This.Thiswas the kind of approval he’d spent years chasing. The kind he’d have bled for. Before.
Now, it all fell flat. Like a feast laid out for a man with no appetite.
His gaze swept the crowd.
Where are you . . .?
Then, he sawher.A flash of raven hair among the golden and auburn tones of the crowd. She stood near the edge, half-shadowed by a pillar, hands folded in front of her, a soft smile on her lips.
JingYi.
Their eyes met. She was his one fixed point in a world that wouldn’t stop shifting.
He stepped toward her through the press of bodies. Through the congratulatory nods and voices calling his name. He moved faster, carving a path, trying not to show how his pulse was racing.
One step, then another. He lost sight of her for a moment, then glimpsed her again between shoulders. He quickened his pace, but the crowd thickened. Words blurred. Someone gripped his arm—an old lord, offering a toast or blessing, he didn’t know, didn’t care.
Let me through.
When he finally broke past the last well-wisher, heart thudding?—
She was gone.
CHAPTER 58
JINGYI
Drowsiness tugged at her, eyelids growing heavier with every passing breath. But she knew the first rule of head trauma: no sleep on the first day.
So she sat up against the bed’s headboard and watched the candle burn halfway down, its wax pooling in a soft ring around the base. Spine straight, despite the throb in her skull.
Cautiously, she touched her temple. The wound had been freshly dressed. Less swelling now. No nausea, no slurred speech. Vision steady, memory intact. Her fingers paused at the bruised ridge, assessing pressure, tenderness, responsiveness.
She closed her eyes, just briefly.
The dark rushed in—damp, fetid, heavy. Her breath caught as the memory of the dungeon tightened its grip, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she reached forhim. The gold of his hair. The blue of his eyes. Steady. Certain.
He became a tether. A light.
The panic ebbed. It didn’t disappear, but held at bay.
Four turns of the clock had passed since the court gathered. The echo of Bertrand’s sentence still lingered in her ears. Alexander had stood frozen in that breathless moment when the king’s voice rang, restoring the honour of a House wrongedfor more than two decades. Her lips tugged into a smile before she could stop them. He’d looked so dazed, so unmoored, when the court swarmed him at last. The lords who’d once kept their distance now pressed close with praise, recognition, admiration.
Everything he’d ever wanted.
He’d earned it, deserved every single moment of honour and glory, more than anyone she’d ever known.
But where did that leave her, now that it was all over?
She opened her eyes. Her fingers drifted to her sternum, pressing gently as if the ache could be massaged from her chest. Her head throbbed again—insistent, warning her this wasn’t the moment for making big, irrevocable decisions. Not while her thoughts still swam and her body strained just to keep upright.
The knock at the door had her looking up.
“JingYi?” came Adelise’s voice. “May I come in?”
The Tremorian princess had checked in every two turns of the clock. JingYi tried to answer but her throat clenched around the effort, raw and swollen from where Tedric’s hands had crushed down. A painful breath, then another. She touched her throat briefly—two fingers pressing the side of her windpipe, checking for tenderness, bruising, the tear in the surrounding ligaments. It would be days before she spoke without pain.
Her voice, when she finally found it, was a rasp. “You may.”