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Chapter Twenty-Five

Seokga

I t’s only after a series of humiliating questions that veer either on the raunchy or depressingly dark side (and after a stern warning from Korain that he won’t be as merciful the next time they damage any property) that they are finally permitted to leave the closet.

Fucking Godly Gossip.

“I think I know more about you than I ever wanted to,” Somi groans as they enter the sick bay, having finally made their escape from Deck 2. She looks vaguely nauseous as she disappears into the small bathroom, and there’s the unamusing sound of retching—which Seokga can tell is entirely manufactured for Somi’s own perverse amusement.

How he regrets not ending her during the Dark Days. He crunches down on his coffee candy with violence. Shards of sugar scrape against his teeth.

Hajun looks vaguely sick as well, but for another reason. Ever since he was interrupted in the security room, he’s been nervously jittering his right leg and working his mouth as if physically attempting to rein in whatever it is he has to say. As Somi re-emerges, it practically bursts out of him.

“ Soo-min! ” Hajun pants, and Seokga snatches Hwanin from him lest he drop the child in his excitement. “Soo-min matches the profile perfectly. She’s a samjokgu, she died in her early thirties, and she has the snootiest voice I’ve ever heard…”

Seokga’s brows rise up to his hairline. “Soo-min is a samjokgu?” This is news to him.

He nods, eyes wide. Seokga absorbs this. “She did seem unusually interested in Hwanin’s skin yesterday,” he says slowly. “She asked how it was so… whole. ”

Perhaps Seokga should have been paying more attention instead of wallowing in a pit of despair. However, when Seokga wallows, it’s very hard to pull himself out of it and remember that other people do, unfortunately, exist. Even on a good day, he does not care very much about anybody else. Aside, obviously, from the woman who has always been his one exception.

Somi snorts in derision. “How did you miss that? Really —”

His phone vibrates, and Seokga sends Somi a withering glare before reaching into his pocket and checking his texts. A moment later, his heart stops cold.

Yeomra: Hwanung just teleported onto the ship.

Yeomra: I’m assuming you’ll get on this immediately.

What in the seven hells?

Seokga gapes at the screen before shoving it back into his pocket and staring down at Hwanin. Why is Hwanung on the ship? He’s nearly certain that the young god is somehow involved in his father’s death, and his sudden appearance doesn’t bode well—at all. Seokga’s blood heats as he’s suddenly overcome with a burning urgency to hide his brother, to protect him. He stares down at the little bundle in his arms, wondering when something so small became so precious. “Hajun, Somi,” Seokga says, voice sharp, “hide the child.”

Somi’s eyes are wide as Seokga passes Hwanin to her, and he’s relieved to see that the gumiho is gentle with him. Hwanin begins to cry as he leaves his brother’s arms, and the sound goes straight to Seokga’s chest—but he’s already rushing from the sick bay. He’s not entirely sure what he’s planning on doing. Where is Kisa? He needs her. He needs her desperately.

It’s almost as if Gameunjang, goddess of luck, has finally thrown him a bone as he rounds the corner only to collide with a smaller body. Seokga rushes to steady Kisa, who’s breathing hard, cheeks flushed blue and curls in a rumpled disarray. Yellow happiness tinged with relief glows down the red thread, but her thoughts quickly dampen his joy.

—Hwanung—with Jang—going—Deck 9—swim—lie—Seokga—

“Your nephew,” she pants. Seokga’s hands are still placed on her shoulders, and he feels that she’s trembling. “He’s heading to—”

“To Deck 9,” he finishes, and she nods breathlessly. Grimly, Seokga lets his hands drop from her narrow shoulders. “Let’s go.”

