Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Jinu, Jinu, Jinu…”

The world was absent but with prominent scarcity, a realm of nothing and yet everything all at once and all of it out of reach, miles below his feet as he hung suspended in the air, his body on fire and simmering with a pain so potent it eroded away at his flesh and pummelled right through to his marrow.

“I was right. You only ever serve yourself.”

That voice…

Jinu knew only two things. One, there was a stark emptiness inside of him, so biting and cold that bile was rising in his throat as a result.

And two…he loathed that voice.

Twisting, convulsing, Jinu tried to shrink away from Gwi Ma’s wicked taunting. Tried to open his eyes, tried to wiggle his fingers, tried to breathe. He could do none of those things. Jinu was bound, once more, and could only endure the king of demons’ quiet rage as the flames continued their rampage on his body.

“It is because of you that your brethren remain stuck here. It is because of you that we all remain oppressed beneath yet another Honmoon. It is because of you, songbird, that the wretched half-breed hunter still lives.”

An awful silence pursued. Jinu waited, and waited, and waited for Gwi Ma to land his wrathful blow, but nothing came.

Still, Jinu’s lungs screamed in protest with each of his bated breaths. Still, his muscles roared in agony as he dangled before the maker of his fate.

In the distance, there was yelling. Sobbing. The demons that had surrounded him for four-hundred years were mourning yet another failed attempt at freedom.

Gwi Ma was still silent. Waiting.

Jinu could feel him watching. Though the king did not have eyes like all other beings, his gaze could rival the blistering heat of the sun.

And then, just when the tension had become so thick Jinu was at risk of choking on it, a horrendous sound boomed through the realm of nightmares.

Gwi Ma…laughing.

Laughing so hard, the world shook. So hard, Jinu could feel it in his throat. He began to sweat, then. Began to feel his heart kickstart once more, pounding against his chest, bruising the skin on the surface with each thunderous punch.

“You await your punishment. And yet you have truly no idea of the horrors that stalk you. Your pet…your Honmoon-weaving obsession…—“

“Do not speak of her in such a way!” The words tore straight from that same emptiness he’d fallen prey too, and they had surprised even him. That he still felt some resemblance of loyalty to…to her…to Rumi…

“You offered a demon’s soul to a hunter. You gave her the only thing left of you that was human,” though his chuckling had ceased, Gwi Ma’s humour was evident. And nauseating.

“In doing so, she became strong enough to overthrow me. In doing so, you betrayed all of your kind this day. And so, your penance…”

The glee…the twisted, giddy excitement…Jinu did not like this, he did not like this at all—

“Why, it is only fitting that her heart ends up pierced by the tips of your very own claws, songbird. ”

“If you think I would—“

“Oh…you will. Because I am going to make her an offer she can’t refuse, and I believe that you won’t be too pleased about her inevitable acceptance—“

“Stop speaking in riddles— “

“ And yet she will indeed accept. The hunter adores you. That much is clear. I wonder…what would she give if presented with another opportunity to free you, like she has wanted all this time.”

“This has nothing to do with her—“

”Tell me, Jinu. If the hunter offers her soul in exchange for your own, what lengths would you go to stop her?”

“She would die before doing such a thing—“

Jinu realised the demon kings aim not a split second after his own outburst.

He was going to trick Rumi into becoming a demon. Drag her down into this hell, in exchange for Jinu’s freedom…and Gwi Ma knew that Jinu would never let that happen…even if it meant—if it meant…

“So you have finally caught on. I suppose you always have been a bit slow.”

“I won’t let you do this.”

“ Ah but Rumi is her own person, is she not? She is a big girl now, she can make her own choices. And with a heart as saccharine as hers…well, why wouldn’t she want the chance to save her beloved Jinu?”

“I will end you—“

“P erhaps you should have thought twice before befriending someone so…malleable.”

Damn him. Damn him. But he was right. Jinu should’ve left Rumi alone. He should have never allowed himself to believe that there could be light in his future…he should’ve never allowed her to believe that he was worth anything.

So malleable…

Gwi Ma’s words ricocheted around Jinu’s skull like a bullet from a rifle, cracking against bone, searing holes through his mind.

Malleable. She’d believe anything . That’s what Gwi Ma was taunting him with. That Rumi could be a puppet with unbreakable strings.

And maybe she could. Maybe she was a little naive, maybe she did think only with her heart, and if that was the case…

Well, he’d just have to break it.

-

Rumi’s thighs were burning.

With every stride, they protested. With every pounding of her feet on the concrete, her body demanded she turned around and admitted defeat, but Rumi was not that way inclined.

She was so close. So close.

He’d only lost his hands so far, she was metres away. Metres. The flames ate away at him, demanding more of his body than she was prepared to see destroyed. But she was there, there, there—

A void loomed before her, a soulless pit of inky tar. Not a whisper of life in existence. At her feet, right on the precipice of everything and nothing, lay a small woven bracelet.

He was gone. She was too late, again.

He was gone—

“Rumi!”

The voice ripped her away from whatever reality she’d been trapped in. Light flooding back into her vision, Rumi sprang upright, the duvet on her bed slid halfway onto the floor, where she noticed all the pillows had scattered across the carpet at some point during the night.

Taking in the scene around them both was Zoey, her best-friend-turned-alarm-clock, levelling her with an unimpressed, almost frightening glare.

“You sleep like the dead. Actually, I thought you were, which is so not cool after everything we have been through, how could you do me like that when you know how much I’d miss you if you were gone, did that one time in the bathhouse not prove how distraught I’d—“

“ Zoey. ” Rumi’s voice was weak. Croaky. From her consistent lack of sleep, no doubt. “Will you please stop rambling?”

“Says you. You were mumbling in your sleep moments before I woke up. All Jinu, Jinu, Jinu, and no, no, no!  I was like, ‘oh this girl needs an exorcism.’ Seriously, it was like something from those paranormal movies Mira loves so much. Are you ever going to explain why the demon-who-was-supposedly-good-but-attempted-to-commit-mass-genocide is on your mind all day every day?”

Rumi grunted. Zoey’s eyes narrowed as her arms folded against her chest. Then, with impressive authority coming from someone who still couldn’t get on all the rides at the theme park, she stormed over to Rumi’s bed and flopped down, pulling the duvet back on top of the mattress and helping herself to a portion of it, as she propped herself up against the headboard and stared down at where Rumi still rested, her head almost halfway down the bed—she realised.

Had she really thrashed around so much in the night?

Her nightmare flashed back to the frontline of her memories. Turning onto her side, away from her friend, Rumi buried her face into the mattress and huffed out a big enough breath to fuel a wind turbine.

Something sharp poked her back—Zoey’s nail was Rumi’s guess. When it poked her again, Rumi knew for sure.

“You need to get up,” her friends voice lacked the usual lightheartedness Rumi was so fond of, “you need to get out of this room, you need to do something other than mourn the loss of a guy you thought you knew—“

“I did know him,” it was barely a whisper, but the strength behind it cast the room in severity. “Perhaps I knew him better than anyone. Ever.”

They were the same, after all. Humans trapped within their own demonic bodies.

“Rumi,” Zoey was defeated and Rumi couldn’t blame her, they’d had this conversation a million times and while Mira had long since given up on trying to get through to her, persistence was Zoey’s middle name. “How do you know he wasn’t using you the entire time? He said it himself—“

“He was backed into a corner. He had no choice, and yet he still made one, when it mattered. He saved my life, Zoey.”

God, how it ached to be alive.

“And now he’s…”

“Gone. I get it, Ru. I do.”

No you don’t,  Rumi wanted to scream.  You don’t get it, Mira doesn’t get it, Bobby doesn’t get it.

Celine doesn’t get it.

Celine.

“Why couldn’t you love me?”

“I do!”

“All of me!”

Rumi hadn’t spoken to her guardian since that night. She couldn’t stomach it—Celine would demand she moved on, she’d insist that Jinu had to have died and would refuse any alternative as to why the man saved Rumi’s life and took on the brunt of the demon king’s wrath, other than it being yet another case of his kind manipulating humans.

And she couldn’t face that conversation, not now, not yet.

Truthfully, it had already been a year. Perhaps her peers were right, perhaps Rumi should have moved on by now, at least enough to function as a human being once more, and show up for her fans if anything.

Yet…such a thing seemed impossible.

It did not feel right for life to go on without Jinu in it, free—like Rumi had always intended him to be.

I’ll make sure the Saja Boys lose tomorrow.

Then we’ll both win.

She should’ve made him promise.

Made him swear an oath that they would reach victory together.

Instead all she had was grief and a blue woven bracelet.

That was all there was left of him—an ache and a memory.

It was what kept her imprisoned in her own mind—Rumi would never have him again.

He was gone.

And some nights…

Some nights, she prayed Gwi Ma would whisper in her ear. Sometimes she even begged for it. For a sign he was alive, for a way to bring him back, she would do anything.

She would do anything—

“ Hey, ” Zoey’s unknowing interruption came softly, with a gentle caress of her hand over Rumi’s upper arm, “where’d you disappear to, just then?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—“

“Your patterns, they started shimmering again. Don’t tell me it was nothing—what is going on inside that head of yours, Rumi?”

Nothing. Everything.

“I’m just tired.”

“And I’m Gwi Ma,” she deadpanned, “don’t pull that crap on me. Mira might’ve given up on you, but I’m not so easily fooled.”

“I have five pouches of expired grape-juice-turned-voice-tonic to prove otherwise—“

Thump. Rumi scowled and flipped onto her back, rubbing the spot on her arm that Zoey had just punched, glaring up at the culprit with halfhearted vitriol.

“Stop deflecting. I will not rise to it.”

“You can’t rise to anything without a ladder—“

“ I’m not that short!”

Rumi was about to throw another taunt out to her friend, anything to distract her from talking about her feelings, when the door to her bedroom burst open for the second time that morning.

Mira stood at the threshold, panting. And her eyes…Mira wasn’t exactly a puppy dog, but the severity in her expression…

“What’s going on?” Rumi was already out of bed, standing, her blade materialising in her hand.

Glancing back and forth between Zoey and Rumi, Mira sucked in a breath and shut her eyes tightly for a moment that seemed to last an eternity, before she opened them whilst a weighty, apprehensive sigh rushed from her lungs.

“The Honmoon is insecure. A demon slipped out—“

“What?!” Both Rumi and Zoey exclaimed in unison, throwing each other wide-eyed looks of disbelief before they focused on the third member of their trio once more.

“That’s not even the worst part,” Mira’s lips thinned, pressing into a flat line.

Tension gathered in the air, fizzing and crackling with each breath Mira took before she said her next words. But this time…she scrutinised Rumi in a way she hadn’t done in months, since before the new Honmoon, since…since she was sneaking around. With Jinu—

“There’s a body.”

Zoey choked on air whilst Rumi…

Rumi could not take her eyes off of Mira. There was something in the way her friend was watching her, eyes narrowed, stance defensive. Guarded.

Wary.

“A demon killed? ”

Demons take souls, they erase humans from the earth, all the victims of their feasting go missing. For there to be a body…

A shiver wracked through her.

This monster did not kill for the soul purpose of pleasing its king…

It killed for the fun of it. The sport.

“Do we know who did it? Where’s the demon now, Mira?”

But Mira did not answer Zoey. She only kept her eyes on Rumi, and something poisonous and violent swirled in the pit of her stomach as her friend pinned her with the intense attention.

“Congratulations, Rumi.” She’d never heard Mira so cold before—

“You got your wish.”

No.

No.

It wasn’t possible.

He wouldn’t—

“ Mira! ” Zoey was desperate now. Pleading for answers. But Rumi didn’t want them. She didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear any of it. She turned for her balcony, running away.

Running away. Always running. Always, always, always—

“She wanted him back, Zoey. And now she’s got him.”

“You don’t mean—“

“Oh yeah,” Mira chuckled, but there was no humour. Only spite. Hateful spite, “And it seems he sent us a present.”

Rumi could feel the vitriol.

Zoey was silent. Still.

“You wanna know how we know it was him?”

She didn’t. Because it wasn’t. It was a lie, it was all lies. There was no way, no way—

“Words. Written in the victim’s blood.”

Her stomach lurched.

“Oh god,” Zoey cried.

“Dream of someone else, Hunter,” Mira whispered, a snake-like hiss, “Ink made of blood to write a personal warning for those who have been so desperately pining for him. Tell me. Tell me now that he still deserves your grief.  Tell me what it’ll take for you to wake up , Rumi!”

The shout boomed in the silence, demanding an answer, demanding justice, demanding something. At the very least, Mira wanted her to say something.

But there was nothing she could say.

No words for how her soul had just cleaved in two.

The contents of her stomach spewing onto her carpet, Rumi sank to her knees, and wept.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, Rumi felt as if she was not supposed to be on this earth.

Sometimes she looked around at the faces she knew and loved, and those unfamiliar yet still warm and welcoming, and it was as if they looked right through her—not in a way that was all knowing, not in a way that felt assessing, wondering.

It almost seemed like they did not see her at all. Like she wasn’t there. Wasn’t just like everybody else.

And maybe she wasn’t. There were two sides of her, her humanity was obvious but the patterns on her skin spoke of a darker secret, a darker shame. Even though she wanted to be treated like everyone else, like Celine treated Zoey, and Mira, sometimes she wanted to scream at them all, at the world, that she could not be what they wanted her to be.

Rumi fit into a mould that was not born from this realm. Everyone knew that, everyone close to her, that is. And yet…there was this unwritten rule, or seemed to be anyway, that they did not speak of her nature. That they ignored it.

As if it didn’t save their lives. As if it didn’t change the world for the better.

As if she was wrong.

Wrong for hiding it, then wrong for embracing it. Wrong for something she couldn’t control.

Wrong for how she was a hunter and yet reluctant to join in on the manhunt for someone she knew differently than everyone else knew him.

She knew him as better. As trapped, as sorrowful and regretful and filled with a poisonous amount of self-loathing that even Rumi couldn’t stop him from making the choice he made the day of the new Honmoon. Because he wanted it all to stop. He wanted to be rid of the humanity that made him hurt, made him grieve.

Rumi worried that his actions were the beginning of a suicide mission.

There was not a chance in the world that Jinu wouldn’t have anticipated a reaction from the hunters. He wanted them to chase him. To end him. Somehow, there was a part of her that knew this so vehemently that she couldn’t bare to be around her justice-hungry friends.

Because they accepted her, but not him.

One demon amongst them all was enough. They didn’t have it in their hearts to accept another.

Yet, what if there was a better world begging to form in the future? What if there was a path that could be taken to end Gwi Ma for good? Free all of the souls he kept trapped. They had been humans, too. Had lived and loved and breathed the way the rest of them did, had family and friends—people that missed them so terribly it only added to the heartache surrounding the fate of all those victims over centuries of torment.

And if Rumi was wrong for thinking that it was inhumane to turn their backs on all those unfortunate souls…

She did not care to be right. She did not care to force her body, her mind and morals, into a mould not meant for her.

Though…to abandon her own friends, her family, when all they were doing was with the purest of intentions…

Rumi couldn’t stomach it.

This was a fork in the road, she knew enough to understand that much. But as for which path she should take? Which one would see all she loved alive and thriving and which one would have everything she cherished reduced to nothing but rubble and dust left to be carried away by the cruel wind of terror? Rumi had no idea what she was doing.

Except for one thing; she needed to speak to Jinu.

The tiger and the bird came and went not unlike the tide, but at the same time vastly different from something so structured and scheduled—something as certain as the sun rising and falling each dawn and dusk. Most of the time, they appeared when Rumi wanted to see them least, when the memory of Jinu and his companions and their silly little ongoing feud over their silly little hat became too much bare.

However now, as Rumi searched the city for them, it seems they had decided they did not want to be found. Not this night, at least.

Still, as even the streetlights abandoned Rumi and her neighbourhood became shrouded in darkness and blanketed by silence, she looked for them—for glowing eyes and cerulean fur—and had no intention of stopping. Not until sunrise, at least—she knew there would be no chance of finding them when the city became bathed in light once more.

Around every corner was further disappointment. Rumi tied the string of her hoodie tighter around her face to weaken the bite of the cold winter air, and then she paused behind a brick house, leaning against the wall to tuck a shoelace back into her boot before she tripped on it and became fast acquaintances with the ground.

It was as she stood back upright that she heard it—movement. And then she truly took in her surroundings and recognised a strange familiarity to them, as if she’d been there before…recently. And that was when she realised where she was, the pictures she had seen from a crime scene plastered over the media, and what had occurred there a night ago.

There was no sign of the murder that had happened, but there was also no mistaking the subtle sounds of another being close by—feet scuffing on pavement, something heavy hitting the ground, sliding against the concrete slightly.

A grunt and a few muttered curses was all it took for Rumi to rise to her toes and sneak back around the building, towards where she assumed the front door was.

Creeping around the corner, sticking to the shadows cast by the structure, Rumi squinted against the darkness of the unlit street. Thankfully, the duality of her blood made senses a lot more heightened—she reckoned neither Zoey or Mira would have been able to see what was unfolding in front of her.

Which, in hindsight was not such a spectacle, but given the circumstances of everything that happened…Rumi felt a shiver tiptoe down the curve of her back.

A man was moving boxes from the building into a nearby truck parked partly on the pavement—something that would typically not warrant any suspicion, had it not been for the fact that, one, it was gone three in the morning and, two, the person who owned the residence was brutally murdered a mere day ago.

Rumi was about to listen to her conscience and leave things be when she caught a glimpse of the man’s face, and curiosity clouded her judgement.

Before she could even really think about it, Rumi stepped out of her hiding spot.

“Healer Han?” She called out into the night. The man froze, then turned, and froze again. Like a deer caught unawares by a pair of headlights, but only momentarily. Startled, the man dropped the box he was holding and glanced to his left, then his right, as if searching for an escape.

Odd, considering he was probably the least likely person to be worried about a hunter approaching him. Granted, Rumi was still a little annoyed by his grape juice scam but it was Zoey, really, that led her into it.

Soon enough, the man’s foreign flight or fight reaction dwindled down to something Rumi could only describe as a strange defeat. Shoulders slumping with a sigh of disappointment, Healer Han—of all people—walked away from the home of a murder victim and approached Rumi, his steps cautious but his eyes filled with a new determination.

It only occurred to her, then , that maybe the guy didn’t just deal in shady tonic distribution. Maybe there was a reason he was clearing out a murdered man’s home in secret at a god-awful time in the morning.

Rumi took a step back. Enough to send a silent warning; no further.

Han halted his approached, and then there was nothing but the rustling of leaves and a faint barking of a dog somewhere in the distance. All was still, aside from the uneven breathing from the man in front of her.

“I figured it wouldn’t be long before one of you showed up here.”

The sudden disruption of silence was enough to send a quick, brutal jolt through Rumi, but when the depth of Han’s words finally sunk in, that jolt spread through each and everyone of her limbs. Warning bells went off inside her head as the man regarded her with an intensity that seemed to shred through each layer of her anatomy to peer right into the essence of her very being.

“Although, I didn’t expect you to move this fast,” he added, an air of inconvenience in his tone, as if Rumi had done something wrong in coming here, though unintentionally, tonight.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she replied, voice strong. Firm, despite the nerves that fizzled under the surface.

There was no way he knew who…or what she was. There was no way he knew of the hunters. She was surely simply paranoid—

“I know what you are, Hunter.”

Well. Shit.

A nervous chuckle slipped out. All of a sudden, Rumi found she couldn’t meet the man’s gaze; she stared passed him at a few dustbins left haphazardly down the residential street—a stray cat was poking around at a deserted rubbish bag, and Rumi found comfort in its presence as she felt the eyes burning a hole through her.

“Have you been drinking your own tonics, Healer Han? You know you’re only supposed to take medicine if it’s prescribed— “

“Don’t deflect with me, child. I am far too wise to fall for such tactics,” there was a mildly irritating annoyance in his tone that had Rumi bristling slightly, but not enough to take her eyes off of the cat, “you’re here because of the murder, correct?”

“Maybe,” Rumi didn’t care to hide her suspicion, “why are you here?”

“ Youngsters, ” Han tutted, partially under his breath although conveniently loud enough for Rumi to still her, “answering questions with questions. Well, I’ll tell you why I’m here.” He swivelled and pointed to the building his truck was parked in front of, the house of the man that had died last night, and then he said something that had ice clogging Rumi’s veins—her heart beginning to suffocate, her knees buckling under her own weight.

“That’s my brother’s house.”

Oh god—

“And yes because I can see the question already brewing in your mind, it is my brother’s body plastered all over the media.”

“Mr. Han, I am so—“

“I’ll stop you right there,” his interruption was gruff, filled with friction and a tension Rumi could not decipher for the life of her, “he was not someone worthy of an apology.”

Rumi didn’t know how to react. On one hand, she thought about how much of a tragedy it would be if she lost someone close to her, how truly and utterly heartbroken she’d feel— had felt—over something as unimaginable as that. Yet on the other hand, she saw the emotions in Han’s eyes. Or rather, the lack of, aside from a fierce sincerity that drenched his words in nothing but the pure, honest truth.

Still, though, to lose a brother and feel no sorrow…

“What makes you say that?”

Han let loose a breath that could’ve knocked a small house over, as if both of his lungs had been punctured and deflated, and then he sank to the floor, perching on the curb of the pavement, his knees bent and his arms folded atop them. He stared at the vacant road for a long, long while.

A stinging sensation in her heart had Rumi joining his side a few moments later. Side by side, they sat in silence, listening to the quiet chorus of the night as she waited for his response.

When he finally opened his mouth, Rumi had to stifle the shock that went through her.

“He was an evil man,” Han said, his voice thick, “There was no greater shame, being related to him. The things that he had done over the course of his life…there are people that have suffered greatly because of him. There are some who are no longer around as a result of his twisted fascinations.”

“He got out of prison last year. Has been trying to make contact with family for most of that time, but we had shunned him the moment we found out who he truly was. Still, the horrors he has committed weigh so heavily on us. There have been so many nights that I begged for him to no longer exist—I couldn’t bear the fact that he was free of his sentence. I feared for everyone that came into contact with him. And then…”

Rumi shuffled just a little bit closer.

“And then he died. Just like that. Brutally killed in an act that could’ve only been out of anger and the only thing I feel is relief. Relief that it is over. He is gone.”

“I am sorry that you’ve been carrying this burden. It must have been very hard.” The words were hard to get out—felt forced—but Rumi had to say something despite her inability to cope well in situations like these. She was always worried she’d say the wrong thing, make the wrong move, have everything turn out worse because of her. Even now, she didn’t want to say anything that might upset this man further.

“It’s not me I care about,” Han muttered, “it’s all the innocents he has hurt. He nearly got away with it, too.” Rumi gazed at the side of his face, eyes the size of dinner plates.

Han’s following chuckle was bitter and humourless. “They argued he was unable to understand his charges due to insanity. But I knew better. It wasn’t mental illness that fuelled his depravity, but something much worse. Something incurable—a demon.”

This time, Rumi could not stifle her reaction. She gasped so loud she feared it’d wake up the residents around her.

“When he was younger, he complained about voices in his head. He would scream and cry and have fits that lasted hours . My parents struggled greatly, they wanted to get him put in some sort of institution—they nearly did , until one day it all stopped, he went quiet. And I’ll never forget what he told me one night—that he’d been chosen, he was special, and when I tried arguing with him, I saw it. Briefly, but undeniable—his glowing eyes. Those dark patterns. From then, it took a lot of research, a lot of digging in both historical records and books of myth until I was utterly convinced.”

“I know all about the Honmoon, Hunter. And I knew who you were years before you stepped into my practice.

Mouth suddenly bone dry, Rumi swallowed. “How?”

And then Han replied with something Rumi would have never anticipated in a million years, something that dislodged a weight heavier than a boulder and sent it plummeting to the very pit of her stomach.

He said, “I knew your mother.”

“That’s not—“

“Oh it is very much possible when you think about it, child. A woman in love with a demon male, pregnant with his baby, looking for any kind of medical expert that has knowledge about the truth of the realm that lurks in our shadow. She came to me, and begged me for answers on the future of her child. Answers…” Han sighed, regretfully, “that I could not give her.”

“And so admittedly I lied, I said the baby would be fine. Healthy, even. And she looked so full of hope…so weightless and free of what had been burdening her…well, I can’t say I feel any guilt about my actions that day what-so-ever, if it meant she lived her life not worrying about the future.”

“Then she died, because of me.”

“So the story goes.” The words weren’t entirely convincing. Han went on, “but I am not so sure that is the whole truth.”

“Then what is?”

“I’m not sure on that either, girl. I just know the one we have is not reliable. The cause of death was never announced to the public. Mostly it was speculation that brought upon the narrative that she died giving birth. It was a sad time, indeed.”

A peculiar feeling, to have lost someone you never knew. People always offered their heartfelt sympathies to Rumi whenever they learned about her mother’s death, and Rumi never really figured out the correct way to respond. She felt sadness, yes, but there was only so deep that sadness could go when all that was missing was a silhouette with the faintest of outlines.

There was no memory of her voice, her laugh. There were no recollections of time spent with each other doing everything she had witnessed mothers and daughters do over the years, and it truly did make her grieve what she could have had.

But right then, with the first person to openly talk about her parents in what felt like decades, Rumi realised something that had her heart feeling a million times heavier.

In all her many years alive in this world, nobody had ever talked about her father.

Because he was a demon.

And now, so was she, and Rumi realised that the same thing could happen to her. One day, she might be gone from this earth and people would only remember her for the way they wanted her to be. They wouldn’t talk about her patterns, her nature. They wouldn’t talk about how she’d resolved the conflicting bloodlines within her and saved thousands of people as a result.

They wouldn’t talk about her father. Because she didn’t even talk about her father. She didn’t even know his name.

It was then she realised that her and Han were vastly different but somehow the same.

He feared that people would only remember him for the crimes his brother had committed, and she feared that nobody would remember her for the man whose blood had empowered her.

And perhaps Han’s fear was the reason why he was here, so late at night, where there was nobody around to see.

“You’re clearing out his house,” Rimu stated after the moment of silence.

“Somebody has to. And I’m the only one left. Figured I’d come in the dead of the night, so nobody would see.”

Rumi hummed, but Han wasn’t finished speaking, “I suppose that is why you are here at this time, too. Looking for whoever put an end to my brother.”

“Something like that,” she whispered, but didn’t offer any more information. The situation was too delicate for her to share with someone else, someone that was practically a stranger, still.

A change of subject, “So if you are a medical professional, why did you sell me fake tonics?”

“Ah,” Han grinned, and although it bugged Rumi that he had fooled her and was seemingly very gleeful about it, she was glad that his somber mood had shifted, “Because I knew that it wasn’t tonics that you needed.”

“Oh?”

“You needed the same thing that your mother needed.”

“ Hope. ” Damn it, he was good. “So you’re telling me your cure was just a placebo?”

“It worked, did it not?”

Rumi snorted, “Somewhat, although I’m not entirely sure how effective it was as a whole.”

“Well, whatever else contributed to you getting your voice back, I hope you hold it close to you from now on.”

There was a lump in her throat the size of a boulder, stubborn and unmoving despite her swallowing a couple times. And then she felt them—tears. Not many, but enough it had her eyes stinging and forced her to blink them away. When she did, a lone droplet trickled down her cheek and hung off of her jaw. She wiped it away, quickly.

“I’m trying to,” she murmured, almost to herself. Han hummed—his only response.

Sensing the conversation was coming to a close, Rumi glanced to the end of the street once more, curious to see if the cat was still there, and it was…but—

The animal was still as a statue, frozen in a stance of paralysis as it regarded something before him, something concealed in the shadows, barely illegible—

Rumi sucked in a harsh breath. She knew those eyes.

She knew that fur.

“Mr. Han, I’m sorry, I have to go—“

“Eh,” he waved his hand, “don’t apologise—“

But Rumi was already sprinting down the street, feet pounding against the tarmac as houses raced past her. The tiger was waiting for her only metres away now and her heart was beginning to break right through her chest with how thunderous it pounded against her flesh and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop—

Loose gravel and dirt sprayed out from beneath her shoes as she skidded to a halt. The tiger watched her as she panted and heaved, hands on her hips, trying to regain her breath.

“I’ve been—“ She breathed, “—looking for you!”

The animal purred, but it wasn’t its usual, warm sound. No…this was one of warning. But why?

Just as Rumi began battling with her confusion, the tiger turned its head and fixed its eyes on whatever scene was laid out in front of him. It sat, and curled its tail tightly against its body.

Approaching its side, Rumi realised it was staring down an alley she hadn’t noticed before, and so she narrowed her eyes and peered through the unlit space, desperate to see what her old companion was so focused on.

And then she wished she hadn’t. She wished she’d never stopped to talk to Han. Wished she’d never left home, wished she’d not abandoned her friends and instead listened to their warnings. Heeded them.

Because only ten or so metres away from her, lay a body convulsing on the ground.

Above it, covered in blood that was not his own, mouth twisted in the cruelest smile that she somehow knew was meant for her, was someone that held her heart in the palm of his hands, and began to crush it.

At the scene of his very fresh crime, sneering at her like she was inconveniencing his moment…

Jinu.

No.

Chapter Text

There was nothing else in existence except the taught string of anguish and yearning tied around each of their middles tight enough to strangle, to choke. There was no wind, no sound. There was no pavement, no foliage, no life except their own, and even their souls were on the way to exiting out of their vessels, suspended in the air between them—just two carcasses gazing at each other's exposed flesh, at each other's gaping wounds and potent vulnerability. Rumi bled out in front of Jinu, and Jinu sniffed the air as if he could taste the heartache and enjoyed it. Relished in it, savoured it, craved it.

He observed her in a way that peeled back the layer of her skin to reveal the soft tissue beneath. He scrutinised her as if he knew every insecurity, every emotion her body was raging with in that moment, and he smiled a smile that was void of kindness, void of care. It was a twisted grimace of sickening satisfaction, all fangs and teeth, no warmth. Above it were two eyes the colour of a venomous yellow—the only thing about him that was light, and yet Rumi could feel the darkness seeping out of just that one look, and all of it—all his animosity, his callousness and cruelty, it was all aimed at her.

It shredded Rumi, down to the rapidly rotting paleness of her marrow. She was nothing but a pile of bones on the floor beneath him, her soul dangling carelessly in the nothingness above her, watching on, trembling, leaving her.

There was an obscene pooling of blood, nearly lapping at his toes, glimmering with what little light managed to find the devastation amongst all the shadows. Above it, the artist of death admired his work a final time, before his eyes flashed with challenge at Rumi. Then, before she could even gather the innards she had lost at the sight of the man she loved falling fast off the cliff of redemption, Jinu was leaping away, scaling walls and clambering across rooftops. Running...away from her. Leaving, again. 

That wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all.

Time did not lend Rumi the opportunity to think, it only gave her brief pause to act, and so she bounded on her toes, pumping her arms as her limbs flailed into motion, chasing after a shadow, a memory yet again whilst everything that was still sane inside of her was screaming at her to turn around. To go back to that body and ensure the soul passed with as much peace it might have left after its torture. But she couldn't. To turn her back now, when she was so close to everything she had longed for in such awful, dragging months, was an idea inconceivable to her. She had to follow.

Had to. In that moment, Rumi had no control whatsoever, only acting on base instinct and sheer determination.

She could see him in the distance, the tail of his cloak flapping in the wind, the emerging moonlight bouncing off the tiniest glimpses of purple-marked skin. Jinu was close, and Rumi knew that he could feel her right on his heels.

In the silence filled with nothing but ragged breaths and feet against rooftiles, Rumi swore she heard the faintest tinkle of laughter. Like a child playing in a backyard, being chased by a friend. A crush.

And then, he stopped. A motion so sudden, Rumi skidded across the roof she had just jumped upon, arms flapping as she teetered right on the edge of an overhang, her foot slipping dangerously near the lip.

Why here? She thought. Why stop now?

The power of demon blood was something Rumi was all too familiar with, and so she was aware that the pair of them could've run until the sun rose, until forever, and neither would have tired. So why hadn't they? Did he want to be caught? Did he miss her as much as she missed him? Did he feel the stubborn and unforgiving thread that tethered them so painfully together?

And then a scent hit her. One so painstakingly familiar. Of jasmine and blossoms and the faintest of spices from the market street below them. She knew this spot. She knew it so well that each building, each path, each stone was engraved in her memory, tattooed in everlasting ink that had seeped into her bloodstream and remained, even after all this time.

Yellow eyes met her own, but for a moment, they were brown, like rich earth and freshly brewed coffee. For a moment, they were exactly where they now stood, only it was so many months ago.

Let the past be the past until it's weightless.

"You remember it, don't you?" The world halted. A final breeze tore through her hair, through his, and then a stillness, so stagnant Rumi felt as if she might choke on it, followed.

Like he had decimated the existence around her with just the timbre of his cold, unfeeling voice, Rumi could do nothing as the ground beneath her seemed to crumble into rubble. Suspended in the air, there was little to do but watch Jinu before her, wait with bated breath, hanging helplessly as he delivered blows she was certain would come. Rumi could practically taste his vitriol on her tongue as the tension fizzled through to every pocket of her body.

"That song," He purred, "So full of hope." There was not a semblance of warmth, of kindness, in his taunt.

"Jinu," A hoarse whisper was all Rumi could manage, "Please." 

It took all of her focus, her energy, to lift a limb so heavy she was sure her bones had turned to lead, but Rumi managed to stretch out her hand towards him. Even though he stood metres away on the ridge of a roof adjacent to hers, she was hoping he'd reach for her, too. Hope he'd join her; her hand as open as it had been the first time they had been at this very spot. 

But Jinu did not reach for her. Instead, the corners of his mouth turned upwards, and those fangs of his seemed illuminated—bathed in silver light. "Say that again," he commanded with a timbre as smooth as silk.

Rumi swallowed a lump the size of her heart, and then braced herself, stretching her fingers out yet again. Reaching for something, for him.

"Please, Jinu," She said. "Come back to me."

For a split second, Rumi swore she saw that brown she adored so much, but it was gone so fast it must have been her imagination, because Jinu's eyes were still that awful, hollow yellow. 

Moments before they rolled to the back of his head. Moments before his mouth parted and the most wondrous, terrifying, blood-boiling sound of subtle pleasure, of desire, rumbled from the back of his throat. Teeth flashing, eyes regaining focus and narrowing to slits as he looked back at her once more, Jinu's mouth fell agape. He licked his lips, a subtle action, and then his eyes flashed and Rumi didn't even have a moment to prepare, to steady herself when flames of crimson and indigo erupted from his fingertips and coiled around her like a snake of pure lava, twisting around her waist, her torso. Cuffing her wrists, binding them behind her back before more heat slithered down her body and spiralled down her legs, locking them together with the strength of iron chains.

