The moment the sack ripped, the noise fell away. Something inside her tore just as suddenly.
She wasn’t on the hill anymore. She was six years old, standing barefoot in a courtyard lined with cold stones. A soldier held her arms behind her back, too tightly, but she barely felt it. Her eyes were fixed on the woman lying just a few paces away,surrounded by shouting figures with spit on their lips and glee in their throats.
Whore. Traitor. Adulteress.
The words chanted louder than the drums. The child in her hadn’t understood their meaning, but she understood their venom. She had tried to run to her mother, but the soldier behind her pinned her in place. Her legs kicked. Her throat burned from screaming. But still, she could do nothing, only watch.
The crowd parted.
Two white oxen were led forward by chains, their hooves thudding on the ground. They’d been decorated with crimson garlands and gold bells, their horns chalked with white, as though they were part of some sacred procession. JingYi’s breath stuttered to a stop. She’d never seen animals so large up close. The world around her slowed, then tilted.
Someone brought out the ropes.
Her mother screamed and struggled, kicking against the soldier restraining her. She tried to rise, to claw her way back to their empty, dusty mansion, but they pressed her to the ground and tied each rope around her ankles. Then, they tied the end of those ropes to each ox.
JingYi’s mind couldn’t reach what her eyes were seeing, but she knew something terrible was about to happen. Tears streaked down her face. Her chest seized with a panic that had no shape, only instinct.
Run to her. Put your forehead to the ground. Ask for forgiveness, for love.
Her child’s heart had hungered for it. Even then, especially then, she still hoped for kindness from her mother’s lips. A single word, a final caress, before they forever parted.
But when Jing Mei turned her head and fixed those bloodshot eyes on her?—
There was no tenderness, no goodbye.
Only fury and hatred.
“Curse you,” she spat. “Curse you, JingYi! If it wasn’t for you . . . You’veruinedme!”
Someone smacked the oxen, and they began to walk in opposite directions. The cheers reached a feverish pitch. JingYi shut her eyes. Her body had done it for her, as if it knew witnessing her mother’s death would break her completely. The world vanished into crimson behind her lids, yet somehow, she still heard it. The screams. The cheers. The snap. The wet tearing of flesh as Jing Mei’s body split down the middle.
The silence after.
Later, no one would speak of what happened. She’d been dragged back to the shuttered mansion and thrown behind locked gates. Inside that dark, dust-choked place, the screams finally stopped.
But they’d never left.
They’d only buried themselves deeper, splintered into her bones, nested beneath her ribs, curling like smoke in the hollow spaces of her being. They waited there, for two decades, quietly, insidiously.
Until the ropes, drawn taut during a harvest ritual in a kingdom far away, broke them free.
When she came back to herself, she was swaddled in shadow and silence. Alexander’s chambers, she realized dimly. The heavy draperies had been drawn, muting the dusky light to a soft amber hush. A fire crackled low in the hearth. Somewhere beyond it, the world continued on: the feast, the festival, the laughter she’d left behind.
But here, there was only breath. And closeness.
She opened her eyes and saw only his chest. One of his arms was tucked beneath her, anchoring her to him, the other wrapped across her waist, his broad hand resting at her hip. He must have carried her here through all the gawking stares and whispers.
And still . . . he hadn’t let go.
He hadn’t removed her ceremonial gown, but he’d undone the sash and loosened the stays so she could breathe easier. The body pressed against her was a warm furnace. She curled against him, closed her eyes, and tried to breathe. It emerged a hiss, squeezed between clenched teeth.
She wasn’t used to being touched like this. Not gently. Not reverently. Her body quivered, not knowing how to receive this gentleness. Her mind scrambled to measure what it meant. As if he sensed the turmoil, his hold adjusted—pulling her closer, his breath warming the crown of her head and silencing her doubts.
JingYi shut her eyes, and the moisture from her eyes leaked out to wet her lashes.
Gods.
The scent of him. The certainty in his body. The way he tucked her in without even thinking, as though this had always been her place.
