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SORA

CITY OF RAHWAY, YUSAN

W hat in the Kingdom of Hells is Sun-ye doing here?

She stares like she doesn’t know who I am. I open my mouth, but then I realize that if I expose her, who she really is, she’ll be killed. We weren’t friends in poison school, but I also don’t want to see her dead.

“Are you all right?” Rune asks me.

“I apologize.” I allow myself to blush and step out of the way as a servant rushes to clean up the shards. “I’m not myself. Earlier today, Mikail told me that my sister passed on. I thought I was doing well with the news, but I am not. Would someone be so kind as to show me to the powder room?”

Sun-ye puts on a kind and concerned face that I know for certain is an act. “Come this way.”

I look to Rune for his approval, and he nods. “A servant will show you to your room when you are ready.”

I incline my head. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

My mind races as I calmly approach the archway. Sun-ye smiles, and then we silently walk down the vaulted hall together, passing tapestries and paintings. Our steps are as light as a butterfly’s wings. Madame Iseul taught us well.

We turn down a hallway, and Sun-ye points to a door with yet another fake smile. I swing it open and then walk into the powder room. As I enter, I drop the dagger from my sleeve into my palm.

The door swings shut. Sun-ye pushes me, and I pull her. We land up against gilded wallpaper, a breath away from each other. I have a fistful of her hair, and my blade is to her throat. Her knife is alongside my neck. If either of us moves an inch, it’s a kill.

I smile. “Sun-ye.”

“What are you doing here, Sora?” she asks through her teeth.

She’s more gorgeous than the last time I saw her, expensively perfumed, and also out for blood.

“It’s a long story. I could ask you the same.”

Her green eyes track mine. Hana was smartest, but Sun-ye was by far the most vicious. “You’re not here for him?”

“No. But I assume you are.”

She doesn’t look away. That’s confirmation enough.

I raise my eyebrows. “That’s quite a mark.”

“Seok promised if I did this, he would free Rayna,” Sun-ye says.

Rayna is her sister—her twin. Which makes her twenty-three years old and the last sibling held by Seok as his ward.

He claims they live an idyllic life, being tutored by his wife without duties or toils.

Of course, he forgets to mention that every moment they have to worry about losing their sisters and being sold as pleasure indentures. But that’s just a small detail to him.

He must be desperate if he’s risking his favorite to kill Rune. Then again, Rune is the last count remaining—the last competition for the throne, if King Joon is really dead.

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” I say.

Sun-ye slightly eases the pressure of her arm on my chest, testing my response the way you would with a wild animal. I also very slowly loosen my grip on her thick hair.

“He made me a similar offer,” I say. “He sent me to kill King Joon and then sold Daysum when I failed.”

Her gaze probes mine, looking for a lie, a tell. I hold her stare.

“I’m sorry, Sora.” There’s no emotion in her voice, but I know she means it.

“She’s… She walked the Road of Souls,” I say.

Something about saying it to Sun-ye makes me absorb the truth.

My eyes sting, and I sniffle. My sister is dead.

All I was living for. Everything I suffered, everything I did, and it all came to nothing because I failed.

My breath catches, and tears start streaming down my face.

I keep my chin up as the drops fall onto my neck.

Sun-ye releases me but keeps her dagger out. I’m surprised, but I do the same.

“I am truly sorry,” she says.

Nodding, I wipe my face. I know she is. I’d feel just as bad if anything happened to Rayna.

We all lived under the same axe, waiting for it to drop on our loved ones.

After the first year, not one of us cared if we lived or died.

We only made it through for our siblings. Now, all that’s left is revenge.

Sun-ye and I both immediately fix ourselves—another of Madame Iseul’s lessons: to look perfect at all times.

“There are moments I think it would’ve been better for Rayna to have walked the road,” Sun-ye says to the mirror. “But she is all I have. I… I can’t lose her.”

It’s as open as Sun-ye has ever been. Is it a ploy? Maybe, but to what end? She will be dead if I expose her, and we both know it. No—more likely, it’s sympathy from someone who is foreign to the emotion.

“How did Daysum pass?” she asks.

“I’m not sure, but he sold her to Sterling.”

Sun-ye doesn’t react aside from the muscle in her cheek twitching. She knows exactly what kind of man Lord Sterling is and what he does. Daysum was thrown to the wolves. But regardless of how she ultimately died, Seok is to blame. “He has always made good on his threats.”

It isn’t much of a reaction, but it’s more than I expected from her.

“When did he send you?” I ask.

“Around three weeks ago.” She combs her fingers through her perfect hair. “He called me to his study and offered me this deal—my freedom and Rayna’s if I kill Rune. I arrived here last week and observed first. But it didn’t take me long to meet the count. It never takes these men long.”

She likes men more than I do, but that’s not saying much.

Sun-ye is a more efficient killer than I am.

She was better paid, taking marks outside of the protection of the south—reportedly as far as Gaya.

In poison school, she claimed she would continue to murder for Seok even after her indentures were paid.

She looked at him as a father when we were young, hers having died when she was a baby.

Still, last I knew, she was only halfway to her sum.

It’s not a surprise for her to be in the west, but something isn’t adding up.

I stare at her, looking for a tell. “If you came to Rahway a week ago, why is Rune still alive?”

Sun-ye sighs. “Sadly, the terms entailed getting close enough to watch him and his affairs first. I am to report back until I’m given the signal. This report may finally change things.” Her red lips turn up in a smile.

Maybe I should’ve exposed her in the dining hall.

“You won’t report anything.” I casually adjust my lipstick.

She arches an eyebrow. “No? Because we’re such good friends?”

There’s hate but also hurt in her tone. I turn toward her, surprised.

“No, don’t give me that pitying look, Sora,” she says. “You never bothered with me before. It was you and Hana against the world until she died.”

It’s simply not true. We all tried to befriend Sun-ye in the beginning, but she took to Seok and hated all of us. Her anger is still aimed at the wrong people, but that didn’t sink in once during all those years in school, so I doubt I’ll have any success in swaying her tonight.

“It is the world against us.” I gesture to her and to myself. “Does Pier still live?”

He was the delivery boy she fell in love with. The one Hana and I kept hidden as long as she kept our secret. We stumbled on them in the woods together, but Sun-ye already knew about us by that point. It was mutually assured destruction for years, not a friendship.

She draws a breath. “He does. I was sorry to hear that Hana passed.”

She’s not. Her green eyes are as clear as fountain pools as she stares at me.

“Do you even have that emotion?” I ask with a sigh.

She shrugs. “Not really, no. I truly don’t know how you carry on feeling everything you do. It’s exhausting to even watch it.”

“At this point, I carry on just to torture and kill Seok. I don’t care about what happens after that.”

She turns and eyes me, a slight wrinkle in her perfect brow. “In that case, maybe my report will be blank.”

I raise my eyebrows, testing if she’s serious. Has she realized the truth? Has she changed her mind?

She puts out her palm. No weapons. I slide my dagger back into place in my sleeve, and then I shake her hand.

Allies for now.