“You will regret this.”
“Already do,” I say. “But not for the reasons you hope.”
Kaelen shifts his grip on the chain and goes very still, like a man remembering every oath he ever took and choosing which ones to keep. He doesn’t look at me, but I feel the weight of what he’s offering:Make this real. I’ll bear it.
“We found the peace-cup,” Rheon says, voice scraping like flint on bone. “Laced with inclination. We found the brand you fed with old law. We heard you call him ‘dog’ with a smile.”
Jisoo tilts his head, wing feathering the floor.
“We also watched him put a blade in the one person who could have savedyoufrom yourself,” he says, almost gentle. “Congratulations, Majesty. You finally made a weapon sharp enough to cut you.”
My father’s eyes flick to Taeyang—slow contempt curdling into interest.
“Look how easily he breaks.”
Taeyang doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t snarl. He only lifts our joined hands to his mouth and presses his lips to the back of my fingers like he’s learned a new way to pray. The crescent over his heart glows faintly under the torn shirt, pulsing in time with the half-moon beneath my bandage.
I step forward. The room inhales.
“By bloom and briar,” I say, and the vines overhead open white, flooding the air with frost-sweet perfume, “by river and stone, by the will of the realm and the weight of its eyes—hear me.”
The light bowls rise a fraction, as if to listen.
“Yuna,” my father warns, and for the first time the word sounds like a plea and not a correction.
“I loved you,” I say. Truth first. Always. “As a girl loves the door she must pass through to reach the sky. I love you still—as a woman loves a mountain that taught her muscles she did not want but uses anyway.”
Tears burn. I let them. I will not give him the dignity of my silence.
“But enough is enough.”
The chain smokes in Kaelen’s hands. The air grows cold enough to chime.
“You used guest-right like a noose,” I continue, “and bound a man’s grief to your will. You called it order. You called it mercy. You called it mine.” My voice thins, then steadies. “It isn’t.”
He tries for hauteur and finds only habit.
“You would cast out your father for ademon?”
I look back at Taeyang. He’s watching me like I invented the horizon. The bond hums—low, stubborn,ours.
“I would cast out anyone who tries to make love a leash,” I say, turning to face the man who taught me to keep my voice even. “Even you.”
I lift my palm. The mark on my wrist flares bright, and the warding chain that used to call medaughterhisses and falls away from the bedrail like it has finally admitted what it is: a lie I won’t wear.
“I am not proof,” I say. “I am purpose.”
I speak the old words—the ones the Crown taught me in secret and told me were ceremony, not power. The ones the land remembers differently.
“By the right of First Bloom,” I pronounce, voice steady, “by the breath of the Court, by the consent of the realm that answers my name—I claim the crown.”
The vines erupt. Every lantern bows. Power laces up through the soles of my feet—cold river, hot sun, the smell of rain on stone—and slots into bone like a long-denied key finally finding its lock.
My father takes one involuntary step back.
“Yuna,” he tries again, softer. “Don’t—”
“Enough.” I lift my gaze and let him see how tired I am of being small. “For treachery against your own blood, for the binding of a guest under false rite, for the attempt to turn this Court into a weapon that murders its children, I name you guilty.”
