We searched the archives but couldn’t find those texts. Wu Ma remembers a detailed scroll, but it is gone. Feng found no record of its transfer.
I don’t know what compels you to study this substance, but I trust you wouldn’t ask lightly. Still, I caution you—be careful.
—LinXin
By the time she finished, the only sound was the crackle of the fire. Alexander leaned forward, elbows braced on his desk. “So. There’s no more information to be had from the library.”
“No,” JingYi said, folding the letter carefully. Still, it was odd. She distinctly remembered seeing more. And a scroll Wu Ma remembered was just . . .gone?Was that negligence, or erasure?
The thought was a chilling one, born of a life spent in a palace where inconvenient truths often disappeared.
Alexander exhaled. “A dead end, then.”
“On this path, perhaps. Still, we know purple limyerite brings corruption. Death. And someone is using it.”
“The question remains:whodid they get the purple limyerite from?”
“Lord Fortier denied involvement, unless . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “Of course, he could be lying.”
“Entirely possible,” Alexander said, voice flat. He paused, then added, “I sent a letter to the King’s Magistrate about the woman’s corpse, but the reply I received was less than satisfactory.”
JingYi frowned. “They dismissed it?”
“They checked the record of missing persons and confirmed there is no one in the list with her description. They recorded it as an accident. Or worse, a suicide.” He shook his head, the scorn in his voice was a charged thing in the room. “It’s certainly easier to do so than start an investigation.”
The cold knot in her stomach tightened. “One unknown woman’s death isn’t enough incentive for them to act.”
Alexander stared at her before he opened his drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “You’re not the only one who received troubling news today.”
JingYi looked up. “Who sent yours?”
“A distant cousin of mine, Prince Kaelendrin of Asadia.”
Her brows lifted. He held the page out to her. As she accepted it, their fingers brushed—the spark of contact made her hand still for a heartbeat. Opening the fold, she saw the ink had bled slightly at the corners—Sparo parchment never travelled without weather—but the hand was strong, clean, slanted with an Alpha’s confidence.
Alexander,
Alarik and I were at Bashkor a few months ago. It was a mess, as usual. We found a vial of crushed purple limyerite left behind near one of the Omega auction sites.
I don’t need to remind you that Blackwood-Veyrde is the one corner of the Nine Kingdoms that mines it, which raises two questions: Are you aware the crystal is being used to subdue Omegas? And do you know how it’s getting from the mine into their hands?
I figured you’d want to know, so I’m asking before drawing my own conclusions.
On a different note, we’re journeying to Nymaris next week. If you can spare the time, meet us there. We can talk further in person.
—Kaelendrin
She looked up from the letter to meet Lord Wulfbane’s eyes. His expression was unreadable, but she sensed the weight behind it, the storm gathering behind the calm.
“Prince Kaelendrin is your distant cousin,” she said. “And Alarik?”
“His half-brother.”
She glanced down again, eyes tracing the letters once more. “They were in Bashkor? Is it not . . . a marketplace?”
She’d heard of a place where the streets bloomed with spices and gold, a marketplace so vast it swallowed the entire city, where merchants spoke in a dozen tongues and no crown helddominion over trade. Wu Ma had once called it the throat of the black river—a narrow, winding passage through which anything might pass: goods, whispers, people. To a young girl confined behind palace walls, it had seemed a magical place.
Alexander replied, “On the surface, it is a marketplace unlike any other, but it thrives on duality. For every open stall selling silk or salted fruit, there’s a shaded alley where a forbidden thing is brokered. It’s where men trade the untraceable, and laws turn the other way.”