It had been nearly a year since the wedding. The bells had rung bright, the silks had flowed down the wooden halls, and the kingdom of Kouka had celebrated the union of its young sovereign and his bride with the fervor of a new dawn.

In the court’s eyes, the marriage was not merely a tradition—it was a necessity. A symbol of continuity. A comfort to the people still trembling from the king’s sudden death and the reshuffling of the throne. That the union was between royalty, childhood friends, was lauded as fate. A seamless shift.

But as the seasons turned, the murmurs began.

No heir.

No nights spent in the queen’s wing.

No whispers of silken footsteps crossing royal chambers in the hush of night.

Soo-Won had always treated her with the warmth of an elder sibling—soft, ceremonial, affectionate in the way a spring breeze might gently stir a tapestry and then retreat. He never raised his voice, never denied her requests, and walked beside her in public with the same golden grace that had won him the crown. But a husband only in name. Behind closed doors, their marriage was a hollow sculpture: lovely to behold, hollow in its center.

They lived in separate quarters. His door remained locked. And he had not, in the eleven months since their marriage, once crossed the threshold of her bedchamber.

The court gossiped behind lacquered fans. Servants shared rumors over folded linens. The bolder ministers called it a quiet disgrace. Whispers of the king's affections leaning toward his own sex slithered through corridors, but they were merely whispers—ones Soo-Won, with his clever poise and piercing gaze, could extinguish without ever raising his voice.

Only one man ever passed freely through the guarded entrance to the king’s private study.

The general.

The old guards who remembered the days before the coronation said it was no surprise. They’d been close since they were boys. Training together. Fighting side by side. Always too close for anyone to quite unravel.

Tonight, the study door was locked, as always.

She had not been looking for anything. The storm had stirred her from sleep. The patter of rain against the palace roof reminded her of nights long before politics and silk-bound duties. Of a time when voices echoed down the halls freely.

She wandered without aim. Her bare feet barely made sound against the cool stone. A faint noise from behind the heavy door of the study—a low laugh, a rustle of movement—drew her pause.

Her fingers grazed the wall beside the study’s frame, tracing the faded etching of a dragon carved there centuries before. That was when she saw it. A thin, jagged slit in the wall—narrow, like a fault in stone, left from the last reconstruction.

Curiosity, quiet as breath, pulled her closer.

The flickering light of the oil lamp illuminated part of the room. The rest glowed in silhouettes and half-shadow. She saw the curve of a bare shoulder. Fingers curling against the small of a back. A low moan, muffled by lips pressed firmly together.

Soo-Won.

And Hak.

Entwined in the center of the study, wrapped in the kind of embrace she had never been offered.

One of Soo-Won’s hands was in Hak’s hair. The other dug fingernails on his arm while he pounded into Soo-Won, whose hips arch forward to meet each thrust. Their mouths were locked, fevered and unrelenting, movements fluid with long-practiced hunger.

The king’s head tilted back slightly as Hak whispered something against his throat, and the look on his face—raw, unguarded, undone—was one she had never seen. Not once.

Her breath caught.

And the crack in the stone seemed to widen.