The Painter and the Prince Who Cannot Be Painted novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Twelve Nights
The key scraped in the lock on the other side of the gate.
Do-yun shoved the brush up his sleeve and kicked frozen dirt over the hole under the plum tree.
His hands were black to the wrists, and his whole body was shaking, and he could not make it stop.
"Go inside," he whispered.
Gyeol did not go inside.
He dropped the quilt on the stones, walked to the woodpile in his open robe, and picked up the axe.
He set a log on the block and split it clean in two, as he did every morning of his life.
The gate swung open.
Captain Jang came through with the breakfast tray in both hands, and his small eyes went around the yard once.
They passed over the prince's broad back at the woodpile.
They stopped on Do-yun's hands.
"You've been in the dirt, Painter."
"The well rope broke. I fished the bucket out."
"At dawn."
"I wanted to wash before I worked."
Jang looked at the plum tree, and at the scuffed ground under it.
Do-yun made himself look back at him.
It was the hardest thing he had done in his twenty-six years, and he did it with a bored, tired, ink-stained face.
"Foxes dig under that tree," Jang said at last. "Every winter."
He put the tray down on the step.
"How many nights more?"
"Eight, Captain. The eyes take longest."
"Eight." Jang said it slowly, as if he were counting something besides nights. "The Consort's birthday is nineteen days off. Not one day more."
"I understand."
"I hope so. You're a pleasant young man."
He left, and the key turned again, and his boots went away down the lane.
The axe came down on another log.
Gyeol set it down against the block, and stood with his back turned and his shoulders very still.
Do-yun walked across the yard, pulled the brush out of his sleeve, and dropped it on the step beside the tray.
"Inside," he said. "Now. My room."
Gyeol turned around.
His face was grey in the early light, and he opened his mouth to speak.
"Not one word," Do-yun said. "Walk."
He slid the east door shut behind them so hard that the paper rattled in its frame.
The room was cold and smelled of ink and old charcoal, and the quilts were still heaped in the corner from the night.
Do-yun stood in the middle of the floor and shook.
He was twenty-six years old, and he had been an obedient man all his life, and he had never been so angry.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Painter and the Prince Who Cannot Be Painted are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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