Taehyung's dream is very violent, so if you cannot stand things like this, skip the part written in italic.

Taehyung focus

Another slash of a sword left an ugly gash on Jimin's face while dark voices laughed around them.

"STOP! Stop hurting him!" Taehyung shouted from the top of his lungs, but he was ignored once again and could only watch in horror when another soldier pulled his lover's head up by his hair to punch him in the face.

"Stop, please. I beg you," Taehyung cried, a new wave of tears making him see blurry.

Jimin's face was already disfigured to the point where he would never be the same again and his swollen eyes barely allowed him to glance at Taehyung. A kick to the officer's side made him grown in pain and spit out another mouthful of blood.

"I TOLD YOU TO STOP!" Taehyung screamed and tried to get rid of the hands that were holding him down, but he was too weak.

"That's the prince for causing our general's death," one of the many faceless Hwon soldiers spat at Jimin and kicked him again.

Then he pulled out his sword an brought it down.

Taehyung woke up drenched in sweat. His heart was racing, and a painful sob forced its way out of his throat before he began to cry. Again, he had dreamed of it again. Since Namjoon had told him that Jimin had been tasked with delivering the ashes of the Hwon general to the enemy's army, Taehyung's dreams were haunted by pictures of his lover being cut down by the foreign officers in coldblooded revenge.

He could not stand it anymore. He did not want to see that. Why was it his lover who had to do such a dangerous task?

With a huff he pushed off the blanket that seemed to suffocate him and forced his breathless crying to subside. He wanted to change. His undergarments were sticky with sweat and he felt sick. But once he had reached his closet, he discarded the idea of just changing into new clothes and went for the door instead. He did not want to fall asleep tonight, so he could as well go to the bathhouse now and spend the night there.

With unkempt hair and bare feet, he stepped out of his mother's quarter, giving the guards outside the hallway door a good scare, and walked up the pebbled path towards the north. The stones hurt his feet and his legs were shaking, but he marched forward like his life depended on it. All he wanted right now was to feel protected. And the only place that made him feel this way when Jimin could not hold him was the bathhouse. It was like an own small world within the world of the palace. A bubble inside a bubble.

The royal guards in front of the entrance were accustomed to his nightly visits and simply let him pass. Especially in summer, Taehyung enjoyed spending many nights here and letting his thoughts roam. But today nothing about his visit felt enjoyable. He felt drained, like his spirit had endured the same torture as the Jimin in his dream.

The milky water of the basin shone ghostly in the darkness, and repelled by the heavy sweet scent of herbals, he passed it to get to the cool basin outside. There he stripped out of his clothes and let himself fall into the water in a very undignified way.

Soothing coolness caressed his skin and welcomed him to stay. And Taehyung could stay for a while. He had learned to hold his breath since the early days of childhood, always challenging his brother Namjoon in who could keep their head under water the longest when they were taking a bath in the big tub of the queen's washroom.

So, he just closed his eyes and let the water wash the horror of the night away and bed him comfortably in its heavy embrace.

How much time had passed, he did not know, but when he had finally begun to enjoy himself a little, a strong hand grabbed his arm and he was pulled to the surface. Water ran down his face and made it had to open his eyes, so he could only feel around blindly in the first moment.

"Jin?" he asked confused when his hands touched warm skin. Was his brother also troubled with sleeping?

The hand let go of him and he finally had pushed all of the hair and water out of his face to look around. Next to him stood a muscular man with big dark eyes and a prominent nose, appearance much too familiar and yet foreign to Taehyung.

"First Jimin and now you. Why can you not leave me alone for one night?" he croaked out. So, he was still dreaming. It was not over, yet.

When it was not the bloody face of his lover chasing him in his dreams, it was the demon-faced assassin he could not get out of his head since Jimin had showed him the picture and brought the man up in a bedroom fantasy. This creature had haunted his dreams in a manner much different from his lover, leaving him just as sweaty and panicked in the mornings but for a reason that could not be further from the horror of war.

And what else could this be but a dream? Why would an assassin visit the royal bathhouse in the middle of the night, with queen Jang's pendant around his neck at that?

