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Save Me - Kim Taehyung ff [chap XV part II]

Synopsis: Two crowns are crumbling. One heir who won’t yield. And a bodyguard who stays just a little too close. In a world where masks fall faster than heads, he’ll have to decide who’s worth trusting —before everything falls apart. He wanted peace. He found war —and a bodyguard with more secrets than commands.

k.taehyung x f.oc

Words count : 26,4 k out of 36,2 k (HELP)

Genre : Kingdom AU, enemies to lovers, bodyguard x royalty, fluff, angst, smut, slow burn

Chap content : Strong language, war, violence (psychological + war battle), lots of weapons, blood, mention of side characters death (not too much and brief mentions but it's still a battlefield so it happens) lots of trauma, Taehyung is an idiot an a bit toxic I guess (but also very tortured so let's say that's okay) (I love writing imperfect and chaotic character blame's on me) LOTS of angst like BE READY, mention of betrayal, gunshot, trust issues, some magic shit on the side, lots of characters arguing, angst, angst, angst, minors dni !

Author note : Here's part 2 as promised :') Please let me know what you think of it !!

Taglist (open, don't hesitate to ask me): @calmyourtitts7 @toskaesuriennt @ohnothisnameisalreadytaken

Gentle reminder that all rights are reserved, so please do not copy, translate or repost my stories. Also I do not own BTS or their actions, the stories are entirely fictionnal and does not depict real-life events or involve any actual member of BTS.

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There was a time when I loved going into battle.

The excitement that made my fingers tremble. The intoxicating feeling of cold steel in my hand, the thunder of hooves against the earth. The pride of riding out with your men, knowing that coming back anything less than victorious was simply not an option.

I remember the day my father agreed to take me with him to the warring lands of Leohan and Usuryn —how I had screamed with joy. The memories of those days are among the ones I love and hate the most. And right now, they're all I can seem to recall.

Our army, taut with apprehension. Dust rising with every step, thick enough to swallow us whole, the ground so parched it had cracked like old skin. The horses pawing and shifting, impatient and unnerved all at once. And in the distance, ahead of us, a fortress to be taken.

Granted, the crumbling old tower lost in the Plains of Fire bears no real resemblance to the vast castle where the Usuryn royal family resides —but the idea is there.

Later, I understood that my father had chosen me as his companion on the Southern Lands purely as a lesson. To show me the lush, abundant kingdom of Leohan first —and then the harsh reality of life in Usuryn. There, people have one single purpose : to survive —whether through cunning or through force. Some would call them barbarians, others savages —but what I saw were men and women who simply wanted to protect what little they had, whatever the cost might be.

Taegeun and Jigeun don't talk much about it —but given the terror that flashes in their eyes whenever the subject comes up, the Brurian soldiers must be cut from the same cloth, if not worse. According to my father, they shouldn't exist —according to Jimin, they're cold, impassive creatures who follow orders to the letter. More organized, then, but also less autonomous, which makes them more predictable. I also allow myself to factor in the climate, which is hardly in their favor —I've never set foot on the Northern Lands, had never even suspected they existed, which only means they're far from the Irinian coasts, and therefore deep in the ice. That would certainly explain why Harin loved the cold winds so much —

Gallien's voice pulls me from my thoughts before the hollow in my chest has time to grow too deep. “I have a bad feeling about this.” His voice barely carries over the rumble of the horses, but I still catch the tremor beneath it, barely concealed.

I glance over my shoulder at the kid. Perched on a horse that was probably handed to him at random, the little redhead looks terrified. Honestly, I don't even understand what he's doing here —he would have been better off waiting back at camp for us to return with those bastards' heads. But for reasons beyond me, he insisted on coming.

Beneath the cloth covering my nose and mouth, I set my jaw. If anything happens to him, I'm locking him in the Capital's stables for the rest of his days. “You can still turn back,” I say without looking at him, eyes fixed on our target straight ahead.

I catch him lifting his head from the corner of my eye —while Jimin, wearing the same makeshift mask as me on my left, barely reacts. His eyes are narrowed against the dust swirling in thick eddies around us, but it's the purest determination I've ever seen that burns in them as he keeps his gaze locked ahead. On his goal. Our goal —the Tower.

Within a few hours, I swear it will fall —and I'll tear it down with my own hands if I have to.

Under me, Xylos snorts and surges forward, throwing every ounce of herself into closing the distance between us and that damned tower, as though she can feel, just as keenly as every soldier around us, what this battle truly means.

This isn't only about avenging a betrayal —it's about saving our two Kingdoms from a dark future.

“No,” Gallien finally answers, shaking his head slowly through the cloud of dust. “I want to be there.”

His voice is so resolute, so certain and so unsteady all at once, that I fall silent for a moment. All I can think of are the great violet creatures —and the only thought that crosses my mind is that he's chosen a terrible moment to find his patriotism.

I don't get the chance to tell him so, though not even the time to open my mouth, or think of anything else. Because the tower is closer now, looming larger, and I can hear the sharp cry of an alarm horn cut through the air.

“Raise your weapons!” Saer and a Hestidian soldier shout, immediately answered by the hiss of dozens of swords sliding free of their scabbards.

The clean steel of my blade cuts bright against the dark fur of my coat, streaked with dirt where the dust has clung —but it doesn't stop me from gripping it harder than I ever have.

“For Hestidia!” Jigeun cries, answered by a perfectly unified chorus of soldiers.

“For Irinian!” My father's voice rings out, quickly swallowed by the cry of his men —and my own.

Before us, the old tower looms, so crumbling that a single blow against its walls seems like it would be enough to bring it down. And yet —behind my eyelids, a pair of hazel eyes looks back at me.

I push forward and raise my weapon as the tower is taken by storm. For Irinian.

I hear our attackers before I see them.

There’s no way you’d miss them, really —even without any training. As I'm dragged through a maze of corridors, the floor, the walls begin to shake, shouts ring out —thunderous— and then the blows.

With a violence unlike anything I've known.

A tremendous crash tears through the air —the great door is forced open, and judging by its size, it must have taken a good twenty men to get it to move. Then the screaming, as swords meet scythes and fists strike —unending, seething with fury— and reverberating inside my skull with terrifying force.

The Borenars are silent. Of course they are —they weren't trained to make noise. They are silent as they return blow for blow, silent as they cut through skin and skewer their enemies, silent as they are thrown into walls and crumble them to dust. Silent as they carry me away, not even letting my feet touch the ground in some last desperate attempt to flee —as silent as the tears that spill down my cheeks.

“Stop,” I can only manage in a broken whisper. “Please, stop…”

They don't listen. Whatever force had made them obey me just minutes ago is gone —replaced by a tide of desperation that could move a mountain to pity. But not them. Never them.

They weren't trained to take pity.

Taehui is nowhere in sight —even Eosu had vanished before they dragged me out of the great hall. That bastard fled the fight to go hide somewhere —waiting for the Borenars to do his dirty work and bring him the crown he won't hesitate to claim.

Maybe then he'll let me go. Or maybe he'll force me to watch as he tramples over their bodies to take the throne.

They drop me against a wall and let me crumple to the floor of a room I don't recognize. Not one of the black rooms, but not a bedroom either —just four walls draped in tapestries, and the foxes embroidered on them judging me without so much as blinking.

It's when the ice-cold hands release my arms and the two Borenars turn their backs to me that I understand. They're going to lock me in.

Nothing compares to the flash of panic that seizes me at the thought. I don't even know where it comes from, where the energy it lends me comes from —but suddenly I'm on my feet, as though struck by lightning. My left ankle screams, but I ignore the pain and reach out toward the looming violet figure —only to catch my feet in the torn hem of my dress, barely catching myself against the wall.

“Don't do this,” I beg, clenching my scraped fists against the thick tapestry, my tongue so thick and heavy I feel like I'm choking. “Please, I—”

The door falls shut with a soft whisper —so soft, and yet deafening as it crushes the last of my hope beyond repair.

I'm finished. This room has no way out and the door is far too solid for me to force. If I had my picks, I'd deal with the lock myself —but I have nothing, nothing but a tattered dress and a cut amethyst resting against my chest. I'm finished. All I can do is wait —wait for someone to come, whether to take my head or to save it.

I let myself sink to the floor, helpless. What good were all those years of training? How did I let things unravel this far?

Seated on the ground, my ankle throbs and swells before my eyes. Being locked in here has at least one advantage —I don't think I could run in this state ; let alone fight. So I wait, in silence, for my fate to fall.

At first, I manage it. Perhaps because of the tapestries, the room is strangely quiet compared to the chaos outside. I can barely hear anything —only the furious beating of my heart and a faint commotion beyond the walls.

Then it grows. The commotion swells —louder, rawer, so vivid to my ears that I can pick out each blow landed, each cry of rage and pain, like the rhythmic pulse of some terrible music. It builds, until I can feel the floor shudder beneath every footfall, until I can hear —can almost recognize— certain voices, until my mind begins to match faces to them.

This is no longer a commotion —it's a merciless storm, roaring louder than the blood pounding in my temples and the pain that steals my breath, each time a voice sounds just a little too much like the one I'm afraid to hear. A storm without limit, that makes me gasp as dark spots bloom at the edges of my vision. A storm that seems to deeply amuse the little voices in my head.

The ones that never stop reminding me of that cursed night.

I see my father's body on the floor. The pools of blood, as daggers flew and the people around me crumpled one by one. I feel again the panic, the raw terror that had flooded through me —that still floods through me when I think of it. I see Yoongi, doing his best to reassure me even as he couldn't keep the tears of fear from his own eyes.

And in the middle of all of it —of that storm of screams and tears and ragged breaths— a voice.

Just one. Clear, absolute, beyond question —and enough to shatter my world to pieces.

“Find me those bastards! I WANT THEM ALIVE!”

My heart stops. My gasping cuts off.

Taehyung.

He's shouting —loud enough for his men to hear him through the chaos— and all I can take from it is that he's here, close. So close.

Far too close.

His soft face, his dark eyes alive with light, superimpose themselves over Yoongi's terrified ones in my memory, overshadowed by thick plum-coloured cloaks and the empty eyes that peer from beneath their hoods. I see the blood again, the sharp blades —I see myself running, running, until my legs gave out, until I couldn't anymore.

I'm suffocating.

The walls close in. My vision blurs, so quickly that soon there's nothing left but endless darkness closing in around me. It's as though my throat has been sealed shut —no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to pull the smallest breath into my compressed lungs. I gasp, and gasp again, and nothing helps.

The embroidered foxes' eyes gleam as bright as scythe blades on untouched snow —and they never stop watching me. Not for a single second.

Before my eyes, the dark spots swell and multiply, until my field of vision narrows to a small, darkening circle. Air still refuses to fill my chest —and in my head, the voices find it all very amusing.

“King’s orders,” they seem to say —the only words I have ever truly seen them speak.

I need to get out of here. I need to do something —anything. Still gasping, starved of air for so long now that I can hear my pulse hammering in my temples as though my skull might implode if I don't get oxygen soon, I try as best I can to haul myself upright, to throw myself at the door —but my swollen ankle fails me.

I've barely found my footing when the pain in my left leg becomes unbearable —my knee buckles, and I have to grab the tapestry with both hands to keep from collapsing. But even that isn't enough —under my weight, the tapestry is wrenched free, sliding entirely from the rod where it had been hanging, near the ceiling —and suddenly, my colourless face is flooded with sunlight.

I'm blinded, dazzled as though I'd just been pulled from one of the black rooms, and it takes me far too long to understand what I'm actually looking at. The tapestry had been hiding a window.

A very small window —barely large enough for me to squeeze through, but enough if I contort myself. Flooded with a surge of hope, I manage to loosen my seized throat and draw a tiny breath —just enough to make me move, but too thin to allow for any real thinking.

I do the first thing that comes to mind.

Seizing the cut stone hanging at my chest, I scrape it hard against the stone floor, over and over —until small sparks begin to fly with each strike. I'm choking, coughing, but I don't stop —not until a spark larger than the rest lands on a corner of the tapestry and catches.

I throw myself at it —grab it and hurl it at the wooden door, somewhere between desperation and autopilot. Nose buried in the crook of my elbow, barely balanced on both feet, I squint past the dark spots crowding my vision to watch the door catch fire, until the hinges give and it swings open on its own with a thunderous crack.

On the other side, at the far end of the corridor, someone spots me. A King's soldier or a Borenar, I can't tell —all I see is a shadow lurching toward me, and my instincts screaming at me to run.

Then everything explodes.

The dust suspended in the air ignites —not unusual in a region this arid— and the force of the blast is so powerful that I'm hurled backwards with nothing I can do about it. Only, I'm not the only one thrown.

My back has barely struck it when the stone wall cracks, shuddering under the impact —the window glass shatters outward, sending a sudden rush of air howling through the gap, which doesn't help in the slightest. The old building can't withstand the force of the blow —the stone quite literally gives way beneath my weight.

I only have time to see a hand reaching toward me before I'm carried backwards, helpless. The blue sky fills my vision, clearer and more blinding than I have ever seen it. Back home, the sky was grey —or white, if we were lucky. I don't think Irinians ever truly realize how fortunate they are to see it like this almost every day.

The air that fills my lungs is clean, almost gentle —right before it's suddenly driven out of them as my back meets the ground. All I can do is watch that vast stretch of blue above me —and then my eyes close as everything goes dark.

My men are winning.

Of course they're winning, I almost want to say —they're my men, after all— but I had held such a vivid memory of the plum monsters that this outcome still strikes me as unreal. And yet, there it is.

We're winning.

The old tower I dared compare to the vast Usuryn fortress is nothing but a crumbling, ridiculous fort that seems to be begging to fall. Every blow sends stone cascading down in avalanches, and for all their menace, it only takes a handful of soldiers to bring one of the monsters to its knees in a matter of minutes. They seem slower than I remember —their scythes duller— and yet it wasn't so long ago that those same creatures had us surrounded at Ebonwick, forcing us to retreat. They were invincible then. Right now, they look almost like impostors, violet decoys set out to lure us in.

Just as my men finish off the last few monsters standing, an explosion tears through somewhere deep in the tower —shaking the building so violently that almost everyone staggers. Sword in hand, at the far end of the hall, Jimin spins around and finds my gaze, apprehension plain in his eyes.

Behind him, my father and Jigeun survey the scene —and if results like these should have put a smile on their faces —those terrifying violet monsters, cut down so easily !— they look anything but pleased.

“Something's wrong,” my father mutters under his breath, eyes fixed on a violet figure sprawled on the ground —right as Jimin shouts my name.

By some miracle, my reflexes get me turned around fast enough to parry the blow aimed at my back. I have to set my jaw and throw everything I have into holding it —the strike is that powerful— and even then, the curved tip of the scythe ends up barely inches from my face.

At the other end of the weapon, there are no eyes looking back at me from beneath the heavy violet hood.

The creature barely has time to pull back for another strike before Jimin appears at my side, a cry of rage tearing from him as he brings his weapon down across the side of the hood. He steps back, readies another blow —but he doesn't need to follow through. The monster has already crumpled before us.

