Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“No.” Jisung shook his head adamantly, slinking away from the doors and around the king to resolve his sense of being cornered. “I won’t do it. No way!” 

“We don’t have time for this, Han,” said the king, trailing after Jisung with the dagger still proffered out to him. 

“Time for what?!” Jisung demanded, heart racing in a panic. “Time for me to lose my mind over the prospect of killing my lover’s father? Well, apologies for the inconvenience.” 

“You said you’d do anything to protect my son.” 

“Not this!” Jisung exclaimed, stumbling slightly when he backed himself up against one of many decorative pedestals in the study; he quickly regained his bearings. “You think something like this would be protecting him? It would ruin him! He thinks you’re a shit father, but he doesn’t want you dead. And he most certainly doesn’t want it done by my hand.” 

The king paused, blinking in a stunned, fluttery way so like Minho it was unsettlingly uncanny. “He said that?” 

Jisung paused too, taking the opportunity to wilt into the nearest bookcase and draw in a stabilizing breath. “At the oasis earlier,” he affirmed. “He said that, even if he’d rather not, he still sometimes had it in him to love you.” 

There was a long stretch of silence. The only sounds that could be heard were those of battle muffled by distance and heavy stone walls. 

“I see.” The king donned just the faintest smile, staring solemnly down at his feet. “Even after everything I’ve put him through… He’s never been an especially hateful boy, but if anyone deserves his hatred…” 

Jisung frowned, a throbbing, woeful ache spreading through his chest—a sensation that wasn’t born of his own emotions, but rather, of a father who’d always loved his son so dearly yet didn’t know how to express it amid his avid mission to protect him. 

A single, rogue tear slipped down Jisung’s cheek; he swiftly brushed it away, schooling his features and straightening his posture. 

“Why is Minho sure to lose this fight?” he asked. 

The king looked up from his feet, inhaling deeply, squaring his shoulders. “The Alchemist is not an enemy to be trifled with, especially if you are the object of his wicked ambitions. My boy may be a fury, but he is the last remaining person on this earth with Seer blood, and you the last person with untapped access to Seer magic. You, the enemy would capture and preserve to carry out their plans; Minho, they would drain of blood for all it’s worth and leave for dead. At least with his magic, he has a fighting chance. Without it, I fear he will meet a tragic end.” 

The first feeling that struck Jisung was horror, fret—an unscratchable itch to bolt out of the palace right that second and rush onto the battlefield to drag Minho off (kicking and screaming in protest, he was sure) somewhere no one could find him. 

The second feeling was unbridled lividity. Because—

“You let him do all of this when you knew what would likely come of him if he fought back? Why?!” 

Jisung wasn’t even thinking about why this ‘Alchemist’ needed his Seer magic or Minho’s blood. He honestly couldn’t care less at the moment. Minho staying alive was all that mattered to him. 

“It was better than making the future king appear weak and untrustworthy in front of his people,” said the king. “Minho had made a decision that the people rallied behind; if I were to lower him in dignity by refusing to honor his invocation of Maia’s Law, not only would the people have been angry with me, but they would’ve seen Minho as nothing more than a witless boy playing pretend-hero. Whatever the outcome of this battle may be, Minho will be more than just interim king by dawn. He cannot afford to look weak if Fleymlansa is meant to prevail. And Fleymlansa cannot prevail unless the seal on his magic is broken.” 

He offered the dagger over again, and alarm once more wriggled itself into Jisung’s chest, rendering his breaths short and his heart stifled. 

Nervously, he wetted his lips and swallowed the lump in his throat, forcing his eyes to meet the king’s. “Listen, I am willing to do just about anything to protect Minho. But I can’t do that if, from this day forward, all he sees when he looks at me is the man who murdered his father.” He breathed out shakily. “What you’re asking me to do—it’d sooner destroy him than it would keep him safe.” 

The king went quiet, piercing gaze adhered to Jisung, whose most visceral instinct was to shrink beneath the imposition of it. All the while, the roar of battle marched ever closer behind the doors, serving as a ticking clock that signified rapidly-impending ruination. 

The king glanced behind himself, toward the doors that had yet to be breached but surely soon would, then refocused on Jisung. A new brand of resolve shone in his sharp features as he set the dagger down firmly on the closest display pedestal. 

“Fine. New plan.” Swiftly, he swaddled the puzzlebox up in the crimson silk wrap upon which it sat in his hand and shoved it into Jisung’s arms. “You’re going to take this and find him. Whatever you do, do not stop running; do not look back. You get this to him, you hear me?” 

“W-what? You can’t fight all those invaders on your own. You’ll--” Jisung’s brows pinched with a mix of confusion and disbelief. “You’ll die…” 

“Don’t you understand that’s the objective here?” 

“But--” Jisung startled when the deafening bang of someone attempting to ram the doors open reverberated through the room. His head spun nauseatingly, stomach rolling, heart hammering a million miles a minute. 

“Go, Han.” The king hurried him to the back of the study, toward the small exit there. “I’ll keep them at bay long enough to give you a good headstart.” 

“Wait, there has to be another way--”  

“There isn’t.” The king had him by the shoulders now, eyes imploring, glazed in a sheen of unshed tears. “You have his mother’s soul in you; do right by it and preserve Minho’s life, no matter the cost. It’s all she would’ve ever wanted.” The grip of his hands on Jisung’s upper arms trembled with trepidation, rivulets spilling free down his face. “Save our boy, Han Jisung. Please.”  

Jisung opened his mouth to speak again, but that’s when the main doors of the study burst wide open, clamoring voices and heavy footfalls flooding into the room. 

“You must go.” The king pushed at Jisung’s shoulders, urging him to turn and flee out the secondary exit.

Jisung hesitated though, knowing that once he turned his back, he’d be leaving Minho’s father for dead. He was hardly convinced this was any better of an option than killing the king himself. 

“Go, Han!”

Jisung flinched and took a few timid paces back, eyes drawn in terror to the soldiers rushing for the king in the background, weapons at the ready. 

The king pushed at him again, making him stagger slightly. “ Go!” 

With great reluctance, Jisung finally caved, whirling around, throwing the plain wooden door open, and sprinting out onto the long footbridge that connected the study tower to an unmarked stretch of dense woodland. 

Behind him, he could hear the various shouts, thuds, booms, and crashes that characterized a violent struggle. Against the king’s explicit instruction, he took a short glance over his shoulder as he ran, just in time to see the backdoor of the study erupt into a flurry of charred splinters, a whirlwind of bright flames escaping through the archway. 

Jisung turned his face away, lifting an arm above his head to shield himself from the shower of embers and wooden shrapnel.  

The chilly air blended with the acrid plumes of smoke rising out of the valley below stung his throat and lungs with every breath. His ears rang with each pounding, rapid pulse of his heart. He clutched the silk-wrapped puzzlebox tight to his chest as a desperate reminder to keep his mind focused on the task at hand. 

He wasn’t just running for his life, nor was his goal aimless and inconsequential. What he was entrusted to do was a matter of life and death. 

Minho would die if he failed. So, too, would Fleymlansa fall, reduced to ashes and the spilled blood of innocents. 

Just as he was about to reach the end of the footbridge and enter the unfamiliar woods, he felt his foot catch on something—like a misaligned floorboard or out-of-place rock. 

Yet, after tripping and nearly collapsing face-first into the ground, he scrambled back upright to look, and—

There was no such rickety board or displaced rock; there was nothing at all. 

Not easily visible anyway. 

But Jisung, in spite of his better judgment, took a brief moment to investigate. Now that he was less concentrated on his mission and more attuned to the mysterious, so-far-imperceptible obstacle, he felt more than saw the presence of a powerful ward. And if he tilted his head just right, he could faintly discern the image-distorting ripples of energy that implicated a tall, magically-conjured wall stretching higher, he was sure, than he could actually see. 

It was a massive dome, he realized, spanning over the entire palace and valley. 

Surely, it didn’t belong to anyone of Fleymlansa; why would they erect a protective ward of this caliber after the invaders had already begun to raze the city? 

If not of Fleymlansan origin, however, then whose? The invaders were human. Even the Alchemist, as far as Jisung understood, was human. 

He remembered, then, with a sharp drop of his heart down to the pit of his stomach, something Minho had said in passing months ago. 

“Anything’s possible for an alchemist with a siphoning serum, a hearty supply of faerie blood, and a book of runes.”

Minho had met the work of the Alchemist before. He and Seungmin. At the Gokdaegi fortress where they’d rescued Jisung’s parents. 

This ward belonged to the Alchemist—there was no doubt in Jisung’s mind. 

And like the ward that’d given them so much grief during that rescue mission, this one felt ‘off,’ too. There was something more to it than met the eye—or, in this case, than met the aurapathic sense. 

Seungmin had introduced Jisung to anti-faerie wards before, and this felt nothing of the sort. 

Without thinking, though with extreme caution, he shuffled forward and carefully prodded the tip of his boot at the ward—and it…

It passed through. 

Jisung’s eyes went impossibly wide at the sight. The very tip of his shoe was within the bounds of the ward, but somehow, he’d tripped over the edge of it in the midst of its construction? How? 

That question was quickly answered when he pulled his foot back and realized that the tip did not come with it, having been severed and left behind the invisible wall. 

Befuddled, Jisung bent his leg up awkwardly to get a good look at his boot, and sure enough, the tip was shaved clean off. He supposed he should count himself lucky he didn’t stick his foot in any farther, or else he’d be missing some toes alongside the tip of his boot. 

It was certain now; the ward was designed to let people in and no one out. The only reason to summon something like that was to build a large-scale trap. 

Somehow, he sensed there was something else quite off about this ward, but he hadn’t the time nor patience to puzzle it out. 

He needed to find Minho. And fast. 

He took off into the trees, unsure where he was going or how he was going to get there. All he knew was that he needed to keep moving--keep making progress, however little. The only way to accomplish that was to neglect every instinct of self-preservation in him and head toward the fight. 

So he banked left, northward, in the direction of the Fleymlansa-Samlimji border, leaping over exposed roots, vaulting over boulders, and crashing through shallow brooks. For a long while, the forest was quiet and devoid of life aside from himself; the small, fantastical critters were either in hiding or had long-fled the area. Even the vibrant nighttime luminescence of Fleymlansan plants was dulled and dim, like the magic in them was already starting to deplete in the face of human toxicity. 

Jisung’s luck was bound to run out eventually, but for it to have run out so far from the thick of the battle was an unwelcome surprise. 

When he reached the top of a small hill of jagged flat-rocks and boulders, he was instantaneously greeted with a band of prowling invaders, just meters ahead. He skidded to a halt and tucked himself behind a nearby tree, though it was a futile effort. 

The invaders had already spotted him right out in the middle of an open clearing, and when they did, one of them declared victoriously, “there he is! We found him!” 

“Ohoho~ We’re gonna be carrying our weight in gold now, boys,” crowed another. 

Jisung gritted his teeth and scrunched his eyes shut, thumping the back of his head against the tree trunk out of frustration. 

He didn’t have fucking time for this. 

“Come on out, little Han. Don’t be scared~” sang a taunting voice. “We’re not even allowed to hurt you.” 

Evening his breaths, Jisung called his magic to the palm of his hand to produce the image of a bluish-translucent throwing knife. It wasn’t anything grand or spectacular, nor did it possess any special, magical qualities other than the fact that it, in itself, was made of magic. 

It was just a single knife, and there were at least seven men or more stalking toward him. 

Internally, he cursed Seungmin for refusing to teach him better offensive spatial casts. 

“You still suck at portal-catch, Han-- the quintessential test of spatial aptitude. You start not -sucking, then we’ll talk,” Seungmin had told him. 

Prick. 

“That’s good to hear,” Jisung responded, situating the knife just right in his hand and peeking around the tree trunk to get a brief, peripheral glance at the invaders’ positions; the cleanest shot was about five meters away. “Guess that means you’re gonna let me hurt you however much I want then, yeah?” 

He whirled around the trunk and sent the knife flying. In the blink of an eye, the blade plunged through the throat of Jisung’s predetermined target, and he crumpled to the ground, dead. 

There was just the shortest pause in time, each of the remaining invaders clearly stunned by the retaliation. But then chaos ensued, and they were all charging at Jisung, seemingly with the intent to dogpile him. 

So Jisung did the first thing that sprang to mind.

He put up a simple, little ward around himself, into which the men promptly collided. The collective fall to their asses was about as amusing as it was unceremonious. 

Jisung couldn’t help but snort. 

He had to wonder how these invaders were squeezing past Fleymlansan defenses so easily when this was how they fought upon encountering magic. 

“Alright, that’s it,” grumbled one of the men. He clumsily shoved himself up from the dirt, unhooking from his belt a circular strip of metal with a hinge on one end that allowed it to open and close freely. “Boss said this was to be used only as a last resort, but I’m not about to let you toy with us long enough for it to come to that.” 

Jisung narrowed his eyes warily, funneling more magic out to reinforce his ward. 

The man then chucked the large, hinged ring toward him. Jisung fully expected it to bounce off the ward, but he quickly, distraughtly realized that it was hurtling straight through the ward instead. He threw himself down to evade its trajectory, and it wound up clamping around a thin-trunked tree behind him. 

He clambered back to his feet, bewildered gaze adhered to the ring that looked about the right size to snugly fit around a neck. Inked onto it was a rune--a cast circle to be precise. It was composed of intricate bends and symbols Jisung didn’t recognize; he’d spent hours a day reading books on magic while he’d been holed-up at Seungmin’s cabin, and the style this rune bore wasn’t of elemental, aurapathic, spatioaurapathic, spatial, or illusory origin. It was something entirely of its own category. 

A mere second or two passed before the puzzle of the rune’s function started to piece itself together. The tree the ring had captured was rapidly withering—leaves turning brown and dry and sloughing into the air, the bark of its trunk going brittle and gray. 

It was being sapped of the magic that sustained it. 

Soon enough, it grew so weak at the point where the ring imprisoned it that the trunk broke in two and the upper fraction of tree began to topple right down toward Jisung. 

He scrambled to throw himself out of the way, struggling to keep the puzzlebox close as he dove off to the side and tumbled into a shallow ditch. 

Forcing his aching body up once more, he cast a cursory look toward the invaders. When he saw they were already in fast pursuit of him, he bolted, careening through the forest no longer with the sense of direction he’d previously had. 

He needed to head north to find the primary battlefront and Minho, but in the thick of the trees with little more than smoke-clouded moonlight to illuminate the way, he was running blind. He tried—he tried really hard to quell the panic in his head so he could hone his aurapathic focus in on Minho, to no avail. 

He couldn’t hope to auralocate Minho when his mind, body, and spirit were all in complete and utter disarray. And he couldn’t stop running to help himself regain his internal synergy, or else he’d be captured, and Minho and everyone was guaranteed to die. 

Fuck. 

He hugged the puzzlebox even tighter to his heaving chest. 

Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck—

He slid to a stop. 

Acting on pure instinct, he stuffed the corners of the silk wrap between his teeth, letting the puzzlebox dangle from his mouth in what was essentially a makeshift sack, and clung onto the first tree he saw, inelegantly shimmying his way up to the high branches. 

He wasn’t much of a climber; in fact, he’d never climbed a tree in his life. But it surprised him to know precisely what he was capable of in a pinch. 

With record speed, he found a perch on a sturdy branch some few dozen feet up the tree. 

“Oh no!” a mocking voice rang out from below. “It looks like you’ve cornered yourself, little prince—nowhere left to run, nowhere left to hide. Pity.” 

Jisung braved a peek down through the branches, spotting the seven men flocked around the tree like vultures waiting for their soon-to-be meal to perish. 

Another one of those runed rings sailed up toward him. Risking a loss of balance, he leaned aside to dodge it, then scrabbled about to regain purchase, latching onto the trunk with panting breaths. Above, the ring closed around a different branch directly overhead. The leaves stemming from it turned to crisps, fell, then came the entire branch. 

Jisung could do little more than wrench his eyes shut, duck his head, hug the tree harder, and pray the heavy, dead branch didn’t collapse on top of him on its descent. He felt it just scarcely graze his back as it fell; only once he heard it strike the ground with a series of shrill, splintery cracks did he dare open his eyes and lift his head again. 

“Are you fucking insane?” chastised one of the men. “Boss needs him alive, and here you are nearly killing him with your stupidity.” He cracked his neck and knuckles, approached the tree, muttered bitterly under his breath, “you want something done right, apparently you gotta do it yourself.” 

He began climbing the tree--albeit with a great lack of finesse and speed, but it was a pressing matter nonetheless. 

Because Jisung truly was trapped. He couldn’t jump from this height, he couldn’t leap to another tree across the way, he couldn’t climb much higher to buy himself time… 

It was as the taunting invader said: nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. 

No time to deliberate--only act.

Jisung carefully maneuvered himself around, sitting himself as steadily as he could manage on his branch. He released the silk wrap from between his teeth and unraveled it to take hold of the puzzlebox in his bare hands. It was warm-- scorching, actually, and yet it didn’t burn him. Grimacing and bearing the bizarre sensation, he hauled in a long breath and let his eyes drift shut, forcibly releasing the tension in his body that prevented his energy from flowing freely. 

He took another breath. 

The last time he attempted this, he’d almost killed himself with a rebound. Now, he wasn’t just preparing for an auralocation cast, but trying to follow it directly with a spatial leap--something he’d never tried in his life nor received a shred of instruction on from Seungmin beyond “don’t even think to try it, or I’ll pay a necromancer to bring you back from the dead just so I can drown you in the river as punishment for being stupid.” 

Jisung hadn’t missed the not-so-subtle implication that an attempt at a spatial leap with his lack of magical mastery would kill him. He hadn’t missed it back then, and it certainly didn’t escape his mind in this moment either. 

But what else was he meant to do? 

Yet another breath.

He cleared his mind of all its hindering clutter: the fear terrorizing his heart and bombarding his nerves, the time he was very quickly running out of, the fact that if he fucked this up in any way, he could wind up with severed limbs, his organs rearranged, his body turned inside-out, all-over degloved, spliced in space--

Another breath. 

His frantic heart steadied, the noise of the world waning. 

In the darkness behind his eyelids, an expansive tangle of technicolor ‘threads’ wove and wound about, their movements entirely random. 

Chaotic. 

Suddenly, all those painstaking exercises in portal-catch made complete sense to Jisung. 

He was legitimately seeing the filaments of chaos that, previously, he could only vaguely sense and wasn’t particularly good at deciphering; now he was tasked, dauntingly, with following the flow to find Minho in the disorder of it all. Or, rather, he was tasked with finding the chaos-generated energy manipulation signature unique to Minho--or whatever the fuck it was Seungmin had said so many weeks ago. 

Frankly, the whole concept of what magic and auras were was never something Jisung could fully grasp. But he didn’t have to, so long as he could still make reasonable use of his abilities. 

He focused in on the flame magic he felt searing in his hands, the sheer power in it, its solar radiance, the traces of gentle warmth and unshakable strength within that identified it wholly and completely as Minho’s. 

The puzzlebox was probably the single best tether for auralocation in history; it was quite literally a raw, unaltered piece of Minho’s aura. But Jisung couldn’t let himself get cocky with the knowledge. In truth, it didn’t give him an advantage; it just filled the woeful gaps in his magical proficiency to give him a sufficient, fighting chance at avoiding a fatal rebound. 

The threads of chaos flickered and dissolved. His brows scrunched apprehensively. 

He was getting distracted, the world’s noise starting to fade back in, enough for his ears to catch the antagonistic hollering from the men below and the uncomfortably close voice of the man ascending the tree deriding Jisung with haughty words he couldn’t be bothered to process. 

Shit. 

Calm down—you have to calm down. 

Another breath. 

Again, he forced his muscles to relax, emptied his mind…

Slowly-but-surely, his ears went deaf to the havoc around him and the colorful threads returned to his mind’s eye. 

He allowed the magic in the puzzlebox to guide him. It produced itself as a bright, orangey-yellow beacon among the ever-changing cluster of chaos. 

One final breath, this time longer and deeper and calmer than all that came before.

Then, the beacon appeared to snag onto one of the infinite threads, pulling it completely taut like a rope attached to the other side of a fog-laden precipice. The remaining threads parted away, lending, instead, the image of another identical beacon in the distance—Minho. 

Here goes nothing… 

Jisung clutched relentlessly onto the puzzlebox, reached out and wrapped his hand around the thread. In an instant, he was spinning like a vortex and racing through space, along the track the thread provided. 

Spatial leaps had always been especially disorienting to him, but it was even worse when he was the one in control of it. Probably because he was hardly actually in control of it; he knew now that there was a certain artistic ‘finesse’ to spatial leaps that he definitely didn’t have. But as long as the world’s most traumatizing roller coaster got him where he needed to be, alive and in a single piece, he surmised his sore lack of finesse didn’t matter all that much. 

It felt simultaneously like an eternity and no time at all before the wild spinning came to a jarring stop, his body flung like a ragdoll up against something hard enough to instill a cacophonous ring in his ears and knock every ounce of wind out of him. He wheezed for air and clutched desperately at his chest, only to yelp at the impossibly sharp sting that radiated all the way up from his fingertips to his mid-upper arm. 

Blinking the discombobulation from his vision, he peered down at his trembling hand, eyes going round with horror at the bloody sight of exposed muscle, tendons, and ligaments. 

His arm had been degloved, its protective layer of skin lost somewhere in space amid his spatial leap. 

In instant shock, he could barely feel the pain of it beyond the dull throb with every beat of his heart. 

“Okay,” he murmured to himself, self-soothing. “You’re okay… You’re--” he puffed out a few shaky, whimpering breaths, body wracked with uncontrollable tremors. “Y-you’re okay.” 

Swallowing roughly and wringing tears from his eyes, he hovered his uninjured hand over his upper arm. As the signature blue glow of regenerative magic emanated from his palm, the edge where healthy skin still remained began to extend downward, building rudimentary flesh over the grotesquely-bared stretch of muscle. 

The new skin was, by no means, pretty, supple, or particularly functional. Once his arm was ‘healed,’ his hand felt so stiff he couldn’t even make a proper fist with it. 

But it took away the pain--the dreadful shock and psychological paralysis--and allowed his mind to function again, at least. 

That was when the ringing in his ears gave way to the blaring symphony of clashing swords, battle cries, and roaring, wind-whipped flames. 

Jisung’s head jerked every which way as he took in the scenes of bloodshed and massacre, lit by fire raging in the treetops. Dozens of fae and humans alike lay in maimed heaps on the forest floor; some of the fae who appeared almost mummified in their lifelessness had their necks captured in magic-sapping collars. 

His head was going faint, alerting him to the fact that he was hardly breathing and his heart was pounding like mad. He needed to ground himself in something--narrow his thoughts onto a single objective, one step at a time. 

It was true that people were slaughtering and butchering each other by the hundreds right before him, and the forest of wonders he’d come to call home was being razed to ashes, and the world was crashing down around him--

But he was here for one reason, and one reason only. 

It was the only thing that mattered right now; it had to be the only thing that mattered, or else his increasingly fragile head might just break. 

Gathering the puzzlebox back into its wrap and slowly pushing himself to his feet, he scoped the immediate area for any sign of Minho. He had no weapons, so he kept himself tucked behind the large boulder he’d apparently been launched into by his partially-failed spatial leap, gaze flicking from one violent altercation to the next. 

But amid the haze of smoke, bloodspray, and general mayhem of battle, he couldn’t possibly hope to find Minho by cowering in one spot. 

His luck seemed to finally take a turn for the better, however, because he didn’t have to muster the courage to step out into anyone’s line of sight. For whatever reason, the human invaders collectively began to fall back toward the border, thinning the field enough to reveal Minho not too far in the distance. He was prying his blade from the chest of an invader he’d pinned into the trunk of a tree, watching straight-faced and stoic as the man fell to the ground. 

His face, hair, and arms were caked with blood, and judging by the lack of visible laceration injuries on his body, likely none of that blood was his. 

He glanced up from the body at his feet and promptly froze with wide eyes and knitted brows when he locked his gaze on Jisung. 

Cautiously, Jisung stepped out from behind the boulder, warily surveying his surroundings as he hurried across the way to Minho, who looked none-too-pleased by his presence. 

“I told you to stay out of this,” was the first thing the fae prince said to him. 

“I-I know. And I was going to, but then your father--he, uh…” 

“ He put you up to this?” asked Minho--demanded, more-like, with a sharp tone frayed with vexation.

“No--well, I mean, yes, but listen, Min--” 

“ Gods, what happened to your arm?” Minho interjected suddenly, distracted and abhorred by the mangled healing-job Jisung had made of his degloving injury. He took Jisung’s arm into his hand, inspecting the disfigured rubberiness of the makeshift skin layer. “It’s mutilated.”  

“Yeah, evidently, I make for a shit healer,” Jisung muttered hand-wavily. “Now, please listen--” 

An abrupt, metallic clang rang out from somewhere nearby, followed by a dull thump that sounded much like a body slumping to the ground. 

“Seungmin!” 

Jisung and Minho whipped their heads to the side, spotting Seungmin writhing in the dirt and pawing desperately at the steel ring hooked snug around his neck. Hyunjin was knelt by his side, trying to pry the collar open, Chan and Changbin flocking over to offer their aid. 

Surprisingly, Minho didn’t hurry over to his friend immediately. Instead, with fury ignited in his eyes, he cast a piercing stare down the invisible trail along which the collar had traveled, ultimately landing on the form of a man veiled thinly behind smoke and falling embers. 

Despite his partial concealment, however, his ‘throwing stance’ shone clear as day. He’d been the one to pitch the collar at Seungmin. 

And Minho—with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever—was the one to put him down in retaliation, flipping his sword around, gripping it by the blade, and flinging it at the man. It spun through the air and slashed long and deep down his chest with deadly accuracy; he drew his final breath before he even struck the ground. 

Jisung took note of the deep gash in Minho’s palm now, but he got no chance to assess it. Minho was already sprinting to Seungmin without another moment wasted. 

“Wait, Min—don’t touch that!” Jisung didn’t know he was capable of moving so fast until he managed to dart up behind Minho in less than a second, bend down, and haul him back a pace with an arm firmly braced across his chest. “It’s a magic-sapping device; it could kill you.” 

“Well, it could kill Seungmin too!” argued Minho, wriggling and pulling against Jisung’s hold in an attempt to free himself (more like a performative attempt than anything; they both knew perfectly well that Minho could free himself with ease if he so truly desired, but he wanted to risk hurting Jisung about as much as he’d want to eat rocks or toss himself off the valley bridge). 

“Look around you,” said Jisung; given Minho’s gradual loss of fight and sorrowful souring of his aura, he was doing as he was told, scanning across the battlefield’s mummified victims, many with their comrades fallen to their knees beside them and sobbing mournfully. “Your people need you now more than ever, but you can’t be there for them if you’re reduced to a magic-sapped husk. So stand back and let our friends handle this.” 

With that, Minho wilted into him, hands latched tightly onto his forearm. 

Hyunjin, Chan, and Changbin worked tirelessly to release the collar from around Seungmin’s neck; still, it didn’t budge. Seungmin’s struggle grew ever-weaker, his skin paler, breaths more labored; his panicked, tear-filled eyes looked sunken into his face, body haggard despite being healthily-built and strong mere moments prior. 

“Alright, everybody get back,” said Hyunjin, leaping to his feet and unsheathing one of his two longswords. He wedged the tip of the blade into the hinge at the side of Seungmin’s neck, setting a foot atop the collar to keep it stabilized. Then he struck down on the butt of the sword with a heavy fist. The blade pierced through the hinge and shattered it, the collar finally falling open. 

Seungmin fumbled at the scraps of metal and cast them away from him, scrabbling across the ground—frantic but weak—for the nearest tree. He hugged onto it, shivering like he’d never been so tortured with cold in his life. 

Hyunjin scuttled after him, and Jisung released Minho to allow him to do the same. They both crouched beside Seungmin, Hyunjin trying to coax him with gentle words and Minho silently-but-solemnly offering his comfort in the form of reassuring touches. 

But Seungmin soon shrank away from those touches and closer to Hyunjin, leaving Minho with a hand hovering uselessly in the air and a combination of sadness and confusion written into his features. 

“Stay back, Min,” warned Seungmin, voice strained and ragged with exhaustion. “The last thing I wanna do is hurt you, but survival instinct is kicking in, and there’s very little getting in the way of my urge to replenish my magic by any means necessary.” 

Only then did Jisung notice the tree Seungmin clung to was drying up and petrifying, much like the earlier tree had when it’d been snared in a collar. Except this time, rather than the tree’s magic being drained and seemingly disappearing into an unknowable void, it was transferred; the sickly pallor of Seungmin’s skin dissipated slightly, his frame looking just a little less gaunt and fragile than before. 

Jisung had read somewhere a while back that, while fae were capable of magic-stripping, it was considered a particularly heinous act. He wasn’t sure what the consensus was on stripping foliage of its magic, but he knew for certain that stripping another faerie of their magic, to any degree, was most often grounds for dreadful punishment. 

What he hadn’t known before, though, was that… Sometimes magic-stripping wasn’t a conscious choice. Seungmin appeared to have implied that he might not be able to curb his survival instinct enough to prevent himself from stripping Minho of his magic if they were to come into contact with each other. 

Minho frowned but ultimately acquiesced, letting his hand fall back to his lap. Jisung didn’t miss the faintest glint of what he could only describe as envy in Minho’s eyes as Seungmin shuffled over to flop into Hyunjin’s arms. 

It obviously wasn’t romantic envy; Jisung could tell by the flare in Minho’s energy that what he was feeling was more akin to what one might experience when a close friend chose someone else to confide or seek comfort in instead. 

Steeling his expression, Minho asked, “anybody know why the invaders fell back?” 

“Beats me,” said Chan, raking a hand back through gnarled hair. “We weren’t exactly winning. Half those men I trained myself before they were assigned to the Samlimji northregion; most of them know how Changbin, Hyunjin and I fight, so frankly, we’re lucky to be alive.” 

“Speak for yourself. I was doing just fine,” said Hyunjin.

“Don’t be a cocky bitch, Hwang,” admonished Seungmin. “I had to save your ass when you got yourself caught like this--” he tugged loosely at Hyunjin’s short ponytail for emphasis-- “twice.”

“You really should cut your hair, Jinnie,” said Changbin. 

Hyunjin clicked his tongue and tossed his fringe out of his eyes, muttering under his breath, “everyone’s a fucking critic.” 

“Glad to know we can be on a literal battlefield and still have no capacity whatsoever for sticking to the task at hand,” Minho groused, exasperated. “Why did the humans retreat? I need ideas here, because I can’t imagine they left without good reason.” 

All six of them looked amongst each other, silent, questioning, neither of them risking the embarrassment of laying a potentially stupid idea on the table. 

For a time, anyway.

Eventually, Jisung conceded: “I don’t know if this has anything to do with their retreat--in fact, I’m struggling to see how the two things could be connected--but… On my way here, I noticed a large-scale ward being built; I’d say it extended well past Sol Valley, into the open field north of the city.” 

“A ward?” Minho’s brows pinched with puzzlement. “One of ours?” 

Jisung shook his head. “No. That, I’m sure of. It’s a single-passage ward; you can pass from the outside-in, but can’t leave once inside its bounds. There’s no reason your warriors would put up a ward that invaders could still get past, especially since it lends easy access to the palace and the city. It definitely belongs to the invaders--the Alchemist, to be precise.” 

Minho narrowed his eyes, pensive. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why put up a ward like that when the city’s been evacuated and nearly all our forces are outside it? Any faerie with passable aurapathy would know to steer clear if they’re in close enough proximity to it.” 

“Why did the humans retreat?” Changbin reiterated. “ None of this is making much sense; we’re clearly missing something.” 

“We’re missing a lot of things, actually. For instance--” Chan jutted his chin toward Jisung-- “what’re you even doing here? It’s not safe.” 

Jisung resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. “It wasn’t particularly safe where I was either.” 

“Wait—” Minho went visibly rigid, alert at the sound of Jisung’s words. “What do you mean it wasn’t safe? What of my father?” 

Jisung went equally rigid. He knew he’d have to explain his presence on the battlefront some time or another, but now that he was confronted with that time, he hadn’t the slightest clue how to go about it. How was he supposed to tell Minho that he’d left the king for dead? Just because it was at the king’s request didn’t make it any easier to confess. How was Jisung meant to tell Minho that his father had to die to save him? Especially since, as far as he could tell, the seal on the puzzlebox hadn’t broken yet. There was no way to prove the validity of Jisung’s claims without a broken seal and the return of Minho’s magic. 

… Now that he was thinking about it: why hadn’t the seal broken yet? Was the king wrong about his ‘requisite sacrifice’? Was the king still fighting the palace invaders? If so, why? Surely, he knew he’d already given Jisung ample time to escape the vicinity of the palace. 

Not for the first time in even the last ten minutes, something felt very, very off about all this. It was an entirely indistinct, nebulous feeling, but Jisung knew in his heart that it was true. 

The invasion had started, but the hammer had yet to be brought down. 

Notwithstanding Jisung’s inability to conjure a reasonable response for Minho, he still tried to open his mouth and speak—

Just to immediately be interrupted by another, unfamiliar voice: “the king’s a bit occupied at the moment.” 

The fine hairs at Jisung’s nape rose straight up, goosebumps erupting across every inch of skin. He didn’t recognize the voice, nor the aura; rather… It was the utter lack of a sensible aura that had chills prickling at his nerves. Every living thing—even non-magical beings—possessed an aura of some denomination. But whoever this was— whatever this was… There was only icy, hollow emptiness where his aura should be. 

Like a void. 

When Jisung finally wrestled his mind back to the present, he found his companions all staring past him with vigilance in their eyes, weapons at the ready with the exception of Seungmin, who dangled wearily off of Hyunjin’s side. 

Gulping down the sudden dryness in his throat, Jisung cast an invisibility glamour over the puzzlebox as he turned to face the newcomer. 

The man was not only dark in the absence of his aura, but in his appearance as well. Though, regardless of his undetectable aura, the points of his ears implicated fae lineage. His hair and eyes were black as coal. His lightweight armor, strangely, paralleled that of the aurachasers--black in fabric with minimal silver plating. He had a belt strapped around his waist holding a long row of small vials, each containing dark, red liquid that could only be presumed as blood. Littering the entirety of both his arms were countless runes and cast circles inked permanently in black. And inscribed upon the upper-left corner of his breastplate was a symbol of an eye--one which was burned into Jisung’s memory after bearing witness to the prophecy earlier in the night. 

It was the same symbol used to characterize the heart of a Seer in the drawings on the oasis wall… 

But, somehow, that wasn’t the most disconcerting part. 

As Jisung dared to let his gaze wander up to the man’s face, he couldn’t help but find a resemblance in the strong brow, sharp nose, feline eyes, high cheekbones, bronze skin, chiseled jaw--

It was frightening--how similar he looked to Minho. 

He was harsher, decades older, more hawkish, and the facial structure was, by no means, a perfect match, but there was no denying it. 

This man was related to Minho. 

Which was something Minho very swiftly caught onto. Apprehensively, with trepidation written into his every feature, he stepped past Jisung toward the man, weapon lowered--still maintaining a healthy distance but clearly aching for an even closer look. 

All the while, the man followed him with his dark gaze, a wry curl tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Hello, nephew.” 

Everything stopped. 

Chapter Text

For an agonizing, awful stretch of time, it felt as though not even a single heart dared to beat. A wicked sort of cold tore through Jisung’s nerves, and considering the sheer, imposing magnitude of it, he reckoned he was passively sensing that same feeling in the rest of his companions more-so than he was sensing it in himself. 

But Minho was a man driven by heart and viscerality, and so, he gathered the courage to act despite the cold. He brandished his spare sword at the man and spat out, “try again. Both my parents are only-children.” 

The man scoffed, amusement twinkling in his eyes. “Well, it comes as no surprise to me that your father never told you about me; I am just another skeleton in his and my poor, late sister’s closet, after all.” 

Minho bristled, firming his stance. “Do you take me for some kind of fool?” 

“No-no~ of course not,” the man answered, hands lifted in mock-surrender, sounding not-at-all sincere in his claim. “I do not blame you for your ignorance. The king had every political, social, and familial reason to hide the fact that he married a woman with a Siphon for a brother.” 

At that, Minho gasped and staggered back several paces--a deliberate, fear-motivated move to put distance he’d previously closed between himself and his adversary. On his way backwards, he grabbed Jisung by the arm and tugged him along with him. Jisung stumbled off-balance slightly but quickly regained his bearings, though with no small amount of confusion. 

It was subtle, but as he refocused on the tattooed man, he was certain he saw the nonchalant mirth in his countenance fade—something darker and colder taking up the mantle in its place. 

“So now you understand, then? Why I’ve been kept a dirty secret?” he continued, fixing Minho in an eerie stare. “Precisely for that very reaction--the fearful gazes, the shunning, the epidemic of animosity against me… My sister was going to have mercy on me and gift me her magic once I completed my duties as a Seer acolyte.” He flicked his gaze toward Jisung. “And then fate told her otherwise.” 

Jisung shrank under the scathing accusation woven into those words--like he was being blamed for the makings and fruitions of this man. Like he was directly responsible for the man’s descent to corruption and those who’d subsequently fallen victim to it… Those who would soon fall victim to it… 

“The funny thing about fate is,” said the man, “it so often gets the cause and effect backwards. You see… I didn’t want to watch the magic world burn to the ground until fate claimed I was destined for evil. I didn’t want what was once the guilty, shameful fantasy of a cruelly-neglected boy to be realized until even the gods decided to project their unjust prejudices onto me--all because of what I happened to be born as.” 

Jisung absently wondered why Minho was staying rooted in place. Just seconds ago, he was assertive, unwavering against the man. Now, he was frozen. Petrified, more-like. His breaths were shallow, eyes glinting with barely-contained unease. Something had very clearly shifted when the man had proclaimed himself as a Siphon… 

What was a Siphon?

Jisung had never heard of that class of fae before. 

“My sister survived, you know.” The man looked, again, to Minho. “After she imparted her magic unto the little prince of Han.” His jaw tensed; Jisung couldn’t get even the slightest aurapathic read on him, but from expression alone, he appeared to be shedding his mask of indifference, making way, instead, for hurt, anger… A certain wild rage that manifested in disquieting calmness. “But dear Mika was no use to me alive; she’d betrayed me for a prophecy she didn’t even try to question. She was too righteous for her own good.”

Minho went even stiffer beside Jisung, to the point that he was trembling. A sort of devastation fresher and more potent than that which Jisung had sensed in him when they’d first reunited rolled off him in suffocating waves. 

Jisung remembered, then: Minho had been under the impression that his mother had simply died in the process of making Jisung faerie-souled--sad, sure, but no deeper a cut to his heart than the loss of what was effectively a stranger to him. Minho knew now, though, that his mother could’ve returned to raise him, be a part of his life, had she not been struck down by her own brother out of revenge. 

A brother not a soul outside the King of Fleymlansa had even known the existence of. 

“ You, on the other hand, Han Jisung--” once more, Jisung found himself ensnared in the man’s sinister gaze-- “poor, tortured prince who only just found his place in the world after a lifetime of neglect and bitter loneliness…” He flashed a lopsided, unnerving grin. “You strike me as just the right kind of weak that would forsake millions to save the few closest to you. All you would need is a little… Push.” 

It happened in the blink of an eye; one moment, Minho was standing right at his side, the next, he was ripped away, snatched in the deadly grasp of the proverbial void. The hand he had wrapped around the hilt of his sword was pinned and cranked hard to direct the tip of the blade up against his throat, his chest caged by a sturdy arm he dared not fight against—not when the slightest millimeter-shift could end with a puncture in his carotid artery. 

There wasn’t a single thought that crossed Jisung’s mind; without hesitation, he readied himself to lunge at the man—

Only to be thwarted and forced to remain where he was when the man mockingly tutted, “ah-ah-ah~” and skimmed a single fingertip across Minho’s bare skin. A little tendril of orange magic leached out of Minho and absorbed into the man. 

Jisung’s heart dropped so heavily it may have even vacated his body entirely. Minho was peering at him—only him. He was terrified, breaths tremoring, eyes glassy with unshed tears, yet the only plea Jisung saw in them wasn’t begging for him to leap to Minho’s rescue, but rather, for Jisung to stay where he was and save himself. 

“In truth, however…” the man went on, meandering his finger in little circles over Minho’s neck, taunting, absorbing more; Minho’s eyelids fluttered as though he’d suddenly gone dizzy in the head. “This manner of graceless, brute force is so unlike me. Ultimately, there are many ways, aside from direct threats, to make a soft-hearted soul like yourself move how I’d like.”

Suddenly, inexplicably, he released Minho—allowed him to scramble back to Jisung, who caught him in a secure embrace. He could feel every ounce of Minho’s fear, so dense and torrential he nearly buckled under the weight of it. 

Jisung had felt fear in Minho before, but not like this. Not in such all-consuming, enormous proportion before. It wasn’t simply the brush with death that had him reduced to utter mental torment. It was the brush with a Siphon—one whose sole power, Jisung began to gather, was to irreversibly strip magic from fae. Not sever, as the hexcasters among the poaching ranks did. Not fatigue, as plain overuse would cause. 

Deplete. Quite literally consume a faerie’s magic, which could never return to them again naturally. Magic, which a faerie relied on to sustain their life. 

“I’ve been waiting in the shadows for far, far too long, Han Jisung—invisible. Placing my trust in another to deal away with my biggest barrier to success and reaping the consequences of my foolishness when that barrier found friends in what should’ve been his natural enemies. Now I’m forced to play a game far too strategic for my liking. For that, I do believe I’ve earned the right to make a statement. The world will know Shin Mireu’s name.” The man gave a short, self-satisfied hum, tilting his head and eyeing Jisung as though he were meek prey. “And if I’m lucky, my strategy might just compel you to come to me on your own.” 

Then… 

He just spun and began to saunter off. 

No attempt at capturing Jisung or draining Minho of his blood, as the king had warned about. The Alchemist--Shin Mireu--was walking away. 

Jisung’s brows scrunched in a deep furrow. Flummoxed, he was unable to contain his need for an explanation. “If you were just gonna let me go anyway, why did you send people to capture me? What was all this for?” 

Mireu paused in his tracks. “This conversation, of course,” he answered, as though it were obvious. Turning to give a deceptively benign smile, he added, “I wanted to officially meet my most infuriating obstacle turned valuable chess piece. As we part ways, though, I must say: while I prefer you alive now, I can execute my aims without you. If you make yourself too much of a nuisance, I’ll have no choice but to demote you from king to pawn--and pawns are easily sacrificed.” 

He studied the surrounding destruction--the blood-stained ground, the piles of bodies, the fires razing the tall trees--and his smile grew broader. “Funny…” He centered his attention back on Jisung. “This invasion and slaughter of Fleymlansan forces would never have happened if your interim king here hadn’t been so hellbent on protecting you. I wonder what the death toll in your name will be by dawn.” 

Jisung sensed a tidal wave of guilt and shame coursing through Minho, the words clearly having scathing impacts. He understood all-too-well that Minho was already feeling responsible for all the warriors that fought and died under his command. Having it shoved in his face like this was like grinding salt into a deep, weeping wound. 

But Jisung would have none of it. Minho did what just about everyone else in that conference hall thought he should but wouldn’t admit to it. Their hands weren’t forced; Minho wasn’t responsible for any of this. 

Mireu was walking off again by the time Jisung summoned the gumption to counter defiantly, “if you’re gonna be a monster, commit to it. Own it. Accept what’s yours to be condemned. Otherwise, you just look fucking pathetic.” 

He felt Minho flinch; no doubt, he was staring holes into the side of Jisung’s head with a blend of astonishment and disbelief. 

Jisung wondered if it was really that difficult to believe he’d make such a retort against perhaps the single most perilous enemy the world had ever seen. He was, after all, rather notorious for speaking his mind, ramifications be damned. And he had the back full of scars to prove it. 

Yet again, Mireu paused. He glanced back over his shoulder, then snorted, seemingly in pleasant surprise. “Be seeing you, Han Jisung.” 

When he vanished in the haze of smoke, he was all but forgotten in Jisung’s mind. The only thing—the only person— he could bring himself to attend to right now was Minho. 

“Hey,” he uttered sweetly, cradling Minho’s face in the palm of his stiff-fleshed hand. “You okay?” 

Minho was shaking still, breaths quivering. “Y-yeah. I’m just…” He closed his eyes and swallowed thickly, weight teetering ever-so-slightly, as though it required more effort than usual for him to maintain his balance. “I feel a little faint—” 

His legs abruptly gave out beneath him, and Jisung hooked his arm tight around his waist to keep him upright. 

“Jisungie, check his reserves,” said Seungmin, fret in his voice. 

Jisung did as instructed, shutting out all other passive magical inputs surrounding him and honing in solely on those of Minho. 

Minho’s magic had always felt lively, coursing-- even in its sealed state. Now it felt dull, enervated, generally… Less. He didn’t look awfully ill in appearance, like Seungmin did, so it was clear Mireu didn’t take a lot from him. But the amount taken was certainly sufficient to incapacitate him to some degree. 

