The Forbidden Line (1)
Night counseling, day ten.
Queen Elena. Her insomnia had improved considerably. The mask of the Queen was peeling away, one layer at a time. [Common Sense Alteration], stage three, had taken root. 'I feel anxious when this man isn't beside me.'
Stage four still hadn't arrived. 'This man's arms are the safest place in the world.' The trigger conditions weren't met yet. So I was waiting.
Fuck — "waiting" is a laughable way to put it. The truth is I'm counting the days, waiting for the moment one woman comes apart. I know exactly what a fucked-up thing that is. And I have no intention of stopping.
2 a.m.
I was asleep. The guest room of the residence they'd given me. The bed was comfortable as fuck — fit for a royal palace, and all that. I was out cold when—
BANG BANG BANG.
"Counselor Kang! Counselor Kang!!"
I bolted upright at the pounding on the door, heart hammering. Fuck. What now.
I opened it. A maid stood there, face drained white, legs trembling.
"Her Majesty the Queen... a nightmare... she was screaming—"
"Where."
"Her bedchamber — please, hurry—"
I ran.
Shoes? Forget it. I sprinted across the marble barefoot. The palace corridors at this hour were fucking freezing. Nothing but sleep clothes, hair a tangled mess. A pathetic sight, but who cared.
Two more maids stood posted outside the Queen's bedchamber. Sobbing bled through the door.
"May I go in."
"Her Majesty said to bring the Counselor—"
I opened the door.
This was my first time inside the Queen's bedchamber.
Vast. Curtains stitched with the kingdom's crest, a bed frame traced in gold leaf, a crystal chandelier overhead. None of it registered.
Elena was curled up on the bed.
Her nightgown clung to her body, soaked through with sweat. Blonde hair in tangles. Face white — no, blue. Her whole body shaking.
Acute agitation after a nightmare. Cold sweat, tremors, racing pulse, ragged breath. The most severe class of nocturnal trauma symptoms.
"Elena."
I switched the form of address deliberately. Not 'Your Majesty' — 'Elena.' The name we used in the night sessions. Framing it: in this room she wasn't the Queen. She was a woman.
Elena lifted her head.
Violet eyes, losing focus. Pupils blown wide. Still trapped in the afterimage of the nightmare.
"Dohyun...?"
Her voice was shredded. She'd screamed her throat raw.
"It's me. You're all right. You're here."
I crossed to the bed and sat, laying a hand on her shoulder. Damp. Body heat radiated through the sweat-soaked nightgown — hot. The fever that follows a nightmare.
"Lizette..."
Tears burst from Elena's eyes.
"Lizette... the demons were dragging her away... I reached out and couldn't touch her... I kept reaching and reaching..."
Lizette. Elena's daughter. The second princess. Across ten nights of counseling, she'd surfaced only in fragments — Elena's deepest fear. The terror of the Queen, of the mother: 'failing to protect her daughter.'
Until now, her nightmares had fed on personal wounds — the King's indifference, her isolation at court. But if Lizette had appeared, it meant she'd touched the very bottom.
[Common Sense Alteration], stage three, had dredged this up. With 'anxious without this man' now settled in her bones, the sensation of anxiety itself had, paradoxically, switched on. Give a person a safe foundation, and the deepest fears they'd been suppressing come boiling to the surface. Only the safe are finally free to be afraid. Fuck. The safety I built for her had become the very instrument that would break her all the deeper.
"It was so frightening... Lizette... the demons..."
Elena leaned into me. Both hands seized my sleep shirt. Her forehead struck my chest.
"Don't go..."
"I'm not going."
"Not tonight... please..."
Her grip tightened until the fabric threatened to tear. The desperation of a woman of thirty-eight. Not one shard of royal dignity left anywhere in her. Just a woman crying over a terrible dream.
"I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here."
[Common Sense Alteration]. Rode in on the contact. Stage four. 'This man's arms are the safest place in the world.'
This was the moment. Being held in my arms at the peak of terror. Fear at its climax and safety at its climax, engraved at the same instant.
A slow, syrupy warmth seeped in.
Elena's trembling began to ebb, her face still buried in my chest. Her breathing found its rhythm again.
One minute. Two. Five.
The shaking had stopped. Her breath had steadied. But she didn't let go. Her hands stayed knotted in my clothes.
...Her sweat-damp chest pressed flush against my body. My lower stomach gave a sharp twinge, and everything below hardened all on its own. Fuck. Hold it. Press it down. Getting hard while holding a woman who was screaming and crying minutes ago — what a pathetic piece of shit I am. Worried she'd feel it, I eased my hips back a fraction.
