Chapter Text
Bruised clouds bleed, the sky weeps and the rattling wind howls. The world is drowning in the unceasing, merciless rain the prayers of a cursed prince had begotten. It pours upon them, in curtain upon curtain of ice cold water - drenching everything earth bound to their weary bones.
It is freezing in the cellars where the prisoners await their fate. Torches in sconces hiss when the water pour upon them and the misty vapour rise like claws of a ghost. The guards suppress a shudder, it is only the beginning of their shift.
The man in question - the master of the rain ritual is coming towards them. The guards exchange a look, half puzzlement and half scorn. In the teeth clattering hours of the night, they’d rather not deal with a prince - let along a cruel one, and one recently poisoned and still on mend - especially not, when the former one is the famed wolf - dog from Shinju. But there is no escaping of misfortune. Their looks turn darker when the said man, Wang So the fourth son of the present emperor turns the final corner and crosses the rain washed yard towards them.
He looks pallid and ill, the faint edges of his scar forbidding against the dark rings under his eye. It had only been hours before that he was there, threatening violence - trying to obstruct the administration of justice. Now the man was back, still looking weary and world worn but determined enough. He comes meet the court lady, who is set to die come sunrise.
Lady Oh takes to the visit in her usual unperturbed manner. Her bow to him is brief, her face as impassive as ever. She waits for him to speak, which he tries a few times before succeeding.
“Thank you,” he says gruffly in the end and swallows. “For saving her.”
Her eyes snap to his and holds, slightly narrowing.
“Pardon me - your highness, my intention had not been of serving your interests.” She keeps her tone light, least she ends up offending an imperial heir, but still allows it to sound stiff enough. There is bitterness in her heart, directed towards the palace in general and the princes in particular who pulled Soo - the daughter after her heart - into this quicksand.
“Then, you’ve failed.” He informs her, not even a tad bit affected by the tone she chooses for him. “Your passing will leave a wound nothing could ever heal - it will ruin her, lady Oh. The price of the life she is to live would haunt her forever. ”
She gulps the lump forming in her throat unwillingly. The prince knows his way with words. She thinks of Soo, broken, battered and still stubbornly clinging to life - finally shattered at the realization that she would be losing her. She thinks unwillingly of the girl who had hysterically tried to find a way to escape - a tunnel, a trapdoor, - anything so they could both live. I cannot lose my mother, yet again. She had said.
When she speaks again, lady Oh’s voice breaks.
“How is she?” She asks hesitantly. He doesn’t reply. But perhaps he doesn’t have to, for she can guess, the headstrong yet naive yet utterly selfless girl would be up to no good.
When she looks at him again, she sees the prince for the man he has become and reminisces the boy he had once been, instead of the cruel woman whose features she had trained her eyes to pick out in his face. The woman she hates with an unwavering bitterness of her own - the murderer of her unborn child. But then, the man who stands before her was there for her child as well - a different child.
“You came for her,” she says slowly. Unconsciously she thinks of the other prince, the one she loves, he had asked lady Oh to save her where he couldn’t. He had not predicted the resultant scars on the woman he claimed to love. Or he had not cared, as long as the woman he loved survived. Quite like his father, she thinks with a slight note of displeasure. He too had not cared how she continued to crumble under the restrains of his world - as long as she remained by his side. But then -
“Your highness isn’t the man she loves.”
“So she says,” the prince says lightly, with a tilt of his head and a ghost of a smile. “It makes no difference to me.” But then he takes in the narrowing of her eyes and the sudden tightness of her jaw. “I do not take by force what isn’t given willingly - lady Oh. What I meant was it makes no difference to my feelings - my heart once given is given.” She says nothing in reply but her shoulders visibly relax, her exhale is softer. “She thinks of you as a mother,” he says then. “Must you make her suffer the loss of one, again?”
He reads her too well. He loves her. She hates herself for seeing hope in bleak skies, for doing something - far too daring - even for her. But her words spur forward on their own accord.
“Do you love her - your highness?”
Her questions is sharper than she had intended and the prince stiffens at its abruptness. His jaw is clenched in a way that reminds lady Oh of his wretched mother once more - no, she must not thinks of that woman. He takes a moment, but never blinks away.
