Page 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

K i s a

F or a terrible moment, nobody speaks. Hajun is frozen, dazed eyes beginning to clear as he stares at Kisa, who trembles under the similar stares of Somi and Seokga. Even Hwanin begins to make a soft, sniffling sound, bottom lip trembling as he buries his face in the crook of his brother’s neck. Nervously, Kisa clears her throat. “The roof was my sanctuary, and I won’t pretend that I didn’t understand the dangers of sitting alone up there like that…There was an approximate ninety-seven percent chance of falling. I just…I needed it. I hadn’t gotten help, like I should have, so I-I used the roof.” She hates how weak, how pathetic, she sounds and avoids their eyes. “That night, I was exhausted. I was…well, I certainly wasn’t in a good place.”

The memory of that exhaustion, the kind that went deeper than her bones, threatens to send tears spilling down her cheeks. Kisa blinks rapidly. “I was on the edge, staring down at the city. Seoul. It was always so beautiful at night…I didn’t realize that I wasn’t alone up there.” Her heart begins to pound and her palms begin to sweat, black spots beginning to overtake her vision as panic claws at her insides, much like the way it did in the elevator. This is why she does not think of that night. Her voice is so unbearably thin as she tries to rush past the worst part, as if speed can force away the flashbacks that seem to lurk always just outside the edges of her consciousness, needing only one reminder of her murder to infiltrate her mind. Captain Lee’s killing had sent her over the edge, and Kisa fights not to fall from it again as she blurts out: “All of a sudden, there was a hand on my back, pushing me into the air…And then I was falling…” Her vision swims—

It all happens so fast. Kisa doesn’t even have time to open her mouth, to scream a plea to her goddess.

For in an instant, her body is sliding off the roof and she is for a perfect, brilliant moment, weightless and hovering over Seoul. But then gravity grabs her by the ankle and tugs her down, yanking her past rows and rows of gleaming glass windows all stacked upon one another, laughing as it hauls her toward the ground in a perfect swan dive.

Kisa closes her eyes.

It’s over soon enough.

—but she manages, through a force of sheer will, to stave off the inbound panic attack. She’s already made a complete fool out of herself in the elevator, and thinks she may die (again) of humiliation if she sinks to the ground and enters another comatose-like state of panic in front of her friends.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Kisa whispers to a stricken Hajun. “I’m sorry I let you think for so long that I jumped. It was—it was wrong of me, I shouldn’t have—” She breaks off as he lurches forward and envelops her in a hug, a warm embrace. Hajun’s trembling as he holds her tight. Face buried in his shoulder, Kisa clutches him close and holds back a torrent of tears as he kisses the side of her head.

“That’s— that’s why you don’t like it when people touch your back, or stand behind you,” he whispers. “Isn’t it?”

Kisa cringes in his arms. “Y-yes.”

“ Why? ” Hajun chokes out as he finally steps away, eyes pained. “Why did they…?”

“I don’t know,” she rasps honestly.

Hajun wobbles slightly on his feet, and Somi darts forward to help him. When the gumiho meets her eye, Kisa sees that Somi is also on the verge of tears. Something passes between the two women then, as Kisa remembers her ruined claws. Some sad solidarity between two dead women who met their ends through violence and unspeakable pain. Kisa feels a bond knot between them, an invisible force connecting them—almost like the Red Thread of Fate, but one of sisterhood.

Somi’s face crumples and Kisa knows that she feels it, too. Somi’s hand reaches out and takes one of hers, squeezing tight. “I’m so sorry,” the gumiho whispers, and Kisa knows she’s apologizing for much more than what happened in this lifetime.

Kisa wants to whisper back that Somi can tell her story, too, that Kisa will comfort her with as much fierce empathy as Somi’s showing her. But now, with Somi swaying unsteadily from drink, just isn’t the time.

One person has not yet spoken. The trickster god is deceivingly silent as he stands with his back against the night, but his green eyes glow like a predator’s in the darkness.

“Seokga?” Kisa asks quietly, letting go of Somi’s hand.

