Hyebin shoved her way through the crowd and overturned a punch bowl on top of the bride. As the woman sputtered and the flames fizzled out, Hyebin cast the bowl to the side with a clatter, then turned to me, her eyes blazing gold, the tablecloth still alight behind her.
Oh no.
Hyebin seized my wrist and yanked me out the emergency exit, into the street. Time magic surged through my arm as we walked, window displays in each shop shifting, the street signs morphing, the crowd patterns speeding up as people flickered in and out of existence.
She carried us back to the present in broad daylight?I thought. The only reason Hyebin would do that was if the whole mission was a wash, if she knew it would all have to be redone anyway.
She stormed into a side street and finally released me, standing at the mouth of the alley with her hands on her hips. She hadn’t pushed me, but the sudden loss of tension sent me off-balance, and I fell hands-first into a puddle. I tried to get up, but Hyebin’s furious gaze pinned me down.
“What the hell was that?” she said. Her eyes had turned blistering gold, forcing me to lower my gaze in submission. Blood trickled from between her fingers, and I realized her claws had descended, cutting into her palms.
“I’m sorry, Sunbaenim,” I said, folding into a bow.
“Sorry?” Hyebin said, letting out an incredulous laugh. “You think that fixes anything? I have to wipe this mission from the timeline and do it all over again. Do you have any idea how busy I am?”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, wishing I could drown myself in the murky puddle. “I’ll fix it,” I said. “Just let me—”
“No.”
I looked up slowly at Hyebin. “No?”
“You’re done for today,” she said. “This is pointless if you’re not focused. The stakes are too high for you to mess up.”
“I tried my—”
“Don’t say that,” Hyebin said, raising a hand to silence me. Four puncture wounds on her palm glistened with blood where her claws had sliced into her skin. “Whatever you do, do not tell methatwas you trying your best. Because if it was, I need to tell HQ that you’re wasting my time.”
I curled in on myself, feeling impossibly small at her feet.
“This wasn’t even a difficult mission,” Hyebin went on. “How could I send you farther into the past if you can’t even do this? You’re unfocused. Clumsy. You don’t listen. You’re so…”
“Human?” I finished quietly.
Hyebin closed her mouth, but the look in her eyes told me I was right.
Humans are allowed to make mistakes, Hong Gildong had said. But descendants weren’t.
Even a single drop of dragon blood was supposed to make you skilled, graceful, beautiful, brilliant beyond measure. But somehow, I was none of those things.
I could blame it on how often I’d moved countries, or my teachers, or my human father, or Hyebin, or Yejun, or even Jihoon… but I was the common denominator in every equation. I thought of the bracelet Jihoon had given me, now lost in the mud at the bottom of a stream. People trusted me with beautiful things, and I destroyed them.
“I want to try again,” I said quietly. When Hyebin didn’t respond, I looked up. “I want to try again,” I repeated, my eyes damp. “Let me start over. I’ll be better, I—”
“Go home, Mina,” Hyebin said. Her eyes were no longer angry, but somehow that was even worse. As if she’d finally realized I wasn’t worth her time.
I hung my head so I wouldn’t have to see her walk away. When the sound of her footsteps had faded, I folded forward into the puddle and let my tears fall.
I could almost feel Hana then—her hand on my back, stroking my hair, wiping my tears with her sweater sleeve. It was too faint to be a memory, more like the soft hands of a dream, as real yet intangible as moonlight on my cheek.Mina, she whispered. And maybe it was nothing more than a wish, or maybe it was one of the torn shreds of another timeline fluttering past me in the wind. Of this I was certain: Hana had loved me in a way that Hong Gildong could never erase.
When you’re ready, come find me, she’d written.I will keep you safe.
I thought of her silhouette in Yejun’s photograph from Timeline Alpha, and how the version of me that sat across from her had looked so calm and bright. Maybe, in that life, with Hana by my side, I’d been someone better. Smart, skilled, strong.
I rose to my feet, and the ghostly hands fell away. I was shivering and damp and alone.
“I’m ready,” I whispered.
About a block from headquarters, I realized that someone was following me.
