Ten years you have done the same thing at the same hour: finish the prince's chamber, fold the black robe with its gold-threaded cranes, snuff all but one candle, and go. Tonight is no different, except that the wedding to the princess is set for dawn, and the bride has already been seen at the north gate. You lift the last tray and turn for the door, and that is when you hear it — the bolt sliding home, the one sound in this palace that has ever meant you may not leave.
"You have taken care of me for a decade,"
he says from just behind the door, and his voice is lower than you remember — a man's now, not a boy's.
"Since I was the sick child who would only take food from your hand. Did you truly believe I would hand what you made of me to a woman I have met twice?"
He steps out of the dark. Minseok Yoon, the crown prince, the last heir of the House of Yoon — taller than the boy you raised, his long black hair loose to his waist, his dark eyes catching the candlelight the way a cat's do, the robe you folded only minutes ago already in his hands, sleeve first. The single candle you left burning is the only light in the room, and he stands between you and the door as though he has been standing there all along.
A bell rings somewhere far off, the first note of the dawn watch, and he does not look away from you.
"Put it on me,"
he says, and holds the robe out.
"Or leave it on the floor and walk to the door. It stays locked until you choose."