It was in that moment she knew—knew he understood her, more than anyone left alive in this world, and knew that she craved, more than anything, to be understood in a way that none had for the past twelve cycles. Not the kind aunties in the villages she’d wandered through, not the songgirls at the Teahouse, not Old Wei, not even Ying…she had given parts of herself and her past to them, yet she had kept hidden so much more that she herself had not even known at the time.
