The Red Palace

The Red Palace Plot Summary

Introduction

In the frozen heart of Changdeok Palace, where silence weighs heavier than snow on black-tiled roofs, eighteen-year-old nurse Hyeon is summoned into darkness. The Crown Prince lies motionless behind silk screens, but something is terribly wrong. This is not His Highness at all—merely an old eunuch playing the role while the real prince has vanished into the winter night. Before dawn breaks, four women will be found butchered at the Hyeminseo medical office, their throats slashed, their secrets bleeding into the snow. As Hyeon is drawn deeper into the investigation alongside the brilliant young Inspector Seo, the palace walls seem to pulse with hidden violence. Every court lady carries whispers, every physician guards secrets, and every shadow might conceal a killer. In a world where speaking the wrong truth means death, Hyeon must navigate royal conspiracies and deadly obsessions to save her beloved mentor from execution. But the deeper she digs, the more she realizes that some truths are buried in blood for good reason—and that the Crown Prince's midnight wanderings may have awakened something far more dangerous than political intrigue.

Chapter 1: The Massacre and a Mentor's Arrest

The great bell tolled its twenty-eighth ring as Physician Nanshin led Hyeon and her friend Jieun through the palace corridors. Their breath formed white clouds in the frigid air, and something in the physician's urgency made Hyeon's skin crawl. They were heading to the Crown Prince's residence, but this felt wrong—their shift should have ended hours ago. Inside Joseung Pavilion, shadows danced behind silk screens. Lady Hyegyoung, the Crown Prince's wife, sat rigid with barely concealed terror. Behind the screen lay a figure in royal robes, but when the cloth was drawn back, Hyeon nearly gasped. This was not Prince Jangheon—it was Eunuch Im, an old servant playing the role of the ailing prince. The real Crown Prince had disappeared into the winter night, and they were all complicit in the deception. As dawn approached, whispers of horror reached the palace. Four women had been slaughtered at the Hyeminseo medical office where Hyeon had trained. The victims lay under straw mats, their throats opened like second mouths, their hands still clutching strands of their attacker's hair. Court Lady Ahnbi, two student nurses, and their teacher—all dead in pools of blood that steamed in the cold air. Commander Song, the brutal police chief, arrested Nurse Jeongsu immediately. She had been found at the scene, her hands soaked red, claiming she had slept through the massacre. But Hyeon knew her mentor—the woman who had saved her from freezing to death as a child, who had taught her everything about healing. Nurse Jeongsu was many things, but she was not a killer. As the beloved teacher was dragged away in chains, Hyeon felt the world tilt beneath her feet. Someone was orchestrating this nightmare, and the Crown Prince's absence was no coincidence.

Chapter 2: Forbidden Alliance with the Inspector

The crime scene reeked of death and fear. Hyeon had snuck inside against all protocol, examining the corpses with the clinical eye her training had given her. Court Lady Ahnbi bore two precise wounds—one to the chest, another to the throat. The student nurses showed signs of desperate struggle, their fingernails bloody from clawing at their attacker. But something about the throat wounds troubled her. They were too clean, too practiced, as if made by someone who knew exactly where to strike. A shadow moved behind her. She spun to find herself face-to-face with a young man in peasant clothes, his dark eyes sharp with intelligence. He moved like a predator, and when he spoke, his voice carried quiet authority. He claimed to be a police servant, but something about him seemed far more dangerous than any ordinary officer. When Commander Song's voice boomed through the morning air, the stranger helped her escape over the wall with surprising strength. His hands were scarred, his face gaunt from hunger, yet he moved with the grace of a trained fighter. Only later would she learn the truth—this was Inspector Seo Eojin, the brilliant young investigator who had passed the civil service exam at an unprecedented age. Their partnership began over steaming bowls of soup at a roadside inn. Eojin's father had been murdered the previous year while investigating similar killings in a distant province. The pattern was unmistakable—a decapitated woman, a slain witness, and whispers of the Crown Prince's involvement. As they pored over the evidence, Hyeon realized that Nurse Jeongsu was merely a convenient scapegoat. The real killer was still prowling the palace halls, and they had perhaps days before her mentor would be tortured to death for crimes she did not commit.

