Do Not Fear Me
Unknown.
Grand Prince Heukju, Cheon Gyeol-woo.
Because Seruhwa's life had never once crossed paths with the Crown Prince, even I—who had gone so far as to press an Upkyeong into service—knew nothing about him beyond his name and his title.
Other than that... all I know is that he's the Queen Dowager's legitimate eldest son, and those strange rumors.
The moment the Crown Prince appeared, the murmuring died away and the atmosphere in the hall turned to thin ice. Some of it seemed like fear, and some of it seemed like outright revulsion. Even the royal musicians' playing wavered, ever so slightly.
It was as if a ghost had walked in, all that dread aimed at a boy of barely eleven.
On the surface he's just a child... but something about him feels off. Is it because his face and hands are all covered up?
If I could see him, my heavenly eyes would pierce right through him, but the heavy veil blocked everything.
"The exchange of bows—!"
At the nervous cry of the officiant, the Crown Prince and I bowed in turn across the wedding table. Even through the veil, I could feel his gaze boring into me.
Ansi sent over an uneasy flicker of feeling.
When a phoenix so sharply attuned to corruption calls something ominous, it must truly be ominous.
What on earth was that child?
He doesn't feel like a yaoguai...
If he were a monster, no amount of face-covering could fool me or Ansi. Not the way Maegu had hidden herself among the musicians earlier.
"The joining of cups—!"
A gourd cup strung with blue silk was pressed into my hand; across from me, the Crown Prince received one strung with red.
Haphwanju. The nuptial wine.
With a bride of nine and a groom of eleven, it was really nothing more than water so diluted it hardly counted as wine at all—but a nuptial cup was a nuptial cup. Share it, and the red thread and the blue thread would be knotted together in fate.
Raising my wide sleeve to shield the cup, I pretended to drink and instead poured half of it straight into my robe.
This is exactly why I wore the Vermilion Bird robe.
Any ordinary garment would have soaked through and betrayed me at once, but this robe made of Vermilion Bird feathers vaporized every spilled drop without leaving a trace.
The court lady exchanged my cup for the one the Crown Prince had half-drained. I feigned drinking from that one too, and dumped it into my clothes as well.
There. Done.
I was setting down the empty gourd when I saw the court lady across from me freeze in dismay. The Crown Prince had simply sat there, never reaching for his cup. Trembling with fright, she urged him on.
"C-Crown Prince, Your Highness, y-you must—you must drink."
"......"
The Crown Prince stayed still for a long moment, then slowly lifted the cup and drank the Haphwanju through his veil. The gloved hand holding it was trembling, faintly but unmistakably.
...So he knows about the plot wrapped around this wedding too, does he?
Come tomorrow, he would be the groom who murdered his bride and be executed for it—no wonder he'd have no appetite for the nuptial wine.
And if they're planning to pin his murder on me... will there be another knife in the night? Or assassins?
Knives and assassins, I had countermeasures for both. But—
If the Crown Prince really is a madman who intends to kill me himself...
That would be a headache. Not the blocking part—the part where I'd planned to go on living as Crown Princess from here on.
The gourd cups were locked together, blue silk wound with red. Through the pair of mandarin ducks set side by side on the wedding table, I quietly studied the Crown Prince.
The boyish groom never once showed his face for the rest of the ceremony.
The moment the ceremony ended, I was sent alone into the bridal chamber. Apparently they had no intention of letting me out until the next day, because they locked the main gate behind me.
Of course, Ansi—human guards or no—simply turned into a tiny bird and sailed freely over the wall.
"Here, take this."
I held out the Eight-Pearl Talisman to the girl who had slipped in.
"Take it and use it to catch Maegu."
A thousand-year-old fox was a dangerous great monster, but against a fully grown phoenix she was nothing. The trouble was that Ansi was still young.
At the sight of the talisman, Ansi's eyebrows drooped in clear reluctance.
"Could Your Highness not keep watch at your side tonight, and have me catch the fox tomorrow instead?"
"By tomorrow, word will have spread that I survived without dying. Then Maegu might sense something's wrong. She has to be caught tonight."
"Then I think it would be wiser for Your Highness to keep the talisman with you. You are the one in greater danger, Your Highness!"
"I'm just going to sit here. What danger is there in that?"
"The humans are plotting to kill Your Highness, you told me so yourself! And that boy they call the Crown Prince feels ominous too, and—"
"Don't worry."
I lifted the hem of my robe slightly and showed her the norigae with its little scarecrow charm no bigger than a finger.
"Oh! Is that the warding charm Lord Cheoyong made?"
"Mm. I had it brought out of the treasury."
Cheoyong had been a son of the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, but after striking down the plague-bearing demons, he became the god who governs the dispelling of misfortune. This Straw Effigy Talisman Pendant was a sacred gift he had crafted with his own hands for me.
"No matter what blade or attack comes, this will take the hit and be hurt in my place. So go without worrying—and besides, you can feel whether I'm safe from anywhere, can't you?"
"...As you command, Your Highness. Still, I shall return as quickly as I possibly can."
Looking somewhat relieved, Ansi departed with the talisman in hand.
Left alone, I looked around the candlelit bridal chamber.
