Chapter Text
(Mina is born perfect.
A full head of hair, unblemished skin, and big brown eyes that seemed to hold the universe. She has all her limbs and is in good health. She cries, just enough for them to know her lungs are in proper functioning order and then settles even before they start to shush her.
Mina is born perfect. Almost.
When the handmaidens see it, their excited cooing falls deathly silent. When her mother sees it, she turns her head and a single sob escapes from her tired lips. When her father sees it, he steels his jaw and quietly orders the execution of the five handmaidens and one midwife that had witnessed her birth. After all, only dead men tell no tales and this secret must be kept at all costs.
He swaddles the baby tightly, maybe too tightly, but it ensures that she remains fully covered while he carries her to the nursery. The handmaiden that was meant to care for her that night is being buried in the woods by soldiers that don’t know why she had to die, but who know better than to question the King’s orders. So the King himself takes the handmaiden’s stead for that night, watching over the innocent child as she sleeps.
She’s perfect. Her little nose, her rosy cheeks, and the little curl of hair that paints her forehead. To know what her future holds, the future of this innocent, perfect child, breaks his heart.
He doubts himself. Needs to see it again to be sure, to be absolutely certain. Careful not to wake her, he unwraps the cloth until her tiny body is revealed.
There, in the middle of her chest, sits a flower, the purple and pink petals almost touching her collarbones and the stem trailing all the way down her sternum. It stands out sharply against her otherwise pale and smooth skin. It’s beautiful. Truly. The prettiest flower he’s ever seen. He’ll learn later and she will as well, that it is a fuchsia. For now he just knows that it’s pretty.
He wishes it were gone.)
(Mina grows up perfect. She isn’t given a choice.
For the first few years of her life the only person she’s allowed to interact with are her parents and her caretaker.
Here’s what she doesn’t know: Her caretaker has a son. Her son is sick, the kind of sick one is born with, the kind that has no cure. Only relief. He lives in the castle’s infirmary, receiving daily tonics and tinctures that keep him alive. He receives these free of cost at the order of the King. There’s a deal there. His mother’s silence for his continued life. Any mother would make the same deal.
It’s her job to teach the girl. It’s not a hard job. Mina is well-behaved. She doesn’t fight or argue or throw tantrums. Her only sin is the usual curiosity of a young child but the handmaiden does everything she can to discourage it. After all, she won’t be allowed to meet other people until she learns not to ask about the flower on her chest.
In another world, the caretaker thinks she could love this girl. She’s wonderful. Perfect. But in this one, the life of her son is far too precariously entwined with this girl’s secret and she can’t bring herself to feel affection for her. It’s not the girl’s fault. But when one stray word from this child could mean her son’s death, it’s hard not to fear her.)
(Mina is quiet. Which is how they want her.
She’s six when she is finally allowed out of the west wing of the palace to the rest of the grounds. It’s her birthday present. She walks between her parents, hand in each of theirs, as they guide her around. They point out art that hangs on the walls, paintings of her ancestors and of mythology she’ll have to memorize in a few years. They take her to the throne room. About a dozen guards stand at attention around the edges of the room. It’s the most people Mina has ever seen. She cowers from them.
Her father has her sit in a chair next to his. It’s small, carved to her exact height but still uncomfortabl y hard and upright . Her mother sits on his other side. Her father tells her to pay attention to what he does, listen to every word he says. He tells her to start learning now so that, one day, she’ll be ready. He reminds her never, ever to mention the flower on her chest. That it’s her deepest, darkest shame. She asks him again, what it is, and he just says ‘a secret’. She doesn’t ask again.)
(Mina learns. She learns and she learns. What else is there to do for a child with no friends. Her parents are busy. And the castle staff that sometimes seem terrified to talk to her. ((There are rumors around her birth, of the fact that no one who had been in the room that night was ever seen again, they say she’s a cursed child, bearing the weight of her parents’ sins, they fear her though none of them really know why.))
She learns from her father’s advisers. She learns from the court physicians. She learns from the philosophers and the monks and the alchemists. And when they are too busy, she learns from the books that line the shelves of the library taller than three of her stacked. She learns how to use the sliding ladder mechanism without help and chooses books based on how worn their spines are.
She learns. She learns. And she searches.
And one day, one day, she finds something. A book that wasn’t supposed to be there, small and fallen behind the other books on the shelf, covered in a layer of dust that makes her sneeze as she brushes it off. Mina has known secrets her whole life. She can tell that this book is a secret too and she slips it into the folds of her dress as she makes her way back to her room. She hides under her covers as she reads it lest that old caretaker decide that it’s time for her to bathe and barge in unannounced.
The book talks of love. A perfect love. An all-consuming love. A love with a touch of destiny. A love marked by a single flower, a flower with a pair, identical and perfect. It’s the kind of love anyone would want, but few get to have.
The book answers some questions. But in turn, it creates far, far more. Mina reads it over and over, as if the same words may impart new knowledge. But she doesn’t understand. How could a love like this be the cause for her mother’s averted gaze and her father’s cloudy eyes? Why would her caretaker never touch the skin marked by those petals while bathing her? Why should she hide it as if it were a mark from the devil himself?
But one question sits heaviest in her mind, makes the skin at her chest itch, speaks in her dreams, fights against the long-practiced silence of her youth.
Who bears the twin flower on their chest? Who? Who? Who )
(Mina is perfect.
Minho is also perfect.
He, like her, has been raised with no other choice. She can see it in him, in his straight spine and unflinchingly polite manners. She wonders if he carries a secret too. She wonders if he also falls asleep dreaming of someone without a face, without a name, without anything but a flower blooming in the center of their chests.
She meets him at a ball hosted by King Lee, his father. Her parents introduce her with false excitement and apologetic smiles. She doesn’t understand in the moment but her parents tell her later. An alliance between their kingdoms is blooming. A marriage will strengthen it. And in these words Mina understands why she bears this secret. Why it must remain that way.
((When she had first asked her father about the flower on her chest, she’d only been three. He had looked down at where her chubby finger pressed against the stem of the flower and his eyes had filled with regret. She hadn’t understood at the time but he had said it was a curse. He had said that it would have been better if she’d been born to common parents. He said that she was destined for pain and heartbreak. She hadn’t understood and she doesn’t remember now but she discovers what he meant all on her own years and years later.))
Who the pair to her flower is, doesn’t matter. She’s promised already to someone, not for love, but for something much more important.
Duty.
She’s still too young. He’s still too young. Her parents want her by their side a little longer. But one day, she’ll be his. If he doesn’t not bear the pink and purple flower on his chest, well… that’s of no consequence. Duty. The strength of the kingdom. Her commitment to her parents. Those overwrite anything else. )
( She dreams that night of a faceless love and wakes in a cold sweat.
In her nightmare her faceless love had begged for her, the flower on her chest had felt like it was on fire, burning into her skin and choking her lungs. But she hadn’t gone towards them. She hadn’t been able to move and behind her, she’d heard her father’s and Minho’s voices calling to her like shackles.
She wakes in a cold sweat, still unable to move and for the first time, the weight of her secret rests on her shoulders.
She doesn’t leave bed that day or the next.)
(There’s a garden in the back part of the castle grounds. Mina, at fifteen, is allowed to venture anywhere within the walls surrounding the castle and this is her favorite place. It is not the pristinely maintained gardens like the ones nearer to the castle entrance, designed perfectly to entertain guests and foreign dignitaries, every leaf is in perfect place, not a single brown spot on any of the brightly-colored flowers. Those gardens are nice sometimes but Mina much prefers this – a garden with a purpose – herbs and medicinal plants allowed to grow in the way that suits them best so that they may bloom to their fullest. There are fewer flowers and the plants grow wild, curling in whatever way they wish. A few of the herbs give of wonderful, bright smells when the wind rustled through them.
Mina loves the imperfection of it. Loves that each plant here has a purpose beyond the simple beauty of nature. She also loves that, other than the occasional gardener and castle physician or cook, the garden is generally uninhabited. She goes whenever the weather allows, finding a seat on the crude bench under the gnarled tree, partially obscured by the large bush of elecampane. She brings a book sometimes, other times just sits and thinks and breathes in the smell of the herbs around her.)
((Mina doesn’t know it yet. How could she? Except, looking back, something about that garden had always felt inevitable. Had she known to look for it, she might have felt it. But she doesn’t know to look and she doesn’t see it until it’s too late.))
(((It’s at this garden, under the protection of the gnarled tree, that it all begins and where it all ends.)))
