Page 103 of Reign of the Talon
The confession hangs in the air between us, an ax waiting to fall. Will she scream at me? Will she leave? I watch, heart pounding, as she wipes her eyes angrily.
“I think I knew,” she croaks. “I just didn’t want to admit it.” Eunbi pushes her soup around in her bowl. “There were always knives everywhere. You never let me touch them, though. I remember running around with one. You were angry at me.”
Your life was supposed to be different.I swallow hard.You weren’t supposed to be like me. I tried everything to keep you away from this life. The mountain academy, the lies… I thought I was protecting you.
“Well, Iwouldn’thave been like you,” she snaps. “Ever!”
Good.Trying to ignore the stinging hurt in my chest, I look down to my lap, where I open and close my fists nervously. The room is spinning around me.That was what I—I wanted. I’m sorry, Eunbi. I…I am more sorry than you will ever know. Yet it does not change anything. So you don’t…you don’t need to forgive me. I just want you to know…that I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment you were born, and I’m sorry…I’m sorry that I wasn’t the sister you deserved.
My stomach churns as she looks at me, dozens of emotions flitting across her small face. Anger. Fear. Hurt. Confusion. “Well—” Her bottom lip trembles. “Well, I still hate you!”
I know.It is as if some sharp tool has reached inside of me and scooped out every single emotion. I am empty. I am hollow.
Eunbi huffs in frustration, scrubbing her face with her hands. Outside of the cottage, rain begins to fall, smattering gently across the window. We watch it fall together, neither of us speaking. Soon she will leave, I think, but she never does.
“I don’t like it,” she mumbles after a few tense moments of silence. “I don’t like being dead. I don’twantto be dead.” Eunbi slides out of her chair and walks to the window, staring out at the rain and dark clouds rolling over the hill lands. “Even though Yeomra isn’t there, there’s still the law where if you’re dead, you can’t go back to life. I tried it lots of times. I thought if I ran over the bridge between life and death, I’d make it, but I never did. Even when I went as fast as I could, something always pulled me back. I wish Yeomra would return so I could ask him to give me life again.”
He can do that?I ask incredulously. Eunbi frowns at me, turning slightly away from the window.
“I thought you were obsessed with the gods,” she retorts sourly. “Yeomra was the ruler of Jeoseung. He could control who lived in it and who didn’t. But now he’s not its king any longer, and so there’s no way for me to come back. Jeoseung has no leader. His throne rejects everyone who tries to take it. Which isn’t a lot of people, because apparently most of the dead just want to rest, but some would want to rule, anyway.”
With a jolt, I remember peering out from the Prophecy’s eyes as Yeomra stood before her in the Wyusan Wilderness with a sharp, predatory smile.
“I expect you will try to demand the return of your dead sister. It has been a long while since I have interacted with any of Iseung’s denizens, but this is what you usually do. So go on, I suppose.”
“I have travelled to your realm by spilling my blood and saying your name thrice, but my sister refuses to come into sight on the other end of the bridge. But—are you saying you could bring her back to life?”
“I’m not, actually. For I cannot reverse the effects of death. I abandoned Jeoseung long ago, and as such, my connection to it has slipped. Jeoseung, direly as it needs one, has no ruler. The throne is there, empty, yet many of the dead no longer have a wish for power. And to rule, one must first die. Therein, I suppose, lies the underworld’s problem.”
“Yoonho tried to take the throne, just to see,” Eunbi says with a hint of a bitter smile. “It kicked him off. He went flying.”
The words hover hesitantly in the air. My fingers play with the three truths around my neck. The three golden values. I frown, but… Surely not. Ofcoursenot. It doesn’t…fit.
Right?
Perhaps the throne wants something specific, I offer.
“Maybe,” Eunbi mutters. “I don’t care.” Yet her voice breaks as she says it, and then she is sobbing, as hard and fast as the storm outside.
And when I rush to her, when I gather her in my arms…
She does not pull away.
Shedoes not pull away.
I hold her close as the storm brews outside, as the fire crackles and pops. She buries her face in the crook of my neck as I kneel down, hands on her shaking back. Eunbi’s tears flow earnestly, heavily, and she’s trying to speak in between the sobs.
“I…don’t really…h-hate you,” she cries. “I d-didn’t m-mean it… I just… I needed to say it…”
A tear slips down my own cheek as Eunbi pulls away to stare into my eyes.
“I d-don’t think it was your fault,” my little sister cries. “I’m just soangry, Lili, I’m angry all the time… And nothing makes it better, nothing! It hurts, and it won’t stop!”
I know, I try to tell her.I have felt the same anger.It destroyed me.
Yet she is crying too hard to read the floating words. Again, I try to summon my voice, and there is…there issomething. Not the obliterating terror I am so used to feeling when I fumble for speech, but something else, something softer, something that is not so jagged and painful. A swell of it, of voice, rises in my throat, and it nearly makes it to my tongue before it falters and fades.
But still, it is—it is change. It isprogress.