As the battle still rages around us, we both stare at the plum garment —the thing we've spent so long associating with something unbeatable— lying on the floor. Felled so easily by a single strike.

The same violet monsters that, barely days ago at Ebonwick, had come within a breath of taking all of us —the same shadows Harin had struggled so hard to face. Had she been playing a part, then? Or, on the contrary, were the shadows…

“Your Highness!” A soldier comes barreling down a wide staircase, forehead slick with sweat, a dark bloodstain spreading across one shoulder. “They're trying to escape through the back!”

I exchange a glance with Jimin. The shadows in his eyes are in complete contradiction with the soldier's —bright, expectant, already tasting victory.

To him, this battle is easy. The easiest we've ever had to win.

To Jimin and me, it's too easy. And that simple realization weighs heavier than anything. For once, I'm in full agreement with my father —something is wrong.

But that doesn't change my objective.

“Go after them,” I order the soldier, who nods at once. “They are not slipping through our fingers.”

“There are many of them, Your Highness,” the soldier adds, as dozens of my men pour into the staircase behind him. “It might be wiser to cut straight to their commanders, to—”

“I said I want them alive,” I cut him off, teeth set. Jimin stiffens at my side, but says nothing. “I don't care how you manage it —I want those traitors breathing.”

The soldier nods, disappears into the staircase. The sounds of battle flare sharper, shouts ring out —and to my left, I can feel Jimin's gaze, heavier than it's ever been.

I don't return it.

Behind my eyelids, two hazel eyes still haunt me. I set my jaw.

Yes. I need them alive.

When my eyes snap open, it takes me a few seconds to understand what jolted me awake. Every part of my body screams as I try to sit up —burning with a pain that is somehow nowhere and everywhere at once. But that's not the worst of it.

The worst is the ground swaying beneath me no matter where I look. The dark spots blooming wider with every ragged breath. The pain splitting my skull, the high-pitched ringing shredding through my ears.

My palms are scraped raw when I push myself upright. My elbows, my shoulders too —every patch of skin my eyes can reach, really. My ankle is twisted at an angle that doesn't look right.

The sky above me is no longer blue. It's grey. A deep, threatening grey. One look at it, and I understand why I woke so suddenly.

The tower is on fire. The wall has been blown open —on the fourth or fifth floor, in the room where I was locked away— leaving nothing but a gaping hole through which I can see the flames roaring freely. The place is so old, the air so thick with dust that the fire devours everything in its path, unstoppable. In a matter of minutes, the building will be nothing but smoke —if it doesn't collapse first.

But above the relentless ringing drilling into my eardrums, there is a sound. A single note, sustained, unbroken. The unmistakable note of a horn blown without pause.

I go still —as much from the sound as from the searing pain radiating through my body. It's as if all my strength has drained out of me at once. I can't move a single muscle, no matter how loudly my mind screams at me to run. My legs don't have it in them.

And yet that's all my instincts are screaming as the clear, unrelenting note of the horn reaches my ears. Run. Run. Run.

A sharp whimper escapes me when I try to stand. My head is spinning so hard that it takes me several seconds to realize the sound is coming from me —and once I do, I clamp it shut behind gritted teeth. I need to go. Every part of me knows it.

So does the terrified little girl I thought I'd buried back in Bruria.

As my bloodied hands press into the dusty rubble around me and I drag myself back to my feet, it's her voice —while the sound of horns multiplies, draws closer, far too close— that murmurs the words I learned like a prayer. My only lifeline, once, when things went wrong.

If you hear footsteps in the corridors, hide in the gap under the mattress. If you hear the sound of scythes, close your eyes until I tell you to open them.

And if you hear the hunting horns —run with everything you have.

So that's what I do. I run —even though every step costs more than the last, even though my legs shake and buckle under my own weight. I run. I throw everything I have left toward the half-dismantled camp my exhausted eyes can just make out in the distance. If I can reach it, maybe I can steal a horse and get out of this hell.

I run. Even when my muscles scream. Even when I go down in the dust and haul myself back up, cheeks soaked, barely seeing straight. Even when the dark spots crowding my vision swell so large and loud that I can barely see anything at all.

Because through all of it, barely audible beneath the unchanging note of the horns, Hobi's voice plays on repeat in the hollow of my ear.

If you hear the hunting horns, run.

I'm on the verge of collapsing when luck finally finds me —in the form of a cluster of horses, still saddled, waiting. The knights' mounts. I nearly stumble at the sight. They must have left them here rather than risk losing them to the Borenars —I don't have to make it all the way to the camp. It's over. All I have to do is ride as far and as fast as I can—

My ragged, half-relieved sobs seem to catch the horses' attention. They lift their heads, turning toward me —and a white mare I know well lets out a soft whinny of recognition, stepping forward—

—Except she never gets the chance.

"NO!" I scream, voice shredded, as a scythe appears from nowhere and swings down hard. Xylos is smart, well-trained —she doesn't need my warning to sidestep, and the cluster of horses scatters in a burst of startled whinnying.

I crumple. Down on my knees in the dust as the curved blade buries itself into the ground as easily as if it were soft earth —right where the mare stood a fraction of a second before. I don't even have time to mourn it.

Visibly unsettled, Xylos holds her ground at a cautious distance —closer than the other horses, but still out of reach. She snorts, stamping the ground, deaf to my screams and tears begging her to get away.

She's still there when a skeletal hand emerges from the heavy plum fabric and wrenches the blade free, lifting it high. Still there when the Borenar advances, weapon raised, ready to strike.

And at that sight —that stubborn mare watching me, stamping her hoof like she's demanding I come home with her —the despair tips into something sharper. Fear, pure and cold fear.

"NO!" I scream again —and then I throw myself forward.

My skull and chest slam into something so hard it can only be stone —but through the pain, I lock my arms around that cold body, the smell of death closing in around me as I hold on like my life depends on it.

Everything happens in the span of a heartbeat. I scream, spend the last scrap of strength I have trying to pin the Borenar down —failing— eyes squeezed shut.

I always told myself that when the moment came, I would meet death with my eyes wide open and a smile on my lips. The truth is I'm too paralyzed to manage either.

The silence settles. Even the hunting horns have gone quiet. Everything is so still I could almost believe I was alone in the middle of the desert —but just as that thought begins to take hold, I'm wrenched out of it without mercy. A massive hand fists in my hair and yanks my head back.

A cry tears out of me —not loud enough to reach the fighters a few metres away— before cutting off as my back hits the ground. The air is driven from my lungs so fast I can't even gasp to get it back. My eyes fly wide open in pure panic —but the sight waiting for me is enough to make me forget I can't breathe.

The sky above me is not blue.

It isn't even grey.

It's plum.

Plum —because of the half-dozen Borenars bent over me like a pack of wolves closing in on prey.

One of them grips a scythe, its blade already stained red. And from beneath all those dark hoods, six pairs of bottomless eyes stare down at me without moving.

The dark spots dance before my eyes. Still, I don't move. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. I'm frozen solid.

If you hear the hunting horns, run with everything you have —that's what my big brother always told me when things went wrong.

Forgive me, Hoseok.

I don't think I managed to follow your rules this time, either.

They're everywhere.

I was wrong to think this victory would come easy — wrong not to be more suspicious when our supposedly invincible enemies were dropping like flies. My men were crying victory inside the tower. It took stepping outside, chasing the ones trying to flee through the back of the building, for the truth to hit us like a wall.

The wide doors at the rear of the tower open onto a vast courtyard —bare, stripped of every tree, nothing but dry, acrid dust and the occasional boulder. A few monsters had been trying to run, their heavy plum cloaks billowing behind them like shadows —but they were too large, too visible, too easy to catch.

I watched the two kings' shoulders sag with something like relief as my men brought down the last monster before us. Allowed myself to believe the nightmare was finally over. All we had to do was search the tower until we found the traitors —and then maybe I'd find some peace.

I was naive.

The monster's body never reached the ground. It never had the time, or needed to, really.

Before it could, the hunting horns rang out again —louder this time, and closer. Far more of them —a deafening wall of sound that made our eardrums shudder, forcing several of us to flinch, hands flying to our ears. I barely had time to register the grimace of pain on one of my men's face, his palms pressed flat over his ears in a useless attempt to block the noise —before his head was taken clean off by a gleaming scythe, sent flying several metres away.

Someone screams. Shouts ring out around me —useless warnings as everything tips sideways— but for one suspended moment, I can't move. Frozen solid, as much by what I've just witnessed as by the sight of the monster now standing where none had been before, stepping free from the wall itself.

This is a nightmare.

There are hundreds of them —multiplying by the second, tearing themselves free from the thick stone walls as though they'd been waiting inside them for hours, larger and faster than anything I've ever faced. My men don't stand a chance. They barely have time to spot them before the gleaming blades have torn off a limb, split open a chest, caved in a skull. Now it's my men dropping like flies —and all I can do is watch, helpless. Every time I move toward one of my companions to help, they're already down, and the plum monsters are sweeping their scythes in wide, brutal arcs that force me to lurch back before my throat is cut.

My blood turns to ice when, stumbling back a step too far to dodge a blow, my back slams into someone else's —and a nameless panic seizes me. It's over. I've hit one of those monsters, it's about to cut me apart just like all the others—

But no. Wild blond curls, thick with dust, brush the back of my skull —and it's Jimin's terrified face I catch when I turn my chin over my shoulder.

His thoughts must have run the same course as mine, a wave of relief washing over him as he recognizes me, his throat working as he swallows hard. “Taehyung,” he breathes, winded —and I notice a thin red line across his right cheek, a few drops of blood trailing down to his jaw. “How are we going to—”

“Watch out!” I shout, my body moving on its own as I lunge forward to parry a scythe swinging down toward him, teeth set hard against the force of it. Jimin shouts something I don't catch, too focused on not buckling, and moves behind my back —the metallic ring that follows telling me he's pushed someone off me. His sword joins mine against the scythe and we shove the monster back together —but where I expect it to charge again, it simply swings its arm wide once more, forcing us to retreat from the blade before it pulls back and vanishes.

I'm gasping, the tip of my sword scraping the ground as my shaking arms lose the strength to hold it —Jimin is no better behind me, just as breathless and drenched in sweat, but I can see in his eyes that his mind is running as fast as mine.

“They're not trying to kill us,” Jimin says, his voice barely above a breath, eyes moving across the courtyard where bodies are beginning to pile up —dozens and dozens of violet shadows looming over us. A few metres to our left, our fathers stand back to back, Jigeun gripping his shoulder, blood running down along his wrist. Almost nothing is left of our men —and given the ferocity of the plum monsters' assault, those still standing won't last much longer. But us —strangely— the shadows are content to push back. “They want to encircle us.”

His voice is so low, so resigned, that the breath catches in my throat. I'd worked it out myself —but hearing him say it out loud makes it so much more real that it lands like a blow to the chest.

They want to encircle us, and they're managing it. Like deer driven into a corner by hounds. The monsters close in, and then Jung Eosu will come to collect our crowns from our bodies.

“Your Highness!” A soldier barely recognizable beneath the blood coating him — it's a wonder he's still standing — comes running toward us, weapon in hand. I can't see Saer anywhere, and the realization hits harder than I'd like. “There are too many of them, we need to fall back!”

“No!” The word comes out sharper than intended, my eyes snapping from the search for the giant to the startled soldier. “Not before we find them,” I add through gritted teeth, tightening my grip on my sword.

“Your Highness, with all due respect—”

“Taehyung, it's over,” Jimin cuts in, pulling a dagger from his belt and hurling it at a monster —the blade bounces off the violet fabric and clatters to the ground, the sound swallowed by the screaming around us. “We can't win this, we need to—”

“I am not leaving!” I snarl, the steadiness in my own voice surprising even me. Jimin meets my gaze head-on —determined— but loses a little colour when he sees the look in my eyes. The fury that won't leave them. “I want her—I want them alive!”

If Jimin catches the tremor in my voice, he says nothing. He just furrows his brow and does what he's always done so well —reads everything in my eyes that I can't bring myself to say.

I need her alive.

“At least let's regroup long enough to come up with a plan,” he finally says, his eyes going soft in a way that makes my blood boil. I don't need to be handled —I need those two traitors in front of me, need to know she's alive—

“I'll take care of—” the soldier begins, nodding furiously. He never finishes.

Because a violet monster appears from nowhere, scythe raised high —and brings it down in one sweeping arc, cutting the soldier clean in half before us with a sound I will never forget. His eyes are still fixed on Jimin and me as his torso hits the ground.

Jimin's hand finds my shoulder —grips it, really— as he says something I can't hear, his voice unsteady. He pulls me backward, trying to move us out —but it's useless. Another monster is already behind us, gripping a long spear in both hands, ready to bring it down if needed. Within moments we're caught from every side, barely metres from our attackers —and when Jimin's back hits mine this time, it's with enough force that it feels like he's trying to press himself into me like a second layer of armour and never come back out.

His hand finds my wrist —grips it— then slides down to take my hand, squeezing with enough force that I can't move my arm. Not that I want to. I can't move at all, frozen at the sight of the three-metre monster looming before me, scythe in hand.

Seems like they've had enough of the hunt. I have no idea where my father is, or Jimin's —oe whether either of them is still breathing. All I can see is the gleaming blade as it rises into the air, blazing in the blinding sunlight, unstoppable —I can already trace its path as it begins to descend, straight toward me, in perfect synchrony with the blade swinging down behind me toward Jimin—

A sharp, piercing sound tears through the air.

At first I think it's a hunting horn —it takes me a few seconds to recognize it as a battle horn, the kind they use in Usuryn.

The monsters freeze. Two perfectly synchronized blades stop mid-air, barely inches from us. Slowly —very slowly— the monster before me turns, lifting its head toward the source of the sound —and it takes me another handful of stunned seconds to realize every single other monster is doing the same, suddenly as motionless as the stone they'd been hiding in.

The sound holds, long and unbroken, blending into the ringing in my ears —and nothing happens.

Until the sun goes out.

For just a fraction of a second —just long enough for an enormous black eagle to pass over our heads. It spreads its wings wide, wide enough to cast a vast shadow over me, then drops down onto the back of a fallen soldier, its sharp talons sinking into flesh.

It is blacker than coal from beak to talon-tip, so dark it could almost pass for a crow —but so large it can only be an eagle, or some spectacular creature that only exists in the Hestidian zoo. It shuffles until it finds a comfortable position on the body, entirely unbothered by the stares of dozens of violet monsters or the slack-jawed looks from Jimin and me. Then, slowly, it spreads its wings —wide enough that the span must be close to my own height— opens its beak, and screams.

A sharp, grating shriek, so loud and dizzying that several violet monsters double over in pain. And if there was one thing I had never seen the monsters do, it was feel pain.

Some of them try to straighten up, to throw themselves at the strange crow —but for all their speed, they don't get the chance. Because what emerges from the stone this time isn't more frozen monsters —it's soldiers dressed in black, pouring from every shadow, every corner where the eye doesn't think to look.

One moment the courtyard is still —the next, they're everywhere, so overwhelming in number that the landscape seems to bleed black. They make no sound, not a single cry —but blades fly, strikes land, and soon the violet monsters are being pushed back, forced to spend every ounce of their agility just to keep from being taken down by the newcomers.

