the dark, the light, the flame

The rumors are so horrifying that at first Lan Wangji simply…cannot believe them. They cannot possibly be true. The world is much darker and less just than he had been led to believe (than he has tried to believe, tried so hard that most of the time, he does. Until a flash of memory unmoors him: his mother’s desperate eyes, a door that never opened, a chill that bit deep into his soul), but surely, surely the world cannot be as dark as that.

He has experienced firsthand the Wen’s callousness and rapacious greed, Wen Chao’s petty cruelties. The burning of his beloved home, the weeks spent in Nightless City, the malice in the Xuanwu’s cave…Lan Wangji, Shufu’s prize student, had learned quickly never to expect the smallest crumb of mercy from the Wen.

But this—this is too much. Surely not even the Wen would go so far.

Surely Wei Ying (bright, beautiful, brilliant Wei Ying) could not be suffering that. Surely the universe simply would not allow it.

(Now, with the emotional articulate he lacked as a child, he can realize that this is the cry of the boy kneeling in the snow, waiting at a door that would never open. Surely the universe cannot be like this, the boy’s heart had cried in a wordless wail. Surely this must be a nightmare.)

But the rumors do not fade with time. Instead, they grow more and more insistent. And Lan Wangji, who has had trouble sleeping since Cloud Recesses burned, stops being able to sleep at all. (The nightmares. The nightmares.) As he fights, travels, trains, flies, plans, packs, heals, cleans, lifts, carries, waits (waits…waits), it is there, in the back of his mind, the image of Wei Ying on his knees, bound and broken.

(And yes, despite himself, he has fantasized about Wei Ying on his knees countless times since the night they met. But in his fantasies, it was always Wei Ying’s choice. It was something Wei Ying wanted to give as much as Lan Wangji wants to give it in return.

In his fantasies, when Wei Ying was on his knees, it was for him. And in his fantasies, Lan Wangji went down on his own knees just as often. A mutual surrender. A give and a take.

Not this.

Not. This.)

Even meditation, his most constant comfort, does not soothe his mind. There is no escape from the nightmare image.

And yet. And yet, despite the way the rumors have eaten away at his innards, gnawing down hope and faith in justice pursued, he has not truly believed them. Not until Lan Yufei is rescued from the Wen’s clutches.

(It is a familiar pattern when it comes to him and Wei Ying. Denial, clung to fiercely, even as it frays under Lan Wangji’s desperate grip. Denial, worn down relentlessly by everything Wei Ying is. And then: the sudden snap.

In the library: Yes, I want him. Fury.

On a cliffside, beneath the glow of rising lanterns: Yes, I love him. Hope.

In the Xuanwu’s cave: Yes, this is what I want for all the days of my life, however many or few there are: to be beside him. Acceptance.

Here is the same pattern, woven again.

Yes, he is taken. Fury, beyond what he had known possible. Pain, deeper even than the loss of his mother. Determination, swelling until there is no room for anything else)

Lan Yufei is one of Lan Wangji’s most distant cousins, the blood tie so tenuous that he might as well be an outer disciple. (No one would assume him the blood of Lan An judging only by cultivation or beauty.) He is not one of Lan Wangji’s favorite shixiong (he has a self-righteous, inflexible quality that Lan Wangji fears most in himself). But he is, at least, unfailingly honest and mentally sound. He would not lie, and he is not given to hallucinations or misinterpretation of what is happening in front of him. When he speaks the words (the ones that shred Lan Wngji’s heart), Lan Wangji can do nothing but believe him.

When they bring him in, Lan Yufei is almost skeletal with weeks of starvation, his middling golden core not equal to the task of such extended stretches of inedia. There are raw wounds on his wrists, his hair is matted, he reeks. His rescuers had not even taken him to the healer’s tent, much less to a bath. Instead, as soon as they pull him from a Wen supervisory office dungeon, they bring him directly to the tent Nie Mingjue uses as the Sunshot Campaign headquarters.

Lan Wangji is there, and Xiongzhang, and a handful of other high-ranking cultivators. Jiang Wanyin is not-–it is his turn to be searching.

(At first, they had searched together, bound in grim silence by their shared mission. But that was before they stopped back at camp for more supplies and Chifeng-zun had done the equivalent of dragging them by the ears back to his tent, where he informed them that they were putting the whole campaign at risk, wasting their time searching for a single cultivator. Lan Wangji thinks of Jiang Wanyin as a generally angry man, but he realized in that moment that he had never seen the new Jiang-zongzhu truly unleash his temper. Lan Wangji’s own fury was less dramatic but just as forceful, and Chifeng-zun had compromised by allowing one of them to go out at a time in between major pushes.

