After the Praise, the Queen Hands Over the Order's Spy
Three in the afternoon. The Moonlight Inn. I was going to see Marisa — the first time in three weeks.
The doorbell chimed as I stepped inside. Behind the counter, a head of brown hair lifted.
"Welcome— ...Do-hyun?"
Marisa's eyes went wide. Forty-three. Brown waves. Her ample chest pressed over the apron, heavy flesh swaying with the motion. Seeing her after three weeks, she was prettier than I remembered.
"I'm here, Marisa."
She shoved back from the counter and came around it, hurrying the last few steps before stopping in front of me. Her eyes glistened. Her lips trembled.
"Dummy."
Marisa buried her forehead against my chest with a soft thump.
"Three letters. That's all I got. Three letters in twenty-three days."
"I was at the front. The circumstances..."
"I know. I know, but still."
Her shoulders shook. She was crying — quietly, holding it in.
"I'm sorry, Marisa."
"If you're sorry, then write every day next time."
"Every day is a bit much."
Marisa pinched my side. Hard.
"Ow."
"Every day."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And on the days you can't write?"
"I'll write ahead of time to say I can't."
"That means one more letter, you know."
"Exactly."
Marisa was crying and laughing at once. Even before I left for the front, she had told me: for the one who waits, news isn't a luxury — it's a schedule. Knowing that, I had still sent only three.
She pulled my three letters out from beneath the counter. They were folded in date order, and beside each one she had noted the day it arrived and the day her reply went out.
"I sent five replies, but you only got three of them, right?"
"Only three reached me."
"Then next time, write down the royal courier's dispatch number too. So I can check if one disappears along the way."
The forged request prick-marked with thirteen pinprick dots surfaced in my mind. The scarcity of news might not have been the front's fault alone — it could also mean that neither of us knew who was reading our letters.
For now I logged Marisa's two missing letters as simple losses, but I resolved to compare the envelope shapes and check the courier stations. A complaint about waiting had turned, unexpectedly, into a security lead.
Marisa lifted her face. Her eyes were rimmed red. She was smiling.
"By the way, what's with this outfit? It looks really expensive."
"I've been appointed Royal Psychologist."
"What? You're working for the royal family?"
"Yes."
Marisa's expression grew complicated.
"You're somebody important now. Aren't you supposed to stay away from inns like this?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"But a royal official should be keeping company with noblewomen. Not with someone like me."
I cut her off with my lips. She went stiff for a heartbeat, then melted.
"To me, Marisa, you don't come with a rank. You're the one who gave me a place to sleep when I first fell into this world. The one who fed me. The first person who ever treated me like a human being. That's who you are."
"Then even dressed in royal finery, you pay for your room."
"Including what's overdue?"
"Of course. The higher up you are, the more you pay."
Marisa fetched the ledger and worked out, of the twenty-three days my room had sat empty, how many nights she had genuinely lost guests and how many she had rerouted elsewhere. She hadn't kept it vacant for free just because I'd asked her to wait.
"I told you I'd take other guests once it passed a month. It hasn't, so your room is still yours."
"Thank you."
"Thank me with money."
However deep our relationship ran, the inn's ledger didn't vanish. Neither did the title of Royal Psychologist erase what I owed.
"Dummy."
"You called me that earlier too."
"I'm saying it twice because you're a dummy."
So fucking cute. Fuck — what right did I have, smiling in front of a woman like this? I was the one who'd bound the first person to ever treat me like a human being with my abilities. Self-loathing pulsed once, deep in my throat.
Marisa took my hand and drew me inside.
"Come in first. You must be exhausted."
"I am."
"I'll make dinner. Your favorite stew."
"What I want right now isn't stew."
Marisa's ears turned red.
"L-later. Not when there are guests."
"I know."
"Still, eat the stew first. You haven't eaten properly in twenty-three days."
"How could you tell?"
"I can see it on your face."
Sharp eyes. The intuition of ten years keeping an inn.
"Even if you're not hungry, I want to make it."
"If that's the reason, then I have to eat. I'll have seconds."
Marisa huffed a small laugh.
