Archive of Our Own

There are a few things in life Kim Yugyeom knows for certain.

He knows, for example, that he’s a good dancer. He knows, definitively, that the earth goes around the sun. He knows the quadratic formula, thanks to a catchy song Jinyoung made up to help with memorization. He knows green tea tastes better when there’s rain in the air and that the best way to win an argument against his brother when he’s angry is not to start the argument at all.

And he also knows that magic is real.

That’s the trademarked slogan of his hometown, the catchy jingle they slap on bumper stickers and commemorative mugs and the forest-green sign by the side of the road that welcomes strangers in. Magic is real, and magic is here . Blah, blah, blah, enjoy your stay. Yugyeom had it on a t-shirt, at one point. Most kids from his town do; they give them away for free on Solstice nights.

Every city has its niche. For Paris, it’s fashion, for Seoul, entertainment. Something to draw tourists, attention, headlines. The thing about magic, though, is that it does not freely give of itself. Yugyeom’s hometown is magical, and popular, and strange, but it is also a borderline place. A half-dangerous place.

Ask a visitor, and they’ll tell you this:

You step across the town boundary, and the air feels different. Closer , somehow, to something, but you can never put your finger on what. The houses look normal, the streets are the same, but there is something charged about the energy inside you. Like you’d been operating at fifty percent power all this time, and you’d just now, finally, reached one hundred. And then you leave the neighborhoods, walk into the forest, move between the trees. And that’s when things really get interesting.

Namely, that’s when things get cursed.

There are loads of explanations for the cursed castle inside the forest, depending on who you ask. The tour guides will say that it’s an age-old secret, a holdover from when the fae were more populace here than people were, before they retreated into the darkest parts of the forest. They like to lean in close when they say that nobody truly knows what happened to Castle Jay, and that nobody ever will. Other townspeople will tell you that the inhabitants of the castle picked the wrong fight, or simply that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yugyeom’s adopted brother, Jia-er, always told him, when he was young and used to ask, that the cause of the curse didn’t matter. The fact was, the inhabitants of Castle Jay were gone forever. The estate would stay that way, frozen in time, with its own geotag on Snapchat, until humans are themselves forgotten.

“The people coming here all want to know why,” Yugyeom would point out - reasonably, he thought.

His brother shook his head. Frowned in a way that made Yugyeom think twice about bringing the topic up again.

“They’re stupid,” he’d say.

Foolish, foolish.

After all, the locals know what the tourists do not: that the woods hold more than just magic, that the trees carry more than just change. Stay away from the forest, and away from the castle inside it. That is the rule Yugyeom walks with, his entire life.

The air in there carries a curse, and the trees see, and remember.

☆ ☆ ☆

When Yugyeom finally allows himself to be dragged to Castle Jay for the very first time, he is sixteen. Most of the town’s kids his age have already been at least once, even the locals; Jia-er is, according to the other parents, overcautious. As long as you respect the curse, it won’t hurt you. Decades upon decades of obnoxious and incessant tourism have proven that point quite effectively.

Even so. Yugyeom doesn’t go.

He doesn’t go when he’s fifteen, and Jaebum and Jinyoung go and touch the inner wall of the castle gate on a dare. He doesn’t go when he’s twelve, trying to impress a girl in his class, and she tells him she’ll hold his hand if he brings her back something pretty from the castle’s garden. He doesn’t go when he’s fourteen, nursing a crush on a boy for the first time, and the boy tells him the sky looks romantic in there, at night.

It’s not complicated, Yugyeom thinks. Not confusing, not strange.

The trees see, and remember .

Yugyeom would much prefer to be forgotten.

The reason he finally breaks and agrees to go is equally uncomplicated, though. BamBam begs him to visit, and BamBam is his best friend. He’s also a foreigner, someone who grew up far away from anything even remotely resembling a magical cursed castle. He doesn’t understand Yugyeom’s discomfort, even though he tries very hard to, so it’s easier to just give up and say yes.

(It is very difficult to explain what it’s like to fear magic to someone who has only ever loved it.)

“It’s fine ,” BamBam says, placatingly, when they step off the well-beaten trail, out of the treeline and into the castle’s clearing. “See?” And it is fine - or, at least, it feels like it is, because the place is crawling with tourists, sightseers, people taking selfies with the castle in the background. It hardly even feels like a cursed place, with the sun beating down bright overhead and the sky a startlingly perfect blue.

“It’s… okay,” Yugyeom grumbles, and BamBam slaps his shoulder genially, already winding his way through the crowd, half-skipping.

“What’s over there?” BamBam asks, pointing in the direction of a queue twisting and stretching through the enormous, arching castle gates.

“Who cares? This is boring,” Yugyeom scoffs, trying for nonchalance, but BamBam’s known him for years now, and all he does is laugh and grab his arm to tug them both forward.

The line moves quickly, and soon Yugyeom is stepping over the castle’s threshold carefully, shoes loud on the pristine marble floor. Dust spirals in the air, diamond-bright and sugar-spun in the sunlight. The air feels heavy, stagnant, strange. Even with all the people around, the camera flashes, the stares, it seems… quiet. Suspended.

Yugyeom shivers.

The queue leads from the enormous, arching entrance hall of the castle, through a pair of intricately carven wooden doors, into a slightly smaller room that is just as ornate and gleaming. On Yugyeom’s left, a tour guide is explaining to a group of middle schoolers that this is the throne room, the center of castle life; she points out the thrones, three of them, large and imposing against the far wall.

There’s a tapestry on the wall behind the thrones, enormous and elegant. On it, three men stand in the same formation as the thrones, one in front and two set ever-so-slightly behind. The men framing the center are both handsome. One is broad-shouldered and beaming, a hand propped on one hip; the other has delicately pretty face and a clever-sharp tilt to his smile. They both wear elaborate crowns, peaked like the sun emerging over the horizon, and the purple robes of kings.

The man in the center is dressed in dark blue, in a simple, high-buttoned shirt, but he shines like gold. His hair is the color of honey, artful and messy over his face, a single slim circlet perched slightly askew over his head. A few teenage girls are fawning over him a couple feet away, arguing over the exact color of his eyes.

Yugyeom lets himself stare for a moment before BamBam pulls him forward again.