Mina doesn’t remember much about the day they meet. It must have been a nice day, otherwise she would have stayed in the weather-safe walls of the castle. But she’d gone out. She doesn’t remember if she brought a book with her to read, because she never gets to read it. She doesn’t remember what dress she was wearing or what she had for breakfast.
She only remembers the girl. The girl.
The girl knelt on the ground by the pretty purple flowers, hands dark with dirt and sweat on her brow. Even with the girl’s back turned, Mina feels it immediately. What it is… she’s not sure in the moment, but she’ll know soon. As if in a haze, she walks towards her.
It doesn’t matter that this girl is a stranger in the castle Mina knows like that back of her hand. It doesn’t matter that Mina is generally painfully shy and cautious around most people, even those she knows well. It doesn’t matter that Mina had come out here to be alone. None of it matters.
Mina doesn’t remember much about the day, but she remembers this. The way her vision had tunneled onto the girl’s figure, her small back hunched over the roots on the ground. She remembers every step she takes towards her, anticipating with bated breath the moment the girl would turn and see her too.
She doesn’t. At least not until Mina is close enough that the dark of her shadow blocks the girl’s sun and she whirls in surprise. The girl brings her hand up to her chest as if to stop her heart from jumping out.
“Oh shit, you scared me!”
It’s the first time anyone has ever cursed to Mina’s face. She’s heard the words before, of course, traded between the stable hands and the guards. Sometimes shouted across the kitchens during the rush of food preparation. But no one had ever dared swear to her face before. Mina doesn’t even notice the affront.
Instead, she notices the girl’s eyes. Big, so, so big, and with a narrowing at the corners reminiscent of a cat. And yet, their roundness depicts an innocence and youth more suitable to that of a kitten. She notices the girl’s lips next. The beauty mark on her chin. Her button nose. Her shaggy, shoulder-length hair. Mina notices everything about the girl, categorizing each piece of her part-by-part in her mind until she has a picture so complete and so perfect that she does’t think she could ever forget it.
(She doesn’t. She doesn’t forget even when she wants to. She dreams of this girl in perfect clarity for the rest of her life and this is the moment it starts.)
She’s beautiful. But that’s… it can’t be the whole story because Mina has known beautiful people. The palace decorates itself with beauty in the same way it does with paintings. She’s seen princesses and princes, faces painted to perfection, and maids-in-waiting selected for their smooth skin and exquisite features. They have nothing on this girl. Nothing on the draw that leads Mina to kneel at her side.
(Mina has never kneeled for anyone in her life. She kneels now and thinks it feels like the most natural thing she’s ever done.)
The girl makes space for her, adjusting her own kneeling position so that they’re facing each other. Her eyes dart across Mina’s face with the same curious focus that Mina imagines must be in her own expression and then she smiles.
Mina has read every book of poetry in the castle library. She has drank in the words describing every type of beauty that could be found. She thinks now that even poetry could never be enough. She wonders if poets often struggle, feeling the limitations of the written word. She knows there are no words for what she sees in front of her. She knows she could spend her whole life learning every word in this language and ever other and never be able to do this justice.
The center of Mina’s chest, where the flower sits painted on her skin, tingles.
“I’m Chaeyoung,” the girl says. “You’re gorgeous. It’s nice to meet you.”
Mina has never broken a rule, she’s never been complicit in a broken rule before either. And still, it feels natural to watch Chaeyoung climb over the back wall of the castle with the help of the gnarled tree when the light gets dark. The only part of it that feels wrong is saying goodbye.
Chaeyoung is a thief. A thief with a heart of gold maybe – the purple flowers that she had dug up earlier are called heal-all and they do as their name suggests, serving a number of different ailments. They can only be found within the castle grounds and Chaeyoung wants to help people. But she is a thief nonetheless.
Chaeyoung is a thief and thieves are dangerous. That’s what Mina has learned from her father’s lessons, from every book she’s ever read. Thieves are selfish and treacherous. Trespassers too, especially on castle grounds. They could be assassins. They could want her dead. Want the King dead. Mina knows this but she doesn’t stop her, doesn’t call the guards, doesn’t tell anyone what she’s seen.
Instead, Mina tells one of the stable boys to confess to stealing the plants. She gives him two gold coins and tells him that if he ever speaks of this moment, she will not be the one who suffers.
The stable boy gets boxed around the ears for his confession and Mina feels bad. But she doesn’t regret it, because she knows that she has ensured Chaeyoung’s safety. The safety of a thief, of a trespasser. And that’s more important than any stable boy.
(They made no promises, but they didn’t need to. Mina goes to the garden the next day and waits and somehow she knows. Chaeyoung will come back.)
Chaeyoung grins at Mina as she scales down the tree, landing softly in the bright grass behind the elecampane. Mina already sits primely on the bench. She had asked the gardener to clear out so she could have some privacy. He didn’t dare question her.
“Hello, beautiful,” Chaeyoung says, taking a seat next Mina.
“I told you. My name is Mina.”
Chaeyoung doesn’t care. She calls her beautiful, she calls her gorgeous, she calls her angel. Mina calls Chaeyoung perfect in her mind, but never says it out loud.
“Were you able to give the heal-all to Dahyun?” Mina asks.
(Chaeyoung had explained at length about her sister – in all but blood – who was incredible with medicines. Who could brew a tea that could bring someone from the brink of death with the right ingredients. Chaeyoung had admitted, she couldn’t make anything even fit for a dog, but she had nimble hands and sharp instincts so she’d collect the items Dahyun requested.
“We try not to steal,” she defended. “We try to grow as much as we can, but the King insists on keeping the best stuff out of the hands of the people so that he can better control us.”
Chaeyoung often forgets who she’s talking to. Not that she knows that Mina is the princess. Mina, far too used to secrets, had kept that one without thinking. But she knows that Mina works within the castle grounds and could be assumed to have some loyalty to the King. A loyalty that Chaeyoung herself does not have.)
“Yeah,” Chaeyoung says, a loving smile on her face as she thinks of the girl who raised her despite being close in age herself. “She’s ecstatic. She says it opens up a whole world of possibilities. She just… likes to help people so I’m glad to help her.”
“Do you need more?” Mina asks.
She doesn’t think she can bribe a stable hand again to cover for Chaeyoung’s pilfering. Too many stable hands suddenly deciding to steal plants will get suspicious. But she’ll figure something out if she needs to.
“No,” Chaeyoung says. “Not for now. Maybe one day.”
“Then why did you come back?”
“To see you,” Chaeyoung says simply.
Mina is about to answer when she hears and then sees the approach of a few guards. They talk casually as they patrol the grounds. Chaeyoung hears them too and immediately dives to the ground behind the elecampane. She disappears almost entirely from Mina’s vision and certainly is invisible to the guards. Mina waits for them to pass quietly. They notice her and stiffen to attention, saluting until she waves them off. They move much more quickly away at her dismissal. Only when the sounds of their clanking armor fades into the distance does Chaeyoung climb off the ground. She sits again at Mina’s side, a little disheveled, a little more cautious, big eyes darting and fearful.
“You know, if you’re with me, they won’t bother you,” Mina says. “They’ll assume you’re my guest.”
Chaeyoung shakes her head.
“If they catch me, they’ll have my head by morning.”
“The punishment for trespassing isn’t death,” Mina points out.
“It is if you have a soul mark,” Chaeyoung says with a grimace. “Anyone with a soul mark is banned from ever entering palace grounds under the penalty of death.”
(Chaeyoung confesses to her soul mark as if it’s not the most shameful secret she’s ever held. The words fall from her lips with no hesitation, no fear. Instead, it’s Mina who shivers in fear for her, instinct from every harsh lesson she’d been taught.)
(Mina understands now why she’d never met anyone else like her before. She understands too, suddenly, that this is meant to be her father’s protection. To keep her soul mark protected from it’s partner, from the pair that would make it whole.
To avoid breaking Mina’s heart, the solution was simple – to never let it find it’s pair. After all, you can’t miss someone you’ve never met. Better to remain as an oblivious half than to feel the kind of love that destiny twists itself to create and the lose it. It’s the best form of protection her father can offer. Minho will be a good husband come time for them to marry and she’ll love him as much as a half a soul meant for someone else can.)
((If only her father had known that destiny is stronger than any King, stronger than any law and any attempt to thwart it. He didn’t know about the twin trees on either side of the castle wall, always protected from being felled so that a young girl in need of an herb – one that he himself had selfishly kept – could climb them and land where his daughter liked to be the most.))
