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Chapter Text

He should know this place. He should recognize the dry, icy skirl of wind through the gaps in the walls, the musty smell of bamboo thatch, and the cool, crisp fragrance of snow on stone. The planks of the walls and the floorboards, he has become familiar with by now, at least, after long hours of running the fingertips of his bound hands along them, seeking some flaw, some distinguishing feature. But there’s nothing, only flat, finely planed wood and the cold.

Still, it’s more than he’d been able to determine the first time he’d woken here in this frigid place, with the wind whistling in his ears, blackness before his eyes, and a cold hearth where his core should have been burning. Then, he’d thrown himself against the walls he’s gently palpating now, bloodied his fingers trying to claw himself free. It wasn’t until he’d collapsed on the floor, exhausted, panting, running with sweat and blood, that he’d noticed his golden core shimmering just out of reach, like a distant wildfire seen glowing on the horizon. Cut off then, somehow, but not gone, not crushed again. The realization was barely a comfort, and yet it had been enough to let him fall into a shallow, drained sleep.

His first thought when he had woken next, still greeted by the darkness of whatever covers his eyes, before he could even ponder who had carefully bandaged his fingers, had been of Jin Ling – perhaps Jin Guangshan had tired of what he would no doubt perceive as Jiang Cheng’s meddling with the child and had decided to put an end to it. Though why Jin Guangshan would have him imprisoned – and in a place that certainly isn’t in the Lanling Jin territories, no less – rather than killing him outright is beyond him.

So he goes on, searching blindly for some sign, listening for the cry of a bird or the murmur of voices to try to discern where he’s being held. The why he supposes will come later, if he gives his captor – when they show themselves – the chance to gabble out an explanation before he kills them. He rubs the back of his head against the wall behind him, trying to loosen the blindfold tied over his eyes as he forces himself to not think of the last time he was blindfolded, when Wei Wuxian had tied the length of black fabric in place, gently lifting a lock of Jiang Cheng’s hair out of the way as he did so. A narrow band of pale, milky light appears at the bottom of the blindfold, seeping between the fabric and his cheekbones.

It is foolish to think that no one will miss him – he’s a Sect Leader, after all, with disciples and servants and the commoners of Yunmeng relying on him, one of whom will raise the cry when he doesn’t return from his night hunt. But it isn’t the same as Wei Wuxian noticing when he’s a few minutes late for sword drills – though Wei Wuxian was far more often the one who turned up breathless from running to the practice yard and trying his best to slip in unseen beside Jiang Cheng as if he’d been there all along – or Ajie seeking him out when he’d wandered off to sit on a secluded pier and let the minnows nibble at his toes after a particularly blistering lecture from their mother. Jin Ling is still little more than a toddler; a knot congeals in Jiang Cheng’s throat at the thought of how long it will be before his face dissolves from Jin Ling’s memory, like a thread of smoke waved away by a hand.

He has only allowed himself to think about Wei Wuxian recently. It had been accidental at first; he’d been playing with Jin Ling, and when he took the rattle away for a moment, Jin Ling had pulled a face that had looked just like Ajie when she’d seen Jin Zixuan during the summer they studied at the Cloud Recesses – his eyebrows had pinched upward and his eyes had grown liquid and enormous – and Jiang Cheng had thought about how he’d have to tell Wei Wuxian that Jin Ling would have Ajie’s good looks rather than the peacock’s pompous, bland ones. The realization that all of them were dead and gone had almost swept him under like a rogue wave; Jin Ling had squirmed in his arms and chewed on Jiang Cheng’s hair as Jiang Cheng had clung to him as if he’d been shipwrecked and Jin Ling were a bit of flotsam that would keep him afloat until he washed up on some shore.

When he does let himself think of Wei Wuxian – purposefully, intentionally – it’s always a Wei Wuxian from the distant past, a Wei Wuxian with callouses on the pads of his fingers from practicing with his bow, a Wei Wuxian whose laugh would frighten the ducks off the lake, not the pale, red-eyed wraith whom Ajie had died for and whom the world believes Jiang Cheng killed. The uncertainty of that Wei Wuxian of what might as well be a lifetime ago, Suibian cradled in the crook of his arm, a swagger to his step that made the red ribbon tied in his hair swing, ever having existed is something Jiang Cheng tries to avoid.

Out of habit, in spite of himself, the thought occurs that Wei Wuxian would’ve found his way out of wherever Jiang Cheng is ages ago, while Jiang Cheng is still creeping along the perimeter of the walls. Wei Wuxian had been methodical in his way, but he’d also been reckless, impetuous, unafraid of risk – or, at least, not willing to be deterred by fear – but Jiang Cheng has never had that luxury. He’s only ever let himself be truly reckless once, and he won’t allow himself to think about the results of that, especially not now with his golden core still little more than a spark, well out of his reach.

And, finally, his deliberation pays off – his fingertips skim across a barrier, fluid as water and yet as solid as ice. He should know the cultivation that put it in place, but the answer that presents itself makes no sense. The Jin are the obvious culprits or, failing that, a rogue cultivator, another of the fools who consider themselves a disciple of the Yiling Patriarch, but why would a Gusu Lan disciple be holding him captive? And why haven’t they shown themselves?

Jiang Cheng leans against the wall, letting his head fall back, eyes straining sightlessly into the darkness as if he can will himself to see through it. He’s been surviving on inedia for as long as he’s been here, and hunger gnaws at his stomach, sharper for the compromised state of his golden core. But now, at least, he has one answer, and though it’s incomprehensible for the moment, it has also provided answers for at least one other question – that cold, snow-scented wind must be the frigid mountain air of the Cloud Recesses. For now, it’ll have to be enough.

*

Wei Ying.

Jiang Cheng’s eyes fly open beneath the fabric tied around his temples, and for a moment, he thinks he’s back on Dafan Mountain, before the war, when he’d been fetching Wei Wuxian back to Lotus Pier. How many times had he heard that grave, low murmur calling for Wei Wuxian after they’d gone to sleep, rolled up in their blankets by the fire? It had always been followed by whispers, drowned out by the crackle of the flames as they dwindled to embers or by Nie Huisang smacking his lips and mumbling in his sleep, but Jiang Cheng had always strained his ears to hear if he could make anything out, a jealousy he should have been ashamed of spreading through his chest.

But then the darkness resolves itself into the now-familiar blackness caused by the blindfold, and the cold isn’t from sleeping on a mountaintop in Wen territory, but from the mists that shroud the Cloud Recesses seeping through the walls. Wei Wuxian is dead; Ajie isn’t back at Lotus Pier, waiting for them to return. He scrambles upright, made awkward by the binding of his hands behind his back, and tries to face the direction he’d thought Lan Wangji’s voice had come from.

For a moment, he thinks the call had been just a remnant of a dream, a fragment sharp enough to jab him awake, and that he’s still alone, but then the air shifts, and he catches the faint whisper of silk scraping over the floorboards. A snarled threat for the great Hanguang-jun rises to his lips, but he bites it back – the voice still could have just been part of a dream, summoned by the realization that the barrier encasing his prison is undoubtedly of Lan origin, and as little as he wants to admit it, he’s in no position to make threats now, with his hands bound and his eyes covered.

Instead he tracks the person’s movement, the approach of their measured footsteps – he doesn’t know what to make of their apparent lack of haste. Perhaps it means they intend to kill him, though to what end? Anyone with the slightest connection to the cultivation world would know that trying to extort a ransom from the Yunmeng Jiang will only end in disappointment; the sect is still being rebuilt, from the ranks of disciples to its coffers. But why would anyone affiliated with the Gusu Lan need a ransom anyway? Lanling Jin gold has flowed like a river from Carp Tower to the Cloud Recesses since Jin Guangyao became Zewu-jun’s sworn brother and rose to Sect Heir.

The warm, woody scent of sandalwood drifts to him, and he has to sink his teeth into the flesh of his lower lip to keep from sneering, anger coiling through him as quick and dense as kudzu vine. Another question answered, perhaps, but more have sprung up in its place – Lan Wangji has been in seclusion for three years; why would he make his first act upon returning to the wider world the kidnapping of a Sect Leader?

But there’s no mistaking the voice now, as it repeats Wei Ying, a baffling tinge of hopefulness gilding its solemnity.

“Are you insane?” Jiang Cheng spits, unable to keep the words back, goosebumps prickling his skin at the sound of that name. “He’s dead. You saw him die.” I killed him, he doesn’t say, though he feels the jolt through his arm as he stabbed Sandu into the rocks that Wei Wuxian dangled from, sees the resignation turn to panic on Wei Wuxian’s face before he pulled himself free of Lan Wangji’s grasp and fell. It had been one last punishment for Lan Wangji, one Jiang Cheng hadn’t realized at the time that he’d wanted to mete out, and one last test for Wei Wuxian, though Jiang Cheng still hasn’t decided whether he passed or failed.

There’s a tense silence that seems at once wounded and furious. In a rustle of silk, Lan Wangji sinks to his knees beside Jiang Cheng; the breeze generated by the movement and the faint creak of the floorboards are Jiang Cheng’s only clues that Lan Wangji is close.

“What are you playing at, Hanguang-jun?” Jiang Cheng demands. “Being beaten so badly that you were healing for three years wasn’t enough? You had to kidnap a Sect Leader too?” He thinks he hears a sharp intake of breath, and so he barrels on, “None of this will bring him back.” The fabric of the blindfold is damp against his cheeks. “Not even getting revenge against me will do that. You can do all the penance you want – he’s gone.”

He snaps his mouth shut so abruptly that he bites his own tongue, his back teeth clicking together. How many hours had he and his disciples combed through the rocks and ruins at the foot of the cliff Wei Wuxian had fallen from, skirting pits of lava, turning over corpses left from the Sunshot Campaign and no doubt before that as well, looking for Wei Wuxian’s body? He’d thought the stench of sulfur would never leave his nostrils; his nose and throat had felt seared by the acrid heat rising. There had been nothing, other than that black flute, still intact despite the fall: no body, no limping footprints in the dark sand, nothing.

Cool fingertips light on his wrist, and he would wrench himself free if his hands weren’t tied behind him. A trickle of spiritual energy flows into him, and then the touch is gone – mercifully so, he tells himself; he doesn’t want Lan Wangji’s hands on him, doesn’t want his spiritual energy soothing the ache in his shoulders, the bruises on his knees.

“What have you done to me?” He doesn’t trust himself to specify that he’s asking about his golden core, why it feels so remote, so unreachable.

“You were unwell,” Lan Wangji replies. “Your meridians are temporarily obstructed to prevent you from harming yourself in your confusion.”

“What confusion?” Jiang Cheng asks. “You’re the one who keeps calling me Wei Ying.” There, he’s said it out loud, and his tongue almost curls with the bitterness of it. He wants to spit, to splatter Lan Wangji’s polished-jade cheeks with the foul taste of his dead shixiong’s name.

“The effects will wear off soon,” Lan Wangji says; just his tone is enough to make Jiang Cheng grit his teeth – he always sounds as if he’s making some kind of momentous declaration; not in a pompous way, the way Wen Chao would have when he still had a tongue to speak with, but because of the certainty with which he says everything.

“Good. Then you can untie me, return my belongings to me, and let me go. I won’t even stay long enough to ask questions as to why you’ve brought me here.” There’s something medicinal beneath the fragrance of sandalwood wafting from Lan Wangji – perhaps three years hasn’t been enough to heal his wounds. “You’re clearly not well yourself, so I’ll spare you the embarrassment of answering for this before the Chief Cultivator.”

He can’t say why he’s being this kind to Lan Wangji – he certainly doesn’t owe him any kindness, any grace, anything at all. It’s just the urgency he feels scrabbling in him like a caged animal to get back to Lotus Pier, back to waiting for the next visit from Jin Ling, back to the place where his memories of Wei Wuxian are untainted by anyone else’s feelings about him. If it’s revenge Lan Wangji wants, he can face Jiang Cheng fairly.

But why should Lan Wangji want revenge against him? Jiang Cheng wasn’t the one who had made Wei Wuxian turn his back on the cultivation world and disappear in the thick of a storm with several dozen Wen prisoners. He hadn’t forced Wei Wuxian to read those books he’d claimed to find in the Burial Mounds and veer away from the righteous path. He’d used Wei Wuxian’s newfound power, perhaps, during the war, but they all had. And then they’d all denounced him, every last one, even Lan Xichen and the rest of the ever-so-virtuous and upstanding Gusu Lan with him.

“It would be unsafe for Wei Ying to leave this refuge,” Lan Wangji replies, and finally Jiang Cheng thinks he catches a tinge of hesitation in his voice, poorly covered by an extra layer of formality. “There are many who would still consider Wei Ying an unacceptable threat.”

Something brushes over Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, and it isn’t until Lan Wangji begins working at the knot in the blindfold that he realizes that it was Lan Wangji’s sleeves. The blindfold falls away, and Jiang Cheng finds himself meeting the gelid gaze of the Second Jade of Lan. Lan Wangji has changed in the last three years – his face has lost some of its boyish roundness, but he still looks like an egg with a disapproving face painted on it, Jiang Cheng thinks; if anything, the faint lines that bracket his full lips make him appear even more disapproving than before. Or perhaps he just looks that way because he’s being forced to acknowledge Jiang Cheng’s existence, even with something as tenuous as eye contact.

To Jiang Cheng’s surprise, Lan Wangji drops his gaze as he unties the bindings on his wrists, and that somehow kindles a spark of fury in him, adding to the blaze that’s already been burning at the whole situation. He’d only seen Lan Wangji once after Wei Wuxian’s death and before Lan Wangji’s seclusion, at the Burial Mounds when the great and righteous Hanguang-jun had thrown the tantrum that had earned him the beating – the penance – that had taken him three years to heal from. During those brief moments in that pathetic hovel of a cave where Wei Wuxian had lived, that stank of blood and was still scattered with discarded talismans, scribbled notes, and half-finished inventions, Lan Wangji had looked past him as if he wasn’t even there – all the rage and despair from the Nightless City had gone, and there was only this icy, studious dismissiveness that had infuriated Jiang Cheng. Lan Wangji had never been friendly with anyone other than, barely, Wei Wuxian, but then his dismissiveness had been benign and equally applied to everyone. This, though, was pointed, a weapon, a lash that cracked over Jiang Cheng’s flesh just as the discipline whip had when he’d been Wen Chao’s prisoner. There was no question that when Lan Wangji lowered his eyes to keep from meeting Jiang Cheng’s, he was doing so because he thought Jiang Cheng beneath him, a wretched but not pitiable creature crawling at his feet.

Look at me, he wants to say as he flexes his newly freed hands, rubbing his wrists to coax the blood back into them. See that I’m not who you want me to be. Lan Wangji would just be another added to a long list, wouldn’t he? At the top was Jiang Cheng’s father, who had wanted him to be Wei Wuxian; then his mother, who had wanted him to be anything but who he was; followed by Ajie, Wei Wuxian, even Jin Ling, on the occasions when he’d smiled more for Jin Guangyao than for Jiang Cheng.

“If you’re feeling more calm, perhaps you would be more comfortable in the other room,” Lan Wangji murmurs. He still has his eyes lowered and is drawing the strip of cloth that had bound Jiang Cheng’s wrists through his long fingers, smoothing it out before rolling it into a neat spool.

“I want my sword, and I want Zidian,” Jiang Cheng forces through his clenched teeth. “No matter how I ended up here, I’m certain it didn’t begin as a social call.”

Lan Wangji’s dark, straight eyelashes flicker as he blinks – he looks startled, though why should he be? Jiang Cheng hadn’t been able to hear his conversation with Wei Wuxian on the roof of the Palace of the Sun and Flames, but it hadn’t appeared friendly. His lips part in that slow, deliberate way he has, but instead of replying, he rises, like fallen cherry blossom petals carried upward by the wind, and glides into the other room, his fist held at the small of his back.

Jiang Cheng scrambles to his feet to follow – he has to take a moment to steady himself; his legs have fallen asleep beneath him, and between that and the lack of food, the floor seems to pitch beneath his feet like the deck of a boat on choppy water. He steps through the doorway into what appears to be a cottage, albeit one decked out with all the trappings of the Gusu Lan wealth, which is as obvious in its simplicity as Lanling Jin wealth is in its gaudiness. The light flooding the large room is diffuse, soft, like watered milk as it shines through the white silk screens and pale blue hangings, but he still has to squint against the brightness of it, his eyes disused to light after who knows how many days of being blindfolded in a dim, little – he glances over his shoulder – storeroom?

The wide main doors are shut tight, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t need to see the spell locking them to know that it’s there, along with something to mask sound. No matter how much he shouts, no matter how many of these elegant vases he smashes, no one outside will hear him.

Lan Wangji is making tea at one of the low tables, his movements quick and efficient and, predictably, maddeningly graceful, as if nothing untoward is happening, as if Jiang Cheng isn’t standing there seething.

“Please, Wei Ying, sit,” he says, not looking up from his work. Why is he persisting in this, Jiang Cheng wonders – if the real Wei Wuxian were here, he doubts that Lan Wangji would be able to stand tearing his gaze from him for even a moment. The real Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have been tied up and bundled into a storeroom either, unless in an effort to keep him out of Lan Qiren’s sight.

“You don’t really believe I’m him, do you?” Jiang Cheng asks. “I don’t know why you’re pretending, but you’re doing a poor job of it, Lan-er-gongzi.”

Lan Wangji’s only response is to offer him tea in a cup that looks tiny in his large, long-fingered hands, cheeks slightly flushed from the steam rising from the teapot. The hopefulness in his expression makes Jiang Cheng’s stomach churn, and for a moment, he almost considers drinking the tea to settle it. His rippling reflection frowns back at him from the surface of the tea, and he leans over to carefully tip it onto the incense burner that’s breathing more of that sandalwood aroma into the chill air – he’s rewarded with the minute hiss as the incense stick is doused, the thin curl of smoke quickly dissipating.

“What makes you think Wei Wuxian would want to be here?” he asks, trying to keep his voice conversational, though he can barely remember the last time he had a cordial conversation with anyone, since Jin Ling does little more than babble. “I seem to recall that the last time you tried to drag him up your mountain, he told you to mind your own business.”

He remembers that conversation all too well, the tension that had pulled taut between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, how he’d still felt shut out even though he was supporting Wei Wuxian, how the shrieking of Wei Wuxian’s flute still echoed in his ears, how the elation at having found Wei Wuxian had been so quickly tamped out by the strange distance of him. But he also remembers how close he and Lan Wangji had come to almost being friends during those three months when they’d been tailing what they’d both hoped was Wei Wuxian as he cut a swath through the Wens single-handedly. Of course, all possibility for a friendship ended as soon as Jiang Cheng had so thoroughly taken Wei Wuxian’s side against Lan Wangji, though hadn’t the joy that had bubbled up inside him when Lan Wangji’s rigidly held shoulders disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell been proof that he didn’t need a friend as long as he had Wei Wuxian? All they’d been bound by had been their love for Wei Wuxian, and they’d been driven apart by their equally intense jealousy over him, though at the time, Jiang Cheng wouldn’t have admitted that it was jealousy – after all, Wei Wuxian was his; his home was Wei Wuxian’s home; his sister considered Wei Wuxian her brother; so why would he ever have been jealous of Lan Wangji? He’d lost in the end, when Wei Wuxian had run off with the Wens, but he’d been able to comfort himself with the idea that Lan Wangji had lost too.

“Do you honestly think he’d want to be locked away up here anyway?” Jiang Cheng goes on when Lan Wangji simply sips his own tea, staring straight ahead as if he hadn’t spoken at all – that, too, gives the charade away, he thinks; in the past, Lan Wangji had always hung on Wei Wuxian’s every boastful, babbling word, even when they clearly infuriated him. He forces a laugh; it comes out as more of a derisive sniff, but that will work just as well. “You’d probably try to make him meditate. Or copy out the Gusu Lan rules again.”

Lan Wangji’s cup rattles onto its saucer with a little more force than Jiang Cheng would expect, but he doesn’t so much as blink when Jiang Cheng crouches down in front of him, forcing himself to maintain eye contact.

“I wanted him to fall,” he says, each syllable precise and as clear as the pools in the Cloud Recesses courtyard. He doesn’t say He wanted to fall out loud, even though he wants to – it would be so easy to say that to Lan Wangji to score a point against him in this game that he suspects is mostly one-sided, but he can’t. The truth is that he hadn’t seen fear on Wei Wuxian’s face until it seemed that Lan Wangji might fall with him, but he doesn’t tell Lan Wangji that either.

Though even if he’d wanted to, if a sudden penitence had overcome him, he couldn’t – when he tries to open his mouth, his lips refuse to part, and his throat feels as if it were being crushed by a strong hand. Laughter, bitter and burning, rises in his chest but has nowhere to go, his shoulders shaking uselessly – the Lan Silencing Spell. Maybe Lan Wangji does believe he’s Wei Wuxian after all.

Lan Wangji bolts to his feet, eyes coal-hot, and is gone in a flurry of white silk – Jiang Cheng hears a lock slide into place when the doors slam behind him, and then through the narrow gap between them, he can see the pale blue shimmer of a barrier. He sits down hard on the floorboards, clutching at his sides as his silent, stifled laughter turns to sobs.

***

“I was so pleased when I returned from Lanling and Shufu told me that you’d gone on a night hunt, Wangji,” Lan Xichen says, accepting the teacup from Lan Wangji. He closes his eyes and inhales the aroma of it before taking a small sip, and Lan Wangji can’t help but think of Wei Ying upending his tea over the incense burner, the way he’d slammed the empty cup so hard onto the table that Lan Wangji was certain it would shatter. It had been unpleasant, loud in a way that Wei Ying normally wasn’t – Wei Ying was loud as a flock of crows in a treetop was loud, raucous and voluble, never in a way that was intended to startle. Though perhaps it was just the shock of it, and the – Lan Wangji can see now – quite understandable anger at finding himself restrained and blindfolded in an unfamiliar place, especially so soon after his return—

“Though of course I always regret your absence when you’re away,” Lan Xichen goes on, with one of those familiar gentle smiles that Lan Wangji has never known how to return but has always been comforted by, “I think it’ll benefit you to take up your work again. You’ve been much missed in Gusu and elsewhere.”

Lan Wangji bows his head, accepting the words as the praise and the censure that they are, for threading through them is the unspoken truth that not only had he neglected his journeys around the countryside, subduing malevolent spirits and dispatching monsters, for months before Wei Ying’s presumed death, but that, after, he had been responsible for the injuries that prevented him from continuing that work. “As always, I will endeavor to stand with justice and protect those who cannot protect themselves, Xiongzhang.”

Repeating that wish, spoken so long ago by Wei Ying on the back hill of the Cloud Recesses, makes an unaccustomed warmth curl in his stomach – is this what keeping a secret feels like? It’s not something he’s done often – it seems too much like lying to him, which is, of course, forbidden by the sect rules – but the knowledge that Wei Ying is hidden in the Gentian House hums at the back of his head like a guqin string plucked and left to vibrate.

“Tell me of the disturbance you dealt with on your last trip,” Lan Xichen says. “I’m sure you’ll write a report detailing all of it, though you know that’s unnecessary.” Again, the soft smile, indulgent but also chiding, as it always is when he feels that Lan Wangji is being too slavish to the sect rules, to the traditional ways of doing things that their uncle had drilled them on when they were growing up.

“It was a ghost,” Lan Wangji replies, “not malicious but causing disturbances.” He is coming far too close to lying for his liking, though Jiang Wanyin must have summoned Wei Ying’s spirit somehow. “The spirit was that of a man who had been murdered; I believe it wanted to… question its killer but not harm them.”

Lan Xichen frowns, the expression disturbing the cloud motif centered on his forehead. “A very unusual case.” Then he brightens, like the sky after a rain; it’s something Lan Xichen has always excelled at, even when they were children – finding the good where doing so should have been difficult, if not impossible. “But perhaps it’s better to start with something like this than with a yaoguai terrorizing an entire village. I know you have a tendency to bridle against limitations, Wangji, but you must pace yourself – it’s been three years, and much has happened.”

The words linger in the air between them, as if they’ve been absorbed into the smoke from the incense burner and are being carried in slow spirals with it before dissipating. Yes, somehow much had happened, even when Lan Wangji was forced to lie prone day after day as the wounds on his back slowly knit themselves together, as his bones made themselves whole again. Even though the worst had occurred – Wei Ying had torn his hand free from Lan Wangji’s grasp and plunged into the smoke-filled, blood-red darkness below – days had continued to pass, lives continued to be lived, even his own, such as it was.

Some lives, he revises in his mind, his eyes smarting. He had barely been conscious, mind swimming with medicine and pain, the day that Lan Xichen had come to visit, but instead of playing Liebing for him or reading to him from one of the books he’d managed to salvage before the Wens had burned the library, his brother had held his hand and told him that the little boy, a-Yuan, who had clung to his leg and sat on his knee, a-Yuan whom Wei Ying had claimed to have given birth to and then laughed at Lan Wangji’s shock, a-Yuan who had given his sweet child’s affection so easily to a stranger, had succumbed to the fever that had been burning in him when Lan Wangji had found him alone in the cave in the Burial Mounds. Lan Wangji can admit to himself that he doesn’t form attachments easily, but he’d been ready, determined, to give a-Yuan a home, to raise him as a Lan, to preserve the memory of Wei Ying that lived in him. But that too had been taken.

Perhaps, though, he will have another chance, if he can manage to coax Wei Ying to the surface. When he’d been well enough to read on his own, and the pain no longer sang so loudly in his head that he couldn’t concentrate, he’d researched soul-summoning spells, driven by his desperation to see Wei Ying again. And as soon as he’d been able to sit upright and move his arms without sending searing jolts of pain through his body, he played Inquiry hour after hour, until the normally pristine wood of his guqin was flecked with blood from his fingers, always querying for Wei Ying. He’d received no answer then, and yet now he’s found one.

From between the white-clad bodies of the Gusu Lan elders, like bars of a prison carved from ivory, across the gloom of the Demon-Subduing Cave where Wei Ying had once lived, and through the dizzying haze of his own blood loss and injuries, he’d seen Jiang Wanyin pick up Suibian in his shaking hand and draw it. The sect elders had closed ranks around him then, sealing Jiang Wanyin out of his view, and by the time he’d fought his way free and earned the penance that would keep him in seclusion for three years, Jiang Wanyin and Suibian were both gone. Still, he knew what he had seen, and he knew that it was impossible. Unless…

“So, have you any more news of possible incidents to pursue?” Lan Xichen asks, tearing through Lan Wangji’s thoughts as if they were fine rice paper, leaving the memory once more in the tatters Lan Wangji had so painstakingly reassembled during his seclusion. “Once you’ve fully recovered and have managed a few more, perhaps you could take some of the junior disciples with you and make it a teaching case.”

Lan Wangji knows he should be thankful for his brother’s encouragement, for the chance to lose himself in his work, but now, finally, he has no reason to leave the Cloud Recesses, as he’d longed to for those three interminable years. Something must show on his face, some minute movement that only his brother or Wei Ying could have understood, because Lan Xichen frowns and says, “You don’t look pleased, Wangji. You have fully recovered, haven’t you? You didn’t over-extend yourself on this trip and re-injure yourself? Perhaps you should see the physicians—”

“That won’t be necessary, thank you, Xiongzhang,” he says, aware that he shouldn’t be speaking over Lan Xichen but unable to fully unravel the tangle of panic that has snarled up within him at the thought that he might be formally ordered to go – his brother wouldn’t insist, but if he discusses the matter with their uncle, Lan Qiren might. “I believe my stamina has suffered during my recuperation, so I would request more time in meditation and exercise to regain it.”

“Are you telling me you want to start doing handstands again, Wangji?” Lan Xichen says with a smile that makes it clear to Lan Wangji that he’s joking – he tries to respond in kind, but his face feels stiff, as if he’s been out walking on a windy winter morning, though he knows that Lan Xichen wouldn’t expect such a response anyway. “Of course you must take as much time as you see fit. All I ask is that you don’t retreat into seclusion again.”

Lan Wangji gives him a seated bow, hearing his brother swallow down a faint sigh, and moves to rise when Lan Xichen speaks again.

“I’ll be glad to have you here for now, actually. A letter arrived this morning from Lotus Pier—” He darts a glance at Lan Wangji, no doubt expecting some reaction at the mention of the place Wei Ying grew up, the home of the man who murdered him, but Lan Wangji schools his face to a stillness even more complete than usual. “It was from Jiang-zongzhu’s second-in-command. He says that Jiang-zongzhu didn’t return from a night hunt when he was due to, which is unusual for him, and as of the writing of the letter, he still hadn’t returned or sent any word.”

He straightens his posture even more and stares past Lan Xichen at a fine vase sitting on a shelf behind him. Beneath the table, his hands grip his knees until his knuckles look bloody against the white of his robes.

“I know you dislike him, Wangji, but the Jiang Sect is requesting the help of the other Great Sects to find him. I could use your help in the matter.”

“Whatever Xiongzhang needs of me,” Lan Wangji murmurs, bowing his head. He thinks but doesn’t say that any help will be pointless, any search fruitless, because Jiang Wanyin is already dead. Three years too late, perhaps, but gone now all the same.

“Thank you, Wangji,” Lan Xichen replies. “It really is an immense relief to have you back.” His eyes lose some of their warmth as they stray back to the letter in his hand, his face growing troubled. “I suppose I should send my reply to this letter, pledging our aid. Mingjue has become increasingly unwell, and when I was last at Carp Tower, Jin-zongzhu seemed to be ailing as well, so I doubt that the Jiang will find much help with their predicament, unfortunately.”

Lan Wangji nods and rises, giving his brother another bow, which earns an exasperated but fond look from Lan Xichen. “I will take my leave and allow Xiongzhang to return to his duties.”

As he turns to leave, Lan Xichen calls after him, “You mustn’t have any fear that I’ll ask you to do anything unpleasant, Wangji. I know it could be—” He pauses as if searching for a word and finally settles on “—distressing to visit Lotus Pier. I didn’t want to upset you during your convalescence, but now that you’re well, I can say that I’m still very sorry about Wei-gongzi and how things ended with him. I had thought he would be a good friend to you, and I believe that he was for a time, at least, so I regret his death very much.”

The words are unexpected – three years have passed since Wei Ying wrenched his hand from Lan Wangji’s grasp and fallen, and Lan Xichen had never mentioned him – and Lan Wangji finds himself relieved that he’s facing away from his brother, though Lan Xichen must have noticed his blink of surprise. But he equally needs to conceal the amusement, perverse and shameful though it is, that tugs at his lips at the knowledge that Wei Ying is not as lost as Lan Xichen believes, that this late offering of condolences is misplaced now that Wei Ying is here, in the Gentian House.

“Was Xiongzhang able to speak with Lianfang-zun about the notes taken from the Burial Mounds?” he asks, not trusting himself to acknowledge Lan Xichen’s sentiments. During his recovery, he’d noticed the disapproval on his brother’s face when he found him reading texts concerning unorthodox topics, such as soul-summoning, but he knows that the Jin had ransacked the Demon-Subduing Cave after Wei Ying’s death, searching for the Yin Tiger Tally but willing to settle for any scrap of research or any half-made invention, and who would know better what was contained in the stolen goods better than Jin Guangyao?

“Wangji, I—” Lan Xichen begins, tiredness thick and dense in his voice as morning fog. “A-Yao was adamant that no such spell was found among Wei-gongzi’s writings. I’m sorry, but—” He lets out another heavy sigh, so deep that it stirs the smoke rising from the incense burner and sends it streaming across Lan Wangji’s path. “Perhaps it’s for the best. It will be easier to… to begin to put this behind you if you aren’t pinning your hopes to impossible and possibly dangerous cultivation.”

