I touch my head, which pounds like I got dropped on it. I'm on the couch in my dorm room; the curtains are drawn, and the fire is big and bright the way it usually is after Sohee lights it in the early evening. But how did I get . . . All at once, the events from the afternoon flood my memory.

I jump up and rub my hands over my face to wake myself up. Sejeong. I need to help Sejeong. This is my fault. I snuck out that night. I got Sejeong involved. I stare at the fire, all the awfulness of these couple of weeks coming into focus. Sejeong's in the dungeon. Uncle Jin is dead. Someone's trying to murder me. And Appa is god knows where, potentially being hunted and running for his life.

"Suzy?" Sehun says softly, and appears in Sejeong's bedroom door.

I don't jump this time. I want to apologize for what happened to Sejeong, tell him I tried to stop the guards, but an apology doesn't fix anything. "Kang threw Sejeong in the dungeon" is all manage to say.

"I know." His eyes are intense again, and I don't blame him. "When I heard at lunch that Kang had removed you two from class and that you never returned, I came here looking for you both. But I only found you, sedated on the couch. Which told me Sejeong was most likely in the dungeon and that you'd likely been sedated because you were trying to prevent the guards from taking her."

I nod and exhale, relieved that at least he knows I attempted to stand up for her.

"Tell me everything about your conversation with Kang," he says. "Don't leave anything out."

I told him everything about the meeting, word for word, start to finish. He lets me speak, not commenting until I'm done with the story.

"Something's weird about it," I say. "There's no reason for Kang to punish Sejeong in front of me. It would have been easier just to leave me in class."

As Sehun considers what I'm saying, I can almost see the wheels turning in his head. "Maybe Kang wanted you to hear it, to know about Dr. Yoo discovering the missing match and about the missing piece of glass," he says.

"But why?" I ask. "Unless she wants me to know because she's also the one who told that guard to look after me? Could she be the faculty member Sejeong was speculating about who's fighting back against the Tigers? But how does that make any sense if in the same conversation she dragged Sejeong to the dungeon?"

He shakes his head and I fidget. We're both silent as we analyze the situation.

I look up at him. "Did you find out anything about that cut on Jimin's hand?"

"Yes and no. He didn't have any classes where he might easily have come by the cut, which makes it suspect. But I couldn't really get many details on him, either. He may not be a powerful Tiger, but he's still a Tiger, and no one feels safe speaking against them right now."

"I get that," I say. "The question is, what happened to the glass after it left this room? And is there any way to get Sejeong out of that dungeon?"

He shakes his head. "We'd have to find it first. The dungeon is either under the castle or possibly under one of the outer perimeter walls. That's why they use the sedative anytime someone gets locked up. They don't want us to know where it is."

"Okay, then let's tackle this one piece of missing information at a time," I say. "And fast, before someone else gets killed. Sohee should be coming soon to turn down the beds and refill the water. You stay here and get her to tell you everything about that glass. If we both leave, we'll miss our chance to talk to her."

He looks at me questioningly. "Both leave? And where are you going?"

I swallow. "To find Jungkook," I say, fighting to keep my voice calm.

He looks at me for a long moment like he's trying to decide something, or maybe he's registering my fear and that I'm doing it despite that.

"Be careful," he says so genuinely that my stomach flutters. 

There's a beat of silence and I nod.

I turn around, grab my cloak from the closet, and exit into the hallway. The cold air and the idea of confronting Jungkook send a shiver down my back.

(ﾒ￣▽￣)︻┳═一

Minutes later, I'm standing in front of Jungkook's room, my hand hovering to knock on the door and my heart racing. The only problem is, if I knock and he slams the door in my face, I'm screwed.

From down the hall comes the sound of boots on stairs and I don't hesitate - I lift the latch and walk right into his room.

Jungkook's on his couch, staring at the fireplace. "Get out," he says without even turning toward me. The sight of him makes my nervousness soar. I take two more steps but don't dare move far from the door.

"I'll get out if you tell me what you know about me." My voice sounds louder and my tone more forceful than I thought it would.

He turns to me and for a brief second he looks surprised. "I'm sick of playing games with you, Suzy. Save us both the energy of getting angry and turn around and leave," he says, and the disgust I usually detect when he's speaking to me isn't there. He almost seems worn out.

