"Why do I have to find an Empress if I can do handle it by myself?"
For the nineteen girls, they have to take any opportunities to escape the life laid out for them. To be swept up in a world of glittering hanfus and priceless ornaments. To live in...
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Ryujin's POV
Palace of Celestial Favors, Forbidden City March 16, 1745
I ᴛʜʀᴀsʜᴇᴅ ᴀɴᴅ shrieked all the way back I think my voice can be heard all over the country. The guards had to hold me so tightly that I knew I'd be covered in bruises later, but I didn't care. I had to fight.
"Where's her palace?" I heard the hideous one ask, and twisted my body to see a eunuch walking down the path. I didn't recognize him, but he clearly knew me. He escorted the guards to my palace. I heard my maids shouting in protest at the way I was being handled.
As I got dragged to my room, I saw Kai and the rest of my maids cursing at the guards handling me carelessly.
"Calm down, Your Grace; that's no way to behave," an Imperial Guard said with a grunt as they flung me onto my bed.
"Get the hell out of my room!" I screamed at the guards and threw the nearest object—which was the porcelain vase the dowager gave me—at them which they dodged.
When the guards left my room, my maids and eunuch, all of them in tears, rushed over to me. Yuna started trying to get the dirt from my fall off my clothes, but I harshly slapped her hands away. They knew. They knew, and they didn't warn me.
"You, too!" I yelled at them, especially at Xiyeon, I glared at her. "I want all of you out! NOW!"
They recoiled at my words, and Yuna tremored her whole shook nervously, Kai hugged her and dragged her out of the room. It almost made me regret saying that to them. But I had to be alone.
"We're sorry, Your Grace," Nakyung said, pulling the other two back. They knew how close I was to Pinky.
"Just go," I whispered, turning my back at them to bury my face in my pillow.
Once the door clicked shut, I climbed deeper into bed, finally making sense of thousand tiny details. So this was the secret she had been too afraid to share. She didn't want to stay because she wasn't in love with Yeonjun, but she didn't want to leave and be separated from Hyunjin.
A dozen moments suddenly made sense; why she chose to stand in certain places or stared toward the windows even the Dowager was discussing etiquettes. It was Hyunjin; he was there. The time when I saw her sneaking around the training grounds for the Imperial Guards. . . Hyunjin. It was Pinky he was waiting for when I ran into him outside the belvedere. It was always him, standing silently by, perhaps sneaking a kiss here and there, waiting for a time when they could truly be together.
How much must she have loved him to be so careless, to risk so much? How could this even be real? It didn't seem possible. I knew that there would be a punishment for something like this, but that it happened to Pinky, that she was gone. . . I couldn't understand it.