“It’s this way, this way,” BamBam urges, and Yugyeom allows himself to be dragged out of the throne room, down another winding marble corridor, and back out into the daylight. The castle courtyard is beautiful, green and flourishing. It doubles as a garden, enclosed by twisted pillars of stone, all covered in vines. The plants all overgrown, vibrantly green, flowers blooming brilliant shades Yugyeom’s never even seen before. It’s unwalkable, except for a single circular patch in the center, where the bulk of the tourists have gathered.

“ Oh , that’s him!” BamBam hisses, and he weaves forward, between the tourists, leaving Yugyeom no choice but to follow him through the crowd and to the side of the castle’s main attraction: a casket with a bottom of gold and a lid of polished, crystal-clear glass.

And inside the casket: a real, actual, cursed boy.

As he gets closer, Yugyeom’s hands twitch up automatically into the suggestion of a defensive stance. He’s defending himself from nothing, though, since this boy is almost certainly not going goddamn anywhere . He’s just lying there, quiet and still, so Yugyeom takes another halting step forward, and allows himself to look at the epicenter of the famous Castle Jay curse.

The cursed prince looks exactly like he does in the tapestry. He is honey-blond, his face delicately structured, more like a painting than a person. His lips are petal-pale and parted slightly, a single, tiny mole dotted just beneath one of his eyes. There’s the faintest hint of gold-pink glitter around his eyes, refracting the light in a way immediately recognizable as fae. His ears are pointed, too, ever-so-slightly; otherwise, he looks human, and remarkably so. He’s wearing rich, old-fashioned clothes, high-waisted pants and a jacket made of crushed velvet, the blue-purple color of midnight. A circlet rests over the graceful arc of his hair, thin and simple and golden.

Yugyeom blinks. Drops his hands out of the defensive stance.

BamBam snaps a picture and starts fiddling with Instagram filters.

The prince is, Yugyeom thinks, is breathlessly, frighteningly beautiful.

And then he shuffles closer, just a little bit, and realizes that the prince is breathing .

“ Fuck ,” Yugyeom screams, launching himself several feet backwards. A couple tourists shoot him dirty looks. The prince does not move, simply lies there, beautiful and motionless and alive . Improbable. Frozen in time, like a flower pressed between the pages of a book.

He looks… sad, Yugyeom thinks. Achingly so. He looks quiet and alone and young , barely older than Yugyeom, and the knowledge sits heavy, heavy on Yugyeom’s chest.

“I’m ready to leave,” Yugyeom hears himself say, as if from somewhere far away.

“Lit,” BamBam says, next to him, sounding mildly impressed that he’s lasted this long. “Let’s go.”

Yugyeom nods, numb, and lets BamBam steer him away. Out of the castle, away from the crowds. Back towards home.

“So, do you think you’ll come back?” BamBam jokes, as they head back up the wooded path. “Maybe get a job with the parks department or something?”

“Hell no,” Yugyeom says, hugging his arms around himself. “That place feels like a nightmare.”

BamBam laughs and slings an arm around Yugyeom’s shoulder, but Yugyeom wasn’t joking.

(That night, he dreams of honey-colored hair, of a boy with ancient eyes, reaching out for his hand and telling him to run. It is not a nightmare, Yugyeom thinks. He does not know what it is.)

☆ ☆ ☆

It is a long, long time before Yugyeom sees the boy again. And that is because for a long, long time things are fine. The town is in balance. Jia-er’s smiles come easy and often. Jaebum sometimes mentions having weird dreams, waking up with aching muscles or dirt on his clothes for no reason at all, but that’s a side effect of living in a magic place - it gets to some people more than others.

Things are fine.

And then, one day, they suddenly are not.

Im Jaebum goes missing on a Friday in May, a few weeks before school lets out. Yugyeom feels something shift out from underneath him when he’s sitting in Calculus, like the change in the wind that comes before a thunderstorm. The principal knocks on the door and beckons him out ten minutes later. Jinyoung and BamBam are already waiting in the hallway, BamBam’s knuckles white where he’s holding on to Jinyoung’s sleeve, Jinyoung as pale and stone-faced as Yugyeom’s ever seen him.

“I need to tell you boys something,” the principal tells them, ushering them into her office. “And I’m going to need you to be strong.”

They sit in that office for what feels like a decade. Yugyeom can see Jinyoung’s hands trembling where they’re pressed together, tight, in his lap. The principal asks them questions, things like When was the last time you saw Jaebum ? and Would he have any reason to run away ? and Do you have any idea where he might have gone ?

“He didn’t run away,” Jinyoung says, over and over and over again. “He didn’t.”

“How do you know ?” the principal asks, and Jinyoung’s mouth goes thin.

“I know,” he says.

BamBam’s knee bumps Jinyoung’s thigh.

“Don’t worry,” Yugyeom tells Jinyoung, voice hoarse and false-sounding, after the principal has finished her questions and gently instructed them to head home. “They’ll find him. They will.”

“They have to,” Jinyoung answers, his voice flat. BamBam presses a palm to Jinyoung’s back.

But they don’t find him. They don’t find him that night, or the next. And it becomes increasingly obvious that there is something very, very wrong going on, because the forest looks darker than usual, and stiller, and angrier , and Yugyeom’s brother becomes very, very quiet.

A change in the wind. The air before a thunderstorm.

“The fae are… discontent,” Jia-er tells him, softly, over dinner Saturday night.

“Did we do something wrong?” Yugyeom asks. And then he hesitates, and adds, “Did JB do something wrong?” and his voice breaks on the name. Jia-er shakes his head, firm and certain.

“Nah, kiddo,” he says, gentle. “No. But he may have done something right , and there is much more danger in that.”

Yugyeom stares at him for a moment before nodding and getting to his feet, clearing his half-eaten dinner from the table in silence.

“Goodnight,” he says, as he heads up to his room, and Jia-er nods.

“Be careful, Yugyeom,” he answers, like he knows .

Yugyeom changes silently, clambering out of his day clothes and into something warmer. He shoved a flashlight and a portable charger for his phone into his backpack, laces up his boots, covers his face in a mask. There’s a knock at his window just as he’s tugging on a jacket, and he slides it open to let Jinyoung stick his head in. Behind him, BamBam’s perched precariously on the sloping roof, holding out his arms for stability.

