Brisk footsteps echoed across the cold stone floor. Keys jingled noisily in the lock, and the sound of an iron door squealing open drew Kyungsoo out of his dark thoughts.

It had been many, many hours since he’d been brought down here, thrown into a cell without a word. They had not questioned him, nor had they asked for an explanation. There was no need for one, not when they already knew. He had seen the look in their eyes, when they first came upon him, covered in blood and soot.

Kyungsoo winced, brought back to the present when a sliver of bright light slashed across his face from the opening door. Vision watering, he could barely see beyond the blurry tips of his own feet let alone make out who it was who was standing at the door - but he heard very clearly their barked orders.

“Get up. Someone wishes to speak to you.”

Kyungsoo stood on unsteady legs, unable to help himself up with the hands that were chained uncomfortably tight behind his back. Although his sore ankles wobbled and threatened to have him tumble back down onto the ground, he was jerked upward and forward by the chain they had looped around his neck, pulling him out of his tiny cell and into the dimly lit hallway. It was humiliating to be led as if he were a dog rather than a human, but he supposed that was the very point of it. So he bore it silently, even as the guards' jerking pace quickened and he was forced to bend forward to keep up.

His shoulders ached fiercely, his wrists were chafed and raw, and the bloodied wounds on his fingers had yet to scab over. His back protested just as much, but he’d had nothing to lean against other than the miserably hard stone floor.

“Get in there,” one of the guards muttered, tossing the chains to his partner and pushing Kyungsoo roughly into the enclosed room. There was nothing more to the room other than a table and some chairs, Kyungsoo realized. One of the chairs appeared bolted to the ground seemed to be coated with streaks of old blood, Kyungsoo noted with a trickle of dread. A chilling story of what had once happened here long ago, perhaps. He was not about to ask - he did not want to know.

A new hand pushed him toward one of the chairs with a touch that was firm but not quite as harsh or hard as the first guard, and Kyungsoo dared a glance upward to see whether it was someone he knew. It was.

Chanyeol was unusually blank-faced and silent, jaw tight with tension as he carefully pushed Kyungsoo down into the chair. The stump of Chanyeol’s arm, bare and empty, was telling in and of itself. The one armed knight kept his gaze away as if he couldn’t even bear to look at Kyungsoo. Perhaps it was for the best. Kyungsoo had to swallow the lump in his throat, gaze sinking back down to the floor as Chanyeol chained him to it.

Yanking on the restraints one more time as if to make sure there would be no way Kyungsoo could escape, Chanyeol stood back up without a word and stepped out of sight. He heard the door open and then shut as Chanyeol left. Kyungsoo didn’t trouble himself to look.

Instead, he counted the cracks on the wall, over and over for what felt like an eternity until the door finally opened once again, and someone new entered the room.

Kyungsoo could not be bothered enough to lift his head to greet his visitor, instead remaining slumped over in his chair. He knew he looked a disgraceful, exhausted mess. The thought of being seen as he was brought him a great sense of shame, so he tried to make himself as small as he could, curling in on himself even as he heard the person pull a chair out from the table and drag it next to his.

Kyungsoo knew who it was, without even having to ask. He knew the sound of his lover’s breath. The warmth of his body. The soft touch of his hands.

Kai had always been in his thoughts. Kyungsoo had imagined all the different possibilities and outcomes. Perhaps Kai would come in screaming and shouting, rightfully demanding Kyungsoo’s life to be forfeited as retribution for his brother. Perhaps Kai would have refused to see him ever again - hating him for what Kyungsoo had done. Either way, he had thought, any love and adoration Kai might have felt for him would have surely died out with the fire that night.

Except the fingers that pushed his chin up were kind, and the thumb that rubbed his scraped cheek was warm and gentle. He heard the sound of a cloth ripping, and eventually looked up to see that Kai had torn the bottom of his own linen chemise off, damping the end of it with his mouth before applying it tenderly to Kyungsoo’s face.

Although Kyungsoo searched it for any sign at all, Kai’s face betrayed nothing even as he wiped the soot and blood off of Kyungsoo’s cheek. Kai said nothing through it all, dutifully cleaning Kyungsoo as if nothing at all had happened. As if Kyungsoo did not stand accused of the heinous crimes he had more or less confessed to.

It would have been enough to bring him to his knees, if Kyungsoo had had the freedom of movement to do so. Still, his heart trembled fiercely, as did his voice, when he opened his mouth next.

“Your brother …” Kyungsoo asked hoarsely, “... how fares his health?”

Kai looked directly at him. Staring unblinkingly right back at him, as the war in Kyungsoo’s heart made his chest pound and body thrum.

Wounded by Kai’s closed off gaze, Kyungsoo took in a shaky, hyperventilating breath.

“I… don’t suppose I deserve an answer to that question, do I?”

No response. Kyungsoo closed his eyes tightly.

“I suppose I don’t deserve any of your kindness nor pity,” he mumbled, wresting his chin from his lover’s grip and turning away.

Kai huffed a soft breath, dropping his hands back down to his knees in order to stare silently at Kyungsoo.

[What happened that night?] Kai eventually asked him.

It was a question Kyungsoo knew would arise, and yet it still made him clench his teeth and hands. The wounds were still bloody and fresh, even if they were not visible to the eye.

"You know what happened," Kyungsoo responded.

Kai’s gaze hardened.

[... help me understand why.]

Why, why indeed. Why had any of this happened? Why had Kai chosen to love him of all people, when anyone else would have been able to make him happier than Kyungsoo ever could? And why had God allowed Kyungsoo a taste of happiness before ripping it out of his hands? It was cruel, bitter irony, and there was no way he could explain any of it to Kai when he himself did not understand any of it.

"Why not?" Kyungsoo choked out with a hollow laugh. “We all knew it would end this way, did we not? You knew who I was, from the very start. We could never be friends.”

The words, as soon as they left his lips, tasted as bitter as poison and as metallic as blood.

And yet, with bright eyes, Kai tightened his jaw and shook his head resolutely after a moment.

“No,” he said.

Kyungsoo stared at Kai before steeling himself for another attack.

[I… tried to kill your brother, Kai,] Kyungsoo said in dinnish.

“I do not believe it.” Kai countered back in Moorish. He had not even hesitated. And therein lay Kyungsoo’s answer. Kai - foolish and naive - still loved him. Even if Kyungsoo had confessed to attempting to murder his own flesh and blood. Even if Kyungsoo told him that none of what they’d shared was true. Kai still believed, in his kind, wonderful heart, that Kyungsoo was worth saving. That somehow, some way, Kyungsoo was still pure and innocent.

It cut Kyungsoo deeper than anything else he could have imagined. He did not deserve Kai’s kindness. Perhaps once, many moons ago, but now… Now, Kyungsoo would rather have faced his hatred.

"Why won't you?"

The tears welled up uncontrollably and Kyungsoo closed his eyes, unable to hold back the soft sob that left his lips.

Kai sank to his knees and knelt by his side. Even though Kyungsoo did as much as he could with his restraints to shy away, he could not escape Kai’s touch. Kai placed his arms around Kyungsoo’s waist, placing reverent kisses against Kyungsoo’s frail chest. And Kyungsoo could only watch, as the filth he was covered in was transferred onto Kai’s beautiful, untouched skin.

Kyungsoo had done this. He’d poisoned the brain of the only man who had ever tried to love him. Burned into him the same madness that twisted Kyungsoo’s mind. He’d made Kai this way, made him so easily able to give up all that he had once loved, if just to be by Kyungsoo’s side.

And yet if Kyungsoo could, would he have even pushed Kai away? Would he have had the heart, knowing this very well might have been the last time he would ever see Kai again? No, the answer was clear. He was a selfish, cruel creature. One who only brought pain unto this world.

