The weight of the morning was a suffocating shroud.
After the execution of the young guard, the air in the High Tower had grown heavy, charged with a static tension that made the fine hairs on my arms stand on end. I had spent the afternoon confined to the gallery, my mind a whirlpool of the guard's lifeless eyes and the chilling whisper of Princess Myung-Ok.
"I know how she really died, and why he is so afraid you will remember."
The words were a jagged shard of glass lodged in my heart. I had sought out the Princess later in the afternoon, finding her near the lily pond in the inner courtyard. She had looked at me with a smile that did not reach her eyes, her fingers tracing the edge of a fan.
"You seek a truth that is not a destination, Sun-Hee, but a circle," she had said, her voice a twisted melody. "The woman in the portrait was not a victim of the shadows. She was the shadow. She did not leave him; she became the very hunger that consumes him. Ask yourself why the General sleeps in ice, little bird. It is not to keep the world out. It is to keep the memory of what he did to her from burning the stars to ash."
She had left me then, her words offering no clarity, only a deeper, more terrifying darkness.
By the time the sun dipped behind the obsidian peaks, Kai-Zin had retreated to our shared chamber. I followed, my heart heavy with a dread I could not name. But as I stepped through the iron-bound doors, the air hit me like a physical blow.
It was scorching.
The room, usually chilled by the mountain wind, was a furnace. Kai-Zin lay across the massive bed, his tunic discarded, his skin flushed a deep, violent crimson. He was trapped in a trance of Ancestral Nightmares, his body jerking with the force of unseen battles. His wolf-aura was no longer a controlled shroud; it was lashing out in jagged, black arcs of energy that shredded the silk hangings and cracked the stone of the headboard.
"Kai-Zin?" I whispered, taking a cautious step forward.
A low, guttural roar erupted from his throat, a sound that was not human. His eyes flew open, but they were not amber. They were a blinding, molten white, devoid of pupils or reason. The shadows in the room surged toward him, coiling around his limbs like snakes.
"Out!" he rasped, the word tearing from his lungs. "Get... out... Sun-Hee..."
"You are burning up," I said, my voice trembling. I reached for a basin of water, but a bolt of his black energy struck the table, shattering the porcelain into a thousand shards.
I stood frozen. This could finally be my chance to run for my life. I could leave. I could run to the door and scream for Madame Vane. But I looked at the way his fingers were digging into the mattress, drawing blood from his own palms, and I remembered the Intimacy Agreement.
"The physical intimacy of our bond will begin on my terms, at the time of my choosing."
But the madness was choosing now. The debt was demanding payment. If his spirit was not grounded, the explosion of his power would level the High Tower, and my people in the pits would be the first to die.
I moved toward the bed, my skin prickling from the heat radiating off him. "Kai-Zin, look at me."
He didn't see me. He was seeing the ghosts of two hundred years. He was seeing the woman in the portrait. He was seeing the blood he had spilled to keep a promise that had turned into a curse.
I climbed onto the bed, the heat of his skin searing through my thin shift. I reached out and cupped his face. It was like touching a branding iron. His wolf-aura struck my wrists, the black energy biting into my skin, but I did not let go.
"Anchor yourself," I hissed, my own anger rising to meet his madness. "You said I was your light. Then look at it!"
I leaned in and pressed my lips to his. The contact was a violent spark. For a heartbeat, he froze, and then the beast roared to the surface. He did not kiss me back so much as he tried to consume me. His mouth was a hot, desperate vacuum, his teeth grazing my lips with a bruising force that tasted of salt and copper.
The impact was like a lightning strike. The world vanished into a roar of gold and black. For a second, I felt his mind, a chaotic, screaming abyss of loneliness and hunger, flood into mine. He gasped into my mouth, his hands coming up to grip my waist with a crushing, desperate strength.
The kiss was not a caress; it was a war.
His eyes were still white, but the edges were bleeding back into amber. He moved with a raw, predatory desperation, his teeth grazing my lower lip as he sought the warmth of my life to still the ice in his bones.
His hands, calloused and massive, slammed against my waist, pinning me to the furs. He moved with a raw, feral urgency, his mind long gone to the fever. He did not see princess Sun-Hee; he saw a life-force, a golden light he had to hoard before the darkness swallowed him. He rolled me beneath him, his weight crushing the breath from my lungs.
"Mine," he growled into the hollow of my throat, the word more a snarl than a whisper.
He did not wait. He did not coax. His hands were everywhere at once, tearing at my shift until the silk gave way with a sickening rip. I lay exposed in the sweltering dark, my heart hammering like a dying bird.