This time, the bow he offers to Lan Xichen is curt and abrupt, though he tries to keep his gait even and moderate as he leaves the Hanshi. Guilt twinges at him like a poorly set bone before rain, but he hasn’t lied to his brother – he simply hasn’t volunteered the complete truth. Neither has Jin Guangyao apparently, and likely with much fewer qualms at that. There must be a ritual, because Jiang Wanyin has executed it. All he was hoping to glean from any information Jin Guangyao might offer was how to deal with the after-effects of the spell. It seems only natural that something so extreme would have consequences, so perhaps Wei Ying’s confusion and denial are examples of that. Perhaps all he needs to do is remind Wei Ying of who he is.

When he reaches the Gentian House, removing and replacing the locking talisman on the gate, lowering and raising barriers, unlocking the crescent-shaped lock on the door, Wei Ying is sitting on the bed in front of the full moon of the window, staring out at the pale shimmering blue of the barrier beyond. Seen from behind, in the white robes that Lan Wangji left out for him to replace the filthy, blood-stained purple ones that he no longer needs, he looks much as he did during the summer he studied at the Cloud Recesses – Lan Wangji remembers Wei Ying kneeling in the courtyard, his shoulders shaking as if he were crying, though he’d really just been playing with a swarm of black ants, poking at them with a stick, still unrepentant even though Jiang Fengmian had been summoned to collect him. His heart seems to stall in his chest, tight and aching, as if it too can barely fathom the thought that Wei Ying has been returned to him, as if the fact of that return is just as painful as the loss.

But then, Wei Ying turns enough to break the illusion, baring the bold arch of Jiang Wanyin’s nose, the steep sharpness of his cheekbones, the stubborn jut of his chin. And, of course, the curl of his lip when Lan Wangji draws closer.

“So, Lan-er-gongzi, how long have I been Wei Wuxian, if that’s what you truly believe?” he spits, still glaring at Lan Wangji from the corner from his eye, as if he can’t bear to look at him directly. “Though you wouldn’t know any of this, would you, since you’ve been hidden away for three years?”

Lan Wangji settles himself at the table, taking his time to arrange his robes properly around him. His silence seems to infuriate Wei Ying – this must be the remnants of Jiang Wanyin still clinging to the body, as if anger is a form of muscle memory; Wei Ying, at least before his three-month disappearance, had never indulged in such behavior – his anger had always been righteous, on behalf of those who had been wronged.

Now, he bolts up from the bed and storms over to the table, looming over Lan Wangji. “Why don’t you ask Zewu-jun if he’s noticed any change in the leadership of the Jiang Sect since the Nightless City? He’d be able to tell you, and you’d listen to him.”

Staring straight ahead rather than craning his neck to give undeserved attention to these tenacious fragments of Jiang Wanyin, Lan Wangji lets the words wash over him; he imagines them beading up and sliding away like water on oiled silk.

“I’m sure you think that Wei Ying could figure anything out,” Wei Ying goes on, still in that sneering tone. He starts to pace up and down, his tread shaking the floorboards beneath Lan Wangji. “But one of us studied from birth how to be a Sect Leader and the other didn’t.”

In spite of the stomping and the fury twisting his face and scrunching up his nose, a hint of uncertainty has crept into Wei Ying’s voice, as if he’s unconvinced by his own arguments. Finally, the footsteps stop in front of the table, and Lan Wangji can almost feel Wei Ying’s dark gaze boring into him.

“Do you think it was Wei Wuxian who took care of my sister’s child? Who’s helping to raise him?” His voice is trembling now, and there’s a dampness to it that makes Lan Wangji’s stomach clench – the last time he’d seen Wei Ying, there had been tears gleaming in his red-veined eyes like pearls; they’d fallen when he had shifted his gaze past Lan Wangji to look at Jiang Wanyin approaching with his sword drawn, and Lan Wangji had had the horrible realization that they hadn’t been for him at all, though it was his hand clutching Wei Ying’s, his blood streaming down their linked arms.

But why couldn’t it have been Wei Ying who had taken on the responsibility for Jiang Yanli’s child? He’d had such an easy affinity with a-Yuan, and the child had clearly adored him as well. Lan Wangji pushes the thought aside, pursing his lips to keep them from quivering. Perhaps he isn’t as fully recovered as he’d thought or as he’d told his brother he was – when he returns to the jingshi, he’ll have to devote himself to meditation until he’s expected at dinner; he knows Wei Ying well enough to be certain that he hasn’t spent a moment of his time here meditating, but having a well of calmness and equanimity to draw from when trying to purge Wei Ying of what’s left of Jiang Wanyin will serve him well.

“How do you think I brought him back anyway?” Wei Ying demands, bloodshot whites showing all the way around his dark irises. “Why? You think I killed him, so why would I want him to come back?” Wei Ying’s cheeks are wet and slick, his face screwed up, brow crumpled into furrows – Lan Wangji had paid little attention to Jiang Wanyin, but he’d watched him cry often enough during the months when they were pursuing Wei Ying during the Sunshot Campaign to know it’s an ugly thing, self-indulgent, lacking in dignity in its complete ceding of control to emotion.

Wei Ying scrubs his white sleeve over his face, but it only serves to smear the tears and drag long strands of black hair into the moisture on his skin. There might be the slightest indication of some moderation in his tone when he speaks again, though. “How could I have managed it on my own, however I’m meant to have done it? I’m not a genius like Wei Wuxian was. While he got to sit around in a filthy cave playing with his little inventions and daydreaming about how to reanimate corpses, I was trying to rebuild my sect. So, Hanguang-jun, how did I do it? Or, I suppose, how did Jiang Cheng figure it out?”

“There were notes in the Burial Mounds, notes that are apparently missing from those that the Jin took as part of their spoils.” He lets himself glance up at Wei Ying, though he has to tell himself it’s Jiang Wanyin he’s speaking to now, whatever is left of him – Wei Ying flinches back as if the gaze is a wasp with its stinger at the ready. “Jiang Wanyin wasn’t alone in making off with the Yiling Patriarch’s belongings.”

At that, Wei Ying winces again, though his face flushes with anger, his upper lip curling back from his teeth. “And now you’ve taken them, I suppose. No doubt to wail over like a widow. You’re already dressed for it.”

Lan Wangji ignores him, though he goes back to staring at the opposite wall, as if he’s alone in the room. The sudden burning in his eyes, he also ignores – how many times had Wei Ying teased him about wearing mourning clothes? “As for why Jiang Wanyin would attempt a Sacrifice Summon, perhaps he had a stroke of remorse and realized that Wei Ying was always the more deserving. Or perhaps he was overwhelmed by the task of leading a sect without Wei Ying’s help and decided to shirk his responsibility and leave it to Wei Ying instead.”

He has never given voice to these ideas before, though he’s thought of them many times since seeing Jiang Wanyin unsheathe Suibian, and he presses his lips together to hold back any more explanations. Wei Ying’s borrowed – or new, he supposes, since Jiang Wanyin will never be reclaiming it; the texts were clear that the sacrificed soul was destroyed in the spell – face is aghast, and fresh tears gleam along the dark eyelashes, summoned by the suggestion that Jiang Wanyin had felt remorse for killing Wei Ying.

Wei Ying sinks to his knees on the other side of the table, his hands in his lap, twisted in the white fabric, his shoulders slumped. “Do you really believe that Jiang Cheng could be unselfish enough to destroy his soul completely for Wei Wuxian? For his own sect?” he mumbles.

There’s a strange hesitance in the question, something that sounds almost hopeful – of course Wei Ying would want to believe the best of his shidi, that there had been some good in him, in spite of him making Wei Ying fall from the cliff, in spite of his public break with Wei Ying rather than supporting his attempt to help the Wen remnants. But in spite of knowing that it’s what Wei Ying wants to hear, Lan Wangji can’t make himself give voice to it – how can he, after he begged Jiang Wanyin to stop, to let him pull Wei Ying back over the lip of the cliff, and Jiang Wanyin had ignored him as if he’d never spoken?

“I am more inclined to believe that Jiang Wanyin was not aware of the risks of the ritual and made some sort of miscalculation,” he says, not unkindly, he thinks, but Wei Ying’s head still jerks up, his face tight with anger.

“Were they worth it,” he spits, “those three years you lost trying to defend a dead man?”

How can he answer that? He had owed it to Wei Ying to try to salvage as much of his legacy, such as it was, as he could. Bitterness rises in his throat as he realizes how badly he failed to do so – a-Yuan had died in spite of Lan Wangji rescuing him; the Jin had absconded with most of Wei Ying’s work. The thought pierces him like an iron nail that he’d failed Wei Ying in letting Jiang Wanyin carry out the Sacrifice Summon, but there was no way he could have known that Jiang Wanyin would have been aware of such a thing, much less have had the ability necessary to perform it successfully.

“You sit here in your mourning clothes, pretending like I’m Wei Wuxian and acting wounded when I don’t play along with your little game,” Wei Ying says, leaning across the table toward Lan Wangji, each word like acid. “But have you ever considered that you only lost Wei Wuxian, while I lost everything and Wei Wuxian?”

Tears are bright in his eyes again, and Lan Wangji has to lower his gaze, watching the ends of Wei Ying’s hair trail over the cups and saucers on the table, not wanting to see the tears if they’re born of self-pity from whatever is left of Jiang Wanyin in the body and even less if they’re indications of Wei Ying’s actual sorrow. Of course Wei Ying wouldn’t understand that he had been everything to Lan Wangji – he’d insisted that he was Wei Ying’s zhiji but had always been too frightened to allow himself to admit anything else.

“You took him from me long before I took him from you,” Wei Ying says through clenched teeth.

If this were simply Jiang Wanyin sitting before him, Lan Wangji wouldn’t dignify such nonsense with a response – Jiang Wanyin had abandoned Wei Ying, expelled him from the Jiang Sect, joined with the other Sect Leaders against him. As it is, the words, angry though they are, kindle an ember of hope in him – perhaps Wei Ying had realized the hold he had on Lan Wangji after all? Perhaps he had known…

His hands are shaking as he slips his qiankun pouch from his sleeve and sets it on the table. Wei Ying stares at it apprehensively – this would be easier, Lan Wangji thinks, if he could see some hint of Wei Ying in the facial expressions that flit over this severe, angular face, so different from the large eyes and softly curved lips he’d known so well. Well, perhaps that will come later, once Wei Ying is more settled in his new body.

“Perhaps seeing some of your own belongings will help ease your confusion, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, making an effort to keep his tone patient and even. He opens the pouch and pulls out the sheathed Suibian, laying it across the tabletop, hilt pointed at Wei Ying. It’s ridden in his qiankun pouch alongside Wangji and Chenqing since he took it away from Wei Ying, along with Jiang Wanyin’s Sandu and Zidian. Those are shut away in a box in the jingshi, where they will hopefully rust and be forgotten, unless Wei Ying insists that they be passed on to Jin Rulan at some point in the future. But Suibian and Chenqing have been a comforting weight in his sleeve, just as the knowledge of Wei Ying’s presence here in the Gentian House has been a balm on the days when his scars ache.

Wei Ying looks at Suibian as if it were a viper, leaning slightly away from it, though it’s sheathed and harmless. “What am I supposed to do with that?” he asks. “You know as well as I do that it’s sealed – it was sealed when we retrieved it from the Wens; you tried it yourself then.”

“It would not be sealed for Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says. “I have seen it drawn by that very hand.” He glances down at Wei Ying’s hand where it lays on the table, paler than it once was, the fingers long and tapered rather than narrow, the bones sharp and prominent. Wei Ying, following his gaze, curls his hands out of sight into his sleeves.

“I won’t. Suibian is sealed, and it’s going to stay sealed.” Wei Ying pushes himself to his feet and walks back over to the bed, the round moon of the window. In silhouette, he looks less like the Wei Ying of earlier years, too broad in the shoulders, less slim in the waist. Lan Wangji supposes he’ll have to accustom himself to this new body; it is, after all, the closest thing in the world to the true Wei Ying. It has slept in the same bed as Wei Ying, bathed in the same tubs as Wei Ying, eaten at the same table, been put through the same training.

He hesitates before putting Suibian back in his qiankun pouch – it could perhaps be helpful to leave it here to remind Wei Ying of his years of sword cultivation, but Wei Ying is still not fully himself, and who knows what desperation might drive him to until he is? After he slides the pouch back into his sleeve, Lan Wangji stands and addresses the figure backlit by the sunlight shining hazily through the barrier outside.

“Lan-zongzhu received a letter from Lotus Pier today—” The shoulders tense; the spine stiffens; and Wei Ying half-turns back toward him. The words poised on his tongue taste as sour as an unripe loquat – more twisting of the truth, however necessary. “From Jiang Wanyin’s second-in-command. He informed Lan-zongzhu that it is now widely believed that Jiang Wanyin was killed during a night hunt.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Wei Ying whirl to face him, his dark hair fanning out around him, and he hears his sharp, shocked gasp, but he makes himself continue toward the door. Perhaps the knowledge that no one is searching for him, that he is now unnecessary, will drive the remnants of Jiang Wanyin from Wei Ying’s body more quickly, so Lan Wangji will leave him to absorb the idea.

As he snaps the lock into place on the door, he hears from within a thump, as if Wei Ying has fallen to his knees, and then a choked sob. His fingers falter for a moment before he fastens a talisman on the door; guilt spreads through him like ink through water – the sounds are echoes from his childhood; he’d heard them every month when his uncle had led him and Xiongzhang away after their visit with their mother. And yet now he’s all too certain that it’s not him that Wei Ying is weeping for – his absence is no doubt more of a comfort to Wei Ying right now than his presence. But that will change, Lan Wangji tells himself as he walks down the gravel path to the wooden gate; it is fortunate that he has long been a student of patience.

Chapter Text

Why couldn’t he even touch Suibian’s hilt? Once, the grain of the wood had been as familiar to him as the smell of Wei Wuxian’s skin, that confusion of duckweed, sword oil, blood, and lotus blossoms – he’d clutched it every night during the three months he and Lan Wangji had been searching for Wei Wuxian, until the pattern of the hilt imprinted itself on his palm. He can remember the covetous gleam in Lan Wangji’s eyes by the fire each night, the hesitation with which he eventually surrendered it to Jiang Cheng after the Lan disciples had recovered it.

Now, without Lan Wangji watching him, he can admit why he hadn’t even been able to stretch out his hand toward the sword’s pommel – it’s just as Lan Wangji had said: He had unsheathed Suibian in the Burial Mounds, among the frantic swarming of the other sects, all desperate to get their grasping hands on whatever they could of the Yiling Patriarch, what they considered their due. Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have taken it to the Nightless City, not when he had Chenqing, and there it had been, lying in the sand like a brown snake sunning itself. His fingers had closed around it, and even just the feel of the wood, the cool bite of the metal accents on the hilt, had been enough to make his eyes sting with tears and his throat thicken with a wail of despair that he’d only just managed to choke down.

He can’t say, even in hindsight, what had made him draw the blade – it had sealed itself when Wei Wuxian had been thrown into the Burial Mounds, so surely it would have done so when Wei Wuxian was dead. Jiang Cheng hadn’t expected the sword to slide free of its sheath, to cut a swath through the smoke hazing the cave. Could it have been because Wei Wuxian was so recently dead, the link between Suibian and its master slimmed to the finest thread before snapping? The hope at the other possibility – that maybe Wei Wuxian wasn’t dead at all – that had churned through him had been followed by nausea, by a sickening sense of being disloyal to Ajie, even to his parents. But there hadn’t been a body at the foot of the cliff, and why shouldn’t he have Wei Wuxian when everyone else had been taken from him except for a squalling orphaned infant he was still almost too afraid to touch? He might be able to forget his hatred of Wei Wuxian, if only—

If anyone had seen him holding the bared Suibian, they hadn’t remarked on it; perhaps it wasn’t well-known at the time that the sword had sealed itself previously. He’d slammed it back into its sheath and shoved it and Chenqing into his qiankun pouch. The cave was still as frenetic with activity as a kicked anthill, not least because the ever-righteous Hanguang-jun had been slicing his way through his sect’s elders for reasons that Jiang Cheng couldn’t discern and didn’t care to know anyway. The new weight in his sleeve was enough, and he’d gathered his disciples and flown back to Lotus Pier. The Demon-Subduing Cave, as Wei Wuxian had foolishly called it, could have collapsed on all the cultivators inside – sect leaders and junior disciples alike – and he wouldn’t have cared overmuch; Jin Ling was safe in Lanling, Suibian and Chenqing were concealed in his sleeve, and that was all that mattered.

Could Lan Wangji possibly be correct? The automatic answer, stubborn, contrary, fueled by his hatred of the man, is no, it’s impossible. He would know if he were somehow possessed by Wei Wuxian, or whatever it is that Lan Wangji seems to believe. Unsheathing Suibian was a fluke – for all either of them know, it’s not sealed anymore at all, and Lan Wangji could draw it as easily as Jiang Cheng had in the Burial Mounds. And yet Jiang Cheng knows that that too is unlikely – if Lan Wangji could draw Suibian, he wouldn’t be pestering Jiang Cheng now; he’d be lovingly oiling and polishing it, caring for it as if it was its bearer.

He drags himself to his feet – he’d managed to wait until Lan Wangji had left before letting himself sink to the floor – and shuffles back to the bed and the round window with its tantalizing glimpse of the outside world, albeit that of the Cloud Recesses rather than Lotus Pier, distorted through the rippling of the barrier. The next time Lan Wangji returns bearing food or trying to browbeat him into drawing a sealed sword, he’ll have to pay close attention – there must be a few moments when the lock is open and the barriers down, and that brief window will be his only opportunity for escape. He’s not so full of himself to believe that he’s a match for the mighty Hanguang-jun, but Lan Wangji seems depleted by his time in seclusion, and if Jiang Cheng can catch him off-guard, he might have a chance. Surely Zewu-jun and Lan Qiren aren’t complicit in this madness – he’ll only have to run far enough to reach one of them, or even just to a common area where his presence, out-of-place as it is, will be noticed and commented on.

But how did Lan Wangji get him here in the first place? Since leaving his seclusion, Lan Wangji has turned up in the most unexpected places – He goes where the chaos is, people had begun to say, as if Jiang Cheng hadn’t been going where the chaos was for the past three years. Their goals must have been the same – Wei Wuxian had brought chaos like the summer typhoons brought rain; he’d practically courted it like a lover, so following the chaos would lead directly to Wei Wuxian, if he was to be found. It had worked during the Sunshot Campaign, after all. They both knew that. Of course, neither of them would have admitted it out loud when they happened to catch a glimpse of one another in a distant village where the inn was too small even to accommodate just Jiang Cheng’s disciples. How many times had he seen from the corner of his eye a flash of white, gliding deliberately through the milling crowds in a marketplace, like the foamy wake of a boat?

He is certain of when it happened, at least – he remembers having slipped his usual group of disciples, sending them off after some yaoguai that they could easily handle without him, and wandering through the woods outside of Wuluo. Had he even seen Lan Wangji in the village then or had the man taken care to hide himself? Even if he had spotted him, Jiang Cheng had no reason to expect Lan Wangji to approach him – if anything, he seemed to be assiduously avoiding him. Perhaps the righteous Hanguang-jun had his own eyes-and-ears to inform him if Jiang Cheng had found any demonic cultivators in the area and would have stepped in if the discovery had been promising. They never were, though – most of them were pathetic fools who could barely write a talisman or play a single note on a flute; the others, the dangerous ones, the ones who refused to renounce their path, Jiang Cheng disposed of and considered the world better off for it.

Still, there is a gap between that walk in the sun-dappled woods, those brief moments cherishing being alone, finally, while also hating it, and waking up here at the Cloud Recesses. If he’d suffered any injury, it was minor enough for either time or Lan Wangji himself to heal it. Had he taken Suibian out of his qiankun pouch then, allowing himself the comfort of holding it out of sight – or so he’d thought – of prying eyes? Had that been what had spurred Lan Wangji to action? And why would his second-in-command, a distant cousin from Meishan whom he’d trusted as much as he was able to trust anyone of late, be so ready to accept that he was dead?

He sinks onto the mattress – thin and stiff, the Lans apparently frown on comfort even in sleep – and watches the slow sway and billow of the thin, pale blue silk hangings, stirred by a wind slipping through a gap that he can’t breach. His head aches, and his golden core, present yet still unreachable, does nothing to help with the pain. Lan Wangji must be using some kind of talisman to blunt the edge of his core, which means that he’s also subject to its effects when he comes to bring food and judgmental stares and brief monologues of pure nonsense. The arrogance of the man shouldn’t be able to shock Jiang Cheng anymore, but does Lan Wangji really consider him that little of a threat, even when both of them are unarmed and unable to use their cores? Even after being so gravely injured that it had taken him three years to recover? Or could it be that he’s so thoroughly deluded himself into believing that Jiang Cheng is Wei Wuxian that he thinks he has no need to fear an attack?

It will be one more thing to disabuse him of, Jiang Cheng thinks as he stretches out on the bed, settling his head onto the bolster. The desire to escape, the longing to see Jin Ling, the duty he has to his sect are a constant low simmer within him, likely to boil over, but he’ll have to time it precisely – failure will only put Lan Wangji more on his guard, make his precautions even more thorough. Could an escape – attempted or successful – dissuade him, force him to realize his mistake? Jiang Cheng can remember Wei Wuxian’s complaints about Lan Wangji before he’d run off to the Burial Mounds, that Lan Wangji was hounding him about his new cultivation methods; he’d been secretly pleased at the time that the perfect Twin Jade had proven to be flawed after all, that it was Jiang Cheng whom Wei Wuxian had confided in. Would Lan Wangji just redouble his efforts to try to convince him that he is, in fact, Wei Wuxian?

Wei Wuxian would never just be settling in for a nap while being held captive, for a start, Jiang Cheng tells himself. When Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were trapped in the Xuanwu’s cave, they hadn’t just curled up on the bare stone and waited for Jiang Cheng to rescue them – no, they’d killed the creature with little more than the discarded bows and arrows of the Wen soldiers. After Wen Chao had thrown him into the Burial Mounds, Wei Wuxian had apparently devised an entirely new cultivation method – to make up for the lack of Suibian, Jiang Cheng has always supposed. The Yunmeng Jiang sect’s motto was Know it to be impossible but do it anyway, and yet here he was knowing something was impossible and going to sleep. If that weren’t concrete proof that he wasn’t Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what is.

It must have been his pragmatism that his father disliked about him, Jiang Cheng thinks as he watches one of the silken tassels above the bed sway, lulling him to sleep like the rocking of a boat on the languid waves of the lotus lake. As if pushing the bounds of possibility were somehow more important than duty. Jiang Cheng had forgotten his duty once – or at least had set it aside, consigning it to another he’d considered more capable – and he’d lost his core for his trouble. But those paths of thought are well-trod, and he clears his mind of them as he lets his eyes sink shut and allows sleep to wash over him.

When he opens his eyes, they’re burning with tears and sulfur fumes. He’s back on the cliff at the Nightless City, with the unnatural gleam of the fires below and the black streamers of cloud that race across an angry sky. The ashen gravel crunches under his boots as he makes the familiar steps toward the lip of the cliff – he’s been here many times in his dreams, though once was more than enough in the waking world – and it’s only a distant concern that Sandu’s tip isn’t bouncing over the uneven ground as he drags the blade behind him, grief and exhaustion weighing his limbs.

The edge of the precipice is curiously empty too, no Lan Wangji there like a brooding swan, though when he looks closer, he can see a pale hand grasping the dark rock. His stomach twists – he makes a different choice every time he has this dream: sometimes he runs Lan Wangji through and boots both him and Wei Wuxian over the cliff; sometimes he throws Sandu aside and helps Lan Wangji haul Wei Wuxian back onto the safe ground. But this is new, unfamiliar, a new possibility offered, though none of this is real, of course, no matter how much Jiang Cheng might wish it or how little.

He leans over the brink of the cliff, the hot, dry wind from the flames below buffeting his face, and finds himself staring into his own eyes.

With a stifled gasp that burns in his throat, he stumbles back from the edge, and yet that hand remains, fingers clutching the rough, red-veined stone. Jiang Cheng doesn’t want to think about the strength and suddenness of the urge that galloped through him to grind his heel into that hand. It must be a mistake, though – he knows this is all just a trick of his sleeping brain; dreams can take on any form, and yet this has never happened before. He looks down at his own hands and is scarcely surprised to find them small, thin, browned by the sun – turning them over to check for healed bite scars on the fingertips and old calluses on the palms is almost an afterthought. Wei Wuxian’s hands. Lan Wangji’s madness must be intruding into his sleep as well.

This time, he approaches cliff’s edge on his belly, slowly, carefully, so as not to send pebbles raining down on, well, himself, he supposes. The upturned face is still down there, staring up at him, a small, white triangle against the seething darkness of the smoke and rocks below. Jiang Cheng recognizes himself abstractly, though he has seen his face on the shifting surface of the lotus lake, distorted on the fragile convexity of Wei Wuxian’s wide eyes – he recognizes himself now mostly in the resemblance to his mother, but could she have ever looked that young, that frightened? Had he ever looked that young, for that matter? Only three years have passed, and the face looking up at him, anger in the crimping of its brow, something approaching hopefulness in the minute gathering-up of its lower lip beneath the upper, hasn’t had time to be marked by the loss of sister and brother, hasn’t yet known the long days of leading a sect and the sleepless nights of caring for a baby.

The pale, pointed chin is streaked with blood, just as Wei Wuxian’s had been, the eyes luridly bloodshot as his had been too, but rather than the face relaxing into a peaceful, almost relieved smile at the sight of someone peering over the edge, it screws itself up into a snarl, lips thinning and drawing back from the clenched teeth.

“Wei Wuxian!” The name is spat up at him in his own voice; it sounds so different coming from outside himself than it does echoing in his own skull.

“Jiang Cheng, take my hand,” he says, not surprised at all when the voice that comes from his lips is Wei Wuxian’s, even changed as it sounds to his ears. The words themselves are no surprise either, though they’re as far from the ones he’d spoken in reality when their circumstances had been reversed as is possible. They are, however, what Wei Wuxian would have said, Wei Wuxian who was always willing to throw himself into danger to save someone – anyone – else. Anyone, perhaps, except the people he should have protected the most, Jiang Cheng thinks, feeling the limp, cooling phantom weight of Ajie’s body in his arms again. “Carefully. I’ll pull you up.”

No hand is raised to meet the one he offers – his borrowed fingers brush his own and try to insinuate themselves between them, try to get some kind of hold. A moment later, they’re grasping at nothing, as Jiang Cheng – the Jiang Cheng he both was and never was – yanks his arm away and falls, not to save another life this time, but in a refusal to let himself be saved. There is no peace or acceptance on his face before it’s enveloped in the billows of black smoke.

His last glimpse of himself is white fingertips and the pale sole of one boot being swallowed by gouts of dark, brimstone-stinking smoke, though he stares down into the seething lava flows and flames for a long time afterward. Relief unspools in him, and he wonders if it’s his own or if it’s been borrowed from Wei Wuxian in this dream, just as he’s borrowed Wei Wuxian’s body. Was running off to the Burial Mounds with the Wen remnants a relief to Wei Wuxian? Or had it been sooner than that – had he returned to the inn where the feverish Ajie waited and been relieved to have found her alone? Duty would have driven him to Lotus Pier to find Jiang Cheng, but before that, might he have briefly been glad?

Though the thought makes something twinge painfully in his chest, Jiang Cheng realizes he couldn’t have blamed Wei Wuxian – hadn’t part of giving himself to the Wens in Wei Wuxian’s place been to put some of the weight down, the responsibility, the duty, the expectations? Or, if not down, into Wei Wuxian’s more capable hands. His disappointment at having woken up alive in Yiling hadn’t only been because of the loss of his core. Even now, sometimes, it’s too heavy for him – he feels as if his ankles have been shackled with iron chains or as if someone has been hiding weights in Jin Ling’s swaddling.

Through the crackle of flame and the slow crumble of rock being consumed by lava, he hears the rattle of a lock, the scrape of a key being turned.

Jiang Cheng bolts upright on the bed – the room is mired in the amber that just precedes dusk – and glances toward the door. He can make out Lan Wangji’s silhouette, blurred by the soft afternoon light and the paper screens of the door; the faint clatter of dishes reaches his ears. Now would be the time to do it, when Lan Wangji’s hands are full of whatever bitter, pond-scummy thing he’s brought to feed Wei Ying.

He levers himself silently out of the bed and creeps toward the door – he’ll have to do without his boots on the way down the mountain, but for now his socked feet are quiet on the floorboards. Closer up, he can see more through the crack in the door, a sliver of Lan Wangji’s profile, a frown of concentration barely disturbing his face as he effortlessly balances a tray on one hand while affixing a talisman to the door with the other. The shimmering blue of the barrier behind him appears thinner as it ripples, more insubstantial.

It must be now. Jiang Cheng’s golden core still flickers just outside his reach, so Lan Wangji’s must be disabled by whatever talisman he’s been using as well. One pristine white boot steps over the threshold – Lan Wangji must be re-hanging the talisman for the barrier. Jiang Cheng gathers himself, all his disused muscles coiling tight, and hurls himself toward the door and the unsuspecting Second Jade of Lan.

Lan Wangji easily steps out of the way; a shush of white silk against his own robes is all Jiang Cheng feels as he barrels past him, though his arm catches the tray in Lan Wangji’s hand and knocks it to the floor in a crash of shattering crockery. The impact barely slows him down, though, and he smashes into the newly restored barrier at full speed, forcing the air from his lungs and throwing him backward. He tries to catch himself as he hits the floor, splinters of broken porcelain stabbing into his hands, but still he ends up in a heap on the floorboards, a shard of the wine bottle piercing his shoulder and his cheek in a puddle of spilled soup. The smell of it is familiar, the rich, savory fattiness of pork, the clean astringency of ginger, and beneath it all, the faint sweetness of lotus root. The tears that burn his eyes and the sob that tangles in his throat have nothing to do with the cuts on his hands and arm.

Is that how much Lan Wangji loves Wei Wuxian, he thinks, gulping down the saliva thickening in his mouth, that he would find lotus root in the cold, misty heights of Gusu, just to make soup for him? But of course it is – everyone had loved Wei Wuxian, Ajie and Wen Qing enough to die for him, Lan Wangji enough to nearly die for him. Hadn’t he done the same, though? Or he’d tried.

He should be getting up, shrugging off the tiny slivers of porcelain clinging to his robes and flesh, but instead he just lies there, disappointment covering him like a heavy blanket. Disappointment at having failed to get past the barrier, of course, disappointment that he’s not running through the Cloud Recesses now on his way to the mountain path and freedom, but also disappointment that Lan Wangji had simply stepped out of the way rather than trying to stop him by force. Was it his arrogance that kept him from knocking Jiang Cheng to the floor himself, an utter confidence in his own talismans and cultivation abilities or was it his affection for Wei Wuxian that had stayed his hand? No doubt some combination of the two, Jiang Cheng supposes, feeling a tear slip from his eye and add itself to the puddle of soup that’s soaking into his hair and robes. Whatever Lan Wangji’s reason, it isn’t what Jiang Cheng had wanted, he admits to himself – short of escape, he’d wanted Lan Wangji to hurt him, to punish him for the traitorous thoughts from his dream that still cling to his mind like cobwebs.

Lan Wangji sinks into an elegant crouch beside him, his white robes pooling around him like seafoam. “Wei Ying, you’ve injured yourself,” he murmurs, managing to look dismayed without visibly moving his face beyond the slightest pursing of his lips. His long fingers hover above Jiang Cheng’s temple without touching him and then fall away, though that part of him, at least, is unharmed.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t really feel the bitter laugh that rises in his throat, but he lets it free all the same, drawing his lips back as if to avoid the taste of it. “Wei Wuxian would’ve easily been able to reverse all of your talismans and unravel your barriers – I doubt you’ve forgotten that, Lan-er-gongzi. So you can’t be that convinced that I’m him.” They both know the stacks of talismans that Wei Wuxian practically lined his sleeves with, ready to be slipped out and activated with a drop of blood at a moment’s notice.

