Chapter 12: The Moon Pavilion

"What did you say?"

But the court ladies had already taken Yeonseo out into the snow.

Soyul stood in the Queen Dowager's doorway and watched the lantern go away across the white courtyard.

Of course, Yeonseo had said.

As if she had known which night it would be.

Captain Kang's hand came to rest on Soyul's back, just for a moment, between her shoulders.

"Come inside," he said. "You're shaking."

She wasn't cold.

She didn't sleep.

He sat on the step outside her door until dawn with his sword across his knees.

Every time she turned over, she could see his shadow on the paper.

The next evening the snow had stopped, and the whole Detached Palace was white and silent.

Two of Captain Kang's guards stood at the gate of Yeonseo's courtyard.

He went to them and said something low.

They stepped aside.

"I'll be at the gate," he told Soyul. "If she so much as reaches for a teapot, shout."

Yeonseo's room was cold.

Her brazier had gone out and nobody had come to light it.

Her maid was in the Inner Gate cell, and no other maid would come near a woman confined for poison.

She sat at her go board in grey silk with a quilted jacket over it, playing both sides.

She didn't look up.

"Lady Baek. Come to gloat?"

"Come to bargain."

"You've already made one bargain with me." She set a white stone. "You didn't keep it very well."

"Neither did you."

Soyul knelt across the board from her.

The youngest finalist's door slid open an inch across the courtyard, and closed again.

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