Chapter 64
JINGYI
JingYi couldn’t remember walking out of Magnolia Palace. Her feet simply moved, carrying her through pathways she didn’t recognize, past gardens she didn’t see.
She didn’t think she was heading anywhere, just . . . away. They led her past the cultivated paths, past the unoccupied guard posts, past the crumbling wall at the edge of the palace complex where the groundskeepers never bothered to go.
She stopped.
The manor hunched before her like a wounded animal.
It was smaller than she remembered, even more decrepit.
The gate hung askew, rusted hinges screaming in the silence.
Weeds swallowed the path where she’d once walked with her head down, counting steps to the well and back.
Chill gripped her nape. Her mind screamed, telling her to turn around. Run, run, run.
But her traitorous feet moved forward.
The gates gave way easily, its lock broken years ago yet no one had any reason to repair it. She stepped into the abandoned courtyard full of rocks and debris, nature growing wild between the paving stones.
Inside, the manor was all dust and shadows. The same narrow corridor where she’d learned to walk without sound, to take only shallow breaths so her mother wouldn’t hear her existing.
Her breath came faster now.
She walked past the room where her mother wept through endless nights. Past the kitchen where she’d taught herself to light a fire. Past the alcove in the wall where she’d pressed her palm flat, counting seconds until it was safe to move again.
She stopped at a door, smaller than the others.
The closet.
Her stomach lurched. She hadn’t thought of this door in years—had walled it off, buried it so deep she’d convinced herself it didn’t matter anymore. But her body remembered. Her palms were slick. Her throat closed to the size of a straw.
Her body trembled as she tried to slide it open. It jammed. She pried it with shaking fingers, and it gave with a groan. The sliver of dark space was even more cramped than she remembered.
She saw herself there. Three years old. Four. Five. Six. Knees drawn to her chest. Hands clamped over her ears, trying to block out the screaming, the sound of her own name spoken like a curse.
‘If not for you, His Majesty would still love me. If not for you, I would still be worthy.’
JingYi closed her eyes. “Stop.” Her voice cracked.
This was the place where she’d first learned to be small. To make her body silent, her needs invisible. To exist only in the spaces between her mother’s rages. Love, if there was any to begin with, had been poisoned at the root, turned into a bitter resin of resentment that seeped into everything.
She sank to her knees. Dust rose around her, settling on her robes, her hands, her cheeks. The place smelled like mildew and rot and everything she’d tried to forget.
The first time she’d hidden here surfaced. She’d been three years old, maybe four. Her mother was in one of her rages where she only saw the birthmark, the proof of her fall. JingYi had crawled into this tiny space and pulled the door closed, shaking, praying not to be found.
You were just a child.
The thought came quietly, like someone else’s voice. Like the woman she was now, speaking to the little girl she’d been.
You were just a child, and she was drowning. She grabbed onto you because you were the only thing close enough to hold. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. But it wasn’t your fault.
A sob escaped her. Ugly. Raw. Ripped from somewhere she’d sealed shut twenty years ago. It came out of her like a draining wound, terrible and necessary.
She looked at the small space again. At the girl who had lived here, in pieces, for six years. At the child who was told, on the last day she saw her mother, she was the reason for her demise.
I didn’t kill her.
The words took shape, clearer than ever. Each one a stone she laid down for a new foundation.
I didn’t ask to be born with this mark. I was six years old. I hid in a closet. And I survived.
On her knees, she looked up at the ceiling, at the water stains spreading like old bruises across the wood.
She had memorized those stains. Night after night, lying on a pallet, waiting for the screaming to stop, she traced their shapes in the dark.
A map of her captivity. The only thing that stayed the same while everything else crumbled.
“You didn’t deserve what happened to you, Mother.”
Her voice was barely a whisper, meant for the ghost of the woman who had once filled these rooms with weeping.
“But I didn’t either. I didn’t deserve any of it.” Her throat closed, then opened. “I’m letting you go. I’m releasing us both. You can rest now, Mother.”
She closed her eyes and waited for something. A crash. A scream. Some final punishment for daring to let go.
Nothing came.
She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling her heartbeat, steady and strong.
“And so can I.”
For a long moment, she stayed on her knees, listening. The silence was different now—not the suffocating silence of her childhood, of holding her breath, of waiting for the next blow. There was no threat. No waiting storm, just stillness. Just the sound of her own breathing, slow and deep.
