NEFARIOUS

23 / 이십 삼

 Yoong Il kept hearing the strange boy's words from last event over and over again. It haunted her ears with every menace in his word.

 "It is a warning from the Falcon," the strange boy had said. "For you to not tangle into our business."

 She'd frowned at him. "And you expect me to obey you?"

 "He did not ask you to obey him anything, Your Highness," the calm tone in his tone had sparked a slight fear within her. "Just wait patiently until our job is done, that is all."

 However, when an impostor had failed to replace the missing spy because he was caught by the palace guards, the strange boy swallowed a pill of poison and choked his life to death.

 Yoong Il still remembered how his hollowed eyes staring at the blue sky, with crimson blood sprinting out of his mouth. She watched him until his soul was taken from his body, until he heaved a last sigh into the world.
And the stillness of the onlookers terrified her.

 Different from the strange boy, the impostor didn't decide to take his own life, letting the palace guards to take him for further investigation. The Falcon might have been the most ruthless killer in the kingdom, but a human sometimes made mistakes too. His recklessness would be a doom for her as well.

 Into the breeze of evening, Yoong Il sighed. She had been standing on her balcony since the sun had begun to set, and she hadn't no idea of what she was doing. Her mind wandered to one place to another, thinking of her next move.

 Commander Kwan and Minister Gyeong would be presumably investigating the chaos in Sinmumun gate and Jibok-jae at the moment, and it would take only a few hours until the traces led back to her.

 She stared above, at the starless sky and the void of night. The King had always been an unpredictable person. It would be uneasy to read his next move. Though Yoong Il was his daughter illegimately, her father wouldn't see her as one, merely as one of the puppets he tried to control in his own game.

 Yoong Il wasn't one to be played. She wanted to rip the string from her skin and be free. But the King was respected by his own men. He had the power she didn't have.

 The Councilmen listened to his voice, and it appeared the Chief State Concilor found some liking in him as well. Though it was not fondness that brought them together, rather greed and lust of power, but they all shared some common sense of goal. With their hidden secrets and desire for something big and new.

 "Your Highness?" a voice broke her from reality.

 She turned, meeting a young servant who bowed to her deeply. When she couldn't find Jin in her chamber, she felt a slight disappointment.

 The old woman was vanished from her sight at the time she needed her most. "His Majesty asks for your presence," the girl continued.

 Yoong Il should have expected this. But her vision turned into a mist of winter, hazing to keep her from reality. The image of her mother laying soulessly on the ground appeared in her mind again, haunting her like a hungry monster looking for its prey. She could feel her father's piercing strokes over her head, and his chilly whispers on her ears. Your mother has tried killed you, she heard his heavy voice. It felt real and close to her. Your mother-

 "Your Highness?" the servant girl glanced at her strangely, as if Yoong Il's thoughts were visible to her.

 Yoong Il blinked rapidly to clear her mind. "Pardon me," she muttered, striding toward her door without casting another look over her shoulder.

 Her father was waiting for her. She shouldn't waste anymore time.

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