The Unknown
"…My lady, what are you doing here?"
"Th-there were so many cobwebs up under the eaves… I was cleaning them off."
"Why on earth would you be the one to—?"
The Crown Prince let his words trail off, raking his gaze up and down over me—skirt hiked up to indecent heights, perched on a roof beam like some child who knew no better.
"Get me down!"
I slapped hurriedly at Ansi's arm. She set me down gently, then smoothed out my rumpled skirts for me.
I cleared my throat and changed the subject. "What are you doing out here, Your Highness?"
"This is my room."
"Oh. Right."
When I just stared at him open-mouthed, the Crown Prince pressed a hand over his mouth and turned his head away. I could see his shoulders shaking.
"…Don't laugh."
"I beg your pardon."
He swallowed his laughter quickly and apologized.
Apologizing somehow makes it even more embarrassing…
And I fell asleep eating right in front of him on our wedding night, remember.
At this rate, I had no one to blame for being treated like a little kid. I buried my burning face in both hands and heaved a sigh.
Then the Crown Prince called to me, his voice still laced with traces of amusement.
"My lady."
"Yes?"
"I was actually just on my way to see you."
"Yes?"
When I lifted my head, he was leaning out the window, beckoning me closer. I approached, and he asked in a low voice, "That golden-haired maid behind you—she's your personal maid, isn't she? Can you trust her?"
"Yes, I trust her more than anyone. Her name is Ansi."
"Good. I've arranged a way out of the palace. Escape tonight, together with her."
"…I'm sorry?"
Why would I run away?
I could only gape at him, and he reached out a hand—only to draw it back just before it touched me.
It was as if he'd instinctively moved to pat my head, then froze and stopped himself.
"…My lady, you are in danger if you remain in this palace. You must get out tonight. Immediately."
His face could not have been more serious. I blinked up at him, dumbstruck, then asked, "Is this about the attack?"
"What attack?"
The boy's eyes went wide.
Wait, so Court Lady Kim knows, but he doesn't? About his own wife? The Royal Investigation Bureau already came?
I guess no one told him. He really is completely cut off from everything.
Which meant, of course, that he also hadn't heard I'd decided to treat the Queen.
But he managed to arrange a way for me to slip out of the palace in half a day?
Something was off here.
I rose up on my tiptoes and asked sweetly, "Your Highness, what exactly is this escape route of mine?"
"My eunuch will guide you, along with soldiers he has bribed. You need only follow him out through the sally gate. He has found someone to escort you as far as the harbor outside the palace as well, so if you simply go with—"
The eunuch.
The image surfaced from the night before—the eunuch I'd seen giving orders to the assassins.
There were hundreds of eunuchs in a palace, of course. But for someone to learn the moment I finished my formal greetings and have assassins ready and dispatched that quickly…
"Is that eunuch the person you trust most, Your Highness?"
"Yes. He is the only one who stayed by my side even after I became… this."
"Is he always with you?"
"He is. My constitution keeps him from lingering too near, but if I shake the bell cord, he comes at once."
"Guarding your side and arranging all of that in half a day? What a remarkable man."
"He's a capable one. Well-connected, too."
"Then there's no way he wouldn't have heard that I was attacked this morning… He must have kept it from you on purpose. So you wouldn't worry, perhaps?"
I asked it with a feigned innocent tilt of my head, and the Crown Prince's expression shifted.
He was young enough to be easily deceived by adults, but he looked sharp enough—and he would have understood exactly what I meant right away.
The Crown Prince's face had drained white when he asked me, "My lady—you were attacked?"
"Oh, yes. But I'm fine. I wasn't hurt at all."
"That is hardly the point!"
The boy's voice rose. He swept an anxious glance around the room once, then continued, agitated, "In any case, it would be best to leave the palace the moment the sun sets. Until then, stay at Unyeondang—no, at Jamryongdang. You may take the room beside mine. If I am watching over you, no one will be able to come near you…"
I cut off the flood of his words, feigning fright, and asked, "Your Highness, could you summon that eunuch right now? I'd like to meet him and hear the details myself."
"Since you must leave with him, it would be wise to meet him beforehand. I will pull the bell cord, so wait for us on the main veranda."
"Yes."
Not that I intended to befriend the man, and not that I had any plan to leave—but for now I nodded and headed toward the veranda.
Ansi and I sat waiting on the wooden floor, and before long a eunuch stepped into Jamryongdang's inner courtyard.
"Your Highness, you called for—ah, Her Highness the Crown Princess is here as well."
The eunuch bowed politely the moment he spotted me. I smiled sweetly.
So easy to find him.
I already knew that face from the night before.
Of course. Only a man glued to the Crown Prince's side would know instantly that I hadn't died, hear instantly that I'd gone to pay my respects, and dispatch assassins instantly.
I'd wager those assassins were meant for me, prepared in case the Crown Prince refused to enter the bridal chamber, wouldn't you say?
The Crown Prince had gone obediently to the wedding night, and everyone must have breathed easy—until I turned up alive, and suddenly they'd panicked and sent killers after me.
Shall we verify that?
[Ansi, seal this place with wind so no sound escapes.]
[Yes, my lady.]
When I went on staring at him in silence without so much as acknowledging his greeting, the eunuch smiled awkwardly.
"Your Highness… is there something you wish to ask of me?"
"There is."
"Ask anything, and I shall answer."
"No, that's all right."
I'll be asking your life directly from here on.
"…Hhk…!"
I opened the Eye of Heavenly Insight.
