Beastly Beauty ✓

42. The Dancer

Turning around, I realized for the first time that Namjoon's fire had died with him, which left the space quiet and cold.

I found Taehyung sitting upright with Yoongi inspecting him for injury. When he saw me approaching, he swallowed. "Jungkook?"

Struggling to catch a breath, I shook my head.

Taehyung's eyes widened, and he started moving to get to his feet.

"Don't, you're hurt—"

"It's fine. Jangmi, your power... it healed me."

My instant reaction was denial. There was no way—not after it so ravaged Namjoon's body and nearly killed Hoseok. It was horrific. Not capable of good.

"It's true," Yoongi stated quietly as he rose. "His wound is healed."

I felt like crying again, but I held it back. "How?"

"There's a few accounts of it happening before. It's only ever been a sun Descendant who can do it, though. And it's rare that their power is unleashed as fully as what you just did."

Though I still doubted what they claimed, my heart jolted.

If it had the ability to heal... what if it worked in time to save him?

Yoongi's voice vaguely registered in my ears as he tried to stop me, but I was already crossing the room to where Jungkook lied. Glass shards crunched under my shoes, and my whole body tensed and shivered as I looked at him, finding only an empty ghost of the boy I'd bonded with in childhood.

Yoongi pulled me into his chest not a second later, where I shook and tried to ignore the pain that pierced my chest every few breaths.

That splinter of time that I allowed to fill with a speck of hope brought more pain than anything else did.

The question of whether I could've saved him if I'd acted sooner would always haunt me. And the idea that the light within me was capable of both destruction and reparation was something I never thought I could wrap my head around.

But I did, eventually.

It began with understanding why Hoseok survived when Namjoon didn't. A deep part of me always knew, but it wasn't pieced together until he realized that dark part of himself was missing.

It took two, maybe three weeks for him to tell me that it was gone. That no matter how worked up he got, no hint of the beast ever made an appearance. He admitted to me almost guiltily that he'd tried everything he could to turn, to find a piece of that shadow self that he feared was only hiding. When he was without doubt that it vanished for good, we all knew my light was the reason.

It had snuffed out the darkness in him. And, as far as I could comprehend, it had done the same to Namjoon. The difference was that his darkness swallowed him whole while Hoseok's never had. So when that power blazed through the poison, it devoured Namjoon right along with it.

Hoseok took a long time to accept the thought that he had enough goodness in him to be spared. I worked each day to gently show him how he was good. Why he was good. Whether through touch or words or simply being with him, I ensured he could see how happy I was in his presence. How safe I felt, proven by the absence of any burning when we held one another. And slowly, he learned to forgive himself and trust that he was not the monster that had tried to corrupt him all his life.

I took equally long to accept that the power I harbored within was never something bad—in fact, it was entirely good. This force entrusted to me had, for a time, felt like a curse. I blamed it for drawing The Hood to madness. I blamed it for burning Hoseok so many times before. I witnessed the destruction it brought upon Namjoon—whom my brain still wanted to imagine as the young boy who once loved me.