“Why don’t you have any other friends?”

I blinked at Jongin. “I’ve never… really made any.”

“So,” Jongin continued, a grin beginning to appear on his face, “if I hadn’t approached you, would you still be friendless?”

“Who in the world said you were my friend?”

He gave me a deadpan look. “Are you really playing this game right now? If I recall, you asked to copy my homework—”

“I take it back,” I say hastily.

Chapter 43

“Was that Jimin?” Jaeyeon asked as I approached her at the staircase.

I was about to make a face when I remembered that we were technically friends. Friends. I almost snorted. I had been possessed when I offered that, and so was Jimin, apparently, when he agreed. “Yeah,” I told her instead as we headed for the elevators. “Kai was supposed to train me today, but he got called last minute to deal with some situation with monsters and after… after an incident, they’re increasing my training, which apparently meant I couldn’t skip anything. So I went to Jimin’s safehouse to train.”

She whistled through her teeth. “That sounds so hard.”

“It was. He’s terrible at it.”

Jaeyeon snickered, a sound that I wasn’t sure I could imagine coming from her until a couple of days ago. “I bet. He’s so ill-tempered at school that I can’t believe he belongs to a safehouse. And works with people period.”

The elevator arrived at the floor, and we stepped outside as I swung my keys to the apartment. Then stopped.

There was a tall figure leaning on the apartment door. Jaeyeon froze beside me, though out of fear.

I knew that silhouette too well to think it would be anything else. Kai turned around when he heard us, lips pressed into a thin, worried line, hands already resting on his daggers on both sides of his hips. He hadn’t bothered to hide them, and he was wearing the Athanatoi clothing for fighting—he had come back from whatever mission it was that Jimin had mentioned, and he was probably glamoured to look normal.

Jaeyeon in a breath even when she recongnized him, and I frowned. “What’s wrong?” I asked when I finally found my voice. And tried to ignore the fact that he looked good—really good in that outfit.

“You’re safer at the safehouse,” was all he told me. Then, without offering an explanation, he headed for the elevator. “You both. Let’s go.”

***

Kai didn’t offer either of us any explanations about what was going on. He led us tersely through the streets, on guard with both of his hands resting on the hilt of his dagger, and I stuck close to Jaeyeon. I knew the walk down to the safehouse—the straight walk down—was warded, so it was usually safe to travel in that direction, but the apartment was also warded, which meant he was worried enough to bring us to the safehouse. It was, theoretically, the only place that no monster (or human) could break into, including the Darkling.

Jaeyeon didn’t talk either, but stayed close to me, hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, knuckles almost white. She didn’t relax the least bit when we got to the safehouse either, but eyed the place with a wary expression. She definitely wasn’t comfortable with it, thought that wasn’t surprising, given what had transpired the last time she were here.

We stepped inside the wards. Then through the door. Nothing changed.

I looked at Kai. “What’s going on?” I repeated.

He seemed to let go of the breath he had been holding the whole time when we had stepped into safety. Then, he shook his head. “They spotted the Darkling,” he replied, voice just as tense. Jaeyeon stiffened beside me, and I wondered if she heard the extra tremor in Kai’s voice, the reminder of an old wound that had never healed, that he had barely shown to anyone.

Either way, she jabbed her finger at the kitchen, the safehouse surprisingly empty at this time. “I’m going to give you two a moment,” she said. “Sum it up for me afterwards.”

She was surprisingly perceptive, though I supposed it shouldn’t have been surprising, given that she lived not only as an Athanatoi but an Athanatoi in hiding.

“The Darkling was spotted,” I echoed in a low voice. “In Seoul?”

Kai pressed his lips together. He didn’t look happy—it wasn’t anger, not exactly, but a hint of fear. And to see fear on Kai…

It meant the situation was bad. Or it meant that the Darkling still had more influence on him than he would’ve liked to admit, and that this was a threat he should stay back from because of what had happened.

“Where was he?” I asked quietly.

A helpless shrug. “I wasn’t there. Not anywhere close to your side of town, but those monsters we were summoned to fight—they might’ve been his doing, to lure you away. It’s a good thing Jimin volunteered to train you, because as much as he’s an , it probably kept you safe. The Darkling was looking for you.”

