Page 55

Iseul

Iseul is not very happy about this whole not being evil thing, yet that night when she closes her eyes to sleep, all she can see is Jae’s face as he sees his eomma still and pale, and all she can hear are his wails as he clings to her for comfort—not striking her as she expected he would. She tosses and turns, but it’s no use denying the obvious—Song Iseul has reached a decision that is woefully annoying and will undoubtedly get her killed if Lina finds out.

Lina. Once, Iseul believed the two of them could be friends. Yet something changed in her, transforming her. She did not tell her that Seojin was in Gyeulcheon, even as she watched Iseul mourn the shattering of a lifelong friendship. She treats Iseul like a tool. How is it that her time as a prisoner in Gyeulcheon was preferable to her time as a soldier in Lina’s army? Even in his worst moments, Seojin still spoke to her like she was a living, breathing, sentient creature—not just a weapon to wield at opportune moments, to keep shiny and polished. And when Iseul opened up to her on the Stretch, detailing the deaths of her parents… Iseul expected anything but the disinterested side-eye she received.

Oh, Iseul does want to kill the Jeon Dynasty—starting with Jeon Eunwoo, whom she simply cannot abide—but call it a change of heart, call it a need to be reunited with Seojin, call it the Gumiho’s natural capriciousness and overall unpredictability… Iseul finds she has larger, more pressing matters to attend to.

Such as sneaking into the stables in the dead of night, careful not to disturb the sleeping Imugi in the garden. The Imugi guarding the entrance cracks open an eye, and Iseul smiles, waggling a hand. “Torture time,” she half sings, stroking her beloved giant ax she once more carries. The Imugi releases what sounds like a hissing laugh. “Get some rest,” Iseul tells it. “Tomorrow, we embark to Bonseyo.”

The large serpent’s nostrils flare, and with a hiss of what seems like thanks, it slithers off to find a spot in the garden. Iseul’s notoriety is infamous in the ranks; the Imugi trust her completely. She slips into the shadowed stables, ignoring the Supreme Commander—who needs him , really, when he’s drugged to oblivion and also probably very concussed?—and stalking straight toward Rui.

His eyes are closed, but he doesn’t seem to be sleeping. His body is alert, tense…yet he doesn’t seem to sense Iseul until she snaps her fingers in front of his face, and the emperor’s eyes flare open in a flash of silver.

The Gumiho and the Dokkaebi regard each other for a long moment. She yanks out his gag, and he smirks.

“Well,” says Rui, pleasantly, “I take it you’re here to kill me.”

“ Whyever would you think that?” she demands, although yes, it’s somewhat true. Killing him would end the war, and she hasn’t beheaded somebody in so long. She should make sure she still has what it takes. Practice a bit on somebody.

Besides, the sooner that he dies, the sooner she can return to Seojin. Ensure he’s safe…

Rui sighs. “Everybody is trying to kill me,” he says. “It comes as no surprise that you would, too. You smell like guilt. A crisis of loyalty is occurring, is it?” He tilts his head, as much as he is able to, as he’s tied to the stable, after all. “You don’t want to kill me, Iseul. Because then you’ll be killing the tiny little Lina who lives inside of this ‘Lina’s’ head. And that would be disastrous for everybody, including yourself, and that healer boy I handcuffed you to. You know, the one you love.”

“I don’t—” I don’t love Seojin. That is what she means to say, but the words get stuck in her throat.

Oh, phooey.

She’s always loved him. She loves him now. She loved him even when she believed he betrayed her. His kiss lingers on her lips, warm and comforting like home. And now, with Jae’s little face fresh in her mind, Iseul understands what Seojin has been fighting for—and she loves him all the more for it. She has never felt this aching in her bones before, her longing to be reunited with him is a physical want, a physical pain.

Wait. What?

Iseul’s mind screeches to a halt. What did Rui just say?

“ The… The tiny little Lina who lives inside of this Lina’s head?”

The emperor notes the realization crossing the Gumiho’s face and smiles smugly. Iseul feels a terrible migraine coming on.

“Nothing you just said makes sense,” she spits, careful to keep her voice down, lest the Imugi hear it and come to investigate. She’s in enough danger already. Should Lina look for Rui through the thread, and see Iseul… Well. That would be positively calamitous . “What do you mean, the ‘ tiny little Lina who lives inside ’…” She can’t even finish the sentence. It is too ridiculous, too impossible, too preposterous , and altogether unbelievable.

The emperor does not look concerned about this. He only arches a brow and says, “Oh, dear. Has nobody deigned to tell you? No; I don’t believe she would. Easier to control you if you believe that Shin Lina is still your friend…not a parasite suckling the free will from your friend’s body. So listen, Song Iseul. And I’ll tell you a very long, and very convoluted, story.”

…

“It would be so very much easier to simply kill you,” Iseul says sometime later, her head now positively swimming at the thought of Lina running about in her own mind, desperately trying to make her way back into her own body. Rui sighs.

“But…you’re right, I suppose.” The words scrape against Iseul’s throat. “Lina deserves a chance to reclaim her body.”

Something like shame blooms in Iseul’s heart. How had she not realized that Lina’s body had been overtaken by a parasite? Perhaps it was her own willful ignorance, not wanting to believe that she was working for an utter monster.