Lan Wangji would not have agreed if Xiongzhang had not gently guilted him by reminding him of the countless thousands who will suffer if the war continues. Only the thought of the peace on Wei Ying’s face as he folded his hands and swore to protect the innocent—and the answering echo in his own heart—made Lan Wangji relent.)

Jiang Wanyin had set out last night after the supervisory office was secured, not even pausing to clean off the blood and muck of battle before taking off on his sword. It has helped Lan Wangji to get through this day, knowing that someone is out there looking for Wei Ying (even if his heart still howls that he should be the one searching).

So those in the tent are mostly Lan and Nie with a few rogue cultivators who have proven themselves in the battle so far, and one or two representatives from smaller sects. The discussion is focused on their next move. The Jin are expecting them at a rendezvous point in three days—is there enough time to try another raid on the Wen in that time? Or should they use this time to rest and regain their strength?

Lan Wangji hopes for the former. Rest is not within his reach. Attempting it will only leave him more restless and desperate. All he wants is to throw himself into another battle. But he will, of course, defer to what Xiongzhang and Chifeng-zun decide. He does not have the energy to argue, even if he had the will.

There is a commotion outside, and then two cultivators, one in Nie colors, the other unaffiliated, bring in Lan Yufei. They’re supporting him on either side, and it takes Lan Wangji a moment to recognize him without his forehead ribbon. He had not expected to see Lan Yufei again, certain that he was long dead. He feels a surge of relief that has nothing to do with any affection he might have for his shixiong himself (which is little), but only the general gladness to see any of his sect alive. Xiongzhang hurries over and gently takes Lan Yufei by the arm, easing him down onto the stool that Chifeng-zun vacates.

“Zewu-jun,” Lan Yufei says, haggard face sagging with relief. “You are safe.”

Yes, Lan Yufei was captured after Xiongzhang fled with the Lan texts but before he turned up again. Sometime in those hazy weeks, Lan Yufei had been dispatched with a small band of Lan and Nie disciples on a raid and never returned. He would not know that Xiongzhang survived.

“I am. I am glad to see that you are as well.” There is real warmth in Xiongzhang’s eyes, but it fades as he asks, “And the others who were with you?”

Lan Yufei grimaces. “All dead.” It is no more than any of them expected, but at the look on Xiongzhang’s face, he hurries on. “It was quick. Most fell in the skirmish, and the Wen executed the rest right away. But one or another of them saw my forehead ribbon and thought I might be useful as a hostage. They brought me here and tossed me in a cell.”

Lan Wangji is surprised that any Wen cultivator knew enough about Lan forehead ribbons to recognize a clan member, but it was lucky for Lan Yufei that one had.

“He was the only one left in the cells,” the Nie escort says. “The rest must have been taken when Wen Chao and his entourage fled.”

They had only just missed Wen Chao when the Sunshot warriors fell on the supervisory office the day before, that much had been clear. Dirty plates and empty cups had been scattered in the living quarters, as had female clothing in the colors Wang Lingjiao favored. The Wen had left only a handful of soldiers behind, and the major raid that Sunshot had planned turned out to be merely a matter of mopping up.

“There were only two others. A local magistrate and his wife,” Lan Yufei says. “He’d been funding resistance to the Wen, but they didn’t want to offend the emperor by killing him. I don’t know if they took them with them or if they just let them out and hoped they learned their lesson. There'd been some other prisoners at various times, but by the end, it was just the three of us.”

And then—

(Such small words, casually spoken. As though they mean nothing at all. An aside that might just as easily have been forgotten.)

“And Wei Wuxian, at night.”

The world goes cold. Lan Wangji feels nothing. For the space of a heartbeat, he might as well be carved from the jade he is so frequently compared to.

And then he is across the room, hands fisting in Lan Yufei’s rags, hauling the man up to face him. (Distantly, he recognizes that Chifeng-zun has shouted something, that Xiongzhang is calling his name. But he registers none of it.)

“What did you say?”

His own voice is rough, raw, unfamiliar. Lan Yufei blinks at him, terror in his eyes. (Later, Lan Wangji will remember that Lan Yufei has always been intimidated by him. But never has another Lan looked at him in fear.

