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A quarter of an hour later, Eun Sook turned from her parchment to glance back at the couple now lying side by side on her brother’s bed.

“Jong Su!” she rebuked him in a whisper.  “Why is the princess in your bed again?”

He chuckled at the blush now lighting up his sister’s face rather like the sunset outside his window was painting roses in the sky.

“You are adorable when you’re embarrassed,” he breathed affectionately.  “And don’t you worry about the princess.  She’s just taking a much-needed nap.”  He glanced at the beautiful girl in his bed.  “I am fairly certain she didn’t sleep a wink the first few nights after I was injured,” he murmured with concern evident in his voice.  “She’s catching up on her rest.”

“That is not an excuse to continue to invite her into your bed!  I’m supposed to be guarding her virtue.  You are making this task nearly impossible for me, brother!  What if Jijin walks in here while she’s in your bed!?”

He studied her face.  “I cannot marry her yet.  I promised her several weeks of courtship first.”

“Then send her to her own bed!  You’re going to get her – and yourself – into some trouble otherwise.”

“Am I?  Did you perchance get yourself into trouble with the king during the two weeks you shared his bed?  Before you were married?”

She growled at him.  “I came perilously close.”

“Did you now?”  He arched a flat eyebrow.  “Is the king aware of that?”

“Probably not.  He’s an honorable man.  And that is the only reason my virtue was safe.”

His other midnight brow joined the first in scaling his forehead.  “Truly?  You’d have given him all of yourself without a pledge from him?”

She sighed.  Deeply.  “You cannot understand what it was like to have to make my way in the world.  All alone.  With this hideous white hair slamming doors in my face everywhere I went.  The king was the first adult who ever welcomed me with open arms.  Or wanted to see that all my needs were met.”

He frowned at his sister.  “I am sorry.  I knew it must be hard for you—”

“No, brother, it wasn’t hard.  It was impossible.  The only reason I did not starve to death is because my nurse took our mother’s golden hair combs the night that we escaped from the palace.  After Harmony died, I used one of her scarves to hide my hair and found a peddler to buy those combs from me.  I lived off that bounty for two years. 

“But I was coming to the end of my means when the king found me.  In fact, I hadn’t eaten in over a day when he brought me home with him.”  Her eyes pierced Jong Su’s.  “The king saved my life.  I wasn’t about to leave him.  No matter what I had to do to stay.”

“Plus, you loved him,” he murmured.

“Exactly.”  She sighed deeply.  “I was truly blessed.  For he loved me even more than I adored him.  He insisted that I either marry him or move to my own rooms before you arrived.”

His eyebrow quirked again.  “And you chose not to marry him?”

“I wanted to wait for you.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew that – as my white hair had injured me – my albinism would tarnish his reign.  If I came to the kingdom an exiled pauper, a freak, then the people would murmur.  And eventually, they would turn their backs on their king.  But if an alliance with me could buy him peace with the northern kingdom, then I would be seen in a different light, and the people would love him for enduring an albino in his bed to save his subjects from war.”

Pained, he frowned at her.  “So, you’re saying that the people of Silla will endure having you as their queen because you’ve brokered peace with Goguryeo?  That the only reason they will love you is because you ensured they won’t send their husbands and sons to war?”

She nodded.

“You don’t believe that you’re lovable,” he murmured sadly.

She shook her head.  “I am not lovable to the vast majority of people.  I am a freak.  Someone they fear.  They think I’m a witch.  Bent on doing evil.  But, in this one instance, I was able to do some corporate good.  To ensure peace between my homeland and theirs.”

Sorrow slid across his face.  “And if I had said no?  If I had wanted to take you home with me instead?”

Her face fell.  “I could never have left Jijin, brother.  Not even for you.”

He sighed deeply.  “You would have accepted a lower place in his bed?”

She nodded.  “I was ready to become his concubine.  Only his honor saved me from that life.”

“Would you have been happy?” he queried in surprise.

“I had never been happy,” she admitted.  After a pause, she added, “Except when I was in his arms.  I cannot say that being his concubine would have been enough for me.  But I am accustomed to such a life.  I have rarely had enough.”

Jong Su felt very unsatisfied with this conversation.  And the state of his sister’s heart.  He was simply thankful that she had chosen to fall in love with an honorable man.  And a worthy king.  One he had been correct in deeming worthy of his own life.

“Are you happy now?” he asked her abruptly.

She glanced at him across that big bed.  And she smiled.  “As happy as I’ve ever been.  I’m still happy in Jijin’s arms.”  She looked down at the bold, ebony strokes on her parchment.  “And I am happy when I’m writing my stories.  I think this is as close to contentment as I will ever get.”

He glanced down at Sook Myeong.  “I will not take advantage of her.  You have my word on it.  I would never so repay the king for the honorable way that he treated my own sister.”

Eun Sook met his gaze as well as she could across the great divide separating them from one another.  His face was a blur, yet she could still read his sincerity in the timbre of his deep voice.  She recognized that her brother was also an honorable man.  Which was a very good thing.  Especially for the princess.  And for her own dear Jijin.  Jong Su had, after all, saved her husband’s life.  An act for which she would always be immensely grateful.