Chapter 48
JINGYI
Someone was shaking her shoulder firmly.
“Rise and shine, Your Highness,” came Tedric’s voice.
She opened her eyes to the pale sky of dawn above her. Mist threaded through the trees. Her head throbbed–a dull, punishing rhythm, and her mouth tasted of bile and iron.
They were tucked in a shallow hollow, half-screened by wet brambles.
Nearby, one of the horses stood between the trees, coat dark with dew.
Wet. Everything was soaked. Panic seized her chest. Would there be tracks Alexander could follow?
She searched the ground, but the night’s rain and fallen leaves had already hidden any sign of their passing.
She tried to sit, and the world tilted. Nausea crested. Her cloak was a leaden weight, the wool saturated and reeking of horse and forest decay. Damp strands of hair clung to her cheeks. A small squelch escaped her slippers with every shift.
Once she was upright, he gave her a nudge—silent, firm, and picked up her medicine chest.
They stood in an unremarkable clearing, save for a crumbled stone ruin ahead. Time and weather had all but erased its shape. What remained was little more than a heap of collapsed walls, with a single row of three arches still standing, already swallowed by moss and trailing ivy.
Tedric nudged her again, and she moved, slippers scuffing wet leaves as the forest floor gave way to worn stone. He stepped ahead and crouched. With the heel of his boot, he scraped away leaves and soil until a flat stone panel emerged—square, weather-stained, with an iron ring set into its center.
He grasped the ring and pulled.
The hatch groaned. Earth clung to its edges as it revealed a narrow opening with steps vanishing into darkness. The cold air that rushed out was heavy with the scent of damp stone and something smelling like iron, or old blood.
“Inside,” Tedric ordered.
JingYi hesitated. His hand came to the small of her back, firm enough to erase any illusions of choice.
She descended. The steps were steep, uneven, and slimy with condensed moisture. As darkness deepened after three steps, she had to use her hands to feel her way down. Her right leg screamed in protest each time she lowered her weight onto it. The old break felt like a knot of live nerves.
The air grew colder and thicker, tasting of minerals and rot.
Her breath echoed loudly in her ears. Her slippers scuffed.
Behind her, Tedric’s tread was calm, even—maddeningly so.
When she reached the base, she nearly collided with a tall, solid iron door.
Behind her, the stone hatch slammed closed with a jolt that echoed through the stairwell, plunging them into utter, suffocating darkness.
For a breathless moment, there was only the sound of his boots against the stone.
He brushed past her. She jumped back when she felt the whisper of his clothing against her shoulder.
Keys jingled. Metal scraped. The hinges shrieked as the door swung open, the sound unnaturally loud in the absolute dark. A faint breeze stirred the stale air.
But still, no light. Not until she heard the clunking noises from her left.
A limyerite torch flared to life between them, its pale blue glow flooding the tight passage with a cold, otherworldly shimmer.
They continued walking through the tunnel. Pain pulsed higher from JingYi’s shin to hip, her breaths growing shallow.
“How much farther?” she asked, her voice small.
“Not far.” His tone was mild, but it carried the kind of finality that made her think pressing him would earn only silence.
They wound their way even further. Now and then, a thin shaft of light pierced through cracks in the stone overhead—proof the open world still existed above them. Her palm skimmed the wall for balance, the rough surface biting into her skin whenever her limp forced her weight against it.
When her breath was turning to rasps, the tunnel widened and opened into a circular shaft carved straight out of a rocky cavern.
The space was vast, its walls honeycombed with cell doors built into galleries spiraling three stories up.
A narrow walkway ringed each level, connected by slender bridges of stone.
Far above, a sun-hole let in a pale beam of light that fell in a perfect column to the centre of the floor.
Around the edges of that light, shadows clung.
And in those shadows, movement. Guards, masked and dressed in black from head to toe, leaned against iron railings with the ease of men who didn’t expect to be challenged.
Tedric stepped aside, letting her take in the sight. “Welcome to your new home, Princess. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
His tone was breezy, as if they were admiring the layout of a country estate.
She didn’t move. Her gaze swept the galleries until her eyes caught on pale ovals in the shadows—gawping faces behind the bars.
Not many dared come close. Those who did were enough for her healer’s eye to know.
