Crowned Prince | hendery

13: Smile

Some say silence when a storm is coming is the most chilling. Maybe she was drowned by the thought of flood problems in her old kingdom, where it was usually silent before all else broke loose. But at this moment, where she and Hendery were sitting for the first time in their shared living area, she could feel the odd peace that she feared.

Taeha leaned on her hand and simply watched as Hendery's eyebrows stuck to one another. One of his hands was busy flipping through the papers, while his other hand massaged his temple.

"Shall I help you?" She finally asked after nearly an hour of sitting here and watching him.

Hendery raises his head, shocked by her offer, but simply shakes his head. "You are no one related to Hwei."

That line hurt her a bit, though she could not deny, as long as she is only his betrothed, she had no obligations towards this kingdom.

"If things turn for the worse," he sighs and looks back down on his paper, "it would be better that you do not associate yourself with political affairs of this kingdom until we wed."

Taeha sighs. "For someone who has a pile of papers to finish," she grabs a handful from the towering pile of application to the imperial knight, "you use your mouth too much."

"Princess–"

"I do not want to hear anything else from you." She begins scanning through the several application papers she has in hand. "I'm sure you've heard of the tale of my romance," she scoffs as she nearly throws an application not worthy enough to be a knight, but Hendery mistakes this as a reaction from beginning her story, "love forbidden," she pauses and looks up at him, "rather, love hated."

"I do not dive into gossip of the kingdoms." He lies.

Taeha simply raised an eyebrow at him. "You jest." She placed the pile of papers on top of her thighs. "There has been no ear in this continent that the story has not reached," she forces a smile on her face, "and unlike yours, ours was displayed like vases found in a cave."

Hendery shakes his head then decides to look down.

"Do you have any idea why father and Farox have been at odds?"

"Political matters," Hendery nods his head. It was both a tale of romance and a tale of politics. The current king was nothing more than a replacement of the old rulers of Sui, he was the sixth in line to the throne. He had no intention of setting his ambitions higher than working in court. That was until he fell in love. To a pianist in Farox, after he was told by the former royal family to attend to a matter in Farox. Some say their love was one that was for the books, it was as if the moment they set their eyes upon one another there was no turning back.

The leader of Farox should've realized this. That even if the current king was nothing more than a mere son of a duke, that the fire that burned that night with a pianist from their land was one that could not be tamed. Thus, when the king of Farox took it upon himself to enslave the pianist and make her play inside the castle even as her fingers turned numb and bleed, all hell broke loose with the current king. He sought assistance from his father– the duke– and his uncle– the former king, yet he was turned down. In absolute desperation, the only way he could've liberated his beloved was to be king himself.

"My father still holds that grudge until this day." She picks up the paper on her thighs. "As the king of Farox is to be chastised for his way of treating humans that are not noble, my father was in no way to be forgiven for his determined way to save his beloved." She shakes her head as she throws another entry into the– now, growing pile of rejected applications.

"I have spoken to your father a number of times."

"You have?" Taeha was shocked to hear that nobles approached her father at all.

"He is the king of Sui," Hendery lifts his shoulders up and decides to finally put down the pile in his hands, "and in every single time I have spoken to him, the queen of Sui gets mentioned along."

"My father's a lovesick fool." She puts down the stack of papers she stole from Hendery's pile on the coffee table. As a childish smile plays on her face after insulting her father.

"If anyone would hear us now they would think we're speaking bad about the king of Sui." Even Hendery was trying his best not to smile.

Hendery was sitting on a single couch, one that sat a lot further away from the princess. While Taeha sat at the edge of the long couch that sat at the middle of the loveseat to her left and the two single couches to her right, where Hendery was sitting. That was originally how they sat, but he decided to take a leap towards sitting on the same couch as she was.

"Among the kings of the kingdom," Hendery thought he was now sitting on the same couch as the princess, refuses to face her and simply leaned forward, "he has the most humor among them."

He smiled.

Taeha couldn't help but notice the smile on his face made something circle within her.

She looks away and takes a deep breath. "When he cracks jokes no one on our table laughs."

Though she was reminiscing about her family, no image of them was playing in her head. All that seemed to fill it was that image of a smile on Hendery's face. She even saw it from his profile. It was as if she was anticipating the next time he smiles, one that would face her.

"I would like to thank you," Hendery interrupts her thought of him, "for the thing that had happened in the northern county." He finally looks at her with eyes that seem to pierce right through her.

She was trying her best not to be swayed.

But things are easier said than done.

"It is but mine to be there for you." Although she said this with no other intention but to say that he could rely on her, the sudden change in the way he looked at her made her blush almost immediately.

This time, his eyes were kind, almost too kind. If it would sparkle, it should have at that very moment. She saw his mouth loosen up as it formed into a small 'o' and how he backed up all of a sudden. She pressed the behind of her hand to her cheek, both to check on it and to calm it down.

She was no stranger to romance. She was not a child experiencing this all for the first time, she knew what she was feeling, yet she could not seem to admit it at all.

"I have misspoke." She stands up from the couch, no longer looking at him or watching his reactions scared that even those would be imprinted into her mind. She bows her head quickly before running towards her room and shutting it behind.

As soon as the door had closed. She leans against the door with her forehead and her hand still holding onto the knob. She takes deep breaths, as if every time she blew air away from her his image would go away. That wasn't the case, as with every breath she took in and every moment she closed her eyes, it was his smile.

She takes a deep breath in, before releasing it and closing her eyes. The look of shock plays in her head.

Taeha was no stranger to her feelings of romance, and there was no denying that she was infatuated with the prince. 

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