He doesn’t care.)

“Wangji!”

Lan Yufei stammers, his rank breath hitting Lan Wangji in the face, teeth clattering together. It takes Lan Wangji a moment to realize that Lan Yufei is not trembling with fear but that he is shaking because Lan Wangji, who is still holding him, is shaking. (Every muscle in his body, vibrating.)

“Where. Is. Wei Ying.”

“Er-gongzi, I don’t know!” Lan Yufei manages to say. “Wherever they—they took him with them—they—I don’t know where—”

The shake Lan Wangji gives him now is intentional—and hard. Lan Yufei gasps, and Lan Wangji is about to shake him again, but suddenly there is Xiongzhang’s hand on his arm.

“Wangji. Please. Let him down.” So gentle. And then, when Lan Wangji does not obey: “He will tell you what he knows, but put him down.”

It is Xiongzhang’s command voice, the one he so rarely uses (for anyone, much less for Lan Wangji). Every emotion Lan Wangji has ever known is screaming through his body at an intensity greater than any he’s ever felt, in chorus with some he does not know how to identify. But at the sound of Xiongzhang’s voice, the touch of his hand, he forces himself to loosen his grip.

Lan Yufei drops back onto the stool with a small moan, but Xiongzhang is there right away, feeding him a thread of qi to steady him.

“Please, shidi,” Xiongzhang says. “What news do you have of Wei-gongzi?”

Lan Wangji trembles.

Frantic-eyed, Lan Yufei starts to protest. “I don’t—”

Xiongzhang’s voice is calm, soothing. (For once, it does not touch Lan Wangji at all.) “I know you don’t know where he is. But you see, we have heard nothing about his whereabouts for months.”

It is a lie—or at least one of those statements that Xiongzhang excels at that are adjacent to lies without exactly qualifying. They have heard nothing conclusive, certainly, but the rumors—

(Lan Wangji trembles.)

“Wei-gongzi is a very dear friend of Wangji’s. He has been very worried since he disappeared. Any news would be appreciated.”

Lan Yufei winces, his eyes darting towards and away from Lan Wangji. “I know little—”

Lan Wangji takes a half step forward, but Xiongzhang catches him with another hand on his arm. “Any news,” Xiongzhang repeats.

(Lan Wangji trembles.)

Lan Yufei curls in on himself, but he keeps his eyes on Xiongzhang now. (And finallyfinallyfinally starts to speak.) “Wen Chao brought him with him, when he came. They only arrived a week or two ago. I really didn’t—” He swallows hard. “They kept him upstairs with them. They only put him in the cell at night, and then they usually dosed him with something that knocked him out—or maybe it was needles, I don’t know. So he didn’t speak to us much. I don’t really know anything about what went on upstairs, but the guards would come get him or bring him back, and sometimes they would talk and—”

He stops, glancing fearfully at Lan Wangji again, but Xiongzhang gives him an encouraging nod, so he continues. “They put him in chains whenever they took him out. I could hear them. And they—they mocked him. About…about being Wen Chao’s f-f-footstool. And—” He sucks in another breath, then seems to force himself to say it. (Lan Wangji trembls.) “—and about what Wen Zhuliu did to his golden core.”

Lan Wangji does not feel his body move. His conscious mind does not note the way that Lan Yufei flinches away from him, the way that Chifeng-zun takes a step forward. The way the other cultivators in the room recoil into horrified silence.

All he knows is that one moment he is standing in front of Lan Yufei (this nonentity, someone barely worthy to speak Wei Ying’s name) and the next he is jerking the tent flap aside with a burst of qi and pulling Bichen from his hilt.

“Wangji!” Xiongzhang’s hand is too desperate to be gentle this time. Lan Wangji tries to shake it off, but it just tightens, iron-strong. “Just for a moment. Just one moment, Wangji.” Lan Wangji wrenches his arm again, like a prisoner throwing itself against his chains (like Wei Ying, in chains…), but Xiongzhang is perhaps the only person in China whose arm strength is greater than his own. He does not let him loose.

“Didi, wait.”

It is that one word that makes him stop fighting, perhaps the only word Xiongzhang could have spoken that would make him do so. Xiongzhang has not called him didi since they were small children. (Since those feverish, confused days right after A-Niang—)

“I must. I must, gege.” He has not called Xiongzhang that in all this time, either, and he makes no conscious choice to do so now. He hears himself say it, his voice raw as a dull blade against stone. “I—”

“I know, didi. I know.”

