Ecstacy of Love (vsoo)

3. I will not leave you.

Edited

Taehyung’s POV

The dimly lit room in the inn felt colder than usual as I sat across from Namjoon hyung and Hoseok hyung, discussing the serious matter at hand. Our eyes flickered toward the man bound to the chair, unconscious but still a threat. His black hanbok was stained with dirt, and his long hair hung in disarray, a reminder of the struggle he had put up. Namjoon had knocked him out, using considerable strength—no easy feat, given the man's martial prowess. He had fought well, and I was impressed by his skills, but now he was at our mercy.

"Taehyung, what shall we do about him?" Namjoon hyung asked, his voice calm but with a slight edge of concern. He was always the practical one, trying to keep us grounded.

I glanced at the man, whose eyes remained shut, lost in unconsciousness. "He knows something. He’s part of the bigger picture, but he’s not talking," I said, my voice tight. "We need to make him speak."

Hoseok hyung leaned forward, his gaze serious. "How about we give him our secret service until he tells us who’s behind everything? You know the one." His tone was calculated, and I could hear the dark implication in his words.

I nodded, the plan already forming in my mind. "Yes, we’ll use the secret treatment. He needs to understand the pain of keeping this secret. But don’t let him die, Hoseok. He knows too much about what's been happening behind the scenes. We need information, not a corpse."

Hoseok hyung gave a knowing nod. "Understood. I’ll handle it. You don’t have to worry about him dying, but I’ll make sure we get the answers we need."

With that, Hoseok hyung and his men took the unconscious assassin away, leaving me and Namjoon hyung to discuss the details of the recent attack. The whole situation was starting to feel like a tangled web that was getting harder to unravel. We had been tracking the assassin's movements for days, ever since we discovered that there was a team targeting the Crown Prince. But that wasn’t the only threat lurking in the shadows.

The moment we arrived in the countryside, we realized that something was off. The Crown Prince’s visit was supposed to be discreet, but it didn’t take long before we were ambushed by a group of highly skilled assassins. They seemed to be prepared for us—our plans to move swiftly and quietly had failed, and we were outnumbered.

I didn’t mind the fight; I’d seen plenty of action in my time as an army lord. But things took a dark turn when one of the assassins, someone I had once trusted, fired a poisonous arrow directly at me. I could feel the venom coursing through my veins almost instantly. It was unlike anything I had experienced—sharp, excruciating pain that clouded my senses.

At that moment, I thought I was going to die. The poison was so potent that I could barely hold onto my sanity, my body teetering on the edge of collapse. I welcomed death—it was easier than enduring the pain. But I couldn’t die, not yet. The kingdom’s safety depended on me, and I knew I couldn’t leave them in this chaos.

That’s when she appeared—the woman who had saved me. She came out of nowhere, like a vision of strength and grace, and helped me fight off the poison. She was no healer, yet somehow, she managed to treat my wound. The poison was rare, almost impossible to cure, but she worked with such precision that I could feel the pain dulling.

She was like nothing I had ever seen before. She moved with the confidence of someone who had lived through hardship, someone who had survived on their own. I felt like I owed her everything—she had saved my life. But it wasn’t just that. There was something about her that kept me coming back to thoughts of her, something that made my heart ache every time I remembered her hazel eyes, her unwavering determination, the way she stood against all odds.