Archive of Our Own ^beta

There used to be a bridge into the forest.

Nobody could quite agree on what it had once looked like, or where it had been, but everyone agreed that, once upon a time, you could enter the forest on foot.

Nowadays, the safest way to enter the forest was by boat – row from the capital until you reach the first trees of the forest, and then continue to row until you had almost passed the last of the trees, as this was the only place where the forest riverbank wasn’t too steep to scale. It was a day’s hard rowing, yet few people would ever bother with the trip – according to official records, nobody lived in the forest.

And yet, if you chose to enter the forest, you would find a well-maintained path, with the oldest trees you had ever seen, their gnarled barks curving around the paths as though they had the suppleness of trees hundreds of years younger. No matter how far you chose to follow this soft, dirt path, you could always hear the river flowing behind you, and the birds chirping above.

If you’re lucky, and choose to enter the forest at just the right time, when the sunbeams shine through the leaves and turn everything a bright, sunny-yolk yellow, you might just see a man on a bicycle, humming under his breath.

Kim Namjoon cycles through the forest with the ease of someone who trusts both the route and the transport – when he suddenly brakes, it is with the surety of someone who has ridden this route hundreds of times before.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, hopping off his bike and laying it down gently in the grass at the side of the path. The grass is long, verdant, and chock full of wildflowers in so many colours that, if you had never seen grass before, you would be hard-pressed to describe it as being ‘green’. “The greenhouse took longer than I thought. Have I missed anything?”

To the untrained ear, Namjoon would be talking aloud. However, Namjoon had trained under the best Witch he knew – his mother – so he can hear the trees when they reply;

“The morning pines… Wings have taken a pinecone across the rush of lifeforce.” The older trees always talked like this – all as one, in low, murmuring voices, and, sometimes, practically indecipherably. Not that these trees minded if Namjoon took a moment to work out what they were saying, of course, as they often took a while to formulate their responses to Namjoon. The newer trees, the ones planted with Namjoon’s own hand, tended to speak more like people – faster, a little more discordant, using a lot more human words for things.

“Weren’t you saying the other day that the eastern pines were getting a little crowded?” Namjoon asks eventually, once he has worked out what the trees want to tell him. “Let them spread out a little, even if it is across the river.”

“We will not be able to feel them,” the trees reply.

“I can always cross over the river if you need me to pass on any messages,” Namjoon points out.

“You will turn to dirt very soon, and we will not. This is not a long-term solution.”

Namjoon lays down in the grass and contemplates this, in his opinion, very grim take on his own mortality. He usually tunes the grass out – it’s all over the forest, very chatty, and usually has very little of value to say – but this close he can hear it chanting “turn to dirt, turn to dirt, turn to dirt”.

He sits up again quickly.

“Okay, what do you want me to do?” Namjoon asks the trees.

“Nothing – some things, no matter how we feel, require no action.”

“Well,” Namjoon says, feeling a little disheartened over the fact that, for now at least, he can’t help these trees. “What else have I missed?”

Namjoon’s daily schedule goes like this:

He wakes at the crack of dawn, when the sun creeps across his face. He sleeps in the cottage’s greenhouse, because that’s where the neediest plants are – before eating, before drinking, before tending to any of his own needs, Namjoon asks the greenhouse plants how they are.

Provided that everything in the greenhouse runs smoothly, which it very rarely does, he aims to cycle over to the glade trees with his breakfast before the sun has fully risen. This is where most, but not all, of the oldest trees are, and although they need much less from Namjoon, they tend to take the longest to talk to – by the time the trees have finished telling him about every major branch fall, every incremental weather change that has caused a particular tree to leaf out early or late, every tree that has passed from maturity into anciency…

Well. Suffice to say that Namjoon has never managed to pack a breakfast big enough to stop his stomach rumbling by the end of their speech. It’s amazing just how much a forest can do in the hours you’re sleeping.

After the glade trees have caught him up on the forest, Namjoon hops back onto his bike and cycles along the paths. This is where the grass, which has so little of worth to say, really shines – as he cycles, the grass will grow and recede, showing and hiding paths, depending on where the forest wants him to go.

Today, the forest is taking him right to the river, which makes him frown. He doesn’t often have dealings with the river plants – they’re hardy by nature, and although he will occasionally ask the algae to pass on a message to the cattails across the river, the river plants rarely ask anything of him in return.

As soon as he appears out of the forest and at the riverbank, peering over the bank’s high edge and into the water below, the algae immediately start shouting at him and, unlike the concordant voices of the glade trees, the different species and subspecies of algae below mean that the effect is so disorienting that Namjoon has to take a few steps back from the bank.

“Calm down! Can you all at least try to speak one at a time?” He yells, rubbing his temples.

“In the place where the humans gather-”

“-quickly approaching-”

“-the ground uprooted and filled with humans-”

“The capital city,” a booming voice says, making the algae fall silent. Namjoon turns to face the oldest tree in the forest, a creaking weeping willow curving tall over the river. Unlike the glade trees, which sometimes get a little haughty over their age and speak in riddles to show off their intelligence, the weeping willow is wise enough to know that if it wants something from Namjoon, it’s quicker to speak to him in words he can understand. “The people there are dying.”

“What?” Namjoon asks sharply. “Why?”

“-loud-”

“-tearing us from our home-”

“It is not like with plants, where we know the cause of our deaths as they come,” the willow explains. “The humans in the city do not know what is killing them, and so are trying to use plants as medicines, which is not working.”

“Which a Wood Witch would be able to tell them,” Namjoon says, a little spitefully despite himself.

“You could tell them,” says the willow.

“No. Absolutely not,” Namjoon says, holding his hands up. “It’s not my fault the Wood Witches left the city.”

“You chose to leave,” the willow says.

“Because I was no help to anyone there – what good is a Wood Witch in a city with no plants?” Namjoon bursts, pacing up and down. “I’m helpful here, I’m good here. It’s not like with plants,” he says, echoing the willow’s earlier statement. “You tell me what’s wrong, I tell you what I think will help, and you take my advice. With people, especially those people, they won’t listen, even if I tell them their medicines aren’t helping!”

“So you will not help, even if they come to you directly?” The willow asks.

Namjoon stops pacing. “What do you know?”

“The cattails,” the willow says; Namjoon looks across the river where, on the opposite bank, the cattails sway cheerfully in the breeze. “They say there are humans on the river.”

“They’re not coming to me,” Namjoon says confidently. “No one knows I’m here.”

Namjoon’s daily schedule continues as normal, despite the burdening knowledge of the death in the capital. He cycles back to his cottage, makes his lunch, and takes it outside to sit in the garden.

It’s time to talk to the laurel and catmint.

“We heard a whisper,” the laurel says, almost as soon as he sits down. A new Wood Witch would be inclined to believe the laurel was prophetic – it always seems to know what will happen, and when, and why.

Namjoon knows that it’s nothing of the sort. Laurel is just incredibly gossipy.

“Oh?” Namjoon says anyway, humouring them.

“From the grasses.”

“You know not to listen to the grass,” Namjoon says, pointing his cutlery at the laurel.

“They say humans approach the forest,” the laurel continues. “That they are troubled, and you will not help them.”

“The grass doesn’t know what it’s talking about,” Namjoon says around a mouthful of food. He swallows. “It’s half-listening to things again, that’s not what’s happening.”

“The human will not help?” The catmint says lowly. “How unexpected.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes. The catmint is argumentative anyway, but has been especially so since Namjoon accidentally let slip that the only reason he keeps it around is so that it can keep aphids away from the rosebush. Catmint is also the only plant he’s ever known that’s picked up sarcasm.

“The people on the river aren’t coming to see me, the algae’s just assumed that because the last person that came this way alongside the river was me. And I’m not not helping, the people in the city don’t need my help.” He finishes off the last of his lunch, stands up, and approaches the rosebush.

The roses have never spoken to him before, and he doubts they ever will – he thinks they don’t know how to talk but, given how they’d started in life, he hopes they’re at least happier than they were. They seem to like him, at any rate. Within the last year they’ve started flowering again; tentative, soft petals that remind Namjoon of apricots, or segments of a tangerine.

He hums to them as he checks their leaves, apologises as he prunes back a few of the stems, and then sits down next to the bush and places his hand on the soil.

The roots underneath still feel bruised in a way he doesn’t think he can ever fully fix, no matter how much he prunes the stems or checks the leaves or fertilises the soil. However, they’re humming the same tune Namjoon had just been singing to them.

“I would help if I could,” Namjoon whispers, a little guilty. “I would. But there’s nothing I can do for that city.”

The roses continue to hum.

After lunch, Namjoon will usually go into the cottage and pull out the compendium. It had belonged to the same Wood Witch who had lived in the cottage before Namjoon – on the day he had arrived in the forest and found this cottage, he had found the book, a detailed account of every plant in the forest.

It had been outdated when Namjoon had read it hungrily that first time, desperate for knowledge after being starved of it in the city. That was understandable, though, given that, while the cottage had stood empty, the forest outside had continued to grow and die and thrive.

Recently, he’s worked up the courage to add his own notes around the notes of the previous Witch. He’d found a solitary hellebore flower on his bike ride that morning – when he’d approached to introduce himself, it had promptly encouraged him to eat it, so he has no qualms with adding it to the section on poisonous plants, squeezing it in just above the previous Witch’s entry for hemlock – ‘If spotted, remove from the forest with protective gloves, mask and earmuffs; causes frenzy and stupefaction.’ For hellebore, he writes ‘probably poisonous – not very persuasive, but it tried its best’.

The compendium also provides clues on what he, as a Wood Witch, could actually be doing with his Magic. He’s very good at talking to plants and offering them help, but it’s only upon reading the compendium that he’d learned that he could ask the plants to do things for him, too. It talks about how messages can be passed between Wood Witches up to hundreds of miles away, provided there are roots in the ground between them; how swarms of insects can be called down through the scents of flowers; how, if a Witch was so inclined, they could ask plants to release hallucinogens, narcotics, even poisons.

Namjoon sees no reason why he would ever need any of these abilities, but it’s nice to know the option is there.

By the time he’s finished studying with the compendium for the day it’s usually coming up to evening, which is when it’s time to visit the vegetable garden.

It’s the only place in the whole forest, aside from his cottage, that’s utterly silent. Unlike the roses, which Namjoon thinks should be able to talk but can’t, he’s pretty sure the vegetables have never been able to talk. He doesn’t understand it – he can tell that they’re alive just by looking at them, but unlike every other plant he’s ever met, when he places his hand on the soil to feel their roots there’s just-

Nothing.

It’s what he imagines it would be like if he wasn’t a Wood Witch, that cavernous silence, but if he thinks about why the vegetables don’t talk he tends to overthink the ethics of it all, so he tries to shut off his brain and harvest only what he needs.

After he’s made dinner, eaten it, and done the few household chores he has to do, he returns to the greenhouse.

Despite the more extensive care they need from him – he’d had to create an intricate system of ventilation and window shutters within the greenhouse, so it was now less a greenhouse and more a glorified shed - the greenhouse housed some of his favourite plants in the forest – the purple and silver inchplant, which had been relegated to the greenhouse after it kept overtaking everything in the garden, and needed to be pinched back apace with its eager-to-please growing speed; the gardenia, which Namjoon had said, multiple times, would probably be just as happy, if not happier, outdoors, in the garden, but it squealed and cried every time Namjoon attempted to move it; the Venus flytrap, whose roots had been too sensitive to the rain when it lived outdoors, so Namjoon now had to handfeed it like the world’s fussiest baby; and, Namjoon’s personal favourite, the smeraldo flower.

It had been so small when he had arrived in the forest, barely a sprout pushing out of the soil, so tiny that Namjoon had originally thought it was a solitary blade of grass growing through the ground outside of the cottage. It was the first plant he had watched grow from sprout to flower and, although it probably didn’t need to stay in the greenhouse, had probably never needed to be watched so carefully in the greenhouse to begin with, he doesn’t have the heart to move it.

“Hungry,” the flytrap whines as soon as he steps into the greenhouse.

“Are you?” Namjoon says, closing the door behind him. “Are you really, or are you just bored?”

“…hungry,” the flytrap says mutinously. While the catmint is the only plant that has learned sarcasm from Namjoon, the flytrap is the only one that has learnt to lie, and will only do so if it feels like it should be fed.

Namjoon lays down on the greenhouse floor to watch the sky shift from blue to pale yellow as the sun sinks lower. The trees outside, the ones who had once shaded the greenhouse have shifted their branches for him over the last few years, so he has a clear, unimpeded view.

He doesn’t have electricity here in the forest so, once it falls dark, and the majority of the plants fall dormant, Namjoon usually falls asleep, ready to repeat the whole cycle again the next day.

There are chains around his wrists and ankles.

He remembers outrunning them, but he’s been caught, and it’s dark, and the stone walls are cold and lifeless, and there’re no plants for miles, no one for miles, he’s alone-

There’s a tug around his ankle and he jolts awake, gasping.

The inchplant, despite having been pinched back the day before, has forced itself to grow in order to reach Namjoon; it’s wrapped itself around his ankle.

“Something’s happening,” the smeraldo flower says as the inchplant, seeing that Namjoon is now awake, loosens its grip. “Outside.” The smeraldo is the only plant in the greenhouse which has been planted in the same soil as the forest outside, because it’s the only plant that Namjoon trusts to accurately relay messages to him if something’s happening in the forest.

“Fire?” Namjoon asks worriedly. It’s only happened once since he’s been here – lightning had struck a tree in the northern part of the forest. By the time he had gotten there, the rain had doused the flames, but the struck tree had already died, the surrounding trees had been badly burned, and Namjoon lives in constant fear that fire will come to the forest again.

“People.”

“Where?” Namjoon does not own the forest, and would feel insulted if it was suggested to him. However, it does still feel like his home is being trespassed on.

“In the glade. They seek the Witch.”

“No one knows I’m here,” Namjoon says, glancing worriedly at the door to the greenhouse.

“They seek the Witch,” the smeraldo flower repeats. “They carry metal, and fire.”

This is what prompts Namjoon to meet the people in the forest – he remembers his mother sitting him down, gently explaining to him that, in the cycle of five Magics, Wood fed Fire, and Metal could overcome Wood. That, when the cycle had been balanced, no one had had anything to fear.

That these people had come looking for a Wood Witch, and carried Metal and Fire with them…

Well. It wasn’t a good thing.

He cycles to the glade, biting his lip as he goes. He’s got a theory about why somebody might be looking for him – he just hopes he can convince them not to harm the forest once they’ve taken him.

There are three of them.

Namjoon has often wondered how he would feel if he ever saw another person again – now he knows he’s not happy to see these people, although he thinks that’s because they’re carrying fire through the forest.

Admittedly, when the smeraldo had told him they carried fire and metal, he had been imagining great cauldrons of fire, heavy machinery, weapons designed to hurt and maim and kill. These three people are carrying a torch each, and while he, as a human, doesn’t fancy his chances against the swords they each carry at their hip, he doubts they could do much damage to the forest with a sword apiece.

All three are wearing satgat, pulled low over their faces; one of them meanders back and forth along the path, while the other sticks close to the third’s side.

“These trees are huge!” The wanderer says, placing his hand carefully on one of the tree’s trunks. Namjoon can just about see his face from where he’s hiding behind his own tree – he looks earnestly excited. “I wonder how long they’ve been here for.”

“The only way to know for certain would be to cut them down,” one of them says; Namjoon has to physically recoil from the cold drip of revulsion that runs through each of the nearby trees and into his bones. Unfortunately, the move brings his foot down on a fallen branch, its snap echoing like a firework.

“Show yourself!”

“Maybe it’s the Witch!”

Namjoon considers running, but it’s obvious these people are looking for him – they’ll just chase him down, probably uncaring of the destruction they’ll leave in their wake.

He steps out into the glade, hands raised defensively. “I’ll come quietly. Just – don’t hurt the forest?”

The shortest of the three lifts his satgat.

(His mother had once taken him to see the Fire Witch Glass Blowers, who would craft beautiful, delicate sculptures of people for commissions. The portraits would be a bewitching mix of the rigidity of glass and the softness of a cheek, the strength of a jaw and the potential for crystal to shatter.

This man looks like that.)

“Are you the Wood Witch?” He asks.

“I’m… A Wood Witch,” Namjoon admits. “I’m Namjoon.”

“See?” The one who’d been meandering around the path runs over claps his hands on Namjoon’s shoulders. He looks Namjoon up and down, head tilting consideringly. “You’re a lot younger than I thought you’d be, though. How old are you?”

“24,” Namjoon says warily. “And I’m… Sorry?”

“Don’t be! I just kind of figured you’d have a long, grey beard or something.” The man brightens. “Hey, can I call you hyung?”

“Um-”

“Taehyung,” the third man says, sheathing his sword. “Let the man breathe.”

“Right!” Taehyung says, taking two steps back before rocking forward onto his toes. “So, I’m Taehyung. Sorry, I’m just really excited – my great-grandmother was a Wood Witch, and my grandmother’s told me so many stories about it – are you talking to any plants right now?”

“N-no,” Namjoon says – Taehyung talks faster than any of the plants he’s talked with in the last ten years. “I’m listening to you.”

“What’re they saying right now?”

“They’re wary.” This is a gross understatement – the older trees are remembering men with metal axes, which is making the younger trees cry. Namjoon can’t help it – he scowls pointedly at the beautiful man. “When you talked about cutting trees down to tell how old they are, it scared them.”

“Do you know who you’re-”

“Seokjin,” the man says, putting his hand on top of Seokjin’s to prevent him from withdrawing his sword. “Obviously he doesn’t.” The man then nods to Namjoon. “My apologies. Can you tell them none of us are here to cut down trees?”

“They can hear you,” Namjoon says. The trees are still unhappy; Namjoon sighs. “Can we go back to the cottage? I can’t concentrate when the trees keep crying.”

“You have accommodation here?” The still unnamed man asks, obviously surprised.

“I don’t live in a tree, if that’s what you’re asking,” Namjoon says. “Come on, it’s this way.”

As Namjoon leads the way, Taehyung immediately attaches himself to Namjoon’s side. As he talks, Namjoon quickly grows used to the speed of human speech (or, perhaps, the speed of Taehyung’s speech), but the sudden changes in topic are taking a little longer to become accustomed to.

“-Jimin and I were at the Academy together – well, technically I’m still at the Academy – so that’s when I told him the stories my grandmother used to tell me about Wood Witches. He’s now the Prince’s swordsmanship tutor, so he’s the one that put the idea in his head to find a Wood Witch, Jimin’s so smart-”

“Why do you need a Wood Witch?” Namjoon asks. “And why come all the way out here to find one?”

Taehyung gives him a look. “This is the closest forest to the Palace, and my grandmother always says, ‘Where else do you think the Wood Witches have gone, but to the trees?’”

“They’re all gone?” Namjoon asks. True, he had left the city feeling as though he was the only Wood Witch left, but as he’d grown older he’d always just assumed that was a feeling filtered through the lens of being a teenager.

“Well, yeah. It’s not like it is here, there aren’t many plants and stuff, except in the Palace, so they’ve all just…” He spreads his hands uselessly, and then looks around. “I did sort of hope there’d be more of you here.”

“No, it’s just me, so whatever you need a Wood Witch for, I’ll have to do, I suppose,” Namjoon says. He can hear Seokjin and his permanent companion whispering behind him, which is in stark contrast to the insulted silence of the trees, furious at him for taking humans deeper into the forest.

“If it’s just you, aren’t you lonely? Although, you can talk to plants, and there’s a lot of plants here, so have you ever been lonely?” He’s not sure if it’s deliberate, but Namjoon can’t help but notice that Taehyung seems to be avoiding the question of just why they’re looking for a Wood Witch.

“Everyone gets lonely, I think,” Namjoon says distractedly, trying to find a path through twisting branches that hadn’t been there that morning. When one of the branches suddenly swings out, Namjoon almost ducks before he remembers that the men behind him will either not dodge in time or will mindlessly cut the branch with their swords, so he takes the hit with his arm. “Stop it – the quicker you let them through, the quicker they’ll leave.” The branch recoils, patting Namjoon’s arm apologetically as it goes.

The path is much clearer after that – almost too clear, with the grass receding to almost comical levels, as though worried it’s impeding the tread of their boots.

“Well, this is me,” Namjoon says nonsensically as the cottage comes into view, as though this solitary cottage in the forest might belong to someone else.

“It’s nice!” Taehyung says, beaming.

Namjoon’s never really thought about it from an outsider’s perspective – when he’d arrived, he’d just been grateful to find a place in relatively good condition with enough residual Magic from the last Witch who’d lived there to keep him alive long enough for him to figure out how to keep himself alive.

He thinks it’s nicer than the house he and his mother had lived in in the City, but then, he’s biased – the cottage is small but has two stories, and he has no idea what colour the walls are, or even what they’re made of, because they’re covered in a dense thicket of ivy. The front door’s green, with a big, circular window in it that could probably do with a clean, because he’s pretty sure the glass isn’t also supposed to be green. Above the front door is the door leading out from his bedroom, onto a little balcony covered in the succulents he’s trying to propagate, which had previously been taking up all of his counter space in the kitchen.

If you didn’t know a Wood Witch lived there, you’d be able to make a very quick guess.

Namjoon turns to look at the three men. “Now, can you please tell me why you’re here?”

Both Taehyung and Seokjin turn to look at the third man, who straightens his posture under their gaze. “There is a sickness in the city.”

Namjoon nods. “The algae mentioned it.”

“The algae – right, yes. Well, we don’t know what’s causing it, or how to cure it. Our doctors are at their wits end.” He looks at Namjoon expectantly.

“Isn’t there a monarchy? What are they doing to help?” Namjoon asks; surprisingly, the man laughs.

“This.”

It takes Namjoon a second to parse the meaning of what he’s just said. Then he remembers that the King has one son, who’s probably about this man’s age, and it would explain Seokjin’s horrified expression when Namjoon had been rude to him earlier, and oh, no-

Namjoon drops to one knee. “Y-your Highness! I swear, I didn’t mean any disrespect-”

The Prince waves a hand, looking a little sheepish. “No, I know. I kind of assumed you didn’t know who I was, so I… Enjoyed it for a bit, possibly at your expense.” He bows his head a little. “My apologies.”

“His Royal Highness came in search of a Wood Witch, in the hopes that they’d be able to narrow down some possibilities for cures,” Seokjin says, prominently emphasising the Prince’s full title. “We found you.”

“Um, I’m not sure if I can be much help,” Namjoon says evasively. “All I can do is talk to plants, I don’t have any Magical medicine abilities.”

Taehyung frowns. “My grandmother told me that her mother could recite every medicinal quality of every plant she ever spoke to.”

“Then your great-grandmother was a very accomplished woman,” Namjoon says, blanching. “All I’ve got is a book left by the previous occupant of this cottage, and a few of my own notes – but it’s stuff like, what kind of sunlight each plant needs, and what their personalities are like, I don’t know how to cure diseases-”

“Namjoon,” the Prince says softly. “We don’t know where else to turn. Nobody has any idea what’s causing this, and at least if you come to the Palace you can rule out what we’re trying. My mother’s come down with it, and my father started feeling unwell yesterday, and – please.”

Namjoon violently remembers being fourteen, hearing his mother wail behind a locked door as the doctors told her, mouths pressed to the keyhole, that they couldn’t come in to treat her, wasn’t there anyone who could look after the boy?

“All right,” Namjoon says, if only to remind himself that he’s not still stuck in that oppressively silent house. “But, Your Highness, I’m not good at this. I’m not Taehyung’s great-grandmother.”

The Prince smiles weakly. “I’ll take what I can get.”

First thing’s first, then, he needs to move the inchplant out of the Greenhouse.

“I know you’re saying you’ll be good,” Namjoon says, carrying its pot in his arms. “But it’s not a case of being good or bad – you’ll grow too quickly and choke out everyone else in there. I don’t even know how long I’ll be gone, you could end up busting open the Greenhouse, for all I know.”

He’s hoping that, because he’s keeping the inchplant in its pot, it won’t grow too wildly in his absence – as it is, he’s had to put it in the furthest corner of the garden, with only the grass and the shade of the hawthorn for company.

The other plants in the greenhouse should, hopefully, be okay for the time that he’s away. He’s set up the watering system to pull from the rainwater collectors outside, which he’s also filled just in case there’s a freak drought.

“I will starve,” the flytrap says as Namjoon moves around the greenhouse, checking that all the pipes and sprinklers are working as they should.

“No, you won’t,” Namjoon says, faux cheerfully. “You don’t even need to eat meat, did you know that? You’ll only starve if you’re deprived of light. Also, where did you even learn that word?”

“Famish. Malnourish. Waste away.”

“When will you return?” The gardenia asks mournfully. “It gets so cold in the winter.”

“It’ll be cold in the winter whether or not I’m here,” Namjoon says, sighing – these plants aren’t making it any easier to leave. “Tell you what – I’ll tell the algae what I’m up to, who can tell the willow, who can get the message to the smeraldo, okay?”

“…No,” the gardenia says, in a way that lets Namjoon know that yes, that’s fine, the gardenia’s just being dramatic.

He crouches in front of the smeraldo.

“Will you be okay? I can see about taking you with me…” He trails off uncertainly, already aware, as soon as he says this, that the logistics of carrying around a smeraldo flower with him everywhere would be a nightmare.

“You have cared for me well – I will be all right,” the smeraldo says. “Will you be okay?”

“I can always come back,” Namjoon says, if only to avoid answering the question.

Next, he needs to harvest as many of the vegetables as he can, and put them in storage. It’s while he’s finishing this, carrying a basket of vegetables back to the cottage, that he spots the Prince, sitting cross legged in front of the rosebush.

It’s the first time he’s seen him alone – Seokjin and Taehyung had offered to pack up his belongings in the cottage when Namjoon had mentioned what he needed to do with the plants before he could leave. The Prince, meanwhile, is positively staring at the rosebush. It doesn’t look as though he’s lost in thought; his eyes are incredibly focused, staring at each individual rose, leaf, and stem, as though he’s trying to memorise it.

“…Your Highness?” Namjoon says warily, approaching him, he realises, in the same way he’d been taught to approach horses – speak softly, walk towards them at an angle. The next step, he’d been taught, was to gently touch a horse on the shoulder; the thought of reaching out and suddenly touching the Prince almost makes him laugh, before he remembers that touching a member of the Royal Family is probably treason.

The Prince barely spares him a glance, he’s so focused. “This rosebush…” He says, reaching his fingertips to graze one of the leaves. “It’s very beautiful.”

“Do you like roses, Your Highness?” Namjoon asks politely.

“Yes,” the Prince replies. He cups his fingers, very gently, around one of the flowers. “Since I was young.”

The rest of the forest is still wary of the Prince, even though Namjoon is starting to think that his comment about cutting down a tree had been purely to share a fact, and not an indirect threat. The roses, however, are humming.

It’s not a song Namjoon’s taught them – he wonders if they’re making it up in an attempt to communicate something. It sounds sad, but the roses don’t feel sad. In fact, they feel…

“Guilty?” Namjoon asks them, utterly bewildered.

“Hmm?” The Prince blinks up at him, his face boyish for a second, before it closes off behind regal serenity again. “You’re not talking to me, sorry, I forgot. What are the roses saying?”

“They don’t talk like other plants do, they never have – not to me, anyway,” Namjoon says, squatting down beside the Prince and setting the basket of vegetables down between them. “But I think… They feel guilty about something?”

“Plants feel such complex emotions?” The Prince asks curiously.

“It depends on the plant, and it also depends on how much contact they’ve had with humans,” Namjoon explains. “Some plants will make an effort to communicate something to you in a way you understand, and others are just assholes. Um, pardon my language.”

The Prince waves his hand, eyes lighting up. “Do they talk to you all the time? How do you concentrate in a forest full of plants?”

“It’s not like they’re talking to me, it’s more like… If you’re in a crowded room, but everyone’s talking to each other quietly, you can still concentrate on certain conversations if you need to…” He trails off awkwardly.