Xiongzhang releases his arm and pauses, waiting to see if Lan Wangji will fly off. He is burning to do so, every bit of qi, every particle of matter in his body yearning in one direction. But he allows Xiongzhang to take him by the shoulders (those hands are gentle again, but firm enough that in any other circumstances, they would be sustaining) and turn him so that they stand face to face. Bichen hangs down by his side.

(Wei Ying.)

“I need you to wait a few moments before you leave,” Xiongzhang says. At Lan Wangji’s inarticulate sound of protest, he squeezes his shoulders. “I know. But you will need supplies to keep you strong.”

Lan Wangji has a qiankun bag with basic supplies, as all cultivators do at all times. But even if he did not, it would not matter. “There is no time—”

“Wei-gongzi…” Xiongzhang’s eyes are so kind, so compassionate. “He may need serious medical care. You’ll need more than what is in your ready bag.”

Lan Wangji hesitates. What would it be like to reach Wei Ying and not be able to help him? (His mind shies away from what condition he might find him in. Denial: that is always his first reaction when it comes to Wei Ying.) But any wasted moment….

“I already sent Lan Liu to fetch one of the emergency bags from the quartermaster. She should be back at any moment.”

Lan Wangji had not even noticed her pass.

“Please, didi. For yourself, and for Wei-gongzi, and for me. Wait a moment.”

It is one of the hardest things he has ever done, but Lan Wangji waits. Xiongzhang does not offer any encouraging words, just keeps holding on to his shoulders as the mundane life of camp continues around them.

(Lan Wangji is not there. His soul is already racing through the chilly skies. Towards—)

It seems like an eternity before Lan Liu runs up, a qiankun bag in each hand. Lan Wangji snatches them from her and whips Bichen around to leap up. But then a thought grabs him, and he turns back to Xiongzhang.

“Will you—Jiang Wanyin, he—” Later, he will be surprised at himself, that he remembers anyone else in this moment. But he has seen his own desperation on Wei Ying’s brother’s face every time he looks at him. And if Jiang Wanyin found Wei Ying first and did not tell him—

But Xiongzhang understands. (Xiongzhang always understands.) “Yes, of course. I will send a message immediately. Go.”

Lan Wangji goes.

Later, he will remember little of that last search. In his memory, it will be nothing but a blur of winds buffeting his body, emotions buffeting his heart. He cannot distinguish night from day, cold from heat, rain from sunshine. Nothing registers, nothing matters outside of the tolling of each heartbeat: Wei Ying. Wei Ying. It drums in his chest, pounding through his veins, building in intensity and desperation as the hours pass.

(Later, Xiongzhang will tell him that he found Wei Ying in less than four days. But time cannot be measured as it passes, each breath only one more in which Wei Ying is suffering, adding up to eternity.)

He flies. He swoops. He rips open doors and through buildings. He demands. He questions.

And he cuts down anyone in red who gets in his way.

The search becomes all he is, the world before swept away by his own desperation. He is caught in that void until:

A huddle of Wen soldiers in a copse somewhere (it could be anywhere, but later, he will learn that it was near Yiling). Bichen’s silver-blue flash, the resistance and then give of flesh and bone under the blade. Blood. And one last cultivator, trembling in terror, reeking of bowels loosed in fear, prostrate with begging.

“---anything you want to know, anything—” the man pleads and Lan Wangji halts his blade mid-swing.

“Where is Wen Chao?”

The man tells him.

Lan Wangji kills him anyway.

And flies.

The supervisory office is well-guarded. If the Sunshot Campaign were to attack it, it would require hours, perhaps days, of fighting to take it.

But one man can go where an army cannot. Lan Wangji rips apart the wards with sheer fury and a few talismans Wei Ying had taught him while they were searching for the Yin Iron. The guards he cannot slip by, he cuts down. He cuts down a door, too, and then another.

And—

(Wei Ying has stolen his breath from his lungs again and again and again, as long as they have known each other. He had once had the ridiculous thought that if he died, Wei Ying could come and look at him, and his heart would start beating again.

Even when Wei Ying was in pain—in Nightless City, in the Xuanwu’s cave—seeing him is, for Lan Wangji, a burst of light bright as the sun.

He cannot say he has grown accustomed to it. For the rest of his life, it will overwhelm him. But it is familiar, at least, the way he feels when he sees Wei Ying.

