Jae-ha still stood half-crouched in the same spot, still clinging to Yona's limp body and holding her up. Mere moments had passed this way, but already an airy feeling of paralysis began to grip his muscles.

"Jae-ha, is it you?" Kija called.

He tried to answer but found that he had no breath — still drowning — and he had to pull in enough air to speak out. "Somehow, it's me."

"And the princess!?" Hak shouted.

"Breathing."

Which puts her ahead of me, he thought, but that very fact helped him recognize that paralyzing feeling. It was his body seizing up from sheer nerves. Well, it's been a long time, hasn't it? It had been a long time since he felt it, but he still remembered the old lesson: breathe in deep, blow it out slowly…

Zeno was covering Shin-ah. "Blue Dragon, can you move yet?"

Shin-ah flexed experimentally and nodded, and they came to join the others in a tighter formation. Now there was only one point they all had to guard: Jae-ha and Yona.

Jae-ha knew that they — that he — had to get Yona somewhere safe. Nothing else mattered by comparison. And this village was definitely not safe. From the sound of the villagers' grumbling, they might have to fight their way out.

He felt himself refuse. He didn't want to attack these people, and he would be damned if he let them attack him. He didn't want to talk to them or listen to them or even look them in the eye.

But he had to put that aside. Next to Yona, none of it mattered. He only had to think of the best thing to do for her.

The first thing he realized was that he would be no use in a fight right now anyway. His muscles were bruised and weary; his ancestors had been very rude, handling borrowed property like that. That vision of an endless night swim through riptides of anguish had left its own form of exhaustion. And he was still breathing intentionally, trying to coax his own body from the brink of self-inflicted collapse. He almost wished that he could fight his way out — getting into a good fight right now would be one way to shake it off and feel better, but a fight here would be the furthest thing from good, and he didn't have the strength for it.

He did have strength for one thing.

Finally, carefully, he straightened himself and stood, lifting Yona up in his arms. Her weight was more of a burden than it would normally have been, especially carrying her in such a demanding position, but it was manageable. His body could bear carrying her like a princess more easily than his aesthetic sensibilities could bear slinging her over his shoulders.

Jumping would get her away from here faster, but he couldn't be sure of his landing in the dark. If one of the villagers shot an arrow at them from below, Hak and the other dragons would have no way to block it.

He took another deep breath to announce his decision:

"Listen. I'm just going to start walking."

Hak and the other dragons gave answering nods all around him and readied themselves to move as a floating shield around the two of them.

Jae-ha took a step forward.

Yona tried to sort through the tangle of ghosts teeming around her, tried to follow each of their voices and find and reach the ones who she might be able to help.

One quiet voice echoed, a young man repeating I loved him… I loved him… as though it were a revelation. When Yona traced that voice and reached out toward it, she felt not scales but warmth. For a moment it was solid, then the gentle heat enveloped her fingers like the steam off a teacup, and then it vanished into a luminous absence and silence. For one of them, seeing through the hatred to the love was enough to set them free.

Another threaded their way through the swarm to reach Yona and wrap themself around her. She could feel the scales melting as it touched her, the serpentine coil turning to small, enfolding arms as the voice of a very young boy whispered in her ear.

They can really love you and still decide to hurt you?

"Yes," Yona answered. An hour ago — or maybe it was a day or a minute ago — she couldn't have answered that for herself, but now she knew.

It doesn't mean they didn't love you? It doesn't mean you did something bad to make them hate you?

"No," she said, with tears of sudden understanding. "I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong."

Again, warmth and light flowed over her like mist and vanished, free and expansive as air.

But there were so many more of them, and every one different. Yona knew that her answers would not serve for all of them, probably not for more than a few. What she could do wasn't enough. She needed help.

In snatches, through fleeting gaps in the swarm, she could see orange light — torchlight. The world outside was that way. The others were there. She struggled toward them, tried to climb up through the ever-moving, ever-changing snarl of spirits around her, and she found that she had more than the light to guide her. There were voices that way, different from the ghosts, familiar voices that gave her a new swell of courage…

Jae-ha could only focus on one step at a time at first. The dragon leg held up strongly — of course it did — but his human leg was shaky, and he was determined not to let it show. Managing that, and breath, and balance, especially as Yona started to shift in his arms and he had to adjust his hold on her with his right hand throbbing and slick with blood… It was as much as he could do.

Kija had taken the point in front, typically.

"Hey, White Snake," Hak called from the left side, "don't get carried away and leave the rest of us behind."

"As if I would leave my master and my fellow dragons behind!" And indeed he set a slow, determined pace, radiating fierce dignity with each step. He hardly looked back to check that Jae-ha was keeping up, instead tracking his steps by sound and by the sense of his presence.

This was the pace that Jae-ha could keep, but it made the village gates seem very far away. Still, he had just proved amid a torrent of angry ghosts how far his endurance could stretch, and with a finite goal, surely he could do it.

One step after another…

It was already becoming routine enough to spare a thought for other things. He looked out from the circle at the villagers, not wanting to make eye contact but needing to be alert for threats. To his surprise, he didn't see any. The arrows that would surely have been aimed at him if he'd come here alone remained in their quivers. The villagers were making way for them, particularly staying away from Hak and Kija. As the group moved further forward and the crowd closed fully around them, Jae-ha could hear occasional waves of murmuring from the back, but he couldn't turn.

"I can't see behind me," he said aloud.

Zeno came closer on the right to answer him. Jae-ha could hardly see him past Yona but could hear his steps and his voice. "Blue Dragon's back there. He hasn't even drawn his sword. They're all scared of his mask."

Amid the effort of walking, Jae-ha managed to carve out space for a smile of amusement. They should be much more frightened of Shin-ah taking the mask off.

"Yeah, I'm not as scary-looking as the others," Zeno announced to some villagers who were coming a bit close on his side. "I guess you could shoot me if you want to see what happens."

"Please don't; it looks awful when you do that," Jae-ha told him.

Although the words weren't intended for them, the villagers took the hint and backed off.

