A breathless laugh escaped her. “You needn’t worry about that. My father wouldn’t bat an eye.”
Reiyana looked taken aback. “He wouldn’t?”
“No. He’d be pleased. It would be just as he’s always intended it to be.”
They reached the inner colonnade, sunlight filtering through latticework, casting shifting shadows on stone. Reiyana stopped and turned fully.
“You can’t mean that.”
“I do.” JingYi’s lips curved, though she couldn’t keep the bitterness from her smile. “To him, I’m no more a princess than this dress makes me a jewel of Aethonia. Born to the name, yes, but so much shame followed it. He wished I hadn’t been born at all.”
Reiyana’s hand enveloped hers. “Then allow me,” she said, voice firming, “to treat you as you should’ve been treated from the start. Not for politics or appearances, but because you’re worthy of it.”
The compliment snagged. She had to look away to swallow it. They’d barely stepped through the marble threshold when she felt it again—his presence pressing closer, heat rolling off him like a forge.
“JingYi—” Alexander’s voice came low and rough.
Her name in his mouth was a hook in her chest. Her body tensed to turn, pulled by a force older than thought, but she forced her steps onward.
She couldn’t face him. To look at him now would be to stand at the collision of two betrayals she still couldn’t understand. She needed the silence of four walls to put herself back together.
JingYi balled her fists and kept walking.
The tension fell away the moment they entered the princess’s room. The light filtered through gauze, tinting everything in rose gold. Her shoulders loosened. Here, breath came easier.This place felt like a safe harbour—temporary, fragile, but enough.
“You are coming to the ball tonight,” Reiyana declared. She pulled the bell cord and launched into rapid Aethairis the moment a maid appeared. The girl beamed, curtsied, and vanished.
JingYi blinked. “I never agreed?—”
“There is nothing I would like more than to watch the Wolf of Tremore choke on regret the moment he sees you.”
JingYi hesitated. The words were meant to empower—a friend arming her with armour she didn’t know how to wear. But the thought of walking into that glittering hall, of all those turning heads and whispered judgments, of his eyes finding her across the crowd . . .
Her chest tightened. She was not a weapon to be aimed. She was not even sure she wanted to wound him.
“But this night is for you and the princes,” she reminded.
Reiyana waved a hand. “My parents wanted this ball as a belated wedding celebration. The princes and I have been married for a few months. In my condition, frankly, the thought of relaxing in bed is more rousing than dancing. Extraordinary, considering how much I loved dancing.”
JingYi couldn’t help but chuckle.
The maid returned with a dress. It shimmered across the divan—blush pink gauze layered over deep aubergine, stitched with pale sea-glass beads catching the light like water.
“I had this made earlier this year,” Reiya said. “But I left before it was finished. It’s never been worn, and I’d like you to wear it tonight.”
JingYi started to protest, but Reiyana ushered her to the mirror and began fiddling with her hair.
When she spoke, her tone was cautious. “You left because of the annulment letter, but now you know Lord Wulfbane didn’t send it. Does that change how you feel?”
She stared at their mirrored faces, her fingers curling into the silk pooled in her lap. The answer should have been simple—yes or no.
It wasn’t.
“It changes the villain in the story,” she admitted. “But still, he wrote it. He couldn’t accept my face, my limp. His first instinct on our wedding night was to write me out of his life. The letter existed. His desire to be rid of me existed.”
She looked down. “That pain doesn’t just go away because someone else sent the letter.”
“No,” Reiyana agreed softly. When JingYi looked up, the princess’s expression was full of knowing empathy. She resumed brushing in gentle, measured strokes.
