Song Mei's hands tightened on her shoulders.
The elder sister looked at Cang. Looked back at her sister. The expression that moved across her face in the interval was a complicated country—protective fury, the specific guilt of someone who had sent help in a form that had its own consequences, and something underneath both that she was clearly attempting to bury.
"He—" she started.
"She is my concubine," Cang said. Not rudely. Not with the theatrical cruelty of the previous night. Simply a statement of fact, the kind that closes a discussion by removing its premise.
Xiao Hua went very still.
Song Mei's head snapped toward him.
"She is my sister," Song Mei said, voice dropping to a register Xiao Hua had only heard twice in her life—once when a merchant tried to cheat them, once when their father had raised his hand. "She is nineteen years old and she was betrothed to—"
