Page 22 of Gumiho Kiss (Realm of Eternal Blossoms #1)

The Portrait

H yun Soo shoved a spoonful of rice into his mouth, but he barely tasted it, his head pounding like the ground under a stallion’s hooves.

He’d left Lady Lee at her chambers an hour ago, but every time he blinked, it was like she was still there, sitting across from him with those haunting honey-brown eyes and pale pink lips he’d almost made the mistake of kissing.

His grip tightened on his spoon. He needed to calm down. It had been one moment of weakness. One.

“I’ll always catch you.”

He shut his eyes. Make that two. He hadn’t had any business making a promise like that. Not when he couldn’t possibly back it up. Not when she belonged to someone else.

So, why had he said it in the first place?

Hyun Soo had seen his fair share of beautiful women.

There had been pretty yangban girls in Hanyang where he’d grown up, many who had flirted with him until they’d realized he had no interest in anything beyond his studies.

Then, when he’d worked as a royal guard, he’d gotten glimpses of the queen as well as the king’s concubines.

All stunning enough to make a man’s heart stop with a single glance.

Yet none of them had made him feel the way Lady Lee did.

A flush spread up his neck, his mind yanking him back to the moment when he’d caught her in the clearing. At first, he’d thought she was frightened, her face as still as a mountain, but then something had changed in her eyes, beckoning him nearer. And those lips . . .

“Are you a man or an infant?” asked a nasally voice.

Hyun Soo scowled at the cook Na Ri standing in the kitchen entrance.

No family name, which was common among lowborns, but that didn’t stop the talented ajumma from commanding the rest of the household’s respect, from the skittish Pyung Ho all the way up to Lord Lee himself.

Na Ri was cantankerous to a fault, but she adored everyone in the house and knew all their favorite foods.

She reminded him very much of his grandmother—ornery but loyal.

The only person she didn’t care for was Hyun Soo himself.

“I’m not sure what I did to cause offense this time, ajumma, but I’ll gladly remedy it if you let me know.”

She rolled her eyes before gesturing to his food. He peered down, grimacing when he realized what a mess he’d made. Half his kimchi lay on the floor, and he’d spilled quite a bit of soup onto his tray.

How had he not noticed any of this?

He ducked his head, shame flooding his cheeks. “I apologize. I’ll clean it all up right away.”

Na Ri glared. “You better, or you won’t like the consequences.” She spun around and stomped out of the room, grumbling about how she didn’t know what young people were learning nowadays.

Hyun Soo bolted to his feet as soon as she was gone. He needed to get out of here, get his head on straight. He tidied up the mess, then headed out to look for leads on Gwishin.

He spent the next few hours going from hut to hut in the poorer areas of Sokju, asking everyone he could find about their experience with the vigilante.

The reports he received were very different from what the highborns had said.

Just as he’d suspected, most of the sangmin and cheonmin thought Gwishin was a hero, not the villain the police made him out to be.

And even with the rumor circulating that he’d murdered that scholar in cold blood, the general consensus among the sangmin was that he’d been slandered.

No one had any information to help identify Gwishin, nor did they know where Hyun Soo might find the elusive criminal.

Leaving him without any more threads to unravel.

Hyun Soo strayed back toward the Lees’ home, but a flicker of movement in a nearby alley caught his eye. Someone was watching him.

He took a sharp left, steering the observer away from the Lees. He picked up his pace, then ducked behind a cart full of wood beams. He squatted down, eyes peeled for someone to walk past.

A pair of straw shoes padded by, pausing just beyond the cart. There was a rush of footsteps as the figure darted away.

Hyun Soo emerged from his hiding spot just in time to see the person disappear into a tavern.

A boy? But something felt off about his gait, almost as if the boy wasn’t used to his own body.

Hyun Soo hurried after him, but the tavern was so full of customers he lost sight of the child.

“Did you want to order something?” asked a middle-aged woman with her hair wrapped around her head.

Hyun Soo craned his neck, straining to see around a group of drunk men stumbling out to the opposite street.

“Did you want to order something?’” The tavern owner’s voice was impatient now.

Hyun Soo turned, realizing he was blocking customers from coming in. With an apologetic bow, he stepped out of the way, allowing the other people to enter and find somewhere to sit.

He ambled off, puzzling over what reason a child would have to follow him. And why even a brief glimpse of the boy’s back had made the hair on his arms stand up.

A few minutes later, he caught sight of the Kangs’ residence on the next street over and veered toward it. He would let Dol Sam know the sangmin hadn’t been helpful. Perhaps his friend would have another idea for tracking down Gwishin.

It wasn’t that he was trying to postpone his return to the Lees’. That would have been ridiculous.

When he arrived at the manor, a servant led him to Kang Dol Sam in the courtyard.

His friend was bent over a white canvas, putting the final touches on a very lifelike portrait of a woman with bewitching honey-brown eyes.

Red spider lilies and mugunghwa flowers surrounded her, and a teasing smile rested on her pretty pink lips.

Hyun Soo looked away, cursing Dol Sam under his breath. He’d gone out to stop the dangerous trajectory of his thoughts. Instead, he’d found yet another reminder of what he was trying not to think about.

Dol Sam glanced over his shoulder, grinning when he saw Hyun Soo. “Ah, what a delightful surprise. I’m glad you took what I said to heart about stopping by for a visit.” He set down his paintbrush and swiveled fully around. “What do you think?” He gestured to the canvas. “Is it a good likeness?”

Hyun Soo cast his gaze over the portrait a second time, hating the way his heart skipped.

The painted Lady Lee looked straight ahead, boldly meeting the viewer’s eye.