Yona shifted again and moved her arms. Jae-ha found that his footing had become more certain, as he managed to keep her in balance without missing a step. Muscles burned and bones ached — his left leg, his arms, his back — but he knew he could endure it as long as he had to.

He was that much more sure of it as Yona, slowly and clumsily as if she were doing it in her sleep, wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

"Don't worry, Yona dear," he told her.

Yona struggled toward the light and the voices. The spirits were constantly upsetting her progress or trying to pull her back, but little by little she got closer.

— You think we're done with you? —

— Don't go! Don't leave us! —

"I can't help you all by myself! I have to get help!" she answered.

She climbed close enough to the world to feel that help was there — someone was there. She felt a warm body, arms around her, and she climbed close enough to take hold of them with her arms around their shoulders — a man's shoulders.

Hak? she wondered. No, these shoulders were narrower than his, but still strong…

She was close enough that she felt — as she had with Soo-won — the voice resonating inside the body as words washed over her from that place of light:

"Don't worry, Yona dear."

Jae-ha! After everything he'd been through, he was the one carrying her. She could even feel the place where his right hand held her and his blood soaked through her dress.

The ghosts stirred at the recognition.

— it's him, from before —

— you like him better —

— it's one of us! —

They crowded forward.

"No!" Yona cried. She turned to hold them back. "Leave him alone! Stay here with me — don't hurt him anymore!"

— let me look —

— I want to see —

They had reached the square. The gate was in sight, but now the entire population of the village surrounded them. The crowd still parted to let them pass, but the people showed more resistance; the grumbling had grown louder. The villagers had begun to realize that if they were going to do or say anything, this was their last chance.

The pain in Jae-ha's muscles had burnt through to ash. He could barely feel his human leg, but it still held him; it still followed the now-automatic pattern, one step after another. It wasn't as if he had never been this exhausted before and kept on. He knew he could continue, but if he halted and had to start again…

Some of the village men gathered in front of them as if to block their way.

"Do not stop," Jae-ha told Kija.

"Just as you say."

One of the men shouted at them, "After what you've done, you think you can just walk out of here?"

"Do you intend to stop us?" Kija brandished his claw with a flourish of power that swelled it to three times its size. The men backed off in a startled ripple before him.

"Let them go," the village elder called out. "It's not worth risking your lives."

Jae-ha recognized the voice as the same old man who'd been village elder when he left. For once he was being sensible, but the words were still galling — as if any green dragon was a useless bother, something not worth the slightest unnecessary effort.

"But the rule!" someone was saying.

"The rule says the Red Dragon King can take him away."

"— the red dragon —?"

"— red hair —"

"— just a girl —"

Jae-ha smiled. They knew nothing about Yona.

"— if someone follows them and finds us —"

"We have to move as it is," the elder said. "It's all we can do."

The village gate was close now. The villagers were making way, but they were still shouting.

"Look at Jae-ha, he's not even looking at us!"

His smile twisted sourly. Why couldn't these people have forgotten my name?

Someone yelled at him, "— After all the years we fed you!"

Instantly, his mind went blank with white-hot rage. Whoever had said that, he was seized with a charging impulse to find them and to hurt them very badly — but his legs kept the pattern, one step after another, and carried him forward until he mastered the feeling.

Breathe in deep, blow it out slowly… It had been a long time since he felt that either. He didn't remember handling it this well before.

Yona stood suspended, half-conscious, half in a vision, between the two agitated crowds — the villagers on one side, the dragon ghosts on the other. The ghosts had mostly fallen silent, some just watching intently, some quivering with rage or fear — they saw these as the people who had hurt them, as if those people's words were coming in from the distance beyond the light.

"…not worth risking your lives…"

…not worth it, I'm not worth it…

Yona found that voice, pulled that dragon to her and held them.

But the crowd of them was calmer. Before, when they were possessing Jae-ha, in a situation like this they would have been overcome by their feelings and lashed out, but now, even the most distressed ones weren't attacking or trying to possess Jae-ha again.

Instead, they were watching him.

Yona watched him, too, as he walked through that other crowd. For him, these people weren't just echoes of their predecessors; these were the very ones who had bound him in chains, who had hurt him badly enough that he wanted to run from this place and never go back — or only go back for one person, Yona still didn't know who.

And yet Jae-ha didn't lash out or even raise his voice. He just held Yona and kept walking through that crowd, through the hail of their harsh words.

"…after all the years we fed you!"

At that, she felt him take a sharp breath and felt his shoulders stiffen. Why that should be the blow that struck home for him, she couldn't guess, but it clearly had.

And still he kept walking.

Then Yona was certain: he had also stood in the trap, seen the ways out, and he had chosen the path that to her had been absurd: let these feelings go; let this bond be broken. For him, it was the bright, clear way, the way that honored his heart, but Yona was certain, too, that his way had been just as ugly and painful and terrifying as hers. He had been on that path for years, and still the tie wasn't fully severed. These people were not nothing to him. Maybe they never would be.

But Yona understood now that the strength of either choice was not purity or an end to pain. The strength was in making a place to stand and to build, little by little…

Jae-ha heard running footsteps coming up and a voice close behind him.

It was Yoon. "Hey, wait!"

"No waiting, we're leaving," Hak told him. "You ready to go?"

"There are still injuries, but— This isn't such a friendly place you can go off and leave me here!"

Kija motioned to Zeno, who nodded and helped himself to one of the standing torches before taking over the position in front.

"Don't worry," Kija said as he fell back, out of formation. "I'll stay and be Yoon's bodyguard. Besides, I still have things I want to say before I leave this place."

It took Jae-ha a moment to grasp the implications. When he did, he was stunned, resisted for a moment — and then burst out laughing so hard that he nearly fell over. "Are you trying to embarrass me!?" he laughed, loud enough for half the square to hear him. "I can never show my face here again!" That bridge had burned long since, but Kija taking it upon himself to smash the cinders was such a good touch that even pain and exhaustion couldn't weigh down the hilarity of it.

