The moment she asked the question, Lin Rui understood exactly what had happened.
He had not even felt the mistake as it occurred. His body had simply moved through the ritual with the thoughtless ease of someone who had done it many times before, in another life, in another world entirely. Close your eyes. Make a wish. Blow them out.
So ordinary, and yet catastrophic.
Lian Zhi was watching him with her head slightly tilted, the expression of a woman who had caught an inconsistency in the narrative.
Lin Rui's mind moved quickly.
"In Tughril," he said, with the calm of a man who had not just made a significant error, "there is a tradition during the Festival of Light."
She blinked. "The Festival of Light?"
