He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
We turn from the doors. I feel the King’s ward settle back over the room like a net thrown over dark water. It will catch what it can. We will swim through what it can’t.
Secrets of a fae king: He doesn’t poison the cup. He salts the road that leads away from him and calls it peace.
Fine.
We’ve walked worse roads.
He Took Everything
Taeyang
The palace gardens were built to make you believe in forgiveness. Even at night, everything bloomed—moon-lilies opening like pale mouths, vines carrying their own lanterns, a stream whispering secrets I don’t trust. I don’t belong in places made for gentleness. But I came anyway, because the bond pulled me like a tide and the only thing I’ve learned to trust less than palaces is the feeling of her too far away.
I find her where the paths cross: barefoot on the crushed pearl gravel, a thin shawl over her shoulders, the ward-chain at her wrist singing that quiet, ugly note.
Yuna.
No crown. No court. Just the person the world keeps trying to translate into something it can own. She hears me the way sparrows hear storms. Her head tips, not startled, just… bracing.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, but she doesn’t move.
“I know,” I answer. “I’m bad at should.”
We stand with three steps between us. The chain hums. The bond pushes against it like a heartbeat under a bruise.
“I drank his cup,” I say first, because I promised her I’d try honesty before fury. “It was laced—not poison. A slope. He’ll try to turn my choices into inclines.”
Her fingers tighten in the shawl.
“Does it work?”
“It wants to.” I spread my hands so she can see they’re empty. “I want you more.”
Something fragile flickers in her face. It looks like hope with a scar.
“Taeyang,” she murmurs, and I hear everything tied to my name: the council room, the word I wish I could cut from the air, the way I held on too hard, the way I kneeled because it was the only way I knew to be gentle with my hands. I take a breath that hurts on purpose.
“He took everything,” I say. “My parents. The girl I tried to keep alive when I didn’t know how to keep myself. He burned our names so the world would forget we belonged anywhere.” My voice thins, then steadies. “He doesn’t get to take you.”
The stream says something I don’t understand. Yuna says nothing at all. She only looks at me like she is measuring how much of this vow is bone and how much is fire.
“Come closer,” she says finally.
I do, slow enough for her fear and mine to keep up. When I’m a breath away, I stop.
“May I?” I ask, because I need her to hear that word from me more than I need air. She lifts her hand. The chain flashes, warning. I ignore it and touch her fingertips with mine—light, as if the world is a sheet of ice and I’m learning to walk.
The bond flares, warm and aching. She exhales like a prayer slipping.
“I keep thinking,” she whispers, “if I stand still enough, make the right choices, don’t pull too hard, the world will... relent.” She almost laughs. “It never does.”
“Then let it be the thing that breaks,” I say. “Not you.”
The garden goes quiet. Even the water listens.
“I know the man your father is,” I tell her. “I know what he calls mercy, what he calls order. I know because I died in the smoke of it and climbed out anyway.” My throat tightens. I don’t hide it. “I won’t watch him touch you with the same hands.”