In an instant, the eunuch went bone-white and broke out in a cold sweat that poured off him like rain.
Terror was written across his face, his legs shaking beneath him—yet he could not flee, could not even tear his eyes from mine.
"Ugh… ughk…"
As the moments dragged on, foam began to form at his mouth.
Must be all the sins weighing him down. He's holding up worse than that maid yesterday.
Just before his eyes rolled back, I withdrew the Eye.
"Huwerk! Huergh—!"
The eunuch collapsed forward and vomited, again and again.
It was clear enough now—mortal humans bore the Eye far worse than immortals did, and the more sinful the man, the less he could endure it.
I looked down at the half-conscious eunuch, cold and unblinking.
You truly lived a filthy life, didn't you.
This one had stayed at the young Crown Prince's side on his master's orders, the money flowing in from whoever pulled his strings.
He'd whispered into the boy's ear that he alone remained loyal, cultivating trust—while doing not one single thing for the Crown Prince's sake.
He'd cut off all communication between the King and his son. He'd made certain that no one could reach the Crown Prince except through him. He'd fanned and fattened the rumor that the boy was a mad monster.
He'd even gone so far as to attach a tale that the Crown Prince ate human flesh.
All of it, heaped onto a boy so afraid of hurting someone that he kept no servants near him, never left his room, and quietly endured—like a criminal—as his meals grew sparse and his house crumbled into ruin.
He watched with open eyes as that child struggled so hard never to harm a soul—and then turned around and reported every last detail of the Crown Prince's traits to his backers, like some manual on handling a monster.
It was that eunuch's tireless probing into the "monster's" nature that led the Crown Prince to learn his shadow fed and grew on human fear in the first place.
He'd drag people right up to the boy, then prod his guilt over it—Your Highness, you hurt someone yet again.
He knew the boy was good-hearted and desperate to keep to the path of duty, and he exploited it beautifully.
And so he drove every other eunuch mad or drove them out, dismissed the wet nurse ages ago, and with nothing left to answer to, embezzled the entire East Palace budget. Skimmed it every which way, down to the cost of the boy's own meals.
No wonder the state of the East Palace seemed so dire.
My guess about the assassins had been right, too.
The one who prepared and sent them was the power behind the eunuch.
The eunuch's role was simply to confirm whether or not the Crown Prince entered the bridal chamber, and to pass word to the assassins.
Once the Crown Prince went in, there was no longer any reason for the killers to strike that night—but they'd stayed on standby until morning, just in case.
And thanks to me becoming Ru Hwa, that "just in case" actually happened.
Confronted with the unforeseen, the eunuch had dispatched the assassins at once—but I'd gone straight to pay my formal greetings, and thrown off their timing entirely.
When the assassins were about to turn back, the eunuch had caught them and told them to wait for me to leave Junggungjeon and strike when an opening appeared. After that… well, everyone knows the rest.
So that's why I was being exorcised until just now.
The attack in the bamboo grove had been the eunuch's own initiative.
His backer had been furious.
The point was never simply to kill me—the point was to kill me and pin the crime on the Crown Prince. What good was an attack in some grove nowhere near him?
No wonder it felt like they were attacking me far too openly.
Which meant this matter had a different mastermind than the plot to assassinate Ru Hwa on the night before the wedding.
"Do you think it will be so easy to bury the Royal Investigation Bureau's inquiry, you wretch?!"
"Forgive me, my lord Left State Councilor…"
Those were the words the eunuch had groveled out to the man raging at him.
The mastermind behind this morning's attack was the Left State Councilor of this very kingdom.
If it's the Left State Councilor, that means Prince Waneon's faction.
Seok-ran—the Maegu—had explained it all to me.
Prince Waneon was the Crown Prince's cousin, the candidate with the strongest chance of becoming the next heir—and the Left State Councilor's grandson through his daughter.
The one paying and directing this eunuch was that very Left State Councilor, head of the Waneon faction.
The man who stood to gain only if the Crown Prince was executed for murdering the imperial princess.
A faction I'd have had to sweep aside anyway to clear the Crown Prince's path. How convenient.
But then—who was really behind the plot to kill Ru Hwa?
At first I'd assumed it was someone desperate to save the Crown Prince even at the cost of Ru Hwa's life, but having combed through the life of the eunuch who'd stayed at the boy's side all these years, I found no one who fit.
Was it truly a conspiracy aimed at the King himself?
I would have to summon Seok-ran and redirect the investigation.
"My lady, the wretch has fainted. What are your commands?"
"Mm. Wake him."
"As you command."
Ansi flitted over to the collapsed eunuch, glanced at the puddle of vomit, and wrinkled her nose with an ugh.
Apparently unwilling to touch him with her hands, she snatched him up with a gust of wind and shook him wildly in midair.
That's only going to make him throw up more.
"Huergh…!"
Sure enough, the moment the eunuch's eyes opened, he was sick all over again. His complexion had gone a sickly gray; he truly looked near death.
Ansi paid it no mind whatsoever, beaming brightly as she turned to me.
"He has woken, my lady!"
"…Mm. Good work. Cover that mess over with something—sand or whatever's handy—and clean it up."
"Yes, my lady."
Ansi whipped up a breeze to blanket the evidence of the eunuch's retching and dried his soaked clothes. Looking him over, he at least appeared presentable on the surface now.
Time to reveal his true nature to the Crown Prince, then.
The trusted elder he'd leaned on all this life turning out to be that—it's a cruel truth to hand a child.
Still, I couldn't leave him in the dark forever.