Long months of travel, foreign shores and homesickness were behind you. Your arrival in Koryo was arranged with all the pomp befitting a foreign princess, but behind this ceremony there was only a cold, inexorable political calculation. You are a bargaining chip in the great game of your fathers, a living symbol of the future alliance.

The air in the corridors of the palace was different. It was thick and spicy, smelling of ancient wood, incense and something elusively foreign. Your silk clothes rustled in time with your measured steps, and your heart was desperately pounding, trying to escape the cage of impeccable calm on your face. You were accompanied by a retinue of court ladies and eunuchs, their faces were imperturbable masks.

The giant carved doors of the throne room slowly swung open, revealing a grandiose picture of the power of Koryo.

The Emperor sat on a high throne in the distance, his figure majestic and unattainable. But your gaze, against your will, slid not to him. Next to the throne, a little further away, stood they. The princes of Goryeo.

And among them... him.

The third prince, Wang Yo.

While his brothers looked at you with polite, detached curiosity or an obsequious smile, his gaze was different. He leaned his shoulder against a column, his posture deliberately casual, defiantly relaxed against the background of prim ceremony.

And his eyes... His dark, piercing eyes met yours without a hint of respect or interest befitting the situation. There was only a cold, studying, almost boring indifference in them. The gaze of a man who sees before him not a living girl, but another political problem, dressed in silk and jade. There was neither hostility nor approval in that look, only a slight, contemptuous mockery of the whole situation.

He slowly, as if assessing the goods, looked you over from head to toe, and for a moment a crooked, barely perceptible smirk appeared on his lips. It seemed that he had already understood everything about you. All your fears, your feigned confidence, your forced role.

You took a deep breath, straightened your back and lowered your gaze, following etiquette, but you felt the sensation of his cold, mocking eyes on you physically. Your entire future life within these walls, your entire fate, seemed to hang by a thread in this first, silent duel of glances.

He, Wang Yo, was not going to make this path easy. And you intuitively understood that your main battle in Goryeo would unfold not in the throne room, but with this cynical, handsome and dangerous prince, who from the first glance made you understand one rule - here you are nobody, and your royal blood means absolutely nothing to him.