That evening, Marisa locked the inn's doors early. On an ordinary night she was the sort who would keep balancing the ledger long after waving off the last guest.
"Twenty-three days."
"You were counting?"
"Every day."
Marisa heard the story of the front first. The day I saved eight men, the record of forty-seven, how Karin and Erica had taken over the counseling. At the part about starting research with Rosa, her brows rose a fraction — but she didn't ask.
Not asking didn't mean I was free to keep hiding things.
"Marisa. There's more I need to tell you."
Marisa took the cup from my hand and set it on the table.
"It's about women, isn't it?"
"Yes. What Rosa and I have isn't only research. I've become personally involved with Karin and Erica as well."
The temperature of the room dropped in an instant. Marisa didn't raise her voice. That was exactly what made the silence so heavy.
"When were you planning to tell me?"
"Now."
"And if I hadn't asked?"
I couldn't answer right away.
"Then it would have been late, wouldn't it."
"Probably."
Marisa let go of my hand.
"We never promised to see only each other. But using that as an excuse to hide things is another matter entirely."
"You're right."
"I don't want the details about them. Even less if they're your patients. But don't hide the fact that they exist."
"I won't."
"And don't go talking about me to them, either."
"Never."
Marisa stared out the window for a long while. She didn't decide on the spot whether she would share my room that night.
"Eat your stew first. Then I'll think."
Reuniting hadn't returned the relationship to where it had been. The fact that I had come home and Marisa's choice to take me back were two separate things.
"So you do know how to mend people's hearts."
"I've broken a few along the way."
"As long as you know that, it's enough. Better than pretending not to."
"Knowing isn't enough on its own."
"No. Which is why what you just promised only means anything if you keep it next time."
Marisa didn't convert the promise into forgiveness. She left it standing as the measure by which to judge my next move.
She took my hand and led me upstairs. The reunion was urgent, but not rough. We held each other for a long time and kissed like we were reconfirming the shape of one another's bodies. In bed, Marisa climbed on top first and filled the twenty-three-day void at her own pace.
We went up an hour after the stew. Marisa spent that hour finishing the ledger to the very last line, and she wouldn't let my hands wander until it was done.
"Sleeping with me doesn't mean I've made peace with the other women."
"I know."
"I can want you even while I'm angry. Both of those are my feelings."
"I won't try to change either one."
Only after hearing that answer did Marisa close the door. It was her way of refusing to melt forgiveness and desire into a single feeling.
Even after the first time, sleep didn't come at once. We shared water, washed each other, then slowly joined again. The second time around, we called each other's names more than we spoke.
Afterward, Marisa lay with her head on my chest.
"How long are you staying this time?"
"I won't know until I've met the Queen."
"Then come back tomorrow and tell me. The one waiting has to know the schedule."
"If the audience runs long and I can't be sure of the hour, I'll send a courier first."
"And the next time you go to the front — write down your departure date, your expected arrival, and the day contact might be cut."
Behind the inn's ledger, Marisa made a separate sheet for my schedule. She didn't soothe the anxiety of waiting with love alone; she turned it into dates that could be verified.
I no longer had merely a face I was loath to leave behind. I had gained someone who had to hear my schedule first, before anything else, the moment I returned.
The next afternoon. The Queen's study. Our first regular session.
Bookshelves crowded every wall, and chamomile tea stood ready on the table at the room's center. Elena was already seated. Golden curls. Violet eyes. Thirty-eight. A sky-blue dress.
The instant those violet eyes lifted to mine, something yanked tight low in my belly. Fuck. What did I think I was doing in front of Her Majesty. The graceful line of throat showing between the golden curls, the curves outlined beneath the sky-blue fabric — they were raking through my skull. Dress pants were not hiding my dick. Press it down. Hard. I refused to be remembered as the bastard pitching a tent at our very first session.
A jolt — my cock twitched once.
"Sit, Kang Do-hyun."
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
Elena took a sip of tea. A fine tremor ran through her fingertips as she lowered the cup. Nerves. Why would the Queen be nervous?
"I have received the report from the front. Remarkable work."
"You honor me too much, Your Majesty."
