It took Seoyeon a long time to calm down. Once she had got over the frustrated feeling of helplessness at her situation and the response of her father and the physician, she found herself so angry about it all that she struggled to breathe. It was only when she picked up the vial to move out off the bed and the glass crushed beneath her fingers that she realised she really needed to calm down or she was in danger of destroying her room.

Gradually, she managed to get herself under control, and she sat on the edge of her bed, trying to figure her next move. The last (and only, if she was honest) time she'd tried plotting like this was when she'd snuck off to the library, and given how that had turned out – both with Captain Park and the threat of the Neuma that she'd nearly unleashed at the time – she didn't really trust herself to choose the best things to do. There was bound to be something she overlooked or missed, even if she had no way of knowing it. And knowing her luck, if it was something she didn't know, it was also probably something very important.

That said, one thing she could be absolutely certain of was that Chanyeol was in trouble. It would have been bad enough if he had been in good condition when they had arrived back, because Seoyeon was at a loss as to how to convince her father that a court martial was completely unnecessary, and she also had no idea how to set about breaking somebody out of a dungeon (even though it commonly featured in the books she read). Throwing in his state after using the Phoenix fire just made Seoyeon's brain hurt. Rescuing him might have been a possibility if he'd been in condition to take the lead after she'd found the dungeons and unlocked his cell door, because he always seemed to know what to do, but unless he'd miraculously improved since they'd arrived back from the Neuma, she was looking into trying to carry him out, and she had no doubt that she wouldn't be able to pull that off.

Second, there was the issue of Chanyeol's health. Seoyeon hadn't seen enough to identify whether it really was Burn Out, but unless Sehun was able to do something about it, she had no idea what would help Chanyeol. And it looked like whatever it was was actually worse than Burn Out anyway.

On the subject of Oh Sehun, he was now the only Borderlander protecting Ximo with an approaching dark solstice and he wasn't yet fully trained. Seoyeon wondered how he felt about that, because she knew it would have terrified to her.

Next, there was the question of who was on her side. Or, more importantly, who would believe her and who would help her. She knew she was going to have to speak to Sehun, because he was the only person who would be able to do anything about the Neuma and Seoyeon needed to warn him about what she'd seen there, and everything Chanyeol had said about the solstice. He would probably listen to her. She hoped.

Minseok, she was certain from his behaviour when he'd brought up her meal, would definitely help her. But the trouble was the secrecy he'd been acting with – maybe it was just because he hadn't had much time and he'd been in her bedroom, but the normally stoic cook had seemed afraid. If that was the general atmosphere in the fortress, and especially if two commanding officers besides Chanyeol were awaiting court martials, she was going to have to be careful about her interactions, and especially about what she said and did that might be overheard. It sounded like the military platoons her father had called in were more or less running the show now, and anybody who disagreed was been put to one side.

Lieutenant Kim, Minseok's brother, she suspected would be willing to help her on the down-low. He’d quietly tried to steer her actions so that she wouldn't raise her father's hackles over Chanyeol, even though Seoyeon had ultimately failed on that, and at the very least he was still loyal to Ximo and the Borderlanders. But he'd also kept his head down enough to be in a position of responsibility still, so Seoyeon reasoned he probably didn't want to ruffle any feathers. She couldn't quite read his take on how he felt about her being close with Chanyeol, but at least she felt confident he wouldn't tell the wrong people about it.

Seoyeon wanted to trust Jieun, but she wasn't sure she fully could. Her relationship with her maid was one of affability rather than one that commanded complete loyalty, and she suspected that if she said too much on the wrong subject and the wrong person asked Jieun the right questions, Seoyeon would find herself in trouble. Worse, Seoyeon concluded after a bit of thought, it might land other people in trouble if she asked Seoyeon to carry messages for her, or asked her to arrange meetings with people. She wished she'd cultivated a better relationship with her, but then she'd never imagined a scenario where she'd essentially be under house arrest trying to navigate such a strange situation with her father.

