#fairy prince!yeonjun

[run2yujin]

....🪞🐚

[hyukascampfire]

yeahh, yeonjun is cooked in the poll, but he put up a better fight this time! 😭

To: Someone From a Warm Climate

wc: 23.2k

genre: smut, angst, fantasy violence

pairings: faerie!taehyun x human!reader, faerie!yeonjun x human!reader

synopsis: a life lived as a human among the fae is one hard-earned. the folk are built of indescribable beauty, and of debauchery and mischief. for some, a life lived subservient to the folk is just fine; but to those who dream of something more, they would spend their lives clawing and biting to make it happen.

you, looking for a way to escape a life as a faerie’s human servant, put a new foot forward thinking that any life could be better than that. but, when your first assignment as a king’s spy is alongside a brooding, icy faerie man, you begin to wonder what your place in this foreign world really could be.

a/n: this part, i put my heart and soul into! i rewrote so many parts and agonized over following the path that i most wanted the story to go down—i hope it shows! xoxoxoxo, love ya! again, this is a long one, so pls let me know about spelling mistakes :,)

! warnings: angst, unprotected sex, voyeurism, orgasm denial, jealousy, angst again, dubious intentions of multiple main characters... poor mc has no idea who to believe

playlists: taehyun | yeonjun | series

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You had hoped that learning of Yeonjun’s relationship with the same crowd who have made attempts on your life would be enough to rattle your brittle heart into sense. You really had. As you watch Taehyun, bent over the war strategy table, though, you wish you had more time to sort it out in your head. You hate the thought of settling on half-baked answers and information all for the fact that time is not on your side. When had time ever really been kind to you, though? It had not made exceptions when you were small and innocent in your cradle, had not slowed down to allow you to at least cherish your final moments a normal child with her human parents. You can only fantasize who you would be if you had been given just enough time to know that gentle love. Even now, time makes your choices for you.  

Taehyun looks over those metal figurines as if searching for something in them. There are more of them stood and strewn out on the map. It reminds you how you are now faced with a plethora of newer, more powerful players.  

You miss when this had been a simple spying mission—when your path forward had been unobscured and clear. You envy that version of yourself: able to believe that bad things presented themselves as such. The world had been clean-cut. Evil had jagged teeth and foul breath, and good had soft edges and sweet smiles. You’re not sure where that distinction lies anymore.  

“How’s your shoulder?” you say, making your presence known. You’re sure he had been keen to your presence from the moment you’d entered the estate, though; not only thanks to his better hearing, but also because Taehyun is constantly assessing his surroundings. The smallest insect could hardly sneak up on him. You push off the doorframe and enter the room. 

He nods his head once in greeting, but he doesn’t tear his gaze away from the table’s ensemble. “It’s doing fine.” 

Sighing, you decide not to push it. The sight of that puncture had been ghastly, and it wreaks havoc in your belly every time you replay it, but the tick in his jaw when you mention it tells you enough of how he feels about disclosing whether or not anything might hurt him. How many times in the past few weeks had you forced him to do just that? It’s no wonder that the two of you butt heads so terribly. Allowing you to stitch him up must’ve been the extent of how far he’d let you see him in need of help. 

You gesture toward the table. “Have you decided when we leave?” 

Taehyun answers you with a strained sigh out through his nose: a testament to how he’d been mulling it over. He levies those figures a few more moments of his gaze as if they might speak an answer for him. They don’t. He concedes to their lack of direction and turns to you. “Every moment we spend here, we risk our identities further,” he starts, crossing his arms over his chest.  

You wince. He still believes that you’d at least contained some of your identity by taking out those three faeries. You know better. Even the bard in that tavern had known what had happened; it’s why Yeonjun ended up finding out in the first place. Even if not all of them had been a part of that rebellion, it’s reckless to assume that there were no more than that. 

Continuing, he says, “And judging by what we’ve picked up, we need to get it all back before the solstice.” He doesn’t pace as he thinks. Only the faraway look in his eyes betray the noise in his head. 

You hate the way it sounds like he’s going to demand that you leave immediately, and you hate how it sieges your tongue and makes it dance into a pitiful ploy to stay. To give yourself some credit, it’s better that Taehyun knows every bit of information you have. This moment is desperate for informed decisions. 

“I saw Yeonjun this morning,” you blurt. The words bubbled and bubbled behind your lips until they’d found the tipping point and spilled out. You’d agonized over what to make of it all for hours: that Yeonjun had been as deceitful with you as you’d been with him, that you are a sorry human girl that had wedged her way into the cross-firings of a war much beyond yourself, that you still have the gall to consider your own feelings despite its grandness... None of that worrying had led you to a conclusion that both your heart and mind would agree on.  

Taehyun’s gaze snaps to you, contained and remote aside from the twitching at the corners of his lips. The intensity of it makes you waver, but you have no time for wavering.  

“He’s... been made aware of our purpose here. He knows that we’re spies,” you say. As you watch him try to piece that together, you add, “He’s part of their rebellion.” 

Now he laughs, barbed and full of mock and disbelief. “The prince is rebelling against his father? He thinks he’ll find the throne like that? What’s his plan for when this falls through? For when his father hears of his mutiny? The prince will lose his head.” 

The thought makes you nauseous, despite how Yeonjun’s image has grown to be something murky. You don’t know what Yeonjun’s intentions are in aligning with the rebellion here. You hardly know anything about his relationship with his father and the High Court aside from the fact that he feels suffocated by his life back there. You’d assume that there’s a lot more to his reasoning, but you’ve learned your lesson about assuming that you know who people are. The inability to lie comes with the need for secrets. The thought that perhaps Yeonjun is only making a shady attempt for power crosses your mind, but either your own reasoning or your own stubbornness shoves it down. Nobody in faerie would hand their fealty to a prince who’d taken the throne of a long-standing king by those sorts of means. He’d be a king with no denizens to preside over. 

You interject Taehyun’s parade of scoffs. “He told me that war is coming, that it’s been coming.” 

His face drops, and he straightens up. “Of course it is. It’ll begin the moment we return with what we’ve found.” 

Your lips go a bit numb, and then your fingers follow. You know that this is your duty—it’d been this all along. It should come as no shock to you that he intends to relay this all to The King. But that was before you allowed your heart to make its home here. How simply he demands that you return to those lands with information that would kill Yeonjun... it has acid crawling a path up your throat. 

You make your best effort to ensure that your voice doesn’t falter as you speak. “He offered us protection as long as we stay here,” you say. “We don’t have to leave now.” You try to catch his gaze as you add, “We don’t have to leave at all.”  

You know that Yeonjun plays a part in the rebellion, but you don’t know how deep his devotion goes, and you also don’t know to what ends you can trust his intentions. How far do his loyalties to the rebellion go? And, where do his loyalties to you stand? The thought that he may have never loved you at all... it’s been a plague to your heart and mind from the very moment he’d revealed the truth to you this morning. Your guilt has chipped away at you without mercy—you’ve spent so many awful nights wishing you could unload your deceptions in front of him. How had it ended up so trivial in the grand scheme of things? How are you the one left feeling betrayed? 

You really, really cannot imagine having Yeonjun’s blood on your hands. He is one of them—a creature deception, and yet you still cannot shake those stolen nights from your bones. He had been your first. He’d made this place a home for you, where you had never had a home. It’s pitiful to search so deeply in someone else for your own strengths; even you can see that. Nevertheless, you do it. You suppose that a pair of warm arms and sweet words will do that to someone, no matter if you know that they could rot you like sweets do the tooth. It’s not unlike drunkards who find their day’s comfort in their drinks, even as it rots their body and mind away. Anything for a stretch of belonging and bliss. You're desperate for it. 

Taehyun’s sinewy words rattle your wandering mind back to reality. “He tells you that he is a member of the same group of people that have tried multiple times to kill you, and you believe him when he says he’s going to protect you? Still?” he spits, shaking his head. “What makes you so sure that he’s not just keeping us from running? That he isn’t handing us on a platter to his rebel friends? You’re going to get us fucking killed.” 

Blood roars like frothy-white rapids in your ears, warring with the echoes of his honey-glazed exclamations of love. To some capacity, he had to have meant those words. Faeries can’t lie, and he had said it so plainly. He loves you. 

“We can’t leave yet,” you say, stepping toward him on legs that you fear might collapse beneath you. “You said it yourself; we can’t return without the whole story. If we return now, we could be missing something.” You study the frosty set to his face and suck in a stabilizing breath. “Please, Taehyun. Please trust me on this.”  

You sound desperate and pleading, but you don’t reel it in at all. You are desperate and pleading. You have no intent of returning as some successful spy and continuing a life of deception and violence. It’s not who you are; it’ll never be who you are. Maybe this world tries to ask it of you, but you refuse to concede to it. 

“Part of our job is staying alive,” he says, his body rigid. He doesn’t like where you’re going with this, you can tell that much. 

“Is that what you want? To be a pawn of war? Isn’t that what we are if we bring this information back?” you challenge. “Don’t you think that if the prince of all people has turned against him, then serving at his hand is the wrong choice? I don’t know The King—I’ve never even seen him! Why should I be excited to serve him?” 

“The prince has more reason than anybody to want his father off his throne.” 

“That’s not what I’m saying,” you say, stepping further toward him. Though, it does make you revisit those thoughts. If vying for the crown is really Yeonjun’s intention, you suppose he’d have no problems pleading with you to stay in order to tie off loose ends. You wish you could see it all from somebody else’s untainted eyes. “What I’m saying is, do you want to be a spy? What has The King ever done for you to earn your loyalty?” 

Taehyun looks at you with disbelief, the corners of his mouth tilting down. “I don’t care about the damn king,” he snaps, and then gestures down at the table with all those figures. “The Queen operates on necessary evils. Where she can find a string to pull, she will pull it. My father was her general for a reason. Do you think she would keep him unless she approved of his violence? There is no good side to this war—just sides. If you’re suggesting that we stay here and try to forget that we came as spies, then you can forget it.” 

You glance over at the war table and wonder how you’ve become a moving piece in ancient faerie politics when all you’d set out for was a purpose. You’d been so warped by your bitterness with your upbringing that you’d failed to see how anything could be worse than that. You’d been so excited that you jumped willingly into dark water without knowing how deep it was, and now your feet can’t touch the ground. Is this the purpose you want? 

“Leave, then,” you say, stepping back. “You can leave. Just let me stay here. Please.” 

Something in Taehyun’s expression flips, so subtle that you can’t name it. It unsettles you, your hair standing on edge. There is something in his eyes that you do not like.  

“So, that’s it?” he says, his voice odd too. “That’s all it took for you to hand your future over on a leash to him?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you stammer. The only ones with a collar around your neck are the spies. They’re the ones who insisted on that geas—the ones who needed to compel you with their faerie magic.  

“It means that you got all the way here, uncovered a whole rebellion, and made a life for yourself, not handed to you by a prince, and you’re going to trade it in. It means that you’ve let him convince you that you are weak and need to be coddled.” 

Your fists curl tight and dig your nails into your palms. “I never wanted to be a spy,” you grit out. Yeonjun is not the reason you want to stay here. He may be part of it, but you’ve come to be utterly unwilling to return to that spy den like it’s your home, or something. It’s not. You’d slept there for one night. Beyond just your word and that geas, what reason do you have to return? 

“You didn’t? And yet, it’s what we are, isn’t it?” he says. “Do you think that I dreamed of being a spy? That I do it because I love it?” 

“Then, what do you do it for, Taehyun?” you say. “When will you begin living your life for you?” 

Taehyun seems to consider your words for a few long heartbeats, and then he seems to settle into something in his head. You allow yourself to let go of some of the tension in your shoulders as you watch his expression morph into something much less poisonous. 

You hadn’t expected him to react like that. 

“Do you have any weapons on you?” he says. 

Faltering, you sputter out, “What?” You look over the room. The last time you’d been in here, you’d sparred. Does he intend to properly fight you in here now? Had you pushed him too far? Shaking your head and feeling at all the places you usually tuck your blades away, you say, “No... I don’t.” 

“Get some. Where we’re about to go...” he trails off, as if reconsidering, but then he continues, “I’ll get you a hag stone.” 

You furrow your brows, not taking off to do so. “A hag stone?” you echo, thankful that he isn’t trying to duel you, but wary at the need for such a faerie ward. Hag stones are of the more serious class of wards used to protect humans from faerie enchantment or glamour. Most often, humans would string theirs up with a bit of thread through the hole of it and wear it around their necks as a pendant. Unlike turning one’s clothes inside out or taking red berries on your person, hag stones protect against the more devastating faerie magic. You shudder simply wondering what you might need a hag stone to protect yourself from. 

He nods a bit solemnly. “Kelpie do not let a meal or trick pass them by when they wait so long to have them.” 

You look at him with wild eyes, hoping to see him laugh or play his words off as a joke. He does not, but of course he doesn’t. Taehyun doesn’t waste his words on jokes. 

“Why... Why would we be going to a kelpie?” you ask him, laughing around the ball of fright in your chest. 

He lends you a wretched look. “I have old debts to call on.” 

❉

The forest in which Taehyun leads you is untamed. At some point, the sound of nature’s buzzing tapers off, and you know that you’ve entered a deeper forest than you ought to be sticking your nose in. When the forest goes silent, it’s only for one reason.  

You’d grown up here. Maybe you’d been born elsewhere, but that does not negate the fact that you had grown up scared every day of the powerful creatures that inhabit this world. Your fear has ruled you for your whole life, and you let it. You’d be a fool not to. It’s how you survive in this world. Your limbs tremble; they plead with you to listen to everything you’ve ever known—do not mess with what is bigger than you.  

You step around frost-capped puddles and dance between briars, careful not to snag yourself on their claws. It unsettles you further that this part of the forest is so untrodden and overgrown. With no folk coming through, you fear how the kelpie might behave when you make an audience before it. Will it climb straight from its frosty swamp and drag you back down with it? Is the hag stone you clutch at your chest enough to keep you safe? 

“I don’t understand why we’re doing this, Taehyun,” you say, delicately avoiding any tumbles as you speed up to gauge his feelings by his face. You’re not fond of the remote blankness in his eyes, nor the staunch determined set to his jaw. “That thing might kill us, and your shoulder is hurt. You shouldn’t be out here; you should be letting it heal.” 

“I know my limits,” he says. 

Grimacing, you return his curt tone. “Taehyun.” You grab at the material of his sleeve with urgency. When he stops to look at you, you continue. “I want you to actually listen to me. You’re being unreasonable. Yeonjun said he’d use his pull to protect us. Both of us. We have no reason to be out here, you’re just putting us in danger.” 

He lets your words stew in the air for a moment before saying, “I’m the one putting us in danger? Me?” He scoffs. “We are about as safe dealing with a kelpie as we are living off his promises. I’m doing what’s best for us. Trust me.” 

You’re winded by his choice of words. You’ve become wary of dealing out your trust so frivolously. Those two words ring alarm bells. 

“But where is this coming from? You didn’t want to stay.” Your breath furls out in a plume of white smoke in front of your face as you speak.  

He looks as if he doesn’t want to answer that. It only makes you more apprehensive. Your limbs fill with lead, planting you where you stand. “Taehyun, I’m scared,” you say. “Isn’t finding help from a solitary faerie a bit too far? How is trusting Yeonjun any more dangerous than that?” 

Taehyun steps toward you. “He is going to kill us. It’s not if, it’s when. That bastard is going to hurt you. This... This is for us. We are self-sufficient; we don’t need his protection shit.” A bitter tang colors his words. “I know that you’re scared. I won’t let it hurt you; I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise that you’ll be okay. You want to stay, don’t you?” 

You nod. You would even make deals with a kelpie for it.  

“Okay, then, let’s go,” he says, taking off with those words, effectively punctuating the conversation.  

You follow him. 

You grow more anxious the deeper you trudge into the forest without any consolation as the daylight begins creeping away. Following behind Taehyun, the wind whips at the perfect angle so that his form takes most of its terror, allowing you a respite from at least some of the brutal cold. You don’t feel any remorse using him as a shield against the elements—frost runs through his veins. He doesn’t shiver or wince at it. 

Taehyun stops a few feet before a wintry mire framed by crystallized cattails and reeds. Your heart stutters as he looks around to ensure that this is the right spot. The water is dark and deep. You stay a healthy distance away from it. You do not want to find out just how deep it is. 

“Where is it?” you say, keeping your voice low as if the beast might lunge from the water and snatch you up if you don’t. 

Taehyun surveys the forest surrounding you and then the body of water as he always does, and when he looks to you, you already know he’s calculated and planned. He doesn’t face a situation without thought—that notion soothes you, even if it’s to the slightest degree.  

“It won’t come until I call it,” he says, gesturing at those murky and horrible watery depths. Swallowing hard, you consider how close you stand to it. You take a shuffled step back. “When you see it, you need to stay calm. Don’t let it see your fear. It’ll find it amusing and latch onto you. Do you understand?” 

A rush of heavy dread spreads from your core and seizes your lungs at his words. You’ve made it this far. You want to stay. You want to stay, bad. If this thing outsmarts you, you will not go down without swinging this time. You have your daggers, and you know how to wield them. Bravery is most of the battle, isn’t it? 

You muster a nod, trying to give yourself a brave heart, but Taehyun shakes his head. Your eyes must betray how stricken you are. “Do you understand?” he repeats, his voice sharp and grave. 

“I do.” 

He accepts your words, pressing on. “It will try to trip you over your words and spin you into a trap with tricky words. Do not entertain it, even as it tries, okay?” 

You’ve been terrorized by faerie tricks your whole life. You can handle their schemes just fine. “Okay.” 

Taehyun frees a blade from its hiding place and brings it to his palm. He slides it there, slicing it open. Crimson creeps from the slit, running in between his fingers and trickling onto the snow. He’d cut pretty deep. 

“Why are you—Taehyun?” you say, stepping toward him as he curls his wounded hand into a fist over the water, shaking it so as to let the droplets down into the black water. You regret those steps you’d made toward him as something comes crashing through the surface. 

No, rather than emerging from under the surface, the beast is born from the water, manifesting from it as something gangly and wretched. From its pointed ears to its hooves, it pushes up from nothingness until it is standing there, real and terrible before you. Its skin glistens with a thickness like oil and its hair and tail hang in heavy, seaweed-like tendrils, plastered against its body. The scum floating on top of the water clung to its hair and pelt as it rose, twigs and the like poking from its withered body. A bridle cages its head, leather reins dangling down. Of all its awful things, you believe that its eyes are the worst—bone-white and piercing, they send a terror down your spine that solidifies in your bones. You know you will not soon forget the ancient soullessness that lives there. The folk do sometimes resemble the places in which they hail from; you suppose that the kelpie bares striking resemblance to the swirling water that sits at its feet. 

You try not to choke or gasp or react in any way at all, but it isn’t easy. You focus your adrenaline on keeping your breathing as even as you can manage. 

“It has been a long time since I’ve found a human at my doorstep,” the creature says, steam blowing from its nostrils as it snorts. How long might a long time mean to a faerie, especially one you know is so ancient? You hope that your presence does not intrigue the beast at all. 

Taehyun swoops in before you can speak, and you are boundlessly thankful for it. “I’ve come to call on the debt you owe me,” he says. He doesn’t leave any room for any familiarity or playfulness. 

“Is it that time?” the kelpie says, placing one hoof down onto the snow. It had looked so incorporeal and liquid that you half expect it to burst and turn to water as it does, but it climbs out just fine. Very real.  

Taehyun eyes the kelpie as it makes land, dribbling with water and its kelp hair swinging. You swallow hard as it disregards his presence to observe you. You’re used to the folk disregarding you, not this. How many years had you yearned for their attention? Right now, you scare under it.  

“For what do you need my help, boy?” it says, voice gurgled, “And why do you bring this human along? Is it for her? Or, rather, have you brought her as your peace offering?” 

Your legs tremble beneath you.  

“I don’t owe you any peace offering, kelpie,” Taehyun says, his head held righteously high. “You’ll offer me what I ask, or you’ll suffer for it.” 

Shifting under the tense atmosphere, you still don’t speak. In Faerie, debt is law. The folk live by a law that is, like many other things about them, foreign to you. Whatever natural laws by which they govern themselves are vastly lost on you—but of keeping promises and respecting debts, you are very aware. They hate to be indebted—you’re sure it’s why this kelpie is so peevish. You hope that the folk’s need to balance their debts is enough to keep it hospitable.  

The kelpie makes a rumbling and throaty sound that mimics that of a laugh. It rumbles the ground below your feet. “Just as rigid as the last time we met like this,” it says. “I wonder if it's because you’ve inherited your father’s stone heart, or because you fear me?” 

The kelpie remains playful with its intonation, but tension lies thick and dangerous beneath both of their words. You know well enough that the beast is not being light-hearted.  

Taehyun holds his face firm. He refuses to give an inch. “Do not try that with me. You have your word to upkeep for my help.” 

Shimmering under the moon’s light now, the beast treats us with a long moment of hostile silence. You can feel its malintent despite how hollow those eyes remain.  

“What do you ask of me?” it finally says, whipping its drooping tail behind it. 

“There is a rebellion here,” starts Taehyun, shoulders relaxing to the slightest degree as the kelpie defers, “The north is uneasy. I’m optimistic that you’ll lend us your protection and hand, whenever I call on it. Regardless of it being in my interest, I’m sure that you aim to keep your lands peaceful, no?” 

“Rebellion? For what would anything of the courts be in my interest? Of their rebellion or even just their ridiculousness, I do not care. I’ve left your gentry to you, leave me to mine.” 

Taehyun’s nostrils flare. “I’m not asking you to care about the courts, I’m asking you to lend me your help when I ask of it,” he grits out, “Or, rather, I’m not asking. I am informing you that I am expecting you to uphold your debt to me, and you’d better be ready to do so. This is just courtesy.” 

You feel the kelpie’s offense in the hollow quiet that follows Taehyun’s demands. Among many things, the fae are prideful creatures. Your stomach is in terrible knots. Taehyun is just trying to regain the power in the situation. You know that. It doesn’t make you any less scared for your life. With an ancient creature like a kelpie, it is paramount to earn its respect, or else it will push you around. 

Worse than that. It will drag you down into its waters and make your soul into a meal. 

“It’s a pity you think that hag stone will save you from me, human.” The kelpie turns its attention back on you. You bade your knees not to crumple. “It takes much more than that to protect you in places like these. Perhaps you’ll be safe from petty enchantment, though.”  

Taehyun shoves his words in before you can give the kelpie any sort of reaction. Not even a tremble. “Understood?” 

“You’ve made deals with our kind before. The magic reeks on you. It’s lousy enchantment, I could dissolve that geas for you. All you’d have to do is climb up on my back, and I’d grant you your freedom.”  

You can’t help but perk up. The prospect of ridding yourself of the geas placed over you is a painfully delicious one. 

Bristling, Taehyun steps between you and the kelpie. Whether he does it to fight off the beast should it lunge at you or to prevent you from approaching it, you’re unsure. “Do not,” he says. 

“Wasn’t going to.” You say it, and of course it’s true. The kelpie is poking around to see what will most entice you. Regardless, you can’t deny how awfully you wish that geas were gone. It’s the one thing that you fear will tether you to The King’s bidding. No matter how you armor yourselves from the rebellion here in the north, what’s to stop the spies from tugging on the enchanted leash? One command from Cricket, and your body would betray you and walk the whole way there itself. 