Lan Wangji reaches for him again, and this time his fingers actually make contact with Jiang Cheng’s arm, his shoulder, everything safely covered by layers of soft, thin wool. He shrinks away, trying to avoid Lan Wangji’s grasp, but that only makes Lan Wangji carefully slide his arm around Jiang Cheng’s shoulders, gathering him up as if to lift him bodily to his feet.

“I can get up on my own,” Jiang Cheng snaps, though it comes out still slightly breathless. He scrambles to get his legs under him to give truth to his words.

The weight of Lan Wangji’s arm lifts, but he can still feel the warmth of it, as if Lan Wangji is waiting for him to fall over. “Let me bandage your wounds,” he says. “It will be difficult to manage on your own.”

“If you’d let me use my core, I’d be healed in no time,” Jiang Cheng points out. “It’s really nothing. Just a few cuts.” The wound in his upper arm burns, as if in protest at being called nothing; wine is seeping into the puncture and making it sting.

Lan Wangji murmurs something about a bath – it sounds apologetic, as if he regrets his inability to provide one, but Jiang Cheng ignores him. He’s going to smell like rancid lotus root and pork rib soup until Lan Wangji frees him, which is entirely Lan Wangji’s own fault.

“I will bring you clean robes,” Lan Wangji says, one of those grave pronouncements of his that sound like he’s reading out the list of Gusu Lan’s rules, as was done at the beginning of each lecture when Jiang Cheng studied here during that now-distant summer. “But first Wei Ying must allow me to attend to his wounds.”

I’m sure he would if he were here, Jiang Cheng wants to say, but it seems too petulant, in addition to being pointless. He lets Lan Wangji shepherd him to the cushion beside the table and settles onto it as Lan Wangji gathers cloths, a bowl of water poured from the pitcher he dutifully refills for Jiang Cheng – or for Wei Ying – every morning. The cuts are unpleasant, still smarting from the salt and the alcohol leaching into them; his palm is embroidered with fine red threads of blood from the tiny shards of porcelain embedded in it, and he can feel another warm, slow trickle meandering down his arm from the larger injury in his shoulder.

He doesn’t realize Lan Wangji has knelt behind him until he speaks. “If Wei Ying would—” The low, solemn voice falters – Lan Wangji always speaks very deliberately, but now he seems genuinely at a loss for words, “—lower his robes so that I may cleanse his wound,” he finally finishes, the rush of words a warm gust of breath that hits Jiang Cheng between the shoulder blades.

His stomach clenches, quivers, and then threatens to gag him with the gush of bile that washes over his tongue. He tries to gulp it down, burning and bitter in his throat, and quickly fumbles with the fastenings of his robes, loosening them enough for the fabric to slip from his shoulder. It catches on the fragment of porcelain still stuck in his upper arm and tugs at it – though he tries to hold it back, he hisses through his clenched teeth at the quick bite of pain, loud enough that Lan Wangji must hear it. A fresh stream of blood trickles from the wound; it must be soaking into the white cloth of the robe that Lan Wangji had given him.

But then there’s a cool, wet pressure against his skin, and he turns his head just enough to see Lan Wangji’s hand holding a wadded-up piece of damp material to his upper arm, the edge of it already pink with blood. His curled fingers are beaded with water, rivulets of it coursing over the back of his palm, but only the fabric is making contact with Jiang Cheng’s skin. He dares a further glance, trying to catch a glimpse of Lan Wangji’s face, but he’s just out of sight, lost in the dark haze of Jiang Cheng’s hair. Is Lan Wangji ever going to touch him? Not that Jiang Cheng wants him too, of course, but the careful avoidance of it is strange – surely if he believes that Jiang Cheng is Wei Wuxian, he would…? He lets the thought dissolve without finishing it; he doesn’t want to know what Lan Wangji’s intentions had been toward his shixiong, even if he can guess at them. Is it disgust, then, that’s holding Lan Wangji back? An unwillingness to touch Jiang Cheng’s flesh, even if he believes it is clothing Wei Wuxian’s soul?

“Remain still, please,” Lan Wangji says. The tension thrumming in his voice makes it seem like he’s attempting some kind of elaborate surgery rather than just treating some minor cuts. “I will remove the large piece from your arm.”

He plucks it out as swiftly and dexterously as he seems to do everything else, and then clasps the wet cloth to Jiang Cheng’s arm to staunch the bleeding. A slight burn remains, worse when the water starts to sink into it, but otherwise it’s nothing more severe than any small, accidental graze he’d gotten in the training yard doing sword drills. He’d grown up with Wei Wuxian, after all, which meant the regular patching up of scrapes from Ajie and sometimes even the sect’s doctor. So why does he wince when Lan Wangji gently ties a bandage around his upper arm? Perhaps it’s the brief brush of cool fingertips against his skin or the steady tattoo of Lan Wangji’s breath against the nape of his neck, closer now and shaking as if he’s nervous.

“If—if Wei Ying would turn around so that I may tend to his hand,” Lan Wangji says, an obvious quaver in his voice now, though he masters it quickly enough, as if it were a guqin string he can calm with a touch of his hand.

Jiang Cheng twists around on the cushion until they’re face to face – he takes some spiteful enjoyment at seeing the faint tinge of pink suffusing Lan Wangji’s cheeks, the way his eyes are lowered until the tips of his eyelashes brush that rosy stain, the same color as the blood-tinted water in the bowl. Before Lan Wangji can take his injured hand in that careful grip, Jiang Cheng thrusts it toward him, blood-streaked palm up.

If Lan Wangji is startled by the gesture, he doesn’t show it, though he does pause before taking Jiang Cheng’s hand into his own, as if he’s considering how to achieve it without actually touching Jiang Cheng’s bare skin and realizing that he can’t. He comes close, though, Jiang Cheng thinks – Lan Wangji is balancing his hand on his fingertips, the touch no stronger than a water strider’s on the surface of a pond. With his other hand, he plucks the tiny splinters from Jiang Cheng’s palm with his thumb and forefinger, his movements quick and gentle – his eyelashes flutter with every removal, as if he’s minutely flinching on Jiang Cheng’s behalf.

Something between a sob and a shout clots up in Jiang Cheng’s throat, fury and sorrow and envy – the worst of all; he can hardly stand to give it a name – battling within him. Lan Wangji would never be this kind to him if he didn’t believe he was Wei Wuxian. To be fair, Jiang Cheng wouldn’t want him or expect him to, nor would he help Lan Wangji in this way if their positions were reversed. No, it’s more that there’s no one who would do this for him by choice rather than duty, though he’s also certain that there is no one Lan Wangji would take such care with except, perhaps, his brother. Once, Jiang Cheng had had Ajie to soothe his hurts; even Wei Wuxian had stitched him up during the Sunshot Campaign. Have you ever considered that you only lost Wei Wuxian, while I lost everything and Wei Wuxian? he hears himself demand of Lan Wangji; he’d been well aware of how pathetic it had sounded, like the sniveling of a child, and yet it’s true, and it’s been a yoke across his shoulders since that night in the shadow of the Palace of the Sun and Flames. Until now, he’s had his sect, but what is that, even, without Wei Wuxian?

“You’re so eager to have Wei Wuxian back that you’ll pretend I’m him, but then this is what you do?” he spits, his lip curling, and shoves his hand toward Lan Wangji’s face, as if he isn’t already looking at it, as if he hasn’t been dabbing at the tiny threads of blood with the pad of his own thumb.

The long, straight lashes beat quickly against cheeks that are now draining of color, and Lan Wangji’s grasp on his hand, once tentative, tightens. That tiny seam in his lower lip, like a few stitches of embroidery in vermilion-colored silk, appears and disappears, but he offers no defense, no apology.

“You always thought you could wear him down,” Jiang Cheng goes on; this is a well-worn groove, like a stone eroded by the flow of water – it’s so familiar, so easy, to unleash his own frustration in cruel words, whether he believes them or not. These, at least, are truthful. “He used to complain about it to me during the Sunshot Campaign, you know.” He omits the fact that he’d taken Lan Wangji’s part sometimes, awkwardly encouraging Wei Wuxian to be kinder to him. Well, he’d still felt indebted to Lan Wangji for those three seemingly hopeless months of searching for Wei Wuxian, when occasionally it was only Lan Wangji’s unshakeable belief that Wei Wuxian still lived that kept Jiang Cheng going.

A faint depression mars the smooth pale skin between Lan Wangji’s brows, and he grasps Jiang Cheng’s wrist and forces his hand into the bowl of bloody water. Jiang Cheng can feel the rest of the shards slipping from the flesh of his palm into the water; it’s gone so quiet in the room that he imagines he can even hear them hitting the bottom of the bowl. Lan Wangji lets go of his wrist as if it were a live coal in a brazier and shoots to his feet – for a moment, Jiang Cheng thinks he’s going to leave, but he’s only going over to the door to gather up what remains of the contents of the tray he’d brought: one unbroken bottle of wine and a bamboo basket that must contain steamed buns.

The buns and the wine would both tempt Wei Wuxian, of course – Jiang Cheng can remember him stuffing a bun into his mouth the morning after he’d spent the night in the Wen dungeon, and he knows Lan Wangji must have been thinking of that too. They’d both been hyper-aware of Wei Wuxian during the Wen indoctrination, Jiang Cheng in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to keep him out of trouble and Lan Wangji almost in spite of himself – he’d been quiet and withdrawn, limping around stoically, but Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but notice the wide-eyed, awestruck looks he’d given Wei Wuxian every time Wei Wuxian had drawn Wen Chao’s attention to himself to keep it from Lan Wangji. Perhaps that should have been the warning for Jiang Cheng, that Wei Wuxian would hurl himself into danger to keep anyone safe – when they were children, he’d thought it was specific to him and Ajie and had loved Wei Wuxian all the more fiercely for it. But he’d been mistaken. They apparently hadn’t meant any more to Wei Wuxian than Lan Wangji, the Jin disciple girl, or the ragged remnants of their former enemies.

As for the wine, he hasn’t been drunk since that night at the Cloud Recesses, when Nie Huaisang had left a wet smear on his cheek, breathing Wei-xiong into his ear, after they’d run out of Wei Wuxian’s room at Lan Wangji’s arrival. Too many images of Wei Wuxian sprawled on various roofs, pouring wine into his mouth and down his chin, are etched into his mind, too many memories of Wei Wuxian wandering into Sword Hall long after he should have been there, stinking of wine and twirling that black flute in his fingers.

Lan Wangji sits opposite him at the table, face smooth and pale once more but the tips of his ears still pink. “I had thought to bring something that would be more tempting to Wei Ying’s tastes,” he murmurs. “The food was not to Wei Ying’s liking before, as I recall.”

Not for the first time, Jiang Cheng notices the repetition of Wei Wuxian’s name – it seems purposeful, pointed, as if Lan Wangji is trying to remind Wei Wuxian of who he is. Wei Wuxian himself would likely have been annoyed by it and given Lan Wangji an overly familiar nudge and told him that there was no need to be so formal.

When Jiang Cheng doesn’t answer – it’s not as if either he or Wei Wuxian would politely insist that they had, in fact, liked the pond water that passed for soup in the Cloud Recesses – Lan Wangji presses his lips together, as if he’s holding his words on his tongue and considering swallowing them back down. “I would—it is my wish that—” Jiang Cheng flatly returns the nervous glance – Lan Wangji nervous? It seems impossible; Wei Wuxian had once joked that his blood was as chilly as the water in the Cold Springs – that Lan Wangji darts up at him. “If Wei Ying could be comfortable here…”

He lets the words trail off, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t need to hear more to imagine what he was going to say. The spiteful temptation to tell him that Wei Wuxian had never been comfortable there and never could be rises within him, but he knows what will come of it: Lan Wangji will just try to ingratiate himself more – will he even take a cue from Jin Zixuan and dig a lotus pond on the back slopes of the Cloud Recesses? Like Wei Wuxian himself, lotuses would wither in the cold here, their trailing roots stunted by the ice.

But to have someone make the effort out of care – out of love, he thinks, sourness curling his tongue – rather than duty or obligation… he knows he’s being unkind, disloyal, but there are times when he’s wondered if even Ajie had only taken care of him out of sibling duty rather than out of love for him. And yet Lan Wangji, of all people, was moved to do so for Wei Wuxian. Well, that’s no surprise, Jiang Cheng supposes. Wei Wuxian knew how to make people love him, something that Jiang Cheng has never been able to master and has, for the most part, purposefully repelled. It had worked on him too – is still working on him more than he would like to admit, if that gnawing, lingering grief that taints his anger is anything to go by.

What can he say to Lan Wangji now, though? Lan Wangji’s eyes are still lowered, but Jiang Cheng senses expectation in the tension of his shoulders, the rigidity of his posture. Why should he thank him for something that’s not being done on his behalf?

“Have you ever even had lotus root and pork rib soup?” he asks instead, though he knows it’s a stupid question – he ate enough of the bitter green soup and steamed vegetables here at the Cloud Recesses to know that the Lan don’t prepare meat in their kitchens. And he knows that Lan Wangji has never visited Lotus Pier, if only because he had to listen to Wei Wuxian whine for months about wishing that Lan Zhan would take him up on his – presumptuous, in Jiang Cheng’s opinion – invitation.

“There was a book in the library—” Another faint blush visits his cheeks. “I had to acquire the ingredients in Caiyi Town, as the sect rules do not allow for animals to be slaughtered here. I cooked the soup myself from the book of recipes.”

Jiang Cheng blinks as if the words were screamed in his face rather than unwillingly muttered to the tabletop. “Maybe it’s for the best that it spilled then,” he replies. Wei Wuxian would have said something similar but played it off as a good-natured joke, but Jiang Cheng has never had the knack for that, even if he wanted to.

“I will try again,” Lan Wangji says, raising his head suddenly and looking directly into Jiang Cheng’s eyes, something he usually seems to avoid, as if to spare himself the reminder that they won’t be Wei Wuxian’s wide, bright eyes staring back at him. Jiang Cheng’s stomach clenches around the emptiness within it – he really should eat one of those buns, but he doesn’t want to give Lan Wangji the satisfaction – at the earnestness in Lan Wangji’s face.

“No need—” Jiang Cheng starts to say, but Lan Wangji is already reaching across the table for the bottle of wine and carefully pouring out a cup of it, which he pushes toward Jiang Cheng. For once, he’s tempted to just toss it back, if only to make this visit from Lan Wangji less torturous, but he’s determined to not give Lan Wangji any kind of confirmation of his hopes. With one finger, he nudges the wine back across the table, its oily surface wobbling.

As if anything so small would deter Lan Wangji, though – he reaches into his sleeve to slip Suibian from the qiankun pouch secreted there and lays it across the table as he has before, hilt toward Jiang Cheng.

“Will you take your sword, Wei Ying?” he asks, which seems foolishly trusting, in Jiang Cheng’s opinion. Maybe he wouldn’t strike Lan Wangji with a killing blow, especially not without the help of his core, but he could at least draw blood and incapacitate him to the point that Lan Wangji would be at his mercy. He could mean two things by it – either he truly believes that Jiang Cheng is Wei Wuxian and therefore trusts him to not raise Suibian against him or he knows on some level that Jiang Cheng isn’t Wei Wuxian and the sword will remain sealed and harmless.

“What do I need a sword for, hm? I can’t draw that one, but even if I could, Suibian is a powerful spiritual weapon, and you’ve blocked my golden core. What do you expect me to do with it?” Jiang Cheng demands; he can hear his own voice rising as he goes on.

Instead of an answer, Lan Wangji slides Chenqing from his qiankun pouch and sets it alongside Suibian, and it takes all of Jiang Cheng’s self-control, frayed as it is, to not flinch back from it. He knows it’s foolish, that the flute is just a length of bamboo, even if it is a spiritual tool. And yet, from the minute Wei Wuxian had appeared at the Yunmeng courier station, drawing screeching peals from Chenqing that had made the hair on the back of Jiang Cheng’s neck rise, he’d never quite been himself again. Hidden away in his own qiankun pouch, both Suibian and Chenqing had been a comfort; now they seem like a threat.

“I don’t play,” he says, forcing the words through the tightness in his throat. “You should know that musical cultivation is rarely practiced by the Yunmeng Jiang, Hanguang-jun.”

“Did you teach yourself when you were—” The tip of Lan Wangji’s tongue, the pink of it a shade deeper than that of his lips, darts from between them. “—trapped in the Burial Mounds?”

Jiang Cheng knows that Lan Wangji must be thinking of that night at the Yunmeng courier station too, when they’d heard the shrieking of the flute and still had no inkling of who would step into their limited view of the room below from their perch on the roof. Up until the moment that Wei Wuxian had spoken, Lan Wangji had held Jiang Cheng back, urging caution – when certainty had dawned, Jiang Cheng had felt Lan Wangji lean toward the gap in the roof before stopping himself, as desperate to leap through it as Jiang Cheng himself had been.

“Why do you even have that?” Jiang Cheng asks. “Don’t you have some kind of duty to dispose of it as an instrument of evil? Wouldn’t that have been one of your conditions if he’d agreed to come here with you?” He remembers one night in Qishan after the war was over, Wei Wuxian complaining to him that Lan Wangji wanted to play his guqin for him to calm his spirit – he’d had a crooked little smirk on his face and had rolled his eyes, determined to show just how stupid he thought it all was, but when Jiang Cheng conjures the image of Wei Wuxian at that time, there’s a hint of desperation in those eyes. How had he missed it then? Perhaps he’d simply written it off as the same desperation all of them felt in one way or another. “Why haven’t you offered to play any of the music you wrote for him?”

The corners of Lan Wangji’s lips tighten, and his adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows. Finally, he meets Jiang Cheng’s eyes and says, “Doing so could yield unwanted effects at this time.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know enough about musical cultivation in general or Lan Wangji’s compositions specifically to know what that means, so he settles on a sneer, shaking his head. The hours in this quiet cottage drag on interminably when he’s alone, but he can’t say that Lan Wangji’s visits make them go by any faster.

“When Wei Ying is more settled in this form—” Lan Wangji begins, though Jiang Cheng can hear the hesitation before form – undoubtedly he’d been going to say body and thought the better of it. “Then it will be appropriate.” He slides Suibian toward Jiang Cheng again. “If you would try holding your spiritual weapon, perhaps—”

“If it will put an end to this idiocy, then fine,” Jiang Cheng snaps and snatches up Suiban, holding it by its rough wooden scabbard. Tears spring to his eyes, but he blinks them back – this sword had been a poor yet somehow comforting replacement for Wei Wuxian during those three months; he knows its weight, the ridges in the wood, the carving of its name almost as well as he knows the feel of Sandu. He’d carried it shoved into the back of his belt for all those months, waiting for the moment when he could return it to Wei Wuxian, and when he had, Wei Wuxian hadn’t even seemed to care, had put it aside almost as soon as he could. Hadn’t he done the same with Jiang Cheng as well? “It’s just a sword. Someone else’s sword.”

“Draw it, please,” Lan Wangji says, his voice even, businesslike – Jiang Cheng hates the command he can put into it; Jiang Cheng is a Sect Leader – Lan Wangji has no right to order him around, but then, he supposes, he had no right to capture and imprison him either.

“I told you I can’t!” Jiang Cheng shouts and sweeps Suibian across the table, knocking the wine bottle, the full cup, and the basket of buns into Lan Wangji’s lap. Chenqing goes spinning across the floor, coming to rest against the dais that the bed sits on.

A drop of wine dangles from Lan Wangji’s chin; it quivers as he takes in a long, deep breath, though Jiang Cheng can see him trembling, hear the pop of his knuckles as he clenches his hands into fists. Let him be angry, Jiang Cheng thinks – maybe they’ll understand one another better that way. More wine has left a damp gray slash across the front of his white robe and soaked one side of his hair, making it as wavy as it had been when he and Wei Wuxian had tumbled from the invisible opening in the side of the hill, their wrists tied together with Lan Wangji’s forehead ribbon.

But it’s not anger that cinches Lan Wangji’s full lower lip or that draws his brows upward toward the cloud motif on his headband – he looks stricken, hurt, though Jiang Cheng would not have imagined that possible. He’d thought he’d seen Lan Wangji hurt once, in the Yunmeng courier station when Wei Wuxian had told him that the killing of Wen Chao was the Yunmeng Jiang’s business, not his, though that had been liberally mixed with self-righteous anger and, as always, that icy pride. Now, his eyes gleam along their rims with what might be tears, though they’re gone after a blink.

“There can be no mistake,” Lan Wangji murmurs, his lips barely moving – he’s clearly trying to convince himself rather than Jiang Cheng. “I saw him draw Suibian, only Wei Ying could…”

Jiang Cheng stands and goes to retrieve Chenqing. Relief washes over him as he clutches it in his fist, along with the usual disgust and anger – the cursed thing had been responsible for both Ajie’s death and Jin Zixuan’s, after all, and Wei Wuxian had kept it even closer than he’d ever kept Suibian, always twirling it between his fingers, the blood-red silk tassel spinning. Of course, the flute was one of the reasons they’d won the war against the Wens, but Wei Wuxian could have put it aside then, could have taken his place at Jiang Cheng’s right hand as they’d always talked about. But he hadn’t.

“I know how we can settle this right now,” Jiang Cheng says, holding Chenqing out to Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji’s eyelashes are clumped together by the sticky dampness of the wine as well, the whites of his eyes reddened when he raises them to look at Jiang Cheng, doubt and mistrust half-hidden behind the usual self-possession of his gaze. “Ajie told me that she once tried to touch Chenqing while Wei Wuxian was holding it, and it attacked her to protect him.” He waves the flute at Lan Wangji, sending the tassel swinging. “If I am Wei Wuxian, its resentful energy will defend me if you try to take it from me.”

He doesn’t feel any of the confidence he can hear ringing in his own voice, but it appears to be working on Lan Wangji, who rakes his lower lip with his teeth and then grimaces slightly, his mouth twisting as if he wants to spit – there must have been some wine still clinging to his lips. Slowly, Lan Wangji’s long fingers unfurl from the fist they’ve been curled into, and he stretches his arm out, reaching toward Chenqing. But before his fingertips can even brush the silken tassel, his hand falls back into his lap once more, and he shakes his head.

Fury spins through Jiang Cheng like a waterspout, roaring in his ears; his fingers clutch so hard at the bamboo flute that they start to cramp. “Don’t you want to know, Lan Wangji? Don’t you want to be certain?” He jabs Chenqing at him as if it were Sandu and he were aiming for Lan Wangji’s throat, but Lan Wangji leans out of reach before the flute can touch him and rises.

“It is a violation of the Gusu Lan sect rules,” he says; he sounds uncertain at first, but when he speaks again his voice is more firm, back to that stern declarative tone that makes it clear that no arguments will be entertained. “I cannot knowingly encourage the summoning of resentful energy.”

“Just say that you’re afraid,” Jiang Cheng shouts, “or is cowardice against your sect’s rules too?” He grabs hold of the end of Chenqing that Lan Wangji had taken such pains to avoid and snaps the flute in half, before hurling the pieces to the floor. “There,” he says, raising his chin as if daring Lan Wangji to take some kind of revenge on him. The nausea rising in his throat is nearly gagging him, but he makes himself go on, “It’s not as if Wei Wuxian will ever need it again.”

Even in the dimness of the early evening, he can see the whites all the way around Lan Wangji’s deep brown irises, like two dark islands in milky seas; Lan Wangji’s full lips have fallen open in shock. Jiang Cheng can feel a mirror of that shock on his own face, but he quickly forces his expression into one of haughty contempt – he’d meant to do it all along, of course. He isn’t already feeling the loss of Chenqing like a minute echo of the loss of Wei Wuxian, both of them at his hands.

“If you’d let me use my core, I could dispose of Suibian as well,” he makes himself say and is relieved that Lan Wangji still looks shaken enough that it’s doubtful he noticed Jiang Cheng’s voice trembling. Grief and exhaustion wring him like hands twisting a wet cloth – he just wants Lan Wangji to be gone.

As if he’s taking Jiang Cheng’s empty threat to heart, Lan Wangji stuffs Suibian back into his qiankun pouch, gathering it with shaking hands. The still-closed basket of buns and the unbroken bottle of Emperor’s Smile, which must be more than half-empty by now, Lan Wangji also collects before he unlocks the door and is gone.

Jiang Cheng barely listens for the click of the lock – even when rattled, Lan Wangji is unlikely to make any mistakes with the safeguards against his escape – before dropping onto the bed as if his legs have been cut out from under him. The wounds in his palm sting, and when he uncurls his fingers, there is a long, black bamboo splinter driven into the center of his hand, surrounded by the smaller tears left by the shards of porcelain.

Was it enough? Lan Wangji has to know that Wei Wuxian would never willingly have destroyed Chenqing. Perhaps tomorrow, Jiang Cheng will wake to find his golden core restored, the door to this cottage flung open, the barriers dissolved. Perhaps his relief will be so great that he’ll let all of this be forgotten, that he won’t demand any public apology or reparations from the Lan Sect and spare all of them – himself included – the embarrassment.

When he wakes up the next morning, awash in a pool of stark white morning light, the door is still shut tight. Sandu and Zidian are nowhere to be found; the barrier still ripples languidly beyond the window; his golden core is still a dim flicker in his lower dantian. He drags himself from the bed, throat dry with sleep and hunger gnawing at his stomach, and crosses the room to test the lock. It too is unyielding, but just inside the threshold, there is another tray with two bottles of Emperor’s Smile and another bowl of lotus root and pork rib soup, steam still winding up from its surface. And beside that, there is a pile of neatly folded clothing, a black robe and trousers and a deep red underrobe, and atop it, like a stream of fresh blood, is a bright red hair ribbon.

***

Lan Wangji envies his shufu his afternoon lecture with the junior disciples. If he were in the lanshi right now, trying to guide the junior disciples through the best way to subdue resentful energy, he would not have to be here, in his brother’s rooms, listening to Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao console one another over the death of Nie Mingjue. The loss has struck Lan Wangji himself, though he wasn’t present as Jin Guangyao had been or even in Lanling as Lan Xichen had been when Nie Mingjue had suffered his final qi deviation – he has, however, known Nie Mingjue since he was a child, served under his command in the Sunshot Campaign, and respected him far more than he ever has his Xiongzhang’s second sworn brother. Lan Xichen had seen him through his two losses, though, so Lan Wangji has put aside his disapproval of Jin Guangyao.

No matter how much he tries to focus on the tidal rise and fall of the wind in the bamboo forest that surrounds the hanshi, he can still hear his brother and Jin Guangyao apologizing to one another, as if they’re competing to take the full blame for Nie Mingjue’s death on themselves, which is, of course, foolish. Everyone, even Nie Mingjue himself, knew he was destined to die of a qi deviation sooner or later.

And yet Jin Guangyao is wailing out an apology, “Er-ge, I feel I am to blame for Da-ge’s misfortune! If only I had been a better student – for I could not have had a better teacher than you, Er-ge – perhaps I could have proven a worthy replacement for you in Da-ge’s treatment.”

His voice is muffled by the mats covering the floor – he threw himself into a bow before Lan Xichen could catch his arms to prevent him and guide him upright once more. Lan Wangji thinks of the way Wei Ying’s lip curled up in disgust when he was offered Suibian and Chenqing and wishes he could indulge himself in such a manner, though it would surely violate at least three of the sect rules, even if he hid it behind his teacup.

“Please, a-Yao, restrain your grief,” Lan Xichen says, and Lan Wangji can hear the faintest hint of panic tingeing his brother’s voice – in spite of Lan Xichen’s affection for Nie Mingjue, Lan Wangji knows that great shows of emotion have always made him uncomfortable, not because they violate the sect rules or because he considers them self-indulgent, but because they obfuscate the path to the resolution of whatever brought them on. “Of course you are not to blame. If anything, I blame myself for not being an adequate teacher and for putting too much of the responsibility on your shoulders when you were still little more than a novice on the guqin.”

Jin Guangyao raises his head to gaze up at Lan Xichen, his eyes huge and glossy with unshed tears. He’s been dabbing at them with a gold silk handkerchief every time Lan Xichen has glanced in his direction, but Lan Wangji has yet to see any actual tears dampen his cheeks. “But, Er-ge, I swear to you that I only wanted to help Da-ge and you – you had so much to undertake yourself, with the rebuilding of the Cloud Recesses and—” His eyes dart toward Lan Wangji, his mouth hanging open as if he’s rethinking his words; Lan Wangji simply gives him a flat stare, and after a moment, Jin Guangyao gives himself a little shake and turns back to Lan Xichen. “—caring for Hanguang-jun during his recovery. I only sought to lighten your load, and yet I failed even in that…” There’s a catch in his voice as if he’s on the brink of a sob, and his shoulders shake as he hangs his head between them, seeming to rest all of his weight on Lan Xichen’s hands.

“A-yao, please be assured that there is nothing I could possibly reproach you for,” Lan Xichen murmurs. He, at least, is adhering to the sect rules, even in his grief – his eyes are red, his eyelashes damp with tears he will not allow to fall, and Lan Wangji heard the aching, melancholy notes of Liebing drifting on the night wind the previous evening.

Lan Wangji’s own grief has always been quiet, as befits a member of the Lan sect – silent vigils for the one lost, how he’d knelt in the snow outside the Gentian House waiting for his mother to return, as if he could buy her more hours by sacrificing his own. The vigil he held for Wei Wuxian was an enforced one – he couldn’t have stirred even if he’d wanted to, his body broken by his penance, but the physical pain had been nothing to the grief that had wracked him, a cruel companion as he waited for his bones and flesh to knit themselves back together.

Is this what Wei Ying is suffering through now? Are these outbursts, the snapping of Chenqing, the hateful words, his way of grieving – undeserved though it may be – for his shidi? Or perhaps, more appropriately, belated grief for Jiang Yanli, which would still be fresh for him?

He turns his attention back to Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao – perhaps something can be learned from the way they interact with one another, perhaps he can formulate an approach to helping Wei Ying through his grief, even if it seems excessive to him. Wei Ying does not strike him as one to over-indulge in mourning, as deeply as he feels things – rather, Wei Ying has always used his grief to fight harder for what is right. But allowances must be made in this circumstance; Lan Wangji has no idea where Wei Ying was during the three years after he ripped his hand from Lan Wangji’s grasp and fell, and Wei Ying himself has not been forthcoming on the matter.

His current tactics have been unsuccessful – they seem to do little but annoy Wei Ying at best and enrage him at worst. He has tried to be kind while still impressing on Wei Ying the need to interact with the remnants of his past, but all that has yielded is a wine-stained set of robes and a broken flute. The obstacle is that he does not know how to be kind in the way Wei Ying had been before his death. His kindness, he supposes, is often impersonal, born of duty – he can protect the common folk from yaoguai or malevolent spirits – or else it is quiet, at a remove from its recipient, such as when he cared for Wei Ying in the Xuanwu’s cave when he was delirious with fever, or when he’d devoted himself to composing music to calm Wei Ying’s spirit, though the efforts had proved to be unwanted. The closest he has ever come to the warm, spontaneous kindness that Wei Ying had was with a-Yuan, though perhaps that was because the child had shown him affection first, easily and unreservedly. Wei Ying in his current state is like a pangolin curled in on itself, its armored back blindly repelling sympathy and danger in equal measure.

Jin Guangyao has prostrated himself on the floor before Lan Xichen, babbling something more about having betrayed Lan Xichen’s trust with his lack of diligence. The mortification is clear on Lan Xichen’s face, already drawn with grief, and when Lan Wangji rises, he glances up at him almost beseechingly, as if looking for his aid.

