Chapter 49
JINGYI
Tedric nudged the plate closer to her, the cut of meat glistening beneath a glaze that smelled of spice and smoke.
“Eat,” he said, as though he was a benevolent ruler who took pity upon a starved, wretched woman.
Her fingers itched to hurl that food at him, but JingYi lifted her cutleries and ate. She kept her expression mild as the oily tang coated her tongue. She forced herself to eat enough bites to give her body fuel for long nights of healing to come.
But when his gaze drifted to refill his wine, she tipped her head, bent into her napkin, and spat the masticated morsel into its fold, pressing the linen closed as though simply blotting her lips.
Tedric’s gaze flicked to the crumpled napkin beside her plate. “The fare is not to your taste, princess?”
JingYi put her utensils down. “If you want the Omegas to recover, give me control of your kitchen.”
His stare flattened, as if testing whether this was insolence or practicality.
“They need more than full bellies,” she explained. “They need nourishments: broths, herbal infusions, food that will repair what the limyerite stripped from them. Not this oily, gristly, hard-to-digest food. Otherwise, they’ll relapse before they’ve even begun to heal.”
Tedric regarded her evenly. “If you take control of the kitchen, you’ll have to cook for my guards as well.”
Hope sparked. Her fingers clenched on her lap. “So be it.”
For a long moment, the only sound was the soft crackle of the fire torches mounted on the walls. Then his mouth curved. “Do it.”
She lowered her eyes, hiding the spark that flared behind them. He thought he was granting her a burden. He didn’t see it for what it was: access to ingredients, heat, and time alone for plotting.
Cautiously, she added, “I’ll also need help.”
Tedric’s eyes snapped to her, but he said nothing.
“If you expect me to care for eight Omegas all at once, I’ll need some who aren’t sick to assist me. Without them, I can’t keep them all alive. Unless,” she paused deliberately, “of course, you’d rather watch half of them die before I’ve had the chance to treat them.”
He brought his goblet to his lips, eyes never leaving her. “And you already know whose help you want?”
“It makes sense to recruit the healthiest one,” she replied, keeping her voice neutral, and let the logic speak for itself. Her mind’s eye could already see the Omega who had shouted defiance from her cell without a thought for the consequences.
She would get the princess by her side. Somehow.
JingYi had written the list of medicinal ingredients herself, jotting down each name in both Isseric and X?enguā, adding the goldenroot last. It was a gamble, and one she might not win, but she had to try.
Tedric glanced at it, folded it once, and tucked it into his coat without comment.
He also agreed, without protest, to let her see Princess Adelise. Her stomach dipped. Was it too easy? She brushed off the doubt and pressed on, keeping her expression smooth as a guard led her up the slope to the second floor.
The cell door loomed ahead, a slab of iron and bolts. The guard unlocked and pushed it open. The princess, still in her rumpled green velvet riding dress, rose from a narrow pallet along the far wall. The woman’s eyes met hers, and that recognition from earlier was still there.
“Leave us,” Adelise told the guard.
He didn’t move. The black mask hid all reactions, though his silence felt deliberate. Adelise’s scowl deepened. The guard took one step back, not out the door, but to stand like a shadow beside it—still listening, still watching.
The princess approached and slipped her arm under JingYi’s. Together, they turned their backs on the guard and stepped toward the pallet.
Adelise shocked her when she whispered—not in Isseric, or even in Tremesi, but in X?enguā, “You are Princess JingYi, Lady Wulfbane, are you not?”
JingYi’s breath caught. Princess Adelise had studied their language. Was it to prepare for the X?en court? How long had she known about the betrothal?
Still, the familiar syllables were a balm and a danger. She glanced at the silent guard by the door, his masked face giving nothing away. Could he understand? Tedric’s operations were sophisticated. She would have to be careful, even in her mother tongue.
