“Again.” I tossed the book at Jongin. “Every single book you recommend my favourite character dies.”

“It’s your problem for always choosing the wrong favourite characters,” he replied with a shrug. “But hey, at least you’re not crying this time.”

“Do you want me to cry?”

He shuddered. “Oh no, spare me. Here, read the sequel.”

“There’s no point reading the sequel if my favourite character dies!”

He gave a helpless shrug. “Find another favourite character.”

Chapter 31

Cornered in some random alley with two golems and the Darkling, of all people, should’ve scared me more than I was scared at the moment, but for some reason, the only thing I could think of was my backpack that I’d dropped and the fact that I had my laptop there and that was probably broken, and then my phone that I had also dropped which was probably cracked again, as if once weren’t enough.

And then it finally hit me that that was the Darkling, accompanied by two golems I couldn’t possibly fight, and then all of a sudden my phone and laptop didn’t seem to matter as much (or maybe it did—just a little bit—because they’d been expensive and I didn’t want to replace my phone again).

I looked back. It was a complete dead end—the only way out was through and past the Darkling and the golems, but that was physically impossible—there was no way I could do that—and I couldn’t scale the walls, either.

My blade was still on me—it was strapped safely onto my back, but it wouldn’t have been particularly any use against a golem either. The first thing that surfaced, strangely, was a conversation with Luhan about whether or not decapitating the Darkling would be any use in killing him, but I figured I wouldn’t exactly be capable of doing so either.

Neither the Darkling nor the golems made any sign of moving for what seemed like the longest time. It could’ve been a couple seconds, it could’ve been minutes—I had absolutely no idea. Finally, hands shaking, I reached for the shortsword on my back. Neither the Darkling nor the golems at his side made any move until I had the blade held in front of me with both hands, though they were shaking too hard to even hold it properly.

He continued watching me with the same stare, unreadable, frighteningly calm, the slate-grey eyes not showing a single thing. Finally, he took a slight step forward. “That’s not how you hold a blade,” he said.

I blanched. I wasn’t sure what I expected his voice to sound like, but it probably would’ve surprised me either way. The weirdest part—it shouldn’t have been anything, but for some reason, he sounded so… normal that I couldn’t quite process. The Darkling had been painted as some terrifying, mythical figure by almost everyone, and he looked just… so relatively normal and sounded so too that my brain nearly short circuited.

“I—” I glanced down at the shortsword again. “Excuse me?”

“That’s neither the position for defense or for offense,” he replied. “I used to fight with a shortsword too.”

I can’t tell why that’s relevant, I thought. If you fought with a shortsword, you were probably better than me.

Lowering the blade just enough so I could see him, I tried to swallow back the fear. Jimin would be there soon, so if I could just stall for a while longer, maybe it would be fine. “You’re not supposed to be in Seoul,” I tried. “Why are you here?”

“I think the answer to that is quite obvious.”

Oh no was the only thought that I could understand. Everything else was a mess, but I could tell very clearly—oh no because the Darkling was here, oh no because I was cornered, oh no because Jimin was still a long ways away and Kai was God-knew-where.

“Wait,” I started, mind whirling. Nothing made much sense, but I stared at the two golems at the side. “Why did you bring those with you?”

I watched as his gaze flickered back for a short moment. “You don’t suppose I’d actually come to Seoul, would you?”

I blanched. “Pardon me?”

“It’s too dangerous. The Athanatoi have Seoul too well guarded for me to stay there for any time longer than a couple of minutes.”

“So you’re not actually there?”

He held up a hand to the light. It was hard to tell, especially because I was still a fair distance away from him, though if I squinted hard enough, I could notice—the tips of his fingertips were slightly see-through, not quite completely opaque.

He wasn’t actually there. That was a bit of reassurance for the first couple of moments after the realization, but then it hit me that I had no chance of taking down two golems. It was impossible with the Darkling physically there, and without him physically there, it was still impossible.

Still, that meant I had a much better chance of getting away alive than I did before. My hands felt uncomfortably sweater around the grip of my blade, and I tried to think of any way I could get past the two golems.

Nothing came to mind. I’d seen golems before, and even Kai had a hard time facing down one on his own. I remembered him blowing up half the school to get away—that hadn’t ended well at all (and from what I knew, the school hadn’t been fixed yet). As good as I was with messing up the spells I did, a narrow alley with no way out wasn’t the best recipe for explosions.

“Look,” I tried. “I don’t know what you want with me, but it’s probably not going to go whatever way you want it to, and I personally think it would be best if you just left me alone instead of sending monsters after me. I’m not even done with high school. Literally—” I broke off. Was he even listening? All of a sudden, the previous frustrations that had been bottled up so neatly seemed to explode. As terrifying as the situation was, it was ridiculous too, and for fifteen or so seconds, I felt angrier than I felt scared. “This is too much. I can’t even walk home without worrying about being ambushed. I can’t even do well in school if I wanted too, and that’s just ridiculous. I didn’t ask for this stupid aura, I didn’t ask for any of this, and this is plain unfair—”

“Jeon Mira,” the Darkling said. He still looked emotionless. I wanted to throw my shortsword at his face and see if he could maintain the same expression after that. “Do you think anything is fair?”

“Obviously not—”

“Park Jimin isn’t going to be here in awhile.” He glanced behind him as if checking. “Most of this place is sealed with spells to prevent that, so it’s going to take him a while to actually get them down.”

There was really nowhere to backup into. I was too far away from the Darkling and the golems to even make an attempt to run at them and escape, so that was one option ruled out. The only other thing I could think of was to attempt to fight, though I had no idea how well that would even work out. How was one supposed to fight a golem? Kai had never really spoken about it, nor had Luhan.

“I’m not going with you,” I started. “I’d rather just stab myself.”

His expression still remained impassive. I was beginning to wonder if he had any other look—was he capable of looking angry? Sad? Happy? I couldn’t even imagine anymore. “I don’t expect you to go willingly.”

From the brief things I’d heard about the Darkling, he’d killed a lot Athanatoi throughout the years, but apart from that, no one had told me much else. He’d been Death—from what I knew, he still was Death, and Eunhae’s mom had told me that that was a huge reason why the normal cycle of Life and Death being reincarnated had stopped. There had also been rumours—never confirmed, but still common belief—that Life had been murdered by him.

“What do you want?” It was a genuine question that time. “Seriously, what are you after? You’re the one who went absolutely berserk and murdered Athanatoi—but what for? Why are you still after them?"

“That’s the story they always tell.”

I stared at him. “Are you saying that you’re the righteous one in all of this?”

He glanced behind him yet again. Was it a habit, to always check his back? I could see why it would be, but he wasn’t even there, technically, at least, not in person. “I don’t have time for this conversation here,” he said shortly. “You have two choices. Go willingly, or unwillingly. The ending is the same.”

Jimin should’ve been here already—he obviously couldn’t, because the Darkling had set up some sort of spell, which left me with the last choice, which was to fight. My arms were beginning to ache from holding up the shortsword for so long, and cautiously, I lowered it and concentrated on my aura.

“There’s no way you’ll take down both golems on your own,” the Darkling told me, the same infuriating calm in his voice. “You’re making