The god does not reply. Fear skitters down Kisa’s spine as the air thickens with a power so acute that Hajun’s hair stands straight up in the air. Goosebumps erupt down Kisa’s arms and legs. The shadows of the ship seem to deepen, to darken.

“Seokga,” Kisa tries again as pure rage, hot and black, shoots down the thread. Cautiously, she steps before him, placing one hand on his hard jaw and gazing up at him beseechingly. “Look at me.”

His eyes remain fixed on some point in the distance. Behind her, Somi shifts nervously and Hajun darts forward to grab Hwanin from his brother’s arms.

“ Look at me, ” Kisa repeats, and this time her voice is hard, brooking no room for debate. Her fingers tighten around his chin as his eyes slowly move down to hers—clouded with rage and something that is quite distinctly bloodlust.

“Who,” he growls, and there is such unfathomable fury in that one word. Seokga’s nostrils flare as she remains silent. “ Who. ”

“I don’t know,” Kisa replies calmly, although inside she’s anything but. “I never saw a face, Seokga.” She’s spent seven years wondering who had sufficient enough motive to send her plummeting to her death. Every single time, she’s drawn a blank—a rare phenomenon for Kisa, who typically possesses heaps upon heaps of theories for anything and everything. It’s just that, well—she didn’t have many friends at all, but she had even fewer enemies. The closest she came was her rival at school, Kim Dae, who—despite their competition—had never been anything but coolly polite to her. Part of her wondered if it was her stepmother, but while the woman was cold and disinterested, she wasn’t cruel. And her half-sisters, although they hardly knew her, still tried to make conversation with her at the rare and awkward family gatherings. “I’m not…I’m not sure I’ll ever find out.”

His chest is rising and falling in an uneven rhythm. “I will find them,” Seokga breathes, barely audible. “And I will kill them for what they have done to you. I swear it on all that I am.”

—they—hurt—her—they—killed—killed—they’ll—pay—make—them suffer—

Kisa scans his eyes for a moment more before turning to Somi and Hajun, hand falling from Seokga’s jaw to his chest, where his heart slams against her palm. “Take Hwanin for the night,” she tells them. “Please.”

Hajun’s head bobs in a nod. “I, uh, think that would be best,” he says, hair still standing straight off his scalp as Seokga’s power pulses through the thick air. Hajun quickly hurries off with the god-child, but Somi hesitates.

“Kisa,” she says slowly, “are you sure you don’t want me to stay? He looks…angry.”

“Go, Somi,” Kisa urges, hair whipping in another dark wind. “I’m safe with him.” She knows it, deep within her bones. Deep within her soul. There is trust between them, perhaps an inexplicable sort, yet it is why he is the one she told about her deepest dream of Okhwang’s library, why it is him that she can fall asleep next to, why it is him that she will swim— nude, for the gods’ sakes—with in a spa.

No, Seokga will never hurt her.

The other woman looks distrustful, but reluctantly follows Hajun off the sundeck anyway, after one final concerned look over her shoulder. Kisa turns her gaze back up to Seokga. Her head barely grazes his chin. “You’re losing control.”

Illusions flicker in and out of sight, a miasma of bewildering visions. Low-hanging storms churn into formation, angrier than the one he conjured for her in the bedroom. Leaves fall from the sky, oranges and reds turning to dark ash as they hit the ground. A pair of wine-brown eyes—Kisa’s eyes—flicker within the storm clouds before vanishing a moment later, replaced by a red, nine-tailed fox that bounds through the leaves toward a new illusion…a stretching shadow monster that opens its maw and devours the fox whole.

A burst of rain-tinged wind lashes through the air as the storm illusion returns, sending Kisa stumbling back from Seokga. Between them, the clouds darken and thicken until she cannot see him anymore through the lashing wind, falling leaves, and the red fox—which has returned to scamper around the deck, laughing almost maniacally.

“SEOKGA!” Kisa screams over the thunder, not afraid for herself, but for her god. The red thread is shaking in panic. She can barely see the deck anymore: The floor has turned to the tops of city buildings, pinpricks of light in a dark sky. It’s as if she’s standing above a nighttime New Sinsi as she surges forward, diving through the storm, hands stretched out for Seokga…

But she never reaches him. Instead, she plummets into another illusion.

