Chapter Text
The night was dark and eerie. A torrent of heavy rain poured down from the heavens and pounded unceasingly on the rooftops and the pavements.
All is silent.
Except for one.
Inside the royal castle’s hidden corridors, a servant walks with hurried steps. Each urgent step an echo of the frantic pounding of her heart.
She covers her mouth with her hand, in fear that someone will hear the heavy breaths she releases from exhaustion. The knuckle clenched tight around her chima skirt is white with terror. She looks back in the dark corridors every few seconds to make sure she isn’t followed.
The rain continues to fall and lightning crashes. She is frightened beyond belief yet she continues on.
Spilling out from the ink black cavern and into a dimly lit hallway, she slinks carefully, her feet making no sound, until she reaches a majestic door. She reaches out and silently puts her hand on the door handles.
If this were any other day, just touching the golden knobs of the door would get her severely punished, and the instinctive inward recoil against the thought of the whip has her pausing.
Lighting crashes.
She takes a deep breath and opens the door silently. She enters the room swiftly and silently, as fleeting as a shadow. Her palms are sweaty and she hastily wipes them against her sleeves.
She rushes to the massive bed at the center of the room and her breath hitches as she beholds the sight in front of her.
If this were any other day, she’d be banished if not hanged for the audacity of glancing at the state of the figure lying on the bed.
But this is no other day. Saying a silent apology, she reaches out with shaking hands and begins to shake the person awake.
“My prince” She whispers, tremulous. “My prince forgive me but you must wake up.”
When the prince shows no sign of alertness, she shakes him harder.
“Prince Seokjin wake up!” She commands and immediately flinches back, barely resisting the instinct to bow low on the ground as the prince startles awake.
Prince Seokjin, heir to the earth kingdom throne, opens his mouth to demand an explanation but stops short, eyes widening at the naked terror on the servants face.
“Your highness.” She says, eyes lowered respectfully, clutching her hands together to stop their shaking. “The councilors have made their move.”
Seokjin’s breath catches and thunder rumbles ominously.
“It’s tonight. You must leave now.”
Lightning flashes outside the window, illuminating the servant sinking deep to bow in tearful apology and the prince’s face, frozen in terror.
----
As the rain tapers off into a drizzle, a figure slips in through the window.
The assassin scans the enormous room high and low but he’s too late.
He lets out a ‘tsk’ of annoyance.
The last of the night’s lightning crashes down showing a fleeting glimpse of the assassin going out the same way he came in, leaving behind a curtain fluttering slightly in his wake--
---and an empty room with no trace of the prince at all.