Raspy coughs kept Yona from sleeping. As she stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows dance in the firelight, she gripped her sheets until her hands shook, nails digging small crescent moons in the palms of her hands. When the coughing didn't cease, she dared to turn her head and glanced at the tuft of white hair sticking out of her brother's bed in the opposite corner of their small room. Suoh faced the opposite wall, his small frame lost in the tangled sheets. His shoulders rattled with each cough he tried to hide.

"You don't have to hold back," Yona said, turning her attention back to the ceiling where the shadows resembled a pair of mice dancing together. "I'm not sleeping."

Suoh coughed again, louder this time. "You should be sleeping," came his hoarse voice when the fit calmed. But even if he wasn't coughing, his lungs still made a horrible, gravelly sound with each inhale.

Yona closed her eyes, biting down hard on her tongue. Every passing day, her brother got worse and she was still no closer to finding a cure.

"When's the last time you got a full night's sleep?"

Yona pulled the sheets up around her chin, the room drenched in a sudden chill. "Doesn't matter."

She didn't have to look at Suoh to know that he was frowning at her. She felt his gaze from across the room, just like she felt his heart from deep within her own, and, surely, like he felt hers. "Of course it matters, Yona. You're working all day and you spend most nights brewing potions with the plants you steal from that alchemist you work for. You need sleep."

Yona frowned, teeth clenched. "Don't worry about me," she said, dismissing Suoh's concerns the way she always did, and he must have realized that he was fighting a losing battle because he didn't press her further. He was silent for so long that Yona was sure he'd fallen asleep, but when she turned her head to look at him, she met his eyes, dancing silver in the firelight.

Unease rose up her throat. Suoh had always been pale, and the silver hair and eyes were features he was born with, features that marked him as cursed with magic, but he was looking even more so lately. His body was weak as it tried to fight off the magic, but it was starting to succumb to it. The brisk air that filled the room and the visible breath that left his parted, chapped lips with each exhale proof that the magic was beginning to overpower him.

She was running out of time.

Yona needed to find a cure and she needed to find it fast. She never understood why Suoh was cursed and she wasn't considering they grew together at the same time in the same womb. Sometimes Yona wondered if she stole all his strength from him in the womb and that was why, despite being born mere minutes apart, she was healthy and he was not.

Children cursed with magic are feared in Verna and, as a result, are taken from their homes and executed before they can grow into their powers, all because of the Great War five hundred years ago that started as a result of too-powerful magic—and created The Waste and the Ghoulim. The Waste, a barren, cursed land where the main battle was fought, separating Verna in the north and Hanin in the south, two neighboring kingdoms with a bad history and no current contact; and the Ghoulim, a race of human hybrids born with claws and teeth from shadows and despair.

According to the history books, there were other human hybrids that existed before the Great War: Elves, beautiful human-like creatures distinguished by their pointed ears, who built their homes in the trees of Verna's dense forests, and Snakeskins, creatures with the skin, eyes, and tongues of a snake that thirsted for human blood. Both races were made extinct in the Great War that was waged between Verna and Hanin, conducted by a deluded emperor with a false sense of grandeur who injected himself with magic that he used to destroy everything around him. He had wanted to rule over both Hanin, his native land, and Verna, melt the two kingdoms into one huge kingdom all for himself. In the end, the magic destroyed him, and the lost empress of Verna—Great Empress Alida—built Verna from the ground up. Rumor had it that she was close friends with the son of the deluded emperor, Prince Sol, but when he took over the throne in Hanin, he closed its borders off forever, permanently separating it from Verna.

But still the magic spread amongst the people like a plague.

And it had its claws in Suoh.

"I wish you would just give up."

Though Suoh's words came out in a whisper, Yona heard them as if they were shouted, each syllable a separate white-hot knife in her back. They'd had this argument countless times during the last couple years, and they all seemed to be held late in the night when the rest of the village was sleeping.

"There is no cure," he continued, his breath leaving his lips in visible clouds. Yona clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. "And even if by some miracle you find one, it's too late for—"

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"Stop," Yona interrupted, her heart jumping to her throat and pounding uncomfortably there. "Just—stop saying that," she hissed behind clenched teeth.

Suoh sighed and hung his head, defeated. "You'll die from exhaustion at this rate. And you can't die before I do, Yona, you aren't allowed." His voice caught in his throat as he finished his sentence, emotion making its way into his lungs as he shuddered. Suoh glanced at his hand, slender fingers shaking against the magic that swelled beneath his veins, desperate to be let out. He frowned.