“Yes.”
“Then you must take her away from the palace.”
“You know that is impossible - lady Oh.”
She inhales slowly, noting how his resolve is crumbling. Now that she had decided upon it, lady Oh decides that she would take the plunge after all.
“If she stays - she would have to bear the burnt of a heart broken emperor’s wrath. Irrespective of truth - his majesty would see her as the reason why I am no longer by his side.”
“Which is why you must not die!” He exclaims. “You don’t have to do anything, beg for a day or two - await until the eighth prince would bring the truth to light and let the real culprit take your place.”
“The eighth prince?” A dry chuckle escape her. “He is the one who begged me to act where he cannot.” Her words cause him to inhale sharply, a little bit of fury that he keeps smartly concealed twitch at the corner of his mouth. “The court lady who prepared the poisoned tea is dead - your highness. The truth has closed its door on us.”
“I -”
“You said it does not matter what her feelings are!”
So itches to turn away, leave the woman without looking at her pleading eyes. He did not mean he would not mind Soo to hating him - which she surely will if he acts on what she suggests.
“No.”
But he cannot bring himself to leave, cannot tear his gaze away from hers. The old woman speaks the truth. He is already ordered to go back to Shinju, an order the emperor never retrieved and Soo would be alone here - to fend for herself in the absence of lady Oh, under the rule of a king who lost his beloved to keep her alive.
“She will hate it,” he says in a small voice, a voice that makes him cringe at how weak it sounds. “She will hate me.”
“But she will live,” lady Oh says softly. He wonders if there is an edge of pity to her tone, there and then gone. “If your highness’ feelings are true as your highness claims - why is it so hard to choose?”
He doesn’t answer, or turn to look at her. She sees only a flash of whitened knuckles in the fist he clenches and then he is gone - as swiftly as he come.
And the silver of her last dawn starts to crawl in.
So wishes it is that easy to run away from the words she brands upon him. They trail after him, nipping at his conscience - the curse of choosing.
Her heart or her life.
Someday or never.
He stands in the rain for a moment, allowing it to beat down upon him, heavy drops tapping against his shoulders like knuckles rhyme. There is no joy in the rain anymore, not when he knows that she is there - kneeling on her bloodied broken knees - praying for a miracle that would never come. The cold - if only - makes his fear run deeper and burn hotter. It feels hard to breathe. He tries to imagine her face, twisted in scorn or faded in indifference. He could not bear her momentary anger before - but now - as the steady rain beat against his back he tries to imagine what hate would look on her face. Like acid perhaps - like poison.
But then, he sees her and sees nothing more.
She is so small and white, drenched to the bones and barely - barely - alive. Around her the rain falls into the slate gray sea of paved stones - they must be freezing. And for a moment, instead of hate, he imagines her face cold - her eyes empty and distant. For a one wretched moment he imagines her gone. Then he realizes that he is freezing, it hurts - strangely in a hollow manner.
He had survived an entire lifetime of hatred - it was nothing new - even if it was poison. But - but the alternative -
Then he knows what lady Oh had meant when she said - if his feelings were true - the choice wasn’t that hard.
Mind made up and heart breaking he steps up to her. The rain slaps against him, and the wind howls at him - he cares for neither as he shields her from both. It must be true, he thinks then sardonically. He was cursed - to crave the love of those fated to loathe him.
Hate me - he thinks - but stay alive, stay safe, stay by my side. Hate me - curse me - but please don’t leave me behind. And I’d do anything - anything and everything - you’d want me to do. I’d do anything that I would have to do.
He thinks of the moment she touched his face, looked into his eyes as if he was whole. The center of his universe had shifted then, and the change of gravity was pulling him now. He would do anything to protect her, the choice was never a choice at all.
And the bells start to toll.
**
“Go to Jin,” the emperor doesn’t look up as he addresses his fourth son. His tone is curt like the growl of a wounded animal. “I do not wish to see you for the time being.”
The penalty of defying the monarch is death, but for a man who had narrowly escaped that recently - the emperor was willing to make an exception. He waits for a beat for the said son to thank and accept his benevolence but gets nothing except for silence. So he looks up.
