Chapter 59
JINGYI
The room was brighter than she expected—curtains pulled wide to let in the pale morning light, the air fragrant with lavender, mugwort, and bitter chrysanthemum, tinged with goldenroot.
Seven cots were arranged in a semicircle.
The girls occupying them sat up as she entered—some slowly, still bruised and hollow-eyed, others more alert, blinking at her with wary recognition.
She bowed her head. “Good morning.”
By now, she knew only three of the Omegas spoke the common tongue, but it didn’t stop the rest of them from giving her a small, shy smile.
“Lady Wulfbane,” said the youngest, her eyes hesitant, her voice still trembling from too many sleepless nights. “Is it true . . . we will be sent home?”
JingYi took the girl’s hand. “Yes,” she said softly and looked at the others. “I believe you will each be returned to your family, under royal escort and with every protection ensured.”
Relief flickered across the girl’s face. She bit her lip, glancing at the others. “Will they ask us questions?”
There it was—the fear not just of harm, but of being forced to relive it. JingYi hesitated, then gave the truth its gentlest shape.
“There may be questions, yes,” she said.
“But no one will force you. And nothing will be asked of you without care.” Her gaze swept the room, finding the eyes of the others, even those who didn’t understand her words.
“You are not prisoners. You are survivors. And the palace will treat you as such.”
She saw the subtle shift in the girl’s shoulders. A breath released.
“Will you be there with us?”
The old answer rose like a reflex: Yes. Of course. I will stay until you don’t need me anymore.
But Tedric’s voice slithered through her memory. ‘You heal because it’s the only thing that makes you worth anything. What are you without it?’
She had despised him for it. For seeing it. For naming it.
But standing here, with seven pairs of eyes watching her, she understood: he wasn’t .
. . entirely wrong. She had spent her whole life pouring herself out for others because that was the only way she’d learned to matter.
She would give and give until she was empty, and then she’d scrape the bottom so she could give again.
She didn’t want to be empty anymore.
“I may not always be here,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring for you. And in my place, Princess Adelise will support you.” She squeezed the girl’s hand. “I will write. I will check in with your physicians. Send word when you need advice, and I will answer.”
JingYi looked at the others, meeting each gaze in turn. Their eyes glistened, but each of them nodded. “Even when we’re not together, I’m not abandoning you. I am trusting you to heal, and trusting myself to let you.”
She waited for the emptiness to come—the familiar lurch of being unmoored, adrift without the purpose that had always defined her.
Her ribs didn’t cave. Her lungs kept drawing air.
She pressed a hand to her chest, as if to check that she was still whole. She was. More than whole. Beneath her palm, steady and sure, a space had opened.
It was room to breathe. Room to want.
Room, she realized with a small, startled breath, to grow.
The infirmary where Haorán rested was peaceful. JingYi stepped inside while Alexander lingered outside the door.
Haorán’s cot was near the back, screened partially from view. A healer was adjusting his woollen blanket, but as she approached, the woman nodded and excused herself.
He was seated against a pile of pillows, back straight despite the bandages around his ribs, eyes already on her as she neared.
Now that they were out of danger, she could see, even injured, Haorán held the calm stillness of someone trained to kill with a flick of the wrist. A fading bruise painted the edge of his jaw, but his eyes were sharp.
“Princess,” he said, dipping his chin. His voice was level—calm, even though clipped with fatigue.
“You’re awake.” She sat on the chair beside the bed. “How is your injury?”
“Painful enough to remind me I’m not dead.”
They looked at each other and smiled.
“Lord Wulfbane came last night,” he said. “Asked me how I was doing. He told me the charges against his father have been lifted, and his family’s good name is put to right. Felicitations to you, too, Your Highness.”
It was strange to accept the well-wishes, but she inclined her head. “Thank you.”
She observed him, noting his injuries, where the healers had placed compresses on him.
“I’m sorry the poison didn’t last longer,” she said quietly. “As a result, he nearly punctured your lungs. Thank goodness he missed.”
Haorán looked down at his bandaged torso. “He didn’t miss. He could have punctured the lung but didn’t.”
JingYi’s mouth went dry. “He wanted you to live?”
Haorán’s gaze didn’t lift. “The poison should have crippled him. It didn’t. He fought through it as if it were nothing.” His jaw tightened, a ripple in his composure. To JingYi, he looked like a man whose fundamental understanding of a weapon—his own skill—had just been proven flawed.