Kai was now carefully tracing the bruises and scrapes on Kyungsoo’s sallow face and arms, trailing his fingers down the handprints on Kyungsoo’s neck with an unreadable look. And then he cracked, letting a raw, tortured look slip onto his face as he kissed every wound he could reach and could see. There was nothing Kai could do to protect Kyungsoo from the pain he was suffering, and knowing that brought tears to Kai's own eyes.

Kai pressed his wet face against Kyungsoo’s skin, breathing in his lover’s scent as they wept together.

“'Soo.”

It broke Kyungsoo's heart to hear Kai sob his name against his chest, and he cast his own wide-eyed and fluttering look at the ceiling, blinking back the tears that thereatened to betray him.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside of the room. Kyungsoo reacted with fear, pushing Kai backward as quickly as he could with his foot. And yet Kai was undeterred, grabbing Kyungsoo’s foot and bending down to press a gentle kiss against Kyungsoo’s ankle. Kyungsoo could not bear it any longer.

“Please, do not be cruel,” Kyungsoo said in a soft, trembling whisper.

Forever stubborn, Kai continued to press his face against Kyungsoo’s legs - as though he would willingly devote the rest of his life to kneeling before Kyungsoo if he could.

Kyungsoo forced shut his eyes, taking a deep breath before trying again. This time, there was a hardness in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

“You mustn’t do this, Kai. If they see you touching me, then they could either have you hanged along with me... or force you to watch.”

They both knew the truth - that Kyungsoo would be nothing but a corpse in just a few days, dangling from the gates of the kingdom with flocks of crows pecking at his eyes. And yet Kai still flinched, looking as if Kyungsoo had stabbed him in the heart.

Moments later, Kai seemed to gather himself, his mouth thinning into a grim line.

[Then I would rather die,] Kai said simply.

Kai reached out again, this time able to brush his fingers against Kyungsoo’s cheek before the disgraced lord lurched himself backward, jerking so far backward that his chair squealed under the force.

“Enough!” Kyungsoo loudly begged, his eyes once again sparking with emotion. It was fear, for the most part, but Kai caught quickly onto something else - something which faded quickly as Kyungsoo’s eyes dulled once again.

“I cannot allow that to happen.”

Kai searched his eyes for another minute or two for that trace - that spark - but found, ultimately, that his efforts were fruitless. He slowly stood, his hands balling into fists by his side.

[So you would rather die than to be with me?] Kai asked. [You would rather I do nothing but watch as the light leaves your eyes?]

Other than a quick inhale and a shuddering exhale through his nose, Kyungsoo said nothing at all in response. Leaving Kai to pick up the pieces of his own heart.

It was not easy, and though Kai was not usually a man overcome by emotion, even he found it hard to fight back his tears. He, a man of very little words, now tried to find the ones with which he could use to somehow convince his lover. But he was no orator, and in his weakness he could find nothing to say that would do just that.

Still, he thought for a long time, slowly mulling over his next words for a few minutes before carefully speaking them into the quiet air.

[You asked me once, many moons ago, to take you away,] Kai said slowly, not wanting his words to be misunderstood. [I would have done what you had asked. I always would have. If only you said one word, I would take you away from here right now, and we would never have to look back. I only need you to ask.]

With a beautiful, wry smile that spread from the very corners of his mouth, Kyungsoo slowly shook his head.

“The only thing I will ever ask of you,” Kyungsoo said in a low whisper, one that dripped with sadness and regret, “is for you to live.”

Kai in a deep breath.

Moments later he slammed his fist onto the table with a loud cry, sending dust flying.

[Tell me who made you do it, Soo. That is all I will ever ask of you again, please -]

“When the day comes, I want you to stay far, far away,” Kyungsoo said hoarsely, speaking quietly over Kai’s desperate words, “I … I could not bear the thought of you watching me die.”

[Please, I beseech you, tell me how to save you - !]

“You foolish, wonderful man,” Kyungsoo whispered, “you have been trying to save me since the very first day we met.”

[No, there must be something…]

There was no more time left. The door opened and the knights guarding his door came flooding in.

“Promise me you won't come. Stay away, and do not look,” Kyungsoo said as one of the knights tugged him back onto his feet. “Do you hear me? Don't look.”

Chanyeol pulled Kai away, forcing him backward as the other knights unchained him from the chair. And though Chanyeol was whispering something into Kai’s ears - reassurances, placations that fell on deaf ears - the two lovers remained focused on each other, as if everything else mattered not.

“Your Highness, please…” “- No!” “Quickly, take him away -”

With one hard yank, Kyungsoo was tugged out of the room.

Before Kai could follow, he was quickly pushed back by Chanyeol who stepped between them and kept his firm hand on Kai’s chest.

“Forgive me,” Kyungsoo choked out, through the hot tears that trickled down under his trembling lashes. Kai called out to him wordlessly, his voice breaking with mirrored grief as he reached out helplessly toward his lover.

But the door slammed shut before he could do anything, leaving him to fall silently onto his knees.

-

Two voices, raised in conflict, pierced into the hallway, drawing the worried attention of the attendants that walked by the enclosed royal quarters. It was early evening, and through the oak doors, two men were nearly at each other’s throats. All the while, a third lay frail and motionless in a large four-poster bed, almost corpse-like if not for the faint, labored breaths that passed through pale lips.

“Please, you must reconsider -”

“I will not!”

“But he would never have -”

“And what do you know about what that southerner would do?! He is a snake, just like his sister!”

“You are not even trying to listen! There must be some plot underfoot, I know him, he isn’t as you say he is -”

“- that barbarous man nearly killed my husband, I do not care to know what his intentions were!”

Prince Sehun stared at the wild figure before him, seeing just how much love had shaped his brother. Months ago, he had thought the change was a welcome one, for Yifan’s husband had drawn out the heart of a man that had hidden it for so long. But it was both a blessing and a curse. The same all-consuming love had, it seemed, blinded the eyes of an otherwise shrewd man.

No matter what Sehun had to say, it could not penetrate the wall of anguish his brother had built up around him. It hurt him to see his brother this way, looking half mad with despair and rage.

And yet Sehun had to try. For Kai’s sake. For Kyungsoo’s sake. For everyone involved.

“Brother, you are not thinking with the right mind -”

“Do not tell me what to think and what to do, I am your King!”

“A good king would not have a man unjustly murdered without a fair trial!”

“Both you and Kai have fallen for their tricks!” Yifan roared, slamming his hand down upon the dresser and silencing them both. “I should have never allowed you to marry that woman, she no doubt has poisoned your mind just as Kai has been -”

CRACK! King Yifan’s face stung with the slap that his brother had given him, and he found himself bracing against the dresser in stunned silence, touching his reddened flesh with his fingers.

And as the anger left Sehun’s eyes, replaced now by sorrow and regret, so too did Yifan’s. There was a ragged weariness that loomed like a dark cloud over the King, one that followed him as he sank heavily into the chair beside the bed.

“It does not matter whether you agree with my decision or not. He will hang for what he has done.”

A struggling wheeze arose from the bloodstained figure on the bed, making the King fell silent for a moment.

“If… if I should lose him...” Yifan said, only for his voice to quietly break.

As the tension left his own shoulders, Sehun looked up after a long period of silence, only to realize that his brother was weeping silently, shoulders shaking as he gripped the pale, lifeless hand of his husband. Yifan closed his eyes, choking back a sob that had Sehun stepping back with a growing sense of unease and discomfort.

He had seen this look on his brother’s face just once before. Before the Battle of the Moors, as he said what he had believed to be his final goodbyes to the man he had only just wed. Although it had made Sehun’s heart ache then, it only hurt more now that he understood what it felt like to fall deeply in love. Who was to say that Sehun wouldn’t have acted the same way, if it had been his own wife lying on that bed?

“Oh lord God, please…” The king cried out brokenly, turning to drape himself over Tao’s body. Without a care for the way he looked, the disheveled king his husband’s hair, still clutching onto his hand as he pressing fervent kisses against Tao’s cold cheek.

Feeling as though he were bearing witness to a private moment, Sehun felt his resolve weaken.

