JingYi’s throat tightened. “You’ll get sick.”
Those grey eyes narrowed, almost in defiance. “The winter I turned eight, there was a terrible snowstorm. All the palace children took to bed with fever and runny noses—except me. For days after, I was the only child running around, making angels in the snow.” A faint curve tugged at her mouth. “It was the best winter of my life.”
JingYi couldn’t help but smile in return.
“My mother said it was because I was so sturdy,” Adelise said, stepping closer. “Either way, I do not fear a little sickness.”
A little sickness. But JingYi knew: It wouldn’t be just a fever or a sore throat. The purple limyerite had effects so insidious for such a pretty gem. She didn’t want to say it aloud, but if Tedric’s true aim was to destabilize Issoirea’s caste system . . .
. . . infertility in Omegas would be a desirable effect.
What, then, for Adelise?
What would the Xûen court do with an infertile empress?
JingYi clutched the tray so hard the edge bit into her palm. She placed it on the pallet and selected a slender stick of compressed mugwort from her kit and caught Adelise’s questioning gaze.
“I must ask for your trust,” JingYi whispered. “What they demand I give you is a rapid poison. But first, I will try to counter it. If I use heat to stimulate certain points on your body, it’ll boost your natural vitality and help your system resist the toxin or slow its damage. It will feel hot on the skin, but it should not burn.”
Adelise’s eyes widened, but after a heartbeat, she gave a single, sharp nod. “Do it.”
JingYi lit the stick. Holding it close, she applied the smouldering, herb-scented heat to precise spots on Adelise’s wrists and ankles—points known to fortify the blood and strengthen the primal energy against cold, consuming poisons. It felt trivial against the threat, but worth doing.
Only then did she turn to the purple vial. As she transferred the limyerite liquid into the glass infuser, she could almost feel it burning through a body like rust in the veins, leaching colour from lips, heat from skin, and life from the womb. She thought of the other Omegas, who’d all met pitiful endings. Of Adelise, regal now, but ravaged later.
Of the promise she’d made to herself to preserve life, not destroy it.
The infuser trembled in her grip. Adelise bared her arm to the elbow. Gaze steady, unflinching, as if she’d already accepted her fate.
JingYi’s own breath came shallow, ragged. Her heart squeezed. A drop of sweat trickled down her nape. She couldn’t bring it closer.Wouldn’t.There must be another way to fool Tedric, to delay, to escape.
A hand closed around her wrist.
She jolted. One of the guards stood beside her—silent and masked. His gloved grip was iron, steadying her trembling hand only to force it forward. The needle hovered a hair above Adelise’s pale skin.
“I . . . need more time,” she stammered, voice breaking. “I’m not ready.”
He said nothing. His strength pressed inexorably against her will, inch by inch lowering her hand. Her pulse thundered.
“No—”
The word barely left her lips before motion split the room. The second guard, who’d lingered in shadow by the door, moved with a speed she could barely follow. An arm hooked hard around his comrade’s neck, the other braced against the side of his head.
One sharp twist. Bone cracked. The guard’s grip slackened—then nothing. He crumpled to the floor.
JingYi reeled back, infuser still trembling in her hand. Horror and confusion surged at once. Her gaze flew to the second guard who stood over the corpse as though breaking a neck was no more weight than snapping a reed. Adelise yanked her back, and they huddled together, facing him as he stared silently. Her grip tightened on the infuser.
He stepped over the corpse, closer now. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
“Stay back,” she breathed, but her voice lacked force.
Then—
The guard knelt, lowered himself until his forehead touched the floor, hands outstretched and meeting before his head—the unmistakable bow of a Xûen servant pledging fealty. As he looked up, he removed his mask.
His features were a contradiction. He looked like a man from both the north and the south yet belonged to neither. The high cheekbones and ivory cast of his skin spoke of Xûen heritage, but his hair was a beautiful shade of slate-lilac, as though the wind had bleached the colour out of him and left smoke behind. His face was smooth, unlined—early twenties, most likely younger than her—yet his deep violet eyes held stillness like the bottom of a well.
When he spoke in beautiful Xûengua, JingYi jolted.
