Elena's Decision (1)
It was the day I reported to Elena on what the king truly was.
Night. The queen's bedchamber. A magic lamp glowed with a soft, even light in place of candles — installed by Elena herself.
"I hate candles. Too many shadows."
A queen who hates shadows. I didn't need to ask why. Twenty years in this palace. She had watched far too many people move through the dark.
Fuck. It's perfect.
A perfect stage. A perfect mood. And seated at the very center of it was the woman I had spent five days slowly grinding down. Fucking hell — my own brain, calling this perfect.
"Reporting on the concubines' condition."
Elena sat on the sofa with her legs crossed. A silk robe draped over her nightgown. The posture of an official report — but her feet were bare. A signal that this was private ground.
"Rianne Hernan — self-harm. Sophia Cavalier — masked depression. Mireille Waldstein — dissociative symptoms and lasting trauma from abuse."
"Abuse?"
"Yes. By the king himself."
Elena's expression changed. Her lips pressed into a straight line.
"Details."
I reported Mireille's case. Violence during sex — grabbed by the hair, slapped across the cheek. The jeer that followed: what would your father think if he saw you?
Elena's hands trembled. Her grip tightened on the sofa's armrest.
"You knew?"
"I suspected. But there was no proof, and the concubines never said a word."
"They couldn't. Their abuser is the king."
...
Silence. Elena closed her eyes. Fifteen seconds. In that long stillness, the magic lamp's glow wavered faintly.
"I have lived in this palace for twenty years."
"Yes."
"As queen. Running the government while carrying the weight of the king's incompetence. I had no margin left to spare for his concubines."
"That isn't your fault, Elena."
"No. It is my fault."
Her eyes opened. Anger burned in those violet eyes — but it wasn't aimed only at others. Anger at herself was mixed in.
"Kalandel is not fit to be king."
For the first time, denial of the king had passed the queen's own lips.
"I knew. From the very beginning. From the day of our arranged marriage, I knew this man was not made to be king. But I thought if I held him up, that would be enough."
"You did."
"Twenty years, Do-hyun. Twenty years I held this kingdom up. Governing, facing down the council, managing diplomacy. Everything a king was meant to do, I did in his place. And even so — even so — that man was beating his concubines?"
Fury boiled over. Elena's eyes went wet, but no tears fell. The queen's pride was damming them back.
"And in twenty years, the direct line of succession amounts to Lizette and nothing more. That man kept adding concubines and breaking them, without ever preparing to name our daughter heir or shouldering any other duty of a king." Elena's voice tore low. It was the oldest shame swallowed by the woman who alone had carried the royal house's future. "It isn't that the queen cannot bear children. I was simply clinging to a man who couldn't even look properly at the daughter I had already given him."
"Elena."
"I need you."
A resolute declaration.
"Not as a court mage. As a man. As an ally. As everything."
"Elena."
"What we'll do about Kalandel — let's leave that for later. Tonight..."
Elena rose from the sofa. Came toward me. The sound of her bare feet on the floor was a soft, silken hush.
At every closing step, my cock flinched of its own accord. Press it down, you bastard — you came here to deliver a report, not to get hard. The queen walks toward me barefoot and my gut starts pulling first. Fuck. So much for being a healer — I'm just a beast in heat.
She stopped in front of me. As I began to rise to meet her eyes, Elena pressed a hand to my shoulder. Stay seated.
"Make me yours."
"...Your Majesty?"
"Not 'Your Majesty.' Elena."
"Elena."
"Before I am a queen, I am a woman. I had forgotten that for twenty years. You made me remember it."
Made me remember. The words caught under my sternum. It wasn't that I made her remember anything. I had pried it open with [Common Sense Alteration]. I was the only one in this room who knew that, and I kept my mouth shut. Fuck. That's what I do.
She slipped off the robe. Silk whispered to the floor. Only the nightgown remained — thin silk hanging from two shoulder straps.
Elena straddled my lap, facing me. Her legs settled on either side of my waist.
"Tonight, I'm the one who leads."
"……"
"A queen's command."
I laughed. A grin broke out of me — because the laughter came on its own.
Elena's hands took my face. Close. Close enough to feel her breath.
The moment her breath touched my skin, my gut knotted and my cock went rigid with a maddening throb. Careful — she'll notice. Hold it in. A woman is looking at me like she'd stake her whole life, and this loser gets hard on cue. Pathetic bastard. Of all things, my cock reacts first.
"Do-hyun."
"Yes."
"This isn't because of [Common Sense Alteration]."
My heart slammed.
"I know about it. Your magic. The magic that rewrites what people think. You used it on me."
"……"
"I didn't notice at first. But over these five days — regretting every morning, calling for you every night — I kept thinking inside that pattern. I could feel my own thoughts changing."
Fuck.
I'd been caught. Part of it, at least.
"But..."
Elena's thumb brushed my cheek.
