Lord Wulfbane’s lips curved into a small smile.
“There it is,” he murmured. “Parandor Castle. Your new home, Princess.”
The word was a lump in her throat.
Home.
She’d never truly had one. The Imperial Palace had been a prison made of jade, gold, and limyerite crystal. A place of surveillance, not sanctuary.
This place . . . this man . . . It might be too much to hope things would be perfect, but she sensed already it would be different.
For once, the warmth she felt in return didn’t frighten her.
They rode on. The road smoothed beneath the horses’ hooves, earth giving way to cobbled stone. A polished wooden sign marked the edge of the settlement.
“This is the village of Everglen,” Lord Wulfbane told her.
JingYi took in her surroundings. The countryside here looked unnaturally neat. Hedgerows clipped with precision, cottages whitewashed, roofs gleaming. Window boxes spilled blooms as if arranged for display. Even the villagers who stepped out to bow seemed prosperous, their linen tunics crisp, their boots showing no wear. No shadow of hunger in their faces.
It was all striking, yet almost staged. More curated than lived in.
An elegant, angular manor rose not far beyond. Pale stone walls reflected the sun and a garden terrace spilled toward theslope with sculpted hedges and imported statuary. It looked rather out of place on this rugged land.
She tilted her head. “Is that one of your vassals’ homes, my lord?”
He stiffened behind her. “Not a vassal. That is Lord Bertrand Fortier’s estate.”
“Who is Lord Fortier?”
She felt the shift before he spoke—a held breath, then nothing.
“The overseer of the limyerite mines,” he said, voice clipped.
She blinked, the neatness of Everglen suddenly taking on a colder, more calculated hue. “Forgive me. I had assumed that duty belonged to the Wulfbane family.”
There was a sharp inhale. “It did. Once.”
The limyerite mines were the lifeblood of Tremore’s wealth, the source of the kingdom’s power. For House Wulfbane to lose that control couldn’t be a simple administrative shift. It was a gutting, a stripping of legacy and leverage that altered the course of its descendants’ lives. Her mind raced. What political maneuvering could’ve warranted such a loss?
The silence around him had grown taut as a bowstring. Even the men behind them held their tongues.
JingYi lowered her eyes to Duskwane’s mane. She didn’t push, not when she wasn’t even his true wife yet. Some wounds deserved time before they were named.
“When Bertrand Fortier gained control of the mines, he built his mansion and Everglen for his workers and their families,” Lord Wulfbane explained.
JingYi studied the uniform rows of neat houses clustered around the manor. “His people seem . . . to be thriving.”
His silence stretched too long before he answered. “They are.”
Looking ahead, Parandor Castle stood on the horizon like a sentinel of stone and ivy. They crested another small hill, and once again the dirt path gave way to cobbles and clusters of homes nestled in the valley below—more scattered, but lovely all the same.
“This is our village,” he said, warmth threading his usual gruff tone. “Lornhelm.”
The cottages spread out like hearths across the land, with thatched roofs, tidy herb gardens. Children chased one another through the grass. Dogs barked from shaded doorsteps, and villagers paused in their work to bow as the procession rode in.
JingYi sensed it at once—the flicker of eyes, the hush following their passage. Her heart thrashed like a caged bird. They couldn’t see her face behind the half-veil, but they spotted her petite frame, her foreign clothing, the stiffness in her posture. What if they saw weakness? What if they whispered?
He leaned in, his breath warm at her ear. “Be calm, Princess. They’ll welcome you as their lady. Smile for them if you can. They’ll see it in your eyes.”