Chapter 23
ALEXANDER
Daan, son of Holm, one of Ulrik’s cousins. Alexander remembered when Holm had been crushed dead hauling timbers, and Daan had stepped in to help with chores. At thirteen, Daan was still a boy, forced to shoulder a man’s responsibility.
His chest clenched. But one look at his wife, kneeling with her sleeves rolled above her elbows, told him she was nowhere near giving up.
The fire caught the barest sheen of sweat at her temples.
Her hands moved without hesitation: unfolding a cloth, laying tools out in tidy rows, unfastening a bottle stopper with one thumb.
And he stood at her shoulder with nothing to offer. No foe to fight, no order to give. The enemy was invisible, and the only weapon was her knowledge. He could only watch the woman he’d deemed inadequate wage a war he didn’t understand.
Daan looked smaller than Alexander remembered. Firelight carved shadows into his hollow cheeks—too sharp for a boy of thirteen. His breath was shallow, his lashes trembling but never lifting. His mother Elswyth hovered near the wall, wringing her apron.
“Highness,” she whispered. “He’s been like this since last night. His fever was so high, he couldn’t even speak.”
JingYi felt the boy’s pulse, eyes closing in concentration, listening to a rhythm beneath the skin no one else could hear or decipher.
“Was he able to eat or drink?” she asked.
“Boiled water, but he retches if he takes in more than two sips.”
JingYi unfolded a bundle of dried leaves on her lap, laying out barks, roots, and blackened bulbs.
“This isn’t an ordinary fever,” she said. “The poison has entered the blood and disturbed his energy flow. The heat is rising toward the heart”—she drew back Daan’s collar to show the blotches staining his chest—“and the hair loss tells me the marrow is compromised.”
Her gaze rose to Elswyth. “You did the right thing to keep him warm. But this fever is poison, and it’s sunk too deep for cool cloths to help.”
The word poison struck. Elswyth’s face crumpled.
She pressed the apron to her mouth, fought for composure, and managed to speak.
“I don’t know how he caught this . . . this terrible illness.
He did errands, water runs, lifting for the older boys.
But I didn’t think—” She swallowed hard, eyes fixed on her son.
One look told him she was afraid. Deeply, helplessly afraid.
“He only wanted to help his family,” he calmly said. “Who can blame him?”
Still, his mind drifted to the corpse. JingYi’s suspicion had haunted him: purple limyerite poisoning. Now here lay a boy bearing the same signs, and the thought was a knife against his throat.
Had Daan come into contact with it too?
How?
During his father’s time, no one under eighteen was allowed near the mines, and no one without proper clearance was permitted anywhere near the west shaft where the purple crystals grew.
“Has Daan been working at the mine?”
Elswyth’s eyes widened. “No, my lord. But I know he helps carry crates up near the ridge. But I thought . . . it was just wood.”
JingYi dipped a cloth into a basin of boiled water and wrung it out over the boy’s lips. The cool drops beaded against cracked skin. Daan’s tongue darted out, as if instinctively knowing the water would ease his suffering, even just a little. Her voice, calm and certain, cut through the hush.
“Whatever he was doing . . . it is poisoning him.”
She looked back at him, and though she didn’t say more, her eyes made the truth plain.
This wasn’t as simple as telling a boy not to work. The roots of the problem ran deeper—poverty, desperation. Though he had tried, fought, bled to restore his House’s name, it didn’t absolve him.
He was still responsible for keeping his people safe and fed.
When JingYi moved to stand, he instinctively bent and offered his hand. The brief clasp of her calloused hand sent a strange jolt through him. A reminder that strength was a form of grace, and that he wanted—needed—her steadiness more than he’d admitted.
As soon as he pulled her upright, she was already turning from him, already returning to the mother, already planning the next steps.
“Here,” she said, picking up a few ingredients from her medicine chest before handing them over to the mother.
“This is goldenroot. Slice it into boiling water and steep until the liquid turns amber. It’ll ease the heat in his blood and help his body fight the poison.
Mix it with this”—she held up a pouch— “red fox ginger. It will warm his organs and support what the goldenroot starts.”