“Please, a-Yao, you mustn’t blame yourself,” Lan Xichen says. “I can think of few who are as diligent as you, and your own responsibilities to your sect are not insignificant.” He nods to acknowledge Lan Wangji’s bow, the helplessness on his face rare and unsettling.

“Lianfang-zun,” Lan Wangji murmurs, including Jin Guangyao in the end of his bow, more out of respect for his Xiongzhang than for Jin Guangyao himself. Jin Guangyao is still too concerned with sniveling into the floorboards to notice anyway, and so Lan Wangji takes his leave, feeling a shameful amount of relief when he finally steps over the hanshi’s threshold. He’s not certain if he’s learned anything useful for dealing with Wei Ying – the Wei Ying he’d known would never have wanted such hysterics, nor would he have wanted so many ready reassurances that he was blameless.

Hadn’t Lan Xichen himself counseled him on nuance? That there was no clear line between right and wrong, and therefore, Lan Wangji assumes, an equally unclear boundary between culpability and innocence? Though he thought he’d forgiven Wei Ying – absolved him, even, though it was not his place to do so – everything when Wei Ying had been dangling from the cliff, his fingers slipping in Lan Wangji’s blood, could he still be harboring some animus toward him for giving Jiang Wanyin what he wanted? Wei Ying is, of course, not to blame for having woken in Jiang Wanyin’s body either – there is little information to be had on the Sacrifice Summon, but that much, at least, is clear.

When he reaches the broad porch of the Gentian House, he inhales deeply, preparing himself for Wei Ying to attempt another escape, the necessary talismans already in his hand to be fastened into place. But the cottage is quiet when he enters, so quiet that for a moment he fears that Wei Ying has managed to find a way out. He slides the door shut behind him and erects the barrier out of cautious habit before glancing around the room, stepping over the two bottles of Emperor’s Smile that still sit just inside the threshold where he’d left them early that morning. The bowl of soup and the pile of clothing, though, are gone.

Wei Ying isn’t in his usual perch before the round window, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them. The silk hangings sway as if someone has walked by them recently, but Lan Wangji knows it’s just the drafts that seep in through the gaps in the doors and windows – the barrier only prevents, or should have prevented, people from moving in and out of the cottage. Could he have made a mistake with the different spells and talismans when he’d left last time? Once, the answer would have been firm, immediate – no, that was impossible. But as loath as he is to admit it, three years of recuperating in isolation, no matter how many hours he spent in contemplation and meditation, have dulled him, and the few night hunts he’s been on since leaving seclusion have not been enough to hone him back to sharpness.

That laxity would only have been exacerbated by the state he’d been in after his last visit with Wei Ying. Seeing Wei Ying snap Chenqing and hurl the pieces to the floor had shaken him more than he would care to admit – and more, he hopes, than he revealed to Wei Ying.

He drifts farther into the room until he reaches the pale rug in the center of the floor, as if it’s an array scrawled on the floorboards designed to protect him from whatever might be lurking in the cottage.

“Wei Ying?” he calls and waits for an answer, but the only response is the chiming of the ornaments hanging from the eaves outside, the churn of the wind in the bamboo groves that fringe the grounds of the Gentian House. His voice sounds strange to his own ears, too small, too hopeful, as if he’s hearing himself as a child calling out muqin, muqin into the hush of falling snow. “Wei Ying? Wei Ying, are you well?”

A small movement catches his eye, and then the hollow sound of wood hitting wood tears the silence as a narrow black tube rolls from behind one of the hangings and falls from the step that divides the sleeping area from the rest of the room. It comes to rest against the leg of the low table, and Lan Wangji can see what it is – half of Wei Ying’s black bamboo flute, one end of it splintered, revealing the pallor of the raw wood.

He picks it up and follows its path back to its source, sweeping the hanging aside to reveal Wei Ying, wedged between the wall and a wooden shelf, his head bowed over his drawn-up knees. Chenqing’s other half lies in the pale, upturned palm of his hand, the fingers splayed around it, as if willing the rest of the flute to roll free as well.

“I didn’t mean to break it,” Wei Ying murmurs; the words are directed at his own black-clad knees – he’s put on the new robes, at least, which must be a positive sign. “I just—I had intended to keep it.”

Lan Wangji sinks into a crouch before him, letting the silk hanging fall around them, a flimsy, translucent wall between them and the rest of the room, the rest of the world. He reaches for Wei Ying’s hand – his own hand pauses in the air for a moment, fingers shaking – and carefully curls Wei Ying’s fingers around what’s left of Chenqing. Wei Ying tenses at the touch, but he doesn’t pull away, if only, perhaps, because of the narrow space he’s tried to hide himself in.

“You are grieving,” Lan Wangji says. He’s not certain if he’s trying to explain to Wei Ying or perhaps absolve him somehow; each seems absurd.

Wei Ying raises his head then, if only to glare at him, the deep creases between his dark brows too much of a reminder of Jiang Wanyin, but Lan Wangji supposes he will simply have to accustom himself to it. Soon, once Wei Ying has accepted who he is, has realized what Lan Wangji is willing to do for him, those lines will be smoothed away like ridges in sand worn down by the lapping of waves. But now Wei Ying’s eyes shimmer with tears even in the low, blue-tinged light.

“It is understandable that one might do things one does not intend when one is grieving,” Lan Wangji goes on, and that makes Wei Ying blink, as if in surprise, loosening a tear and sending it rolling down his cheek. Lan Wangji wraps the edge of his sleeve around his bent finger and dabs the wetness away, letting the white silk seep it up – he can feel the warmth of Wei Ying’s skin even through the fabric.

There had been times before Wei Ying’s death when they’d been this close together, and Lan Wangji had thought, if he’d dared, Wei Ying might have let him kiss him. But he’d never taken that risk, the thought of Wei Ying pulling away and laughing it off or saying something absurd like that Lan Wangji was just practicing so he could kiss that girl Mianmian properly next time he saw her too compelling a deterrent for him to press his lips to Wei Ying’s.

Now, of course, he can see none of that in Wei Ying’s expression, none of that hopefulness, none of the flirtatiousness. Wei Ying looks only confused, disturbed, those parallel pleats between his brows deepening even further, and he brushes Lan Wangji’s hand away with the back of his own as if it were a troublesome mosquito.

Why is Wei Ying being so resistant to returning, to accepting the sacrifice that Jiang Wanyin – purposefully or not – made for him? Could it be that he doesn’t want to let go of whatever remains of Jiang Wanyin – purely out of the comfort of familiarity, Lan Wangji assumes, since Jiang Wanyin has never had anything else to recommend him; his value has always been purely the value that Wei Ying saw in him. He has tried to offer other familiar items, though – Suibian, Chenqing, even the lotus root and pork rib soup; what else can he do? The obvious answer is the most impossible: He could take Wei Ying to Lotus Pier and let him see his former home and whatever of his erstwhile comrades still remain. If only Wen Yuan had lived— But he forces himself to smother that thought, grief and guilt roiling in his stomach.

Wei Ying brushes at his eyes with his own sleeve, the motion indignant, impatient, as if Lan Wangji were somehow responsible for his tears. “What do you want now?” he asks, his voice muffled.

“Please, Wei Ying, come and have some tea with me,” Lan Wangji replies, rising unwillingly – the air between them had grown warm with their breath, and the closeness had seemed to offer some kind of possibility, albeit one Lan Wangji isn’t certain he would be able to capitalize on. He has tried to be kind to Wei Ying, after all, to no end. “Some news has reached the Cloud Recesses that I would share with you.”

Wei Ying’s head jerks up, and he clambers to his feet. “Is it about a-Ling?” he blurts out. “He hasn’t taken ill, has he? Or Lotus Pier – nothing has happened there?”

He follows Lan Wangji to the table, almost trampling on his heels, and throws himself down onto the cushion, impatience crackling in every movement. Lan Wangji is tempted to draw it out, to begin brewing the tea before responding, but he can hear Wei Ying’s ragged breath, sense him leaning across the table as if on the verge of plunging his hand down Lan Wangji’s throat and dragging the words out of him.

“Jin Ling is well,” Lan Wangji says, and Wei Ying slumps back onto his cushion, a relieved sigh gusting across the table. “As is Lotus Pier, in spite of the loss of its Sect Leader.”

“Loss?” The word is incredulous, spat out, and Lan Wangji keeps his eyes lowered as he pours the tea to avoid having to see the sneer that’s a too-common reminder of the body’s former inhabitant. “You kidnapped me!” Wei Ying drags in a shaking breath, as if to steady himself, and then says in a calmer voice, “The momentary loss of its Sect Leader. You’ll have to let me go eventually, Hanguang-jun. I know how unbending you can be, but someday you’ll have to admit you were wrong.”

Lan Wangji hands the cup of tea to Wei Ying; he won’t argue with him now, not when there is hot tea sitting on the table between them. “Chifeng-zun is dead,” he says instead. He doesn’t mention Jin Guangyao’s presence at the Cloud Recesses – if there are dregs of Jiang Wanyin clinging to this vessel, that would no doubt bring them to the surface, since Jin Guangyao is his nephew’s shufu.

Wei Ying blinks, then frowns, a strange interplay of surprise, sadness, and anger flitting over his face. Lan Wangji can remember their visit to the Unclean Realm when they were searching for the Yin Iron, how pleased Wei Ying had been to receive Nie Mingjue’s praise, even if it was slightly tempered by being shared – undeservedly – with Jiang Wanyin. And yet Nie Mingjue had stood against Wei Ying at the Nightless City – it is understandable that Wei Ying should feel little grief over his loss.

“A qi deviation?” Wei Ying asks, his face still troubled. He takes a sip of tea, as if he’s forgotten his recent habit of refusing to take any food or drink when Lan Wangji is present, unless to throw it at him. “Jin Guangshan must be delighted,” he mutters. He glances up and must see some of Lan Wangji’s confusion on his face somehow, because he adds, “With the Nie weakened by the loss of Chifeng-zun and your weakening of the Jiang by holding me here, Jin Guangshan can do as he pleases. The rest of the sects are just his vassals now, really. Well, the Lan already were.”

He sets the cup on the table, fingers still loosely curled around it, one of them tapping the rim. “Chifeng-zun was kind to me at the Unclean Realm and trusted me during the Sunshot Campaign,” Wei Ying says, and then his lips twist into something that isn’t Jiang Wanyin’s sneer, but more wistful. “One of the rare people to say I was deserving of praise.”

Lan Wangji dampens his lips with his tea, to resist the urge to tell Wei Ying that he’s always been deserving of praise, that he himself regrets having withheld it so often before. Finally, he manages to say, “Your new robes suit you. I hope you find them comfortable.”

It has not escaped his notice that they are not quite the robes he’d left just inside the door of the Gentian House that morning – Wei Ying still wears the white underrobe from the Lan robes he’d worn previously, and his hair is tied back from his face with a length of black fabric, rather than the red ribbon that Lan Wangji had had to go to Caiyi Town to find. Perhaps he is trying to distance himself from his previous life, Lan Wangji thinks, which will be useful if he is ever to return to society, but that attempt at putting the past behind him could explain why he has been so resistant to Lan Wangji’s care – perhaps Lan Wangji too has been consigned to the past, no longer his zhiji but an unwelcome reminder of the many betrayals he’d suffered.

The thought makes him tighten his grip on his teacup, until he feels the porcelain begin to crack in his fingers. He carefully places the cup on the table and rests his hand on his knee, forcing himself to uncurl his fist. Has he learned nothing from losing Wei Ying at the Nightless City? True, he had managed to make himself leave the Burial Mounds when he’d visited, though he’d wanted – foolishly, impossibly, undutifully – to stay, and he’d struggled with himself not to pester Wei Ying any further about the dangers of the path he was taking. He swallows down the sob that rises in his throat as he remembers Wei Ying’s boyish sing-song about walking the single-plank bridge alone seeming to pursue him down the mountain on his way back to Yiling.

“Rare praise from Hanguang-jun as well,” Wei Ying says, though he doesn’t sound quite pleased by it. If anything, perhaps, his tone is slightly discomfited.

“In the past, perhaps I have not always been as forbearing as I should have been,” Lan Wangji begins – the words are not untrue, exactly, and yet they still leave a bitter taste on his tongue. He had been right to be concerned about Wei Ying straying from the righteous path – Wei Ying’s downfall proved that – but he could have been more unswerving in his loyalty. “I have come to understand that you were only ever doing what you believed was right, no matter how frowned-upon or difficult your course may have been.”

Wei Ying blinks, a quick, fluttering beat of his eyelashes, and for a moment, Lan Wangji feels as if he’s looking at Wei Ying’s reflection on the surface of a still pond – a strange, watery tremulousness comes over it, his lips quivering, his eyes going wide and liquid. But then he seems to master himself again and arches one eyebrow, looking at Lan Wangji askance. Perhaps it is something peculiar to Jiang Wanyin’s face that Wei Ying can make it seem as though he’s looking down at Lan Wangji when they’re seated across from one another.

“I never thought I’d hear those words from you, Lan-er-gongzi,” he says slowly. His lips part, as if he’s going to go on, but instead he takes another gulp of his tea; the rim of the cup barely conceals the slight upward curl of his upper lip.

Why is Wei Ying not calling me Lan Zhan? he wonders; after all, it had been on Wei Ying’s insistence that they’d begun using their birth names – though it had taken a while before Lan Wangji had been able to bring himself to address Wei Ying at all. Still, though, he had accepted the admission of regret, the praise for remaining true to his principles, without argument. Surely that must be a positive sign that Wei Ying is settling into this body, like water poured into a vessel, crowding out anything that’s left of Jiang Wanyin. The tantrums, at least, seem to have exhausted themselves – Wei Ying hasn’t thrown or broken anything, and as he sits there pensively, his profile to Lan Wangji as he gazes at the round window, the hand holding his teacup swaying like a magnolia blossom in a spring wind, it doesn’t seem likely that one of those sudden flashes of temper will show itself. Perhaps Chenqing has released its hold on him, or perhaps being sequestered here, away from Chenqing, his talisman papers, and his strange inventions, he’s simply weaned himself away from the demonic path he had tread before his death.

“I should leave you now, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, pushing himself to his feet. Wei Ying’s eyes follow him – he looks surprised at first, as if he’d forgotten Lan Wangji was there, but the expected disdain never flickers alight in them; if anything, they’re wide, almost – if Lan Wangji is allowing himself to be hopeful – disappointed. “I am sorry to have been the bringer of such unfortunate news.”

“The soup wasn’t bad,” Wei Ying blurts out and then bites his lower lip as if to cage any further words. “It wasn’t like—it wasn’t like what we had at Lotus Pier, but it wasn’t bad.”

Lan Wangji acknowledges this with a nod before beginning the work of unlocking the door and replacing the talismans and the barrier, his throat too thick to speak, even if he knew what to say. He has always found himself inarticulate in the face of Wei Ying’s praise, his words always coming out choked, either too muted or too emphatic, and always giving far too much away, no matter his intentions. But perhaps, he thinks, as the white gravel of the path crunches beneath his boots, progress has been made today.

*

He has never seen Jiang Wanyin look relaxed before, though this, of course, is not Jiang Wanyin at all, sitting on the edge of the Gentian House’s wide porch, dangling his bare feet into the small pond below. Jiang Wanyin always made a point of standing rigidly upright when he knew he was being observed, but when he thought no one was looking, he’d slouched, head bowed and shoulders hunched forward, giving him the air of a dog expecting to be kicked. Wei Ying had told him about the summers at Lotus Pier, always trying to lure him to visit, the long days swimming and eating lotus seeds and then lying in the sun on the pier, and Jiang Wanyin had always, Lan Wangji assumed, been present for these activities, and yet he can’t imagine it, can’t conceive of what Jiang Wanyin might look like when enjoying himself.

Now, he supposes, he knows, as he watches Wei Ying mold Jiang Wanyin’s features into a contented smile, his head tilted back to meet the stray beams of pale sunlight that slip through the bamboo trees. It had been a gamble, but one that has, for the moment at least, paid off – expanding the barrier around the cottage to include the porch and part of the garden, just enough for Wei Ying to take in the sunshine and fresh morning air. He can’t let Wei Ying have the run of the back hill, much less the Cloud Recesses proper, not yet, but for now, he can do this much, in the hope that even this narrow sliver of freedom will lure Wei Ying further out of his confusion. Wei Ying’s love of freedom, his endless curiosity about new people and strange places, had been one of the traits that most fascinated Lan Wangji, who had rarely ventured beyond Caiyi Town except to go on night hunts and had never much wanted to.

Perhaps Wei Ying is ready to emerge, both physically and within the confines of his new body – when Lan Wangji had arrived that morning with his breakfast, he had asked, in a calm voice, without a sneer twitching at his lip, if this is what Lan Wangji had wanted, for Wei Ying to be dependent on him, counting down the minutes until he appeared each day. Indecision had ebbed and flooded in him like a heavy tide; he could hear curiosity in Wei Ying’s voice – could he be trying to gauge whether Lan Wangji still harbors intentions of holding him captive here to rehabilitate his poisoned spirit if he agrees to renounce demonic cultivation or to keep him prisoner forever if he does not?

“I have never wished for Wei Ying to be dependent, certainly not upon me,” he’d murmured. He had never been certain if Wei Ying had understood, before he’d snatched his hand free of Lan Wangji’s and fallen to his death, the depth of Lan Wangji’s devotion to him, so it was not impossible that Wei Ying might still be questioning his motives for keeping him here. “This is for your safety – I would not have you believe that I am keeping you here for my own whim or convenience or—” He’d heard himself falter, unable to give voice to the dreams that had managed to sneak past the walls he’d erected against them, the ones that kept him awake long after his appointed bedtime and woke him far earlier than mao shi, shamefully hard and soaked in his own sweat. “These are not the ideal circumstances. Today, perhaps, a step can be taken toward making them more tolerable.”

The expected sneer had finally shown itself then, but Lan Wangji had thought he’d seen a glimmer of curiosity remain alight in Wei Ying’s eyes as he’d watched him remove the talismans from the door and extend the barrier – curiosity and, more importantly, no mistrust.

He has not risked losing that hint of trust by trying to play any calming music for Wei Ying on his guqin, though it might have proven to be wasted effort if he had – since Wei Ying had edged past him through the open door and stepped out onto the porch, he has seemed calmer, almost easy in himself. That should have come as no surprise; Wei Ying has always been resourceful, able to adapt – of course he would, eventually, accept his new situation. In the past, he’d always – sometimes maddeningly – been able to conceal his distress, so the lashing out must be either the last lingering influence of Jiang Wanyin or some tenacious effects of demonic cultivation.

Instead, Lan Wangji places two bottles of Emperor’s Smile beside Wei Ying’s hand and withdraws to the wide-open door of the cottage, watching Wei Ying’s dark hair sway in the breeze, how his toes curl around the edge of the porch, the way the sunlight clings to his eyelashes like tiny flakes of snow and bleaches away the harsh line of his nose. If he can just keep Wei Ying like this, leaning back on his hands, face turned to the sun, the hint of a smile at the corners of his lips, perhaps he can forget to whom this body once belonged, perhaps he can be thankful for Wei Ying’s return without reservation.

“You know, I’ve only ever had Emperor’s Smile once,” Wei Ying says. He’s cracked one eye open and is squinting at Lan Wangji against the brilliance of the sun, though in the shadow of the eaves, Lan Wangji is likely nothing more than a silhouette, a shade lighter than the room behind him. “You remember. We all got punished for it because of you.”

He picks up one of the bottles and unstoppers it before taking a sip, not a messy gulp as he once would have, spilling the wine all over his chin – Wei Ying would, of course, know Jiang Wanyin’s tolerance, which Lan Wangji doubts was very great, considering how he’d passed out and then staggered out of the room when Lan Wangji had caught him, Wei Ying, and Nie Huaisang drinking.

“That was not the only time,” Lan Wangji says, his cheeks burning though he’s revealed nothing yet. “For me.” Wei Ying puts the bottle down and turns toward him more fully, sitting cross-legged – the foot that had been dangling in the pond leaves a dark streak on the fabric of his robes. “When I mostly recovered from my penance and the full force of Wei Ying’s fate struck me again—” He does not mention a-Yuan’s fate too, not trusting himself to speak the name out loud, especially not with Wei Ying watching him so closely. “—I purchased some Emperor’s Smile from Gusu and tried to drink it. In Wei Ying’s memory.”

His voice has sunk as he spoke; perhaps Wei Ying couldn’t hear him at all over the rustle of the bamboo and the trickle of water as it flows beneath the half-moon bridge. He thought he might gag on the words when trying to speak them aloud, and yet even they are not the full truth, cannot completely convey the madness he’d felt when the cocoon of physical pain and illness had cracked and fallen away and left bare the agony of having lost Wei Ying.

It should be, perhaps, a relief that Wei Ying’s face isn’t twisted with disgust, but at least open revulsion would be clearer than the stricken expression that casts a shadow over his features now. Lan Wangji has not always been able to read the emotion in others’ faces, and often hasn’t cared to, but he can’t completely tamp down the curiosity that flares within him at the blend of what he would call sadness and envy that sobers Wei Ying’s face, lowering his eyes to watch himself play with the stopper of the wine bottle and flattening the up-curled corners of his lips.

After a long moment, during which Wei Ying has sat totally still except the ends of his hair as the breeze toys with them and the slight movement of his hand that makes the bottle wobble on the boards of the porch, he raises his head to meet Lan Wangji’s eyes and says, “I would never have thought you could be so impulsive, Lan-er-gongzi. Sneaking wine into the Cloud Recesses and abducting a Sect Leader?” He shakes his head in feigned disbelief, letting out a little huff of bitter laughter.

I know you understand this sort of desperation, Wei Ying, Lan Wangji thinks. He can remember Wei Ying’s face streaming with tears and rain, the bedraggled Wen refugees at his back, and the frustrated anguish in his voice when he’d cried out that there must be somewhere in the wide world for them to go.

“I could not let an opportunity escape—” he begins but trails off as Wei Ying’s tongue darts over his lips; Wei Ying unstoppers the bottle again to take another drink, this one longer, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“Impulsiveness gets you into trouble, after all. Does your shufu know that his punishment had the opposite of its intended effect?” Wei Ying asks, a droplet of wine glistening at the corner of his mouth.

There is nothing of the teasing tone that Wei Ying would once have used when speaking of Lan Wangji’s uncle, but why should there be? This is no longer a question of Lan Qiren losing his temper at Wei Ying’s impudence during a lecture – the Gusu Lan had taken part in the battle at the Nightless City and the ransacking of the Burial Mounds as well; perhaps Lan Wangji should consider himself lucky that Wei Ying has not been more aggressive with him for the same reason. He’d been attributing the angry outbursts to the residue left in the body by Jiang Wanyin’s consciousness, but doesn’t Wei Ying have cause for resentment against him too?

Wei Ying swivels around once more to look out over the pond and the garden beyond, arms resting on his drawn-up knees, the bottle of Emperor’s Smile still dangling loosely in his fingers. “Maybe you’d even fit in well with the Yunmeng Jiang now, though we both know you’d never do that.” His shoulders rise and fall, and then he murmurs, “Since when did being impulsive do any of the Yunmeng Jiang any good, though?”

It is perched on Lan Wangji’s tongue to point out that it must have been Jiang Wanyin’s impulsiveness that brought Wei Ying here now, as loath as he is to credit Jiang Wanyin with anything. But the words are mired in a swell of worry – he can’t quite call it panic, though it comes close to fear – and are smothered before he can speak them. Wei Ying was always impulsive – it was one of the qualities that Lan Wangji had most loved and admired in him, even though in the beginning, it had also been one of the traits he’d found the most maddening. What is Wei Ying without the lack of fear – or the willingness to put fear aside to do what must be done – or without the disregard for the opinions and judgment of others?

Wei Ying takes another careful swallow of the wine – just from watching his profile, Lan Wangji can tell that he’s grimacing at the taste. Perhaps this is one other good quality that Jiang Wanyin has inadvertently contributed to the returned Wei Ying; Lan Wangji wants Wei Ying to have whatever pleases him, but he still feels a twinge of guilt for breaking the sect rules by procuring the alcohol – if Wei Ying has lost his taste for it, Lan Wangji can put at least that concern aside.

In spite of the small sips he’s been taking, Wei Ying is already listing slightly on the edge of the porch, and when he speaks again, the words are soft, slurred together, as if they’ve been cocooned in thread by a silkworm. Lan Wangji can remember how Jiang Wanyin had crumpled over on the bed behind Wei Ying, like a magnolia petal touched by a human hand.

“That’s why I should have known better,” he mutters, half-drowning the last word in a gulp of wine; some of it gleams at the corner of his lips before trickling down his chin; he wipes it away with an impatient swipe of his sleeve. “We went off to fight a water ghost once, just after we’d been given our swords. It had been luring children into the water near Yunping – we heard the rumors about it in the marketplace and decided to go take care of it ourselves instead of telling anyone. Maybe we wanted bragging rights over the other junior disciples?”

Wei Ying shakes his head, one corner of his lips curling up; that, at least, looks familiar – how many times had he had that bitter, crooked smile on his face when Lan Wangji had offered to play his guqin for him or had suggested taking him back to the Cloud Recesses? He doesn’t dare move closer to Wei Ying now; as much as Wei Ying used to chatter away at him, he had never told him of this before, and he can’t risk Wei Ying withdrawing again – the memory of Wei Ying at the Yunmeng courier station, staring flatly ahead of him in response to Lan Wangji’s questions, though now years old, is still fresh enough to keep him in his place by the cottage’s door.

“When we found it, the thing was gnawing on a child’s arm. Usually water ghosts can’t taste at all – they just drown their victims out of resentment for their own deaths, so this one must have been particularly nasty. We tried to kill it then, but even though our cores were beginning to develop, we barely knew how to use our swords as spiritual tools, so the creature just fled back into the water. We could have exorcised it – neither of us had done it before ourselves, but we knew how, at least. And yet how could we go back to Lotus Pier and explain where we’d disappeared to without having anything to show for it? It would be a betrayal of the sect motto.”

He seems to be speaking to the air in front of him, to the heron wading in the pond, to the rippling barrier around the garden, rather than to Lan Wangji, not seeking any kind of response or even appearing to care if he’s being listened to. Wei Ying was always one to talk, but Lan Wangji has never witnessed him speak without a care for the audience, or even if there is an audience. When the breeze rises and makes the ornaments hanging from the eaves sway and rattle, he wishes for a silencing spell that would work on inanimate objects – he himself doesn’t dare to move, for fear of reminding Wei Ying of his presence.

“I woke up in the night, and he was gone,” Wei Ying goes on – he can only be Jiang Wanyin, Lan Wangji assumes, though his stomach curdles at the ease with which Wei Ying has been referring to himself and Jiang Wanyin as we; Jiang Wanyin should have lost that privilege long ago, when he’d turned his back on Wei Ying and expelled him from the Yunmeng Jiang. “His footprints were clear in the soft earth around the lake shore, so I followed – the lake looked like it was glowing; it was a strange, bloody, milky color, like the light of a firefly cupped in a palm, shining through someone’s fingers. I could see him wading out into it, and beyond that, the water ghost luring him in. It was like he was sleepwalking – he wasn’t going in to fight it; he was going in to let it drown him.

“How could I have not gone in after him? He was—I would have been in so much trouble if anything had happened to him, my—” He cuts himself off again, and when he raises the bottle to his lips once more, his hand is trembling. Of course Wei Ying would have had his responsibility to keep Jiang Wanyin safe ground into him, Lan Wangji thinks, sourness sharp as vinegar washing over his tongue. “So I splashed out into the water and tried to stop him, tried to wake him, tried to put myself between him and the water ghost. It dragged both of us underwater – I had left my sword on the shore, but I had a belt knife, so I just blindly stabbed and stabbed with it until finally the hold on my ankles released. But I didn’t know what that meant – had I killed it? Had it fled? Had it taken him and just left me to flail around in the water?

“The light in the water had gone out, so I was just groping around in the dark, and finally my hand caught on his robes. I dragged him out of the lake onto the shore, but he was a deadweight. I thumped him on the back, rolled him on his side, anything to get him to cough up the water. I could barely raise my own arm anymore, and he was getting colder and colder –” He blots his eyes with his cuff, blinking as if he’s been staring into the sun. “Anyway, he eventually spat up all the water, and we went home. But we never told anyone about it, even though—” Wei Ying cuts himself off again, this time with a deep sigh that makes his shoulders sink as he releases it. “So you see, Lan-er-gongzi, being impulsive never got me very much in the end.”

Finally, Lan Wangji stirs himself from his place by the door and dares to draw nearer to Wei Ying, though he can’t quite make himself settle down onto the porch beside him – even before Wei Ying’s death, he’d nearly always held himself at a distance, perhaps out of fear of giving himself away when he was unsure of Wei Ying’s true feelings, perhaps simply out of lifelong habit. Now, with Wei Ying in a different body, some of those barriers have reasserted themselves. He resigns himself to sitting on a low bench nearby; he can only see Wei Ying’s pale profile against the darkness of the depths of the garden and the bamboo forest beyond.

“But Wei Ying, you have always – even in your most impetuous moments – stood with justice, just as we promised we would. You swore you would live your life with no regrets; you must not let the foolish actions of another change that now.” He reaches out toward Wei Ying’s shoulder, though his hand hesitates in mid-air as Wei Ying stiffens, as if he can sense the closeness of it; he lets it fall into his lap once more. “You asked me once if I remembered that promise, but now it seems that you may have forgotten it. I never have, though you may disagree.”

When Wei Ying turns toward him, his eyes are wide, glimmering with anger and contempt, and that sneer that Lan Wangji has dreaded seeing again has returned to his lips, twisting them. “You truly are blind, Hanguang-jun. You may as well have tied that ribbon around your eyes.” He grasps the railing and pulls himself to his feet. “Thank you for the glimpse of everything you’ve taken from me, Lan-er-gongzi, but I would prefer to go back indoors.”

The words are accompanied by a slight, jerking bow of his head, and then he walks stiff-backed across the porch to the door and disappears into the cottage.

*

Wavering pillars of steam rise off the water of the Cold Springs, spiraling upward into the night sky until they make a fine veil over the stars. As soon as he had left seclusion and been sufficiently recovered to walk on his own, he had been coming to the Cold Springs on the sect physician’s orders, the curing waters leaching some of the tightness from his new scars, soothing the lingering pain from his recently healed bones. But every time he’d been haunted by the memory of Wei Ying running through the bamboo toward the pools, throwing off his robe, kicking one of his own boots into the water in his haste; of Wei Ying shuffling closer to him, teeth chattering, lips purple with cold; of Wei Ying’s wrist bound to his in the Cold Springs Cave with his own headband.

The haunting is perhaps less tonight, with the knowledge that Wei Ying is nearby in the Gentian House, that someday, maybe, he’ll run down that path again upon seeing Lan Wangji in the waters, that someday he might turn to Lan Wangji, seeking warmth. Hai shi is approaching, and Lan Wangji knows that he should be drying himself, dressing, and returning to the jingshi, but instead he floats on his back in the water that feels almost warm in comparison to the frosty air and thinks about the story Wei Ying had told him that afternoon.

What could Wei Ying have meant by it? He has no doubt that it was Wei Ying doing the telling – Jiang Wanyin would never have behaved so heroically, and why would Wei Ying have needed Jiang Wanyin to rescue him? Was he trying to tell Lan Wangji that he regrets having run off with the Wens after all? That had been the most irreversible result of his impulsivity, Lan Wangji thinks, up until the day, perhaps, that Jin Zixuan had been killed. He had hoped that his words would have soothed Wei Ying, reassuring him that in spite of everything, he had always acted in concert with his morals, with justice, whether on the spur of the moment or after more careful deliberation. But instead, anger had flared into Wei Ying’s eyes, that scowl souring his handsome features and hardening the hint of softness that had settled over them.

