then she remembers, and hates herself for feeling this way, for finding happiness and companionship with her father’s murderer.

She loves him, and he did a terrible thing, so she hates him. But her hate is not more powerful than her love, no matter how badly wishes it was.

~

It’s early morning, just past dawn. Soo-won has just left, and there’s a knock at her door. She’s in no state to receive anyone, mid muffled sob and in a loose robe that’s half open. “Who is it?” she calls out, and winces when her voice comes out rough.

“Hak. Can I come in, my queen?”

“Of course,” she says, surprised he’s awake this early in the morning. She barely bothers to pull her robe tighter around herself, still sitting in her bed as she rubs her tears from her eyes, and hopes it’s not too noticeable. She feels so much all the time, and crying is only way she can let any of it out without creaming. A recently orphaned queen crying all the time is much easier for her people to swallow than one who spends her days screaming. “Is something wrong?”

“My queen,” he begins, then hesitates. He swallows, “My room is right next to yours.”

She blinks. She doesn’t understand. “I know.”

“I can uh … the walls are not very thick, my queen,” he says, not looking at her.

It takes her a long moment, then she grabs her pillow and buries her face in it. “You can hear me and Soo-won have sex!”

“No! I mean, well, yes, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.” She risks peeking above the pillow, and his face is beet red. She – does he listen, when they have sex? Does he know how she sounds when she finishes? “I can hear you crying. Every day.”

“Oh,” she says, lowering her pillow. “Oh, that’s – don’t worry about it.”

“I,” he coughs, “Is it because – does it have anything to do with Soo-won? Just because you weren’t crying every day before you got married, is the thing. I – you seem to, uh, like it? But if, I mean – you can tell him to stop. Soo-won wouldn’t want to do anything that upsets you, even if – uh, if you don’t want him – touching you, then – then he shouldn’t. If you’re unsure at all, you should tell him to stop.”

“What if he doesn’t listen?” she asks, not because she thinks he wouldn’t, but because she wants to hear Hak’s answer.

There’s that same fierce look about him. “Then I’ll cut off his hands!”

There’s a beat where even he looks surprised at his vehemence, but he doesn’t take it back.

“He is your friend and your king,” she says, but she’s smiling.

“And you are my queen,” he says. “You come first. I’m on your side, remember? Always.”

That’s the first time he’s spoken of that night, the night she when was so afraid and her father was killed, and he’s never asked. He’s not going to ask now, even, and maybe that’s what makes her say, “I’m not crying because of him. I’m crying because of me. I think – I think I’m broken.”

She’s a monster, she has to be, how else could she live like this? She saw Soo-won stab her father in the heart, and still she finds comfort in his embrace, still he makes her laugh, still she sleeps with him. But the hands that killed her father are so kind to her, and she’s heard of what he’s doing, of the information he’s gathering, of the scouts he sends out, of his promises to make Kouka a strong nation once more. She knows he doesn’t want to go to the Earth Tribe for something so simple as getting a better understanding of their nation, no matter what he tells her, and thinks he might be a good king. That he might be a good, kind man who loves her. And who also killed her father.

“You’re not broken,” Hak says, sitting beside her, and he looks stricken. “This is – hard. It’s so much harder than anything was ever supposed to be. You’re doing fine. No, you’re doing great. I’m proud that you’re my queen.”

She looks up at him, trying to keep a fresh wave of tears at bay. He’s looking at her with a fierceness and earnestness that makes her heartbeat quicken. He’s handsome. Has he always been this handsome? Hak who she trusts, who has protected her for so long, who would protect her from her own husband and his king if she asked him to.

“Hak,” she breathes, a brilliant, horrible idea occurring to her. She grabs his shoulders, “Help me. I need to know if I’m broken.”

She pushes him down and throws her legs over him, straddling him. She’s still in nothing but the robe, and she doesn’t stop it from coming undone. “My queen!” he says, wide eyed and face pale. He holds his hands up like she’s pointing a weapon at him. “What are you doing?”

“Please,” she says, and her voice breaks. “I know you don’t think I’m pretty, but please. You’re the only person I trust completely. I – I need to know if I really am broken.” It doesn’t make sense, but she can’t explain herself, not really. Her father liked Hak, approved of Hak. And Hak is kind to her, makes her smile, and is a good man that didn’t kill her father.

If she sleeps with him, and if it’s just as good, if it’s better, then – then maybe she’s not the worst person, maybe she’s not a monster. Maybe she can live with herself, if it’s not just Soo-won who does this to her. If her father’s killer is the only one that can satisfy her, then she’s the worst sort of person, is barely human, and she can’t live that way. But if Hak, who is good, who is the best person she knows, if he can touch her and not burn, if she can touch him and like it, then maybe she can learn to stop crying every day.