Jimin and I stand motionless, mouths open, watching the battle turn —the black soldiers are relentless, almost untouchable, fast as wind. They strike with blinding speed, seem to dance around the violet monsters, and vanish before they can be touched —so quick you'd swear they were never there at all. And yet what else could explain this sudden reversal?

“The special guard,” Jimin breathes, stunned, eyes wider than a child mid-dream. Honestly, I probably look no better —I can't believe what I'm seeing. Maybe I took a blow to the head. That has to be it. There's no other explanation—

“Your Highnesses,” a voice comes from behind us, far too cheerful given the circumstances. We spin as one —but it's a soldier of the special guard, his black uniform marked here and there with blood —his own or a monster's, who knows. Other than that, he's as immaculately put-together as ever, and doesn't so much as flinch when two blades are suddenly pointed at him.

“Juhel !” Jimin's face lights up with recognition, his weapon dipping slightly. Mine stays high, on guard. If we hadn't nearly died just moments ago, I might question how easily Jimin is switching sides —given that he called his very Lieutenant a traitor in front of every last person in my manor.

Juhel seems to make the same observation, one eyebrow arching without the faintest hint of shame —but Jimin, entirely unembarrassed, simply smiles at him, always the perfect little angel. Moments like this are when Jimin's quietly Machiavellian streak is hardest to miss.

“My regards,” the lieutenant's second says, in a tone that doesn't entirely commit to sincerity, tossing Jimin a crossbow. “Take that, you'll do better with it than with your sword.”

“You came to help us?” I can't help but say, unable to fully shed the suspicion. The arched eyebrow redirects itself to me, not the least bit impressed.

“I came, on my lieutenant's orders, to stop an enemy of the crown. I suppose it works in your favour that you are the crown — gives us a common enemy.”

I open my mouth to retort —why would Cat-Eyes be helping us, after breaking out of my dungeons and taking every last one of his men with him— but Juhel doesn't give me the chance.

“Frankly, I couldn't care less about your plans.”

“We want the traitors taken alive,” Jimin cuts in, glancing up briefly from the crossbow he's adjusting. Juhel's eyebrow makes another appearance, and the look he slides my way leaves no room for interpretation.

“I want them judged the way they deserve,” I explain, and even Jimin tenses slightly at my side. Juhel studies me for a moment, like a man with a great deal to say and insufficient words to say it, before shrugging.

“Be my guest. I'd advise you to distance yourselves from the battlefield, but…” He tilts his head, considering. “I have my own orders, and you're not in them. So —don't get in my way, I guess ?”

He doesn't bother softening the implicit threat —get in the way of my mission and I'll kill you— and punctuates it with a broad smile and a sharp clap of his hands that leaves no room for discussion. Jimin and I stand there a moment, neither of us quite accustomed to the special guard telling us to go to hell —and yet, given Harin and her brother, God knows we should have seen it coming— before finally, stunned, we nod.

Juhel mirrors the nod, looking satisfied, and turns to go, already refocusing on the battle —before spinning back abruptly to look at me.

“Oh, your Highness, one more thing. The Lieutenant asked me to pass along a message.”

I sigh, resigned, already braced for whatever string of insults that message contains. “What sweet nothings does he send me?” I say flatly, exhausted beyond measure by this endless game of cat and mouse.

“He said, and I quote, 'touch her and I'll kill you,'” Juhel makes air quotes with his gloved hands, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. “Any idea what that might mean?”

I take the hit in silence, wetting my lips slowly —his little smirk making me want to crack his skull against the wall, but I hold myself back.

Of course Cat-Eyes would forbid me from going anywhere near her. What an idiot I've been.

One day, I really will make him pay for his insolence.

“What do we do?” Jimin asks, long after Juhel has vanished into the courtyard where the battle still rages. He holds his crossbow firmly, now adjusted and ready to fire, and his gaze is steadier, more certain than before —even as I feel utterly alone in the world.

“What do you want us to do?” I sigh, running a hand through my already-wrecked hair. “We fight.”

“It's only us now, Tae,” he says then, his tone dropping into something gentler —the voice you use with a frightened child. Supposed to be calming, it has the opposite effect. “Our men are barely standing, and whatever Yoongi has planned, it's clear he didn't account for us. So either we use the chaos to get out — or—”

“We keep going.”

His eyes brighten, and his grip on the weapon tightens. “We don't leave without those traitors, agreed,” he nods, his gaze drifting outward. “Either they used the battle as cover to flee into the desert, or they're hiding in the tower.”

From the corner of my eye, I take in the old crumbling tower, half on fire, threatening to collapse at any second. Would they actually hide in there?

When I meet Jimin's eyes, I find nothing but pure resolve —no trace left of whatever fear was there before. The special guard is keeping the monsters busy enough, isn't it?

A slow smile pulls at my lips. He mirrors it immediately.

Maybe we'll actually get them alive, after all.

Jimin has never felt so alive. Which is ironic, given the number of people who have died before his eyes today.

At some point, he had lost hope, it's true —hard not to, when you watch all your men fall one by one, left for dead. When he found himself cornered with Taehyung, he was certain it was over —then Yoongi's men appeared, and everything shifted.

Damn Yoongi, always showing up at exactly the right moment. Now Jimin owes him one —two, actually, since it was his fault the lieutenant ended up behind bars in the first place. Not that it seemed to slow him down much, given how quickly he'd broken out.

Jimin presses himself against a wall as noise echoes through the corridor, every sense on edge. Normally, he's pretty good at slipping into places unnoticed —fleeing your own kingdom with monsters on your heels will do that for you— but the current situation makes things considerably harder. Partly because the tower is literally on fire, and partly because the battle is raging even here.

But never mind that —as he watches, from the corner of his eye, a soldier dressed in black disarm a purple monster with a sharp kick before leaping onto it and bringing it to the ground, Jimin feels more focused, more electric than he ever has. They're going to make it. He's certain of it —they can't lose, not with the special guard here to back them up, the same one he and Taehyung spent their entire childhood idolizing. Impossible.

The special guard has never suffered a single defeat, after all.

Methodically, still cloaked in shadow, Jimin takes in his surroundings. There's the grand stone staircase, serving the tower's many —too many— floors, but he can already smell the thick smoke pouring down from above. From outside, he'd seen the explosion, the fire that had broken out on the fourth or fifth floor —you'd have to be out of your mind to take shelter up there, and anyone who'd been there must have fled the moment it started. The alternative would be reckless —the tower is so old, so worn, that it could crumble at any moment, and with a fire on top of that…

No —there's no one up there, he's sure of it. And if there had been, Yoongi's men would have intercepted them on the way out. They must have fled outside, Jimin concludes, which suits him just fine. There are dozens of soldiers in black out there, and Taehyung is among them, busy searching the stone quarry a few meters away. A perfect hiding spot —close enough, yet far enough that no one would think to look there while the battle is raging, only Taehyung, for Taehyung is sharp. Really sharp, and, Jimin knows, devastating in close combat. He'll handle it. Maybe Jimin should still—

He freezes mid-step, one foot still raised as he was moving toward the corridor that leads outside.

In front of him, tucked into a recess darker than the rest, is a narrow stone staircase —so thin and cramped it looks like it was built for someone half a man's size. Silence seems to reign in this section of the ground floor —the walls are so thick that the roar of the battle barely reaches his ears, leaving him alone before this mysterious staircase he hadn't noticed on his way in, for one simple reason: this staircase doesn't go up. It goes down.

A staircase, on the ground floor, going down?

Jimin's blood runs cold as the realization hits him. There's a basement. Beneath the tower, with a hidden entrance. Why bother fleeing when no one even knows this place exists? And what if it wasn't just a basement, but a deep tunnel leading somewhere else in the plains of fire, offering a clean escape? They'd be safe underground —by the time anyone found them, they'd already be long gone, and the worst that could happen would be the rubble from the collapsing tower blocking the entrance… They'd just dig another way out.

For a moment, Jimin panics —but only a moment. He's done being the helpless little prince everyone else has to protect. Done hiding behind Taehyung because he's better at charming people than hitting them. He knew what he was signing up for when he set out alone to hunt down his enemies: there's no way he's going back to Taehyung with his tail between his legs just because he got cold feet.

So, gripping his crossbow a little tighter, Jimin takes the first step down. Then the second. Then all the rest.

By the time he reaches the basement, plunged in darkness, he reflects that he's picked up a few things from Yoongi —his footsteps are so silent he can barely hear them himself. He sees no one around him, no immediate threat, but the corridor stretching before him is so empty, so stripped of any sound, that instinct alone makes him move without making a noise.

The corridor is nothing like those he grew up with in the many palaces he'd called home. It isn't wide or bright, lined with perfectly spaced doors dripping in gilded trim. This one is sunk in a strange greenish dark, barely wide enough for a single person, and it leads to only one door, a few meters ahead.

He understands immediately what that means: if anyone comes at him from behind, he's completely exposed.

He goes anyway —to prove he can, whether to himself or his enemies, it doesn't really matter. He needs to prove it.

He moves forward —carefully. One step at a time, perfectly silent, crossbow held close to his chest, finger on the trigger —ready to shoot at the slightest movement. But nothing happens. He reaches the small door in a few steps, and doesn't even have to force it: it isn't locked. A single kick sends it sliding on its hinges, letting out a creak that drags a disgusted shiver down Jimin's spine —right before the breath is knocked clean out of him.

He's looking into an enormous room, lit by strange pale crystals casting a faint white glow. It's richly furnished, with enormous plush sofas and dozens of cabinets displaying strange trophies —mostly animal skulls, and others that look uncomfortably human. The walls are entirely covered in tapestries of unsettling designs, and directly across from him, on a kind of raised platform, sits an enormous overturned bowl, holding what looks like—

Jimin barely has time to react before a scythe comes down on him, rolling sideways just in time as the blade buries itself into the stone floor —exactly where he had been standing less than a second before— its sheer force carrying it all the way through.

He doesn't think —if there's one thing he's learned about these monsters, it's that every second spent thinking is a second wasted. He charges. Leaps at the creature with a cry of rage, not a moment's hesitation, clinging to the body that feels like stone beneath his hands, striking what must be its face with everything he has —it's not like its oversized scythe is going to be much use to it with Jimin pressed right against it. He hits again and again, ignoring his splitting knuckles and the blood on his fingers. He keeps hitting even as the monster thrashes —a cry tearing from him as a hand comes out of nowhere, seizing him by the collar and hurling him to the ground without mercy.

The air is driven from his lungs, pinning him there for agonizing seconds, helpless, as the monster retrieves its weapon and steps closer, raising the blade high above its head…

BANG.

The monster goes still, the scythe frozen mid-air. Jimin's crossbow would be just as still if not for his trembling hand, the tip of the weapon only inches from the creature's chest, the bolt still visible where it has buried itself —barely visible now from how deep it’s sunk.

He doesn't know what made him do it —all he knows is that one second he was sure he was going to die, and the next his finger was already pressing down on the trigger.

For a moment he's afraid it won't be enough —that the monster will shake it off, barely bothered by an arrow through the heart, and land the killing blow. But no.

The monster stays motionless for long seconds, Jimin's heart hammering so hard against his ribs it feels like it might crack with every breath —and then two points begin to glow beneath the heavy hood. Two large golden circles, flaring suddenly to life, before going dark —and the creature crashes to the ground, collapsing with a deafening sound, like stone shattering.

Jimin stands there, crossbow in hand, slack-jawed, as the heavy cloak becomes nothing more than cloth pooled on the floor, covering a lifeless body he's not entirely sure he wants to look at.

It takes him several seconds to process what just happened, eyes fixed on the center of the creature's back where the tip of his bolt juts out. Several more before he can move, pull himself upright, and finally look at what surrounds him, rather than the still body in front of him.

The tapestries seem to swallow him whole. Images of the monsters he's seen far too many of, sometimes alone, sometimes in overwhelming numbers, and at their center, a figure standing rigid and straight, eyes woven from golden thread, a violet crown on its head.

Almost in a trance, Jimin rises and moves toward it, gaze locked on the strange overturned bowl at the end of the room, and the liquid spilling from it. A thick golden liquid, like honey melting in the sun, glimmering in the dark. He suddenly feels like it's calling to him —whispering without a sound, urging him to come a little closer, just a little.

So he does, without another thought for the body on the floor or the crossbow hanging limply from his hand. He draws closer, tentative at first, then compelled, his eyes unable to leave the overturned bowl and the liquid slowly spreading across the floor. As though someone had meant to take it somewhere, then let it slip in the rush.

Could it be Eosu ? Could this liquid be some precious drink, something he'd tried to take when he fled but hadn't had time to recover, or had knocked over in his haste ? That would explain why it's here, in this silent room, hidden from sight. But what makes this liquid so special…?

“Don't move,” a voice he knows well pulls him back to himself —and only then does Jimin realize he's crouched beside the small puddle, one finger already dipped into it. He hadn't even noticed himself move. When did that happen ? He could have sworn he was still flat on the ground in front of the monster, crossbow in hand… Speaking of which, where is his crossbow ?

“Step away,” the voice comes again, leaving no room for argument. “I won't say it twice.”

It takes a superhuman effort to pull his eyes away from the golden liquid shimmering around his fingers, to silence the small voice urging him to raise those same fingers to his lips, just to taste it. He doesn't know how he manages it —the voice in his head is so loud, the pull so overwhelming— but the noise drops away all at once when his gaze lands on Yoongi, standing in the doorway, Jimin's own crossbow gripped in those slender fingers and aimed directly at him.

Suddenly, he has no use for the drink, can't even hear the voice anymore —all he sees is his lieutenant pointing his own weapon at him, loaded and ready to fire, and the look of absolute terror that Yoongi is barely holding behind those hard eyes.

“I'm begging you, Jimin,” Yoongi says then, in a voice Jimin has never heard from him before —almost pleading— as his pale finger settles on the trigger, taut, ready to press. Two dark eyes, one crossed by a scar, fix onto his, and Jimin's breath catches at the intensity he finds there. “Please, if you value your life, step away from that cup.”

I can't breathe. That's the only observation I'm capable of making, the only thought coherent enough to form, and I cling to it desperately as cold, firm hands seize me from every direction, haul me to my feet, then hold me in a grip so tight it draws blood —my legs have long stopped being able to hold me up on their own.

I can't breathe. Simple as that —as though there's a wall at the back of my throat, at the back of my nose, blocking the air and trapping it in my lungs. I try everything, opening my mouth, closing it and puffing out my cheeks, whatever my panicking mind can come up with —none of it works.

My lungs contract, seem to curl in on themselves from the lack of air —and yet just enough seems to get through to keep me from suffocating, enough that I don't die while the only thought running through my head, over and over on a loop, is that I can't breathe. The only words I can manage, repeated in a panicked whisper.

Not because it's the only thing frightening me right now —more because it's the most pressing. One problem at a time, as Yoongi would say. Except Yoongi isn't with me anymore. If he were, he'd probably choose asphyxiation over having what's in front of my eyes as his last sight before being executed.

