Chapter 45
JINGYI
The Aethonian coastline thinned to a pale seam between sea and sky, the colours of Nymaris dissolving into the distance.
JingYi stood at the gunwale, early morning wind blowing her skirt. In the stillness, she could almost feel Reiyana’s arms wrapped tight around her again, silk against silk. Hear her voice, fierce in its softness.
‘You’ve been a friend. A true companion in so short a time. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish you’d come with us to Asadia, but I understand why you can’t.’
She had given Reiyana a bracelet she secretly commissioned with Princes Kaelendrin and Alarik’s help—a slender gold band capped with two small, polished jade balls. Reiyana had dreaded the return voyage, already sick at the thought of the sea.
‘The jade balls press against points on your wrist that ease nausea,’ JingYi had explained, slipping it onto Reiyana’s hand. ‘It should help you weather the crossing more comfortably.’
Reiyana had stared down at the gift, composure faltering, before pulling JingYi into another embrace.
‘Thank you,’ she had uttered. ‘You are a beautiful person, JingYi. Don’t ever forget.”
Captain Marzius had stood guard at a respectful distance. As JingYi stepped back from Reiyana, she turned to him. The words came to her easily.
‘Thank you, Captain. For your companionship, and for matching my pace.’ She offered a small, sincere smile. ‘Any woman would be lucky to have you.’
He’d placed a fist over his heart in a soldier’s salute, but he didn’t speak.
A seagull’s scream brought her back to the present. It flew overhead, white against the sky. She didn’t hear Alexander approach, but she heard the creak of the deck, the brush of his presence at her side.
“I thought you’d be below,” he said. “It’s cold up here.”
“I don’t mind the cold,” she murmured, eyes still fixed on the horizon.
He stood beside her, the silence stretching like a taut line between them—not uncomfortable, exactly, but far from easy.
“I never know how to start these conversations,” he admitted.
That drew her gaze.
“I’ve always been better with action than words. But with you, I keep wishing I have the right ones.”
A soft breath of amusement left her. “That makes the two of us.”
They lapsed into silence again, but this time it wasn’t strained. It was the kind that settled between people who’d run out of excuses and finally made room to feel.
Waves lapped against the hull. A gull shrieked in the distance. The ship creaked as it leaned with the wind, sails pulling them toward the open sea.
Her fingers grazed the wooden railing, as if the worn grooves could anchor her. Alexander glanced down, watching her hand, then followed her gaze out across the glittering water.
“I used to think I liked solitude,” he said eventually. “But I think what I really liked was silence that didn’t ask anything of me.”
“And now?”
“Now I’d rather share it with someone who understands it.”
Their eyes met briefly. He cleared his throat, chin tilting toward the direction of the cabins.
“There’s a board game downstairs. An old Tremorian strategy board called Stronghold. I used to play it with Aurell, Lord Reave’s eldest son, when we were boys.”
She turned. “Are you inviting me to play?”
A small smile touched his lips. “Only if you’re willing to lose.”
She lifted her brows. “Why do you think I’d lose?”
Alexander leaned an elbow on the railing, facing her more fully now. “Because you’ve never played Stronghold, have you?”
“No, but I’d never practiced medicine in Tremore either, and your people are still walking now, aren’t they?”
He laughed. The corners of his eyes crinkled, his blue gaze shining brighter. “Point taken.”
Then he offered his hand, palm up, the glint in his eyes shifting into a warm invitation. “Come. Let me show you how loud a Tremorian can be when he loses.”
She looked at his hand, then placed hers in it.
His fingers closed around hers, warm and certain, and she let him lead her down to the empty dining hall where a table waited, bolted to the floor.
On its surface sat a shallow wooden box lined with black and white tiles—polished smooth by age and use.
They sat down facing each other. The game was unfamiliar, but Alexander was patient as he explained the rules.
It was deceptively simple: surround the opposing tiles, claim territory, and hold the center if she could. But the game valued boldness over subtlety—victory through domination rather than patience.
“Do you always go for the center so quickly?” she asked, moving a black tile to the edge of the grid. “It’s predictable.”
“It’s also effective.” He placed his next piece without hesitation. “Controlling the center gives you dominance.”
“So says the Alpha. But when you look at things differently, you might learn to see more than one path to victory.”
He laughed softly, a sound low and rusty. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“Everything is, with you.”
She glanced back at the board. He’d maneuvered his pieces into a familiar formation again—aggressive, orderly. A war map more than a pastime. She moved a piece into a corner he’d left exposed—not because she could win, but because it would force him to unravel what he’d just built.
Alexander shook his head. “You’re trying to distract me.”
She didn’t deny it. Instead, she tipped one of his captured tiles between her fingers. “Tell me something, then. You said this game is for strategy, yes?”
“Yes. Most noble households in Tremore use it to train their sons for war.”
“Why are you letting me win?”
“I’m not.”
“You could’ve cornered me three moves ago.”
A beat passed. He leaned forward, bracing one forearm on the table. “Fine. I’ll play earnestly, but with a new rule: for every tile I take, I get to ask you a question.”
She looked at him askance. “Is this another Tremorian strategy?”
“No.” His expression was unreadable. “Call it a wager.”
