Chapter 29
JINGYI
The morning light through the trees was a pale, insistent glare. By the time JingYi reached the village square, the sun stood high, washing the stalls in a brightness that left no room for shadow or for the privacy she desperately craved.
She hadn’t slept. Her mind wouldn’t release the memory of last night. Her leg, too, still throbbed from the frantic flight.
A short, written message had awaited her at dawn. Meet at Ulrik’s at noon—A. Its brevity was a mercy and a sentence. She dreaded seeing him, yet the promise of a later meeting set her heart galloping, nonetheless.
Every glance from the villagers scraped against her raw nerves.
A hush settled as she arrived, Tedric and Conrad flanking her.
Some stopped to stare. Others bent to their work, whispering as she passed.
Their suspicion that she’d harmed Annett unsettled her.
But the disappointment in their eyes—as if she’d personally failed them—cut deeper.
Her steps faltered at the sight of Bertrand beside the central well, accompanied by a round-bellied man in an emerald coat and thick leather gloves. The leather bag at his side gleamed with polished buckles, too pristine for real use.
“Lord Fortier,” Jingyi said, keeping her voice level. “It is rare to see you in Lornhelm.”
“Your Highness.” Bertrand’s smile never reached his eyes. “When I heard of disturbing rumours—certain medical treatments causing distress among the villagers—I felt it my duty to lend assistance.”
Jingyi stiffened. Words certainly travelled fast. Or had Bertrand planted spies everywhere?
He gestured to the man beside him. “Allow me to introduce Master Hevlan from the Royal College of Physicians in Niewberg. He kindly volunteered to visit while travelling through the region.”
Master Hevlan bowed with shallow precision. “Your Highness. A pleasure.”
Jingyi returned the gesture. “Welcome, Master Hevlan. Blackwood-Verde has not had a physician’s attention for quite some time. We welcome you.”
Hevlan’s mouth twitched. “Of course. I am well-versed in evidence and dosage. Tremorian constitutions do not vary so wildly as to dismiss good, traditional medicine.”
Bertrand stepped forward, eyes still friendly. “You have done what you could, I am sure. But the people here respond best to familiar remedies. It is natural they would feel uncertain about foreign treatments, especially when they result in complications like yesterday.”
Conrad’s voice cut across the square. “Complications you seem unusually eager to announce, my lord. You hardly visit the village except on the way to the capital.”
Bertrand’s smile didn’t waver. “I am merely thinking of the Crown’s subjects.”
“Then perhaps,” Tedric said coolly, “you should explain why your concern only arose after Her Highness began healing them. Where were you weeks ago when half the village suffered from agues?”
“We cannot be expected to respond to every sniffle in every village,” Hevlan countered. “The College prioritizes real afflictions.”
Conrad folded his arms. “But Her Highness treats sniffles. And fevers. And festering cuts. All without complaint.”
Hevlan’s brow knitted. “With all due respect, she is not certified by any recognized healing institution in the North.”
A hush fell over JingYi’s mind—the kind that came right before a blow. Her spine stayed straight, but somewhere inside she recoiled from the familiar burn of humiliation.
“No,” she said. “But I trained for over twenty years under the Royal Physicians of the Imperial Court of X?en-Sarai. I too know how to tend a body in distress.”
A few murmurs stirred the crowd, but Jingyi didn’t turn. She didn’t dare break her focus, not with her pulse thudding in her ears, not when staying composed felt like it might splinter her ribs.
Hevlan’s voice sharpened, feeding off the eyes around them. “Yet you bring foreign methods. Foreign powders. Herbs no Tremorian recognizes. You stick strange needles into your patients. If there are more barbaric methods than yours, I’ve yet to hear of them.”
A woman’s voice piped up near Bertrand, reedy and eager. “Master Hevlan’s tonic cleared my boy’s cough in a day. Good northern medicine is all we need.”
JingYi’s gaze snapped to the speaker—a pinched-faced woman she vaguely remembered from her first rounds.
Her son had a mild, damp cough. She had recommended steam and honey, knowing the ailment would pass with time, that healing the body’s own defences would protect him better than drowning him in unnecessary remedies.
But the woman hadn’t wanted to see her the next day.
Now she stood proudly beside the boy, nodding with vigour.
The realization trickled cold down JingYi’s spine. Bertrand wasn’t just questioning her. He was staging this.
“Barbaric,” Hevlan repeated, seizing the moment.
