Seaweed Desert, The Dunes, Waterland Border.

Joohyun wonders how such extreme environments are possible. She can’t discern where the desert ends and the ocean begins. She studied a lot when she was younger and she remembers seeing something similar back when they were still the Republic of Korea and the world wasn’t in shambles. It was her favorite subject. She always dreamed about traveling the land on foot. She finds it ironic that the first time she does it’s because she’s being chased.

They didn’t have much time to run away before the other three noticed they were gone, and with a powerless Seulgi they had to hide in plain sight (in another room) and wait for them to go looking for them again before taking the chance to escape. She changed clothes anyway, with the scarce time they had. Seulgi stole them from the market.

“The spell I put on you should be enough to counter a locator spell if they try again, but not for long.”

“Do you just randomly carry these potions in your pockets?”

“I’m a mercenary, I’m always prepared to disappear in case something goes wrong, so yes.” The monolid girl says, recovering her balance after almost falling. “Be careful where you step. Follow my footsteps. Since I’m a shadow, I can heal when my powers come back. This desert has deadly traps.”

Joohyun does as she’s told, stepping on Seulgi’s footprints on the wet sand.

“You know this is a suicide mission, right?” Seulgi asks, moving the sand around with her right foot. When she doesn’t see anything on the surface, she puts her foot there, advancing that way. “I still don’t understand, why don’t you just… disappear? Start a new life?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Joohyun says, mindlessly following her.

“Try me.”

“I just… I have the stupid theory that it could be my brother, you know? I’ve been thinking about it. I never saw his body so I thought… but it’s just a fantasy. I didn’t have a choice at the beginning so I just went along with it.”

“You have a choice now, princess.” Seulgi turns around for a second without stopping. “I could help you disappear in Dimland. This could be your only chance.”

Joohyun distracts herself from imagining a new life with a new name, dyed hair, and being part of the working class, growing fungi crops in her backyard in total darkness, far away from The Front. It sounds peaceful, a great life for someone who doesn’t deserve it, but it also sounds lonely. Unfortunately, any life that she chooses will be lonely without her family. It already was back at the castle, but now it’s permanent. She can’t fantasize anymore about her family changing their ways and loving her.

“Princess, watch out!”

Too late, Joohyun thinks.

A click followed by a metallic screech is the only warning before a bear trap in bad shape closes on her foot. It’s lacking the force dues to its rustiness, which she is thankful for because that thing would have broken multiple bones.

She grunts, falling backward. The position makes her hurt more and her breathing is uneven, almost hyperventilating. Seulgi tries to deactivate the trap, but it’s so rusty that it gets stuck. She tries again, this time cutting herself in the process, but freeing the princess from the trap.

Joohyun stays there, laying on the wet sand under the itching sun. The skin of her face is red and she feels like she’s burning. It hurts to the touch. The trap perforated the skin, but also scratched it lightly, leaving a nasty wound close to the left heel, rendering the shoes unusable.

Seulgi opens her backpack, grabs one of the water bottles, and pours half the bottle on Joohyun’s foot, cleaning the blood to be able to see the wound.

“It doesn’t look that deep, do you feel anything’s broken?”

Joohyun shakes her head, touching her foot very lightly to assess the damage.

“I don’t think so, but the ankle is at least bruised.” She says between hiccups.

“Do you think you can walk?”

Seulgi extends her arms, helping her stand. Joohyun supports her weight on her other foot, assessing how much weight her injured foot can support.

“I think I can walk.”

“Okay, but don’t get distracted and step exactly where I step, understood?”

Joohyun nods. She’s bleeding like she’s dying and it leaves a trail of blood in the sand. She hopes that the trail will be washed away by the high tide later. If not, she would have left them her own white pebbles trail.

•••

Seungwan shouldn’t have left Joohyun’s side. Something was off about her, but she expected it after she stopped giving her the potion. The effects would take time to wear off, so Joohyun running away with Seulgi didn’t make much sense. She was probably kidnapped by her and forced to leave that message.

Dear Winter, it started. It didn’t even have her name but she was trying not to feel hurt.

She sits on the same chair Seulgi was in, the letter in her hand while she rereads.

Dear Winter,

I’m sorry.

Not enough words for someone like Joohyun.

“Are you going to stare at that letter all day? We should be looking for her.” Karina walks across the room and goes back again, snatching the letter from Wendy.

“We already tried that! She’s nowhere. Your locator spell didn’t work either, what else do you want me to do?” She sounds angrier than she means, her emotions all over the place. “She wouldn’t have left if you had been honest in the first place!”

Karina scoff. “Please, do you think I didn’t know you’ve been poisoning her with your little potion? Do you have any idea what that kind of potion does to a person? What it did to Joohyun?”

“How would you know? I stopped giving it to her weeks, months ago! She’s fine!”

“Keep telling that to yourself,” Karina murmurs, not following the yelling game they have. “Where I’m from we call that a corruption potion. It plays with your brain, corrupts you, and that’s something you don’t come back from, ever. You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“And you have?”

“In fact, yes, I have. You changed her whole personality with what you did just so you could stand her and manipulate her, and, unfortunately, it’s too late to change it back. Her future is damned.”

“You’re an oracle.” It’s said in realization, in surprise. Seungwan’s expression morphs into something Karina recognizes as regret. But she can’t pity her, she won’t pity her. “Maybe things are the way they were supposed to be.”