What he feels now, when he sees Wei Ying for the first time in so long, also steals his breath, but it is nothing like those other times.

This is something new.)

Wei Ying is on the floor. He’d been on his hands and knees earlier, perhaps, but now he is collapsed down into a pile of pallid skin, black rags, matted hair, too prominent bones. Lan Wangji cannot see his face, but he knows every (beloved) line of that body, the shade of his hair, the fabrics he prefers. Lan Wangji cannot see any blood, but it would not show on black, even if it is there. He is, at least, alive.

That is all that matters. That is all Lan Wangji sees.

(He does not see Wang Lingjiao, reclining on a couch. A female guqin player behind a translucent screen, who breaks off her song with discordant twang and a scream when Lan Wangji kicks in the door. Incense and silk hangings and wine bottles and plates of half-eaten delicacies, while the common people turned to refugees by the Wens’ war are starving in the mud.)

No. He sees this too: Wen Chao, leaping to his feet from where he had slouched in a chair set up like a throne. From where he’d had his feet propped up, lazy and arrogant, on Wei Ying’s back.

(They mocked him, Lan Yufei’s voice echoes in his mind. About being Wen Chao’s footstool.)

There is no disbelieving his own eyes. The rumors were true.

And then there is the glint of lamplight on links of chain as thick as Lan Wangji’s wrist that curl around Wei Ying’s prone body like smoke around a stick of incense.

Lan Wangji’s mouth does not let out a bellow of rage, but his heart does. His eyes narrow as the guqin player screams and flees through a back door. Lifting Bichen, he flings himself forward—

—and jerks to a halt, mere bu from Wen Chao. Who has grabbed Wei Ying by the hair and hauled him to his feet in a clatter and clang of chains. Who has a knife held to Wei Ying’s throat.

“Don’t. Move.” Wen Chao’s voice is smug, with only a hint of fear underneath it. “Or I slit his throat and he bleeds out right here.”

Lan Wangji does not move. He could not, even if he wanted to. He is caught, frozen, by Wei Ying’s eyes.

They are riveted to Lan Wangji’s face, wide and wild in his skeletal face. Disbelieving. But his cracked lips cannot part with that bright Lan Zhan! that Lan Wangji has been waiting to hear since Wei Ying passed out in his arms in the Xuanwu’s cave.

His mouth is gagged. (Of course they gagged him. Of course they did. Wei Ying would have talked and talked, annoying them to death. He would have used his silver tongue to try to talk his way out of captivity. He would have mocked Wen Chao and driven him to distraction. Lan Wangji, of all people, knows the power of Wei Ying’s voice.)

As the disbelief bleeds out of Wei Ying’s face, relief (welcome—joy) does not take its place. Lan Wangji’s heart thuds in his chest once, twice, before he recognizes the emotion dawning in Wei Ying’s eyes.

Shame.

(This is nothing like Lan Wangji imagined. Whether in his fantasies—the ones he could not stop his own fevered mind from conjuring over and over—or his nightmares, being reunited with Wei Ying was never like this. Sometimes in those fancies, Wei Ying had been unconscious or confused about what was happening around him. But always, when he realized that Lan Wangji was there, his eyes would fill with that bright recognition and he would say, “Lan Zhan!” like he always has, like he is making some new, delightful discovery.

Never, not even in his nightmares, did Wei Ying drop his gaze in shame and stand in silence.

Shameless, Lan Wangji had said, more than once. And always, instead of denying it, Wei Ying laughed.

This Wei Ying, weak and bound, does not look like he remembers how to laugh.)

Wen Chao’s hand is still fisted in his hair (how many times has Lan Wangji’s mind conjured up visions of grabbing that hair, baring that long neck in all its vulnerable glory? How many times has he imagined pressing worshipful kisses to the delicate skin there, just as the knife is doing now?), but Wei Ying keeps his gaze on the ground, though he must feel Lan Wangji’s eyes boring into him. Look at me. Wei Ying, look at me again. (How many times had he stared at Wei Ying in class, in the library, wishing that the intensity of his own desire for Wei Ying’s attention would pull it back to him? He had thought it worked then, for Wei Ying never looked away from him for long—though every time he did look back, Lan Wangji had to avert his own eyes. But maybe it had not worked. Maybe Wei Ying had just wanted to look. That would explain why the intensity of Lan Wangji’s longing now does not raise Wei Ying’s eyes.)

