Taeyang doesn’t look at my hand. He looks at my face, like he’s memorizing whether I’ll send him away. Kaelen exhales and drops his arm, jaw tight.
“Kaelen,” I say, not unkind, “you’re my friend. You’re my guard. That’s all. Please don’t blur that for me. Not tonight.”
He swallows, wounded pride catching in his throat, then bows his head a fraction. “As you wish, Highness.” His eyes flick past me to Taeyang—a warning he doesn’t voice—and he steps back to the archway, taking up a watch he won’t abandon.
Silence settles. The city hums below. My palm is still on Taeyang’s chest. His heart is a hammer.
“You shouldn’t have said it,” I tell him. “You shouldn’t have called me pathetic.”
His eyes close like the word itself hurts. “I know.”
“You say you’re protecting me. Then protect me fromyou.From that tongue when fear is driving it.”
He opens his eyes again. The anger is gone; only ruin remains. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice low. “It was fear pretending to be strength. I… failed it. And you.”
I drop my hand. The cold rushes back in. “Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.” A breath shudders out of him. “I can’t lose you by my own hand.”
I look past him to the doorway where Kaelen stands, an outline cut from moonlight. I look back at the demon who keeps setting fire to all my certainties and then kneeling in the ashes with me.
“I don’t need a cage, Taeyang,” I say. “But I don’t want to do this alone.”
His throat works.
“Tell me how to stand with you.”
“Don’t choose pride over us.” The words shake, but I let them. “Don’t choose fear over me.”
Wind lifts the edge of my hair. A single petal spins up from the courtyard and lands in my palm, unburned. I close my fingers around it and finally say the thing I’ve been trying not to name all night.
“I still want you.”
The world goes very, very quiet. Taeyang doesn’t reach for me. Not this time. He bows his head instead, as if something sacred has just been placed between us and he’s terrified of breaking it.
“Then I’ll be worthy of being wanted,” he says. “I’ll learn how.”
I nod once, because anything more and I’ll unravel.
“Start with this,” I add, flicking my gaze toward the arch. “No more threats in rooms I have to live in.”
A corner of his mouth lifts, shame-soft and real. “Understood.”
I turn to Kaelen. “Walk me to my door?”
He straightens. “Of course.”
We move down the corridor together. I don’t look back, but Ifeelhim—Taeyang’s presence held tight and careful, shadowing at a distance that’s half promise, half penance. The petal warms in my fist. Wanting him doesn’t erase the hurt.
But for the first time tonight, it doesn’t erasemeeither.
His Darkness, Her Light
Taeyang
The Fae Kingdom looks softer at four in the morning. It’s a lie, of course—blunted teeth are still teeth—but the edges blur, and for a few breaths I can pretend a place like this could ever want a creature like me.
I keep the perimeter like Minji asked—three rooftops, two courtyards, one balcony that already knows the shape of my shadow. The night is all silver and quiet, and my body remembers what to do when my mind won’t: count exits; test the wind; map the distance between my heartbeat and hers.