“You have a soul mark?” Mina asks, somewhat breathless in the discovery.
Curiosity teems at the edges of her mind. She’s learned to fear her own curiosity, to ignore it, but Chaeyoung’s nonchalance puts her at ease.
“Yeah,” Chaeyoung confesses. “God, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You could turn me in right now.”
“I won’t,” Mina says.
“Yeah, I know. I don’t know how, but I know you won’t.”
It must be the same way Mina knows that this thief and trespasser, this stranger with a mischievous smile and shaggy hair, is innocent in every way that matters. It must be how Mina knows that this girl will never hurt her. It must be how she knows, despite never having said one way or another, that Chaeyoung will be here again tomorrow, as certain as the day will break.
“Tell me about… tell me about soul marks,” Mina says. “Please.”
It’s another day under the shade of the gnarled tree that carries this wonder of a girl to her every day. Chaeyoung lies back against the bench, taking up most of the length of it, while Mina sits primly at one end, watching the way Chaeyoung twirls a blade of grass between her fingers thoughtlessly.
“You want to know about mine?”
“I meant… generally. I don’t know much about them,” Mina says.
If Chaeyoung finds her lack of knowledge strange she doesn’t comment.
“Hmm,” Chaeyoung says, thoughtfully. “Well… it’s a sign that there’s someone out there meant for me. Someone perfect. Someone who will always protect me, put me first, love me so thoroughly that there is no meaning outside of it. And someone that I will love just the same.”
“Do many people have them?”
“No, only the lucky ones,” Chaeyoung says with a wistful smile.
Mina has never once felt lucky for the flower on her chest. She has only ever wished it gone. She has held the secret as shameful, as the worst thing that could have ever happened to her. She thinks of the wedding with Minho that will comeand can’t help but feel that it might still be true. To know there’s a love like that out there for her, and yet know that she’ll never get to feel it… could there be any worse fate?
“Do you… have you met your other half?” Mina asks.
Chaeyoung shakes her head and sighs.
“I want to,” she says. “I want nothing more. There’s… there’s these two people I know. They live down the road from me. They found each other and they… it’s wonderful to be around them when they’re together. It’s like, that’s what humans are supposed to be. Whole. Loving. Even those without marks dream of it. I want it. I want to meet whoever it is and I want to give myself to them fully.”
Mina ducks her head. The flower on her chest feels like it’s twisting, like it’s screaming at her. She wants it too. But she knows. She knows, she knows, she knows, she can never give herself to anyone perfectly like that. She has a duty. That will always come first, before anyone or anything else. Even the other half of her soul. Mina looks at Chaeyoung and wants to cry.
Chaeyoung plays the lute. She brings the instrument with her one day, strapped onto her back somewhat haphazardly. She asks Mina if she’s ever heard tavern songs and Mina confesses to never having heard anything other than the classical music her father’s string quartet plays for them at the state dinners. Chaeyoung seems overjoyed that she’ll be the one to get to open her eyes to this new experience.
She plays and sings and Mina laughs. She laughs and laughs because Chaeyoung is grinning ear to ear and the words to the songs are raunchy at best and downright disrespectful at worst. She imagines herself in a tavern, seated among all the dirty, dusty workers after a long day in the fields and at the market, and imagines them singing loudly around her. She can’t remember the last time she laughed like this. She can’t remember the last time she laughed at all past the polite chuckle when one of her father’s guests makes an attempt at humor.
“Do people really sing this out loud?” she asks, between gasping giggles.
“Of course! It’s fun!”
Well, Mina can’t deny that, even when the lyrics make a blush rise to her cheeks, she’s having fun. Her chest feels warm, it tingles along the stem of the flower down her sternum and she’s never felt this warmth before.
(She tries to grasp at it with both hands, to let it sit within her past the moments that Chaeyoung is in front of her. But the warmth always fades as soon as Chaeyoung disappears over the stones of the castle wall. It’s only the promise of seeing her again that allows it to linger.)
It rains. It rains and rains and rains and Mina looks out the window and wonders. Would she come in this weather? Would she brave the thunder and the lightning to see Mina? Mina hopes not. She hopes for Chaeyoung’s safety. She imagines her feet slipping on the slick bark of the tree as she scrambles up it’s trunk. She imagines lightning hitting the tree as her fingers grasp it. She imagines Chaeyoung falling ill from the wet and cold. And yet, she knows Chaeyoung will come.
She races across the grounds, doing her best to not get caught by the guards who are positively miserable at having to be out in this weather. No one questions a princess enjoying a nice day in a quiet, shady garden. There would be questions, many, if anyone saw her drenched from head to toe, racing across the almost deserted castle grounds with her hands up in an attempt to shield her eyes from the rain. Most wouldn’t question a princess of course, but her father would, her mother would, her caretaker would, if they were to get wind of it. And get wind of it they surely would as all the castle staff are terrible gossips (dead men tell no tales but once a secret is out it cannot be reined back in). She dresses in her worst clothes and covers her head with a cloth to avoid being recognized and she runs.
She arrives under the tree at the same time as Chaeyoung’s feet land on the ground. Under the protection of the leaves, the rain doesn’t hit as hard, but even so it falls in large drops drenching them. Chaeyoung, already slight in stature, looks even smaller with her clothes clinging to her skin and her hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks. Mina worries and worries, and wants to yell at her for not taking care of herself. She doesn’t think as she throws her arms around her shoulders, pulling her into a hug to keep her warm, to keep her safe. To protect her from the rain that continues to fall and fall.
Her skin thrums and trembles where it meets Chaeyoung’s. Mina’s arms meet around Chaeyoung’s back, elbows bending in the exact right place, the right angle for comfort and safety. It should feel weird, Mina thinks, to hold and be held like this when the only other people she can remember ever touching her were her parents and that lone caretaker who knew her secret, but she fits perfectly in Chaeyoung’s arms the way she’s never fit in anyone else’s, not even her mother’s.
She knows, in this moment, knows even before she pulls away from the hug and sees the tops pink and purple flowers etched into the skin on Chaeyoung’s chest, revealed as her drenched clothes get disheveled and pulled away from her collar bones. Enough to reveal the flowers that Mina knows so, so well. She knows even without seeing because nothing has ever felt like this before. Nothing ever has and she knows that nothing ever will again.
She raises her fingertips to the petals on Chaeyoung’s chest and touches them. Chaeyoung shivers when she does and her lips part slightly. Mina isn’t thinking anymore. Her eyes can’t leave the mark. She carefully brings her fingers to the front of Chaeyoung’s tunic, undoing the first two buttons. Chaeyoung makes no move to stop her, frozen under her touch, breathing a little shallowly. Buttons now loose, Mina pulls the tunic open and reveals more of the flower. It is unmistakably identical to hers. Every leaf, every petal has the exact same shape, hue, angle.
The rain hides the tears that slide down Mina’s cheeks though she feels how they track down to her chin, warmer than the cold of the rain. She isn’t sure which of the emotions causes them but she knows there’s no holding them back.
(It’s such a unique feeling to feel the pain of losing something that’s in front of her, something she can feel under her fingers. But she knows that this is the only way this ends. She will love Chaeyoung. She maybe already does. But she will not be allowed to love her forever. She cries for her future self but does nothing to protect her from the heartache that is sure to come. How can she when it would mean pulling away from this perfect, wonderful girl?)
“Mina,” Chaeyoung says softly.
“It’s beautiful,” Mina says.
Somehow it’s true, though she’s never thought of the flowers as being beautiful when she saw them on herself, but on Chaeyoung… on this beautiful girl, the flowers almost seem to glow against the pale of her skin and Mina could spend the rest of her life tracing her fingers of the lines of the petals.
“They’re fuchsias,” Chaeyoung says softly.
“I know,” Mina answers.
The rain falls around them, a crack of thunder splits the air, but Mina barely notices. Somehow through all the noise she thinks she can hear the rapid pace of Chaeyoung’s breath better than anything. Her fingers still rest on the flowers on Chaeyoung’s chest. That sparking, trembling feeling that runs through her fingertips up her arm and into the rest of her body seems to flow endlessly, warm despite the cold rain seeping into her limbs. Mina can feel her flower on her own chest, warm and insistent. It sees it’s pair, it knows those petals so intimately despite never having touched before. It speaks in a burning mantra in Mina’s mind. Mine. Mine. Mineminemine.
