Page 55 of Reign of the Talon
Iseul’s mouth suddenly feels dry. Seojin has always done this, has always lost his mind when she displays even the smallest symptom of some illness. The paranoia only grew worse after his brother’s death. She scans his face, and the concern in his eyes—even after all of this—makes her heart stumble in her chest.
“Your pulse is too quick,” Seojin determines softly before placing a hesitant hand on Iseul’s forehead, where her skin warms under his touch. She wonders if he can feel it. “And your skin is too clammy. Do you have any stomach pain? Any nausea?”
Oh, Iseul certainly hasnauseaas she thinks to Ijun’s words. She had never heard of the 43rd Division before, and for some reason, possessing the knowledge of their existence makes her feel rather ill.
It changes nothing, she tells herself determinedly.Nothing.
But that doesn’t feel like the truth, not at all.
They were human. And they fought.
She hadn’t known…
“Iseul?” Seojin prompts, and his soft voice is almost worried. When she again fails to reply, he stretches out an arm to the small shelf of herbs he has next to the bed and grabs the glass vial of sticky elderberry syrup. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to make her take this specific medicine. “Here,” he murmurs, raising it to her lips. “Drink.”
“I’m fine,” she says, pushing the medicine away. Seojin raises his brows, but he shouldn’t be surprised. Iseul has never quite liked medicine and would in all honesty prefer to chew off her own foot than drink any of the foul stuff. “I just…” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”It changes nothing. Nothing.“Besides, I’d think you would begratefulif I really were deathly ill. It might relieve you of a burden, wouldn’t it?” She lifts her manacled hand and shakes it pointedly.
Seojin lurches back as if she’s struck him. Color rises to his face, and his fingers spasm around the vial of elderberry syrup. For a moment, she thinks his eyes look glassy. But Ryu Seojin does not cry. Especially, she thinks, for someone like herself. Someone he sodisdains.
She watches as he slowly recaps the syrup and places it back on the shelf. When he apparently trusts himself enough to speak, he turns back to Iseul. His eyes are dry.
“If you think that little of me,” he says, voice scratchy, “it doesn’t surprise me that you would think the worst of them. You want to see the worst in everybody, Iseul, even when there is good. Even when they’ve tried to help you.”
“I don’t need yourhelp,” she spits out, suddenly vicious as she catches that glint ofpityin his eyes. “I’ve been alone my whole life. I don’t need to let you help me. I don’t owe anyoneanything, no matter how much they try to—to manipulate me into thinking otherwise.” Iseul pants in anger, for they’re no longer talking about Seojin or the medicine. “I know what I am,” she hisses, “and what I ammeant to doso that they know that I—that I lived for a reason.”
Seojin’s eyes soften, the bastard. “Iseul—”
“What do you think they would say?” she demands. “If I turned my back on them now?” Tears sparkle in her eyes, trail down her cheeks. Iseul scrubs them away.
It’s an effort to speak. “I’m not sick,” Iseul forces out, only to herself. “I’m not. I’m fine. I’mfine.”
Yet still, she feels something growing inside of her.
Something she needs to weed out.
So for the rest of the day, Iseul is as much of a menace as she possibly can be.
Yet it doesn’t bring the same satisfaction as it did before.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Prophecy
“There are archers on the wall’s western edge, watching the sea for Imugi,” Bomin reads, and I hiss through my teeth. Rage boils within me. This should not be happening. My finely laid plans should not be going to waste.
Bomin’s latest correspondence is held in his hands, the black bird already flapping away. The Beast Wall looms in the distance, a formidable barrier of old stone, scuffed from age yet strong and sturdy.
“The arrows are made of the same material as the swords. Forged in the emperor’s fire. Many of the soldiers are also equipped with Imugi scale armor. They were harvested during the Battle of Seocheonkkotbat.”
From the Imugi in the failed First Wave. Their brethren hiss, Sonagi shaking with fury at the thought of her dead children’s skin being fitted to the enemy, although it is nothing new.
“How,” I say coldly to Bomin, “do they know of our plan?” We have paused in our voyage, but the Beast Wall still beckons us. The Imugi travelling via sea are drawing closer, yet no longer do we have the advantage of surprise.
But Bomin does not need to answer.
My suspicions have become more than just ideas construed of paranoia. I already know who must have spied from her prison, who must have somehow passed on information to Haneul. I remember the feeling of sensing not one, buttwospecks of consciousness in my head. So this is where he goes where I cannot follow.
Into my mind. To hiswife.