Her arms hung at her sides, a single mugunghwa blossom clasped in her right hand.

A faint light shone around her, almost as if she were the sun itself, bringing life to everything she touched.

Now who was getting poetic?

Hyun Soo pushed the sentiment aside, reminding himself he was looking at Lady Lee through the eyes of a man in love.

Meaning Dol Sam, of course.

His friend had always been a remarkable artist, so it only made sense for Lady Lee to look enchanting. But it was just a picture, not reality. No one could actually be that stunning. . . .

He swallowed. He was in more trouble than he’d thought.

“Well?” Dol Sam prompted. He’d sat down on the veranda outside his private quarters.

Hyun Soo tore his eyes away. “It’s beautiful, Dol Sam-ah. You’re quite talented.”

His friend beamed at the praise, then his forehead creased. “I hope Lady Lee is pleased with it. I haven’t been a very attentive fiancé. As soon as I left the two of you the other day, I regretted not escorting her home myself. Was she out of sorts after the attack?”

Hyun Soo took a seat next to his friend. “Not at all. She handled it all so calmly, one might think she was a soldier herself, ready to take on Gwishin single-handedly.”

The words sounded funny on his tongue, but they rang with truth. Lady Lee may be a woman, but she bore the heart of a warrior. There weren’t many with the courage to stand against a goblin. And the way she’d fought that day—he’d never seen a woman so fierce.

Dol Sam pursed his lips. “My bride to be? Take on Gwishin?” He clapped his friend on the back with a laugh. “You never cease to amuse me, my friend.”

Hyun Soo chuckled along with him, but his smile was thin.

If Dol Sam had seen how well Lady Lee could fight, he wouldn’t find it amusing at all.

Hyun Soo considered telling him what had really happened at the school, but if Lady Lee had wanted Dol Sam to know about her sword skills, she would have told him herself.

Besides, he wasn’t sure how his friend would react if he knew Hyun Soo had offered to train her. He might think it indecent.

Would that be a false assumption though? an annoying voice in his head asked. You’ve certainly been having indecent thoughts about her.

Not that Hyun Soo could help it, given the circumstances. Being in such close proximity to a beautiful woman would be challenging for any man, not just him.

In a few days, he’d be over it. He’d forget how good it had felt to hold her, how perfectly she’d fit in his arms.

Probably.

“I hope you’ve not lost your perception since leaving the military,” Dol Sam continued, “You always were so good at noticing the things other people didn’t. Like that time when we were sparring and I sprained my ankle, but I didn’t want you to know. Do you remember?”

Sprained ankle?

Something materialized at the edge of Hyun Soo’s consciousness, something he couldn’t quite grab hold of. Not about Dol Sam, but about Lady Lee. What was it?

He replayed the moment she’d fallen for the hundredth time. He’d caught her between his hands. One hand had gone to her back, and the other had pressed into her abdomen, somewhere close to her ribcage.

He hadn’t paid attention to it at the time, but when he’d grabbed her, she’d let out a sharp breath and glanced down at her chest.

Almost as if she were injured. Right below her ribcage on the left side. Exactly where?—

An impossible thought shot through Hyun Soo’s mind, like a flaming arrow illuminating the night.

No. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be Gwishin.

Images flooded him in quick succession: her lack of fear with the bandits in the alley, her skill with a hwando, her open hostility toward him when they’d first met. Behaviors that were strange on their own, but when put together . . .

He called to mind his run-in with the vigilante, hoping to find something dissimilar between them, something with which he could cast out this suspicion for the absurdity it was.

He’d fought Gwishin under cover of darkness, unable to make out much beyond his opponent’s basic shape. How tall had he been? Too tall to be Lady Lee?

But his mind betrayed him, conjuring a figure smaller than himself. Small enough to be a woman in disguise.

But that voice. It had clearly been male. Hadn’t it?

The memory of the vigilante’s sharp cry of pain filled Hyun Soo’s ears, high-pitched and feminine.

“They don’t call me the Ghost for nothing. But I’m more curious about you. Did Hong send you? He must be desperate if he’s hiring common thugs now.”

He’d found the vigilante unbearably cocky, someone who’d needed to be put in his place. But everything changed if he imagined Lady Lee behind the mask. He thought back to the way she’d responded to his taunt during their training session.

“You call this poor technique?”

Her outrage had been so adorable he hadn’t been able to hold back a laugh. Now he assessed her words more critically.

Though the pitch had been higher than Gwishin’s, the fire had been the same. A bold self-assurance bordering on brazen, especially for a noblewoman.

And then she’d shown him she had plenty of reason to be confident in her sword skills.

Hyun Soo bounded back over to the portrait and held his hand over Lady Lee’s mouth. A chill went down his spine.

“What is it, Hyun Soo-yah? Did something get on the picture?” Dol Sam came up on the right side. His attention went from the portrait to Hyun Soo.

“It’s nothing.” Hyun Soo lowered his hand and forced his cheeks into a grin. “Nothing at all.”

“Oh, that’s a relief. A damaged painting wouldn’t make a very good gift.”

“Gift?”

Dol Sam clicked his tongue. “Weren’t you listening before? I’m planning to give this to Lady Lee.” He ran his hand along the edge of the canvas, gaze distant and dreamy. “So she knows I’m not just marrying her out of duty. I’m marrying her because she’s the only woman I want.”

Hyun Soo’s head jerked toward his friend. “Dol Sam-ah.” His voice was weak. He needed to be louder. “I need to tell you?—”

“It’s so fortunate you came by today.” Dol Sam locked eyes with him. “I need to ask another favor.”