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PROLOGUE

AS WITH ANYtragedy, it came about because he loved.

When he was on the cusp of manhood, a young man met a girl. She was beautiful, desired by everyone in town, and— unbeknownst to him—desired by a powerful sansin.

However, despite the many scholars and noblemen offering their love, she chose the young man who was only the forgotten last son of a lower noble family. She professed her love for him, and they planned to marry.

In preparation for their marriage, he commissioned a ceramic vase that he would present to her.

He didn’t know that, as he prepared his gift, she was preparing one of her own. For the girl he loved was not a girl at all. She was a fox, a gumiho, and she wished to become human for him. But she was tricked by the sansin who coveted her. He persuaded her to kill to gain mortality. One hundred livers devoured in one hundred days. It would allow her to take the gi of her victims—energy that fuels all living things. She did not know that the world demanded balance. That if she took the souls of others, she was sacrificing her own.

The night before their wedding, she came to her young man.

He awoke to see her washed in the light of the moon.

He cringed in fear of her. For she wasn’t human, but halfwoman–half demon. Her nine tails wove around her as symbols of her true form, and her soul was shrouded in shadows.

He denied her love. The gi she’d devoured fueled her despair, and the gumiho lashed out, killing him in a blind rage.

But that wasn’t to be his end, because he awoke again. This time not as a man but as a beast. A dokkaebi. He was cursed by a shaman that served the sansin to roam the earth as an unnatural goblin.

In despair, he planned to kill the shaman who turned him. But before he could, she told him that because of his rejection, the gumiho had hired the shaman to curse the man to this dokkaebi form. And the shaman gave him a chance for his own revenge. She helped him capture the gumiho for the rest of her immortal life. So the vase that was to be his wedding gift became the gumiho’s prison.

And Junu lived the rest of his life as a dokkaebi.

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MIYOUNG LOVED HERmother.

Miyoung mourned her mother.

Miyoung was haunted by her mother.

She didn’t use to dream much, and when she did, they were often of her victims. But now, it seemed, she dreamed of her mother as well.

At night, Gu Yena came to Miyoung. Her skin so pale it seemed translucent. Perhaps that’s what happened to gumiho when they died. They became spectral things that could haunt you.

“Eomma,” Miyoung said. The innocent title a child gave their mother. The title she hadn’t called Yena since she was a toddler. Except for once. Except when Yena lay dying in her arms. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” In death Yena’s voice sounded hollow, distant. A shiver raced down Miyoung’s back.

“I should have tried harder to save you.”

“How could you when you can’t even save yourself?” Yena asked, sorrow tingeing her words. They hung thick in the air. More accusation than question.

“What do you mean?” Miyoung asked, fear joining the chill that spread over her.

“You can’t save yourself because you don’t even know what trouble you’re in. My sweet girl. My ignorant saekkiya.”

The words stung, but Miyoung couldn’t dwell on that.

“What kind of trouble? Is it because I don’t have my yeowu guseul?” Miyoung had always worried losing her fox bead would have dire consequences. She just didn’t know it would involve her mother.

Yena’s eyes shifted at the mention of Miyoung’s bead. A light pulsed, then faded into nothing. “I didn’t prepare you enough.”

“No, you did everything you could for me.”

“And now you must do for yourself.”