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Chapter Text

They summoned him to the study just after midday, an hour too early for wine and far too late for mercy.

Jongseong entered stiff-backed, jaw tight, the way he always did when summoned like a servant rather than a son. The sun streamed through the high eastern window, setting the dust motes aglow like drifting ash. It smelled of old paper and older disappointment.

His father did not rise. Of course not.

“Sit,” Lord Park said, without looking up from the papers before him.

Jongseong remained standing.

The steward in the corner cleared his throat, an unnecessary formality for a conversation already stained with formality. Jay’s fingers twitched at his sides.

Lord Park finally lifted his gaze. His face was carved in stone, lined not with age but with calculation. There was always some plan twisting beneath his expression, some scheme dressed in silk, masked as duty.

“I received word from the Crown this morning,” he said. “Your marriage has been sanctioned.”

Jongseong blinked once. “Pardon?”

Lord Park didn’t repeat himself. He never did.

Jongseong laughed, too loud for the room, too sharp to be called mirth. “You must be joking.”

“There is no jest in statecraft,” his father replied coldly. “It is a noble match. An elevation.”

Jay’s pulse was a slow, hot drumbeat in his ears. “An elevation for whom?”

“For our name,” Lord Park answered, as if that settled everything. “For you. You will marry Sunghoon, the famous knight. The estate at Daejong has been granted as your joint holding.”

Jongseong stared at him, mouth half-open, blood colder than the room deserved. “Sunghoon,” he repeated. “The crippled knight?”

There was no protest from his father. Not even a twitch.

“That house is half-burnt,” Jongseong continued, his voice growing sharper. “That man is half-dead. What am I meant to do, build a dynasty out of ghosts and ash?”

“You are meant to obey,” Lord Park said. “Your personal feelings are immaterial.”

Jay’s mouth twisted. “Why not just hang me from the city gate and call it diplomacy?”

Silence.

Even the steward stilled.

Jongseong looked between them, a bitter smile forming. “No rebuttal?”

Lord Park folded his hands atop the letter. “The match is final. It carries the Crown’s seal.”

Jongseong stepped forward, planting his hands flat on the desk. “Is that what I am now? A consolation prize for a broken knight and a ruined border house?”

“Your position is not one of punishment,” Lord Park replied. “It is opportunity.”

Jay’s laugh this time was quieter, but no less cruel. “You want me out of the capital. Admit it.”

His father’s gaze hardened. “You are twenty-seven. Unmarried. Unproven. And full of words that waste air. It is time you served your house.”

Jay’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “By marrying a man with one working leg and a pile of forgotten land.”

“By proving,” his father said evenly, “that our name still commands something beyond dinner gossip and self-pity.”

The sting landed sharper than Jongseong cared to show.

His hands curled into fists on the desk.

He remembered Sunghoon only distantly, rumors from the battlefield, whispers in salons and drawing rooms. A tactician, they’d said. A prodigy once. And then, a casualty. Some scandal involving a failed campaign, a mutiny, an injury too severe to recover from. A man too proud to die but too ruined to return.

A ghost with a title.

That was who he was being sent to wed.

“You mean to exile me,” Jongseong said at last, his voice low, bitter. “You think if I rot there long enough, I’ll stop embarrassing you.”

Lord Park’s expression did not change. “You are not so important as that.”

Jongseong flinched. Just slightly. Just enough to notice.

The steward cleared his throat again, the universal signal that the audience was over.

“Preparations will begin at once,” Lord Park said. “You leave at month’s end. You may take whatever household staff you see fit. The estate will require attention.”

Jongseong took one step back. Then another. He bowed low, mockingly, poison-sweet.

“Your Grace,” he said. “May your conscience rot as thoroughly as the land you’ve condemned me to.”

And with that, he turned on his heel and left the room, the heavy doors swinging shut behind him with a satisfying, echoing crack.

He did not sleep that night.

Nor the next.

Jongseong spent the days before departure as any condemned man might, with ritual, with rage, and with a shovel in hand, digging for the truth he was too proud to ask for directly.

He found the records in a locked cabinet in his father’s library. Not hidden, nothing in that house was ever hidden, only arranged to suggest he had no right to look. But Jongseong had always known which keys the steward carried and which drawers creaked loudest.

He lit a lamp and began to read.

Sunghoon Park, knight of the southern campaign. Commended for strategy at the Battle of Gray Ford. Promoted to command at twenty-four. Injured at Daegok Pass. Wounded men returned. He did not.

The paper was old, crisp-edged. The ink bled where it had been handled too often, like someone else had read this report with shaking hands. There were more documents, military dispatches, pension approvals, Crown notices. They told a story Jongseong didn’t like.

Or rather, didn’t trust.

Because there were two Sunsghoon Parks, it seemed. One that lived in documents, and one that lingered in the mouths of others.

And the one people spoke of, he was something else entirely.

Jongseong heard it first from the blacksmith’s son, lounging too casually outside the manor’s stables.

“Oh, him. That’s the knight who crawled back from the mountains, isn’t it?” the boy said, grinning. “Half-dead and still clinging to his sword like he was waiting for an encore.”

Jongseong pretended to laugh. Didn’t ask follow-up questions. That would’ve looked like curiosity.

He heard it again at a tavern, low and slurred over a cup of bitter rice wine.

“Crippled, they said. Barely walks. Might as well be a ghost, but they still gave him a title.”
“Shameful,” the barkeep replied. “A proper knight would've died with his men.”

Jongseong drank quietly and said nothing.

Later, in the officers’ records, he read about the retreat at Daegok: how Sunghoon held the last ridge with twelve men against two hundred. How he kept a signal fire lit through the snow. How only he returned alive.

The report called it heroic. Jongseong called it suspicious.

That kind of story didn’t end in an arranged marriage to a stranger in a crumbling estate, unless the hero wasn’t a hero after all.

Jongseong stared at the final page, where the words “honorable discharge” had been crossed out and replaced with “dismissed.”

Dismissed. Like a servant. Like a burden.

He folded the pages with steady hands and returned them to their drawer, but the words burned behind his eyes.

Crippled. Shameful. Ghost of a man.

He tested them on his tongue like blades, rehearsing the lines he might sling if provoked.

“Tell me, does your leg hurt more when you're lying or when you're limping?”

“Did they knight you for strategy or for pity?”

“I expected a husband, not a wounded dog guarding a pile of stone.”

They sounded good in his head. Clean. Sharp.

He knew from experience: it was always easier to draw blood with words when you were bleeding first.

The journey to the estate took three days.

Jongseong traveled in a carriage that smelled of cedar and regret. The roads grew worse the further they went, no more cobblestone, only dirt and ruts and silence. Servants tried to make conversation. He silenced them with glares and with books he didn’t really read.

Every hour brought him closer to a man he had never met and already loathed. Jongseong turned his name over like a bad coin.

A knight without a war. A body without a future. A husband he had not chosen.

At dusk on the second day, the wheels caught in a rut and the carriage jolted so hard he bit the inside of his cheek. The driver swore. Jongseong pressed a hand to his mouth and tasted blood.

The estate couldn’t be much further now. Soon he would see it: the house that time forgot, the ruined symbol of this farce of a union. He imagined the man waiting for him there, limping through hallways that echoed too much, practicing his own version of civility.

Maybe he was proud. Maybe he’d pretend not to care. Jongseong couldn’t decide which would be more irritating.

He tried to picture his face. Nothing came to mind but fragments, stories. Ghosts. Pity-laced recollections from men who’d fought beside him and would never speak his name without hesitation.

Jongseong hated hesitation. It always made the truth murky.

He stared out the window at the rolling hills, the dark line of forest, the crooked ridge that ran like a scar across the landscape.

They sent me to marry a ruin, he thought. But I’ll be damned if I become one.

He closed his eyes. Rehearsed the insults again. Let the anger sit like armor on his tongue.

Let it protect him. Just a little longer.

The estate at Daejong rose like a ghost from the mist, grey stone bruised with ivy, rooftops sunken in parts like a once-proud man who now stooped from too many burdens.

Jongseong stared through the carriage window as they rounded the final bend in the overgrown drive. His jaw clenched so tightly it ached.

This was supposed to be a house of status. A holding worthy of noble blood. What I’ve been given is a tomb.

The gates hung crooked on their hinges. Weeds pushed through the cobbles in defiance of civilization. One of the main chimneys was visibly cracked, blackened with soot like it hadn’t been properly swept in a decade.

The scent hit him the moment he stepped down from the carriage, mildew, rot, and the kind of dust that only collects when pride has long since packed its bags and left. The air was wet and heavy, dragging at the hems of his cloak and the corners of his patience.

A steward emerged from the front doors, bowing too quickly, nervously. Jongseong didn’t catch his name, didn’t care to.

Inside, the great hall yawned wide, cold, and echoing. A row of portraits glared down from the walls, their frames dulled and crooked. Tapestries hung in disrepair, threadbare as forgotten oaths. The hearth was lit, barely, as if it too had grown indifferent to the idea of warmth.

His boots clicked against the stone as he crossed the threshold. The sound was too loud. Too final.

He caught the flicker of movement before he saw him.

From the far side of the hall, beside the empty hearth, a man stood. Not lounging, not seated in some exaggerated parody of welcome, but standing. Straight-backed. Unsmiling. Motionless.

Jongseong blinked.
And then he saw the cane.

Not an old man’s stick, but a soldier’s tool: polished black, steel-tipped, functional and grim. The man leaned on it only slightly, subtly. Enough that you might miss it if you weren’t looking for the weakness.

Jongseong was looking.

So this is him.

The husband I didn’t ask for.

He was taller than Jongseong expected. Broad-shouldered, though the fitted black coat did half the work. His hair was pulled back, a clean tie at the nape. Pale face, sharp jaw, unreadable eyes. Not beautiful. Not cruel. Just… still.

Jongseong took a breath that tasted of smoke and time.

I’ve been married to a statue. A statue with a limp.

Neither of them spoke.

Jongseong stepped forward first, because someone had to. Because his father would have expected him to wait. Because he refused to be the one who hesitated.

“Sunghoon,” he said, voice crisp. Without honorifics. 

The man nodded. Just once. “Jongseong.”

His voice was not what Jongseong expected.

Not soft, not cold. Measured. Like a man used to being obeyed. Like a man who once gave orders in places where disobedience meant death.

Jay’s mouth twitched. “I see you haven’t been burdened with preparing a reception.”

A pause. Then: “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

Jongseong laughed, short and dry. “Trust me, if I’d had a say in the matter, I wouldn’t have.”

That earned him silence. Not offense, just absence. Like Sunghoon had already pulled a door closed between them in his mind.

It irritated Jongseong more than it should have.

He turned in a slow circle, letting his gaze sweep over the dusty rafters, the patched floor, the sad little table bearing what might have once been a vase. “Charming. You could have warned me you were living in a mausoleum.”

“I assumed you could read estate records,” Sunghoon said mildly. “Or is that beneath the capital-born?”

Jay’s gaze snapped back to him. “Oh, that’s good. Starting off with barbs. I was told you were a cripple, not a wit.”

He expected a reaction—anger, at least. Shame. Something.

Sunghoon only lifted an eyebrow. “I was told you were clever. We were both misled.”

Damn him.

Jongseong didn’t let it show. Instead, he smiled, a precise, poisonous thing. “Is this where I’m supposed to compliment your courage for standing?”

“If you feel the need,” Sunghoon replied.

Jay’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly do you expect from this arrangement?”

Sunghoon didn’t answer at once. Instead, he moved, slow, calculated steps toward the hearth. His gait was halting but controlled. The limp was real. So was the strength it took to walk without showing pain.

He leaned slightly on the cane and turned to face Jongseong again.

“I expect,” he said finally, “you’ll want your own quarters. The east wing is dry. The roof doesn’t leak.”

Jay’s lips parted in disbelief. “No discussion? No demands? You’re not even going to try to make this palatable?”

“I’m not here to make anything easier for you,” Sunghoon said.

Jongseong stepped closer, compelled by anger or something like it. “You’re not much of a husband.”

Sunghoon’s expression didn’t flicker. “Neither are you.”

That landed. Not because of the words, but because of the evenness behind them. As if Jongseong were a storm Sunghoon had long ago learned to let pass through him untouched.

You’ll break before I do, that look seemed to say.

Jongseong hated him.

No. Worse.

He hated the restraint.

Because it made him feel like a child shouting in a cathedral, and Jongseong never lost his footing first.

He exhaled sharply. Stepped back. “Fine. Take your wing. I’ll take mine. Let’s call this what it is, cohabitation under duress.”

“That works,” Sunghoon said. “Dinner’s at seven. I assume you eat.”

Jongseong turned and walked toward the staircase, each step loud and furious.

He didn’t look back.

The wedding took place in what had once been a chapel.

Not a grand cathedral. Not a gilded hall humming with strings and soft murmurs. Just a stone-walled room at the back of the estate, where ivy crept through the mortar and the stained glass had long since dulled into cloudy greys and blues. The altar had been cleared of its crucifix. The benches bore the weight of dust and time, not guests.

There was no priest. No music. No guests.

Just a legal representative from the Crown, a table with two chairs, and a bundle of parchment tied with black ribbon.

Jongseong stood in the doorway for a long moment before entering. The air was cool, damp, with that faint sour tang of mildew that never seemed to leave the estate. His boots echoed too loudly on the flagstones, which had not been cleaned properly in decades. Every step felt like an intrusion.

Sunghoon was already there.

Of course he was.

He stood beside the table, leaning lightly on his cane, dressed not in formal silks but a black doublet with silver buttons, plain and sharp. His hair had been pulled back again, tight and exact. There was no ornament, no color, nothing to mark the occasion but the way he stood, a little straighter, a little more still.

