Don’t Leave Me Again
Don’t Leave Me Again
Yuna
The attendants lace me into a dress meant for diplomacy and a corset meant for war.
Silk over leather. Petals over steel. The breastplate is etched with flowering thorns—pretty enough for a balcony, strong enough to stop a knife if anyone decides the Princess should be a lesson before the morning ends.
They pin moonstone at my throat; they buckle armguards that look like bracelets.
The ward-chain at my wrist hums like a caged wasp.
“Highness,” one whispers, eyes down. “The balcony has been prepared. The warding focus is set.”
A cage with a view.
“Leave us,” I say, and they go as if the room itself told them to.
I sit on the edge of the dressing couch and try to breathe around the ache in my ribs.
From here I can hear the palace changing shape—portcullis groaning, banners unfurling, the low thunder of boots on stone as the court pretends it isn’t terrified.
Somewhere, Minji is folding a map into a pocket only she will remember.
Somewhere, Jisoo is counting exits and lies.
Somewhere, Seori and Rheon are murmuring each other into steel.
I press my thumb to the ribbon Taeyang tied around my wrist, violet stubbornness against the silver chain. A knock, soft and wrong for a morning like this.
“Come in,” I say, even though I already know.
Taeyang fills the doorway like the shadow of a storm that has learned how to be gentle. No armor, just a dark coat and a leather harness for blades he pretends he won’t need. He looks like he didn’t sleep—which is unfair, because my heart is the thing pacing in his chest.
“You look like a promise,” he says, and the rawness in his voice makes my throat sting.
“You look like a threat,” I answer, and try to smile. It breaks halfway through.
He crosses the room in three long strides and stops a breath away, hands hovering like he’s afraid of touching a bruise he made once and swore never to make again.
“The King wants you on the eastern balcony,” he says, careful. “You’ll anchor the ward. If the lines fail, you reinforce them. You’re the last defense if the gates fall.”
“Not a princess,” I whisper. “A fuse.”
“An answer,” he says, because he can’t bear the other word in my mouth.
“And where will you be?” The question comes out small, and I hate it for being honest. “Don’t say ‘one breath away’ if breath means miles.”
He exhales like it hurts.
“Front line to the north with Rheon. We punch a hole, draw your father’s eyes away while Minji moves supplies and Jisoo sabotages the east wards. We make a spectacle there so the real work can happen here.”
I nod even as the room tilts.
“And after?”
“After,” he says, and the word is a cliff, “I come back to you.”
I want to believe that so hard my bones ache with it. But belief and war share a spine.
“They told me to watch,” I say. “To keep my hands pretty on the railing while I let the court measure my composure. I am to be proof our house is unshaken.”
“You’re not proof,” he says. “You’re purpose.”
“Don’t feed me poetry to make this easier,” I snap, and then I’m crying, furious with myself because this was supposed to be the day I learned how not to. Tears burn hot down my face; the chain flickers brighter, like it wants to translate my fear into something useful for the crown.
“Yun.” His hands lift—stop—lift again. “May I?”
I nod and he wipes my tears with a thumb that shakes. He doesn’t shush me. He doesn’t tell me to be strong. He lets my grief have a face and doesn’t look away.
“I am afraid,” I say, words tumbling. “I am afraid he’ll take you from me the way he takes everything, and I’ll be stuck on a balcony pretending that I don’t know how to scream.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” he answers.
“I don’t want to be left behind.” I hear the girl I used to be, the one who leapt from the Star Bridge and trusted the water to rise. “Don’t leave me again. Please.”
His face goes soft and wrecked at the same time. He takes my hand and presses it to his chest, over the mark that mirrors mine. His heart is a hammer.
“I will walk away from you,” he says, steady, “only to walk back.” His voice thins. “If I’m late, it’s because I’m carrying what tried to kill us.”
“It could kill you,” I whisper, and my fear finally finds its name. “He could.”
