filled the door, and Ye Eun reclaimed Ae Ri as Woo In stalked heavily into the room, clutching his freshly bandaged side.
“I checked her for wounds, like you said,” Ye Eun reported. “She’s sick, but clean.” Then she turned to leave.
“Wait,” I called out, not ready for Ye Eun to be gone. For so long, I had thought she was dead. It didn’t matter that she hated me; she was alive—gloriously, vindictively alive. When she stopped, I stammered, “What was your emi-ehran in the Underworld? Was it a leopard, like Woo In’s?”
“No,” she said after a pause. “Mine is a phoenix.”
“I’m not surprised.”
The hint of a smile played with her mouth. “I named her Hwanghu,” she said quietly. “Empress.” Then she vanished from the room.
Woo In dropped a bundle of clothes at my feet. “Change into these. The journey will be short.” His half-moon eyes were wan; he had passed a restless night. He was sweating with fever, and it was likely his head pounded as mine did. I felt no pity. The Lady’s bloodied face still glistened in my mind.
Before leaving me he said, “Summon the Ray. You can’t reach your council from this far, but it helps the headache when you try.”
I obeyed him, letting heat build at the base of my neck, and sending an invisible beam of light in what I guessed was Oluwan’s direction. The light faded and grew cold when met with emptiness. But Woo In had been right—the pain, for now, was no longer unbearable.
The garments were made of wax-dyed cloth, seeping with spice-scented memories of Oluwan, where Woo In must have bought them. He had brought boots for me as well, and a cloak—blue like his, cut from warm wool.
I dressed and passed into the house’s main chamber, seeing what I’d missed the night before. Diagrams of beasts and Underworld passages hung around the room, and chalk slates cramped with Songlander script lay abandoned on cushions. A schoolroom. On the longest wall, a map of the continent stretched from end to end, lodestones marked meticulously in each realm.
Woo In and I left the camp on Hyung’s back, and soon crested one of the pine-covered steppes. After an hour, we stopped at a curved crevice in the rock face, tall and narrow, like a cat’s eye. The glistening blue veins that ran throughout Sagimsan seemed to meet here, joining to form lightning bolts across the mountain floor. Energy pulsed through the cold air, and when we dismounted, it hummed through me as well, exploring my body with relentless curiosity. The emi-ehran arched its back, its whiskers on edge.
What kind of place could unnerve a beast who had seen the Underworld?
“Hyung will wait outside,” Woo In said, then bent to pull off his worn leather boots, one by one. “I would advise you do the same,” he said, nodding at my feet.
“Why?”
“It’s a way of showing respect.”
“Until you explain what this is, I’m not going anywhere.”
Woo In shot a tense glance at the crevice opening. “I’m not supposed to show you this place. Its location is known only to the Songlander royal family. But …” He let out a slow breath. “There’s a story hidden deep in the mountain. It explains the Redemptors and Songland’s curse. But it’s spelled, so only certain bloodlines understand. According to the shamans, the Kunleos are one of them. So when The Lady came to Songland sixteen years ago, asking for aid with her coup … I brought her here. She read the story, but wouldn’t tell me what it said. She said it was dangerous. She told me to trust her, and I did.” His face hardened, then softened with desperation. “I need to know what’s in there, Lady’s Daughter. Please, we don’t have much time. The Treaty Renewal is tomorrow night.”
“You’ve never said my name before.” I frowned, feeling strangely awake in that air, as though I’d been sleepwalking for months. “Do you know that? She’s part of me, Woo In, but we aren’t the same person. And we never will be.”
He blinked, processing this, then nodded slowly and reached for my hand. “Please, Tarisai.”
I let his fingers close around mine. Together, we slipped through the crevice, and descended into the heart of Sagimsan mountain.
THERE WAS NO NEED FOR A TORCH. Translucent bolts of blue rock glowed from within the tunnel walls, and we moved as with a current, energy coursing in one direction as we climbed down, down, down.
We stopped in the mouth of a round