The room hissed. The King did not look at the document; he looked atme.
“Forgery,” he said.
“Authentication on the reverse,” Jisoo replied, perfectly polite. “And four witnesses prepared to swear before your legalists, your gods, and mine.”
A beat. Then the small, brittle smile my father saved for insolence.
“What do you want?”
Seori didn’t flinch.
“Her freedom. Intact.”
“And if I refuse?”
Minji’s voice floated up from the shadowed archway—she’d already mapped the exits; of course she had.
“Then you explain to your court why you severed a royal-bonded princess while a foreign realm stood in witness holding proof that you tried to kill a boy for being born. I’m told optics matter.”
A few courtiers almost choked. I loved her a little for it. My father ignored them all. He fixed on the one person he thought he could break.
“Demon,” he said, mild as poison in wine, “does your leash know how easily I could end you?”
Taeyang didn’t rise to it. He didn’t even look at the King. He looked atme. His voice, when it came, wasn’t for the throne. It was for the girl in chains.
“Breathe,” he said, barely moving his mouth.
My eyes burned. I did.
He turned at last, just enough to be civil.
“Your Majesty,” Taeyang said, the title tasting like ash, “you don’t want a war with me. You want to keep your crown clean.”
Murmurs again. He went on, steady.
“Here are your terms: you release Yuna unharmed into neutral custody. You suspend all severance rites publicly. You sanction a hunt for my uncles and their loyalists and take credit for their removal. We recognize your treaty line. We remove every patrol from your borders. And this writ—” he tapped the parchment with one scarred knuckle “—doesn’t have to see a sunrise.”
He said it like a man offering a lifeline and a threat at once. My father’s gaze slid over him as if he were furniture.
“You presume.”
“I protect,” Taeyang said. “It’s new for me. I’m learning.”
The King leaned back, a painter deciding where to lay the stroke that ruins the whole canvas.
“Yuna,” he said, not looking at me. “Choose.”
The chain on my wrist pulsed, hungry. The bond slammed against it, frantic. Taeyang’s hands were open at his sides—stay or run, I’ll match you. Seori’s jaw was set; Rheon was a storm held in a glass. Jisoo’s eyes were knives; Minji’s fingers hovered over a seam in the floor only she could see.
“Return as my daughter,” the King said, “or watch me take his head.”
The world narrowed to a single, impossible edge. I thought of the girl who used to braid flowers into Seori’s hair and dare Minji to laugh until milk came out of her nose. I thought of the boy who learned to be a weapon because no one taught him how tobe anything else. I thought of a ribbon tied at my wrist by hands that shook when they promisedstay.
I lifted my chin and turned to the throne.
“I am your daughter by blood,” I said, and my voice did not shake, “and your subject by choice. Both of those things end where your cruelty begins.”
A low sound rippled through the room.
