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She woke up when he tried to stand up while holding her.  Disoriented, she grabbed ahold of his shoulders.  He could feel her fear as the unknown swamped her.

“Shh.  It’s me, Yoongi.  You’re all right.  You just fell asleep in my arms.  In our garden.”

Our garden.

Her heart melted.  For so long this had been her garden.  But it was truly his.  Yet he was happy to share it with her.

“Your song…” she breathed.  “It’s so beautiful.  Did you – did you write it?”  

For me?

He bent to whisper in her ear.  “I wrote it for you last night as I lay sleepless in my bed.  Thinking of you.”  

Wishing you were with me.

She inhaled sharply.  He was making her dream again.  A most dangerous pastime.  She had to stop.  His lips had been soft and sweet.  But stolen kisses often were.  She could never belong to him.  As he could never be hers.  They both knew it.

“Thank you,” she murmured, suddenly shy.  She gazed, unseeing, off into the distance.  “I don’t know why I fell asleep.  I usually don’t head to bed until five in the morning.” 

It must be that your presence is such a comfort to me that I completely relaxed.  To the point of sleeping.

He smiled at her.  “I wish I could stay with you.  But I’ve an early meeting with my advisors.”  He groaned.  “I wish I were not king.  I wish I were a gardener who could play in the dirt with you all night long.”

“Don’t say such things!” she admonished him in a low murmur.  “As long as you are king, you have power to do much good.  Use your power to bless your people.  Be a good king, Yoongi.  It’s a role that suits you well; though, I know you don’t think so.”

He glanced sharply at her.  “How do you know that?”

“You think that your brother was meant to be king.  That he would have been a better leader than you.  But it isn’t so.  A true king must be humble.  He must be willing to put his people before himself.  Your brother…can I speak freely?  Without fear of punishment?”

“Yes, of course!” He wanted to know what was burning in her heart.

“Your brother was a terribly selfish man.”

He gazed at her in astonishment.  “How – how do you know that?  You’ve been in hiding.”

“You’re not the first man to wander through the garden at night,” she muttered.

Instantly, he felt an arrow of alarm pierce him.  “What did he do to you?”  He felt anger bubbling up as a memory surfaced.

Yoongi had loved a little lass when he was fourteen years old.  His brother had been seventeen.  And cruel.  He had seen Yoongi eyeing the thirteen-year-old villager.  One day as Yoongi returned to the palace from the pond where he had been fishing, he saw his brother with the girl his own heart desired.  

His brother had shoved her up against the outside wall of her house.  He was busy kissing her when Yoongi came upon them.  Yoongi took exception to the way his brother was treating the girl.  Yoongi lost his temper and punched his brother, who had just laughed at him while he rubbed his jaw.  

“Can’t you see, Yoongi?  She prefers me.  I know you.  You’d marry the chit and tarnish our royal name.  I’m here to show you that you can get for free what you’d be willing to trade the whole kingdom for.”

Yoongi had been boiling over with rage at that point.  

No honor.  

His brother had no honor.  Yoongi’s eyes had slid towards the girl.  He’d seen the hurt in her gaze as her eyes connected with his.  He had turned towards his brother and let his words fly.  Right before his fists had followed suit.

“You have no honor!  She is a precious soul!  You just treated her like she is your slave, her only purpose to serve your desires!  What of her feelings?  And her future?”  

Then he had flown at his brother again.  This time his fist had connected with his nose, and the blood had flowed.  His brother had grabbed his nose and run back to the palace.  Yoongi had been the one who had had to endure a royal punishment.  But it had been worth it to defend that girl’s honor.

He had turned towards her after his brother left.  “Are you all right?”

She’d nodded her head.  “He just kissed me.”

His eyes had slid over her for a moment before connecting with her own again.  “He would take much more than that if you were willing to give it to him.  Don’t dishonor yourself for my worthless brother.  He may be a prince, but you are precious and deserve to be more than the plaything of a royal son.  Don’t count yourself so cheap.  Save your kisses for a man who will prize you.”

She had simply stared at him.  “What world do you live in?  Do you not realize how good your brother could make my life?  Should he choose me as one of his concubines, I – and my children – would be set for life.”

Yoongi had felt a great sorrow invade his heart that day.  He had loved her.  But she hadn’t prized her own self.  She would rather have comfort and security than love.

“Wouldn’t your heart break when he takes a wife?”

She had shrugged.  “I don’t love him, so why should it?”

“You don’t love him, but you would kiss him?” He’d asked, astonished.  

But he had recognized that part of her statement was false bravado.  He could feel the way her heart bent towards his brother, though he could not understand why she felt as she did.  There was nothing lovable about his brother.  Not that Yoongi could see.

She’d looked him squarely in the eye.  “You have no idea what it’s like to go hungry.  You were born with a silver chopstick in your mouth.  You cannot fathom what it’s like to be poor.  Food in my belly and shelter over my head is more important than love in my heart any day.”

That was the day Yoongi had realized he was different.  For he prized love above those things.  He would gladly have slept out under the stars and lived off of apples from the trees if he could have had Moonflower with him.  He would give up the palace and all its trappings, the fine meals and the luxurious clothes, if he could simply have followed his heart.  

How ironic that he was the one person who had everything that young girl had desired, yet he wasn’t happy.  He wanted the freedom that she was born to.  The freedom to choose his own path.

He sighed.  He didn’t have that freedom.  Not really.  He was a prisoner in a palace.  He would rather be a pauper in a rice paddy.  Able to choose the woman he would love.  

He was gazing down at her right now.  But she could never really be his.  Could she?  

All because she hadn’t been born with a silver chopstick in her mouth. And he had.