"Galahad challenged Luo Binghe on my behalf," he says, at last. "It was noble-hearted -- I'm grateful to him, and grateful he came to no harm. The only consequence seems to be the recurrence of cruel dreams. Knowing Luo Binghe, the nightmares will cease as soon as he grows bored, or Shen Yuan smiles and says something flattering at him ... but it sits uneasily with me. I was rather more flippant, I think, when it was my dreams he meddled with. I may've taken your warning beforehand more flippantly, too. Sometimes I can scarcely think of the man as a threat, he's so consumed by his every insecurity -- if I ever wanted to hurt him, I'd only have to look at him once, and tell him what I honestly think. But lately ..." He looks at Lan Wangji, and his eyes are tired.

"I've told you of my brother, and said nothing kind. But he wasn't a monster every day. Even monsters are beloved by someone; that's why murder has such a heavy weight. After I resolved to kill him, my resolve would falter whenever enough time passed between outrages. Whenever he and Gertrude looked happy, I'd spare him everything I'd planned. I'd take batches of poison and destroy them, so that there'd be no temptation, and I'd only have to bear sins of the heart. Whatever he did to me in childhood ... he was a younger man. I'd hope that he'd changed. And then another outrage would occur, one I could not ignore or forgive. I could put behind my childhood, but I could never countenance what he did to Gertrude, or consign it to the past. And though I knew that was the truth of it, I also knew it would take another year to grow the poisons I needed and distill them. I grew used to such cycles. And I'm used to the feeling of waiting for another man's mercy to run out."