Jae-ha walked out through the gate of Green Dragon Village that way, carrying Yona and laughing until tears of mirth ran down his cheeks.

A place to stand, a place to build…

As Yona watched, she thought, This is what we're building. Laughter, friendship, a kind of strength that none of them could ever have alone…

The surrounding orange firelight fell away behind, with only one torch wavering ahead, leading the way. Around that one light, darkness swallowed them, but it hardly even seemed like darkness in its cool, intense brilliance. It felt like being embraced, and yet it also felt like being set free.

One of the ghosts marveled at Jae-ha as he carried them all out into the night. That one took on the shape of a plump young woman and began to fade. You can just walk away. They can't chain me up anymore. I can just walk away…

Another was fading too, turning into a smaller girl. There's a whole world out here. There's a whole other world. I can go and see it all…

But there were more.

— nobody helped me —

— I couldn't do it, I can't do it —

— it's not fair, why not me —

And still more.

— you finally came, don't leave me again —

— you like me, right? you wish it had been me —

— stay with us! —

"I can't!" Yona cried. She didn't want to hurt them or abandon them, but she couldn't give herself to them. She had her own people she had to return to and a life she had to live. She couldn't even tell them, I wish it had been you, because she could never wish that it hadn't been Jae-ha, but she did wish… "I wish I could have been there for all of you. I don't know why I couldn't. If I could have, I'm sure I would… I'm sure I wanted to…"

She was still clutching one of them, the one who had muttered, I'm not worth it, I can't do it, and now they curled closer to her.

You wanted to come — for me? You didn't stay away because I wasn't good enough?

"I know I wanted to. It hurts so much — I know it hurt so much that I couldn't."

For a moment it was a man she was holding, a man older than Jae-ha. For a moment he was crying on her shoulder, and then he was gone.

A few of the ghosts, and a few more, needed something that simple, just a key to unlock their shackles. But others needed so much more. They needed that place to stand; they needed to build.

They needed time, more time than Yona had to give.

Jae-ha kept walking, following Zeno and the torch, until the village was out of sight. He felt as if he were floating along weightlessly; even his arms seemed to bear Yona's weight as invincibly as the arms of a statue, as if he could keep walking and carrying her forever.

He knew that the feeling was an illusion. He was actually near his limit, but deciding when to stop and balancing himself as he halted would also be an effort, one he was too tired to commit to. So he kept floating along, following the pool of torchlight that traced Zeno's hair and shoulders and glinted on his medallion, brushed dimly over blades of grass, now and then hung ghostly in the air among the boughs and leaves of each lone tree…

Ghostly…

Another shape loomed up from the dark, and Jae-ha looked straight at it for a moment before recognition materialized: what the torchlight was tracing out ahead of him was not a tree. It was a person.

He checked himself and halted at last. Zeno stopped too and turned back to face him, but not to see why he'd stopped or if he was all right. The yellow dragon was smiling, a broad smile but with a strange depth in the eyes; in the pale torchlight it made him look like a messenger from another world. He stepped aside, intentionally making way for Jae-ha and the mysterious figure to look at each other.

It was a man dressed in archaic clothes, with long hair tied high on his head behind a short, unruly fringe of forelocks. As they stood face to face, the man's eyes opened wide and his mouth hung slack, like someone stunned by a gift they didn't expect and weren't certain they deserved.

That stunned gaze lowered slightly, to where Yona was still curled in Jae-ha's arms and clinging to his shoulders. The man's brow softened, his lips spread into a blissful smile showing oddly sharp teeth…

"Droopy Eyes, you okay?"

Jae-ha startled toward Hak's voice, caught himself and turned back — and the figure on the path was gone. "I… for a moment… I was seeing things."

"Don't worry, Green Dragon," Zeno told him, still with that strange witch-smile. "It's all right."

Yona still clung on among the crowding ghosts, knowing she had to get free of them but not knowing how, wishing there was something better to be done.

— why do you want to leave us? —

— you're just like them, I knew it, nobody —

— not fair —

— don't go —

"I'm sorry," she told them. "There are things I have to do. I wish I could have been here for all of you. I wish I could be here —"

A new voice broke over them: "I'm here." The presence shone with light and warmth like breaking dawn — no, like coming home in the night and the door opening for you, the hearth waiting for you. "I've always been here, if you'd stop and listen for one damn minute!"

The fierce love in that voice made her think a little of Hak. It filled her with warmth and trust as though she'd known this person all along, like Zeno. And there was something about it too, not a detail of resemblance but some quality like a color that reminded her of Jae-ha.

Yona didn't need anyone to tell her who this person was.

The ghosts didn't either.

"Come on, kids. Come here," he invited them.

— that voice —

— it's true —

— he was always there, someone was there —

— I'm going back with him, this is stupid —

They began to flow toward him.

Yona relaxed into a rapture of relief and gratitude. She couldn't give the ghosts what they needed, but here was someone who could, someone who had made that their work. With him, they would have the love they needed, they would have the place and the time they needed to build their own way forward. Most of them felt it, and now they could embrace it.

As the tangle pressing around her unraveled, Yona felt one of them still gnawing at her ankle — not fair not fair not fair — and their ancestor had to pry their jaws off of her.

As he wrestled with them, Yona reached out and touched his presence — warm and luminous, human but unfading. "You're… you became their saint," she said.

The first green dragon brushed it aside with a scoff. "They're my kids, that's all. — Come on, kids, we're going home. Stop bothering the king."

"Thank you," she told him. She couldn't remember what he'd done for the Red Dragon King, but for loving these spirits as they needed to be loved, "Thank you… Thank you…"

She also knew that Jae-ha wouldn't exist, or she would never have met him, if it weren't for this person. "Thank you… Thank you… Thank you…"

She poured it out until he couldn't take it anymore. "Enough already! Shut up, idiot!"

Yona laughed, as though at an old, familiar joke.

Jae-ha had been right not to stop moving earlier. Now he couldn't start again, or even stay standing for long. "Hak? Would you care to…?"

"Right."