“How much did he lose?” asked Seungmin. 

Jisung frowned and shook his head. “Enough,” was all he could say. “We need to get him off the frontline.” He looked to Seungmin. “You, as well.” 

“Mm-mm--” Minho grunted and stirred in protest, wriggling out of Jisung’s arms to brace himself against the nearest boulder instead. “I’m not leaving. My people need me here.” 

“ No, your people need you alive, and there’s no guaranteeing that when you’re out in the open on a battlefield with barely enough energy to keep yourself standing,” argued Jisung. 

Minho shook his head with obstinate vehemence. “I’m not leaving,” he insisted. “What would everyone think if the man who invoked sacred law to take power from the elected king abandoned his warriors to fruitlessly fend for themselves in a battle he ordered them to fight?” The amber of his eyes flashed like flames as he passed his gaze once more over the mummified carnage strewn across the forest floor. “I refuse for my fallen kin to have died under a coward’s command.” 

The air was thick with tension, silence heavy. Minho’s words, the passion in his tone, the fire in his eyes, the pain underlying it all--how could anyone coax him down from such a determined stance when he was so motivated by the burden of his entire province’s fate dangling over his head? By the hundreds, thousands of dead warriors whose blood he believed to be smeared upon his hands? 

Perhaps they’d all get lucky. 

Perhaps Mireu had truly only wished to make his grand entrance--to assert his power--and the invaders had really fallen back for good. 

Then again… 

Luck had never been much on their side. 

The winds shifted then, whipping the flames in the trees, obscuring the sky entirely with smoke. And then everything went oddly still and quiet. 

Yet, in that stillness and quietness, Jisung’s mind was as loud as he was sure it’d ever been--not with thoughts or apprehensions or fretful worries. Rather, the loudness was most akin to that of a watchtower bell blaring frantically to warn of impending peril. 

The fine hair on Jisung’s nape stood straight on end. 

For what felt like the millionth time that day, he acted wholly on instinct, governed by not a single conscious thought--

He leapt for Minho, gathered his friends close, and blindly cast a ward behind himself, just in time to defend against an earth-rumbling impact that shook them to the ground in a tangled heap. 

The ward barely withstood the plummet of what Jisung quickly realized was a blazing boulder down on top of them. The translucent shield of magic flickered pitifully out of existence a short second after the boulder made contact with it, giving way for Minho’s ankle to be crushed beneath a fragmented chunk of rock. 

Minho let out a sharp cry and tried to scrabble out from under it, to no avail, fingers clawing at the dirt, his free leg kicking back in futile attempts to shove the rock off with his foot. 

“ Minho!” In the cloud of smoke and strobing fire, Jisung could hardly see what he was doing, but he managed to wedge his shoulder under a notch in the rock and lift it up just enough for Minho to crawl away. He rushed to haul Minho up from the ground, giving extra support when his eyes screwed shut with a pained whimper, his injured foot hovering uselessly to avoid bearing weight. “Can you stand?” 

Minho didn’t respond. He tried to set his foot down, only to hiss through his teeth and stumble in Jisung’s hold. 

“ Minho,” Jisung said firmly, cupping his face and forcing their eyes to meet. “Jagi, can you stand?” 

Finally, Minho conceded a shake of the head, tears racing down his cheeks. 

They weren’t tears of pain, Jisung knew. 

They were tears of great remorse. As if his ankle being maimed by a catapulted boulder and the subsequent reliance he now had to put on Jisung were somehow his fault. 

Nearby, another several boulders crashed through the trees and met the ground, a series of shrieks and calls for retreat erupting among the remaining fae warriors. 

It became abundantly obvious, then, that there was no time to spare toward soothing Minho. 

Resolve setting in, Jisung looked to Chan, who’d only just gotten back to his feet, and tossed the silk-wrapped puzzlebox his way. “Take this,” he ordered bluntly. 

Chan caught it dutifully but eyed Jisung with puzzlement. “What is it?” 

“No time to explain.” Jisung draped Minho’s arm across his shoulders and hoisted him up in a secure carry-hold, much like Hyunjin did with Seungmin a few paces away. “Whatever you do, do not lose it. Understood?” 

Chan nodded, still looking perplexed but willing to accept his task. 

Another set of boulders hurled through the forest, one landing close enough to nearly throw them all off their feet yet again. 

“Run!” 

It was the only thing they could do, really. 

Run and hope not to be crushed by a seemingly ceaseless rain of hellfire. 

All around them, flaming masses of rock collided with the ground, demolished trees, splintered wooden and stone shrapnel in all directions, flattened fleeing warriors. In his periphery, Jisung saw Changbin stagger after a large shard of tree bark jabbed into the side of his thigh, but he was quick to dislodge it and continue forging on. 

Mere steps in front of him, Hyunjin screeched to a stop and turned away to shield Seungmin from flying debris as a boulder blasted through a thicket of tall trees, which came toppling down atop a dozen screaming warriors. 

Chan called out and directed all in the general vicinity who might hear to maneuver westward; the bombardment was less concentrated that way. 

So, they all went with him. 

But that didn’t mean the risk of being pulverized was null. 

And, as Jisung carried Minho through the woods at the fastest sprint he could muster, he recognized that this direction--westward--was drawing them and the entire flock of warriors right toward the open field north of the valley. 

Toward the ominous ward that would trap any who entered its bounds. 

Jisung opened his mouth to shout out to everyone--warn them--but his aim was foiled when a boulder slammed into the ground right behind him, the shockwave of its impact launching him several meters forward. 

He skidded through the dirt for what felt like forever, pine needles jabbing into his skin, ash and hot embers grinding into shallow wounds. Somewhere along the way, he lost his grip on Minho. 

“Minho!” He coughed on the searing smoke that burned his throat, heaving himself up to his elbows and knees. “ Minho!” 

“Right here!”

Jisung blinked the dusty particulates out of his eyes, wincing at the sting that bored into them. He glanced around, spotting disembodied limbs of nameless warriors scattered about, corpses pinned beneath rock, fire everywhere--

And Minho, hobbling desperately through the clearing, his lame foot dragging limply along the ground. 

Jisung willed his beaten body to stand, reaching out just in time for Minho to once again fall into his arms. “Come on--we have to keep moving.” 

The tumble he’d taken rendered one of his shoulders too battered and his strength too exhausted to continue on carrying Minho. Instead, he slung Minho’s arm around the back of his neck, braced him around the waist with his own arm, and ran like that. 

It was slow--much slower than carrying Minho had been. Jisung was forced to move at a pace Minho could tolerate in his injured and weakened state. Not to mention, the amount of weight Minho needed to bear on Jisung was taking a great toll on what little energy he had left to give. 

But he pressed on. He had to press on. No matter how much his throat and lungs burned with smoke, how many warriors he saw get demolished by flying boulders, how lost and directionless--how terrified he felt--he pressed on. 

Only once the concentration of trees began to thin and the open field came into distant view did he finally spot his companions again. Despite the fact that he was still running--still fighting for his and Minho’s life--a small flame of relief kindled in him. He hadn’t lost any of his friends, his family… Yet. 

He watched closely as each of them rounded a bend, disappearing behind what appeared to be a short ledge; they must’ve found some manner of adequate shelter there. 

So Jisung placed all the faith he had in his friends’ judgment and headed straight for the bend. He was within just a few more clumsy, hurried steps, hope swelling, his frigid, frightened heart warming at the thought of soon reuniting in reasonable safety with all his friends--

Then a boulder struck the earth right in front of him, fragmenting into a cloud of jagged rocks and searing fire. His feet slid out from under him when he shielded Minho’s face against his chest and tried to carry his forward momentum to a complete halt. 

Yet again, they found themselves disoriented and damn-near helpless on the ground, another bout of scuffs, aches, and wounds added to their seemingly never-ending repertoire of injuries. 

This time, Jisung was sure he’d smacked the back of his head against an exposed tree root amid his fall, a dull throb setting into his skull, vision going briefly unfocused with stars drifting around the edges. He felt a bit nauseous as well. 

Still, the sole thing on his mind was Minho and protecting him as the king had begged him to do. Thus, he shoved aside all that physically ailed him and scooped Minho back into his arms, making a faltering, cumbersome break for the bend. 

Minho’s fear must’ve become potent enough at this point to mask the pain in his ankle and the fatigue of his lost magic, because he was now limping along more-or-less on his own beside Jisung, their hands clasped together with desperate fervor. 

The moment they reached the bend, they were snatched up by their companions and hauled behind the safety of the ledge, which turned out to be a shallow cave. Inside were huddled masses of wounded, trembling fae, many with noticeable tear tracks carved through the ash caked on their cheeks. Some were fighting to keep critically-injured comrades alive; Jisung reckoned, though, given the extent of blood and depth of the lacerations in their chests and abdomens, most rescue efforts were futile. 

“Hey--” Hyunjin took Jisung’s face into his hands, thumbs sweeping the residual dirt away from his skin-- “you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?” 

“I-I’m okay,” murmured Jisung, nodding more as an affirmation to himself than anything. “Just some scrapes and bruises. Nothing too bad.” 

“I’m not so sure,” said Changbin, lightly touching his fingertips to the back of Jisung’s head. “You’re bleeding like hell back here. Does your head hurt?” 

Like a bitch now that he was out of imminent danger, but Jisung wasn’t about to confess to that. There were far more pressing matters at hand. 

“I’m fine,” he asserted, turning to offer a halfhearted smile to Changbin. “Really.”

Meanwhile, Minho disentangled his fingers from Jisung’s and collapsed unceremoniously to his knees, shuffling over to where Seungmin sat propped against the wall and gathering him into a dour embrace. 

“Min…” Seungmin uttered weakly. “You shouldn’t get too close, remember?” He said this, even as he feebly lifted his arms to reciprocate Minho’s affections. 

Minho sniffed and shook his head. “I don’t care.” 

Even in the darkness of the cave, Jisung could see the mistiness in Seungmin’s eyes, the streak of a single tear sliding down his face. 

“Home is gone,” he whispered. 

Minho responded not with words but with a solemn tightening of his arms around Seungmin’s frail form. 

“What did we ever do to deserve this?” Seungmin exhaled unevenly, more tears pouring free. “How many of us have to suffer and die before we can finally live in peace?” His bony fingers curled into a fist against Minho’s back as he cried out at last: “it’s not fucking fair!” 

Minho remained silent, simply holding Seungmin like it was the only thing that could be done. 

It struck Jisung as odd that Minho’s aura, for the first time since they’d met, felt… Numb. Minho had always emanated the strongest emotion at any given time, in any given place. In this moment, however, he seemed to emanate nothing--his aura icy and vacant as if he felt so much that his mind forced him to feel nothing to preserve his sanity. 

Except… Was it truly numbness that Jisung was sensing? Underlying what registered as ‘numb’ was, strangely, a sort of unbridled ire—an energy that burned so hot it felt cold. 

That was when Jisung realized he wasn’t feeling hollow emptiness, or even numbness at all in Minho. 

It was rage. And it was astonishingly well-contained—unnervingly so. Jaded and resigned. 

Jisung almost would’ve rather seen Minho lose himself as he had after the rescue mission of the king and queen several months ago. 

This brand of tranquil rage… It felt like a ticking time bomb of monstrous proportion. 

“You’re right that it isn’t fair,” Minho agreed coolly. “But you’re wrong that our home is gone.” He pulled back to meet Seungmin’s glassy gaze. “Fleymlansa is not dead until its heart--its people are eradicated. Last I checked, I am still breathing. You are still breathing. All of us here, those evacuated from the valley and the many millions residing in faraway cities, villages, islands, and holy lands are still breathing.” He struggled his way up to a stand, propping himself against the wall with a grimace. “The enemy prevails only if we lie down and die for them. And I sure as shit plan to do nothing of the sort.” 

For a man with a brutally busted ankle and a not-small depletion of his magic reserves, Minho was awfully swift in his inelegant exit from the cave. So unexpectedly swift, even, that no one was prepared to catch him and drag him back in.

“Wait—Minho!” Jisung’s heart was in his throat as he bolted out after him. At the very least, the bombardment seemed to have let up, but Minho was heading straight for the warded field. And soon enough, so were a slew of able-bodied warriors that’d been sheltering in the cave with them, reinvigorated by Minho’s words. 

It was true that Minho could be reckless at times. But Jisung had never seen him be reckless without aim or purpose before. What exactly did he stand to gain from putting himself and the sparse dregs of the valley’s forces in thoughtless danger like this? Jisung wondered if Minho had considered that at all—if he was even capable of considering that far ahead in the delicate state of mind that he was in. 

It was becoming abundantly clear that Jisung wasn’t going to be able to catch Minho or any of the warriors before they reached the ward, so he planted his feet firmly where he was and called a mass of magic to his hands to cast a widespread ward of his own. A wall of crystalline blue stretched out right along the threshold of the Alchemist’s trap, blocking the unsuspecting warriors’ path, much to their collective, grand dismay. 

Paces ahead, Minho whirled around and fixed Jisung in a feral glare. “What the hell are you doing, Jisung?” 

Utterances of the same vein rippled among the warriors, who also shot him dissatisfied and even downright murderous glares. Jisung supposed he couldn’t blame them; from their perspective, he’d just inexplicably barred their offensive efforts against a heinous adversary. 

“Take a moment to actually feel what’s beyond that wall,” said Jisung. “I know some of you have shut your passive sensing channels to conserve magic, and many of you have been too preoccupied with survival to notice anything, but if you stop for a second to feel it, you’ll know right away that you were just about to lead yourselves into an inescapable trap.”

“He’s right,” said Seungmin, shuffling up beside him with heavy assistance from Hyunjin. “I’m nearly on death’s door and even I can feel it.” 

With the confirmation from a fellow faerie, the warriors loosened their bristling stances, taking Jisung’s suggestion and sensing the ward’s presence for themselves. Minho, on the other hand, merely frowned and averted his eyes, pensive embarrassment souring his expression. 

The sight tugged a little at Jisung’s heart; Minho truly was trying his best to fight in the hopeless circumstances he was dealt, but he just… Wasn’t equipped anymore, mentally or physically. So many of his comrades and subordinates had perished in gruesome agony--right in front of and all around him; Minho’s heart was too soft, too kind, too pure to handle such a hellish torture to the mind. Helplessness like this--like what Jisung was forced to impose upon him and the other warriors to preserve their lives--was only going to bring Minho one step closer to breaking. 

If only Minho’s magic would’ve returned already… If only the king’s plan had worked--maybe it wouldn’t have come to this. 

This. 

What even was this anymore? 

First an invasion, then an enemy retreat, now a bombardment which led a large concentration of Fleymlansan forces into a trap. What was the point of any of it? 

More importantly, at least to Jisung: 

What the fuck did he leave the king—Minho’s father— to die for? 

Jisung shook his head—at the situation, at life, the universe at-large. He crossed the distance toward Minho, pausing in front of him to assess his sorry condition. He had one hand extended out to the side to stabilize himself against Jisung’s ward, blood and dirt dried onto every inch of him, little gashes in the skin of his face and arms, bruises blooming everywhere in between, flakes of ash tangled into his hair, anguished, lost tears in his eyes. 

It was all Jisung could do to guide Minho’s forehead down to rest against the crook of his neck and wrap him up in a hug. 

“I’m trying--I’m trying so hard, but I don’t know what to do, Jisungie,” murmured Minho, quiet and broken only for Jisung’s ears to hear. “I can’t stand it.” 

“I know, love.” Jisung rubbed tenderly at his back, hoping it offered even just a little comfort. “It’s not your fault.” 

Minho lifted his face up, brows drawn into a sorrowful knit. He peered at Jisung, eyes flitting from one feature to another, searching. 

Jisung laid a delicate hand against the side of Minho’s face. “Not your fault,” he reaffirmed. 

Just as Minho seemed to believe the sentiment, a sudden movement in their periphery accompanied by a sharp, reverberating thud startled them. They whirled around to stare wide-eyed in the direction of the ward, watching as warriors confined in Mireu’s trap rushed back toward the forest in droves, slamming up against the barrier and shouting for help. 

Minho, like a man entranced in a nightmare, gulped roughly and pressed a palm to the wall dividing him from the hysterical crowd. He patted weakly at the wall, something utterly, heartrendingly desperate in the plaintive gesture. 

All the while, long, wispy tendrils of technicolor energy began to seep from the trapped warriors, flowing somewhere into the unseeable abyss far behind them. Each of their faces were contorted and fraught with fear unlike anything Jisung had ever seen before. Some thrashed against the ward, the fruitlessness of it forgotten in the face of certain death. Others plainly sobbed. And a few even stared through the ward at Minho with disdainful betrayal, choosing to assign blame in their final moments to make sense of their imminent, agonizing demise. 

Soon, they all began to drop, one-by-one--pale, gray, mummified husks hollow in the grass. 

And Minho dropped with them, to his knees, level now with the ever-growing pile of lifeless bodies just on the other side of the ward. Salty tracks cascaded like rivers down his face, though his gaze appeared vacant, dissociative. The palm he had pressed to the wall flopped back to his side, his posture slumped. 

Many of the untrapped warriors sank to their knees with him, their cries starkly audible in the near-empty echo of Jisung’s mind. Seungmin was among those many, having collapsed down right beside where Jisung stayed standing; he wept hard enough it looked as though Hyunjin feared for his ability to stay breathing. 

In less than a minute, all shouts for help went silent, and within two, thousands of Fleymlansan warriors lay dead in the open field, sapped of their magic, mere shells barely resembling faeries at all. 

On the other side of the field stood rows upon rows of human soldiers—a grand, insulting display.  While the majority of Fleymlansa’s land forces were reduced to corpses littering the ground, the humans stood proud above them. Alive and unscathed. 

Jisung’s knuckles blanched as he coiled his hands into fists, the skin of his earlier-degloved hand burning uncomfortably at the inflexible stretch. He’d been so attuned to Minho—watching his every move, feeling his every emotion, wanting so badly to wrap him up in a protective sheath and shield him from the horrors that would, undoubtedly, plague him for the remainder of his life—that he hadn’t spared any mind toward what he was actually seeing. Watching from the outside looking in. 

Now Jisung was truly recognizing what had been done that day. Studying the sprawl of faerie bodies before him, queasiness gripping painfully at the pit of his stomach, he understood that what he’d just witnessed was a legitimate act of genocide. 

Growing up in the culture he did, he was no stranger to genocidal ideals, unearned superiority complexes, and unfounded prejudices, nor was he a stranger to the array of fae massacre events in the continent’s history. But to have seen it firsthand—watched innocents be senselessly tortured to their last breath in a state of collective, unfathomable terror, targeted only for a single trait that characterized their race…  

Jisung clapped a palm over his mouth, swallowing down the bile that’d suddenly risen up in his throat. His vision blurred with tears, and the only way he could grasp ahold of his composure’s meager remains was to duck his head and fix his gaze on his feet. 

However, though he could easily evade the distressing sights beyond the ward, he was powerless to do anything about the chorus of devastated cries and screams that rang out all around him. Seungmin’s, above all, speared at his heart most cruelly. 

“Jisungie…” Chan’s voice only scarcely cut through the trance of despair clouding Jisung’s head. 

Just enough for him to dismissively respond with a crack in his voice, “not now, Chan.” 

“Okay, um—it’s just…” Jisung heard Chan sniff, as though he’d been crying too; judging also by the waver in his words, he likely had been. “What do I do about this?” 

Brow furrowing, Jisung turned to face him, eyes falling to the bright, vigorously-pulsing glow of the puzzlebox sat unwrapped in Chan’s hands. 

Jisung’s heart thudded back to life in his chest. He reached out to carefully take the box into his own hands, holding it like it was made of precious glass. 

He spun back around to present it to Minho, freezing when he was met with the sight of the prince not only shaken from his hollow stupor, but risen back to his feet, peering intently at the box. He tilted his head to the side, assessing the artifact with a sinister shade of amber in his eyes that Jisung found to be especially spine-chilling. 

Minho limped forward with a humorless scoff, a wild, almost crazed, grin curling his lips. “Figures my father would wait until thousands of his people are dead to give us the fighting chance we fucking needed in the first place.” He swiped the puzzlebox up into a harsh grip and lumbered with unshakable purpose toward the closest boulder. 

Jisung gawked, speechless for a moment but able to find his words again once Minho’s snide mutterings processed. “Minho, that’s not what—”

Minho crushed the puzzlebox viciously into the rock face, and the beginnings of Jisung’s insistence that the king had, in fact, not waited for thousands to die before returning Minho’s power instantly died on his tongue. The box burst into a fine, pulverized flurry of gold and jade, the vibrant energy within exploding free, flooding into Minho with enough beaming vigor to briefly blind everyone around him. 

Jisung blinked the spots out of his vision, waited impatiently for his eyes to readjust. Then he stilled, back stiff and straight, breaths shaking unevenly as an immense, alien force seemed to constrict around his ribcage. It was born from aurapathic sense--of a power so tremendous and imposing that it possessed a tangible, physical weight of its own. 

Minho stood just ahead, remnants of his restored magic spiraling up the lengths of his arms and melting in where his heart resided. He had his head tipped up toward the sky, eyes closed, basking in the enormous stores of energy now surging through him. 

It was stifling—how incredibly vast Minho’s magic felt. But it was also exhilarating, thrilling, downright awe-striking. Jisung had heard stories from Seungmin and Felix here and there about Minho being the strongest fury seen in centuries, prior to the majority of his reserves being sealed away. Jisung believed these stories, of course, though he could admit that he’d always suspected there was some level of exaggeration to them. 

But now that he was faced with Minho at full strength—magic searing hot and bright and alive like the sun itself—he thought those stories woefully understated just how strong Minho was in his most natural form. 

So this is a fury… 

The glow of magic in the center of Minho’s chest wove into the image of a pair of feathered wings before waning from existence, and Jisung remembered then that--

No. Not a fury. 

A phoenixfae. 

That’s what Minho truly was. 

Although… 

With the resurgence of profound wrath in Minho’s aura, Jisung thought that, perhaps, ‘fury’ was the more appropriate name in this case (however derogatory he recently came to understand its connotation was). 

Minho didn’t move. Not for a good several beats. While Jisung waited with bated breath to ascertain Minho’s next--likely unpredictable--objective, the warriors’ cries faded. They, too, warily awaited what was to come. 

“Jisungie,” Minho murmured finally, head descending from its upturned position, his hair falling ominously over his eyes. 

Jisung pushed past the hefty lump in his throat to tentatively answer, “yes?” 

Like earlier, the winds shifted in an eerie sort of way. Except, this time, they didn’t signal an oncoming storm of fiery boulders; instead, they spiraled around Minho, carrying orangey ribbons of energy that streamed into his palms. The sheer weight of his power grew further yet, enough for Jisung to feel as though he was bearing an entire planet upon his shoulders. 

It took little time at all to notice that the flames ravaging the forest had almost fizzled out entirely, bathing the region in relative darkness. 

Minho turned slowly toward the field of withered fae bodies and the human army that stood over them. “Dispel your ward,” he said, wincing with each hindered step he took closer to the ward in question. “I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“What?” Jisung’s voice was scarcely a whisper, his brows turning up in puzzlement. His confusion was answered not with words, but with a sharp burning sensation suddenly settling into his palms as Minho stepped through his ward, the bluish energy quite literally melting apart around his form. 

Jisung swiftly choked off the flow of energy he’d been using to fuel the ward, allowing the magical barrier to flicker out of existence, sparing his palms from further pain. Hissing through his teeth, he flapped his hands about to cool them off; though they hadn’t actually been on fire, they sure as hell felt burned like they’d been. 

It was perplexing: any time his wards had ever been struck by something in the past--be it magical or mundane--he’d never felt physical pain upon contact. What about Minho’s heat was different? Was furyfire just that grand a force that it could melt magic? Literal energy? 

Jisung was getting the sense that he’d truly never had the understanding of Minho’s power that he thought he did. 

When his hands were finally remedied of their distracting burning sensation, he looked up to find Minho hobbling out into the field, having long breached past Shin Mireu’s trap. 

Jisung’s heart plummeted in his chest, eyes round with alarm. 

He knew Minho had the power to do a hell of a lot of damage to Mireu’s army. He also knew something had to be done about the invaders, and if anyone was in any state to do so, it was Minho. And-- fuck-- he knew this was what he’d gone through all the trouble of bringing the puzzlebox to Minho for, but… 

Gods, it was ridiculous and asinine and stupid, but Jisung wanted to stop Minho. He was itching desperately to hold him close and keep him as far out of Mireu’s reach as possible--protect him at all costs, because that was what the king’s last dying wish was and it was Jisung’s own greatest wish. 

What if Mireu could just as easily siphon the magic from Minho as he had from the many fae that came before him? What if Minho was about to drop dead out in the middle of that open field because Jisung was too slow to grab him before he passed through Mireu’s trap--too negligent to guard him? 

What if the king was wrong that restoring Minho’s power would ensure Fleymlansa’s victory? What if all they had really achieved was giving Minho a false sense of confidence? 

Shit, shit, shit, shit--

“ Don’t, Jisung,” came Seungmin’s firm, scolding voice. 

Jisung froze in his tracks; only then did he notice that, amid his panicked trance, he’d begun to travel toward the trap’s threshold in pursuit of Minho. Hesitantly, he turned toward Seungmin, who was still knelt in the dirt, propped against Hyunjin’s side. 

Each and every little feature of his face was contorted with vengeful woe, tears pouring down his cheeks as he spat out, “let them burn.” 

Jisung swallowed thickly, the sheer, venomous hatred woven into Seungmin’s words sending disquieting chills rippling down his spine. 

He hardly believed Seungmin would ever sacrifice Minho’s safety for the chance to see retribution served, but Jisung had to wonder if Seungmin was even capable of rationally reading the situation in as emotionally-compromised a condition as he was. 

Was he saying to allow Minho his retaliation on behalf of his fallen kin because it was well-deserved and there wasn’t a big risk to Minho’s life in doing so, or was he saying it because his hunger for revenge was clouding his inhibitions? 

Jisung supposed, harrowingly, that he’d just have to wait and find out. 

Staring back toward the field, he watched as Minho came to a slow halt, paused out in the open, utterly exposed. He didn’t move or flinch, even when the horde of horseback archers drew their arrows and sent them flying at him. 

Jisung gasped, about ready to leap past the trap’s bounds, logic and reason be damned—he’d rather get impaled by innumerable arrows in a laughably futile attempt at rescue than stand by and do nothing while Minho incurred the same fate. 

Not a single arrow struck their target, however. As soon as they were loosed, they were incinerated in expertly-honed plumes of white flame, vaporized in thin air.

The field went still. Jisung couldn’t see all that far in the distance, but he imagined the faces on each of the invaders were nothing short of flummoxed, distraught. 

“Shin Mireu!” The fierce snarl in Minho’s voice was vicious enough to startle Jisung. He stretched his arm slowly above his head, palm ablaze with a white glow so bright it bathed the nighttime scene in sun-like luminance. “I know your name--” 

The light in his palm intensified, and a strange, foreign warmth alerted Jisung to the fact that his own palm had begun to glow as well. Or, rather, the mysterious marking that’d appeared after his accidental initiation of the oasis’ prophecy had begun to glow. It was of blue hue, not unlike that of his wards and simple spatial conjurings, though it was far more subdued than the light emanating from Minho. The gentle moon to the fae prince’s scorching sun. 

“--and you’re gonna wish I didn’t!” 

Jisung’s vision suddenly went black, the world as he’d come to naturally see it vanishing and giving way instead to a broad assembly of orange pinpoints--beacons indicating the precise locations of a thousand or more human souls. 

The bizarre, inexplicable image winked out of sight nearly as fast as it’d come. And when it did, Minho was slamming his hand down, veins of white racing along the ground, heading straight for the army. 

Many of the invaders saw what was coming and attempted to flee on foot or steer their horses to safety, but there was no safety to be had when their auras were being continuously tracked by Minho’s magic. 

Jisung ascertained, then, that, whether he’d done it consciously or not, Minho had been able to tap into Jisung’s aurapathic abilities to mark each and every last one of those invaders for certain death--not a single soul would be able to cleanse themselves of that mark, no matter how far they ran.

The veins burst forth from the ground in a merciless inferno of ivory flames, emitting a shockwave powerful enough to pulverize the Alchemist’s ward into a fine mist. 

The air was hot, even from far away—so, very hot. Not enough to burn or wound, but it was uncomfortable, made Jisung’s eyes water. He, along with everyone else gathered near him, had to turn away and shield their faces from the heat with raised arms. 

Faintly, over the roar of Minho’s fire, he could hear the shouts and wails of ignited invaders, some closer than others… Like they’d thought they’d somehow have more luck escaping if they fled toward the remaining Fleymlansan forces and away from the border with Samlimji. No such luck would be had. 

When the staggering heat waned and the screams fell quiet, Jisung dared a peek up from the shelter of his arms. 

The first thing he noticed was… There wasn’t a flame in sight. Much like moments before, there were tendrils of energy swirling around Minho and flowing steadily into him. It seemed he’d reabsorbed the flames to prevent further destruction to his people’s treasured landscape. 

But secondly, and arguably most important: Jisung saw no bodies in the field—not even the heap of fallen fae warriors that’d piled up along the edge of Mireu’s trap. 

He blinked, scrunched his eyes nice and tight then opened them again; the scene before him didn’t change. 

No dead invaders, no dead fae. None. Minho had chosen to burn even the bodies of his felled warriors. 

What Jisung did see were grayish-white ashes strewn in among the grass. And from those ashes began to sprout scores of green stems with perfect leaves, atop which luminescent, red-orange buds bloomed into beautiful lilies. 

The whole field, wherever the ashes touched, flowers glowing like festival lanterns grew—a life exchanged for a life, born from the ashes of a phoenixfae’s fury… 

A field of fleymlilies. 

Minho crumpled to his knees, head hung low, body wracked with tremors as he attempted to contain his emotions. Tentatively, the surviving warriors began to migrate out into the field, closer to their new king; they were slow and vigilant in where they stepped, regarding the lilies as precious and untouchable, especially those that’d risen from the ashes of their kin. 

Seungmin tried to force himself up to follow his comrades, only to collapse on frail legs. Hyunjin helped him up and, without question or a single word, guided him where he so desperately wished to be--with his people, with Minho… 

Jisung made his pilgrimage out to the field alongside Chan and Changbin, silent and withdrawn in their solidarity. 

It almost seemed antithetical--how the fleymlilies gleamed with such beauty, warmth, and vitality in the wake of an event so ghastly. Jisung felt there had to be something poetic about it that he wasn’t quite seeing. He wondered if Minho had chosen fleymlilies to be his objects of resurrection because they were everything the massacre wasn’t… Perhaps that was the poetry… 

Gradually, the warriors congregated in a circle around Minho, leaving him a fair deal of space in all directions. On the surface, it appeared as though the fae were particularly wary of him, now that his great but terrifying power had been unleashed before them. But Jisung felt, on a much deeper level, that the space being given to Minho wasn’t out of fear or apprehension; rather, it was out of solemn respect. 

Minho’s aura emanated something that could only be described as profound suffocation--too much, too fast, and too deep-cutting had lanced through Minho’s heart in the aftermath of all that’d happened to him and all that he himself had been forced to do. Jisung imagined he’d feel smothered and imprisoned should anyone approach too close. 

He looked lonely, isolated in the center of the circle his people had made around him. It was reminiscent of what Jisung had seen etched on the walls of the oasis--except, instead of Minho, a fury, being surrounded by disparaging denizens fearful of his magic, he was surrounded by warriors somberly honoring him and their departed comrades. 

Jisung wanted dearly to go to Minho, hide him away from the world, soothe everything that so gravely ailed him. But what he wanted wasn’t what Minho needed. Even the comforting efforts of Jisung, who Minho loved unequivocally, could very well be too much for him. 

So Jisung stayed diligently where he was, beside his friends where they all stood just a few paces away from Minho’s trembling form. In the far, far distance, a low rumble of thunder roiled through stormclouds, the fae gods, too, joining the vigil in their own ominous way. 

One by one, soft, little flames began to crop up around the circle--symbolic conjurings nursed in the warriors’ palms. Out of the corner of Jisung’s eye, he saw Seungmin struggling to produce a flame of his own, trying over and over again, to no avail; frustration joined the despair on his face. 

It was the most natural thing for Jisung to summon a small blaze for himself and reach out with faint uncertainty to lay his hand face-up in Seungmin’s palm. Their eyes met, then, Seungmin sniffling as Jisung managed the slightest, commiserating smile. 

Seungmin wrenched his eyes shut, leaning his head against Jisung’s shoulder, body shaking with silent cries. Jisung winced at the sharp ache that resurged in his battered arm but dared not move. He exchanged a brief, mournful glance with Hyunjin, the latter placing a hand beneath Seungmin’s, sharing Jisung’s flame. 

On his other side, Chan and Changbin huddled close to present their own hands--Changbin’s atop Chan’s--in a wordless request for a flame for them to share as well. Jisung readily obliged, casting an identical fire in his other hand and setting it in the cradle of Chan and Changbin’s palms. 

When they all returned their attention to the rest of the congregation, the entire circle was lit with flames held in palms, making the fleymlilies appear even more brilliant. 

Minho had his head lifted now, glassy, amber gaze scanning over the masses in a complex blend of anguish and awe. He found Jisung and their friends among the crowd, staring like they were the only people he could properly discern in the sea of despondent faces. 

Jisung gave a subtle nod--not necessarily of affirmation or encouragement… More like acknowledgement. 

I see you. I see your pain. I’m here for you. 

Minho sniffed, wiping the blood and ash-tinged tearstreams away from his face and fighting his way up from the ground. He hopped in place a bit as he wrestled to find his balance with a shattered foot and only a single good leg to stand on. But once he found his equilibrium again, he took another moment to look around him, drinking it all in--all he could see and hear and feel of his people… 

Soon, he, too, held a flame in his palm--white-hot and solar-bright--raising it high above his head as if to cleanse the circle of the stormy darkness overhead. 

The fleymlilies shone even brighter, colorful, glimmering flecks dancing off the petals in the light like miniature fireflies. 

Minho’s head was ducked low once more, the fae king reduced to quivering tears yet again. 

Jisung frowned, eyes stinging and blurring at the sight, heart heavy, throbbing. 

Something poetic, indeed… 

Chapter Text

The air in the Sol Palace convention hall was horrifically still, silent, leaden… Not a single soul dared to speak, all reduced to utter, abhorred speechlessness. 

Jisung wasn’t sure he could trust his eyes. Many a nightmare had befallen him in his lifetime, each terrifying and scarring in their own right. And yet, nothing in his vault of memories--dream or lived event, including the massacre he’d just witnessed not an hour prior--could possibly compare to the absolutely vile display that’d been left behind by the invaders in that palace hall.

Dangling from the high ceiling in a messy tangle of ropes and chains was the king’s lifeless body, eyes gouged from his skull, bared short of his underclothes to reveal a skeletal frame indicative of sapped magic, not an inch of skin without vicious wound. His wings--opalescent orange like those of Minho--were severed from the rest of him, hung on either side by hooks; the streams of blood that’d poured from the punctures suggested the king had likely been alive with his wings still attached while the hooks were being driven through them… 

And on the back wall, written barbarically in the king’s blood above the throne of Fleymlansa, were the words: Death to Faerie. 

Jisung clutched at his stomach and cupped a hand over his mouth, tears pricking at his eyes as he desperately willed away his violent nausea. He was shaking, couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t help but blame himself for this appalling outcome. Had he not fought against the king’s initial request--had he just done what was asked of him, the king could’ve died in relative peace; Minho could’ve gotten his power back faster and fended off the invaders before thousands perished at the Alchemist’s hand. Seungmin might not have lost so much of his magic either. 

Had Jisung not been so damn selfish-- hell, maybe, if he hadn’t torn the vines away from that gods-damned wall in the oasis and borne witness to a prophecy better left unseen, none of this would’ve happened at all. 

It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault, it’s all your--

“It’s not your fault, Jisungie.” 

Jisung flinched, stunned. 

Minho’s voice was but a distant, monotone whisper, impenetrably guarded; he took the hand Jisung had wrenched into his stomach, giving it a gentle squeeze. 

Jisung sniffled and stared at him, though Minho did not shift his own gaze away from the hideous spectacle hovering overhead for quite some time. 

And when he did, it was to address a royal guard on his other side. “Get him down,” he said quietly. 

The guard made a mournful gesture of respect. “Yes, my pri--um…” He ducked his head apologetically; Jisung imagined something in Minho’s expression must’ve prompted the tense but swift correction: “my king…” 

With that, Minho’s hand slipped away from Jisung’s, and he turned to limp away on the wooden crutch one of the healers had insisted he take upon arrival back at the palace. He’d refused their offer to heal the crushed bones in his ankle and foot, declaring that the surviving warriors he’d commanded into battle deserved for their injuries to be tended to first. 

“It’s the least I can do for them…” he’d said, remorse wound tight around each word. 

Jisung watched Minho shove open the nearest side door and step out onto the balcony. The door fell shut behind him with a low thud that resounded through the hall. 

He blinked in befuddlement at just how… Calm Minho was. Even his aura was difficult to read. But Jisung knew that what registered as stoic calmness in the face of unthinkable horrors wasn’t a true representation of what Minho was feeling. If anything, the calmness was a stark testament to the very likely reality that Minho had simply… Shut down. 

He’d cried so many tears that day, felt so much emotional agony, saw his ancestral lands razed, witnessed his people gruesomely slaughtered in droves. And at the end of it all, he’d come back to his palace—his home, for better or worse—to see his father, the final remaining member of his family, tortured dead and defiled to the highest degree. 

Not a mind in the world was resilient enough to bear such suffering.

“It’s not your fault, Jisungie”… 

Minho was no mind-reader, but he knew Jisung was blaming himself for something. Jisung thought back to the moment he’d initiated the prophecy; Minho had said then, too, that “whoever dies, whatever gets destroyed--none of it will be your doing.” 

Minho may have intuitively understood that the invasion was a direct result of the prophecy, and he loved Jisung enough to not want him to shoulder the blame for it. But Minho didn’t know that the fate of his father had quite literally been in Jisung’s hands, and Jisung had failed him. 

Maybe Jisung wasn’t at fault for the events tethered to the prophecy; he was unconvinced, but he was willing to accept the possibility. However, he was directly and wholly responsible for how the king died, and his cowardice had ultimately resulted in this. 

Minho needed to know. 

Jisung’s breaths were shallow, throat constricted, heart pounding. 

Minho needed to know, no matter the consequence. Jisung’s rationale for not being the one to kill the king had been that Minho would hate him, and that wouldn’t have been good for anybody, much less Minho himself. But Jisung thought now that… Perhaps that had just been a front to justify his own need to never be hated by Minho. Perhaps… Jisung had unwittingly argued for what’s best for himself rather than Minho. Because being hated by Minho would be utterly unbearable. 

Minho needs to know—

Jisung’s feet were carrying him across the hall and out the same side door Minho had disappeared through before he knew it. 

Outside, Minho was leaning heavily on the balcony’s stone parapet, head sunken low, shoulders hunched. Though Jisung couldn’t get a good look at his face, he could see the tension creeping into his back— feel a gradual, simmering return of tempestuous emotions previously buried. 

Jisung swallowed around the dryness in his throat, hands wringing together anxiously. He approached with caution. “Minho?” he said, startled by the meekness in his voice. 

Minho didn’t turn around. He hauled his head upright, peering out over the valley—at the lightning flickering in the storm clouds encroaching ever closer. “He’s alive,” he muttered, tossing a halfhearted glance at Jisung over his shoulder. “Shin Mireu… I don’t know how he managed to escape my flames, but I’m sure it was him I saw slinking back toward the border after all was said and done.” 

Jisung’s lips bowed into a deep frown, brows pinching with either foreboding or sympathy—likely both. “We’ll catch him…” was all he could say. 

Minho hummed flatly, and that was that. He said nothing more, reverting again to unsettling silence. 

Jisung could only take so much of it before his nerves got the better of him. His heart hammered bruisingly in his chest, lungs twitchy with each short breath, fingers fidgeting, weight shifting restlessly—

“Min, I need to tell you something,” he blurted. 

That seemed to grasp Minho’s attention; he turned to meet Jisung’s eyes, apprehension wearing on his features. 

It was odd… It was almost as if Minho could aurapathically sense Jisung’s emotions a little better now that he’d reacquired his sealed magic. He was looking at Jisung with appropriate wariness, whereas, before, he might not have picked up right away on the anxiety shaking Jisung’s voice and the nervous tension winding up tight in his shoulders. 

“Before he sent me to find you…” Jisung began, words wavering, “your father--he…” 

Minho’s brows pulled together in a trepidatious knit, the sight nearly deterring Jisung from speaking further. 

The only thing that rescued Jisung’s voice from cowardly silence was his choice to stare down at his feet, evading Minho’s eyes. 

Jisung wetted his lips, jaw clenching. “He asked me to take his life,” he confessed. “He said your original assumption about breaking the seal on your magic was false and that the only thing that could actually break it was… If he was killed by someone unrelated to him by blood.” 

In spite of better judgment, he lifted his gaze timidly. His breaths halted altogether when he saw Minho’s glassy eyes--the dismay creasing every line of his face. 

“What?” Minho’s voice was small, hardly even audible. 

Jisung winced, internally flailing to grasp ahold of something-- anything to ease Minho. “I-I didn’t do it, obviously. I told him I could never hurt you like that. But…” 

Tears slipped down Minho’s cheeks, distress waning to make way for something utterly, frighteningly furious. “So you left him to die like that instead?” He gestured sharply at the door separating them from the hall of bloody horrors. “To be tortured and torn apart until he breathed his last breath while his killers laughed over his corpse? You thought that was a better alternative? Genius, Jisung. Truly.” 

“I--” Jisung shrank under the scathing accusation, heart throbbing, everything in him urging him to flee. And yet, he still dared to ask, “would you rather I had killed him myself?” 

“ Yes!” 

Jisung recoiled, eyes stinging at both the venomous ire in Minho’s voice and the wild sense of betrayal burning in the amber of his irises. 

“No…” Minho amended after a moment, shaking his head at himself. He grabbed tight fistfuls of his hair, waterfalls cascading down his face as his eyes squeezed shut, confliction radiating off of him in stifling waves. “I don’t know!” 

He slid down the sturdy stone of the parapet, visibly trembling. His eyes went wide and glazed, fixed distantly on the far wall. He gasped for air in between ineffectual hyperventilations and tortured sobs. His aura soured with a sort of dreadful panic that had even Jisung’s own heart fighting to regulate itself. 

All that Minho had desperately shoved down and locked behind a fragile air of feigned calm came flooding forth like violent river waters surging from a collapsed dam. 

“I’m sorry, J-Jisungie,” he wrestled out. “Please don’t hate me. P-please, I can’t—I didn’t mean--” a ragged, plaintive noise was wrenched from his throat-- “d-don’t hate me.” 

Jisung felt as though the world had given out beneath his feet. His chest constricted with such an insufferable ache, he feared his heart may have actually broken. 

Why did Minho suddenly think Jisung would hate him? He’d lashed out at Jisung, sure, but it wasn’t like Minho had threatened or hurt him. How could Jisung hate him when he was suffering so deeply? When he was unraveling at the seams as any mere mortal would in the face of having lost so much in so little time? When he was expected, despite it all, to continue on leading his people like he hadn’t just been given all the reasons in the world and more to turn his back on all of it?

Jisung was quick to scuttle over and kneel down in front of Minho. His most visceral instinct was to wrap him up in a tight embrace and whisper any and all reassurances he needed to hear--but something stopped him:

A memory, hazy in its test with time, of a day blackened by unshakable fear and unimaginable pain--of hands much larger than the wiry, juvenile limbs they reached for, of disjointed, coaxing voices bidding for cooperation, of copious stains of scarlet upon formal clothing worn by the little prince of Gang Dosi, aged ten—

Jisung froze at the resurfacing of such a long-buried memory. He remembered the palace physician and his assistants cooing softly at him, attempting to persuade his frightful panic away; he remembered their eventual impatience, their insistences that his lash wounds would become infected if he didn’t allow them to be treated. He remembered the kind nurse who thought it’d help soothe away the rapid breaths and hiccuping cries and petrification if she swaddled him up in her arms and murmured sweet words. But all it’d done was frighten him more, make him feel like a caged, helpless animal, her touch suffocating and her voice shrill like metal on a grind wheel, regardless of the fact that young Jisung had quite liked her on a normal day. 

He shook the unpleasant images away, finding himself once again confronted with the sight of Minho, looking uncannily akin to how Jisung had felt all those years ago--so small, vulnerable, fraught with distress--

And Jisung knew, then, that incessant consolations and a confining embrace would only serve to further fan the flames of Minho’s ever-intensifying deterioration. 