He buried his face in my chest, his mouth hot and demanding. He bit and sucked at the sensitive skin of my breasts and shoulders, leaving dark, purple marks that felt like brands. Every touch was an act of possession, a violent claim that left me gasping in a mixture of pain, pleasure and a terrifying, unwanted electricity.
I squeezed my eyes shut, tears leaking from the corners. I thought of the young guard. I thought of Min-Ah. Live, I told them in my mind. I am doing this so you can live.
When he moved to part my legs, a fresh wave of terror crashed over me. I was pure, raised in the sheltered gardens of a peaceful kingdom, and he was a mountain of muscle and madness. He did not notice my flinch. He did not see the way I gripped the furs until my knuckles turned white. He was a predator who had finally cornered his prize.
He entered me with a brutal, singular thrust that felt like being split apart by a lightning bolt.
A sharp, jagged scream tore from my throat, but it was lost against the heat of his neck. The pain was absolute: a white-hot, tearing agony that made the world go grey at the edges. I felt the wetness of my own blood against the furs, a silent testament to the end of my innocence.
Kai-Zin did not slow down. He could not. He was driven by a biological necessity that had been building for two hundred years. He moved inside me with a rhythmic, devastating power, his body a relentless engine of shadow and heat. Each thrust sent a new jolt of pain through my hips, a dull ache that seemed to settle in my very bones.
I felt like a doll being broken, my small frame bouncing against the mattress under the sheer force of his assault. I reached up, my fingers digging into his back, scratching deep lines into his skin just to feel something other than the crushing weight of his body. He let out a low, guttural moan at the sensation, his pace turning even more frantic.
"Please," I gasped, the word broken and small.
He did not hear me. He was buried in the crook of my neck, his breath coming in ragged, animalistic huffs. He was marking me, his teeth sinking into the pulse point of my throat as he reached his peak. I felt a sudden, blinding surge of energy through the blood-seal on my wrist, a golden heat that raced through my veins and collided with the darkness of his power.
He stiffened, a long, primal roar erupting from his chest as he emptied himself into me. The shadows in the room suddenly collapsed, pulled inward toward the bed in a silent, violent vacuum.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of our labored breathing and the smell of sex, blood, and ozone. Kai-Zin went limp, his heavy head falling onto my shoulder. The fever seemed to have broken with the act, leaving him in a state of profound, bone-deep exhaustion.
I lay beneath him, my lower body throbbing with a dull, persistent pain. I felt hollowed out, a vessel that had been filled with a storm and then discarded. The guilt of the guard's death was still there, but now it was joined by a profound sense of self-loathing. I had sold the only thing that was truly mine to the monster who had destroyed my life.
I did not move. I could not. I watched the shadows settle back into the corners of the room, feeling the sticky warmth of our combined blood cooling against my thighs. I was his anchor. I was his prize. And God help me, I was the only thing standing between my people and his total, unbridled madness.
As the grey light of dawn began to creep through the windows, I felt the bond lock. It was no longer just a mental connection. I felt his heartbeat as if it were my own. I felt the steady, dark thrum of his soul anchored to the base of my spine.
I was no longer just Sun-Hee. I was a part of him.
I woke hours later, the grey light of dawn creeping through the windows to illuminate the wreckage of the room. Kai-Zin was already awake, but he was not the predator I remembered from the night. He was propped up on one elbow, blinking at me with eyes that were wide, clear, and searching.
He looked at our joined hands, then down at the golden lace glowing on my arm. A faint, relieved smile started to form on his lips. "The bond," he whispered, his voice hushed with awe. "It is locked. The screaming in my head... it is finally gone."
But as he shifted the furs to sit up, the smile died. His gaze fell upon the blood on the sheets and the dark, angry bruises on my shoulders. He looked at my tear-stained face and the way I instinctively recoiled, my body tensing as if expecting another blow.
The realization crashed over him like a physical strike. He recoiled, sliding to the very edge of the bed as if his own touch had become poisonous. "Sun-Hee," he breathed, his voice trembling. "Tell me I didn't. Tell me the shadows did not take me that far."
He sat on the edge of the bed, his head burying into his hands, his broad shoulders shaking. The silence was broken only by his ragged, uneven breathing. When he finally turned back to me, his amber eyes were filled with a raw, bleeding shame that made him look human for the first time since we met.
He looked at the marks he had left on my skin, and his hand shook as he reached out, not to claim me, but to pull the heavy furs higher to cover me. "I did this," he whispered, his voice cracking with a profound self-loathing. "The madness... I could not see you through the dark. I have become the very thing I promised to protect you from."
He did not ask for my forgiveness. He simply sat there in the cold morning light, a king reduced to a penitent, looking like a man who knew he did not deserve to even speak my name.