Slighter frames. Shoulders narrow and underfed.
Eyes wide, restless, rimmed with the exhaustion she knew too well.
She didn’t need to examine them—the recognition hummed low in her marrow.
The instinct Omegas carried when one of their own was nearby.
Her stomach lurched. This was no ordinary dungeon. She’d grown up in a prison, sealed away in a crumbling mansion at the edge of the Peony Court. But this was different.
The words tore from her before she could stop them. “You’ve been imprisoning Omegas here.”
Tedric’s smile widened. “Ah. The healer’s eye always notices first.”
JingYi sucked in a breath. The metallic tang in the air seared her nostrils—old blood, fresh sweat, the sweet-sour stench of prolonged fear. Weeks ago, she’d knelt in the reeds of Draemir Lake, turning over a cold, stiff hand. A woman with no name, no one to mourn her, no one to look for her.
“That dead woman,” JingYi said slowly. “She came from here.”
Tedric’s sidelong glance was answer enough. Casual. Unashamed.
A cold, pitch-black space yawned open in her chest. “And the Omega traders in the woods?” Her voice thinned to barely a thread. “That attack—was that you, too?”
“They were meant to take and deliver you to me.” He smiled, unrepentant, the disposition of a man discussing a shipment that had gone slightly awry. “But Wulfbane sent a scout who reported to him and arrived early. So, I adapted. I earned your trust instead.”
A pause. His gaze flicked over her, impersonal, assessing. She felt it like spiders crawling across her skin.
“And when I saw you treating Conrad, saw how deft you were with a poisoned wound . . . I had another idea.”
Beneath her ribs, something very old and very young began to keen—the child who had learned that her body was never her own, that men with authority could do whatever they wished and call it necessary. Hunted her across the palace courtyard. Summoned a pair of oxen. Brought down an iron rod.
Not again. Not again. Not again.
“What idea?” she heard herself ask.
Tedric turned and continued walking. “Come.”
He took her to one of the cells on the first floor and opened the door. The stench met her first—damp stone, stale sweat, the metallic bite she now associated with purple limyerite.
On the pallet, an Omega’s body was wasting before her eyes. Purple-tinged nails. Cracked lips. The sweet-metallic reek of limyerite poisoning—familiar now in the worst way.
Tedric handed over her medicine chest. “Heal her.”
Her insides bristled at the glib command, when he was the one who’d poisoned her.
Nonetheless, she knelt, ignoring the pain shooting up her leg. Her hands moved on instinct, checking pulse and pupils, while her mind raced backward. Daan. Annett. Both poisoned. Both treated by her hands, with her herbs. And the man who had done it watched from the door.
She turned to him, her voice emerging raw. “You poisoned Daan and Annett. On purpose.”
“It was absurdly easy.” He shrugged. “The boy would swallow anything for a copper.”
Her hands began to tremble. She pressed them flat against her thighs.
Her throat worked to swallow the bile, but it didn’t stop the image from rising: Daan’s small, trusting face, his relief when she’d eased his pain.
Tedric had leveraged that desperation. She remembered how terrified the boy seemed when he first woke.
She’d assumed he was afraid of Alexander’s wrath, but Tedric had been there too. Watching from the doorway. Silent.
“And Annett?” Her voice cracked. “How did you poison my needles?”
His grin widened. “I’m rather proud of that one.
After watching you tend to so many patients, I noted your routine: always clean the needles first. All it took was taking your rags from the laundry and treating them with a potent extract of purple limyerite.
You poisoned her yourself, with your own admirable hygiene. ”
He wrinkled his nose delicately. “You really should be more careful.”
Nausea roiled up from her gut. Her vision swam. She rasped, “Why are you doing this?”
Tedric tilted his head. “Because I had to be sure you knew what you were doing.”
“It was a test?”
“And you passed.” The mildness in his voice was more chilling than a threat.
“So I can heal the Omegas you’ve tortured?”
“So you can help with our mission.”
She shook her head. “Mission?”
He only smiled. JingYi gritted her teeth, wanting nothing more than to scream at him. The sick Omega whimpered, and all the sharp words died on her tongue.
“Hot water. Clean cloths. Now,” she said without taking her eyes off her patient.