“I suppose the…cerebration transference…can be useful,” Kisa puffs as they hurry up the stairs. Seokga’s right leg burns, but he grips his cane harder, ignoring it. “I can barely…speak…”

Concern flares through him as she wheezes. How quickly did she run to the sick bay? “Elevator,” he grits out, knuckles white on his cane as they burst onto Deck 4 and practically sprint to the nearest elevator, pushing past throngs of guests who mill about the restaurants and shops with glazed, dreamy expressions. For them, this cruise must be a dream, but for him, it’s a fucking nightmare. Seokga pounds on the little white Up button, and when the elevator door finally opens, he hurls himself into it and closes the door before anyone other than Kisa can enter. The elevator might stop at every floor, and taking the stairs would be faster—but Seokga isn’t sure his leg can handle running up the stairs from Deck 3 to Deck 9. That had been the original plan, but one flight up, he’d acknowledged defeat to the monstrous stairways. And Kisa looks as if she’ll pass out if she’s made to run any more anyway.

Seokga would very much like to rip out the sound system as cheerful Muzak begins to play. In the mirrored ceiling of the elevator, he and Kisa are so incredibly frazzled and sweaty that the vain trickster god does something he normally would never dream of, and looks away from the mirror.

He’s relieved to hear that Kisa’s breathing has begun to steady. The elevator stops on Deck 5, and Seokga impatiently jabs his cane against the Close Door button before any of the other guests can board.

“ Hey! ” one of them shouts, a sunburnt man wearing the tie-dyed shirt he’d found so horrendous. The door closes on his outraged face.

“You’re going to break the elevator if you keep doing that,” Kisa warns, but Seokga ignores her, pounding the button again as they reach the sixth floor while simultaneously hitting Deck 9 with a growing determination. “Seokga, really, stop pressing the buttons! It’s not going to get us there quicker, and besides, Hwanung might not even be who we’re—”

“Even technology bends to my will,” he informs her smugly, moments before he accidentally pounds in the Emergency Stop button about a dozen times rather than the Deck 9 one. Kisa stumbles into his back as the elevator, caught somewhere between Decks 6 and 7, abruptly jolts to a stop.

There’s a moment of terrible silence.

—he is—so smart—yet so—exhaustingly dumb—

“Perhaps I spoke too soon,” admits Seokga. Kisa makes a sound that reminds him of a growling kitten who is trying very hard to be ferocious, and shoves past him—presumably to remedy his mistake.

“You — ”

Her voice is abruptly drowned out by the sudden screeching over the cruise ship’s intercom. Seokga’s ears fucking shriek in pain and he grimaces as his head pounds. Kisa jumps about a foot in the air—which would be comical if the noises now being broadcast all over the SRC Flatliner weren’t so…alarming.

Sharp, masculine grunts blare over the speakers, followed by a feminine laughing.

Kisa’s eyes are wide. “Oh, gods,” she whispers, a hand rising to her mouth, “are they…”

Seokga is considering it, too, but that particular theory falls away as the man starts to scream. And scream. And scream. There’s no way to block it out, no way to ignore the sheer agony in the voice—in Captain Lee’s voice, Seokga realizes, recognizing something in the anguished cries that remind him of the mustachioed man.

“ Oh, gods! ” the captain screams. “ Please, stop! Stop! Help! Please! ”

“Shut up,” the woman snaps, followed by a wet squelching that makes even Seokga’s hardened insides turn. The living captain, apparently, won’t be living for much longer.

“Soo-min?” Kisa’s eyes are bright, shining with horror and unshed tears. “That’s Soo-min’s voice…Why is she hurting him?” Seokga hesitates, but his thoughts must flicker down the thread, for Kisa’s eyes widen. “ Her? ” she gasps out. “She’s…? But I thought—”

“ HELP! ” wails the captain as Seokga pounds on the elevator buttons, desperate for it to start moving, so they might help Captain Lee.

“Oh, gods,” cries Kisa, burying her face in her hands. “I think I…I think I might be sick.”

“Pull out the heart,” a new voice demands over the speakers. “Throw it into the river. His ghost won’t return to the ship if the organ leaves. He’ll end up in some obscure corner of Jeoseung.”

Hwanung. Seokga sees red. He’d know that fucking voice anywhere. His knees nearly give out with fury.

Hwanin’s body was missing its heart, too.

Somewhere far above the elevator, screams resound through the ship, horrified guests clutching their ears and shrieking as Captain Lee lets out a terrible cry.