So he took a few grounding breaths, then tentatively reached out to unfurl the blanch-knuckled fists Minho had curled into his hair. Minho’s skin was hot to the touch--not enough to burn, but enough to feel uncomfortable. Jisung didn’t let it show on his face, though, maintaining as neutral a countenance as possible as he pressed one of Minho’s heated hands to his aching but steady heart, while he set the other gently in Minho’s lap. 

Jisung didn’t know what he was doing--not at all. But he thought that, if he were in Minho’s position right now, feeling the sure heartbeat of someone who loved him dearly and immovably would aid in tethering his mind back to reality. 

Minho was falling ill to delusions told to him by poisonous thoughts--thoughts that his lover, his Jisungie, could ever hate him for not being okay. 

Jisung hoped his simple, wordless gesture demonstrated otherwise. 

Minho stayed fighting for every ounce of air he could in sporadic sniffles and gulps of breath, strained whimpers of struggle accompanying floods of tears. 

It was hard--so incredibly hard, just watching like Jisung was. Still, he gave it some more time, holding Minho’s palm more firmly to his chest, thumb sweeping lightly over the back of his hand. 

Please know how much I love you, Lee Minho. 

Jisung breathed in deeply, clutching Minho’s palm to his chest with both hands now. 

I could never hate you. Please believe me.

For the faintest moment, Jisung thought his eyes were playing pranks on him. Perhaps it’d just been a flash of lightning causing a trick of the light, but it seemed, if only for a second, like a gentle, bluish glow had pulsed through Minho. Gone as quick as it came. 

Seconds later, Minho’s fingers flexed weakly against Jisung’s sternum--the first instance of any receptiveness to Jisung’s supplicative touch, a sign that he was coming back to earth, finding solid ground again. 

His breaths were far from smooth or stable, but they were beginning to slow, little by little. His body was still riddled with tremors, but they, too, were gradually subsiding. He sniffed wetly, pulled in a choppy inhale, and another, and another. 

Then, brokenly: “do you mean it?” he asked, so very feeble and quiet. 

Jisung was confused, but not any more than he was reassured upon hearing Minho form coherent words. He lifted Minho’s hand up to press a kiss to his knuckles, letting his eyes drift shut to savor the relief. “Mean what, my love?” he prompted, soft and unprovoking. 

“That you could never hate me?” Minho met his gaze, misty eyes pleading. “Even though I yelled at you and blamed you for something horrible?” 

Jisung couldn’t help but blink at first. Because… He hadn’t said anything of the sort aloud; he’d only thought it to himself. Yet Minho--it was like he’d somehow been permitted direct access to Jisung’s thoughts. Or, at the very least, the cherished sentiments he’d prayerfully hoped Minho would come to grasp amid his devastating panic. 

Jisung wondered if that strange pulse of light that’d coursed through Minho was indicative of some sort of spontaneous conjuring of aurapathy. Not an explicit, deliberate cast, but rather, a transient connection forged between two emotionally-afflicted spirits--runaway magic summoned forth by a soul desperate to reach another…

He ran his fingers through Minho’s gnarled hair, then settled his hand against the side of his face. “Jagi… Of course I could never hate you, especially for the things you say when you’re hurting. I understand it’s near-impossible for you to know how to feel after everything that’s happened,” he said, thumbing the streams of tears away from Minho’s cheek. “I’ll gladly bear whatever you need me to, Minho. Always.” 

Minho’s lips wobbled with the effort of stifling further cries. Without another word, he reached out to wrap his arms around Jisung and pull him close, hiding his face in the crook of his neck. 

Jisung readily reciprocated the embrace, hugging Minho nice and tight against himself. He rubbed slow, idle patterns into his back, lulling Minho’s residual sniffles and tremors. 

For a while, they sat like this, stormclouds marching slowly closer. In the time it took for the first drops of rain to dash upon skin, Minho’s torrent of energy had dampened, alongside his trembling and tears. In fact, when Jisung pulled back a bit to get another look at Minho and found his body to be so lax that it needed to be held up with sturdy hands, he discovered Minho had actually drifted off to sleep. The realization struck in that instant that neither of them had gotten a wink of sleep since the previous night; Minho had exhausted himself, both physically and emotionally. 

Jisung thought it best to take the opportunity to get Minho the help he’d refused earlier, knowing the latter wouldn’t seek it out himself any time soon if left to his devices. 

Gritting his teeth and bearing the sharp throb in his beaten and bruised body, Jisung gathered Minho into his arms, heaving him up from the ground. Minho shifted, just a bit, nuzzling himself into Jisung’s chest. 

Ordinarily, Jisung would find the sight adorable, but in this case… It wasn’t adorable. It was sad. Minho looked tiny and frail and so, so breakable in his unconscious urgency for comfort. 

Minho would hate to be seen like this by his people--his guards, warriors, citizens… 

Jisung couldn’t just openly carry him back into that conference hall with him in this state. So he constructed an invisibility glamour around them both, hoping to shroud them well enough that others--well-trained fae much more proficient in magic than him--wouldn’t be able to see through it at first glance. 

Then he carried Minho back through the door to the hall, making swiftly for the temporary infirmary near the main entrance to the palace. 

He made it a point to himself not to let his eyes wander in the direction of the strung-up, tortured king, lest he fall victim to insidious thoughts of his own again.

~

The infirmary was a scene of pure chaos, healers rushing about with heaps of bloodied linens, alchemical tonics, and buckets of water. There wasn’t a single inch of floor in the ward unoccupied by cots and disfigured warriors lying in agony upon them. 

Jisung gulped, warily weaving through the havoc in search of Felix. He was still glamoured, thinking it best that, even with everyone else’s minds occupied, he continue to conceal Minho from potential prying eyes. 

It’s what Minho would want, he was sure… 

Eventually, after nearly stumbling into several bustling fae along the way, Jisung found Felix at the opposite end of the ward, the healer puffing out a defeated sigh and draping a bloodstained sheet over yet another fallen warrior. 

His tunic was smeared copiously with crimson not his own, his face and white-blonde hair, too, having somehow found themselves dyed with blood. With a heavy heart, Jisung watched him slump against the nearest wall and press the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

Hesitantly, Jisung dispeled the glamour hiding him and Minho from sight. “Lix?” 

Felix jumped at the sudden utterance of his name. “Dear gods, Jisung, don’t scare me like that.” 

“Sorry…” mumbled Jisung. “I know you’re busy. I just--” he glanced down at the fragile form of Minho cradled in his arms. “Can you help him? Preferably somewhere more private? He wouldn’t want everyone to see him in this state.” 

Felix softened at the request, nodding with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course. I’m glad you brought him to me.” 

He led Jisung through the short journey to the nearest empty room; it was modest, lacking color and any personal artifacts. Really, it seemed the main attraction was just a small bed with its headboard pressed up against the wall. The single window allowed glimpses of lightning and rivulets of rain upon its panes outside. 

“This is one of the palace staff’s living quarters; it’s been vacant for a while,” said Felix, clicking the door shut and motioning for Jisung to set Minho down on the bed. “No one should bother us here.” 

“Thank you. It means a lot, Lix.” Jisung was so very careful as he laid Minho atop the quilted sheets. He let his fingertips linger on Minho’s cheek, feeling his warmth--now more prominent than ever after having his magic restored. “I hope this doesn’t come across as entitled or selfish; I just want him to have one moment where his darkest hour isn’t being spectated.” 

“Don’t fret, little dove. What you worry is selfish is actually admirably noble. It relieves me to know you’re advocating for him in a way that prioritizes the preservation of his dignity. That sort of thing takes a great deal of selfless compassion. And, dare I say…” Felix’s gaze glinted with curious sort of mirth as he set a clean bucket of water on the floor beside the bed. “Love?” 

Jisung found the change in tone from suffocatingly morose to somewhat brightened with levity a bit jarring. But, more-so, he was sheepish in response to Felix’s suggestion, cheeks flaring a rosy hue. It occurred to him that none of his companions knew what the explicit nature of his relationship with Minho was now, but… He wouldn’t necessarily put it past them to have already puzzled it out. Especially Felix, who had a not-so-subtle penchant for romantic reverie. 

Still, being spotlit like this amid such a whirlwind of devastation was cause for a heaping dose of perplexity. 

Jisung blinked owlishly at Felix. Tugging shyly at the collar of his tunic, he answered, “um… Y-yeah. You could say that. Definitely.” 

Felix hummed, carefully pulling the boot off Minho’s injured foot and dropping it onto the floor. Meanwhile, the tiniest hint of a smirk was tugging at his lips. “When he told me he was going to take you to the beach house, I knew right away that he was planning on professing his feelings to you. You wanna know what I asked him the night before you two left?” 

“What?” 

“I asked him: ‘what kind of future do you see with Jisung?’” Felix drew a small dollop of water out from the bucket and laid it over Minho’s crooked ankle. The water soaked into his heavily bruised skin with a light blue glow, spreading down to the tips of his toes. “And he said, albeit drunk on way too much whiskey: ‘the happiest future~’ after which he burst into tears and confessed out of nowhere that he would even go permanently celibate if you asked him to. ‘You don’t understand, Lixie, I would give up sex for that man.’” He laughed, a light, floaty sound that seemed to fill the room with sunshine. “Something tells me he doesn’t remember that part.” 

Jisung squirmed in the seat he’d found at Minho’s bedside, face, ears, and neck hot with a blush. “Well…” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I think whiskey-drunk Minho can take solace in the fact that I’m never going to ask that of him.” 

“You sound rather confident in that declaration,” said Felix. “Am I safe to assume, then, that you two have…” His eyes twinkled. “ Done the deed?” 

Jisung thought for a second that he had to be in some strange dream, because in what world was this the topic of conversation following a catastrophic near-collapse of the Fleymlansan province? 

“I, uh…” He stumbled over his words for a longer while than he’d care to admit before gluing his gaze to his lap and relenting, “I wish you wouldn’t word it that way, but yes.” 

Felix let out another one of his warm, hearty chuckles. “Forgive my nosiness, dove. I only hope to help you relish the good moments you were able to share with him before… Well, before.” The briefest hint of sadness doused the levitous flame in his eyes; it was fleeting, though served enough as a dour reminder that the nature of this discussion was, at its core, a distraction. “It was good, right?” 

Again, Jisung could only blink and respond dumbly, “what?” 

“The sex?” 

Jisung nearly choked on air. Every time he was beginning to think he’d become accustomed to the casualness with which the fae regarded such subjects, he was proven sorely wrong. 

“Um, yeah. Y-yes,” he managed, coughing to smother the flustered crack in his voice. “I think so, anyway. I guess I don’t exactly know how Minho felt about it.” 

Felix snorted at that. “Believe me, Jisungie, Minho would’ve let you know immediately if he found your performance at-all unsatisfactory. He’s not one to sacrifice his pleasure to avoid stepping on toes. If he had any notes, he’d have shared them with you.” 

“Oh.” Jisung stared at him with big, round eyes. “Then… I guess it went very well.” 

“Glad to hear it.” 

They fell mutually silent after that. Jisung watched while Felix hovered a hand over Minho’s injured foot, shifting the luminant water below his skin with meticulous, calculated adjustments of the fingertips. 

The technique was one of highly advanced caliber, if Jisung recalled correctly from one of his many study sessions spent with his nose buried in magic encyclopedias. Its origins hailed from the small fae province of Archipelago di’Suvassai, the eastmost congregation of islands belonging to the Southern Islian region. Some of the world’s greatest healing arts came from that province, and it was no wonder why when this was the sort of innovation the Suvassaifae had exhibited over the millennia. 

Felix was, as Jisung understood it, using aquakinesis to nudge dozens of bone fragments and tattered soft tissues back into their rightful place. An ailment human medics often had no choice but to treat with amputation was merely a matter of fine-tuned magic skills to the world’s healing fae. 

Jisung’s fascination soon wasn’t enough to detract from the looming tension that’d inhabited the room, though. Eventually, he felt compelled to fill the silence yet again, if only to quell his own discomfort. 

“Can I ask…?” he began, not entirely sure yet what he intended to inquire about. 

“Hmm?” Felix prompted absentmindedly. 

Jisung hesitated, nibbling pensively at his lower lip. “Despite my confusion and bashfulness, I did actually appreciate our earlier conversation. But I have to wonder…” He met Felix’s eyes. “Why talk about such frivolous matters in the aftermath of something so sinister committed against your people? Aren’t you angry? Grieving? I don’t mean to say you’re not feeling those things, but I find it curious that you’re able to hold yourself together so well. I guess it’s just difficult for me to comprehend…” 

Felix’s expression wavered faintly, and Jisung wished he hadn’t said anything. 

But, peculiarly, Felix adopted yet another smile, tinged with sorrow though it was. “Healers are tasked with saving lives that would otherwise be lost and preserving quality of life where it would otherwise degrade due to grievous injuries,” he said softly, curling the hand he had hovering over Minho’s foot into a gentle fist; Minho’s ankle slowly straightened out, bones and ligaments and tendons tightening back into place. “Many more wounded are likely to lead the rest of their lives in permanent, painful disability or join those already passed if I allow my mind to be paralyzed in mourning. Prioritizing others’ pain over my own is a sacrifice I must bear as one whose greatest responsibility is to the health and wellbeing of his people.” 

Jisung frowned. “Doesn’t that wear on you?” 

“Always.” For reasons indecipherable to Jisung, Felix’s smile only grew. “But so long as it facilitates my ability to help my people--my friends and family--I feel it’s a worthy price to pay.” He drew the water out from beneath Minho’s skin and dropped it back into the bedside barrel. After assessing the condition of Minho’s foot and deciding he was satisfied with the results, he moved on to spot treating the cuts and scrapes littering just about every other part of Minho’s body. 

All the while, Jisung retreated to his thoughts, threading his fingers through Minho’s hair. 

He couldn’t say he fully understood Felix’s sentiments. Noble though it undeniably was to sacrifice one’s own experience of pain and grief to aid in healing that of others, Jisung couldn’t help but feel like it didn’t have to be so starkly one way or the other. 

When, if ever, would Felix be able to process his grief if there was always going to be someone in need of his help? There’d always be someone sick or injured or ailing that’d call for his aid. There’d never be a day without at least one. 

To simply neglect such complex, enormous feelings for the sake of others at all times… 

It didn’t seem right to Jisung. Especially now. 

Felix had just nearly lost his home; he’d seen and heard accounts from the battlefront of horrific crimes against the Fleymlansan people, watched warrior after warrior die right in this very infirmary despite his every valiant effort. 

He deserved, as much as anyone, to break down, cry, seek comfort, commiserate… 

“You don’t have to pay that price here,” Jisung said quietly.

Felix’s soft brown eyes peered at him, round, open, ever-so-slightly stunned. 

“It’s just me, after all,” Jisung added with a little shrug. “If there’s anyone you don’t owe anything to, it’s me.” 

Felix stared for a moment, then puffed out a wistful sigh. His smile had still yet to disappear, and there was an eerie sense that it wasn’t going to. “I’m grateful for the offer, little dove,” he said. “I’ll have to take you up on it some other time, though, yeah? I still have a lot of work to do.” 

“Right. Of course.” Jisung ducked his head. He supposed there did remain the matter of the infirmary teeming with wounded warriors. 

The door to the room abruptly swung open, then, making both Jisung and Felix jump in startlement. 

In came Hyunjin with Seungmin in tow; it seemed the two were attached at the hip following the severe depletion of Seungmin’s magic reserves, though he now sported a crutch of his own to help keep him on his feet rather than having to rely on Hyunjin to drag him everywhere. 

“Ugh, fucking finally. We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” grumbled Seungmin. 

Felix pursed his lips and gave him a disapproving look. “What are you doing here? I told you to rest.” 

“In a ward full of warriors screaming and moaning in agony? No thanks.” Seungmin hobbled his way further into the room and unceremoniously plopped down on the edge of the bed; Minho stirred at the disturbance but luckily didn’t wake. “What the hell are you teaching those young healers, by the way? You’d think they were torturing the wounded by the sound of it.” 

He was being more callous than usual, Jisung observed. No doubt, it was a coping strategy of his--a disorienting contrast from his earlier state of tears and vulnerability. 

“Restoration magic isn’t always pretty as you well know.” Felix folded his arms over his chest. “And I’d prefer if you wouldn’t barge your way in here and perturb him--” he gestured to Minho, asleep but not nearly as deeply as he had been prior to Seungmin’s disruptive antics. “His body is not the only thing in grave need of healing.” 

“Yeah, yeah, join the club,” muttered Seungmin. 

His insensitive attitude was swiftly checked when Hyunjin snapped his name and raised his eyebrows pointedly at him. “Be mad, but don’t spite your friends while you’re at it,” scolded Hyunjin. 

In a strange turn of events, this appeared to work rather well; Seungmin ducked his head in wordless apology. He glanced back at Minho, breathing out long and slow, lips bowed downwards. “Forgive me,” he said, to no one in particular. Then, flicking his gaze up to Jisung: “I need to talk to you.” 

Jisung straightened up attentively. “About what?” 

“I’ve gotten word from some of the other aurachasers,” Seungmin said ominously. “They didn’t want to say anything at the time because they didn’t know what to make of it and there were far more pressing matters at hand, but… Do you remember anything else about that ward Shin Mireu erected around the valley? What it felt like?” 

Jisung’s face creased with puzzlement. He dug back into his memory, trying to recall all that he’d learned about that cursed ward. 

He remembered, before making a break for the forest, the fleeting sense that there was something ‘off’ about the ward beyond what had already been identified. However, there’d been too much happening around him and in his mind for him to properly hone in on it. 

He shook his head. “I just remember it feeling strange. I couldn’t get a good read on it with everything that was going on.” Eyeing Seungmin warily, he asked, “what’s this about?”

Seungmin’s expression was tense as he answered, “some of the surviving aurachasers said they could feel your magic signature, as well as Minho’s, on that ward.” 

Jisung’s heart jerked dizzyingly in his chest. “Wait, they don’t think we had anything to do with this, right?” 

“No-no, don’t worry.” Seungmin waved the notion away with a dismissive hand. “But this does confirm that Mireu is using an incredibly vile form of blood magic in lieu of natural magic of his own. Given the advanced character of that ward and the fact that it carried a distinct tether to your and Minho’s shared magic, it can be reasonably assumed that the blood he used belonged to Mika… Minho’s mother.” 

“I don’t understand,” said Jisung. “How is that possible? He made it sound like Minho’s mother had been dead for decades. There’s no way blood can even be preserved for that long.” 

Felix made a muted sound of disagreement. “Fae blood is eternal. Mireu very-well could have killed Mika all those years ago and still have access to her blood’s properties to this day.” 

Jisung was only growing more confused with every new addition of information. “Why would he even need her blood in the first place? He’s fae, is he not? Doesn’t he have his own magical capabilities?” 

Seungmin and Felix exchanged a brief, unreadable glance. 

“Short answer is no,” said Seungmin. “Siphons are quite literally antitheses of magic. Rather than emitting manipulable energies like most fae typically do, they absorb them instead, like a void. They don’t even emit a measurable aura because of it. They cannot organically produce magic or perform casts in the sense that you’ve become familiar with. Their only natural ability is the sapping of magic. Anything beyond that must be acquired through nefarious means, as Shin Mireu clearly has.” 

“So all those runes and cast circles tattooed on his arms and the vials of blood he carries with him…” 

“Are most likely tools he discovered during experimentation with Sanguinerean blood magic and human alchemy,” Seungmin concluded. “Hence the name: ‘the Alchemist.’” 

“How is he even able to use magic at all if he’s a so-called ‘antithesis of magic’?” 

“ That is a little more complex of an answer.” Seungmin breathed a sigh, as if even thinking about it drained him. “Sanguinerean blood magic is the one and only form of magic available to all species and races if an individual should be so depraved to seek it out. In combination with human alchemical elixirs--such as preservative draughts--it could allow any otherwise magicless bastard access to a multitude of fae casts. So long as they’re willing to slaughter said fae and steal their blood without remorse.” His voice was particularly bitter now. “The only difference between a human and Mireu in this case is the fact that he wouldn’t need the addition of a siphoning serum to bind a faerie’s magic to their blood before extracting it; he has his own natural siphoning capability that can store magic until its corresponding blood is ready for use.” 

The pieces of a still-foggy puzzle began to fall into place. 

Mireu had no natural ability to use magic as a Siphon—only absorb it. That’s why he’d become a Seer acolyte despite being born to Seers, and why Mika--a beautifully doting sister--had promised her own magic as a gift to him once he completed all necessary trials, even in knowing it would likely mean her demise. It’s why Mireu had felt so betrayed when the oasis’ prophecy had guided Mika instead to little baby Jisung; she’d broken her promise to her brother for a human, and a royal human at that. Even further fueling Mireu’s betrayal was the prophecy’s foretelling of his evils in spite of him, presumably, never having committed evil before. 

Jisung reluctantly entertained the idea that, maybe, Mireu was right, in a way. Perhaps, if the gods’ prophecy had never been conceived, he wouldn’t have turned wicked after all. He wouldn’t have turned to blood magic, sought ultimate revenge on those with natural magic to alleviate the pain inflicted upon him growing up as one without it. If Mika hadn’t been steered toward Jisung and had bestowed her magic upon Mireu as planned… 

Well. Jisung supposed that wasn’t an avenue of thought worth the time of day at this point. What’s done is done, two whole decades in the making. There was no undoing any of it. 

“How does one come by Sanguinerean blood magic?” asked Jisung. 

Seungmin’s features were steely and grim as he said, “a blood sacrifice of all that are closest to you must be made and presented to a dark entity by the name of Sanguinere.”

“All that are closest…” Jisung mumbled to himself. “Does that mean Mireu killed Mika not just out of revenge but because she was a sacrifice for Sanguinere? Possibly others as well?” 

Seungmin nodded stiffly. “I hate to even think about it, but… Nobody actually knows what happened to the remaining Seers. It’s assumed they all died making their acolytes faerie-souled, but given the fact that a living acolyte hasn’t even been seen in decades, it would come as no surprise to me if Mireu’s blood sacrifice included the remainder of his already endangered people--the only ones that would’ve ever extended the generosity to let a Siphon live among them.” 

Jisung felt a discomforting shiver tingle at his spine. Most prevalently, because the very concept of murdering everyone he’d ever considered family for the attainment of power was just… Inconceivable to him. But also, he vaguely recalled something Mireu had said earlier: “the fearful gazes, the shunning, the epidemic of animosity against me…”  

The fact was that Siphons were treated very poorly by other fae; Seungmin was essentially saying that the Seers, in all the kindness and compassion ingrained into their culture, were the only people that wouldn’t persecute or brutalize Mireu for being a Siphon. Any and all other settlements of fae—it was implied that, while many would simply run in fear from a Siphon, others might even go as far as to torment one. 

As dangerous and abhorrent as Mireu was, Jisung couldn’t help but feel like the treatment of Siphons dulled the clean, sparkly luster of Fleymlansa that he’d always found so appealing—of the fae in general. 

He’d known Fleymlansa and other fae civilizations must’ve had issues of their own, but he hadn’t spared much mind to them because the fae didn’t seem to have the issues he had so desperately run from. He hadn’t especially cared to know the issues of the fae as long as he was no longer facing the issues that’d forced a cruel life on him up until his departure for Fleymlansa. 

He hadn’t really imagined the possibility that others would face cruelty here for different reasons. 

He’d romanticized the notion of Fleymlansa as an ideologically perfect society, so much so that learning otherwise almost shattered him.

He hated to recognize it in himself—gave him a churning feeling in the pit of his stomach—but he actually found himself empathizing with Mireu. Sympathizing, even, if the way the scars on his back seared with a phantom ache testified to anything. 

Not for the first time that day, Jisung felt truly sick. 

“Jisungie?” 

He blinked himself out of his retreated contemplation to find Hyunjin, Seungmin, and Felix all with their gazes affixed to him, each reflecting their own variants of concern. 

Just how long had Jisung been silent and unresponsive for? A vacant “hmm?” was all he could manage in reply. 

Felix exhaled deeply, decisiveness in his posture. “Alright, I think it’s time you get some rest. You’re obviously exhausted.” He turned to Hyunjin and Seungmin. “You all are.” 

Seungmin looked like he wanted to argue, but with another stern glare from Hyunjin, he conceded. “Yeah, fine. Whatever. I’m not sleeping out in that damn infirmary, though. Gods know all the screaming can’t be good for the ol’ traumatized brain.” 

Felix clicked his tongue at the flippant remark. “Go commandeer Minho’s bedroom, then. You’ve never had a problem with it before.” 

“Mmm~ now that’s certainly an idea.” Seungmin heaved himself up from the bed, leaning heavily on his crutch as he ambled toward the door. “Come along, Jinnie. I’d quite like you as my pillow; Minho’s are dismally stiff.” 

Hyunjin rolled his eyes, though there was a tinge of amusement curling his lips as he followed Seungmin out of the room. 

Jisung thought it’d still take quite some time for him to become accustomed to… Whatever Hyunjin and Seungmin were to each other now. As it stood, he had no idea when or why they’d become so close-- seemingly in a romantic sense, as well. He’d have to ask them about it some time. 

“Well…” Felix breathed a sigh and rolled his tired neck. “I should be getting back to work,” he said, heading for the room’s exit. “But I’ll be coming back to see what I can do for that poor arm of yours once my more immediate patients are cared for.”

“Oh.” Jisung lifted his shoddily-patched arm up to give it grimaced lookover; honestly, he’d forgotten about his earlier degloving injury amid the stress of the past several hours. “Thanks. I did kinda demolish it, didn’t I?” 

“Oh, dove--” Felix gave him a playfully pitying look. “It’s positively hideous.” 

Jisung scoffed lightheartedly. “See you later, Lix.” 

“See ya~” Felix sing-songed wearily as he stepped out into the infirmary. “Rest well, Jisungie.” 

And with that, the door was shut closed again, and Jisung was left alone with a slumbering Minho. 

He was beautiful. Tranquil in his unconsciousness. The shallow scrapes and burns on his face had been healed, but the dirt, ash, and dried blood still remained. His auburn hair fell in tangled ropes over his brow. Even his ornate array of gold earrings and cuffs appeared disheveled, twisted upside-down, dangling lopsidedly, jostled from their original positions. 

Jisung took the liberty of fixing them, gently turning them back upright and returning the cuffs to their snug, fitted seats around the points of Minho’s ears. He smoothed the wayward locks of hair away from Minho’s forehead, scritched lightly at his scalp, smiled just faintly at a recent memory of Minho lying in his lap in silent ask for pets, much akin to a cat. 

Then Jisung’s smile curved into a frown, as the worry struck that a time of such simple pleasures may not come again for… Ever, maybe. 

Would the events of that day harden Minho beyond repair? Cause him to never indulge in soft, tender, isolated moments for fear of missing the signs of oncoming danger? 

It was something Jisung recalled as a concern of Minho’s. Back when they were exchanging vulnerable thoughts and insecurities their second day at the beach house, Minho had scolded himself for allowing his mind to revel in peace instead of keeping himself attuned to any potential perils that could threaten them and his people. Jisung had told him that it was okay to enjoy peace when he had it, but what if Minho now associated his enjoyment of peace with Jisung at the beach house as a failure to predict what was to come? 

It wasn’t that far-fetched of a concern, and that’s what scared Jisung the most about it. 

What if Minho were to never permit himself happiness again? 

Jisung shook his head. What did he stand to gain from hypotheticals of the future at a time like this? There was enough wrong in the present as is. 

Slowly, he situated his aching, abused body in bed alongside Minho. He nestled in close, tracing the lines of Minho’s face with delicate fingertips. Sweeping the pad of his thumb over the pale teartrack carved through the ash and grime on Minho’s cheek, he whispered so quietly--so as to not even let the gods themselves hear-- “I wish we could’ve been happy together longer.” 

Part of him wanted to know what Minho would say to that.

Another part was happy he wasn’t even awake to hear it. 

Jisung draped his arm across Minho’s chest, snuggling closer while his eyes fell shut. 

Minho was so warm. Always so warm. Homey. Lulling.

It almost gave the illusion that everything was going to be okay. 

Chapter Text

Jisung woke to the absence of Minho and a handwritten note lying beside his head on the pillow. 

Jisungie,

I’ve gone to pick through the remains of my father’s study. Please join me when you get the chance. 

-♡

It was a little ridiculous, but the way Minho had signed off the message with a heart in place of his name made Jisung feel just a little more at-ease. It was cute, quirky, Minho. Perhaps Jisung had leapt to conclusions too quickly when he feared the damage done to Minho would be irreparable. If shades of pre-invasion Minho still shone through this soon after the fact, then there was hope that it was only a matter of time, support, and careful healing before Minho could find peace again. 

Frankly, Jisung wanted to chastise his own optimism; feeling so hopeful over a scribbled love heart was, in every sense, quite inane. 

But he couldn’t help himself. Anything-- everything good he could possibly grasp ahold of at the moment, he’d reach for with fervor. 

He flipped the note over to check if Minho had written anything else. Lo and behold:

P.S. Felix came by to heal you up while you were asleep. Your arm’s looking much better. Though, unfortunately, it seems you’ll have some permanent weakness and dulled sensation from the nerve damage. On the brighter side, he said your head injury wasn’t too severe, but you shouldn’t push yourself too much for the next few days, just to be safe. So take your time getting here, okay? 

Jisung smiled as he read Minho’s words, imagining them spoken in his soft, kind voice. 

He glanced down at his left arm, noted the pale scarring and faintly-thickened texture of his skin. Closing his hand into a fist, he quickly internalized the extra effort he had to exert in order to perform the simple action. As well, when he skimmed the fingertips of his healthy hand along his reconstructed forearm, the stimulus only scarcely registered, sensitivity diminished. 

He breathed a long, troubled sigh. At least his fascia didn’t feel so inelastic and immovable anymore… 

Getting out of bed was a bit of a challenge, dizziness swimming in his head as he swung his legs over the edge and attempted to stand on them. But all it took was a few rapid blinks and a steadying hand on the bedside table to regain his bearings. 

Once he did, he folded up and tucked Minho’s note away under his waistbelt and shuffled over to the door. Pulling it open lent a much more digestible image of the infirmary compared to its earlier state of chaos. 

The large room was quiet, for the most part. Most of the injured warriors were slumbering away, huddled up on their cots with warm blankets and soft palace pillows. The healers were gathered around a candlelit table on the far end of the room, sharing in drink and mundane games to pass the time. They were likely unable to sleep with the responsibility of monitoring their wounded patients dangling solemnly over their heads. 

Felix wasn’t among them, though. Jisung wondered if he’d taken his leave to be with their friends, wherever they all may be--perhaps Minho’s bedroom, if Seungmin and Hyunjin had actually gone to commandeer it per Felix’s half-joking suggestion. 

Jisung wanted to visit all his companions and make sure they were faring okay in the invasion’s aftermath. But that would have to come in due time. As it stood, assuring himself of Minho’s condition was his most immediate priority. Especially considering he’d ventured to the late king’s study so soon after being struck with such incomprehensible grief. It was hard to imagine an endeavor like that would be easy for a notably fragile Minho. 

Jisung tip-toed out of the infirmary and into the palace’s sprawling corridors. 

The Sol Palace was lovely, from what little he’d seen of it. There were some similarities to the Sulyeon Palace, like its sturdy cobble walls, numerous paintings, and pedestaled artifacts. But it was brighter, the halls wider, the gold and jade accents offering ornate scenes of tranquility. There were windows and outdoor atriums, bridges, and balconies that painted various scenes of the valley. It was difficult to feel suffocated in a space so inviting of fresh air. 

Eventually, Jisung wandered his way to the large bridge overlooking the valley’s city below. The king’s study resided on the other side. There were some arrows lodged into the outer walls, as well as some black charmarks scuffing the entire exterior. The wooden double-doors were heavily splintered where they connected—evidence of the battering ram the invaders had used to thrust them open. Overall, though, the study didn’t appear too terribly damaged on the outside. The inside, on the other hand, was likely a very different story. 

Strobing memories of the study’s backside door being blasted apart by a violent explosion of fire flickered through Jisung’s mind. Just about every precious artifact and book in that room must be demolished. What exactly was it that Minho hoped to find among the rubble? 

Anything, Jisung supposed. 

Anything at all… 

As he padded across the bridge, he spotted dried, streaky tracks of blood leading out from the study toward the main palace, summoning forth the picture of King Haru being dragged, beaten and bloodied, to his horrific fate. 

Jisung’s face pinched, jaw tensing. He shook his head slightly to rid himself of the unsavory scene playing in his mind’s eye. 

It didn’t escape him that Minho had to have likely had similar scenes conjuring themselves against his will on his own trek to the study.

Jisung’s heart contracted heavily. 

Standing paused in front of the study doors, he peered up to see the silhouettes of Soonie, Doongie, and Dori perched atop the tower, each appearing somber in their vigilant watch over the late king’s sanctum. Familiars guarding their beloved faerie companion inside. 

Timidly, Jisung knocked on the damaged wood doors to announce his arrival. “Minho?” he called, voice gentle. “You still in there?” 

It was more a courtesy than anything. Sure, Jisung could just waltz right in--after all, he’d been invited--but Minho could be experiencing any number of complicated feelings right now, and he might not want to be perceived in his current vulnerability. 

Jisung also reluctantly entertained the idea that Minho may have changed his mind about… Well… Jisung. Minho had broken down in sobbing, panicked tears, desperately apologizing and begging for Jisung’s forgiveness after pinning the blame for his father’s death on him, but that didn’t mean-- 

Jisung swallowed around the dry lump in his throat.

That didn’t mean Minho didn’t harbor those feelings yet again, now that he’d been given time alone to stew in his thoughts. 

Jisung wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if Minho had arrived at the same conclusion a second time. It’s not like Jisung could even absolve himself of the blame; a part of him remained that fully believed his cowardice made the king’s death immeasurably more tragic than it would’ve been otherwise. He’d live with that guilt for gods know how long. Probably the rest of his life. 

When no response from Minho came, Jisung tentatively cracked one of the doors open, calling out once more: “Minho?” 

A muted sniffle was his answer this time. 

Jisung resisted the urge to throw the door open and rush to Minho. Instead, he took a breath, then slowly, calmly stepped inside. 

Curled up beneath the central sundial, in among the disaster of burned books, broken relics, and cobble wreckage, was Minho. He was concealed within a cocoon of opalescent orange, having stripped away his shirt to allow himself refuge behind the barrier of his wings. 

All Jisung could see of him were his wings and bare back, but the spasmodic tremble in his form was clear as day. 

He was crying. 

Jisung remembered all the times he’d been wrapped up in Minho’s wings, cozy, warm, and safe. He remembered how nice they’d felt around him while he’d confided his troubles in Minho back at the beach house--how well they served to lull the physical manifestations of his turmoil. 

It seemed a faerie’s wings had another purpose outside of seduction. They were tools of easement, alleviation. Self-soothing. 

“Minho?” Jisung carefully approached. 

Minho didn’t reply, but he also didn’t shoo Jisung away either. He stayed huddled up in his wings, sniffling plaintively. It was a mystery whether he registered Jisung’s existence in the room with him at all. 

Jisung crouched down beside him. “Jagiya…” He extended a hand out, laying it delicately on Minho’s lower back; Minho flinched, wings tightening protectively around him, soft, sorrowful sounds halting. It was like Jisung’s hand on his back was the first thing he actually noticed that indicated another’s presence in his space. “It’s me, Min. It’s okay.” 

He felt the added tension leave Minho’s body. But Minho still didn’t open up, wings remaining secured around him. 

Jisung frowned, brows knitting. “Can you let me in, love?” he asked, sweet and tender in his tone. “We don’t have to talk. I just don’t want you to struggle alone.” 

Minho drew in a shuddering breath. Gradually, he unfurled one of his wings, unveiling the rest of him hidden within. He was sat with his legs hugged to his chest, the lower half of his face shrouded behind his knees, eyes shiny and glazed with tears. 

Jisung’s heart only grew heavier, lead-like in his chest. 

He crawled up close to Minho, situating himself against his side in a similar curled-up fashion. He gently draped an arm over Minho’s shoulders, and Minho wound his wing back around them both, shielding them away from the rest of the world. 

For a while, neither of them spoke, as Jisung had promised. Minho had taken to resting his head on Jisung’s shoulder, and Jisung pressed occasional soft kisses to his hair, uncaring that it was still tangled with the grime of battle. 

“I’m really sorry, Jisungie,” Minho said after some time, voice cracking wearily around the words. “What I said to you earlier--the sort of blame I put on you over such an impossible situation… It was cruel and unfair to you.” He sniffed wetly. “And I’m really sorry.” 

“Oh, honey…” Jisung threaded his fingers into Minho’s hair, nuzzling his cheek against the crown of his head. “I know you didn’t mean it. You weren’t in a good headspace. It’s alright.” 

Minho sat up straight to shake his head adamantly at the notion. “You should never let me get away with treating you like that. Just because you can sense my emotional state and understand why I came to say what I said doesn’t mean it was okay for me to say it.” He wiped the staling teartracks away from his face with the back of his hand, shrinking into himself. “Please allow me to apologize when I wrong you. It doesn’t make things right, but it’s the minimum of what you deserve, especially as my lover.” 

“Okay…” Jisung pouted, reaching out to lace his fingers with Minho’s. “I just don’t want you to feel guilty about it on top of everything else.” 

Minho hummed, neither in agreement nor disagreement. He went quiet again for a bit, burdened with contemplation. Then:

“He knew everything, you know? My father…” He plucked a leatherbound journal up from the ground and handed it over to Jisung. “The prophecy, the war, Shin Mireu--all of it. And somehow, he thought it wiser to keep secrets from me than to be upfront about everything. Maybe, if he’d just been honest, none of this would’ve happened.” 

Curiously, Jisung flipped the journal open to the bookmarked page and began to read.

Fourth day of Autumn, 1683

Today, I lied to my boy. I suppose I didn’t quite lie, but rather, embellished what would come of the prince of Han if they were to pursue a romance with one another. But Minho is a very rebellious boy; I fear that he will pursue the prince of Han in spite of my, admittedly cruel, warnings. Should their relationship flourish, I imagine the universe will lead them to that cursed prophecy all on its own, at which point my embellishments of their fate would act more as omens of the future in my dear boy’s memory than mere warnings from his callous old man. I can only hope there’s a chance that prophecy might strengthen the bond between my boy and his human and instead make them more resistant to corruption in the face of war’s horrors. Otherwise, I’m afraid their minds may warp into something unrecognizable—merciless and vengeful and unfeeling toward brutality. It is easy in war to become no better than your enemies, and Shin Mireu has the power to make those that oppose him worse in evil than himself. For the sake of Minho and Han Jisung, I pray to the gods that they will overcome the inevitable hatred that ignites in the face of Shin Mireu and light the path for their people in the darkness he intends to impose upon the world. I pray further, however, that they will never stumble upon the prophecy in the first place. Even if it means the world is short a couple destined heroes. 

My boy deserves his peace.

“I haven’t even scratched the surface of what he’s written over the years,” said Minho. “But I’m sure there’s more he confesses to in his journals--most of which have likely been lost to the fight that occurred here. I’m lucky to have even stumbled upon this one.” 

“Mmm…” Jisung uttered in soft acknowledgement. “Why do you think he kept all of this from you?” 

Minho let out a bitter scoff. “Some fucked-up idea of protecting me, I imagine. He probably thought that, because I’m such a ‘rebellious boy,’ I’d have gone to seek out that prophecy on purpose just to spite him if he’d told me about it. Gods, he was such a shitty father; he didn’t even know me at all.”  

Jisung took to rubbing soothingly at Minho’s lower back as he pinched the bridge of his nose and devolved once more into tears. When he’d wept himself dry, he thumped his forehead against his knees, taking a few wavering breaths to reground himself. 

“He was a shitty father,” he repeated. “But he was a better king than I ever gave him credit for.” 

Jisung waited patiently for Minho’s next words, sensing that it wasn’t a slew of empty, meaningless affirmations he needed, but rather, for someone who’d hear him without rushing to try and ‘fix’ how he felt. 

“For as long as I can remember, I criticized him for being so passive and shamefully useless… I’d thought: how could any king just sit back and let his people suffer on foreign soil without even an ounce of consideration toward rescuing them? How could a man who calls himself king squirrel away the evidence of a barely-amiable relationship with another province in hopes of keeping his people blissfully unaware of the hatred their kind still endures beyond the border? How could the king of the most powerful fae nation in the world be such a gods-damned coward? And then I realized…” Minho huffed humorlessly. “It takes a hell of a lot more courage to exercise restraint and sacrifice juvenile dreams of heroism for the sake of keeping as many people safe as possible than it does to make grand promises of valor and command thousands to charge headfirst into danger without the means to lead them properly.”

Minho sounded hollow now, cried-out, lacking the energy to express the dense storm of emotions raging within. Jisung felt it all in him, polluting his solar aura with blightful darkness. 

“All those warriors are dead or mortally injured because I naively thought I could do better in a threat of war than an experienced king who’d been masterfully evading war and unrest for twenty-five years.” Minho coiled his arms tighter around his legs, knuckles blanching. “Because I was selfish and felt I had a point to prove.” 

“Min, you and millions of other people would not have a place to call home right now if you hadn’t done what you did,” Jisung reminded him gently. 

Minho’s hair cast a dark shadow over his eyes as he ducked his head, shame in his posture. “What’s a home worth when its patriarch is better at leading his people to death than making the difficult sacrifices to preserve their lives?” 

“Jagi, look at me.” Jisung guided Minho to meet his gaze with a hand placed firmly on either side of his face. “You are not what killed those people. The blame lies with the evil that forced you to choose between equally impossible options in the first place. I could blame myself for carelessly initiating the prophecy that foretold this, but I see now that that prophecy would’ve never even been written if an antagonistic force weren’t already a threat to the peace to begin with. This isn’t your fault; you only did what you thought was right.” 

Minho looked off to the side, shaking his head, lips wobbling. “But if I had just--”

“Stop.” Jisung swept his thumbs across Minho’s cheeks, something particularly imploring in the gesture. “Honey, nothing that happened is your fault, for the same reasons you told me none of it’s mine. You keep replaying scenarios over and over again in your head as if there was ever a right answer. There wasn’t. There never is for the sort of circumstances we were met with today.”

Minho nodded faintly, lips pressing into a thin line. “It just hurts, Jisungie.” 

“I know, love.” Jisung pulled Minho close, allowing him to bury his face in the crook of his neck. “I know.” 

“I don’t want to be king.” 

Jisung tipped his chin up slightly, blinking back tears of his own that’d begun to sting behind his eyes. “You’re not right now, okay? When you’re with me, you’re just Minho.” He hugged Minho tighter, dropping a kiss to his shoulder. “My Minho.” 

“Your Minho…” It was a self-affirmation, whispered weakly while Minho’s wings clung like warm blankets around their bodies. “Okay.” 

~

It felt as though hours had passed before Minho had gathered enough composure to continue poking around his father’s study. When he’d first arrived at the study, his search had been entirely aimless--more of a way to grieve privately than anything. Now, he had a goal, sifting through towers of debris to unearth more of the king’s journals. 

“It’s probably a longshot, but there might be something in them that could help us figure out how to defeat Mireu,” he’d told Jisung. 

And the reasoning seemed sound enough, so Jisung was diligent in his own search through piles of scorched books and broken bookcases. 

Neither of them spoke unless to communicate that they’d found something of import. But their silence was far from tense or uncomfortable. Minho simply preferred to stay retreated for the time being, and Jisung was more than happy to oblige his needs. 

So far, they’d collected three journals in passable condition and about a dozen others at varying grades of damaged, some with still-legible passages, others just about entirely unreadable. 

They were in the middle of helping one another heave a large chunk of rubble off of a busted bookcase when the double-doors of the study were flung blithely open. The suddenness of it startled both of them into dropping the rubble back to the ground with a loud thud. 

Minho was a little quicker to ire than usual, grief-shortened fuse ignited by objectively minor inconvenience. “Who the fuck told you you could just barge in here unannounced?” he snapped at the young guard standing in the doorway. 

The guard winced, though she was braver than Jisung would’ve initially given her credit for, because she swiftly recentered herself and responded, “apologies, my king. But I bring urgent news, predominantly of interest to the prince of Han.” 

At that, Minho’s bristling demeanor ebbed, making way instead for apprehensive confusion. He exchanged a brief glance with Jisung, then addressed the guard again (this time, far more respectfully). “What is it?” 

“It’s Gang Dosi, sir. Shin Mireu’s forces have started to attack civilians for rebelling against his insurgency. The city’s residents are still partial to Han rule, which means--”

The realization struck Jisung like a hard kick to the chest. “If we take the city back and I assume the throne, Fleymlansa regains its fortified border with Samlimji via the amity treaty.” 

“Mireu won’t be able invade our territory anymore without having to go through Gang Dosi first,” added Minho. “He’d have to topple it all over again to get to us.” 

Jisung gulped down the sense of his heart having leapt its way into his throat. “And we could forge a formal alliance to better weather future attacks. With fae reinforcements, Gang Dosi wouldn’t stand alone as the only thing between Mireu and Fleymlansa like it did this time.” 

