Chapter 68
ALEXANDER
The brush caught mid-curve, spilling ink like a wound that wouldn’t clot. Alexander stared at the blot and watched the tip of the brush tremble. Too much water, not enough control. The character he’d meant to copy resembled a withered insect.
“Again,” came Scholar Wen’s voice from the shade behind him. Not unkind, but not coddling either.
Alexander nodded and dipped the brush again. The stroke was meant to rise gently, then hook left in a motion he still hadn’t mastered. He moved slower this time, but the brush snagged on the parchment’s texture and left a stuttered edge.
“Ké, not kè,” the old man corrected in X?enguā, tapping the sheet with a knuckle. “You’ve written ‘carve,’ not ‘dog.’ Though some dogs do leave their mark.”
The scholar chuckled at his own joke and shuffled off, leaving Alexander to scowl at the ink-stained grid of failures.
But he grabbed another clean parchment and tried again.
It was morning in Changzihuā, and the air still held the night’s coolness.
From the veranda where he sat cross-legged, he could see the tiled rooftops curving like sleeping beasts, pale mist trailing between their ridges.
The city hadn’t yet shaken off the hush of dawn.
There was something poetic about the way each day unfolded here—almost ceremonial.
Even the silence seemed to have structure.
He’d lived among the locals for a month now, far from the mountain fortresses and stone halls of Tremore.
Here, he wasn’t Lord Wulfbane. He was just a foreigner who studied with a stiff back, broke half his brushes, and cursed under his breath in Tremesi when he forgot the tonal difference between water and dog.
Still, he showed up each morning.
He studied their scripts with clumsy reverence, spilled ink on his sleeves, and practiced pronouncing herbal ingredients he couldn’t yet identify.
A few days ago, Scholar Wen had left out a medical scroll—lists of root properties and poultices in delicate calligraphy.
Alexander had tried to sound out the words.
He could only guess what each character meant.
JingYi would’ve known in a flash.
The thought caught him unguarded.
He blinked and lifted his eyes toward the yard beyond the rail, past a pair of children chasing a paper kite shaped like a rabbit, giggling as it flopped against a trough, groaning when the tail got soaked in water.
Past the shopkeeper ladling water onto the street.
If he squinted at the horizon, he could glimpse the gold structures of the Imperial Palace of a Thousand Suns.
She’d walked among these sounds, grew up with them albeit from within her cage.
And still, she had come to Tremore and learned his language—for him, an Alpha she’d never met—though she never admitted it aloud. She’d spoken with grace and broken syntax, practiced his customs with care.
Now, it was his turn.
He wished he could’ve come sooner, but the earliest he’d been able to leave Blackwood-Veyrde was nearly a month after she departed.
Too much needed shoring up before he could safely relinquish the reins. The mines had to be stabilized. His first act was to reappoint Ulrik as foreman; the man’s experience and respect among the workers were invaluable during the transition.
Darion remained as second-in-command, overseeing Parandor’s broader operations with his grumbling yet efficient ways.
Conrad, healed and eager, assisted wherever needed. It was hard work, but Alexander saw in him the makings of a true leader.
Yrenna, meanwhile, had taken up her old post as chatelaine with grace.
Lord Krystoff Reave offered additional support, lending men, resources, and counsel while Alexander was away—his friendship never once in question.
Still, each decision had cost time. It wasn’t until the last contract was signed and the final report delivered to the capital that Alexander allowed himself to turn his gaze southward.
Toward Changzihuā. Toward her.
He picked up his brush and faced his parchment again. ‘Relax your wrist, let the brush breathe,’ Scholar Wen had said numerous times.
The brush must breathe. The language was a thousand layers of breath and tone, structure and spirit. JingYi had learned Tremesi in a matter of weeks. He had been here for a month and still, his pronunciation of ‘thank you’ could get him directions to a butcher instead.
Alexander practiced again, not caring how much time passed.
The character for dog was just beginning to take shape properly beneath his brush when a swell of noise rose from the street.
He lifted his head. On instinct, he stood and moved to the edge of the veranda, leaning over the railing.
The breeze shifted, and he caught sight of silk canopies gliding down the road.
