Chapter 28 - Where We Meet Without Touching

The Silk of Fate

Chapter 28 – Where We Meet Without Touching

They didn’t meet every night.

Sometimes it was two days. Sometimes more.

But still, they saw each other.

In the folded corner of a book on the study shelf—one Idran left open just beneath the passage she once quoted.

In the plum blossom tucked discreetly between two scrolls—Lianhua’s quiet answer, left where only he would look.

In the way her maid Yenli sometimes arrived with Osmanthus tea, no words, just a bow—and Idran, reading the gesture, would smile faintly.

They carried each other like shared breath.

Invisible, but constant.

When Lianhua entered court sessions, her shoulders sat straighter. Not in defiance, but in choice. When someone challenged her for quoting foreign texts, she no longer sidestepped—she asked them to define their objections.

When they stumbled, she smiled.

Not cruelly.

But with purpose.

When Idran walked the palace grounds, he no longer walked as a guest trying not to offend.

He walked like someone who had made peace with what might come.

He listened more. Spoke less. But when he spoke, even the ministers paused.

Because his stillness now meant something.

Not hesitation.

But anchored belief.

In one meeting, Idran challenged the interpretation of a treaty clause. Not forcefully. Just… precisely. Offering a solution the court hadn’t expected, one that would benefit not Tumapel—but the poorer outer provinces of Yuan.

The room murmured.

The Emperor watched.

But Lianhua, from her seat across the room, met his eyes.

And gave the smallest nod.

Later that evening, she found a scroll left at her windowsill. No message. Just a simple inked line at the bottom:

Even from across the room, I know when you say yes.

In her private chamber, Lianhua paused before her mirror.

For the first time in a long while, she didn’t look at her reflection to correct anything.

She simply looked.

And whispered—

“Don’t disappear.”

She wasn’t sure if she meant herself, or him.

Maybe both.

And when Idran stood in prayer later that night, whispering verses beneath his breath, he didn’t ask for safety.

He asked for strength.

And for the red thread—still thin, still taut—not to break.