Chapter 67 #2
She felt LinXin’s gaze shift—felt the weight of it, heavy and close. Then her sister reached across the board and took her hand, the grip warm and steady.
“What do you want?” LinXin asked, squeezing her fingers.
JingYi stared at their joined hands. She hesitated, just long enough to shape the lie.
“I don’t know what I want.”
The words slipped out too easily, because saying what she truly wanted would only open the wound wider. LinXin didn’t press her, but she tilted her head, searching her face.
“Are you still in love with him?” she asked gently.
JingYi’s throat thickened, closing around the answer she couldn’t give.
“It seems unproductive,” she said at last, “to keep wishing for something unattainable.”
LinXin shook her head. Her fingers tightened around JingYi’s. “You’re made of flesh and blood. Not productivity and duty.”
The game tiles between them lay untouched, their gentle pattern of strategy and territory now seeming like a mockery of the lives they’d been forced to play. JingYi looked out across the pond, where a lotus leaf drifted lazily under the sun. “It is safer to hide behind duty. Focus on being useful.”
“Safer. Not better.”
“It used to mean the same thing to me.”
“Not anymore.” Vehemence entered LinXin’s voice. “You are now the First Princess of the Tsaiqun-Veyara line. An Omega. You occupy the position I used to, but better, because he is no longer here tormenting us. Use this position to get what you want.”
JingYi glanced at her sister, struck once more by how their positions had been reversed.
She lifted her head when a cluster of court ladies paused on their stroll.
Their fans lifted in unison—some to shield against the sun, others to muffle whispers.
All eyes were on LinXin. In a court where secrets rotted faster than fruit and information passed for gold, the revelation that LinXin was not the emperor’s trueborn daughter had already taken root.
Now, it bloomed. She’d been reduced from the First-Ranked Princess to a fodder for gossip.
LinXin rolled her eyes. “I can’t wait to leave this place.”
JingYi couldn’t help but smile. “And go where?”
“Anywhere. Be free.”
JingYi moved a tile upward and sighed. “I used to want something small. Not freedom the way you do. Not even love, necessarily. Just . . . peace. A home of my own. An herb garden. A place where I could wake each morning and be needed. Useful. Wanted.” Her throat closed slightly. “I would’ve called that freedom.”
“And now?”
JingYi’s gaze drifted past the water’s edge, toward the far horizon where the sky touched the lake in a hush of pale light.
All around her, the garden bloomed in soft shades of green and pink—peony buds just beginning to open, the willow leaves whispering overhead—but her thoughts refused to remain in this place.
She could only see the impossible blue of his eyes. The gold of his hair, sunlit and wind-blown. The way he’d looked at her. The rough warmth of his palm against her cheek. The steadiness of it.
Her voice was barely audible when it came. “Now I want something I cannot have,” she said. “And so, I suppose I’m learning to want nothing at all.”
The oil lamps cast soft golden light over the garden paths. Night birds murmured in the trees, and every time a carp leapt in the pond, the ripples lapped against the stone foundations of the palace gardens.
JingYi sat alone on the marble bench inside a pavilion, breathing in the scent of wet moss and water lotus. She didn’t want to return inside yet. Not to the emptiness of her chambers. Not to another night of fretful silence and restless sleep.
Footsteps approached, familiar in their steadiness.
“Good evening,” she said softly, without turning. “Haorán.”
He stopped beside the bench, one hand resting briefly on the hilt of his sword before he bowed. “Forgive the intrusion, Your Highness. I noticed your ladies retired without you.”
“I asked them to go. I wanted air.”
He said nothing at first, simply stood beside her as the breeze stirred through the shrubs.
“Although we are within the palace walls, we can never be too careful. Allow me to stay with you, and escort you to Magnolia Palace when you are ready to retire for the night.”
She looked up. “Sit down, then.”
“I thank Your Highness for the kind offer, but I will stand.”
“There’s no one to impress here.”
His voice remained gentle. “It’s not for show, Your Highness. It’s habit.”
A humourless chuckle escaped her. “Then I’ll pretend you’re seated beside me. It feels less lonely that way.”
For a moment, neither spoke. Another carp leapt, another satisfying splash. Haorán was the one to break the silence.
“Has your return to the Imperial Palace not been as you expected?”
JingYi sighed. “I don’t know what I expected. I don’t think I expected anything at all. But sleepless nights seem to be a common occurrence.”
“It can’t help that the court is eager to send you to another Alpha as a bride.”
Her lips quirked. “You’ve heard?”
“Being a shadow has its advantages.”
For a moment, only the night insects’ songs filled the space between them.
“Is your inability to sleep because you miss Tremore?” He hesitated. “Or . . . Lord Wulfbane?”
JingYi couldn’t answer.
With LinXin, the lie had come easily, smoothed over with practiced words and a placid smile. But here, beside a man who had risked his life to pull her from the dark, her tongue refused to shape the falsehood.
“Do I miss him?” JingYi’s voice was a whisper, torn from the raw, honest place she usually kept guarded. “Every day. With a clarity that frightens me.”
She looked down at her hands—the hands that had pushed him away. “I left because I had to. To find a foundation of my own making. I do not regret that choice. But understanding why I had to go doesn’t stop the heart from remembering what it left behind.”
She finally met Haorán’s patient gaze. “I chose my path, but sometimes . . . I wish he would come and choose me freely. That he would meet the woman I became because I walked away.”
Her confession hung in the fragrant dark. “It’s foolish. I have no right to such hopes, but it persists.”
Haorán was silent for a long moment. “Longing for the person who helped you find your strength is not foolish, Your Highness,” he said gently. “It is a testament to what you shared. You chose this path. That does not mean you must unchoose him in your heart.”
JingYi looked down at her open hands. She hadn’t expected understanding—least of all from Haorán, who so rarely offered more than duty and vigilance. Yet here he was, speaking the ache she hadn’t dared admit, not even to herself.
It was the permission she’d been denying herself: Her freedom wasn’t the absence of longing, but the strength to carry it without letting it weigh her down.
“You are kind,” she said at last. “Thank you.”
Haorán inclined his head. “If I may offer a suggestion: There will be a merchant fair in Changzihuā tomorrow. Traders from all corners of X?en-Sarai will set up stalls. If Your Highness would like to attend, I can arrange a palanquin and a proper escort.”
She stilled, the idea catching her by surprise. It was a simple thing, a common thing, yet the thought of walking among the stalls, enjoying Changzihuā the way she’d never been permitted to, seemed lovely.
Haorán added, “You have not left the palace since your return. A change of air, and a diversion, might do you good.”
She glanced over. “Very well. But only if you come along.”
He bowed. “Of course, Your Highness.”
JingYi turned her gaze back to the night sky. “Let me watch the moon a little longer,” she said. “Then you may take me back to Magnolia Palace.”
Haorán inclined his head and stepped back to his silent vigil. She could no longer see him, but she felt his presence there—steady, reassuring.
Stillness settled again. Her gaze returned to the sky. As the moon traced its way, one truth remained, clear and unchanging: The path ahead would have to make room for the entirety of her—the woman who missed him, the heart that loved him, and the will that had chosen to leave.
All three, moving forward.