Though you don’t verbalize your interest, the kelpie no doubt sees the interest alight in your eyes. It pounces accordingly. “Unless you’d prefer that I give you a whole other enchantment. Protection against any of our kind’s glamours? Permanant true sight? A touch to my pelt would be all it would take for you to make yourself free.” 

Taehyun clicks just the hilt of his sword free from the sheathe. “Stop with the tricks. You can find your fun elsewhere.” 

Like the swampish water behind it, the kelpie stands there totally still, studying Taehyun. You really wish this altercation could wrap up at any pace faster than it currently is. You’re itching to escape those white eyes. They’re much more intimidating as night settles in. What sort of thing had Taehyun even done to indebt a creature like this to him? Once again, you’re left confronting how little you know of him and his past. By the time you’ve come to terms with the last thing, the next arrives to remind you that the folk lead much longer lives than you do. 

It finally speaks again. “Why have you brought this human with you, Lord?” Its furls out the term like a weapon. This bitter intonation that you’ve seen be used multiple times to speak of Taehyun’s title sticks with you. The title is a taunt. In this case, the you know it comes from the kelpie’s place of utter indifference and lack of obeisances toward whatever sovereignty the Courts may claim. The kelpie only answers to the land.  

“Because I needed you to know that your protection will extend to her. Know her face, learn it so that when I call on you, you’ll play your part correctly.” 

“I fail to see why you dote over her safety. Who is the human to you?” The kelpie takes a step forward, its powerful muscles rippling with the moon’s white light on its ink pelt. You mirror it with a step back. Taehyun stays put. “I owe her no help. That’s not how this works. I concede that I am bound to your help, but I do not repay double. You overestimate my generosity.” 

You watch as Taehyun takes on a posture that you’ve come to recognize as his offensive posture, potent adrenaline twisting up your stomach and sending your heart into a fit so fierce that you feel it in all your pulse points. You’re sure that swords are a laughable matter to the kelpie. Iron, though, you’re sure would still burn. Turning your hands to fists, you make a conscious effort not to find your iron weapons. If the kelpie were to see that, it may escalate things. You do not want to escalate.  

It’s only smart for you to consider your disadvantages: Taehyun is wounded. He had literally been struck by an arrow last night. You’re so far into the woods that running would consist of stumbling over roots and avoiding thorny bushes. Taehyun might know them, but you’re fully unfamiliar with a kelpie’s weaknesses, or if they even have any at all. You’re better off appeasing the beast.  

“Taehyun,” you warn. 

He pays it no mind. “I said,” he snarls, “stop with the tricks. You owe your very ability to draw breath to me, and beyond that. It was my neck on the line to grant you that. What I did for you was worth many debts. If you want to settle it all to even, you’ll do it. Don’t play this like a fool.” He doesn’t address the kelpie’s first question. 

Taehyun creeps toward the kelpie. You’re not sure where he sources all that fearlessness from inside himself. He’s way too close for your comfort. “What are you doing?” you hiss, quiet and meant for just him. There is no way he intends to fight this thing right now. You’d prefer taking the risk of trusting Yeonjun’s word over this any day. 

“Even the general”—the kelpie spits that word with a similar distaste as he had Taehyun’s title—“knew when he was in over his head. Ask a more respectable payment of me.” 

You suck in a breath. “Let’s just go,” you tell Taehyun. “We don’t need to do this; we didn’t need to in the first place.”  

As Taehyun takes one last step toward the kelpie, he reaches a sword’s distance from it.  

Really? Is this happening right now? 

“I’m giving you grace right now, kelpie,” he says, his voice pure warning, “My father is the one who landed you like that. It’s humorous that you’d even speak of him while we’re sorting out the debts that you incurred because of him. I suggest that you give up the sly act.” 

Once again, a charged and meaningful pause rings throughout the forest. The silence speaks volumes of how the kelpie takes his words.  

It’s a flash of movement, the two dark figures like blurs as Taehyun’s hand flies out to grab a hold of the reins that hang from its head and the kelpie rears back with a bone-piercing, harrowing whinny. He braces himself on its side and uses its flank to push off of. The creature bucks fast, but Taehyun is faster.  

The rage that it bellows with guts you. The forest ground trembles with its frantic clambering, hooves battering the snow.  

The kelpie’s frenzy ends as Taehyun takes the reins in both hands. It doesn’t make any more attempts to send him off, nor does it stumble about wildly. It settles. The kelpie bows its head. Your hands cover your mouth. They’re ready to muffle your scream. You wait for Taehyun to become one with the beast’s figure and for it to drag him down to the depths of its water that don’t see the sun’s light. Nothing happens. Instead, he slips off the back of the kelpie without any trouble, landing with a thud back on the ground.  

“Fix your appearance,” Taehyun commands.  

You allow a sound of surprise to slip as the beast melts down, shedding water to the ground and crumpling over. You watch it shrink all the way down until, where once the gangly beast had stood, the form of a faerie man stands. He unfurls from the forest floor to his full height, taller than Taehyun and reedy in his limbs. His hair cascades down from his head in shaggy, damp brown locks with twigs and leaves tangled in. Sharp faerie ears protrude from it. It confirms to you that this is just another form of the kelpie, not someone else entirely. 

“You’re a fool,” the man says, turning on Taehyun with wild eyes.  

You join his confrontation on Taehyun. “What the hell is going on?” you say. You’re still jittery with the urge to run. 

Taehyun entertains only you, saying, “I hoped that he’d just make things easy in the first place.” 

The man, dripping with water from his tattered, sopping rags for clothes, sneers. “I would not serve you if you fucking killed me. Of course you had to take my bridle.” 

You give Taehyun an expectant look. You’re in dire need of being filled in. 

“His bridle,” he says, grabbing the reins that still hang from the man’s face even in his human form and tugging him into a walk into the forest, “I grabbed it. He serves me, now. He can hate it all he wants, but he’ll do what I ask.” 

The thought makes you deeply uncomfortable, but you can’t pin exactly why. It lives somewhere around the place inside you that loathed the way the folk made your kind into their glamoured servants.  

“We’re just going to bring him back with us?” You trail them tentatively back through the woods that you had arrived from. “Like a prisoner, or something?” 

“Exactly like a prisoner,” the man says, excited to get a hit in on Taehyun. Of course, he’s unhappy.  

He stumbles as Taehyun tugs him forward by his bridle. “Shut your mouth,” Taehyun says. It’s more commanding than angry. “What’s your name?” he asks him.  

The man looks as though he wants to deny him that knowledge. Names are a powerful thing to a faerie. They spend their lives hiding them away—to give away their real name would make them totally vulnerable to the whims of whoever knows and uses it. However, you assume that whatever hold Taehyun has over him now works in a similar way, and his lips move despite his revolt.  

“Beomgyu,” he answers, eyes full of bite. 

You climb between a pair of close-resting, gnarled trees. “Does he have to keep that thing on, Taehyun?” you say, struggling with the sight of him being dragged along. It’s unsettling. “Like, does it work without that?” 

Stopping, Taehyun reaches up to pull the bridle off and around from Beomgyu’s head. He lets it fall to the snow. “You can use his name if you need to command him and I’m not around. He’ll have to do what you say.” Pushing Beomgyu into a walk, he says, “You’re going to protect us if in any case we need it. That includes her. You’re going to stay within my estate, unless one of us brings you somewhere. You won’t try your hand at any escape, and you won’t make any attempts to harm us either directly or by omitting something you are aware will do so.” 

You rub your hands together to generate heat as he lists his commands. Why would he even need those precautions, if Beomgyu is supposed to be his compulsory servant now? Would that not mean that he’d be unable to harm him? Either Taehyun is being extra precautious, or the command he has over him is weaker than you had thought at first. Beomgyu scowls the whole way through. Perhaps if Taehyun had not spoken those exact words, he would have lunged at him. 

As the kelpie stalls, Taehyun urges him forward once again with a shove. “Walk,” he snaps. “You did this to yourself. If you’d been a respectable man, I’d have only asked for your help when we needed. Now, you’re following us everywhere.” He allows him to stew on that for a little before saying, “You do your job well and I’ll let you return to your waters. I’ll forget I even made you my servant, and you’ll live knowing you’re no longer in my debt. You’ll not have to worry that someone might tame you again, because I already had, and I won’t even utilize it. We’ll never even make each other’s acquaintance again. You’ll be free to toil in your forest, and I will stay far away. All I need is for you to keep us alive and unharmed.” 

At least he doesn’t intend to keep him forever as an eternal servant. Most faeries that fall into debts work their long lives as living servants. Your years as Nut-hatch's worker taught you how that life whittles your soul down. Hundreds of years of just that is unfathomable. Maybe that is the cost of betraying honor here, though.

“So be it,” Beomgyu says, teeth gritted.  

You continue to trudge through the forest behind them. 

❉

Once you’re within the walls of the estate and Beomgyu is given a place to stay, you turn to Taehyun. “What part of that was safer than trusting Yeonjun?” you say.  

His eyes drop closed and he sighs. “It was worlds safer,” he grits out. “I knew what I was doing. You had that hag stone, and I’d have cut him down if he tried anything.” 

He stretches out his shoulders, shifting them uncomfortably under the fabric of his tunic. You know that his sewn-up wound bothers him. Could it be getting infected? You hope not—an infection this early on would most definitely mean it would be a nasty one. If only he weren’t insistent on pretending that it’s nothing. “I don’t think you could”—you gesture at your own shoulder—“you’re going to infect your shoulder. I don’t know how to treat an infected wound that big.” 

“I wouldn’t have even gone there if I thought I couldn’t handle it. I had a plan. I can protect us just fine.” 

Us. You’ve been wondering what your purpose here might become once you abandon returning to your duties. Would you be staying with Yeonjun? If he betrays you, and Taehyun were to push you out now that you’re no longer partners in duty, where would you go? Crawl to the doorstep of some random faerie to place yourself in their services, just to find yourself a warm place to stay? Taehyun now makes it clear that he still sees the two of you as a pair, but why? You still can’t understand why he’d suddenly switched up the moment you said you’d stay here even if he left. Realistically, he should’ve killed you for being a traitor to the king that he serves. You know that his intentions are more complex than that, but you fail to grasp where they lie. His actions and his words clash.  

“And when Yeonjun doesn’t betray us? What will all of this be for?” 

“This doesn’t stop at the prince,” he says, “there are more players than just him and The Queen. Any one of them could determine that we’re liabilities. Don’t you think that we should prepare for that? We came here as spies infiltrating their court from the very king that they rebel against; of course they’ll have plans for us. 

“It’s still best that you stay your distance from the prince from this point on, regardless, unless you bring the kelpie.” 

Your mouth drops open, brows pinching. You don’t like the thought of being chaperoned at all. If Yeonjun is to betray you, then it’ll be your own fault. You can take the consequences of your actions just fine. “I think I can make that decision for myself,” you say, voice low. “And I can protect myself, too. Are you saying my skills aren’t up to your standards? Well, I didn’t spend that time working on them for nothing, and I don’t plan on stopping. I know I’m not perfect, but I think I can at least use a dagger adequately, no?” 

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Taehyun says, eyes flat with frustration. “You can protect yourself well. I know that. What I mean is that you shouldn’t rest your life on his integrity. I have no doubts that you’d be able to protect yourself from him alone. He’s delicate. The King doesn’t pamper his children, but I have no doubt that the prince hasn’t wielded a sword anywhere other than in sparring. But you don’t know if you’ll ever truly be alone, and you don’t know whether or not he’s setting you up. I think you can at least agree that it’s best that you can acknowledge that and behave accordingly, no?” 

“I rested my life on your integrity today. Am I supposed to trust you blindly, too? What if you’re just stringing me along until you kill me for my treason to The King? You were his spy, no? How many years did you serve him? Why have you given it up so easily? Why are you staying here? None of it makes sense to me, but I still trusted you. Was I wrong for that? Are you a liar, Taehyun? Does your tongue tell lies?” 

His eyes crystallize, a few degrees colder than you’d seen them all day. “I can lie,” he says. “But would I have done what I did today if I intended to kill you? It’s time that you see that actions tell you so much more than words ever will.” 

Again, he treads around your questions about his intentions. “Why are you staying here?” you repeat, studying him with your suspicion.  

He’s quiet. 

“Answer me,” you demand. 

“Is this not my home?” he says. 

Unsatisfied, you press more. “I thought you hated this place. Why would you want to stay here? Don’t you have an awful reputation here?” 

His eyebrows shoot up, but his face stays hauntingly blank. You’re used to his blank mask, but this feels different. “If you think that I left here because of my reputation, then you’ve fooled yourself.” He begins making for his quarters. “I have obligations to fulfilling my father’s role as Lord of this estate,” he says before turning and ending the conversation on his terms. 

That leaves you just as confused. If he cared about his responsibilities here, he would’ve never left them in the first place to become a spy under The King. It makes no sense. Whether or not it’s true, you’re positive that you aren’t getting the whole story. You sigh and drag your feet bed-bound. You hope to never have another day as unending as today again. 

❉

You dodge Beomgyu for the entirety of the day, not sure what to make of a new presence around the estate, even if it’s an indebted servant beast of a presence. You’d half expected Taehyun to rope him up in the horse stalls outside, making that his permanent residence, but he’d given Beomgyu a place somewhere in the servant’s quarters. You’re glad of it—you may be wary of him, but you don’t wish anything like that for him. Now that he has a more human form, you find yourself able to empathize with him more than you were when he was a hulking, killer water horse. He doesn’t necessarily run around much—without a doubt because he’s not the happiest about being forced into Taehyun’s servitude. You don’t blame him. 

Despite your efforts, he enters the kitchens while you’re alternating between chomping on a slice of bread and a platter of dates. He eyes you. Though in this form his eyes are not as piercing, they’re still heavy.  

You offer him a slice of the bread and push the platter toward him. “Hungry?” 

He shakes his head. “I don’t eat the way you do.” 

Then why’d he come to the kitchens? Either he’s exploring, or he came looking for you. “Not even like this?” you ask, gesturing down to his form. 

“I eat when someone is foolish enough to come to my waters,” he says. “I thought I’d be eating yesterday, but the Lord subverted those plans, didn’t he?” 

You laugh a bit, though it’s absurd to laugh about being eaten with the same creature that had intended to do so.  

“I sometimes go for more years than the entire span of your human life without eating,” he says, tilting his head to one side. Shaggy locks of hair follow his head with it. It’s unkempt and in dire need of a washing to rid it of dirt. 

You gesture at his dirt-smudged cheek. “Do you want to clean up? I’m sure Taehyun has some clothes to spare for you. There are some pretty nice bathing quarters, here, too. The kind that makes you reluctant to get out.” 

A wry smile cracks across his face, a bit feral like the rest of him. “I’m not afraid of some dirt. These are my clothes. I’d go naked before dressing myself in his.” 

“Okay, then,” you snort, shrugging. “No baths.” You rip a bite out of the wrinkled fruit in your hand. “How did you even end up... in debt to Taehyun?” you ask, eager to fill yourself in. If Taehyun insists on not telling you anything, you’ll find it in other places. You’d picked up that it had something to do with his father, but you need to know more. The more you’re able to piece together, the better you’ll be able to make sense of Taehyun’s behaviors. You hope so, at least. He holds is truths very close to himself, and almost everybody else seems to harbor a poignant distaste for him. 

Beomgyu’s face sours up again. “I had a dispute with his father. The General was going to raze my forest and kill each one of us. I’d called on him and asked for his help. I’m not sure what he did, but The General never came. If I knew it’d land me like this, though...” He grimaces. “I’d have just let him make me history.” 

Reigning in the laugh that bubbles in your chest at his resentment, because you’re positive that you finding humor in his misfortunes would ruffle him, you nod and pocket that information. “Then, why didn’t you just agree to help when he tried to collect your debt in the first place?” 

“I was going to,” he snaps. “He’s just a prideful creature. No patience. If he’d waited a few moments, I’d have agreed.” 

Humming, you don’t tell him that he’s definitely the one who wound himself up like this. Taehyun had made it clear multiple times that Beomgyu needed to stop playing around.  

Taehyun’s voice comes from the doorway, cutting into the conversation with its matter-of-factness. “Speaking bad on my name while I’m away, kelpie? Should I amend your list of commands to include watch your mouth?” His tone is bare and humorless. 

Beomgyu bristles beside you, about to rebut him before you spy the weapon at Taehyun’s hip and interrupt before they can come to verbal blows. “Where are you going?” 

Taehyun rips his icy gaze from Beomgyu to you. “To Court,” he answers, plain and as if it were obvious. 

Furrowing your brows, you say, “Court? Why didn’t you tell me we’re going? I don’t want to get ready in a rush.” Your mind turns. You weren’t even sure what you’d be doing now that you’re no longer here as spies. There’s no need to infiltrate Court, now. Would you just be attending as revelers? Not to mention that Yeonjun no doubt has no clue that you’re even staying. You hadn’t seen him since you’d ran to him yesterday morning and had your world thrown for a loop as he revealed his truth. How had so much happened in one day?  

His mouth hardens. “You’re not attending with me,” he says, knuckles turning white over the pommel of his sword. “You’ll stay here with him today.” 

Your heart thrums in your chest; not with fear like it had been doing so much over the span of the last few days, but with anger. “What?” you say, voice strained with shock. “No. I’m getting ready; wait for me, or don’t. I don’t care.” You spin on your heels to do just that, gritting your teeth. He thinks he can tell you what to do? Is that it? You don’t care what he’s done for you, or what power he thinks he has over you because of it. You’d left your life of taking commands behind for a reason. This was supposed to be new beginnings, not just your past life under a new skin. 

He catches your upper arm frantically. Whipping your head to him, you rip yourself away from him and back off. “I said, no!” you say, lips twitching into a heavily emotional scowl. It’s not just that he’s telling you to stay back today. You know that what he’s doing is much bigger than that. It sends memories of a life in a seamstress’ cottage flooding back. You struggle to keep your head afloat, to keep yourself from drowning in it, but they’re old and deep wounds. 

“Oh, look at that,” Beomgyu croons. “You are just like him. Except, your father was a general, so at least he had some reason to believe that folk would obey him. You? Not so much.” 

Taehyun’s head snaps to him. He barks a command. “Leave.” 

His eyes flash and he reels against it, but Beomgyu’s body moves against his own will. There’s a spark of ravenous hate smeared across his lips and in the glare he gives Taehyun as he leaves. 

“So, you’re just going to hand out commands and expect them to be followed now, huh? Because you’re suddenly just... taking up this role as Lord? Well, you’re not my Lord. You’re not his, either.” 

He crosses his arms over his chest. “Stop that.” 

Laughing a bitter laugh, you spit, “Stop what? Oh, I’m sorry. I should just obey you like a good human does, huh? ‘Cause that’s what we’re for, right? My bad, I’ll get a head start on working around the estate—what would you like for dinner, my lord? Or, do you need me to press your clothes?” Your words are angry, but you choke toward the end around the lump of emotion in the back of your throat. 

He takes both your arms into his hands, his brow furrowed hard. “Stop it,” he snarls. “Stop it, damn it. Don’t do that. You’re not a servant here. Don’t you try to cry to me, I expect better than this from you. That’s not it at all.” 

You shove back on his chest, putting some distance between you. “I’m not crying,” you say. “And, so what if I was? There’s nothing wrong with it. I think it’d do you a little good to cry some time.” 

“It’s weak,” he says. “Pitying yourself just ends up making you a fool. If you just sit around and wallow, you’ll just stay where you are. The only thing you can do is act.”  

That sounds about right coming from his lips. “Is that what your father taught you?” you ask. “Well, he was wrong. You can cry and try and take care of things at the same time.” 

“I’m just asking you to stay back today,” he says. 

“Why?” you say, throwing your hands up in exasperation. “Tell me why? It’s not like we’re spying around or have some sort of mission to keep secret. Why can’t I just go enjoy it like that for once?” 

“Can you just do this for me?” Taehyun says, jaw tight. “I just need you to stay.” 

You’ve become sick of him not telling you things. Being in the dark never feels good, but it especially feels like shaky ground now. If he thinks you’ll be attacked, so what? You’re the one who wanted to stay here. Let you come. You’re better off being attacked as a group of three than he would be by himself, no? 

You decide to lean into his own concerns to appeal. “What if they’re waiting for you? Wouldn’t it be better that Beomgyu and I are there? Isn’t that why you did that whole thing yesterday?” 

He shakes his head. “If they are, then it’ll be easier for me to slip out if it’s just me.” 

Crossing your arms over your chest, you determine by the solemn lines to his face that he’s not going to give. “Fine,” you say. “I’ll stay here today. If it’s so necessary, I’ll stay here. Do you want me to stay inside the estate, too? Could I go see Yeonjun?” 

“I’d prefer that you stay here,” he says, slow and measured and veiling tension. 

You shake your head, pairing it with a tired laugh. “Yeah, right, I forgot. He’s a threat too. Well, you have fun then.” Turning and departing from the kitchens, you leave behind your bread and dates. So much for lunch. 

❉

Reaffirming Taehyun’s ability to lie, it was not just that one day. The next day, Taehyun slipped out for Court, sword on hip and pleading with you to stay in the estate on the terms that he believes they still might have an attack planned for you. It turned into a week that you were cooped up in the estate, and then two. The same walls you’d once looked at in wonder for their beauty became the ones you stared at mindlessly during the most boring of hours. 

You spend most of your time listening to Beomgyu drone on and on about the ways he’d tricked faeries and humans. He’s quite odd, but it’s not like you can blame him for it—most of the folk are odd to you, and he’s an ancient beast among them. You feel like that warrants a spunky personality like his. He’s nice company, anyway. Such a long life lends you an impressive wealth of stories. 

You can’t help but think about Yeonjun. He’s got to have seen Taehyun at Court by now. If there haven’t been any incidents at this point, doesn’t that mean that he doesn’t intend to betray you? The images of him thinking that you’re avoiding him makes you want to slip out to see him. You not sure why you don’t. Maybe the lies that sat between you affect you more than you thought they did. You’re quite the hypocrite, though. You’d kept secrets just as much as he had. 

You miss those stolen nights you two had shared. A knot, queasy and pessimistic, sits in your belly each time you lay in your bed and remember them and tells you that you’ll never see anything like that again. You’d allowed a girlish part of you to blossom beside him—a part of you that could throw caution to the wind and melt into the fun things in life.  

As you rot your days away in that estate that has become more like a dungeon than an estate, you allow yourself to miss him only a little. Once it begins transforming into a certain impending doom about how you’d thought that staying here would be everything you’d ever wanted, you find something else to do. If you aren’t toiling around by yourself or listening to Beomgyu drone, you’re practicing your combat skills. The times that Taehyun stops in to help you, it ends with you insisting that you’re fine to make appearances in Court by now, or at least see Yeonjun with Beomgyu in attendance. He never agrees. Each time, it’s the same awful excuse: Tensions are worse. He doesn’t know if they’re planning something. When you ask why he demands that he can attend, but you and Beomgyu can’t join: He’s a lord. It’s his duty to attend Court. 

The solstice is nearing, too. You’d looked forward to it, honestly. Hopefully Taehyun will let you attend by then. 

You sit crisscrossed on the hardwood flooring, running your fingers through your hair. Beomgyu is stood a couple feet away, and makes big gestures as he explains the one time he’d been called to attend Court as a solitary faerie. Moments like this have kept you grounded over the weeks. 

“And the stupid crone tried to say that I was wrong for catching him,” he exclaims, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head as if the ancient memory were still as fresh as day one.  

You laugh. “What did you even do to end up there, anyway?” you ask. You can hardly picture Beomgyu in the setting of Court, even more so meeting with The Queen and her council. Moreover, you’re intrigued to know what he’d said to talk himself out of trouble. You’re amazed that he managed to make a sufficient enough case to save his life. 