"It's true your magic changed my thinking. The thought that 'this relationship is necessary.' I can't tell where it came from — whether it is purely mine, or yours."
"Elena, I..."
"Listen until the end."
I shut my mouth.
"The fact that I can't tell them apart doesn't matter."
"...?"
"Because the result is the same. Magic or my own heart — the fact remains that I am sitting here before you. That I want you is fact. Whether it began with magic or with three years of thirst, my heart is pounding in this very moment, and that is fact."
Logical. A viciously logical woman.
Elena had sensed the existence of [Common Sense Alteration]. And rather than reject it, she had accepted it. She had chosen the outcome over the cause.
This was a reaction I had never predicted. Normally it's one of two things. One — they rage at the manipulation. Two — they never perceive it at all. Elena was the third. She perceived it, and accepted it anyway.
Goddamn it. If she'd raged at me, it would have been easier. If she'd treated me like a criminal, at least the fact that I am one would be clean and clear. But this woman knows my crime — and climbs on top of it of her own will. That frightens me more.
"Your magic may have opened the door. But the one who walked through it was me."
"...Elena."
"No more excuses. In exchange, I have conditions."
Elena's hands held my cheeks, as if to keep me from fleeing.
"From tonight on, whenever you touch my mind, you tell me first. If I do not permit it, you do not use it. The only exception is a moment when my life is in immediate danger — and even then, you tell me everything once it's over."
"...Understood."
"Don't toss my name around freely with my ministers and my maids, either. If politics requires something, you consult me. If you hide it from me, this relationship ends that very day."
It wasn't a threat. It was a boundary line. A queen's declaration that she was reclaiming sovereignty over her own skull.
I nodded.
"I promise. Your refusal will stand above my power, Elena."
"Good. Then right now — I permit it. Reading my memories, you can ask me about another time. Tonight, you use nothing on me. Just look at me."
A kiss.
This one was different from every kiss before it. Not the tentative kiss of the beginning, nor the fierce kisses of our nights. A kiss of resolve. A kiss that staked everything.
When she broke the kiss, Elena confirmed it once more.
"Tonight, I decide. You don't use your power."
"I promise."
Again and again, she made clear that this was her own choice — not a queen's command. She set the pace herself; she decided when to stop. Every time I heard her answer, I stilled my hands, then moved them again.
Neither of them pronounced on her cycle or the chance of pregnancy by feel alone. [Mind Interference] acts on the heart, nothing more. The two of them acknowledged the risk that remained and agreed to seek a physician's counsel the next day.
"This isn't magic," Elena said, steadying her breath.
"At the very least, the one saying 'keep going' out of my own mouth right now is me."
Those words could not wipe away the manipulation I had committed in the past. If anything, they made her boundary line all the sharper — that if I broke this promise, this relationship would end.
From then on, Elena led the rhythm of the night. Her proof of having shed the queen's mask was not some exaggerated performance, but the attitude of hiding neither what she wanted nor what she didn't. I used no power at all, from start to finish.
A long while later, Elena leaned into my chest and caught her breath. Two hearts that had beaten to different rhythms slowly quieted together.
"Do-hyun."
"Yes."
Still breathless. A whisper against my ear.
"Do-hyun... I love you..."
My heart stopped.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
"I love you. Do-hyun."
Once more.
Her first confession of love.
Queen Elena. Thirty-eight years old. Twenty years of an arranged marriage. Twenty years inside the prison called queen. And that woman had spoken of love.
"...Elena."
"You don't have to answer. Just know it."
"……"
"This isn't magic. At the very least, I believe it isn't."
I held her. Hard. Elena's body felt small in my arms. Behind the towering image built by the title of queen, there was, in truth, a small woman.
Something inside me lurched.
The effect of [Common Sense Alteration]?
Or the real thing?
I can't tell.
It is magic that changes thoughts. Not magic that creates feelings. I could plant the thought that 'this relationship is necessary' — but I had not forged, out of nothing, the feeling of 'I love this man.' Not directly, at least.
But indirectly? When the bolt on a heart comes loose, the feelings locked inside seep out. Elena's 'I love you' was probably not something my magic had fabricated onto an empty place. It could be a feeling that had always been there, let out through an opened door.
Could be.
I have no certainty.
And that is the most fucked-up part of all.
I was a man trained to analyze human hearts. Digging into people and dissecting them was my confidence, my trade. And now I couldn't judge whether the 'I love you' of the woman in my arms was real or counterfeit.
Why?
Because my own feelings had gotten involved.
The wish that 'Elena's love be real' was fogging my judgment. Seeing only what I wanted to see. Picking up only the evidence that propped up the conclusion I desired. I knew it was a trap, and I stepped in anyway.
Knowing, and falling all the same.
"Elena."
"Mm?"
"I... like you too."