His neighbour, the wiry older woman who sold preserved plums and had once shooed chickens out of his rented courtyard, waved at him.
“Lán mùyan!” she called, the name they’d teasingly given him—Blue Eyes, rendered in their local tongue. “Come see!”
He descended the few steps in front of Scholar Wen’s house before he could think, wiping ink from his hands with a rag.
The street was already teeming with people, all bowing low as the procession neared.
He stood at the back, watching the soldiers in their armour, attendants in layered silks, a canopy with lacquered poles and tasselled veils swaying in the breeze. And within it—
JingYi.
His heart jolted against his ribs.
He couldn’t quite see her face, half-veiled behind the silk screens of the palanquin, but he would know her anywhere, even by silhouette.
He knew the line of her shoulders, the curve of her cheek, the sweep of her brow as intimately as his own breath.
Around him, the murmurs swelled. Every syllable was laced with reverence and honour.
He caught only fragments of the language he was fighting so hard to learn, but one word was clear among the rest: Meir?nsha.
The First-Ranked Princess.
He watched as the procession turned the corner toward the palace gates. His pulse roared in his ears. He wanted to call her name, but her name wasn’t his to speak here. Not in this place where she was worshipped like the morning moon.
He stood there long after the crowd dispersed. His neighbour nudged him lightly in the ribs.
“Magnificent, isn’t she?” she said with a smirk. “Too noble for you.”
Alexander managed a smile. “I know.”
He headed for the veranda, his hands already itching for the brush. He would work until his hand broke to write her name in her language. To speak to her not as a stranger, but as a man who had walked her roads, learned her words and the culture that shaped her.
Even if he never earned her forgiveness, he would meet her in her world.
He was two steps from Scholar Wen’s house when a light tap landed on his shoulder. Alexander turned.
Xū Haorán stood behind him.
The man was as he remembered: lean and sharp-angled, built like a reed that had learned how to cut.
His robes were simple—charcoal grey, the cuffs trimmed in black, but they moulded over the contours of his body, concealing nothing of the agile strength beneath.
The single sword at his hip had a lacquered scabbard, the silk wrapping at the hilt fraying where fingers had gripped it countless times.
“Lord Wulfbane,” he said in Isseric, bowing with a precision that held no deference, only courtesy. “You walk fast for someone far from home.”
Alexander’s mouth twitched. “I have to. Otherwise, I’ll be trampled by grandmothers and children with better footing than I have.”
Amusement touched Haorán’s eyes, gone as quickly as it came. Then, after a moment’s pause: “Have you eaten?”
Alexander hesitated. In X?en, that question was more than politeness.
Sharing a meal was language. A way of seeing someone, of showing care, extending honour, demanding respect.
Since arriving, he had never gone hungry.
Even strangers offered him something—not out of obligation or flattery, but to watch how the pale-haired, pale-eyed foreigner took in their land one bite at a time.
A sweet bun savoured. Broth drunk with closed eyes.
They observed him the way one watched a guest in one’s home: quietly, attentively.
And he had learned not to take a single bite for granted.
The famine that plagued X?en-Sarai during the previous emperor’s reign was still fresh in many minds.
Entire provinces had gone without grain.
Bitterroot porridge had once been common.
Their bowl of rice had never been white but colourful from miscellaneous grains and, oftentimes, insects.
Even now, recovery was uneven—pockets of hunger still lingered along the western valleys, where he heard the climate was so dry the earth cracked like bark.
So, when he accepted an offer to eat, he bowed—not just his head, but his pride.
He answered Haorán, “I have, but I’d share a meal with you.”
Those purple eyes watched him, as though reading more into the answer than words alone.
Haorán tilted his head toward the market. “Come. I know a good place.”
They sat at a corner table inside a crowded teahouse that smelled more like broth than tea.
The place was narrow and unpretentious, its walls stained with decades of steam and soy.
One side of the room opened to the street, where smoke wafted from large clay pots simmering over coals, each bubbling with stew, soup, or spiced porridge.
Steam fogged the serving counter as aproned boys ladled broth into bowls and chopped scallions with that tap-tap-tap-tap rhythm, their hands and cleavers flying across cutting boards.