Maybe she can learn to not hate herself.

“We can’t – think of Soo-won,” he says, but he’s not pushing her away, he’s looking at her. Maybe he does think she’s pretty. She shrugs off her robe so she’s naked, and she grabs his hands and brings them to her chest. He makes a sound like he’s dying, but doesn’t push her away.

“Don’t worry about Soo-won,” she says, and she’s learned a little from her nights with her husband. She starts to move her hips, and Hak’s breathing grows shorter, more strained. “Please, Hak. I want you. I need you!”

That’s the last straw. In the next moment he’s kissing her, putting his hands all over her, tearing off his clothes. “As my queen commands,” he murmurs in her ear, and she giggles until his hand goes lower. He’s not gentle like Soo-won, not hesitant. He’s definitely done this before. He’s careful not to hurt her, but he holds her hips too tight and bites his lip to muffle his voice as she sets the pace. It’s entirely different from laying with Soo-won, and – it is better, she thinks.

After, they lie exhausted and spent and sticky. “Are you going to cry now?” he asks, and he sounds afraid.

She rolls over so she’s laying on top of his chest. “No,” she says, and she hooks her leg over his. “I don’t feel broken when I’m with you.”

He shifts to look at her at that, surprise clear on his face. She cups his jaw in her hands, and kisses him. This feels better, feels right. It would be a lie to say she didn’t enjoy having sex with her husband, to say that he didn’t sooth her, wasn’t a cooling balm to some of her frayed edges.

That’s not how Hak feels. He’s not soothing, he’s exciting, he makes her feel like she’s made of fire.

When Hak is touching her, she feels more alive, more herself, than she has since her father was killed.

~

Yona has already decided that Hak isn’t something she’s willing to give up. It seems like the only time she feels normal, feel like she isn’t living on eggshells, is when she’s in his arms.

But there’s the matter of her husband.

Does she truly love him? Is it enough? Can her love survive, can it grow when it’s stained with her father’s blood? She knows he likes sleeping with her, at least, thinks maybe – perhaps – that there’s a chance he likes her, loves her, which is terrifying. She shouldn’t be trusted with Soo-won’s heart. The temptation to crush it like he crushed hers is too great.

He’s a king that will ensure Kouka weathers the coming storm. She knows the meetings he has, is starting to see Kouka in the same shape that he must, sees what is inevitably to come.

“Min-soo,” she says, turning in her seat to face her servant. She knows what she thinks of everything, of how her husband so clearly prepares for the worst, how sometimes she wonders if he courts the worst by preparing for it. But she wants to know Min-soo’s perspective, because she can trust it. He would never lie to her.

He stops rearranging her books and turns to her, “My queen?”

“Kouka is heading into war,” she starts.

Min-soo gasps, dropping the books. “My queen! Why would you say such a thing?”

She blinks, thrown. Isn’t it obvious? It had only taken her a week of studying treaties to realize conflict was inevitable. “Any transition of power in a country is a time of weakness. But my father was killed, and I’m only sixteen, and Soo-won is only eighteen. We are young, and Kouka has a history of non-aggression, of negotiating rather than fighting. If I wanted to take some of Kouka’s power, I would strike now. I don’t know who will attack as first, although I’m inclined to say Kai based on their horrendous trade terms alone. But someone will attack.”

“What are we going to do?” he asks, and maybe she shouldn’t have said anything, she hadn’t meant to frighten him.

She shrugs, “If we were to follow in my father’s footsteps, then we would approach them first, make it known that we are prepared for such an attack, but more than willing to negotiate to avoid it, and perhaps lose something of our nation in return for prolonging the peace.”

“Do you not want to follow in your father’s footsteps, Queen Yona?”

She pauses, looking at her books and her reports. It takes her a long time to respond, and when she does her mouth is dry. “I think my father was a good, kind man, who genuinely wanted the best for his country and the people inside it. I think – I think the way he did it was ineffective. A country need not be aggressive, but it also cannot be weak. I think – maybe – that Kouka grew weak under my father.”

“My queen,” Min-soo whispers. “You loved your father.”

“I still do,” she says, and tears are spilling out her eyes once more. “I always will. But I think if we do what my father has done, then this country will be what it’s been, and we can’t have that. Kouka deserves to be more. And I don’t want anyone to die, if I could I would go out on that battlefield and fight ten thousand men by myself, I would, if offering foreign nations my head would ensure peace in my land then I’d cut it off myself,” and she’s startled by the truth of that statement, by the honesty of it. She was never raised with the harsh realities of regency, but she was raised to love her people, raised by a loving father who was a loving king, and just as her father would do anything for her, so will she do anything for her people. “But I can’t, and it won’t. So – so, we must fight, and we must sacrifice, and it’s going to hurt. Every citizen of Kouka that falls will hurt. But if we do nothing, people will die, if we negotiate and weaken ourselves, we stave off a battle now, but it will come one day, and people will die.”

