Jisoo
The Fae King wears winter like a second skin. Frost-light spills through the high lattice, laying thin knives across the floor between us. Rheon stands to my left—shadow contained, rage doing that quiet, dangerous breathing. Taeyang is to my right, spine straight, hands empty on purpose. We surrendered steel at the door. It doesn’t matter. The sharpest thing in this room is history.
The King hardly glances at the parchment I carry—the authenticated writ ordering the extermination of House Korr. Of Taeyang’s blood. He looks instead at Taeyang, as if the document is a rumor and my friend is a stain.
“We can end this,” the King says, voice clean as an altar. “Sanctioned, contained, final. You will remove your uncles and their loyalists from my borders. In return, I will… refrain from further correction of my daughter’s mistake.”
He calls Yuna amistakewithout blinking. Taeyang doesn’t move. I feel his control like a blade laid flat against the inside of my own ribs.
“Give me the order,” Taeyang answers, even, deliberate. “I’ll do it under your eyes so you don’t have to pretend it was mercy.”
The King smiles with only half his mouth.
“You will follow my order.” He is not repeating. He is binding. Every syllable is a hook.
Rheon’s shoulder shifts—half an inch—and stops. He heard it too. I lower my gaze as court etiquette demands and study the floor. The glass tiles are inlaid with old sigils forguest-right, the kind kings twist when they want the stability of law and the convenience of a leash. I tuck the writ deeper into my sleeve and count heartbeats.
A steward approaches with a tray of crystal goblets. Their rims are etched with thorn-script that moves when you aren’t looking straight at it. The liquid inside is palest gold, starlight trapped in wine.
“Peace-cup,” the steward announces. “Witness to accord.”
The King’s eyes never leave Taeyang.
“Share drink, share word.”
Taeyang’s jaw works once. He nods.
Rheon’s shadow tightens. I shift half a step, enough to catch the way light refracts off the goblet nearest Taeyang. There—along the inner lip—something more than hospitality: a hairline rune stitched into the crystal like a spider’s thread. Not poison. Worse.Predicate obedience.The first command spoken after the sip becomes a path of least resistance through the mind. Not compulsion. Not exactly. Just gravity, bent.
I should speak. I don’t. Politics are a battlefield with different casualties. A warning here becomes an insult. An insult becomes pretext. Pretext becomes a door slammed in our faces with Yuna still behind it.
So I do the coward’s calculus and choose strategy over scream. I let one black pinion unfurl under my coat—just enough of a fallen angel left in me to cast a quiet ward across the rim: a ripple, a scuff, a falter in the line of the glyph. It won’t erase it. It might blunt it.
Taeyang takes the cup. His hand doesn’t shake. He lifts it, glances once at the glass like a man checking the barrel of a gun he already decided to use, and drinks.
On the far end of the hall, the Queen’s standard stirs in wind that isn’t there. The rune in the goblet brightens, then dims—as if disappointed. Still, I feel something notch in Taeyang’s aura, a tiny click where there wasn’t one before. A door, unlocked but not yet opened.
Rheon accepts his cup and only touches it to his mouth. I mirror him—lips wet, throat closed. The King pretends not tonotice. He raises his own goblet last, a priest to his own myth, and sips.
“Good,” he says, setting crystal to glass. “Then hear my words, Wrath born. You will hunt House Korr by my command. You will report to my councilors. You will present proof of each death to my hand.”
Each sentence lands like a stake. Taeyang’s aura shivers—barely. The binding isn’t absolute. It doesn’t need to be. It only needs to turn choices into inclines.
I want to tip the table, tear the floor up, break every pretty thing in this palace until the truth lies panting and obvious. Instead I bow my head, counting how to unmake a king’s geometry.
“Your Majesty,” I say, with the kind of politeness that can be filed to an edge, “you will, of course, reciprocate. Public suspension of severance rites. Release of the Princess into neutral custody during the hunt. A statement acknowledging demon cooperation so your people know who to thank when their borders go quiet.”
A murmur ripples. The King regards me as if I’ve spoken out of turn in a language he invented.
“You make… requests,” he says.
“Terms,” Rheon corrects smoothly, and the air drops a few degrees.
The King folds his hands.
“Very well. While the hunt endures, no severance shall be enacted.”
While.It’s always the small words. I feel Taeyang swallow a reply that tastes like blood. His hand tightens at his side, then opensagain. He is learning. He is choosinglaterin a room built to make him choose now.
