[SECOND BIRTH] 

The sun in the village of Hanyang was not polite. It beat down on the golden wheat fields with a blistering, unapologetic intensity, baking the mud paths into cracked clay and turning the air thick with the scent of dry earth and sweet hay.

It was a good day to sleep under a willow tree. It was a terrible day to commit treason against the Royal Treasury.

"We are going to die," Taehyung whispered, his voice a high-pitched, reedy sound of absolute despair. "They are going to chop off our heads, put them on wooden spikes, and feed our eyeballs to the crows. And I have very sensitive eyeballs, Jungkook. They will not digest well."

Jeon Jungkook, twenty and covered in field dust, didn’t look up from the little wooden gadget he was messing with in the dirt. He chewed a dry wheat stalk, dark hair tied back with a scrap of leather. His linen shirt hung open at the collar, skin browned deep by the sun.

He looked like a peasant. But when he finally looked up, his dark eyes held a sharp, dangerous glimmer of intelligence that did not belong in a muddy farming village.

"Tae," Jungkook said, his voice a smooth, effortless drawl that always managed to sound like a secret joke. "Relax. The crows don't want your eyeballs. You squint too much. Makes the meat tough."

“I’m squinting ’cause the sun’s blinding and I’m trying to see the exact second the tax men show up to kill us!” Taehyung paced in frantic circles around the big, half-rotted cart sitting in the middle of the square. He yanked his straw hat down over his ears like it might save him from the crown. “Fifty sacks, Jungkook. The decree said fifty. We got thirty. You know what they do for shorting the king by twenty?”

Jungkook dropped the wooden gear. He stood, stretching long and lazy like a cat waking up. Brushed the dirt off his knees and flashed a bright, boyish grin that made half the village girls go soft and made Taehyung want to punch him right in his perfect face.

“Penalty’s death, yeah, yeah, I read the same paper,” Jungkook said, waving a rough hand. “But they ain’t gonna kill us. ’Cause we’re gonna give ’em exactly what they want.”

“We only got thirty!” Taehyung pointed a shaking finger at the cart. “Look! Count ’em! One, two… thirty! Unless you learned to multiply barley by blinking, we’re dead!”

Jungkook chuckled, threw a heavy arm over Taehyung’s shoulders.

"I don't need magic, Tae. I just need greed," Jungkook murmured, his eyes shifting toward the main dirt road leading into the village. A cloud of dust was rising on the horizon. The unmistakable sound of armored horses and wooden carriage wheels echoed through the valley. The Royal Tax Collectors were here.

"Listen to me," Jungkook said, his voice dropping its playful lilt, taking on a sudden, razor-sharp focus that always made Taehyung’s stomach do a complicated flip. Sometimes, when Jungkook spoke like this, he didn't sound like a twenty-year-old farmer who couldn't afford a second pair of boots. He sounded like a general commanding a battlefield. 

"The men coming down that road are aristocratic leeches. They don't know the difference between barley and dirt. They only know numbers, and they only know pride. I am going to use both against them. You just stand there, look incredibly stupid, and agree with everything I say."

"I excel at looking stupid when I am terrified," Taehyung whimpered, his knees visibly knocking together. "But if this fails, I am telling them it was all your idea."

"Fair enough," Jungkook grinned, the blinding, chaotic smile returning instantly. He bit down on his wheat stalk. "Showtime."

The royal carriage rolled into the square with six armored guards on horseback. Villagers in faded rags dropped to their knees, faces in the dirt. Taehyung hit the ground so fast he nearly cracked his chin.

Jungkook went down too, but slow and lazy, head just high enough to watch the doors open.

Out stepped Lord Minho, chief tax collector for the west. Plump, arrogant, wrapped in thick emerald silk that was pure foolishness in this heat. He dabbed his sweaty face with a lace cloth and sneered at the mud on his velvet slippers.

“Disgusting,” he muttered, eyeing the kneeling villagers like they were bugs. He snapped open a long parchment. “Village of Hanyang! Your seasonal yield has been assessed. You owe the Royal Treasury fifty sacks of good grain. Bring it out, load my carts, and maybe I won’t burn your sorry taverns for wasting my time.”

Nobody moved. The village elder, a frail man with a long white beard, was trembling too violently to speak.