Mina’s lips find Chaeyoung’s parted ones and she’ll never know who moved first but they meet perfectly. This was where they were always meant to be. Lips hot, so, so hot against each other, fighting against the chill of the rain. Mina has never kissed anyone, has nothing to compare to, but this is… it’s the best thing she’s ever felt. The flower on her chest burns and tingles and rejoices. Mine. It says. Mine. Closer. Closermoreclosermore.
Mina’s fingers slide up from Chaeyoung’s chest to tangle in her soaking hair, tugging as much as she can without causing pain. Chaeyoung’s fingers find her waist, gripping, curling into the fabric of her dress and pressing into the space on her back by her spine, pulling closer, closer, closer. Mina goes. Easily. So, so very easily pressing as much of herself against Chaeyoung as she can. Her head is empty save for the warmth, save for the hum, save for the love. Her soul reaches out to the one before it and finds that it reaches back.
It feels like a hug. It feels like a hug but it goes past their arms wrapped around each other and past the press of their lips. It feels like someone has taken her soul, her very essence and has wrapped it in the tightest embrace. One that says, I will never leave you. I will always protect you, keep you safe and warm. Nothing can hurt you. You will never feel alone again. I love you. I love you. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.
Mina can’t pull away. She can’t. She can only kiss, only find new ways to fit her lips to Chaeyoung’s and delight in each time Chaeyoung does the same.
(When they finally part for air, both of their breaths completely spent. They don’t go far, foreheads pressed, lips still millimeters from finding each other again. But they part just enough for Mina’s brain to conjure thought past the boundaries of Chaeyoung’s form. And she thinks a timer has started. She doesn’t know how much time is on it, but there’s a countdown starting now till the moment she’ll have to rip her own heart out. The dread starts then.)
“Mina,” Chaeyoung says. “You… can I see yours, please?”
She’s begging, desperate. Though she must know. She must. Just as Mina had known the minute she’d held her that there was a soul here that was meant for her. But she begs anyway, she wants to see it. Mina can’t deny her anything.
She fumbles with her clothes, always designed so very specifically to hide the marks on her chest from any accidental revelations. The buttons of her collar behind her neck are disastrously slippery in the wet rain. Her hands are shaking still too, the adrenaline and emotion taking her muscles out of synch with her mind. Chaeyoung sees it and immediately starts to help. Her nimble fingers do better, work faster and soon there’s enough slack on her dress to slip the front off her shoulders just enough to reveal the top of her flower.
Chaeyoung’s eyes go wide with wonder and awe, and just like Mina she seems unable to stop herself from pressing her fingers against the painted skin. As soon as she does, Mina feels a full-body tremor run through her. It feels like Chaeyoung is touching her heart and she does it so gently, so reverently.
“You’re… you’re mine,” Chaeyoung says and her voice is shaking, her whole body is shaking and maybe it’s the cold of the rain but Mina doubts it.
(She doesn’t bother correcting Chaeyoung just yet. Doesn’t bother telling her that she can never be Chaeyoung’s. She’s already promised to someone else. She’s got a duty that has her first. In some ways Chaeyoung is right though. Mina’s soul is hers, even if the rest of her can’t be, Chaeyoung will have that one part of her always).
They find each other still each day. As soon as Chaeyoung’s feet hit the ground at the base of the tree, Mina has her in her arms, tastes her on her lips. Each time it feels like coming home and she kisses Chaeyoung until she needs to breathe. They part but never go far. Chaeyoung will lie on the bench as she always has, but now her head rests in Mina’s lap and Mina’s fingers find her hair, smoothing out the unruly tangles and waves that Chaeyoung never seems to care to fix herself.
They talk still, and Chaeyoung tells Mina about her day, about Dahyun, and Mina listens and listens and breathes in every fact about this beautiful girl and imprints it on her own soul. She’s saving memories, she knows. For the day when it will all end.
She doesn’t know when it will be. Her eventual wedding to Minho has hung over her head for years, but where before she might have been too young for it to be seriously considered, her sixteenth year is approaching and Minho is a few years older, more than marriageable age. Any day now, the preparations will start.
Mina promises herself that she’ll tell Chaeyoung soon. She’ll tell her. She will.
It might be more cruel like this, to get Chaeyoung’s hopes up and then to dash them when it feels more convenient. Maybe she’s being selfish. Maybe she’s being a coward. But she wants Chaeyoung to be able to love her like this for a while. To love her like nothing in the world could stop them. She wants Chaeyoung to be able to feel it with no fear, no doubt, no timer on a relentless countdown, because she wishes for herself that she could love Chaeyoung without this dread hanging over her head.
(Mina thinks of Chaeyoung as a song bird. She’ll sit in the tree sometimes with her lute, resting against the branches like some Robin Hood type and singing tunes that can make Mina laugh, others that could make her cry. She’ll sing and play and admire Mina from afar until she can’t stand the distance between them.
Then she’ll flit down from her perch and press kisses to Mina’s cheeks between laughter and sunshine and then she’ll settle, legs thrown across Mina’s lap, and play Mina a love song. Two. Three. She’ll weave everything she feels into lyrics and words and leave Mina breathless with the weight of it.
Mina often wishes she had the vocabulary to do the same. And then she thinks that she wouldn’t be able to do it without feeling like a liar.)
“These are amazing!”
Chaeyoung’s eyes are bright and wide with delight. There’s cream on the corner of her mouth that Mina wipes away with her thumb. Chaeyoung leans even into the briefest of her touches and it just makes Mina want to touch her more, to hold her in every way a person can hold another. Her fingers itch from holding back the urge.
“Where did you get these?”
“From the palace kitchens,” Mina says.
Chaeyoung’s eyes widen.
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
Mina shakes her head.
“I’m sneaky.”
(She doesn’t say how she didn’t sneak. How she just walked in and asked for three different pastries from the kitchen’s reserves to be wrapped in brown paper packaging. How the staff didn’t question, not because they weren’t curious but because they know better than to question the King’s daughter.
She doesn’t mention that she’s never done this before. Has only ever eaten the food provided to her during mealtimes and has never once begged for any other indulgence, but she had for Chaeyoung because Chaeyoung had said she didn’t know what a cream pastry was and Mina couldn’t do much for her, but she could do this.)
Chaeyoung laughs with childlike glee and then takes another bite. Her eyes flutter shut in pure bliss as she chews, savoring each morsel.
“I’ve never eaten anything like this before.”
“Well, I’ll get you more. Whenever you want. You can even take some back to Dahyun as long as you keep it secret.”
Chaeyoung swallows the food in her mouth before she closes the distance between them and kisses Mina, warm and full on the mouth. She tastes like the cream pastry and Mina has had more of those desserts in her lifetime than she could count, but this is the sweetest it’s ever tasted. She doesn’t think she’ll be able to eat them again without thinking of how much better they taste off Chaeyoung’s lips.
“You know, I’ll come here to be with you regardless,” Chaeyoung says. “You don’t need to bribe me with sweets.”
Mina knows, because she’s sure the flower on Chaeyoung’s chest sings with the same bright and endless joy she feels when they’re close like this.
“I’m not bribing you,” Mina says. “I’m doing this because seeing you smile makes me happy.”
(There have been skirmishes to the South. King Bang’s forces are testing the borders, probing for a response.
“We need to start bolstering our forces,” her father’s military says forcefully. “We need to-”
“Go to each village and collect the five most able young men to fight,” her father interrupts.
“But Your Majesty, that won’t be nearly enough to-”
“We cannot sacrifice too many of our farmers at this stage. A starving country is just as vulnerable as a weak one. Start there, get them trained. We’ll continue to monitor the situation to the South. And tomorrow we’ll send troops. Two large battalions should do it to quash whatever King Bang is planning down there.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the advisor says.
The King assures Mina that everything will be alright, that their kingdom is strong, that she has nothing to fear.
Mina nods and chooses to believe him.)
Mina sits completely still. She even tries not to breathe as Chaeyoung’s fingers trace along the lines of her face. Across her eyebrows, down to her cheekbones, along the bridge of her nose, along the edges of her lips. Her jawline. The curve of her ears. Every place she touches erupts in goosebumps and Mina is holds back a shudder to avoid dislodging her soulmate.
“You’re perfect, you know that?” Chaeyoung says softly.
Mina has been told she was perfect before by many. But whenever it had been said – by her parents, by her caretaker, by whispering servants in the halls – it had never felt true. Her perfection had felt like a mask to hide this shameful thing she carried as her secret. But when Chaeyoung says it, Mina believes it. Not just because Chaeyoung has seen her deepest secret and has loved her more for it but because Chaeyoung’s soul sings to her and tells her that it’s true.
