The Arrow's Flight 4/?
Title: The Arrow's Flight 4/?
Pairing: Changmin/Junsu (Jaejoong/fc, Yunho/Heechul, Yoochun/Yoohwan [incest], Junho/fc)
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Here is another world that I wish existed in a place other than my mind, but it doesn't and I don't own them and I can only place them into this delusion.
Summary: Greed and corruption rule two neighboring kingdoms: The Kingdom of Mountains and the Kingdom of Trees. Two princes are planning a coup. Their success or failure depends on the shadow in the woods, the rogue of the forests, the arrow in the sky.
A/N: Totally inspired by Robin Hood. Can you blame me?
Warning: het
Part 4:
The Limbs
The limbs are the two wooden parts of bow extending from the Riser to the tips.
This chapter contains a wee bit of het.
Junho paced a heavy circuit around his room. All the drapes were closed, cutting off the sunlight from the setting sun. Only two torches dispelled part of the gloom. There were two guards outside his door and two guards inside his door. They waited as day faded to evening.
Jaejoong needed to do something! The Kingdom of Trees held such impossible standards for the Heir Apparent. While they were mostly the same as the Kingdom of Mountains, it was harder to attain.
A wife, an heir, those were not nearly as difficult as building wealth. Junho had set up a marketplace. It thrived with goods and possessions, even in these times of heavy taxes.
But Jaejoong was not allowed. Business and trading were for merchants, not royalty. The only way Jaejoong could get gold was to steal it from the people. But Jaejoong refused. Even as the King of Trees pressed even more taxes upon the people, the tax called the Prince’s Tax remained at the same low amount as it always had. There was no way Jaejoong could get enough money to be heir that way.
Hence, Junho ... and Junsu.
Junho sat heavily in a chair and ran his hands through his hair. His brother had been gone for four days. It would be at least two more before he returned. If he returned. There were too many factors. They did their best to stay hidden, but all it took was one person telling their secret.
He glanced up at Minho and Key, doing their jobs, guarding him. He knew Onew and Taemin were on the other side of the door. He knew they were.
But were they?
It only took one person.
And what about Jonghyun out on an information run? Is that really what he was doing? Or was he spilling their tales to the king?
Junho growled and stood up, pacing back and forth. He trusted his guards. They’d been with him for far too long not to trust them. But what about Junsu’s guards? They’d been with Junsu just as long as Junho’s guards had been with him.
But could they be trusted?
Junho never interacted with them, never had the need to. But if his own guards thought even for a moment that Junsu’s were unfaithful, then they would say something to him.
Unless they were in on it too.
Junho wanted to throw something. He was seeing traitors everywhere as their plot dragged on.
The sun set behind the heavy curtains. Minho lit another torch. Neither told Junho to sleep. He needed to, but every time his eyes shut he saw his brother’s body: captured, tortured, killed.
The door opened, and Junho jerked alert, breath heaving, and to his feet. He only relaxed when he saw that it was Taeyeon. Her dark hair was loose, held back only by a thin metal circlet. She wore the barest of nightshirts, cream colored and loose, and only a pair of slippers. She had their newest infant in her arms.
“You walked here wearing that!” Junho protested.
His wife, his princess, his love just laughed at him. “It’s too early in the morning for anyone sane to be awake. You need to sleep, JjunJjunnie.”
Junho rubbed his face in his hands again. “I can’t.”
“That is because you have not tried.” She turned and gave Minho and Key a pointed look, and then shifted the baby in her arms, took Junho’s arm with a firm hand, and led him through the sitting room and into the bedroom.
Junho was almost a foot taller than his wife, stronger, and no less stubborn. But he let himself be led. She stopped only long enough to place little Hyungjoon into the crib in his room, and then continued toward the bed. Junho did not protest when deft fingers unlaced his trousers, and warm hands slid up his chest to remove his tunic.
He shivered when a mouth followed fingers, and then finally put his hands on Taeyeon’s shoulders. “You cannot. You still are not well, the doctor said.”
Taeyeon laughed. “Silly husband,” she said and pushed him to the bed. “There is nothing wrong with my mouth.”
Junho groaned, and as with most things, let his wife do what she wished.
