Chapter 2 #3
The scents met her first—dried roots and bitter bark, goldenroot steam curling from the clay pots. Here, the air was warm, alive with the familiar order of jars and scales. Here, at least, the world made sense.
Fēng looked up from the worktable. Her widened eyes found the bruise. She blurted, “What happened to your neck?!”
Wu Mā rose from her seat, the movement slow and shaky, like someone bracing for bad news. “What happened?”
JingYi crossed to a stool and sat, the simple movement sending a throb through her skull. Wu Mā rushed over and held a cool cloth against the bruise.
“I received a command from the emperor,” JingYi muttered.
Wu Mā’s hands stilled. “What command?”
JingYi kept her eyes on the table before her. “I’m to marry a Tremorian Alpha Lord, Alexander Wulfbane of Blackwood-Veyrde.”
Fēng made a strangled noise. “What?!”
Wu Mā didn’t move. The only sound was the gentle bubble of the medicine pot. Then, she pressed the cloth more firmly against JingYi’s skin, as if to anchor her.
“The match has been deemed auspicious,” JingYi said, her own voice sounding far away. “He was born in the Year of the Wolf, four years my elder. They say it ensures balance.” She let out a shuddering breath. “It is fate, apparently.”
“The Year of the Wolf,” Wu Mā repeated, vehemence in her tone. “Fierce in loyalty, steadfast in duty. If he’s a good man, he will protect his own.”
Those eyes—the ones that had watched over her since her mother’s death—softened. Her fingers found JingYi’s, calloused and warm, holding on as though she could pass some of that strength. “You deserve a man—an Alpha—who will protect his own.”
JingYi’s chest clenched. A man who’d shield her when the world struck. Who wouldn’t flinch at the drag of her right foot, nor avert his eyes from the stain of her birthmark. Who wouldn’t treat her mother’s past as a shadow over her worth.
Would there be such a man, for her?
The aching want startled her. She shook her head. Stop, don’t overthink. Better to let it fade before it could wound her further.
She rose. “I need to make more dysentery decoctions.”
Fēng and Wu Mā glanced at each other, but they didn’t stop her. She was halfway through grinding the herbs when the familiar scents of perfumed silk and camphor oil reached her.
Then, the voice: “What are you still doing here?”
She looked up and saw Master Yu, the head of the Jade Mortar Hall and commander of every physician and attendant in the Royal Dispensary. For over a decade, she had apprenticed under his watch, learning at the elbows of those willing to teach her. But never him.
He disliked being contradicted, and she had done so once too many times—carefully, and always with proof.
Her recommendations and carefully cited proposals had all been met with the same dismissal.
Year after year, she remained absent from every list of recommended promotions, a ghost in a hall she served better than most of its named physicians.
Now, his gaze flicked to the bruise at her neck before sliding past it, as if it were nothing worth remarking on.
“Leave it. You’ve been released from all menial duties,” he grumbled. When JingYi didn’t move, he added, “You’ll also move out of the servant’s quarters. Take your belongings to the Wisteria Palace. You’ll stay there until your departure.”
He scoffed, making it clear the order wasn’t his to give. If it were, she’d still be here, grinding powders for him, unseen and unappreciated.
JingYi bowed her head. “Thank you, Master Yu.”
He turned away, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. Only when his footsteps faded did she reach for the pestle again.
Fēng gaped. “What are you doing? You heard him.”
She didn’t pause. “I’ve been here twenty years. Not once have I ever left my work unfinished.”
The girl huffed. “Ai-yah, Sister. They’re moving you to Wisteria Palace, one of the six grand palaces! Go enjoy it. Heavens know you’ve earned a little pampering.”
JingYi didn’t answer. How could she explain the strange satisfaction, the relief of defying Master Yu, of choosing for herself, no matter how small the decision?
Wu Mā’s voice came softer, more careful. “It means the emperor is doing right by you, at last.”
JingYi kept grinding the root, eyes on the mortar. “It is all a facade. We cannot have His Majesty losing face by sending a bride straight from the servant’s wing.”
She could already see it: tailors draping her in silk, attendants adorning her hair with jewels and pins, pearl dust softening the face no one wanted to see.
Not for her sake, but for her father.
The steam made her skin clammy. She set down her pestle and moved to the open lattice window, drawn by the promise of crisp courtyard air. Beyond the walkway, two junior attendants swept fallen leaves from the cobblestones. A white crane passed overhead. All of it—so ordinary.
Soon, she’d leave this place for Blackwood-Veyrde.
The name felt heavy in her mouth. She repeated it, testing its shape.
And . . . Lord Alexander Wulfbane, an Alpha born in the Wolf year. There was weight to his name—a solid, lupine cadence. Fierce in loyalty, Wu Mā had said. Steadfast in duty.
Would he be a paragon of such virtues? Would his voice carry warmth, or simply command? What would he think of the limp she couldn’t hide, the birthmark she couldn’t cover? Would he look once and turn away, or not look at all?
Softly, she wondered, “What kind of a man accepts a bride sight unseen?”
Fēng, from across the hall, replied, “One with much to gain.”
Wu Mā followed, more softly, “An Alpha with nothing to lose.”
Something in her blood, old as bone, answered to the word ‘Alpha.’ It curled sinuously in her belly, an echo of an instinct she crushed down before it could bloom.
Yet, she pictured him anyway—broad-shouldered in armour, perhaps, with the pale eyes of a Northerner. An Alpha who might stand between her and the world, or become the very thing she must stand against.
JingYi swallowed, turning back to the workbench. She gathered the pestle again. More bark crumbled beneath her hand, the rhythm calming, familiar.
One final mixture. One final dose.
Beyond the window, dusk thickened. Somewhere across the sea, in a kingdom at the foot of a mountain range, an Alpha waited.
It was fated, they said. She didn’t know if she believed in fate.
But if the gods saw fit to carve one last sliver of life for her, she would take it.
And she would not look back.