The Birth of The Prince and The Raven

Part 2

Kim Rok Soo felt a bit wronged by his current circumstances.

While, yes, he had smacked the territory lords eldest son across the head with some force he was quite confident in saying that the lout deserved it.

There was no reason to throw him in prison.

Normally Kim Rok Soo had absolutely no reason to think or care about Cale Henituse, local trash. While it was true that Cale had more drunken disorderlies than even his significantly wealthy family could cover up, he so rarely crossed paths with people of Rok Soo's stature in society that it was just irrelevant to him.

And while it was true that Cale was known to break stuff and pick fights when he was drunk, he also only ever did so with punks and criminals. Since Kim Rok Soo was neither of those two things, Cale was unlikely to ever cross paths with him.

And Rok Soo liked it that way. He had absolutely no intention of getting involved with the idiot who picked a fight with Choi Han and got himself beaten half to death. For that matter, Kim Rok Soo planned to leave the territory long before Choi Han ever showed up.

Nothing good could come from getting involved with that munchkin.

But Cale had picked a fight with some goon who happened to be sitting near where Rok Soo was enjoying a long awaited meal with his two tiny companions. The table had been flipped, the food had been lost, and the children were going to go hungry.

Kim Rok Soo couldn't be blamed for losing his temper.

"Hey, idiot! Don't waste food!"

And with that, he'd knocked the young master in the back of the head.

Of course, it probably wouldn't have been all that bad for him if it had just ended with that.

"How dare–"

"No! Shut up, you spoiled piece of shit. Not everyone gets a meal everyday, you mindless drunken oaf!"

Yeah, Rok Soo might have taken it a bit far. He also might have hit Cale a few more times before the pair was separated. Rok Soo rubbed his sore cheek where Cale had managed to land a punch on him.

The situation hardly seemed fair.

He shouldn't have done it though. He was worried about On and Hong. They had wisely backed away from the growing chaos when Rok Soo had urged them to but now they were alone.

He felt a stab of guilt at that. Those kids were his responsibility and now he was spending a night in jail over something stupid.

...he'd probably do it all again though. That lousy brat needed some damn sense knocked into him.

Rok Soo let out a long suffering sigh and leaned against the wall, eyeing the other occupant of the cell who had remained silent this whole time.

She looked young, maybe in her late teens or early twenties, but her eyes were cautious and distrustful in a way that Rok Soo was all too familiar with.

It was the sort of look he saw in the mirror a lot.

She was curled up in a tight ball, taking up as little space in her dark corner as she could. She hadn't once looked away from him since he entered, as if waiting for him to present as a dangerous entity.

He couldn't tell much else about her due the dark tattered cloak that was tightly wrapped around herself. Her deeply distrustful red eyes and pale face were the only things he could glean.

It really didn't look like a person that Rok Soo wanted to get involved with. She had 'dark backstory' written all over her and he definitely didn't want to find out how she was connected to the overarching plot of this stupid book.