The word landed like a slap. She had never heard that word used against her needle therapy—not in all her years behind palace walls, where it was a respected art passed from master to apprentice.
But here, where she had begun to believe she might serve, protect, perhaps even belong—the word sounded shameful.
Bertrand stepped forward, all silk and civility. “Of course, we don’t mean to accuse any healer of causing harm. But perhaps the people need reassurance. Familiarity. You come from another land, Your Highness. Your ways are different.”
Different. Always that word. Always said with a smile.
Her fingers curled into fists inside her sleeves. “Different does not mean dangerous.”
Bertrand inclined his head, as though agreeing. “No one questions your dedication, my lady. Only, in uncertain times, people cling to what they know. Trusted hands. Proven methods.”
“Northern hands, you mean,” JingYi said.
He didn’t reply. His smile was enough.
Hevlan, emboldened, leaned toward him and said in a stage-whisper, “It isn’t just her methods. There’s also the matter of her temperament.”
Slowly, she turned to him. “Temperament?”
“You’re an Omega.” He spread his hands as if that excused his indecency. “And given what hasn’t occurred between you and your husband, things are rather . . . tricky, aren’t they? Heat is a difficult time for any Omega. Heightened emotions. Unreliable judgment.”
The ground seemed to fall away beneath her. The shame of her marriage, the cold space in her bed, the Nest she couldn’t touch—all turned out to be common knowledge. Something for the village to chew over with their morning bread.
She could hardly draw breath. Had every patient seen through her? Had every grateful smile concealed pity? The trust she’d painstakingly built now felt like a fragile shell, and Hevlan had just smashed it with a few practiced words.
Hevlan went on, his voice falsely reasonable. “Even the most well-meaning Omega can lose clarity under her cycle. The instincts are powerful. They cloud thought. It’s not your fault. Merely nature stacked against you.”
And there it was.
They had tried to diminish her skill, her heritage, her tools. Now they brought up her blood. Her caste. As if those, too, were stains to be scrubbed out. More marks she could never shed—like her limp, like the birthmark.
It was always something she hadn’t chosen, couldn’t change.
For a heartbeat, her vision blurred. She clenched her teeth. Rage would not win this fight. Neither would self-pity.
Her limp did not make her less capable. Her X?en-Sarai origin did not make her less capable. Her Omega nature did not make her less capable. She was a good healer. She knew it. No rank or bloodline could unravel that truth.
She turned to the people who had once greeted her with smiles and aching limbs. They were quieter now. Unsure. Guarded.
“I know I am not what you expected,” she said. “I am not of your blood. I do not speak your tongue as well as you do. But I have treated every patient who came to me. I never asked for coin, position, or loyalty—only for the chance to do the one thing I know how to do.”
Her voice nearly caught. She steadied it.
“I am an Omega. I am foreign. But a fever in the north burns the same as a fever in the south. Illness does not care who it ravages.” She paused. “And neither do I.”
A breath of unease rippled through the crowd—until a familiar voice sliced clean through it.
“Well said, Wife.”
The word cut through the square’s tension like a blade through mist. Wife. Not Princess. Not Your Highness. The claim was public, unequivocal.
Jingyi turned. Alexander stood at the square’s edge, the morning sun gilding his silhouette. His expression was granite, but his eyes held a familiar, protective storm. He had heard.
He stepped forward, gaze landing on her briefly before fixing on Bertrand. “My wife speaks with the full authority of House Wulfbane. You will not challenge her again—especially not in her territory.”
Bertrand’s mouth opened, but no sound came. Jingyi watched the twitch at his jaw, the hitch of breath. For the first time since arriving, he looked insecure. Afraid.
Alexander didn’t stop.
“You’re far too eager to involve yourself in matters that don’t concern you—my marriage included.” His voice sharpened, though his posture remained calm. “Perhaps it is time you focus on your own conduct instead.”
His pale brow quirked. A meaningful silence ensued—a hush that demanded stillness. Then Alexander added, voice lower, “It would be a shame if your name reached the wrong ears. Especially now.”
Jingyi caught the nervousness in Bertrand’s eyes. A long beat passed before he recovered, schooling his expression back into vague civility.
Alexander turned to her at last. He didn’t reach for her hand, but the invitation in his gaze was unmistakable. “Come, Wife. I believe you’re needed elsewhere.”
She followed him, the word wife echoing where Hevlan’s insults had been. Was it a shield fashioned in the moment to defend his house? Or was it a claim? The difference terrified her, because one was politics, and the other was a promise she was no longer sure she had the strength to refuse.