Hak hurried to take Yona. Shin-ah came forward and helped lift her onto his back. Jae-ha gasped as her dress pulled away from his right hand, taking clotted blood with it and reopening the feverish, lancing pain of the wound.

"Jae-ha…"

He looked up at the sound of Yona's voice and found her looking at him sleepily. Concern glistened in her eyes, but so did peace, too much of it to think that she was fighting ghosts. He smiled to see it, and then she smiled back at him.

"Princess! Are you all right?" Hak asked.

She nodded against his shoulder. "Everybody went home," she said, and closed her eyes again.

"Zeno saw, too. The ghosts all went home."

For a moment, Hak wasn't sure whether to be relieved or confused, but in the end the answer was obvious, and he relaxed as Yona settled against his back and fell asleep. He started forward, but Zeno didn't move. When they came side-by-side they both looked back.

Jae-ha realized that he'd forgotten to think about whether he could start walking again unencumbered. Before he said a word or even managed to push his exhausted mind onto the question, Shin-ah yoked himself under his left arm and took hold around his shoulders. Jae-ha leaned into the support, letting himself relax gratefully and heedlessly…

So heedlessly that he would have poked himself on a horn of Shin-ah's mask if not for a warning "P'kyuu!" from the squirrel who was perched there.

When they reached the little stand of trees where they'd left their packs, a stack of wood was already there waiting for a campfire. Yoon had assembled it that morning when he'd realized that Zeno wasn't coming back, and now that Zeno did return, he lit some tinder off his torch and got the fire going.

Jae-ha was barely staying on his feet, and when Shin-ah gently lowered him to the ground, he didn't move. The bite-wound on his hand was red and swollen. Shin-ah dug into the packs for Yoon's stash of extra medicines, but he didn't know what was what.

Hak did know at least enough to do better than nothing. "Let me," he said, and lay Yona down in the grass.

Jae-ha still didn't move or resist. His face lay in darkness, shaded from the campfire, and so twitches of pain and sounds of sharp, uneven breath were the only signs that he was even conscious as Hak scrubbed the wound, dabbed the salve, and wrapped the bandages.

While he worked, Shin-ah took bedrolls out of the packs and tucked Yona into one of them. She woke up just long enough to recognize him and smile before falling asleep again. He lay out another blanket beside Jae-ha, and when the bandages were fastened, they lifted him onto it and folded it around him. Shin-ah stayed beside him; he lay down in the grass resting his chin on his folded arms, and he pushed his mask back on his head to watch over his fellow dragon with his gold eyes.

Hak considered that to be leaving Jae-ha in good hands and went to sit beside Yona.

Zeno also concluded that things here were under control. "Listen," he said, "Zeno has something he has to go and do, but he'll be back by morning."

"Try not to hurt yourself," Hak said, by way of seeing him off.

He took the torch and went, leaving the camp silent except for the crackling of the fire — and Jae-ha. He never spoke, but now and then Hak heard him make a sound, sometimes like a chuckle and sometimes more like something else slipping through his attempts to control it.

Meanwhile Yona breathed softly and heedlessly, seeming peaceful as if she had just fallen into a well-earned sleep after a hard day of honest work.

Hak looked at her, and he spoke to her silently in his mind. How am I supposed to be your bodyguard when you keep running ahead to places I can't follow you? Getting herself possessed by a mob of angry ghost-dragons was a new benchmark — but not really so new. It wasn't as if he hadn't already known things were like this.

After all, if King Il had wanted someone to shut his daughter up behind strong walls and make sure nothing ever happened to her, anyone could do that. Apparently an entire village could spend two thousand years making that mistake and proving where it led. No, to protect his daughter, the king had asked someone who knew her, and who loved her, and who had once helped her sneak out of his own castle. Not someone who wanted to hide her away and stamp out every risk, but someone who wanted to see her shine and to support her for the times when she had to take risks to live out her brilliance.

Hak knew that that was his role. Even if, on a night like this, she made it really nerve-wracking.

Zeno arrived at the green dragons' tomb only to find it empty. Well, it's better this way, he thought. There was nothing to hold them here any longer. Maybe they were all in the next world by now. After all, Shuten had deserved to rest in peace long ago.

It was foolish to feel lonely, or angry at being left behind without a word. For the yellow dragon, that was only natural…

He started back toward camp, and had barely left the deep-set path leading from the cave when he saw them coming back.

"Hey, Yellow," Shuten called as he approached. "Nice of you to say goodbye before you leave."

The dragon-like spirits of his successors trailed after him like banners at a parade — even more like banners because they were no longer one wave of inky black but a procession of snaking bodies in every shade of green. One of them was still gnawing bitterly on his elbow, but he bore it patiently. Some of them were even looking human again. He carried a small boy in his arms, and a girl of around Yoon and Yona's age trailed after him, yawning and guiding herself by a handful of the back of his robe.

Zeno watched them come, feeling a foolish prickling of mist in his eyes, and he fell into step beside his old friend.

"We went down to the village to watch the show for a while," Shuten explained, grinning. "That pretty-boy white dragon was so mad! Him and all of Guen's kids hanging on behind him! A couple more of mine could rest in peace just from seeing that bunch spoiling to fight for them like that.

"The rest of mine were all worn out, though, so I had to bring them home. Even as ghosts they need a nap after too much excitement."

When they reached the tomb, most of the ghosts went back down the broken well, returning to what they knew. Some settled into corners of the hillside chamber, making the shadows there darker or at least scalier than before. Shuten settled the little boy on his lap as he sat on the lip of the ancient stones, and the girl sat on the floor and folded her arms on his knees, rested her head there and fell asleep.

"Will you be okay here now?" Zeno asked, sitting down on the floor himself.

"We'll be fine," Shuten told him. "About half of them went tonight, and the ones left here aren't in one constant fit anymore. I can talk to them." He bounced the little boy in his lap demonstratively. "I don't think he'll be here much longer — and this one —" he rubbed the girl's hair "— says she wants to stay and help me. We'll see though. She's still bitter, wanting to do what she says nobody did for her. Well, you can tell she's sore just by looking."

