“No.” His expression was unreadable. “Call it a wager.”
“And if you lose?”
“Thenyouget to ask me something. One for one.”
She turned the tile she’d captured over, considered, then set it aside and met his gaze again.
“Very well,” she said. “First question.”
He sat straighter.
“Who taught you how to play?”
“My father,” he replied without hesitation. “He had a board made for my fifth birthday, with limyerite crystal pieces. I lost so much, I’d spent the night awake staring at the board, thinking of strategies.”
JingYi placed her tile on the board, claiming another one of his. “And did you win?”
“Eventually.” His smile turned wistful. “He wasn’t easy to impress. Wouldn’t relent and let me win. He’d say,‘You learn more from losing than from mercy.’”
Alexander took his turn and captured one of her tiles. “My turn?”
She gave a nod.
He considered her for a moment. “What’s your favourite colour?”
She blinked. It was such a simple question—so ordinary it caught her off guard. No one had ever asked her that before. Her mind went blank. She searched backward through memory, past the years that had been grey or blood-bright with shame. Then she found it: the swish of silk trailing over the dusty floor, dark hair with two strands of silver, like ripples on a deep pond.
“Plum, I think,” she said quietly. “The colour of my . . . my mother’s favourite robe, the one the emperor gifted her when she was made consort. She always seemed calmest in it.”
He didn’t press for more, and simply watched her set her next tile. Then, his own: white, angled toward her flank. She answered with a corner move that blocked him.
“That’s a trap, I think,” she mumbled.
“It is. I wanted to see if you’d take it.”
Their fingertips met over the tile—a brief, unplanned press. Heat pricked up her arm, aggravating in its honesty. She slid her counter forward and took his.
“What were you like as a boy?”
Alexander chuckled, low in his throat. “Awful. Reckless. Always trying to outshine other Alphas, and always getting bruised for it.”
“Did you, in the end?”
“Once or twice,” he said, smiling faintly. “When it mattered.”
He laid down a tile and flipped one of hers. For a moment, he was silent, fingers rubbing the corner of the tile, where it had chipped a little.
“You can ask your question,” she prompted.
He didn’t look at her when he spoke. “You said your facial mark was from birth. But your leg . . .”
JingYi froze.
The lantern above them swung, but its light felt stark, too bright. The warmth of the cabin leeched from her skin. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, but it did little to ease the sudden dryness in her mouth.
“A few days after my mother’s execution, I was accused of stealing,” she finally said, eyes fixed on the grid of black and white tiles. “An earring, or some other trinket. It belonged to a consort who lived near the manor where I was kept. I never entered her palace, but it didn’t matter.”
The board blurred. She knew he was watching her, but she didn’t look up.