Min-soo is looking at her like he’s never seen her before, but not in a bad way.

She meets his gaze head on as she says, “If my people must die, then I prefer they do it protecting their country, their family and their friends, rather than pointlessly falling to foreign invaders that we could have stopped and chose not to. My people deserve to live. Even if it means some of them must die.”

She’s crying even harder now, because she believes everything she’s saying, and she didn’t want to, these aren’t thing she ever wanted to think about, ever wanted to have to make decisions on. But she’s Queen now, and she must.

It’s more than that, though, more than the knowledge that she’ll lead her people into war if she has to, that she’ll turn her back on everything her father ever taught her if she has to.

It’s that for first time, she understands how Soo-won could have killed her father.

If killing her father saves Kouka from ruin, then she doesn’t know if she can hate him for it.

Nothing matters more than her people.

~

Hak and Soo-won are standing outside of Yona’s office, eyes wide as they stare at each other and do their best not to move, not to breathe, not to alert Yona that they’ve been eavesdropping.

It wasn’t on purpose. Soo-won had found him and asked to have dinner, and he’d nearly died, certain his best friend had already found out he’d slept with his wife, but then he suggested they grab Yona as well, and Hak didn’t think Soo-won would kill him in front of Yona. He’s pretty sure.

But they weren’t expecting this. They weren’t expecting to hear this, to know this.

Soo-won jerks his head to the side, and on one hand Yona is crying, and Hak hates to leave her while she’s crying. But on the other hand he doesn’t know what to say to her, how to react to anything she’s just said. Soo-won grabs his hand, and Hak lets him pull him away like when they were children. They make it outside, and Soo-won still hasn’t let go of his hand. Hak doesn’t really want him to.

“Do you think,” Hak says, head tilted to the sky, “that we’ve been underestimating her?”

“Yes,” Soo-won says immediately, “I thought – I didn’t think she’d – I expected to do this alone.”

Hak looks to him, surprised, but Soo-won is looking towards the setting sun. “What do you mean?”

“When I accepted Yona’s proposal, I expected to rule alone, I thought she wanted me as king because she wasn’t ready to be queen. Because she didn’t want to be queen,” he closes his eyes. “Have I been blind this whole time? I didn’t know she could feel this way, that she could pick up things this quickly.”

“She’s always been smart,” he feels the need to say, because none of the tutors had ever denied that Yona was clever. They often called her easily distracted, flighty, but they’d never called her anything but intelligent. “I didn’t think she knew what was coming. Not – not as well as she does, apparently.”

Soo-won doesn’t say anything, and for some reason he looks unbearably sad. Hak uses his free hand to tip Soo-won’s face towards him. He opens his eyes, and Hak quirks an eyebrow, a silent question. “It’s nothing,” his kings says.

“This is a good thing, isn’t it?” he asks. “You feared you would rule alone, that Yona would be unsuited to the throne. But she’s not. She’s going to make a good queen.”

“Yes,” Soo-won says, and Hak doesn’t understand the grief in his voice. “She is.” Hak elbows him in the side, and he forces a smile. “I just – wonder, is all, how much more she could have been, how ready to be queen she could have been, if her father had raised her a little differently, is all.”

Now Hak’s frowning. Yona is doing an admirable job of playing catch up, working hard to make herself into a proper queen. But if she’d spent the past sixteen years doing this, if any of them had thought her capable of it and encouraged her to do it – she would be terrifying, twice as clever as either of them, he bets.

He understands why Soo-won looks sad. They’ve failed her. They didn’t mean to, but they have, they treated her like an airheaded princess so that’s how she behaved.

If they had treated like something more, like their next monarch, like the future ruler of Kouka, like a clever, dedicated princess, is that what she would have been for them?

Clearly, she’s been capable of it all along.

~

That night, Hak paces across his room. Sleeping with Yona was a mistake. It was foolish, and stupid, and he shouldn’t have done it. Every second he’d spent in Soo-won’s presence he’d spent terrified, and that’s not how he wants to feel around his best friend, around his king. But the woman he loves asked him to make love to her, and how could have been expected to say to no to that?

But he should have. She’s not just a woman. She’s his queen, she’s his best friend’s wife, she is the last person in the world he should have slept with.

She’s the person he loves and treasures more than anything in this world, and he knows her taste, her touch, and he doesn’t know how he can bear to live the rest of his life with that knowledge when he can never have it again, never have her again.