Zeno leaned over to look at the girl more carefully and understood all too well what Shuten meant. Her spirit still wore the image of the arrow that had presumably killed her, a fletched shaft that angled up into her back. Her sloping eyes made her look uncomfortably like Jae-ha.

He could have ended that way just as easily. There might be nothing but sheer luck separating him from the ghosts. The idea in Zeno's mind had a slippery, downward pull about it…

Shuten laughed, a merciful interruption. "I should have known that idiot would show up and stick his face right in it." He sighed and shook his head with deep affection. "I never thought I'd see him again."

The him was her.

The Red Dragon King.

Yona.

It might just have been worth the wait to see the look on Shuten's face when he saw his king again in Jae-ha's arms…

"Ah!" Zeno cried suddenly, as the thought of the red dragon pricked his memory. "With everything that happened, I almost forgot why we came here in the first place!"

"Hm?" Shuten looked at him.

"There's a story that Red Dragon gave you his jade seal, and some rebels are looking for it."

"Hmph. They'll be looking a long time."

"Did he really give you anything like that?"

Shuten opened his mouth to respond, paused, and began again from another angle. "Do you remember his personal seal? The little tall square one? It was peach jade, and the top was carved with a dragon on each side and the fifth dragon on top."

"Oh," Zeno realized. "Wasn't that the one, that time when he was doing paperwork and you burst in—"

"I forget what it was even about."

"—And his hand came up too fast and he accidentally threw it—"

"Out the window. Into the rock garden. And of course you can't just leave that lying around…"

"I said I'd look for it," Zeno recalled.

"Because you're a glutton for punishment," Shuten confirmed. "And then Abi insisted that I had to go find it because it was my fault, but I still had my urgent whatever…"

"…And before the fight got too bad, Red Dragon said 'Oh, the rock garden is a good place to talk,' and next thing, I looked out the window and there you two were…"

"…Crawling around on our hands and knees sifting through gravel and talking about bridge repairs or whatever it was. I finally saw the red ink, but when I picked it up, it was just the stamp and an inch or so of stone. When it landed it broke right in two."

"Oh, and then they put that big gold handle on it!" Zeno remembered, laughing. "He never managed to throw it very far after that!"

"That's probably why all the royal seals after that were these big gold things," Shuten said, "so the idiot couldn't throw them out a window.

"Apparently he kept an eye out whenever he went for a walk in the rock garden, though. Eventually he found the other piece with the carved dragons."

"And that was what he gave you?" Zeno guessed, with sudden but gentle gravity.

Shuten nodded, then broke into a sharp-toothed grin. "Yeah, you got jewelry from Heaven, I got broken stationery."

Zeno laughed again, freely, knowing what a perfect gift it had been for all that. Long after the original emergency had been forgotten, Shuten had always laughed when he remembered that incident.

"That's a relief, though," Zeno sighed at length. Even if someone gets it, they can't use it to forge Red Dragon's name."

Shuten was silent for a moment; his smile fell away. "The words you want are 'couldn't have' if they'd 'gotten it'."

"Eh?"

"When things got bad here, one of the kids said to himself, 'this wouldn't be happening if it weren't for the Red Dragon King,' took the gift from him and stomped it into powder."

Zeno took a breath, let it out slowly. That slippery downward pull again, and this time he knew what it was. "I'm sorry," he said. "Two thousand years and I never… I felt like I was just…" It felt ridiculous to be two thousand years old and tongue-tied, but apparently there were things he still didn't understand, even about himself. "I let myself think of them as just green dragons and not ask what each of their lives were like, so…"

All this time, I thought everyone else was leaving me alone, but maybe, really, I was the one…

He felt something more than a nudge but less than a blow as Shuten planted a fist in his fluffy hair. "Two thousand years and you're still a glutton for punishment! It's still annoying, too. 'Oh, it should have been like this,' 'oh, I'm not good enough,' — just say 'to hell with it' and do what you need to do already!"

"So I should be more like you and Guen?" Zeno asked.

"As long as you're not like Abi; I couldn't take two of him. Thank the gods this new one doesn't look a damn thing like him." Shuten sighed and let slip a hint of wistfulness. "The new white one doesn't look a thing like Guen either, does he?"

"In the face, you mean? Nope, not a bit," Zeno said. "And this green dragon doesn't look like you."

"Huh? I thought he did. It's the teeth, isn't it?" Shuten grumbled, then drew a slow breath, if a ghost could do such a thing. "Jae-ha…" He spoke his successor's name slowly, as though savoring it. "Take care of him for me, will you?"

"I try, but he has things to say about it sometimes."

"I'll bet he does!" He paused. "I don't think this place… I don't think I deserve him."

Zeno stretched, rose to his feet, and dusted himself off. He looked down at his old friend, who was still seated — and planted a fist in his slick green hair. "You're right. It is annoying when people do that, isn't it?"

Shuten batted his hand away. "Just get out of here already. — And don't make it two thousand years this time!"

Zeno blinked at him. "You're still planning on being here?"

"What did you think? Even if I get all these kids out the door you never know what stupid crap those villagers are going to do. Hell, even if they cleaned up their act, I'm used to it here. Why leave? I'm the saint of this place, you know." He'd scoffed to Yona's face, but now he accepted the title she'd given him with a swell of pride.

Zeno blinked at him again. That foolish prickling mist again, and this time it tugged his mouth toward a smile. It wasn't the self-indulgent cheer he liked to show people, but he let the smile come, foolishness and all. "Then, until next time."

"You'll know where to find me; I'm not going anywhere."

"Neither am I," Zeno replied. He meant something different by it, but he knew that he and Shuten understood each other.

Early the next morning, Yoon and Kija finally left Green Dragon Village. By then, the sun had revealed the full extent of the damage, and it was a great deal but nothing unrecoverable. The injuries, likewise, were nothing fatal. Yoon hadn't received much thanks for his help, but he hadn't really looked for it. By the time they left, hearing an end to Kija's lectures was almost thanks enough, even for him.

