A baby's cry pierced the air of the royal birthing chamber.
The physician attending the Crown Princess smiled with relief. "It's a boy, Your Highness. A healthy prince."
The exhausted mother reached for her child as the physician cleaned and wrapped him. The baby was placed in her arms, and tears of joy streamed down her face. An heir. A son. Her husband would be pleased, and more importantly, his position as next in line for the throne would be secured.
But then the physician's expression changed.
"Your Highness... there's another."
"Another?" The Crown Princess looked confused, then felt another contraction.
Minutes later, a second baby emerged.
A girl.
The room fell deathly silent.
The physician's hands trembled as he held the twin sister. In the Joseon Dynasty, when an heir to the throne was born with a twin sister, it was considered a harbinger of terrible fortune. A curse. An omen that could destroy a royal lineage.
When the Crown Prince—the babies' father—was informed, his face went white with fury and fear.
"My father is dying," he hissed to his wife. "Any day now, he could pass, and if I have no male heir, my brother will take the throne instead. No one can know about the girl. No one."
The Crown Princess clutched both babies to her chest. "What are you saying?"
"The girl must die. Tonight. Before anyone else learns of her existence."
"She's your daughter—"
"She's a curse!" The Crown Prince's voice was sharp, final. "I'll send men to handle it. Quietly."
The boy was named Ji-won. The girl would have no name at all.
When the Crown Prince's men arrived at the birthing chamber, they found the female twin already dead—her tiny body cold and still, showing no signs of life.
"It's done," one of the men reported back. "The girl didn't survive the birth."
The Crown Prince nodded, satisfied. The threat was eliminated. No one would ever know.
But there was a secret within the secret.
The Queen—the Crown Princess—had anticipated her husband's cruelty. She had ordered the royal physician to use a technique that would stop the baby girl's heart temporarily, making her appear dead. The physician, loyal to the Queen above all others, had complied.
After the men left, the physician worked quickly to revive the infant. The baby girl gasped and began to cry—quietly, so as not to alert anyone.
That same night, trusted servants smuggled the child out of the palace. She would be raised in secret, far from the eyes of the court and the murderous intentions of her father.
The girl was given the name Sun Hwa by the woman who took her in.
Twelve years passed.
Sun Hwa grew up knowing nothing of her true heritage, raised by a kind woman in a modest home outside the palace walls. But fate has a way of drawing threads together.
Through careful manipulation by the Queen and her most trusted allies, Sun Hwa was brought back into the palace as a court lady—a servant girl of no particular importance, invisible to most but performing her duties with quiet competence.
The Queen noticed her first. How could she not? Those eyes, that face—it was like looking at her son Ji-won. The resemblance was unmistakable to anyone who knew to look.
Then her twin brother Ji-won noticed. The boy felt an inexplicable connection to this particular court lady, though he couldn't understand why.
And finally, the Crown Prince—now the King after his father's death—noticed.
He'd become King as planned. His first wife, the Queen, had given him Ji-won. His second wife, the new Queen, had recently given him another son—Yi Seong-ryu, still just a toddler. Everything was perfect.
But when the King saw Sun Hwa working in the palace, something in his mind clicked.
The recognition in his eyes was murderous. He knew exactly who she was.
The King sent an assassin—not after a random court lady, but after his own daughter. He knew she was Sun Hwa. He knew she'd returned. And he wanted her dead.
The Queen, who had been watching and waiting for this exact scenario, had prepared. She and her son Ji-won hid Sun Hwa in a secret chamber deep within the palace.
When the assassin found them, he moved with lethal efficiency, his blade aimed at Sun Hwa's heart.
But Ji-won—the boy, Sun Hwa's twin—threw himself between them.
The blade meant for his sister pierced his chest instead.
Sun Hwa screamed as her brother collapsed, blood spreading across his robes. She'd only just learned who he was, only just discovered she had a twin, and now he was dying to protect her.
The assassin raised his blade for another strike—
A sword burst through his chest from behind.
The Queen's most trusted bodyguard had arrived, his own blade dripping with the assassin's blood. The would-be killer collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.
The Queen rushed to her son's body, cradling him. But there was no saving him. He was already gone.
Through her tears, the Queen's mind worked quickly. She stripped her dead son of his royal clothing and dressed him in a court maid's outfit. When palace guards arrived, drawn by the commotion, they found the Queen weeping over what appeared to be a servant girl.
The King arrived moments later.
The Queen looked up at him with eyes full of hatred and grief. "Why?" she screamed. "Why would you send an assassin after your own daughter? What kind of monster kills their own blood?"
