Chapter 27 The Guilt Between Us
The Guilt Between Us
Jisoo
The Fae Kingdom sleeps like a cathedral—quiet, beautiful, and full of things no one wants to confess.
I can’t sleep in it.
Moonlight cuts the guest hall into silver bars, and I pace between them like a prisoner who lost the key himself. Somewhere above these rooms, vines are blooming out of season and the air tastes like lightning. I don’t need a scrying bowl to know why.
Taeyang finally stopped running.
The bond’s surge ripples through the palace like a struck bell—heat, then quiet, then the soft hum of two heartbeats finding the same cadence. Relief crawls up my spine and dies on my tongue. I’m happy for him. I am. But the feeling curdles into something heavier.
Guilt has a way of diluting every good thing.
I step into the open gallery to breathe and nearly run into Minji.
She’s alone, sitting on the lip of a marble fountain shaped like a lily. No armor. No blade. Just a travel cloak and a book she isn’t reading. The moon paints a pale stripe down her cheek, catching on the small scar near her jaw—one I should have prevented.
My feet move before my pride can stop them.
“You should be sleeping,” I say.
“So should you,” she answers without looking up.
“I don’t,” I admit.
She closes the book and finally meets my eyes. There’s no ice there tonight, which is almost worse. There’s exhaustion. Disappointment. A thousand unasked questions.
“I felt it,” she says, as if we’ve been sharing a conversation all along. “Their bond.”
I nod.
“He went to her.”
Of course he did.
“Part of me wants to shake them both,” she murmurs. “Another part… wants to believe they’ll be okay.”
“They will be,” I say. “If the world lets them.”
Her mouth twists.
“When has it ever?”
Silence settles. I hate it, but forcing words into the quiet has never helped us.
“I wanted to say—” I start.
“That you’re sorry?” Her voice is gentle, which hurts more than the bite. “You’ve said it, Jisoo.”
“Not like this.” I take the opposite edge of the fountain, leaving space she can reclaim. “I made choices for you. Around you. I told myself it was protection, but it was control dressed up in love. You deserved honesty, and I gave you strategy.”
Her breath catches.
“You’re not wrong.”
“There’s more,” I add, because if I stop now, I’ll become the man I hate. “Before we learned who Yuna’s father is, I’d heard whispers. Old records. Rumors of a royal order against Taeyang’s line. I didn’t bring it to you. I didn’t bring it to anyone.”
Her head snaps toward me.
“Why?”
“Because I thought knowledge would light the match.” I stare at my hands. “I was afraid of the fire.”
“So, you let us walk blind,” she says softly. Not accusation—just truth. “That’s the fire we’re standing in now.”
I force myself to look at her. “I can’t fix what I broke. But I can stop breaking it.” She studies me for a long moment, as if weighing the marrow of me. “Promises won’t move us, Jisoo.”
“I know.”
“Plans might.”
A horn blares from the eastern parapet—low, warning, close. The air sharpens. Minji is on her feet before the echo fades, and so am I.
“Patrol?” I ask.
“Or a test,” she says, already moving.
We take the balcony stairs two at a time, slipping through latticework of flowering arches. Two fae sentries crumble at the outer walk, sleeping rather than dead enchanted. Shadows peel from the wall and become men. Not Taeyang’s uncles—leaner, too polished. Assassins dressed like courtiers.
“Capture them. Alive if you can,” Minji breathes.
“I’ll try.”
They come in pairs. I meet the first with empty hands, letting the old habits bloom: wing-bones unfurl beneath my skin, not light, not holy—obsidian feathers that drink the moon.
I shove one blade aside with a pinion and trap the attacker’s wrist; Minji slides through the opening I leave and knocks him cold with the pommel.
We move together without speaking, like music we both remember but haven’t dared to play.
A knife whistles for her ribs. I’m there before thought, catching the throw with a wing, feeling the bite of steel glance off quill. She doesn’t flinch. She never has. That, more than anything, makes my throat ache.
Three breaths later, it’s over. Sleeping bodies are tied in ivy. Ward runes re-chalked. Moonlight, again.
She wipes a blood smear from her knuckle. I pull a linen strip from my pocket—habit—and offer it. She hesitates, then holds out her hand. I wrap the scrape carefully; my fingers are steady, but my chest isn’t.
“I don’t need saving,” she says.
“I know,” I answer. “I need saving. From myself.”
A ghost of a smile. It hurts and heals at once. “There you are.”
I step back, give the night air room. “I’m going into the High Archive tomorrow.
There’s proof in there—royal writs, sealed orders, the kind that survive dynasties.
If we put the truth in the hall with the treaty, the Fae King can’t bury it without showing his hand.
It protects Yuna. It keeps Taeyang from carving justice in the wrong place and starting a war we can’t win. ”
“You’ll be caught,” she says. Not a warning, just a fact.
“Probably,” I admit. “Come anyway.”
She studies me. The moon coins her eyes bright. “I’m not your absolution, Jisoo.”
“I’m not asking you to be,” I say. “I’m asking you to witness.”
A long heartbeat. Then she nods once. “Dawn.”
We turn to leave, our footsteps soft over sleeping stone. At the arch, she pauses. “Jisoo?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be brave in the dark and careful in the light. Choose one.”
I almost smile.
“Then light,” I say. “For once.”
She goes, cloak whispering against marble. I lean on the balustrade and stare into the garden where vines keep opening, even at midnight. Somewhere above us, two souls are learning how to breathe together again. Below, a kingdom of secrets waits to be unmade.
Guilt built the distance. Truth will have to pay the toll.