"I want him to hurt no one ever again. But I don't see a path to trusting that he will not." Lan Wangji thinks again of Claudius' face that day in the library. All of that as repayment for a kiss gone awry and a handful of well-chosen words of unkindness. "Luo Binghe is accustomed to ruling an empire, and he chose to torture and threaten a man much weaker and more vulnerable than him solely because he was insulted. If he sees the magnitude of an insult as equal to the magnitude of unbearable, inescapable pain, then he is not going to find that path within my lifetime. Certainly not within Claudius'."