"It is no excess. A thirty percent rise in the rate of return to combat, and you caught the demon intelligence service in motion. You have done what no one else could."
"The figures need correcting, Your Majesty."
Elena's brow lifted.
"The forty-seven are men whose acute symptoms eased — not men who are cured. Nor does thirty percent mean every man returned to combat; it is the margin by which we beat our earlier projections. The true number back on the line is fifteen."
"You intend to report your own achievement downward?"
"I intend to report it accurately. The remainder divides into restricted non-combat duty, continued treatment, and long-term transfer."
I handed her the statistical table Erica had annotated. Elena spent longer with the footnotes than with the first page.
"The treasury officials will look only at the first number."
"Which is why every man's full disposition is attached on a separate sheet. If they see only the acute relief and demand the same speed from the next unit, patients could be forced back to the line prematurely."
Elena said nothing for a while. A miracle convenient for praising had just turned into a thicket of administrative tables.
"Good. I will revise the royal report to your wording as well."
That first agreement not to inflate results would later become the standard of trust for the spy reports.
I watched her. I read the micro-expressions. Dark circles. Corners of the mouth pulled down. Shoulders drawn inward. Her left hand covering her right — a self-protective posture. On the surface, a ruler of full dignity. Underneath, she was coming apart.
"The tea is excellent, Your Majesty."
"Is it? I'm glad."
Rapport basics. Go straight for the heavy ground and the defensive wall goes up.
"Do you spend much time here in the study?"
"Lately, yes. It is more comfortable here than my office."
A signal that she had come to associate the official space with stress.
"It's a lovely room. You have so many books."
"I have loved books since I was a girl. Before I became Queen. Some days I read from sunup to sundown."
Before I became Queen. Nostalgia for what she'd lost. A veiled grievance about where she now stood.
"And I imagine there's no time for reading anymore."
"There is not."
Elena's eyes wavered, just barely. Emotion rising to the surface — and crushed down at once.
"Your Majesty, how would you like these regular sessions to run? Formal reporting? Free conversation?"
"Free conversation. The reports I can receive separately."
"Then we should set the bounds of confidentiality first."
"A queen and her subject require bounds of confidentiality?"
"We have to keep private feelings spoken in session separate from commands of state. If what Your Majesty admits in here could look, the next day, like grounds for a personnel decision, then I cannot ask my questions freely either."
Elena set down her cup.
"Who sees your records?"
"In principle, only Your Majesty and myself. Should there ever be an immediate danger of harm to yourself or to others, I would inform you first and share the minimum necessary with whoever needed to act."
"And if the King demands them?"
"I would refuse, without Your Majesty's consent. Even if it cost me the post."
"How bold of you."
"Without that line, free conversation is merely a report wearing another name."
Elena had a single locked drawer emptied out. Session records would never exist in duplicate — I would write one copy, seal it, and keep it in that drawer. Elena and I would each hold a key.
"And mental abilities?"
"I use them only where Your Majesty has heard the exact wording and purpose and granted leave. Today, I will use none."
"Memories as well?"
"I will not look without permission."
The Queen weighed me for a long moment with those violet eyes.
"Very well. Today, we simply talk."
The most important thing settled in that first session was neither the King's indifference nor the noble factions. It was the first ten minutes — spent deciding what would be written down and what would never be touched.
An important signal. What the Queen wanted was not information; it was someone she could speak to. The early sign of dependency beginning to take root. From a counselor's seat, there was no easier door to walk through.
The worktable in my head floated up the word Dependence again. I corrected it to A Need for Someone to Talk To. The moment I read a simple wish to meet again as subservience to me, even a session turns into a conquest chart.
And here I went again — stepping into a fragile heart. It was my specialty. I ought to be so proud.
"Then, Your Majesty, let us begin lightly today. How has Your Majesty been sleeping of late?"
Elena's hand stilled above her cup.
"Badly."
The first crack.
The session ran a full hour. Elena spoke carefully at first. The King's indifference. The nobles' pressure. The loneliness of the crown.
"The King... has no interest in the governance of this realm. Only in hunts and banquets."