Minho returned his attention to the guard, renewed conviction in his eyes. “How many of our warriors are still in commission?” 

The guard grimaced in a blatantly ‘regret-to-inform’ manner. “Only about a handful, sir. Certainly not enough to withstand another battlefield’s worth of enemy soldiers.”

Minho’s nose wrinkled with disgruntlement. He sighed curtly and went quiet to think, gaze darting every which way as though he could find the solution to his predicament in among the rubble. 

“Then there’s only one thing that can be done,” he stated decisively, marching toward the door. “Send an aurachaser to notify the remaining Sol representatives that I’m leaving to go contain the situation in Gang Dosi. Magister Lee will assume command in my absence.” 

“Y-yes, my king.” The guard spun around and scuttled after him, leaving Jisung standing alone, blinking bewilderedly in the middle of the razed study. 

It eventually struck him that Minho’s intentions were--

Insane.

Yes. That’s the word he was looking for. 

Batshit, fucking insane. 

Panic rising, Jisung dashed out of the study to catch up to Minho, who was already on the other side of the bridge. He was still discussing matters with the guard; her aura radiated discomfort with Minho’s plan, but Jisung understood this dynamic very well. Minho was a king, and she a mere servant to the crown. Even if Minho was known to be kind and forbearing on a good day, today was not a good day, and he’d already snapped at her once. Openly questioning him would be unwise of her. 

So Jisung took it upon himself to speak up instead once the guard was sent off to carry out her assigned duties. If anyone could dissuade Minho from chucking himself recklessly into a battle, alone, on foreign land he was woefully unfamiliar with, it was Jisung. 

“Minho,” he said firmly. “You can’t expect to take on an entire enemy army all on your own.” 

“I’ve done it once already. I can do it again,” argued Minho, not pausing nor even sparing Jisung a glance as he continued on his way through the palace corridors. 

“Those invaders were standing in largely neat, organized lines with no one else to fight but you. You could use your flames without restraint.” Jisung was feeling himself lose his breath, struggling to keep up with Minho’s determined, erratic pace. “But this situation is different. How do you intend to neutralize Mireu’s forces without the civilians becoming collateral damage? You can’t just set the city ablaze and hope you only burn your enemies.” 

Minho rounded yet another corner and threw open a carved-wood door that led into what could only be assumed as a bedchamber (Jisung only scarcely registered the presence of their friends inside, each of them now gawking at the quarreling pair in stunned silence). “I know how to control my fire, Jisung.” 

“ Do you?” 

Minho froze, finally turning to look at Jisung, though the clear hurt in his eyes sparked by Jisung’s doubt in his capabilities made his previous lack of acknowledgement almost more preferable. 

“I-I just mean--” Jisung flicked his eyes toward their friends, suddenly feeling disquietingly spotlit. He softened the edges of his voice as he continued, “you haven’t had your fire since you were sixteen, Min. The sort of mastery you had back then may no longer be there after eight years of dormancy. I don’t want you getting overconfident and unintentionally hurting yourself or someone else because of it.” 

Minho narrowed his eyes. “I know how to control my fire,” he reaffirmed stubbornly. 

Whirling back around, he made for the large wardrobe across the way, rifling through tunics and pants galore until he found what he was seeking at the very back. He hauled out a mass of black, silver-plated armor that Jisung recognized as the aurachaser set he’d worn on the day he’d helped rescue Jisung’s parents. The damage to it had since been repaired.  

“Minho, please rethink this. I’m begging you,” said Jisung. “Don’t go to Gang Dosi alone. Wait until your warriors recover--until we can think of a reasonable battle strategy. Anything otherwise would be foolish and desperate and stupid.” 

Jisung thought he might’ve heard astonished exclamations of “Gang Dosi?!” erupt from their friends, but he was frankly too in-deep with Minho at the moment to care about filling them in. 

“I can’t afford to wait, Jisung.” Minho undid his waistbelt and peeled his tunic over his head, dropping them both carelessly to the floor. “ Fleymlansa can’t afford to wait. And moreover, if there’s anything I learned very well from the tragedies of today, it’s that a king should never force his people to fight his battles for him.” He was quick and efficient as he fastened the armor onto his torso, adjusting the position and snugness of its protective plating. “My warriors have done more than enough; I refuse to demand anything further of them.” 

Jisung made a face at that. “Do you even hear yourself? This is madness, Minho!”

“Shin Mireu has forced my hand!” 

Jisung recoiled, body tensing as though preparing to be struck, and everything went still. It was entirely instinctive, bred from years of slaps, smacks, and threats thereof following verbal admonishments from authority. He didn’t actually think Minho would ever hurt him in such a way-- never. But it seemed, even after months of freedom, he couldn’t help what’d been beaten into him from young childhood. 

He’d been on the receiving end of Minho’s fiery retorts before--hell, even just in the past day alone--but he’d yet to be yelled at by Minho. This was new.

He’d never taken well to yelling, no matter who it came from. 

Jisung wasn’t dull. He was well-aware of the pressure Minho was under and how little patience he currently had for discussions he found pointless. If it’d been anyone else trying to talk him down from this precarious ledge he obstinately insisted upon tumbling over, he’d have yelled at them all the same. Minho truly believed this was the only way out of their dire straits, and he was being forced to argue in favor of it even though he most likely didn’t even want to do it. 

Such a thing would be exhausting for anyone, but more-so for someone who’d lost too much and still had everything else he cared about to lose. 

Nonetheless, Minho recognized his disproportionate reaction and scowled at himself, instantly regretting the sharp, reprimanding cut of his voice. “I’m sorry, Jisung.” He was apologizing an awful lot today; Jisung almost wanted to tell him to stop, to quit worrying about it. He stepped forward and wrapped Jisung’s hands up in his own, pressing a chaste kiss to his forehead. “But I have to do this. And you’ll only get in my way if you follow me.” 

He backed away slowly, looking remorseful and shifty to a concerning degree. 

“Minho…” The warning tone--much like a parent would use when scolding a child--from Seungmin confirmed to Jisung that he wasn’t seeing things. 

It was bad enough that Minho looked like he was about ready to leap off the balcony in pursuit of Gang Dosi without another word, but it eerily seemed like he had something else up his sleeve. 

“Your foot is still healing. It could shatter all over again if you strain it too much,” fretted Felix. “It’d be a death sentence for you in the middle of a fight with no reinforcements.” 

“So don’t be daft,” added Seungmin, words dripping with wariness. “Whatever’s going on in Gang Dosi can wait.” 

Minho cast them a single, short glance, swallowing roughly. Then he met Jisung’s eyes, fearful, apologetic, and the second Jisung moved to take a step toward him, he thrust an arm out in front of him and snapped his fingers, sending a thin thread of white flame to the floor in front of Jisung’s feet. 

The flame raced around Jisung, surrounding him in a wide ring of fire. He staggered backwards, to the middle of the ring, where the heat was most tolerable. “Minho!” When he whipped his head back up, the last he saw of Minho was of him climbing onto the balcony railing and diving off to be caught midair by Soonie seconds later. “ Minho!” 

Jisung attempted to rush at the flames; they were definitely low enough for him to jump over, he thought. But he was proven sorely wrong as they flared higher and grew unbearably hotter, forcing him to scurry back to the center of the circle. “ Damn it!” 

“It’s no use, Jisungie. That’s an eternal flametrap. The only one who can dispel it is Minho,” said Felix. 

He and the rest of their friends had gathered around Jisung, just beyond the threshold of the trap. 

“What if I warded myself and stepped through?” asked Jisung. 

“You do remember him literally melting your ward earlier, don’t you?” Seungmin crutched himself closer, glowering down at the white flames; it appeared he found Minho’s choice of trap especially distasteful (Jisung wondered if he’d been a victim of this very trap before, given his and Minho’s rocky history). “Furyfire’s a bitch like that. That shit dissolves everything it touches.” 

“What about a spatial leap, then?” 

Seungmin’s face twisted as though he couldn’t believe the audacity of Jisung’s question. “You were lucky enough to get away with only a degloved arm the first time you tried that today. You really wanna find out just how much worse a rebounded spatial leap can be for an inexperienced whelp like you? Even if you came out of it alive, I’d take it upon myself to kill you for being a fucking idiot.” 

Hyunjin shot him a sideways glare and reached out to pinch the point of his ear between his knuckles. “ Watch it, Kim.” 

Seungmin hissed through his teeth, then flashed a wry grin. “Or what, Hwang? You gonna pin me down and show me my place?” 

Hyunjin pursed his lips, letting go of Seungmin’s ear to toss his fringe dramatically out of his eyes. “Read the room, jagi,” he sighed. “I’m not entertaining your insatiable powerplay fantasies right now.” 

…Jagi?!

Jisung blinked, utterly taken aback. And… Mildly abhorred, because what the fuck was Hyunjin saying about powerplay fantasies? Was he joking or was he serious? 

Jisung’s gaze slid to Felix, Chan, and Changbin; each of them wore some variation of exasperated expression--Felix with a scrunch in his freckled nose, Chan with his face planted in his hand, and Changbin with a disapproving shake of the head. It was clear they’d become accustomed to whatever the hell Seungmin and Hyunjin were to each other and were somewhat sick of their overly-crass exchanges. 

Whatever Seungmin and Hyunjin had together--it must’ve been going on for a lot longer than Jisung had originally thought. Which meant Jisung had to have been far more wrapped-up in Minho than he’d ever realized if he really hadn’t noticed any indication that two of his friends--one of which was his best friend-- were getting involved with one another. 

“C-can we maybe get back to worrying about Minho?” Jisung suggested, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Someone needs to stop him, and it obviously can’t be me.” 

“Frankly, Jisungie, I don’t think there’s anyone in the world that can stop him if you couldn’t even do it,” said Seungmin, demeanor returning to something more appropriately serious. “Our best hope, to my--” he shivered like a chill had torn up his spine-- “ grand dismay, is to send reinforcements to help him.” 

“Why is that dismaying?” Aside from the fact that Fleymlansa hardly had any such reinforcements to spare? Jisung got the sense that that wasn’t what Seungmin was referring to, though. 

“Because it means I have to make contact with someone I’d enjoy seeing just about as much as I enjoyed having my magic leached out of me,” grumbled Seungmin. 

“And who would that be?” prompted Chan. 

Seungmin didn’t answer with words. Instead, he delved his hand into the small, leather pouch he always had strapped to his hip and retrieved a little, folded-up piece of parchment. “Lix, you do the honors.” He flicked the parchment Felix’s way, and Felix scrambled inelegantly to catch it before it could wind up in the flames. “I don’t even have enough magic in me for a simple return cast.” 

Felix clicked his tongue at the demand, but acquiesced without argument. He unfolded the parchment, working the wrinkles out of it to the best of his ability, and set it down flat on the floor, revealing a return rune drawn in rust-red--blood. Then, he knelt down and pushed his palm into the rune, the magic flooding into it generating a familiar, blinding flash of light. 

Once Jisung’s eyes readjusted, he spotted the figure of a woman standing beside Felix. She wore the trademark silver and black aurachaser armor, except she sported a few additions to the getup--like a sleek, black cloak bearing the Sol emblem and a gold, palace brooch--that attested to a much higher rank than Jisung had seen among the aurachasers thus far. Her hair was long and ink-black, woven into regal braids accessorized with gold beads, and her eyes were a dark amber. She was older, around the late king’s age if Jisung had to guess. Objectively beautiful, too, if not a bit frightening with her sharp, hawkish gaze and obvious displeasure with having been summoned. 

“This better be good, boy.” She honed in on Seungmin without so much as a glimpse afforded in anyone else’s direction. As she took in the unfortunate state of him, all she did was snort, seemingly at his expense. “If you called me here hoping I’d hug you all better after failing this pathetically at your job, you’ll find yourself beyond disappointed.” 

Seungmin… Deflated? That didn’t seem right. Seungmin was strong-willed and brash and flippant to an infuriating degree. Whatever shit was dished at him, he dished it back tenfold. 

But he didn’t do any such thing this time. In fact, he couldn’t even look the woman in her eyes. There was no fight nor challenge in his stance. He was uncharacteristically meek. 

Leaning further onto his crutch, and, coincidentally, closer to Hyunjin, he stated finally, “we need your help, mother.” 

And suddenly, Seungmin, in all his faults and flaws, made a whole lot more sense. 

Chapter Text

“Mother?!” 

The collective exclamation from each of his human companions (minus Hyunjin) made Seungmin wince. 

Yes. Mother. Vile woman that she was. Viper whose venom stung with the pain of a thousand blades. Harvester of children’s happiness and cultivator of lifelong attachment issues. That’s Kim Nari. 

Seungmin could write a thousand-page tome on the things his mother had done to royally fuck him up, and he’d still need a sequel to account for it all. The absolute last thing he’d ever want to do was see her. Much less speak with her—much more less plead with her for her help. And yet, here he was. Shrunken like a kicked puppy, trembling beneath her cruel gaze, doing just that. 

He’d kept that return rune on him for years upon years in case of emergency and never once, even in situations of near-certain death, had he ever resorted to using it. Until now. 

Minho was going to owe him for this. Big time. 

“Oh.” His mother smiled crookedly. “Good to know I’m such a shameful skeleton in your closet that you won’t even hint at my existence in front of humans, son. I feel so loved.” 

“I learned from the best, didn’t I?” Seungmin dared to say, though the fear in his heart shook his voice—something she picked up on very astutely if the way she quirked a snide brow at him was any indication. 

“You really want to try that tone with me without an ounce of magic to defend yourself?” 

She barely advanced an inch before Hyunjin had his blade brandished at her. 

“Touch him and die, witch,” he spat, pressing the blade’s tip into the center of her throat just enough to indent the supple flesh. 

Protests and interjections from the other presences in the room, calling for Hyunjin to save his brashness for another day, only somewhat registered in Seungmin’s mind. He was far more occupied with the sheer volume of the deafening ring of alarm bells in his ears, the rapid pound of his heart, the dizziness looming. 

Nari went coolly still, narrowing her eyes. Even with a sword threatening her throat, she briefly glanced at Seungmin, something unnervingly calm in the fire of her irises. It was an indication that she hardly even regarded Hyunjin as a danger to her—dividing her attention like that. And… As much as Seungmin had come to admire Hyunjin’s capabilities, he’d be the first to admit his human would stand no chance if she were to retaliate. 

He’d step in to shield Hyunjin if… If he could make himself move. 

Damn it. He couldn’t move. 

Not with his mother peering at him as if one wrong step could mean Hyunjin’s demise with a snap of her fingers. 

Hyunjin knew about Nari--enough to understand how Seungmin became Seungmin and develop a desire to protect him from her, but not enough to understand how savage she truly was. 

She did not earn the title of the Crown’s Butcher for nothing. Nari was ruthless, vicious, and overall deadly in a manner even the coldest assassin would consider nauseating. She’d scarcely think twice about cutting the throat of a faerie, much less a human.

She drew in a steady breath, settled her stare back on Hyunjin, and slowly pushed the point of his blade away from her throat, revealing the tiniest trickle of blood in its wake. “Well, then,” she began with a haughty scoff, “looks like my boy at least had the decent judgment to court a human with big enough balls to compensate for his own lack thereof.” 

Hyunjin was quick to open his mouth for a retort that, no doubt, would’ve been impressively sharp-witted and masterfully-delivered had he not been silenced by a dismissive wave of Nari’s hand first. 

“Save it, blunt-ears. Unless you hope to squander any chance of me lending my aid to the fight in Gang Dosi.” 

A little crinkle formed between Hyunjin’s brows. “You already know about Gang Dosi?” 

Nari snorted. “An aurapath like me sees everything in a place loaded with magic. Just because I’ve been holed-up at the southern mountain training grounds doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly become ignorant to the happenings of the valley or our tumultuous border with Samlimji. Gang Dosi’s certainly in some shit, which I understand makes Fleymlansa especially vulnerable to future invasions.” She flitted her eyes, finally, to the human prince confined in Minho’s flametrap, a deep glower creasing her face. “But I don’t very much care to help a Han regain power. Nor do I care to clean up the mess King Minho has made of everything since invoking Maia’s Law.” 

“Minho did what his father couldn’t,” Jisung argued defensively. “Fleymlansa wouldn’t be yours to call home anymore if he hadn’t fought back.” 

A surge of energy flooded the room, then Nari vanished and reappeared within the bounds of the flametrap. She towered over Jisung, who instinctively recoiled out of shock. 

“I don’t entertain the sentiments of humans who know nothing of fae creed.” She took a step closer, towered higher, and Jisung could do little more than back away. “What Minho did was shameful, leading thousands of warriors and aurachasers—good men and women I poured years of my life into training to perfection—to their excruciating demise because he hadn’t the sense or humility to place his faith in a man who knows infinitely better. The high court’s assembly to discuss his invocation of Maia’s Law can’t come soon enough, but when it does, I hope to the gods he is stripped of every title he has ever held and kicked out on his ass to suffer eternal exile.” 

Jisung balled his hands into tight fists, lifting his chin in challenge. “Ask any of those surviving warriors and aurachasers you trained, and they’d all say they’d rather fight by Minho’s side than give up their ancestral homelands to vicious warmongers who violate their very way of life.” He squared his shoulders, taking a steady pace forward. “And since the court has not assembled and decided Minho’s fate yet, he is still your king, so how about you step off your high horse, honor the palace brooch you bear on your chest, and protect him like you were sworn to do.” 

Nari let out a sharp, maniacal laugh. “Lee Minho is not my king!” she shouted. “Lee Minho will never be my king. Haru is my king; he is the only man fit to lead this nation, and I will not stand by any other who would burn it all to the ground in record time with a dangerous incompetence not seen since the first Faerie War--” 

“Haru is dead, mother!” Seungmin surprised even himself with the outburst, but he was forging on like his mouth had a mind of its own before the fear that so often rendered him weak and silent could coil around his ribs and tie his tongue. “You’ve been clinging to that man in the hopes that he’d finally see you for thirty years, even when he was wrong--even when you knew he was wrong. You can make every damn excuse to justify your resentment and hatred of Minho, but that’ll never change the fact that the only thing he ever did to slight you was be born to a woman Haru actually loved.”

Nari’s lip twitched, and Seungmin’s heart lurched. 

Shit.

Yet, he kept speaking, unfiltered, mouth a wayward nuisance. “And, in spite of your vitriol against humans and halflings, somehow the biggest thing I ever did to deserve your scorn was earn the love and eternal companionship of a royal when you couldn’t. Well, boo-fucking-hoo, mother.” 

Why was he bringing his own grievances into this conversation? Come on, rein it in, Kim. If you’re gonna talk like you have a deathwish, make it count. 

He took a breath. “I am done catering my every waking hour to you; I’m done cowering and bending over backwards to convince you of what is right and wrong. Because this is so much bigger than you and me and the royal pains in our asses that too often cause us grief. This is everything. What happens in Gang Dosi today determines the fate of our millions of kin, our culture, heritage, and home. Now, I might’ve called you here to save Minho, but your aid in Gang Dosi would be saving our nation too. And I know, if there’s anything you truly care about in this world, it’s Fleymlansa.” He swallowed roughly, vision beating black around the edges. “So do your fucking job, mother—if not for Minho, then for your province and its people.”  

The air went frigid, as did his mother’s gaze as she honed it on him. Seungmin could count on a single hand the amount of times he’d taken the risk of standing up to Nari, and not a single one of those times had ended well for him. Once, when he was only nine, he rose up in defense of a fellow aurachaser trainee, who’d been falling behind in the grueling practice regimen Nari always set for her future warriors. And, while the young girl he’d defended incurred no consequence, he himself had been harshly slapped across the cheek and forced to do tree trunk punches all night in the bitter winter cold for his ‘insubordination.’ His knuckles had bled to the bone. 

Nari was a wildly impersonal woman. Seungmin never quite felt like her child; of course, that was never helped by her blatant hostility against him for his… Paternal genetic makeup. 

Hyunjin did point out, one night in the afterglow, that the universal animosity toward humans Seungmin had exhibited until recently seemed fueled much by self-loathing—a desire to be like everyone else around him with no chance of attaining such a thing. And, as much as Seungmin insisted there were enough reasons to despise humankind from a fae perspective (which there were; don’t get him wrong), he’d silently admitted to himself that night that Hyunjin very well may have been right. 

No one but Nari knew Seungmin wasn’t full-blooded, though enough hints had been dropped in vulnerable candor between himself and his unexpected lover that he was certain Hyunjin suspected it. He considered himself lucky that his tainted blood didn’t dilute his fae features, energies, or abilities; he couldn’t imagine how much worse his mother would’ve treated him if he’d presented like most other halflings, radiating human-adjacent aura like a beacon for hazing. How much worse everyone would’ve treated him… 

For all intents and purposes, he was full-fae. Even the strongest aurapath wouldn’t be able to detect the humanness in him. Still, just knowing of his ‘dirty human blood,’ Nari had always treated him as lesser, weaker, worth hardly more than the mud on her boots. 

It used to deeply trouble Seungmin. Now, he found a peculiar sort of strength and security in his unlikely companions—humans he, too, once regarded as mud. 

Perhaps that security is what led him to say things he ordinarily wouldn’t so much as look in the direction of saying to his mother. Perhaps he had faith that they would protect him somehow, keep him safe (though, for their sake, he would never ask them to go up against Nari in his defense). 

His mother vanished again, spatial leaping from within the flametrap to her original place just across from Seungmin. 

He held his breath, but otherwise didn’t react, feigning valor. 

“Bold words for a useless, magicless brat.” 

Seungmin’s jaw tensed, teeth grinding painfully against each other. “Yeah, that’s right, mother. I lost my magic. Because I was here, defending our homeland. I was the one who had to face an invasion force equipped with anti-fae weaponry never seen before in known history. And where were you?” His voice was pitched, strained, and he realized it was because he was fighting back angry tears. “If you really wanna have a conversation about who’s useless here, take a good, long look in the fucking mirror. Have you considered that, maybe, if you’d been here, Haru might still be alive?”  

The room went dead-silent. Nobody moved, nor spoke, nor breathed. The air was still. 

Something strange flickered in Nari’s eyes. Not dangerous, necessarily, though it still rendered Seungmin cautious, wary of what potentially was to come. Nari wasn’t known for expressing sorrow, guilt, or regret, but in that instant, she looked exactly that—sorrowful, guilty, regretful… 

She pulled in a long, measured breath, then spun around on her heels. “You have my aid,” she stated decisively. “But I better not see you lot lazing around in the safety of this room. If I’m fighting, you’re fighting.” 

And with that, she disappeared. 

Everyone seemed to puff out a collective sigh of relief, the tension that’d been sizzling in the air dissipating. 

“Suddenly, Seungmin and his issues make a lot of sense,” commented Changbin, earning himself a series of exasperated glares. He cleared his throat awkwardly, ducked his head, and said nothing more. 

“When do you think she’ll have her forces ready?” asked Chan amid the cumbersome quiet. 

“A matter of minutes. She’s not the type to waste time—except, clearly, when she feels it necessary to belabor me.” Seungmin scanned over the faces of his companions, silently resenting the not-so-subtle pity shining through in their attentive expressions. “You all should get going now. Lix can escort you to the outskirts of Gang Dosi.” 

“What about you?” Changbin asked tentatively. 

Seungmin resisted the urge to make some dry response or another along the lines of ‘oh, well, I briefly considered taking me and my crutch on a little, hobbling stroll around the raging battlefield but thought better of it’ and instead said with a gesture toward Jisung, “somebody’s gotta keep Prince Reckless here from living up to his name. Though, I make no promise that I can stop him if he gets too tenacious. I’m officially disabled now, so I hope you’ll understand if he decides to botch a spatial leap to Gang Dosi and winds up with his kidneys dangling outside his body or something.” 

Following another beat of quiet and pitying stares, Seungmin rolled his eyes, forced a smile, and added, “I’ll be fine. This isn’t my first experience being out of commission. Go.” 

With obvious reluctance, Chan and Changbin gathered around Felix. Hyunjin lagged back for a short moment, taking Seungmin’s hand and squeezing it tight, then letting go to join the huddle. When his eyes met Seungmin’s for a final time, Seungmin gave a reassuring nod in hopes that it’d help quell Hyunjin’s worry over him and reset his focus on the battle ahead. 

Somehow, with a heavy, aching sensation in his chest, Seungmin hadn’t realized just how attached to him Hyunjin had become over the past several weeks. He wondered if… Had there been no outsider eyes to witness it, Hyunjin would’ve kissed and held him rather than lending a simple squeeze of the hand that left so much-- too much more to be desired. 

As Felix departed with their human companions in tow, Seungmin supposed he wouldn’t have an answer to the elusive question of Hyunjin’s feelings toward him until the battle for Gang Dosi was over and he was safe again. 

If… He was safe again… 

“Even with your mother’s help,” Jisung began after a long, uneasy pause, “what are the odds Minho makes it out of this?” 

Seungmin frowned, finding a sort of haunting poetry in the image of a headstrong man desperately fearing for his lover caged within flames of that lover’s own making--the protective, soaring eagle clipped by what it most cherishes. 

“Furies may be incredibly powerful, but their explosive casts fatigue them quickly,” he said solemnly. “If Minho faces that battlefield alone for too long, in as emotionally-compromised a state as he’s in, he could end up dangerously fatiguing himself before he can fight off all of Mireu’s forces. He could run out of usable magic surrounded by enemies, at which point… I’m not sure even my mother could save him.” 

Jisung’s lips pressed into a tight, fine line. He ducked his head, hair falling in gnarled, grimy ropes over his eyes. His chest expanded and contracted shakily, then once more with eerie resolve. 

Lifting his head back up and peering straight out toward the balcony just beyond the flames, he declared, “I’m getting out of here one way or another, Seungmin. You can’t stop me.” 

Seungmin could argue. He could make witty banter and provide sardonic counterpoints and threaten until he was blue in the face. But he knew… 

He knew nothing he said would dissuade Jisung. Nothing ever did. Especially where Minho was involved. 

“I know,” he said, leaning further on his crutch almost as a sobering reminder to himself that he was powerless here. “Just… The magic residues the flametrap emits will obscure your spatial visualization if you’re not extremely careful. Even Felix wouldn’t have been able to safely get you out of there. Freely entering and exiting the bounds of a cast like this requires master-level spatial abilities--something you don’t have…” 

Jisung fixed him in a glassy stare--revealing of his dread, uncertainty, trepidation. “I have to try.” 

Seungmin felt his throat constrict. “I know that, too.” 

Jisung took a deep breath and closed his eyes, retreating to his mind in preparation for a spatial leap that likely-- so very likely--would kill him. Severely disfigure him at best. 

Seungmin hated that he couldn’t physically do anything to stop him. Not only because he’d be watching someone he’d shockingly come to call a good friend die or edge himself too close to it, but because he’d be losing Minho too. It didn’t matter how much Minho might intuitively understand Seungmin was in no position to stop Jisung; no amount of logic or cold truth could detract from the fact that Jisung will have perished on his watch. 

Of course, this was all assuming Minho even made it out of Gang Dosi alive in the first place. But Seungmin only had room to preemptively mourn the probable loss of one friend at the moment. 

The longer Jisung stood there in complete, concentrated silence, the more panic crept in and suffocated Seungmin, drowning him--the more he wanted to throw himself through the flames and tackle Jisung to the ground, charred burns and melted flesh be damned. 

But then--

Then a sudden gust of air surged through the room, ushering in the floaty, urgent arrival of a gray, white-footed dragon. 

“Dori?!” exclaimed Jisung, lowering his arms--which he’d used to shield himself from the gust and subsequent flare of the flames--and blinking in wide-eyed disbelief. “W-why—? Why are you here? You should be helping Minho. What’re you doing wasting time like this--?” 

“Jisung,” interjected Seungmin, drawing the prince’s bewildered gaze. “Dragonskin is impervious to fire.” 

“What…?” Jisung’s brow scrunched, his attention returning to Dori as the dragon stepped closer and closer to the flames, until he passed effortlessly through them. 

A broad grin spread across Seungmin’s face. “He is helping Minho,” he said, “by helping you.”  

Dori crouched and ducked his head slightly—a gesture of invitation. And Jisung just continued to stand there, stunned. Much like a hasteless idiot. 

“What’re you waiting for?” asked Seungmin, half-scolding. “Now you’re the one wasting time.” 

“I-I know, I’m sorry. It’s just…” Jisung eyed Dori warily. “He doesn’t have a riding saddle like Soonie does.” 

“Then you better hold on tight.” 

“Hold onto what? His skin is made of smooth, slippery scales.” 

“His neck’s not too wide to wrap your arms around.” 

“Yeah, but I don’t wanna hurt him!” 

Dori had apparently grown impatient in the time it’d taken for Jisung and Seungmin to stumble into a bickering match, because the next thing the dragon did was bonk Jisung upside the head with the tip of his wing. 

“ Ow! What the hell?” Jisung grimaced and rubbed soothingly at his head, shooting Dori a stern glare. “Well, fuck me I guess for caring about your wellbeing.” 

Dori huffed vexedly, repeating his earlier gesture of invitation, this time with firmer insistence. 

Jisung wilted in defeat. “This really doesn’t seem any safer than taking my chances with a master-level spatial leap,” he grumbled under his breath, trudging forward and gracelessly struggling to mount the dragon’s back. 

“Maybe, but falling to your death is a lot more pleasant a way to go than accidentally making your insides your outsides,” Seungmin pointed out. 

Jisung scowled. “Minho’s gonna owe me so much after this is over.” 

“Hey, get in line and wait your turn. He owes me first for braving a meeting with my hag of a mother to save his sorry ass.” 

“You got me there.” Jisung looked Seungmin’s way one last time, conviction etched into the lines of his face. “He’ll pay his debt to you. I’ll make sure of it,” he promised. 

It was his way of assuring Seungmin he’d bring Minho back. Alive, at least. Safe, preferably. 

Seungmin felt the corners of his mouth tug into a faint smile. He jerked his head toward the balcony. “Get out of here already.” 

Jisung nodded, leaning down and securing his grip around Dori’s neck. A moment later, the dragon pounced high up and over the flames; the fire flared in reaction to its captive fleeing its threshold and managed to graze Dori’s legs, but it wasn’t fast enough to reach Jisung’s position atop his back. Without wasting another second, Dori dashed out to the balcony and leapt into the air, unfolding his wings to carry Jisung off toward the pillars of smoke in the distance. 

And then there was one… 

Seungmin glanced around himself, taking in his aloneness. His uselessness.

It struck him, then, that this was the first time he wouldn’t be there to protect Minho when he needed it. 

The knowledge left him feeling without purpose. He hadn’t realized until now just how much he relied on Minho being reckless and him being there to catch the prince whenever he fell to fulfill his life. 

He knew it was impossible, but he was determined from then on to find a way to restore his magic, despite the futility such efforts would entail. 

Protecting Minho-- no… 

Protecting the people he cared about and loved--that’s what he was made to do. That’s what he’d sworn his life to do. 

He’d be damned if he’d ever have to sit on the sidelines and watch from a distance while his family fought for survival ever again.

Chapter Text

Jisung had been expecting at least mild terror when he made the decision to mount Dori’s back and take to the sky. But that was because he’d foolishly operated under the assumption that he’d have enough grip strength in his weakened arm to help him keep a hold on Dori as they soared through the air, turbulent winds whipping at and jostling them about. 

His grasp was slipping. It had been since the moment they’d left the ground. And it was all he could do to squeeze his eyes shut and cling for dear life around Dori’s lithe neck, his healthy arm compensating desperately for the frailty of the other. 

“I can’t hold on much longer, Dori!” he shouted into the stormy gale. 

In response, he felt the dragon take a steady dive downward, causing him to let out an undignified shriek and scrabble futilely for better purchase. “Are you trying to kill me?!” 

A sharp thwack to his back from Dori’s pointed tail was his answer--an impish expression of irritability.

“ Ow-- would you quit doing that?” 

Another thwack. This one seemed more insistent than irritated, as if to get Jisung’s attention. 

Reluctantly, and with no small amount of trembling fear, he cracked his eyes open. In a matter of seconds, he had to squint against the air’s peculiar sting, choking out a cough as Dori took them through a thick plume of black smoke. 

Once it began to thin out, he blinked away the scratchiness in his eyes to set his sights on the ground below. His breath was stolen yet again, but not by smoke. Rather, it was the scene of his city razed by unyielding fire, the forest beyond its walls reduced to charcoal and ashes, the field to the west littered as far as the eye could see with both enemy and Gang Dosi corpses--

And Minho, standing on that battlefield, casting white flame after white flame, unrestrained, scarcely controlled. His aim was true, and he was striking his targets in broad swathes without fail, but he was conserving nothing. He was only concerned with being as destructive as possible in as little time as possible. 

He was running himself dry. And fast. 

Jisung was ready to steer Dori in the direction of the field, toward Minho, not an ounce of hesitation on his conscience. It wasn’t even a question what his goal was. 

Then the stifling screams from within the city walls started to reach his ears, chilling him down to the very marrow of his bones. And, suddenly, the only thing on his conscience was hesitation. His gaze slipped eastward, finding civilians cornered and terrorized in alleys, drowned and dumped in the waterways, beheaded and hung in the palace square. They weren’t soldiers. None of them were. Instead, the soldiers were all gathered around the Sulyeon Palace, standing in a tight blockade that was slowly getting backed toward the walls by dense enemy advances. 

It didn’t make sense. Why were the soldiers so vehemently guarding the palace when there were thousands of civilians in far more urgent need of their aid? It wasn’t like the palace was some sacred symbol; it’d been burned and built back up again dozens of times before in countless other wars. The only reason to guard the palace like this was if… 

Jisung’s heart promptly leapt into his throat, alongside the acid-burn of bile, vision going black around the edges. 

“They’re not dead yet,” he whispered to himself. 

Why would Mireu claim they were dead if they weren’t? What was there to gain in lying about murdering the king and queen of Gang Dosi? 

“And if I’m lucky, my strategy might just compel you to come to me on your own.”

Jisung gritted his teeth, jaw tensing painfully. 

So that’s what the Alchemist was playing at. 

A little convoluted, don’t you think, Shin Mireu?  

He glanced back at Minho, who was still setting enemies ablaze without relent--without restraint. A ticking clock down to its final minutes. 

Jisung returned his gaze to the palace, watching the soldiers fruitlessly defending it imprisoned further still by a cage of enemies brandishing spears their way. 

Mireu intended to make Jisung choose. 

His lover and the future of the fae people, or his parents and the future of his own kingdom? 

The choice should be easy. After all, what had his parents and this gods-forsaken kingdom ever done besides use and abuse him? Fleymlansa wasn’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was the first place in which he’d ever belonged. Minho wasn’t perfect, but he was Jisung’s, and to him, that was perfection in its own right. 

The choice should be easy. 

Yet it wasn’t. 

Because saving Gang Dosi was ensuring the future of the fae people; if the city were to be retaken, emergency alliance negotiations between the Fleymlansan delegation and the king and queen of Gang Dosi could fortify the border against Mireu’s attempts to penetrate it again. If Jisung chose Minho and let his parents be killed, there was absolutely no guarantee that, even if the city were still able to be reclaimed, the people of Samlimji would follow Jisung’s command. Many would be able to put two and two together and angrily question what made Jisung choose a fae prince over his own parents and the rightful rulers of Gang Dosi. It was hardly a recipe for success as far as ascensions to the throne were concerned. 

Jisung bit his lip so hard it bled. 

Saving the king and queen of Gang Dosi was what would save Fleymlansa. Or at least buy the nation time to strategize its defenses and coordinate with other fae provinces.

But it also meant abandoning Minho to fend for himself in return. 

“You strike me as just the right kind of weak that would forsake millions to save the few closest to you.”

Minho was the one closest to Jisung in this case—no doubt in his mind. If Jisung were to go to Minho, he’d be every bit as predictable as Mireu thought he was, and being predictable in battle was a one-way ticket to losing the war. 

Minho was handling himself. He was being reckless and he only had just so much time before he drained himself of his reserves and left himself defenseless. But right now, he was handling himself. 

The palace and the city’s worth of innocent civilians, on the other hand… 

Jisung swallowed down the dry lump in his throat, shutting his eyes and taking a breath. “Looks like you’ll be joining Minho on your own, Dori,” he said, resigned. “Swing by the palace and drop me off there. Don’t wait up for me; just leave me and go help Minho, got it?” 

That earned him yet another sharp smack from Dori’s tail. 

“Hey!” snapped Jisung. “I’m not arguing with you on this. You know damn-well this is not a decision I wanted to make. But it’s what must be done; we can’t retake a city if there’s nothing left to take back.” 

Dori grunted petulantly. For several seconds, he stayed on course to join Minho, and then he abruptly switched directions, aiming for the palace. 

Once Jisung readjusted his grip—which had slipped amid the dragon’s jerky motion—he took another deep breath. “Thank you…” 

Dori gave nothing in reply, though Jisung sensed a marked dissatisfaction in his aura. 

They came up on the palace swiftly, Dori weaving expertly between towers of thick smoke and hot embers. Flying through the city made tuning out the sounds of horror from below a further impossible task, but Jisung couldn’t allow them to cloud his mind—to tempt his desire to rescue nameless innocents. 

Prioritizing who needed saving felt innately evil, like inviting a parasitic worm into his chest and permitting it to feed on what remained of the light in his soul. 

But saving the citizens wouldn’t be saving the city--not until the king and queen were saved first. 

“Don’t land anywhere,” instructed Jisung, repositioning himself so he was sat in a precarious crouch atop Dori’s back, thighs readying to pounce. “It’ll be safer this way.” A sentiment which was strongly supported by the haywire commotion surrounding the palace; there wasn’t any place for Jisung to dismount properly without the risk of being swept up in the midst of a violent flurry of swords and spears. 

As Dori obliged his request and stayed circling around the palace, Jisung assessed the exterior for reasonable ways in. He’d prefer to enter as close to where his parents were being kept, but getting a good sense for their auras to pinpoint their location was proving to be a rather fruitless task. He still wasn’t yet adept enough in his aurapathy to detect the weak signatures of humans at a distance, much less when his surroundings were in a state of utter havoc like this. 

Either he was going to have to guess, or… 

He narrowed his eyes, peering through the windows as Dori swept him past them. Upon rounding toward the back of the main tower, Jisung glimpsed the hazy sight, obscured by the reflection of flickering flames in the window, of the king and queen bound and chained to the floor of the throne room, forced into a knelt, yielding position. Mireu was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t lurking nearby. 

Steeling his resolve, Jisung adjusted his footing on Dori’s back, took a deep breath, and leapt straight for the window. For a short, panicky moment, his arms flailed about wildly in the air, at a loss for what to do. Quickly enough, though, he was able to regain command of his limbs, casting a shield of bluish magic just in time to guard himself as he came crashing through the glass. 

Admittedly, it was a little inelegant, his feet stinging on impact and his legs stumbling beneath him before he could regain his balance. It was loud, too; if Mireu was nearby, he’d have heard it from a mile away, not that Jisung was even attempting an element of surprise anyway (though perhaps he should’ve considered it). 

“ Jisung?” 

He met his mother’s round, startled eyes, then his father’s, and wasted not another second in scuttling over to them. “No time for pleasantries. Where’s Mireu?” he asked, hastily summoning red-hot magic to his palms and grasping hold of the chains to melt them down. 

“Who’s Mireu?” asked the king, and Jisung tried not to think about the fact that this was the first time he was hearing his father’s voice in over a year. 

Could be the last… A foreboding inner voice warned him. 

He shook his head free of the troubling thought. “The man responsible for invading the city and capturing you,” he clarified. 

“The one with strange tattoos littering his arms?” said the queen. 

“That’s him.” Once the chains were sufficiently hot and malleable, Jisung did a single, hard yank on them. They broke free from the floor, releasing the king and queen. Their shackles still remained, but that was hardly a problem in need of solving at the moment; they could be severed after everyone was reasonably safe. 

“We don’t know where he went. Once he had us chained, he left,” said the king. 

“How long have you two been chained?” 

“Hours. Maybe even half a day. The guards have been so busy trying to defend the palace from the outside that they haven’t even noticed we were imprisoned.” 

“Mireu hasn’t returned here since the Fleymlansan invasion?” Jisung muttered, mostly to himself, his brows pinched fretfully. 

What if he was wrong in his assessment of Mireu’s strategy? What if his intention hadn’t been to lure Jisung to the palace? In that case, Jisung had no idea what the Alchemist’s plan with the king and queen was, and that made the circumstances far scarier than they were originally. Now, Jisung understood it was possible he hadn’t accurately predicted Mireu’s tactics. 

Now, not only was Jisung wholly predictable, but Mireu was wholly unpredictable. 

Fuck. 

Jisung wore a brave face, however, unrevealing of his bothersome revelations as he pulled his parents up to their feet and began to escort them toward the back courtyard. He remembered it being less inundated with violent battle than the rest of the palace exterior when Dori had flown him past it. 

“Fleymlansa was invaded as well?” asked the queen. 

“Hours ago,” Jisung confirmed. “But it was unsuccessful. Minho was able to dispose of the invasion force, but not without the valley taking a massive hit to its defenses. Fleymlansa’s weak right now; it won’t be able to withstand another invasion unless Gang Dosi is saved and a formal alliance is formed against Shin Mireu.” 

“Is that the only reason you came back? So Fleymlansa could keep its amity with our kingdom?” 

Jisung paused, glancing his father’s way. His heart panged at the sullen look on the king’s face. “I thought you were dead,” he answered earnestly. “I came back expecting to have to save the city as its king.” 

“You…” the queen started, puzzlement clear in her voice. “Are you not of Fleymlansa now? Why return to a province you don’t consider yours anymore?” 

“Funny you should ask that, mother--” when Jisung stepped around the bend at the end of the corridor and was met with the sight of two invaders skulking through the hall, he acted swiftly and with deadly precision. He conjured forth a pair of translucent throwing knives, hurling them into the throats of the two men; they came to a gurgling, writhing demise within seconds of falling to the floor. “Because I seem to recall it wasn’t me who decided this province was no longer mine.”

The queen either elected to skirt around the topic altogether or was hardly paying attention to Jisung’s remark in the wake of his cursory dispatch of enemy men--likely the latter, because her next words were, “dear gods, how can you just do such a thing without any forethought?” 

Jisung almost found it amusing that his parents--or, at least his mother--would find the act of killing barbaric when there were infinitely more vicious things that took place in the name of Samlimji’s monarchy, both presently and historically. 

“They were members of an enemy force that’s currently terrorizing innocent civilians all over the city. What else would you have had me do?” 

“I-I don’t know…” 

Jisung took a breath, sparing a soft look toward his mother. “I know you never taught me to kill--always did what you could to shelter me from it. But the world is much scarier beyond the walls of Gang Dosi; I had to learn that the hard way, and I’m a stronger man for it.” 

His mother was silent in reply, though she did adopt a small glimmer of a smile. Jisung thought it was an odd reaction to his blunt explanation until he sensed something like sentimentality in her aura and came to the conclusion that he was somehow inspiring pride of him within her. 

He felt a warm, firm hand lay upon his shoulder—unmistakably his father’s. “It seems like it was just yesterday that I was swatting bugs away for you and smiting the monsters that hid under your bed at night, son. It’s hard to believe you’ve grown up to be so resilient.” 

They didn’t have time for this heart-to-heart, truly. But Jisung just couldn’t help indulging in the praise, despite the tinge of bitterness festering in the back of his mind with regard to the root of his so-called ‘resilience.’ 

Yeah, well, being bound and lashed on repeated occasion while my parents passively watched tends to toughen a man up. 

Valiantly, Jisung refrained from speaking the snide words out into the open. Instead, he simply offered a smile and jutted his chin toward the double-doored courtyard entrance at the far end of the hall. “Come on,” he said. “We should keep moving.” 

They didn’t make it more than a step. 

“Leaving so soon?” 

Jisung nearly faceplanted with the sudden nature of his stillness, chills ripping up and down his spine as he registered the dreadful void-like presence he’d come to recognize as Mireu. He spun on his heels, protectively corralling his parents behind him. 

“I will admit…” Mireu came prowling out of the shadows, twirling a pair of small, red ward-blades between his fingers. “It did come as a bit of a surprise--your choice to abandon dear Minho on the battlefield. But, then again, I did leave a tempting loose end you simply couldn’t ignore, didn’t I?” 

Despite the actually quite grave circumstances, Jisung had to restrain the urge to roll his eyes. “Right. You’re the epitome of clever, claiming my parents to be dead as a means of luring me here once I inevitably ascertained you’d lied. I envy your wit.” The tone of his voice was about as dry and sardonic as could be, utterly unamused. 

“Oh, I am quite clever. Because, you see…” Mireu loosed the blades, and all Jisung could think to do in the moment was recoil and prepare to be impaled--but impalement never came. 

