Chapter 12: Yin and Yang ☯️
His eyes burned into mine.
"No," he said again, the word a final, absolute decree that carved the air in two. "This is mine."
My knees gave way. The sound of my body hitting the marble was dull, swallowed by the cathedral's hollow silence. I sank into the lace and silk of my ruined gown, the fabric drinking the blood that seeped from the floor, from the air, from my shattered past. My hands, pale and shaking in my lap, were already stained. A painter's daughter, dipped in crimson.
He knelt. The scent of him—gunpowder, winter, iron—wrapped around me, a new, terrifying atmosphere. His fingers, surprisingly gentle, brushed a tear from my cheek. They came away red.
"Look at me," he commanded, soft yet unyielding.
I did. Through the blur, I saw not the professor, not the stranger from the coffee shop. I saw a king crowned in chaos. "You killed them," I whispered, the words raw.
"I erased them," he corrected, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw, leaving a faint, smeared path. "They were a cage. I just shattered the lock."
"My parents—"
"Were merchants," he cut in, his voice low and relentless. "They traded in souls. Yours was the final piece in their portfolio." His grip on my chin firmed, forcing my gaze to hold his. "Do not mourn negotiators who sold you with a smile."
A sob ripped through me, tearing at my throat. "You're a monster."
"Yes." He leaned in, his forehead nearly touching mine. His breath was warm, his eyes black pools reflecting the broken chandelier light. "I am the monster who saw you in their auction house and decided to burn it down rather than let you be sold."
His proximity was a live wire. My skin prickled with awareness, with a fear so deep it felt like the flip side of a terrible, thrilling fascination. "I hate you," I breathed, the confession trembling between us.
A dark, possessive smile touched his lips. "Hate me, then. Let it be the cord that binds you to me. Hatred is honest. It has heat. It has life. I will take your hatred over their cold, polite ownership for eternity."
He stood, pulling me up with him. My legs were water, but his arm around my waist was iron, holding me against the solid wall of his body. He turned me to face the remnants of the chapel—the overturned chairs, the terrified guests frozen like statues, his men standing as silent, deadly sentinels.
"You are no longer Park Jihoon's bride," he announced, his voice echoing with terrifying authority. "You are no longer your parents' daughter. Those titles are ash." His lips brushed the shell of my ear, the intimacy a violation and a promise. "You are Aish. And as of today, you are mine."
He signaled with a glance. One of his men stepped forward, rolling a portable table draped in black velvet. On it lay a single sheet of heavy parchment, two pens, and a small, ancient-looking box.
"This is a formality," Taehyun murmured, steering me toward the table. "The truth was decided the first time you looked at me like I was the most infuriating man alive and didn't look away."
A document. Our names. Aish. Kim Tae-hyun. Dates. Witnessed by men with guns.
"This is madness," I whispered, my voice thin.
"It is destiny," he countered, opening the box. Inside, nestled on black silk, were two jade rings. One was a deep, forest brown, streaked with threads of black. The other was a pale, misty grey, like a morning fog over a river. Opposites. Incomplete alone.
"Jade," he said, lifting the brown ring. "It remembers. It endures. It is soft enough to carve, yet strong enough to outlast empires." He took my left hand, his touch deliberate. "This is the story of Yin and Yang. Not a fairy tale. A law of the universe. Darkness and light. Chaos and order. Destruction and preservation. One cannot exist without the other. They are not enemies. They are partners in balance. In inevitability."
He slid the cool, brown jade onto my finger. The weight was shocking, final. "You are the light, Aish. The calm. The order I have spent a lifetime tearing apart." He placed the pale grey ring in my palm, curling my fingers around it. "I am the dark. The storm. The chaos that clears the path for new growth."
His eyes held mine, a gravitational pull I couldn't escape. "Put it on me."
My hand trembled violently as I took his left hand. His skin was warm, his fingers long and elegant—a scholar's hand, a killer's hand. I pushed the grey ring onto his finger. It settled at the base, a stark, beautiful contrast against his skin. A perfect fit.
"Now," he breathed, his voice a dark caress as he placed a pen in my hand and guided it to the parchment. "Sign your name to the storm."
I was crying again, silent tears cutting through the dust and blood on my cheeks. The pen scratched, a tiny, insignificant sound in the grand silence of death. I signed. Aish.
He signed below, his script bold and slashing. Kim Tae-hyun.
He took the document, glanced at it, and then, holding my gaze, brought the corner to the flame of a nearby candle left burning on a pillar. The parchment caught, orange and gold eating up our names, the vows, the legality of it all. He held it until the flame neared his fingers, then let the ash flutter to the blood-stained marble.
"Paper burns," he said, watching the last ember die. "Guns jam. Empires fall." He lifted my jade-bound hand, pressing it over his heart. I felt the strong, steady beat beneath. "This? The balance? This is forever."
He leaned down, his mouth a hair's breadth from mine. The world ceased to exist. There was only his scent, his heat, the terrifying promise in his eyes.
"Our story does not begin with 'I love you'," he whispered, the words a secret for me alone. "It begins with 'I see you'. And I saw you, little one. I saw the fire they tried to smother. The will they tried to break. And I decided the universe was wrong to let you burn out quietly. So I will be the dark that makes your light necessary. I will be the chaos that forces your strength. I will be the villain in every other story, so I can be the axis in yours."
His lips finally met mine.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was a claiming. A seal. It was cold jade and warm lips and the coppery taste of tears and blood. It was devastation and salvation tangled into one. I didn't kiss him back. I couldn't. I was a pillar of salt, of shock. But I didn't pull away. A part of me, the part that had always scowled at overpriced coffee and dreamed in the quiet corners of libraries, that part recognized a terrifying truth: in all this ruin, this was the first real, un-manufactured thing that had ever happened to me.
He pulled back, his eyes searching mine, seeing the fracture, the fear, the dawning, unwilling comprehension.
"Yin and Yang, Aish," he murmured, his thumb stroking my lower lip. "The storm and the shelter. You don't have to love the dark. You just have to survive it. And I will make sure you do. Even if I have to tear the sky down to do it."
He turned, my hand still clasped in his, and faced the silent, shattered world of the cathedral.
"Let it be known," his voice rang out, clean and sharp. "The balance is set."
He led me away, through the wreckage of the doors, into the blinding afternoon sun. I didn't look back at the altar, at the white orchids, at the fallen. I looked down at my hand, at the band of brown jade gleaming on my finger. Cold. Heavy. Eternal.
Beside me, his grey jade caught the light.
Opposites. Entwined. Bound.
Not by love, but by something older, deeper, and far more dangerous.
Fate
Yin & Yang.
Jade-bound. Blood-bound.
Two souls... balanced by madness.
And I knew-whether I wanted it or not...
Aish & Kim Tae-hyun
Forever. ♡
A love story bounded by fate and sealed by marriage?