Chapter 63
JINGYI
The piers of Changzihuā looked different this time.
The air still carried the river’s scent: mud and damp wood, the familiar smoke of morning braziers, but the acrid bite of rot had lessened. The cries of dockworkers rose in harmony rather than desperation—voices clearer, sharper, no longer drowned by the groan of overburdened piers.
JingYi stood near the gunwale as the ship entered the port.
There were fewer beggars now clinging to their posts.
The old fishmongers’ stalls had been replaced with neat wooden booths, and while the river still ran brown with silt, there was a freshness to the activity along the banks.
The carts that rumbled past were better loaded.
The guards standing at attention wore simpler uniforms, but their faces no longer looked starved.
She recognized the change. A new beginning. A breath after drowning.
“It’s different than before, isn’t it,” Haorán murmured beside her, observing as she did.
She nodded. “Cleaner. Calmer.” Then, more softly, “Full of hope.”
It surprised her that such hope could follow bloodshed. That such peace might rise from the ruin of a palace coup.
A pair of palace officials in navy robes approached the gangplank as it was lowered. No jade tassels nor plated with gold embellished the palanquin awaiting her. No drummers marched ahead. No scent of incense clouded the air. It was elegant in its restraint.
“High Princess JingYi,” one said, bowing. “Welcome home.”
She stepped forward. Her foot touched the pier where she had once stood, heartsick and furious at the empire’s emptiness. But now, beneath her slippers, the wood felt sturdy.
A city once sick now finally received the purge it needed.
Unlike the harbor, the Imperial Palace of a Thousand Suns had changed little.
JingYi hooked her finger around the palanquin’s curtain and drew it back a fraction. Pale jade walls. Carved salamanders. Gold-glazed roof tiles curving overhead—all of it unchanged. The familiarity pressed against her chest, heavy and strange.
She let the curtain fall. Her hands curled into fists in her lap.
Even after taking over, ShunLi hadn’t razed their father’s legacy with flamboyance and had let the halls breathe. No fresh lacquer, no carved excess, just the dignity of stone allowed to stand as it was. He hadn’t even changed all the salamanders to pangolins to mark his reign.
She’d expected to be sent to the Garden Wing, the half-forgotten residence where distant cousins and disgraced concubines were often placed out of sight. Instead, the palanquin came to a smooth halt before Magnolia Palace—a residence reserved only for the highest-ranking princesses of the realm.
That alone might have stolen her breath.
But then she saw them: Emperor ShunLi and High Princess LinXin.
Not waiting inside behind beaded curtains, not reclining beneath cypress shade while handmaidens pampered them.
They stood side by side in the courtyard, beneath the canopy of early light.
They weren’t wearing white for mourning, though both their robes were of light colours without excess ornaments.
LinXin’s expression, usually so fiercely guarded, was open. The moment JingYi stood before them, her half-sister stepped forward and reached out. She flinched back before she could stop herself. LinXin’s hand hovered, then lowered with grace.
ShunLi stood as regal as ever, but the softness in his gaze was not something she’d seen before.
JingYi steadied herself and dipped into a low curtsy. With her gaze still on the ground, she greeted the new emperor for the first time, “May the morning sun rise with your reign, Your Radiance. I have returned by your leave and grace.”
“Rise, Shō Meisha.”
The words brushed against her like unfamiliar silk—careful, too measured to trust.
JingYi began to rise slowly, her fingers still pressed against the folds of her dress, anchoring herself to the movement. Her knee clicked. A small pain shot up her spine.
Before she could straighten fully, a palace handmaiden appeared at her side—pale pink robes, magnolia-blossom soft—and took her elbow, steadying her.
JingYi nearly pulled away. The touch was gentle, patient, utterly foreign. She had always learned to rise alone, to hide the click of her knee, to smooth her own dress while pretending the pain didn’t exist.
This stranger’s hand held her like she was worth the extra moment.
This, too, was new.
JingYi’s gaze met her brother’s. She searched his face for something—remorse, affection, guilt—but he hid any emotion well beneath the polished ease of an emperor.
“You look well,” ShunLi said. “We hope your crossing wasn’t too taxing.”
She inclined her head and replied cautiously, “King Ferdinand was most generous. He sent us on his newest and smoothest ship.”
A pause stretched. Her skin prickled with the weight of so many eyes. What could they speak about here, other than formalities, with dozens of retinues watching?
“It is good that you were brought back with dignity,” he said at last.