Contempt threaded her voice. Beneath it sat disappointment — disappointment in a man she had once wanted to love.
"The noble factions look through me. They say a queen must not govern. That a woman must not step forward. I only... I only wish to work for this kingdom."
I listened. Nods, sounds of sympathy, silences placed where they belonged. Every few of Elena's sentences held the moment her subject slid from the kingdom to herself — and that was when the feeling entered her voice. The point where her public self split from her private one. Prize that crack open the right way, and the Queen's heart would swing wide.
The urge to use Memory Reading rose in me, and I swallowed it. Not yet. The trust had to thicken first. If I rummaged carelessly through the Queen's memories and were caught, everything ended there. And reading her without touching her was impossible — her mental defenses were solid, several times denser than an ordinary noble's.
The session ended.
"Speaking with you today was... easy. We will do this again next week. And—"
Elena stopped at the door.
"Kang Do-hyun."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
She turned. The violet eyes had gone cold and still. The softness of the study drained away, and the Queen's face returned — like a lock clicking home.
"I have obtained intelligence that a demon spy hides within the Knight Order. There is a task I wish to place in your hands."
Elena laid a thin envelope on the table, pressing one finger against its seal — a warning, it seemed, not to break it yet.
"Three operations have leaked in the past half year. Movement routes, supply dates, and the east gate rotation times of the royal castle. Twelve people can reach all three."
"Is whoever altered Luke's duty roster among them?"
"Possibly. The overwritten hand does not match, but the authority to enter the room where the roster is kept does overlap."
"And the thirteen pinprick dots on the forged request from the front?"
"It matches neither our kingdom's crest nor the insignia of any known demon unit. Yet the copy of the most recently leaked document bore the same arrangement of dots."
An unattributed verbal order in the palace, the forged medical referral at the front, the note carried by the demon scouts. Three trails that had seemed separate had connected for the first time — at thirteen points.
"Is the mission to read all twelve men's memories with my ability?"
Elena's gaze went colder.
"Can you?"
"Whether I can and whether I should are different questions. If I sweep through them indiscriminately, I end up holding the secrets of innocent men as well — and the real spy, watching the order of my visits, simply runs."
"Then how do we find him?"
"We hand out controlled information. Each man is told a slightly different time or gate for the same operation, and we watch to see which version leaks."
"Baited intelligence."
"Yes. No real troops move; under the pretext of confirming facts, each person is given a different document to review. Only after the leak channel narrows do we even consider sessions and memory reading."
Elena tapped the table twice with her finger.
"So this amounts to testing innocent knights."
"Which is why no arrest may rest on a single result. Document access logs, courier routes, and the flow of money must be examined together."
"Good. You will design the procedure. But the bait must not touch any real operation."
"Give me a week, and I will have the first leak channel identified."
The principles forged in the treatment room had followed me into counterintelligence. Memory is a clue, not a verdict. Slow cross-verification comes before fast ability.
The air in the room changed.
"We will speak of the details another time."
"Do not open the envelope outside this study. Today, look over the candidates' names only. Tomorrow we compare the twelve men's access authorizations in the security office."
"Understood."
"And never keep the records of these sessions and the records of this task in the same drawer."
"I will keep them as separate ledgers from the very beginning."
The Queen, too, had kept the confidentiality we had just defined out of the business of state.
Elena left. The door clicked. I stood alone in the emptied study, looking down at the chamomile as it went cold.
Flushing out a spy. The Queen's secret commission.
This world had no intention of letting me rest.
Through the window, sunset was staining the castle's spires. Two days back from the front, and a new battlefield was already waiting. Marisa's bed. The Queen's study. And beyond them, the shadow inside the Knight Order. Three scenes wove my week together. I could not afford to drop a single one — drop one, and the other two would come apart with it.
I took a sip of the cold chamomile. Bitter as fuck.
The tea tasted as it always had; the taste of peace was gone. Inside the envelope Elena had handed me lay the personnel records of the Third Knight Order and the three operations that had leaked across the past half year.
Her final instruction: suspect the kindest, most ordinary-seeming man first. At the very top of the first list stood the name of Adjutant Lebran.