“They said that I’d been taking too many of their folk—hah! I must eat too, you know? Oh, the pretention! Do they expect me to starve? If a fool lands themselves on my pelt and then in my waters, it’s only natural that they’re eaten. I’m simply freeing them from one more mud-brained fool. The Courts are full of those, too. It’d take me a millennium to eat them all. What are they so worried for, I wonder? They do the very same to their own people.” 

“Aren’t they ridiculous?” you say. Like you, he’d been an outsider in Court. Though you’re sure that it’s just as, if not more, intricate to those well-versed in it, to the ones like you two... It’s odd to see. You had grown used to it in the time you spent there, but you still know what the first day had felt like. Anyway, you hadn’t spent as many days there as you feel you had. All that had happened had bloated that time in your memories. “To be quite honest with you, your kind are all so odd to me. I grew up among you, but still... my instincts are always kinda at odds with my surroundings, you know?” 

Beomgyu considers that for a moment, as if trying to view the fae from a human’s eyes. “Even when we look so similar?” he asks you, grabbing at a lock of his hair and making a round gesture over himself. 

You nod. “Even in this form, you just... I don’t feel like I’m looking into the face of another human. Maybe that’s because I watched you turn to this from a horse, though.” 

“A kelpie,” he corrects. “What gives it away?” 

“Sorry, a kelpie,” you snicker. You look over his face. It’s so close to right, but somewhere in your mind you can decipher that something is not right. Like all of the fae, though, there’s an unspeakable beauty there, beyond explanation. It demands your human attention. Even the most terrifying are beautiful. “Well, for starters, your ears. They’re pointy. All of you have that, and none of us do. And then... I guess”—you narrow your eyes—“your eyes? They’re just different. And your limbs are pretty lanky, too.” 

He frowns as if he’s unable to see it. “You don’t sound so sure,” he says, joining you on the floor. “I’ve had quite some time to look at myself in my life. I don’t think I ever saw any of that when I was in this form...” 

“I’m sure you did,” you say, lips turning up in a playful mock. A water creature no doubt has an eternity to stare into the water at themselves in its rippled reflection. “Did you do a lot of that?” 

Scowling, he huffs. “No. But I’m sure you would, if you looked like this, huh?” 

You roll your eyes. “You’re ridiculous.” His face morphs from dismay to careful concentration. Frowning, you look around and ask, “What?” 

“I hear somebody,” he answers, pushing off the floor. 

Your spine tingles, but you search for the logical explanation. “Like... Taehyun?” 

“No... the walk is definitely different.” He strains to listen. “He’s usually pretty quiet. This one... they don’t conceal their footsteps.” 

Neither of you can get to a window to scope anything out before there’s three heavy knocks from the door, the metal knocker ringing. You shoot him a wary look and tilt your head toward the door. You mouth the word, answer? 

He considers for a moment and then nods. Well, he’s the one able to hear their approach. You trust they’re at least not imminent danger. You pull the door open. A breeze of frost comes rushing in as you do, blowing your hair and as jarring as a hit to the face might be. You’ve been cooped up in here for so long you’ve forgotten how bitter the cold here is.  

Behind the door your eyes lock with a pair of inky ones, settled into a pinched and snooty face. “Letters from the palace I have for you, my lady,” she says, her voice mousy. She holds out a stack full of letters to you, all held together by some twine. 

An errand runner. You furrow your brows down at her and accept them. The little hob wrings out her long fingers. “From who?” you ask her.  

She bows her head to you hurriedly. “Oh, from the prince, my lady! He sends these for you!” 

You look down at the stack in your hands, and your heart begins to run amok in your chest. He’d sent to you? You thank her. She scurries off in the snow and you close the door, sharing a look with Beomgyu. 

“The prince?” he says, brows shot up. “Meaning, The King’s son? He’s sent letters for you?” 

Nodding, you hold the stack close to you. Your feet ache to find your quarters and to begin tearing into each one; you’re ravenous for any sort of word from him. Does he hate you? Does he miss you? At least he still thinks of you. You’d worried that he might’ve found another lady of the court to dote on in your absence... 

“Yeah,” you say over your shoulder, more interested in tearing the letters open than explaining to him why the prince would be sending you letters. Curiosity sits in his furrowed brow. You hadn’t exactly prattled on about Yeonjun to him. Had you even mentioned him at all? 

He tags along as you head to your room and plop onto your bed. You don’t tell him to leave you; opening these letters alone... You appreciate his presence in some odd way.  

Unstringing the pile, you pull the first one out and run a thumb over the wax seal that identifies it as definitely from the High Prince—a fine silver dusted over white wax and branded with the image of Yeonjun’s insignia, the fox. It’s uneven and dribbled, clearly sealed by Yeonjun himself with the insignia ring he often wears on his finger. You pry it open and then unfurl the parchment inside. 

Do you intend to return to Court? Perhaps we keep missing each other. Though, the Lord is always there. I wonder where you are. If my letter reaches you, please write me back. Or better, come see me. My doors are open to you.  

They always have been. 

Yeonjun 

Beomgyu’s gaze burns holes through you as you read this first one. You sigh, pressing your lips into a thin line as you reach for the next one. This one twists a hot knife of guilt into your belly and up into your heart. 

Have I done something wrong?  

The General’s son continues to attend Court, and though I seek your lovely face beside his, you’re never there. I’m under the impression that he wants you not seeing me. Although, perhaps that’s only because I loathe what your absence might mean otherwise. 

Is it because I learned of your identity? Is it that you think I hate you? 

Allow me to make it utmost clear: I do not. I doubt I could if I tried. You’re quite the heart stealer.  

I know I sound a bit ridiculous telling you I love you when we only knew each other for so long. I understand that. It’s that sort of love that ought to burn bright and short, right? But I won’t let it. Not us. 

Some might say that a love found so easily is fickle. That it doesn’t exist. I say it does, because I have felt it. 

Do you remember how it felt the first time our eyes met, too? How odd is it to feel something so deep inside you, but also so far beyond your reach that you cannot alter its course?  

Please write me, pretty. If I can’t see your face, at least allow me the pleasure of knowing that you’re okay. 

Yeonjun 

“What do they say?” Beomgyu asks, timbred voice whipping you apart from the words on paper that manage to send your heart hurting.  

You’re not entirely sure how to tell him that they’re desperate letters of the High Prince’s love for you, a worthless human girl that had avoided him on purpose. He probably wouldn't believe you, anyway. Leaving behind your old life, you had pleaded with the sky to make your life something worth note. It seems that it had answered. Life works in odd ways.  

“A lot,” you say, brushing him off. Your voice cracks with the word, though,  

Hearing the veiled emotion, he frowns, inching forward to take a peek. “Why are you upset?” he pries, and then gasps as a thought formulates in his head. “Have they called you to be tried by the council?” He considers his own suggestion for a long moment and then shakes his head. “You hardly have gone anywhere enough to cause that degree of trouble, though.”  

You let your face drop into your hands. Is the tremor in your chest from laughter, or from crying? You can’t tell. Maybe it’s both. 

The kelpie makes an unsure sound, clearing his throat. “I... uh, I jest...” 

Collecting yourself, you say, “No. I’m not being called in for trial.” You reach for the next letter.  

The next envelope has dried up rose petals that come falling out when you pull out the letter. The flower of love. 

Have you left the north? Could you not have at least lent me one last look at your face before doing so? I don’t mean to be so pathetic, but my heart is lonesome. I thought we’d have more time. Hadn’t you wanted to stay with me?  

If you still reside in his estate, I send these letters to you. I’m not sure if they’ll reach you, but I hope that they’ll move you. Don’t you know that I’d give you anything? 

Please come see me. I beg. Let’s talk. I just want to know what’s wrong. 

Yeonjun 

Why hadn’t you at least gone and told him that you’ve stayed? How had you allowed yourself to feel fear when you think of him? You don’t deserve his love.  

You don’t even know if you deserve love at all. All it would’ve taken was one night of slipping out. He deserved to know that you’re okay. You don’t remember being this selfish. When had this happened? Maybe this is just what happens when someone spends a lifetime not allowed to think of themselves before serving others. You don’t want to be selfish, though.  

The next one you open is more raw. Hurt. The paper, scrawled in writing that becomes less elegant and more frenzied as you read down it, crumples in your hand. 

If you think that I’m the sort of man that will easily forget what we’ve shared, I am not. I love you. I love you. I love you. Please return to my arms. They ache for you. They remember your weight, and they won’t soon forget it.  

Do I need to say it anymore?  

I love you, darling. It’s making me sick.  

Yeonjun 

You stuff the letters back in their envelopes and shove them into a box in your wardrobe. If you don’t, you’ll read them over until you’re ill. Once over was enough for you. 

❉

“The Lord would have my pelt if I let you leave,” Beomgyu, crossing his arms firmly over his chest, says. “Let alone by yourself.” Realizing that his words insinuate that Taehyun holds any true power over him, he backtracks. “If it weren’t for the harness, I’d be unconcerned with his anger, but... Of course, you know, I’m obligated by my imposition to his word, so...” 

Tugging your boots on, you say, “So, tell him I commanded you to stay. You’ll be fine.”  

You had waited for Taehyun to leave for Court, anyway. You have hours of the night to sly-foot your way around him. 

You’d moped around for a few more days, your gut heavy with stones each time you remember Yeonjun’s letters. Stuffing them into a box, no matter how deep into the corner of your wardrobe, still could not wipe those words from your mind. You’d turned them over and over until you couldn’t handle imagining him writing those letters with a hopeful heart any longer.  

The solstice is only a few days away now, too. You’d been bound to the estate for weeks. Although you’re unsure what Taehyun’s real intentions are in boarding you in, you can no longer even care if leaving will end up getting you attacked. You’ve become a bird with clipped wings.  

Even if your wings are out of order, you’ll walk your way to your freedom. Hell, you’d crawl there. It just so happens that Yeonjun’s doorway feels like freedom in this moment.  

Like he’d always said, the doors remain unbarred. You don’t even have to use the metal knocker; you just push through the doors of swirling white engravements. Just as if nothing had changed. He’d been waiting for you. 

Instead of Yeonjun in his quarters, you find a brownie diligently working on doing up Yeonjun’s bedding. When she turns to you, her hands continue their efforts. 

“The prince is not here right now, dear,” she says, snout twitching. Round eyes recognize you before you can introduce yourself. “He’s only just made for Court, though. You should catch him quite quickly, if you mean to.” 

It seems he hasn’t given up searching for you in Court, either. You offer her your gratitude and slip out from his room. Picking up the hems of your dress, you race to catch Yeonjun before he’s arrived at Court. Once he does, things get more sticky—if Taehyun spots you... Pushing down the anxiety that bubbles up at the thought, you cross your fingers. Let luck be on your side.  

Your Court dress, though heavy, feels nice on your skin. Although you often look down on court goers for their pompousness, you can’t deny how good it feels to fit in. That’s perhaps the reason you cling to Court the way you do; you’re beyond desperate for belonging. 

On the plush, snow-dusted bits of the forest’s floor, you spot a set of footsteps. They’re quickly being filled with the flurries. You clasp your hands in an overwhelming bout of gratitude—luck had listened, this time. Those tracks are as fresh as can be. You double your pace. 

Around a bend, you’re overjoyed to see his figure walking there. Finally hearing you coming over the roar of snowfall, he spins. His face pinches and then drops as he recognizes you. 

“You... You came?” he says. Disbelief flips his lips into a frown. “You got my letters?” 

“I did,” you answer, catching your breath. “I’m so sorry.” 

A few feet float between you, the space not yet closed but so magnetic. His cheeks are tinged pink with the cold. Yours must be too.  

“I’d thought you left. I thought I’d never see you again.” 

Your chest caves in a little at the hurt in his voice and the way it clashes with the longing in his eyes. He wants to be angry; he wants to yell at you. He can’t do either when he’s just thankful to see your face. You had missed his just as much. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeat. “It shouldn’t have happened.” 

Yeonjun approaches you and takes your face into his hands. His fingers are ice on your skin. He swallows in your face, soft black eyes darting from your eyes to your lips and around the rest of it; just like he’d begged you to let him do in his letters. 

“Why?” Yeonjun asks you, brushing your hair back with his fingers like he’s just testing the feel of it. 

You don’t know how to answer him. You could tell him a lot of things: Taehyun told me to stay away. He had told me that you’d hurt me. I’d started to believe him. I became scared of you. We had lied to each other. None of them feel adequate in this moment, so you shake your head. 

His eyes harden to a degree as you don’t answer. “Why wouldn’t you come talk to me, pretty?” he urges. “If something was wrong, why couldn’t you come to me? We can’t leave things broken. I sent you weeks of letters. Weeks.” 

Weeks? You’d only seen four.  

“Finally, I got smart enough to send them when he’s at Court. And then you show up here. Tell me, how am I to think that you’re okay? When he won’t even let you speak with me?” 

You blink once. Twice. Taehyun had been intercepting letters. A pit of anger flares in your belly. Whatever this protecting thing he’s doing really is, you’re sick of it. Since when had he become your keeper? He’d demanded that Yeonjun was trying to do just that, but here he is, and you have no clue why he’s doing it. 

“I didn’t know you’d sent letters until yesterday,” you tell him. “I should’ve come and seen you.” 

Running his thumb over your cheek, he murmurs, “You’re not going back there. Please, tell me you’ll stay with me. If you’re to stay here in the north forever, let it be with me. We can’t slip around like this forever.” 

Shaking your head in his hands, you pull back. You can’t decipher the dread that washes over you at his suggestion once again. Your heart is wary with the need to do just that—to not return to the estate where you’d become some sort of prisoner. Something washes over you and tells you that it won’t go the way you’d wanted, just as most things in your life hadn’t. 

Seeing the way you retract, Yeonjun becomes more desperate. “Please,” he says, hands finding your shoulders to hold you as if you’ll leave him there.  

“We’ll figure it out,” you say. “Just give me a few days to think about it, okay?” 

His face stays drawn as if he wants to argue it, but he relents. Taking your frozen hands into his own and wrapping them up in attempts to warm them, he says, “Okay. Okay, let’s get away from this blizzard, then. I’ll wait for you, love.” 

Your chest sizzles. The cold isn’t so bad, today. In a way, you’d missed it. You nod.  

Yeonjun brings you to his chambers and urges you to settle into a plush seat. You run your hands over the embroidered whorls of thread on the cushions as you watch him rummage through a chest. “What are you looking for?” you ask him, drinking in his figure. He’d switched his Court shirts for some more comfortable wear, but even in those he looks princely. He’s so pretty. Your heart flutters as he fishes out what he’d been searching for and turns to you with a smile. He settles beside you carrying a leatherbound book and a miniature wood sculpture of a girl. 

“These,” he says, setting them down on the cushion between you.  

You pick up the wood thing, looking over its painted pink cheeks and feeling the carvings that make its face. It’s fitted with a dress; one unlike any you’d ever seen. Your brow furrows. “What’s this thing?” you ask. 

“It’s called a doll,” he says explains. You feel his eyes on you, watching your reaction, not on the thing in your hands. “Human girls carry them around to play with. They change the dresses and stuff. They even make things for them to hold, but... I couldn’t get ahold of any of those.”  

Heart stuttering, you look at the wood-carved thing. “Human girls?” you ask, imagining a life where you too could have worried only about what dress your toy would wear. You revere the resilience your younger self had to have. At least you didn’t know any better; you didn’t know how you could’ve had it. That ignorance saved you. The painted eyes of the doll stare back at you. 

“Kinda cute, huh?” he says, smiling and scooting closer to fiddle with the thing’s hair. “They even do their hair up all pretty.” Looking back up to you, he says, “It’s a shame that no human who has ever grown up here knows of things like these. Simple joys.” 

You nod, a little choked up. “Yeah. I wish I had. It would have been nice to have something like this as a girl.”  

He tucks some hair behind your ear to get a better look at your face from the side. “How did you ever end up being a spy?” 

Tearing your gaze from the doll to meet his, you find a sadness there despite you not even having told him yet. It’s as if he knows it’ll hurt him already. You fiddle with the little doll’s dress as you recount. “I was a servant to a seamstress,” you start. “A royal seamstress, too. She was favored well by the gentry. She brought in hordes of clients and made dresses and Court clothes for them—but, really, her work mostly ended at being there to hear what they’d want and inlaying the dresses with her magic when they’d ask for it. The rest was my work. Taking their measurements, making their dresses... I worked her shop as soon as I became able to.” Memories of cruel and wicked faces that snickered at your expense or those who found it entertainment to scare you come back, as fresh as ever. Those memories never leave you; the ones so early on that they’d calcified into permanent parts of your personality. That terrified little girl will always be somewhere in your mind. She surfaces quite a lot, these days.  

“There was this one time...” you say, trailing off to trudge up a more awful memory. “A Lady had come in to have a dress made. She brought a guard along with her. He was this massive troll with grey skin like a toad.” You’d recall his details without any trouble for the rest of your life, you think. “I’d ran off to grab some fabric for the Lady, and he followed,” you say, voice wavering just how your little heart had wavered as you had turned around from the bolts of fabric to see the goblin stood there. “He yanked me around by my hair until I sobbed, and then he had me get on the floor and beg him to let me live.” You know now that of course he wasn’t going to kill you—he wouldn’t want problems with Nut-hatch—but you hadn’t known it then. You thought you were dead. “When he had enough of his fun, he let me go. When the other two saw how hysterical I was, all I got was being asked why I’d left them waiting so long.”  

Yeonjun asks, voice soft and tender, “The seamstress allowed that?” His eyes are heavy with a mixture of emotions. You see sadness and anger there, but also something a bit more. 

“Nut-hatch?” you say. “Of course.” They’d known what he was doing in there, of course. Even a human could have heard it. As long as you served your purpose, the folk could not care less. 

He looks taken aback at that, recognition turning his brows up. “Nut-hatch? You worked for Nut-hatch?” he asks. 

Nodding, you hum. You had no doubt he’d know her name. Her work was well-renowned in his father’s court and beyond. “I did.” 

His eyes rake over you for a long few beats before he turns your face up. “Their names?” he asks. 

“Huh?” 

“The goblin and the Lady. What are their names?” 

You try to tug at the threads of that old memory. “I don’t remember,” you say. Much of it is fresh, but you hadn’t committed their names to memory. Inconsequential in the grand scheme of it. “It’s okay. It’s passed now.” 

He doesn’t look very convinced, mind wheeling behind his eyes. You don’t want to stay on this memory for too long. Pushing it back into the dusty corner where it stays, you continue explaining. “I accepted that as my life for a long time, but... At some point, I just wanted more. I imagined all the ways I could find a new life as a human here. There are so many other things I’d preferred, but the only one I could manage was that. Even that, I was wrong about. I’m not really made for that, you know?” You lighten your tone in hopes that it’ll make your chest feel lighter as well.  

He listens intently and then leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead. Pulling you into his chest and keeping you notched under his chin, he says, his voice smooth to your ears, “I’m so happy you’re here now, pretty.” 

Letting out the weight in your lungs in a long, meaningful sigh, you melt into his touch. It’s difficult not to when his body is so warm against yours. You revel in it for some time, just letting him smooth over your hair and rub your back. You try your best not to let any old, sad emotions pour out through your eyes; this is a happy moment. You’ve made it. Perhaps things had been harder than you imagined they’d be, but you knew it’d be a long journey when you escaped that sewing cottage anyway. 

Peppering a few last kisses to the top of your head, he releases you to pick up the book he had also grabbed from that chest. On the front it reads: Pride & Prejudice.  

“A book?” you say, looking over the brown leather and gold printing. It’s an unfamiliar name to you, but you never read much anyway.  

He nods and pries it open. The spine crackles with age. “It’s also from the human world.” Thumbing through the pages, he adds, “It’s a story. I read it often, it’s quite a nice one. I want to give it to you so that you can read it too; it’s a beautiful love story.” 

You lean in to take a look at the words, too perfect to be handwritten. “Where do you get all this stuff?” you say. It reminds you of he’d brought you to that market for human goods. He seems to be interested in things that are human. Perhaps that includes you. Either that or he continues to show you these kinds of things for your sake. 

“I lived in their world for some years,” he says, flipping through the pages. “It’s quite different. Though... I found myself not wanting to leave. When the time came, I brought these back with me to remind me of that time.” 

Lived? Not just visited, but Yeonjun had lived in the human realm? Your heart flurries with a lifetime of wondering what your true home was like. How ironic is it that he knew more of humans than you? That you’re the one asking him questions about your kind? “How long?” you ask first. “And why were you living there?” 

“Just for something my father wanted me to do,” he answers, “Somewhere around a decade, I believe.” 

He’d spent ten years there. Multiple things click into place—no wonder he’s so able to understand your human emotions. No wonder it feels as though you’ve been seen to a different degree by him than you’d ever known before. He’d spent years with your kind. “What is it like?” you say, not sure where to begin with your questions. 

He smiles fondly. “You wouldn’t even be able to believe me, pretty. You’ll just have to see it.” 

See it. “You’d take me there?” you say.  

“Of course,” Yeonjun says, frowning. He takes one of your hands into his, pressing a kiss to it. “You deserve to see it.” He presses another kiss to your skin, now at your wrist. The hair on your skin raises at the contact. His eyes find yours as he begins a slow ascent of kisses up your arm. Each is warm and sends your spine blazing. Once he reaches your shoulder, he slows down, leaving a long moment between kisses. He continues this pace—one that both makes you wish he’d slow down and that he’d hurry and quell your want—right up the juncture of your neck and up the column, too. His controlled breaths puff out like fire on your skin where his mouth lingers. You let your head back to help his path up. He places one final kiss at your jawline before his lips land on yours, drunken and in no rush at all.  

You can’t help the visceral urge to run your hands over his soft skin, to check if the warmth there was real or if you’d manifested it in your longing. Yeonjun breaks this lethargic kiss just to laugh, but he’s quick to recapture your lips. He meets your hand and brings it under his silken shirt, guiding you up the soft planes of his abdomen. 

Pushing you back, he whispers into your mouth, “I missed you so much, pretty.” 

You rememorize the gentle muscles of his stomach beneath your palm. “It was only so many days,” you tease, “you’re just horny.” 

He lets go of your hand to begin slipping down your dress from the shoulders. “Yeah?” he hums, gobbling up each inch of skin that he reveals. “I suppose I am. It’s a gift to be able to love you in this way.” Once the fabric is clear of your hips and he’s tugging it down your legs, his face turns sly. He studies your wettened core. “I think you missed me too, though, love.” 

You drag your bottom lip into your teeth. You had. Your chest thumps rhythmically in your chest, syncing like symphony with the throb between your thighs. 

Blood sings in your veins when he places his palm right on the boundary between your lower belly and your cunt. Your stomach soars, too, so excited by his touch so near where your body craves it. He runs it up, feeling the curves of your body, up to your breast. You expect him to stop and pay attention to your chest, but he presses his hand down right over your heart and feels its beating against his palm. His eyes flutter to a shut, and he leaves his hand there for a few moments, relishing in it.  

“What other purer form of love can I show you?” he says, tapping on your hip. “On your hands and knees, baby.” 

You flip, your limbs a bit clumsy in anticipation. Once you’ve found your way there, he dances his fingertips on the small of your spine. 

“Did you think of my touches while we were apart?” 

“Mhm,” you hum. Especially on the nights when the estate seemed the emptiest. Some nights, your fingers were just not enough to save you, and you’d contemplate making a big escape to find him.  