He waited until they were well away from the village before tempting fate again. "You seemed to take this whole thing really personally," he said.

"I just couldn't believe it!" Even now, Kija was still fuming. "Blue Dragon Village was terrible, but this place! To see dragon blood treated like — like nothing! Like a mere nuisance! To think of dragon warriors being raised in a place like this with no — with no sense of the sacred!"

"I guess it does explain some things," Yoon said. The remark had begun as a joke at Jae-ha's expense, but it was cold before it even reached his mouth.

Kija took it in without reply and without offense. If anything it seemed to calm him, or at least weigh him down. They walked on for some time in silence. Gradually, Kija slackened his pace and began gazing absently at his cloth-wrapped claw.

Yoon looked at him and drifted closer beside him by way of query.

Kija glanced back and took the cue but continued for several more steps before he spoke. "Once," he said, "when I was eleven or twelve years old, I broke a support beam of a house. I don't even remember any reason why I did it."

Eleven or twelve… That age, huh? Yoon thought it was explanation enough.

"Everyone was able to prop it up in time and make repairs, but it was a panic," Kija continued. "Granny took me aside and talked to me for a long time about how doing such a thing was hurtful to the people around me, how it was unworthy of me and of my power. But nothing she said made me doubt for a moment that I was more important than the house."

He fell silent for a few steps. "Even with the tradition of my village saying that the white dragon's power was sacred, I'm sure it would have been easy to see me as troublesome and dangerous if I misbehaved. I could have been feared or restrained, but instead I was taught with care, and I was trusted.

"Shin-ah and Jae-ha deserved to be treated as well as I was, so of course something like this makes me angry, but it's nothing disrespectful like pity. How could I pity someone who faced difficulties I never did, without the help that I had, and still grew to be just as strong as I am?"

Stronger, if bugs are involved, Yoon noted silently.

"For a while, I let myself wonder if I would have done as well in their place, but there's no use in thinking that way. The best thing I can do is to give them my respect and be grateful for the love I received."

When Kija turned to look at him, Yoon averted his eyes, feeling the annoying heat of a blush across his face.

"Am I wrong?" Kija asked.

"No, you're not, just… Geez, back in your village they let you say anything you wanted to, didn't they?"

Soo-won yawned. It got him a sharply-raised eyebrow from General Joo-doh, and admittedly letting it slip in the middle of a Five Tribes meeting wasn't the best of manners. He did like to keep everyone's awe of him in a certain balance, though, and letting a bit of human weakness show was in keeping. The important thing was that he was paying careful attention, and he could demonstrate that to anyone's satisfaction whenever he chose.

He did take another sip of tea. It was early in the morning and several people were still waking up, but Soo-won in particular had slept badly, and the effects were inconvenient.

The new governor of Awa was in the midst of his report and continued unfazed. "The importation of drugs from Kai remains a problem, especially at makeshift landings outside the port itself," he was saying. "Coastal patrols outside the immediate area of the city are beyond my jurisdiction; I can only offer my opinion that they would be a justified use of resources. Addiction and trafficking in the city itself are lower than in comparable areas, and the citizens have been very cooperative. Your Majesty's suggestion of enlisting assistance from the ladies in hospitality professions has been especially fruitf—"

"Uwah!" General Tae-woo of the Wind Tribe suddenly jumped. "Sorry, sorry, it just took me a minute to catch — er — did he just say what I think he said?"

Tae-woo was hemmed in by glares, on the one side from old Mundok and on the other side from General Joon-gi, who could glare surprisingly well with his eyes closed. General Geun-tae, on the other hand, only smiled.

For his part, Soo-won outright beamed. "He was so diplomatic, wasn't he? He's always like that! No matter who he's talking to or who it's about, he's just so polite it's impossible to be angry at him."

His choice for the appointment had been unconventional. The new governor had previously been a bureaucrat below the rank that would normally be considered for such a post, but Soo-won had known what kind of man he wanted and had known where to find just such a man. For a town that threw off its last governor, it had to be someone who would keep things from getting chaotic, but he didn't want to undercut the strength the citizens had built in standing up for themselves, and sending someone who might provoke them would be courting disaster. Thus, the by-the-book bureaucrat without a discourteous bone in his body. Promoting him out of turn could have caused disruptive controversy, but when the predecessor had been murdered in an uprising and the post came with no more than the usual complement of troops or bodyguards, no one made much fuss at being passed over.

"Please continue," Soo-won prompted.

The governor bowed in acknowledgment. "The topic had been adequately addressed.

"Moving on, I have been trying to ascertain the particulars in the matter of my predecessor's death. Of course, per Your Majesty's order, no legal action is to be taken, but I thought it worthwhile for the sake of a complete record. At first, word of Your Majesty's clemency was met with some confusion —" he didn't say "distrust" or any word that might imply disloyalty "— and we were unable to gain much in the way of information, but by this time the citizens have grown more confident, and the incident is now the subject of a popular song. It exists in a handful of variants, of which we've transcribed as many as possible, and you may find them included in my written report."

Geun-tae leaned over to Soo-won. "Dullest murder case I ever heard, even with a song to spice it up. This guy's a secret weapon — if they start another uprising, he'll put them all to sleep." He sounded at once amused and impressed at the shrewdness of it.

Soo-won nodded happily, sipping his tea.

"…All versions do agree on the identity of the immediate perpetrator. According to the song, my predecessor was shot by one of the women he intended to sell."

"That could be excused as self-defense even without the blanket pardon," Joon-gi observed.

"Indeed so, if the account is true. It may be only a story that has gained wide acceptance as an expression of the citizens' sense of grievance and justification. The description of the woman is again very consistent, but I would consider it as an instance of poetic license. The song states that 'her eyes burned with the fire of justice, and her hair blazed red like the coming dawn.'"

Soo-won's teacup hit the floor and shattered with a jaggedly musical ring.

"Your Majesty, my profoundest apologies if I given offense." The governor bowed deeply to him.

