“You will not sever me,” I went on. “And if you touch him, you will lose me—forever.”
My father’s eyes cooled.
“I lost you the day you let a demon put his mark on you.”
“Then maybe,” I said, and finally looked at Taeyang like I was allowed to, “you never had me to lose.”
The chain constricted in a sudden, vicious cinch. Pain flashed white. I bit it back. Taeyang took a half-step he wasn’t supposed to take; Seori’s hand caught his sleeve; Rheon’s shadow swelled like a storm about to break.
“Enough,” the King said, voice flat. “Take her to the inner sanctum. Prepare the rite.”
Kaelen moved before the Sentinels could. He stepped into my path, seal-bright, eyes glassed with something I couldn’t stand to see.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Not you.”
“I swore,” he said. “To the Crown. To the realm.”
“And not to me.”
He flinched.
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“You’re trying to keep me compliant.”
He couldn’t deny it. He lifted a hand, and the ward-light reached for me like a leash that thought it was love. The herald’s staff struck the floor again—two sharp blows. Seori’s signal.Stall.Minji’s voice drifted up from the arch, conversational.
“I do wonder what the Queen will say when she learns which sanctum you’ve reserved, Your Majesty. The one for ‘corrections,’ was it? For yourdaughter?”
The room reacted like a throat swallowing wrong.
My father’s mouth thinned.
“Escort the envoys to the waiting chamber.”
“No,” Taeyang said. Not loud. Not negotiable.
He looked at me again—only me—and I felt the command inside his tenderness like the edge inside a petal.
“Stay,” he mouthed.Please.“Breathe.”
The bond pulsed once, hard enough to make me sway. Through the ward. Through the chain. Through a lifetime of being told what to be.
I breathed. Then I said, steady and bright, “I choose myself.”
It wasn’t the promise the King wanted. It wasn’t the declaration the court understood. But Taeyang’s face broke open in a way that told me he heard what I meant.
I choose us.
Guards closed in. Courtiers scattered. The throne room became a chessboard, and every piece moved at once.
As they took my arm, my father leaned in, voice for me alone.
“If you won’t be my princess, then I will make you my lesson.”
I smiled without teeth.
“Then learn this: a leash looks a lot like a noose when you pull hard enough.”
