Page 2 of Reign of the Talon
Lovely,I seethe.
I brush my mind against Sonagi’s consciousness, a wall of scale and serpent.He is coming.
Underneath me, she halts. Her head sways back and forth, tongue flicking out as she smells the air.“So he isss,”the Mother of Imugi grumbles in the Serpentine Language.
“Stop,”I hiss in the same tongue to the others, who do as I bid. The wind carries my order behind me, toward all one hundred serpents.
“Today’s ambush?” Iseul asks. The Gumiho does not sound too upset at the thought. In fact, Iseul sounds almost hopeful. She is, after all, a violent creature. It seems as if she still blames the Dokkaebi for failing to help stop the Fox Hunt fifty years ago. Honestly, I do not care about her motives, as long as she kills who I need her to kill. And so far, she has done just that. Exemplarily.
“Yes,” I reply, summoning my scales. Faster than the flit of a butterfly’s wings, they unfurl across my skin, crusting the edges of my face before rippling down my neck toward my heart, and then outward along my arms, a diamond-hard armor against whatever bloodshed the infernal Gyeulcheon army has planned. “Brace,” I hiss, just as the air explodes around us.
Shadowed corridors burst into existence like splashes of dark ink on white paper. Dokkaebi leap forth from the portals, clad in battle gear that flashes under the sunlight. Their furious war cries echo over the peaks, harsh and grating on my ears. Scowling, I gesture for Bomin to take cover. The favor-collecting dealer is admittedly useful despite his propensity for eye-sores of fashion statements, and I can’t have him dying in a fight. His Imugi, Beongae, moves toward a rock outcrop, hiding him beneath the ice-glazed stone.
There are hundreds of Dokkaebi warriors appearing from thin air, and I once again curse Haneul for administering the wongun enhancer to his forces, restoring the power to move through these portals to basic Dokkaebi. This…development…has been most inopportune, as we can hardly go a day without some bloody clash interrupting my march.
It’s annoying, to say the least. But my army knows well what to do. In one swift motion, Iseul launches herself out of Uloe’s saddle, swinging her formidable ax as her Imugi rears back and hisses. Venom sprays through the air, and although Uloe is careful not to shower Iseul in the deadly liquid, the green poison catches a pair of Dokkaebi in the face and they fall screaming to the ground. Just like Haneul’s friend, Hana, did three months ago when my Imugi bit her in Sunpo’s palace. She died not long after. Suffice to say, her lover wants desperately to kill me. I worry not. Kim Chan will die. This pair will, too.
The warriors had been rushing toward me. They always do that. It’s almost funny. They always try to make it to me first, although their emperor has decreed mehis. Every battle, he directs his Dokkaebi fire toward me, as if trying to free that weak, sniveling girl from my mind before he is forced to deliver a fatal blow. But even he knows it’s useless. Although such strategy worked before, it will not work again. A fool’s hope, even with his heavenly fire.
For she will not emerge, even if given the chance. He knows that to stop me, he will have to kill me. Undoubtedly he wishes for it to be painless, in some act of foolish nostalgia for the girl who once inhabited this body. I won’t afford him that luxury when I kill him. It will be painful, and it will be ever so slow.
Overhead, thunder booms. This is Sonagi’s doing—she is summoning a storm for me. One of frost and lightning. The heavy rains have put out the Dokkaebi fire for me before, and today, the produced sleet will bank it enough for me to avoid injury. For the flames—tapped directly from the heavenly realm of Okhwang itself—are one of the only weapons that can render me truly weak. And despite their inability to produce the metamorphosis that Haneul so clearly wishes for, they can still sear my skin and scales.
I scowl as the tugging in my chest intensifies. As the battle clashes around us, the sound of swords against scales ringing through the air, my eyes focus on an explosion of shadow not twelve paces away from me. Sonagi hisses in furious distaste, her long body tensing as the Emperor of the Dokkaebi bursts onto the snow-crusted battlefield atop his white mare, Duri.
As the red thread connecting me to him materializes into full view, a deep, glimmering scarlet bond of hatred.