He was staring slack-jawed and had to shake himself out of it. "Oh, no! Not at all! It's just that I had a dream last night — a girl just like that told she had been the one…"

A flurry of muttering broke out around the room. Soo-won scolded himself for carelessly setting it off — and it was all the worse because, if he mentioned a red-haired girl, the better half of the room knew exactly who she was. Tae-woo and Mundok stared with fiercely-guarded wonder not directed at the king. Geun-tae's brows went up, at once knowing and questioning. Joon-gi betrayed no reaction, but surely something was going through his mind. Kyo-ga at least was off at his studies and missed the slip-up, but word was sure to reach him.

Joo-doh bent down to Soo-won's ear so that his whisper was loud and harsh: "If you knew that already, tell me! Don't make bad jokes!"

Even among the minor ministers who didn't know, it was a problem. "Does the king hear the voice of the gods in his dreams?" one of them was asking.

"Ah, it was just a coincidence, I'm sure!" Soo-won said, trying to wave it off and answer everyone at once. "A little before that, I dreamed that some fruit jellies came to life and Minister Kei-shuk was chasing them around." He laughed.

It didn't catch, and very soon, through a mix of confusion, facetiousness, and social momentum, Kei-shuk had the eyes of all the room on him.

He folded his hands and inclined his head, his decorum liberally seasoned with vinegar. "I assure you all, gentlemen, that nothing of that kind has occurred."

When Yona woke, dawn had passed. The sun had taken on the white color of full day, but its light still came slanting over the hills and through the trees, and the misty scent of morning had not quite burned away. There were other smells too: wood smoke, savory rice, and there was the bubbling sound of cooking.

She opened her eyes and sat up. Yoon and Kija hadn't returned, but everyone else was there. It was Zeno stirring the cookpot.

Hak was still watching over her. "Princess."

"I'm all right," she announced preemptively. Wanting to prove it, she got to her feet and found herself still a little unsteady. It would take more time to get back to normal after that ordeal, but she wasn't helpless.

Jae-ha still lay in his bedroll, with Shin-ah still watching beside him. Yona went over to them; at first she felt a pang of worry — Jae-ha's hand was wrapped with a bloodstained bandage, and the sunlight revealed bruises she hadn't been able to see during the night — but as she watched, it seemed that he was sleeping peacefully. His hair fell lightly across his face, his mouth lay slack, and his eyes were closed and settled into gently-sloping curves.

"I never noticed how cute he looks when he's sleeping," Yona whispered. "It just makes you want to cuddle him, doesn't it?"

Shin-ah nodded with a hint of restrained eagerness. Ao on the other hand knew nothing of restraint and lay curled in the hollow of his shoulder.

Hak gave them a look of silent disbelief.

Jae-ha's face pinched, and he stirred. "Nnngh… Hey… When you say something like that about a grown man, he might take it the wrong way." He tried to sit up, but he winced when he moved anything but his right leg, and he couldn't brace his right hand. Rather than leave him to solve the balance puzzle himself, Shin-ah lent an arm to lift him.

"Are you all right? How do you feel?" Yona asked.

"I'll manage," he said, but then his mouth bent into a frown, and he turned away from her before opening his eyes. "But Yona dear… This is really terribly embarrassing…"

"Why?" she asked innocently, trying to dodge into his line of sight. "You saved the day back there! It was so amazing how you just — walked — like that. Er, saying it that way it doesn't sound so great, but when you did it, it totally was! Some of the ghosts were able to rest in peace just from watching you!"

He stared at her, blinking. "Yes, I was impressive, wasn't I?" he finally agreed, with a bit of undue emphasis as the only remaining clue that he hadn't thought so all along.

"Of course, from what I hear," Hak pointed out, "you trying to play it cool was what got us into the whole mess."

Jae-ha winced again.

"Zeno said too much," the yellow dragon muttered.

The grassy sound of footsteps came in from the trees, announcing Yoon and Kija's return.

Yoon stretched himself. "Ahhh, the delicious smell of food I didn't have to cook!"

Zeno stirred the bubbling pot. "Everyone had such a hard day, Zeno made rice porridge. It's nice and salty and there were some wild onions. It's hard to carry, though, so we have to eat it all."

Jae-ha waved a welcome back, still sitting in his bedroll. It was his right hand that he waved to them, and he noticed the bandage and stopped to admire it. "Ah, Kija, we dressed alike today."

Kija immediately clapped a hand to Jae-ha's forehead, checking for fever. "Are you all right? How do you feel?"

"I'll manage."

"How is everyone back in the village?" Yona asked.

"Lots of bruises, lots of broken stuff," Yoon answered, "a few broken bones. Nobody's going to die."

Yona saw Jae-ha relax at that news. Maybe she should keep quiet, but the resonance was too fresh. "That's good to hear, isn't it? Even after what they did, you want them to be okay."

Jae-ha did take an awkward moment to reply to that. "Well, it's good not to leave with any regrets like that. Especially since Kija made certain I can never go back again."

"I don't see why not!" Kija insisted.

"We haven't even told you what the princess said about you in front of the whole place," Hak remarked.

"Oh, dear, I'm blushing already."

Yoon pushed their banter aside. "What about your 'one person' who only they could bring you back? Can they not even do it now?" he asked.

"Oh, that's right, isn't it? I broke my solemn vow in front of everyone," Jae-ha said with a genuine frown.

"Zeno says being possessed doesn't count!"

"You never said who it was," Yoon persisted.

"You're right. I didn't."

Yona looked at him, but no answer was forthcoming. Apparently he wanted to keep it to himself.

Their cook started ladling out porridge. "Zeno has a guess, but he won't say."

Shin-ah also had a guess, and he didn't hold it back. "The next one," he said. "The next green dragon."

Jae-ha wilted in mock-violation. "I have no secrets," he lamented. "Yes, that was the vow. I would never return until I felt that my successor had been born, and then I would be honor-bound to attempt a kidnapping — risking death and worse than death, but —"

"— But, Green Dragon," Zeno interrupted, handing him the first bowl of porridge, "you wouldn't go without us, would you?"

