For a heartbeat his eyes werehis—wrecked, desperate, finding me like the only star left. Then the leash bit down.
His gaze slid past recognition into vacancy, a furnace door slamming shut. Heat detonated off his skin; the air warped. His hand shot up and crushed my wrist—not cruel, justabsolute.Instinct sent light racing down my arm; the ward I flung between us shrieked and shattered like thin ice.
“Taeyang— it’s me.” I barely got the words out before he moved.
He didn’t strike like a lover forgetting himself. He struck like a story that had been told too many times to end any other way.
Steel hissed. I twisted. The blade parted the air where my throat had been and cut a clean line through my shawl. I stumbled, caught the ground, forced power into the vines beneath the mud—roots rose to snare his boots, toslow, toask. He tore free. Every breath he took made the world flinch.
“Wrathborn!” Rheon’s voice, close, steady, anchoring. “Eyes. On me.”
“Stay with us,” Seori called, the command shaped like a hand held out in the dark.
He didn’t hear them.
He came formovement. Forthreat. For me.
I pulled the last of the ampoule’s dawn-light through my veins; it seared my palm and leapt for him again—seeking the crooked gravity the King had carved. For a flicker, the rune beneath his sternum screamed andbuckled. His step hitched.
“Taeyang, please.” I took the chance, stepped in close, pressed my marked palm to the heat-livid skin over his heart. “Hear me. I’m here.”
His jaw locked. The corner of his mouth twitched—pain or recognition, I couldn’t tell. Then, far across the churn, Daesin’s ruin of a mouth shaped a word that rang like a cracked bell.
The leash yanked.
He roared—not a sound, aweather—and the cage of shadow Rheon had thrown around him sheared in two. Light went colorless. My bones hummed with it. His blade came up in a clean, merciless line that would have ended anyone who wasn’t already falling in love with the ending.
I met him.
I met him with everything we hadn’t been allowed to say in rooms that called love treason. Ribbon-hot, mark-bright, I called the bond the way Seori taught me to pray—like a door, not a plea.
“One breath away,” I said, voice shaking, “come back to me.”
Heat slammed my palm. His markanswered—a brand going nova under my hand. His eyes flared—amber, lucid,there—and I saw the man I’d made my vows for claw his way to the surface.
It was a heartbeat too late.
Momentum doesn’t keep our promises. His body had already chosen the arc that made sense to a ruin. Steel kissed my armor, found the seam beneath the moonstone collar, and slid home with horrifying grace.
Shock is a white flower opening. Quiet. Blinding.
The world narrowed to his hands on me—one still fisted in my shawl, the other wrenching back as if he could take the bladewith it and leave me whole. The heat fled him in a wave; the light guttered; wrath blew out like a candle in rain.
His eyes—gods—his eyes.
“Yuna.” The way he said my name sounded like the first time a man realizes he has a throat to weep with.
Air came ragged. Pain bloomed like starlight behind my ribs—beautiful, unasked for. I found his face with my shaking hand; his skin was fire and ash andhome.
“Thank goodness you’re back,” I whispered, and managed a smile, small and defiant, because even now I would not let the King have the last beautiful thing.
Everything happened at once.
Rheon’s roar split the valley; shadow crashed down, a wall between us and the world. Seori wasthere, blade to Daesin’s throat, a promise of silence for any more bells he might try to ring. Jisoo dropped like judgment, wings flaring wide to break arrow-rain, his hands already moving to staunch what couldn’t beundonebut might besurvived. Minji’s whistle cut the smoke—sharp, surgical—calling routes, callinghelp, callingnow.
Above us, the balcony exploded into shouts. The King surged to the rail, crown askew, fury finally cracking the porcelain of his face. Kaelen held his ground with a blade that shook, buying breaths with blood.
Taeyang’s sword clanged out of his hand. He caught me as if I were the only thing keeping the world from falling off its axis.
