“I’ll be gone for… around three days?” Jongin told me that morning. Half awake, I looked up from my desk where I was sitting and frowned at him. “It’s okay, though. You won’t suffer too much. One of those days is a weekend.”

“You’re leaving me at school alone?”

“Well, you’re hardly alone.”

“I’ll be sitting alone in every single class alone, eating lunch alone, going home alone—”

“Yeah, I’m leaving you alone,” Jongin cut in, rolling his eyes. “Deal with it.”

Chapter 37

Going into Ignis wasn’t much different than the last time, except it wasn’t nearly as surprising given everything else I had seen already. Watching Luhan open the portal probably nearly gave me a heart attack the last time, but now, it was more or less daily routine seeing him use his aura.

It was only Eunhae, Luhan, Baekhyun, Sehun, Kyungsoo, Kai and I this time. I was pretty sure at least three people from the other safehouse that were going, though I had no idea who (I had a feeling that Jimin would end up being one of them, which was just my luck). We all filed around in the room as Luhan finished up with the spell, and less than a minute later, we were standing in the sunny, flowery field that led up to Ignis, shining in the distance. The wards around the city shone ever so slightly in the light, flickering in and out of existence.

I turned to Kai. “When was the last time we were here?”

“Couple months ago?” He shrugged. “I can’t remember exactly. Though a lot more time has passed in Ignis already.”

“One hour to a day,” I mutter. “Right.”

“It’s a good thing,” he replied. “Anyway, let’s hurry. We need time to get settled down before we figure out what the plans are when we get there. I’m hoping that… well…” He glanced towards Eunhae. “I’m hoping it’ll be a standard report, though I have no idea how Eunhae’s going to handle the information with her mother. If everything goes well, we won’t have the meet in front of the council and we’ll be going home really soon.”

“And if everything doesn’t go well?”

“Then we’re here for an indefinite amount of time, though I still don’t think it’ll be over ten days.” He paused. “By the way, Mira, don’t say a thing about what happened when we met the Darkling. Don’t even mention it. Word spreads fast, and if anyone else hears about it, then there’s no way it can remain a secret.”

The warning was heavy enough to settle the dread into my heart, but I still managed to nod at him. “Okay.”

He nodded at that, then, as if there was no more to say, turned to look forward at the city again as he sped up, catching up with the rest of the group. I had to jog to keep up with his steps, heading down the flowery meadow as the Ignis gradually loomed closer and closer. Ahead of us, Luhan was chatting quietly with Eunhae, a couple of paces ahead, and even further down was Baekhyun, practically running towards the city walls. On second glance, he seemed to be racing Sehun.

Looking at that seemed to pacify a bit of the initial uncomfortableness. I turned to look at Kai again. “Are we going to stay at Baekhyun’s house again?” I asked. “Last time…” Last time was so long ago. “Last time that’s where we stayed, right?”

Kai nodded. “Yeah, we most likely are. I don’t think there’s anywhere else to go, and the Byun’s manor is large enough to house most of us. Luhan’s going home, though, and Eunhae probably will too. I don’t know if she’ll be returning with us to Seoul, given that we go back soon. I’m not too sure how well her mother’s going to take the news.”

That was another mood downer. They seemed to turn up every time I thought we had moved on to a new topic, which, I did suppose, was inevitable. Still, part of me wished there would be something to talk about that didn’t lead to only uncertainties.

Another thirty seconds later I had thought of something else. In a half-whisper (in case anyone ahead were somehow listening with enhanced hearing), I asked, “Did you tell anyone we went on a date?”

Kai glanced at me, raising an eyebrow. “Would you prefer if I did?”

I coughed. “Well, no, but I would like to know how much they know since Baekhyun didn’t say anything I’m going to assume you didn’t either.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Is that a yes?”

“No,” I sputtered, “I clearly just said no—”

“Luhan,” he called, and I practically choked on my next breath then and there. Luhan broke off for whatever he was saying to Eunhae, turning to look at Kai.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Don’t you dare,” I managed out, sounding very much like I was wheezing. Perhaps I was.

