Page 34

Iseul

“Stop dragging me,” Iseul bites out as she stumbles after Seojin in the Gyeulcheon sickbay. The wounded glare at her, and she sneers back at them. Oh, they’re so sensitive. All she did was shove them over and trash this very infirmary a little bit —

Seojin ignores her, focusing on administering the healing brew to the victims of Imugi venom. Iseul knows this brew. It’s a very potent painkiller, and this victim certainly needs it. His flesh is being eaten away little by little. Imugi venom adheres to the skin like a suckling leech.

“Ow!” Iseul snaps as Seojin moves his right hand, which forces Iseul’s left hand to move. The handcuff is so tight .

“Please stop complaining,” he whispers out of the corner of his mouth as he pours the brew onto a spoon and slips it into a soldier’s slack mouth. “We both know who landed us here.”

The Gumiho scowls. She will complain if she pleases, and she will make it a point to do it oh-so-very loudly . “I am a prisoner of war ,” she huffs, “manacled to a cruel traitor —”

Seojin sighs and moves to the next cot, pulling Iseul along with him. She scoffs in outrage, the skin on her left wrist chafing.

It really is a horrible punishment, Iseul reflects, to be trapped next to Ryu Seojin all day long. An exquisite sort of torture. Their wrists are rubbed red and raw, but nothing hurts as much as the deep gash in Iseul’s heart. Oh, she loved Seojin. He was her best friend, the first boy she ever kissed in a clumsy bumping of noses and grinning lips. He healed her when she was nothing but a tiny, wounded fox, and he stood steadfastly by her side as she expertly swindled Sunpo into making her a notoriously rich madame.

Seojin was the only boy her wicked, wicked heart ever stumbled for. Except for that childhood kiss, nothing ever happened between them. And now, nothing ever will, because Ryu Seojin is a cruel, uncaring, disloyal, conniving, pig-headed, obtuse bastard —

The cruel, uncaring, disloyal, conniving, pig-headed, obtuse bastard yanks her over to another cot and so rudely interrupts her sad wallowing. Underneath the sheets lies a sallow-faced human woman. The venom has taken the left side of her face, and it is clearly too late to save that side of skin. The ravaged skin is red, oozing. Iseul wrinkles her nose. Ugh.

“Ijun,” Seojin greets quietly, dipping the spoon back into the glass vial. “How is the pain today?”

Ijun licks dry lips. She smells of sickness and death. Iseul tries to hold her breath. “My boy,” Ijun rasps. “Where is my boy? Where is Jae?”

“Eomma! Eomma!” A scampering of feet, and then Jae is rushing to the cot, eyes wide. “You’re awake!” He shoves past Iseul, and Seojin tenses, glancing to Iseul…

But she keeps her face carefully blank. And she fights for it to remain so, watching as the child clambers onto the bed, the woman grimacing from the pain of his embrace yet attempting to smile anyway. The smell of death sours further in her nose. Ijun does not have much time left, and her son—Jae—knows it. As Ijun plants a kiss on the top of his black-haired head, Iseul is transported suddenly to a dense thicket, the smell of ferns and pine heavy.

She is a small thing, white-furred and slender, only a kit. She has not yet obtained her human form. Her eomma and appa, in their fox forms, are speaking to her urgently.

They are coming, they’re saying. Run, Iseul. Run.

Iseul can smell them—the sweat, the fire, the pitchforks, the rage and hatred. She wants to know if her parents will run with her. She whimpers nervously, and then in grief as the answer comes to her. Her parents kiss the top of her head, bumping their black noses atop her white fur.

Run, Iseul. Run.

With a firm nudge, her appa sends her off, racing through the forest, scared and small and utterly alone. The sound of heavy feet crashing into the thicket sound behind her.

Keening wails—and then…nothing.

She swallows hard as a familiar rage burns inside of her. It is so dreadfully unfair, for these humans to still know love and family while she is so completely alone.

Yet her fiery rage flickers as she watches this mother hold her son tight, fighting off death for a little while longer, just to be with him.

Ijun takes her medicine, Jae nestled in her arms. Iseul looks away.

“Thank you,” Ijun murmurs. And then Iseul feels her gaze upon her. She forces herself to meet the woman’s eye, expecting to see blame there. Hatred. Disgust.

Instead, she sees something sad and warm. “My mother was part of the 43rd Division,” she says, and Iseul frowns, confused.

“The 43rd?” Seojin asks, equally confused, and Ijun nods, eyes flickering.

“A Bonseyo rebel troop,” she whispers, stroking her son’s hair. “They tried to stop the Fox Hunt. Many of them were killed for their insolence.”

