Page 20

Chapter Twenty

Seokga

T he cold water of the secluded cavern bath is bliss on Seokga’s too-hot skin. The private room, by some magic of Yeomra’s—or, possibly, the spa’s interior designer—perfectly resembles a small cave. This spa is certainly more impressive than any mortal one would be.

Stalactites hang from the dark ceiling, and the waters themselves could easily be an underground pool with the way the rocky ground slopes to create both a shallow end and a deep end. The illusion is only ruined by the room’s gray door, which Kisa could come through, but he knows she won’t. Seven hells. People who met only two days ago don’t swim naked together—even if there’s the history of a past life between them.

He tips his head back in the water, floating somewhere in the pool’s middle. The sauna had become too much for him. Seokga doesn’t do well with heat. He despises summer and just barely tolerates the spring. Seokga only likes the cold, and his body revolts when subjected to too much warmth. He is a cold thing, a statue of ice, a frigid god who shrivels in the sunlight.

Except when he’s standing with her. With Hani.

I swear on Hwanung, the god of laws and kept promises, that the sun will shine on us both once again.

Seokga lets himself drift underwater, letting his naked skin soak in the water’s frigidity. When he breaks back through the surface, shaking his head like a dog, there’s a small hitch of someone’s breath.

Blinking back droplets of water hanging from his eyelashes, Seokga’s blurry vision clears to reveal Kisa, who hovers hesitantly near the door. Her eyes are on his crumpled stack of clothes.

Shock jolts through him. Seokga hadn’t thought she would come. He’d only been teasing earlier, convinced that Kisa would rather perish than swim with him…But she’s here. Something flutters in his chest, and Seokga is reminded—as he always is around Kisa—that he actually has a heart. She’s surprised him.

Yoo Kisa can be spontaneous.

Perhaps she does need to…cool off, as he put it. He can’t deny that it pleases him, although he’s still completely bewildered about what, exactly, had been going through her mind at the spa. The sensational glide of his tongue, indeed. (The thought has inspired some of his own. Yes, Seokga can be quite skilled with his tongue when he wants to be.)

“Er,” she whispers, tucking a curl behind her ear, “hi.”

“Hi,” he rasps, treading water. Hi. When has he ever, in his immortal life, said hi ? It’s disgraceful. Humiliating. Absurd.

And yet he will be all of those things for her.

Kisa shifts nervously on her feet, looking as if she doesn’t know what she’s doing there.

—I really—should squash—what—am—I—should—leave—

“You don’t need to come in,” Seokga tells her gently, wanting more than anything to put her at ease, wanting her to stay.

“I know.” But she hesitates, and his eyes are fixed on the wildness of her curls, no doubt due to the sauna’s humidity. Kisa’s forehead is shiny with sweat as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Is it cool?”

“Mm,” Seokga says noncommittally before smiling wickedly and sweeping his arm to send icy water arcing toward Kisa. She splutters as it drenches her, and in the very bottom of his vision, Seokga is half-certain that the shaking red thread is spelling out HAHAHAHA again.

“That’s—freezing—” Kisa gasps, but she’s laughing.

“It’s nice,” Seokga promises, and he watches as Kisa hesitates, looking to the small sign on the cavern’s wall, reading Please No Fabric in Water. There’s a moment of deep contemplation from her, and Seokga is captivated by how she tilts her head and scratches at her cheek. Finally, she takes a deep breath and says, “Turn around.”

Seokga practically spins away. He’s never been gladder to meet somebody who follows the rules so strictly. Is she coming in? His heart is thumping like he’s a smitten teenage boy. There’s the soft rustling of clothing falling to the ground, and then a faint splashing. The waters of the cavern are cloudy with what Seokga knows must be buckets of minerals, salts, and whatever gives the water an almost clean, soap-like fragrance. Neither will be able to see any part of the other that’s below the surface, but his blood still stirs knowing that Kisa is nude like him beneath the cold water. “Okay,” Kisa says softly, and Seokga turns around. If he’s suddenly trembling, it’s only due to the cold.

—can’t believe—I’m—doing this—what has—gotten into me—

She’s leaning against the bath’s rocky wall a healthy distance away from him, the waters reaching her neck. Her eyes flutter shut. “You’re right,” she murmurs reluctantly. “It is nice.”

—what am I doing—what am I doing—what—am—doing—

Seokga’s eyes snag on the exposed slope of her neck and his knees weaken. He quickly looks away, pasting a casual grin on his face (rather than a lovestruck expression) and trying not to think about how his lips might feel on her neck, if she would writhe under his gentle kisses.

Kisa’s eyes open and she rolls her eyes. “You look precisely like the cat that caught the canary,” she informs him.

He attempts again to smooth his face into something more…subtle. Kisa snorts and pushes off the wall to tread water. “You’re so obvious,” she murmurs.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Kisa’s eyes twinkle. Her hair is a beautiful cloud of brown in the water as she drifts closer and then ebbs away a moment later, reminding him of a gentle tide.