“Do not take him from me,” Yifan was whispering, over and over again like a prayer. “I cannot live without him - ! My love... my darling... my little flame, please - ! I beg you, do not leave me…!”

Sehun couldn’t bear to watch any longer. He turned and quietly left, letting the door shut behind him.

-

“I have tried my very best, but I fear there is nothing we can do. My brother still wishes to see Kyungsoo hang,” Sehun told his wife later, rubbing his eyes wearily as he sank down beside his wife. “Bita, I am afraid that … well … that I do not know what to do.”

Sehun’s voice cracked on the last word, and, mortified and ashamed, he dropped his head.

“I… am a failure, am I not? I could not protect my father, could not protect my brother, and now… now I cannot protect Kyungsoo, either.”

Knowing that nothing she could say at that moment would be able to reassure him, Bita cupped his face between her hands, meeting his gaze before reaching out to wrap him in her arms. She held him close, as though to share the weight of his sadness.

Sehun tried his very best not to let it all overwhelm him. But that seemed an impossible task to accomplish. He closed his eyes, taking comfort in his wife’s silent company for a long while, sharing quiet breaths and forlorn thoughts.

Their peace was eventually disturbed when the door to their quarters burst open. Kai appeared there at the doorway, looking wild and breathless as if he’d run the entire way there.

Sehun and Bita got up quickly to greet him, meeting him halfway with outstretched arms and a sense of urgency that was matched in the man’s frantic eyes.

“Well, what did he say?” Sehun urged him to speak, grabbing the dinnish man by the shoulders.

[‘Soo did not do it,] Kai said in dinnish, as soon as he’d caught his breath.

“What, he told you this?” Sehun said with a hopeful voice.

Kai glanced up at his friend, gulping in another breath before shaking his head.

[He would not have hurt Tao. They were kind to each other.]

Sehun glanced at his wife, who looked puzzled. As Sehun translated Kai’s words for her, Kai only grew more aggravated. As if it pained him to have to wait to explain any of it.

[I refuse to believe it. He is not capable.]

“I know that,” Sehun spluttered, as if he’d been insulted.

“Well, go on, who does he think it was then?” Bita urged him.

Kai only stared darkly back at her.

Slowly, it became clear to the other two that he had no real answer.

[He still loves me,] Kai shouted, with a voice that dripped with heartache. [I can see it in his eyes!]

“Well we need far more than a feeling to convince my brother of anything!” Sehun shouted back.

Kai shook his head again, raising his hands up in frustration as he spun around with a growl. He took that which was closest to him - a delicate flower vase on the dresser - and smashed it against the wall with a wordless shout.

His companions flinched at the sound, and they all turned to watch the pottery crumble to pieces on the ground, droplets of water traveling down the now wet wall to puddle onto the ground. Sehun muttered something about having to clean up the mess, stepping forward to pick the pieces off the ground and put them carefully into the palm of his hand. Kai said nothing in response, turning around to nervously pace the length of the room as he brooded in silence.

Only Bita was left to stand there to contemplate what little she’d understood of the conversation, staring at what was left of the vase on the ground.

And though she was a woman of action rather than one of deep introspection, something struck her about the shattered vase that forced her to think.

There had to be something, something that they were not thinking of. The key to the puzzle. A missing piece.

“... they found him standing alone in his sister’s quarters with a knife,” she muttered quietly to herself. “There was a bent candlestick on the floor, a trunk half packed full of clothes, and a dead man on the ground. His sister’s servant. Stabbed once, through the heart.”

She blinked. And then she glanced up toward the other two, waiting for them to catch her eye. They didn’t. So she whistled sharply, drawing their attention.

“There were only three people in that room,” Bita said slowly. “One is dead, the other refuses to speak, and the last…”

She looked at Kai, holding his gaze intensely for a moment.

[There were handprints around his neck,] Kai spat out, his anger growing with his realization. He grit his teeth, and switched back to Moorish so that they could both understand him. “Kyungsoo’s sister made machine weapons. She made that toy. Not ‘Soo.”

Bita sighed, her features pinched with grim resolve.

“No one will believe us if we do not have proof.”

“What, and we are supposed to find her and talk to her and ask her for her blessing?” Sehun asked incredulously, looking at the pair of them as if they were insane. “How, praytell, do you propose we do that?”

There was no clear answer. They all fell silent once again, their excitement slowly fading away and being replaced with determination as they tried to puzzle it out in each in their own way.

Kai, ever the blunt instrument, suggested breaking Kyungsoo out of the prison first, and worrying about his sister second. But they would be seen as treasonous criminals if they did that, Sehun argued, and then neither of them would be allowed to set foot in the Moors again.

Sehun wished to petition the eldest dinnish brother Suho for the aid of his hunters - for they were purportedly the best trackers of the land - but Kai quickly dismissed the idea, knowing that his brother would never lend his aid if he knew what their true goal was.

“Would he not want to help his own brother?”

[Not if he believed Kyungsoo tried to murder one of his brothers.]

“As long as we find proof that he was not the one to harm Tao, what difference does it make? Just convince him!”

[You could not convince your own elder brother to spare him, what makes you think I could convince mine?]

“Because Yifan is married to Tao! You of all people should know how blinded by love he is! Suho would be more reasonable, would he not?”

[You do not know brother well enough. His anger, once incited, will never fade.]

“Well it is certainly a better plan than running away from the problem!”

[I will do whatever it takes to save Soo, just as I will do whatever it takes to avenge my brother.]

“If you do this, you will never see your brother! Or I! Ever again! Have you considered that?”

[My brother will never see me again either way, what difference does it make?]

While the two of them bickered like children for the better half of the evening over whose idea was better, Bita walked over to the window and stood there silently with her arms folded over her chest.

It came to her as slowly as the grin that eventually spread across her face.

"Of course! I am such a fool," she said, before whipping around and sticking her fingers in .

She whistled as loud as she could.

And heard, in the distance, an answering bark.

-

It was late when they finally set out across the courtyard. The sun had set hours ago, which meant that they would have no choice but to travel under the cloak of night. It did mean that they would have some time before anyone discovered if they were gone, but to travel through the Moors and into (for two of them, at least) uncharted territory they would need to travel carefully.

And yet, time was also against them.

They ran to the stables as soon as they’d grabbed what they’d needed for the long journey. A few lanterns, a few bags of grains for the horses and food for the journey were all they could stuff into their horses’ saddle bags. While Sehun and Bita wrapped themselves up tightly in their cloaks and pulled on their riding boots, Kai draped a fur skin over his head and shoulders and deftly tied the sinew string in a tight knot.

Kai’s stallion matched his owner’s frantic energy, pawing its hooves into the ground as the dinnish warrior pulled himself quickly onto its and grabbed hold of its thick mane. Sehun saddled his own horse as quickly as he could, tugging securely on the belts before using his grip on the saddle to haul himself up. He reached a hand out to his wife and waited patiently for her to finish allowing her hound to sniff a swatch of black silk that they’d pulled from the palisean Queen’s quarters.

Lady barked as soon as she’d caught the scent. Bita allowed her husband to pull her onto his horse, and the moment she was seated the dog took off. The horses soon followed, bursting from the stable doors and thundering down the cobblestone path.

And as their path turned southward, through the cold night fen, Kai looked back only once, to glance at the tower in the distance. Kyungsoo was there. Shivering and alone in a dark room. And though it pained Kai to know that he was leaving his lover behind, the tightness in his chest only grew when he saw the distant harvest moon, slowly rising in the west.

There was not much that Kai feared. He’d fought many fearsome beasts in the past, and was no stranger to bloodshed. But there was nothing more that made him more frightened, than to imagine the swinging, lifeless corpse of his lover. And the unfillable void that it would leave behind.

But there was no time to ponder, no time at all to think.

Kai blinked away the sudden tears in his eyes, turning to face forward again. He spurred his horse on with a wordless cry, digging his heels into the side of the stallion and urging it onward, faster and faster.

