A strangled sob erupted from my mother, the back of her hand flying to her mouth. I stiffened at my father’s harshness, yet I also wanted to weep for the suffering knotted in his heart all this time. While my mother and I had each other, it was he who had been left alone. And I understood how he felt, his words stirring in me an echo of my own betrayal at Wenzhi’s hands. Yet I had seen my mother’s suffering and anguish, and no matter what my father had gone through, I would not let him hurt her.

Before I could speak, my father took my mother’s hand. “I first saw you at my grave a year ago. I restrained myself from confronting you, for I believed you faithless. A part of me was also ashamed of what I had become, while you remained as luminous as the day we wed. I told myself it was enough to know you were well, that you remembered me. That you wept for me still. At last, I would find peace.”

He paused. “I was wrong. It was then I realized the last of my anger had vanished, and only the sadness remained. I told myself not to go again, for it was a cruel torment—one I could not resist. To feel both relief and disappointment on the days I did not see you, elated and desolate whenever I did.”

“I could not come,” she wept. “I could not leave. And even if I could, I did not know where you had gone. Whether you were alive.”

He reached for her then, embracing her so tightly it was as though they were one. “I am sorry too,” he whispered fiercely into her hair. “For leaving you alone and not listening to you. I was thinking of myself and what I feared and wanted to be true. I would have given the elixir to you. I should have offered it to you before. I would never have let you or our daughter die. You made the choice I was too selfish and afraid to make.”

Silence stretched wide and deep. Lightning could have struck the ground, wild beasts could have rampaged through the corridor—yet nothing could have torn them apart. My mother gazed at him like he was light and warmth. The sun, moon, and stars. As though everything else, including me, had receded into the shadows … and I was glad for it.