Jay’s first thought: He looks like he’s attending his own funeral.

He almost respected that.

The Crown official looked up as Jongseong approached. A thin, papery man with thinning hair and the sort of eyes that had long since stopped expecting sincerity. “Lord Park,” he said with a nod. “We may begin.”

Jongseong did not reply. He took his place beside Sunghoon and waited for the performance.

But there was no performance.

No procession. No recitation of vows. No exchange of rings. Only the clearing of a throat, the shuffling of parchment, and the dry, unimpressed voice of the official reading aloud the terms of union:

“By order of His Majesty’s Crown, witnessed and affirmed in the presence of legal authority, let it be recorded that Lord Jongseong Park of House Park and Sir Sunghoon Park do hereby enter into matrimonial and territorial union under the terms provided—”

Jongseong tuned it out.

He stared at the documents laid out on the table. The ink glistened darkly, still wet from some earlier flourish. The quill had been sharpened. The wax seal waited, blood-red and final.

Sunghoon turned toward him.

Not meaningfully. Just slightly, enough that his hand extended between them.

Jongseong looked at it.

And didn’t move.

One beat passed. Then two.

He heard the official shift uncomfortably behind the table. Somewhere in the rafters, a bird fluttered trapped, or perhaps mocking.

Jongseong stared at that outstretched hand like it was a blade.

“This is what I’ve been given,” he thought. “A husband I didn’t choose. A ceremony without meaning. A hand I’m expected to take just so no one has to write “dissenter” in the margins of the record.”

Still, he did not move.

Sunghoon didn’t lower his hand. Didn’t raise an eyebrow. Didn’t speak.

He simply waited.

Jay’s pride flared hot in his chest. Don’t be the one who blinks. That was what his father always said.

So he reached out carefully, mechanically, and took Sunghoon’s hand in his own.

It was warm.

He hadn’t expected that.

Rough, calloused, the grip firm but not crushing. No tremor. No weakness. Just skin, bone, history. A hand that had held a sword through fire and snow, and now held him, if only for ceremony’s sake.

Jongseong let go after exactly two seconds.

The official cleared his throat again and turned the documents toward them. “If you would both sign.”

Jongseong took the quill first.

He dipped it in ink. Watched it bead. Pressed the nib to the parchment.

Jongseong Park, House Park. The name felt like lead on his tongue and iron in his wrist.

He signed with a flourish he didn’t feel. Sealed it with the signet ring his father had insisted he wear. Sunghoon signed next. No hesitation. Just steady fingers and clean script.

Jongseong watched him out of the corner of his eye, looking for a flinch, a tremor—something. Nothing came.

The official took the parchment, pressed the wax seal into place, and announced, “By writ of Crown authority and under noble right, the union is sealed and binding. May it bring prosperity to both Houses.”

Jongseong snorted softly.

Prosperity. In this place? With this man?

The official, unfazed, began gathering his things. “I’ll have the copy delivered by week’s end. Good day, my lords.”

They did not answer him. Jongseong didn’t watch him leave.

The door shut behind the man like the closing of a tomb.

For a long moment, they stood there in silence. Two husbands. Two strangers. One ruin between them.

Jongseong folded his arms. “Is this the part where we toast our future?”

Sunghoon looked at him evenly. “Do you want to?”

Jongseong scoffed. “Not even slightly.”

Sunghoon nodded once. “Then no.”

Jongseong exhaled through his nose and turned away. “Lovely. Then I suppose I’ll return to my wing and begin drawing up a list of repairs. The chapel will need to be burned and rebuilt.”

“Not before the roof,” Sunghoon said. “The south wall’s begun to sag.”

Jongseong stopped mid-step. “Of course it has.”

He didn’t turn around. Didn’t say anything else. Just left the chapel with footsteps that echoed too sharply down the empty corridor.

The room they gave him was cold.

Not unfit for nobility—no, not that—but distinctly unlived-in. A hastily cleaned guest chamber, warmed only by the desperate enthusiasm of servants who didn’t want to be blamed. The hearth fire struggled to catch. The sheets smelled faintly of lavender and mildew. And the windows, despite being shuttered, groaned with wind that had crawled down from the mountains and remembered how to bite.

Jongseong sat on the edge of the bed long after the lamps had been snuffed out, still half-dressed. His ceremonial coat hung over the back of a chair. His boots stood by the fire like they’d been banished. A basin of cooling water sat on the washstand, untouched.

The silence was oppressive.

He’d always thought the capital was quiet at night, with its guards and gaslamps, its rules and curfews. But this was different. The estate made no effort to hum with life. No bells. No footsteps. Only creaking wood, the wind against the eaves, and the distant, barely-there scurry of creatures in the walls.

It sounded like abandonment. Like the kind of silence one inherits, not chooses.

Jongseong lay down stiffly, pulling the quilt over himself with mechanical precision, as if the neatness would anchor him. It didn’t.

He stared at the ceiling.

He told himself he was angry, still angry about the ceremony, about the lack of dignity, about the absolute farce of it all. They hadn’t even exchanged words afterward. No congratulations. No remarks about the future. Just that damned line about the roof sagging and then—

Nothing.

Sunghoon hadn’t come to him.

Not even to discuss the terms. Not to posture. Not to gloat. Not to claim rights that were, by law, his to claim.

Jongseong turned over. Then turned back.

He wasn’t expecting Sunghoon to come to his chamber. Of course not. That would’ve been absurd.

It wasn’t a real marriage. Everyone knew that.

There was no kiss. No feast. Just ink and silence and that brief, unbearable moment when Jongseong had taken his hand and thought, His palm is warm.

He flung the covers off. Sat up. Got out of bed. Poured himself a glass of water and drank it down too fast, like punishment.

Why am I even thinking about it?

Because somewhere in the back of his mind, quiet, stupid, half-delirious with ceremony, he had assumed it might happen. That Sunghoon, for all his stiffness and cane and bitter elegance, might appear at his door. Might say something blunt and formal like, “I assume we should make this official.”

Jongseong would’ve said no.

He would have.

…Probably.

Maybe.

He lay back down and turned over again, this time yanking the blanket up like it owed him something. But that image, Sunghoon at the door, silent, silhouetted by torchlight, the shape of him just as unreadable as his expression, lingered.

Jongseong shoved the pillow under his head harder. Closed his eyes.

Still didn’t sleep.

The hours dragged. He heard the hearth crackle. Then sputter. Then quiet. He rolled to the other side. The mattress dipped unevenly. Probably the stuffing. Or the old frame. Or just the weight of an estate collapsing inward on itself.

I didn’t want him to come. That’s not what this is.

It wasn’t.

Jongseong didn’t care about touch. Or warmth. Or comfort. That had never been the bargain.

He’d been bartered like livestock, and now here he was: housed, signed, and shelved in some empty wing of a house that smelled like forgotten things.

And yet—
He couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Sunghoon’s face in the chapel. Not unreadable, exactly. Not cold. But… controlled. Like someone standing at the edge of a battlefield and not flinching when the first arrow flies.

He hadn’t looked at Jongseong like he was a prize.

Nor a chore.

Just… a fact.

He shifted again.

How dare he? How dare Sunghoon walk away like that? Like the marriage was just something to be endured. Jongseong hadn’t even gotten the satisfaction of rejecting him. Hadn’t been given the chance to be difficult or cruel. And that, somehow, infuriated him more than any insult could have.

Because underneath the resentment and pride, there was another voice. A whisper in the back of his mind:

He didn’t want to touch you.

Jongseong sat up again, hair mussed, eyes dry.

Of course he didn’t. Why would he?

He wasn’t beautiful in the way capital men were, he didn’t powder his skin, didn’t wear lace. Didn’t flirt. Didn’t fawn. He’d always been sharp around the edges, too clever, too bitter. And Sunghoon, Sunghoon was a soldier. A nobleman. Someone who had once commanded armies and now commanded… nothing.

Maybe he’d simply lost the appetite for companionship.

Maybe he’d never had it.

Jongseong should have slept hours ago. He lay down again, closing his eyes with the kind of desperation that made sleep impossible. The fire burned low. Shadows danced along the wall, half-formed, like the figures in a dream that would never come.

He did not cry. That was not his way.

He just lay there, waiting for footsteps that never came.

By the third morning, Jongseong decided they were playing a game.

Sunghoon, of course, hadn’t said so. Hadn’t declared rules or even acknowledged that something was being played at. But Jongseong could feel it, the unspoken push and pull between them, the silence weighted just enough to make him flinch.

It began over breakfast.

They took meals at opposite ends of the long, warped dining table, flanked by disinterested portraits of long-dead ancestors and a pair of maids who moved like ghosts. The food was edible, if uninspired: porridge, pickled radish, tea that tasted faintly of earth.

Sunghoon sat with quiet, practiced stillness. He buttered his bread like a man raised on etiquette and war: efficient, unbothered. He ate with his left hand, the other resting on his cane beside him. His gaze never wandered.

Jongseong hated him for it.

Say something, he thought. Anything. Cough. Sigh. Comment on the weather like a provincial bore. Just move.

But Sunghoon didn’t move unless he needed to. And when he did, it was measured. Intentional.

Jongseong tapped his spoon once, sharply, against the edge of his cup.

Sunghoon didn’t flinch.

Jongseong cleared his throat. Nothing.

He leaned back in his chair with exaggerated boredom. “Do you always keep your mouth shut,” he said finally, “or is that just for me?”

Sunghoon didn’t blink. “Would you prefer I scream?”

Jay’s spoon paused mid-air.

And then he laughed. Just once. Sharp, disbelieving. “Was that a joke?”

Sunghoon took a sip of his tea. “Was it not amusing?”

Jongseong stared at him.

There was no smile. No twitch of amusement. Only calm, deliberate disinterest.

Jongseong’s irritation curdled in his chest. “You know, some men would try to make conversation with their husbands.”

“And some men would listen,” Sunghoon said.

Jongseong slammed his spoon down hard enough to rattle the saucer. “Do you enjoy being insufferable, or does it come naturally?”

Sunghoon finally met his gaze.

His eyes were dark, steady. Not cold. Not cruel. Just… immovable.

“Is that your game?” he asked. “Provocation?”

Jay’s throat went tight. He hated how the question felt like a mirror.

Yes, he almost said. Yes, and you’re not playing right.

Instead, he pushed his chair back and stood. “Enjoy your toast, Sir Ghost.”

He left before Sunghoon could reply.

Not that he would have.

The next day, Jongseong tried again.

He brought a book to the garden, knowing full well Sunghoon took his morning walk there, slow circuits along the gravel path, leaning on his cane as though the act of walking were both ritual and defiance.

Jongseong positioned himself on a bench with a clear view. He didn’t read. He watched.

Sunghoon moved with a limping grace, one foot dragging slightly on turns, his expression unreadable as ever. His pace never changed, even when he passed near.

Jongseong waited until he was close. Then said, too loudly, “Is it true you killed seven men with one hand and a broken rib?”

Sunghoon didn’t break stride. “No.”

“Shame,” Jongseong said, smiling without warmth. “That would’ve been interesting.”

Sunghoon walked on.

Jongseong closed the book, unopened. “You could at least try to impress me.”

“Why?” Sunghoon asked without turning.

Jongseong opened his mouth. Then closed it.

Because this house is rotting and I don’t know what I’m doing here and I hate how I think about you in the dark.

Because I didn’t want to be married and now I’m angry you don’t want me either.

Because silence makes me feel like I’m losing.

He said none of it.

Instead, he stood up, brushed invisible dirt from his sleeves, and left the garden with a scowl.

By day five, the rules of the game were as follows:

Jongseong would speak.

Sunghoon would respond, when necessary, with words sharp as fencing points and just as economical.

Jongseong would try to get under his skin.

Sunghoon would not have skin.

And if Jongseong stayed up too long at night, imagining what Sunghoon’s voice might sound like without the walls—
That was no one’s business.

That evening, Jongseong cornered Sunghoon in the hallway near the library.

Not deliberately. Not really.

“Ah,” Jongseong said, stepping into his path. “Sir Husband. Off to contemplate the meaning of life in complete silence?”

Sunghoon paused. He tilted his head slightly. “No. I’m going to find a map.”

Jongseong blinked. “A map?”

“There’s a collapsed drainage tunnel beneath the south field. I intend to fix it before we drown in our own history.”

Jongseong stared. “How poetic.”

Sunghoon’s gaze flicked to him. “Unintended.”

Jongseong tilted his head. “Do you ever lose your temper?”

“No.”

“Do you ever feel anything?”

“Yes.”

Jongseong leaned in, smiling like a man daring gravity to drop him. “Then why don’t you show it?”

Sunghoon didn’t step back. “Because I’m not twelve.”

Jay’s breath caught. Just for a moment.

Then he laughed again tired and annoyed. “God, you’re infuriating.”

“Then stop talking to me,” Sunghoon said simply.

He stepped past Jongseong without brushing against him.

Jongseong stood there a moment longer, breathing too fast, watching the space where his husband had just been.

He’s supposed to care. He’s supposed to react. He’s supposed to hate me back.

This isn’t a game if I’m the only one bleeding.

That night, Jongseong lay awake again.

The silence felt different now, not empty, but full. Like something unspoken had taken up residence in the walls and was listening. Watching.

He turned over.

Closed his eyes.

Opened them again.

Somewhere, in the far wing, he imagined Sunghoon reading. Or writing. Or walking that same path in the garden, even in darkness.

Jongseong hated that he could picture it. Hated the sound of his cane on stone echoing in his head like a heartbeat.

He sat up. Considered leaving his room. Considered knocking on Sunghoon’s door just to see if he’d open it.

He didn’t.

