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Han Sung had died a year ago.  Today.  Was it ironic then that Dan Se was being forced to meet with his brother’s once affianced bride this morning?

Why did he have to face that girl today of all days?

Though his grandfather was now dead, his father had insisted that the best way that he could honor Han Sung was to take his place.  First, among the hwarang.  Now, in an alliance with the Man house.

Dan Se had his own reasons for following through with this marriage.  Still, he walked with leaden feet towards her house.  Privately mourning the death of his beloved brother.

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He was shown into her private sitting room a few minutes later.  He waited patiently for her to arrive.  For half an hour.  Finally, she entered the room silently.  Shutting the door behind her.

He stared at her as she turned to face him.  He hadn’t seen her in more than a year.  But she was still a tiny thing.  Of course.  She’d passed her twentieth year recently.  She was done growing.  Nearly a foot shorter than he was, she had barely achieved five feet in height.  Maybe a factor of her shorter height, she had always been a little plumper than the average girl too.

Then he noticed her second most striking feature.  Her long, gleaming locks flowed nearly to her knees.  She had parted her hair in the middle, pulling just the front sections back with jeweled clasps.  So that all of her gorgeous, midnight waves cascaded down her back.  Except for one rebellious tress that had fallen forward over her shoulder.  To cover her heart.

Her great, obsidian eyes were still the same.  As she lifted them to gaze squarely into his own, he felt that same zing of recognition that always bit him when she glanced his way.  Those eyes, instantly haunting him as they had when he’d first seen them as an adolescent, today appeared to be full of fire.  And a fury which he could only guess was directed at him.  He shivered under that direct gaze.

They were alone.  She was unchaperoned.  Of course, there was an understanding between their fathers.  She belonged to Dan Se now.  They were to be married in one week. 

Mi Sook faced him with a stone-cold expression chilling her countenance.  And he felt his second frisson of unease.  It was clear that she was not pleased with this match.  His heart sank.

Of course, she wasn’t.  She had adored his younger brother.  Everyone had adored Han Sung.  Why wouldn’t she?

Dan Se cleared his throat.  “Good day, Man Mi Sook.”  He bowed to her.

“Good day?  What’s good about it?” she barked at him.

He took a step back.  Then he admitted, “Nothing.”

“You’re right.  Nothing is good about today.  Han Sung died a year ago today.  You killed him!  The only boy I ever loved!” Mi Sook cried out as she faced Dan Se.

“I know I did,” he breathed quietly. 

Taken aback by his bold statement of guilt, she watched as a tremendous tremor passed over his countenance.  He turned away from her to stare out the window. 

“I do not blame you for hating me.  I hate myself.  If you don’t wish to marry me, I will not force you to.  I was simply trying to honor Han Sung’s memory.  By taking care of his intended.”

“You think to usurp his place?” she bit out the acerbic words.  “You have taken his spot among the hwarang.  Now you wish to occupy his space in my bed?”

He spun towards her then.  “Would that I could raise him from the grave and occupy that bed of his myself!  In his place, as it were!” he thundered menacingly.  “Then you could have your precious Han Sung.”

Her eyebrows rose in astonishment as his sour fervor flooded the air around her.

He withdrew his sword from its scabbard. “Do you think that it ceases to hurt me every single time that I withdraw this blade from my belt?  Or swing it through the air?”  He did just that, slicing an arc through the frigid space between them.  “Do you think that the memory of his death isn’t emblazoned upon my heart?  That I don’t see it every time I close my eyes?”

The passion vibrating his voice scared her.  And she suddenly realized that he had grown up even closer to Han Sung than she had.  He was, after all, his brother.

Caught off guard, she admitted, “But…I always thought you hated him.”

“I didn’t hate him.  How could I have hated such an innocent creature?”  Now he spoke with a stealthy softness.  It chilled her to the bone for some odd reason.  “He was a dreamer.  Always lost in some vision or some such nonsense!  Talking to the birds or trying to pet a butterfly!” 

He inhaled sharply.  “We grew up in a violent world.  But he was never acclimated to it!  He didn’t have the stomach for it.  And I was always paying the price for him.  Better me than him.  He couldn’t have borne it.”

He took a deep breath.  “Maybe that’s another reason that Grandfather always despised me and adored Han Sung.  Even though I gave my all trying to gain a fraction of his favor!  Instead, I earned his eternal disgust!  Perhaps I am already being punished for what I did to my brother!”  He blinked then, and the tears that had flooded his eyes to tremble on his eyelashes suddenly fell.

Unblinking, she stared in consternation at the bitter man weeping before her.  She watched as those tears cascaded down his cheeks and dripped down onto his robe.  His hand still curved around the hilt of his sword, he suddenly lunged for her.