“Ready?” Jinyoung asks, his eyes burning in a way Yuygeom is unaccustomed to, and Yugyeom nods.

“Let’s go get our boy back.”

BamBam whoops, pumps a fist, and almost falls off the roof.

☆ ☆ ☆

They split up at the edge of the forest. Yugyeom’s skin crawls as he watches BamBam and Jinyoung disappear between the trees, headed opposite directions; the dark feels... darker here. Unwelcoming and unfriendly. Watchful. Sharp.

“Okay,” Yugyeom whispers, spinning the flashlight in his hand. “You got this. You’re good.”

At first, the progress is fine. He follows the middle path, the largest and clearest one. He calls Jaebum’s name occasionally, sending out texts and calls at random and straining to see if he can hear a phone ring. But the darkness just seems to keep getting darker, the trees arching over his head until the sky is invisible and he’s muffled, blanketed. Covered.

Lost.

“JB,” Yugyeom hisses, hands cupped around his mouth. He can’t see more than a couple feet in front of himself, even with the flashlight. If he was walking in circles, he doesn’t even think he would know.

What are the rules for getting lost again? Follow the river, follow the sun, follow your instincts?

Well, there’s no river, here, only trees and moss and shadow. The moonlight is barely visible, dripping like rain between the leaves above Yugyeom’s head, and he’s pretty sure the moon doesn’t count as a substitute, anyway. And Yugyeom’s instincts aren’t giving him much of anything, except for a small, half-formed feeling of eyes on his back.

“Fuck,” Yugyeom mutters. “Ah, fuck, fuck. Shit.”

For a single, horrifyingly clear moment, his brother’s voice rings in his head. He is five years old again, his hand clasped between both of Jia-er’s, and Jia-er is serious in a way that young Yugyeom cannot possibly understand.

The trees see, and remember.

Stupid , Yugyeom thinks to himself, pointedly. Don’t creep yourself out.

Still, the shadows are getting longer, and the cell service on Yugyeom’s phone is ticking lower, and itchy, cloying panic is starting to spread up his limbs.

Keep moving. Is that a rule of walking in the woods? Or are you supposed to stay in one place, like when your boat sinks out to sea?

There’s a noise, out in the distance. Loud in the stagnant air. A sound like bells, or whispers, or maybe quiet sobbing.

“JB?” Yugyeom calls, cautiously.

The sound disappears.

Keep moving, Yugyeom decides, and he picks up the pace.

And then he takes a step, hangs a left around a corner, and the trees fall away. Castle Jay looms in front of him like an enormous, crouching monster, stained silver-white by the light of the moon. The tourists are long gone, and the curse feels… realer, somehow, when the clearing is abandoned like this.

“O- kay , time to go,” Yugyeom says, pivoting sharp on his heel. He takes two steps. Three. Goes still. Buries his face in his hands.

What if JB is in there ? a tiny, insistent voice that sounds quite a lot like Jinyoung says, at the back of his mind.

“ God fucking dammit,” Yugyeom whispers, and he forces his feet to turn him around and walk him into the castle.

Inside, without the crowds, Castle Jay is dark, and cold, and silent. The air is just as Yugyeom remembers it - horribly heavy, sharp with a painful kind of energy. Yugyeom shivers and follows his feet deeper into the castle, half-following the line they stood in the day he came here with BamBam. Through the throne room, where the eyes of the men in the tapestry seem to follow him, itchy on his skin. Down a winding corridor. Into the garden.

Right into the epicenter of the curse.

The place where a real live human person has been lying, half alive and half dead, for the past however many centuries.

Fantastic.

“Do it for JB,” Yugyeom tells himself, rather viciously.

And then he steps into the garden, and forgets to be scared altogether.

The courtyard at night is something parallel, effervescent, not of this earth. The moonlight is lamplight-bright, fairy lights dancing between the trees, silver and gold, enough to make the clearing glow. The light is dawn-bright and breathless , yellow, sparkling. Yugyeom holds his breath and steps close to a flower; one of the fairy lights drifts up, slowly, slowly, and winds its way over to Yugyeom, where it comes to rest on his outstretched palm. Above him, stars spread out across the sky, reflective like a mirror - stars on earth and stars above, all of them spinning, spinning around him like a snowfall.

More of the fairy lights drift towards him, alighting on his hand or around his head. Yugyeom giggles as they brush up against him, warm and gentle, and there is something in the way they make his heart go feather-light that is undeniably, uniquely magic. Good magic, kind magic.

“You’re here despite the curse, huh?” Yugyeom whispers, moving his fingers through the air and watching the lights dance between them. “That’s brave of you.”

The lights twinkle at him as if to say you’re here, too.

There are more lights around the clearing in the center of the garden, the place where the glass casket lies. Yugyeom hesitates, but the lights seem to draw him forward, moving ever so slightly out of his reach; he follows them, slowly, cautiously, to the side of the coffin.

The boy in the casket is beautiful, like Yugyeom remembers. Maybe even more than beautiful, under the golden-bright glow of the fairy lights. He is honey-bright, all of him, from his hair to the shimmer on his skin to the aura of light around him. Yugyeom feels frozen, fixed to his spot. Slowly, he reaches out and bumps his fingertips against the coffin.

“Hi,” he whispers.

The boy does not move, but his next breath comes deeper. Long, slow. Like a sigh.

“Um… sorry to interrupt you,” Yugyeom continues, feeling a bit like an idiot. “You probably appreciate the peace and quiet once the tourists are gone, right?”

The lights seem to brighten, just for a moment, before dimming again.

“My friend is missing,” Yugyeom says, his voice still soft. “So I was looking for him in the woods. I thought he might be in here, but it looks like he’s not. I’ll leave soon, I promise. I just-”

And the lights float around him, swirling down, guiding him into a seated position, so that he’s perched facing the casket, legs crossed below him.

“Thanks,” Yugyeom whispers.