It was that, and his quick, silent return to the cottage, that had told Lan Wangji that the story had not been told to offer him any kind of reassurance – Wei Ying hadn’t been trying to persuade him that he wouldn’t attempt to run off again or that Lan Wangji could let him access his golden core without fear of it being used for violence against him. And yet he cannot allow himself to believe that Wei Ying would renounce the promise he had made, his hands clasped, his eyes squeezed shut, in the dusk on the back hill at the Cloud Recesses.

Still, he thinks as he steps out of the water into the frigid air and wraps his outer robe around himself, that Wei Ying had emerged enough to tell him the story is a start. Tomorrow, perhaps, he should offer Wei Ying Suibian once again.

*

Wei Ying is pacing the room, back and forth incessantly like a carp in a too-small pond, when Lan Wangji arrives the following morning, Suibian once again tucked into the qiankun pouch in his sleeve. Once the door has finally slid shut behind Lan Wangji and the talismans are in place, Wei Ying stops, his chin raised, glaring down at Lan Wangji, though his hand is clutching at his robes, the fabric crumpled and damp.

Before Lan Wangji can slip Suibian free, Wei Ying speaks, though the words sound as if they’re being dragged from him, “You have been right all along, Lan Zh—Lan-er-gongzi.” He lets go of his robes and wipes his palm on them before clasping his hands behind his back; he’s trembling like a struck bell – even his lips quiver as they form the words . “I am Wei Wuxian. I only concealed it because the spell used to… summon me back is not an orthodox one, and I feared you would use it as an excuse to prolong my captivity here.” His teeth click together as he snaps his mouth shut, and he gives a short, quick nod, as if to punctuate the statement, to assure himself, at least, that it is sufficient. “So, now that you know the truth and have monitored me so closely since my return, you can release me.”

He holds Lan Wangji’s gaze, though with difficulty, his eyelashes fluttering, the urge to fidget under such scrutiny clear. The time in the sun the previous morning has left a sprinkling of freckles across the arched bridge of his nose – Wei Ying had never had freckles in his first life, and Lan Wangji’s stomach clenches with something he cannot quite identify as disgust or sadness.

“If you’ll bring Jiang Cheng’s things to me, I will return them to Lotus Pier,” Wei Ying babbles. “They should be kept for a-Ling—that is, his nephew when he comes of age.” His cheeks are even paler than usual; even the pink of his lips is bleached away, making the dark, almost frantic glimmer of his eyes appear all the more hectic. “Well, Lan-er-gongzi? You’ve gotten the answer you were seeking. There’s no reason for you to keep me here.”

Lan Wangji slides Suibian from the qiankun pouch and holds it out to Wei Ying, hilt first. Wei Ying’s eyes flare wider with panic at the sight of the sword, and he takes a half-step back before stopping himself.

“To prove the truth of what you say, draw Suibian,” Lan Wangji says when Wei Ying hesitates. “If you can, I will do as you ask.”

“Isn’t my word good enough for you, Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asks, though he seems to almost gag on Lan Wangji’s birth name. There is nothing of the old flirtatiousness that Lan Wangji can remember from the days in the library at the Cloud Recesses when Wei Ying had tormented him in more ways than he was likely aware of – but that in itself means nothing. Some of that coquettishness had returned when Lan Wangji had happened upon Wei Ying in Yiling, but otherwise, after he and Jiang Wanyin had found him at the Yunmeng courier station, Wei Ying had mostly seemed angry, embittered, distant – when he had tried to flirt, it had always been mocking and insincere, as if he knew exactly what Lan Wangji felt for him and was willing to use it to his own advantage. “Or are you really just that desperate to keep me here?”

“It is a simple request, Wei Ying.” He offers Wei Ying the pommel of the sword again. “To be completely certain.”

“And what if I can’t?” Lan Wangji flinches, and for the narrowest sliver of a moment, Wei Ying’s face softens, as if he’s hurt himself with his own words. But then his expression hardens again, his nose wrinkling, his lips pursed into an ugly moue, and he spits, “You’d have to let me go anyway, wouldn’t you?”

“As long as there was no danger to you, yes.” As always, the wall of rules sits rigidly at the center of his mind – he can edge around it, but only carefully.

“Danger to me,” Wei Ying repeats slowly, his lip curling, as if he’s tasted the words for the first time and decided he doesn’t like them. “You claim to be concerned about danger to me, when I still have no idea what you did to me to get me here.”

“I suspect that one repercussion of the spell performed by Jiang Wanyin was brief memory loss,” Lan Wangji replies, feeling the hard, heavy weight of stone pressing down on his chest as he eases himself around the wall of rules in his head. “Of course Wei Ying would have gone willingly with his former classmate.”

How it stings to refer to himself that way, bringing back the hated memory of that night at the Yunmeng courier station when Wei Ying had dismissed him. After the war, Wei Ying had called him his zhiji, and Lan Wangji had been eager – perhaps too eager – to insist that he was. To demote himself this way is intolerable, and yet, for now at least, it is necessary.

Wei Ying watches him from the corners of his eyes, his brows drawn down, as if he can scarcely bear to look at him, and when he speaks it’s through clenched teeth, “You’re keeping me here now because you know exactly who I am and what you’ve done and that if you set me free, I’ll reveal you to the whole of society. I know you don’t care on your own behalf, but for your brother? Your shufu? Surely your three years in seclusion gave you plenty of time to think about how your selfishness might reflect on them.”

A tiny seedling of doubt takes root in Lan Wangji’s heart – could he be mistaken? Could there be some other explanation for what he saw through the smoke in the air and the blood in his eyes in the cave in the Burial Mounds? But that would mean that Wei Ying is gone, truly gone, that his soul has been so thoroughly destroyed that not even Inquiry can reach him, that all of Lan Wangji’s questions will remain unanswered, that he’d found his zhiji and lost him within a matter of a few short years. Worse, it means that Wei Ying had chosen death over him, and worse still than that, that it was Jiang Wanyin who had killed him with such finality.

There is only one way to settle it – what happens when the question is answered, he will have to decide later. His heart throbbing in his throat until he feels he might gag on it, Lan Wangji reaches out, grabs Wei Ying’s hand, and forces it around Suibian’s hilt. Wei Ying struggles to yank himself free, but Lan Wangji holds him fast, pressing his fingers around the rough wood of the hilt until it must be nearly drawing blood. With his other hand, he tugs on Suibian’s scabbard, praying that the sword will remain in Wei Ying’s hand and be pulled free of its sheath, even if it means that it’s buried in his chest a moment later. Knowing that Wei Ying still lived would be enough to allow him to die content.

His breath is driven from his lungs as Wei Ying slams the heel of his hand into his diaphragm – Suibian clatters to the floor, spinning across the floorboards like the needle of the Compass of Ill Winds. Still gasping for his breath, and regretting the talismans he’d hung to suppress the use of one’s golden core within the bounds of the Gentian House, Lan Wangji dodges the flurry of blows that Wei Ying aims at him – Wei Ying had usually been one to fight defensively, leaning out of the way of sword thrusts and swung fists like water flowing around a stone in a river. He moves like water now too, flowing from one strike to the next, quick and unrelenting, just as he had when Lan Wangji had once happened upon Wei Ying and Jiang Wanyin sparring in the courtyard of the guest quarters at the Cloud Recesses – they’d moved in the same way, but Jiang Wanyin was always a bit slower, a bit weaker, as if he were Wei Ying’s uncertain reflection on a wind-riffled puddle.

Finally he recovers his breath enough to counter some of Wei Ying’s attacks, no longer just leaning out of the way of his punches but blocking them strongly enough that having his own force used against him must jar Wei Ying. Lan Wangji gets him back on his heels, the anger pulsing through him fueling his movements without any thought behind them – if he allowed himself to think, he would stop this, wouldn’t he? Why would he want to hurt Wei Ying? And yet he can’t stop himself from trying to do just that, frustration simmering in his veins – how can Wei Ying be so stubborn about this? Even if he’s still chosen to deviate from the path of sword cultivation, drawing his sword is easy enough; it isn’t as though Lan Wangji is asking him to perform advanced cultivating methods with it.

Wei Ying manages to dance out of the way of the kick intended to sweep his legs out from under him, hopping up onto the dais beneath the round window to avoid it. He’s penned against the bed now, though – all he can do is stand there in his half-crouch, waiting for Lan Wangji’s next move; there isn’t enough room between the step and the bed for him to launch an attack without running the risk of throwing himself off-balance.

“You really can’t stand for anyone to defy you, can you?” Wei Ying spits at him. He’s panting too, his face glistening with sweat. “Baring steel at the slightest disregard for your precious rules, demanding that people submit to the judgment of your sect, and now this? It seems you’re only truly righteous in your own mind, Hanguang-jun.”

The last bit of restraint in him snaps at the disdain, the derision, that suffuses Wei Ying’s voice – that voice that isn’t Wei Ying’s at all – and Lan Wangji hurls himself at him, ramming his shoulder into his abdomen, the momentum knocking Wei Ying back onto the bed, Lan Wangji toppling with him. Before Wei Ying can recover, he pins him down, straddling his hips, his hands wrapped around his throat. He should have more self-control than this; he should know better than this, than to use his greater strength this way – but what else can he do in the face of Wei Ying’s mockery? He has lost three years to his grief for Wei Ying, and while he never expected or wanted any gratitude for it, neither can he accept being taunted for it. How many lashes across the back would this cost him? How many hours kneeling in the snow with his arms held out in front of him? How many disappointed, pitying shakes of the head would he have to endure from Xiongzhang? With anger veiling his vision, that forbidden emotion that he had always told himself he would never be weak enough to give into, Lan Wangji thinks that any punishment would be worth it to rid himself of this mistake, this folly he’s been led into by his own willful blindness.

His fingers dig into the smooth skin of Wei Ying’s throat, into pale flesh that will be stained with bruises without a golden core to heal them, feeling Wei Ying’s adam’s apple shift against his palm as he tries to speak, tries to breathe. Still, he wants to press harder, to make the tender bones of Wei Ying’s neck bend to the point of snapping. Wei Ying’s face darkens to a livid scarlet, his teeth unnaturally bright against his purpling, drawn-back lips, and his cheeks are wet, not just with sweat, but with tears that leak from the corners of his squeezed-shut eyes.

But Wei Ying isn’t fighting him, not even the seemingly instinctual struggling of self-preservation at its basest. Instead he raises his chin, stretching his neck as if to give Lan Wangji’s hands more room to do their work. If I am doomed to death, at least I could be killed by you, he hears Wei Ying say over the mutter of thunder and the clamor of rain, sees him through the curtain of rain dripping from the rim of his umbrella – Wei Ying with tears streaking his thin cheeks and Chenqing in his shaking, outstretched hand. That would be worth it.

For a moment, his fingers tighten further around Wei Ying’s throat, and he presses down with all of his weight, forcing Wei Ying into the mattress. Wei Ying twitches beneath him, finally feebly trying to buck Lan Wangji off, and the movement sends a jolt of pleasure through him – he’s hard, shamefully, shockingly hard.

He snatches his hands away from Wei Ying’s neck, leaving him to suck in air in painful gasps, and stares down at him, as if expecting to find answers inked across the high cheekbones, the furrowed forehead. It is undeniably Jiang Wanyin’s face, tear-sheened and red, and yet why would Lan Wangji ever react in such a way to Jiang Wanyin? No – this must be the proof he’s been seeking; this must be Wei Ying beneath him, his coughing intermingled with poorly stifled sobs.

Tears blur his vision, and he tries to blink them back, raising his head and looking about the room in a daze. In the far corner of the room, wedged beneath a silk screen, is Suibian, its bared blade gleaming dully in the low light. No, he thinks, it must be a mistake, a trick of the failing sunlight and the lamp’s flames glinting off the metal on Suibian’s scabbard. Perhaps it’s even his own mind trying to fool him, making him see what he’s longed to see, as recompense for his own horror at his behavior.

Biting his lip, he squeezes his eyes shut and then slowly, deliberately, opens them. Suibian’s blade still shimmers, its sheath an arm’s length away from it. Triumph swoops through him like a heron diving for its prey, even as relief quivers in his stomach and through his limbs – if he rose and tried to walk, he’s certain his legs would fold uselessly beneath him.

With one shaking hand, he reaches out to brush a fingertip over the mottled collar of bruises that encircles Wei Ying’s throat. Before Wei Ying can bat his hand away or finally shove him off, Lan Wangji leans forward and follows the path of his fingertips with his lips. Wei Ying’s adam’s apple leaps upward at the touch, a ragged gasp tumbling from his mouth – he freezes like a startled rabbit as Lan Wangji kisses his neck, as if he’s expecting him to tear it open with his teeth.

The salt of Wei Ying’s tears is on his tongue as he rocks his hips forward, pushing his erection against Wei Ying, just where his robes have splayed open. Even that tentative of a touch makes Wei Ying shrink back against the mattress, and this time the gasp he lets out is almost panicked, shocked, as if he couldn’t believe it of Lan Wangji. And why would he? Bichen’s point had come closer to touching Wei Ying’s neck than Lan Wangji himself ever had.

He had thought that he had meditated and contemplated every need out of himself during those three years in seclusion, and perhaps if Wei Ying hadn’t returned, he might have been successful. But now, desire stampedes through him in a way he hasn’t known since the day he found Wei Ying under the pines on Phoenix Mountain, and unlike then, he can act on it without fear of discovery. Even during the interminable hours spent in the Xuanwu’s cave, he has never known hunger like this, so much more intense than he could ever imagine feeling for something like food, no matter how desperately he was starving.

Wei Ying cries out, a sharp yelping cry, as Lan Wangji sucks on the bruised skin of his throat, but again he makes no move to push him away – once more, he tilts his head back on the bolster, as if to bare more of his neck to Lan Wangji. It couldn’t be pain making Wei Ying cry out like that – Wei Ying had always downplayed his pain, always trying to hide it, always rebuffing any attempt to help – so could it be pleasure? The idea makes the pressure in his own groin tighten, and he reaches down between them to fumble with the fastenings of Wei Ying’s trousers, tearing the material in his haste. Will Wei Ying give him this, after trying to deny his very identity for so long? Is this seeming capitulation an apology for the months of refusal to admit that Lan Wangji was correct in his assumptions? That Suibian lies there free of its scabbard is proof that he was right all along and that Wei Ying has been – for whatever reason – trying to maintain his deception.

When he finally manages to tug Wei Ying’s trousers open, he finds him only half-hard. At the touch of Lan Wangji’s hand on him, Wei Ying turns his head away on the bolster, as if suddenly interested in what might be happening outside the round window – the corner of his sharp jaw is clenched tight, and tears shimmer in the corner of his eye. If he flinches slightly at the roughness with which Lan Wangji strokes his cock – though it’s no more harsh a touch than Lan Wangji uses on himself when he allows himself to do this – neither does he voice any complaint. Lan Wangji frees his own erection from his trousers and takes both of them in his hand, sinking his teeth into his lower lip to trap the groan that rises in his throat. How long has he been waiting for this? How long has he thought this impossible? Now, he can admit to himself that the answers are the same – from the first moment he saw Wei Ying outside the entrance to the Cloud Recesses.

Wei Ying bolts up from the mattress then, grabbing a handful of the collar of Lan Wangji’s robes and heaving himself upright. They stare at one another for the space of a few heartbeats – the quick, frenzied sort hammering in Lan Wangji’s chest – and then Wei Ying pulls them together, his hand tightening on his collar, and slams his mouth against Lan Wangji’s. Their teeth knock together, but Wei Ying seems undeterred, pressing harder, his lips closed and unmoving against Lan Wangji’s. Lan Wangji has never kissed or been kissed before, but he suspects it isn’t like this, that it should be something softer, gentler, that his teeth shouldn’t be bruising the soft flesh on the inside of his own lips from the pressure of Wei Ying’s mouth. Does this mean that Wei Ying has never kissed anyone before either? The thought sends a shiver of pleasure through him, that he might be the first.

His hand is slippery with precome now as he strokes them, and Wei Ying’s cock is fully hard against his own as they slide together in Lan Wangji’s grasp. Finally, Wei Ying breaks the kiss, turning his head aside to pant against Lan Wangji’s cheek, his breath hot and tremulous. He lets go of Lan Wangji’s collar, and Lan Wangji tenses, expecting Wei Ying to shove him away, but instead Wei Ying tugs at his own trousers, lifting his hips off the bed to pull them down.

Reluctantly, Lan Wangji releases them and sits back on his heels to stare down at Wei Ying, his scarlet face, his wet, swollen lips, the purple bruises ringing his throat, and then, finally, his stiff, flushed cock rising from the dark shadow of his pubic hair. As if shying away from Lan Wangji’s gaze, Wei Ying averts his face again, but not before baring his teeth in a sneer that looks too-bright against his blushing cheeks.

“Aren’t you going to—” he begins but doesn’t seem to know how to finish; perhaps he too is uncertain what he’s even asking for. Lan Wangji knows that Wei Ying has looked at yellow books before – he’d hidden a page from one of them in Lan Wangji’s book in the Cloud Recesses library once, and they’d been strewn all over the room the night when he had found him drinking with Nie Huaisang and Jiang Wanyin. Shouldn’t Wei Ying have some idea of what to do? Lan Wangji knows what his body wants, and that drawing that Wei Ying had made him look at as a joke is still inked indelibly on his memory, even after so many years. But is Wei Ying imagining – perhaps even longing for – something similar? Does it even matter?

Without speaking, he gives Wei Ying’s shoulder a push, hoping that he’ll understand and turn over – he doesn’t trust himself to say it out loud. Wei Ying’s eyes dart up to flick back and forth across Lan Wangji’s face; he looks stricken, shocked, and yet after a moment, he lies down on his stomach, his arms draped over the bolster, his head buried in the nest of them. With one hand, he reaches out and laces his fingers through the slats of the bedframe, as if to anchor himself into place. It’s easier without Jiang Wanyin’s face glaring at him, easier to imagine that when he gathers the black fabric of his robes up around his hips, it’s Wei Ying’s skin that he bares, Wei Ying’s hipbones that his fingers dig into, clutching at the soft flesh so hard that it dimples.

Wei Ying jerks a little, the muscles of his back shuddering beneath his robes, as Lan Wangji pushes his hard length along the cleft of his buttocks, leaving a shimmering trail of precome behind. Goosebumps pebble his pale skin, blue-white in the light that filters in through the barrier outside and the silk hangings within.

“Do it, will you?” comes Wei Ying’s muffled voice. “Isn’t this what you’ve wanted all along? Or close enough to it.”

Lan Wangji grits his teeth together, and his fingers tangle themselves into Wei Ying’s hair – for a moment, he wants to wrench his head up and force him to look at Suibian’s blade shining even in the dimness of the room, force him to acknowledge that he, Lan Wangji, has been right all along. Instead, he tightens his grip until a pained gasp riffles the silk of the bolster by Wei Ying’s lips, and thrusts himself into him.

The movement draws a sharp sound from deep in Wei Ying’s throat – he can’t tell if it’s pleasure, the relief that he himself feels, or pain, nor does he care. If anything, pain seems the most desirable option – though the thought of causing Wei Ying pain makes guilt curdle in his stomach, he also feels himself harden further at the idea of it, and he rocks his hips against Wei Ying sharply, trying to push into him deeper, harder, to drive more of those noises from him, to make him clutch tighter at the wood of the bedframe. Wei Ying squirms beneath him, like a drowning man making a last, feeble attempt to swim to shore, and buries his face into the bolster again. In spite of all this, he clenches around Lan Wangji, though he can’t tell if Wei Ying is trying to force him out or if this is how it’s meant to be done.

For a brief moment, he struggles with himself – has he gone too far? In the past, Wei Ying has teased him, laughed at him, made solemn promises to him, has touched his forehead ribbon with far more familiar a touch than he should have. But is this what he wanted after all? After the first confusing rush of pleasure, the sheer overwhelming feel of Wei Ying around him, has passed, he realizes that Wei Ying’s shoulders are heaving with muffled sobs. He knows that Wei Ying has suffered much worse than this physically – hadn’t Jiang Wanyin himself stabbed him? – but even when they’d sparred before, Lan Wangji has never been the one inflicting that pain either.

Wei Ying shifts on the mattress, angling his hips upward and pushing back against Lan Wangji, as if to urge him on, the movements jerking and insistent. Hesitantly, Lan Wangji slides one hand onto Wei Ying’s buttocks, fingers curved around one firm, white cheek, and spreads him open before thrusting back into him, harder this time, his balls slapping against Wei Ying’s skin with the force of it. Squeezing his eyes shut, he bites back a groan – surely it must violate at least one of the sect rules to be too loud when taking one’s pleasure? His breath forces itself out through his lips in a rasping sigh, almost of relief, and even that sends shame flooding through him, hard on the heels of the ecstasy he’d never expected to experience.

Beneath him, Wei Ying tenses again, letting out a long, shuddering breath of his own, the meaning of which Lan Wangji can discern nothing. A moment later, he pushes back against Lan Wangji once more, and his grip on the bedframe tightens as if preparing himself for the response. Lan Wangji’s stomach sinks, bile bitter on his tongue, at the thought that Wei Ying is expecting violence from him – but perhaps that is what Wei Ying is seeking?

He winds Wei Ying’s hair around his fist and tugs his head back, lifting it off the bolster but not pulling it far enough that he can see Wei Ying’s face. A sharp breath hisses through Wei Ying’s teeth, but then – to Lan Wangji’s horror – he starts to laugh, bitter, mirthless, mocking laughter, a close cousin to the laughter that had shaken Wei Ying’s shoulders on the roof of the Palace of the Sun and Flames, that had been almost indistinguishable from sobs.

Tears spring to his eyes, shameful and stinging, but he clenches his jaw and forces them back. He should stop; should arrange his robes; put all the talismans, locks, and barriers in place and offer himself to his shufu for punishment for what he’s doing. Instead, he snaps his hips against Wei Ying hard, forcing himself fully into him, their bodies flush to one another. A strangled groan escapes through Wei Ying’s stretched throat, and with his other arm, he tries to push himself up from the mattress. Another hard thrust forces him back down, though, and then the fight seems to leave him – he goes still under Lan Wangji, letting him fuck him, his fingers slipping free from the bedframe.

The room is quiet except for the soft slap of skin against skin, the faint thump of the bed against the floor, and the panting of their breath. In spite of Wei Ying’s apparent capitulation, Lan Wangji doesn’t slacken his pace, trying to bury himself as deep inside Wei Ying as he can. Sweat drips from his chin onto Wei Ying’s back, speckling the black fabric of his robes – he wants to disentangle his hand from Wei Ying’s hair and rip the clothing from him, flaying him bare, but as much as he wills himself to hold on, he isn’t certain how much longer he’ll be able to.

Colored lights burst behind his closed eyelids like the sparkling flares during night hunts. Every muscle in his body pulls taut, straining forward into Wei Ying; he feels as if the air is being crushed from his lungs. Desperately, he thrusts deeper, faster, pushing Wei Ying into the mattress with all of his weight, all of his strength. Wei Ying arches his back, his muscles tightening around Lan Wangji’s cock, and with a quiet, shuddering moan, Lan Wangji sinks into him as far as he can and collapses onto him, his chest against Wei Ying’s back.

He lets go of Wei Ying’s hair – without Lan Wangji pulling his head back, Wei Ying lets it fall back onto the bolster – and runs his hands along the length of Wei Ying’s arms until he can twine their fingers together, as if mooring them both to the mattress. When Wei Ying straightens his fingers, refusing Lan Wangji’s grasp, he digs his fingernails into the skin between them instead, hard enough to leave bloody crescents. His thrusts are shallow now, almost frantic, but the feel of Wei Ying’s heartbeat thudding against him, the sweat-slick slipperiness of Wei Ying’s thighs against his own, even the tiny wheeze as Wei Ying sucks in air through his clenched teeth, is too much.

There’s a tugging in his groin, a drawing-in, like the sea at ebb tide leaving a wide stretch of empty sand, and he buries his face into the knotted muscles of Wei Ying’s shoulder and comes with a muffled groan, spilling himself into him. In his mind’s eye, he sees the sea come rushing back in, flooding the land once more, submerging everything in its wake. The tension leaves his body, for the first time that he can remember, that he has permitted, and he presses his cheek to Wei Ying’s shoulder, letting the fabric of his robes soak up the sweat from his skin.

He lies there on top of Wei Ying, his breath gradually slowing, though he knows that this is self-indulgent, that he should be moving away to straighten his robes and then return to the jingshi to clean himself and meditate. This close, with his cheek resting on Wei Ying’s, he can hear the quiver of his breath, as if he’s on the brink of tears. Why would Wei Ying be weeping? He’d been hard in Lan Wangji’s hand, rutting himself against his palm – should he, after all, have been gentler?

Wei Ying doesn’t move when Lan Wangji pushes himself up from the bed, sliding out of him. He’s slick with his own come, and he tucks himself away quickly and pulls his robes shut, his cheeks burning. He starts to tug Wei Ying’s robes down over his bare buttocks too, the pale skin now flushed pink – at the movement of the fabric against his skin, Wei Ying shivers, his entire body wracked with it, as if he just shuffled into the waters of the Cold Springs.

“Wei Ying—”

“Just leave,” Wei Ying spits, though his words lack the force, the contempt, they had before. “You got what you wanted, so go.”

Longing for the added strength his golden core would have given him, Lan Wangji rolls Wei Ying onto his back. His face is still hidden by the sweat-soaked tangle of his hair, though through the dark web of it, Lan Wangji can see the bright red blush staining his cheeks. The silk bedding beneath him is stained with precome, bunched up into a mass of wrinkles where Wei Ying had been pushing his hips against it, and to Lan Wangji’s embarrassment – and disappointed confusion – Wei Ying is still hard, his cock lying against his stomach, his balls tight to his body.

“Don’t—” Wei Ying begins, but whatever he means to say is choked away as Lan Wangji’s fingers curl around his erection. The smoothness of his cock, soft as the skin of a persimmon, shouldn’t have surprised him, since there’s no reason why it should be any different from his own, but it startles him all the same, perhaps if only for the sheer fact that it is Wei Ying’s. He runs the ball of his thumb across the slit in the head of it, and Wei Ying pushes his hips upward against his hand, even as he throws his arm across his face, burying it in the crook of his elbow. Slowly, with the sort of care he usually reserves for practicing calligraphy, Lan Wangji draws Wei Ying’s foreskin up over the head of his cock and strokes him through it, carefully at first and then faster, tightening his fist until Wei Ying lets out a strangled yelp that’s muffled by his sleeve.

His own cock twitches in his trousers as he watches Wei Ying fuck his hand, sees him wince when Lan Wangji jerks him too roughly. None of this is quite what he’d imagined those nights when he’d taken himself in his hand and brought himself off as quickly as he could, before devoting himself to meditation for the better part of the following day, but at least he can be certain that this is, in fact, the person that he’d always dreamed of being able to touch like this, different body or not. After all, Jiang Wanyin would never have allowed any of this – if anything, he’d have found a way to kill Lan Wangji before submitting to it, even without his golden core. And Wei Ying hasn’t stopped him, has in fact mostly swallowed his protestations, so perhaps he’s enjoyed it too?

A long, gasping breath judders from Wei Ying’s throat, his stomach quivering like a plucked guqin string, and he comes in Lan Wangji’s hand, droplets of his semen pearling the front of his robes, milky white against the black. Lan Wangji gives him a final, long stroke, twisting his wrist as he squeezes, harder than perhaps he should, though Wei Ying shivers against him in spite of it.

I will be kinder next time, he tells himself as he watches Wei Ying’s chest heave, the flutter of his heartbeat visible as it shakes the fabric of his robes. Now that Wei Ying can no longer deny who he is, now that he is safe from the bloodlust of the cultivation world and the vengeance of his own martial brother, there can be no doubt that he will accept Lan Wangji as well.

Chapter Text

He can still sense Lan Wangji standing there, hovering by the bed like a moth around a lantern. Jiang Cheng knows his own spunk is drying on the front of his robes; he can feel Lan Wangji’s becoming tacky between his thighs – there’s a damp spot on the mattress beneath him, but he can’t make himself move, as if doing so will prolong Lan Wangji’s attention and make him linger even longer. Instead, he lies there as still as he can, as he had on his first night hunt when the yaoguai they’d been hunting had passed by, and he’d frozen, hoping that it wouldn’t smell him and would just continue on its way. Wei Wuxian had killed it, of course, and had come to visit Jiang Cheng in the family shrine, where his parents – for once in agreement – had forced him to kneel for hours as punishment for his cowardice. He hadn’t made the same mistake since, until now and in the face of nothing more than Lan Wangji, whose breath seems to tremble with trepidation as he offers new clothing to replace the ones he’s soiled, a hot bath, unsupervised access to the cottage’s garden.

Swallowed-down sobs clog his throat, making him unable to answer even if he’d wanted to, and all he can think, repeated like a prayer in his head, is, This wasn’t for me. This is nothing to do with me.

“Go away,” he manages to croak, relieved that no cries slip out along with the words.

Lan Wangji’s hesitant overtures taper off, and his footsteps head in the direction of the cottage’s door. “I will leave you now, Wei Ying, as you wish. I—the garden will be available to you, should you wish it. Good night.”

The door slides open and then closed again, and Jiang Cheng is alone, regret bitter at the back of his throat for not having accepted anything from Lan Wangji, for not catching the wrist of the hand that had almost shyly cupped his cheek through the veil of his own sweaty hair, for not somehow wordlessly – for he would never be able to ask out loud – urging Lan Wangji to stay. Not that he wants Lan Wangji there, much less a repeat of what had happened, but to have some kindness, some consideration, after the rough hands, punishing kisses, bruising thrusts.

Anger roils through him – why should he want comfort from Lan Wangji, the one holding him captive, the one doing such things to him? But why had he allowed it? He hadn’t fought or tried to shove Lan Wangji away or even told him to stop. The come drying in white crusts on the front of his robes is proof that he must have even enjoyed it somehow, though coming itself had made him think of the time Wei Wuxian had broken his arm in their staged fight – necessary in a way but forced from him, a means to an end. Telling himself that indulging Lan Wangji’s wants is more likely to get him out of here than constantly fighting him is no consolation, because he knows that wasn’t what had made him grab Lan Wangji’s collar and crush their lips together. So what had?

He waits a few minutes to make sure Lan Wangji is gone, listening to the wind in the bamboo trees, the jingling of the ornaments that dangle from the eaves outside as the same wind catches them. Finally, he pushes himself up from the bed – soreness that his suppressed golden core can’t touch makes him move slowly, gingerly, breath whistling through his teeth. One lamp throws fitful light around the room, calling up darting, uncertain shadows and gilding Suibian’s blade.

The taste of sick sours his mouth, and he has to choke down the urge to gag – how could the sword have been drawn? It was sealed – the time in the Demon-Subduing Cave had been a fluke, the last remnants of Wei Wuxian’s soul being as unwilling to give up its possessions as Wei Wuxian had always been to give up on anything. He stoops down beside it, reaching out with one hand for the hilt. When had it been unsheathed? Jiang Cheng can dimly remember Lan Wangji forcing his fingers around Suibian’s pommel, but he hadn’t drawn it, had he? No, it must be a trick somehow, another maddening talisman or spell that Lan Wangji no doubt stole from Wei Wuxian’s belongings himself. He snatches his hand away before it can touch the sword; if it is some kind of talisman, there could be something written into it, some sort of nasty trap for anyone unwary enough to wield Suibian.

