JingYi went very still, the silence a pressure against his temples.
“There was a trial, one of the most public in Tremore’s history.” His voice flattened, becoming the detached tone of a soldier reporting a lost battle. “Witnesses, ledgers, crates bearing our crest, papers bearing my father’s seal. It didn’t matter that he swore his innocence. The proof was damning.” He swallowed, the next admission a lump in his throat. “And perhaps . . . he wasn’t . . . entirely innocent.”
The thought, even now, was a blade twisted in a wound that had never closed. He looked down at the empty goblet. “He was executed before my ninth name day.”
The silence that followed was absolute, a living thing in the room. When he spoke again, it was with a grim edge honed by years of bitterness. “The mines were stripped from us and handed to Lord Bertrand Fortier, a man my father had once called a friend.”
He could still see them in this very hall: Bertrand clapping his father on the back, laughing together.Sickening.
“His estate now gleams with white stone and gold,” he said. “His men wear our colours. He lords over this fief as if it had always belonged to him.”
Alexander rubbed his face, the exhaustion from a long day crashed over him now. “We lost . . .everything. Income. Honour. Influence. Half our soldiers abandoned us. Villagers and tenants left, unwilling to live on a traitor’s land.” He could still see the empty cottages, the silent fields. “At court, they never say my name without a glance over the shoulder—as if I, too, might stab them in the back.”
He let the goblet rest in his lap, its weight suddenly intolerable.
“I spent twenty years clawing my way back. I earned my rank in the military. I bled on foreign soil to remind this kingdom that House Wulfbane is still loyal to the Crown.” The phantom ache of old wounds twinged in his side. “Ferdinand, the old king’s son, finally saw fit to look past my father’s sins. But the rest of the court . . . they have long memories.”
“What about your mother?” she asked, her gentleness a stark contrast to the clamouring in his head.
He sighed, the sound ragged. “My mother could not bear the shame. She locked herself away. Stopped leaving her rooms. Stopped caring about . . . life.” The image of her door, perpetually closed, surfaced with a familiar pang. “Seven years ago, she died of consumption.”
JingYi tilted her head. “Did she love your father very much?”
“I believe so.” The admission unlocked a vivid flash: his mother’s laughter ringing through the hall, her hand in his father’s as they danced during a midsummer feast, the air sweet with wine and music. Parandor had been alive then. “They were very happy.”
“It must’ve been very difficult for her.”
Alexander’s fingers curled into his palm, nails biting into flesh. A different ache stirred. Duller than rage, but deeper—the old, helpless fury of a child watching his world collapse and being powerless to stop it.
“It was difficult for her children, too,” he said, his voice dangerously even.
She must’ve sensed the edge in his tone, because she lowered her eyes to her hands. Her voice, when it came, was even gentler. “It must’ve been terrifying for you and Yrenna. You lost your father, faced judgment from the court and your neighbours, then watched your mother fall apart under its weight.”
He didn’t speak right away.
He had knocked on the door of his mother’s chamber again and again, his voice growing hoarse with pleading. There was only silence on the other side. And Yrenna, barely four, curled on the floor with a blanket, waiting for a mother who never emerged.
Grief had taken their mother from them long before illness did.
“It was like losing both parents at the same time,” he said quietly. “I tried to shield Yrenna, but I was just a boy myself. Still trying to figure out how to keep the roof from caving in.”
JingYi’s eyes—dark as ink—met his. There was no pity in them, only understanding.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to compare your grief to hers. I only meant . . . she must’ve felt so alone. To lose the man she loved. The father of her children. The name of her House.”
“She wasn’t alone. She had us.”
He’d spent years trying not to think of his mother—not the way she used to be, and certainly not the way she left them. Buthe couldn’t forget the look on Yrenna’s face in those early days when grief had no name and love offered no answer.
He’d sworn, even then, to give his sister the life their mother didn’t stay for.
And he would keep that vow—no matter the cost.
“When did you go to train under Lord Reave?” she asked.
“A year after my father’s execution, Krystoff Reave, my father’s friend, brought me to his estate. I trained under him until I was old enough to fight.” His tone turned colder, more distant. “I went to war, hoping to earn back what we’d lost.”
“Darion said you saved King Ferdinand’s life.”