What did come was a dull thud from behind him. Hesitantly, he peeled his eyes open, fixing his gaze blearily on the sight of the king and queen strewn in gasping heaps upon the floor. Syrupy crimson gushed from deep wounds in their chests--wounds which were perpetrated by blades that seemed to have materialized out of existence on impact. That was the especially nasty feature of projectiles conjured by ward magic; their swift disappearance made the chance of surviving their wounds rather dismal. 

Not for the first time that day, it felt as though the world had come to a skidding halt. The only thing that did move was the pool of scarlet that grew ever-larger around his parents’ bodies with every passing second. 

Just faintly, beyond the deafening, ringing rush of blood in his ears, Jisung heard Mireu say, “the king and queen couldn’t die until you were here to witness it.” 

Jisung’s nails cut into his palms, gaze slowly, darkly drifting back toward Mireu. 

“Hmm. Curious,” commented Mireu. “I thought you would cry at least. I mean, I know they put you through hell and all, but they’re still your parents. Do you honestly feel nothing?” 

The aim of the words alone seemed to be to ignite shame in Jisung, but paired with the jeering tone so venomously coiled around each and every syllable, it was obvious the Alchemist’s goal was to taunt. Seek a specific reaction. Draw forth something ugly from within Jisung. 

But frankly? Jisung… Actually did feel nothing. His mind was devoid of whatever anguish, grief, and turmoil he thought he’d experience upon seeing the rapidly-impending demise of his parents. Emotionally, there truly was nothing to be felt. 

Physically, on the other hand--

He felt… Imbued with an odd power so unlike his yet identical in its own haunting sort of way. Like it’d always been a part of him, lying in wait for the opportune moment to come surging free. Something akin to muscle memory, but for magic. 

Mireu narrowed his eyes dubiously at Jisung. “You do, don’t you?” he asked, voice quietened, inexplicably tensed. “Feel nothing?” 

Jisung didn’t answer--just stood rooted in his place, watching Mireu blankly. 

“Well, then,” huffed Mireu, “figures my sister would make this as difficult as possible. Even in death, the wench haunts me--” 

Jisung had the Alchemist’s throat clamped in his grasp in a matter of a single, fatally-precise spatial leap. “Shut. Up.” 

Mireu gasped for air, eyes bulging from their sockets, hands scrabbling uselessly at Jisung’s outstretched arm. And Jisung didn’t budge; ordinarily, he’d feel remorse or hesitation in the face of harming another person, even if that person wholeheartedly deserved it. Now, he watched Mireu struggle for breath by his doing with just as much hollow blankness as he had when listening to the man attempt to taunt him. Jisung’s heart didn’t race or ache, nor did his skin prickle with shameful heat or frightful goosebumps. Everything was entirely steady within him, energies flowing laminar and unperturbed throughout his body, mind emptied of burden. 

He felt unstoppable. 

Perhaps he was. 

Mireu scrabbled some more until he seemed to finally remember his nature amid his panic-driven flailing and took firm hold of Jisung’s wrist. His hand glowed with the bluish light of Jisung’s own magic as it was sapped from its reservoir. 

Jisung had no choice but to relinquish his iron-grip, sending Mireu staggering. He shook his head and rapidly blinked his eyes to clear away the sudden fog in his vision--one of the earliest signs of magic fatigue. 

A little drop of blood plopped to the floor just beside the toe of his boot; he went to wipe his nose, inspect the resulting stain upon his sleeve… 

Right. 

Vesselrot. 

“Gods damn it all, Han! Now look what you made me do,” grumbled Mireu, voice hoarse from injury. “That’s valuable magic you’ve just forced me to drain from you. I need you alive, you know.” 

Jisung had been through this song and dance before. Mireu needed him alive for some mysterious purpose, yada-yada. 

Whatever. 

Frankly, Jisung didn’t care about all that. Not anymore. 

He only knew that he had a goal of eliminating Mireu. What did it matter whether or not he died accomplishing it or not? 

Jisung summoned a tidal wave of magic to his palms and shoved them into the ground. Two large, translucent spikes came bursting up through the cobbled floor, sending rocky debris flying, their deadly points angled straight for Mireu’s torso. 

Mireu leapt backwards, not with any amount of elegance. He narrowly escaped being pierced through the thorax, but he was nowhere near agile enough to avoid a deep gash to the upper arm. He cried out, almost tumbling off his feet. 

Managing to regain balance, he spun around and sprinted off down the corridor. 

Jisung wouldn’t let him get far, employing another spatial leap to cut off his route. He conjured a slew of ward-knives next, launching them all at once. 

Mireu threw himself to the floor but still got struck in three superficial places. 

Jisung took the opportunity to materialize a set of blue chains, binding Mireu’s wrists and ankles to the ground. Mireu thrashed against the imprisonment, eyes wild with alarm, chest heaving frantically. 

“All that big talk like you’re some kind of god and this is all you have to show for yourself?” Jisung summoned another ward-knife, readying it to spear through the center of Mireu’s chest. “You’re nothing on your own.” 

Just as he moved to plunge the blade into Mireu’s sternum, his vision went black around the edges, his head spinning dizzyingly, and the flow of his magic faltered, nearly causing his knees to buckle beneath him. When the chains and ward-knife flickered out of existence, Mireu wasted no time in scrambling up to his feet, plucking a vial from his belt, and crushing it into a slurry of glass shards and blood in his palm. He rushed to smear it over one of the runes tattooed on his arm, and then he vanished without a trace. 

Jisung teetered a bit on his feet, balance weakening, while his vision blurred and pulsed with his heartbeat. On the floor beneath him, drops of blood plashed from his nose and eyes--his ears, too, felt sticky with trickles of red. 

At the very least, it seemed his magic stores weren’t as crippled as they’d been when he’d fallen victim to the poachers’ magiseverance hex months ago; his lungs didn’t spasm or crackle with the effort of moving air through sludgy clots, nor did his abdomen seize up while blood filled the space his organs had previously enjoyed unhindered. 

But Jisung was, by no means, in good shape right now. The blood leaking from his face streamed freely and rapidly, and opaque bruises began to bloom in droves beneath the skin of his arms and hands--likely in other places he couldn’t readily see as well. 

He might not bleed out, but he was in no position to continue a fight he had to win--for the fae, for the innocents of Gang Dosi, for his friends…

For Minho. 

A lone teardrop joined the pool of blood at his feet.

Jisung was… Feeling again. 

He shook his head again--a vain attempt to clear the fog of bloodloss. His gaze honed in on the still heaps of stained, royal robes on the other end of the corridor--nary a breath from one, while the rise and fall in the other was shallow and feeble. 

A sensation like ice-water rushed down the back of Jisung’s neck, all the way to the tips of his toes. 

“Eomma, appa…” He took a step, nearly collapsed but managed to keep himself upright. Then he rushed with weary, inelegant haste to his parents’ side. Along the way, his legs gave under his weight, and he had to crawl the remaining distance, uncaring of the indignity of how it must’ve looked. 

“Appa!” He shook the king’s shoulder, desperate for something-- anything in response, even despite the cloudiness in his open, unblinking eyes, the gray palor in his skin, the sea of blood that’d seeped into the stone beneath him. “Appa, please.” 

Tears cascaded like rivers down Jisung’s face, his shaking of the king’s limp body slowing to a halt. He wilted in anguished defeat, quiet sobs wracking his form. 

For so long, it’d been just Jisung and his mother, the king’s obligation to allies taking him on long, faraway travels for months, sometimes years at a time. Even still, Jisung had always felt closer to him than he did his mother, and it’d been an especially tough decision to walk away from Gang Dosi before he could at least say goodbye to his father. This was the first time they’d truly met in what felt like forever, and within minutes of reunion, he’d been taken from Jisung. Permanently. 

Jisung may have harbored some firmly justifiable resentment toward his father, but he’d never once wanted him dead. If anything, he’d always sought his guidance and affections more than he did his mother’s, because at least the king had never been afraid to express guilt for the abuse he’d allowed Jisung to suffer. Jisung’s father never hid behind a stone-cold wall, touting lines about ‘necessary sacrifices’ like his mother so often did. 

It was complicated, but it was as safe as it got in the environment in which Jisung was raised. 

Now it was gone. 

“Ji…Sung…” 

Jisung froze, sniffles ceasing. He hauled his head back up to see his mother peering distantly at him, a cloudy haze threatening to dull the light in her eyes as it had in the king’s. 

Jisung scrubbed the blend of tears and blood from his eyes and shuffled along the floor over to the queen. She, too, was lying in a vast ocean of scarlet, the ward-knife wound in her chest oozing steadily. Her ribs expanded and contracted with frailty as she met Jisung’s gaze. 

A small, sullen smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, tears of her own welling. “My boy…” she whispered, expending far too much effort to reach up and caress Jisung’s cheek. “You’re bleeding.” 

Jisung’s chest and throat felt constricted, as through wrapped unyieldingly in barbed-wire. “I’m sick, eomma. Remember?” He took his mother’s hand away from his face, setting it, instead, in his lap, where he played absently with her fingers. It gave him an excuse not to watch death actively encroach on the remaining vitality in her face. “I always have been.” 

“You’re strong, too.” 

Jisung frowned, deflating. He was so tired; he wanted to give up. “I’m not.” 

“You have to be to protect those you love--the one you love.” The queen dragged in a harsh, suffering breath. “Is that not why you really came back to Gang Dosi?” 

Jisung stared at her, wordless. He hated for his intentions to be boiled down only to the selfish desire to shield Minho from harm, but the reality of it was… That is what he was there for. First and foremost. 

His mother stole her hand back to unclip the glass waterlily pendant from her hair. “You take this,” she said, placing the trinket into Jisung’s palm, curling his fingers around it, “and when the time feels right, you gift it to that beautiful fae boy. You devote your lives to each other before the gods, your friends--your family…” Her eyes began to glaze over, her lungs struggling more and more for air with each passing second. “It is my greatest regret that I always struck you down whenever peace and happiness were within your reach. But I beg of you now, my brave, sweet boy: please promise your selfish mother you’ll find your peace someday.”

Jisung blinked, stunned. “Eomma, are you…?” He swallowed thickly, glancing down at the delicate pendant in his hand. “This is the royal betrothal charm.” 

“Passed down to every Han queen on her wedding night for the past five hundred years.” 

Jisung… Laughed. Watery and weepy, but he laughed, nonetheless. How could he not? “I’ve only known Minho a few months--had him as a lover for a couple days-- I… I don’t--” 

“Shh…” his mother hushed, soothing his frantic ramblings. “It takes no genius of a mother to know when her child’s found the one they’re meant to spend forever with.” She smiled once more, this time more doting than sad in appearance. “It’s the least I can do as my final act in this life to express my acceptance of you in the best way I know how, Jisung.” 

Jisung’s mouth worked open and closed for a moment, trying to find words that wouldn’t come. 

“You don’t need to say anything.” The queen reached up once more, this time to gently guide Jisung down by the back of his neck and press a kiss to his forehead. “I’m so sorry, sweet boy,” she murmured, voice growing fainter. “I should’ve loved you better.” 

Jisung gritted his teeth, eyes squeezing shut and wringing tears. “You’re loving me just right, now,” he assured her. 

She hummed, quiet, melodic, strangely contented given the circumstances. Her hand slowly slipped away from Jisung’s neck, flopping lifelessly to the ground. 

Jisung’s eyes flew open, and he jerked back to scan over his mother’s face. The light in her own eyes had finally blackened to nothing, her chest no longer heaving for breath. 

“Eomma?” whispered Jisung. He touched her cheek, fingertips registering the chilliness that’d begun to settle in beneath her skin. 

She was gone. 

Jisung’s hands began to tighten into fists, then abruptly paused. His attention fell to the fragile glass flower sat upon his palm, taking in the fine edges and blue-white accents. He’d never spared much thought to the Han betrothal charm--figured it’d never become relevant to him as long as his marriage prospects were restricted to a gender he couldn’t physically develop feelings for. 

Now, the charm was precious. A symbol not only in memory of his mother, but of a sort of acceptance he’d always yearned for yet couldn’t reach for as long as he could remember. 

Priceless.

… 

And it took until the queen was on her deathbed to finally bestow that longed-for acceptance onto him. 

Jisung scoffed, slowly devolving into another bout of sobbing laughter, because… 

“Acceptance only means something if you stick around to see it through, mother.” 

No doubt in his mind, his mother very sincerely thought her gesture came across as something grand and full of weight. But the longer Jisung sat with it, the cheaper it felt. He’d never know if the queen had truly reached a point at which she could accept him for all that he was or if she’d simply told him what he wanted to hear to cure herself of her own guilt before death claimed her. 

Knowing Han Jisu… 

Crack. 

Jisung glanced down at his palm again--the pile of shattered glass strewn therein. “Apologies, mother,” he said, dropping the glass shards to the ground, “but Minho deserves better than an emblem of your guilt as an engagement gift.” 

Nevermind the fact that a faerie deserved better than a token of the family that’d caused their people grief for centuries. 

Jisung took no joy in the realization that his reaction to his mother’s death was starkly more stoic and spiteful than it’d been to that of his father. It made him feel frigid on the inside, something insidious and dark crawling into the space where his heart once pumped hope and forgiveness through his veins. 

He loved his mother, and in some sense, he did appreciate her show of acceptance, but he could no longer deny that he hated her too. 

He pushed himself up to a stand, wobbling a bit as disorientation swam in his head. Blinking hard, he swiped roughly at the remaining tears that spilled free and made for the nearest exit. 

He wasn’t sure whether his resolve was finding its way back to him or anger was taking its place, but his energy was starting to swell again, dispelling the dizziness, slowing the flow of blood from his nose and eyes. 

When he reached the very end of the palace’s main corridor, he kicked open the double-doors that led out to the mayhem-ridden courtyard and marched right into the thick of battle. His fingertips buzzed with a vast heat he’d grown intimately familiar with over the course of the past several months; he’d felt it wrapping protectively around him every night, scorching his skin amid tsunamis of unbridled emotion, rolling in impassioned waves off naked flesh, warming him every time the faintest shiver came over him--

Minho’s fire was unmistakable. Always had been. 

And now, Jisung got to share in it in an entirely novel manner--in the same way Minho got to share in Jisung’s magic. 

He halted in his tracks, fully aware of each and every blade that was hurtling his way, drawing in a deep breath and shutting his eyes. Behind his eyelids, a sprawling array of orange beacons cropped up, some near, some far… Earlier, as Minho was preparing his final blow against the invasion force, this form of auralocation had been enacted completely by accident--a subconscious tap into Jisung’s power on Minho’s part. This time, Jisung was utilizing it deliberately, flagging each and every rancid aura in the city for rightful expiration; he’d never learned it, but… He was beginning to realize he was newly capable of a lot of things he’d never had to learn. 

With an immense build of searing hot energy congregated in his prophecy-marked palm, he stooped low and slammed his hand down--a mimickry of Minho’s earlier actions against the invaders. Veins of white darted like lightning bolts across the ground, finding their beaconed targets and erupting forth in blinding vortices of ivory flames. 

In seconds, the nearby enemy forces were vanquished to piles of ash, leaving the remaining palace guards shell-shocked and frozen in-place. Suddenly, the courtyard, which had previously been overrun with loud clashes of metal and gargling shouts, went eerily silent. 

Jisung could feel the eyes on him, gawking. 

“P-Prince Jisung?” came a shaken voice. 

Jisung rose to his feet and turned, meeting the many dumbstruck gazes of those once sworn to protect his life; he wondered if they actually still regarded him as their prince or if he was only being addressed by his title out of habit. 

Either way, their king and queen were dead, and Jisung was the only one there with any birthright to take their place. 

He had to take their place… 

Trepidation threatened to creep in, but it was swiftly quashed; there was no room for it. 

Jisung lifted his chin, squared his shoulders. “King Yeongjae and Queen Jisu are dead,” he announced, voice ringing out clearly into the crowd. “I am to you what you make of that news.” 

For a long while, silence and stillness remained, but Jisung did not waver. Not yet. 

Eventually, the guards began to look amongst themselves, uncertain, wordless communications transpiring. Then, one guard fell to a kneel, followed by another two, five, ten, twenty, and so on--until each was knelt before Jisung, heads bowed. 

In that moment, Prince Jisung became king. 

Chapter Text

Jisung’s body was moving of its own accord and his voice was relaying orders with little conscious thought. Frankly, if he thought too much about the position he was in at the moment, he might just lose his mind altogether. 

And so he didn’t think. He didn’t have to. 

He’d been trained from birth for the day he’d become the leader of his people; being king and executing the duties of one were, apparently, second nature to him. 

“I need a squad covering Vendors’ District--where’s Marshal Yoon?” 

“He’s dead, my king.” 

“Then follow the chain of command; I don’t have time to hold your hands through this. Whoever holds the next-highest rank in Yoon’s squad oversees the defense of Vendors’ District,” said Jisung, turning to the remaining huddle of guards awaiting orders. “All patrol guardsmen: you’re responsible for evacuating the citizens. Escort them to the south gate; by the time you get there, Lieutenant Jung should have cleared the way of enemy forces well enough to pass through safely.” 

A few dozen guards then scurried off to carry out their assigned duty, splitting off into the nearest alleyways and thoroughfares. 

“Where will the citizens go once they’re evacuated?” asked a particularly audacious guard, voice reeking of distrust. “Will they not be sitting ducks just standing out in the open near south gate?” 

Jisung narrowed his eyes, skeptical. “Some of Fleymlansa’s elite warriors are stationed near there; I saw them taking out the enemy’s command post when I was flying in earlier. They’re here to help.” 

“ Right.” The bold guard scoffed. “Are we really expected to trust the likes of them? I’m still not sure we should even be trusting you. Clearly, you’re aligned with them, if that imp-blue hair and violent magic you displayed earlier are anything to go by. How do we know you’re not just some Fleymlansan puppet praying on Gang Dosi’s downfall?” 

Jisung’s brow twitched irritably at the inflammatory accusation. “Well, if you must know, Fleymlansan philosophy dictates that there must be suitable instigation from an opponent to justify killing them. I, on the other hand--” he conjured forth an array of ward knives and sent them flying toward the guard, watching him cower as they halted mid-air just a hair’s breadth from his chest-- “find my opponent being an insubordinate nuisance to be more than enough justification.” 

The guard stayed frozen in-place, breaths rapid and shaky, eyes blown wide. The surrounding guards, too, dared not move an inch. 

Jisung pinned the offending guard in a cold glare. “Is this explanation sufficiently un-puppet-like for you?” 

The man nodded frantically, and Jisung dispelled the ward knives with a halfhearted wave of the hand. 

“Good,” he said. “Now, go make yourself useful and quit wasting my time.” 

With that, the guard did, indeed, make haste to go be useful. On the other hand, though, all the other guards were stood there staring at Jisung with varying degrees of fear in their eyes. 

Great. Jisung had always despised the idea of leading by instilling fear. The very notion of it once churned his insides and made his skin crawl. 

Now, it seemed he was well on his way to becoming the precise type of leader he so loathed. 

He huffed an exasperated sigh. At this point, he couldn’t be bothered with the existentialism of that issue. If being cold and harsh got as many people safely out of this battle as possible, then so be it. He could atone for his sins later. 

Just as he was about to resume his recitement of orders, an odd glow shining within his periphery distracted him and drew his gaze its way. 

It was… 

A portal. Several portals, in fact, from which a steady stream of fae emerged. None of them were wearing armor, nor were they bearing any insignias related to the Fleymlansan military. They were just… People. 

Jisung’s brow scrunched into a puzzled knit, though it swiftly disappeared when he spotted Seungmin crutching his way to the front of the crowd. 

Jisung didn’t think he’d ever be able to smile amid such strife and chaos, but the unexpected presence of his friend when he felt, deep down, so uncertain and alone was a more-than-pleasant surprise. 

“What’re you doing here?” asked Jisung as he walked over to meet Seungmin, saving the latter the effort of having to crutch any farther than necessary. 

“Oh, don’t sound so shocked. You know I can’t leave the world-saving to you,” Seungmin remarked teasingly. “And wipe that stupid grin off your face; it’s unnerving.” 

Jisung snorted and shook his head, then gestured toward the flock of fae his friend had towed along with him. “Who are all these people?” 

“Uh…” Seungmin looked behind himself, almost as if he couldn’t believe those people were there either. “Well, originally, I asked just a few people from the town to help, since I knew they were retired aurachasers, but then some others overheard our conversation and volunteered to come along, and then even more people caught wind of my plan, and they volunteered too, and, uh… Now you have approximately five-hundred Sol Valley residents eager to help you save Gang Dosi. Happy birthday, I guess.” 

Jisung blinked. “My birthday passed six weeks ago.” 

“Yeah, and I didn’t get you a gift back then, now did I? Just be grateful, you little shit.” 

Despite himself and… Literally everything else, Jisung couldn’t help but huff a little laugh. Strange how levity could be found even in the darkest circumstances. 

“When we heard Gang Dosi was under attack by the same man who invaded our home, we knew we had to help,” said one of the fae women. “Nobody should have to experience anything like what we did, even if our people are historically at great odds with one another.” 

Jisung gave her a solemn, grateful smile. “I appreciate your willingness to fight for the safety of my people. Joining forces should prove to be very fruitful.” He turned his head just enough to see his guards out of the corner of his eye, the sharp edge returning to his voice as he addressed them: “isn’t that right?” 

He could sense in the air how instantaneously rigid they all went. Collectively, they responded with a stiff, “yes, my king.” 

“Hmm,” Seungmin uttered, incredulous. “That’s gonna take some getting used to.”

Jisung didn’t know whether he was referring to the fact that he was now king or the intimidation factor he’d taken to adopting with his guards. Probably both. 

“And there’s something different about you. I can’t quite get a read on it, though…” Seungmin added thoughtfully. “What exactly’s happened since you left Sol Palace?” 

A reel of images flashed by in Jisung’s mind: his parents collapsing to the ground in puddles of their own blood, his fight with Shin Mireu, his unleashment of power previously untapped, reducing dozens upon dozens of enemy forces to ash, the guards of Gang Dosi kneeling before him, symbolizing his ascension to the king’s throne… 

“Too much to chat about now,” Jisung settled to say. “Anyway, how well do you know the layout of Gang Dosi?” 

“I spent several years in this city, Han—I know it like the back of my own hand.” 

Jisung nodded decisively. “Good. Do you think you can coordinate the citizen evacuations from here on out?” 

Seungmin’s face creased with something akin to begrudging reluctance, gaze briefly scanning over the guards behind Jisung. “I suppose… As long as your humans are willing to accept orders from a faerie.” 

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Jisung shot a stern glance at his guards. “Right, men?” 

“Yes, my king,” came their stilted reply. 

Seungmin made yet another face and shook his head. “So weird,” he muttered under his breath. 

Jisung rolled his eyes. “I’m gonna go join Minho now.” 

“Wait, how do you intend on reaching him?” Seungmin asked with a puzzled crease in his brow. “Dori’s nowhere to be found, and I don’t see you traversing the city on foot--not with it in complete shambles like this.” 

Jisung considered this for hardly even a millisecond; it’d occurred to him rather instantaneously that he hadn’t any need for foot-travel or Dori. Not anymore. 

“Well, you were wondering what was different about me?” 

Seungmin nodded, eyeing him apprehensively. 

Jisung didn’t even have to consciously gather his magic reserves, nor did he have to agonize over his own capability to concentrate on his intentions; all he had to do was… Know what he wanted to do. And the coursing flow of energy through his body responded accordingly. 

He wondered if this was what true mastery of magic felt like. 

“More than you can guess,” was his only answer before the world before him dematerialized and reappeared anew. 

To his dismay, though, despite completing a successful spatial leap all the way to the apex of the city’s north wall, he was immediately crippled, the deepest reaches of his brain throbbing so hard he crumpled to the ground with a groan and his head cradled in his hands. Desperately, he tried to blink the strange new obstruction out of his vision, only to realize that the obstruction was a fresh stream of blood, and there was no sign of it slowing or stopping. He felt it trickling from his nose and ears again as well, and it was then that he remembered: Shin Mireu had taken some of his magic earlier. He’d briefly been able to recover his deficient reserves, most likely through the link he shared with Minho’s magic, but now that he was making sole use of his own magic, he was, once more, left incapacitated. 

Damn it. He didn’t have time for this. He’d already wasted enough time taking his detour from Minho in the first place. Minho couldn’t wait any longer. 

Gritting his teeth and bearing the pain, he clambered back up to his feet, bracing himself against the nearby parapet. He squeezed his eyes shut, wringing as much blood out of them as possible and swiping whatever spilled onto his cheeks away with the back of his hand. 

When he blinked his eyes back open, he was reunited with the familiar scene of battlefield chaos that he’d borne witness to earlier. The body count had noticeably risen, as had the amount of ghostly ash piles he’d come to recognize as victims of Minho’s fire. 

Minho’s fire… 

Jisung scanned over the battlefield, once, twice, thrice—no reckless explosions of ivory flames, no sudden bursts of impossibly bright energy, no solar-like flares. Nothing but a few petering spot-fires could be seen. 

Jisung’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. His gaze flitted over the battlefield once more, to no avail. Even if Minho were miraculously still up and fighting without the use of his magic, he’d be impossible to spot in amongst the broad clash of Gang Dosi guards and enemy forces. 

“Come on, Minho,” Jisung murmured prayerfully under his breath. “Give me something, please…” 

As though the gods or Minho himself had heard him, a weak-but-noticeable blaze of white ignited like a beacon amidst the hordes of warring foot soldiers. 

Several of those soldiers caught fire, each of them dispersing from their clustered formation in a fit of flailing arms and alarmed shouts. At the center of that now-thinned cluster was Minho, brought to his knees with a hand clutching the ankle he’d shattered earlier. A blend of fear, pain, and exhaustion was written into his face as he attempted and failed to push himself back upright. 

Jisung felt the air get stolen straight from his lungs, heart hammering erratically behind his sternum. Without a single moment wasted, he prepared himself for another spatial leap, magic fatigue and Vesselrot be damned—

And then everything went black, his consciousness fading rapidly to the tune of a sharp, inexplicable ache at the back of his head. 

Almost like someone had struck him there… 

~

When he came to, his vision was fuzzy and unfocused, but he could tell he was no longer atop the north wall. Judging by the sprawls of blood-stained grass as far as the eye could see, soldiers dueling all around him, and the little white fires close enough for him to feel their heat, he was on the battlefield. 

He squinted and widened his eyes repeatedly to refocus them, though it really only helped a little. Now, instead of pure fuzziness, he was hindered by phases of double vision that ebbed and flowed with the deep throb at the back of his head. 

He made to stand, only to realize he was already standing, weight supported by something immovable held beneath his arms. 

He tried to move his arms—they wouldn’t budge, and he finally registered that he wasn’t being supported at all; he was being restrained, arms bent forcibly behind his back. He resisted, but the instantaneous twinge in his shoulders swiftly thwarted the effort. 

“Ah~ you’re awake. ‘Bout damn time.” 

Jisung was out of it. Far too out of it. Because that voice sounded just a little too impossibly familiar, and it simply couldn’t be that--

“Hello~” came the voice again; a sharp smack rang against the side of Jisung’s face. “ Wake up!” 

The pins and needles burning in his cheek were more than enough to stun him nearly to full alertness. He blinked his eyes rapidly, the world around him--the man before him--finally coming into proper focus. 

The beat of Jisung’s heart faltered in his chest; it may as well have stopped altogether. His breaths, too, came in tiny, quivering little puffs, the sensation of his throat closing in on itself igniting a sort of morbid desperation in him to claw out his windpipe for relief. 

Stood in front of him, mere paces away, was Han Hakun. Much of his face and neck were disfigured by heavy burn scars--Minho’s work. One of his eyes was clouded as though it’d been blinded. He no longer beared the waterlily crest anywhere on his person; there was no symbol or emblem on any of his clothing that boasted a loyalty to any entity. Even Mireu’s forces seemed to unite under a common symbol: the Seer’s eye. 

Hakun wasn’t here as a follower of Mireu, though Jisung had come to understand that the two of them were—at least to the extent of Hakun facilitating Mireu’s barbaric alchemical practices in his Gokdaegi fortresses—in collusion with one another. 

No. Han Hakun wasn’t here to enact the will of Shin Mireu. 

Jisung much suspected he was here for more personal reasons. 

“Quite a long nap you took,” jeered Hakun. “I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t be able to wake up in time for the show.” 

Jisung narrowed his eyes in puzzlement at the implication. It didn’t take long at all for the puzzlement to make way for horror. 

“Jisungie…” 

His throat clamped even tighter on itself as the plaintive, whimpering utterance reached his ears and his gaze drifted down toward the bloodied grass. There, mercilessly pinned frontside-down beneath Hakun’s boot, was Minho, armored fabric torn all the way from his neck to the base of his spine to expose the bare plane of his back. 

Hakun ground the ball of his foot right in between Minho’s shoulderblades, forcing a pained whine out of him. “What was it you said again about the amount of nerve-endings in the bases of a faerie’s wings, imp?” He applied further pressure, and Minho broke into a shrill sob. “We last met a good while ago, so my memory’s a little foggy. But I do seem to recall twenty-thousand being the sum, correct?” Even further pressure, and Minho’s voice resembled tattered shreds as he loudly wept. 

Jisung thrashed against the goons holding him captive, uncaring of the creaks of protest in his contorted shoulders and elbows. “Get away from him!” It was all Jisung could think to shout--something, anything to draw Hakun’s attention away from Minho. 

Hakun paused, glancing Jisung’s way with a derisive scoff. “Careful there, ‘Jisungie.’ You wouldn’t want to break your arms in your pathetic attempts to escape, would you?” 

“I’d gladly have my arms severed if it meant granting me the pleasure of mauling you to death,” spat Jisung. 

“Oh dear, I see your fraternization with these savages has taken quite a toll on you.” Hakun tutted his tongue at that, mocking. “Such feral impulses for a boy once belonging to high royalty. What a shame…” 

Jisung was about to make another retort, but a glint of metal originating at Hakun’s hip drew his gaze. 

“Now, I understand you’ve abandoned your people and a life of civility, but surely, you remember the rules of engagement as outlined under Han law, yes?” Slowly, Hakun began to unsheathe the blade strapped to his waistbelt. “ ‘He who commits an act of grave assailment against a Han must expect grave assailment in return.’ And I do believe--” his blade was fully drawn now--sickle-shaped-- “our friend here has, indeed, committed an act of grave assailment against me.” 

Hakun hovered the point of his sickle just above Minho, and about a dozen images flickered by in the eye of Jisung’s mind, all at once, acquired through hours upon hours of pouring through fae lore and Faerie War history, and the atrocities committed therein--

The atrocity. A hideous act that transcended far beyond the bounds of any other that could possibly be perpetrated against a faerie. 

And it was done using the very tool Han Hakun had gripped in his hand and brandished at Minho’s back. 

“No, please! Don’t do this-- please!” Jisung fought once more against the unyielding grasp of his captors. “Take me instead. Lash me until I’m bled dry, dissect me inch by inch, burn me at the stake--whatever you want. Just please don’t do this!” 

“Jisungie,” cried Minho, having sensed the threat that’d been lodged against him. The plea in his tearful voice--the desperate hope that somehow, some way, Jisung was going to find a way to save him--may as well have shattered Jisung’s heart into dust. 

“It’s okay--you’ll be okay, Minho.” Jisung looked to Hakun, supplicative tears streaming down his face. “Please take me instead,” he repeated. “You have to take me instead.” 

Minho’s soulful whimpers evolved into panicked sobs as he scrabbled futilely against the ground. “ Jisungie, help--!” 

“Can it!” Hakun thrust his boot viciously into the space between Minho’s shoulderblades, punching an agonized shriek out of him; all the while, he held Jisung’s gaze. “You seem to be operating under the delusion that I’m not already torturing you in the manner you deserve, boy. Clearly, seeing your pretty little imp in pain is a punishment worse than any amount of torture I could inflict directly upon you.” 

The tip of the sickle bit into Minho’s flesh, slipping balefully beneath the slit of one of his wing’s sleeves, and Jisung lurched so hard his shoulder crunched out of place, making him yelp and fall limp in his captors’ grasp. 

Chest heaving, tears like rivers, he lifted his head to fix Hakun in an imploring stare. “Please…” he murmured brokenly. “I’m begging you.” 

Hakun cracked a wicked grin. “I know you are.” He held Jisung’s stare with haunting malice as he crouched down, shoved his hand beneath each slit on Minho’s back, and forcibly unearthed his wings from within; Minho wailed, trembling with frantic breaths. “That’s what makes this so damn sweet.” 

The hook of the sickle met the bases of Minho’s wings--and everything went eerily still, time seeming to slow to a stop. It was an added torment, a prolonging of the single most abhorrent scene Jisung had ever been made witness to, milliseconds ticking by as though they were hours, days, years, decades, centuries--

The sickle made its swift cut. 

And just like that, with a cry so, impossibly teeming with anguish it curdled the very blood in Jisung’s veins, Minho was clipped. 

In that moment, Jisung was paralyzed, his eyes harrowed by the vile, grisly sight of Hakun holding Minho’s wings, bloodily severed from their roots and leaving behind gaping cavities from which syrupy crimson cascaded. 

Equally, Jisung was deaf. He wondered when it’d happened. He couldn’t hear anything. He wasn’t even sure what he was seeing was real, actually. It was a bad dream. Surely. 

Just a bad dream. 

He let his eyes fall shut, blotting out the dreadful image of Minho tremoring from shock, Hakun cackling while proudly holding high the delicate appendages he so cruelly cleaved--

It was just a dream. 

Jisung’s ears began to ring with the faintest, most distant sound--something like a scream, but he was sure it was just the late-night breeze howling at the window of the beach house bedroom’s window. He was curled up beneath lovely, satin sheets with Minho to keep him blessedly warm.

Just a dream. 

The disruptive sound grew louder, akin, now, to a series of wrenched sobs. Perhaps a storm had rolled in? Chucking rain down upon the shelter of the beach house. Jisung nestled himself closer to Minho’s chest, gently tucking the soft blanket of his wing tighter around him. 

Minho’s wing… 

Just a dream. 

The sound, ever so briefly, startled him with how loud it was--a sharp cry? Sometimes thunder was a shrill noise. Jisung stroked his fingers along Minho’s wing, self-soothing. 

Minho’s… 

Scenes strobed, uninvited, unwelcome, behind Jisung’s closed eyelids: Minho lying face-down upon the grass of the Gang Dosi battlefield, so heavily caked in blood it was difficult to discern an arm from a leg, Hakun towering over him, sickle and clipped wings in-hand, donning a victorious grin--

Suddenly, Jisung was deaf no longer, the full brunt of Minho’s ailed, excruciated cries assaulting his ears and yanking him straight back to reality. 

The reality that was just a dream--the dream that was not a dream. 

Jisung’s eyes were wide-open, fixed upon the sickle drenched in Minho’s blood, which now lay a mere pace away by Jisung’s feet. Hakun must’ve haphazardly cast it his way amid his dissociative reverie. 

All Jisung could bring himself to look at was that damn sickle, the horrific symphony of Minho’s eternally-pained screams and whimpers the theme tune to the birth of a brand-new feeling Jisung had never felt before in his life. 

That sickle… How poetic it might be to see it hack off the very hands that’d just used it to commit such abominable evil. 

It’d been tossed Jisung’s way after all. A shame it would be to not seize the opportunity.

He slowly lifted his head, something cold and hollow yet, somehow, simultaneously white-hot and brimming, surging within him. A single tear streaked down his otherwise vacant face and dripped to the ground.

“Aww~ poor, little ‘Jisungie,’” drawled Hakun, carelessly dropping Minho’s wings into a crumpled heap among the grass. “My heart aches for you, truly.” 

Jisung’s teeth gritted together. He inhaled deeply, applied the slightest pressure against his captors’ grip to test its strength.

Then, in a single, jerky motion, he twisted himself out of his imprisonment, shoulders audibly crunching as they cracked out of their sockets, one of his elbows snapping at the joint. The pain scarcely registered, mind honed entirely on the sickle that lay before him. 

He slipped the toe of his boot beneath the hilt and kicked it up into the air, snatching it between his teeth. As he whirled back around, the outer curve of the blade sliced cavernously across the throats of the nameless men who’d detained him. 

He didn’t even wait to see the light die from their eyes before he turned his attention right back toward Hakun, who’d already taken off in a sprint toward the trees. Jisung bolted after him, arms dangling limply by his sides--and even in his wounded state, he managed to catch up to his target with deadly haste. 

Opening his jaw, he allowed the sickle’s hilt to fall into the palm of his hand. With the extent of his injuries, he had to throw his entire body weight into the slash he cut down the length of Hakun’s back. 

Hakun let out a throaty bellow and tumbled into a nearby tree. He attempted to scuttle his way back up to his feet, but he was too slow. Jisung pinned him against the tree with a knee brutally driven into the center of his chest. All Hakun could produce in protest was a pathetic little squeak, and Jisung reveled in it. The look of sheer terror in Hakun’s eyes? Even better. 

Jisung struggled just a mere moment with his one partially-functional arm to gather Hakun’s hands together and clamp his thumbs in his teeth. 

Hakun appeared both disgusted and fearful as he tried to steal his hands back. “Unhand me, you filthy savage!” 

Jisung only bit down harder, drawing blood. He took the sickle back into his hand, capturing Hakun’s wrists in the hook of it. 

Let’s see how you fucking like it. 

In one sharp motion, he drove the sickle’s blade clean through Hakun’s wrists. Hakun’s scream of utter dismay was a different type of symphony Jisung rather enjoyed. 

Jisung turned to spit Hakun’s disembodied hands off to the side, standing himself back fully upright. The actuality of his debilitated state finally began to sink in; he needed to end this quickly. 

It’d be easy enough to plunge the sickle through Hakun’s heart and be done with it, but… Jisung thought Hakun ought to have some time to live with his new condition before making his descent to hell. 

So he dropped the sickle, selfishly drinking in another second or two of Hakun’s visible panic before whip-kicking the side of Hakun’s head, knocking him wholly unconscious. 

The exertion threw Jisung off-balance, and he collapsed to the ground with his knees and chin as the only things he had to break his fall. 

Whatever pain he’d been successfully ignoring all this time returned with a crippling vengeance. The back of his head throbbed, his arms felt like they’d been set ablaze with pins and needles, his eyes were seeing double again, and blood started aflow from his diseased vessels once more. 

He raised his head as best he could, glimpsing the now-still form of Minho lying on the battlefield, just beyond the treeline. Jisung’s heart lurched, his body going eerily frigid. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to crumple under his own weight once again. 

He tried, and tried, and tried, moving agonizingly few inches with each attempt until he ultimately gave up on using feet and resolved to slither across the ground with only his knees and face as leverage. By the time he was within Minho’s reach, his face was plastered in mud and scraped raw by pine needles and jagged rocks. 

He was weak--growing weaker by the second. But he needed to get Minho out of here. 

“Minho,” he said urgently, head-butting his unmoving form in hopes of rousing him. “Min, please. Wake up. You have to wake up.” 

Jisung delivered another headbutt to Minho’s shoulder, this time more firmly, but he still garnered no response. “Come on, Minho. Please!” 

Without another thought, he threw himself down onto the arm afflicted only by a dislocated shoulder to force it back into place. As a grating snap resounded from the joint, he unleashed a half-sobbed shout, powerless to do much more than tremble in the dirt for several horrible seconds. Once he regained will of his body, however, he slung his shoddily-reset arm across Minho’s lower back and endeavored to haul him along, even in knowing he could hardly haul himself along. Jisung still had to try. 

He only made it a few feet before his grip on Minho slipped, the blood still oozing from his wounds making it near-impossible to maintain a sturdy latch on him. 

“No-no-no, come on, Minho. We have to get out of here. Please,” Jisung muttered frantically, as if Minho had any control whatsoever of the flow of blood from his injuries. He sat as upright as he could, peering at the two deep, vertical lacerations between Minho’s shoulderblades like they’d personally offended him. “ Stop fucking bleeding already!” 

Jisung was panicking. He didn’t quite realize it until right then, but he was panicking, and afraid, and at a loss, and he was losing Minho right before his eyes, and he couldn’t do anything, and--

“Help!” he cried, hands pressing into Minho’s wounds in a fruitless effort to slow the endless stream of blood. “Somebody, please help us!” 

There was no one around to help. Not really. Hundreds of soldiers stayed battling on around them, far too occupied with saving their own lives to spare a pair of lost causes the time of day. 

Still, Jisung continued to call for help that’d most assuredly never come. He did so until his own energy had depleted to the point that he could no longer hold himself up. Lying in the bloody grass, face-to-face with Minho, whose vitality he could sense waning further with every passing moment, he found himself beginning to pray. Not for help, for it was clear no such thing was on the horizon. But rather, to die alongside his most beloved. If Minho’s death should be inevitable, so, too, should Jisung’s. 

Jisung’s eyelids began to droop, heaviness setting in. Occasionally, they’d flutter shut, but the natural instinct for self-preservation would persistently jolt him back to half-consciousness. Between episodes of that, he saw the world grow dark as night, as though he and Minho had been shrouded in a protective blanket. As well, he felt warm, no longer pelted by the frigid late-autumn winds. 

He thought that dying felt curiously blissful. That was, until he caught vague sight of white-socked, scaled feet and a pair of large, yellow eyes watching him with fretful concern.

And it registered, then, that dying might not nearly be as inevitable as he’d thought. 

Unconsciousness was, though.

Not long after his revelation, he slipped into a coma-like stupor. 

Chapter Text

Jisung’s return to consciousness left him with a not-so-vague sense of dread. It’d felt as though he’d been passively existing, drifting for a thousand lifetimes through blissful nothingness, only to be dragged back to a reality that--though fuzzy in his bleary memory--he thought wasn’t necessarily worth remembering. 

When he finally blinked his eyes open, he was met with an all-wooden room dimly lit by a sparse assortment of candles. There was a sort of window on the far wall--circular, complete with a sturdy, metal border. A porthole, he realized. Altogether, with the rhythmic, wave-like swaying of the world around him, he arrived at the conclusion that he was on a ship at sea. 

With no small amount of effort, he pushed himself as upright as he could manage, wincing at the stiffness in the joints of his arms and shoulders. His head throbbed, too, though less with pain and more with dizziness. He felt bruised all over, despite there being no visible blemishes on his skin; he recognized the sensation from his first experience recovering from a resurgence of vesselrot a couple months back--the sense of being bruised when nothing was actually bleeding. He hadn’t known there was such a thing as ‘vessel pain’ until then. It’d also been the most long-lasting and irritating symptom he’d had to endure during that first recovery. Suffice to say he wasn’t leaping with joy at the prospect of having to suffer it all over again. 

“Welcome back, dove.” The sudden introduction of Felix’s voice in the otherwise silent room made Jisung flinch. 

He turned round, startled eyes on his friend, who was sat at his bedside with a fresh glass of water proffered out to him. Felix looked… Exhausted, the dark circles around his eyes attesting to a lack of sleep and overexertion. He smiled, but the expression scarcely reached his eyes, the light in them much duller than Jisung had become used to seeing. 

Quietly, Jisung took the glass of water, lifting the rim to his lips for a little sip. 

“How’re you feeling?” asked Felix, touching the back of his hand to Jisung’s forehead to check for a fever.

“Okay,” murmured Jisung, voice raspy with disuse. He wondered how long he’d been unconscious. 

“Pain’s not too bad, I hope.” 

Jisung shook his head. “It’s okay…” And it was. He was achy and stiff and generally uncomfortable, but it was nothing he couldn’t bear. Especially compared to the pain he’d felt back on the battlefield, when his energy had damn-near depleted, and he was crawling desperately along the ground with no working arms and withering vessels to reach--

He gasped and lurched straight upright. “Minho--!” 

“Is here,” said Felix softly, coaxing. “He’s alive.” He guided Jisung to recline back against the pillows. “He’s… Not well. But he’s hanging in there. For now.” 

“I want to see him,” demanded Jisung. 

“I know you do, dove. And you will soon enough.” Felix tucked a stray lock of hair behind Jisung’s ear. “Just… Take a little time to wake up and readjust. You’ve been out for a week. Your injuries and magic fatigue took a big toll on you; the extent of everything was so severe I had to heal it all in waves. You’re in better shape than you were after your run-in with poachers some months back, but you still won’t be functioning at your best for a while.”

Jisung huffed begrudgingly, crossing his arms over his chest with an indignant shake of the head. “None of this should’ve been able to happen,” he muttered, thinking back on the way he and Minho had been left to fend for themselves—where had any of Nari’s warriors been? Where the fuck any of the dragons had been during all of it was a better question. “Maybe if Soonie, Doongie, and Dori hadn’t abandoned us—”

“You don’t want to finish that accusation, Han. Trust.” Felix shot him a stern, disapproving glare. “Those dragons are Minho’s cherished familiars; Soonie and Doongie have been with him since boyhood, and Dori was once a sickly, orphaned baby raised back to health by Minho’s hands alone. To think such a bond could ever be betrayed as easily as you’re implying…” He inhaled deeply through his nose, self-composing. “Soonie had been captured during the battle; luckily, one of Nari’s warriors was able to intercept the caravan imprisoning him before it could leave the battlefield. Doongie had taken it upon himself to help Seungmin evacuate Gang Dosi; if not for his protection, Seungmin and many others very likely would’ve been killed. And Dori? He was wounded. Badly. Mireu’s forces had harpoons on-hand—he was shot and dragged out of the sky before he could reach you two in time. The only reason he was able to make it to you at all was because he broke his own wing to dislodge the harpoon spear and free himself. We found you and Minho with him curled protectively around you, and he wouldn’t budge, even as he weathered the blades and cruelty of enemy soldiers who’d come across him on the battlefield.”