He lay back down and stared at the ceiling until morning.

Jongseong had seen crumbling buildings before, tenements tucked behind the grandeur of the capital, the occasional neglected temple, the remains of lesser houses turned to soot after scandal. But none of it compared to the quiet, aching deterioration of Daejong Hall.

Because this wasn’t neglect.
This was effort.
Ongoing, failing effort.

He realized it the morning when he finally accepted that pacing his bedroom wouldn’t provide answers and storming off wouldn’t work without somewhere to storm to. So he asked the steward, some pale, nervous man with eyes like puddles if he might be shown the grounds.

“I can fetch His Lordship—”

 “No,” Jongseong interrupted. “You’ll do.”

 And off they went.

He started in the west wing, which had once been guest quarters. The furniture there was still intact, heavy cedar wardrobes, embroidered tapestries, but everything smelled faintly of wet cloth and old firewood. A family of mice had made a kingdom beneath one of the wardrobes. No one seemed interested in evicting them.

The halls were crooked in places, floorboards warped by years of water seeping through the plasterwork. Jongseong traced one of the cracked moldings with a finger and came away with a smear of rot and dust.

“You know,” he said dryly to the steward, “I was told this was a reward marriage.”

The steward offered a weak smile. “Yes, my lord.”

“Does this look like reward to you?”

Silence.

Jongseong didn’t press it. The man was only a pawn. He turned toward the stairs. “Show me the library.”

He expected shelves. Velvet chairs. The scent of polished wood and old secrets.

Instead, he found chaos.

The room itself was large enough, a beautiful rotunda with cracked skylights and a hearth that had clearly once blazed proudly. But the books… God, the books, they were ruined. Not all of them, but many. Water had seeped through the upper windows, warping spines and turning parchment to pulp. Mold bloomed between the older tomes. Pages stuck together. Scrolls curled in on themselves like dead spiders.

Jongseong walked the rows in a slow, stunned silence. This had been someone's pride once. He could feel it, still, in the architecture: arched beams, carved lions in the cornices, the meticulous lettering above the hearth that read In silentis veritas.

In silence, truth.

Jongseong snorted.

All right. That part, at least, tracks.

He opened a ledger on a tilted reading desk and found it stained. Illegible.

What good is a soldier’s library if it’s abandoned like a corpse?
What use is a husband who lets knowledge drown on the shelves?

Jongseong slammed the ledger shut and stalked toward the pantry.

What he found was worse.

The stores were almost bare, barrels of dried rice scraped near to the bottom, dried fish hung like penance, root vegetables rotting in sacks. The wine cellar had fewer bottles than a middling merchant’s. Most of the glass was cloudy, unlabeled, or sealed in wax so thick it might have been a defense against theft. Or time.

He turned on the steward then. “Are the servants paid?”

The man flinched. “Most… not in coin. But they’re fed. Given housing.”

“That’s not payment. That’s indenture.”

 The steward bowed his head. “It’s what we can manage, my lord.”

Jongseong almost asked, Why hasn’t he done something? But the answer was already there, in every crumbling corner. Sunghoon was trying. Not succeeding—but trying.

And that was worse, somehow.

It would’ve been easier if he had found Sunghoon living in comfort while the house burned. It would’ve justified the resentment, the sharp tongue, the furious loneliness.

But no, this was not negligence. It was endurance. Jongseong didn’t like what that meant.

He found Sunghoon that afternoon in the outer courtyard, inspecting the damaged wall that bordered the south field. A few old stone tiles lay stacked beside him. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, revealing scarred forearms. The cane rested beside him on the grass.

Jongseong stopped, watching.

Sunghoon didn’t turn.

“You should’ve told me,” Jongseong said at last. “About the pantry. The books. The servants.”

“I assumed you’d see for yourself,” Sunghoon said without looking up.

Jongseong scowled. “And what? Be moved?”

Now Sunghoon did turn, slowly, gaze steady. “Do you think I need your sympathy?”

“No,” Jongseong snapped. “But I’d hoped you might show something more than—” He gestured vaguely. “—this.”

Sunghoon raised an eyebrow. “What is ‘this’?”

“This,” Jongseong repeated, stepping closer. “This grim silence. This... stoicism. As if living in a ruin is some moral virtue.”

“I live in what I was given,” Sunghoon said.

Jongseong laughed bitterly. “You could have petitioned the Crown.”

“I did.”

“And they gave you this?”

“Yes.”

Jongseong stared at him, disbelieving. “As reward?”

Sunghoon’s jaw tightened. Just barely.

“They called it an estate in a peaceful region, suitable for retirement and marital establishment.”

He said the words like a man quoting a poem he loathed.

Jongseong opened his mouth. Then shut it.

Something about the way Sunghoon stood, impeccable posture, shoulders squared despite the limp, made it impossible to mock him.

“You could’ve left,” Jongseong said, more quietly.

“I did not die,” Sunghoon replied. “That was already considered ungrateful.”

Jongseong looked away.

I wanted a tyrant. I wanted a fraud. Instead, I’ve been given a man who walks slowly not out of pride but because he’s dragging a kingdom behind him.

Sunghoon returned to the wall, lifting one of the stones. His hand trembled just slightly as he set it down.

Jongseong didn’t comment on it.

He stood there for a long time, listening to the wind whistle through the holes in the estate walls.

Then, quietly, he asked, “Why did you accept the marriage?”

Sunghoon didn’t answer right away. Just placed another stone down with care.

“Because,” he said eventually, “I thought perhaps it would be easier than being left behind.”

Jongseong swallowed hard. The silence that followed wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t meant to hurt.

It just was.

He turned away before he could say anything foolish.

It began with a list.

Jongseong sat at the long table in the west parlour, his chosen command post, surrounded by a small army of ledgers, dry quills, half-used candles, and an inkpot that had likely belonged to someone three generations dead. The table bore its weight well. Jongseong did not.

The records were a disaster. Nothing was sorted by date or category. Some were written in dialects he had to sound out syllable by syllable. Entire ledgers were riddled with damp spots and ink blots, pages dog-eared or torn. One sheaf of tax receipts had been used to press herbs; he’d sneezed for an hour before banishing it.

He hadn’t meant to take charge.

Truly.

He had merely asked for the most recent harvest records, only to find that they did not exist. What passed for inventory was a half-page of messy numerals scribbled on the back of a sermon.

Well. If the kingdom wouldn’t run itself, then he would do it. And he would do it well, if only to throw it in Sunghoon’s stupid, immobile face.

So he made lists.

He reorganized records.

He barked orders at the servants, many of whom, to his surprise, obeyed with relief, not resistance. They were overworked, underpaid, and apparently desperate for someone to pretend things might improve.

Jongseong didn’t smile at them. He wasn’t there to inspire.

He was there to fix.

By the next week, he'd assigned a hierarchy to the steward staff, banned the use of broken tools, and demanded someone scrub the upstairs hall until it ceased to smell like rot. He insisted the linens be aired. The floors swept. The windows opened.

The steward, his name was Han, Jongseong eventually remembered, looked perpetually on the verge of bowing too low and falling over.

“You’re a quick learner,” Han murmured as Jongseong redrafted a supply order for the nearby village. “Most noble sons wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Jongseong didn’t look up. “I was raised by a man who only ever spoke in commands. I learned early which ones mattered.”

Han hesitated. “And Lord Sunghoon? What does he think of all this?”

Jongseong dipped his quill. “Lord Furniture has no thoughts. He merely exists.”

Han coughed.

Jongseong smiled without humour. “Too much?”

“I…no, my lord. It's just—” He lowered his voice. “He walks the house each morning. Touches the walls, like he’s listening. Always has.”

Jongseong paused mid-stroke. “Is that meant to make me feel something?”

“No, my lord.”

“Good.”

He returned to the parchment with renewed focus.

Sunghoon didn’t interfere.

That was the worst part.

He didn’t question Jay’s authority, didn’t challenge his lists or amendments. He didn’t speak up when Jongseong rerouted the servant schedule or decided that two of the west-facing rooms should be repurposed into storage. He didn’t flinch when Jongseong proposed loudly, in front of staff that they burn the library mold before it became a second plague.

He just listened. And nodded. Or didn’t.

He might as well have been carved from stone.

Lord Furniture, indeed.

Jongseong once passed him in the hall and made a mocking bow. “A pleasure to see Your Honour at rest. How generous, to allow your kingdom to govern itself.”

Sunghoon only paused long enough to say, “Better that than govern it poorly.”

Jongseong blinked.

He didn’t know what he expected. A fight, perhaps. A glare. But no, Sunghoon didn’t raise his voice, didn’t even stop walking.

Jongseong turned in place as he passed, feeling the flicker of fury kindle beneath his ribs.

There was no satisfaction in outmaneuvering someone who refused to play.

One evening, Jongseong found himself in the pantry again. He was counting barrels by candlelight, as no one had yet repaired the lantern, and muttering under his breath about vermin ratios when he heard it.

A limp.

He froze.

It was subtle, Sunghoon always tried to mask it, but Jongseong had come to recognize the pattern: slow step, soft click, weight shift, drag.

Sunghoon entered the room like a ghost. He looked at the barrels, not at Jay.

Jongseong straightened. “Come to inspect my math?”

“No,” Sunghoon said. “I trust your numbers.”

Jongseong stared at him. “You shouldn’t. I could be lying.”

“I don’t think you’re foolish enough to lie about food.”

Jongseong clenched his jaw. “Is this some tactic? Let me dig the whole house out of the ground and then clap me on the shoulder after?”

Sunghoon’s gaze finally met his. “You think I enjoy this?”

“I think you endure it,” Jongseong said coldly. “And call that nobility.”

Sunghoon looked at him a long moment. Then turned and walked out without another word.

Jongseong wanted to throw something.

Say something. Yell. Slam a door. Stop being a cathedral built from old regrets and moral restraint.

But Sunghoon never raised his voice.

Not even to disagree.

Not even to be cruel.

The next morning, the firewood was stocked. Jongseong hadn’t asked.

The stable repairs, barely sketched in his records, were begun.

And on his desk, neatly folded, was a new inkcloth.

Jongseong picked it up like it might bite him.

No signature. No note. Just quiet approval, slipped beneath the door of war.

He crumpled the cloth and threw it in the hearth.

It didn’t burn quickly.

He watched it for a long time.

It was the light that drew Jongseong in.

Late afternoon sun poured through the western corridor, honey-gold and reluctant, limning the floor with long shadows and catching on the dust that hung suspended in the air like old ghosts. The manor rarely looked soft. It had corners and bruises and rooms that groaned when you entered them, but this hour made it kind.

Jongseong turned into the corridor more out of habit than intention, cradling a rolled map beneath one arm and a headache blooming just behind his eyes. He had been up since before dawn drafting harvest schedules and reading through handwritten petitions from nearby villagers, many of whom had penned their requests with more sincerity than clarity. His tea had gone cold. The steward had been fidgeting. And he’d found a rat’s nest in the northern cellar.

So when he turned the corner and saw Sunghoon, seated silently on the broad cushioned bench beneath the long window, he stopped walking.

The man hadn’t moved.

He sat with his back straight, one leg stretched before him and the other bent slightly at the knee, cane discarded on the floor beside him. His hands were clasped, resting on his lap. His gaze, unwavering, was fixed on something far beyond the glass.

Jongseong followed the line of it. Out across the frost-hardened fields, toward the tree line dark with the coming evening.

He waited for Sunghoon to turn.

He didn’t.

Jongseong shifted his weight. Cleared his throat.

Nothing.

At first, he assumed Sunghoon hadn’t noticed him. But then Jongseong looked closer, saw the subtle tension in the set of his shoulders, the fine tremor in the fingers folded so neatly in his lap. Not weak. Just… worn.

The air felt too still.

Jongseong let out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold. “Trying to remember what having a future felt like?”

It came out sharp. Cruel.

Too cruel.

Sunghoon didn’t react. Not visibly. He didn’t turn his head, didn’t raise a brow. He simply stayed. Still. Gazing out across the estate as though his bones had turned to iron and rooted him there.

Jongseong waited.

Still, no response.

He almost repeated the line, this time with mockery, a laugh, something to puncture the moment, but his voice caught in his throat, the way it sometimes did when he was a boy and realized he’d said too much.

He felt it then deep, unwelcome, the sting of it. Not pity. Never pity. But awareness. The kind that made you realize you'd stepped on a wound thinking it was just stone.

Jongseong turned on his heel and walked away before he could think better of it.

He didn’t make it far.

Back in the west parlour, map discarded on the floor, he sat with his head in his hands.

Why didn’t he say anything?

Not even sarcasm. Not even one of those dry, pin-point remarks that Jongseong had come to expect. Just silence.

Jongseong would’ve preferred anger. A scoff. A glare. Something to justify the sharpness he’d thrown like a dagger into a man’s back.

But silence?

Silence made it real.

Later, he told the steward loudly and flippantly that Lord Furniture had taken up residence by the window, likely waiting for the sun to die so he could mourn its passing with dramatic flair.

The steward didn’t laugh.

Jongseong didn’t either.

That night, he couldn’t sleep.

He tossed beneath the blankets, too warm and too cold at once, the fire in the grate burning low. Outside, the wind picked up. Branches clawed the shutters. Somewhere in the manor, a door creaked open on its own.

Jongseong turned over again, clutching the edge of the quilt like it might anchor him.

Trying to remember what having a future felt like?

He repeated the line in his head, and hated the way it sounded.

Hated how it fit.

Because what kind of man stared out a window for hours? Not in reverie, not in boredom but in quiet, unspoken stillness that felt like mourning?

Jongseong remembered the limp, the careful way Sunghoon paced the halls in the morning, the way his hands occasionally trembled when lifting teacups, and the ever-growing ledger of things he didn’t say.

