Page 110 of King Foretold
The darkness tightens around me and fights to extinguish my light. I welcome it with a smile. I can’t have Daeseong plunging to the bottom of the caldera. I ease the gi into my sword of light, and the sword at last glows white with power. It is the Shin’gwangdo.
I raise the sword in a double-handed grip and bring it down with absolute certainty. Light rips through the darkness in a long, diagonal slash.
Daeseong screams—a sound of pure terror—and the darkness dissipates. I see the night sky of Santorini and the Aegean Sea before me again.
On the rugged outcropping where Draco lies still and small, the dark mudang stands before me in his corporeal form. Darkness oozes between his fingers as he presses his hand against the gash in his chest.
He can’t run. He can’t hide. I am too fast for him—too powerful.
“Do not think you have won, daughter.” His face twists into a mask of hate, terrifying and wrong.
“I don’tthinkanything. IknowI won,” I spit out even as a corner of my heart chills.Daughter?I won’t let his Hail Mary mess with my head. “You lost, mudang.”
“You think I am lying.” His chuckle is indulgent until a hacking cough overtakes him, and thick, greasy darkness drips down his chin. “About your inevitable defeat. About you being my daughter.”
“What I think is that you bore the shit out of me.” I grip the hilt of the Shin’gwangdo in both hands and raise it horizontally above my head. Then I widen my stance and dip low on one knee, the other leg stretched long. “Do you really want to blabber nonsense so you could live another minute?”
I don’t give him a chance to respond. I don’t give in to the doubt and fear flickering in the corner of my mind. My human body doesn’t just move as fast as my gumiho. It moves as fast as light. And I bury the glowing white blade of the Shin’gwangdo in the dark mudang’s heart before he can blink.
I meet his stricken gaze and hold it as I withdraw the bladeslowly, making sure the motherfucker hurts. Then I step back as he crumples to the ground.
It’s done. It’s over. Nothing else matters.
“Your mother was filth like you,” Daeseong sneers, even as his eyes roll back.
“Shut up.” I hate that my voice trembles.
“She bewitched me to fall in love with her, then shestoleyou from me,” he hisses. “She ran from me, pregnant withmychild.”
“Shut up,” I scream. He’s lying. He has to be. He islying.
I should chop his head off so he stops talking. So why don’t I? The Shin’gwangdo shakes in my grip. Why can’t I?
“You don’t get to speak about my mother. Justdiealready.”
“She hid you from me for eighteen years, but I found you,” he rasps, his lips stretching into a dark smile.
Horrified laughter bubbles up my throat. Do I smile like that when I taunt people? I swallow the laugh and crush the thought.
“Ifoundyou.” He coughs wetly before he continues, “Didn’t I, daughter? And we both learned on that mountain that you are more like me than your mother. There is darkness inside you, Mihwa. Darkness born of me.”
“You’re lying.” My legs give out, and I fall to my knees.
I have to think. What does he have to gain by lying to me in this moment?To see me suffer.He wants to see me suffer before he dies. He wants me to doubt myself. He wants me to falter. That’s all.
“Your mother stole you from me,” he babbles. He’s delusional. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore. He was already insane before I stabbed him in the heart. Now he’s insaneanddying. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. “She stolemyYeoiju from me.”
Daeseong is not my father. He can’t be. My mother said my father was a gentle, mild-mannered scholar. He died before I was born.
“The Yeoiju can revealeverything, daughter.” Darkness spills from the corner of his eyes like tears. “That’s all I ever wanted. Why is it wrong to seek knowledge? I only wanted to understand ... everything.”
I sit back on my ass with a thump.
Daeseong was a scholar before he became consumed by his obsession with magic and power. Had my mother been speaking in fucking metaphors? Did she mean Daeseong the scholar died when he became Daeseong the dark mudang?
My lungs tighten around every ragged breath. I would scream if I weren’t hyperventilating.Why, Mother?She can’tdothis to me. She can’t. It’s not true. None of it is true.
“No,” I mutter past numb lips. I grab Daeseong by the shoulders and shake him hard enough for the back of his head to bang against the rocky ground. “You arelying.”