And then, as shock rattled through her and terror raced afterwards, her thundering heart in her throat and her blood roaring unforgivably around her brain, something yanked—

She was hurtling through the air, unable to stop herself, unable to move, unable to scream as another tendril of flame coiled around her throat and squeezed, squeezed—

Jinu's face was all all she could see, so close his breath washed over her simmering skin, so close she could see each capillary of indigo spider-webbed across his cheeks, his forehead—filtering down to his eyes, his lips, colouring the flesh in a sickly sheen of the palest white, as if he was born of the moon and had the power of the sun for eyes.

He was porcelain reinforced with the hardness of diamond, and the luminosity of the gem itself. He was out of this world, a god in his own right, and so awfully frightening that Rumi did not need ropes of hellfire to hold her still—he had rendered her paralysed. Useless. hopeless. Like she had been that day at Namsan Tower, when the man who had promised to be by her side had betrayed her so vehemently, she had sought death by the hands of her own guardian.

For a moment, Rumi was back at the Honmoon Tree once more. Kneeling before Celine, sword in her hands, defeat in her lungs and pure, violent anguish in her heart.

For a moment, she craved death again. If only to escape this version of Jinu that went against everything she had believed him to be.

"Rumi," He breathed, chest heaving as he stepped towards her, his proximity so invasive she felt his knees graze her own, felt each word he spoke seep into her skin, "You are so beautiful when you beg."

"Jinu—" Rumi couldn't stop the cough as she choked on her words, her throat burning as a result of its confinement, "You are so ugly," another heavy pant, "when you lie—"

Pain erupted. Beneath her clothes, Rumi was certain her skin had ruptured into a network of blisters and burns and marred flesh exposed.

Around her, the world was bathed only in the hateful glow of flame. 

She couldn't feel her legs, nor her arms or her body as a whole; she only felt his pure, undiluted hatred. His mockery. His maliciousness. 

His pain. Her pain. One and the same yet vastly different, inflicted only by one person, felt irreversibly and undoubtedly by both. He was millimetres away now, baring his teeth at her, eyes wild and flickering with something even Rumi could not describe no matter how close she was to him.

The hold he had on her tightened. Worsened. Rumi swore she could smell the rotten, foreign scent of charred tissue.

"Does this feel like a lie, my love?" He taunted, and sent another wave of heat just to emphasise. Rumi groaned, her head rolling back as far as her bindings would allow it. Faintly, she could feel sweat pouring down her forehead in moist, rapid rivulets, only for each stream to evaporate before it could gather along her jaw and drip to her feet.

"Is this what you felt," she heaved, the words rough and forced and barely loud enough to sound out above the gushing of her blood and the pummelling drumbeat of her pulse, "when you saved my life?"

"No." So cold. So blunt was his voice, only for it to sharpen in an instant into the deadliest of blades that he then wielded to slice her up further, "All I felt was regret," he said. So casually cruel, so demeaning.

It all ceased. The pain, the heat, the desperation. All of it gone. All of it inferior.

I wanted to set you free.

You did.

"Liar," She whispered at the figment in her head of a man she thought was made of honour. "You're a liar!" Rumi hissed at the real Jinu before her, who was being nothing but a coward and nothing like who she knew, at her core, was a decent man.

"Look at you!" He seethed back, bruising her forehead as he collided his own with hers, forcing her to feel every morsel of wrath he aimed at her through those eyes of his that were other. 

Rumi used to think his demon form was beautiful. Now, its ugliness was truly exposed in the way she had been raised to believe it to be. And yet there was no more fear running through her at the appearance of him, there was no wincing at his true form when it was like looking into a mirror, and she had learned a long time ago now to no longer shy away from her reflection. And so she wouldn't shy away from him either, even though, for whatever reason, he was trying so desperately to get her to do so. Refusing to be like everyone else, refusing to have the same look in her eyes that her loved ones held sometimes—when she thought they wouldn't notice—Rumi stared at him. Glared at him, glared through him. Let him feel the way she could expose his defences and burn them down to nothing but ash, let him see the way that she knew him so intimately that he would have no room to deny it any longer. And then she did—in Jinu's eyes, she was sure—the unthinkable. 

Against the pain, the pure strength of his demon fire and the agony tearing through her limbs, carving her up from the inside out, Rumi lifted her hand once more.

Placed it right over his heart.

The breath Jinu sucked in smothered every last ember of his flames.

Shrouded in nothing but moonlight once more, the world faded back into view. Rumi saw the sparkling city lights in the bustling centre of skyscrapers reaching up to the sky like the outstretched fingers of some forgotten god of glass and wealth. She saw an abundance of tree canopies swaying in the returning winds. Heard the barking of dogs, the bickering of cats and the calls of owls and other nocturnals alike. 

But above it all, she saw Jinu. Briefly, she saw him. As he was, as he always had been and always would be, to her.

Black hair unkempt, brown eyes wild, skin still pale but healthy and void of colouring.

In an instant, he was gone.

But too late. Rumi had her first glimpse of who she had lost that night she sealed her new Honmoon, and she would cling to it until her dying breath.

Jinu's demon returned. The purple flooded back into his face, his brown eyes melted once more into pits of toxic venom and yellow flame, highlighted further by the splattering of blood that still caked his skin, his clothes. Gone was the man who longed to be free, who longed for her. In his place was the creature Celine had warned her about. But Rumi knew better now; she saw the cracks in his facade. Saw the slumping of his shoulders, the tight line of his lips—no fangs in sight, not anymore.

"I knew you'd find me eventually." There was something else buried in his words, another meaning hiding between the lines, as if she had discovered more than she thought, as if she had taken more than he had been prepared to offer. 

The pain writhing under her skin from the remnants left behind of his torturous capture was second to everything Rumi now felt. Sorrow, grief, sympathy. Relief. Confusion, hurt, anger.

Love.

Hatred.

Him.

"What are you doing, Jinu?" That glorious wind hurtled over the rooftops and cooled her scorched skin. Jinu angled his head towards the sky as it wafted over him, too, lifting his hair as it carried on its journey through the suburbs.

Jinu laughed—a sound void of all the humour, the light that should accompany such a noise. Instead, all that was there was a subtle defiance. A last stance, another wall. Behind Rumi, some distance away, was a man still lying deceased in a darkened alleyway, and he'd stay there until some poor soul found him when the sun rose and called the authorities to take him away from the nightmare of where he took his final breath, but Rumi couldn't even begin to think about that right now—two bodies, her conversation with Han, the history of Jinu's first victim, the theory that was beginning to form in Rumi's mind but yet lacked enough information for her to fully voice it...all of it came second place to the man before her. Everything came in second place to him.

She had to stop him. If it was the lack of his soul that was carrying out these acts, she had to find a way to give what was supposed to be his final gift back to him. Before he was too far gone. Before he hurt other people the way he had hurt the two men. Hurt her.

As if reading her mind, that now familiar velvet-like drawl sounded above all noise once more. Except this time, it was void of the cruelty, the callousness...there was simply nothing behind his words, his tone. It was absent; he was absent. Broken.

Lost.

"Have you come to save me, Rumi?"

She whispered back. As soft as a feather, as solid as oak, "Do you need saving, Jinu?"

"I want nothing from you." 

Rumi knew the momentary reprieve was too good to be true; that darkness in his voice had returned with newfound strength. 

"That's not true—"

"You know..." Jinu ran a clawed hand down his face, his finger dragging his bottom lip down too, before it bounced back up into place, and a smile that was more of a grimace captured his mouth, "I'm getting very sick of you calling me a liar," he rumbled, "Very sick, indeed."

"Well, there's a solution to that," Rumi deadpanned, her breathing still a little uneven, her skin still tremendously sore, her heart still traitorously splintering.

One of his eyebrows lifted, along with an upwards tilt of his head. He was staring at her down the bridge of his nose when he replied, "Oh?" Accompanied by a flash of his fangs as they scraped across his bottom lip. Rumi gulped.

"Stop lying," she finished. As blunt as ever, as cold as him.

"So naive," He cooed, but there was a twist in his voice. A hidden knife. Something like an accusation, something like rage, as if she had disappointed him, as if she was not following a script he may have had written out in his head, "So malleable," he cursed.

Ignoring his puzzling taunts, Rumi pushed further. "Whatever Gwi Ma has promised you, whatever he is controlling you with, remember how it played out last time, Jinu. You died. You lost your soul—"

In an instant, a swift movement so fast it was a blur lasting less than a second, Jinu was in her face once more, all teeth flashing now, eyes wide and scolding. Rumi's skin remembered the torture of his flames and it took everything in her to not cower at his proximity again. To look past the vitriol in his gaze and remember the warmth—the kind she would welcome—that hid beneath whatever mask he was so adamant on wearing.

And perhaps she truly was delusional. Perhaps he was truly gone and would never be the man she thought he was; perhaps he never had been. But Rumi knew all too well what it felt like to push people away when in reality all she ever wanted was for them to admit that they see right through her, that they see all of her flaws and still love her, still need her. She knew what it was like to crave to be wanted, wanted for everything that she came with—the good, the bad, the ugly. The terrifying. And she wouldn't dare subject Jinu to endure another person seeing the real him and running from it. She would not let him do that to them. Wouldn't let his cruelty ruin what they had, ruin what only they could have with each other.

"Gwi Ma has promised me nothing. I make my own decisions!" It came as a thousand voices at once, his rage-filled rebuttal. A true portrayal of his demonic nature. Rumi didn't flinch. She did not back away. She stared at him still. 

I see you, her eyes read. I see you and I am not afraid.

"Are you convincing me, or yourself?"

Silence. A lot of it. A cloud of quiet, a suffocating absence that lasted far too long and rattled Rumi far too deeply.

And then, delivered by cruelty crafted by the demon king himself and a heartlessness reserved only for those with the most twisted of minds, Jinu broke her heart again. "It is because of you that I am like this. It is because of you and your insufferable obsession with me that I have been driven to show you who I truly am. It is because of you following me around with that worthless hope in your heart that makes me so disgusted by the sight of you that I can barely breathe. I wish you were gone. I wish you would just disappear."

It was at that point that Rumi recognised the moment for what it was. A tear in the fabric, a fault in his defence. A breakthrough. He was teetering on an edge unknown, feet slipping off of a precipice, his hands clawing for a purchase in the rubble he had roused from his path of self-destruction. He was looking for someone to stomp on his fingertips and send him spiralling into a void that would fulfil whatever purpose he craved; martyrdom, finality, reprieve, Rumi had no idea. The only thing she knew was that she would not give him the satisfaction. She would not let him be a coward and take the easy way out. 

She would make him face whatever was burning him up from the inside out, and then she would face it with him.

Rumi took one step. Just one, and Jinu staggered on the edge of the roof. He had nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. 

And as Rumi reached her palm towards him and placed it against where she knew a human heart beat so wildly beneath, Jinu froze.

When she spoke, Rumi knew he was unravelling.

"If that's truly the case, Jinu, then you should know this." The words were so soft, so lilted. A lullaby meant to soothe whilst her fingernails dug deep into skin, telling him that she knew what he was, what he was trying to protect. Against her hand, Jinu's chest was heaving, his breath laboured, fragile wisps of air accompanied by random cracks reverberating from the back of his hoarse throat. Eyes wide, mouth parted, he regarded Rumi as if she were a stranger. As if he had only just realised that the person standing before him was not the woman he left behind at Namsam Tower. Because this woman in front of him now had lost him once before, and there was a burning determination within her to never let her suffer that loss again.

Rumi knew he could feel it. Taste it. She wondered what it would be like to place her lips against his own and let him show her everything she was making him feel. To witness firsthand his anguish, his pain, his yearning. As suddenly as a landslide, Rumi burned with longing.

She stopped breathing. 

Jinu grasped at her hand. Clawed at it. Pushed it away, held it close. Their breath mingled, washing over each other. Rumi shook vigorously, and Jinu trembled against her touch. Like he was about to explode, like he was a ticking time bomb.

Rumi ached to feel the destruction of his unravelling. She vibrated with the need to let him use her as an outlet, as a punching bag. Let him land blow after blow, let her do nothing but watch as he moved her body over her, into her. Forge them together, break her apart. Let her feel his loathing, his vengeance. Let her soak it all up—

A low, agonised moan slipped through Jinu's lips. Rumi's own parted in response, and she wet her flesh with her tongue. Closing her eyes and letting loose a steadying breath, Rumi cleared her head and finally summoned the words she wanted to say, to fire at him.

"You should know this," She repeated on a murmur, moving her mouth so dangerously close to his own that Jinu was a hair's width away from feeling the way her lips wrapped around her words. He sucked in a breath, and stole hers. "I will follow you wherever you go. I will cling to your every move like a parasite. I will not let you be rid of me when I know, I know, Jinu, that what you demand of me is not what you desire. I know you are a liar, always have been, may always will be, but let me demonstrate what the truth looks like in its pure, unadulterated form," her nails bore further into his skin, Jinu hissed in retaliation but could do nothing to even out his rapid, ragged breathing—he was now practically growling, straining against whatever his body was telling him to do. To do to her. Rumi had to remind herself that now wasn't the time to let him.

"I promise you that you will never be rid of me. I promise you that I am not going anywhere—"

Jinu's harsh interruption came brutal and sudden, "I will kill everyone you love—"

"No, you won't," Rumi scoffed with a bitterness that visibly zapped him, "Because you would have to start with yourself." On her final word, she let her lips brush against his own. Just once. Just a touch, a taste.

A death wish.

A revelation. A condemnation.

From then on, they were doomed. From then on, there was no going back.

Something snapped. Rumi felt the echoes of it in her soul right before two hands pushed against her chest and sent her flying across the rooftop.

She tumbled to the ground, rolling over her hand before bouncing back onto her feet, knees bent, ready—

Before she could even look up from the ground, a leash of flame coiled around her once more. Eyes darting up the length of crimson, Rumi only had a millisecond to see a simmering, shaking Jinu holding the other end of her tether before his arm yanked backwards and she was flung through the air once more, crashing into Jinu's chest where burning palms pressed against the small of her back, crushed her against him. And she felt everything.

Then she was up in the air, feet dangling helplessly as flames spread all over her and yet they did not burn like they had before, did not burn because there was no need to.

When Jinu smashed his mouth against her own, Rumi's own blood set alight.

It was a mess of teeth and fangs and tongues, an exchange of breath, of moisture. He was consuming her, devouring her. Taking what was his, what he needed, what he demanded. And all she could do was remain bound by him and let Jinu feel her. Let him taste her honesty, all of the aches that made them both alive. Both human. 

They were spinning. Spinning. Rumi didn't know up from down or left from right but it was the most beautfiul storm she had ever witnessed, being tossed and turned in his arms, Feeling every inch of him dig into her flesh, feeling his skin fuse to her own, his mouth and his lips take everything they wanted and leave nothing for herself. Take all of me, she wanted to say, take it, take it, take it—

She was floating now. Falling. Gravity working against her, summoning her down, down, down.

Jinu bit at her, drawing blood and sending her soaring whilst his hands roamed every surface they could reach, creeping round to the front of her, grabbing one of her breasts between his fingers and clutching onto the flesh like his life depended on it, and then his claws dug into her shirt, as if he was to rip it off, as if he was—

Everything stopped.

There he was, above her; lips swollen and red, eyes wild and glowing like a thousand suns, skin flushed and gleaming, chest heaving. Purple veins protruding from the toned arm he was holding her by, dangling her by—

Rumi's head cleared. She felt gravity pulling her down. She looked down at their feet. Jinu's were on the edge of the roof.

Hers were hanging off of it.

In a movement that felt like it took a century, Rumi met his gaze once more. 

Just as Jinu tasted the traces of her left on his mouth with a wicked swipe of his tongue.

Fangs out yet again, he grinned. But there was something hidden in it, something hazy and saccharine beneath the cold front. As if part of him was still kissing her, taking her. As if part of him was imagining what would have ensued if he hadn't stopped. And Rumi would've let herself wonder, too, if the man she had just let fuck her with his lips and tongue wasn't now dangling her over the edge of a two-storey building.

Arms flailing, her nails yet again clung to his skin, now for an entirely different reason.

"What are you doing—"

She was cut off by Jinu's sudden release of her clothing, and she jerked downwards an inch or two; the only thing keeping her in the air was her unforgiving nails latching onto his skin, buried at least a centimetre into his arm. Blood ran in rivulets over his skin and onto her, slipping underneath the arm of her hoodie, warming the skin but still raising goosebumps in the wake.

"Jinu!" She screeched, legs kicking as her feet fought to find a place on the ground again. Jinu only smirked at her struggle.

"Your little claws are quite impressive. Like a cat," He jested, and shook his arm lightly, Rumi slipped. One of her fingers lost its grip, then another, and another, and another—

"I wonder if you'll land on your feet like one—"

"No—"

With a violent tug, Jinu pulled his arm free from her grasp. There was a strange flash of blue in her peripheral and then she was falling, falling, in slow motion, and he was bent over the edge of the roof, watching her tumble, almost looking...nervous. Apprehensive, but Rumi didn't have enough time to decipher whatever it was.

Her spine was surely about to shatter against concrete on impact; she would not survive it, not from this angle—

Something tackled her mid-air, and then she was spiralling to the side, wrapped in something big and warm and...furry? Rumi was tossed about, flailing around for what felt like an eternity before there was a giant thud, a scattering of stones and she forced her eyes to open—didn't remember when she had closed them—only to be met with a thick arm of blue fluff wrapped around her midriff, claws securing her in place before she was placed oh-so-carefully on the ground, only to be gripped by the back of her hoodie—by something that felt suspiciously like a warm, gaping jaw—flung into the air where she then crashed onto the back of an animal she knew all too well.

A tiger that she would be having words with. Colourful words, many of them.

Rumi pushed herself upright, squeezing her thighs to stay balanced as the tiger bounded through the streets and away from where she had been tossed off of a fucking roof. She swivelled her back and craned her neck to look behind, eyes scanning the night to spot a familiar silhouette lurking on the rooftops. Close to giving up, Rumi was about to turn around when she spotted him. Watching as the tiger took her away.

"You bastard," she seethed, but he did not respond. He didn't move. He stood there, a figure in the darkness, hands hanging limply by his side as he stared after her—a sense of exhaustion about him in the way his head was dipped, his shoulders slumped. Rumi didn't know if he even realised what he looked like, in that moment; he was not the man who had just stolen every ounce of life out of her veins only to throw her off a building. Instead, he was a man weighed heavily by his choices. A man who, quite possibly, had no idea what he was doing.

Tears welled in her eyes. 

Rumi let them fall all the way home.

—

That night, she went to bed in agony. The adrenaline from the events that had taken place had worn off. Instead, what was left was anger and misery and pain. Every inch of her burned and throbbed, and ached. Every cell in her body screamed in protest with each of her ragged breaths. She was drenched in sweat, and it had soaked through to her sheets. And earlier, when Rumi had peeled off her clothes...

Not once in her life had she ever felt discomfort like it. Some of the material was fused to her skin; she had to rip it clean off, like some awful band-aid, and scream into a pair of socks she had wedged between her teeth, to stop her from hurting herself further in reaction to what she was enduring.

Sleep did not come for hours, not until the sun shared its first rays of the day with the city. By then, she was so drained from the pain and so exhausted from the lack of sleep, there was not a single wound on her body that could've hurt her enough from succumbing to her tiredness. There, with her eyes closed and her body at a temporary ceasefire against her nerves, Rumi slept.

And dreamt.

Dreams so weird and off-putting that she couldn't put them into words. Visions of figures and darkness and flame, a voice so deep and menacing she felt it in her throat, in her stomach.

But then...nothing.

A stillness settled over her. A tranquillity. She had a vague memory, a feeling of some kind, where a warm palm settled over her and a soothing voice murmured words in a language Rumi did not know. Something had tugged at her hair and had ghosted over the skin of her cheek, skating around her jawline, over her lips, back into her hair, all whilst the voice carried on humming above her, drawing her somewhere deeper than slumber, somewhere that nothing existed capable of harming her. Somewhere safe.

It was the most wondrous sleep of her life, after that.

When she woke, there was not a single trace of her wounds to be seen.

Chapter Text

There was a small tuft of sapphire blue fur still clinging to the material of her leggings. It was the only sign that last night had been real. That, and the fact that the only resemblance of pain left still setting her nerves alight with a buzz so potent it was swirling up a storm in her stomach, was the small incision left on the inside of her bottom lip. One from a fanged kiss of rage and loathing and desire. A parting gift, left behind by the man who so desperately tried to convey an emptiness within him that was nothing but a falsity, a facade. Jinu did not feel nothing. He felt the complete opposite; he felt everything. All the time. A relentless, unforgiving onslaught of torture from his past mistakes.

That is all demons do. Feel. He'd said it himself, and while Rumi was beginning to understand him as a tragic liar, she knew those words, in that moment, had been the truth.

And so she clung to the sting on her mouth like a lifeline, relishing in every second of the pain—embracing it, encouraging it. Begging it not to fade, pleading for the tattooed memory to stay with her for a while. It had already partially healed in the morning, and so Rumi had pried it open once more with her teeth and welcomed the rush of blood, the burn, with an eagerness bordering on psychopathy. 

But Rumi did not feel any shame. How could she? The harm Jinu inflicted on her was the only scraps she was given. One day, she hoped she'd gorge on the fruits of her labour—have him open up before her, willing and ready to accept her into him, to merge their souls and become an entity bound so tightly there was no telling where she ended and he began.

Perhaps her obsession was bordering on insanity, but Rumi had never once claimed to be anything otherwise. This was her; twisted, darkened, demon.

A knock grappled Rumi from the corner of her mind she so frequently dwelt. Her door opened moments later. This time, Mira faced her. Not Zoey, to Rumi's shock.

And partial horror.

"We need to talk," Her pink-haired, black-souled friend said, offering no greeting. Barely looking into her eyes. "We're in the lounge." And then she was gone, the only sound the soft clicking of the door closing once more, bathing her in a silence much more hostile than the peace she'd been enjoying moments before. 

Rumi couldn't stop the sudden torrent of brief flashes back to the days after Namsan Tower. How she hadn't wanted to talk about it. About Jinu, about his death, about their bond. About her blood, her patterns. She hadn't wanted to speak about any of it. Only wanted to bury it down, down down—focus on the fans, on rebuilding their image, before they went on a needed hiatus. At the time, she thought her friends—Celine, too—had been respecting her boundaries, had understood that she'd open up when she was ready.

It had been a year. Rumi had now realised that they weren't respecting her boundaries at all. They weren't simply waiting for her to talk, no. They were merely hoping she'd forget about it. So they could all move on from the inconvenience of the real her. Of her multifacetedness, her depth. They hadn't wanted to acknowledge it in the first place.

They didn't even let her think about Jinu. For months, she was bombarded with single after single, performance after performance. Talk shows, variety shows, interviews, livestreams. There was no spare seconds for her to even breathe, and the time where she was supposed to be spending sleeping, resting, was filled up by all of her suppressed thoughts coming out at once. 

Six months in, she'd reached her breaking point. Six months in, she'd approached Celine with her sword yet again. Told her that she might as well run the blade through her now; they were going to kill her eventually.

She was done. Drained. So fucking depressed every one of her heartbeats was undiluted agony. She saw Jinu around every corner, he was behind every blink, he was everywhere and he was nowhere and he was dead. And not only did nobody care about him—the sacrifice he had made to save Rumi's life—they didn't even care about how she felt. About how deeply she mourned, how vastly she grieved and how gravely she was wounded. 

The hiatus came after that. Rumi didn't leave her room for months.

Zoey had tried to understand. Mira hadn't bothered.

To them, she had betrayed their morals. To them, grieving a demon was the greatest dishonour.

To her, Rumi had been cleaved in two. One half wandered the world a wraith, the other half had followed its beloved to whatever fate had welcomed him. 

It was the epitome of losing everything. All that she had, gone. All that she loved decayed and wilted, covering her in the rotten smell of expiration.

All her life, Rumi had been on borrowed time. All her life, she had begged for more, begged the world not to fail her.

In the year after Jinu's death, Rumi wished she'd never bothered. She wished her demon had taken over her soul and carried her straight to Gwi Ma's flames so he could engulf her and send her to oblivion, where she would no longer feel. Feel anything.

Now? Jinu was alive.

And she was done conforming. She was done. So she would go and speak to Mira, to Zoey. She would listen to what they had to say, and then she would tell them she loved them, before turning her back and taking her first steps ever towards her own self-acceptance, and not that of anyone else. But when she turned the corner of the hallway leading to her bedroom, and emerged from the shadows into the vast, open space of their shared penthouse, it wasn't just her two group mates waiting for her.

There, sitting on an armchair as if it were a throne of gold and not flatpack furniture from some uptight and overly expensive furnishing store, was Celine in all her cold, powerful glory. Wearing her huntress robes like this was some sort of ceremonial gathering.

Or hearing.

"What are you doing here?" Rumi had made it very clear that she was not ready to face Celine after their argument months ago when she refused to end her suffering a second time.  

If the woman had picked up on Rumi's obvious disdain, Celine didn't make it obvious. Her voice was as even and stern as ever: "Your sisters have concerns."

Rumi scowled, but refused to look at the somewhat sheepish girls who stood on either side of their leader. "They always have concerns," she replied, shrugging her shoulders and steadying herself whilst taking a few steps before sinking onto the end of one of the couches. "What difference does it make today?"

With the slight narrowing of her eyes the only indication that nerves were being tested, Celine kept her tone clear. Away from emotion, as always. "These concerns are slightly more valid this time, it seems."

She looked to her friends, then. At the way they clung to Celine's sides like she was a clutch, an anchor. And Rumi saw with a clarity simultaneously new to her yet not a single bit surprising. She saw Mira, the judge. Zoey, the jury, and Celine...

Celine, the executioner.

"Is this an interrogation?"

"Where were you last night?" Mira, it seemed, couldn't bite her tongue any longer. An overwhelming bewilderment clawed at Rumi just beyond her annoyance, her defensiveness; how had it come to this? How were her best friends, her sisters, looking at her like she was some sort of stranger unwelcome in their home, unwelcome in their little posse? 

Because you've always been a stranger. Because they have never known you, because they have never tried to.

Because there is something else in your blood, something dark but still beautiful, and yet they refuse to look through the shadows and delve into the unknown. They refuse to acknowledge you, your change.

They refuse.

Rumi paled. The voice in her head was her own, and yet entirely foreign. But the words...they rang true—a blaring of a car horn, the screeching of tires, the crash of a collision. It was a devastating revelation. It was freeing.

"Aren't you supposed to read me my rights?"

"Rumi." At least Zoey had the nerve to act at least somewhat sympathetic, "We are just worried about you."

"You almost sound sincere—"

"Enough," the interruption came like a swift slice of a deadly sword. Final, unstoppable. "There have been two murders in two days, Rumi. And you were not here, in your bed, when last night's occurred. The girls checked. Where were you." Not a question, a command. And Rumi was beginning to tire of them. Rapidly.

Mira and Zoey had the sense to flinch at the reveal of their hand in Celine's visit today, but Rumi didn't spare them a glance. Deep down, she knew their intentions were good. Deep, deep down. However, Rumi didn't have the energy to dig enough to acknowledge them, not when they had never reached for her true self in all the years they had known each other. And maybe that was unfair—Rumi had kept her identity hidden—her deepest shame—but there had been signs. So, so many signs. If her friends had been a little more forthcoming, a little more demanding, maybe Rumi would have found the courage to disobey Celine's orders of secrecy.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

"I was out."

They all knew then; a gauntlet had been thrown. A challenge, a stance—perhaps her final one. Both Mira and Zoey sucked in a harsh breath and shared nervous glances between them whilst Celine's lips pursed into a line so tight the skin around the tissue went bone-white, not a hue of pink flesh in sight. 

"Doing what." She demanded, yet again. Though it did nothing to hinder Rumi's defiance. If anything, her tone only strengthened it.

"Walking."

Running. Fighting. Burning. Falling.

Breathing.

Living.

Celine's eye twitched. Only slightly, and only once, but in that moment it was the most glorious spectacle Rumi had ever witnessed. The unflinching Celine, rattled by someone she could no longer control. "Walking where," she gritted between clenched teeth, and Rumi didn't fail to notice the way her fingers were beginning to pierce the cushioning on the edge of the armrests. 

Taking her time to respond, absolutely on purpose, Rumi lifted her hand to her face and picked out a little crumb of dirt lingering under the nail of her forefinger, "From one point," she blew the flake off her finger, "to another."

If they hadn't completely evaporated already, all pleasantries from that moment on were abandoned. All niceties, all fake smiles and calm words, they were out of the window in a flash. What was left in place was an animosity so thick, so consuming, there was a distinct buzzing humming beneath Rumi's skin, setting her blood on fire, bringing her nerves closer to the precipice of something unknown, yet something she knew it was time to leap from and greet whatever awaited at the bottom. Or, perhaps, she would soar instead. Away from it all, away from Celine and her oppression, away from Mira and Zoey—though that was a heartbreak she couldn't fathom—and their misplaced sympathy.

"You are hiding something." There it was, the accusation Rumi was waiting for, the one they had skirted around for so long that there was no more avoiding it, no choice but to air it out in the heavy, cloying air. "And if it has anything to do with that disgraceful—"

"Jinu is dead." The words scraped at her throat as if she'd swallowed a jar filled with thousands of the sharpest shards of glass. "And I am only here, we are only here, because of him."

Mira and Zoey both shifted on their feet, but Celine showed no more signs of agitation. Perhaps her guardian still believed she was in control of the situation, but she truly had no idea. No idea how long Rumi had already been out of her reach. How long ago she had taken a knife to the strings tied so tight around her limbs they had lacerated her, and cut them loose.

"Who are you trying to fool, child? He left a message. To you. In blood."

Rimu brushed her off as if the words went over her head when, in reality, they caused her blood to bubble, her throat to lose all moisture and her head to drown in nothing but despair. She had that feeling again. As if her soul had left her, hanging in the air above its vessel, unable to no longer bear the aches riddling her body anymore. 

"Gwi Ma has had centuries to master his tricks; perhaps this is but another one of them."

"Perhaps," Celine said, coolly, "though I highly doubt it."

"That is because your closed mind cannot fathom the possibility of anything that is outside your realm of consideration."

"How dare you—"

"Me?!" 

"Rumi," came Mira's voice, its attempt at steadiness ruined by the nerves wobbling through it, "Sit down."

Truthfully, Rumi hadn't even realised she'd shot to her feet, but now that she was upright and towering over Celine, there was no bringing her down. There was no stopping this interaction, this impact. It had been a long time coming and there was a thrill rippling down Rumi's spine and straight to her toes; there was a calling to her. A need to make her guardian see that she had been pushing Rumi too hard, for too long. That in trying her self-proclaimed best to protect Rumi, she had done the exact opposite. Celine had raised her with hatred in her heart and it was her fault that the same hatred was now being fired at her by every cell in Rumi's body.

She wanted them to see, wanted them to realise what truly lurked far beneath Rumi's exterior. How depressingly out of depth the three of them were, facing Rumi after she had been changed for good, after she had become herself, at last and it wasn't what they wanted for her, for themselves.

Selflessness had been the tether in her upringing, the focal point, and now it had caused a fault. A tremor. And what was beginning to rise out of the rubble of her quaking was something they had all feared, all this time, when they could've have just accepted it. So long ago, they could've accepted her. Maybe not so much Mira and Zoey. But Celine...at least Celine could've loved her. Wholly.

"This right here is what I tried to protect you from, since the very beginning, Rumi. This half of you that—"

"There are no halves of me, Celine." There was a flat finality in her words that Rumi had never possessed before. Celine knew it too—that this time was different, because her guardian rose to her feet to meet her. Finally seeing this interaction for what it was, a battle. "There is one whole, and you don't get to choose which part of me you can love. You don't get to choose which part I can be. I do!"

"This world is not meant for demons—" Celine was in her face now, angry veins protruding from the skin stretched over her forehead, and her eyes were wide with a stark franticness Rumi had never witnessed before. There was sheer malice in her voice now. Gone was the damper she put on her hatred for Rumi's true nature, gone was the so carefully crafted filter she'd adorned all the years of her childhood. Gone was the guardian who swore to protect her.

Abandoned. Again.

Rumi snapped. "You mean your world is not meant for demons!" 

Two palms and a strength inhuman were all it took for Celine to fly backwards into her chair. Celine was up in an instant, simmering with violent rage and pent-up vitriol no doubt from years of pretending she truly didn't hate the side of Rumi that was other. And for the first time in her life, Rumi feared her guardian. Feared that she truly did not know the real extent of the loathing that simmered within her. 

Feared that perhaps Rumi would get her death wish after all. 

Down her nose she stared at Celine, who was heaving breaths so ragged the whole building seemed to shake. Mira and Zoey, too, were rife with a dread-filled anticipation. 

Once more, the ground started to slip beneath Rumi's feet.

You've got her now, snarled something inside of her, end it.

But Rumi would not give Celine the satisfaction of only fortifying her discrimination. "You swore to protect me. You made my mother a promise. How disappointed she would be if she could see just how badly you have let her down—"

In a blur, Celine was baring her teeth at Rumi again, millimetres away from her face, the most twisted look of both anger and anguish painting her features and for a moment—just a moment—Rumi was overwhelmed with regret.

Until Celine opened her mouth and revealed the forked tongue within.

"Your mother has no right to disappointment after sharing a bed with your monstrous father."

"Celine—" Mira gasped.

At the same time, Zoey had zeroed in on Rumi, "No!" She cried, but it was too late.

Rumi had her sword, glowing beautifully with Jinu's humanity, pointed right at Celine's neck. The room became illuminated by the incandescent glow of the blade, casting patterns and shadows around the room, bathing all those in it in a glorious blue. Back Namsan Tower all those months ago, it had been the light of a life.

There, in the penthouse with rage in Rumi's eyes and vengeance in her blood, it was a siren of death.

Do it. That voice chanted. Do it.

And she would have. God, she really would have. The restraint she possessed was hanging on by a single thread of the weakest string and Rumi could not stop herself from trembling as if she was a mountain ready to erupt or a faultline ready to collapse, and in that moment there was no care within her, not a single ounce of premediated remorse aimed at the guardian she held at sword point. She would do it. She would do it—

A flash of silver arched through the air. There was only a split second in time for Rumi to change her stance and clash her sword against Celine's hook before it cleaved her in two.