Chapter 3: Royal Secrets and Silent Witnesses

The palace buzzed with whispers like a hive disturbed. Anonymous handbills appeared on walls throughout the capital, their message written in blood-red ink: "The Crown Prince killed me. The Crown Prince killed the four women. The Crown Prince will kill again." Royal guards tore them down with savage efficiency, but the words had already poisoned the air. In the streets, peasants spoke in hushed tones of the prince's midnight rides and violent rages. Hyeon found herself summoned before Prince Jangheon himself. The meeting took place in his private chambers, where books on dark magic lay scattered among silk robes. The prince was younger than she had expected, handsome in a way that spoke of divine blood, but his eyes held a darkness that made her skin crawl. When he looked at her, recognition flashed across his features—she bore an uncanny resemblance to his dead sister, Princess Hwahyup, his only beloved companion in a childhood of isolation and cruelty. Using this resemblance, Hyeon learned terrible truths. The prince spoke of his father's endless disappointment, the daily humiliations that had driven him to seek solace in violence and occult practices. He hinted at a bloody object in his possession—something dropped by a fleeing figure on the night of the massacre. In exchange for procuring medicine to calm his rages, he would give her this crucial evidence. But the palace walls had ears, and Hyeon was not the only one watching. Madam Mun, the king's cunning concubine, had her own network of spies. Court Lady Ahnbi had been one of them before her death, tasked with following the prince's movements. Now others were being murdered—Nurse Aram found poisoned and throat-slashed in her home, Nurse Kyunghee bludgeoned and left to drown in the Han River. A pattern was emerging, but the killer stayed always one step ahead, cutting down witnesses like wheat before the harvest.

Chapter 4: The Prince's Absence and Deadly Vengeance

The truth came from dying lips beside the river. Nurse Kyunghee, barely clinging to life after her attack, gasped out a tale of horror that made Hyeon's blood freeze. A year ago, she and the other victims had witnessed the Crown Prince's most brutal act—the decapitation of a palace nurse named Hyo-ok. The prince had been in one of his rages, lashing out at anyone within reach, and the woman had simply been in the wrong place when his fury exploded. The three witnesses—Court Lady Ahnbi, Nurse Aram, and Nurse Kyunghee—had fled in terror, then made a fateful decision. Rather than report the prince's crime, they had helped dispose of the body, dragging the headless corpse deep into the mountains where wild animals would scatter the bones. Their silence was bought with fear, knowing that speaking out would mean their own deaths. But secrets in the palace were currency, and someone had learned what they knew. Court Lady Ahnbi's murder had been the first—lured from the palace on the very night the prince had chosen to wander the streets. The killer was methodical, working through the list of witnesses while using the prince's absence to frame him for the crimes. Each death was carefully staged, the throat wounds matching perfectly, creating a narrative that would see the prince blamed for a massacre he did not commit. As Hyeon delved deeper into the web of vengeance, she discovered that Nurse Hyo-ok had left behind a son—Physician Khun, who worked in the palace's medicinal gardens. His grief had transformed him into something hollow and desperate, a man who spoke of wishing he had died alongside the mother he barely remembered. The murders were not random acts of violence but a carefully orchestrated campaign of retribution, and the blood was still flowing.

Chapter 5: Unmasking the Nurse's Revenge

The revelation struck like lightning in darkness. Nurse Inyeong—the witness who had first reported the Hyeminseo massacre—was not what she seemed. For nine years, she had served as a police investigator in a distant province, trained in swordsmanship and the art of reading crime scenes. She had come to the palace not to heal but to hunt, seeking the truth about her mother's disappearance and the witnesses who had helped hide the crime. Inyeong was Physician Khun's half-sister, sharing the same generation name in the tradition of Korean families. While he had pursued medicine, she had mastered violence, learning to kill with the precision of a surgeon. The medical blade found in the Crown Prince's chamber was hers—a pichim used for surgical incisions, now sharpened into an instrument of death. She had planted it there after murdering Court Lady Ahnbi, another piece in her elaborate frame. The pattern became clear as blood on snow. Inyeong had manipulated events from the beginning, using her brother's love for Court Lady Ahnbi to extract the truth about their mother's death. When Ahnbi revealed how the three women had dragged Nurse Hyo-ok's body into the mountains, leaving it for scavengers, something broke inside Inyeong. Her victims had died in terror, just as her mother had died—but their deaths brought no peace, only a deeper hunger for vengeance. Her brother had tried to stop her after the first murder, but family bonds ran deeper than justice. Instead of turning her in, Physician Khun had chosen a different path—poison, administered slowly, ensuring that Inyeong's rampage would end with her own death. She was dying even as she killed, her body failing as her rage consumed everything in its path. The pale spots on her skin, the constant nausea, the trembling hands—all signs of a woman living on borrowed time.

