Journey Into the Knight

Chapter Thirty

TaeOh did not know what to think at first when there was a knock on his door in the early hours of the morning. He got to his feet hesitantly, wondering if he should even answer it, his men knew better than to wake him up for nothing, this had to be important.

What he did not expect was to find YongSun at his door. Her eyes were wide with fright, she was still wearing her night clothing, a cloak hastily thrown on top. "YongSun?" He asked quietly as if he could not tell it was her, he was just surprised to see her, how did she even get past the others.

She looked around. "I need to talk to you." When he made no move forward she added. "Now."

Something serious was going on, he grabbed his coat off the hook by the door, sliding it on as he stepped out of his room. "Okay but not here."

There was no one in the hall. That explained how YongSun got to his bedroom, but there should have been someone on duty. "I may have started a small fire nearby to draw the guards away." She said answering his silent question.

TaeOh nodded, still kind of asleep, he should've been able to throw the fatigue away easily but the days of endless research he had been doing lately had taken up a lot of his sleeping time.

TaeOh led YongSun to one of the gardens, he knew that none of the guards patrol the gardens late at night, they were too busy attending to the sleeping royals. Queen Joy loved her gardens but she hardly used them except to have a tea party.

The particular garden TaeOh decided to go to with the princess, looked like it didn't belong to the castle, in fact, when he first went to that place, he didn't even realize that he was still on the property.

Large grey stone walls fenced the garden in making it appear like a giant trap, something that wasn't very noticeable to Yongsun's eyes because of how dark it was, only TaeOh, who learned the layout of the whole castle including the gardens. He knew better.

This particular garden stopped being used by the royal family because it was a blind point for the guards. The reason behind was that the place was there when the castle was being built and it served as a dumpster. The walls were used as the thing that prevented the original king and his court from seeing what was inside and only the staff could access it through the servants quarters, now the guards barracks.

After king Henry inherited the castle he made a lot of changes, one of them was to clear the dumpster and change the staff into a safer place inside the castle, instead, he demolished and built better and improved barracks for his growing army. When he was asked about the dumpster, the king saw that it was more of an investment to demolish it than to keep it and do something else with it and it was the queen's petition to turn it into a garden even if it wasn't going to be used.

At first, queen Joy would go there accompanied by guards and her maids to take care of the plants but the king demanded to stop the visits due to the lack of safety of the place, no other guards but the ones with her could keep an eye on Joy because of the walls. After long years, the place was still there but different. The plants that were carefully placed in the past had grown into a messy forest. The main walkway was lined with stone benches and bushes in between them, big trees growing over them.

TaeOh walked YongSun deep into the garden, to be sure they would not be overheard. The heart of the garden was a small pond of irregular shape housed by the forest. Large rocks formed the outline of the pond and lilies of different colors grew in between.

They had to cross a small stone bridge that was hardly noticeable due the many plants and trees that surrounded it. Finally, he walked her to a small sitting area near the water and sitting down next to each other, he motioned for her to tell him what was going on.