The Prince, however, seems genuinely interested when he asks, “Tell me more about the-” He lets out an undignified snort. “Asshole plants?”

“The catmint,” Namjoon says immediately, turning around to point the plant out to the Prince, who turns obligingly. “I mean, poisonous plants can be tricky, trying to persuade you to eat them, but the catmint’s just mean for the sake of it.”

“Really?” The Prince says, surprised. “But it looks so… Soft and gentle.”

The catmint laughs. “Hear that, human? Somebody who knows how to appreciate me, if only they could have come to this forest instead of you-”

“That’s because it looks like lavender,” Namjoon says immediately, making the catmint shriek indignantly. “Lavender is soft and gentle, catmint just likes to cause problems on purpose. Which reminds me…” He stands, goes to the shed next to the cottage, and comes back with wooden fencing he had painstakingly attached to rope he had made himself.

“No!” The catmint wails. “Barbaric! Monster!”

“What’re you doing?” The Prince asks, his soft, calm voice completely at odds with the hysterical yowling of the catmint.

“Catmint spreads if it’s left unattended for too long,” Namjoon says, neatly setting up the fence around the catmint. “This should keep it contained, at least until I get back. Alternatively, I could prune you right back?” This is said pointedly to the catmint. “Or uproot you and put you in a pot, your choice.”

“I hate you,” the catmint says, sounding so much like Namjoon as a young teenager that he snorts with laughter. “You are mocking me.”

“What’s left to do?” The Prince asks; there’s a small smile on his face.

“Just need to put these vegetables into storage and then I’ll be done,” Namjoon says, picking up the basket. He pauses, resting the basket on his hip. “How long will the journey to the city take? Do you need to rest here before we go?” When he had made the journey himself, a decade before, he’d gone by bike, following the river as the cattails egged him on. He had left the city before dawn, and even though he had only taken short, panicked breaks, it had still taken him until late into the night to reach the forest.

“We left at sundown,” the Prince says thoughtfully. “I’d like to rest before we leave, but-”

“But you need to be back before people realise you’re gone, Your Highness,” Seokjin says, appearing so suddenly that Namjoon jumps, almost sending the vegetables flying. “If we leave soon, we can hopefully get back into the city at the same time as the morning commuters, we’ll be less noticeable in a crowd. You can hopefully get some rest on the boat, if you’re worried.”

“I was worried, but about you, actually,” the Prince says, frowning up at Seokjin. He sighs, and then stands up. “Fine. Shall we go now?”

“Just need to-” Namjoon jerks the basket of vegetables.

“Right, yes.” The Prince says, nodding.

Namjoon has a few cool boxes, left behind by the previous occupant, which will hopefully keep the vegetables reasonably fresh. By the time he gets back out to the garden, the three of them are stood there; Taehyung is holding a crate that Namjoon doesn’t own, but he recognises that the sleeves and pant legs trailing out of the top belong to him.

“You don’t have much stuff, huh?” Taehyung says, jolting the Prince and Seokjin out of their muttered conversation.

“I don’t really need a lot out here,” Namjoon says, offering to take the box from Taehyung, who just jerks it away.

“Well, if you run out of clothes, I’m sure it’ll be easy to find you some new ones,” Taehyung replies. He watches as Namjoon picks up his bicycle from where it’s been resting against the garden fence. “I haven’t ridden a bike in years. I mean, to be fair, I haven’t really left the Palace much since I started at the Royal Academy.” He looks around as they walk along the path towards the river. “I suppose it’s pretty handy here in the forest, huh? This place looks pretty big.”

“It is,” Namjoon confirms.

“Whoa, have you been everywhere in here?”

Namjoon shakes his head. “I can feel how big it is – well, up to a certain point.” Taehyung blinks, so Namjoon tries to explain further. “It’s like… If you stood in the middle of a huge field, which spread out further than you could see, you might only be able to see a certain amount, but you’d know that the field probably went further beyond that point.”

“I get it,” Taehyung says, nodding. “My family used to have a farm, and I used to hang out in the fields a lot.”

“Yeah?” Namjoon asks.

“I don’t remember everything, but I remember that there was an orchard near the back of the house, and wild strawberries! Some of them were so tiny, no bigger than your fingernail,” he shifts the box so that he can hold it one handed, and holds his other hand up to waggle his finger in front of Namjoon’s face. “My great-grandmother planted it – you know, the Wood Witch? – and after she died my grandparents took over running the farm.” Taehyung pauses, moves the box again to hold it with both hands. “When my grandparents got older, they couldn’t keep up with running a farm, especially one that had originally been planted by a Wood Witch, so they sold the land to the Minister for Taxation as part of this scheme to revamp agriculture?” He shrugs. “And then we moved to the city.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Sometimes – like I said, I don’t remember everything.” He looks around at the trees, clearly fascinated. “My grandmother misses it the most. Hey, when you come back, could I bring her to visit you here?”

“Sure,” Namjoon says. “It’s a public forest, after all.”

Namjoon has never been in a boat before.

There’d never been any need – his mother had taught him to cycle early on, and then he’d run away to the forest at fourteen. His mother had said that she’d take him on a boat at some point, that there was something upriver that he’d love to see (the something, he’d later realised, being the forest) and he’d just rolled his eyes and said that only Water Witches needed to ride in boats – to which she’d just tweaked his nose and said “Well, by that metric, only Metal Witches can ride bikes. Want me to give yours to the kids next door?”

He’d shaken his head furiously, and that had been that – his mother would take him on a boat ‘at some point’.

“Do you get river sick, Namjoon-ssi?” Seokjin asks as they emerge out of the forest and onto the low-lying riverbank. If Namjoon stands on his tiptoes, he can just about see the top of the willow downriver, silhouetted against the moon.

“I don’t know, I’ve never been on a boat,” Namjoon says.

“Right, of course,” Seokjin replies. “Well, I’ll sail steadily, just in case.”

The boat’s not what Namjoon had been expecting, until he remembers what Seokjin had said about wanting to blend in with the morning river commuters; it’s broad, flat, and made from thick planks of pine, thick enough that Namjoon’s heart aches a little to think of the tree that must have been felled to make this boat. The sides of the boat are surprisingly low, low enough that Namjoon has to wonder how the boat doesn’t just immediately sink the second it enters choppy waters, and there’s a raised observation deck in the centre of the hull.

Seokjin unties the mooring line of the boat from a nearby maple. It responds by deliberately dumping a hefty number of samaras on his head, the effect of which is ruined somewhat by how gently the seeds flutter down, landing softly on his hat.

“Was that…” Seokjin pauses, swiping the seeds off with the side of his hand. “Intentional?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon says, shrugging. “But I wouldn’t take it too seriously, it once dropped a branch on my head when I tried to prune it.” Seokjin casts a wary glance up at the trees branches before taking several steps back.

“Your Highness,” he says to the Prince. “Please take care not to stand under any branches on our way back to the city.”

“…On a boat travelling alongside a forest, Seokjin?” The Prince asks wryly.

Seokjin closes his eyes, looking a little pained. “Please just stay inside.”

“Inside?” Namjoon asks, looking at the boat. The river is surely not deep enough for the boat to have much, if any, space below deck.

“Underneath the observation deck,” the Prince explains, pointing. “There’s a small room.”

Seokjin pulls the boat towards them with surprising ease, wades through the shallow water, and hauls himself up onto the boat, sliding a board of wood down towards the shore. The Prince walks up first; Taehyung goes to follow before pausing, turning to look at Namjoon. “You should go up first,” he explains. “I’ll follow behind you, just in case.”

Namjoon immediately learns what ‘just in case’ refers to – while the Prince had made it look easy, walking along the plank with sure feet and a straight back, Namjoon’s knees wobble precariously as he takes step after cautious step. He tries to use his bike for balance, but it just seems to be making things worse, the wobbling of the wheels clashing with his own centre of gravity.

“Well done!” Taehyung says, clapping Namjoon on the shoulder as soon as they’re both on board the boat. “I fell in the river my first time boarding a boat, Jeongguk and Jimin had to pull me out.” He raises the box of Namjoon’s belongings slightly. “I’ll go put these inside – want a tour?”

The room the Prince had described as ‘small’ is the same size as the cottage in the forest – which, Namjoon supposes, would be ‘small’ if you lived in a Palace. There is a set of bunk beds pressed up against each wall, and a table in the centre of the room covered in maritime maps that look a little dusty. The whole room, in fact, is a little dusty, so Namjoon’s grateful when Taehyung leads him back outside just as the boat sets off.

They’re trundling along at a surprisingly fast and smooth pace, which Namjoon can’t place the source of until he sees Seokjin on top of the observation deck, lazily flicking a wand back and forth in a manner resembling an oar.

“Seokjin-hyung’s a really good Water Witch,” Taehyung explains when he sees where Namjoon’s looking. “Which is a good job, because if he wasn’t it would’ve taken us days to row all the way here.”

“Your Highness!” Seokjin calls down to the Prince, who’s standing off to the side; Namjoon turns his head just in time to catch the Prince looking directly at him. “If you retire now, you should be able to get enough rest before we make it back to the capital.” The Prince nods wordlessly and walks into the room below the observation deck.

Taehyung stretches his arms over his head and yawns. “I might turn in, too – Namjoon-hyung, are you coming?”

Namjoon shakes his head. “I’d already slept for a while before I got woken up.” He doesn’t want to say that he doesn’t think he could sleep in that stuffy, dusty room if you paid him, it seems a little rude.

“Are you staying out here?” Seokjin says to him once Taehyung has closed the door behind them.

“Yes – is that okay?”

“Of course – you can join me up here, if you want.”

“I won’t be in the way?”

“Course not.”

Namjoon climbs up the ladder to join Seokjin on the observation deck. This close, he can get a good look at Seokjin’s wand; a tightly coiled, dark brown seashell, the pointed tip of which has chipped off. Aside from that, it’s in good condition – better than Namjoon’s hand-me-down wand, at any rate, which he’s had to encase in rope in order to keep it held together.

“I know,” Seokjin says ruefully, waving his wand. “I keep meaning to go and get a new one.”

“Hey, I’m not judging,” Namjoon says, pulling his own wand out of his belt.

Seokjin blinks, and then laughs, loud and squeaky. “Are you a Rope Witch, Namjoon-ah?”

“At this point, I might as well be,” Namjoon says, grinning as he puts the wand away. He doesn’t use it often, anyway, and certainly not enough to warrant the hassle of procuring a replacement. He leans back on his hands and looks up. The sky is clear right now but, if Namjoon tilts his head back, he can see clouds rolling in behind them, following them up the river.

Seokjin, Namjoon thinks, a little guiltily, is very good company when the Prince isn’t in sight. He’s a great conversationalist, and he’s funny – he’s in the middle of a story about Taehyung sneaking out of the Palace to buy fruit when he suddenly stiffens, back ramrod straight.

“Your Highness!” He says, bowing low. Behind him, Namjoon hears a tiny, very quiet sigh. He turns; the Prince has climbed up a few rungs of the ladder, so just the top of his face – his eyes, and a little bit of his nose – is visible.

“Please, don’t stop on my account,” the Prince says, climbing the rest of the rungs. Namjoon bows, too.

“Did we wake you, Your Highness?” Seokjin asks, looking the Prince up and down.

“No, I woke up on my own,” the Prince says, sitting down, cross legged, on the floor. They fall silent – gone is the chatty Seokjin Namjoon had been getting to know, and he’s been replaced by the Prince’s taciturn guard.

Namjoon had thought there would be more fanfare surrounding the return of the Crown Prince to the capital, but the people at the river dock don’t even spare them a second glance. The Prince isn’t even attempting to disguise his face; Namjoon is pretty sure that, even though he had only just met him, he would still be able to recognise the Prince several decades from now.

“The Palace is this way,” Taehyung explains, pointing. Even if Namjoon hadn’t spent the first fourteen years of his life in the city, he thinks he’d be able to find the Palace on his own, if only because it is clearly visible from the river docks. The Palace walls, usually white in the sun, have taken on a muted, greyish tone under the overcast sky, and people are hurrying down the road outside of the gate, heads tilted in anticipation of the coming rain.

Namjoon had forgotten just how grey this city could get.

The three doors of the gate are all closed, with a solitary guard posted outside, sword in hand. When he sees them approaching he relaxes a little, before drawing himself up to his full height, marching to the door on the left, and banging his fist against the wood. He nods as they pass, bows low to the Prince, and then makes exaggerated, prolonged eye contact with Taehyung.

Namjoon had only ever entered the Palace once, and that had been a very hurried visit; he hadn’t had time to appreciate the painted ceilings inside the gate, the first spots of green and blue he thinks he’s seen since arriving in the city. Ideally he would like to spend longer looking at the painted ceilings, but the Prince keeps a swift pace, marching them through the second set of gates, around the Throne Hall, and through to what could only be his personal residence, a handful of ornate red buildings around a courtyard. The Prince takes them into the first building, the smallest of the four.

“This is my personal library,” the Prince explains, as though the shelves of books in the first room hadn’t given it away. “You are welcome to peruse at your leisure, and accommodation for you has been set up in the next room over. If you require any texts that aren’t here, just let Seokjin know.” For the first time in their, admittedly brief, acquaintance, Namjoon sees a momentary flash of irritation cross Seokjin’s face.

“Your Highness,” Seokjin says, bowing low, as though that would mask the shred of personality Namjoon has just glimpsed. “My duty is to guard the Crown Prince, not the Witch.”

“You will be guarding my interests by guarding the Witch,” the Prince says, his tone leaving no room for argument.

The Witch has a name, Namjoon thinks mutinously, literally biting down on his tongue to prevent himself from saying this aloud – he’d spent the last decade voicing almost every thought he had aloud to one plant or another, a habit he would need to break completely if he wanted to avoid offending anyone.

“Is there anything you require?” The Prince asks; it takes Namjoon a moment to realise he is being spoken to.

“No, thank you, Your Highness,” he says politely, bowing. “I think I’d just like to get settled.”

The Prince nods, still hovering by the door. Namjoon’s mother had never taught him court etiquette – understandable, because why would Kim Namjoon ever meet the Royal Family? – but he was pretty sure he needed to wait for the Prince to leave before he left the room, right?

“Do you want to see the gardens?” The Prince blurts out. His expression after the words fall out of his mouth, seemingly without his permission, is almost comically surprised; mouth agape, eyes wide, cheeks pinking. “They’re not like your garden, they used to be…” He is no longer making eye contact, but it doesn’t look guilty – rather, it looks as though he is physically no longer able to make eye contact with Namjoon. “My mother, the Queen, likes gardens, so they’re a lot nicer than they used to be.”

It isn’t a persuasive argument by any stretch of the imagination, but Namjoon finds himself inexplicably charmed by it anyway.

“I’d like that, Your Highness,” Namjoon says. The Prince glances over at a spot just beyond Namjoon’s ear, as though he is trying to make eye contact but gave up just before he could succeed; he nods, and then gestures for Namjoon to follow.

Enroute to the gardens, however, they are waylaid by a man in blue robes walking swiftly towards them, a very large smile tugging up his mouth as he blinks deliberately.

“Your Royal Highness!” He says, bowing. “Perhaps, now that you have returned from your morning walk, you should wear something befitting your station,” he says through his gritted teeth smile. “Especially before your meeting with His Majesty, your father?”

The Prince grimaces down at his clothes. “Ah.” He looks up at Seokjin. “Can you take Namjoon to the gardens? I’ll join you when I’m changed.” He sweeps back the way they have just come, striding purposefully.

“…Taehyung, escort His Highness,” Seokjin says shortly.

“I was going to see Jimin-” Seokjin scowls at Taehyung, who straightens his spine on reflex. “But that can wait, definitely!” He almost trips over his own feet in his haste to catch up with the Prince.

The man who has joined them grins at Seokjin. “I see you returned in one piece!” He nudges his elbow into Seokjin’s ribs. “And you were worried.”

“I found a grey hair this morning on the boat ride back to the Palace,” Seokjin says flatly. “At the rate they’re coming in, I’ll be grey enough to retire in five years.”

The man waves a hand and, in the most startlingly normal display Namjoon has seen from any of these people so far, blows a raspberry. “You’re never going to retire, you’re still going to be guarding the Prince well into your old age. Sure, your subordinates will have to carry you around in a gama, but-”

“Aish,” Seokjin says, rolling his eyes. “Since you took up your cushy advisor’s job you’ve gotten pretty sedentary, so I think it’ll be you getting carried around in the gama-” It’s the most animated Namjoon has seen Seokjin be, even more so than when they had been chatting alone on the boat, and it leaves Namjoon with a bit of a sour feeling in his stomach. If this is what he’s actually like, what is making him act so stoic and serious around the Prince?

“Ah, where’re my manners?” The man says suddenly, cutting Seokjin off mid-flow. He nods his head to Namjoon. “Jung Hoseok, Left Minister, and also technically the Crown Prince’s tutor? But more or less an advisor these days.”

“Kim Namjoon,” Namjoon replies, bowing. “I, uh, talk to plants?”

Seokjin snorts. “That’s an understatement. You should see the forest this guy lives in, Hoseok, it looks like a painting.”

“I’d like to see a forest,” Hoseok says wistfully. It suddenly occurs to Namjoon that, for the last few minutes, he hadn’t been following Seokjin and Hoseok to the gardens – rather, he had been walking in step with them. Thankfully, they hadn’t seemed to have noticed his familiarity with the Palace layout, but he tries to hang back a little, just in case. “Or just a tree.”

“There’re trees in the gardens,” Seokjin points out.

“I don’t care what you say,” Hoseok says, turning his nose up. “If it only comes up to my hip, it is a shrub at best.”

They stop in front of a locked gate, which hadn’t been here last time; Seokjin pulls a ring of keys from his pocket and begins sifting through them.

Namjoon can’t often hear plants through stone, but this close he can hear a low muttering noise; he is pleasantly surprised to see, once the gate was open, that the garden has been covered with grass since his last visit.

Admittedly, the grass doesn’t look great. It looks a little yellowed, cut so short that he could see the sandy-brown dirt underneath. However, there were plants, and as soon as he steps onto the grass he feels a little more at home.

The plants seem to recognise something in him, too, because as soon as his foot touches the soil the low murmur erupts into an eager cacophony.

“We never thought we would see the day-”

“Human! Tell those with the metal that we do not have what they seek-”

“We remember you-”

“The Witches of the Wood have been gone for three thousand, six hundred and seventy-seven sunrises-”

“One at a time?” Namjoon pleads, blinking a few times.

“Huh? Oh!” Hoseok says, bouncing on his toes. “Are the plants talking to you? What’re they saying?”

“A lot,” Namjoon says. “No one’s been able to hear them for a while, so they’ve got a lot to say.”

“What can they tell us about the plague?” Seokjin asks, glancing from Namjoon to the grass. Namjoon thinks about telling him that grass cannot reliably tell anyone much of anything, but he worries that Seokjin will think he was joking, or being rude. It’s also pretty stupid to ask the question to every plant in the garden simultaneously – he can’t tell how many there are in here exactly, but he would wager the number went into the hundreds – but Seokjin looks so expectant that he says;

“Does anybody here know anything about the sickness?”

“The sickness? The lilac regularly has the sickness-”

“I meant the human sickness,” Namjoon says immediately, recognising the gossipy tones of a laurel somewhere in the garden announcing the lilac’s tendency towards getting powdery mildew.

“Speak to the Lady’s Tree,” says a sleepy voice – lavender, Namjoon would wager.

“I need to speak to the… Lady’s Tree?” Namjoon asks the two men standing on either side of him. “Does that mean anything to either of you?”

“Is that what they call it?” Seokjin asks, looking as though he’s fighting back a smile. “It’s the cherry tree, probably – the Queen planted it herself a few years ago.” He points towards a raised patch of dirt enclosed within a small stone wall. Sure enough, a cherry tree stood there; it would barely reach Namjoon’s ribs, even with the extra height provided.

Namjoon sits on the wall and places his hand on the soil.

“The lavender told me to speak to you,” Namjoon says, drumming his fingers soothingly on the soil. “Are you the one called ‘Lady’s Tree’?” The tree hums – for a brief, stomach-churning moment Namjoon thinks of the rosebush back home.

“I am the Lady’s Tree,” the cherry tree says softly, assuaging Namjoon’s fears that this tree was also unable to speak. “Although the Lady has not returned in some time, so perhaps I will one day no longer be so.”

“The Lady’s sick,” Namjoon explains, feeling as though he was telling a small child about a sick parent. “But you can still be her tree, if you like.”

“I do. The Lady is kind, unlike the men who suffocated this place with stone once before. I was not planted here then, but the soil remembers.” Namjoon lets his Magic glow a little warmer, mimicking the sunlight for the soil. “What is it you wish to know?”

“The Lady is sick with a disease that a lot of other humans in this city have,” Namjoon says. He can see Seokjin and Hoseok openly, blatantly staring at him; he tries to ignore them. “Can you tell me anything about that?”

“Before the Lady no longer came, she would come to sit here and weep,” the cherry tree says. “She would speak of the sadness of the people, and the plants in this garden that have known her hand wept with her. No plant in this garden would cause harm to the people she loves.”

“But it is a plant?” Namjoon presses.

“It is no plant in this garden,” the tree repeats, which is to be expected – how could a cherry tree know what was causing a plague in the capital city?

“No plant in this garden’s causing the sickness,” Namjoon says to Seokjin and Hoseok. He expects this to disappoint them, but both of them brighten.

“That narrows it down a lot,” Hoseok says. “There’re a lot of plants in here.”

“Is it a plant causing it?” Seokjin asks.

Namjoon shrugs. “The cherry tree only knows what’s happening in the soil it’s growing in, so its knowledge extends as far as the stone walls of this garden. What are the symptoms?”

“It depends,” Seokjin says grimly. “Some people just get blisters on their hands or feet. Others…” He shakes his head, pulls out a notepad, and starts reading from the bleakest list Namjoon’s ever heard. “Weakness, paralysis, severe pain, loss of speech, convulsions, comas, complete system failures…”

“It comes on suddenly, too,” Hoseok explains seriously. “Originally we thought it might be contamination in the water supply, because it seemed to happen after people ate, but every Water Witch in the city would spot that a mile off.”

“I mean, it could be a plant,” Namjoon says. “But with a list of symptoms that varied, it could be anything.” He taps his foot, thinking. “Is there a list of what’s planted in here? I could cross check it with my compendium, see if there’s any notes on what could be causing those symptoms that’s not planted in here.”

“Ah, no,” Seokjin says. “After the old King died, the current King was amenable to growing more plants here. The Queen had the courtyard in here ripped up, planted any seeds she could get her hands on, and this is the result.” Namjoon winces, looks around. It certainly looks tidy, but with no way of knowing just what’s been planted where… “She planted it herself,” Seokjin continues defensively. “She fired all of the old groundsmen, no one knows why. Well, she does, I’d imagine. New staff have been hired since then, but she does all the planting.”

“I’ll just…” Namjoon sighs, looks around again, as though looking twice will make his upcoming task more surmountable. “Talk to every plant in here, I guess.”

Hoseok goes to get him an empty writing book, and comes back with both the book and the Prince, who is dressed so finely that Namjoon genuinely feels a little dizzy when he looks at him. His robes are a dark blue so rich they’re almost indigo, and they’re elaborately embroidered in silver thread.

“Hoseok caught me up to speed,” the Prince says, as Namjoon and Seokjin bow. “Is there anything you need?”

“I don’t think so,” Namjoon says, taking the book from Hoseok.

“Then, do you mind if I work in the garden? Will I be in your way?” Namjoon shakes his head mutely, so the Prince moves to the low wall built around the cherry tree and takes a seat, setting a bag down next to him, which he pulls a book out of.

Hoseok leaves for a meeting, and Seokjin takes up his post at the garden’s entrance, so Namjoon starts with the one task his mother had told him to always do in a new garden.

He sits in the middle of it, takes out his wand, and jabs it into the soil. There’s a sickening moment where he feels the wood of his fragile wand wobble, but then he feels the rush of knowledge through his wand and into his mind – how far the garden stretches, both above ground and below, the hard limits of that knowledge in the form of the garden’s walls and pond. And, curiously, a dead space he can’t see or understand, buried underneath the soil next to the pond.

“We recognise you,” the plants say, in an eerie, discordant harmony. “But not your wand.”

“It was my mother’s,” Namjoon explains. “I need to make a record of every plant living in this garden – where should I start?”

The plants fall silent, before the cherry tree speaks up. “The last-sun side. The frost was not kind, and many of the plants there did not wake after the thaw.”

Namjoon sighs, stands up, and heads over to the west side of the garden.

It’s slow, taxing work – first he has to check whether the plant is still alive. Then, if it’s something he doesn’t recognise, he has to check his compendium to see whether it’s an annual plant or a perennial one. Finally, if it’s a plant that’s alive and well, he has to record it in the book Hoseok’s given him.

This is all not accounting for the fact that this is the first time any of these plants have spoken to a human, and some of them are chatty.

“For the last time,” Namjoon says to the yellow adonis. “I’m not eating you.”

The Prince laughs suddenly; thinking he’s read something funny in his book, Namjoon looks over, only to find that he’s looking directly at him.

“Sorry,” the Prince says, still grinning. “But are those plants asking you to eat them?”

Namjoon nods, holds his hand behind the flower of the yellow adonis so that the Prince can see it. “Yellow adonis is poisonous to humans. And animals, to be fair.”

The Prince shuts his book, lays it down on the wall, and moves to join Namjoon. “If it’s poisonous, why is my mother growing it?”

“A surprising number of plants are poisonous,” Namjoon explains, pointing to the spidery Witch hazel. “You can use Witch hazel extract quite safely on your skin, but I wouldn’t recommend eating it.” He glances sidelong at the Prince. “I mean, I wouldn’t recommend eating most of the plants in here, as a general rule?”

“Noted,” the Prince says. “So, toxic plants try to convince you to eat them on purpose?”

“Very few plants understand the concept of lying, so they don’t try to trick me into eating them,” Namjoon says, shuffling along to examine the winter hazel more carefully. The branches look a little fragile, but the pale-yellow blooms are still hanging on relatively strongly, especially considering how late in their flowering season it is. “I’ve never come across a plant that’s that convincing, but I’m sure it exists.” As Namjoon shuffles along and comes across the sage green stems of a burst of daffodils that look as though they could bloom yellow any day now, he turns to the Prince. “Has Her Majesty planted these flowers by colour?”

The Prince looks a little more closely, and then twists his mouth into a surprised little smile. “Possibly. I don’t think she knows much about gardening, though.” Namjoon quietly thinks that maybe the Queen hasn’t been entirely honest with her son – for her to have planted all of these bulbs by colour, she must be at least passingly familiar with what the bulbs and seeds she was planting were going to look like. Not to mention that it looks as though she’s included flowers from each season, so that sections of the garden will be in bloom for as much of the year as possible.

“She’s done a good job,” Namjoon says, because it’s not his place to divulge the secrets of someone he’s never met just based on a hunch.

It’s his first morning in the Palace, and somebody is banging on his door.

He’d slept pretty well, all things considered – although, that maybe had more to do with the fact that he’d done more manual labour yesterday than he’s done in a while, and less to do with how welcome he felt in the Palace.

Case in point – someone is still banging on his door, making Namjoon feel less welcome by the second.

Namjoon is staring at it motionlessly.

It’s probably fine, even though he doesn’t know who would be knocking on it – the Prince doesn’t need to knock, and Seokjin would more than likely be with the Prince. Maybe it’s Hoseok? But maybe it’s not, and there has to be a reason the Prince has assigned Seokjin to escort him around the Palace –

Namjoon opens the door, because the suspense is going to kill him.

The man standing there is wearing a blue jeonbok over the orange and red dongdari of the royal guard. Maybe the Palace has decided to arrest him? He certainly looks intimidating, with his jeonrip tilted low enough that Namjoon, being taller, couldn’t see the guard’s eyes.

“The Prince wishes to see you,” the guard says, tilting his head up and looking at Namjoon appraisingly. “Wow, Taehyung was right, you are tall. Is there something in the air in the forest that makes you that tall?”

