She rose and crossed to his study. Silence pressed in from all sides. Light poured through the narrow windows—a cloudless, endless blue. The sky watched, cruel and indifferent, as she passed beneath it.
The study smelled of beeswax, ink, parchment, and beneath it all, him: frost and spruce. It had once meant safety. Now, it was the smell of the knife twisting.
Her chin trembled. He knew. Heknewthe disgrace this annulment sealed for her. Still, he’d sent the letter.
A dagger to the throat would have been better. If only he’d looked her in the eye and said, ‘You are a burden. Go away.’She would’ve staged her own death in distant woods, erased herself for his convenience, if he’d only just asked.
But he had not asked. He had written her out of his future with the same detached efficiency as correcting a ledger. It took this far for her to finally understand: she had built her hope for a home around a man who never intended to share one with her.
JingYi placed the letter on his desk, right in the centre of an open ledger. She set her wedding ring on top of it. A circular, golden prison lay to rest. It weighed nothing—and everything.
A pouch of coins lay near the desk’s edge, enough to carry her far. She looked at it but left it untouched.
A map sprawled across another table. Her finger followed the Blackfen River, curling past the fief toward Lowfen Quay. It wasn’t far. She could ride Brisa there, tracing the same path as Bertrand’s limyerite wagons. Boats would be waiting at the quay. Some might be bound for Niewberg, others farther.
Then, where? Was there any place she could live in peace and simply . . .be?
Her eyes landed on Bashkor. A loud, filthy, dangerous city, especially for an Omega. But she imagined it was also vast and anonymous. No one would know who she was or care about her limp and birthmark. There, she could vanish into the crowd. Sell tinctures. Tend the sick. Earn her keep. Live alone.
It wouldn’t be joy, but it would be freedom.
And freedom was better than love imagined and lost.
JingYi returned to her room and took only what she couldn’t live without: her medicine chest. She left the dresses Yrenna had gifted her, choosing instead the simplest robes brought from Xûen-Sarai, layered one over another, then wrapped herself in her cloak. Beneath her belt, she secured the tiny pouch of limyerite crystals the Xûen court gave her as dowry—pitiful in value, meant more as a formality than a true gift. A symbol, they said, of how little she would ask of her new House.
Why men were given fortunes and women pittances, she would never understand. But this was her only claim to autonomy, and likely the last she would ever possess as someone’s wife.
She didn’t look back.Couldn’t.She closed the door and walked away.
Outside, the afternoon met her crisp and clear. Wind, carrying the smell of woodsmoke, stirred her cloak and lifted strands of her hair. She kept her stride even, but inside, her pulse raced.
She was almost at the stables when she heard her name.
“JingYi!”
The sound of it twisted in her chest. She turned slowly, as if bracing for a blow.
Yrenna crossed the flagstones, eyes bright. “I thought you’d be resting. Where are you going?”
“To the village,” JingYi said with a small smile. “I want to check on Annett and Daan. Others, too, might need help.”
Yrenna frowned. “Are you sure? You must be tired?—”
“I won’t be long. I’ll return before Alexander does.”
“But Conrad, Tedric, and Darion all went with him. Let me send a stable boy?—”
“No need. I know the path.”
Behind Yrenna, Parandor Castle rose in muted gold and grey, its banners stirring against the bright sky. Jingyi let her gaze linger—the turrets, the ramparts, the narrow window by the dovecote that always caught the first light. Weathered, imperfect, but warm.
It could have been a home.
Her throat seized, but she didn’t blink. She reached for Yrenna’s hand and squeezed it lightly. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For always being kind to me, Sister.”
Yrenna’s brows drew together. “Why do you speak as if you’re going farther than the village?”
JingYi’s smile held, thin and brittle. “Aren’t we all always going somewhere?”
