Page 125 of Reign of the Talon
“You came back,” he breathes. “You came back to me…” Iseul’s heart leaps as he kisses her again, sliding his hands through her hair, crushing her against his body until there is no telling where one ends and the other begins. It is only a faint prickling on the back of her neck that alerts Iseul to the fact that they are being watched, and it is an effort to tear herself away from Seojin’s lips, to turn over his shoulder and meet the eyes of the man watching him.
Her heart stops dead in her chest.
She knows him, doesn’t she? The man with scarred hands and chestnut curls, hazel eyes that soften as he watches his Seojin, seeing him as the man he has become. A hand rising to her lips, Iseul slips from his lap and steps aside, unblocking Seojin’s view of his brother.
Slowly, so slowly, Seojin’s eyes move to him. Iseul watches through blurry vision as he freezes, his face bloodless, his dark eyes wide as he sees…
Sang, to his members.
Ryu Seokjun, to Seojin.
“Brother,” Seojin breathes, and his brother smiles crookedly. “Seokjun,” he says again, rising to shaking legs. “I… You…How…”
Seokjun nods in that gentle, understanding way of his that Iseul remembers from their childhood. “I know,” he says quietly, embracing his younger brother, folding him close to him. “I know.”
Iseul, for once, is at a loss for words. “How—howare you here?” she manages, unable to catch a breath through her stupefaction and shock.
Seokjun meets Iseul’s eyes.
“She brought me where I needed to be,” he replies softly, and there is a glimmer ofsomethingin his hazel eyes that tells Iseul that somehow—somehow—Shin Lina is at the center of this. She looks around for the small girl with the teardrop scar, for her silver-eyed emperor, but Lina is nowhere to be found.
And some kernel of bittersweet truth within Iseul tells her that although she will see Lina again one day, it will never be in the world of the living.
With a bittersweet smile, Iseul watches as, against his brother, arms wrapped around his solid, living, breathing body…Ryu Seojin finally allows himself to cry.
INTERLUDE
Kang
Jeong Kang sits in front of Rui’s empty throne, face buried in his tremor-stricken hands. The war is over, the war is won.
Yet he feels as if he has won nothing at all.
Their bodies have been laid, side by side, on the throne room’s obsidian floor—pale and colorless and still. There will be a funeral, a ceremony. But it will not be in Gyeulcheon.
For with Rui’s death, the magic holding the pocket-realm together will begin to decay. It will be at least a night before the effects begin, before the Dokkaebi once again return to Iseung, to the Three Kingdoms. There are preparations to be done. Evacuations.
How pitiful that Kang finds that he cannot yet move.
A slender hand touches his right shoulder. A large, calloused one touches his left. Chan and Hana slowly sit beside him, three-fourths of an inner circle, forever missing their final link. Chan is staring at Rui’s body, and Kang notes that even with the return of his lost love, the madness has not left his green eyes. Ah. Insanity is not so easily bled from a soul. He wonders if Hana has noticed yet. What she will think when she finally does.
“Kang,” Hana says, freckled face concerned, “I saw them.”
The advisor stiffens. “You saw…”
“She came to me, in Jeoseung. She freed me from the realm. From death.” Hana blinks rapidly. “They’re together,” she finally finishes, and Kang wonders at the regretful note in her voice. She never liked Shin Lina at all and thought the world would be better off with her dead…
But now, reunited with Chan, perhaps Hana is ashamed of how cruelly she treated Shin Lina.
“What do we do now?” Kang rasps hoarsely. The tranquil pool of his mind is riotous with grief. Struggling to stay afloat in the aftermath, he finds himself lost. It is only a small comfort that Lina and Rui have found peace together. That Lina has somehow found…power.
Later, Jeong Kang will wonder, warily, how it was that Lina found herself to be the Goddess of Death. He will begin to suspect that a game has been played by the heavens, and the wise Dokkaebi will not be amused.
But for now, he only leans into Hana’s touch and closes his ever-weary eyes.
“We pick up the pieces,” Hana says grimly. “We forge a new path.”
INTERLUDE
