The Eunuch Who Guards the Crown Prince's Bed novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Han Name
It was the Dowager who stopped the swords.
She did it without rising, in her thin dry voice, with the whole hall holding its breath.
"Councillor."
"If blood is spilled on this floor during the King's mourning, every man who drew steel will answer for it before heaven."
"I am old. I have time to wait for that."
She turned her head.
"The Lady and her friend will come under my roof. The letters will go to the Office of Inspection, to be read by men who do not eat at your table. Court will sit again at noon tomorrow."
Min looked at her a long moment.
Then he smiled, and bowed, and the swords went back into their sheaths one by one.
"As Her Majesty wishes," he said.
Seok-woo did not believe it for a breath.
Hyeon was marched back across the courtyard in the Dowager's own chair, under her own seal.
He was a prisoner of the grandmother who had just saved him.
Seok-woo walked behind in the ring of guards.
At midnight Bae came to the bath room door with a bundle of dark cloth.
"The Dowager has given me four hours of her seal," he said. "I have a chair at the side gate and a boy who can't be bribed. If you want to go, go now."
"Go where?" said Hyeon.
"Where you have never been," said Bae.
It was a long way through the dark streets inside the north wall, in a closed chair, with Hyeon's knee against Seok-woo's under the blanket.
Neither of them spoke.
The chair set them down at the end of a lane below a hill of frozen grass.
At the top stood a plum tree that had never flowered, and a flat grey stone.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Eunuch Who Guards the Crown Prince's Bed are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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