He cut the thought off at the throat.
When he found Tedric, there would be no trial. No mercy. Only blood.
Only an ending.
CHAPTER 51
JINGYI
In the morning, Tedric brought her a tome bound in blackened leather, smelling faintly of ash and iron.
“Knowledge should not be hidden away,” he said, looking more than a little proud. “Not when it offers liberation.”
Inside, the pages told a different story.
It wasn’t liberation. It was blood. Bone. Organs. The systematic unmaking of Omegas in the name of freedom. Research neatly printed in Isseric, diagrams inked with clinical detachment—cuttings of the quick, bleedings of the humours, the sundering of sinew and glands. Purple limyerite was at the heart of it all. Pulverized into powder. Diluted in spirits. Injected. Implanted. Burned into soft tissue.
Test subjects, mostly lowborn Omegas, didn’t survive the early trials. Organs failed. Instincts collapsed into madness. One subject clawed her own chest open before succumbing. Another set herself ablaze, incoherent with pain.
But one endured.
Referred to only as the ‘fifty-third vessel,’ she’d been a highborn Omega, noted to be the daughter of a major House, though her identity was kept secret. She survived the purging and showed no response even when confined with multipleAlphas in the throes of Rut. No scenting, no slick, no desire to submit.
The Alphas, despite being confined with the Omega, also showed no signs of reaction. No restless energy.
JingYi read the next line three times, heart thudding against her ribs:
‘Noble Omegas may contain a more concentrated strain of the Omega traits, making them both more stable for testing and more likely to endure the early stages of transformation.’
Endure, but not survive.
Because days later, the ‘fifty-third vessel’ died.
Long before the final trial, her organs had begun to shut down from long-term limyerite poisoning, referred to as ‘limyerite rot.’ The researcher admitted, without shame, that while they could destroy the Omega traits, they had no idea how to repair the body that remained.
She heard Tedric’s voice again, soft with conviction: ‘Think what this could mean. No more Heat. No more dependence for Alphas. Freedom.’
JingYi closed the tome, pushed it aside, and felt sickened to her core.
Was freedom bought in flesh a truly free, or simply slaughter dressed as progress?
If everything recorded in the book was true, theycouldbreak the nature of an Omega.
But they couldn’t heal what followed.
And that, supposedly, was her task now.
She relied on the roots of her training.
Not just instinct, but doctrine—what the royal physicians of Xûen-Sarai had drilled into her from when she was old enough to crush lotus seeds with mortar and pestle.
She crafted a cleansing decoction tailored to force out the limyerite now blooming inside their organs: scorched bitter orange peel to move stagnant energy, white mulberry bark and licorice root to draw the heat downward, poria to drain dampness, all steeped in bone marrow broth until it darkened to the colour of old blood.
Goldenroot went in last. Too much would cause vomiting. Too little, and the rot would cling to the marrow. The root was unusual enough that, if requested at the market, it might draw questions. Perhaps even aid. But when the guard returned with the parcel of ingredients she requested, there was no sign the bait had been noticed.
Needle therapy came next, fighting limyerite with limyerite.
The irony nearly choked her.