I didn't say I loved her. I said I liked her. One step down. An honest expression — the only thing I could state for certain right now. Because saying more might turn it into a lie, or because I might end up deceived by the very lie I had crafted.
Elena laughed, face buried against my chest.
"A careful man. That's your charm."
"Occupational hazard. I used to make my living picking apart people's hearts."
"And what would that be?"
"The affliction of being so busy analyzing emotions that you're clumsy at actually feeling them."
Elena laughed out loud. A laugh I'd never heard before. Or no — not the first, but the most natural one yet.
"Strange man."
"Strange queen."
"I'm not a queen right now."
"Then what are you?"
"Your woman."
My heart thundered again. Fuck.
We moved from the sofa to the bed.
I carried Elena in my arms. A princess carry. The queen, like a princess. The irony.
"Aren't I heavy?"
"Light as a feather."
"Liar. It must be that you're strong."
I laid her down on the sheets. Golden hair spilled out beneath the soft glow of the magic lamp. Along her inner thigh ran a thin trail of the seed I had just poured into her. Seeing it, Elena swept it up with her fingers and pushed it back inside — as though it were too precious to let spill.
Elena opened her arms. Come here, the gesture said.
I climbed atop her. A kiss. From her throat to her breasts. Down her stomach. Lower still.
"Ah... again?"
"Because I want to."
"We just did..."
"It wasn't enough."
"You madman..."
A madman, correct. I've gone mad over this woman.
Mad over a woman — and I couldn't even tell whether this feeling was real or the backwash of [Common Sense Alteration]. Was the magic I had cast on Elena now gnawing at me in reverse? The way emotions poured into a patient can swallow the healer whole — did magic have its own version of that sickness?
Analysis could wait. Right now — right now I wanted to lose myself in this woman's voice, this woman's body, this woman's eyes.
We drew close again.
This time, when I tried to hurry, Elena caught my wrist.
"You promised. I decide."
At that one line, I slowed my pace. Without dressing my desire up as a queen's command, I continued only when she answered clearly. Elena, for her part, no longer pronounced on her chances of pregnancy by feel alone, nor spoke of the royal succession as though it were an instrument of vengeance.
When it was over, the two of us lay side by side, breathing slowly. Elena laughed that she had to stay alive to keep making choices tomorrow, and I laughed with her. A brief laugh in which, for a moment, we both forgot politics and manipulation.
"Do-hyun."
"Yes."
"I love you."
The second confession. Not at the peak this time, but in the afterglow. Calmly. With certainty.
"...Me too."
I couldn't say I loved her. Only me too. I couldn't even tell whether those two words were sincerity or escape, so I couldn't make them any longer.
But Elena smiled. As if it was enough.
"That's enough."
Three in the morning.
Elena had fallen asleep in my arms. Golden hair spread across my chest. Steady breathing. Deep sleep — a sleep untouched by insomnia.
I was the only one awake.
I stared at the ceiling and thought.
What happened today?
Elena had declared flat-out that Kalandel was no king. She had drawn a clear line: I was to be her political ally and her lover, openly. She had given her first confession of 'I love you.' And after catching on, in part, to [Common Sense Alteration], she had set her condition — any further touch to her mind required her explicit permission.
The last one weighed the most.
Elena had admitted, with her own mouth, that her mind might have been touched by my magic. And even so, she had not made it a crime. The one who walked through the door was me.
Her reaction could be read two ways.
One. The roots of [Common Sense Alteration] run so deep that her acceptance of the manipulation may itself be part of the manipulation — if even her willingness to accept it despite knowing was something I planted there.
Two. The woman called Elena was simply like this all along. A ferociously rational, pragmatic creature. A politician who weighs outcomes over causes. The type to embrace a feeling, a situation, so long as it benefits her — magic or no magic.
Which one it was, I couldn't tell.
And I didn't even know which one I wanted it to be.
If the second, Elena's love is real. Magic merely handed her the pretext; the feeling itself is pure. Then I could set down my guilt and rest easy.
If the first, it is all a mirage my magic sculpted. Elena's love, her acceptance, her 'I love you' — all of it. And then I would have stolen this woman's soul whole.
Fuck.
My thoughts knot themselves.
The old me — the Kang Do-hyun who made his living peering into people's minds — fears the first answer.
The hypnotist Kang Do-hyun, dropped into another world, babbles that it doesn't matter — first or second.
Both of them are me. And neither of them wants to let this woman go. Which is exactly what makes it so goddamn impossible. There is nowhere to run.
Elena murmured in her sleep.
"...Do-hyun..."
My name, even in her dreams.
I tightened my arm. Held her closer. Elena's warmth seeped into me. Warm. Her belly would still be hot with what I'd filled it with. The thought that the royal line's next generation might be carried on my seed instead of the king's sent a strange heat through my predawn skull.
Real or fake.
This warmth is real.
At least for tonight, I chose to lean on that single, lying line. Telling myself it was enough — deceiving myself as I did it.