There's only one blanket.
A nine-year-old bride and an eleven-year-old groom—no one could be expecting anything.
A bride who's just going to die here anyway.
When the bride and groom were this young, wasn't the custom to sleep separately even after the wedding ceremony, rather than share the bridal chamber?
If it hadn't been me—if Sohwa had simply come back to life...
Imagining a tiny child swamped in an enormous wedding gown, sitting all alone in a cold bridal chamber waiting to die, made me sick to my stomach.
Humans, honestly... No wonder Hell is bursting at the seams.
These days Hell was so crowded with sinners you had to take a number and wait your turn in line.
I'll have to ask Dad to send the ones who killed Seruhwa straight to the Eight Great Hells, no queue required.
While I was mulling over how exactly to hunt those people down and deliver them to the afterlife, the sun sank below the horizon.
As dusk settled, there was a stir in the courtyard—the Crown Prince had arrived.
Rising up on my toes, I cracked the window open. Not a single eunuch had come with him; only one shadow stood in the darkened yard.
Why is it so dark? I can barely see him.
Dusk was one thing, but there were still torches burning, and a whole line of blue palace lanterns lit besides—yet the space around the Crown Prince standing in the yard was black as midnight. Even without the veil, a shadow lay over him so deep and so black that his face was invisible.
The Crown Prince, who had been standing motionless in the middle of the courtyard, began to move. Reluctantly. Unbearably slowly.
He stepped onto the stepping-stone, and the bonfire that had been blazing in the yard snuffed out in an instant. He stepped up onto the wooden porch, and the blue lanterns hanging from the eaves lost their light. He walked along the corridor, and the row of lanterns lining it went dark one after another.
That's...
Wherever the boy passed, the lights died and a darkness deeper than night bloomed in his wake. It was eerie. It was chilling.
In the daytime... during the ceremony, he wasn't like this at all, was he?
He would be here soon.
I closed the window, sat down on the floor cushion, and stared at the door. Darkness that grew in strange ways. Flames that went out on their own. Harmless enough in daylight, but revealing its true nature once the sun went down.
Suddenly, I understood why such sinister rumors clung to the Crown Prince. And at the same moment, I became certain that there would be no flying knife tonight, no squad of assassins bursting through the door.
If my guess is right... there'd be no need for any of that.
It was truly the one scenario I had never imagined. Even if the Crown Prince had turned out to be a genuine murderer come to kill me with his own hands, it would have been less of a shock than this.
There shouldn't be any precedent for this. And yet that phenomenon is unmistakably...
Soft footsteps drew nearer. The light that had flickered dimly through the paper window vanished, and a pitch-black darkness swallowed the space outside the door. The footsteps stopped.
A long silence. Then, at last, the Crown Prince spoke.
"...My lady, are you within?"
It was a young voice, and yet—cool and immaculate, like water pooled in shadow.
"Yes—no, I mean, yes. I am."
I answered without thinking, then hastily corrected myself into formal speech. Fake marriage or not, husband and wife normally used honorifics with each other. Mother and Father had done the same.
"Do you know why you were wed to me?"
"...I do."
"I—"
The Crown Prince paused, then spoke as if making a vow.
"I do not... wish to harm you."
"......"
"So I beg you. Please."
"......"
"Do not... fear me."
His voice trembled, thin as a thread.
He's terrified right now, the poor thing.
The boy was telling me not to fear him while he himself was in the grip of utter horror.
"If you fear me, my lady, you will die. Even if I do nothing... it will happen of its own accord. Even if I don't want it, even if I wish harm on no one—it happens anyway. So please—!"
The Crown Prince, spilling the words like a scream, drew a ragged breath. Then he made himself breathe deeply, slowly, forcing himself calm, and went on in a halting voice.
"When I enter the room now, every light will go out."
"......"
"You will not be able to see a hand's breadth before your face, and you will feel dread, and fear, and something ominous in the dark."
"......"
"In truth, nothing will happen. It is only a feeling. Only darkness."
"......"
"You may close your eyes. Yes—better yet, close them. It will be easier that way."
There came the soft sound of a sleeve brushing cloth, as though the Crown Prince were anxiously rubbing his face.
"Close your eyes, and simply sleep. I will not lay so much as a fingertip on you, and I will not stir from my corner of the room."
"......"
"That is all. Do that, and it will be all right. But if, by some chance, you begin to feel the slightest fear—then... the darkness will grow."
"...!"
"You can see the darkness gathered around me, can you not? This darkness feeds on fear. The more frightened you are, the larger it becomes. The more afraid, the vaster and more monstrous it grows, until it swallows you whole. So please—never, ever be afraid of me."
I had wondered, but now I knew for certain.
What the Crown Prince really was. Why the rumors spread. Why everyone feared him. Why someone had gone to such elaborate lengths to arrange a wedding just to have him killed.
Why he and Ansi had both sensed something ominous radiating off him.
So... one of those was born among humans, too.
It was every bit as unprecedented as my own existence. And like me, it must have stirred up no end of unprecedented trouble as well.
He's had a fate just as crooked as mine, hasn't he.
Clicking my tongue inwardly, I rose from my seat.
And flung the door wide open.