And what he wished. Taeyeon was so very good with her mouth. And he’d been more nervous than she on their first night together, after the craziness of their wedding week. She had taken care of him, she had always taken care of him, and Junho knew that he would never be a good king without a perfect queen by his side. Taeyeon was his perfect queen. Such a pretty queen with such a pretty mouth.
“Such a pretty mouth,” Junho gasped. “Perfect mouth.”
Taeyeon laughed and crawled up on the bed, straddling his knees. “You just like what it can do to you.”
“Yes, so much.”
“That’s three you owe me for when I’m feeling better.”
Junho nodded, eyes hooded, body relaxing after its pleasure.
Taeyeon pressed a kiss to his lips but he was too far gone to return it.
The haze and exhaustion dissipated at the sudden knock on his door.
“Damn them,” Taeyeon said. “You were almost asleep.”
Junho smiled and stood up. “It was a good try. A very very good try.” He leaned over and kissed her lips.
Taeyeon smiled and curled up on the end of his bed.
Junho straightened his breeches on the way to the door. It was one of his guards with standing orders not to bother him when he was with Taeyeon unless it was an emergency. So he knew it was an emergency. But the smile on his face threatened to get larger, not smaller as he opened the door.
It was Minho. He said nothing but handed him a scroll, the seal still intact.
Junho lifted an eyebrow.
Minho cleared his throat. “It was delivered by Leeteuk.”
Junho’s eyes widened. “Is he still here?”
“No. He handed that to Jonghyun on the street and disappeared.”
Junho ripped through the wax pressed with a feather seal. The scroll scratched in the silence as he unrolled it. He did not recognize the handwriting, but it was neat and precise. Obviously written by someone educated.
The messenger is safe, but delayed. Her ladyship is also in our care after a long journey.
Junho flipped the parchment over, but that was it. Two sentences.
Delayed? Junsu was delayed? Why? And her ladyship? The Princess? Jaejoong’s wife? Why was she with them?
Junho rubbed his face with his hand and groaned. What did this mean? He felt the parchment slip from his fingers, and Taeyeon curled her arm around his waist.
“Delayed?” she whispered. “What does that mean?”
“I have no idea. Taemin!”
The guard was there in a moment, brown hair tied up and away from his face. He bowed.
“Go to the trees,” Junho said and moved around Minho. He went to a chest and opened a drawer. Removing a small necklace, he turned and held it out. “This will keep you safe.” Light glinted off the feather etched into the metal medallion.
Taemin took the necklace with another bow.
“I need answers. Not cryptic sentences.”
Taemin nodded. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Junho nodded and then hugged him tightly. He heard a few of the other guards chuckle. “Be safe.”
<|---------<<<
Changmin walked into his treehouse and then attempted to exit immediately, but the door shut behind him, and he was shoved forward by the hilt of a sword. Yunho’s sword. He was lucky it was the hilt and not the blade.
Yoochun and Yoohwan stood on either side of his bed.
Changmin checked and saw that Junsu was still alive, still breathing, still passed out.
Also in the room were Kangin, Hangeng, and Heechul, standing around the space with their arms crossed. Only Yunho had his weapon out. That meant they weren’t going to kill him. Not right away anyway.
“All right, Max,” Heechul said, and Changmin was not surprised that he was going to be in charge of this interrogation. “Talk.”
“About what?”
“Lots of things. But first, why don’t you explain why we have two nobles from warring kingdoms in our stronghold?”
Changmin winced and then mentally cursed because Heechul’s face morphed into a victorious smirk and the Park brothers’ questioning looks turned to glares.
He took a deep breath and schooled his face. “My name is Shim Changmin. My father was--”
“Shim Changho,” Yoochun said and his knife came out of its sheath, and then slammed against the longer blade of Yoohwan’s short sword. The two blades were inches from Junsu’s throat.
The brothers glared at each other, but whatever they were saying with their eyes, no one else knew. Yoohwan eventually won the stare down, and Yoochun moved his knife first, and then Yoohwan did. Neither put their blades away.
Yoochun pointed his knife at Changmin. “You are a callous--”
Heechul held out his hand. “Name calling after we get the entire story, yes?”
Yoochun glared.
Changmin understood. He’d heard more than once how his father had been in charge of the soldiers that had destroyed the village the Park brothers were from, and in the process killing their parents.
“Who is Shim Changho?” Kangin asked.
“The commander of the army for the Kingdom of the Mountains,” Yunho replied. “Fuck, I knew you looked familiar.”