The mother took them with shaking hands and watery eyes. “Thank you, Highness.”
JingYi turned to look at the boy’s sister, who had crept halfway behind her, wide-eyed. “You’ll need to rub warm oil behind his ears and along his ankles to help draw the poison away from his heart,” she said, her tone encouraging. “Do you understand?”
Elsa nodded, just barely.
JingYi smiled and tucked a damp curl behind the girl’s ear. “Shall I show you?”
Elsa nodded again.
Alexander watched her kneel once more beside the mattress, guiding the child’s trembling fingers to the pulse points behind her brother’s ears. Her voice was low, carrying the gentle authority of someone who’d done this a thousand times.
Guilt twisted in his gut. The villagers didn’t need a flawless ornament. They needed a healer. In a single day, she’d answered that need. While he’d been measuring perception, she’d built substance.
Finished, JingYi faced the mother and said, gently, “Please do as I instructed. I’ll return first thing in the morning.”
Elswyth’s lips parted, but no words came at first. Her eyes brimmed with tears. When she finally managed to speak, her voice was a croak. “Thank you . . . thank you, Highness.”
JingYi only inclined her head.
He stood silent at the threshold. He wasn’t the one his people turned to.
She was.
They left the cottage, closing the door behind them. Alexander waited until they were halfway down the lane. “Another victim of purple limyerite poisoning?”
“It seems so,” JingYi murmured. “Yrenna helped me dispatch a Sparo to my half-sister. The more information she sends, the more we know.”
“You said your relationship with your half-siblings was strained. Will she help?”
JingYi hesitated. “LinXin is the emperor’s most favoured daughter. A beautiful Omega. A brilliant jewel among the emperor’s children. We were close, once. I used to think she distanced herself because I embarrassed her.” A beat of a pause. “But I hope she remembers what we were, and helps.”
Alexander went still. A beautiful Omega?
The phrase aligned with the court’s whispers. The legendary beauty they’d gossiped about had been her sister. A new, unsettling thought followed: If the emperor had sent that polished jewel instead, would she have been able to help Annett and Daan?
Alexander had told himself he hadn’t wanted his bride.
He’d even written the words to make it so.
That parchment, now hidden in his desk, was a confession of his own blindness.
But the longer he watched her work, the harder it became to remember why he penned that annulment request in the first place.
“That was . . . brave, earlier,” he said at last. “I’ve seen trained physicians shrink away from less.”
She didn’t look at him. “It’s not bravery. It’s just what I know how to do.”
Her humility stung. They’d taught her to degrade herself, yet her skill only showed him everything he lacked.
“You’re better at this than I am,” he admitted.
She glanced at him sidelong. “At what?”
“At being what they need.” The words sounded cowardly, but they were the truth.
She didn’t speak for a moment. Then, softly: “You’re not failing them, my lord. Not if you still care.”
His eyes trained on the path. “Daan is thirteen. He’s badly ill in a cottage a stone’s throw from my hall, and I didn’t know until today.”
“You’re here now. That counts.”
“Not enough.”
Not when he had spent years trying to claw House Wulfbane back from ruin, only to find rot under his watch. Not when a foreign bride—unwanted, unasked for—had seen what he hadn’t.
He should’ve seen it.
He should’ve seen her.
Duskwane waited at the lane’s end, black coat glistening with dew, ears flicking as they approached.
Alexander untied the reins, the stallion snorting as if sensing the tension.
His hands steadied her waist as he lifted her into the saddle.
He mounted behind her, adjusting their balance with one brief touch on her waist while she sat straight, careful not to lean into him.
They rode in silence, the path narrowing where the forest pressed close. Some of the mist returned, dampening the air, carrying the decaying musk of fallen leaves. Alexander let Duskwane pick the pace, his thoughts still knotted around the boy.
Then he heard a growl—an unmistakable sound—and felt the vibration against his arms.
Her stomach.
JingYi stiffened, hands gripping the saddle as if she might silence the noise by sheer will. Her head dipped, just slightly.
“I—” she began, low. “Forgive me—”
“You’ve hardly eaten since you came to Tremore,” he said, cutting her apology short.
