Chapter 2 The Friend He Hates
The Friend He Hates
Taeyang
I smelled him before I saw him. That sickly-sweet fae cologne—summer citrus gone rotten, lilies left too long in a vase. It clung to the air around Yuna like it had a right.
It didn’t.
He didn’t.
Laughter—his—broke across the courtyard like cheap glass.
Yuna walked beside him, shoulder brushing his, eyes bright the way they haven’t been around me in weeks.
As if her mouth had remembered how to curve and chosen him as audience.
I stood under a stone archway that has watched a thousand sins and ground my molars until I tasted iron.
“Who?” I asked, voice low enough to cut.
Seori slid into my shadow like she’d been born there, gaze already narrowed.
“Kaelen. Summer Court. Her childhood friend.”
Friend. The word rattled in my ribs like a loose nail. Kaelen leaned in—too close—and said something against the shell of her ear. She smiled.
I saw red so bright it went white at the edges.
It shouldn’t matter. I gave up my claim the day I called mercy by its prettier names and walked away.
Except the bond beneath my skin didn’t get the message. It surged—fierce, livid—as if insulted on our behalf. My mark burned, answering the soft glow at her collarbone like a challenge.
Yuna’s head turned, slow as a tide change. Our eyes locked. For a breath, everything she was pretending slipped—the smile faltered, the ache pressed against the glass between us and left a mark. Then Kaelen laughed again, and she looked away.
She walked away. Something in me cracked like glass in a kiln, quiet and irreversible.
Seori’s fingers brushed my forearm—once, warning and anchor.
“Not here,” she said, and the steel in her softness was the only reason the arch stayed standing.
I didn’t move. Not until they were gone. Not until her scent—wildflower and moon—was smothered by the summer-sweet rot he wore like a brag.
· · ─ ·?· ─ · ·
I found her later on the high balcony where the fae lights make liars of stars. They threaded her hair in patient constellations, as if the sky had decided to touch what it couldn’t keep.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” I said, because I am better at accusations than apologies.
She didn’t turn.
“I’ve been busy.”
“With him?”
That got me her face—sharp, blazing, all the reasons I fell and the proof I never stopped.
“With duty,” she said, chin lifted. “And yes. Kaelen is helping. He’s a diplomat.”
“He’s a leech,” I snapped before I could dress it prettier. “And he wants you.”
Something flickered in her eyes—anger, hurt, hope sharpening itself just in case.
“And if he does?”
“Then I’ll kill him.”
Truth, raw and ugly, split the night. The fae lights stuttered like even they remembered what my hands are for.
“You have no right, Taeyang.” Her voice didn’t rise; it cut. “None.”
“The bond says otherwise.”
“The bond you denied?” She took a step toward me. She only came to my collarbone; somehow I had never felt smaller.
“You pushed me away until silence learned my name.”
“I was protecting you.”
“From what? From me?” She didn’t blink. “Or from what you become when you love me?”
My jaw worked.
“From what I become when I lose.”
For a second, the set of her mouth broke. Then she rebuilt it, brick by brick.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t watch me anymore.”
“Too late for that.” I closed the distance in one breath I couldn’t afford, one heartbeat I couldn’t slow. My hand rose and stopped just shy of her cheek, trembling with everything I wanted and had no right to take. Heat rolled off her—fae magic and fury and the familiar wild that undoes me.
“I see the way he looks at you,” I said, voice roughened to truth. “Like you’re light. Like you’re whole.”
Her lashes lowered, lifted.
“And how do you see me?”
“Like you’re the end of me,” I said, and the words felt like stepping off a cliff on purpose.
The bond flared—one hard beat that hurt and healed in the same breath. The air pulled tight between us, the way it does just before a storm admits rain. My fingers hovered in the space where her skin warmed the night. One more inch and I’d be gone.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. The fae lights gilded the wet at the corner of her eye; she blinked and refused to let it fall for me.
“Kaelen calls me by my name,” she said finally, quiet as the truth that ruins you gently. “He doesn’t make me smaller so his fear can fit.”
My hand dropped like a sentence. Jealousy snarled up my throat—the old, easy animal. Lust clawed after, mean with hunger. Love—the difficult thing—held them both by the scruff and asked me who I was going to be.
“He touched your arm,” I said, hating the pettiness and unable to stop the bleed. “He wore your air like it belonged to him.”
“He asked,” she said, more tired than cruel. “You’ve done a lot of taking, Taeyang. Not much asking.”
That landed. I felt it. I let it.
“I am trying,” I managed, each word a scraped knuckle.
“I’ve been a weapon so long I forgot how to reach without drawing blood.
Seeing him beside you—” I broke off, swallowed heat.
“It makes me want to set the Summer Court on fire and salt the ashes. It makes me want to earn you so cleanly I never have to look at a man like him and wonder if he deserves the place I left empty.”
Her lips parted around something that could have saved me. She closed them on it.
“You don’t get to be jealous of what you surrendered.”
“I know.” The admission stripped me. I didn’t try to hide. “But I am. And I am ashamed that it took jealousy to make me move.”
The night held us like a breath. The city below went on not caring. A wind lifted the hair at her temple; I wanted to tuck it back, to earn the right to be the hand that smoothed instead of the one that scorched.
“If he touches you like he means to keep you,” I said, and it wasn’t a threat so much as a prayer with teeth, “tell me you chose it. Don’t make me watch you use him to unlearn me.”
“You don’t get to ask that.” No heat. Just truth. “If you want me, choose me. Out loud. In daylight. And stay.”
There it was—the key I’d pretended I couldn’t find. It rattled everything bolted down inside me. I leaned in until I could count the gold flecks in her eyes.
“I choose you,” I said, shame and want and terror braided into one rope. “And I will stay. I will learn how to hold without hurting. I will be the man who stands next to you, not the shadow you learn to step around.”
Silence laddered between us. She searched my face like a map and found the places still uncharted. Her throat worked; her lashes trembled. The bond beat, hopeful and afraid.
Then she stepped back.
“Learn first,” she said, not unkind. “Then come find me.”
She turned and walked away—again, always—and I stood where she’d left me, hands useless, chest full of thorns I put there myself. The fae lights in her hair went with her, a moving constellation I had to earn the right to follow.
I hated Kaelen.
Not because he wanted her. Because he could—stand in her light without flinching, ask without taking, listen without leaving. Because for one vicious, honest second I envied a man who’d never have to scrub blood out from under his nails before touching her face.
The bond throbbed once, hard enough to bow my head. In the pulse I felt her—steadying herself on a railing I couldn’t see, breathing through the ache I gave us both, refusing to look back.
Cowardice tastes like copper. Resolve like ash. I let them both sit on my tongue until I could tell the difference.
“I’m coming back different,” I told the night, the archway, the jealousy snarling under my ribs. “Or I’m not coming back.”
Far below, somewhere I couldn’t reach from here, laughter lifted—bright, unbroken. It wasn’t hers.
Not yet.