That balcony door had been shut — she knew it had been.
And yet beyond the threshold, framed by the city's glow, stood a figure leaning casually against the balcony doorframe, his silhouette half-cast in shadow, half-illuminated by the city lights behind him. His skin looked even paler in the moonlight, though there was nothing fragile in the way he carried himself. His injured arm hung at his side, but his posture carried none of the weakness she'd seen earlier.
Bora's breath caught in her throat. Shock rippled through her, bafflement twisting her expression. This was the penthouse; the top floor. There were no stairs, no secret paths, no way he should have been able to reach her balcony without alerting her. The sheer impossibility of it made her stomach drop — And yet, there he was.
Her heart thudded, equal parts alarm and fascination tangling in her chest. "How… how did you get here?"
No answer came; only the weight of his gaze, and the night air pressing colder against her skin as she realized just how little she understood of the man she had once sought to kill.
Taemin stepped forward from the balcony with the kind of ease that made her skin prickle. He moved like he belonged there, as though scaling a penthouse or slipping into someone else's home was as natural to him as breathing. Without waiting for permission, he pushed the balcony door wider and strode into the warm glow of her living room.
Bora scrambled upright on the sofa, tugging the throw blanket around herself like armor. "Y–you can't just—what are you doing here?" Her voice cracked, her heartbeat hammering so loudly she was certain he could hear it. The salve jar still trembled in her hand, her thumb pressing nervously into the glass lid.
But Taemin only smiled — soft, disarming, so unlike the soldier whose eyes had burned with suspicion when she was Foxglove. Here, in this room, he carried none of that fire. Instead, he carried the kind of boyish charm that seemed almost impossible for him to fake— though she knew better than to believe such things.
"I just wanted to thank you properly," he hummed, his voice low, almost coaxing. He took another step closer, then another, until the distance between them felt dangerously small. "That salve of yours, it actually helped. My arm hasn't felt this light in days."
Bora felt her pulse stutter. Every instinct screamed at her to stay calm, not to let him see her panic. "Haha— what salve? You must be delirious." she stammered, forcing her voice into something firmer, though it wavered at the edges. "It's late! You need to rest your arm."
Instead of retreating, he closed the space between them with a fluidity that seemed almost inhuman, his pale features softened by the dim glow of the lamps. "That's the thing," he said, drawing out the words with a faint, mischievous curve of his lips. "Rest doesn't help. But that little trick you pulled earlier? That did."
The words slipped past her defenses, landing heavy in her chest. He was convincing — too convincing. Every gesture, every tone, seemed designed to make her lower her guard. Even the slight twitch of his ears — or was it the tilt of his hair, she couldn't be sure — reminded her of the foxes of legend, elusive and cunning, with charm that was as dangerous as it was disarming.
Bora's breath hitched. Somewhere in the back of her mind, alarms screamed that this was dangerous — that Taemin was dangerous. And yet, with him standing so close, looking at her with that boyish desperation, she couldn't tell if she was more panicked by his intrusion or by the way part of her wanted to give in.
"Please," he murmured, tilting his head, expression shifting into something unexpectedly boyish, almost like a fox cub begging with wide, innocent eyes. "I don't know what you put in that stuff, but it helped. It's the first time I've felt like I could breathe without the pain gnawing at me. So..." He raised his brows, a touch of hopeful mischief brightening his eyes. "You wouldn't happen to share about it, would you?"
She swallowed hard, trying not to let her eyes dart toward the balcony door — the only reminder of the impossible way he'd appeared. "You're awfully pushy for someone who just barged into my home with wild accusations." she said, attempting to sound steady.
Taemin chuckled softly, not at all ashamed. "I didn't barge. You left the balcony open."
Her breath caught. The balcony had not been open. She knew it. But when she looked into his eyes, so deceptively warm, it was impossible to tell if he was joking or if he had just quietly upended another one of her carefully guarded secrets.
And then he added, softer this time, the boyish charm bleeding into genuine plea, "Please, Bora. I won't ask for much. Just... help me like you did earlier. I don't think I can handle another night of this pain without it." There was a trick to it, she realized dimly — not cruelty, but instinct. The way he charmed was not human habit but nature, as if his spirit itself was woven from the art of being adored.
