Alexander stared at this man who’d travelled days, dressed in his finest, waited hours, only to step aside at the threshold.
“I will find my wife,” he promised. “And I will ask her, or the emperor, to let you meet your cousin. I swear.”
Xian Jun nodded with neither fanfare nor self-pity, just the dignity of a man full of understanding. “Her name is Xian Rui.”
Alexander tucked the name safely in his mind, clasped Xian Jun’s shoulder, and walked through the gates. Behind him, the great doors groaned shut.
The line inched forward, a river of petitioners winding through passageways and courtyards he’d only ever imagined—pavilions with curved roofs painted dark jade, gardens where artfully arranged pines twisted like ancient calligraphy, walls carved with the twelve animals of the Xûen calendar. Every corner held intention. The weight of centuries pressed down from every beam.
Finally, they reached the entrance to the Hall of Celestial Appeals.
He stepped into the vast hall, its floor of polished jade, cool and green as deep water, reflecting pillars that rose toward a ceiling lost in shadow. Limyerite veins spiralled up the columns—raw crystal catching the dimming sunlight, shimmering pale blue against the stone. These pillars alone could have funded a small nation.
And they’d been paid for, one way or another, with her suffering.
A cold anger settled in Alexander’s chest as he looked around at the gilded prison where JingYi had spent her childhood. Every exquisite courtyard, every glittering limyerite arch, felt like a monument to her pain. He forced the feeling down, locking it away. None of this mattered except getting to her.
The hall was full of people—officials in silk robes, nobles with painted fans, petitioners like himself stretched in a line that snaked toward the far end. Hundreds of eyes tracked his passage, curious and cold, measuring the foreign lord who daredwalk these stones. At the end of the vast space, raised on a dais of pale jade, sat Emperor Xûen ShunLi.
Alexander had seen him a handful of times in the Tremorian court—both of them youths, surrounded by music and wine. A lifetime ago, before duty carved them into different shapes. Now ShunLi was a ruler, and Alexander was here to ask for the one thing this new emperor might be most reluctant to give.
He watched as petitioners took their turns, voicing their troubles: land disputes, spring planting, missing kin. The emperor listened, grave and still, speaking only to issue concise instructions to the chamberlains beside him. Alexander studied each exchange, measuring the new emperor’s patience, his fairness, his tolerance.
This is not her father,he reminded himself.This was the brother who sent her away to keep her safe.
A hush swept the hall as his turn came. His footfalls echoed, a solitary rhythm in the vast silence. Before the throne, he lowered himself into the kneel Su Lian had drilled into him: spine straight, forehead to the floor, arms outstretched, fingertips meeting. An Alpha on his knees was a surrender of pride. His every instinct screamed against it.
But this, he told himself, was not surrender. It was the bridge he must cross to reach her.
When he lifted his gaze, the disciplined calm fractured. Two bamboo screens flanked the dais—one to the left, one to the right. Behind each of them, he knew, sat the High Princesses.
JingYi.
His breath caught. The entire plan, the crystal, the speech—it all condensed into a single, desperate point of focus.
Which one?
If they had bonded, he might’ve known. Might’ve felt her presence the way a tide pulls toward shore. But their bondhad been left incomplete, so starved that it had withered and vanished.
Still . . . he wanted totry.
He closed his eyes and listened with more than his ears. He felt past the weight of ceremony and the hundred eyes upon him. Past logic. Just breath and heartbeat and the question that had lived in his chest since the moment she left:Where are you?
And then, soft as a snowflake, his heart pulled him almost imperceptibly toward the screen on the left. He opened his eyes and bowed again. This time not to the emperor, but to her.
The emperor’s gaze found him, and in the faint flicker of his eyes, Alexander saw the recognition.
“Your name?” the emperor asked in Xûengua.
He sucked in a breath and straightened. “Alexander Wulfbane of Blackwood-Veyrde, Tremore, Your Majesty.”
Murmurs erupted. Many of the nobles present, undoubtedly, recognized his name as Princess JingYi’s former husband.
“You have journeyed far to air your grievance, Lord Wulfbane.” ShunLi’s voice silenced the others. “Speak, then.”
“It is not a grievance I wish to speak about, Your Majesty, but a wish.”
“A wish?” The emperor shifted slightly, his expression unreadable for a moment before a slow, genuine smile touched his lips. It was the look of a man presented with a puzzle more interesting than the day’s petitions. “How intriguing.”