Was that his future?

This—this decaying manor and its hollow halls, the unspoken debts and unlit corners? A husband who barked orders like they were battle cries and made jokes out of scars?

Jongseong turned away from the window.

Even in his own chambers, he could still feel Sunghoon sitting there.

Still. Watching.

The next morning, Jongseong entered the corridor again.

Sunghoon was gone.

But the cane was still there, resting neatly against the wall.
And the cushion bore the faint imprint of where he’d sat.

Jongseong stared at it.

Then turned around and walked away.

Jongseong didn’t knock.

He threw the door open with enough force to startle the wind.

It banged against the inside wall, hard enough to leave a dent. The steward, half a step behind him and stammering something about waiting for permission, was waved off with a sharp flick of Jay’s fingers. He didn’t even spare the man a glance.

Sunghoon was inside.

Seated at the writing desk near the hearth, posture flawless, a single sheet of parchment before him and a thin brush in his hand. He looked up, not startled, not wary, simply aware.

He set the brush down. Not a sound.

Jongseong stared at him across the dim, fire-warmed room, chest heaving.

“Do you ever intend to speak,” he snapped, “or is the plan to spend our entire marriage impersonating furniture?”

Sunghoon blinked. Once.

Jongseong strode into the room like a storm unwilling to change course. “Because if silence is meant to be some kind of virtue, I assure you it isn’t working. It’s infuriating. It’s cowardice, disguised as composure.”

Still, no response.

Not even a twitch.

Jay’s voice rose. “I have worked every day since I arrived here. I’ve rebuilt your house from rotting beams and forgotten ledgers. I’ve fixed your accounts, your staff, your gods-damned pantry, and you? You sit in your chair and say nothing.”

Sunghoon did not rise. Did not flinch.

He merely turned slightly toward him, as if shifting for comfort rather than confrontation.

Jongseong hated him for it.

He began pacing in front of the hearth, arms folded tightly. “Say something. Just once. Disagree with me. Yell. Complain. Accuse me of overstepping. Tell me I’ve embarrassed you. That I’m too loud. Too much. Something. Anything.”

Silence.

Jongseong turned on him.

“I asked you a question!”

Finally, Sunghoon spoke.

“I heard you.”

The voice was soft. Even. Like still water held in a deep well.

Jongseong took a step forward. “And?”

“I have no rebuttal,” Sunghoon said simply. “You are not wrong.”

Jongseong stared at him.

It was not what he’d expected.

It should’ve satisfied him. But somehow it didn’t.

His hands clenched. “Then what is this? What are you? Some ancient monument left to weather and dust? A knight stripped of meaning, sitting in his husk of a house, too proud to die and too proud to ask for help?”

Sunghoon’s jaw tightened. Slightly.

Ah.

Jongseong pressed harder. “Is this the great war hero? The blade of the South? A man who once faced fire and steel, reduced to silence and candlelight?”

And still, still, Sunghoon didn’t shout. Didn’t rise. Didn’t even sneer.

Instead, he held Jay’s gaze with calm, steady restraint.

There was something terrible in that. Something immovable.

Jay’s fury began to falter, not from lack of passion but from the disorienting sense that he was standing on the edge of a cliff and screaming at the mountain across the valley, only to find it listening.

He’s not angry. He’s not defending himself. He’s just… enduring me.

That realization gutted him more than any sharp retort could have.

“Why don’t you fight me?” Jongseong whispered, voice raw. “Why don’t you do something?”

Sunghoon’s brow furrowed, barely. “Would it ease you, if I shouted?”

Jongseong wanted to say yes. He wanted to say anything would be better than this vast, endless stillness.

But the words caught in his throat.

Sunghoon looked away then, gaze drifting toward the fire.

When he spoke again, it was not for drama. Not for defense. Just truth.

“I spent years teaching myself stillness,” he said quietly. “Not because I am patient. But because I was afraid.”

Jongseong blinked.

Sunghoon continued, slowly. “When I first lost the use of my leg, they told me to rest. I didn’t. I tried to fight through it. To spar. To run. To prove I was not broken.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “And each time I failed, I heard it louder: crippled, shameful, ghost of a man.”

Jay’s breath hitched.

“I learned stillness the way soldiers learn silence. Not because I wanted it. But because I could not bear to flail where others could see.”

He turned his head again, this time to meet Jay’s gaze. “So no, I do not shout. I do not rage. I have forgotten how.”

The air went out of the room.

Jongseong felt hollowed. Carved out like old wood.

He didn’t move.

Sunghoon’s voice softened further. “You rage, Jay, because you still believe someone will answer you. That someone will care enough to shout back. I envy that.”

Jongseong swallowed.

It should’ve been a victory. A confession. A moment to strike.

But it felt like a wound had been placed in his hands and he had no idea how to carry it.

“I’m not—” Jongseong began. Then stopped.

Sunghoon said nothing.

Jongseong turned away. His vision blurred. The fire popped once in the grate, casting flickering shadows across the floor.

He let the silence stretch.

Then, finally, he said, “I don’t know how to forgive you for being quiet.”

Sunghoon didn’t reply.

Jongseong didn’t look back.

He left the room with less force than he’d entered it.

The door closed without a bang.

It was supposed to be a display.

Jongseong had planned it down to the tablecloths.

He chose the silver with the serpent handles, polished until it nearly blinded and had the staff re-starch every napkin twice. He instructed the kitchen to serve three courses, not two. Candied ginger in crystal dishes, bread studded with fennel and black salt. Wine, too—not the cloudy cellar dredge but a bottle from the merchant’s private shelf. The good one. The one with the foreign lettering and wax sealed like a promise.

The guest list was curated with precision.

Three local landholders. A baronet and his second wife. A minor scholar who had written something laudatory about Sunghoon during the war. A general, retired now, who Jongseong barely remembered meeting once at court, but who was known for his dinner stories and sentimental toasts. The kind of man who made everything about legacy.

Sunghoon had not objected.

He hadn’t commented at all, really. Only glanced at the invite list Jongseong left on the parlour table, and said, “As you like.”

It had annoyed Jongseong more than an argument would have.

By dusk, the candles were lit. The dining room, usually a cavernous relic of better centuries, now glowed with golden light and the scent of rosemary and wine sauce.

Jongseong stood at the head of the table, not seated, and greeted each guest by name as they arrived.

They bowed. Complimented the hall. Admired the table.

And then Jaeyun walked in.

That wasn’t his name, formally. General Jaeyun Sim, with a sun-split smile and a voice like a drumline. He wore the polished remains of his uniform, red piping on black, with a row of medals dulled from time and sentiment. His hair was silvering. His gait, still springy.

He strode in like he belonged, clapped the steward on the shoulder, and then—

“Oh gods above,” he said, loud and delighted. “Sunghoon?”

The room hadn’t quieted yet. But Jongseong felt something go still.

Sunghoon had just entered behind him, dressed more formally than usual, a black coat with pearl buttons, his cane in one hand. His hair was combed back. He looked less like a soldier and more like an heir to something long faded.

Jaeyun crossed the room before Jongseong could say a word.

“Sunghoon,” he said again, and took him by the shoulders. “You bloody bastard. You survived.”

Sunghoon blinked. Slowly. “Jaeyun.”

Jaeyun grinned. “You look…well, you look the same. Bit more hollow around the eyes, but that’s a soldier’s tax. We thought you died when the marsh outpost fell. There were rumors. No letters. And then the crown sent word that you'd been awarded a manor. A manor!”

Jongseong watched them, something knotted and sour forming under his ribs.

Sunghoon gave the faintest smile. “The rumors weren’t exaggerated.”

Jaeyun laughed. “Still full of riddles. You haven’t changed.”

Then Jaeyun turned to Jongseong, beaming, offering a bow that felt more practiced than sincere. “And you must be the husband.”

Jongseong inclined his head. “Lord Jongseong Park.”

Jaeyun gave him a once-over that was neither hostile nor warm. “You’ve done well for yourself.”

Jongseong smiled. Sharp. “So I keep being told.”

Sunghoon had drifted a half step back.

Jaeyun didn’t notice. Or pretended not to.

He took Sunghoon’s elbow with the casual familiarity of someone who’d done it hundreds of times before. “You remember the northern pass? Where you got that fool brandy from the quartermaster? Tell me you still drink like a priest and swear like a thief.”

Sunghoon didn’t laugh. “Not lately.”

Jaeyun looked disappointed but recovered quickly. “Well. We’ll fix that. Come, sit by me. You can tell me how many aristocrats you've terrified into obedience since they hung you up like a medal on a mantle.”

Jongseong moved toward the table before he realized he had.

He set a hand—light, too light—on the back of Sunghoon’s chair. “Actually,” he said coolly, “I’d like my lord husband seated to my left.”

Jaeyun raised his eyebrows. “Ah. Of course. Possessive sort, are you?”

Jongseong smiled, teeth white and cold. “No. Merely traditional.”

Sunghoon said nothing. He seated himself beside Jongseong without complaint. Jaeyun took the seat opposite. The meal began.

Jongseong tried to steer conversation. Asked about crops, trade, border skirmishes that hadn’t been relevant in months. His voice was polished, his posture perfect.

And yet—

Jaeyun kept redirecting. Back to the past. Back to Sunghoon. Stories from campaigns. Inside jokes Jongseong didn’t understand. The table leaned in when Jaeyun spoke. They laughed. They listened. They stole glances at Sunghoon like he was a figure from myth reanimated.

But Sunghoon?

Sunghoon barely spoke.

He answered questions, yes. Nodded politely. Even smiled once, faintly, when Jaeyun told a particularly embellished tale about a swordfight on a frozen river. But his gaze was distant. Detached.

Jongseong studied him between courses. Watched the quiet stiffness in his shoulders. The way he kept his hands beneath the table. The way he avoided Jaeyun’s eyes whenever the laughter swelled.

Jaeyun never noticed. Or perhaps refused to.

At one point, after the second course, Jongseong leaned in just slightly and murmured, “You used to drink like a priest?”

Sunghoon, eyes on his plate, replied, “That was before priests drank less.”

Jongseong didn’t laugh. He looked across the table, where Jaeyun was gesturing animatedly with his wine glass, and said, very softly, “You don’t seem happy to see him.”

Sunghoon’s knife paused.

Then moved again. “He remembers a version of me that no longer exists.”

Jongseong said nothing for a long moment.

Then: “Maybe I’d like to meet that version.”

Sunghoon glanced sideways, just once.

Then returned to his meal.

By the evening ended, Sunghoon excused himself before anyone else. 

The fire had burned low. He stood up like a man unsure whether he should rise or simply disappear.

Jongseong crossed the room slowly.

“He likes you,” he said, folding his hands behind his back.

Sunghoon didn’t look up. “He liked who I was.”

“And who are you now?”

A pause.

Then: “An obligation. A broken heirloom. A story with a quieter ending.”

Jongseong’s throat tightened. “You could’ve said more. They were listening.”

Sunghoon turned toward him then. The fire caught in his eyes, and for once, there was something there. Not rage. Not sorrow. Something bare.

“I am tired of being listened to for what I was,” he said.

Jongseong swallowed. “Then be someone else.”

Sunghoon reached out. Before Jongseong had a chance to flinch, Sunghoon’s fingers brushed against Jay’s cheek. 

“I am,” Sunghoon said. “I’m your husband.”

And he left the room.

Jongseong did not follow.

The fire had burned down to embers by the time Jaeyun poured them each a final glass of wine.

The others had gone, carriages rumbling into the dusk, laughter echoing faintly through the stone halls. Servants scurried past, clearing dishes with the grace of those trying not to be heard. Jongseong let them go. Let the room empty. Let the night settle around him like a shawl he hadn’t meant to wear.

Jaeyun had lingered. Naturally.

He sat in Sunghoon’s chair now, uninvited and comfortable, elbow resting on the armrest like it was his own home. He swirled the wine lazily, watching the flicker of firelight inside the goblet.

Jongseong sat across from him, not drinking.

Jaeyun broke the silence first. “He was always like that, you know.”

Jongseong looked up.

Jaeyun nodded toward the empty space between them. “Sunghoon. All storm and steel on the field, but quiet the moment the sword went down. Like the noise cost him something.”

Jongseong didn’t respond.

Jaeyun sighed. “You don’t strike me as the type to marry quietly.”

Jongseong snorted. “It wasn’t my choice.”

Jaeyun smiled. “His either, I’d wager. Though he was always good at doing what needed to be done. Even when it hurt.”

Jongseong finally took a sip of the wine. It was sweet, thick, and dark as blood. “You were close, then.”

Jaeyun nodded, but without dramatics. “Close enough. We served together for nearly five years. Fought in two campaigns. Buried a dozen men between us. I’ve seen him pull an arrow out of his own thigh with a hand shaking from fever, just so he could carry someone else off the field.”

Jay’s throat closed a little.

Jaeyun continued. “But it wasn’t the battles that made him… him. It was after. The quiet after. We’d lose half a regiment, be soaked in mud and smoke, and he’d sit with the new recruits. Speak to them like they mattered. Remember their names. He never forgot a name.”

Jongseong blinked. “That doesn’t sound like the man I know.”

Jaeyun leaned back, considering. “No. I suppose it wouldn’t.”

Jongseong fiddled with the rim of his glass. “So what happened?”

Jaeyun raised a brow. “You mean the injury?”

Jongseong nodded. “Yes. That. But… more than that. He doesn’t speak unless spoken to. He flinches when people look at him too long. And he walks like every step is a penance.”

Jaeyun didn’t answer right away.