Her voice drips with doubt, and if emotions were tangible, hers would be splattering on the floor, splashing Karina with black and blue tones.

“Maybe,” the princess agrees. “It doesn’t change the fact that you did something unforgivable. You’ll have to live with it for the rest of your foreseeable life.”

“I didn’t know! You could have stopped me.” Seungwan says, scrambling for an excuse, but even she knows there’s none.

“I’ve done worse things,” Karina shrugs, just in time for Winter to enter the room. “Everyone has to live with their decisions. So do you.”

Out of character, Winter lets the silence sit. She waits, giving Seungwan time to recover. She puts Joohyun’s note back on the bedside table, away from her eyes.

“Let’s go,” Winter says, grabbing her own backpack. “Someone saw them heading to The Dunes.”

“You can’t seriously be thinking of crossing The Dunes,” Karina blocks the door. “It’s a declaration of war.”

“Who’s going to stop me? You?”

“Yes, if our deal still holds. If you are imprisoned or killed, my land dies with you.” That’s not what she really means. My mom dies with you, is what she wants to say. But she doesn’t say it, she doesn’t need to give her more control over her. Still, it’s implicit in the way she begs her.

“I thought you didn’t want anything to do with your throne and your crown.” Winter laughs. “The hypocrisy.”

“I still love my mother.” She insists. “I won’t let you cross that border without an army, but then you would be fighting a war on three fronts.”

“This moment had to come someday, may as well be today. The time for you to uphold your promise has come.”

Seungwan touches her face, getting rid of any sign of her weakness, of her regret for what she already did. There’s no turning back now, and the end of her journey has also come, mocking her. Deep down she always knew what her purpose in life was. She just got confused when she fell in love with her.

Even admitting the words in her mind tires her, draining all the energy out of her.

“I can’t wait any longer,” she speaks, not sure how much time has passed in silence. “She’s in danger right now.”
 

“Seulgi is not a danger to her,” Karina is quick to defend her, almost too quickly like she cares about the assassin. “The only possibility she could hurt her is if it serves her purpose, which is not the case. She’s more valuable alive.”

Again, Seungwan can hear the unspoken words.

“You mean she’s an asset to bargain for.”

“You sound surprised,” Winter hops in. “She’s always been a hostage, a pawn on the board. She’s alive because it serves a purpose, and it’s in the best interest of everyone that she stays like that.”

Alive, she means.

Suddenly, Seungwan doesn’t feel as guilty anymore. It’s a dark way of relief, because she’s not as bad as Winter, and she will never be if she has anything to say about it. She won’t become a monster, at least not more than she already is. She won’t trade Joohyun’s life if she can help it at all.

“You should go,” Winter continues, adjusting the backpack straps on her shoulders, seemingly too tight to her liking. The sunlight is at its peak, illuminating the room from the open door. “Before I change my mind.”

Seungwan doesn’t have to be told twice. She grabs an empty bottle, walks to the bathroom, and opens the faucet. She puts the bottle below the faucet, waiting patiently while it fills to the top. Then, she puts the blue cap back, taking her time to twist it in the correct direction until it stops moving, tight enough to not spill one drop.

She doesn’t look at Winter’s or Karina’s hawk eyes, nor she stops to turn around to say goodbye. All is said already, they don’t owe anything to each other, and they surely don’t like each other. However, it’s Karina who makes her stop with her voice. She stays still without turning around.

“There may exist a chance of saving her from her fate,” Karina murmurs, but even at that distance, her voice is loud enough to be heard. “But you need to make sure you get to her first.”

Seungwan doubts if she should ask more, but she knows that if Karina had more information she wanted to give her, she would have said so.

So, instead of asking, she starts walking again, with only a water bottle in a plastic bag to accompany her.

She needs to find a phone as soon as possible.

•••

The cold water is above her knees. The salt makes her injuries burn, but she forces herself to ignore the pain and keep walking. She’s still not sure if she made the best decision, but it’s too late now to question it. She’s glad that the warlock she’s looking for is probably on the high part. She doesn’t want to go underwater.

“How’s your leg?” The assassin asks, using Joohyun as support to unstick herself from the sand.

“It stings a little.”

“On the bright side, it’s not a swamp. If it gets infected, at least it will be treatable.”

Seulgi is trying, she can tell. She’s been trying to stir a conversation for twenty minutes now but for Joohyun it’s just so strange to talk to someone that kills people for a living. She can’t trust her.

Seulgi looks into her backpack. It’s so small she doesn’t know how it can fit anything at all. Dimland is weeks away so she can barely imagine what it must feel like to travel alone and with no personal belongings.

“You didn’t have the chance to eat anything, right?” The assassin says, handing her a weird-looking taco with cheese on it. It’s made with flour as far as Joohyun can guess from her limited cooking classes. “Don’t look it like that, I know it’s not nutritive and it’s basically sugar but it’s my favorite.”

“I don’t look at it because of that,” the princess says, turning it around. Grated cheese of a brand she has never eaten before falls off it. The cheese seems dipped in some kind of white caramel. “What is this?”

Seulgi stops in her tracks, the water almost to her chi chest now. Waves have started coming onto them and their hair is wet and their eyes burn.