But when she did, a sight worse than death emerged.

Where the two blades met, sparks flew. They spread up Celine's hook and all either of them could do was watch in slow motion as the curved weapon flashed with colour before the whole length of it burst into a wondrous sapphire.

A sickening sapphire.

Like Rumi's own sword. 

The exact same glow. The exact shade.

The shade of Jinu's humanity.

Present, in Celine's hook.

But that meant—that had to mean—it was like...like...

Celine dropped her weapon. Saw the look in her eyes. Disbanded the blade into thin air.

Though it was too late. A secret revealed. An awful possibility. A betrayal. A shame a tragedy a lie.

A lie.

"No—"

"Rumi."

"No—"

"Calm down." Pushed aside was Celine's anger, her frustration. In its place, the diffuser. In its place, the calming mother figure Rumi had known all her life and for a second she wanted to fall into those familiar arms and weep until she withered away from exhaustion and became nothing but a speck of debris floating in the wind. Up, up, up. Away. 

But she couldn't. She couldn't. Because those same arms have been wielding—have been...

Have been wielding a blade—

Then she died, because of me.

I'm not so sure, Han had said.

The cause of death was never announced to the public.

Oh no. Oh...Oh god. She was—

There was a soul in Celine's hook.

Rumi's knees buckled. Her own sword evaporated.

She was going to be sick—

"What's going on?" Zoey was rushing to her side but Rumi couldn't stomach it—the touch. She pushed her away, shoved her. Perhaps she might have yelled in her face, too. She didn't know, honestly didn't know. All she knew was the look on Celine's face. The stoniness masking an underlying guilt that only served as confirmation to her horrid, horrid theory. "Rumi—"

"Don't touch me," She heaved. Staggered back a few steps. Bounced her eyes from Celine to Zoey to Mira.

Back to Celine.

This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening.

Not real. Not real. Not real.

Pulse in her throat, heart peeling away layer by layer, Rumi was halfway across the room now. Nearing the door. The walls were creeping up on her, closing her in, trapping her—

"Rumi," Mira was speaking now, and had the nerve to actually sound concerned for the first time in months. "What. Happened." A demand.

Another fucking demand.

There was something crawling beneath her skin and raking venom-soaked talons along her flesh and it was biting into her. Biting and she couldn't rid herself of it no matter how much she squirmed and writhed and shook. There were no bones in her limbs and only a gushing tide of horror, of terror, of nausea, and it wouldn't relent, it wouldn't stop, it would go on forever and ever and ever—

"Child." She knew that tone. She knew what it was: a preface to a lie, a soothing manipulation. And she couldn't stomach it, she couldn't hear that voice when it was like the screeching of a childhood monster millimetres away from her ear and all she wanted to do was tuck every inch of her body under the duvet and never emerge into the light again, because Rumi had just discovered how horrible the world was and how cruel it was and it had nothing to do with demons and everything to do with those who were supposed to love her.

"Don't," She was panting now, skin slick with sweat and face rife with little rivulets pouring from her forehead, into her eyes and down her cheeks. Or maybe those were tears or blood or something because she felt as if her brain and just been decimated into shrapnel and was spilling out onto her feet below her, "Don't speak to me."

"Do not walk out that door—"

"Don't," Rumi tried to growl. To threaten but all that slipped out was a moan of exhaustion. Of grief. 

Mira and Zoey started towards her.

Something vital frayed between them before it gave up, and Rumi bolted.

Time was unavailable to thought, to rationality. She had to leave; she wasn't safe there.

She wasn't safe.

"Rumi!" Both her friends were frantic now, yelling after her with such heartrending sorrow that Rumi knew that neither of them had clocked on to what had been revealed to her moments before. But it wasn't enough for her to answer their pleas. Her hand was on the doorknob now. Twisting it, straining against the metal as the slickness in her palms left her with little grip, the weakness in her bones offering her little strength.

"If you walk out that door, you do not come back."

Go to hell, she wanted to yell. Go. To. Hell!

Voice raising a few octaves—rife with a selfish kind of panic—Celine tried her threat once more.

"If you walk out that door, Rumi, you abandon the ways of the hunters! You are banished from your duties!"

Finally, the handle twisted.

Finally, the door slid open.

Rumi stepped one foot over the threshold, flicked her head over her shoulder, her lilac braid flying out with it, and stared Celine right in the eyes. Right down to her horrid, rotten soul.

"So be it," came the demon-hunter's last words.

The door slammed shut.

The elevator took a year to hit the bottom floor but when it did and those doors revealed the lobby and the open world beyond its glass prison, Rumi was out.

Rumi was gone.

—

At first, the exertion was a welcome ache. At first, Rumi revelled in the fire thriving in her lungs and the minute knives slicing through her tendons.

But she'd been running for hours. Days. Years.

When would it be that she finally keeled over and collapsed? When would it be enough, all her suffering? Her torment?

The city was so far behind her now that Namsan Tower was nothing but a needle poking out from the tiniest quilt of silver and blue, still watching her as if it knew the memories of its stadium still haunted her and controlled the path of her life until this very moment and every moment beyond. On the horizon, it was a looming statue of grief, an unyielding reminder of the life she'd had to throw away, of the life that had been thrown away for her.

In her mind, she pushed aside what she had uncovered hours ago because if she let the knowledge of such a hideous truth seep back into her thoughts, she would be hopeless. She would become as still as that tower. Another reminder of loss. Of tragedy.

And Rumi couldn't allow that, she had to keep moving forward, had to forge a new purpose with each of her agonising steps down the many winding roads of the city outskirts. It only hit her—when she abandoned the pavements for an unlit stretch of rolling hills—that she had truly nowhere to go. That after she scaled this hill, there would be another one that followed. And another, and another; she would be climbing forever, always yearning for a downwards slope, always longing for something to ease her efforts, to carry her along a little while, just so she could rest her feet and her mind and her soul.

Yet there was no sort of reprieve for someone like her. The world was unkind to those whose blood was made of indigo, even though it bled red like everybody else.

Rumi was alone. Utterly alone. For the first time ever and when she got to the top of the hill and realised that there was, in fact, an onslaught of inclines to follow, she finally stopped. Finally gave in to gravity.

Head falling into her hands, Rumi plummeted to her knees and screamed.

Screamed because nobody could hear her and she wanted to, cried because there was a little girl inside of her who missed the mother she never got to meet, and she shook so vigorously with a desire for somebody, something to claim her and accept her. All of her. And yet, nothing like that existed for Rumi, not in this realm, anyway.

It was a wound so deep—her helplessness—she was bleeding crimson all over the grass. Unable to think of anything else.

Unaware of her surroundings.

Unaware of a pair of yellow eyes that watched her from afar.

Until she heard little whispers of disturbed grass. Until she heard the soft, but urgent padding of footsteps approaching. Rumi didn't have the energy to reach for her sword. If this was Celine coming to finish the bloodline, then so be it. She was done. 

Done—

Something thudded to the ground before her, but Rumi didn't have time to even flinch at the sudden sound before hands were clawing at her own, prying them off of her tear-soaked face, and then even the moisture was being wiped away from her skin. 

Her eyes shot open.

Her jaw dropped to the floor.

There, knelt before her as if in worship, warm palms cupping her face as rough thumbs and fingers smeared away her tears...

Jinu.

A force greater than a sob wracked through Rumi, and she sank into his touch like it was second nature. Like she was home. The effort it took to even whisper was astronomical but Rumi managed it, even though a resulting headache splintered her skull in two, "What are you—"

However, Rumi didn't get the chance to finish her sentence.

"Are you hurt?" Jinu's interruption came hoarse with emotion whilst his eyes frantically darted between her own, searching for something Rumi couldn't indentify, but it was like he could find all the answers he'd ever need in her gaze alone. "Are. You. Hurt." 

Another command. But this was...this was different.

This was worry. This was care. This was safe.

It was Jinu. And he had found her. 

"Angel," he breathed, fingers running over her skin once more, clutching at her like his life was in the balance, "if you don't answer me soon I am going to go out of my fucking mind—"

"I'm not hurt," she blurted, and winced at the sound of herself. "Not hurt," she repeated, this time a soft murmur that washed over Jinu and extinguished whatever burned so ferociously in those eyes of his. The yellow disappeared, brown melted and rushed forth in its place. The patterns on his skin still shimmered in the early moonlight, but Rumi didn't care about those. She'd never cared about those, not on him.

Whatever had caused the tension rife in every muscle on his body disappeared in the blink of an eye, and his following sigh of relief was a gust of air strong enough to knock over a large building. Rumi could only watch with wide eyes as his forehead lowered to her own and his eyes closed as he rested their heads together. They were close enough now for Rumi to count each and every one of his lashes; she was robbed of the ability to breathe, let alone think.

"I felt you," He whispered. 

"I'm sorry—"

"No." His eyes flashed open so rapidly that Rumi could not suppress the way her body jolted in response. "You don't apologise. Not to me."

Above them, the moon watched on and cast them with enough light to see each other in all their vulnerability. Rumi, with her heart falling out of her chest. And Jinu, his defences gone. His facade abandoned. The moon allowed them to be Rumi and Jinu once more, like it had done so many times in the past. The moon took away the rest of the world and let them exist in that place they had carved out for each other, where nothing else could reach them, harm them. Not even themselves. And it was then that it dawned upon Rumi that perhaps she hadn't spent hours running with no direction. Perhaps there was that thread between her and the demon, whose soul she partially harboured, pulling them to each other once more. Guiding them under partnership with the silver light blessing them in the otherwise pure, suffocating darkness of night.

Perhaps there was a place for her in this world, after all.

Right there, being held up only by the hands of a man who, last night, had burned so thoroughly she'd thought she'd never recover.

Until she did.

"It was you," she gasped, "You came back to heal me. Last night."

"Of course I did." His smile was not one of humour but of a resigned sorrow, "Of course."

Humour was also lacking in Rumi's responding scoff. "You watched me sleep?"

There was nothing but severity in the way his eyes bore at her, through her. Nothing but the unadulterated truth. And a longing so deep, so gutwrenching, she could actually, physically feel it tugging in the pit of her stomach and igniting wildfire within her veins. 

"Sometimes," he paused. Swallowed. Fingers flickering against her skin, eyes undecided between which of hers to look at, "Sometimes, I find it difficult to believe you exist. Sometimes...I find I must go to extreme lengths to remind myself."

And it was the meaning Jinu poured into every single word, the openness with which he spoke about the shadows that festered inside of him...the depth with which he regarded her—he saw everything and did not turn his cheek. Did not pull away, if anything, every time he touched her, he only held her tighter. Longer. It was all of it that had Rumi reaching her palms upwards, too, and mirroring on him the way in which he held her.

"I think Celine killed my mother." The admission felt so wrong, the words came up her throat with a wave of bile, burning her from the inside out and forcing her to choke on nothing. She clung to Jinu like her life depended on him, whilst in the man's eyes a new fire was set ablaze.

One that carried a promise of retribution. Vicious, depraved retribution. But it wasn't that side of him that Rumi needed, not in that moment, so she swiped her fingertips under his eyes and had them softening once more, with just a single touch.

"I have nowhere to go," Rumi said.

"Yes, you do." Jinu replied.

Then he stood. 

Rumi's arms fell back to her sides. There, Jinu loomed over her like he had once done so very long ago now.

Although this time, when he held out his hand, and Rumi reached for it, Jinu did not pull away.

Their hands were still merged together even as he helped Rumi to her feet. Even as he began to lead her back down the hill, back into the suburbs, the city. His hand insisted on a vice-like grip throughout the whole journey towards wherever she willingly followed.

And not once did he let go.

Chapter Text

Silence was not something unfamiliar to the pair of them. In fact, it was something that came easily, something that brought comfort. A soothing balm when everything else was far too noisy to bear. They basked in the quiet for the entirety of their walk, soaking in the rare tranquillity of the empty city streets as dawn broke over the many buildings lining the roadways, casting the near-distant skyscrapers in a thick film of golden filigree, mixed with a breathtaking dusty pink and burnt orange. This was the gold Rumi was so fond of—the glorious hue of the waking sun and the ripples of velvet in the new sky as the giant came round to greet it. 

It was hard to take her eyes off the man walking by her side. Jinu underneath the sun was another spectacle altogether, skin radiant from the rays that blessed him, eyes reminiscent of liquid cocoa. There, he was no creature of darkness, no man tainted. In the light, she could trust him. In the light, Rumi could forget all that he had done and just breathe, just walk. Just be.

That she followed a murderer so willingly through unknown neighbourhoods may have been a true testament to the current state of her frayed mind, but Rumi didn't care. She was away from Celine, away from Huntrix—the rest she'd think about later. Right then, Rumi needed a roof over her head and an accomplice who wouldn't ask questions. Jinu was a perfect candidate in every sense of the word

Especially when they stopped in front of an unassuming, run-down business plot and made their way up the emergency exit stairs around the back, where Jinu pressed his palm against a handleless metal door and pulled it so easily, so fluidly, to the side as if it were made of nothing but paper and, based off the state of the building, Rumi wouldn't have been surprised if that was indeed the case.

With one leg stretching over the jutted, jagged sill lying half rusted across the width of the doorframe, Jinu glanced towards Rumi, jerked his head backwards in a gesture to follow behind him, and then he was disappearing around an immediate corner to his left. Holding her breath because the place had asbestos written all over it, Rumi slipped through the entrance after him and was immediately welcomed by an awful heat reeking of stagnancy and a dampness with enough tang in it that Rumi had no choice but to cover her mouth with the sleeve of her hoodie, aiming to protect herself from the mould threatening to infiltrate her nostrils.

Mortifyingly, Rumi had also only just realised that she was still wearing the same clothes as the night before. God, she must smell worse than the building

"This way," Jinu's direction came calmly, partially muffled by the distance between them. Rumi turned a corner and saw Juni waiting at the end of a moderately sized corridor, leaning against the flaking wall beside him and another worn door.

"I'm not going to be your next victim, am I?" 

Jinu's disapproving look was enough of an answer.

"Just checking," she taunted, and then closed the gap between them just as Jinu put his hand out against the door, ready to push against it, when he hesitated. 

"Rumi." Her name suffered through its journey up Jinu's throat, "Promise me you won't tell a soul about what's behind this door."

A frown pulled her brows together, and her eyes narrowed as they observed the man in front. He wasn't necessarily on edge, but...there was a stature to him, a stance of readyness, as if any moment now he may have to flee, and he was ensuring his preparation to make the swiftest of exits.

"I don't have a soul to tell," Rumi admitted on a pain-fuelled whisper that barely sounded in the tiny space surrounding them. 

But even the strain in her tone wasn't enough to convince him. Not wholly, it seemed. "Just promise me," he murmured once more, and there was a resigned sort-of defeat about him, an insecurity come to fruition that Rumi couldn't decipher, though it still struck a chord within her—a heartstring that had not been cut loose just yet, one so deeply tethered within debris inside her chest.

"I promise," she said, and meant it. He knew it, too. Because in an instant, the door swung open into the space behind it.

Reaching around the frame, Jinu searched around for something—a switch. It clicked not a moment later, and when Jinu stepped out of her way and into the warm glow of the now-lit unknown, nothing could've prepared Rumi for what awaited her.

Beyond the door, within the confines of a building that had been without good maintenance for what appeared to be decades, was a something so simple, so human and ordinary and inviting that for a split second Rumi was convinced Jinu had broken in to the home of somebody who worked a regular nine-to-five and rode the train back after a long day to settle on their couch with a glass of wine, a book, and an animal of some kind. A cat, maybe.

Or a tiger.

It was one open room, a ceiling high enough she could jump on Jinu's shoulders and not reach the top. At the back wall was nothing but beige-stained glass separated into square panes that looked out onto rooftops behind the building and the city skyline that loomed beyond. From the front, from the street, there was no way Rumi could have ever anticipated a space like this. There were plants everywhere. Covering every wall, every shelf, as if they had been brought here a long time ago and told to grow as wild and free as they wanted. In one corner was an intricately detailed byeongpung—room divider—partially shielding a mattress with no frame, bedding haphazardly thrown atop it and only two pillows across the entire canvas.

To her left was a kitchen tucked against the wall and built atop a slightly raised platform made of pitch black slate. The cabinets—a dark, gleaming oak—sat atop the stage, with countertops matching the floor and more greenery placed anywhere there was space, anywhere there weren't stray utensils and pans and plates and books cluttering the surfaces. To her right was a generously sized corner cut off by thickly frosted glass—a bathroom, no doubt. 

And the floor was nothing like the crumbling cement that lined the hallway they'd come through and the courtyard behind the building. It was made of the richest planks of wood, reflecting the copious amount of light that flooded in through the giant windows. Covering the boards in shapes of all sizes and were rugs of the weirdest, cosiest designs, with no rhyme or reason to their placement save for a large, rectangular rug of dark wool and golden thread laid beneath a dining table only barely big enough for two.

The rest of the space was filled with side tables, shelves and more furniture dotted around the place. In the middle, though, was the most glorious stone and brick fireplace with an ancient-looking log burner standing proudly in the centre of it, piles and piles of logs leaning against it on either side. In front was a singular brown leather couch. Nothing else, no television, no screens, no gadgets. Just the bare necessities.

Simple. Easy. Human. 

"It was a reward." Rumi jolted; she'd somehow forgotten Jinu was there, and now he'd managed to creep up behind her with feline skill. "From Gwi Ma," he added.

It was an admission that dimmed the brilliance of the loft. Just a little, just enough to taint it in the faintest of crimson.

"Not the apartment itself but...the time to create it. A space, just for me. Where I could escape."

"I thought demons were bound to your realm."

"We are. Gwi Ma can pull us back at any second. And it is only those of us with ties to this realm that can open up cracks in the Honmoon. Those of us who were humans, too. Once upon a time."

Rumi took a few shy steps forward, still craning her neck to scan every nook and cranny of the place Jinu had crafted for himself to feel safe. As if this were a gateway into his own mind. And if that was so, it was all it proof of who she was becoming to truly understand him as—a lost soul who had wandered for centuries looking for a place he could belong again, if he ever even had. She imagined what it must be like to have something like this after all he had endured. Even before Gwi Ma imprisoned his soul, Jinu was more or less living on the streets, begging anyone for a scrap of food, even though those who strolled by him were not faring much better than his family in the first place.

And the fact that he was showing her this sanctuary, had allowed her to witness it herself...Rumi couldn't fathom the kindness Jinu possessed, and his inability to recognise it.

He thought he was wretched for abandoning his family for wealth, but times were different four hundred years ago. There was no aid to those who needed it, there was no shelter. No reprieve. Faced with the same direness of impending starvation, disease...Rumi couldn't say for certain that she wouldn't have made that choice, too. That many others would. And that didn't justify an eternity damned to hell, no matter what Jinu told himself. It only made him more human, that he had made a choice he'd regretted and had spent the rest of forever torturing himself over it. To the point he'd nearly subject the world to Gwi Ma's flame just so he could be rid of it all. The guilt, the shame.

It was why Rumi got so frustrated that Mira and Zoey refused to open their minds to him. To others like him. Rumi knew what had happened on the night the Saja Boys had almost serenaded a stadium to death. She knew it had taken her friends little to no influence for them to march with the hordes under the demons' influence.

That Jinu had resisted the king for centuries...

"Is there a way? To be rid of him?"

A light flickered out. Indigo streaks writhed atop Jinu's skin. His jaw tightened, his eyes hardened. He wouldn't look at her as he stepped around Rumi and stalked further into his home. "No." 

It had sounded like a threat. "There isn't," he added, "Don't lose sleep over it."

"Jinu—"

"I have to go."

"Why?" She could not stand this version of him, this unreachable Jinu who came and went as he pleased, who was a bridgekeeper between them whenever it suited him, so he could cut the ropes loose and prevent her from crossing whenever she toed some unknown line too close for his comfort. It was infuriating, the way he could shut down. The way he could turn it all off and expect Rumi to just go with it like her feelings were inconvient, like there was some higher purpose he was serving and deemed her unworthy of uncovering it. 

Whenever the thread between them grew tangled, Jinu did not help Rumi as her fingers desperately tried to unravel it. Instead, he cut it loose. Always. And left Rumi untethered. Suspended. 

The same thing was happening again; she knew it.

Jinu didn't answer her, and Rumi realised he wasn't planning on it, either, as he yanked a multitude of random items from his pockets and scattered them over the surface nearest to him, before he removed his jacket and marched over to the couch, flinging on that trench coat of his she couldn't bare the sight of. And the hat...he was reaching for it, pulling it over his head and shielding his eyes. Hiding, from her. 

He was leaving. And there was only one explanation as to why he now donned that dreaded uniform of his.

"You're running to him again—"

"Stop."

"I don't understand, Jinu. I don't understand why you refuse to let me help you—"

There was a puff of air, an outburst of violet embers, and then he materialised in front of her in all his purple-veined, white-fanged glory, yellow eyes decimating her own.

"You can't help me!" He thundered, chest heaving, "And if you even think about trying—"

"You'll what, Jinu? Pretend to be a cold-hearted demon whilst murdering only those who truly deserve it? You may have the other hunters fooled, but you can't do the same to me. I know you."

"That's not what I'm doing."

"Don't lie to me, I'm too used to it by now."

"Oh?" His scoff was rife with ridicule, "You got me all figured out, huh?"

"What can I say," Rumi glowered, "You're an open book."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Well, close it. And stop sniffing around in territory that already reeks of piss. You don't know what you're getting into. What you're up against."

What did that even mean?

"You're insufferable, I just want to—"

"Help, yeah. So you've said." She'd never wanted to smash someone's face in more in that moment, as Jinu used his height to tower over her, demean her. Intimidate her. But she'd faced monsters over twice his height and thrice as vile, his tactics didn't work to push her away, not anymore. Now they just pissed her off. Pushed her to the edge of a cliff so high, with a drop so sheer, she knew she wouldn't survive the fall and yet she teetered on the edge at every opportunity because Rumi could never keep herself away.

"Has it ever occurred to you that I don't want your help? That I want you to leave me the hell alone—"

"Perhaps you should have thought about that before holding my hand for a whole ten miles."

"A momentary lapse in judgement."

"We were walking for four hours."

Jinu sighed then, falling back into his own body. Loosening his muscles and ridding himself of any tension left strewn upon his features. Taking its place was that same reservedness Rumi despised more than his rage, his malice. She would rather be angry and vocal and real than hidden away. Defences up and impenetrable, those awful shutters in his eyes blocking out any warmth residing within. That all-consuming yellow burning around his irises, engulfing his pupils. "Rumi," he exhaled, and pinched the bridge of his nose between two claw-clad fingers, "Please just...just let it go. I brought you here because you have nowhere else to go, but it changes nothing. By all means, come and go as you please. Just stay out of my business."

Rumi said nothing—had nothing to say. He was drawing another line, yet again. Tearing a ravine between them like he'd done so many times before. And what could she do? How could she reach out to someone when their back was turned? How could she have hope for someone who had abandoned it centuries ago?

Would she give up on him? No, never. Would she give up on him in this instance? Fine. Whatever.

It was what it was. He didn't want her around; he didn't want her help. Would rather still dwell in his eternal misery than confide in her.

Which was fine. It was fine. It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt one bit.

He'd abandoned her before, and she lived. Barely. But this time she had practice, this time she was prepared.

"Fine," was all she came up with, all she knew.

An arched brow told her that Jinu wasn't so convinced. "Fine, as in you won't do anything stupid?"

"Fine, as in I'll stay out of your business, and you'll stay out of mine."

Oh. He didn't like that. He didn't like that one bit. The same hand that had been held to his nose moments prior was now being dragged down his face, morphing the skin it caught along the way. Shifting on his feet, Jinu scrutinised her for a very, very long time. To the point where Rumi felt an unwelcome burn in her stomach. A tug of a thread. One she had never been able to ignore.

"Don't test me," he warned, low and rough and rich, "You know just how well I can burn you."

Rumi's answering grin was nothing but feline—saccharine and coy and taunting, "I also know just how well you kiss it better—"

He was on her in an instant, a large hand bracketing her throat, the other coming up to the front of her hoodie and clenching the material in his fist before he walked her back, back, back until her spine meshed with the wall and there was nowhere else for her body to go except into him, pressed firmly against his rigidness, every inch of his body fused to her own and when her eyes widened at the feel of everything, his grip around her throat tightened and he forced her to look up at him, whilst catching her bottom lip with his thumb and tugging it down, down, down before it bounced back into place, set alight and burning. 

"You should watch that mouth of yours." His voice was nothing but a rumble. A tremor that went right through her and short-circuited every single one of her nerves, yet even then, Rumi refused to back down.

That same smug little smile on her face, she cooed, "No need, when you're already so good at doing it for me."

Another squeeze. Rumi's breath came out in a pathetic little whimper, but she was not frightened. Not in the slightest. And to prove it, her hand snaked its way up the side of his torso, along his straining arm where she then wrapped her fingers over his own and pressed. Harder. "You don't scare me, Jinu."

"Oh, but I'd like to try." There was a grin on his face to match her own now; it was devilish and sickening and so twisted Rumi was sure he could feel the reaction it stirred within her, the pummelling drumbeat of her heart and the rapidly shortening of her breath. He was so close, so close to her, she could feel the air leaving his mouth wash over her skin, somehow both cooling the surface yet boiling the flesh beneath. And his grip on his was unforgiving; a deadlock, a capturing. Truly, if he decided he wanted her, then—her death or otherwise—there was nothing she could do.

No training that had prepared her for this. This lust that coursed through her like liquid wildfire, the heat that scorched her from within.

And he could feel it too, Rumi knew. His eyes half-shut and darkened, his patterns glowing ferociously—teeth clenched as if he battled every millisecond to stop his fangs from taking what they craved; her. Every. Single. Drop.

Rumi would let him have it, too. She would give him anything. Everything. If this was the only way he would be willing to share himself with her, then to hell with the rest of it. Let him consume her until all that was left were embers fizzling out into nothingness, and he was named maker of her death; there would be no better way to go. No end as mesmerising as one by his hands.

Lips ghosted over her own. Rumi didn't know when she'd shut her eyes but there was no opening them now as she gave in to her yearning. As she let go of all inhibitions and bent to his will, forged herself into his mould. She was ready. Ready—

Cold air greeted her. Along with a disappointing freedom.

When Rumi opened her eyelids, Jinu was a metre away from her. All traces of what had transpired, gone. As if he weren't affected. As if it hadn't happened.

"I have to go," He said. And she was sick of those words.

"Coward," She fired back, still panting against the wall. Still alive, still burning.

Jinu laughed—a peeling, grating sound that bore no warmth or light. "God bless the Honmoon and the souls it saved," he murmured, his body already disintegrating into a cloud of crimson and violet.

The last thing he said came like a barrel of the iciest water dumped right over her head. "If only Gwi Ma hadn't then found a new way to feed."

And he was gone. No traces left behind to show that he had even been there in the first place.

Nothing but his words replaying over and over in Rumi's mind as she had finally gathered a semblance of sanity and made her way to the bed to, at last, get some rest. The depth of the meaning behind what he had spoken was lost on Rumi, but her suspicions kept her tossing and turning before she finally succumbed to her exhaustion; Gwi Ma was using Jinu in a way the demon king had never done before, and Rumi recognised that unforgettable fear pouring into her, embracing her like an old friend.

Like it had done the night Jinu had died.

The night Gwi Ma had consumed him.

—

It had only felt like mere seconds ago that Rumi had fallen asleep before a weight pressed into her shoulders and shook her so furiously her teeth rattled against each other with sickening cracks of bone on bone.

Her eyes flew open in an instant, her body jolting upright as she adjusted to the faint light bathing her surroundings. 

She couldn't hold back her shout of outrage and shock at what greeted her. Reptilian-like eyes, the colour of both the sun and poison. Skin as white as ice with indigo fractures spider-webbed across the entirety of it. Fangs longer than she'd ever seen. Claws piercing into the skin of her collarbone. Rumi screamed and thrashed about like a fish out of water but there was no use; she was pinned too harshly, her assailant stronger than any she'd ever encountered. A new fear settled in her bones right down to her marrow before it froze her bloodstream and coated her heart in a suffocating layer of frost. She was going to die, she was going to—

"Tell me it's not true!" A thousand voices boomed at once, all different in pitch and tone, but...but she knew one of them. She knew—

"Jinu!" Rinu gasped as the last tendrils of her slumber finally released her. "What are you—" Her own hiss of pain cut her short as talons dug a millimetre further into her skin. She knew there would be small droplets of blood forming. She knew Jinu was hurting her, and he had no intention of stopping—

"Have you been hearing him?" He rasped, "Have you?!"

"Get off me!" Rumi bucked again, thrusting her hips in the air to try and dislodge him from the straddle he had her held down by, two muscular thighs digging into her own, rendering her legs useless against the sheer weight of him.

"Tell me what he said," He seethed, "Tell me what you agreed to!"

Tears began to trickle down her eyes, but Jinu did not see them, or if he did, he mistook them for rivers of guilt, a confession of some sort of betrayal that he seemed to be accusing her of. There was no shaking him, no getting through to him. He put more of his weight on her—all of it—and Rumi could do nothing but squirm beneath his hold and brace for the torrent of rage he brought down on her. Along her neckline was a line of fire from where his nails clawed at her, and she knew that Jinu couldn't see the blood. Couldn't fathom that he had caused it, that he was hurting her. But he was.

God, he was.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do!

He was at her neck now, a mess of delusion, a whirlwind of mania and panic and fear she had never seen strewn upon his face in all the time she had known him. This was the Jinu buried deep within, the shadows he had locked up in the deepest chasm of his heart. This was who he was terrified of her seeing.

And she understood now. She understood—this was the monster Gwi Ma had sculpted. This was centuries of torture, of trauma. This was the decrepit, desolate thing left to rot away inside the hard shell he had adorned his entire existence.

But this was not him. It was not. Him.

Rumi screwed her eyes shut and she searched and searched and searched for that thing inside of her that only answered to him. That thread of gold binding them together. It was there; she could feel it.

"Jinu..." She whimpered as the thing above her raged. "Please," she breathed. "Please." 

There. A light amidst her pain. A lifeline, a rope—Rumi yanked at it with all the might her soul could muster.

A wet, choking sound echoed around her—a sort of desperate gargling, as if someone was drowning—

"Jinu!" Leaping from the depths in which she had sunk into her own self, Rumi's eyes fluttered open to the most beautiful, blinding sapphire light she had ever seen. 

It was a slight whisp of cerulean coiling around her body, pouring from the space where her heart was and flowing in the air, twisting itself around Jinu's neck.

Forcing itself into his mouth. 

He was pale before. Now he was borderline see-through.

God...was she...was she killing him?

Immediately, Rumi tugged back on that thread inside of her, and the glow around the pair of them ceased entirely.

Above her, Jinu was trembling.

But there...on his face, colour washing back in. Not much, but enough. It was something.

"Hey," she exhaled softly. Cautiously. Shivering hands lifted to wrap around his own, where Rumi tentatively pried each claw out of her skin, trying her best not to grimace as each one seared her on the way out. Eventually, though, the pain faded.

Though Jinu was still gone. Still lost to whatever had rattled him right to his core. Rumi again lifted her hands, this time cupping his head, stopping it from dropping to her chest. The pads of her fingers swiped away the moisture smeared over his skin. Sweat, tears, Rumi couldn't distinguish a difference, but she cleared it off of him, away from his eyes, anyway. "Jinu," She tried to rouse him once more.

It worked.

Glorious pools of rich brown stared back at her at last. "There you are," Rumi soothed, caressing his skin a final time before she brought her hands back down and lightly clutched onto his biceps from where they strained against his weight on the mattress beside her. 

"Rumi," Jinu panted, and she'd never adored the sound of her name more. "He said that you—"

"It's okay," Rumi softened, squeezing the muscle in her palms to further reassure him.

"He said that you have been speaking to him," his throat was torn to shreds, the words came as rough as sandpaper, "Said that he'd gotten to you—"

"He hasn't," Rumi interrupted, "I promise, he hasn't."

"I've never...I don't know what happened—"

"It's okay. It's okay," She wasn't sure which of the two of them she was trying to convince the most, but that didn't matter, not right then. "Just please," Rumi swallowed the lump in her throat, "Please don't let that happen again—"

That was the moment all clarity came rushing back to him in a collision that must've felt close to a freight train hurtling into him at the speed of light. And that familiar scrutiny she had grown so irritated by, so fond of, was back with a bone-chilling ferocity. For what felt like hours but was only a matter of seconds, Jinu scanned her, head-to-toe, searching for something he did not want to find. When his eyes landed on what Rumi knew were prominent marks gouged into a bloodied necklace along her collarbone, Jinu discovered what he'd feared the most above all else.

He'd hurt her. And maybe it wasn't okay. Maybe this was a new line crossed.

"Don't look at it," Rimu said, "Not right now. Not tonight, just...forget about it. Lie down, Jinu."

"I did that." Not a question when he knew the answer, the proof in the already-drying blood underneath his nails.

"We'll talk about it in the morning. Just lie down. Please."

Jinu was silent. As still as a rock. He did not take his glare of self-loathing off of Rumi's cuts for a very, very long time. So long, his arms had begun to quiver at the strain they endured holding his weight up.

Eventually, though, he rolled to the side. Landed just to the right of her. 

There, they lay with only inches between them and yet also a wasteland stretched for miles and miles and miles that rendered him nothing but a mirage on the horizon.

"I'm sorry," He said. 

"In the morning," Rumi replied.

But when morning came and the sun flooded the loft in gold once more, Jinu was nowhere to be seen.

Even after Rumi spent an hour combing his home for a spare, clean change of clothes, Jinu had still not returned.

On the second day, there was no sign of him.

On the third day, still nothing.

The morning of the fourth, Rumi finally mustered up the energy to venture outside and buy herself a charger to revive the phone that had been dead in her pocket for far too long. When she got back home, and plugged it in, she wished she'd thrown the damn thing in the river and never looked back. As the screen finally lit up, it welcomed her with a bombardment of major alerts throughout several news articles.

Six bodies found. Brutally tortured until they had succumbed to their injuries.

Rumi made it to the toilet just in time for the contents of her stomach to splutter into the bowl.

She didn't get up for the rest of the day.

