“Because I thought knowledge would light the match.” I stare at my hands. “I was afraid of the fire.”
“So, you let us walk blind,” she says softly. Not accusation—just truth. “That’s the fire we’re standing in now.”
I force myself to look at her. “I can’t fix what I broke. But I can stop breaking it.” She studies me for a long moment, as if weighing the marrow of me. “Promises won’t move us, Jisoo.”
“I know.”
“Plans might.”
A horn blares from the eastern parapet—low, warning, close. The air sharpens. Minji is on her feet before the echo fades, and so am I.
“Patrol?” I ask.
“Or a test,” she says, already moving.
We take the balcony stairs two at a time, slipping through latticework of flowering arches. Two fae sentries crumble at the outer walk, sleeping rather than dead enchanted. Shadows peel from the wall and become men. Not Taeyang’s uncles—leaner, too polished. Assassins dressed like courtiers.
“Capture them. Alive if you can,” Minji breathes.
“I’ll try.”
They come in pairs. I meet the first with empty hands, letting the old habits bloom: wing-bones unfurl beneath my skin, not light, not holy—obsidian feathers that drink the moon. I shove one blade aside with a pinion and trap the attacker’s wrist; Minji slides through the opening I leave and knocks him cold with the pommel. We move together without speaking, like music we both remember but haven’t dared to play.
A knife whistles for her ribs. I’m there before thought, catching the throw with a wing, feeling the bite of steel glance off quill. She doesn’t flinch. She never has. That, more than anything, makes my throat ache.
Three breaths later, it’s over. Sleeping bodies are tied in ivy. Ward runes re-chalked. Moonlight, again.
She wipes a blood smear from her knuckle. I pull a linen strip from my pocket—habit—and offer it. She hesitates, then holds out her hand. I wrap the scrape carefully; my fingers are steady, but my chest isn’t.
“I don’t need saving,” she says.
“I know,” I answer. “I need saving. From myself.”
A ghost of a smile. It hurts and heals at once. “There you are.”
I step back, give the night air room. “I’m going into the High Archive tomorrow. There’s proof in there—royal writs, sealed orders, the kind that survive dynasties. If we put the truth in the hall with the treaty, the Fae King can’t bury it without showing his hand. It protects Yuna. It keeps Taeyang from carving justice in the wrong place and starting a war we can’t win.”
“You’ll be caught,” she says. Not a warning, just a fact.
“Probably,” I admit. “Come anyway.”
She studies me. The moon coins her eyes bright. “I’m not your absolution, Jisoo.”
“I’m not asking you to be,” I say. “I’m asking you to witness.”
A long heartbeat. Then she nods once. “Dawn.”
We turn to leave, our footsteps soft over sleeping stone. At the arch, she pauses. “Jisoo?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be brave in the dark and careful in the light. Choose one.”
I almost smile.
“Then light,” I say. “For once.”
She goes, cloak whispering against marble. I lean on the balustrade and stare into the garden where vines keep opening, even at midnight. Somewhere above us, two souls are learninghow to breathe together again. Below, a kingdom of secrets waits to be unmade.