Jungkook let out a loud, exaggerated gasp. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring Taehyung’s desperate, panicked tug on the hem of his trousers.

"Oh, merciful Lord!" Jungkook cried out, sprinting forward and throwing himself into a messy, sprawling bow right at the tax collector's feet. "Praise the heavens you have arrived! We have been waiting for a man of your vast, unmatched intellect to solve our tragic dilemma!"

Lord Minho blinked, taking a step back from the dirty boy at his feet. But the flattery worked instantly. The aristocrat puffed out his chest, looking down his nose at Jungkook.

"A dilemma? What dilemma? The law is the law, peasant. Fifty sacks."

"Yes, exactly! Fifty sacks!" Jungkook sprang up, his wide, doe-like eyes brimming with manufactured panic and absolute innocence. He gestured wildly toward the village cart. "We have the grain, My Lord. But you see, a terrible, tragic curse has struck our harvest this year."

"A curse?" The guards shifted uneasily, their hands drifting to the hilts of their swords.

"Yes, My Lord! The grain..." Jungkook lowered his voice to a loud, dramatic whisper, leaning in close. "The grain has become mathematically dense."

Taehyung, still face-planted in the dirt, let out a muffled squeak of pure horror. Mathematically dense? He was going to murder Jungkook in the afterlife.

Lord Minho frowned, his thick eyebrows knitting together in confusion. "Mathematically... dense? What nonsense is this? Grain is grain."

"Ah, to a common mind, yes!" Jungkook nodded vigorously, his hands waving in the air to paint an invisible picture. "But to a scholar of your obvious pedigree, you surely know the ancient law of displacement! You see, our soil this year was infused with heavy spring water. Every single sack of our grain now weighs exactly twice as much as a normal sack of royal grain."

Lord Minho stared at him. The silence in the square was so absolute you could hear a grasshopper chirp.

"Therefore," Jungkook continued, pacing back and forth with the frantic energy of a mad genius, "if you take fifty of our sacks, you will actually be taking the weight of one hundred sacks! Which means, by the strict laws of the Royal Treasury, you would be stealing from the Queen!"

The tax collector’s face paled. Stealing from the Queen was an offense that ended in a very quick, very messy beheading.

"I—I am not stealing!" Lord Minho sputtered, glaring at the boy. "The decree says fifty sacks!"

"But the decree assumes standard weight!" Jungkook countered instantly, tapping his temple. "If you show up at the capital with carts weighing double, the Treasury Auditors will weigh them. They will divide the total weight by the standard metric. They will say, 'Ah! Lord Minho brought back one hundred sacks of value but only recorded fifty! He must be skimming off the top to fund a private rebellion!'"

Lord Minho choked on his own spit. The guards looked at each other, their loyalty suddenly wavering at the mention of a rebellion.

"That is absurd!" Minho shouted, though his voice cracked perfectly down the middle. "I am a loyal servant to the crown!"

"I know that! We all know that!" Jungkook placed a hand over his heart, looking deeply moved. "But the Auditors only know numbers. They do not know your noble heart. Which is why I, a humble, stupid farmer, stayed up all night trying to protect your honor, My Lord."

Minho narrowed his eyes, suspicious but utterly trapped in the dizzying maze of Jungkook’s logic. "Protect my honor? How?"

Jungkook walked over to the village cart and dramatically pulled back the tarp, revealing the thirty sacks of grain.

"We give you twenty-five sacks," Jungkook announced proudly.

"Twenty-five?!" the Lord shrieked. "That is half the quota!"

"Exactly!" Jungkook beamed, clapping his hands together like a delighted child. "Twenty-five sacks, but because they are mathematically dense and weigh double, they perfectly equal the fifty sacks of standard weight the Treasury demands! When the Auditors weigh the carts, the scales will balance perfectly. Your quota is met, your ledger is clean, and the Queen never suspects you of treason. It is foolproof!"

Minho stared at the cart. He stared at Jungkook. He looked at his guards, who were entirely lost and just shrugging. The aristocrat's brain was working so hard Y/N could practically see the smoke coming out of his ears.

Jungkook didn't give him a single second to process the absolute insanity of the lie. He pressed the advantage with ruthless, charming precision.

