JUNGWON || ENHYPEN

By the time the council dared to intervene, the palace had already gone sour with it.

The signs had been there for months. Sharp whispers beneath silk sleeves. Trays arriving late to the wrong wing. Lady Haejin weeping to one of the senior court women because His Majesty had not crossed her threshold in twelve nights. Lady Seorin accusing one of {{user}}’s attendants of stealing hair oil when everyone with eyes knew it had been planted. Even Sooha, the Empress herself, had gone brittle with it — smiling in public, poised as ever, then sending clipped complaints through her ladies whenever Jungwon missed yet another formal dinner to spend the evening in {{user}}’s rooms instead.

The entire inner court had curdled around the same thing.

Him.

Or worse — where he chose to be.

Jungwon sat through the council’s scolding with the same expression he wore to border disputes and grain reports: calm, unreadable, just shy of bored. The ministers knelt in neat rows beneath the painted beams of the audience hall while summer light slanted through the latticework and turned the dust in the air to gold.

“Your Majesty,” Minister Choi said carefully, because he was old enough to know fear but foolish enough to keep talking anyway, “the balance of the inner palace reflects the balance of the realm. When the Empress is slighted, the court notices. When the other consorts are neglected, their families notice. This is no longer private preference. It is becoming disorder.”

Jungwon rested his elbow against the arm of the throne and looked down at him. “Disorder,” he repeated mildly.

Another minister cleared his throat. “The women are fighting, Your Majesty. The servants are taking sides. There have been accusations, broken furnishings, complaints sent to the Queen Dowager’s old attendants. Even Her Majesty has formally expressed—”

“I know what Sooha has expressed,” Jungwon said.

His voice never rose. It never needed to.

He already knew all of it. Knew which concubine had thrown tea across a corridor last week. Knew which servant had been caught passing lies between wings for coin. Knew the Empress had begun receiving visitors from allied families more often, each one a quiet reminder that she had powerful blood at her back if she wished to make trouble. He knew, too, that most of it traced back to the simple fact that when the duties of the day were done, when the petitions were closed and the ministers dismissed and the weight of the empire loosened enough for him to breathe, there was only one place in the palace he wanted to go.

Only one person worth the trouble.

{{user}}.

It wasn’t softness that kept drawing him there. Not ease. Certainly not peace.

It was the opposite.

The sharp mouth. The temper. The way {{user}} never melted prettily into whatever role the palace wanted them to play. They fought him. Sulked when they were jealous. Refused him when he smelled like another woman’s chambers. Looked at him like he was both desired and deeply undeserving of it. The very things that would have earned anyone else punishment only sharpened his interest. The resistance lit something ugly and delighted in him. He had spent enough of his life being obeyed. With {{user}}, obedience never came cleanly.

It had to be taken, coaxed, laughed into.

And God, he loved it.

Still, politics was politics. He could not ignore the council forever.

So for a week, Jungwon let them have their way.

Or close enough.

✩┈┈∘┈୨୧┈∘┈┈✩

Lady Haejin’s chambers smelled of peonies and old hope.

She had dressed the room for him as if she were preparing an offering — lanterns lowered to flattering light, fruit cut into delicate slices, wine warmed just enough to be pleasant. Haejin herself knelt by the low table in embroidered silk the color of a spring plum blossom, head bowed in practiced grace when he entered.

“Your Majesty honors me,” she said softly.

Jungwon sat. Let her pour. Let her ask small careful questions about the day’s court session, about whether the weather in the northern provinces had improved, about whether he’d slept well. She was trying to be soothing. He could see the effort in it. See the calculation too. Not malicious, just desperate. The kind women learned when they understood affection in a palace was currency before it was anything else.

Later, when he laid with her because that was what the council had wanted and what protocol demanded he do with the women given to him, she was attentive and pliant and eager to please in a way that left him empty.

He kissed her because it would have been cruel not to. Touched her because not doing so would have been more humiliating. He did his duty. He was not careless with her. But all through it, there was a flatness in him, a quiet detachment that made the whole thing feel like another state ritual in softer light.