"...Dohyun."
"Yeah."
"It's safe here."
There it was. The line that sealed stage four. 'This man's arms are the safest place in the world' — spoken now from Elena's own lips.
Everything going according to plan. Perfectly.
And then—
Elena raised her head.
Violet eyes, wet with tears. Moisture beading on her lashes. Tangled blonde hair plastered to her forehead. Lips parted. Ragged breath.
That face.
Was fucking beautiful.
Calculation, leverage, all of it — wiped clean from my head in an instant. The Queen, thirty-eight. Blonde hair. Violet eyes. Tears. A bedchamber at two in the morning. A sweat-soaked nightgown.
Shit. This was off the books. I'd spent my whole life handling women with my brain, and right now that brain was empty. Goddamn it.
"Dohyun."
"Yeah."
"I—"
Elena took my face in both hands. Not gently. Desperately. Her fingers dug in.
And she kissed me.
Elena first.
The instant our lips touched, my head went white. Her mouth was hot. The salt of tears came away on my lips.
No light brush of mouths — a kiss steeped in three years of thirst. Her tongue slipped in first. Elena's. Not the least bit clumsy. A woman who knew what she was doing. But three years of drought had turned all that experience into sheer desperation.
Chup. Chup. Chuuup.
"Haa..."
Elena pulled back, gasping. Violet eyes gone hazy.
"I'm sorry... the Queen shouldn't be doing this..."
"Elena."
"Yeah."
"I told you. In this room, you're not the Queen."
"..."
"You're a woman."
Elena's violet eyes wavered. Badly. Then they broke. The last wall came down.
"Three years, Dohyun. Three years without anyone touching me. The King went to other women, and I— alone—"
Her voice cracked, dissolving into sobs.
"I was losing my mind. Every night. By myself. The bed was too wide. There was no one to hold my hand."
"There is now."
"...Yeah."
"I'm here."
Another kiss. Mine, this time. I took the lead.
Just as the kiss threatened to deepen, I pulled away once.
"Elena. Can you decide this for yourself, right now?"
This woman had been shaking inside a nightmare until minutes ago. The way she felt safe with me was already laced with the [Common Sense Alteration] I'd planted. Simply not refusing could not stand in for consent.
Elena steadied her breathing, then gripped my wrist.
"I can decide. In return, hear me out first."
I waited, hands stilled.
"Tonight I am not the Queen, and I am not your patient either. I held on to you because I wanted to, before anything else. Don't use your ability anymore. If I say stop, you stop at once."
"Understood."
"And tomorrow's business gets decided tomorrow, with a clear head."
Only then did Elena draw close again, her hand never leaving my wrist.
"Three years. The King went to other women, and every night I was alone. The bed was so wide I thought I'd lose my mind."
"I'm here now."
"Yes. Which is why tonight, I choose."
Elena lowered the candle flame herself. I laid no further [Mental Interference] on her. I couldn't know how far the dependency I'd already sown had bent her judgment. That uncomfortable truth didn't vanish. If anything, it threw the line I was crossing into sharper relief — and showed me exactly how dangerous it was.
We settled the essentials in a few quiet words: a signal to stop, secrecy afterward, protection. Elena wouldn't claim to know the state of her body on a guess, and I didn't add the false comfort that a power built for the mind could read her cycle too.
"Dohyun."
"Yeah."
"Don't think, for now. Just check that I'm all right."
Instead of answering, I nodded.
What came after was carried less by words than by breath and questions. Elena set the pace over and over, and each time I stopped and waited for her answer. The Queen's mask and the counselor's role were left outside the door for a while — though our stations, and the danger between us, never left the room.
At last Elena buried her face in my shoulder. The trembling was nothing like the one that had wracked her when she woke from the nightmare. She called my name as if confirming her own choice, and I listened for her answer to the very end.
By the time the candle had all but burned down, only even breathing remained in the room.
Afterward.
Elena lay with her face buried against my chest, blonde hair brushing my chin. Soft. She smelled good.
No tears now. Nothing like earlier. Quiet. At peace.
Her breath rose and fell against my chest in an even rhythm. She was close to sleep.
Inside my thighs, everything that had overflowed earlier still burned. The sensation of seed planted deep in the Queen's body wouldn't fade.
"Dohyun."
She wasn't asleep.
"Yeah."