She finishes tracing each line of Mina’s face and neck down to her collarbones, where the neck of her dress, high and modest as always, impedes further progress. Her lips come next, following the path her fingers had traced with reverent precision and care. When they meet her lips, Mina finally allows herself to move, to reciprocate the kiss, to keep her there a second longer. It works, for a second, but Chaeyoung is determined in her quest to map out ever piece of Mina she can reach. Her lips trace lower, along her cheeks to her jawline and then lower to the line of her neck.
Mina hadn’t realized necks could be sensitive like this. It make sense, with how vulnerable they are, connecting life vital blood and air from the body to the head but with none of the protection of a skull. It tickles until it doesn’t, until Mina start to feel so warm that it’s the only thing she feels. Chaeyoung moves to pull away and Mina abandons her frozen state to hold her in place, lips pressed against her pulse point. Chaeyoung obliges the silent command easily and presses more firmly, kisses turning open-mouthed as she tastes the skin Mina has put on offer.
“Chaeyoung,” Mina gasps, begging for something she can’t name.
Chaeyoung licks and then bites, gently so as not to leave a mark, but with enough pressure that it travels straight down Mina’s spine and makes her legs weak. She slumps against the stone wall behind her slightly, grip on Chaeyoung tightening to keep her steady.
“You’re perfect,” Chaeyoung repeats into the skin of her neck. “My heart, my soul, you’re perfect.”
“Think you can make an escape today?” Chaeyoung asks, eyes all excitement and mischief.
“Escape?”
“I want to show you my home. And introduce you to Dahyun. If that’s okay with you.”
“Oh… I’ve… I don’t…”
Chaeyoung’s eyes go wide and hopeful like a puppy’s and Mina’s words change without her permission.
“I… okay.”
Chaeyoung’s smile is bright and everything good in the world and Mina doesn’t think about the repercussions her escape will have if she’s caught. She’s never seen her father’s wrath directed at her, but she knows that it burns hot and violent. It doesn’t matter though. Chaeyoung’s smile will serve as a balm to his fire.
Mina isn’t accustomed to climbing but Chaeyoung doesn’t let it be a problem for even a second. She instructs her through each movement, hovering as close as possible to steady her and pull her up over the wall. When Mina’s feet touch the ground on the other side, she feels like she’s in a whole new world. Not that there’s anything immediately different except for the first time in her life, she’s found land that she doesn’t recognize, sees grass she’s never touched and stones she’s never sat upon.
It’s much more wild out here compared to the perfectly manicured gardens within the castle grounds. Mina is unsure of what to look at first.
“Come on!”
Chaeyoung doesn’t seem at all concerned with the complete wonder in Mina’s expression. She takes her hand, the skin-on-skin contact sparking and warm, and tugs her along. Mina follows along, trusting completely. As they round to the front side of the castle, there’s noise past the constant rustle of the leaves in the wind. It grows steadily as they move. Voices, overlapping and constant, dogs barking, the sound of horses’s hooves. Children laughing. When was the last time Mina heard a child laugh? There weren’t many on the castle grounds. But here they run through the streets joyfully, darting between carts and people.
Mina and Chaeyoung enter the town completely unnoticed. No one spares them half a glance as they weave through the crowd.
If not for Chaeyoung’s hand in hers, Mina might be terrified. She’s never seen this many people, all looking far more rugged and dirty than those within castle walls. The men stand strong and gnarled like trees, skin leathery from the sun and hard work, shoulders broad from the weight of their wares. The women look similarly weathered, pink across their cheeks from the light of the sun and calloused hands. And yet… and yet… Mina finds she loves them.
There’s a truth in them that she has never seen in the artificially polished castle halls.
This is how people are. How they’re meant to be when living freely without pretense and politics. They laugh openly, brightly, they shout just as openly when angered. But mostly, they just live. A mother carries her baby on her back, two men haggle over the price of some potatoes, a teenage boy gets smacked on the back of the head by his mentor as he fumbles his way through a wooden carving. Mina watches each person she passes, soaks in their humanness and their vitality. If this is the world Chaeyoung grew up in, lives in, it makes sense that she glows like she does. The spark in her eyes and the sheer vivacity she seems to carry could only be bred somewhere like this.
A few people greet Chaeyoung with bright smiles that Chaeyoung returns with a wave, but she doesn’t slow to speak with any of them. Eventually, they reach a small house on the edge of town. Mina is drawn to it immediately. There’s something warm about the flowers that grow in the windows and the bundles of herbs hung and left to dry from the rafters of the roof. There’s a calico cat curled up in the patch of sun afforded by the front window.
Chaeyoung pushes through the front door with little grace and with all the familiarity of someone stepping into their home.
“Dubu!” she shouts. “I brought someone!”
Her excitement makes Mina’s chest flutter. She sounds like a child excited to share a something they believe to be the first to discover.
Chaeyoung had told her enough about her best friend, sister, that Mina had painted a picture of her in her head. Dahyun is not who Mina expects and yet… she makes sense somehow. She’s pale and delicate in a way Mina has only ever seen among the nobility of the palace but it doesn’t feel the same as it does on them. Her porcelain nature is not contrived, not bred from years indoors and no manual labor, nor from powered noses and cheeks. It’s unassuming and innate. At first glance she seems to carry none of the mischievousness that Mina has associated so strongly with her soulmate, but then she smiles and Mina sees it sparkling in her eyes.
“Hello,” Dahyun says, extending her hand to Mina, who takes it carefully and shakes. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Mina wonders what she knows. If Chaeyoung has told her about the fuchsias and the love between them. Or about their afternoons spent under the shade of that tree. Has Chaeyoung talked about her with the same adoration she had spoken to Mina about Dahyun?
Mina gets no hints, but she learns more than she could have dreamed of about the love of her life in this place she calls home. How her playfulness only increases around her sister, tugging at the ends of her braids and teasing at every opportunity given. How she moves even more nimbly, smoothly in the space she’s most comfortable with. How she adores the cat on the window, shares its eyes, and yet the cat cannot stand her attentions and swats at her in annoyance.
She makes Mina at home immediately, dragging her to a wooden chair by the table as Dahyun starts to cook. Whatever she’s making smells amazing and Mina’s mouth waters. Dahyun doesn’t let Chaeyoung help. Slaps her hand every time she even tries.
“She’s a disaster around food,” Dahyun shares with Mina conspiratorially. “Not sure how, but everything she touches somehow turns black. It’s a good thing she has other skills.”
Chaeyoung protests the likely very honest description of her abilities but not with much vigor. She ends up grumbling until Mina’s hand finds her waist and she’s soothed immediately. She ends up sitting in the chair next to her, pressing up against her side, head tucked into Mina’s shoulder. At first, the blatant contact, in Dahyun’s full view, makes Mina unsure, but when Dahyun sees them she smiles with quiet approval. So Mina soaks in the warmth of her soulmate’s touch and allows herself to relax in her surroundings.
Against her will, she starts imagining what her life could be if she weren’t who she’d been born to be. She imagines herself within these four walls, comforted by the smell of Dahyun’s cooking and Chaeyoung’s love. She could feed the cat and use her embroidery skills to mend the tears in Chaeyoung’s clothes. She soaks into the fantasy of it. Too far. Too much. By the time she manages to drag her mind out of it, it almost hurts to do so. She feels as if she’s losing something she never had.
The soup Dahyun serves is perfect. Somehow miles better than anything she’s tasted within the castle walls. She feels tears in her eyes as she takes the first bite. If Dahyun sees, she doesn’t say anything, but she smiles proudly when Mina haltingly compliments her work. She helps clean up after, to the best of her ability. She helps further in the back garden, carefully following Dahyun’s instructions to prune some of the plants and recognize the weeds that need to be pulled. Her hands, unused to this kind of work, are red and tender by the time she’s done but Dahyun looks grateful and Chaeyoung kisses her fingertips proudly.
Only when the sun begins to set does Chaeyoung guide her back to the castle. Mina hopes she wasn’t missed but doesn’t care if she was. This was worth any punishment that could be leveraged, any anger, any repercussions. She kisses Chaeyoung under the tree on the outside of the castle wall. Tries to breathe her in, tries to thank her for the gift she’d given her today. Chaeyoung hums and smiles under her lips and holds her tightly, so tightly that it can only mean she doesn’t want to let go.