Changmin smirked and shrugged.
“So you’re a noble? An actual noble?”
“Technically? No. My father was publicly beheaded for treason. I lost my noble status after that.”
“Technicalities,” Heechul said with a wave of his hand. “Once a noble ... you’re all a breed apart.”
“What did your father do?” Hangeng asked. “To be charged for treason?”
“Nothing worth being beheaded for,” Changmin answered. “He protested the king sending our army into the trees. The last offensive the Kingdom of the Mountains sent had failed, and a lot of the army was slaughtered. He did not want to lose anymore men and he publicly protested and told the king he was being stupid.”
Changmin knew that most of those here remembered that battle. They had all been children, but Heechul lost his father in that battle and had to resort to prostitution to help feed his mother and sister. Yunho lost his entire family. Changmin was not sure about the other two.
“And you?” Heechul said. “How did you come to live in the woods?”
Changmin sighed. “My father had been preparing me to be a soldier. He taught me to fight and was teaching me combat, swordsmanship, archery. But he was also teaching me peace and politics, how to be in charge without being a killing machine. I was going to be a soldier soon, and then commander, the general of the king’s army, if I worked hard enough. The prince,” he nodded at the bed, “came and warned me that I was going to be killed for having treasonous thoughts. It was only two days after my father had been executed, so I ran with nothing more than a bow on my back and a knife at my hip. I was thirteen.”
“And, what? What now?” Yoochun demanded, his knife waving dangerously close to Junsu’s head again.
Changmin glanced down at him. “The first time we overtook Junsu with his guards, I did not know it was him or what his purpose was until after I opened the carriage door and out popped a prince.”
“I actually remember the look of shock on your face,” Yunho said. “It was the first time you had ever lost focus enough to be injured.”
Changmin nodded. “And I knew I couldn’t kill him. He saved my life. I owed him, so I let him go.”
“And then the next time and the next time, and the one after that,” Yoochun said and rolled his eyes.
Changmin nodded. “There was no way the prince would be traveling through the woods toward the Trees Kingdom without some good reason. So, on his way back to the Kingdom of Mountains, I slipped into their camp, into the carriage and had a talk with him. He told me about the corruption in the kingdom, that I already knew about, but he said that his older brother and Kim Jaejoong were going to bring peace and stop the fighting and the stalemate, but they need to be kings first.”
“By the trees,” Kangin said. “They’re planning to assassinate the kings!”
Heechul hissed. “Lower your voice.”
“Yes, they are, but Jaejoong cannot be the heir or the king until he has a male child and enough gold to claim the title. Junho has his marketplace set up in the Mountains, but Jaejoong has nothing like that and can only get money through the taxing of his people, which he does not want to do, so Junsu brings him Junho’s surplus. And the princess is here because Junsu’s guards betrayed him and kidnapped her, probably to keep her child from being born in the palace, thus removing its claim as heir if it’s a boy.”
“And the goo-goo eyes and kissy faces and the way hearts dance around your head whenever you see Junsu?” Heechul prompted.
Changmin winced again. “I didn’t mean for that to happen at all, but I promise we only see each other when he’s traveling to the Trees Kingdom. I’m not stupid enough to go into the Mountain Kingdom just for ...”
“Sex?” Heechul said.
“We haven’t ... not that it is any of your business, but there hasn’t been time or an opportunity.”
Heechul smirked. “There is always time, and one day in that boy’s carriage is going to be your opportunity.”
“So what is the point?” Hangeng said. “You’re helping them, obviously, but why?”
“Yes, the end goal,” Yunho said. “What is that?”
“The reason why I shouldn’t slit his princely throat right here,” Yoochun growled, lowering his knife toward Junsu’s throat again.
Yoohwan did not stop him.
Changmin swallowed. The sharp edge was too close to Junsu’s neck for comfort. But Yoochun was fast enough that there was no way Changmin could stop him. And Yoohwan would aim for whom was aiming for his brother.
“The end goal has always been the same,” Changmin finally said. “Help the people. We do this because the nobles and the kings are corrupt. It is their goal and my goal to help the people of both kingdoms. It always has been. Their goal is more permanent. With Junho and Jaejoong on the throne, the wars will end, taxes will be lowered, and people can actually work and prosper.”