Five Borenars stand proudly before me, their dark cloaks catching the sunlight, drifting softly in the wind as they hold their lances —so straight it's almost ceremonial, the perfectly honed blades rising above their heads. They all carry lances, except one, who grips the handle of his scythe almost delicately, his head tilted back as though admiring the curve of the blade.

I can't see the sixth, but I can guess from the painfully firm grip still locked around my arm that he's behind me, keeping me upright while the one with the scythe does his work. Back in Bruria, that was considered the thankless job —while my father's associates praised whoever held the scythe, the one holding the prisoner was always the one who got mocked.

Sometimes my father would let the prisoner run, let them try to escape —purely for the pleasure of setting the Borenars loose. The first to make the kill was rewarded, and it made fine entertainment for the guests —but the Borenars were too fast, there was never enough suspense, so they always came back to the old ways. I could never decide which was worse.

I doubt they'll let me run. Maybe it would be better that way, more dignified —but for that, I'd need to actually be capable of running, which, clearly, I'm not.

I'm going to die, executed the way I watched so many innocents die in my childhood.

I don't even have time to fight back, to try anything —because even if I had the strength, the purple soldiers move too fast, falling into that formation I've watched so many times. The one with the scythe stays straight-backed in front of me while the others fan out to the sides, two by two, spears in hand.

The grip on me tightens, a hand appearing from nowhere to tilt my head to the side and bare my neck. It feels like one of those night terrors I used to spend hours trying to claw my way out of. I know how this ends, every single time. I don't know if this time I'll wake up.

The last Borenar steps forward, and his scythe catches a beam of sunlight, sending it straight into my face, blinding me for a moment. Eyes shut, face twisted in a grimace of despair, I wait —and when my eyelids open, just enough to filter the brutal glare, all I can see is the enormous purple creature looming over me, and the massive scythe he raises above his head.

The sun catches the blade again —but this time, the light falls on his face. For just a second, the hooded face is visible, and suddenly the air rushes back into my lungs, flooding them all at once. Too suddenly —I choke on it, like my head might split open.

Beneath the hood, looking as though it had been carved from stone years ago, its edges worn smooth, is a bear's head.

A giant bear, its skull three times the size of mine, fangs jutting from beneath the lips and glinting in the light.

Its hollow eyes settle on me, still waiting as its skeletal arms hang frozen above its head, ready to swing down and bring the blade to the back of my neck.

Those same hollow eyes, carved from stone. I would recognize them anywhere —I grew up with those eyes boring holes into my back, after all. It was always there, for as far back as I can remember —except when Hoseok or Mama came to see me and sent it away. It never lasted long enough for my liking.

It terrified me so much that even at the castle, I'd scream at it to put its cursed hood up, hoping that might spare me a few nightmares. It listened, sometimes —never when Father was there, though.

That bear that followed me through my hours with my governess, while I played with Yoongi, while I drifted through the rare balls.

That same bear that nearly killed us when we were fleeing, before finally letting us go. Even now, I don't know why it did that —I had never seen a Borenar disobey an order. They aren't trained to.

After twelve years, I wouldn't have thought I'd ever see it again —and yet here it is. Looming over me, its hood casting a dark halo around its head, its arms and scythe raised high against the sky. And yet it doesn't move. No, it stays perfectly still, as though waiting for the moment all hope leaves my face.

Because that's exactly what's happening —I, who had sworn to die on my feet, to always fight, give up. If these years have taught me anything, it's that you can't win against them. Hoseok failed. Mama failed.

I'm just sorry Yoongi will have to finish the fight alone. I don't have the strength anymore.

I close my eyes, lower my head. The sun beats down on my bare neck, but I don't care —it'll be cut clean through soon enough anyway. I try to reach for the good memories, to hold onto Taehyung's laugh, Jimin's smiling eyes. Mama's voice, so soft, as she taught me to read the stars. Hoseok's jokes while he whittled little horses for us out of scraps of wood.

Then I remember the blood, and the strange green foam at the corners of Mama's mouth as she tried to reassure us. I remember Hoseok's smile —that beautiful smile, broken by sobs— as he promised we'd all live happily, far from Bruria. I see Yoongi, desperate, begging me not to go to the Plains of Fire alone.

You can't win against Bruria.

The blade cuts through the air —it whistles past my ears as it closes in, my eyelids clenching tighter as I brace for the impact, the last I'll ever feel…

But nothing comes. The blade doesn't find my neck —it finds the ground, where it rings out so violently the sound rattles through my skull.

The hand releases my arm, lets me crumple to the ground —and when I lift my head, the bear has his tilted to the side, those hollow eyes fixed on me as though taking me apart. Slowly, his head slides back until it sits straight on his shoulders again, and then he screams.

A piercing scream that vibrates through my eardrums and tears a cry out of me, the ground seeming to sway beneath my feet. Dust swirls up as the Borenars scatter, fills my nose and sends me hacking —and when I open my eyes again, there is nothing. Nothing at all.

The Borenars are gone with their spears and their cloaks, and even the dust has had time to settle. It takes me several seconds to find the strength to pull myself upright under the burning sun, my legs shaking so badly I don't know how they're holding me at all —not that I'm in much of a state to wonder, still too stunned by what just happened.

The scythe blade scrapes the ground as someone picks it up —and only then do I notice that the Bear is still standing behind me, weapon in hand.

With the blade, he points at something straight ahead, behind me, and I make out, meters away, the immense stone quarry that was once the pride of the Plains of Fire, before they became uninhabitable.

I don't understand any of it. Has he decided to kill me in the quarry? Why would Eosu want me dead in—

The Bear takes a step forward. That alone is enough to get my legs moving, stumbling back several steps to keep the distance between us. When I stay still too long for his liking, the Bear starts forward again, forcing me in the opposite direction —and when he picks up the pace, it becomes clear he isn't asking.

Maybe the court hunt is back in fashion in Bruria, after all.

I don't have time to sit with the horror of that thought —because the Bear tightens his grip on the scythe, and I could swear he's charging at me. So I reach for whatever reserves are left in me without knowing how there can possibly be any, and do what I seem to have spent my entire life doing.

I run.

Run and run and run, until I can no longer feel my feet or my burning thighs. Until I can no longer feel the wind slamming into my face or the tears of pain it carries off. Until I can no longer hear my own thoughts —only that small voice that has never truly left me, screaming at me to run, to get as far away as possible, to hide in the hollow tree.

If only I could go back and hide in the hollow tree.

I don't look over my shoulder —if I'm going to die like this, I'd rather do it with the illusion that I had a chance, not the certainty that he was right behind me the whole time. I don't stop —not even when the ground hardens beneath my feet and rocks and stone debris reshape the landscape as I plunge into the vast abandoned quarry.

I don't stop even when I hear that piercing scream ring out at my back again —no, I keep running, on and on, because maybe, just maybe, I'll find enough left in me to run so far that Bruria will never find me again. That thought alone is enough to send a fresh surge of air and determination through me —I run, run, faster and faster, never stopping…

Until another voice rises through the quarry.

A voice whose timbre makes me shiver, a voice I could have listened to for nights on end. A voice screaming my name with unmistakable fury, killing me faster than any blade against my neck. A voice I never thought I'd hear again.

Kim Taehyung.

“What the hell is this ?!”

Jimin's voice might be shaking somewhere between bewilderment and pure bafflement, but Yoongi's shoulders drop in what looks very much like relief —the crossbow, however, stays perfectly level, still aimed squarely at Jimin.

Not that Jimin particularly cares —he's too busy shaking his fingers, trying to get the strange thick liquid to come off. He really, really wants to press his fingertips to his tongue and just taste—

“Wipe your hands with this,” Yoongi throws a piece of cloth straight at his face, jolting him out of it. God, what is wrong with him?!

He shakes his head, a violent headache crashing into him all at once, as Yoongi closes the distance between them, studying him strangely. Like he's trying to confirm something. What, Jimin has no idea. In fact, he's having a hard time believing Yoongi is actually standing in front of him and not some fever dream. He doesn't entirely know whether he's relieved or absolutely furious.

"What the hell is that stuff?" Jimin snaps, the panic making him swear more than usual as he presses the cloth against his hand with his clean one. It takes everything he has not to look at his fingers still coated in golden liquid —even as something pulls at him to do exactly that, whispering in his ear, driving him crazy like a moth drawn to a flame… “What's happening to me ?” he mutters, shaking his head again, suddenly very tempted to knock it against the nearest wall.

“I told you to wipe your fingers,” Yoongi snaps back, sounding furious —but more than anything, wound impossibly tight. He practically tears the cloth out of Jimin's hand, takes his fingers in his own colder ones and scrubs so hard that Jimin winces, the fabric definitely taking off a layer of skin. The lieutenant doesn't apologize for it —only once Jimin's fingers are completely clean does he shove the cloth angrily into his pocket, his eyes cutting around the room, hard and flat.

Jimin would bet the lieutenant is doing it to avoid his gaze —though he's no better, eyes fixed on his own scraped, slightly trembling fingers. The strange pull urging him to taste the liquid is gone, vanished the moment the golden mixture disappeared, but he can still feel its warmth lingering on his skin, its echo at the back of his mind. What in the hell was that?

Under the room's strange lighting, Yoongi looks even more unreal than usual. His already unnaturally pale skin takes on a greenish cast in here, and his dark eyes are sharper than ever. But his shoulders are wound tighter than usual, his jaw too —and while he looks composed on the surface, Jimin knows the lieutenant well enough. He's seen Yoongi serene under every possible kind of pressure —God, even behind bars the man didn't flinch— and right now, Jimin would swear he looks panicked.

It's in the way he holds himself, in the white-knuckled grip on the crossbow, in the way his gaze keeps sweeping the room —if he were an animal, his ears would be flat against his head right now. Like he's afraid, and the sheer force he projects is nothing but a front.

Why does that thought terrify Jimin so much ?

“I told you to step back,” Yoongi says again, no longer trying —or managing— to keep the tension out of his voice, and it hits Jimin like a slap, sending him stumbling back several steps.

When was the last time he saw Yoongi scared ? No —when has he ever seen Yoongi scared, full stop?

Never. For as long as he's known him, Yoongi has always been confident, unshakeable, immovable. Nothing rattled him —even when Harin, one of the most fearless people Jimin knows, was shaken or frightened, Yoongi stayed stone-faced and handled it without so much as a blink.

And yet standing here now, Jimin sees something in Yoongi that looks almost like a mirror —the image of himself when he's terrified, but straining to look strong for everyone else's benefit.

That lands like a fist in his gut —because Yoongi doesn't pretend. And the fact that a man like that is this frightened is not remotely reassuring.

The crossbow is still aimed at him as Jimin steps back another two or three paces, and Yoongi's gaze drifts somewhere past him, settling on one of the enormous tapestries on the wall. An expression Jimin can't name crosses his face, and when he tries to match it to something he recognizes, the only thing it calls to mind is pain.

“Are you going to answer me, or not ?” Jimin caves and finally breaks the heavy silence. He's never been good at keeping his composure when tension runs this high, but if Yoongi has any interest in him right now, it doesn't show —he doesn't even glance his way, crouching slowly to examine the golden liquid still trickling across the steps. His brow furrows, and Jimin notices the careful way he makes sure not to touch it, not even with his feet. “Hello ? I'm talking to you,” he breathes out, aiming for irritated and landing somewhere closer to panicked instead. He really hates this tension.

“I've always said you talk too much,” Yoongi mutters, without his eyes leaving the golden liquid for even a second. Is that what Jimin looked like before he wiped his fingers ? He looks possessed.

The lieutenant's blunt words puncture some of the tension and replace it with something more like annoyance —but Jimin can't stop shifting his weight from foot to foot, uneasy, as Yoongi, still perfectly composed, pulls two glass vials from another pocket and uncorks them methodically.

“What are you even doing here ?” His voice comes out more pleased than he'd like, like he's actually glad to see him. He doesn't know if he is —he's not, absolutely not— but the last thing he needs is for Yoongi to think he is —which he isn't. “I thought you were dead.”

Even he can hear the hope that's crept in and turned the end of that sentence into a question rather than an accusation. On purpose, obviously. As if knowing the lieutenant was dead would have upset him. Please.

He hates the pang of disappointment that hits when the lieutenant doesn't sound even remotely as hopeful as he does —not even mildly interested in the conversation, really. “A few shabby cells in the Ebonwick manor weren't about to do me in,” Yoongi mutters in reply, focused on cleaning the steps of the platform, coaxing the liquid into the small vials while taking care not to let it touch his skin. “Not even the Capital's, for that matter.”

Jimin hates how easily those words make his blood boil. Hates that they get to him this much. “Oh right, I keep forgetting you come from a nation of overtrained soldiers. Is this ghastly decorating also typical of back home ?” Jimin feigns impressed as he gestures at the strange lighting fixtures and the enormous tapestries surrounding them. “Feeling right at home, are we ? What, don't tell me —that's you as a kid, drawn over there ?” He sneers, turning toward a very large tapestry embroidered with several figures, including three children of different sizes —and stops dead.

Shit. The boy in the middle —he really does look like Yoongi. And the girl next to him… Jimin could swear she has the same face as Harin. Feature for feature. He doesn't recognize the other boy embroidered beside them, slightly taller, but the resemblance between all three is striking, and… God. Oh, God. There has to be a mistake, this can't be—

“Please, go on,” Yoongi's low voice pulls him from his stupor, that characteristic and slightly sadistic calm back in place, and he doesn't look the least bit irritated —faintly pained, at most. Though Jimin doubts he would have caught something so subtle if he didn't know the lieutenant as well as he does. Yoongi exhales a long, slow breath as he puts the lid back on the first bottle, now glowing with a soft golden light, and begins to fill the second. “I'll admit, I’m gonna miss listening to you ramble for hours on end…”

“So it's true. All of it.” Jimin breathes out, as if saying it aloud might bring the tower down on their heads. “You really are the Prince of this kingdom.” Yoongi doesn't react, staying perfectly still beside the platform.

So still, in fact, that Jimin wonders if he's even breathing. A single blink confirms that he is —and Jimin's heart is hammering so hard in his chest that he can barely hear himself murmur, “Why didn't you say anything ?”

A rough exhale leaves the lieutenant's lips —the ghost of a laugh, except it's only bleak given the hollow look in his eyes. When he finally raises his head toward Jimin, his gaze is resigned —and sadder than Jimin has ever seen it.

“What good would it have done ?” Those two dark eyes pin him in place with an intensity Jimin immediately resents. “We'd have had to find you another bodyguard, and believe me, soldiers good enough for that are hard to come by.”

“Give me back my crossbow,” Jimin blurts out, at the end of his rope. He hates the enormous, stinging grief threatening his eyes and making his hands shake —he wants to be angry again, wants back the strength that was in him when he took down the purple creature now sprawled on the floor a few meters away. “You're nothing but a traitor !”

“Am I ?” Yoongi breathes out, almost sounding surprised, though Jimin barely hears it.