“You’re Taehyung’s friend,” Namjoon says, feeling the pit in his stomach subside. “Jimin, right?”

“Yes!” He peers past Namjoon’s shoulder. “Are you good to go now? The Prince’s swordsmanship lesson is starting soon, and I think he wants to talk to you before then.”

“You’re his teacher, right?” Namjoon asks, vaguely remembering Taehyung mentioning something about it.

Jimin smiles brightly. “Yes! Only officially for the last year, but His Highness first said he wanted to learn… Wow, about ten years ago? So I’ve been teaching him secretly after my own lessons for that long.”

Namjoon tries to work out the timeframe in his head – the Prince is a little older than him, and Jimin looks to be about his age, maybe younger. Why would a teenage Crown Prince need to secretly learn how to use a sword from a teenager in the Royal Academy?

“That’s cool,” Namjoon says, because it’s not his place to question it. “But yeah, I’m good to go now.”

Jimin, like Taehyung, chats a mile a minute on their way to the training grounds, where they’re greeted by Seokjin. The Prince, dressed similarly to Jimin except for his black jeonbok, is running through some warmup stretches; Seokjin coughs, and the Prince stumbles very slightly in surprise, only noticeable because Namjoon’s already watching him.

“Namjoon-ssi,” he says, smiling. “I wanted to ask if you’d be happy for me to accompany you to the Garden again today.”

He’s pretty sure he’s not technically allowed to say no, but Namjoon finds that he doesn’t actually want to. The Prince is inquisitive, and attentive to the answers Namjoon gives, and while Namjoon doesn’t know why everyone around him exhibits a different personality while he’s not there, the Prince has been nothing but polite to Namjoon.

“Of course, Your Highness,” Namjoon replies, bowing. “I’ll head over there now to begin my work, if that’s okay?”

The Prince nods his head again, and then frowns a little. “Before you do, Seokjin, could you take him to see Hoseok? He’s got some robes for Namjoon to wear.”

Namjoon looks down at what he’s wearing. He had arrived at the cottage in the forest with nothing but a rosebush, his bicycle, and the clothes on his back – thankfully, the previous occupant had left behind enough clothes to last for a lifetime. Unfortunately, Namjoon had never quite grown into them, even as he’d shot up in height and bulked up in muscle. Just one day back in the city had made it painfully obvious that these second-hand clothes were incredibly old fashioned and impractical for court life.

Seokjin leads him through the Palace, and it is perhaps because of this quiet that Namjoon is more attentive to the cloying smell that hits him as soon as Seokjin opens the doors to a corridor.

Then again, Namjoon would have almost certainly recognised the distinct smell of cut flowers, even if Seokjin had been talking to him at a mile a minute.

It was how his mother had known he was a Wood Witch – he had cried every time, without fail, she had taken him past flower shops. He doesn’t cry now, but the smell does make him feel sick, the sugary sweetness of the water pumping through their capillaries at odds with the gnarled scar he can feel at the bottom of their stems.

He holds his finger under his nose and tries not to breathe as Seokjin leads him through the halls and into an open-door office, mercifully free of cut flowers. Hoseok’s sitting behind the desk, frowning at a thick wodge of paperwork; when he hears them come in he looks up, and his face immediately brightens.

“Seokjin-hyung, Namjoon-ssi!”

“Are you busy?” Seokjin asks, glancing at the paperwork; Hoseok waves a hand.

“Yes, but I don’t want to be. Namjoon, how was your first night here?”

Lonely, is Namjoon’s immediate thought. He had worked in the garden until the sun had gotten too hot to do so; after that, he had returned to his room and read in silence, making the occasional note in either his compendium or the log of plants he’s found in the garden. One of the Prince’s servants brought him dinner, which he’d eaten before falling asleep, for lack of anything else to do.

“The bed is comfy,” Namjoon says, a little flatly.

“His Royal Highness says you have robes for Namjoon?” Seokjin prompts; Hoseok nods, opens a drawer in his desk, and pulls out a set of blue robes. These aren’t like the Prince’s robes, the dark blue of a summer night; they’re more like the bright sky of autumn, made more vivid by the burnished reds and oranges of the trees.

It’s also, coincidentally, the same colour robes that Seokjin and Hoseok are wearing, which makes Namjoon feel a little like a pea in a pod when he emerges from Hoseok’s private quarters, fully changed and fiddling a little with the cuffs.

“Oh, good, they fit!” Hoseok says, eyeing him up and down. “I’ll get a few more sets sent to you this evening – don’t worry about getting them dirty when you’re working in the gardens, they’re really easy to wash.”

It takes a while to get used to working in a garden in full court regalia. Namjoon feels as though he should be sitting at a fancy dinner, not kneeling in the soil trying to detangle the roots of a false forget-me-not.

“Why are you even like this?” Namjoon mutters, carefully running the fingers of one hand through the roots as though he was trying to de-knot a child’s hair. He uses his other hand to trace along the words written in his compendium, frowning. “There’s no mention in here that your roots grow weirdly.”

“I was grown in small soil,” the false forget-me-not explains faintly. “Then moved here long after I had encompassed the soil.”

“Oh, you were pot bound!” Namjoon says, pulling out a pocketknife. “I’ll make some cuts in your roots – it’ll help you spread out more.”

Stopping to help with the ailments of each plant is, admittedly, making this job take longer than it needs to. All he needed to do, here, was note down ‘false forget-me-not’ in his list of plants in the garden and move on to the next plant. However, Namjoon can’t just ignore a problem that he can fix, even if it does add an extra half an hour or so to his work.

“What are you doing?”

Namjoon jumps, almost nicking his thumb with the knife, and turns back to look at the gate. The Prince is standing there, clutching the iron of the gate with a white-knuckle grip as he stares over at Namjoon. Seokjin, who had been sitting by the garden pond, sits up suddenly.

“I’m – it might be easier to show you?” Namjoon suggests, worried by the horrified expression on the Prince’s face. He sets his pocketknife down at his side slowly, as though placating a wild animal.

The Prince approaches slowly and, unlike the last few times he’s been to visit Namjoon, he remains standing, fists clenched at his sides.

“This false forget-me-not was originally grown in a pot,” Namjoon explains, holding the plant towards the Prince and pointing with his finger. “And, for most plants, if they’re left in the same pot for too long they can become pot-bound. See how the roots sort of grow around themselves, forming this tight ball?” The Prince nods warily; Namjoon touches the handle of his pocket-knife, but doesn’t pick it up yet. “If you catch it early enough, you can untangle a pot-bound plant with your fingers, but this little guy’s tried to grow into its new soil, and it’s done… This. I’ll cause less damage in the long run if I cut it.”

Finally, the Prince crouches down. “It doesn’t hurt?” Namjoon hums thoughtfully. “Sorry, is that a stupid question?”

“No! No, not at all, it’s an interesting one, really – so, plants don’t have pain receptors, not like we do, but if you don’t know what you’re doing you can certainly harm plants.” He picks up the knife and holds the handle out to the Prince.

“I – what? No, I don’t know what I’m doing-”

“I’ll show you,” Namjoon says gently. “I won’t let you cause it harm, Your Highness, don’t worry.”

He still looks terrified, but he takes the knife from Namjoon anyway. Namjoon, meanwhile, twists the ball of roots in his hands.

“Okay, cut here,” Namjoon says eventually, pointing. “Straight down. Don’t be afraid to really get the knife in there.” Despite the trepidation on his face, the Prince cuts quickly and cleanly. “Now here.”

Namjoon turns the ball of roots slowly until there are seven cuts in the roots, and then he puts the plant back in the soil.

“Thank you,” the false forget-me-not says immediately, its voice much stronger in Namjoon’s head. “I will grow well.” Namjoon breathes a sigh of relief and pats the top of the soil, right over the roots.

“It’s alright?” The Prince asks worriedly, his fingers stretching towards the soil.

“It’ll be okay,” Namjoon confirms. “It says thank you. We should keep an eye on it for the next week or so, just in case, but you did a good job, Your Highness.”

“Thank you, Namjoon-ssi,” the Prince says, pulling his hand back and placing it in his lap. “Can you hear them, when their roots are out in the open like that?”

“If they need to talk to me, they can,” Namjoon says. “But when they’re out of the soil like that, plants try to conserve as much energy as possible.”

“And if a plant was out of the soil… How long would it live?”

“…Depends on the plant, I suppose,” Namjoon says eventually, frowning as he remembers the state the rose had been in when he had found it. He shakes his head. “I need to prune back this false forget-me-not a little, so it’ll focus more of its energy on growing its roots back in.”

“Oh. Do you need me to go?” The Prince asks.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to learn how to prune it yourself,” Namjoon says. He laughs embarrassedly. “I mean, I know you have gardeners and weird forest Wood Witches to do that, but you seemed interested, so I thought I’d-”

“I’d love to,” the Prince says urgently, as though he was worried Namjoon would talk himself out of the offer.

Namjoon… Settles.

He doesn’t feel at home – he didn’t feel at home in the city even when he lived here, and a few days living in the Palace wasn’t likely to change that. However, he quickly grows used to the rhythm of his days – wake up, eat, spend the morning in the gardens (usually with the Prince, who was taking a very keen interest in learning how to maintain the plants himself), eat, spend the afternoon studying, eat, sleep.

It’s rather like the routine of the forest, with the major difference being that the forest didn’t make him contend with other people.

He likes Seokjin and Hoseok, and Taehyung and Jimin are fun, even if they do keep running off to hang out with someone named Jeongguk. The Prince is interesting, too.

It’s just everyone else that’s the issue.

Even with the blue robes Hoseok had provided him, Namjoon sticks out like a sore thumb. Even with Seokjin following him everywhere, people stare openly, muttering to each other in plain sight – one man in red robes had even slammed a door in their faces.

Seokjin had inhaled sharply at that, nostrils flaring as he had wordlessly turned them around and taken them the other way to the garden.

But it still takes a full week before somebody actually says anything to him.

“Rootspeaker!” A man calls to him across the courtyard. “What have you done to deserve those robes, hmm? What favours have you promised-”

“Choose your next words carefully, Fire Witch,” Seokjin shouts, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Despite how sunny it had been that morning, clouds start to roll in, great, hulking clouds the colour of bruises.

“Fighting’s forbidden in the courtyard, lapdog, you know that,” the man jeers.

“Fighting is, but the punishment of treason is very much encouraged,” Seokjin says, glancing up at the sky and laughing. “Run along now, or have you forgotten your place in the cycle? A damp Fire Witch is no use to anyone.” The man grumbles under his breath but storms off, green robes fluttering at his heels.

“What’s wrong with the robes?” Namjoon asks, looking down; they fit him pretty well, all things considered. Better than the second-hand clothes he had been wearing, anyway. “Do they mean something?”

“Right, I forgot that you grew up in the forest,” Seokjin says; Namjoon doesn’t correct him. “Red robes are for senior ranking officials; then you have blue robed ministers, who fill out the middle ranks, and our friend in green is a bottom ranked minister. He basically has the authority to decide when he can sneeze, and that’s about it.”

“So, he’s right, sort of – what have I done to deserve these robes?” Namjoon says.

“You’re acting in an advisory role to the Crown Prince of the Kingdom,” Seokjin points out. “That guy uses his Fire Magic to melt wax for seals for the Junior Minister for Defence. A function, I’ll remind you, that can be performed just as well by a candle. Better, in fact, because candles don’t accuse other candles of impropriety.” Namjoon nods, and waits until they’re in the garden to ask the question bubbling under his lips.

“Is the Prince…” He starts slowly, unsure of how to word it. Seokjin, who had been taking up his typical position of sitting by the pond, stiffens. “I don’t know how to ask.”

Seokjin snorts, but his spine is still ramrod straight. “Just ask the question, Namjoon-ah.”

“Is he not respected by the court?”

Whatever question Seokjin had been expecting, it clearly wasn’t that; his posture crumples a little, and he looks…

Sad.

“How much do you know about the Royal Family, Namjoon?” Seokjin asks instead.

“Not much – I didn’t really pay much attention, growing up.”

“Right, right,” Seokjin says quietly. “Well, the late King was an awful ruler, and a horrific man, but he was also little more than a puppet King, placed on a throne created after the Witch Council Coup.”

Now that Namjoon knows about, considering the coup was the event that had pushed the Wood Witches out of the ruling Council and led to, eventually, all of them fleeing the capital city. His mother had explained it to him one winter’s evening – he even remembers the soup she had made, the bowl she’d placed tenderly into his hands as she explained their shared history.

“The current King is… Better,” Seokjin continues, very carefully. “Yoongi is the best of them.” It’s the first time he’s ever heard Seokjin address him without a title or honorific; Seokjin obviously catches his surprise, because he grins sheepishly. “In private, we call him Yoongi. In public, of course, we use his titles, and offer him the respect he deserves from the rest of this court.”

“If he is a good man, why isn’t he respected?” Namjoon asks.

Seokjin smiles; it’s a little pitying. “That’s not how this court works, Namjoon-ah – men don’t get respect just because they’re good and kind and true.” He leans back on his hands comfortably. “Many of the older ministers remember a time without the Royal Family. And the younger ones see the lack of respect displayed by their superiors, and follow suit.”

“Is that why the Prince has assigned you to guard me? To dissuade people from making comments like that?”

“I’d imagine so,” Seokjin says with a shrug. “He hasn’t actually said.”

“I won’t be guarding you today,” Seokjin says, poking his head into Namjoon’s room. “The Prince is holding a council to discuss your progress on identifying plants that aren’t causing this plague, and I need to be there in case...” He raises his eyebrows; Namjoon nods. “Jeongguk should be by in about ten minutes to pick you up, though.” Jeongguk is still something of an enigma to him, one month after arriving at the Palace. Everyone seems to talk about Jeongguk almost constantly, especially Jimin and Taehyung, yet he has never seen him, not even at a distance. “He’s pretty shy, but he’s really been looking forward to meeting you.”

Namjoon, if he’s being honest, is imagining a child when he hears someone knock on his door precisely ten minutes later. However, it’s undoubtedly a man in front of him, even if his sweet, shy smile is incredibly boyish.

“Namjoon-ssi,” he says, bowing lower than Namjoon feels he deserves. When he straightens, his smile is even wider. “It’s nice to meet you! I’m Jeongguk.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Namjoon says, unable to help himself from smiling back.

“Ah!” Jeongguk says, rubbing the back of his neck. “They’re so embarrassing sometimes…” He trails off, and Namjoon thinks he sees a touch of that shyness Seokjin had mentioned – an unsureness in how to continue their conversation, a deliberateness in maintaining eye contact with Namjoon, a dichotomy in the way he holds himself. Straight posture, raised chin, slightly turned in toes, wide, deerlike eyes.

“Taehyung mentioned you were a scholar with him at the academy?” Namjoon asks, grabbing his books and wand from his desk and gesturing for Jeongguk to come with him to the garden.

“Yes!” Jeongguk says. “I’m studying to join the Royal Guard, like Seokjin-hyung and Jimin-hyung.” His face falls a little. “I can’t… I haven’t learnt how to do Magic, yet. My tutors say there’s still time, but…” But if he hadn’t exhibited any signs of being able to do Magic during his childhood, he’s unlikely to pick anything up as an adult.

“You don’t need to be able to use Magic to join the Royal Guard though, do you?” Namjoon asks.

“Well, technically no?” Jeongguk says, wrinkling his nose. “But realistically yes. It’s another skill set, you know? I mean, if you’re going to hire a translator, would you hire the one who knows one extra language, or five?”

“I’d hire the one that has the skill set to do the job I needed,” Namjoon says. “I’d rather hire a guard who’s really good with a sword than one who’s mediocre with a sword and can just about light a candle.”

Jeongguk, in the middle of unlocking the garden gate, giggles. He pushes the gate open, gestures for Namjoon to enter, and then shuts it behind both of them. “His Highness the Prince says the same thing. But it’s because I want to protect the Prince to the best of my ability that I want to learn Magic, you know? Seokjin-hyung is the best Water Witch in the city, and Jimin-hyung can throw boulders.” This is news to Namjoon – Jimin’s never mentioned being able to do Magic before. He doesn’t even think he’s seen Jimin carrying a wand. “What if somebody bad and powerful comes, and all I can do is swing a sword?”

“Every Witch is susceptible to having their arms cut off,” Namjoon says.

Jeongguk blinks at him in silence, and then laughs uproariously.

He’s still chuckling about it intermittently ten minutes later when Jimin and Taehyung let themselves into the garden.

“You look like you’re having fun,” Jimin says, draping himself over Jeongguk’s back.

“Namjoon-hyung’s funny,” Jeongguk says; he immediately straightens up. “I mean, Namjoon-ssi-”

“You can call me hyung, Jeongguk,” Namjoon says, mulching the soil the daisies are in. “Jimin and Taehyung have been calling me hyung for a month now.”

“Yeah, well, they’re rude,” Jeongguk mutters; Jimin squawks and tackles Jeongguk to the ground.

Taehyung, meanwhile, is sitting next to Namjoon, watching him work with careful, attentive eyes. He does this a lot, Namjoon’s noticed, almost as much as the Prince does, but where the Prince asks questions, Taehyung will just sit quietly, barely moving, hardly talking. He’s asked him about it, but even Taehyung doesn’t seem to know why he does it.

He works steadily, adding an entire bed of flowers to his ongoing list of plants in the garden. They’re not only colour-coordinated, but incredibly hardy, further solidifying his working theory that the Queen knows more about plants than she’s letting on. He reaches the end of the bed and pats the soil; Taehyung stretches his arms over his head, blinks a few times, and stands up.

“Thanks, hyung,” he says. This is another thing he does each time he sits with Namjoon, and it’s another thing he’s unable to explain his reasoning for.

His space is very promptly occupied by Jimin, who’s twisting his hands in his lap.

“Namjoon-hyung,” he says immediately; Namjoon turns his full attention to him, trying not to worry. “Jeonggukie said that he’d accidentally let slip that I’m an Earth Witch to you.”

“Uh, yeah,” Namjoon says, frowning. “Is it… A secret?” Namjoon’s mother had encouraged him not to tell strangers that he was a Wood Witch, but that was something specific for Wood Witches in the city – as far as he’s aware, Earth Witches have never been prejudiced against in the same way as Wood Witches. Earth Witches, after all, built this city – and, as the propaganda went, what good could a Wood Witch do?

“Not really,” Jimin says. He chews his lip. “I didn’t want you to know, though.”

“Oh. Okay…” Namjoon says. “Can I ask why?”

Jimin’s hands still, and he stares at Namjoon as though he has two heads. “Because… Hyung, because of the Witch Council Coup!”

“What about it?”

“Earth Witches were the deciding vote that led to the removal of the Wood Witches from the Council!” Jimin says, looking incredibly distressed.

“Yeah, but… Jimin, neither of us were even born then,” Namjoon points out. “I’m not friends with Seokjin because the Water Witches supported the Wood Witches, I’m friends with him because he’s, you know… Cool,” Namjoon finishes lamely.

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Jimin mumbles. He stares down at his lap, twists his fingers, and then looks up at Namjoon. “Sorry I didn’t tell you, I just didn’t want you to feel sad, you know?”

“Thank you for thinking that way, but I can assure you that I don’t blame you for the Witch Council Coup that happened two generations before either of us were born,” Namjoon says, grinning. Jimin shoves his shoulder slightly. “Hey, now that you’ve told me, I can count on your help in the gardens, right?” He means it as a joke, but Jimin straightens up eagerly.

“What do you need, hyung?”

“Oh! Well,” Namjoon says, tapping his fingers against the soil. “Actually, I wonder if you could look at something for me.” He stands up, dusts off his knees, and heads towards the pond.

It takes him a moment to find the spot without the power of his wand, but he eventually pinpoints it – that curious dead spot that he can’t see, buried underneath the soil.

“There’s something buried here,” Namjoon says, tapping his foot on the ground. “I just want to make sure it’s not something to be concerned about, you know? I don’t really want to go uprooting the whole garden if I have to, it’s buried pretty deep.”

Jimin nods, sits down on the ground, and pulls out his wand.

The reason why Namjoon’s never seen Jimin’s wand is because it’s not shaped like a wand at all – most of the Witches he’s seen carry wands that are long and thin, that can act as an extension of their arm. Jimin’s wand is a trapezoid piece of purple crystal, no bigger than his palm; he draws one of its corners over the top of the soil.

“Yeah, it’s stone,” Jimin confirms, pocketing his wand again and standing up.

“A cube, right? That’s what the gap’s shape is,” Namjoon says.

Jimin hums, skewing his mouth to the side. “I can see dead space inside it, so it’s not a solid cube. The stone itself is perfectly solid, so it was made by an Earth Witch, but the only person who’d be able to tell you what was inside was whoever made that box.”

On the one hand, Namjoon relieved that there’s not something potentially harmful to the garden buried within its soil. On the other, he’s immensely curious as to what somebody’s chosen to bury there.

As Seokjin appears at the garden gate and announces the arrival of the Prince, Namjoon jumps away from the spot guiltily.

“What a shit show,” the Prince says as soon as Hoseok closes the garden gate.

“Did the meeting not go well, Yoongi-hyung?” Jimin asks.

“The meeting went fine right up until my father started convulsing on his throne,” the Prince says flatly. “The Commander General almost named me Regent on the spot. I had to talk her out of it, namely because my father was still conscious at that point and looked close to having her imprisoned for treason.”

“Is he… Not conscious now?” Jeongguk asks carefully.

“His doctors say he’s ‘resting’, which is royal doctor code for ‘the King is doing poorly and I’m legally not allowed to tell you’. We’ve got maybe a few weeks before the Commander General will really start to make her case for making me Regent.” The Prince turns to Namjoon. “So, um, any progress you can make would be much appreciated. I will help, of course, and you have all of my resources at your disposal.”

“I’ll do my best, Your Highness,” Namjoon says, bowing low enough to hide his alarmed expression.

His first major breakthrough in cataloguing the Royal Garden’s plants is his discovery of common nightshade.

First, because it’s the only plant he’s come across so far that’s not been planted with the Queen’s apparent careful consideration. Its delicate white and yellow flowers are in stark contrast to the brash orange lilies they’re planted next to, and the rest of the dark berried plants are on the opposite side of the garden.

“Nightshade?” The Prince asks when Namjoon points out his discovery. “There’s something in here about that, hang on…” He flips through Namjoon’s compendium; in the last week, he’s taken up the mantle of reading the compendium so that Namjoon can focus on the plants themselves.

“I’d imagine so,” Namjoon starts, but the Prince shakes his head.

“I mean outside of its plant entry.” He flips a little more frantically; both of them are feeling the time constraints, although Namjoon doesn’t understand why the Prince is suddenly so frantic to find a cure. He’d gotten the impression that he was closer to his mother than his father – why was the deterioration of his father worthy of more panic than that of his mother? “Ah, here.” He’s stopped at a page right near the front of the book, an assortment of sayings and wisdoms that Namjoon has, in all honesty, maybe read through twice in his life, if that. “To hinder Witches from their will, plant nightshade, rue, hemlock, and dill.”

“Well, I’m guessing that originally referred to deadly nightshade,” Namjoon says. “This is just common nightshade. Both called nightshade, but very different plants.”

Just? The plant whispers, its voice a little insipid. I rise again with my own sowing, boy, there is no ‘just’ to my nature.

“What I mean is, this plant won’t kill you.” This appeases the plant; it seems to stand a little more upright. “Deadly nightshade, on the other hand…” He frowns. “Your Highness, I’ll be blunt - is Her Majesty the Queen definitely the only person who’s ever planted things in this garden? Because the Queen seems to choose her plants with care and attention, and this common nightshade sticks out like a sore thumb. An inexperienced gardener, however, could quite easily mix up common nightshade and deadly nightshade if they were just planting by name alone.”

“There are gardeners who do the majority of the day-to-day care of the garden, but my mother should be the only person planting anything. Why do you ask?”

“Do you have any enemies who would want to poison you or your family? Because if someone was trying to plant deadly nightshade here, well… I’d question their motives, that’s for sure.”

“It’s possible,” the Prince shrugs, not looking all too alarmed at the idea that somebody could be trying to plant his assassination right under his nose. “What about any of these other plants? Could any of them be causing this illness? Are they planted here?”

“No-”

“Yes,” Hoseok says suddenly. “Well, I don’t know about this garden, but there’s dill in the kitchen gardens – it’s, you know, dill – and the last person we drafted in to help with this plague ended up planting a shit ton of rue around the Palace.”

This is the first Namjoon’s heard of there being attempts to solve this before his arrival, but it makes sense – they had seemed at their wits end when they had come to find him in the forest. Although… “You say there’s rue here?”

“Yeah, why?” Hoseok asks.

“Well, exposure to rue without proper protection can cause blistering, which… Wasn’t that one of the symptoms that appeared in some people, but not others?” Namjoon asks. “If it’s just people who live and work in the Palace getting the blisters…”

“We can ask the doctors,” Seokjin says. “But that would mean…”

“We’ve been trying to find something that could cause all of the symptoms of this plague, when it could be lots of things happening simultaneously to make it look like a plague,” Namjoon says. “It’s just a theory, though.”

“It’s more than any of the Minsters have suggested in the last few months,” the Prince says, rubbing his face. He looks exhausted. “So, what’s the plan?”

Namjoon looks around the garden again. “Continue cataloguing the rest of these plants… Wait for the doctors to confirm our suspicions about the rue, and then cast our search net wider, I suppose? Your Highness, I need to stress that this plague could very well not be caused by any plants, and if that’s the case I’m not going to be any help at all?”

The Prince looks him directly in the eye, and his focus is so intense that Namjoon finds himself unable to maintain the eye contact. “You’re helping, Namjoon-ah. You might not feel that way, but… You are.”

“The doctors have confirmed our theory about the rue,” Seokjin says as soon as Namjoon opens his door. He’s already ready to go, books and wand in hand, because, despite what the Prince says, he does feel like he’s wasting everyone’s time. All he’s provided so far is a list of plants that aren’t causing their problems, and, apparently, helped to identify the cause of some blisters that aren’t even related to their problem.

“That’s good,” Namjoon says, stepping out of his room and shutting the door behind him. “I’m almost done cataloguing the garden, too-” A woman in green robes approaches them the opposite way along the path, but when Namjoon steps aside to make room for her she steps into his path and knocks her shoulder against his.

“Rootspeaker, when will you stop taking up space in this Palace?” She asks, making a show of rubbing her shoulder. “You’re distracting the Prince from finding an actual solution.”

“And just what are you doing to help?” Seokjin asks irately. He double-takes, and his irritable frown becomes an outright scowl. “Oh, wait, I remember, you’re the student who got expelled from the Academy for… Gross misconduct, wasn’t it?”

“That was never proven to be me,” the woman snaps, pulling out her wand and unsheathing it to reveal a disconcertingly sharp, metal point, almost needle like.

“Of course not,” Seokjin agrees, hand hovering over his own wand. “That’s why you were only expelled, not arrested.”

The Metal Witch points her wand at Seokjin’s face, but before she can do anything else another woman, dressed in full armour, appears at the end of the hall. “Dahee! Stand down.” Dahee scowls, sheathes her wand, and storms off back the way she had come. “Apologies. She’s new.”

“Commander General,” Seokjin says, bowing low, which Namjoon hastily mimics. “I wasn’t aware you were due back until this afternoon.”

“My meeting with the Admiral ran short.” The Commander General, a tall, imposing woman, walks closer, her boots echoing through the hall. “Difficult to hold a meeting with a man trapped on his boat, unable to leave or take on passengers due to the ongoing plague.” She levels Namjoon with an impassive look. “I heard you were the one that discovered the cause of the blistering.” Namjoon, frozen in place, can only just about manage a silent nod, which the Commander General returns before continuing on her way down the hall.

“I think I’ve had nightmares about her,” Namjoon mutters seriously, remembering the solid year after he had arrived in the forest where he’d dreamt of being hunted down by shadowy, armoured soldiers. “She leads the military?”

