“I know you were the one they still called ‘Princess.’ I know you had new gowns and tutors and your name and status untouched.”
For a moment, there was only silence.
“It is true,” LinXin finally whispered, her fingers rubbing across her throat. “On the surface, I had privilege. But never freedom. Or kindness. Or peace.”
Her voice cracked. JingYi watched her sister’s composure splinter—the same mask she herself had worn for years, finally breaking.
Then LinXin’s jaw tightened. The softness in her eyes hardened, not into anger at JingYi, but into something older, more bitter, held back for years.
“You think I was safe?” The whisper became a rush, fierce and low. “He kept my mother under lock and key for most of my life. Every lesson, every smile, every time I stepped out of line, he punished her. And when I asked to help you—” Her voice caught. “He made it clear you’d be next.”
LinXin sat back, her hands gripping the arms of her chair. Her breathing was fast, shallow.
“He turned us all into weapons,” she whispered. The fire was still there, but it had banked. “Even against each other.”
The words rang like cold bells in JingYi’s ears. She looked at them both—ShunLi, still as a carved figure, his gaze fixed somewhere past her shoulder. LinXin, her hands pressed flat against her thighs, knuckles white. They were waiting. Braced.
She could wound them here.
“So we were all made into bargaining chips.” She let the words settle, watched LinXin’s throat move in a swallow. “Still. Why send me away?”
ShunLi finally looked at her. His voice was low, but there was no defence in it, only weariness.
“Because the palace was about to drown in blood and you had no protection. I was going to overthrow our father. I knew the people I was about to betray would not go quietly. They would’ve used you. Strung you up like a warning. I saw it happening every time I closed my eyes.”
JingYi stared at him. The words landed one by one, each a small, sharp blow.
His hands curled around his knees. “I did the only thing I could think of to save you. I brokered your marriage, sent you to a kingdom ruled by laws and honour, to an Alpha who, I prayed, would treat you better than we ever did. It wasn’t noble. It wasn’t selfless.”
JingYi pressed her palms flat against her thighs. Her breath came shallow, her rib cage too small to hold the revelations.
He had been watching, all these years.The thought surfaced, and with it, a wave of something she couldn’t name—grief and anger tangled together, sharp-edged.
“I understand,” she said finally. Her voice was steady, but it cost her. “I understand why you did it.”
She looked down at her hands. All the scars. The limp. The years of believing she was worthless.
“But understanding . . . doesn’t undo it.” JingYi’s throat closed. “I was still alone. I still thought I was nothing. I still spent years wondering what I had done wrong—what was so broken in me that my own family couldn’t look at me.”
She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet, but she didn’t wipe them.
ShunLi bowed his head. “I prayed every day since you left that your husband would treat you better than we did.”
He offered no defence, no excuses of palace bloodbaths or politics or what the crown had cost him. He let her words stand.
“But Alexander Wulfbane didn’t treat her better, did he?” LinXin snapped. “You promised King Ferdinand would find someone suitable. Someone worthy.”
ShunLi’s shoulders tensed. “I trusted Ferdinand to make that choice. He is not a man who treats marriage lightly, nor alliances. I gave him JingYi’s birth scroll and the year of the Raven. I told him she was a gifted healer, an Omega of rare discipline. I asked him to find her honour, if not affection.”
He shifted his weight, turning toward JingYi. “He chose Alexander Wulfbane. An Alpha he trusted. An Alpha with a tarnished House, yes, but one known for strength and loyalty. Not cruelty.”
JingYi pressed her thumb into the fold of her palm, hard enough to feel the bone beneath. “He is, indeed, not cruel. He is honourable.” She released the pressure, and watched the blood rush back. “And that was the problem.”
“I didn’t think it would be perfect,” ShunLi admitted. “But I thought, in time, it might be enough to give you peace.”
She turned toward the window. Outside, the garden was still—too still, as if the world itself was holding its breath. “It might have,” she said. “But it’s over now.”
ShunLi and LinXin exchanged something across her—a shift in posture, a tightening of LinXin’s grip on the arm of her chair. Then ShunLi drew a breath, slow and deliberate.