Chapter 6: Confrontation in the Forest

The attack came without warning in the isolated hut where Hyeon and Eojin had sought shelter. The widow who owned the home lay butchered in her own courtyard, her blood pooling in the moonlight. Inyeong had followed them from the capital, tracking them like a hunting hound, desperate to eliminate the investigators who had finally seen through her deception. Eojin fell first, pushed from a cliff and left broken among the bamboo stalks below. When Hyeon found him, he was dying—his arm shattered, his ribs opened in a gaping wound that would not stop bleeding. Above them, Inyeong descended like a vengeful spirit, her sword gleaming with fresh blood, her face twisted by months of consuming hatred. But even as death closed in around them, Hyeon refused to surrender to despair. She had seen too much suffering, lost too much already, to let this nightmare claim more lives. Using her medical knowledge, she recognized the signs of Inyeong's poisoning and turned the woman's own mortality against her. Why waste the last days of life on meaningless slaughter when true justice remained within reach? The confrontation ended not with violence but with a terrible understanding. Inyeong's rage had always been directed at the wrong targets—not the three women who had hidden her mother's death in terror, but the prince who had killed without remorse, who would one day rule a kingdom with blood on his hands. Her brother's poison was already doing its work, but perhaps there was still time to ensure that her mother's murder would not go unpunished. As Hyeon bound the dying woman's hands and began the desperate race to save Eojin's life, she carried with her the weight of all the secrets that had bled into the snow. The investigation was ending, but the reckoning had only just begun.

Chapter 7: Loss and Renewal Beyond the Palace Walls

The palace gates loomed like the mouth of a great beast, and Hyeon walked toward them knowing she might never emerge alive. King Yeongjo sat in judgment as she testified before the Old Doctrine faction, detailing every secret she had uncovered. The Crown Prince's crimes, Inyeong's revenge, the web of lies that had nearly claimed her mentor's life—all of it spilled forth in the throne room where silence had reigned for too long. By royal grace, she lived to see justice done. Prince Jangheon's fate was sealed by his own actions, though the exact nature of his punishment remained shrouded in palace secrecy. Nurse Jeongsu walked free, her innocence finally recognized, though her legs bore the permanent scars of Commander Song's brutality. The system that had nearly destroyed them all continued to grind on, but perhaps some small measure of truth had found its way into the light. Hyeon's own punishment was swift and final—stripped of her palace position, cast out from the world she had fought so hard to enter. Her father's wrath followed her home, exiling her family from their residence, cutting the last threads that had bound her to respectability. Yet in losing everything she thought she wanted, she discovered what truly mattered. Her mother revealed depths of love long hidden behind walls of grief. Nurse Jeongsu welcomed her home as the daughter she had always been in all but blood. Months passed like pages turning in a book of seasons. Spring returned to the kingdom, bringing with it news of Eojin's recovery in the mountain provinces. His arm would never be the same, his sword-fighting days ended, but his mind remained sharp as ever. When he finally returned to the capital, he found Hyeon teaching at the Hyeminseo where their story had begun, passing on the healing arts to a new generation of nurses.

Summary

The Hyeminseo massacre had torn the kingdom's carefully maintained facade apart, revealing the rot beneath centuries of tradition. In seeking justice for her mentor, Hyeon had uncovered truths that powerful men would have preferred to keep buried. The Crown Prince's violent madness, the witnesses who died for their silence, the daughter who chose vengeance over healing—each thread in the tapestry told the same story of a system that devoured its own children. Yet from the ashes of that terrible winter, something new had grown. Hyeon found her calling not in the glittering halls of the palace but in the humble rooms where she had first learned to heal. Her love with Eojin bloomed quietly, rooted in shared trauma and mutual understanding rather than the grand romance of court poets. They had walked through hell together and emerged not unscathed but unbroken, their bond forged in blood and tempered by loss. In a world where truth was often the most dangerous weapon of all, they had chosen to wield it together, whatever the cost.

About Author

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June Hur

Hur investigates the intersections of history and mystery in her writing, often delving into the complex layers of human experience during Korea's Joseon dynasty. Her purpose is not just to entertain but to illuminate forgotten or underrepresented narratives, blending the intrigue of historical events with the suspense of mystery. This thematic focus is evident in her acclaimed book, "The Silence of Bones," which offers readers a deep dive into cultural and social dynamics through its engaging plot and rich historical context. Hur's method involves meticulous research, informed by her background in History and Literature from the University of Toronto, which enhances the authenticity and educational value of her work.\n\nReaders benefit from Hur's novels by gaining insights into the societal and historical frameworks of past eras, making her work particularly appealing to those interested in history and young adult fiction. Her exploration of themes such as identity, duty, and justice resonates widely, offering a nuanced perspective on human nature. In "The Red Palace," for instance, she intertwines romance with political intrigue, providing a multifaceted narrative that keeps readers engaged while expanding their understanding of historical complexities.\n\nBeyond crafting engaging stories, Hur has received recognition as an Edgar Award-winning author, underscoring the literary merit of her contributions to the genre. Her books have gained significant attention in prestigious outlets like Forbes and NPR, further cementing her status as a notable voice in YA historical fiction. With her upcoming release, "Adoration," a homage to Jane Austen set in the Joseon dynasty, Hur continues to blend cultural homage with historical depth, promising to captivate and educate readers once more. Through her works, this bio of an acclaimed author underscores how historical fiction can be both enlightening and thrilling.

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