Her defenses wavered. The stern words she meant to say tangled with the irrational tug in her chest at hearing her name fall from his lips in such a way that was almost sweet, earnest, and vulnerable. She could feel the trap tightening around her, even though he wore nothing but an innocent smile.
Taemin leaned casually against the sofa's armrest as though they were merely sharing tea, not standing on the edge of something she couldn't name. The city lights framed him in a halo of gold and silver, the faint glow brushing over his sharp jaw and softening it, turning him into something dangerously human.
Her chest tightened. When he looked at her like that —wide-eyed, lips quirking into that boyish, half-pleading smile— it was harder to breathe. Harder to think. Back when she'd faced him as Foxglove, she had built walls of sharpness and ruthlessness between them. She'd had control. But here? As Choi Bora, standing in the skin of the timid, helpful civilian he thought her to be, she felt pried open.
"You... shouldn't be here," she whispered again, the words trembling out of her throat. She took one small step back, the distance laughable in the wide-open space of her penthouse. "How did you even get inside?"
Taemin blinked, then tilted his head, his lips curling into a grin that managed to be both charming and infuriating. "Trade secret." he said lightly, as though scaling a high-rise or slipping through locked doors were no more difficult than crossing the street. "One I could show you later, but it involves a harness and a very helpful blind spot on your surveillance."
Her blood chilled. That wasn't an answer. It was a deliberate sidestep, and it left her panicking all the more. "That's not—" Her voice cracked, and she clenched her fists at her sides. "You can't just show up like this. Do you have any idea—"
Her throat tightened, panic sparking sharp in her chest. And that, somehow, was far more dangerous.
Her sharp gaze tracked him, searching for a tell, a weakness, a crack in that boyish charm. Instead of bristling, Taemin chuckled, his smile tilted. "And why would I leave you to your lonely, ticking clock and unlived regrets? Not a chance." He folded his arms, the motion loose enough to be comfortable but precise enough to look rehearsed. "Besides, I prefer the company of people who are convenient liars." He stopped just a breath away, the faint warmth of him brushing against her senses, and in a voice quieter than the hum of the city below, he murmured:
"Foxglove," he breathed, deliberate and unshakable. "You're Foxglove. And I need you to fix this. We're allies now, whether we like it or not. I don't want to die."
The words barely had time to settle before instinct took over. Fight or flight surged through her veins — but with him in her home, with the balcony behind him and nowhere to run, flight wasn't an option.
Her sigils flared to life all at once, glowing violet across her skin like molten lines of runes. Her eyes lit up the same sharp hue, searing through the haze of panic. In an instant, mist rolled thick across the penthouse, veiling furniture, walls, every corner of her sanctuary.
"Get out," she snarled, and before he could respond, she launched herself forward, slamming into him with enough force to send them both crashing onto the balcony.
Taemin grunted but twisted sharply, his strength overwhelming. In one fluid motion, he wrenched her off, his hand iron-strong as he broke her hold. She hit the railing with a metallic clang but whirled back, hands weaving sigils mid-air.
Her sigils flared brighter as she tried to bind him in glowing restraints, strands of violet wrapping for his limbs. But he slipped through with skill born of training, his blade flashing just enough to sever the tendrils before they tightened. Every movement reminded her that this was Kang Taemin — a metahuman bred for survival, a man impossible to subdue by brute force alone. He didn't move like a soldier — not in the rigid, trained way she was used to. His body curved and pivoted with the precision of instinct, like wind curling around obstacles rather than fighting through them.
She gritted her teeth, fog rolling thicker around them. "I don't mean you harm," she hissed, though her voice was strained from the exertion. "Don't mistake me—I would love nothing more than to see you bleed, but your death costs me mine. You die, I die. That's the tether."
"That's rich," he returned, eyes glittering in the lamplight. "For someone who doesn't want to fight," he shot back, "you sure were the first to throw me off a balcony."
