When Yona came to herself, she was in a small place, open yet confined like a bubble. The ghosts were all around her, weaving together among each other, forming an impenetrable shell.

She felt at once tiny, surrounded by them, but also expansive, as if her self were the entire landscape where this was all happening, stretching far beyond what she could see. Her thoughts and voice were the small, cornered piece of her, and the whole of her was much larger, but with her consciousness hemmed in like this, what could she do?

She'd gotten herself into this. Back in the real world, Hak and Jae-ha and the others must be going crazy with worry. This had been the best option, but stopping here wasn't enough. Now that she was here, she had to do something.

"Hello?" she said, experimentally.

The ghosts made a jumbled response — snarls, sneers. One gave her a nudge that didn't feel too aggressive, and that encouraged her. After all, these weren't monsters. If things had been only a little different, they would have been family to her, like Jae-ha and the others.

"I want to help you," she said.

Another rumble, and she strained to hear its individual tones:

— come here and say that now? —

— nobody wants to help me —

— can't even help herself —

But behind the sharp blades of anger and despair, she felt hints of warming and softening. If there were a few or even one of them who wanted her help and whom she could help…

"I know you don't want it to be like this," she called. "You're not monsters — you're just hurt. I know — I know your hearts were tender enough to be hurt." That had come into her mind a bit desperately, but as she said it she felt it confirmed by the sense, again, of that elusive warmth.

"What is it that's keeping you here? What's making you hurt other people?"

— what else can I do? —

— hurt them like they hurt me —

— You know how it feels. You feel it.

Those last words came through very clearly, and for a moment the swarm of ghost-dragons fell silent, then one by one…

She knows how we feel?

She feels just the same.

The hypocrite.

Where did you see that?

Show me.

Show her.

They began to move. For a moment it felt like they were closing in, reaching in, but then Yona realized that they were reaching out into that larger landscape of her self. "What are you doing?" Even as they pulled her along, she rushed forward herself, as if she could catch them and stop them from rifling through her belongings without permission — it felt exactly that rude and even more sickeningly personal as they found the place they wanted. She didn't even know what that place was — somehow she held back from letting herself know — before they seized her and pushed her in.

"What's making you hurt other people?"

Yona was plunged into pure sensation, and she knew the sensation — fire in her blood, steel in her muscles from her chest down to her fingertips. Why now? She tried to catch herself, reached out for anything that would make sense of the feeling.

For a moment she stood again on the ship in the waters off Awa, bow drawn, glaring down the length of an arrow at Yan Kum-ji. In another moment she would let the bolt fly, infused with fire and steel —

But before she could release the bowstring she lost hold of the moment. She was plunged in deeper. The feeling of rage was baffled and turned from power to sickness. A new feeling tightened around her — around her chest, her hands, her head — she could hardly think —

"What is it that's keeping you here?"

The plunge stopped so suddenly it was a blow, as if she had hit the bottom of the pit they had pushed her into — no, as if she were shackled and had hit the end of her chains.

The feeling sank in, freezing inside her as it went. She could hardly move, she didn't want to move, but she had to move. She didn't want to stay in this pain, and she knew that there was something she had to do. She made herself remember — it was the green dragon ghosts who had sent her here. I want to help them. I can't help them if I give up this easily. And Hak and the others — if she didn't try to get out of this, she would just be leaving them to suffer. I want to do my part and protect them. I still want to see more of my country and what I can do for its people.

I have to move!

She reached out. It hurt as though she really had frozen solid and her arms and fingers cracked and shattered as they flexed. The vision of cold made her numb. She found something to hold onto and orient herself, but she couldn't feel it. She could only pull herself blindly toward it, knowing that when she reached it she would know where she was…

She pulled the anchor to her. It touched her face.

It was the handle of a sword.

The pommel touched one of her cheeks; the other cheek rested against a warm, cloth-wrapped body. Sunlight filtered in through a sheet of pale cloth, a thin cloak draped over her, but then the cloak lifted away. Morning light poured in. She felt that warm body move against her, felt the resonance of the voice inside it.

The impossible blessing.

The blackest curse.

"Yona?" Soo-won asked.

She screamed. Soo-won jumped back in shock as she scrambled away from him, back against the wall of the street in Awa.

