The Binyeo

With eyes resembling glacial blocks of ice, Hwan raked over her gold and red figure, lingering briefly on the gold hairpin at the nape of her neck. 

He uncoiled himself, straightening his spine, his movements slow, calculated.

Furious. 

A hand flew to her chest, debris of dread jamming her throat, her brain emptying itself of all thoughts as Jay Yi absorbed the barely suppressed manic rage emanating from Hwan.

With his hands clasped behind his back, Hwan looked handsome in a terrifying way. His coral-green hanbok sat snugly on his shoulders, the smooth silk of his silver dapho juxtaposing against the harsh, unforgiving lines on his face. The gold sangtugwan crowned his bun, its brilliance mimicking the hard glitter of his eyes, his footsteps soft and sure as he advanced towards her.

"Why did you hide from me, Jay Yi?" His conversational tone belied the stretch of his taut muscles that threatened to unleash the strike of a coiled snake. 

Jay Yi backed away from the door, her feet hastening to create a distance. She came to an abrupt halt as the cold, hard edge of the basin table blocked her retreat.

He entered the washroom. It was too small a space for two of them. Jay Yi felt as if there was not enough room to breathe.

"Y-Your Majesty, it - I - It isn't what you think. I was coming to you," She tried, her voice hollow, unconvincing. Afraid. 

"Were you?" His eyes glinted at her. "After hiding away this pathetically, you planned to come to me." His observant tone was deceptively casual. 

"Y-Yes. Please, I can explain."

"Hiding from me as if I was an assassin - I am sure there must be a reasonable explanation." Hwan drawled.

Hwan's anger was not something she could toy with, thought Jay Yi, her mind racing with fear and worry. 

As if sensing her panic, Hwan crowded in on her. Ruthless, long hands reached out and rested on each side of her on the table, imprisoning her. He was now bending towards her, his face dangerously close, his eyes glassy with wrath, his knuckles white on the table.

"P-Please, Your Majesty, you are frightening me," Jay Yi closed her eyes.

"I would never hurt you, Jay Yi," Hwan's voice dropped another notch. "But you need to tell me - what made you hole up like that?"

"I w-wasn't holing up; I-I didn't hear you -" She tried lying.

"You are losing your touch, Investigator Min Jay Yi. I cannot believe you overlooked the angle of the mirror," Hwan said silkily, his mocking laugh leaving angry bruises on her tortured heart.

She turned her face away to avoid looking at his beautifully deep, dark, and betrayed eyes. Guilt flooded her.

"I-I'm sorry, I was not thinking," Jay Yi said dully, hoping her stupid truth might calm him.

If anything, it made him angrier. "So your first instinct when you heard me was not to fly to me in excitement but to hide from me?"

She shook her head, miserable, anguish clouding her vision with a moist film she hated. "I am sorry."

"Sorry. Hmnnn. So that is your defence. What are you hiding from me, Jay Yi?"

Curling her hands, she brought them to her chest and helplessly shook her head.

His hand reached out of their own volition, the knuckles of his fingers tracing her jaw gently. Jay Yi flinched, and regret immediately hit her like a rock. Alarmed, she glanced at Hwan. His eyes hardened into flint.

"Do you still want to marry me, Jay Yi?" His tone was deadly casual, as if he were asking about something mundane like what colour flowers she liked while walking in a garden.

Her pupils dilated in shock. "Your Majesty! Please - it was just a momentary stupidity!"

"Was it, Jay Yi? Was it?" Hwan dropped all pretence of casualness, rage bubbling over. He was so close that the labyrinth of veins meshing his jaw was all there for her to see in their angry splendour.

Jy Yi leaned back, her hands grabbing the table to keep her balance.

"I didn't mean to hurt you. You must believe me. I would have come to you." 

"No, your intention was not to be found out because you don't want me anywhere near you," he grated.

"You are twisting it all wrong! Why would I come here then?" Jay Yi asked despairingly. 

Hwan's laugh was rancid.

"You would not have met me in the last few days if I had not forced you. When alone with me, you avoid me like a disease." 

"No! I was angry initially, but how can you think I would avoid you?"

Jay Yi reached out to place a hand on his shoulder, but she could not meet his eyes. Hwan was not a fool. She had been avoiding him. How could she have been so foolish?

