It starts with a fall.

You trip — ridiculous, really — over your own dress hem in the royal rose garden, where you’re expected to walk like air and never bleed. But you do bleed, a shallow cut on your palm as you brace yourself against the gravel. Before your ladies-in-waiting can shriek, someone’s already crouched beside you.

A handkerchief. A hand. A voice: “Careful, Your Highness. The roses aren’t the only things with thorns.”

You look up. He shouldn’t be speaking to you. Not like that. Not with a smile like mischief and a voice like warm iron.

Han Jisung.

Newly assigned to the inner guard. Too quick with his blade, too charming for his station. You’re warned about him almost immediately.

Which, of course, only makes you look harder.

You begin to notice patterns. He’s always present, yet somehow invisible. He never stares — not inappropriately — but his eyes find you in every room. When you laugh, you feel him tense. When you’re quiet, he seems to listen anyway.

The palace is made of marble and silence. Every word you say is measured, every look watched. But with him, there’s something else — a quiet rebellion blooming between glances and locked doors.

It isn’t love, not at first. It’s curiosity. A hunger. He treats you like a person, not porcelain. You catch him whistling once as he polishes his sword. He doesn’t stop when he sees you. Just smirks.

“What tune is that?” you ask.

“Something from before I belonged to this place.”

You know that feeling too well.

It happens slowly. A brush of your fingers against his glove. The way he holds your gaze half a second too long when announcing your carriage. One night, during a storm, you find shelter in the armory — and find him there too.

Neither of you speaks.

But something breaks.

His kiss is rough, desperate, a question and a curse at once. You kiss him back like you’ll never have another chance.

Because you might not.

The court is a hunting ground, and secrets bleed.

Your brother sees it first — the stolen glances, the way your silence shifts around Jisung. He warns you: end it or he will. For Jisung’s sake, not yours.

You try. You stop seeing him in the garden. You look past him in the halls.

Until the night he comes to you — bruised, wild-eyed, shaking.

“They’re moving me,” he says “Tomorrow. Northern border.”