-

Lady took them south. Far south - down the winding road that meandered through the marshes, through endless miles of mud and rain, forging a new path through the barren battlegrounds that had laid undisturbed for months. They rested there for an hour or two, allowing their animal companions to catch their breaths before pressing on relentlessly.

They turned southeast. Where the fen’s green grass turned gradually yellow and and then white, before fading into dust, stone, and grey infertile dirt.

There was a sense of unease that grew the deeper they traveled into the southern tip of the peninsula. There was not a sign of life within miles - no animals, no shrubbery, no trees. Just a dead wasteland, desolate and quiet.

Many lives had been lost here, in this land ravaged by hundreds of years of war. It unnerved Sehun in particular, for he had never really known a life of hardship. Imagining a life outside of the walls of the Moorish castle had been previously impossible. The closest he’d ever gotten was listening to the tales of his wife’s childhood, and even then he’d only been able to conjure up vague images of the poverty, famine and war she’d described.

And yet here it was, in front of them now. A world that they’d never known existed. While the cold wind made Sehun shiver and wish for the safety of his homeland, for Kai, it served as an eerie echo of the tales passed down from his ancestors. Land as black as ash. Cold as then winter. Still and without a heart.

It discomfited Kai to imagine Kyungsoo here, growing up in these deadlands as a child without love.

“There is nothing here of interest other than the ghosts,” Bita, the only native to the land, reminded the two of them. “So let us not tarry - we haven’t much time to waste as it is.”

No matter how much they wanted to take in their surroundings, her words resteeled their resolve. Kai bent back over his horse, focusing on keeping pace with the tireless hound that seemed to understand their urgency. She kept pressing onwards, tongue lolling outside of her muzzle as she kicked up clouds of grey dust.

So they continued south.

Though they stopped on a few more occasions to water their horses and feed themselves, they did so only when necessary.

Finally, after what felt like an eternal stretch of grey, barren land, there appeared a single tower in the distance on the very tip of the southeastern coast, one that jutted out from the otherwise empty landscape. Lady howled as soon as she saw it, shifting the plodding direction of her paws to head straight towards it. The dog quickened its pace, pulling the horses and their riders with her as they thundered across the dirt.

The skies rumbled forebodingly in the horizon, and Kai looked up to the dark skies, cursing when he saw light begin to break over the horizon. Calling out to his companions, he bent down over his horse and nudged it forward with his heels, pulling swiftly ahead of the group.

Almost there.

-

Here was the place where Kyungsoo was born. This strange, eerie mockery of a city, where there was nothing to be heard except the loud singing howl of the wind beating against the cliffs. It was a sound, Kai found, that grated against one’s ears. Something that would drive a man or woman wild.

Lady had slowed her pace once they’d reached the city gates, ears flattened against her skull as she whined in discomfort. Their horses slowed to a walk as well, tossing their heads as if it would alleviate the painful ring in their ears.

Kai recalled hearing of the auditory phenomenon from Kyungsoo before, and although his description of the eerily screaming wind had been very accurate, it was something that still caught Kai off guard, making him wince and pull the animal furs tighter over his head to block it.

And yet it still pierced the air.

Like a dying animal.

The native paliseans seemed to have grown accustomed to the sound, never reacting to its shifts in pitch and volume as they slowly trudged through the village like silent, skeletal ghosts. Kai was deeply unsettled by the robed men and women who they passed by, having perhaps expected to have been greeted as enthusiastically by his lover’s people as he was by his own. And yet, they were met with nothing.

It was but early morning, so perhaps there weren’t as many walking around as there would have been later in the day. But somehow he doubted it.

Despite the presence of those they passed, the streets still felt empty. In fact, the only sign of life were the shuttering of the windows as they clopped past, flashes of frightened faces and pained, bright eyes that were hidden quickly away from view.

If this is truly where Kyungsoo had spent his youth, then there really was no wonder as to why he hid himself away from the world. The world - at least here - was not one that was worth facing.

He shared a disturbed look with Sehun, who looked equally as uncomfortable as he himself was. This city - one of the largest in the southern peninsula, Bita claimed - felt as though it were taking its last, rattling breath. Withering away in the arid, dry wind until there was nothing left except for the holes in the cliffs and the bone white sand.

They stumbled upon a dark alleyway, halfway to the tower, within which either a child or a very small, malnourished adult lay collapsed and still in the dirt. It was unclear whether it was a girl or a boy, for their clothes were ripped and ragged, and their features were sunken with a hunger that sharpened their cheekbones and accentuated their ribs. It wasn’t clear to the three of them whether the figure was alive or dead. Before either of them could make their way over for a closer look, a wooden door creaked opened within the alleyway and a few thin hands reached out from the darkness, grabbing the body by the arm and pulling it inside. The door slammed shut not long afterward.

Kai had long known about the dire circumstances of Kyungsoo’s people, having heard quiet anecdotes about it whenever he’d accompanied Kyungsoo into the village. The palisean had bartered for small shipments of food to travel back south. Though he had but little to give, Kai had watched him trade his own precious toys for bread and cured meats for his people. He’d long wondered why Kyungsoo had never once bartered for plants or seeds - after all, he’d heard of all the machines Kyungsoo had made to help with the harvest. But Kai could see for himself that the soil was barren, and most likely had been for many years now.

It made Kai feel sick to the stomach as the food in his full belly turned to sludge. His hands tightened around the thick black strands of his stallion’s mane.

“Are… are we sure his sister is here?” Sehun asked in a small voice that they could just barely make out over the howling wind. Sehun was paler than normal, looking as though the blood had drained from his face. When a small, shambling form stumbled past them, coughing wetly and pulling their black headwrap tighter around their face, Sehun made a soft, wounded noise and followed the figure’s path with his head.

“Do not worry,” Bita reassured him with a small squeeze around his waist, urging Sehun to face forward once again. “She is here. And we will find her. And then we can leave this place and return home.”

"But why would she come back here?"

The words seemed cruel, but they all knew that it was the truth. There simply was nothing that they could do. At least, not in the moment. Bita knew it well enough, because even though this was not where she’d grown up, it wasn’t much different in her own land. The people starved. The wars raged on. And the sickness - the infectious melancholy that caused people to waste away into dust - was a curse that all the southern countries shared. One which bound them like slaves to the infertile land.

With no real idea of where to go, they rode in a somber silence towards the tower, with nothing else to say as they passed through the empty streets, pursued by the bitter cold of the wind. They became as quiet as the townsfolk, and each found themselves into their own dark and brooding thoughts.

Eventually, as the sun began to make its journey up through the sky, Lady lifted her nose up from the dirt and barked, trotting quicker as she picked up the scent once again and moved up the steps toward the sea. Grateful for a distraction, Kai turned his horse to follow, knowing that behind him both Sehun and Bita were following.

-

After their long journey, at the highest point of the cliffs overlooking a sheer drop into the ocean, they finally found her.

Though her back faced them, there was no doubt who it was. Her bare hands were still covered in blood, and her long black hair whipped behind her in the wind. Bita’s hound confirmed the fact when she flattened her ears back, sinking down to the ground and growling lowly.

And then it all happened too quickly.

Mind completely blank other than the sound of the roaring wind rushing in through his ears, Kai slipped quietly off his horse and immediately drew a knife from his pelt. Sehun shouted upon seeing it, falling off his horse in his haste to make it to Kai’s side. He very nearly fell onto his face, if not for the strong arm of his wife who pulled him upright at the last moment.

It was too late to stop Kai though, who had already begun to make his way up the hill toward her. Though he did not try to disguise the sound of his quick footsteps, she never moved, as if fixated on some distant point in the horizon.

The howl of the wind was nearly deafening now as it reached to a fever’s pitch, nearly drowning out all other sounds with its force. Kai’s cry could still be heard over it. Channeling the full force of his anger and pain into his voice, he called out to her, knife raised as he tackled her to the ground.

“KYUNGRIIIIII!!!”