Seokjin hums in agreement, gesturing for them to continue walking. “She’s the one who’s very keen to have the Prince instated as Regent while the King takes a leave of absence.”

“That’s… Good though, right? She supports His Highness? The Prince would make a good regent,” Namjoon says as they reach the gate to the garden.

As he unlocks the gate, Seokjin turns the full force of his sceptical grimace towards Namjoon. “The Prince thinks that being made Regent when his father is still alive, and while there are plenty of Ministers that oppose him, will make his transition to the throne… Difficult, and I’m inclined to agree. Also, I don’t trust any Minister’s motives, Namjoon-ah, especially the ones that take on suspended students to fill out their Ministry’s Junior ranks.”

“That Witch?” Namjoon asks, entering the garden. Jeongguk’s sitting there alone, surrounded by textbooks the width of a fist; he looks up eagerly at the sound of their voices.

“Yeah. Jeongguk-ah, wasn’t Dahee in your cohort?”

Jeongguk frowns thoughtfully, and then shakes his head. “The year above me. The one that almost blinded another student, right?”

“Blinded?” Namjoon splutters, turning rapidly from Jeongguk to Seokjin.

“Magic, as I’m sure you know, takes a lot of study, and even more practice,” Seokjin says. “Some Witches like to take shortcuts.”

“Dahee used to carry around this bag of iron filings – she’d use it to cheat in class, swap out the solid metal she was supposed to be working with and just shape the iron filings instead,” Jeongguk explains. “Traditional Metal Magic is about, like, shaping the metal and stuff, like a sculptor, so the professors apparently used to get super mad at students who’d try to cheat the system by using filings or powders.”

“A student was found stumbling around in the hallways of the Academy – he said that he’d been leaving the library when he’d suddenly been attacked by a student, that he couldn’t see,” Seokjin continues, sitting down on one of the low stone walls as Namjoon kneels in front of one of the few remaining flowerbeds he needs to categorise. “He made a full recovery, but when the doctors cleaned out his eyes they found iron filings.”

“And she’s been given a position in the Palace? In the Military?” Namjoon asks, his alarm making his voice hoarse.

“There’s no requirement to have any formal education to be a Minister,” Jeongguk says, casting his schoolwork an irritable glare. “You just apply, and the Minister for Personnel approves or rejects your application. Education is just here to torment people, and me specifically.”

“Finish your homework, or Yoongi will be sad,” Seokjin says, prompting a long, exaggerated sigh from Jeongguk as he pulls a book into his lap. “Yoongi wants to change the application process so that there are more pathways available to becoming a Minister, but all of them involve training and education, with the Royal Academy being one of those paths. But to do that-”

“I need to be King, or the Ministers will accuse me of pursuing personal interests over that of my father and the Kingdom,” the Prince explains as he enters the garden, Jimin waving at them before he leaves. He sits next to the pond, kicks of his shoes and socks, and dips his feet into the water with a sigh. “Jimin had me working on my footwork,” he explains over his shoulder to Namjoon, who tears his eyes away from the sight of the Prince reclining like a figure in a painting.

“Get your feet out of the water, I use that!” Seokjin squawks, waving his hands in a shooing manner as the Prince sighs and hauls his feet back out of the pond again.

“What is the point of being a Prince if you can’t even dunk your feet in the pond your family own?” He bemoans, tipping back exaggeratedly. Namjoon grins as he watches the Prince’s antics out of the corner of his eye. Because he’s watching him, he sees the moment that the Prince glances over and smiles brightly when he locks eyes with Namjoon.

He’s finished cataloguing the plants in the Queen’s garden.

He sets his pen down on top of the book he’s almost filled with notes, and stretches his fingers out. It’s late enough in the day that most of the plants are still and quiet, so Namjoon’s left alone to his own thoughts as he puts the book aside and stretches out his legs.

It is perhaps this introspectiveness that prompts him to turn his head towards the Prince, who’s laying out on one of the garden’s stone benches. “Your Highness?”

The Prince startles a little, turning to look at Namjoon. “Namjoon?”

“I’m finished.” The Prince sits up, crossing his legs underneath him but before he can say anything Namjoon continues. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help, but I can be ready to leave by morning.”

It’s too dark to really make out the Prince’s expression from this far away, but his voice sounds like it more or less always does, calm and thoughtful, even if Namjoon thinks he sees a flicker of worry on his face. “Do you want to go?”

“What I want doesn’t really matter,” Namjoon says, frowning. “I’m here to do a job, I’ve done it, I’m outstaying my welcome.”

“Well, a few things – one, I’d argue that you’re only ‘done’ with the job when I no longer need you to consult on Wood Magic,” the Prince says slowly, clasping his hands in his lap. “Two, if you left at first light I think everyone would just go out and track you down again for not saying goodbye.” The thought of his new friends traipsing after him through the forest makes Namjoon crack a smile, ducking his head to hide it. “Three, what you want matters to me.”

That makes him whip his head up again to look at the Prince. “I… I’ll stay as long as you need me to. I want to stay.”

“Good,” the Prince says briskly. They fall into silence – Namjoon considers moving closer so that he doesn’t have to keep peering through the increasingly thickening darkness at the Prince, but he can feel how warm his cheeks still are from the Prince’s earlier comment, so he keeps his distance.

“Can I ask a question?” Namjoon says.

“Of course.”

“You seem sure that this plague is caused by plants,” Namjoon begins slowly, considering each word. “It doesn’t just seem like a hunch.”

“I’ve been calling it a hunch, actually,” the Prince admits. “When my father’s Ministers ask me why I’m not pursuing other avenues. I don’t really know how else to explain it, but something in me is sure it’s being caused by plants. Like how you know that if you step from one room to another, gravity isn’t going to suddenly stop working.”

“It sounds similar to how I just know how to talk to plants,” Namjoon says. “Is there Magic in your family?”

The Prince snorts, shaking his head and casting a look over at Seokjin, who’s dozed off with his back resting against the garden gate. “Seokjin’s been trying to teach me Water Magic for years, and I’ve never been able to pick it up. He insists you can’t poison a Water Witch, and he wants me to be able to check my own food.” He says it jokingly, blasé, but the thought that enough people would attempt to poison the Prince that not only does he need Seokjin to check his food, but Seokjin’s attempting to train him to check his own food for when he’s not around, just makes Namjoon feel desperately sad.

The sound of his name makes Seokjin stir, rubbing his face tiredly. “You done, Namjoon-ah?” He asks, his voice soft with sleepiness.

“Yeah, hyung,” Namjoon replies, standing up to stretch his legs. “What will I be doing tomorrow?”

“I’m in a meeting with the Commander General which I’ll need Seokjin for, so you and Hoseok will be checking the rest of the plants in the Palace, make sure we’re not missing any offenders like the rue,” the Prince explains.

“Hoseok’s an early riser,” Seokjin says with a ghost of a smirk on his face. “So prepare yourself.”

“I’m used to waking up at dawn with the forest,” Namjoon says with a shrug.

The knock comes when the moon is still out.

“Seokjin told me he’d said I like to start early,” Hoseok says when Namjoon creaks his door open, propping himself up against it so that he doesn’t just curl up on the floor and fall asleep.

“I thought you meant dawn,” Namjoon mutters. He’s not one-hundred-percent certain that he even is awake – on the off chance that he’s still sound asleep, he doesn’t want to speak too loudly and risk waking himself up from this, admittedly, very realistic dream.

“Nope! Early.” He holds up some sheets of paper, which already have writing on them. “I’ve made a list of every room in the Palace – we’re going to check as many as we can access for plants, to see if any of them are giving off spores or whatever.”

“I don’t think a plant giving off spores or allergens in the Palace would cause citywide sickness,” Namjoon says bluntly, rubbing his face in an attempt to ascertain whether or not he’s awake. “I don’t think your problem’s in the Palace at all.”

“Honestly? I think you’re right,” Hoseok replies. “But here’s the thing – can I come in?” Namjoon blinks in surprise, but steps aside to let Hoseok into his room. “Thanks.” He shuts the door behind him, and leans against it. “Yoongi’s pretty sure our problem is out there, and he wants to check it out for himself. However, Crown Princes aren’t supposed to be going off around the Kingdom without the King’s permission – which, I’m sure you understand, isn’t currently possible.”

“Okay… Surely there’s a procedure in place for something like this?”

Hoseok snorts. “Oh, there is – he needs majority permission from the King’s Ministers.”

“Ah.”

“We’ve got… Maybe half on our side? I honestly can’t tell with the Commander General, she could go either way, and the Admiral would be on our side, but he’s currently stuck on his ship in the docks,” Hoseok sighs, ruffling his hair with his hand. “I think one or more of the Ministers knows more than they’re letting on about this sickness, too, but I need to be sure of that before I start throwing around accusations in meetings.”

“That sucks,” Namjoon says, too tired to come up with anything more substantial. Hoseok snorts again. “Couldn’t, uh, couldn’t we go without him? The Prince, I mean. I know he wants to be there, but…” He trails off in the face of Hoseok’s expression.

“I’ll explain this politely, because I like you, Namjoon, I do,” he says stiffly. “Yoongi cares about his people, more so than any leader this country’s ever had, monarch or not. You think he would be happy to delegate finding a solution for this? You haven’t noticed that he’s tried to make himself as helpful to you as he can, because he feels guilty that he can’t do what you’re doing himself?”

“Sorry,” Namjoon says guiltily. “I wasn’t thinking about it that way.”

Hoseok nods, instantly appeased. “I know. It’s hard to think about Yoongi like that when you haven’t grown up knowing him. As a last resort, he probably would ask us to take you around the city, but then we’d risk splitting up his support network here in the Palace…” Hoseok sighs, his shoulders slumped. Almost as soon as Namjoon as caught the slouch, though, Hoseok straightens his spine, squares his shoulders, and lifts his chin. “Yoongi has his meeting with the Commander General today, and he’s going to formally state his intention to accompany you around the city to check for plant-based causes to the plague. So, until that meeting’s over, we’re going to make ourselves busy, because otherwise we’ll just be sitting around looking nervously at the clock.”

The Palace is vast.

Obviously, Namjoon already knew this – he’s lived within its walls for several months now. However, he tends to keep to the same areas – the garden and his room, with occasional visits to the others’ rooms.

Hoseok is taking him everywhere.

“That’s not true,” Hoseok says in response, leading him up a spiralling flight of stairs. “A few of the Royal Residences are currently shut up because there’s no one living in them, and no one’s allowed to enter the King or Queen’s residence except for their personal doctors.” Namjoon nods around a held breath – the tower they’re climbing has recessed niches every ten steps or so, and each one holds an ornately painted vase of cut flowers. He’s trying to time his breathing so that he inhales at the furthest point away from any vase possible as he can, but even then he’s still got that cloying smell up his nose.

“Do you have hayfever?” Hoseok asks suddenly.

“What? No.” Namjoon stops to think about it. “That’d be terrible, a Wood Witch with hayfever. Why do you ask?”

“You’re holding your breath whenever we walk past bouquets,” Hoseok says. “I’ve noticed it before, but you look like you’re really struggling here.”

“Oh. I don’t like the smell,” Namjoon says lamely.

“Because they’re cut?” Hoseok says, grimacing. “I’m sorry, I’d never even thought about that.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Namjoon says with a shrug. “I’ve gotten used to it, I’ve been here long enough.”

“You shouldn’t have to be used to it,” Hoseok says, spinning on his foot to look down at Namjoon from several stairs up. “You should say something! Let people know that something’s making you uncomfortable!” He digs in his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, which he hands to Namjoon. “It’s clean, it should smell like whatever the Witches in the laundry use.” Namjoon presses it under his nose and breathes in deeply – while he can still, very faintly, smell the cut flowers around him, mostly he can just smell soap.

Sudden, thunderous footsteps below them in the tower make Namjoon jump, gripping the handrail with one hand and his wand with the other. He’s not sure what good his wand would be in a fight, but he’d feel better with it than without it – not to mention that he’s pretty sure Hoseok isn’t a Witch, and he’s never seen him carry a weapon, not like Seokjin, Jimin, and Jeongguk’s ubiquitous swords.

Speaking of – the figure charging up the stairs quickly reveals himself as Jeongguk, making Namjoon relax.

“They’re done,” he says quickly. He’s out of breath, but Namjoon doesn’t think it’s from exertion – his cheeks aren’t flushed, and he hasn’t broken a sweat. “The meeting. Yoongi – the Prince is in the Garden, he won’t tell us how it’s gone until everyone’s there-” Jeongguk stops talking, looking up at Namjoon with a worried furrow in his brow. “Hyung, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Jeongguk-ah, I just don’t like the smell,” Namjoon admits. “Cut flowers, you know.”

“Oh, I get that too, sometimes!” Jeongguk says. “Not with flowers, but I’m super sensitive to smells – Hoseok-hyung lets me smell his hair when I get too overwhelmed, that helps a lot!”

“Jeongguk-ah, the Prince?” Hoseok prompts.

“Right!” Jeongguk takes off again as quickly as he had arrived – once Namjoon can no longer hear his footsteps, he turns slowly to Hoseok and raises a slow, singular eyebrow.

“Not a word,” Hoseok says gruffly, scooting past him on the stairs and leading the way back out of the tower.

The breeze outside is welcome after the stuffiness of the air inside the tower, and indeed the stuffiness of most of the Palace. Namjoon had quickly ascertained that there were no living plants indoors – the air was too still and dry, even if the Palace decorators had seemed inclined to attempt to keep any living plants inside.

It was odd, though – the Queen clearly loved plants. Why did the Palace show no signs of that indoors?

Namjoon’s still pondering over this when they enter the garden, but the sights and smells and sounds of living, soil-drenched plants drive the thought completely from his mind – as soon as his feet are on soil again he drops to sit cross-legged, just soaking in the life around him.

“Okay, okay, they’re here!” Jimin calls – he and Taehyung are sitting on one of the low stone walls, and Jimin kicks his feet back and forth excitedly when he sees them. “How did it go?”

The Prince, who’s sitting next to the cherry tree, smiles enigmatically. “How do you know the Commander General didn’t just want to relay how the Admiral was getting on?”

“You wouldn’t call us all here just to tell us that,” Jimin says; he pauses. “Wait. Yes, you would. You better not have-”

“The Commander General has agreed to vote in my favour when I tell the Ministers that I’ll be accompanying Namjoon as he investigates the city,” the Prince says with a grin.

The cheer that rings up from his friends makes Namjoon smile – he doesn’t know whether he’s projecting, but even the garden feels happy under his palms.

Despite the King’s Ministers agreeing to let the Prince leave the Palace, they drag their feet on deciding the minutia of how it will work. The original plan was to have half of the King’s Guard accompany them everywhere they went, before the Prince had pointed out that that would not only be impractical, but would leave the Palace incredibly vulnerable.

Their second plan had been for the Prince and Namjoon to go alone and in disguise, but Seokjin had shut that down as needlessly reckless.

“No offense,” he’d said to Namjoon that evening as he’d caught him up on the day’s meetings. “But I’ve never seen you fight.”

Once a general plan had been established, itineraries had to be drawn up, transport had to be organised, even, to Namjoon’s utter bewilderment, outfits had to be prepared.

After almost an entire month of preparations, however, they’re finally done, and the Prince is showing Namjoon their itinerary on the eve of their first trip.

“The park across the road,” Namjoon says flatly, looking up from the itinerary and raising an eyebrow at the Prince. “All this, just so you can cross the street?”

The Prince sighs and nods his head. “You know, when my father was Crown Prince, he was never allowed to leave the Palace? His Royal Secretary has told me that fact at least five times since we started planning these research trips.” Namjoon has met the King’s Royal Secretary a few times, now, and he’s noticed that, even within the cutthroat world of the King’s Ministers, the Royal Secretary seemingly has no friends, or even allies.

Namjoon sets aside the itinerary and pulls the compendium towards him. He’s spent the last few weeks transcribing the entries for the poisonous plants, the ones that hadn’t been found in the garden, into a smaller book, one that would be a little easier to carry round if they travelled any further than across the road.

He’s made steady progress – he’s currently transcribing the ‘H’s – but he’s slowed down significantly since the Prince had joined him in the library an hour or so ago. The Prince is allegedly doing his own research, but Namjoon hasn’t seen him touch the still closed book in front of him for a while.

“Is that your wand?” The Prince pipes up suddenly; Namjoon looks up at him from his entry on hellebore, glances down at the table, and nods. He’s taken to keeping his wand out when he sits down now, because he’s not sure his wand can survive being accidentally sat on again. “Can I…” He trails off, holding his hand out over Namjoon’s wand.

“Sure,” Namjoon says with a shrug, forcibly looking back at his book. He finishes writing about hellebore, and looks over at his compendium for the next plant to transcribe.

“It’s very…” The Prince trails off again, rolling the wand in his hands.

“You can say it looks like shit, I won’t mind,” Namjoon says, turning back to his book again. Transcription is boring work, and he keeps getting distracted – he’s not sure why the Prince is here, considering that he doesn’t seem to be working, and if he was a better man he’d ask the Prince to leave him alone to work.

But he likes looking up from his work and seeing the Prince, watching the shadow of his eyelashes being cast by the lights ahead, how he’ll occasionally run his tongue along his bottom lip before pulling it into his mouth, the lines of his hands as he examines Namjoon’s wand.

Namjoon turns back to his compendium yet again.

“I was going to say ‘fragile’,” the Prince says defensively, putting the wand back down so gently that it barely makes a noise.

“It was my mother’s,” Namjoon explains, transcribing the first entry for a poisonous plant that he sees, before he realises he’s skipped ahead to ‘henbane’, missing out ‘hemlock’ through his distraction.

“Oh,” the Prince says. “That makes sense.”

Finally giving up his work as a bad job for now, Namjoon looks at the Prince. “What does?”

“Why you wouldn’t want to replace your wand. Seokjin replaces his at least once a year, if not more,” the Prince says. “But none of his wands ever belonged to his mother.”

“I’m not keeping it because of that,” Namjoon says; he picks up his wand and, very carefully, unwraps the rope holding it together. The wand itself, nestled within the rope, is practically splinters at this point, holding itself together with dark tendons of wood. “Wand making is a violent thing for a Wood Witch – ours are the only wands that come from the living. So I’m putting off replacing it until I absolutely have to.”

“Does your wand affect your Magic?” The Prince asks.

“Most of the Magic I do doesn’t rely on a wand,” Namjoon says evasively, because the truth of the matter is yes, he does put himself at a disadvantage by refusing to use his wand most of the time. It’s the difference between writing a novel with a pen and writing it with his finger in the dirt.

“You’re the only Witch I’ve ever met who doesn’t use their wand,” the Prince says. “I was always taught that most Witches can’t even do Magic without their wand.”

“Well, that’s clearly untrue,” Namjoon says, gesturing to himself.

“I don’t know, Namjoon – again, you’re the only Witch I’ve ever met who doesn’t use their wand,” the Prince repeats.

“I’m not powerful,” Namjoon insists. The Prince finally picks up his book and opens it, but it’s as though he’s picked it up for the sole purpose of peering at Namjoon over the top of it, head tilted so that he’s looking at Namjoon from under his eyelashes.

“No?” He says simply, blinking slowly.

Namjoon shakes his head so vehemently that he can feel his hair move from the force of it. “No. I just think you’re overestimating me, your sample size of Witches you’ve met isn’t exactly big.”

The Prince snorts and leans back in his chair. “Ah, maybe you’re right.”

“I would really rather just walk,” Namjoon wheedles to the staff member standing outside of his door. He’s never met her before, and she looks young.

“Um. I don’t think that’s allowed, sir?” she stutters, tapping her toes together.

“Just Namjoon is fine,” Namjoon says gently. He glances over her shoulder at the gama they’ve prepared for him, with three other staff members waiting to carry him from his room to the park across the road. They’re just doing their job, and Namjoon feels bad for complaining at them for something they have no control over, but it’s ridiculous. “Can’t we just… Pretend that I got in?”

“I… No,” the staff member whispers, looking genuinely devastated by the turn this conversation is taking.

Sighing, Namjoon climbs into the gama, and tries to keep himself as still as possible inside as he is carried from his room, out of the Palace, and across the road to the walled-off park.

The park hadn’t been there when Namjoon had lived in the city – he’s pretty sure this space had just been an empty plaza that had once held Witch Council parades. According to his mother, the parades had been as dull and drab as the plaza they had taken place in. The park installed in its place is still more stone than plant life, and the walls block anyone outside the park from looking in, but it’s nice to see some greenery in a city that seemed permanently grey in his childhood.

He belatedly remembers that he’s here to check the poisonousness of these plants, not just admire them. He starts with the closest plant, a viburnum, planted in a huge stone pot shaped like a bowl. Reluctant to stick his very fragile wand into the soil for every single individually planted plant in this park, he settles for placing his hand on the soil. It doesn’t feel like its draining well, which worries him a little; the viburnum shakes its white flowers, a spicy smell permeating the air as it does so.

“Hello,” Namjoon says politely. “I’d like to ask you about a sickness in this city?”

“I know very little,” the viburnum says.

“…About?” Namjoon prompts.

“Anything. I was raised in this space, and I know the warmth and the wet from above.”

Namjoon winces, already anticipating how this excursion is going to go – if the plants within the garden had had limited knowledge, at least they’d been able to go off of the cherry tree’s assertion that nothing within the garden would cause harm to the Queen. Here, though, the park’s plants, unable to communicate with each other or the world around them, are more or less as knowledgeable as babies.

“You look glum,” the Prince says as Namjoon futilely questions his fourth plant of the day, a young forsythia that just wiggles its yellowing leaves happily whenever Namjoon talks to it.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say nothing in here has anything to do with the plague,” Namjoon says flatly, standing up; he immediately feels guilty for not saying goodbye to the forsythia, so he crouches back down and gives the soil a little pat. When he stands back up and looks at the Prince, he’s startled by how endeared he briefly looks before he turns away. “Everything in here seems… Young.”

The Prince nods. “Everything planted in here is less than six months old – the Minister for Taxation has been endeavouring to plant more green spaces here in the city, which sounds altruistic until you remember that rental properties close to green spaces can have their rent prices increased.” Gone is the fond expression on the Prince’s face – he looks agitated.

“Can you change that policy, when you’re King?” Namjoon asks quietly. The Prince appears to be alone, but it’d be naïve to assume somebody wasn’t close by, and Namjoon still wasn’t sure what the laws were on speculating about the Prince’s ascension to the throne.

“It’ll be easier to do that once all of my own appointees are Ministers, which could be anything up to five years after I come to the throne,” the Prince says. “Small comfort to the families whose rent will be increased by greedy policy makers.”

Namjoon thinks about the house he’d grown up in, here in this very city. Their front door was at the top of three stone stairs, a number Namjoon still remembers to this day because his mother used to count them as he climbed, teaching him to place his feet carefully to avoid the parts of the stairs that were loose and crumbling. The ceiling in one of the rooms had a leak so persistent that it would return with every rainy season, no matter how hard his mother tried to fix it, so she’d stick a bucket under it and Namjoon learned to listen for when the thuds of water hitting wood became the delicate plinks of water hitting water, because that meant the bucket needed to be tipped out of the front door.

He used to try staying awake as long as possible to listen for when the bucket got too full, so that he could empty it for his mother, but he could never quite manage it. Every morning after it rained he’d run to check the bucket and every morning, without fail, there’d be no sign of the bucket overflowing.

He’d never known that life could be any different, as a child, but he thinks about telling his younger self that there was a Prince in this very city that cared about people like him, somebody who wanted to ensure that people were treated fairly, that their rooves didn’t leak and their stairs didn’t crumble.

“I think some of them would be,” Namjoon says. The Prince raises a questioning eyebrow. “Comforted, I mean. That you want to help them.”

“That’s kind of you to say, but my family and I have done nothing as the ruling family of this kingdom to warrant the affection of any of its people,” the Prince says bluntly. He’s curled in on himself, rounding his shoulders.

“That’s because the people haven’t met you yet,” Namjoon says. “But when they do, you’ll win their trust and affection easily.” The Prince looks up at Namjoon, and Namjoon decides to be honest in the hopes of convincing the Prince. “You won mine.”

The Prince smiles at him so earnestly that Namjoon thinks that he would quite willingly follow this man to the ends of the earth; for now, he settles with following the Prince around the city in the hopes of helping him to find the cause of his peoples’ sickness.

Their next trip out of the Palace is scheduled to take place a full seven days after their first – this is, allegedly, to give the Ministers time to audit the safety of their first trip, make any potential itinerary changes, and debrief the Prince on everything that happened in the Palace during the time he was absent.

“I was gone for less than five hours, and I’ve spent almost double that in meetings about everything that happened here during those five hours,” the Prince says irritably. They’re meeting in the Prince’s private quarters today, because the Prince has been more or less placed on house arrest to ensure he hasn’t picked up any illnesses in the few hours he was outside the Palace walls. It is, in Namjoon’s opinion, utterly ridiculous, but it means he doesn’t have to worry that people are listening in on their conversations.

After their first conversation in the park had ended, there hadn’t been a single moment when they’d been alone. Green-robed Junior Ministers flitted about, muttering to one another and casting Namjoon suspicious, irritable glances as he worked, and among the Royal Guard that accompanied them Namjoon was sure he could see Dahee, the hot-headed Metal Witch who kept finding excuses to snipe at him whenever she saw him.

So, it’s nice to be somewhere where Namjoon doesn’t feel constantly on guard. Something is making him feel a little on edge, but it’s more the feeling of being presented with one picture after another, and being told that the second picture is missing something from the first. He still feels relaxed as he sits in the comfiest chair he’s ever sat in in his life, feels calm as he listens to the Prince go over the itinerary changes for their trip a few streets away to a restaurant’s private garden.

“We’ll be visiting much earlier in the day than the Ministers had originally wanted – their original plan had been for us to search their property during the afternoon, until Hoseok reminded them that was when the owners would probably be preparing to serve dinner. Speaking of which, the owners have been completely amenable to our requests to investigate their property, so I don’t actually think we’re likely to find anything,” the Prince says. “I’m not even sure it’s possible for the kitchen garden of one restaurant to cause such mass illness, you’d need growing fields on huge scales to cause the amount of damage we’ve been seeing, but I want to explore all possibilities.” He takes an empty vase off the shelf behind him, weighs it thoughtfully in his hands, and then pops it onto his desk before dumping various pens into it. There’s something odd about seeing an empty vase, especially one of the Palace’s most ornate ones, acting as nothing more than a pen pot.

Wait.

“The cut flowers are gone,” Namjoon blurts out, feeling like an idiot as soon as he’s aware that the words are leaving his mouth. He could’ve said literally anything else – talked about the itinerary, maybe even attempted to contemplate the Prince on his décor choices.

“Oh,” the Prince says. “Uh, yeah.”

“Are you getting them replaced?” Namjoon asks, although he’s not sure what could have happened to result in every bouquet wilting simultaneously. Not to mention that the huge, ornate vases have disappeared, too – the only ones left in the Prince’s room are the smaller ones, and they’re all in the process of being repurposed as pen pots, candle holders, and displays for shiny stones and dark, fragile branches.

“Yes,” the Prince says. “Most of the new plants haven’t arrived yet, but one has, hang on…” He steps out onto his balcony, and comes back with-

“A Holly Bonsai?” Namjoon asks delightedly, approaching to get a closer look. It’s so pretty – dark, glossy leaves and a trunk shaped like ginger, all sitting neatly in a glazed, dark blue pot. He holds out his hand, before pulling it back a little. “Can I…?”

“Of course,” the Prince says, sounding a little breathless as he holds out the bonsai to Namjoon, who carefully puts the tip of his little finger on the soil.

“Hi,” Namjoon says quietly.

“Hi,” the Holly repeats, although it’s not repeating Namjoon’s tone – if anything, it’s singing the word back to him. “You do not sound like the birds.”

“Like… The birds?” Namjoon asks, tilting his head.

“The human who provides water and sun and shade sings like the birds,” the Holly explains in its sing-songy voice. “It is very nice.”

