o15

Bargain

By the time Jinqiong and Jongdae had gotten downstairs, a fair bit of the crew was awake—or maybe awake wasn’t the exact word, because Park Chanyeol looked like he was sleepwalking. Even Luhan didn’t seem to be fully functioning, and the only person who looked conscious enough to respond was Junmyeon. She turned towards him immediately.

“Junsu’s here,” she got out breathlessly, and his head snapped towards her direction.

Luhan, too, looked like someone had dumped a bucket of water over his head because he immediately looked more awake. “What?” Junmyeon demanded, and at the same time, Luhan got out, sounding slightly shellschocked, “Baekhyun and Hei left.”

The effect was instantaneous. Chanyeol, who had been moping around the room looking more zombie than human whirled around with wide eyes. Kyungsoo, who had been bustling in the kitchen, stepped outside, staring at Luhan.

“Baekhyun and Hei are out there,” Luhan repeated, sounding slightly numb. Jinqiong wanted to tell him that both she and Jongdae knew and they ought to do something about it quick instead of standing there and letting the information sink in. It wasn’t as if there was a lot to stomach—firstly, Junsu had caught up, secondly, while they were safe because he couldn’t track the jewel, Baekhyun and Hei didn’t know about it and that was bound to call for trouble.

Luhan took a deep breath. “It’s fine,” he got out. “I gave Baekhyun a potion before he left, so no one should be able to recognize them. He’s smart enough to stay away from trouble, too, and if anything happens, Hei’s perfectly capable of stopping time. We should… we should give them a little while to get back—Baekhyun did mention that he won’t stay out there for too long—they should be coming back anytime. And then we need to move.”

He had a fair point, but Jinqiong still didn’t feel very good about the whole situation. Then again, maybe it wasn’t tied to Baekhyun and Hei—more so the old paranoia that had followed her for months since Junsu began chasing her that she was never safe, especially not when he was so close, and in the same city no less. Even if Luhan had supposedly veiled the whereabouts of the gem, she still felt uneasy.

Then again, it was the Lu family’s city. It wasn’t the same as Vasileia—unguarded, barely functioning, with the family struggling to appoint a new family leader yet still unable to. Junsu wouldn’t dare make a huge move, because, after all, he could still be overpowered, locked up again.

That limited him, but it also made him more unpredictable. And Jinqiong hated unpredictable.

She hadn’t even realized that Luhan was talking to her until Jongdae tapped her on the shoulder. “Jinqiong,” she said. “Where did you see the ship?”

Blinking, she glanced at Luhan. “Far end of the docks. Right—well, if you were standing facing it from here, it would be the right—end of them. I think… well, Junsu can’t come outside during the day.”

“We’re docked at the furthest left,” Luhan replied. “And the ship is hidden. If we’re lucky, we can get out of Xiyuan before he can see us, and then get a head’s start. We’re mostly stocked up for food, so we just need Baekhyun and Hei and then we can leave.”

He looked grim enough. Jinqiong figured that was the best case scenario; while he hadn’t yet painted the worst, there were many versions of what could possibly go wrong that were all too likely.

It was Chanyeol that spoke up. “What about Baekhyun and Hei?”

“We’ll wait for a while.”

Waiting seemed to be a horrible idea, but then again, Luhan was first mate, and with Baekhyun gone, he was practically the captain. And, she thought slightly bitterly, it wasn’t as if anyone would listen to her if she proposed they go out and look. Even to her that sounded like a suicide mission.

“Pack your bags,” Luhan decided. His voice was short, and Jinqiong could see that he was worried too. “Get everything ready. We leave as soon as Baekhyun and Hei get back, and also…” He scanned them. “Get ready to fight if we are to encounter Junsu or his men. Jinqiong, Jongdae, tell me everything you know about him. We need to be ready.”

Jinqiong wanted to say that if they did encounter him, it wasn’t a matter of being ready to fight but being ready to get away, and the chances that a group of over nine people doing so stealthily didn’t seem to be high. Still, she exchanged one look with Jongdae and decided to follow Luhan.