"Of course," Jungkook sighed, looking down at his muddy boots in defeat. "If you want to take the full fifty, we will give them to you. We are but humble peasants. Who are we to stop a great Lord from accidentally committing treason and having his entire bloodline erased from history? Please, Guards, take all the grain. Load the heavy, heavy treason sacks."

"Stop!" Lord Minho barked, holding up a frantic, shaking hand. He wiped the sweat from his brow, his eyes darting between the sacks and Jungkook’s innocent face.

The aristocrat did not understand a single thing about agricultural weight, displacement, or mathematics. But he understood fear. And this dirty, fast-talking farm boy had just painted a very vivid picture of an executioner's block.

"You..." Lord Minho swallowed hard, pointing a trembling finger at Jungkook. "You are certain the scales will balance at the capital?"

"I stake my life on it, My Lord," Jungkook said, his voice lowering into a deadly, confident purr that sent a shiver down the spine of every person watching. "I am absolutely positive."

It wasn't a lie. Jungkook was positive the scales would balance—because before the tax collectors arrived, he had spent the morning covertly adjusting the tension springs on the Royal carriages' built-in scales, ensuring they would read double the weight no matter what was placed on them. 

The boy was a menace.

Lord Minho puffed his chest back out, quickly adjusting his emerald silk robes to reclaim his dignity. He looked at his guards with a haughty sniff.

"The boy is uneducated, but his crude math holds a sliver of merit," Minho declared loudly, ensuring the village heard his benevolence. "I am a man of the law. I will not take a single grain more than what is owed to the crown! Guards, load twenty-five sacks! Leave the rest!"

Taehyung, still face-down in the dirt, let out a noise that sounded like a dying goose.

The royal guards quickly dismounted and began hauling twenty-five sacks of grain from the village cart to the tax carriages. They left five extra sacks sitting in the village square.

Jungkook stood off to the side, his hands on his hips, wearing an expression of profound, humble gratitude. "You are a savior, Lord Minho. The Queen is lucky to have a mathematician of your caliber in her court."

"Yes, well," Minho cleared his throat, climbing back into his plush carriage. He refused to look at the mud again. "See to it that your soil is less... dense... next season, peasant. I will not be so forgiving twice."

"Of course, My Lord. I will scold the rain immediately."

The carriage doors slammed shut. The guards spurred their horses, and the Royal Tax Collectors rolled out of the village of Hanyang in a cloud of dust, completely unaware that they had just been masterfully robbed by a twenty-year-old farm boy with a piece of wheat in his teeth.

For a long moment after the carriage disappeared over the horizon, the village square was completely silent.

Then, the village elder slowly looked up. He counted the five remaining sacks of grain. He looked at Jungkook.

"You..." the elder whispered, his jaw hanging open. "You just swindled the Royal Treasury out of twenty-five sacks of grain. And they thanked you for it."

"Actually," Jungkook corrected, a wicked, brilliant smirk breaking across his face. "I swindled them out of twenty-five sacks, and we have five extra sacks leftover for the winter. So technically, the Treasury just paid us to exist."

The village erupted.

Cheers rang out into the blistering summer sky. Men threw their straw hats into the air. Women rushed forward, laughing and pressing fresh apples and woven charms into Jungkook’s hands. He laughed with them, his eyes crinkling at the corners, a bright, booming sound that held no shadows. He was vibrant. He was untouchable.

Taehyung finally peeled himself off the dirt floor. He looked like he had aged forty years in the span of ten minutes. His clothes were covered in dust, his face pale and streaked with sweat.

He walked over to Jungkook, who was currently biting into a fresh apple, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

"Jungkook," Taehyung said, his voice entirely deadpan.

"Yes, my loyal friend?" Jungkook asked, crunching loudly on the apple.

"I am going to strangle you in your sleep."

Jungkook threw his head back and laughed, throwing an arm around Taehyung and pulling the stressed boy into a tight headlock. "Oh, stop whining! I saved the village! We get to eat bread this winter instead of boiled tree bark!"

"You lied to a royal official!" Taehyung hissed, struggling to break free of the headlock, though he wasn't really trying that hard. "Mathematically dense? Are you insane? If he ever finds out you rigged his carriage scales, they will hunt us to the ends of the earth!"

"He won't find out," Jungkook said, finally letting Taehyung go, his smirk softening into a fond, cocky smile. "He's too arrogant to ever admit a peasant outsmarted him, and the Auditors in the capital are too lazy to double-check a balanced scale. It’s basic human psychology, Tae. You just have to know which strings to pull."