Then she opened her eyes and looked around—truly looked.
The closet was just a closet. Small. Dusty.
Ordinary. The dark corners held nothing but shadows.
The creaking above was just old wood settling.
No monsters lurked in the walls. No ghost of her mother waited in the gloom.
No echoes of screaming, no phantom hands with missing fingers scrubbing her cheek raw.
Just a heap of rotting timber and peeling lacquer, gradually returning to the earth.
She rose. Her knee complained, stiff from kneeling too long on cold wood. She didn’t mind the ache. It was hers. Every part of her was hers now.
At the door, she paused and looked back one last time. The girl who had hidden there was not hiding anymore. She stood in the doorway, a woman grown, ready to walk out.
She closed the door. The sound was soft, final.
Outside, night had fallen. She hadn’t even noticed the hours passing. The moon hung low, casting silver over the overgrown path. Crickets sang in the weeds. The air smelled of damp earth and night-blooming flowers—scents that had nothing to do with rot or memory.
She drew a breath. Deep. Clean. Filling her lungs with the present.
Rapid footsteps reached her ears. She turned just as the broken gates swung open. Haorán stood silhouetted against the moonlight, lantern in hand, chest heaving. When he saw her, panic drained from his face—relief rushing in to take its place.
“Your Highness.” He bowed. “Your handmaidens are frantic. No one saw you leave Magnolia Palace.”
She inclined her head. “I needed a walk.”
His gaze moved past her to the crumbling manor, then returned to her face. Recognition flashed in his eyes, the look of a man who had seen his own share of ghosts.
“Why did you return to the place that pains you so?” he asked.
JingYi looked back and simply said, “To let go.”
Haorán studied her for a moment. Then he nodded, a simple acknowledgment from a man who, she believed, understood some journeys required no explanation.
“Shall I escort you back, Your Highness?”
She meant to say yes. Meant to end this night. But her eyes caught on the broken fence—the gap where she and LinXin had often met in secret. Repaired once, splintered open again. Like an old wound, refusing to close.
She had heard ShunLi’s story, but she knew—somewhere deep and certain—that LinXin’s tale was not yet finished.
“Can you take me to Plum Blossom Palace?”
His eyes widened slightly. But he didn’t say anything, only bowed and raised the lantern, casting light into the darkness ahead.
LinXin’s palace was not far from her own residence.
They were the only two Omega High Princesses, occupying equally desirable buildings within the Imperial Palace complex.
At this hour, the lanterns that lined the covered walkways burned low, casting flickers across the wide flagstones.
The guards at LinXin’s gate bowed when she and Haorán approached, but none dared to question her for coming so late.
LinXin’s maid let her inside straightaway while Haorán waited in the courtyard.
She followed her to the receiving room where, beneath a hanging scroll of cranes in flight, LinXin stood in her robe, belted loosely, her hair unpinned and falling in soft waves.
Though she was calm, there was surprise in her eyes.
Once alone, JingYi wasted no time. “There’s something you weren’t telling me this afternoon. What was it?”
LinXin didn’t speak right away. Her posture, always so composed, faltered. She looked younger in this moment, unsure—as if they were children again, hiding in the darkest corners of a garden.
“Your return should mark a new age in our relationship,” LinXin finally said. “One built on honesty and truth, not secrets and fear.” Her throat bobbed with each swallow. “But I do fear . . . you’d despise me if you knew.”
JingYi’s brow furrowed. “Knew about what?”
LinXin’s gaze turned glassy. She took a step forward. “Do you remember when we were little? When I would sneak away to visit you at the Withering Orchid Manor?”
JingYi nodded slowly. “You used to slip through the broken fence in the garden after curfew. I’d wait there with a blanket and two cups of barley tea.”
“And when they repaired the fence, we still found a way to meet.” LinXin gave a quiet, almost wistful laugh.
“We held hands through the gap. You always came with stories. I never had any. Only shadows. My mother’s bitterness. Her weeping.”
LinXin took another step. “Do you remember when, shortly after your mother died, I showed you . . . a little trick with the light?”
Her sister opened her hand. A flame stirred to life in her palm. No ordinary flame. Not red or orange, it shimmered silver at the edges, and at its heart glowed a bright fuchsia light, pulsing as if alive.