Taemin didn't charge in a straight line. He moved as if following a path only he could see: a low, circling rhythm that never gave his weight away. His steps skimmed the floor with the lightness of something that always lands on the balls of its feet — a dancer's grace laced with the economy of a hunter. When he lunged, it was a sudden, sideways dart that looked almost like a playful pounce, his blade flashing in a quick, precise arc. Despite the constant danger, there was an odd rhythm to it, and for all her training, Bora felt the old thrill — when control was a living thing between two people, and each move was a negotiation. Her sigils flared, anger braided with calculation. She lashed again, weaving tighter, more complex bindings; this time his slips were narrower, his replies thinner. A man who relied on the brute would have tried to outrun the light. Taemin unlearned it: he baited, feinted, and left gaps that looked like invitations only to retract and punish the answer.
Between maneuvers he kept talking all soft, flippant, like a creature trying to unnerve its prey. "You're bad at hospitality. I knock, you attack. I say please, you try to strangle me with magic chains." His voice was soft, amused — but the gleam in his eyes had changed. It was sharper now, bright and vulpine, catching the low light like molten amber.
The fog curled between them like a living thing, vibrating with her restless energy. "You shouldn't have come here." she spat, runes crawling higher across her arms.
He stumbled eventually — deliberately, she suspected — and when she pinned him to the floor, he didn't resist. Instead, he laughed softly, breathless and grinning up at her, strands of hair sticking to his cheek.
"Still got it," he murmured, eyes half-lidded.
"Got what?" she snapped.
"The knack for surviving sharp women." His grin widened — a flash of teeth that looked, for an instant, just a shade too pointed.
Instinct unsheathed itself fully. Her sigils flared, anger and calculation braided in the violet light. For a moment she felt the old thrill — the clean, cold weight of control that had defined Foxglove. The memory tasted like iron, and she felt the world tilt. Fight or flight tried to choose for her; she opted for neither. Instead she lashed out once more, weaving chains of light that would bind more tightly than the last.
Eventually —by design or by exhaustion she didn't care to untangle— he lowered his blade. The tip skimmed the floor; his hands rose in a gesture that was equal parts surrender and performance. "Fine," he said, voice subdued, an actor returning to his mark. "No more theatrics. I came here for healing, not a duel."
Her sigils still blazed hot and angry along her skin, but her breathing slowed just enough to keep her from striking again. She glared hard at him, eyes glowing through the haze. "Take off your jacket."
He blinked at her, then smirked. "You could at least buy me dinner first."
The glow in her eyes flared dangerously, the fog snapping like thunder around them. "Now."
He sighed theatrically, shrugging out of the black jacket with deliberate slowness. "You know, you'd make a terrifying nurse."
She ignored the jab, snatching the jacket out of his hands and tossing it aside so she could see the injured arm beneath.
Bora's eyes narrowed as she stepped into his space, her violet glow illuminating the angry discoloration spreading along Taemin's forearm. The skin was mottled with a deep bruise-like stain, veins darkened like spilled ink beneath his flesh. Yet she noticed something—its edges weren't as sharp as before. The color had dulled, slowed. Her salve had worked, but only just. It masked the pain, dulled the fire gnawing at his nerves, yet the poison still lingered, crawling with patient persistence.
"Hold still," she ordered, voice clipped, betraying none of the anxiety that churned in her chest.
Taemin tilted his head, a sly grin curling his lips. "You've got a rough bedside manner, you know that? Most people say please before poking at a man's wound."
Her grip tightened just enough to make him hiss. "You're lucky I haven't decided to reopen it entirely."
"Ah," he winced, but his grin never faltered, "so this is you being gentle." he murmured, not moving away in the slightest. "Is that your healer's bedside manner? Because honestly, Foxglove, you might scare off more patients than you save."
Her eyes snapped to his, glowing amethyst in the haze of magic still clinging to the penthouse air. "You are not a patient," she hissed. "You are an inconvenience. A liability. And if you don't keep still, I swear—" Bora crossed her arms over her chest, trying to reclaim some semblance of distance between them, though the air still thrummed faintly with the energy of her glowing sigils. Her gaze settled firmly on his arm, the faint pulse of black veins refusing to fade entirely no matter how many layers of salve she smoothed over them. For a long moment, silence hung heavy until she finally spoke, her voice low, clipped, almost unwilling.
