The Oath of Eight Summers
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 7: The Last Growing Season
The letter came in the second month of So Yeon’s thirteenth year.
Park Dohun delivered it after he had eaten, set it in front of her, and went to speak with Park Myung Hee. So Yeon picked it up and went to find Jo Soo.
They sat on the step.
She read it once to herself. Then she set it in her lap and looked at Jo Soo.
“I need to tell you everything,” she said.
“All right,” Jo Soo said.
So she did. Yi Joon’s brother died. That made Yi Joon crown prince. That made her the most dangerous girl in the kingdom because she was betrothed to him. The night Park Dohun came through her window. The silk nightgown her mother burned. Eight years of people trying to find her and kill her. The mercenaries in the road. All of it.
Jo Soo listened without moving.
When So Yeon finished Jo Soo looked at her for a long moment.
“People have been trying to kill you for eight years,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And they’ll keep trying when you go back.”
“Yes.”
“What does the letter say.”
“That I’m going back in the spring,” So Yeon said. “And that I will be queen.”
Jo Soo nodded once. Taking inventory. Filing it where it belonged.
“I want you to come with me,” So Yeon said. “As my lady in waiting. My other pair of eyes and ears. You will never lie to me or betray me. I know that. I need that.”
Jo Soo looked at the mountain.
“I suppose,” she said, “somebody has to keep your little royal butt out of trouble.”
Dohun asked for the letter back and looked at the two girls.
Park Dohun folded the letter back into its oilskin pouch and looked at her. “You have been summoned by the queen,” he said.
“Spring,” he said. “The palace sends a escort in spring.”
So Yeon looked at the letter in her hands. The formal characters, the royal seal, the words that had been coming for eight years and had arrived now on an ordinary afternoon while the chickens scratched in the yard outside and Jo Soo was somewhere mending a fence with her father.
She had known it was coming. She had always known.
She folded the letter carefully.
“Jo Soo comes with me,” she said.
Park Dohun was already reaching for his riding coat. His hand stopped.
He turned.
“That is not—” he started.
“She comes with me,” So Yeon said again. Same tone. Same certainty. The tone of someone who had made a decision and was informing him of it rather than requesting his opinion.
He looked at her with the direct calm that was simply how his face worked. “Princess. The palace has protocol for ladies in waiting. Lineage requirements. A provincial farm girl cannot simply—”
“She comes,” So Yeon said. “Or I don’t.”
The room went quiet.
Park Dohun looked at her. At the girl he had carried over a palace wall at five years old. At the girl who had learned to gather eggs and grind barley and climb walls for persimmons and become someone he hadn’t entirely anticipated when he brought her here.
“You don’t have a choice,” he said. Carefully. Not unkindly. “The letter is from the prince himself. The palace requires—”
“I am Kim So Yeon,” she said. Quietly. The first time he had heard her use her full name with that particular weight behind it in eight years. “Betrothed to the crown prince of Joseon. I will return to the palace when the palace is ready to receive me to become queen.” She looked at him directly with those bright black eyes. “And I will return with Jo Soo. Or I will not return at all.”
Park Dohun looked at her for a long moment.
“Why,” he said. “Give me one reason that I can take back to the palace.”
She looked at him steadily.
“Because she is the only person I trust to keep me alive.”
The words landed in the quiet room and stayed there.
He had carried her out of a palace where people had tried to harm her family. He had kept her hidden for eight years for exactly that reason. He had no response to an argument that was simply and completely true.
A palace was not a safe place. It had never been a safe place. It was full of people who smiled and poured tea and waited for the right moment. She was going back into that world at thirteen with nothing but her wits and whatever eight years on this farm had built in her.
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