Chapter Text

The market districts of Seoul beheld an artistry no museum or gallery could ever replicate. It was a myriad of colour, kaleidoscopic and ensnaring, so much so that you could wander for hours unknowing of how much you have lost to time. If a person wanted to hide, they would find the best sanctuary amongst the mosaic crowd as it ebbed and flowed around the stalls with no solid direction, no given speed. It was a frightening kind of beauty—that many people, so many strangers, a stark reminder of how little you were in the world, how easily you could disappear.

Overstimulation was inevitable in a place like the market. It took little energy for thieves to slip through the cracks in the crowd, their sly hands breaching the jackets of those none the wiser, bouncing from target to target before disappearing on the next wind. There, nobody noticed them. Nobody noticed anything.

And when guards were down, rumour and gossip spread like a plague. People assumed not a soul would bother to listen in on private conversations and hushed confessions; the public was too busy clinging to their bags, their children, their partners.

Rumi had none of those. Nothing of value, just her keen mind and inhuman hearing.

It was a dance like no other, the way she weaved through the crowds and peered at the inventories of stalls she had no real interest in. Today, Rumi felt reptilian. An urban chameleon, blending in no matter the scene, no matter the circumstance. 

Two weeks had passed since Jinu had left. Two weeks of nothing but traces of him and bold, soul-shattering headlines in the media.

Another body was found...

Three more victims...

The Slasher of Seoul...

There were clippings all over the loft: stuck on walls, shoved into drawers, scattered over the kitchen counters. As if they were the only pieces of him she could have, the only scraps he left for her. She kept them all, telling herself it was for information purposes only when in reality, they were a reassurance. That he was out there. And that he was still Jinu.

Because not a single one of his victims had been innocent. It seemed to be the only line his self-proclaimed black soul was incapable of crossing.

But then the stories had stopped. The news had died down.

There had been no more bodies in four days. Rumi had barely slept, skin crawling with the need to get out there and do something. Find him, help him, anything. Her first time hearing any sort of rumour had been a complete accident. She'd entered the markets a few days ago, picking up some necessities for herself back at the loft. More clothes, toiletries, food—things she wouldn't dare go back to the penthouse for—when she'd picked up on some rather harsh whisperings; two women were arguing about something, and so Rumi had pretended to be a tourist scanning their wares of beautifully crafted jewellery.

"We have nothing to be afraid of," One of them had hissed, "Only the ones who deserve it are dying."

"So far," The other had countered similarly, "But we're not entirely angels. And the attacks are happening close by—"

"Only a few of them."

"Yes, the most recent ones—"

They had stopped talking once they noticed Rumi had been lingering for a suspiciously long moment. So she had smiled at the women, complimented their work, and left them clueless about just how close the two of them had come to the murderer prowling the streets at night. That day, Rumi went home with a new purpose blooming in her chest. In the morning, she was out of the door as the sun was rising and did not return until it had sunk beneath the horizon. It had been an unsuccessful day, but the roaring of her blood left her with no room for disappointment. Instead, she was burning. For the first time in two weeks, Rumi sensed she might actually be doing something constructive, regardless of the fact that it may end up being absolutely useless; at least she wasn't lying in bed all day doing nothing but staring at the front door, begging silently for it to open.

And at least, if anything, it gave her the opportunity to find something to eat that wasn't Superstar Ramyeon. 

That was what she was doing now—gorging on mayak gimbap—when she felt something brush past where she stood leaning against a food stall. But when Rumi turned, using a hand to peel her hoodie away from her peripheral, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps she was on edge—anybody could recognise her at any given moment—but there was no denying that something had been close enough to make her hair stand on end. 

Rumi discarded the rest of her meal in a nearby bin and, making sure her famous braid was still wholly hidden beneath her clothes, she set off in the direction that had called to her—the way she was certain somebody had walked past, around the back of the stalls and down the little pathways reserved for vendors who were either up haggling with passerbys or resting on pop up chairs as they ate their lunch.

Frowning, Rumi ambled down the sliver of walkway, not seeing anything unusual despite the goosebumps rising all over her body. Beneath her clothes, she could feel her patterns thrumming to life, but there was nothing ahead of her, nothing sneaking around corners or lurking in shadows that would warrant her body's hackles rising.

It was as the strip she was walking behind opened up to a junction in the street and an open space of tarmac and pavement, that Rumi saw it.

Saw him. She was certain.

On the opposite side of the road, just stepping off the crossing, was a man in a jet black trench coat with his head hidden in a very familiar hat. 

Her heart leapt to her throat. Knocking past shoulders, weaving through bodies, Rumi advanced with her eyes narrowed firmly on her target, her pulse a jackhammer against her chest and in her skull. All faded around her, the world zoomed in on the one person so far away from her. Too far.

He was losing her.

She sped up, not bothering to offer apologies to those she nearly knocked over on her way. It took all her focus to move without tripping over so many obstacles, all whilst keeping her eyes fixed on her fleeing target. She knew that he knew Rumi was on her tail. He was speeding up, crashing into the public, his hat the only thing keeping him visible amongst the crowds.

Rumi was catching him. The hoards of people were thickening ahead; there was nowhere for him to go. She didn't care about being discreet, not anymore, not when the object of all her thoughts for what felt like a century was only metres ahead of her now, struggling against the tide.

All she had to do was push a little harder, just a couple more metres—

A child ran out in front of her. Rumi swivelled to avoid knocking it over. In doing so, she smacked into a post and collided with the ground.

Although she was up in an instant, it was too late. He was gone. Slipped through her fingers, again.

Reminding herself she couldn't swear at the kid, Rumi pursed her lips and bottled up the frustration simmering on the tip of her tongue. She barged past the mother, who apologised for her child's carelessness, but Rumi ignored her. There was no time to waste; he couldn't have gotten far. And where was there for a demon in his full garb to hide amongst such normality?

He had to be somewhere. He had to be—

In the near distance, something dark swung around a corner, through a narrow gap between tall, blocky offices. Off Rumi went once more, her shoulders now bruised from the number of people they had crashed against.

Finally, her destination was upon her—an unused, forgotten slip dividing two worn structures looming far above her and casting the path ahead in shadows. Still, she could see the figure waiting at the end, back aimed towards her, staring at what was just an unassuming brick wall lined with overflowing dumpsters.

"Jinu?" She spoke softly into the sheltered quiet. Perhaps too softly, as Jinu showed no signs of hearing her. Rumi sank further into the alleyway, cautious of the safety in numbers she was leaving behind. But this was Jinu. There was nowhere safer for her to be. "Hey," She said, a little louder this time. And it worked, Jinu's head twisted ever so slightly, enough so she could see his jawbone protruding from under the shadow of his hat. But that was all she could make out, along with the faint indigo of his patterns, so she moved closer yet again, now only a metre or so away.

A stillness settled around them, a thick blanket that still thrummed with energy. The hair on Rumi's arms still had not settled, the goosebumps still hadn't deflated. 

"I've been looking for you," Rumi murmured, taking one more step. 

"I know," A voice said.

It did not belong to Jinu.

Paralysis rendered her immobile. Even as the person before her finally turned, oh-so-slowly. "You know," That voice said again, a twisted smirk now visible beneath the rim of the hat as the man faced her, fully. "Jinu wouldn't be very happy that you followed a stranger into a dark alley."

God, she knew that tone. That smugness. And just before Rumi could cuss out the imposter before her, several things thudded to the ground behind her. 

"Yeah," Another man spoke, "You're lucky it's just us."

A third voice joined the mix. One she was also familiar with. "Especially with all those awful murders going on."

And at last, the missing fourth rumbled right next to her ear, "But you're safe from those, aren't you?"

In an instant, she had her blade summoned in all its gleaming glory, shooting out from the palm of her hand as she twirled and arched it through the air, wildly slicing the space where a demon had stood a fraction of a second ago. Then she saw them all, the Saja Boys in their truest forms—dark, alluring, so hideous she couldn't look away. Romance, Mystery and Baby stood watching her like a cat would a mouse. Behind her, the man she now knew as Abby reached for her wrist before she could stop him. With an iron grip, he kept her still, unable to swing her sword again.

"So vicious," She could hear his grin as a rush of breath wafted too close to her ear, "I see why Jinu is obsessed."

With a grunt, Rumi shoved him off and tore her arm free. A split second later, she was staggering away from them, knowing there was no exit at her back but still reversing towards the dead-end anyway. 

"Impossible," She breathed, and her eyes latched onto Mystery as they narrowed, "I watched Zoey slice your throat."

"Ah," The man himself grinned, "And she looked so pretty doing it."

"Unfortunately for you," It was Baby who addressed her this time, "Demons don't really die. Gwi Ma loves to recycle."

"Explains why you all smell like trash."

To her abhorrence, they all laughed. And what made it worse was the peeling sounds of humour varying from demon to demon were all genuine. Like they were catching up as old friends. Like they hadn't tried to kill hers. Rumi steadied herself once more, keeping her sword angled, ready to attack when she willed it.

"Mean," Abby pouted, "Thought you were our little soda pop—"

"Call me that again," Rumi growled, "and I'll soda pop your head right off of your shoulders."

"But that would be such a waste."

"I'll live," She deadpanned, "Now stop fucking around and tell me why you're here."

"Same reason as you. We miss our hyung."

Ridiculous, arrogant, intolerable, infuriating—

"Uh oh, she looks like she's about to breathe fire."

"Shut your mouth, Mystery," Rumi glowered. Even though he might've been right.

The man in question wrinkled his nose. "Ew, please. It's Miso."

Rumi snorted, "As in the soup?"

That earned a hearty cackle from the rest of the boys, including Romance, who patted him on the shoulder in mock solidarity before taunting him, "Told you to stick with Mystery, brother."

"Oh, like you're one to talk, Roma. What are you? The capital of Italy?"

"Uh-huh," Roma folded his arms, looking way too smug with himself, "The city of love itself."

Abby cleared his throat, "That's Paris."

"Don't care, didn't ask, plus you're on steroids—"

"These are real!" 

Roma nodded in false agreement—slow and sarcastic and deeply patronising, "Sure they are, Hwa."

The look of outrage on Abby—Hwa's face was as real as it could be. "Don't government name me!"

Baby glanced at Rumi with a specific sort of slyness, as if they were co-conspirators against whatever the hell was going on. "He's just mad because it means flower," He whispered, though everybody could still hear him, "Bae-Jin, but Jin is fine. Nice to meet you. Again."

Amidst her bewilderment and sheer, sudden exhaustion, one thing was very, very clear to Rumi. These couldn't possibly be the Saja Boys that sang Your Idol. Not when they were bickering like five-year-olds. Rumi relieved her sword from its duties, letting it disappear into tiny embers of sapphire—something told her she wouldn't be using it anymore. It took her a couple of tries at clearing her throat before the back-and-forth finally halted between the demons. They all glanced at her like they awaited orders. As if they had forgotten it had been them who had cornered her.

Rumi glared at them all with impatient expectancy. 

"What?" Miso frowned.

"Do I have something on my abs?" Hwa lifted his shirt, frantically checking the muscles beneath. 

Unimpressed, Rumi glared at the man who was sighing in relief at the sight of his pristine torso, "Narcissism fears you."

Hwa frowned, truly puzzled, "Is that some type of disease?"

"Yes," The rest of the demons replied unanimously and immediately. A headache was starting to form right at the very front of Rumi's skull. She pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to ease the pain before speaking again.

"Can we finally address the elephant in the room?"

"Hey," Jin protested, "Miso's head isn't that big—"

"You little—"

"Enough!" The frayed band of Rumi's patience had finally snapped. Her throat raw with emotion—anger, frustration. Devastation. There they were, all bickering amongst themselves when Rumi had not even spent a moment for just herself the last two weeks, too worried about Jinu's whereabouts, what he might have been going through, and all these men were doing was putting a massive obstruction in her path to find him. And bring him back home.

"Tell me why you led me here or fuck. Off."

They at least had the sense to look mildly apologetic, in the only way demons, who had been alive and messing with humans for centuries, could manage—not very well at all. 

Hwa, who stood in the centre of them all, seemed to finally regain the composure he had harboured before all the nonsense had started. Standing upright, taller than the others, his voice donned a welcome sincerity once more, but not without the subtlest hint of the arrogance she had come to expect from him. "We have a proposition for you."

"I'm not becoming Saja number five." The old rivalry between the two different groups was still very much alive, it seemed.

To his credit, Hwa ignored the demeaning remark. "Jinu is missing."

Baulking, Rumi swayed a little on her feet. "Impossible. I know he's been with all of you. With Gwi Ma."

"How so?" Miso cut in.

Because he hasn't been with me, she felt like saying, and he has nobody else.

Instead, she chose a different approach. "What makes you think I could help you find him?"

In a silent communication Rumi could not decipher, they all shared looks amongst themselves, as if coming towards some kind of telepathical agreement. A final one. Hwa looked back at her once more. "You don't need to find him."

"Excuse me—"

"We know where he is."

"Then why—"

"Because we can't get to him." It was Roma who interrupted her that time, self-reproach all over his face in the form of a disappointed grimace. Rumi waited for further explanation, but when it was clear the Saja Boys were having a hard time forming the words they needed to say, for whatever reason, she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Because...?" She prompted. And waited for some bullshit excuse, or maybe another one of their traps. They didn't have a trustworthy history to back them up, so Rumi was beginning to suspect foul play.

Surely, they were luring her towards something malicious. Did they honestly expect her to fall for yet another trick, using the most obvious bait? 

The idea itself was preposterous, and yet... 

An air of defeat clung to each man with unmoving ferocity. And she'd never seen them like it before. When Hwa spoke again, she understood why. Understood why Jinu had been off the radar for four entire days. Why there hadn't even been as much as a whisper of him. 

Hwa said, "Because he has been caught."

Her throat held her heartbeat hostage once more, throbbing on the tip of her tongue as if she had been stung by some deadly, venomous insect. The look in their eyes...Rumi could tell that they didn't want to confide in her. Could tell that it shamed them to ask for help finding their brother from someone they had sworn as an enemy. 

Yet there they were, practically on their knees. And there were very few reasons as to why things had turned out like this. As to why they were before her now, claiming Jinu had been caught.

"Celine has him," Miso murmured. Rumi's stomach lurched, nausea rolled through her, but he hadn't finished speaking. "You're the only one that can get close enough."

To save him was what he didn't say, but Rumi knew he'd implied. To save Jinu.

Celine, who had killed her best friend just for loving a demon, now had one in her clutches. Rumi didn't want to imagine what she could possibly be doing to him. It hurt, it killed her to so much as think of it. Jinu, who had already suffered so much, had already endured four hundred years of torture, now at the hands of a woman whose hatred for his kind knew no bounds. In Celine's eyes, Jinu had stolen Rumi from her.

And that thirst for justice Celine possessed...it was a vile, ugly, vicious thing.

"Where," Rumi demanded in a voice she did not recognise. Around her, the shade lit up with indigo and violet. The men before her stared, wide-eyed, at what she knew were her patterns beaming tremendously like some beacon of violence. A declaration of war. They were so shocked, in fact, that none of them answered her.

Rumi stomped her foot, "Where!" She said once more, and the earth flashed crimson as the might of her true demon form overwhelmed her body and rebounded off the Honmoon. And she knew without need of confirmation that her eyes matched the demons' metres away from her. Rumi knew, if she looked into a mirror, what her reflection would show.

It was Hwa who stepped forward, making the first move yet again. This time, though, there was no mockery in his eyes. No ire, no vitriol. Only a deep-seated respect.

Because Rumi had chosen a side. Rumi had chosen them. Chosen Jinu.

And though she knew that choice had been made a long, long time ago, it was only now, she realised, that it was finally time for it to come to fruition.

"We'll show you," Hwa said, and he got close enough to place a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it in an act of comfort. Roma approached shortly after. Followed by Jin and Miso. Side by side, they stood next to Hwa, but their attention was all on Rumi. And for the first time since she'd met the demons, her skin didn't crawl beneath their yellow-eyed gazes.

"We'll get him back," Miso assured.

Jin smiled, a mischievous tug of his lips, "And if he's hurt—"

He didn't get to finish his sentence, Rumi's voice sounded above his own—deep, dark. An oath sworn in blood and bone, setting her body ablaze, "I'll kill her," she murmured.

"Well—"

"I'll kill her."

Four demons of unmatched power and age flinched at the promise dripping like venom from her mouth, pouring poison out of her eyes. And they were right to be afraid. Rumi was ready to let the world burn.

—

"You're certain on this?" Rumi's voice ricocheted through the long cylinder of reinforced concrete, echoing on into the distance until eventually fading.

"I wouldn't be ankle deep in piss, shit, and other god-awful bodily fluids if I wasn't." 

In the end, it was only Abby—Hwa—that had accompanied her on their little rescue mission; as much as the boys teased him about his muscles, he was the strongest, most skilled out of them all, and they couldn't risk more than two of them embarking on this task because of the exponential risk of discovery. However, his strengths undoubtedly came with agitating annoyances. Such as his inability to move with the grace of anything other than an elephant. It was a necessary sacrifice, his strength instead of the others' stealth, but god was it getting on her nerves.

"Is there any way you could move a little quieter?" Rumi hissed through clenched teeth as Hwa led them around a corner.

"Yes," The bluntness in his response was enough to warn Rumi of impending sarcasm. "If you give me a piggyback."

And there it was. So predictable already.

"I'll pass on that, petal."

"One more flower joke and I swear—"

"Shh!" Rumi hushed him, trying to keep her satisfied smirk to herself. It was nice, winding him up. A welcome distraction. A mildly sedative balm.

"But—"

"Shut up."

His answering scowl might have burned two holes through her cheek if she weren't already used to such scrutiny. 

If she hadn't spent so many hours with Jinu.

God...Jinu. Every step took an eternity, not helped by the fact that they had to move slowly as a result of both the sewage and the urgency for discretion; neither of them knew if Celine was watching this route to a warehouse the Sajas had been staking out for days. Impatience had a hook right through her navel, urging her to move faster, to hurry. As though some external force, some unknown omniscient knew something she didn't. Knew that every second that passed them by, the window of determining Jinu's fate was growing ever-so-fickle. 

"How much longer?"

Her accomplice didn't respond. Rumi waited. Still nothing.

"Hwa?" 

Silence.

With a jab of her elbow, she punched into his side. "Oi!" She barked, breathy and quiet but loud enough to be effective.

Hwa only side-eyed her, before facing forwards again, nose tilted in the air. Rumi had the most tempting craving to throttle him within an inch of his life.

"Are you going to stop acting like a child?"

"You told me to shut up." He shrugged, "I'm just following orders."

"Oh, you are so immature."  

In an infuriating act of mockery, Hwa lifted his forefinger to his mouth and held it in a line down his lips, mouthing a shh back at her. A taste of her own medicine, Rumi assumed. It was disgusting. Thankfully, they continued in silence after that, the only sound an occasional groan from the demon every time something squelched a little too suspiciously beneath his feet, to Rumi's pleasure. He walked slightly ahead of her, a guinea pig for all the awaiting traps, meaning she knew where not to step and could spectate in silent glee as Hwa suffered.

What was only ten or fifteen minutes passed by with the tediousness of several hours, and it wasn't long before Hwa turned back to her and made a pinching gesture with his thumb and forefinger. We're close, game his soundless update. Rumi nodded, all traces of humour wiped clean from her face. They meandered through a few more narrowing tunnels, almost sliding to the floor a few times from the increasing sliminess of the concrete, before Hwa eventually turned around one more bend and stopped at the bottom of a rust-plagued ladder. Above it, an ancient-looking manhole cover was the only thing now separating them from the cold, glorious fresh air outside. 

Once they went through, Hwa had told her, they'd be feet away from a window to the decrepit building. It was already open for them to pass through—the panes long shattered by juvenile vandals looking for a thrill, no doubt.

Rumi motioned for him to go ahead; he'd have better luck moving the slab of pure cast-iron than her, and she wasn't too proud to admit it. Thankfully, Hwa was opting to keep his arrogance on a tight leash. With great precision, taking care to avoid any sharp edges on the withering metal, Hwa ascended upwards. It was only a few metres, but Rumi's thunderous heart made it seem like the climb was up a sheer cliff face, with nothing but rocky, raging waters beneath. 

The cover slid with impressive ease as Hwa pushed it to the side, not going as fast as Rumi knew he could in an attempt to make the whole procedure as soundless as possible. And though the iron grated against the surface above them, Rumi knew he'd done a good job when they waited for a good couple of minutes to see if anyone had been alerted, but nobody came to investigate their disturbance. Finally, Hwa climbed the last few rungs and perched above ground, scanning the area before flicking his hand upwards.

A silent command that Rumi obeyed in an instant. She was up the ladder in mere seconds, crouching by Hwa's side. Fingers in the vague shape of a gun, he waved them ahead, drawing Rumi's attention to the window he had told her about earlier as they had planned their quest. Half crouched, Rumi's knees ached in protest as they scampered across the courtyard they'd emerged into, and quickly made their way to the entrance point.

Hwa dove in first, keeping his body hunched up as best as he could manage. When he gave Rumi the all-clear, she was again at his back in an instant, moving with the grace and accuracy she had trained to attain all her life. 

The warehouse layout was thankfully a vast open space after the building had been partly torn down some years ago. But what aided their assessment of the surroundings also hindered their resources for cover. With little to no choice but to stick to the walls of the structure, where the moonlight couldn't reach, their journey towards the opposite side was slow. And painful, Rumi soon learned as her ankles screamed in protest.

Eventually, they ended up at their targeted destination—a crumbling set of stairs that led down to a series of interconnected rooms for boilers and furnaces and other machinery lying unused and collecting dust beneath their feet. They had a vague image of what to expect, thanks to blueprints Jin had found when the warehouse was originally built, but there was no telling how much destruction time had caused to the basement. Their biggest hope was that it remained as true to its original layout as possible. If not?

They hadn't really thought about it; Rumi had been in a desperate haste to get going. 

"Let's go," She breathed. Hwa nodded his agreement, and then they were encroaching on the festering darkness below. 

"Want to see a cool little trick?" There was a lighthearted mischief in his words, noticeable even though his voice was no louder than the faintest of breezes. A raised brow was Rumi's only response, and Hwa translated it into consent. For a brief pause, Hwa halted his steps and closed his eyes, and she could see them wiggling ever so slightly beneath his lids. Just when she was about to curse him out for wasting their time, his patterns shone an iridescent purple, illuminating the space around them like...like a torch.

Wow, Rumi didn't dare say it aloud, there is a brain in there.

Though the light couldn't compare to a battery-powered bulb, it was much better than the hindering shadows they had entered. With slightly more courage in her movements, Rumi continued onwards as Hwa lit up the path ahead. From a first glance, she didn't notice anything different to what they had studied, but when she squinted through the gloom, the disrepair of the otherwise impressive space was apparent. 

Walls were half crumbling, spiders had draped their webs over every surface, in every corner, and there was an awful smell—worse than the sewers—permeating from every direction. The smell of decay and mould and an air undisturbed for years. 

Yet, as they continued on their way, something worse than all things prior began to breach her nostrils. 

The undeniable tanginess of blood.

And then...wet, laboured breaths bounced off the walls.

Rumi let go of any hesitation. Disregarded all of her past training, the wisdom that had been drilled into her. 

She ran. Like her life depended on it, ignoring Hwa's muffled curses behind her. She jumped over debris, ducked underneath lose pipes and beelined for the sounds that were only growing louder, only growing more desperate.

Jinu, she cried to herself. Wait for me—

And suddenly she was dreaming again. Dreaming of a body disappearing into tiny embers, being engulfed by flames. Dreaming of an abandoned bracelet lying at herfeet. Flashes of tear-stained cheeks, of a heartfelt apology—

I'm sorry. For everything.

Jinu. Jinu, Jinu—

A final corner turned, Rumi emerged into a vacant room.

Vacant...except—

Her knees buckled.

"Shit!" Hwa skidded to a halt behind her. Saw what she saw.

Every single cell of hers exploded into a fit of tremors, her body quaked so vehemently she swore it was shaking the ground beneath her feet.

This was something worse than a nightmare...this was...this was—

"Jinu," She half sobbed, half roared. Then she was off again, crashing to her knees and sliding atop soaked cement. Soaked with...with blood. 

As Hwa's light finally engulfed the room in its entirety, Rumi couldn't stop the hot, angry tears streaming from her eyes.

There, arms chained and anchored high up onto either side of a mould-ridden wall, body hanging limply between them, held up only by the links of iron...

Jinu didn't even have the strength to look up at her. Covering his body, slicing across his patterns, through his flesh were lacerations so deep she swore bone gleamed from far within the wounds. His face was unrecognisable, beaten to a bloody pulp and swollen beyond comprehension. His chest was barely moving, out of pain or exhaustion or something much, much worse, Rumi didn't know.

She didn't know. And all she could do was lift trembling hands to him and let his head nest in her palms. When Rumi lifted his head, he moaned from the agony of it, blood spilling from his lips as a result and spluttering down onto his naked chest where he'd been...god, he'd been—

"She took a whip to him," Came Hwa's horrifying realisation.

Nothing but a faint, low buzz filled her head. A flatline, a breaking point. All Rumi could do was stare into those brown, human eyes. Human, he was human. And Celine...

Something settled over her then. An awareness that prickled against the back of her neck. There was a scuffling sound.

A struggle. She faintly heard Hwa call out before something silenced him and all the while that buzz in Rumi's head carried on, a hum of eerie calmness. The quiet sound of death promised. Something moved against her palms—Jinu's jaw. She looked into his eyes once more, and finally, a hint of recognition flared as his mouth moved, ghosting over the same word. Again and again and again.

Run, run, run.

But she would do no such thing. Not anymore.

"Hello girls," Rumi said. Plainly. Emotionless. Silence greeted her. And she rose to the thrum of it, her weapon materialising by her side. "Well?" She prodded, breath bated, body eager. With her head turned ever so slightly to the side, just so the two cowards behind her could see Rumi without her mask in all her demon-eyed, patterned glory. 

"Come on, Huntrix," She enticed, "Aren't you going to show me how it's done?" It was then that she turned, sword pointed to the ground but limbs ready to swing it within a moment's notice. Legs spread, knees slightly bent, she let them see the ultimatum she was offering. There was no need for words, not when she felt the fierceness of her intentions leaking through her eyes.

Right then, it was evident. Right then, both Mira and Zoey knew what she was so soundlessly screaming at them. You'll have to go through me, she so soundlessly screamed. You'll have. To go. Through me.

Hwa gazed at her with eyes the size of saucers and as white as untarnished porcelain, the blade at his throat bathing him in cerulean. Behind him, Zoey was using all of her might to keep him pinned. But that didn't faze Rumi. Not one bit, and the silent command in her companion's eyes only reinforced her determination.

Save him, the Saja begged, though there was no need. Rumi knew how this would end, no matter the cost, and it was with no more demon blood spilt.

"Rumi," Mira's warning was clear in her surprisingly calm timbre, "We're only here to warn you."

"Celine is on her way," Came Zoey's voice, to Rumi's right. 

Rumi didn't take her gaze off of Mira, still managing to stare at her down the bridge of her nose despite the other girl's height advantage. "Let her come," Rumi purred, "She has a debt to pay."

Two debts, Rumi reminded herself as Jinu let loose another pain-fuelled grunt behind her. 

Hwa was grinning like a maniac. A proud maniac. Upon Zoey's realisation, she pressed one of her knives further into his neck. "I must admit," He taunted, "This would be more fun if you were Mira."

"Shut him up," The fuchsia-haired girl in question snapped, without taking her gaze off Rumi.

Still, Hwa paid her no mind. "Don't worry though," He breathed, "Mystery told me to say he misses you."

For a brief moment, in Rumi's peripheral vision, she saw Zoey falter. It only lasted a millisecond before the girl hardened once more, but it was enough of a crack for Rumi. In that instant, with just one brief lapse in control, Rumi believed there may yet be some hope for at least one of her sisters.

Mira, on the other hand...

"Why has it come to this, Rumi?" She had the nerve to place blame on her? After everything? 

Rumi shot daggers at her with just one, scathing look. But didn't dare bless her with a response. If she was truly okay with standing there, in front of a man lying half dead and chained up to a wall like some kind of animal, then she didn't deserve Rumi's words. And she was not who Rumi thought she was. 

Instead of answering her question, Rumi presented her with one of her own, asked so stoically, so boldly, it made Mira flinch. "Tell me, will you stand watch over this place when it is me in chains?"

It was like all air had been sucked out of the room, leaving only ash in its wake. On her tongue, Rumi tasted smoke. As though flames had just shot up from her throat and singed her flesh on the way. It felt wrong to ask such a question. But she needed to. She needed to hear the answer.

"That won't happen."

Rumi cocked her head. "You sure?" 

"Celine wouldn't do that, not to you."

"Why not? Why him, and not me?" Behind her, Jinu began to wheeze, as if a part of him wanted to emphasise her point. Rattle Mira further. 

"Because—"

"Because he deserves it." A new voice flowed into the room. Seconds before the figure it belonged to swept into sight, hook hanging loosely in one hand. "And you do not."

"Celine," Rumi flashed a smile that was all teeth and fangs, taking care not to hold back on her demonic physicality. She wanted to see her former guardian face what Celine had always feared. A monster who thirsted for her blood. "So good of you to join us."

Something shifted near her feet, the movement accompanied by a groan not born of pain this time. But of something else, something sickening. Horrifying. Something that had Rumi's previously simmering blood cooling to rivers of ice in her veins, her heart now a glacier. She turned back, slightly. What Rumi saw nearly had her emptying the contents of her stomach. 

Jinu, still lost to the world in his agony-fuelled haze, still barely conscious, barely sentient, stared at Celine with bloodshot eyes filled with nothing but sheer, utter panic. 

Rumi couldn't breathe.

Couldn't see anything but red.

The man she had come to save, a demon who had four centuries over the woman lingering metres away, a being whose power was unrivalled, was cowering away from a figure out of his nightmares.

And he was still mouthing the same word to Rumi. Still protecting her in what little way he could.

Run, run, run.

The glacier shattered into nothing but the tiniest of razor-sharp splinters.

Flinging her blade into the air, Rumi cried a song of war.

Then, she lunged.

Chapter Text

It was forked lightning and the bruising pulse of thunder with which their blades collided—two steel cymbals crashing together at the precipice of their grotesque song. Eyes met Rumi's over the wicked curve of her old guardian's weapon, narrowed. Focused. Determined. She was sure the same could be said of her own, but this was not the time for contemplation.

With a grunt, Rumi swept her blade up in the air, taking Celine's with it and sending her staggering back towards the two girls who observed with tormented trepidation. Zoey, holding Hwa, trembled. Mira's hands slipped on the hilt of her scythe, she was adjusting her grip every second, twitching, shifting, reacting to every step of the dance unfolding before her eyes. Neither stepped up to help, nor hinder, the other party. They had chosen neutrality, drawn in line. They wouldn't interfere with this fight.

They couldn't interfere with this fight. The gods had waited for this gruesome reunion.

Celine was on her again in an instant, curving her body as she launched forwards, blade held over her shoulder moments before she released her attack and sliced through the air moments after Rumi had already jumped backwards, circled her, and aimed an elbow at her side. On her heels, Rumi swung around and used the momentum to unleash another blow coming from the pommel of her sword, crashing it into the back of Celine's spine.

If it had hurt, Celine's only tell was the slightest of grunts before she gathered herself and went after Rumi again. Then, they were a blur of movements. Of flashing steel and twisted limbs. Purple and black hair spun in the space around them like their own aurora, a veil the same colour as a bruise. As death. Rumi took a jab to her chest, narrowly missing a slice to her gut. One that may have killed her.

This was Celine in all her truth. This was the monster born of masochism and righteousness. 

No more, Rumi promised to herself. To Jinu, who still knelt crumpled behind his only standing defender. 

Jinu, who was the reason the chamber smelt like metal and blood. Chains rattled behind her with every shallow, short breath he took. She knew if she turned around, he would be hanging there. Limp. Lifeless. Cold to the touch, warm to the heart. There was blue flame inside of her, hotter than rage, rampant with excitement. Embers fizzled and cracked in each of her veins, her organs, with every blow she landed on Celine and with each hit Rumi endured. It was a mess of brutality, a mirage of vengeance and anger and pure, insolent heartache.

Even then, Rumi could not silence her mind enough to focus solely on the method of battle. Even then, Rumi remembered the woman who had once tucked her into bed at night.

Clanging rang out every second, shouts of outrage following shortly with the subtle bite of pain inflicted, entwined with each yell, each laboured breath. There was blood on Celine.

It wasn't her own.

Rumi let the crimson splatters fill her vision. Behind her, Jinu moaned a lament of the dying. 

Her response ripped from her throat—a cry that was purely based on instinct. Animalistic. Wild. The call of a beast defending one of its own. A roar, a defiance.

"Stop this!" Somebody finally protested. Vaguely, Rumi noted it to be Mira. "You are going to kill each other!"

Celine's grin as they edged around each other, awaiting their opponent's next move, was that of a predator—sickly gleeful, horrendously pleased. Her response came with a low, breathy chuckle, "I am already dead to her."

With a flip of her wrist, the sword spun a full turn in the air, a promise of what was yet to come. Rumi's eyes shot calm lethality through her brows. "As I am to you," she crooned, and the performance commenced once more. 

Why? The part of her still harbouring the innocence of a child wanted to ask as they came for each other in another tangle of limb and weapon, Why has it come to this? It whispered through her blood, her marrow. But then a soft, barely audible whimper sounded barely above all the vicious chorus. 

Everything fell away. The memories, the bonds, the laughs. The smiles—all reduced to nothing but the faintest cloud of ash on some forgotten breeze. The whispers sounded no more—all of it forgotten and in its place was a desolate sort of ache, a furious shadow whose tendrils reached only for vengeance and for death. It was silence, still. Heavy. Cold.

And it settled in her bones. Reinforced them.

Now panting—each ragged breath slowly ripping her lungs to shreds—something deep within her rumbled. Like the fault of an earthquake miles below the sea, the core of Rumi erupted and the ripples that spread on the surface grew and grew and grew the closer they came to shore. Rising above life, waves cresting at the bounds of her soul, ready to take what it wanted. Ready to decimate all in her path, to claim back land that had been stolen, to wash it away and wipe it clean of any stains. 

The Honmoon flickered around them. Rumi squeezed the hilt of her sword, and held it vertically, millimetres away from her forehead.

Celine faltered, her prowling ceased. Brows resisting a frown, twitching above partially narrowed eyes, the woman held her breath. Held it because—

There Rumi was, eyes of yellow flame, skin hosting a labyrinth of indigo. Blade alight with the soul of the man behind her, Rumi smiled, fangs lighting up in the sapphire glow.

