The carriage did not just stop; it settled into a heavy, ominous stillness.
For three days, the rhythmic jolting of the iron wheels had been my only companion, but now, the silence of the mountains pressed against the carriage walls like a physical weight.
We had reached the Gyeongbokgung of Shadows, the legendary fortress carved into the jagged peaks of the north, where the sun supposedly feared to tread.
I clutched Kai-Zin's heavy cloak tighter around my shoulders, my fingers tracing the rough wool. Across from me, the General stirred. His amber eyes, which had barely closed for seventy-two hours, flared with a sudden, sharp intensity.
Outside, the muffled sounds of shouting reached my ears. They were not the rhythmic, disciplined calls of the Shadow-Wolves. These voices were higher, thinner, laced with the shrill arrogance of the Imperial Guard.
"General! By order of the Emperor, we must inspect the transport for contraband and Haneul-Bi relics!"
A muffled thud hit the side of the carriage, followed by the sound of a hand fumbling with the exterior latch. My heart leaped into my throat. The Emperor's soldiers were looking for a reason to humiliate me, to prove that even as Kai-Zin's prize, I was subject to their petty whims.
The air inside the carriage suddenly vanished.
Kai-Zin did not speak. He did not move to open the door. Instead, a low, tectonic vibration began to rumble deep within his chest. It was a sound that made the very air shimmer with heat. His pupils dilated until his eyes were almost entirely black, and I watched in terrified fascination as the skin over his knuckles began to ripple. His fingernails lengthened into jagged black points, and the shadows in the corners of the carriage seemed to crawl toward him, feeding his growing mass.
He was shifting. He was becoming the beast that haunted my people's nightmares, and he was doing it out of pure, unadulterated possessiveness.
He lunged toward the door, his hand slamming against the iron interior. "Touch this handle again," he roared, his voice a distorted, animalistic snarl that shook the entire carriage, "and I will feed your entrails to the mountain winds. She is not Imperial property. She is mine. If the Emperor wishes to inspect her, tell him to come and take her from my throat himself."
The silence that followed was absolute. I heard the frantic, scrambling footsteps of soldiers retreating in terror. The "loyal" General had just threatened the Emperor's men for the sake of my privacy. It was not a gesture of kindness; it was a territorial claim.
Kai-Zin took a long, shuddering breath, his features slowly smoothing back into the cold mask of a man, though the predatory heat remained. He turned to me, his gaze lingering on my lips before he reached for the door.
"Get out," he commanded.
As I stepped down from the carriage, the sheer scale of the palace stole my breath. It was a fortress of obsidian and silver, its towers reaching up like claws to scratch the belly of the clouds. The walls were not built of stone but seemed to be grown from the mountain itself, dark and jagged.
I looked back at the gates we had just passed and realized with a sinking heart that the spikes were curved inward. This place was not designed to keep an army out; it was a cage designed to keep a single soul in.
Waiting for us at the base of the Great Staircase was a woman who looked as though she had been carved from winter ice. She was tall and severe, her grey hair pulled back into a knot so tight it made her eyes look permanently startled. She wore the charcoal robes of the Shadow Palace with a sharp, military precision.
"General," she said, her voice like the snapping of dry twigs. "The west wing is prepared for your guest."
"Madame Vane," Kai-Zin acknowledged, his hand finding the small of my back to usher me forward. "See that she is bathed and dressed in the colors of the Shadow. She is to be monitored at all hours. If she so much as whispers to the walls, I want to know the frequency of her breath."
Madame Vane's cold, grey eyes drifted to me, appraising me like a piece of livestock. "Of course. The watchdog protocol is already in effect."
"Wait," I said, digging my heels into the stone. I turned to Kai-Zin, my pulse thrumming with a desperate courage. "We had a bargain. You said I could make requests."
Kai-Zin paused, his towering frame casting a shadow that swallowed me whole. "I promised you the safety of your people. I did not promise you a voice in my household."
"I want Min-Ah," I stated, my voice echoing against the obsidian walls. "I want my court lady. I will not eat, I will not sleep, and I will not cooperate with your rituals unless my friend is by my side. That was the first request of the blood-debt."
A tense silence fell over the courtyard. I saw the way Madame Vane's jaw tightened. No one spoke to the General this way. Kai-Zin stepped closer, his scent of frost and old leather overwhelming my senses. He tilted my chin up with a single, clawed finger.
"You are bold for a girl who has lost everything," he murmured. He glanced toward the lower courtyards, where a line of prisoners was being led toward the servant quarters.
I followed his gaze and gasped. There, at the end of the line, was Min-Ah. Her face was smudged with soot, her eyes wide with terror as she clung to the arm of a limping Commander Joon. Joon's armor was shattered, his young face masked in blood and exhaustion, but he was still trying to shield Min-Ah with his body.
"Fine," Kai-Zin said, his voice dropping to a low growl. "The girl will serve you. But she will be watched as closely as you are. And the soldier? If he survives the night, he will be put to work in the armory. If either of them steps out of line, the debt is void, and I will personally end them."
He leaned in closer, his breath hot against my ear.
"Now, understand the terms of your freedom here, Sun-Hee. The Emperor cannot touch you. My men cannot touch you. But in exchange, you are mine in every way that matters. The physical intimacy of our bond will begin on my terms, at the time of my choosing. You will be the anchor to my madness, and you will learn to welcome the weight of it."
I felt a shiver of pure, cold dread. He wasn't talking about love. He was talking about a biological necessity that would consume me.
"Madame Vane, take her," Kai-Zin ordered, turning away without another word.
The Madame gripped my arm with surprising strength, leading me through the labyrinthine corridors of the palace. The walls were decorated with ancient tapestries and silver weapons that looked old enough to have tasted the blood of gods.
"Do not mistake his obsession for weakness, Princess," Madame Vane whispered as we walked. "He has waited longer than you can imagine. He is not a man who knows how to be gentle."
I didn't answer. I was too busy memorizing the turns, looking for any sign of a weakness in the fortress. We turned a corner into a long, dimly lit gallery filled with portraits of the General's ancestors. Most were of fierce, snarling men and women with eyes like Kai-Zin's.
But then, I stopped.
My heart felt as though it had been gripped by an icy hand. Hanging in the center of the hall was a portrait framed in tarnished gold. It was a painting of a woman standing in a garden of white lilies. She wore a gown of ancient Haneul-Bi silk, her ink-black hair flowing down her back in waves that matched my own.
Her face was not just similar to mine. It was mine. The same curve of the jaw, the same shape of the eyes, even the small, faint mole near the corner of her left brow.
"Who is she?" I whispered, my legs turning to water.
Madame Vane did not look at the painting. She kept her eyes fixed on the door ahead. "That is the woman who began the debt two hundred years ago. The one who broke the General's heart and left him to rot in the shadows."
I stared at my own face from two centuries ago, and for the first time, I realized that I wasn't just a prisoner of a war. I was a prisoner of a ghost.