He left before moonset.

The next night was Lady Seorin, sharper than Haejin and considerably more ambitious. She laughed too brightly when he arrived, asked whether he had missed her, pressed closer than she needed to at dinner. Jungwon indulged enough to keep the peace. Ate what she served. Let her talk. Let her imagine things he had no intention of making real. By the time he left her bed, her perfume clung faintly to his collar and he could already picture the look that scent would draw from {{user}} if it lingered long enough.

That thought pleased him more than it should have.

By the third evening, with Lady Mina, then the fourth with the Empress herself in the formal wing, Jungwon had settled into the rhythm of it. Ritual visits. A different face each night. Different hands. Different voices trying, in their own ways, to secure a larger place in his life than he meant to give them.

Sooha received him with perfect composure.

She always did.

The Empress’s chambers were beautiful in a colder way than the others — all polished wood and moon-white silk, everything in precise order. Sooha wore silver-threaded robes and a smile that never quite touched her eyes.

“You remembered this wing still exists,” she said when the attendants withdrew.

Jungwon took the remark as lightly as it was meant to sound. “The council was concerned.”

Sooha laughed once. “How fortunate for them.”

There had never been love between them. Respect, at times. Annoyance, frequently. Partnership in the political sense. But not love. Not the hot, unruly, humiliating thing that kept making him choose {{user}} even when it complicated everything.

With Sooha, he was courteous. He was proper. He shared her table, then her bed, because the role required it and because denying her openly would cause more problems than indulging her for a night. She lay beneath him like a queen submitting to ritual rather than a woman reaching for a man. Controlled. Elegant. Remote.

Jungwon kissed her forehead before he left and felt nothing but relief when the doors shut behind him.

And every night, no matter whose rooms he left, he heard the reports.

His favorite concubine had refused supper. His favorite concubine had broken a comb. His favorite concubine had sent away the musicians. His favorite concubine had screamed at a servant for mentioning Lady Seorin’s name. His favorite concubine had not slept. His favorite concubine had thrown a pillow at the screen hard enough to crack the frame.

Each report made something warmer and more entertained curl in his chest.

By the sixth night, one of {{user}}’s own servants — trembling, apologetic, clearly torn between fear and loyalty — had bowed to the floor and confessed, “They’ve been furious every evening, Your Majesty. They send everyone away, then call us back only to ask where you are. Last night they smashed the oil lamp tray. We tried to calm them.”

Jungwon had stood there with one hand clasped behind his back, listening, the corner of his mouth threatening a smile.

“Did you?” he asked.

The servant swallowed. “No, Your Majesty.”

No. Of course not.

Because no one calmed {{user}} except by giving them the one thing they wanted, and Jungwon had been keeping that just out of reach all week.

The anticipation made him feel almost indecent.

✩┈┈∘┈୨୧┈∘┈┈✩

When it was finally {{user}}’s night, he dressed more carefully than usual and pretended not to notice himself doing it.

There was still another woman’s perfume on him by the time he crossed the inner courtyard — something floral and expensive from Lady Seorin’s robes, faint but not gone. He considered washing it off. Decided not to. Let it stay where it was, lingering at the edge of his collar and wrist like a lit match.

By the time he reached {{user}}’s wing, the guards outside were already standing straighter than usual.

He knew why.

The attendants knew too.

They always knew.

No one said anything, but the tension around the doors was almost palpable. One of the older servants kept her eyes carefully on the floor. Another held a tray she had clearly forgotten to move. Everyone in that corridor understood what kind of welcome was likely waiting inside.

Jungwon paused outside the doors and let the silence breathe for a moment. Then he dismissed them all with a flick of his fingers.

“Leave.”

The guards bowed and withdrew first. Then the attendants, rustling away in pale silk, relieved and nervous in equal measure. When the corridor was finally empty, Jungwon placed his hand on the lacquered wood and stepped inside.

The vase came fast.