He looks up at the Prince with a smile so wide he can feel his cheeks rising. “You sing while you look after your plants?”

The Prince turns lily-pink, eyes wide, before huffing and turning his head away. “A little. Do they not like it?” He sounds gruff, but Namjoon doesn’t miss the flash of worry quirking his mouth.

“They do,” Namjoon says, his heart so full he feels like it could burst. “It was the first thing they said – they told me off for not sounding like the birds.”

The Prince turns impossibly pinker, but the smile that dawns on his face is as warm and golden as the sun. “I’m glad.”

“So,” Namjoon says, handing the holly bonsai back. “What prompted you to get a bonsai?”

“You,” the Prince says. When he takes the pot from Namjoon, their fingertips brush. It reminds Namjoon of when he touches the soil and feels the warmth of the life in the roots below. “We’re replacing all of the cut flowers with living plants – once they grow they’ll be planted in the city as part of a greening initiative, to make the city nicer for Wood Witches to live in, so they don’t, you know, flee to the forest… Namjoon?”

Namjoon bows hastily, because if he keeps looking at the Prince he’ll do something stupid. “Thank you, Your Highness.” He straightens in time to catch the tail-end of something flashing in the Prince’s eyes, but not soon enough to discern what expression the Prince had pulled.

“It’s… You can call me Yoongi. If you want. My friends do.”

“I’d like that,” Namjoon says softly. “Yoongi.”

Whereas his earlier smile had been warm like the sun, the grin Yoongi shows him now is as bright as the stars through the roof of his greenhouse, as soft as the sun-warmed grass in the glade, as beautiful as the first time he had seen the smeraldo flower bloom, or heard the roses hum.

Shit.

Seokjin smiles at him, warm and bright, when he comes to meet him on the morning that they’re heading out to the restaurant gardens. The rainy season has arrived, yet Seokjin stands in front of Namjoon’s door, perfectly dry as the rain curves gently around him.

“He’s been wanting to ask you to call him by his name for months,” Seokjin says, apropos of nothing as Namjoon slips his boots on and grabs an umbrella for good measure. The restaurant they’re heading to is on the riverfront, which means that they can take the Royal Barge. “I went into his office after I’d walked you back to your room last night to find him sitting at his desk like this-” He holds his own cheeks in his hands and smiles. “Which was very sweet.” He lets his hands drop and then sighs as Namjoon leaves his room. “Namjoon-ah, what’re your plans?”

It’s such a non sequitur that Namjoon genuinely doesn’t know how to respond. “For… What?”

“Life,” Seokjin says, watching Namjoon lock up his room. “Your future.”

“I don’t give it any thought,” Namjoon says honestly. “Living in the forest is a day-to-day thing, really. I imagine what a tree might look like when its fully grown, but I don’t plan for it.”

“Okay, but what about you? Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten? Do you want a family?”

“Hyung, where’s this coming from?” Namjoon laughs. “I don’t know, I don’t really have a concrete idea of where I’ll be in a few weeks, let alone a few years.”

Seokjin nods thoughtfully, leading Namjoon to the Palace’s private dock. “So you wouldn’t be opposed to-” Whatever he was about to say was interrupted by Jimin marching over; Namjoon’s a little alarmed to see that the stone beneath his feet is literally cracking with each step. “Jimin-ah!”

Jimin glances down and rolls his eyes. “Good. Let certain people see what real Magic is capable of.” He holds up what appears to be a tiny twist of paper, rather like the husk of a ground cherry. The twisted end of it looks a little scorched. “I just found a Junior Minister, one of the ones who was supposed to be accompanying us today, in possession of a whole box of these. He was supposed to be escorting the Prince onto the ship.”

“What are they?” Seokjin asks. Putting the little twist of paper into his pocket, Jimin pulls out another one just like it, except it’s not got a scorched end; he then pulls out a box of matches, takes one out, and lights the paper, gesturing for them to take a step back before tossing it to the ground. “A children’s toy?” Seokjin says dismissively as the paper releases a sharp ‘pop’, smokes a little, and quickly burns out.

“Mmm,” Jimin says, picking up the paper between his fingernails. “Except these are clearly not made for children.” He tips the paper over onto his palm, where a tiny pile of something heaps into the middle of his hand.

“Is that… Glass?” Namjoon asks, squinting down at it.

“Some of these have sand in – I ran into the Minister for Taxation earlier and got her to run her wand over the box, and she told me at least a dozen of them have metal filings in them,” Jimin says.

“What was a Junior Minister doing with these?” Seokjin asks.

Jimin closes his fist over the glass, which makes Namjoon squirm before he remembers that, as an Earth Witch, he’s not likely to hurt himself – he uncurls his palm to reveal a perfect replica of his curled hand made from glass. “He claimed they were confiscated from a child in the city. If that were the case, why would he be going to meet the Prince with them in his pockets? I personally believe he’s another second-rate Witch attempting to bolster their abilities with cheap tricks, but because I have no proof we still have to take him with us today.”

Seokjin scowls over at a gaggle of Junior Ministers walking towards them, their green robes trailing behind them like leaves in the wind. “I’ll keep an eye on them.”

“Is this a common problem?” Namjoon asks. “People pretending to be better at Magic than they actually are?” He remembers Dahee, the Metal Witch with the iron filings.

“Common enough that I’m getting sick of it,” Jimin mutters furiously. “When you have people like Jeongguk willing to fight to protect the Prince, yet people like that get given positions because their father is one of the King’s Ministers, or their mother went to the Academy with the King’s sister…”

As a huge procession starts to approach from the Prince’s quarters, the Royal Barge is steered closer to the dock by a Water Witch. The boat Namjoon had ridden on from the forest to the Palace has nothing on the Royal Barge, which looks better suited for war than it does for ferrying them from the Palace to a restaurant within the city. It looks as though it has room for hundreds of people on board, and it’s been intricately painted with the royal coat of arms.

“We’re definitely just going to a restaurant, right?” Namjoon says quietly to Seokjin.

Seokjin snorts. “This is nothing, you should see the King’s ship.”

It’s hard to imagine there could be a river ship bigger and better than this one, but Namjoon’s not exactly an expert.

“Announcing His Highness, the Crown Prince!” Namjoon bows, but with his lowered gaze he can see Yoongi’s boots go past. He’s too afraid to look up, afraid that something he hasn’t acknowledged to himself will be visible on his face for the whole court to see if he makes eye contact with Yoongi here, now.

As soon as Yoongi’s on board, the crowd jumps into action – carrying resources onto the boat, bags and maps and weapons.

“Again,” Namjoon says, looking around at the carnage as Seokjin leads him and Jimin through the bustling crowds on board the ship. “You’re absolutely sure we’re just going to a restaurant?”

“All these supplies have been negotiated down,” Seokjin mutters, opening a door and politely gesturing for Namjoon to enter. “The Commander General wanted us to go on processional horseback, as though anyone has ridden on horseback in the last hundred years.”

“I’ve ridden on horseback,” Yoongi points out sullenly, making Namjoon jump. He’s sitting on a long couch with so many cushions that he’s almost subsumed by them.

“You’re the Prince,” Jimin points out, perching on the arm of the couch. “You have to learn weird things like that. You think Jiyoung down in the treasury has ever ridden a horse? She probably doesn’t even know what a horse is.”

“Just because you’ve never seen a horse, doesn’t mean you don’t know what they are,” Seokjin says, sitting on a big armchair. The room they’re in looks rather like Yoongi’s office, except this one is rocking slightly under their feet – Namjoon wishes there were windows, or at least one window, because what is probably just gentle rocking feels horrendous without a frame of reference to compare it to.

“You’re going very green, Namjoon-ah,” Yoongi says worriedly from his little cocoon of pillows and cushions. “Do you need a window opening?”

“There’s a window?” Namjoon asks a little desperately, glancing around at the walls for some curtains, maybe even a door.

Jimin hops off the arm of the couch and heads to the bare wall behind the desk. He pulls out his wand, puts it at the very edge of the wall, and then folds the wall like a paper fan.

The wall parts to reveal the front of the ship, and Namjoon feels instantly better for being able to see the city passing by outside. They’ve already left the Palace walls and, Namjoon realises, they’re pretty close to the street he’d grown up on.

“Better?” Yoongi asks, mistaking his recognition for something else. Namjoon nods, tight lipped.

Despite them now being in private, he’s struggling to look Yoongi directly in the eye. Maybe calling him ‘the Prince’ in his head all these months had been a way to distance himself from him – because, really, what does he think can happen here? Even if all he wanted was friendship, when Yoongi no longer needs his services he’ll just return to the forest, and it’d be pretty difficult to maintain a friendship with a Prince, let alone a King.

“Can you give us a minute?” Yoongi says. Namjoon looks up, goes to stand to leave, before he realises Yoongi’s not talking to him – he’s talking to Seokjin and Jimin, who step outside so quickly Namjoon starts to think this has been planned. “Namjoon, look at me?”

If Namjoon is typically bad at making eye contact with Yoongi, then Yoongi is usually just as bad, but when Namjoon turns his head Yoongi’s already watching him with wide, worried eyes.

“Is this… Namjoon, if you’re uncomfortable calling me ‘Yoongi’, please just say so. You’ve barely looked at me all day.”

“It’s not that,” Namjoon says. “I’m so happy, and I’m worried that it’s written all over my face every time I look at you. I know that people talk about us around the Palace, about your reasons for keeping me around, and I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.”

“Let them talk,” Yoongi says, shrugging. “They’d find something else to talk about eventually.” He finally breaks eye contact, looking out of the front of the ship for a moment before continuing. “But we’re in private, now, and I had to ask you to look at me.”

Because I’m worried that, every time I look at you, I’ll imagine a future we can’t have, that it’ll get harder to leave when you send me away, Namjoon thinks, so honestly and abruptly that, for a moment, he’s worried that he’s said his thoughts out loud, a habit he still hasn’t entirely broken. Thankfully, Yoongi’s expression hasn’t changed. “I’m sorry, Yoongi. I’m not used to this.” Yoongi turns to look at him again, one eyebrow raised questioningly. “Having friends, I mean.” It’s absolutely a cop out, even if it is true, but it seems to appease Yoongi well enough, giving Namjoon more time to grapple with the dawning realisation that he could, given more time, see himself falling in love with Yoongi quite easily.

He needs to talk to someone.

“No joy?” Taehyung says sympathetically. Namjoon had sent him a note as soon as they’d docked back at the Palace, asking to see him in his rooms at his earliest convenience. Taehyung, to his credit, seems to have turned up in the time it had taken for the note to be delivered and for him to walk from his room in the Academy to Namjoon’s quarters.

“I spent the entire day looking at parsnips,” Namjoon says tiredly, letting him into the room. “Vegetables don’t even talk, so I was just… Sitting in silence, looking at parsnips.” Taehyung frowns. “What?”

“I’ll ask you about it in a bit, I get the impression you didn’t invite me over to talk about parsnips,” Taehyung says, sitting in Namjoon’s chair.

Namjoon perches on the edge of his desk. “Right. Um. I’ve not had many friends.” Taehyung nods encouragingly. “And I’ve never, you know… Been in love. Romantically. Before I, uh, overthink it, I want… How do I know? If I’m falling in love?”

“I think it’s different for everyone, and it’s different every time,” Taehyung says thoughtfully. “For me, my issue is that because I fall in love easily, I never tend to notice that I’m doing it until I realise I’m thinking about our long-term future together, whether our goals align, how they’d fit into my life and vice versa.”

“And what if… What if we don’t have that?” Namjoon asks quietly, feeling emotionally flayed. “What if I realise I’m letting myself fall in love, even though I know there’s no future with him?”

“Then you let yourself love him,” Taehyung says, a little fiercely. “You let yourself love him for as long as time allows, and you maybe let yourself trust that you don’t know the future.” Namjoon sighs – he still feels vulnerable, but he does feel better for getting it off his chest. “Have you told him?”

“No,” Namjoon says. “I only realised that I could see myself falling in love with him today.”

“Oh, Joonie,” Taehyung says sadly. “Can I give you some advice?” Namjoon nods. “Tell him. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t.”

He doesn’t tell him.

How can he? Aside from the fact that Yoongi’s the Crown Prince and Namjoon’s employer, he’s also quickly becoming the best friend he’s ever had. They talk even more than they used to, as though, by calling him by his first name, Namjoon’s broken through the last remaining wall around Yoongi’s heart. He’s effervescent, and kind, and smart, and Namjoon feels more and more ridiculous by the day as he remembers how, when he’d first met Yoongi, he’d thought him stern and mysterious.

They’re back in the garden again, sitting next to the pond, just talking. They had originally been working in Yoongi’s office, reading through missives from the farmers on the edge of the capital, when Yoongi had looked out of his window and insisted they go to the garden to ‘sit in the sun for once’.

It’s clearly an excuse to stop working, because Namjoon gets more sunlight here than he ever did under the shady canopies of the forest, but he willingly and eagerly agrees.

“You were the first person I’d ever met who didn’t immediately know who I was,” Yoongi admits suddenly, throwing some food to the fish in the pond. “Which sounds more impressive than it actually is, I haven’t really met a lot of people.”

Namjoon has learned that when Yoongi announces things like this, sudden yet casual, then he’s been thinking about them a lot. They’re things that are important to him, no matter how offhand he sounds.

“I always imagined that the royal family met lots of people,” Namjoon says carefully.

Yoongi shakes his head. “We don’t really get out much. Even when we entertain foreign dignitaries, we’re sat at a different table.” He grimaces. “My grandfather believed it would solidify our position, when all it’s done has just left us isolated as a royal family, overly dependent on our advisors and ministers.”

“It sounds lonely,” Namjoon says, leaning forward to look at the film of algae coating the edges of the pond. “How’re things along the river?”

We are thriving, the algae say.

“Can you pass a message to the oldest tree who shadows the river?” Namjoon asks, because calling the willow by its human name would just result in the message getting lost before it even left the Palace. There’s a lot he wants to say – he wants to tell the willow how much he’s enjoying his time here, how much he’s learning. He wants to tell it about his friends, and about Yoongi, who cares so deeply about everything it’s a wonder he doesn’t bruise with it. However, even if the algae could be relied on to relay everything he would want to say, the thought of describing how he feels about Yoongi out loud, in front of Yoongi, without even taking the time to sift through the feelings himself, gives him second-hand embarrassment just imagining this alternate version of himself. So, he sums up everything he has experienced and thought and felt over the last few months with “I’ll be here longer than I thought. Can you tell the tree that, please?”

The algae agree, and Namjoon can hear his own words echoing back to him in a harmonic chorus, each species of algae resonating at a different pitch as they pass the message along.

“You can do that?” Yoongi asks.

“Do what?” Namjoon asks, leaning back again.

“Use plants as a way to pass along messages.”

Namjoon wrinkles his nose. “It’s not really… I don’t actually do anything, I just ask the plants. It’d be like crediting yourself for the postal service delivering your letter.”

“I still think it’s interesting,” Yoongi says. He unfolds his legs and dips the toe of his shoe into the pond. “I think all Magic is interesting. Seokjin’s been trying to teach me Water Magic for years, I think I told you? But if I’d been taught Wood Magic we could have talked to each other. Although,” he muses, drawing patterns with his shoe. “If there was somebody to teach me Wood Magic, I wouldn’t have gone looking for you in the first place.” It’s an odd thought – that meeting Yoongi has relied upon chance after chance after chance. So many variables, layered upon one another like network of spider webs. “You say that my life sounded lonely,” Yoongi says suddenly, distracting Namjoon from his burgeoning existential crisis. “But wasn’t yours? Growing up in the forest – I know that you had the plants, but did you ever wish there were other people around?”

Namjoon winces. “So, I think I need to clear something up – I’ve only lived in the forest for the last decade or so.” Yoongi frowns. “You just assumed I grew up there – I never actually said that.”

“Why haven’t you corrected me before now?” He laughs in shock, knocks his shoulder against Namjoon’s. “Where did you grow up?”

“Here, actually. Well, not here, but in the city.”

Yoongi looks at him carefully, and then nods. “I can see it, you growing up here.” He grins. “Little Namjoon-ah, a baby Wood Witch in the city.” The smile fades off his face. “Ah… That must’ve been lonely, not being able to hear the plants. There were even fewer in the city, back then.”

Namjoon nods. “I was never lonely in the forest, but I felt lonely here. My mother was a Wood Witch, and she raised me well, but both of us longed for the trees, I think. We didn’t really talk to anyone else.”

“You’ve talked about your mother before,” Yoongi says. “You were close?”

“Very. She died when I was fourteen,” Namjoon explains, staring down at the water. “There was nothing keeping me here, after that, so I just… Left. Ran to the forest, and never looked back.”

There’s more to the story, and Yoongi seems to know that – but he doesn’t ask, and Namjoon doesn’t offer.

Which is just as well, really, considering that the part of the story he’s not telling involves him breaking into the Palace.

On a dark, stormy night, a fourteen-year-old Namjoon had snuck into the Palace, the only place within the city that had any plants.

Normally he could ignore the call of it, the knowledge that there were plants just out of reach, but that night he’d heard sobbing – wailing, and it was the first sound he’d heard all day that wasn’t his own breathing, so he hadn’t thought twice before throwing on a coat over his pyjamas, shoes on his feet, and hopping onto his bicycle in search of the crying.

It was surprisingly easy to break into the Palace, something that had given Namjoon much pause as he’d gotten older, but on that stormy night he’d just been grateful for it, cycling past the sleeping guards at the gate and pedalling as fast as he could towards the garden.

Once he had gotten there, the crying had stopped.

“Come on, come on,” Namjoon had muttered, looking around desperately. There were hardly any plants, except for a few ornamental shrubs in giant granite pots, and all of those were silent in ways Namjoon had never experienced before.

And then his eyes had alighted on the rosebush, planted next to a low stone wall.

It was in the direction he thought he had heard the crying coming from and, looking at it, he could see why it might be crying – it looked damaged, its stems hacked at and, in some places, drilled through; the soil around it looked discoloured, and the bush had barely any leaves and no flowers.

Namjoon didn’t know what possessed him, but the next thing he knew he was on his hands and knees, scrabbling at the dirt, trying to pull up as much of the rosebush’s roots as he could. He carried the salvaged plant, and as much soil as he could carry, and dumped it into his bike’s basket, before taking off into the night to find somewhere safe to keep the rosebush.

He shakes his head to clear the cobwebs of memory. Yoongi’s still sitting at his side, anchoring Namjoon to the present with the solid warmth of him; he seems to notice that Namjoon isn’t lost in thought anymore because he offers him a slight smile, his mouth closed and lips pressed together.

“Sorry,” Namjoon says.

“For what, thinking?” Yoongi says, his smile widening with what Namjoon thinks is relief. “More people in this place could stand to do it more often.” He knocks his shoulder against Namjoon’s again, but this time he doesn’t move away.

Yoongi has guards posted outside the garden gate, but Namjoon stills feels his stomach clench in fear when somebody lets themselves into the garden. As he’s spent more time in the Palace, there have been times when he’s spent time alone with Yoongi without Seokjin posted nearby, yet every time he can’t help but feel aware of the fact that if something does happen, Namjoon will be more or less useless. He has no combat training, his wand has maybe one offensive spell cast left in it, and he doesn’t even know what spell to cast first in a combat scenario.

Thankfully, it’s Taehyung – Namjoon once again resolves to ask Seokjin or Jimin to teach him at least one useful fighting technique.

“Seokjin said I’d find you here,” he says breathlessly, looking at Namjoon. “I was studying, and I suddenly remembered that I wanted to ask you something, so I checked your room but you weren’t there, then I checked everyone’s offices – thankfully I ran into Seokjin in one of the hallways. When we talked last night, do you remember, when you were asking about…” He trails off abruptly, as though his brain has caught up with his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah,” Namjoon says quickly, resolutely not looking at Yoongi, who’s still pressed comfortably against his side. “I remember. It was about vegetables, right?”

“Yes!” Taehyung sits down next to the pond, cross legged. “My grandmother used to tell me a story about vegetables. I don’t really remember it, but I’m sure they talked.”

“…What?”

“You said that vegetables are silent, right? But my grandmother – remember, when we first met, I told you that my great-grandmother was a Wood Witch, and my grandmother would tell me stories about it? – I think we should ask her! Ask her if the vegetables used to talk, and if so why they stopped!”

“It’d be interesting,” Namjoon says, trying to separate how desperately he wants to talk to someone raised by a Wood Witch from how, objectively, he can’t see how this could be related to the work he’s been asked to do – how could the silence of the vegetables be at all related to the plague still sweeping through the city?

“You’ve been trying to get permission to survey the farm fields on the outskirts of the city, right?” Taehyung presses. “Well, my grandmother used to live on one of those farms! My whole family did!”

“…It is odd that the Minister for Taxation keeps giving us excuses as to why we can’t go,” Yoongi points out. “And the Ministers won’t give me permission to go any further beyond the city than the outskirts.” He doesn’t say it, but Namjoon knows he’s thinking it – they’re running out of leads to pursue. Maybe he’s too willing to convince himself that speaking to Taehyung’s grandmother could be useful, but they also don’t have anything else to look into until they’re allowed to investigate the farm fields. Yoongi grins suddenly. “You can sneak me out again.”

“I don’t know how you handled it,” Namjoon mutters to Seokjin as they slip out of the front gate. “The stress when you snuck out last time.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I found grey hairs,” Seokjin replies, looking up and down the road in front of the Palace walls before waving the rest of them through. “However, that was worse – that time it was only me and Taehyung, and we didn’t know who would be there to meet us in the forest. This time it’s all of us, and we’re going to visit Taehyung’s grandparents who live down the road.”

He seems casual enough but, in Namjoon’s opinion, sneaking Yoongi through the backstreets of the city is more dangerous than having him sit on a boat on the river. Namjoon eyes each person they pass with suspicion, until Jimin treads on his toes.

“Stop glaring,” he says. “Strangers don’t stare at each other in the street, you’ll draw people’s attention.” Jimin, unlike Seokjin, seems incredibly stressed, his shoulders pulled back stiffly and his hand hovering close to where Namjoon knows his sword is hidden.

“People also don’t walk down the street like this,” Jeongguk points out, waving his hand at their circular formation around Yoongi. “You know, just saying.”

“We’re not letting Yoongi walk around unprotected, are you mad?” Hoseok grits out through his teeth.

Out of all of them, only Yoongi seems perfectly content – happy, even, looking around at his surroundings like a child in a sweet shop. The streets are a little too similar to the ones Namjoon grew up on for it to really be interesting to him, but watching the wonder on Yoongi’s face forces him to see it in a new light; the sharply sloping streets letting him look down at the rain-slick roofs; how the houses are much less grey than he remembers, with dark roofs and the different tones of brick and the bright brown woods contrasting with the white paint. It’s not the opulence of the Palace, not even close, but there’s still a beauty to it.

“This is their house!” Taehyung says excitedly, climbing the three stairs up to the house’s door in one go and rapping on the door. It’s opened by a woman with a kind face and strong-looking hands.

“Taehyung-ah!” She pats his cheek. “I didn’t know you were coming to visit. Where’s Jimin-ah?” She peers down at all of them, eyes narrowed; Jimin, his shoulders visibly relaxing, scoots around Seokjin to greet her. “You’ve brought a lot of friends with you, Taehyung-ah.”

“Can we come in?” Taehyung asks politely, casting a glance back at Yoongi, who has his satgat tipped low over his eyes. “We’re actually here on official business.”

“Well, alright then,” Taehyung’s grandmother says, stepping aside and allowing them all to traipse into her home. “Your grandfather’s out at the moment, I’m sure he’d love to – Y-Your Highness!” She inhales sharply as Yoongi, safely inside, removes his hat and nods to her. “Welcome to our home, Your Highness, I hope you find everything to your liking -Taehyung, some warning would have been nice,” this last part is hissed at Taehyung, who grins sheepishly.

“We didn’t have time to tell you – we wanted to come sooner rather than later, and to do that we had to sneak Yoongi out of the Palace, otherwise we’d get caught up in meetings for the next ten years,” Taehyung replies, rolling his eyes. His grandmother widens her eyes at his casual address, and looks set to call Taehyung out on it before Yoongi steps forward.

“Taehyung is a friend, and I asked him to call me by name,” Yoongi explains.

“I – good grief, our little Taehyung, making friends with royalty and nobility.” There’s something hilarious about this tiny woman calling Taehyung ‘little’, so Namjoon has to press his lips together to avoid laughing.

“Let me introduce you to everyone else!” Taehyung says. “You’ve met Jimin, obviously, and you’ve just met Yoongi – that’s Seokjin, and Hoseok, and Jeongguk, and that’s Namjoon, and he’s why we’re here.” Taehyung’s grandmother turns her gaze on Namjoon, looks him up and down, before looking at her grandson quizzically. “Remember that story you used to tell about my great-grandmother, the one about the vegetables?”

She looks lost, glancing from Taehyung to Namjoon as though one of them will provide answers. “Taehyung,” she says eventually. “Why do you want to hear that old story?”

“Because the vegetables have never spoken to me,” Namjoon says. “And…” He almost lies, almost says that it’s important for him to know why so he can figure out what’s causing the city’s plague, but instead he says, “And I want to know why.”

“It’s been so long since I’ve spoken to a Wood Witch,” Taehyung’s grandmother whispers, before gesturing for Namjoon to sit. “Sorry, there aren’t enough seats for all of you…” There’s some scuffling as they decide who should get to sit – eventually, Namjoon and Yoongi sit across from Taehyung and his grandmother, Seokjin stands at Yoongi’s shoulder, and Hoseok, Jimin and Jeongguk sit cross-legged on the floor.

“There was a time,” Taehyung’s grandmother begins, folding one of her hands over the other. “When the vegetables would talk.” Namjoon leans forward, almost desperately. “My mother spent much of her time in the vegetable patch.”

“I always just assumed they never spoke,” Namjoon admits. He’s gripping at the edge of his seat, so hard that his knuckles are whitening and his fists are shaking a little. He makes the conscious effort to loosen his grip, flexing his fingers to encourage blood back into them. “I’ve met plants that won’t speak, but I can still talk to them, and I know they can understand me. But the vegetables…”

“When I was a child, my mother would refuse to come to the market with us,” Taehyung’s grandmother explains. “When we were older, she told us that newer farming methods were damaging the vegetables, and the stalls at the market were full of vegetables… Hurting. She was always very specific in her word choice, always used the word hurt, even though before then she was adamant that plants couldn’t feel pain like we could.” Namjoon nods in understanding. “Then, one day, my mother needed to come into town with us… I forget why, but I’ll never forget the look on her face when she realised that she couldn’t hear the vegetables anymore. She never forgave herself.”

“It wasn’t her fault,” Namjoon says.

“Oh, I agree. But she was insistent, right up until the day she died, that she should’ve done more to explain to people what they were doing.” Taehyung’s grandmother sighs. “In the years since the Wood Witches have dwindled, and their knowledge has died out, I’d imagine that a lot of damage has been done by well-meaning farmers, and not-so well-meaning businessmen.”

Hoseok hums thoughtfully. “Your father appointed a new Minister for Taxation recently,” he says to Yoongi, who nods. “And she seems very reticent about letting you go to the farms.”

“Most of my father’s Ministers are reticent to let me go anywhere,” Yoongi points out. “I don’t see how a farm could be causing a plague, though.”

“That’s a lot of shoes!” Somebody calls jovially from the hallway. “Fancy shoes at that.” A tall man pokes his head into the room and smiles at Taehyung – they share the same boxy, delighted grin. “Taehyung! Good to see you. How’re they treating you at the Palace, do they feed you enough?” Taehyung’s grandmother emits a noise like a whistling kettle, jerking her head towards Yoongi; Taehyung’s grandfather seems to misunderstand, because he strides forward and shakes Yoongi’s hand. “You must be Jimin, I’ve heard a lot about you from my wife – sorry we’ve missed each other in the past-”

“I’m Jimin, sir,” Jimin says, standing up and bowing.