She backed up against the hard wall.  Her hands reaching behind her to splay her fingers against that flat surface.  He seemed headed straight for her heart with that stealthy blade.  Still, no scream would rise in her throat.  For she had become instantly devoid of breath.  She prepared to die.  But at the last moment, he cast that sword at her feet.

“Please.  If you despise me so much, put me out of my misery.  Revenge Han Sung’s death.  End me.”

He dropped to his knees before her and gazed up at her with…empty eyes.

Haunted only by the face of a boy whom they had both loved.

She stared down at him in trepidation.  Her brow wrinkling as she remembered a day long ago.  “Do you know…?  As an adolescent, I thought my appa insane for betrothing me to a child.  I was eleven years old the day you and your brother first came to visit me.” 

Her lips flipped upwards into a humorless smile.  “Han Sung was eight years old.  When I discovered that I was older than he, I questioned my father.  He demanded that I stop speaking nonsense.  That the boy was a nobleman from a powerful family, and I must do my duty and marry him as soon as he was of age.  Appa wanted our houses united.”

Dan Se recalled that day.  The first time that he’d seen that young girl.  Her dark hair had been pulled back into two long braids.  Her high cheekbones had been suffused with bright color.  In stark contrast to her pale skin.  And her great, obsidian eyes had stunned him the first time that he’d ever looked her way.

Now she drew a deep breath.  “I couldn’t understand it.  I could have married years before Han Sung would reach his majority.  Why didn’t Appa just promise me to a different nobleman’s son?  Or even to…you?”

He swallowed as her eyes fathomed the depths of his own.  He prayed that she couldn’t unveil his secret.

She gazed down at him.  And a spasm crossed her face.  “But then I met Han Sung, and he was so…different.  Up until I met your brother, I didn’t really care for boys.  They were all too brutal.  But not Han Sung.  The boy was gentle…simply adorable.” 

Now a true smile did brighten her face.  “I spent that afternoon playing with him.  He had such an imagination!  And he was always trying to delight me.  I truly felt affection for him.  And by the time he died…”  She stopped speaking.  “He was turning into a truly beautiful man.  Though he was still a child even then.”

“A sweet, brave, faithful child,” Han Sung’s brother murmured brokenly.  “Who was too good for this cruel earth.”

He bent over and put his face to the floor.  And began to sob.  He hadn’t allowed himself to weep since the day that his brother had died at the edge of his sword.  An entire year of holding back his grief.  But in the presence of this fierce girl, whom he had greatly wronged, that dam instantly burst, and all that sorrow finally escaped his lungs.  Dan Se’s shoulders began to shake as he completely fell apart in front of his brother’s intended.

Horrified, Mi Sook stared down at him.  All her wrath evaporating.

Dan Se wasn’t the fearsome, jealous rival she had once pictured mowing down her beloved Han Sung.  Dan Se was just a broken boy.  Broken by the death of his younger brother.  Which he had – unwittingly? – caused.

She stood gazing down at him.  Wondering what to do.  Then she remembered her adorable Han Sung and considered what he would do.  She wasn’t nearly as childlike as that sweet boy had been.  She would certainly never replace him.  Nor could she behave exactly as he would have.  She had never been as innocent as he.  But she knew what he would have told her to do.  What even now his heart seemed to be crying out for her to do.

So she knelt down in front of the wretched man on her floor and reached for him.  She set her hand gently on his shoulder.

“Please, oppa.  Please don’t upset yourself.  He is gone.  And there is nothing you can do about it.  Not now.”

Even those words seemed to condemn him.  He lifted his head and leaned back until he was sitting against his heels.  Then he gazed down at the girl whom his brother had liked.  But never loved.  At least, not with any semblance of passion.

“Won’t you put me out of my misery?” he begged softly.

She gazed up at him out of eyes full of her own agony.  “If I did, who would share mine with me?” she questioned softly.  And one lone tear slid down her cheek.

It didn’t even begin to compete with his grief, but somehow the sight of that single teardrop comforted his soul.  And he stood up.  So she followed suit.

“I have not wept since the day my brother died,” he admitted.

“Oh, Dan Se!” she gasped, using his given name for the very first time.

And that sweet whisper undid him.  His face crumpled again, and she stepped forward.  This time when she reached for him, it was to wrap her arms around him and draw him near.  To the heart that had always adored his brother.  And feared him.

Why had she always feared Dan Se? 

That was hard to fathom.  Except that where Han Sung had been soft, Dan Se had always appeared rigid.  Where Han Sung had been sweet, Dan Se had most certainly been sour.  Han Sung had been carefree and childlike.  Dan Se had always seemed old beyond his years.  And burdened with the cares of this world. 