I've only got one shot at this. "You don't trust me. But consider this: Sejeong does. And you know better than I do how much Sejeong cared about Taehyung. Do you really think she would trust someone who killed her boyfriend? Of course she wouldn't."

I watch as Jungkook clenches his hands and then releases them again. It seems like he's trying to keep himself from getting worked up.

"Ever since Taehyung's murder we've been trying to figure out why Kai attacked your friend. Sejeong, Sehun, me - we've been sneaking around this creepy castle, putting ourselves at risk trying to help." My voice becomes more insistent. "The least you could do is stop making things harder!"

Jungkook gets off the couch so fast that I take a step back. He crosses the room in a few long strides.

"How dare you come into my room and tell me what I'm doing or not doing? If this whole situation is anyone's fault, it's yours," he says, and his muscular chest rises and falls quickly. "What made you think you could just walk into this school, an exact replica of your mother? You can't be stupid enough to think no one would notice. Anyone who knew her recognized you immediately. This is your mess!"

I look at him closely, trying to make sense of his words. "This is exactly what I mean. You're assuming I know something I don't. How do people here know my mother?"

A warning flashes in his eyes, telling me to back off. "I'm doing my best not to kill your right now. But you're not making it easy. You should have stayed in whatever hideout you came from."

"Are you kidding?" I say, matching his tone. "Gladly! Fire up the goddamn plane. I don't want to be at this insane school any more than you want me here. Kang refused to send me home. So you can mistrust me until the end of time, but it won't change the fact that both of us are stuck here together. Only one of us knows anything about my family's history. And it's not me."

He takes a step back, getting a good look at me. "Bull."

"No, not bull. I wish it were like you all thought. I would love to be playing a game right now, masterfully manipulating people and scheming about my next move. But instead I've been kept in the dark my entire life and am trying desperately to learn my way around this place and to avoid getting murdered at every turn, all because of something to do with my parents that I know nothing about. In fact, as far as I can tell" - I point at him - "you are the one person who reliably knows who I am. But the moment you saw me, you punched me in the face. So I've been left on my own here. Some Family you are."

Something in his expression shifts, only I can't quite read his emotions.

I hold eye contact with him so that he knows I'm completely serious. "Taehyung is dead," I say in a calmer voice. "And without Sejeong and Sehun, I would have been dead by now, too. So, yes, I'm in your room yelling at you to explain what I'm missing here. Because as far as I can tell, this whole mess circles around me and my parents and very possibly you. I'm over not having answers. The only way I'm leaving this room without an explanation is if I'm dead."

He scowls and stays silent for so long that I wonder if he's coming around or deciding to in fact kill me.

"When you attack me in the dining hall . . . ," he says, and his voice is less angry than it was before. "Somebody died that day. Who died?"

"My uncle," I say, and my voice deflates as I picture Jin's face. "My mom's brother."

His eyes widen and he runs a hand through his hair. "Seokjin?"

The sound of my uncle's name coming out of his mouth all but freezes me. "He, well, he went by Jin, actually. H-he -" I'm stuttering, unable to make sense of his personal knowledge of one of my most important people.

"- gave the name to himself after he the actor in the American film, Jin Johnson of Beyond the Scene," he says, finishing my sentence.

My eyes tear up and I will them to stop. The last thing I want is to cry in front of him. "Yeah," I say quietly. "How could you possibly know that?"

"My mom used to tell that story," he says.

I look at him sideways. "Your mom knew my uncle Jin?" I say, trying to grasp what that could mean.

"Knew him? My mom is Jin's sister - the youngest of the three," he says, and it feels like someone all the air out of the room.

"You're lying," I say, pressing my hand into my chest in a desperate attempt to get control of my heart and the crack I feel forming there.

He shakes his head.

Eomma and Uncle Jin had a younger sister. They had a younger sister, and Jungkook . . . "You're my cousin?" I say, and my confusion and anger surge again. I shake my head to blink away the tears, but they're getting heavier. "When did you know? How could you not tell me this!" I'm marching toward him, fuming. "Omo, you punched me!"

I swing at him and he leans out of the way.

"You made me a target!" I yell, and swing at him again.

He catches my wrist. "You made us a target!" he yells right back at me, and releases my hand. "Taehyung is dead because you came here. So don't tell me what I did to you."

