For a long time after he spoke those words, Xiao Zhi simply stood there.
The lantern burned between them. The letters sat on the desk. The silence had the particular quality of something that had just broken and could not be put back the way it was.
He was not from this world.
Just like her.
She had suspected it for days. She had tested him, investigated, built her case piece by piece with the patient methodology of someone who had spent years learning not to trust a manuscript until she had read it all the way through. She had been almost certain.
Being almost certain and being told were not the same thing.
"You knew," she said slowly.
The man in front of her did not interrupt. She had lost any way to address him now. He was Ruhan, then he was not. He was Kazrail the Khan, and then he was not.
"You knew all this time."
