“Together,” Yuna whispers, leaning into Taeyang’s chest like home.
Jisoo’s hand grazes my elbow as we turn. It’s nothing. It’s everything. I don’t look at him. I don’t need to. We move—through shadow, through ash, through a story that tried to endwithout asking us first. I don’t count heartbeats anymore. I carry them.
Not without her. Not withoutanyof us.
Cracked But Still Breathing
Yuna
The infirmary smells like moon mint and iron.
Light pools in bowls along the walls, soft as breath. Healers move like good ghosts—quiet, exact, unstartled by blood. A lattice of living vines curls over the ceiling like a second sky, blooming and withering in time with my pain. Every so often the world sways, and I realize it isn’t the room—it’sus. Two pulses trying to learn the same song.
Taeyang sits at my side like a vow in a body. One hand cups the bandage over my sternum; the other holds my fingers as if they’re a ledge and he hasn’t finished falling yet. His thumbs keep finding the ribbon at my wrist—violet against dried blood—then resting there, like the color itself is a thing that can keep me.
“I’m here,” I tell him, because sometimes the truth needs practice.
“I know,” he says, and his voice breaks on theo. “I keep counting and it’s still true.”
Seori stands at the foot of the cot, blade cleaned, eyes rimmed red and steady anyway. Rheon has shadowed the doorway so the world has to ask permission to come in. Minji leans against the next bed with ink-stained knuckles and a face that saysdon’t you dare be brave without me.Jisoo’s wing tips drag, bandaged and stubborn.
The door bangs.
Kaelen enters with a sound I’ve never heard him make: a grunt with blood in it. He is spattered, breathing hard, gauntlets scored. In his hands, a chain of star-silver and ivy-iron that smokes where it kisses skin.
My father is on the other end of it.
The King looks smaller without a balcony. Not broken—just revealed. His crown is gone, his hair clotted to his forehead, his mouth a righteous line that used to teach me how to be small enough to survive.
“Highness,” Kaelen says. He doesn’t kneel. He doesn’t look away. The seal-scar on his palm is raw where the chain rubbed. “As requested.”
I have never loved him more or understood him less. The healers pause as if the air changed temperature. Seori’s fingers feather toward her blade; Rheon’s shadow tightens until the room is a held breath.
“Remove his weapons,” I say.
“He brought none,” Kaelen answers. His voice is hoarse but steady. “He broughtorders.”
I sit up. The stitches pull; my vision whites at the edges. Taeyang’s hands are immediately there—one at my back, one braced under my ribs—ready to pick me up or hold me down.
“Let me,” I whisper.
He nods, knuckles white, and eases away just enough to let me stand. The two of us sway together, the bond correcting for gravity like a new tide.
My father takes me in—the pallor, the bandage, the way Taeyang’s touch steadies my breathing—and smiles a little.
“So dramatic,” he says. “All this for a lesson you should have learned young.”
“You taught me,” I say, and my voice is calm enough to scare me, “that appearances matter more than mercy. That order is kinder than love because it does not need permission. Today I learned which of us was wrong.”
He lifts his chin.
“You broke ward and oath. You chose a beast over your blood. This court watched you make yourself into a story the realm will not forgive.”
From the cot, Minji snorts softly.
“Funny. I thought we were watching you try to murder your daughter with another man’s hand.”
The King looks past her like she’s furniture and fixes on me.
