Wang So woke up with a sudden start. He was confused for a moment. He wasn't sleeping under the stars in the remote mountains of Later Jin. He was home. As home as Damiwon Palace could be to anyone. A coldness settled in his chest. Was it a nightmare he had? Was the night really as cold as he imagined? He looked around his chambers. The faint outline of his bed, his armour, looked as unfamiliar to him as a foreign landscape. There was no movement, no sound, just the scraping boots of the palace guard, patrolling the ground.

Wang So reminded himself that he was no longer on the battlefield. He was in his own bed at the imperial palace, but tonight, he wished he was back with his army. Soldiers who heeded his command; soldiers, he relied on with his life. Men who fought with steel and blood were reasonable. They spoke a language he knew.

He hated this palace full of diplomats and governors and greedy servants of power, whispering plans to each other. Those were people he couldn't stand. He could barely remember what sleeping with four walls felt like. No whistle of the wind, or the piercing echo of a wolf howling at the moon. He missed the wild noises.

He still felt uneasy. His fingers reached for the crevice where the futon met the frame of the bed and touched the cool metal of his knife. It wasn't a huge knife, but it would get the job done. He grabbed a layer of light armor and got dressed quickly.

Hae-Su. Her name floated to the front of his mind like a ripple on the surface of water. Those long months away in Later Jin, he would call up her face whenever he walked away from the dinner with his men. After one too many drinks, his men would start to tell ribald stories of girls they left behind in their villages. He had heard plenty about soft thighs and full breasts and a particularly erotic, but unbelievable, tale involving four men and one very flexible gisaeng.

And it wasn't like he didn't have urges.

There were women all over the encampments, no matter where they traveled. Where there are soldiers, women followed; for companionship, for protection, or for excitement. He thought a lot of his men would be staying in Later Jin with new wives. Wang So noticed that the women of Later Jin didn't care about his mask. Some were very enticing, but he wasn't interested. His single-minded focus was on completing his task so that he could return back to Songak as soon as possible. He didn't have time to waste. Every morning, he rose with the first crack of light and rode as far as he needed to survey the land between Khitan and Goryeo. He ate once a day, ravenously, and rode again until his body was so tired that sleep would come as soon as he collapsed in his tent. His mind was elsewhere. His men complained that he didn't know how to have fun. Wang So agreed. He didn't know how to have fun. He just wanted to go back to Songak for only one person, Hae Su.

Hae-Su was beautiful, but there were plenty of beautiful woman in Goryeo that he didn't remember. Her name sounded like water to him. His chest clenched. He had been away for too long. Twelve long months away from the woman who had taken root as deep as a tree in his soul. Now that he was back, only a few miles away, but she felt as remote as when he was hundreds of miles away. He wanted to know why. Maybe that's why he sneaking out of the palace in the middle of the night, trying to figure out where things went left.

The guards were changing and at just the right moment, he glided through the courtyard of the palace. The pale slice of moonlight landed in a strange shadow and he thought he saw her slight form, still kneeling in front the palace gates. It was a trick of the light, but Wang So saw her as clearly as the day it happened one year ago.

The image of her, bloodied from churi torture, trembling in front of the palace, set in his brain like a lye burn.

He scrabbled to the top of the wall, ran along side the the northwest side of the palace wall. He stopped short when he saw a hanging rope was still swinging. Probably an errant breeze, but it made Wang So realize he was in front of the gallows. His gut turned into ice when he remembered how close Hae Su was to death. She nearly died three times in those two days. She was punished for a crime she didn't commit. His woman went under the kind of torture that broke men three times her size. There was a reason he hated the palace. The palace nearly killed Hae Su. Before her trial, Hae Su was tortured. He was already too late when he finally came to from the poisoning. He hastened to her cell, but the sight of her crumpled on the floor stopped him cold. She worn a prisoner's white smock and her delicate body looked like a twisted paper crane stained with mulberry juice. Through the prison bars, she had demanded why he drank the poison for her. He only smiled wryly, deflecting the charge, and called himself stupid. Even with her legs twisted under her, bleeding on the hay floor of the prison, Hae Su chided him to take care of himself, to not see her again in this state. He felt his jaw clench and barely choked out that she was too much trouble. She had weakly retorted that he was too.

He cursed himself. Wasn't there anything he could have done? Yes, he had intercepted the poison that his mother delivered to the Crown Prince. But it was still too little too late. Hae Su would be dead if the poison she served unknowingly had reached the Crown Prince instead of him. He didn't regret swallowing the three cups of poison. He regretted that the poison rendered him unconscious. Were he stronger, faster, even better than he was, maybe she wouldn't have a permanent limp.

Wang So found himself drawn to the gallows. He walked up the steps, stepped around the trap door, and faced the palace. In the moonlight, he could still make out the balcony where his father's chambers were. Did Lady Oh face towards the palace when she died or did she close her eyes to the the man who gave her a death sentence? Bile rose from his stomach to his throat. Could he ever forgive his father? What kind of man would give up on the woman he loved to save a son? It was incomprehensible to So. There was no one he would save rather than Hae Su.

