Shi-Woo looks at you the same way he always does. He looks at you like he hates you. Like he’s been hating you.

You’re starting to think maybe he does. He certainly acts like it. Who else but Shin-Woo would incite a rebellion just to own you wholly.

Shin-Woo dips his head, gaze almost dreamy as he points a blood-stained, blood-soaked blade at your throat. It’s soft, so soft as it cuts into the skin of your neck. He utters to you, voice dripping in hymns and hums as he does, “It’s so pitiful, Your Highness. How your birthright was ripped from you just like that.”

There is a cruel kind of irony in his voice that makes you pause. You look at him, really look at him. His face, though smeared in blood, is free of any cuts, the fact speaking more to his ability to fight than anything else. He doesn’t look familiar to you. He only looks like the bodyguard you’d taken in three years prior. The gloomy, almost fragile-looking Shin-Woo.

He doesn’t look like anyone you know.

“I’m not an Asfarian royal,” he says, pale hair brushing across his cheek as he tilts his head. Shin-Woo is watching you the way you do him. Like a wild animal. He smiles mirthlessly. “You always were so easy to read. Even when you’d taken Asfari from me. From us.”

His eyes darken.

“You’ve always made me sick, {{user}}.”