We don’t talk. Instead, I go over to the fire and busy myself stoking it back to life. She stands quietly—because she knows I need a minute to collect myself, and she’s nice enough to give it to me.
“Don’t you find it exhausting to care about everyone all the time?” I ask. “To always take the high road?”
She closes her eyes and smiles slowly. “Aeri, from the second I realized King Joon wasn’t a god, my plan was to steal the Immortal Crown and give it to my sister. Tiyung talked me out of it by saying that Daysum would just end up dead. But there’s only so much high road, and I’m not walking it.”
I turn to her, my mouth falling open in shock. It didn’t seem like she wanted the relic or had any desire to be royal. “Why would you give the crown to your sister?”
“Because she may be dying.”
She says it without emotion, but pain twists in my chest for Sora and a girl I’ve never even met.
“Oh, Sora. I’m sorry.”
She nods and inhales deeply, her chest rising. “Anyhow, it’s hard to be too upset with you for keeping secrets when I had my own. And, in all honesty, I need you now.”
I blink. “For what?”
She steps closer to me, stopping at the other end of the mantel. “To take the throne of Yusan.”
I laugh, then look at her face. She’s not laughing or even smiling. She’s dead serious. “Wait, you’re not joking?”
“You’re the daughter of the king,” she says. “That gives you a birthright to the throne, above Euyn.”
I shake my head. If I were a boy that would be true, but I am not. “Yusan has never had a queen.”
“I remember in school there was a rumor that there had been queens in the past,” she says. “That there’s evidence in the Temple of Knowledge. I hadn’t given it much thought until Euyn mentioned the Yoksa.”
I chew my bottom lip and worry the hem of my dress. Even if there had been queens, it was so long ago that no one remembers it outside of rumor. And although I am Joon’s daughter, I wasn’t raised to rule. I wasn’t even brought up in the palace. “But Euyn is…”
She stares at the fire, her expression grave as her hand curls into a fist. “It can’t be Euyn. It just can’t be. Your father can’t keep the throne, but Euyn will only be more of the same.”
“What makes you think I’ll be any better than him? I’m Baejkin.” I shake my head, then smile a pained grin.
“You aren’t your family. Ty…” She trembles as she exhales. I’ve noticed it before—her right hand shakes a little sometimes. She balls it in a fist before releasing it. “Tiyung made me realize that people can grow to be different than the soil they were raised in.”
“Or sometimes they are the same.” I think about my father, Euyn, and Omin murdering without conscience. The story goes that my aunt is just as bad or worse—but that’s a tale told by killers.
“It was true, then, that Prince Omin…” Sora begins.
I tense, but she doesn’t say any more.
“They thought he killed me when I was twelve.” I smile even though there’s nothing to smile about.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says. “There’s an old expression in my village that sometimes the tongue isn’t ready to speak what the eyes have seen. I believe that. But I’m listening. And I know a thing or two about cruel men.”
She stares into the distance. I know she does.
“He was charming,” I say. “Much more so than Euyn or my father. He charmed my mother so easily. Then again, all he had to say was that the king had made a mistake throwing out a woman like her. That was all it took.”
Sora nods.
“Omin courted her for a week, maybe two, and she was so excited to move into his villa,” I say, wringing my hands. “She was so ready for the life promised to her that she didn’t think twice about it. It was the happiest I’d ever seen my mother. For the two weeks we lived in his villa, we had servants she ordered around, great food from the kitchens, expensive gifts and lavish surprises. Anything she wanted, Omin gave her. Including his carriage to go visit with her sister.”
Sora frowns. “Powerful men can often appear charming until their masks slip.”
“He attacked me the night she left,” I whisper.
Sora inhales sharply.
