Chapter 42
JINGYI
She had thought herself prepared. Prepared to run until the ocean or a foreign border swallowed her whole. Prepared to face Alexander again. She’d imagined this moment so many times, convincing herself it would mean nothing.
But when their eyes met across the plaza, every fragile wall crumbled. She had fooled herself.
The Alpha in him had always carried weight, but now it pressed heavier, reminding her body what her mind refused to acknowledge. Even before he spoke, her marrow recognized him, pulling taut on the thread left half-woven the night of her Heat. It throbbed like an infected wound.
And now—a stolen letter? A ploy, he’d said. A deliberate strike meant to break them apart.
Her mind split. Two truths warred for dominance.
The first was a clean, familiar blade: He wrote it.
He rejected her. That pain had a shape she knew how to carry.
The second was formless: Someone else did this.
They were both targeted. It reframed everything—his absence, the king’s summons, the cruel timing—as moves on a board she hadn’t known she was on.
She could not reconcile them. The first had broken her heart; the second shattered her understanding of the breaking. Which wound was she supposed to tend first? The one from his hand, or the one from the dark?
It was almost easier to cling to his failing. To be hurt by a husband was a private grief. To be a pawn felt like standing on a cliff in the dark, not knowing when the ground would give way.
She was grateful when Reiyana tugged her toward the palace.
She let the princess’s presence override the urge to turn back.
But just once, she looked over her shoulder.
He walked several paces behind, the princes flanking him.
Each stolen glance was like pressing her hand to an open flame.
It hurt, but she kept testing whether the fire still burned.
“JingYi,” Reiyana called in a low voice. “That is . . . if I may still call you JingYi?”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “Please. Nothing needs to change.”
They climbed into the shadowed walkway overlooking the gardens. Reiyana smiled, though her voice was firm. “Some things must change. Lord Wulfbane, for all his foolishness, was right about one thing: You are a princess, not a servant. You should be treated as such.”
JingYi’s stomach twisted. Princess. What did she know about being a princess? She didn’t want to be one. The memory of cold halls, whispered scorn, her mother’s hissed curses—it all rose like smoke.
Reiyana’s hand remained lightly on hers. “You understand, don’t you? If word reaches the X?en Emperor that his daughter was housed and treated as a servant in Aethonia, my parents will be placed in an impossible position.”
A breathless laugh escaped her. “You needn’t worry about that. My father wouldn’t bat an eye.”
Reiyana looked taken aback. “He wouldn’t?”
“No. He’d be pleased. It would be just as he’s always intended it to be.”
They reached the inner colonnade, sunlight filtering through latticework, casting shifting shadows on stone. Reiyana stopped and turned fully.
“You can’t mean that.”
“I do.” JingYi’s lips curved, though she couldn’t keep the bitterness from her smile. “To him, I’m no more a princess than this dress makes me a jewel of Aethonia. Born to the name, yes, but so much shame followed it. He wished I hadn’t been born at all.”
Reiyana’s hand enveloped hers. “Then allow me,” she said, voice firming, “to treat you as you should’ve been treated from the start. Not for politics or appearances, but because you’re worthy of it.”
The compliment snagged. She had to look away to swallow it. They’d barely stepped through the marble threshold when she felt it again—his presence pressing closer, heat rolling off him like a forge.
“JingYi—” Alexander’s voice came low and rough.
Her name in his mouth was a hook in her chest. Her body tensed to turn, pulled by a force older than thought, but she forced her steps onward.
She couldn’t face him. To look at him now would be to stand at the collision of two betrayals she still couldn’t understand. She needed the silence of four walls to put herself back together.
JingYi balled her fists and kept walking.
The tension fell away the moment they entered the princess’s room. The light filtered through gauze, tinting everything in rose gold. Her shoulders loosened. Here, breath came easier. This place felt like a safe harbour—temporary, fragile, but enough.
“You are coming to the ball tonight,” Reiyana declared. She pulled the bell cord and launched into rapid Aethairis the moment a maid appeared. The girl beamed, curtsied, and vanished.
JingYi blinked. “I never agreed—”
“There is nothing I would like more than to watch the Wolf of Tremore choke on regret the moment he sees you.”
JingYi hesitated. The words were meant to empower—a friend arming her with armour she didn’t know how to wear. But the thought of walking into that glittering hall, of all those turning heads and whispered judgments, of his eyes finding her across the crowd . . .
Her chest tightened. She was not a weapon to be aimed. She was not even sure she wanted to wound him.
“But this night is for you and the princes,” she reminded.
Reiyana waved a hand. “My parents wanted this ball as a belated wedding celebration. The princes and I have been married for a few months. In my condition, frankly, the thought of relaxing in bed is more rousing than dancing. Extraordinary, considering how much I loved dancing.”
JingYi couldn’t help but chuckle.
The maid returned with a dress. It shimmered across the divan—blush pink gauze layered over deep aubergine, stitched with pale sea-glass beads catching the light like water.
“I had this made earlier this year,” Reiya said. “But I left before it was finished. It’s never been worn, and I’d like you to wear it tonight.”
JingYi started to protest, but Reiyana ushered her to the mirror and began fiddling with her hair.
When she spoke, her tone was cautious. “You left because of the annulment letter, but now you know Lord Wulfbane didn’t send it. Does that change how you feel?”
She stared at their mirrored faces, her fingers curling into the silk pooled in her lap. The answer should have been simple—yes or no.
It wasn’t.
“It changes the villain in the story,” she admitted. “But still, he wrote it. He couldn’t accept my face, my limp. His first instinct on our wedding night was to write me out of his life. The letter existed. His desire to be rid of me existed.”
She looked down. “That pain doesn’t just go away because someone else sent the letter.”
“No,” Reiyana agreed softly. When JingYi looked up, the princess’s expression was full of knowing empathy. She resumed brushing in gentle, measured strokes.
“It certainly wouldn’t. But . . . might it change the ending? If the cruelest act wasn’t his, does that change how you see the man who sailed across an ocean to undo it?”
JingYi looked at their reflections, her sad smile not reaching her eyes.
“It should. But all I can think about is that he needed a perfect Omega to restore his House, and I was the flawed one he tried to send back.” Her hands twisted the fabric in her lap.
“If it hadn’t been for my Heat, he would never have touched me at all. ”
The hands stilled at her hair. “You truly believe that?”
A profound sadness flickered across Reiyana’s face. In that look, JingYi saw her own secret fear reflected back: the torment of questioning every touch, of never being sure which was duty and which was desire.
Reiyana sighed. “It’s not my place to have an opinion on your marriage, but the way Lord Wulfbane looked at you today . . . that was not a man eager to be rid of his wife.”
JingYi froze, her breath snagging. Something hot rose in her throat. The raw panic in his eyes, the tremor in his voice when he pleaded—he hadn’t been the cold, detached lord she’d scripted, but a man unravelling by the second.
The doubt was a crack in the ice. She pressed her lips together and lowered her gaze.
“You don’t owe him anything after all you’ve been through.” Reiyana paused, her hand pressing on JingYi’s shoulders. “But I’ve learned that a person’s first thought is not always their last. Being wrong about someone—truly, shamefully wrong—can teach them more than being right from the start.”
JingYi lowered her gaze, her throat dry.
Reiyana gave her shoulder another squeeze, then left her in the shaded hush with the sound of distant waves.
A fragile, impossible thought lodged like a splinter in her heart: What if he truly wanted me, too?