Cast Off (Jewels of the Nine Kingdoms #2)

Chapter 1

JINGYI

All her life, JingYi had known three kinds of silence.

First, obedience—head bowed, breath held, a rabbit frozen in a hawk’s shadow.

Second—calculating. A blade in the dark. The patient stillness of a concubine orchestrating a rival’s fall.

The third was her own. The silence of a woman so far beneath notice, she’d become part of the furniture.

A shadow, moving only when called.

But lately, even shadows had no rest. Dysentery swept through X?en-Sarai, and the Imperial Palace of a Thousand Suns wasn’t spared.

Servants and courtiers staggered, pale and sweating, into the Royal Dispensary inside the Jade Mortar Hall.

Bitter herbs suffused the air, floors perpetually slick with spills.

She brewed medicine day and night, fingers wrinkled from steam, sleep stolen in hour-long fragments between one task and the next.

Another row of clay pots simmered before her now.

In a rare lull, her eyes strayed to the heavy tome open on the worktable: A Compendium of Flora Across the Issoirean Nine Kingdoms. Written a hundred years ago, it was still the unchallenged reference for healers.

Her fingers rested on an entry about herb varieties, their fascinating uses noted in a tight, cautious script.

Wu Mā appeared at her side, white-haired and bent like a gnarled root, but still moving with the precision of a woman who’d spent forty years in these humid shadows. Without a word, she set down a small, covered bowl.

Only then did JingYi realize: The Hour of the Snow Leopard was upon them. Time for the noonday meal.

Wu Mā’s gaze fell on the book and she clucked her tongue, though the sound was more fond than sharp. “Poisonous moss and battlefield antidotes. Other girls dream of silks, you dream of weeds, roots, and barks.”

“Knowledge is a kind of silk,” JingYi said without lifting her head. “It is protection. Armour. It just doesn’t tear as easily.”

“Hnn. It also doesn’t keep you warm at night.” Wu Mā’s hand briefly patted JingYi’s left cheek before tilting her chin at the bowl. “Eat. Plain porridge, boiled twice. Don’t touch whatever the kitchen brings. Who knows what filth they’ve let fester while this bloody flux crawls through the halls.”

A glance at the clay pots told JingYi the brew still had time to simmer. She shuffled to the washbasin and rinsed her hands. Steam rose as soon as she uncovered the bowl. It was humble fare—enough to keep one alive, no more.

“Princess YünYün is now sick,” she said, dipping a spoon into the gruel. “I just returned from Azalea Palace. Her fever’s getting worse.”

Wu Mā tsk’d. “That child’s always in the servants’ kitchen, picking at whatever’s left on the trays. Imperial Consort Shū should’ve kept her inside.”

Leaning in, Wu Mā whispered, “What if the girl dies? A Beta concubine without a son is a painted vase with a cracked bottom. The emperor might favour her now, but beauty fades.”

The image surfaced: Imperial Consort Shū in her peach robes, wringing a cool rag over her sick daughter’s bed. A son—an Alpha son—would’ve secured her place in the harem. A Beta daughter secured nothing.

JingYi forced down another bland spoonful of porridge. Her heart ached with the memory of being that age: small, scared, and utterly inconsequential in the calculus of the court.

“Princess YünYün is only six,” she pointed out. “There’s still time before her eighteenth year.”

Time for an Omega Awakening.

A phantom pulse of pain flared in her left cheek—her body’s cruel reminder, Omega or not, worth was a fragile thing. An advantage in theory, never a guarantee. She could only hope Imperial Consort Shū would be strong enough to protect what the court deemed a liability.

“The sickness is getting worse,” a voice came from above. Fēng, her junior assistant, stood balanced on a step stool, one hand clutching a high shelf. The girl looked down, her long braid swinging. “The laundry girls said half the north wing’s kitchen has shut down.”

Wu Mā’s frown deepened. “The palace is running like a beast with two legs down, yet they expect to prepare banquets fit for foreign guests.”

JingYi looked up. “Foreign guests?”

“The Tremorian envoys arrived earlier at dawn. Important business for His Majesty.”

“For limyerite trade?”

Tremore’s mountains were veined with it: the hardest, most radiant stone in Issoirea, a crystal whose inner light captivated kingdoms. To the priests of Moon Goddess Luneth and Sun God Solthar, it was the sacred conduit to the divine.

It was Tremore’s weapon and its chief export.

No other kingdom possessed such wealth. X?en-Sarai had its own scant deposits in the eastern caves, but they were a pale trickle compared to the mother lode.

And the X?en emperor coveted the crystals above all else.

Fēng came down, voice hushed, “Not this time. They say Tremore is looking for an Omega bride.”

The room fell silent. An Omega bride—a precious thing to be shipped to some Tremorian Alpha.