“I saw him after he left you,” JingYi said, her healer’s memory supplying the details: the shallow breaths, the pinprick pupils, the tremors in his hands. “The poison was working. But he was skillful enough to fight his own body’s collapse.”
Haorán stared at her now, his gaze steady and grim.
“We are not fighting an ordinary Beta, Princess,” he said, and she felt the truth as palpably as ice on her spine.
“We are fighting an organization that has trained him to move and think like something else. Something that should not exist by the logic of this world. Tedric is just the tip of the blade. The hand that wields it . . . and the arm behind it . . . are still in shadow.”
Then, with fingers clenched into fists, he continued, “He knew how to counter my techniques, to dismantle pressure-point strikes. The kind that only my teacher and his disciples know about.”
JingYi blinked. “That training is rare. Was your teacher X?en-born?”
He nodded. “But resides in Elloryn. When Prince ShunLi found me, he placed me under my teacher’s care.”
That phrasing—placed—told her everything. Haorán hadn’t chosen this life. She watched him, taking in the edges of what was unspoken. A childhood shaped by duty. A man carved from silence and precision. Not quite foreign, not quite native. Born into two worlds and claimed by neither.
Yet, he had survived and become honed, loyal, lethal. And Tedric had matched him—not by luck or brute force, but with a precision that hinted at a familiarity he should never have had, a precision that violated the world’s order.
JingYi’s scalp prickled.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just betrayal that chilled her.
It was how little they still understood about their enemies.
Darion, when JingYi arrived in his room with Alexander, was in the midst of putting on his boots.
“Sir Darion,” JingYi greeted, eyeing him. “Should you be on your feet?”
“The healer told me to stay put,” the stubborn man said, tying up his laces, “but I can’t take it anymore. Told them to spend their precious time on those who really need it.”
“You really need it,” JingYi insisted. “You took an arrow through the side.”
Darion grunted. “And being in bed won’t knit me back together any faster. A walk will do me more good than another moment of lying down.”
She levelled him a look.
“A sedate one,” he amended, tugging on his second boot with a wince. “Come on, Princess. I need to feel like a person again.”
JingYi exchanged a look with Alexander, biting back a smile when he arched a brow. Then, to Darion: “Then, you may escort me to see how Conrad is getting on.”
Darion smiled faintly, as though knowing she was indulging him. Or more likely, keeping a watchful eye under the guise of company. “At your service, Highness.”
They all glanced down the hall as a steward approached and bowed.
“Lord Wulfbane,” the man said. “His Majesty requests your presence in the Receiving Hall.”
Alexander hesitated, gaze flicking to JingYi. “I’ll be along shortly—”
“Go,” she urged. “We’ll be fine.”
Darion glanced at him. “She’ll have me back in my bed in no time, don’t worry.”
With one last look, Alexander nodded and turned, the guard falling into step beside him. His footsteps faded, and JingYi turned to Darion.
“Alright, Sir Darion,” she said. “But if you so much as wobble, I’m turning us around.”
He chuckled, slow and dry. “Understood, Highness. I’ll behave.”
They stepped into the corridor together, his pace measured, her watchful eye making sure of it. The palace felt more peaceful here, the morning hush broken only by the soft tap of boots against marble.
After a moment, Darion nodded toward a lacquered door ahead. “He’s just in there. They moved him from the Golden Hare to the palace the moment we returned.”
She stepped inside while Darion waited in the corridor.
Light spilled across the woven rug and the edge of the bed, where Conrad sat propped against a bolster, a thick blanket folded at his waist. She spotted a wide swath of bandage stretching beneath his tunic’s collar and across one shoulder.
A forgotten book lay beside him, pages bent but unread.
He looked up—and went still, as if something inside him seized. Colour drained from his face. His gaze locked on her. Not her eyes, but slightly to the left, at all the cuts and bruises.
He tried to smile.
“Well.” His hoarse voice was ruthlessly forced into teasing. “Look who survived a kidnapping and still manages to look better than I do.”
JingYi didn’t call attention to his reaction. She only stepped closer. “That’s because I didn’t fall off a horse.”
“I didn’t fall off.” His laugh was brittle. “Just stabbed, punched, and emotionally scarred for life.”
She tilted her head, smiling. “Your jokes are definitely getting worse. A sure sign you’re on the mend.”
“I’m saving the good ones for when I can sit up without groaning.”