Taehyung dusted off his trousers, shaking his head in absolute bewilderment. He looked at his best friend, really looked at him.

It was a mystery to everyone in the village, including Taehyung, how a boy born to a dirt-poor farmer possessed a mind that operated like a finely tuned, lethal instrument. Jungkook couldn't read formal literature, he had never been to a proper school, and his greatest worldly possession was a chipped hunting knife. Yet, he could look at a complex legal decree, a rigged scale, or an arrogant lord, and instantly see the invisible cracks in the foundation.

It was as if his soul was older than his body. As if he had spent a lifetime studying the art of manipulation and strategy in a grander court, and the echoes of that genius had simply carried over into this muddy, chaotic farming life.

Of course, Jungkook didn't know that. He just thought he was naturally brilliant.

"You're going to get us killed one day," Taehyung muttered, though a reluctant smile finally tugged at the corner of his lips. "Your mouth moves faster than a runaway horse."

"Maybe," Jungkook shrugged, tossing the apple core over his shoulder. He looked out toward the horizon, where the royal carriage had vanished, his dark eyes suddenly catching the golden light of the sun. For a split second, the boyish charm faded, replaced by a strange, heavy longing he didn't quite understand. A phantom ache in a chest that had not yet been wounded in this life.

He shook it off instantly, turning back to Taehyung with a wink.

"But until that day comes," Jungkook declared, walking backward down the dirt path toward their tiny mud-brick house. "We are going to be legends, Tae! Now come on. I need to wash this dirt off before the village girls start thinking I've lost my handsome edge."

"You are a menace to society!" Taehyung yelled after him, groaning loudly as he picked up his straw hat and trudged after his best friend.

"I know!" Jungkook yelled back, his laughter echoing across the golden fields, bright and free, completely unaware of the vintage brown diary buried deep in his family's cellar, waiting patiently in the dark to wake him up.

—

The Jeon family root cellar smelled of fermented radishes, damp earth, and centuries of unquestioned generational trauma.

"I am inhaling ghosts, Jungkook," Taehyung wheezed, tying a dirty linen rag over the lower half of his face. He held up a lantern that flickered pathetically, casting long, menacing shadows against the dirt walls. "My lungs are currently coated in the dust of your ancestors. If I die down here, I am haunting you. I will personally ensure your crops wither and your cows give birth to very ugly, very aggressive goats."

Jungkook, who was currently up to his elbows in cobwebs and centuries-old grime, did not offer sympathy.

"You aren't going to die, Tae. You're just being dramatic," Jungkook grunted, shifting a massive, terrifyingly heavy earthenware jar to the left. He wiped a streak of sweat from his forehead, leaving a smudge of dirt across his brow. "Besides, this is technically your fault."

"My fault?" Taehyung shrieked, his voice echoing shrilly off the low ceiling. "How is this my fault? You are the one who told the Royal Tax Collector his grain was mathematically dense! Your father heard you nearly got yourselves beheaded and sentenced you to clean the ancestral crypt as punishment! I am just collateral damage because I have a tragic flaw called loyalty!"

"You're here because you owe me for letting you eat the last honey cake yesterday," Jungkook corrected effortlessly, dropping to his knees to peer into the dark, forgotten alcove he had just unearthed.

The cellar had belonged to the Jeon family for longer than anyone could remember. It was a sprawling, subterranean mess of forgotten heirlooms, rusted farming tools, and jars of pickled vegetables that had likely achieved sentience by now. But as Jungkook cleared away a pile of rotting wooden planks in the deepest, darkest corner of the cellar, his hands brushed against something that didn't feel like dirt or wood.

It felt cold. Like forged iron.

"Hold the lantern closer," Jungkook commanded, his playful tone dropping entirely.

Taehyung grumbled, shuffling forward and extending the flickering light. "If a badger jumps out and bites my face off, I am writing you out of my will."

The light spilled over the dirt, revealing the top of a small, heavily bound chest. It was partially buried in the compacted earth, constructed of a dark, petrified wood and wrapped in thick bands of rusted iron. There was no lock, only a heavy iron latch shaped like a crescent moon. It did not look like a farmer's belonging. It looked ancient. It looked like it held secrets that belonged buried.