“S-Seokga,” Kisa whispers, but he barely hears her. His body has begun to vibrate as he begins the teleportation process, itching to rip his nephew’s head from his body and throw that into the river. He’ll still reincarnate as a baby in the same spot in which he died, but clearly the fucking rookie didn’t know that when he murdered his father and tossed his heart overboard.

What did he think? That baby Hwanin would reappear somewhere deep in Jeoseung and forever be stranded from Okhwang? Foolish boy.

Seokga is about to step through time and space, to bend it to his will and take him directly to the bridge, where the murder must be happening…But something, a sharp tug on his pinky, stops him. The red thread is quivering in concern, yanking him toward Kisa as over the speakers, Captain Lee screams himself hoarse—and then abruptly falls silent. There’s a crackle as the intercom shuts off.

“Kisa?”

She’s slid down to the floor, hugging her knees against her chest. Kisa’s face is so pale behind her curls, and Seokga staggers, momentarily swarmed with terror. He has seen fear before, on countless different faces, but this is…This is not mere fear. Her eyes are fixed on something he cannot see—a memory?—and her chest is rising and falling so unevenly that it cuts Seokga to the bone to see the choppiness of her shallow breaths. He can’t— fuck, he can’t leave her like this, stuck in an elevator. What sort of fucking soulmate would he be?

“Kisa?” he asks, grabbing her shoulders in his own fear, giving her a gentle shake. But it’s as if she doesn’t hear, or even see, him. “Kisa?”

The red thread shakes and shakes as Kisa remains lost to him. Seokga tries to fight off rising panic. His hands flutter uselessly around her—smoothing down her hair, cupping her chin, holding her shoulders, her hands. Seokga doesn’t—he doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know how to send a calm, silver serenity down the bond as she once did for him. He’s too panicked, too frightened. What’s happened to her?

“Please,” Seokga whispers. “Kisa, please—shit, shit, shit —” It’s as if he’s back in that warehouse, watching Hani’s life drain from her eyes, unable to do anything…Unable to help…

Around Kisa’s pinky, the red thread glows black…And when that color reaches his end of the thread, the terror he feels—Kisa’s terror—is endless, as suffocating as drowning in a dark sea. He’s nearly sick from the taste of it. Only when it fades is he able to move again.

The red thread tugs insistently on his finger and he glares at it through a sudden onslaught of pained tears. “ Help me, ” he begs. “Help me help her. Please—”

It hesitates before rising farther into the air, twisting itself into a shape composed of one unbreaking red line that twirls and turns to create an image, a threaded pictorial of a man holding a woman. Seokga doesn’t hesitate as he sits on the elevator’s floor, gently pulling Kisa to him and mimicking the position of the couple in the thread’s suggestion. Her head rests limply on his chest. Seokga’s own fingers spasm as he holds Kisa’s. “Kisa,” he murmurs into her ear. “Come back to me.”

It could be seconds, or minutes, or hours until she surfaces—but surface she does, her breathing slowly steadying. Seokga could nearly weep with relief as she looks up at him, as she sees him.

“Seokga?” she whispers.

“I’m here,” he assures her, voice catching in his throat.

Kisa smiles—a trembling rictus on her face that dies as quickly as it was born. “Don’t leave me…”

“Never,” the trickster swears, meaning it with every inch of his wicked soul.

“I wanted…to be a leaf,” she whispers, clearly delirious as her eyelids flutter shut. “I wanted to be…a leaf…but I never meant to fall…” Her soft, nonsensical words trail off as her eyes shut.

A moment later, the elevator begins to move slowly upward once more.

Seokga stares up at the mirror above and wonders what in the seven hells just happened.

The body is a fucking mess, slumped on the navigation console in the ship’s bridge, a bloody, heartless slab of unmoving flesh. Seokga stares at it in disgust and pity as Yeomra—having kept his word and descended “very dramatically” onto the ship an hour before like it “was the plan all along” to “deliver divine justice”—secures the skeletal chains around Soo-min. The bonds are unbreakable, forged in Yeomra’s death magic, the bones sourced from corpses of long-dead prisoners who died within penitentiary walls. Only gods can remove the shackles, as long as they are not the one imprisoned within them.