Around them, the Honmoon flashed the deepest, darkest red. 

Rumi pounced.

Her movements were precise and quick and unstoppable, her feet light and rapid as she curved and arched and dodged around Celine's futile attempts to stop her—Rumi laughed as she tried and did not once yield to exhaustion. Blow after blow, she glided through the rhythm of the fight, controlling it, mastering it as if she had composed it herself. Each step planned, each swing calculated. Celine could do nothing to counter the onslaught. She was pushed back, back—forced to only deflect each blow. There was no time for her to offend, no time for her to breathe.

There was screaming, most of it from Rumi. Flanking the fight, Zoey and Mira yelled out. Begged and pleaded for them to stop. Out of her peripheral vision, Rumi saw movement.

But she didn't care. Celine's retreat was nearly over; she was nearly cornered. Rumi would get her soon, she'd get her—

A subtle thud. The crashing of steel on concrete. Celine, with eyes wide, skin gleaming and muscles quaking, pressed herself flat against the wall. Her hook was discarded on the floor.

At her throat, the sharp cerulean tip of certain death pierced only enough to draw a singular bead of blood.

"Well?" Celine heaved, her entire body shifting with each of her laboured breaths. "Finish it, child."

For a long, long while, Rumi stared. Not at Celine, but at the blood of hers that had snaked a river down the length of Rumi's sword. She saw it in all its crimson glory. The red of life, the red of humans.

Pooling on the ground behind her was blood of the exact same shade. 

"Celine," Rumi whispered, her throat finally giving up on, "You bleed as he does."

Celine observed the few gashes she herself had inflicted on Rumi. "As do you," she said. "Rumi," a scoff. Her name, drenched in derision, "Look what he has turned you into. A monster to keep him company—"

The voice that followed was the same she had used when she faced Gwi Ma, a year ago at Namsan Tower. "He made me human," she murmured, no need to raise her voice. "It is you who makes monsters."

"Your insolence is insulting. Your sisters stand behind you, begging for you to see sense."

"If my sisters are not by my side," She said, clear enough to be heard by her audience, sharp enough to slice, "Then they are not my sisters."

There were two twin inhalations large enough to suck all air from the room, and then a voice that was the epitome of heartache, "Rumi," Zoey quivered, "You can't possibly mean that—"

"Of course she does," Came Mira's harsh silencing, "Let it go, Zoey."

A lifetime played through Rumi's head, as a bitter quiet engulfed them all. A reel of friendship, of childhood. Of a home that was a sanctuary and a bond that seemed unbreakable. Laughter. Tears. Warmth and hope and compassion. All of it towards fuelling a mutual passion, a destiny bestowed upon them from birth. Rumi had known Mira and Zoey for as long as she could physically remember. They had always been by her side.

And over them all, Celine had governed. Firm, strict, sometimes ruthless, but always with open arms. Rumi thought she had known love. All it had been was some intricately disguised collar. Her sisters a tether, a rope to bind them all. An entrapment, a prison. Their chains had been honour and duty, and respect.

Now, a love that she couldn't even fathom was suffering in chains of iron and malice and hatred. An unconditional love that didn't depend on her performance, her capability. A love that protected her, even from himself. A love who had been so irreversibly tortured by the same woman who had killed her mother and lied about it. For years. There were horrors to Celine that Rumi didn't yet want to perceive. There was still that collar around her neck, even now.

Her sword shook in her hands. A momentary falter.

Celine seized the opportunity. "Go," she commanded. A shift in the air was the only warning Rumi had before Mira launched for her, sending her foot into her side and puncturing the tissue surrounding her waist. Rumi flew to the side, stumbling for what felt like an eternity before her front collided with concrete. 

With only a brief moment before another impending attack, Rumi tightened the hold on her sword, pushed herself off against the wall and raised her weapon just in time to meet the deathly swipe of Mira's scythe. And then she was off again, different opponent, same routine.

Rumi didn't hold back, couldn't hold back; Mira was going at her full force with a tenacity Rumi had only ever fought alongside with. Not against. And as they clashed together, grunting and yelling and panting, all Rumi could focus on was her next movement, her next target, and even though Mira's actions were in defense of Rumi's newly formed enemy, she found she could not summon a final blow.

Could not deliver that to someone who didn't even know just who she was protecting. Even now, Mira and Zoey still saw Celine as a guardian, just like Rumi once had. They didn't know the darkness Rumi had unveiled, they didn't know how shrivelled Celine's heart was, how her veins were filled with tar and venom. 

So, on they went. A never-ending battle, both opponents as stubborn and ruthless as the other. Each collision of their weapons was met with sparks of pure heat, the strength behind each of their swings were unparralleled. Unmatched. Growing up, it had always been Rumi and Mira sparring with each other. Pushing each other to be better. It meant that Mira's moves were predictable, her tactics out in the open.

But, so were Rumi's. 

They were tiring, both of them knew it.

Celine knew it, too. Behind where they fought, Rumi kept an eye on the woman. And so she saw it, when she reached for her hook. When she advanced. 

Mira was knocked aside by a swift kick of Rumi's foot, landing directly centre of her thigh, sending her stumbling away.

A perfect opening. Celine swept in already on the offence with her hook raised high above her head before slashing down towards her. Rumi only had a split second to pivot on the spot and curve away from the attack, and then it was her and Celine once more. Picking up where they left off. Except this time came with a fatal distraction. Mira prowled around them both. Wherever Celine had to deflect, Mira attacked. Rumi knew their patterns, their tells, but it wasn't much use when it was the pair of them against her. She barely had time to think, to breathe. Just swing, duck, dodge, turn.

Swing, duck, dodge, turn—

Too late, Rumi felt a presence behind her. Too late, she registered a body at her back. As Celine swung for her once more, Rumi's dodge was destroyed by a knee to her shins. And it was just the right spot, the perfect pressure.

She crumpled to the ground. Was back up in an instant but the atmosphere had warped into something desperate. Something exhausting. Her leg buckled beneath her as she moved. The pain throbbing in her calf was immeasurable, distracting. She had too many things to focus on, too many things to think about—

A sharp backhand had her head snapping almost a full one-eighty. Rumi staggered. Narrowly avoiding tripping over her own feet as she collided with the wall yet again. The force of the impact rattled her bones and worsened the pain. Worsened the tiredness aching in every single fibre of her being. 

And then, over Celine's shoulder as she approached with a satisfied gleam in her eye, hook hanging by her side, her gait feline and confident, Rumi watched as Hwa struggled against Zoey. Almost out of her grip.

"Mira!" She cried, "He's too strong!"

"Swap out," Mira's command came instantly. Zoey shoved the demon to her partner and watched as Mira met him, vicious scythe against pure strength. Nothing else. 

"Hello, beautiful," Was all Hwa said, a taunting little purr, before they delved into a battle of their own. Rumi couldn't pay them any further attenion; Celine was upon her again. Relentless and unforgiving as she swung over and over and over, meeting every one of Rumi's attacks, deflecting them, diminishing them and renderring useless and there was Zoey at her side, sending her daggers flying, slicing through her flesh. No killing shots, but they may as well have been. The betrayal burned. On the inside there was a part of Rumi writhing in agony at not only the wounds rupturing her skin, but her heart aswell.

And she could tell, she could tell that Zoey hated it too. That she did not understand why such violence was occurring. As if there wasn't a body hanging mutalised feet away from them all.

As if Jinu wasn't dying. As if they had forgotten that she loved him. Or they didn't care.

But it was too much, too fast. An onslaught of precision. Each of her moves were being predicted and already renderred useless before she could perform them.

Her lungs were ablaze. Her heart was splintered. And her soul was still withering away with Jinu as he bled out right in front of her and she could do nothing. Nothing—

A sickening thud rumbled through the room. Rumi could only watch as Hwa sank to the floor, out cold as Mira stood above him, staring as if in disbelief. A flash of something in her eyes, that Rumi could not place, was gone in an instant and Mira turned her cheek, marching towards the three of them who still fought.

Despair overcame Rumi. She was cornered, cornered, and she had failed. And Jinu would die here and she would die with him—

Rumi let her sword clatter to the ground. 

Everything ceased. Zoey and Mira stared at her blade as though they might vomit at the sight of it. But Celine...all her attention was still pouring into Rumi, seeping beneath her skin and making her very flesh itch with dread. 

Silently, Rumi skirted around them. Edged further and further along the edges of the room. And they let her, like they knew she had given in, that she was not a threat anymore. Finally, Rumi reached Jinu's side again.

Then, she sank beside him. Knees digging uncomfortably into the cement. Her whole body protested with each of her movements. 

Refusing to look at Celine, Rumi played her final card. One she didn't really have any hope in, not any more. 

With her arms raised on either side of her, she kept her gaze firmly darting between Mira and Zoey, letting them see everything as her hands hung limply in the air. They saw it, then. Her aim.

Because next to her, in the exact same position, except for only a set of chains, was Jinu. This was her surrender. She would give in, but they would have to do what they did to him. It was a risky choice; she had no idea how far their hatred of her spun, but if they still loved her, if they were still under the impression that Celine had all of their best interests at heart, Rumi prayed this would convince them otherwise.

"What are you—"

"Command your dogs, Celine." Even addressing her, Rumi refused to bless Celine with any more attention, "Capture me like you did him." Rumi let her fangs show, "A demon is a demon, right?"

There were rivulets of blood dripping out of her from too many injuries to count, bruises littering her entire body, blending into the purple of her patterns. Still, Rumi held strong. She did not falter. Wouldn't, until it was all truly over. And if she met her death in this rotten, godforsaken basement, she would take solace in the fact that Jinu was right there, by her side.

"Rumi," Zoey spoke out, softly. As if soothing an injured stray. "You know we wouldn't do that to you."

Her responding laugh was humourless and full of mockery, "You are so naive."

Mira stepped forwards. "What do you want from this Rumi? What is your aim?"

Rumi donned a vacant stare, eyes gazing from beneath the shadow of her browbone, "I want you," she whispered, "to do what you do to all demons. Put me in chains, like she did with him. Let me rot here, if that is what you think we deserve."

Silence. 

"Do it!" She boomed, her voice cracking and she was somewhat surprised the building around her didn't crack, too, as the Honmoon flashed blood red again. "Carry out her dirty work, like always," She spat.

"Celine," Mira looked towards her leader, "Tell her we aren't going to harm her." If Celine heard Mira, had registered her polite command, she didn't let it show. Confusion twitched upon Mira's face. Zoey's, too, as Celine brushed them both forward and took a few more steps towards Rumi, now looming over her a foot or so away.

"I will give you one chance," Celine murmured, "To step aside and admit your wrongdoings. We can put you right again. Reverse the damage he did to you."

"You speak of damage," She sneered, "What wounds on my body were born from his hands? His weapons? You say he's a monster, look at what you did to him!"

"Lower your voice—"

"You've carved him up like an animal. He is barely breathing, and you still keep him in chains. He is dying—" Rumi blasted a look of pure flame and anguish at Mira and Zoey, "He is dying, and you still keep him in chains!"

"He tried to kill a whole stadium of people—"

"What did you get from this, huh?" The words poured from her lips like smoke, "What good did this do? Who is better off because of it? I know I didn't swear myself into a duty that involved meaningless torture, did you?"

"Nonsense," Celine scoffed, and the look Rumi sent her could've reduced her to nothing but ash and bone. "He has been killing people."

"He has been killing rapists," Rumi deadpanned, "Abusers—"

"Enough." So calm, so collected.

"—murderers, like you!—"

"I said, enough!" A foreign panic settled in Celine's eyes. The type an animal might get when it knows its days are up and it is staring down the maw of a blood-thirsty lion. The quiet that followed Celine's outburst was cloying. Deafening. Gut-wrenching. But when Mira and Zoey both slowly took their gazes off Rumi at last, and turned to Celine with an obvious look of suspicion in their eyes, mixed with a subtle flare of fear, something golden began to bloom in Rumi's chest.

"What is she talking about?" Surprisingly, it was Zoey who questioned her superior, who was now breathing so heavily her skin gleamed with sweat, small beads of it dripping down from the top of her forehead, bumping over the small ridges of a vein that had started to protrude; Rumi had never seen Celine as riled as this. As if she knew that they were all at a breaking point, and she may not be the side in favour.

Rumi looked at her former guardian, who had tried her hardest to ruin everything Rumi loved, including herself, and she sent Celine a blood-chilling grin, with a smug kind of boldness to it not many would be able to conjure in a moment like this one. "Are you going to tell them, Celine?"

No response. It seemed Celine thought the inevitable could be postponed if she didn't make a sound, a move, if she stayed as still as a statue. 

"Hm?" Rumi poked, still with her hands up in the air in a soundless dare, still with half her attention on Jinu's condition. This whole time, she had been counting his breaths. Timing them. They were steady, but ragged. Most importantly, however, was that they hadn't stopped—showed no signs of stopping. She still had time, she could get them—Jinu and Hwa—out of there. All she needed was this revelation, this truth to finally air itself, and then maybe...Mira and Zoey..."C'mon, Celine. What was it you always used to say to us? Truth will out?"

"Celine," Mira cut in, "Explain—"

"Watch yourself, child. Remember your place."

Ridiculous, Rumi couldn't stifle her huff of disbelief. Even now, Celine was still playing the role of honourable guardian, incapable of doing any wrong. So righteous, so brave. It made her sick. "Do you ever tire of your own voice?"

"The only thing I tire of Rumi, is your constant yapping. Like a rapid dog," Celine hissed, and her arm stretched around her, probably reaching for the hook she had sheathed, no doubt. But if it was an act meant to intimidate Rumi, it had the absolute, opposite effect. She was on her knees in front of three skilled warriors, begging to be locked up like the demon beside her, and Celine still felt it prudent to reach for her weapon. Pathetic.

"Forgive me," Rumi grinned, "But I learned from the best."

"Brat," She hissed through gritted teeth, eyes flaring with a shade of range Rumi had never seen in her before—a wild, tangible roar. Rumi was about to laugh in her face, was about to ridicule her even further because why not? Why not wind her up after everything she has done? With herself backed into a corner, what was the point in going quietly? They wanted her to come to her senses, to join them and be some twisted kind of happy family once more. Leave Jinu behind in this decaying dungeon and forget that he had ever existed.

But all of her bravado evaporated when Celine made her next move. All that wit, the sarcasm, the courageous bite, gone.

It wasn't her hook that Celine had been reaching for.

No...when her old guardian brought her hand back to her front, it was holding a weapon drenched in the blood of the man beside her.

A whip.

"Hold her," Celine commanded. The world stopped turning. Mira and Zoey both stared at the side of Celine's face with nothing but sheer, horrified incredulity. Even Rumi couldn't summon words as the air had been poached from her lungs and her heart had forgotten how to breathe and was now jumping up her throat, begging to be flee whilst it still could so it wouldn't have to endure...wouldn't have to suffer...

Rumi's eyes scanned Jinu's injuries once more. How hard must someone be hit by such a weapon to cause such lacerations? How was he still breathing when bone poked out from his flesh? How has he survived? How would she?

"Celine—"

"I won't say it again," Fire thrived in Celine's eyes, "Hold. Her."

Mira's response came simple. Flat. As if it were nothing but instinct. "No," Her friend said. "I won't."

"You've gone too far," Zoey added, "You can't seriously mean to use that on Rumi."

"Of course not," Celine smiled. And for a brief moment, Rumi felt relief. For a brief moment, she was able to look into Mira and Zoey's eyes and recognise the compassion she felt from them, the friendship between them that was still around, had survived even after all this time. But then Celine raised her whip, and it was not Rumi she gazed at. Nor was it Mira, or Zoey.

Or even Hwa.

With pure vitriol in her eyes and a sickening glee twisting up the corners of her mouth, Celine looked at Jinu and said, "I'll be using it on him."

With that, Rumi exploded.

With no sword in hand, she lunged at Celine, flinging her arms in the air and raking her nails down the woman's face, shredding the skin, gouging the flesh out from beneath it. Blood trickled down her face but Rumi didn't have the time to admire her work as Celine, with all her might, sent her elbow flying at Rumi's face.

There was a deafening crunch. A gruesome snap of bone. Everything darkened, the outskirts of her vision fogged into a swirling mist of black and blue dots. Something hard hit her head and then she was falling, falling. With nothing but the ground to catch her, Rumi's head cracked on the cement.

It was a pain so unbearable she wished Celine would deliver a final blow. Let her render Rumi unconscious so she didn't have to feel the blood leaking out of her nose, her scalp. Would be numb to the pain of her skull splintering into webbed fractures. But Celine did not do such a thing. Instead, she brought her foot down on Rumi's outstretched arm and used the blunt force of her heel to snap the bone in half.

Agony. Sheer, nauseating agony. Firing at her nerves, setting her skin alight, her heart soaring. The sound of her scream reverberated through the whole building, so loud and so heartfelt it might've brought the ceiling down on them if it had been one decibel louder. Faintly, she could hear the sound of Mira and Zoey's protests. And yet, they did nothing to physically prevent Celine from approaching Jinu once more and Rumi could do nothing, nothing as the first crack of the whip shattered her soul.

Like he'd been woken from the deepest of slumbers, Jinu's eyes flashed wide open and the sight of his pain alone was enough to summon a sob to wrack through Rumi's body. She tried shouting out but the pain in her head, her arm, was so potent and volatile that moving her jaw a millimetre had vomit shooting up from her stomach and bubbling out from her lips.

All she could see was Jinu.

All she could feel was her pain. All she could hear was his.

Yet somehow, amongst the onslaught, the torture, his eyes found hers and though they were frantic and tear filled and bloodshot and swollen, she saw the relief.

Relief, just because she was there, because he wasn't alone.

"I'm with you," Rumi whispered, and the action had her stomach rolling again, I'm here. I'm with you.

Down went Celine's whip. Again and again and again, a conductor of misery composing Jinu's roars of suffering and the sickening sound of leather against wet flesh. 

"Please," Rumi begged, forcing herself to drag her attention from Jinu, to leave him, so that she could see Mira and Zoey. The two girls wouldn't watch their leader. They'd gone paralysed with fright. With disgust. But they looked at her. For the first time in so long, they looked at her as if they understood. Everything.

"The soul in Celine's sword," Rumi began, despite the all-consuming ache that engulfed her, "The light that had it glowing in the penthouse," She rasped, her dry tongue making it difficult to form the words but Mira and Zoey were listening so intently, staring at her so earnestly Rumi was certain she could speak in her own head and they would still hear her. So it was with confidence that she said her next words, that she unveiled a decades-old shame. 

"It was my mother's."

Zoey remained frozen. Paralysed. Unable to do anything but stare at Rumi with pure, utter shock. And she didn't expect anything else from her friend, Rumi herself wouldn't know how to react if she was in her shoes.

But what she didn't expect, was Mira.

Mira, who had never really understood her after Namsan Tower. Mira, who had been cold and unsympathetic about the loss Rumi had endured. Mira, who out of all of them, had been the most steadfast under Celine's leadership. 

It was Mira, of all people, who tore her gaze away from Rumi and turned slowly, so slowly, to the woman now holding her whip like a trophy as she admired her handiwork. And it was Mira who launched herself at her, Mira who ripped the device from Celine's hands and sent a kick right in the centre of her spine, sending her careening to the floor in a mess of flailing limbs.

And then she took Celine's whip, raised it high in the air, and slammed it down with a crack of thunder. Celine cried out in premature agony, cowering away from the girl who was half her age as she gave Celine a taste of her own medicine.

Except, the whip never made contact.

"Coward," Mira hissed, and then she launched one more swing of her leg and sent the toe of her boot into Celine's forehead.

The woman didn't move again. Mira discarded the whip at her feet and spat on Celine's unconscious body.

"Zoey," Mira called, her gaze still focused on her—former—leader. "Get him out of those chains." She didn't wait to see if Zoey complied. The second she finished speaking, Mira stalked over to where Hwa still rested half-slumped against the wall opposing Jinu. With the same foot that had incapacitated Celine, she nudged at the demon's unmoving body. "Get up," She commanded. Hwa didn't move. "I saw your eyes open moments ago," Mira announced. "Get. Up." Each words was accompanied by another kick, and her harmless attack proceeded until Hwa stirred with a groan.

Lifting his hand up to his head and soothing the raised tissue already forming from Mira's earlier hit, Hwa glared up at his assailant.

"Playing dead?" Mira taunted, "How brave."

”Have you come to finish me off? Have you finally put Jinu out of his misery?”

Mira tutted, “So dramatic. Stand. We need to help them get out.”

”You’re helping us?” Hwa didn’t bother to conceal his skepticism. Mira didn’t look very impressed.

“I’m helping my sister,” Mira deadpanned, “Because we have wronged her. And for some reason, she likes you patterned freaks.”

Rumi didn’t tune in for the rest of their bickering. She didn’t have the energy to. In fact, all she’d been doing for what seemed like a century was staring at Jinu. At the rise and fall of his chest. To reassure herself. To check if it was still rising and falling.

Alive, she told herself. Alive.

But it wasn’t enough. Anxiety had her in a vice-like grip. There was so much blood, so much blood and Rumi couldn’t take it anymore, she needed to be with him, needed to feel that he was alive and so she used her only working arm and dragged her body over the ruby-stained concrete.

Ignoring the pain. Denying it any right to her body. She moved torturously slow, watching on as Zoey worked on removing the chains around his wrists, jabbing at the iron with her knives. She could tell her method was working poorly, she knew it would be a while before Jinu was free. Unbound.

So she had to get to him. Had to stay with him. Her jaw ached tremendously from how hard she was biting down to stifle her screams of agony, but still she moved.

Rumi pushed and pushed and pushed. It was the worse five minutes of her life. It was terrifying and excruciating and soul crushing.

But she got to him. Crawled the final few inches to him.

Then her head came down onto his thigh.

Rumi looked up at him. 

Jinu looked down at her.

I’m here, I’m with you, her eyes said.

I’m here, I’m with you, he replied.

Chapter Text

For the first time in three days, the loft was silent.

Mira and Zoey had finally given up trying to get Rumi to leave the building. Instead, they'd decided to get some fresh air for themselves, and also wander back to the penthouse and bring some of Rumi's belongings over for her—it was clear to the pair of them that Rumi wouldn't be returning any time soon. The Saja Boys had also left, gone to buy some more supplies for their temporary set-up in Jinu's home. Three days, and Rumi was alone.

Alone, except for the demon slumbering so deeply beside her. Jinu hadn't left his bed, hadn't woken up since they had escaped the warehouse. Exhaustion was holding him hostage, and Rumi longed to see his eyes flicker open again, but she was also glad. Glad, because he was only sleeping. Glad because his chest rose and fell with each of his steady breaths. He was alive. 

Rumi stared at him now, the afternoon sun peering at him through the window, casting a golden glow atop the white sheets and his pale skin. Only just peeking out from beneath the duvet were the grotesque markings of all he had endured those days ago at the hands of evil. And although it pained her to see him so frail, Rumi still regarded him with a faint, little smile on her face.

There had been an argument amongst the little group that had emerged from the warehouse and struggled on the entire journey back to the loft; Mira and Zoey had demanded that they go to the hospital. Jinu was completely out of it, but Rumi was aware enough to agree with Hwa on the matter; they couldn't risk the events of the night getting out to the public. And a battered and bruised Huntrix, accompanied by the returning Saja Boys, would've been plastered all over the news in a matter of hours. 

So Rumi had called the only person she could think of.

Healer Han arrived within thirty minutes. Immediately, he had beelined for Jinu.

Jinu, who had been unconscious since that moment in the basement—who had not uttered a single word since they had all escaped—lifted his head, stared past Han, past his brothers. Past Mira and Zoey, and watched as Rumi limped over to the nearest chair, cradling her broken arm.

"Her, first," He whispered.

Han had tried to protest. Jinu had shown him the full might of his demon form, fangs and all. "I will break every single finger that touches me before her," Came his hoarse, deathly warning. Han did not argue any more and Rumi was in so much pain that she selfishly couldn't find it within herself to argue. Han had, very skillfully, wrapped her injured arm in a cast and attached a sling around her shoulder. Thankfully, her nose was a matter of just pushing it back into place, and though it had hurt more than the initial blow, she was glad when Han finally secured a bandage over the repaired bridge, given her some strong painkillers and told her all she could do for the rest of her wounds was clean them thoroughly and keep them wrapped.

Finally, he moved on to Jinu. Han worked on him for an entire night and half the following day.

The shouts of pure torture that had ripped from Jinu's throat throughout the entirety of it were the worst things Rumi had ever heard. Nobody slept that night. Mira and Zoey, who had barely spoken a word to Rumi simply because they'd seemed to be struggling to find the right ones, had merely tucked themselves against Rumi's sides and kept her company as she so silently sobbed.

Though her sisters had left her side days ago, Rumi had not moved. Neither had Jinu. Han had stitched up what he could; the other wounds were too complicated for anyone other than an experienced surgeon to clean up. But the bleeding had stopped. Finally, the bleeding had stopped.

Rumi had changed his sheets more than a dozen times since he'd been placed into his bed. She was relieved to see the end of those awful, crimson stains. 

Still, though...as Rumi adjusted her grip on his hand, she wished he'd squeeze it back. Longed for a sign of life other than his breathing, his pulse. She wanted to see those eyes again; she wanted to rid herself of the memory of all that dreadful agony she had seen in them when they'd faced Celine. Even now, using Jinu as a physical anchor to remind herself that they were out, they had escaped, Rumi still felt as if part of her was still kneeling at Jinu's side, hands raised and awaiting chains that were never put on her, because Mira and Zoey had gotten them away.

But in her dreams, Rumi was there. In her dreams, Mira and Zoey did not help. 

In her dreams, it was her sisters who had chained her. Her sisters who had taken a whip to Jinu and then to Rumi herself. And in the background, Celine was always watching. Giving them directions, tips on how to inflict the most pain. In her dreams, Rumi's mother's lifeless body lay at Celine's feet, a hook piercing her heart.

And so Rumi had refused sleep for days, now. But as the sun began to set again and the quiet footsteps of life returning to the loft pitter-pattered over the hardwood floor, Rumi couldn't resist it any longer. Tucking her knees to her chest, her good arm keeping them secure, Rumi dipped her head and let slumber take her hostage, too.

—

In waking up, Rumi felt a weighty absence even before her eyelids had flickered open enough to let light filter through. Although the past few days had been filled with long periods of silence, there had always been the steadying rush of background noise coming from Rumi's side, the soft little whispers of air escaping lungs. Now, the lack of noise was deafening. Suffocating. There were no little breaths, no tiny grunts of discomfort. It was a thick blanket of nothingness that had cocooned itself around her without consent.

Rumi's eyes flew open. They were pitch black—her surroundings, with only subtle highlights of silver as the moon peeked through a cloud and gazed upon the loft. Where the light couldn't reach was an abundance of shadows, only adding to the gloom of the desolate space. And atop were a man had been lying for four days straight...there were only wrinkled sheets and the faintest of indents shaped roughly to the outline of a male body. 

She was on her feet in an instant, biting down her cry of pain as her joints creaked and her arm twinged from the sudden movement. Rumi glanced all around her, seeing if Jinu had rolled off the other side of the mattress, or was somehow hiding under his bundled-up duvet, but there was no sign of him and suddenly Rumi remembered a morning some three weeks ago, where she had woken up to his lack of presence and then spent two weeks searching for him only to find the man on the brink of death, hanging on by a thread, by chains.

"Jinu?" She whispered, bare feet padding over the floor as she emerged from behind the room divider and stood before the rest of the loft, scanning over the sleeping Saja Boys who had tucked themselves against the back wall by the lounging area. He wasn't there. Nor were there any signs that he had been. 

Maybe he'd gone to the kitchen, Rumi tried to reason, maybe he had fallen—

Except when she breached the entrance between the counters and saw not a soul around, Rumi's hope dwindled even further. In its place, a tangible despair.

He couldn't have left. He wouldn't—

A hiss of breath. A muffled curse bounded throughout the soundless loft. Down her spine, a spider made of frost and ice crawled. With the hair on the back of her neck prickling and standing at attention, Rumi turned and, like her ears had just been tuned to a whole new frequency, she could finally hear what had previously been hiding from her. Not waiting a second longer, Rumi quickly darted across the space towards the bathroom. Walls of frosted glass awaited her, with a door to match, designed for nobody to be able to see the details of what awaited beyond. But it didn't shield Rumi from the obvious figure beyond the blockade.

She slid the door open. Nearly fell to her knees.

Jinu stood, dressed only in a pair of worn, black boxes, with his arms braced against either side of the sink. Through a small, slightly misted mirror, his brown eyes bore into Rumi. 

Yet...Rumi couldn't meet his gaze. Not when the full expanse of his injuries was presented to her on such a vicious, angry display of marred flesh. Though some lacerations were somehow impossibly healing, the trauma was catastrophic. Not an inch of his usual pale tone was visible to her. What replaced it was a furious canvas of red and purple and black. Of crusted blood and warped flesh. Bruises and gashes and holes—

"Jinu," She rasped, and it was all she could manage when all of the air in her lungs had been torn from her. She had no choice but to brace herself with her only working arm against the door frame, knees threatening to buckle beneath her. Jinu looked unfazed. Withdrawn.

His eyes were not only void of pain, but of everything.

"I didn't mean to wake you." Monotone. Drained. But his body spoke a different story. Agitation was rife amongst his strained muscles and white-knuckled grip on the porcelain basin. Shoulders hunched, spine rigid, Rumi knew there was a deep-seated frustration that had captured him. Had drawn him from slumber at last. Trapped in his tight grasp was a damp cloth stained a deep pink. Next to the tap, lay a bottle of numbing ointment Rumi had been applying since Han had instructed her to do so when he had visited. 

Finally, she met his gaze. Understanding had somewhat settled her nerves. Rumi straightened and no longer felt the need to hold herself up. She took a step into the bathroom, and Jinu somehow found the ability to tense further.

"What are you doing?" The question was murmured. Soft, in an attempt to not only soothe Jinu but to leave the slumbering boys outside unaware that the two of them had woken. 

For a long while, he only stared at her. Within him, there seemed to be a war raging, those pools of black coffee simmering beneath half-shut lids. After his eternal scrutiny, it seemed the battle had ended at last. With a sigh of resignation, Jinu let the cloth he held drop into the sink with a wet slap before he grabbed Han's bottle and squeezed a helping of the medication onto the tips of his fingers. Muscles rippling from the movement, he stretched his absolute limit to reach a particularly gruesome injury along the right side of his back, but his fingers fell short. His arms flapped to his side, along with a huff of air that reeked of contempt.

"I woke up on a bed of a thousand nails," He said, studying his reflection, captivated by the marks littering his skin. 

Rumi braved a few more steps, now close enough she could reach out and feel him, if she so dared.

"Why didn't you wake me?"

Jinu scoffed, but it was not filled with ridicule. Not towards her, anyway. "Because you look like you haven't slept in years." 

"I'm fine—"

"And so am I."

"So stubborn," Rumi whispered, "Look at you." 

"How come you get to be fine, and I don't?" He questioned. No animosity, just sheer wonder. It was then that Jinu, through the reflection before him, scanned Rumi head to toe and back again, before his eyes narrowed ever so slightly on the sling still wrapped around her forearm. His jaw tightened, rippling as it worked through swallowing an angry lump in his throat.

"Jinu..." Rumi began, carefully rifling through her vocabulary and hand-picking her next words with utmost caution, "What you went through—"

"I know what I went through," He cut her off. Again, no ire. Just stifling withdrawal and a timbre as firm as steel. "I was there." It was then, on that hoarse reminder, that Jinu broke eye contact and his head dipped, hanging limply between his shoulder blades as the muscles on his back shifted once more. As a result, those injuries on his back stretched and not even this flat, distant Jinu could hold back the hiss of pain his body squeezed out from between clenched teeth.

"I'm sorry—"

"Enough," His command came sharp. Brutal, like she'd been struck down by a freight train, it was the most emotion she'd witnessed from him in a very long time. "What did I say about apologising to me?"

Rumi gulped, finding that she could not summon the words towards an adequate response, not when he was glaring at her so intently with not a hint of yellow in his eyes, but a raging fire burning within just the same, all from underneath a set of tensely furrowed brows atop a forehead straining against the veins that protruded from beneath the skin. 

"Told you not to do it, didn't I?" Rumi nodded, suddenly feeling like a scolded child. Satisfied, Jinu returned his attention to the cloth he'd dropped. Turning the faucet on, he rinsed the stained cotton under a steady stream of water before using it to wipe away at his face, where a thin layer of sweat had formed. No doubt due to his irritation towards the current state of his body. "Anyway," He sighed, and tried to reach around to itch at a different wound, but he fell short once more, "You needn't worry. We demons heal a little bit faster, don't we?"

Thinking of the pure agony Rumi had been in days before that had now fizzled out to a mild discomfort that only twinged when she shifted her left arm, Rumi lowered her head in acknowledgement,

"And even if we didn't," Jinu continued coolly, "I've become very used to pain in my centuries of existence."

As if it hadn't been damaged enough already, Rumi felt her heart shatter to a million pieces at that one, catastrophic revelation. But before she could even think about what to do next, Jinu flinched, his back twitched uncontrollably and he clawed at the skin of it, desperate for relief to ease the discomfort he was being tortured with. When he failed, yet again, his fist slammed against the sink. "It's just so fucking uncomfortable—"

It was instinct, the way Rumi moved. Natural, absent of all thought, all consideration. One moment, there was a safe amount of distance between the pair of them. Next, her breath ghosted over his spine. Every single inch of him seized up. Like a statue, he could only watch on as Rumi brushed against him, weaving her arm around his body to grab the bottle he had discarded. Then, without explanation or any form of warning, she was pushing the contents out onto her palm and soothing it into the spots he had been so desperately trying to reach.

Something rushed into the space around them. Something thick and hazy and hypnotic. Beneath her palm, she felt the heat of him increase with every single one of her gentle strokes. And though he was as rigid as stone, Jinu's chest heaved with breaths so laboured one would think he was dying at her touch. As if her treatment, something so mundane, was a fatality designed only for him. As if Jinu might crumble into pieces underneath her touch.

Her fingers ran over his surface, but her touch resonated far deeper than that. And it was so captivating—this devastating discovery—Rumi found that she, too, could no longer breathe. 

"If I can't apologise," She murmured, a phantom of a smile disguised in her velvet tone, "Then let me at least help."

"Fine," He coughed, "Just—fine."

