But all along, Hana had known—Ihad known—that that wasn’t the full story.
My fingernails lengthened into sharp points, glinting in the light.
I had always thought of myself as more human than dragon, but now I felt as if I was seeing my own hands for the first time in my life. Of course I’d always looked out of place in every photograph—I’dbeen wearing the skin of a lost, lonely human, not a descendant. Hong Gildong hadfearedme.
Slowly, I leveled my gaze with Hong Gildong.
Without the power of his yeouiju, he no longer seemed like a tsunami of darkness, an all-powerful dragon too strong and wise to challenge. He was just a lanky young man in an expensive suit who thought the world was his inheritance.
“Mina,” he said—the same smug voice that had once ordered my sister’s death.
I lunged forward and closed my claws around his throat.
With his yeouiju clenched tightly in one hand, I crushed him into the carpet, holding him down with my knees on his chest. He struggled against me, but he felt like a butterfly beating its wings against a glass window.
I wrenched his jaws open with a clawed hand and brought the yeouiju to his teeth. He thrashed in my grip but didn’t dare bite down with the yeouiju so perilously close. I raised the heel of my palm to jam it into his mouth, but before I struck down, a gentle hand squeezed my shoulder.
At first I thought it must have been my parents, but when I turned around, they were still a few feet back, helping Yejun. No one was stopping me. Everyone knew Hong Gildong deserved it, and yet…
There it was, that same gentle touch on my shoulder that I’d felt so many times before. Hong Gildong said Hana couldn’t interact with me anymore, but maybe there were things that he—as a cold-blooded dragon—couldn’t understand. The warmth on my shoulder that bloomed like sunlight on a spring day, the invisible hand that tucked hair behind my ear and gently pulled my wrist back… maybe it wasn’t a rogue Hana in another timeline reaching out to stop me. Maybe it was the lingering traces of love, the memories that Hong Gildong could never erase. Whatever it was, I trustedit. That was what sisters were for—loving you through the darkest times.
I pulled my hand back, releasing Hong Gildong. He stayed perfectly still, as if afraid I would change my mind. I put his yeouiju in my pocket, then picked up the discarded gun and sank my claws into it, snapping it in half. I didn’t know what to do with Hong Gildong, but I knew I would never let him hurt anyone again.
Footsteps pounded down the hallway. I braced myself in front of Yejun, claws bared as the footsteps drew closer and closer. Then the office doors swung open and the doorway filled with gold.
At first, it looked like all of Hong Gildong’s hoard had burst out from behind the bookshelves and filled the room with glittering piles of sunlight. But as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that a gold dragon had curled around the perimeter of the office, its massive head resting on Hong Gildong’s desk. It blinked its gilded eyes at me, and I found myself staring at my own petrified reflection within them.
Logically, I’d always known that I was descended from dragons, but I never imagined I’d actually see one. I felt impossibly small, yet something about the dragon felt natural and safe, as if I instinctively knew that despite our different bodies, we were the same.
Hyebin appeared in the doorway, Seulgi close behind her.
“Sunbaenim,” I said. “What are you—”
“This one overheard what was going on and called for me,” Hyebin said, nodding toward Seulgi. “I figured this was a matter for someone above Hong Gildong. Now bow, you idiot. This is the Dragon King.”
I jerked my head back to the dragon, then threw myself to the carpet in a bow. “I’m sorry, uh, Dragon-nim,” I said, not missing Hyebin’s groan of disappointment at what I was sure was the wrong title.
The dragon let out a huff of warm air over me.
“It’s all right, Mina,” said a voice in Japanese.
I turned to a woman in a kimono standing beside the dragon, one hand resting gently on its head. I was so shocked at the dragon that I hadn’t noticed her at first, but now it was impossible to look away from her beauty. Her turquoise eyes appraised me coolly, her pale blue kimono fluttering as if rustled by an ocean breeze. Her skin had a pearlescent sheen, like the inside of a seashell.
“It’s Otohime,” my mom whispered in awe.
I all but slammed my face back into the carpet in another bow. This was my ancestor, the daughter of the dragon god who bestowed time magic on Japan… and she was standing six feet in front of me.
Otohime laughed. “Relax, Mina,” she said. “You’ve done well.”
I peeled my face from the carpet, wincing at the sting. “I have?”
Otohime nodded. “Hyebin called your sajangnim’s supervisor,” she said, gesturing to the dragon. “We happened to be out for lunch together, so I came along as well.”
The dragon huffed, its eyes glinting across the five of us.
“He says that he wants to thank you and Kim Yejun personally for uncovering Hong Gildong’s corruption,” Otohime said. “And he assures you that accepting bribes to alter the timeline is not in alignment with the principles of dragon culture, in Korea or Japan.” She glanced warily at Hong Gildong’s ruined desk, the golden office supplies spilled across the floor. “It is unfortunate that some with higher concentrations of dragon blood are too drawn to riches. Of course, we also agree that Hong Gildong cannot erase our children as he pleases. That decision should have been brought to us first.”
Yejun coughed wetly and I turned back to him, kneeling by his side.
