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“You lied to me.” The heat of anger rose up in her, and sheembraced it because if she was angry, at least she wasn’t feeling any of the other emotions she wanted to ignore.

“What?” Yena’s voice was low and cold.

“You said that yeowu guseuls don’t exist. If you’d told me... if I’d known—”

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you were too immature to know. And I was right because you lost yours and have now put it in that pathetic boy.”

The truth of Yena’s words deflated Miyoung’s anger. And without it, Miyoung felt completely drained.

“What do we do now?”

“I want to rip it out of his chest.”

Miyoung twisted to see a look of resignation on Yena’s face.

“But you can’t do it without hurting me, too, can you?”

“It could damage the bead,” Yena confirmed. “I don’t care about the boy’s life, but I won’t risk you.”

Miyoung should’ve been grateful, comforted even. Instead she felt empty.

“You can’t be around him,” Yena said. “If he holds your yeowu guseul, he holds control over you.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me. I trust him.”

“I don’t.”

“You’re telling me to leave him alone. His only family is dying down the hallway,” Miyoung said.

“I didn’t kill the old woman.”

Miyoung sighed, because her mother was right. The blame for that lay squarely on her own shoulders.

“If I feed, will it hurt him?” Miyoung asked.

“There’s no way of knowing that.” Yena spoke like a politicianskirting the topic. It made Miyoung’s suspicion expand tenfold until she had no room for anything else, like air or rational thought.

“The bead is connected to me, even in Jihoon. What do you think will happen to him if I feed and it makes the energy of the bead flare up, too? It could kill him.”

Yena shrugged, clearly uncaring of what happened to Jihoon. “Without your bead you have to feed more often and you have to feed directly from your prey’s flesh. No more of this sifting energy. It’s the only way you can guarantee you’ll survive.”

“I won’t feed.”

“What?” Yena’s eyes narrowed.

“You ruined Nara’s life to feed. You didn’t need to kill both of her parents. Did you never think about what it would do to her?”

“I don’t check the family status of all of my prey,” Yena answered, so flippantly it squeezed at Miyoung’s heart.

“I won’t feed tonight.”

“Why? Because I killed that shaman’s parents? Or because of that boy?”

“No,” Miyoung said. How could she explain to her mother that she’d always struggled with the idea that others had to die for her to live? How could she explain that she just didn’t believe her life was worth more than the lives of her victims? How could she explain that tonight hadn’t just hurt because of Nara’s betrayal, but because Miyoung could understand why the young shaman had done it all. Revenge for the unjust death of her parents. It was true what the shamans thought. Yena and Miyoung were the bad guys in this story. Their choices had a ripple of consequences that even they couldn’t see. And people ended up hurt, like Jihoon.

“Not tonight, Mother. The sun is almost up anyway. Just...”Miyoung trailed off and let her head drop into her hands. “Not tonight.”

“Fine,” Yena snapped, and Miyoung knew the conversation wasn’t done, just on pause until the next full moon. “But if we’re to find a way to get that bead out of the boy and back into you, then we need to seek out answers. We’re leaving. Today.” There was finality in Yena’s voice.