Then: “Sunghoon wasn’t built for politics. He wasn’t meant to be paraded. When the crown decorated him, gave him this title, this house, it was meant to keep him quiet. Out of sight. He was a reminder, you see. That we lost more than we gained.”

Jongseong frowned. “But they call him a hero.”

Jaeyun smiled, thin and sad. “That’s what you call a man after you’ve broken him.”

The silence stretched.

Jaeyun sipped his wine. “He never liked killing. He was good at it. But he hated it. Always did.”

Jongseong stared into the hearth. “I don’t understand him.”

Jaeyun’s eyes softened. “Maybe you’re not meant to. Maybe you’re meant to see him anyway.”

Jongseong turned sharply. “You speak of him like he’s some… tragic sonnet.”

Jaeyun grinned. “I’m a soldier. We love tragic sonnets. Especially the living kind.”

Jongseong hesitated. “He doesn't seem to care that I’m here.”

“Does he push you away?”

“No. He… lets me do what I want.”

“Then he cares,” Jaeyun said simply. “Sunghoon doesn’t keep people close unless he means to. But he doesn’t pull them near either, unless he thinks they want to be there.”

Jongseong hated how that sat in his chest.

Jaeyun watched him a moment longer. “You came out swinging. Wanted this dinner to feel like a throne room.”

Jongseong laughed, bitter. “Is it that obvious?”

Jaeyun chuckled. “I’ve worn that crown before. You’re not the first man to try and outshine a ghost.”

Jongseong looked away.

Jaeyun leaned forward slightly. “Do you want him to love you?”

Jongseong didn’t answer.

Jaeyun’s voice softened. “Because he could. He would. But not for spectacle. Not for show. You have to sit with the silence long enough to hear what he’s not saying.”

Jongseong was quiet for a long time.

Then: “You said he never forgot names. He remembers everyone. But not me. Not really.”

Jaeyun looked at him like he was weighing something precious. “You’re not a name, Jongseong. You’re a future.”

Jongseong almost flinched.

Jaeyun rose then, slow and deliberate, and drained the last of his glass.

“He won’t ask you to stay,” he said. “He doesn’t know how.”

Jay’s voice was raw. “And if I want him to?”

Jaeyun turned toward the door. “Then stay. And speak softer.”

When the door closed behind him, Jongseong sat alone in the dim light.

He stared at the seat across from him.

The wine was half-finished. The fire dying.

And somewhere in the house, behind closed doors, Sunghoon slept or pretended to.

Jongseong didn’t go to him.

Not yet.

But he thought about knocking.

Just to hear what silence sounded like on the other side of the door.

The sun was already climbing when Jongseong entered the breakfast hall, but the warmth of it had not quite reached the floor. Pale morning light slipped through the high windows in narrow, angular shafts, catching on silver dishes and cooling tea.

He hadn't expected Sunghoon to be there.

But there he sat, already dressed, already composed. Cane propped neatly beside his chair. His plate untouched, but his cup half-empty, steam curling gently above it. He looked like he had been there a while, and not because he was waiting.

Sunghoon looked up, eyes flicking briefly to Jay.

“You’re awake late,” he said, voice smooth.

Jongseong lifted a brow. “It’s breakfast, not dawn prayers.”

“I assumed you would be out walking the grounds by now. Or redesigning the pantry again.”

Jongseong smirked and made for the table. “I see the wine from last night made you chatty.”

Sunghoon’s lips twitched, almost, almost smiling.

Jongseong sat across from him, waving for the steward to bring something warm. “You left early last night.”

“I wasn’t needed.”

“You were missed.”

“I doubt it.”

Jongseong exhaled, then drummed his fingers lightly against the table. “Jaeyun stayed.”

Sunghoon’s brow lifted. “He did?”

“Apparently found the wine better than the guest chamber. He drank and we talked a bit.”

There was a flicker in Sunghoon’s eyes. Then, softer than Jongseong expected: “He always did take up too much space.”

Jongseong chuckled. “He said something similar of you.”

Sunghoon looked away, hiding a smile.

It was the first time Jongseong had seen it without bitterness. Without weight.

The door opened, and Jaeyun entered then, hair a mess, face freshly washed, looking utterly pleased with himself. “I smelled bread.”

“You’re brazen,” Jongseong said.

Jaeyun gave a mock bow. “And yet somehow beloved.”

He clapped Sunghoon on the shoulder as he passed, familiar and unafraid, and slid into the seat beside him without waiting for invitation. The steward looked briefly alarmed, then fled.

Jongseong watched them both as bread and butter were laid out, as tea was poured again. And then,  Sunghoon laughed.

Something Jaeyun had said, something about a lieutenant who once tried to seduce a queen’s cousin using only boiled eggs and terrible poetry, and Sunghoon actually laughed.

It was low and brief and dry at the edges, but it was real. It startled even Jaeyun, who blinked and then grinned like a man seeing spring for the first time.

Jay, mid-sip, forgot to swallow.

The sound of it stayed in his ribs like a held note. It wasn’t musical. Not charming. But it was Sunghoon’s. Something alive. Something untouched by the weight that usually dragged his voice into half-tones and silences.

Jongseong set his cup down with care.

He didn’t speak for a long time.

After breakfast, Jaeyun clapped Jongseong on the back and suggested a walk.

“I’ve seen the manor,” he said, “and the wine cellar. But if I don’t take air soon, I’ll begin to look like a retired toad.”

Jongseong barked a laugh and agreed.

The two of them stepped out into the garden just as the sun began to warm the frost-laced hedges. Birds were awake now. The light filtered through leafless branches, soft and broken.

Jaeyun walked with the easy gait of someone used to patrols and long silences. He let the quiet stretch for nearly a minute before saying anything.

“You saw it, didn’t you?”

Jongseong frowned. “Saw what?”

“That laugh.”

Jongseong scoffed lightly. “I don’t catalog his sounds.”

Jaeyun hummed. “You froze.”

Jongseong rolled his eyes. “It was unexpected. That’s all.”

Jaeyun tilted his head. “It’s rare. The last time I heard it was years ago, after he beat three knights in a training match using a broom and a sprained wrist.”

Jongseong snorted. “He sounds ridiculous.”

Jaeyun smiled. “He was. It was glorious.”

They passed the rose arbor. The vines were bare now, sleeping through winter.

Jongseong let his hand brush one of the brittle branches. “He hasn’t laughed like that since I arrived.”

Jaeyun nodded. “You gave him space.”

Jongseong blinked. “I didn’t mean to.”

“No. You meant to control the room, the estate, the tempo of the place. But in doing so, you made noise he didn’t have to answer.”

Jongseong glanced sideways. “You talk like he’s some haunted saint.”

Jaeyun shrugged. “He’s haunted, sure. But not a saint. He’s proud. Reckless. Stubborn. Broods like it’s a sacred calling. But he’s also kind, if you pay attention. Soft with animals. Unfailingly loyal. Brutal only when he must be.”

Jongseong didn’t respond.

Jaeyun studied him. “So what are you, then?”

Jongseong raised a brow. “Excuse me?”

“You said the marriage wasn’t your choice. Fine. But you’ve stayed. You run his house like it’s your name on the deed. You fight him like you want him to fight back. So tell me, what are you?”

Jongseong looked down at the gravel path. The crunch of his boots was the only sound for a moment.

“I’m a man who was sent here to disappear,” he said at last.

Jaeyun waited.

“And I’ve been shouting ever since, trying to remind the world I exist. That he exists. And he just sits there, like none of it matters.”

Jaeyun’s voice was quieter. “Does it?”

Jongseong looked up. The wind caught his hair. “It shouldn’t.”

“But it does.”

Jongseong didn’t answer.

Jaeyun took a breath. “Do you love him?”

Jay’s laugh was quick, hard. “No.”

Jaeyun just waited.

Jongseong glanced at him. “I don’t.”

Jaeyun nodded slowly. “That’s fine.”

Jay’s jaw tensed. “You don’t believe me.”

“I believe you believe it.”

Jongseong stopped walking.

Jaeyun took two more steps, then turned. “He’s not easy to love, Jongseong. But he’s easy to miss, once you’ve learned him.”

Jongseong looked away. Toward the hedges. The distant stables. The crumbling sundial in the far lawn.

Then softly: “He makes me furious.”

Jaeyun smiled faintly. “That’s a start.”

They returned to the house in silence.

Sunghoon wasn’t in the parlour. Or the study. His cane rested by the hearth, and one of the windows had been left cracked open. The breeze that entered was cold.

Jongseong closed it without thinking.

Jaeyun watched him do it, and said nothing.

The stables were quieter than Jongseong remembered.

He’d passed them a dozen times, always in a hurry, always with something else on his mind. He hadn’t intended to stop that morning either—not really. But the wind had cut sharp as he passed the northern courtyard, and he’d ducked into the stable corridor half out of convenience, half out of boredom.

And then he saw her.

A warhorse. Or what remained of one.

She stood alone in the last stall massive, black as ash with a silver blaze down her nose. Her mane was tangled, her eyes glinting with a mistrust that bordered on violence. The stablehands gave her a wide berth. The straw at her feet was fresh, but the stall’s gate was reinforced with iron. One look told Jongseong this was no docile field horse.

He asked the boy sweeping near the tack wall, “Whose is that?”

The boy didn’t look up. “Belonged to the lord.”

Jongseong blinked. “Sunghoon?”

“Aye.”

Jongseong moved closer to the stall. The mare shifted, ears twitching back.

“She’s old,” Jongseong murmured.

“She’s mean,” the boy corrected. “Won’t take a rider. Won’t even let us change her bridle. Bit the last groom bad enough we sent for a bone healer.”

Jongseong raised a brow. “And no one’s put her down?”

“She’s his,” the boy said, as though that explained everything.

Jongseong watched her for a long moment. “She’s beautiful.”

“She’s cursed,” the boy muttered.

Jongseong ignored him.

He took a careful step forward. The mare stamped once, nostrils flaring. Jongseong paused. Held out his hand slowly.

The mare’s ears pinned flat. Her jaw tensed.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he murmured, half to himself. “I just want to see.”

He stepped closer.

And that’s when she bit him.

It wasn’t a hard bite. But it was sharp enough.

Jongseong stumbled back with a hiss, clutching his hand as blood welled between his fingers. The mare snorted, unimpressed, and turned away, tail flicking.

Jongseong swore under his breath, already furious. He pulled a cloth from his coat pocket and pressed it to the bite, teeth clenched.

“Let me see.”

The voice was quiet, behind him.

Jongseong turned, already flushed with embarrassment, and saw Sunghoon standing in the stable doorway, face unreadable.

Jongseong straightened. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“She bit me.”

Sunghoon raised an eyebrow. “You tried to touch her.”

“I’ve touched horses before.”

“Not this one.”

Jongseong looked back toward the stall. “She hates me.”

“She hates everyone,” Sunghoon said, stepping forward. “Except me.”

Jongseong scowled. “Of course she does.”

Sunghoon said nothing more, just approached. The horse turned her head, ears lifting. For a moment, Jongseong thought she’d strike again. But she didn’t.

Sunghoon stopped at the gate. Lifted his hand.

The mare pressed her nose into his palm with something like reverence.

Jongseong stared.

“Her name’s Gaeul,” Sunghoon said softly. “Means Autumn. She was born the same day I first held a sword.”

Jongseong didn’t move.

Sunghoon turned slightly. “Come.”

“What?”

“You need that cleaned. My wing is closer.”

Jongseong blinked. “I’ll get the steward.”

“No. Come.”

It wasn’t a command. It wasn’t quite an invitation either.

It was simply a path, offered.

Jongseong followed.

Sunghoon’s chambers were warm.

Not lavish. Not like Jay’s wing. But personal. The fireplace glowed low, a book left open by the hearth, the pages gently curling. There was a faint scent of cedar and saddle soap.

Jongseong stood awkwardly by the door until Sunghoon pointed to a chair. Then he sat.

Sunghoon moved with his usual quiet deliberation, retrieving a basin, cloth, and a small tin from a cabinet. He didn’t ask for Jay’s hand. Just held it when offered, unhurried, steady.

Jongseong hissed as the water touched his skin.

“She bit through the skin,” Sunghoon murmured.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

A pause.

Then, barely, Sunghoon smiled.

Jongseong caught it. Felt something twist.

“You trained her?” he asked, voice low.

Sunghoon nodded. “From birth. She wasn’t bred for nobility. She was born on a field. Almost died in the frost. But she lived.”

“And tried to kill everyone since?”

“She saved my life twice.”

Jongseong looked up.

Sunghoon dipped the cloth again, wiping the bite clean with slow, practiced care. “Once during the Riverfall siege. She broke formation to reach me. Kicked a man off me before he could—” He stopped. “And again when I was dragged from the marsh.”

Jongseong watched his face. “I didn’t know you were dragged.”

Sunghoon didn’t meet his eyes. “The records mention an injury. Not how I got it.”

Jongseong wanted to ask. Wanted to know.

But Sunghoon kept cleaning the wound, gentle now, as if remembering made him softer.

“She was the last thing I saw before I blacked out,” he said, almost to himself. “Covered in blood and mud and still kicking.”

Jay’s voice was quiet. “She loves you.”

“She remembers me. That’s different.”

Jongseong swallowed. “Do you miss her?”

Sunghoon bandaged the wound carefully. “I see her every day.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Sunghoon paused. Tied the cloth. “I miss who I was with her.”

Jongseong stared at him.

It was the first time he’d said something like that. Not as an echo. Not as a deflection. Just truth, laid bare.

Jongseong felt the words sit inside him like warm stones.

He flexed his fingers slowly. “Thank you.”

Sunghoon rose, setting the basin aside. “You shouldn’t have gone near her.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t ask.”

Jongseong flinched. “You never talk.”

