Chapter 1

The sun is warm on your skin, smearing its heat all over the lavender ribbon tied around your torso which descends and brushes your heels. Your scalp feels like a fork has been jabbed into it as if the maid mistakes it as a comb and leaves it there to hold your hair together in a bun with a string of braid encasing it. Flyaways are left caressing your cheekbones as the wind blows past the miniature field-like lawn; you crave to push them back and lock them behind your ears.

Maids in white cotton aprons scurry about, some carrying a nicely fashioned napkin on a tray, some with wooden rulers in hand that remind you of your lessons where your teacher would walk around with a whip at her back, to measure the precise centimeter gap between the silverware. Men in tailcoats and high chin are setting tables and chairs under the instruction of the higher-chinned butler.

The whole mansion is buzzing with the preparations. The banquet.

It is tonight, right after the last streaks of magenta disappears from the sky, the moonlight begins to peek through the clouds, candles and lanterns hung on branches of the trees surrounding the mansion await to be lit.

Your sister must be inside, on the second floor first room on the left, cooing over her husband whilst the maid pins her naturally curly hair up the way she requests, already donned in her white lace wedding gown hours prior to the event, your mother complimenting how she looks darling. Her first born is getting married and the first in the branch family to do so! She will have a splendid time showing your sister's ring off to your aunt who, in your mother's words, needs to get that stick out of her ass.

You've done your fair share of compliments, sharing her bed last night for the first time since you were children, listening to her go on and on about how happy she is to have found her husband and your parents' approval, though his respectable background has something to do with their immediate rupture, adding to her euphoria. Nothing could be more perfect than marrying for love! Said she.

In all honesty, you don't quite share her sentiments but that must be because you haven't actually met a man in private, those you have are all acquaintances of your father, sons of nobility who peers down through their noses and leers at you like you're a trophy. If all men are like that, you would rather grow old not knowing the pleasure of another.

But you are, without a tinge of doubt, happy for your sister. Seungcheol is a gentleman with humility, pride, and what made your parents say yes right off the bat; came from a family with impressive background. But what matters most is that he treats her like there is no other woman in the world.

And as you walk down the pebbled path to the garden, the hem of your gown dampening from the evening dewdrops on emerald grass, you think, your sister and her husband are two of the lucky ones for not all women nor men are free to marry for love. Not even your parents as your mother once admits that she too was unhappy for the longest time after gaining the title of Duchess upon marrying your father until they got their first born. That was the word she'd used ─first born─ but you decide not to ponder on it too much.

The garden is breathtaking at this time of day, between the sunset and moonrise; white roses at its full bloom painted as rosy as the sky. Farther into the heart of where the flowers are is a bench, a vantage point of which you can see the beauty of what your brother once held a rapt interest in before he was lost to the war, though that isn't why your heels root themselves onto the ground and your body stills like the statue of the lone lover at the center of the fountain.

It seems someone's beaten you here, when all is in mayhem of finished touches, last minute checks and guests beginning to arrive. You don't expect to find a dark haired man perched on the bench. Surrounded by these roses, he is isolated from the world and the soft hums from the lawn; but he isn't looking at them. His back is on you, on the beauty of the floral as he tilts his head up to look at the crescent moon which rays makes his hair glow.

The sound of your approach or rather, sudden halt from announcing yourself as one should must have told him to look over his shoulder. Then, his body rises to a stand, noticing the lavender among the roses and he bows slightly to which the years of your etiquette lessons drilled into you like flesh and bones, curtsy.

With the sun gone and its counterpart casting a silver glow all over the dew on leaves and pebbles, you can barely see his features, though it is not a feat to guess that from the graceful bow and the natural stature he poses, he wears the color of his coat in his bloodstreams; a royalty. The golden insignia of two swords crossed together is clipped to his left chest winks at you as though praising your knowledge of the royal family.

"My lady," he takes a step forward and freezes as though thinking twice about approaching you, why, you don't know, "congratulations on your sister's marriage to the Earl."

"Thank you, my lord, I'm sure my sister is delighted to have you here," his facial expression is unchanging as he awaits your next words and you can only hope to have addressed him accordingly as you feel the weight of the burden of the host's daughter to know every single one of your guests though─ "I believe we haven't been properly introduced."

"Ah," he nods contemplatively as though he's forgotten his own name, composure falling apart, "I'm Junhui."

Alarm heats your cheeks as a striking thought crosses your mind; no person should be able to pass the lawn unnoticed to get to the garden and judging from the time you've tread your way here, there wasn't any guest in sight which is to say, if he was the first, your father would have given him extra attention and bore him with social affairs and attempting to offer his second daughter for a beneficial marriage for the whole evening until other guests start to arrive.

"Well, my lord, Junhui," the lanterns have all been lit on the left side of the garden, the lawn looking like a sea of fireflies deep in the forest where your brother once took you and your sister to at midnight when all the servants thought the masters of the house are asleep, "the banquet is starting soon, shall we?"

"Just Junhui and uh, I forgot I have something of the utmost urgency to attend to," and because his face contorts uncharacteristically for his beautiful features, you confirm your suspicions; that he is not on the guest list and one way or another, he has strutted into your father's land undetected and in his hurried farewell, you hear the creaking sound of metal which can only come from the disused gate in the corner of the high walls where you see the last of his figure disappears through, "send my regards to your family!"