She had always believed him to be as hard as her father.  But his tears seemed to paint Dan Se in a completely different light today.  She had never seen her appa weep.  Not even when her baby brother had been laid to rest.

She cringed suddenly as she recalled an incident from their later years.  She had been fifteen, Han Sung a tender twelve, and Dan Se eighteen.  The three of them had been playing in the gardens behind their house.  Well, Dan Se hadn’t been playing.  She had never seen the man play.  He’d been fourteen years old upon their first meeting.  And even then, he had seemed an old man. 

But that bright spring day three weeks after she’d turned fifteen, she had been taking a turn through their gardens with them, playing with Han Sung as he chased a brilliant blue butterfly.  In his pursuit of that lovely creature, he had accidentally crashed into and overturned a rare urn on the stones of the patio.  The vase had shattered instantly. 

And his grandfather, his face a mask of rage, had suddenly appeared.  He had taken one look at that broken vessel, and a vein had bulged in his neck as his face had turned crimson. 

“Your grandmother loved that urn!  It was priceless.  How could you be so clumsy as to break it!”

He had been hollering at Dan Se.  Stricken, Han Sung had stepped between his grandfather and his brother. 

“I – I broke it, Grandfather.”  The poor boy had hung his head.  “I am most sorry.”  Then he had bowed to the irate man.  Several times.

“Come here!” his grandfather had snapped.

Han Sung had made an instant movement in his direction.

“Not you!” the old man had bellowed.  “Dan Se!”

Cringing, Mi Sook had turned horrified eyes on the older boy.  But his face had remained impassive.  Bravely, head held high, he had crossed the distance between him and the vengeful man.  As he had come to a stop in front of him, that cold man had lifted his cruel hand and slapped Dan Se across the face.  Three times.  She had flinched every single time.  Just watching it happen.  But Dan Se hadn’t moved.  Not once.

Then their grandfather had turned towards Han Sung.  “You will cease to be clumsy.  Or your brother will pay the price for your carelessness.”

In that moment, she had recognized the man as a mastermind.  Of manipulation.  Tormenting one boy to punish the other.  Nothing had hurt Han Sung as much as watching his brother suffer.  She could tell from the horrified expression on the younger boy’s face.  But Dan Se had been made of marble.  He hadn’t even flinched when the man’s hand had approached him the third time.  And by then, she knew from experience, his face must have been on fire.  Pain exploding along his cheekbone. 

She had pitied him then.  For a few moments.  But once they’d been left alone, he had turned his impassive face away from Han Sung when the boy had apologized to him. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Dan Se had murmured woodenly before disappearing around the corner.

She had shivered.  That house had been so cold.  Even their garden in the bright light of day had held no warmth for her.  Except that which she had found in Han Sung’s smile.  And in his laughter.

Still, she had feared being allied to that family.  But not any more than she still feared her own father.  He seemed to be cut of the exact same cloth as Han Sung’s grandfather.  The vicious sort.

She couldn’t believe that her father still wanted to marry her off to a Seok.  They had fallen from favor with the demise of Minister Park.  Both her household and Dan Se’s. 

From a young age, she had been promised to the younger Seok boy.  With his death, a cloud had fallen over her household.  Her father hadn’t spoken to her about marriage for a few weeks after Han Sung’s death.  Then, after Minister Park was executed, her appa had informed her that he was going to request that Dan Se fulfill Han Sung’s obligation to her. 

She was, after all, more than nineteen years old.  No longer an excellent choice for a young bride.  And she had never been very appealing to men.  She was neither pretty.  Nor demure.  Her nose was too flat.  Her lips too puffy.  Certainly, she was not a slender girl to attract a man’s notice.  And she was so short that she might have difficulty birthing babies.  What man in his right mind would choose to marry her?

Or so her father had ruminated.  Not just within her hearing.  But boldly.  To her face.

He hadn’t seemed to believe that it would be easy to find her someone else to marry.  Or even possible.  For her part, she had been terrified.  Enough so that she had begged him to leave the new hwarang alone.  To find her a different husband.  She couldn’t imagine herself pledged to Han Sung’s cold older brother.

But her father had insisted that Minister Seok had already worked out the details with him.  And when Dan Se had completed his first year as a hwarang, the two of them would be married.  Still, the months had passed without her having to face him.  Until today.

She was surprised that he was still allowing that broken, old man – one who had passed away several months ago now – to control his life anymore.  Dan Se was one of the king’s most trusted men now.  Surely, he could choose his own bride.  So…why was he here?