“You never listen.”

That made Jongseong freeze.

Sunghoon’s expression didn’t change. But his voice was softer. “I speak. You fill the silence before I finish.”

Jongseong felt heat crawl up his neck.

He looked down. “Why did you let me stay?”

Sunghoon didn’t answer immediately.

“Because you’re louder than the ghosts.”

Jongseong looked up sharply.

Sunghoon was already turning toward the hearth, his back a slow retreat.

Jongseong watched him for a long moment.

Then, unthinking, he asked, “Will you show me how to approach her?”

Sunghoon stilled. Looked back.

There was something in his eyes, not warmth, not quite but the shape of it. The possibility of warmth.

He nodded. “Tomorrow.”

And that was all.

Jongseong returned to his wing that evening with his hand bandaged and his thoughts worse.

He lay in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, hearing the echo of Sunghoon’s voice, the way it went soft when he said “she saved my life.”

He didn’t know if he was jealous of the horse.

Or of the man Sunghoon used to be.

Maybe both.

The stables smelled of old hay and saddle oil and frost-warmed wood. Jongseong hadn’t returned since the bite, but the mark on his hand was already healing, wrapped tight beneath his glove like a secret. He kept flexing his fingers as he walked, as if testing whether the memory still stung.

Sunghoon was already there.

He stood at the edge of Gaeul’s stall, hand resting against the gate in that wordless way he did everything, quiet, unintrusive, but unmistakable. The mare had her head lowered, her black coat catching the winter light like armor. She snorted when she saw Jay.

Jongseong halted.

“She remembers,” he muttered.

“She remembers everything,” Sunghoon replied.

Jongseong studied him. “Even pain?”

Sunghoon gave a slow nod. “Especially pain.”

Jongseong swallowed.

Sunghoon turned, eyes soft but unreadable. “Come.”

Jongseong stepped closer.

“She’ll bare her teeth,” Sunghoon said, “but she won’t bite, not with me here.”

Jongseong raised a brow. “Do I count as ‘with you’ yet?”

Sunghoon didn’t smile. But his voice warmed. “We’ll find out.”

Jongseong approached slowly, cautiously. The mare flared her nostrils, shifting her weight with suspicion.

“Stop there,” Sunghoon instructed. “Let her see you. Let her decide.”

Jongseong obeyed.

“She’s watching your shoulders,” Sunghoon said behind him. “You’re too stiff.”

“I’m about to walk into a beast’s mouth. Of course I’m stiff.”

“She’s not a beast. She’s a soldier.”

Sunghoon stepped up beside him. Close. Close enough that Jongseong felt the heat of him even through thick coats. His presence was steadying, not loud, not coaxing, just there.

“Breathe out,” Sunghoon said. “Let her feel your calm.”

Jongseong exhaled. Long and slow.

The mare lowered her head by a fraction.

Jongseong took another step.

Gaeul didn’t retreat. Her ears twitched, wary, but she stayed still.

“She’s giving you a moment,” Sunghoon said. “Don’t waste it.”

Jongseong nodded. Took one more step. And then stopped, close enough to touch her but afraid to raise his hand.

“She won’t accept it if you hesitate,” Sunghoon said.

Jongseong glared. “Everything in this house punishes hesitation.”

Sunghoon moved then. Not past him but beside him. His hand reached out slowly and came to rest over Jay’s own. Just the barest pressure. Just enough to guide.

Jongseong felt every joint in his body lock and loosen at once.

“Here,” Sunghoon murmured, and moved Jay’s hand forward. “Not on the nose. Too vulnerable. Touch just below her jaw.”

Their hands moved as one.

The mare flinched.

But did not step back.

Jay’s gloved fingers brushed the side of her face. Warm, coarse, alive.

She let him.

His breath caught.

“She’s letting me,” he whispered.

“She trusts me,” Sunghoon corrected. “You’re standing close enough to borrow it.”

Jongseong blinked. “That’s… brutal.”

“It’s true.”

Sunghoon removed his hand slowly. Jongseong felt the loss like a chill.

The mare stood still. Her eye found his.

“Talk to her,” Sunghoon said softly.

Jongseong blinked. “She doesn’t speak.”

“She listens.”

Jongseong hesitated.

Then: “You bit me.”

Gaeul snorted.

Jongseong smiled faintly. “You have good taste.”

A pause.

He said, more quietly, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The mare shifted slightly just enough to lean her head a bit into his palm.

Jongseong froze.

“She understands,” Sunghoon said.

Jongseong looked at him.

Sunghoon stood with his arms folded now, leaning lightly on his cane. He watched them like someone watching an old memory become something new.

Jongseong withdrew his hand.

“She lets you touch her like she’s not dangerous.”

“She is,” Sunghoon said. “That’s why it matters.”

Jongseong stepped back, tucking his hands into his coat. “And the others? They’re afraid of her.”

“She doesn’t owe them comfort.”

Jongseong looked at him. “And me?”

Sunghoon turned. Looked straight into him.

“You didn’t run.”

That should not have landed the way it did.

Jongseong opened his mouth. Closed it.

After a pause: “Why did you show me this?”

Sunghoon tilted his head. “You kept calling me Lord Furniture. I thought I’d demonstrate movement.”

Jongseong bit down a laugh. “Did you plan that line in advance?”

“Yes,” Sunghoon said simply.

Jongseong chuckled, dry and startled. “You’re more arrogant than I thought.”

“I’m more patient than you assume.”

Jongseong glanced back toward Gaeul. “She’s lucky.”

Sunghoon didn’t respond.

They stood in silence for a long moment. The kind of silence that felt earned. Not tense. Not wounded. Just quiet.

Jongseong finally asked, “Did you ever think of leaving?”

“This place?”

Jongseong nodded. “The estate. The title. All of it.”

Sunghoon was still. Then: “Sometimes. When the days were short and no one spoke my name.”

Jongseong studied him. “And why didn’t you?”

Sunghoon met his gaze. “Because someone might come. And I’d want to be here when they did.”

Jay’s breath caught.

He didn’t ask who. Didn’t need to.

They walked back to the manor slowly.

Not side by side. Not quite. But not far apart, either.

Jay’s hand still tingled, even through the bandage. The warmth of the mare’s breath lingered on his skin.

He didn’t say thank you.

He didn’t have to.

And Sunghoon didn’t ask for it.

It started with a draft in the library.

Jongseong hadn’t meant to be there long. He came only to find a ledger he suspected had been misfiled, typical, in this crumbling monument of half-finished shelves and neglected tomes. The windows in the west alcove wouldn’t close properly, so the air had a constant chill that bit through wool like knives. Most days, he avoided it altogether.

But he needed the ledger. The house was eating coin like a starving beast, and if Jongseong was going to keep the entire estate from collapsing under the weight of bad bookkeeping, he needed the records of cavalry grain shipments from two years ago.

Instead, he found Strategy and Discipline in the Northern Theater, bound in dull green leather and tucked behind a stack of war poetry.

He would’ve ignored it.

But the name inked inside the front cover stopped him.

Park Sunghoon.

Jongseong stared.

The handwriting was neat. Efficient. Just slightly slanted. Nothing grand or ornamental, simply present. A possession marked not for pride, but use.

Jongseong thumbed through the first few pages with idle curiosity.

Then stopped.

Margin notes.

Dozens of them.

Not just the usual scribbles, these were meticulous. Razor-sharp. Critical. Red-inked annotations that sliced through the printed words like scalpels.

“Author overestimates terrain advantage. See Dolfort Ridge skirmish, our side lost ten men due to this misjudgment.”

“Good theoretical model, but untested. Unreliable in actual cavalry withdrawal unless flank support is confirmed.”

Jongseong blinked.

The notes weren’t just smart. They were experienced. Not the kind of commentary a student would leave. Not academic nitpicking. This was the voice of someone who’d seen blood on snow, who’d watched strategy crack in real time and lived to make it better.

Jongseong sank into the nearest chair before he realized he was doing it.

He read the whole chapter.

Then the next.

The book was supposed to be a dry, theoretical summary of battle ethics and formation theory. But Sunghoon’s commentary made it something else, something alive. A chessboard built from memory. A quiet deconstruction of everything romantic people thought about war.

Jongseong hated it.

He hated that it made him want to keep reading.

He hated the way the notes painted a different Sunghoon, one who thought, not just endured. Who planned. Calculated. Saw twenty moves ahead and wrote them down because he expected someone to understand.

Jongseong flipped a page.

“Reflex-based loyalty is fragile. Build systems that reward clarity, not obedience.”

He exhaled, sharp and quiet.

His chest hurt a little.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that the man who wouldn’t speak more than six words at breakfast had once written like this. Had once commanded with his mind as much as his sword. Had once built sentences that rang like steel and carved out logic in blood and ink.

Jongseong closed the book gently. Held it in his lap for a moment.

He wasn’t sure what he was feeling.

Not admiration.

He refused to call it that.

Not jealousy, either, though it had that same hot taste at the back of his throat.

It was closer to something like… grief. Or awe. Something painful.

Because it was one thing to be married to a ruined knight. To hate him. To resent his silences, his limp, his ghost-heavy eyes.

It was another thing entirely to realize that underneath the limp, the silence, the carefully measured words, was a mind still blazing.

A man who had never stopped thinking.

Jongseong hated it.

He hated that it made Sunghoon real.

And real was dangerous.

Because Jongseong could ignore a legend. Could mock it, diminish it, call it furniture.

But this?

This was a person.

And it was harder to hate a person when you found out how brilliant they were.

He put the book back on the shelf.

Not hidden. Not tucked away.

Right where he found it.

And when he passed Sunghoon in the hall that afternoon, he didn’t say a word.

But he slowed.

Just a little.

Just long enough to wonder if the man with the cane still thought that sharply. Still wrote in the margins of his mind. Still saw ten moves ahead, even now.

Jongseong didn’t ask.

But he thought about it for the rest of the day.

Dawn hadn’t broken yet, not fully.

The world outside was still that particular shade of grey that made everything seem suspended, as though time itself were holding its breath. Jongseong stood on the upper balcony with one hand on the cold stone balustrade, his other wrapped around a half-sipped cup of tea gone lukewarm. He wasn’t supposed to be awake. He’d meant to sleep through the sun’s reluctant rising, but habit, or restlessness, had stirred him early.

Below, the grounds were hushed. The gardens lay wrapped in mist, the trees reduced to silhouettes, their branches trembling gently in the breeze. There was no wind, only suggestion. No birdsong yet. No human noise at all.

Until the hoofbeats came.

Jongseong heard them before he saw them, soft, rhythmic thuds muffled by the damp earth. Slow, deliberate, like a heartbeat echoing from the bones of the estate.

Then he saw the shape emerge.

At first, just the horse: dark, tall, proud even in its age. And beside it, moving half a pace behind, Sunghoon.

He wasn’t in uniform. No cloak, no pretense of ceremony. Just his plain coat, thick boots, and gloves that looked worn through at the knuckles. He walked with a slight unevenness, a subtle catch in the rhythm of his stride where the brace met frozen ground. But he didn’t limp, not truly. He adapted, as if the injury wasn’t something to hide, but something he had folded into himself like the spine of a closed book.

Jongseong didn’t move.

He stood at the edge of his own shadow and watched.

Sunghoon reached the eastern paddock. The fog swirled around him like a shroud, trailing from his shoulders, curling around the horse’s legs. Neither seemed bothered by it. Gaeul huffed, her breath misting in the chill, and Sunghoon reached up to stroke her flank.

It was… elegant. Not the word Jongseong would ever use aloud, but the only one that settled into his mind as he watched. Not because Sunghoon moved like a noble or postured like a statue, but because every motion was intentional. Quiet. Efficient. Stripped of anything unnecessary.

He didn’t speak to the horse. Not aloud. Just walked beside her, guided her slowly in a half-circle, stopped. Let her breathe.

Then started again.

Jongseong couldn’t look away.

He knew this was nothing new. Likely, Sunghoon had been doing this every morning since Jongseong’s arrival, maybe long before. But Jongseong had never bothered to ask. Never thought to notice.

And now, seeing it without permission, he felt… intrusive. As if he’d opened a door not meant for him. Not just because the scene was private, but because it was unbelievably honest.

There was no mask here. No tight-lipped stoicism meant to provoke or punish. Just a man and a beast moving through the fog like they’d been born to it.

Jay’s eyes narrowed.

He wasn’t sure what to make of the feeling tightening in his chest. It wasn’t fondness. It wasn’t even admiration. It was something colder, heavier. The realization of a truth he hadn’t prepared for.

That Sunghoon, despite everything, was not broken.

Scarred? Yes. Slower than before? Certainly.

But not ruined.

Not useless.

Not some half-man thrown at Jongseong as punishment for some political sin.

He had seen Sunghoon’s body, scarred, crooked, marred by pain and assumed the rest of him matched. Had wanted it to match. Because it made hating him easier. Made the arrangement tolerable. Made the silences justifiable.

But now?

Watching him move, soft and sure in the mist, hands gentle on a creature that no one else could touch?

Jongseong felt… wrong.

Unsettled.

Impressed in a way that tasted like betrayal.

He took a sip of tea and grimaced, it had gone cold. He set the cup down on the stone, forgetting it immediately.

Below, the horse paused. Sunghoon stood still beside her, both figures backlit by the weak grey glow of coming dawn. They were not still like statues, but like trees, living, rooted, patient.

Jongseong realized, suddenly, that he’d never seen Sunghoon laugh.

He’d heard the ghost of it once with Jaeyun. But not the real thing. Not the kind of laugh that lived deep in the chest, unguarded and unwilling to be tamed.

He wondered if Sunghoon laughed like he walked, with intention. Or if, perhaps, he only laughed when no one was watching.

