The pendant stopped.
Cang did not react.
Wei Lingyue looked at Chen Yun.
Chen Yun looked back.
The thing that happened in the next three seconds was not a conversation. It was the exchange of information between two people who had enough shared history that the information traveled in channels that did not require speech.
The princess's grey eyes moved across Chen Yun's face—the fine jaw, the precision of the bone structure, the particular quality of her eyes—and arrived somewhere.
"How long have I known you," the princess said.
"Since I was assigned to your guard rotation," Chen Yun said, with the specific flatness of someone producing a cover story that both of them know is a cover story.
"You said 'since I was eight,'" the princess said.
Chen Yun's jaw pressed together.
