The Righteous Sect's Discarded Fiancée novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Discarded
Yeon-hwa wakes at the Alliance banquet as her fiancé dumps her for the Saintess and calls her a demon, takes back her dowry sword before the hall and cuts loose the chained hostage the book kills at dawn, who turns out to be the Little Heavenly Demon and tells her she's his.
"Seol Yeon-hwa, from tonight you are no longer my betrothed."
A handsome man in pale blue robes said it to her face, in front of four hundred people.
A second ago she had been crossing a street in Seoul with her phone in her hand.
Now she was kneeling on a silk cushion in a banquet hall full of swords.
"She practises demonic arts," the man told the hall. "The Azure Cloud Sect will not take a demon into its house."
Somebody at the back hissed.
Yeon-hwa looked down at her hands.
They weren't hers.
They were long and pale, with hard calluses ridged across both palms, and a little white scar on the left thumb.
"Instead," the man said, and his voice went warm, "I will marry the Saintess of the Hundred Herbs Valley, Mo Ye-rin."
A small woman in green robes rose from the head table and bowed.
The hall burst into applause.
Yeon-hwa knew this scene.
She had read it on the night bus three weeks ago, half asleep, in a free web novel called "Saintess of the Azure Cloud".
In the book, the jilted fiancée cried on her cushion.
The golden Young Sect Master, Jin Seo-gang, walked away with the Saintess on his arm.
And in chapter five, at dawn, the jilted fiancée was found hanging in the woodshed behind the east wing.
Dead of shame, the book said.
The jilted fiancée's name was Seol Yeon-hwa.
It was also the name of the body Yeon-hwa had woken up in.
She put her hand on the cushion and stood up.
The applause stopped in pieces, one table at a time.
Seo-gang frowned at her.
"Sit down, Yeon-hwa. Don't make this worse."
"I accept," she said.
He blinked.
"I accept the break. Gladly. Write it down for me, I'll sign it twice."
Laughter, quickly smothered, went through the lower tables.
On the dais, a tall man with a grey-streaked beard set his wine cup down very gently.
Jin Gwang-hu, Sect Master of the Azure Cloud, was Seo-gang's father.
The book called him the kindest man in the Alliance.
Tonight the Alliance had named him its next Leader.
"Child," he said, in a voice like warm tea. "You're upset. We'll speak of this privately."
"Here is fine, Sect Master. I came to your sect at thirteen with a dowry. I'd like it back."
The warm voice went cold.
"Your dowry is held for safekeeping."
"I'm safe now," Yeon-hwa said. "I'm leaving. The lacquered box, the manual inside it and my father's short sword. In front of these witnesses, please."
She turned to the hall.
Four hundred faces from every righteous sect in the land looked back at her.
"Unless the Azure Cloud Sect means to keep a discarded girl's dowry," she said.
A white-haired elder at the second table cleared her throat.
"The girl has the right of it, Sect Master Jin."
Another elder nodded.
Then a third.
Jin Gwang-hu smiled at Yeon-hwa for a long moment.
Then he lifted two fingers, and a servant ran.
The box came back in under a minute, which showed exactly how close he kept it.
It was black lacquer, scratched, with a plum branch painted on the lid.
A short sword in a plain white sheath lay across the top.
Yeon-hwa picked the sword up and felt her new hands close on it; they had been waiting ten years.
"Thank you, Sect Master."
"Go to your room, child," he said. "Rest. Tomorrow you'll feel differently about everything."
In the book, the discarded fiancée didn't have a tomorrow.
Yeon-hwa tucked the box under one arm and walked out of the hall.
Nobody stopped her.
Why would they?
The courtyard outside was stone, hung with red lanterns.
In the middle of it stood a wooden post with a man chained to it.
The guests had walked past him on the way in to look.
Yeon-hwa remembered him from the book, too.
The Red Moon dog.
He didn't get a name.
He got one paragraph in chapter three, where the righteous heroes cut off his head at dawn while the Saintess turned her face away.
He was on his knees in torn red-and-black robes, long black hair hanging in his face.
Seven gold needles stood out of his bare back, one beside each knob of his spine.
The book had been very pleased with those needles.
They sealed his meridians, it said, so the demon's power couldn't move.
Two guards in Azure Cloud blue stood at the gate behind him, watching the banquet doors, not him.
Yeon-hwa counted her chances.
She was a discarded girl alone in a compound full of men who wanted her hanged by morning.
She had a sword she had never drawn.
And there was exactly one person in this courtyard the whole Alliance was afraid of.
She walked up to the post.
He lifted his head.
His eyes were a dark red-brown, the colour of old blood, and they were laughing at her.
"Come to spit on me, Miss Seol?"
"Hold still," she said.
She pulled the first needle out of his back.
He went rigid under her hand.
She pulled the second, and the third.
By the fifth, he was breathing like a man coming up out of deep water.
At the gate one guard turned around.
"Hey!"
Yeon-hwa pulled the last two and drew her father's sword.
The chains were iron, but the ropes that held them to the post were only rope.
She cut through them in two strokes.
The chains slid off his shoulders and rang on the stones.
The banquet doors burst open behind her.
Jin Gwang-hu stood on the top step, and for the first time that night his kind face showed what was under it.
"Seize him!" he roared. "That's Baek Mu-hyeon! The Little Heavenly Demon of the Red Moon!"
The Little Heavenly Demon.
The heir to the darkest cult in the land.
The book had never said his name, because the book had cut off his head at dawn.
He rose behind her until she had to tip her head back to see his face.
He rolled his shoulders once, and every sword in the courtyard came out of its sheath.
Then he smiled down at her.
"You cut it," he said. "So now you're mine."
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