Hevlan’s voice sharpened, feeding off the eyes around them. “Yet you bring foreign methods. Foreign powders. Herbs no Tremorian recognizes. You stick strange needles into your patients. If there are more barbaric methods than yours, I’ve yet to hear of them.”
A woman’s voice piped up near Bertrand, reedy and eager. “Master Hevlan’s tonic cleared my boy’s cough in a day. Good northern medicine is all we need.”
JingYi’s gaze snapped to the speaker—a pinched-faced woman she vaguely remembered from her first rounds. Her son had a mild, damp cough. She had recommended steam and honey, knowing the ailment would pass with time, that healing the body’s own defences would protect him better thandrowning him in unnecessary remedies. But the woman hadn’t wanted to see her the next day.
Now she stood proudly beside the boy, nodding with vigour.
The realization trickled cold down JingYi’s spine. Bertrand wasn’t just questioning her. He was staging this.
“Barbaric,” Hevlan repeated, seizing the moment.
The word landed like a slap. She had never heard that word used against her needle therapy—not in all her years behind palace walls, where it was a respected art passed from master to apprentice. But here, where she had begun to believe she might serve, protect, perhaps even belong—the word sounded shameful.
Bertrand stepped forward, all silk and civility. “Of course, we don’t mean to accuse any healer of causing harm. But perhaps the people need reassurance. Familiarity. You come from another land, Your Highness. Your ways are different.”
Different.Always that word. Always said with a smile.
Her fingers curled into fists inside her sleeves. “Different does not mean dangerous.”
Bertrand inclined his head, as though agreeing. “No one questions your dedication, my lady. Only, in uncertain times, people cling to what they know. Trusted hands. Proven methods.”
“Northern hands, you mean,” JingYi said.
He didn’t reply. His smile was enough.
Hevlan, emboldened, leaned toward him and said in a stage-whisper, “It isn’t just her methods. There’s also the matter of her temperament.”
Slowly, she turned to him. “Temperament?”
“You’re an Omega.” He spread his hands as if that excused his indecency. “And given what hasn’t occurred between you and your husband, things are rather . . . tricky, aren’t they? Heat isa difficult time for any Omega. Heightened emotions. Unreliable judgment.”
The ground seemed to fall away beneath her. The shame of her marriage, the cold space in her bed, the Nest she couldn’t touch—all turned out to be common knowledge. Something for the village to chew over with their morning bread.
She could hardly draw breath. Had every patient seen through her? Had every grateful smile concealed pity? The trust she’d painstakingly built now felt like a fragile shell, and Hevlan had just smashed it with a few practiced words.
Hevlan went on, his voice falsely reasonable. “Even the most well-meaning Omega can lose clarity under her cycle. The instincts are powerful. They cloud thought. It’s not your fault. Merely nature stacked against you.”
And there it was.
They had tried to diminish her skill, her heritage, her tools. Now they brought up her blood. Her caste. As if those, too, were stains to be scrubbed out. More marks she could never shed—like her limp, like the birthmark.
It was always something she hadn’t chosen, couldn’t change.
For a heartbeat, her vision blurred. She clenched her teeth. Rage would not win this fight. Neither would self-pity.
Her limp did not make her less capable. Her Xûen-Sarai origin did not make her less capable. Her Omega nature did not make her less capable. She was a good healer. She knew it. No rank or bloodline could unravel that truth.
She turned to the people who had once greeted her with smiles and aching limbs. They were quieter now. Unsure. Guarded.
“I know I am not what you expected,” she said. “I am not of your blood. I do not speak your tongue as well as you do. But I have treated every patient who came to me. I never asked forcoin, position, or loyalty—only for the chance to do the one thing I know how to do.”
Her voice nearly caught. She steadied it.
“I am an Omega. I am foreign. But a fever in the north burns the same as a fever in the south. Illness does not care who it ravages.” She paused. “And neither do I.”
A breath of unease rippled through the crowd—until a familiar voice sliced clean through it.
“Well said, Wife.”