She does, eventually, when their lips are bruised and red, and she helps Mina over the wall. When Mina’s feet touch the perfectly trimmed grass of the castle garden, she wonders if these walls have always felt this cold.
(The villages on the borders see the storm coming first. They fear it and run with messengers to the castle. They beg and plead for an audience with the King and when they get it they tell stories of farmlands burning and livestock being killed. They speak of disappearing children and soldiers from another land taking their women. The King listens. He listens and listens and then he sighs.
Two battalions almost entirely lost.
The reports say that King Bang’s army is… large. Able-bodied men from various smaller kingdoms he had conquered on his way to their lands join his army by the dozen in the promise of riches and rewards. The numbers grow each day. Mina’s father’s army is not weak, but they are likely to lose on a numbers game alone and that is enough for the King to worry.
He looks at his daughter over dinner. She smiles when their eyes meet and his heart grieves. He has wished many times that he would not have been born King but none more poignantly than when this perfect, perfect girl looks at him and smiles. He wishes he could have saved her, could have given her a life where she could be truly, deeply happy, and not tied down to the same duty that had weighed on his shoulders his whole life.
She looks frail across from him. She had inherited her mother’s slender build, but none of her mother’s fire and he worries how she’ll protect herself when he can’t keep her close anymore.
He had hoped they could wait longer till she was a little older so that he could have more time with her by his side. But this war… this war is troublesome and it seems unavoidable. They need help. An alliance.
He trusts King Lee. And he trusts King Lee’s son to care for her.
In this moment he makes the same choice he has always had to, the same choice he has tried to protect his daughter from has best he can. Duty over love. His daughter smiles at him over dinner and he decides that it’s time to send her away.)
(It’ll be a fall wedding. That’s the first thing her father tells her. She thinks maybe he could have said more to prepare her, to preface this moment, but he doesn’t. He just says fall. One month to prepare herself. One month to get her affairs in order and pack her belongings. One month to say goodbye to her parents, to that old caretaker who had raised her from an infant, to Chaeyoung.
One month.
The countdown she’d felt for so long has a number now. It ticks ominously in her head, slowly down, down, down. Her soul already mourns. It begs and begs and the flower on her chest feels like it’s wilting against her. It says don’t go, don’tgodon’tgo. Stay with her. Stay. Mina aches. She aches and aches and can already feel how much this will hurt, to split herself body and soul apart.
She wants to wish she’d never met Chaeyoung but she can’t bring herself to wish for something like that. She wants to run and betray her country, betray her father, but she can’t do that either. There are children in the borderlands dying, there are people begging for help. If she were to leave Chaeyoung, her soul will break, but if she were to abandon her duty, the guilt will kill her just as much. And with her would go the lives of more people than she can count.)
“You’re quiet,” Chaeyoung murmurs into the crown of Mina’s head.
She’d noticed immediately when Mina had arrived at the base of the tree that she wasn’t alright. Whether it had been something in her expression, her delayed arrival as she’d dragged her feet, or maybe just her soul calling, calling, calling to its pair to help soothe the ache. Chaeyoung hadn’t asked, at first. She’d just pulled Mina into her, cradled her against her chest and swayed them lightly as if soothing a baby. Eventually, when their legs had started to ache, Chaeyoung had pulled them to the ground, to lean against the trunk of the gnarled tree, Mina pressed to her side and her fingers running a soothing path down her spine.
“Tell me what’s wrong?”
Mina presses her face into Chaeyoung’s chest as she feels her tears begin to fall. She knew she’d cry the moment she’d left her room to come here. She’d cried herself to sleep last night, and had woken up and cried again. She’d managed to stop just enough to escape the castle without any of the servants being concerned but she’d known it would start again when the moment came.
Her hand is resting, as it often did automatically in silent moments between them, against Chaeyoung’s chest, right above where Mina knows those beautiful, wonderful petals to be. Her soul begs her to stay quiet. It begs her not to break this bond. It screams and wails and scratches against the inside of her chest but Mina doesn’t see another path. She’s looked at her options. She’s considered every possibility. She knows that this is her only choice. She has to do this, even if it kills her. She just has to hope it won’t kill her beautiful songbird as well.
Still, words fail her. They stick in her throat, choking her, robbing her of air and turning into sobs when she tries to release them. Chaeyoung just holds her tighter, presses a kiss to her forehead and loves her. It only makes Mina feel worse.
“You can tell me anything,” Chaeyoung says. “I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried. Nothing will scare me away.”
“That’s… that’s what I’m afraid of,” Mina says.
“That I’ll stop loving you?”
“That you won’t.”
It’s enough to stump her soulmate entirely. But she doesn’t release her hold, doesn’t question, just waits. Waits for Mina to explain because she has faith in her, utmost and unyielding. Undeserving, Mina thinks. Because what has she done for this wonderful, perfect girl except be born with a flower on her chest. What has she given her that she isn’t about to yank away?
“I’ve been lying to you,” Mina says. “By omission, but still a lie.”
“Okay,” Chaeyoung says, still completely unshaken. “Then tell me the truth now.”
Mina pulls away. Not far, never far, because even if she knows she’ll have to leave her behind soon, now is not that moment and she indulges in every touch and breath she can feel from her. Just enough that she can look Chaeyoung in those big, beautiful, round eyes and bare herself to her entirely.
“You asked once, if I worked here, at the castle,” Mina says. “I said, I did.”
“And you… don’t?”
“I… I guess I do. Technically speaking,” Mina says. “I… I work as much as any other princess does in the royal court.”
Chaeyoung goes rigid under her hands for a second as she processes and then she’s scrambling up to standing. Mina’s heart drops and for a second, it feels like the link between their souls trembles.
“You… you… princess?” Chaeyoung hisses. “Fuck, fuck, I’m so stupid. Princess Mina. Of course, you’re… you’re a fucking princess. I…”
Her shock curdles immediately into a kind of fear that Mina is all too familiar with, the kind that hangs around nearly every person Mina has ever met.
(When Mina is seven one of the servants spills a cup of her tea. It clatters on the stone floors and the cup shatters but Mina isn’t hurt. The woman immediately falls to her knees, supplicating herself to the young princess. Mina doesn’t understand. She’d dropped a cup three weeks before and no one had so much as scolded her. But this woman begs like her life hangs in Mina’s hands.)
(When Mina is nine, her father dismisses one of the cooks when he finds a bone in his daughter’s fish. He claims she could have choked and died. He claims that it’s not that hard to make sure fish have no bones. He claims that the young cook is lucky he isn’t executed that night.)
(When Mina is ten, her horse balks and nearly throws her. The stable hand who is teaching her how to ride catches her and places her on the ground. He bows so deep his nose almost touches his knees and he apologizes for picking the wrong horse, for touching her without her permission, for the near accident. Mina is just been grateful that she hadn’t actually hit the ground. He’s still trembling when she dismisses him an hour later.)
(When Mina is twelve, her mother has the gardener whipped for leaving a thorn on one of the roses that were placed by her bedside table each morning. Mina had grabbed it and had pricked her finger and when the Queen finds out she declares that the gardener must bleed as punishment.)
(Mina learns that the expressions the staff wear around her, around her parents is fear. Fear of retribution, fear of stepping out of line, fear of receiving punishment far beyond their crimes. She hates it but she doesn’t fight it. This is her role. This is who she is. She’s accepted it. She’ll accept the fear from anyone. Anyone except-)
“Y-your Majesty.”
Chaeyoung bows, spine stiff and awkward. She doesn’t even look like herself like this. Mina hates it, wants her carefree, smiling girl back. She fears she might never get her.
“Chaeyoung,” she begs. “Please, darling. Please. I’m not… you don’t have to be like that with me.”
(Chaeyoung thinks. She bites at her bottom lip, the lip that Mina has made a home of in the past months, plump and red. She regards her soulmate. She regards the daughter of a King who keeps medicinal herbs from his subjects. She can’t reconcile the two. But she can’t not reconcile them either. Because this person is the other half of her soul, the other half of her life, the core of all of the love she carries in herself.)
Chaeyoung falls to her knees, putting her level again with the princess that is her love and cups her face. She kisses her. She kisses her and kisses her and the princess, the other half of her soul, lets her. Lets her and lets her and lets her until they hear the clatter of armor of passing guards. They’re accustomed to keep their ears perked for their approach and Mina reacts first, pulling Chaeyoung up against the wall behind the elecampane, and holding her.