He can hear them, Soo-won’s grunts and her sighs while they have sex, and this is truly the worst kind of torture.

What could he have possibly done to deserve this hell?

~

Soo-won leaves the next morning, and Yona waits a couple minutes before she taps on the wall connecting her room to Hak’s. “Are you awake?” she asks, raising her voice just a little, hopefully just enough so that it will carry. “If you are, can you come here?”

There’s silence, and her shoulder slump. But then she hears the faint sound of movement, and can’t help but grin in relief.

When Hak enters her room, she’s kneeling naked in bed. He pauses, eyes wide, then shuts the door behind him with more force than is strictly necessary. “My queen?” he asks, strangled.

She holds out her hand, willing him to come closer. “Are you just going to stand by the door?”

“You’re married,” he says, eyes wide and wild. “You are my queen, and you are married. We can’t.”

Soo-won killed her father. She loves him, understands him maybe, but she doesn’t owe him loyalty. Hak makes her feel normal, and cheating on Soo-won may be wrong, but not wrong enough to make her stop. She’s not crying this morning. She’s so, so sick of crying.

“It’s not an order,” she says, although she knows that he knows that already. “I want you. But if you don’t want me, then leave.”

He does nothing for a long moment, and she thinks for a terrifying second that maybe he really will leave, and she’s just made a fool of herself and lost the only person in this world she can trust completely. Then he snarls and shrugs his outer robe off, glaring at her as he sheds his clothes and stalks forward. “You’re a greedy brat, my queen.”

She’s laughing as he covers her body with his own, as he uses his thumb to tilt her chin up and kiss his way up her neck. “You like me that way,” she says, and knows she’s right by the way he kisses her to shut her up.

~

Yona doesn’t seem bothered at all about their transgressions, about betraying Soo-won, and he doesn’t understand. She loves Soo-won, is still sleeping with him, still supporting him, still in love with him. But she has only smiles for Hak whenever they lie together, slipping off her robe as soon as he steps through the door.

She’s sweet, with him. He’s seen the marks she leaves on Soo-won, but she doesn’t do the same to him, leaving soft kisses where she would leave teeth imprints on her husband. She doesn’t look conflicted about being with him, and this is all his dreams come true, to have Yona’s attention and body, her kindness and affection. But it’s also a nightmare.

He’s sleeping with his best friend’s wife, and Soo-won is the smartest man he knows. They won’t manage to keep this a secret forever, and it seems inevitable that this careful balance, this delicate happiness, will shatter all around them.

~

This is how she lives now, having Soo-won at night, and Hak in the morning. Maybe she should be wracked with guilt, with uncertainty, with fear. But she’s not. Being with Hak makes everything make a little more sense, makes her love for Soo-won bearable. She won’t tell Hak this, but since they started sleeping together, her sex life with Soo-won has improved too. She feels more comfortable with herself, more comfortable with Soo-won too, as long as she tells herself he killed her father to protect their people, and not just for selfish revenge. It doesn’t lessen her grief, but it does make it easier to love him.

Yona is deep into reports of the Fire Tribe’s revenue stream and redistribution when Min-soo clears his throat. She turns to him, and he’s wringing his hands, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “What’s wrong?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. “Permission to speak freely, my queen?”

“Always,” she says warmly, “You know how much I value you.”

He smiles at that, then says, “You and, uh, General Hak. You’re – the two of you are–”

“Sleeping together?” she finishes, when it doesn’t look like he’ll be able to.

Min-soo nods, mortified. “People are beginning to talk.”

Servants are beginning to talk, he means. “Will any of the house staff tell Soo-won?” Min-soo insists none of the house staff favors Soo-won over her, but she knows most of the guards do. Knows that most of the guards turned their backs as her father was murdered. She trusts them as far as she can throw them.

“No. We are loyal to you first, Queen Yona. But these things have a way of spreading. It won’t stay a secret for long, and I wouldn’t – I just don’t want you to get hurt, my queen,” he says helplessly.

Yona smiles at him. “If Soo-won wishes to discuss my infidelity, then we’ll discuss it. But that’s a worry for a later time. Right now, our concern is untangling this convoluted report and getting some real numbers out of it.”

She’ll keep it a secret for as long as she can, will avoid the blowout for as long as she can. She isn’t even a hundred percent certain Soo-won doesn’t know already – he has people everywhere, people that are loyal to him everywhere. But Hak isn’t something she’s willing to sacrifice, isn’t someone she’s willing to give up.

If Soo-won wants to keep his throne, he’ll allow her to keep Hak.

~

Mundok is visiting the palace, theoretically to deliver some books on Sky Tribe history that the queen asked to borrow.