The smirk tugging at Taemin's lips faltered for just a second before returning, softer this time. "And yet," he lifted his free hand with a flourish, gesturing to himself sprawled across her sofa, "—here I am; alive, breathing, and looking rather handsome too, don't you think?"
"You should've been dead the day after I cursed you," she said, her tone flat, almost clinical. Her eyes stayed on the spidering black lines beneath his skin, as if watching them could keep her composure intact. "That's how it was designed. A swift collapse of the nervous system, internal organ failure within hours. By sunrise the next morning, you should've been a corpse."
"Because you're not what you were supposed to be," she continued, biting out each word with precision. "The toxin sees you as... foreign. Incomplete. Like trying to infect a body it doesn't fully understand. Which is why the spread has slowed. Which is why you're still alive." Her eyes dimmed slightly, the glow receding, but the tension in her frame did not. "But don't mistake that for immunity. The venom's still in you. It's still killing you. Just... slower."
Taemin hummed, leaning back again as if she'd just confirmed his suspicions rather than revealed something dire. "So I'm confusing your poison? Guess I'll take that as a compliment."
She bristled, lips pressing thin. "You shouldn't. It doesn't mean you're safe; it only means that you're dying slower."
For a moment, his expression softened, the teasing quieting into something more serious. His gaze lingered on her face, as though weighing her words against her earlier actions, against the way her hands had trembled when she examined him.
Then, after a beat, he gave a slow, almost solemn nod. "So what you're saying is... we've got time. Time for you to fix this."
Her breath caught, and she hated the sting of truth in his words. Time, that was all she'd bought him. Not a cure. Not salvation. Just more days until the inevitable.
Her eyes snapped to his, brilliant violet against the lamplight. "Don't twist my words. I'm not sorry I created it. I'm not sorry I used it. But the bond that ties our lives together makes your death my death. And that, Kang Taemin, is the only reason I bother keeping you alive."
He let out a low chuckle, but it wasn't sharp or mocking this time—it was lighter, edged with something that might have been gratitude, or disbelief. "You keep saying that. Like if you repeat it enough, it'll erase the fact that you're still here, patching me up with those glowing hands of yours."
Bora ignored him, pulling back to dip her fingers into the small jar of salve and smoothing another layer across the corrupted veins. She worked with precision, as though she could force the poison to yield through sheer meticulousness. "Don't flatter yourself. This isn't about you."
He hissed faintly at the sting, then leaned forward, his tone turning sly again. "Maybe not, but you admitted it; you built this for humans, not someone like me. Which means you'll have to spend a lot of time with me if you want to figure it out."
She gave him a withering look. "I'm saying the poison is working slower. Much slower. It still recognizes you as prey, but it can't strike as precisely. So instead of a swift end, it lingers. It gnaws at you bit by bit." She gestured to his arm, her voice tight. "Every hour it festers, waiting to learn you."
Bora folded her arms, holding herself still though every muscle was taut with restless tension. "It means the salve I gave you is only buying time. It numbs the pain, slows the advance. But it doesn't cure. If I can't find a way to rewrite the toxin —to trick it into dissolving— you'll still die. It may take weeks instead of hours, but the end is the same."
She glared, but the hard edge of her anger was blunted by a practical consideration that always whispered when men she'd set in motion were in danger: containment. "You won't leave," she said. "You will rest. You will tell no one how you got in here, and you don't do anything stupid." Her voice carried the authority of someone who had engineered worse things than this and learned the currency of commands. "Got it?"
Taemin made a grand show of obedience, pressing his palm theatrically to his chest. "Spirit's honor," he said, and the phrase was half-sarcasm, half-sincere. For a moment, the performance dropped and something softer slipped through — gratitude, fragile and direct. "Thank you," he murmured, quieter, not pretending it wasn't real.
"You stay put," she repeated, more calmly. "I'll try to buy you more time. But understand this: I will not be your nurse for very long. I need access to my notes, to the equipment I destroyed. If we're going to make something that actually undoes this — and not just slow it down — I'll need a lab and silence."
He studied her face as if reading a map he'd never seen before. "A lab and silence," he echoed. "You make me sound like I'm heading to art school."
She snorted. "You sound like you're bargaining for a cure with a hostage."
