Page 4

TIYUNG

THE KHAKATAN MOUNTAINS, KHITAN

I hold a lantern as Hana and I approach the cave system that will take us under the Khakatan Mountains and back into Yusan. I need to return, but my steps are slow and deliberate. Weeks in Idle Prison stole my strength, but it’s fear that makes my legs leaden.

Plus, I am still grappling with the fact that my father has taken Qali Palace.

Somehow Seok went from being the southern count to sitting on the throne of Yusan, but however he accomplished that feat, he must believe I’m dead.

I should be. I would’ve been ashes if not for Mikail’s father’s sacrifice.

When Ailor heard the assassins coming, he pretended to be me, borrowing my noble necklace.

He saved my life. And he was murdered for it in the dark of the cell.

We reach the cave mouth. It towers overhead like a hungry demon about to consume us.

Darkness is all I see. I stumble back a step as fear grips my spine and my innards twist. My palms sweat in the cold.

I’ve seen what happens in the dark. I can’t go back there again—not into a lightless place, not to Yusan. There has to be another way.

“I… Maybe we should continue to Quu,” I say.

Hana stops and pushes her hood back, shaking off snow. She stares at me, her beauty striking. Her eyes are the same brown as her hair. Her lashes are long, her face perfect, even as her full lips curl.

“You think, all things considered, that you can help Sora more by running into a land-and-sea battle in Khitan than by returning home and talking to your father, who has just appointed himself the new king of Yusan?”

I grimace. We heard the war drums at the border. We know Gayan and Yusanian troops are invading Khitan. And during this chaos, my father usurped the throne.

So I walk.

The daylight fades behind me, and I utter a noisy sigh.

“That place will cling to you, if you let it,” Hana says. “Don’t let it.”

She keeps her chin high, but her expression changes, her eyes haunted. She must’ve gone to Idle Prison not only to communicate with me but in her role as a royal spy.

“It’s easier said than done,” I mutter.

She growls in disgust. “You think I don’t understand suffering and the way it scratches and gnaws at your mind? It is a weight that constantly pulls at your neck, and it can drown you on dry land if you’re not careful.”

I wince. She’s talking about her suffering at the hands of my family.

She and nineteen other girls were selected by my father to become poison maidens.

They were subjected to poisoning for almost ten years.

Nearly five hundred weeks of torture. Only three survived, and then they had to murder at Seok’s command.

If they refused or died, their siblings were sold as pleasure indentures.

Hana looks me in the eye again.

“You are more than what you endure,” she says.

She keeps walking, and I put my head down.

I rustle up some bravery and trudge into the darkness, adjusting my heavy pack.

Hana managed to acquire more supplies, even with people taking cover from the impending war.

We’ll need the food, firewood, and lamp oil for the trek back, but I’m surprised commoners parted with anything.

Then again, there’s always hope that tomorrow will be better.

That the money she offered will buy them a brighter future.

We continue into the cave for bells, our two oil lamps burning a small path through the dark. I tell myself I’m fine, that I’m not back in a dungeon as Hana checks markings on the walls, but I’m not fine.

I keep seeing wet blood on the ground, and when I look again, it’s gone.

I’m not sure how long we walk before we finally stop, but it felt like weeks. Hana puts her lantern in an alcove next to charred wood. A firepit here means there’s a place where the smoke will vent to the outside. And this spot is protected on three sides. It’ll do for a camp for tonight.

“Can I ask you something?” I inquire as I set down my pack.

She looks at me.

“Why are you coming back to Yusan when you were free in Khitan? If my father finds out you’re alive…” I trail off. We both know he’d torture and kill her. It doesn’t need to be spoken.

“For Sora.” She blinks and then returns to arranging the logs I carried in.

“Does she know you’re alive?”

I can’t believe it hadn’t dawned on me to ask. But before we escaped from Idle Prison, Hana was in charge of the questions, and I was a prisoner. Now, I’m the son of the king…somehow. I run a hand over my clean-shaven chin. My father’s ambition is truly boundless.

Hana shakes her head just enough for me to know the answer. It’s strange she didn’t tell Sora that she’d faked her own death, but I suppose she couldn’t risk making contact when Sora was still in Gain. But now the path will be clear for them to reunite—if we all survive.

