The Eunuch Who Guards the Crown Prince's Bed novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Hairpin

Min shows Yeon-hwa's hairpin and sets forty days; Seok-woo burns the poison, tastes the tea first, and the prince kneels for him; the Dowager orders an inspection.

The Left Councillor received Seok-woo in a garden pavilion, in the cold, with his hands in his sleeves.

Min Sa-heon was shorter than Seok-woo remembered.

Five years ago Seok-woo had watched him read his father's sentence aloud.

Now Min poured the tea himself and called him child.

"Sit, child. You'll catch cold standing."

Seok-woo sat.

The steward stood at the edge of the pavilion with his back to them, looking at the pond.

"Tell me about the Prince's evenings," Min said.

"He bathes at the third watch. He drinks tea at the fourth. He sleeps very little."

"And the tea?"

"It went down without a word, Councillor."

That was a lie.

Seok-woo had not put a drop in the cup, and his sleeve felt as if it were on fire.

Min's small calm eyes rested on his face.

"The poison is slow," Min said. "You won't see it for three weeks. After that his cough begins."

"A winter cough, the physicians will say, like his poor grandfather's."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

Min reached into his own sleeve and laid something on the table between the cups.

It was a plain wooden hairpin, scratched along one side, with a small notch cut near the head.

Seok-woo knew the notch.

He had cut it himself with a knife when he was twelve, for a little sister who kept losing her pins.

His hand went out before he could stop it.

Min laid two fingers on top of it.

"She is well," he said gently. "She works in my kitchens, and eats with the cooks, and sings."

"The day His Highness's cough turns bad, I will strike her name from the slave rolls."

"I will put her on a cart to the south with a purse of silver. That is my word."

"And if the cough doesn't turn?"

"Then I shall be sad for her."

He lifted his fingers.

"Forty days, child. The Selection of the Crown Princess is in forty days."

"I would like my daughter to be chosen by a prince who has the grace to be dead."

Seok-woo took the hairpin.

He did not remember standing up.

In the corridor outside the bedchamber, the evening tea was warming on a brazier.

Seok-woo took the vial from his sleeve.

It was a small glass bottle with a wax stopper, and the liquid inside was clear.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he lifted the brazier's iron lid and poured the whole thing onto the coals.

It hissed, gave off a sweet smell for the space of a breath, and went out.

He put the empty vial back in his sleeve.

He did not know what he would tell the Councillor in three weeks.

That night the prince sat at his table with his brush when Seok-woo carried in the tea.

He did not look up.

"Put it down."

Seok-woo did not.

He lifted the cup from the tray and drank from it.

The tea was hot and plain and tasted of roasted barley.

He swallowed, and waited, and nothing happened.

The brush had stopped moving.

Hyeon was watching him over his shoulder, and his face had gone very still.

"What was that?"

"It's what a night attendant does, Your Highness."

"No one has done that for me since my wet nurse."

Hyeon turned all the way around on his cushion.

"You're not afraid that I'm poisoned," he said. "You're afraid it's you."

Seok-woo said nothing.

Hyeon set the brush on its rest, rose, and crossed the floor.

"Whoever sent you, and don't tell me, I haven't asked, did they give you something to put in my tea?"

Seok-woo went cold.

"If they had," he said, "would I have drunk it?"

"I don't know. Would you?"

"Hyeon..."

It was the first time he had said the name outside the bath room.

Hyeon's eyes flared.

"There's something I have to tell you," Seok-woo said, and his voice cracked in the middle. "I came here..."

Hyeon kissed him.

He took the cup from Seok-woo's hand and set it down without looking.

He took Seok-woo's face between his ink-stained hands and kissed him hard.

His mouth was warm and tasted of barley tea.

It was not a gentle kiss.

It was a starving man's kiss, with teeth catching Seok-woo's lower lip, and a sound in Hyeon's throat that went straight through him.

Seok-woo had not kissed anyone in five years.

He kissed back.

He pushed his hand into Hyeon's hair, behind the jade pin, and felt it come loose.

