The White Dragon Priestess of the Rear Palace (2)
The rain came down in sheets.
Under a sky blanketed by dark clouds, the violent downpour hammered the earth without mercy.
And there, drenched in that relentless rain, lay a corpse in a forgotten corner of the rear palace. No proper funeral had been held. It was simply waiting to be disposed of.
“……”
Seoryeong, her long white hair plastered against her back, stared silently at the straw mat covering the body.
“Priestess. At least take an umbrella…”
Jina, her newly assigned guard, held out the umbrella she carried. Seoryeong had been standing motionless in the stinging rain for so long that it seemed her skin would soon be raw. Yet she made no move to seek shelter.
“It’s fine. I want to cool my head for a moment.”
Her face remained expressionless. The strands of hair clinging to her forehead and eyes, heavy with rainwater, did not seem to bother her. She simply stood there in silence, as if mourning someone dear.
“Why did it come to this?”
“I’m not entirely certain, but from what I overheard among the palace eunuchs, they’re calling it suicide.”
“……”
“It seems the official story is that she was bullied by the other maids. The physician will be here soon to examine the body, so perhaps we should head inside.”
Jina had once again quickly gathered what information she could. Even though Seoryeong hadn’t asked for an answer, the guard offered the best response she could manage.
“She was such a bright child.”
“……”
“She reminded me of the little sister I left behind in my hometown.”
“Priestess.”
“I know. I know she wasn’t actually my sister.”
Seoryeong’s voice was flat, almost a murmur.
“It’s cruel. Just because she was an orphan with no connections, her body is left to rot alone in a place like this.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
Perhaps Seoryeong’s demeanor looked too fragile. Jina reached out, intending to place a hand on her shoulder and guide her back to her quarters. But the moment she moved—
“……!”
The expression on Seoryeong’s face as she turned was the complete opposite of grief. Cold fury burned in her golden eyes.
“Jina.”
“…Yes, Priestess.”
Jina bowed her head. She had been momentarily overwhelmed by those golden eyes flashing within the shadows. The voice that called her now was colder than anything she had heard from Seoryeong before.
“Pets sometimes act on their own, regardless of their master’s wishes. Isn’t that right?”
“What are you suddenly… Wait, you can’t mean—”
“Being an imperial pet priestess is probably not so different, is it?”
Beneath the thunderous sky, Seoryeong smiled a chilling smile. Jina’s face drained of all color as she frantically shook her head.
“…You mustn’t.”
It was unthinkable. If Seoryeong caused trouble in the rear palace and was cast out by the Emperor, the consequences could reach all the way to the Azure Shrine.
“Besides, we don’t even know the exact cause of that maid’s death yet.”
There was no evidence. They couldn’t stir up problems just to honor the spirit of a dead servant. Jina was certain Seoryeong had lost her reason and moved to stop her—
“It was poison.”
“……?”
“A typical drowning victim always has some kind of wound on the body. Suffocating to death isn’t something that happens instantly.”
Whether someone had strangled her or she had desperately clawed at the edge of the water trying to escape, there was no way she would have died looking untouched—except in one specific case.
“When I glanced at her earlier… there was a faint purple tint on the underside of her tongue. She was paralyzed by poison first. Or she was already dead when they threw her into the water.”
Seoryeong had a guess about what kind of poison it was, but unfortunately she didn’t possess the vast medical knowledge to be completely certain. She swept back the rain-soaked strands of hair clinging to her face with cold fingers.
“…How could you possibly tell something like that?”
“Didn’t I tell you? Before I became a priestess, I worked as a herb gatherer. I had a teacher who taught me pharmacology and medicine.”
Through an old apothecary in her home village, she had learned the uses of the herbs she collected and how to recognize the characteristics of poisonous plants.
“No matter how lowly one’s status, you shouldn’t treat human lives so carelessly.”
The Emperor’s pet priestess made her declaration beneath the pouring rain.
“I have to let them know. If you kill someone, you must bear the responsibility.”
If no one would see her as human, then she would simply bark like the beast they believed her to be.
The next day.
“By the way… do you have some clever plan in mind?”
Seoryeong was lounging against the railing of the pavilion exactly as she always did, looking utterly relaxed. Jina found herself wondering if yesterday’s terrifying intensity had been nothing but a hallucination.
“If we wait, it will come.”
“What will… come, exactly?”
“The food handler.”