The King stared at the body dressed in servant's clothes and smiled in relief.
But the Queen's accusation had been public, witnessed by guards. He couldn't deny it without revealing the truth about the twins. So he had all the guards killed.
"No funeral," he said coldly. "Hide this. All of it."
The twin brother Ji-won was buried in secret, his death known only to a handful of people. The existence of a twin sister could never be revealed—it would destroy the royal family's legitimacy.
And Sun Hwa took his place.
The Queen, her loyal court maid, the bodyguard, and the bodyguard's son who would become Sun Hwa's eunuch—these four kept the secret and began the transformation.
Sun Hwa would become the Crown Prince. She would take her brother's name: Ji-won.
"You must be perfect," the Queen told her daughter. "Not just competent. Perfect. Because anyone who gets close to you risks discovering the truth."
"How do I do that?" Sun Hwa asked.
"By being so terrifying that no one wants to get close."
And so they trained her. Not just in combat and statecraft, but in cruelty. In calculated brutality. In the art of keeping everyone at a distance through fear.
The Queen was ruthless in her training. When a court maid broke the rules—arriving late, gossiping, stealing, anything—the Queen would order Sun Hwa to execute them.
"Do it," the Queen would say, handing her daughter a blade. "Show no mercy. No hesitation."
The first time was the hardest. A young maid who had stolen food. Sun Hwa's hands shook as she raised the sword.
"If you can't do this," the Queen said coldly, "you'll be discovered. And when you're discovered, you'll be executed. So will I. So will everyone who helped hide you. That girl's life, or all of ours. Choose."
Sun Hwa chose survival.
Word spread through the palace. The Crown Prince was merciless. Cruel. Evil. Court maids whispered that he was a witch, a demon wearing human skin. They feared him, avoided him, and that was exactly what the Queen intended.
"Let them hate you," the Queen said. "Hate keeps people at a distance. Love makes them want to get closer. You can't afford closeness."
Two years passed. The Queen died under mysterious circumstances—some whispered poison, others said heartbreak. The bodyguard died in battle shortly before the Queen's death.
The eunuch, the bodyguard's son, left the palace to pursue his own dreams, unable to bear the weight of the secrets he carried.
The court maid fell ill and was confined to a hospital, unable to move or speak, locked in her own body.
Sun Hwa—now fully inhabiting the identity of Ji-won—was alone.
Of all the people in the palace, only one person kept trying to break through Ji-won's walls.
Yi Seong-ryu, her step-brother—the son of the King's second wife, the new Queen. He was only six years old, innocent and kind-hearted, and stubbornly persistent.
"Why do you wear all black?" he asked one day.
"It's practical," Ji-won replied coldly.
"Why don't you smile?"
"I have nothing to smile about."
"Why won't you be friends with me?"
"Because friendship is a liability."
But Yi Seong-ryu didn't give up. Day after day, he sought out his older sibling, trying to connect, trying to understand. And slowly, despite herself, Ji-won began to care for him.
Not as a tool. Not as a political piece. But as family.
It was a dangerous feeling. Caring makes you weak. But Ji-won found herself unable to stop it.
When Yi Seong-ryu was in danger, she protected him. When he was sad, she found herself wanting to comfort him—though she rarely knew how. And when he smiled at her, something in her chest would ache with an emotion she'd thought she'd buried forever.
Two years after the Queen's death, when Ji-won was sixteen and Yi Seong-ryu was eight years old, two young men arrived from the outside world.
They approached Ji-won with an unusual request: they wanted to serve as her eunuch and bodyguard.
Itachi, who claimed the eunuch position. Beto, who claimed the bodyguard role.
"I don't need servants," Ji-won told them.
"Everyone needs someone," Itachi replied calmly.
"I refuse."
But they didn't leave. Day after day, they followed her, insisted, wore down her resistance with persistent offers of loyalty.
Then one day, they caught her changing.
Ji-won's blood ran cold as she realized these outsiders had discovered her secret. She reached for the hidden blade she always carried, prepared to kill them both before they could speak—
"We won't tell anyone," Itachi said, his hands raised peacefully.
"Why should I believe that?" Ji-won demanded.
"Because we have our own secrets," Beto rumbled. "And we need you as much as you need us."
It was a gamble. But something in their eyes told Ji-won they were telling the truth.
She lowered her blade. "If you betray me, I'll kill you both."
"Understood," Itachi said with a slight smile.
And just like that, Ji-won had allies again. More than that—she had people she could be honest with, people who knew her secret and didn't recoil from it.
For the first time in years, she could speak freely without watching every word.