The boy sighs again, and it makes Yugyeom’s heart feel funny.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there. The lights twirl and spin around him, the stars making their slow way across the sky above his head. Five minutes, maybe. Or ten. And then he pulls his phone out, turns it over in his hands, and one of the lights drifts by it, just for a moment. Immediately, it buzzes, the top of the screen showing suddenly five bars of service, as well as about ten text messages from BamBam and Jinyoung. Yugyeom unlocks the phone, but instead of it opening messages, it winks open to the maps application, destination pinned on a random roadside Yugyeom knows he’s definitely never searched for.

“Is this…?” he asks, slowly, not daring to hope.

The boy does not answer, but one of the lights lands on Yugyeom’s cell phone, right by his thumb.

Yugyeom leaps to his feet, sending a screenshot to BamBam and Jinyoung as he goes. He’s sprinting towards the exit when something inside him stalls his feet, causing him to stumble to a halt.

“Goodnight,” Yugyeom offers, carefully, to the boy in the glass casket. “And thank you.”

The boy does not move. Just the slight rise and fall of his chest. Up, down. Up, down.

Yugyeom runs.

☆ ☆ ☆

They find Jaebum in a ditch precisely where the GPS said they would, shivering and exhausted but otherwise okay. He’s gripping the hilt of a sword none of them have seen before, though. And there’s a note crushed in his left hand, written in the same hurried handwriting he uses to take down notes in class.

It’s coming , it says. Be ready .

“God,” Jinyoung whispers.

☆ ☆ ☆

The only thing anyone talks about in the days following the incident is Jaebum’s disappearance. When Jinyoung asks, hesitantly, what happened, Jaebum tells them he doesn’t remember much - just blurry images, too fast for him to make sense of. The sword in his hands, a heavy kind of darkness, a cold that settled in his bones. He mentions the queen of the fae, just once, before his jaw clamps shut and he looks down at the ground.

(Humans aren’t meant to see the fae and live to talk about it, and they, all of them, know it.)

“I feel like I remember them telling me they were training me,” Jaebum says, thumb tapping the hilt of the sword as the four of them inspect it. “I just don’t know for what .” He looks frustrated, tired, a little bit angry.

“Why you , though?” Jinyoung asks.

“They said I was a leader,” Jaebum says. “I just don’t know who I’m meant to lead.”

An unofficial curfew is imposed by the locals, with nearly everyone in the town hurrying back indoors by nightfall, locking up their windows and their doors. Even the tourists seem to realize something is wrong, and begin to leave the castle earlier and earlier in the day.

Yugyeom takes a couple days to keep an eye on Jaebum and Jia-er, who’s retreated more and more into himself with every hour since the incident. It isn’t until about a week after they get Jaebum back that he finds a free evening to slip away to the castle.

The path seems less frightening, the night less dark now that he knows where he’s going. He arrives in the garden, quietly greets the lights, then walks over to the casket where the boy is sleeping.

“You saved my friend’s life,” he says. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

Lights gather around him, bobbing up and down, flickering gently. Yugyeom sets a single, bright pink rose at the foot of the coffin. His neck feels uncomfortably hot and he stares down at his feet, hands stuffed in his pockets.

“I looked it up, and it said online that pink means thank you , so. I mean. Thank you.” He pauses, then adds, “My name is Yugyeom. My brother says the fae trade in names, so… I hope you’ll accept mine, I guess.”

A single light lands on his nose, blinks once, then floats away.

“I’ll be back,” Yugyeom hears himself say. He does not know why.

☆ ☆ ☆

And he does come back. At first, he tells himself it’ll only happen once or twice, that he’s going to stay away, that the castle’s bad news. But the boy in the casket tugs on him in a way Yugyeom doesn’t understand, insistent and all-consuming.

Yugyeom’s always been decent at juggling his time - between school, friends, home, dance lessons, sports - and that comes in handy now. He comes to the castle whenever he can slip away, right at nightfall, since the castle closes to visitors at dusk. He brings his homework along and does it there, illuminated by the fairy lights. He sits with his back to the casket, his head tipped back and his eyes closed, and he talks. He tells the boy everything, about his parents and his friends and his dreams. About his future, how he’s frightened of it like he’s frightened of the magic. Sometimes he twists around and looks at the boy, at the lines of his face, the mournful arc of his mouth. Sometimes he sings, soft and high, BTS’s new song or his favorite movie soundtracks or classic rock in broken, halting English.

“Where have you been disappearing to, dude?” BamBam asks him, finally, when Yugyeom shows up half an hour late to their Friday night movie, and his jaw drops to the floor when Yugyeom tells him.

“I thought you hated that place,” he says, and Yugyeom shrugs.

“I did,” he says. “I do.”

“Then why…?” BamBam starts, and then his eyes narrow and he says, extremely slowly, “ No .”

“Nope. You’re right. No. Definitely not. Let’s go get ice cream.”

“You,” BamBam announces, gleefully, jabbing a finger at Yugyeom’s chest, “have a crush on the magic dead boy.”

“He’s not dead,” Yugyeom says, automatically, and BamBam’s smile goes absolutely manic.

Jaebum and Jinyoung react a little differently. When BamBam tells them, in a tone of massive superiority, that Yugyeom’s been “flirting with the curse boy,” they exchange a kind of glance that Yugyeom’s long since grown used to and then both stare at Yugyeom like he’s lost his mind.

“You do know he’s cursed, right?” Jinyoung says, and Jaebum nods.

“And a faerie,” he points out, and Yugyeom frowns.

“I’m just sitting there,” he says. “I’m not doing anything dangerous.”

Jinyoung and Jaebum exchange those looks again. “It’s never a good idea to get involved in magic.”

“I’m not involved,” Yugyeom tells them, flat. “I just talk to him. How is that any different from the six thousand people who’ve got him on their Snapchat story?”

“Just be careful,” Jaebum says, and Yugyeom nods.

☆ ☆ ☆

Weeks pass like that, and Yugyeom starts to dream strange dreams.

First, he dreams of a familiar man with a lightning-strike smile and broad, broad shoulders, sitting on a golden throne. He dreams of the man walking through the woods, these woods, until he is following paths that no human ever has. He dreams of another man, pretty-faced and slender, stepping out from behind the trees; there is glitter smudged on his face, something strange and alien in his eyes, and Yugyeom knows immediately he is fae.

He dreams of the two of them watching each other, cautiously, carefully, like each is waiting for the other to break.

