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The next day dawned clear.  The rains of the last week had abated.  For the moment, at least.  Before the sun had even risen, Nuri had knocked on Insuk’s door and pushed her towards the kitchen.  Today the sight that greeted them seemed truly a royal one.  For it was a sea of purple.  Beautiful, long-stemmed irises lifted their cheerful faces towards the ceiling as the two girls entered the room.  The heavenly fragrance of the lush blooms was filling the kitchen with a secondary delight.  

“Oh, miss!  They’re stunning!” gushed Nuri.

“Aren’t they just?” breathed Insuk.

But just as beautiful as the blooms was the plate of goodies awaiting their pleasure.  Insuk stared down in wonder at the bukkumi.  As she bit into one a moment later, she discovered that the fried rice cake dumplings had been filled with red beans.  Jimin had decorated the white dumplings with tiny edible purple flowers and greenery.  They echoed the beautiful irises he’d plucked for her.  Both the bouquet and the treats combined to present her with such a lovely picture.

But its glory couldn’t touch that of the words that suddenly engulfed her soul with Jimin’s delight in her as she read the poem that he’d written her last night.

“Your voice embraces me.

Your tone, it graces me

With all that’s sweet in you,

All that completes me too.

“Your lips release a sound.

It wraps itself around 

My heart and holds it tight,

Making it feel just right.”

Jimin loved her voice?  

No one had ever spoken such words to her.  She would have said that none had ever thought them either, but apparently she would have been wrong in that assumption.  She was simply overwhelmed.  How long had Jimin felt this way?  

She’d been surrounded by signs of his ardor all week long.  Of the brilliant passion he felt for her.  But before this week, he had never given her any indication that he saw her as anything more than a friend.  Had he?

––

Balgeum sighed.  She was to be penned up with these two little brats for the foreseeable future.  She had already endured three days of this torture.  She supposed that it beat being a chambermaid.  But she was used to wandering the halls during the day.  Moving from room to room.  Cleaning.  Snooping.  Catching snatches of conversations here.  There.  Everywhere.

But the king had insisted that watching over his sisters was more important than that.  She had been given a very important charge.  Nursemaid to twin royals.  The problem was that these two twerps were unaware of her importance.  As was the rest of the world.  Aera and Aeri had spent the entire morning bossing her around.  And the past three days too.  Demanding she fetch them this and bring them that.  

Couldn’t they walk across the room for themselves?  A couple of lazier, little brats she had never met.  What was so precious about them anyway?  It might do them both good to be confined to a bed for a week.  To learn that the universe didn’t revolve around them.  

Ah!  But that wasn’t her charge.  Her duty was to protect them from the dread measles and anyone who might be trying to expose them to its devastating effects.  So here she sat.  Trapped in a room with two irritating, teenage girls.  

“Balgeum!” snapped Aera.  “Bring my hairbrush!  You must brush my hair a hundred times so that it gleams.”

“What for?” she asked dryly.  “No one is going to see you for months.”

Aera scowled at her.  “You don’t know that!  As soon as the epidemic has passed, we can leave this dreadful room.”

Twenty-two years old.  Balgeum had achieved twenty-two years.  Yet here she was…being bossed around by a fourteen-year-old.  Correction.  Make that two fourteen-year-olds.

She would have to put some thought into how she could avenge herself upon them for their snotty demands.  A little “please” and “thank you” never went amiss.  After all, Moonflower was a queen, but she seemed to frequently breathe those phrases out.  Almost like thankfulness was the air she breathed.  If she was bent on establishing a new royal culture, it was an excellent place to start.

Balgeum was quite pleased with the wife Yoongi had chosen for himself.  He had chosen extremely wisely.  Balgeum had yet to meet a wiser man.  Which might explain why she was still single at the ancient age of almost twenty-three years.  After all, she could never marry a king.  She was too low-born.  

But she could certainly aspire to find someone with the character of a king.  She recognized that she deserved such a princely suitor.  Unfortunately, amongst the other servants and guards, she had met mostly a group of men stuck in a bygone era.  Still worshipping themselves and their power over the “weaker sex” as they often referred to those of her gender.  It made her grit her teeth.  Were all men still stuck in a cave?

Clearly, the king was not.  But he seemed to be one of very few men who had been cut from wholly different cloth than the rest of the nation’s masculine population.  Women were still expected to be demure.  Silent.  Obedient.  Unable to form a coherent argument or an original thought.

Balgeum could never be thus.  Hence, she had remained alone.  Still seeking a man with both a brain and a heart.  Preferably one that was still beating.