In about a space of a week, my husband had really done his best to pacify the villager and undo the damage that The Princess had created. It seemed that spending time bonding with the villager by himself and them coming home late at night to spend with his children was doing him some good. As for myself, I did al that I could to soothe my daughter and get her used to me, even if it meant spending all night up with her crying. I wasn't being paranoid as a new mother; I could already tell that my daughter was rebelling against me and making me pay for not being with her when she needed me the most. This was a trait that she got inherited from her father that did scare me a little, especially when I saw how much more drawn he was to her than his own son. I couldn't blame him after everything he had been through, he always approached his son with caution and more so admired him from a distance, but he couldn't keep his hands off of Hana who brought a new type of smile to his face that I had never seen before. It wasn't the small secretive smile that he always gave me, but it a full blown smile that reached from ear to ear and it suited him. He was so…gentle and patient with our loud little girl who alway smiled from ear to ear when she saw her father, he was even more gentle than he was with me. It made him even happier to see our nephews and Bo-Geom come over and watch our children over with us. I was also grateful to the village for being understanding about our twins and keeping my daughters existence a secret. BoGeom was especially grateful since she didn't really have that much in common with her own brothers and she simply adored Hana as soon as they met. She was in fact the only other persons that my daughter didn't cry when she was around them since she was always trying to find way to stay in her father's arms for as long as possible. But I was at my happiest when we had all heard the news of the arrest of The Mistress Han and her husband. Even his main wife who was on her deathbed at this point and was beyond saving wasn't spared of the implication and now rumour had the was rotting in the dungeons along with his wife and concubine with no chance of getting out for the rest of their natural lives.
And as for my husband and myself, we never abandoned each other even once, although we were sleeping in separate beds for a while due to the twins waking patterns in the night that disturbed him too much. I did tell him that I needed some time to work on my emotions because I did not want to unjustly lash out at him and he reluctantly gave me the space that I needed, at night time anyways. Bonding with the villagers who saw him as equal to my brother and the fact that he loved being a father more than he knew was starting to make him understand his parents for the first time in his life. He was still a little uneasy around his son but the look on his face when he saw him every time showed nothing but pride for his son, the son that he always wanted. But as for our marriage, there were some small bumps in the road but nothing that we couldn't handle. My husband starting drinking again to cope with the pain of the loss that I had told him about in anger, but it seemed to have finally did the trick and convinced him to stop making moves where Hui-Jae was concerned. He never spoke of her and his plans with her again, but that still didn't mean he had let everything go. My brother was tasked to bring The Third Prince back to his father so he could be dethroned and yet kept close to him so that he could keep a proper eye on his son. But upon his return, he had rejected all merits that The Emperor imposed on him on behalf of myself and my husband for the unfair treatment and suspicion that we all befall. As for myself, I hardly cared about what the people said about me, not after the way that they had treated my family. But for the sake of my father's legacy, I could not let it be tarnished in any was possible. So against my better judgment, I had no choice but to return to the kingdom and try to restore my reputation whilst my husband and brother were busy being full time fathers and treating Bo-Geom and her siblings like toys in their game.
I still tended to my husband flawlessly despite how busy and tired I was, apart in one aspect and I knew that underneath his cool facade that it was during him crazy. He kept giving me that look 3 months after my children were born when he knew full well that I had physically healed up after my pregnancy. But I had bee with him for so long without taking a break and I still needed the space that he was giving me for a while. But he obviously disagreed with me, and it showed as I was planning on visiting the companion that I had left in bad form last time when dealing with The Princess. Apparently she had become pregnant and she had lost a lot of support around her, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I had my husband's old servants write to me and keep me informed of the news, and the public opinion myself and my brother had the people divided and questioning the loyalties and priorities of The Emperor and the rest of The Royal Family. Tp be honest, this was exactly the kind of response that myself and my brother were looking for when our parents lost their lives decades ago, and this response from the public did satisfy us, but we knew that it could not continue forever in case The Emperor wished to attack us for 'our acts of disloyalty'. My brother was already completely furious when he found out about the tricks that The Princess puled on our land since he had pretty much sunk all of his funds into faming and developing the land, but he agreed that we had no choice but to move everything entirely to somewhere new, isolated and undisturbed where nobody could find us.