“And what about us?” Yoochun sneered. “Are we to be pardoned for our crimes? Are the prices on our heads just going to disappear? When you have the prince you want, will you abandon us here?”
Changmin shook his head. “I was not planning on it. Just because two princes, one I have never met and the other I have not seen for fifteen years, say that they are going to be just and noble doesn’t mean they will. And if they don’t spread money to the people quickly enough, then I’ll be doing the exact same thing I am now. It has always been about the people.”
“And your prince? What is he planning on doing?” Yoochun said, holding his knife above Junsu’s neck.
Changmin shrugged. “Why don’t you wait until he wakes up and ask him yourself?”
Heechul snorted, and even Yoohwan smiled a bit. A rare occurrence for the younger man.
Yoochun huffed and flipped his knife, the hilt smacking into his palm. “It’s not worth it. You’ll just have me get you a new mattress.”
Yoochun stalked out of the room, followed by Yoohwan.
Yoohwan paused only long enough to say, “I’ll talk to him,” like that was supposed to make Changmin feel better. It did, he supposed. Yoohwan was the only one Yoochun listened to, but Yoochun was capable of changing his brother’s mind.
Kangin followed the brothers, growling under his breath. Changmin considered himself lucky that the man hadn’t punched him on his way by.
Heechul waltzed after them, placing a kiss on Changmin’s cheek. “You’re adorable when you’re in love, Max.”
Changmin rolled his eyes.
He snagged Yunho’s arm on the way out and pulled his lover with him.
Leaving just Hangeng. He regarded Changmin carefully before saying, “You give your word. We will not be uprooted from here?”
Changmin knew very little about Hangeng. He had his suspicions that Hangeng was from a completely different kingdom and had been out and traveling a long time before joining them almost seven years ago.
Changmin thought about that for a moment and then nodded. It was something he could promise. Or at least he hoped he could promise it. They were still well hidden here. They were still safe from the searches of either king.
Hangeng nodded and said, “If anything does happen, I will slit your throat.”
Changmin smiled. “I think Yoochun will do it first.”
Hangeng walked by him and whispered, “He will wait until you are awake. I will do it when you are asleep.”
Changmin believed him.
Part 5: The Fletching
Part 3: The Anchor
Part 2: The Grip
Part 1: The Shaft
.
Pairing: Changmin/Junsu (Jaejoong/fc, Yunho/Heechul, Yoochun/Yoohwan [incest], Junho/fc)
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Here is another world that I wish existed in a place other than my mind, but it doesn't and I don't own them and I can only place them into this delusion.
Summary: Greed and corruption rule two neighboring kingdoms: The Kingdom of Mountains and the Kingdom of Trees. Two princes are planning a coup. Their success or failure depends on the shadow in the woods, the rogue of the forests, the arrow in the sky.
A/N: Totally inspired by Robin Hood. Can you blame me?
Warning: het
Part 4:
The Limbs
The limbs are the two wooden parts of bow extending from the Riser to the tips.
This chapter contains a wee bit of het.
Junho paced a heavy circuit around his room. All the drapes were closed, cutting off the sunlight from the setting sun. Only two torches dispelled part of the gloom. There were two guards outside his door and two guards inside his door. They waited as day faded to evening.
Jaejoong needed to do something! The Kingdom of Trees held such impossible standards for the Heir Apparent. While they were mostly the same as the Kingdom of Mountains, it was harder to attain.
A wife, an heir, those were not nearly as difficult as building wealth. Junho had set up a marketplace. It thrived with goods and possessions, even in these times of heavy taxes.
But Jaejoong was not allowed. Business and trading were for merchants, not royalty. The only way Jaejoong could get gold was to steal it from the people. But Jaejoong refused. Even as the King of Trees pressed even more taxes upon the people, the tax called the Prince’s Tax remained at the same low amount as it always had. There was no way Jaejoong could get enough money to be heir that way.
Hence, Junho ... and Junsu.
Junho sat heavily in a chair and ran his hands through his hair. His brother had been gone for four days. It would be at least two more before he returned. If he returned. There were too many factors. They did their best to stay hidden, but all it took was one person telling their secret.
He glanced up at Minho and Key, doing their jobs, guarding him. He knew Onew and Taemin were on the other side of the door. He knew they were.
But were they?
It only took one person.
And what about Jonghyun out on an information run? Is that really what he was doing? Or was he spilling their tales to the king?
