Read Chapter 11: — THE SON OF TANG XIAO

Tang Zheng did not cry at first.

He asked questions.

Where had Tang Xiao been wounded?

What had he said?

Had he suffered?

Had he remembered them?

Lin answered each one.

When he described Tang’s final request—to find and protect his son—Tang finally looked away.

“My mother waited for years,” he said. “She never told me he was dead because she did not know. She died still believing he might walk through the door.”

Lin’s guilt returned with an old familiar precision.

“I searched.”

“You failed.”

“Yes.”

The word landed harder because Lin did not defend himself.

Tang stood.

For a moment Lin thought the young man might strike him.

Instead Tang asked, “Did he really say my name?”

“He tried. He got as far as Zheng.”

Tang swallowed.

“That sounds like him. Always leaving the important thing until the last possible second.”

Lin laughed once, unexpectedly.

Tang looked at him.

“You laugh like him?”

“No.”

“You looked like you remembered how.”

Outside the prison, Xiaoxi waited.

Tang stopped when he saw her.

“I owe you an apology.”

“Yes.”

“I lied.”

“Yes.”

“I had reasons.”

“That part I know.”

He waited.

She sighed.

“You also nearly died twice while trying to save my brother and me. It complicates being angry with you.”

“So there is hope?”

“Do not ruin this.”

Tang closed his mouth.

Lin watched them and thought of Tang Xiao’s hidden house in the capital, of a boy asking for a uniform, of a promise he had failed to keep for ten years.

Perhaps some promises did not expire when they were broken.

Perhaps they only became more expensive.