Not now, not now, there are things I have to do, I can't do this now, she pleaded in her mind. She tried to get away, to grab hold of something else, but everywhere she turned, there he was. He was giving her the hairpin. He was lying beside her and holding her hand. He was standing over her father's dead body, holding the bloody sword.

At that she froze and stepped back warily, keeping her eyes on the blade. She hadn't learned enough yet to take on an opponent like Soo-won, and she knew that this time, no one was coming. If he came at her now…

But the sword fell to the floor with a ringing clatter of steel. Soo-won only stared at her — not with the alien look of hate she remembered from that night, but with a look of surprise, even concern.

"Yona," he said, "I can't hurt you. This is just a dream."

She blinked at him. It was a cool, totally unexpected splash of practicality, and it gave her a strange sensation, as if Soo-won had picked the room up like a toy and turned it around. When he put it down again they were back on the street in Awa. She was still backed up against the wall.

Soo-won was looking all around, at the walls, at the air, as though there were something more to see in a sphere all around them. Yona managed to take her eyes off him and follow his gaze, and there hidden in plain sight was the teeming shell of intertwined ghost dragons. Those weren't bricks against her back, they were scales.

She jumped away from them and turned back in apology. "Sorry, sorry! I didn't mean to sit on you!"

She sensed a grumble, maybe a snicker.

"These are dragons?" Soo-won questioned.

"They're just people. But they're dragons too." She wasn't sure how to explain, or if she even should. "They're ghosts right now. I think they look like this because they're upset. I don't even know how many of them there are."

"I counted twenty-one," Soo-won said.

How did he do that? she wondered. Could anyone count a barrel full of snakes? If anyone could, it would be Soo-won, but still she glanced back incredulously —

— And flinched away from the sight of him. As a threat, she'd been able to fix her eyes on him, but now he was something else, and she couldn't bear to look. She was stuck here with him; that much was clear. But why? The shock had swept her mind blank at first, but now she began to remember just how she'd gotten here.

"They brought me here," she recalled aloud. "They said I felt just like they did."

"In what way?"

"Like how they're lashing out at people, but I don't…" She recalled the other flash, when she'd tried to catch herself as they pushed her in. "Oh, that's why I remembered that."

"What did you remember?"

"The time in Awa, when I shot Yan Kum-ji. I did want to hurt him after everything —"

"Wait, Yona, you shot him?" Soo-won asked.

She nodded. She still didn't turn toward him. He leaned forward to catch her eye, and she managed enough of a glance to see him staring at her before she turned away again.

"Maybe I shouldn't be surprised," he said.

"But I still don't understand. I did want to hurt him because of everything he'd done to the people in Awa, and Yoon got beaten up, and he was trying to kill Jae-ha —"

It struck her suddenly that the rage she'd felt then was about power, about making that moment go her way, not his. The fire and steel and the arrow's flight were all to say I choose — and it didn't match. The problem for the ghosts was that they weren't choosing. Even the attack on the village had been a release of formless rage with no decisive intent, just bruises and fractures and broken property. They couldn't move on, but she'd moved on long since.

"I wouldn't turn into a ghost over that, though. I mean, I feel…" She felt Soo-won coming up beside her shoulder, uncomfortably close, but she pressed on. "I feel… like I should apologize to my father, but other than that I'm not sorry. But I'm not really happy either. Or I'm happy that I stopped him from hurting people, but I'm not happy that I hurt him. I don't hope he's being punished in the next world, although I wouldn't be sorry about that either…" Yona finally gave up. The meaning she was aiming for was too tiny a target, and she'd landed enough shots surrounding it to basically understand it…

"So as a person in himself, he means nothing to you — no attachment one way or another." And Soo-won hit the bulls-eye in one shot. Naturally.

"Yeah, like that," she admitted.

So in that way, she wasn't like the ghosts. Or she was only like them in that she could want to hurt someone. The similarity was so superficial — but then she realized that of course it was superficial. When the ghosts had found the place where she felt the way they did and pushed her into it, that had been the first image she could grasp, long before she reached the bottom.

And at the bottom…

Yona's hands flew to her mouth. She'd been trying so hard to avoid the obvious, but of course — at the bottom was where she was now. The place where she and the ghosts were just alike was right here.

In this place.

With this person.