He smiled that crooked, infuriating smile. "Maybe bargaining is my best skill." Then, softer, less performative: "Just—keep me here for now. Don't let Junwon ask too many questions."
Bora's eyes narrowed. "You didn't tell them you were going to crash my balcony."
"I like surprises," he said, shrugging. "Consider it a service."
She gave him a look sharp enough to cut. He was still alive; he was still breathing; the city still hummed; and for the moment they were entangled by an ugly, practical cord she'd made. It was uncertain, dangerous, and utterly hers to unpick. She dipped two fingers back into the jar and smoothed another thin ribbon of salve across the dark veins. The warmth it released felt like a small, mocking mercy.
He let that sit, sunning like something that needed digestion. Then, with the old flare of theatrics, he leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. "Well. Good news then. I like your work. Bad news: you're stuck with me while you figure that out."
Her hands paused over his arm. "You don't get to be sentimental about your life when you forced me into ownership of it."
"Forced is one way to put it," he said. "Another way? You made a flaw in your design. You created a puzzle and now you get to be its solver." He flashed a grin, sudden and infuriatingly boyish. "Think of me as an ongoing project."
She blinked. Then, abrupt as a snip, the annoyance crested into something almost like amusement. "You have the audacity to reduce your imminent mortality into a portfolio item."
Bora didn't bother to be gentle. Her grip on Taemin's arm was firm, fingers pressing into bruised flesh with the precision of someone who cared more about accuracy than comfort. The jar of salve clicked sharply as she set it down on the coffee table, scooping out another dab with two fingers before smearing it across the darkened veins. The pressure she applied made him hiss and squirm.
That tone—casual, almost friendly—was wrong. She glanced at the salve glistening on his skin, the faint shimmer betraying its magical enhancement, and cursed herself inwardly. Of course. She had engineered a docility component into the topical mixture. Not because she wanted to domesticate a dangerous animal — that would have been monstrous and useful only to those who wanted servants — but because she needed Taemin less prickly and therefore less likely to break windows, threaten her at knifepoint, or complicate rituals with bursts of reflexive violence. She had designed the docility to take the edge off a man who might try to bite her hand while she sutured his fate; she had not expected it to rearrange the furniture of his personality. Watching him press his fingers into the thin cushion and sigh as if the world had been made tolerable bothered something she rarely acknowledged: the truth that she liked to be the one to make people uncomfortable. It was a control thing, raw and human and petty. If he was too amiable, she could not read him. If she could not read him, she could not keep him contained. The salve had fixed one problem and created another.
She realized the danger in three, crisp mental ticks. One: a man made benign by enchantment was easier to manipulate, and if he later realized he'd been softened, he might turn bitterly resentful. Two: excessive docility risked conflating gratitude with affection, a messy psychological glue that could entangle them both. Three: the wrong temperament in him, left too compliant, might enable him to be weaponized by others — a man who follows without question is as dangerous as a man who rebels.
She hadn't expected it to hit this hard.
"I don't say things I can't enforce," she said. "So if you wake up halfway through a procedure screaming or worse, it will be my hands you see. Not some nurse who will push you aside because it's not their problem. Not Junwon. Me."
Silence stretched. He chewed the air. "Is that fear or comfort?" he asked finally.
"Both," she replied. "And you should have equal parts of both for the situation."
He let out a small, humorless laugh. "Delightful. The woman who tried to kill me is both my doom and my guardian angel."
"Stop romanticizing the roles," she snapped.
"Careful!" Taemin yanked against her hold, glaring as if she'd personally stabbed him again. "What is this? Torture or treatment? You ever heard of medical malpractice?"
Her eyes flicked up, unimpressed. "That term doesn't apply."
"The hell it doesn't," he shot back, wincing as she dug her thumb into a particularly tender spot. "You're rougher than a field medic after a bombing. At this point, I'm filing a complaint."
She snorted—an almost laugh, then a sound that became something sterner. "First of all," Bora hummed, leaning over him and pinning his forearm with two fingers, "medical malpractice implies there is an actual medical license on file. I am not licensed. Second, I don't do medicine." She said it plainly, as if clarifying a trivial fact. The word "medicine" had no claim on her. "I think you've misunderstood." she replied flatly.