"Does it hurt?" She asked, after a long silence, "Is it sore?" There wasn't much space left of him that she hadn't smeared the ointment over, but Jinu was still tesnse against the sink, his knuckles still pale as he clutched on to the sides for dear life and a sense of desperation overcame Rumi because she wasn't sure what else could be done to ease his discomfort.

"It just—" He began, but a muffled curse interrupted him when Rumi accidentally scraped her nail too close to a particularly nasty gash, "it just itches," he confessed on a rush of air, "So bad."

"Oh," Rumi's lips parted, catching his reflection for a brief moment over his shoulder, before she focused on his back again. Brows furrowed, she observed the angry surface. There were a lot of injuries, and she had to be careful not to agitate them further, but...Rumi could see spots where it would be safe to rake ner nails over, maybe offer him a little reprieve. So, without even thinking about it, that's what she did.

The atmosphere shifted in an instant. Jinu froze. Stopped breathing. Rumi didn't really pay much attention, too enraptured by the task she had set herself. Unaware that Jinu was falling apart, that his heart was racing. The air was hot, heavy. His breathing returned, though more uneven than before and his head...whereas before it had been hanging limply against his chest. Now, he had thrown it backwards, exposing the column of his neck, the lump that bobbled at the base of it. His mouth was parted, his breath so full, so weighted and rapid, and the sheen of sweat he had previously wiped away had returned with a vengeance.

Rumi thought it was just sheer relief.

Until he moaned. The world halted.

Her body locked up. Her cheeks burned furiously. She paused her movements, fingertips lingering millimetres away from his skin. 

Then, a choking sound. "Don't stop," He croaked. "Please."

And Rumi could not deny him. Not like this, not when he was so...so frantic with need. Begging for her touch. It was a thrill unlike any other and her heart was hammering against her chest and her blood was simmering with something she couldn't acknowledge because it would be detrimental to them both. 

However, curiosity had her hook, line and sinker. There was no controlling her actions, her wonder. Rumi could only watch on with wide eyes as intrigue controlled her and her nails scraped lower, lower—

Ripping her from the trance she'd thrown herself in, Jinu spun in an instant. Chest to heaving chest, they stared at each other. Rumi through her brows and Jinu down the straight bridge of his nose. Tightly in his fist, he held her wrist. Stopping it from moving. From sending the pair of them into a spiral neither would be able to escape.

Face on fire, Rumi's mouth moved in a way not unlike a fish out of water, struggling to locate her voice, to explain herself.

"What are you doing?" God, he looked pissed off. A being made only out of wrath and fury, towering above her as if he might bring her to her knees. Rumi would do so willingly. But humiliation slowly seeped in, like a cold flush of water through her veins. 

"I was just..." She trailed off. Realising she had no explanation, Rumi reached for the lotion again. "I've not finished. Let me—"

He blocked her from getting around him. From finishing what she'd started. "Rumi, stop—"

"I'm nearly done," She interrupted, trying to wiggle her wrist free, trying to get him to turn around again, "Jinu, let me go—"

"Rumi." Oh, she was done for. The authority with which he spoke, the way just her name could sound like a command...and with him crowding over her like that...god, he could do whatever he wanted and she wouldn't have a say. She needed to distract him, needed to get back on track, soothe his wounds and then disappear for an eternity.

If only he would just release her. She squirmed again yet her struggle was futile against Jinu's grip. If anything, his hold on her grew tighter and tighter, more adamant on preventing her the more she tried to get away. But she just needed to get the ointment on him and then get out of the bathroom so she could deal with her humiliation in private.

But he just. Wouldn't. Move—

Rumi shoved him.

Jinu's patience snapped.

With one tug of his arm, Rumi crashed against him. Pressed entirely against his body. Felt the muscles, the skin, the—

Her mind blanked. Something...something poked against her stomach—

"I told you to stop."

With a throat too dry to even breathe, let alone talk, Rumi kept her gaze on his bare chest and just ceased. Everything. Jinu kept her pinned. Kept her against him, feeling it all, touching what she'd caused.

"Didn't I, Rumi? I told you to stop."

"You..." She stammered, "You're—"

One brief glance down at his waist was all it took for her to confirm the reason her thoughts had warped into sheer depravity. But that look cost her, too. Jinu smiled, and it was all feline. Predatory. He had his prize in his clutches.

"Ah," His lips smacked, "That." To his credit, Jinu gave her pause to use her words, but they had failed her entirely. She couldn't look at him. Couldn't look up, or down and so her eyes carried on drilling holes into his chest, her heart in her throat, her stomach in turmoil. "I couldn't help it, Rumi," He whispered, "It just felt so. Good."

"Jinu..."

"So good, Rumi. So good."

Oh, she was going to pass out. Fighting for air, Rumi braved one more look down but was stopped by a palm cupping her jaw. Instead, Jinu forced her to look at him. Cheeks flushed, eyes wild and fatal, he wetted his lips, "Ignore it," He uttered, "It's natural. Ignore it." 

"I'm—"

"No."

"But—"

"I said ignore it, Rumi." 

But how? How could she possibly ignore such a thing when there was a desire so thick coursing through her right now with each beat of her heart, each swipe of his fingers against her chin, her jaw? And his laboured breaths sent his chest pushing into her own and she could feel him everywhere. Feel how deeply he had responded to her, feel how desperately he wanted her not to ignore that firmness arching into her skin despite his words, his refusal. She wanted him, all of him. Wanted to feel Jinu against her, inside her. Wanted him to consume her, to bury himself under her skin and stay there until their flesh morphed together as one and formed a new whole, a new them, where they couldn't be separated. Ever again.

Yet, Jinu didn't allow her to voice such longing. Distracted, his eyes scanned over her face, her body. Her hair. And for the first time since setting foot in the bathroom, Rumi wanted to shrink into herself. Away from him—she knew she looked horrendous. Knew she hadn't taken care of herself the past few days and could only imagine the odour permeating from the layers and layers of dirt and dried blood caking every inch of her.

"How come there is not a speck of filth upon me, but you still look like you crawled out from hell and barely survived?"

Rumi nearly choked on her tongue, coughing and spluttering, pushing herself a little further away from Jinu—who, thankfully, allowed her the space—before she finally composed herself enough to answer. "It is too difficult with my arm. To bathe properly, I mean. With you, I managed. Plus, Han helped me originally, said that you needed to be cleaned up, otherwise you'd be at risk of infection."

"I see," He replied calmly. Too calm. Rumi braced herself. "Did he not say the same for you?"

"I told him I'd deal with it."

She tried not to flinch at the disappointment in his eyes. The subtle anger. "And did you?"

Finally, the stupor she was in had cleared. Rumi regained some of her backbone. Straightening up, she levelled him with an unimpressed glare. "I had more pressing matters."

"Not good enough."

"Excuse me—"

"Get in." Jinu jerked his head towards an unknown target behind her, taking a step forward, crowding her.

"What on earth—"

Another step. Rumi had no choice but to retreat and could only stare wide-eyed as Jinu followed her across the bathroom floor. "In," He demanded, not even looking at her, now, focused only on his hidden objective over her shoulder.

"Jinu," Rumi reached her hands up to press against his bare chest, trying her best to ignore the feeling of a thunderous pulse beneath her fingers, "Stop." But Jinu didn’t stop.

He continued his advance, smothering her until all she could see was his collarbone and all she could feel was the weight of his body pressing into hers, forcing her back, back, back.

“Get in,” he said again.

"Stop fucking around, "Rumi tried to laugh him off, tried to get around him, tried to do something but Jinu would not stop moving against her, pushing her, covering her until—

The back of her knees collided with something hard, and she fell on her backside onto a narrow ledge, about to tumble over her head if it wasn't for Jinu's firm grip on her wrist keeping her upright. Once steadied, he finally let go but he did not back off, instead, his shins brushed against her knee caps, and his back had him slightly hunched over her. The message was clear; he may have let go, but she would not be leaving anytime soon.

No longer able to bear the intensity of his attention, Rumi looked down, to her left and right and finally behind her. Jinu had cornered her to the bath...

He couldn't possibly mean to...

"What are you doing?"

If he had heard her, Jinu didn't make it known. Instead, his fingers toyed with the neckline of her hoodie, tugging ever so gently at it, peeking at the sliver of skin his movements unveiled. "Have you got anything on, under this?"

Rumi's stomach leapt out of her throat. "What—"

Jinu sighed, as if this was all one, massive inconvenience to him. And then he was bending over, leaning into her, getting closer, closer until his breath wafter over her own and his lips ghosted over the tip of her nose and his eyes flashed the warmest of yellow before fading back to brown and when he spoke next, his voice the smoothness of honey but razor sharp and intoxicating, Rumi forgot how to function. Forgot that she had lived a life before him. Everything was Jinu, he was all she could see and feel and smell and hear and god, it was the most paralysing drug, she never wanted it to end. Never wanted this spell to break.

"If I take this off you," He started, as if he was speaking to someone with only two brain cells to their name, "Will I find you naked underneath, Rumi?"

Her entire self short-circuited. There was smoke wafting off from every single one of her nerves. "I—"

"Because if that's the case," He smiled, nothing friendly at all in the way his fangs gleamed at her, "We'll be in a lot of trouble, won't we?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Swallowed. Parted her lips again, darted her tongue across—

Wrong move.

Shooting his hand out, Rumi's jaw became his prisoner again. "You've already seen what your touch alone does to me." Rumi resisted the urge to flit her eyes downwards, "If I see a pretty pair of tits when you've already got me so fucking desperate, what do you think I'm going to do, Rumi?"

Anything. Everything. Do it all, take it all.

"I'm—I have a bra on."

He had the nerve to look mildly disappointed, moments before his eyes flashed again. Cocking his head to the side, Jinu let his hand trail down her neck, her shoulder. Over her arm, following its natural path to her waist, where his fingers pinched the band of her leggings, his eyes scorching a path of fire as he watched his own motion.

"And these?" He hummed, "What will I find under here?"

"Nothing, I—"

This time, there was no controlling the power of those otherworldly eyes of Jinu's. They seared her in all their burning glory, and the room around them flared in indigo light as his patterns shone from deep beneath his skin, covering them both in the very proof of his nature. Reminding her of who she was dealing with. What he could do to her. Rumi wanted to let him, but she couldn't. Not when he was like this, not when he was still healing.

"I meant I have...I've got—" The fire dimmed, only slightly, but Rumi had successfully tugged him away from the edge he'd been about to fling himself off.

"You've got something on for me under there, too?" The rumble came from the very back of his throat. He still gazed at her so intensely, head remaining tilted to one side, fangs still very much on display.

"For you," Rumi scoffed, trying her best to claw back some sense of control for herself, "ridiculous—"

Two hands clasped each side of her face so tightly she could no longer move her mouth. Could not answer back when Jinu delivered a declaration so firmly it rattled right through to her bones. "No," He said. Simply. Plainly, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "All of it, of you, is for me from now on. Understood?"

No. Yes.

Please don't let go.

She could only nod. Jinu's lips twitched with the hint of a smile, "Good girl," he murmured, tapped her cheek, and then there were...there were metres between them—

"Where are your toiletries?"

Brain spasming, Rumi could only stare at him, blinking. Trying to rid herself of the daze she was trapped in. Trying to wrap her mind around the way things had gone from scorching heat to lukewarm neutrality. Trying to figure out how Jinu stood before her, so evenly, so structured, after he'd been moments away from taking everything she was willing to offer. "My—huh?"

A lighthearted sigh of exasperation poured from between his lips, "Shampoo. Conditioner. Body wash. Where are they?"

The fog was still so thick, so dense in her head, that it took a few more blinks for Rumi to finally register what he was saying. What he was planning to do, and then an unwelcome shyness took over. She found she could no longer look at him. His previous questions made sense, his crowding her over to the bath...he intended to wash her. It was mortifying.

With a newfound inability to speak, Rumi could only point at the bathroom cabinet Mira and Zoey had stashed her stuff in when they'd returned in the evening. Without another word, Jinu marched over to it, flung open the doors, and grabbed the clear back filled with all of her care products. It was only slightly embarrassing how much she had. Rumi loved her hair, but god, the maintenance was expensive. And draining.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that Jinu was insisting on doing it for her. Although she doubted he'd know what he was doing. But that was fine, she could talk him through it. Except, Jinu opened the bag on his way over to her and had already begun rifling through it, pulling out everything he somehow knew she would need, leaving the rest to sit in the bottom of the pouch. When he approached her once more, he crouched and settled all of the products down on the corner of the bath, where a little shelf was built into it.

Then, getting on his knees, he said nothing as he undid the knot to Rumi's sling and eased it off of her, using a hand to keep her arm from dropping at the sudden lack of support. He tugged at the sleeve of her opposite arm, and Rumi worked with him as he pulled it off of her, exposing the bare skin underneath. "Hold your arm," He commanded softly, and Rumi obeyed without much thought. It took some work, some tricky manoeuvring, but they eventually got her wounded side free, and then the hoodie was off.

Leaving her, as promised, in her bra. But Jinu didn't look. There was a new purpose in his eyes, a thorough sense of control. Restraint. He had one objective: to take care of her. And he wouldn't be distracted by the sight of her body. At this, disappointment didn't bloom in her chest. Instead, something warm. Something delicate. Sacred. And as he helped her remove her leggings, tearing her limbs free of the material and folding them gently atop her hoodie on the ground before aiding her into the tub properly, Rumi felt another sensation tugging in her gut. A feeling she was not ready to voice, but one she still welcomed.

It only bloomed further and further as Jinu took out the band holding the tails of her braid and worked through each carefully woven knot until the entirety of her hair was spilling all over the tub in long, thick clusters of lilac. 

For a long while, Jinu stared at her like he'd never seen her before. Rumi had no choice but to duck behind strands hanging limply along her cheek to conceal the growing pinkness of her face. 

"Rumi," He said on a gasp, voice hoarse. Raw. 

She ignored his thorough gaze. "You'll have to brush it first," She warned quietly, "Otherwise it will be a mess afterwards."

Jinu swallowed the words he had wanted to say. "Okay," He nodded. "Okay. There's a lot of blood, it might pull—"

"It's fine," She mumbled, "Celine used to leave my scalp burning when I was a child."

The pair of them froze.

What a stupid thing to say. What a fucking stupid thing to say—

"I'll be more careful. With you."

With everything, was what he didn't add. But there was no need; Rumi knew she was safe now. Right to her marrow, Rumi knew she would never be hurt by someone she loved again.

And the way Jinu eased the brush through her hair, took an hour just untangling it all because he was being so heartachingly wary of harming her, was only further testament to his oath. 

When it was time to finally wash her hair, he was just as thorough, just as patient. Listening to Rumi's instructions like they were holy prayer and him a loyal devotee. His fingers dug into her scalp, massaging the ache she felt after having a brush prick at it for so long, and she let herself relax, let her shoulders flop and when Jinu realised she had melted so thoroughly she was no longer able to keep herself upright, he climbed into the tub behind her. Clothes and all and he held her for as long as it took to get her clean. And it was paradise, leaning into his chest, letting his arms wrap around her and soothe her and hold her. Keep her together, keep her close.

In that bathroom, with him, Rumi felt untouchable.

Even after he was finished, had rinsed the final suds out of her hair and had dragged a cloth over her body, scrubbing it free of the residue she had let build up for days, he stayed there. Water sprayed from the discarded shower head lying at one end of the tub. The first few rays of sunlight breached the loft, and they stayed there.

The guests in the lounge stirred, and Jinu stayed there.

The water ran cold, but Jinu was still there. Keeping her warm. Keeping her safe.

Keeping her home.

Eventually, they had to get out. Had to step out of their little bubble. Jinu had wrapped the softest towel around her, replaced her sling and carried her formless body back into the bedroom. Wet hair, damp towel, and all, he placed Rumi in his bed, tucked the duvet up to her chin and pressed the gentlest of kisses against her forehead. 

She'd thought he'd been about to leave, was about to protest but—

But Jinu climbed in behind her, wrapped a firm arm around her waist, and breathed as if it was his first time doing so.

As if he had been suffocating for so long.

Finally, Rumi slept without interruption. Without visions, without ghosts.

Finally, Rumi was okay.

They were okay.

Whatever faced them in the future, whatever consequences they faced for leaving Celine unconscious—but alive—in that basement, they'd deal with it together.

She would never be alone. Not again.

Chapter Text

Today was a rare day, indeed.

Not a single fleck of a cloud in the sky, a warm, early spring sun and a breeze as gentle as cotton were hard to come by this time of the year. And, usually, Huntrix would be touring the world right now, show after show after show, but the group hadn't performed in months, their hiatus still going strong, and so Rumi found herself with a gloriously precious commodity: 

Time. Lots of it. Before, such a thing felt like a punishment. A burden. Because every waking second and every second beyond that was spent with an ache so tremendous that most days, she had been suffocating. Most days, she hadn't left her room. Yet, now...

Jinu had taken a corner of the rooftop for himself. Long limbs draped over a simple lounger, eyes closed as he embraced the warmth of the sun against his skin, he had been dozing for most of the afternoon. Rumi had found him hours ago, after she'd woken up and he hadn't been there by her side. She'd padded all around the loft, ignoring any comments from the Saja Boys—who had been desperately trying to wind her up—until she eventually found a ladder on the side of the building and climbed it without thought.

At the top, she was yet again amazed by Jinu's hideout in this forgotten corner of Seoul. Just like the loft below them, the exposed expanse of sun-worn concrete nestled atop the building was covered in all manner of foliage adorned occasionally with lights of various shapes and sizes: strings, lamps, lanterns—there was no pattern to their placement along the greenery, no symmetry or synchronisation, just a splattering of green and gold and all the colours of a kaleidoscope gleaming in the afternoon sun. Just like the various flowers, under the rays, Jinu bloomed.

Rumi had been watching him for a very, very long time; she couldn't tear her eyes off of him. Not when the light blessed him so thoroughly, casting his exposed torso and chest in a wondrous glow. Skin shimmering with a thin layer of moisture, mind lost to slumber and a face void of worry, of stress, Rumi wanted to have the image burned into her brain. Perhaps it already was. Sometimes, she couldn't believe he was real.

Couldn't believe he had slept by her side every night for the past week. And she was finding it impossible to take her eyes off him, there was nothing else in her sight, not when the edges of her vision were blurred and useless and the only thing she saw was him as he slept so peacefully unaware of how her heart was racing, how her pulse was on her tongue and her skin was ablaze in a wildfire unable to be contained, extinguished. There was only Jinu, his face and his hair and his body and Rumi was gorging on the sight. Feasting until she could no longer take any more, until she might die if she watched him for a moment more.

It was then that something swiped against her chin.

Yanked free of her trance, Rumi scowled as she turned to face Hwa, who had placed himself next to her a few hours ago, the rest of the Saja Boys in tow. They were all lounging around another corner of the roof—Bae-Jin and Roma draped over the low wall guarding the edges of the building, Miso and Hwa sat on either side of her, cross-legged on the floor, half-focused on a game of cards sprawled out before them. Rumi stared daggers at Hwa, who was smiling at her far too smugly.

"You were drooling," He grinned. 

"Basically foaming at the mouth," Miso added, unhelpfully. 

"Bastards," Rumi gritted, then nodded her head at the game she may have forgotten about, "Whose turn is it, anyway?"

The pair of them shared a conspiratory look, one that Rumi wanted to slap off their faces, "It's been yours for, uh...how long, Hwa?"

"I'd say at least twenty minutes," Hwa answered Miso, still with that arrogant smirk curling both of their lips. "If not more."

"You're both intolerable," Rumi grumbled and flicked through her deck of cards, if only to stave off the overwhelming awareness prickling at the back of her neck, the same awareness she always had whenever a certain demon was nearby.

"Ignore them," Roma called, swallowing a big gulp of his boba that he and Jin were sharing, "They've been staring at those two—" He pointed somewhere off to Rumi's right "—for longer." 

Following his gesture, Rumi's eyes landed upon Mira and Zoey, who had come to the rooftop a half-hour ago and perched themselves a good distance away from everybody else, no doubt in an attempt to give Rumi space. And to give them space from the Saja Boys, for it had been an uneasy alliance in the days after rescuing Jinu from Celine. Tensions were high and not helped by the fact that Rumi had yet to have a conversation with them. There was a tenderness in her heart, her soul, that still twinged every time she saw their faces, as if subconsciously she still recalled the months after Gwi Ma had torn Jinu from her.

Still recalled the lack of compassion she had received from her sisters. And hadn't forgotten that day at the Idol Awards, when they'd turned their weapons on her.

They may be with her now, helping her in whatever way they can, but Rumi still saw the prejudice in their eyes when they gazed upon the Sajas, and while she could tolerate that, what Rumi couldn't brush off was the distrust still rife in their eyes every time Jinu dared do as much as breathe in their presence. After all, in some capacity, they had aided Celine with capturing him. Torturing him. And even when Rumi had gone to free him, they had hesitated. Paused before realising that maybe what Celine had been doing was not justified, not honourable, but inhumane.

Mira and Zoey had looked at Jinu's mauled body and had only decided to do something about it when Rumi's life had been hanging in the balance, too.

If she was acting harshly, so be it. Rumi turned away from the girls once more, who had only just noticed Rumi's attention—Zoey attempting a half-hearted wave of her fingers—and brought her gaze back to the demons. 

"It's never going to happen," Rumi warned both Miso and Hwa, "I'd quit whilst you're ahead."

Hwa pouted, "How come you get to pine, and we don't?"

Jin snorted, "Hers is reciprocated, buddy."

With a roll of her eyes and a grunt of disapproval, Rumi flung her cards to the ground and din't care about the way they fell into disarray, she no longer had any interest in finishing the game they had started an hour ago, "You guys are insufferable," She complained, "We do not pine after each other—"

Half focused on the boba Roma was passing to him, Jin haphazardly flicked his wrist towards Rumi, past Rumi and said, bringing the straw to his lips, "What would you call that, then?"

Brows furrowed, Rumi twisted her torso to look behind her once more. When her eyes landed on a familiar pair of brown, something fizzled through her bloodstream, frayed her nerves and locked up the entirety of her spine. Jinu, the sun still beaming down upon him like his own personal spotlight, had his gaze boring into Rumi's. With eyebrows slightly scrunched, lips parted no more than an inch and chest rising and falling faster than it had been doing during his nap, his attention scorched her. In his eyes—damn him—was an unmistakable, tangible longing. All of it, for her.

It took all of her might to tear away from his focus. And even with her back turned yet again, she still felt twin holes in the back of her head, aching with the same longing pouring from the stare that had created them. Facing the Saja Boys once more, Rumi's agitation returned with a vengeance at the sight of their far-too-pleased expressions. "Don't say a word," She threatened. And Jin, at least, had the decency to flinch.

"What?" Hwa shrugged as he gathered the discarded cards and re-dealt another round, this time just between himself and Miso, seeing as Rumi now sat in defensive mode—knees folded to her chest, chin resting atop them and eyes, as usual, firing off warning signs at any who dared approach her. "It's nice that he's finally warming up to someone."

"Yeah," Miso snickered, "Between everything with Gwi Ma and Celine, the guy needs it."

Roma slapped Miso on the back of his head. Rumi didn't waste a breath, "What do you mean?" She demanded, flattening her legs and leaning as far forward as her knotted muscles would allow.

"Idiot," Roma cursed under his breath, and the notion appeared to be shared by the rest of the boys as they all glared at the man currently hiding behind the mop atop his head.

Rumi paid them no attention; instead, she burned holes into Miso, "What. Do. You. Mean?" 

A breeze blew over them all, rustling clothes and tousling hair as it dragged over the buildings in the neighbourhood. Distantly, there were the sounds of car horns and laughter, a child screaming in the street and a mother begging it to hush. But there, above the loft, was pure silence. Something had shifted upon that breeze, bringing with it a heaviness Rumi became oppressed by. She saw the solemn looks on the demons' faces, felt those eyes scalding the back of her head, and felt two other pairs piercing her cheek from somewhere to her right.

However accidental, Rumi had uncovered a hidden secret, a shame based upon the way the Sajas had deflated, shoulders slumped, heads hanging low between them. Only Hwa looked at her directly with polite resignation, as if preparing to deny her. 

And that wouldn't do. "If you dare lie to me," Rumi glowered at him, at Miso, and then jerked her head to the side where she knew Mira and Zoey were watching, deaf, "I'll make it that they never so much as look at you again." And though the two demons next to her had been nothing but lighthearted about their infatuation with her sisters, Rumi knew Hwa was remembering that day in the warehouse, trapped in that basement, forced to endure blow after blow from Mira. 

Mira, who had ended up saving them. Rumi knew Hwa had unfinished business with her friend. Knew he wasn't the type to let it be. Miso, too. His throat had been slit by Zoey, who had admired him until the very bitter end. Neither planned to let their opponents go free so easily. And so it was their pride, mixed with emotions Rumi didn't dare decipher, that had Hwa speaking up.

"Gwi Ma has been torturing Jinu. Ever since Namsan." Unaware that the ground had crumbled beneath Rumi and she was now hanging carelessly in the air with nothing to hold her, nothing to catch her as she awaited the eventual plummet to certain death, Hwa continued, "He found a new way to feed. It's why Jinu has been killing. Well, part of it anyway. Gwi Ma can only send us—his reapers—to the human realm; no pure demons can create tears in the Honmoon. Because of this, they cannot feed souls back to Gwi Ma. And since we reapers cannot take souls the way pure demons can, Gwi Ma relies on our misery. He makes Jinu kill, and then feeds off the humanity that rushes to the surface after slaughtering a being from a race he once belonged to."

Her heart threatened to burst through her chest and crash to the floor before her, leaving her gaping and bleeding out for all of them to see, to witness. Rumi felt that thread in her gut, felt it pull and pull and pull until she was certain she would vomit. Certain she would die.

Jinu...

She couldn't look at him despite every single one of her nerves screaming at her to turn around. Rumi couldn't let him see the anguish this revelation was causing her because he was staring at her, even now, and she knew in her heart that if he saw the tears threatening to spill out of her eyes and down her cheeks, he would be over in an instant. The boys would not share any further information. Information that she craved after being kept in the dark for so long. Despite everything they had already endured, Jinu was still sealed so tightly shut that Rumi's fingertips had begun to erode from her efforts of prying him open. He barely spoke to her, barely came within a metre of her. The only time she got the opportunity to feel him, to breathe, was at night when he would silently climb into bed behind her and refuse to let her go until the sun came up.

Then, he would be a ghost again. Floating around his own home like a wraith that did not belong, a phantom of frost and desolation and despair. There were wounds in his heart he wouldn't let anyone tend to, there was an ache in his eyes that no smile could hide, no laughter could cure. She was losing herself searching for him. Rumi had no time to focus on anything else; her thoughts were only of Jinu, always of Jinu. It was unrelenting and heartbreaking and poisonous. It was the happiest she'd ever been, the saddest she'd ever felt. 

To have him back, to have him at arm's reach but thousands of miles away yet. Somehow further than he had been dead. "If that's the case," Rumi forced a swallow, "Why isn't Gwi Ma forcing all of you to serve him, too?"

All of them winced, as if an old wound had resurfaced, one they all shared. 

This time, it was Jin who spoke, his voice void of the warmth Rumi had become so used to these days. "Because Jinu never would've let that happen."

"Bae-Jin," Roma warned, but the man himself ignored his brother.

"When Jinu found us all, we were boys thrust together in one tiny room at some remote orphanage where there was barely any food or water to spare for us. All of it went to the women, the girls. We were fed the scraps. One day, I ventured into the nearest village at night. My goal was to steal something for us to eat, to ease the ache in our stomachs if only by a fraction. But I was caught," He paused, absent-mindedly scratching at his wrist. "The butcher who had found me attempted to saw my hand off as punishment. And I guess my screaming was so loud they heard it in hell. I still remember it so clearly, the moment when Jinu appeared in the doorway."

The rest of them couldn't stifle tiny little huffs of amusement, as if they all recalled the same memory simultaneously but did not want to share it with anyone else. With Rumi. Despite this, though, Jin carried on, the traces of a weak, bemused smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Back then, I was terrified of him. The cloak, the hat. The eyes burning like fire. When he stopped the butcher from harming me further, I was no longer scared. He paid the man off and then walked me back to the orphanage. He asked me why I had tried to steal, and I told him that I could show him. So I led him back to these guys, my brothers..."

His next words were accompanied by a delicate tenderness, fuelled by warmth and with something Rumi wouldn't dare name as love because they would tease her about it until the end of her days, but...that is what it was. The Saja Boys, whom Rumi had once deemed simply as Gwi Ma's minions, shared a bond much deeper than an alliance with an evil king. They were loyal to Jinu, right to their marrow.

"Jinu started visiting regularly. We had no idea who or what he was. Until Gwi Ma started whispering in our ears. Telling us about all that Jinu kept secret—his riches, his lavish life. His immortality. And we were urchins leeching off of charity, wondering when we would get the next scrap of food thrown at us. So when the demon king offered us an eternity of comfort, in return for our unwavering loyalty, we were all naive enough to agree."

"He was furious," Roma whispered. "His anger could've raized Seoul as it stands today. Jinu knew Gwi Ma had taken us to punish him for the many good deeds he had done for us since discovering Bae-Jin on the brink of starvation. Gwi Ma wanted Jinu's life shrouded in darkness, with the only source of light his eternal flame. And so he took us from him, too. And destroyed the Jinu we had come to adore as our brother. He was never the same after that. The things he did only served himself...we think he had grown selfish out of fear that if he leant his warmth to anyone else, Gwi Ma would ensure they suffer for it, to punish him. Even now, he still blames himself for Gwi Ma turning us into reapers."

"When you sealed the new Honmoon," Miso added, as severe as the others, "Jinu knew Gwi Ma would be desperate to find a new way to feed. He attempted to bargain with Gwi Ma, telling the king that if there was a new method of keeping his flame burning, he would do whatever it takes to discover it. On one condition," His voice had turned grave, and there was a suffocating quilt of remorse now thrown over each of their heads, crushing them under the weight of it all. Rumi's pulse fluttered in her chest, her throat. She didn't like where this was going, she didn't like it one bit—

"Jinu wanted us freed." A lone tear spilt out of Rumi's eyes. The holes in the back of her head faded away. Jinu had finally stopped his staring. Rumi's heart ached at the possibility that he might be hearing his brothers' confessions, and instead of coming to them, of accepting their warmth, their gratitude, he kept himself away. In the lonesome cold, where—Rumi now knew—he believed he deserved to be. 

It was the farthest thing from true. She wished she could make him see how worthy he was. How beautiful the colours of his soul lit up the people around him. He didn't even have to try; he didn't have to do anything, and Rumi felt him. Always. He was the one person who had ever dared look beyond her surface and he had not flinched. Not once.

"Gwi Ma mistook his bargaining for a suspicion that Jinu already had the answers he needed. Jinu was held captive in his fire for a year, being burned alive, healed, then burned again for what felt like a century for us and probably an eternity for him. We assumed Gwi Ma was attempting to force the answers out of him. Answers he did not have. It was us, in the end, that figured out the way for the king to feed," Shame overtook Jin as he explained, "He could unleash his reapers unto the world, have them kill, and then feed off the shreds of humanity such a crime would draw out from those who had been human once, too. We offered to do it for him. To test the theory."

"Jinu had other ideas," Roma interrupted, a regretful bitterness coating his words. "He told Gwi Ma he would do the work capable of all of us, all by himself. And then he had Gwi Ma banish us from the realm, had us trapped in this city ever since."

Rumi blanched. "You've been up here all this time?"

"For about a month, yeah."

"But why would Jinu prevent you from helping Gwi Ma, if he was just going to end up helping him, too?"

"Because for Gwi Ma to feed from the reapers—"

"He has to burn me from the inside out." 

That voice. 

The boys froze, staring wide-eyed at a place just above where Rumi sat. A shadow engulfed her, removing the warmth of the spring sun from her skin. In its place, a crippling cold summoned goosebumps all over her skin, causing her hairs to stand on end, and as if that wasn't enough, two hands bracketed the side of Rumi's neck, holding her there, soothing the skin, pulling her against a pair of long, toned legs. Because of his grip, she couldn't turn or stand. All she could do was tilt her head and meet her gaze to the underside of Jinu's jaw as he loomed over her, pinning her against him. Grip soft, but firm, like he would do anything in his power to keep her right there, with him, but would do so without inflicting a single bruise upon her skin.

What Jinu didn't know was that he needn't resort to such methods. Rumi would stay put with just his word asking so. 

"That's enough gossip for today, don't we think?" 

"Us? Gossip? Never," Roma was scratching the back of his head, a nervous smile painted across his face. The others weren't too dissimilar in their reaction to Jinu's sudden presence. None of them could look him in the eye. The hands atop Rumi's shoulders crept round to the front of her throat, forcing it to stay tilted as Jinu looked down upon her, ignoring the rest of the guys' bouts of denial.

"Are you talking about me, Rumi?"

"So narcissistic," Her eyes journeyed to the back of her skull, "Must you make everything about you?"

The grip on her jaw tightened, a thumb stretched out to caress the skin growing taut over it. Rumi swallowed, the lump in her throat struggling to slip past Jinu's ever-tightening grasp. "I would quite like it if it were," He murmured, those eyes of his not even flickering in the slightest as he peered down at her, "To be the only thing on your mind..." His mouth parted, his tongue wetting his lips, "That would feel so good, no?"

"Depends," Rumi said, eyes narrowing, "Right now you're on my mind for all the wrong reasons."

He faltered. Only slightly, and recuperated instantly, but Rumi had not mistaken the way his face had fallen. "Have my brothers been filling your head with lies, angel?"

"Don't play those tricks of yours, Jinu," She scolded, and at last pried his hands away from her so that she could rise to her feet and meet him face-to-face, "You may be able to fool them with this front you've been putting on, but not me."

From this close, she could see the truth behind the arrogant mask on his face. Could see the concern, along with a slight panic, swimming beneath the surface of his eyes, disturbing the otherwise calm lakes of liquid cocoa.

"What tricks—"

"You need to stop this madness. The murdering. Being Gwi Ma's pet. Pretending everything is under control. All of it."

"Why would I do that now, when I've gotten so good at it?" He taunted, taking a step closer to her, knees almost brushing. His scent wafted over her then, a smell she had grown so used to recently: jasmine and spice, soft and sharp. It had a habit of infiltrating her senses and weakening all of the bones currently holding her upright, but she did not let this effect show. Not then, when she knew the slightest crack in her walls would be exploited by the man before her, used to manipulate her into standing down—something she couldn't do anymore. Rumi had been quiet since Jinu had been freed, had ignored his late returns in the middle of the night, sometimes smelling faintly of blood, most of the time still covered in it. But after hearing what the Sajas had to say, she would tolerate no more.