Park Jimin volunteered to train me. Not on Jin’s orders. He volunteered to train me.

I brushed the thought off and figured I could sort it out later. “And my apartment…?”

“He can’t pop up at any moment,” Kai informed me. “The apartment is still too well warded for that, and same goes for the path back to your house, but I think he’s been experimenting in creating portals. That’s how he managed to show up in Seoul. I don’t know what realm he is, but we’ve all figured out that he’s somehow managed to create a dimension for himself to hide in.”

“A dimension,” I echoed.

Talking about the Darkling seemed to physically pain Kai, and part of me wanted to stop, but this felt too important to. And he knew too, because he kept on going, burying that spark of hurt and fear and anger behind as he continued calmly on. “A realm,” he confirmed. “Just like Ignis. A realm. Perhaps not as stable, because Ignis is grounded with many doorways and could never fall, but he has one for himself to hide in, and we don’t have the forces to scour for doorways. Even if we did, there’s no telling if it’s the Darkling’s, or where it leads. There’s been too many pocket dimensions created throughout time for us to know.”

“And he can just… go anywhere in Seoul?”

“Anywhere that it’s not warded,” Kai replied. “So technically, the Darkling can’t show up at your apartment, but we’ll be spending spellcasters there tomorrow to make sure there are stronger wards and that the Darkling has no way of getting in. The only way someone can show turn up is if they’re invited or if they’re human.”

“So it technically was safe there.”

Kai’s jaw clenched. “Yes,” he grit out, “but I’m not taking any risks. You and Jaeyeon can just stay in your room. Your brother’s back soon, anyway, and we’ll have the wards all set.”

He didn’t look like he was in the mood to do anything, especially talk, so I nodded. “I’ll get an inflatable mattress for Jaeyeon,” I said.

His nod was distracted, surprisingly empty. Telling myself to ignore—it was unavoidable, I couldn’t blame Kai for it—I headed upstairs with Jaeyeon.

***

“The Darkling’s in Seoul,” Jaeyeon concluded.

I glanced at her, then frowned. “If you’re going to put it that way, then yes?” I tried. “They spotted him. But that could also mean a bunch of things. And he was on the opposite side of town, so really…” I hoped I didn’t sound as unnerved as I felt. “It’s probably nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing, though. I washed my face thoroughly after I had spoken to Kai, hoping to wash away the feeling gnawing at my stomach, of fear because it was ridiculous, but I couldn’t.

The Darkling had never appeared, not really. It had been through monsters, through others sent to kidnap me, but as himself, never. I had assumed it was because he didn’t think it would be safe, with so many Athanatoi watching Seoul, but now I had the horrible feeling that he had been biding his time, waiting and watching and observing and learning. The last time I had seen him—not even fully there—Kai had died. And if he were after me because I was Life, then what more of a reaffirmation would it be for him to see Kai alive and well?

They had said he wouldn’t show his face for a while after what had happened with the golems. It had barely been a week since the whole incident had happened and he was already doubling his efforts, pushing and waiting for us to make a mistake.

This was a man with a millennia of experience. What could we even do against him?

“Hey,” came Jaeyeon’s voice. She nudged me with a shoulder. “It’ll be fine. You’re well protected. Kai said that the Darkling can’t really find you unless he has your exact location, and the times he has your exact location are times when you’re already safe and inside wards, so he can’t get you. You just need to be a bit more careful than usual when you’re not in warded areas, but apart from that, it’ll be fine.”

Fine didn’t seem to be a word that could properly describe the past couple of days, or the past couple of months. Fine did not describe discovering that I was an Athanatoi, being dragged into a world in which I had barely an idea of how to survive. It did not describe Kai dying, did not describe the Darkling and the ever-looming threat of him hanging over me no matter what I did, didn’t describe my power and how I resented to be the one who carried it.

Fine also didn’t cover time spent with Luhan in the training room, vain attempts to avoid Baekhyun’s teasing, that date with Kai, and all the little things in between. They were be