“You want to kill Taehyung and me to take control of the two most powerful King—”

“With all due respect, if that were truly the case, I would have done it a long time ago,” Yoongi cuts him off without preamble, looking away again. Jimin suddenly feels unmoored without the pained look in his eyes. “And I would have only killed Taehyung —Irinian is more than enough to take control of everything else. But you know that, don't you? After all, it's where you ran when you needed help.” He straightens slowly, unhurried, and calmly closes the second vial without sparing a thought for the wreckage his words have left in Jimin. He feels trampled, hollowed out by the hard truth of them —but the expression on Yoongi's face, that emotion he can't name but that is unmistakably grief, nails him to the spot. “Stop making a fool of yourself, Jimin,” Yoongi sighs, and Jimin clenches his jaw. “I could have put a bolt between your shoulder blades while you were busy staring at your hand less than a minute ago, or I could finish you here and now without the slightest difficulty. And yet, as far as I can tell, you haven't picked up a single scratch since I arrived.”

Methodically, he tucks the second glowing vial into his pocket and produces a third, this one filled with a strange black powder. Jimin's fists are shaking with how hard he's clenching them.

“That doesn't mean anything. You're just waiting for the right moment.”

“My, how patient I am,” the sarcasm drips from the lieutenant's voice as he uncorks the vial and lets the black powder fall onto what remains of the golden liquid.

The moment the two make contact, the liquid catches fire —flames far too black, far too large to be natural surging upward, and Yoongi steps back on instinct, caught slightly off guard. Jimin takes the opening and snatches the crossbow from his hands, too stunned to think of anything else —but Yoongi barely reacts. He closes the vial, watches the black flames with the eyes of someone who has done this hundreds of times —and when the flames die with a crack, leaving nothing but ash and not a single drop of golden liquid on the floor, he stands, a few centimeters taller than Jimin, but towering over him all the same.

Then he leaves.

Just like that —unbothered by Jimin having reclaimed his weapon, not even making an attempt on his life the way Jimin might have expected. No, he simply turns his back and walks away.

Jimin doesn't understand the ache that twists in his chest at that —nor can he stand it.

“Stop,” he calls out in a voice that doesn't sound like his own, crossbow leveled at Yoongi. “That's an order.”

He could swear he sees the muscles of the lieutenant's back sag, just before he sighs. “This leads nowhere, Jimin,” he mutters, crouching down, his gaze drifting to the lifeless body of the purple creature.

“I said stop! I won't let you just walk away!” Jimin's panic spikes as he watches Yoongi reach toward the creature with something almost like curiosity, and tightens his grip on the crossbow. “I was locked in that tower, I know what you're capable of, you and those monsters,” he blurts out whatever comes to mind, seized by panic, “I won't let you—”

He stops himself when he sees Yoongi shake his head —but more than that, when he sees the expression that settles over his face. That same boundless sadness, laced this time with a fear that Yoongi himself doesn't seem able to explain. Irrational, incomprehensible —but undeniably there.

“These aren't monsters,” his voice is barely a whisper, but it echoes through Jimin's mind. He shakes his head slowly, brow furrowed. “Not really, anyway.”

“What are you talking about…”

“Trust me on this, Prince Jimin,” Yoongi says, looking up at him, his voice finding that steadiness Jimin has always known in him —but with that same fear still written across his face, enough to frighten Jimin in earnest. “I grew up surrounded by monsters. I know what I'm talking about. Trust me when I tell you —you haven't seen the real ones yet.”

Jimin opens his mouth, without the faintest idea what he's going to say —it doesn't matter. He doesn't get the chance anyway. Before he can do anything, Yoongi reaches out with a pale, trembling hand and pulls back the edge of the creature's hood, letting it fall to the floor —revealing a gigantic deer skull set on a thick neck, a monstrous creature reduced to nothing but skeleton, so milky and worn it looks like stone. Like an animal pulled straight out of a nightmare and given flesh.

Jimin takes a step back, his weapon dropping as a wave of nausea rolls through him at the sight of the creature. The skull looks like it's rotting —like a real decomposing body, except made of stone— and where eyes should be, two bottomless abysses stare up at the ceiling, a darkness so complete it might swallow him whole if he looks too long.

He steps back again, doing his best to ignore the cold crawling up his spine, the fear seizing his gut. The thing is twice his size. God only knows how he managed to take it down…

Yoongi looks just as frightened as he does when their eyes meet —but this fear is different. In Jimin, it's something brand new, the kind that freezes you on the spot simply because you didn't know what you were fighting, didn't even think a thing like this could exist.

In the lieutenant, it looks almost like an old memory. A spider that moved into a corner years ago, refused to leave when you tried to chase it out, and has just been there ever since.

Yoongi looks frightened, but he looks resigned, too. Like someone who, over the years, came to understand that fighting this particular fear is pointless. Jimin isn't sure he wants to know how many years exactly.

Yoongi's voice doesn't shake when he speaks again —but it's hollower than Jimin has ever heard it, and that alone is enough to truly frighten him.

“Please don't act like you understand any of this, Jimin. You're wasting your breath. And whatever you think you've figured out, the truth will always be worse.”

Jimin tries to answer. He tries to speak, searches for something to say, reaches for the words that might begin to capture the terror running through him —but once again, fate doesn't give him the time.

Yoongi's right eye —the one crossed by the long scar— flares suddenly to gold, flooding the room with a brief blaze of light, and as Jimin stumbles back Yoongi jerks upright, as though struck by lightning. He presses his hand over his eye, face twisted in a grimace of pain, but doesn't let out a sound. Then, after a few minutes of a silence so heavy Jimin is half-convinced he's lost his mind and is either already dead or rapidly getting there, he finally says in a low, flat voice: “We need to go back up. Now.”

Jimin is terrified —he really is, more than he's ever been, and given how easily he frightens on a good day, that's saying something— both because of the creature still lying on the floor and because Yoongi's eye was gold, what the hell —but he still manages to stammer out, his tone matching the lieutenant's gravity.

“What ? Why ?”

“Their plan is going into motion. They're going to trap them in the quarry.”

It's urgent enough that Jimin understands he doesn't have time to ask how Yoongi knows any of this. If watching the lieutenant be afraid is terrifying, watching him panic isn't much better. “Who do you mean, them ?”

“Harin. And Taehyung.” He simply says, and then his eye goes back to normal, and he swears under his breath.

“They're… they're up there ? Harin is alive ?!” Jimin exclaims, unable to believe what he's hearing as Yoongi is already heading for the door, visibly rattled. “But… that's good news, isn't it?” Jimin stammers, following after him, less sure now of what to make of any of it. If Taehyung is out there, that means they've won the battle, doesn't it? So… “Why are you reacting like that ? What's going to happen ?”

“I don't know,” Yoongi says through gritted teeth, cutting through the corridor at a pace that suggests he's entirely at home in these narrow passages —taking the stairs four at a time. “And while I couldn't care less what they do to the other idiot…,” he shoots Jimin a dark look, and rather than looking away, Jimin meets it head-on and raises an eyebrow. He still nearly loses his footing at the lieutenant's next words, and the look that comes with them. “...I made a vow to gut anyone who dares lay a hand on my sister. And that includes the prince.”

“MIN HARIN!”

At first, I don't understand who shouted —screamed, really. I don't understand where the rage and hatred in those words are coming from, or why they sound so close. Then I realize it's my own voice, my throat raw from the force of it —but deep down, it doesn't matter.

Because she's here.

I see her the moment she enters the stone quarry —dressed in a long violet gown set with jewels that would give her an almost ethereal look if it weren't torn in places, her long dark curls dancing behind her with every step. She's running, slower than usual but fast enough to kick up dust in her wake, and I can't see her face, but her steps are so unsteady it's obvious she's limping —which leg, I couldn't say. I'd put money on both being injured, from the look of her —not that I care.

She's here. After all the time I've waited for this moment, dreamed of it like a mirage I could never touch, she's here.

She freezes when she hears me shout, the wild crack of my voice ricocheting through the quarry, bouncing off the stone cliffs —she stops so abruptly she stumbles, has to catch herself on a nearby rock to keep from falling, and her eyes sweep the area until they land on me. Her face falls apart, literally, and even from a distance I can see she's paler than I've ever seen her.

Dust coats her cheeks, her hair, but all I see are her eyes. Her goddamn eyes, lighting up like a beacon in the dark, pulling at me the way they always have, like I'm some lovesick moth that never learned better.

She opens her mouth, stammers words I can't hear, reaches out in some gesture I don't bother to interpret —all I see are those damned eyes, brighter than the sun, fixed on mine for the first time in days. All I see is that she's finally here.

I don't think. I charge.

I watch with satisfaction as her eyes go wide when she sees me close the distance —far faster than she was running— and understands what I'm about to do. She barely has time to grab a large piece of wood lying nearby and hold it in front of her before my sword comes down on it. Splinters fly, she stumbles back under the force of the blow, and when she raises her head, she's staring straight down the tip of my blade —which would have caught her clean across the face without that unexpected plank.

This close, I can see every mark exhaustion has carved into her face, make out each grain of dust stuck there by sweat —I can even trace the gash splitting her cheekbone, a thin trail of blood from God knows where.

But more than anything, this close, I'm overwhelmed by the intensity of those golden eyes pouring into mine without her even realizing it, wearing an expression I can't bring myself to name. Don't want to name.

A furious sound tears out of me and I shove her back with a sharp motion, sending the plank spinning to the side where it shatters into pieces. Harin is thrown off by the force of it, lurching left, and it's becoming increasingly clear that her legs aren't what they used to be —she's barely staying upright.

Again, I let my body take over without wasting time on thought —I charge, certain she's done, then let out a shout of rage when she somehow finds the strength to roll aside and my sword glances off the ground, the blade wedging between two stones.

I wrench at the hilt like a man losing his mind, blind with fury, as from the corner of my eye I watch her haul herself back up, breathing in ragged bursts, legs shaking so badly she needs a boulder to hold herself upright.

That sight wakes something in me, and I release the hilt —the way she looks right now, I won't even need it.

Her eyes aren't on me, though —which only enrages me more. Instead she's looking somewhere past us, with that small crease between her brows that I know means she's worried about something. She opens her mouth, but by the time her eyes find mine again, it's too late —I'm already moving, and even at full strength she would have struggled to block a blow this fast.

My fist catches her square in the stomach, sending her reeling sideways with a muffled cry of pain. She dodges one hit, then another, but she's too slow for the one that follows immediately after. My arm slows down last second, her head snaps to the side when my fist connects with her cheek gentler than I first intented to, but she still staggers back, barely keeping herself from going down.

“Taehyung.” Her voice —so desperate, so close after days of wanting nothing else— makes me shiver and clench my fists at the same time. Her eyes turn pleading, more panicked than I've ever seen them, and she raises her hands again. "Please, wait—"

She doesn't get to finish —I sweep her ankles, and her knees are too loose, too drained to hold: she goes down hard, a gasp escaping her when one of her ribs cracks on impact, and it takes several long seconds before her chest rises again.

“I'm going to kill you,” I breathe as she pulls herself up, but my voice sounds hollow even to me, and that alone is enough to make my skin crawl.

'If anyone is going to kill her, it'll be me,' I'd told Jimin in a tone so full of hatred and resentment it barely sounded like mine. 'No one else.'

I was set on it —ready, even, I had been waiting for nothing else. But right now, I can't find a tenth of that resolve. Not when she's this broken, this destroyed, and I can only imagine what she's been through —not when those damned golden eyes are nothing but a dull, washed-out brown, the life slowly draining from them.

Not when she's finally here, in front of me, after that being all I've wanted for days.

“Please,” she says again, croaking the words through an exhausted breath as she pushes herself up onto her hands and knees, still struggling to breathe. “Listen to me,” she begs, “They're going to—”

“Listen to you ?!” I cut her off as a nameless fury floods through me. “Listen to you?! What, so you can feed me another one of your lies before running off like the miserable traitor you are, to go back to the enemy's side ?!”

She gets back up just in time to dodge the kick I throw at her, but stumbles sideways —lurches several steps in what I know is an attempt to put distance between us. Again.

“What are you going to tell me, hm ? That it's a misunderstanding, or, let me guess, that you're sorry ? Like that would change a damn thing,” I snarl, and at this point even I don't recognize myself.

She's holding her side as I close in, and despite her trembling body and her spent limbs, I watch her shift into a defensive stance, readying herself for what's coming. A proud soldier of the special guard, fighting to the last.

A laugh escapes me —bitter and empty, more of a ragged grunt than a laugh, really. “You know what the worst part of all this is? Out of everyone who could have done this to us, betray us that way, it's you who did.”

“Taehyung, please…” Tears cut channels through the dust on her cheeks, her voice weaker than ever, too weak to reach me through the storm raging in my head.

“You, after everything we went through, after all those promises…” She blocks the strike I aim at her shoulder, but she's too weak —or too unfocused— to hold when I sweep her ankles again. Under normal circumstances she would have locked her knees, but instead she goes down hard, and her face twists in horror as I drop onto her, straddling her waist and pinning her in place.

She twists, struggles, but it makes no difference, and watching her like this —watching Harin, the Harin I spent so long looking up to for her strength and her resolve, crying in front of me, unable so much as to stand on her own two feet —the fury inside me swells and swells, until my eardrums are roaring loud enough to burst, until my fist is shaking in the air above her, until I'm so far gone I can't even hear her when my name leaves her lips in one last plea.

Until nothing makes sense anymore.

“How could you do something like this ?! How could you ?!”

I scream it in her face —so hard the sound drills into my own ears, my throat begging for mercy. I scream, again and again, one hand fisting the collar of her dress as the other stays raised, ready to strike one last time…

…but the blow never falls.

It doesn't fall, because Harin is there. Because even as tears still run down her cheeks, the last traces of her panic from only minutes ago, she is suddenly very calm. So calm, in fact, that she isn't looking at me —not at me, not at my fist hovering above her, ready to come down and be done with her the way I'd been dreaming of, months earlier.

No, her golden eyes aren't on me —despite what I'm about to do, despite everything that's happened, she seems to refuse to look at me. To offer me one last glimpse of those golden eyes that taught me how to drown just as much as how to swim.

I'd like to believe it's fear. Panic —that in her guilt, she can't bring herself to face me and is simply waiting for her fate to fall. But no.

She isn't looking at me because she's looking at something else —which is probably worse. And as I freeze, fist still raised, I follow her gaze in spite of myself, tracing the line of it between us, until I understand what has her so transfixed.

A smeraldo-shaped emerald, cut in two, set in a ring that has slipped free of my armor and hangs from my neck on a silver chain.

A piece of jewelry she wore for far longer than I would like to admit.

Two days earlier.

Located at the exact opposite end of the manor from the stables —or from anywhere the princes ever set foot, really— the cells of Ebonwick manor are what one might charitably call cramped. Not really designed to hold anyone —more to deter, which sounds strange for a region as remote as Ebonwick.

To find them, you have to take a narrow hidden staircase at the back of the building —where no one ever goes— and descend underground before crossing a long corridor where almost no light filters through. Cast iron bars line the passage, perfectly aligned, offering glimpses of the cells beyond, each one more decrepit and cramped than the last.

Yes, compared to the gleaming prison cells of the Capital palace, these are ridiculous. Pathetic, even.