“Well, I shouldn’t make you wait too much longer then, huh?” he coos, running that hand down to ghost touches over your slit. Though minimal, you jolt. You’d been so ravenous for this. He’d worked his shirt off so that when he leans forward to meld his chest to your back, it’s his skin that touches yours, not fabric. His hand stays ghosting touches that leave you softly gasping. 

He teasingly pinches your clit, laughing in your hair at the sharp hiss it draws from you. “So reactive,” Yeonjun muses. His fingers find their way to your hole. He dips the middle two in. “Just like the first time we made love like this. Your lovely face is burned into my mind, pretty. You have such hungry eyes.” As he pushes his fingers in, he uses his free hand to tilt your face against the cushion so that he can better see your eyes. 

You sigh, shuddering and breathy, as he begins to curl his fingers. It only takes him a few curls to rediscover that spot that has sparks flying behind your eyes. 

“There?” he asks, chin on your shoulder. “That feel good, darling?” 

Your muscles tremble at their own accord, rendering your huffs trembled as well. “Yes,” you answer. Each meaningful curl hits its mark, knees unsteady pillars that dig into the cushions. “So—so good. Please don’t stop.”  

He maintains a sickening pace—your muscles twitch around his giving fingers, just enough so that your entire body buzzes and your stomach twists, but not enough to send you shaking yet. You collapse down from your elbows, chest in the cushions. He brushes back the hair that obscures your face with the movement, adamant to see your face.  

He eggs you on by curling deeper; faster. Your answering groan is shaky and tense—you can’t get enough of the knot he curates in your belly, but at the same time, it’s daunting. He sits back, but his fingers don’t falter. His free hand explores, feeling your body up for all the time he couldn’t.  

Stomach taut and brimming on your peak, you suck in a breath. Your orgasm sits so close, running a line of electricity from between your legs up to your spine, raising goosebumps on your skin.  

Your eyes fly open, mouth ready to scold, as Yeonjun pulls his fingers from you. Your chest bubbles up with frustration, your orgasm drifting off to somewhere else. “Why?” you ask, cheeks burning. It slips and slips away from you, hole twitching around nothing as if seeking out just enough stimulus to bring it crashing back. “I was so close.” 

His hand soothes the loss ever so slightly by circling your cunt, but he does not make the mistake of offering you any touch where you most need it. It only prolongs the float down, keeping you suspended. You abhor it.  

“Please,” you whine. 

He doesn’t entertain your whines. He only continues to deliver just enough to torment you until he’s sure that you’re not so wound up that you’ll cum the moment he touches you, and then he slides his fingers back in and begins building up a more tense knot with pointed curls. Your insides delight in the return of attention, falling almost instantly back into a brutal climb. Yeonjun doesn’t bother with languid, teasing strokes now. He aims for your ruining. 

You writhe against the cushions. Your heart is a fluttering bird in your chest, trilling at the prospect of your release. It’s so close—so close that you might be able to just touch it. It tastes like honey on your tongue, painting your words sweet. “Love you,” you tell him. “Love you so much.” 

Yeonjun rewards your sweetness with his free hand on your throbbing clit, sending your hands gripping at the cushions. You wiggle your hips helplessly in search of just the right amount of friction that it’ll finally give you want you’ve been wanting. “Yes,” you mewl. “Yes, so close—” 

“Wait, baby,” he commands from behind you. “It’ll feel so much better. I promise. Hold it back.” 

He reins in his touches once again, not stopping like last time. It’s not enough to put a stop to the orgasm rippling right under your skin, right at the edge of ripping through you. You can’t hold it back; it’s right there. 

“No,” he says, once again ripping his touch from you. It doesn’t stop anything—you go rigid just before it crashes over you, and then you’re shaking without his hands even on you. You cum with a vengeance—body reclaiming twofold what he had denied you.  

“Holy shit.” Yeonjun groans watching you come unraveled without his help. “So riled up that you’re cumming by yourself, pretty,” he says, running a hand around to feel your belly muscles twitching and the way they roll along with the twitches of your hips. He eggs on your orgasm with gentle touches at your clit, sending you jolting, until you’re a panting mess and he can tell that you’ve had enough. 

You attempt to push yourself off your chest, but he gently guides you back down with a palm against your back. “Stay there, pretty. You can handle a little more, right? You did so well, I know you can. Let me make love to you, darling.” 

The cushions are awfully warm against your skin and you’re still dealing with the waves of pleasure that drift up from your cunt, but you nod your head for him. “’Kay,” you say. 

The rustling behind you tells of how he’s slipping out of the rest of his attire. You lay boneless as he does, focusing on the waves running down your thighs. It’s ecstasy in its purest form. It floats through your veins, addling any consciousness and breaking you down into what you are at your core. 

The familiar prod at your entrance jolts you back to life. As he presses in, he presses a hand to your flushed cheek. It’s a welcome temperature difference—you feel set ablaze in some sort of languid flame, one that takes its time to consume you. He laughs softly. “You’re burning up,” he says as he bottoms out, as if the feeling of him filling you up isn’t rendering you jittery in anticipation. “Ready for me, pretty?” he teases, taking your hips into his hands. “I need you to make those pretty sounds for me. I want to know that they’re just as sweet as I remember them.” He punctuates his sentence with deep rolls of his hips, aiming where he knows will have you singing. 

You’re helpless to the chorus of ‘Oh's and ‘Yes’s that he draws from you, the smacking of his hips and your sweet moans much too loud for you. You dread the thought of his servants hearing you and push your face into the cushions, muffling the array of sounds that bubble over. It’s all you can do—you could hardly contain your sounds. 

Your scalp strains as he tugs your head back, tugging your face from the cushion. “None of that, love. I waited too long for that. Don’t hide your pretty voice.”  

You shake your head. “Too loud,” you pant. “They’re gonna hear.” 

“I don’t care who hears you. Let me hear how good I’m making you feel, or I’m going to stop. Do you want me to stop?” His fingers cling to your soft hips, betraying how much this is affecting him. You know that he hardly wants to stop. 

You’re turned to mush, though. In this moment, being heard feels nowhere near as awful as Yeonjun ceasing those dizzying thrusts. You shake your head, scalp aching against the movement. “No,” you say, breathless.  

“That’s what I thought,” Yeonjun taunts, letting your cheek drop back into the fabric. “Let them hear our love. Let them hear how real it is, darling. Louder.”  

You tentatively let your sounds out into the thick air, but he decides that it’s not enough for him. Taking his hand off your hip to brace himself on the seat’s plush armrest, he doubles down his thrusts, feverish and desperate to guide you both to a beautifully explosive end. Your mouth drops open, unfiltered words and sounds spilling out from your chest as you grab at the cushions for help. With the hand that he doesn’t use to deliver those wild thrusts, he encases your hand in his own, threading his fingers between yours.  

For a few more incandescent moments, Yeonjun’s room only consists of your unabashed cries, his alternating grunts and whines, the rhythmic and hollow smacks of his hips to your skin, and the musk of your passion. Frantic bodies dance against each other, skin against skin in the purest way. Your thighs tremble pathetically, his cock brushing against your sweet spot until you squeeze your eyes shut and ride out the quivering of your cunt around him. You squeeze his hand as you shake. 

“Yes,” his pretty voice whines, “Just like that.”  

Picking up his pace, he chases to join you in your orgasm. He pants behind you, desperately fucking into you until his hips stutter and he stills, falling into your shoulder to deliver needy rolls and shooting warm spurts of his release into you.  

You two stay like this for some unhurried moments. You focus on his heartbeat; feeling it thudding against your back reminds you that he is real, and he is love. You hold his hand in yours a little tighter. 

❉

“I doubt that this will go exactly as you believe it will,” Beomgyu says, watching you do your hair up. Your eyes meet his in the vanity’s mirror.  

Arms burning as your hold them over your head, your words come out clipped with the ache. “It worked yesterday, didn’t it?” you say. You push a filigree comb into your hair to secure it up. “I got back hours before he did.” 

“I’m not saying that Taehyun is right,” he says, “but I think that it would do us both a favor if you practice a bit more precaution.” 

“What, are you afraid of Taehyun?” you ask, raising your brows at him in the reflection.  

Your taunt hits its mark, Beomgyu shifting in your bed and scowling. “Of Taehyun, never,” he parries, “of the fact that he could ask me to do anything and I’d do it, yes.” He shakes out his lightly matted tresses, a habit you’ve noticed over the passing weeks. “I played a little too closely to the fire with him once, and it landed me like this: no longer the owner of my being. I’d sooner chew off my own fingers than become his obedient dog, but I believe you also know that it’s best to soar low with this, no? Are we not together in this?” 

You press your lips into a thin line. In a way, you’d come to an alliance of sorts with Beomgyu. Despite his being a kelpie, the two of you are not so different now. Both confined to these walls, listening to Taehyun when he commands it. You don’t want any of your actions to snap back on Beomgyu, though. With you attending Court today, it’s almost definite that Taehyun will see you. You turn to face him. “Why don’t you join us, then?” you offer. “I’ll tell him myself that I commanded you to come with me. I’m sure he’ll be less upset if I have you there with me.” 

He gives it a thought, his eyes looking as tired and sunken as they always do. “I’m not one for Court,” he says. 

“But I’ll be there,” you plead, unable to help the twitching of smirk on your lips. “If we do it together, it can’t be so bad.” 

He frowns, but you can see that you’ve won. “I grieve for how the forest left me to my own,” Beomgyu grumbles. 

You surge up from your seat, eyes bright. “You’ll go?” you say, giddy to return to the thrill of faerie revelry and also to see the strange kelpie in the center of it. 

Grimacing, he answers, “I will join you.” 

You take his hands into yours and press a cheeky kiss to his forehead. “You’re not so scary as you try to paint yourself,” you tell him, watching as he catches bait. You laugh as he glowers. 

“Don’t push it.” He climbs off your bed. “I’m scarier than you should imagine, girl. I do this for my own reasons.” 

You pull a patronizing frown and nod. “Of course, I know.” 

You don’t have to wait for him to get ready to any capacity; he tells you that he has no intentions of making any impressions, and you’ve seen faeries in far more drastic states of disarray. Many show up for their reveling in just their skin. 

Beomgyu drones on about how he detests the audaciousness of the gentry folk while you make for the hall. The forest around you is as quiet as you remember it being when you’d first met him. It reminds you that, no matter how used you become to him, he is a creature to be feared. The little folk are right to hide away. For you, though, his might is a relief: should Taehyun be right, you’ll be safe. He moves at your beck and call. Though, the thought of forcing the kelpie to carry out your will is an uneasy one that you do not strive to fulfill. 

Once the buzzing of Court comes into earshot, wonderful faerie music along with it, you breathe it in. “First time in... how long since you’ve shown your face here?” 

“Perhaps four-hundred-something years,” he answers, looking over the scene with as much distaste in his face as his voice. “We solitary folk don’t make ourselves known here unless to bow to a crown. I do not bow to any crown.” 

Itching to find your prince, you gesture toward it. He should be fine—Court is supposed to be an insouciant place. “Don’t they host anybody who decides to come? Faerie hospitality, and all that? You’ll be fine.” 

“It’s all hospitality until you step foot from those trees,” he says. “And even hospitality is sometimes betrayed. You know how capricious we can be, I’m sure.”  

You approach the warm lights, but his words remain with you. It beckons you to remember that their minds are fickle and fundamentally different from yours. However you think they may act, they might act in the complete opposite way. You should at least let that guide how you conduct your actions a little bit. 

As you breach the pillars of trees and are finally surrounded once again by their pinched faces and gangly limbs, you search for both Taehyun and Yeonjun. You see neither, and so you make your way to the tables to seek snacks. You scour them for something sweet to chew over as you wait for him to appear. He’d said he’d be coming around this time, right? You surely hadn’t mistaken the time he’d told you? 

Beomgyu speaks from beside you, observing a hag that loiters nearby. “Is he not here?” he asks. 

Shrugging, you say, “He’ll be here soon.”  

You watch the hag inching closer, bent over with age; though, you assume that’s she’s been old for the entirety of her life. Her pointed ears droop from her thin tresses of silver, cuffed with gold.  

Turning from her, you gesture over the cavorting crowds, more frantically chasing their merriments than ever before. The solstice arrives tomorrow; they welcome its presence with their excitement. “This is all for the solstice?” 

He offers you an affirmative nod. “Just some excuse to entertain themselves like this,” he explains, “the solstice will arrive whether they encourage its coming or not. I believe that they just enjoy this debauchery too much.” His hollow eyes rake over the throngs. “Anyway, many of them are just here because it’s the only time that they’ll see Court. Otherwise, only the gentry gather here.” 

“What makes you any different than them?” you ask. “What makes you so averse to offering your allegiance to the High Courts? Would it not be nice to have their protection, and to keep them off your back?” You seek Yeonjun once more in the crowds, but still, he doesn’t appear. “You know, so they don’t call you in for things like eating too much?” 

“I do not surrender my sovereignty to any. Come they to my doorstep and demand that I do, I could not care. I’m content with the way I make my life.”  

His refusal to do just that must be why Taehyun’s father had come to claim his life. You’re sure that it’s also why the coming of the General’s son to steal his autonomy must’ve made him so angry. You don’t blame him.  

Why would The Queen demand fealty from the solitary folk? You’d thought that, like the High King, she’d leave them to their forests. If they’re all as adamant as Beomgyu, it seems like a lost cause. 

“Well,” you say, “I’m glad that—” 

A gnarled hand, fingers knobbed against your skin and skin about as soft as tree bark, tugs your arm. You spin to find who owns it.  

The hag’s eyes remind you of Beomgyu’s, piercing and dull with the weight of a long life. Though, hers are much more unsightly than his mud-brown ones, saggy eyelids drooping over a pair of eyes with ink-black where the whites of her eyes should be. She pulls you toward her by your skirts.  

You tug yourself back, pinching your brows. “Who are you?” 

She points her clawed, grey hand out at you, bangles of gold and chunky beads jingling as she does. “You, girl,” the hag says, urgent. Her voice is harsh and it crackles as she speaks. She reaches inside of her furry robes and produces a wood trinket from it. In her palm that she shoves at you lays a bit of wood carved into the shape of a wolf, painted in black. Its shaggy black fur reminds you of the kind Taehyun would sometimes wear over his shoulder.  

“I don’t need that,” you say, rejecting her hand. Nothing in faerie comes for free—the hag just sees a human girl that she can offer free things to in hopes that you’ll know no better and take. Then, you’d be in her debt, and she’d demand something from you. You do know better, though. 

“Oh,” she says, shaking her head as she draws out the word. “You do, girl. Take it, take it. You need it, I know it. Take it, I won’t hold it to you, girl, just have it.” Razor teeth appear behind her curled lips. “It is dormant with me. But, in your hands... Take it.” She shakes her jousted hand out at you each time she demands that you take it. “It offers you protection. It would do no good in my possession. It beckons me to give it to you, its pleas are so loud—loud, loud, loud! Take it off my hand, won’t you?” 

Her urging unsettles you, but so do her words. You assume that it’s inlaid with some sort of protective enchantment. Why would you need protection? Although, she could also just be fooling you. She could be holding a perfectly plain hunk of carved wood in her palm for all you know. You shoot a look at Beomgyu. If she were any trouble, he’d tell you. 

He looks about as lost as you do, shrugging. 

“Oh, sakes!” the hag grumbles, clutching her robes to her body. She takes Beomgyu’s hands and places the thing there. “There. I have no reasons to be here fooling humans. Useless debts, what could you give me? Nothing I need.” She points a sturdy, twiggy finger at you. “Keep it on you, girl, else it won’t do its work.” 

With those final ill-boding words, the hag hobbles off, her curved back disappearing between the gaps in the crowd. 

“Here,” Beomgyu says, regarding the trinket with his observation. “That hag really wanted this to be yours, so I think it ought to be in your hands.” He tries pushing it off to you. 

Laughing, you don’t reach out to take it, darting his hand with your whole body. You hang your hands in the air. “I’m not taking that thing,” you say. “She handed it to you, so I really think it ought to be in your hands.” 

He deadpans. “I’ve just been collecting myself a heap of debts, haven’t I?” He closes it into his fist for his lack of pockets. “What’s this one to add?” 

“Does it... feel like it has anything bad on it?” you ask, remembering how he’d identified your geas. “Like a curse, or a bad enchantment, or something?” 

Shaking his head, he says, “No. I feel it does have a protective purpose, but the magic there is... odd. Hard for me to decipher. Probably that hag’s.”  

You purse your lips, nodding. Regardless, whatever protection that thing might have offered you, you’ll be fine without it. 

Shaking off the odd interaction, you resume perusing the snack platters in your wait. You skip over glazed pinecones. Those would be terrible on your human stomach and teeth. You can only imagine how they’d jab at your gums. You opt for a helping of braised fiddlehead ferns. Chewing on the furled thing, you entertain yourself with the revelers. Littler folk dart in and out of legs. Long-limbed gentryfolk with flowers in their hair spin with interlocked hands at the center of the clamor. Sharp-eyed faeries with even sharper mouths speak in clusters, no doubt scheming. In all its oddness, you’d missed it.  

 A silk-smooth voice steals your attention. “A kelpie?” Yeonjun says, regarding Beomgyu beside you. “Now, how did you manage to befriend a kelpie? Even better, how did you drag it here?” 

Your chest lights up. “Long story,” you say, brushing his curiosity off. “What took you so long?”  

He’s dressed in his Courtly best—cuffs made of ruffle and an array of rings decorating his fingers. They catch light as he brings his hand up to run a hand along the expanse of your collarbone. He hesitates to answer for a split second. “I ran into Kai on my way,” he explains. “He’s performing here today and for tomorrow's solstice.” 

Accepting his answer, you go to tell Beomgyu that you’re going off, but he’s not even there as you turn. He must’ve wandered off as Yeonjun had arrived. 

“Want to join them?” he asks, tilting his head toward the dancing bodies. Soft black strands drift over his eyes.  

Shaking your head, you offer him some of the sweets you’d been eyeing, knowing that he’s got a knack for sweets. “Not today. I think I want to remember all of tonight, and, well...” Memories of the way you’d danced uncontrollably until it’d fade to black lick at your mind. You want to revel in your return to normalcy fully, not with a buzzing mind. You can’t deny the allure of that tingling in your bones as you hear the faerie music, though. It curls a wild finger at you, beckoning. 

An uncomfortable look passes through his eyes, gone as fast as it had come. “All right, darling,” he hums, accepting the sweets. “Does the Lord know you’re here?” 

Lips tugging into a faint frown, you say, “Not yet, I think.” The quick expression doesn’t go unnoticed by you. Unlike the ice the Taehyun offers you, Yeonjun wears his feelings all over himself. It’s just one way that they are fundamentally different. “Is something wrong?” 

Yeonjun looks taken aback at your asking. “I’m doing just fine,” he says. “Why do you ask?” 

He does not say nothing wrong. You know it is because he cannot lie. You look him over. What had happened? And, why is he averse to telling you the truth? “Just thought you looked a bit upset.” You shrug. “Did you want to dance?” 

His nose crinkles with a laugh. “No, pretty. I’d be in your presence doing nothing and still be content.” He takes your hands into his, the metal on his fingers biting cold against your skin. “How about we go listen to Kai play?” 

He leads you to where the musicians work at concocting their works, claiming a chalice of some drink from a table on the way. Kai, of course, stands away from the rest, back to a tree while his fingers dance on the strings. You look around for Taehyun from here, but still, you don’t see his face. 

Yeonjun holds the chalice’s neck between his middle two fingers, sipping from it. “It’s nice to know that even as this season ends, I won’t be forced to go back there.” 

His pretty lips wrap over the edge of the chalice as he drinks from it. “Won’t your father know something is up when you return?” 

Nodding slowly, he grimaces. “I suppose that time has finally come.” 

You squeeze his hand in yours. “We both sacrificed things to be here, huh?” you say. You don’t know a lot of what Yeonjun’s life back in his home court was like, but you know that it would be hard to revolt against your own family for anybody. Even for the prince of Faerie. 

He captures your eyes, his soft brown ones making crescents with his gentle smile. “We did,” he muses. 

“Remember our first night in Court?” you say. You’d been so uneasy, searching for a place to fit in. Then, from the crowds of overwhelming faces, he’d appeared, all charm and welcoming smiles. How couldn’t you have let your heart fall? 

Another flash of disconcertment flashes, his smile faltering. He hides it behind another sip of his drink. Swallowing, he nods, laughing off-kilter. “I do. I think watching you dance that time was the best thing I’ve ever seen.” 

Odd, but you don’t push the issue. If he says that he’s fine, it must just be something to little effect. “What made you come up to me that night?” you say, remembering how confused you’d been when such a pretty gentry boy had taken interest in you. You’d agonized over why he’d done so for long, and sometimes you still, but you’ve made some peace with it by now.  

His lips are tight. “I... It’s hard to explain.” 

You accept that answer at face-value and let your head fall into his shoulder while you watch Kai dutifully work at his songmaking. Among those making the music for Court, his contributions stand out as the most enthralling. Faerie music is too elusive for you to decipher why, but perhaps it’s just his lazed passion. “I understand,” you say. His shoulder is tight and less cushy than you expect it to be. Looking up to him, you frown to see how he’s looking down at you, eyes stormy. He looks like he’s sick to his stomach. You go to ask if he’s going to be okay, but he speaks before you can. 

“Pretty, I... I have to tell you something.” He pulls you off of him to look into your eyes. He’s always been so steadfast and sure, but now his gaze wavers. “I’m so sorry.” 

Your stomach drops. You don’t like the way he’s looking at you. “What?” you say, a tingle in your spine telling you that something isn’t right; that you’re not going to like what he’s going to say. “Yeonjun, you’re making me nervous. Is something wrong?” 

You know it’s awful and you’re not sure why you do it, but for a split second, you inspect the hall for possible attackers. A terrible bout of potent adrenaline makes you want to run or cry. Beomgyu is here, right? 

He swallows hard, face a ghostly pallor. “I can’t keep doing this,” he says, voice trembling. “I need to tell you the truth, it’s... it’s been eating me alive. I can’t look into your sweet face and know...” 

Acid climbs up your throat. Your heart joins it, thick in your throat and choking you. “What? Know what Yeonjun?” you ask, lips trembling. Your skin prickles, hair raising. You may throw up. He looks stricken in place, not answering you. “What?” you demand. 

“I didn’t come up to you for no reason that day.” 

Your heart, still caught in your throat, bursts. It’s a horrifying, bloody affair. “No,” you say, shaking your head. You feel so removed from your body that you can almost envision how your blood-drained face might match his. 

“I knew that you were the spies the moment I saw you. It was....” He sucks in a breath. Your world spins around you as you wait. “I was supposed to determine who the spies were. I was supposed to have them killed, but pretty, I knew I couldn’t do that the moment I saw you. I thought it was just going to be some... some random faerie that I’d...” 

If your world was spinning before, it’s now flipped upside down and inverted. “No,” you repeat, a guttural plea that you know won’t change anything. It’s the only word that your mouth will make for right now, though. 

You’re hurt. You’re scared. You’re angry. You’re frozen. 

Yeonjun grabs for your hands, but you rip yourself away from him, your glaring eyes so at odds with your wobbling lips. “It doesn’t change anything,” he says. “It doesn’t change how I love you now. You know I love you. You know I love you, right? I’m so sorry. I would never hurt you. I did my best to protect you. Please, I never wanted to hurt you,” he rambles, frantically grabbing for your arms as he falls down to his knees before you. 

