The Fae Kingdom sleeps like a cathedral—quiet, beautiful, and full of things no one wants to confess.
I can’t sleep in it.
Moonlight cuts the guest hall into silver bars, and I pace between them like a prisoner who lost the key himself. Somewhere above these rooms, vines are blooming out of season and the air tastes like lightning. I don’t need a scrying bowl to know why.
Taeyang finally stopped running.
The bond’s surge ripples through the palace like a struck bell—heat, then quiet, then the soft hum of two heartbeats finding the same cadence. Relief crawls up my spine and dies on my tongue. I’m happy for him. I am. But the feeling curdles into something heavier.
Guilt has a way of diluting every good thing.
I step into the open gallery to breathe and nearly run into Minji.
She’s alone, sitting on the lip of a marble fountain shaped like a lily. No armor. No blade. Just a travel cloak and a book she isn’t reading. The moon paints a pale stripe down her cheek, catching on the small scar near her jaw—one I should have prevented.
My feet move before my pride can stop them.
“You should be sleeping,” I say.
“So should you,” she answers without looking up.
“I don’t,” I admit.
She closes the book and finally meets my eyes. There’s no ice there tonight, which is almost worse. There’s exhaustion. Disappointment. A thousand unasked questions.
“I felt it,” she says, as if we’ve been sharing a conversation all along. “Their bond.”
I nod.
“He went to her.”
Of course he did.
“Part of me wants to shake them both,” she murmurs. “Another part… wants to believe they’ll be okay.”
“They will be,” I say. “If the world lets them.”
Her mouth twists.
“When has it ever?”
Silence settles. I hate it, but forcing words into the quiet has never helped us.
“I wanted to say—” I start.
“That you’re sorry?” Her voice is gentle, which hurts more than the bite. “You’ve said it, Jisoo.”
“Not like this.” I take the opposite edge of the fountain, leaving space she can reclaim. “I made choices for you. Around you. I told myself it was protection, but it was control dressed up in love. You deserved honesty, and I gave you strategy.”
Her breath catches.
“You’re not wrong.”
“There’s more,” I add, because if I stop now, I’ll become the man I hate. “Before we learned who Yuna’s father is, I’d heard whispers. Old records. Rumors of a royal order against Taeyang’s line. I didn’t bring it to you. I didn’t bring it to anyone.”
Her head snaps toward me.
“Why?”