And yet it's with a determined stride that Taehyung descends the steps of this staircase he never thought he'd set foot on. The sound of the wind snaps at his ears until he's too far below ground to feel it.

The thin candle in his hand throws unsettling shadows into each cell he passes, but that isn't what's worrying him —no, what worries him are the sounds around him.

He's nervous and focused at the same time. On edge. Given the layout of the space, there'd be nowhere to run if someone came, and that alone has held him back from doing exactly what he's doing now.

He suspects it's a bad idea. No —he knows full well he has no business being here, in a place far too undignified for someone of his station, but he can't help it.

He needs answers. He has for several days now, but the need is sharper than ever tonight. And right now, he only knows one person capable of giving them to him.

His feet carry him to the end of the corridor on their own. He doesn't even have to think about it —he knows that even if he ordered his imprisonment, his men would never dare put the Lieutenant anywhere but in the largest available cell.

And yet, as Taehyung slows and stops before the thick bars at the end of the corridor, the candlelight only finds the drawn features of a man standing so still he seems to belong to the scenery. He's holding something in his hand, which he tucks smoothly into his sleeve the moment Taehyung appears, but he doesn't pay it much attention —he's too taken aback by the sight in front of him.

Gone is the proud, invincible lieutenant —all that's left is a tired man with disheveled hair and no one left to give orders to. The man Taehyung has only ever seen in black now wears a loose grey garment that makes him look paler, somehow smaller too. Near the ceiling, a thin crack lets in a sliver of the night's light —but unlike the basement beneath the kitchens, which is always washed in moonlight, here it's barely a thread of silver seeping through, carving shadows into the cheeks of the man behind the bars.

Taehyung can't help but pause. Has he always been this small?

You'd think he looked sad. Hungry, maybe —frightened, or even angry. And yet, upon recognizing his visitor, the lieutenant laughs. Softly, his lips twist into a wide grin that shows his gums, and a low laugh escapes him, as grating as the cry of a winter crow.

“Prince,” he says, the smile losing some of its edge and settling into something more like boredom. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“It's Your Highness to you,” Taehyung can't keep the sharpness out of his voice. On the other side of the bars, Yoongi just smiles faintly, as though he already knew word for word what was coming. Which only makes Taehyung's nerves worse.

“Of course,” he simply replies, his gaze unreadable.

Despite being on the right side of the bars, free to move as he pleases, Taehyung feels like the one in a cage. The man in front of him was, until only a few hours ago, the lieutenant of the most powerful army in the Known Lands. You'd think stripping him of his uniform in favor of rough, dust-stained cloth would strip him of some of his presence —but the effect is the opposite.

Standing there, dressed so plainly it borders on shameful, with features more worn than if he'd come straight from a war, Min Yoongi holds himself with more pride than Taehyung has ever managed.

His shoulders are straight and loose, his chin lifted, his lips curved in an insolent smile as though he were welcoming whatever trouble comes his way with open arms. He doesn't drop his gaze, doesn't look the least bit bothered —you'd think it was Taehyung being held prisoner, not the other way around.

For the first time since setting foot in Ebonwick, the former lieutenant looks almost content with his position. Taehyung hates that glint in his eyes, the one he can't read.

“And how can I be of service on this fine evening, Your Highness ?” Yoongi asks then, almost weary —but that isn't what unsettles Taehyung. No, it's what he does next.

He turns his back.

Just like that —as though it were the most natural thing in the world, toying again with whatever he's holding between his fingers, he turns his back on the prince and tilts his head to look through the tiny hole in the wall, where nothing is visible but the ink-black night sky. Entirely uninterested.

Taehyung can feel his blood starting to boil —but he can't seem to get his lips to part and respond.

His fist tightens around the medallion hidden inside it —he can feel the stone pressing into the folds of his palm.

“Your Highness?” The lieutenant's voice jolts him out of his stupor, the hairs on the back of his neck rising at the insolent tone grating against his ears. “Was there something you wanted ? Or does your presence here at such a late hour simply mean that you missed me ?”

This time it's the prince's jaw that clenches, hard enough for his teeth to grind together. He wants to knock that arrogant smile off his face.

A few days ago, he trusted this man with something close to blind faith. Now, all he can think about is the broken, terrified look on Jimin's face when he appeared in the courtyard.

“What I want,” he finally replies, his voice a low snarl — enough that he'd flinch at himself if he could hear it over the blood roaring in his temples. “Is explanations. Now.”

Slowly, with that same lazy smile, he feels the lieutenant's gaze take him apart, studying him from head to toe. As though he had all the time in the world —even as Taehyung should have left long ago.

“Explanations?” he finally replies, and Taehyung's jaw tightens at the smile that seems to grow wider with every passing second. “I was rather under the impression the situation was perfectly clear…”

“"Don't play games with me.”

Not the least bit stung by his sharp tone, Yoongi holds his gaze for a moment, lips pressed into a thin line as though he's silently making a decision. Then, almost as quickly as his smile disappears, he arches an eyebrow. Suddenly he no longer looks tired, or bored —he looks dignified and irritated in the way that only a prince can master, his eyes cutting with a sharpness so striking it seems like he's the one outside the cell, and Taehyung the one inside.

“What exactly would you like me to explain?” Taehyung had braced for it, and yet the force and steadiness behind those words still hit him. “You heard the prince —forgive me, His Highness Jimin. My sister and I are traitors in the service of a dangerous kingdom that wishes to invade yours…”

“That's enough.”

If he notices the prince's tight jaw and clenched teeth, Yoongi simply smiles as though he's enjoying every second of it —but it's a smile without warmth, carrying the same cold gleam as those sharp eyes. A smile just as unsettling as his steady tone as he steps forward to lean against the bars of his cell without ever dropping Taehyung's gaze, advancing the way a predator corners its prey.

“...Together we set out to earn your trust over months while our men sowed chaos across your lands, all so that at the right moment, when you least expect it, we could strike the killing blow and finally—”

“That makes no sense and you know it !”

Silence falls over the long corridor, imposed by the fury in Taehyung's voice. He surprises himself, having given in so easily, having let that slip —but he can't bring himself to regret it. Not when the effect on the lieutenant is immediate.

He doesn't straighten, doesn't move an inch. His smile doesn't even falter —but his eyes, those two dark, narrow slits that make him look like a cat, cloud over at once, deepen— as though yet another wall were silently being erected behind them in the space of a second.

“Oh, is that so ?” He sounds almost surprised, but with a sudden edge to his voice that bodes nothing good. “Prince Jimin seemed to find it perfectly reasonable.”

“If you wanted to win Jimin's trust, all you had to do was be even the slightest bit interesting and clever. If you wanted to win mine, being an effective soldier would have been enough.” The lieutenant's eyes follow the movement as Taehyung can't stop himself from swallowing, his voice faltering more than he would have liked. “You didn't need to put yourself in danger like that at Ironshell, didn't need to turn the Kings against you to take our side —none of it makes sense, and you know it. Just as it makes no sense to kidnap Prince Jimin, pour that many resources into supposedly finding him, only to release him a few days later. It's absurd.”

A shadow crosses the lieutenant's gaze. “Is it really ? Or are you trying to convince yourself that it is ?”

As best he can, Taehyung tries to push past the breath catching in his throat, the tightening in his chest. He does everything in his power not to dwell on the hollow ache that opens up at the mere thought that it might all be true, that he keeps stubbornly lying to himself over and over.

But he can't manage it. Not when the lieutenant's feline gaze is so heavy with meaning.

“The world is far from black and white, Your Highness,” the lieutenant says, almost softly, as Taehyung has to swallow again to keep from choking on his own breath. “Face facts and admit, for once, that you are not the strongest player in this story.”

His words land like a blade, as sharp as the look of hatred he fixes on him —then the lieutenant straightens, impassive, and turns away again, offering Taehyung only his profile as Taehyung's skull threatens to cave in from the pressure.

It's impossible. He can't admit it —refuses to accept it. It can't be true.

She would never have done this.

His fingers tighten so hard around the stone that the skin breaks —but even that is less painful than the knife seemingly lodged between his shoulder blades.

“I demand answers,” he says in a voice that doesn't sound like his own, trembling with rage, humiliation, and something else he refuses to put a name to. He won't believe it.

The lieutenant barely spares him a glance.

“And I demand a little peace —I was under the impression I was to be executed in the morning, you won't hold it against me if I take the time for one last nap, right ?”

“You will answer me !” Taehyung explodes, shouting so hard his voice echoes through the corridor as his fist strikes the bars. “That is an order.”

The silence that follows is heavy —crushing. But if Taehyung's outburst has one thing going for it, it's that it at least succeeds in pulling the lieutenant's attention back to him.

For a second, Taehyung catches himself wishing it hadn't —because the look Yoongi turns on him now is no longer irritated. It's furious. Carrying a hatred he had never seen in him, not even in the fiercest battles.

And yet, to his great surprise, what echoes back at him isn't a matching scream of rage —it's laughter.

Cold, bitter, chilling laughter.

“I don't think so.”

The lieutenant steps forward as he barks those words, and driven by some strange reflex, Taehyung stumbles back. “I beg your pardon ?”

“Look at me, prince. Look at me carefully,” Yoongi snarls, gripping the bars so hard his knuckles go white. “Then look at the cell you ordered me thrown into —because even as you yourself so aptly put it, I never gave you a single reason to doubt my loyalty, and yet you chose to believe unsubstantiated claims that I was a traitor. If I'm locked in here, it's because you chose to believe I was the prince of a distant kingdom.”

“One that wants to take possession of mine,” Taehyung says, almost sulking.

Yoongi simply arches an eyebrow. “That hardly matters between these earthen walls, don't you think ?”

Slowly, he straightens and leans against the bars, looking down at Taehyung from his full height. He no longer looks like a disgraced soldier or a tired man —he looks like a prince, proud and dignified, the kind Taehyung only encounters at official functions and ends up either despising or admiring. “You chose to believe that, to see me as such. So follow through on your own decision, Your Highness, and treat me accordingly —as the villainous prince you chose to believe I am.” His voice carries through the corridor, rings in Taehyung's ears. Too loud for him to react. “If I am within these walls, in this cell, then I am the crown prince of Bruria as you have decided. I take no orders from another prince, least of all one who is simply a lost man willing to believe the first foolish thing he is told.”

The two of them hold each other's gaze, silent. Yoongi with eyes dark and taut as a predator ready to spring, Taehyung with breath so knocked out of him he can't speak. If he had any doubts before, he can no longer bring himself to believe that the lieutenant doesn't have royal blood in his veins. Which does nothing to help him make sense of everything else.

It takes him too long to find the strength to answer —too long to even find what to say to those barely veiled accusations— and the lieutenant notices, sighing and casting him a contemptuous look before straightening and stepping back from the bars.

And in that moment, as he turns away, Taehyung sees the shadow that falls across his face —the way his features tighten, just a fraction of a second, before closing off entirely, impassive —and Taehyung panics.

Because he knows that shadow —it's the same one that used to fall over Harin's face, every time she shut down at his questions. He sees it now on the lieutenant's face, and suddenly he's seized by a surge of fear he can't control.

The only thought he can hold onto, running on a loop, is not again.

“Please,” he can only manage in a whisper, past caring how his voice breaks open. This time it's he who grabs the bars with both hands as the lieutenant steps back. The silver chain is still coiled between his fingers, letting the emerald medallion clink freely against the cast iron. “I just want… to understand.”

“Understand what, Your High—” The lieutenant starts with an impatient growl, before abruptly going still as his eyes catch the glint of the emerald gleaming in the light. He stops, motionless, mouth slightly open as he stares at the stone the way a cat watches its prey, an unreadable expression on his face. It's enough to fill Taehyung's chest with hope, even as the lieutenant visibly gives way to anger. “Where did you get that ?!” He snarls, striding forward furiously —but Taehyung doesn't step back.

No, he simply swallows and holds the bar tighter, feeling the cold emerald resting against the back of his hand. “That ring is mine.”

“Don't take me for an idiot, Kim, I know a piece of jewelry my sister wears every day when I see one.”

“I gave it to her,” he hates how his voice shakes as the words leave him, but it at least has the merit of holding the lieutenant's attention. “It was… an assurance of sorts. Giving her something I valued, to prove that I… would do better.”

“Well, well,” Yoongi simply mutters, but something has shifted in his tone. It's suddenly more tightly wound —less certain of itself, Taehyung can feel it.

He swallows, more on edge than he'd like to be. “She was supposed to keep it, and only give it back when I'd made it right. When she'd forgiven me.” When he had become a better man.

The lieutenant arches an eyebrow, the scar cutting across his eye bending at a strange angle that makes him look more threatening still. “Then what is it doing in your hands?”

Taehyung had expected it, and yet it still takes him a few seconds to absorb the blow. The lieutenant has never hesitated to say things to his face —not before, and not now. A direct hit, the barely concealed implication that today, more than ever, he deserves no one's respect or trust —let alone Harin's forgiveness…

“That is precisely what I would like to know.” He can barely breathe, his voice coming out strangled —but the unsteadiness of his words doesn't stop the lieutenant from going very still, his gaze retreating beneath a shadow Taehyung can't decipher. He swallows again, with more difficulty this time. His throat burns. “It was tied to her horse’s bridle.”

He can still picture the way Lexi had tossed his head furiously at anyone who tried to get close enough to remove the bridle —until Taehyung came. He remembers cursing at the animal before freezing at the sight of the chain tangled in his mane. His fingers had shaken so violently it took him long minutes to free it.

The lieutenant's eyes fix on his, and from the way he's visibly going pale before him, Taehyung knows his thoughts mirror the pure chaos that had seized him when he'd set the ring on his palm for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

She had given it back. After days, months of trying to make amends, of trying to earn her trust —to prove his sincerity— she had returned his ring, like a silent way of making them even, equal. A way of finally opening herself to him entirely, on that fateful day when everything tilted.

He remembers the promises, the smiles, the secrets whispered against his pillow. He remembers those golden eyes, brighter than any lantern, holding his with a softness and an intensity that seemed to have no end. And that ring, always hanging between them —a ring he had first seen as a mission, a challenge, before he'd almost forgotten it, forgotten the weight it carried —because nothing else mattered by then except her, and this boundless need to be with her, to be there for her.

None of it makes sense.

“Listen,” Taehyung finally says, scratching the back of his neck, and this time he has to clear his throat to keep from sounding completely undone. “I don't care where you come from, whether you're a prince from an enemy kingdom or whatever else. You could be a prince, a stable hand, or the archbishop of Leohan, I couldn't care less. But I know you would never have betrayed Jimin. Because you're not a man who puts on a performance to keep up appearances, and because I'm convinced that even now, if you wanted to kill me, you could do it without blinking. And I also know that Harin would never have—” His voice breaks, tears blurring his vision, but he doesn't look away. “She wouldn't have done this.”

The lieutenant doesn't look impressed by his steadiness or the crack running through it. He simply studies him in silence, more a prince than Taehyung has ever been. “You know that?” he finally says, his voice quiet as a snake's hiss. “Or are you simply refusing to believe otherwise?”

“I know it.”