Her blood went cold all over again. Dream or no dream, there was no escaping it. She couldn't avoid it or she would just be giving up and not helping anyone. Reaching out blindly in freezing darkness was easier…

"Yona?" Soo-won's hand touched her shoulder.

She jerked away from him, but she couldn't avoid him. She tried to turn toward him, but doing it doubled her over; she couldn't help bending over to avoid seeing him. There was no way forward except through him, or with him. There was no way forward at all.

"It's you," she breathed the words out raggedly through her fingers.

"Yes, it's me," he sighed, as if he understood just what a burden his presence was.

But he didn't understand what she'd meant. "How I'm just like them, like the ghosts. How I can't move on, but I have to move on, but I can't…" How she'd thought, looking down at the capital from the mountains, that she was stuck in that middle place… "It's you."

Now the match was terribly perfect. For Yan Kum-ji, she would never have become a ghost, but what if Hak hadn't come that night, or had come too late? What if Soo-won had killed her along with her father? It was all too easy to imagine the ghost of a red-haired princess wandering the castle forever, frightening people with her anguished cries. And if that ghost had gotten a chance to vent her feelings on Soo-won, decisive killing intent would probably have been beyond her, but bruises and fractures and smashing anything that was his would have offered tempting illusions of satisfaction. She hoped she would have drawn the line at possessing someone and getting them hurt or killed for the sake of her own temper tantrum, but when she thought of the princess she'd been — the world she'd seen then was so small, and her own self had seemed so large within it — she wasn't as sure as she would have liked to be.

Hypocrite. The accusation echoed in her mind. How could she tell the green dragon spirits to free themselves, when she was this trapped?

Soo-won bent down to her level. He didn't try to touch her again, just leaned closer to her line of sight. "I don't want to keep you from moving on," he said. "It's all right if you need to hate me."

"I do hate you!" The words burst out, and they shocked her. She jolted up straight and looked at him at last — looked down at him for a moment, before he straightened up as well. This time she managed to meet his gaze and hold it, even though she was trembling. His eyes were wide; despite his own invitation, he almost looked hurt.

I do hate you. It was irresistibly true. She had loved him, and he had betrayed her and everything else she loved. He had killed her father, killed Min-soo, made Hak bear the blame for capital treason, made the entire Wind Tribe suffer — how could she not hate him? How could she let go of hating him? That wasn't a solution, it was the problem!

But shouting at him I do hate you had shocked her because it was also painfully wrong. His expression softened, and he seemed to understand even without her saying anything that it wasn't how she really felt, or was a very incomplete picture.

Hating him was the problem, but it was only half the problem. The other half was something she felt but couldn't put into words.

The words wouldn't come, but she knew the feeling, and she had something to attach it to.

She lowered her hands at last and looked down at her shoes. "I still have the… the present you gave me." The word "birthday" was too difficult, so she dodged it. "I lost it once, but I couldn't let it go, and I went and looked for it. I tried to throw it away, but…"

"You should throw it away," Soo-won said. "It was too selfish for a gift."

Yona looked up at him, but this time he was the one who averted his face from her.

"I knew that after that night, there could be nothing between us," he explained. "Before that, I wanted to see you smiling and feeling beautiful. I told you it was a gift when it was really a self-indulgent 'goodbye'."

Even as he accused himself, Yona couldn't let go of the words, I wanted to see you smiling and feeling beautiful. They caught in her chest and fluttered there, unable to escape.

"Of course," he continued, "I had hoped that you would sleep through the night and never know, but even then… Some of my party said that if that happened, I should marry you —"

The words gave Yona a jolt.

"— But it would have been a sham, built on lies. I had too many ways to justify my rule to treat you so disgracefully."

The obvious disjointure pricked her to a moment of pique. "So it would have been too mean to marry me, but you were okay with killing me," she pointed out. "Men are so weird."

"Oh, I'm more twisted than most, don't blame everybody else!" He laughed, waving his hands in an empty show of self-defense and flashing that disarming smile of his.

"Still, though…" He turned his face again and gazed off into some invisible distance. "It is nice to meet you like this, in a dream where I can say these things."