They wait for the sound to pass and then Mina is pulling away. Pulling away and looking at the ground, picking at her sleeve and looking every bit like she doesn’t know what to do with herself. There are tears flowing down her cheeks again. She doesn’t bother trying to stop them. She knows there will be no end to them, maybe ever.
“I’m sorry,” Mina says. “I’m so sorry.”
“What for?” Chaeyoung asks.
“For lying. And for… for being me. For not being someone else. You deserve someone who you can love properly. Who can love you with everything they are.”
Chaeyoung doesn’t understand. Her expression is blank and confused.
“What are you talking about?” Chaeyoung asks. “You don’t… love me?”
“I do,” Mina promises. “I do, I do, I do.”
Her soul screams IdoIdoIloveyouIloveyouwitheverythingIcan.
“Then what… what’s the problem? Is it because I’m a commoner?”
It’s not the core of the issue though it certainly doesn’t help. Even if Mina weren’t promised to someone, even if there weren’t a war on their doorstep it would certainly complicate matters. But Mina could make it work. Maybe. She doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter though, because the reality is that Minho is expecting to see her walk down the aisle in a month and their borderlands are being ravaged.
“No, it’s… not that. I’m… already promised to someone.”
She can’t bear to look at Chaeyoung’s expression when she says it. She can already imagine the heartbreak, can feel it in her own chest as the flower burns and burns against her skin. Chaeyoung’s hands fall down to her sides, limp, lost. Where they had always reached out to Mina now they seem unsure of what to do but hang. The silence of this garden has always felt peaceful to Mina, but now it weighs heavy as she waits and hopes for Chaeyoung to say something. Anything.
“I… how… do you love them?”
Mina shakes her head and the tears start to fall.
“No. No. I could never. I didn’t choose him… It was never my choice,” she says. “But it is… it is my duty.”
“But… you’re mine.”
There’s no malice in Chaeyoung’s voice, no possessiveness or anger. It’s just confusion. She doesn’t understand why this is being taken from her, why the other half of her soul can’t be hers. Mina knows it must be hard to understand to someone who lives as freely, as joyfully as Chaeyoung does, to feel the weight of a nation on her shoulders and the heft of her upbringing.
“I want to be. I promise I want to be. I want nothing more in the world. But there’s a war brewing and we need this alliance to secure our borders. A treaty won’t… it won’t be enough. They need a wedding. A proper, unbreakable union.”
Chaeyoung stares blankly for another few moments, as if she can’t make the words make sense. Her hands reach out again, no longer paralyzed by her sides as if to take Mina into her arms and never let go. Mina’s soul begs for it. Go with her. Please. Love her. Stay with her. Hold her. Kiss her. Love her. LoveherLoveher. It almost breaks her.
But she forces herself back.
“Chaeyoung, please,” Mina whispers. “You don’t understand how important this is.”
“More important than us?” Chaeyoung says.
“It’s war!”
It’s not in Mina’s nature to raise her voice. It’s not in her nature to shout but she does now because she needs Chaeyoung to understand. Before her begging actually manages to tear down Mina’s defenses, she needs her to know.
“They’ll come in a destroy everything they can’t make use of,” Mina says. “They’ll keep farmland because they need food too, but they’ll destroy anyone or anything that doesn’t suit their needs. They’ll burn down villages that try to stand in their way. They won’t care about women or children, the wounded, the elderly. They’ll all fall. This castle will fall and the town around it, the one where you live, where Dahyun lives… who knows what will happen. If there are food shortages, they’ll feed their people first. If there’s a drought they’ll give water to their people first. It’ll ruin this kingdom and the people in it. It’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than us. I can… I can stop this. With this alliance, I can...I can protect my people.”
It seems to finally dawn on Chaeyoung that Mina is serious. That this isn’t some sick joke, that she is well and truly asking the impossible of her. To let her go. To sever the bond between their souls that means more to her than anything else ever has. Her expression turns to anger and she exhales once, shakily and then she’s turning. She runs. She climbs up the gnarled tree with all of her usual swift-footedness and before Mina knows what’s happening, her love, her heart, her soul, is gone from her sight.
She breaks. The flower on her chest is screaming, it’s screaming and wailing and burning and Mina wishes she could soothe it, soothe herself, but there’s nothing to be done. There’s a war coming and a marriage to be had and Mina cannot choose herself. She has never been able to but certainly not now when her whole nation will break and fall if she doesn’t. So she breaks herself instead.
(The King’s daughter doesn’t leave bed for three days. He sits with her, hand brushing her hair gently out of her face. He doesn’t apologize with words. How could he? It would mean nothing. The apology is not for this wedding. It is far, far larger. It is for the tragedy of her birth. You would have been much happier if you hadn’t been my daughter. But how could he apologize for the most precious thing in his life? He loves her. Maybe selfishly but he’s so glad to have her even if he knows that life would have treated her more fairly had she been anyone else’s.)
(Mina wonders if her father knows. There’s apology in his touch. In his soft words as he encourages her to eat what little broth she can manage to swallow. She wonders if he’s aware that her heart breaks. It screams and cries and wails and the flower in her chest throbs like a phantom limb. She wonders if he knows what she’s sacrificing for him, for their country. He tells her he loves her, that he’s so proud of her, that she’s strong. She tries to believe that it will be enough.)
(Mina goes out to the tree every day. She has a month. A month to hope that she might get to see Chaeyoung one more time. She could go to Chaeyoung’s cottage, could beg her for these last few weeks. But she won’t force that on her. If what Chaeyoung needs to survive this is a clean break, Mina would never, ever begrudge her that, even if it means losing her own heart in the process.)
The rain falls and Mina lets herself get soaked in it and waits. The tree only somewhat protects her from the downpour but Mina doesn’t really want to be protected. She tastes the rainwater on her lips and remembers. The first time. Chaeyoung’s lips warm despite the water, her hands gripping at the soaked fabric of Mina’s dress. She’d tasted like rainwater and like herself. And Mina tastes the rainwater now and remembers, but it’s a poor imitation. She thinks she might come to hate the rain.
But she doesn’t move.
She hopes. She hopes and hopes and hopes and the flower on her chest counts down the days. Sixteen now. Sixteen. She waits. She waits and waits and waits and her dress is soaked through, her hair sticking to her skin and she can’t taste or smell anything other than rainwater and petrichor. And then there’s a sound in the tree above her, the rustle of leaves and of booted feet against bark and Chaeyoung is landing in front of her Mina, feet lithe on the ground.
Mina’s soulmate looks broken, tired, none of her usual vitality. No mischievous tilt to her lips. Dark circles under her eyes and skin pallid in an almost sickly sort of way. But she’s here. She stands in front of Mina after days and days, after Mina had almost convinced herself that she’d never see her again.
Her heart sings. The flower on her chest rejoices and dances and sings out for the girl in front of her. Mina’s hands raise to reach out to her without conscious thought. It’s only when her arms are already extended that she thinks that maybe Chaeyoung doesn’t want that from her anymore. She starts to let her hands drop back down, but Chaeyoung is stepping forward and takes them in her own, stepping close enough for Mina to feel her warmth.
“How long do we have?” Chaeyoung asks softly.
Her voice cracks with unshed tears and there’s nothing in the world that could stop Mina’s soul, her whole being from pulling the other half of her soul into her and cradling her to stop the tears.
“Sixteen days,” she says and it sounds like not enough time, like it could be minutes only, but also its better than nothing. It’s everything, really.
Chaeyoung sobs once into the crook of Mina’s neck and then pulls away, just enough to press her lips tentatively, shaking to the corner of Mina’s lips. Mina fixes the angle, presses their lips together properly. Chaeyoung tastes like rainwater, like the first time. She tastes like everything Mina has ever wanted, has ever dreamed of. She tastes like the last thing Mina ever wants on her lips.
There’s no pretense anymore. No need to hide or shelter. Mina takes Chaeyoung by the hand and guides her through the paths she’s walked every day of her short life. She knows these grounds like the back of her hand, knows how to get back to her room without being seen. Knows how to lock her door so that no one will come looking. Chaeyoung stands dripping and lost in the middle of the vast room (larger than Chaeyoung’s whole house by a reasonable measure). Mina doesn’t let her hesitate for too long.
She peels carefully, reverently. First her tunic, leaving just a white shirt, nearly transparent from the rain. And then she peels away the shirt too, and Mina’s lips trail along the expanses of skin revealed. Chaeyoung’s skin is smooth and cool like marble and she trembles under each gentle touch. She seems unsure until Mina’s lips find the petals of the flower and then she shudders and her hands reach up to grip at Mina’s shoulders.
