I’ll Follow You Anywhere
I’ll Follow You Anywhere
Taeyang
The night before Ashen Vale tastes like rain trying to remember where to fall.
Yuna leads me into the moon garden—wisteria bowed with white bloom, lanterns burning low, the air sweet as if the palace itself wants to apologize for everything it’s about to ask of us.
Her palm is warm in mine; the crescent under my sternum answers the one beneath her collar with a slow, hungry thrum.
“This is reckless,” she says, though her mouth curves like she hopes I’ll disagree.
“I’ve built a life out of worse,” I murmur, and the bond hums closer.
She stops under an arch of vines, light pooling over her shoulders like a mantle. For a heartbeat we only breathe. The war, the court, the knives waiting to learn our names none of it finds us here.
“Taeyang,” she says softly, and it unstrings me the way only she can. “If tomorrow takes everything—”
“It won’t,” I cut in, because I need one true thing tonight. “But if it tries, I’ll follow you into whatever comes next. Door, river, darkness—name it.”
Her lashes lower.
“And if I run?”
“I’ve never chased anything worth catching until you,” I tell her, honest as blood.
She steps into me. I feel the bond catch—that fierce tug low in the ribs, breath syncing, two pulses testing the rhythm that wants to be one drum. I lift her hand and kiss the inside of her wrist where the ribbon lies violet and stubborn; her breath hitches like a string pulled sweet.
“Color?” I ask, voice rough.
“Green,” she whispers. “Always green with you.”
“Hands,” I say, and thread her wrists together with the ribbon—no tighter than trust, no looser than want. I lift them above her head and brace them to the cool stone arch, my body locking hers safely between my arms. “If you want out—say.”
“I want in,” she says, and smiles like sin learned manners.
I take my time. A kiss at her temple, then lower cheekbone, the hinge of her jaw, the hollow just beneath her ear where her pulse is a secret she lets me learn.
She trembles; our marks flare. When my mouth finds the edge of the bandage above her heart I slow again, reverent, heat and breath instead of teeth.
She arches anyway, offering, and the sound she makes ties another knot in me I never want undone.
“Good girl,” I murmur before I can catch it.
“Again,” she breathes, eyes gone dark.
“Good girl.”
She shivers hard, the bond spiking—violet-gold heat skimming skin to skin.
I let my free hand map her: the curve of waist, the small of back, the place at her hip that makes her gasp and tip her chin.
When she tries to rise, I press her gently to the stone and feel everything in her answer me—need, trust, command.
“Say please,” I tease, because she likes to rule and I like to serve and somewhere between those truths is a country we both belong to.
“Please,” she says, wrecked and lovely, “Taeyang, please”
I tip her face up and kiss her the way I’ll fight tomorrow: slow, precise, devastating on purpose.
Her fingers flex in the ribbon; I catch one wrist and slide my thumb along the inside until her knees go loose.
The bond swells—pressure, promise—the edge where a man could fall forever and call it flying.
“Breathe,” I tell us both.
She does. I let her ride the breath, keep her right there circling, rising, the kind of patience that turns worship into a weapon and back again. When she whimpers I swallow it, greedy for the sound. When she says my name I give it back, low into her mouth, so she can hear what she does to me.
“Don’t stop,” she begs, and there’s nothing I want less.
I ease the ribbon, bring her hands down, and place them over my heart.
“Feel me,” I say. “Not the brand. Me.”
Her palms flatten over the half-moon cut Seori wrote there; our marks blaze together.
The garden tilts—lanterns bowing, wisteria sighing—and the world narrows to a pulse and a promise breaking at the same time.
She falls first—back arching, lips parted, my name a blessing against the night—dragging me after her into the heat we made and the quiet it leaves.
We sag into each other, laughing-soft, ruined in the right ways. I loosen the ribbon completely and kiss the faint line it left at her wrists, a benediction for every place I’ve ever asked her to trust me.
“Arrogant line,” she pants, forehead to mine, eyes shining. “Give me one.”
“I just made a queen forget the war,” I whisper against her smile. “Twice.”
She huffs, hides her face in my neck, then lifts it again with a seriousness that puts steel in my spine.
“Tomorrow will try to take you.”
“It can try,” I say. “I’ll be busy choosing you.”
“And if you fall?”
“I’ll crawl,” I tell her. “Toward your voice. Toward this mark. Toward home.”
She swallows.
“Say it—the thing you said under the arch when we were foolish enough to think the court couldn’t hear.”
I knot the ribbon back around my own wrist and tug her closer by it.
“I’ll follow you anywhere,” I vow, so quietly the vines lean in to listen. “Into war, into peace, into a life I didn’t think I was allowed to want. If there’s a door, I hold it. If there’s a night, I light it. If there’s a price, I pay it.”
Her eyes wet.
“Then take me to morning.”
I lift her, and we leave the garden with petals in her hair and my mouth on her knuckles, walking like criminals who stole an hour and got away with it. At the threshold of her chamber I pause, press our marks together one last time, and give the night the only warning it gets:
“She’s mine,” I tell the darkness, “and I’m hers.”
The bond thrums agreement.
Tomorrow, let the Vale learn what vows can do. Tonight, she is the only battle I want to lose, and the only victory I’ve ever needed.