“Please,” she says, wrecked and lovely, “Taeyang,please”
I tip her face up and kiss her the way I’ll fight tomorrow: slow, precise, devastating on purpose. Her fingers flex in the ribbon; I catch one wrist and slide my thumb along the inside until her knees go loose. The bond swells—pressure, promise—the edge where a man could fall forever and call it flying.
“Breathe,” I tell us both.
She does. I let her ride the breath, keep her right there circling, rising, the kind of patience that turns worship into a weapon and back again. When she whimpers I swallow it, greedy for the sound. When she says my name I give it back, low into her mouth, so she can hear what she does to me.
“Don’t stop,” she begs, and there’s nothing I want less.
I ease the ribbon, bring her hands down, and place them over my heart.
“Feel me,” I say. “Not the brand.Me.”
Her palms flatten over the half-moon cut Seori wrote there; our marks blaze together. The garden tilts—lanterns bowing, wisteria sighing—and the world narrows to a pulse and a promise breaking at the same time. She falls first—back arching, lips parted, my name a blessing against the night—dragging me after her into the heat we made and the quiet it leaves.
We sag into each other, laughing-soft, ruined in the right ways. I loosen the ribbon completely and kiss the faint line it left at her wrists, a benediction for every place I’ve ever asked her to trust me.
“Arrogant line,” she pants, forehead to mine, eyes shining. “Give me one.”
“I just made a queen forget the war,” I whisper against her smile. “Twice.”
She huffs, hides her face in my neck, then lifts it again with a seriousness that puts steel in my spine.
“Tomorrow will try to take you.”
“It can try,” I say. “I’ll be busy choosing you.”
“And if you fall?”
“I’ll crawl,” I tell her. “Toward your voice. Toward this mark. Toward home.”
She swallows.
“Say it—the thing you said under the arch when we were foolish enough to think the court couldn’t hear.”
I knot the ribbon back around my own wrist and tug her closer by it.
“I’ll follow you anywhere,” I vow, so quietly the vines lean in to listen. “Into war, into peace, into a life I didn’t think I was allowed to want. If there’s a door, I hold it. If there’s a night, I light it. If there’s a price, I pay it.”
Her eyes wet.
“Then take me to morning.”
I lift her, and we leave the garden with petals in her hair and my mouth on her knuckles, walking like criminals who stole an hour and got away with it. At the threshold of her chamber I pause, press our marks together one last time, and give the night the only warning it gets:
“She’s mine,” I tell the darkness, “and I’m hers.”
The bond thrums agreement.
Tomorrow, let the Vale learn what vows can do. Tonight, she is the only battle I want to lose, and the only victory I’ve ever needed.
When War Ends
Jisoo
War doesn’t end with trumpets. It ends with a list. Names to write. Bodies to lift. Blades to clean. Lies to unlearn.
Dawn finds me on the inner battlements with charcoal on my fingers and ash still feathering the edges of my wing. The courtyard below looks nothing like the place we defended last night and exactly like it, because memory refuses to take orders. Sentinels move through the wreckage in careful pairs. Healers lay down bowls of light that don’t hum like they did during theworst of it—they just glow, steady, like someone sayingstayand meaning it.