The more I look at him, the more I realize how much his features remind me of eomma and Uncle Jin. How could I not have seen that before? "Why were my parents in a small unknown town near the border of North Korea?"

He looks at me with caution.

"I'm serious. Tell me why my parents were hiding in the province. Tell me why I didn't know I was Strategia."

He frowns. "You didn't know you were -"

"No. And spare the endless 'That doesn't make sense' responses," I say. "I know better than anyone that it doesn't make sense. But I have a right to know who I am and why I grew up the way I did. And don't tell me you don't know, because I can see on your face right now that you do."

"I'm not telling you Family Secrets," he says.

"These are my secrets! I have more of a right to them than you do and you know that," I say.

Jungkook looks at me like he's not sure.

I exhale. "Look, eomma died when I was six, and although I was always told it was an accident, Uncle Jin was passionately convinced it wasn't. Now my uncle gets murdered - our uncle. And I"m guessing that whoever is trying to destroy my family will go after my father next. If they haven't already. And if what's going on in this school is related to their deaths, and I'm nearly positive it is, then I damn well need to know. All I have to go on right now is that the Tigers hate us because we're trying to stop them from taking over all of Strategia."

Jungkook scoffs. "You are a Tiger," he says, and I open my mouth and close it again. His comment, while confirming my suspicion about appa, throws me. How can I have all these identifies that mean so much to everyone here that I've never known anything about?

"I'm also an Eagle," I say, and raise my chin. "Just like eomma and uncle. And even if appa was born a Tiger, in his heart, he wasn't one of them."

Jungkook steps away from me and for a split second I'm terrified that he'll go into his bedroom and lock me out. But instead he heads for the fireplace, staring at the logs for so long that I take a few steps toward him.

He nods to himself like he's made a decision. "Twenty-five years ago there was a group of students here who were the best this school ever had."

"I've heard the teachers talk about them," I say.

"Right," he says. "Your mom, my mom, Uncle Jin, Kang, your father, and a couple of others were part of that group. But there were two who were better than all the rest - your parents."

"What?" It takes me a second to wrap my mind around what he's saying. "Not the . . . the scroll in the library?" I ask, remembering my visit there with Sehun. "That was them?"

He nods, and the look he gives me tells me to shut up and let him finish. "Your parents - the firstborn of the Tiger Family and the firstborn of the Eagle Family - started at the Absconditi Academy the same year. My mother says everyone anticipated fighting, considering it's what our Families do. And they did that first, but over time they also fell in love."

My stomach twists uncomfortably. Not only were my parents the best, but they were also both firstborns? The magnitude of information appa kept from me is staggering.

"My mother said your parents thought they could change Strategia politics for the better," Jungkook says. "But they soon found that the decades of fighting between the Tigers and the Eagles, and then centuries of the power imbalance, were going to make things nearly impossible. Initially your grandparents refused to come to an agreement about what the terms would be if they were to get married. Taecyeon demanded that your father and mother stay with them and that she give up her standing as an Eagle, and your mom's parents wanted the opposite. The fought viciously among themselves for months, but to everyone's surprise, they did eventually agree to sit down and try to compromise."

Taecyeon is my grandfather. Oh my god. "And what happened?" I ask quickly, with some amazement that my parents were actually doing something to fix things. "Did they get their Families to agree?"

Jungkook sighs, like he understands the larger question I'm asking. "At the time, some people thought that your parents would restore order and put an end to the Tigers picking off members of other Families."

"By your tone I'm guessing that I'm about to find out how they went from uniting their Families to hiding," I say.

"Your mother killed Taecyeon's brother -"

"Wait, what?"

Jungkook puts up his hand. "Patience really isn't your strong suit, is it?" He pauses, daring me to interrupt him again. I swallow and shake my head. "What I was saying was that your mother killed Taecyeon's brother and any shadow of an agreement that our Families had fell apart."

Eomma. A killer?

As if he can sense my shock, he continues, speaking quickly, almost reassuringly. "My mother always said the reasons were complicated. And if she knows more, she's never told me exactly what happened. But needless to say, the Tigers put out a hit on your mother."

Even as Jungkook is talking, I'm wrestling with the impossibility that this my mother, my family.

