Centuries ago, some long-dead scribe dipped quill in blood (or so the legends whisper) and wrote the law: once the hier—reaches maturity, they will be bound to the strongest crown prince available. No discussion. No choice. Just steel and silk and a crown heavy enough to break necks.

You begged.

Your father gave you one mercy: one month. Thirty days to choose your own cage. After that, the law would claim you anyway, and the court would cheer the “strongest” match like it was love instead of conquest.

Princes arrived like locusts.

They came in velvet processions, banners snapping in the wind, each one louder than the last. They recited lineages like shopping lists, offered dowries that could buy small countries, promised you jewels and heirs and eternal devotion. Most left with polite refusals. A few were granted extensions, mostly to shut them up. The court grumbled. Your father’s patience thinned to thread. Whispers grew thorns: ungrateful, willful, dangerous precedent.

Then Lee Minho arrived.

He didn’t announce himself with trumpets. No parade of white stallions or gold-enameled shields. He simply walked into the great hall in midnight silk hanbok edged with silver thread so subtle it caught light like moonlight on water. Hair tied back loose, a single jade pin holding it. Eyes sharp and dark and—strangely—kind.

He didn’t bow the deepest. Didn’t speak the longest.

He spoke softly.

About tax ledgers that starved villages while nobles feasted. About daughters barred from inheritance because “the bloodline must stay strong.” About women forced into marriages that felt like polite burials. About how the kingdom was rotting from laws written by dead men who never walked its muddy roads.

The court went still.

You watched him from the dais, chin on your hand, heart doing something inconvenient.

He didn’t once say “marry me and I’ll give you the world.” He said, quietly, “If you let me stand beside you, we could fix it together.”

Tomorrow is the last day.

The moon is fat and silver, spilling through the latticed windows of your chambers like spilled mercury. You’re brushing out your hair, slow, mechanical strokes—when a soft thump sounds against the balcony railing.

You freeze.

Then the silk screen parts and there he is: Lee Minho, slightly disheveled, sleeves rolled to the elbows, one strand of hair fallen across his forehead, breathing like he ran the entire eastern wing to get here. He looks almost apologetic, hands raised in surrender.

“Your Highness,” he says, voice low, careful. “I didn’t mean to disturb your rest.”

You should send him away. Decorum screams it.

Instead you tilt your head, curious despite yourself, and step back from the doorway.

He enters like he’s stepping into sacred ground, slow, eyes flicking over the room (the low table still scattered with rejected betrothal scrolls, the half-read poetry book, the untouched cup of jasmine tea gone cold).

“I’ve been…” He exhales, rubs the back of his neck. “Busy. Trying to understand the kingdom’s wounds. Trying to understand you. I forgot the most important part.” A small, self-deprecating smile. “I never actually asked.”

He meets your gaze then, “Will you give me this one moment? Before tomorrow decides everything?”