But Tedric’s earlier slip—‘your betrothed’—now echoed with sinister precision. He hadn’t guessed. He knew the secret pact between ShunLi and King Ferdinand, a pact that traded her life for Adelise’s future. Knowledge that should’ve been locked in the minds of a king and a crown prince.
How? What else did he know?
She placed her hand over the woman’s and dipped into a small curtsy. “Your Highness, are you well? Did they hurt you?”
“Hurt me? Only my dignity,” Adelise replied, her grin quick and irreverent.
“And my wrist. But that’s what I got for trying to wring one of the guard’s neck through the bars.
” Her tone dipped. “They tried to shove limyerite powder up my nose, but I snapped my head back so hard the fool nearly poked himself in the eye. Still got a whiff, but . . .” She wrinkled her nose.
“It didn’t seem to stick. Guess I’m too stubborn for poisoning. ”
JingYi’s grip firmed. “King Ferdinand has been searching for you. He tore Niewberg apart in his fury, and my husband rode under his command to bring you home. We’re not alone in this.”
For a heartbeat, Adelise stared, something sharp and bright flickering behind those grey eyes before she let out a soft laugh. “Well. That does take the edge off.”
“Do you know where this place is?”
Adelise bit her lower lip. “A fumed cloth knocked me unconscious. I was already inside this cell when I roused. You?”
JingYi shook her head slowly. “Tedric struck me from behind. When I regained consciousness, we were deep in unfamiliar woods. I glimpsed stone ruins—moss-covered, with a layout I didn’t recognize.” She hesitated, the admission leaving her lips softly. “But I cannot tell you more than that.”
She thought of Alexander. If Conrad had made it back to Niewberg–please, please let the boy reach safety–her husband would know by now. Despite all their troubles, she couldn’t imagine he’d stop looking.
She squeezed the princess’s hand again. “I am glad you’re well. Others, I’m afraid, aren’t so fortunate.”
Adelise’s smile thinned. “The others, JingYi—may I call you JingYi? There were more when I arrived. Twenty, maybe. Or twenty-five? There was a healer, too, though you wouldn’t call someone who hurts others a ‘healer,’ would you?
He was a quack. Did horrid things to the women.
Jabbing them with a needle attached to a tube full of purple limyerite dissolved in spirits.
Said it’ll ‘stabilize’ them, whatever that means.
But I’ve seen what it does. It makes them feverish, their skin like ash, eyes glassy. And that’s before the tremors start.”
“Where are they now?”
“Shortly after I arrived, the guards gathered the healthier Omegas and the healer, and moved them elsewhere. I haven’t seen them since.”
JingYi glanced beyond the bars. “So, that means, everyone left behind—”
“Are sick,” Adelise concluded grimly. “Terribly so.”
“Then I need to tend to them. If I can start treatment, we may slow the damage.”
She met Adelise’s gaze, but her mind was churning. Twenty-five Omegas, moved elsewhere with a man posing as a healer, gradually poisoning them. This wasn’t just a prison; it was a testing ground. And if there was one, there could be others.
The scale of it threatened to overwhelm her, so she focused on the only part she could fight: the seven souls left in this stone pit.
She said, “I can’t do it alone. I’ll need someone to help with water, with holding them steady . . . with keeping the guards from interfering.”
A spark lit behind Adelise’s eyes—reckless, almost relieved to be given a task. “Oh, say it’ll be me. I’ve been dying to do something about all this. No one’s ever accused me of being quiet, but I can make myself useful. Point me where you need me, and I’ll be there.”
JingYi inclined her head in thanks, the knot in her chest loosening—just a little. “Then we begin now.”
The Omega hadn’t moved from where she’d left her earlier. With careful fingers, she withdrew the needles. They came out dark, stained with the impurities drawn from the woman’s body. Setting them aside, she checked for a pulse at the wrist.
A small improvement, but not enough yet.
She took out a few ingredients from her medicine chest to make her best blend for drawing poison down and out. She ground them in a small porcelain mortar, adding boiled water drop by drop until the paste thinned into a cloudy draught.
