She observed him, noting his injuries, where the healers had placed compresses on him.
“I’m sorry the poison didn’t last longer,” she said quietly. “As a result, he nearly punctured your lungs. Thank goodness he missed.”
Haorán looked down at his bandaged torso. “He didn’t miss. He could have punctured the lung butdidn’t.”
JingYi’s mouth went dry. “He wanted you to live?”
Haorán’s gaze didn’t lift. “The poison should have crippled him. It didn’t. He fought through it as if it were nothing.” His jaw tightened, a ripple in his composure. To JingYi, he looked like a man whose fundamental understanding of a weapon—his own skill—had just been proven flawed.
“I saw him after he left you,” JingYi said, her healer’s memory supplying the details: the shallow breaths, the pinprick pupils, the tremors in his hands. “The poisonwasworking. But he was skillful enough to fight his own body’s collapse.”
Haorán stared at her now, his gaze steady and grim.
“We are not fighting an ordinary Beta, Princess,” he said, and she felt the truth as palpably as ice on her spine. “We are fighting an organization that has trained him to move and think like something else. Something that should not exist by the logic of this world. Tedric is just the tip of the blade. The hand that wields it . . . and the arm behind it . . . are still in shadow.”
Then, with fingers clenched into fists, he continued, “He knew how to counter my techniques, to dismantle pressure-point strikes. The kind that only my teacher and his disciples know about.”
JingYi blinked. “That training is rare. Was your teacher Xûen-born?”
He nodded. “But resides in Elloryn. When Prince ShunLi found me, he placed me under my teacher’s care.”
That phrasing—placed—told her everything. Haorán hadn’t chosen this life. She watched him, taking in the edges of what was unspoken. A childhood shaped by duty. A man carved from silence and precision. Not quite foreign, not quite native. Born into two worlds and claimed by neither.
Yet, he had survived and become honed, loyal, lethal. And Tedric had matched him—not by luck or brute force, but with a precision that hinted at a familiarity he should never have had, a precision that violated the world’s order.
JingYi’s scalp prickled.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just betrayal that chilled her.
It was how little they still understood about their enemies.
Darion, when JingYi arrived in his room with Alexander, was in the midst of putting on his boots.
“Sir Darion,” JingYi greeted, eyeing him. “Should you be on your feet?”
“The healer told me to stay put,” the stubborn man said, tying up his laces, “but I can’t take it anymore. Told them to spend their precious time on those who really need it.”
“Youreally need it,” JingYi insisted. “You took an arrow through the side.”
Darion grunted. “And being in bed won’t knit me back together any faster. A walk will do me more good than another moment of lying down.”
She levelled him a look.
“A sedate one,” he amended, tugging on his second boot with a wince. “Come on, Princess. I need to feel like a person again.”
JingYi exchanged a look with Alexander, biting back a smile when he arched a brow. Then, to Darion: “Then, you may escort me to see how Conrad is getting on.”
Darion smiled faintly, as though knowing she was indulging him. Or more likely, keeping a watchful eye under the guise of company. “At your service, Highness.”
They all glanced down the hall as a steward approached and bowed.
“Lord Wulfbane,” the man said. “His Majesty requests your presence in the Receiving Hall.”
Alexander hesitated, gaze flicking to JingYi. “I’ll be along shortly?—”
“Go,” she urged. “We’ll be fine.”
Darion glanced at him. “She’ll have me back in my bed in no time, don’t worry.”
