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CHAPTER FIFTEEN–The Boy Who Would Not Bow
Across the mountain, morning did not break; it scraped itself bloody against the slate horizon, a thin, glacial dawn leaking through the slats of the ice clan barracks. No sunlight here, only the hard, mineral cold, the stink of sweat and boot-leather, the long groan of beams strained by too many winters.
The clan’s warriors sprawled in loose knots across the stone floor, heads bowed over breakfast—rice gone cold, broth thin as rainwater, jokes falling flat as knives. Haneul’s absence hung like a curse. Not one dared mention his name above a mutter, and when they did, it was with a snort, a forced laugh, a sidelong look that meant danger.
Jeong nursed a swollen jaw by the stove, muttering. Gwan sharpened his blade, but his hands shook. The jokes had stopped sometime after midnight—after the youngest brother had woken the barracks screaming, “Haneul’s gone for good. He’s with the Fire King… He will never come back”
Those words had spread like wildfire through dry grass. The news traveled fast: not a secret, but a wound.
And now commander Baek, —stood at the head of the room. His boots struck the stone in measured, deliberate paces, every step a threat. His eyes blazed—not with magic, but with something uglier. Possession. Fury. The old fear that no weapon stays loyal once it learns the taste of freedom.
He spat, voice cold enough to freeze the steam rising from a dozen bowls:
“So. Our little snow demon thinks himself clever. Runs off in the night—again. But not to the wolves, not to his precious fucking sky. No. This time, he went to him.. and he is not coming back… huh?”
Baek’s lip curled on the last word, as if Seungho’s very idea was poison.
“Boy-whore,” he sneered, a slur so old it was brittle, so false it rang with the desperate anger of a man who’d lost something sacred and doesn’t know what to do but break it.
The youngest brother, voice trembling, tried to joke—“Not a whore, commander, he doesn’t even know how to—” but the commander’s fist crashed down, bowl shattering, silence recoiling through the barracks.
“No more jokes.” The words hung in the frozen air, knife-edged, final. “No more legends. He is ours. And he will be broken for this shame.”
Jeong raised his head, bruised, resentful. “He never asked to be ours.”
Baek’s voice dropped, low and dangerous:
“That’s what makes him dangerous.”
Gwan muttered, not looking up, “The Fire King’s probably already bedded him. Got him wrapped up in fire silk and gold, feeding him sweet tea and lies—”
“Enough.” Baek’s glare could flay a man. He turned to the window, the thin morning light clawing at the frost on the glass. “We will not let this stand. The truce is thin. The clans will laugh. The old alliances will crack if the weapon we forged turns traitor.”
Acolder fear swept the room—old soldiers remembering winters without food, years when war was survival, not glory. They stared at their commander, waiting for a command they could obey, a punishment that might heal their own sense of loss.
Baek bared his teeth, wolf-mean, feral. “He will crawl back. They always do. And when he does—we’ll remind him who he belongs to.”
Someone at the back spat in the straw, voice full of sick envy: “Maybe he’ll come back with fire in his blood, all melted and soft, and then what?”
Baek’s hand curled around the hilt of his sword.
“Then I’ll cut out the weakness myself.”
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“Oh…” Haneul murmured, holding the robe aloft, fingertips trailing over the luminous sky-blue silk with the wary reverence of someone inspecting a weapon, or a miracle, or both. His eyes glittered with suspicion and awe. The grin that followed was the kind of thing that could fracture a god—sharp, feral, a flash of boyish pride and hunger all at once.
Then chaos: Haneul dove into the wardrobe like a thief in a god’s treasure hall. Underlayers, sashes, fine linen shirts, crimson coats—they all went flying, tossed with the contempt of a storm who’d never been taught to worship gold. He tried a pair of silk baji, only to find them puddle at his ankles. He yanked them up, rolled the waistband five times, and scowled over his shoulder.
“What are you—A GIANT?!”
Seungho, watching from the wall with arms folded, arched a brow—unhurried, enjoying every second of this dressing-room carnage. “You’ve seen me,” he answered dryly.
Haneul huffed, kicking at the air. “Do you have cotton belts? Leather belts? Anything to keep this shit on?!”
Without a word, Seungho crossed the room and handed him a folded white sash, as if he’d been waiting for this precise moment his entire life.
