Chapter 22 - The Things We Never Say

The Silk of Fate

Chapter 22 – The Things We Never Say

The bench was stone, worn smooth by rain and time. Idran could feel the faint chill of it beneath his palm. Beside him, Lianhua sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap, flute resting between them. Neither moved. The koi drifted slowly across the pond, their scales catching the lantern light in flashes of soft gold.

And in the quiet, something loosened in his chest.

“When I was young,” Idran said, voice low, “I used to think silence was punishment.”

Lianhua turned her head slightly. “Why?”

He shrugged. “In the palace, everything is noise. Orders. Applause. Instruction. Silence meant absence. Isolation.”

“And now?”

“Now…” He exhaled. “Now it’s the only thing I trust.”

Lianhua looked down at her hands. The fingers still remembered the shape of the flute.

“I once went a full year without writing anything of my own,” she said quietly.

Idran looked at her, surprised.

“Why?”

“Because every word felt like a betrayal. I wasn’t sure if they were mine, or what I’d been taught to say.”

She gave a small, almost-laugh. “Do you know what it feels like to be praised for disappearing well?”

“Yes,” he said. Too quickly.

Then softer: “Yes.”

They sat with that.

Not as confession, but as recognition.

“I read something you wrote,” Idran said after a moment.

Her head lifted, a slow, uncertain glance.

He smiled faintly. “Jun Cao.”

Her lips parted, but she didn’t deny it.

“Which one?”

“The essay on arranged marriages and political stillness.”

“That one was almost burned,” she said.

“It should have been carved in stone.”

She looked away, but there was warmth beneath the silence now. A kind of trembling at the edges of her composure. Not fear.

Hope, maybe.

Or the slow ache of being understood.

“What do you want?” Idran asked.

Not like a man asking a woman what she desires.

But like a man asking another soul what it aches for, when no one is listening.

Lianhua’s breath caught.

Then—

“To choose,” she said. “Even once. Just to choose.”

She turned to him. “And you?”

He hesitated.

Not because he didn’t know.

But because the truth was too simple.

“To be known.”

The koi stirred. A breeze moved through the garden.

And for a long moment, the pond, the trees, the lanterns—all of it disappeared.

There was only this:

A woman who had learned to fold herself into others’ expectations.

And a man who had folded into himself, for safety.

Both beginning, slowly, to unfold.

“You shouldn’t be here long,” Lianhua said eventually, her voice returning to a whisper.

“No,” Idran agreed. “But I think I came for this.”

She looked at him again. Sharper now. More curious.

“For this conversation?”

He shook his head.

“For you.”

No blush. No breathless reaction.

Just her eyes, wide and still.

And the faintest shift of her lips.

Something like sorrow.

Something like yes.