Jisung wilted as he listened to Felix’s retelling, gaze averted off to the side. 

“Those dragons did not abandon you,” said Felix. “They did everything in their power to fight an enemy they had no hope of winning against, just like you.”

Jisung sat for a bit in guilty silence, wearing a sullen frown and ducking his head low. “Forgive me,” he said after some time. 

Felix nodded, features softening. “I get it. And you’re right: you and Minho should’ve never been allowed to wind up in the position you did. We all should’ve tried harder to dissuade Minho from going to Gang Dosi in the first place. Many mistakes were made, and the consequences were dire. But all we can do about it now is plot our course to move forward from this. We’re at war; we cannot afford to dwell on missteps and misfortunes. There’s simply no time for it anymore.” 

Jisung hummed a halfhearted acknowledgement, gaze fixed on his lap, where his fingers picked incessantly at his cuticles. “How are Hyunjin, Chan, and Changbin?” he asked. “I never even saw them once in Gang Dosi.” 

“They got banged up pretty good too,” said Felix. “It became impossible for them to fight their way onto the northern battlefield—we were cornered the moment we reached the city. So they stayed defending me while I tried to heal as many wounded as possible. They’re okay now, but I can’t say they aren’t still a bit rattled.”

Jisung gave a little, absent nod. He was finding words rather difficult to produce. His mind felt both empty and far too full at the same time. 

“Jisungie…” Felix reached out to lay a hand gently over Jisung’s, effectively halting his restless fidgeting. “I don’t want to overwhelm you right now, but there’s something I must ask.” 

Jisung peered at him diffidently, wary, and Felix gave his hand a little squeeze. 

“Your magic has evolved greatly in a very short period of time; I felt it the second I first got to heal you after the battle. From what I felt, it makes me wonder…” Felix paused, taking time to select his next words carefully. “Jisungie, during your time in Gang Dosi, were there any moments you had where you felt… Numb? Perhaps coincident with a surge in power or energy? Or maybe an instance in which you didn’t necessarily feel numb, but you still experienced a burst of energy strong enough to make you forget your pain so you could accomplish an objective?”

Jisung blinked owlishly, stunned to wordlessness as the events of the battle came flooding back to the forefront of his mind--his parents’ death, his violent encounter with Mireu, his fiery vanquishment of the enemy swarm outside the Sulyeon Palace, the sudden ability for him to spatial leap without rebound, his capture and torment of being forced to watch helplessly as Hakun robbed the wings off Minho’s back--

Bile rose up in his throat at the memory, burning, singeing. He swallowed it back down, remembering, finally, with an odd sense of self-satisfaction, what he’d done to Hakun in return. 

Taking a breath, he said, “I only felt numb alongside a surge in power once--when Mireu killed my parents. And, I guess… When I dislocated my shoulders and broke my elbow to free myself so I could, um--” he tried to gauge Felix’s expression in an attempt to grasp whether or not what he was saying was troublesome, but Felix was rather staid in countenance, unrevealing-- “give Hakun a taste of his own medicine, so-to-speak, the pain was barely even there. All I cared about was hunting Hakun down. I don’t think… Even my own life mattered to me in either case.” 

Felix inhaled deeply, indeed looking troubled. 

“D-does it mean something?” asked Jisung. “Something bad?” 

Felix made a noncommittal face, neither confirming nor denying the concern. “It’s… Complex. Let’s put it that way,” he said. “You see, there is a vast array of abilities under the Seer magic umbrella. One incredibly rare ability is that which allows an especially adept Seer to convert the energy of emotion into physical energy usable as magic. It can manifest in one of two ways: either all emotional energy is converted, in which case, the caster lacks emotion altogether and feels numb. Or all emotional energy with the exception of a single, highly potent emotion is converted, in which case, the caster is guided so strongly by that single emotion that they have hardly any regard for anything other than the objective they hope to attain. In either scenario, the caster is considered particularly deadly, which is beneficial in some ways but can be exceptionally dangerous in others. This conversion comes with an inherent disregard for the caster’s own life, and it can even make their actions particularly cruel, since they cannot feel empathy or guilt for those they bring harm to.” 

Jisung narrowed his eyes at that last part. “Hakun deserved what he got,” he proclaimed defensively. 

“He sure-as-shit did,” said Felix. “But can you honestly say you would’ve been able to so easily do something as gruesome as what you did to him if you’d still been connected to your sense of empathy? What if, the next time you’re faced with a battle, an emotionless state leads you to level an entire city of civilians and your own soldiers simply because your objective was to destroy the enemy forces occupying it? Could you justify the cruelty then?” 

Jisung opened his mouth to speak but just as soon closed it again when he ascertained he had no reasonable rebuttal to Felix’s hypothetical question. He looked away, shrinking into himself. Once upon a time, he’d never dream of enacting or attempting to legitimize hideous acts of brutality; he’d never imagine himself succumbing so deeply to hateful vengeance that he’d open his mouth to speak on behalf of it, even if no words ultimately came out. 

Who was he anymore? Really? 

“It’s a slippery slope, Jisung,” continued Felix, “and you’d do well not to start the descent in the first place.” 

Jisung’s body gradually tensed, a torrent of feelings he didn’t know he’d been suppressing inundating and overwhelming his system. He didn’t realize tears had begun to stream down his cheeks until Felix was thumbing them away and crawling onto the bed to pull him into a tight embrace. 

The added pressure hurt his fragile form, but Jisung was so certain Felix’s arms were the only things keeping him tethered to solid ground that he was powerless to do more than cling onto him and pray not to be let go. 

“Shh… You’re okay, little dove,” Felix said hushedly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.” 

Jisung shook his head, sniffling wetly against Felix’s shoulder. “You didn’t,” he murmured, voice cracking around the words. “I’m scaring myself.”  

Felix pulled back, and Jisung had to smother the urge to sob and latch onto him even harder in reaction to the unwanted distance. “How so, Jisungie?” he asked, once again sweeping the tears away from Jisung’s cheeks. 

Jisung sniffed, forcing himself to drag in a couple deep breaths. “I’m not me anymore, Lix,” he said brokenly. “Ever since my magic became… Whatever it is now, there’s just been this awful sense that my feelings and actions aren’t fully my own. I used to be sickened by cruelty, even when an argument could be made that it’s justified, but now--now it’s almost like there’s a part of me that craves it, and I--” 

More tears poured free, breaths shuddering as he roughly swiped at his eyes and nose with the back of his hand. 

“I just feel so lost, and I’m terrified because this thing you’re talking about with my magic--it’s not something I do on purpose; it just happens, and I wouldn’t know where to even begin trying to control it or prevent it from happening again, and what if it makes me do something truly evil, Lix? What if--” 

“Okay, okay--alright, dove,” Felix interjected, rubbing his warm palms soothingly up and down the lengths of Jisung’s arms. “Breathe, Jisungie. Where are you right now?” 

Jisung, despite his borderline hysterical state, was perplexed by the abrupt question, not quite understanding what Felix meant by it. 

He didn’t know where he was; of course he didn’t know. Out at sea, probably. Why else would he be in the barracks of a boat? But he didn’t know geographically where he was. 

He had a suspicion that Felix’s question wasn’t nearly as literal as it sounded. 

After a series of quiet, hiccuping inhales and exhales, he answered, “w-with you.” 

“That’s right. And are you safe with me?” 

Jisung nodded. 

“Are we in any danger?”

Jisung shook his head. 

“Are either of us using magic currently?” 

Jisung shook his head again. 

“Then you don’t have to worry about causing anyone harm right now,” said Felix. “What you’re describing, about feeling a newfound indifference or even a desire to cause harm to those who’ve wronged you--it’s normal, difficult as it is to reconcile with such a jarring change in moral code. It doesn’t make you inherently evil. What you do with that feeling is what determines the nature of your character.” 

“But what if I can’t control it?” Jisung asked, a plea woven into every word. 

Felix gave a little, close-lipped smile. “Even then--” he cradled Jisung’s face in his hands and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead-- “the fact that you worry about it means there’s not an evil bone in your body. The moment you stop worrying is the moment you’ve truly lost yourself.” 

Jisung wished these affirmations helped, but not a single one quite subdued the confliction warring in his head. “Evil or not, my worries mean nothing to the people whose bodies I’ll have left in my wake.” 

He somewhat regretted saying as much when he saw Felix deflate slightly, the healer struggling to find just the right words. Jisung absolutely appreciated his friend’s effort, and Felix was often a great confidant to him. Just… Not this time. 

This time, Jisung feared he was inconsolable. Nobody short of Minho, probably, could get through to him. Say exactly the right thing, like he always did. Be the exact right amount of warm and homey and comforting simply by existing the way he naturally was. 

Jisung missed Minho. 

He understood Minho was in bad shape, but… He needed to see him. The last time he’d seen Minho, he’d been a hardly recognizable heap of stillness, blood, and impossibly deep wounds; Jisung wasn’t sure he could really believe Minho was alive at all until he saw him with his own two eyes. The fact that Minho had survived such severe injuries was a true enigma. 

… 

Along the same vein, Jisung tried not to think about the reality that Minho had almost become a body in his wake. After all, if he hadn’t allowed himself to be tempted by Mireu’s wicked schemes, he could’ve fought alongside Minho from the beginning. He could’ve shielded him from his horrific fate. 

He could’ve saved him… 

“You’re thinking about him right now, aren’t you?” asked Felix, a knowing glint shining in his soft, brown eyes. 

Jisung’s lips pressed into a fine line, gaze downcast. “I need to see him, Lix. Please.” 

“Jisungie…” There was a not-so-subtle hint of hesitancy in Felix’s voice. “I really think you should take a little more time to get back on your feet.” 

“Why?” 

“Because--” Felix huffed a short breath. He didn’t finish whatever it was he’d begun to say. 

Jisung eyed him incredulously, taking in the tense set of his jaw and the retreated posture of his shoulders. “What aren’t you telling me?” 

“Nothing. It’s just…” Felix flicked his eyes toward Jisung, then averted them again. “I don’t think you’re in a strong enough place, mentally or physically, to see him at the present time.” 

“ Why?” 

“He’s in bad shape, like I said.” 

“Well, of fucking course he is. I don’t expect him to be happy and living his best life a week after being violated and tortured within an inch of his life, Felix.” 

“That’s not… Really the point I’m trying to make.” 

“Then what is?” 

“I--” 

“Oh, for the gods’ sake!” came a muffled exclamation from outside the room, just before the door was thrown open and Seungmin crutched himself inside. “He’s dying, Jisung. As in he only has half a day left to live at best after refusing any and all healing treatments since the moment we resuscitated him and allowing his wounds to turn septic.” He cut a pointed glare toward Felix, the way he wobbled a bit on his feet indicating he wasn’t necessarily in the most sober of states. “I knew you would wuss out. This isn’t the sort of topic you skirt around, Lix. You gave him hope, and now I look like the bad guy because you couldn’t just tell it to him straight.” 

Felix’s lip twitched irritably at the accusation. “Leave, Seungmin. You’re drunk.” 

“Sure am.” Seungmin’s speech slurred a bit as he added, “you know, now that I think about it, Minho wouldn’t be lying at death’s door right now if you hadn’t been such a wuss back then too--when he first woke up. He was so weak and you still let him kick you out of the room. How fucking pathetic do you have to be to--”

“Hey!” Just then, a tall fae woman with white-blonde hair, icy-blue eyes, and freckled skin came marching into the room to haul Seungmin back out by the ear. “Talk to my baby cousin like that again, shitstain, and we’ll see who’s the real wuss when I rip your tongue out through your ass.” 

Seungmin wriggled against her iron-grip on his ear, shouting a few expletive protests on their way out the door. 

With that, Felix and Jisung were left alone once again. The brief bewilderment Jisung had experienced upon hearing the unfamiliar woman’s threat quickly evolved into abhorred disbelief as Seungmin’s words finally sank in. 

He’s dying, Jisung. 

Minho was dying. 

In only a matter of hours, he’d be dead. 

And Felix had been sitting there talking to him like there was time for him to waste getting himself reoriented. 

Jisung gritted his teeth, hands balling into fists in his lap, uncaring of the way the simple action made his rigid joints twinge. He pinned Felix in a cold stare. “Take me to him, Lix. Now.” 

Felix looked like he wanted to contest the demand, but he relented anyway, head bowing low with shame as he stood to his feet. “Okay,” he mumbled feebly, and offered his hands down to help Jisung out of bed.

~

Jisung stood in front of a plain, wooden door, the room to which it led being only a few paces down from where he’d been unconsciously recuperating for the past week. His heart was in his throat, lungs begging for air he couldn’t seem to sufficiently pull in. The room beyond the door was so, eerily quiet, and he wondered, then, morbidly, if he was about to walk in on an already-perished Minho. 

“He’s been extremely combative every time anyone’s tried to enter the room,” said Felix. “So be careful--more than you think you should. Septic delirium can make one’s actions entirely unpredictable.” 

Jisung inhaled long and slow, and yet it still didn’t feel like he had enough air to breathe. “You’ll be out here the whole time?” 

“Yes, of course, Jisungie.” 

“Good.” Jisung met his gaze, determination swelling within him. “Because you better be prepared to get in there with me and fix this mess the second I get him to agree to it.” 

Felix’s lips parted in absent stupefaction, brows pulling up into a taut knit. “Jisung, healing him now would be a worse torture than the original injuries were to begin with; debriding necrotic tissue and disinfecting septic wounds in such a sensitive area of a faerie’s body is beyond excruciating. Not to mention, he’s so ill at this point that I can’t guarantee he’d even survive the ordeal.” 

“Would you rather he die, knowing you didn’t at least try to save him?” 

“Obviously not, but--” 

“Then be ready,” said Jisung, leaving absolutely no room for argument. 

Taking one final breath, he pushed the imposing door open and entered the room. As he pressed the door closed behind him, bathing his surroundings in near-pitch blackness, the very first thing that struck him like a kick to the gut was not Minho himself. 

No. In fact, Jisung couldn’t even see Minho. Rather, he was instantaneously assaulted with a most foul scent that had him clamping a hand over his mouth and nose, both to avoid inviting more of the smell into his nostrils and to prevent himself from audibly retching. Never in his life had he experienced such a miasmatic odor; the closest he’d ever come to it was at the funeral of a neighboring region’s lord many years back, when the local mortician had failed to properly embalm the body and the unpleasant aroma of decomposition had begun to seep through the cracks of the casket before it was lowered into the ground. 

That, he realized, was precisely the smell he was enveloped in right now. 

Decomposition. 

Only this time, it was much, much worse. Rotten, decaying flesh festering with microbes still being fed by a living host. 

Jisung stayed paralyzed where he was for a good long while. He tried breathing through his mouth, but the smell was just too potent; it hardly made a lick of difference. Just as he started to seriously consider fleeing the room to afford himself some fresh air and a break to reevaluate his plan before making another attempt, a pitiful, plaintive whimper cut through the quiet darkness, echoing like a ghostly ring within the confines of Jisung’s skull. And he was reminded of the reason he was there. 

This wasn’t some faceless, nameless nobody whose vessel had been overtaken and infested with parasitic illness. This was Minho. Sweet, lovely, kind-hearted, and full-spirited Minho, who was suffering unfathomable horrors in a wholly undeserved hell. 

Minho, who was dying and didn’t need to be. 

Jisung’s heart squeezed with a special brand of agonizing ache in his chest, eyes welling with unshed tears. Swallowing down the acid-burn that’d crept into his throat, he braved the putrid scent to the best of his ability and slowly approached the hazy, indistinct form of the bed near the corner of the room. 

“Minho?” he called out softly. 

He was met with no direct response. But he was close enough now to hear Minho’s trembling, uneven breaths--how haggard and weary they sounded. 

He called Minho’s name again, and he heard those ragged breaths grow heavier, quicker, as though in alarm. 

Eyes having adjusted more to the darkness, he was finally able to sort of make out the form in the bed, curled-up under a tangled mass of blankets rising and falling rapidly with each frail breath. This close, Jisung could hear a more constant stream of doleful little noises, smothered by the tower of blankets, or perhaps the mattress itself. 

The smell had become even more pungent, nigh unbearable. But Jisung persisted anyway; he had to. 

“Minho?” he whispered, tentatively reaching down toward the blankets. 

He felt an abrupt surge of blazing-hot energy before an ivory flame came barreling right toward him, wild, untamed. With a calmness that shocked even himself, he caught Minho’s wrist mid-air, just before his fire could make dangerous contact with Jisung’s head. 

Everything went still, the introduction of light into the room from the flame burning in Minho’s palm allowing a clear image of his sorry condition. 

He looked like he’d never left the battlefield in Gang Dosi. He still wore crusted blood stains on his face and neck and in his hair from those most unfortunate to have received his wrath. Ash from fallen embers caked his skin just about from head to toe. His auburn hair was soaked through and dripping with sweat from dangerous fever—the heat of which Jisung felt scorching his hand where he held Minho’s wrist. What had always been brilliant, warm amber eyes were now filmy and dull in hue. And the usual bronze of his skin was a sickly, pale gray. 

Tightly wrapped around his upper torso were far-too-old linens, saturated with sweat and blood. Jisung could only imagine how awful they must have looked in the back, where Minho’s most dire wounds had suppurated. 

Jisung gulped harshly, eyes flitting between Minho’s as he desperately wondered if the elder could still remember him in his deteriorated state—praying it wasn’t too late. 

The cloudiness in Minho’s eyes seemed to clear a bit, the faintest hint of light returning to them. 

“Jisungie?” he rasped out, weak and nearly inaudible. 

Jisung exhaled a profound sigh of relief. “Yeah, love, it’s me,” he said, climbing onto the bed, scooping the flame out of Minho’s palm and depositing it into the vacant lantern situated on the bedside table to let dim light fill the room. “I’m here.” 

Minho practically threw himself into Jisung’s arms, burying his face in his neck and clutching onto him with a surprising level of strength, given his condition. Jisung held him like he was made of the most fragile glass, one arm wrapped loosely around his lower back while he kept a hand free to pet Minho’s natty hair. 

“I’m here,” he uttered once more, tearfully, dropping a kiss onto Minho’s bare shoulder. Every inch of Minho’s skin burned like hot coals, making Jisung grimace, but he couldn’t care less about his discomfort. As always, he’d gladly let Minho burn him and wouldn’t care. 

“I’m sorry, Jisungie--I’m so, so sorry,” wept Minho, much to Jisung’s combined dismay and confusion. 

“Hey…” Jisung plucked his face up from his neck to meet his gaze; the raw, sincere distress lying therein was effectively a brutal cut to Jisung’s heart. “Jagi, why are you apologizing? You have nothing to be sorry for.” 

Minho shook his head insistently, wrenching his eyes shut and wringing waterfalls of tears onto his cheeks. “I didn’t listen to you,” he said, frantic, fretful. “I should’ve listened to you when you told me not to go to Gang Dosi. But I went anyway because I’m a stupid, reckless fool, and I put everyone in danger, put you in danger, and then I--” he was sobbing, hard enough that the clarity of his words had begun to devolve-- “I lost my wings, and I know how much you loved them--I’m so sorry, Jisungie. I’m--” 

“Hey, no-no-no, Min. Look at me-- look at me,” Jisung interrupted firmly, gripping the sides of Minho’s face with assertive fervor. “We’re not going there, you hear me? I’m not gonna sit here and let you blame yourself for being victimized, and I’m sure-as-hell not gonna listen to you reduce my love for you down to your wings.” 

“But you thought they were beautiful,” croaked Minho. 

“I did, and they were.” Jisung brought their foreheads together, caressing Minho’s tear-stained cheeks with tender, back-and-forth brushes of his thumbs. “But only because they were yours,” he said. “I love you, Minho. Any form that you come in--I’ll always love you, because it was never about what I saw on the outside. It was always about what I saw on the inside, within the deepest reaches of your spirit. I felt the very essence of who you were, and I fell for you. Irrevocably.” 

Minho sat back a bit to search his face, eyes bleary and unfocused—a sign that his sudden burst of energy had already started to deplete from his afflicted body. 

Jisung had to shove that thought to the background of his mind, lest he break down when Minho needed him at his strongest. “And for what it’s worth,” he continued, forcing a doting smile, “you always have been, and forever will be, the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.” He combed the sweaty ropes of Minho’s fringe back from his forehead, pressed a kiss to the newly bared skin. “My lovely, little fleymlily.” 

He heard Minho exhale shakily, somewhat crackly and wheezing, like his lungs were slowly collapsing in on themselves. Minho returned his face to the crook of Jisung’s neck, arms wrapping around him again—only this time, his grip was noticeably weaker. 

Jisung hugged him back; it was all he could do. 

“Jisungie…” murmured Minho.

Jisung had to glance up toward the ceiling, blinking rapidly to keep his tears at bay. “Yes, love?” 

Another strained breath worked its way out of Minho. “I’m dying.” 

Jisung clenched his jaw, curling his hands into tight fists against Minho’s lower back. “I know, love.” 

“I don’t--” Minho’s next breath snagged in his throat, and he was sent into a fit of pitiful coughs and hyperventilations to correct for it. He held Jisung tighter, yet his grasp was still weak. “I don’t want to go,” he confessed. “I don’t want to leave you or our friends behind.” 

Jisung’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach. “Then don’t.” He pulled Minho’s face up from his neck again, looked him in his fading eyes once more. “Don’t go. Stay right here and fight.” 

Minho’s eyelids fluttered shut and peeled back open unevenly--a testament to his struggle for consciousness. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough, Jisungie.” 

“You won’t know until you try,” said Jisung. “And you won’t be alone when you do.” 

“It’ll hurt…” 

Jisung felt his throat go taut with the effort to keep himself from crying. He nodded solemnly. “Yeah, honey. It will. But I’ll be right here, the whole time.” 

Minho was quiet for a good while, head beginning to loll and droop. One more ragged, wheezy breath, and--

“Okay,” he said, and fell limply against Jisung. “I’ll try…” 

Jisung clung onto him, steadfast, heart hammering behind his sternum as he felt the beat of Minho’s wane. 

He’d done it; he’d convinced Minho to live. 

But he feared they may have already run out of time. 

Whipping his head around toward the door, he called out desperately, “Felix, get in here now!” 

~

Felix was astoundingly swift and meticulous. Within a matter of minutes, he’d managed to shuttle in and set up several basins of clean water, a towering bundle of fresh linens, a leather-wrapped roll of silver procedural tools and vials full of alchemical substances and salves. In the few seconds after that, he’d successfully tapped one of the flaccid veins in Minho’s arm and flooded his system with a massive dose of antiseptic tonic. And after that, not a moment wasted, he’d unraveled the soiled linens plastered around Minho’s chest and upper back--unleashing the stench of necrosing wounds to its fullest extent--and begun the painstaking process of debridement. 

Now, Jisung’s ears throbbed with the persistent, shrill ring of Minho’s screams, his skin prickling everywhere Minho’s nails bit into it as he latched tremulously onto him. Jisung had the additional misfortune of being able to see exactly what it was that Felix was doing to cause such agony. 

At this point, the two vertical slices between Minho’s shoulderblades had been nearly hollowed out, cleared of the surface-level decayed tissue. But Felix kept digging with an alternation between pointed tweezers and aquakinetic flush-throughs of heated water; Jisung could only assume that Minho’s infection ran far deeper than he’d ever thought possible. With how far Felix was taking the debridement, it was a morbid wonder whether or not Minho would have any healthy flesh left in the end. 

As Felix steadily peeled a long, thin chunk of blackened flesh from deep within one of the wounds, Minho seized up against Jisung and pressed a drawn-out, guttural shriek into his neck, the sound vibrating all the way through Jisung’s body. 

“Does he really have to be awake for this?” asked Jisung, sending a pleading look Felix’s way. “Can’t you sedate him?” 

“What, you think I’m forcing him to endure the world’s most unimaginable pain because I think it’s fun? How low do you think of me, Jisung--honestly?” snapped Felix.

Jisung blinked at him, speechless, taken aback by the sudden outburst.

Grimacing, Felix plucked the dead flesh from its root with a flick of the wrist and dropped it into the nearby waste-basin. Then he breathed out a tremoring sigh, setting his tweezers aside and pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes—the only parts of his hands not heavily stained by blood. 

Minho’s blood. 

“I’m--” he puffed out another long sigh. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s… Okay.” Jisung swallowed roughly; intuitively, he’d known it couldn’t have been easy for Felix to be doing this. Somehow, though, he hadn’t fully comprehended just how not-easy it was until now, as he watched Felix keep himself teetering on the edge of a meltdown right before him. He reached out in front of him to rest a reassuring hand on Felix’s shoulder. 

Felix dropped his hands away from his face, eyes fixing vacantly on the barbaric wounds carved into Minho’s back, head shaking with resigned disbelief. “I have to keep him awake because I’m working around nerves branching straight from his spinal cord. If I nick something I shouldn’t, I need to know right away, or else permanent paralysis could set in if the injury’s not corrected in time.” 

Jisung nodded minutely. “Okay.” 

“There’s something else.” 

Jisung gave him a wary stare. “What is it?” he dared to ask. 

“The final mass of necrotic tissue… I’ve been avoiding it this whole time because I couldn’t figure out a good way to go about debriding it.” Felix flicked his gaze up, meeting Jisung’s with terrible unease. “I still haven’t.” 

“What makes it worse than the rest of the tissue you’ve already debrided?” 

“It’s completely enmeshed with his cardinal erogenia-- the bundle of nerves that connects all the erogenous zones in his body. It’s what makes the space between a faerie’s wings so sensitive.” 

Jisung furrowed his brow at that. “I don’t understand…” 

“It’s an extremely complex entanglement of nerves. It could easily take me several hours to debride even half of the necrotic tissue around it; not only would it be unbelievably excruciating, but it would also put him at high risk for shock and hypothermia from having such large, deep wounds kept open for too long. The only other option is to excise the entire necrotic mass in one go--nerves included.” Felix explained with a grave frown. “In that case, I’d be taking away his ability to experience physical pleasure normally.” 

Jisung tightened his hold on Minho, eyes widening with disconcertment. “W-what do you mean you’ll be taking it away? Could it come back eventually? Is there some kind of regenerative healing you can do later on?” 

He hoped he wasn’t coming off as selfish--caring more about his sexual relationship with Minho than Minho’s actual life. That’s not at all what this was about. When it came down to it, he’d much rather have Minho alive no matter the cost. 

But he also knew Minho. He was a very physical being, conveying love and intimacy and connectedness through the pleasures he shared with his partner--with Jisung. What would happen if, suddenly, he wasn’t able to seek connection in that way anymore? He was already bound to feel isolated and alone after this was over--a clipped faerie among those with wings, the only one in any room he entered to have experienced something no other in attendance could fathom or begin to understand. 

Now, he was being asked to give up yet another avenue for connection and belonging? 

It was unfair. Everything about this was so profoundly, cruelly unfair. 

“There’s something I can try, yes. But…” The look on Felix’s face was unmistakably one of regret. “The likelihood of him regaining full function would be next to zero. In fact, even partial function would be somewhat unlikely.” 

Jisung reeled as a flurry of disorienting thoughts spun about in his head. He’d only been Minho’s partner--his closest loved one--for a few days. Many months of pining and courting aside, he didn’t think he had anywhere near the right to be where he presently was, in the position to be making a decision like this for Minho. 

And yet that’s exactly how Felix was looking at him right now, like he was expected to have the final say on a matter that would, in a most probable sense, irreversibly alter the way Minho experienced life. 

“I-I…” Jisung trailed off briefly, at a loss. “There’s no way I can make this decision for him, Lix. I can’t--” 

He froze when something unintelligible was mumbled against his skin, attention piqued. He then shifted to gently pull Minho upright from where he’d slumped into him. “What’d you say, love?” 

Minho’s voice cracked as he said through panting breaths, “cut it out.”

Jisung stiffened, returning his attention to Felix, who looked about as stunned as Jisung felt. 

“A-are you sure?” stammered Felix. “This’ll likely mean permanent disability for you. I can’t guarantee--” 

“I said-- cut it out,” reasserted Minho, bordering on a supplicative sob. “Just make it stop already. Please.” 

Jisung and Felix exchanged uncertain glances, no doubt both thinking the same thing. 

Minho was making a permanent decision based on current, temporary circumstances. He was willing to go with the option that meant his pain was over quicker; his present pain was dictating his future life. Which, on one hand, was troubling. But on the other, he was ultimately making the safest decision--the one that Felix and Jisung probably would’ve arrived at anyway if Minho hadn’t spoken up. 

Jisung just hoped that Minho wouldn’t wind up blaming himself for the decision when its ramifications inevitably came to fruition. A part of him wished that he had been the one to make the decision for Minho, because, at least then, he would have someone other than himself to lay the blame upon. 

For the umpteenth time since he’d woken from his week-long coma, Jisung found himself, again, fighting tears. 

He watched as Felix exhaled shakily and reached over to his roll of tools to pick up a small, impossibly sharp bistoury. 

“Okay,” said Felix, readying the blade with an expression nothing short of harrowed. “It’ll be quick… Over in seconds.” 

Minho hummed a weary, mindless acknowledgement and fell back into Jisung’s arms. Just as he hid his face in the refuge of Jisung’s neck, Jisung, in kind, took to hiding his own face in Minho’s, the very notion of seeing Felix hack off another hunk of Minho’s flesh nauseating him to his core. 

He couldn’t stand to witness Minho being picked apart--quite literally dissected from the inside-out--any longer. 

The sole way Jisung could tell that Felix had begun to cut was by the violent lurch of Minho’s entire body against him, blunt nails etching bruising divots into his back. The scream that tore out of Minho near-deafened Jisung’s ears and rattled him down to the marrow of his bones. Any sound that attested to Minho’s pain would be an unwelcome ghost in Jisung’s memory--but this one, above all, was bound to haunt his every waking and slumbering hour for gods know how long. Maybe forever. 

Jisung became convinced in that moment that he couldn’t possibly know what real pain was. Not really. Not in the way Minho had become too mercilessly familiar with. 

Only once Minho had gone quiet and limp in his hold did Jisung dare to look up from his hiding place--just in time to catch a glimpse of Felix’s copiously bloodied hands dropping a sizable lump of diseased tissue encased in a thick web of little, wiry structures Jisung deduced must’ve been nerves into the nearby waste-basin. 

It was done, Jisung registered as he observed Felix suddenly chuck the bistoury across the room in a show of grievous outrage and veil weeping eyes behind his forearm. 

Minho was forever changed, and not for the better. 

They all were… 

Chapter Text

Jisung spent the next several minutes in a blurry daze. He kept just enough of his mind present to hold Minho up so Felix could place a time-release regenerative cast on his wounds and wrap a fresh roll of linen around his upper torso. But otherwise, he was largely retreated, detached. 

He’d originally hoped that seeing Minho would help him come to grips with the troubling moral shift he’d sensed within himself. 

Instead, after just having seen what horrific agony Minho had to be put through to survive an already incomprehensible violation of his being--Jisung’s moral shift felt a whole hell of a lot more reasonable. 

Maybe it was okay to hate, he thought. 

Maybe it was okay to crave violent retribution. 

“Jisungie.” 

“Hmm?” He shook his head free of its daze, blinking up at Felix, who was peering at him like this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get his attention. 

“I know you’re still recovering yourself, but do you think you can pick him up from the bed?” asked Felix. “The sheets are in desperate need of a change.” 

“Oh…” Jisung glanced around himself, noting the large splotches of bloodstains--some old, most new--littering the sheets and blankets; indeed, a change was in order. “Right. Yeah. I can, um… I can move him.” 

It was a struggle, his recently dislocated shoulders protesting with sharp twinges as he looped Minho’s arms around his neck, held him securely against his chest, and hoisted him off the bed. Ultimately, though, he did manage to carry Minho to an out-of-the-way corner of the room so Felix could begin undressing the bed. 

He searched the near vicinity to see if there was a place he could temporarily sit Minho--afford his own weakened body a bit of rest--but Minho seemed to read his mind amid his debilitated stupor, if the way he stirred and insistently locked his legs around Jisung’s waist was anything to go by. 

A clear communication: please don’t leave me. 

So Jisung, in spite of his aching joints and mild frailty, altered his grasp on Minho to prepare for a longer-term hold, tightening one arm around the small of Minho’s back and moving a hand to support him beneath his upper thigh. Minho did his part by winding his arms more firmly around Jisung’s neck. 

The heat radiating off his skin was still sweltering, enough to make Jisung sweat. But his fever had reduced significantly, meaning the strong antiseptic tonic he’d been dosed with had served its purpose well; Minho’s infection was clearing. 

Jisung sighed, not quite out of relief but perhaps something vaguely akin to it. There was only so much ‘relief’ he could feel at a time like this. If anything, he was more apprehensive than he’d ever been before, uncertainty all-consuming. 

He supposed he was just glad Minho was alive. 

He wondered how long that’d be enough for him… How long Minho being alive would feel more like a blessing for Jisung than a curse for Minho. 

Casting the bothersome thought aside, he rested his cheek against the side of Minho’s head, staring blankly in front of him. 

Just as Felix was about finished laying new sheets and blankets on the bed, Jisung noticed the door crack open, torchlight from the corridor outside filtering into the room. A head of long, white-blonde hair poked in through the crack, cerulean eyes finding Jisung straight away. 

It was the woman from earlier, who’d dragged a drunk and angry Seungmin away before he could say a few too many regrettable things. 

Baby cousin, Jisung remembered her saying in reference to Felix. 

Now that he was getting a prolonged look at her, he saw the resemblance. Her glowy, freckled skin was almost identical to that of Felix. She had similarly sculpted features, too--all over lithe and elegant. The most discernibly different characteristic of hers was the color of her irises, quite the opposite of Felix’s warm brown. 

“You shouldn’t be here, Sev,” said Felix, tossing a cautioning glance her way. “He’s in no shape to be meeting visitors right now.” 

“I’m not a visitor; I’m family,” she countered, slipping into the room and clicking the door shut behind her. 

“Distant-- extremely distant, actually, when you consider the fact that I’m barely related to him by blood.” 

“Blood doesn’t make family, Lix. You know that.” The woman--Sev--stepped farther into the room, but seemed to have the good sense to keep a respectful distance from Minho. She tilted her head curiously at Jisung, eyeing him up and down. “Kitty chose him, after all. Nothing says family quite like a human being able to miraculously talk a clipped faerie down from willful suicide. It’s unheard of, really.” 

“Would you shut up?” hissed Felix, voice hushed. “He’s awake, you know. If you’re gonna be here, at least try to keep remarks like that to yourself.” 

Sev winced, looking genuinely guilty. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t know he was--” 

“Yeah, well, now you know.” 

Jisung watched passively as she squinted at Felix, who was vehement in his effort to evade her line of sight while gathering up all the dirty sheets he’d scattered across the floor. 

She seemed to have a retort in mind, but upon deeper observation of the profusely-bloodied sheets, Felix’s unpleasant demeanor, or perhaps a combination of both, she elected not to speak it aloud. 

Instead, she returned her focus to Jisung--the small, huddled-up form of Minho he held in his arms. A grim frown bowed her lips, her gaze softening somberly. “Long time, no see, huh, Kitty?” she said, attempting a lighthearted tone but not quite hitting the mark. 

Kitty… That was the second time she’d said that. Jisung assumed she must’ve been directly addressing Minho, though he couldn’t puzzle out where such a pet name could’ve come from. 

“Sev, I really think you should just go,” said Felix. “He won’t talk to you.” 

Sev pursed her lips irritably at that. “This isn’t a bid for his attention, Felix.” 

“What is it, then?” 

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe I just wanted to make sure my friend--who I haven’t seen in over a year--was okay. Ever thought about that?” 

“ Okay?” Felix barked out a humorless laugh, jabbing a finger in Minho’s direction. “Look at him, Sev. You think any part of that is okay?” 

“No, of course not--you know what I meant.” 

As they continued to argue, Jisung could feel Minho hugging himself tighter to him. His aura, which had only just regained enough vitality for Jisung to be able to properly read him again, was soured with suffocating darkness, despair, distress--all of which grew stronger by the second. 

He burrowed his face deeper into Jisung’s neck, and Jisung instantly felt the cool plash of tears against his skin. 

Minho was at the end of his rope, unable to tolerate any further external stressors. 

“Alright--both of you need to leave,” declared Jisung, voice clear and unwavering, effectively halting the cousins’ bickering match. “ Now.” 

Felix and Sev set mutually dumbfounded eyes on him, both stunned to speechlessness. 

“Obviously, it’s been a long day for everyone. I get it. But going at each other’s throats--especially here-- isn’t helping anything or anyone. So go.” Jisung jutted his chin toward the door. “Take a walk, clear your heads, do what you have to do to cool off--I don’t care. Just don’t be here. Let him have a little peace for once. Please.” 

While Sev continued to gawk without words, Felix slouched his shoulders, a hand coming up to rub contritely at his upper arm, gaze lowering to the floor. 

He understood his error. More often than not, he was careful to keep his emotions under wraps when in the presence of those he’d been charged with healing. All things considered, he’d been doing a shockingly good job of that around Minho up and until now. 

Jisung surmised Felix was about at the end of his rope, too. After everything… 

“He’s right,” mumbled Felix, shuffling over to the door and pulling it open. “Let’s go, Sev.” 

“Hey, wait--” Sev whirled around to face Felix, a faint hint of affront in her tone-- “you’re just gonna let this little human tell us what to do? We were Kitty’s family first.” 

Felix paused in the doorway, fingers gripping tight onto the doorknob. “This ‘little human’ saved Minho when the rest of us nearly cost him his life because we were too afraid to try.” He turned his head just enough to catch Sev in the corner of his eye. “We’re not who he needs right now.” 

Sev opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out. After a handful of seconds spent looking indecisively between Felix and Jisung, she puffed out a curt sigh. “Fine,” she said, and marched out the door. 

Felix lingered a little longer, and while he didn’t look at or say anything more to Jisung, his bittersweet gratitude was palpable. He was glad Jisung was there for Minho, advocating for him. On the flip side, however, Jisung could tell he felt shame in the fact that he’d made his presence unwelcome. 

Jisung wished he knew what to say to reassure him. But he hadn’t the foggiest clue what it felt like to be in Felix’s position; he could read his aura all he wanted, but he’d never truly know. 

One more second passed, and then Felix, too, was gone, quietly pulling the door closed as he made his exit, blood-soaked bedding in tow. 

Now alone, Jisung exhaled a tense breath. “Okay…” he murmured to himself, trundling over to the freshly-made bed. “Minho, love--” he brought the hand he’d been using to support under Minho’s leg up to scritch lightly at his nape-- “can you let go for me?” 

Minho’s sole response was an adamant reinforcement of his latch on Jisung, which made the all-over bruise-like sensation in his body flare. Jisung grimaced but remained otherwise neutral; in the grand scheme of things, his own pain was laughably inconsequential. 

“I’m not going anywhere. Promise,” he added softly, rubbing coaxing little circles into the base of Minho’s neck. “It’s just a bit difficult to get us both settled in bed when I have the world’s largest koala clinging to me.” 

Minho loosened his hold just enough to lift his head up and pin Jisung in a heatless glare. The rims of his eyes were red and puffy, though the teartracks on his cheeks had begun to dry. His amber irises shone with renewed light--not vibrant or full of vigor as Jisung had become accustomed to seeing, but light was present nonetheless. He had his lips pursed and a single brow quirked in mild disapproval. 

“What? Did I say something?” asked Jisung, experimentally playful. “You know I’ve never been able to read the room well.” 

At that, Minho rolled his eyes and shook his head, and Jisung briefly wondered if he’d made a mistake. But then Minho bonked his forehead with Jisung’s, gave his cheek a little nuzzle, conveying fondness above all. And Jisung was able to relax again. 

“Come on, my little oversized marsupial--” he patted Minho’s outer thigh-- “bed time.” 

Minho made yet another disapproving face but acquiesced, unraveling his arms and legs and allowing Jisung to place him down on the bed. 

Strangely, he didn’t make a move to slip under the covers or lie down. He just… Sat there, staring up at Jisung with big, round eyes. A tinge of alert vigilance infiltrated his aura. 

Jisung tilted his head, puzzled. Felix had given Minho a strong, painkilling elixir earlier, so there shouldn’t be an issue with him being able to lie down; his physical discomfort was fairly minimal, judging by his generally neutral expression and the lack of strain in his posture. He wasn’t even trembling anymore. 

The only thing that Jisung could think of that would have Minho so intently fixated on him was… 

Minho wasn’t fully convinced Jisung was staying as promised. He was afraid that, if he let his gaze stray from Jisung, he’d no longer be there. 

It dawned on Jisung, then, that Minho had spent the past week suffering alone--no Felix, no Seungmin, no Jisung… No one. The very notion of ever having to weather such anguish like that again was most assuredly devastating to Minho. 

On the surface, it seemed irrational for Minho to legitimately fear Jisung leaving him alone. Deeper down, however, when the realization struck that Jisung had effectively already done that to him once--regardless of the fact that it was at no fault of his own--the fear made a whole hell of a lot more sense. 

Jisung’s heart felt leaden in his chest. “I’m not going anywhere,” he reaffirmed, brushing tender fingertips against Minho’s cheek. “Be at ease, my love.” 

Minho did his signature, fluttery blink--the one that Jisung adored so and hadn’t seen him do in what felt like forever. He suddenly reached out and wrapped his arms around Jisung’s middle, pressing his face right into his belly. 

Jisung was still as a statue; he peered down at the top of Minho’s head with some fluttery blinks of his own. 

This was highly peculiar. Minho had always been a cuddly person, but this was… Different. Not so much cuddly as it was a sort of desperate gesture to communicate. And it was really only that precise moment that it occurred to Jisung--

Minho wasn’t speaking. He hadn’t spoken a single word since he’d told Felix to cut out a most precious piece of him well over an hour ago. Anything he’d ‘said’ since had been conveyed purely with physical cues and whatever Jisung could deduce with aurapathy. 

“Min,” Jisung said tentatively, guiding Minho’s face up so their gazes could meet, “jagi… Can you speak?” 

The air went thick like tar around them, suspenseful, eerily quiet and unmoving. 

All the while, a glossy film slowly coated Minho’s eyes, something black and cold encroaching on the energy he exuded. His lips parted, as if readying to form words, and then… 

Nothing. 

Not a sound. 

His lips began to wobble, then pressed firmly together into a thin line, salty rivulets rolling down his cheeks. He ducked his head, body shaking with the most silent of cries. 

“Oh, honey--no, it’s okay. Hey--” Jisung crouched down beside the bed, holding Minho’s face in the delicate cradle of his hands. “You don’t have to speak. You’re okay.” 

Jisung didn’t know what to do here, having unintentionally brought to light something it seemed Minho himself hadn’t prior noticed. Or at least had deliberately spared no mind to. 

After internally flailing for a way to comfort Minho for far too long, Jisung felt the slightest sort of… Prickling in his right palm. He wasn’t sure if it was actually there or if it was his subconscious taking pity on him and trying to steer his attention toward something potentially helpful. 

Bemused, he peeled his hand away from Minho’s face, glimpsing the black, prophetical mark etched into his skin there. It wasn’t pulsing with energy, nor was it glowing, and yet, at a time that it hardly seemed relevant, he’d become all-too-aware of its existence.

Why? 

A sequence of images flickered by in his mind’s eye:

A scene etched onto the wall of Fleymlansa’s ancestral oasis—the piece of the prophecy depicting two men, one waterlily-hearted and the other wing-hearted, entwining one another’s magic. 

A memory of the Fleymlansan invasion—Minho utilizing Jisung’s aurapathy to target Mireu’s forces before unleashing his divine hellfire upon them.

And another memory of the battle in Gang Dosi, when Jisung, in kind, utilized Minho’s fire to destroy the blockade surrounding the Sulyeon Palace. 

Their magic was connected—always had been to some degree—but more importantly, their souls were fatefully entangled. Their spirits were unequivocally bound. 

In knowing that, Jisung came to the conclusion that he should be able to understand Minho’s pain—his sudden inability to speak—if he simply allowed himself to feel… Minho. If he let everything but Minho’s energy fall away from his mind.

“Minho,” he whispered sweetly, slipping his hand into his sleeve a bit to pat-dry Minho’s tears. “Jagi, I wanna try something to help me understand what you’re feeling--beyond aurapathy… Is that okay with you?” 

