“Bring me their heads,” the King says, and for an instant the polish slips and the monster looks out. “Then we will speak again of daughters and dogs.”
Rheon’s shadow swells. Mine tries to.
“Understood,” Taeyang says.
I hate the word in his mouth. I love him for surviving it.
We are dismissed with a graciousness that feels like being escorted from a chapel after the funeral. In the antechamber, the doors reseal with a sigh. Minji peels herself from a pillar and joins us; her eyes go straight to Taeyang’s face, then to his hands, then to his throat—assessing, counting, refusing to be comforted by posture.
“Well?” she asks.
“He gave the order,” Taeyang says. It sounds like it hurts.
“And you drank,” she says, gaze sliding to me.
I don’t bother pretending surprise.
“Guest-right rigged to bind the first command,” I say. “Not a gees. A track.”
“Can you break it?” Rheon asks.
“Yes,” I answer, because I need to. “Maybe.” I close my eyes and conjure the shape of the rune, the way it brightened and dimmed, the way it tried to catch. “It was woven into the cup, not the wine. That limits duration and scope. We can sand its edge. But until we do, his words will lean toward obedience when they echo back.”
Minji exhales through her nose.
“So if the King tells him to report, he’ll feel the slope.”
“He’ll still choose,” I say, and look at Taeyang because that’s the truth the binding can’t touch. “He already did.”
He doesn’t say thank you. He doesn’t look at any of us for long. He stares instead at the seam in the door, at the space where Yuna is and isn’t, at a future he refuses to let someone else write.
“What else did you hear?” Rheon asks me quietly as Minji begins sketching routes over the palm of her hand with a coal nub.
“That he will move the goalposts the moment it suits him,” I murmur. “And that he will call it governance.”
Rheon huffs something that isn’t a laugh.
“Kings always do.”
I tuck the writ back into my sleeve. The wax warms against my skin, a small heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me.
“I didn’t warn him,” I say.
Taeyang looks over, amber gone low.
“If you had, I would’ve drunk anyway.”
“I know,” I answer. “That’s why it’s going to work.”
Minji draws three Xs across her palm.
“We hunt the uncles on our map, not his. We send proof through channels that make him wait. We buy time. We find the counter-rune. We keep heroutof the sanctum.”
Taeyang closes his fist around the ribbon he carries like a relic. When he opens it, I see the mark it has pressed into his skin. It looks like a vow pretending to be a bruise.
“We move at first light,” he says. “We take heads, we take care, and if he thinks the first order will make me kneel, he’ll learn I was already on my knees for the only crown I recognize.”
“Yuna,” I say.