Taemin blinked, then leaned forward, curiosity sharpening in his expression. "Misunderstood? You mean to tell me the genius who brewed the poison isn't also the genius who can undo it?" He gestured broadly, voice pitching toward mock drama. "That's how these things usually go, you know. Evil mastermind, clever toxin, then brilliant antidote. It's practically tradition."
Bora stopped mid-step and turned, her coat flaring slightly with the motion. She regarded him with an expression that hovered somewhere between exasperation and amusement. "Science?" She let out a dry laugh. "Do I look like the type who sat through hours of equations and lab work? I can barely balance a basic formula, let alone whip up a pharmaceutical antidote. What I do isn't science. It's magic."
For a moment, Taemin just blinked at her, as if she had spoken in another language entirely. His jaw worked, lips parting, then closing again. Finally, he managed a strangled laugh—sharp and disbelieving. "A magical antidote? That's supposed to make me feel better? You poison me, and now my life is in the hands of someone who openly admits she has no actual medical knowledge?"
"I know very little about poisons," she continued briskly, wiping her fingers with a cloth and setting the salve aside. "What I made wasn't born of science. It's cursecraft. Rune-binding. Sigilwork. I couldn't synthesize a chemical antidote if my life depended on it." She paused, then added with grim amusement, "And unfortunately, it does."
He sat up straighter, staring at her as though she had just confessed to building his arm out of paper-mâché. "Wait. You're telling me the only person who can save me from your poison... doesn't actually know what she's doing?"
Bora didn't flinch at his incredulity. She placed a small crystal into the circle, its faint glow flaring in answer to the sigils. "I told you, medicine isn't my expertise. But magic is. Poisons, wounds, curses—they all share the same thread of corruption. The body is flesh, but the spirit is tied to it. If I can weave the poison out of that connection, it won't matter if I know the chemical composition."
"That's not comforting," Taemin snapped, his voice rising as his composure cracked. "Do you hear yourself? You're telling me my survival depends on your... your guesswork with glowing rocks and squiggly lines!" He gestured wildly at the sigils and herbs. "Do you even know what you're doing, or are you just hoping it looks impressive enough to work?"
She finally lifted her gaze to meet his. Her eyes were steady, her expression unreadable. "I know enough. I've dealt with poisons before, Taemin. Not through formulas, but through spells. People have lived because of my work. You may not like it, but this is the only option you have."
He gritted his teeth, his shoulders tense. He wanted to argue, to tear down the cold certainty in her tone—but the memory of his body convulsing from the poison's first strike flashed in his mind. The sharp, burning ache still lingered in his veins, a reminder of how little time he had.
"Unbelievable," he muttered, sinking into the chair behind him. He buried his face in his hands before dragging them down to glare at her again. "So let me get this straight. My poisoner is now my only hope. And that same poisoner isn't a licensed healer, not a trained scientist, not even someone with actual medical knowledge? Just a witch with chalk and confidence."
"You forgot stubbornness," Bora replied, not missing a beat as she lit a small incense stick and placed it beside the circle. The smoke coiled upward, shimmering faintly with magic. "That's what will save you."
Taemin stared at her like she'd just announced she meant to heal him with good intentions and a song. His throat tightened. "You've got to be joking. You poisoned me, and the best hope I have is some experimental rune-work from someone who admits she knows next to nothing about medicine?"
"Not experimental," Bora said evenly. "I've used it before. Not often, but enough to know it works."
"On what?" His voice cracked slightly, more from incredulity than fear. "On rats? On plants? On unlucky bastards you decided to practice on?"
"Exactly," she replied without hesitation. She set her palm over a rune stone, its etched surface glowing faintly in response to her touch. "The poison I used isn't something you'll find in medical textbooks, Taemin. So why would you think the cure would be? This isn't about formulas; this is about balance. I tipped the scales one way when I poisoned you. Now, I'll tip them back."
He leaned back slowly, his voice low and bitter. "You know, you're the worst savior a man could ask for."
Bora smirked faintly, unbothered. "And yet, I'm the only one you've got."