Jae-ha found himself surrounded by tokens of fierce assent — Shin-ah nodded, Kija clenched his claw, Hak grinned as if spoiling for a fight, and Yona had that spark of fire in her eyes. He sat staring for a moment as the mental image, well-worn and deeply traced into his sense of himself, was revealed as preposterously out of date.

Finally he laughed. "Now that you mention it, that wouldn't be my first choice, no."

"Yes! No more dragons getting chained up!" Zeno declared.

Jae-ha paused over his food, and Yona saw a faraway look come over his eyes. "The ones made of metal aren't the worst kind," he said.

Yona cocked her head.

He considered it for a moment. "The ones made of stupidity are worse. I left that place knowing nothing at all — about money… drugs… love…"

"Something tells me you managed to learn it all the hard way," Hak said.

"When you get to know the captain, you find that she's a very patient woman," Jae-ha replied, in a roundabout confirmation.

"You're going to go back there sometime, aren't you? To Awa," Yona guessed.

"I will. I don't know when, or how long I'll stay, but I will."

"So, not all chains are bad," Hak pointed out.

"You would be the one to know," Jae-ha replied, taking a sip of porridge.

Hak replied not with words but with a keen smile.

Yona blushed, not quite knowing why, but she smiled too, in her own way. She wasn't used to Jae-ha opening up like that, and she remembered the day this whole thing had started, his deadpan voice saying, I feel so loved. Those words were probably too plain and clumsy for him to ever say without turning them into a joke, but Yona thought that if Jae-ha meant to say that seriously, this was what it would sound like.

They set an easy pace that day. Despite Jae-ha's hopes for wine and beautiful women, by evening they hadn't seen a town or gotten beyond the slopes and hollows of that country, so they pitched their tent and camped on a hillside.

Yona offered to take the first watch, reasoning that she was the most rested of all of them, but the others — especially Shin-ah and Jae-ha — insisted she go easy on herself after the ordeal with the ghosts. The after-effects of that were the problem, though. Her body wasn't so tired, but her mind was too unsettled to sleep, and after an hour or two of lying awake, she finally crept out of the tent.

Outside, the clouds of the night before had cleared, making way for starlight and a sliver of moon. It was enough to see her way around.

The dragons in their bedrolls had gathered themselves into such a snug pile that Yona had to look carefully to find Jae-ha at the bottom, and it made her smile. Seeing it directed at him, she knew it was only natural that everyone would be protective for a while. Yoon hadn't even complained about washing Jae-ha's blood out of her dress.

She looked around and spotted Hak sitting further up the slope. They waved to each other, and he didn't try to send her back to bed. He didn't so much as frown as she climbed up and sat down a couple of feet from him.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

"No."

"You could practice your archery," he suggested. "After all, we have that new bow and the arrows you stole."

He was trying to tease her, but she wasn't a bit sorry, and she certainly wasn't giving those back.

"I'll do that later," she said. Right now she would be too distracted, and she needed to go further into the distraction.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Yona finally reached into her robe and took out the box that held the hairpin. It was hard — with Hak there, it was even harder than she had expected, and she felt heat come up in her face, but in the past day and night she had faced much harder things.

She opened the box and looked at the ornament. She ran her fingers over the smooth enamel of the created flower petals and butterfly wings. She touched the colder metal edges of the leaves and ran the dangling chains and beads through her fingers. The darkness turned the delicate, vibrant colors to dark, mysterious blues, and it struck her what a rarity it was: a flower fully open in the night.

Yona heard Hak draw a breath. She was intensely aware of him watching her.

"I'm going to keep it," she said.

Silence for a moment. "Is that so?" he answered dully.

"I mean, the way things are now there's really nothing to do about it. It's just, for myself, I need to be honest that I want to keep it," she hastened to explain. It all came out vague and confused; she was working around barriers she didn't understand, toward a goal she didn't understand either, but there was something she needed to make clear. "It's like, if I admit it, then I don't have to fight it so much, I'm not stuck fighting it, so it might be more where I could think about other…" Things was the wrong word, so she just let it drop, but as it began to make sense, she gave an awkward chuckle. "That's not how it's supposed to work, is it? If you say you… have feelings… in one place, that's not supposed to be what makes it so you can have feelings in other places. Right? Maybe I'm just weird."

"No," Hak told her. "I think I get it, just…"

"Just what?" She looked at him.

"Just, coming from you it sounds…" Suddenly he grinned, and his teeth showed pale in the dark. "It sounds surprisingly adult."

"What does that mean? When you talk about things like that and say 'adult,' you make it sound a little dirty."

"Oh, excuse me! You're the one who just said 'hey, I can love as many people at once as I want'!"

Sudden, harsh heat flooded into her face. Before she could reply beyond wordless sputtering, he leaned in closer.

"Were you planning on adding me to your little harem, Princess?"

"No!" she burst out. "Er! I mean —! Hak, you're so mean!" she finally cried.

He started laughing.

"It's not fair!" she persisted. "If I say 'no' it sounds like — it sounds bad — but then if I say 'yes' it sounds like I want to —"

Yona stopped short, and then she started laughing, too.

"What? What's so funny?" Hak asked.

"I just— I just imagined it like they do it in Kai," she laughed, "and I pictured you in the inner palace all dressed up in fancy clothes!"

"Oh, so you are into that?" he prodded. "You think I wouldn't make it look good?" With each sally he pressed her to laugh harder.

Below them, Yoon crawled blearily out of the tent, roused by the noise. "Oh, it's those two. What are they on about anyway?"

"I… don't… know…" Shin-ah replied.

"I— I don't— don't think I know either," Kija stammered.

Jae-ha would have stroked his chin, but the others had him pinned down too completely to move his arms. "So we're a harem now," he mused. "Interesting…"

"Ahh," Zeno sighed, "the Miss is growing up so fast!" He leaned back against the younger dragons and gazed up into the sky, basking in the warmth and laughter and starlight.

Not All Chains are Forged of Iron - END