It looks as if Captain Lee put up a fight. One of the bridge’s long, horizontal windows has a crack down the middle. The navigation console’s many levers are all—according to Yeomra—disarranged. Somewhere in the struggle, Captain Lee must have hit the ship’s intercom. His impressive leather seat is on its side, and the wheels had still been slowly spinning as Seokga (after setting Kisa gently on his bed under the watchful eyes of Hajun and Somi) sprinted into the room. Bloodstains splatter the floor, although Soo-min’s hands and clothing are almost impressively tidy. The captain himself is slumped over the console.

Soo-min’s typically unruffled hair is a mess, her lipstick smudged around the gag stuffed in her mouth. “I didn’t do it!” she had been wailing to anyone who had listened. “I didn’t! I-I would never—he was—we were—I didn’t do this !” Unfortunately for her, Soo-min’s voice exactly matches the voice broadcast over the entire ship. Yeomra had stuffed the gag in her mouth with gusto when he caught her running to the I-95, presumably to hide in the midst of the chaos.

Hwanung, unsurprisingly, is nowhere in sight. The god fled directly after the murder—Seokga has spent the past hour making various lengthy calls to the other deities, recapping everything from Hwanin’s murder to today’s events. There’s a watch out for him, and once Seokga wraps up this fucking nightmare, he’ll hunt his nephew to the ends of the fucking realms.

He’s also flatly refused to bring the baby to Okhwang. As Hwanin’s closest living relative who’s (a) not imprisoned in the depths of Jeoseung for crimes against humanity, (b) currently awake and has not been sleeping for thousands of years, and (c) not a proponent of patricide (at the moment), Seokga can claim legal guardianship of Hwanin—and claim it, he shall. For some absurd reason, the thought of the child being out of his sight sends anxiety shooting down his spine. By Seokga’s side is the safest place for Hwanin to be.

He’s told himself not to think of why s—but as Yeomra finishes up his phone call to one of the seven hells, the one where they’ve decided to relocate Soo-min—Seokga can’t help but long for an explanation. Why kill Hwanin? Why kill Captain Lee? The two murders hardly even seem connected save for the murderers.

How were Soo-min and Hwanung involved? How did they know each other? How did they meet?

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Soo-min is clearly set on playing the denial game, although her voice was blared across the entire ship and she matches their suspect’s profile perfectly. Hwanung’s number was found stored on her phone, although any texts and calls had been scrubbed. There were times in the New Sinsi haetae precinct when the officers had to let go of the why s and focus on the evidence they had. Chief Shim had hated it, but back then, Seokga had never given a damn. Now, he understands Chief Shim’s lingering confusion. It gnaws on him like a leech.

“When this cruise ends,” Yeomra says, pocketing his phone, “the girl and her friend can head toward the nearest DAR. They’ll be given a fast pass to the front of the line.” He grabs Soo-min’s shoulder. The woman sobs around her gag, pleading incoherently. Both gods steadfastly ignore her. “The ship can’t go anywhere until I find another fucking captain, and it was so much work getting the first—”

“You didn’t think to kidnap a co-captain?” Seokga demands, but his heart isn’t in it. The sooner the ship starts moving, the sooner he must say goodbye to Kisa. He’d be fine if the ship remained stagnant forever, floating upon the red waters with nowhere to go, nowhere else to be.

The death god’s mouth opens…and closes. With a grimace, he seems to admit defeat. “I don’t like it, but you have a point. It’s what I get for short-staffing.” Yeomra’s dark glitter-dusted eyes narrow. “I’ll find one quickly enough.” He pauses before reaching out a hand to Seokga. “I’m not going to say that you did a great job, because you sure as fuck didn’t. It was passable detective work at best. But still, thanks.”

Seokga rolls his eyes, but shakes the death god’s hand anyway. It’s as cold as ice. With a sarcastic smile, Yeomra disappears in a flash of dark smoke that leaves Seokga choking. When the smoke clears, both the CEO and Soo-min are gone. Unfortunately, the captain’s body still remains. “Fucking cadaver,” Seokga hisses, realizing Yeomra left him to clean up.

