“You want me to ask the man who killed my family for permission to kill my uncles.”
“No,” Minji says. “I want you to put a leash on his story. Makehimneedyou.” Her voice softens without losing its edge. “You’re not asking. You’re offering him a way to keep his face while you get Yuna back.”
Rheon taps the parchment.
“He cares for power more than hate. He won’t ignore a solution that lets him keep both. Especially if this writ is hanging over his head where his courtiers can see it.”
“And if he refuses?” I ask.
Jisoo’s eyes darken.
“Then we don’t walk in. We bleed in. But we do it with an extraction route, three safehouses, and a diversion at the east gate that makes your uncles look like the lesser fire.”
Silence. Breathing. The sound of my heart trying to beat its way out of my ribs. I hate plans that look like begging. But this isn’t begging. It’s war by another name. It’s walking into a throne room with a leash in one hand and a knife in the other and saying choose.
I look down at the ribbon in my palm. It’s warm again, as if it knows I’m choosing the path where she lives.
“Fine,” I say. “We do it your way.”
Relief moves the air. It doesn’t touch the place in me that’s already at the palace door, tearing it off the hinges.
Rheon starts assigning.
“Seori and I front the delegation. Jisoo guards the writ and speaks to their legalists in old tongue. Minji runs the shadow net and extraction. Taeyang—”
“Perimeter,” Minji says, meeting my eyes. “One breath away. You are the blade we draw if the King blinks wrong.”
I nod once. It tastes like rust and restraint.
“Signals,” Seori adds. “One bell for stall. Two for release. Three for betrayal.”
“Four,” I say, flat.
They look at me.
“If I say four,” I clarify, “it’s because I’ve already chosen wrath. You get everyone out.”
No one argues. They know better. Or they love me enough to let me be the wall and not the ruin.
We move. The sanctum becomes a war room. Broken glass is kicked aside to make room for maps. Minji scratches routes onto the table with a shard of mirror—outer garden stairs, servant passages, an old aqueduct that runs beneath the royal baths and meets a cistern by the southern gate. Jisoo mutters to the parchment until the wax warms and the seal re-floats true. Seori braids her hair back, clean and tight, then folds a hand around mine for the length of one breath, and I remember how to count to ten.
Rheon studies me.
“You said unforgivable,” he says softly when we’re alone at the edge of the circle.
“I meant myself,” I answer.
He shakes his head once.
“You were a heartbeat late to a door built to close on you. Save your rage for the ones who chose to lock it.”
“Kaelen chose,” I say. The name is ash.
Rheon’s gaze hardens.
“Then he will live to regret it, or he won’t live.”
I don’t promise mercy. I don’t promise anything. We ride before dawn—no armor that shines, no banners that brag. The “peace envoy” looks like what it is: four people too dangerous to bedismissed. At the palace threshold, we lift a cloth the color of truce.