The rules of the palace dictated that someone had to be guilty. If Hae Su was spared, it was only because Lady Oh took the blame. Lady Oh knew the price of staying alive. She knew that someone had to die. Only a life could pay for a life and Lady Oh choose her own. On the final hours of the execution, the rain poured from the sky like it was weeping. He felt utterly useless. He couldn't stop Hae Su making the king angrier. He was silent when he saw Wong Wook approach Hae Su's kneeling protest. She had glanced at him, the faintest trace of a smile at his half-brother. So felt gut-punched. He knew that Hae Su's relationship with Wang Wook was different than her relationship with any of the other princes. He knew that Wook cared about Hae Su, maybe even as much as he did, which is why he thought Wook would have figured out a way for Hae Su to be out of this hellish nightmare. Instead, nothing changed. The palace machinations of injustice rolled on without a hitch and here they were, Hae Su begging for her mentor life, and incurring the king's wrath.

Wang So shook with anger when he saw Wook turn away from Hae Su at the last minute, walking back to the safety of the palace. All the princes would be punished if they stood with her, but his most loyal brother, Baek Ah didn't care, he too, knelt with Hae Su.

With measured steps, Wang So promised that he would never leave her alone, not as Wook had. done. Her slender back was drenched. The white cloth clung to her. She was a pitiful sight. He swallowed painfully and when he was close enough, threw his cloak over her, standing in solidarity against the king who would have no choice but to punish them both. When the tolls of the executioner rang out, Hae Su screamed. She struggled, try to get stand, but she was too weak from the torture. He tried to draw her close to him, to give her some of the strength he had. He would never let her see Lady Oh's body, swinging from the hanging rope. It was too ghastly. He had wrapped her in his arms, holding her feverish body, but this was physical intimacy at the worst price. He shouted her name, over and over again, his thumb brushing against her face, willing her to wake up again. To fight again.

Another palace guard rounded the corner and Wang So had to duck behind another wall. He was still about 50 meters from the wall. He held his breath so that the soldier wouldn't see the water vapor from his breath condense in the frigid night air. When the foot soldier finally moved out of his sightline, Wang So made moves and lightly climb the wall. He wanted to get away from the memory of that day. As soon as possible.

King Taejo executed his lover. Hae Su lost her friend. He, Wang So, was banished to a far away land. The palace chewed through people's lives and left them stripped to the bone. They were all scraps in his mother's war path. The failure of his father curdled bitterly in Wang So's mouth.

He sighed and looked the silver moon. He promised that he would never leave her. But that's precisely what he did. He left her last winter.

It was certain death if he didn't abide by his banishment. The king sent him away. A year later, he finally completed his mission that the King had ordered. King. Father. Abeoji. He was angry with his father. He promised to allow Hae Su to stay in Damiwon palace, but had instead degraded her to the status of a water maid.

He touched the scar on his face. Rubbing it always reminded him of her. How her fingertips, traced his scar, lighting the sensitive nerves on his face. Self-control was difficult around Hae Su. The Goryeo women he had known all his life always gave him a wide berth. They spoke softly to him. Averted looking in his eyes. The first time she touched him, Wang So felt like his entire body was alive, only at the points where her skin made contact with his. All he desired since the day she touched his scar was to wrap himself around her slender frame. He'd be closer to her than the hanboks she wore. He would stroke and tease her, slipping his hands underneath her dress, circling her waist. Maybe going lower. The first time she applied the makeup to his face, Wang So barely made it through. She was the first person to touch his face in years. He hadn't imagined anyone, let alone the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life.

"Can I place myself in your hands," he had asked Hae Su when she made a promise that would change his life.

There wasn't curiosity or pity when she lifted off the mask. She traced the outline of the faint scar. Wang So had seen every single reaction to his face for the last twenty years. Only he had traced the strange ridge of skin that quartered his face. One long line, like a life-line in the groove of his palm, bisecting his face before it splintered off between his orbital bone underneath his eyes. Su's fingers were light, but he felt like he like was running at full speed, his heart pounding blood in his head. The air in his chest was burning. He didn't want to believe that this was happening. She was stroking the very thing that made him more animal than man. It felt wrong. He felt naked. He expected her to recoil, to do any of the things he'd seen people do. She was only a hair's breadth away and he could see that her pupils were dilated. A slight flush was in her face and she didn't notice that his eyes were fully open, drinking her in. When she finally met his gaze, she didn't recoil. She was so close. He only had to lean a fraction forward and his lips would brush hers. He swallowed hard, willing himself to stop staring at her when she was so close, and closed his eyes again. Closing his eyes might have shut off one sense, but now the brunt of his concentration was on her warmth radiating from her closeness. She smelled slightly smoky from the tea she prepared all day long at the palace. His mouth was dry. He could only imagine how she tasted. She was so close that he felt the her light even breath on against his cheek. Her light brush continued its job and when she was finished, she changed his life.

She held the brass mirror to his face and he felt his chest expand. He was in shock. The scar was completely gone. The thing that divided him against his family, kept him in exile, from duty from love, was gone. He was less than a person before she began and now he felt more powerful than a King now that she was done. No one had ever thought to help him remove his scar. People sneered at his bad fate, but only this brilliant girl in front of him thought that the world was unfair. Only Hae Su understood.

He silently lead his favorite black gelding out of the stables and mounted the horse quickly. It was the same horse on the day that he swung Hae Su from the edge of the ravine onto its powerful back. He rode silently until he was well away from the palace, and then took off in a sudden burst of speed.

He was going to the Gyobang. He was going to Hae Su.