Taemin pressed himself back against the cushions as though trying to sink through them. His face was a perfect cocktail of disbelief and dismay. "Grateful. Right. Of course. I'll be sure to write that down in my will: 'My killer is also my healer, but don't worry, it's magical.' That'll really comfort everyone at the funeral."
Bora exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You're being dramatic."
"I am dying of magical poison delivered by a woman who just admitted she doesn't know anything about actual cures," he shot back. "Forgive me if I feel a little underwhelmed by your qualifications. Poisoned by a law student. Saved by magic. If I survive this, I'm suing someone."
Bora's lips twitched — not into a smile, but something close, something amused and irritated all at once. "Good luck finding a court that recognizes magical malpractice in a world with little to no magic left."
Taemin groaned. "Even worse. I've got the one woman in the world who can both kill me and out-argue me."
"Then stop arguing," she snapped, pressing another sigil into his skin.
But in the silence that followed, his muttering gave way to a low chuckle, shaky but real. "God help me," he whispered, "you're the most terrifying nurse I've ever had."
Taemin let the words sit between them. The room hummed—city, kettle, clock—insistent and indifferent. He flexed his hand against the silk, feeling it press like a promise. For a moment, his bravado reappeared in a wry tilt of his mouth.
"You're the worst kind of professional," he said finally, "the kind who's confident in everything but certified in nothing."
She allowed a sliver of a grin, the corner of her mouth softening. "And you're the worst kind of patient," she shot back. "The kind who insists he knows his body better than the person holding the needle, and then promptly falls asleep when it's time to be brave."
She made a sharp mental note as she tightened the band of cloth over his wrist. The next batch of magic-infused painkiller salve would have its docility effect cut down by half, maybe more. A quarter at most. Enough to stop him from being unbearable, not enough to make him like this.
She looked at him then—at the stubborn set of his jaw, the tired shadow beneath his eyes, the way he tried to joke to thin the fear. For all the heat of antipathy she felt, something like a stubborn, reluctant pity tugged at the corners of her heart. She had made him a problem; she'd chosen to keep him. That was its own kind of cruelty and mercy.
"Get some sleep on the couch if you can," she said, standing and gathering the props of her work: the notebook, a small satchel of candles and stones —innominate in purpose on their own—, the jar of salve she smoothed again over the skin.
She tugged one of the larger blankets from her linen cabinet, then draped it over the arm of the couch. Her huge sectional sofa dominated the living room, an L-shaped expanse of deep cushions and wide arms, littered with throw pillows of varying textures she'd collected over the years. Luxurious, by most standards, but she had no intention of coddling him. She dragged over the space heater from her study, set it on low near the sofa, and adjusted it with a flick of her wrist.
"Aw," he drawled, voice syrupy with the salve's magic, "you're almost hospitable."
"Sleep." she ordered curtly, shooting him a look sharp enough to cut.
The salve's sedative—what she had intended to be a blunt instrument to dull his cruelty and keep him from being a prick while in recovery—had been tuned toward submissiveness as a safety measure. Make him less likely to lash out; reduce agitation so the toxin couldn't provoke panic-driven accelerations. It was a simple risk-management strategy.
It had also, however, left him unnaturally affable.
She chuckled without humor. "Too much of a good thing," she muttered. Taemin, half-asleep, heard it and made a noise between a snort and a chuckle.
He turned his head, hair falling like a dark tide across the cushion, and opened one eye. "You muttering about my charm?" he rasped, the voice still thick with the residue of painkillers but clear enough to be insolent.
"You're not charming," she said briskly. "You are a calculated inconvenience." She bristled at the casual warmth in his tone. It wasn't malice she feared, exactly; it was complacency. Docile Taemin could be dangerous because he might slip under the radar of suspicion—too pleasant to provoke thought—and then quietly retake control of narratives where he favored the teeth.
The routine of preparing for bed was a litany of efficiency: wash the day from her hands, set the alarm, check the door lock sequences, verify the silent alerts on the security panel. She moved through these motions automatically, each check a metal peg hammered into the wall of her control. She told herself the bedroom would be easier to sleep in — the bed was deeper, the sheets cooler — but as she lay with the darkness pressing the ceiling, she found the world subtler on edge. The image of Taemin on the couch refused to dim.