“If you’re hungry, I can—”
“…That’s not what I mean, you know?”
Seoryeong let out a small sigh at the sight of Jina’s pure, concerned eyes that seemed to say, If you were hungry you should have just said so.
“Stories about the dead maid should be heard from another maid.”
“Ah. So that’s what you meant.”
The body had been found only yesterday. By today, rumors would surely be circulating among the maids.
Jina stood guard beside Seoryeong as the latter sat on the pavilion railing, gazing up at the sky. Before long—
“……”
Jina noticed a young woman approaching hesitantly from afar, clearly nervous.
She was a tall maid with small eyes, freckles across her nose, and rough skin. The moment her gaze met Jina’s, her already hunched shoulders shrank even further. She looked utterly terrified as she crept closer.
“P-Priestess… I-I’ve brought your meal…”
She set the tray down beside Seoryeong, who had continued staring at the sky until that moment.
“W-Well then… I’ll be going…”
“Wait.”
“Eek!”
Only when Seoryeong finally turned and met her eyes did the maid’s legs give out. She collapsed right there on the spot.
“I have something to ask you.”
The maid stared at the monstrous priestess who had somehow appeared right in front of her. With her ghost-pale hair hanging long and two horns sprouting from her head, those golden eyes seemed to pierce straight through her. The maid’s teeth chattered, but she still managed a small, obedient nod.
“Yesterday. The maid who was found dead. Do you remember her?”
“Y-Yes…? Do you mean Hwaryeon…?”
“…Hwaryeon.”
Seoryeong repeated the name she had just learned, then quietly reached out and wrapped an arm around the frightened maid’s back, helping her to her feet.
“Yes. That girl. Hwaryeon. Were the two of you close?”
“Hwaryeon was…”
Realizing that Seoryeong had no intention of harming her, the maid relaxed slightly and continued in a calmer voice.
“No… we were all in the same situation. None of us were chosen to serve any of the higher concubine candidates. We weren’t even given proper chores within the palace. That’s why… we’re stuck working in a place like this, never knowing when we might die.”
Though the rear palace maids officially held similar ranks, there were invisible hierarchies among them.
Those above mid-rank—the exclusive maids who attended the concubine candidates who had already caught the Emperor’s eye at least once.
And the common maids, whose lowly birth meant they were given none of those privileges and were instead forced to handle every menial, backbreaking task in the palace.
Because only women lived within the vast rear palace, the exclusive maids treated the common maids like servants, as if they themselves had become concubines.
“Among the rare creatures His Majesty keeps, some are so dangerous that simply approaching them can cost you your life.”
The maids assigned to tend the garden where the Emperor’s pets lived were essentially disposable. Their deaths would mean nothing.
“The truly dangerous ones are handled by dedicated eunuchs, but that doesn’t mean the other pets are completely safe.”
In this enormous rear palace, the only people they could rely on were each other.
Ah, I see. No wonder they were so scared of me.
Seoryeong finally understood.
Even though she possessed a monstrous body, she still looked mostly human and spoke like one. When the maids had first encountered her, that was why they had been so terrified.
They say that once you learn about those beings, the ones who can speak like humans are the most frightening of all.
She remembered learning that during her studies at the Azure Shrine.
Creatures that devoured humans and roamed the mountains—whether called monsters, mountain gods, or spirit beasts—the most dangerous and terrifying among them were those that could speak with human tongues.
“Hwaryeon always said that if she just worked hard enough, even a lowborn maid like us could become an exclusive servant to one of the senior concubine candidates. She was always smiling so brightly.”
“I see… I’m sure she was.”
“Before she disappeared, she told me something. She said she had caught the eye of one of the concubine candidates.”
And that was how the dead maid, Hwaryeon, had ended up in such a terrible situation.
“She couldn’t give me the details, but she said that once this matter was over, she would become that candidate’s exclusive maid. That was the last thing she ever told me.”
“Thank you for telling me. One last question… Do you know which concubine candidate Hwaryeon was referring to?”
“That’s…!”
The maid looked up in shock, clearly understanding what Seoryeong was implying.
“It’s all right. If anything happens, Jina here will protect you.”
Seoryeong pointed at Jina, who stood behind her sighing softly but nodding in reluctant agreement. Then she asked again.
“So… will you tell me?”
“…Ryuhong. It’s Lady Ryuhong, one of the mid-rank concubine candidates.”
The moment the target she needed to bare her fangs at was decided.