"Stop talking nonsense and quit drowning yourself. You can't die, yet," the man said gruffly.

"What?" Taehyung asked confused. Normally he would already be squirming in the man's hold, feeling guilty for having fun behind his lovers back. Why was this one leaving him behind?

When the man was about to lift himself out of the basin, Taehyung began to doubt that this was a dream. "Am I not dreaming?" he asked the assassin, who froze in his motion and turned his head at him.

Brother Jin had told him to squeeze his arm in case he was not sure, but before he could do so, water splashed next to him and a hand protected his arm from his probing fingers. "Do you already want to wake up?" the man asked him, eyes gleaming lively in a mischievous face.

"I do not know," Taehyung admitted confused. Maybe one dream could make him forget about the other. Maybe a strong hold was what he needed right now.

"Then don't," the other said nonchalantly.

Taehyung's mind was a mess. He had never had a dream so vivid and real, but it had to be a dream. No man was mad enough to break into the palace for a bath, and no one could possess this pendant. He stretched out a shaky hand to touch the dark green jade that looked so beautiful on top of the shimmering sun-kissed skin of that muscular chest.

Queen Jang had gifted him this piece after he had almost drowned in the banquet hall's pond as a child. To console his little sobbing self, she had told him that anyone who survived drowning was blessed by the dragon kin. He had cherished the gift like his most valuable treasure. Seeing this pendant here after the man had saved him from drowning, it could not be a coincidence.

The assassin tilted his head at him, looking amused. "What is the prince thinking?" he asked.

What was Taehyung thinking? He did not know. His whole head was filled with swirling chaos.

"Can you touch me?" he whispered eventually, letting his hand slip off the jade and touch the skin beneath. It was warm, vibrating with life. And the bright traces of scars were such a familiar sight to him that it was almost comforting.

But before his hand could cross the surface of the water and wander lower, his wrist was grabbed tightly.

"Didn't you want me to touch you?" the demon asked with a grin and snatched Taehyung's other wrist as well to fix them both behind the prince's back.

Now they were standing close enough for their chests and hips to touch, and Taehyung could feel the cold jade on his skin and the foreign length pressing into his loins, but he did not dare to lean forward into the other body. Breathing in and out shakily, he watched the face that was only a hand's width away from his. All the staring at the drawing in his room must have burned the features into his mind or else he would never have been able to see them this clearly.

When he could almost feel the other man's lips on his, he closed his eyes, silently asking himself why all of this was so much more intense than the dreams before? But the lips he was expecting never came to touch his. Instead, a striking pain shot through his shoulder and made him faint.

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Jungkook focus

Jungkook caught the prince's body when it became slack and lifted it out of the water with one arm under the knees and one supporting the neck. Of course, he had not been able to enjoy a cleansing bath in piece. And of course, it had to be the third prince who came to interrupt him.

Touch me please. What in the name of Buddha was that man thinking? And why did it cause Jungkook to feel so hot?

With a growl he placed the prince's body on the ledge of the basin and climbed out of the water. He should have left the imbecile drown. Who cared whether the man killed himself at night? He was only here to do one task, and that was not saving the third prince from his own stupidity.

To think such a strange man could make his groin twitch with interest. It was truly shameful.

But those eyes. He had seen brothel girls making eyes at him like this but never a man. Such unhesitant devotion from a guy this size was stirring something in his lower regions. It was, in a lack of a better word, thrilling. And Jungkook did not like that. He was not one of those men who preferred sharing his bed with other men.

Looking down at the naked body, that was obviously aroused, made his cheeks burn with new embarrassment. Tomorrow the idiotic prince could tell himself that this had just been a dream, but what about Jungkook? How was he supposed to justify this to himself?

With much effort he stopped himself from kicking the prince into the side and lifted him up instead. He could not let the future emperor lie outside the whole night. The little princess would chop of his head, should she ever hear word of him leaving her brother outside to freeze and catch a cold. But then again, she would chop of his head anyway if she heard he had almost touched her brother in a way that was far from proper.

