That night, the tavern boiled with noise—heat rolling off sweat-slick bodies, smoke curling through rafters black with war stories and lost bets. Laughter cracked like thunder, voices crashing together in a storm of post-festival joy and post-battle violence, fists pounding battered tables, stools skidding beneath booted feet. Outside, early winter clawed at the shutters with crooked fingers. Inside, the heat was suffocating.
Haneul perched on a bench too wide for his slight frame, knees pulled up, arms locked tight, shoulders drawn to sharp points beneath blue-and-gold silk and battered leather. He tried to disappear, but the clan’s joy was a riptide he could never escape.
His brothers were wolves tonight—shirtless, scarred, roaring, spilling broth and soju, betting on who bore the deepest wound, whose magic could split the city gates. Not one could match Haneul’s body count, and not one let him forget it.
“Oi, Little Snowdrop!” Gwan bellowed, a grin cracking his broken nose. “You freeze the Fire King’s cock off or just sing him a lullaby with that pretty little mouth of yours?”
“Didn’t he say the Fire King moaned?” Jeong jeered, eyes full of mischief. “Was it ‘hghkk—!’ or was that you, Skyboy?”
“Probably both of them!” another howled. “Oh, Seungho, your cock’s too warm, let me—”
“I’M GOING TO MURDER ALL OF YOU,” Haneul snapped, voice slicing the table in half. His cheeks flushed pink, eyes glassy with too much drink and not enough sleep. The soju bottle beside his elbow was nearly empty—he never remembered who filled it, only that it kept refilling.
“Then stop making that face,” someone jeered. “Like a virgin who saw a cock for the first time.”
A chopstick whistled across the table, bouncing off a forehead. Haneul swayed, vision doubling for a heartbeat, fingers clawing at the edge of the table. Everything felt loud, light, wrong. He tried to focus on the chaos—on the security of rough bodies pressing close—but his mind kept slipping.
Back to the forest. The fire. The impossible, infuriating king.
The scent of him—smoke and cypress and molten metal. The voice pressed to his throat, the weight, the threat, the promise. Say it, or I’ll fucking make you—
He shoved the memory away, too hard, and the world spun. He exhaled, slow and shaky, but the warmth wouldn’t leave his bones. Even the frost in his veins felt thin and weak.
“Someone get him broth,” a voice muttered, a hand landing on his back—warm, heavy, too much. “He’s gonna pass out.”
“I’m fine,” Haneul hissed, slurring the words. “Always fine.”
He wasn’t fine. He felt it—a presence, a pressure, someone watching. He blinked at the back of the tavern, where a stranger sat alone, face shadowed beneath a hood, not drinking, not speaking, just… watching.
Watching him.
He blinked again. The shadow was gone.
His heart hammered. The tavern door slammed behind him,wind blasting in, half-freezing the sweat on his brow. He staggered out, boots slipping on packed slush, running, half-falling toward the crooked row of trees behind the latrines—where only wolves and men in disgrace went to retch.
He gripped a trunk, shoulders heaving, hands digging into the bark. Soju, eel, pride—everything came up in violent waves, leaving him shaking and hollow. When it was over, he scooped snow with both hands, shoved it into his mouth, let the cold numb his tongue, tried to freeze the shame.
Still on his knees, he groaned, voice raw and pitiful. “F-fuck… gotta… barracks…”
But the snow was soft, the sky a bowl of ancient gods wheeling overhead, and the cold was clean. For a heartbeat, he let himself be small. Let himself breathe.
Then he felt it—heat rolling over his spine, a pressure that wasn’t wind, a silence that wasn’t safety.
No footsteps. No warning. Just presence.
He turned—too slow.
Seungho was there.
Leaning against a tree, arms folded, cloak drawn around his massive frame, face half-shadowed but eyes crimson and burning, hungry, watching Haneul like a wolf that had finally found prey worth hunting.
“I liked the part where you threw up,” Seungho drawled, voice soft as fur, deadly as steel. “Really makes your reputation shine.”
Rage and panic knotted in Haneul’s stomach. “What the fuck—how did you—?”
“I always find what I want,” the king murmured, boots crunching closer.
Haneul tried to scramble up, but his legs wouldn’t work, his magic wouldn’t answer. The world was spinning, and Seungho crouched in front of him, not touching, just watching. The scent of fire and pine tar was thick in the snow, wrong and right all at once.