The ground drops out from beneath Iseul’s feet.

“My mother fled to Wyusan. But not before she tried to stop them.” There are tears in Ijun’s eyes. Lies , Iseul wants to hiss. Yet something…tells her that the woman is honest. “She passed last year. Her only regret was failing the Gumiho.”

“I’ve never heard of this division,” Seojin says, and his eyes are worried as he glances over at Iseul. She sways on her feet. Her face is pale. Sweat beads on her forehead.

Iseul has never heard of the 43rd, either. Not once. Not ever.

“Just as the Gumiho were wiped from the history books, so was the 43rd.” Ijun coughs, and a trickle of blood leaks from her mouth. Jae stares at it and begins to cry. Underneath her son’s wails, Ijun whispers, “But they existed. And they fought.”

The rest goes unsaid, but Iseul hears it as plainly as the cry of a frightened kit in the wilderness.

And they were human.

…

“I’m not sick, Seojin,” she snaps as Seojin all but forcefully pulls her into the small room they share near the medical bay the moment he is released for a short break. She scowls as Seojin drags her over to the bed and gestures for her to sit down. Seething, Iseul complies, the chain between them rattling awkwardly as she seats herself before him.

“You look ill,” he replies, brows knitted together. Fine, so maybe that’s true. Her face is clammy and damp with a cold sweat. It’s that Ijun woman. She did this to her.

Seojin takes her free wrist in his, measuring her pulse.

Iseul’s mouth suddenly feels dry. Seojin has always done this, has always lost his mind when she displays even the smallest symptom of some illness. The paranoia only grew worse after his brother’s death. She scans his face, and the concern in his eyes—even after all of this—makes her heart stumble in her chest.

“Your pulse is too quick,” Seojin determines softly before placing a hesitant hand on Iseul’s forehead, where her skin warms under his touch. She wonders if he can feel it. “And your skin is too clammy. Do you have any stomach pain? Any nausea?”

Oh, Iseul certainly has nausea as she thinks to Ijun’s words. She had never heard of the 43rd Division before, and for some reason, possessing the knowledge of their existence makes her feel rather ill.

It changes nothing , she tells herself determinedly. Nothing.

But that doesn’t feel like the truth, not at all.

They were human. And they fought.

She hadn’t known…

“Iseul?” Seojin prompts, and his soft voice is almost worried. When she again fails to reply, he stretches out an arm to the small shelf of herbs he has next to the bed and grabs the glass vial of sticky elderberry syrup. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to make her take this specific medicine. “Here,” he murmurs, raising it to her lips. “Drink.”

“I’m fine,” she says, pushing the medicine away. Seojin raises his brows, but he shouldn’t be surprised. Iseul has never quite liked medicine and would in all honesty prefer to chew off her own foot than drink any of the foul stuff. “I just…” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.” It changes nothing. Nothing. “Besides, I’d think you would be grateful if I really were deathly ill. It might relieve you of a burden, wouldn’t it?” She lifts her manacled hand and shakes it pointedly.

Seojin lurches back as if she’s struck him. Color rises to his face, and his fingers spasm around the vial of elderberry syrup. For a moment, she thinks his eyes look glassy. But Ryu Seojin does not cry. Especially, she thinks, for someone like herself. Someone he so disdains .

She watches as he slowly recaps the syrup and places it back on the shelf. When he apparently trusts himself enough to speak, he turns back to Iseul. His eyes are dry.

“If you think that little of me,” he says, voice scratchy, “it doesn’t surprise me that you would think the worst of them. You want to see the worst in everybody, Iseul, even when there is good. Even when they’ve tried to help you.”

“I don’t need your help ,” she spits out, suddenly vicious as she catches that glint of pity in his eyes. “I’ve been alone my whole life. I don’t need to let you help me. I don’t owe anyone anything , no matter how much they try to—to manipulate me into thinking otherwise.” Iseul pants in anger, for they’re no longer talking about Seojin or the medicine. “I know what I am,” she hisses, “and what I am meant to do so that they know that I—that I lived for a reason.”

Seojin’s eyes soften, the bastard. “Iseul—”

“What do you think they would say?” she demands. “If I turned my back on them now?” Tears sparkle in her eyes, trail down her cheeks. Iseul scrubs them away.

It’s an effort to speak. “I’m not sick,” Iseul forces out, only to herself. “I’m not. I’m fine. I’m fine .”

Yet still, she feels something growing inside of her.

Something she needs to weed out.

So for the rest of the day, Iseul is as much of a menace as she possibly can be.

Yet it doesn’t bring the same satisfaction as it did before.