But what if it isn’t a trick? The thought slithers through his mind like a worm through rain-softened earth. It would explain his being able to draw Suibian before, but it would also provide a convenient explanation for the events of the previous hour – if Wei Wuxian were somehow inside him, controlling him or at least somehow influencing him, he would be to blame for letting Lan Wangji do that to him.

The question of how still lingers in the air like incense smoke, though. Lan Wangji has mentioned some nonsense about a spell, something to do with sacrificing or summoning – presumably some notion he heard Wei Wuxian babbling about, one of those insane ideas that were always crowding Wei Wuxian’s mind, many of which he somehow made possible. Wei Wuxian had never shared such things with Jiang Cheng, perhaps in a rare show of self-awareness realizing that Jiang Cheng disapproved of them once the war was over, and Jiang Cheng hadn’t been able to bring himself to join in the ransacking of the Demon-Subduing Cave – he’d taken Suibian and Chenqing when the opportunity had arisen, but he hadn’t been like the Jins or the Yaos, snatching up anything that wasn’t part of the stone of the cave. He had even seen cultivators filling up water skins from that sickening, iron-smelling red pool in the cave and scooping up handfuls of the gray, ash-like earth that covered the floor of it.

And yet Lan Wangji had said there is a ritual that can achieve what he’s claiming Jiang Cheng has done, that one soul can be traded for another – from anyone else, he could easily dismiss it as a lie, but as little as he likes to admit it, the ever-upright Hanguang-jun cares far too much about honoring his sect’s rules to lie. Unless he’s simply deluded himself into believing what he saw to the point where repeating it isn’t a lie? Jiang Cheng rubs his forehead; his thoughts are snarled up like fishing nets – he has all the time in the world to untangle them, but doing so would mean thinking about things he would prefer not to, not least the smell of Lan Wangji on his palm.

He peels off his outer robe and trousers, leaving only the white inner robe – the blood-red one Lan Wangji had brought for him is still neatly folded on the table, but though the thought of a clean robe is tempting, he still can’t bring himself to put it on. But why not? a voice whispers to him as he glances at the unsheathed Suibian again, unease humming in his gut. Why not take what is now yours?

The answer is, of course, that he doesn’t want any of it, precisely because it’s not intended for him. He stoops to pick up Suibian and slams it back into its scabbard. No sooner is it sheathed than he wraps his fingers around the pommel, steeling himself to try to draw it. He’s not bound by any rules the way Lan Wangji is – if he can unsheathe Suibian, he is under no obligation to admit it.

Taking a deep breath, Jiang Cheng tightens his grip on the sword’s hilt and pulls. A few inches of bright steel, just enough to reveal the brilliant cinnabar-red line down the center of the blade and the inscription of its name, are bared before he lets the sword fall from his hands and land with a clatter on the floor. He stumbles backward away from it, as if the blade and its scabbard are two intertwined serpents. His back collides with the door, and he fumbles for the handle – true to his word as ever, Lan Wangji has left it unlocked – and pulls it open, almost tripping on the threshold as he steps out onto the porch, his eyes never leaving Suibian.

The mellow gold of the late afternoon is distorted by the shifting barrier enveloping the cottage’s garden, but Jiang Cheng hardly notices as he tugs off his underrobe and climbs off the porch into the shallow water below. It’s so icy that his hands almost immediately go numb as he scrubs at himself, his skin flushing an angry red from the cold and the force with which he tears at it, trying to clean himself of Lan Wangji’s come, his touch, his kisses. If he lays long enough in this pool, maybe he can freeze away the memory of how Lan Wangji’s gaze had glanced off his face without seeing it, the memory of the weight of Lan Wangji’s cheek as it rested on his shoulder.

But why stop there? Why not rid himself of the memory of Wei Wuxian too, of the exhausted relief of his smile when Jiang Cheng had stared down at him over the lip of the cliff. I am not here to save you, Jiang Cheng wants to tell the Wei Wuxian who lives in his memory, though he suspects that Wei Wuxian hadn’t wanted to be saved anyway, that Jiang Cheng had, in fact, given him almost exactly what he wanted. That, he supposes, would be reason enough to use a spell to summon him back to life, just to take away whatever peace he may have found in death, to punish him by making him live with what he’d done.

He dunks himself in the freezing water, blowing air out through his nose out of habit built from long days of swimming in the lotus lakes, taking turns to see who could stay underwater the longest. In that, at least, he’d bested Wei Wuxian a few times. Those memories can be eroded by the water too, along with the one of carrying the bobbing moon of the lantern to light Ajie’s way as she bore Wei Wuxian home on her back, or the many of watching his father carefully arrange Wei Wuxian’s limbs into the perfect stance for shooting a bow, all the while never glancing once in Jiang Cheng’s direction. Or, worse, the memory of throwing himself between the lash of Zidian and Wei Wuxian’s back, his mother hesitating before stopping short of hitting him.

Lan Wangji is wrong about many things – even if Jiang Cheng had known the Sacrifice Summon, he wouldn’t have done it, not with Jin Ling still alive – but perhaps he’s not as mistaken as Jiang Cheng would claim him to be when it comes to wanting Wei Wuxian back. No matter how often he’s told himself it would be for punishment, no matter how many pointless trips he’s gone on to hunt down demonic cultivators claiming to be the Yiling Patriarch, he can’t say for certain that he wouldn’t weaken if Wei Wuxian were actually before him now, that he wouldn’t tell him to come home to Lotus Pier and take his rightful place at Jiang Cheng’s side.

Would it be so terrible, he thinks as he stares up at the sky, unable to tell if the way it shimmers is from the barrier or because of the tears stinging his eyes, if Wei Wuxian were still in the world? Would it be so terrible if Wei Wuxian were still in the world instead of him? Wei Wuxian had been so easy to love, until he’d run off with the Wens, so easy that even the cold, humorless Second Jade of Lan had fallen in love with him. Jiang Cheng, on the other hand, has already been forgotten, the rumors of his death met with an apparent shrug by his own sect and likely sighs of relief from the others.

And after all, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d pushed pieces of his own life aside to make way for Wei Wuxian.

*

The next morning, another set of robes is folded in a tidy pile just inside the front door of the cottage, right beside a basket full of enough food to last several days. Another red ribbon slashes prominently across the black of the robes, but Jiang Cheng drops it onto the table before dressing himself in the clean clothes. He’d spent most of the previous evening ruining the fine silk bedding by washing it in the shallow pond – he couldn’t have slept on a bed that still smelled of Lan Wangji – and he wonders what the fastidious Hanguang-jun must have thought to see the stained blankets thrown over the railings of the porch, getting more even stained by the morning dew. Perhaps all the locks and talismans being back in place is his punishment for the bedding – when he tried the door, it hadn’t budged.

He had thought the same of what had happened the day before – that it had been a punishment, though he’s not certain who was administering it. Lan Wangji would not have considered it such, no matter how brutally he’d shoved himself into Jiang Cheng or how hard he’d yanked on his hair. So is it a punishment he’d accepted of his own will, one that he wanted even, or at least felt that he deserved? Perhaps it’s his penance for having been careless, for letting Lan Wangji get close enough in the woods to bundle him off to the Cloud Recesses. He wishes he could stop hearing the tiny, insinuating voice – the one that sounds strangely like Jin Guangyao at his most wide-eyed and disingenuous – that says the punishment is for being unlovable, so much so that he’s unmissed and unmourned and so willing to take affection – for he does believe that Lan Wangji intended it as such – meant for another as his own.

But now it seems, judging by the provisions he’s left, that Lan Wangji is going away. Maybe another Yiling Patriarch pretender has sprouted up like a poison mushroom? Who knows, perhaps Jiang Cheng will be replaced as the prisoner in the cottage and will be dumped somewhere as unceremoniously as he was taken? Will Lan Wangji insist on keeping Suibian to use as a test for the other possible Wei Wuxians he finds?

Lan Wangji must have seen Suibian unsheathed, though – so wouldn’t he believe his search to be ended? How apt that Jiang Cheng shouldn’t even be good enough at being whom Lan Wangji has been so insistent that he is.

He sits at the table to choke down a few bland bites of steamed bun; his throat hurts when he swallows, and he supposes he should be thankful that Lan Wangji hadn’t crushed it completely with the much-vaunted strength of his hands. Or, perhaps, disappointed? Tears had sprung to his eyes when Lan Wangji’s hands had closed around his neck, not because of the pain or fear, but because he’d remembered the feel of Wei Wuxian’s thin throat between his own hands, Wei Wuxian’s face shifting from crimson to purple to almost blue, his eyes bulging, as Jiang Cheng pressed all his weight into his hands.

Guilt had washed through him at the memory, only to be chased away by anger at feeling guilty for it at all – perhaps the Wens would have attacked Lotus Pier no matter what, but that doesn’t absolve Wei Wuxian of anything that came after, abandoning Jiang Cheng in favor of the Wens, killing Jin Zixuan, losing control at the Nightless City and letting Ajie die for him. And yet, in that moment in the tall, wet grass, when he’d come so close to extinguishing Wei Wuxian’s life as if it were a flame pinched out by damp fingers, Wei Wuxian had been almost all he had, his only disciple, his only friend.

What he had not been expecting, though, was to feel Lan Wangji’s erection pressing into his stomach. Lan Wangji, at least, had looked as surprised as Jiang Cheng had felt, snatching his hands away from his throat, though his shock had been far shorter-lived than Jiang Cheng’s. So is that why he’d kissed Lan Wangji, why he’d let him turn him over and push his way into him?

Or, he wonders, looking at Suibian laying across the table beside its scabbard, was it truly some proof of Wei Wuxian being somehow part of him? He still longs to have a dog again; the heavily spiced food that Lan Wangji had tried to tempt him with had mostly just made him cough and scramble for a gulp of tea; and the one time he experimentally raised Chenqing to his lips, only a pathetic whistle had squeaked from it. So if he is carrying Wei Wuxian’s soul around inside him, is it only the parts of it that can draw Suibian and that made calf’s eyes at Lan Wangji for years? That would be just like Wei Wuxian, wouldn’t it, one final joke, giving Jiang Cheng only the most useless parts of himself and none of the brilliance.

Perhaps some petty enjoyment can be gained from having something that Wei Wuxian wanted first or, at least, from having gotten more than Wei Wuxian in some way? But even that brings no comfort. What good is triumphing in a skirmish against someone who’s either dead or trapped inside one’s own body, especially when they have already won and will continue to win the wider war?

Jiang Cheng leaves the half-eaten bun on the table and drifts over to the bare mattress, the pale cotton still marred by the stain from the previous day. He perches on the end of the bed, facing the window, and wonders how long it will take for the barrier Lan Wangji put up to dissipate if not maintained. After all, if Hanguang-jun has gone on a night hunt, there’s the chance that he could be delayed at best, killed at worst – worst for him, at least. Though, Jiang Cheng supposes, that would be the worst for him as well; since no one else knows he’s here, if Lan Wangji doesn’t return, he’ll eventually starve to death, all the more quickly for being cut off from his golden core.

It seems unlikely anyway – all through the war, Lan Wangji had remained unbloodied, his white robes always pristine. Seeing blood streaming from his arm at the Nightless City would have been shocking if Jiang Cheng had still had the capacity by that point to be surprised by anything. His untouchability had made him a valuable ally during the Sunshot Campaign; now, once again, Jiang Cheng’s survival might depend on it. The thought makes him grit his teeth – he’d grudgingly allowed himself to rely on Lan Wangji during their search for Wei Wuxian, but that had been by choice, or so he’d told himself; he doesn’t like being forced into it. Hadn’t he walked away from that partnership as soon as he could? Of course he had – it had been what Wei Wuxian had wanted. But what had that loyalty gotten him? Abandoned by Wei Wuxian again and his sister dead in his arms.

He shoves those thoughts away, dabbing the tears that have rolled unnoticed down his cheeks away with his sleeve. From what he can tell, this cottage is on the back hill of the Cloud Recesses, out of the way, perhaps even forbidden to junior disciples. It’s clean and well-maintained, but the furnishings appear out-of-date, as if they’d been chosen long ago and meticulously cared for rather than replaced. Would anyone think to come here if Lan Wangji died or even was injured? Does anyone even know that he comes here – or did come – every day?

*

Only one bun, stale now and starting to harden, remains in the basket when Lan Wangji finally returns. Jiang Cheng tells himself that the anticipation that rushes through him when he hears the lock click open is just hunger or perhaps boredom – not that Lan Wangji has ever alleviated anyone’s boredom before. But what else could it be? He certainly hasn’t missed his company, nor is he hoping for a repeat of what happened at Lan Wangji’s last visit.

“Where have you been?” he demands and then bites down on the inside of his lip to keep himself from saying anything else. He shouldn’t want to see Lan Wangji, much less speak to him, after what Lan Wangji has done to him – manhandling him had been merely the most recent insult.

The question seems to slide off Lan Wangji like a drop of water off a lotus leaf – he doesn’t acknowledge it at all as he sets his basket down on the table and begins to unpack it. Jiang Cheng thinks he sees the slightest flit of an eyelash when Lan Wangji has to maneuver the basket around the still-unsheathed Suibian, but that’s all. It isn’t until he has arranged the food and wine he’s brought more beautifully than they likely warrant that he murmurs, eyes downcast, “I thought perhaps Wei Ying would not want to see me.” His full lips purse into what Jiang Cheng would call a pout on anyone else – it makes him look like a child trying his best not to cry – and when he darts a glance up at Jiang Cheng, it’s almost pleading. “I feared that I had displeased.”

Jiang Cheng lets his face fall into a sneer, though it must be liberally tinged with disbelief as well. Since when has Lan Wangji feared displeasing anyone? First, the entire world seemed to agree that the Second Jade of Lan was incapable of being displeasing, and after that, Lan Wangji made it very clear that he didn’t care about such things in the slightest, to the point that he’d injured thirty-three of his own sect’s elders.

“Do you think I’ve been pleased by any of this?” he spits. “Least of all, that.” He flings out an arm to gesture at the faint stain on the mattress. “Or this,” he says, pointing at the fading necklace of bruises around his throat. They must be a mess of sickly yellows and greens now, and they barely hurt when he presses on them anymore, as he’s lain awake doing in the days since Lan Wangji had left them.

Lan Wangji has the decency to blush when he looks up to see where Jiang Cheng is pointing, though for all Jiang Cheng knows, the reminder could have him getting hard beneath his robes – after all, it had been when Lan Wangji had been choking him that Jiang Cheng had first felt the pressure of his erection heavy against him. His lips part, though he seems to be being even more deliberate than usual with his words, but before he can speak, Jiang Cheng plunges on – there’s nothing Lan Wangji can say that will take away the shame of what Jiang Cheng had allowed to happen, no, what he’d encouraged. What, for a few moments, he’d thought he wanted.

“How could anyone be pleased with anything on this mountain? You hardly see the sun; the kitchens serve boiled grass and call it dinner; and everyone is controlled by these ridiculous rules – or they say they are, at least. It seems to me that the Sect Leader, his brother, and his uncle don’t mind breaking them when it suits their purpose.” He’s not even certain what he’s saying or what he hopes to achieve by it – the dark flash of anger in Lan Wangji’s eyes at the mention of Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren would once have been a sign of success, a point scored in their one-sided battle, but now Jiang Cheng has seen what Lan Wangji’s anger can lead to. Surely he doesn’t want that again?

But still he goes on, the need to hurt winning out as it so often does, the consequences forgotten in the sheer cruelty of the moment – perhaps he and Lan Wangji aren’t so different after all? Their weapons may differ, as do their ultimate ends, but otherwise, the infliction of pain is the point. “Speaking of Zewu-jun, not even he can stand it here, apparently. Why else would he be at Carp Tower so often?”

Lan Wangji’s expression is clouding over; his fists are so tightly clenched that Jiang Cheng hears his knuckles pop. And then a path opens up before him, like a well-trodden trail in a forest when one has been wandering in hapless circles – to inflict the greatest wound, Jiang Cheng can use Lan Wangji’s bizarre devotion to the idea that he is Wei Wuxian against him. From his memory, he dredges up a time at the Unclean Realm during the war, when Wei Wuxian had barely acknowledged Lan Wangji’s presence.

“I avoided you for weeks because you threatened to bring me here. Do you remember that, Lan Zhan?” The birth name doesn’t come naturally to his lips; it tastes as acrid as vinegar. “Does that make it clear enough to you how little this place pleases me? How little you please me?”

He had always been confused by Wei Wuxian’s infatuation with Lan Wangji, who seemed so staid, so cold, so inflexible – he’d supposed Wei Wuxian had enjoyed teasing him, pushing him until he forgot his sect’s rules, until he was not so cold after all. By the time Jiang Cheng had left them alone in the Xuanwu’s cave, though, fear had begun to sink its teeth into him and grasp him tight: Wei Wuxian wasn’t just toying with Lan Wangji out of boredom – in fact, he didn’t find Lan Wangji boring at all.

“I could think of no other way at the time, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji blurts out, his eyebrows draw up, pleading replacing – or at least mingling with – his anger. Jiang Cheng hasn’t heard him speak with this much feeling since his anguished cry of Wei Ying when Wei Wuxian had fallen, arms pinwheeling, from the cliff in Qishan. “I was certain that it was the righteous course to follow, but I have learned since—” His white sleeve billows like a swan’s beating wing as he raises his arm, offering his hand to Jiang Cheng. “Who is stronger and who is weaker? Who is right and who is wrong? I understand now, Wei Ying. I should have stayed before, that day we met in Yiling; I should have shown you sooner that—” He cuts himself off, swallowing hard, and seems to take a moment to carefully compose his features once more, to smooth his furrowed brow, to relax the tension in his mouth. “If Wei Ying would allow me to rectify the missteps that I have previously taken—”

The backs of his fingers brush across Jiang Cheng’s, and his thumb hooks over the side of his curled hand. The pad of it wallows a moment in the curve between Jiang Cheng’s thumb and forefinger – they both stare down at it, as if Lan Wangji is inscribing characters into Jiang Cheng’s flesh with his thumb rather than simply stroking his skin.

A squall of fury gusts through Jiang Cheng, and he flings Lan Wangji’s hand away. “How can you rectify drawing your sword on the roof of the Palace of the Sun and Flames?” he demands, for a moment feeling the betrayal as if it were his own, rather than Wei Wuxian’s. And hadn’t it been, in its way? As little as he likes to admit it to himself, he’d secretly wished for the great Hanguang-jun, Wei Wuxian’s beloved Lan Zhan, to appear that night at the Nightless City and do what he couldn’t do – take Wei Wuxian safely away from there and hide him from the other sects until their throats grew sore from baying for his blood. At that point, at least, Jiang Cheng would still have been able to forgive him, and perhaps even Ajie would eventually have as well.

“You failed, Hanguang-jun,” he spits, his eyes burning, his chin buckling. But the sobs piling up in his throat aren’t for Wei Wuxian; they’re for himself, for the memory of Ajie tearing her hand from his to reach for Wei Wuxian, always reaching out for the one she loved more, loved better. Did Lan Wangji feel the same as he had when he’d reached for what he loved most and his fingers had closed around nothing?

At any other time, he’d at least feel a pang of satisfaction about the righteous Second Jade of Lan breaking his own sect’s rules to see Lan Wangji running, but now, as Lan Wangji flees from the cottage, throwing the door open so hard in his haste that it rattles in its runner, he feels nothing more than relief tinged with regret.

*

It’s the light that wakes him, a bright beacon like a low-hanging moon that tears open the darkness of the cottage. He bolts upright in bed, squinting against the white glare, trying to see past it – could it be someone here to rescue him? Lan Xichen coming to free his brother’s hostage and attempt to save his sect’s face?

Jiang Cheng pushes himself up into a crouch on the mattress, feet scrabbling on the slippery silk of the new bedding. Suibian is in a stand beside the bed, just out of reach; though he’s never wielded it before and certainly never tried to cultivate with it, having a blade in his hand would be a comfort all the same.

“Who’s there?” he shouts, but the only answer is some shuffling, as of unsteady feet weaving their way across the room.

Whoever – or whatever – it is comes closer, and for a moment, Jiang Cheng is back in the Xuanwu’s Cave, and Wei Wuxian is cupping the burn on his chest with one hand, making some disgusting joke about having some cooked meat for them to eat. The smell is the same, the stench of charred flesh, singed cloth, the rusty odor of blood, and then he knows what the white-hot light is, remembers the wedge shape with the Wen insignia worked on it.

“Lan Wangji?” he calls out, swallowing down the fear that rises in his throat, though why should he fear this, after everything? It’s just the Wen sigil, the memories it brings back – he hadn’t been afraid when the Wen soldiers had first dragged him back to Lotus Pier, because he’d known he was doing the right thing for Ajie, for the future of the sect. No, back then, fear had only taken hold when he’d realized that Wen Chao wasn’t going to kill him after all. “What are you doing?”

He can hear their breath now, rasping and unsteady – worse, he can smell it, sour and vinegary. That alone should be enough to tell him that the intruder is not Lan Wangji – though hadn’t he said something about drinking Emperor’s Smile out of grief for Wei Wuxian? Is this what love does to people, Jiang Cheng wonders, makes them want to be their beloved? Or is it grief that’s animating Lan Wangji, making him drink the wine that Wei Wuxian drank, even burn himself with the brand that had scarred Wei Wuxian? No, it’s impossible, isn’t it? Jiang Cheng hadn’t made soup after Ajie’s death; he hadn’t sat on the end of the pier and played Chenqing. He’d just climbed down to the bottom of the cliff and picked his way among the lava pools until sweat poured from him, looking for Wei Wuxian’s body, something, anything, that he could have, that he could take away from Lan Wangji.

In the threatening glow of the branding iron, he catches a glimpse of slack, full lips the color of ripe apricots, the roundness of a pale chin, a long white throat, and then – finally, briefly – a fresh burn, blistered skin dark and glistening with blood. Jiang Cheng swallows hard at the sight of it, at how brutally it mars the otherwise smooth, marble-like flesh. “What have you done?” he breathes.

“Wei Ying was branded,” is the thick, drowsy-voiced reply. “This body should be too – to make it become – to make you—” He trails off, his lips smacking together as they work soundlessly – Lan Wangji is always careful with his words, but now it seems that the wine has dried up the well of them that he usually eventually draws from. “Let me—”

He half-leans, half-falls toward Jiang Cheng, thrusting the iron at him as if it were Bichen. Jiang Cheng dives beneath it, back onto the mattress, and Lan Wangji collapses on top of him, catching himself with one arm before the white-hot brand can touch the mattress and set it and both of them ablaze. With effort, on legs as wobbly as a newborn foal’s, he pushes himself back up, waving the iron around as if using its light to search for Jiang Cheng.

Penned between Lan Wangji and the back of the bed, Jiang Cheng finds himself trapped – if he tries to shove his way free, he’s likely to end up burned somewhere, an eye, perhaps; nausea squirms in his stomach at the thought of it. Squeezing his eyes shut, he sinks his teeth into his lower lip, clenches his fists in the silken blankets, and waits for the smell of his own burning flesh to reach his nostrils. Maybe, if he’s lucky and if he does what Lan Wangji wants, it’ll at least be over quickly, that one brand on the chest will be enough to satisfy Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji brushes the top of his underrobe aside, baring Jiang Cheng’s chest to the cool night air – and Jiang Cheng’s eyes spring open as he hears Lan Wangji’s quiet gasp. How could he have forgotten his own scar? The one that has been a source of shame to him since it was lanced into his flesh by Wen Chao with the Jiang Sect discipline whip, a punishment for a crime he hadn’t committed, meted out by someone with no right to do so. After he’d regained his golden core, he’d tried to heal the scar, but it stubbornly remained, slashing across his chest, puckered and dark.

He swings his arm up blindly, trying to knock Lan Wangji away before he can see more of the scar, follow the line of it with the illumination provided by the iron, but Lan Wangji bats him away easily in spite of his drunkenness. The light from the brand catches in the whites of his eyes, visible all the way around the dark irises, shimmers on the tears pooling in them. With cool, trembling fingertips, he traces the long, crooked seam of the scar, and then, to Jiang Cheng’s horror, he leans down and grazes his lips over it.

“Forgive me, Wei Ying.” The words are just warm puffs of breath against Jiang Cheng’s chest. “I could not hurt you – how could I? Especially after seeing how cruel they were to you.”

They? Tears sting Jiang Cheng’s eyes, and he tries to blink them away – could Lan Wangji mean his family? That they were responsible for the scar that disfigures Wei Ying’s chest? His throat tightens, but he can’t tell if it’s trying to contain a shout or a sob. Could the man’s brain be so addled by wine that he doesn’t realize that this body hadn’t been Wei Wuxian’s when he’d lived at Lotus Pier, under the apparent tyranny of Jiang Cheng’s mother and the unlikely disregard of his father?

Reaching up with both hands, he grasps Lan Wangji’s wrist and tries to drag the brand toward his own body. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he demands through teeth clenched so tight that his jaw aches. “Don’t you want your Wei Ying back, as close as you can get to the one you lost? I’ve seen how you look at me, how you try to put a different face over this one, when you can bear to look at all.”

He wrenches the brand closer – Lan Wangji’s eyes widen even further, and his fingers go limp around the handle of the branding iron. “Let me give you something to look at instead of this face then!” Jiang Cheng shouts, and he presses the brand against his chest, directly over his heart. Tiny threads of smoke rise from the edges of the metal as the flesh beneath sizzles, the pain searing through him until he can finally take no more, and the iron falls from his hand. He curls in on himself, as if he can somehow compress the pain, crush it until it’s small enough to ignore, his hand cupped over the charred skin without touching it.

“Wei Ying!” The whisper is soft, horrified, with enough pity in it to make Jiang Cheng’s pent-up sobs break free of his throat. He muffles them by burying his face into the bolster – he’s not certain what he wants from Lan Wangji, but he’s sure enough that it’s not pity. Is that what he’s crying for? For not getting what he wants, even when he can’t even properly say what that is? It must be the accumulation of years, for when was the last time he did get what he wanted? On Baoshan-sanren’s mountain, perhaps, and yet in his mind’s eye, he sees a comb wrapped in blue silk held out by a small, white hand; he sees his sister with blood bright on her mourning robes; he sees Wei Wuxian wrest his hand from Lan Wangji’s and fall into the flames below.

A shaking hand pushes the tear-soaked hair from his temple; knuckles graze the curve of his cheekbone. Nausea boils in his stomach, acid-sharp, but he feels himself still at the gentleness of the touch, his cries drying up in his throat. Can at least one of them be happy? On the cliff in Qishan, it had been a fair exchange – Jiang Cheng’s happiness for Wei Wuxian’s – but now can he give Wei Wuxian what he himself can never have? If Lan Wangji is right, and Wei Wuxian is somehow still alive within him.

Lan Wangji sinks down toward him – Jiang Cheng feels enveloped by him, as if he were the pale mist that swathes the Cloud Recesses on most days – and leaves a trail of feather-light kisses along Jiang Cheng’s cheek, over his eyes, blotting the tears from his eyelashes, until he finds his lips. No, he decides, as Lan Wangji inexpertly kisses him, too eager, making too obvious of an effort to be gentle, this is not what he wants. He reaches up with his right hand – trying to move his left arm makes pain shriek through him – and grabs the back of Lan Wangji’s neck. Lan Wangji stiffens at the ungentle touch – was he expecting something softer from his Wei Ying? Not that Jiang Cheng can recall ever having seen Wei Wuxian touch Lan Wangji, though he’d made a point of not looking – but he doesn’t pull away or struggle. Instead, he lets Jiang Cheng tug his lips open with his teeth and shove his tongue into his mouth.

Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what he’s doing any more than Lan Wangji does – the first time he’d ever kissed anyone had been in this cottage, on this bed, and he’d meant it as a dare, a punishment, a plea to be pushed away. Lan Wangji’s tongue has the remnants of the wine clinging to it, sweet and sharp, and his hands when they begin fumbling with Jiang Cheng’s robes aren’t as graceful and purposeful as they usually are; he must still be drunk, in spite of Wei Wuxian’s insistence that Lan Wangji had passed out after one cup. Maybe he’ll forget all of this then, this messy kiss, the seeping burns on both of their chests, the erection that Jiang Cheng can feel nudging his stomach.

Lan Wangji breaks the kiss to let out a shocked cry, a warm, vinous puff of breath across Jiang Cheng’s lips, as Jiang Cheng grabs his cock through his thin white trousers. The brand has cooled and dimmed, so the moonlight sheeting in the window seems brighter, and in its blue-white gleam, Jiang Cheng can see a small wet patch on the front of Lan Wangji’s trousers. He hasn’t expected to feel much of anything from doing this – he can’t deny that he’d come, eventually, in Lan Wangji’s fist the last time, but it had seemed more like a reflex or some medical necessity, as if he’d been given an emetic to rid his body of a poison.

Now, though, a lazy warmth pools in his groin as he runs his thumb over the head of Lan Wangji’s cock through the thin barrier of silk – he can’t explain it, for he’s certainly never wanted to touch Lan Wangji, of all people, this way; he’d had a few confused dreams about Wen Qing from which he’d woken hard, his cheeks hot with embarrassment even though he’d been alone in his own room. Maybe he’s just enjoying seeing Lan Wangji so at a loss without his precious control, how he quakes against Jiang Cheng with every stroke. It had been the reverse during those three months when they’d been searching for Wei Wuxian – Lan Wangji had been grim determination and rigid self-control, while Jiang Cheng had cried most nights, biting his lip to muffle the sound and hoping that his eyes wouldn’t be swollen in the morning.

There is also the need to put one over on Lan Wangji – he hadn’t felt it before, nor is he doing it as a prank the way Wei Wuxian or Nie Huaisang would have, but he does hope that one day, Lan Wangji will come to his senses, which he must have had once, and realize that it was Jiang Cheng’s hand he was pushing his cock into, Jiang Cheng’s lips he was pressing short, tremulous kisses against. Then, perhaps, he’ll recognize his foolishness, how easily he’d duped himself, his stupidity in believing that the scars he’d kissed were the remnants of the cruelty of the Yunmeng Jiang toward Wei Wuxian, and even if Lan Wangji never acknowledges any of it verbally, Jiang Cheng will at least be content in knowing that he knows, that the shame of it has been steeped into his bones.

But when he looks into Lan Wangji’s glassy eyes, that day seems a long way off, and his hand falters in its stroking. Lan Wangji’s bleary gaze skims back and forth over Jiang Cheng’s face; he hears a soft, damp click as Lan Wangji’s lips part, but instead of speaking, he raises a trembling hand and lightly presses Jiang Cheng’s cheek with his palm as if trying to staunch blood from a wound, before sliding it along his cheekbone to bury his fingers into Jiang Cheng’s hair. He pulls them together in an embrace so unexpected that Jiang Cheng wants to break free of it out of sheer reflex, but Lan Wangji wraps his other arm around him, cupping the back of Jiang Cheng’s head in his other hand.

He can feel the warm, sticky kiss of Lan Wangji’s fresh burn against his chest, and his own blistering flesh adheres to Lan Wangji’s smooth skin – he’s sure there will be a stain of his own blood in the shape of the branding iron on Lan Wangji when they finally separate. The throbbing of Lan Wangji’s heart against him is stronger, more insistent, through the brand, as if it’s pumping more diligently to heal the wound – does his own heartbeat feel the same to Lan Wangji? It’s a stupid thought, of course, and he doesn’t care about the answer, he tells himself – in fact, the idea that Lan Wangji is as aware of him as he is of Lan Wangji sends a flurry of panic through him so intense that he almost tears himself free of Lan Wangji’s grasp again.

Instead he sits there, stupidly, waiting to see what the point of this embrace is, trying to keep his breath shallow so that it doesn’t gust in Lan Wangji’s ear. Lan Wangji shifts on the mattress, easing himself closer, hooking one leg over Jiang Cheng’s hip, and that hot, firm pressure prods him again through the damp silk of Lan Wangji’s trousers.

