She mistakes his honesty for artifice, his vagueness for restraint, though she has never once been made nothing by circumstance— not for a single breath in a life devised long before her first. Her dreams are, in that light, perfectly understandable. He wonders if she can even imagine the opposite.
“Forgive me, huánghòu, but I've made no agreement to that. I'd not part you from your dreaming.”
The dark mouth curves, though wèi jūn presses no further.