A few faeries around you gasp, and a blur of their commotion forms around you. The crowned prince of Faerie just went to his knees. Your eyes dart wildly around their guffawing faces, and between a space you spot a familiar face: cold eyes and a cracked mask of indifference. He looks right at you. 

What on earth is going on? How is this life right now? You snap back to Yeonjun in front of you. 

“Please, don’t look at me like that, pretty,” he pleads. “Please.” His voice cracks, eyes frantic. “Slap me. Tell me you hate me for it. But please, don’t look at me like you’re scared of me.” 

Tears scald your cheeks. 

“I know that it’s selfish of me to ask you that; I know, I know it—but please, I can’t handle it, love. I was never going to let anything happen to you, I knew it the moment I saw you. I felt it right here”—he gestures to his beating heart, the one your hand had felt and cherished so only last night—“I knew that no matter how big my ambitions were, they would never be bigger than that.” 

You can’t listen to any more. His words pour out onto your skin, but they all slip off like rain upon a beast’s winter pelt. None can penetrate the ringing in your ears. 

Yeonjun sees how retracted you’ve become. “Pretty, please,” he says, slower and more dire now. “Say something." 

You don’t know what to do. Your feet are rooted fast to the ground, but you know that you have to leave, or else you’ll start creating excuses for him. You know yourself too well to let that happen. 

Picking up your skirts, you manage only a few words to part him with. “Though your kind can’t lie,” you say, “you have been the biggest liar I have ever known. You said you loved me.” 

“I do,” he says, shaking his head, eyes twinkling. “I do.” 

Maybe love is a different thing to a faerie. 

You take off. He calls for you, but it’s muffled by the restlessness of the folk around you and the still-playing music. You dart between openings and bounce off bodies, lights and angry faces a blur in your frenzy. Most folk don’t spare you even a glance; nothing could pull them from their merriment. But others gawk at you like you put on a performance, greedy eyes drinking in any amount of fanfare. Their eyes itch under your skin. Crossing the expanse of the hall has never felt so arduous.  

You’ve become their spectacle. 

Breaking into the cold night air, you don’t run home or collapse to your knees in a sob. You hold your dress hard in your hands, the one he’d gifted you among so many others, its fabric bunching in your fists, and stand there as if frozen staring into the tree line ahead. You don’t move and you don’t think; both would remind you that this is real and that you are a fool. You just allow the bitter air to swaddle your skin. 

You don’t even know if you doubt that he loves you. You don’t even know if he actually never intended to hurt you. Had there been times where all you’d done was look at him with starry eyes, and he’d look at you deciding whether or not to have you killed? 

Why are you even here? There is nothing left for you. Whatever simple joys you thought you’d found, they’re gone. You’re so far away from home, and you’ve nobody to call home. You’d left behind your beginnings of a purpose, and now the only purpose you serve is to rot away in Taehyun’s estate because you demanded that you stay here. 

All that time you’d spent worrying, and still, you walked yourself into this. You’re a joke. 

White breaths unfurl into the night air before you, floating off to join the snowflakes and heavy fog. You just watch those fluffy flakes fall for a while. 

Snow creaks under a few footsteps behind you, someone letting you know that they’re there. “You’ve gotten awfully good at sneaking around,” Taehyun says. 

You let your head fall back, sighing slowly out through your nose. Turning to him, you spit, “I understand. You were right. I got it, okay? I don’t need you to come here and rub it in.” 

Beomgyu approaches from behind Taehyun. 

Taehyun doesn’t say anything for a bit, ice-hard eyes darting all over your face. “Take her back to the estate,” he tells Beomgyu. 

Glad to escape him, you begin your way on your own. You know that he’s only looking at your break down as pathetic. Perhaps it is, but recognizing that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Wind lapping at your wet cheeks have them stinging as you walk. 

Beomgyu awkwardly trails behind you as you follow the path that had become trodden in the time that you and Taehyun have been here, foliage and shrubbery broken down to make somewhat of a path. 

He doesn’t speak; you don’t expect him to. Instead, you break the quiet yourself, unable to stand only the sound of wind twirling between trees. “I should’ve taken that ridiculous charm thing,” you say, laughing through your tears. That hag had absolutely been able to feel what was coming with you with whatever intuition that the magic in her bones lends her. 

“But then,” Beomgyu says, “you wouldn’t know the truth.” 

That’s true. Not knowing the truth doesn’t make it untrue, but at least it spares your fragile heart. “I don’t know if I’d mind that,” you tell him. “I think I’d prefer it.” 

Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes. 

❉

You don’t remember falling asleep. You remember climbing into your bed, dreading that you’ll be in your head all night, but to some mercy, you’d found sleep not long after that. 

You’d pulled yourself from bed, no matter how it had grown a gravitational pull and insisted that it’d hold you warm while you weep. If you hadn’t, you might not have gotten up at all. As a girl, you’d force yourself into the day’s routine when you had your worst days. It’s the only way that you live through it. You’d also made an effort to walk past your wardrobe. It carries so much of him: the lovely things he’d gifted you, his letters, and that book he’d lent you. It’s not that you don’t want any of these things; to wither away in your bed, to go through his things and wonder how someone who’d showered you so had meant to be your killer, to drag your feet... It’s that you can’t. 

You poke your needle through the fabric. On the cut of white fabric stretched inside the embroidery hoop, you’ve embroidered a dozen woven wheel stitch flowers of different colors and types. Your bottom aches against the hardwood flooring and your lower spine strains, but you don’t pay any mind to their complaining. You just continue to embroider the little flowers. Some are poppy, some rose, and some you’d made up just to have more to stitch. 

A knock resounds through the war room from the doorway. You look to see Taehyun there. He’s dressed in his Court attire. 

“You should get dressed,” he says. “It’s almost midnight. If you want to make it in time, you’ve got to get ready now.” 

Since when had he decided that you’re okay to go? It’s as if this elusive threat that’d he’d been so careful has up and disappeared. “You can go. It’ll take me too long to get ready.” 

Truth be told, you’d go sick seeing Yeonjun’s face, and you know without a doubt that you would. 

“It’s the solstice,” Taehyun says, stepping into the room. He looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. 

Despite how much you had wanted to see it, your heart is too apathetic for it to be worth anything now. Returning to the same faces that had seen your demonstration and no doubt now talk of it... You’d rather finish your fifth rose. “I know.” 

He hesitates, studying you while gears turn in his head. “Hadn’t you thought that something would happen on the solstice?” he says. “Come on. It’s worth seeing how this unfolds.” 

“Why? We aren’t spies anymore. I don’t care what happens in their conflict. It’s well beyond my control as a human here.” 

He grimaces, but you don’t recognize the look there to be anger, more a rigidness. He rests his hand on his sword as he always does. “Then we’ll stay here.” 

You furrow your brows. “Huh?” 

“We can celebrate the solstice here,” he elaborates. “We don’t need to do it there. Plenty of folk celebrate on their own.” 

It dawns upon you that this is his stilted attempt at comforting you. It’s the only way he knows how. You push off the ground. You couldn’t ignore this sliver, however little, of tenderness. You’re not sure if you’d ever see it again if you did. You’ll take anything to distract your mind, as well. You can’t escape the image of Yeonjun’s eyes as he’d pleaded with you from the ground. “I’m not sure Beomgyu will join us, though. He doesn’t believe in the need to celebrate the solstices.” 

“He will if I command it,” he says.  

“What, you’re going to command the poor kelpie to sit and watch a bonfire with us?” you say, imagining how he’d brood. 

The north is wickedly cold at all times, but it’s especially so after night falls. You shuffle closer to the bonfire that Taehyun had built. It’s multitudes smaller than the bonfire you’d sat around with Yeonjun, but it’s warm enough for just the two of you. You quickly shove down those tainted memories before they sting. A lump of emotion forms in your throat before you can, though. You clear it. “Is there anything special that you’re supposed to do?” 

Feeding one last log into the flame, he watches it catch. “We started this really early,” he says. “The fire is supposed to keep you warm and represent the sun’s warmth until sunrise...” He trails off, sliding the cuffs of his shirt that he’d slid up to his elbows to tend to the fire down and sucking in an awkward breath. He looks between the fire and you as though he’d not fully thought out his offer when he’d made it. 

You face your palms to the orange flame, letting the roiling waves of heat warm them. “It’s nice like this.” 

The flame sizzles and pops, spewing sparks and eating up the wood, for a few long moments. You’re not in a talky mood, and Taehyun doesn’t seem to know where to begin on conversation with you that isn't functional. No snow falls around you, and any wind is cut by the estate. This—a place to lose yourself to your mind—is both the thing you need and what you most should not have. 

Taehyun stands watching the fire twirling, his arms over his chest.  

“Is your shoulder healing fine?” you ask, once the air starts feeling a bit heavy with the weight of the prolonged quiet. “Are my stitches holding up fine? No infection, or anything?” 

His gaze flicks up to you. “You stitched it up pretty well,” he answers. “I saw the flowers you were making. You’ve got a good hand.” 

Frowning, you say, “You didn’t say it’s not infected...” 

“It’s not infected,” he says. 

That could be a lie or the truth, you know. But... this sort of deception, you’re more comfortable with. Your human mind can pick up on these subtleties, can catch the careful intonation of somebody trying to hide something behind a lie. “Could I see it?” you ask him. 

He hesitates, expression flat as his eyes convey the extent of his consideration. “You can.” He grabs at his tunic, the fabric the only thing his frost blood even needs to wear out in the cold, and pulls it over his head. 

You swallow hard and fight the flush to your cheeks at the sight of his scar-flecked flesh, his muscled abdomen disappearing as he turns around to show you his back. When you’d last seen his bare skin, you’d been so high on your fear and adrenaline that you’d barely flinched.  

Blinking, you focus on the arrow puncture at his shoulder blade. It’s done some healing, but tinged by an angry red and visibly swollen around the stitches. You curse. 

Of course, he’d rather let his shoulder rot away than admit that he needs any more of your help than he’d been forced to allow. That would require admitting that he’s not just an impenetrable wall of ice. “That is definitely infected,” you say. “Were you just going to let that kill you? Infections like that are beyond help once they get in your bloodstream.” 

“I’ve had infected wounds before,” he says, preparing to put his shirt back on. “This one is nothing. It’ll take a bit longer, but... It’ll heal up fine.” 

You grab his arm. “Just let me clean it a bit,” you insist. “It’s not that big of a deal. You’re not scared that it’s gonna hurt, are you?” 

Sighing, Taehyun says, “I thought you wanted to enjoy the solstice.” 

The hopeful girl you’d been had wanted that, but now it’s just a reminder of everything you don’t want to remember. You wave your hair in the air dismissively. “We did. Come on.” 

You find a bucket to fill with water and cloth along with some stash of ancient spirits in the kitchens, their containers lined with a layer of dust so thick that you know they’re left over from Taehyun’s father. He watches you gather it all. 

You beckon him to turn and show you his shoulder again. He does, bracing his arms on a counter and letting his head hang. You spill out some of that strong liquor into the wound. You’re not really sure if it’ll work as a disinfectant, but as a girl you’d seen an older woman pour it over her wound once, and it’s all you know. 

Gently dabbing at his shoulder now with the water-soaked rag, swollen except for where the stitches sinch it, you say, “You should’ve been going gentle on this thing.” 

Taehyun doesn’t make any fuss as you prod at the wound. “I had more important things to concern myself with,” he says plainly. You press the wet rag to the wound and hold it there, and he begins to try and redirect the conversation to anything other than about himself. “What did the prince say to you at Court?” 

Your stomach drops. “It was nothing.” 

“I know that’s not the truth,” he says, picking up his head to try and look over his shoulder at you. “Tell me the truth.” 

You take the long, torn strips of cloth and begin wrapping it around the expanse of his broad shoulders in a sloppy and amateurish wrap. As long as it shields the wound, it’ll work. “That’s rich coming from you,” you say. “There’s plenty that you lie to me about. You even lied about this.” You tap his shoulder. 

Turning now that you’re done, Taehyun eyes you. You don’t know if he’d been able to hear anything over the sounds of Court or if he’d heard it all with his better hearing ears. You can’t tell which it is.  

“I’ll hear it from some Court gossiper anyway. I think you’d prefer to tell me it yourself.” 

The thought of that scene being a topic of Court gossip makes you ill, but you know that it’s true. The folk love the show, especially one that includes a prince of Faerie on his knees in front of a human. Red-hot embarrassment takes a leisurely stroll up your spine. Your biggest fear has taken flesh in the cruelest way possible.  

Well, if he’s going to end up knowing anyway... You’d prefer it’s from your mouth. You don’t know what sort of conflated half-truths the folk might come up with, since they have no more idea what happened than what they saw. “He was supposed to kill us,” you say, chest too tight to explain it in any depth. “Or, at least, find out who we are, so that we could be killed.” 

Taehyun doesn’t look shocked. He nods. “So, they anticipated our arrival, then. The odds had been stacked against us from the beginning.” 

You nod. Would you have been able to escape? If things had never become entangled between you and Yeonjun, would you and Taehyun lived beyond the first day? Taehyun is strong and you know that he’s no doubt survived plenty in his life, but you’d have been caught completely unaware. “Yeah.” 

“I told you that he’d show you his colors eventually.” 

You want to fight him on that, but you can’t. You have nothing to say. He’d been right. 

What’s left for you now that he has?  

END PART 4

a/n: RAHHH! like i said, this part gave me a bit of grief because part 3 was left so open ended—i had so many options and paths i could follow, but ultimately, i chose this one! how do we feel?

taglist: @lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @lickingan0rchid , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @sanshiningstarhwa , @hyucktapes ,

[yoonbroom]

TOMORROW X TOGETHER FIC RECS

a list of TXT fics I really enjoyed! pls go and show these amazing authors some love <3 if there wasn't a summary I just included a little blurb from the fics! now onto the recs ↓

CHOI SOOBIN

IT'S YOU!! YOU'RE THE ONE THAT I WANT!!! - @koqabear

oneshot, fluff, angst, friends to lovers

Witty jokes? Didn’t really work. Pick up lines? Been there, done that. Now he probably just thinks you’re corny. These are two of many (many) methods that you used to try and get Choi Soobin, your classmate, your friend, and your husband (though he doesn’t know it yet) to notice you. Come on Soobin!!! You’re practically throwing yourself at him and yet, nothing. Is he blind, or just a robot? It’s time to find out.

FAIRY OF SHAMPOO - @02chois

series, fluff, idol au, friends to lovers, smau

soobin found his own fairy of shampoo. the one that makes him smile whenever they show up on screen, and even manages to brighten up his day whenever he's upset. but this feels a little familiar, isn't it? he hopes it won't be like the song they released. he wants to be able to face the fairy that casted a spell on him without the screen between them.

CHOI YEONJUN

JUST A LITTLE TIPSY! - @aakomii

oneshot, fluff, established relationship, idol au

Taehyun calling you to pick up your wasted boyfriend after their videoshoot with Suga!

SOFT MOMENTS WITH YEONJUN - @blue-jisungs

oneshot, fluff, est relationship, idol au

"Hihii!! Your writings are so incredibly good like you deserve to be one of the big 3 writers of kpop fanfic dead serious here. Can i request random moments with idol yeonjun!! In the dorm, practice room, with the members. Just random moments while dating yeonjun :))"

CHOI BEOMGYU

ATTENTION - @/aakomii

oneshot, fluff, college

Everyone and their mama knows about Beomgyu’s massive crush on you. Even you do, but you’ve never given the poor boy a chance. He’s not complaining though, he loves the chase and you love the attention.

ETERNALLY - @h4chi

series, fluff, angst, fake dating, friends to lovers, idol au, smau

yn works as a producer for the companies BigHit and SM. one day she founds herself victim of a dating scandal, but what will happen when she agrees with her company to a dating rumor?

LOVE YOU, LOVE YOU, LOVE YOU... - @wildernessuntothemselves

oneshot, fluff, angst, smut, arranged marriage, royalty

You go into your arranged marriage already distrusting your husband and all other men, and despite him repeatedly attempting to gain your favor, you are resolved to rebuke him at every turn. Will you manage to keep up the walls you’ve built to protect yourself, or will prince Beomgyu succeed in getting through your defenses?

HOW TO GET THE GIRL - @ijhyo

oneshot, fluff, angst, friends to lovers, college

lee chaeryeong is the most sought after girl in your school. everyone has fallen victim to her charms, including choi beomgyu and it is no surprise that he wants to try and win her over. what is a surprise is that he came to you for help considering that one: you have never spoken to him in your life, and two: you have no connection to chaeryeong at all. well, except for your beginners music composition class.

TOTALLY UNLABELED KISS - @heart2beom

oneshot, fluff, best friends to lovers

in which you and beomgyu teeter between being normal best friends and well...best friends who makeout from time to time.

KANG TAEHYUN

태현 소프트 시간 ⟡ [8:26 AM] - @kazmura

drabble, fluff, est relationship

"As the sun's gentle rays streamed through the curtains, casting a warm glow in the room, you slowly stirred awake, greeted by the peaceful stillness of the morning. The soft sheets tangled around your body, and you shifted slightly, feeling the weight of Taehyun's arm draped over your waist, holding you close in a comforting embrace."

HERO - @btxtreads

series, fluff, angst, idol, samu

"Heavily based off of the Disney Channel Original Movie “Starstruck”

OMG - @eundiarys

series, fluff, angst, idol au, smau, fake dating

in which — yn who just debuted gets into a dating scandal with one of the most famous group members because of a misunderstanding and is forced to fake date with him. what happens if it isn’t as bad as she thinks? and and what if she finds comfort with him? (❗️ — dia’s jueun is used to potray yn! )

SEASONS (WAITING ON YOU) - @noramoons

oneshot, fluff, angst, college

when your high school sweetheart choi yeonjun is off to grad school, you aren’t too worried about how your relationship will last—but your favorite coworker, kang taehyun, is. OR: a study in the seasons of loving and losing choi yeonjun—and how you put yourself back together afterwards.

HUENING KAI

LONELY BOY WILL STAY LONELY? - @awmancreeper

series, fluff, angst, idol au, enemies to lovers

StayC’s Y/n is notorious for being K-pop’s social butterfly and making friends comes rather easy for her. When she’s asked to be an MC for Inkigayo, one of her co-hosts doesn’t seem too pleased to be working with her. This unknown feeling sparks a drive to become the bestest of friends with him but from the looks of it, he’ll fight her the whole way there.

want recs for other groups? check out my navigation → here!

[candysugarush]

TXT Profiles and Tales:

✧══════•❁❀❁•══════✧

Choi Yeonjun

Tale : The Pied Piper

Character : The Pied Piper

Story : On that day of winter, as a wandering lad, all he wanted was to make a quick buck with this golden opportunity as he stumbled on the city of Hamelin. And yet, after all his work to help the town folks, he was thrown away like nothing. All of them were horrible. All? Not the mayor's daughter who took care of him during his stay.

As he play of his flute and lure the children away from this ungrateful town to a better place, won't you join him? Don't force him to play you a tune.

Choi Soobin

Tale : Cinderella

Character : The Fairy Godmother

Story : Born from your lucky star on the day you came to life, he was your devoted guardian and best friend with for duty to watch over you. Through happiness and despair, sickness and health. He was present through it all even if you couldn't see him. And on that faithful night where he finally appeared to you to help you to the ball, he never regretted granting your wish as much as he did now. That monstrous prince chasing after you, seeking to possess you.

It's alright, he is going to fix his mistake. Trust him. He is going to give you your happy ever after, no matter what.

Choi Beomgyu

Tale : Rapunzel

Character : The witch

Story : Living as a recluse and in solitude for centuries wasn't truly a problem for him, even if he craved that companionship. So when a young man stole from his garden to feed his sister, he jumped on the occasion, allowing the man to go free if he won a game against him, and if he lost, his sister would be his. Luck on his side, the wizard won and grabbed the young girl, moving her to a recluse and hidden tower for him to keep.

And now years later, you can't really complain about your life with everything you could wish at hand. And yet the outside world is a blurry memory that you should forget already. Don't you see he is trying to protect you? He knows what's best.

Kang Taehyun

Tale : Snow-white

Character : The evil queen

Story : Born from a loveless union as the needed heir to his kingdom, he got the combined beauty of his mother and strength of his father to become a renowned war strategist and alchemist. But the lack of love in his life left him with a hole in his heart he filled with an obsession and striving to become the best. And so as he stepped in to marry the widowed queen of the neighboring kingdom, he wasn't expecting the emotions he would feel during the years toward the princess, hate and jealousy mixing with something else as you became a woman and later on, ran away to protect your life.

You're the only one who genuinely cared for him even when he pushed you away. Won't you forgive him and come back to your step-father? If he can't be the fairest of them all, he can at least possess the fairest one.

Huening Kai

Tale : Alice in Wonderland

Character : The queen of hearts

Story : As the sole monarch of an entire abstract land, he liked to make sure the rules were followed to a T even if it didn't make sense in this crazed world. Dutifully following a routine in a place where day and night could coexist at the same time in the same place and where time could go backwards. Accompanied with his ten cherubs adorably frolicking as usual, the tyranny was going as usual until a curious girl walked in and questioned everything about him and his ways, especially his unreasonable outbursts.

So after criticizing him to his face as well as complaining about his rules, you decide to leave after looking at the clock? Oh no, you're not leaving yet. Tea time just started and you don't want to break a rule.

✧══════•❁❀❁•══════✧

Which story are you jumping into?

[kumabeom]

my veins full of sweets, the forbidden lines slowly fade away - choi yeonjun

forbidden love, dark fairy prince!yeonjun x light fairy princess!yn, mention of death

synopsis : dark fairy! yeonjun finally confesses his feelings for you, however as you start to agree to his feelings, fate has different plans.. and so does the head of the light fairy community

“yn… i love you…”

you turned your gaze towards yeonjun, who crouched behind your sitting figure. his hands braiding flowers into your hair, as he abruptly stopped, catching sight of your innocent eyes. playing with the flower between his hands, twirling it.

“junnie.. y’know there’s a strict line between dark fairies and light fairies.. the council would never let us even get close, in fact.. even our meetings are quite against everything they stand for.” you replied, however, your eyes just couldn’t resist the sight of his strawberry pink lips. you looked into his dark orbs.

“but.. who said the council has to know..?” he smirked, taking your hand into his, pressing the back of your hand against his lips. the lips that you so desired to kiss. in all honesty, you had returning feelings for the fae that was still crouched behind you.

“yeonjun.. i really love you, too.” you admit, your hand coming to cup his cheek, your free hand pressed against his chest. “i can never help but feel like you light up fireworks in my tummy.. nobody else has ever done that, you take care of me like no one else does.. and i’m-.. i’m willing to take a risk to be with you.”

“my pretty princess, you surely would do anything for me, huh ?” he rhetorically asked, knowing your response to his curious words. you had the same effect on him that you claimed to receive from him. yeonjun as the prince knew that his kingdom had no problem with dating a light fairy, in fact, it was quite celebrated. however, your kingdom had low expectations for the dark faeries, they truly thought that whatever connection light fairies had to dark fairies was just a mistake and that they were just trying to play with your feelings.

“of course i would, you’ve done so much for me. you’ve truly won me over.” you giggle, seeing yeonjun’s lips turn upwards. he truly felt like he was on cloud 9, whatever that meant, he heard his human friends say it quite often. there were times when yeonjun would travel outside of the seelie realm and into the ‘real world’.

his hand lifted your chin, taking in your beauty before deciding to press a deep passionate kiss on your lips. a tingling sensation in your chest as you desired to keep your lips warm by having his lips on yours. although you pulled away, deciding to control yourself for the day.

