Chapter 36 #3
His brow furrowed. For a moment, the words didn’t make sense. If the king didn’t broker this marriage, then who—
“It was ShunLi,” the king said, the words emerging low and slow, “who wrote to me in secret. He would make Princess Adelise his empress, but only if I swore to find an honourable man to marry his sister.”
The words were a blow to the chest. Her brother proposed it? The brother who—by JingYi’s own account—had let her fade into the background, a ghost in her own family. The one whose indifference she wore like a second skin, a fact so ingrained she never even questioned it?
The contradiction was a blade, twisting. If ShunLi cared so little, why arrange this deal? Why wager his own future to ensure she was given a position in a kingdom so far away?
“I chose you,” Ferdinand continued, stepping closer, “because I believed you would be honourable. I thought you, of all people, understood what it was to be unwanted. Judged for a past you cannot change.” The king’s eyes hardened as he took a sip.
“You could have met her with empathy. Instead, you shamed her.”
Alexander opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. The defence ‘I never meant to hurt her’ withered before it could take form. Truth, yet utterly worthless. A thin, self-serving plea of a man caught in the consequences of his own carelessness.
“Your intent is irrelevant. Your action was a betrayal of my trust and an insult to her dignity.” Ferdinand’s voice dropped, icy. “Where is your bride? Safely ignorant in your keep, I pray?”
Alexander held his gaze and confessed: “She left yesterday, slipping away by river from Blackwood-Veyrde after your messenger arrived.”
“You let her flee?” Ferdinand’s control finally cracked, his hand slashing through the air. “By Solthar’s bollocks, Wulfbane, why?!”
Alexander’s jaw tensed. “I was drawn away by a mine collapse, which, I now believe, was a ruse.” He bit back Bertrand’s name, but not the wider truth.
“And you have done nothing about the rot I wrote to you about. The purple limyerite. The poisoned bodies. The trade in Bashkor. I told you something dark and foul is moving through this kingdom.”
Ferdinand’s eyes flashed. “I received your missive. Do you think I dismissed it? The charge is grave. It implicates this realm’s very trade and security.
” The king leaned forward, his voice lowering to a furious, pragmatic grind.
“A king cannot turn his entire kingdom upside down on whispers and suspicion. My duty is to justice, not panic. An inquisition must be built on proof, or it becomes its own kind of tyranny. It. Takes. Time.”
Time. The word was a spark to tinder. Alexander’s restraint burned away. Time was a luxury for men in guarded halls. Not for JingYi, alone on a river with a potential target on her back, hurt by the thought her husband planned to send her away.
A thick, charged silence filled the room. Ferdinand studied him, his gaze sharp enough to flay skin. The unspoken name—Bertrand Fortier—hung between them.
“So the ruse at your mine was not an isolated incident,” Ferdinand said, his tone shifting from anger to a stony, assessing calm. “It was the first move in the open, which means your task has just become twofold.”
He stepped closer, his next words for Alexander’s ears alone.
“You must retrieve what is yours while the fox believes the hound is still chasing its tail. Bring the princess back. And if, on your journey, you happen upon proof of who profits from this chaos . . . secure that, too. A king cannot act on suspicion, but a lord can investigate what occurs within his own borders and threatens his household. Do you understand the distinction?”
Alexander felt a surge of grim clarity. The king was giving him the one thing he needed: a covert license to hunt.
“I understand.”
The king nodded and waved his hand. A steward materialized to escort him out. Alexander bowed and retreated, the doors sealing behind him.
Before, gaining the king’s favour was all he’d cared about. This time, JingYi’s disappointment cut deeper. And now, the grim certainty of a mysterious plot made her flight not just a wound, but a race.
His brows drew together as he descended the stairs into the mist-drenched courtyard.
In the cold clarity of the damp air, the pieces locked together.
The mine collapse, the damning letter arriving in his absence—it was too clean.
Someone had orchestrated their separation, knowing this crisis would consume him completely.
Someone like Bertrand, who needed him gone long enough to scour the ledgers and bury the proof of stolen purple limyerite. Their marriage had been the lever. Her heart, the pressure point. But if this was a trap, then it meant he was walking straight into it.
He clenched his jaw. So be it. Let it spring. She was the only thing that mattered.
He stopped by a Wingmaster’s stall to send a Sparo with a brief message to Yrenna:
The cave-in was Bertrand’s ruse. Secure the household, but do not alarm. Let him think his distraction works. I’m going after her.
Then, he boarded the ship bound for Aethonia.