“Nevermind,” he called back to Luhan, who gave both of us one more confused glance as he turned back to Eunhae.

Kai was grinning much more now, obviously very amused by my reaction, and, too embarrassed to meet him in the eye, I managed to kick him in the shin. “I swear,” I started, “if you ever do that again, I’ll…”

“You’ll…?”

“I’ll dump out all your chocolate milk.”

“Terrifying threat,” Kai replied, though before he could say more, we had approached the warded part of the city.

Just like last time, it was Luhan who stopped first, though he wasn’t the one to take down the wards. I watched as Eunhae, instead, approached the wall, a hand held out in front of her. She reached forward, pressing her palm against the invisible boundary, and with her touch, the light flared again, flashing sporadically in the area where she had touched it. I watched, entranced—the last time I’d seen it I barely had the time to appreciate it, though that wasn’t unexpected given the situation. Now, though, even if there was still a lot on my mind, it wasn’t nearly enough to completely distract me from the way the wards seemed to light up all around us, the whole city turning much brighter for the briefest moment.

And then it all faded again, the brightness dying down. Eunhae turned around a beamed at them. “We can go through now,” she said. “Hurry up, though, they don’t really remain open for very long.”

That marked the end of the conversation with Kai, which I wasn’t going to complain about, because from the way it had been going, I was going to end up digging the trap even deeper for myself. We filed through the door Eunhae had opened, with Kai last, and immediately, the landscape seemed to have changed around us.

The wards had obviously done more than protect; it also concealed. Going through it had brought us directly to Ignis, meaning that the city was much closer than it seemed compared to what it had looked like when I was looking from the outside. It was still more of the outskirts of the city, especially the residential areas, but houses already lined the paved path, most of them looking even larger than the Seoul safehouse, all built in an old fashioned manner. The road lead towards where the taller buildings stood, winding down until it disappeared behind another building. Further ahead the houses got closer and closer together until they were storefronts, others restaurants. The whole place seemed… medieval. Or perhaps medieval wasn’t the right word; it was definitely much more advanced than that, though the style differed so much from the greys of Seoul’s skyscrapers. The sky was a clear blue, cloudless, once again unlike Seoul. It was such a different place that I couldn’t comprehend how I had been there just fifteen minutes ago.

“Where’s Baekhyun’s manor?” I asked.

“The Byuns’,” Kai corrected. “Baekhyun doesn’t own it. Not yet. His father does. And it’s across town. Probably… thirty minutes walk?”

He had the audacity to laugh at my expression. “Just kidding. It should be another two minutes away.”

It was a very Kai thing to say, and another yet that he knew well enough that I was most likely going to complain if there was another thirty minutes to walk. Scowling at him once more, I hurried my pace.

It didn’t do much, really, because Kai was a significant amount taller than me and two of my steps were practically one of his, so he didn’t even have to walk that much faster. I was pretty sure my sprinting equaled his jogging. Seeing that walking faster obviously hadn’t done me any favours, I slowed down again. “Are we going to be doing anything today? If we don’t meet the Council now, could I explore Ignis?”

“What do you normally do on Sundays?”

“Uh…”

“Training,” Kai filled in helpfully. “Do you think anything has changed?”

My eyes widened. “Excuse me? We’re in Ignis, so everything has changed. I don’t have to train—”

“Ignis has really nice training rooms,” he told me with a shrug. “We’ll do that this afternoon. And if you do well, we can eat dinner somewhere. They have really good food here.”

Given the fact that, supposedly, I had to do well, eating dinner outside seemed a little bit impossible. Before I could point out that very obvious fact to Kai, Baekhyun, who had changed to be in the lead, turned down one of the roads towards one of the manors.

I didn’t really recognize it from the last time I’d been there, even though we’d stayed for over five days, it hadn’t really been something ingrained in my me