He wondered why that thought ached.

The horse nuzzled Sunghoon’s shoulder. Sunghoon turned his face into the motion, eyes closed, resting his forehead gently against the mare’s neck. For a moment, they were one shape.

Jongseong drew back.

Not all the way. Just half a step, enough that the mist might hide him if Sunghoon looked up.

But Sunghoon never looked up.

He stayed there for another minute, then turned the horse and began the slow walk back toward the stables.

Jongseong remained at the balcony long after they’d vanished into the fog.

His fingers curled around the stone rail.

His chest felt hollow.

It wasn’t love. It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t even envy.

It was awe.

And that, perhaps, was the most dangerous feeling of all.

Jongseong didn’t knock.

He was too angry for politeness. Too tired for diplomacy. The day had begun with the steward missing again and ended with the baker threatening to sever deliveries over unpaid debts. Jongseong had spent hours trying to trace coin that no longer existed, arguing with men who believed this manor still held the weight of power it once did.

Sunghoon had not lifted a finger.

Not a signature, not a word of intervention, not even a damn glance in Jay’s direction.

And Jongseong was done.

He shoved the heavy door open with the flat of his palm, already half-shouting, “I need you to—”

He stopped.

Everything in him went still.

The air was thick with steam, curling lazily against stone walls. Light from a single low window filtered in through the mist, turning the room soft and gold-edged, like a painting left too long in sunlight.

And Sunghoon was in the bath.

The tub sat in the center of the room, an old, claw-footed thing made of iron and porcelain. Water lapped gently at its edge. Sunghoon’s back was to him, bare to the waist, pale skin gleaming with condensation. The brace on his right leg had been partially unstrapped, set aside within reach. The leg beneath was exposed, wasted muscle, pocked with old wounds, a long scar cutting cruelly down the outer thigh like a blade dragged from knee to hip.

Another scar traced the curve of his shoulder, jagged and white. More across his ribs, half-swallowed by water. And his hands…

His hands trembled.

Just faintly. The left one barely breaking the surface of the water as if undecided whether to sink or float.

Jongseong froze.

Sunghoon didn’t flinch. Didn’t turn sharply, didn’t grab for a towel.

He merely looked over his shoulder, eyes lidded and unreadable.

“Say what you came to say,” he murmured.

His voice echoed strangely in the wet air. Not sharp. Not cold. Just… steady. Tired. Like he had spoken those words many times before.

Jay’s mouth opened. Closed.

He couldn’t look away.

The scars should have repulsed him. That was what he told himself. They should have made Sunghoon small. Weak. Pitiful.

But they didn’t.

They were proof.

Proof of suffering. Of pain with no exit. Of every battle Jongseong had only ever heard sung about. But more than that, proof of survival. Of the sheer audacity to keep waking up each morning inside a body that had clearly tried to quit a hundred times.

And somehow, despite the damage, despite the way his right foot barely broke the surface and trembled just so, Sunghoon was still beautiful.

Not the kind of beauty one spoke of in polite company.

Not soft or clean.

He was the kind of beautiful that stories feared. A statue after the fire, blackened and cracked but standing.

Jay’s heart made a strange, unsteady leap in his chest.

He stepped back.

“I—” he tried, voice catching.

Sunghoon said nothing.

Jongseong turned.

He left the room without slamming the door.

He did not bring it up again.

That night, Jongseong could not sleep.

He lay flat on his back in the dark, eyes open, heart ragged in his chest like a tethered animal.

He hadn’t seen everything. He hadn’t needed to.

The scars were enough. The brace. The silence.

The dignity of it.

Jongseong had stormed in expecting cowardice. Laziness. The same detached coldness he always accused Sunghoon of wearing like armor.

Instead, he’d found a man bearing his wounds like a second skin. Quietly. Without ceremony. Without shame.

It made Jongseong feel like the shame belonged to him.

It made him feel young. And foolish. And small.

And it made him want.

He wanted—he didn’t even know what.

To touch? Yes.

To ask? Maybe.

To understand? Dangerous.

To press his mouth to one of those hideous, holy scars and whisper something reverent, something needy, something—no.

Jongseong sat up and pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes, hard.

It wasn’t real. It wasn’t anything. It was just shock. Pity, perhaps. That was all.

It had to be.

But when he finally lay back down, his hands remembered the outline of Sunghoon’s shoulders beneath water.

And when sleep did come, it came haunted.

The morning began in silence.

The kind of silence that felt almost respectful, birds still asleep, sky still grey, frost still clinging stubbornly to the edges of the windows like it had earned the right to stay.

Jongseong liked mornings like that. Liked being the only one awake, the only one moving through halls as if they belonged to him. Lately, they did. Sunghoon had grown more passive in the day-to-day operations, letting Jongseong bark at stewards and scribble in ledgers with the kind of desperate precision only the overlooked acquire.

So when Jongseong heard the hooves—six, no, eight of them—cutting clean through the hush like knives on slate, his body tensed on instinct.

He rose from the desk in the east drawing room and stepped to the window. The frost was beginning to melt now, revealing the slow arrival of a gilded carriage drawn by high-stepping, perfectly groomed horses. Their manes were braided with silver ribbon. The crest painted on the door was unmistakable: the royal sigil, newly updated with the insignia of the king’s second marriage.

Jay’s fingers curled around the windowframe.

Maids in fine silks stepped down first. Then footmen. Then a girl—no, a woman, though her beauty was still painted in the colors of youth. Her dress was winter-pink and fur-trimmed, her hair coiled into a crown of impossible braids. She held a lacquered basket filled with figs and cut pears, and another trailing with lengths of silk and folded letters sealed in gold.

She walked like she knew exactly where she was going.

Jongseong had only reached the front entry when he heard her laugh.

It was bright, almost musical, and horribly familiar. Not from his own memory, but from the stories courtiers always told about the princess the king never denied.

“Sunghoon!”

Jongseong turned the final corner just in time to see Sunghoon at the top of the steps, hair damp, jacket half-buttoned, cane forgotten somewhere behind him. He bowed to her, not a nod or a perfunctory lean, but a bow with weight behind it.

The kind given to people you don’t want to disappoint.

“Happy birthday,” said Princess Jang Wonyoung, lifting the baskets with a grin. “You didn’t think I’d forget, did you?”

Jongseong froze.

Birthday?

Birthday?

Sunghoon accepted the baskets with the kind of quiet, unreadable grace he gave everything. “You’ve come far,” he said.

Wonyoung shrugged. “You’re worth it.” Then she turned, eyes already shining with mischief. “Walk with me?”

Sunghoon hesitated for just a breath.

Then nodded.

Jongseong watched, stunned, as they descended the steps side by side, her hand brushing his elbow like it belonged there.

He wasn’t spoken to. Wasn’t even seen.

Just left.

Like a servant. Like a ghost.

Left to watch his husband walk away with a woman who knew the date of his birth, knew the right way to make him smile, knew him well enough to arrive unannounced and still be welcomed.

Jongseong stood rooted in place, every inch of him screaming.

He didn’t even remember how he got back to the study. The air felt too hot, the light too sharp. His own reflection in the glass door caught him, red-cheeked, too thin, shoulders hunched from long nights bent over account books.

You didn’t know it was his birthday.

The thought struck like a whip.

He hadn’t been told. Of course not. Sunghoon barely spoke to him about the weather, let alone the date of his birth. And why should he have? They weren’t husbands, not in the real sense. They were two men chained together by a contract written in royal ink and bitter irony.

Still.

Still.

Jongseong raged quietly, uselessly.

How long had they known each other? Wonyoung and Sunghoon? She was a child when the war ended, barely at court, yet she knew him. Had visited, clearly. Had brought gifts. Had walked with him like it was a ritual.

Jongseong clenched his jaw so hard it clicked.

The servants had seen, of course. They’d lingered in the halls, pretending not to watch. They always pretended. Jongseong could hear their whispered questions already. Why hadn’t he brought Sunghoon anything? Why had the princess remembered, and not the man meant to share his name?

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair, because no one had told him how to love this marriage. No one had told him how to un-hate the man with the cane and the scars and the thousand-yard stare. Jongseong had tried. Had pushed and needled and rearranged the whole estate with bleeding hands. But none of it mattered.

Because he didn’t get laughter.

She did.

Hours passed. He didn’t eat. Didn’t move.

When he finally stepped out, the afternoon light was low and bruised.

He found them in the garden.

Sunghoon and Wonyoung, seated on a bench beneath the half-dead pear tree. She was laughing again, about something Jongseong couldn’t hear. Sunghoon was smiling.

Not his polite court-smile. Not the faint-lip twitch he offered at dinners.

A real smile. Subtle, but real.

Jay’s hands tightened at his sides.

He turned before they could see him.

By the time Wonyoung and Sunghoon reentered the manor, the light had softened into that syrupy gold of a winter afternoon pretending to be gentle. Her hair glinted as she stepped out of the cold, her gloves draped lazily over one wrist, her smile still fixed in place, charming, patient, practiced.

Sunghoon’s pace was measured beside her. Slower now, as if the walk had taxed him more than he cared to admit.

Jongseong stood at the foot of the stairs waiting.

He had, in fact, been waiting for some time, just far enough from the windows to avoid being seen pacing. His expression was set, polite to the point of brittle. His posture screamed stillness, but his fingers tapped once, twice, against the spine of the book he wasn’t reading.

They stepped into the hall and paused.

Jongseong did not bow. Did not nod. Only looked at Wonyoung with the blankness of a man trying not to throw a candlestick at the wall.

“Princess,” he said with a courtier’s lilt, each syllable dipped in frost. “You’ve met my husband, I see.”

Wonyoung’s smile thinned, beautifully.

“Yes,” she said. “Quite thoroughly.”

Jongseong’s teeth clicked once, softly.

“I’m Jongseong,” he added, drawing himself up. “Sunghoon’s husband.”

He said it not as introduction, but as statement. Claim. Line in the dirt.

Wonyoung’s eyes flicked between them, her lashes delicate as a dagger. “How lovely,” she said, voice dipped in honeyed civility. “The letters never mentioned marriage.”

Jongseong raised a brow. “They wouldn’t. He barely speaks to me either.”

Sunghoon made no move to interrupt. He only closed the door behind them with a quiet click and stood beside Wonyoung like a portrait someone had forgotten to dust.

Jongseong smiled.

It was not a kind smile.

“I hope you’ll join us for dinner,” he said, turning before either of them could protest. “We don’t often get royal company these days, and the kitchen’s been tragically underused.”

Wonyoung hesitated, just a flicker, then dipped her head in agreement. “I’d be honored.”

Jongseong didn’t look back. He was already calling for maids, summoning the steward, flinging open cabinets and directing people like a captain barking orders before a storm.

He passed Sunghoon once in the hall, where he stood like a misplaced column in the middle of chaos.

“Is this necessary?” Sunghoon asked quietly.

Jongseong didn’t stop walking. “Is what?”

“All of… this.” He gestured vaguely to the fluttering skirts of maids and the clatter of wine bottles being uncorked in a hurry.

Jongseong didn’t even blink. “Forgive me. I wasn’t aware my husband’s friend would be gracing us with her presence today. I’d have baked a tart.”

“She’s not—” Sunghoon cut himself off. He exhaled through his nose. “Jongseong.”

“What?” Jongseong turned, smiling wide. “Is she not a dear friend?”

“She’s an acquaintance.”

Jongseong laughed. It was sharp, small, and entirely humorless.

“Darling, if that’s how you greet acquaintances, I fear what you do for lovers.”

Sunghoon’s jaw tensed, but he said nothing.

Jongseong turned again, calling for fresh linens and a second decanter of wine.

When the servants had scattered and the table was being hastily arranged, Jongseong stood by the hearth, watching the flame dance with the same manic energy he now felt thrumming in his blood.

He should not care.

It shouldn’t matter that Wonyoung knew about Sunghoon’s birthday. That she brought fruit and silks and memories wrapped in gold-leaf familiarity. That she had smiled at him like she owned a part of him, quietly, confidently, like someone who didn’t need permission to still be loved.

But it did.

It mattered far too much.

Jay’s hands curled against the mantel. He didn’t even notice when Sunghoon stepped behind him.

“She meant no harm,” Sunghoon said. “You don’t need to—”

“I do,” Jongseong snapped, turning to face him. “I do need to. Because every time I begin to understand this place, this arrangement, you do something to remind me how little I know.”

Sunghoon’s gaze didn’t flinch. “She was still a child when I returned from the war. I was sent to the palace to convalesce. Her mother was the only one who treated me as more than a political inconvenience.”

“Is that what she is to you, then?” Jongseong asked, eyes narrowing. “A product of gratitude?”

“She’s a reminder,” Sunghoon said. Quiet. Implacable.

Jongseong hated that tone. Hated the way it sounded like closure. Like finality.

“Of what?” he asked bitterly. “Who you used to be?”

Sunghoon didn’t answer.

He only stepped past Jay, moving with slow precision toward the table. His limp was more pronounced now. Jongseong didn’t know if it was from the walk or the confrontation.

He hated that he noticed at all.

Wonyoung swept in at twilight, glowing as if she had bathed in rosewater and vanity itself. She complimented the table, the décor, even the slightly overcooked venison. She asked after the steward’s health by name. She laughed at Jongseong’s most pointed jokes with feigned obliviousness.

Jongseong sat opposite her, wine in his hand, fury behind his smile.

Sunghoon spoke little, but he listened. That was worse somehow.

Because Jongseong could see it, the ease between them.

The way her hand brushed his arm in a way that wasn’t intimate, wasn’t flirtatious… just familiar. Like an old song played by memory.

Jongseong said little.

But beneath the table, his leg bounced. Just once.