One, two, three.

He dreams of their wedding, of the way the king looks at the man from the woods with bright, brilliant adoration, like he’s never seen anything more precious in his life. He dreams of the way they say each other’s names - “Jackson.” “Mark.” - strange syllables that fit funny on Yugyeom’s tongue.

He dreams of the honey-gold boy in the casket.

He dreams of him awake, and bright, and burning - his eyes are open and the color of sunlight, in the dreams. He dreams of his quick smile and his loud laugh. He dreams of him kneeling at the foot of Mark’s throne and begging him to come back. He dreams of him calling Mark “hyung,” telling him desperately that the humans would hurt him, reminding him that the humans are built from steel and soot and that the fae do not take well to iron.

He dreams of Mark smiling. Cupping the honey-gold boy’s face in his hands. Telling him to stay. To protect him, if the time came. To learn to love Jackson, in the meantime.

“Mother will be furious,” the prince protests, one eyebrow lifted. Incredulous.

Mark shrugs and says, “Let her be.”

He dreams of three thrones, all in a row. Two men with crowns, one with a circlet of gold. He dreams of contentment, of warmth, of love.

And then the dreams go cold, and dark, and that is when Yugyeom wakes up.

(He asks his brother, once, what it would mean for a human to fall in love with a faerie. Jia-er’s expression goes black, his lips pressed into a thin, pale line.

“The fae,” he says, “don’t take kindly to outsiders. To meet one is a death sentence. To love one is worse.”)

☆ ☆ ☆

Months pass like that, one after another after another. Senior year comes and, too quick, the end of senior year does, too. Every once in awhile, a villager goes missing and then turns up again in a gutter, with a weapon and a message and no memories of the night before. To some, it happens twice. To Jaebum, it happens almost every other week. Jaebum retains memories the others do not, too - simple images, of darkness and danger and his own hands on the hilt of a sword.

Yugyeom tries to piece together what is happening with what he understands of the Castle Jay curse. They’re connected, somehow, he thinks, he just doesn’t know how . How three men, a family , went from together and at peace to this .

During his near-nightly visits, he talks through his theories to the prince in the casket. Sometimes, as he’s working through his thoughts, he calls the boy “your highness,” since he doesn’t know his name, but somehow that feels even weirder than calling him nothing at all.

He’s close to a breakthrough. He’s close to something . At least, it feels like it is.

“Something happened to you guys,” he tells the boy in the casket. “Something that caused your curse and something that’s happening again, now.”

The boy says nothing, but some of the lights flicker encouragingly.

Yugyeom sighs, reaches his palm out for a light to land on.

“No chance of you learning morse code, huh?”

The light does not react and Yugyeom huffs a little laugh and presses his eyes shut tiredly.

“Thought not.”

He dozes for a moment, falling in and out of sleep for the briefest of seconds. There’s a soft rustling noise in front of him, a gust of cool, gentle wind. A hum. And then something very, very odd - something that sounds a bit like a quiet laugh.

Yugyeom’s eyes fly open.

Kneeling right in front of him, hands braced on his thighs so he can lean close to Yugyeom’s face, is the boy.

“Hello,” he says, cheerfully, his eyes wide and open and alert and the most startling color gold Yugyeom has ever seen in his entire life.

Yugyeom shrieks and slams backwards against the casket. The boy’s eyebrows fly up and he looks down at himself a bit frantically, patting at his face and torso like he’s looking for a gaping wound or something. “What?” he gasps. “Do I look horrifying? I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, I truly didn’t mean to frighten-”

“ No ,” Yugyeom says, a little too emphatically, his hands flying up in a pacifying gesture despite the fact that his heart feels like it’s trying to launch itself into his throat. “No, no, you. You look. Um. Great. For your age. Wait, shit, that’s not what I meant.”

The boy’s eyes curve into little half-moons.

“I.” Yugyeom clears his throat, then tries again. “ How ?”

“How?” the boy echoes, rearranging his limbs so that he’s sitting cross-legged, elbows on his knees. He moves exactly, precisely the way Yugyeom imagined he would. Quick and cautionless, with a strangely musical rhythm. His voice sounds like singing, a bit. Yugyeom is finding it very difficult to breathe.

“How,” Yugyeom repeats, trying to formulate a proper thought, “are you talking to me, right now? Aren’t you cursed?”

The boy blinks. “Oh! Yes. I’m very cursed. Eternal sleep, never to wake, et cetera et cetera, the whole shebang. But we aren’t talking properly, you know.”

“We’re not?” Yugyeom echoes, baffled.

“No,” the boy says. “You’re dreaming, of course.”

“Oh, right,” Yugyeom says. “Of course.” And then he screams a bit again, just because he can’t help himself.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t be scared!” the boy begs, holding his hands, palms out towards Yugyeom placatingly. His hands are honey-golden and graceful, just like the rest of him, and Yugyeom is feeling extremely overwhelmed. “I’m very sorry, I’m really making a mess of this. I didn’t mean to intimidate you, that’s not what I wanted at all.”

“What did you want, then?” Yugyeom asks, a bit challengingly, a bit out of curiosity.

The boy’s mouth curves upwards, just the slightest bit. The hint of a smile, like he is just remembering how to.

“Good question, Kim Yugyeom. But first, I think, I owe you something.”

Yugyeom’s eyebrows scrunch together. “What? You definitely don’t, if anything, I owe you-”

The boy shakes his head, his smile spreading up just a little. “I do. I owe you my name, in return for yours.” He scoots forward, holds out his hand. Yugyeom takes it to shake automatically, but instead, the boy lifts Yugyeom’s hand to his mouth and presses a light, halting kiss to Yugyeom’s knuckles. Warmth blooms violent across Yugyeom’s skin.

“It’s very nice to meet you properly. My name is Choi Youngjae.” And then Choi Youngjae releases Yugyeom’s hand and shoots him a slightly conspiratorial smile. “That’s how I would’ve done it, probably. If we’d met when I was alive. Suave, right?”

“You are alive, though,” Yugyeom says, stupidly. “Or, at least. Partially. Mostly? You’re a bit alive, I guess. Aren’t you?”