"Well, look at that," Jungkook murmured, a sudden, inexplicable thrill shooting up his spine. He reached out, his calloused fingers wrapping around the iron latch.

"Don't touch it!" Taehyung slapped Jungkook’s shoulder, his eyes wide with genuine panic. "Have you never listened to the village elders? You don't open strange, buried chests! That is how you get cursed! That is how a vengeful spirit possesses you and makes you dance naked in the town square until you expire from exhaustion!"

"If I get possessed, I promise to choreograph a very tasteful dance," Jungkook smirked.

With a sharp, violent tug, he broke the rusted seal. The chest popped open with a hollow, echoing groan that sounded unnervingly like a human exhale.

A cloud of stale air rushed out. Taehyung immediately crossed his arms over his chest, whispering a rapid, panicked prayer to the heavens to spare his sensitive eyeballs. Jungkook just peered inside.

There was no gold. There were no cursed amulets.

Laying perfectly preserved on a bed of rotting black velvet was a book.

It was a vintage diary, bound in cracked, weathered brown leather. It looked fragile, as if a strong breeze might turn it to dust, yet as Jungkook looked at it, he felt a strange, heavy pressure building in the air. The temperature in the cellar seemed to drop by ten degrees. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention.

"A book?" Taehyung peeked over Jungkook’s shoulder, instantly offended. "We risked badger attacks and demonic possession for literature? Throw it back. It’s useless."

But Jungkook couldn't hear him. The blood was rushing in his ears, a deafening, rhythmic thudding that drowned out the world. His hand moved on its own. He reached down and pulled the book from the chest.

It was heavy. Much heavier than paper and leather should be. And it was... warm.

With trembling fingers, Jungkook flipped the heavy cover open.

The pages were not filled with faded black ink. The text written across the ancient parchment was glowing. A brilliant, liquid gold light pulsed from the pages, casting a warm, ethereal halo onto Jungkook’s dirt-streaked face.

Taehyung gasped, stumbling backward and dropping the lantern. It shattered on the dirt floor, but the cellar did not plunge into darkness. The diary illuminated the room, the golden letters swirling and shifting like living fire.

"Jungkook," Taehyung whimpered, pressing himself flat against the dirt wall. "Drop it. Right now. Drop the cursed witch book."

Jungkook did not drop it. He couldn't. His eyes tracked the glowing, fluid script. He couldn't read the language, but the moment his gaze locked onto the golden ink, a violent, piercing warmth shot up his arm.

He reached out. His index finger brushed the glowing text.

CRACK.

The cosmic anvil dropped.

The comedy, the wit, the warm summer air of the farming village—it all evaporated in a fraction of a second, violently violently replaced by absolute, unfathomable ruin.

It was not a memory. It was a physical blow.

Jungkook was thrown backward, his spine slamming into the dirt wall, but he didn't feel the impact. He felt the freezing, biting wind of a palace courtyard. The smell of fermented radishes vanished, replaced instantly by the overwhelming, sickening stench of iron, sweat, and his own blood.

The deafening roar of a thousand screaming aristocrats exploded in his skull.

Traitor! Let him hang!

He couldn't breathe. His lungs seized as the phantom weight of heavy iron chains materialized around his wrists and torso. He looked down, expecting to see his dirt-stained linen shirt. Instead, he saw white silk torn to ribbons, soaked in fresh, brilliant crimson.

Then, he looked up.

He saw her.

Y/N.

She was standing above him on an iron dais, wearing a crown that looked too heavy for her delicate head. Her velvet skirts were sweeping the bloodstained cobblestones. Her face was a flawless, cold mask of absolute authority, but her eyes—oh, her eyes were screaming. They were shattered, pooling with unshed tears, begging him for a salvation they both knew did not exist.

I failed you, her phantom eyes wept, the memory burning itself into the retinas of his current life. I am so sorry.

Jungkook gasped, clawing at his throat as the memory intensified. He felt the cold, unforgiving stone beneath his knees. He saw the executioner’s broadsword gleaming in her trembling hands.

He heard his own voice, dark and velvet, echoing from a lifetime ago.

“If my blood is the mortar required to keep your throne from crumbling... then I gladly bleed. Take it. It has always been yours.”

The phantom blade swung forward.