Once inside, he slowly let the body slide into the warm milky water and bedded the head on the ledge. Then he went back outside to grab the prince's garments. The way he had undressed himself so nonchalantly, Jungkook had almost swallowed a mouth of basin water at the sight. Though he was not sure whether that could also have happened because of the fear of being detected.

Still, how the prince had appeared from thin air, had stripped down to nothing, and had fallen into the water like a corpse, it was nothing Jungkook and seen before. And at first he simply had wanted to flee while he had not been detected, yet, but when the prince's head had not reappeared, he had gotten worried and thrown caution to the wind because he sure would not want to see the reaction of the little princess to that loss if he could prevent it.

But who would have thought that him taking advantage of the prince thinking he was dreaming would turn out this way? He had just wanted to chat with the man when he was offered such an opportunity, but fate had given him another harsh slap. And one that he could still feel prickling between his legs.

With a huff, he placed the neatly stacked garments under the prince's head as a cushion and left for his own clothes. The pendant around his neck caught his attention when he put his robes back on and he halted for a moment to take a look at it. Something had changed when the prince had seen this, like he had been put under a spell.

Jungkook shook his head. What would he know?

The piece of jade felt cool on his skin when he let it fall back into place to close his undergarments over it. The pendant was meant to be fixed to a sash and dangle from the waist, but since he could not do that, he had decided to wear it around his neck for now. When he had inspected his keepsake after slipping out of the palace gardens yesterday, he had found it very pleasant to look at. The stone was of a dark green, engraved with a curling dragon, while the tassel was made of fine black thread.

But apart from getting a pretty keepsake, yesterday's expedition had shown that his wound had healed well enough to climb walls again, so he did not need the disguise of a royal guard anymore to slip in through the west gate in glaring daylight but could simply come at night. Thus, he had sneaked into the palace this night as well.

He had planned to spend the remaining hours at the little pavilion on the hill, change into the royal guard's robes in the morning, and observe whether the first prince had already succumbed to the treatment or not. And afterwards he would have slipped out for lunch in one of the carriages that brought food to the palace kitchens every morning.

But his wound had begun itching, so he had decided to take a detour over the royal bathhouse. Since the little princess had thrown him out, he had not been able to wash, and the bathhouse was easy to break into, so he had deemed it a good idea. Who could have known that the third prince liked to drown himself during this particular night?

With a last glance at the dark bathhouse, he climbed a tree next to the basin and slipped onto the hallway roof to vanish into the night. He needed a girl to set his head straight.

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Taehyung focus

When Taehyung woke up, it was with a piercing headache. For a moment he was confused before he understood where he was. This was the basin at the bathhouse. He must have fallen asleep from the warmth. And he had dreamed something.

The demon assassin! Suddenly he was wide awake. Queen Jang's pendant!

Hastily he climbed out of the water and almost fell down because his legs were weak and his head was dizzy from the herbals. Falling asleep inside the water was foolish, but that did not matter now. He had to find out whether the queen's gift was still where it was supposed to be. Of course, it was almost mad to assume that what he had dreamed had not been a dream at all, but he wanted to make sure.

Staggering forward clumsily, he found his way outside and stumbled past the guards onto the pebbled path.

"Your highness," one of the men said concerned. Apparently, Taehyung looked exactly like he felt.

"I am good. I am fine," he assured the two and began to run back to his chamber.

He did not even want to know what it would mean when he could not find the green dragon jade. If it had not been a dream, he had basically offered his life on a golden plate to an assassin who had attempted to kill his brother. Much worse, he had been flirting with the man. But what concerned him the most was that this would mean the man had been in his room without him noticing. General Shin would be beheaded for such a failure regarding palace security and Taehyung would receive a beating that would be beyond everything he could imagine.

This must not happen, he told himself over and over until he had arrived back at his room. Panicked, he lit some candles and pulled open the drawers of his commode to find the dark green piece. But the longer he searched for it, the clearer it became. It was gone. The assassin was back.

He needed advisor Min, and he needed him right now.

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