Youngjae props his face up on his hands, looking thoughtful. “A bit alive,” he repeats, and then he shakes his head, something slow and fond dawning on his face. “You are,” he begins, and then he cuts his voice off abruptly, clearing his throat before starting again. “Really interesting, Kim Yugyeom.”

“Says the man magically preserved in a coma in a glass box,” Yugyeom says, without thinking, and before he can be mortified, a grin breaks like the dawn across the boy’s face, huge and blindingly bright.

“True enough,” Youngjae says. “We’re both interesting, then, I suppose. In different ways.”

Yugyeom shakes his head. “I essentially force you to listen to the town gossip every other day. I - God, I complain about homework to you! I spent, like, an hour on Tuesday talking about a dance move I can’t get right. How can you possibly think that I’m interesting?”

“I think you are more than interesting,” Youngjae says, a bit of a wicked glint in his eyes. Yugyeom gapes at him, and Youngjae’s smile softens. “I’m very grateful to you, you know.”

“Grateful?” Yugyeom repeats. “For what?”

“For several things. Telling me your name, for example. The fae do not take such gestures lightly. And…”

“And?”

“For speaking to me,” Youngjae says. “You don’t know how quiet it gets, inside my head.”

Yugyeom stares at him for a long moment, slightly open-mouthed, before Youngjae reaches forward and taps below his chin with one finger.

“Please don’t look at me like that. I have so much to tell you, a year’s worth of things to tell you, and very little time. I don’t want you to pity me.”

Yugyeom flushes, feels the heat of it from his ears to the back of his neck. “I don’t,” he mumbles. “Pity you, I mean. I don’t - that’s not why I-”

“Oh,” Youngjae says, and then, startled, golden eyes wide, a tinge of pink high in his cheeks: “ Oh .”

“Yeah,” Yugyeom mutters, scrubbing a hand through his hair. There is a moment of quiet between them, Youngjae reddening and Yugyeom staring studiously down at his lap, before he finally clears his throat and asks, a little too loudly, “Do you know what’s happening with the fae? Why they’re kidnapping people?”

A little bit of the surprised stiffness leaves Youngjae’s shoulders and he nods. “Yes. The fae cannot fight with iron, so we have always been forced to rely on humans to do so for us. A danger is awaking, one that the fae’s usual magic is powerless against. A… creature known as Sorrow, who lives at the center of the forest. And I’m afraid it is my fault.”

Yugyeom frowns. “ Your fault? How is it your fault?”

Youngjae gestures at the casket behind them, conspicuously empty. “My curse is breaking, and my curse is also the only thing binding Sorrow in place. We are tied together, the two of us. All those years ago, I had to seal myself away in order to seal him.”

“ You cast the curse on yourself?” Yugyeom demands, eyes wide.

Youngjae’s mouth quirks into an immensely sad half smile. “Believe me when I say the alternative was… out of the question.”

Yugyeom frowns. “Why is your curse breaking, though? After all this time?”

“Hmmm,” Youngjae says, “I wonder,” and then he looks at Yugyeom, eyes serious and thoughtful and leaden and something in Yugyeom’s chest yawns open, hungry and desperate and unfamiliar, and it feels like an answer.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “What do we do, then?”

“We wait, I suppose. Prepare. Keep your people safe. When I wake, he will, too. We must be ready for a fight when he does.”

“I’ll warn the town,” Yugyeom says, and Youngjae nods, and then winces.

“And about Im Jaebum… I’m sorry, Yugyeom, but from what you’ve told me, he’s been chosen by the fae. He is powerful, capable. A good man. A strong leader. He will need to be on the front lines. He may be the only one who can hold off Sorrow until I get there.”

Yugyeom flinches, and, in his mind, he is explaining this to Jinyoung, to Jaebum, telling them Jaebum was chosen , strongest, superior. In his mind, Jinyoung is furious and Jaebum is still.

You’re a good man , Yugyeom tells them, and it is a small comfort. Meaningless. Trivial.

“Okay,” he finally says, hands balled into fists at his side. “I’ll tell him, too. But I can’t decide for him. He’ll have to choose, in the end.”

Youngjae inclines his head. “That is all I can ask.” And then he looks up, eyes wide once more, and says, “Ah. I’m afraid I’m out of time. Yugyeom?”

“Yes?”

Youngjae’s face goes soft, immeasurably so. He reaches out, brushes his fingertips carefully against Yugyeom’s temple, along his bangs. “You are beautiful,” he whispers.

Yugyeom wakes with a jolt and slams his head rather painfully against the casket. In his head, he imagines he can hear Youngjae’s laughter. In reality, Youngjae lies there, still, just the way he always has.

(Yugyeom does not stay long enough to see his fingers twitch, just once, before going still.)

☆ ☆ ☆

“Okay, explain it again, and more slowly this time.”

Yugyeom sprints into the house and lets the door swing shut loud behind him. Holding his phone between his ear and his shoulder, he peels himself out of his sneakers, stumbling once or twice.

“I told you,” Yugyeom says, though his teeth. “I talked to Young… to the magic dead boy, and he says that there’s a monster coming out of the woods.”

“Right,” BamBam says, voice crackling over the phone line, “but you didn’t mention how, exactly, you managed to have a conversation with a comatose faerie in a glass coffin, and that seems like a pretty essential point.”

“Hang on,” Yugyeom mutters, and he knocks on his brother’s bedroom door. Jia-er’s voice answers immediately, and by the time Yugyeom flicks the light on, he’s already pulling a pair of jeans on, one arm in and one arm out of a jacket.

“You okay?” he asks, and Yugyeom nods.

He sighs, ruffles Yugyeom’s hair once, and gets to his feet. Does not ask for an explanation. Does not ask for an apology. Yugyeom sits there, hands balled into fists in the blanket, BamBam still asking him questions on the phone. He hears the door open and shut as Jia-er leaves the house to warn the town.

“BamBam,” Yugyeom says, and BamBam goes silent immediately. “Let me explain in the morning, okay?”

“Okay,” BamBam says. Simple. Easy. “Get some sleep, dude.”

Yugyeom hangs up.

