He dipped lower, then glanced up with a smile that bordered on roguish. “It was nothing, Your Highness. Any man worth his steel would’ve done the same. And, please, call me Tedric.”
She inclined her head. As he turned away, she watched him. A Beta, she was certain, yet he’d fought with an Alpha’s precision and ferocity. In Xûen-Sarai, the guards ringing her father’s palace were almost all Alpha-born, with the rare Beta clawing their way to recognition, though never with such ease.
Inside the tent, a water basin waited. She plunged her hands into the cool water, and the first pink swirls of Conrad’s blood bloomed. She scrubbed, not with a healer’s efficiency, but with a survivor’s desperation. The blood under her nails, the spray that had dotted her neck—each mark was a map of the violence that had touched her. She stared into the rusty brown water, breath coming short, until the image of the axe splitting the bandit’s neck flashed behind her eyes.
She gripped the basin’s edge, forcing air into her lungs.It’s done. You’re alive. He’s alive.Only then did she wash her face, the white linen coming away stained.
Carefully, she sat on the edge of the fur bed. Tension drained from her body, leaving her weakened and quivering. She pressed her palms to her cheeks. Heat seeped through her skin as memories returned.
She’d gone against Lord Wulfbane’s command. Worse, she’d spoken to him as though she had the right to direct him, or his men. That alone was a slight worthy of a public beating in the Imperial Palace.
Yet, he hadn’t hurled objects at her like Master Yu, nor struck her as others would. Lord Wulfbane hadthankedher.
No one, other than Wu Ma or Feng, had ever thanked her.
When he’d grasped her hand in parting, she almost flinched. In her world, hands had been seized, struck, used. Never honoured. She cradled that hand to her chest now. It still bore the imprint of his warmth, as though he had pressed an invisible seal upon her skin.
The tent flap lifted and MeiYün swept inside, hands on her hips.
“Lord Wulfbane is waiting outside for you,” she announced, lips twisting.
JingYi’s stomach dipped. “Why?”
“How should I know?” MeiYün sneered, clearly irritated at being made a messenger. “If you want answers, ask him yourself.Tsk.If he saw what’s under that veil, he wouldn’t be waiting like a dog.”
The insult followed a well-worn path. Jing Yi let it pass. She tried to feel . . .nothing. This numbness was her oldest armour.
She held MeiYün’s gaze. “He is not a dog.”
The girl rolled her eyes. “I meant it figuratively, you fool.”
Of course, JingYi knew. Still, the word jarred. Lord Wulfbane was nothing so domesticated. There was a primal gravity about him—untamed, commanding—that brought to mind not a hound, but a wolf.
And hadn’t he been born in the year of the Wolf?
Ignoring MeiYün’s derisive snort, JingYi put on her half-veil—the swath of fabric she’d torn from her hat—and stepped outside.
As promised, Lord Wulfbane stood waiting. Moonlight silvered his wheat-coloured hair, catching the small braids at his temples and the pale ice of his eyes. The rest of his shoulder-length hair swayed in the night breeze. He was, without question, the most formidable man she’d ever seen. Taller than ShunLi, broader than even the Imperial General. Rugged as a mountain, cut through with the refinement of nobility, his face was both severe and beautiful, tugging at something low in her belly.
Tonight, he’d shed his cloak and armour, clad now in only a black quilted arming coat. Even unarmoured, he looked no less formidable.
JingYi curtsied. “You summoned me, my lord?”
He bowed and cleared his throat, expression unreadable but not unkind. “After what happened tonight, I thought you might welcome a chance to bathe in the lake.”
His words were spoken in careful Tremesi—measured, deliberate, as if meant to ease her understanding. It took her a moment to grasp his meaning. When she did, her stomach plummeted.
“You want me . . .” Her voice faltered. “Tobathewith you?”
For a beat, there was only silence. Confusion crossed his expression first, then a scowl, before his expression shuttered completely.
In Xûen-Sarai, men and women didn’t so much as share a meal unless bound by blood or marriage. The thought of undressing, of standing bare in water beside a man she’d only just met—even if said manwasher husband by proxy marriage—sent heat to her cheeks.
Was this a Tremorian test of modesty?
“Notwithme,” he said at last, voice clipped. “I will remain ashore. My back will be turned the entire time.”
Relief struck first. Then, mortification crept in. He hadn’t suggested impropriety at all. Of course he hadn’t.