“Minji.” Jisoo’s voice—close, careful. He’s behind me, one wing half-spread like a shield he forgot to fold. I feel heat ghost my neck where feathers brushed me a moment ago to keep an arrow from learning my name. My mark—the one I refuse to look at for too long—flares hot and then settles. Later. Not now.
I turn back to the only two faces that have ever been my map. The world loves to rename us; we refused long enough that it started to stick. We survived childhood, and secrets, and night after night of training rooms that taught us to be neat with the way we hurt. But this—this almost—stripped the paint off every story where we pretend tears are optional.
I take Yuna’s hand in both of mine. “Listen to me,” I say, and I don’t bother sanding the raw edges down. “We’re not doing anything without you. Not war. Not peace. Not coffee. We stick. You promised me once on a rooftop we’d make it to thirty just to spite the Guild’s actuarial tables.”
“That sounds like me,” she whispers.
“It was,” I say fiercely. “Keep your promises.”
Her eyes wet. “Okay.”
“Good.” I press our knuckles to my mouth like prayer. “And you—” I look at Seori. “No more lone-queen decisions without telling me.”
She winces, caught.
“I told you with my face.”
“Use your mouth next time,” I snap, which is our language forI love you so much it hurts my ribs. She leans her forehead to mine, and when she pulls back I can breathe without counting again.
Behind us, Rheon is already turning to face the balcony—jaw set, shadow taut. The King’s voice scrapes the air, nasty with a fear he was sure other people were supposed to feel. Somewhere in the smoke, the uncles who didn’t learn enough are regrouping. The Vale hasn’t finished trying to earn its name.
But for a slivered instant the three of us bend the world small enough to hold.
“Say it,” Yuna whispers, and I know whichitshe means because some spells need witness and some promises refuse to be quiet.
“Not without her,” I tell Seori, chin high, and then turn back to Yuna. “Not withoutyou. I don’t take another step that doesn’t have your shadow in it. Understood?”
Yuna’s answer is a breath that feels like a yes. Seori’s is a nod that looks like a vow.
Taeyang shifts, uncertain, like a man who’s afraid to tread across something sacred. He needn’t be. I reach out and flick his sleeve with two fingers—the Minji version of a benediction.
“You get to stay,” I inform him. “But if you ever make me watch that again, I’m inventing a curse you can’t fight.”
He swallows, eyes glassing. “Fair.”
“Good boy,” I say, and it almost makes him smile.
Jisoo clears his throat.
“We have to move,” he says, voice back to blade, but softer at the edges. “The balcony isn’t going to forgive us for long.”
“Routes?” Rheon asks without looking over; the world is already big around him again.
I take a breath and wipe my face with the heel of my hand. Strategy is love in a language that doesn’t get poems—fine. I’ll be bilingual. “South breach is clogged,” I say, brain reassembling maps from memory and blood. “We take the colonnade. I’ll ghost the wards while Seori snarls the balcony. Jisoo, you carry Yuna. Taeyang—”
“I carry her,” he says, quiet and devastating.
I study him. The crescent over his heart glows faintly, pulsing in time with the one under Yuna’s bandage. He will be careful because whatever happens to her happens to him now, and I don’t have the vocabulary to mock that without crying again.
“Fine,” I say. “You carry her. But you listen tome.”
“I will,” he promises, and for once the world doesn’t twist a vow into a leash.
I look between the two people who taught me how to be brave out loud and the one who taught me how to weaponize an apology, and I let the last of the fear bleed out of my knees.
“Okay,” I say, blowing out a breath. “We go together.”
“Together,” Seori echoes.
