Yeon-woo begins her grueling princess training, which involves learning to bow without making a candle flicker and walking with plates on her arms. She cringes adorably as plates come crashing down, one after the other.
Prince Hwon sends her a snack and a letter, saying that he wishes he could see her every day, but he’ll have to wait and cherish the anticipation of seeing her as his bride.
That night, Shaman Nok-young waits, and the queen dowager comes to Seongsucheong shrouded in black to give the kill order. Nok-young begins a spell, and raises a dark cloud of smoke. Wait, are you raising the Lost Monster to kill Yeon-woo? Because I don’t have five seasons to wait for her ineffectual demise.
The black cloud rises up and finds Yeon-woo asleep in her chamber. It wraps around her neck and chokes her, as she crawls to the door and struggles for breath. But she collapses before she can call out for help, and the cloud dissipates, leaving her lying on the ground unconscious.
The queen dowager asks if it is done, and Nok-young explains that it’s beyond her power to mess with the balance of the universe – she can’t kill someone whose death is already determined by the fates. The cloud was to give Yeon-woo an illness, grave enough to get her ousted from the palace.
The queen dowager wants to see her dead, but decides that maybe this is better all around, since killing her now would just raise suspicion. She agrees that this is a satisfactory method, that is, if Nok-young sees it through to the end, otherwise it’s both their necks.
And then she goes to the neighboring chamber to greet a trembling Princess Min-hwa, who has witnessed everything. It’s clear the queen dowager wanted her to, though for what purpose we have yet to find out.
The queen dowager says in that creepy fake-nice way that now Princess Min-hwa can have everything that she wants.
Days pass and Yeon-woo’s condition worsens, and the king meets with his assembly to discuss the matter. They argue that she be sent out of the palace at once, afraid of what contagious disease she may have brought inside the palace walls.
The king wants to wait, but Minister Yoon interjects, arguing that the future queen who is to bear the next line of kings can’t be of ill health. He takes it further to imply that it’s an illness she and her family knew about and that they must be punished for keeping it secret.
He names her father Minister Heo, and ever her brother Yeom as culprits. Oh damn, so this is what the queen dowager meant. If they can use this to oust Yeon-woo’s entire family from the palace, then Princess Min-hwa no longer has obstacles to keep her from marrying Yeom.
There’s nothing the king can do to stop the fear of a contagious disease that threatens the royal family, and Yeon-woo is escorted out of the palace, along with the order to burn everything she touched.
Prince Hwon hears the news and comes rushing to see her, eyes bloodshot from crying. Guards stand in his way to keep him from going near her, and he demands to be let in, screaming that she is to be his wife.
Yeon-woo gets led out and sees Prince Hwon trying to get past the guards. He calls out her name as tears fall, and she looks up at him, broken-hearted. He screams and screams, crying for her, as she turns back one last time to look at him before she’s led away. *sob*
The queen dowager watches it all unfold, as she thinks back to Minister Yoon’s warning that Prince Hwon is not just a silly child, as she assumes. He reminds her that he mobilized Sungkyunkwan, and that he understands how politics works.
So she gives him a talk, to urge him to forget Yeon-woo. He can’t, of course, but she reminds him that this is all his fault. He looks up, startled. If he hadn’t moved Sungkyunkwan, if he hadn’t been selfish, then Yeon-woo would just be a normal girl, living peacefully at home, and if she got sick, she’d just be tended to by her mother, without it having cataclysmic political implications.