"Whatever it is that we all must face in the future, we need to do it together. This is bigger than your pride, Jinu. You need to let us see what is going on inside that head of yours."

"I have no idea what you're on about—"

"You're highly intolerable sometimes, you know that? Who said that you get to make all the decisions, the sacrifices, huh?"

"Who said I didn't?"

"Me. Your brothers. Hell, I'm sure even Mira and Zoey have something to say about it—"

"Word," The two girls interrupted in unison. Jinu flashed a brief scowl behind him, but the expression had dissipated when he faced Rumi once more. In its place, a face void of any emotion whatsoever. A sight she had seen many times before. A sight she loathed with every single cell in her body. He was an impossible man, most of the time, and it was enough to make her want to tear her hair out, strand by strand.

"Make your point," He deadpanned, "And get it over with. I have somewhere to be."

For a long while, Rumi contemplated her next actions. Eyes darting back and forth between his own, she weighed out her options. Like she had done so many times prior today, she thought about trying to reason with Jinu, to make him see the sense in letting her in, letting her help. But she knew now what she didn't back then, Jinu acted like this out of protection. There was something he was shielding Rumi from, like he had shielded his brothers from Gwi Ma; she was certain of it. And so her words would go wasted on him; there was no use when he was so thoroughly set on his private plans.

There was more to this, to him, than any of them knew. He was hiding something, and that much was certain, but there were no answers for her questions to be found with him, or with anyone on that rooftop.

Deep within her, the sound of a door unlocking reverberated through her soul.

Mind made up, Rumi jerked her chin upwards and pierced Jinu with a gaze sent straight down the bridge of her nose. "No need," She hummed, "I have somewhere to be, too."

It was clear he hadn't expected such a response. It was clear he had depended on more backlash from Rumi over his stubbornness. He had the nerve to look mildly agitated. Rumi bit back her indignation. 

"Hwa," She called out without looking away from the man before her, "Are you ready?"

"Uh...sure?" 

"Let's go then—"

"What is this?" Jinu's eyes flashed a brief flicker of gold, his nostrils flaring, "What are you playing at, now?"

Rumi offered him a small, smug little smirk as she backed away from him. Backed away and strolled over to Hwa, who had gotten to his feet and was staring at her with sheer incredulity. Jinu's attention went from Hwa to Rumi and back again. And again. Until his chest was heaving, veins protruding from his forehead and the side of his neck. All the way down his body, his muscles were locked up, straining against the clothes covering them all. His jaw, clenched and unmoving, hardened his face into someone almost unrecognisable. 

This wasn't anger, this was something else. Something delicious.

"Like I said," Rumi shrugged as she hooked her arm through the still-perplexed demon, "I have somewhere to be."

"He's going to tear my head from my neck, what are you doing—" Hwa hissed at her through clenched teeth. She dug her nails into his bicep in response. Harshly enough, she wouldn't have been surprised if she'd drawn blood.

"Care to explain?" Jinu gritted, eyes ablaze.

In her defence, she at least had the decency to pretend to consider. "Nope," She said. At the sight of her patterns flaring to life, her fangs materialising at the front of her mouth, Jinu's brows raised with realisation.

He made one step towards them.

Rumi and Hwa had already disappeared in a flurry of violet embers.

—

The alley they ended up in was barely lit and plagued with shadows. Moisture dribbled down cracked, cobbled walls, and moss festered in unkempt corners, partially disguised by long-discarded boxes and crates of hell-knew-what. Without a word, she dragged Hwa down right to the end of the passageway, where light was not a thing that existed, and the rest of the world was oblivious to the two demons lurking under the cover of damp and darkness.

"What are we doing here?" Hwa whispered, sparing a nervous glance over his shoulder, as if he was afraid Jinu might materialise behind him and claw his throat out. Rumi almost scoffed at the idea. 

"I need you to do something for me," Rumi said back, matter-of-factly, not wasting a second on a meaningless explanation. The plan she had in mind needed to be executed quickly, before Jinu caught a whiff of what exactly she intended to do. He had an impressive skill of finding her even in the most obscure of places, and she was not willing to bet he wasn't already looking for her.

"I am so confused—"

"Your kind, reapers, you're the only ones who can slip past the Honmoon, correct?"

"Yes, but—"

"And you can come and go as you please, in theory?"

"Well, I can't, because Gwi Ma has banished me and the boys, but I'm pretty sure my ability to create tears still remains with me," He elaborated, "But why?"

"Because," Rumi grimaced, "Jinu is hiding something. From all of us. I'm not stupid enough to pretend that Gwi Ma won't ever retaliate against me for what myself, Mira and Zoey did to him at Namsan Tower. And I'm also not dumb enough to act like Jinu wouldn't go to extreme lengths to protect those he cares about from harm. You Sajas said it yourself earlier. He doomed himself to awful torture just to ensure you guys wouldn't have to feel a slice of what he has felt. He also has a bad track record of sacrificing himself for me."

Hwa was still riddled with bewilderment. Rumi carried on with her ramblings, "And I'm not going to let it happen again. But considering he won't let a single soul into that head of his, I'll have to go to another source."

Finally, the other demon caught on. His face went bone-white. "Rumi, you can't seriously mean—"

Lips pursed, eyes avoiding Hwa's, Rumi dipped her head. Only once, but it was enough to set Hwa off. "I won't do it," He said, adamantly, "I won't—"

"Hwa," She sighed, "I'll find a way somehow. Doing it like this is my safest bet."

"There's got to be something else we can try before—"

"Hwa," She breathed, again, "I can't let Jinu give up anymore of himself. I can't. Why does he get to be the only one who puts himself in danger? Why can't he have somebody willing to go to his own lengths to protect him? I know you feel the same, all of you do—"

"Rumi..."

"Please," She whispered. "I can't help him, we can't help him if we don't know what we're up against. And since all of you are banished..."

Shoulders dropping, head limp between them, Hwa couldn't look at her as he finished what she'd been about to say.

"You want me to create a tear," He exhaled. "You want me to deliver you to the king himself."

"Only he knows what is truly going on," She reasoned. "I have no other option."

Silence. Nothing but silence. Not even the familiar chorus of the busy capital could be heard in their little slice of the city. It only added to the weight in the air and increased the difficulty of breathing. Heart hammering, mind racing, Rumi watched as acceptance inflated Hwa right in front of her eyes. Face twisted in a wince of what could only be some hidden pain, Hwa met her gaze once more.

In a voice filled with premeditated regret, "I'll do it," he said, "I'll take you to Gwi Ma."

A breath of relief washed out of her. "For Jinu," Rumi added.

"For Jinu," Hwa confirmed.

Chapter Text

Hell was cold.

Light did not reach this place; there was no sun, no moon, just an everlasting presence of oppression and weight settling over a vast expanse of sheer nothingness, all accompanied by the most bitter of winds, the most desolate atmosphere. When Rumi had stepped through the tear, it had felt like both the rise and fall of a Ferris wheel, spinning five times faster than the speed of light, over and over and over again until her body was not a body but a vessel to carry her through this awful, awful realm.

The sky was not black but an aurora of the deepest cerulean, speckled with whisps of cyan and turquoise darting about the place like hell's own version of shooting stars. Rumi couldn't look at them—she knew what they were. She had one of her own trapped inside her sword. She didn't have a set expectation for what might greet her on the other side of Hwa's tear, but of all the things her imagination might've conjured, this was not something Rumi would ever have fathomed. Perhaps when she was little, she imagined this realm to be crawling with all manner of demons, to have them festering as far as the eye could see.

There was not a single other being in sight. Except...

At the top of some mountainous altar, a flame of violet and crimson towered above all else, plaguing the world with its violent embers, casting everything around it in a colour not unlike a deep bruise. Rumi stared at the steps looming before her. Everything fell away, even the breeze. Like he was a living, breathing thing, she could taste Gwi Ma's anticipation in the air. Wishing Hwa had been able to accompany her, slightly cursing herself for such a bold idea, Rumi began her ascent.

What awaited her at the precipice was not something she would have ever considered. At the top of the mountain, on the edge of the great plateau, was a dining table fit for a kingdom. At one end, a seat fit for a queen.

At the other...

The king of demons.

"Hello, Hunter."

Rumi did not falter, did not bow. Nose high in the air, she levelled Gwi Ma with just a look, a fire of her own. "Gwi Ma," She said, "I see you knew I was coming."

"Not much can pass into this realm without my knowing," His voice boomed in the void, "And I have been expecting you for a while."

"Best we skip the pleasantries then, no?"

"Sit." Though it came with the softness of an offer, a suggestion, there was a bite in it that pierced her skin. Back in the human realm, Rumi may have relied a bit more on her backbone. But she was alone, here. Alone, with a god who could reduce her to ashes with merely a whisper. And so she ducked her head, just a little—to appease—and took slow steps towards the chair carved of stone that awaited her, the only one surrounding the table. It would just be her and the king for this impromptu meeting. Rumi didn't know whether that was a good or bad thing. 

"This is all highly unnecessary, don't you think? I don't plan on staying long." The chair scraped against the mountain rock as some faceless force pushed it out for her, an offering. When she perched herself atop it, that same force tucked it back towards the table once more.

"Why waste a visit when you have come so far? That won't do." If Gwi Ma had a face, she was certain he'd be grinning, "You will stay for a while."

And how could she possibly argue with him when she was in his territory? If he so willed it, she could be trapped here for the rest of her life.

"Time passes differently in the demon realm," Hwa had informed her before she'd crossed through the tare, "A minute down there is like an hour up here. Do not dwell for too long. Someone will soon know you are missing." He had meant Jinu. Rumi knew what Hwa had been implying; if she took too long, Jinu might tear both worlds to shreds looking for her. She had to make this brief, but she also couldn't afford to piss Gwi Ma off. If it was a civilised, formal dinner he wanted, then that is what he would get.

"Hosting a dinner with no food?" Rumi raised her brow at the empty table, "Is this how you welcome all your guests, Gwi Ma?"

The king barked a humourless laugh, "You hunters always underestimate me," He said, moments before twin bolts of violet erupted from one of his many wisps of flame, they came arcing out of him, shooting to the ground like two miniature meteors. Rumi braced herself as they neared the ground, her heart racing, but the impact she had been expecting never came. Instead, the fire swirled into a vortex of colour, a tornado of power, twisting and pulling and writhing until they slowly relinquished speed. Slowly retreated into their maker. In their place, two figures emerged.

At first glance, Rumi assumed them to be demons.

She quickly realised how wrong she'd been.

Those were not beings of this realm. Eyes narrowed to slits, Rumi scrutinised them as they approached, carrying silver trays hosting large domes hiding the contents beneath. Something deep within her twisted as they approached, as she took in what they were wearing—nothing, on their top halves at least, except for a black, unbuttoned waist. Revealing the skin beneath...a pale, sickly expanse of ice-white, covered in marks...in wounds—

They were near enough now that Rumi could see their faces: gaunt, emotionless. Eyes rolled to the back of their heads, nothing but white peeking out from the sockets and god, these things...these...

Dead. Humans. Dead. Corpses, being puppeteered by Gwi Ma. Violated.

Her stomach lurched, bile rose in her throat and all the while she could feel Gwi Ma's sticky perusal waiting for her reaction, for her to falter. He'd done this, arranged this whole thing, to rattle her. To bring her to her knees—

Rumi's entire body seized up. The two undead humans were upon her now, serving her food with the most awful, vacant smiles twisting their faces—so wide the skin of their cheeks was nearly splitting. And she knew...she knew who one of them was...

"Ah, I see you're admiring the dolls Jinu fetched for me."

The vomit came up. Rumi had no choice but to swallow it back down.

Currently serving her a platter of steaming hot food, was the corpse of Han's brother.

Mutilated by Jinu himself. 

God. Oh god—

"He's always been so thorough," Gwi Ma contemplated, "Such a loyal follower."

Rumi didn't know who the other zombified puppet was, but she could guess it was another of Jinu's victims. And though she knew, she knew, he hadn't murdered anyone who didn't deserve it, having corpses serve her dinner was unsettling, no matter the circumstances. Why had she come here? What was she doing—

"He's why you have come to me, no?"

She couldn't answer. Couldn't get her words past the dryness in her throat, on her tongue.

"I'm afraid I'm not quite ready to part with him, yet—"

"What are you holding over him?" The question came hoarse, barely audible, but the ripple of recognition that waved through Gwi Ma was enough confirmation that he had heard her, loud and clear. 

He chuckled. "What makes you think I am holding something over him?"

"I know him," She spoke more strongly now, firmly. The desire to protect the man who had already sacrificed too much overwhelmed any fear, any trepidation she had felt moments prior. The corpses faded into nonexistence, and the demon realm fell away around her. It was just Rumi and Gwi Ma, like it should be. Nobody else. Nobody else needed to be involved in this; it was between them. He wanted her death for himself, and she wouldn't let him take another soul as collateral. "I know he wouldn't so willingly do your bidding unless it was a necessity."

"Do you know him? Truly? He keeps our little secret from even his most loyal dogs—"

"Don't call them that—"

"—Maybe there is a reason he hasn't confided in you. Maybe, he doesn't want to be freed."

"Your manipulations are nothing to me. I will find a way to rid him of you, no matter the cost."

"Is that so?" Gwi Ma hummed. Rumi couldn't shake the feeling that she had just made a fatal error. "What if I told you that equal was my price? An eye for an eye, a soul for a soul. Tell me, Rumi, would you be desperate enough to take his place?"

Something clicked. A puzzle piece falling into place. Understanding dawned, and there was a potent satisfaction swarming inside of her, threatening to burst her open at the seams, but she couldn't let it show. Couldn't let Gwi Ma know just how much she was onto him. 

Instead, she sighed. A puff of resignation, of mock disappointment. "Must everything be a transaction with you?"

"Is that not the fairest way to do business?"

Business. Jinu was damned to an eternity of suffering, and he had the nerve to reduce it to business. Rumi stood, the corpses lingering next to her exploded into embers. Gwi Ma's flame burned brighter, higher. He knew he had not won this battle, knew Rumi was about to slip through his fiery fingers once more. 

"I'll be going now. I see my visit was in vain—"

"You wouldn't swap places with him?" Gwi Ma's laughter was no longer mocking, but desperate. Unhinged. "And you claim to love—"

"You mistake my intentions, Gwi Ma," She called, voice of steel, set in stone and iron, unwavering. Cool. Powerful. "I do not wish to simply cast him out of the darkness he resides in, but stand with him in the light, together."

Then, Rumi, half hunter, half demon, turned her back on a god.

Walked away from the eternal flame.

Felt it combust behind her.

"Wait, hunter."

Rumi halted, but did not face him again. Secretly, she smiled a smile that reeked of deep, deep satisfaction. 

"What if I tipped the scales in your favour?"

"Go on," Rumi prompted, if only to hear him fumble for her a little more. She imagined he was on his knees right now, catatonic that he was losing this battle.

"Carry out one favour for me. Get a taste of what it is like to have the king of demons in your debt."

Head angled slightly over her shoulder, so Gwi Ma could watch on as her eyes flickered yellow, she let her fangs show. "And what do I get in return?"

"There is a hole inside of you that you have long forgotten about. One you never imagined could be filled—"

"If this is about my mother, save it. I know what happened to her."

"On the contrary," Gwi Ma spoke with that horrendous smirk of his once more, "It is about your father."

There had been an ache plaguing Rumi for as long as she could physically remember, a silhouette that had followed her no matter where she had ventured. A nameless ghost, a phantom that floated through her own body and captured part of her soul for itself. It was an ailment of longing, a curse of the unknown. Nobody had ever spoken about her father. Rumi didn't even know his name. For so long, she had forgotten the desperation she'd once possessed as a child, clinging to Celine's arm as she begged for a story about her dad but was only ever told about her mother.

She wanted them both, in whatever scraps she could get. But nobody had ever obliged her. For a long while, Rumi had entirely forgotten the man her mother loved had even existed. Until now.

"Jinu once stole something from me. An amulet I had collected many years ago. Get it back for me, and I can give you the information you so desperately crave about the demon who sired you."

"Why?" Rumi croaked. "Why?"

"Because," His voice came as a breeze, the faintest of whispers, seeping beneath her skin. Clawing at her flesh. "It is in my best interests to make you see what a life with me could entail."

God, he sounded like a crazed lover, an obsessed devotee. "Bring me what I seek, and I will give you a taste of all I could offer you, if you were to take Jinu's place by my side."

"I will get you that amulet," Rumi rumbled, voice not entirely her own, "And you will tell me what you have promised. As for the rest, I will consider."

Gwi Ma's pleasure thundered throughout the realm. "A pleasure doing business with you, Rumi."

She smiled, all teeth. "Take me home, Gwi Ma."

There was a rush of air as constellations born from the souls of millions raced past her in a blur of blue haze and black nothingness. The air slicing past her grew warmer, warmer, until she was at yet another precipice. Falling, falling, until the world burst into colour once more. Into life. Buildings rose around her, clouds and an orange sky as the sun disappeared beneath the city skyline. Then, she was crashing into something solid—

"Fuck!" Someone hissed as arms fell around her, steadying and cancelling her momentum. Finally, everything stopped. Rumi's heart stopped racing. She pushed away from whoever had caught her.

And vomited. Knees bent, palms bracing her weight atop them, Rumi spewed all over the cobbled floor, coating the forgotten alleyway in more grime, more filth. "Rumi—" She lifted a hand, cutting the voice off as her other arm was used to wipe away the remnants of bile coating her lips. Eventually, she found the strength to stand and discovered Hwa standing before her, partially hunched and eyes rife with concern and poorly disguised disgust.

"I'm fine," She rasped, "Just motion-sick."

"First time?" He faked a false wince of sympathy. Rumi waited for a moment, staring at him blandly, before her arm shot out and her fist jabbed him in the stomach.

"Shut up," She croaked, "Not another word. Just get us back to the loft, my legs feel like jelly."

"Okay," He wasn't even trying to hide his amusement as he approached her and wrapped one arm around her back, the other came to the back of her knees, sweeping her feet from beneath her.

"What are you doing—"

"Testing a theory," He grinned down at her, "Hold on!"

Rumi didn't have time to question him further as the world fell away from her one last time, before everything materialised again. Except they were no longer in that alley. No longer in that hidden corner of the world.

The loft was silent the moment they appeared in the middle of it, Hwa still holding tightly on to Rumi, who didn't notice it at first.

Didn't notice him.

Sitting in an armchair directly facing the front door, facing them, with his legs spread, one arm resting dangerously close to his crotch, the other propped up by an elbow on the armrest, the hand attached to it supporting his jaw...Jinu. Waiting.For her. Only for Rumi to arrive back, held bridal style by another man. A man she had disappeared with moments before—

No, not moments. She'd been with Gwi Ma for maybe ten minutes. In this realm, half a day had passed...

Jinu looked like the epitome of death. A silent fury scorching her through just his eyes below, but he wasn't looking at her, not directly. His gaze flicked between the hand under her legs and the arm wrapped around her back, fingers clutching her tightly, so close to the side of her chest. Hwa noticed where Jinu's attention had fallen, and he stammered an explanation.

"Sorry, boss," He winced, "She could barely walk." Jinu's eyes flared yellow, a raging fire of poison flame. Hwa dropped her in an instant without grace or care. Luckily, she landed on her feet. Not that it made any difference, when Jinu's eyes alone had the floor feel like it was made of air. 

"Hwa," Jinu's voice, though quiet, calm, reverberated through the loft. Shook Rumi right to her core. "Go with everyone to the roof."

"The roof?" Hwa frowned, "But it's cold—"

A single look from Jinu cut Hwa off entirely, a silent threat, a hidden warning. Rumi didn't look to see Hwa's reaction because she could only stare at Jinu, who would not look her in the eye, and seemed to be quaking from head to to but for the life of her, Rumi couldn't figure it out. Even as she glared at him, willed him to glance her way so she might figure out what had him so unbelievably riled, Jinu did not bless her with an ounce of attention. And that didn't set well with Rumi. To put it plainly, it pissed her off beyond reason. Folding her arms, absent-mindedly tapping her foot whilst her tongue dug into her cheek in an attempt to subdue the numerous comments she longed to make, Rumi waited for Jinu's next move.

"We can go to the penthouse," Mira called as she emerged from the kitchen, Zoey in tow, looking suspiciously like they had leapt into damaged control. "We can stay there for a while, right?" 

Rumi paid no attention to how everyone's eyes bounced between her and Jinu, something like fear swimming in every single pair. Her vision had tunnelled, the object of her intention? Who else but the man who looked as if he might reduce the world to ashes for no apparent reason—

"Yeah," Miso called, "I've always wanted to see how the other half lived." 

"Let's go, then."

"Now—"

"Now."

Not even the sight of Saja and Huntrix alike shuffling out of the loft like scolded children could draw Rumi's gaze away from Jinu, who watched until every last one of them was out of the door, which clicked shut behind them. Keeping them all out.

Sealing her in. 

Neither of them spoke. Rumi couldn't seem to draw in enough air, not when the atmosphere had grown so dense, so cloying, it settled like honey in her lungs. She couldn't stop her fidgeting, couldn't stop shifting side to side with unease, despite the bubbling annoyance she was beginning to feel towards the man sitting mere feet away from her. The man who still hadn't spared her a single ounce of attention. He stayed put, rigid. Unmoving. A statue, a talisman of bitter fury, of quiet rage and fatal envy. Envy...

Her pulse fluttered. God, he was jealous—

"Tell me why you look so pleased with yourself," Jinu's voice was low, controlled—but only just—dangling precariously on the edge of something Rumi couldn’t quite place. A shiver went through her at the sound of it, and when his eyes finally landed on her, it took all Rumi's strength not to let her knees buckle beneath her weight. 

"What's wrong with you?" Rumi scoffed, tucking a strand of hair that had escaped her braid back behind her ear. Jinu didn't reply to her, just continued to leer at her beneath lowered brows. Rumi's eyes flew to the back of her head, rolling her shoulders, she breezed past where Jinu sat, and made her way to the bathroom—

A hand shot out and grasped her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. "I asked you a question," He said. 

Rumi tugged herself free. "You already know the answer," She smiled, the expression dripping with ire, then she was on her way again.

Jinu shot up. His footsteps thundered behind her—he was hot on her tail, she could practically feel his breath washing over the back of his neck. She moved swiftly, eyes ahead on her target destination, ignoring the prickling at her scalp from two eyes boring into her flesh. He was close, so close. Rumi rushed into the bathroom. Went to shut the door.

A foot blocked it from swinging shut. Rumi huffed and swivelled on her heels, heading for the sink as she pulled out her toothbrush and coated it with paste, ignoring Jinu's presence as he crowded her in the small space, watching her as she brought the device to her lips and began brushing. Dismissing him. Not even daring to look into his eyes, even if it was via a reflection. 

He was inches from her, now. The warmth of his body fusing to the air at her back, awareness trickling from the tip of her spine right to the very bottom, mixing into her bloodstream and swirling a storm in her gut. Above them both, the bathroom light buzzed and flickered, the dying bulb only adding to the evening shadows, casting the room in a hazy gloom. He was all she could see in the mirror, lit up by the last few rays of the weak setting sun. Her t-shirt was sliding off her shoulder, revealing those patterns of hers, offering them on display to the man behind her.

Jinu couldn't look away from that exposed slice of skin. Mouth parted, lips wetted by his tongue, he glared at her as if she had offended him deeply. As if he hated her, for the way his lungs couldn't seem to engulf enough air, for the way his eyes could not contain the wildfire that burned deep within him. It was rare that he looked at her with those demonic eyes of his, so Rumi knew, in that moment, his control was slipping away. Ebbing more than flowing. God save them both when it became fully depleted. What would he do to her if he could act without consequence? How would he make her body sing as he enacted his vengeance? She recognised what he wanted, what he craved. To have her with him again after she had slipped away earlier. To remind her that she was his.

That she couldn't escape from whatever this thing between them was. That thread of gold, still woven within them even now, after everything. 

"Rumi," Came her name, hoarsely, "Where did you go, with Hwa?"

"Out," She replied flatly. To her defence, she couldn't exactly elaborate with a mouth full of toothpaste. For a while, the only sound was moist bristles against bone. Jinu scrutinised her for an eternity. She couldn't meet his gaze, not when his desperation infiltrated her senses and slid down her throat like tar.

Eventually, Jinu couldn't wait any longer. "Doing what?" He said softly. Evenly. As if he wasn't moments away from decimating the entire building, as if his jealousy wasn't a tangible thing writhing in the space around them.

For a moment, she removed the toothbrush from her mouth, pushing the minty suds into her cheeks so she could respond, earnest agitation now beginning to develop, her blood beginning to simmer. "I had some things I needed done."

"You are being deliberately evasive."

"I learned from the best."

"Damn it, Rumi!" He was upon her now, chest against her spine and his arms coming to either side of her so that his fists could clench the sink. His chin hovered millimetres above her shoulder, the air pouring out of his lips wafting over the side of her neck. He pressed into her, forcing her against the sink, caging her. There was nowhere to go; her toothbrush hung limply in her mouth, her fingers barely grasping it. "Just tell me where you went," He pleaded, tone laced with a fury not directed at her but she felt it all the same.

"You disappear in the night," Rumi found the courage to say, words slightly muffled from her interrupted brushing, "Why can't I disappear in the day?"

"Where did you go? Where did he take you?"

And, quite frankly, Rumi had had enough. Enough of his demanding what he did not give in return. Enough of one rule for him, another for herself. She wanted him to feel a shred of what she felt every time the mattress dipped in the middle of the night and he offered no explanation as to where he had wandered off to, did not give her the honesty he commanded from her in that very moment. 

"Somewhere only he could take me." Her grin was feline. Evil. She regretted it instantly. 

The sink creaked under Jinu's weight. There was no more uncertainty about him; he moved with purpose. His right hand released its grip on the porcelain, only for it to travel up the length of Rumi's arm, fingertips caressing the exposed skin as it went higher, higher, until he was cradling her wrist, prying the toothbrush out of her grip. Settling it down next to the faucet. Then, up came his other hand, until both of them were cradling Rumi's face.

She caught his gaze in the mirror, saw the way it had darkened, no longer those pools of brown but something richer, something borderline sinister. His lips bore the traces of a cruel smile, his fangs slowly pierced his own flesh as he bit down on the tissue, watching her, lids hooded, brows furrowed. Enraptured as he tilted her head down.

Tilted it down, towards the sink, and said, "Spit."

Every single cell of hers froze. Every muscle froze. Seized. Her spine locked. Her breath stilled. She was motionless. All her blood went to her head. She was melting, melting—

"I said," He purred, fingertips digging further into her cheeks, shoving her head further down, "Spit."

Without thought, she emptied her mouth, clearing out all remnants of the toothpaste. In the mirror, she watched from beneath her browbone as Jinu's head tilted up the slightest amount, undisguised pleasure rippling over his features. Because she had done what he'd asked, because she had obeyed. It was a foreign kind of thrill to let him have that control. To let him tower over her, make her do as he wished. 

There was no going back. Not anymore, this was a line drawn and immediately breached.

"You do this to me on purpose, don't you?"

When she didn't answer Jinu instantly, he had her spinning on her heels, one hand keeping her steady at the waist, the other grabbed her braid in a fist and tugged. The action had her chest pushing into his own, the base of her spine digging into the sink as he came even closer, blurring the seams between them, forging their bodies together with not even a whisper of room between them. She felt him, everywhere. Felt his warmth, his strength. His heart, and the way it thundered within him, so loud and violent that not even the many layers of his flesh could block it out. 

"I bet you like it, knowing how easily you can get beneath my skin."

To hell with restraint, Rumi lifted her chin, let her lips brush against his own, and whispered, "How do I feel under there, Jinu?" As her words washed over him, his eyes shuttered upon a sharp inhalation, as if he was soaking her up, willing her into his veins. 

"Did he touch you?" He was shivering.

"Would it matter?" 

Nostrils flaring, jaw clenching, his hand left her braid and cradled her throat, squeezing it. Her breath left her on a difficult wheeze. "Yes," he croaked. The word was a punch to the stomach. Raw. Honest. Pained.

This was a game no longer; this was no matter of cat versus mouse. When his thumb stretched to tug at her bottom lip, eyes captivated by the sight of the flesh bouncing into place, his own lips separating so that his tongue could dart out and moisten them, Rumi's breath caught. She couldn't tear her eyes off his mouth, his fangs. Couldn't breathe as eyes of gold pierced her own, scouring all her defences, breaching the most inner part of her. Her heart threatened to burst from her chest, her stomach was lost to a storm so violent, so dense, she felt as if her entire body was lost in a vortex of desire and wonder and agony.

The tension within him was palpable—coiled and trembling like an arrow would after landing dead centre of a target.

"Forget my bond with him," He rasped, "I would remove any part of his that dared feel you." 

It was the truth in his voice, the sheer, depraved honesty, that had her quaking. "You keep your soul locked away, yet expect me to bare mine at the click of your fingers?"

"I do not keep it locked away," His forehead crashed against her own, his voice tortured, tormented, thick with an emotion they hadn't yet dared put into words, "It is yours. You have it. It's yours."

"It doesn't feel like it," She breathed. Jinu's eyes slammed shut, and a softly spoken curse tore from his throat.

"I don't know how to be soft with you," He confessed as if it were the darkest of crimes. 

"I never asked you to be," She admitted back to him, letting the words soak his skin, his tissue, "I am no longer made of glass, Jinu."

"There is something inside of me," He choked, "Something depraved and twisted and insane. You have no idea—" He was panting now, unravelling, hand cutting off any chance of airflow in her throat, but she didn't care, didn't care—

"—You have no idea what it wants me to do to you."

"Tell it I want it, too," She managed to squeeze out. Jinu froze, relinquished his grip just enough for Rumi to continue, "I will have all of you, Jinu. It's all or nothing."

"All or nothing," He repeated, soundlessly.

Silence followed. Nothing but the buzzing of electricity and the heavy breaths falling from the pair of them as their eyes pinned each other to the spot. As they remained there, frozen.

Until...

Rumi saw it the moment it happened—the control that restrained him finally snapping loose. She angled herself, ready. 

He was upon her not a moment later, crashing into her with the force of some forgotten god of desire, of craving. His lips bruised her own before they were moving, and she was moving with him whimpering as he bit into her, as her tongue painted a thousand words in her mouth, and she had no idea where she ended and he began. He was clawing at her, tugging her shirt up, up, up until her writhing body was on display, all for him, only for him and he took advantage of the offering in an instant, roaming the exposed flesh, squeezing wherever he could, rising higher and higher and higher until his nails bit into the flesh of her chest.

When he scraped his claws against her nipples, Rumi cried out and Jinu caught the sound with his mouth, nibbling at her, taking and taking and taking. Until there was nothing left, until she was unravelling and pooling at his feet as nothing more than a pile of molten flesh and indigo bones. 

He was everywhere. Everywhere. And Rumi had nowhere to go as her spine rubbed against the mirror behind her; he followed everywhere she went, did not let her remove her hips from the hardness poking at her, searching for reprieve, desperate for relief. 

"You're mine," He rasped, mouth wide open against her own, breathing her in, devouring her. Rumi could only whine her response. "You're mine. Even if I don't deserve you. Even if I haven't earned it."

"You have," She rasped, "You have."

"I don't care," He hissed, forcing his hips against her, rubbing and grinding and searing her with a heat so potent she was certain he'd set her alight with just his touch, "I don't care. I'm taking it all regardless. You make me so greedy, Rumi. Look at what you've done to me—"

"Jinu..."

"You can feel it, can't you?" His laughter was wicked. Cruel. "You can feel what I'm going to do to you. Feel how I'm going to split you in fucking half—"

"Please," She whined, a sound pried from her and rife with an ache only he could soothe, "Please. I feel like I'm—"

"Dying?" His fangs pierced her flesh, his words rumbling through her, "How does it feel, Rumi? Knowing you have no choice, you've given me no choice. You asked for this, begged for it."

"I know," She chanted, "I know, I know, I know—"

"No, you don't," He was cooing now, soothing her despite the pain he inflicted, the divine torture he was subjecting her to. "You don't, and it's okay, because I'm going to show you, aren't I?"

All she could do was nod. Nod, brace for impact, and just accept it. All of it, all the things he wanted, needed to do to her. 

Without taking his lips from her own, Jinu's hands hooked underneath her thighs, and then she was up. Floating. No choice but to allow Jinu to carry her wherever he willed, wherever he desired. All the while, as he moved them both, he did not relent his attack, did not give her a moment to breathe any air that wasn't laced with his breath. His lips were punishing, brutal. She was already sore, still demanding more, craving what he had yet to give. What was promised every time his lower half shifted against her own, grazed against the sensitive flesh throbbing beneath her leggings. Then she was falling, falling—

Jinu's mattress caught her, sending her bouncing atop the springs. Before her, the man himself towered above, chest heaving, eyes wide as they took in every single inch of her—her rumpled clothes, her exposed skin that already bore scratches from his claws. The hair he had tugged from her braid, and her lips...no doubt swollen, no doubt bruised. And as Rumi licked them, it was blood that coated her tongue. Blood, and him.

She was drunk. Intoxicated. Borderline paralytic. Her limbs were not her own, her lungs filled by his breath. She was overwhelmed. Possessed. He'd already taken everything. He was only going to demand more.

"You..." He began, at first there was a sheer bewilderment widening his eyes, keeping his jaw agape, but it soon twisted into a smile of pure satisfaction. Of hunger. "You look so filthy." 

"Please—"

"Sh, shh," He hushed, mock sympathy keeping his eyelids apart, but it was nothing but a mask, nothing but a veil to disguise the depravity he felt when he observed the mess of Rumi he had created. He was pleased with himself. So, so pleased. And then he was sinking down on her, knees on either side of her thighs, pinning her with his weight and god it felt so good to be crushed by him, to feel him atop her, rendering her powerless, out of control, vulnerable. 

Scraping at her skin, his claws dug into her once more, this time with her t-shirt clutched in his fist, lifting, exposing. So slowly, slowly, until the warmth of the cotton had left her completely. Then his hands were reaching around her back, crashing her into his torso, taking only a moment to fiddle with the clasp of her bra, before that, too, was gone. 

