She sits back, studies me for a long beat, and then nods to the bench near the wisteria where the petals fall like slow forgiveness. I take the far end. My wing stretches along the back; I keep it to myself.
“Say the thing,” she says, because we don’t waste softness on preliminaries. “The thing that’s chewing you hollow.”
“I delivered your friend to a monster wearing a father’s face,” I say. It still tastes like metal. “When Taeyang looked at me, he had no reason to believe I’d pick him over you if I was pressed the same way again. He wasn’t wrong to doubt.”
“And now?” she asks.
“Now I will never trade your terror for my plan,” I say. “Even if my plan saves the whole court. Even if it saves you.” I turn my hands over, empty. “If the world insists on sacrifice, it can start with my comfort.”
She snorts—tiny, exhausted.
“You’re getting better at not making speeches sound like altars.”
“I’m trying to become a person instead of a performance.”
We sit with that. The garden hums bees and low talk and the distant clatter of the kitchen making food that tastes like survival. My wing aches where the feathers singed in the first rush. I let it. Pain that announces itself is easier to heal.
“How many names?” she asks at last.
“Seventy-three,” I say. “We’ll add three who won’t make it through the night.”
“Write them like we intend to remember who they were,” she says. “Not just what they did for us.”
“I will.”
She nods once, then reaches into her pocket and produces a small vial.
“For your feathers,” she says, eyes on the path. “Lavender and witch hazel. It’ll help with the singe.”
“Is this a truce offering?” I ask carefully.
“It’s inventory,” she says. Then, smaller: “It’s care. Don’t be greedy.”
I press the vial to my chest.
“I won’t.”
We don’t touch. We don’t need to. Proximity is its own vow when you’re not lying to make it happen. After a while she nudges the petitions toward me. “Read the ones marked with wax. I don’t trust the unmarked to be worth your eyes.”
I do. A baker asks for flour; a river hamlet asks for seed; an old archer asks for an apprentice who won’t drink; a mother asks where her son’s body is. I underline what matters and write:Yes. Yes. Yes. I will carry him.
“Do you miss flying?” she asks suddenly.
I look down at my hands and remember air like a promise that didn’t depend on permission.
“Every day,” I say. “But less when I’m useful.”
She lifts an eyebrow.
“Useful is my religion too.”
We almost smile. Then the quiet gets heavy again.
“When war ends,” I say, because the title of the day is something we’re all pretending we know how to own, “there’s a beheading in people’s stories. A fanfare. Clean edges.” I gesture at the garden where a broken lantern leans against a repaired balustrade. “But this is what it is. Tape. Thread. Tea. Apologies that don’t expect a window to throw themselves out of.”
Her mouth goes sideways—Minji’s version of softness.
“When war ends,” she says, voice low, “we decide who we are without the excuse of fire. That’s the part I’m scared of.”