Those were the people that she knew best in the fortress, except for Jongin. She doubted her father would let her go near Jongin if he'd spent weeks thinking Seoyeon had been kidnapped – come to that, Seoyeon thought she'd be lucky if she was ever allowed out of the building again. But she got on with Jongin pretty well. She was certain she could trust him.

Once she had finished her mental list of Ximo residents on her side, Seoyeon stopped pacing around her room and frowned. What was she even going to do? It was useless having a side if she wasn’t going to do something with it. She wasn’t Chanyeol, who’d had an answer to every problem the Neuma had thrown at them, and nor was she Jongdae, who had the uncanniest ability to redirect any situation in his favour. Worse still, she couldn’t ask either of them for advice – Jongdae didn’t live in Ximo and she had no idea where Chanyeol was, not to mention having no chance of going to see him if she did.

That was when she finally remembered that Jongdae was supposed to have moved into Ximo on her birthday to take up a permanent posting as her tutor. It was possible that her father had sent him away again when it had become clear that Seoyeon was definitely missing, but she knew that her father valued Jongdae, and it wasn’t wholly for her benefit that he’d wanted Jongdae around on a more permanent basis. Jongdae had a huge variety of skills and it was just as possible that her father had kept him around.

Just the thought that she might be able to heap all of her problems onto Jongdae and ask for his advice cheered Seoyeon up immensely. If he was still in Ximo, she was going to find him and he was going to give her all the amazing advice he always had at his disposal so that she could figure out what to do about the Dark Solstice and how to get Chanyeol free again. And if he wasn’t still in Ximo, the next best person to go to was probably Minseok the Chef, because he was probably the person with the biggest network of knowledge and she had excuses to talk to him anyway to ensure she was getting the right nutrition to recover. Her father might be able to argue with her talking to pretty much anybody else in the fortress, but not the chef.

Finally feeling like she had purpose, Seoyeon crossed to the bedroom door and yanked it open. Two guards whirled around, but they said nothing when she stepped out. Seoyeon attempted to give them a smile even though she could see they weren’t wearing Ximo uniform. Were they there to stop Ximo people from coming to see her, or to stop her from seeing people her father didn’t want her to see?

When Seoyeon started off down the corridor and neither of them challenged her, she felt a little guilty at being so suspicious of her father’s intentions. Of course he was trying to protect her rather than to keep her under house arrest – he’d always been protective. After all, she was his only child, and his daughter at that, and now she was his only family.

That lasted until she turned the corner and realised that both of the guards were following her. Seoyeon stopped and turned to face them.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

The guards exchanged glances. Both of them had their hands on hilts of weapons, and it made Seoyeon unnecessarily nervous.

“Your father has assigned us as your bodyguards, ma’am,” one of them said eventually.

She couldn’t help comparing them to Chanyeol when she heard that, and it took a lot of effort to prevent a scoff from escaping. They were both young and fit, and they were probably both very competent, but neither of them would last very long in the Neuma.

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” she snapped back.

They appeared not to even notice her change in mood.

“On the contrary, ma’am, you were abducted from under your father’s nose by one of his most trusted soldiers on a day when everybody was paying attention to you,” retorted the second soldier immediately. “It was foolish for you not to have had a bodyguard since you arrived here.”

“What, even indoors?” Seoyeon hoped that they would shake their heads, but she knew before they did it that they were both going to nod. She had to control herself so that she wouldn’t lash out. “This is insane. All I wanted to do was use the bathroom and I get you following me even for that?”

They both nodded again and Seoyeon’s heart sank. They hadn’t even hesitated: it would be hard to persuade them. If they were going to hover permanently at her shoulder, she wouldn’t be able to have the conversations she wanted to have with the people she wanted to talk to.

“How very uncomfortable,” she muttered, changing direction in the next passage to go to the bathroom instead of towards the rooms she’d had prepared for Jongdae before she’d e