His sea-green eyes, looking out under softly-lowered lashes… His smooth hair, the color of peach jade, sweeping across his cheek… His disarming smile — she knew it was an illusion, but she still wanted to believe there was truth in it, deep down…

The flutter in her chest returned, so strongly it was almost unbearable. After everything he'd done, she should hate him — and she did hate him. After all of that, she shouldn't feel anything for him like she had before.

But she did.

The other half of the problem. She knew perfectly well what it was called, she just didn't want to admit it to herself, because it hurt too much to say it.

I still… I can't… Can I?

Supposedly there had been someone who could do such a thing. Supposedly her own soul had done it. Ik-soo had even reminded her that that was the story of the Red Dragon King, that he had said of the humans who betrayed and nearly killed him, I still love them. Written in a book or recited as a legend it sounded so simple, so noble, but how must that really have felt for him when it happened? Yona felt a new surge of gratitude to the dragon gods for choosing that moment to reach in and help; she understood in a new way what a blessing that had been.

But she couldn't wait for such a rescue. Now she was the one who had to help them, and the only way to do it was to free herself from this middle place.

From the middle, there were two ways out. Both were impossible. Either promised only pain.

She let out a sound that might have been a whine or a roar, buried her face in her hands and shoved her palms back over her hair.

"I'm sorry," Soo-won said. "I'm being self-indulgent again."

"No, it's not —" She almost said it's not your fault, but it was completely his fault. "I'm the one who has to do this." That was what she meant. "I have to get past this place. I can't stay trapped in the middle like this. I want to help the ghosts get free, but I can't do that if I'm trapped too, right? If I let them keep me here, Hak —"

She clapped her hands over her mouth, as if she shouldn't have said his name — but why not? It wouldn't put him in any danger to mention him in a dream. Even if it wasn't a dream, she didn't know what she could tell Soo-won that would make him more of a threat than he already was. "Hak and the others will worry about me," she finished, with a vague sense of shame as if Hak's name had revealed some problem with this dream that she couldn't identify.

"Yes, we need to get you out of here," Soo-won agreed. He looked again at the tangled shell of dragon-ghosts surrounding them, with scarcely a gap in the weave of their snakelike bodies. "But how do we get past them?"

"It's not them, it's me," Yona insisted. She stopped short of adding, and we don't need to get me out, I need to get out. "They put me here because…"

"Because, you said, I represent something you've been unable to move on from."

It wasn't really a matter of "representing," but close enough. "And to move on, I have to either totally hate you or — no —" Instantly she knew that hatred wasn't the way out of the trap — it was the trap itself. Hating him more would only be going further in.

The way out that she was trying to find would be… "I have to take what I feel for you and —" let it go was too inadequate a phrase "— and I need to throw it away." It would have to be like… The thought resisted connection, but she managed to force it; she would have to make Soo-won in her mind someone like Yan Kum-ji, someone who only mattered because of what he did and had done, who meant nothing to her as a person in himself. Completing the thought stung, but once she had done it and seen that path marked out, it wasn't that it would be painful to go that way — it would be absurd. She had no idea how to even begin doing such a thing. But if she didn't, that only left the other way out.

"I need to throw it away, or I need to…" Still she hesitated.

But when Soo-won spoke, he spoke with decision. "If throwing away your feelings for me can set you free from here — in any case at all, really, it would be a good idea at this point."

His dispassionate tone hit Yona like a dull, heavy blow. Well, if you can tell me that so easily, it really must be a good idea — but even as she thought it, she knew it was one more sign of attachment.

"I think you're neglecting an option, though," he added.

"What's that?" She wanted more options than she had, and she indulged the hope that maybe another one would be less terrible.

But when she met Soo-won's gaze, that hope evaporated. He looked at her not unkindly, but with disheartening gravity. "Accept it," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Like in this case," he explained, "if you have feelings that you can't throw away but can't embrace, and it's painful for you, it still doesn't mean you have to stop moving forward. What if you were to say 'this pain is the price of being who I am, and I'm strong enough to endure it and still move on'?" He let out the end of his breath in a little settling sigh of resignation. "Maybe that's easy to say when it wasn't forced on you by someone else."

Yona's eyes widened as she looked at him. In one moment, the little sigh, she had seen everything. He knew she was strong enough to take that path, but he didn't want her to take it. He didn't want her to follow him down it. That was how he could want to see her smiling and still do what he had done, still look her in the eye and tell her she should discard him. It was painful for him to lose her — and Hak too, and she couldn't guess who or what else — but it was the price of who he chose to be: a son who would avenge his father's death, a king who would make Kouka better and stronger, a man who wouldn't hold Yona back. And so his answer was simply to pay the price, to accept the pain and endure it.