Hak isn’t fooled for a second. He’s always known that Yona was Mundok’s favorite “grandchild" out of all of them. He’s really here just because he wants to check up on her. Hak’s never managed to muster any proper indignation over it, since Yona has always been his favorite too.

He’s about to greet Mundok when he’s pushed aside, and he stumbles not to lose his footing. “Mundok!”

Yona runs past him and throws herself into his grandfather’s arms. Mundok swings her around and kisses both her cheeks, his lone eye sparkling. “Queen Yona! How I’ve missed your smiling face!” The next moment Hak has an arrow pointed at him, which was about what he expected. “Hak, the queen looks as if she’s lost weight! You are not taking care of her properly!”

He rolls his eyes. Yona laughs and lays her hand on Mundok’s arm, “Please, you mustn’t shoot my bodyguard. He’s been doing a wonderful job of taking care of me.”

A blush erupts across his face before he can stop it as he thinks of some of the ways he’s been taking care of Yona. Maybe he should just – run away. Mundok has always been able to practically smell the guilt on him, and he’s never been more guilty of anything than he is now.

Mundok glowers, but puts his bow and arrow away. “He must be. Before, you would have cheered me on as a I taught my grandson a lesson.”

Oh, god, does he know? He’s been in the palace thirty seconds, and he already knows. His grandfather is going to kill him, and then then Tae-woo will become general, and the Wind Tribe will collapse.

“I did not properly value Hak’s devotion to me before,” she says earnestly, “He is rude, and unlikable, but he is dear to me.” Her grin turns mischievous, “However, I wouldn’t presume to get in the middle of a grandfather disciplining his grandson. If you must teach him a lesson, then please leave enough of him behind for me to use.”

“My queen!” he squawks, choosing to sound offended instead of thinking of the warmth echoing out from his chest.

There’s the sound of footsteps, then Soo-won walks into the room, smiling. “So much commotion! What could possibly be the reason?”

Mundok gives a booming laugh and bows to Soo-won, a formality he hadn’t extended to Yona because he knew she wouldn’t want it from him. “My king, you are looking well.”

“As are you,” he says, stepping forward to receive a warm clap on the shoulder. Soo-won raises his arm slightly, and Yona doesn’t hesitate to lean against his side. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, and she clutches his waist, and they look like a normal couple, like they’re happy.

That used to make him – not sad, not angry, because they were his best friends and all he’s ever wanted for them is their happiness. But it used to make his heart clench in his chest, when he saw them together.

It doesn’t anymore, and he thought it would, he thought having Yona would make him covet her, and it wasn’t what he wanted, but he didn’t think it was something he’d be able to prevent. But it hasn’t happened. Maybe because he doesn’t want Soo-won not to have her, he just – wants her too.

Maybe if he saw Soo-won with another woman, he’s be jealous of that. He’s never been fortunate enough to have his affections run in one direction. Yona stole his heart first, has most of it, but the bit that’s left over – it probably belongs to Soo-won, he thinks. Then he decides to stop thinking about it, because his life is complicated enough as it is.

They’re talking, happily filling Mundok in on all those things he missed since he was at the castle last. Hak crosses his arms and leans against the wall, and can’t help a small smile from curling around his lips.

They make sense together, Yona and Soo-won, both beautiful and kind, a little flighty at first but sharp underneath. Sharper than he thought they were, both of them stepping into the role of monarchs in their own way, neither of them flinching. He doesn’t think he could do that. He avoided being becoming the Wind Tribe’s general and chief for a long time, only ended up accepting it in order to protect Yona.

He’s not like them, he’ll never be like them. But he can’t help but love them anyway.

Eventually, Hak decides to leave them to it. He has his own duties to attend to, he can’t spend all day looking at them like a creep. His grandfather will find him at some point.

~

Some point ends up being that night, leaning against the wall along the path that leads to his rooms. “Rude grandson,” he greets, a bottle of sake held in his hand. “Take a walk with me.”

Hak sighs, but follows. They leave the palace grounds, and he almost hesitates, but Yona will be fine. She’s doing so much better now, she doesn’t need him to be constantly by her side. Besides, it’s not like Soo-won is useless at fighting, if anything happened he would be able to protect the queen. So he follows Mundok in silence, until they’re in the thick of the woods.

Mundok takes a seat at the base of a tree, and undoes the cork to the sake with his teeth. “All right, tell me everything.”

“What are you talking about?” he sighs, but sits on the ground across from him. He accepts the bottle of sake and takes a slow sip. He likes the burn of it down his throat more than he likes the taste.

“Something is different with you, something is off. Tell me what it is. Is it about our new king and queen? Is something wrong that they’re not telling the rest of us?”

He shakes his head, “Queen Yona and Soo-won are fine. The queen was – upset, for a long time, and she still is sometimes. But she’s better now.”

