In the end, Lee Jung agreed to let Jia take Narae in as an apprentice, though Jia wasn’t a fan of the title. Apprentice felt too impersonal—Lee Narae was her sister, and Jia would prefer their relationship to be defined by that. Was there a better way to describe it? Sister disciple? Apprentice sister? Apprentsis? Jia shook her head—that last one was too silly. The title didn’t matter anyway—Lee Jia loved her little sister, and she would fight to the last to protect her. It was a little bit surprising how strongly she felt, considering that she’d technically only known the girl for less than a day, but when Jia looked at Narae, sleeping peacefully in her mother’s arms there was no doubt in her mind.

After dinner, the exhaustion of the day had caught up to Lee Jung’s frail body, and she’d need to rest. Having devoured her way into a food coma, little Narae hadn’t been far behind, and now the two of them were curled up together in Jia and Eui’s bed. They didn’t mind giving up the bed—they didn’t need to sleep anyway, and besides that, they had other plans for the night. Jia closed the bedroom door to leave her sisters to their rest before returning to the conversation with Ja Yun and Eui.

“Do you think we should tell Hayakawa and Rika what we’re doing?”

Eui shook her head in response to Jia’s question.

“Nah. As nice as it would be to have Rika on board, I don’t think we should involve them.”

Ja Yun nodded slowly, sighing miserably.

“Yeah...gives your lady some plausible deniability. You guys...do realize that you’re going to get in trouble for this, right?”

Eui scoffed.

“Who’s going to miss a bunch of lousy gangsters? As a criminal, I assure you nobody gives a shit.”

Ja Yun looked like she was going to fold under Eui’s glare, but she scrunched up her face and gathered her resolve before shaking her head.

“A-and I’m telling you as an officer of the law, it’s not that simple. If it was as easy as just marching in and arresting all of the gangsters, the army would have done it ages ago. Look, I get it. You guys are way stronger than me, you know important people, and you’ve got that monster on your side b-but this is different. If you go through with this, it might seriously jeopardize the diplomatic mission.”

Eui shrugged.

“I don’t care. This is about more than politics—this is for family.”

Jia smiled and gave her girlfriend’s hand an appreciative squeeze. They hadn’t had time to discuss it in detail, but the nice thing about their bond was that they didn’t really have to. Eui had given Jia her unconditional support, and had made her position clear through thought, feeling, and action—Jia’s family was her family.

“Eui’s right. We’ll take full responsibility for whatever happens afterwards, but we have to do this. It’s the only way to keep our family safe.”

Ja Yun sighed in resignation.

“Yeah, I didn’t think I was going to convince you otherwise. Do you even know where to find this Boss Lee guy? Is he even in the city?”

Jia shook her head and shrugged.

“I don’t know, but now that I remember this city, I think I know how to find out...”

In the dead of night, three men sat awake in a small, ratty apartment in the red light district of Yangye City. Lanterns and mage lights lit the streets outside, which bustled with activity despite the lateness of the hour—this was a part of the city that never slept. The room, however, was dark—none of the men needed the light to see, and they valued their secrecy more than the comfort of a well-lit room. One stood by near the window, watching the street, another sat in the middle of the room, meditating quietly, and the last paced nervously around the room. He turned to the one by the window.

“Have you spotted anything?”

Harada Jun sighed and shook his head.

“No, Dae. If anything of note had happened since you last asked me three minutes ago, I promise I would have told you. Nao’s got the right idea. Sit down and relax—we’re going to be here for a while, you know that.”

Hyeong Daesung ran his hands through his hair and huffed in frustration. He knew that his impatience was foolish, but he’d been charged by Princess Seong Eunae to find their mutual friend or her origin, and after years of searching he’d finally found a credible lead. He was anxious to see it through, but he also knew that he couldn’t afford to misstep here. Nobody knew that he or his small team were in the city, and he needed it to stay that way. The Lee Gang almost certainly had powerful backers, and Dae needed to know who they were.

If he failed here, who knew when he’d be given freedom to act again? It was already a miracle that Eunae had managed to pull together the resources she had, and gotten him out of his confinement at the palace. Those ‘resources’ consisted mostly of his two former classmates—Harada Jun, and Ishihara Nao—who had defected from Yamato shortly after the descent of the gods. They were something of an irregular group—each of them was both too valuable to simply waste doing nothing, while simultaneously under too much suspicion to trust with anything truly important. Instead they’d been relegated to busywork, chasing paper trails for the Forgotten Princess’ pet project cleaning up the criminal underworld.

Dae had to hand it to Eunae, she couldn’t have possibly set up a more perfect cover for their activities. He’d been rather worried that his usefulness to the royal family had come to an end once his tutoring had finally gotten the young Princess Haeun to start casting spells ‘properly’ instead of her own strange, self-taught brand of sorcery. Her old tutors had been quick to sweep in and ‘take it from there,’ but Dae doubted it mattered who taught Haeun anymore—she would develop into a monster all by herself.

