II. Seunggyo

The spare robes did not fit as well as the ruined ones.

Jungkook stood in front of the mirror in his private chambers while two attendants adjusted the shoulders and refused, absolutely refused, to let his face show a single flicker of what he was actually thinking, which was: he spent his entire morning on this. Three hours, easily. Maybe more. He wanted it to be perfect. He wanted me to see it and know exactly how much effort went into hating me today, and I did, and some idiot part of me thought it was — I need to stop. I need to physically stop this thought right now.

He did not stop the thought. He never did, not really, not where it counted, but he had gotten extraordinarily good at making sure it never once reached his face.

"Your Highness," murmured the elder attendant, "the collar."

He adjusted the collar. He thought about Taehyung's collar, crooked, twenty minutes ago, close enough to fix.

I should have fixed it. That would have been normal. Cousins fix each other's collars. Old friends fix each other's collars. There was no reason not to reach out and fix a piece of fabric except that I know, I know exactly what would have happened if I'd touched him for one second longer than strictly necessary, and it would not have looked like fixing a collar, it would have looked like something else entirely, and he would have known, and that cannot happen. That will never happen. I have had twenty years of practice at this and I am not going to fail now over a crooked collar.

"Your Highness, you're frowning."

"I am not frowning."

"Your Highness is frowning quite specifically."

"I am thinking," Jungkook said, with as much royal dignity as he could summon while wearing robes two months out of proper tailoring because his actual robes were currently the color of a bruised plum drying on a laundry line behind the kitchens, "about state matters."

The attendant, wisely, said nothing further.

Jungkook had been thinking about "state matters" — which was to say, thinking about Choi Taehyung — for approximately twenty years now, and had never once found it to get easier. If anything it had gotten catastrophically worse in the last several years, ever since Taehyung had stopped being a gangly, loud-mouthed adolescent who tripped over his own sword and had instead, with what Jungkook privately considered extremely poor timing, become a genuinely formidable tactician, a devastatingly sharp wit, and — this was the part Jungkook resented most, on principle — infuriatingly, distractingly handsome in a way that made concentrating on treaty negotiations feel like an act of heroic self-discipline.

None of which he had ever said aloud. None of which he would ever say aloud. He was the Crown Prince of Hanju. He was going to be king. Kings did not harbor a decades-deep, humiliatingly tender feeling for the general's son who had once put a live frog down his collar during a memorial rite and had spent every year since finding new and inventive ways to ruin his dignity in front of foreign dignitaries.

Except.

Except that when Taehyung laughed — really laughed, not the sharp performing laugh he used in company, but the short surprised one that escaped him when he wasn't trying to win anything — something in Jungkook's chest did something so violently soft that it frightened him.

Except that he had, in fact, replaced the training swords not to embarrass Taehyung, not really, not primarily — he'd done it because Taehyung had been overworking the same shoulder for two weeks straight, favoring it in every drill, and Jungkook had noticed, because Jungkook noticed everything about him, and had wanted an excuse to make him rest it without ever once admitting he'd been worried. The fish pond had been a happy, if mortifying, accident. He had felt guilty about it for four days. He had told no one this, and would tell no one this, least of all Taehyung, who would either laugh in his face or — worse, infinitely worse — understand exactly what it meant.

"The delegation will arrive within the hour," said Hoseok, appearing in the doorway with the particular blend of calm and long-suffering patience that came from being the Crown Prince's personal scribe for nine years. He looked, as ever, entirely unbothered by chaos, and entirely aware of far more than he ever let on. His eyes flicked once to the ill-fitting spare robes and back up to Jungkook's face without a single visible reaction, which Jungkook appreciated more than he could say. "I heard," Hoseok added mildly, "that there was an incident with the laundry."

"There was no incident."

"Someone told me your ceremonial robes are currently the color of a peach blossom."

"They are the color," Jungkook said, with immense dignity, "of a diplomatic miscalculation on the part of General Choi's son, and I would prefer it not be discussed further."

Hoseok's mouth twitched — the exact same small, suppressed twitch Jungkook had felt in his own chest twenty minutes earlier and refused to acknowledge. "Of course, Your Highness."

"Is Jackson already at the gate?"

"Insisting on greeting the delegation personally, yes, on the grounds that he is, and I quote, 'the only person in this palace who has actually traveled anywhere.'" Hoseok said this with the weary fondness of a man who had been listening to Jackson make that exact argument for three years running.

"Tell him to behave."

"I have told him to behave every day since the Ganju visit was announced. It has had no measurable effect."

