Page 4 of King Foretold
“Shut up and come at me,” I bark at the merman with the beautiful blue gi.Damn it all to hell.I give my head a rough shake, and the color disperses. I might very well be losing my mind, but I’ll deal with that later too.
Haesan reluctantly widens his stance, bouncing lightly on his knees, and raises his arms loosely in front of him. I’m still getting used to the fact that he has legs rather than a tail and fins. In fact, other than the barbels and the gills behind their ears, the in’eos look no different from the rest of the Shinbiin.
“We don’t have to do this,” he pleads one last time.
“Have you met Captain Seo?” I gape at him. “We definitely have to do this.”
I take a surreptitious glance around the training yard. At the opposite end of the long courtyard, the cadets not sparring are running through drills under the watchful eye of the junior instructors. My gaze skims swiftly over them in search of Captain Seo. I find her making the rounds through the ten sparring circles, stopping at each to point out the good and the bad. She’ll reach our circle soon.
“Come on, Haesan.” I beckon urgently with my hand, but the big softy doesn’t move.Damn it.I have no choice but to strike first.
I launch a flurry of attacks on Haesan. I feint a kick toward his head, anticipating his dodge that leaves his left torso open, and pivot to bury my knee into his unprotected ribs. When he grunts and takes a halfhearted swing at me, I kick the side of his head.
The mountainous merman sways slightly on his feet, and I rush him like a linebacker, angling my right shoulder toward his stomach. If I plow into him hard enough, he might stumble outside the sparring circle, and I can take this round.
My plan backfires when I bounce off his ridiculously muscular body with only a ringing head to show for it. Haesan, who I know has been holding back, reaches for me with lightning-fast reflexes and grabs me before I fall flat on my back. With an apologetic grimace, he lifts me up by the arms and gently sets my feet down outside the circle.
“Sorry, Cho Mihwa,” he whispers, releasing my arms when my head stops lolling from side to side. “I mean, Sunny Cho.”
What started out as a bad morning is turning out to be an even worse day. I can’t seem to catch a break. Ever since we returned to the Kingdom of Sky, I’ve been hanging on by a thread. I saved Ethan and my friends from Daeseong but almost died in the process, and I’m terrified I won’t be able to do it again. I can’t lose them. Not now.
Gods.I’m no closer to understanding the powers of the Yeoiju than I was three weeks ago. I don’t have time to play suhoshin cadet.
“Why are you sorry? Are you scared my gumiho will toss you around like a toy?” I let my incisors lengthen, and I flash Haesan a vicious smile.
The merman pales but holds his ground, catching himself before he backs away from me.Shit.I shouldn’t take out my frustrations on him when he has been nothing but kind to me—unlike the other cadets.
Even though we’re forbidden from using our magic during training—including taking my fox form—the vast majority of the cadets stay clear of me. They fear me because I’m an unknown quantity. I get that. But I’ve faced enough racism in my hundred years in America to recognize bigotry when I see it.
The cadets ostracize me because they believe they are better than me. They believe they deserve all that is good and fair in life because they were born the way they are, and I don’t deserve any of it because I was born the way I am. They only have toexistto garner all the privileges of this realm. But it infuriates them that I dare exist alongside them, fighting toearnmy share of the goodness and fairness that is just handed to them.
Their deeply ingrained bigotry makes my skin crawl, but I refuse to direct that disgust at myself. I refuse to give in to the instinct to shrink in on myself, to hide from myself, to erase myself. It took me more than a century to embrace the gumiho in me. The Shinbiin can hate me all they want. I will not be ashamed of who I am.
But Haesan is a good male. He’s smart enough to fear me, but he didn’t back away when I baited him because he didn’t want to make me feel any more reviled. I didn’t mean to befriend him, but I did. Then I threatened to play hot potatoes with him. I am definitely the asshole here.
“I’m sorry, Haesan.” I drop my head. “I didn’t mean that. Neither I nor my gumiho would ever toss you around. Besides, my gumiho is me. And I am my gumiho. We’re the same person. And you’re my ... friend? So yeah, I wouldn’t do that.”
I press my lips together to stop babbling. I’m obviously as bad at apologizing as I am at being a good friend. Even so, Haesan’s face lights up with a guileless smile.
“You don’t need to apologize.” He claps me on the shoulder, and I’m damn proud of not crumpling to the ground. The male is freakishly strong. “You were just being you. Speaking of which, what’s an American name that meansdark like a storm?”
“Stormy,” I grumble in English.
“‘Store-mee’?” He sounds it out.
I shrug. “Close enough.”
“Well, better luck next time, Stormy.” He grins.
“Yeah, yeah.” I take his teasing lying down because he’s earned it.
But he stiffens, and his smile dies a swift death. I glance over my shoulder, following the direction of his gaze, and stiffen as well. Then I wince because every part of my body feels bruised and battered. Haesan felt squeamish about punching me with his paint-can-sized fists, so he opted to throw me onto the ground during our first two rounds.
“Who gave you permission to stop sparring?” Captain Seo’s voice slashes down on us like a whip.
“We finished the three rounds, Captain.” Haesan stands at attention.
“Is there a victor?” the captain asks with a straight face, even though everyone in the whole damn training yard knows there’s a victor.
