Her thumb traces the line of my jaw, clumsy and perfect. “And, Taeyang… I love you.”
The words hit like arrows and become wings. I am not a man who cries. I am a man who was taught fire instead of water. But my eyes burn anyway, and the tears come hot and humiliating and holy, and I don’t know where to put my hands excepton her,gentle, like learning.
“I—” The first answer tangles. I try again, raw. “I love you. I love you, and I will spend the rest of my life making that sentence meansafe.”
A sob gets out before I can hide it. It sounds like a boy who wasn’t allowed to need anything making up for lost time.
“Rheon, more shadow,” Jisoo snaps. “Seori—hold him steady.” Minji’s knees hit mud across from me; she slides a vial to Jisoo, eyes bright and furious. “Drink this,” he orders Yuna, lifting her carefully. She swallows, coughs, swallows again. The ward flares, flickers, holds.
Above us, the balcony erupts—guards, shouting, the King’s voice a blade thrown at a daughter who won’t be small. Kaelen’s steel sings defiance. The world keeps insisting on being a war. I only have room for a person.
“Yun,” I beg, the way a man prays after he’s seen the god and asked it to be human. “Stay. Please.”
She smiles like the sky broke just to let one star through. Her hand slips from my cheek to my mouth, hushes me without force.
“Shh,” she murmurs, lashes lowering. “It’s all right.”
Her fingers loosen.
Her hand drops.
I break.
The sound that leaves me isn’t wrath. It’s the quiet after, torn open. I fold over her, shoulder shaking, nose in her hair, tasting salt and iron and a garden that promised forgiveness and kept it anyway.
“Don’t take her,” I tell whatever listens. “Take the burn. Take the leash. Take my name. Leaveher.”
Jisoo’s seal glows brighter, then steadies.
“She’s fading and fast,” he grinds out, sweat slick on his brow.
Rheon’s shadow seals the world smaller so the arrows can’t find us. Minji counts under her breath—routes, supplies, lies to tell death so it will wait its turn.
I kiss Yuna’s knuckles, one by one, and lay my cheek to her palm as if it can teach me how to be gentler than fire.
“Shatter me slowly,” I whisper to her, to me, to the old house that built my bones wrong, “as long as I can build again where you can live.”
I don’t lift my head. I don’t wipe my face. I hold. I breathe for both of us. I sayI love youinto her skin like it’s a ward and a weapon and a vow, and I promise the world that if it wants the rest of me it will have to learn the cost of touching what is mine.
The Battle of Ashen Vale
Rheon
Ashen Vale earns its name as you live through it.
The smoke doesn’t rise; ithangs, a gray ceiling pressed low enough to buckle a spine. War thins sound into needles. Shadow wants to answer everything with teeth. I keep it leashed because the one thing shadow can’t do is carry someone back.
We make a small world around Yuna.
Jisoo’s knees hit mud hard enough to bruise a stone; his seal flares and steadies. Minji’s voice counts like a drum that refusesto be out-marched. Seori is a line of blade and breath at my shoulder. And Taeyang—gods—Taeyang is on the ground with Yuna in his lap, both hands bloody at her breast, whisperingstayas if the word could be taught to a wound.
Then I feel it. Not air. Not heat. A leaving. A pale gold slips from Yuna’s mouth like fog from a winter river—delicate, veined with violet, carrying the scent of honeysuckle and rain on stone. Souls always look like themselves. This one looks stubborn. It looks loved.
“Seori,” I say, because she sees it too. We always see. It’s what the Under keeps of us: the sight no crown can polish away.
Her eyes go sharp.
“Tether?”