Jungkook allowed himself, finally, one small breath that was almost — almost — a laugh, and let the attendants finish adjusting his robes, and did not think about Choi Taehyung, standing by the drying line an hour ago with pink dye still faintly staining the creases of his knuckles, looking entirely too pleased with himself, looking — infuriatingly — the way he always looked right before he did something that made Jungkook want, in roughly equal measure, to strangle him and to never let him out of arm's reach again.

He did not think about it.

He thought about it the entire walk to the front gate.

III. Both — The Gate

By the time the delegation's banners appeared at the base of the hill, Taehyung had changed into his own formal attire — dark blue, the Choi family colors, sword at his hip in the ceremonial style, hair properly pinned for once in his life — and taken his position among the assembled officials at the base of the palace steps, three places down and one row back from where the Crown Prince stood.

He was not looking at Jungkook. He was extremely deliberately not looking at Jungkook. He was looking at the approaching delegation with the focused, professional attention of a general's son who took court appearances seriously, and if his eyes drifted twice — only twice — to check whether the spare robes fit properly across the shoulders, that was purely a professional assessment of the prince's ceremonial appearance and nothing else whatsoever.

They don't fit as well, he thought, with some satisfaction. Good.

Beside him, General Choi Wooyoung leaned very slightly toward King Han Deokwon, both men watching the delegation approach with the composed patience of two rulers of consequence, and murmured, low enough that only the king could hear:

"I heard the ceremonial robes had an incident this morning."

"I heard," the King murmured back, not moving his gaze from the approaching banners, the corner of his mouth betraying nothing except twenty years of intimate familiarity with exactly this conversation, "that my son had a spare made three days in advance."

"Ah."

"He's gotten faster."

"Taehyung," General Choi said, with the enormous, weary pride of a father who had genuinely given up trying to reform his son sometime around age nine, "spent three hours on the dye ratio. Bora told my wife it was, and I quote, 'the most beautiful color of pink she'd ever produced by hand.'"

"They're going to be unbearable at the banquet tonight," the King said.

"They're going to be unbearable for the rest of their natural lives," General Choi agreed, and there was something in his voice that was not quite despair — something warmer, something that had been building for twenty-one years and showed no sign of stopping. "Ten more years. I give it ten more years before one of them says something."

"Ten," the King said. "You're an optimist. I said fifteen, to your wife, at the spring banquet. She still owes me eleven silver pieces for it."

"You're both wrong," said a third voice — Lady Baek, court physician and shaman, who had appeared at the King's elbow with the silent, unnerving efficiency that made half the court faintly afraid of her. She did not look at either man. She was watching the same two points on the palace steps that they were: the Crown Prince, standing perfectly composed, eyes flicking exactly once toward the general's son and immediately away; the general's son, jaw tight, shoulders squared, deliberately, painfully not looking back. "It'll happen sooner than that. Something's already shifted. I can feel it."

"Feel it how," General Choi said, with the particular caution of a military man who did not entirely trust matters of feeling, but had learned, over three decades, never to bet against Lady Baek.

"I don't know yet," she said, and there was something in her voice — thoughtful, a little sharp, entirely too pleased for a woman discussing nothing in particular. "But I'd start saving your silver."

Neither king nor general asked her to explain further. They had both learned, a long time ago, that Lady Baek said exactly as much as she intended to say and not one word more.

Below them, at the base of the steps, the delegation's front riders came into view — and Han Jungkook, Crown Prince of Hanju, drew one slow breath, arranged his face into the perfect, gracious mask that had been trained into him since birth, and thought, with a clarity that frightened him more than any foreign delegation ever could:

I hope he's watching. I hope he sees that I can do this too — be exactly what everyone needs me to be, effortlessly, while he stands there in his perfect blue looking like he's already won something. I hope he's watching, and I hope he never, ever finds out why it matters to me whether he is.

Three places down and one row back, Choi Taehyung watched the prince's spine straighten, watched the mask slide into place with the seamless ease of two decades' practice, and thought, with the particular irritation of a man who refused to examine his own feelings too closely:

Show-off. Absolute, insufferable show-off. I hope the princess trips on the stairs.

Neither of them noticed Lady Baek watching them both, nor the very small, very satisfied smile that crossed her face before she turned back to the approaching banners.

Some storms announce themselves for hours before they arrive.

This one was going to arrive in about six weeks, on a hunting trail, during a lightning storm neither of them saw coming — and it was going to change absolutely everything.

End of Chapter One.

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