"Please do not lie, Jay Yi, please don't. Just tell me why -"

"There is nothing to tell. Please do not think like this, Your Majesty," she pleaded.

"I do not know what to think anymore, Jay Yi. All I know is the woman I have loved more than my life has been avoiding me to a point where she now prefers hiding in dark, shadowed corners to escape me," his voice was hoarse with bitterness and hurt.

"I was a fool. It-it was an impulse I regret. I do! I know I hurt you. I am sorry. Please do not misunderstand me. Please forgive me," her fingers gripped his shoulders hard.

Inches from her, Hwan's eyes dropped to her lips. His thumb moved on its own accord, tracing the full and supple texture. And he immediately felt Jay Yi's resistance. However, she stood still, her efforts to not anger him further apparent from every rigid muscle in her body.

She loved him, of that, he never had a doubt. And she hated it here with him, of that, he now had no doubt either. She was so beautiful, so unique, almost exotic, like a migratory bird who flew the skies to find her roost.

Hwan had become her cage. 

His hand dropped.

"I do not think I misunderstand, Jay Yi. You don't want me, this Palace, this life."

His gaze fixed on her, Hwan willed her to deny it vehemently. Prayed. Waited.

Overwrought from everything, Jay Yi could only move her head from side to side, sickened, at a loss to find reassuring words to assuage him, tears of helplessness spilling over. 

"It's not w-what you are thinking. I want nothing more than to be with you, but -" Stressed and afraid to say the wrong thing, Jay Yi faltered.

"But-?" 

"I-I don't know, I don't know what else to say anymore!" The gut-wrenching words rent through her flesh, splitting open wounds she did not know existed. 

Immobile, Hwan searched her face in a prolonged, torturous pause that threatened to deafen her. 

Her but said more than he could bear. It had been staring in his face. He had not wanted to accept it.

Hwan looked past her into the mirror. The gold of her binyeo glowed back at him mockingly, the one sitting in his pocket laughing out loud at the irony. He wanted to smash something, anything. Perhaps the noise of something breaking could shut the cacophony of pain thrashing his ears and drown the din of his heart shattering. 

Hwan had always heard too much pain could numb, and the curtain of blackness falling upon his heart could be a sign that it was true after all.

Hwan straightened suddenly, shrugging her hand off and stepping back.

"I was wrong to bring you to the Palace." The angry resignation in his voice sliced a knife of pure, cold terror through Jay Yi's heart.

Before she could gather her scared, scattered thoughts, Hwan exited the washroom. Without thinking, Jay Yi ran after him. She clutched onto his sleeve. "Your Majesty, you were not wrong to bring me here. I want you and a life with you more than my own life. I should not have hidden from you. I do not know why I did, but you must believe me, I was coming to you. I will do anything to make up for what I did today. I did not mean it. It will never happen again." She clamped down a terrified sob.

Hwan turned to face her, his large hand swallowing her pale, smaller ones, his eyes an aching sea of sorrow. "You do not need to pretend anymore, Jay Yi, or be someone you are not. You have hated it here since the first day you came. And I know you tried. But now you are coming to detest everything that comes with it, including me." He gently removed her hands from his arm. 

"No, no, that's not true. I cannot even think of detesting you, Your Majesty. I live for you. I love you," Jay Yi tried to move her voice past the lump of panic in her throat, her fingers curling around his sleeve again, refusing to let go.

Hwan gave a mirthless chuckle. "But then, here we are. Fourteen days to our marriage, my beloved bride, who says she loves and trusts me, hides from me as if her life was in danger." Though he made no effort to remove her hand from his sleeves again, every rigid muscle in his body screamed his agony at her betrayal. "I will not keep you like a caged bird."

Her blood vessels contracted, leaving her bloodless. "What do you mean?" 

He did not even spare her a glance. "You do not need to worry or ever hide from me again. I will buy you the biggest house in Gaeseong, with everything you need to live without worry." 

"G-Gaeseong?" She repeated after him, sick with fear.

"Yes. Gaeseong. You will not lack anything." Only a faint, almost imperceptible tremor betrayed the effort it took Hwan to utter the words. Jay Yi was oblivious to it, the implications of his words unfolding like a macabre tapestry in her mind.

He was sending her away. 

Jay Yi broke out in a cold sweat. "No! No." She bunched his sleeve in a painful clutch. "You cannot punish me like this. I understand you are angry, and I will accept any punishment you want, but not this. Please, please, you cannot send me away."

