Chapter 11

Hwayoung was tempted to ask Kyungsoo to bring her up instead of forcing her to do it herself because her ankle was injured and she wanted to be spiteful, but then there was the fact that that would make her look weak. There was also a audible tremor in his voice when he spoke, so curiosity beat everything else and she summoned the wind to bring her up.

There was nothing visible around them at first glance, though Kyungsoo’s stance was wary. He didn’t have his blade drawn, though he kept a firm grip on the hilt of his sword.

The hole in the ground was a lot larger than Hwayoung expected when she looked down at it, which was the first sign that it wasn’t meant for a human to fall through. It had been covered by a thin layer of leaves and twigs, though it was woven well enough for it to look realistic. Anyone could’ve made the mistake of stepping on it, and the drop down was far enough for a normal person to perhaps break an ankle or leg.

“Wild animals?” she suggested to Kyungsoo. “I can’t think of anything else.”

He pressed his lips together. “That’s not the main worry, though. The fact that there’s a trap means that there are people around here, and you’re not going to be able to move properly for at least a couple more days.” His eyes travelled towards her again. “Is your ankle hurt?”

There was a faint tinge of worry in his voice (or maybe she was reading it wrong—Hwayoung wasn’t sure) that made her raise an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think it’s any worse than before,” she tried a bit cautiously. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Let’s go back. We better tell Baekhyun about it and start moving as soon as possible. I don’t feel like this area is safe, and it’s not just because of what this trap was made for.”

The walk back was a silent one, and Kyungsoo didn’t make any other comment about her injured ankle, though he did walk along with her at a slower pace, hand never leaving the hilt of his sword. Hwayoung limped along, applying the odd bit of pressure to her ankle to check it. She wasn’t too sure, though it felt like it was better than it had been the previous day. She was lucky the fall down the trap hadn’t hurt it.

Baekhyun was absentmindedly playing with rays of light between his fingertips when they came back, and he lifted his head and gave both of them a nod of acknowledgement. Hwayoung nearly fell over next to her bag—she needed a more efficient way to move instead of hobbling around.

“Hungry?” he asked her, holding up one of the purplish fruits he’d given to her at breakfast. “I scaled a tree and got more of these.”

She shook her head at him. “I just fell down a trap.”

Baekhyun did a double take at her, opened his mouth, shut it, and then turned to look in Kyungsoo’s direction. “She just did what?” he asked.

“Fell down a trap,” Kyungsoo echoed, face impassive. It took Hwayoung at least ten seconds to figure out that he was joking around with Baekhyun and then another fifteen seconds to get the thought through her mind that Do Kyungsoo was joking. She gaped at him alongside Baekhyun.

“Okay,” Baekhyun repeated, shaking his head as if trying to clear it. “Let me get this straight. You just fell down a trap? What about your ankle?”

She rolled it around. It didn’t hurt that much, especially when there was no pressure on it, though it was still swollen. “The fall didn’t really hurt it because I stopped myself with wind, but Kyungsoo says that it was most likely made for a much bigger animal, which means there was someone who made it. Before we entered the forest, didn’t you mention that there were stories about savages that lived in the forest?”

Baekhyun pressed his lips together. “Well… those are just rumours. The forest definitely isn’t uninhabited, but the stories that they were savages were definitely made up to scare children. It did more than that, though. The crown prince and his soldiers don’t go far into the forest. At least I don’t think they do.”

“That means that some part of those stories are real,” Kyungsoo interjected. “I bet at some point they did go in and something happened for him to never send his men inside again. But I don’t… I don’t see anything wrong with this place at the moment.”

“Except for the fact that there was a giant trap in the middle of the forest.” Hwayoung glanced at her ankle. “What sort of creatures lives in the forest, Baekhyun?”

He raised his arms in surrender. “I don’t know everything. Don’t ask me.”

Kyungsoo looked just as miffed as Hwayoung felt, so she reached for one of the fruits Baekhyun had gotten and took a bite in. “I guess we should keep watch again tonight, then,” she muttered. “Just in case something happens.”

The rest of them said their agreements, and the rest of the time was spent in silence.

***

Hwayoung was fifteen again.

Sehun was pulling her through the streets, hand wrapped around hers tightly and his windblown hair a mess around his face. She could see the tense line his lips were pressed in, the nervous flash of the familiar sky-blue of his eyes.

She had already asked him for their destination. He told her not to ask, but Hwayoung knew that he was avoiding it because he had no idea either. A day ago, he’d told her they needed to get out of the Second Sector and out of the city, but an attempt at that had done no good because half of the guards of the city were after them now.

Hwayoung glanced up at her brother again. She couldn’t see any guards behind them at that point, at least not the ones with the silver and red emblem on their chest plate.

The sun was beginning to set, which was a good thing. It meant people would be clearing from the streets and it would darken, and then the soldiers would have a harder time spotting them.

Though neither her nor Sehun knew the streets of the Second Sector well, and while her brother had played it off as nothing, Hwayoung knew how much it was bothering him. They could very much turn into an alley and then come face to face with a dead end.

Hwayoung was out of breath and panting when Sehun stopped running. His hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat, blue eyes wary. He’d somehow found a broken wooden door leading to an unused house, the previous owners long gone.

It was too dark around her to be able to see much, though the ground was covered by a thick layer of dust. The floorboards creaked under her feet at every slight movement. There was the shape of a bed in one corner of the room and then a smaller door on the other side, so small that she was pretty sure she’d have to stoop to get through.

“Someone used to live here,” Sehun muttered. “I don’t know where they went.”

He’d left the door open just a crack so she could see a sliver of the outside. The sun was almost completely set, so it was almost as dark as in the inside when she peered outside.

“Are the guards gone?” she asked him.

He definitely looked exhausted. They’d been on the run for days since they got into the Second Sector, and it was mostly Sehun that took watch on the rare days they could sleep. She’d tried convincing him in multiple ways—asking him, begging him, trying to force him—but he refused to let her keep watch. Hwayoung couldn’t quite figure if it were because he didn’t trust her or if he didn’t want to tire her out even more.

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