CHAPTER FIVE – The Trail He Can’t Stop Leaving
CHAPTER FIVE – The Trail He Can’t Stop Leaving
That night, the tavern boiled with noise—heat rolling off sweat-slick bodies, smoke curling through rafters black with war stories and lost bets.
Laughter cracked like thunder, voices crashing together in a storm of post-festival joy and post-battle violence, fists pounding battered tables, stools skidding beneath booted feet.
Outside, early winter clawed at the shutters with crooked fingers. Inside, the heat was suffocating.
Haneul perched on a bench too wide for his slight frame, knees pulled up, arms locked tight, shoulders drawn to sharp points beneath blue-and-gold silk and battered leather. He tried to disappear, but the clan’s joy was a riptide he could never escape.
His brothers were wolves tonight—shirtless, scarred, roaring, spilling broth and soju, betting on who bore the deepest wound, whose magic could split the city gates. Not one could match Haneul’s body count, and not one let him forget it.
“Oi, Little Snowdrop!” Gwan bellowed, a grin cracking his broken nose. “You freeze the Fire King’s cock off or just sing him a lullaby with that pretty little mouth of yours?”
“Didn’t he say the Fire King moaned?” Jeong jeered, eyes full of mischief. “Was it ‘hghkk—!’ or was that you, Skyboy?”
“Probably both of them!” another howled. “Oh, Seungho, your cock’s too warm, let me—”
“I’M GOING TO MURDER ALL OF YOU,” Haneul snapped, voice slicing the table in half. His cheeks flushed pink, eyes glassy with too much drink and not enough sleep. The soju bottle beside his elbow was nearly empty—he never remembered who filled it, only that it kept refilling.
“Then stop making that face,” someone jeered. “Like a virgin who saw a cock for the first time.”
A chopstick whistled across the table, bouncing off a forehead. Haneul swayed, vision doubling for a heartbeat, fingers clawing at the edge of the table. Everything felt loud, light, wrong. He tried to focus on the chaos—on the security of rough bodies pressing close—but his mind kept slipping.
Back to the forest. The fire. The impossible, infuriating king.
The scent of him—smoke and cypress and molten metal. The voice pressed to his throat, the weight, the threat, the promise. Say it, or I’ll fucking make you—
He shoved the memory away, too hard, and the world spun. He exhaled, slow and shaky, but the warmth wouldn’t leave his bones. Even the frost in his veins felt thin and weak.
“Someone get him broth,” a voice muttered, a hand landing on his back—warm, heavy, too much. “He’s gonna pass out.”
“I’m fine,” Haneul hissed, slurring the words. “Always fine.”
He wasn’t fine. He felt it—a presence, a pressure, someone watching. He blinked at the back of the tavern, where a stranger sat alone, face shadowed beneath a hood, not drinking, not speaking, just… watching.
Watching him.
He blinked again. The shadow was gone.
His heart hammered. The tavern door slammed behind him, wind blasting in, half-freezing the sweat on his brow. He staggered out, boots slipping on packed slush, running, half-falling toward the crooked row of trees behind the latrines—where only wolves and men in disgrace went to retch.
He gripped a trunk, shoulders heaving, hands digging into the bark. Soju, eel, pride—everything came up in violent waves, leaving him shaking and hollow. When it was over, he scooped snow with both hands, shoved it into his mouth, let the cold numb his tongue, tried to freeze the shame.
Still on his knees, he groaned, voice raw and pitiful. “F-fuck… gotta… barracks…”
But the snow was soft, the sky a bowl of ancient gods wheeling overhead, and the cold was clean. For a heartbeat, he let himself be small. Let himself breathe.
Then he felt it—heat rolling over his spine, a pressure that wasn’t wind, a silence that wasn’t safety.
No footsteps. No warning. Just presence.
He turned—too slow.
Seungho was there.
Leaning against a tree, arms folded, cloak drawn around his massive frame, face half-shadowed but eyes crimson and burning, hungry, watching Haneul like a wolf that had finally found prey worth hunting.
“I liked the part where you threw up,” Seungho drawled, voice soft as fur, deadly as steel. “Really makes your reputation shine.”
Rage and panic knotted in Haneul’s stomach. “What the fuck—how did you—?”
“I always find what I want,” the king murmured, boots crunching closer.
Haneul tried to scramble up, but his legs wouldn’t work, his magic wouldn’t answer. The world was spinning, and Seungho crouched in front of him, not touching, just watching. The scent of fire and pine tar was thick in the snow, wrong and right all at once.
“You looked so smug,” Seungho said, low, thumb brushing across Haneul’s cheek—smearing snow and dirt, a touch more intimate than any threat. “So proud of surviving me. But here you are. Alone. Drunk. Covered in vomit and snow, on your knees again.”