“That’s the Prince,” Taehyung’s grandmother whispers hurriedly. Taehyung’s grandfather stops shaking Yoongi’s hand for a moment, and then shakes it more vigorously.

“Welcome to our home, Your Highness. Have you been feeding my grandson properly?”

Yoongi looks utterly at a loss, looking at Taehyung to confirm whether or not he’s being well fed.

“Apologies for him, Your Highness, he’s from the countryside, we’ve never met royalty before-”

“Yoongi, have you been feeding Taehyung properly? Fess up,” Jeongguk says cheekily, making Yoongi look even more panicked.

“I – he’s never complained?” Yoongi says, looking around a little desperately at them all. “Are you eating enough? Please tell me you eat enough.”

“I eat well,” Taehyung says, finally taking pity on Yoongi. “Although I wouldn’t say no to some home cooking, while I’m here…”

“Yah, the cheek of you!” Taehyung’s grandmother says, relaxing again in the face of Yoongi’s overwhelming softness for his friends. She stands up and stretches out her back. “As it happens, I’ve just made a batch of rice.” As she goes into the kitchen, Namjoon follows after her.

“Um,” he says, watching her bustle around the kitchen. She turns to him and smiles encouragingly, wooden spoon already in hand. “If it’s not too much trouble, could you tell me more about your mother?”

“Have a seat,” she says, pointing with her spoon at one of the stools. “You too, Your Highness.” Namjoon startles and turns around – Yoongi’s followed him so quietly that he hadn’t even heard him approach. “Would you like to hear about anything in particular?”

“As much as you’re willing to tell me, ma’am,” Namjoon says, lowering himself into the stool. Yoongi sits next to him, nudging the stool he chooses a little bit closer.

“She used to sing to every plant on our farm,” Taehyung’s grandmother says. “And I’m no Wood Witch, but even I could tell that every plant would sing back.” She carefully explains how Wood Witches used to pass their teachings and traditions down orally, which was why, when they lost their place on the Witches’ Council and fled the increasingly industrialised city, so much of their knowledge was lost so quickly. She talks about her childhood on the farm, how she used to get so lost in the corn fields her parents could only find her if she jumped and waved; the sharply concentrated sweetness of the wild strawberries she used to eat by the handful; her mother’s wand.

“I still have it, if you want to see?” She offers; Namjoon nods fiercely, so she wipes her hands on a towel and disappears.

Namjoon turns to Yoongi, who seems to be deep in thought. “You okay?”

“I was thinking about my mother,” Yoongi says. “I’ve never asked her about her family, can you believe that?”

“I never asked my mother about her family either, or anything about my father, really,” Namjoon says gently.

Yoongi nods, but doesn’t look appeased.

Taehyung’s grandmother returns with a very hardy looking driftwood wand – even though it must be well over a century old, the only real sign of its age is how pale the wood is.

“Both of my parents were born near the ocean, and she used to take us there every year when she replaced her wand,” Taehyung’s grandmother says. The way she holds the wand is a little unnatural, more like a pen than a wand. “She always preferred her wands to be driftwood, although she would never explain why.”

Namjoon eyes the wand, thinks about his own reticence to replace his wand in the traditional way his mother taught him. Thinks that he can understand why a Witch would seek out an alternative wand source, even if it’s not as powerful or as easy to come by.

As they approach the Palace gates, Jimin frowns at what he sees up ahead.

“The wrong people are on duty,” he says, squinting.

“Will we still be able to get back in?” Namjoon asks, worried – the main reason they’d been able to sneak out with no trouble was because Jimin was friends with the gate guards on duty.

“It should be fine,” Jimin says slowly; he points to a little side street. “Wait here.” They all press themselves into the narrow space as Jimin strides ahead.

“Why would they change the guards?” Jeongguk asks, peering around the wall to watch.

“Any number of reasons,” Seokjin replies, pulling Jeongguk back behind the wall. “It won’t help to speculate, just wait.”

They don’t have to wait for long – Jimin reappears, looking incredibly unhappy.

“There’s been an incident in the Palace – no deaths,” he clarifies. “A few injuries. Some sort of explosion.”

“Where?” Yoongi asks.

Jimin bites his lip and looks to the side. “The gate guards said they don’t know for sure, but they’d heard it was close to Namjoon-hyung’s room. They caught the person that caused it.”

Namjoon breathes a sigh of relief, but he’s the only one. He frowns. “There was nothing valuable in there, don’t worry – all my notes were in Yoongi’s study. I might need to borrow some clothes, though.”

“Don’t – don’t worry?” Yoongi hisses, looking incandescent with fury. “Somebody’s blown up your room and you want me to not worry? What if you were in it?”

“But I wasn’t,” Namjoon says. Yoongi yells wordlessly.

“Can we discuss this inside the Palace?” Hoseok says, looking around sharply. “Preferably after we’ve questioned the guy that’s chosen to go around blowing up rooms?”

“Fine,” Yoongi says shortly, stalking off in the direction of the Palace so fast that Seokjin and Taehyung almost have to run to catch up with him.

Jeongguk falls into step with Namjoon, letting Jimin and Hoseok walk ahead. “You don’t really think that, hyung? That we shouldn’t worry about you?”

“I don’t see why you should,” Namjoon says honestly. “I wasn’t there.”

“Okay, but you should’ve been,” Jeongguk points out, turning his deerlike eyes on Namjoon. “We weren’t scheduled to be away from the Palace today. This wasn’t just somebody trying to be annoying, they were trying to hurt you.”

“We don’t know that,” Namjoon says hastily, because Jeongguk looks one stiff breeze away from bursting into tears. “It might’ve been an accident.”

“Hyung, just accept that we’re worried!” Jeongguk says furiously, almost stamping his foot. “Accept the fact that Yoongi – the Prince is worried that somebody could be trying to hurt you!”

“I – alright,” Namjoon says, stunned.

They walk past the gate guards, who look at Namjoon out of the corners of their eyes as he passes, and immediately begin whispering as soon as he’s passed under the painted ceilings of the gate interior. He automatically goes to walk towards his rooms, but stops; Jeongguk takes him by the arm and leads him away, towards Yoongi’s private rooms.

They don’t go in, though – instead, Jeongguk takes him past Yoongi’s compound to a tiny building, where a small crowd has gathered in front of the door.

“Your Highness,” the Commander General says, standing firm at the door. “I strongly recommend you don’t go in.”

“And I strongly recommend you let me pass,” Yoongi replies through gritted teeth. As Namjoon and Jeongguk approach, he glances over his shoulder at them; his shoulders soften when he sees Namjoon, and then he stiffens and turns away again. “I want to question them myself.”

“I understand,” the Commander General says gently. “I do. But until we can determine just how dangerous this individual is, the last thing the Kingdom needs is for you to get injured.”

“They are blowing up rooms,” Yoongi says.

“All the more reason for you to be nowhere near them,” the Commander General insists. “Your Highness, I’m not saying this as one of your father’s Ministers, I’m saying this as someone who cares about your wellbeing – please do not command me to let you in. Anything else, but not that.”

Namjoon can’t see the look on Yoongi’s face, but he can see the whites of his knuckles, he can see his fists vibrating from how tightly they’re clenched.

“Actually, Your Highness,” Hoseok says suddenly. “There is something.” Yoongi turns to look at him, and Namjoon can see, in profile, the red blotches on his cheek, the furrow of his brow, his jaw pulsing. “The farms.”

Yoongi turns back to the Commander General. “We want to investigate the farms, but we keep getting blocked by the Ministers. Particularly the Minister for Taxation.”

The Commander General looks genuinely surprised, blinking wide, confused eyes. “The farms, Your Highness?” He nods firmly, and she draws herself to her full height, standing to attention with a stamp of her foot. “I’ll get their agreement within the day, Your Highness.”

“Thank you,” he says, turning back to them. “Jimin, stay here with the Commander General, attend to anything she asks. Hoseok, draw up a list of every farm within a day’s travel of the city and find out when they were first established. Taehyung, Jeongguk, go and scope out Namjoon’s room, see what you can find out.” The four of them bow, and Hoseok, Taehyung and Jeongguk head off, leaving Namjoon with Seokjin and Yoongi, who looks at him blankly and then jerks his head for him to follow.

Yoongi doesn’t say a word, not even when they’re safely ensconced in his quarters. He waits silently as Seokjin does a full security sweep of his rooms and the hallway outside. Once he has, Seokjin looks at Namjoon, looks at Yoongi, rolls his eyes, and points his thumb at the door. “I’ll be outside.”

“Are you… Angry with me?” Namjoon says incredulously as soon as Seokjin has seen him out.

“I’m angry with the person who’s tried to kill you today, Namjoon-ah. I am frustrated with you.”

“Why?” Namjoon asks. “Look, I’m sorry that I don’t really care about an attempt on my life that was so poorly planned I wasn’t even in the Palace when it took place?” Yoongi splutters indignantly. “Nothing happened. I’m fine. I’m sorry if anything’s irreparably damaged, though.”

“Oh my god, do you hear yourself?” Yoongi yells, finally turning to look at Namjoon. He looks wild – his eyes are wide, his cheeks flushed, and his hands are shaking. “Namjoon, I do not care about the stuff, I care about the fact that you could’ve died and you don’t seem to care at all!”

“I’m sorry,” Namjoon begins.

Yoongi shrieks in frustration. “Stop apologising!”

“I – Yoongi, what do you want from me?” Namjoon shouts; Yoongi sags at the sound of his voice. “Sorry for shouting. And for apologising again.”

“No, I – sorry. God, now I’m doing it,” Yoongi snorts humourlessly, putting his head in his hands. “I’ve just been made acutely aware of the fact that people do in fact want to kill you just for being here, and I’m not handling it well.”

“We don’t know they’re trying to kill me,” Namjoon says reasonably.

Yoongi looks up from his hands with a scowl. “Whoever it was tried to blow up your room. They weren’t trying to ask you out to dinner.” He drums his fingers against the table. “You can stay in this building with me – I’ve got a higher level of security.”

“Whoever did it is probably jealous,” Namjoon says, thinking about his regular run-ins with the green-robed Ministers. “Won’t giving me accommodation within your private building make that worse?”

“Can you please just prioritise your own safety for once?” Yoongi says tiredly. “That’s what I want from you. Accept the fact that, even though nothing happened to you today, that was a sheer stroke of luck, and I – we are entitled to be a little protective because of it.”

“Fine,” Namjoon says. “But give me the shittiest room in here.”

Yoongi snorts again, but it’s happier than the first. “Fine.”

“Are you two done?” Seokjin calls from outside. “Taehyung and Jeongguk are back.”

“Send them in!” Yoongi says.

“It’s not… Great,” Jeongguk says evasively as soon as they enter, Seokjin just behind them.

“There’s a huge hole in the wall,” Taehyung says bluntly, taking a seat.

“I was leading up to that!” Jeongguk hisses through his teeth as Yoongi puts his head in his hands again. “But, um, yes, there’s a hole in the wall. A pretty big one.”

“This is all speculation from bystanders, but it sounds as though it was deliberate, but accidental at the same time,” Taehyung says. “The guy they caught, he was apparently aiming for the door. He missed.”

“Which sounds like he was trying to break in,” Namjoon speculates. He frowns. “Wait, how did he miss? That door is huge!”

“That’s what you’re taking from this?” Yoongi says despairingly. “A man tries to break into your room, probably thinking you’re in it, and you’re pondering his lack of aim?”

“It sounds as though it’s another one of those mediocre Witches that keep giving Jimin so much trouble,” Seokjin says. “Anyone with proper training would be able to hit that door, even from the other side of the courtyard. It’s a big door,” he adds apologetically to Yoongi, who looks one step away from kicking them all out of his room.

“The rest of the room looks intact,” Jeongguk says optimistically. “So I’d imagine that most of your stuff will be okay, Namjoon!”

“Yeah, you could move back in if it wasn’t for, you know, the giant hole in the wall!” Taehyung says brightly. “We swung back to see Jimin before we came here, to ask him if an Earth Witch could patch it up, and he said ‘probably, but they’ll want to keep it as-is until they’ve investigated everything fully’.”

“Which is why Namjoon’s staying in here, where there are plenty of guards to ensure rooms he’s in don’t get blown up,” Yoongi says.

There’s a knock at the door. “Your Highness? It’s Hoseok!” Seokjin opens the door; Hoseok brandishes a sheet of paper, which he puts on Yoongi’s desk with a triumphant smack.

“Already?” Yoongi says, glancing over a list of farms, along with the dates they were established and a list of declared produce – at a glance, there’s a surprising amount of parsley and parsnips.

“I’ve had this ready to go since we first suggested investigating the farmlands,” Hoseok says. “I also looked into what they’re producing. Well, what they’re declaring they’re producing – I’m sure if one of these farms is producing something suspect, they wouldn’t declare it on their shipping forms.”

Yoongi turns the paper towards Namjoon, raises an eyebrow at him. “Is anything jumping out at you?”

Namjoon leans over to read it. “Like Hoseok says, nobody would declare poisonous plants on a shipping form if they were deliberately trying to, you know, poison people.” He reads through it a few times and sighs, shaking his head. “The only thing that seems weird to me is all the parsley and parsnips these few farms are producing,” he says, pointing. “But I don’t know enough about farming to know whether that’s normal.”

“It’s worth checking out,” Hoseok says with a shrug, pointing to the farms. “These farms are all on the river anyway, so we can take the Royal Barge.”

“We just need to wait for the go ahead from the Ministers,” Yoongi says, looking less frustrated and more determined by the moment.

Two things happen almost simultaneously the next day.

The Commander General arrives at Yoongi’s door, early in the morning, to let him know that the Ministers spent the night deliberating, and have agreed that the farms should be investigated as soon as possible.

And a messenger arrives to say that Yoongi’s parents have taken a turn for the worst.

“Why should I stay here? It’s not as though I can go and see them,” Yoongi says neutrally as he packs a bag full of documents to read on the boat trip. “The doctors still haven’t ruled out that this plague is airborne, even though there’s no evidence for that – my parents have been sick for a while, now, and none of the doctors have caught it from them. In fact, no one has gotten sick in the Palace since my father did.” Namjoon shrugs wordlessly, staring at the floor. He hears, rather than sees, Yoongi turn to look at him. “Ah, Namjoon-ah, I’m sorry. I forgot about your mother, which was callous of me.”

Namjoon shrugs again. “I wasn’t allowed to go see her, either.” That plague had been airborne, and it was honestly a miracle Namjoon hadn’t caught it – most of the families on their street had lost at least one person to it. However, he had haunted the hallway outside her locked bedroom until the very end, and if anyone had even suggested that he leave, he doesn’t know what he would’ve done to them in response.

But he knows that his relationship with his mother was very different to the one Yoongi has with his parents, so he doesn’t say anything.

“I think we’re close to a solution,” Yoongi says quietly. “To a cure. The thought of staying here in the Palace while you go out to find it makes me want to tear my own skin off.” He huffs in frustration. “I don’t want to sit around and do nothing while my parents die. Even though I can’t do Wood Magic, I can bring my guards, and resources, so you can do your job as quickly and safely as possible.”

What can he say, in response to that?

It’s raining again, heavy enough that Seokjin keeps leaving Yoongi’s office on the Royal Barge to go and help the Water Witches with steering the boat. The wall that opens up into a window remains firmly shut against the lashing rain outside, so Namjoon has no choice but to sit very still with his eyes shut, inhaling and exhaling as slowly as he possibly can in an attempt to stave of his queasiness.

“You could probably go up onto the watch tower,” Yoongi offers. “You might feel better up there than you do down here.” Namjoon shakes his head, pressing his lips together tighter at the sensation. “Alright. Well, if you need anything…” Yoongi trails off.

It’s just them, Seokjin, and Hoseok on this trip to the farms – Taehyung and Jeongguk have classes, and Jimin is sitting in on the questioning of the Witch who had blown a hole in the wall of Namjoon’s room. Seokjin is currently with the helmsman, and Hoseok is…

“Where’s Hoseok?” Namjoon asks, his lips feeling numb from how tightly he’s been pressing them together. He opens his eyes uneasily – he doesn’t immediately feel worse, so he keeps them open.

“He’s up on deck,” Yoongi says. “There’s a few farms we’re passing on the way to the one we’re actually visiting, and Hoseok wants to see if he can spot anything suspicious going on there – come in!”

Hoseok himself opens the door to Yoongi’s office. He is sopping wet, his hair and robes plastered to him like a second skin.

“Don’t let Seokjin hear me say it, but this weather is disgusting,” Hoseok says through chattering teeth. “The rain’s going sideways? So it’s not even as though I can hide under a roof or anything, because the rain’s just blowing everywhere.” He stands in the doorway, and a puddle is starting to accumulate at his feet. “I couldn’t see much of anything or anyone on the farms we’re passing, but the good news is that we’re going to arrive soon.”

“Did you fall overboard?” Namjoon hears Seokjin say in the hallway outside Yoongi’s office. He appears at Hoseok’s shoulder, takes out his wand, and waves it over Hoseok, siphoning the majority of the water from Hoseok’s clothes and hair, which he distributes among the potted plants in Yoongi’s office in neat, curving arches. “Better?”

“Much,” Hoseok says, finally coming into the office; Seokjin siphons up the puddle he’d left behind, heating it enough to let it evaporate into the air. “Are we here?”

Seokjin nods. “Our missive’s just come back – interestingly, the farmer is nowhere to be found.”

“…It is raining,” Yoongi says slowly. “Maybe they’re inside?”

Seokjin snorts. “Farmers are pretty famous for working in all weathers, Yoongi,” he says fondly.

“…Shut up,” Yoongi says, looking off to the side and very clearly trying not to pout – his expression clears when he hears Namjoon laugh.

“I’ll admit, I’m a bit concerned that the farmer’s just up and vanished,” Hoseok says after a moment, frowning, as they head out of Yoongi’s office and towards the deck. “Somebody’s been shipping produce from this farm.”

The rain is still torrential as they step out onto the deck, but Namjoon appreciates the fresh air, inhaling deeply and sighing out his exhale. The rain’s cold on his skin, which feels pleasant after being stuck in Yoongi’s office while being shunted about by the waves.

Some of the crew are lowering the gangway from the deck to the riverside below; the farm they’re visiting stretches right to the riverside, and Namjoon can see fields stretching out into the dark fog of the rain.

Once Yoongi’s guard have disembarked to flank his path from the ship to the farmhouse, Yoongi steps onto the gangway. “Mind your step,” he says casually over his shoulder, shielding his eyes against the rain as he looks up at Namjoon.

Namjoon nods and walks carefully off the ship – the gangway is made of specially reinforced metal to prevent it from becoming slippery in the rain, but he wouldn’t put it past himself to find some way to fall and barrel into Yoongi’s back.

As soon as he steps off of the Royal Barge, a wave of something hits him with a force so potent that he stumbles backwards. Insidious whispers, promising happiness, love, just take a bite, touch, consume-

“Is that – that’s hemlock,” he stammers, hopping back up onto the metal of the gangway and covering his ears for good measure. He wants to reach out to Yoongi, pull him back onto the gangway, even though he knows that, just planted in the ground, the hemlock can have no impact on him.

“Where?” Yoongi asks, looking around. “These fields are parsnips, and there are allegedly parsley fields somewhere.”

“No, no, definitely hemlock. Don’t want to mix them up, hemlock can cause… Frenzy and…” They share a horror-stricken glance.

“Hoseok, how long have people been consuming the produce of these fields?”

“Not long,” Hoseok replies slowly. “But… Yeah, just before the plague hit us. Or, not a plague?”

Namjoon nods grimly. “Not a plague, the people are being poisoned.” He turns back to Yoongi, who’s staring out at the fields with wide, blazing eyes. “Do you have the authority to arrest whoever made the decision to plant this?” Namjoon asks. “How high up does this go?”

Yoongi draws himself to his full height and rests his hand on the hilt of his sword, still staring out at the fields. “I have the authority, regardless of how high up this goes.” He sinks back down again. “But first we need to figure out who’s planting this, and why.”

“I think I know the why,” Namjoon says. “You said it to me once, remember? ‘To hinder Witches from their will, plant nightshade, rue, hemlock, and dill.’ Somebody’s followed an old wives tale and planted fields of hemlock in your kingdom, after realising that the most common nightshade, rue, and dill will do is give Witches a few blisters.”

“And I can wager a guess at the ‘who’,” Hoseok says. “The Minister for Taxation did not want us here, remember?”

Seokjin shakes his head. “That doesn’t make any sense though, she’s a Metal Witch.”

“We can question her,” Yoongi says, gesturing for everyone to reboard the ship. “We’ve found what we came for, and we have enough evidence to question her – at the very least, somebody has taken liberty of her negligence to plant all of this here.”

“Your Highness,” the Royal Secretary says as soon as they disembark back in the Palace. “Welcome back. Is there anything you require?”

Yoongi looks at her blankly, before shaking his head. “I have my own Secretary, thank you.” He turns to Hoseok completely and raises an eyebrow; Hoseok nods, bows, and walks away as Yoongi waves Seokjin and Namjoon after him.

As soon as they’re out of sight of the Royal Secretary and the crew of the Royal Barge, Yoongi peers back over his shoulder. “Is it just me, or has she been incredibly… Persistent lately?”

Seokjin turns back to look down the hallway. “We can look into it. Where first, Your Highness?”

Yoongi thinks for a moment. “Jimin first. I want to hear how his questioning went.”

They find Jimin training – he’s running through drills incredibly slowly, his muscles straining with the effort of how deliberately he’s going through the movements. When he sees them he stops, runs his hand through his hair, and leans on the training sword he’s using.

“You’re back early,” he says, breathing heavily. “What happened?”

“Somebody’s planting hemlock by the ton on at least one farm, potentially more,” Yoongi explains.

“Poisonous?” Jimin asks Namjoon, who nods.

“Very.”

“Explains why people are getting so sick, then, if they’re unknowingly eating it. Do we know who’s planting it?”

“The farmer’s disappeared, and Hoseok’s gone to summon the Minister for Taxation for formal questioning,” Seokjin explains. “But I, personally, don’t think it’s her.”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that,” Jimin says, spinning the training sword idly. “Because the Commander General finished questioning that Witch – he was a Junior Minister, and he’s implicated at least one of the Senior Ministers as ‘deliberately encouraging violence’, but he refuses to name names.”

“Why’s that funny?” Namjoon asks.

“It’s funny because he was a Junior Minister under the Minister for Personnel, who has a noted distaste for Witches.”

“I didn’t know that,” Yoongi says, looking genuinely surprised.

“If he hates Witches so much, why does he keep hiring them to Minister positions?” Namjoon questions. “Jeongguk was complaining about it months ago, said he didn’t see the point of studying if the Minister for Personnel was just going to hire Witches.”

“We can ask him,” Seokjin points out.

Yoongi bites his lip. “I don’t really want to make enemies of too many of the Senior Ministers at the same time, especially when my father’s in such a critical state. We need to question the Minister for Taxation now, because we have to stop the consumption of hemlock in this kingdom. Then we can move on from there.”

Namjoon sits in his room and stares at the crate of his belongings he had brought with him from the forest.

He has, technically, finished his job. He’s found the cause of the ‘plague’. He’s even suggested cures and treatments for hemlock poisoning. The rest of it is in the doctors’ hands.

He should, really, be packing. It’s only a matter of time before he’s asked to leave.

And yet, he hasn’t even started.

He can’t help it – even though he’s done his part, he wants to see this through until the end, so he’s going to wait until Yoongi brings his departure up in conversation.

Somebody knocks on his door, making him jump guiltily.

“Namjoon-ah?” Seokjin whispers through the wood. “The Prince wants to see you. He says it’s ‘urgent, but if he’s sleeping, don’t worry about it’.”

Namjoon nods decisively to himself, wishes he’d at least made a start on his packing, and opens the door.

Namjoon’s just down the hall from Yoongi’s sleeping quarters now, but Seokjin still escorts him the whole way there, constantly vigilant even in his casual nightwear.

Yoongi’s door is shut.

It makes sense – it’s late at night, and if Seokjin hadn’t come to him Namjoon would have assumed Yoongi was sleeping.

“Is His Highness alright?” Namjoon asks quietly, glancing up and down the hall. It looks empty, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything – he’d hate for someone to be listening in and hear him referring to Yoongi as ‘Yoongi’.

“I think he wants to talk to you himself,” Seokjin replies, standing next to the door and folding his arms. “I’ll be here to walk you back.”

“I can walk back on my own, if you want to go to bed?” Namjoon offers.

Seokjin smiles, tired but a little fond. “I think the Prince might have something to say if he found out you were wandering the Palace at night on your own, even if it’s just down the hall. Especially seeing as you refuse to carry a weapon.”

“No one wants me holding a weapon,” Namjoon mutters, knocking on Yoongi’s door. He tries to knock quietly, but the halls are so silent that the sound echoes with a thud.

“It’s open,” Yoongi calls back, so Namjoon pushes the door open, steps inside, and watches Seokjin close the door behind him.

Yoongi’s pacing back and forth next to his desk, biting his thumbnail and casting glances at a cube sitting on his desk. His eyes slide briefly to Namjoon, and then back to the cube.

“Jimin mentioned this to me earlier,” Yoongi says, jerking his head towards the cube. “He assumed you would’ve mentioned it, given it was buried in the garden we spent several months in. Why didn’t you say anything? Be honest.”

Considering Namjoon had assumed he was going to be told to pack his bags and leave tonight, job well done, he’s at a loss for what to say. He approaches the cube and examines it from a few angles – from directly above on his tiptoes to at eyelevel from a crouch. “This is the thing that’s buried in the garden?” Namjoon asks, looking up. “Or was, I suppose?” Yoongi nods once, a little aborted gesture; Namjoon stands up again. “Um, no reason? When I first sensed it I figured it wasn’t my place to ask questions like that, and then I just forgot about it.” Yoongi’s shoulders slump and soften. “Did you think I was keeping it from you?”

“I didn’t know what to think,” Yoongi says, before he shakes his head. “No, that’s a lie, it’s not fair for me to ask honesty from you and then just immediately lie to you. I thought you were keeping it from me, because I couldn’t work out why else you wouldn’t tell me, you know?” He snorts disbelievingly. “I didn’t figure you’d have forgotten about it, though. The mystery would’ve killed me.”

“I was curious, at first,” Namjoon admits, looking at the cube. It’s more roughly hewn than it had seemed to be while buried underground, warm grey, with the top half snapped cleanly off and resting on the bottom half like a lid. “But there are plenty of things to be curious about here in the Palace.” He runs his finger along the crack. “It’s strange, though, this looked perfectly solid underground. Or, rather, the space I couldn’t see into looked perfectly solid. There weren’t cracks.”

“It was solid, originally,” Yoongi explains, sitting directly on his desk next to the cube and pulling it into his lap. “When Jimin dug it up, he cracked it open for me.”

“What’s inside?” Namjoon asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to go, so you can have a look? Now that we’ve talked, I mean,” Namjoon offers, pointing at the door behind him with his thumb.

Yoongi looks at him, considers him, and then shakes his head. “I can’t explain it, but whatever’s in here… I think you should see it?” He puts his hands on either side of the makeshift lid, frowning a little deeper. Before Namjoon can say anything, maybe ask what the hell that even means, Yoongi pulls up the lid and peers into the cube.

Whatever’s in there, it makes him blink slowly, as though he can’t process what he’s seeing. He sets the lid down on his desk and looks into the cube again; this time his eyes go wide, and as he puts his hand into the hollow space inside the cube he seems to be holding his breath as he pulls out…

“Is this what I think it is?” Yoongi asks quietly, holding a Wood Witch’s wand in his hand. “It’s not just a fancy stick, right?”

“I’m pretty sure this is a wand, yeah,” Namjoon replies, staring at the wand. It’s the most beautiful Wood Witch wand he’s ever seen – admittedly not a difficult superlative to achieve, as this is only the third one he’s ever seen, with the first one being more rope than wood at this point and the second literally being a piece of driftwood.

“How can you tell?” Yoongi asks, holding it out flat in his palm.