***

The first thing Hei registered when she blinked back into consciousness was that her head felt uncomfortably airy, but it didn’t necessarily hurt. There seemed to be nothing but black over her eyes, and she couldn’t tell if she somehow couldn’t see or if there was something obscuring her vision.  

And then the panic came in, full force. Everything felt strangely, frighteningly numb, though she could just feel the rough rub of ropes against her wrists, which were tied behind her back. Disoriented, thoroughly beginning to panic and practically unable to focus or think straight, Hei managed to remember that the last thing she could recall when she was conscious was the man in black and her utter inability to use her power, which only succeeded in more panic. It wasn’t the same, but it reminded her of Hua, being unable to summon the power that she should’ve been more than capable of calling.

Then there was Baekhyun. She had no idea where he went, but they’d both had Luhan’s potion, which meant that no one should have been able to recognize them. It didn’t add up, and she tried to summon her power again.

Hei was certain that she’d grasped her power, though it was only for a second before the same feeling shoved back. She flinched—it didn’t exactly hurt, but it was a shock—and then there was the sound of footsteps.

“The girl’s awake,” she heard someone say, and then, abruptly, there was light slanting through the darkness.

It was definitely a blindfold. A moment later, someone had grasped her wrist and yanked her up roughly into a sitting position.

There was no point in struggling, especially when her whole body still felt weak from whatever it had been before they used to knock her out. Through the confusion and panic, she could register one thought: Baekhyun.

The answer came a bit sooner than she expected. Somebody pulled the blindfold off, and Hei blinked at the sudden light.

Three men stood in front of her. Two were foreign, but the tallest one, still dressed in all black, was the same one who had come out of the door in the alley. Immediately, she tried to move back, though the other had a strong enough grip to stop her from getting far.

He stared at her for a couple of seconds, frightened, confused, and half panicking. There were two main possibilities of who he was with: the families, or Byun Junsu. At that point, she was certain that it would’ve been easier if he was with the families, and given where they were at the moment, that seemed a bit unlikely. In the light of the lantern he was holding, his face was all angles, a contour of black and white, though even then, Hei could tell that he couldn’t have been much older than twenty. His age was another hint. The families typically wouldn’t send someone so young out.

“Where’s Baekhyun?” she asked immediately.

He ignored her, but instead, turned to the two men. “Let’s go,” he said. “Bring her over. We need to see if he’ll talk now.”

She tried again. “Are you Byun Junsu?”

At that, the man turned around, a little caught off guard. Hei raked her mind for everything Jinqiong had told them about Junsu—he’d been cursed, supposedly—mutilated features, couldn’t go under the sun, and craved human flesh, three terrifyingly inhuman things to bring on anybody, no matter what they had done.

The man’s face steeled again. “No,” he replied shortly. “But if you’d like to meet him, then don’t worry.”

We need to see if he’ll talk now. But if you’d like to meet him, don’t worry. As much as she hoped it wasn’t, he’ll talk now was most likely referring to one person—Baekhyun. And Junsu—it was obvious that they were working for Junsu, though Hei couldn’t figure out more. No one should have been able to recognize her or Baekhyun, yet they had, somehow, and at the same time, she couldn’t use her power. She had no idea where they were, either—the room she’d been put it seemed like a storage room of some sort, though she couldn’t see enough from just the lantern and not long after, she’d been hauled to her feet and forced towards the door.

“Where is Baekhyun?” she repeated to the first man.

Half expecting him to remain silent, she stumbled forward, trying to match the pace, still slightly disoriented. To her surprise, he glanced over his shoulder before turning back. “You’ll see.”

That wasn’t the least bit comforting. If she couldn’t use her power, it might have meant that Baekhyun couldn’t either. And if they were trapped God-knew-where, powerless, with Byun Junsu, Hei couldn’t figure out a way that it wouldn’t end in one of them getting hurt or being forced to reveal the location of Jinqiong and Jongdae.