She’d barely touched her plate during each mealtime. Modest portions, always moving food around more than consuming it. A restless protectiveness stirred in him, sharp as the bite of the morning air. No one should go hungry. Not in his keep. Not under his name.
They could hurry back to the castle, where the kitchen could feed her. Or he could do it himself, here, and steal another private moment with her.
He pulled Duskwane off the trail and guided the horse toward a clearing. “We’ll stop here.”
Before she could protest, he swung down, steadying her by the waist as he helped her dismount. Without another word, he gathered fallen branches, striking flint until a fire kindled in the hollow of a ring of stones. The moment the first flames caught, he slipped into the trees.
He moved quickly, sure-footed over familiar ground.
It didn’t take long before a rabbit crossed his path.
With a snap of his wrist, his knife made a clean kill.
By the time he returned, he had more than that: a pouch of chestnuts knocked from the base of a tree, a couple of turnips unearthed from damp soil. Autumn’s gifts, enough for a meal.
He saw she hadn’t been idle either. A small bundle of blackthorn berries rested in her palms, gathered from a bramble patch near the path.
She held them out. “These should be sweet this time of year.”
He took them with a nod.
Together, they worked without speaking. He skinned the animal, setting aside the pelt.
She rinsed the roots in a nearby stream.
Chestnuts went into the embers, scored and split.
The rabbit, spitted and set across the fire, began to hiss and drip.
Its smoky and rich scent filled the clearing with warmth that felt like reprieve.
He carved the meat and offered her a tender leg.
She hesitated only a moment before taking it.
Under his watch, she ate—not like a lady preserving an image, but like someone famished.
He couldn’t look away. Firelight traced the dark sheen of her hair, the curve of her cheek.
A soft sound escaped her, something close to a sigh, and though it wasn’t meant for him, his chest pulled taut.
She paused once and caught him staring. A faint line drew between her brows. He cleared his throat and turned his knife on the next slice of meat.
A companionable silence settled between them. He found himself noting the way she held the meat, the careful efficiency of her movements. He felt a low thrum in his chest—warm, unexpected. It wasn’t the sharp possessiveness of an Alpha, but something quieter.
He realized: He wanted to provide for her.
When the bones had been stripped clean, he drew a deep breath, watching her purple-stained fingertips wipe the last of chestnut crumbs from her lap.
The fire crackled low between them, throwing long fingers of light against the pines.
The sweetness of chestnut shells and the sharper tang of singed rabbit bones wafted around them.
They sat so near their sleeves almost brushed, sharing the same pocket of heat.
Alexander stared into the flames. “What I said last night,” he began, low, “in the study.”
Her fingers stilled.
“I shouldn’t have said it,” he admitted. “It wasn’t meant for you to hear, but that doesn’t make it any less shameful.”
It had been easy, in that room, to speak of her as though she were a problem to be solved. Easier still to blame her for his frustration than name it for what it was: his own failure.
The fire popped, sparks lifting into the late afternoon air.
“What difference does it make when it’s how you feel?” Her voice was barely louder than the wind slipping through the trees.
The shame pressed hard beneath his sternum. He saw her fingers, resting on her lap, curl inward. Her breath was held for a second too long before she released it, a controlled exhale that spoke of mastered pain.
“I understood the moment you looked at me,” she said softly. “You don’t need to explain. But I suppose it still hurts, knowing I wasn’t wrong.”
He closed his eyes for a breath. It would’ve been easier if she’d been angry—if she’d snapped or looked at him like the small, narrow-minded man he feared he was. But she didn’t. She simply sat beside him—close enough to reach, and still impossibly far.
And the worst was . . . she’d never asked him to be more than himself. She hadn’t looked at him and Parandor and questioned why it lacked the luxuries a lord’s hall should hold, or why his House bore its shame.
The failure was his, and his alone. He demanded a symbol to polish his legacy. She offered him a partner to build it. He insisted on a flawless bride to silence petty whispers. She came as a healer to silence suffering.
It was he who had wanted her to be someone else.
Then punished her when she wasn’t.