Page 30 of Reign of the Talon
Suddenly, I feel hollow. There is not the relief I thought there would be: only an uncomfortable feeling ofemptiness. Perhaps if it was only me who’d seen the Dalgyal Gwisin, I would feel more…at peace with the knowledge that death looms on my own horizon. It’s what I wanted, after all. But I am not the only one who has looked at it. Rui has, too.
Rui is…going to die. It is a certainty.
He won’t—he won’t survive what’s coming. No. No.
The Dalgyal Gwisin laughs softly from the shadows. I feel its eyeless gaze tracing me through the bars. Rui is watching me carefully as well as I sign,When?
“It could be hours from now. Days. Weeks. Months. Or even years.” The line of his mouth is very tight. “Omens like this are fickle, in regard to time. Yet there has been this…feeling, within me, Lina, for a while now. A suspicion. Like a mercenary, breathing down my neck. I can feel them approaching, at my back, reaching out a hand. Any moment now, it will touch my shoulder. I do not think that I will leave this war alive, little thief. I can feel it on the battlefield, can hear it in the clashing of sword against scale. My death rides swiftly toward me.” His voice is harsh, bitter, as he raises his chin, and I see him for the warrior that he is, even as alarm seeps through my blood at his words. “I would rather die, sharply honed in battle, than rust away as an unused blade,” he tells me quietly. “That is the Dokkaebi way.”
The barb strikes true. Despite myself, I flinch.
Rui holds my gaze. “Even if this war is futile, I must give my death—mylife—meaning. Even if I die tomorrow, or years from now. I must meet death honorably. I want to travel to Jeoseung knowing I did all I could.” His hands twitch, as if he wants to reach for me. “What about you, Lina? Will you take your last breaths as yourself? Or forever imprisoned here? Will you die a honed blade or a puppet to the Prophecy?”
My heart slams painfully against my ribcage.
“Will you die with the blood of innocents on your hands?” Although his eyes are gentle, his voice is like steel. “Or will you wash them clean, and redeem yourself? Will the legends of you be ones of horror, or ones of redemption?”
Damn him. Damn him—he must know, hemustknow how an image of my appa flickers in my mind, his eyes kind as he told me the stories of the gods, his brows pinched together as he told me the stories of the monsters. I swallow hard, pressing my palms to my eyes, my head swimming so much that it aches.
They have been gone so long that sometimes I forget to wonder, what my eomma, what my appa would think of me.
But now I wonder. And I…I do not think they would be proud.
“The way I see it, there are two paths looming before us—each leading to the same inevitability. Yet one is covered in shadow, while the other is dappled in sunlight.” I can hear his desperation in the quickness of his words, as if he is frightened that at any moment, he will somehow be silenced. “You meet your foretold demise many years after the Prophecy reaches Fulfillment. Iseung is terrorized, decimated. Long has the Prophecy reigned. The Three Kingdoms fell years ago. Your body grows old; you die. Your death changes nothing. We have still lost. Perhaps it is the most likely scenario, or what the Prophecy itself predicts.”
Ice sluices through my veins. Sonagi had once assured me not to heed those last lines: that the death they referenced could be years in the future.
And the Child of Venom will rule all
Before making her home in Yeomra’s halls.
Yet…
Your death changes nothing.
“Or—oryou fight your way back into your body, little thief. And we—we try, our hardest, to save these Three Kingdoms. Together. It might be futile. It might very well be foolish. A losing game, an uphill battle. We die trying and either fail or succeed. Death is coming for us both, Lina. It is only a question of how we choose to meet it.”
His words have struck me harder than any weapon ever could. Violently, I flinch, my pain flaring down our bond just as Rui’s own torment pierces me from the outside.
“Do you know,” he whispers raggedly, “the first time I realized I loved you? Trulylovedyou? Soul-crushingly so? When I saw a future with you, as if told by the stars themselves?”
My hands flutter in my lap. I want to know, but I cannot. I do not deserve to know. I was never worthy of anybody’s love, least of all Rui’s. Just look what I have done with it. I have hidden away, in a cold cell, like the coward I am. Terrified by what I have done. Unable to do anything but weep. A weakling, a shell of myself.
The emperor smiles, just slightly. A small, broken thing, but there all the same. “It was in the gardens, when Wang Jiwoon attacked. You were beaten. Badly broken. Laying on the cold ground.”
Images of that night flash before my eyes. Jiwoon’s mocking smile. His blows, falling down upon me, fracturing bones, shredding skin. Despair consuming me as he walked away, retrieving his ax, intent on beheading me.
No hope of survival had flickered inside of me. Nothing but bone-deep defeat.
But then…
“But then,” Rui breathes, “you planted one fist down on the ground. And then the other. You pushed yourself back to your feet. Yourose, Lina, you rose like an ember to flame. You emerged from the ashes and youfought. I know you’re hurt. I know you’re grieving. But I’m here now, asking you to do it one last time. Rise to your feet, Shin Lina. One last time.”
INTERLUDE
Chan
Rage is too small a word to describe the monster that prowls underneath Kim Chan’s skin.
