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Prince Jong Su crept into the garden at sunset and glanced around, looking for his quarry.  He found her sitting on a bench near a stream full of blooming lotus.  Of course, now the flowers had closed up for the day.  Rather like the young lady staring down at them.  Closed off.  And he wondered why.

He stepped into her view and smiled at her as she raised her head to meet his eyes.

“Good evening, princess,” he breathed.

And she scowled.

Which just made him chuckle.

“I see you are enjoying the season of fire,” he murmured provocatively.  Hoping to get a reaction.

He did.  Her scowl deepened.

“I’m not enjoying anything right now.”

“Ah, yes.  Your broken heart.”  He stepped up to the bench and gestured at it.  “May I?”

Her delicate eyebrows arched magnificently.  “You wish to sit next to me?”

He nodded.

She speared him with an assessing glance.  Then she sighed deeply.  “All right.”

He sat down next to her, careful to leave a few centimeters between them.  But then he ruined the effect, leaning towards her to whisper into her ear, “I could make you forget him, you know.”

Her head whipped around, and her lips nearly collided with his own.  “You are impertinent, sir!” she rebuked him haughtily as she drew back wildly.

But the effect of her remonstration died a quick death as she lost her balance and went flying backwards.

Only to be caught by two capable, strong arms.  His eyes had flown wide as he reached for her.  He dragged her back up onto the bench.  At least, he tried.  But he overcompensated, and she ended up draped unceremoniously across his lap.  Gasping like a landed fish.

“What are you doing?!”  Indignation sputtered out of her mouth as she grappled for the bench.  Wiggling her way off his lap.

“Why, I was rescuing you, princess, from a bad fall.”

Fire shooting from her gaze, she glared at him before glancing at the ground behind her.  “Hardly a bad fall.  This bench isn’t even two feet off the ground.”

“Perhaps.  But you were falling backwards.  I wouldn’t want you to hit your head and forget you hate me.”

Her eyes lifted to meet his again.  She was so tempted to laugh at his absurd answer.  But she fought valiantly to keep the corners of her lips still.  She lost the battle, though, so at the last instant, she twitched them downwards to save herself from smiling.  She wasn’t about to let him know that he had won a point.  The man was too confident for his own good.

But she’d discovered something else about him during her debacle.

He smelled divine.  Like a stiff sea breeze.  Salty.  Tangy.  With a hint of freedom.

She’d traveled to the sea once as a child.  With her father.  She could still feel that beautiful zephyr pushing her hair back to blow in a continuous stream behind her.  She closed her eyes to soak it in.  And inhaled deeply of that sweet liberty. 

A freedom she would never know.  The liberty to make her own choices in life.  Undetermined by those in authority over her.  Not subject to a royal decree.  Or a kingly command.  Or even that of her imperiously frigid mother.

A mother whom she wished had held her lovingly.  At least once.  But Sook Myeong had no such lovely memory.  She could not, in fact, recall anyone ever holding her.  She rather thought it was too late now to undo such damage.  She was a woman.  Her childhood behind her.

But she turned her attention back to that day on the beach.  To the sea breeze in her hair.  Its freedom beckoning her. 

She opened her mouth to drink it in.  Is this what freedom tasted like?

A deep ache spiraled up and out of her core.  Independence was what she longed for.

She used to dream of love.  Of her mother’s adoration.  Or her father’s devotion.  But she had soon learned those things were too high for her to grasp.  Then she had found the courage to pursue Seon Woo’s affection.  Only to discover that she was unworthy of his love too.

So she was giving up on love.  It was clearly made for others.  But not for her.  She was not one of the chosen ones who would bask in the adoration of her own beloved. 

She was destined to travel life alone.  Isolated.  Watching joy heat the faces of lovers around her.  Warmth spilling from their eyes for each other.  But such flames would never touch the ice surrounding her heart.  She blinked back the tears that she would never allow to come.  She had to be stronger than this.  To save herself from an indescribable pain.

So she bent her dreams towards freedom.  She tipped back her head and unlatched her eyes to stare at the darkening sky.  The sea was far from her now.  Only the vastness of the heavens could quench her desire for freedom tonight.  Like a lantern, she would grow wings and fly into the limitlessness of that indigo vault.  Not bothering to look down again. 

She already knew what awaited her on earth.  Absolutely nothing that she really needed.  Her only hope was in flying overhead.  Beyond the mundane cares of everyday people and the kingdom crises that had controlled her mother for the entirety of her life. 

Her mother had devoted herself to the kingdom.  To maintaining its peace and security.  And how had she been rewarded?  Poisoned to death by a cruel man who would grasp power for himself.  Attempting to steal a boy’s throne out from under him.

Sook Myeong didn’t want such an end.  Sacrificing all she had to save someone else.  And in her final days, suffering because of that devotion.  What was the point?

She blithely ignored the fact that her brother had now secured the throne with which her mother had fought so hard to provide him.  And that the traitor who had poisoned her mother had been sentenced to death.  His execution was just a few days from now.  Her brother had allowed him one month to live.  Because he hadn’t killed their mother quickly.  Because of that, Jin Heung had had a few days with her.  He was giving the evil minister one day for every day that he’d had with his mother since he’d reached his majority.

But all that Sook Myeong saw when she glanced around was bitterness.  Her mother had met a bitter end.  The minister was meeting a bitter end.  The princess had no wish to meet a bitter end.  Or to live a bitter life.  Yet it seemed to be eating her up anyway.  Because of other people’s choices.  Again, she craved freedom.

She glanced at the man sitting next to her.  He was the antithesis of liberty.  He embodied her powerlessness to make her own choices.  She was going to be forced into a marriage with him.  She could feel it.  It was, after all, the reason he was sitting next to her right now.  He wanted her.  Oh, not for her unlovely self.  But for the kingdom that came with her.  A kingdom to which she was inextricably linked.

The prince studied the woman seated next to him.  She had such a fragile expression on her face.  And when her eyes had opened to gaze longingly up at the sky, he would have sworn that he could read sorrow in her gaze.  And a desperate sort of despair.

“What is it?” he queried quietly.

“It’s you!” she shot out, yanking her head towards him so that her eyes could duel with his.  “You are the perfect picture of it!”

“Of what?” he asked, taken aback at her vehemence.

“My inability to choose!  I’ve been locked in a prison my whole life!  And you are the capstone on a life of captivity.”

He leaned back.  Greatly disturbed by the violence of her discontent.  She was even more broken than he had anticipated.  He blinked at her in alarm.

She jumped to her feet.  “Don’t you understand?  I just want to be free!  I don’t want to be forced into a marriage with a man I don’t even know!  I don’t want to be dragged off to some foreign land!  To be at the beck and call of a power whose family I wasn’t even born into!  It’s enough that I was born into this one.  That they determined my every move from the time I was tiny.  That I nearly killed the man I love because I was carrying out an order from my own mother!  Really!  How much should one woman be expected to bear?!”

She turned and fled from him.  And he sat, shocked by the power of her passion. 

He’d been right.  Her heart wasn’t a block of ice.  It was a raging fire.  The question was…how to bask in its warmth without being burned?