“It’s a trait I admire, believe me. For my part, I can spend an exhausting amount of time caring about a person’s incorrect opinion of me.” It’s why he needs to untangle himself from Luo Binghe — though with their truth-spelled conversation and their brush with childhood friendship, it’s more worrying to think Luo Binghe might understand him, or find they have more in common than their obvious, vicious differences. It’s safer when they’re completely irreconcilable. Thank someone he isn’t visiting Claudius’s dreams this time, or gleaning anything more from his nightmares. “You’re an empress who knows her worth, worthy of her own respect, and I never imagined you were anything else.”