Chapter 52
JINGYI
The fruit was flushed with gold and rose, perfectly ripe. Its skin gleamed in the low light as if it had just been plucked from the branch.
The room tilted. The damp stone, the stench of the cell, Adelise’s sharply-drawn breath—all of it fell away.
A sun-drenched courtyard took their place.
A girl of fourteen, clutching a green, stubbornly unripe peach, guarding it for days until it blushed sweet.
She’d left it on her brother’s porch in the dead of night, a show of gratitude for the rescue she could never name aloud.
Her rib cage felt suddenly too small. She’d given that peach without expectation, certain it would mean nothing to a crown prince whose table overflowed with delicacies. And yet, here it was, returned to her in a moment when she’d desperately needed a lifeline.
Xū Haorán wasn’t lying. He couldn’t be. Only three people in the world knew the story: ShunLi, Alexander, and herself. Her brother—the cold, distant, unreachable Pangolin Crown Prince of X?en-Sarai—had sent help. Her eyes burned.
Adelise reached out to squeeze her hand. “I knew ShunLi would be sensible and send someone,” she murmured.
JingYi’s lips twitched. Adelise’s faith in the crown prince steadied her own. And this peach—this secret—felt like a sign, a message from another life, whispering that not all bonds had been broken.
Her heart still thundered in her chest as JingYi stared at Xū Haorán. The mask was back on, veiling all traces of the man beneath it. He was already at the door, tray in hand, the emptied vial carefully balanced atop its surface.
“What’s next?” JingYi whispered.
“I’ll return at the next check.” His voice was low, careful. He turned to Adelise. “You’ll need to act as if the limyerite is working, Your Highness. Drowsy, weak, disoriented.”
Adelise nodded vigorously. “I understand.”
JingYi leaned in. “And after that?”
Even softer, he said, “There’s another tunnel—an old one, mostly collapsed. I haven’t found the exit yet, but I’m close.”
He glanced at the door before continuing. “I hid a Sparo in the woods, near the entrance I used. If I get out, I’ll send word. Their leader doesn’t allow guards to come and go freely. I have to be careful. But I’ll come back. Trust me.”
She stepped forward, voice barely more than breath. “How will we know it’s you? All the guards look the same.”
He set the tray down on the pallet and raised his arm. A single jade button gleamed at the underside of his cuff—small, unobtrusive, but vivid enough to catch the eye of one who’d been told where to look.
Adelise’s voice was hoarse. “What about the body?”
“I’ll move it behind the screen for now,” Haorán replied. “During the changing of the guards, I’ll slip back in and carry it through the tunnel. There’s one that leads to an underground river.”
A river. JingYi’s mind leapt to the Blackfen—the sluggish tributary that fed into Draemir Lake where she’d found the drowned woman’s body weeks ago, drifting like a fallen blossom in the reeds.
How many bodies had Tedric disposed of the same way?
They worked together to hide the guard’s corpse behind the screen. After Haorán left, JingYi looked at Adelise. “Do you trust him? Or . . . them?”
Adelise didn’t hesitate. “I trust ShunLi.”
“But you haven’t seen him in . . . fourteen years.”
“He was sent here so young, the court practically raised him.” Her voice turned wistful. “The first time I saw him, I thought he might be the most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on. He made people feel seen—important. I think even my father forgot he wasn’t Tremorian.”
JingYi absorbed this. Fourteen years. A boy sent across the sea, shaped by foreign hands into a man she didn’t know.
What else had she missed?
She pushed the thought aside. There would be time for that later. If they survived.
Adelise sighed and plopped down onto her pallet. “No one ever really saw me. I was sturdy, even as a child, not the delicate kind of Omega they praised in the poems and fables. They used to call me the ‘stocky blossom.’” She huffed. “Not kindly, too. But he was always kind to me.”
JingYi sat beside her and took Adelise’s hand. “I’d rather be stocky than sickly, wouldn’t you?”
That earned a short laugh. “You must know already. Being an Omega, especially a royal one, meant you had to be perfect. Anything less was a failure.”
JingYi looked down at their joined hands, her brow furrowing.
She didn’t know this gentle version of ShunLi.
To her, he was a man she saw from afar, whose station was so high above her that, according to the palace rules, she wasn’t permitted to look him in the eye.
But to Adelise, he was grace and gentleness.
A radiant boy-prince who had made her feel whole.
She wasn’t sure which version was real.
“We have to fool Tedric,” JingYi said, her voice dropping to a whisper. She nodded at the pallet. “When he comes, you need to look poisoned. Shallow breaths, hand on your abdomen as if you’re cramping. Your eyes should flutter, like you can’t focus. Can you do that?”
Adelise gave a confident nod. Her earlier fire returned, ready to be channeled into the performance. “I was also the lead in the palace winter play for three years running. Just watch.”
Footsteps echoed down the gallery. They exchanged a glance. Adelise quickly lay down, eyes closed, already in character. JingYi snatched a rag from the water basin and leaned over her, dabbing at her brow. Her movements were calm, unassuming—a simple healer tending to her ailing patient.
The footsteps drew closer. A moment later, Tedric appeared at the door. His mild voice cut through the stillness. “How is she?”
JingYi didn’t look up. Her hand moved across Adelise’s brow, heart thudding, silently praying Tedric wouldn’t see through their ruse. “The first bout of fever has begun.”
Behind her, fabric rustled as he leaned against the wall. “Good,” he said. “You can administer more doses to the other seven Omegas.”