“hmm.. it’s time for my princess to go, isn’t it ?” yeonjun spoke up, realizing that the sky was beginning to glow orange. the sun setting on the horizon, he smiled, taking a look at you and carefully caressing your cheek. he stood up, pulling out his hand for you as you gladly accepted it.

“unfortunately so, but we’re still on for thursday, right ? i truly wish that i could invite you to the ball, however, we don’t have the pleasure of meeting in front of the council.. or really any light fae.” your voice sounded disappointed, yeonjun brushed his thumb against your cheek.

“don’t be so disappointed, my love. be patient, we’ll be able to be with each other soon enough, plus i completely understand that i can’t come, we can always just discuss another meeting.” he grinned, his face beaming with pure sunshine. as he pulled you into a hug, lightly and gently squeezing you. he pulled you away, pressing one last peck on your lips. picking up your basket and holding it out to you.

“see ya’ thursday, yeonjun.”

“bye bye, my love.” yeonjun’s guards walked up next to him. smiling at the idea of seeing their prince so caught up in such a lovely relationship.

“you really do love her, your majesty.”

“i do, i just wish that the light fairies could stop stereotyping dark fairies, maybe then we could finally have a peaceful and normal life.”

you practically skipped into your mother’s office after hearing word that she needed to see you. your basket hanging on your forearm as you entered, face beaming with pure happiness. while your mother was happy to see you, she wasn’t very happy from the reports that she had gotten.

“yn..” your mother called out to you, something about her was that she had been in lead of the council for a rather long time, and you were next in line. “my knights have reported that they caught sight of you with the dark fairy, yeonjun choi.. is this a fact or something that they might have mistook..?”

“i think.. they must’ve seen somebody else, i was just in the forests, out for a picnic.” you stuttered feeling quite anxious due to your current interrogation and.. you didn’t feel well lying to your mother, you hadn’t really lied about your relationship with yeonjun until now, you just avoided speaking the truth.

“but yn.. you decorated that basket when you were just a kid, don’t you think that it looks a bit familiar to the basket in this picture ?” your mother turns over a paper, showing a clear picture of you and yeonjun. it was clearly obvious that it was you in the picture and maybe this was all a test to see if you were willing to tell your mother the truth.

“i’m sorry, mother. i just.. we were just talking, and i know that the council doesn’t like any relations to dark fairies so i didn’t tell you..”

“unfortunately, you’re right. my sweet princess, you know that you can’t go around seeing the dark fae, they’re bound to hurt you at one point or another. so instead of immediately turning you in, as your mother, i must protect you. you have to choose, the dark fae or the light fae.”

“c-can i talk to yunjin..?” you questioned, tilting your head as you attempted to hide the sheer nervousness, even though you weren’t very successful in that mission.

“yn.. you shouldn’t even have to hesitate.. but yes, you may talk to yunjin.” your mother was right, you shouldn’t have had to hesitate.. not when you just told yeonjun that you were willing to risk everything to be with him, yet here you were. you quickly tried to exit your mother’s office, but she had one more thing to say. “from now on, you won’t exit this palace without an escort.”

you silently acknowledged her words, leaving the room. you spotted yunjin beginning to exit the palace, running over to her side. the blonde could only stop in her tracks as she turned around to see whose footsteps she was hearing. she grinned as she noticed you.

“something wrong ? you look so… scared.” yunjin asked, commentating on the way that you looked.

“i think… i’m going to run away.” you state, yunjin’s facial expression changing into a worried one, she grabbed onto your hand. both of her hands wrapped around your singular hand.

“why ? you can’t just.. run away..? yn, you have a duty here, you’re the only one trained to take your mother’s spot and you’ve been assigned with so many tasks these past few days.”

“i get it.. but-.. i’m not giving up on love.” since yunjin was your best friend, she knew about you and yeonjun. she knew that your were quite serious about him, but she couldn’t just encourage you and your plan to run away.

“yn, yeonjun is like the definition of dark fairies, he’s literally the meaning of temptation.. do you know how many light fairies have turned against us because they ‘fell in love.’” yunjin questions you, her gaze following you quite intently as you began to pace around the hall.

“there’s a reason they don’t return, yunjin.. the council doesn’t support these relationships and they decide to just banish any person who loves a dark fae.. it’s not right.. they separate faeries from their families, all due to fact that they’ve experienced true love..” yunjin let out a sigh, knowing fully well that she had no chance in changing your mind no matter what.

“when ?”

“well… umm, first i kinda wanted to meet up with him.. but i need an escort..” you replied, “are you free ?”

“i am, i was just leaving to head back home.. why ?”

“he usually spends a bit of time in our meeting place, can you ‘escort me’ ?” you ask your friend, hoping that she will be able to aid you in your desires. she simply nods, holding your hand and guiding you out the palace. however as soon as you make it out, you are stopped by a few guards.

“are you out to meet your boyfriend ?” a specific guard asks, you can recognize that voice. he took off his helmet, showing the familiar face of huening kai.

“no…” you lie, a bit of guilt pouring over you for lying to your rather close friend. however, you couldn’t say what you were up to, or else kai was sure to lead you back to the palace and to your mother.

“y’know, soobin told us to keep an eye on you. especially since we heard that you were out seeing a dark fairy.. you really should be careful, life isn’t like what it seems like..” huening advised, “i’ll come with you, wherever the two of you go.”

“ah kai… it’s just that yn has something pretty private to show me ? something quite personal.. we were only leaving to get a bit of privacy..” yunjin attempted to convince him, which worked quite successful as huening simply nodded before guiding the guards behind him into the palace. you smiled at yunjin, happy for her save, she seemed to be quite proud of herself as well.

you took yunjin’s wrist guiding her to your and yeonjun’s meeting spot. running through the forest, you eventually ran into yeonjun’s guards.

“where’s his highness ?” you questioned, trusting his guards to give you directions, however they were wary of yunjin. yeonjun had told his guards about keeping you safe, which meant they weren’t really okay knowing that your secret would be revealed in front of someone else.

“your highness, are you sure it would be safe for you to expose your secret in front of another light fae ?” one of his guards whispers, only getting a nod in return.

“the secret has gotten out… her majesty already knows..” you admit, the guards’ faces immediately appearing with fear. they turned around, one telling the other to go get the prince. although, the prince beat them to it. running to you with his arms completely open, only to wrap around your body.

“are you okay ? have they done anything to hurt you ?” he practically interrogates you, pulling away only to put his hands on your cheeks.

“i’m fine.. for now.. being her majesty’s daughter comes with its benefits, instead of instantly turning me into the council… she’s making me choose between the light fae and the dark fae.. junnie, i don’t know what to do-“

“yn, you know what you have to do.. you have to choose your own kind. if you choose me, then you’re bound to never see me again, they’ll banish you.. but if you choose the light fae, then maybe you’ll have a chance to maybe see me in the future..”

“but jun.. i want to leave. i don’t want to spend my life without you, i don’t want to face any kind of banishment just because i decided to follow my heart.. we agreed that we would do anything for each other, and i want to run and hide from the council.. i want to wake up every morning in your arms. i want to feel your sugary sweet kisses each and every day. you’re so addictive to me, jun. it’s nearly like my veins are full of sweets.. please my prince.”

yeonjun couldn’t help but feel guilty, all of this was because of him. you’re craving to run away because of him. if he hadn’t approached you that one day then you would’ve stayed as the innocent light fairy that you were. however, he also knew that he had to recognize the council’s misdeeds. there was no need for light fae and dark fae to be separated. the light needs the dark, life needs death, you could only feel happiness if you feel sadness. the earth need a moon. you need yeonjun.

“alright, my sweet princess.. you can come, okay.. but my palace won’t be nearly as majestic and innocent as the light fairy palace. there is some seriously dark stuff, but it’s nothing too scary.. and your friend ? she won’t snitch on us, right ?”

you turn to take a look at yunjin, tilting your head, quietly asking her as well.

“she won’t have to snitch.” you heard your mother’s voice, as she appeared right next to yunjin, with kai and his fellow guards behind her. he appeared apologetic, he didn’t mean to snitch you out, but the second that he arrived to her majesty’s office quarters.. she asked where you had been and he accidentally said the truth about seeing you outside and leaving with yunjin. he truly wish he could’ve taken back his words, he had noticed how happy you had been the past few months and he didn’t want to destroy that happiness even if it meant getting punished for ‘treason.’ “yn, my princess, how many times do i have to tell you to stay away from the dark fae ?”

“too many times.. i lost count..” you honestly answer, backing up into yeonjun’s chest. his hands rested on your shoulders, as his guards stood with high alert, this wasn’t just about protecting their prince, but also you.. after all you were yeonjun’s love, they had to make sure that you were safe.

“your majesty, with all due respect.. i think yn is in my hands now, and whether or not you respect it, yn’s decision is to stay with us dark fairies. you’re aware that once light fairies agree to stay with dark fairies, you can’t do anything.” he spoke with a little bit of sass in his voice.

“i can do something, yeonjun.. if it concerns the life of my own daughter then i will do anything to keep her away from dark fae.” your mother grumbles, you hadn’t seen her so upset in such a long time.

“is it really my fault that she fell in love with temptation or is it the council’s fault for not allowing to let your citizens seek what they so desire ?”

“she doesn’t love you, yeonjun.. she’s only hooked on the idea of you.. and you’re not any better. that’s why the council is so against the dark fae, don’t make it seem like we’re so oppressive towards you and your kind.”

“well when you say it like that, it quite sounds like you’re trying to degrade me and my ‘kind’, however.. i won’t disappoint, yn, so i suggest that you move out of our way..”

“i’m not backing down, yeonjun. either you hand me back my daughter or we will have to punish you.”

“and how would that work ? your council is only eligible for light fairies.. for the dark faerie’s council, i am doing absolutely nothing wrong.. or are you really just so self absorbed that you want to arrest me for using my power to win yn over.. you can do that too, but as soon as an investigator checks yn and i.. well they’ll know that i haven’t done anything to hurt your highness. you’re the same person who practically threatened your own daughter to not follow her heart.. the punishment of banishment isn’t really as vile as taking the life of light and dark faeries just because they have emotional connections to one another.”

“mother..” your head turned to her, eyes widened. her lips trembling, she never thought that the truth would be revealed. she couldn’t bear to come eye to eye with your disappointment. she kept it a secret for a reason, she didn’t want to let you down.. but yeonjun was right, she had completely lied about the punishment that her own daughter was going to receive.

“yn.. i did it to protect you..”

“by what ? giving me a false sense of hope that maybe even if i got caught that i would somehow be able to return ? and you gave me the ‘benefit of the doubt’ by giving me a chance to rethink if i wanted to get banished or not… but i didn’t even know that i was going to be killed.”

“you wouldn’t have gotten killed, i have the power to stop that from happening..”

“but, the council doesn’t accept any kind of bias in the court.. so would you have really done everything in your power to save your daughter ?” yeonjun was keen on getting you out of the light fairy kingdom, only because.. in all reality, the kingdom was full of evil hidden by the form of light. “my kingdom may not seem so innocent, but i’m glad that my court doesn’t build itself off of lies.. so how about we give yn one last chance to decide.. if she chooses to come with me, you’re all the more welcome to come visit, and she must be able to visit you and her friend without any sort of problems from the council.. i, myself, will ensure to secure her with my best guards and even accompany her with my own presence. and if she chooses to stay with you, then i must be allowed to visit her and she will be able to visit me, again with no issues. and this entire encounter must be kept between the people here.. no issues from the council at all.”

“you must be out of your mind, choi yeonjun.”

you turned back to go face to face with yeonjun, his eyes looking down at you. he saw a small frown on your face, he lifted your chin with his thumb and pointy fingers. his eyebrows couldn’t help but furrow with worry washing over him.

“are you okay ?” he whispered, he knew that he might’ve seemed quite cruel with the things that he had spoken out about your majesty and the council, but he was sick and tired of your mother leaving you out in the dark. he knew that the truth was quite hard to come to terms with, but sometimes you need to see the truth for the sake of your own being.

“mhmm… i just.. i really want to go with you, yeonjun. but i’m scared.. scared that she won’t leave you alone if i go with you. what if she tries to hurt you after all of this..”

“yn.. remember that we promised to risk our lives for each other, that i would do anything to end up with you, and i will gladly do so if it means living a life with you.”

“yeonjun.” your mother speaks up, her voice still quite mumbled. “you can continue your relationship with yn… but.. she really won’t be safe in the light fae kingdom. i hate to say it, but you’re right, she’ll have to leave with you.”

“thank you for understanding, your majesty.. yunjin, if it’s not too much.. may you pack my things ?” your mother’s heart ached hearing you not call out with your genuine affection for her. you needed a moment to process the fact that she was okay with the idea of losing you, because even with her claims of not letting anyone hurt you.. she was always in support of the council, the council came first before you did in her eyes.

yunjin could only nod, feeling teary eyed due to your sudden departure. however you were always going to leave and she should’ve come to accept that, but she grew up by your side. although, she didn’t have to worry about you any longer, knowing that yeonjun seemed to have proven himself worthy of taking care of you. you came face to face with her, embracing her in your arms.

“promise to visit whenever you’re free ? we can always have our girls night any time that you are free or in need of one.”

“you better stay out of trouble, you’re quite the troublemaker without me..” she pulled away, smiling at you, before turning her gaze over to yeonjun. “and with all due respect your highness, if you dare hurt our princess, we won’t hesitate to find you.”

yunjin threatened, however neither her or yeonjun had anything to worry about. yeonjun had complete intentions of taking the greatest care for you. and yunjin would realize that sooner or later. “run along now with your lover, i’ll be sure to get you your things.”

○・•*~☆ ○・•*~☆ ○・•*~☆ ○・•*~☆ ○・•*~☆ ○・•*~☆

your eyes watched as the moon began to settle into the night sky, high in the distance, with white specs accompanying it in its rather lonely journey. your hands on the concrete ledge of the balcony, it was right outside of yeonjun’s resting quarters, lovely plants decorating the grayish area. the dark fae kingdom had proven to not be as dark as people made it out to seem. a few sights catching your attention with how beautiful they were.

“are you alright, my darling princess ?” yeonjun questioned, walking up behind you and wrapping his arms around you as his chin rested on your shoulder. you could only move your head up and down, a gentle grin expressing the excitement that you felt to start this new journey with yeonjun.

“i’m all good, you must be tired.. you had to work all day.” you commentated, yeonjun squeezed your body just a bit, ensuring that he was gentle with his movements.

“well.. i would certainly love to get rest, but only if i could get somebody to accompany me to bed.” he smirked, a tingling feeling still lingering in your tummy.

“oh just what have you done to me, my sugary prince ? you can’t have me feeling this flustered already.” you straightforwardly said, “is this your little secret dark fae power that you possess ?”

yeonjun chuckled, as he pulled away a bit, only causing you to turn around. you took a look at him, getting absorbed in his dark orbs, a purple glow from the natural lighting reflecting off of his pretty face. “mmmm.. you’ve got it all twisted, you’re my secret little power. you give me all the strength i need to do anything i have to.. y’know i’m not lying, dark fairies aren’t too different from light fairies, we’re just living out a ‘punishment’ due to our bloodline and predecessors.”

“another hypocrisy in the council’s rather weak stance, huh ?” you spoke, yeonjun’s hands caressing yours, taking in your warmth on his rather cold hands.

“you already know it, cmon, honey.. let’s get some rest..”

“alright.” you took one last look at the moon, the darker the night, the brighter the stars. life needs death. growth may only be accomplished after experiencing pain. hate is not capable of driving itself out, only love is.

yeonjun, the so called darkness, pressed a kiss onto your cheeks. a warm sensation springing up from inside of you, feeling his love.. feeling the strong emotion that he had for you. he pulled away, only to take one last look into your eyes before he pressed one last kiss onto your lips

you and yeonjun were the epitome of equinox

©️soobpricity

permanent taglist : @run2seob @soobadooba @mrsyawnzzn @matcha-binz (send asks !!)

an : not going to lie… i’m feeling pretty confident about this. me and my sister have been watching shadowhunters the like 2013 series and uhmmm well i got back into my fantasy phase with the seelie queen !! so i hope this is enjoyable

[yo-yo-yeonkai]

MY EVERYTHING, MY ETERNITY - CHOI YEONJUN - SFW

Yeonjun x fem!reader

Genre: Fluff

Warning list: not proof read, established relationship, a bit suggestive for a sentence or two, very much so in love, pet names (princess, loverboy, Junnie)

Word count: 976 ~ a short little baby

Summary: a tired and lonely Yeonjun comes home to his cute girlfriend muttering his name, and decides he simply can’t go to sleep without talking with her first. Maybe she won’t mind being woken up?

Even as your chest rose and fell with each breath you took in your sleep, your boyfriend didn't stray far from your side. Cute little mumbles were falling from your mouth as you slept and he just so happened to hear them, so he wasn't going to let you off the hook for keeping him up with how adorable you are. He'd intended to go to sleep the second he saw you fast asleep in your bed, but the sounds just wouldn't let him. You'd grasped his attention, unintentionally.

Even as you mumbled he ran his thumb along your wet lip, thinking about how he'd move to kiss them. He knew you wouldn't mind, but he'd much rather hear your sleepy mumbles right now. Gentle chants of his name fell from your lips, and even in your dreams, he seemed to be making you feel good. He had to be proud he could bring your dreams into reality.

As he kissed you, you slowly began to stir. He had expected this and continued to play with your lips. You had always been a heavy sleeper, completely unaffected by any noise in the room. But for some reason, the touch of his lips was enough to rouse you instantly. It was as though you could sense that he wanted your attention. It felt like a fairy tale, and he was determined to be your prince charming. And so, he tried to play the role to perfection.

You hummed, your eyes fluttering open to meet Yeonjun's gaze. It seemed to be the evening, and the only way you could see his face was from the lit lamp on his bedside table. You moved closer to him and wrapped your arms around him, cuddling into his chest, thinking that's what he wanted and then he'd let you go back to sleep. In all honesty, he didn't know what he wanted other than you. He wanted to hear you, see you, touch you, he wanted it all. He'd selfishly woken you up because he felt lonely and wanted to at least say goodnight, seeing as he couldn't earlier. That's what happened when he had long days in the studio...

Yeonjun hated not being able to hug you when you drifted to sleep, hated not being able to ask you how your day was, he just longed to be a normal couple sometimes. No, he wanted more than that, he wanted to be your prince.

"Heya sexy man~" you jokingly mumble in your soft sleepy voice. He hums and wraps his arms around you kissing your forehead a few times before speaking back to you. "Sorry, I woke you princess. I just wanted to check how your day was..." he explains, feeling a blush crawl up his face at the thought of how babyish he must seem right now. You didn't mind though, you loved when he woke you to check how you'd spent your day without him. It gives you a chance to see him before you have to wake up and say goodbye and start the cycle again the next morning.

"I don't mind, Junnie," you reassure your boyfriend. ''My day was good, I was actually productive for once. It was plant watering day so I really enjoyed that." You speak, an innocent twinkle in your barely opened eyes as you gaze up at your boyfriend. He smiles at your cuteness and kisses your lips before speaking "I'm glad you had a nice day. I'm assuming you spent some time singing to the plants again?" He teases, remembering how he'd caught you a few months ago. You blush and tell him "It's not the same when you don't join me. The plants grow better when you sing so brilliantly to them. Try serenading them as you pass by please~" you suggest, making Yeonjun nod in understanding. He didn't know if it truly had benefits, but Taehyun had read an article once that said it had some benefits, so Yeonjun was more than happy to do as you pleased and try it anyway.

When he first caught you singing to a plant, he was convinced that you were a princess straight out of a movie. It seemed as though you possessed the power to communicate with plants and help them thrive. Your track record with plants was impressive - you had never killed one or even caused harm to one and they all flourished in your presence. Your beauty left him in awe that day, and he swore he'd marry you one day.

You then asked him "How was your day, Loverboy?" He chuckled and rubbed soothing patterns on your back "It was okay... same old same old today. Just more rehearsals... I really wanted to hang out with you when I got home, so I was a bit sad to see you were asleep, but I can't blame you, it was 1 am...". You nod and reach to kiss him quickly "Well I'm awake now, so we can chat! What's the time now?" you inquired, trying to peek over his shoulder to see the time. He checked his phone and replied, "It is 3:30 ish, sorry I woke you up..." he murmurs. You shake your head at him and cup his cheeks "Hey, look at me Yeonjun, and listen. I. Don't. Mind. You. Waking. Me. Up. Especially if you are feeling sad!" You reassure him for the 100th time. He nodded and kissed you, a soft smile on his lips as he pulled away.

"Alright, princess, let's get some rest. You've made me feel much better," he says, switching off his lamp and snuggling closer to you. You let out a soft laugh and settle into a cosy position. "Goodnight, my everything," you whisper, as you start to drift off to sleep, hearing him reply with "Goodnight, my eternity"

[hydroyaksha]

Soleil’s fic recs

EXO:

Yixing- king! “The Lotus king and his jade” @sweetjekyll

Kyungsoo- hogwarts! “Spellbound” @whimsical-ness

Sehun- X-EXO! “GREED” @/quokkacore

Sehun -(X-EXO) “LIBERALITY” @quokkacore

Baekhyun - idols! “The rumors were true” @eomayas

Kyungsoo - yandere! “I love you, I love you, I love you.” (Made by me!)