His grandfather takes the sake back, glaring from his one eye. “Hak, what’s bothering you?”

It really irks him that Mundok has always been able to read him so well. “If I tell you, you’re not allowed to kill me.” He doesn’t want to talk about this, but he thinks he might need to talk about it. He can’t tell Yona he’s guilty, and worried, and questioning, not when she’s always so happy around him, not when she sighs and kisses the corner of his mouth and lays her head against his chest, searching out his heartbeat. So he can’t talk about this with Yona, and he obviously can’t talk about this with Soo-won, and if his best friends are out he supposes his grandfather will have to do.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Mundok assures, “I’m under strict orders from our queen, after all.”

Hak’s gut is churning, but he can’t help but smile at that. “It’s – I’m – that is, we are – I’m sleeping with the queen.”

He squeezes his eye shut, waiting for the blow that he’s sure is coming. It doesn’t. “Was this her idea?”

“Of course!” he says, eyes snapping open. “I would never – Soo-won is my best friend, and she’s my queen, I would never!”

“But you are,” he says. When Hak risks a glance up, his grandfather doesn’t look mad.

He shrugs, feeling the heat crawl up his face. “I know I shouldn’t have done it, or at least I should stop now, before everything comes crumbling down around us. She thinks it will be fine, that everything will work itself out. But I can’t bear looking Soo-won in the eye and telling him I’ve slept with his wife. But at the same time – I can’t deny her.”

“You’ve never been able to,” Mundok says, and Hak’s mouth drops open. He sounds amused, of all things. “This isn’t so bad. I worried something darker, something worse was happening within the castle, the way you were carrying on.”

“Something worse?” Hak demands. “I’m sleeping with my queen! I’m betraying my best friend’s trust, I – I’m bringing dishonor on the Wind Tribe with my actions! How could this be worse?”

Mundok snorts, and he actually has the gall to smile. “You are serving your queen, as you swore to do, and you are protecting Yona, as you promised. Do you think our queen is the first to have both a spouse and a lover?”

“It’s wrong,” he whispers, looking down, feeling like a child even though his grandfather isn’t treating him like one, for once.

Mundok’s hand lands heavy atop his head, and he glances up beneath his fringe. “You have always loved Yona. Since you were a little boy, she has carried your heart. And now – I know this has been hanging over you, I could tell from the moment I saw you. Yet, at the same time, you seem happier too. Does Queen Yona make you happy? Are you making her happy?”

“Yes,” he says, because that is true, he thinks. He would rather fall on his own sword than do anything to hurt her, than to touch her when she didn’t want it. If she didn’t seem happier for being with him, then he wouldn’t do it, no matter how much he wanted it.

“Worry about the rest later, then,” Mundok advises. “This country is starting to love their studious queen, and have yet to decide how they feel for their manipulative king.” Hak looks up at that, surprised. He would hardly call Soo-won manipulative. “They will not rebel over her choosing you for her own happiness, when she made it so clear she chose Soo-won for theirs.”

“She loves Soo-won,” he says, because she does, Yona has loved Soo-won for nearly as long as he has loved her.

His grandfather shrugs, “Perhaps. But she did not marry Soo-won because she loved him. She married him because her country needed a king, because she knew she was not fit to rule them alone. She made that clear with her wedding dress, with her proposal during her coronation. Her first act as queen was in service of her people, as has been every action that she’s taken since. If she wants you, Kouka will let her have you.”

~

It’s the day before they’re set to leave for the Earth Tribe. Soo-won has told her multiple times that he can go on his own, that he doesn’t wish to pull her from her studies, from the safety the castle provides.

Some safety. She doesn’t say it, but her father was murdered in these very walls, Soo-won killed her father in these very walls. The castle is obviously not that safe.

Yona insists on going, but she tells Hak to stay behind. He’s furious, and in the end she has to order him to get him to listen to her.

She’s gotten good at lying these past couple of months, but Hak is a terrible liar, he always has been. If he’s kept in close quarters with her and Soo-won, Soo-won will know before the day is out that they’re sleeping together. She doesn’t know what he’d do with that information. She’s not eager to find out.

She’ll fight for Hak, when the time comes. But she doesn’t feel the need to hasten that time forward, so putting the two men she’s sleeping with in close quarters seems like a monstrously bad idea. Even if Soo-won knows, and is willing to ignore it for now, he’ll probably be a lot less willing to do that if the three of them are forced to be in each other’s spaces for too long.

The three of them haven’t really spent any time together since she started sleeping with both of them. She sees Hak and Soo-won, of course, and they spend time with each other. But the three of them haven’t, really, and she’s not sure whether it’s by design or coincidence.