“And if you lose?”
“Then you get to ask me something. One for one.”
She turned the tile she’d captured over, considered, then set it aside and met his gaze again.
“Very well,” she said. “First question.”
He sat straighter.
“Who taught you how to play?”
“My father,” he replied without hesitation. “He had a board made for my fifth birthday, with limyerite crystal pieces. I lost so much, I’d spent the night awake staring at the board, thinking of strategies.”
JingYi placed her tile on the board, claiming another one of his. “And did you win?”
“Eventually.” His smile turned wistful. “He wasn’t easy to impress. Wouldn’t relent and let me win. He’d say, ‘You learn more from losing than from mercy.’”
Alexander took his turn and captured one of her tiles. “My turn?”
She gave a nod.
He considered her for a moment. “What’s your favourite colour?”
She blinked. It was such a simple question—so ordinary it caught her off guard.
No one had ever asked her that before. Her mind went blank.
She searched backward through memory, past the years that had been grey or blood-bright with shame.
Then she found it: the swish of silk trailing over the dusty floor, dark hair with two strands of silver, like ripples on a deep pond.
“Plum, I think,” she said quietly. “The colour of my . . . my mother’s favourite robe, the one the emperor gifted her when she was made consort. She always seemed calmest in it.”
He didn’t press for more, and simply watched her set her next tile. Then, his own: white, angled toward her flank. She answered with a corner move that blocked him.
“That’s a trap, I think,” she mumbled.
“It is. I wanted to see if you’d take it.”
Their fingertips met over the tile—a brief, unplanned press. Heat pricked up her arm, aggravating in its honesty. She slid her counter forward and took his.
“What were you like as a boy?”
Alexander chuckled, low in his throat. “Awful. Reckless. Always trying to outshine other Alphas, and always getting bruised for it.”
“Did you, in the end?”
“Once or twice,” he said, smiling faintly. “When it mattered.”
He laid down a tile and flipped one of hers. For a moment, he was silent, fingers rubbing the corner of the tile, where it had chipped a little.
“You can ask your question,” she prompted.
He didn’t look at her when he spoke. “You said your facial mark was from birth. But your leg . . .”
JingYi froze.
The lantern above them swung, but its light felt stark, too bright. The warmth of the cabin leeched from her skin. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, but it did little to ease the sudden dryness in her mouth.
“A few days after my mother’s execution, I was accused of stealing,” she finally said, eyes fixed on the grid of black and white tiles. “An earring, or some other trinket. It belonged to a consort who lived near the manor where I was kept. I never entered her palace, but it didn’t matter.”
The board blurred. She knew he was watching her, but she didn’t look up.
“They tried to make me confess the crime, but I didn’t, so they broke my right shin with an iron rod. And . . . I don’t know how much you saw on the night of my Heat . . . They branded me with the mark of a thief. On the sole of my right foot.”
JingYi squeezed the tile until its edges bit into her skin. She lowered her head. Her body remembered everything: the snap of bone, the world going white with pain, the smell of her own flesh as they branded her like cattle.
Bile rose to her mouth, and she swallowed the bitterness. She wanted to drag the shame out by the throat. Hold this ugly thing and understand why she’d carried it so long.
“In the end, the joke was on them. The pain triggered my Awakening. I presented as an Omega the following night.”
The fever from her shattered bone and scorched flesh intensified into something primal. Her Awakening came raw, unmedicated, utterly alone. No one came until her scent shifted. Only then did they summon the physician and the Luneth priestess to assess her worth.
The physician declared her leg too damaged to set right. An Omega with only the birthmark might have been passable. But with a permanent limp?
When Alexander made a low, strangled sound—half-breath, half-curse—she finally dared to look up.
He’d gone so pale the colour leached from his lips.
The stillness in him was worse than any outburst. His hand gripped the edge of the board until his knuckles shone stark against the lantern light, the veins in his forearm drawn tight.
“Six years old,” he said hoarsely. “They broke your leg. Branded you.” His voice cracked over the last word, as though forcing it through his teeth.
The air turned to glass in her lungs. She didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure he wanted an answer.
He sat rigid, every line of him strung with fury. His chest rose once, sharply, as though he had to remind himself to breathe. His eyes were impossibly blue but clouded with something black and dangerous beneath—a kind of murderous promise.
“Give me their names,” he hissed.
Her fingers curled around the smooth tile in her palm. The heat of his rage radiated across the small table, and for a moment she wondered if she feared it—if she should fear it.
But . . . no. His anger wasn’t turned on her.
It was turned outward, at the faceless ghosts of her past. A strange, fragile feeling unfolded in her chest. No one had ever been angry for her before.
Angry at her, yes—for her face, her limp, her very existence.
But this—this fury was a fortress built around a wound.
And she had no idea how to hold it.
Her lips parted. She meant to answer, but all that emerged was a small, uneven whisper, “What use are names when the deed is done?”
A muscle ticked in Alexander’s jaw. Deliberately, he placed his next tile—but didn’t flip hers.
The lantern creaked overhead, its glow rocking with the sea. Shadows dragged long across the table. Their silence wasn’t empty. It throbbed.
He released his breath. Then, quieter still: “Your turn.”
And so, the game went on.