But even as he spoke, she saw the effort behind the humour. His mouth wobbled at the corners, his fingers clutching the blanket. She reached the side of the bed just as his shoulders gave a single, silent shake.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly, voice cracking. “Princess, I—I’m so sorry.”
“Conrad . . .”
“I saw him every day. I trained beside him. And when he took you, when he—” He broke off with a shudder. “I thought I could stop him. I really did. But I didn’t even come close.”
“You tried.” She sat on the chair beside his bed. “You followed your instinct, and you found me.”
“He disarmed me in less than three moves. I was useless—”
“You were brave,” she insisted. “You still fought when most would’ve run. You faced a threat none of us saw coming.”
He wiped at his damp cheek, frustration written in every movement. “It wasn’t enough.”
“Maybe not in the way you hoped,” she said, placing a hand on his. “But it was enough. You brought Lord Wulfbane to me.”
He looked at her again, eyes red-rimmed. “He did all that to your face, didn’t he? Tedric?”
“In the end,” she said, “he got tired of pretending. He showed his true colours.”
Silence stretched between them. A breeze stirred the curtains. Then, after a long moment, he breathed out. “When I’m healed, I’m going to train ten, twenty times as hard. Next time, I won’t freeze. I’ll fight better. I’ll be better. I promise.”
She knew he meant it—every word. He would grow stronger. He would become a knight worthy of every vow he’d make. Her chest ached, as if she were already missing him. Missing the man the boy would become, before she even left.
She squeezed his hand. “I believe you. But for now, just focus on healing. That’s enough of a promise for me.”
When she left Conrad’s bed, Sir Darion still waited outside, arms folded. He gave her a brief once-over, then jerked his chin at the door behind her. “That boy’s harder on himself than any blade I’ve ever trained with.”
JingYi drew a breath. “He’ll make a fine knight.”
“He will.” Darion started walking, his pace leisurely enough to match hers. “Takes his knocks hard, but he doesn’t flinch from them. That’s a good sign.”
“He never fully trusted Tedric,” she murmured. “Even when the rest of us did.”
“Shame we didn’t listen.”
“It’s always clearer in hindsight, but I should’ve seen it, too. He was always too kind.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Like someone buttering a knife before the cut.”
Darion gave a grunt of agreement, but before they could speak more, the sharp rap-tap of hurried footsteps echoed down the corridor.
They both turned as the same steward from earlier rounded the corner, breathless, his sash slightly askew. He bowed quickly.
“His Majesty requests your presence in the Receiving Hall at your earliest convenience, Your Highness.”
JingYi’s heart thumped. She’d expected a summons at some point, just not this early. Was it about the missing Omegas? About Tedric? Or tied to whatever had pulled Alexander away?
She let the steward lead the way, Sir Darion keeping pace at her side.
The Receiving Hall was silent when she stepped inside. Her eyes landed first on King Ferdinand, seated at the head of a table, hands steepled beneath his chin. Alexander stood beside him, already looking at her, his expression cautiously neutral.
Behind her, the door shut with a soft finality, leaving Sir Darion and the steward outside. Only then did she notice Haorán near the window, a little bent from his injuries, gaze dropping respectfully. She couldn’t read his face even if she tried.
The king rose slowly. “Princess JingYi,” he said, “a Sparo arrived from your natal kingdom. Considering the dire nature of the message, I asked for you to be brought here without delay.”
Her mouth went dry. Someone had reached across the sea to her. LinXin, perhaps? Or Wu Mā, or Fēng?
But the way King Ferdinand cleared his throat—uneasy, uncharacteristically fumbling for a monarch—worried her. He looked to Alexander, as though seeking assistance.
Alexander stepped forward, closing the space between them, and took her hand in his. The grip was steady, his eyes anything but.
“JingYi,” he said softly. “It’s about your father.”
The words struck without meaning at first, like a language she should understand but couldn’t. The fire snapped in the hearth. Her own heartbeat thundered.
“What about him?”
Alexander’s hesitation told her everything before the words came. He held her gaze, as if by will alone he could keep her braced against the news.
“He has passed.”
The world seemed to contract. Silence thickened, pressing against her chest until breath itself was foreign.
She blinked, the room swimming. “How?”
It took him a moment longer, that pause twisting into dread. His mouth shaped the truth carefully, as if he feared it might cut her if spoken too suddenly.
“Your brother, ShunLi,” Alexander said, “killed him.”