Page 58 of Reign of the Talon
My hand aches around the sword, giving me my answer. Panting, I turn and resume my sprint up the staircase of my mind. Another level—it must be close. Ithasto be. I’ve been running for so long that the barley field seems like a long-gone dream. I might have forgotten about it entirely, if not for the key I won at the end of it. The slide of the cool chain around my sweat-slick neck is the only reason I do not despair, that I do not believe that these stairs will go on for an eternity. I cling to it, that key, as I run. I cling to it as my feet pound against the steps. I cling to it as I stumble into a garden. A different time. A different place.
A memory.
…
In this memory, I am happy.
Perhaps that is why my breathing steadies as I step into the scene, into the sunlit garden, where Chara and Chryse lounge underneath the willow tree, drinkingSallinnawine and teasing Sang who sits with his back to the trunk.
“Lina!” the blond twins chorus, green eyes flicking to me as I push aside the willow tree’s drooping green curtain just as I did the first time, when this scene was not yet a memory, but the present. I feel myself smile, just as I did the first time. I sheathe my sword and plop down next to Sang.
“I’m late,” I apologize breathlessly.No, I want to protest.No, I don’t want to speak, not now, not ever again—but these words are from the past, and they never hurt anyone. They have already been spoken. So I allow the memory to keep its course, let the words spill automatically from my lips, propelled by the past. “I was running around Sunpo for Yoonho—”
“Ah, Yoonho.” Chara giggles, laying on her stomach. “He has a longer list of targets than Chryse has lists of clothing she wants.”
Something twists inside of me as my friends laugh. The last time we were all together like this, in Sunpo, they were dead and I was standing amongst the sea of their bodies. I know what is coming—no, what has alreadyhappened—yet this feels so…real. Our teasing. Chara’s wicked little cackles, Sang’s fond exasperation. As the sunlight streams through the willow tree, I wonder…if I might just…stay here.
Here, in this moment, with them. Here, where there’s no war, no danger, nothing but the smiles of my friends and a sense of peace that I thought I’d lost when…
C R A C K.
And with that echo of sound splitting through my head, the hope—no matter how foolish it already was—is lost forever. My sister is in the underworld, believing me a monster. The gods are descending in hateful fury. And Rui is fighting alone.
I will savor this memory while I am here. But then I will let it pass, as I must.
As it already has.
Chryse snorts and shoves her sister. “Excuse me! My list of clothing is useful!” she protests. “Besides, if I’m to be showered with gifts by our marks, they might as well be things I actuallywant—”
“And you want so many things,” cackles Chara. “Your list is longer than one of my legs, which—getting back to the point—means that Yoonho’s target list is the length of, well, two of my legs stacked on top of each other.”
“Don’t be disgusting,” I groan, crinkling my nose.
“I do as I please,” she replies cheerfully.
She was right, though. Yoonho’s list had been extremely long. It was a result of last week’s disaster of a dinner party, where our sponsors had gathered only to quickly disperse as some rival lord had attempted to detonate an explosive in the palace. His plan had failed, but I’d now been tasked with hunting down each and every one of his equally dangerous associates. The rival lord himself had long been taken care of.
“He wants revenge,” Sang says quietly, turning a long blade of grass over and over between his scarred fingers. “You know how Yoonho gets. He’s a good leader,” he adds quickly, “but he allows revenge to consume him all too quickly. Your targets are disgusting excuses of men, Lina, but they had no part in last week’s attack.”
“It’s easy to get caught up in revenge,” I reply, quick to defend Yoonho. “We could have been killed.”
“But we weren’t,” the spymaster retorts softly. “And now he runs you ragged all over the kingdom. That’s the thing about revenge, I suppose—it feels you will die if you do not chase it, but the chase is what kills you in the end. There are parts to life that are more important than endless vengeance.”
“Like what?” Chryse asks curiously. Sang gives her a crooked smile and shrugs.
“Well, like this, I suppose,” he says a little awkwardly, waving a hand at the three of us. “Spending time finding peace. Wanting retribution…it eats you up inside. But it’s only a distraction from a greater problem. Yoonho blames himself, I think. He feels that if he’d only been more cautious, none of us would have been put in danger. But self-blame is frightening and too difficult for some to face. So he hunts others instead.”
I listen to each word Sang says in that slightly raspy voice of his. There’s a bittersweet ache lodged somewhere in my heart. Nostalgia, I think, for…for Sang. For the sweet, hopeful adoration I felt for him, for how everything was simpler then, my idea of love included. I didn’t know that it could be so wonderful yet ruinous, could not evenfathomthe tidal emotions I would soon feel for a Dokkaebi emperor with silver eyes and a power to rattle the moons.
The fragile, delicate, innocent feelings I held for Sang cannot even be compared to the depth and complexity of being soul-stitched to Rui. Yet I…I remember what I thought I felt for Sang, and I fight back a sad smile. Looking at him, it’s like gazing fondly at such a fundamental part of my younger self, but this time as older…and perhaps a little wiser.
“Revenge is ugly,” Sang concludes. “And it’s ugly inside and out.”
He’s right. Every time I sought retaliation, I was seeking some way to lessen the blame onmyshoulders. What happened in Sunpo, with the Blackbloods… They deserved it, yes—gods, they deserved it dozens of times over—but I lost myself in the hunt for retribution, lost myself so completely that I’m now trapped in my mind, body host to a parasite of a Prophecy.
And the need for revenge is anuglyfeeling. Like claws scraping against your heart, over and over until you bleed. And when you finally obtain it, that vengeance… It feels nothing like you thought it would, and you still bleed.
You’re still haunted at night. You still hate yourself. You still look, futilely, for somebody else to blame, anybody else to blame, but yourself.
