“I’ll do my best.” Ethan claps him on the shoulder, grinning back at him.
I honestly can’t get enough of the bromance between these two. I’m so happy they have each other.
Then Jihun turns to me and bows, a fist over his heart. “My queen.”
I had his loyalty before I became the queen, but now he has sworn his allegiance to me. I was grateful then, and I am grateful now.
“Thank you.” My chest aches, and I hold my breath without realizing it. Jihun clicks his tongue and wraps his arms around me. I exhale and say in a tremulous voice, “For everything.”
“Be safe.” He gently sets me away from him.
Cheyun and Minju take turns hugging me and Hailey. Even Bora hugs me. I hate goodbyes, but I linger over this one. I am definitely stalling.
Fuck this.
I have a long way to go till the finish line. I can only jump one hurdle at a time.
“Let’s get on with it.” I work my features into a bad-tempered scowl, but Ethan looks at me like I’m the cutest thing and kisses the tip of my nose. And I further undermine my badassery by making heart eyes at him. I catch myself and clear my throat. “How far is purgatory, Gyun?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s far at all,” he says enigmatically, then turns to Hailey. “Are you all right?”
She’s chugging water straight from the teapot, hydrating in preparation for expending herjeoseungsajapowers. Generating all that creepy fog around her really wrings her dry.
“Mm-hmm.” She pulls the spout out of her mouth. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” The judge looks so bemused that I have to bite my lips not to cackle. With a sharp shake of his head, he holds his arms out to me and Ethan. “Your Majesties.”
My husband obliges without hesitation and seems perfectly at ease when Gyun wraps a beefy arm around his waist. Ethan has never been prone to masculine posturing—males with true confidence generally don’t bother with that nonsense.
I have no idea why, but I salute the Queen of Sky and the King of Underworld—probably because I didn’t get to hug them goodbye—then step into Gyun’s free arm. From the judge’s other side, Ethan catches my gaze and mouths,I love you.And like a sap, I mouth back,I love you too.
Ignoring our admittedly cringy exchange, Gyun nods at Hailey, and she promptly switches to her grim reaper mode.
Her skin leaches of color, her eyes glow red, and her hair floats around her like sinister shadows. Then she rises off the floor on a cloud of icy fog. Her transformation is so fast and so sudden that I can’t hold back my horror-queen scream. I clap a hand over my mouth and squeeze my eyes shut.
“Here we go,” the Judge of Tenth Hell says.
We levitate into the air, then that eerie sensation of not existing shrouds me. I would shudder if I could feel my body.
“We’re here.” Gyun drops his arm from my waist.
“How?” I open my eyes and take in my surroundings. “Even moving through the Kingdom of Underworld took longer than this. And if we’re really here, then why do I still feel ... unreal?”
Wearesomewhere, though, because I’m standing on wood floors ... in a large room ... I stumble back half a step. It’s the audience hall at the Celestial Palace.
But everything looks faded and washed out—nearly transparent. And there isn’t anyone here but us. Our friends, who had just been surrounding us, are gone.
I don’t like this.
“Thisis purgatory?” Ethan spins in a slow circle. “And I agree with Sunny. I still feel like I’m fading away. My consciousness is intact, and I’m still me, but I don’t feel ... alive.”
“That’s because purgatory is the in-between place dividing life and death,” Hailey explains, back to her beautiful self. I breathe a sigh of relief.At least there’s that.“This is where souls who lose their way come.”
“Like the stranded?” I flip my hands back and forth to make sure I’m not as see-through as I feel.
“No.” Gyun motions for us to follow him out of the audience hall. “The stranded are truly dead. Theirhanmerely holds them back from moving on to their next life. Whereas the souls here are neither dead nor alive.”
“How does that happen?” Ethan asks.