“Give me the child,” Samsin Halmoni shrilly demands as Seokga grits his teeth and shoves his way through the still-panicking throngs of guests. Various crew members are attempting to calm the masses, but the gwisin are apparently not able to grasp the concept that they are already dead, and therefore not about to be brutally murdered. The goddess of childbirth, mothers, babies, and general annoyances waddles next to him, her hands folded over her swollen stomach. She’s just appeared, the only hint of her impending teleportation having been the faint scent of floral perfume and baby powder. “Our heavenly emperor will be safest in my hands. Do you even know how to care for a baby, young man?”

He inhales a sharp breath of anger, stopping mid-stride to glower at the goddess. Samsin Halmoni blinks innocently back at him, the portrait of a kind, warm mother. But he knows she has the heart of a snake. “Thirty-three years,” Seokga breathes over the general bedlam and panic, jostled by frightened guests as he stands still. Anyone who knows Seokga would recognize the deadly calm before the storm, the way his features are almost terrifyingly blank save for the roiling hints of thunderous rage beneath that escape in flashes like white-hot lightning. “You knew who she was, where she was, and you never told me. Why is that, Samsin Halmoni?”

No sign of remorse, or surprise, dashes across her face. “Because you are your father’s son, boy. And I believed that Yoo Kisa deserved better than Mireuk’s spawn.”

The words carve something out of him, as if they are a honed blade. If there was no ring of truth to them, Seokga would have ignored them, firing back one of the scathing retorts he is so known for. Yet they hit true. Desperately, he attempts to keep his mask up, but the other deity sees through the cracks. He is like Mireuk.

“There was also your little pyramid scheme prank.” Samsin Halmoni’s smile is unkind, and he reassesses his opponent. She has a marksman’s instinct of where, and how hard, to strike. “So I’m only counting down the moments until you storm into Okhwang’s throne room and order us all to bow to your will.”

“I’m…reformed.” Seokga frowns uncomprehendingly at her words, which seem both strangely expectant and defeated at once.

Samsin Halmoni hesitates, clearly not receiving the reaction she was looking for. “Hwanin is a baby,” she tells him, and he manages to give her a scathing yes I am very aware sort of look. “Hwanung is—if you’re to be believed—patricidal and running from his crimes. You are next in line for the throne. You—” Her mouth works as if she’d like to spit in his face, but she spits the next words instead. “You are the heavenly emperor.”

It’s as if the world stands still at those words, as if the chaos around him freezes as realization sinks deep into his body. In the stress of the last few hours, the farthest thing from his thoughts had been Okhwang. The SRC Flatliner had taken up his mind, down to the little crevices. He hadn’t spared a thought to realize that…that he is the emperor of Okhwang.

“The interim heavenly emperor,” Samsin Halmoni hastens to add, but she’s staring at him as if he’s some sort of circus monkey who has utterly failed to perform. Instead of cackling madly like he might have some years ago, Seokga is silent. Power. So much of it at his fingertips, should he only leave the cruise ship to take his rightful place on the throne. This is what he’s desired since childhood, this is what he staged a massive fucking coup for…So why isn’t triumph welling up inside him? Why isn’t he smirking at Samsin Halmoni and telling her to kneel before him? Seokga opens his mouth to at least attempt a victorious cackle, but all that comes out is a faint sort of wheeze. Samsin Halmoni gapes as the trickster god closes his eyes, feeling rather sick.

Kisa cannot go to Okhwang, not like this. She is a gwisin bound to the SRC Flatliner, and the farthest she can go from the ship is to the fucking DAR when the cruise ends. Even if they’re able to locate Hwanung, he’s not sure that Yeomra will revise his terms to allow Kisa some other victory. But she doesn’t seem to want one anyway. She wants reincarnation.

Don’t leave me, she’d pleaded with him, and he’d sworn not to. Not until after she leaves him. Again.

She’s always leaving him. Part of Seokga wonders, bitterly, if he should be the first to vanish this time around. Before his heart can be shattered into millions of shriveled little pieces for a second time. He can self-medicate on his newfound power, his control over Okhwang, lounging in Cheonha Palace’s phoenix throne and amusing himself by ordering the other gods around like puppets. He wouldn’t have to think of her at all—

—but he would. How can he ever forget the exact color of her eyes, the gorgeous curls of her hair? The way she rambles when she’s nervous or excited, that razor-sharp intellect?