Her breath snagged. Dignity. A word that had never been offered to her before.
“You’ve granted me a palace,” she said, her tone neutral, though the words felt foreign in her mouth. “And sent guards to escort me safely through the city. I thank you for your generosity.”
LinXin spoke, “There is much that was done poorly before. We intend to begin again.”
JingYi gave the barest tilt of her head, enough to appease the watchful eyes of the guards and attendants circling the courtyard. As long as they remained in public, anything said would be fodder for gossip, something for the whole palace to discuss and dissect later.
Outside, she must keep calm. Her insides, however, knotted.
Begin again.
As if their past could be folded neatly away. As if it hadn’t marked her skin, shaped her gait, rewritten her very sense of self. She wasn’t so naive to believe apologies would come—not here, not in public—but even this peace offering, carefully worded, was something she hadn’t expected.
Should she feel wary of their intentions, or relieved? It seemed easier for now, safer, to feel nothing at all.
ShunLi’s eyes slid past her and softened a touch. “Haorán, you’ve returned.”
At once, Haorán stepped forward and dropped to one knee, head lowered, fists clasped and lowered in a warrior’s salute. “This one greets the Rising Sun of the Realm—He who wears the Golden Seal, chosen by Heaven and guarded by fate.”
He turned slightly toward LinXin and dipped his head. “And offers due honour to Her Grace, the High Princess.”
“Xū Haorán,” LinXin said, her voice even. “You’ve found our sister and brought her back to safety. For that, you have our gratitude.”
Haorán remained bowed. “Begging Her Highness’s pardon, but the one who freed High Princess JingYi from her captors was not this servant. It was Lord Alexander Wulfbane of Blackwood-Veyrde, who arrived at the final hour.”
The name struck JingYi’s chest with the strength of a battering ram. She kept her eyes open, though the rest of her wanted to fold. Even here, leagues away, surrounded by rigid decorum, Alexander’s name brought back the memory of his last kiss.
She said nothing. The ache didn’t need sound to exist.
LinXin bristled. “He lost what was entrusted to him,” she said, voice cold, “and failed to protect the High Princess from those who left their mark on her.”
JingYi’s fingers curled into her sleeve, an old habit to keep them from drifting to her cheek. Six weeks had passed since the dungeon. The bruises still clung to her skin in faint yellow and green, like wilted leaves refusing to fall.
Haorán lowered himself further, his forehead pressed to the polished stone. “This servant accepts full blame. Had I not been defeated, Her Highness would never have fallen into enemy hands.”
JingYi waved the words away. “Enough. Xū Haorán’s loyalty is beyond question. He risked his life to protect mine and the emperor’s future bride.” She paused to gauge ShunLi’s reaction, but her brother’s face remained impassive.
“Lord Wulfbane is also not on trial here,” she added with finality. “I left his House and his name by my own will. Do not mistake my choice for his failure.”
ShunLi’s gaze shifted—first to Haorán, still kneeling, then to her.
“That is enough for now,” he said, and though his tone was even, it was enough to signal the end of the discussion. “This is not the time to reopen wounds that have barely begun to heal.”
Then, he gestured toward the open doorway behind him. “The Magnolia Palace is yours now, Sister. I would have you cross its threshold not as a guest, but as its mistress. Come. There is still much to discuss, and much to reacquaint ourselves with.”
He turned first, giving her space to follow of her own will. He paused just shy of the threshold and looked over his shoulder. “Haorán, rest for now. Later, I will hear more about the man who defeated you.”
After ShunLi disappeared into the building, JingYi hesitated for a breath before walking past the rows of courtiers, past Haorán still on the ground, past LinXin’s storm-laced silence. She never imagined she’d walk into the palace that was hers to command.
It had once been the residence of Princess MinLuo, the beloved Omega sister of the twelfth Emperor—X?en Yánlei the Encompassing, a Sunborn sovereign who ended the Seven-Army Rebellion and forged peace with the Tzadun-Khor tribe.
She returned as a young widow after a rare love match with a Tzadun chieftain.
Instead of being wed again for politics, the emperor granted her the unheard-of freedom to live out her days in peaceful solitude.
It was a scandal—a widowed Omega refusing remarriage—but the emperor upheld her choice and bequeathed the Magnolia Palace as her place of refuge.
And now, decades later, it opened its doors to another Omega long forgotten.
The scent reached her first—aged incense, spiced, like dried orange peel and osmanthus.