And then again.

When the meal ended and the candles had burned low, Wonyoung rose with a graceful stretch and placed a hand on Sunghoon’s shoulder.

“It’s good to see you,” she said.

Then, after a beat, she turned to Jay.

“And to meet you.”

Jongseong smiled, sharp as broken glass. “The pleasure was mutual.”

She left to rest with grace of royalty, like a dancer bowing out after her final curtain.

The morning crept in pale and cold. The fog still clung low to the ground, reluctant to leave, as if the earth itself had secrets it wasn’t ready to reveal. The dining hall was quieter than usual, no bustle of servants yet, only the faint crackle of the hearth and the soft clink of teacups being placed with care.

Jongseong had not slept.

He had waited until he heard the faint stirrings of Wonyoung's maid moving through the guest wing before deciding to intercept her. Not to fight. Not to argue.

To ask.

Though what exactly, he wasn’t sure yet.

She arrived in the morning room alone, shawl drawn over her shoulders like a crown, still dew-damp at the hem. Her hair was braided less tightly today, a few strands falling loose against her neck.

“Princess,” Jongseong greeted, standing as she entered.

Wonyoung blinked in soft surprise. Then she smiled, not the razor-sharp court smile, but something gentler. “Lord Jay.”

“I thought you might like tea before your journey,” he said, gesturing toward the table. It was set for two. “I asked the cook to prepare your favorite.”

Her eyes flickered with something unreadable. She walked to the table and sat with the grace only royal blood seemed to grant. “Figs and cardamom,” she murmured. “You’ve done your homework.”

Jongseong offered a tight smile and took his seat across from her.

Steam curled upward from their cups. The silence was not awkward, but poised, like a held breath.

“You care for him,” Wonyoung said after a moment, eyes on the mist outside the window.

Jongseong blinked. “I don’t think I—”

“You invited me to dinner,” she continued, tone soft. “You smiled with your teeth. You called him your husband like it was a title you’d bled for.”

Jongseong didn’t speak.

Wonyoung lifted her tea, exhaled into it. “You may not like me, Lord Jay, but I do not lie about feelings.”

He leaned back in his chair, tension coiled beneath his skin like a drawn bow.

“You knew him before,” he said finally. “Before I was ever in the picture.”

Wonyoung’s gaze slid to him, quiet and sharp. “Yes.”

Jongseong swallowed the bitterness in his mouth.

“I was fourteen,” she said softly, “when he returned from war. They sent him to the palace because no one else knew what to do with him. My mother said he looked like a statue that had survived fire, still standing, but hollowed out.”

Jongseong pictured it: the stone halls, the gold and silence, a scarred young man limping through rooms too bright, too polished for his ruined frame.

“I followed him everywhere,” Wonyoung admitted, smile wan. “Like a shadow. He never told me to go away. Never indulged me either. But he let me be near.”

“And you loved him,” Jongseong said, not quite a question.

“I was a child,” she replied. “And he was... something more than human to me. Not because of the war stories. Because of how quiet he was. Like he knew things no one else would dare remember.”

Jongseong stared into his tea, the taste long forgotten.

“I thought,” she continued, “that we would marry. One day. When I was older, when the court had forgotten his limp and his silence. When I had earned the right to stand beside him.”

Jay’s hands clenched beneath the table.

“But my father said no,” she said, the smile curdling. “He said Sunghoon was no longer suited for alliance. Not marketable. Not… whole.”

The word hung between them like smoke.

Jongseong felt it slide down his throat like glass.

“He was cast off,” Wonyoung murmured, “and married to a man whose family needed silencing. You were his consolation prize, and I was... a remnant.”

Jongseong wanted to feel triumphant. Wanted to seize on the phrase, cast off, consolation prize, and use it like armor.

But all he felt was sick.

“Did he love you?” Jongseong asked, the question leaving his mouth before he could tame it.

Wonyoung paused.

She did not smile this time. Her eyes were downcast, her fingers circling the rim of her teacup like she was tracing the edge of memory.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He never let himself be seen like that.”

Jay’s breath caught.

Wonyoung looked up at him, gaze suddenly too clear. “He looks at you more than he ever looked at me.”

Jongseong said nothing.

Wonyoung set her cup down gently. “But he let me be near. That was enough for me.”

Jongseong stared at the rippling surface of his tea, hands unmoving, mouth dry.

He had been foolish to think the pain would be sharp. It wasn’t. It was slow, acidic. A long erosion of certainty.

He never let himself be seen like that.

Sunghoon had let Jongseong in only by accident. In glimpses. In fragments. A touch in the stable. A voice in the fog. A scar in the bath. But never enough to name.

Never enough to own.

“I should go,” Wonyoung said, rising. She gathered her shawl. “Thank you for the tea.”

Jongseong stood automatically.

Wonyoung paused at the door. She looked at him again, and this time, there was pity in her gaze. Not cruel. Not smug.

Just… pity.

“I don’t think he knows how to love out loud,” she said. “But I hope he learns.”

Then she was gone.

Jongseong stood alone in the morning room as the light crept through the curtains and the last of the warmth faded from the porcelain.

His mouth still tasted like blood.

He didn’t knock.

Jongseong didn’t even hesitate.

The study door groaned open under the force of his shoulder, crashing against the inner wall with a thud that echoed like thunder in the high-ceilinged room. Shelves trembled. A quill rolled off the writing desk and landed with a soft, traitorous tap.

Sunghoon looked up from his seat by the hearth. He didn’t flinch. He never did.

Jongseong hated that about him most of all.

“I suppose it’s locked to everyone but me,” Jongseong snapped, voice already ragged, sharp with something he hadn’t named yet. “How convenient.”

Sunghoon sat still, a book open in his lap, thumb holding the place. The fire cast his features in amber and shadow, half statue, half man. A fitting disguise.

“Say something,” Jongseong barked.

Sunghoon didn’t. Not yet. He merely watched Jongseong with that infuriating calm, as if waiting for the storm to finish tearing up the sky before taking shelter.

Jongseong stalked forward, boots loud on the polished stone floor. “You knew she was coming, didn’t you?”

“No,” Sunghoon replied. Quiet. Clipped.

Jongseong laughed, sharp and ugly. “Of course you didn’t. You just happened to dress for the occasion. Let her bring you fruit and birthday presents like some martyr she still kneels to in her sleep.”

Silence.

“She told me everything, by the way.” Jay’s voice dropped, but the venom thickened. “That she loved you. That she thought you’d marry. That you were taken from her like some war prize no one wanted.”

He began to pace now, the rage twisting through his spine like a snake, striking his ribs from the inside. “You let her come here, walk your halls like they still belonged to her. You smiled at her. Smiled! And I—”

He stopped, breath heaving. “I didn’t even know it was your damn birthday.”

Sunghoon set the book aside.

Jay’s hands curled into fists. “You didn’t think to tell me?”

“You never asked,” Sunghoon said evenly.

Jongseong lunged forward, eyes flashing. “Because you don’t offer anything, Sunghoon! You sit in your shadows and say nothing, feel nothing, do nothing! You let me drown in this house while you stare out windows like the world’s already ended!”

Sunghoon stood slowly, using his cane as he rose.

Jongseong didn’t stop.

“You hide behind that limp like it’s armor. You pretend silence is strength, when really you’re just afraid to live again. You’re a coward.”

The last word rang like a slap across stone.

And still, still, Sunghoon did not raise his voice.

He stepped forward, each movement deliberate, measured. His cane tapped once, then again. When he was close enough, he lifted both hands and laid them gently on Jay’s shoulders.

Jongseong stiffened.

Sunghoon looked him dead in the eyes, and for the first time in what felt like weeks—years, maybe—there was something behind the stillness. 

Just quiet, aching restraint.

“You’re angry,” he said simply.

Jongseong jerked away. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Talk to me like I’m a child having a tantrum.”

“You’re not a child,” Sunghoon replied, voice too calm. “You’re hurt.”

Jay’s vision blurred.

“I’m furious,” he spat.

“Yes,” Sunghoon said. “That too.”

Jongseong shoved at his chest. “Why don’t you fight me?! Why don’t you yell or slam the damn desk or feel something for once?”

Sunghoon didn’t stumble. Didn’t even sway.

Jongseong stepped back like he’d been burned. “You’re empty,” he hissed. “That’s what this is. You’ve hollowed yourself out so nothing can touch you again. And maybe Wonyoung loved what was left, but I don’t. I can’t.”

Sunghoon said nothing.

The fire crackled.

And that was what broke Jay.

Not a scream. Not an insult. Just the absence of anything.

Jongseong spun on his heel.

He made it to the door in four furious strides, and as he reached it, he turned once more, just enough to throw the words like knives over his shoulder:

“I hope whatever part of you died out there never comes back.”

And then he slammed the door.

The door shook in its frame.

Jongseong didn’t stop walking. He didn’t care where he went. His feet carried him down hallways he barely saw, out into the garden where cold bit at his throat and the sun felt too bright, too false.

He hated the way his heart was pounding.

Hated that his hands were shaking.

Hated that his chest felt hollow now too.

He stayed awake anyway, curled on the far side of the bed in the cold, staring at the empty half like it had betrayed him. Like he was the one who had been left behind.

Again.

And again.

The fire had been burning wrong since dusk.

Jongseong had lit it himself, refusing the maid’s help with a tight smile and a dismissive wave. She had looked at him like she wanted to say something, then thought better of it. And left.

The hearth in his chambers was not large, nor especially fine, but it was his. His wing of the manor, his fireplace, his bed, the only part of this estate that wasn’t shaped by Sunghoon’s silence.

Or so he’d told himself.

The smoke had started curling back into the room the moment the kindling caught. At first, it was subtle, a faint bitterness in the air, barely visible, but then it thickened, grey and curling, seeping toward the ceiling and staining the edge of the molding with damp, persistent grief.

Jongseong knelt by the hearth, hand braced on the soot-blackened stone. His sleeve was streaked with ash. He was already cursing under his breath, muttering oaths fit for stables and alleys, not married noblemen with silk hems and diplomatic marriages.

He jabbed the poker upward, searching for the catch on the flue, but it resisted him like everything else in this house. Rusted, or stuck. Or simply cruel.

He coughed, squinting against the smoke.

Behind him, the door to his chambers creaked open.

Jongseong froze.

He didn’t have to look back. He already knew the shape of that silence. The particular rhythm of steps told him exactly who it was.

Sunghoon said nothing. He didn’t ask. He didn’t clear his throat or knock or offer help.

He simply crossed the room in that maddeningly composed way of his, and then, with no permission asked, knelt beside Jay. One knee down, the other angled carefully to keep weight off the braced leg. He didn’t wince, didn’t sigh. Just reached forward with steady hands and adjusted the lever.

There was a quiet metallic groan. Then a soft whoosh as the flue opened properly.

The smoke began to rise as it should. The fire settled. The room exhaled.

Jongseong didn’t.

He kept his hands on his knees, jaw clenched. He could smell the soap on Sunghoon’s wrists, plain, herbal, infuriatingly clean. That scent stayed even as Sunghoon stood and stepped back, brushing off the soot on his palm with slow, efficient movements.

He turned to leave without a word.

Jongseong didn’t stop him.

Didn’t even look up until he heard the door click shut.

Then—softly, bitterly, after the echo had faded—he muttered, “Thank you.”

Too late.

Of course.

He stayed by the fire long after that, arms folded tightly, staring into the flames like they might explain what had just happened. As if the embers knew something he didn’t.

It was his chamber. His space.

Sunghoon had never entered it , not once, not in all the weeks of their marriage. Not during the sleepless nights. Not during the biting mornings. Not even after the dinner with Wonyoung, when Jongseong had wanted someone to tell him he wasn’t losing his mind.

And yet… tonight, he had come in. Seen the smoke. Fixed the problem. Left.

Like it was nothing.

Like Jongseong himself was nothing.

Jongseong stood abruptly, the legs of the chair scraping back against the floor. His hands were shaking again. He pressed them into the heavy curtains, trying to ground himself, but all he could think about was the heat of Sunghoon’s presence beside him. The surety of his movement. The quiet strength in it.

Coward, Jongseong had called him. 

And still, Sunghoon had fixed his fire.

Jongseong turned to look at the door. It stared back at him, shut and smug.

He wanted to punch it. Or open it and demand that Sunghoon come back just so he could say what? Apologize?

No. Not yet.

He couldn’t bring himself to do that.

Instead, he went to the small table by the window and poured himself a glass of the mulled wine the steward had left earlier. It was cool now, the spice bitter. He drank it anyway.

Outside, the wind had picked up. The trees in the garden swayed like they were whispering things he couldn’t quite hear.

Jongseong sat on the edge of the bed, the cup still in his hand. He watched the fire catch fully, no longer choking on its own smoke. He thought of Sunghoon’s hands, calm, assured, utterly steady, and how he hadn’t said a word the entire time.

Not even hello.

Not even are you alright.

He didn’t need to.

That was what made Jongseong want to scream.

He wanted to be hated back. Wanted shouting matches and slammed books and emotion, anything other than that quiet, bone-deep patience. It was unbearable. Because it meant Sunghoon wasn’t indifferent.

He was resigned.

And that was worse.

Jongseong let the glass slip from his fingers. It landed on the rug with a dull thud, miraculously unbroken.

He laid back against the coverlet, staring at the ceiling.

And for the first time in days, he let himself admit quietly, with no one there to hear that he missed the sound of Sunghoon’s voice.

The next morning, a fresh log had been placed by the hearth. Not by a servant.

And Jongseong, shame burning in his throat, said nothing.

But that night, he knocked, once, on Sunghoon’s study door.

Not to start another fight.

Just to ask… if he might borrow a book.