"I am not punishing you, Jay Yi. I am setting you free." He pried away his sleeves from her grip, his hands unfolding her fingers one by one, gently, firmly, stepping out of her reach as her hands fell limply to her sides. 

"You gave me the right to accept or deny, Your Majesty. I will not accept this!" Her voice shook.

Hwan said flatly, almost cruelly, "It does not apply anymore. I forced you into it, and I will set it right. I will not hold you to anything, so please do not feel you owe me anything. I will announce the cancellation of the marriage edict today. Your maiden status will be restored, and you will be released from further royal obligations. You can leave at the first light tomorrow. Stay at the villa while I make arrangements in Gaeseong."

Her world tilted.

"I will not leave. You gave me your word, Your Majesty. You can't go back on it. What kind of King does that make you?" Panic raked her into shreds. She clutched her hands to her heart as if she could stem the tide of pain that threatened to blow it apart. 

He turned to her. "You see, Min Jay Yi, where you are concerned, I sometimes question whether I even possess a brain. I thought I could change things to make it work, but I failed. So, for you, I am a failed King." Hwan reached out and, in a fluid motion, pulled out the gold binyeo from the bun at the nape of her neck. Her unanchored braid cascaded down her back. He grasped a lifeless hand and placed the gold pin in her palm, his long fingers folding her numb ones close over the metal. "Today, I free you from all commitments, Min Jay Yi." He turned around, his tone cold, hard, devoid of emotion. "Go back to Gaeseong. This chapter in our life is closed. I will not bother you any more."

Hwan walked away.

In a haze of red, Jay Yi watched her whole life crumble like a sand castle. This could not be happening. He could not do this. 

"How dare you, you bastard!" Jay Yi hurled the gold pin with all her might across the room.

Clang!

 The metal clattered on the middle of the staircase, ricocheting off it, and then bounced down with its own momentum and slid for a few moments, spinning on its base like a pinwheel before coming to a rest a short distance from the foot of the wide, wooden steps.

Hwan froze, turning around, his expressions contorting into rage and pain of a ravaged soul, someone who was at his breaking point.

"Watch out," He warned.

"Setting me free? No, you are throwing me out because you can, you lying autocratic bastard." 

Hwan closed the distance in a flash. "You are speaking to your King. Watch your mouth, you wench!" 

"Or what? Will you kill me? Do it because I will be as good as dead without you!" 

He grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her. "Your actions do not match your words anymore, Min Jay Yi. It's you who is lying. I will not have a woman tied to me whose gut instincts reject me so savagely."

"You arrogant jerk, I never rejected you! Am I a toy to you? You bring me when you like, throw me when you don't -"

"Shut up! Shut up!" Hwan pushed her back against a pillar, his grip on her shoulders bruising, his face so close she could see the gold flecks of her reflection in his furious eyes. 

Panic of losing Hwan had destroyed all sense of self-preservation in Jay Yi. Words tumbled, unwelcome, hurtful, anguished. 

"Is this all you have to show for your tall promises, you short-sighted moron? Yes, you failed. You are throwing me out as your ego hurts because you failed. You are afraid, so you think shutting me off is the ans-" 

Her words were cut off as his mouth crushed hers in a punishing onslaught, his weight pounding her against the pillar. Furious tears pushed past his burning eyelids as Hwan shook with rage of loss and pent-up emotions. He was so consumed that it took him a while to notice Jay Yi had gone still. That only enraged him further. He bunched her hair, tugging her head back, his tongue invading her relentlessly, thirstily. He pressed his hand at the small of her back, crushing her to his swollen body, frantic to make her want him.

 His mind was a cavern of blackness, empty of sanity; his senses could only recognise his physical need to capture her essence. He wanted to punish her, to protect her, to hate her, to love her. Jay Yi twisted, trying to curb the instantaneous response of her body to his onslaught. The pillar blocked her exit. His arms hooked her to him, her back flushed to his side. The angle of her body only exposed more of her to him as his hands roamed freely. His hands slid under her silken jeogory, pulling down the cinch of her skirt to her waist, his fingers finding the sweet spots of pleasure that dissolved her resistance. 

