Treasure - II

By the time he snatches hold of the hand that she raises to trace his face, her eyes have misted over. Her head falls heavily against his arm that supports it. Seo feels something tightening inside him, drawn tense like a bow ready to shoot - crackling as if sparks were cast into dry roots. He feels the tension spread to his shoulders, tightening the lines there, along his spine as he folds himself around her. He squeezes his eyes shut and wills for his heart to stop its pounding - destructive rhythm. The control - fine threads of it - is imminent to be lost.

He spends a moment longer without moving, listening and awaiting another attack. When nothing comes - Seo moves. His arms protest for a moment, unwilling to remove themselves from the embrace they hold her in. Then leaves under snow crunches and his ears perk up.

Naju would burn. There was no other way out of it.

His fingers slip through her snow dusted hair, laying her down gently. It isn't for long, he promises himself, reaches for his bow and picks out an arrow. He lights it from the fire of Seol's discarded lantern and shoots into the sky. In quick succession he shoots another towards the rustle of the dead leaves he had picked up earlier. It is followed by the satisfying crunch of metal finding flesh and even if the injured man had intended to keep his silence, he picks out the faint whimper of surprise that he lets out unconsciously.

That, Seo knows for himself, would be his last act of sanity. The urge to trip over had never rage so loud or so powerfully. Over his shoulder he looks at Seol, thinks of blood that spills from her wound into newly fallen snow, thinks how fortunate it is that when Naju burn - she wouldn't be touched - how fortunate it is that his fire could not burn her. There is a hiss of tearing air and the fools - he could think of no better word - the fools make the mistake of unleashing another arrow.

His hand finds it in mid flight, he hadn't even turned his face to trace its path. Unseeingly, his ears pick up the moment the foolish thing had come close enough. Folding his palm around the unforgiving edges of the traitor's arrow, Seo plunges it down on the now. A snarl is rippled from his throat.

When he raises his head and looks - straight at the place where the archer remained hidden, beside his friend who was taken down with an arrow straight to the heart - the man sees the angry flash of his silver eyes in the darkness itself. Cold fear trickles down his spine at suddenly realizing that they no longer hand the upper hand in this conspiracy. The man cowers, already too late.

The last time - Seo remembers - he had been faced with a furious witch, who believed he had betrayed her summoning, who didn't understand that instead it had been her own demands that had clashed with one another. She didn't understand that even gods had their limits.

Now, Naju will learn the same lesson that she did.

A part of him that had grown to understand and relate to the feelings of loss and greed people attached to those they considered their own - ponders over the consequences. Not all Ohs had wronged him. That attacker and the conspiracy attached to him was the work of one or two well placed traitors - but still - the very soil they claimed as their own was tainted with generations of greed, lust and corruption. Nothing that rose from this tainted soil deserved mercy.

Silver light spills forth from where the tip of the broken arrow had torn into the frozen earth. Then its blinding brilliance pulses. Once. Twice. When the light ring of the third pulse ripples across the landscape, the fields that had once been the harvested grounds of the prideful Ohs are aflame.

*

She always asked for things he couldn't give. Smiles, words, promises - too precious to afford, too delicate to replicate. Seo couldn't give his heart nor his life. Nor the promise she wanted with blurry eyes and failing breath.

He cannot not tell the emperor.

He was his lord, his word the law. Her simple words could not override that. Yet those eyes hold him in thrall. His brush had dried, last of its ink seeping into an unseemly stain where its tip touched the parchment. He was yet to commit that horror into words.

"Do not write that letter Seo," her voice stirs, thick and raspy yet commanding enough. He turns to find her eyes on him, open after three days of sleep.

He wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't supposed to be seen here. Kang Seo rises abruptly.

"I haven't allowed you to leave," she observes in a neutral tone. "You may rise however and pour me a glass of water."

There is mischief dancing in her pretty eyes and he sees her ruse for what it is, an attempt to divert his mind. She doesn't take the cup he offers, instead offers him a frail, fair arm.

"Help me up!"

Her wrists are beautiful, slender and delicate. Kang Seo gulps looking away from the bare forearm.

"I shall call your maid."

"No need, you were here to mind me weren't you? Do a proper job at that."

"Princess-!"

She narrows her eyes in a fair imitation of her father. Seo takes the offered arm, wrapping his own around her shoulders to lift her up. Her fingers bunch at his collar. She is warm from lying for too long, her face flushed and her hair mused. He cannot meet her eye, cannot remember if he was inhaling or exhaling. Seo keeps his eyes on gossamer lace that hang around her bed frame, trying not to inhale too much of her faint jasmin scented hair. It is too intimate an embrace, too inviting a temptation. He could just dip his head and he would be buried in her soft, tousled locks.

"You called me Seol before," her grip tightens when he tries to pull away. Her whisper brushes against his cheek in warm puffs of breath. "...at Naju."

She takes him by surprise. He stares at her coming into realization of his own actions.

"I was startled then," he explains. That is hardly a reason to call the sacred name of an imperial princess. But Kang Seo could hardly admit in his thoughts he called her Seol, had always done so. "Forgive me, princess."

She allows him to draw away, her eyes are no longer lit with mischief but darker with sorrow.

"It was lovely," she says in a small voice. "When you called me that." He couldn't conjure a reply to that. "Don't write to Songak Seo."

"Your father might already know, princess."

"How would he?" She asks knowingly. "Who will tell him when you are my shadow?"

She laughs at his face.

"Oh I've known since long. You are in places you have no business at - I wasn't quite an interesting prospect to chase when I was six and you, Kang Seo, were always there."

She leans contentedly on puffed pillows, enjoying the effects of having rendered him speechless. "Water," she reminds him with a smile. "Once you are done, bring that book over there and read to me. My eyes are tired."

"Princess!"

She sips delicately and looks up at him her eyes wide and innocent.

"Wherever else would you go Kang Seo, my shadow?"

**