Her hand froze. The rag sagged in her grip, water dripping onto the straw pallet. “But they’ve only just begun their road to recovery.”
“Precisely why now is the moment,” Tedric replied patiently, as if talking to a child. “Their bodies are strong enough to endure another trial.”
The words struck. She looked down at Adelise and thought of the others. The girl who had finally kept the broth down. The one whose hands had stopped shaking. The faintest glimmers of life she had fought to coax back.
Now, he meant to burn it all away.
She dragged a ragged breath into her lungs, then stood and turned to him.
“No.”
He sighed, eyes rolling upwards. “Why must you carry on with these tiresome arguments?” His hand waved as he paced. “You could do more if you joined us. You’re not like the others—they follow orders. You ask questions. You see things.”
“I see pain,” she said, “and I try to lessen it.”
He paused and turned, facing her. “I see pain, too. Unlike you, I go to the root and cut out the rot.”
She lifted her chin. “By widening the wound?”
“By turning it back on those who caused it.”
“That isn’t healing. It’s revenge.”
His mouth tipped, almost amused. “Is revenge so wrong if it sets people free?”
“Toppling a tyrant isn’t the same as freeing people.”
“The new regime will bring freedom.”
“At what cost?”
He examined his lacy cuff and flicked off dust. “Surely, a better future for the majority is worth the sacrifice of a few.”
“Not when you’re the one choosing the ‘few.’” Her fingers curled. “You don’t save a body by swapping one infection for another.”
He stepped closer, close enough that she could see his eyes narrowing into slits. “You think your healing makes you better than us, don’t you?”
“No,” she said. His eyes, his whole being, made her want to crawl beneath the ground, but she held firm. “It makes me accountable, and it keeps me from turning people into tools.”
He laughed—a low, unpleasant sound. “You think your self-sacrifice makes you noble. But I know the truth, Princess. You heal because it’s the only thing that makes you worth anything.
What are you without it? An unwanted Omega.
A crippled woman with a badly-marked face.
Your healing isn’t a virtue—it’s a performance.
Your way of convincing yourself you still matter. ”
JingYi backed away. “You don’t know me at all.”
“Don’t I? You like the power it gives you. The feeling of usefulness. The false sense of purpose. It feeds you. In the end, you do it for yourself. You’re just as selfish as the rest of us.”
Her hands shook. She couldn’t answer. Tedric gave her a lingering, arched look before he turned toward the door.
Was he right?
The question coiled in her chest, tight and cold. Had she ever healed out of pure selflessness, or was it always, in some small way, a plea to be seen? To matter? To prove she was more than the sum of her flaws?
She didn’t have an answer.
But she thought of the Omegas—their chests rising and falling, their fevers less, their pulses stronger. That was real. That was fact. Whatever lived in her heart, the work was real.
Before stepping outside, Tedric said over his shoulder, “Tomorrow morning, give the other Omegas more purple limyerite. If you won’t, I’ll do it myself.”
The door shut. The room tilted, but she did not fall.
JingYi paced. Tedric would not stop. Not after this round. Not the next. He would make her do it again, and again, until the last Omega was either ‘successful,’ or . . . dead.
Pleading, reason, morality—none of it mattered to him. He didn’t want healing. She suspected he didn’t want justice either. He wanted domination. Supremacy. Proof he could break and rebuild the Nine Kingdoms into something new.
Unless she stopped him.
The thought was a clear current, cutting through the murk of her doubt. It was the first clean breath she’d taken in days. Her hands, which had trembled with uncertainty moments before, steadied.
She would stop him.
JingYi had known, during that dreadful supper with Tedric, the kitchen might one day be her weapon. She hadn’t thought it would come to this. A healer’s hands were meant to save. Not to poison, nor betray.
Yet here she was, dragging herself along the corridor, her pulse hammering in her skull. Above, guards leaned over the gallery rail, their murmurs a careless hum. She kept to the wall, head bowed, willing herself unseen, just another shadow in the dim.
Footsteps approached. She lifted her gaze just enough to catch a wink of jade green. She didn’t pause.
As they neared, she spoke, her voice no louder than a breath, “Don’t eat the guards’ meal tonight.”
Haorán gave just the barest incline of his head. She slipped inside the kitchen, closing the door softly behind her.
Empty. Just as she’d left it.
The place smelled like old broth and charred stone.
A pot sat on the hearth, the coals beneath it faintly glowing.
She crossed the floor, her hand at the pouch on her hip.
She drew a small twist of cloth—the sample she’d collected from the Wulfbane mine, sealed away and forgotten in the whirlwind of childbirth, flight, and fear.
She’d meant to study it. There had never been time.
Unfolding the cloth, she stared at the dry fungus slivers within. They were unremarkable—dull grey, slightly shrivelled. Yet they held the property that transformed common limyerite into deadly things.
Her stomach clenched. Her fingers hovered over the pot as she stared at the cloudy broth. She was about to cross a line she couldn’t turn back from.
She thought of the guards leaning over the rails, laughing at every Omega moaning and coughing. Vials of purple limyerite solution, ready to be force-fed. Tedric, watching with cold interest, caring only that they served as fodder for his goals.
Even if the girls healed, how long before it began again?
The fungus crumbled like ash in her palm. She opened her fingers and let the pieces fall.
She stirred the pot—slowly, steadily—until the soup turned thick and glossy and as dark as her own resolve.
She would serve it hot. She would serve it herself.
And let them taste what they had fed.