I swallow the feelings of jealousy that rise in me. I don’t want anyone else to have Sora, but that’s not a fair thought.

“She’ll be thrilled,” I say.

Hana looks to the side as she takes out the fire starter, and then she nods. “She’ll be relieved.”

“You’ll be able to be together.” I unfurl my sleeping bag and try to sound pleased. It’s harder than it should be, but I do want Sora to be happy, even if that’s not with me. She deserves at least that much.

Hana stops striking the flint and stares at me. “You really don’t know her at all, do you?”

“I do, I—”

“Tiyung, once she realizes I’m alive, she will never love me again.”

I can feel my brow crease. “Of course she will. She’ll—”

“I abandoned her and my brother, the two people I loved most in the world, just so I could survive. For myself alone. She would never have done the same, and no matter what, she won’t be able to forgive it.”

“She did,” I say quietly.

The memory replays in my head of finding Sora hiding by that moss-covered boulder in the woods.

She’d fled from Gain after she murdered her first victim.

I was the one who dragged her back as she begged me to let her go.

I drove her forward as she told me of the horrors she’d endured in poison school and about the man she’d just killed for my father—all while she begged me to report him to the king’s guard.

Shame floods me in waves of hot and cold, but I don’t shrink from it. I make myself remember the terrible cowardice and complicity I’m capable of. Only by owning your mistakes can you really hope to change.

Hana shakes her head again.

I lean forward. “Sora ran into the Xingchi forest three years ago and…”

Hana arches an eyebrow. “You think you just caught her?”

“I…had to.”

She sighs, and her shoulders droop. “Kingdom of Hells, do you ever doubt your own greatness, Tiyung?” Hana takes a deep, steadying breath.

She balls her hands into fists and then releases them.

“Sora stopped running. She went far enough to have second thoughts and then no farther because I would’ve been left behind.

Because if she fled, she would’ve left Daysum to the wolves—the very thing I did to Nayo—the difference being, I didn’t turn back.

I didn’t let anyone catch me. She had a moment of weakness after taking a life for the first time. I’ve lived for only myself.”

I sit on the ground next to the firepit as I think back to that day. Hana can’t be right. Sora didn’t want to be caught. But…she wasn’t moving, and she wasn’t well hidden when I found her. I had to push her back to Gain, but not wanting to return isn’t the same as actively escaping.

“I had to become another person in order to go on,” Hana says. “It cost me everyone I loved. I mean it when I say I’m not Hana anymore. Hana died two years ago when I made that deal with the nobleman. I let him live, and he helped me kill Hana.”

The space fills with quiet regret, with choices that can’t be unmade.

“She’ll understand,” I say gently. “Nayo did.”

Hana stares at me. “You don’t know a thing about Sora.”

She shakes her head and then lights the fire. She’s not vicious, just resigned, and that’s worse. I turn the lamps down to conserve the oil.

“You don’t believe I love her,” I say.

Hana hesitates. She pulls out a dinner pot and runs her hands over the metal. “At first I thought you just fell for her beauty, and that’s surely a part of it, but the more I think about it, the more I believe you love the concept of her.”

She’s wrong, but it’s pointless to argue about my own feelings. I love Sora from the arch of her foot to the depths of her soul. I love all the ways she’s strong and every weakness. I’d know her in a hundred lifetimes, and I’ll love her through all of them.

We sit silently as Hana prepares a rice pot, filling it from the water bladder. Curiosity soon gets the better of me, though.

“What concept is that?” I ask.

Hana meets my eye. “Atonement.”

The word knocks the wind out of me.

No. She’s not right. But something about atonement sticks in my mind.

Something about it feels true. Is that what I’m searching for?

Am I doing all this to atone for who I was and what I let happen, or do I truly love Sora?

When I was in Idle Prison, I asked Ailor if he thought redemption was possible, and he gave his life thinking I could make amends. Is that what this is?

Nothing but the crackling of the fire answers me.

“So then, if you’re right, neither of us love her enough,” I say.

Hana nods and then smiles slowly. “Finally, something in common.”