He’s sitting at a desk in a grimy precinct, hunched over a pile of paperwork. Kisa stands some length away, separate from the scene, yet feeling somehow…part of it. Seokga’s dark hair falls into his eyes as he concentrates, only looking up when polished-pink, oval nails curl around the edge of his cubicle divider.

“Good morning,” a woman greets cheerfully, waggling her fingers at him. She’s beautiful, Kisa thinks with an ache. Blown-out brown hair, slender curves, and angular wine-brown eyes that precisely match Kisa’s own. Hani, she realizes with a cold start. That’s—me.

“You,” Seokga snaps icily. “What do you want?”

Hani preens, batting her eyelashes. “Haven’t you heard? I’m your brand-new assistant.”

The scene changes, shifts as the illusion-work unravels and is rewoven. Hani is striding through the precinct doors with an iced coffee in her hands and colliding with a cross-looking Seokga. Kisa stares. This Seokga is unfamiliar to her. There is no hint of the tenderness that seems to show itself only when Seokga looks at her. Only ice.

“I suggest that you watch where you’re going,” the cold god snaps and then everything is changing once more. There are bodies: a dead gumiho with black veins, followed by a haetae slumped in the middle of an alleyway. She watches it all, Somi and Hani, the bargain offered by Hwanin, the frantic pursuit of an escaped witness on Geoje, hot chocolate and strawberry egg buns in the morning. Kisa laughs, tears silently streaming down her cheeks, as the god and the gumiho tackle each other in a bamboo forest, as they share a tender kiss at the behest of a sly yojeong, and her riddle.

Dok-hyun’s framed attack on the precinct. The race back to New Sinsi. Kisa’s cheeks heat as she watches Hani and Seokga in the car, on the stakeout—but she can’t stop herself from memorizing the exact way Seokga’s breathing hitches and his head falls back as Hani’s hand— her hand—slips into his pants…

Then they’re dancing in a club, underneath the flashing strobe lights. Kisa stares in envy at the way Hani moves so freely, the confidence she carries as she dances against Seokga. She’s never moved like that, not in this life. She furiously scrubs away a tear, hating herself for hating Hani. Hating herself for hating herself.

It’s almost a relief when Eodum descends on the club.

And all of a sudden, they’re in a bed, tangled in the dark sheets. Hani is laughing as Seokga kisses her neck, as he bites softly on her ear. Kisa shivers as the god and the gumiho come together for the first time, unable to look away from Seokga—the softness of his expression as he gazes down at the gumiho, at the chiseled hardness of his body, the small birthmark he has just above his navel.

The Dark Days, and the warehouse. “I swear on Hwanung, god of laws and kept promises, that the sun will shine on us both once again.” Kisa is there for all of it, caught in the swirl of rapidly shifting illusions, stumbling from cars to cafés to penthouses to grocery stores with plague demons to the warehouse where it all ends. The gumiho lies on the ground, weak-limbed, breathing shallowly as she blinks up at the god. “Seokga,” Hani whispers, one of her ruined hands fumbling in her pocket. “This world will…see the morning dawn again.” Blood leaks from her mouth. “I need you to know,” she whispers, “that it wasn’t all…a lie. I…promise.”

“Hani,” Seokga whispers. “Just close your eyes.”

Kisa sobs with Seokga as Hani uses his hand to plunge the dagger into her heart. She sobs still as Seokga defeats Eodum, as he bursts through the Okhwang throne room and begs his brother to save Hani.

It’s when the god is sipping a hot chocolate outside of a Creature Café that the red thread appears for him. Kisa clutches her hands to her mouth as he smiles, a pure, brilliant thing that fades as the illusion disappears, draining away to reveal him. Seokga.

He’s slumped against the railing, holding his head in his hands. Gone is that beautiful smile, the hopeful god with eyes full of dreams. “Kisa,” Seokga whispers. “I didn’t mean to—to show you all of that.” The storm breaks. The fox vanishes. The leaves dissipate into ash on the wind. Seokga’s eyes are tortured and lined with silver as he looks up at Kisa. “I’m so—I’m so sorry.”

