She’s awake.
I don’t need the bond to tell me; I feel the small shift in the air when Yuna opens her window. Honeysuckle drifts across the stone like a hand I don’t deserve.
I close my eyes.
I used to think unworthiness was a bruise—you pressed, you winced, you moved on. Now I know it’s a marrow-deep thing. It lives where rage sleeps. It wakes when love knocks.
I hear the door of her chamber whisper on its hinges. Soft footsteps. A pause. I don’t turn until she speaks.
“Patrol,” she says, voice low. “Or penance?”
“Both,” I answer.
She comes to stand beside me at the balustrade. The city glows below us—lanterns strung like constellations that forgot their sky. Yuna’s hair is braided back, a single ribbon caught in the weave. Simple. Royal in a way that has nothing to do with crowns.
“I shouldn’t have let that word touch you,” I say, and it’s the closest I can get to what keeps tearing my throat: I can’t stand the thought that I became the blade.
“I know,” she says. Not absolution. Not dismissal. Simple truth.
Silence stretches between us, gentler than it was yesterday. My hands rest on the stone; hers hover over the rail like a bird deciding whether to land. The mark beneath my ribs hums, but I keep still. I’m learning stillness the way some men learn prayer.
“My father summoned me after the council,” she says, eyes on the distant spires. “He asked if the demon had remembered his place.”
My jaw locks. “And what didyousay?”
“That I have no use for places built to keep anyone small.” Her mouth curves—tired, wry. “He didn’t like that.”
“Good,” I murmur. “I don’t, either.”
A beat. Then:
“Taeyang… why do you keep stepping back when I step closer?”
Because if I step forward, I won’t stop.
Because I love you like a storm loves the sea—too much, too hard, enough to drown what it’s trying to hold. Instead of saying that, I give her the smaller, uglier truth.
“You’re a princess.”
She huffs. “And?”
“And I am a weapon forged by men who never meant me to be anything else.” I flex my fingers once, ashamed of how they tremble. “I was fifteen when I failed to save the only good things I knew. I held ashes in my palms and promised the world it couldn’t take anything from me again.” I swallow. It scrapes. “Then you arrived and proved me a liar.”
Her gaze turns to me, steady as moonlight. “Lying to grief isn’t a sin, Taeyang. It’s survival.”
“My grief made me a blade,” I say. “Yours made you a garden. What if I cut what you grow?”
“You already have,” she answers, quiet, not cruel. “And I’m still here.”
I look down. The stone beneath my hands is worn smooth where centuries of watchmen leaned the way I am now. “I can’t be what you deserve.”
“Maybe not,” she says, and my chest goes hollow until she adds, “But I don’t need a statue. I need a man who knows the difference between guarding and gripping. Who won’t apologize for wanting me but will apologize when the wanting hurts.”
The ribbon slips from her braid and flutters to the floor between us. I pick it up like it’s a relic and hold it out. She doesn’t take it. She takes my hand instead. Warm. Certain. The bond surges—sweet ache, then heat. I breathe through it.
“Look at me,” she says.
I do. And gods, it ruins me how easily I do.