STRAYKIDS - [separate link]

Chan/ Felix - polyamory! Hogwarts! “Detention” @dreamescapeswriting

Felix - demon slayer! “If you tell me about myself” @skazoo

Felix - enemies to lovers! “Strawberry kisses” @softsan

Felix - dick joke centered! CEO! “Penis heart” @staysuki

Felix - Agent! Scientist! “A normal Thursday” @abiaswreck

Hyunjin - mafia! “Ice” @healinghyunjin

Hyunjin - mafia! “Not a stranger” @straywrds

OT8 - ABO! “No control” @cherryeol04

Hyunjin - Hanahaki! (With a good ending) “forget me not” @hhjs

Bangchan - Indian performer! Idol! “Butterfly wings” @straykidshoe

Lee know - siren! “Call of the siren” @tasteleeknow

Lee know - hogwarts! “Green flames” @streetlight11

Jeongin - android! “Alive” @rainy-bangbeom

Felix - royalty! Best friends! “Fairy flowers” @hyunsvngs

Felix - bodyguard! “Your bodyguard, Felix” @skzdarlings

Jisung - ghostface! “It’s a scream baby!” @tyunphoria

Felix - dating show! “TOO HOT TO HANDLE” @seospicybin

Felix - prince! “Forgive me for what I haven’t done” @rachalixie

NCT:

OT23 - yandere! Cult! “Connect” @mymoodwriting

WAYV:

OT7 - yandere! “Awaken” @/mymoodwriting

TEN - vampire!Hunter! “Blood wars” @things-we-cant-say

LUCAS - hybrid! “Please don’t bite me” @/quokkacore

NCT127:

NCT127 - yandere! Aliens! “Who is sticker?” @/mymoodwriting

Taeyong/ Yuta - Angels! Devils! Yandere! “Watching over you” @whiteteadreams

Jaehyun - Dog hybrid! “Competitive spirit” @flowerboykun

OT9 - vampires! Witches! “Black magic” @stayarmytinyzenmoa-l

Jaehyun - hogwarts! “Head over brooms” @sehunniepotwrites

NCT DREAM:

Mark - supernatural! “grit your f*ckin’ teeth” @irtza

Haechan - yandere! “Inseparable” @mint-yoongi

Jaemin - athlete! “on the rebound” @lunena

Jaemin - “Crazy in love” @mayaflowerxs

Renjun - classmates! “Blondes are done with fun” @rrxnjun

00’ line + Mark - arcana! “Arcane” @neonacity

Haechan - hockey player! “Ice ice baby” @cozyjae

Haechan - uni! “Learning languages” @tonicandjins

NCT TOKYO:

Sungchan - superhero! “Through the webs” @yutafrita

ENHYPHEN:

ENHYPHEN - scenario! “How they’re protective over you” @foresdxw

NI-KI - scenario! Idols! “Cookies - shattered glass” @ilovehimyourhonor

JAY - bad boy! Good girl! Dancer! “Opposites attract” @dazed-hee

NI-KI spiderman! “Spider-Man loves you” @misoxhappy

TXT:

Beomgyu- hybrid! “Until it hurts a little less” @horanghoe

Beomgyu - fae! “Dasies” @thru-the-grapevine

Soobin - AI! “Artificial love” @bb-eilish

Beomgyu- Spider-Man! “Not your average boyfriend” @slytherinshua

Yeonjun- fox hybrid! “Silly fox baby” @seowhorebin

BTS:

Taehyung - Android! “A human touch” @snackhobi

SHINee:

KEY - A/B/O! “Out of love” @mymoodwriting

THE BOYZ

OT11 - android! “The boyz become human” @tbznewberry

[niki-phoria]

couldn't find a gif of prince gyu :// but he's so cute here my bf (real)

pairing: beomgyu x 6th member!male!reader (he/him pronouns) genre: fluff word count: 1.0k

request: I have been thinking about this, in which Choi Beomgyu has a Boyfriend who is completely opposite of him. He's quite and calm and likes video games. But that didn't stop them to have cute moments with each other.

includes: barely based on to-do ep 96 (the prince ep), the chaos is kinda implied ?? idk reader is just kinda quiet lol, clingy gyu i need to write for him more

a/n: thank you so much for requesting !! this idea was really cute, i hope you like it :))

requests open !! read my rules first

you tug at the sleeves of your prince costume as you follow behind taehyun into the set. the polyester feels slightly uncomfortable against your skin. it’s warm wearing so many layers, especially underneath the bright studio lights above. 

a makeshift castle has been built to further add to your faux status. “give an introduction to the cameras.” a staff member says. you nod, preparing yourself. beside you, beomgyu squeezes your hand. you reach up to brush a strand from his bangs aside, fixing his fringe for him before they start recording.

“i’ll have to improvise,” soobin murmurs as he walks out in front of the castle. “hello, i’m the ultimate face of korea, choi soobin.” 

“you have to add ‘prince’ to the end.” kai calls. 

“and i’m a prince.” soobin steps aside, making room for yeonjun to introduce himself. beomgyu goes next, waving to the cameras in front of him, followed by taehyun, kai, and finally, you. 

“hello everyone,” you wave. “i’m prince y/n. it’s nice to meet you all.” 

beomgyu smiles, coaxing you over to stand beside him. taehyun pats your shoulder as he makes room for you. “we got this from an owl earlier,” kai says, pulling a note out of his pocket. “all five of you here today are great princes, but there is only one main character in this fairy tale. we will now begin ‘a singer in reality’ but a prince in this world and a test in search for its main character!” 

“shall we begin?” the production crew asks. 

“sounds good!”

“should we do the to-do intro before we begin?” kai asks. you hold your hands up, repeating the same motions that have become second nature at this point. 

“to-do!” 

“chapter three, ambition.” a staff member announces. a small table with ten candles is sitting in the middle of the room. “choose an object from the table beside you. you’ll use it to try and put out as many candles as possible.” 

yeonjun goes first, dramatically swinging a plastic sword around the room. you stand to the side next to beomgyu. he smiles, letting you play with his fingers as you wait for your cue to take your turns. yeonjun raises the sword, swinging it towards the candles. it hits straight into the side of them, sending multiple wax fragments throughout the room. 

he gasps, hiding behind soobin as he covers his mouth. you can’t help the small laugh that escapes you as you glance between the candles and the staff in shock. “do you need help cleaning it up?” 

a few staff members help you pick up the remains of the candles, setting them aside to be thrown away later before they replace the candles on the table. “huening kai will go next,” soobin says, gesturing for him to stand in front of the table. kai swings the bat over the flames successfully putting out four of them. 

“wow,” you applaud. 

“he beat yeonjun, for starters,” soobin laughs. “okay, beomgyu next.” 

with his plastic sickle in hand, beomgyu practices swinging the blade over the candles. “it can’t be that hard, right?” 

he dances around behind the table, preparing for his swing. his first attempt misses completely; blade passing directly over the flames and not affecting them at all. you chuckle as he seamlessly continues dancing, brushing off the failed attempt. 

“was that the swing?” taehyun asks. 

“it’s part of his intro,” you defend. “he’ll do great.” 

beomgyu smiles, trying again. this time he puts out seven flames. he props the sickle on his shoulder as he taunts the camera. “did you see that?” 

“the sickle may be the best one among ours,” soobin says. 

beomgyu returns to his place next to you with a smile. you reach over to grab his hand, squeezing it in yours. “good job,” you whisper. 

his smile grows as the staff set up another set of candles in preparation of taehyun’s turn. “thank you.” 

beomgyu sighs as he lays down on the couch next to you. he shifts so his head is in your lap. you smile, gently running your fingers through his hair. “tired?” 

“not yet,” he hums. “just wanna cuddle with you.” 

“okay honey.” you reach over to grab one of the console controllers, holding the second out for beomgyu. “do you wanna play?” 

he nods as he moves to sit in your lap. you lean so you can see the screen, resting your chin on his shoulder. your arms snake around his waist to hold your controller with both hands. you press a small kiss against his shoulder as beomgyu relaxes in your hold, leaning back against your chest. 

the hours pass by quickly. after a long day of filming, your eyes slowly begin to grow more tired before keeping them open becomes a chore. you sigh as you set the controller aside. beomgyu follows your lead, pushing you down on the couch to lay against your chest. he’s quick to make himself comfortable against you as you reach over to exit the game before sigh, allowing yourself to fall asleep on the couch with your boyfriend in your arms. 

“they’re so cute,” yeonjun chuckles. “they must’ve fallen asleep while gaming again.” 

“let them sleep,” soobin swats him away. “we have the day off. besides, they need the rest.” 

you sleepily blink yourself awake, sitting up a little. beomgyu’s body lays sprawled on top of your own. your legs are intertwined together, his head resting on your chest. his hair is sprawled out. the strands tickle against your skin. his arm lays over your body, pinning you down onto the couch. 

your game controllers lay forgotten on the floor. the tv is off - either from inactivity or from one of the boys finding you earlier. “sorry,” soobin whispers. “did we wake you?” 

“no, your voice is raspy. “it’s okay.” 

“we’ll wake you up later when breakfast is done. get some rest.” 

“thank you,” you smile. soobin nods, retreating back into the kitchen. you shift, wrapping your arms further around beomgyu’s waist. he sleepily sighs as he moves even closer against you. you lean down, pressing a kiss against his forehead. “i love you,” you whisper. 

“love you too.” he mumbles back. 

[luxora]

TXT -> {Royalty AU} -> Running away with their lover

Requested: No

Group: TXT

Genre: Fluff. Angst

A/N: First royalty for our 4th generation princes!

Yeonjun

Despite knowing that he had not been followed, his paranoia couldn’t help but screech at him at random times as he waited anxiously for your arrival, his hood up to conceal his identity by any night goers near the harbor. Despite knowing the docks better than him, you wanted to ensure that all of your contacts carried out their words before joining him.

The yells from the tavern not too far away made him flinch and prompt him to press himself further into the wall while he anxiously played with his pocket watch, the hands seemingly moving at snails pace as he attempted to soothe his nerves. Due to his upbringing, Yeonjun was trained to always be on time and to never be even a second too late; however, you were the opposite as you simply worked at your own chosen pace without that much consideration of others.

You were someone who went where the wind took you, which was the entire reason why you ended up in his kingdom in the first place. You were a sailor by heart and trade, and Yeonjun couldn’t help but be whisked away by your love of adventure and freedom, two things which he did not have as the crowned prince. He knew that he was being incredibly selfish with his wishes to run away with you, and yet for the first time in his life, he did not care of the consequences. He just knew that somehow it would become worth it because he would have you by his side.

The roles between the two of you were quite reversed. Instead of him being the prince charming sweeping you off your feet and rescuing you from your tower like in the fairy tales, you were the one saving him. His father was going to be furious while his mother was going to be heartbroken, and yet somehow he found his desires being much stronger than his regrets. But at the moment, his fears were coming to surface due to the various voices he was hearing, some sober and some not, and the fact that some of the unsavoruy kinds of individuals were starting to glance in direction did little to help his nerves.

And then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Nearly leaping ten feet in the air, Yeonjun whipped around with his fists at the ready to defend himself from his oncoming assailant, but then he froze when he was met with your grinning face, eyes bright with amusement as you raised an eyebrow at him.

“And what do you think you’re doing?”

“Uuuuh.” Yeonjin started, lowering his fists and avoiding eye contact with flushed cheeks. “Nothing.”

“Mhmm.” You hummed before chuckling and leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek, giggling in his ear. “It’s a good thing you’re cute.”

“...Is that all I am to you?’ he asked lightheartedly, smiling at your bright smile as you shook your head and pressed your lips to his own instead in a sweet kiss before pulling back.

“No, you also make me laugh.” You laced your fingers with his, rubbing your thumb across your knuckles. “But I just have to make sure one last time. Do you really want to do this?”

While you are naturally a cheery person, your face was cast in a slight shadow of anxiousness and he did not blame you. You were after all kind of committing a crime, which could be considered the kidnapping of the crown prince. But again, it is not kidnapping since he is going freely. He knows that if the two of you were ever to be caught, it would be you who will be dealt with the harshest punishment, hence why he was hesitant at the start of the planning of your and his happily ever after.

But as he smelt the sea salt in the air, heard the ruckus of the common folk as they enjoying their evening time, and felt the warmth of your palm pressed against his, a smile crawled along his face and he could not stop himself from stepping into your space to kiss you, his lips fitting with yours like a matching puzzle piece. He pulled away after a few seconds and leaned his forehead against yours, smiling.

“Not even my father’s Kingsguard will be able to separate me from you.”

“...Let’s hope it will never come to that.” You said frankly, causing him to laugh. He began to tug you towards the dark.

“You going to take me to your chariot?”

“Only a prince would refer a ship as a chariot.” You quipped, a smile crawling along your face before you began to lead him towards the docks, fingers squeezing your hand. “You are in for a whole new different world.”

Yeonjun smiled.

“Well that is what I have signed up for.”

The smile you gave him was breathtaking and the eventual body of the ship was enough to make Yeonjun weak to the knees, but he eagerly followed you aboard and watched from the crows nest as you set sail, eyeing the palace at the top of the mountains as it began to shrink the further the ship sailed away from shore. No doubt there will be a ruckus upon the discovery of his disappearance, but hopefully you, him, and your crew will have sailed far enough to not be immediately caught.

Although being caught is not exactly part of his plans. But he has you by his side, and quite frankly, that is all he needed.

Soobin

Laughter from both you and Soobin could be heard throughout the forest but neither of you cared as you both sprinted through the meadow, the sound of grass rustling and getting trampled creating a melody of their own. You squeeleed as Soobin gave chase to you, your dress bellowing in your self-made breeze but Soobin just laughed before he scooped you up into his arms and spin you around.

“Stooop!” You squeeled, albeit with a massive smile on your face which Soobin reflected. 

Deciding to listen to you request, he placed you back down on your feet and turned you around to face him, his hand cupping your cheek while his other arm remained wrapped around your waist. Your cheeks were slightly flushed and you were a bit out of breath due to the running. A few strands of hair escaped your low ponytail but Soobin happily tucked them behind your ear before leaning in to press a kiss to your lips.

Your hands curled around his neck, keeping him in place while the light breeze rustled through the grass and through the two of you, Soobin feeling his own locks dancing with the breeze while your own strands tickled his face. It was still so strange for him to act so freely around you, him having to act so differently whenever he was in the public with the family, and yet when he was with you, he was able to be like anyone other person, completely free from anymore responsibilities. When air became a necessity, he pulled away and cupped your face, smiling serenely into your gorgeous orbs.

"I never thought I would ever be able to have this.” he confessed, tracing your cheekbones with his thumbs. "There is nothing in this world which could ever take me away from this moment."

Your eyes shimmered with a mixture of love and gratitude, your smile so brilliant that it would almost be blinding, although Soobin would happily go blind from such a sight.

“I never thought that I would ever be able to have this with someone like you. Your family...are you really sure that you want to leave them behind for a life with me?”

Soobin could hear your hesitance and fear and he did not blame you. It was hard enough to believe that he found the courage to run away with you, to abandon everything that he knew and loved just so he could live a life of simplicity. He was a prince, he has grown up with love and luxury, and yet he never found himself truly being happy until he met you. He had no idea what kind of magic you casted on him, but he knew it was potent because it was no longer his responsibilities as a prince which kept him standing, but rather your beating heart matching his, along with the wedding band which he exchanged with you not too long ago, forever connecting your two souls together.

Soobin only flashed your a smile before suddenly bending down and sweeping you off your feet into his arms, holding you like a groom should to his bride and spun around on his heel, laughing jovially at your surprised yelp and squeal before finally collapsing to the ground. While catching his breath, he wrapped his arm around you and then prompted you to look up at the stars beginning to emerge over head. With a soft smile, he reached out towards the sky, attempting to connected the constellations with one another while you watched him in memorization.

"I was born into a life of privilege, but it always felt like a cage," he confessed. "Now, with you, I feel free and alive for the first time in my entire life."

He felt you move in his arms, your hand moving until it was brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead and then curling around his jaw to tilt his head towards you, his eyes locking in a gaze with your beautiful orbs. 

"And I never thought I'd find love in the arms of a prince. But here we are, writing our own story beneath the stars."

Soobin shared a smile with you before closing the distance, locking his lips with yours in a passionate kiss, soon rolling over to lay on top of you while you curled your arms around his body. He knew that the path that the two of you have chosen to take will have plenty of challenges. But in this moment, far away from the kingdom, the two of you found solace in the simplicity of your shared love, choosing to live a life with one another with the hardships that would come from his title as a royal prince.

The two of you were simply two normal people, newly married, and finally free.

Beomgyu

You had resigned yourself to the cold, damp confines of the dungeon, the faint flicker of the lone torch casting eerie shadows on the stone walls. The heavy iron bars seemed like an impenetrable barrier between you and the world outside. Your fingers traced the marks of your misdeeds, and you couldn't shake the feeling that your thieving ways had finally caught up with you.

Little did you know, above the grandeur of the palace ballroom, Beomgyu in his offcial attire was slipping away from the festivities. He hardly thought that he will be missed, especially since the ball was in the celebration of his brother’s betrothal, despite the family knowing that the two fiances were hardly in love with one another. They were arranged to marry since they were children, it was only know it was official that the two were to wed, something which Beomgyu knew was soon going to be an oncoming issue for him.

The life that he has...he never asked for it. He had always yearned for a life of freedom and it was only upon meeting you did he realize that it was possible. Only...it would take a lot of sacrifice from his side, but as of late...he did not care. The only thing he probably did care about was you, hence why he needed to help you escape.

As the echoes of laughter and music faded behind him, Beomgyu made his way through hidden corridors and secret passages, guided only by the flickering torchlight. The guards were fast asleep when he eventually arrived, making him frown in disdain before he ventured further into the dimly lit dungeon, locating you in your confined shadows of your cell. Once he eventually reached your cell, the sound of his footsteps made you you look up and then gasp in surprise at the sight of him. You stood up unsteadily from your floor and reached your barred door, grabbing at the bars while you stared at him in shock.

 “B-Beomgyu?" you whispered, disbelief etched across your face.

He smiled at you before lifting a finger to his lips, signaling for silence before digging into his pocket and producing a key. Enjoying your stunned expression, he flashed you a wink before inserting the key in the door, unlocking it. 

"I couldn't let you rot in here for a moment longer. Pretty girls don’t deserved to be locked up like some kind of dog."

“But...but...” You were completely stunned at his actions, making Beomgyu tilt his head in confusion at you. “But...why?”

“Why not?” Beomgyu questioned, his hand reaching out for you and tugging you closer, his eyes tracing over your stunning features, them hardly losing their shine despite being locked away for a week in the dungeons.

“I-I stole from your mother. I deserve this, I-”

“Hush.” Beomgyu lightly scolded, his hand moving to your face to cup your jaw, his thumb angling your head up to face him, his eyes shining in mirth as he took enjoyment from your adorable face. “You did not deserve this at all.”

“But I-”

“Y/N, the only thing you are guilty of is stealing my heart. And that is something which I have to personally deal with.”

Your cheeks immediately flushed at his confession and he smiled brightly before finally closing the distance between the two of you, his hand moving to the back of you neck to pull you in for a passionate kiss. You gasped into the kiss and went to clutch at your shoulders but Beomgyu only pulled you in closer, uncaring of his surroundings as he has yearned to kiss you for so long. Pulling away only when it was necessary, he gazed deeply into you eyes before giving the back of your neck a gentle squeeze.

“I know it is a lot to ask, but...run away with me.”

“...W-What?”

Beomgyu leaned in closer until the two of you were brushing noses, his eyes full with conviction.

“Run away with me. Let’s leave this place and start some place new. Some place where nobody will ever find us.”

“B-But your family-”

“If we leave now they will only find out much later, probably in the morning, and by then we can be long gone. Please Y/N...run away with me.”

“...”

You probably thought he was crazy and he didn’t blame you. He was rather behaving in the heat of the moment, not really thinking about the long-term consequences of his actions but he did not care because he knew that his life could only be better with you in it and it will not be possible if he stays in the palace and you in the dungeons, being punished for snatching a necklace from his mother to sell in order to feed your family.

The two of you running away would be incredibly selfish, leaving both of your families and creating an absence in them.

And yet...the two of you found something better for your futures with one another, hence why you agreed.

Upon your agreement, Beomgyu stole another kiss from you which tasted of rebellion and longing before leading you away from the dungeon,  through the hidden passages and eventually out of the palace. The night air was crisp as you emerged into a moonlit garden, the scent of roses filling the air. After forgoing his royal jacket, leaving himself in only his trousers and loose collar, he shared a smile with you.

“Let’s go my love.”

And then the two of you were running, hands entwined as you both left the world of royalty and dungeons faded behind. In the quietude of the night, you and the Beomgyu embarked on a journey of unlikely love, leaving behind the constraints of titles and societal expectations, stealing moments of freedom under the watchful gaze of the moon.

Taehyun

As the first rays of dawn painted the sky in hues of soft pink and gold, Taehyun awoke to a world vastly different from the one he had known. The warmth of the inn enveloped him, and the rhythmic breathing of the love of his life, cradled in his arms, reassured him that the choices made in the cloak of the night were not dreams.

He felt you stir in your arms, battling against sleep before eventually opening your eyes to the world of the living, your eyelashes fluttering open to reveal eyes that mirrored a mixture of awe and trepidation. It was still quite fresh, your and his escape, and it seemed the realize of your and his situation seemed to settle upon you because instead of greeting Taehyun’s bright eyes, you simply flashed him a look of fear. He felt your hands dig into his shirt, slightly trembling, which prompted Taehyun to speak.

"Good morning," he whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. "We made it, Y/N. We're free."

You gazed at him deeply, an unreadable look of your face before a hesitant smile curved on your lips, but worry seemed to linger in your eyes. 

"Tae... what if they find us? What if we're caught?"

Between the two of you, you were the one who was more worried about the consequences of your and his actions. It was one thing for someone like you to disappear as you were someone who would not be missed. You parents were long dead and you were not close enough with anyone else for them to truly miss you. But someone like Taehyun, the crowned prince, was someone who would immediately be missed. Taehyun was the beloved prince of the kingdom and it will only be a matter of time before the whole army will be sent out in search for him.

A missing prince is most obvious and you can only imagine the kind of punishment which will be imposed on you due to your contributing to his plan to run away from the palace and to start some place anew.

Taehyun knew that you were obviously worried for what may happen to the two of you, and he understood your reasoning. But he traced a soothing pattern on your arm, hoping that his touch will serve as a balm to your apprehensions. 

"We'll face whatever comes our way together. But right now, let's savor this moment. Our moment."

While the worry in your eyes were still very clear, you seemed to relent to his wishes and remained in his arms. The two of you remained in the bed in a quiet embrace of the morning, the world beyond the inn seeming like a distant memory. The scent of fresh bread wafted in from the inn's kitchen, and the distant sounds of a waking village added a serene backdrop to the cocoon of their shared space. And yet despite the peaceful surroundings, you were still so stiff and tense in his arms, which made him worry. So after brushing some of your stray hair strands out of your face, he spoke that were imprinted in his heart.

"I love you, Y/N," Taehyun declared, his eyes locking with yours with unwavering certainty. "And I'll do everything in my power to ensure that you never have to face fear or uncertainty alone."

There was only so much that he could to try ease your apprehensions, but he was certain that the two of you would be fine during your journey together. You were someone who was used to moving to different places, and so he trusted your judgement as you would decide where the two of you would go. In return, he would be your protector and forever lover, giving you a world of love and affection of which you have been deprived.

You lost your family so long ago and have always been on your owned, but Taehyun swore to him and to you that you would never know what its long to be on your own any longer as long as you accepted him by your side. 

And it seemed that you found some kind of solace in his words, as you nestled into his chest, nuzzling him while wrapping your arms tightly around his waist.

"I love you too, Taehyun. Please never doubt that. It's just…everything happened so fast. What if we're not ready for this new life?"

Moving his hand, Taehyun cupped your face and prompted you to move away from his chest to gaze at him, his thumb brushing away the lingering traces of doubt as he stared into your eyes.

"We don't have to have all the answers right now. We'll figure it out together, one step at a time. You and I love one anther and with that, we can face anything."

You still seemed scared but your eyes closed as Taehyun closed the distance between the two of you, your and his lips melding with one another like two perfect puzzle pieces. Through his kiss, Taehyun promised that no matter what happened, he would never abandon you. The soldiers burst into the room, he would fight tooth and nail to defend you and to ensure that no harm will come to you. And through the kiss, you promised to trust him. Taehyun has never been someone to ever break his promises and it would not start now, not when the two of you were just starting the new chapter of your lives together.

Hueningkai

The kiss between you and Kai was passionate, fire getting sent through his veins as you clutched at his neck, almost as if you were scared that he would disappear the second he pulled away. But once air became a necessarily and he tugged his lips away from yours, you realized that he was not in fact a figment of your imagination but truly there in front of you, smiling brightly.

“Missed me?” he teased, smiling at your flushed cheeks but feeling his heart warmed by your hands as they grabbed fistfuls of his cloak, almost still in a daze to the fact that he was meeting you at the agreed upon time. He chuckled before grabbing one of your hands and lifting it to his lips to press a kiss to your knuckles. “I told you that I would be here.”

“But...still...” You were still so shocked.

Kai had promised you that as long as you accepted him, he would follow you wherever you went. The two of you knew that it would only be a matter of time before you left the kingdom, as a magician could never settle themselves down due to their curious natures. You were a wanderer and you had stayed in Kai’s kingdom for a small while, serving as a tutor to Kai’s younger sister as she seemed to possess magical abilities, but it was only to be a matter of time before you left and during your stay at his palace, Kai simplify feel head over heels for you and could not imagine living a life without you.

