Chapter 33
JINGYI
Jingyi had thought she could last through the ceremony.
The climb had been gruelling—steeper than it looked, each step sending a bolt of agony through her joints. But she had kept her head high and made it without stumbling. Without making a fool of herself. Without disappointing anyone.
The ceremony had been beautiful.
And Alexander . . .
She hadn’t meant to steal glances, but her gaze kept finding him anyway.
He stood at the edge of the altar platform, half-turned toward the villagers, his expression solemn.
His ceremonial cloak—black outer folds, crimson beneath, lined with cream fur at the collar—caught the light with every breeze.
Across his chest, a fitted leather plate bore the Wulfbane sigil, sharp and gleaming beneath the fading sky.
And he looked—
Handsome in a way that disarmed her, because he rarely allowed himself to be.
The remnants of daylight kissed his flaxen hair into silver.
There was a cleanness to his jaw, to the line of his brow, that made her chest tighten.
This afternoon, there was no armour for battle, but the way he wore himself—still and watchful—felt like protection of another kind.
He looked content. Proud. Maybe even happy.
It made her ache.
Because for a flickering moment, she thought of what happened between them earlier, his intense expression when he said those words that still thrummed through her.
‘I send them because the thought of something happening to you . . . makes me feel like I can’t breathe.’
He hadn’t meant to say them, but he had, and they’d landed in a place that felt so fragile she wanted to cup her hands together to protect the spark from going out.
And then the game began.
She had expected camaraderie. Perhaps some shouting, a bit of spectacle, laughter as the men fought over the ceremonial sack. She hadn’t expected the weight of the rope, the sounds, the strain as the fibres stretched and creaked.
And most of all, she hadn’t expected the memories to flood in.
She should’ve looked away. Should’ve turned her eyes to the trees, or the children stealing bits of apple tart from the feasting table.
But her gaze stayed fixed on the giant, bloated sack.
When the signal sounded and the men began to pull, the sack jerked and lurched, resisting.
Two teams strained against it, muscles bulging, heels digging into the ground. They shouted and cheered the struggle.
The moment the sack ripped, the noise fell away. Something inside her tore just as suddenly.
She wasn’t on the hill anymore. She was six years old, standing barefoot in a courtyard lined with cold stones.
A soldier held her arms behind her back, too tightly, but she barely felt it.
Her eyes were fixed on the woman lying just a few paces away, surrounded by shouting figures with spit on their lips and glee in their throats.
Whore. Traitor. Adulteress.
The words chanted louder than the drums. The child in her hadn’t understood their meaning, but she understood their venom.
She had tried to run to her mother, but the soldier behind her pinned her in place.
Her legs kicked. Her throat burned from screaming.
But still, she could do nothing, only watch.
The crowd parted.
Two white oxen were led forward by chains, their hooves thudding on the ground.
They’d been decorated with crimson garlands and gold bells, their horns chalked with white, as though they were part of some sacred procession.
JingYi’s breath stuttered to a stop. She’d never seen animals so large up close.
The world around her slowed, then tilted.
Someone brought out the ropes.
Her mother screamed and struggled, kicking against the soldier restraining her. She tried to rise, to claw her way back to their empty, dusty mansion, but they pressed her to the ground and tied each rope around her ankles. Then, they tied the end of those ropes to each ox.
JingYi’s mind couldn’t reach what her eyes were seeing, but she knew something terrible was about to happen. Tears streaked down her face. Her chest seized with a panic that had no shape, only instinct.
Run to her. Put your forehead to the ground. Ask for forgiveness, for love.
Her child’s heart had hungered for it. Even then, especially then, she still hoped for kindness from her mother’s lips. A single word, a final caress, before they forever parted.
But when Jing Mei turned her head and fixed those bloodshot eyes on her—
There was no tenderness, no goodbye.
Only fury and hatred.
“Curse you,” she spat. “Curse you, JingYi! If it wasn’t for you . . . You’ve ruined me!”
Someone smacked the oxen, and they began to walk in opposite directions.
The cheers reached a feverish pitch. JingYi shut her eyes.
Her body had done it for her, as if it knew witnessing her mother’s death would break her completely.
The world vanished into crimson behind her lids, yet somehow, she still heard it.
