What Yeon asked me about as she finally opened up to me enough to let me touch her again was a harrowing experience that I was not expecting to face at all. The journey in finding The Third Prince alone after he was forced to kill his only allies was already a harrowing trip in the heavy snowfalls of winter and my team were starting to run out quickly. Capturing him with his father's armies behind me for backup was an entirely different story on it's own that would be worthy of my father=in=law's attention someday, but it was the journey home that altered my life for the worse and extended my separation from my fiancé, which was more painful than anything I had faced in my entire life. The Third Prince was in the worst physical and mental state that I had ever seen anyone in, and yet he had plenty of time on his hands to make my life as miserable as possible with his endless petty requests and tantrums that I had never witnesses coming from a grown man before. It was a new form of torture that he had unlocked on me, but it was the price to pay for bringing this bastard down. But being alone with him with opium in my blood had never tempered my darkness more that it did back then when I had to suppress the urge to kill that man every single day. And it wasn't a small urge either; it was strong enough to challenge every and any emotion that I had left in me, and I didn't have my woman by my side to distract me either. If she were besides me right now, she would be doing everything and anything in her power to distract me to the upmost; she would pull small pranks on me to no end just like her brother used to. She would create a mess in my quarters and then refuse to clean it up to piss me off, she would engage in nonsensical debates with me and she would use her feminine charms to the maximum limit that could make me forget about my work all day long. But she wasn't here, and while I was away from her, I had to start to really work against this addiction that I had to that I could come back to her a better man…a man who wasn't going to play games with her anymore and exploit her as a way to always keep her with me before our marriage…
"…husband? Husband, wake up." "What is it wife? It is so early, what are you up to now?" "Have you already forgotten what you have promised our children? It is already early in the morning and they are waiting for you in the snow." "Already? Before breakfast time? Have they even taken their morning baths yet?" "They are only years old, what do you think? Come on, get up and get dressed, otherwise they shall freeze to death out there." "So call them inside and tell them to wait for me to wake up properly, dammit." "Do you think they listen to a word I say once you make a promise to them? You are the man of our home, so stick to your word and entertain them." "But…" "But nothing, I will never forget the hell you put me through to have those babies in the first place; and now that they are here, you will keep your promises to them." "Or we can both stay in bed together and make a new one whilst the twins play with each other…" "Husband! Go on and leave so that I can have the bed to myself for once! I have already slaved all morning ever a big lunch feast that my brother will join us for later on with his children, so try to stay awake until then." "How comes you get to keep warm in bed and I do not?" "That is because as much as I love the sweet angels that you plowed in me rather forcibly, I have already suffered being pregnant with them for 9 months and…" "…and you made me suffer right alongside you." "That is what you get." "Very well, give me 10 more minutes and…" "Father! You didn't wake up in time! You have to eat the snow now!"
Before I even had the chance to say anything in my defence, I quite vividly saw a pair of small yet beautiful pair of twins climbing on top of me in bed and covering me with little fistfuls of snow until they had managed to cover the entirety of my back. That was when I was forced to wake up from my warm bed and show those brats who they were messing with. But the sounds of little feet and hysterical laughter even in my drug induced illusions was filling the gaping hole that I had left inside of me that was dying to be healed. Children would give me a legacy, children will fill up the emptiness in my soul that made me rely on Yeon even more when I was left entirely alone and having children will put an end to my obsessive work habits that will make me focus on my family more. I was beyond exhausted with keeping up with my own plans in the palace and that place was taking more and more of me every single day, which was something that I wasn't expecting to happen at all. I had always treated Yeon's disdain with the palace as mere exaggerations, but thinking back to how eager she was to leave the palace when I asked her to, she may be onto something at all. And that feeling only intensified as I went through my luggages, only to come across a book of her's that I had secretly taken with me, along with all of her diaries that I had collected…
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"Yeon! What on earth are you doing? Why are you tearing your room apart? Do you have any idea how long it took for your brother to decorate it?" "Hyeon? Have you seen any of my diaries? You know the ones that I kept on me all of the time? I could have sworn that I had packed them up when I had them in the palace last!" "Are they really that important?" "You know that they are! I have documented my whole life in those books, even the parts of myself that only my brother knows!" "So you had them in the palace last? Are you sure you didn't leave them in our old home before you helped it burn down to the ground?" "No, I didn't unpack them at all! I knew that we were only staying there for a short time, so I barely unpacked anything at all! Are you sure that you didn't see them at all?" "Sister, I learned long time ago that I should respect your privacy, don't you remember?" "Butt where…and how…where is my brother?" "You brother is helping his men settle into his father's village still, and he had taken Chul with him for a while. And you said that you were going to help me prepare a feast for the until we help the women make up communal kitchens so that we can feed everyone at the same time. Get ready now, and we can find your writings later on." "Very well, I write everything in Chinese anyways, so anyone who stole them would never be able to figure anything out…brother? What is wrong with you? Why do you have that look on your face? Brother?" "Husband?"
"I have just received word that Seonho has been arrested for rebellion against The Emperor….by killing The Third Prince himself." "What? What are you saying right now…he wouldn't…" "Sister…I do not know what to tell you…"
My world was turning upside on it's head, just like the day that my father was wrongfully convicted for a minor crime that did not deserve the death penalty that took his life. My head started to spin, my legs gave way under me and I felt nauseous, so much so that I had to run away to a corner of the village and throw up until my stomach felt completely empty…and then the world went black…
"…what happened? What have you heard, Hwi?" "I have a letter here from one of his servants that there were incriminating evidence found. Some letters were exchanged between himself and The Master Chung before he killed hm himself when he found The Third Prince. Everyone knows about their enmity and The Third Prince had to have seen this coming. Would he accept being dragged down by an illegitimate half breed that Seonho is? Of course he wouldn't, he cannot even admit to being out smarted by him, so he fabricated evidence behind everyone's back to look like he colluded with an enemy to kill a Prince while being on duty to simply capture him and bring him into exile." "So what is happening now? Is The Prince n exile or not?" "That mission is being taken over by Seonho's enemy in the palace where sooner rather than later, he will escape captivity. Seonho on the other hand must suffer punishment…" "Punishment? What punishment?" "He will be imprisoned for some weeks before returning to his job as a junior scholar despite his age and reputation. He was just about to be crowned as senior in that whole department and now this? Something about this isn't right at all…"
They knew. The Emperor, or The Third Prince or even The Senior Scholar, they must have figured out each and every scheme that my husband had done to get to where he was now, most likely starting when I was still his father's hostage. Someone may have ratted him out, he may have had unknown enemies in his office or maybe The Emperor knew what sort of game he was playing all along and maybe he got tired of it? Seonho was only a quarter noble, but the rest of his background was far too much of an insult to let anyone else accept it, no matter how passionate and experienced he was now. But the fact that he would be kept on in the palace instead of facing the death penalty himself for a crime such as this, told me that The Emperor didn't want him dead at all. Nam Jeon was only half as cunning as his son was, which didn't get him far in life at all, which is why The Emperor didn't care about his life at all. But Seonho was different; he could come up with a new scheme for every day of the year within the palace. He still held some value to him, just as Seonho always wanted…but what about me? About us? I had successfully produced the enemies plans to burn our home down just as suspicion rose up against my brother, which had now proved him innocent. But nobody could have predicted that someone would pull the same trick on my man who had fallen into a position where he couldn't defend himself at all. My family was safe but my man? What should I do? Just say here and wait for him to find me? Or should I leave my brother's family behind where they belonged and fight for my man myself? What if I saw something that I didn't like? Then what? What do I do?