Those twinkling eyes. “What were you thinking about?” he asks quietly, arching a brow and pretending his pounding heart does not feel like it’s going to break free of his ribs and fall out of his chest. “In the dry spa?”

Here, Seokga hopes that a grand romantic confession will follow. That she will admit to being utterly infatuated with him, and full of wonderings regarding the skill of his tongue. Then he will say he would be happy to show her, and she will fall in love with him, and they’ll—

Kisa grimaces. “Sometimes,” she mumbles, “when I…Sometimes, I recite book passages in my head. The thread”—a ferocious glare toward her pinky, at the red knot—“decided to let you listen in, I suppose. Really, it has the worst sense of humor…”

“Ah,” says Seokga, indescribably disappointed. Then he frowns. “What sorts of books are you reading, Kisa?”

“…Good ones,” she replies after a long pause, very blue. “Very…good ones. About many…things. Different sorts of…things.”

He smirks. “I can see that. Or, rather, hear that.” But his response is a moment late, for he’s faltered. A flash of vibrant memory has smeared itself across his mind: a cluttered bookshelf in a New Sinsi apartment. A grinning gumiho offering to let him borrow one of the absurd titles. Something about a pirate. Or was it a Scotsman? Or both?

Perhaps Kisa would know. A passion for raunchy books, it seems, has carried over from one life to the next. Warmth spreads in his chest and yellow happiness flows down the bond. Before Kisa can shoot him a puzzled look, Seokga tips his own head back and stares at the stalactites. His soft joy falters. The last time he was in a cave, he was imprisoning his father. He would bet anything that Mireuk is staring up at stalactites now, too. Has been for thousands of lifetimes, underneath Bound God’s Pass on this very river. This cruise is the closest Seokga has been to his father in lifetimes.

“What are you thinking about?” Kisa asks quietly.

His heart practically stops in his chest.

The trickster is so thoroughly shocked that Kisa has just used banmal, the informal (inwardly, he is screaming in victory and pumping a fist in the air), that he entirely fails to realize what she’s actually said until she repeats herself. In banmal. Banmal.

“Seokga,” she prompts again.

“Uh,” says Seokga, physically unable to use any semblance of eloquent language at the moment. His heart has begun to beat again, so violently that he wonders if he could possibly be going into cardiac arrest. “Um.”

Kisa’s concern spirals down their bond.

—because—used—banmal?—should I—not?—thought—because—we’re—naked—after—all—

“No,” Seokga gasps out, struggling to tread water without resembling a dying fish. “Please use banmal. Please. ”

So much for her “squashing.” He attempts to withhold a shout of triumph.

“None of…this”—a vague gesture at the thread, her slender arm lifting from the water and causing Seokga’s mouth to dry out rather pathetically—“means that we can’t be—friends. Would you, I mean, can we do that? Just friends?”

Friends. His heart shatters and mends itself all at once. “Just friends,” he repeats, voice little more than a croak.

“I’d like that. To be your friend.” Her smile is like a shy crescent moon barely peeking out of the clouds. “Now will you tell me what you were thinking? The way you were staring up at the stalactites made me curious.”

Compose yourself, Seokga tells himself, although he’s becoming certain that he is in the middle of a heart attack. “The red thread is keeping my secrets now, is it?” he croaks, his attempt to sound suave and nonchalant failing miserably.

Kisa shrugs and smirks. “Apparently.”

“I was just…I was remembering my father.” Seokga straightens in the water and shakes his head, spraying drops all over Kisa—a quick way to change the topic.

A knowing glint in her eyes tells Seokga that Kisa knows precisely what he’s doing, but she humors him all the same. She tips her head back and, with gusto, jerks it up again and shakes water from her long, waterlogged curls. Hands raising to protect himself from the onslaught, Seokga finds himself chuckling.

“Fine,” he begrudgingly admits, “you and your mane have won.” He despises losing, but with Kisa, he doesn’t mind.

She smirks, but a moment later, she shivers. When she raises an arm from the water once more, he sees that delicate bumps have raised all over her skin.

Again, it’s as if he’s a gentleman from the sixteenth century or something. Seokga can think of no other reason the sight of a single bare arm and a neck should have such an effect on him. “I think I need to get out,” she says through chattering teeth, staring up at him. When did they get so close? “How you can stay in this water for so long, I’ve no idea. Don’t you have any goosebumps?”

“I have plenty.” Seokga makes his way to the shallow end, where he stands and walks until the waters only reach his lower back. “They’re on my back,” he says, though of course that’s not the reason he’s focusing on flexing his back’s muscles with tremendous concentration. Seokga is quite pleased to feel the water sluicing down him (it will lend a certain effect to the whole view, he thinks) and even more pleased to feel Kisa’s gaze on him. The goosebumps multiply as he feels her look, and as her gaze seems to drift lower.

“Erm,” Kisa breathes, and then coughs. “Right. Yes. You’ve proven me wrong…Well done.”

—can’t stop—looking—he’s—per—

A peculiar emotion travels down the red thread. It almost feels like…

There’s a loud and abrupt splash.

Seokga turns to see that Kisa has dunked herself entirely underneath the cold water.