MeiMei giggled good-naturedly every time he slipped. Ru Rong would supply corrections while trimming pots of miniature trees in the courtyard. Su Lian, ever the helpful bridge between worlds, alternated between encouraging translation and slyly slipping in cultural blunders he ought to avoid—like not complimenting someone’s slippers if they were white. It meant mourning.
By the third night, the block of clear mineral, once rough and uneven, began to gleam under Su Jiang’s tools—shaved, smoothed, inlaid with impossibly fine channels of gold filigree. The craftsman had stopped protesting the time constraints and started humming while he worked.
“It’s still not possible,” he grumbled once, not looking up. “But it will be done.”
One week passed. It felt like a blink and a lifetime. He didn’t speak of JingYi often, but everything he did carried her memory.
He learned how her people steeped herbs—that bitterness in a brew often meant it was working, that healing rarely tasted sweet. He studied the plants she’d once touched, their names written in her hand beside tincture recipes. Every day, he was in awe of her. He could learn for years and barely scrape the surface.
He no longer clung to the conviction she would return simply because he showed up. He let go of the belief that love alone could be enough. Still, he stayed—to understand the soil that shaped her. To become someone who could tend to her roots, not pluck the flower.
It would begin with the offering of crystal. Cut from Tremore’s earth. Reshaped by Xûen hands. And, perhaps, worthy of both.
So—no, he didn’t speak of her.
But everything he did now, he didforher.
Later that night, after the shop had closed, dinner had been enjoyed, and tables and chairs had been wiped clean, Alexander sat with Xian Jun in the courtyard. The night breeze carried the scent of jasmine and woodsmoke, stirring the lantern light into shifting patterns on the stones. MeiMei leaned against her father’s arm, small face slack with sleep, one hand curled trustingly into his sleeve.
Alexander watched them for a moment, the peace of it, and felt something ache in his chest. He looked away.
Xian Jun blew a stream of smoke from his pipe. “I’ve decided to accompany you to the Appeal.”
Alexander arched a brow. “You have something you’d like to ask the emperor?”
The man didn’t speak for a moment. The pipe glowed in the darkness. “The late emperor’s soldiers took my Omega cousin from her village. She was nine years old.” His voice was steady. Impassive, even, but something beneath it made the night air feel colder. “I’d like to ask His Majesty to let me see her.”
Alexander stilled.
Nine years old.He looked at MeiMei—her small chest rising and falling, lips slightly parted, utterly trusting in her father’s protection. That cousin had been no older than MeiMei was.
His stomach roiled.
Jing Yi’s voice surfaced from memory, speaking words that felt like a lifetime ago in Blackwood-Verde’s forest: “Once the Omegas are retrieved, they are sent to the Imperial Palace of a Thousand Suns and added to my father’s harem.”
He’d heard the words then, understood them. But sitting here, watching a sleeping child beside a man who had spent years wondering what became of his own young cousin—the words took on an entirely different weight.
“I will support you,” he said.
Xian Jun nodded his thanks. The silence between them was heavy but not uncomfortable. Two men carrying different losses, sharing the same night.
The silence also brought forward another memory—his first meeting with JingYi. The shock of her face beneath the veil. The panic he’d felt during the bandit attack. The long, slow journey from that moment to this one, where her voice lived in his mind like a ghost he didn’t want exorcised.
Bittersweet. Brutal in its honesty. And yet, somehow, it curled a small smile onto his lips.
“How did you meet Madam Su?” he asked.
Xian Jun’s dark eyes flashed with tenderness, rare for so practical a person—a glimpse of a younger self. He adjusted his hold on MeiMei and pointed with his pipe toward the shop front, to the staircase leading up to the second-floor gallery.
“I was standing right there. I’d come to sell pearls from Aethonia to her father. I looked up, and there she was, looking down at me from the second floor.”
Alexander chuckled softly. “Love at first sight, then?”
“First sight or not, it turned out to be love.” Xian Jun’s expression softened, then turned somber. “It is rare for a Xûen city-dweller to allow their daughters to marry a Talharen. We are travellers, never staying in one spot for long. But Old Master Su gave permission almost immediately. He knew the politicalsituation in Xûen-Sarai would worsen.” A pause. “The marriage was a way for his daughter to escape into freedom.”
Alexander absorbed this. A father, giving his daughter away not in rejection but in love. Not to a cage, but to a door. He thought of JingYi’s brother, who had done something similar—sent her across the sea to a stranger, not to be rid of her, but perhaps . . . to save her.
The world was full of men who failed the women in their lives. But here and there, in the quiet spaces, were men who had tried.