Taehyung sounds broken, desperate —but he has never been more certain of anything. He's turned it over enough times, too many, and can only face what's in front of him. Jimin is blinded by his anger, or perhaps simply afraid. Because Taehyung knows Harin well enough to know that she doesn't abandon the people she loves.

Part of him can't stop the doubt from creeping in —maybe he's wrong, maybe he isn't one of the people she loves at all. But it doesn't matter. He wants to believe it was real, to believe that everything they shared wasn't smoke and mirrors.

To believe she was sincere when she kissed him before falling asleep in his arms every night.

When Yoongi finally turns away, he has the weary look of a man who has seen too much and can no longer close his eyes against it. His gaze drifts to the floor, aimless, his porcelain skin catching the light as he thinks.

“I have no answers to offer you, Your Highness,” he says at last, trampling what's left of Taehyung's hope with a quiet brutality that catches him off guard, given the sudden softness of his voice. “Neither can I help you, from where I stand.”

He lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, his head dropping without him meaning to as his shoulders cave forward. If he could cry from sheer despair, he would. In fact, given how blurred his vision already is, perhaps he can.

“Is it true ?” Yoongi says before he can, something in his tone —he can't name what— reawakening the hope in Taehyung. “That she returned the ring to you ? Of her own accord ?”

He nods. “You know something ?” He can't help asking, clinging to the smallest spark. “Is it some kind of signal between the two of you, is it—”

“Lately, I rather get the impression it's with you that she has secret signals,” the lieutenant cuts him off with a sigh, those cat-like eyes meeting his without a hint of shame —and the glint that lights them then reminds him so sharply of Harin's that Taehyung has to grip the bars to keep from swaying. “I don't know what my sister has in mind, Your Highness, not more than I know whether she was right to trust you. But I trust her. Whatever you think you've understood, you know nothing of what we've been through. Harin doesn't get up to do nothing, and she doesn't give her attention to things that aren't worth it —and I had never seen her look at anyone the way she looked at you.”

His voice takes on the shape of a barely veiled threat as he steps forward to grip the bars in turn. Their faces are closer than they've ever been —Taehyung can even make out the dark dagger the lieutenant no longer bothers to hide in his sleeve— but he finds himself suddenly unable to move. Pinned in place by that steady gaze, so dark he can almost see the shadows of a past he will never know dancing inside it.

“There is nothing I can do from where I am, Your Highness,” Yoongi says then, and in this moment Taehyung sees in him neither prince nor lieutenant. He sees a man who learned to kill in order to survive, and who would be willing to do it again. “Don't make me regret letting you anywhere near her.”

His eyes glint, his scar almost as bright as the blade in his hand —but he doesn't move. It takes Taehyung several long seconds to manage it himself —and when he does, it's to swallow before slowly nodding his head.

He takes a step back, then another, half-expecting Yoongi to follow. The lieutenant stays leaning against the bars, as still as granite, watching him without blinking once. Taehyung doesn't dare look away, certain this image will stay carved into his worst nightmares. He only turns his back at the halfway point of the corridor, his steps quickening in spite of himself, desperate to leave that vision behind before it can haunt him any further.

When the prisoner's quiet voice reaches his ears, however, his body freezes on instinct. Then his heart stops, for a second or two.

“Did you really love her, at least ?”

His throat tightens —too many answers rush to mind, words he will never be clever or poet enough to string together in a way that truly reflects what he feels. Too many emotions he was never taught to name.

All he can do is turn his chin toward his shoulder, without quite finding the courage to look at the man standing behind him in the dark. He won't be able to face that disbelieving gaze. Because he knows that no matter what he says, Yoongi will never believe him. He says it anyway.

“I still love her, Lieutenant.”

He leaves him there, too much of a coward to face him, too desperate to confiscate the perfectly sharpened dagger he'd left within reach.

Later that night, he is called abruptly and led to the cells where helpless guards are already gathered. He doesn't even need to inspect the room to understand what has happened.

Most of the soldiers are dumbfounded —calling it magic, this sudden disappearance. And yet the truth is far simpler: someone scraped at the stone with a blade to widen the crack in the wall and push the enormous rocks out one by one —and where a pale man of average height should have been standing, black-haired and scarred across the eye, rest the remains of a silver ring set with an amethyst fox. A ring that has been carefully broken in two, like a silent promise.

The eyes are golden again.

Two beautiful hazel irises, burning with a light so strong they look like gold. As though life had come back into them. As though the sight of the flower cut in two had been enough to bring back at least a shred of resolve.

She reacts far faster than I would have expected —she shoves my head violently to the side with both hands, and, surprise doing the rest, I find myself rolling through the dust, carried by my own weight. I lie there on my back, only understanding what just happened when I hear her struggling to get upright, gasping.

Even at death's door, she's still stronger than me.

This time, I'm the one with no fight left. No strength for anything —except to smile up at the blue sky riddled with thick grey clouds stretching above me, a hollow laugh shaking my chest.

“I refused to believe it, you know ?” I murmur, and I can feel those two golden eyes settling on me. I don't need to look at her to know she's tensing, watching me with caution. I don't even have the strength to meet those golden eyes that I love so much. “I'm stubborn,” I shrug with a sigh, almost disappointed in myself. “I refused to see what was right in front of me. Even when you disappeared, even when Cat-Eyes refused to tell me where you'd gone. I refused to admit it, until Jimin came back from that godforsaken place and the truth exploded in my face.” Slowly, I lift my head to look at her. Blood has stained her dress at the shoulder, and only then do I notice that her knees and hands are bleeding too. In fact, I can even feel some of that blood on my cheek where she pushed me away.

I give her a sad smile, not finding the strength to raise a hand to wipe my cheek. “I would have gone to war for you, you know ? If you'd come back, if you'd explained… Anything. You could have told me anything and I would have believed you, I would have gotten down on my knees for you. You could have asked me to go fight all those monsters with my bare hands and I would have done it. Right then and there. Without flinching. I would have left everything behind, put everything aside, for the simple reason that I can't stand anyone hurting you, anyone doing anything that makes your eyes go that dull…”

“…Taehyung, please…” I hear her say, almost begging, as I push myself back upright until I'm on my knees —but I don't have the strength to stop, not even to listen to her.

“Because I fucking love you, damn it,” it comes out, and this time it sounds like I'm the one begging. My eyes find hers, two golden beacons so drowned in tears they can't show me the way, but I hold on to them anyway, desperate. “Because I love you, and I would have raised an army to go tear those bastards apart if you'd asked me to, I would have done anything to see you smile, to hear you laugh. Because falling asleep and waking up beside you is my favorite moment of the day, because I can't breathe right without knowing you're in the room with me.” My voice dies to a pleading whisper, and I realize I'm crying too —not because I feel the tears on my cheeks, but because my vision is blurring so badly that Harin becomes a smear in front of me, and that alone enrages me more than anything else. All I want is to look at her, to drink her in, now that she's here, finally here, before she disappears again.

Please. Please don't let her disappear again.

“…And I refuse to believe it's only me. That you never felt any of this,” I shake my head like a man losing his mind, one fist against the ground, my tears falling into the dust.

She shakes her head too, her mouth twisted into a broken expression, her voice nothing but a strangled sound by now. “…I… I never wanted anything except to protect you.”

“Protect me ? Disappearing overnight, turning up on the enemy's side —that was protecting me ? Lying to me for months, about everything we went through —that was protecting me ?!” She lets out a sound, stumbles over something, but I shake my head again. “Stop hiding behind yet another lie, Harin. I want the truth.”

“That's not—”

“Just say it, Harin,” I get back to my feet, cutting through whatever she's trying to stammer out as I step toward her, her eyes blazing brighter than ever behind the tears. “Tell me it was all a lie. Tell me you really did betray me. Say it to my face —that's all I'm asking. So we can be done with it, once and for—”

“TAEHYUNG, WATCH OUT !”

PANG.

The explosion rings through my ears, through every corner of my skull, at the same moment my head cracks horribly against the ground under the force of Harin's impact —she has literally thrown herself at me to shove me out of the way. Despite the ground swaying around me and my ears ringing, I pull myself upright, searching desperately for her —only when I spot her, lying on her side a few meters away, do I manage to breathe normally again. I watch her move, push herself up slowly, and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

Only then, now that I'm almost certain she's alright, do I understand what just happened. Someone just shot at us.

I don't have time to think about it —I've fought more than my share of purple monsters, and the only time I ever saw them use guns was in Ebonwick, and today they were all armed with spears, without exception —because a second shot rings out, forcing me flat to the ground with my hands over my head as the bullet lands close, far too close to me.

Harin shouts something, a warning I barely register —I'm too busy drawing the pistol at my belt and firing toward where the shot seemed to come from —in vain. The bullet goes off, but hits nothing.

More shots are fired, dozens of them —and I barely notice that none of them seem to get within five meters of me this time, leaving small furrows in the dust as I try, again and again, to hit the shooters with my own shots, losing track of how many rounds I have left…

…until two cold hands close over mine.

“Taehyung, stop !” Harin shouts, panic flooding her voice as she throws her full weight against my arm to force it down.

She looks all around us, to every corner of the stone quarry, as silence falls back —her hands pressing mine a little harder with every passing second.

For a moment I wonder what's gotten into her, why she looks so panicked, frightened even. Then I see them —and I understand.

I understand why she kept looking into the distance, why she was begging me to listen. We're surrounded.

All around us, each one holding either a spear or a scythe twice their height, the purple creatures stand proud as ever —blocking every way out we might have taken. She knew, I realize, as I meet her golden eyes full of horror. She knew, and she was trying to warn me. And I, like an idiot, stopped her from speaking.

I don't have time to stammer anything —not even time to reach for the words. The quarry, carved like a hollow surrounded by cliffs, amplifies a thousandfold every sound that escapes it —which probably explains why the sound of slow, deliberate applause that rises through the air hits so loudly, so utterly consuming.

“Taehyung,” Harin's rushed whisper cuts through everything else as one of her hands leaves mine to close around my arm —grip it, really— her eyes searching mine. “Taehyung, look at me,” she urges, and her voice has that hurried, pained edge I don't like at all. That panics me, even.

“What ?”

“Or just close your eyes,” she presses, tightening her grip on my arm, “Either way, just don't look, it's—”

“Well, well, what a show you've put on for us, my friends,” a voice booms then, cheerful —far too cheerful. A voice I know. One that turns my blood to ice. Harin squeezes me harder, begs me to keep my eyes on her, but it's no use. All I can do is watch the figure that emerges from between the purple creatures and walks toward us, hands still clapping. “No, truly, I have tears in my eyes. I almost feel bad for interrupting.”

For the first time, Harin's voice is nothing but background noise in my mind. I can feel her eyes on me, see the sorrow and the plea written on her face, but all I can look at is the silhouette of my brother walking slowly toward me, a vicious smile on his lips.

“…Taehui ?”

I must be dreaming. It's impossible. Taehui can't be here —he wasn't even called to the battle. No, Taehui is where I placed him with his troops —in some remote village in Hestidia, searching for Jimin the way he begged me to let him. He can't be here… Can he?

“Surprised to see me, dear brother ?” he exclaims, arms spread wide and grinning as though I'm about to throw myself at him for an embrace.

Again, the ground tilts around me, and this time I'm the one who has to hold onto Harin to keep from swaying. It's impossible. And yet there he is —hair slightly disheveled, eyes more alive than I have ever seen them, face… changed.

Taehui has always been quiet —the second son who never wanted responsibility, who preferred to read in his corner, to go unnoticed. But right now, he isn't trying to shrink, to seem less than he is. He stands before us with his shoulders pulled back, his eyes lit with a malice I have never seen in him, and that terrifies me. But not as much as what he's wearing.

A brown coat bearing our kingdom's crest —beneath a violet cape billowing behind him in the wind. The color of Bruria.

I must be dreaming. There's no other explanation. “What are you doing here?” I stammer, so lost the words get tangled in my mouth. It makes no sense. None of it. How—

“Seriously, Taehyung ?” Taehui arches an eyebrow with a sigh, looking exasperated —or disappointed. “I thought you were clever, but you still haven't worked it out ? Or maybe Eosu was right and you were really too busy with your beloved to suspect anything at all…” He tilts his head, a small smile playing at his lips.

“That's enough,” Harin cuts in suddenly, jaw tight, turning her head to glare at him with a look that could draw blood. It doesn't have the intended effect —Taehui beams from where he stands.

“Hmm, yes, I agree, I've waited long enough,” he nods pleasantly, before making a dismissive wave of his hand. “Now step aside, soldier, I'd hate to have to put a hole through that pretty skull of yours.” He raises his other hand, revealing a revolver still smoking at the barrel —aimed directly at my head.

Harin doesn't flinch. She steps in front of me, her eyes narrowed to hard, determined slits, but I can't focus on her.

Can't focus on anything but the fact that my own brother has crossed to the enemy's side.

“Why? Why would you ally yourself with these… monsters ?”

I was always good to him —everyone was always good to him, except maybe Taeyeon, who hates him with all the strengh a seven-years-old can gather. We never forced him to fight, to appear at receptions when he didn't want to, nothing like that. So why—

“Because they may be monsters, but they have their uses,” he replies, with a biting tone I never thought I'd hear from him. “You think it's fun, living in your shadow your entire life, Taehyung ? You think it's enjoyable, being the younger brother nobody cares about, because the crown prince is so intelligent, so strong, so handsome ?!” He seethes, his voice rising until the tendons strain in his neck and a vein swells at his temple. “Do you know what's going to happen to me when you're King? They'll politely ask me to clear out of the palace I grew up in and go marry some princess from God knows where, while your future children run through my halls !”

My throat tightens —his words stop me cold. Harin, beside me, stays unreadable, the only thing keeping me from coming apart entirely. “Tradition dictates—”

“I don't care about tradition !” Taehui screams like a man unraveling, the vein at his temple darkening beneath his skin. He jabs a finger at me, furious, a hatred worse than anything I have ever seen spreading across his face. A hatred, clearly, that has been held back far too long. “You're nothing but a smooth-talker who got lucky enough to be born first ! The Brurians have promised me Irinian and a portion of Hestidia, I'm going to—”

“I can assure you they will never honor that,” Harin says, in the tone of someone who knows exactly what she's talking about —but my brother clearly has no patience for being corrected. The barrel of the revolver swings sharply toward her, and this time it's me who tenses. He can keep me in his sights as long as he likes —but he will not touch her.

“Let them try to double-cross me,” Taehui spits, his voice dripping contempt as he cuts me a dark look. “I managed to fool my own father, and I'm about to kill my beloved big brother, so I'll take my chances. I kill you, I take back my throne, then—”

“Killing me won't get you anywhere,” Harin turns to me, surprised, only to find me with my head low, quietly working my thumb to check how many bullets I have left —one single one, sitting there waiting. When she understands what I'm about to do, her eyes go wide with horror and she shakes her head furiously —but my mind is already made up. “Father is still King,” I say, loudly and clearly, for my brother's benefit, ignoring Harin's silent warning.

