The Oath of Eight Summers
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Epilogue — The Step
She found Jo Soo on a step.
Not the farm step — that one was three days’ ride away in the mountains with the pear tree and the grinding stone and the chicken yard and Park Myung Hee standing at the gate in the dark watching them go. This was a palace step, at the eastern edge of the inner courtyard where the wall met the garden and the winter light came in at the same low angle it had always come in, wherever So Yeon happened to be sitting when it arrived.
Jo Soo was looking at nothing in particular.
So Yeon sat beside her.
They sat in their available silence for a while. The palace moved around them the way it always moved — the distant sound of court business, the particular quality of a large place conducting itself with great seriousness in every direction. Above them the same sky. The same cold coming down from somewhere above it all.
“Jo Soo,” So Yeon said finally.
“Mm.”
“Do you miss it?”
Jo Soo considered this with the honest attention she gave things that deserved it.
“The chickens,” she said. “Mostly the chickens.”
So Yeon looked at her.
“They had no agenda,” Jo Soo said.
So Yeon’s mouth did the thing it did. The real one. The one that arrived like a surprise guest.
Jo Soo almost smiled.
They sat.
“Lord Yoon,” So Yeon said.
“I know where he goes,” Jo Soo said. “And who he meets there. I need two more weeks.”
So Yeon nodded. She had stopped being surprised by what Jo Soo knew and how quickly she knew it. She had stopped being surprised by Jo Soo in general approximately eight years ago.
“Park Myung Hee,” Jo Soo said.
“I sent for her this morning,” So Yeon said. “She’ll be here before the new year.”