All that he’s gone through, for her. She never knew. She never asked, afraid to draw too close to him—like a moth to a flame. But now, it’s as if all her carefully confined emotions spill out from the filing cabinet, toppling to the ground of her mind.

Oh, they’re a mess.

Such a beautiful, daunting mess.

“Stop it, Seokga,” Kisa whispers, voice ragged. “You really, truly, have nothing to apologize for.”

“You were right. I lost control,” Seokga rasps. “Hwanin…”

“He’s with Somi and Hajun.” She’s stepping toward him, then kneeling down and smoothing a sweat-drenched strand of hair away from his face before she realizes what she’s doing. “Seokga…” Kisa swallows back more tears. “Seokga, I wish I were her.”

His eyes widen, and he grabs her hand from his forehead. “Kisa, you’re—”

“I’m not…I can’t dance, and I hate hot chocolate. I’m not—confident like her. I’m not fun like her. But I wish I was. I can’t imagine how it must feel…” Kisa shakes her head, drawing in a shaky breath. “I can’t imagine how it must feel, searching for her and finding me instead.”

“Who told you?” Seokga demands. “Who told you that you’re not—?”

“I’ve never been to a club. I’ve never had a boyfriend—I’ve no idea how to give anybody a, well, erm, what Hani did in the car—” Kisa’s cheeks burn and she clamps her mouth shut, mortified. Seokga is staring at her like she’s a complete imbecile.

“Kisa,” he says slowly, as if struggling to wrap his head around it, “do you mean to say you truly believe that after thirty-three years of endless searching, I could find you wanting in even the slightest way?” Seokga’s green eyes are almost hazy with confusion. “Because of your inexperience ?”

“Erm,” she replies, wishing she could disappear forever. “When you say it like that, it sounds rather ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

“Because it is.” Seokga shakes his head, and there’s a glimmer of a smile on his lips again. “Kisa, I have wanted you before I even knew you. It wasn’t your dancing, or the way you touched me, that made me fall in love with you the first time. It was your bravery, your intellect, your complete loyalty to your friends. You posed the Ship of Theseus question to me. I know my answer. The parts that are important—the parts that I cherish, that bravery, intellect, and loyalty—are still the same. And perhaps I needed…Hani first. To show me the path to you. It took me time to realize that, but, Kisa—you’re not so different from who you were in your past life as you think. As I recall, you still seem to have a thing for my ‘arse’…”

She groans in embarrassment.

“You’re perfect, Kisa,” Seokga says. “And I want, very badly, to kiss you.”

“But you won’t,” she guesses, voice feather-soft, disappointment churning in her stomach.

“?‘Just friends’ is a terribly restrictive label,” murmurs Seokga, staring at her lips. “It’s already beginning to chafe.”

Kisa tucks a strand of hair nervously behind her ear. “We never had it on paper…We never swore it on Hwanung…Agreements can be, ah, modified…”

“Loopholes can be found,” the trickster god agrees, eyes sparkling with something like mischief. Kisa’s face heats as he reaches for her. Seokga’s lips curve into a smile as he—in one smooth motion—tugs her onto his lap. Kisa stifles a small yelp of pleased surprise. Her legs bracket his, and this close to him, she can count each and every one of his beautifully long lashes. Heat pools low in her stomach as his right hand skims up her back, coming to rest on the nape of her neck—but not before he tugs, gently, on one of her curls. “Promises can be broken.”

“Spoken like a true trickster,” she replies, voice humiliatingly breathy. But Seokga’s perennial rasp is huskier than usual, too, and his eyes darken as Kisa lowers her head so her nose brushes against his. Atop him, she feels his shiver, his gasp. The way his right hand spasms, the way his left one trembles as it finds her waist, the barest hint of skin peeking out underneath the hem of her scrub top. Her lips are so close to his. Seokga’s breathing is uneven. Her curls flutter with each of his shallow exhales.

“You’re going to break my heart again, aren’t you?” whispers her god, staring up at her.

“I don’t know,” Kisa murmurs.

