Be Gay, Do Crimes: Ros Vs Everything, Apparently

gay people CAN drive in the woods #nolabels

Eunha healed quickly.

It was an old game to her, and a day after she came around, she was already telling her ladies-in-waiting and her Head Advisor to stop tailing me like anxious orphan ducklings, and that she was perfectly fine. And she might have seemed almost well again, to any casual observer. But while it was an old game for Eunha, she wasn't the only player. Chinhae had been watching for well-concealed winces and faintly blue fingertips and dilated pupils as long as he could remember, and he knew that while she was okay, she wasn't 'perfectly fine' yet. (But then again, was she ever?)

But the cane, he knew, was also for the intimidation factor; the thudding of her approach was lovely and ominous, she said. Chinhae told her late in the afternoon, as they were sitting around in the library, that she was spending too much time around Seohun if she was starting to enjoy scaring people.

"Oh, pssh, that's always been fun." Eunha flipped a page of the day's paper dismissively. "But I haven't got any choice but to hang around him, have I? My actual son has run off to magic boarding school, so I can't talk to him ."

Chinhae frowned at her.

"It was with your encouragement."

She smiled and went back to her paper.

"Was it? I don't remember."

"It's the holidays, soon." Chinhae said. "Maybe I should just stay until then, go back after..."

"Oh, no, you can't do that." Seohun bustled around the corner with a bunch of articles about covert hexes. "You'll miss the Snow Ball!"

Chinhae bit his cheek.

"I'm not... bothered about that, really..."

It sounded weak even to his own ears.

"But they're one short without you. So someone will go alone." Eunha pointed out.

"You don't get failed for that anymore." Chinhae dismissed, but there was a twist of guilt somewhere in his stomach.

"Well, yes, but odds are that there's someone who wants you to ask them, because you're so handsome and charming ." Seohun drawled. "I know you pretend you're oblivious to these things, but at the Trial, you turned heads the whole time."

"Oh, no, don't," Chinhae sighed. "Someone already tried to love drug me–"

There was the slap of paper as Eunha smacked the newspaper down.

"WHAT? WHO?"

"Oh, don't worry, it didn't work, Jade beat the hell out of her–" Chinhae said quickly. "I'm fine now. I was only freaked for about a week–"

"Who was it?" Eunha demanded. "Not even the lowest-life scum tried that when you were still living here, I've half a mind to send out an arrest warrant–"

"It was Colette de Claire, and she..." Chinhae trailed off, something suddenly becoming very clear, "Was probably doing so... in league with, or to please, her family... who are incredibly influential in the Everwood Society..."

"Why would they do that?" Seohun said.

"They don't like Ros, they kept trying to get close to me... if they wanted to control me and keep me away from her... what better way to do it than a love potion?"

Seohun frowned.

"Why would you being in love with someone else keep Rosalind away? Last I checked, she was very much not a competitor for your bride, unless she's realised she's now the least likely to get Tedros's throne and embarked in a power-motivated pursuit of you..."