-

“No, Kai!!” “Quick, stop him before he kills her!!” “I am trying!!”

With a grunt, Sehun tore Kai off of Kyungri, struggling to restrain his friend as Bita attempted to pry the bloodied bone knife from Kai’s fingers. Kyungri’s features were twisted in pain as she pressed her hand against the shallow wounds that littered her shoulder and chest. Fortunately for her, Kai had, in his blinding rage, missed all of her vital organs. Still, she bled fiercely from her wounds, looking pale and pained as she struggled back up to her feet.

“Murderer!! Kinslayer!” Kai shouted in Moorish, his accent thick with distress as he tried to wrestle free of Sehun’s grip. “I will kill you for what you have done!”

Swaying in the wind, Kyungri stared silently at him, as if not believing the sight in front of her eyes.

“You…” she croaked in a voice that sounded lost.

Her eyes, once cruel and cold, looked deadened and dull. Her hair was a mess, no longer the sleek beautiful curtain of black that it once was, instead curled and frizzy, plastered onto her pale and withdrawn face and hanging limply by her side. And yet, most strange of all was the unmistakable trail of tears - still wet - on her cheeks.

Sehun stared for a moment, turning to share his puzzled look with his wife. But they soon turned their attention back to Kai, who had since begun to struggle once again.

[Let go of me - ] he spat, [let go of me so that I can end her life - ]

“What is he saying?” Bita said distractedly, dropping the bloodied knife to the ground before reaching forward to help. “You mustn’t do this, Kai!”

[I can and I will - ]

“Even if you kill her, Kai, Kyungsoo will still hang!!” Sehun finally snapped.

His words did the trick. Kai stopped struggling almost immediately. With one last roar of anger, Kai fell silent, sagging in his companions’ arms as he glared through the messy strands of his auburn hair.

“... you said … my brother ... would die ...?” Asked a soft, tremulous voice.

They looked up with surprise. Kyungri had regained her composure, although she still clutched at her bleeding wounds with one hand. She took a limping step closer, and then paused.

“How did they find him ...?” Kyungri repeated with a blank face and a dull voice. Not at all like the vipress they had all come to fear, and that fact alone made Sehun hesitate to answer.

“He never left. My brother will hang Kyungsoo unless we bring proof that Kyungsoo had no hand in what happened during the harvest festival,” Sehun eventually responded. He swallowed hard, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down with his nerves. “We do not believe that he did it. But we… we think you might know who did.”

Kyungri stared wordlessly at him for a moment, the blood draining from her face just as it was from the wounds on her shoulder. Then slowly, she sank back to the ground, collapsing onto her knees as she stared numbly down at the dirt.

“That stupid boy,” Kyungri finally whispered, with eyes that swam with unshed tears. “I should have known. I told him to run, I begged him, and yet he still insists to play the hero.”

“What do you mean…? What exactly happened that day?” Bita pressed.

Kyungri closed her eyes and shuddered, choking out a gasping breath as if her wounds ran deeper than the shallow cuts she’d received. A tear dripped down her cheek, disappearing quickly into the white sands. When she looked up again, she looked directly at Kai.

“Will telling you save him?” Kyungri finally asked, just loud enough to be heard over the howling wind. She looked directly at Kai.

Although the tension never quite left his shoulders, the intensity in Kai’s eyes dimmed just a little bit as he stared down at the broken woman who would have, in better days, been his future sister. After a moment, he nodded just once.

“It might.”

-

The heat of the flames still nipped his heels and the sound of the faerie fyre still roared in his ears. His terror chased after him like a monster, following him through long winding hallway after long winding hallway. When he finally reached western wing, he lost his footing and slipped, sliding across the floor and slamming into the wall. He scraped his already bruised arm against the rough stone in his scramble to get back onto his feet. Though it stung, he barely paid it any attention, mumbling a frantic prayer under his breath over and over again as he ran towards his sister’s rooms.

Kyungsoo’s threw open the doors and ran into the middle of the room, wheezing heavily as he searched for his sister. He called out her name when he could not find her, whirling around only to come to the realization that the room had been nearly emptied out.

His sister’s silks, scarves, and dresses - once draped neatly across the dresser and the chairs - were almost entirely stuffed into the open trunk sitting on the floor by the foot of the bed. The bed was stripped bare, her jewels splayed out on top of it. Her wardrobe lay open and exposed, doors creaking open and shut in the chill wind that filtered in from the open windows.

Seeing it all for himself made Kyungsoo’s suspicions all the more real. The truth crept upon him like a dagger in the back, leaving him to grip his head between his hands terror. Heart beating furiously in his chest, he screamed her name out again.

This time, finally, something shifted behind him in response. He whirled around to see Kyungri appear from the doorway of the adjoining room, carrying yet another one of her countless black dresses in her arms. He stared at her, taking in her nonchalant expression with disbelief.

“There you are, Kyungsoo,” she said shortly, as if nothing were wrong at all. “You should leave as soon as you can. There is a horse waiting for you in the stables, if you hurry.”

She brushed past him to place the dress calmly in the trunk, tucking it carefully in with the rest of her belongings as if that were the only thing she cared about at the moment.

Kyungsoo - still gasping and still covered in blood and soot - could only gawk at her apathy. He finally snapped out of it when she attempted to step past him again. Kyungsoo grabbed her by her shoulders, forcing his sister to face him as he shook her hard between his hands.

“Kyungri… what did you do?!” He cried, trying his very best not to let his nerves get the better of him. “What did you do?!”

“Oh come now, brother. Don’t be stupid,” she said, as if the answer were obvious. And perhaps it was, even if Kyungsoo had refused to believe it.

Kyungri pushed his loosened grip off of herself with ease. She moved out of Kyungsoo’s line of sight

as he slowly sank to his knees.

“No…” was the only word he could choke out. “No…!” He collapsed with his head against the stone, slamming his fist down as he struggled to gather his swirling thoughts. Only when a fiery flash of anger lit a fire inside of him did he lift his head again.

“How… could you...?!” He whispered, only for his words to grow louder and louder with each successive word. “What have you done...?! Oh god, everything we have done, all that we’ve fought for -”

“- and what is it exactly that we have done, Kyungsoo?”

He stared up at her, frozen for a second before his lips loosened again.

“All that you asked me to do, all the plotting and the scheming, you told me it was for the good of our people! And instead you - you’ve gone and killed the king consort...!”

“So it was that mindless brute who picked it up, then?” Kyungri said, a strange look of relief flashing onto her face before it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. A mask of haughty calm replaced it, accompanied by a smile that froze into place on her face like a layer of frost. “Good… then you have done your job well.”

“My job?! What have I done to deserve this, Kyungri?! You have made me take part in the murder of a good man - you have put blood on my hands and in doing so have doomed our entire country - can you even know what you have done?!” Kyungsoo shouted at her, any fear he might have had over being punished for his insolence was far outweighed by the sheer desperation of his situation. “You have ruined us, Kyungri! All this work, all of this - for what?! For glory?! For revenge?!”

Kyungri walker over, reaching down to pull Kyungsoo up by his chin.

She examined him, taking in the tattered state of his once beautiful tunic, stained red with blood. The dirt on his hands and his knees. His hollow expression, the tears that splashed down onto his scraped knuckles.

“Oh, Kyungsoo. It would have been much easier for all of us if you had just accepted the wine,” she said, before letting him go.

He sat there for a moment as her words slowly sank in, staring unseeingly at her back as she turned to face the bed once again.

“The wine … ?” He asked numbly, as the gears began to turn in his head. “What did you do to the wine, Kyungri … ?”

“You really do not know, Kyungsoo? All these years, it has never occurred to you?”

Though through her words she confirmed the very worst of his fears, Kyungsoo still tried desperately to deny it in his own mind. Although the two of them had been estranged for many a year, surely she would not have done this to him. Surely she - his very own sister, his flesh and blood - did not have the capability of committing an act so vile.