The screams. The cheers. The snap. The wet tearing of flesh as Jing Mei’s body split down the middle.
The silence after.
Later, no one would speak of what happened. She’d been dragged back to the shuttered mansion and thrown behind locked gates. Inside that dark, dust-choked place, the screams finally stopped.
But they’d never left.
They’d only buried themselves deeper, splintered into her bones, nested beneath her ribs, curling like smoke in the hollow spaces of her being. They waited there, for two decades, quietly, insidiously.
Until the ropes, drawn taut during a harvest ritual in a kingdom far away, broke them free.
When she came back to herself, she was swaddled in shadow and silence.
Alexander’s chambers, she realized dimly.
The heavy draperies had been drawn, muting the dusky light to a soft amber hush.
A fire crackled low in the hearth. Somewhere beyond it, the world continued on: the feast, the festival, the laughter she’d left behind.
But here, there was only breath. And closeness.
She opened her eyes and saw only his chest. One of his arms was tucked beneath her, anchoring her to him, the other wrapped across her waist, his broad hand resting at her hip. He must have carried her here through all the gawking stares and whispers.
And still . . . he hadn’t let go.
He hadn’t removed her ceremonial gown, but he’d undone the sash and loosened the stays so she could breathe easier. The body pressed against her was a warm furnace. She curled against him, closed her eyes, and tried to breathe. It emerged a hiss, squeezed between clenched teeth.
She wasn’t used to being touched like this.
Not gently. Not reverently. Her body quivered, not knowing how to receive this gentleness.
Her mind scrambled to measure what it meant.
As if he sensed the turmoil, his hold adjusted—pulling her closer, his breath warming the crown of her head and silencing her doubts.
JingYi shut her eyes, and the moisture from her eyes leaked out to wet her lashes.
Gods.
The scent of him. The certainty in his body. The way he tucked her in without even thinking, as though this had always been her place.
Her mother’s voice rose unbidden from the deep, a cruel whisper half-lost to memory—curse you, curse you. If not for you—
She tucked her chin to her chest, trying to swallow the small whimper pushing behind her teeth. She pressed her palm lightly to the arm across her waist, just to tether herself to the presence of another.
“JingYi?” His voice was low, tentative, a little rough.
Her throat hurt, but she pushed the words out. “I’m sorry I ruined the celebration.”
He didn’t speak at first. His arm didn’t move either, grounding her in place.
“It was beautiful,” he said, “and you didn’t ruin anything.”
She closed her eyes again. The silence between them was a living thing, and in its hold, the old, scarred truth within her twisted, restless.
For years, she had carried it alone—a private, ugly stone in her gut.
To speak it was to risk everything: his pity, his disgust, the shattering of this fragile, temporary sanctuary.
But the weight of his stillness, the absolute lack of demand, became a strange kind of permission.
The words pressed against the back of her teeth.
A cold, hard fact that needed release. If she was to be truly seen here, in this room where he’d brought all of her broken pieces, then let him see the first and deepest crack.
“I was six when my mother was executed,” she whispered.
The words came out too evenly, but it was the only way she knew how to speak of it—stripping it bare of feeling, laying it down like something already dissected a hundred times over the years.
“There was a stablemaster in the Peony Court with a mark like mine—same colour, same shape. Someone saw him pass my mother in a courtyard and decided there was an ugly, perverted reason why I was born this way. Rumours spread that he was my true father, and that I’d inherited his birthmark.”
He froze, but didn’t speak.
“The court believed it. His Majesty believed it. My mother lost her status overnight.” She paused, the memory a cold, familiar shape.
“I was just a newborn. I have no memory of the palace we lost, or the privileges she wept for. But my mother . . . she mourned like a widow. She cried for the emperor every night. Begged to be seen. Begged, until the end, for her innocence.”
Her fingers curled into fists, her tone stripped bare.
“We were sent to an old, sealed mansion at the edge of the Peony Court. It was already falling apart when we arrived. I grew up in rooms that never saw the sun. The gates were always locked. No visitors. No company. Only Wu Mā, the caretaker, brought us food and news from the outside.”
The room felt too still. Too warm. A familiar tightness returned to her chest—the sensation of being so small and helpless, trapped inside a body that couldn’t stop what was coming.