Sothing had broken that bond, fractured it beyond repair. And whatever it was had left her with a hatred for n that went bone-deep, that colored every interaction, every relationship.
"Tsk!" Shuyin waved her hand dismissively, taking up her tea with forced casualness. "You can all go back to the celestial realm and stop disturbing my life here. I will be back there when I want to."
"Kailani...."
Lu Yuze chose that mont to descend the stairs, his hair still damp from the shower, dressed in the black outfit Shuyin had suggested. He’d heard the tail end of the conversation, caught the venom in his wife’s voice, the defensive posture of her brother, the weary sadness on her mother’s face.
There was clearly a deep wound here, sothing old and infected that had never properly healed.
"Shuyin," he said quietly, moving to sit beside her on the couch. "They’re your family mbers. You can’t be that rude to them."
His tone was gentle but firm, not a reprimand exactly, but a reminder that whatever pain lay in her past, these people had co because they cared about her.
Long Chen, still standing awkwardly in the middle of the sitting area, imdiately bowed respectfully to Lu Yuze. "Brother-in-law. I apologize for the disturbance."
Lu Yuze studied the celestial prince, proud, elegant, clearly powerful in his own right, yet showing deference both to his sister and to the mortal man she’d married. Interesting dynamics at play here.
"No apology necessary," Lu Yuze said, gesturing for Long Chen to sit. "You ca because your mother was in danger. That’s what family does and you have every right to."
Long Chen hesitated, glancing at Shuyin’s stormy expression, all dark clouds and barely restrained lightning, then carefully lowered himself onto the opposite couch, maintaining a respectful distance as if proximity itself might trigger another explosion.
The sitting area had beco a tableau of tension frozen in ti: Shuyin radiating cold fury that was literally dropping the temperature with each passing second, her mother looking weary and heartbroken, Long Chen caught between his loyalty to their father and his desperate desire not to further antagonize his volatile sister, and Lu Yuze serving as the calm eye in the center of this familial hurricane.
Ah Ling and Ah Ying had given up any pretense of working and simply stood at attention near the wall, silent witnesses to a drama that clearly went far deeper than simple poisoning accusations. This was about betrayal, about trust shattered and never properly nded, about wounds that centuries had failed to heal.
And Lu Yuze was beginning to understand that his wife’s reluctance to have children, her bone-deep distrust of n, her five-year disappearance from the celestial realm, it couldn’t all be traced back to a single incident when she was six years old, especially one that had been proven to be a sche. There was sothing more, sothing darker lurking beneath the surface that she’d never spoken of.
A mistake, Long Chen had called their father’s situation.
But so mistakes, Lu Yuze thought as he watched his wife’s shuttered expression and the rigid set of her shoulders, left scars that never fully faded. And so wounds weren’t mistakes at all, they were deliberate cruelties that victims carried forever.
The frost was spreading now. Lu Yuze could see ice crystals forming on the surface of the water glasses, and could feel the temperature plumting with each second of Shuyin’s mounting rage. Long Chen had started to shiver despite his celestial constitution. Even Long Mingyue pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
He had to intervene. Not just for the family’s sake, but for Shuyin’s own.
"Kailani," Lu Yuze spoke up carefully, his voice cutting through the icy tension with deliberate gentleness. "This is your brother, and this is your mother. They are your family. They haven’t hurt you in any way, not intentionally, not maliciously. They ca here because they were worried about you, because they love you."
He reached out and took one of her cold hands in his palm, his warmth a stark contrast to her frozen skin. "Reciprocate their care and love. Because that kind of unconditional family affection is rare. It’s precious. Not everyone gets it."
His thumb traced gentle circles on the back of her hand, grounding her, anchoring her to the present mont rather than whatever terrible mories were driving her fury.
Shuyin had opened her mouth, ready to respond with sothing cutting, sothing cruel. The words had been right there: "It’s because you haven’t handled such a complicated family to understand the delicate existence of navigating these relationships..."
But then she stopped.
Because she suddenly recalled Yuyan’s casual ntion during one of their conversations about how Lu Yuze had been mistreated since childhood within the Lu family. How his own relatives had looked down on him, sched against him, tried to undermine him at every turn. How he’d built his empire without family support, often despite active family sabotage.
He knew exactly what complicated, painful family dynamics looked like. He’d lived them. Survived them. Overco them.
And yet here he was, asking her to show grace to her family who had only ever shown her love and concern.
She couldn’t say sothing so insensitive to him. Not when he’d done nothing to deserve her cruelty. Not when he was trying to help her, to save her from doing sothing she’d regret.
But since when had she been so careful about what she said? Since when did she weigh her words before speaking, consider soone else’s feelings before her own anger?
"I... I..." Shuyin stamred, completely thrown off balance by her own hesitation.
All the sharp, cutting words that usually ca so easily had evaporated like morning mist. She stared at Lu Yuze’s hand holding hers, at the genuine concern in his silver eyes, and felt sothing crack inside her carefully constructed walls.
Long Chen watched this exchange with barely concealed amazent. His sister, the one who could reduce courtiers to tears with a single cutting remark, who’d verbally eviscerated generals and politicians without breaking a sweat, was actually speechless.
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