“Mina,” she whispers.
“Please,” Mina answers, against the skin of her chest. “Let me be selfish. Please.”
Chaeyoung shakes her head and puts her hands on Mina’s cheeks, pulling her in to kiss her tenderly.
“It’s not selfish. I… I want it too. I want you. Until I can’t have you anymore.”
Mina’s soul shivers at the reminder that this time is borrowed and finite. But then Chaeyoung’s fingers are dancing along the lines of her shoulders to where her dress can be unfastened and she lets herself forget everything.
(Mina eschews the wedding planning entirely. She tells her father that she’ll be happy with anything selected. That she trusts him, she trusts her mother, and she trusts Minho and King Lee. She just needs time… time to prepare. He hugs her tightly. Kisses her firmly on the crown of her head and tells her that he loves her dearly and she should take whatever she needs. He can’t give her much anymore, has to trust that Minho will give her what he can going forward, but he can give her the next couple of weeks to be the person she wants to be, until she can only be Minho’s.
She bars anyone from entering her quarters, including that old caregiver. She begs to have her food delivered to her door, double portions just because. The staff wonders but they don’t ask. They know not too. Her orders are followed to the letter.)
Mina makes a sanctuary of her bed. She makes it the most perfect home she can for the next couple of weeks, ferrying Chaeyoung safely, discreetly out to the gnarled tree whenever Chaeyoung says she desperately must see Dahyun again, so that her sister won’t worry. But she’s never gone for long. She spends days, nights, every second she can holding onto the other half of her soul.
“You’re beautiful,” Chaeyoung whispers late at night, her hands everywhere she can reach.
“You’re perfect,” Mina whispers back, arching into her, trying to get closer, closer.
She wishes sometimes, when the heat surrounds her brain and the only thing she’s aware of anymore is the smoothness of Chaeyoung’s skin and the heat of her breath, that they could just meld into one. That she could become Chaeyoung’s so completely that they couldn’t be separated by any force in the universe. She dreams of Chaeyoung even as her love sleeps in her arms and she wakes to her there still.
“I love you,” Chaeyoung whispers at every chance she can.
And Mina can hear the plea in it. She won’t ask Mina to change her mind. She understands why Mina is doing this to them, enough at least to not hate her. She won’t make it harder on Mina by asking, by begging and making her choose. Instead, she says I love you. I love you. I love you more than anything. You are my heart, my soul, the other half of me. I adore you. But with each syllable Mina hears it anyway. Stay. Please. My love, stay with me. I’ll do anything. I’ll give you anything. I’ll be everything. Just stay.
The flower on Mina’s chest blossoms, it sings. It begs. It tells her that she could have this forever, if only she just chose the path destiny wanted for her. If only she let her love for Chaeyoung come first, above everything, above anyone else. Mina cries when Chaeyoung falls asleep, cries and cries as softly as she can so as not to wake her. She curses destiny one second for making her choose like this, she thanks it in the next for bringing this perfect, beautiful, wonderful girl to her. For giving her even the shortest moment to experience this love.
(These days won’t feel real soon enough. They’ll feel like a dream. Like a heaven no one but an angel should be allowed to reach. She will wake sometimes, in her new bed in King Lee’s castle, with the phantom press of Chaeyoung’s fingers into her skin and will try to remember it in full but the memory will always pale in vibrancy to the real thing. She’ll try to touch Minho, she’ll let him touch her and it won’t matter. He’ll smile and thank her and tell her how good she feels and she’ll pity him, thinking ‘this is nothing, if only you knew how it could feel. If only you knew what this could be.’)
“I can make my way back alone,” Chaeyoung says quietly.
“I can… you don’t have to go alone.”
Chaeyoung has tears streaming down her face. She isn’t even trying to stop them. Mina isn’t either, her own face soaked.
“I don’t want you to,” Chaeyoung says and she sounds hoarse, like her throat is squeezing each word as it tries to leave. “I want to… I want to remember you like this.”
Laid out on the bed. Bare, the flower bright and proud in the center of her chest, hair probably tousled and skin littered with marks.
“I want… I want to kiss you goodbye,” Chaeyoung says. “And I want to feel you while I do. I can’t… if you follow me back out there, I don’t think I’ll be able to let you go.”
Mina kisses her. Mina kisses her and kisses her and kisses her and hopes Chaeyoung feels, hopes she knows that Mina is giving her soul. Not just the half that is Chaeyoung’s already, prescribed by destiny. All of it. She wants her to have all of it. She’ll live as a shell of herself from here on out and she’s okay with that. If it’s Chaeyoung who has her other half, then she’s okay with it.
“I love you,” she promises. “I love you. I will always love you.”
Chaeyoung nods, kisses her, nods again.
“You should… you can love someone else,” Mina says. “I want you to. I want you to be happy so do whatever it is you need to be happy. Stop thinking of me. Stop loving me if you need to. It’s okay. I’ll still love you. I’ll still be yours. But you should be happy.”
Chaeyoung shakes her head and cries harder. Sobs interrupt every other breath but she tries to kiss Mina anyway.
“Yes,” Mina urges. “Please. Promise me, you’ll be happy. I need to know that you’ll be happy so that I can…”
Chaeyoung cuts her off with another kiss, desperate, pleading, her last attempt. Her last request. Mina wishes she could grant it. She can’t but she gives every other part of her she can. Chaeyoung takes. She takes and takes and takes and she’s never been selfish but she is now in how she pulls everything out of Mina that she can until Mina is left shaking and trembling with nothing left to give.
“I love you,” Chaeyoung says as she stands from the bed.
Night has long since fallen. It’s pitch dark through the window of Mina’s bedroom. It will make Chaeyoung’s escape easier.
“Be happy, Chaeyoung,” she says. “For me. Be happy.”
Chaeyoung looks down at her mournfully and then slowly nods.
“For you,” she says softly. “For you only.”
I love you Mina thinks. Doesn’t say. Chaeyoung slips out of her room with one last forlorn look back and Mina wishes for the darkness to take her too, to whisk her away to wherever Chaeyoung will be. But the darkness does nothing but settle around her like a cloak.
(The flower on Mina’s chest whimpers and sobs and wilts. It begs her, the same way Chaeyoung had and Mina has nothing to say to it. She’s letting it down, defying the wishes of destiny. The destiny that had been so kind to give her this love, the destiny that had chosen her and said ‘you, you will be loved’. It had given her a gift, the kind of gift others dream of, write of, pray for, and Mina had looked at it and loved it, adored it so tenderly, and then had said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t have this’. And destiny burns in the flowers on her chest, burns and burns, until Mina thinks she might turn to ash entirely. Maybe that would be her punishment. Maybe it’s what she deserves for turning down the kindest gift anyone has ever been given.
You should have chosen someone else, she tells destiny. You should have picked someone who deserved this. You should have given her someone that wouldn’t hurt her.
Destiny doesn’t answer.)
(Morning comes and with it, a carriage. Mina sits next to her father and he smiles at her. She thinks he’s trying to be reassuring, but he mostly looks sad.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
Mina nods. But she knows he doesn’t believe it. How could he, when she must look only a step above death. She feels sick and weak, as if every meaningful part of her has been drawn out of her and left only the bare components that will keep her alive. Mina had given it all to her love, to the other half of that flower. She just has to hope that it means that Chaeyoung is feeling that life force that she lacks. Mina has to believe that she’s doing better that she is . It would break her heart otherwise.
She wonders if Chaeyoung found the purse of coins she’d slipped into her satchel when she’d last slept yet. She wonders if she’ll hate her for it. She thinks she might, but that she’ll share it with Dahyun because Dahyun deserves it and shouldn’t suffer from her broken heart. She hopes Dahyun will convince her to use it, so that she’ll never want for anything. She hopes Chaeyoung is loved. Because Mina can’t do it herself.
She peeks out of the carriage window as they pass through town. She wonders if Chaeyoung would watch the procession or avoid it. She really doesn’t know. Isn’t sure what she’d do herself. All she knows is she doesn’t see her. She passes through town, away from her love, and she wishes, for just a second, that she could stay behind with her, even if it was in a grave.)
((The worst part of it all isn’t that Mina says goodbye to the love of her life, to her soulmate. It isn’t even that she breaks Chaeyoung’s heart, though it kills to know that she’s hurting her. No, the worst part of it all, is that she does it all for nothing .))