“No—no—Yun,no.” He was all gravel and thunder, the kind that learns how to beg. “Stay. Please. Stay.”
The bond burned violet and gold between us—pain and promise braided tight. I felt it try to knit what the blade had unstitched. I felt itfightfor us the way we had learned to fight for it.
My vision haloed. The garden tilted. He pressed his forehead to mine like he could breathe me back in.
“I’m here,” I told him, because I could still choose the shape of our last words, whether or not they would be last. “I’m here.”
And then the light folded, the sound thinned, and the war became a blur around the center we made—his hands, my breath, our vow—while the world decided, very slowly and very loudly, whether it would let love live.
If You Die, I Die
Taeyang
I don’t feel the sword leave my hand. I only feel her leaving me. Yuna folds forward with a soft, surprised breath and I am already there, catching her before the ground can learn her name. Heat rips out of me in a rush—wrath blowing itself to ash—until the valley is only cold and the sound of my own heart failing to keep up.
“Yun,” I choke, lowering us to the churned earth. “No—no—stay with me. Look at me.”
Her lashes tremble. She finds my face like she’s been navigating by it all her life. There’s pain in her eyes, yes—but there’s something else I don’t deserve: relief.
“Thank goodness you’re back,” she whispers again, weaker, and the fact that she uses her breath to comfort me is the cruelest mercy I’ve ever been given.
“Pressed seal—now!” Jisoo hits the ground hard beside us, wings flaring to shatter arrow-rain. His hands are already moving, quick and clean. Seori’s shadow cleaves the air; Rheon throws night over us like a cloak; Minji’s whistle carves routes, turning chaos into a map with teeth.
I press my palm over the wound and feel the heat and the slick and the prayer of not too late. My hands won’t stop shaking. I’m afraid to speak because everything I say will just besorryand that isn’t a tourniquet.
“Hold.” Jisoo’s voice is all blade. He slaps a warding seal against Yuna’s skin; wax flashes, catches. “Breathe for me, Princess.”
She tries. The breath stutters. The chain mark at her wrist is gone; the ribbon I tied there peeks purple under blood, stubborn and small. I cradle her head in my palm and bow my forehead to hers like I can trade my life through skin.
“Please,” I say, and the word scrapes. “Please stay. Take me instead. Take the whole of me and leave her.”
“Taeyang.” Seori’s hand lands firm on my shoulder, an anchor disguised as touch. “We’re here. Don’t go under.”
I nod, but I’m already drowning.
Yuna’s fingers climb my cheek, shaking, and I lean into them like absolution might be learned.
“It’s okay,” she breathes.
“It isn’t.” The truth breaks out of me. “I hurt you. I—”
“It isn’t you,” she says, and somehow she’s still the one making room for me in a world that doesn’t. “And even if it were… I choose you anyway.”
My vision blurs.
“Don’t say brave things when you need your breath.”
“I have enough for one more.” Her mouth tilts—small, defiant. “For the thing I should have said before the balcony, before the garden, before everything that tried to make us small.”
Jisoo presses harder; the seal hisses.
“Hold pressure—good—Minji, tincture—now.”
Yuna tips her face to mine, finds my eyes, and gives me the only crown I will ever let touch me.
“I forgive you,” she whispers.
Something in my chest cracks down the middle and light pours through.