Seokga would hate himself more than he already does for an eternity if he left before the short days they have left with each other come to a close.

He opens his eyes. Samsin Halmoni looks stricken with shock and something that could be regret if Seokga squinted (and possibly used a magnifying glass). “I have business to conclude here first,” Seokga says, voice hollow. “I’ll return to Okhwang when the cruise ends, within the week. Hwanin will stay with me. Until then, keep watch for Hwanung. Alert me immediately if he is found.”

The goddess swallows hard and shakes her head. “I don’t understand. You’re not…I don’t understand.”

Seokga’s glare is withering. “Kisa is here,” he tells her, as if it should explain everything. And it does. Samsin Halmoni looks almost mortified as she jerks her head in a nod. He pivots on his heel to leave, but can’t resist throwing one scathing glower over his shoulder. “You might have taken her away from me, but you took me away from her, too.”

Unexpectedly, Samsin Halmoni’s eyes fill with shame. “I…”

His lip curls. “Scurry back to Okhwang like the meddling insect you are,” he snaps. “Don’t come near this ship again.” Seokga doesn’t linger to unravel the guilt wracking Samsin Halmoni’s face. He stalks away instead, knuckles white around his cane.

Dr. Jang is waiting outside of his suite when he rounds the corner. Seokga is in no mood for an hour spent unraveling his feelings, and his shoulders slump in relief when he sees that Jang isn’t holding her leather-bound notebook. “Dr. Jang,” he greets wearily.

“Seokga.” Her voice is more solemn than he’s ever heard it—even during the stilted conversations about his father. “I’ve heard about everything. I need to speak with you.”

Will this day never end? All Seokga wants is to tend to Kisa and hold his brother, but he still allows Dr. Jang to lead him into her suite. She seems tired as she locks the door, although it’s hard to tell with those ridiculous sunglasses. When Dr. Jang turns around, he sees that her mouth is bracketed with deeper lines than usual.

“It’s my fault,” she whispers. “I was walking with him, but he escaped my sight…He must have snuck away to the bridge…”

Alarmed, Seokga steps toward the old woman. “What do you mean?” he demands, thoroughly bewildered.

Dr. Jang sucks in a shallow breath. “I should start at the beginning. I…used to work with Hwanung, much in the way I work with you. Hwanin sent him to me a few years ago. Hwanung was having relationship trouble, and his father was concerned.” Dr. Jang takes a deep breath. “He’d fallen in love with a married woman. They were having an affair and Hwanung was besotted.”

Slow dread trickles down Seokga’s spine. “What was the name of this woman?”

“I only met her once,” she tells him hoarsely. “She looked so different then. Her name was Soo-min…”

Well, Seokga thinks grimly, it seems as though the why s have found him anyway. “Go on,” he says, folding his arms as he processes, quickly, the damning fact against his nephew.

“Their relationship was rocky, but Hwanung was infatuated.” She shakes her head. “Most of their tension came from Soo-min’s fear that her husband would find out about the affair. He was a violent man. At the behest of your brother, I attempted to intervene through couple’s therapy sessions and subtly show Hwanung all the reasons it was wrong to be with her. Godly Gossip was the least of my worries. But they stayed together—until her husband found out.” Dr. Jang laces shaking fingers together. “By that time, my sessions with Hwanung and Soo-min were over. I didn’t find out…until today, from Hwanung, that Soo-min had been murdered by her jealous spouse. Hwanung begged Hwanin to do for Soo-min what he did for Hani, but Hwanin refused. That was three years ago.”

Seokga tenses. Three years ago was approximately when Hwanung and Hwanin’s relationship started to deteriorate. “Hwanung knew if he were heavenly emperor, he’d be able to do what Hwanin refused,” he says slowly, putting the pieces together. “He waited until the moment Hwanin was alone and vulnerable—on a Jeoseung cruise ship without any other gods near. He was working with Soo-min. In her samjokgu form, she killed Hwanin and they threw his heart into the river, hoping it would deposit the baby somewhere he would suffer. They miscalculated.” He feels as if he’s missing something. What harm could baby Hwanin ever do? But he plows on, eager to close the case. “To gloat, she moved the body to where I would find it. Maybe that was done impulsively. It led to problems for her after—when Soo-min found out we were investigating, she tried to keep me from Kisa, and she had to destroy the security room after Somi overheard her calling Hwanung.”

