Page 118 of The Shadows we Live In
Rheon’s shadow folds around the bench like a cloak, then loosens.
“And if fear comes,” he says, mild, “we will give it a job. It can count the doors we keep shut.”
A breeze lifts the wisteria. Somewhere a bell marks an hour that doesn’t matter. I press my lips to Yuna’s temple and feel everything I used to pray for without knowing how to ask to make a home in my mouth.
“Say it,” she whispers, because she knows the spell that holds me, and because she taught me that love likes to be loud even when it’s quiet.
I slid to one knee, because the garden remembers who I am when I do. I lace our fingers and lay them over the half-moon beneath her collar. The Little Drum answers with a kick that makes my throat ache.
“Always,” I vow—to her, to the boy learning our song, to the life that turned wrath into a door and asked me to stand in it. “When the crown is heavy and when it’s forgotten on the table. When he cries at dawn and when he sleeps through my best stories. When your power frightens the people who refuse to learn what mercy is for. When my hands remember the old ways and I need you to say my name out loud to call me back. I am yours. I am theirs. I am here.”
Yuna’s eyes shine. Seori wipes hers as if she can deny it; Rheon doesn’t bother trying. The garden breathes around us like a living thing that decided to stop holding its own fear.
“Again,” Yuna says, greedy for the truth the way I am.
“Always,” I repeat, and the bond hums it threefold—queen, mate, son—until the word lodges in the bones of the palace.
Later, when the moon is high and the rookies have finally stopped pretending, they aren’t watching from the colonnade, Yuna falls asleep against me on the bench, crown on the table, ribbon looped around my fingers. The Little Drum keeps time slow and sure beneath my palm. Across from us, Seori dreams with her mouth barely smiling while Rheon counts the stars like he can will them to stay where they’re put for once.
I don’t sleep. I keep watch, the way I promised I would, calm in a way I didn’t know existed. The old whisper tests the door of my chest—out of habit, not malice. The sigil warms. The bond answers. It has nowhere to land.
When the night finally cools to the hour where even shadows rest, I bend and press a kiss to Yuna’s hair, then to the place our son made holy without asking.
“Always,” I tell them both, and feel them answer from the inside