He sleeps poorly that night, his dreams rapid-fire and all sharpened, hyper-focused lines. An empty castle, the space between the trees, a woman’s voice burning with rage, Youngjae’s lips on his hand, Youngjae’s lips (on his mouth his throat his chest his thighs), swords clashing, a man sobbing, Youngjae’s voice shouting out a name.

“ Mark !”

When he wakes up, his sheets are tangled around his legs, his forehead covered in a thin sheet of sweat, and there is a spring of lavender on the bed beside him that certainly was not there when he went to sleep.

Preparations for the inevitable begin that morning. It’s impossible to know how long they have until the curse breaks and Sorrow is released fully, so they scramble to fortify the buildings, plan evacuation routes, cancel outsider visits into the town. Jaebum’s face goes grim when Yugyeom tells him when Youngjae said, but he nods, despite Jinyoung’s vehement protests.

All the while, the forest seems to be breathing. It is not still, silent the way it should be. The way it always has been. Instead it is stirring, like it’s ready to wake.

(In the weeks that follow, Yugyeom visits Youngjae as often as he can. He sits with his back to Youngjae less often now, preferring to lay down next to him and stare upwards at the stars. The lights drift down to dance around him. One lands lightly on his chest, just over his heart.)

☆ ☆ ☆

It happens two weeks later, in the time just before dusk. Yugyeom has another moment of clarity, like he is standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down, and all of a sudden the earth falls away.

He is sitting in his bedroom with Jaebum and Jinyoung, button-mashing his way through Super Smash Bros, when BamBam bursts in, the door bouncing off the wall.

“The prince woke up,” BamBam says, out of breath.

Yugyeom is on his feet before he knows what he’s doing. Jaebum and Jinyoung both whip around to look at BamBam, alarmed.

“Where is he?” Yugyeom demands.

“I don’t know,” BamBam says. “Word is that the coffin’s empty. And that’s not all.” He pauses, hand on the doorframe. Takes a few deep, heavy breaths. “Something is coming out of the forest.”

Jinyoung’s hand finds Jaebum’s. Yugyeom’s already out the door.

☆ ☆ ☆

Out on the street, it is chaos. People flow towards the high school, through the streets, several of the older members of the community calling out for calm and orderliness as they enter the makeshift safehouse. Yugyeom helps direct people, taking hands and catching stragglers. The halls of the high school feel liminal, the way schools in summer always do. Yugyeom and Jaebum are helping a mother usher her children into the building when BamBam sprints up to them, out of breath.

“It’s at the edge of the forest,” he says, and Yugyeom’s heart leaps into his throat.

They sprint away from the school, picking up Jinyoung along the way. Something in the air feels like static, crackling in Yugyeom’s veins. Jaebum’s holding the sword the fae gave him with white knuckles, like if he loosens his grip he’ll let it fall.

They reach the edge of the forest. The trees ripple, bow, responding to wind that is not there. The static sensation is so strong it’s painful, here, prickling Yugyeom’s skin hard enough to hurt.

There is a moment of silence.

Stillness.

Jaebum adjusts his grip on the sword.

Then.

Sorrow bursts out of the treeline like an explosion, like a sonic boom. It is enormous, amorphous, blackblackblack, the same color as the feeling of forgetting. It ripples like shadow, spreads like mist, and towards the center, there is a point of perfect darkness, almost precisely human-shaped. It hurts to look at, makes Yugyeom’s eyes ache.

Improbable. Deadly.

Then Sorrow lets out a cry, half growl and half keening wail, and Yugyeom’s heart shatters in his chest.

It is like terror, like grief. It is every time Yugyeom has ever mourned, everything Yugyeom has ever lost, compiled and multiplied and spat back into his face. It is what he felt when he looked at Youngjae, asleep in his coffin, barely old enough to be considered a man. It is what he felt when Jaebum was gone.

He sways on his feet and BamBam snags his arm before he can fall. Jaebum steps between them and the monster, spinning his sword lightsaber-style in his hand. “Go,” he says, loud. Steady. “Yugyeom. BamBam. Jinyoung. Go. You know what you need to do.”

BamBam nods, grabs Yugyeom’s hand, drags him away. Yugyeom is crying a little bit, or maybe a lot, but he goes anyway. They take off at a run back to the town, dodging between buildings, looking for anyone left behind during the evacuation. Into houses, around corners. BamBam waves him off, so Yugyeom sprints to the town boundary, all the way to the trail that leads to the castle. He follows the path, but the castle is quiet, empty. No tourists have been here in weeks.

He pauses, braces his hands on his knees. Breathes.

In the distance, Sorrow screams again, and his legs get wobbly and weak.

Keep moving , his mind tells him. Keep moving keep going keep looking -

“Yugyeom,” a voice says, quiet, behind him.

Yugyeom whips around.

Youngjae steps forward, places a palm flat against Yugyeom’s cheek. “Are you okay?” he asks, voice searching, eyes trailing over Yugyeom’s face, and Yugyeom gives a breathy, helpless half-laugh.

“They weren’t fucking around with the name, huh?” he manages.

Youngjae sighs. He is iridescent, glowing, with those gold gold eyes and the strange incandescence of the glitter around his cheekbones. There is a sword in his hand, a bow and quiver slung over his back. His circlet gleams in the light. He is, every inch of him, a prince. Beautiful and so, so alive.

He reaches forward. Kisses Yugyeom’s knuckles, then his palm.

“Sorrow,” he says, “has lost everything. It is impossible to look at him and not feel the way you’re feeling. I’m sorry.”

Yugyeom nods. Grits his teeth. Makes himself stand.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “Let’s go save the town.”

Youngjae’s eyes light up, a satisfied smile curling his mouth, and he nods.

☆ ☆ ☆

At the edge of the forest, it is chaos.

The trees tremble and twist like they’re under hurricane-force winds, leaves whipping through the air like bullets. Jaebum’s cheek is bleeding, his arms smudged with mud and dust. He holds his own, though, flying towards Sorrow again and again, keeping it from advancing on the town.

Youngjae flashes Yugyeom a smile and says, “He’s just like you said he was.”

Yugyeom nods, fiercely proud, and says, “I know.

When Youngjae launches himself into the fray, there is a sound like a sonic boom. The earth shakes, roils, bubbles like boiling water, and the accompanying blast of light burns . Yugyeom sprints forward and helps Jaebum, tripping over their feet as they run away; they crouch behind a park bench and stare as Sorrow and Youngjae collide, again and again and again.