But how did Soo-min avoid the security cameras while dragging the body? Perhaps it was Hwanung, teleporting his father’s corpse to the unsupervised stairwell. Yes, that must be it. How did he appear on the ship without Yeomra noticing, as he did today? Seokga grimaces. Yeomra must have been busy with his demon lover again.

“But why did they kill the captain?” Dr. Jang pushes.

Seokga remembers Hajun’s news. The affair. It explains the rest. “Soo-min was seeing him on the sly. Hwanung found out, and—in an attempt to prove her loyalty to the god, Soo-min helped him kill the captain.” After all, why settle for a mortal man when one can have an emperor? Soo-min must have regretted her infidelity and backtracked in the only way she knew how: with murder. “Hwanung came to the ship today to take Soo-min to the reincarnation queue. He wasn’t expecting to catch her with the captain. In the struggle, he hit the intercom button. After realizing they’d been broadcast across the entire ship, Soo-min fled—and Hwanung teleported away.” So much for true love.

Dr. Jang shakes her head, unsteadily moving to her bed, where she perches on the edge like an uncertain bird. “Why didn’t you tell me about Hwanin, Seokga? I could have helped you. I could have told you all of this.”

“You would have been mandated to report it immediately to Okhwang,” he explains in exhaustion, running a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t risk the pantheon suspecting me. We all know my history. It’s over now anyway. The case is closed.”

“And how are you feeling?” she asks, to his great weariness. “How has the pantheon taken the news?”

Seokga’s lips twist bitterly. “Samsin Halmoni called me ‘Mireuk’s spawn.’?” It stings more than he’d like to admit.

Dr. Jang’s lips thin. “Does it bother you,” she asks, “how the rest of the pantheon uses your heritage as an insult? It must be frustrating, when everyone only remembers the Mad God rather than the father he could have been.”

He shrugs, but his throat is tight. Dr. Jang sighs softly.

“I want us to speak candidly, Seokga, without worrying about word getting back to the pantheon about what you say in this room. You’re the heavenly emperor now. Nothing can touch you if you don’t want it to, dear.” Dr. Jang smiles, fiddling with the hem of her Hawaiian shirt. “Besides, I seem to have misplaced my notebook. I couldn’t take notes even if I wanted to. What would you do, Seokga, if you could give your father a second chance?”

Seokga suddenly feels dizzy. “He doesn’t deserve a second chance.”

“The same case could have been made for you,” Dr. Jang replies gently. “And now, look. What extraordinary growth you’ve had, Seokga. Your dream has come true, and you could hardly care less. You’ve changed. Why shouldn’t Mireuk have been given that opportunity?”

“My father was a tyrant.”

“And not so long ago, you were a villain.”

Seokga flinches. Is this the purpose of these hypotheticals, then? Some skewed attempt at self-reflection? His knuckles shine as he grips his cane’s hilt. “Excuse me,” Seokga gasps out as he makes for the door, suddenly feeling nauseous with an awful mixture of regret, confusion, anger, and longing. It’s one thing to fear becoming like his father. It’s an entirely different one to consider not what could have been, but what still could be. Dr. Jang is goading him and she knows it. As he fumbles with the lock and staggers from the room, Seokga wonders why in the seven hells Dr. Jang is paid so handsomely to torture him like this. It’s a relief when he slams the door to his own suite shut, a relief when he glimpses Kisa sitting upright in his bed. As he enters, her eyes widen and one of her hands flutters to the space above her heart. Somi and Hajun hover nervously beside her, Somi clutching one of Hwanin’s small feet as the baby hovers in the air. Kisa’s eyes widen and she stretches out her other hand, reaching for him.

