Page 4 of Reign of the Talon
A moment later, the battlefield is empty of Dokkaebi save for the dead.
I stroke Sonagi’s head as the storm begins to recede. Iseul shifts back into her human form and grins at me, strutting over to where Sonagi stands. Her light, almost white, hair is soaked golden with blood, and she licks her lips as the sea of Imugi parts to allow her through. They adore her, and although she cannot fully understand them aside from a few susurrations here and there, she has a special bond with Uloe, the serpent upon which she rides.
“Well,” Iseul declares, tapping the space between Uloe’s flaring, scaled nostrils with a dainty and bloody finger, “that wasexquisitelyfun, don’t you think? The snowstorm was a nice touch, as always.”
“Thank you,”hisses Sonagi, swaying in pride. Her hood, akin to one of the cobra’s, is unique to her as the Motherof Imugi. It flares with pleasure at the fox’s words. Iseul has caught onto enough of the Serpentine Language to send Sonagi a wink in return as she remounts Uloe.
Bomin emerges upon Beongae, looking rattled atop his Imugi. “No,” the halji dealer wheezes, fumbling in the pockets of his elaborate lavender robes for a roll to smoke. “No, that was not fun. Actually, I hated every single moment of that.” The thin, reedy man shakes like a leaf as he always does after one of these ambushes.
Beongae’s golden eyes are laughing.“My rider iss a coward,”he tells me.“He cried. It was most amusssing, Empresss.”
Bang Bomin might be a coward, and the sight of his hat may incline me toward violence, but he is smart. Some humans in Sunpo did not respect the idea of my rule after hearing the Prophecy. They were swiftly dealt with. Bomin knows that his alliance to me is the most useful thing he possesses.
As Bomin lights his roll of halji with shaking hands, my throat itches. An intense flare of annoyance rises inside of me at the weakness this body feels for something as trivial as the drug. “Bomin,” I snap, gesturing impatiently. I am too busy to try to fight this addiction. My weaker self was a fool, trying to outrun this. When he tosses me the lit roll, I put it between my lips and inhale deeply.
Iseul collects my fallen cloak from the snow and hands it to me with a mischievous smile. “Onward, then?” she asks, eyes glittering. It is a relief to see that the shine is not due to tears. For weeks after that healer-boy Ryu Seojin left her, forsaking his alliance with me, Iseul was prone to crying. It was irritating to no end. He is a worthless thing. I do not understand why she loves him so. Bomin has told me whispers that Seojin has been seen with the Dokkaebi, perhaps apprenticing under Jeong Kang as a healer, helping mend the wounded Dokkaebi on the opposing side. I don’t particularly care. If he’s with them, he will die, and we will be all the better for it. I have not told Iseul of his allegiance. She doesn’t need to know. Just as she does not need to know that I am not the Lina she once knew. I’ve no desire for unnecessary complications.
As Iseul waits expectantly, I smile precisely the way that Haneul hates. I love the feeling of it on my lips, the feeling of knowing it is something he despises. I hope, through our bond, he can feel my smug satisfaction at the battle won.
A flicker of rage in response tells me he can. My grin grows.
“Onward,” I whisper, and my smoke-hoarse voice drifts over the mountain tops toward Wyusan.
CHAPTER TWO
Rui
The Dokkaebi emperor staggers to his knees in his throne room and chokes on his grief.
Every day, the torment gnaws upon his insides. After every battle, he cannot breathe, his lungs forgetting the simple act of drawing in oxygen as the world crashes and burns around him. Wheezing, he clutches his throat, shaking so violently that he is almost sick on the glossy black floor. Hot tears pressing against the backs of his eyes, Rui lowers his forehead to the cold stone, trying to focus on the frigid feeling against his skin. He needs help, he needs comfort, but he is alone to suffer this attack. As he must be.
For what would they say, if they could see him like this? What would theythink? His soldiers, his subjects. An emperor cannot be weak in a time of war. And so, while his forces return to Gyeulcheon and cluster in the ballroom—which has been converted into a hospital for the wounded—Rui shakes and shudders before his damned throne of dark thorns. He fights to regain control over the pocket-realm’s weather, which fluctuates wildly from sunny to storming as adrenaline fills him so deeply that he gags upon it.
It begins to pass, and Rui takes a tremulous breath, yanking the helmet off his head and dragging an unsteady hand through his sweat-damp hair. Slowly, he pushes himself to his feet. Above him on the ceiling, ruby-scaled Yong swim through scatterings of glowing moons. Rui stares up at those Yong, thetrueYong of old, eradicated by time—the creatures the Imugi wish to become a wicked mockery of. Rui’s hands flex at his sides. These original Yong were benevolent. But their dagger-sharp talons, their elongated fangs, their ability to weave through air and sky…
Prophecies cannot be stopped, but by the gods, he has totry.
It would not behonorable, to die knowing that he did not do everything in his formidable power to save these Three Kingdoms from the Prophecy’s wrath. He knows that his army of Dokkaebi warriors feel the same. This, it is their culture. The unstaggering belief that it is better to die a honed blade than one dull and coated in rust. It is no secret that Rui used to scorn this particular Dokkaebi belief—taunting a dishonorable death in ways such as, say, hiring a mortal assassin to try to kill him within fourteen days—but now, Rui understands. He understands, although he wishes he did not.
It’s more likely than not that death is coming for them all…and swiftly.
It is only a matter of how they choose to meet it.
Like cowards?
Or like the warriors they are?
Rui closes his eyes, attempting to collect himself. Trembling, he dons the mask he has become so used to wearing.
Cold. Indifferent. Confident. It is a mask made from terror, sculpted from necessity and weakness. For this is all it is—a mask. Underneath its cold edges, Rui is as broken as only a Dokkaebi can be: endlessly, eternally, through the depths of an immortal soul.
Breathing hard, he closes his eyes and does what he now always does after these attacks. As sweat trickles down his back, he summons the red thread of fate into his mind’s eye. In inky blackness it appears, swirling to someplace far in the distance. In this empty mindscape, Rui closes his fingers around the sparkling ribbon. Here, the string is corporeal, a true ribbon rather than one of the spiritual. With a clenched jaw, he begins to walk. His feet move across the plane of nothingness, following. Following, following. He walks, hope pounding futilely against his rib cage, but he only findsherat the other end of the red thread.
The Prophecy.
It’s like a watercolor splash in the darkness—the blue-tinged, frosty mountain on which the Prophecy stands, the whirling eddies of powdery snow, the long strands of her inky black hair escaping from her tight braid, having already grown back from Rui’s attack in the Sunpo palace with inhuman speed. There is no sign of the burned, bald woman from the Night of the Red Moon. Her eyes are golden above the teardrop scar and slit in the middle by an inky dagger of black—so different than the rich brown that they once were.
No humanity lives in those golden depths. No emotion.