Jay Yi gave up fighting the flames inside her. She turned her face to his, seeking him, desire fogging her eyes. He captured her lips, her hands looped around his neck. Lust tore through Hwan like a bonfire, eating every bit of restraint, her abandoned response acting like quicksilver on his incensed senses. Passion rendered her helpless as he plundered, his hands knowing no bar as they pulled up her skirt. His fingers probed and prodded in and around her long underpants, restless, explosive, trying to explore parts of her that rebelled with shock at the unexpected invasion and then sighed in ecstasy as pleasure, the sort she had never known before, wracked her body. 

The fastenings of her jeogori had come undone, and her skirt bunched at her midriff, exposing her delicate flesh to his ravenous eyes. Hwan was exactingly brutal in his need, and he did not let on, his fingertips and mouth leaving welts as he ravaged her. She revelled in the power she unleashed on Hwan, responding in kind as her starving hands roamed over him, trying to find ways to get closer to him, opening up for him. Jay Yi moaned and gasped in turns, a wet ball of aching hunger, the line between pleasure and pain blurring rapidly. She wanted to sink to her knees. He held her up by sheer strength, wrapping her around his hips, using his body to hold her captive against the hard surface of the pillar behind them, which acted as a porous surface that absorbed the volcanic energy their bodies generated. 

This was not the Hwan she knew, her gentle, kind, considerate, beautiful man. This Hwan exhilarated her, excited her, made her senseless with pleasure and crave the forbidden. 

This Hwan - terrified her. 

At that moment, Jay Yi understood she had driven Hwan to madness. 

Her heart ached.

She cupped his face, trying to control their fevered passion and stem the flow of inevitability. Her palm filled with moist dampness his face was covered with. 

His fingers worked on the fastenings of her underpants, his incoherent moans mingling with hers as they hurtled towards a place from where there would be no return.

She knew him too well. Even though her body rebelled, she could not let him. When his senses returned, it would destroy him. 

"Your Majesty - don't do this -" Jay Yi pleaded and then gasped, her face contorting in pain as his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her thigh while tightening his hold on her legs around him, opening her up further.

Hwan's eyes fell on her, bereft of clarity. 

Her words sank in. Her pain registered.

Something cracked. The black of his mind gave away to a crater of ashes as he suddenly felt removed from himself, like a curious onlooker. That onlooker judged him. Jeered him. Lassoed him with condemn for acting like a common thug, for daring to snatch what was not his and hit his conscience with a flesh ripping cane, dripping with repugnance. 

Who had he become? What was he doing! 

Stunned at what he saw as his own depravity, Hwan closed his eyes, breathing so hard that the bones of his chest shifted in pain.

He was no better than an animal. 

Revulsion filled his mouth with a bitter metallic taste.

Jay Yi slid out of his lifeless hands. Shaking, he staggered back. "Jay Yi - I -" 

Hwan turned around to face away from her dishevelled sight. He walked to a pillar further from her. Placing a hand, he leaned on it, shaking, his scattered, painful, humiliating thoughts coalescing into a demon that ate him from inside. 

His life was pulverising before him. He had not only caged her, but he had tried to destroy her tonight. "I dishonoured you." 

"Your Majesty -" Her voice shook.

The room started to tilt out of focus. "Looks like you have every reason to not want to be here with me," His voice was so full of self-loathing that Jay Yi wanted to run to him to soothe him.

A bitter laugh escaped her. "You could not be dishonourable even if it killed you, Your Majesty. You did not dishonour me. If anything -"

"I am becoming a monster around you."

"Please stop! Why do you not listen to me? You are the kindest man I know. You didn't do it alone. I let it happen because I -"

"How many times will you forgive me, Jay Yi? You were right. I failed. I failed you in every way. I have even lost the right to apologise."

"You are deliberately trying to ignore that I wanted it as much. You chose to walk away last time. I stopped you today because you would have hated yourself. I could not have lived with that -" Jay Yi whispered. 

"Is it possible to hate myself more than I already do, Jay Yi? I am sorry for everything." His voice cracked. "I have loved you to the point I am broken, and look what I have become, what I have done to you...I will not let this happen ever again. Our paths must diverge here."

"If you truly love me, you cannot throw me out like this, Your Majesty," Jay Yi said achingly, her face wet with tears.