“Seokga?” she whispers. “What in the realms happened?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off her. “Out,” he says sharply to Hajun and Somi as he strides for Hwanin, knocking Somi aside to tug the baby down into his arms.

“Absolutely not,” the gumiho snaps, but Hajun has already met Seokga’s gaze with a small nod of understanding, and is hauling Somi to the door. Her aghast protests echo down the hallway as Hajun totes her away, the door closing sharply behind them.

Aware of Kisa’s intently curious stare, Seokga attempts—with extreme effort—to control his thoughts, so as to not overwhelm her. Slowly, he settles down on the bed next to her, Hwanin cooing contentedly as he snuggles against his big brother’s chest.

“Kisa,” Seokga says quietly, scanning what he can see of her above the heavy blankets.

“I’m fine,” she quickly replies, reaching over to offer Hwanin her finger. The baby stares at it, unimpressed, before reluctantly curling his hand around it and inspecting the digit rather begrudgingly. “I don’t—want to talk about it right now. Later, I-I might. But just for a bit, I want to…rest. But I want—need—you to tell me what happened to the captain. To Soo-min.”

His mouth flattens, but the red thread is carrying Kisa’s exhaustion over to him in debilitating waves, and she looks so frail—so haggard, without the usual brightness in those magnificent eyes of hers. Seokga won’t argue with her.

Not right now, at least. She’s not a worthy opponent like this.

With a small sigh, Seokga settles back against the headboard and, in low undertones, recounts the last couple of hours’ events to Kisa, who absorbs the information with furrowed brows. When she twists her finger to escape Hwanin’s death grasp (the little god now looks extremely disconcerted to be deprived of the toy he didn’t even want in the first place) and raises her hand to her temple, Seokga wraps up his summary as quickly as possible and—before he can stop himself—is reaching for her wild mane of curls, smoothing them out of her face, tucking one strand behind a small ear. “Enough,” he says, and she glances at him, hand falling from her head to her side. “We’ll go over the specifics later.”

She blinks slowly. “That might be a good idea,” Kisa mumbles, and burrows back into the blankets, lying down once more and resting her head on one of the ridiculously overstuffed pillows. When her eyes flutter shut, Seokga takes it—reluctantly—as his cue to leave. But as he slides off the bed, a warm hand shoots out from beneath the covers and grabs his wrist.

—don’t want—him—to go—not—yet—not—ready—to—go—

“Stay.”

It’s as if his entire world unravels with that one singular word. Golden joy courses down the Red Thread of Fate as Seokga slowly kicks off his shoes and sets Hwanin on his back on the bed next to Kisa. The baby yawns gigantically, and Kisa makes a small, humming noise as Seokga stealthily—so as to not disturb them both—edges onto the bed and lies down underneath the covers. Bleary, wine-brown eyes peek at him over the dozing baby beneath the Red Thread of Fate.

“Do you dream?” Kisa whispers, and he nearly laughs in fond exasperation at the hungry curiosity in her voice and the scholarly gleam in her tired eyes.

Instead, though, he only smirks, turning on his side to better trace the lines of her face, the waves of her hair. “I do,” he replies quietly. “All gods do.”

“What…do you dream about?”

“You,” he says hoarsely after a long moment.

“Me?” Kisa closes her eyes again. “Or Hani?”

—wonder…—which…—wonder—which…—

Her thoughts are slow, sluggish, weighed heavy by sleep. Seokga hesitates, but the trickster god decides to be painfully honest. Never let it be said that it cannot be done. “Both,” he murmurs. “I had a terrible nightmare once, about you.”

“ Mmph? ” She sounds rather indignant, although it’s hard to tell with her face now buried halfway into her pillow.

“You were an old man,” he admits, closing his own eyes, a wave of exhaustion suddenly crashing over his head and sending him plummeting down into a deep, dark sea. Hwanin is sighing in his sleep, and Seokga gently tugs his small brother closer to him. “An…old man who terrorized his crochet group.”

“I don’t…crochet…” Kisa mumbles. “I… knit …”

“Same thing,” he whispers, and the last thing he feels before drifting off to sleep is Kisa, kicking him half-heartedly beneath the covers and laughing sleepily into her pillow.