She catalogued the reasons: he had been trespassing, he had been poisoned by her hand, and the tether made him not merely a trespasser but a shared liability. If he moved without her consent, if he tried to access her study, if he reached for a forbidden drawer, she would not have the reflexive advantage of distance. She could not trust herself to be the woman who slept two flights away when an enemy — or a man she'd tried to kill — was in the same room. The logic was clean, and it guided her feet.
She rose, bare feet whispering against wood, and padded back into the living room. The small heater hummed, painting the air with near-tangible warmth. Taemin's breath rose in shallow evenness; he looked asleep, the kind of sleep that makes the jaw slack and the guards down. The salve had done its job well enough to coax slumber. She studied his face: the bruise along his cheek had softened into a pale bruise of healing, his eyelids flickered with dreams. Even asleep, he maintained an easy grace — a betrayal of the kind of animal he could be when waking.
Bora moved, performing a ritual she had practiced on other things — securing, binding, ensuring safety first. She set the blanket over the back of the couch so it wouldn't slip off, then went to the coffee table. From a small satchel under the console she withdrew thin strips of parchment, a vial of quick-drying ink that glowed faintly when exposed to air, and a small bone token — her release key — etched with a clean sigil. She did not speak as she worked; incantation in practice was precise and private.
She knelt at the sofa's edge and placed a strip of parchment beneath Taemin's palm, where the fabric met his wrist, then traced a sigil over it with the ink. The runes were spare, modular: anchoring loops to root a person to a place, tolerance arcs to prevent suffocation or pain, and a locking knot that responded only to her token. The ink hissed faintly as it set, and a cool breeze pulsed through the living room for an instant — the magic inhaling, then settling.
The sigils spilled from the parchment like fine thread. Lines of violet light crawled along the slate of the cushions and braided themselves into the seams where the upholstery hid its stitches. They wrapped around Taemin's wrists, the light skimming the fabric without biting into flesh, then coalesced into a lattice at his ankles and across the curve of his hips. The magic was not crude rope; it was constraint designed to be nonviolent: warmth where it bound, a gentle pressure that made curling or rising difficult without snapping — a napkin twist of force that discouraged movement rather than punishing it.
She set the bone token beneath the pillow nearest her hand and whispered the final syllable that sealed the lock. The lattice tightened, a ripple like a tame tide, and Taemin shifted in his sleep with a small groan but did not sit up. Bora watched the lines settle into the sofa, felt the familiar satisfaction when a charm took hold exactly as planned. The binding would hold him through the night without causing injury; the tolerance arcs ensured his circulation would not be cut off. Morning release required her token; emergency override required a sequence she kept only in the cavern of her memory.
Eventually she gave in to the logic that had driven her back: proximity was a control she could use. She lifted a light throw and padded back to the living room, deciding she would sleep on the far section of the sofa where the sigils' anchors did not reach. The sectional allowed for distance: two long arms separated by a tufted corner, a small fortress of textiles that she could use to watch him without intruding. She picked the opposite end, the one where the cushion dented slightly to echo the shape of an empty presence, and laid herself down in a soldier's curl. The heater warmed the back of her neck like an ally.
Before she allowed herself to close her eyes, she went through her checklist one more time. The binding lattice was visible as a faint sheen in the lamplight — delicate, functionary. She murmured a quick seal of reinforcement, a short chant that shored up the tolerance arcs against accidental failure and tied a whispering sensor to the living room threshold: if Taemin attempted to move past the couch, the sigils would flare and wake her. If he tried to stand, the bone token would vibrate — a small, personal alarm. She tested the vibration with a gentle tap to her palm; the token hummed, then stilled.
In the small hours she let herself slacken only enough to permit thought: that she'd chosen this, that this burden was hers by design as much as accident. The sofa creaked softly under them both, a domestic sound that might have been comfort in another life. Outside, the city kept its indifferent watch. Inside, runes shone faintly until dawn, and Bora, ever the careful accountant of threats and debts, made more notes in the margin of the night — alterations to make, cautions to store, and the one immovable record: she would not let him lay her living room without knowledge and at least a sliver of control.