Page 83 of Reign of the Talon
Oh, phooey.
She’s always loved him. She loves him now. She loved him even when she believed he betrayed her. His kiss lingers on her lips, warm and comforting like home. And now, with Jae’s little face fresh in her mind, Iseul understands what Seojin has been fighting for—and she loves him all the more for it. She has never felt this aching in her bones before, her longing to be reunited with him is a physical want, a physical pain.
Wait. What?
Iseul’s mind screeches to a halt.Whatdid Rui just say?
“The… The tiny little Lina who lives inside of this Lina’s head?”
The emperor notes the realization crossing the Gumiho’s face and smiles smugly. Iseul feels a terrible migraine coming on.
“Nothing you just said makes sense,” she spits, careful to keep her voice down, lest the Imugi hear it and come to investigate. She’s in enough danger already. Should Lina look for Rui through the thread, and see Iseul… Well. That would be positivelycalamitous. “What do you mean, the ‘tiny little Lina who lives inside’…” She can’t even finish the sentence. It is too ridiculous, too impossible, toopreposterous, and altogether unbelievable.
The emperor does not look concerned about this. He only arches a brow and says, “Oh, dear. Has nobody deigned to tell you? No; I don’t believe she would. Easier to control you if you believe that Shin Lina is still your friend…not a parasite suckling the free will from your friend’s body. So listen, Song Iseul. And I’ll tell you a very long, and very convoluted, story.”
…
“It would be soverymuch easier to simply kill you,” Iseul says sometime later, her head now positively swimming at the thought of Lina running about in her own mind, desperately trying to make her way back into her own body. Rui sighs.
“But…you’re right, I suppose.” The words scrape against Iseul’s throat. “Lina deserves a chance to reclaim her body.”
Something like shame blooms in Iseul’s heart. How had she not realized that Lina’s body had been overtaken by a parasite? Perhaps it was her own willful ignorance, not wanting to believe that she was working for an utter monster.
Oh, she’d noticed…something…after Lina’s little sister had died. A certain change in Lina’s voice, a certain hatred that could not be contained. Yet Iseul had assumed that all of these changes were the effect of Eunbi’s death. Such a thing, well, it would be enough to consume anybody with anger and violence. She’d only known Lina for a couple of weeks—perhaps less—before the Night of the Red Moon. And most of those days, if Rui is to be believed, the Prophecy was already beginning to take control.
In the end, and despite their blossoming friendship, Iseul hadn’t known Lina well enough to realize she’d been swallowed whole by the Prophecy.
And thethinginhabiting Lina’s body had never told her.
Gnawing on her bottom lip, Iseul eyes the ropes knotted around Rui. Perhaps the way that the Prophecy treats him should have been her first clue. She’d seen, firsthand, the love that Shin Lina had for him. The heartbreak in her eyes when Iseul had told her of his “Pied Piper-ing.” Even furious, that Lina would never have tried to kill Rui, as the Prophecy so often does.
The emperor follows her sullen stare. Absurdly, a corner of his lips twitches. “These ropes are a formality on both our ends, and I can burn through them easily enough. In fact—”
Iseul watches as the emperor summons the blue fire, as the flames eat away at the heavy cords binding him to the stall. “There,” Rui groans, rising to his feet. He rolls his shoulders.
She is quiet, thinking back to that day she and Lina first met, in her Dove Coop—the girl with the teardrop scar and eyes sosadthat Iseul had taken it upon herself to somehow make her laugh. Iseul still remembers that girl, the one she had been forming a friendship with. And friends, for Iseul, are so terribly hard to make. She is always simplytoo muchfor them. But the Lina back then never made her feel like that.
For that girl, and for Seojin, Iseul will continue on in this rather exhausting quest of not being a terrible person.
Iseul knows what it is like to be the victim of a Prophecy. Her own rings in her mind, a terrible fate brought to fruition with the extermination of her people.
“The woods shall fill with swords that gleam, that wipe the population of Gumiho clean.”
Her eyes rise wearily to Rui’s.
“General Lee Yongmin,” she says, sighing. “He’s a mole from the Wyusan army. He’s feeding Lina—the Prophecy—information. It’s how she knows things she really shouldn’t.”
Rui blinks—it’s the only sign she’s taken him by surprise. “I borrowed a raven from him to send a missive,” he murmurs. “He stank of…fear. Do you have a brush and ink? Some paper?”
“No,” she scoffs. What does he think she is, ascholar? The only person in this army who possesses parchment and ink is the Prophecy, who’s claimed Bang Bomin’s stash. And as confident as Iseul is in her abilities to lie, cheat, and steal, she’s not one to go toe-to-toe with whatever is inside of Lina’s body…especially now that she knows the truth. Smuggling some to Rui is simply out of the question.
The emperor curses under his breath before striding toward Chan. The warrior is slumped, asleep, and barely stirs as Rui yanks the drugged gag out of his mouth. Iseul stares as he wraps his fingers around one of the rope cords.
Yet he hesitates.
“He tried to kill Lina,” Rui mutters out of the corner of his mouth to her. With a bitter grimace, the emperor leaves the ropes intact.
Iseul watches as he does, however, slip a hand into the pocket of Chan’s robes, fishing around until he pulls out a crumpled slip of paper. By the looks of it, it’s a torn bit of a map detailing the land of the Wyusan Wilderness, where he attempted to surprise Lina—the Prophecy.