And then Youngjae shouts, “ Hyung, please, I’m not your enemy !” and Yugyeom freezes.

Hyung.

Sorrow wails, a sound that reverberates like a drumbeat in Yugyeom’s chest, and Yugyeom remembers. Remembers.

Pieces fall into place.

Think .

The empty castle, the dreams, the tapestry. His brother’s words, over and over and over again: “To meet a faerie is a death sentence. To love one is worse.”

Mother will be furious.

Let her be.

“Mark,” Youngjae says, “please. Please.”

Yugyeom cannot breathe.

“What do we do?” Jaebum demands, shaking Yugyeom’s shoulder. “We can’t just sit here.”

“We need,” Yugyeom says, staring down at his hands, trying desperately to process. “We need-”

Mark fell in love with a human king, left the court of the fae, took his brother with him. His mother did something to Jackson - killed him, transformed him, sent him away? - and Mark became a monster, so Youngjae cast the curse on both of them. To save the humans. To save the town .

Think. Think.

What do we need?

To find Jackson, to end Mark’s suffering, to save the town, to put this right-

“Yugyeom,” Youngjae’s voice calls, and Yugyeom’s mind goes quiet.

“I need your help,” Youngjae continues, breathing heavy as he continues to fight. “Please, Yugyeom, could you sing for me?”

“ Sing ?” Yugyeom repeats, and Youngjae nods, dodges one of Sorrow’s - one of Mark’s - blows.

“Please. It’ll calm him down.”

Jaebum looks between the two of them like they’re crazy, but at least it’s a plan - it’s something for Yugyeom to do, instead of cowering behind a bench uselessly.

So Yugyeom sings. He starts off quiet, awkward, halting. And then Jaebum bumps their shoulders together and joins in, an effortless harmony, and Sorrow lets out another long, horrible cry… and then goes quiet. Settles. Stills.

“Mark,” Youngjae says. “I’ll take you to him, okay? Let me take you to him.”

“You can’t,” Sorrow says, and it is a human voice, a quiet voice, a voice broken with a thousand years of heartache. “He’s gone.”

“He’s not,” Youngjae whispers. And then he turns to Yugyeom and says, “Forgive me, but if it’s alright with you, I’d like to meet your brother.”

“My brother ?” Yugyeom repeats.

To love one is worse .

“Oh, my God,” he whispers, the final piece clicking into place, and Youngjae nods.

☆ ☆ ☆

Yugyeom finds Jia-er sitting on the front step of their house, bags under his eyes, wearing sneakers Yugyeom knows for sure are his. He glances up when they approach, Yugyeom and Jaebum, battle-weary and sore, accompanied by a faerie prince and a slightly-less-enormous-than-it-used-to-be shadow-beast.

Jia-er gets to his feet slowly, carefully. “Yugyeom?” he asks.

Youngjae smiles at him and says, “Hold still.”

When Youngjae presses a thumb to his forehead, Jia-er’s eyes go wide. His forehead creases, hands flying up to clutch at his chest. Yugyeom gasps, “What did you do ?” but Youngjae just shakes his head.

“I gave him back what is his,” he explains, and then, when Yugyeom continues to look blank, he taps Yugyeom once on the temple and says, “His memories.”

Jia-er - Jackson - takes a halting step forward. Sorrow gives a tiny, soft little sob.

Jackson blinks. “Mark,” he says.

Sorrow melts away.

The darkness dissipates, evaporates, turns to thousands of butterflies that are carried up on the wind. There is a crash like thunder, a ripple in the air, and then, suddenly, a person is crouching on all fours in the dust, shoulders hunched. And then Mark lifts his head, scrambles to his feet, and sprints forward. Jackson sweeps him into a hug, grabbing onto him hard enough to hurt. They’re both sobbing, clutching at each other.

Mark pulls back long enough to say, “You dyed your hair blond.”

Jackson grins and says, “You turned into a giant shadow-monster.”

“Touche,” Mark laughs.

“I was adopted by a king,” Yugyeom mumbles.

Jaebum says, “What the fuck is going on?”

☆ ☆ ☆

That night, a knock at his bedroom window wakes Yugyeom from sleep. He slides the window open and pops out the screen, expecting BamBam or Jinyoung or Jaebum on the other side. Instead, Youngjae clambers awkwardly over his window frame and tumbles gracelessly into Yugyeom’s room, catching himself on the bedstand before he hits his head. He’s exchanged his armor for normal clothes, a threadbare t-shirt and bomber jacket Yugyeom recognizes as Jaebum’s, plus black skinny jeans that might be Jinyoung’s.

Yugyeom stares.

Youngjae flashes a peace sign. “Surprise?”

Yugyeom scowls at him and points accusingly. “Who taught you that?”

“BamBam,” Youngjae laughs, and gets to his feet, dusting himself off. “I like your friends a lot. You should’ve brought them around to my coffin once or twice.”

“My brother,” Yugyeom says, “is a king.”

Youngjae laughs. “Welcome to the family.”

They look appraisingly at each other for a second, Youngjae still snickering, Yugyeom trying to sort through the confusion inside his head. Yugyeom is careful when he finally reaches out. Painfully so, achingly so. Youngjae tips his head closer when Yugyeom’s fingers meet the curve of his jaw.

“Hello, lover,” Youngjae says, quiet, musical, and then he smiles, and Yugyeom feels like he’s been socked in the gut.

“Hello,” Yugyeom agrees, and Youngjae laughs, bright and soft.

“Do you remember, Kim Yugyeom, when you asked me why my curse was breaking?”

“Yes,” Yugyeom says, because he does.

“You,” Youngjae says, “are the reason.”

And then he leans in and kisses him, soft and serious, right on the mouth, his nose bumping against Yugyeom’s, his eyelashes feather-light against Yugyeom’s skin. When he pulls away, Yugyeom chases the kiss, sliding his hand around to cup the back of Youngjae’s head. Youngjae laughs against his lips.

“True love’s kiss,” he says, giggling.

“The whole shebang,” Yugyeom answers, and Youngjae beams and kisses him again.