“He’s already tried,” Taeyang says. “I’m still here.”
“Promise me,” I say. “Not with pretty words. With something ugly enough to be true.”
He nods, inches closer until his forehead rests against mine, until our breaths learn each other again. He speaks in the old vow of his house, low and rough, and I feel the syllables thrum through bone.
“I will be the wall,” he murmurs, “and if the wall breaks, I’ll be the ground you land on. If the ground gives, I’ll be the hand that pulls you out. If death comes, it will hit me first. And if it takes me, I will still be facing you.”
I bite my lip until I taste blood.
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” he says, and there’s the ghost of a smile. “It’s love.”
I laugh, broken. He takes something from his pocket and folds my fingers around it. Warm. Small. Heavy.
“What is it?”
“A charm,” he says. “From the old house. My mother sewed it into my collar once and called it luck. It wasn’t. But it’s stubborn. Like me.” He closes my hand tighter. “Wear it. If the wards crack, you burn this before you burn yourself.”
“Taeyang—”
“Promise.”
“Fine,” I say, and tuck it into the armor at my heart like I’m hiding a prayer.
His gaze finds the ribbon at my wrist, violet against the chain. He touches it gently, the way you touch a thread holding something precious together.
“Keep this too.”
“I was going to.”
We stand there, breathing the same air, as the palace finishes rearranging itself around our choices. Bells begin to toll—low, then lower—calling courtiers to their marks, summoning soldiers to theirs. The sound crawls along my spine.
“I hate this balcony,” I tell him.
“I hate its king,” he says, and it shouldn’t make me feel better, but it does.
“If you don’t come back—” I start.
“I will,” he says, and then softer, for the place in me that doesn’t believe in promises made on battle mornings, “and if I have to crawl, I’ll crawl.”
I lean up and press my mouth to his—quick, salt-slick, not enough and exactly all there is time for. When we part, I hold his face in both hands so I can memorize him past the war.
“Don’t leave me again,” I whisper.
He nods once, and there’s a shine to his eyes I’ve never seen in daylight.
“I’ll leave,” he says, “and then I’ll arrive. Over and over. Until it annoys you.”
“It won’t.”
“It will,” he insists, and for a heartbeat we almost smile like ordinary people.
Another bell. Louder. Minji’s signal in the hall—two knuckles on wood, pause, two more.
Time. He steps back. I feel it like cold air.
He looks at the balcony doors, then at me, and the look says more than any vow: I don’t know how to do this without touching you, but I’m learning because you asked me to.
“I’ll watch for your signal,” I say, holding up our ribboned wrist.
“Watch for mine,” he answers, tapping his chest. “You’ll feel it.”
He turns toward the door.
“Taeyang,” I call.
He stops.
“Come back angry,” I say. “Not empty.”
He nods once.
“I will.”
And then he is gone, carrying my breath with him like a stolen lantern.
I stand alone a moment longer, listening to the new shape of my heartbeat. Then I wipe my face, lift my chin, and walk to the balcony where the court has arranged a chair like a throne and a rail like a collar.
The King is already there, looking at the army like a gardener surveys weeds. He does not meet my gaze. He will. Later.
I take my place at the warding focus. The runes under the rail glow faintly, waiting for my hands. I set my palms to the marks and feel the magic flood up, bright and biting—compliance disguised as power. The chain at my wrist hums; the ribbon warms like a hand closing around mine.
Far below, a dark figure moves to the northern line. No crown. No leash. Just a vow in a body that refuses to stay broken.
I close my eyes, press my mouth to the charm hidden in my armor, and breathe the way he told me to.
“Don’t leave me again,” I say to the wind.
The wind answers with bells and banners and the first distant roar of a war that has always been coming.
“Come back,” I whisper.
Somewhere, across stone and steel and the space between a promise and its proof, I feel the bond kick, like a bird inside a cage daring the sky to be real.
He’s still there.
And I will be, too.