This isn’t what he’d wanted – he’d expected the anger and pain to carry him through; he hadn’t thought to find himself wrapped in Lan Wangji’s arms. Lan Wangji had meant to brand him, after all, on top of everything else. Shouldn’t he be angry? But in the end, it had been his own hand that had pressed the iron to his chest – yet again the anger at himself is the most pointed, the most lasting.

He closes his eyes, a pit of dread yawning open in his stomach the way it had when Wei Wuxian would dare him to jump off tall rocks into shallow water, and turns toward the sour, wine-tinged warmth of Lan Wangji’s breath. Their lips brush together – Lan Wangji’s are already open, and he catches Jiang Cheng’s lower lip between them. For a moment, Jiang Cheng fears that it’s going to be a soft thing, that he’s going to be able to taste Lan Wangji’s longing for Wei Wuxian in his kiss as palpably as he can still taste the Emperor’s Smile.

Jiang Cheng flinches back, trying to break the kiss, but Lan Wangji bites down on his lip, so hard that the taste of blood washes away the sweeter flavor of the wine, and holds him fast. He manages to raise his hands enough to grab Lan Wangji’s shoulders and try to shove him away, but instead he finds his fingers closing around the fine silk of his open robe and tugging it down Lan Wangji’s arms, baring more of that pale skin that looks like moonlight solidified, that seems to glow in the darkness of the room.

Rising onto his knees, awkwardly bearing Lan Wangji’s weight as he does, Jiang Cheng forces him onto his back on the mattress, his hair a spreading puddle of ink around his head. The breath driven out of Lan Wangji’s lungs tumbles over Jiang Cheng’s lips as they remain locked in that kiss that is barely a kiss, that kiss that he is glad to let remain a bite. The slickness between them could be sweat or blood; the fresh burn has begun to sting, yet he makes no move to pull away, to get the basin of water and clean it – maybe, without his golden core to heal it, it will fester and kill him, but it’s a meaningless fear to him. After all, he’s already dead in the eyes of the world, likely forgotten by his young nephew – he may as well be dead to himself too. He may as well forget himself.

He tears himself free of Lan Wangji’s arms, his lips, and kneels between his thighs. Lan Wangji’s cock still strains at the front of his thin trousers, the outline of it plain in the moonlight; Jiang Cheng has no sense of what Wei Wuxian would do in this situation – he’d flirt, no doubt, and bat his eyelashes and bite his lip, but would he have any more concept of what was expected of him than Jiang Cheng does? Then again, when had Wei Wuxian ever cared for what was expected of him? He tries to think back to the yellow books that Nie Huaisang had had, that he’d spread all over the table in the room that Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian had shared at the Cloud Recesses.

His cheeks burn with embarrassment, and he’s glad of the blend of darkness and moonlight, since Lan Wangji is staring up at him, actually looking at him, his eyes as searing as the hot brand had been. Is it anger or desire? Jiang Cheng can’t decide which is worse, though he finally settles on anger being the better option – desire brings with it the potential for disappointment. Could it, in fact, be both? He has no other explanation for the pressure winding tightly in his own groin as he looks down at shape of Lan Wangji’s erection, the minute quivering of the taut white skin of his belly, the gleam of dampness on his lower lip.

Hadn’t Lan Wangji just done this to him days earlier? But suddenly the difference between doing and being done to seems impossibly wide. He reaches down to grasp the waistline of Lan Wangji’s trousers where it hangs from his narrow hips and tugs them down with a quick jerk – Lan Wangji’s cock bobs against his stomach as it’s freed, precome leaving glistening beads in the faint trail of hair that starts at his navel. Jiang Cheng smears his thumb through them without touching Lan Wangji’s erection; he can feel his pulse even in just that quick swipe across his lower stomach, and Lan Wangji makes a choked sound deep in his throat, almost pained, as if he’s trying to hide some hurt, as he did when he trudged along on his broken leg and refused Wei Wuxian’s help.

His breath is frayed, arrhythmic, when Jiang Cheng leans over and drags his tongue over the smear of precome; he ignores the damp graze of Lan Wangji’s cock against his cheek and chin as he kisses his navel, his hands working Lan Wangji’s trousers down his legs. He can’t even say why he’s doing this, other than to torment Lan Wangji both now and later.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji breathes, and it’s not the name that Jiang Cheng wants to hear, though why would he ever want Lan Wangji to say his name in that breathless half-moan? The back of Lan Wangji’s hand brushes his temple, and he wants to lean away, out of his grasp, but instead, as he delves his tongue into Lan Wangji’s navel, Jiang Cheng reaches up and grazes his nipple with the heel of his hand before digging his fingers into the burn on his chest. Lan Wangji bucks upward from the mattress, as if trying to throw Jiang Cheng off of him, though he doesn’t cry out in pain.

Sitting back on his heels, Jiang Cheng wipes the precome, blood, and serum on the blanket. He hadn’t felt anything other than a petty jolt of satisfaction from hurting Lan Wangji – in that, as in so many other things, they are not the same, he thinks, remembering how Lan Wangji’s cock had seemed to harden even more when Jiang Cheng had yelped in pain, how his thrusts had quickened every time he’d yanked on Jiang Cheng’s hair. Should he care what Lan Wangji wants, though? It had, from necessity, carried them both along, since Jiang Cheng didn’t want any of it and still doesn’t, no matter how much his own erection presses against the front of his trousers.

Lan Wangji is watching him, that pensive look on his face, the slight pursing of his lips, the gentle furrowing of his brow. “Would Wei Ying prefer if—” he trails off, a rare hint of uncertainty in his voice, though Jiang Cheng can also hear a hint of insinuation in it, as if he’s hoping that Wei Ying will say no, he prefers what happened before.

Jiang Cheng’s answer is to grab hold of the backs of Lan Wangji’s knees and drag his legs up until they’re resting on his shoulders. He tugs open the tie on his trousers and takes himself out; his cock is slippery with precome – it pools on his hand when he grasps the base of his erection to guide himself into Lan Wangji, and he feels a stab of annoyance that borders on disgust that it’s Lan Wangji, or at least the thought of fucking Lan Wangji, that has done this to him. Still, he runs his hand along the length of his cock and then spits into his palm and quickly, his face burning again with embarrassment, smears his wet hand over Lan Wangji’s entrance.

There is no struggle – Lan Wangji lets him arrange his legs, allows him to lift his hips off the bed, lets out a soft sound but otherwise voices no complaint at Jiang Cheng rubbing spit onto him – but when Jiang Cheng tries to push into him, he feels Lan Wangji tense. The other night, Lan Wangji had had no qualms about forcing his way into Jiang Cheng – could the great Hanguang-jun, the man who goes where the chaos is, be frightened?

The question of what Wei Wuxian would do blossoms in Jiang Cheng’s head once again, bright and useless as it always is – Wei Wuxian had, apparently, known how to talk to Lan Wangji at the very least, though Jiang Cheng can’t recall how much of a response even he got. He would have been bold, no doubt, coy, just provocative enough to draw a reaction even from the stoic Lan Wangji.

Jiang Cheng leans down, folding Lan Wangji nearly in half as he does so, and winds the end of his forehead ribbon around his finger. Does Lan Wangji flinch at the touch? A dangerous gleam does burn through the drunken haze in his eyes when he glances up at Jiang Cheng, though.

“Will you do this for me, Lan Zhan?” he asks. He can’t duplicate that maddening, flirtatious drawl that Wei Wuxian used to have when he was trying to wheedle Lan Wangji, but he does attempt the crooked little smile that Wei Wuxian would put on – he’d seen it often enough, after all, since Wei Wuxian had used it on him as well. “I didn’t stop you, did I?”

Slowly, muscle by muscle, Lan Wangji relaxes beneath him, and Jiang Cheng eases himself into him – as much as he dislikes Lan Wangji, he can remember too well how it had felt when Lan Wangji had shoved into him too quickly, that sharp pinch followed by a spreading burn, and as petty as it is and as unlikely as it is that Lan Wangji will even notice, Jiang Cheng wants to show that he is better, even if only in something so small as this. Still, as slowly as he goes, he does sink all the way into Lan Wangji in one, drawn-out stroke, unable to stop himself.

Lan Wangji accepts it without complaint, though perhaps in someone else, the small pleat between his brows and the slight tension in his lips would be a complaint. They’ve both known greater pain, Jiang Cheng thinks, as he thrusts in deeper and feels Lan Wangji’s muscles clench tight around him, pain that never edges hesitantly toward pleasure as this kind had – pain intense enough to make branding oneself seem like a respite from it.

His first instinct is to go quickly, in the hope of getting it over with as soon as possible, but now it seems as if the decision might be taken away from him – his thighs are already trembling, control slipping away from him, everything blotted out by the feeling of being clutched inside the now-yielding warmth of someone else’s body, even if that body happens to be Lan Wangji’s. Without thinking, he curls his hand around Lan Wangji’s slim leg and caresses it as he thrusts into him, fingertips mapping the muscle, bone, and sinew, the softness of his skin and the surprising coarseness of hair.

Lan Wangji makes a noise deep in his throat, almost a grunt, so low and sharp that Jiang Cheng feels the vibration of it in his own body. The sound sends a flood of pleasure straight to his groin, where a dull, demanding ache is already pooling, a counter-weight to the bright, scything pain of the burn on his chest – every upward rock of Lan Wangji’s hips, every fraction of an inch deeper that Jiang Cheng buries himself into him brings the flimsy banks of that pool closer to overflowing.

He turns his head to press his face against Lan Wangji’s calf and lets out a long, low sigh. Though he wants nothing more than to go on, he pauses, waiting for his heartbeat to slow a bit, for his brain to catch up with his overwhelmed nerves, to remind himself why he’s doing this at all. It’s clear why Lan Wangji is, at least – his displeasure had been obvious, and yet his love for Wei Wuxian must be so strong that he’s willing to forget, however briefly, his own preferences in favor of pleasing his Wei Ying. At least he’s sincere in his madness, Jiang Cheng supposes; after all, there is no reason why Lan Wangji – or, indeed, anyone else – would ever be devoted enough to do this for him.

His fingers dig into Lan Wangji’s ankle, grasping hard, as if he might somehow be carried off, as if the fact that this is intended for someone else will be realized and Lan Wangji will be snatched away. But why should he care about that? He’s a Sect Leader, powerful and feared – why should he want to cling to his shixiong’s cast-offs?

All he can hear is Lan Wangji’s ragged, expectant breath, and below that, he thinks he can make out the sound of their sweat trickling down their bodies, tiny streams that meet and merge into rivulets. At another – this time impatient, prompting – noise from Lan Wangji, Jiang Cheng slowly thrusts into him again, curving his hips against Lan Wangji’s ass. He blinks the sweat from his eyes and looks down at Lan Wangji, his body framed by his own legs, the dark smear of the burn on his chest, the white column of his throat—

Panic whirs through him like one of those iridescent green-winged beetles that skim over the pond in the cottage’s garden – Lan Wangji’s cock is soft against his stomach, shrunken into the fine black nest of hair at its base. Has he done something wrong after all? Does Lan Wangji really not like being fucked, even if it’s Wei Ying doing the fucking?

Jiang Cheng tries to shift backward on his knees, to slip out from beneath Lan Wangji’s legs and give himself room to pull out of him, face hot with embarrassment. Maybe this will be the final proof that Lan Wangji needs, he thinks, and can’t explain the disappointment that twists in his stomach. How will Lan Wangji balance him being able to draw Suibian against his own inability to stay hard when Wei Ying is fucking him? The two would seem to contradict one another.

But none of that matters now; all he wants to do is get away, wrap himself in his robes, and wait until Lan Wangji leaves – is it even worth hoping that Lan Wangji’s disappointment will be enough to make him finally let Jiang Cheng go? And yet, even as he thinks it, a brief tremor of distaste at the idea runs through him. He does want to return to Lotus Pier, of course he does – he wants to reclaim his position as Sect Leader, continue the rebuilding, hold Jin Ling in his arms again. But wouldn’t that be a final death for Wei Wuxian? He would live on in gossip and in stories told to frighten naughty children, perhaps, and no doubt Lan Wangji will continue to wear mourning clothes for him, but there would be nothing left of him in the world.

Lan Wangji has propped himself up on his elbows – with his dark hair streaming behind him, he looks as if he’s sat up from being submerged in a bath – and when Jiang Cheng finally forces himself to meet his eyes, he finds Lan Wangji’s so wide that the moon shining in the window is trapped in the darkness of them. His lips are swollen and damp, but he still darts his tongue over them before murmuring, “Do not stop.”

“But—” Jiang Cheng begins, but he trails off immediately – what can he say, after all? He can feel his own arousal seeping from him; perhaps he won’t be able to— It would be so much easier if he could simply shout at Lan Wangji now, hide his embarrassment behind bluster and insults, but something about the shimmer of Lan Wangji’s eyes, the open expectation on his face, prevents him. It’s unbearable, and to avoid having to look at that expression, he pushes himself carefully into Lan Wangji once more and lowers himself down onto him, until they’re close enough that he can kiss him, tongue clumsy as it curls against Lan Wangji’s.

His hand slips between them and wraps around Lan Wangji’s cock, and he tells himself it’s no different from the times he’d done this to himself when he was younger, when half-formed thoughts about Wen Qing would make longing tip over into desire. A small, shallow puddle of precome still dampens Lan Wangji’s stomach, and when Jiang Cheng touches him, his cock is still slippery with it, the silky skin sliding easily as he strokes him, willing Lan Wangji to harden against his palm. This, at least, he knows how to do, though that seems embarrassing somehow in itself.

The scent of Lan Wangji’s precome, a confusion of pear blossoms and seawater, mixes with the musky odor of their fucking and the sharper smells of their sweat, all of it threaded through with the sandalwood fragrance that always hangs about Lan Wangji. It floods his nostrils with every breath he takes and makes him grit his teeth, always fighting to restrain himself, even with his concentration divided between thrusting into Lan Wangji and stroking his cock. Lan Wangji’s body seems to cling to him, and he pushes into that sensation, quickening his movements in spite of himself, just wanting to be deeper, always wanting more.

Soon – finally – Lan Wangji is hard in his hand; when Jiang Cheng strokes him, he thinks he can feel Lan Wangji’s heartbeat throbbing in his cock, the pulse of it rapid against his palm. Jiang Cheng stares down into his face through the dark fog of his own eyelashes – Lan Wangji’s eyes are closed, his eyelids twitching from time to time as if he’s dreaming. No doubt he’s envisioning Wei Wuxian’s cock buried in his ass, Wei Wuxian’s lips hot and humid against his own. In the light spilling in through the window, he looks almost peaceful, as if he were deep in meditation – though Jiang Cheng can remember Lan Wangji glowering through his meditation when they were hunting for Wei Wuxian – his mind far from what’s happening to his body. Sweat beads on his cheeks, droplets of it occasionally breaking loose from the force of Jiang Cheng’s thrusts and rolling down his temples to soak his hair and the pale fabric of his headband.

Could he really be doing this just because he believes it’s what Wei Ying wants? Jiang Cheng wonders if Wei Wuxian had even been aware of the power he had over Lan Wangji – he must have been, and yet he didn’t seem to abuse it in the way Jiang Cheng would have expected. Though perhaps Lan Wangji is trying to rectify not having given in before now that his Wei Ying has returned to him?

He lowers his forehead to Lan Wangji’s collarbone once more, trying to forget that distance on his face and concentrate on the soft, damp rhythmic slap of his balls against Lan Wangji’s ass, the wheezy, protesting creak of the bed, as he fucks into him as hard as he can, no longer caring if he comes too soon just as long as Lan Wangji does as well. Sweat rolls down his face; he can feel it pooling along his collarbones and slicking his hair to his forehead – he can see it dripping onto the burn on Lan Wangji’s chest and winces in vicarious pain at the sting of salt in the wound.

One last, hard thrust, and he topples over the edge, all control gone, pushing his mouth hard against Lan Wangji’s throat to muffle his cry as he comes. Even as he softens, he keeps pressing himself into Lan Wangji, waiting, hoping to feel Lan Wangji’s come splash against his stomach, to hear Lan Wangji let out a low moan, though he’d been quiet before. But Lan Wangji just remains still beneath him, and after a long moment, Jiang Cheng collapses against him, gasping for breath, his cheek resting on Lan Wangji’s heaving chest.

Lan Wangji is still hard, his erection thick and heavy against Jiang Cheng’s stomach – how could he not be disappointed? Though it’s not so much Lan Wangji’s disappointment he’s worried about, but rather that he has failed, that not even playing along with the pretense of being Wei Wuxian could camouflage that failure.

He pushes himself upright and pulls out of Lan Wangji, which elicits a shiver but nothing more. Lan Wangji’s eyes do snap open, though, when Jiang Cheng grasps the base of his cock and slowly lowers himself onto it. He’s still trembling with the remnants of his own orgasm, his teeth nearly chattering as if he were cold, and the feeling of Lan Wangji stretching him is painful, both because of the intrusion and the rawness of his nerves – he feels as if he’d scrubbed himself too hard in a hot bath, leaving him scalded and too tender.

Biting down on his lower lip to stifle the hiss of pain that tries to force its way through his clenched teeth, he experimentally rocks his hips forward, squeezing Lan Wangji inside him. The pain doesn’t lessen at all, but he presses on, watching Lan Wangji’s face for some sign that he’s doing it right, that Lan Wangji is enjoying it. All he can see, though, is a tiny furrow between Lan Wangji’s brows, half-covered by the cloud motif on his forehead ribbon, that appears and disappears as Jiang Cheng moves above him. How had Wei Wuxian ever tolerated this impassivity? He knows that Wei Wuxian had done his best at the Cloud Recesses to annoy Lan Wangji until he got a reaction from him, but that won’t work now, nor would he himself find it satisfying in the least.

He is trembling all over, his thighs quaking against Lan Wangji’s flanks, his fingers quivering where they clutch at the blanket – he feels as if he’s been plunged into the Cold Springs and then left out on the back hill in the Gusu winter, the ever-present fog freezing to his wet skin. And yet, at the same time, he’s still pouring with sweat, trickling into the burn on his chest and mingling with the blood there, leaving pale pink trails coursing down his stomach. He’s distantly aware that his lips are drawn back from his teeth in a grimace, and even more distant are the cries he can hear – at first he thinks it’s some kind of bird, the hoarse, gasping call of the white heron that frequents the garden, but then he realizes it’s his own voice, raw and choked, breath rasping from his throat.

Something brushes his cheek, a quick, hesitant touch, and he opens his eyes to find Lan Wangji curling his fingers away from Jiang Cheng’s face, a combination of widened eyes and parted lips managing to make him look concerned. The expression makes Jiang Cheng lose his rhythm – his hips stutter, then stop, but when he tries to move again, Lan Wangji pushes himself upright and curls his arm around Jiang Cheng’s waist. Jiang Cheng flinches as his still-sensitive cock brushes against the concavity of Lan Wangji’s stomach, breath whistling through his teeth, but breath of any kind flees as he meets Lan Wangji’s gaze, the hunger in it, so intense that he feels small, insignificant in the face of it.

Holding him in place with the arm thrown around his waist, Lan Wangji hitches his hips upward, fucking into him. Each thrust makes the jangling of his nerves worse – he feels like a chime dangling from the eaves of a roof caught in a gale – but neither can he form the words to tell Lan Wangji to stop, and instead of shoving him away, his hands rest on Lan Wangji’s shoulders, until finally, his arms slip around his back, and he finds himself in the unfamiliar – and once disgusting – position of clinging to him.

Lan Wangji’s breath gusts in his ear, labored with the effort, and Jiang Cheng strokes his hand down his back, as if to soothe him – the dense, too-smooth stripes of scar tissue that mar the skin are not entirely a surprise, and yet touching them with his own fingertips make them somehow more real to him. These are the wounds Lan Wangji took for his loyalty to Wei Wuxian, out of love for Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng bears one of those himself, and yet he still can’t help but feel envy toward a dead man. How could he not want that sort of devotion for himself?

Finally, Lan Wangji shudders against him, letting out a quiet, wordless moan against the burn on Jiang Cheng’s chest, and Jiang Cheng feels his cock twitch inside him as he comes. It’s a relief, he tells himself, nothing more, relief that it’s done, that he didn’t embarrass himself completely. He waits for Lan Wangji to try to slip out from beneath him and begin pulling on his stained robe and trousers, but instead Lan Wangji just presses his cheek against Jiang Cheng’s sternum – he must be getting blood in his hair, but he appears unbothered by it. The arm around his waist tightens, though Lan Wangji is softening inside him.

“Can Wei Ying forgive me?” Lan Wangji murmurs, his voice a soft, low rumble, like a drift of snow collapsing under its own weight. “I should not have attempted to—” He doesn’t finish the thought but turns his head to press his lips against the brand. His fingertips trail down Jiang Cheng’s spine to where they’re still joined, and he caresses the area wonderingly, as if he can’t quite believe that it’s happened.

“It is only my wish for Wei Ying to be happy—” He trails off again; he still sounds dazed, speaking slowly in a way that isn’t just his usual careful deliberation – it must be the Emperor’s Smile still working its effects on him.

Still, any reply Jiang Cheng could have made snarls up in his throat. How can Lan Wangji, always so stern and judgmental, be so forgiving of his failure? When Wei Wuxian was alive, Lan Wangji had tried to hold him to account when he did something that he considered wrong – of course, what was wrong in the eyes of the world and wrong in Lan Wangji’s eyes were often two different things. Has Jiang Cheng ever been extended such forgiveness? Perhaps by Ajie, though he’d always been so careful with her, so diligent in pursuing her happiness, even though she’d never asked him to, never expected him to, never made a fuss about anything. He can’t say that he’d ever been granted Wei Wuxian’s forgiveness for his mistakes, but neither is he certain that he would have wanted it if it had been offered. And even though Wei Wuxian might not have judged his failures, might have just good-naturedly teased him in a way that felt patronizing even if it wasn’t intended to be, it was impossible that he wouldn’t have noticed them, if only because Jiang Cheng’s own parents wouldn’t have let either of them forget.

But he knows that all of this, the gentle kisses filling the well between his collarbones, the fingers sifting through his hair, the arms still wrapped tightly around his waist, all of it is contingent upon him being Wei Wuxian. It’s unsurprising, considering the caresses and murmured words are coming from Lan Wangji, but would anyone else have behaved the same way toward him, Jiang Cheng?

The next morning, he wakes to pallid sunlight creeping in the window and the bed beside him empty but for the torn remnants of his own robes. He runs his fingers over his chest, expecting to find the burn there, needing to be cleaned and bandaged, but the skin is unbroken, though it has the smoother, tighter texture of a scar, just as Wei Wuxian had had.

*

Lan Wangji returns to the cottage that afternoon, though neither of them speak of the previous night or of the brands on their chests. To Jiang Cheng’s relief, rather than wanting to sit in not-at-all companionable silence while staring at him as if waiting for him transform physically into Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji drags a wooden bathtub out of the small room where Jiang Cheng had first been held and asks if Wei Ying would like a bath. Cleaning himself in the cold water left in the wash basin hadn’t been nearly thorough enough to wash away the dried come on his upper thighs and buttocks, so Jiang Cheng accepts the offer immediately, and soon enough, he’s sitting in the tub with warm water up to his chin behind a screen that seems unnecessary considering the night before but that he’s grateful for all the same.

It gives him the privacy to puzzle through how he should behave; he can’t say that he enjoys Lan Wangji’s company – when they’d been searching for Wei Wuxian during the war, they’d gotten along well enough, if only because Lan Wangji was mostly silent except for offering what Jiang Cheng had to admit was reasonable and useful advice. But Wei Wuxian had apparently liked spending time with the pious and respectable Hanguang-jun – at least he sought out his company often enough. There is, he has to concede, something almost comforting about being paid attention to; even in his mind, he shies away from comparing it to being with Ajie, though even her attentiveness was never as complete as this – she’d often be distracted by Wei Wuxian or bound up in her own worries about their mother or Jin Zixuan. As Sect Leader, of course, he commands attention, but there’s never any affection in it, only duty.

He scoops up a cupped handful of water and lets it trickle through his fingers, the steam-veiled surface of the bathwater rippling. On the other side of the screen, Lan Wangji must be preparing tea – Jiang Cheng can hear the clink of porcelain and the pouring of water. Would Wei Wuxian have enjoyed something as simple as this? He always spoke of traveling, of seeing the wide world, which had made a splinter of cold fear pierce Jiang Cheng’s heart, for after all, how could Wei Wuxian stand at his right hand if he was off exploring? Worse than that, Wei Wuxian had never asked Jiang Cheng to go with him – Jiang Cheng had tried to soothe the sting of it by telling himself that a Sect Heir couldn’t be impulsive, and a Sect Leader even less.

But it’s no use thinking of now, and he ducks his head underwater as if doing so could wash away the still vivid memories, the broken promises, the inexplicable betrayals. When he resurfaces, gasping for breath, water streaming from his chin, the strains of a guqin are wavering through the air. At least Lan Wangji won’t expect him to accompany him on Chenqing, he thinks, pulling himself out of the water and reaching for the two linen towels draped over the top of the screen.

Another set of new, clean robes are folded nearby, red and black, again with a red hair ribbon coiled on top. This time, Jiang Cheng does pull on the dark red underrobe – the white one he’d been wearing was ruined the night before – before slipping on the black outer robe. He hesitates over the hair ribbon – too much of his life has been spent following Wei Wuxian, watching that bloody slash of color slip in and out of sight among the black of his hair. Eventually, he crumples it in his fist and steps around the screen where Lan Wangji waits.

The silvery notes of the guqin cut off abruptly, and Lan Wangji glances up at him with an expression Jiang Cheng has never seen on his face before – he looks… content? He is still by no means animated, but his face seems softer somehow, its usual impenetrable reserve melted away; he looks as if he’s just woken up from a pleasant dream.

Jiang Cheng thrusts the ribbon at him, the end of it trailing from his hand as if he’s bleeding. “Could you help me with this, Lan Wan—Lan Zhan?” He tries to stop the wince he can feel twitch across his face – Wei Wuxian would never have asked for help. Even when they were children, Wei Wuxian had refused to ask for any assistance at all, with anything, except jokingly to Ajie when he’d ask her, his lower lip pushed out into a childish pout, to wipe his mouth for him or when he’d whine to Jiang Cheng about the buckets of lotus seeds he was carrying being too heavy, not because he couldn’t carry them himself but because he wanted at least one hand free to flick discarded seed husks at Jiang Cheng.

Had he ever heard Wei Wuxian ask Lan Wangji for anything? In his memory, they seemed to always come to the same silent accords that he and Wei Wuxian did or had once done. As flirtation, perhaps, but he can’t bring himself to do that. Instead, he reaches out and almost brushes Lan Wangji’s forehead ribbon with his curved finger, stopping just shy of touching it, so close that Lan Wangji’s eyelashes flicker.

“You have more practice with such things than I do,” he says, trying to smile, though he can feel that he’s not quite being successful – the tiny reflection of himself that he can see in Lan Wangji’s wide eyes seems to be leering crookedly.

Lan Wangji stares up at him for a long moment, until Jiang Cheng, cheeks flushing, starts to withdraw the hand clutching the ribbon. Before he can, Lan Wangji reaches up to grasp his wrist and then tugs the end of the ribbon so that it slides out from between Jiang Cheng’s fingers. “Allow me to help, Wei Ying,” he murmurs, lowering his eyes, his eyelashes like two black fans on his cheekbones.

Jiang Cheng kneels down with his back to Lan Wangji, gripping his knees, digging his fingers in to keep them from trembling. Why should his hands be shaking? Ajie used to fix his hair for him when he was a child – there’s no reason to be nervous about Lan Wangji doing it. And yet, he can feel the sweat slicking his palms, no doubt leaving darker handprints on the black fabric of his robes.

It is, he supposes, some comfort that Lan Wangji’s hands are quivering too as he carefully dries Jiang Cheng’s hair with the towel and then begins to comb his fingers through it. The first touch is barely a graze of his fingertips through the hair at Jiang Cheng’s temples, and yet he shivers at it, so hard that his teeth nearly chatter.

“Are you cold?” Lan Wangji asks, his breath warm against Jiang Cheng’s cheek.

Once, not long ago, Jiang Cheng would have had something sneering to say about the draftiness of the Cloud Recesses, the unrelenting chill that clung to everything, that he would once have imagined to have sunk into Lan Wangji’s very bones. But now he pauses – what would Wei Wuxian have said? Before Wei Wuxian had gone off with the Wens, Jiang Cheng would have guessed that he would have spoken of the heat of the Yunmeng summer, the warming spice of the food, the sultriness of the lotus lakes at the sun’s afternoon peak.

All he can manage is an uncertain “No”, so uncertain, apparently, that Lan Wangji leans over to add another piece of coal to the brazier before returning to Jiang Cheng’s hair. His strong fingers massage his scalp as he works – Jiang Cheng can’t tell what he’s doing, just that he wants to lean back into the touch of Lan Wangji’s hands as he had into the steaming bathwater. Lan Wangji is taking his time about it, no doubt because with Jiang Cheng’s back turned, he can more easily pretend that he’s the Wei Ying who had gone searching for the Yin Iron with him, who had deflected Wen Chao’s attention from him when he was injured, who had killed the Xuanwu of Slaughter with him.

“Do you mind?” he asks and instantly wishes the words back. The pause of Lan Wangji’s fingers in their work is as good as a question, so he forces himself to choke out, “That I look like this?”

He hears a sharp inhalation, of quiet shock at being caught off-guard, he supposes, though Lan Wangji always answers in his own time, so it isn’t as if he’s being put on the spot. Though Lan Wangji is behind him, Jiang Cheng can easily imagine the look on his face, can almost hear the slow parting of his lips before he says simply, “Wei Ying is Wei Ying.”

Jiang Cheng’s stomach clenches at the reply, the bitter taste of disappointment rising in his throat. If only it were that easy, he thinks, though that just makes the tightness in his gut radiate upward into his chest – would he rather be Wei Wuxian? Sometimes when they were younger, the idea had occurred to him – he would have been liked by everyone, loved by his father, doted on even more by Ajie, and all of that with none of the responsibility of being Sect Heir, none of the expectation to represent the Yunmeng Jiang properly. What would he have done if he were so unfettered? Now, of course, he has to own that he’s always been too cautious, that the only time he’d truly been impulsive was when he’d stepped out into the street and let the Wen soldiers see him, and that had just been to save Wei Wuxian. While it might have been a decision of the moment, he had weighed out similar scenarios before, so the answer had been immediately clear: Ajie was safer with Wei Wuxian; the future of the Yunmeng Jiang was in better hands if Wei Wuxian lived.

Could he be Wei Ying? The fact that he can draw Suibian implies that there is – somehow – something of Wei Wuxian in him, but if he makes that choice to cultivate it, whatever it is, can he do it? Well enough to fool Lan Wangji? Well enough to fool himself?

Lan Wangji’s fingers are idly playing with his hair, as if he’s still arranging it, and they let go only reluctantly when Jiang Cheng turns to face him. He’d had years to learn Wei Wuxian’s expressions, if only to often be annoyed by them, but to duplicate them on his own face is another matter. Can his mouth even curve itself into Wei Wuxian’s broad smile, the one made slightly crooked by the faint shadow of a dimple in one cheek?

He tries it on, certain that he’s actually grimacing, and the smile almost collapses before it’s even fully in place when he sees Lan Wangji’s reaction – that glossy-eyed, slack-jawed look of adoration he’d seen Lan Wangji give Wei Wuxian once before, at Carp Tower, when Wei Wuxian had drunk a cup of wine on Lan Wangji’s behalf. His throat tightens, but he can’t swallow down the thickness in it, knowing he’s more likely to gag than anything else.