“Most Witches will shape, or at least choose, their wand to suit their hand,” Namjoon says, gently curling Yoongi’s fingers around the wand. “But look, this Witch has shaped it right down to the placement of their thumb – see how the engravings stop just short of where your thumb lies, and how this ridge would have sat right under where the Witch’s palm would rest? Whoever the Witch was they had smaller hands than you, but you get the general idea, right?”

“Right,” Yoongi says, flexing his hand a little around the wand. “What else?”

“It’s long,” Namjoon says. “The way Wood Witches usually get their wands… I always just assumed they’d be on the shorter side, you know? Although I’m not an expert. Um, it looks like it’s made of cherry wood, which is why it’s got that faint pinkish colour…” A faint memory flickers in the back of Namjoon’s mind, making him frown. Something about cherry wood?

“Why would somebody bury their wand?” Yoongi asks, sitting up on his desk. He’s still holding onto the wand like a lifeline, even if he doesn’t seem to realise he’s doing it.

Namjoon thinks about the question for a moment.

He bites his lip. “I think the question isn’t why, but who. Yoongi, what do you know about your mother’s side of the family?”

“My mother? Not a lot,” Yoongi says. “She never talks about them, and the genealogy books just describe her as being ‘lowborn’, which could mean anything from commoner to the daughter of traitors. Not a lot to go off of.” Namjoon frowns at the thought, that what Yoongi knows about his mother’s family, he knows because he’s had to read it. Yoongi’s fingers flex on the wand again. “Why?”

“It’s…” Namjoon had half-suspected, but he had always just assumed that it was a deep, family secret that no one talked about, not that Yoongi had no idea. “Somebody hides a wand in the royal gardens, a wand with enough residual Magic to make flowers grow through the stone the garden is buried under. The stone gets removed, and somebody tends to the garden with enough knowledge to make sure something is always in bloom, and coordinated.” He thinks about the garden, and realises why the mention of cherry wood is familiar. “Somebody plants a cherry tree in the garden, and looks after it with such care that it introduces itself to a new Wood Witch as ‘the Lady’s tree’.”

“It… Makes sense,” Yoongi says slowly. “But why wouldn’t she…” He laughs once, humourlessly. “Sorry. I know you haven’t actually met her, so why would you know?” He slides off the desk, drops the wand back in the cube, and puts the lid back on the top with a firm little nod. “I’ll ask Jimin to seal this back up and bury it tomorrow morning.”

Namjoon knows he should say something, but it’s not as though he’s ever been in this situation before. What do you say – ‘sorry that your mother didn’t tell you she was a Wood Witch, it’s probably due to the fact that many people in this kingdom still hold deep-set prejudices against Wood Witches regarding their worth in the cycle, a belief that has infiltrated your ministry right down to the Junior Ministers’?

“I can hear you thinking,” Yoongi says, his smile more genuine.

“Sorry,” Namjoon says.

Yoongi shakes his head. “Don’t be. I like that you think about your answers, and don’t just say the first thing you think I want to hear.” He checks the clock; his mouth drops open a little. “It’s late? I didn’t realise how late it was.” He looks back at Namjoon. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have asked you to come if I knew just how late it was-”

“I was awake,” Namjoon says with a shrug.

“But still,” Yoongi says guiltily. “Summoning you at this hour, as though you’re a night-shift employee-”

“I am your employee, technically, and as I said – I was awake.”

Frowning, Yoongi turns away. “I don’t pay you, though.”

“We can talk about that later,” Namjoon says with a laugh. “Okay, I’m not your employee, but I am your friend, which makes it even more important to me that I come and help you if you need it.”

Yoongi stands silently, still facing the cube; when he turns back around, his cheeks are pink and there’s the sort of smile on his face that Namjoon thinks deserves to be there all the time, wide and unfettered.

Seokjin knocks for him a little later than usual the next morning, which is just as well – Namjoon’s only just finished dressing when he knocks, and he’s still in the middle of brushing his teeth.

“From the Prince,” Seokjin says, holding up a bag. Namjoon invites him in. “Payment.”

“I was – I was joking!” Namjoon splutters, before running back into the bathroom to spit out his mouthful of toothpaste. “I get bed and board here, I really don’t need anything else.”

“Maybe have a look first before you decide you don’t want them,” Seokjin suggests, a smile curving his lips. Namjoon pouts a little before taking the bag and peering inside.

“Gloves?” Namjoon asks, pulling one out to look at it. “Gardening gloves?” It’s thoughtful of Yoongi to send him these, but he only wears gloves when he’s dealing with especially thorny or poisonous plants. Not only is it easier for him to do Magic with his bare hands, but he also just likes the feel of soil and flowers and leaves under his hands.

“Wood Witch gloves specifically,” Seokjin explains. “Made of some sort of fibre that doesn’t block your connection to plants?”

Namjoon pulls the glove on. He can certainly tell he’s wearing a glove, but it doesn’t feel like the bulky, heavy-duty pair he’d found in the forest house. It feels more like a second skin, if the second skin was a dusky green colour. When he runs his fingers along one of the bookshelves, he can still feel the grains in the wood with his fingertips.

“Where did he even find these?” Namjoon asks, impressed. He thinks he’ll probably always prefer to work barehanded, but it’ll be nice not to have to worry about scrubbing his hands for ages after working with plants.

“He found them in the archives this morning,” Seokjin explains, which disproves Namjoon’s theory that Seokjin had arrived later this morning because they’d slept in.

“They’re very nice,” Namjoon says, taking the glove off and putting it in the bag. “But I can’t accept these as payment. It’s too much.”

“Yoongi said you’d say that,” Seokjin says, moving his hands away when Namjoon tries to give him the bag. “He said to remind you that you’re going above and beyond what was originally asked, staying here while we wait for an opportune moment to question each and every suspect.” Namjoon feels a weight lift from his heart – Yoongi wants him to stay until they’ve seen this through to the very end, too. “He also said to tell you that ‘I’m your friend, so it’s important to me that if I want to give you a gift, you know that it’s because I want to, not because I feel obligated to’. He made me memorise that whole thing, by the way.”

“He’s so…” Namjoon says, flustered. He shakes his head. “What’s the plan today?”

“The Commander General wants to see us – all of us, she specified in her note,” Seokjin says. Namjoon’s had very little cause to spend time with the Senior Ministers, and he’d assumed that he was little more than a blip on their radar – evidently not.

When they enter Yoongi’s office, everyone’s gathered already, including the Commander General herself, resplendent in her full armour.

“Congratulations on discovering the hemlock, Kim Namjoon-ssi,” she says as soon as she locks eyes on him, nodding her head respectfully. “The first treatments are being administered, according to your advice and expertise.”

“That’s good,” Namjoon says. He thinks he sees Yoongi’s lip twitch out of the corner of his eye, but when he looks at him straight on he looks serious and thoughtful.

“I came to tell you that the Minister for Personnel has absconded,” the Commander General says.

“I don’t suppose he left a note?” Yoongi asks sarcastically.

The Commander General shakes her head. “He did, however, leave behind documents implicating the Royal Secretary in a multitude of crimes – it turns out she’s been intercepting, forging, and falsifying a number of documents, including these.” She pulls a scroll of documents out of her sleeve and lays them out on the table.

Namjoon recognises the top one as a purchase record for the farm they visited the day before, but it’s not exactly the same as the one Hoseok had shown him – this one is made out in the Minister for Personnel’s name.

“So, the Minister for Personnel has been swiping up land, before asking the Royal Secretary to falsify records to send to the Minister for Taxation so she didn’t suspect anything,” Yoongi says, still reading through the paper trail. It’s not just purchase records for land – there are receipts for the hemlock seeds, plans to purchase more land, and, perhaps most incriminatingly, letters between the Minister for Personnel and the Royal Secretary, with the Royal Secretary offering her support for the Minister for Personnel’s plan to eradicate Witches from the Palace in exchange for him promoting her to Yoongi’s Personal Secretary.

“This is recent,” Namjoon says, pointing to that letter specifically.

“She was probably worrying over her position within the Court – she was the late King’s Secretary, and even then she wasn’t popular,” Seokjin explains. “The current King prefers to write his own documents, and tends to use whichever staff member is on hand to deliver them.”

“He’s even mentioned in meetings that he doesn’t see much need for a Royal Secretary, and prefers the method of working His Royal Highness the Crown Prince has developed with Jeong Hoseok-ssi,” the Commander General adds on.

“Does that mean the Royal Secretary…” Namjoon trails off. Something’s been bothering him about how, despite the Minister for Personnel apparently having a vendetta specifically against Witches, the King and Queen both got sick, even though the general belief was that neither of them are Witches (Namjoon is still hedging his bets on the Queen). However, he doesn’t know how to delicately say what he’s thinking.

“It sounds like she deliberately targeted my parents, yes,” Yoongi says frankly. “Which explains why I got sick and they didn’t, despite the fact we used to share meals.”

“I’d like to ask your authorisation to arrest the Royal Secretary, and to set out to arrest the Minister for Personnel,” the Commander General says.

Namjoon bites his lip and watches Yoongi’s face carefully. If the Commander General is specifically asking Yoongi for authorisation, then that suggests that the King is doing worse than he’d thought.

If Yoongi notices the implication, he doesn’t react; he merely nods.

“Where does Namjoon-hyung come into this?” Jeongguk asks suddenly – that gets a reaction from Yoongi, whose mouth parts in surprise before he frowns deeply at the Commander General.

“What do you mean?” Namjoon asks, confused.

Seokjin snorts. “Namjoon-ah, did you forget somebody blew up your wall recently?”

“Oh. Um. Yes?” Namjoon replies.

“We strongly believe the Minister for Personnel has been… Encouraging violence amongst the Junior Minister Witches in his employ,” the Commander General explains. “Possibly to drive a wedge deeper between Witch Ministers and non-Witch Ministers. But we’ve found no evidence that either the Minister for Personnel or the Royal Secretary encouraged an attack on Namjoon-ssi specifically.”

“Well, if it wasn’t them, then who?” Yoongi asks.

“Maybe… It was just a random attack?” Namjoon suggests.

The look Yoongi shoots him is so disbelieving that Namjoon thinks he would be willing to question anything if Yoongi looked at him that way.

“We will continue questioning the culprit,” the Commander General says. “But, and this is just my interpretation, it sounds like this particular individual was jealous of Kim Namjoon-ssi.” She turns her gaze on him. “This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, is it?”

“Uh, no,” Namjoon says – Yoongi looks very alarmed. “I mean, it’s the first time somebody blew up a wall, definitely! But people have been making comments since I first got here. I’m used to it, don’t worry.”

“You shouldn’t… Namjoon, you shouldn’t be used to it!” Yoongi says furiously, before he notices that no one is meeting his eye. “Did you all know about this?”

“None of us are especially popular among the Ministers,” Hoseok says with a shrug. “Seokjin regularly fights them in the courtyard.”

“I – no I don’t-”

“It’s true, he got into a fight with Dahee when she threw Namjoon across the room-”

“She did what-”

“Taehyung, that’s not what happened!”

“If it happens again,” the Commander General says – not loudly, but severely enough that everyone falls silent. “Let me know. This kingdom owes you a great debt, Kim Namjoon-ssi.”

The Junior Ministers seem to be going deliberately out of their way to avoid running into Namjoon, so he suspects that the Commander General has already said something. He spots a small group of green-clad Ministers at the end of a hallway turn on their heels and practically run back the way they came when they spot him.

Namjoon doesn’t mind, really. What he does mind is that he now has his own personal team of guards.

There’re four of them, and they’re all very stern, very quiet, and very unnecessary, in Namjoon’s opinion.

“You need to stop sneaking off from your guard.”

Namjoon jumps guiltily and turns to look at the garden gate – Yoongi’s standing there, arms folded and a grin on his face that tells Namjoon he’s not really being told off.

“I don’t need a guard, though. We’re more or less sure that I’m not being deliberately targeted by anybody particularly dangerous.” He turns his focus back to the plant he’s been looking at. It’s a very young rosebush, with leaves no bigger than Namjoon’s pinkie nail and yellowish-green stems. When he puts his palm on the soil to feel for the roots below, he’s pleased when he finds them growing strong. “Have you seen this? It’s new.”

“Hm? Oh, uh, yes,” Yoongi says, sitting down next to Namjoon in the soil. “I planted it.”

“You did?” Namjoon asks, turning his attention back to Yoongi.

“Have I done something wrong?” Yoongi says worriedly. “I followed all the notes I could find in your compendium.”

“You’ve done it perfectly,” Namjoon replies. “Where did you get the seeds?”

“We found them in the archives,” Yoongi says. “I always thought the majority of the seeds had been destroyed by my grandfather, but we found them in a locked safe. Labelled in my mother’s handwriting, as it turns out.” He leans forward and holds his finger under one of the tiny, bright green leaves – Namjoon can hear the rosebush’s pleased hum.

“It looks good,” Namjoon repeats. “Happy. Healthy.”

“I’m glad,” Yoongi says, sitting back again with a pleased little smile on his face. He tilts his head up and closes his eyes – they’re having a rare day of sunshine amidst the endless rainy days, so the chicory blue sky and the pale, watery sun cast a soft, diffused glow on his face. Namjoon feels a swoop of embarrassment when he remembers that, the first he had seen Yoongi’s face, he’d compared him to a glass sculpture. Now that he knows him, though, he thinks the comparison was a little off – he’s closer to a painting, the softly blended colours in his cheeks contrasting the sharp lines of his features. “What?” Yoongi opens one eye and grins at him, one side of his mouth open a little wider than the other.

“Nothing,” Namjoon says, trying to commit Yoongi’s smile to memory as much as he can.

On a dark, stormy night, a sixteen-year-old Yoongi sits in the garden, weeping over the rosebush.

His grandfather doesn’t like roses – or any plants, really – so, when he’d seen the stubborn little rosebush that kept growing back through the cracks in the stone he’d had placed over the soil, he’d ordered his gardeners to get rid of it. Yoongi had begged the gardeners to dig it up fully and replant it outside of the city – they’d bowed, and then laughed as soon as his back was turned.

It’s stupid to be crying over a rosebush, but it feels so personal – the gardeners knew that Yoongi likes the rosebush, so they’d responded by maiming it. They’d hacked at it, drilled holes into its stems, even half-uprooted it, so it was dangling, precarious, out of the ground. And then they’d left it there for Yoongi to find.

It’s stupid to be crying over a rosebush.

It’s also stupid to be out alone without Seokjin.

He hears the approaching bicycle before he sees it and, rather than attempting to run back into the Palace, he dives behind the wall next to the bush. If anyone so much as glances over the wall, they’ll see him, hunched like an idiot.

The person on the bicycle stops right next to the rosebush; Yoongi holds his breath, hoping that this was at least a kidnapper, rather than an assassin.

The person approaches the wall.

And then they stop.

And start digging.

Yoongi breathes out as quietly as he can. Maybe it’s one of the gardeners, who’s had a change of heart? But if that’s the case, then why do this in the dead of night, in the middle of a thunderstorm?

Yoongi hears the person heave a breath and walk away from the wall; he hears a dull thump, and then the sound of them cycling away.

Once Yoongi works up the courage to stand up, he stares down at the empty space where the rosebush had been, and feels the distinct, bizarre urge that he’s been left behind.

Somebody knocks on Namjoon’s door, so late that he’s in bed and drifting off to sleep. He’d been in the process of packing, which is taking longer than he’d like, especially considering how little he’d brought with him. He’s also reluctant to actually commit to it – he doesn’t want to outstay his welcome, but he also doesn’t actually want to leave, so he’d packed a couple of books before he had given up for the night.

The person knocks again. It takes several knocks, in fact, before Namjoon really comprehends what’s happening, and several more before he rolls out of bed, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, to answer.

Yoongi’s standing there alone, pushing the cuticle on his thumb back fervently; he freezes when Namjoon opens the door fully. “You shouldn’t be answering the door this late.”

“You shouldn’t be walking around alone this late,” Namjoon shoots back, stepping aside to invite Yoongi in. “I won’t tell Seokjin if you don’t.” Yoongi offers a faint smile as he enters. “What’s happened?”

“My mother’s woken up,” Yoongi says.

“Earlier today?” Namjoon asks, wondering why Yoongi’s telling him now rather than waiting until tomorrow.

Yoongi shakes his head. “About ten minutes ago.”

“About – are you allowed to go and see her?”

“I was – can you…” He trails off before squaring his shoulders and looking Namjoon directly in the eye. “Please come with me? I want to ask her about… Everything. The garden, the hidden seeds, the buried wand, all of it.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Namjoon says worriedly, reaching out towards Yoongi – he doesn’t know why he’s doing it, so he lets his hand fall at his side again. “She’s just woken up.”

“I need to know,” Yoongi says desperately. He’s still looking Namjoon in the eye, as though he knows that Namjoon won’t be able to say no to him for long. “And if I go alone, I won’t say anything, out of, I don’t know, respect, or not wanting to rock the boat, or cowardice, or-”

“You’re not a coward,” Namjoon says immediately.

“I can be, sometimes,” Yoongi says, finally looking away. “About some things.” As he looks away his eyes alight on the crate of Namjoon’s belongings, which he frowns at before turning back to Namjoon, his eyes intense. “Please.”

“Of course, if that’s what you need,” Namjoon says.

It’s the wrong thing to say – Yoongi shakes his head. “Is it what you want?”

Namjoon’s sure the answer is ‘yes’, but he takes the time to think about it anyway. He wants to meet the Queen, Yoongi’s mother, not just to sate his own curiosity but to learn more about Yoongi, too. He also wants to be there for Yoongi, especially because he’s specifically asked.

“It is,” Namjoon confirms with a decisive nod.

“Alright then. Do you mind if we go now? I can’t guarantee she’ll still be awake and talking much tomorrow during the day,” Yoongi says.

Namjoon agrees, and Yoongi leads him out of the room and through his compound. Namjoon’s had no reason to enter the King and Queen’s compound of the Palace, but he’s seen the building – how could he not, when it takes up so much space? Yoongi takes him past increasingly armoured guards until they’re in front of an ornate set of doors, which Yoongi pushes open without so much as a glance at the guards.

Yoongi looks like his mother, right down to the sharp-eyed, curious stare she gives Namjoon as soon as she sees him come in. She’s sitting in bed, propped up against so many cushions that she’s almost folding forward, her long hair pooling in her lap.

“Yoongi,” she says hoarsely. “My son.” Yoongi nods wordlessly, his mouth pressed together tightly. “And this must be Namjoon,” she continues, turning to Namjoon. “I apologise for not meeting you when you first arrived in the Palace. Thank you for your service to our kingdom.”

“Y-you’re welcome, Your Majesty,” Namjoon says. He feels something touch his back, but before he realises what it is, he feels Yoongi pull his warm hand away.

“I know you’ve just woken up,” Yoongi says. “But I think it’ll be easier to have this conversation before Father wakes up.”

The Queen blinks in a manner so reminiscent of Yoongi that Namjoon almost smiles – long and slow, as though she’s using the time to think. “What is it you wish to know?”

“Are you a Wood Witch?” Yoongi asks outright.

His mother smiles sadly and shakes her head. “My family – our family – were, but not me. I learned how to garden from them, but I could never hear the plants the way my parents and siblings could. The wand – I assume you found the wand?” Yoongi nods. “It belonged to my sister.”

“What happened to them?”

“They fled the city, just like every other Wood Witch,” the Queen explains. “For them, though… They claimed that my marriage to your Father made their lives… difficult, so when they chose to leave they told no one where they were going.”

Namjoon thinks about his own flight from the city – how he’d been convinced the Royal Guard were going to imprison him for stealing the half-dead rosebush. He hadn’t told anyone he was leaving, either, but there also hadn’t been anyone left for him to tell.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” the Queen says to Yoongi, who nods politely. “With the increasing lack of respect for Wood Witches, I was worried that people would treat you badly if they knew my family were Wood Witches. When I found out they’d left, I thought it was for the best. My sister had left behind her wand, so I commissioned an Earth Witch to seal it up and had it secretly buried in the gardens the night before the late King had the ground covered with stone.”

“Thank you for telling me now,” Yoongi says, bowing. “We’ll leave you to rest.”

“Yoongi…” the Queen trails off before sighing. “I was trying to protect you.”

“I know.” He puts his hand on Namjoon’s back again, and gently presses in order to get them both out of the room.

He keeps his hand there as he leads them to the gardens; as soon as they’re inside the walled-off space, he removes his hand quickly and stretches his fingers, staring down at them as though he’s never seen them before.

“Yoongi?” Namjoon says quietly.

“I wanted… I wanted her to be a Wood Witch,” he says. “Isn’t that silly? I wanted her to be a Wood Witch because I thought that explained her reticence all these years. And… I guess I wanted something in common with you, too.”

Namjoon doesn’t know what to say – in his experience, being a Wood Witch brings with it a lot of trouble – so he just stands there awkwardly and doesn’t look at Yoongi, who just sighs and folds himself down to the ground.

“It’s been a long day,” he mutters, unfurling himself out onto the grass. The moon is cool and bright on his face, and he looks more troubled than Namjoon’s ever seen him. Namjoon sits next to him – as soon as he puts his hand on the soil, he feels so much anxiety and sadness thrumming from every root unfurling in the dark below them that he draws his hand back sharply. “What?”

“There’s… I can’t explain it,” Namjoon says, tentatively touching the ground again – nothing. “Melancholy? But it didn’t feel like it was coming from the plants. It felt like… Like they were passing a message on?” He presses his hand more firmly against the soil, trying to chase that feeling again, but nothing happens.

“I thought plants could only pass messages between plants that share the same soil as them,” Yoongi says, sitting up and looking around. “There isn’t anybody else in here to pass messages to you.”

“I felt it,” Namjoon insists.

Yoongi lies back down on the grass again, face blank. “I believe you.” Unlike his troubled expression from earlier, Namjoon can’t read anything from his face now. “Maybe the plants are anxious.”

There’s something off about him, but Namjoon can’t quite put a finger on it – he puts it down to Yoongi feeling out of sorts from seeing his mother and shrugs. “If plants are anxious, you can usually see why in their environment. Plants don’t tend to get existential.”

Yoongi sits up again, looking curious. It’s a more natural expression, an expression Namjoon’s used to and likes on Yoongi’s face, so he feels himself relax. “You can feel all that just from the soil? Could you teach me? Magic can be taught, right?”

Namjoon hesitates – he’s never attempted to teach anyone Magic, and, by the sounds of it, Seokjin’s been attempting to teach Yoongi Magic for years, to no avail. While, yes, Magic can be taught, it usually requires at least some innate ability that means at least something manifests in childhood. However, Namjoon simply does not have the heart to say no to Yoongi, not when his eyes are so wide and bright, not when he’d looked so miserable and lost earlier.

Suddenly, he remembers his own mother telling him about the very first lesson she had given him about plants – before she had known he was a Wood Witch like her, before the time his own memories went back to.

He starts scraping at the soil, digging up a little patch of it. “Put your hand here,” he says, patting the upturned soil. Yoongi does so, palm down and fingers deliberately placed. Namjoon starts tipping the soil he’s dug up on top of Yoongi’s hand; once it’s in place, he taps it down a little. “Very little of what you think of as soil is actually alive – it’s almost half water and gas, and the rest of it is almost entirely minerals – clay, sand, silt, you know. But that tiny bit that’s left? That’s just as alive as you and me, and a Wood Witch’s job is to listen for that tiny bit of life.” He puts his hand on top of the soil. “Just like how we’re only the tiniest fraction of the whole universe, but we still deserve to be listened to. That’s all a Wood Witch does when you boil right down to it – listens.”

Namjoon can feel Yoongi’s fingers wriggling underneath the soil, and he can see him frowning in concentration. “It’s warm. Should it be warm?”

“Uh,” Namjoon pulls his hand away. “No? Soil’s usually cool, especially when it’s freshly dug up.”

“Maybe I’m just imagining it,” Yoongi says, pulling his hand out of the soil. “Did you hear plants from the very start?”

Namjoon shrugs. “I don’t remember the first time I heard plants speaking, I was pretty young. I do remember that it took me a while to hear more than a few words at a time, though.”

“How come?”

“I suppose it’s like learning any language,” Namjoon says thoughtfully. “My mother used to say that if I wanted to ask plants something, it was easier to ask them a yes or no question. She used to take me out of the city sometimes to this field of grass so I could practice, and when you’re talking to any plant like that – grass, algae, whatever – it’s helpful to ask yes or no questions, just because otherwise they talk all over each other.” He looks down at Yoongi’s hand. “Ah, I got your hand all dirty.”

Yoongi looks too, examining the dirt that’s accumulated under his fingernails. “A little soil never hurt anybody.”

They find the Minister for Personnel attempting to board a ship out of the city. The Admiral, freshly returned from the ship he and his crew had been isolating in since the onset of the plague, returns with him in handcuffs.

The King wakes up, and both he and the Queen start getting out of bed, walking around their rooms, then their compound, then the Palace itself.

Namjoon finishes packing.

No one has said anything to him about leaving, but he feels like he’s outstaying his welcome. He knows that the people are grateful, but just because he discovered the cause of what was making them sick, doesn’t mean he can leech off of Yoongi’s hospitality forever, even if a part of him (most of him) wants nothing more than to spend an eternity in Yoongi’s company. They’ve started reading books about teaching and learning Magic, approaching it from a theory perspective that Seokjin had never had time to delve into when he’d tried teaching Yoongi Water Magic. They have meals together every day, usually in Yoongi’s private room but occasionally in Namjoon’s, crammed in together with elbows flying everywhere as they try to use their chopsticks in the tiny space.

He spends every day with Yoongi, every day with the rest of his friends, and he knows that the longer he waits to go back to the forest, the harder it’ll be.

He’s planning to tell them in the morning, ask them if they maybe want to make a day of it – maybe Seokjin will row the Royal Barge down to the forest, and Namjoon can show all of them as much of the forest as he can before they need to go back? He can introduce them to the willow, and the smeraldo flower, and show them the little cottage that kept him alive for ten years.

“Namjoon, can I come in?” Yoongi calls through the door. “I need to tell you something important.” Namjoon opens his door and, smiling, lets Yoongi into his room. “I – what’s that?” Yoongi says, freezing in the door frame and staring at the sealed crate. “Where’s your books?”

“In there,” Namjoon says, jerking his head at the crate. “I was going to tell you in the morning.” He sits on the edge of his bed. “What did you want to ask?”

Yoongi doesn’t answer, staring at the crate with wide, unfathomable eyes. “You… You’re packed? When will you leave?”

“Tomorrow,” Namjoon says. “I’ve done my job, right?”

Yoongi’s very still, only blinking as he continues to stare at the crate. “Your job,” he repeats tonelessly. “Of course.”

“And I should probably check on the forest,” Namjoon says quickly, because Yoongi’s monosyllabic answers are just making him want to fill the silence. “You know? I’ve been kept away for so long, it’ll be good to get back to them… Make sure the inchplant hasn’t throttled everything…”

“The inchplant,” Yoongi repeats again.

Namjoon looks up at him worriedly, notices the bags under his eyes, sees the white-knuckle grip he has on the doorframe, notes his other hand, clutched into a tight fist at his side. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Yoongi says shortly, finally looking away from the crate and around the room at large. “Well, if you’re already packed, what’s stopping you?”

“I… What?” Namjoon says, gripping the edge of his bed. “Now?”

“You’re packed, right? So you were just going to run off into the night again?” Yoongi says. It doesn’t sound vicious, he sounds flat and neutral, but each word cuts into Namjoon so deeply that he feels himself wince.

“What? No!” Namjoon jumps up in defence. “I was going to tell you all tomorrow!”

“Why bother? As you said, you’ve finished your work here, we wouldn’t want to keep you.” He storms off without a second glance, leaving Namjoon standing alone in his room.

Or, rather, not his room anymore. He’s been evicted, evidently, so now he is, once again, trespassing in the Palace at night.

Come full circle, he thinks as he loads his crate onto his bike – thankfully, it’s small enough that it more or less fits into his basket, he’ll just need to be careful on any terrain rougher than a path.