Minho sniffed pitifully, gaze flicking over the features of Jisung’s face with unguarded apprehension. He conceded a little nod, pawing softly at Jisung’s chest and shoulders, not unlike a distressed cat seeking solace. 

Jisung gave a smile, taking Minho’s hands into his own and pressing a kiss to his knuckles before bringing their foreheads together. “Deep breaths, love,” he said. “Close your eyes.” 

Minho did as asked, though his ‘deep breaths’ were more like hiccuped gasps. It was the effort that mattered; Jisung just wanted him calm enough. Not that he really knew where he was going with this or what the potential consequences could be, but he got the sense that attempting this while Minho was in a state of complete disarray wouldn’t bode well for either of them. 

Once Minho’s eyes had fluttered shut, Jisung followed suit, retreating to the darkness behind his eyelids. Previously, whenever he’d had need for sensing others’ emotions or auras, he’d try to focus in on a specific target. This time, he tried to forget everything but a specific target, seek passive entry to Minho’s thoughts, emotions, fears… Hoping a different approach would lend an impression of Minho’s experiences less colored by what a conversely active search would provide. 

Over time, Jisung’s own mind quieted to a barely-there lull. The only thing he could still physically feel was that subtle prickling in his right palm, adopting what felt more like a warm heartbeat the longer it stayed connected with Minho’s left--where he shared the same mark. 

More time passed, and sure enough, a new, strange scene opened up behind Jisung’s closed eyes. 

He was in a forest, feet submerged in water crisp and clear as air. The sun’s rays filtered through the aspen canopy, gently illuminating his surroundings. Looking closer, he noted the vivid colors of the fauna scattered about, the small fantastical critters he’d only recently become familiar with. 

He was in Fleymlansa. Serene, unperturbed, lively… 

“Have you ever thought about it?” came a gentle, youthful voice. 

Jisung pivoted to look behind him, and laid upon a large, flat rock in the center of the water pool was a pair of young children, a boy and a girl, neither any older than eight or nine. One sported a head of short, coppery-auburn hair, and the other long, braided, white-blonde. 

“Thought about what?” prompted the blonde girl. 

“Seeing your own wings, silly,” said the redheaded boy, chuckling; his laughter was so, undeniably Minho’s. “Have you been listening to me at all?” 

“Oh, mm.” It was an attemptively affirmative sound.

Little Minho scoffed lightheartedly. “Yeah right.” He pushed himself upright, leaning back on his hands as he tipped his face toward the clear sky, basking in the sun’s warmth. “I’m just saying: it feels a little wrong, don’t you think? That binding means we can’t even see our own wings for ourselves?” 

“I guess…” 

Minho pursed his lips, wearing an adorable face of skepticism. “You disagree, don’t you?” He repeatedly poked at the girl’s nose until his hand was swatted away and he was pinned with a pouting glare. 

“I don’t disagree…” she mumbled, sitting herself up as well. “I just think… There’s a reason adults tell us to bind them. What if something bad happens if we don’t?” 

“Bad like what?” Minho flashed a toothy grin, nudging the girl’s shoulder with his own. “Come on, Felicity--what could possibly happen?” 

Felicity…? 

“I don’t know,” said the girl. “But I don’t think I wanna find out, just in case.” 

“ Pfft, suit yourself.” Minho stood and leapt into the water with a great splash, watching as a nearby swan--disturbed by his rambunctious display--flapped its luxurious wings and took to the sky. His large, amber eyes twinkled with determination. “I’m gonna do it tonight,” he declared, returning his gaze to Felicity, who was using aquakinesis to drag the water out of her now-soaked dress with a scowl. “I’m gonna see my wings.” 

Felicity breathed a long sigh. “You’re crazy, Minho. Really.” 

“ No, I’m free.” He puffed out his chest confidently, fists planted on his hips. “Or… I will be. After tonight.” 

Felicity shook her head but was unable to successfully fight a fond smile. “Well, I don’t think it’s a good idea, but… I hope you like them.” 

“Of course I’ll like them. They’re mine, after all.” 

The scene before Jisung melted away and refreshed anew. 

Now, he stood in what he recognized as Minho’s bedroom in the Sol Palace. It was nighttime, the doors to the balcony left open to let in a cool breeze, lanterns and torches bathing the space in soft, orange light. 

Before him, he saw little Minho parked in front of a tall mirror. His tunic lay forgotten by his feet on the floor. Jisung saw in the mirror’s reflection Minho’s unsure eyes, the way he nibbled nervously at his lip, his weight shifting back and forth on his feet. It was a stark contrast to his earlier bravado. 

“Okay,” Minho said to himself, “you can do this.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, hands wadding into tiny fists at his sides. Slowly, but surely, with some struggle, his wings sprouted from his back, unfurling from within their sleeves and stretching wide. 

Hesitantly, Minho peeked one eye open to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror. And then both of his eyes were wide-open, sparkling, awed. He shuffled closer to the mirror, touching his hand to the reflection of one of his wings, as if he simply couldn’t believe what he was seeing. 

Steadily, a huge, beaming smile crept across his face. He curled one wing around himself, grazing its silky, iridescent edge with careful fingertips. 

“Woah…” he uttered in amazement. 

The way he bit his lip this time was far from nervous, instead full of barely-contained glee. He twirled around with a jubilant giggle, observing how his wings elegantly flowed with the motion. 

Once he resettled himself, he peered down at his hands, which held the corner of a wing delicately upon them. He lifted his gaze, admiring his reflection with such raw, vulnerable sincerity. 

“So pretty,” he told himself with a giddy little bounce on the balls of his feet. 

Jisung couldn’t help an endeared smile, heart feeling warm and full. 

The scene shifted; Jisung was outside again. He appeared to have wound up at a place similar to the Sol Palace--comparable architecture, complete with jade and gold accents. This structure was less vertical than the palace, though. It was more spread out, a horseshoe-shaped building with only two storeys wrapped around a large courtyard. 

Sat on the edge of the courtyard’s central fountain were Minho and Felicity. Concerningly, Minho was wielding a pair of silver scissors near her long hair, opening and closing them with concentrated curiosity. 

“Minho, are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Felicity, her warm, brown eyes scrutinizing his movements apprehensively. “The healers said it’s possible the gender anomaly in my aura can go away.” 

“Yeah, and hair grows back. So what?” Minho said with a flippant shrug. “Now sit still and let the master work.” He grabbed a chunk of her hair and lopped it off in one go. 

Felicity gasped in horror. “Minho!” She gathered her hair up in her arms protectively, shrinking away from him. “It took five years for it to grow this long!”

“And you never liked it, did you?” 

She didn’t respond. Rather, she turned away with a deep frown and a downcast gaze. 

“Right?” Minho said--a soft nudge. 

Finally, she gave a faint nod. “I hate it.” 

“Okay.” Minho scritched the top of her head, grinning when she looked up at him. “Then let’s cut it off.” He waggled his brows mischievously, flapping the scissors about. 

Felicity eyed the gleaming instrument incredulously. “No offense, Minho, but I don’t wanna look ugly either.” 

“ Ugh, you’re not gonna look ugly.” Minho rolled his eyes and turned her to face away from him. “I’ll make you a prettier boy than me. Promise.” 

Jisung faltered for a second. Oh, he thought, struck with comprehension of the situation. Little Felicity, no older than eight or nine--with her freckled face and blonde hair and brown eyes--was actually… Felix. 

For a while, Felix quietly allowed Minho to cut his hair, and Minho seemed to be sticking to his word of not making him look ugly. In the meantime, Jisung had found a perch beside them on the edge of the fountain, affection swelling within him as he saw Felix grow more and more comfortable with every snip. 

Minho was so good and kind, taking everyone as they came. 

He always had been. 

When Minho was finished, Jisung found himself quite pleasantly surprised with the quality of the cut. There were no awkwardly long or short chunks, no choppiness; he’d even taken the consideration to add some depth to Felix’s hair instead of making it all one length. 

Minho set the scissors aside and sat back to evaluate his handiwork. 

“W-well?” asked Felix. 

“Hmm…” Minho looked struck with inspiration all of a sudden. “One more thing,” he said, and reached down into the fountain to wet his hands. He then raked and combed his fingers through Felix’s hair, mussed it a bit, smoothed it in strategic places and roughened it in others. When he sat back again, he nodded to himself. “Perfect.” 

“Really?” 

“Mhmm~ see for yourself.” Minho gestured to the pristine fountain water. 

Felix moved to tentatively look at the smooth, reflected image of himself in the water’s surface. He froze, a similar manner of awe shining in his eyes that Minho had had when he’d seen his own wings for the first time. 

“You like it?” asked Minho, and Jisung could hear a hint of worry in his tone. 

Felix swallowed audibly. Then, after some time, his face split into a broad grin. He threw himself into Minho, hugging him tight. 

“It is perfect,” he said, voice ringing with pure happiness. “Thank you, Minho.” 

“You’re very welcome, Fel--um…” Minho unlatched Felix from around him. “Sorry, just--” he rubbed sheepishly at the back of his neck-- “you never really liked being called Felicity either, did you?” 

Felix wilted slightly, shaking his head. 

“Is there something you wanna be called instead?” 

Felix considered the question for a moment, eyes flitting around as if he could find his answer written into thin air, or in the ripples of the water fountain. “I like ‘Felix,’” he confessed shyly. 

Minho tipped his head to the side. “Isn’t that the name of the cool healer guy from those old storybooks your mom used to read for us when we were younger?” 

“I guess.” Felix pouted. “Is that okay?” 

“Does it make you happy?” 

Felix nodded eagerly. 

Minho smiled, running his hand through Felix’s freshly-cropped hair. “Then it’s great.” 

Felix returned his smile, resting his head on Minho’s shoulder. 

They sat at that fountain, talking about everything and nothing, and Jisung drank in every innocent, joy-filled second. 

That is, until the two boys were interrupted by the approach of a gaggle of three other young kids, each of them dressed in noble garb of some denomination, and all clearly older than Minho and Felix by a couple years. 

“See? I told you these two fools were getting into trouble,” said the middlemost child, addressing the brats flanking him on either side. “The Magister’s gonna kill you when he sees how badly you butchered his little girl’s hair, Minho.” 

“Eww~ she looks like a boy now,” another of the three commented. 

Minho scoffed, adopting an air of nonchalance. “Clearly, you have no idea how not offensive that kind of commentary is. In fact, please do keep it coming.” 

“What?” The middle brat slid his gaze toward Felix, and something must’ve dawned on him if the way he chucked his head back with a snide cackle was any indication. “Aw~ little Felicity still thinks she’s a boy?” He looked again to Minho. “You realize it’s all for attention, right? She knows Severia’s the family’s pride and joy, and this is the only way she can think of to get Uncle Jiho and Aunt Suniza to look at her.” 

“That’s not true,” Felix mumbled meekly, curling into himself. 

Minho stood to his feet, stepping between Felix and his bully--a blatant act of protection, though he maintained his facade of cool unbotheredness. “Yes, well, you certainly would know a thing or two about attention-seeking, wouldn’t you, Silas? Tell me, when was the last time your mother spoke more to you at the dinner table than her cat?” 

All three brats seemed to reel at the insult, thoroughly gobsmacked. 

“Well, at least I have a mother!” 

“Ooh, ouch,” Minho said flatly, picking at his fingernails. “Don’t let anyone catch you talking about the late queen like that. Tends to be frowned upon, methinks.” 

“As frowned-upon as a member of Sol House pretending to be something she’s not so she can hog attention she doesn’t deserve?” Silas retorted with an ugly, jeering scowl. “I’m gonna tell everyone: Lee Felicity is a big, fat poser who only wants to embarrass her parents because she’s not being spoiled to her liking.” 

“Everyone, huh?” Minho’s eyes went round, feigning concern. “All, like, five people in the world you know?” 

Silas smirked--a crooked, unpleasant expression. “Try the entire guest list of attendees at the Fleymlansan royal solstice dinner.” 

That seemed to break Minho’s calm facade. “It’s really not that serious. So what if you think Felix--” 

“ Felix?” Silas echoed, and all three boys burst out into sinister laughter. “Is that what she has you calling her now? That’s rich!” 

Minho’s body tensed as he quickly realized his mistake. He whirled his head around to peer down at a very distraught Felix, who’d huddled himself into a ball, knees pulled up to his chest, tears glazing his eyes. 

When Minho returned his attention to the three brats, they were already walking off, laughing amongst themselves. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?!” 

“The convention hall, of course,” said Silas. “I hear some guests have already begun to arrive.” 

“Oh, and you’re gonna tell them a seven year-old wants attention? Groundbreaking stuff, Silas. Truly. I’m sure you won’t be embarrassing yourself in the process.” 

Silas huffed a dismissive laugh, continuing to saunter on his merry way. “Nice try, Minho. You’re gonna have to do better than that.” 

Minho growled under his breath. “I do have something better that you can tell them,” he shouted after them, peeling his tunic over his head and tossing it to the ground. 

Felix blinked up at him, utterly perplexed. “Minho?” 

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” Silas asked, still not pausing or bothering to turn around. 

Minho was reluctant; Jisung could see it in the teeth-gritting confliction on his face and the rigidity of his body. 

Even still, he announced, loud and proud: “Prince Minho has unbound wings.” 

At that, Silas and his friends finally halted and spun around to be greeted with the sight of Minho, wings outstretched behind him, golden-orange iridescence shimmering beneath the setting sun. 

“Wha--? You…” Approximately a million-and-a-half emotions passed through Silas’ features before ultimately settling on scandalized disgust. “What the hell is wrong with you?” He turned right back around and marched off, his friends in hot pursuit of him. “You’re a filthy fucking freak, Lee Minho!”

Once they were gone, Minho breathed out a long, deep exhale, plopping back down on the edge of the fountain. 

“Why did you do that?” murmured Felix, making a clear effort not to gawk at Minho’s wings. 

“Because you deserve to figure out who you are with as little judgment as possible.”

“But…” Felix frowned, wiping at his misty eyes with the back of his hand. “You don’t deserve to be treated badly either.” 

“Maybe not.” Minho’s lips pulled into a self-satisfied grin. “But I’ll be okay.” He straightened his back and lifted his chin. “I’m tough!” 

Felix snorted, knocking their shoulders together. “You are,” he agreed, casting a short glance toward Minho’s wings with a little smile. “They’re really pretty, by the way.” 

Minho let out a bashful chuckle, the points of his ears blooming with a rosy blush. “Thanks.” 

The memory came to a close, the world around Jisung morphing yet again into something new. 

Little Minho was sunbathing by himself out on the same flat rock from the first memory. He was lying flat on his belly, chin propped on his hands, wings freely splayed. His eyes were closed as he hummed a soft melody to himself. 

He was content. Troubled by nothing. 

For a bit anyway. 

“Gods, Silas really wasn’t lying, huh?” The voice was a distant whisper, but so conspicuous amid the near-silence of the surrounding forest. 

“It’s gross, isn’t it?” said another voice. “The crown prince being so comfortable showing his assets out in the open like that—how shameful and perverted.” 

Minho puffed out a curt breath. “ You’re the ones going out of your way to get a look at them, are you not?” He opened his eyes and pushed himself upright, glaring pointedly ahead as two unfamiliar boys—perhaps up to five years older this time—emerged from the shade of the canopy. “Seems to me like you’re projecting.” 

“Careful there, my prince. Those sound like fighting words.” 

“ Fighting words?” Minho folded his arms over his chest. “I’m just stating a fact.” 

The two boys vanished and reappeared behind Minho. 

“Little kids these days have absolutely no respect for their elders,” tsked the taller of the two. “What would the king say if he knew his son was parading himself around like a little tease out in the open like this?” 

Minho spun on his heels, one wing wrapped self-soothingly around himself. “I was just minding my own business,” he said, defiance in his tone. “It’s not my fault you look at me that way.” 

“ This is a public pond. Don’t act like you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.” 

“I wasn’t doing anything!” 

“Right.” The shorter boy performed another spatial leap to get behind Minho again. “As if you weren’t practically begging to be touched like this.” He reached out and groped roughly at the delicate space between Minho’s shoulderblades. 

“Hey!” Minho leapt away from him, eyes round with alarm, knees knocking. Both wings were wrapped around him now, blankets over his shrunken, trembling frame. 

On instinct, rage surging within him, Jisung went to yank the two boys back, but his hands passed right through them. He couldn’t help Minho, being a mere visitor in a memory long-passed. 

He feared for what came next, watching helplessly as the boys encroached again on Minho’s space--

Then they were gone. But it wasn’t a spatial leap that’d carried them away. Rather, upon closer observation, Jisung saw that a violet-rimmed portal had opened up in the ground beneath the boys’ feet. 

They’d… Fallen through it, just like that, leaving Minho standing alone in the middle of the pool. He blinked owlishly at the portal, though he couldn’t possibly have gotten a good look at the destination on the other side, because it’d swirled shut only a second later. 

“You should really learn some basic defensive measures. You are the crown prince, after all.” 

Minho jerked his head back toward the rock face he’d been using to sunbathe just moments prior. Crouched atop it was a young boy with ink-black hair and dark amber eyes. He was dressed in all black, hood partially flipped onto his head, the Sol emblem painted onto the breast of his tunic. 

Minho rolled his shoulders—tried to slip his wings back into their sleeves with a haste he wasn’t yet capable of. 

“Don’t worry about it,” said the boy. “My wings aren’t bound either. I couldn’t care less what you do with yours.” 

Minho averted his eyes, hugging his arms around himself. He cautiously allowed his wings to relax. “Who are you?” 

“Name’s Seungmin, aurachaser trainee. I’m your new babysitter—per the king’s orders.” 

“Uh…” Minho’s brows scrunched with a blend of confusion and mild offense. “Hi, I guess? I’m Minho.” 

“I know who you are, dork. The king doesn’t appoint babysitters for nobodies.” 

“Right…” muttered Minho. He rubbed self-consciously at his arm, glancing behind himself at the space the portals had previously occupied. “Where did you send them?” 

“Sol Valley prison,” Seungmin said casually. “Threatening a member of the royal family with physical harm of any kind is a capital offense.” 

Minho’s eyes went round--fretful--at the news. “I don’t think they were threatening--” 

“What else do you call what that was?” Seungmin quirked a single brow at him, challenging him to answer. 

“I-I don’t know…” Minho averted his eyes, kicking aimlessly at the water around his ankles. “It’s just--it’s a bit much, don’t you think? Sending them to prison? They’re just kids, like us.” 

Seungmin scoffed at that. “They’re beyond old enough to know better,” he stated matter-of-factly. “And clearly, you don’t actually understand what just happened to you if you’re choosing to defend them.” 

“What do you mean? They were just teasing.”

“They touched you.” 

“Yeah, and?” Minho shook his head, puzzled. 

Seungmin gave him a look-- one more serious than Jisung thought a child should ever have to wear. “They. Touched. You.”

Realization finally reached Minho, his body stiffening with a tiny gasp. “You mean…” He ducked his head, hand sliding beneath his arm toward the outer edge of his shoulderblade. “That spot? Between my wings…?” 

Seungmin nodded--a faint, solemn movement. “Yeah.” 

“Oh…” Minho frowned and went quiet. Whenever the water reflected the sun’s rays just right, Jisung was able to spot the misty shine in his eyes. 

Jisung’s chest felt positively cracked open, spilling his heart onto the ground below. He wanted to reach out and hug little Minho, tell him he was going to be okay--but Jisung had to remind himself: this was a memory, and he was only a visitor. 

“Come on.” Seungmin stepped down from the rock and held his hand out to Minho. “Let’s go to the training grounds. I’ll teach you some things so you can protect yourself.” 

Minho looked up, sniffled, wiped the brimming tears from his eyes. “Really?” 

“Yeah, it’s whatever.” Seungmin shrugged. “You gotta know how to stick up for yourself sometimes; I can’t be around for every bully encounter. I have a life, you know.” 

Despite his attempts to sound aloof and generally uncaring, it seemed Minho detected the underlying compassion in his offer. 

He smiled and took Seungmin’s hand. 

The scene changed. 

“I’m sorry, Minho. I just can’t do this.” 

“But why? We had a good night--a good past several weeks, actually. I don’t understand where this is coming from all of a sudden.” 

Jisung took a hurried pace back when a nameless adolescent boy almost trekked right through him, an equally adolescent Minho scuttling along right after. 

This memory was set in Minho’s palace bedroom. Minho--probably around sixteen or seventeen--was clad only in his trousers, hair messy, skin flushed. The other boy, around the same age but likely a tad older, was in a rush to slip his tunic on and secure its belt around his waist. A second later, he was near the bedroom door, speedily shoving his feet into the pair of boots he’d left along the wall; it was obvious he was making a concerted effort to avoid Minho’s eyes. 

“You said you didn’t have a problem with it,” continued Minho. 

“I thought I didn’t.” 

“What changed?” 

“I don’t know, Minho.” 

“That’s not a real answer.” 

“What do you want me to say?” the boy snapped, making Minho flinch. “You want me to say I was never really okay with your unbound wings? Fine-- I wasn’t!”

Minho froze in his tracks, hurt, bewilderment, and disbelief occupying his features all at once. 

“I thought I could look past it, but honestly? The payoff just isn’t worth the degradation of my values and morals.” 

Minho’s brows drew up into a tense knit. “Payoff?” he echoed feebly, voice cracking.

The boy smiled, but it was anything but sweet. Condescending, morelike. “Come on, Minho. Don’t tell me you really thought this was anything more than a lower-status noble family using their son to garner favor with the crown.” 

Minho breathed out like the air had physically been ripped from his lungs. He didn’t speak, because of course he didn’t. What could he possibly say to such a cruel, heartless confession? 

The boy left without another word, and even Jisung, who was nothing more than a ghostly apparition in this memory, could feel the frigid cold of the atmosphere that lingered in the boy’s wake. 

There, in the middle of the room, Minho stood motionless. Jisung wasn’t sure he was even breathing for a long while. Eventually, though, Minho’s paralysis broke; with slouched shoulders and his head hung low, he ambled backward until the backs of his knees met the edge of his bed. Then he sat down, elbows rested atop his knees, head propped in his hands. 

Jisung went to sit beside him, wishing desperately that he could offer anything of consolation. 

He’d known Minho had had a rough time growing up, but he’d never imagined so much of his turmoil had been brought forth by his relationship with his own wings. It seemed ridiculous to Jisung as an outside observer. How could the fae simultaneously subscribe to freedom of expression as a whole but condemn one such freedom so vehemently? Moreover, how was it that the fae didn’t believe in sexual purity as most human cultures did, and yet, just this one thing--what a faerie chose to do with their wings--was so deeply steeped in the fallacious idea of purity that it impacted every relationship, friendship, and otherwise close connection a faerie had with others? 

Jisung supposed that was just the mortal condition at play… Humans and fae alike were not infallible in logic. Sometimes, detrimentally, they implemented customs that made hardly any sense, that were contradictory to other beliefs they harbored. 

It was painful to see--young Minho, all alone in his cold, empty bedroom, lost and weeping into his hands. It made Jisung reflect on just how little he actually knew about the man he’d come to love so irrevocably. He knew the Minho of the present, plus a scarce few childhood anecdotes that Minho had been willing to share with him. But he didn’t know the Minho of the past, whose experiences shaped who he was now. 

There was so much Jisung didn’t know about Minho, and from the looks of these memories, he was beginning to understand why. 

Jisung was Minho’s fresh start. Why would he ever want to bring the pain of the past into a fresh start? 

Jisung sat there beside a crying Minho for long enough that he began to wonder if this was where the memories ended--if this was as far as Minho was willing to show him. 

But then Minho’s weeping crawled to a stop, reduced to quiet sniffles and quivering breaths. 

“Go away, Seungmin,” he muttered, sitting up from his hunched position and haphazardly wiping his tears away. “I’m not in the mood for whatever you have to say.” 

“You don’t know what I have to say.” 

Jisung looked behind himself to see Seungmin leaning against the archway separating the room and the outdoor balcony. 

“You have to say what you always have to say,” said Minho, pushing himself up from the bed to retrieve his tunic from the floor some paces away. “‘You can do so much better, Minho’, ‘I don’t know why you waste so much time and energy on these vultures, Minho’, ‘you know these boys only ever want you for royal favors, Minho’, ‘why don’t you just wait until you find someone who wants you and not your status, Minho?’ And you know what, Seungmin? I’ll fucking tell you why--” he whirled around to face Seungmin, tunic clutched in blanch-knuckled fists, eyes wild with a cocktail of overwhelming emotion-- “because who the fuck would want me?! Before I was outed as a fury, I had a small chance of forging meaningful relationships with people; I’d still meet a lot more who’d rather just be able to say they personally know the prince of Fleymlansa, but at least they wouldn’t be afraid of me or see me as too unpredictable to get close to. Now, all I am is a vessel of wealth and royal favors to anyone I meet. And on top of that, because I can’t seem to stop collecting misfortunes like it’s my favorite pastime, everyone and their gods-damned mother knows I have unbound wings, and that’s just one more thing that makes me utterly undesirable to just about everyone around me--even the ones who only seek to use me. So I have to ask again, Seungmin, in what mythical universe must you be living in to believe anyone would actually want me? Who the fuck do you know of that would ever look my way and not immediately regret it?” 

Seungmin’s expression was guarded, unrevealing. He stayed leaning against the archway, eyes trained intensely on Minho. “Are you actually asking?” 

Minho pressed his tongue into his cheek, smirking without an ounce of mirth. “You know what? Yeah, I guess I am.” 

“Okay then.” Seungmin crossed his arms over his chest. “Me.” 

That gave Minho pause. He blinked rapidly, face scrunching with befuddlement. “What?” 

“You asked who would actually want you, and I’m telling you: it’s me, Minho.” 

A beat passed. Then Minho suddenly burst into a bout of stilted, doubtful laughter. “You’re full of shit,” he accused. “Do I seem like I’m in the mood to be fucked with right now?” 

“I’m not fucking with you.” 

“Bullshit, you’re not!” Minho went on laughing, bordering on maniacal. Soon enough, he caught onto the reality that Seungmin very much wasn’t laughing, or cracking wise, or appearing amused or smug in any fashion. The moment Minho’s laughter began to die was the moment Jisung was sure the understanding had finally set in that Seungmin was dead-serious. 

“You done?” asked Seungmin. 

Minho swallowed roughly, big, round eyes glistening with the moonlight that filtered into the room through the archway. He gave the slightest of affirmative nods. 

Seungmin inhaled deeply, unfolding his arms and stepping farther into the room. “Seven years… That’s how long I’ve been your friend. And in those seven years, I’ve stood idly by as you got yourself hurt, over and over again, day and night, by anyone and everyone you met, because you told me to. As much as it infuriated me, I did what you asked for two reasons, the first of which being that, contrary to popular belief, I respect you greatly and I believe that micromanaging your every waking hour would be more harmful to you than letting you learn from your mistakes ever would’ve been. The second reason--well, let’s just say it was a spot of wishful thinking on my part.” 

He halted just in front of Minho, who continued to wordlessly peer at him and hang on every word he spoke. 

“I thought that you’d see it eventually--the fact that there’s no sense in leaping into situations you know will get you hurt when I’m right here.” Seungmin’s voice lost its level and stoic character, something of a plea infiltrating its cadence, disrupting its calm. “I don’t give a damn about your unbound wings, or your nature as a fury, or your royal status--or any number of other superficial qualities about you that you consider to be a hindrance. I think sometimes you forget that I can read you down to the core of your being; I know who you are, Minho, so you can be damn-sure that when I say I want you, I fucking mean it.” 

They both stood still for what felt like an eternity, neither daring to stray their gaze from the other. Jisung recognized the look in Minho’s eyes as hesitant longing; he knew because Minho had looked at him like that on more than one occasion, when things between them had been uncertain and neither one of them had known how to establish what they felt for one another. 

It felt like forever since that was the case, but in reality, it’d only been a couple weeks. 

“That’s one hell of a confession, Kim,” said Minho. 

“You only think that because you apparently need to be beaten over the head with something to know it’s there. Seriously—I haven’t exactly been subtle these past few years.” 

“Shut up.” Minho wadded his hand up in the front of Seungmin’s tunic and hauled him into a kiss. 

Seungmin reciprocated instantly, winding his arms around Minho and hugging him close. All the while, Minho reached up with his free hand to tangle into Seungmin’s dark hair, canting his head to deepen the union. 

It didn’t last long, though. 

“Mm--” Seungmin pulled back a bit, planting a hand on the center of Minho’s chest-- “by the way, is this a bad time to tell you I portaled that guy to the peak of Hei-lai Volcano the second he left the room?” 

Minho’s eyes blew wide-open with horror. “You what?” 

“Yeah, I should--” 

“Go get him!” 

“Yep, my thoughts exactly.” Seungmin backed away toward the balcony with a sheepish grin. 

Minho breathed an exasperated sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Seungmin,” he called, just before the boy in question could leave. 

“Yeah?” 

Minho met his gaze from across the room. “Get your ass back here the second you’re done cleaning up your mess.” 

Seungmin’s eyes twinkled with genuine excitement. “I will.” 

With a farewell salute, he vanished. 

This time, when Minho was left standing alone in his room, he wore an elated smile on his face, fingertips grazing his own lips as he savored the lingering sensation of a kiss from one who cared. 

The scene changed. 

Jisung was still in Minho’s bedroom. It was dark, breezy, the temperatures flowing in from outside resembling those of mid-autumn. No candles, lanterns, or torches were lit. For a second, Jisung thought the room may have been empty, despite that making rather little sense if he were truly wading through Minho’s memories. 

Light then briefly flooded the room, alongside the sound of the door swinging open on creaky hinges. Just as quickly, the door fell shut again, everything returning to nighttime darkness, and Jisung had only managed to catch a faint glimpse at the figure that’d escaped the room--a man, relatively tall, icy-white hair with pearlescent accents. Otherwise faceless, nameless. 

Jisung looked toward the bed, not that he could really see anything. Still, he could hear the gentle rustle of satin sheets and deep, somewhat labored breaths that implicated Minho’s presence. 

A small flame appeared to illuminate the room. Minho was sat with his legs swung over the edge of the bed, wings out, bared nude as far as Jisung could tell, flame held in his palm. When he reached over to the nightstand to light the lantern settled upon it, a little, strained noise escaped him, as though he were in pain. 

Jisung crept closer, noting, first and foremost, that Minho looked almost no different from how he did in present-day; he was most assuredly in his early twenties. 

Jisung’s subsequent observations were much less innocuous. His eyes were drawn to what were unmistakably bruises, handprint-shaped, wrapped around his waist and hips. Another mottled bruise was present right between Minho’s shoulderblades, alongside angry-red scratchmarks, some of which clearly deep enough to have, at one point, drawn blood. 

Minho made to stand, painstakingly slow, wincing as he nursed a hand against his lower back. He exhaled slow and deep, biding his time until he was upright enough to walk--or… Hobble was more like it--over to the large mirror on the other side of the room, grabbing his trousers up from the foot of the bed as he went. 

Jisung followed, pausing just behind where Minho had stopped in front of the mirror. He scanned over Minho’s body for any more marks that he suspected, disturbingly enough, were not terribly welcome. His eyes honed in on the purply-red impression of teeth in the junction between Minho’s neck and shoulder and what suspiciously resembled burst capillaries around his throat.

Once Minho had wrestled his pants on, with absolutely no small amount of effort, he began to inspect the state of himself, hissing through his teeth and grimacing as he lightly prodded at the bruises on his waist, the marks on his throat… 

He bit his lower lip, seeming unable to look himself in the eyes. Behind him, his wings shifted, starting to retreat into their sleeves when he cried out abruptly, face pinching with great discomfort. 

He maneuvered to get a look at his back, the stark bruise between his shoulderblades staring back at him like a warning. 

“ Seriously?” he muttered to himself. “Fucking bastard just couldn’t help himself, could he?” 

Shaking his head in irate disbelief, he folded his wings down the length of his back, much like a moth, and threw on the red, silk robe that’d been dangling off the upper corner of the mirror. Jisung trailed along after him as he trudged over to the small table by the archway, grabbed the largest, fullest bottle of liquor up from its surface, and half-limped out to the balcony. 

Once there, he uncorked the bottle with his teeth, spit the cork off to the side, and knocked the liquor back, chugging for a truly concerning amount of time. After consuming more than enough alcohol to kill a human in seconds, he placed the bottle down on the stone railing and glared vacantly out at the city skyline. 

“Here to join the party, Kim?” He didn’t move his gaze, but like always, he knew Seungmin was there. “I hope you brought your own liquor, ‘cause mine’s almost out.” 

“What just happened to you is serious, Minho. I’m not playing games with you this time.” 

Jisung turned and spotted Seungmin crouched atop the archway overhang, a grave expression written into his face, austerity in his eyes. 

“How would you know anything about what happened?” asked Minho. “Are we gonna have to have a conversation about you eavesdropping on my private escapades?” 

“You know I wasn’t eavesdropping.” Seungmin disappeared and rematerialized in a seated position on the railing, facing Minho directly. “Your aura reeks of misery, and the images constantly replaying in your head right now are alarming at best.” 

“Peculiar that you thought telling me you’re currently rooting around in my head would be more comforting than the notion of you eavesdropping on my most recent fuck,” remarked Minho. He grabbed the bottle and lifted it to his lips, only for Seungmin to snatch it away and set it out of reach. 

“He knowingly and deliberately injured your cardinal erogenia--that’s not an innocent feature of rough sex, Minho; that’s considered a violent crime,” Seungmin stated pointedly. “We’re talking about this.” 

“It’s not a big deal.” 

“He hurt you.” 

“I didn’t say no.” 

“He hurt you--”

“I didn’t say no.” 

“Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” demanded Seungmin. “You never had a problem telling sleazy men off until recently. You deserve better.” 

That struck a nerve. “What--better like you?” Minho scoffed. “Look how well that turned out.” 

“We’re not talking about us,” Seungmin countered with finality. “And you know I’m right.” 

Minho shook his head, looking back out at the night horizon. “It’s just easier,” he said quietly.

Seungmin’s brow formed a deep furrow. “How is letting yourself be used in a way you hate easier? Easier than what?” 

“The vast majority of fae think of someone whose wings are unbound outside of a formal union as some exotic, promiscuous creature up for anything and everything.” Minho cast his gaze down to his hands, which were fiddling restlessly where they rested on top of the railing. “Over time, it simply became easier to buy into that narrative than to make exhaustive efforts to correct people’s perceptions of me.” 

Seungmin’s lips pulled into a deep, sullen frown. “What you’re doing to yourself--what you’re allowing others to do to you--is self-harm, Minho.” 

“Yeah, well… Maybe I deserve less than you think.” 

Seungmin was positively appalled at that insinuation. “How can you say something like that about yourself?” 

Minho was silent for a moment, ruminating. “Back when we were kids,” he began, “I told Felix one day that I was going to ‘see my wings.’ He asked me ‘what if something bad happens?’ and I said ‘bad like what?’.” He wrung his hands together, hard. “I didn’t believe anything bad could possibly come from it. It didn’t make sense to me why anything bad would happen. Flash forward fourteen years, and I’m someone who’s been repeatedly bullied, harassed, and assaulted in ways I’d really rather not think about—all because I decided one day that denouncing a long-standing tradition couldn’t possibly have any consequences worth caring about.”

Seungmin’s eyes widened, brows upturning. “You’re punishing yourself,” he realized, dismayed. “You were just a kid. You had no way of knowing how things would change for you.” 

“Felix was a kid too,” Minho pointed out, voice hollow, “and yet he knew better.” 

“This isn’t about knowing right from wrong, Minho; there is no right and wrong with what you choose to do with your own body on your own terms. There just is and is not. Your wings are unbound. It just is. It’s not an inherent invitation for those around you to treat you like dirt, but what is an invitation is you allowing that kind of treatment without protest--something you never used to do.” 

Minho exhaled wearily, massaging at his temples. “Have you maybe considered that I’m tired, Seungmin?” he asked rhetorically. “I’m tired of constantly having to disallow what others think I’ve invited upon myself. Allowing is easier--”

“Easier for who?” 

“For--!” Minho cut himself off mid-retort, unable to find words. He bit down hard on his lip, adamantly avoiding Seungmin’s prying stare. Tears slowly welled in his eyes and spilled onto his cheeks, something like indignance overtaking his countenance. “Gods, why can’t you just leave it alone?” 

“Because this is what you look like when I try to talk to you about it.” 

Minho huffed humorlessly, saying nothing further on the matter. 

Seungmin softened his gaze on him, slipping his hand beneath Minho’s chin to tilt his face up. “He hurt you, Min.” The words were uttered in the gentlest way possible--certainly gentler than Jisung had ever heard from Seungmin before. 

Minho pressed his lips together, blinking back his remaining tears. He drew in a shaky breath. “I know.”

There was a long stretch of silence in which Minho tried his best to not look anywhere in Seungmin’s direction, and Seungmin had taken to soothingly petting Minho’s hair. 

As time went on, Seungmin’s face grew progressively more pensive. At last, he let out a self-composing sigh and spoke again. “You are the crown prince of the single most powerful fae nation in the world.” 

Minho made a face, perplexed by the introduction of seemingly irrelevant information. “And I try to forget about it. What’s your point?” 

“You are a highly-skilled fighter with cunning intellect that simply cannot be taught.” 

“Do you honestly think a little ego-stroke is gonna fix me?” 

“Nothing about you needs to be fixed. You’re perfect.”

Minho rolled his eyes, and Seungmin forged on undeterred. 

“You are a loyal friend with a heart of pure gold, a kind man who seeks to right injustice when he sees it, a curious mind who marvels at the wonders of our world, an angel with an impossible amount of love to give, an absolutely hilarious drunk--” 

“What’s your point, Seungmin?” 

“My point is you are everything and so much more than the wings on your back, and I’ll be damned if I can’t convince you of that irrefutable fact before I leave this balcony tonight.” Seungmin arched a brow in challenge, daring Minho to argue. 

Minho didn’t. Rather, he only took a big, deep breath and slumped against Seungmin’s leg. 

Seungmin resumed petting his hair, long, soft strokes that Jisung had come to understand Minho loved. “At least promise me this…” 

“Hmm?” grunted Minho. 

“The next man you invite into your bed better treat you like treasure and nothing less,” said Seungmin, and he was undeniably serious, firm in his request. 

Minho’s chest expanded and contracted heavily. “Pretty sure I’ll be living celibate for the rest of my life under that condition.” 

“So be it.” 

Minho snorted weakly at the blunt assertion. “Could always try my luck with the humans, I suppose,” he mused.

Seungmin’s fingers went still in Minho’s hair. “Yeah, I think a piece of my soul just shriveled up and died.” 

Minho smirked--genuine levity returning to him. “That Prince Jisung is pretty~” he sing-songed dreamily. “Maybe he’ll let me corrupt him.” 

Jisung’s brain promptly short-circuited, Minho’s casual mention of him in a memory that had to have been set at least several months before they’d even met sending him into a brief but potent spiral. 

“Okay, first of all, you saw him once from very far away at a treaty renegotiation; he’s as pretty as you know the sun is pretty without being able to look directly at it--that is to say: you have no way of knowing he’s actually pretty,” said Seungmin. “And second of all, I loathe you for making me have to explain why you, a fae prince, should never speak or think about a Han in any semblance of a positive light.” 

“Oh, boo,” taunted Minho. “You’re no fun.” 

Seungmin squinted at him. “For my sanity, I’m gonna go ahead and blame this blasphemous behavior on the fact that you downed half a bottle of whiskey before having this conversation.” 

Minho huffed amusedly before forcing himself to support his own weight again. Following several seconds of contemplative quietude, he looked up to meet Seungmin’s gaze. “You sent him to Hei-lai Volcano, didn’t you?” he asked. “The guy who, um…” He made a vague gesture that somehow encompassed precisely what he was alluding to. 

Seungmin’s jaw visibly tensed, eyes darkening. “Do you want me to go get him?” Jisung could tell he didn’t even want to pose the option for Minho, and yet he did despite his reluctance. 

Minho considered the question for exactly no time at all. “Fuck no,” he said decisively, stretching his arm over Seungmin’s legs to grab the bottle of whiskey and taking a hearty swig. 

Seungmin grinned, taking the bottle when Minho offered it up to him. 

The scene changed. One after another, Jisung was taken through the parts of Minho’s memory that depicted the progression of their relationship. 

It began with a memory Jisung wasn’t a part of. 

Minho and Seungmin were talking at the warm pool cavern; it was a little disconcerting seeing that Minho was completely nude while Seungmin was fully clothed ( and helping Minho wash his back), but Jisung more than understood the complexities of their friendship. Things like this just… Didn’t bear the same sort of meaning for them as it would for many others. 

They were discussing Minho’s sudden insecurity about his wings--about his concern that Jisung wouldn’t like the fact that they were unbound. And Jisung was pleasantly surprised to hear Seungmin actually vouching for him, even back then. Even back when Seungmin was still a bit cold and distrustful toward him. 

When Seungmin asked Minho what he liked about Jisung, Minho spoke nothing aloud, but the bashful fondness that appeared in his eyes as he thought on the question said more than enough. 

“What’s the verdict?” Seungmin asked after a while. 

“I… Actually like him,” was Minho’s reply; the softness of his voice and the cherry hue blooming in his face made Jisung grin ear-to-ear. 

Next came the climactic moment that Minho revealed his wings to Jisung. Strange as it was for Jisung to be seeing himself in this memory, it was also highly illuminating. 

He’d known he had to have been marveling at Minho’s wings to an almost comical extent, but he’d never known just how fascinated, allured, and well-and-truly spellbound he’d been. 

No wonder Minho had gotten a little shy under his gaze. 

Jisung watched Minho closely as the memory played out, picking out details he’d been none-the-wiser to before: 

The way Minho relaxed-- melted, even--upon the affirmation that Jisung thought he was beautiful, that Jisung felt absolutely nothing negative or demeaning toward Minho as so many preceding him had. 

The pure joy hidden beneath Minho’s mask of feigned exasperation as Jisung uttered the words “I see you, Minho. Truly.” 

The manner in which Jisung managed to take Minho’s breath away with their bodies pressed flush against one another--a stark contrast between the bliss Minho exuded in this memory as opposed to those prior. 

Minho was so happy. Jisung had always known they were in good company whenever they were with one another, but after having borne witness to snapshots of Minho’s life from before Jisung had ever entered the picture, it all was put into solid perspective. 

Jisung really was the kind of different Minho craved, as Seungmin had said back in the warm pool cavern. 

He supposed he should’ve seen it coming--the next memory being their first time having sex at the beach house. Still, it thoroughly knocked the wind out of him when he was faced with the image of Minho sat in his lap, rolling his hips in a rhythm Jisung could, in retrospect, only regard as sinful. 

He saw how quickly Minho crumbled into a shivering, whimpering mess when the spot between his wings was nudged; from this perspective--on the outside looking in--Jisung could see the full extent of Minho’s physical vulnerability. The reality was: even a light touch to a faerie’s ‘cardinal erogenia’ could be enough to stun one into near-incapacitation for several seconds. 

Suddenly, the incident with the man who’d gotten too rough and greedy with Minho seemed all the more dreadful to Jisung. Rage-inducing, when the realization sank in that the brutal handling of such a sensitive area had probably weakened Minho’s ability to move to a significant degree in the moment. 

Seungmin’s earlier statement that the injury inflicted upon that part of Minho’s body was ‘considered a violent crime’ made a lot more sense than it did before… 

Knowing what Jisung now knew, it made this memory a little bittersweet. On one hand, he was sure in his heart that being so close and connected and vulnerable with Minho in all the saccharine, ooey-gooey ways that some would find overly mawkish had been, and still remained, Jisung’s greatest desire, and Minho shared completely in that desire. On the other hand, it disheartened Jisung to look back on their first intimate moment knowing that such a desire was far from the norm in Minho’s experience. 

How could no one in Minho’s past see that all he wanted was to be loved and cared for? How could they neglect to see how gentle, sweet, and truly affectionate he was? 

How could they not care as Jisung did? 

Somehow, while Jisung watched himself curl up into the warm cradle of Minho’s wings, smiling into sleepy kisses and savoring lovely touches, it wasn’t endearment or sentimentality that he felt. Instead, it was a form of melancholy he couldn’t quite place. 

At this point, Jisung hoped the memory reel would finally come to a close--not because he was tired of seeing bits and pieces of Minho’s life, but because he knew what would inevitably come next, and he wasn’t especially excited to relive it all. 

Then again, that’s what his original intention had been, wasn’t it? He wanted to understand Minho’s feelings as a freshly-clipped faerie; he wanted to be able to identify precisely what it was that lost Minho his voice so he could better empathize with him. 

Jisung wanted to be there for Minho in his recovery exactly how Minho needed him to be. And he couldn’t accomplish that without first establishing a fundamental grasp of Minho’s condition, emotionally and physically. 

The next several memories were more like strobing, chaotic flashes than fully-developed stories, as though Minho’s brain hadn’t actually processed and retained them in their entirety. 