She knows the right thing to do would be to stop gazing at his mouth, stop feeling this soft glow of desire. To slide off his lap. He deserves more than she can ever give him. But he’s looking at her like she hung the moon, and his thumb is tracing hesitant circles on her bare hip, and he smells like pine and soap and coffee and she can’t stop staring down at his lips, can’t stop her heart from pounding with a BPM that can’t possibly be healthy…

There’s only a centimeter between them, yet it feels like a mile. Perhaps fifty miles, Kisa revises, as longing twists in her chest.

“I don’t know,” she whispers again, her strained voice sounding tortured even to her own ears.

“Should we find out?” Seokga’s words are smooth, calm, but his hope shoots down the thread like an arrow shot straight to her heart. And his hands, oh, how his hands are trembling on her.

“I’d like to,” Kisa breathes before leaning that extra centimeter forward and pressing her lips to his.

“Am I, um, doing this right?” Kisa asks nervously sometime later, perched halfway over Seokga on his bed, the two of them having stumbled into the suite after the fairy lights had been shut off on Deck 10. “Is there, er, a certain sort of…angle…you prefer?”

Seokga stares up at her with swollen lips and a sated, dreamy expression that’s mingled with amused disbelief. “Kisa,” he practically purrs, “stop overthinking.”

With a gentle tug, he guides her head back down to his, and her mind obediently shuts off with the next tug of his teeth against her lower lip. His hands roll down her spine almost reverently, and she shivers in delight as they slip underneath her scrub shirt, resting just above her hips. Her skin suddenly feels terribly hot, and she finds herself wishing she was wearing nothing at all. Desire aches within her, and it’s hotter, more molten, than any late-night longings she’s ever felt before. An embarrassing noise escapes her lips as Seokga deepens the kiss and with extraordinary gentleness, rolls them over so he now lies atop her.

The feeling of him resting between her legs is almost too much to bear. Kisa wraps her legs around his narrow hips and gives in to pure instinct, running her hands through the silken strands of his dark hair and pressing up into him, arching her back until she’s certain he can feel the frantic thump-thump ing of her heart. She shivers as his mouth pulls away from hers, glistening sinfully before his lips press into the side of her neck. Neck kisses. Who could have known that something so simple could feel so wonderful? No anatomy book ever suggested… oh …

Kisa is a trembling mess beneath his teeth and tongue. When Seokga’s hands tug questioningly at the hem of her shirt, she nods almost frantically. Yes. Yes. Nerves swarm in her belly as he gently lifts the shirt over her head, but they’re the good sort of nerves, she supposes. The kind that has her making embarrassingly incoherent sounds as her head falls back and Seokga’s lips trail a path toward her cleavage, one finger sliding a bra strap from her shoulder. Kisa squirms under his mouth, wanting more, and shakily unhooks the clasp. Seokga’s eyes darken with lust as she drops her bra to the floor next to the bed. Underneath his gaze, her nipples peak in desire and she bites her lip as Seokga stills, his breathing shallow.

Has she gone too far, too fast? She’s never done anything like this before. Perhaps that’s why she’s been so quick to bare herself to him, having (to a bit of her own disappointment) died without ever being intimate with anybody. Kisa hesitates.

Or perhaps Seokga’s remembering Hani’s perfect breasts…Kisa’s are smaller, and she’s fairly certain that they might be a bit, well, uneven. She was only following what her body longed for, but maybe she should have waited…

“Fuck, Kisa,” her god whispers, head dropping forward. “You’re perfect.”

—she’s—everything—

She flushes in pleasure at the praise.

“Kisa,” he continues, “I don’t know…if I start, I don’t know if I can stop…”

“So don’t stop,” she tells him, barely recognizing the huskiness of her voice. She wants it all, tonight. Before the cruise ship resumes its course, before she’s faced with an impossible decision.

“Are you sure?” the god asks, and she realizes he’s trembling with restraint, the veins in his arms standing visible as he holds himself up above her. The red thread between them is shaking with anticipation, and as Kisa gazes up at him, it carries her red lust down its length toward Seokga.