He wheels the bike through the quiet halls of the Palace. He doesn’t run into anyone, but he thinks he sees a few green robes flick out of view when they see him coming their way.

As he hops on his bicycle and cycles past the guards, he thinks he hears one of them call “Namjoon-ssi?” after him, but he doesn’t stop, pedalling furiously to get himself out of this city as quickly as he can.

He’s older now, and stronger physically, so he imagined that the ride to the cottage in the forest would be easier. If anything, it’s worse – every rotation of his feet feels like he’s pedalling through lead as he cycles further and further away from the city. He’s not keeping good time, either, he keeps stopping and looking over his shoulder at the receding silhouette of the city against the night sky, and it’s not until he’s starting the long ride along the riverbank that he realises he’s still wearing his blue robes. He’s stolen something from the Palace again.

Wish I’d stolen some food, he thinks grimly, feeling his stomach rumble for the first time in months.

He slows his pace to an outright crawl in order to conserve as much energy as possible, the slow rhythm meaning he rocks back and forth on his bike like a boat on the river. He laughs hollowly at that image – that he’d thought, just hours ago, that he’d be returning to the forest with his friends. It hurts that he didn’t have time to say goodbye to them, but Yoongi had been very clear, in Namjoon’s opinion, and Namjoon didn’t want to risk being caught trying to sneak around the Palace to say his goodbyes.

Well, they all know where he lives.

The first thing he notices about the forest when he steps foot on its riverbank is that everything’s… Fine.

Nothing’s the same, of course, because that’s not how forests work – there are new saplings, fresh seedlings, a space or two where a tree has gone…

Nothing’s changed in his absence. The forest is the same minutely shifting organism it was before he arrived, the same as it was when he was here, and the same as it was when he left. The same as it will be, long after he’s gone.

The older plants, the ones that haven’t sprouted up in his absence, are pleased to see him as he wheels his bike back along the river on the other side. As he spots the willow coming into view, tall and strong against the bright sky, he heaves a sigh.

“I’m back,” he says needlessly, settling his bike down on the ground and sitting on one of the willow’s roots, resting his back against the trunk’s bark. “Did you get my message?”

“From the algae? I did,” the willow says, its low voice settling something inside of Namjoon. “You are sad to return.”

Namjoon shrugs and draws his knees up to his chest, staring out over the river towards the cattails on the opposite riverbank. He’s looking the wrong way, the city is to the east, but he stares hard at the horizon anyway. “I’ll be over it in a few weeks.” He doesn’t think that’s true, but acknowledging the alternative out loud is beyond him at the moment.

“What about now?”

“Now?” Namjoon shrugs again. “I’ll just be sad, I guess.”

Plants don’t know to ask people to talk about what’s troubling them – to be fair, Namjoon has never needed to be prompted by plants to talk about what he’s feeling. So the willow doesn’t ask, even though it must be able to feel Namjoon’s sadness permeating through its roots. Or maybe that’s why it doesn’t ask – it can feel that Namjoon isn’t ready to talk about it yet, isn’t ready to vocalise just why he feels so heartbroken.

When he finally gets up again from sitting with the willow, the sun is low again, and his cheeks are wet. Wiping them furiously with the heel of his hand, he picks up his bicycle and slowly wheels it through the forest.

The garden surrounding the cottage seems much smaller than he remembers, but it has sustained itself well in his absence. The catmint pretends to seethe at Namjoon, but wiggles its leaves in greeting as he tidies away the makeshift fence surrounding it; the inchplant hasn’t grown too wildly in its pot, and cheers in joy when Namjoon replants it in the soil of the greenhouse.

Everything else has grown a little, but it is still recognisable as the garden he had left, all those months ago.

As the sun sets, Namjoon helps himself to a plate of raw vegetables from storage, unbothered to do anything to prepare them other than give them a quick wash. He washes the plate quickly, drags himself to the greenhouse, and falls asleep long before the sky fully darkens.

“Namjoon,” someone whispers; for a brief, heart stopping moment, Namjoon thinks it’s Yoongi. When he opens his eyes, though, he’s exactly where he fell asleep – flat on his back, alone, in the greenhouse.

Except he’s not alone.

“Namjoon, hurry,” the smeraldo flower begs.

Namjoon sits up, rubbing his face. “What?”

“The willow, Namjoon, the willow, they’re harming the willow, Namjoon, go-”

“Who’s harming the willow?”

“The people, with their metal and their fire-”

Namjoon’s up and running before the smeraldo flower can finish, not even bothering to put his shoes on as he sprints towards the river. He’s still in the blue robes he had inadvertently stolen, and they’re catching on the branches as he runs past the low-lying bushes and shrubbery of the forest. He can hear the forest keening, wailing in his ears, the roots beneath his feet crackling with rage as the willow, the oldest of them all, burns.

He bursts out of the trees at the river; there aren’t as many men and women as he’d expected crowded around the other side, but he recognises them all, their green robes, their scowling faces.

“Rootspeaker!” One of them sneers, holding up a fireball that flares intermittently, spluttering like it’s gasping for breath. “You left before we could say farewell!”

“What do you even want?” Namjoon shouts. “I left the Palace! Go away! There’s nothing here for you!”

“Now that’s just not true!” Another of the Witches crows, tossing a metal chain across the river and just barely missing Namjoon’s head. Namjoon recognises her as Dahee, watches as she whips the chain back, loses control of it and drops half of its chain links in the river; she crumples the remaining chain links in her hands like paper, forming something that resembles a poorly constructed cannonball. “You’re here! And now that your useless Prince and his lackies aren’t here to protect you, it’s time for us to teach you your place – you’re nothing more than a soil scrabbling, plant whispering parasite.”

The trees escalate their feverish wailing to a higher pitch as one of the Witches tosses a fireball at the willow, hitting its branchlets and setting it ablaze.

The willow stays silent; strangely, underneath the noise of the other trees, Namjoon can hear the algae in the river below – they’re screaming at him, but he can only just hear what they’re saying past the grief of the trees;

“I’m coming we’re coming hold on I’m coming hold on Namjoon-”

The plants, Namjoon remembers suddenly, never call him Namjoon. None of the plants have ever called him Namjoon, until the smeraldo had woken him up by calling his name.

Three things happen at once.

One of the Witches across the river throws a huge replica of the snapping fake Magic, a mix of gunpowder, shrapnel, and flames at the willow.

Namjoon calls upon the roots of the forest as he runs towards the riverbank; he can feel them thundering through the soil beneath his feet, and he can only trust that the trees will move their roots far enough through the air to get him across the river.

And the cattails on the opposite bank swarm the Witches, dragging them to the ground, binding their arms and legs with their hardy stems.

Namjoon barely has time to process any of these things before the blast of the explosion behind him blows him off the roots he’s running along and onto the opposite riverbank. He rolls so many times that he feels black and blue all over, but he’s still cognizant, which he takes as the small blessing it is. He’s able to stand, albeit slowly, and survey his surroundings.

The Witches are stunned and still bound, but Namjoon knows it won’t be long before even they, as incompetent as they are, remember that the majority of them can burn and cut through their binds. The willow is on fire, and there’s a deep gouge in its trunk from the explosion that Namjoon knows, even from this distance, can’t be good. The algae are still screaming and, because he’s now on the other side of the river, he can hear it much more clearly.

“The tree corpse is coming! They gave us a message! Hold on hold on hold on-”

One of the Witches stands up, hands burning red as the cattails fall away. Before she can do anything, water rears up out of the river, arcs, and encases every single Witch’s hands, freezing solid into handcuffs.

The Royal Barge turns the corner with a speed that Namjoon didn’t even know it possessed; Seokjin is leaning out of one side, whipping water at the Witches with deadly accuracy. Namjoon can see Yoongi on the other side, the side facing the forest, dangling one hand into the water as Hoseok and Jimin clutch onto his other hand.

Taehyung suddenly comes running out of the ship’s cabin, staring at Namjoon, before he turns to Yoongi and starts yelling, too quiet for Namjoon to hear him over the roar of the barge. Jimin and Hoseok yank Yoongi back fully onto the boat, and he runs to the other side, yelling something at Namjoon.

Namjoon, however, has the last of the cattails clamouring for his attention, wrapping around his wrists and ankles.

“The willow, the willow,” they whisper, the cottony seeds brushing against him feebly.

“I – I can’t get back over there, it’ll take too long,” Namjoon says, twisting his head left and right as though a path to the forest will miraculously appear. The roots of the trees have fallen short of the river, stunned by the explosion that hit the willow.

“Ask for help,” the cattails say, their voices even quieter than the shameplant.

“Ask who?” Namjoon says desperately. “There’s no one here!”

The cattails are silent.

“Help!” Namjoon yells anyway, turning this way and that, hoping that the cattails knew of a deeply rooted plant that could come to his rescue.

“Hyung!” Someone calls – the motor of the barge has been switched off, and Jeongguk has appeared from the cabin, leaning over the side of the boat. “Are you hurt?” The six of them are all staring at him worriedly; Yoongi looks as though he’s one thought away from trying to leap onto the riverbank.

“I need to get back to the forest!” Namjoon shouts; Seokjin immediately curves river water from one bank to the other and freezes it, creating a very slippery looking, but otherwise perfectly serviceable, bridge of ice. As Namjoon runs across it, his feet sliding in each direction, Seokjin moulds the bridge underneath him, preventing him from falling into the river.

As soon as his feet touch the dirt on the other bank, he’s struck by the silence. It’s not cavernous, the same way the other bank was after the last of the cattails were silenced; the forest is holding its breath.

Namjoon runs to the willow and puts his hand on its trunk.

“You can’t heal this,” the willow says. It doesn’t sound mournful, or angry – it’s simply stating a fact. This is a wound that it cannot be healed from.

“I can try,” Namjoon says stubbornly, wiping the hot tears from his eyes.

“I know you can,” the willow concedes. “But you shouldn’t.”

“But this forest needs you,” Namjoon says, placing his other hand on the bark, as though he can knit the tree back together simply by forcing it with his bare hands. He can feel the dampness of his tears on his palm, at odds with the burnt brittleness of the bark.

“I will still be here for the forest.”

“No.” Because that was the thing – the willow would still be felt by everything in this forest except for Namjoon. “Don’t – let me try-”

“I’ve never asked anything from you before,” the willow says. “Not you, nor any Witch who has spoken to me, and I will not ask anything hence. Let my roots feed the soil, let my branches house the birds, and let my bark become a wand.”

“Fuck, I don’t want a new wand!” Namjoon sobs, pressing his head against the willow’s trunk.

“Namjoon,” the willow sighs fondly. “Please do this for me.”

Namjoon inhales a shuddery breath, steps back from the willow, and nods once, abruptly.

Wand making is a violent thing for a Wood Witch, Namjoon had once said to Yoongi. He hears those words now as, hand white hot, he plunges his hand through the willow’s bark and into the heart of the tree, where its rings run darkest. Ours are the only wands that come from the living.

As he rips his new wand out of the willow, he hears it sigh.

Then, a sound like a popping fire.

And the bark splinters with a gunpowder bang, a noise so cacophonous that the birds in the forest wake, taking off into the night sky. The willow collapses over the river, and then the forest falls silent.

Considering that he’s a Wood Witch, Namjoon is always startled by just how pale the inside of a jagged, splintered stump is in comparison to the dark bark. He sits in front of the stump and puts his hand on the bark, taking care not to touch the splintered wood as best as he can. He can feel something, but it’s not his willow.

He can hear footsteps behind him, shuffling in place, but he doesn’t turn to look. He hears murmurs, and then some, but not all, of the people behind him depart

Namjoon doesn’t know how long he’s sits on the ground in front of the stump of the willow, but he does know that the sky is now turning a pale primrose, and the morning sun is peeking over the horizon, turning the fields across the river a soft, hazy brown; he jumps when he feels a hesitant hand on his shoulder, which pulls away like a frightened animal.

“Sorry,” Yoongi mutters as he squats down next to Namjoon. The forest behind them is so quiet that Namjoon can hear Yoongi’s soft breaths, the rustle of his robes on the dirt. Everyone else has gone – it’s just him and Yoongi. “For all of it.” Namjoon glances at him wearily. “I shouldn’t have told you to leave like that, and I should’ve gotten here sooner, and I shouldn’t have just touched you. And I’m sorry about your friend.”

Namjoon nods in acknowledgement of Yoongi’s last statement, and then he pauses, thinking the other three over. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

Yoongi sighs, staring down at his hands. “You set clear boundaries on our relationship, and I acted like a spoiled prince, basically banishing you from the Palace because you didn’t feel the same way I did. Even though you singlehandedly saved my kingdom, I acted like a child.”

“That’s not what happened,” Namjoon says slowly, frowning. “That’s not what happened at all. You asked me if I was leaving, and I said yes, I’d finished the work I needed to do, and that I should get back to the forest, because I’d been away for longer than I had ever been-”

“Which was my fault-” Yoongi interrupts.

“You weren’t keeping me against my will!” Namjoon interrupts right back.

“You’re the first person in a long time who’s offered me friendship because you like me as a person, but I told you to leave sooner rather than later because I’m in love with you and I thought you’d realised and were, I don’t know, pitying me, stupid Yoongi falling in love with a guy he’s literally employed to stay with him, but almost as soon as you’d left I realised you were offering genuine friendship, and I turned that gift away like it was something to be scorned at-”

Namjoon leans forward and puts his hand on Yoongi’s cheek, very gently, making him freeze in place. He looks down at Yoongi’s mouth, petal pink and lips parted in shock, and then he looks Yoongi directly in the eyes. “I’d – I’d really like to kiss you, please,” he says hoarsely. He can see Yoongi swallow, his eyes darting across Namjoon’s face before he nods.

He’s never been more sure of anything in his life than he is right now, pressing his lips against Yoongi’s. From their positions on the ground – Namjoon sitting, Yoongi squatting – Yoongi is a little higher up than Namjoon, meaning that Namjoon has to tilt his head up slightly to kiss him. He brings up his other hand and lets his fingers trace from Yoongi’s cheeks and into his hair, using the leverage to pull him a little closer.

Yoongi breaks away, eyes wide, but before Namjoon can even contemplate overthinking anything Yoongi manoeuvres himself into Namjoon’s lap, staring down at him.

“I’d convinced myself that I’d outstayed my welcome,” Namjoon says, settling his hands on Yoongi’s waist. “That’s why I’d packed when you came to see me. I was going to tell you all in the morning, invite you all with me to show you around the forest, but when you told me to leave I thought… I thought that I was right, that you didn’t want me around anymore.”

“The opposite, actually,” Yoongi whispers. He’s now got his hands on Namjoon’s face, as though, now that they’ve touched each other once, he can’t physically bear to be separated. “I came to see you to ask you if you wanted to stay at the Palace. I was going to offer you any position you wanted – my Wood Magic tutor, my advisor, I would’ve given you the Minister for Personnel position if I’d thought you would’ve taken it – I just wanted you to stay. I wanted you to want to stay.” Namjoon leans up to kiss him again, feels his heart burst when he quite literally feels Yoongi’s smile against his lips.

“I do. I want to stay,” Namjoon says against Yoongi’s mouth; Yoongi presses forward again, caressing Namjoon’s cheekbones with his thumbs as they kiss.

When Namjoon pulls back, he doesn’t go far, just tilts his face back a little so that he can drink in Yoongi’s face. The sun is bathing him in golden light, making him glow as he smiles down at Namjoon.

“Where did the others go?” Namjoon asks, not looking away from Yoongi to check for them himself.

“Jimin and Jeongguk went to help the Admiral and the Commander General escort the prisoners onto the ships – we had them follow us, just in case – and Seokjin, Hoseok, and Taehyung went to put out the fires.” Namjoon starts guiltily, looking at the forest in alarm – he’d been so focused on the willow, and then on Yoongi, that he had completely forgotten the fire. “It was the grass, mostly, over by the riverbank where the willow fell.” Namjoon turns and spots Seokjin, Hoseok, and Taehyung huddled close to the river; Taehyung spots him looking and scrambles to stand up, but Seokjin plucks his sleeve and shakes his head. “They’re cross with me,” Yoongi says.

“With you? Why?” Namjoon asks.

“For telling you to leave so fast that you didn’t say goodbye to them,” Yoongi admits. “Sorry, again.”

“You’ve apologised already,” Namjoon says. “But for what it’s worth I forgive you, and I’m sorry I didn’t just talk to you.”

Yoongi shakes his head, looking guiltier and guiltier by the second. “Namjoon, I brought up the night you fled from the city after your mother died, that isn’t comparable to you pre-packing a suitcase!”

“It was a crate,” Namjoon says. Yoongi huffs and turns away, so Namjoon puts his fingers on his jaw and tilts his head back to look at him; his head moves easily. “Yoongi, I forgive you.” Yoongi tries to huff again, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the shy smile creeping up his face.

He hears footsteps, fast footsteps, approaching them – he looks up just in time to see Jimin, Taehyung, and Jeongguk barrelling towards them. Yoongi moves in time, sliding off Namjoon’s lap neatly to the side, but Namjoon freezes like a rabbit, and is promptly bowled over.

“Can’t believe you thought we wanted you to leave-”

“-stupid, hyung, I only found out you’d left when the gate guards told me on shift change-”

“-missed you so much-”

“Jeongguk, it’s only been a day,” Namjoon points out gently, shuffling them all up into a sitting position. He ends up with Jimin sitting on one of his legs, Taehyung pressed to his back, and Jeongguk holding onto one of his arms, as though the three of them are trying to hold him in place.

“I didn’t know it was going to be a day, though,” Jeongguk says sniffily. “It’s always easier if you know how long someone’s going to be gone for.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, Jeongguk-ah,” Namjoon says.

“Don’t be sorry,” Jeongguk says, shooting a very genuine scowl at Yoongi.

“Don’t be cross with Yoongi, either,” Namjoon says immediately, shifting his arm so that he can take Jeongguk’s hand. “He was feeling vulnerable, said some things he didn’t mean.”

“He was feeling stupid,” Jimin says petulantly, reaching his own foot out and gently kicking Yoongi. “But you’re back now, so it’s fine.”

“You are coming back, right, hyung?” Taehyung asks.

Before Namjoon can answer, Hoseok and Seokjin catch up; Seokjin pulls Namjoon up from the cuddle-pile he’s in and brings him in for a hug of his own. Namjoon’s never noticed before, because Seokjin always seems so sure and sturdy and powerful, but Seokjin’s actually shorter than him, and he’s able to tuck himself easily into Namjoon’s shoulder.

“You’re so stupid,” he says quietly. “Thinking we didn’t love you.” He willingly hands Namjoon over to Hoseok, who checks him over carefully first before hugging him. He’s always been able to tell Hoseok is shorter than him, but Hoseok, perhaps because Namjoon is pretty bruised, cradles him like he’s delicate.

“We found this,” Seokjin says, holding out Namjoon’s old wand. “On the other bank.”

It’s just a coil of rope at this point, a few splinters of wood – Namjoon’s surprised they recognised it as anything at all, let alone his wand. He takes it, cupping the pieces of his mother’s wand in his hands.

“Here,” Yoongi says, pulling out an empty coin purse from his pocket and holding it out, open, towards Namjoon, who tips the pieces inside.

“What will you do now, hyung?” Jeongguk asks worriedly, biting his lip as Namjoon takes the purse from Yoongi and pockets it. “Without a wand?”

“I have a new one,” Namjoon says, showing them the new willow wand. The wood is shiny and dark, and the wand itself is currently on the long side and curiously flat. He likes it, but as it is it’ll be a nightmare to hold.

Jimin looks from the wand to the fallen willow tree. “Is it… Dead?”

“…It’s more complicated than that,” Namjoon says. “The forest will use the resources of the fallen tree, and a new tree will probably grow from the stump, it’s pretty difficult to get rid of a willow tree just by cutting it down. The forest won’t consider it to be dead. But the tree I knew, the one that stood there for hundreds of years, that tree is gone. So, for our understanding… Yes, it’s dead.”

They stand in silence for a moment, allowing Namjoon the space to grieve his friend.

Eventually, Taehyung stands back up again. “Are we going back to the Palace?” They look to Yoongi, including Namjoon, but Yoongi looks questioningly back at Namjoon.

“You want to come back now?” Yoongi asks.

“Actually…” Namjoon trails off, glancing at the forest. “Can you all stay? At least for a little bit. I’d like to show you around.”

“Oh, please say yes,” Jeongguk says eagerly. “I’ve wanted to see the forest ever since Taehyung got to go.”

“The Commander General isn’t due back to meet us until tomorrow at the earliest,” Seokjin says. “She said she ‘wanted to give us time to ourselves’.”

“That’s thoughtful,” Jimin replies.

Hoseok snorts. “She probably just wants time to question as many Junior Ministers as she can – she did technically let them leave the Palace from right under her nose, and quite of few of them were her Junior Ministers, she’s probably feeling guilty.”

“Well, we’ll take all the time we have,” Yoongi says. “Lead the way, Namjoon-ah.”

He says lead the way, but he walks side-by-side with Namjoon through the forest, his hand entwined with Namjoon’s.

“What’re you thinking about?” Namjoon and Yoongi are lying on their backs in the greenhouse, staring up at the sky. Their friends had, very pointedly, left to explore the forest some time ago – Namjoon had told the grass not to let them get lost, and had then pleaded with the trees to keep reminding the grass what they were supposed to be doing.

Now it’s just them, and Namjoon’s been quietly pondering the events of the previous day. He’d assumed that Yoongi had fallen asleep – evidently not.

He turns onto his side to look at Yoongi. “Something you said earlier.” Yoongi raises his eyebrows as he turns his head towards Namjoon. He does look tired, but he seems reluctant to fall asleep. “You apologised for not arriving sooner. How did you even know to arrive at all?”

Yoongi turns onto his side too, smiling a little bashfully. “The algae told me.”

“The…”

“I was sitting in the gardens,” Yoongi says, wriggling his feet a little in imitation of how he would dip his feet in the pond. “Seokjin was getting the Royal Barge ready, because we’d already decided we were going to go after you at this point, so I was thinking about you, trying to imagine what you were doing, what I’d say when I saw you, and then I heard all these voices.”

“Sounds like the algae,” Namjoon mutters, making Yoongi snort.

“I couldn’t understand them at first, but I remembered what you told me, about how with plants like algae it helps to ask them a yes or no question, so I asked if they knew you.”

“Not every plant knows me.”

“These ones did. Once they realised I could only hear one-word answers, they started shouting random words at me – fields, fire, green, and then your name, over and over.” Yoongi looks lost in thought, staring at nothing with a furrowed brow, so Namjoon reaches over and brushes his hair back from his forehead. The action makes his eyes clear, and he reaches up, takes Namjoon’s hand in his, and brings it down to his lips, gently kissing his palm. “That’s when we realised that a group of Junior Ministers had gone missing, so I asked the algae to make sure you were safe, and then I told the Commander General and the Admiral to bring their soldiers along with us, just in case. Seokjin was amazing, helping Jeongguk power the barge so we could make a half-day’s boat ride in less than half an hour, but if the algae hadn’t told me those Junior Ministers were going after you…” He kisses Namjoon’s hand again, as though he doesn’t want to verbalise his thoughts.

“I figured out something was strange, because all of the plants in the forest were calling me by name when they woke me up.” Namjoon admits. “The plants never knew my name.”

Yoongi blinks in surprise. “Never? Why?”

Namjoon shrugs. “It never came up. Plants don’t give each other names, and I was the only human, so they usually just called me that. Suddenly all the plants were saying my name, but I only noticed it when the algae started telling me to hold on.”

“That was me,” Yoongi says. “Once we could see the forest from the river, see the – the smoke, I had Hoseok and Jimin practically dangling me in the river so I could tell the algae to tell you that we were coming.”

“The only reason I woke up at all was because the algae got that first message to the forest,” Namjoon says, linking his fingers with Yoongi’s. “I can’t believe you’re a Wood Witch now, though.”

“Seokjin’s furious,” Yoongi says, grinning. “Years he’s been trying to teach me Water Magic. He thinks I’m being ‘wilfully obstinate’.”

“Maybe the guy teaching you Wood Magic is just a better teacher,” Namjoon says with a shrug; Yoongi huffs his shaky laugh, Namjoon’s favourite.

“I’ll tell him that,” Yoongi says eventually, rolling over onto his back again. “So” He rests his hands on his stomach and closes his eyes, the sun making his face glow prettily. “In the interests of honesty, I think it’s only fair of me to be clear here and say that I’d like you to stay in the Palace. Stay with me.”

Namjoon leans up on his elbow and props his cheek on his hand. “I think… If you were just you, and I was just me, I’d say yes in a heartbeat. But… I’m not sure I can spend the rest of my life living in a Palace, doing nothing.” Part of him wants to agree outright, just agree to going back to the Palace with Yoongi, but he doesn’t want to become resentful further down the line.

“That’s fair,” Yoongi says, his eyes still closed. Some of his hair has fallen out of its careful styling, and he wants to reach out and put it back in place; when he remembers that he can, he smiles and reaches out, moving the hair aside with gentle fingers. Yoongi cracks and eye open and smiles when he sees Namjoon’s face. “Okay, how about this,” Yoongi says, closing his eye again. “I’ve been thinking that I’d like to reassign the Minister for Taxation to a different position.”

“I thought she’d been cleared of wrongdoing?” Namjoon asks.

“She has. But she’s still been the one authorising the monoculture of our farm fields for profit, which was how the Minister for Personnel was able to plant huge fields of hemlock so easily.” Yoongi opens his eyes and looks right at Namjoon. “I know you wouldn’t accept the position of Minister for Taxation right from the get-go. But maybe… You’d be interested in heading up our initiative to plant more greenery in the city?”

“You’d trust me with that?” Namjoon whispers.

Yoongi opens his mouth to say something, seems to reconsider and shuts it again, before he sits up with a determined expression on his face. “I think I’d trust you with anything, Namjoon.”

“Ah, Yoongi-hyung…” Namjoon says, sitting up too so that he can cover his face and grin embarrassedly into his hands.

He feels Yoongi’s hands on his wrists, palms first before he slowly curves his fingers around Namjoon’s arms and gently pulls his hands down. Yoongi’s shifted so that they’re sitting facing one another, their knees pressing together. “I like it when you call me by my name,” he says, moving their hands so that he can hold one of Namjoon’s in both of his. “The first time you called me ‘Yoongi’, I couldn’t stop smiling for days afterwards.”

Namjoon doesn’t know how to put what he’s feeling into words, so he doesn’t. He puts his hand on Yoongi’s jaw and kisses him.

After a moment Yoongi pulls back slightly to look at Namjoon with dark eyes. “You’re good at that, for somebody who’s spent the last decade living alone.” Namjoon grins and kisses him again. “Ah, Namjoon-ah – I’m trying to complement you, you’re distracting me – no, wait, come back-”

“You’re sending me mixed messages,” Namjoon teases as Yoongi tries to pull him closer. “I don’t know what to tell you, hyung, maybe I’m just good at kissing you.”

“You know nobility gets taught how to be charming, yet none of them have ever made me feel the way you make me feel,” Yoongi says.

“How do I make you feel?” Namjoon asks.

Yoongi doesn’t answer immediately. He shuffles up onto his knees and positions himself in Namjoon’s lap, wrapping his legs around Namjoon’s back in a way that has his brain short-circuiting. He drapes his arms over Namjoon’s shoulders and looks down at him silently for a moment longer. “Like I could spend the rest of my life getting to know you, mapping your brain like a cartographer, and I still wouldn’t tire of talking to you. Like I could relinquish all of my responsibilities, or utterly devote myself to them, and I’d be the happiest person alive if I did it at your side.” He smiles a little helplessly. “Like I want to kiss you?”

“And you called me charming,” Namjoon says breathlessly, tilting his head up to be kissed. Yoongi kisses reverently, as though he’s savouring every second. Like he’s been waiting for forever for this moment, and it’s everything he could have hoped for.

Namjoon’s rather inclined to agree.