It would be selfish for him to ask you to stay in the palace because you were not someone who could be chained down. You needed to be free. You needed to wander. And most of all, you need to be in a society who would not look down on your and look at you in slight fear because of you abilities.

While magic was not illegal in the kingdom, it was a concept which was approached with caution. One could never have absolute control over an essence such as magic, not even you have have been in control of it ever since you were young. Kai’s sister is lucky enough to have you as a tutor to start helping her control her magic, but it will only be a matter of time before his parents will probably have her sent away to the magic academy to fully gather control over her magic, and that will be an incident which will cause a massive crater in the royal family’s relationship.

But not as much as Kai leaving his responsibilities as the crowned prince and heir apparent to be with you.

Just as it was selfish for him to ask you to stay, it was selfish of you to ask him to leave, and yet it was a selfishness of your which he was willing to fulfill because he realized that you were someone that he wanted by his side forever and even though he would be expected to be betrothed to someone from a foreign land, they would never be able to replicate the intense feelings he has developed for you.

You were it for him. You were the queen of his heart and nothing could change it.

“Y-You can still go back.” You finally said, casting your head down to prevent him from seeing your face. “I-I would understand and not hold it against you. I-I know I am asking a lot from you.”

“Yes, that is true.” Kai said, reaching for your chin and forcing you to look back at him. He smiled at you, tracing his thumb along your jawline as you gazed at him. “But it is something I’m willing to do to be with you.”

“Y-You have no idea what you are asking for.” You started, shaking your head at him but Kai only shook his head in response and tugged you closer to him by the waist, his hands moving to the back of your neck and angling your head up to face him.

“Yes I do. A life of eternal happiness with you. That is all I want.”

And then he kissed you. He kissed you with every flame of love that he had for you. And you kissed him back tenfold. He smiled into the kiss when he felt your hands thread themselves into his hair, it being a habit of yours ever since the two of you started your secret affair. Although it was hardly an affair since the two of you fell in love with one another, the two of you bonding over your simulations curiosity abut the world and its many possibilities.

Since he was the only male out of the three children, he was the one entitled to the throne, but it was not something that he wanted. Out of all three of them, his older sister was a much better option for the future ruler of the kingdom. The people adored her while advisors respected her. His older sister was born to be leader, and yet she was passed over simply because Kai was a male, something which he found extremely unfair. While he was prepared for the role, it was not what he wanted.

He wanted to explore the world, to look at ever hook and cranny available and to record his findings. In fact, he wanted to find the secrets of the universe and share it with everyone, something which you were similarly interested in, hence why your reluctance to settle anywhere.

And so instead of asking you to stay, he was going to join you on your adventures. His parents will obviously be most displeased by his actions, practically committing treason against his birthright. But at the same time, he did not care. He was not born to fulfill the role as monarch, that role should be passed to his eldest sister. He has left a letter to her detailing his decision and hopes that she will be able to convince their parents to accept his decision to join you on his travels and to convince them to make her the heir apparent.

She was born for the role while he was born to be by your side.

You provided no further arguments when he eventually joined you in your carriage, a sack of gold safety tucked in his cloak as he sat by your side, smiling warmly at you as you tucked yourself into the side as the marriage moved along the road, heading in the direction of the next kingdom to escape his own. Once the two of you were far enough, you may then start your next studies and adventures, albeit this time you will have a partner to support and guide you while also giving you some sense of stability which you have never had before.

[kozumesphone]

[ KOZUMESPHONE ]

RULES ⟡ M.LIST ⟡ TAGLIST ⟡ WIPS

ぬ ─── BOOKS [ 042 ]

percy jackson and the olympians

heroes of olympus

trials of apollo

magnus chase

kane chronicles

harry potter

maze runner

hunger games

divergent

the mortal instruments

keeper of the lost cities

a good girl’s guide to murder

the folk of the air / cruel prince

shatter me

shadow and bone

six of crows

these violent delights

renegades

the secret history

the inheritance games

the naturals (jlb)

caraval

once upon a broken heart

divine rivals

heartstopper

to all the boys i’ve loved before

daisy jones and the six

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo

xoxo

asap

counting down with you

a show for two

stay with my heart

if you could see the sun

this time it’s real

I hope this doesn’t find you

one of us is lying / is next

two can keep a secret

the cousins

nothing more to tell

you’ll be the death of me

ば ─── ANIME [ 016 ]

jujutsu kaisen

haikyū!!

my hero academia

demon slayer

blue lock

bungo stray dogs

spy family

chainsaw man

saiki k

sk8 the infinity

tokyo ghoul

kuroko’s basketball

alice in borderland

tokyo revengers

a silent voice

wind breaker

び ─── MOVIES & SHOWS [ 023 ]

fast and furious franchise

gran turismo

gilmore girls

pjotv

brooklyn 99

f.r.i.e.n.d.s.

once upon a time

superstore

arcane

ginny and georgia

never have I ever

marvel cinematic universe (mcu)

detective comics (dc)

stranger things

the umbrella academy

vampire diaries

greenhouse academy

the summer I turned pretty

my life with the walter boys

ncis

suits

the good doctor

new amsterdam

ぶ ─── K/C/J-DRAMAS, WEBTOONS, ETC. [ 013 ]

seasons of blossom

xo, kitty

true beauty

a business proposal

all of us are dead

bloodhounds

the 8 show

falling into your smile

heirarchy

lovely runner

love next door

when I fly towards you

officer black belt

twenty five twenty one

20th century girl

weightlifting fairy kim bok-joo

べ ─── MUSIC [ 025 ]

stray kids (hyunchan biased)

enhypen (jayki biased)

tomorrow x together (yeonjun biased)

ateez

arctic monkeys

hozier

one direction + solos

5sos

the neighbourhood

halsey

taylor swift

slight eminem

slight olivia rodrigo

slight sabrina carpenter

abba

ado

official hige dandism

neoni

måneskin

fall out boy

the score

imagine dragons

league of legends soundtracks

valorant soundtracks

subway surfers soundtracks

[jwoongz]

Hello Friends! I was tagged by so many lovely people, @ambivartence @gnanii @ashisland @strayklds and @chanstopher. Thank you so much for thinking of me! I decided to do this on main because quite frankly I am too lazy to do it twice. (Sorry!) So thank you to those who tagged me on @yang-innie thank you!

I am going to tag @changbeens @booskwan @strhwaberries @minhosblr @honeydewtual @chanrizard and @yeonbins. No pressure at all! 🫶

rules: link your favorite and/or most popular post from each month this year <3 (it’s totally fine to skip months!) and tag some CCs you love!

January - hwichanis: this cute set of moonbin & sanha yang-innie: beware of snakes (lee Know) if you are a small tree (han) favorite: chani's birthday set (because chani makes everything better)

February hwichanis: winking younghoon ending fairy yang-innie: god's menu jeongin favorite: jaejun being dramatic but pretty March: hwichanis: have you shanty shanty yayaya-ed latey? yang-innie: there mv jeongin for a heavy does of cringe favorite: dystopia mujin!!! one of my favorites from the year

April: hwichanis: xiker's pocket leader killing it on stage yang-innie: maknae line selfie time! favorite: flirty louis ending fairy that I am still not over

May: hwichanis: ateez ot8 illusion break the wall tour performance yang-innie: tasty kitchen jeongin! face! stickers! favorite: heejae from the peak time concert

June: hwichanis: ateez really loves mingi yang-innie: giant smiling jeongin gifs 🫶 favorite: king of masked singer seungmin looking like an absolute prince!! (aka the start of the seungmin madness, please save me from myself) July: hwichanis: yeonjun and huening kai being best boys <3 yang-innie: the seungmin facecam that will not be named favorite: beloved bee's birthday set!! Honorable Kim Jiwoong Mentions: 1 , 2 , 3

August: this jeongin is the only think I made the whole entire month!

September/October The sad months I was missing because work was busy and I missed TXT, Kingdom, and most of ZB1's comebacks. November: hwichanis: fluffy hatted jiwoong!! yang-innie: seungmin lalala ending fairy favorite: jeongin dancing to perfect night! he looks so happy

December: hwichanis: jongho ending fairy (aka the only thing I giffed on main) yang-innie: jeongin compliation from exchange island favorite: cozy and cute christmas jeongin

Thank you to anyone who took the time to go through and read through this and look all those posts! I hope you all had a wonderful 2023 and have an even better 2024! Looking forward to kicking off 2024 with BOTH SF9 and Vanner! 🎉🎉🎉

[hyukascampfire]

Hiiii! I am wondering if the fae in your work have wings? I am assuming not because it wasnt mentioned?I didn’t realize the terms fae and fairy are interchangeable until recent and so it got me thinking… Unless I might be completely wrong!

But on the topic of wings, how do you picture yj and th to look like? Also, if they do not, did you think of them having wings? Or maybe they appear sometimes? Ahhhh sorry if this is an odd question or I’m completely wrong with the fae/fairie. I’m just so into tsfawc and I love fae aus. I also love hearing from the author the image of the characters they have in their head while writing

A little extra just sharing about my personal life hehe… Convinced my lil friend group to go as fairies this Halloween… Theyre all thinking I based myself on winx club but little do they know 🤭 Yes I’ll be thinking of yj and th all night at the halloween party

OMG THIS IS SUCH A FUN QUESTION!!

Not all of them, but some def do!! The fae/folk in my world are a bit different from the modern interpretations of ‘fairies’! I base most of the faeries that appear in my story off of European folklore, so they’re a bit more grotesque and strange! A lot of my inspiration comes from an author named Brian Froud—I own his books ‘Faeries’ and ‘Good Faeries/Bad Faeries’. You can look up his name and maybe see a bit more of what I had in mind!! There are absolutely more whimsical ones, too, like crystal skin and glittering hair or insect wings on their back. The fae in TSFAWC come in a range of ways—as the typical pixies you imagine as ‘fairies’, as goblins and other creatures, and the more human appearing ones like Taehyun and Yeonjun!

The ones like Taehyun and Yeonjun can have a variety of features as well—think of anything, like green hair or scales or tails or honestly anything you could think of. But, for those two, Yeonjun has just pointed ears and Taehyun had pointed ears, at some point. I often describe them as beautiful in a way that can’t be described—I kinda mean that to MC, they just have this air of grace and beauty to them in her human mind. That’s just the effect that the fae have. I took a lot of inspiration for the more human characters from Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince! I adore those books! They’re the biggest reason I’ve fallen in love with faerie stories as well, and I can’t quite find another story that gives me a similar world!

Taehyun and Yeonjun don’t have wings in my mind, but if you’d like to imagine that, you’re of course welcome to! I think that would be super whimsical!

ALSO THE DRESSING UP AS FAIRIES LMAOO YESS!! I love WINX but also…. dressing up as a faerie and imagining I’m going to Court with TH or YJ… yeah 🤤

I was thinking of making a pinterest board for you guys to help with visuals and just to see how I envision the world. Would you guys be interested????

Here are some of the extra concepts banners I made for TSFAWC, if that helps you envision some of the little critters I have running around throughout the series! LOL!

[artscloudy]

🌸 Moodboards

&TEAM

&Audition finale here

Pics (ot9) here

Christmas (ot9) here

Hwaiting &Audition (ot4) here

Christmas (Nicholas, Ej) here

Baymax glasses??? (Ej) here

As... (Nicholas) here

So cute (Nicholas) here

Date with your sweet boyfriend (Ej) here

Sky blue (Ej) here and here

Pink (Ej) here

As... (Ej) here

Happy birthday (Ej) here

Black (K) here

As... (K) here

Green (Nicholas) here

Black (Nicholas) here

Pink (Taki) here

As... (Maki) here

°

ENHYPEN

Flower photoshoot (ot7) here

Black & White (Heeseung) here

Detective kitty (Jungwon) here

Valentine (Jungwon) here

Fairycore (Jungwon) here

Sky blue (Jay) here

Blue (Jake) here

Boyfriend material (Jake) here

Mafia (Jake) here

Hockey (Sunghoon) here

White (Sunghoon) here

Fluorescent (Sunoo) here

Racer (Niki) here

°

TXT

Christmas Edition (ot5) here

Downtown (Soobin) here

Boxer (Yeonjun) here

Kidcore (Yeonjun) here

Mangacore (Beomgyu) here

Orange (Beomgyu) here

Angelic (Taehyun) here

Fairycore (Kai) here

°

STRAY KIDS

Boyfriend material (Minho) here

Campfire (Hyunjin) here

Ethereal (Hyunjin) here

White (Hyunjin) here

Sky blue (Seungmin) here

Caretaker (Felix) here

Boyfriend material (Felix) here

°

ATEEZ

Yellow (San) here

°

NCT

Maximalism (Taeyong) here

Pastel (Taeyong) here

Tial (Mark) here

Prince (Jaemin) here

Sky (Jeno) here

°

BTS

Green yellow red (Tae, Jin, Nam) here

Dreamcore (Jin) here

Kidcore (Suga) here

Miami (Taehyung) here

Boyfriend material (Jimin) here

Spy (Jungkook) here

°

EXTRAORDINARY HEROS

Rockstar (O.de) here

Primary colors (Gun.il) here

Pastel (Gaon) here

°

SEVENTEEN

Black Eye (Vernon) here

°

BLACKPINK

Fairy (Rosè) here

Sunset (Rosè) here

Purple (Jennie) here

°

ITZY

Old money (Yuna) here

[slytherinshua]

.....how?? Can someone be this gorgeous? He looks like an angel bro- yeonjun is so perfect in any ways 😭 imagine born as THE CHOI YEONJUN

(lets simp over yj now 😋 i afraid that, I'll end up spoiling if I continue simping over so mun. So lets stop for now 😔)

STOP ITS LIKE KDRAMA BF AND THEN LITERAL FAIRY ANGEL PRINCE LIKE WTFFFFF 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 yeonjun doesn't wreck me AT LEAST I SAY HE DOESNT CAUSE IM IN DENIAL 👹 he looks so fine tho and yk his 1k fic is kinda gonna be giving those city boy moves to the countryside kdrama vibes like 😭😭😭 i love those kdramas sm they're so relaxing??? i think ive only watched hometown cha cha cha and once upon a small town BUT THOSE 2 WERE SO CUTE AND PRETTYYYY

yeah no spoilers 😔 i almost finished watching ep 6 tho (liar im only like halfway through skdjsk) but most importantly im starting to get up to date again ☝️

[armyhome]

Lost In Your Love Story | Yeonjun

⇢ summary: Hwa Suji is a very skilled makeup artist who works at her best friend's salon, serving major Korean entertainment companies and that includes the artists she is a fan of: Tomorrow x Together! One day when protecting one of the members, she ends up having a car accident that takes her to another universe! The universe of your favorite fanfic called "Winter Song" but the thing is, life is not a strawberry, her new universe got a target on her back, she's the villain and has no idea how survive this cannon.

⇢ pairing: Choi Yeonjun x Hwa Suji.

⇢ Chapter 1 : Life is not a strawberry.

⇢ Chapter 2 : Love is a Disease.

⇢ Chapter 3 : Made a little cookie...

⇢ Chapter 4 / 5 / 6

⇢ Chapter 7 : Why Don't You Stay?

Chapter [08/16] : Beyond this Universe

I wake up with my cellphone going crazy, it was so many notifications, somebody tells me to die more quickly and stop bothering her otp, another call me crazy b*! I was all over the campus blog because of a video of Ji Eun talking with Taehyun about my Hanahaki. To the otherwise the fans of my youtube channel start to defend me like warriors, they fill my social media with love and nice comments, how so many people like me? Oh yeah, they like the true Suji, I take a deep breath, ignoring all Ji Eun calls, not because I'm mad at her, but because I need time to wear my armor to fight this.

"Yah! Hwa Suji! Answer the freaking door!" Soobin screamed smashing my door, I got surprised, was not part of his personality this kind of approach "If don't answer I'm gonna put this door down!" Nah, he wouldn't "One..." Okay, maybe "TWO" Okay, he convinced me, I run to open the door, he doesn't say anything when see my face, just look at me like was searching for something wrong, and I realize that I don't need to play the strong person for him so, when Soobin closes the door behind him, I cry about everything, my death, my disease, my broken heart, and he hugs me and just hears my crying in silence when I can bearly open my eyes because of all crying thing he thinks if safe to talk again "I'm so sorry that's happening, that people are trash…. It's not like you would choose to be sick like that!"

"I'm sorry too, I ruined our trip" We sit on the couch and Soobin takes out his pocket, yeas his pocket an ice cream pot, the big ones, from his pocket! I look inside, is he a magical being? There's no way that this was there! Suji you're forgetting a detail, you are locked in a manhwa! Chocolate with caramel pieces was the flavor, everything that I need right now, glucose shot!    

"You don't ruin anything! But think about answering Ji Eun's calls, she's close to collapse!"I put a spoon full of ice cream in my mouth. 

"I'm not mad at her, I was just needing time to get more strong, don't wanna cry as I did early in front of her" Soobin stared at me carefully. 

"You know that we're your friends right? That there is no reason for you to ride yourself from us! We always go to you when we have problems, so you should come to us when you need it, this is what true friendship means!" He was right, I always try to solve my problems alone, the fact I just jumped in this world make me doubt and no trust in them when they didn't do anything to deserve this, I need to be more honest with them "So, what you will do today?"

"Spend the whole day in bed, waiting for death while I eat ice cream?" I honestly don't wanna show my face to anyone. 

"No, request denied, we have to find something cool to do, even inside of this hut!" I try to think about something but my mind was stuck in the hate comments, so I remind myself how the fans of my channel were doing to protect me. 

"I know! But I'll need your body"I can hear Soobin gulps "Let me be more specific, your face! And maybe, Taehyun, Ji Eun and Hueningkai too! Let me create a group for us!"

Between them has different types of skin and tons too, so many tutorials could be doing, different concepts, daily makeup, date, Christmas, prince, and fairy! I write on these concepts on a piece of paper, cut and double. Ji Eun and Taehyu almost apparate in front of me when I send the message. 

"We are so sorry," They say together. 

"I believe, I'm not mad, but I need to use your guilty in my favor guys, you both gonna be my models for my tutorials vídeos!" I smile at them, but they don't dare look sad or mad at me, Taehyun and Ji Eun just accept. 

"Now I see the villain," Hueningkai says entering the hut. 

"MUUAHAHAHAHA!" I answer him "You include little lion!"

"Rawn" I don't know why I got so sensible when he roars like that, and I swear that I saw this somewhere before! 

"Okay team, we got ONE mission, make five tutorials, pick your paper, and accepted your destiny!" Soobin got prince, Hueningkai Christmas, Ji Eun date, Taehyun fairy, and I daily makeup. So I snap my fingers, stretch my arms, it's time to do my magic! The thing I love doing. 

From the moment I learn about the power of makeup, I was able to spend hours doing others and my makeup, it was therapy for me, as some people like run, read, or sing, I like to learn about makeup, how they're made, how to apply, whats get better with a specific skin type or color, concentrated in my friends face details, I do a video for each one, and finished doing my daily makeup. 

"Okay, we are too pretty to stay at home," Hueningkai says "Let's go somewhere, I know nice places!'

"Please say they have food! I'm starving!" Taehyun complains.

"Pizza, I need a big pizza!" Say's Ji Eun and Hueningkai smiles.

"I know the best place!" 

Never in my life, I thought I was gonna eat pizza on the beach, like sitting on the sand! Accordingly Hueningkai, the owner decided to open it because never see anyone doing it, and he denied to accept that pizza and ocean didn't match. 

This moment was my dream of haven, be next to the ocean always calm me down because in my past life my dad's hometown was close to the ocean and we travel there every single weekend in my childhood, observing my friends smiling eating pizza, telling jokes, and history, with my forever TXT, and my beloved Ji Eun, my heart miss Yeonjun, but I don't wanna think how he is reacting about all this.

Was sunset when we decide to walk by the bay, me and Soobin get behind at some point, the ocean was so beautiful that I need to look protractedly, when the sundowns an amazing surprise, phosphorescent corals, that was the most magical thing ever, I film a little bit, I need carry these memories with me, I point the camera in Soobin's face he smiles for me. 

" I was thinking about how you met Hueningkai, It's very similar to how we met," Soobin says looking at the ocean "I know we were neighbors at the time, but we never talk before that day..." The best part of being here if found about the character's background, and release that leaders got too much attention and what I learn since I got here the second characters are more interesting "I don't know if you remember but, it's hard to forget an accident as you have, and today I still don't understand how a six-year-old kid could find a way to broken a glass table!" I feel like I've been punched, that history, was part of my past life history, maybe this accident is a karma thing? "I broke my arm during your recovery, the other kids on the school were calling you monster and scar because your face still had some steaks on, but this didn't bother you, but when the kids start to make fun of me because my Half Blood Camp uniform, you stand for me, saying that your dad will make get all their parents unemployed, then you turn to me and say 'Don't worry damigod, this normies will not mess with you anymore' I was truly surprised when you tell me that you were from Atenas daughter, you were so courageous, still are..." So I laugh. 

"Anabeth is one of the bravest and courageous demigods  that ever exist, and she is Atena child" I defend my favorite character with everything I have, Soobin turns himself at me he smiles was so lovely. 

"That's why you are my first love" His confession makes me freeze, I remember the day I died in my past life. 

Soobin was saying to me that he confessed his feelings to the girl that he likes, I don't know why my eyes are full of tears, but I miss my old life, call my mom late at night, I know the Ji Eun in the other world is take care of her, I let a policy for my mom so she doesn't need anything. 

When I realize I'm in Soobin's arms, he put his head above me, I can hear his heart that way, the sound makes me calm, we observe the ocean in silence.

"Would be more simple if today we were in love with each other," I say, and I can hear his heart beating faster. 

"Yes, it will" Soobin holds my face in his hands "We should try" I can feel Soobin warm breath against my face, his nose touches my cheek softly, our lips are so close, so my eyes closed, but something falls on us, better-saying someone, Choi Yeonjun. 

"I'm so sorry! I was trying to take a selca, I didn't see..."Soobin helps me get up and clean the sand off my arms "Oh that's you guys! I swear that I didn't see you were there! I'm so sorry! Are you coming back to the hut? Let's go together!" 

Yeonjun holds my arm putting himself in the middle of us, and start to drag us so fast that I bump into a stranger, the guy was all wearing, black which is strange for someone that was on a tropical beach, he looks into my eyes, for last than a second, and after keep walking fast.

"Sorry," We say together, but he doesn't answer, why does he look so familiar?

[ While this, in our universe...]

DANNY: Today we got real news about our oldest subject, the stalker was identified! 

DAVID: He was an old trainee, that was Yeonjun college before he debut...

DANNY: His identity was not revealed to the public yet, but fans are doing their job as always and looking for the suspect!

[banggyu0308]

my reactions to each gif:

GAH- HIS HAIR JHEBHEJ

this soobin... the eyepatch- his face- blonde hair- the little bit of exposed chest- fuckkkk

that performance was so pretty :((( why does he look so sexy though?????

double kill- fuck- that yeonjun + that soobin + me + me thinking about lollapalooza yeonjun and beomgyu = GAHWYGDEIDEUJKDE

fairy prince :((( (i was his princess two days ago :D)

HIS SMILE OH MY GOD IM MELTING

that part of the mv had me dying-

HIS DIMPLES HELP- he looks so cute :((( and tired SOOBIN LET ME CUDDLE YOU PLEASE-