"I am not throwing you out. I cannot bear that I have reduced someone so brave as you to a woman who is losing her mind because of my whims and my selfish desires. I kept coming to you, crowded you, tried to convince you that your place was with me here, in the Palace. You deserve better than this," the nasty truth bludgeoned him where it hurt the most. "You loved me, and my repayment was to damage you. You kept saying all the right things to make me happy -"

"I have never lied to you. How often do I need to tell you I want to be here for you to believe me? Please, please don't send me away." She walked to him and wound her hands around his waist. She felt like a broken piece of glass and did not know how else to reach him. "Please give me another chance. Please give us another chance."

Hwan stiffened, moving away from her, unwrapping his hands from around him, not trusting himself.

"You wanted to know why I avoided you, hid from you. I-"

"I do not need to know anymore, Jay Yi, because it will not change the reality that you did, and I was the cause. You do not want to be here. This is - over." Hwan barely spoke over a whisper, but the echoes around the chamber amplified it to a point where it felt her eardrum would burst.

Fresh tears spilt over from eyes that Jay Yi thought had become devoid of moisture. "No! It's not. I will not accept it. You cannot do this. I at least deserve a chance. I am sorry for tonight, for that every night I have been difficult. But I can prove that I want to be here."

The binyeo was lying at the foot of the steps, incandescent in the soft light of the lanterns around it, gleaming in a morbid shine that taunted the darkness in his heart. Hwan found himself drawn to it. Cold digits that seemed to belong to someone else picked the large, pointed metal pin from the floor. It was a phoenix. 

"All right. I shall give you a chance to prove you want to be here. Answer my question with the first thing that comes to your mind."

Jay Yi's heart lifted. Perhaps she still had a chance to show him she was telling him the truth.

Hwan walked to her, footsteps slow, heavy, his gaze fixed on the binyeo in his hands. 

"Yesterday, you had the coronation ceremony. The Kingdom of Joseon declared you its Queen. When they placed the crown on your head -" Looking up from the binyeo, Hwan locked his eyes with her, "Tell me in one word, how did you feel?"

Blood drained from Jay Yi's face before she could manage to assemble any thoughts or command the composure to hide her feelings. 

She closed her eyes in the misery of her truth. 

Hwan saw it all. It was all he needed to know.

Anything she could say in her defence would sound like a lie to him. 

Hwan's lips curved in a mirthless half smile. "I thought so. I will ask Eunuch So to arrange your departure from the Palace. You can take everything that you have been gifted with you. Pack whatever you need from here." He looked over the corner he had lovingly set up for her with everything she might have needed for her crime-solving brain. "I will call back Tae Kang from Byeokcheon tomorrow. He will go with you to set you up in Gaeseong. For now, live with Ga ram in the villa for a few days."

"Will- will you be able to live without me, Your Majesty?" 

His knuckles were white in his fist that held the long, pointed shaft of the golden hairpin, the rigid line of his shoulder telling her what he refused to voice.

"Why Gaeseong?"

Hwan walked over to the table by the side of the bed.

"It's the least I can do for my Master's daughter. I know you will miss Ga ram but after her marriage to Myung Jin, she will be able to see you more often than she could if you were in the Palace."

Liar. He was ensuring his footsteps never found her again. 

"Is this your final decision, Your Majesty?" Jay Yi asked calmly. 

Surprised at her sudden, serene demeanour, Hwan glanced at her. She looked resigned, almost peaceful, despite her tear-ravaged face. Had she already come to terms with it? The pit of his stomach emptied. He looked away. 

"Yes." He swallowed painfully. He had finally managed to tear their hearts asunder.

"Can I ask for one last favour from you?"

"I do not know if I can grant it, but ask if you must."

"Can you hold calling off the royal marriage edict till morning? I have a court lady's case I was to hear tomorrow, but I will hear it tonight. If I give my ruling as a Queen, the Dowager will not be able to overrule it without your permission."

Hwan rolled the pin in his hands. He had thought she would ask for something personal. Why was he surprised? Was this not who Jay Yi truly was? 

"Ensure you finish it tonight and be ready for departure tomorrow morning," Hwan said expressionlessly. He spurned the knife that twisted his gut. "I will call it off at the start of my duties at the Court."

Jay Yi nodded and bowed, "Thank you, Your Majesty."

Hwan gently deposited the binyeo on the table and, without looking at her, made his legs cover the distance across the room. He climbed up the steps, eased the door closed, walked into the small, private annexure, and pulled the door shut. 