Junho growled and stood up, pacing back and forth. He trusted his guards. They’d been with him for far too long not to trust them. But what about Junsu’s guards? They’d been with Junsu just as long as Junho’s guards had been with him.
But could they be trusted?
Junho never interacted with them, never had the need to. But if his own guards thought even for a moment that Junsu’s were unfaithful, then they would say something to him.
Unless they were in on it too.
Junho wanted to throw something. He was seeing traitors everywhere as their plot dragged on.
The sun set behind the heavy curtains. Minho lit another torch. Neither told Junho to sleep. He needed to, but every time his eyes shut he saw his brother’s body: captured, tortured, killed.
The door opened, and Junho jerked alert, breath heaving, and to his feet. He only relaxed when he saw that it was Taeyeon. Her dark hair was loose, held back only by a thin metal circlet. She wore the barest of nightshirts, cream colored and loose, and only a pair of slippers. She had their newest infant in her arms.
“You walked here wearing that!” Junho protested.
His wife, his princess, his love just laughed at him. “It’s too early in the morning for anyone sane to be awake. You need to sleep, JjunJjunnie.”
Junho rubbed his face in his hands again. “I can’t.”
“That is because you have not tried.” She turned and gave Minho and Key a pointed look, and then shifted the baby in her arms, took Junho’s arm with a firm hand, and led him through the sitting room and into the bedroom.
Junho was almost a foot taller than his wife, stronger, and no less stubborn. But he let himself be led. She stopped only long enough to place little Hyungjoon into the crib in his room, and then continued toward the bed. Junho did not protest when deft fingers unlaced his trousers, and warm hands slid up his chest to remove his tunic.
He shivered when a mouth followed fingers, and then finally put his hands on Taeyeon’s shoulders. “You cannot. You still are not well, the doctor said.”
Taeyeon laughed. “Silly husband,” she said and pushed him to the bed. “There is nothing wrong with my mouth.”
Junho groaned, and as with most things, let his wife do what she wished.
And what he wished. Taeyeon was so very good with her mouth. And he’d been more nervous than she on their first night together, after the craziness of their wedding week. She had taken care of him, she had always taken care of him, and Junho knew that he would never be a good king without a perfect queen by his side. Taeyeon was his perfect queen. Such a pretty queen with such a pretty mouth.
“Such a pretty mouth,” Junho gasped. “Perfect mouth.”
Taeyeon laughed and crawled up on the bed, straddling his knees. “You just like what it can do to you.”
“Yes, so much.”
“That’s three you owe me for when I’m feeling better.”
Junho nodded, eyes hooded, body relaxing after its pleasure.
Taeyeon pressed a kiss to his lips but he was too far gone to return it.
The haze and exhaustion dissipated at the sudden knock on his door.
“Damn them,” Taeyeon said. “You were almost asleep.”
Junho smiled and stood up. “It was a good try. A very very good try.” He leaned over and kissed her lips.
Taeyeon smiled and curled up on the end of his bed.
Junho straightened his breeches on the way to the door. It was one of his guards with standing orders not to bother him when he was with Taeyeon unless it was an emergency. So he knew it was an emergency. But the smile on his face threatened to get larger, not smaller as he opened the door.
It was Minho. He said nothing but handed him a scroll, the seal still intact.
Junho lifted an eyebrow.
Minho cleared his throat. “It was delivered by Leeteuk.”
Junho’s eyes widened. “Is he still here?”
“No. He handed that to Jonghyun on the street and disappeared.”
Junho ripped through the wax pressed with a feather seal. The scroll scratched in the silence as he unrolled it. He did not recognize the handwriting, but it was neat and precise. Obviously written by someone educated.
The messenger is safe, but delayed. Her ladyship is also in our care after a long journey.
Junho flipped the parchment over, but that was it. Two sentences.
Delayed? Junsu was delayed? Why? And her ladyship? The Princess? Jaejoong’s wife? Why was she with them?
Junho rubbed his face with his hand and groaned. What did this mean? He felt the parchment slip from his fingers, and Taeyeon curled her arm around his waist.
“Delayed?” she whispered. “What does that mean?”
“I have no idea. Taemin!”
The guard was there in a moment, brown hair tied up and away from his face. He bowed.
