Chapter 24 #2
The noise faded to stone-quiet halls as she left the courtyard behind. Aliz had lit the hearth in her chamber, the fire smouldering low.
On the desk by the window lay a tray with a tiny, folded parchment. She crossed the room and opened it, brow furrowing as she traced each character. After reading twice, she refolded the letter and hurried toward Alexander’s study.
As soon as she reached the door, she paused. Yesterday, she had stood in this very place and heard words not meant for her—words that left her raw. Now, here she was again, about to intrude on his private domain.
Her hand hovered at the wood. The old insecurities urged her to retreat, but the message she carried was too grave to let hurt hold her back.
Her knuckles rapped the wood.
“Enter,” came his reply from the other side.
JingYi pushed the door open. The study smelled of parchment and smoke. A fresh log had been set on the fire, its light flickering over the maps and ledgers spread across his desk. Alexander sat behind it, shoulders straight. His hand stilled when he saw her.
“JingYi.” He rose at once, as though surprised by her presence. Her name, not ‘Princess,’ stilled her. After all the formality, it sounded strangely intimate on his lips. Like a simple, disarming gift.
She cleared her throat. “LinXin’s letter arrived by a Sparo,” she said, stepping inside. The door closed softly at her back.
His eyes sharpened. He gestured to the chair across from him and she sat.
“It is written in X?enguā,” she said, “so I will translate.”
She set her eyes on the paper and read,
JingYi,
Your message surprised me, though perhaps it shouldn’t. Even across distance, I might’ve guessed your thoughts would turn not toward jewels or gowns, but illness and cure.
We searched the archives but couldn’t find those texts. Wu Mā remembers a detailed scroll, but it is gone. Fēng found no record of its transfer.
I don’t know what compels you to study this substance, but I trust you wouldn’t ask lightly. Still, I caution you—be careful.
—LinXin
By the time she finished, the only sound was the crackle of the fire. Alexander leaned forward, elbows braced on his desk. “So. There’s no more information to be had from the library.”
“No,” JingYi said, folding the letter carefully. Still, it was odd. She distinctly remembered seeing more. And a scroll Wu Mā remembered was just . . . gone? Was that negligence, or erasure?
The thought was a chilling one, born of a life spent in a palace where inconvenient truths often disappeared.
Alexander exhaled. “A dead end, then.”
“On this path, perhaps. Still, we know purple limyerite brings corruption. Death. And someone is using it.”
“The question remains: who did they get the purple limyerite from?”
“Lord Fortier denied involvement, unless . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “Of course, he could be lying.”
“Entirely possible,” Alexander said, voice flat. He paused, then added, “I sent a letter to the King’s Magistrate about the woman’s corpse, but the reply I received was less than satisfactory.”
JingYi frowned. “They dismissed it?”
“They checked the record of missing persons and confirmed there is no one in the list with her description. They recorded it as an accident. Or worse, a suicide.” He shook his head, the scorn in his voice was a charged thing in the room. “It’s certainly easier to do so than start an investigation.”
The cold knot in her stomach tightened. “One unknown woman’s death isn’t enough incentive for them to act.”
Alexander stared at her before he opened his drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “You’re not the only one who received troubling news today.”
JingYi looked up. “Who sent yours?”
“A distant cousin of mine, Prince Kaelendrin of Asadia.”
Her brows lifted. He held the page out to her.
As she accepted it, their fingers brushed—the spark of contact made her hand still for a heartbeat.
Opening the fold, she saw the ink had bled slightly at the corners—Sparo parchment never travelled without weather—but the hand was strong, clean, slanted with an Alpha’s confidence.
Alexander,
Alarik and I were at Bashkor a few months ago. It was a mess, as usual. We found a vial of crushed purple limyerite left behind near one of the Omega auction sites.
I don’t need to remind you that Blackwood-Veyrde is the one corner of the Nine Kingdoms that mines it, which raises two questions: Are you aware the crystal is being used to subdue Omegas? And do you know how it’s getting from the mine into their hands?
I figured you’d want to know, so I’m asking before drawing my own conclusions.
On a different note, we’re journeying to Nymaris next week. If you can spare the time, meet us there. We can talk further in person.
—Kaelendrin
She looked up from the letter to meet Lord Wulfbane’s eyes. His expression was unreadable, but she sensed the weight behind it, the storm gathering behind the calm.
“Prince Kaelendrin is your distant cousin,” she said. “And Alarik?”
“His half-brother.”
She glanced down again, eyes tracing the letters once more. “They were in Bashkor? Is it not . . . a marketplace?”
She’d heard of a place where the streets bloomed with spices and gold, a marketplace so vast it swallowed the entire city, where merchants spoke in a dozen tongues and no crown held dominion over trade.
Wu Mā had once called it the throat of the black river—a narrow, winding passage through which anything might pass: goods, whispers, people.
To a young girl confined behind palace walls, it had seemed a magical place.
Alexander replied, “On the surface, it is a marketplace unlike any other, but it thrives on duality. For every open stall selling silk or salted fruit, there’s a shaded alley where a forbidden thing is brokered. It’s where men trade the untraceable, and laws turn the other way.”
JingYi folded the letter carefully. “And the underbelly of that marketplace?”
“Is where men buy what should never be for sale.”
“Like an Omega?”
She thought of the Omegas who’d fallen into traffickers’ hands. How easily she might’ve been among them—the vial of crushed crystal, a body going limp.
“Do you think Lord Fortier is tied to all this?” she asked.
Alexander rose from his chair and began to pace. “Bertrand is ambitious, but this reeks of something larger. If he is involved, he isn’t acting alone.”
“Will you inform King Ferdinand?”
Alexander’s gaze darted to her. “Do you think I should?”
Five words. He’d asked as though her opinion mattered—not out of politeness, but because he truly wanted to know. She heard it in his voice. Felt it in the way he held her gaze.
JingYi placed the letter on his desk. “If you accuse without proof, Bertrand will twist it back on you. The Crown trusts him. You—” She hesitated, then stated plainly, “You carry your father’s shadow. There is a risk the king may call it jealousy, not truth.”
He didn’t argue.
“But silence is dangerous, too,” she added. “If word reaches the king from another source, it will seem as though you tried to bury it and neglect your duty.”
She saw his jaw worked at the word ‘duty’—a word that had once been used to reduce her as a liability. Now, she used it as a lever.
“At least,” she pressed, “send word that the crystals have surfaced beyond the mines. Do not name Bertrand, not yet. Only warn the Crown that purple limyerite is being moved where it shouldn’t, as your cousin outlined. That way, you aren’t complicit in silence.”
His expression shifted—a flash of something gone too quickly to name. Finally, he exhaled. “A general warning, but enough to show vigilance.”
“And meanwhile, you look for proof. Something Bertrand cannot explain away.”
Alexander studied her, and this time, she saw respect flickering in his gaze. A foreign sentiment, but it sent a thrill down her spine. The decision seemed to settle something in him. “I’ll write the missive and dispatch it tonight.”
“And Daan?” she asked softly. “When he is well . . .”
“If he’s involved, he must answer to the law, even if he is a pawn.” Alexander’s tone was hard, yet she heard the strain beneath it—a lord caught between his duty to the king and his people’s welfare. “I will try to get his testimony. The Crown’s justice would offer no such chance.”
JingYi nodded. This was no longer just about healing the sick. It was about unmasking a rot that reached from mines to the marketplace, and possibly to the throne itself. And she, an Omega in a foreign land, was now squarely in its path.
Alexander held her gaze across the desk, the firelight dancing between them. In his eyes, she saw the same resolve.
For now, at least, they were allies.