SHNK.

"AGH!" Jungkook screamed, a raw, blood-curdling sound that tore his vocal cords.

He collapsed onto the dirt floor of the cellar, clutching his chest. He could feel it. The exact, excruciating sensation of cold Valyrian steel parting his ribs, piercing his heart, pinning his soul to the executioner’s block. The pain was blinding, white-hot, and absolute. He felt his lifeblood spilling over her hands. He felt his head fall against her shoulder. He felt the fragile, desperate brush of his own dying fingers against her silk dress.

“I will love you... until the stars burn out.”

The memory snapped.

Jungkook was back on the dirt floor of the cellar, but he was completely broken. He curled into a tight ball, his hands gripping his shirt over his perfectly intact, unscarred chest.

And he wept.

It was the guttural, devastating sob of a man who had just watched his soulmate murder him to save an empire. He wailed, his tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt on his face, his body convulsing with a grief so immense, so centuries-old, that his young, human frame could barely contain it. He wept for the empire they had built in the shadows. He wept for the way her hands had shaken on the hilt of the sword. He wept because he loved her so fiercely it had literally killed him.

"Jungkook! Jungkook!"

Taehyung was on his knees beside him, his face completely pale, his hands shaking violently as he gripped Jungkook’s shoulders.

"Hey! Look at me! Breathe!" Taehyung was crying too, terrified out of his mind by the sheer, inhuman agony tearing out of his best friend. "What happened?! Did it burn you? I’m getting the healer—I’m getting your father—"

"No."

The word was quiet, but it hit the air with the weight of a falling anvil.

Taehyung froze.

The crying had stopped abruptly and unnaturally.

Jungkook stopped convulsing. He lay perfectly still on the dirt floor for three seconds. Then, slowly, methodically, he pushed himself up onto his knees.

He kept his head bowed. He raised his hands and wiped the tears from his face, smearing the dirt across his cheeks into war paint.

When Jungkook finally lifted his head to look at his best friend, Taehyung stopped breathing.

The twenty-year-old, chaotic, fast-talking farm boy who had laughed in the sun twenty minutes ago was dead. The boy who complained about chores and rigged wooden carts was gone.

The man looking at Taehyung now was a predator.

His dark eyes were terrifyingly blank, stripped of all warmth, all boyish charm. They were ancient. They were the eyes of a ruthless, blood-soaked Warlord who had conquered cities, manipulated kings, and willingly walked to the executioner's block without flinching.

The energy in the room shifted so violently Taehyung felt physically nauseous. Jungkook’s posture had changed. He wasn't slumping. He was kneeling on the dirt with the perfectly balanced, lethal grace of a master swordsman resting before a slaughter.

Jungkook reached down and picked up the glowing brown diary. He didn't flinch this time. He held it with a possessive, white-knuckled grip, treating it like a holy relic.

"J-Jungkook?" Taehyung stammered, his voice barely a whisper, shrinking back from the terrifying stranger wearing his best friend's face. "What... what did that book do to you?"

Jungkook tilted his head, the golden light of the diary illuminating the sharp, dangerous angle of his jaw. The corners of his lips twitched, pulling up into a slow, chilling smile that held absolutely no humor. It was the smile of a man who had just remembered how to play a very deadly game.

"It woke me up," Jungkook murmured. His voice had changed, the pitch had dropped, shedding its playful lilt, replaced by a smooth, dark velvet baritone that commanded absolute obedience.

He stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees, his eyes fixed on the blank cellar wall as if he could see straight through the earth, across the provinces, all the way to the Royal Capital. His mind was already moving, gears turning at a terrifying speed, calculating politics, trade routes, court laws, and aristocratic weaknesses.

The absolute, unhinged obsession in his eyes was blinding. He remembered her touch. He remembered the crown. He remembered that she belonged to him.

Jungkook slowly turned his head to look down at his terrified, trembling best friend.

"Pack your bags, Taehyung," Jungkook commanded quietly, his dark eyes burning with a feverish, centuries-old madness.

"W-why?" Taehyung choked out. "Where are we going?"

Jungkook looked down at the golden ink pulsing in his hands, his thumb brushing reverently over the cover.

"To the Capital," Jungkook stated, his voice ringing with absolute, terrifying certainty. "I am going to marry the Queen."

—-