Brand of the Desert

Secret room

The heavy stone-panel door twisted horribly and slammed shut with a bang, and in that instant our sealed refuge dropped into a suffocating abyss of silence. The blinding midday sunlight that had filled the archive was cut off without a trace in a single moment. This small shelter was hidden perfectly inside the deep ancient foundation stones of the imperial palace, and only a single low flickering oil lamp set atop a small wooden box barely lit the shadows. The space inside was packed tight with thick silk cushions and warm, weighty fur blankets, so a faint cedar scent and the lingering smell of age hung in the air, but the air itself, trapped in there with our breath, had sunk into a stale, heavy stillness.

A low, fearful tremor pushed through the thick stone walls, racing along the floorboards and violently into the depths of my chest. The imperial palace’s vast rebellion was raging madly just beyond that door. We could hear it all clearly: the distant, dull crash of glass lattices shattering, the heavy clang of iron plates colliding, and the sharp, distinct sounds of thousands of enemy arrows battering the outer courtyard like a cruel hailstorm.

At that moment, a wave of sharp, white-hot, searing pain seized the depths of my lower abdomen without mercy, and my lungs froze completely as my ragged, shallow breath caught sharply at the back of my throat.

“Your Majesty!”

The two maids assigned to my private quarters, the ones I trusted most, threw themselves onto the fur bedding beside me in one breath. Their faces were ashen with pure fear, but their movements were astonishingly quiet and perfectly precise. One maid hurriedly slid a thick silk cushion behind my neck to support my head, while the other, as if she meant to become a sturdy, solid anchor in this tiny hidden room, seized my hand firmly in the space of a single heartbeat.

As waves of violent labor pain tore through the center of my womb, I carefully rolled onto the heavy fur blanket, curling my small body tightly. With Hyunjin not by my side, my fingers desperately dug into the maid’s palm, and under the dim oil-lamp light every knuckle on my hand turned white. Cold sweat spread across my skin. I clenched my lips shut and held back every scream, keeping not even a single cry from leaking beyond those stone walls. If even one soldier from the rebel faction were wandering near the archive shelves and heard the slightest groan, our position would be exposed in an instant.

Inside this narrow, closed space, the steady texture of every light, quiet breath I exhaled echoed unbelievably loudly. All my thoughts were on Hyunjin. The last desperate promise he had made, thundering grandly through the darkness, kept circling in my mind. He was out beyond that door right now, fighting alone against dozens of elite assassins in raw, blinding fury, wearing nothing but the emperor’s golden robes, to open a path toward this hidden sacred bloodline.

Suddenly, a huge, ear-splitting crash boomed through the stone wall—a clear sound of a thick wooden pillar standing right beside the bookshelves inside the archive being shattered completely. The massive shock made the little oil lamp sway violently, and irregular shadows began to dance fiercely and chaotically across the stone ceiling. The battlefield was no longer confined to the courtyard. The enemy had finally broken all the way into the inner archive. Beyond that maelstrom, we could faintly hear Hyunjin’s deep, commanding shouts as he led the loyal shield soldiers according to the counterattack formation I had mapped out perfectly for him.

I lifted one hand and calmly pressed my palm against my belly beneath the wide, rumpled crimson silk layers of my hanbok, feeling another fierce ridge of labor pain swell and tighten beneath it. This pain was like a blinding wall, threatening to drag my consciousness straight down into the dirt floor, but thanks to the firm, unwavering pressure of the maids gripping my hand, I was able to keep my footing and hold steady on the floorboards.

“The front line is still holding and hasn’t collapsed, Your Majesty.” The maid holding my hand whispered in a hoarse, low voice, her words pushing into the space right by my ear through the cruel clang of steel outside, and tears brimmed in her eyes. She gripped my fingers even more tightly. “The general... His Majesty the Emperor will surely break through this door. Did His Majesty not promise he would come back to Your Majesty?”

Yunseo is coming out. In the midst of intersecting gunfire, and inside this cold stone prison, only the three of us were the ones truly preserving the secret of this sacred bloodline intact. As the whole room shook hard from a massive explosion heard far away, I trembled with a rising exhaustion and forced my jaw into a firm, straight line.

“Please win this war, Hyunjin.” I murmured softly toward the dim oil-lamp light, and my voice, carrying raw, emotional, extravagant longing and aching desire, spread through this narrow refuge in ragged fragments. As soon as the next wave of labor pain swallowed my entire body, I planted my feet hard as if bracing myself against the huge stone wall and gripped the maids’ forearms firmly. “Please win... and come back to us.”