“No… you… you couldn’t have…”

And yet there it lay bare.

A hole Kyungsoo had uncovered, unanticipated and dark. And he almost immediately began to sink into it, into that pit of despair that rendered him almost entirely mute.

“Do you remember those sleeping draughts mother had the royal physician make for her? The ones she had us take a sip of every night to help us sleep? Do you remember how bitter and metallic it always tasted, Kyungsoo?”

Kyungsoo said nothing at all, leaving Kyungri to fill in the silence on her own.

“I found out that she had been crushing up blue graveflower and slipping them into our sleeping draughts every night.”

“She what … ?”

His mind raced. Back to the days when his elderly tutor had taught him the basics of medicine and herbology. And though his memory was fuzzy of those days long past, he still remembered that particular flower. After all, it had been his mother’s favorite. And his sister’s, as well.

But it was not a flower meant to be consumed. After all, if he remembered correctly, it would have...

“I don’t understand,” Kyungsoo finished, in barely a whisper at all. “Why would she…”

“It made us docile and suggestible,” Kyungri said, turning to face Kyungsoo with an unreadable expression. She walked slowly towards him, kneeling before him and leaning in as if to the life out of Kyungsoo’s eyes. “You never noticed? The taste it leaves in your mouth. It has a sedative effect - even if it causes a gradual weakening of the body and mind when consumed over a long period of time. And the hallucinations that came with it - Mother always thought she knew what was best, even if it meant terrifying us with monstrous visions, every single night.”

“You mean the visions were never ...?”

“They were as real as we believed them to be, nothing more and nothing less.”

His sister’s eyes slid over him for a moment, staring past him as if seeing her own childhood ghosts reappear. Eventually, she looked back down at him, eyes strangely bright, and shook her head.

“I put an end to it once I realized what she had done. I did what I had to in order to preserve our lives, even if it meant pushing her off that cliff,” she whispered. “I stood there and I watched her fall, Kyungsoo. I heard her scream, heard her skull crack to pieces against the stone, and I felt nothing at all.”

For as frightening as her words were, her voice was hollow and bitter as she finally admitted the truth to him. And Kyungsoo, still reeling from what he had learned, could not help but to mourn the loss of the mother he had always assumed had took her own life.

“Kyungri, you killed our mother -”

“She tried to kill you as well! What would you rather I had done? Would you rather I had let it happen, would you rather I had let her continue? The only one she ever loved was father. She would have only continued hurting us, only continued out her only daughter, only continued bending our minds until there was nothing left of us but a husk!”

“And for my good deed, what reward did I receive?! What have I ever done to deserve what has happened to me?!” She cried, standing over him with a rage that left her shaking and red. “You never understood, you will never understand - !”

Kyungsoo in a wounded breath and Kyungri shut abruptly with a click, biting back a furious sob as she clenched her hands into fists at her side. She blinked rapidly, turning her head to face the window as she slowly regained her composure.

“All you need to know is that what I did, I did for your own good,” she finally said, after a long period of silence.

Kyungsoo, whose broken expression had long been mirrored by his sister’s, finally lifted his head. He gazed over at his sister’s trunk, recalling how it was once full of rations Kyungri had brought from home. There was the incense burner as well, still swaying gently in the breeze from the ceiling. There it was, plain for all to see - the answer to all of his own suffering. The nosebleeds, the blurred vision, the ghastly apparitions.

And Kyungsoo knew what Kyungri had done to him. After all, he could taste the after effect of it, still lingering in his mouth after all this time.

“You poisoned me,” he said.

His sister flinched. As if hearing it from his mouth caused her harm.

“You confessed to me that you murdered mother for what she did to us both. But you’ve been doing the same to me, all this time, haven’t you?” He asked, pinning her down with a haunting, hollowed look.

“I never used half of what she used on us,” Kyungri answered after a moment, staring blankly at the wall behind him. “I had no intention of killing you.”

“But you… you knew what mother had done… and yet you did the same to me… all this time?”

“None of this would have happened if you had done what I’d asked you to do. If you had only listened to me, I would have never had to resort to what I did.”

“And what was your plan all along, Kyungri? To use me as a tool so that you could kill the royal family? Tell me, how was that for my own good?”

“I’ve taken care of you since you were born. Your obedience was the one thing I asked of you, the only thing you could have given me. And yet I knew you wouldn’t do what I would have asked you to - not with that bleeding, foolish heart of yours.”

“So instead, you would see me executed for your crimes -” “- I told you to leave, did I not?! I am not holding you prisoner here!” “How could I leave, Kyungri?! How could I, after all that you have put me through?” “- there you go again, always playing the victim -”

“YOU NEARLY HAD ME DROWNED IN THAT FOUNTAIN, KYUNGRI! I NEARLY DIED!!”

Kyungsoo staggered to his feet, breathing heavily as he stared his sister down. She stared right back, almost matching him in his intensity if not for the fact that her hands were still quivering.

She was afraid, Kyungsoo realized. Kyungsoo was no longer hers to play with. Perhaps she did not see him as an equal, perhaps she never would see him as an equal, but there was power in that knowledge all the same.

“I never ordered you to do anything, brother. I only suggested that you take a swim. That man was smitten with you from the very beginning. I knew he would never have allowed you to come to any real harm,” Kyungri said with conviction, as if she really believed what she was saying. “And you should be grateful for my actions. It was the only way you would have met that man to begin with, given how much of a recluse you were. Do not lie to me by saying it was not something that you did not reap any benefit from.”

“Stop making it seem as though you were trying to make me happy. You never wanted my happiness - never wanted our people’s happiness - you only wanted your own!”

“I have always done what I’ve thought was best for all of us -”

“How can you tell me what is best for me when you have been watching me die slowly for years, Kyungri?!” Kyungsoo shouted at her. “I was there for you, I believed you, I loved you! How could you do this to me?!”

“Enough!!”

The two of them shared a look in that strained silence, one that crackled with thick tension, lined with words unsaid that would never be shared. And through Kyungri’s dark eyes Kyungsoo saw once again his own reflection, his own pale flesh and the twisted root of the disease burying its way deep into their veins. And he saw the deep sadness. The moisture that gathered at the corner of her eyes. As if she were sorry for it all, as if her words could at all begin to help him make sense of the cold drip of betrayal he felt in the pit of his stomach.

It did not.

On the contrary, it only rubbed salt in the wound.

“I did what I had to do,” she said simply. As though that was all there was left to say. She turned back around, dismissing him coldly as she always had done.

With a wordless, savage cry, Kyungsoo lunged at her. The two siblings tumbled onto the ground, smashing the glass lamp and spilling fine silk dresses onto the dirty floor. Scratching and shouting and biting and clawing their fingers into each other’s skin, the two were animals trying to gain the upper hand on one another, ignoring the tears that still fell from their eyes as they each sought to inflict as much physical pain as they could onto their own flesh and blood.

“I told you to leave!!” Kyungri shouted at him, scratching him in the face with her nails. She threw all of her weight down on him, grunting with exertion as he struggled desperately underneath her. “I never asked for your pity or your acceptance! I never asked for your understanding!”

“You had it! You always had it!! I was always by your side! You have made my life a hell of your own making for years, and yet you still choose to punish me just for existing!” Kyungsoo roared back, slamming his forehead into hers. When she fell backward, he quickly followed, flipping their roles as he now was the one to hold her against the ground. She screamed and shouted, trying to claw her way out, but Kyungsoo held fast, grabbing her arms and binding them with his own.

Fueled by madness and rage and with blood pouring from the wound on his cheek, Kyungsoo reached within his belt, taking out his paring knife and holding it threateningly against .

“I only wanted one thing - one thing - and you took it all away! YOU ALWAYS TAKE EVERYTHING AWAY!” Kyungsoo shouted as loud as he could, his face reddening and voice trembling with force. He could barely remember to breathe. He could hardly see, either, through the tears that fell from his cheeks and blended into hers.

And then the rage left him.

