“Sun Yue taught me when I was very young. It’s important to know these things when you’re in a position like hers, so of course, as her heir, I had to learn these things too. The most effective is to get them to fall in love with you. With all those feelings you have for Liu Xingyu, you’re of course familiar with this one. He could ask you to do anything and you would probably do it, save for perhaps your parents’ legacy.”

Weiran was getting a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Xiaokai—”

“The second best way is to control them with sex. If you can’t make them need you emotionally, you make them need you physically. Most of my clients probably wouldn’t be able to get off properly if it wasn’t for me. I’ve learned everything I need to learn to give them the most exquisite pleasure. I’ve trained my body to take whatever they want to throw at me and look like I’m enjoying it too. They might fall in love, which of course would be excellent for me, but in most cases there just isn’t time to cultivate that kind of emotional dependency. So Sun Yue made me good enough at sex that such things wouldn’t matter.” He cracked open one eye and peered at Weiran. “Can you guess what the third best way is?”

“Xiaokai, what the hell happened to you?”

Xiaokai ignored him. “It’s fear. If you can’t get an emotional or a physical dependency, you settle for a physical reaction. Get them to tremble at your feet. Liu Baiyan likes that one. It’s what he taught to Liu Xingyu. So, I guess, I win over him at one thing, at least to Sun Yue.” He shut that one eye again and tilted his head back, and then he laughed—not a genuine laugh, which Weiran thought by now for him was exceedingly rare, but something dark and bitter. “They knew I couldn’t fall in love, so that one was off the table. And they knew that sex hasn’t meant anything to me in a long time. But the last one…” The laughter stopped abruptly. Xiaokai was quiet for what seemed like an eternity. “They were wrong,” he said at last.

“What?”

“I could have fallen in love with him, if I tried hard enough. At least, I could have convinced myself that I was in love with him.”

“With—with Bai Xue?”

Xiaokai pulled his legs to his chest and then slithered partly underneath the covers, moving his body down until he was laying flat across the bed. He was facing away from Weiran now, not quite curled up on his side but almost there, and he still wouldn’t open his eyes or respond to Weiran in any real way.

Weiran bent toward him, put his hand on his shoulder. “Xiaokai—”

He froze.