Your Highness {NamJin}

twenty two

A plain, undecorated clay bowl held the steaming cup of venom, fitting for the criminals' last drink on Earth. It swirled with gleaming eagerness, seeming to twist and churn like great waves over a stormy green sea. It was placed before Mirin first, and she stared down at the poison with wide eyes. Her entire life seemed to pass through and collect in the bowl of her fatal deeds, and she couldn't help but imagine all her work and efforts to step on others being shoved down her throat in the form of nearly boiling, imminent death.

Rinji took the floor for the last time, seemingly hovering over the carpeted ground as if she were a ghost. All emotion seemed to have left her face, and had she not been dressed in the beautifully colored garb of the heiress of a kingdom, Mirin would've taken her for a ghost. Approaching the woman, she looked over at Namjoon, awaiting some sort of signal in a sullen manner.

Namjoon didn't even lift his arm from the throne's armrest, only outstretching his fingers and opening the palm of his softly calloused hand.

With that, Rinji raised her arm towards her aunt, smiling emotionlessly as she brought it down once more with heavy force over Mirin's right cheek.

The woman gasped, made to turn to her left by the impact of Rinji's blow. She turned slowly, looking up at the empty countenance of her niece with tears in her eyes.

"H-How dare you"--

"Shut up"--

Rinji lashed at her again, this time slapping her with more momentum and force than the last.

"--you haggard, old witch. That was for Hancheol," Rinji breathed, speaking through clenched teeth and hardened chest.

"This is for Uncle Yoongi"--

slap

--"and Uncle Hoseok"--

slap

--"and Chindeok"--

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--"and Sooyoung"--

slap

--"and my mother"--

slap

--"and my father" --

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--"and His Divine Grace"--

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--"and His Majesty"--

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--"and for me!"

Rinji pulled herself away before she could spill the drink on the floor, almost stomping away from Mirin and towards the stairs ascending to the two thrones. She had worn a long, silver pendant that hung around her neck and reached down to her hips to the trial that evening without intent to use it, but reasoning seemed absent to her in that moment, and it was the closest thing in reach that wouldn't immediately kill the murderess behind her.

Taking the necklace off her shoulders, she harnessed the chain in her hands and brandished its potential energy, whipping around to thrash the woman with it.

She gave the necklace to Sooyoung, placing the pendant in her hands without any regard for Mirin's whimpering or pain.

"Please have that cleaned for me, Sooyoung. I'd hate to wear it again while her rancid fumes are on it."

Sooyoung bowed, kneeling with the item as Rinji made her way back to the steps. She bowed before the royals, then briskly walked up to her silent yet approving parents.

"The time has come to execute justice!" Seokjin said, waving his sleeve over his intricately embellished robes. "Say your last and drink the poison!"