At the end of the hallway, the man pushed another door open. It was wooden but much thicker than the last, fortified with what looked like metal, screeching against the floor.

Much brighter light flooded into her vision, and for a good couple of seconds, Hei stood blinded.

It was a much larger room, and that was Hei’s first thought. It was also strangely bright for such a huge place and then she realized that there were torches lining the walls.

There were a small group of men at the left side of the room. In front of them, wrists also tied behind his back, kneeling on the ground and bleeding profusely from a cut on his forehead, was Byun Baekhyun, scowling, lips set in a flat, angry line.

He turned towards the door at the noise, then his eyes widened, expression melting into confusion, surprise, and then, finally, fear.

Seeing him in such a state made her head hurt. It was such a foreign sight, too, to see Byun Baekhyun so vulnerable. She’d seen him injured many times, but this was new—he obviously was incapable of fighting back, and the fact that he had somehow been restrained by ropes didn’t quite make sense. Not only that, she remembered—he had already been injured before from when he and Kyungsoo had bumped into guards, and he had refused to let Yuxuan heal it. She had done her best to clean and bandage the wound (with Baekhyun claiming that the water already sped up the healing process), though it was nowhere near fine. Hei had half the mind to start forward, though she barely got another half step before the men yanked her back.

It was only then that she noticed the person who was standing a couple of paces away from Baekhyun. Or maybe noticed wasn’t the right word. She had seen him before, too, but she hadn’t exactly paid attention. Not with Baekhyun. But he was impossible to ignore, too—decked head to toe in gold plated armour, a sword that looked even bigger than Junmyeon’s strapped to his waist, and what looked like a whip in his other hand.

He, too, looked away from Baekhyun to turn his attention towards her. Underneath the helmet was a pair of deep set eyes, staring at her with unnerving perceptiveness.

Byun Junsu.

The helmet covered his nose, though his mouth twisted into a smile. Hei couldn’t see the rest of his face, but horribly deformed hadn’t been an exaggeration. It was as if someone had burned away the skin around his mouth, though it remained marred. She fought a shudder, although part of her must have been equally horrified at the Byun family for inflicting something so terrible on Junsu.

“Song Hei.” His voice was deep, surprisingly pleasant. “Good to see that you’re awake.”
 

Baekhyun, somehow, still tugging on the chains around his wrist, managed to push himself to his feet. “What the hell do you want?” he snarled. “I swear if you—”

Behind him, one of the men shoved him down again. Baekhyun, not quite finished, fought back (which was quite difficult, given that his hands were still tied behind his back), though the scuffle barely lasted five seconds before he was promptly kneeling again.

He fixed a murderous gaze on Junsu. “She has nothing to do with this.”

Junsu sighed. Hei continued staring at him, not sure what to think of the man. He was well spoken, that was for sure, smart. Then again, if he’d proved a threat to the Byun family leader, he must have been.

“Look, brother.” He gestured at his helmet. “Our father did this. And you—or, as I’ve heard, more accurately Song Hei—killed him.” Junsu turned in her direction. “Is that true?”
 

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“I have you two to thank.” Junsu nodded at Baekhyun. “I mean it. If neither of you had done what you did, I don’t know how much longer I would’ve been stuck in Vasileia’s dungeons to rot. I take it that you also hated our father?”

Baekhyun definitely didn’t look like he wanted to talk. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to help you,” he hissed.

“Of course not.” Junsu took a step closer to him, still being held down by two guards, and Hei watched, half petrified in terror and half confused what to make of the whole thing. If Junsu were to try to force Jinqiong and Jongdae’s location out of them, she couldn’t figure out what alternative there was, especially with her power not working. Talking the way out of a situation would have been ideal, but she didn’t have much confidence it would work on someone like Junsu. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, Baekhyun. And Song Hei—your wife, isn’t she?”

He still sounded calm, though there was a veiled threat under it that Baekhyun immediately caught on. She could see his jaw tightening, a vein jumping in his forehead. “She has nothing to do with this,” he repeated.

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