My Husband Thinks I Forgot I Was a Demon novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Right Protector

Maeng Soo-hwa came through the feast doors.

She wore black robes with red cuffs, and her grey-streaked hair was pinned up in a high knot.

She had painted her nails the color of fresh blood.

Four hundred Alliance guests went quiet, and four hundred hands moved toward four hundred sword hilts.

She bowed to the room with a wide, cheerful grin.

"Peace be with you all," said the Right Protector of the Black Lotus Cult. "I've come with gifts. Please don't stab the gifts."

Someone laughed in spite of himself.

The Vice-Leader rose from his seat, smiling his sorrowful smile.

"Envoy. You are welcome under the Peace of the Pass."

"Naturally I am. I brought wine."

She did bring wine.

She brought forty jars of it, and a lacquered black box that a servant carried across the floor with both hands.

She stopped in front of the couple's table and looked Ji-han up and down.

Ji-han looked back with polite blankness.

He had to admit that she didn't blink either.

"So you're the husband," she said.

"I'm told I am."

"Pretty."

"I'm told that as well."

"My Lord would have found you very annoying."

Under the table, the Leader's huge hand found Ji-han's knee and squeezed it once.

"Your Lord is dead, Envoy," the Leader said, in his soft rough voice. "I am sorry for it."

"So am I." Her grin did not change. "He had a terrible temper. I brought the gift for the groom. May I?"

She set the black box on the table in front of Ji-han.

He opened it, because there was no way not to.

Inside, on a bed of red silk, lay a silver ring cast in the shape of a lotus.

It was the Lord's ring.

Ji-han had watched it flash on the Lord's hand for nineteen years.

He looked at it, and he picked it up between two fingers.

"Is this a wedding present?"

"It's a very old family piece," said Maeng, sweet as syrup. "I thought the groom might wear it to remember us."

She said the next sentence in plain speech, but Ji-han heard the cult's secret code woven into it.

"Isn't it strange," she said, "how the lanterns burn red when the wind turns?"

In the code, it meant: the Lord's will is hidden in the lid.

Ji-han set the ring back in its silk.

"I don't care for lanterns," he said. "They're too bright."

"Are they? Pity."

Her eyes crinkled.

Ji-han knew that look.

It meant: nice try, you idiot, I'm not leaving.

Hyeong Jeong-seok came around the table with a cup in his hand.

"Leader," Hyeong said, "a toast to our guest."

"Of course," said the Leader.

"Sir," he added, before he knew it.

The word dropped into the quiet.

It was small and fast and polite.

The Leader's ears went red.

"Vice-Leader," he corrected.

Hyeong raised one eyebrow, and nothing else.

"Always so formal," Hyeong said. "I forget you were raised a gentleman."

Everyone laughed, and the Leader laughed too, a beat late.

Ji-han put that away in the part of his mind where he kept things he didn't understand.

He was good at not understanding.

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