And sank to the floor in grief.

Jay Yi picked up the binyeo from the table. She took herself to the washroom and washed her face gently, careful not to wet her hair. She separated the pleats of her braid, running her fingers through it to separate the stands, pulling at them with a force that threatened to tear them from the roots. Sectioning her hair into three parts, Jay Yi rolled each portion over the other, alternating, weaving them expertly until the braid hung nice and smooth down her back. Jay Yi then straightened and smoothed her clothes. Rolling the braid at the nape of her neck, she inserted the binyeo, securing the bun.

She straightened. She knew she looked regal, every inch the Queen Hwan had hoped she would become.

Hwan had overlooked something. Jay Yi had never given up on hope, not even when the world had turned its back on her and left her to die.

She was not about to start now.

She also made her own decisions. Hwan would not decide where and how she spent the rest of her life.

She looked at herself in the mirror. "Your Majesty, I still have the night."

A few hours later, when her retinue came to fetch her, Jay Yi was calmly working on her translation of Ŏbu sa.

Back at the detached Palace, she quietly took an early bath and changed into a set of orange and green hanbok.

Jay Yi then serenely listened to the court lady's case and thoughtfully gave her judgment. Unexpectedly, she caught a gleam of approval in Court Lady Kim's eyes.

"Court Lady Kim, may I ask you a question?"

"You do not ever need my permission, Your Royal Highness." Court Lady Kim's expert eyes examined Jay Yi's royal meal tray as the other court ladies exited, leaving the chamber to two of them. 

"You have lived through the lives of three queens in this Palace. What kind of Queen do you think I would make from what you have seen?"

"It is not my place to comment on something so above my station, Your Royal Highness."

"I insist."

"You still have a lot to learn, Your Royal Highness. You can act hastily, sometimes not befitting a Queen, and you must always measure what you say to others, a skill that seems to elude you at times. You are terrible at playing instruments, a drawback I regard as the worst kind, but then His Majesty does not spend much time listening to music, so it is not a deterrent, I suppose. Instead, you are gifted in Arts, which His Majesty is a patron of. And sometimes, you are too kind for your own good. But then, even if you were the worst, which you are not, you still would be an improvement on what the Palace has seen since His Majesty's mother passed away."

Jay Yi swallowed the information, almost smiling. This was Court Lady Kim's way of complimenting her. She pushed a spoonful of rice into her mouth. Would this be her last meal in the Palace? Jay Yi almost choked, then trained her mind not to think about it.

She did not expect what came out of the senior servant's mouth next.

"However, you have qualities this Palace might have never seen. You are exceptional in martial arts, have a brilliant mind, and, most importantly, a keen sense of justice. Your presence has already saved lives, and you have brought a sense of joy to the Palace servants. You have made some of us reevaluate how we do our duties, and we are also thankful for that." 

Jay Yi sat, her food forgotten, as she whispered, almost to herself, "Then, why do I feel so afraid?"

"You must give yourself time to grow, too, Your Royal Highness. What you have accomplished in a month has taken others years. Please keep that in mind. "

Court Lady paused, her face still devoid of expressions, but Jay Yi could tell she was contemplating whether to speak. "I owe you an apology from two years ago. You were right. I was too harsh on the young woman. I was amiss for not mentioning this earlier. You never shy away from fighting for what is right; that is the most critical asset a subject looks for in their ruler."

Shock dilated Jay Yi's eyes. "Since when -"

Standing upright in her attendant's position, Court Lady did not even bat an eyelid. "From the beginning, Your Royal Highness. I do not forget faces, especially of someone who was so fearless and had the favour of the Crown Prince. Some of us did not forget he gave up the throne for you. If he had failed his mission and lived, I believe he would not have returned and chosen to live with you outside this Palace. However, you have been pushed into a role you were not ready for. Fear is normal."

Jay Yi stared at the older woman whose expression did not change despite her monumental confession. It also explained her paranoia at Jay Yi being left unchaperoned anywhere. The wise woman had not been wrong, Jay Yi thought with sadness. Jay Yi felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes. She wanted to embrace Court Lady Kim but knew the woman would die of disgust.

Jay Yi fixed her eyes on the older woman. "Can I trust you to be my person?"

"With my life, Your Royal Highness."

Jay Yi traced the binyeo in her bun with her fingers. "I need you to do something."