"You'll regret this. Probably. Tomorrow morning."
"..."
"The Queen slept with her counselor. That's a scandal. If it comes to light, we're both finished."
Elena's voice was calm. The ferocity of minutes ago felt like a lie. The Queen's reason had come home.
"Do you regret it?"
"...No."
Elena lifted her head from my chest. Violet eyes found me in the dark where the candle was guttering out.
"I don't, Dohyun. For the first time in three years, I felt alive."
Alive.
Erica said it too, once. A different woman, a different situation, the same word. 'Alive.' When my cock is inside them, women feel alive.
Not arrogance — observation. [Suggestion] and [Common Sense Alteration] tear down the walls around a woman's feelings, and sexual pleasure switches the sense of 'being alive' back on. A perfectly rational response. Except — fuck — sometimes I lose the thread. Whether the moment these women feel most alive isn't really the moment they're dying the deepest. And that I know it, and don't stop. Fucked up. And I still don't stop.
Elena was quiet for a moment. Then she laid a hand on her lower belly — right where I'd spilled myself.
"...You did it inside."
A level voice. But something quivered beneath it.
"Yeah."
"It's a dangerous day."
"..."
"After three years, I don't even know when my body is ready anymore. But today... it's probably one of those days."
Elena's hand stroked slowly over the place where the seed had been planted. It wasn't fear. If it were, [Common Sense Alteration] would have smothered it long ago.
"The King hasn't come to me in three years. The succession hangs on Lizette alone, and the court uses that to pick me apart. 'The Queen's belly is empty,' they whisper."
"..."
"And now, inside me, there is your seed."
Violet eyes held mine in the dark.
"...I should say I'm afraid. As the Queen, I mean. And yet, strangely, I'm at ease. I feel filled. All the way to the bottom."
Fuck. Because stage four had planted 'this man's arms are the safest place in the world.' Seed received in a safe place turns even the political bomb of a royal bastard into 'relief.' The heir the worthless King never gave her — this woman wants it from me. She'll never say so out loud. The hand circling her belly says it for her.
And, fucked-up as it is, I didn't hate it either — the fact that I'd filled the womb of the most powerful woman in this other world with my seed.
"Elena."
"Yeah."
"Don't be scared. I'll make sure there's nothing to be scared of."
Elena laughed — small, soft. Then her cheek settled back against my chest, her hand still resting on her belly.
"...Strange man. You pour everything inside me and then promise there's nothing to fear?"
"That's mine to take responsibility for."
"..."
Elena didn't answer. But the hand moving over her belly grew a little more unhurried.
"Tomorrow morning, I go back to Queen mode."
"I know."
"Don't be disappointed in me when that happens."
"I won't."
"I might be cold to you."
"That's fine."
Elena laughed. Small. Bitter.
"Strange man. The Queen will freeze you out, and you say that's fine?"
"I told you — in this room, you're not the Queen."
"...That line again."
Elena pressed a light kiss to my lips. Short. A peck.
"Dohyun."
"Yeah."
"Next time too... can you come?"
"It won't be me coming. It'll be you calling me."
"...Right. Then I'll call."
She let the silence sit for a moment, then dropped her voice even lower.
"...Inside, again, next time too. Don't spill it outside."
Words from the Queen's own mouth. A woman offering herself up as a seedbed. Asking that the place left empty for three years be filled with my seed from now on. She knew exactly what she was saying. And she didn't take it back.
"...All right."
Elena buried her face in my chest once more.
A minute later, her breathing slowed into sleep.
The woman who'd spent ten days hunted by nightmares had fallen asleep on my chest. Peacefully. With my seed cradled in her belly.
[Common Sense Alteration], stage four: fully established. 'This man's arms are the safest place in the world.' Elena's sleep was the proof.
I stared at the ceiling.
The royal crest spread above me. As the candle died, the crest sank with it into the dark.
I'd crossed the forbidden line. Slept with the Queen. With the most powerful woman in this other world. Inside her — on a dangerous day, no less.
A political bomb. Discovery means my neck. And if that seed ever takes root in her womb, the bomb doubles. A child not of the King's blood. Something that could shake a kingdom to its foundations.
And yet, watching the woman who even in sleep kept her hand resting on her belly—
I don't regret a goddamn thing.
And the fact that I don't regret it — that's the most fucked-up part of all.
Elena's breathing. The candle out. The Royal Palace at dawn.
I thought it had gone quiet.
Violet eyes opened again. Elena caught my wrist and pulled me toward her.
"More."