Xiao Zhi began avoiding him on purpose.
She adjusted her steps, arriving late to places where he might appear, leaving early when she sensed that stillness in the air that always came before him. When messengers arrived with a summons from the Khan, she found reasons to decline.
She claimed she was too tired or that she felt sick. Same excuses she always used whenever she didn't want to go to work and call in sick.
It was a matter of survival, she told herself. The distance she was creating was the only logical choice, the safe choice. The warmth she felt when he stood near her was a dangerous thing. It was a wildfire that threatened to melt the careful, frozen walls she had built around her grief, leaving her exposed and vulnerable to a man who held the power of life and death over her.
When the Khan approached her directly one afternoon in the library wing, she bowed quickly before he could speak.