Since they leave tomorrow, today is the last day she’ll have to herself. Hak is there, with her, both of them naked and sweaty, his hands familiar to her now, his movements and desires familiar to her now. He’s so much easier to read than Soo-won – half the time she still feels like she’s guessing when they’re in bed together, not sure if he truly likes something or just doesn’t want to tell her he doesn’t.

She’ll have to suffer for weeks without this, not just him in her bed, but his presence, his safety, his teasing, without the warmth he pulls from her just by being around her. Only a few short months ago she couldn’t bear to sleep if she didn’t have the assurance he was by her side, and now she’s set to spend weeks away from him, to spend weeks solely by the side of the man who murdered her father.

The fact that he’s also her husband and she loves him all the times that she forgets to hate him doesn’t mean much. She loves Soo-won, she would ache to lose him, would be bereft at his loss, would hate to have to rule Kouka on her own.

But he’s not the only one she loves. Not anymore.

She has one hand buried in Hak’s hair, and the other pinned to the bed, her legs locked around his hips. She doesn’t have to say this, she probably shouldn’t say this, considering. But she thinks he deserves to know.

“I love you,” she says, with Hak inside her and his lips on her neck.

“Don’t say that,” he grunts, not missing a beat, “You have a husband. You have Soo-won.”

“I love him too,” she says, and it almost doesn’t hurt to say that anymore. It’s almost completely true, except for those times she hates him so much she wishes she could tear him in half with her bare hands. “It doesn’t mean I love you any less.”

He pauses and looks at her, and she wants him to believe her. She wishes she knew how to make him believe her. But maybe he does, maybe he trusts her enough to believe her, because he smiles, large and full, and then he’s kissing her. He says it in between one kiss and the next, almost too softly for her to hear. “I love you too.”

~

It’s time to go, and Soo-won is looking for his missing wife. He doesn’t find her, but he does bump into Hak. Literally. He bounces off his best friend’s chest, and only doesn’t stumble because Hak grabs his arms and steadies him. “Soo-won,” Hak greets, frowning. He’s always been so careful of Yona’s title, but he never bothered with Soo-won’s, even now that he’s king. That’s how Soo-won like it. “Shouldn’t you be gone already?”

“Yona’s missing, I think she’s still in her study,” he says, but he’s distracted. Hak’s still holding his arms, giving off enough heat that it’s like he’s being held by a small fire. His eyes are dark, and his lips look bruised, like someone’s been kissing them. He can guess who.

Without thinking about it, he pushes Hak against the wall, and Hak lets him, confused. Soo-won is under no illusions about his own strength and skill, and how it pales compared to Hak’s. He wouldn’t be able to move him an inch if Hak didn’t let him. “Soo-won? Is something wrong?”

He blinks, hesitating, but Hak is warm and firm under his hands. This isn’t something he’d been planning to say anything about, he’d decided not to say anything when he found out, which was the very first day it happened. “I know you and Yona are sleeping together.”

Hak goes deathly pale, and Soo-won thinks the only reason Hak’s knees don’t go out is because he’s pinning him to the wall. “I’m so sorry–”

“Don’t be,” he says, pressing a finger against Hak’s lips. “I’m not mad. She – she got better, pretty much the day you two got together. She stopped crying so much, got stronger, was almost her old self. Being with you saved her, I think, in a way that I couldn’t save her. I’m not mad. I’m jealous.”

“Jealous?” Hak repeats, frowning.

Soo-won goes on his tiptoes, pushing himself up so their lips are almost touching. “I have Yona, and Yona has you. I want you too. I told you that before, remember?”

He doesn’t wait for Hak to respond, kissing him slowly, carefully. Hak could shove him off easy as anything, but Soo-won is also his king, so maybe he wouldn’t, even if he doesn’t want this, so he has to pay attention. He has to be sure.

There’s a moment when Hak does nothing at all, and Soo-won pulls back, disappointed. Then Hak seizes his upper arms and pulls him back.

This kiss isn’t slow, or careful. Hak kisses him like he’s trying to devour him, and it makes his knees weak. Hak’s hand settle heavily on hips, pulling their bodies together, and it’s no wonder that Yona looks so pleased all the time.

He really has to go find Yona, and they have to leave for the Earth Tribe, but he and Hak spend several long minutes kissing in the hallway corridor.

When Soo-won finally walks away, Hak looks confused and surprised, but not regretful.

Once they return, the three of them are going to have to sit down and figure out what to do about this, about them. He won’t touch Hak if Yona doesn’t want him to, won’t try and get in the way of them if Yona doesn’t want him to.

Maybe he shouldn’t have done that. Maybe he should have waited, should have asked. But Yona’s been sleeping with Hak for weeks. Sha can’t reasonably get mad at him over one little kiss.