Oh, she’d noticed… something …after Lina’s little sister had died. A certain change in Lina’s voice, a certain hatred that could not be contained. Yet Iseul had assumed that all of these changes were the effect of Eunbi’s death. Such a thing, well, it would be enough to consume anybody with anger and violence. She’d only known Lina for a couple of weeks—perhaps less—before the Night of the Red Moon. And most of those days, if Rui is to be believed, the Prophecy was already beginning to take control.

In the end, and despite their blossoming friendship, Iseul hadn’t known Lina well enough to realize she’d been swallowed whole by the Prophecy.

And the thing inhabiting Lina’s body had never told her.

Gnawing on her bottom lip, Iseul eyes the ropes knotted around Rui. Perhaps the way that the Prophecy treats him should have been her first clue. She’d seen, firsthand, the love that Shin Lina had for him. The heartbreak in her eyes when Iseul had told her of his “ Pied Piper-ing .” Even furious, that Lina would never have tried to kill Rui, as the Prophecy so often does.

The emperor follows her sullen stare. Absurdly, a corner of his lips twitches. “These ropes are a formality on both our ends, and I can burn through them easily enough. In fact—”

Iseul watches as the emperor summons the blue fire, as the flames eat away at the heavy cords binding him to the stall. “There,” Rui groans, rising to his feet. He rolls his shoulders.

She is quiet, thinking back to that day she and Lina first met, in her Dove Coop—the girl with the teardrop scar and eyes so sad that Iseul had taken it upon herself to somehow make her laugh. Iseul still remembers that girl, the one she had been forming a friendship with. And friends, for Iseul, are so terribly hard to make. She is always simply too much for them. But the Lina back then never made her feel like that.

For that girl, and for Seojin, Iseul will continue on in this rather exhausting quest of not being a terrible person.

Iseul knows what it is like to be the victim of a Prophecy. Her own rings in her mind, a terrible fate brought to fruition with the extermination of her people.

“The woods shall fill with swords that gleam, that wipe the population of Gumiho clean.”

Her eyes rise wearily to Rui’s.

“General Lee Yongmin,” she says, sighing. “He’s a mole from the Wyusan army. He’s feeding Lina—the Prophecy—information. It’s how she knows things she really shouldn’t.”

Rui blinks—it’s the only sign she’s taken him by surprise. “I borrowed a raven from him to send a missive,” he murmurs. “He stank of…fear. Do you have a brush and ink? Some paper?”

“No,” she scoffs. What does he think she is, a scholar ? The only person in this army who possesses parchment and ink is the Prophecy, who’s claimed Bang Bomin’s stash. And as confident as Iseul is in her abilities to lie, cheat, and steal, she’s not one to go toe-to-toe with whatever is inside of Lina’s body…especially now that she knows the truth. Smuggling some to Rui is simply out of the question.

The emperor curses under his breath before striding toward Chan. The warrior is slumped, asleep, and barely stirs as Rui yanks the drugged gag out of his mouth. Iseul stares as he wraps his fingers around one of the rope cords.

Yet he hesitates.

“He tried to kill Lina,” Rui mutters out of the corner of his mouth to her. With a bitter grimace, the emperor leaves the ropes intact.

Iseul watches as he does, however, slip a hand into the pocket of Chan’s robes, fishing around until he pulls out a crumpled slip of paper. By the looks of it, it’s a torn bit of a map detailing the land of the Wyusan Wilderness, where he attempted to surprise Lina—the Prophecy.

Catching on, Iseul scours the stables for something that can double as a quill. In a stroke of luck, she spots a small gray feather, perhaps from an owl living in the rafters. Rui takes it from her with a nod of thanks, and Iseul watches as he crouches down near a clump of wet mud.

It’s almost hilarious, seeing the wealthy emperor reduced to such desperation, using mud as makeshift ink to write thick letters.

Almost hilarious, but not quite. Not quite. An uncomfortable feeling tightens in Iseul’s chest as Rui frowns in concentration. She remembers meeting him for the first time: that formidable aura of power around him as he’d stood behind Lina in the doorway of her Sunpo hanok, every inch of him cold royalty. To see him scrabbling around in the dirt is…honestly, it’s not a sight that Iseul delights in.

General Lee Yongmin is a traitor , the parchment painstakingly reads in smudged mud as Rui finishes his missive.

“How are you going to send that?” Iseul asks skeptically.

“Like this,” the emperor replies before a small corridor of shadow appears behind him—just the size of the paper. He pushes the paper through, and with a whoosh , it disappears.

“Who did you send it to?”

“Seojin,” Rui says simply. Iseul’s brows raise, but she knows Seojin will ensure it gets into the right hands. “General Lee must not be allowed to continue these correspondences. The goal is to slow down the Prophecy’s path to Fulfillment, not hasten it. Ending the missives will buy us more time. As will what I have planned for the route to Bonseyo.”

“She will not allow that,” Iseul manages to say after Rui explains his plot, involving a series of impediments along the route to Bonseyo.

He smirks. “What will she do? Kill me?”

“No, but she’ll kill him .” Iseul points to Chan, who is slowly blinking awake, green eyes bleary and confused from pain and drugs.

“Rui?” he rasps, voice thick with disuse. “What are you doing here?”