Page 46 of The Dandelion Princess
MARC
“It’s good of you to come,” I say, reverting to my mother’s tongue.
“I’ll go anywhere you ask,Marcus-shi,” she says, tagging my name with a Seongan honorific.
We pick up her breakfast smoothie on our way through the kitchens. The slurry looks like the underside of a boat dock, but she swears by it, happily sucking the straw as we adjourn to the library.
I hold the door but my gaze locates the exact spot where I tumbled to the floor with Ella in my arms. Was it only last week? I look at the window and the woods beyond, but there is no safety there. I might have to burn the little forest down.
I let Alix think I was industriously working last night, shooting off emails and outlining productivity schedules. Instead, I tore through her aesthetic piles of wood until they were reduced to a few bark chips, and cursed myself in every language I know.
Stultes es.Lines were crossed.
Ever since I returned from Seong, I haven’t been able to speak to Ella like a normal person, and it’s not her fault she has become my own personal kryptonite. When did that happen? Erasmus knows.
I should have backed away last night and explained with clinical precision that I didn’t mean she wasn’t as appealing as her sisters. The problem was that I meant that she is much, muchmoreappealing than her sisters. Other people have different, worse opinions, I’m sure. There were no words that were going to help me with that one.
So I kissed her like I was on the seventh round of a hot wings challenge and she was the last glass of milk. Desperate. Insatiable. My stomach tightens and I feel my heartbeat everywhere. If Alix hadn’t found us when she did, I might still be kissing her.
“Why do you look so tired,” Jang Mi perches on the window seat, “when I’m the one who took a red eye?”
I sink into the sofa and close my eyes for a moment. I bet Ella slept deeply. I bet she had her hand crooked under her chin at an impossible angle, cheeks flushed with sleep. I don’t have to wonder if she likes to push her icy feet under the nearest warm body. I know she does.
Jang Mi glances out the window and I sit forward, clasping my hands lightly as I remember how Ella kissed me back and the brush of her fingertips against my ear. A satisfied shiver carries through my shoulders, but cold reason grabs me by the collar and hauls me back onto the crumbling ledge of reason. Noah asked me to watch his sister and it’s my job to keep her out of trouble.
It’s not as simple as that. Even now, the memory of that kiss kicks me on the back of my legs, forcing me to kneel before it. Honor makes me frown.
Noah would send a hit man if he knew, and for the sake of the many ties that bind us, this lapse of judgement with Ella has to be regrettable. It must be viewed as a mistake. I rub a hand over the sudden pain in my chest.
“Did I understand correctly, Marcus-shi?” Jang Mi says, stretching to see the corner of the garden from the window. “Was that little creature really a princess?”
Little creature?
Irritation works under my skin as I translate her meaning. Seongan can be a formal language, layered with sharp, Confucian boundaries delineating old from young, king from subject, teachers from students, constantly reinforcing hierarchies. ‘Little creature’ is a Seongan idiom and not as bad as it sounds in Sondish, but it firmly places Ella in the realm of children and much-loved animals—something to be protected rather than someone who could wreck me.
“Explain yourself, Jang Mi-yeo,” I charge. It doesn’t matter that she’s internationally famous. In the rules which govern our shared culture, she must give way.
Jang Mi crosses her long legs and takes a sip of her smoothie, eyes searching my face. “I was surprised after you described her. I was expecting one of the Four Ancient Beauties, but in the morning light, your princess has spots all over her face.” She gives a shiver of distaste.
“Freckles,” I correct. They make me want to run my fingertips along the ridge of her cheeks and plot them as carefully as ancient mariners mapped the stars. “They’re cute.”
Jang Mi pouts, her eyes open wide and innocent. Her hands are wedged under her chin in a kind of frame. “Aren’t I cute? Aren’t you happy to see me?”
This kind of performative flirtatiousness is common in Seong, but it doesn’t have the same effect in Sondmark. Despite my father’s attempts to purge the bloodline of sobriety, I’m probablytoo Lutheran to succumb to it. “Of course I am. I hope this stop means you’re accepting my proposal.”
She drops the wheedling tone, emits a little sigh, and shifts into being the entertainment mogul she is. “I ran your idea of a benefit concert past the other girls and our manager. Even with a stripped down production, it means diverting considerable resources from the tour.”
“Think of what all that charity will do to your public image,” I counter. “You’ll be the saviors of Seong. Your career might even survive an actual dating scandal.”
“Is that a proposition?” When I make no answer, she releases a sigh and sets her smoothie aside. “If certain conditions are met, we’ll consider it.”
“And those are?”
“Don’t rush me,” she says, kneading her neck. “The flight was exhausting.”
Negotiations move slowly in Seong. There are layers of ritual to be observed, and her reticence is not really about being too tired. The rigorous Seongan idol system is meant to weed out mere mortals and I’m certain that Jang Mi could pop and lock from her deathbed. No, she simply wants priceless treasures set at her feet and to be wooed with a ceremonial cup of tea as an ancient zither echoes across a formal Seongan garden. Slowly. Formally.
Her eyes flick up and she smiles. “When you needed help, your first thought was of me. Was it your idea?”