By the time they reached the blacksmith’s cottage, Ulrik was already waiting at his door. If he had heard the commotion in the square, he showed no indication.
“Come inside, Highness,” he said. “Warm yourself by the fire. Annett has been waiting all morning.”
Jingyi nodded, grateful for the welcome.
Inside, the room was dim but cozy, the smoke-sweet warmth of peat and herbs sinking into her skin.
She crossed the space, the hush broken only by the creak of floorboards and Tedric’s low exchange with Conrad just outside.
No one mentioned what had just occurred in the square, but she could still feel it pressing at her back, clinging to her cloak.
She drew the heavy linen curtain around Annett’s cot, the fabric muffling the conversations beyond. Here, she could finally draw breath.
“Did something happen outside, Your Highness?” the girl asked. “I heard a commotion.”
JingYi smiled reassuringly at her. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, Annett. Let’s see how you’re doing after your bout of nausea yesterday, shall we?”
Annett lay propped against a cushion, a little pale but no longer wan. Her breathing was steady, her gaze more lucid than the day before, though fatigue still seemed to cling to her.
“You look steadier,” JingYi commented and sat on a stool. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“We tried some porridge and a bit of broth.”
“Did you keep it down?”
A nod.
That was something. That was everything. JingYi’s shoulders sagged with relief. To keep food down meant the stomach was settling, the body’s pathways clearing. The violent purge was over. Now came the slow work of healing.
She unwrapped the girl’s wrist, exposing the inside of her forearm. The bruise was yellow-green now, a sign of healing. She pressed lightly around it.
“No tenderness?”
“No, Highness.”
She checked the other points—the ankle, the elbow—each one fading in colour, no sign of new swelling.
“I won’t use the needles today, but I’ll press a few points to keep your core energy open and the fetus steady.”
Annett smiled. “I trust your hands, Princess. They never hurt me.”
The words snagged at her chest. JingYi smiled at the girl’s faith in her and reached for the wrist. Her fingers rested against the pulse point.
Yesterday it had been thin and thready, now it moved with purpose.
Deeper, rounder. Rooted. She lingered before placing her hands over the girl’s lower belly, pressing delicately through the wool of her dress.
“You’re progressing well,” she told Annett. “Baby, too. The energy in the womb is drawing down. I don’t believe you’ll be waiting much longer.”
Annett’s eyes widened, blinking against the dim light. “So soon?”
“Your body is already making space. You’ll feel it more in the coming days—tightness, maybe pressure in the hips and low back. That’s the child beginning its descent.”
A soft sound left the girl’s lips—half-nerves, half-something like awe. She rubbed her belly, the movement tender, almost unconscious. “Just as well. I can’t wait to meet the little one.”
“All signs are favourable, but rest is everything now.” JingYi covered her with a quilt. “Keep warm. No lifting, no sudden movements. Trust the work your body already knows how to do.”
Annett gave a nod, firmer this time. “Yes, Princess. I promise.”
JingYi patted Annett’s hand before she left her to rest. She saw Alexander’s silhouette just outside the door, speaking with Ulrik, rays of sunlight catching his jawline. Both men turned as she emerged.
Ulrik’s face hadn’t changed much since she arrived—creased with sleeplessness, drawn by the gravity of a man waiting on fate. But his eyes searched hers now with the cautious desperation of a father—or a grandfather—bracing for bad news.
“She’s doing well,” JingYi said immediately, not wanting to keep the man in misery even a second longer.
“The bruises are healing. She’s able to eat.
Her pulse is strong. The child’s energy is descending as it should.
There are early signs of labour. Subtle, but enough to suggest she may deliver soon. ”
Ulrik exhaled a breath. He bowed his head briefly, then rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Thank you, Highness. For everything.”
JingYi wrapped her cloak around her shoulders. “I’ll return tomorrow. But if anything changes before then—” Her hand came to rest on his arm. “Send word to the castle. Immediately.”
“I will, Highness. I’m grateful.”
Alexander stepped forward, his hand settling firmly on Ulrik’s shoulder—a show of thanks. Then he turned to her, extending the crook of his elbow.
Her gaze flicked from his face to his proffered arm. Last night’s flight lay between them, unacknowledged. This was a bridge back, presented in the clear light of day. After a measured pause, she accepted.
Together, they walked toward the waiting horses.