It wasn't what she wanted for him either. "That's… But that's like giving up!" she cried.

This time, he blinked at her. "Eh?"

"I can understand it, but — to act like that's the end of it, like you just have to go on like that forever — that is giving up!"

He frowned. "And you think I shouldn't give up?"

"Of course not! We're both still alive, aren't we?"

"Unless I've died in my sleep," he said. "Which is always possible in politics…"

That idea drew his gaze away from her, and it was the first thing that really seemed to distress him. Yona knew that wasn't simply selfish — he'd told her in Awa, he had things he needed to do — but it was still annoying.

"Well, I'm still alive," she announced defiantly, "so when you wake up, you'll know that we're both still alive, and as long as that's true, you can't give up!"

When he turned to meet her eyes again, his look nearly daunted her. He almost seemed angry. It touched the memory of that night, those hateful eyes in a bloodstained face — but she held firm. She didn't look away, and at last what she saw in him was serious intent. There was no gentleness in it, but there was respect, enough to fully accept her challenge and to challenge her in return.

"I murdered your father," he said. "You saw me holding the sword stained with his blood." He held her in that stare until the silence demanded an answer.

"You did," she said. "I saw you."

"I won't let anyone stand in the way of my vision for this kingdom, no matter whose blood I must have on my hands," he told her.

"I know you won't," she answered.

"I drove you from the castle. If you or Son Hak appear openly before me, you will be killed."

At the mention of Hak's name, Yona flinched, but she refused to surrender.

"I know," she said.

"And will you tell me that you and I can do anything better than hate or discard or endure each other? That such a thing is not only conceivable, but worthy of consideration?"

The challenge was issued in full. The path was laid out before her, terrible and painful and ugly, yet also clear and bright. In that moment, Yona knew that her choice was clear — and maybe she had always known. Maybe that was why she had spent so long turning her face away from it, because she had always known that it was hers to face it in the end.

And now there was no more turning away. She looked into Soo-won's eyes with as much gravity, as much fierce respect as he was showing her.

With fire and with steel.

And with love.

"Yes," she answered.

His eyes went wide. The word had struck home, but a word was not enough. She took a step toward him.

It felt terrible — sickening and shameful. It felt like treading on her father's corpse, but she knew that this was her path. Father, forgive me, but I have to honor my own heart. I believe you would want me to do that. Even if he wouldn't have wanted it, she would still have to do it.

She took another step, treading on Min-soo's grave, treading on the Wind Tribe's kindness.

Soo-won recoiled from her a little, but he caught himself and stood firm. She was close to him now. If they reached out to each other, their fingers could touch.

Yona took another step, treading on — what? She paused, not stopping but only pausing to try to understand.

"Are you having second thoughts?" Soo-won asked.

"No," she said. "It just feels like… Like there's something else I should do before this, or something I should say to someone."

He nodded sagely. "I'd say that's both fair and wise."

How he could make a judgment on such vague hints, she didn't know, but he seemed as definitive as if she'd handed him a plan with a name written on it. Indeed she had a sense she'd done just that, unknowingly.

"This is just a dream, though," she remembered. "So it will be okay, even if I go forward now."

She took one last step. She was close enough to feel the warmth of his body.

"Yona…" Soo-won lifted his hands toward her.

Immediately she swatted them away. "Don't touch me." Even in that, she wasn't turning back or stopping.

I am the one who has to do this.

Still looking into his eyes, she reached up, put her hands on his shoulders, and he let her draw him down to her until she could hold him cheek to cheek and wrap her arms around his neck. She felt the velvet of his skin, the silk of his hair, the tickle of his breath…

She felt him start to return the embrace.

"I said don't."

His shoulders lifted back against her arms and settled; he was clasping his hands behind his back.

Yona held him, feeling everything.

Sickening guilt. Corpses under her feet.

Cold fear. She half-expected to be pierced with a blade at any moment — but in a dream, she could brave that. And if she wouldn't brave it in reality, it was not because her heart was too weak to go forward, but because he had created the barrier by choosing to threaten her.

