The profound, grateful relief that had followed Xue Lian's touch curdled into a deep, seeping awkwardness by morning.
Lan Yue awoke feeling clear headed, her body finally her own again. The frantic, humiliating need was gone, leaving behind a vacuum that was immediately filled with the memory of every single second of the previous evening.
She had asked. She had begged for touch. She had practically melted into a puddle under the Empress's hands, moaning like… like some…
She buried her face in a pillow, a groan of pure mortification muffled by the silk. The clinical, physiological intervention she had constructed in her mind now seemed like the most pathetic self delusion. There had been nothing clinical about it. It had been intensely, unbearably intimate.
Every detail was etched into her memory with horrifying clarity: the cool certainty of Xue Lian's fingers, the exact pressure of her thumbs, the way her own body had yielded with a traitorous willingness she hadn't known it possessed.
And the worst part? The part that made her skin prickle with heat that had nothing to do with her cycle? She had liked it. Not just the relief it brought, but the touch itself. The attention. The care.
She was ruined.
The thought of facing Xue Lian was paralyzing. What would she even say? Thank you for the illicit massage that saved me from my own hormones? The Empress, with her sharp tongue and knowing eyes, would undoubtedly have a field day.
When the time for their usual tea approached, Lan Yue seriously considered claiming a sudden, debilitating illness. Or perhaps attempting another escape, just to have a valid reason to avoid the library.
But she was Lan Yue of the Azure Cloud Sect. She faced her challenges head on. Even if the challenge was the devastating awkwardness following a semi medical, semi spiritual, wholly intimate encounter with her demon captor.
She went to the library. She chose a seat far from their usual table, deep in the shadows of the celestial genealogy section, and pretended to be utterly engrossed in a text about the migration patterns of minor star deities. Her heart was thumping so loudly she was surprised the shelves weren't vibrating.
She heard the door open. Heard the familiar, light footsteps. She didn't look up. She focused on a particularly convoluted sentence about orbital resonance, her knuckles white where she gripped the scroll.
The footsteps paused. She could feel a gaze on her. Then, they continued, moving to their usual table. The soft clink of a teapot being set down. The sound of pouring.
A long minute of silence passed. It was the most deafening silence Lan Yue had ever experienced.
"…The migration patterns of the Luminous Sparrow constellation are truly fascinating this time of year," Xue Lian's voice floated over, dry as dust. "I hear their mating rituals involve a complex dance of bioluminescent algae. Riveting stuff."
Lan Yue flinched. She'd been caught. Of course she'd been caught. She slowly lowered her scroll.
Xue Lian was sitting at their table, pouring two cups of tea. She wasn't looking at Lan Yue. Her focus was entirely on the teapot, her movements precise. She, too, seemed to be radiating a strange energy. Not her usual confident amusement, but something more… careful. Almost hesitant.
"It is… educational," Lan Yue managed to croak out, her voice sounding strange to her own ears.
"Mm." Xue Lian took a sip of her own tea. Another beat of awkward silence. "I trust you are… feeling better today."
"Yes."
"Good."
Silence.
Lan Yue forced herself to stand and walk to the table. Every step felt like walking on knives. She sat in her usual chair, the wood feeling harder than ever before. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the grain of the table.
Xue Lian pushed a cup towards her. Their fingers did not touch.
The air between them was a solid wall of unspoken things. The usual easy debates, the sharp exchanges, the shared moments of understanding they were all gone, replaced by this terrible, careful politeness.
Lan Yue chanced a glance up. Xue Lian was studying her tea with an intensity usually reserved for battle maps. A faint, barely there hint of pink colored the tips of her ears. Was she… was the Demon Empress also feeling awkward?
The realization was a shock. It was also, strangely, a relief. She wasn't alone in this excruciating dance.
Xue Lian cleared her throat softly. "I have been reviewing the trade agreements with the Northern Wastes. Their artisanal ice, while… chilly, is of a remarkably high quality." It was the most boring, safe topic imaginable.
Lan Yue grasped onto it like a lifeline. "I… I have read that the clarity of ice can be affected by mineral deposits. Is their ice… clear?"
"Exceptionally," Xue Lian said, a bit too quickly. "Very clear. Almost aggressively clear."
"That is… good for trade," Lan Yue offered lamely.
"Yes. Very good."
They lapsed back into silence, both sipping their tea, both staring at anything but each other. The conversation was a hollow shell, a pathetic pantomime of their usual dynamic. The tension wasn't gone; it had just been buried under a mountain of forced normalcy.
It was worse than arguing. It was worse than the heated glances from the day before. This was pure, undiluted, mutually acknowledged awkwardness.
And yet, beneath the awkwardness, something hummed. The memory of touch hung in the air between them, a ghost at the table. Every avoided glance, every stilted word about ice, was just another way of acknowledging the thing they were desperately trying to ignore.
Lan Yue missed their easy rapport. She missed the sharp debates. She even missed the infuriating flirting. This was unbearable.
She finished her tea in one scalding gulp and stood up. "I… I should return to my reading. Thank you. For the tea."
Xue Lian just nodded, still not quite meeting her eyes. "Of course. Any time."
Lan Yue fled back to the shadows of the bookshelves, her face burning. The architecture of their relationship had fundamentally shifted, and neither of them knew how to navigate the new, awkward, and terrifyingly intimate floor plan.