He smiles into my mouth this time. The kiss is slow and low and full of the kind of reverence that makes my knees consider softening. I let myself be kissed. Then I let myself kiss back with all the sharp edges I’ve been told to hide. When we part, the night looks thinner.
“Say it,” he murmurs. “For me. So I can carry it where I’m going.”
I know what he means. I take his face in both my hands as if I built it and could fix it when it cracks.
“We protect them,” I say. “At any cost. Yuna’s crown will not be a collar. Taeyang’s wrath will not be turned into a leash. If the King tries to sever, I cut his hand. If the court tries to shame, I show them a better fear. If anyone dares to name love a mistake, I will teach them another word.”
He closes his eyes.
“Say the last part.”
“Come back to me,” I whisper. “Whole. Or we will be whole together in the way we know how—stitch by stitch, scar by scar.”
“Deal,” he says, and it sounds like an oath I’ll hold him to.
The shadows around us stir—Minji’s brisk footfalls, Jisoo’s voice low and sharp, the distant thrum of an army getting into the shape that meanshurt something else before it hurts us.We let the slow turn of our bodies stop at the edge of the moon-square. He doesn’t let go of my hand. I don’t let go of his.
“One more thing,” he says, almost shy.
“Mm?”
“Dance with me again when this is over,” he says. “Somewhere ugly. Somewhere honest.”
I huff.
“A rooftop with rusty railings. A bar with chipped glasses. A kitchen floor.”
“Yes,” he says, eyes brightening. “Bare feet. Bad music. You, laughing.”
“Not if you step on me,” I warn.
“I’ll be careful,” he promises, and it’s the kind of promise that fits inside armor without breaking it.
We turn toward the dark where duty waits. I slide my palm down his forearm and squeeze once at his wrist where the red thread lies. He mirrors me. The knot bites just enough to remember.
As we start walking, he says the thing that will live in me when the night tries to be too big:
“Whatever the King takes, he doesn’t get to take our choosing.”
I nod.
“Then we choose them,” I say, and it steadies us both.
Last dance before the war,I think as the moon-square falls behind us.Then we teach the world the steps it tried to forget.
To Kill or to Love
Taeyang
War doesn’t arrive. It wakes—like something that was always in the room.
Dawn never breaks over the northern ridge; it stains. Smoke drifts low across the valley in ribbons the color of old bruises. The grass is wet with dew and oil and the copper breath of what’s coming. Rheon stands to my left, shadow caged tight, a storm with its teeth bared behind glass. Seori’s braid is a blade down her spine, calm as a whetstone. Jisoo is a dark outline on a shattered column, eyes turned to the wind as if he can read treachery like scripture. Minji’s signals flicker through the ranks—two fingers, palm flat, then the quick cross at her throat:now.
I taste the bond before I feel it. Honeysuckle and storm, dull under the ward, stubborn under everything that wants to smother it. I don’t look at the palace. I don’t have to. She’s there, somewhere above banners and balcony, hands on a rail that thinks it’s a leash, watching me like she’s trying to memorize a man the world keeps trying to unwrite.
“Breathe,” I tell the part of me that only answers to her name. “One breath away.”
The uncles arrive like a lesson the world never learned. Three riders from the north line, silhouettes through the smoke: Garran Korr, the one with the iron-ice eyes and a voice that could split bone; Vorren Korr, priest of the furnace, ash stitched into his tongue; and Daesin Korr, smiling like he gets paid to.