Jisung was subjected to imagery he was convinced not a single person on earth could imagine in their wildest nightmares. More disturbingly, he was no longer just a passive observer, jabs of inscrutable pain lashing between his shoulderblades with all the fleeting intensity of a lightning strike--descending upon him with each successive flicker of Minho’s torture on Gang Dosi’s battlefield. 

He could no longer stand, collapsing to his knees as a sharp scream clawed its way out of his throat. Over and over again, he was struck with that white-hot pain, and over and over again, he was confronted with the very moment Hakun made the cut. The terror in Minho’s eyes, the sound of ripping flesh and blood-curdling shrieks, the metallic tang of blood that permeated the air--

And gods, the pain… 

Over and over again. 

Though thoroughly entrenched in a world of his own agony, a repeated, miserably-sobbed chorus of “Jisungie!” still managed to reach his ears, carried along by Minho’s raw voice. 

Jisung remembered, then, that he hadn’t been present for the entirety of this dire event. He’d shut down the second Minho’s wings had been severed from his body, and only once Minho had largely been reduced to little more than tremors and unintelligible cries had Jisung been able to rein his mind back in from its retreat to haven-like daydreams. 

The whole time Jisung’s mind had stayed huddled away, Minho had been crying for him… 

The strobing images and jabs of agonizing, incomprehensible pain came to a sudden stop, and Jisung found himself, now, lying on the floor of a dark room, tears wetting his entire face, body trembling with a residual searing sensation in his back. 

There was a gentle sway to the room, implicating its belonging to a ship at sea. Jisung tried to blink the blurry haze out of his vision to garner a better sense of his surroundings, but it was still too dark to see anything worthwhile. 

He tried to get up from the floor, too, only to be thwarted by an unearthly weakness from head to toe and a stabbing twinge in his back. 

So there he lay, helpless, debilitated, alone… 

The only indication that he wasn’t actually alone was the sound of heavy, panting breaths from nearby--a sound he so dreadfully recognized from the moment he’d entered this very room hours ago to be met with Minho nearly on his deathbed. 

Except, this memory… It wasn’t from just a couple hours ago. 

No--it was much, much worse. 

It was from days ago. 

Jisung could tell, because he laid strewn across the floor of that room, helpless, debilitated, and alone in every way that mattered for several cycles of dim daylight funneled through the singular porthole in the wall and blackest night. Each day that passed, the heavy, panting breaths grew more ragged and frail, the few-and-far-between glimpses he got of Minho lent pictures of withering vitality, and the odor of necrosing wounds pervaded the air with increasing potency.

A few times, when someone would dare to enter the room, a short burst of energy would allow Minho to send them away with volatile threats of fire, but he would just as soon be depleted of that energy, returning to his crippled state upon bloodied sheets. 

As the time passed, torturously slow, into the later days of his deterioration, Jisung became haunted by the introduction of Minho’s delirious mutterings. Mostly, it was hours upon hours of Jisung’s name whimpered despairingly into the otherwise silent room. Occasionally, it was prayers to the gods, pleading with them to take him away, to put him out of his misery. Sometimes, though, it was furious ramblings against the gods, criticizing them for their cruelty and their gleeful willingness to watch their own creations’ prosperity erode before them. 

All the while, Jisung remained too feeble and in pain to move, just like Minho. 

The memory faded away once Jisung watched himself enter the room, and he was able to stand again.

Not that he was permitted any solace when the seemingly endless days of decay concluded, because he was once more thrust into a disorienting mess of strobing imagery--with one key difference this time: 

It was the same three, short instances playing on horrific repeat. 

“Cut it out.” 

One. 

“I said-- cut it out. ” 

Two. 

Pain like no other cleaved right into the center of Jisung’s back, sending him tumbling right back down to the floor.

Three. 

He’d compare it to a serrated knife twisting into his spine, but even that couldn’t encompass the nature of this truly harrowing brand of pain. It didn’t even come close. His scream matched the ear-piercing cadence of Minho’s exactly. 

Repeat. 

Again and again--

“Cut it out.”

“I said-- cut it out. ”

Pain like no other.

Repeat. 

“Cut it out.” 

“I said-- cut it out. ” 

And then, amid Jisung’s agony in the cycle’s dozenth repetition, the epiphany he’d been hoping for came to him, and he was abruptly transported to a world of all-black. No new memories, no more pain, nothing… 

It was just black. 

He breathed out, long, slow, and shaky, bringing quivering hands up to clear the tears from his face. He hugged himself, eyes darting around in search of any signs of life. There was no one. 

As far as he could tell, there was no more pain in store for him, and yet he was fearfully prepared for it like it could come right back to torment him if he set himself just the slightest bit out of line. He couldn’t move or speak or do anything for fear that he’d bring the same kind of hell down upon himself all over again. 

And that was what Minho felt. 

His inability to speak did not come without reason. It wasn’t just some nebulous effect of extreme trauma or a residual symptom of shock that’d simply go away with a little time. 

Minho couldn’t speak, because the last time he did, he’d brought unimaginable pain upon himself. He feared what other horrors his voice might bring him, and thus, he trusted it no longer. 

Upon finally finding in Minho’s mind what Jisung had originally set out to look for, the ground fell out from beneath his feet, and he jolted back to his physical body in the real world. 

He was hyperventilating, lungs stinging with the choppy movement of air in and out of them. His heart pounded like a hammer behind his sternum. Tears streamed like rivers down his cheeks. Every little muscle in his body was wracked with a deeply unpleasant sort of ‘jitteriness’ that he only ever got when he suffered episodes of panic. 

Warm hands cupped his face, grounding him, retethering him back to earth. His round, frenzied eyes flicked up, and there Minho was, peering at him in concerned silence. The amber of his irises was soft, tender--honeyed pools of wordless comfort. 

Jisung gulped down the lump of panic in his throat and took a hiccuping, self-soothing breath. He placed his own hands over Minho’s where they held his face, shut his eyes, continued to breathe. 

He felt Minho feather a kiss against his temple and melted further into his touch. 

It took more time than Jisung cared to admit for him to reacclimate to real life--regain emotional stasis. He hardly wanted to burden Minho at a time like this, but… It seemed to him like Minho was more than happy to help. Having just experienced, firsthand, what Minho had gone through in the ordeal of being forcibly clipped, Jisung knew--with complete and utter certainty--that the last thing Minho would ever want was to be treated any differently than he had been before sustaining his injuries. He didn’t want to be regarded as broken, even if he felt he was. Perhaps because he felt he was. 

He needed someone to show him he wasn’t, or else his self-perception would become an inalterable truth. 

In a torrential ocean of unwanted change, Minho needed an immovable constant. 

Jisung, and the relationship they’d kindled, would be that constant. 

“Thank you for showing me,” murmured Jisung, setting his palms beneath Minho’s elbows and opening his eyes with renewed calm. “I think I understand now.” 

Minho frowned, averting his gaze. His hands slid back into his lap. 

“Hey…” Jisung moved to sit beside Minho on the bed. “We’ll figure this out; I said I understand, not that I’ll sit by and let you rot because of it.”

Minho hesitantly met his eyes, something vaguely hope-like shimmering in his gaze. 

Jisung put on a smile and gave a reassuring nod. “Rest today, work tomorrow? 

Minho offered a nod of his own, maybe also a tinge of a smile if one knew to look for it. 

“Yeah? How about we start with, uh… This?” Jisung threaded his fingers into Minho’s ropey hair. “Could fry an egg in this grease.” 

Minho pinned him in a deadpan glare. His aura betrayed his amusement, though.

“Again,” Jisung began with a sheepish grin, “you really can’t expect me of all people to read the room well.” 

Minho huffed a big sigh, snatched Jisung’s hand away from his hair, and plopped down on his side in the bed, dragging Jisung along with him. 

Jisung caught himself just quick enough so he wouldn’t fall right on top of Minho, then cautiously, experimentally situated himself behind him. He only nestled in--chest meeting Minho’s linen-wrapped back--when Minho tugged at the arm Jisung had draped loosely over his waist, beckoning him closer.

From there, Minho hugged Jisung’s arm to his heart, ducking his chin to lay a kiss to his fingertips. 

The exhaustion that bored deep into Jisung’s bones was nearly instantaneous; the last thing he could think to do before his mind was too tired to function anymore was reach behind himself to grab the edge of the blankets and flip them over himself and Minho, snuggling in for some much-needed sleep. 

He dozed off to the sound of Minho’s soft, unimpeded breaths--haggard no more.

Chapter Text

Jisung woke in a furious cold sweat, breaths heavy, heart slamming behind his ribs. If it was a nightmare that woke him, he didn’t remember the details of it. All he knew was that he sensed, so intensely, the nearby aura of an ultimate threat. It was all he could feel, his magic clinging like an involuntary tether to it as though urging him desperately to dispose of it. 

And he surely intended to. 

Raw, unadulterated outrage flared within him--so all-consuming that his entire body ran scorching-hot with it. 

Just as he was about to throw the covers off himself and race out of bed, there was a stirring motion beside him paired with a sleepy little noise he couldn’t ignore. 

Right. Minho. 

“Shh…” hushed Jisung, reaching over to stroke Minho’s hair in hopes of lulling him back to slumber. “Sleep, jagi.” 

Minho stirred some more, but with a brief pulse of bluish light that radiated all the way through his body, he was fast-asleep. Utterly still, breaths but a steady murmur in the dark. 

Jisung blinked, staring down at the hand he had in Minho’s hair; a phantom, almost imperceptible warmth tingled in his fingertips, waning residues of magic he hadn’t consciously brought forth simmering there. 

It was purely by accident, but it seemed he’d placed Minho under a drowsing cast—something he’d never explicitly learned but recognized from various magic encyclopedias as an ability tangentially-related to the empathic subclass of aurapathy. 

He was finding that a lot of magical abilities were coming to him rather naturally these days… Not for the first time, he thought it much like a sort of muscle memory he never quite earned himself. 

He spent another moment running his hand through Minho’s hair, a hint of guilt niggling at him as he mused upon the promise he’d made to stay with Minho—the promise he was very much about to break. 

There was a deeply unwelcome entity on this ship, and Jisung wasn’t about to allow its existence anywhere near him or Minho any longer. Why it was ever taken onboard in the first place was beyond him and frankly only made him angrier thinking about it. 

Measuredly, he slipped out of bed and slinked into the ship’s main corridor. He paused only a second to peer apologetically back at Minho’s resting form before clicking the door shut and continuing on his way. 

The ship was fairly large, but its layout was rather easy to navigate. Everything was symmetrical with few twists and turns. All Jisung had to do was simply proceed in whatever direction that loathsome aura grew strongest. 

When he reached the very end of his path, he found a trapdoor built and locked sturdily into the wooden floor. He inhaled deeply, focusing more of his energy and scowling at the amplified sense of rancid aura below his feet. 

His target was down. 

With a wince, he willed his aching body to kneel to the floor, hands working at the various locks and securements keeping the door sealed shut. He easily flipped up the single securement lever, but the two locks required keys--that was… If he intended to enter kindly, which he didn’t. 

Instead of wasting his time with subtle entry, he gripped the locks tightly--one in each hand--and called a bout of white-hot energy to his palms. The iron beneath his skin adopted a bright orange glow, crackling as it melted through the cracks between his fingers into puddles on the floor. With a firm yank, the locks broke clean off the door. 

It wasn’t a quiet endeavor, surely waking others in nearby rooms. But as long as Jisung was quick, it wouldn’t matter who he might’ve woken up. 

After chucking the remains of the melted locks aside, he pulled the door open and snuck down into the gloomy space below, closing the door overhead as he went. 

It was quiet here, save for the creak of the steep wooden staircase with each step. 

Quiet, but not empty. 

He paused at the very bottom of the stairs when he detected another presence not belonging to the aura he’d been tracking. It was faint, but not nearly as faint as a human’s, and it was familiar. 

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t be troubled by this familiar presence, but seeing as he was almost certain said presence would make a concerted effort to get in the way of his aim, it was exceptionally unwanted at this time. 

He breathed out a curt sigh, folding his arms over his chest and stepping into the low torchlight of the room, which consisted solely of a single walkway down the middle and barred cells on either side. None of the cells were occupied except for one, but he valiantly ignored that for now to address the apparent warden for the night. 

“When exactly were you planning on telling me you were keeping him here?” He set his gaze steadily on Seungmin, who was lounging slouch-shouldered on the only chair in the room and keeping halfhearted watch over the prisoner in the far corner. The glaze over his eyes attested to the boredom-inducing meniality of the task. 

“Never, probably.” Seungmin looked Jisung’s way, level in demeanor. “For the same reason you’re here right now.” 

Jisung squinted at him. “What reason do you think that would be?” 

“You intend to kill him.” 

“You’re damn right I do.” 

“I can’t let you do that.” 

Jisung’s fingers dug into his upper-arm, jaw tightening. “Why is he even here? You should’ve left him to rot on that battlefield.” 

“As much as I’d like to agree with you, Jisungie, he’s unfortunately more valuable alive,” said Seungmin, taking a casual swig from the ale bottle he had loosely clutched in his hand. “He’s been in close contact with Shin Mireu for over twenty years. He could have important information about him that we need in order to get a leg up in the war.” 

“So get a strong aurapath in here to forcibly extract the information and be done with it,” argued Jisung.

“Believe me, that was the first thing we thought to do. But Mireu’s mind-warded him. Any attempt to forcibly extract information would end up rebounding on the caster.” 

“The plan, then, is to hope he’ll suddenly see the error of his ways and come clean about everything he and his co-conspirator have been plotting for two decades?” 

The faintest falter in Seungmin’s expression betrayed the fact that he very much recognized the absurdity of such a plan. “Torture has become a recent consideration,” he said, hardly with any confidence. 

Jisung scoffed at that. “The fae don’t do torture. He’d sooner laugh in the face of your attempt to do so than he would be compelled to confess his sins.” 

Seungmin exhaled wearily. “I understand your anger, Jisung. I truly do. But I’m not letting you kill him. Not until we at least try to get some information out of him.” 

“Who’s gonna stop me?” With as little effort as it took for him to breathe, Jisung executed a spatial leap into the prisoner’s cell; this close, he could discern the bandage-wrapped stumps where his hands used to be and the overall sorry, deteriorated state of him. “Oh, hi, uncle. Fancy seeing you here. I do hope my handiwork’s been treating you well. It’s some of my finest.” 

Hakun scrabbled backward in a burst of panic, his back meeting the wall. Jisung liked that his uncle feared him so viscerally, and for once, he couldn’t be bothered to care what that said about him. 

Seungmin jumped up from his seat, gripping desperately at the thick cell bars separating them. “Leave him be, Jisung. I mean it,” he warned. 

“Relax, Seungmin.” Jisung crouched down, eyeing Hakun like he was nothing more than meek prey ripe for the picking. “If torture has become the recent consideration to get answers out of him, I’ll gladly lend my expertise. Humans are awfully creative in this department, after all.” 

He reached out and snatched Hakun by the collar of his filthy shirt, hauling him along on a violent spatial leap up to the main deck of the ship. There, he threw Hakun to the ground, watching calculatedly as he tried to scramble his way back up to his feet while his legs continuously slipped out from under him on the rain-flooded floorboards. 

The very second he got his bearings, Jisung was ready with another sharp kick to the ribs, sending him right back down again. There was an audible crunch of bone to the heavy blow, and Hakun howled louder than the whipping winds. 

It wasn’t enough. He needed to hurt worse. He needed to pay. 

Jisung’s hands balled into white-knuckled fists, magic crackling to life. A million tiny, blue-glowing threads summoned forth, criss-crossing in tight hatches up and down every inch of Hakun’s body, squeezing through his skin like a knife through butter. 

His screams were near-deafening—loud and shrill enough to put a ring in Jisung’s ears. Even as streams of crimson cascaded from his fine-cut flesh, Jisung knew it still wasn’t enough. 

He yanked his hands back, pulling on the threads like they were ripcords. Chunks came clean off, leaving entire expanses of Hakun’s body void of skin. He screamed louder and shriller yet—

Not enough. 

Jisung was about to conjure a handful of ward knives when, against all logic, Hakun’s body began to shake with laughter--wild, maniacal. Jisung narrowed his eyes, keeping his knives suspended in midair. Watching. Waiting. 

“You spent your entire life trying desperately to convince the courts that those filthy imps were anything more than monsters by nature, and now here you are, using their cursed magic to brutalize me.” Hakun managed to drag his head up just enough to pin Jisung in a scornful glare. “The truth always reveals itself at some point or another.” 

Jisung wasn’t even mad at the words. If anything, he was amused by them. 

His uncle truly was a most confounding man, with a mind so rotten by hatred that it was almost comical. 

Jisung let his ward knives fly; they pierced in lines down Hakun’s arms, eliciting a gravelly yelp. With the knives firmly wedged in place, Jisung was able to manipulate their positions from a distance and lift Hakun back upright, tacking his arms to the wooden frame of the ship. He conjured two more knives and propelled them straight into Hakun’s thighs, just for good measure. 

“You’ve always subscribed to a woeful misunderstanding of how a monster comes to be, uncle. You see…” Jisung slowly stalked closer, heel-toe, heel-toe-- “monsters aren’t born. They’re created.” He knelt down in front of him, magic passively prickling in his fingertips, itching for blood. “What do you say we take a little peek at what you did to create yours.” 

He seized Hakun by the head—fingers digging brutally into his skull, glowing veins of energy surging beneath his skin and concentrating in his eyes. Hakun’s jaw dropped wide open around an agonized roar, loud enough to reverberate through Jisung’s body. 

A series of memories long-forgotten—or, perhaps, long-buried, ignored—played within the deepest reaches of Jisung’s mind:

Thirteen years ago, when he was made to kneel before the high courts of the continent’s human provinces and took twenty lashes for the first time. 

“How dare you condemn our righteous deeds on behalf of those savage beasts,” said Hakun. “How dare you dishonor the names of your ancestors who died at the hands of the wicked ways of Faerie.” 

Two years later, when Jisung was made to kneel before the courts and took twenty more lashes for a second time, after suggesting safe passage of Samlimji’s displaced fae, who had become house slaves and brothelworkers by no choice of their own, back to Fleymlansa and Vindalay. 

“They trespassed onto our land and consumed our resources, and now you want us to expend even more of our resources to help them return home without paying their debts? If you’re so enamored with those disgusting criminals, maybe you ought to be treated like one.” 

Three years later, when Jisung was made to kneel for a third time, after arguing vehemently against the newly-proposed death sentence for Samlimji citizens who wished to take a faerie for a spouse. 

“You want our society to be overrun with bastards born tainted by the filthy sludge those imps call blood? Some day, little prince, you’re going to have to learn to desire something other than barbaric incivility for your people.” 

A year later, when Jisung knelt for a fourth time, after rushing to protect a lord’s faerie house slave from receiving a lashing of her own for accidentally spilling wine on a noble lady's dress. 

“Why won’t you learn that your duty is not to their kind? Perhaps fifty lashes will finally do the trick.” 

And five years after that, when Jisung knelt for his fifth and final time, following his strongly-voiced denouncement of any attempt on Samlimji’s part to ‘neutralize the Fleymlansan threat’—to assassinate Prince Minho over rumors of his deadly power. He was lashed sixty times. 

Jisung had known at the time that he clearly wasn’t privy to something the rest of the human monarchies were, and he had also known that that was completely by design. He didn’t care; he hadn’t even known Minho back then, or anything about his supposed power, but he’d known an attempt on his life would’ve been sorely, deeply wrong. 

Frankly, given his uncanny ability to omit from memory the details of days in his past in which he was inflicted unbearable pain, he’d just about forgotten his defense of Minho before the courts. 

Now that he remembered—now that he’d met and fallen in love with Minho—the memory sparked a sort of rage in him that he didn’t think he’d ever experienced before. 

He gripped Hakun’s head even harder, making him feel every lash, every slap to the face, every scathing remark, every ounce of fear and dread and emotional torment—

An image of Minho’s bloodied, freshly-wingless body flickered in his mind’s eye, and he sucked in a sharp breath, abruptly releasing Hakun’s head. 

No, he thought. His pain isn’t yours to share. 

Gritting his teeth, he wound his hand into the front of Hakun’s shirt, yanked him up to his feet, and landed a forceful jab right to the center of his chest, sending him flying back-first into the ship’s sail pole. Jisung summoned ghostly chains from the floorboards, curling them around Hakun’s body from his ankles all the way to his throat to imprison him against the pole. 

He balled his hand into a fist that made the little joints in his fingers creak, the chains tightening in response, choking the air out of Hakun’s windpipe. 

“No matter what, you will die by my hand, uncle,” said Jisung. “How long it takes me to make that happen depends entirely on the usefulness of your information. So tell me--” he slackened the chain around Hakun’s throat, just enough for him to pull in a few desperate gulps of air-- “what do you know about Shin Mireu’s aims? What’s his next move?” 

“ Go to hell,” spat Hakun, grinding the words out through bloodstained teeth.

“Oops.” Jisung cranked the chains that were wrapped around Hakun’s legs; two distinct, shrill snaps of bone resounded out from the wrenched limbs, and Hakun shrieked, trembling uncontrollably. “Try again.” 

“Wretched brat!” Hakun’s voice verged on a feral snarl. “He’s gonna wipe you out--you and all your little faerie minions, every last one of you!”

“Oh, blah.” Jisung cranked the chains around Hakun’s arm this time--snap of bone, harrowed scream. “I don’t care about the unoriginal delusions he touts; I care about his plans. So do yourself a favor and cough it up already.” 

“Don’t pretend you’re doing this for anything other than your own sick thirst for vengeance.” Hakun scoffed. “What do you think dear sweet Minho would say if he saw you like this? I’d wager you hardly even resemble the man he fell in love with anymore.” 

Jisung faltered, but only for a split second. Just as fast, he rushed forward and captured Hakun’s jaw in the unforgiving clamp of his hand, fingers depressing into his cheeks. Hakun tensed up like a coil--a reminder that, in spite of his obstinate behavior, he was scared of Jisung. He just needed to be broken first. 

“ Minho,” he began, tone low, dripping with barely-contained malice, “isn’t so naive as to think there’s no such thing as just execution. And neither am I.” Jisung squeezed his jaw harder, pulling a whimper from Hakun’s strangled throat. “Not anymore.” 

A heavy silence dangled between them, even the sound of torrential rain becoming a mere lull in the background. 

Jisung inhaled deeply, feeling his magic heat to beyond fever-pitch as it passed from his hand and chains into Hakun’s skin. It grew hot--enough for Hakun to begin wriggling restlessly as the rain that struck his flesh started to evaporate with almost instantaneous speed. “What are Shin Mireu’s plans, uncle?” 

“W-what are you doing?” Hakun wriggled some more, to which Jisung responded with a further tightening of the chains around his body. 

“I seem to remember you were the one who taught me about the ‘frog in boiling water’ proverb,” said Jisung, magic heating, sweltering. “Truth be told, though, I have no intention of boiling you slow enough that it goes unnoticed until your demise. I want you to feel every agonizing second of your body desiccating until your heart gives its last, pathetic beat.” 

Hakun’s eyes went wide with terror he could no longer hide. He was thrashing against the chains now, futilely, steam rolling off his skin in thick waves. 

“I can offer you mercy, uncle,” Jisung said calmly. “Just tell me what I want to know.” 

Hakun’s skin sizzled beneath Jisung’s fingertips, his panting breaths brimming with panic. Jisung amplified the heat once more, abruptly enough to startle a high-pitched cry out of him. 

“He intends to rid the world of the gods who gave it magic!” The words came spilling out of Hakun’s mouth between ragged hyperventilations. “Write them out of existence--and he’ll use your magic and your faerie prince’s blood to do so.” 

Jisung squinted incredulously. “What do you mean ‘write them out of existence’?”

“Your magic--” Hakun panted some more, eyes wrung tightly shut-- “it has the power to rewrite the events that transpire in time--past, present, future. But only if it’s fully-matured, tied to live Seer blood, and in the hands of someone not tethered by fate. Mireu has no fate prescribed by the universe, because he has no magic, no manipulable aura, no tangible spirit. The gods can’t touch him, but he can touch them, as long as he’s aided by magic like yours. He can make it so the gods never even existed--never created the First Fae. Should he get ahold of your power, he’d effectively destroy the family lines of every faerie alive today. Anyone with fae lineage would simply never have existed at all, including in the present.” 

“Why bother with the war, then?” demanded Jisung. “If all he needs is my magic and Minho’s blood, he’s had plenty of opportunity to take it.” 

“Your magic needs to have fully-matured, and it hasn’t yet. According to Mireu, magic like yours reaches its full potential upon experiencing intense, unrestrained emotions. But your magic actively resists the process of metamorphosis, as if it knows what it’ll be used for otherwise. That’s the point of the war, the murder of your parents, the clipping of your faerie lover. He intends to whittle down your resolve until the guilt on your conscience overshadows your ability to resist magical maturity--until you ultimately offer him your magic of your own volition.” 

That gave Jisung pause, the faintest waver in his concentration giving Hakun an unintentional reprieve from the heat; he went lax against the chains, breathing heavily like it was the hardest ordeal he’d ever had to undertake, head dangling limply. 

“He needs me to give it up willingly?” asked Jisung.

Hakun gave no response, and Jisung wasted no time in retaking his jaw into his hand and sending a potent flare of scorching magic through his body again, making him wail and squirm. 

“Answer me.” 

“Yes!” cried Hakun. “Otherwise, he’d just be absorbing your magic with no way to use it for himself!” 

Jisung was quiet, ruminating upon the cryptic messages that lingered in the back of his mind, echoes of Mireu’s voice clawing their way to the forefront. 

“You strike me as just the right kind of weak that would forsake millions to save the few closest to you. All you would need is a little… Push. ” 

“Ultimately, there are many ways, aside from direct threats, to make a soft-hearted soul like yourself move how I’d like.” 

“If I’m lucky, my strategy might just compel you to come to me on your own.” 

“That’s valuable magic you’ve just forced me to drain from you. I need you alive, you know.” 

He really was just a pawn in another’s strategy. Even long before his magic had erupted from its dormancy on the fateful night he’d first ventured into Fleymlansa. Mireu had been lying in wait for the right moment to set his plans into motion. 

… 

But what had Hakun been doing all this time? If he and Mireu had been co-conspirators for years, why is it Hakun’s schemes against Jisung seemed to directly contradict Mireu’s? 

Jisung took a step back and dissolved his chains with a halfhearted wave of the hand, allowing Hakun to collapse to the floorboards with a dull thud. “Something still doesn’t make sense, uncle,” he said. “If you’ve been working with Mireu this whole time, why did you make that attempt on my life months ago? What was the point of setting fire to the Sulyeon Palace with me in it, kidnapping my mother and father?” 

“Mireu didn’t disclose any of his plans to me until after the palace fire,” Hakun answered wearily, having been sapped of all his stubborn fight. “For years, he was merely an alchemist whose experiments I allowed in the basement of one of my many nameless fortresses. Only after I tried to make my bid for the throne of Gang Dosi did he unveil his intentions, with the promise that Samlimji would be mine by the end. The plan to marry you off to the Molae Princess was his; he wanted you separated from your friends--thought it would break you, make you easier to mold into what he wanted.” He shook his head, faintly, almost imperceptible. “Neither of us considered the possibility that you’d found companionship among the fae, much less built a strong enough rapport with them to blow our entire operation. Much more less forged an acquaintance with the Fleymlansan prince, of all people. When Mireu found out one of your faerie companions was Prince Minho, he had to shift his entire strategy. He called it a blessing; now both his targets would always be in the same place at the same time. But he also thought it a curse if mishandled…” 

There was a flicker in Hakun’s eyes, then—something akin to regret. His face was one of someone who realized they’d said something they shouldn’t have. 

Jisung’s gaze was sharp, unwavering, tracking any and every little movement Hakun made. The man had practically spilled everything he knew about Mireu, and yet this was what he regretted letting past his loose lips? 

“Why?” prompted Jisung, and when Hakun hesitated, he snatched him by the throat, burning his skin so intensely, it produced visible wafts of smoke, even in the rain. “ Why?” 

Hakun scrabbled helplessly at Jisung’s hand, his pained groan resembling the bellow of a wounded animal. Finally, he relented, “just as Mireu can make use of Minho’s blood to amplify your magic, so can you!” 

Jisung gasped, eyes blowing wide open. He released Hakun, who fell to a heap on the floor, coughing violently as he nursed his charred throat with the stump where his hand used to be. 

“You can’t ever alter fate like he can,” he continued, “but you can commune with spirits of the past—spirits who wrote your prophecy. He fears they hold the key to his defeat.” He swallowed roughly, grimacing, eyes watering. “You meeting Minho has always been the worst-case scenario.” 

Jisung was still for a long while, mulling over the new information pensively. 

He’d never given it much thought before; to him, meeting Minho was the single greatest blessing of his entire life. From the day they’d found one another in the arts district plaza of Gang Dosi, Minho had opened Jisung’s mind, heart, eyes—his very soul to the wonders of the world that he’d always yearned to behold. Minho had shown him what it was like to love and be loved with every fiber of his being. He’d shown Jisung the secret to prosperity, fulfillment, happiness, peace— given him hope to attain it all, hand-in-hand, heart-to-heart. Minho had always been Jisung’s best- case scenario. 

But he had to wonder…

Was he ever really Minho’s best-case scenario? In retrospect, while Minho would still be right on track to becoming Mireu’s personal supply of Seer blood regardless of his affiliation with Jisung, would he not be leaving this world a less brutalized individual had he never met Jisung in the first place? 

He was only clipped because Mireu needed Jisung to react to it. He was only robbed of his one remaining family member, because Mireu needed Jisung to bear the guilt for it. He was only stripped of his homeland and forced to watch thousands of his people suffer and die, because Mireu needed Jisung to be harrowed by it. 

The worst occurrences of Minho’s life had happened… Because he met Jisung. 

“Connecting the dots now, are you?” Hakun muttered bitterly, propping himself against the sail pole with ire in his gaze. “Don’t you find it ironic how your openness to faeriekind is what’ll ultimately be your dreamy little prince’s tormented demise?” 

Jisung stared at him evenly; he expected to feel another surge of rage boil over at the provocation, but instead, he just felt… Tired. 

Breathing a short sigh, he summoned a blue-glowing wire and bid it to furl snug around the sail pole and Hakun’s neck. 

Hakun choked, feet kicking, stumps pawing uselessly at the wire as it bit into his flesh and drew blood. With bulging eyes, he held Jisung in a contemptuous glare and accused through stifled breath, “you really are a fucking monster.” 

Jisung tipped his head to the side—a scant movement. His expression was blank; emoting was an effort the occasion was unworthy of. “Don’t be surprised when your own creation begins to fulfill its name, uncle,” he said, flicking his wrist and cinching the wire all the way through Hakun’s neck. 

Blood spewed from severed arteries, spilling like waterfalls down his chest. It was dark and hazy from the rain, but even then, Jisung could see the light die from his eyes as his head slid from his neck and tumbled to the ground, decapitated body slumping against the sail pole. 

Jisung used to get squeamish seeing such things. The one and only time he’d witnessed a public execution, he was a mere child with absolutely no stomach for the horror of it. 

Much had changed since then. Sometimes, it felt as though he’d grown up several decades in the past few months alone. Tonight, it felt as though he’d grown up a dozen more, weary with apathy, benumbed to brutality. 

He’d always thought a monster was one who took great pleasure in and derived gluttonous satisfaction from the cruelty they imposed. Now he knew that a true monster simply didn’t feel anything about it at all. 

It was with such indifference that he dispelled his ward wire and conjured a portal in the ground for Hakun’s body and head to fall through, alongside the sea of bloodied rain collected upon the floorboards. Jisung didn’t know where it all went; he didn’t care. As long as it wasn’t here… 

He was tired. He just wanted to curl up with Minho again. 

Minho… 

Remorse like a dastardly parasite gnawed at his chest. He’d left Minho’s side for this, and yet all he’d gained from it was one less evil in Minho’s life and the realization that Jisung very well may be the one to replace it. 

“Jisungie…” The sound of Felix’s voice, quiet and shaky with disbelief, acted as an epiphany to Jisung that he wasn’t alone; he’d had witnesses to his vicious display this whole time. “What have you done?” 

Jisung turned slowly, and he was met with the sight of… Everyone--Felix, Seungmin, Hyunjin, Chan, Changbin, and Sev too--huddled beneath the overhang of the cabin doorway, mixed emotions ranging from stunned to abhorred playing on their faces. 

Felix’s face, especially, was wrought with dismay, belonging to the only one in attendance to whom Jisung had admitted a fresh hunger for vengeance--one who knew the signs to look for, one who knew to fear the future. 

If this had happened a week ago, Jisung would be frantically attempting to assure his friends that he didn’t mean for it to go this far, that he felt the guilt of his deeds rotting him from the inside-out. 

But this wasn’t a week ago. He did mean for it to go this far. And the only guilt he felt was that of his broken promise to Minho, who he owed everything to after having become a blight upon his warm soul. 

Eliminating Hakun was one of the many acts he’d need to commit in order to atone for the sins he’d unwittingly perpetrated against Minho since entering his life.

And so, in lieu of an apology or a series of desperate, empty excuses to win his friends’ favor, he said, “don’t worry, Felix. What I just did was guided by empathy, not a lack of it. Minho can rest easy now.” 

With that, he ambled over and brushed right past his friends, offering them no opportunity for further discussion as he re-entered the cabin. 

He was growing increasingly exhausted by the second, full-body bruise sensation begging his attention now that his mind was no longer occupied by barbarous aims. He’d nearly forgotten he was still in the midst of recovery from Gang Dosi’s battle, and his body was making him pay dearly for it. 

His magic use that night must’ve been particularly excessive, because the moment he returned to Minho’s room and shut the door behind himself, he was afflicted with sudden chills and a horrible dizzy spell that had him stumbling clumsily into the bedside table. The lit lantern jostled atop the stand’s surface, causing Minho to rouse slightly and make a faint, disgruntled noise. 

“Shh, love…” Jisung was quick to stretch across the bed to thread his fingers into his hair and scritch placatingly at his scalp. “It’s okay. I’m right here. I’m…” He trailed off when his vision began to go dark around the edges. The distinct sense of wet streaks trailing down his face--warm compared to the rivulets of rainwater that clung to his skin--alerted him to the beginnings of scarlet tears and a nosebleed.

His vision waned rapidly to nothing but pitch blackness, dizziness dragging him under the spell of unconsciousness. 

The last thing he felt was his knees buckling under his weight, his plummet to the floor beside the bed stealing his comforting hand away from Minho. 

Perhaps Minho could forgive him for his failure to mend the promise he’d broken.

Chapter Text

Minho grew up a lonely boy. He’d never say he had a bad life or a particularly inhumane upbringing, but he’d known from a young age that he was unlike most and that such a quality meant hard times in his future. He knew he’d had it easier than many in a lot of respects; money was never an issue, the question of whether he’d be able to find a warm bed to retire to at night was never posed, having enough food to fuel himself and his abundant stores of energy was always a given. Despite his troubles in forming meaningful connections with his peers, he couldn’t say he didn’t eventually find beautiful friendships to last a lifetime. 

For a good while, he’d forgotten what loneliness felt like—how crushing it was on the spirit, how demoralizing it was to the fragile psyche. How could he possibly remember what such a thing felt like when his heart had been made so full with strengthened connections to old friends, blossoming connections to new friends, and the unexpected family he found in the pretty, human prince from across the river? 

Meeting Han Jisung marked perhaps the most integral turning point in Minho’s life. Jisung loved in such a uniquely gentle way—made Minho feel special and just as normal at the same time, accepted his quirks as lovely and offered him grace where his comings were short. Jisung loved him for his fire when others seemed to love him in spite of it. 

Minho would never be able to live without his friends—that, he knew, irrefutably. But he thought that, after every heartless trial he’d been subjected to, he’d never be able to live without Jisung, even if his friends stuck by his side. 

Jisung made him feel loved, yes, but above all, he made him feel understood. Like nobody else ever had before.

Simply put, after being clipped, Minho had been fully committed to letting himself waste until he died. Sometimes he’d hear Felix talking to him on the other side of the door through which he’d allowed no one to enter, telling him that his life didn’t have to be over, that he was strong, that he was capable of healing if he’d just let himself be tended to. Other times, he’d hear Hyunjin, Chan, and Changbin on the other side of the door, telling him much the same as Felix but with more cautious kindness. One time, it was Severia on the other side of the door; she’d told him no one would think of or treat him any differently for his injuries. 

But people did treat him differently. Felix was more than capable of suppressing Minho’s fiery outbursts in as weakened a state as he’d been, and yet he’d never even made an attempt because he’d thought Minho too fragile and pitiful to handle it. Seungmin, with his wicked wit and clever tongue, could’ve easily talked Minho down from the ledge he’d insisted upon teetering over, and yet he’d taken immediately to drowning himself in booze like Minho had already died. 

From the moment Minho had been clipped, he’d been viewed as a lost cause. Hopeless. Because that’s what clipped faeries were. 

He was thought of differently. He was treated differently. Had he sustained any other type of injury, his friends would’ve stopped at nothing to save him. But this one thing made him too damaged to be worth the effort. 

That’s what he was made to feel, if even unintentionally. Why would he fight for his life if that pitying perception of him was what he had to look forward to in survivorhood? 

And then Jisung had come to him, carrying with him that blessed, gentle love so innate to him, and he’d told Minho that he wasn’t going to be alone in this fight. When everyone else offered hollow platitudes that unveiled the insufferable sympathy lying within, Jisung offered him true security. 

Minho, a man with a lonely boy’s past, was promised that which he’d so often been denied, and he latched onto that like he would a solitary buoy lost at sea. Jisung was an unwavering, ever-present force in his life, whose support he could feel even when they were separated. Jisung was steady. He was immovable. He was constant. He didn’t make Minho feel like he’d lost something due to his sorry misfortunes; he reminded Minho that not every relationship he’d so deeply cherished as miracles that worked to blot out the darkness of lonely days had changed to afflict him with the sense of isolation all over again. 

Jisung didn’t change. He still looked at Minho like he was in awe of his beauty. He smiled at Minho like he would when they’d exchange frivolous banter around the nightly campfire. He held Minho like he was just as precious as before--far from damaged goods. He loved Minho all the same, and that was enough to dispel the encroaching plague of loneliness. 

Jisung was important; Jisung was necessary. There was no world in which Minho could do this without him--

Which was the dominant thought that blared deafeningly in his head as he threw himself to the floor in a panic to assess Jisung’s unconscious, bloody-faced form. 

When had Jisung even left the room? How did he wind up on the floor like this? Why did he feel so cold to the touch like he’d drained himself of his reserves? Why was his aura suddenly so weak? 

Minho wanted to call his name, but when he opened his mouth to do so, his throat seized up against him. He wanted to shout for help, but his vocal cords locked stubbornly closed in refusal, paralyzed as flickers of their most recent mistake echoed cruelly in Minho’s ears-- “cut it out”-- and jabbed with phantom pain between his shoulderblades. 

Minho gritted his teeth, wrenching his stinging eyes shut. Gods damn it all! 

Robbed of his voice, he had no choice but to set out for help himself. 

He was weak--so, very weak. His strong muscle tone had atrophied greatly over the past several days, consumed by his own body in its last-ditch attempt to sustain his life against his will. But he made it to his feet regardless, legs wobbling beneath him, wiry arm outstretched to brace himself against the nearest sturdy surface. He felt awfully faint, and his back throbbed in protest; even Felix’s intense elixirs struggled to fully mask the pain when Minho was exerting himself so forcefully this early in his recovery. 

Despite this, he forged on, using the wall as a crutch as he hobbled to the door, swung it open, and damn-near tossed himself out into the cabin corridor. His shoulder met the wall opposite the door with a low thunk, twinging the brutalized nerves in his back hard enough to pull a strangled whimper out of him. 

At the end of the corridor, he saw his friends, each of them crowded together with troubled looks etched into their features and droplets of water dripping off rain-saturated hair. They hadn’t taken notice of him yet, which the frightful part of him that hated to be seen in such a withered state was selfishly thankful for. But the much bigger part of him that feared for Jisung’s life and wanted him saved cursed his friends’ lack of observation. They seemed extremely engrossed in whatever it was they were murmuring amongst each other about--too occupied to be aware of Minho’s presence. 

What were they all doing awake and soaking wet and whispering in the hallway about anyway? He was sure it was well into nighttime. All of them, save for perhaps Severia, whose expertise as a seafarer would be required to keep the ship afloat in stormy waters, should be asleep. 

Exercising more concentration on staying upright than he’d ever like to admit, he shuffled with agonizing slowness down the length of the corridor, leaning heavily into the wall as he went. Not only was he weak; he was stiff, limbs having been left unused and curled into his body for days on end. He still wore the trousers of his aurachaser armor set, and that didn’t help much with mobility either—nor did it really help with his sense of dignity; he was keenly aware of the grime that’d built up in them, clinging to his skin in a manner he could only describe as crusty… 

As if it wasn’t bad enough that he’d been reduced to half a faerie, feeble and lesser, he had his visible and smellable filth to degrade his pride even further. 

Eventually, he managed to clamber close enough to hear the content of his friends’ conversation.

“We need to keep a very close eye on him,” said Seungmin. “He has two things working against him. It’s not just the nature of his Seer magic that can influence outbursts of violence like this. He’s faerie-souled; by definition, he houses the fragment of a soul not his own within him, and that makes his spirit much more easily corruptible.” 

“Being faerie-souled also means that, should any true corruption occur, he becomes progressively less worthy of the magic he’s been given, and it will begin to reject him,” added Felix. “He’s still in early stages though; right now, he’s relying entirely on the cast memory of his magic’s predecessor—it’s raw, it’s untamed, it’s unmastered—but if we can teach him how to become his own master of his magic instead of relying on another’s mastery of it, I’m sure we can steer clear of the likelihood of rejection.” 

“Yeah, but that’s assuming he’s in the right headspace to hear reason,” said Severia. “And judging by what I just saw, I’d say we’re well past that point.” 

“He’ll listen if we relate it all to Minho,” Hyunjin suggested hesitantly. “I know it’s unkind, but I don’t think we have another choice. He didn’t do what he just did because he resents what’s happened to him in recent days; he did it because he resents what’s happened to Minho.” 

“You’re saying we should dangle Minho over his head to get him to behave?” Felix’s face twisted with disgust at the notion. “That’s vile!” 

“Do you see any other way?” countered Hyunjin. “I don’t like it either, but if it makes the difference between him staying true to his values and sense of empathy, and him devolving into an unrecognizable version of himself that would brutalize anyone who stood in his way, I’d say it’s worth the hit to our ethicality.” 

Felix shook his head, clearly still displeased with this idea. “So— what? We tell him Minho would disapprove of his pursuit to execute anyone who has caused or could cause him harm?” He scoffed. “If I know Minho—and I definitely do—there’d be absolutely no disapproval on his end, especially when it comes to Han Hakun, whose mangled body can now be found as fish food at the bottom of the ocean.” 

Minho froze in his place, feet rooted mere meters away from his huddled friends. His brain was fuzzy, having been starved of sustenance for far too long and fatigued by trauma, but he was almost certain Felix had just insinuated that Jisung had killed Hakun. 

When would Jisung have even had the time for such a thing? How had he managed to find Hakun when they were currently at sea and far from the mainland? This didn’t make sense; none of it made sense. 

“It wouldn’t be about Kitty’s disapproval,” said Severia. “It’d be about his very real need for Jisung to be there for him. We make it absolutely clear to Jisung that he cannot succumb to magical corruption, because doing so would leave Kitty without the support he needs. He’ll listen then, I’m sure.” 

“You don’t even know him,” said Changbin. “How could you possibly be so sure of that?” 

Severia cut him a stern glance. “One does not need to be well-acquainted with your Han Jisung to know who it is he lives and breathes for. It was my deck he decided to stage your prisoner’s judgment day upon, in Kitty’s name. His motives are crystal clear.” 

Whether Minho’s feeling of stolen breath came from his lungs working double to supply his weary body with oxygen or the unsubtle hint that Han Hakun had been taken prisoner by his friends and held this close to Minho the whole time he’d suffered the pain of the very wounds Hakun himself had inflicted—he couldn’t know for certain. 

He did know he felt most viscerally betrayed by the news, though. What could his friends have possibly wanted with Hakun that they’d been willing to bring him anywhere near Minho? Call him selfish, but even if Hakun had held the key to all of Shin Mireu’s secrets, Minho wouldn’t have given a single flying fuck about it. Han Hakun took from him many a thing most cherished; his wings, his precious connections, his sense of safety and security—the ability to face his people with dignity ever again. Gone. 

Was Minho, in his new, pathetic state, really so easily forgettable that his own friends could bring the monster of his vivid nightmares aboard the same ship he occupied without sparing another thought to how it would make him feel? 

Minho’s hand curled into a trembling fist where it braced his weight against the wall. With as much energy as he could muster, he struck the wall with that fist, instantly nabbing his friends’ startled attention.