[Lauchenoiria]

Several hours after their encounter in the restaurant

Xia Chiu took her daughter’s hand and gently sat her down on a chair in their hotel suite. After lunch, they had watched more swimming, and then had another meal with Councillor Greenwood. Now, Xia knelt beside Jia, clasping both the 5-year-old’s hands in her own and sighed. Jia, for her part was silent, confused at her mother’s actions – she had been expecting either a telling off after what happened at lunchtime, or for the entire event to be forgotten.

“Jia, listen. I could yell at you for throwing food, but I will not. I know that you know it is wrong, so that would be a waste of time. Instead, I need to explain to you why it is wrong – and why it was especially dangerous today,” Xia began, looking gently at her daughter.

“Okay…” Jia said, confused and a little worried.

“The man you hit with that broccoli, do you know who he was?” asked Xia.

“Some Shen, I guess,” shrugged Jia, swinging her legs a little. “I know you said they were dangerous but he didn’t look any more dangerous than any of the other males.”

“That was Wu Genbao, the Shen prince, son of Empress Wu Zhou.”

Jia stopped swinging her legs, her entire body going stiff, and she looked up to meet her mother’s eyes with alarm. “But… the Wu…”

“Yes. And you threw broccoli at him,” Xia said.

“Is he going to hurt me!? Are we safe!?” Jia panicked, standing up and looking around the hotel room like she expected assassins to jump out at any second.

“We are safe, Jia, you can calm down,” soothed Xia, standing and taking her daughter’s hand, lifting the girl – who was now shaking – and hugging her tightly. “We are safe because he was far nicer than I expected… and rather, I think, because he did not remember why our families do not get on.”

“Why don’t we get on?” asked Jia. “You’ve never actually said. Just that they’re dangerous and they hate us and we can’t ever, ever go to Shen.”

“We can talk about that when you’re a little older. It’s complicated. Listen,” she said, walking into the side bedroom Jia was sleeping in and placing her on the bed, “you can’t ever throw food at someone again, ok? You never know who they could be.”

“I won’t, I promise!” Jia nodded frantically. The idea that she had been so close to a member of the dreaded Wu family, who took the place of monsters under the bed in the tales the Chiu tell their children, had terrified her out of ever throwing anything again.

“Good. Now, I think you need to get ready for bed, okay?”

“Okay,” Jia nodded without argument, a rare occurrence. She began to change into her pyjamas as Xia walked back into the main room, nodding at one of her bodyguards as she made a beeline for the bathroom. When inside, she promptly threw up in the toilet.

She muttered a swear word to herself as she wiped her mouth, sitting down on the edge of the bath to wait for the nausea to pass. She sat, taking deep breaths, and cursing her own stupidity. Really, she should have known better than to come on this holiday so soon after… well, it wasn’t that she’d been especially trying this time. It should have been fine. And yet…

She threw up again, and, feeling that she was done for the time being, then took a drink of water and cleaned away all traces of the vomit herself, lest anyone notice. She went to her make-up bag (a curious thing for someone who does not wear make-up to own) and rifled through the moisturisers and care products until she pulled out the plastic bag containing the pregnancy test she’d used last night.

It was positive.