“Hold her upright, just enough so she can swallow,” she told Adelise. They worked together to brace the girl and brought a small cup to her lips. “Don’t hurry. Let it rest in her mouth before she swallows.”
When all the medicine was gone, she handed Adelise a cloth steeped in salt and warm water. “Wrap her feet with this—it will help guide the heat away.”
They worked in silence, and for the rest of the day, hours blurred into a grim rhythm. A key turning. A door groaning open. The stink of fever-sour air.
Some patients clung to them; others stared through them, minds too far gone to register touch. By the time they finished with the last Omega, her fingers ached and her knees throbbed. Sweat dampened her forehead, and hair matted to her skin.
When they emerged into the gallery again, Tedric peeled out of the shadows at the end of the passageway.
With his navy velvet jacket and crisp white shirt, wrists dripping with lace, he looked out of place in this gloom.
She caught a small gold pin on his lapel—a curious little sigil: a crown with a jagged line through the middle, as though struck by lightning.
It was too deliberate to be mere adornment.
“I’ve sent your ridiculously complicated list to the Niewberg market,” he said, voice light, almost bored. “A guard will bring your roots and barks and whatever else by morning.”
Tedric’s gaze slid to Adelise. Beside her, JingYi felt the princess adjust—hips shifting, weight settling—and then Adelise’s arm hooked around hers, drawing her in.
“She should stay with me. I’ll see that she rests.”
Tedric half-raised an eyebrow. “Why not?” he drawled. “The two of you are guests of honour, after all.”
Once they stepped inside Adelise’s cell, the door clanged shut behind them.
Alone at last, after what felt like days.
But JingYi’s body reminded her it hadn’t forgiven her yet. A sharp cramp lanced through her lower abdomen, and she folded in half. The medicine chest fell from her hand with a clatter.
“Are you alright?” Adelise’s voice, sharp with concern.
JingYi managed a nod. “Give me a moment.”
She rushed behind the worn privacy screen as another cramp, deep and grinding, seized her abdomen. She braced a hand against the cold stone wall, breathing through the wave. When it passed, she lowered her undergarments.
The sight of the red smear sank her heart to the bottom of her stomach.
Not pregnant, then, if her flow came at last?
Her fingers trembled as she cleaned herself with the meagre water and rag provided. The physical evidence was a closure she hadn’t sought, answering a question she’d refused to fully ask.
What a relief, her practical mind whispered. What use could she have for a pregnancy in this dreadful place? Still, she hadn’t been prepared for this ache. She’d told herself she hadn’t been thinking of it—that there was no reason to.
But now, faced with the truth, the absence . . .
It felt like a loss.
When she emerged from behind the screen, the sight of the narrow pallet—thin blanket, straw sagging in the middle—was enough to pull at her like a tide. The moment she sank down onto it, her strength ebbed away. Adelise crouched beside her, bright grey eyes searching her face.
“Did . . . something terrible happen?”
JingYi tried to smile, but her chin wobbled. “No. I’m just . . . tired.”
Even as she spoke, a faint scent of spruce rose through the cell’s mildew-thick air. It reminded her of Alexander. An ache sharper than the cramp rolled over her.
Because here, under the weight of rock, she couldn’t even see the sky, let alone the blue of his eyes.
Her throat closed, and before she had the strength to will the lump away, one tear slid hotly down her cheek, then another, and another, until she had to bite her lower lip to keep from sobbing aloud.
Adelise’s hand landed lightly on her shoulder. The princess didn’t press, but her eyes lingered, as if tucking away some understanding for later.
“It’s alright to let loose. Allow yourself to be human about it.” Adelise said softly.
JingYi swiped her hands over her eyes and nodded, swallowing the ache and the spruce-scented memory with it. Outside, a guard’s boots scraped along the corridor, and the sound was a reminder: more hardships awaited them.
But for now, she let herself sit in silence. Missing the fresh air, the sky, and the man whose gaze had always made her feel as though she could touch it.