Sent as the Alliance Leader's Hostage Husband novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: The Red Cord
Gyeong-wook picked up the vial and pulled the stopper.
He sniffed it once.
"Monkshood and something sweeter," he said. "Slow."
Ye-han lay very still.
"It was given to you," Gyeong-wook said, "by the man who gave you the needle."
"Yes."
"Ye-han."
"Don't say my name in that voice."
"Which voice?"
"The one that is going to ask me a question I cannot answer prettily."
Gyeong-wook turned the little bottle in his fingers.
It caught the lamplight.
"Then answer it ugly," said the Leader of the Martial Alliance.
So Ye-han sat up in the bed with his knees pulled to his chest and told him all of it.
He told Gyeong-wook about the Peace of Nine Seals, and the regent who smiled like a favourite uncle.
Gyeong-wook did not interrupt once, and his thumb never stopped moving over Ye-han's ankle.
He told him the Cult would say the Leader had killed the hostage, or the hostage had killed the Leader.
Either way the Alliance would take the blame, and the war would be back by spring.
He told him he was meant to lie in this bed and be loved, and murder him slowly.
He was shaking by the end.
Gyeong-wook sat there with the vial in his hand and did not move.
When Ye-han had finished, he asked his question.
"Do you want to?"
Ye-han stared at him.
"That is all you have to say?"
"You told me what you were sent to do.
"I'm asking what you want."
"I..." Ye-han's voice cracked. "No."
"No?"
"No.
"No, I do not.
"I haven't wanted it since the courtyard, when you caught that sword."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Sent as the Alliance Leader's Hostage Husband are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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