Page 47 of King Foretold
I raise my eyebrows at Minju. I don’t mind sharing with the class, but she’s more careful about revealing my powers than I am. She pinches her lips to the side, then nods, coming to a decision.
“Sunny can discern which life source we originate from.” She drops the bomb so matter-of-factly that it feels anticlimactic.
“What?” Jaeseok sits forward so fast that he rebounds slightly. Maybe it wasn’t anticlimactic for everyone. “How? And just to be sure,what?”
“I can see the colors of the life forces.” I take the last seat at the table, across from Captain Seo, with Ethan and Jihun on either side of me. “The hunter’s gi was green.”
An awed sort of silence descends on the room. I welcome the distraction, even though it’s over my weird, no-one-but-me powers. I just ... Grief isn’t an emotion I often allow myself to feel. But lately, it’s as though the walls that protected my heart for over a century are cracking and crumbling. I feeltoomuch,toooften. I need a break from the emotions I don’t want, like mourning the death of a hunter I didn’t even know. I exhale slowly and force myself to relax.
“That’s fire,” a disembodied voice says in my head, scaring the shit out of me. “Can you seemygi? Is it the same color as my hair?”
“Draco?” I rise to my knees, scanning the dark courtyard for blue scales. I can’t believe they are frolicking in the moonlight in their dragon form. “Come out this instant.”
I cringe as soon as the words leave my mouth.Eww.I sound like a naggy parent. But the teenage dragon spirit emerges from the shadows of a bejeweled tree, with their hands stuffed in the pockets of their jeans. At least they had the sense to shift back to their human form.
“What are you doing here?” Jihun manages to convey cool displeasure without sounding naggy. I should work on that.
“I’m here to help.” Draco climbs the stone steps and sits with one leg dangling off the raised floor. “I can contribute more than just my dragon scales.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Jaeseok protests, earning a shocked glance from me.
I never suspected him of being the overprotective type. Then again, he did try to throw down with a dragon to protect Minju—except he is now trying to protect said dragon. Either way, I stand corrected. The dokkaebi is definitely the overprotective type.
“Don’t forget that Draco fought at our side at Heaven Lake,” Ethan says with quiet authority. “Haven’t they earned their place in this meeting?”
Draco stretches his arm out and points at Ethan. “That’s on god.”
“Are they on the queen’s list too?” I lean toward Jihun, and his entire body tenses. I give him awhat the helllook.
“Yes.” Jihun rubs his forehead as though he feels a headache coming on. “Everyone here is on her list.”
“While we’re on the subject”—I glance around the room—“what do we calleveryone?”
“The suhoshins here have been sworn in as the prince’s royal guards,” Jihun suggests.
“His Royal Guards.” I nod slowly. “That works.”
“What about me?” Draco grumbles.
“Do you want to be an honorary royal guard?” I coo like those ladies who gush over cute babies at the checkout line. “Would you like a little sticker badge that saysJunior Royal Guard?”
I snort when they flip me off, but they do have a point. Ethan and I aren’t royal guards either, but we are very much a part of this team. And somewhere along the way, our endgame stopped being about protecting Ethan and became about protecting the worlds.
“The Sentinels. We stand watch against the eternal darkness,” Minju says, her nose still buried in her book. The rest of us hum and nod.
I glance around the room and grin. “That works.”
“Welcome to the Sentinels,” Captain Seo says, addressing Draco. “I assume you heard everything we discussed so far.”
“Bruh.” The teenager gives her a hooded glare.
I’m not sure whether that means ayesor ano. The captain frowns like she doesn’t know either. When our eyes meet, we shake our heads with baffled laughter.Holy Twilight Zone.Did we justsharea moment? We hastily look away from each other, implicitly agreeing to pretend it never happened.
“If I may continue, Sunny confirmed that the hunter was from the Kingdom of Mountains.” Jihun picks up where we left off. “Why would the King of Mountains send an untrained assassin to kill the prince?”
“The tyrant spread the lie that the queen died during childbirth along with the baby.” I remember the hunter’s last words.Forgive me, my queen.“But his people are still loyal to the queen. If they find out that her son is alive, they will rise up to puttheirprince on the throne.”
“And that’s the last thing the king wants,” Ethan says darkly. “He must not trust anyone in his court, which is consistent with our spy’s intel about his mounting paranoia. That must be why he blackmailed a poor civilian to do his dirty work.”