He shook his head, realizing he was letting his mind wander again—a bad habit he’d never quite managed to rid himself of. Thanks to Eunae’s efforts, not only was Dae free to act independently—to a point—but also discreetly. There had only been so much he could accomplish by digging through official records, and his small team had been instrumental in the success of his more clandestine activities over the last year.

Harada Jun acted as the muscle. He was by far the strongest combatant of the three of them, and though he’d gone somewhat overlooked in the academy, he’d even given Lee Jia a difficult time during the tournament. His talent for spiritual arts was quite incredible, and there were few mages who could handle his overwhelming and indiscriminate magma techniques—paired with an ice-element martial art that kept his own body safe from the heat of his own technique.

Ishihara Nao was the only unified cultivator of the three—despite Dae’s best efforts—and while he was a perfectly competent mage at the peak of the second stage, his real value was as a gatherer of information. He had developed his own version of Yan Yue’s signature Melody of the Dreaming Moon, and while he lacked the ability to trap the minds of his opponents in their own dreams or puppet their bodies about, his technique was no less dangerous if applied properly. He could read the thoughts of any willing recipient of his technique—or unconscious and unwilling—through their dreams. Far more sinisterly, if their impression of him was sufficiently small, he could remove their memory of him entirely from their minds—though that part didn’t work on mages at all. Considering how small a presence the somewhat effeminate man had, it made him a superlative spy.

For his own part, Dae was the leader—coordinating their efforts, putting together the information collected by Ishihara, sending Jun wherever his talent for violence was needed, and just generally keeping the entire operation together. It also fell to Dae to liaison with any officials as necessary—since the two Yamato men would only raise suspicion if they claimed to be working on behalf of the Goryeon government.

All of their efforts had led to this—a gang led by one Boss Lee that had considerable reach across the nation, ties to nobility, and possible connections to Lee Jia or even Dae’s former master Do Hye. This was not a lead they could afford to lose, and they were being exceptionally careful with it. They’d been here for days, watching and waiting for the right moment—the right opportunity—and Dae was getting nervous. He refused to let anything go wrong with this operation. Speaking of which—

“Ishihara, have you had a chance to look into that envoy that’s taken up in the consulate? In our last communication, Princess Seong mentioned that Hayakawa Kaede was going to be arriving some time this year, but I’d like to know for certain who’s here and why. No unknown variables.”

Ishihara cracked an eye open from his spot on the floor, pausing his meditation with a frown.

“Oh, that’s a fine idea. ‘Hey there, it’s me. I know I’m a traitor to our nation and all that, but do you suppose you could tell me if Lady Hayakawa’s in? I figure she’d probably want to do my execution herself.’”

Dae sighed.

“I know, I know. But it’s not like anyone’s going to recognize you right away, and you’d fit in at the consulate more than I would. I could probably visit officially, but that would give up our location. I can’t send Jun, he’s about as subtle as a volcanic eruption.”

“Hey!”

Dae and Ishihara ignored Harada Jun’s protest. Ishihara shrugged helplessly.

“I suppose you’re right. I’ll try infiltrating tomorrow—maybe knock someone out for a day and take their place. If they’ve got any unified cultivators with domains there, they’ll see right through me, though.”

Dae grunted in acknowledgement.

“Do you think Takeda or Minami are likely to be among the envoys?”

Ishihara pondered it for a moment before shaking his head.

“Minami maybe, but I don’t think so. She’s a bit too hot-headed to be a diplomat, and last I saw, Takeda hated Hayakawa.”

“Then you should have little to worry about. I can all but promise you that Hayakawa herself hasn’t developed a domain yet, from personal experience.”

Ishihara nodded in acknowledgement and went back to his meditation. Dae’s certainty that Hayakawa wouldn’t have a domain was a result of his own struggles. Thanks to his time as Princess Haeun’s tutor, he’d made great strides in his spiritual cultivation—she practically taught him once she’d picked up that particular subject—and his friends from Yamato had been helping him with martial arts over the past year. He’d managed to reach the peak of the second stage in both, but the breakthroughs completely eluded him. Besides—he hardly had the spare time to go into closed door training now, and he doubted that Hayakawa did either.

“Hey, guys!”

Harada’s urgent call brought Dae and Ishihara both out of their respective heads and got their attention.

“Someone’s approaching the target—three mages, they look important.”

Dae stood up, his tail wagging excitedly. Was this it? A representative of whichever nobles were backing the gang? Three mages would be difficult, but if Ishihara could get their hands on them—

“Oh kami!”

Harada’s exclamation was followed by an incredulous chuckle.

“Dae, you are never going to guess who just showed up escorted by a stage three war mage. Seriously, ten pounds of silver says you won’t guess it.”

Dae sighed with exasperation—this wasn’t the time for games.

“You don’t have ten pounds of silver, Jun. Just tell me who it is, already. Ancestors, it had better not be a member of the Seong family, I don’t think we can handle that level of corruption...”

“Haha, nope! It’s none other than our old friends Lee Jia and An Eui themselves. I guess you were right about that connection.”