Like a wound that ached with an emptiness he could not describe, Kyungsoo in a hard breath, feeling all of his aches and pains hitting him all at once. The cold tremors that came with each shivering exhale made him feel older than his years. Withered, and dead.

With a wrenched cry, he finally let go of her and let his knife clatter harmlessly onto the floor behind him, sitting back onto his haunches as he stared down at his sister’s prone body.

They were worn ragged and frayed, the aftermath of their tumble smeared all over their faces and their clothes with blood, soot and dirt. For a moment, they regarded one another with both pity and disgust, as if they both finally acknowledged that the unbreakable bond they shared would never again be one of love. Theirs was a never ending cycle, an ouroboros of the pain they had given and the pain that they’d received.

“You… you always take everything away from me,” Kyungsoo repeated softly, in a voice that trembled with heartbreak. “Why?”

Kyungri stared up at him, her own eyes still glimmering with tears, finally forced by her position to look up at him and see him for the man he had become. But just as he thought she might have finally understood, their connection was broken once again, this time by footsteps that echoed across the stone floor.

It came from the adjoining room, drawing Kyungri’s attention away as she stared over his shoulder. Before Kyungsoo could turn around to see who it was that had interrupted him, the cold scrape of metal against the floor preceded a deeply familiar voice.

“These people must be punished for what they have done to us. So we will make them suffer - just as we have.”

Kyungsoo cried out in pain as he was lifted by his hair, pulled off of his sister before being thrown aside with a strength far greater than his or Kyungri’s own. His back hit the wall first before his head cracked against the stone, and the reverberating pain was one that drew him into a speechless stupor.

All he could do was to stare wordlessly up at the face of Kyungri’s servant, standing over him now with Kyungsoo’s paring knife in his hand.

-

Kyungsoo hissed, rubbing the aching back of his head as he slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position. Still gathering his wits, he watched as Virgil reached down and hooked an arm around Kyungri’s midsection, pulling his mistress up with all the familiarity of a lover.

Kyungri was still trembling, taking a step back on shaky feet to hide behind Virgil’s larger form as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

Alarmed by her sudden deference to her servant, Kyungsoo braced himself against the wall and pulled himself back onto his feet.

“Virgil … ?” Kyungsoo said hoarsely, trying and failing to find an explanation to what he was seeing. “What are you doing?”

The servant smirked - a cold expression Kyungsoo had never seen the man make before and one that immediately put him on guard. He tapped the flat end of Kyungsoo’s paring knife against the side of his hand.

“Not quite,” The man said, speaking for the second time. Kyungsoo hardly remembered the sound of Virgil’s voice - in fact he’d barely ever noticed the man to begin with. And yet here he was, gripped by the sinister quality of a voice that was barely louder than a whisper. Like a serpent, coiled and ready to strike at any moment.

The man snorted at Kyungsoo’s silent stupor.

“We’ve met before, do you not remember?” He said, a lopsided, slow smile creeping onto the man’s face that struck a familiar chord deep inside of Kyungsoo. He’d… he’d seen this smile before. A long, long time ago, when he was still a child, when Kyungri - when Kyungri had -

“No … it can't be you … ?” Kyungsoo whispered, staring at the face of his sister’s husband. One he had thought long dead.

“Aye,” Minos, the disgraced and corrupt king, lord and master of all the southern lands - said. He clapped his hands together, turning back to his wife with a wry grin.

“Your brother is smarter than the idiot you’ve made him out to be, Kyungri! Although perhaps a touch too naive.”

“My love, please...” Kyungri said. Kyungsoo watched his sister’s eyes trail to the ground. He watched her step even further behind her husband as if she would be able to hide herself in his shadow. He wanted nothing more than to question her, than to demand answers from her that she refused to give - but there was a more pressing matter to attend to now. One that needed his full attention.

“I heard from my sister herself that you had died. How…?”

“Only Yifan would be foolish enough to send himself into battle. A true king rules through the absolute obedience of his subjects, not through useless displays of bravado,” Minos said with a snort. “No. I sent one of my slaves in my stead. A tireless, unyielding brute who I acquired from the western islands. I promised his freedom with our victory which makes it unfortunate that Virgil died without ever reaping the reward he worked so hard to obtain. But I suppose it is true, what they say - that you cannot send a slave to do the work of a king.”

Minos stalked forward with Kyungsoo’s knife in hand, ignoring the pleading tug of his wife’s hand on his sleeve as he backed Kyungsoo up against the wall.

Kyungsoo kept his eyes trained on his sister’s lover, glancing down frequently at the hand that held his knife. Kyungsoo’s hands fumbled blindly behind his back, feeling for the candelabrum that he knew lay on the nightstand.

“They were so easy to fool - all of them - so rash to think that they’d won when they’d never once stopped to consider if they had killed the right man. They all thought I hid my face behind that mask because I was deformed somehow - that I was ashamed of my own appearance. And yet the truth was a plan that was years in the making. One that was engineered by your very own sister to protect the man she loved.”

Kyungsoo darted his eyes over to his sister, catching her watery eyed gaze. So it was true, what they said. That his sister had truly loved him. He’d doubted it all along, not knowing the true depth of his sister’s feelings for a man who had shown her a scrap of sympathy.

Because even if he may not have loved her the same way she loved him, she would have done anything for him all the same. Even if that meant watching the rest of the world burn.

Minos stepped even closer, forcing Kyungsoo back yet another step as the gap between them continued to diminish.

“Shame that the King wasn’t the one to die. We had such high hopes, after all. But I suppose that makes it even more poetic, does it not? That he would lose what he loved more than his own life. A city crumbles when a king that neglects his duties, and with time, even the ‘great north’ will fall.”

“This was your plan all along?”

“Our plan was to make them suffer. They have humiliated us by making us beg for scraps of their charity, as if we were nothing more than dogs. The day will come when the northern kingdom will fall, and when it does, the south will unite once again to defeat the Moors. We shall see then who will fall to their knees before whom,” Minos spat, echoing the sentiment Kyungsoo had heard repeatedly from his sister.

“My love,” Kyungri said, “we have wasted enough time as it is. Perhaps we should leave -”

Minos whirled around to face his wife, giving Kyungsoo just enough time to grab the heavy candelabrum and hide it behind his back.

“We will leave, my love, after we deal with your brother.”

“- but my brother is useless! He cannot do anything for us, let alone do anything to us, and -”

“Enough. An open mouth is one that will talk.”

Minos whirled back around, taking the last few steps forward to press Kyungsoo backward into the wall.

“But do not worry, my love,” Minos said, pressing the tip of the paring knife against Kyungsoo’s fair cheek. “There is more than one way to silence a man. After all, one does not need a tongue to live.”

Although fear pounded in his heart and his mind cried out desperately for the aid of his lover, Kyungsoo refused to close his eyes. He kept his eyes trained on Minos’ cruel smile as the man cut a shallow wound into his cheek. Kyungsoo bit his lip as hard as he could to stop himself from whimpering in pain, blinking back the tears began to wet his cheeks once again. The disgraced Tidreann king smiled at the sight, looking over his shoulder for a moment before leaning in to whisper into Kyungsoo’s ear.

“No matter what your sister has said about you, I have always believed in you and your capabilities,” Minos said mockingly. “For I see so much of me in you, dear brother. A kindred spirit, a man of great intellect. For that, and for the sacrifice you are about to make, I offer you my eternal respect and gratitude.”

Minos pried Kyungsoo’s mouth roughly with his fingers, reaching in to pull out Kyungsoo’s tongue - only to howl in pain when Kyungsoo bit down on his fingers as hard as he could. The Tidreann pulled his fingers out as quickly as he could, recoiling in pain and leaving Kyungsoo the opportunity to act.