“Go to the trees,” Junho said and moved around Minho. He went to a chest and opened a drawer. Removing a small necklace, he turned and held it out. “This will keep you safe.” Light glinted off the feather etched into the metal medallion.
Taemin took the necklace with another bow.
“I need answers. Not cryptic sentences.”
Taemin nodded. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Junho nodded and then hugged him tightly. He heard a few of the other guards chuckle. “Be safe.”
<|---------<<<
Changmin walked into his treehouse and then attempted to exit immediately, but the door shut behind him, and he was shoved forward by the hilt of a sword. Yunho’s sword. He was lucky it was the hilt and not the blade.
Yoochun and Yoohwan stood on either side of his bed.
Changmin checked and saw that Junsu was still alive, still breathing, still passed out.
Also in the room were Kangin, Hangeng, and Heechul, standing around the space with their arms crossed. Only Yunho had his weapon out. That meant they weren’t going to kill him. Not right away anyway.
“All right, Max,” Heechul said, and Changmin was not surprised that he was going to be in charge of this interrogation. “Talk.”
“About what?”
“Lots of things. But first, why don’t you explain why we have two nobles from warring kingdoms in our stronghold?”
Changmin winced and then mentally cursed because Heechul’s face morphed into a victorious smirk and the Park brothers’ questioning looks turned to glares.
He took a deep breath and schooled his face. “My name is Shim Changmin. My father was--”
“Shim Changho,” Yoochun said and his knife came out of its sheath, and then slammed against the longer blade of Yoohwan’s short sword. The two blades were inches from Junsu’s throat.
The brothers glared at each other, but whatever they were saying with their eyes, no one else knew. Yoohwan eventually won the stare down, and Yoochun moved his knife first, and then Yoohwan did. Neither put their blades away.
Yoochun pointed his knife at Changmin. “You are a callous--”
Heechul held out his hand. “Name calling after we get the entire story, yes?”
Yoochun glared.
Changmin understood. He’d heard more than once how his father had been in charge of the soldiers that had destroyed the village the Park brothers were from, and in the process killing their parents.
“Who is Shim Changho?” Kangin asked.
“The commander of the army for the Kingdom of the Mountains,” Yunho replied. “Fuck, I knew you looked familiar.”
Changmin smirked and shrugged.
“So you’re a noble? An actual noble?”
“Technically? No. My father was publicly beheaded for treason. I lost my noble status after that.”
“Technicalities,” Heechul said with a wave of his hand. “Once a noble ... you’re all a breed apart.”
“What did your father do?” Hangeng asked. “To be charged for treason?”
“Nothing worth being beheaded for,” Changmin answered. “He protested the king sending our army into the trees. The last offensive the Kingdom of the Mountains sent had failed, and a lot of the army was slaughtered. He did not want to lose anymore men and he publicly protested and told the king he was being stupid.”
Changmin knew that most of those here remembered that battle. They had all been children, but Heechul lost his father in that battle and had to resort to prostitution to help feed his mother and sister. Yunho lost his entire family. Changmin was not sure about the other two.
“And you?” Heechul said. “How did you come to live in the woods?”
Changmin sighed. “My father had been preparing me to be a soldier. He taught me to fight and was teaching me combat, swordsmanship, archery. But he was also teaching me peace and politics, how to be in charge without being a killing machine. I was going to be a soldier soon, and then commander, the general of the king’s army, if I worked hard enough. The prince,” he nodded at the bed, “came and warned me that I was going to be killed for having treasonous thoughts. It was only two days after my father had been executed, so I ran with nothing more than a bow on my back and a knife at my hip. I was thirteen.”
“And, what? What now?” Yoochun demanded, his knife waving dangerously close to Junsu’s head again.
Changmin glanced down at him. “The first time we overtook Junsu with his guards, I did not know it was him or what his purpose was until after I opened the carriage door and out popped a prince.”
“I actually remember the look of shock on your face,” Yunho said. “It was the first time you had ever lost focus enough to be injured.”
Changmin nodded. “And I knew I couldn’t kill him. He saved my life. I owed him, so I let him go.”
“And then the next time and the next time, and the one after that,” Yoochun said and rolled his eyes.
Changmin nodded. “There was no way the prince would be traveling through the woods toward the Trees Kingdom without some good reason. So, on his way back to the Kingdom of Mountains, I slipped into their camp, into the carriage and had a talk with him. He told me about the corruption in the kingdom, that I already knew about, but he said that his older brother and Kim Jaejoong were going to bring peace and stop the fighting and the stalemate, but they need to be kings first.”