Burning anger. It drew up tight in her hand, and her fingers curled, digging into his shoulder. She wanted to hurt him and not hurt him. She wanted him to feel pain — she wanted to give him a piece of her pain — but she still wished him safe from real harm.

"Is this how it would be for us, from now on?" he asked.

"No," she said. "Not forever." Because she felt something else too, as strong as the guilt and fear and anger, and even stronger yet. She felt a desperate wish that this could be real, that she would never have to let him go.

Just as she asked, he didn't move to touch her, but where she touched him, he didn't simply endure it. He inclined his head against her, very slightly. She felt his lashes brush against her skin as he closed his eyes, felt them quiver with the tension of life in his face. His breath flowed deep and slow. With such tiny gestures, the fortress walls around her heart shook. She almost couldn't bear to cause him pain; she almost needed his arms around her. The barriers held, but if only this could be real, she knew that they would soon begin to crack.

"If somehow we could, when it wasn't a dream," she told him, "if we could get to something like this… It would be hard, and it would hurt, but I'm sure that little by little…"

He sighed, softly and with a dry hint of laughter. "Yona… You are merciless."

"You deserve it," she said, in full embrace of the double meaning: You don't deserve my mercy. You deserve love.

"If we were as free in the world as we are in a dream…" he mused.

She laughed once into his shoulder, half-bitterly. "When you show up in my dreams, you're not usually this nice."

"No, I can see where I wouldn't be."

She barely heard him. With her own words, she realized that even in dreams this chance would never come again.

She turned her face toward his.

— guilt, anger, pain —

She had thought of his cheek, but even as she turned toward him, he turned toward her — only curious, not intending to take it from her, but there it was:

— one chance —

— I wish —

Her lips touched his.

Suddenly, something slammed into Yona with enough force to throw her back and tear the two of them away from each other. She reached out to catch herself or struggle — and she felt scales.

The green dragon ghosts. Their howling rose in her ears again. Seeing her step forward while they were still trapped only drove them into a greater paroxysm. They closed in, teeming around her, and she reached for anything to hold onto.

Something caught her hand. She felt no teeth or claws there, but warmth. As she adjusted to the resurgent roar of tangled, anguished voices, threaded among them she heard her own name.

"Yona!"

She struggled toward that voice and that hold until she could see — it was Soo-won. The ghosts were dragging her away from him, and he had caught her and was holding her. Fear struck her; she forgot that this was a vision and not real. If they pull him in too—! "Soo-won, let go!"

"What's happening!? Where are they taking you!?" he called.

"Listen, this is something I have to do!" — and she saw the way to break his hold. She met his gaze again. "You have things to do, too — you can't risk yourself for this! Isn't that right?"

He understood, with a nod of grim acceptance. He squeezed her hand — a squeeze when he was already gripping hard enough to hold her — reassurance and pain — and then he let go.

Instantly there was nothing but the dragon ghosts all around her, writhing, clawing, biting, crying. Before, she had thought, I can't free them from the trap if I'm in the same trap, too. Now she had found her way out, but that made it harder than ever, because now she knew the trap for what it was.

A special kind of rage and pain, the kind that could bind someone's very soul in unbreakable chains, hold them for a thousand years and never let them go:

This was hatred forged in the pyre of murdered love.

Their claws and teeth didn't cut deep; they were bearable, but Yona's eyes burned with tears. She knew now how she and the ghosts felt just the same. "You loved them," she lamented. "You wanted them to love you."

And all around her came the discordant chorus of twenty-one different different answers.

— nobody loved me —

— why would I want something stupid like that!? —

— Mama — Mama! —

She had focused — had needed to focus — so fully on her own trap, not theirs, what could she offer them now?

'We're both still alive, aren't we?' Her own voice echoed cruelly in her mind. For the ghosts, there was no comfort there.

Even the bright, clear choice, to embrace love despite betrayal and ugliness and pain — it was one thing to know, This is the path that honors my own heart. It was quite another thing to tell someone else, This is what you must do. It would be unforgivable presumption. Among this tangle of unique souls, she was sure there was one and more than one whose heart-path would be, Let these feelings go, let this bond be broken, let the ones who hurt me become nothing to me.

And she still had no idea how to do that.

Chapter 3 - END