It is only then that the prince bows, graceful but rigid the emperor knows a man with purpose when he sees one.
“I will obey your command - your majesty,” his tone is carefully neutral, the emperor throws a swift look at the astronomer who looks rather unsettled himself. “But I have a request to make, may it please you.”
The emperor narrows his eyes. Those words weren’t exactly out of turn, but he felt certain that what followed would be. He rolled the scroll he had been reading and turned his cold gaze upon his son. “I shall go where you wish to send me, carry out duties as you command - I will forever and more be a faithful alley to the crown prince and a fearsome enemy to those oppose him - if lady Hae Soo is permitted to leave with me.”
Ji Mong drops something, rather dramatically. It clatters on the ground and the silence that holds a breath ready to explode seems to swell with it. The emperor turns slightly purple, but the gaze of his son never wavers. As if, he had not just uttered the most incriminating sort of speech in front of his monarch.
“Wang So -” says the emperor, his tone icy and so very smooth. “All those things that you mentioned are part of your obligation to the king and the country. Do you wish to name a price for your loyalty?”
“Your highness - do beg for pardon - I -” the astronomer tries to intervene. So shoots him down with an icy glare of his own. But his eyes are for his father.
“Your majesty do not believe in my loyalties anymore. Is it not proper that I offer to reinstate your majesty’s faith in me - somehow? I am offering your majesty a bridle to rein me in. Give her to me - I’ll be yours to command as long as you wish to.” Refuse, you will lose my support forever. He doesn’t say that but the emperor reads it in his eyes loud and clear. The old man frowns, clearly giving into thought.
He did not wish for any of his sons to get involved with that girl anymore. On the other hand he did not wish to set his eyes upon her again either. But then, her connection with Mu was openly questioned in court. Those ministers under Queen Yoo’s thumb had implicitly suggested that it was the crown prince who had used the court lady to poison the fourth prince - an opponent for his throne. If she was to be linked with So…would it not reflect the charges back to the faction making them? Would it not stain the image of the prince they were trying to use as the champion of their cause against the crown prince? Would it not at the same time, take both So and the girl out of the game of thrones for a while. So would no longer be of any use to his power hungry mother and at the same time he would have bought his loyalty in Mu’s behalf forever. Dare he refuse, would that not mean he creates a chance for So to take advances from his mother’s faction seriously? Would not that mean he would create an enemy for Mu - another, more resourceful one than his third son?
“You cannot marry her,” he says in the end, “I will not allow it.” His son bows but doesn’t acknowledge his remark. If anything it stirs his fury more. “You may take her as a concubine if you wish to.” And satisfyingly he notices a corner of So’s mouth twitch in a flicker of temper. “A disinherited lady - a disgraced court lady -”
“I owe her a huge debt - lord father,” when he speaks next, his eyes snap back to the emperor and the old man is unwillingly forced to stare back at the full glory of his once scarred son’s unblemished bare face. “It would not do for either of our honor to forget that.”
“Very well,” the emperor sighs wearily. “Very well!”
It is then that his son bows, truly lowering himself.
“Your benevolence knows no limits - Pyeha,” he says then. The emperor tutted, unhappy but left with no better choice. “And Wang So,” he calls after, rather sinisterly. “Now that I have paid the price of your loyalty - do not forget that if you fail the sword would fall on her neck before it finds yours. It is no longer the kinship that binds us, but the bargain we made here today. For the sake of that girl’s life I hope and pray that your loyalty never falters.”
The prince doesn’t reply but merely bows again and takes his leave. His shoulders hunched as if there’s a new burden placed atop them - the emperor watches him leave wondering why he does not look as happy as a man who got the last word in the argument should.
“Your majesty,” Ji Mong speaks slowly, as if uncertain whether to break his trance or not. “I’m certain with time the fourth prince would learn the ways of -”
“He has learned the game a long back astronomer Choi, now only he is willing to play it.” The emperor replies, thoughtful yet not utterly displeased. “And he plays well.” He turns again to look at the disappearing figure of his son with an unreadable expression. “There goes Wang So, finally a prince.”