Seori shifted around the table to my side, fingers brushing mine under the lip where no one else could see. The bond between us pulsed—a steady engine, the kind that carries ships past reefs that want to have their say.
“Rheon,” she said, so only I could hear, “we will be who we needed when we were young.”
I smiled without any teeth in it.
“Then the world is already kinder.”
We bent over the map together, making the marks you make when you choose diplomacy first and prepare for the old habitsof kings. I drafted the message to the Summer Court aloud as Seori’s quill caught it:
To Queen Elara and High King Theron of the Summer Court. We ask parley at the High Summit at dawn two days hence.
Two escorts each. No glamour, no compulsion, no memory work.
Weapons peace-bonded.
We come as sovereigns and kin of the woman you claim,
and we bring daylight with us.
—Rheon, King of the Outer Ring
—Seori, Queen of the Obsidian Throne
When I looked up, the room had stopped holding its breath. The future hadn’t changed; we had. Sometimes that’s all you get.
“Send it,” I told Jisoo. “Not by gate. By wing. A hawk with the old seal. Make them remember we know the roads that don’t look like roads.”
He bowed his head.
“It’s done.”
I straightened.
“One more thing. If the court refuses our terms or arrives with more blades than mouths, I take the first step forward. No one begins this but me.”
Seori’s fingers tightened around mine.
“We begin it together,” she corrected gently, as she always does. “And we end it the same way.”
The candles guttered, caught, steadied. Somewhere beyond the walls, the first drumline from the inner garrison began to practice—low, patient beats reminding men how tomove in time with each other. The sound rolled through the stone and into my bones.
I looked at the people who have become the measure of every choice I make: Seori at my side, eyes bright with the kind of courage that learns tenderness first. Minji, already sorting supplies in her head, preserving lives no one had counted until she did. Jisoo, standing like a man who intends to be better than his last mistake and will accept bleeding if it’s the price.
Yuna. Taeyang. Names I did not speak because speaking them would turn this into a prayer, and I have never been good at asking gods for anything I can bleed for myself.
I set both hands on the table. The old obsidian hummed—the throne’s voice in a different key—recognizing its own.
“We ride at dawn,” I said. “We carry white before iron. If the fae want a show of strength, they’ll see two sovereigns who learned to call mercy by its true name. We keep our people between our ribs. We make space for theirs to do the same.”
I glanced at the western window, where the horizon had begun to pale. The wind had shifted again—cleaner now, like a blade after oiling.
“And if war comes,” I added, not loud and not for effect, “we burn the skies before we let them fall.”
Seori’s hand found mine a second time, not to steady me. To anchor us both.
The drumline changed cadence—faster now, readying the bodies that would have to hold the line if words failed. We stood a little longer around the map of a world I intend to leave better than I found it, listening to the sound of our realm remembering how to live together on purpose.
Then we began to move.
