Chapter 7: Not the King's

"Very carefully, Majesty," Captain Kang said.

The king smiled at him, patted his arm, and strolled away into the dark with his eunuch.

Captain Kang lifted the lantern.

"Lady Baek."

That was all he said.

They walked back through the palace without a word.

The paths were empty.

The roofs were black against the stars, and somewhere a night watchman struck his wooden clapper, twice.

The covered corridor to the Detached Palace was long and narrow, with red pillars on both sides and a tiled roof low overhead.

Halfway down it, Soyul stopped.

He stopped too, three steps behind her, exactly where a guard belonged.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what, my lady?"

"Don't walk behind me like that."

"It's where I'm supposed to walk."

"I don't care."

He set the lantern on the boards.

The light came up under his jaw and made the scar in his eyebrow white.

"He's the king," he said.

"I told him no."

"Kings don't hear no. They hear 'not yet.'" His voice was very quiet.

"In fifteen days he'll stand up in that hall and say your name, and I'll be standing at the pillar watching."

"Then don't watch."

"I'll have to. It's my post."

He said it so plainly.

As if it were only one more cold night on a wall.

In her first life he had stood at her gate for two years and never once said what he wanted.

He brought charcoal.

He brought books.

He talked to her through the bars about the north and the stars.

The winter she died, she still hadn't known if he had ever thought of her at all.

Soyul went back the three steps.

She took hold of his red sash in both fists.

He went completely still.

"Lady Baek," he said, low. "If somebody comes down this corridor."

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