The entire village was doing it's best to help my brother in the search, along with my husband so I really did not think that he would even notice me if I had disappeared for only a few hours to venture into the kingdom to check on the companion that I had left behind. But it seemed that I had underestimated my husband's…sudden laxity that he had never really displayed before. It was my fault for assuming this of him, after such a long time after my children were born but…in the end it hardly mattered at all. My husband when he confronted me as soon as he saw me packing lightly for an overnight visit…he reacted in a way that i saw coming a long time ago, because i understood him and his nature even if I didn't always agree with it. His burdens were always by burdens and he was always a slave to his ends obsessions anyways. And told me as much when he cornered me and took what he wanted from me that I had always been much more of an obsession to him; that I was his life that he didn't know what to do without me. But the very fact that he was willing to let me go to the kingdom alone for less than a day was already showing great improvement on his behalf. He was slowly loosing his possessiveness that I was beginning to miss at times, which just showed me how much of a great influence he would be on our children, even beyond his duties as a father…
"…every single road that I chose took me to you wife, even when I tried my hardest to ignore and forget you." "How long will you keep dancing with all of the ghosts of your past before you realise that you are no longer hunted? Can't you let everything go now? The truth of the matter is this husband; you are no monster and you never have been, despite the false world of monsters that people placed you in. And even then…" "Even then what, wife?" "Every monster that exists was once a human being made from the finest silk that our children are made from. The difference between us is that someone stole that silk from their should and turned them into heartless monsters which you are not!" "Is this why you have never feared me wife?'
"I suppose so; despite my condition, I never regarded myself as a thing to be ruined or owned by any man; neither my heart nor my body. And I was never a full tragedy waiting to happen either; but at the same time I could not risk being with someone who didn't understand my silences, words or actions. We both especially awaken the mind of the same attitude that we hold over each other and we both understand our abilities, do we not?" "It was you who taught me how to get what I wanted by first going without it wife, and for that and more, I shall always be forever grateful to you." "Just grateful?" "Wife; I would recognise you in another lifetime entirely at this point with how much I know and have come to understand you in our painful absences. I would recognise you in different bodies and different lifetimes; and I would love you in all even until the very last star in the sky burst into oblivion. And I have always loved you with my soul, just in case mind forgets you and my heart stops beating. And you must hold my memory in high regard just in case I forget to hold you always when you come to me from now on, for I shall live in your heart if you ever pull me out of your life." "That shall never happen husband, no matter how angry I am with you, you need not worry. I shall only go for a few hours and then return to you and my babies and I shall promise you that I shall hold onto you forever." "Do I have your word about that, wife?" "You have my word if you have truly reflected upon your actions for the past decade." "What are you talking about wife?" "You suffer when you don't get what you want and you make us all suffer with you. But you also suffer when you get what it is that you want because you cannot hold onto it forever. Your mind is your own predicament; it wants to be free of change and of the obligation with death, but that possibility has always come with your work, hasn't it? You cannot alter reality and you cannot always be obsessed with everything to death. That is why I chose to surrender you to that woman in the first place and love you in silence; for there was no rejection or you putting me in second place to you endless goals of ambition. I chose to love you in my loneliness where nobody could own you in my mind apart from myself. And I chose to love you from a distance where it shielded em from pain and kiss you in the wind since the wind was softer than my own lips at the time." My twins were 6 months old now and this was the first time that my husband and I had been intimate for a while now, and I still ha don idea how he wold act towards me if I kept on resisting him. He gave my my very first glimpse of a real life and he was the only person to not make me live a false one after that. Distance no longer corrupted us, but we still could not live without seeing each other. Even if we use detach other, we could never kill each other and we could recognise each other in total darkness at this point. The concept of war had majority disturbed us, he actually partook in those to show prove his worth to my late father despite his schemes around me. He lost hi support because of me when Hui-jae first collected him from the dungeons and protected my brother beyond their friendship to not see any tears in my eyes. He took on my hurtful words of utter despair and bowed to his enemy just to come home to myself and his children when they were still in my womb. He even went above his pride and protected the men that came with my brother from my husband's own blunders and he even overcome his opium addiction for me. He is the man that I chose to love and cherish forever, and now I knew that he was waiting for me to come home to him with full devotion, trust and loyalty to him and him only.