"You aren't allowed to die at all," Yona countered, shooting a glare in her brother's direction. "I'm so close to finding a solution."

"That's what you said three moon cycles ago and another three cycles before that," Suoh said, his voice soft and full of defeat. He had already given up all hope, and that was exactly why Yona had to hold onto the very last thread of it. For him. Everything was for him.

"No," she said, sitting up in her bed, a waterfall of straight black hair falling down her back and over her face. She pushed the hair behind her ears and turned her body to face Suoh who was watching her with a raised brow. "It's different this time. I—I really think I found something."

Curious and with an effort, Suoh also pulled himself up to a sitting position, leaning his back against the wall.

"I came across this book in Zorro's storage," Yona started, adrenaline pumping through her veins at the thought of the newest lead she stumbled upon. "A book about the Ghoulim and their origins."

Suoh scrunched his nose.

"The Ghoulim are Soul Eaters that are born from the shadows. We all know that already. But this book … it had so much more about them. The guy really studied them, even got up close and personal with one without getting his soul sucked out—can you believe that?—and—!"

"Breathe, Yona."

"Right. Sorry." Yona took a deep breath, clearing her jumbled thoughts. "In that book, right at the end, it said—Suoh, the Ghoulim are immortal!"

----------------------------------------

"Absolutely not."

The sun was beginning to rise, casting the small, wooden room in a faint orange light. The rays bounced off Suoh's hair, making it look like starlight, a stark contrast to the deep anger etched into his features.

He paced from one end of the room to the other, shaking his head and voicing his rejections over and over again. His pajamas, too big on him now, fell off his shoulder, leaving it exposed. He was skin and bone and hollowness and Yona had to force the rage welling up inside of her back down her throat.

"Don't you get it? If I can kill a Ghoulim, extract its blood and bones, and mix it into a stone or a potion, it might be enough to dispel the magic from your body. The Ghoulim's immortal body can be used to save your life," Yona argued, her eyes following her brother back and forth.

Suoh shook his head again, his feet loudly tapping against the floor. "No! If the Ghoulim are immortal, how would you ever be able to kill one in the first place?"

"There has to be a way—"

"Absolutely not," he repeated, turning toward the small door in the center of the room and swinging it open, slamming it behind him. 

The sound made Yona jump, but she quickly followed Suoh out into the main area of the apartment where a broken down piano sat against the window and a small table separated the kitchen, which consisted of only an empty refrigerator and a counter piled high with the utensils they used the night before to eat noodles that Yona was able to find for only two silvers, and the living room.

Suoh stopped at the piano, his long fingers running over the ivory keys. He'd learned how to play the instrument by ear. The only time the sickness didn't seem to eat away at his body was when he was playing, lost in a world of melodies. He looked up at her when he noticed she'd followed, his silver gaze intense enough to make her want to cower away. "I don't want you risking your life for a theory. You don't even know if this would work. And even if, by some miracle, it does and the blood of a Ghoulim can heal me, there's no guarantee that it wouldn't suck your soul out before you got within arm's length of it. I don't want to lose you, Yona," he said, the last sentence coming out as more of a whisper.

Yona blinked back tears that threatened to spill.

Suoh played a note on the piano, the soft sound echoing throughout the apartment. Suoh's eyes followed the echo as if he saw the melody in physical form before he looked at Yona again. "I was dealt a shitty hand when I was born," he said, his voice cracking as he looked down at the hand that just played that note. "But it's the hand I must play. I'm sure the magic, this ice that runs through my veins, will freeze me from the inside out, but I've come to terms with that. I know I'll always live a life in hiding, unable to show my face in public because the second the guards see me, they'll know I have magic and execute me on the spot. So I'm okay with this life in this apartment. I like this life I have because I'm not alone." His voice grew more desperate the more he spoke, breaking as tears slowly fell down his cheeks. "Don't you get it? I can't—I can't lose you. You're all I have."

Yona couldn't stop the tears as they fell like tiny waterfalls down her round cheeks. "Suoh—," she said, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around his shoulders, the feel of the bones in his back making her tense. It was happening fast. The magic was winning this battle. In a way, he was probably lucky that he lived over two decades with the magic. But was the life he described truly living? If he never left the apartment, never met other people, was it truly a life?

Yona's grip on her brother tightened as tears fell more rapidly, sobs building up in her throat and threatening to overflow. Yona licked her lips and swallowed a dry lump in her throat. She gathered fistfuls of Suoh's shirt, a worn, thin fabric, and when she spoke, her voice was full of determination.

"That's exactly why I have to do this."