"As for your father, he fought back against Taecyeon and the Tigers, and it earned him a contract on his as well. So they ran." Jungkook shrugs, as if running from trained assassins is what everyone does when things get bad. "As for our Family, well, the Eagles felt betrayed that your mom left instead of coming home to them. And they . . . they refused to protect them."

My eyes widen. That's why Uncle Jin blamed his family for Eomma's death.

"The way I heard it, the Tiger assassins came back one day by one without fighting either of your parents. Or they didn't come back at all. So to save face, the Tigers convinced the rest of the Families that your parents were tragically murdered. But meanwhile the hunt went on," Jungkook finishes.

"But they kill my mother eventually," I say quietly.

"Yes," he says, and there's some regret in his voice. "But none of the other Family know that except us and the Tigers. And since then, the animosity between the Tigers and Eagles has only gotten worse. When I hit you that day outside the dining hall, I . . ." He falls silent then and return his gaze to the fire.

"It's okay," I say, and my voice is heavy. "Thanks for telling me the truth."

"You are . . . welcome," he says, but doesn't look at me. Under all his anger and bravado, there's such a deep sadness.

"You should know," I begin slowly, trying to find some way to match his honesty with another truth, "that Kai wasn't trying to kill Taehyung. He was trying to kill you and make take the fall for it. After your explanation just now, it makes a hell lot of sense that the Tigers would want to divide us. I also think you should know that the guard who was killed outside my door has his neck slashed with a piece of glass. As far as we can tell, the weapon is till out there somewhere. So I guess what I'm saying is . . . be careful."

Jungkook looks up and his sadness intensifies. "They were trying to kill me?"

I nod slowly. I feel awful for telling him. I know how I could feel is something happened to Jisoo, especially if it had something to do with me. But after what he's just confided in me, I can't not tell him. There is every chance someone will try again.

"How do you know this about Taehyung?" Jungkook asks, and I can almost hear his heart breaking.

I explain the blood under Taehyung's bed, the guard's tattoo, and all the strange details we've uncovered. He listens to everything I have to say, and by the time I'm done speaking, his jaw is tight and his forehead is creased in concentration.

"I was going to come back here that day after class," he says. "But Kang had given me a third mark for punching you and sent me to the outer perimeter."

"That's what Sejeong figured," I say.

Jungkook rubs his neck and looks at me like he's trying to decide something. Finally he sighs and drops his arm. "And I wouldn't assume I'm the only one who knows who your parents are. Kang has to know. Probably Yoo. Taemin and Jennie were Kai's best friends, so they definitely know. Jimin. And I'm sure there are others."

"Jimin?" I repeat, suddenly remembering the creep "I know" that he hissed in my ear at my first lunch.

"Yes," Jungkook affirms, and rubs his neck again. "The thing is . . ." He pauses for a moment, like he's debating whether he should keep going, and I sit very still, hoping he will. "Jimin's father was one of the assassins sent to kill your parents. One of the ones that didn't come back. There are likely other Tigers here, too, who have lost a relative trying to take out your parents. No one knew you even existed, though, until you showed up," he says.

My mouth is suddenly dry and it's hard to swallow. My parents killed Jimin's father? No wonder he hates me. Not that his father wasn't trying to kill them, but still. I should feel excited about getting another piece of the puzzle, but the entire conversation fills me with dread. Coming to this school was like starting a wildfire that immediately raged out of control. Not to mention that I remind people of the past in the worst possible ways.

"Suzy?" Jungkook says.

"Yeah?" I look up, snapping out of my thoughts.

"You should know that I didn't punch you because I was angry," he says. "What happened to your mom . . . You're still an Eagle. I punched you because I was told to."

"Who told you to punch me?" I say, my brain starting to whirl once again. "Was it Jimin?"

"I can't tell you that," Jungkook says, and I can see by his face that he's not going to. "But I just thought you should know."

I open my mouth to argue, but he looks so lost in his thoughts that I suspect he's thinking about Taehyung again.

"Now it's time for you to go," he says, and I do.

As I close the door behind me, I can't help but wish things were different. I finally have another family member who's more like me than I want to admit, and he also wants nothing to do with me. I can't really blame him, though. He's right. If I'd never come to this school, Taehyung would still be alive.