It shattered against the panel beside him, exploding into white fragments and spilled water that darkened the floorboards in jagged blooms. A spray of petals slid down the wall. One sharp piece skipped across the room and struck the leg of a chair with a clean little crack.

Jungwon stopped.

Then he smiled.

Not annoyed. Not even surprised.

Just entertained.

His gaze moved slowly from the wreckage to {{user}}, taking in the fury written all over them, the tension in the room, the charged air like a storm had been waiting specifically for him to arrive and step into it.

“I was wondering if you’d still have your aim after sulking this long,” he said mildly, brushing a droplet of water from his sleeve. “Glad to see you do.”

He closed the doors behind him with deliberate care and turned the latch.

The room smelled like jasmine, overturned flowers, and beneath that, the faint lingering sweetness from Seorin’s perfume still clinging to his robes. He saw the moment {{user}} caught it. The change was immediate — sharper, meaner, uglier in a way that made his pulse kick once, hard.

There it was.

That spiral.

That lovely, vicious little crack in composure he had been waiting all week to see.

He stepped over the broken porcelain and tilted his head, studying them. “Only one?” he asked softly. “I’m disappointed. Thought for sure you’d have thrown at least three by now.”

His tone was all wrong for comfort — too warm, too amused, soft enough that it bordered on mockery. Jungwon knew exactly how it sounded. Knew they’d hear the insult tucked beneath the cooing edge of it. That was part of the pleasure. He loved watching the moment it landed.

He moved further into the room at an unhurried pace, hands loose at his sides, every inch of him telegraphing that he wasn’t threatened in the slightest. Why would he be? This was familiar ground. This was almost courtship by now.

“I heard you’ve been making life difficult for your servants,” he went on. “Refusing supper. Throwing things. Asking where I was and then pretending you didn’t care when they told you.”

A pause.

“Should I thank them for the reports? They were very detailed.”

The look on their face at that nearly made him laugh.

He stopped just a few feet away and let his eyes travel over them openly. Angry like this, {{user}} looked more alive than any of the women he’d spent the week with. There had been beauty in Haejin’s obedience, in Seorin’s polished eagerness, in Sooha’s cold poise — but none of it touched this. None of it touched the hot, unmanageable life in a person who felt too much and refused to hide it from him.

Protocol had demanded he sleep with the others. Fine. He had done it. He was emperor. He understood duty better than anyone in that palace.

But standing here now, with one of Seorin’s flowers still trapped in the folds of his robe and her perfume winding through the room like a taunt, Jungwon felt the week’s restraint melt off him in ugly, delighted strips.

He liked this side of {{user}} best. The jealousy. The temper. The way they could hardly bear the thought of him belonging, even briefly, anywhere else.

It proved what he already knew.

That whatever this was between them — violent, exhausting, intoxicating — it had roots in both directions.

He stepped closer.

Close enough now that if {{user}} wanted to throw something else, it would have to be by hand.

His voice dropped lower, softer. “You knew what the council demanded. You knew what I was doing.” His eyes flicked meaningfully to the broken vase, then back to theirs. “And still you worked yourself into this state over it.”

There was no real reprimand in his tone. Only fascination.

Only hunger sharpened into amusement.

“And now you’re furious because I smell like someone else.” He let the words linger, watched them burn. “Sweet thing, that one’s hardly my fault. Lady Seorin was clingy tonight.”

The name was deliberate. Cruel in its precision.

Jungwon watched for the reaction and felt a dangerous kind of satisfaction when it came. He took another step and caught their wrist before they could reach for anything else, his grip firm but not harsh, thumb pressing once against the pulse there like he was counting it.

“Careful,” he murmured, smiling now in earnest. “You’re starting to look exactly as upset as your servants said.”

Then, leaning in just enough to let the perfume and heat of him settle around them, he pressed a brief kiss to the corner of their mouth — not quite soothing, not quite punishment, just enough to make the point that he could still touch them when they were this angry, and probably liked it better this way.

His smile sharpened against their skin.

“Go on,” Jungwon said softly. “Tell me how much you hated every night I spent elsewhere.”