He simply shrugs, unimpressed. “Maybe. Maybe not. Wanna bet ? Because I'm quite certain my little friends have taken care of him by now,” he gestures at the purple creatures surrounding us on all sides, and I can only hope he can't see the horror sweeping through me at the sight of them. They're everywhere. Statues so motionless they've become part of the landscape. “Same goes for dear Jimin and his father. Only you are left, and I am going to take the greatest pleasure in wiping that smug little smile off your pathetic face for good, you—”

“Are you quite so certain of that, Your Highness?”

I don't think I have ever been so glad to hear Yoongi's voice.

Taehyung too —despite everything between them, I can feel him go slack behind me all at once, a long breath of relief escaping him. He stays focused on Taehui, revolver firmly in hand, but I can't help searching for my brother, after days of not knowing whether he was alright.

Eosu had wanted to use me to draw him in, and I had begged the heavens dozens of times not to let him follow me into that hell —it seems they listened. Still, even knowing he was safe, even being certain he wouldn't abandon me, seeing him in the flesh, proudly posted at the top of a cliff with Juhel and a few of his men at his side, does me more good than I can say.

From a distance, he catches my eye and winks —unaware of the wave of joy and hope it sends through me. Everything is going to be alright —if Yoongi is here, then this nightmare is almost over.

“Lower your weapon, Taehui,” Yoongi thunders, not bothering to cup his hands around his mouth to carry the sound —he's using that firm, uncompromising tone that is so unmistakably the Lieutenant, and even without forcing it, his voice is strong enough that the shape of the quarry alone carries his words down to us, leaving no room for argument.

“What, you think you frighten me?” Taehui has to shout to get the same echo as Yoongi, but he's furious enough that it seems to bother him little. “I have a hundred Borenars under my command, Lieutenant, and even if there were only ten of them, you wouldn't stand a chance!”

He punctuates his words with a dismissive flick toward the Borenars posted behind him, and the response is immediate —the violet-draped giants surge into motion, gripping their weapons tight as they launch forward, fast as the wind, heading straight for the soldiers in black at the top of the cliff.

Taehyung's hand finds my shoulder on instinct, pulling me toward him, but it's unnecessary —we aren't their target, not yet. From up on his cliff, however, Yoongi simply smiles —a cunning smile, faintly cruel, the kind he rarely shows. He grew up steeped in cruelty —he knows as well as I do that it is never the answer. And yet right now, it's the only word I can find for his expression.

“That is your problem, Your Highness,” he calls out, almost clicking his tongue as he shakes his head, not the least bit troubled by the Borenars charging toward him. “You have never fought a real war. It puts you at a disadvantage: you haven't yet understood that in battle, numbers aren’t what matters…”

The men behind him hand him something he accepts without hurrying —an enormous rifle modified by the special guard, so large he has to rest the barrel on his shoulder to hold it level. The muzzle is wider than the span of a hand, and Taehyung lets out a strangled sound as Yoongi closes one eye to aim, calmer than ever, and with good reason. You don't need to be a genius to understand what that thing does —a single round can crater the ground for meters in every direction.

“No, it's not numbers… It's the sense of timing.”

Without missing a beat, his finger finds the trigger of the enormous rifle —the bullet tears through the air, landing on the attackers at the exact moment the group of Borenars passes Taehui —who is hurled off his feet by the force of the blast.

A screen of smoke swallows the scene, but you only have to hear the screams tearing through it to know the Borenars have been hit. The others who had stayed posted on the flanks stir, making a decision of their own —something I didn't even think them capable of— and move to attack the cliff where Yoongi and his men are standing. But at the same moment dozens of soldiers in black materialize from nowhere, surging in from every direction, and the battle erupts.

It takes several of them working together to bring down a single Borenar, but one by one they begin to fall around us, the violet cloaks replaced by uniforms black as night —quick and impossible to catch.

“Sense of timing, my ass,” Taehyung mutters to himself, staring at the scene unfolding around us. “He simply knew he had the numbers on his side.”

“He just saved our lives, in case you hadn't noticed, so maybe be a little —WATCH OUT!” I shout, and this time it's Taehyung who shoves me to the ground as a bullet tears past us —if we'd stayed on our feet, it would have taken him clean through the head.

I'm dazed by the impact, my poor bones struggling to take yet another fall, and Taehyung pushes himself up to check I'm alright before, at my nod, scanning the quarry for the shooter.

It doesn't take long. It's becoming increasingly clear that Taehui had never planned for the situation to slip from his control —he's standing in the middle of the quarry, one hand clutching a bloodied shoulder while the other holds his revolver, arm locked straight and aimed directly at Taehyung. His face is more enraged than ever —his features, ordinarily so soft and hesitant, bear no resemblance to his brother's anymore. He looks like someone else entirely.

“I missed once. Not twice,” he snarls, thumbing back the hammer to chamber the next bullet.

“You can still turn back from this, Taehui,” Taehyung tries, raising both hands on either side of his head in a gesture of peace —at the exact moment Yoongi, having come down from the cliff, levels his monstrous rifle at the young prince and adds, “Yeah, listen to him. ‘Cause either you drop the gun, or I blow your head off. Your choice.”

Taehui turns on him, wild with rage.

“It's over! There's nothing you can do anymore ! The Brurians will come back whether I hold the crowns or not ! They won't spare a single one of you, they'll burn you to ash ! You'd almost be better off letting me negotiate with them…”

“Let them come, I'll be ready,” Yoongi shoots back, looking about two seconds away from spitting at the prince's feet. “I have men across the four kingdoms, Your Highness, and the Brurians have precious little of either. Let them come.”

And he's right. The Borenars may be formidable —but against the near endless numbers of the special guard scattered across every corner of the Known Lands, they won't last long. Around us they fall one by one, until not a single one is left standing —the armed line replaced entirely by soldiers dressed in black, prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Taehui from escaping.

At that precise moment, some of them shift to make way for two men, one of them on horseback. He looks exhausted, one hand pressed to a bloodied thigh, but nothing could conceal the crown sitting proudly on his head, or the perfectly blond hair beneath it —the same blond that colors the head of the other man beside him, younger, leading the horse, standing tall with a sword in hand. King Jigeun and Crown Prince Jimin.

“Insubordination against the crown, pact with the enemy, and violence against a member of the royal family,” Yoongi recites, repositioning the rifle against his shoulder. “Even for a prince, that'll hurt. Some have been executed for less.”

“Easy, Lieutenant,” a low voice cuts in then, a thin and weathered hand appearing to gently push the barrel of the rifle toward the ground. “No one is executing my son today.”

“Father!” Taehyung bursts out, indignant, but Taegeun stops him with a hard look. Yoongi narrows his eyes, visibly displeased by the King's sudden appearance, but says nothing and lets him lower the weapon. I'm lost myself —Taehui just confessed without a shred of remorse to allying with the enemy to seize the throne, and he's defending him?…

“His Majesty is too kind,” Taehui sneers, and all at once he sounds strangely like his brother when he's furious. “I would not dare ask for such mercy.”

“Don't celebrate yet, wretch,” Taegeun thunders, and this time his hard gaze settles on his second son. “You will get what you deserve, but you will be judged as is proper for what you have done. You are still my son.”

“I want none of your pity,” the prince says through clenched teeth, his eyes so wide they look ready to leave his face entirely.

“It is not pity,” the King replies, in that moralizing politician's tone that normally drives Taehyung mad, and that makes everyone present tense at once. “Don't hope to see freedom again; you will end your days in prison, far from this crown that has so thoroughly turned your mind.”

All things considered, this is the moment I genuinely wonder whether his eyes might fall from his skull, so completely does Taehui seem to be coming apart from the inside. His face drains of color, his expression wild, and he starts to laugh —a crazed, desperate laugh. One that echoes through the quarry as though he were standing right beside us. I push myself to my feet, suddenly uneasy —and when I manage to stay upright, I see Taehyung swallow, deeply unsettled.

He has never seen his brother like this. No one has ever seen Taehui like this. And it is terrifying.

“Oh, what, father, you'd disinherit me ? Really ?” He sneers, still laughing but the laughter dies slowly as the King keeps his face of stone, with no intention of yielding. And then, slowly, Taehui's features twist back under the force of his fury. When he speaks again, it's with a smile full of contempt and a sound barely human in his throat. “You know what ? I am sick to death of your worthless justice, Father. Taehyung was always right: you're nothing but a hypocrite who does exactly as he pleases.”

He drives the words in like a blade —but not as violently as the speed with which he raises his arm, levels the barrel of his revolver at his father, and fires.

The King's face falls apart as the bullet takes him in the stomach, the force of the impact sending him stumbling backward before he crumples. Yoongi throws himself toward him, having never anticipated anything like this —like every other person present, stunned motionless by what has just happened.

Too stunned, at least, to react in time as Taehui turns back toward Taehyung, his weapon still smoking. “And you,” he thumbs back the hammer, chambers another bullet. “There is no way I'm letting you sit on my throne.”

Taehui never received any training in combat or weapons handling. That probably explains why no one expects him to aim so well, to reload so fast, to fire one-handed without his arm so much as wavering. And yet that is exactly what he does.

He aims —straight at Taehyung— and fires.

The bullet leaves the barrel, travels through the air, covers the distance between them far too fast —and time seems to stop.

Taehyung is there, weapon in hand with no way to use it, too caught off-guard to react, too far behind his opponent to fight back.

My Taehyung, who was begging me only minutes ago to tell him the truth, to love him back, not to break his heart for good —who carries that ring on a chain with the same fierce tenderness I once did. The certainty that everything will be alright as long as the other one is there.

I don't know what force moves me —or perhaps I do, but everything is too tangled for me to admit it.

All I know is that one second, I'm watching him as the bullet closes in and he stands there, helpless. The next, I'm standing in front of him, our faces only a few centimeters apart —and we can only stay like that, so close and yet so far in this second that stretches, and stretches, as though trying to buy us more time, his eyes filling with horror when he understands.

Not so long ago, I swore to protect him —not because it is my duty, but because I want to. Because I could not bear for anything to happen to him.

I just want him to be safe. The rest can wait.

So, tenderly, I smile at him —even knowing it repairs none of the unsaid things, the lies, the apologies we will never get to make. I smile at him.

Even as the bullet lodges in my back and blood fills my mouth. I smile at him.

“Forgive me,” I whisper, no longer knowing whether it's blood or tears making me suddenly so cold. No longer knowing whether I should scream or fold into myself against the searing pain, choosing instead to say the only thing that comes to mind. The only words that matter.

Please. Forgive me.

He doesn't answer —his eyes are fixed on my mouth, on the smile I'm holding there, on the blood escaping it. It must not be pretty, because he barely reacts when I take the revolver from his hands —a revolver engraved with my initials, a revolver with only one bullet left.

The second stretches, stretches. I lose myself, just one last time, in those dark eyes that contain my entire world —smile at him, just one last time, pressing the image of those chocolate-brown eyes into my mind. I want to dream of those and nothing else, forever.

Then I turn, raise my arm, and fire.

One bullet, one chance —it flies, cuts through the air straight to its mark— and lands on the forehead of the second prince of Irinian, right between the eyes.

In that second that stretches on and on, I find myself alone before the perfectly round hole drilled into the forehead of Prince Taehui.

Then the second ends, the pain strikes like lightning —too hard, too sudden— everything goes black, and I fall.

My mother used to say that as long as the stars are above our heads, everything will be alright. My big brother preferred to put it more simply, saying that everything works out in the end, that it's only a matter of time.

As the world closes in around me, I'm no longer sure either of them was right.

“No.”

A few meters away, my brother crumples to the ground, stone dead, the bullet having caught him straight between the eyes. Everyone rushes toward him from all sides. The soldiers are shouting, my father is crying out, all of them scrambling to make sense of what just happened.

I don’t.

“No.”

The voice doing the begging is mine, but it sounds foreign —too strangled. A cry held too far down to come out right, a plea addressed to no one, and to everyone at once.

“No, no, no, NO!”

I catch her body before she hits the ground, half-expecting to feel her twist in my arms. To see her try to pull herself upright and go make sure the nightmare is over herself. Not knowing that the nightmare is only starting.

Harin doesn't move in my arms. Her dress is wet when I pull her against me —sticky and soaked through with red, against my hand at the small of her back as much as against my chest. Too wet. Too much red. Too much, too much, too much—

“No, please, no,” my voice shakes this time, my teeth rattling together and refusing to stop. I sink to the ground, barely feeling the pain in my knees —nothing compared to the pain tearing through my chest at the feel of her body going cold, at the sight of her eyes not shining as much. No longer shining at all.

They're barely open, glassy —stripped of everything that blazed in them when she smiled at me, still so impossible to predict, still so resolute even at the worst of times. That damned smile, so understated and yet so blinding —the way her lips would press together gently, the corners tilting faintly downward in an expression that was almost shy, but that was always enough to undo me completely. Those same lips now frozen in a grimace of pain, blood escaping them with every tremor.

“Harin,” I beg, drawing her cold body back against me, holding her as carefully as though she were the most precious thing in the world —because she is. “Sweetheart, please, look at me. Harin,” I sob, helpless before her still face draining of all color. Tears I never felt coming slide down my cheeks and fall onto hers, mixing with the blood painting her mouth. There is too much blood. Far too much.

I pass my hands over her face, this face I have spent so long looking at that I know it by heart —once, twice, as much to wipe away the blood as my own tears that have fallen there. Her blood stains my clothes, cold and wet and clinging —too much blood, too much, too much, too much—

“Please,” I cry, over and over, holding her against me, pressing my forehead to hers, searching desperately for the warmth of her skin, for the faintest twitch of her cheek that might signal a smile trying to form. Nothing. She is as limp as a ragdoll in my arms. “Please,” I say again. “I'm begging you. Don't leave me alone. Sweetheart, answer me, please.”

I hold her close, bring her fingers to my lips, again and again. Her fingers are cold against my mouth. “I'm sorry,” I sob. “I love you. I love you. You can't give up now. I'll take you far away from this hell, we'll live wherever you want, I'll never let anyone scare you again, I—”

Someone grabs my shoulder, pulls me back. I hear my name being called, more than once, by more than one voice —but my vision is too blurred to make out who. My eyes refuse to leave her, my hands clutch at that cold, limp body from which so much blood is still flowing without stopping.

“Let go of me,” I shout, clinging to her, desperate. “Please. Don't leave me, you can't, I'm begging you—”

Her body is torn from my hands. Someone drags me backward as I fight to keep her close —she's going to wake up, I'm sure of it— but the other is stronger, steadier on his feet. I stumble, end up on the ground, my vision wrecked with tears as she is carried away from me, leaving me there, helpless, the arms holding me not the ones I want.

Tears fall onto my neck —not mine. The tears of whoever is holding me, whispering in my ear, weeping words meant to calm me, meant to comfort me. Words I cannot hear.

As the love of my life is carried away from me, all I can see are those eyes —dull, extinguished. Those eyes that once burned so brightly they gave me a reason to live.

In front of me, in less than a second, the golden eyes —the light that guided me home— went dark. And the moth that I am is left alone in the dark.

Thanks for reading ! Don't hesitate to reblog, like or comment ! I always love to hear 'bout what you guys thought of the chap :) Also don't hesitate to ask if you wanna be tagged !

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