“Just go slow,” she whispers, and he nods, his expression so tender as he closes his mouth against one pointed peak and sucks. Kisa’s entire body tautens like a bow as he bites the underside of her breast with an almost contradictory tenderness and plays with the other, squeezing and pinching as he kisses her stomach. “Wait,” Kisa whispers as his fingers dip underneath the hem of her pants. “You first.”

Seokga freezes and then smiles, a bit smugly. When he tugs off his own dark sweater to reveal the hard, toned muscle underneath, Kisa’s mouth dries out completely. She can’t resist dragging her hands down his chest, just as she wanted to do in the baths. Seokga closes his eyes underneath her touch and shivers. Her eyes drop to his pants, to the straining evidence of his arousal, and—remembering how Hani did it in the car—tentatively reaches forward to drag her hand across it. “Could you,” she croaks before clearing her throat, flushing blue, “could you, um, show me how…?”

His eyes flash open.

“I like to learn,” she reminds him in a whisper, and shakily pushes him back as she rises to her knees, undoing his zipper. There’s really no graceful way for an aroused man to shed a pair of stiff, dark jeans and the underlying underwear but Seokga manages—although Kisa suspects, with fond amusement, that there may be a bit of illusion-work involved. When the length of him springs free, Kisa’s breath catches in her throat. He’s long and hard, and she feels a surge of excited anticipation as she waits—breathlessly—for instruction.

When Seokga fists himself, his eyes become heavy-lidded. Kisa watches ravenously as he slowly strokes himself from the base upward. “Like this,” he pants. “I like it—like this.”

Kisa edges forward, replacing his hand with her own.

“Tighter,” Seokga pants, eyes fluttering shut. Kisa does as he asks, and as she strokes him hard but slow, she admires the way a flush crawls up his neck. “Good—that’s good…Kisa…”

He barely protests as she pushes him onto his back, leaning over him. She’s gotten quite good at this quite quickly, she thinks proudly, loving the way he groans underneath her touch. Perhaps it’s all the romance books. She stares down at her hand, and—on a whim—replaces it with her mouth.

His hips buck underneath her in surprise before quickly stilling. “Kisa,” he groans as she gazes up at him. His hand finds her head, and he gently holds back her hair as Kisa makes a few educated guesses about what is, precisely, the best way to go about this. Within moments, Seokga is panting and groaning, twitching in her mouth, other hand fisted in the sheets. “ Kisa, ” he gasps. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to—”

Kisa blinks innocently up at him.

—fuck—fuck—fuck—

She sees why they call it the “little death,” now. It’s as if he falls apart, tortured in some exquisite, erotic way as if the pleasure is pain and he succumbs to it as a warrior might fall on the battlefield. Feeling rather pleased with herself, Kisa swallows and wipes her mouth with a finger, utterly satisfied to see Seokga reduced to a limp, panting figure beneath her, cheeks flushed pink. He reaches for her, and she lies beside him, resting her head on his chest, while he wraps an arm around her.

“You’re a quick fucking study,” Seokga mumbles into her hair, and she laughs.

—can barely—fucking breathe—she’s—perfect—came so fast—like a fucking—teenager—embarrassing—

“Perhaps it’s some muscle memory from my last life,” she jokes, and he chuckles, an exhausted, sated sound. His fingers trail down her stomach, lazily slipping past the waistband of her pants. A moment later, all hints of his weariness are gone.

“You’re lovely,” he murmurs, and Kisa trembles in pleasure as Seokga, suddenly intent, peels off her remaining clothing and gazes down at her in worship. “Let me touch you,” he begs.

“Yes,” she sighs. Her blood sings as he drags a finger down her folds, as he swirls the small nub at the apex. Their roles quickly reverse, for Kisa is the one panting and moaning now as Seokga kisses her there. His tongue coaxes the most humiliating noises from her, and he doesn’t stop until she’s climbing that peak and falling off, thighs shaking as he holds them open. She scrabbles in the sheets for purchase as she comes back down, Seokga only pulling away when she is thoroughly and utterly spent. His lips gleam and he looks incredibly pleased with himself as she draws him in for a kiss. Seokga’s length prods gently at her as Kisa nips at his bottom lip.

“Please,” Kisa begs.

—gods know—I can never—say no—to her—