“By the trees,” Kangin said. “They’re planning to assassinate the kings!”
Heechul hissed. “Lower your voice.”
“Yes, they are, but Jaejoong cannot be the heir or the king until he has a male child and enough gold to claim the title. Junho has his marketplace set up in the Mountains, but Jaejoong has nothing like that and can only get money through the taxing of his people, which he does not want to do, so Junsu brings him Junho’s surplus. And the princess is here because Junsu’s guards betrayed him and kidnapped her, probably to keep her child from being born in the palace, thus removing its claim as heir if it’s a boy.”
“And the goo-goo eyes and kissy faces and the way hearts dance around your head whenever you see Junsu?” Heechul prompted.
Changmin winced again. “I didn’t mean for that to happen at all, but I promise we only see each other when he’s traveling to the Trees Kingdom. I’m not stupid enough to go into the Mountain Kingdom just for ...”
“Sex?” Heechul said.
“We haven’t ... not that it is any of your business, but there hasn’t been time or an opportunity.”
Heechul smirked. “There is always time, and one day in that boy’s carriage is going to be your opportunity.”
“So what is the point?” Hangeng said. “You’re helping them, obviously, but why?”
“Yes, the end goal,” Yunho said. “What is that?”
“The reason why I shouldn’t slit his princely throat right here,” Yoochun growled, lowering his knife toward Junsu’s throat again.
Yoohwan did not stop him.
Changmin swallowed. The sharp edge was too close to Junsu’s neck for comfort. But Yoochun was fast enough that there was no way Changmin could stop him. And Yoohwan would aim for whom was aiming for his brother.
“The end goal has always been the same,” Changmin finally said. “Help the people. We do this because the nobles and the kings are corrupt. It is their goal and my goal to help the people of both kingdoms. It always has been. Their goal is more permanent. With Junho and Jaejoong on the throne, the wars will end, taxes will be lowered, and people can actually work and prosper.”
“And what about us?” Yoochun sneered. “Are we to be pardoned for our crimes? Are the prices on our heads just going to disappear? When you have the prince you want, will you abandon us here?”
Changmin shook his head. “I was not planning on it. Just because two princes, one I have never met and the other I have not seen for fifteen years, say that they are going to be just and noble doesn’t mean they will. And if they don’t spread money to the people quickly enough, then I’ll be doing the exact same thing I am now. It has always been about the people.”
“And your prince? What is he planning on doing?” Yoochun said, holding his knife above Junsu’s neck.
Changmin shrugged. “Why don’t you wait until he wakes up and ask him yourself?”
Heechul snorted, and even Yoohwan smiled a bit. A rare occurrence for the younger man.
Yoochun huffed and flipped his knife, the hilt smacking into his palm. “It’s not worth it. You’ll just have me get you a new mattress.”
Yoochun stalked out of the room, followed by Yoohwan.
Yoohwan paused only long enough to say, “I’ll talk to him,” like that was supposed to make Changmin feel better. It did, he supposed. Yoohwan was the only one Yoochun listened to, but Yoochun was capable of changing his brother’s mind.
Kangin followed the brothers, growling under his breath. Changmin considered himself lucky that the man hadn’t punched him on his way by.
Heechul waltzed after them, placing a kiss on Changmin’s cheek. “You’re adorable when you’re in love, Max.”
Changmin rolled his eyes.
He snagged Yunho’s arm on the way out and pulled his lover with him.
Leaving just Hangeng. He regarded Changmin carefully before saying, “You give your word. We will not be uprooted from here?”
Changmin knew very little about Hangeng. He had his suspicions that Hangeng was from a completely different kingdom and had been out and traveling a long time before joining them almost seven years ago.
Changmin thought about that for a moment and then nodded. It was something he could promise. Or at least he hoped he could promise it. They were still well hidden here. They were still safe from the searches of either king.
Hangeng nodded and said, “If anything does happen, I will slit your throat.”
Changmin smiled. “I think Yoochun will do it first.”
Hangeng walked by him and whispered, “He will wait until you are awake. I will do it when you are asleep.”
Changmin believed him.
Part 5: The Fletching
Part 3: The Anchor
Part 2: The Grip
Part 1: The Shaft
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