The long black weight of it slid down over his wrist.

Hyeon pulled back an inch.

"Whatever it is," he said against Seok-woo's mouth, "tell me tomorrow."

"If I tell you tomorrow..."

"Then tell me tomorrow." His hands were on Seok-woo's robe. "Tonight, let me."

"Let you what?"

Hyeon did not answer in words.

He walked Seok-woo backward until the backs of his knees met the edge of the sleeping mat, and Seok-woo sat down hard.

Hyeon sank to his knees between his legs.

The Crown Prince of the kingdom knelt on the floor in grey silk, with his hair down and his mouth red.

"Hyeon," Seok-woo said, appalled. "No. You can't."

"Say that again and I'll gag you with your own sash."

He parted Seok-woo's robe.

Seok-woo's cock was already hard from the kiss alone, heavy and leaking against his stomach, and he watched Hyeon's eyes go dark.

"There," Hyeon murmured. "I've been thinking about this since the bath."

"You can't have been."

"All day. In council. I lost the thread of a speech about the rice tax."

His thumb traced a slow line up the underside of Seok-woo's cock.

"Tell me what you want."

Seok-woo's mouth was dry.

"I don't know how to ask for that."

"Just say it. Crudely, if you like."

"Your mouth on my cock," Seok-woo said, hot to the ears. "Please. Suck me."

Hyeon smiled.

It was the first real smile Seok-woo had seen on him, small and crooked.

Then he bent his head and took Seok-woo's cock into the wet heat of his mouth.

Seok-woo made a sound he had never heard from his own throat.

Hyeon was slow.

His mouth was slick and hot and patient, hollowing his cheeks as he sucked him down, and every long pull took Seok-woo further out of his own body.

Seok-woo's hips came up off the mat, fucking shallowly into that tight heat.

"Harder," Seok-woo gasped, his fingers curling on the mat.

Hyeon drew back, breathing hard, his lip shining with spit.

"Use your hands, then."

He took Seok-woo's wrist and set the hand in his hair.

"Hold on to me."

Seok-woo held on.

Hyeon went down on his cock again, and this time he flattened his tongue along the thick vein underneath while one long hand closed warm around the base.

Seok-woo had thought the bath was the most he could feel.

He had been wrong.

He gathered Hyeon's hair in his fist, and Hyeon moaned around his cock, a low needy sound, and rutted his own hard length against the floor.

"You like that," Seok-woo said, wondering. "You like me holding you."

Hyeon looked up.

His eyes were wet at the corners and fixed on Seok-woo's, and he nodded.

Seok-woo lost the rest of his mind.

He pushed his hips up, fucking deeper into Hyeon's throat, and Hyeon let him, taking him to the root and swallowing around the head.

"Hyeon. I'm going to cum..."

Hyeon gripped his ass with one hand and sucked harder.

Seok-woo came with a shout that he swallowed into his own fist, pulsing hot cum down the prince's throat.

Hyeon swallowed all of it, sucking him through the aftershocks until the shaking stopped.

When he finally let go, he rested his cheek against Seok-woo's knee.

His hair was a mess in Seok-woo's fingers.

He was flushed and still wanting, and he was smiling a little, dazed.

"Come up here," Seok-woo said roughly.

"I told you, later."

"Hyeon."

"Tomorrow." Hyeon pressed his lips to Seok-woo's knee. "Tell me everything tomorrow. Tonight I'd like to pretend you're only mine."

Seok-woo lay on the floor of the chamber with Hyeon's head on his belly and the tea going cold.

He did not tell him anything at all.

At dawn Bae Chun-sam knocked on the doorframe, grey-faced and round, holding a scroll.

"Forgive me, Your Highness. Seok-woo."

He did not look at the state of the room.

"The Queen Dowager has ordered an inspection of every night attendant in the Eastern Palace. It begins at the hour of the dragon."

Seok-woo sat up with his robe half open and his mouth still tasting of Hyeon.

"Today," said Bae. "In an hour."

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