He leaned in, voice almost a purr. “Fitting.”
Haneul’s whole body shivered, not from cold.
“Tell me, Snowdrop,” Seungho whispered, voice dipping to something old and private, “did you dream of me, after that day?”
Haneul swayed on his knees, breath steaming in frantic bursts, eyes unfocused but burning.
For a split second it seemed he would collapse right there—lips parted, cheeks aflame, chest shuddering with each ragged breath.
But instead, he lurched up, scooped a double handful of snow, and smacked it square into Seungho’s face.
The sound was beautiful—wet, cold, pure indignation.
“—Pfhh—!” Seungho blinked, stunned, slush running down his jaw. Before he could recover, Haneul grabbed another fistful, hurled it at his cheek, howling—a banshee’s shriek ripped from somewhere wild.
“DIE ALREADY!”
He lunged, arms flailing, hands scrabbling at Seungho’s boots.
The Fire King toppled backwards in genuine surprise, cloak tangled, massive body thudding into the snow.
Before he could right himself, Haneul was on him—clambering onto his chest, shoveling armful after armful of snow into his face, throat, collar, babbling curses through gritted teeth.
“You… stinky—” more snow smashing onto Seungho’s belly.
“Arrogant,” a fresh scoop slammed to his chest, his jaw, as if Haneul could bury a mountain.
“Smug bastard!” he snarled, slapping the pile like building a burial mound.
He patted it down, wild-eyed and deranged, cheeks burning red, braid swinging madly, breath pouring out in little clouds. Nothing seductive or measured—just wild, animal justice, the raw, ridiculous strength of a body that refused to be beaten, not even by shame.
For a heartbeat, Seungho just lay there—beneath him, snow trickling down his neck, eyes wide with shock and wonder, watching Haneul’s chest heave with exertion, lips bared like a wolf cub defending its kill.
His lip twitched. He started to laugh.
At first it was rough—disbelieving, edged with pain and surprise.
But then it broke open, deep and ugly and rich, laughter torn from his belly like something starved for years.
His chest shook, the sound rolling through him as Haneul shrieked and shoveled more snow into his collar, each hit more ferocious and triumphant than the last.
Haneul froze, hands full of snow, eyes flicking wide.
He’d never knew the Fire King could laugh like that.
No one did. The sound, thick and ragged, cut through his rage, through everything.
Haneul’s whole body jerked at the sound of that laughter—raw, deep, cracking through the night air like a forbidden spell.
He leapt back as if stung, magic flaring with a startled burst, snowflakes erupting like starlight around him.
Eyes wide, mouth open, staring as if he’d just heard a god howl.
It only made Seungho laugh harder.
“You’re insane,” Seungho choked out, crimson eyes slitting with honest joy. “Utterly fucking insane… You thought you could bury me,” he teased, voice low and liquid, eyes gleaming. “With snow.”
“What the fuck?!” Haneul yelped, voice shrill, teetering between curse and plea.
Then he lobbed one last snowball—clumsy, desperate, pitiful—a wet thump against Seungho’s shoulder as the Fire King doubled over, laughing so hard steam poured from his chest, melting ice where it landed.
Haneul didn’t wait to see what came next.
He just turned and crawled away—on hands and knees, boots squeaking, braid trailing in tangles, muttering curses into the blue dark.
“Gotta find the… the straw mat… the warm… clan jerks… stupid drunk bastards… fuckin’ vomit king…”
Not words. Just memory, survival, pride. And Seungho—half-buried in a snow-grave, cloak soaked through, chest trembling with laughter—just watched. He’d hunted assassins, broken warlords, watched men crawl at his feet. But never—never—anything like this.
Precious. Baffling. Infuriating.
Mine, something deep inside him whispered, though he dared not say it.
He stood, fire flickering beneath his skin, drying frost from his throat.
He watched Haneul stagger, weaving through snow and shadow until the boy finally collapsed near the river, arms curled beneath his head, chest heaving.
He could go to him—wrap him in furs, drop him on his mat, watch him sleep and breathe in the scent of snow and stubbornness. But he stayed. He waited.
His voice cut through the clearing, sharp as a blade but soft enough for only Haneul:
“You keep crawling away from me, Haneul. But you always leave a trail.”
The snow glowed—a map of escape, melted prints, glowing frost, the flare of magic Haneul couldn’t hide. Even drunk, even half-dead, he made it too easy.
At the riverbank, Haneul’s knees sank into the ice, hair stuck to his cheek, eyes fixed on the moon as if it held a promise. He swayed, fingers shaking, as if he might pray, or vomit, or both.