My eyes narrow at the horse who, to my utmost chagrin, iswinged.A chollima. The first time I saw her, I nearly choked on my rage. In Gyeulcheon, when I was weak, when I was not who I am now, I rode atop her back. She was wingless then, but I know now that the white-feathered appendages were only hidden.
So many secrets Haneul kept from me.
So many lies.
His eyes are burning with blue Dokkaebi fire as Duri’s hooves crunch against the icy ground, stepping over the bodies of the two fallen warriors with a muscle pulsing in his jaw. Underneath his black helmet, his short, wavy hair whips in the bitter winds. His armor is undoubtedly meant to intimidate—although what it only does isenrage. He wears dark-green plate armor laced together over simple black robes to cover his shoulders, torso, and waist. A sash holds the sword that he never uses, instead preferring to blast me with his foul fire.
Yet I do not look at his sword. I glare at his plates, so recently forged from the dead scales of one of my fallen Imugi. She is my only Imugi casualty so far. The Dokkaebi dogpiled her on these mountains three days ago and tore her scales from her body, knowing their value as defense. Now, Haneul wears them as he slowly makes his way toward me. The din of the battle seems to fade, and nothing exists except us and our steeds on this icy plain. I feel his emotions, pummeling me from the outside in: Grief. Rage. Guilt. I know that he feels mine: disgust and determination.
Thunder roars again and rain bursts from the gray clouds, freezing to sleet and snow as the Yaepak air meets it. “Hello, husband mine,” I croon as lightning splits the sky. Sonagi hisses menacingly at Duri, who huffs and flaps her wings, ascending so that she and her mount look down upon us.
“Prophecy,” Haneul says, voice almost as cold as the sleet pounding upon us.
I smile. He does not call me “Lina.” He never does. He does not understand, I suppose, that IamShin Lina in many ways. To him I am simply theProphecy, the one who will transform the Imugi into Yong and reclaim their land. Yet it goes deeper than that. I am not the cowardly girl with the foolish desire for redemption, the girl I have trapped in my head forevermore. “Really, Dokkaebi. Is that any way to speak to yourwife?” I purr.
Through our bond, there is a bolt of sharply lanced pain. Pain and longing. I know that Haneul is thinking of our wedding, a wedding that was only ever a pretense. A foolish ploy to thwart my destiny. Laughing, I check that my scales, hard and glittering, cover my vitals as I summon the scaleblades from the back of my hands. The fatal blades extend from the back of my wrists, sharp and glittering. Sonagi hisses as I stand upon her saddle, looking up at the chollima and the Dokkaebi.
Haneul tenses, as if he knows what I am about to do.
I leap into the air with a grin as bloodlust overtakes me, soaring upward as cerulean Dokkaebi fire crackles between Haneul’s hands. He shouts in rage as I grab onto one of Duri’s hooves. The chollima panics, kicking wildly, wings flapping haphazardly as she thrashes. It is with great satisfaction that I watch Haneul tumble from the sky and onto the icy ground below. He rolls, flipping himself to his feet, snow crusting his armor as he curses violently.
Leaving the chollima for now, I drop to the ground, descending the ten feet and ignoring the burst of pain in my left leg as I land. Haneul pants hard, eyes narrowed in fury. The red thread between us, still visible, tightens as I take a step forward.
“You should really give up,” I tell him, smiling in the way I can feel hurts him the most. It’s a cold smile, a cruel one, filled with mock-love. One that my lips had to grow used to. This face had never smiled like that before, not whensheinhabited this body. “She’s not coming back. No matter how hard you try. And I am not her.”
“Silence,” snarls the emperor. As ifhecan commandme. His voice turns raw. “You are a parasite, a leech under her skin.”
The sleet is coming down heavier now. A normal fire would have no hope of lighting in this storm, but Haneul’s fire is no ordinary fire. Even so, it is a weaker flame between his fingers than it might have been. I watch it warily, licking my lips as I take another step closer. The emperor flinches as my next words strike through the air like a whip.
“I do not love you, Dokkaebi. I love the storms that rage in the skies, and the blood that wets the ground. I love the kiss of a blade against a throat, not the kiss of your lips against mine. I love war and ruin. I love fear and fire and fury. I do not loveyou.”
