Queen of Roses

33) First Kill

Jennie was innocent. She had not intended to lose Taeyong among the tavern crowd that night. It was an honest mistake. A momentary lapse in judgement, if you will.

Under normal circumstances, she would have remained as focused as a hawk and never allowed him out of her sight. But there was nothing normal about their situation – saving princesses and restoring national unity and all.

And perhaps the weeks she had spent hauling around the cruel but emotionally confused young man had sparked a bizarre bond between the two. An understanding. A weakness. Being stuck together on so many occasions had forced them to engage in real conversations, and she had soon found herself not opposed to babysitting the hostage. Looking after him had become both a responsibility and a hobby. Maybe that had caused her to develop an unconscious trust for him that reassured her he would not escape.

Only now, as she stormed through Donggyeong's narrow roads on horseback in search of him, did she realize how wrong she was. He had entered her world at a time where she was most vulnerable and used every interaction, every sarcastic comment as a tool to break down her walls little by little. And he had succeeded. She had foolishly let her guard down for a mere moment and he had already vanished.

It would not have posed as much of a threat if she had lost any other person in the world. But, the fact that Taeyong was a corrupt serial killer, hell-bent on killing the only heir to the throne (who also happened to be the woman Taehyung loved) provided them with just a little bit of a problem.

Jennie was not sure what she was expecting to find as she roamed through the town. Pools of blood and a path of dead bodies automatically came to mind when she pictured a normal hostage on the loose – but a part of her held onto the little shred of hope remaining in her for Taeyong's humanity.

She was surprised to finally find him in the town centre, casually sitting on the executioner's block where Mingyu's officers had almost murdered a child earlier that day. Somehow, he had rid himself of his restraints and was now distractedly playing with the noose of rope that was meant to kill the boy.

Breathing a huge sigh of relief and running a hand through her sweat-dampened dark hair, Jennie hopped off her horse and slowly approached him. A normal person may have been frightened to face a freshly released murderer, but Jennie had never been scared of Taeyong. Much to his dismay.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find you here," she noted sarcastically, causing him to glance up at her, "as a killer, an executioner's block is like your natural habitat, after all."

She expected him to challenge her sarcasm with a remark of his own, or at the very least to run away, but was surprised to see his jaw clench and his focus to shift back to the rope laying in his hands.

"I have not killed as many people as you may think," he muttered, his eyes unfocused and distant, "...and never a child."

Deeming it safe to do so, she took a seat beside him on the ledge of the wooden post. If she didn't know better, she would think Taeyong was feeling remorse for the day's events.

She turned towards him with an amused glint in her eyes which she attempted to hide to the best of her abilities, "what is this? Is Lee Taeyong finally feeling an... an... an emotion?"

She said it in such a dramatic way, clutching a hand to her heart and nudging his shoulder, that he couldn't help but chuckle.

"You wish," he tried to mask the humour in his eyes, but not before she had noticed it.

"Then why are you still here? Why are you not trying to hunt down the princess? Don't you have a mission to complete? What kind of an assassin are you?"