“Do not think me as cowardly as you,” Kyungsoo spat, gripping the candelabrum tightly in his hand and slamming it as hard as he could into the side of Minos’ head. When the man grunted in pain, losing his composure once again, Kyungsoo shoved him backward as quickly as he could, dropping his weapon as he attempted to pull the knife out of Minos’ loosened grip. But the disgraced king refused to let go of it, using his grip on it to jerk Kyungsoo closer and in doing so, slicing Kyungsoo’s fingers open. Minos freed one of his hands, slamming his fist into Kyungsoo’s head.

Kyungsoo yelped, bloodied and bruised, but held on steadfast. He planted a foot on the man’s chest and pushing as hard as he could. Unable to maintain his grip, the knife was finally pried from Minos’ grip. It landed on the floor, only to be kicked somewhere behind them by their feet as they continued to struggle.

Kyungsoo dug his fingers into the bloodied bite marks on Minos’ hand, waiting for Minos to howl before letting go and ducking under the Tidreann’s arm, intent on finding the knife for himself. The man recovered faster than Kyungsoo anticipated, reaching over and yanking Kyungsoo backward in a tight chokehold. He elbowed Minos in the gut, however his strength was no match for the other man. Although Minos grunted, he held on tightly as Kyungsoo snarled and struggled fiercely in his arms, never letting go even when Kyungsoo bit down on his arm.

Locked in their battle, they did not notice Kyungri moving until they heard the sharp scrape of metal against stone. They stopped.

Kyungri stood there, just feet away, clutching the knife between her two shaking hands. She looked not the least bit royal with her torn dress and the kohl bleeding an ugly trail down her cheek. Her hair was knotted and wild, sweat dripping down her forehead as she looked between the two of them with desperation.

Kyungsoo yelped when Minos pulled him back by his hair, drawing his arm tighter against Kyungsoo’s throat until the young lord could barely breathe.

“I told you he was more trouble than he was worth,” Minos grunted, barely even flinching this time when Kyungsoo tried to elbow him weakly again. “Now you see why he has to die.”

The iron curtain had finally dropped, and behind it, Kyungsoo could finally see that what had been reflected in her eyes all along was not anger, but fear. And there was something else, there too. Something there that he had not seen in his sister for a very long time.

“Come now darling, the faster you do it the quicker we can leave.”

“But, I … I -” Kyungri stammered, hands shaking so much that she nearly dropped the knife on the floor. Staring into her brother’s frightened eyes, her own watered, and she tightened her grip on the knife with a trembling gasp. “I cannot…”

“Just a quick . Like we practiced. He won’t feel a thing, I promise -”

“Kyungri, please,” Kyungsoo croaked, begging for his life with every labored breath. “I … know you love him, but you … you must see how he has manipulated you, how he has twisted you, just … just like mother had! But this isn’t you -”

“- KYUNGRI!! Do as I say, sweeting, do it now - and then we can go away, the two of us, just like we had always planned! We can be happy, at last, just the two of us. Was that not always your wish?”

Tears fell freely from Kyungri’s eyes as she pointed the knife at her brother, the sound of their frantically raising voices falling on deaf ears.

“Please, Kyungri, don’t do this -” “Do it QUICKLY, Kyungri!” “...Kyungri!” “Kyungri now!!”

“NO!” Kyungri finally screamed, running forward and ramming them both into the wall. The pair cried out as they fell back onto the ground. Minos was the first to stumble back onto his feet, falling upon his stunned wife and wrestling her for the knife that she still clutched between her hands. Kyungsoo scrambled away as quickly as he could in the chaos, collapsing in a fit of coughs by the foot of the bed.

“You are ruining everything -” “No, please, Minos, he is my brother!”

For a moment, he was lost in his own world, clutching onto his throat and listening to his own blood beat a terrifying rhythm in his ears. Mind still reeling with all that had been revealed to him, he nearly lost himself to the spectacle and the hysteria of it all.

“Get out of the way, Kyungri!” “No!!”

Get up, he willed his body, stubbornly forcing his legs underneath him. And though he still heard the bells ringing in his head, although his vision still swam and the twisting phantom vines still wound their way sharply up his legs, he knew now that the voices screaming in his head had never been real. They were artificial ghosts, drug induced hallucinations that overwhelmed him in the moments his resolve weakened and the door to his delirium was thrown open.

But there was power in that knowledge. And now was not the time to lose himself. Not anymore.

Kyungsoo cried out his sister’s name, clambering back onto his feet. He stumbled forward as fast as he could to help, wrapping his arms around Minos’ waist and pulling him back with the last vestige of strength that he had. The Tidreann man stumbled backward, letting go of Kyungri. And as he struggled to regain his balance, Kyungri fell forward onto with one last shriek, sinking the dagger hilt deep into her husband’s chest with a slick thump.

For a moment, no one dared move, all eyes fixated on the hilt of the dagger.

Coming to the same conclusion as the other occupants of the room, Minos looked up at his wife with disbelief and opened his mouth - only to let out a wheezing, wet gurgle.

With wide eyes, Kyungsoo let go.

“Oh no, no, no, no, no, no,” Kyungri sobbed, pulling the knife out and dropping it to the ground with a clatter. Blood bubbled up in a steady river from the wound in his chest, and the Tidreann king toppled to his knees, conquered once and for all by none other than his own wife.

He reached out for her, and Kyungri quickly wrapped her husband in her arms, pulling him close to her bosom as she pressed a hand against his wound in a futile attempt to staunch the blood.

“Forgive me,” she sobbed over and over, “please forgive me, I did not mean to do it, please…!”

Kyungsoo sat back and watched the two of them in a numb silence. It was clear to see that this was not a wound from which Minos would ever recover. He was losing blood, far too much and far too fast.

Kyungsoo found himself yet again a bystander, unable to do anything but to watch his sister weep. And as she pressed frantic kisses against her lover’s head, holding on to him and begging the quickly fading man not to leave, Kyungsoo could not help but to draw parallels to the horrible scene he’d run from. The blood that had streaked the grass - it had been as deep of a red as the one that soaked the stone now, trailing in rivulets through the cracks. And the horrified scream that came out of , when Minos breathed his last rattling breath into her ears, was the exact same as King Yifan’s.

And though Kyungsoo wished he would not feel a thing, he did. The painful recognition that his sister was human, after all. That she had loved and that she had lost just as much as he had. The feelings that he thought had been his own, ones that he had not thought her capable of, were ones she’d had all along. And for as much as he had hated her, he knew now that she had loved a man just as much as he loved Kai.

Once again, the cycle had manifested itself, claiming another life just as it always would. It had started with their mother, taking her along with their father. It had consumed the bond between two siblings until there was nothing left but the bone to remind them of what had once been. And that which had been forgotten between the two of them would never again be found. Not when the wounds that had mended were twisted and scarred.

The flames, once roaring, had died down to a whisper. And as embers burnt away the last charred remains of that night, his sister’s sobs eventually quieted. Her hollow gaze traced her husband’s face, and she quietly his hair, taking comfort in what little warmth his body still held. Kyungsoo thought to comfort his sister, to put his hand on her shoulder and tell her some little lie that would help her grieve. He knew, though, that this was her punishment for all that she had done. For that, Kyungsoo could offer no sympathy.

It did not make it any easier to bear, however. What he once wished upon his sister, he now regretted wishing at all. She had never wanted him dead.

She’d only fallen for a man whose love had blinded her to his cruelty.

But not all was lost, Kyungsoo thought to himself, as he slowly picked his knife up from the ground. It was true, what she’d said - that he’d had something she never would. True happiness. From the very first time Kai had pressed his lips against his hand, from the very first time he’d felt that flutter in his heart. 

He could see very clearly that there were two choices that lay before him. One that would allow him to grow old with the one he loved. The other, much more difficult, which would cost him everything he had. His life, his love, his happiness. There would be nothing to gain for it, Kyungsoo knew. But he also knew he would see it through to the very end, even if the only comfort he would have was the knowledge that he’d done the right thing.

He was brave, after all. Able to shoulder the weight of the choices his sister had made. And that, Kyungsoo hoped, was something Kai would one day understand.