Tianshi Xue did not want to come to lunch, but she thought that it would look like she was the one losing face if she would let the empress win. Once she stopped crying over her memories, her sense of the impending danger heightened once more.
When Howin saw her eyes, she was stunned for a moment but only bowed when she left the room and followed her to the dining hall. She turned her face away when he saw that Prince Xiaodan was walking from the opposite direction, his head bent on what looked like a letter.
"Everything good with you?" he asked once they were inside the room. "You look like you've been crying. Have you been missing Qui?" he teased.
Tianshi Xue tried to detect a single sliver of bitterness in his voice before she answered. "Yes, I miss him a lot nowadays."
"As you should," he said. "His birthday is coming up, and it should have been the first that you two are supposed to be celebrating, but here you two are… apart."