Then her braid was being tugged once more, and she had nowhere to look except up and into the eyes of the man who had her right in the palm of his hand, who knew what he was doing to her, what he was turning her into—someone mindless, weightless, free. Just like they had promised each other a year ago, just like what she had longed for ever since he had left her but he was back now, back and she was going to have him, all of him and she was going to claw and bite and tug at him until he'd never be able to separate them again. 

Jinu spoke as if there was something wrong with him, for the way he craved her. And if that was the case, Rumi was just as twisted. If not, more. She wanted to fuse them together. Wanted to ensure that there was no more escaping, from this moment onwards. They were in to deep, they were going too far.

"So good," He whispered, his head hanging over her own, "So beautiful."

His eyes did not leave her own, even as his hands trailed over her torso, straight up the centre of her body, until they each cupped a breast, and squeezed. Rumi couldn't stop herself from arching into his touch, from offering herself as a sacrifice, a vessel with which he could do whatever it was his soul desired. Craved. 

A hum of approval rumbled from the back of his throat. It was the greatest song she'd ever heard.

Head tilted, eyes lidded, he watched her as she writhed from a touch so simple. She could tell, right then, what he was thinking. How she was so responsive, already. And he hadn't even begun.

"On your back," He breathed. Rumi obeyed instantly. 

She was still bending towards him, even as her spine met the mattress. Jinu removed his hands from his chest, but raked his nails over her nipples, back down her torso, leaving a trail of pure fire everywhere he went, and it was the slowest of torture, the most crippling apprehension as he took his time, perused every inch of her. Anywhere untouched by his fingertips was scorched by his vision; she'd never felt so exposed, so seen. For him, she was unfurling. For him, there was nothing Rumi wouldn't offer.

When his hands finally grasped the waistband of her leggings, the only sound in the room was Rumi's dense, frantic breaths.

The smile on his face was criminal. Sadistic. She was utterly at his mercy. 

Long gone were the golden rays of evening sunshine filtering through the loft. In their place, streams of moonlight bathed all they touched in silver. Including Jinu. Lighting him up like a twisted deity, come to collect what it craved under the cover of night. And she was willing, so willing, to let it happen—let anything happen.

Jinu was shuffling back off the bed now, taking the last of her clothes with him, tugging the fabric down her legs before eventually tearing them from her ankles. And then, all that was between them was a flimsy scrap of material covering the apex of her thighs. One last boundary.

He glared at it like one would an arch-nemesis. Under his scrutiny, Rumi squirmed and in an instant two hands crashed down against her thighs and crushed them against the bed, pinning her down. Now immobile, she could only watch on as Jinu dipped his head. Lower, lower, lower until she could feel the heat of him against the dampness of the cotton, could feel it washing over her in waves of pure fire, of agony.

Then he pressed his lips against her. Kissed her and with his lips against where her clit was burning beneath her panties, he sighed. A noise of relief, of pleasure. A sound one would make after returning home from a long day and sinking into a hot bath, a noise that was nothing but pure bliss. Her cheeks flamed, even as he pulled away. Jinu noticed. He cocked his head.

"Are you embarrassed?"

"No—"

His fingers flicked at the inside of her thighs, "You should be," He hummed, "You've made a mess."

Defiantly, Rumi shook her head in disagreement. "You made it," She whispered.

Impossibly so, his gaze deepened, shadows swarming what little warmth was left. "Oh?"  His jaw ticked. "So this is all mine?" Moving from her thighs, his nails scratched against her heat, and Rumi's entire body became slave to a spasm that jolted every single muscle in her body. Despite his stern expression, the corner of Jinu's lips twitched in a flash of a smile. Once more, Rumi writhed under his attention. God, she was burning up, every inch of her was on fire and she needed Jinu so badly, needed him to put a stop to it all, to ease the ache that was boiling her from the inside out and reducing her brain into nothing but scalding vapour.

"Jinu, I can't take anymore, I'm serious, I need you so bad I feel like I'm going to pass out—"

Mid-sentence, Rumi had no air left in her lungs to finish.

In one swift motion, Jinu had tugged his shirt over his head and was now standing before her in all his toned, broad glory. Chest covered with the faintest layer of moisture and moving rapidly with each of his breaths, Rumi could not tear her gaze away. 

All that power...that strength...

"Filthy thoughts," Jinu purred. Left no time for her to reply. He was ridding himself of the rest of his clothes in an instant, nothing left but his underwear and even that came off in a matter of seconds and then he was exposed for her eyes only. All of him. Rumi couldn't stop her eyes as they travelled down, down...

Just as her gaze fell to his crotch, Jinu gripped his length in his hand. Pumped it. The flesh turning an angry red, a thick vein running from the head all the way down to where it disappeared between a thin coating of fine hair. 

Practically drooling, it occurred to Rumi too late—the size of him—he was already prowling up the bed, ripping her underwear off of her legs and flinging the cloth somewhere to the side. Then, he was crawling after her and Rumi had nowhere to go but away as her eyes widened in fear and her heart leapt to her throat but he kept. On. Advancing. Until her head knocked against the backboard. Trapped. Cornered. Jinu angled his head, the emotion in his eyes clear. Dangerous. He had her, now. Finally caught his prey, and she could not escape; there was nowhere for her to go.

He closed the gap, hovering inches above her, both his forearms bracketing either side of her head, muscles straining against the skin. The skin straining against the veins protruding beneath it. 

All Rumi could see, feel, breathe was him. He was in her lungs and her blood and her heart. There was only one part of her untouched, one part of her that ached—

Lips ghosting over her own, Jinu let the smallest laugh slip. "I warned you," He whispered. Nipped at her bottom lip. "Too late now," He lilted. Then she felt him, felt him resting against her hip. "Put me in," He rasped.

Rumi was frozen.

"Put me in, Rumi," He repeated, "If I do it the way that I want, it's going to hurt."

It was a clear warning. A final offer, not a way out, but his last act of kindness. Deep within her, something snapped into place. Her sense, what was left of it, returning.

Quietening her breathing, Rumi leant into his touch, let their mouths press fully against each other.

She lifted her hips. Jinu sucked in a harsh slice of air. 

"I told you before," She murmured against him, revelling in the way he gasped for breath, for her, as she swirled her hips against him, let him feel how ready for him she was, in every single possible way, "I am no longer made of glass."

That was it. The last boundary was torn to shreds.

He shifted.

Once, twice.

Nudged against her opening.

It was the only warning she got.

In a movement that had every single inch of him rippling with effort, Jinu sank into her in all his entirety and with her hands clawing at her face he brought their mouths together, not for a kiss but so they could taste each other's gasps of sheer bliss as he filled her inch by wondrous inch until the warmth bled to pain and she was writhing, moaning, stretching away from him, pressing against him. Jinu allowed her no room to escape; he kept her head in his grasp and his lips pressed against her own as she whimpered and cried and fell apart beneath him. Not once did he relent, not once did he pause and give her the reprieve she so desperately needed.

He had warned her. He had warned her. It was time for her to reap what she had sown. 

To feel everything he'd threatened her with.

To break.

Jinu was everywhere, there was no room between them, with each of his thrusts he kept her locked against him. When she turned her neck, he was there, crashing his mouth against her own, kissing and licking and biting and sometimes just leaving them both open, not allowing her to breathe in a single portion of air that hadn't been expelled from his own lungs and her body was on fire and she was melting, melting into him. Becoming one, just like she wanted.

She felt him, all of him, his hardness and his warmth splitting her open from the inside out, just like he had promised and Rumi had nowhere to go, nowhere to go but him as he punished her, as he worshipped her and breathed new life into her fucking soul—

Uncontrollable grunts fell from him and poured straight into her mouth, her ears. Every thrust came with a growl of violent pleasure and Rumi recognised it, all of it, as something else, something other. The force between them was a new religion, their bodies simply conduits as power consumed them, devoured them. They were a mess of limbs and heat and sweat but it didn't matter, it didn't matter because he was lighting her up from the inside and she was falling apart in his arms.

Each push of his hips was a new divinity. He was brushing against a spot within her that had her seeing stars and she couldn't help the way she fluttered, the way she clenched around him, it was too much, too much—

"You're going to kill me," Jinu's voice came strained. Thick. "You were made for me, Rumi, fucking made for me. I knew you'd be like this. So soft, so warm, so fucking desperate."

"Jinu!" She gasped, and he caught it, swallowed it with a kiss that was all teeth and tongue and pure filth. 

"You did this to me," He was angry. Furious. "Did this to yourself—you'll never be rid of me now. Not when I know how greedy this filthy cunt is for me—"

"Please—"

"Please, what?" He hissed, "Stop? Not a fucking chance. I need you this too bad, I've needed it for so long—"

"Too much," She panted, "I'm—"

"Do it," He gritted, "Come all over your man's cock."

But Rumi wasn't there yet; it burned. It hurt so good, so good she didn't want it to stop, didn't want it to end but then she felt the warmth of Jinu's hand leave her face, felt it snake down between their bodies as he thrashed above her. Felt it drag down her torso, her chest, between her hips—

With a vicious arch of her back, Rumi cried out.

Jinu had slapped her clit—sharp, merciless—then immediately soothed it with fast, relentless circles. Her body jerked in response, twitching under his touch, every nerve ending screaming, lit and alive. As she began to thrash, he moved fast—his other hand braced against her forehead, pushing her down, keeping her from knocking her head against the frame.

And then she broke.

She clenched around him, a cry torn from her throat as the orgasm took her hard and sudden.

He groaned into her skin, forehead pressing into hers, chest trembling as he held on. Then his lips were on hers again—not to claim, not to dominate—just to be there.

A kiss that tasted like an apology. Like worship. Like gratitude.

There was no controlling the moans and whimpers and sobs that wracked through her. Not as she throbbed around him, as her body slowly peeled away from her soul. He held her so tightly she could barely breathe. Rumi felt every single one of the quivers that rippled through him.

Their climax lasted for hours, it seemed. And they could do nothing but hold each other through it all.

Rumi didn't even realise she'd been crying until Jinu finally found the strength to raise his head and swipe the moisture away with his thumbs. His eyes had faded back to that warm, enrapturing brown.

As the last of her whimpers left her, she wrapped her arms around his back and tugged. His head fell into her neck and she buried her nose against his own. Breathed him in. Tried to calm her frantic heartbeat.

"Rumi," He murmured.

"Jinu," She whispered.

"Tell me you're okay," His voice cracked, muffled only slightly by her skin. 

"I'm okay," Rumi reassured. 

Jinu paused. For a while, they remained that way, not a millimetre between them, skin on sweat-slicked skin, Jinu still inside of her, twitching. Rumi relishing in the aftershocks. In his arms, he cradled her, soothed the many loose strands of her hair and wiped them away from where they'd become glued to her forehead. Rumi couldn't help it; she practically purred against him as his hands soothed her muscles and eased her heart. 

Occasionally, he'd squeeze her a little tighter. Press a kiss to her forehead. Calm her with sounds that he let rumble from the back of his throat.

He'd torn her apart. Now, he was placing her back together again, treating each piece of her as if made of porcelain. Made of glass. And she didn't mind it. Not one bit, not after what they had just done together. 

Finally, Jinu spoke again. "I can't breathe," He admitted on a shaky exhale of air.

Despite everything that had just occurred, Rumi laughed with her entire body and then relinquished her hold on him, only enough for Jinu to rise back up to his forearms. He gazed at her, then. The intensity with which he'd bestowed upon her during those moments prior was gone. In its place, a potent fondness. An unmistakable adoration.

"Do you know," He sighed, "that you are everything to me?"

The tears returned, along with a lump in her throat the size of a boulder. Words failed Rumi, so she brushed his cheeks with her fingertips and planted a kiss on his lips that said everything she couldn't. He returned it, too, hiding those same words.

Soon, Rumi promised herself. In Jinu's eyes, came his agreement.

Soon, he said back to her, silently.

Chapter Text

For millennia, he had existed.

Those many paths he had walked were long forgotten to the natural decay brought about by time and the limits of man. But he remembered.

He remembered it all.

Some part of him, a morsel, remained who he had once been. An insignificance, an ant under the boot of the universe. Crushed, forgotten, unimportant. When the fire had come for him, he had embraced it. As if he, himself, were flame and ash and everything calamitous. As if he could be god, be the universe. And there was nothing to stop him, no spirits of good, no force greater than the power he had usurped. 

For millennia, he had thrived.

And yet...

Five hundred years ago, another boot came down upon him. And then there were beings that came in the many years that followed that did not lose memory to time and they did not forget him. For centuries now, he had longed to go back to being so easily cast aside so that he might dwell in the depths he had carved for himself in as much peace as something like him could possess. But their song never relented, and so neither did he. Over the years, his collection had grown; his prized artefacts that he had cultivated from the same way of life he'd once known stayed so diligently in the shadow of his flame. Obeying it, following it, worshipping it.

Puppets on strings of barbed wire.

Except, the strings were fraying.

The boot hovered ever closer with each passing day. He felt its shadow, the inevitable cold that would follow when his fire had finally been smothered.

Did they expect him to fade out so easily? To disappear back into that nothingness he had once known so well? To greet his oblivion like an old friend?

They were foolish. All of them that dared stray from his guidance, his acceptance. To turn their noses up at what he had offered them, what they had once so greedily sought. Now his subjects had experienced the taste of light in its pure, golden form. But what was wrong with his own luminosity? Had they tired of his violet glow, his dark embrace?

It doesn't matter, he'd decided. They may have abandoned him now, but they were already falling into his trap. Already wandering back into his lair unknowingly. By refusing to give him what he wanted, they had done exactly that.

Not long now, he hummed to himself. Not long.

For a moment, he reminisced about a cool weight dangling from his neck. For a moment, he had a body.

But that was the nonsense of humanity. 

Such a thing was beneath the king of demons.

—

Jinu was not beside Rumi when the first rays of the waking sun had roused her from a deep, restful slumber. A delicious ache sang to her as she righted herself, leaning her back against the headboard, ghosting her fingertips over her lips and reawakening a phantom of the lips that had bruised them the night before. Briefly, she worried that he had left again.

But then she heard the faint humming of the shower, the slow splattering of water as the pipes groaned to life, and she smiled as the sound of the bathroom door closing echoed throughout the loft. Rumi strained her neck to peek around the room divider, to see if the others had returned from the penthouse, but all of the temporary camp beds that the Saja Boys had set up were vacant. Untouched. Her grin widened.

Shivering as the cool air hit her bare skin, Rumi swung herself off the mattress and rose to her feet, blushing as she looked down upon herself—at her body clad only in a shirt too big to be her own. It draped down to the middle of her thighs and, Rumi realised as she lifted the collar to her nose, it still smelt so strongly of the man who'd lent it to her last night. Face hot, legs slightly unstable, Rumi emerged from the corner of the loft and padded barefoot across the hardwood, towards the bathroom, more than ready to get a second serving of what Jinu had done to her the night before.

The kisses...the bruises. Breath washing over her skin, sounds of nothing but sheer pleasure humming right next to her ear...Rumi had to bite her lip to stop a sound of her own from escaping at just the memory of it all. There was a heat pooling between her thighs once more, despite how much she ached down there, but when Rumi got to the bathroom, hand shaking with apprehension as she turned the handle, the desire came to a stagnant standstill.

It was locked. The door. Jinu on one side, herself on the other.

Disappointment came immediately. It took Rumi stewing over a freshly brewed cup of coffee for half an hour to decide it was for the best.

They had many things to talk about. And though Rumi did not plan on telling Jinu about where she'd gone with Hwa the previous day, there was no stopping her from revealing what she suspected, what she knew.

Tell me, Rumi, would you be desperate enough to take his place?

Of course she would be.

The real question was, would she be stupid enough? And the answer, quite simply, was no. Because if Gwi Ma wanted to trick them into walking that path, it meant there was a different route he feared they may take, instead. Otherwise, he wouldn't have to meddle; he would just let things be. If the only true way to save Jinu was to take his place, then that was something she would have to consider in the future, but she would not succumb to Gwi Ma's will if there was another way around it.

And there had to be. 

Rumi glared into the bottom of her mug as she swirled the last dregs of her coffee around. She had been alone now for forty minutes, waiting for another sign of life whilst dreading it at the same time. She had no idea how to approach the impending conversation, had no idea how Jinu would react and she was scared, truly terrified, that he would bolt. That she wouldn't see him again for weeks and when they finally reunited once more, he would be even more bloodied, even more bruised than the last time. Or he might not even survive at all. He had too many enemies, too many. Sometimes she wished she could keep him in a room, locked up for however long it took for all the threats biting at his ankles to fade into non-existence. 

Yet, that was never something she would do. Not when all she'd ever promised Jinu was that he'd be free.

False imprisonment was a bad way of achieving such a thing, to put it lightly. 

Beside her, Rumi's phone lit up.

Is it safe to come back?

How had Miso got her number? She tutted to herself before picking up the device to type a reply.

Or, she had been about to, when a click sounded in the silence. Her phone fell to the table.

On the other side of the building, Jinu emerged from the bathroom, t-shirt damp around the collar from where his black hair dripped onto the cotton. He was attempting to lessen the moisture by rubbing a towel against the back of his head, but it wasn't doing much for him.

For Rumi? It was doing everything.

Her throat had forgotten the taste of water. 

An onslaught of images came to fruition. Jinu's chain brushing against her chest, skin slick with sweat, body moving over her own and quivering with restraint. Heavy, uneven breaths. Grunts, groans—

"You're up," Jinu interrupted her internal depravity. He let the towel drop to a nearby chair as he made his way over to the little dining area beside the kitchen, though when he approached, he didn't take a seat. Instead, he loitered at Rumi's side, casting her in his shadow, which she had zero complaints about. Not as the scent of jasmine filled her nostrils. Suddenly, Rumi had the urge to shower, too. If only to cover herself in whatever it was Jinu used to bathe. He smelled so good.

And the idea of smelling like him...

Rumi shivered. To her left, Jinu let a short breath of amusement fall from his mouth. For a split second, Rumi was worried he could hear her thoughts, or at least see them plastered all over her face. Although, if that was the case, Jinu appeared none the wiser. 

But then he reached out a hand, tentatively stroked his fingertips through the loose mass of lilac tangles atop her head, and something like pleasure rippled through him. And her, as he sighed a noise not dissimilar to relief. As though it was his first breath for a very, very long time. 

"I am," She finally managed to reply, "Have been for a while."

His nails grazed her scalp. Rumi nearly bit her tongue clean off with the effort it took to hide her wordless appreciation. 

"Are the others back?"

She cocked her head at him and knew there was mischief in both her eyes and her voice as she said, "No...unless the boys were in the shower with you."

A chuckle escaped from him, warmth shining in his eyes as he peered down at her, hand still smoothing over her hair. "There's only one I'd share that shower with."

Fire ignited in her stomach. Rumi leant into his touch just a little bit more. "You shouldn't have locked the door, then."

Too late, she realised her mistake. Jinu was on her in an instant, crowding her against the chair with nowhere to go except into him as he bent towards her, stopping his face only when there was merely a hair's breadth between their lips. His head tilted to the side, his brows furrowed, but his eyes glinted with delicious wickedness. "Rumi," He murmured, "How did you know it was locked?"

"I—"

"Shameless," He rumbled. With a quick flit of his eyes, Jinu darted a glance at Rumi's semi-parted lips. His hand came away from her hair and instead caressed down the side of her jaw, before his fingers grasped her chin. Absentmindedly, his thumb pushed against her bottom lip, and his mouth hung agape ever-so-slightly. 

However, before Rumi could surrender herself to his touch once more, he was gone. Removed. A draft wafted over her, cold and unwelcome, whilst she watched Jinu's back muscles shifting beneath his shirt as he strolled into the kitchen and started rummaging through the cupboards. Probably looking for something to have a morning coffee or tea with. But he'd be looking for a while; Rumi had taken the only mug he had.

Clearly, Jinu had never planned on anyone else seeing this place.

A new kind of heat blossomed, right in the centre of her heart. And it was then that Rumi finally realised how easy it had become to breathe in the last couple of days. Gone was that tightness in her chest, the shards of glass that scraped her throat every time she inhaled. Gone was the anxiety, the permanent headache that clung to her like a parasite. There was an evenness within her, an equilibrium, like an old debt had been paid and her body was no longer surviving without the heart she had loaned and lost. Jinu's death had been a monumental toll; his disappearance had been the darkest of shadows that had pursued her no matter the day, no matter the weather. A thousand suns could have burned down upon her this past year, and she still would have been frozen to the core.

It seemed impossible—the notion that her heart may one day thaw again, that she would feel it thrumming beneath her chest.

There was the smell of coffee and jasmine and earth in the air. It was nicotine. It was heroine. 

Rumi wanted more. She would always want more.

Could he feel it? The depth to which her infatuation delved? How her heart was synchronised to his movements, his breaths. She only lived if he was near. Did he know that? Did Jinu know if he abandoned her once more, he may as well dig her grave himself?

There was no way he could. Because if he did, he would stop leaving her in the dark about everything. He would stop hurting himself if he saw how much his own pain carved wounds upon her and she bled out with every second he wasn't around.

"You can use mine." She swallowed the obstruction in her throat. "I'm finished with it." Rumi nudged the mug before her towards Jinu, in response to his evident look of confusion. Eyes widening with realisation, Jinu grinned a lazy but heartfelt grin, and then he was upon her yet again.

"Angel," He breathed and picked up the mug. Not a thank you, but something better. 

The room crackled with electricity, but Rumi was sure she was the only one who had felt it. With confidence, Jinu went about preparing his drink, dunking a tea bag into boiling water as he stood tall in the kitchen, gazing mindlessly out of the window whilst the sun blessed him through the glass.

Sometimes, he was painful to look at.

Rubbing her chest, Rumi faced the table, and didn't dare look up as she announced, "I think there are some things we need to talk about."

Behind her, Jinu slurped his tea, cursing softly under his breath—no doubt he'd been scalded by the beverage—and then he was shuffling back over the floor. This time, he pulled out the chair adjacent to Rumi's. 

"Talking," He tutted, "Aren't there other ways to spend the morning?"

Rumi's bewilderment was sincere. "What else do you suggest we do?"

The feline curl of his lips was answer enough. Rumi cut him off just as his mouth parted to speak, stopping him from distracting her any further. This conversation could not be put off again. "I know what you're trying to do."

In the blink of an eye, the atmosphere twisted. Morphed into something sharper, the electricity had turned into pure lightning, spiking down all around them, miniature bolts hitting every single hair on her body. Her skin bubbled, pebbling with tiny bumps all over Rumi's skin. Upon Jinu's face was a tangible panic and though it had disspated the second it had appeared, Rumi was always paying close attention to him, and this moment was no different; she'd caught the rapid flash of his eyes before his lids fell half-way shut and he gazed at her with a confident, intolerable ease to his composure.

Leaning back against his chair, bringing his ankle to rest atop his knee, Jinu took another sip of his drink before he settled the cup down. The sound it made against the wooden table seemed to thunder throughout the loft, like a sole, heartfelt beat of a drum.

"This should be interesting," He hummed. Rumi let the condescension run off her back like water, however icy it was. She knew he was deflecting, knew she'd breached his front lines of defence. This time, no barbed wire would keep her out. She'd conquer the wall before her, bloodied cuts and all.

"Did you think I wouldn't catch on?" There was no ire in her voice. In fact, she spoke to him softly, like a teacher confronting a misbehaving student. Even though beneath her chest was a heart beating so vigorously it might burst, Rumi ensured that there was nothing but a calm neutrality settled into her features. She, too, relaxed into her seat, despite every inch of the wooden frame feeling as if a thousand nails had been embedded into it and were now puncturing her skin. 

No sound came from Jinu; he only watched on with subtle scrutiny, silently waiting for her to continue. Likely already forming excuses in that complicated labyrinthine mind of his. The way he watched her was not unlike patrons at a gallery, quietly observing a piece of art as they pondered what it could mean, what purpose each colour, each stroke held. What Jinu didn't know, and would soon realise, is that in all of her shades, Rumi harboured only one purpose herself. And it had always been, always will be, him.

He was something she would not relent on. She would offer Jinu no reprieve until he opened up to her entirely, and if that was too intrusive, too intense, she didn't care. Not anymore.

Rumi would not see him in chains again.

"You've been carrying out Gwi Ma's demands under the guise of a loyal servant, but does he know the reason why you took it upon yourself to fulfil your brothers' duties, too?"

"Is that what Hwa told you about yesterday? You spent the whole day talking about me, Rumi?"

"No," She replied, flatly. "I found out about that a few days ago."

Interest suddenly piqued. Jinu leant towards her, placing his foot back on the floor so he could rest his upper body against his forearms, where he'd braced them upon the table. 

"Then what did you do yesterday, Rumi? Because I know you didn't sleep with my brother." For whatever reason, it had sounded like a warning. 

"I didn't," She confirmed, "But what we did do is not something I'm willing to share with someone who never returns that particular favour."

"I earned plenty of favour last night—"

"We're not talking about that. What you did to me has nothing—"

"Excuse me?" Something volatile was laced in his tone. As if he were on the world's shortest tether, and the rope was fraying rapidly. There was a quiet animosity about him that wasn't there before, a potent anger that had his muscles rippling, his jaw ticking, skin straining against whatever storm had erupted within.

Mildly exasperated, Rumi said, "What?" Upon a short and tense puff of air. 

"What I did to you?" His laugh was born void of amusement. "Honey," His fangs flashed at her. "You were a very willing participant—"

"That's not what I meant—"

"No? Just 'cause it sounded like you'd forgotten that you fucked me, too."

"So dramatic—"

"Say it." His interruption came harshly. Unforgiving. Voice deep enough, it vibrated through the space around them. 

"Have you always been this evasive?"

"You should know by now not to play with fire."

At this, Rumi scoffed, raising a brow. She folded her arms across her chest and, down the bridge of her nose, she levelled Jinu with a thoroughly displeased glare. "I could say the same about you."

In his seat, he shifted. Unease flickered over his features. As if, for the first time in his life, he felt out of control. Rumi took his silence as permission to continue, and though she had to summon every ounce of courage she possessed, she managed to get the words out, managed to have them land exactly as she'd expected.

"You dance in Gwi Ma's flames every day," She said, so casually. "Eagerly doing his bidding, pretending you've had a change of heart. Pretending you don't even have one. But I know you, Jinu, despite what you may think. Did you honestly believe I wouldn't figure out that you're doing your absolute hardest to convince the world you're not worth saving?"

There it was. Truth uncovered, all layers peeled and torn to shreds. Nothing was hanging over them now, no facade he could hide behind, no pain he could inflict to deflect her even further. She was on to him, and Rumi knew Jinu had realised it was over. 

Or, she had thought so.

"Why would I do that?" He questioned, so steadily. Unphased. Like Rumi couldn't see the way his nostrils flared, the way his leg twitched beneath the table. He looked as guilty as ever, and he was. Guilty, that is. And it was infuriating to Rumi that Jinu still insisted on remaining closed off to her, that he thought they were both better off if he kept all of his burdens to himself. She wanted to scream at him, tear into him until he realised that what he was doing was pointless. Pointless. They could walk this road together; they would never have to be apart again.

It crushed her more than she cared to let on, the idea that perhaps he simply did not want her by her side.

He'd locked the door this morning.

He'd left the bed before she'd woken.

The day before only happened because of jealousy. Rumi had believed it was because he couldn't stomach the thought of her with someone else. And perhaps that was indeed true, but it had only dawned upon her now that his jealousy may be born from greed. Maybe he only reacted the way he did when she'd arrived with Hwa, because he'd never liked sharing his toys.

Four hundred years ago, he hadn't shared his riches with his own family—

No. No. She was angry, hurt, desperate. But she was not a liar, and she would not entertain thoughts that she did not believe, not in the slightest.

And yet...

"I'm hoping you'll tell me, Jinu," She finally answered, a new weariness in her words. All of a sudden, there seemed to be an impossible weight clinging to her shoulders. As though her body already knew where this conversation would end. 

It only took a roll of his eyes for Jinu to completely dismiss her. 

“When will you understand that you have people who want to sacrifice themselves for you? Why is it only you, Jinu, that gets to be a martyr?”

For a while, Rumi stared at him as if she could will him to speak on a silent plea. For a while, the quiet hung over them like a noxious cloud and Rumi couldn't breathe, not fast enough to get the air she so desperately needed. Her lungs were shrinking inside of her chest and her heart pummelled the against her flesh as it worked to keep her upright, keep her alive...because Jinu was shutting her out again and he was abandoning her and she didn't know how much more of this she could take. There were barely healed fractures on her soul and he found a new way to open them back up every time he did this to her. Every time he decided she wasn't worthy of his trust.

It was intolerable. Inconceivable. All she wanted was to fucking help him. Was she that detestable? Did he truly loathe her so much? Was last night an act of nothing but lust?

She'd felt him, felt the pure need writhing under his skin as his body moved with her own. Rumi had tasted his desire. Perhaps all that appeared on his surface was all that existed deep within, too. How was he not losing his mind? Why was she the only one unravelling right then? How could he look at her, see the desperation in her eyes, and turn his cheek?

After everything...everything...what was so horridly wrong with her that he could not look past?

As she withered away before him, the world faded to a mirage. Suddenly, she was in front of Celine again. At the Honmoon tree, as the stars hid beneath clouds, unable to bear the sight of her, too.

Why couldn't you love me?

I do!

All of me!

It was the same as before. Nothing had changed. She was still the monster everybody had flinched away from the day of the Idol Awards.

"Please, Jinu," She whimpered. Whimpered, like a wounded dog.

Jinu, holding her leash, stared at her for a long, long while. Rumi straightened, wiped away the hair from her face. Tried to clean herself up, tried to not look like damaged goods—

"I told you before, I don't want your help."

That was it. A final thread snapped. Burned to ash. The bond between them rusted from golden to a muted cream, and then that, too, flaked away into nothing.

Wide-eyed, mouth agape and so dry it hurt, Rumi let the tears fall, let them pour down her cheeks. But there was still a stubbornness in her. There was nothing left unbare, and so there was no more shame.

Chair scraping against the floorboards, Rumi stood in one, sharp jolt. Jinu's eyes flashed to keep up with her. Fists pressed into the table, almost splintering the wood under her weight, her pain, Rumi crowded over him, so close he had no other choice but to meet her gaze. To experience all he had done, to choke on it.

"You've—" Her voice, curse it, hitched, a sob prevented, but that didn't matter. She may as well have been bawling, Jinu would still be staring at her with his shutters down, locked, bolted. "You've been killing only those who deserve it," She shuddered, fighting through a difficult breath. "You took on your brothers' responsibility. We both know why. Please, just—"

She reached for him then. Tried to wrap her fingers around his hands that were still clasped atop the table.

A knife went through her chest.

Jinu pulled away from her. Flinched.

She gazed at her own fingertips.

Saw claws there, instead.

Monster, a voice chanted, monster.

God, she was disgusting; she was filthy. 

And he rose from his seat just as Rumi hit rock bottom. He turned from her. Walked away. Towards the door. Fleeing—

"Why?" A death rattle.

Nearly at the door, Jinu paused. Didn't face her, but he'd stopped running. A sliver of hope bloomed petals of gold.

"Why are you doing this? What could possibly be worth it? Look at me." Her voice was so hoarse, so raw and thick with emotion, and still there was a putrid plea blatant with every syllable, "Look at what you're doing to me, Jinu."

Every inch of him went rigid. Still. Rumi was certain he'd stopped breathing. But he did not do as she asked.

Jinu didn't look at her.

"If you're doing this to protect me, you should consider that you might be causing even more damage—"

"You should consider," he cut her off, and there was not a single ember of warmth in his tone as his head turned slightly to the side and his jaw hovered over his shoulder. Still, he did not lift his gaze. "That I am doing this because I want to. Because I enjoy it."

Something broke. Rumi didn't care, didn't care about his words or his lies or the pain he insisted on inflicting. She'd brave it all, endure every ounce of his venom and let her body lie wasted at his feet as his poison overwhelmed her and she died from his vitriol. It would all be worth it if she could just get him to stay.

Just get him to stay—

Another step to the door. Rumi's knees buckled.

"Don't leave," She rasped. "I'll stop. I'll never mention it again. Don't leave, Jinu. Please."

At the sight of his shoulders shaking, his cruel, cruel laughter, bile rose in her throat. Rumi's stomach lurched, her head spun. The world was being flipped on its axis and she was losing her grip, slipping away.

"You're an awful liar," He chuckled. And then he was moving again. Rumi composed herself enough to follow.

Hand now on the door, she ran up behind him. Slammed her palm against the surface, holding it still. Just inches from her chest, Jinu's entire body moved with his heavy breaths.

"Every time you leave," She murmured. Let him feel her breath ghost over the base of his neck. "You have a habit of not coming back."

An eternity followed. A lifetime of bated breath and tangible apprehension. Rumi had grown so cold, so desolate; she was shaking uncontrollably. Jinu was watching, head angled upwards, as her arm trembled against the door. He stared for a long, long time.

A sigh fell from him. Soft, resigned. He turned.

That hope flared—

Jinu reached out his arm, grabbed her own and brought it down between them. Hands clenched together, he stared at her wrist as his thumb soothed over it. There was a fire raging within her, fuelled by relief and heartache and fucking gratitude because he was listening to her, he had stopped, he wasn't leaving—

"I've never asked you to wait for me."

What—

"I have a job to do."

Her hand crashed back down to her side. Once more, Jinu gave her his back.

Once more, he had his hand on the door.

"Don't get in my way again."

The door slammed shut after him.

Rumi fell to the ground. 

Tears pooled at her knees.

For half a day, she stayed there.

Crumpled up, discarded.

Unwanted.

Insignificant.

When the door burst open again, Rumi did not look up.

She knew it wasn't him.

She hadn't been waiting for him.

When arms immediately came around her, when she looked up and saw two pairs of eyes she had adored for most of her life, Rumi realised why she had stayed by the door. Who she had been waiting for.

Mira and Zoey gathered her up, put the innards that had been gutted from her back in place. They carried her, bloodied and battered and broken, and placed her on the sofa.

On the sofa, not the bed. Because they knew her, they knew her so well.

And they said nothing. Not a word. Just held her through a forever silence. 

Kept her warm. Kept her together.

The Saja Boys returned sometime in the night.

They all watched a film on a tiny laptop.

It was cramped. It was fine.

It was all fine.

Rumi gave all her attention to the screen.

She didn't once look at the door.

There was nobody else to wait for.

—

They were playing right into his hands.

He gazed upon his feast. At the reaper who'd captured a hunter's heart.

Gwi Ma laughed as Jinu writhed and roared.

He laughed, and laughed. And laughed.