“Thank—” he manages to croak out before Lan Wangji’s mouth is on his, the kiss gentle, only the softest pressure of his full lips. There’s no frustration in it, as there has been before, no sense of punishment, only Lan Wangji’s warm mouth, the slight touch of the tip of his nose on Jiang Cheng’s cheek, the cup of his hand around his jaw.

Is this what it’s like to be loved? Jiang Cheng wonders, tears smarting in his eyes as he returns the kiss. He’s never known it before, not like this – everything else can be written off as the undiscerning sweetness of a baby, or the duty of an older sibling, but to have been chosen is another matter. Though even now, he knows it’s not him that Lan Wangji has chosen at all. And yet he still can’t summon the disgust he once would have, even though at the back of his mind is the constant refrain that this isn’t for him, that he may have had the title of Sect Leader and the power that came with it, but he’s never had this.

He lets Lan Wangji bear him back onto one of the cushions on the floor, part his robes, and untie his trousers, his long fingers as nimble with that as they were plucking the strings of his guqin. And when Lan Wangji takes him into his mouth, Jiang Cheng is already hard for him, as if this has been what he’s wanted all along.

*

They fall into a pattern in which Lan Wangji comes to the cottage in the lazy golden hours of the afternoon and stays until the chill gray of the next morning, when the fog that hangs on the mountain’s shoulders is lit by the first hints of sunlight. Sometimes, to his own surprise, Jiang Cheng urges him to stay longer – Jiang Cheng himself had never lacked for company growing up, and as an adult, he’d told himself he didn’t want it even if it was offered – but Lan Wangji’s mostly silent presence, rather than being maddeningly judgmental, has become somehow steadying. It’s also gratifying that Lan Wangji’s murmured refusal – something about his uncle being concerned that he’s not teaching enough classes – sounds genuinely regretful, that the righteous Hanguang-jun has found something to lead him off the path of duty, which he had once so rigidly followed.

Most of those hours are spent fucking, sweaty limbs entwined on the bed, hair tangled together on the bolster, or wrapped around one another in the wooden bathtub, water sloshing onto the floor with their movements. Jiang Cheng isn’t certain what he’s pursuing when they do this – Lan Wangji enjoys it, and somehow, bafflingly, that’s enough. Once, he’d been looking for punishment in whatever form he could get it, but now his goal seems to be for that hazy, soft-eyed look of peace to come over Lan Wangji’s face, to feel the breathless Wei Ying vibrate in Lan Wangji’s chest even as he hears it fall from his lips, swollen with Jiang Cheng’s kisses. Sometimes a small voice he keeps corralled in the back of his mind like an unbroken horse whispers that it’s just to make Lan Wangji hurt more when Jiang Cheng finally escapes this prison, but it’s becoming easier to ignore, especially when Lan Wangji’s lips are dabbing droplets of bathwater from his throat.

During the mornings and early afternoons, when he’s left on his own, the voice grows louder again, undeterred by the thought that Wei Wuxian wouldn’t want to hurt Lan Wangji or, at least, not on purpose. It’s just restlessness, he tells himself, though he knows that Wei Wuxian would be able to entertain himself if in similar circumstances – hadn’t Wei Wuxian taught himself an entirely new cultivation method when he’d been trapped in the Burial Mounds?

Sometimes he finds himself staring at his uncertain reflection in the wash basin, trying on Wei Wuxian’s expressions the way Ajie had once tried on robes when she knew Jin Zixuan was due to visit Lotus Pier. None of them suit him very well, though, nor are they convincing – his eyes don’t have the gleam in them that Wei Wuxian’s always had; when he scrunches up his nose the way Wei Wuxian used to do to make Ajie laugh, he resembles a rat scenting the air. It hasn’t seemed to matter much to Lan Wangji, but every time he gazes down into his tea for too long or fucks Jiang Cheng from behind, Jiang Cheng wonders if it’s to avoid having to look at a face he very much does not love.

Lan Wangji catches him leaning over the wash basin one afternoon, making faces at his own reflection, and gravely washes Jiang Cheng’s face for him after Jiang Cheng stammers out a lie about having gotten ink on his cheek. He tries wrinkling his nose as Lan Wangji methodically wipes his face in small circles with a damp cloth – Lan Wangji blinks, one of those inscrutable blinks that could signify either surprise or bone-deep disgust, but then the cloth drops from his fingers, and he sits back, a gulf of space widening between them.

“Lan Zhan?” The name comes more easily to his lips now, even if he still thinks of him as Lan Wangji; though he has to admit that that’s foolish – after everything, surely they’re on intimate enough terms to use birth names.

With a wave of his hand, Lan Wangji slips his guqin from his qiankun pouch and bows his head over it to tune the strings, though Jiang Cheng doubts that the thing has ever been out of tune for even a moment. Lan Wangji’s cheeks, when he can glimpse them through his hair, seem flushed – could Jiang Cheng’s attempt at one of Wei Wuxian’s expressions have been so mortifying as to embarrass the mostly unflappable Hanguang-jun?

“The cloth tickled my nose,” Jiang Cheng mumbles, feeling his own face grow hot as if echoing Lan Wangji’s blush, but Lan Wangji doesn’t seem to be listening to him anyway, still busily plucking the strings of his guqin.

“It was foolish of me to not have thought of this before,” Lan Wangji murmurs, his voice so low that Jiang Cheng can barely hear it over the wavering notes of the guqin. “This could have been resolved months ago.”

“Resolved?” Is this another test, just as drawing Suibian had been? But why? If Lan Wangji wasn’t already certain, why had he come to the cottage every day? Why did he let Jiang Cheng sleep with his head on his chest each night? Jiang Cheng squeezes his hands into fists where they rest on his knees to keep them from shaking, though he doesn’t know why he should be nervous. If he fails whatever test Lan Wangji is going to put him through, he’ll be freed from this prison. Isn’t that what he should want?

“I wrote this song for you years ago, Wei Ying, but I never had the opportunity to play it for you properly.” Lan Wangji glances up at him but then just as quickly looks away, though the brief glimpse Jiang Cheng catches of his face is enough, the earnestness of it but behind that a tenderness that makes his breath catch and tangle in his throat. “May I play it for you now?”

Jiang Cheng nods, two awkward jerks of his head, and Lan Wangji, teeth sunk into his lower lip, begins to play. The notes soar and swell within the too-small confines of the cottage – the sound of them stirs something deep in Jiang Cheng’s memory, Wei Wuxian humming under his breath while carrying planks of wood during the rebuilding of Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian whistling to himself as he dangled his feet into the lotus lake, stopping only to take a gulp of wine. Jiang Cheng knows little of music himself, but he recognizes the melody, if only because Wei Wuxian had hummed it so incessantly before he’d run off with the Wens. He wants to sneer at it, to make some sort of scathing critique of it, and yet he can’t – after all, Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have; he might have made some little joke, maybe a bit of false self-deprecation, but Wei Wuxian would have been kind.

Tears spring to his eyes, and he brushes them away with the side of his hand. Why, after everything, is he doomed to carry the weight of missing Wei Wuxian? Because there is no one else, is the answer that springs into his mind, but then he looks at Lan Wangji, at the tiny pleat of concentration between his brows, the nimbleness of his long fingers on the strings, and he knows it isn’t true.

Lan Wangji must see a stray tear rolling down his cheek, because he stops the vibration of the strings with his palm and abandons the guqin on the table. “Wei Ying?” He dams the flow of the teardrop with the pad of his thumb. “Do you remember? Can you recall the name of the song?”

Jiang Cheng forces out a short, huffing laugh. “You know what hi—my memory is like for things like that, Lan Zhan,” he says. “But I—I think I remember some of the tune?” He hums a passage of it haltingly, unable to look at Lan Wangji for fear of seeing him wince at the sound of it. At Lan Wangji’s silence, Jiang Cheng lets the song trail off and finally dares a glance at him.

Has anyone – even Ajie herself – looked at him with so much love in their eyes? No, any more than anyone would have written a song for him. It seems all the more intense for Lan Wangji’s usual reserve, the way his dark eyes shine with it, every line of his face softened, disarmed. Jiang Cheng swallows, the gulping noise loud in the quiet room, trying to force down the lump that has swelled in his throat. He doesn’t deserve this – even if it were intended for him, how could he ever have earned such naked adoration?

When he speaks, though, his voice still comes out strangled, hesitant. “I can’t deny that I can draw Suibian. We both saw it, and I—I’ve done so since.” He presses his lips together – he has no map to follow for this based on Wei Wuxian’s expressions, for when was Wei Wuxian ever unsure of anything? And if he had been, would he have ever admitted it? “But I can’t remember any kind of spell or ritual being done to—to summon me back.”

“It is as you said, Wei Ying – your memory has always been unreliable,” Lan Wangji replies. “When I happened upon Jiang Wanyin in the forest, the day you returned, he was performing the Sacrifice Summon. I saw the array drawn in his own blood – I covered it over with dirt and leaves to hide it, because I knew that you would not want the reputation of the Yunmeng Jiang to be tainted by the knowledge that its Sect Leader had resorted to such wickedness.”

“But why would he—” Jiang Cheng begins before realizing the absurdity of what he was about to say. Why would he have tried to bring Wei Wuxian back at the expense of his own life? He can’t truthfully say that he was happy, but happiness and duty rarely overlap. And yet, it wouldn’t have been the first time he had sacrificed himself for Wei Wuxian, would it?

Perhaps the answer is here, though, directly in front of him, shining hectically in the deep, gold-flecked brown of Lan Wangji’s eyes – Wei Wuxian is someone who could inspire love, devotion, even awe in others, and Jiang Cheng is not. In spite of the hatred, the resentment, the blame, he still holds for Wei Wuxian, even Jiang Cheng can see that, for hadn’t he once been one so inspired?

“Maybe he regretted what he’d done,” Jiang Cheng mumbles, and he can’t tell if he’s referring to himself or to Wei Wuxian – it might even be true of both of them.

“It no longer matters, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji replies. “It may have been the first unselfish action Jiang Wanyin ever performed, and for that, at least, I thank him.”

Was it? Jiang Cheng wants to protest, wants to tell Lan Wangji about the rain splashing in a muddy alley, how it streamed off the black pointed helmets of the Wen soldiers as they advanced on Wei Wuxian, how it had soaked his boots and his robes up to the knees as he’d led them through the twisting streets at a run. Was that not unselfish?

But he shoves the thought aside. Lan Wangji, no doubt, would be unmoved by any defense he can put up for himself, for Jiang Cheng, and that in itself is alluring somehow – the devotion so evident in his every word and action, every opinion even. Lan Wangji had given up three years of his life for Wei Wuxian, and while Jiang Cheng considers that foolish, the idea of it makes his skin crinkle into gooseflesh, makes envy sour his stomach.

No one has bothered to look for him, it seems, in all these months – on the rare occasions when Lan Wangji gives him news of the outside world, Yunmeng Jiang appears to be thriving in his absence. Jin Ling is safe and loved in Carp Tower; Lan Wangji is more free with information about that, at least, apparently gleaned from Zewu-jun’s frequent visits to Jin Guangyao. It’s always delivered to Jiang Cheng with complete neutrality, as if he were relaying news about an acquaintance or even an acquaintance of an acquaintance, rather than Jiang Cheng’s only living family member, a toddler who has been partially his charge nearly since birth. Perhaps this too is better – as much as he loves Jin Ling, Wei Wuxian would no doubt be a far better uncle than he could, one who never let his dark moods overtake him, who always had a ready smile rather than one that appears to hurt his face. Jin Guangyao already spoils Jin Ling – every time Jiang Cheng saw him, the child would have a new toy, a new pet, a new cloth-of-gold robe already stained with drool.

He reaches out and takes Lan Wangji’s hand, turning it over in his palm; one of his fingers has the beginnings of a blister on it, as if he’d been practicing his guqin with special concentration, determined to play the song perfectly for Wei Wuxian. What would Wei Wuxian have done if he hadn’t been constrained, first by Lan Wangji’s apparent dislike of him and then by his defection from cultivation society? Jiang Cheng knows that if anything had happened between them, Wei Wuxian would have let it slip to him – if it had happened before he ran off to the Burial Mounds, that is.

So instead, he thinks of Ajie, how she’d soothed his scrapes and cuts with gentle kisses before smearing on stinging ointments and bandaging his wounds, and presses Lan Wangji’s fingertip to his lips.

“Remind me of the name of the song, Lan Zhan,” he says, folding Lan Wangji’s injured finger back into his palm.

Lan Wangji’s cheeks flush, deepen into the color of the tips of lotus buds, and he bows his head before murmuring, in a voice so low and faint that it barely stirs the strands of hair falling over his face, “WangXian.”

Take it, a voice whispers to Jiang Cheng. He’s gotten a second chance once before, on Baoshan-sanren’s mountain, and now another is being offered to him. This time, at least, he has even less to lose. He wouldn’t want any of this, of course, not for himself – but Wei Wuxian would have.

He lets go of Lan Wangji’s hand and cups his face between his palms, thankful that Lan Wangji’s eyes are still downcast, any expectation or disgust hidden behind the shade of his eyelashes. It was a rule as inviolate as those carved on the wall in the Cloud Recesses’ main courtyard that the Second Jade of Lan is a peerlessly beautiful young master, and Jiang Cheng had certainly heard about it enough from Wei Wuxian, always in an offhand way, as if he were just repeating common knowledge. Even Nie Huaisang had commented on Lan Wangji’s beauty before, which had just made Jiang Cheng roll his eyes and feel as though everyone had caught some kind of illness that only he was immune to.

But now, he makes himself look at Lan Wangji, actually look, not just in a quick, sideways glance, but a long, thorough appraisal. The years of seclusion and recuperation have changed him, have planed down the smooth roundness of his cheeks, given his beauty a severity that matches the austere coldness of his personality. Or, rather, his personality outside of this cottage, Jiang Cheng supposes, because his eyes when he raises them to meet Jiang Cheng’s are as warm as the lotus lakes at summer’s peak, as is the breath that grazes the tip of Jiang Cheng’s thumb when Lan Wangji’s lips, the same color and crinkled silken texture as a poppy’s petal, part to be dampened by his tongue.

Has he ever truly wanted to kiss anyone? The thought of kissing Wen Qing had always been too far-fetched, the idea that she would have ever allowed it absurd. He’s kissed Lan Wangji many times now but never for what he would have thought of as the right reasons. Perhaps he does now – but could it just be whatever allows him to draw Suibian doing its work on him?

And yet Lan Wangji clearly expects to be kissed, which must mean it’s what he, at least, believes Wei Wuxian would have done, so Jiang Cheng leans forward and brushes his lips over Lan Wangji’s, slowly, gently, until Lan Wangji is gasping against his mouth.

*

When he wakes the next morning, the bed beside him rumpled but empty, he’s slick with sweat, as if a fever were raging through him. It takes perhaps longer than it should for him to realize that it’s his golden core, roaring like a freshly stoked flame in his lower dantian, hot and close and accessible. The power of it has been just out of his reach for so long that his body has forgotten it, even if he himself never stopped longing for it.

He scrambles out of bed, throws the cool water from the washbasin over himself, and tugs on his robes, even though they cling to his wet skin. The talismans that Lan Zhan has been using to suppress his golden core must be gone – does that mean that Lan Zhan trusts him to stay or that he wants him to go? But why now, after all this, would Lan Zhan want him to leave?

Still, he can’t help but test the lock with his spiritual power, trying to probe its inner workings with brief bursts of spiritual energy. Lan Zhan locks the cottage’s door from the outside when he leaves in the morning, and attempting to do this blind is more difficult than hitting a bullseye while blindfolded. Sweat prickles along his hairline as he works at the lock, but it remains steadfastly shut.

Wei Wuxian would be able to do this, he tells himself as he tugs at the door. I can do this.

The morning stretches on as he works – will he still be crouched here, tinkering blindly with the lock when Lan Zhan arrives in the afternoon and opens it with his key? Finally, through the paper panel of the door, he hears a dull click and then a thud as the lock opens and falls to the wooden porch. Something surges through him – he would call it pride, perhaps, and yet wasn’t it a foregone conclusion that he’d be able to get the better of a simple lock?

He throws open the door and steps over the threshold into the crisp sunshine, the air chill after the stale warmth of the cottage. The bamboo trees toss their heads in the breeze, and in the darkness at their feet, he can see the morning fog beginning to retreat. The heron in the pond fixes him with a stern yellow eye when he climbs up onto the porch’s railing to breathe in the air that smells of gentians, pine, and distant snow. He’ll always think of Lotus Pier as his home, of course, but perhaps the Cloud Recesses has its own beauty.

As he swings his legs over the shallow pond in the garden, the dim sense that he should be running comes to him, some forgotten urgency that had once seemed so important. Perhaps it’s just an eagerness to finally see Jin Ling, since he hadn’t had the chance before, but that can wait – no doubt, Lan Zhan will take him to Carp Tower eventually, though he can’t say he’s that excited to go otherwise. But Jin Ling is Shijie’s son, and he’s all alone now in that gilded snake-pit that the Jins call Lanling. How like Jiang Cheng to be so impulsive as to leave a child in such a situation.

The bamboo gate scrapes over the gravel as it opens, and Lan Zhan glides through, his step as measured and graceful as always, though he can see the haste in it too. Two bottles of Emperor’s Smile dangle from Lan Zhan’s curved hand, clinking together with the rhythm of his gait.

Lan Zhan gives a minute start when he hops down from his perch on the porch’s railing, waving and calling Lan Zhan! in a voice that startles the heron into the air and scatters the birds from the bamboo trees. He’s still not accustomed to smiling with this face, though at least his smiles come more readily now, but it’s of no great concern. After all, Shijie always used to say that he’d been born with a smiling face, hadn’t she?

***

“Can you understand my concern, Wangji?” Lan Qiren asks, and Lan Wangji anticipates a pang of guilt that never comes – he has given his shufu far too many reasons for concern over the past few years, but whatever Lan Qiren is troubled by now couldn’t be that serious.

He stares straight ahead, watching his uncle’s hand as it strokes his beard, waiting for the inevitable explanation for his disappointment. It was Lan Qiren’s usual habit for when he was particularly agitated – during the summer that Wei Wuxian had studied at the Cloud Recesses, his beard had begun to look decidedly threadbare as the weeks had passed.

“I had thought that your penance and the years of meditation and reflection that followed might have helped you to shake off the… recalcitrance of your youth,” Lan Qiren goes on. “Instead, I have heard from Lan Qiyuan that you have given her your afternoon classes. She is, of course, eminently capable of handling them, and if it had been due to you going on night hunts or otherwise helping the people of Gusu, I would not have called you here.” He slaps his hand down on the small table between them, hard enough to make the teapot and cups rattle; against his will, purely out of habit, Lan Wangji’s eyes dart to meet his uncle’s. “But I have no reports of any such excursions, nor have you been in the jingshi in meditation or in the library for study.”

Lan Wangji blinks, silently pleased with himself for not jumping at the sound of his uncle hitting the tabletop. The tip of Lan Qiren’s nose is turning pink, and Lan Wangji can see moisture glittering among his eyelashes, and then the guilt finally begins to needle at him – it has never been his intention to cause his shufu distress, and yet there was no other choice. It isn’t as if he could have told Lan Qiren that he had Wei Wuxian – in the body of Jiang-zongzhu, no less – locked in the Gentian House; doing so might have led to another debilitating punishment, another prolonged recovery, and Wei Ying would have been lost to him forever. Now, perhaps, that Wei Ying has accepted who he is, the time is ripe for Lan Wangji to present him to his uncle and his elder brother, though he can’t imagine that the revelation will lessen Lan Qiren’s irritation with his perceived shirking of his responsibilities. If anything, it’s likely to exacerbate it.

“And in addition to all of this, Lan Jingyi has been telling tales of seeing you return from Gusu carrying bottles of wine, though I’m not sure how a child of his age could have known what they were.” Lan Qiren purses his lips, disapproval radiating from him, but to Lan Wangji’s surprise, it is tinged with sadness. “I had hoped that once… certain elements were removed, you would be able to return to the path you were raised to tread, Wangji.”

He stops listening. It is all too clear what his uncle is referring to, another sad repetition of the idea that Wei Ying had led him astray, had somehow tainted him, when nothing could be further from the truth. The thought of revealing the Gentian House’s secret inhabitant to his shufu is buried as quickly as it was unearthed.

“I know you have been spending a great deal of time in the Gentian House,” Lan Qiren says, and that, at least, captures Lan Wangji’s attention, if only for the threat of discovery – what would happen if his uncle found the crescent-shaped lock on the door, likely the same one that had been used to keep Lan Wangji’s mother prisoner there? “Even I can see how events of recent years might have recalled those of the past – Xichen and I both fear a repetition of…” He trails off, the unsaid words seeming to flitter like snow in the air between them.

“Please be assured, Shufu, that your fears are groundless,” Lan Wangji says, and his uncle blinks as if startled by the sound of his voice. “I have no intention of entering secluded meditation.”

He can find no other assertions to offer, though – Wei Ying has been returned to him, true, but he still has no concept of how that will shape his daily life. His own voice, younger, more desperate, perhaps, but also more inflexible, whispers to him that he should keep Wei Ying locked away forever, for his own safety – but hadn’t Wei Ying himself told him how much he would have despised that? The words had been spat from Jiang Wanyin’s mouth, but they’d surely been Wei Ying’s – The last time you tried to drag him up your mountain, he told you to mind your own business. He has made such progress with Wei Ying; to lock him up again, to put the talismans and barriers back in place, to limit his world to the Gentian House and its little garden, would almost certainly undo all of that.

That Wei Ying has already been changed by whatever befell him between his fall from the cliff and his soul being summoned by Jiang Wanyin is obvious – he’s more subdued, more deliberate, less irreverent than he’d once been, though Lan Wangji supposes such a transformation is inevitable and perhaps not unlike the one Wei Ying had undergone after his time in the Burial Mounds. He can well remember the change that had overtaken Wei Ying then, how he’d been so altered that Lan Wangji hadn’t been entirely certain that the black-clad figure confronting Wen Chao at the Yunmeng courier station was Wei Ying at all; the laughter that had once lingered in his eyes and at the corners of his lips had gone – he’d appeared frozen over, pale, cold.

And yet, Wei Ying had returned to himself after that – for a time, at least – though now Lan Wangji can recognize that some of the smiles during their lunch at the inn that day in Yiling had been forced, a brittleness poorly concealed by their brightness. But he can still hear Wei Ying’s voice over the wail of the wind in the Burial Mounds as he had walked off with a-Yuan, singing his song about walking a single-plank bridge.

Not for the first time, he ponders taking Wei Ying away from the Cloud Recesses and wandering the countryside like the daozhang they had met before the war had, beholden to no one and following only their own promise to do good works and live without regrets. Though even then, he couldn’t simply slip away without any explanation – he may have to bide his time, but there is no way to avoid telling Shufu and Xiongzhang the truth. He would not wish them to hear rumors from outside of him traveling alongside the Yiling Patriarch without being able to explain himself.

“I am pleased to hear that, Wangji,” Lan Qiren replies, though he sounds hesitant in a way Lan Wangji has never heard before, or, rather, that Lan Wangji has never heard directed at him before. “I would not have liked to have been forced to put you under more formal supervision. And your brother, I know, will be appreciative of the help – he carried the burden of rebuilding and then caring for you well, never complaining, but I am well aware of that weight. I bear as much of it as I can for him, but I am growing old – he needs you here at the Cloud Recesses, Wangji, though he will never say it.”

That, finally, is the blow of guilt that strikes him, nearly driving the breath from his lungs. He can dimly remember his Xiongzhang cradling his head to trickle broth between his lips, gently sponging the still-seeping wounds on his back clean, bringing him news of a-Yuan’s illness until the terrible day that the fever had overtaken the child. Lan Xichen had wiped the tears that followed from his cheeks, had stroked his hair as his sobs had racked him.

“Does this mean you will be resuming your classes?” Lan Qiren asks. “Perhaps you over-taxed yourself – you could start with fewer, and—”

“Not yet, Shufu.” Lan Qiren’s nostrils flare in response to the interruption, and he blinks a few times, quick beats of his eyelids. Lan Wangji might still be trying to accustom himself to Wei Ying’s new face, but it has made him more aware of others’ changing expressions – perhaps Wei Ying has yet to achieve full control over it, and so his every feeling is plain on his face. “Soon, though, you and Xiongzhang will understand the reasons for my recent behavior. And once that has been achieved, it is my hope that I will return to night-hunting and good works, in addition to my responsibilities at the Cloud Recesses.”

Lan Qiren’s brow furrows with such intensity that it disturbs the cloud motif on his headband, but he doesn’t ask any further questions, and when Lan Wangji rises to leave, he dismisses him with an impatient wave of his hand, not acknowledging the bow Lan Wangji offers. It is doubtful that his uncle will be pleased when he discovers the truth, Lan Wangji knows, and may even been concerned about losing face with the other sects when it appears that a long-missing, presumed-dead former Sect Leader has been at the Cloud Recesses all along, but what good is the righteous, principled reputation of the Gusu Lan if it does nothing to lessen the suspicions of the other great sects?

His uncle, for all his sternness, has always been indulgent with him – or he had been until the siege at the Burial Mounds – perhaps in an effort to spare Lan Wangji the burdens that he himself had suffered under. Surely he – and Xiongzhang – will indulge him in this as well, once they know the truth of the situation. After all, hasn’t he achieved what no one thought possible? Hasn’t he tamed the Yiling Patriarch and returned his feet to the righteous path?

The sun has sunk low in the west, its ruddy light striping the gravel path as it shines through the bamboo trees. Wei Ying must wonder what’s kept him. Lan Wangji can picture him, sitting on the porch with his boots crumpled beside him, leaning back on his palms, his hair swaying as he tips his head back to look at the sky. At the creak of the gate and the sound of Lan Wangji’s footsteps on the gravel, Wei Ying will raise his head and smile at him, that smile that is at once so familiar and so unfamiliar.

He quickens his pace, keeping it just slow enough to avoid reprimand if he’d been a junior disciple, and hurries toward the Gentian House and Wei Ying.

*

Wei Ying wipes his palms on his robes; they leave darker streaks on the black fabric from the sweat on them. The last time Wei Ying had faced most of these cultivators, he’d had blood on his lips and tears streaking his cheeks, and his shoulders had been shaking with mirthless laughter. Even so, he had still been defiant, whereas now he’s fidgeting, pale, pursing his lips so tightly that the pink of them disappears. It’s unlike Wei Ying to be so nervous in the face of interacting with members of cultivation society – his bravado, sometimes taken to the point of disrespect, had drawn Lan Wangji to him as much as it had first repelled him. But, he has to admit, the circumstances are entirely different, and perhaps Wei Ying is correct to be trepidatious – after all, now he has something to lose.

“At least the conference is in Qinghe,” Wei Ying mutters. “Carp Tower would’ve been almost as bad as Lotus Pier.”

That too is reasonable, though Lan Wangji can’t help but frown at the catch in Wei Ying’s voice when he says Lotus Pier. The Jin still have the most reason to bay for Wei Ying’s blood, even though several years have passed since the death of their heir at the hands of the Ghost General, and while Jin Guangyao, with the increasing infirmity of Jin Guangshan, has taken on more of the responsibility of leading the sect, there is no guarantee that Wei Ying would not be thrown into the Carp Tower dungeons if he turned up there, even as a guest of the Second Jade of Lan.

He would have avoided all of it if he could, would have even risked Shufu’s disappointment and Xiongzhang’s grief, and taken Wei Ying away from the Cloud Recesses, but the countryside is still infested with cultivators seeking the Yiling Patriarch, wanting to claim the glory or the reward of delivering him to the Jins or killing him outright. If the sects, at least, are informed of his return, of his rehabilitation, perhaps Wei Ying will be spared the danger.

Xiongzhang has exhausted himself by flying Shuoyue between the Cloud Recesses, the Unclean Realm, and Carp Tower to help Nie Huaisang – Nie-zongzhu, Lan Wangji supposes – to organize this cultivation conference. Perhaps Lan Wangji should feel some twinge of guilt for potentially overshadowing that labor by reintroducing Wei Ying to cultivation society at the event; perhaps he should feel something greater than a twinge for not having told Xiongzhang or Shufu of his plans. They would have opposed it, of course, not wanting it to be known that the Yiling Patriarch had been secreted at the Cloud Recesses for months – he doubts they would have agreed that just such an arrangement is the perfect justification for Wei Ying to be accepted once more into the cultivation world.

Fortunately, Wei Ying hasn’t balked at carrying Suibian as Lan Wangji had feared he might; if anything, he’s seemed eager to have the sword in his hands again. Nie Mingjue, the first and most vocal critic during the Sunshot Campaign of Wei Ying’s decision to discontinue his sword practice, is gone, but plenty of gossips and meddlers remain, many of whom still bear grievances against the Yiling Patriarch.

Wei Ying’s gait, as he paces back and forth across the length of the Gentian House, is not quite the easy swagger it had once been, even if his clothing is right – black silk robes with a faint pattern woven through them over a crimson underrobe, a broad leather belt with matching wrist guards, his sleeves wrapped with strips of black cloth, and, of course, the blood-red streak of his hair ribbon flickering in the dark of his hair. The only thing missing is the Yunmeng Jiang clarity bell hanging at his waist, but it would have been Jiang Wanyin’s, which would have invited unwanted questions. Today is a departure from that old life and Wei Ying’s embarkation into a new one, so perhaps such reminders of the past would be out of place.

The broken halves of Chenqing, another remnant of Wei Ying’s former life – or one of his former lives – have been slipped into the qiankun pouch in Lan Wangji’s sleeve, further proof, if needed, that Wei Ying has turned away from demonic cultivation, that Wei Ying may live once more, but the Yiling Patriarch is dead and gone. He has never been one for persuasion with words, though for Wei Ying, he will do his best, but if the heads of the other sects close their ears and demand their vengeance, they will fall to Bichen just as easily as the thirty-three Lan elders did. Wei Ying will not be taken from him again, not by anyone.

No doubt all of this will prove to be an excess of caution, though, he thinks as he watches Wei Ying turn and start another lap of the room, his dark brows drawn together, that line between them that he’d never had in his first body etched deep with worry. A hint of anger too, perhaps, but worry certainly. Has he finally learned the importance of at least maintaining the appearance of remaining within the boundaries set by society? Lan Wangji has never cared much for such things himself, but he has come to understand the freedom that at least keeping up the pretense of following them has afforded him.

That concern alone on Wei Ying’s part should be proof to the Sect Leaders of the Jin, Yao, and Ouyang that he has reformed, and once that is clear, how could anyone refuse to forgive him whatever grudges they bear against him? Carrying Suibian cradled in the crook of his arm should be reassurance enough, and then – perhaps with Xiongzhang’s beautifully diplomatic speech – they can all be reminded of how Wei Ying had turned the tide against the Wen during the war, something that they forgot far too quickly in the first place, preoccupied as they were with their own thirst for power. At least they had seen with their own eyes at the Nightless City that the Yin Tiger Tally had been broken and half-destroyed, had scrambled greedily after the pieces of it, so there can be no accusations on that score.

No, there can be no excuse to call for Wei Ying’s imprisonment or worse, not when he has been supervised for months by Lan Wangji himself, forbidden from using his golden core – he hasn’t so much as written a talisman, and his fingertips, when he runs them over Lan Wangji’s skin, are free of the bitemarks that had always marred the pads of his fingers in his former body. And while Lan Wangji might regret Wei Ying’s current docility, when it comes to his reintroduction to cultivation society, it will serve him well.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, and Wei Ying stops immediately in his pacing to look at him, that worried crease between his brows smoothing away when their eyes meet. “It will be well.”