The three days passed faster than Yuan wanted them to, each hour slipping away with a cruelty that felt almost deliberate, and by the time the final evening arrived, he found himself wishing, uselessly, that he had some cultivation technique capable of bending time itself rather than merely channeling qi through his own body.
They spent that last day quietly, deliberately, away from Lei's reports and the King's war councils and the growing weight of everything still unresolved beyond the palace walls. Jian had insisted on it, clearing his schedule with a firmness that brooked no argument from his advisors, and Yuan had never loved him more than in that small, stubborn insistence on claiming these final hours for exactly the two of them.