Wu Mā snorted. “An Omega bride paid for with crystals. His Majesty will be looking to fetch a dowry fat enough to keep the court in new silks for a decade, no doubt.”

The porridge turned to paste on JingYi’s tongue.

In the Nine Kingdoms, the script was always the same: Alphas ruled, their presence a force that flattened everything in its path. Betas, like the woman she sometimes pretended to be, were the grist of the realm—farmers, merchants, scribes, physicians, servants. The invisible hands.

And Omegas?

She allowed the truth to settle in her gut. Scarcer even than limyerite, they were the ultimate prize for Alphas, the reason for wars and treaties. But a prize was still a possession to be bargained, managed, and displayed.

It was rarely about love, or choice.

JingYi sensed Wu Mā’s eyes on her, but she kept her head bowed and lifted another spoonful.

“Who will marry into the Tremorian nobility is none of our concern,” she muttered. “Besides, everyone already knows the candidate.”

Wu Mā began wiping the table with a rag, her gaze drifting toward the open window where the autumn wind stirred the paper screens.

“Still . . . how could they forget the emperor has two Omega daughters?” The words were spoken softly, the way one sounded when hope was already lost.

“The court has its own ways of measuring worth,” JingYi said gently, a fact she offered to soften the old woman’s worry.

Wu Mā’s stare lingered on JingYi’s left cheek, the side others mostly ignored. It was the sorrow in that gaze that clogged her throat, the weight of another’s heartache on her behalf.

She set her spoon down and mustered a smile.

“Do not fret for me, Wu Mā. This way, I won’t have to leave you.

And”—she forced a light tone—“an Omega is little more than a womb to an Alpha. The world doesn’t see her as a wife or a woman, only the chance to produce a Sunborn Alpha or a Moonfire Omega. That is the true goal.”

Only Alpha-Omega unions could bear them: children believed to be god-touched, foretold to crown dynasties, end wars, or usher in new golden ages. Some called them miracles. Others, weapons. But either way, kingdoms would rise and fall for the promise of one.

“Still, if things had been different . . .” Wu Mā lamented. “Your mother would’ve wanted more for you.”

The mention was a needle piercing a carefully sealed scar. For a heartbeat, the dispensary vanished. First, the scent of her mother’s perfume—osmanthus and bitter smoke. Then, the silhouette of a hand against the lamplight, two fingers missing, crashing down on her cheek.

Any memory of the late Imperial Consort JingMei should be ash.

Still, it clung and choked.

“Who knows what she would’ve wanted?” JingYi spoke at last.

The next few seconds passed without words until Wu Mā nudged her with an elbow. “Eat. Best keep up your strength.”

She thought Wu Mā would sit beside her, but the old woman moved to the shelf and began pulling down jars—dried silver chrysanthemum, golden Xueji bark. She began measuring pinches into a stone mortar, the action so routine it was almost a meditation.

“Already?” JingYi asked. Her fingers went to her waist, touching the small pouch dangling from her belt, filled with Heat suppressant herbs. “We made this one just last week.”

Wu Mā didn’t turn. “It needs changing. I caught three Alpha soldiers leering at you this morning. Better be safe than sorry.”

A cold alarm tightened JingYi’s stomach. Had her true scent broken through? She set down her spoon and stood. Pain shot up her right leg to her hip. “The ratio must be off. Perhaps the batch of sage we got last month was weak—”

“It’s not the sage,” Wu Mā interjected, grinding the mixture with a rhythmic, rolling move. “You’re exhausted. An Omega’s body betrays her when pushed too far.” She looked over her shoulder. “Fēng, fetch the magnolia leaf powder.”

The girl bounded over with a blue earthen jar. “This is from the deliveries this morning,” she whispered, glancing at the door. “Quick, before Master Yu sees.”

JingYi shot her a grateful look. Together, they finished the blend. Wu Mā scooped the mixture into a small pouch of plain, dark cloth and handed it over.

“Tuck that into your belt. Sleep tonight, or no chemistry in the Nine Kingdoms can hide you.”

JingYi’s fingers closed around the pouch, warm from Wu Mā’s hands and the friction of grinding. She exchanged it for the old one at her waist. The new, potent aroma—earthy, bitter, clean—enveloped her, a fresh layer of anonymity. Her shoulders relaxed a fraction.

She was returning to her porridge when rapid footsteps had them all looking up. A court messenger sagged at the doorway—breathless, cheeks flushed.

“Physician’s Attendant JingYi,” he gasped. “Consort YiLan’s in labour. She’s having complications. Midwives asked you to go to Orchid Palace. Hurry!”

JingYi stiffened. A difficult birth, now, while a dysentery outbreak was about to strangle them all? The Imperial Palace of a Thousand Suns truly never slept, never stilled, and never offered a moment’s peace.