~

Soo-won had arranged for them to take the carriage because Yona doesn’t know how to ride a horse.

It ends up being a wasted effort, because about an hour into the journey, Yona says, “I can’t see anything from in here. Isn’t there a way I can see more? Half the fun of traveling through the country is being able to see it.”

They all blink. It’s Min-soo, brought along on Yona’s insistence, who says, “You don’t know how to ride a horse, my queen. So unless you want to walk…”

She brightens at that, and for a moment Soo-won thinks she’s going to insist on walking, and they’ll never get there. “I’ve been learning so much since I became queen, this might as well be something else I learn.”

Kye-sook raises an eyebrow, “What are you suggesting, Queen Yona?”

Yona ignores him and sticks her head out of the window, “Hey! Everyone stop! Stop the carriage!”

Everything comes to a halt. Soo-won blinks, then says, “Yona, what are you-”

She opens the door and slips from the carriage before he can finish his sentence. He leans out of it, confused.

Yona stands before the half dozen guards following them on horseback, and they all have their heads bowed to her. “I think it’s time I learned to ride a horse! Which one of you is willing to teach me?”

“You are our queen!” Joo-doh exclaims, appalled. “You cannot ride with any of us, it would be improper.”

“I am a queen who cannot ride a horse, which is ridiculous,” she informs him, crossing her arms. “I will make it an order if I have to. What, am I so repulsive that the thought of sharing a horse with me is enough to shake my proud, strong warriors? It’s a wonder my husband can stand to look at me.”

They don’t raise their heads, but Soo-won can tell they’re all trying to keep from laughing.

Joo-doh narrows his eyes at her, “You’re just as much of a brat now as when you were a child, my queen.”

“Off with your head,” she says, grinning, and Soo-won can’t help the soft smile that overtakes his face. She’s almost acting like her old self, is acting happy. Maybe his actions really didn’t break her completely. Maybe she’s going to be just fine, and at the very least he won’t have to add destroying his best friend to his list of sins.

“I’ll teach you,” he says, stepping out of the carriage. “Joo-doh, trade places with me.”

“This is disgraceful,” his general grumbles, but jumps down from his horse and hands Soo-won the reins.

“Consider it a well earned reprieve,” he suggests. Joo-doh glares at him and hops into the carriage, slamming the door shut behind him. He can faintly hear Min-soo’s yelp of surprise.

Yona is looking at him, considering and contemplative. It’s unnerving when she looks at him like that. Those stares look a little too much like his own.

“I’ll give you a boost,” he says, and can’t help but think of the day before her sixteenth birthday, the day before he killed her father and set off the chain of events that led them here. She’d cringed away from the horse, and it should have been exasperating, but instead it was endearing. She was endearing.

His wife frowns, then shakes her head. “No,” she says. She hikes her dress to her thighs in one hand, and every guard suddenly looks to the sky, face beet red. “I’ll do it myself.”

She looks at the horse like it’s a chessboard, and not an animal to be ridden. She grabs onto the front of the saddle, and carefully places her foot in the stirrup. But then she freezes, uncertain, and he moves forward to help her.

He doesn’t get the chance.

Yona shakes off her moment of fear and hauls herself up, throwing her leg over the horse’s back and sitting atop the animal in one smooth motion. She beams, absurdly pleased with herself and twists to face him, “Here, I’ll help you.”

She kicks her foot free of the stirrup and holds out her hand. This feels – important, and he can’t really say why. He grabs her hand and lets her help pull him up and settles behind her on the saddle. He grabs the reins and places them in her hands, “You steer. I’ll be here if you need me.”

Soo-won calls out for the carriage to start moving again, and sits with his arms wrapped around Yona’s waist. He can see her biting her lip in concentration as he softly gives her instructions, tells her all the commands the horse knows and how best to communicate them, how to direct a horse with her legs and her voice instead of the reins, how to sit and move so it’s most comfortable.

He hadn’t taken the throne so he could have this, could have her. If he had, he’d be a despicable person, and unworthy of either. But now that he has this, has her, he knows he’ll never be able to give it up. No matter what it costs him.

~

Her husband is warm along her back, his voice low in her ear. She’s nervous riding a horse for the first time, nervous with the reins in her hand. But Soo-won is there, and he won’t let her mess it up too badly, won’t let her lose control and get hurt.

She feels safe with him at her back. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to feel safe around him again.

Yona hasn’t forgiven him, doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to forgive him.

But she doesn’t need to forgive him in order to love him.

Notes:

there's a whole lot of action-y plot i'd planned that ended up having to get pushed to the side while these three sorted out their ~emotions~

so we'll get there .... in the next story

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Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of She's Prettier When She Smiles