JingYi exhaled and turned to Alexander.
“He invites me to return to Xûen-Sarai,” she said.
His eyes flashed with emotions, but they were quickly shuttered, leaving a man as immovable as the mountains they could see from the palace windows.
She looked down at the letter again, at the pristine brush of ink by her thumb.
“Was it love?” she whispered, more to herself than to Alexander. “Or strategy?”
Neither answer brought comfort.
She’d returned to her room, mind and body heavy with fatigue. Her healer’s mind prescribed rest, but she tossed and turned on her bed. At midday, she ate her meal from a tray, taking only a few bites. She’d swallowed without tasting, stomach too heavy for anything except silence. ShunLi’s message lay on a table beside her, its presence a small, persistent weight. She hadn’t dared to reread it.
Outside, late afternoon sun had slipped behind a cloud. Her room dimmed further. Shapes lost definition, but rest remained out of reach, as if her mind were pacing its own narrow corridor.
A soft knock pulled her from her thoughts. She opened the door and found Alexander in the doorway.
“The gardens are peaceful,” he said. “Would you walk with me?”
JingYi turned slightly toward the window. Golden sunlight stretched across the stone courtyard outside, warming the ivy along the walls. She caught the faintest trace of earth and crushed leaves drifting in. It smelled of petrichor, like the edge of something new.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice surprised her—clearer than she felt. “I think I will.”
Alexander stepped forward, and for the briefest moment, she could see the strain around his eyes. He extended his arm. She took it, fingers curling around his sleeve, his strength bolstering her for the conversation that awaited them.
Outside, the garden path crunched beneath their feet, gravel giving way to the fallen leaves. Golds and russets blanketed the grounds, curled like parchment edges where frost had kissed them overnight. The last of the autumn blooms nodded in the beds, and somewhere farther off, a fountain gurgled beneath a veil of ivy.
JingYi breathed the scent of smoke, loam, and decaying flowers. Her fingers remained tucked in the crook of Alexander’s arm, though neither had spoken since leaving the chamber.
He was the one to break the silence. “I thought your brother might wait longer. To claim the throne.”
“He killed instead,” she murmured.
Alexander didn’t respond immediately. She could feel his restraint, the deliberate silence of a man trying not to reach too far, too soon.
“Do you mourn your father?” he finally asked.
JingYi didn’t answer at first. The fountain’s whisper filled the space between their steps.
“Xûen children are taught filial piety from cradle to grave. It is the most important virtue. But I do not see the emperor as a father, only a sovereign.” She paused, gathering the thought. “I mourn the silence where a father’s voice should have been. I mourn the protection he did not give, the pride he never showed. That is a different kind of grief. It is for a ghost that was never there.”
Alexander’s arm was solid beneath her hand. “A ghost can be heavier than a man.”
“Yes.” The word was an exhale. “It is a weight made of absences. Should I mourn the architect of my unhappiness? The man who saw my body as a flaw and my person as a tool?” She shook her head slowly. “I feel . . . nothing for the man. But for the institution of ‘father,’ I feel a sort of hollow anger for what was stolen from both of us.”
“You pity him,” Alexander said, not as an accusation, but observation.
The insight startled her. She stopped walking, looking out over the frost-touched blooms. “Perhaps I do. He lived in a cage of his own making. Greed was his only language; avarice, his god. He understood wealth, not daughters.” She glanced at Alexander as the image of the crown prince—no, the new emperor—appeared in her mind. “ShunLi will be different. Hemustbe. He has seen the cost of that cage.”
They walked for some time before Alexander spoke again. “He will have you beside him to remind him, won’t he?”
JingYi froze. She slipped from his hold and stepped away to face him. “Alexander?—”
He lifted his hand. “Please. Let me speak first.” His voice was quiet, pleading.
For once, when she looked at him, there was no armour, only a man trying to bridge a chasm with words before it widened beyond reach.
“You’ve done more than I could hope for. More than I deserved.” His throat bobbed. “The truth is . . . I didn’t know what I needed when we married.”