Seeing that his threat is effective, one of those wide, smug smiles stretches across Wen Chao’s face. “Well. Isn’t this interesting? A visit from Lan-er-gongzi. Wait—I believe they’re calling you Hanguang-jun now, aren’t they?”

His sneering turns the title into an insult. Lan Wangji ignores it.

“Release Wei Ying,” he commands and is gratified to hear that his own voice is steady if rough with anger.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Wen Chao says, tightening his grip on Wei Ying’s hair, forcing out a small, muffled whimper from his captive that flays Lan Wangji’s heart. (How many times had he dreamed of making Wei Ying whimper? How many times had he dreamed of stuffing something into Wei Ying’s mouth so that he couldn’t talk, only moan around fabric or Lan Wangji’s fingers or Lan Wangji’s cock?)

“I think I’ll keep my favorite footrest,” Wen Chao adds.

The sound Lan Wangji hears himself make is almost a growl, and Wei Ying’s eyes dart to him in shock before flitting away again. (Lan Wangji feels that one brush of his gaze is as he would the touch of Wei Ying’s hand.)

Wen Chao jerks Wei Ying’s head back, unintentionally scraping the blade over the jut of his throat. It’s only the smallest of scrapes, but it leaves a spot of bright red blood on Wei Ying’s skin. (On Lan Wangji’s heart. How many times has he dreamed of sucking marks into Wei Ying’s beautiful neck, of nipping at his Adam’s apple, of leaving records of his touch all over Wei Ying’s body? How many times had he gloried in the thought of that golden skin marked red?

But not like this. Never like this. This is all of Lan Wangji’s most private fantasies, stolen and forcibly inverted. They had been pure in his mind, almost holy. He had comforted himself when the intensity of his own fantasies frightened him, telling himself it was only because of his love for Wei Ying. That he wanted to make Wei Ying feel worshiped.

Once, he would have given anything to see Wei Ying on his knees, his skin marked. Now, here, everything is twisted, ugly, hateful, and Lan Wangji burns with shame.)

“You don’t think I’m serious about slitting his throat, Hanguang-Jun?” Wen Chaos’ eyes and smile narrow in challenge. “Try me.”

“It would be doing the world a favor anyway,” says a woman’s voice, and Lan Wangji almost starts—he had forgotten that Wang Lingjiao is in the room. She had shrieked when he burst in, but apparently did not run out with the musician. In his periphery, he can see her easing towards him, her sword in her hand. “It’s not like he’s worth anything anymore without a core.”

Just for a moment, Wei Ying’s eyes, still directed at the ground, flutter closed. And Lan Wangji’s heart sinks.

(He had known, of course. The rumors and Lan Yufei had said it was gone. But he had hoped it was some sort of misunderstanding, even as he had known that it couldn’t be. Not even Wei Ying’s being used, yes, as a footstool had crushed the very last crumbs of his denial. Maybe Wen Chao had forced him to lock down his spiritual energy. Maybe Wen Zhuliu had done something else to drain but not destroy his core.

But the way Wei Ying’s eyes close now, in defeat…there is no room left for denial. Wei Ying’s golden core is gone.)

“Gut him now,” Wang Lingjiao is saying. “And rid the cultivation world of a nuisance. Or better yet, toss him into the Burial Mounds like you said. That’s the right place to dispose of trash.”

Wei Ying shows no reaction to being likened to garbage. He must have heard many things as terrible as that—if not worse—in his time as a captive. (How long? Judging by what Jiang Wanyin has said, the most probable scenario is that Wei Ying was captured right before he was due to meet up with Jiang Wanyin. But that was well over three months ago. It is unendurable, to think that Wei Ying has been suffering this for all that time.)

Wen Chao’s laughter is the most loathsome sound Lan Wangji has ever heard. “That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? Fitting and funny. But it would be a waste. It seems like Hanguang-jun wants this baggage back.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Wang Lingjiao says. “He’s less than worthless now.”

Saying that Wei Ying is worthless without a golden core is like saying a priceless vase made by a master craftsman is worthless because the flowers it held have died and been thrown out. Only the most wretched of fools would believe such a thing.

“Release Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji commands again.

“You’re not in any position to be making demands, Hanguang-jun,” Wen Chao says.

Lan Wangji lifts Bichen again, but when Wen Chao shakes Wei Ying hard enough to make his chains rattle, he freezes in place. “You think you’re so strong, don’t you? Just because you killed Xu-ge? You think that you’re fast enough that you can get to him before I can kill him. That you can take both me and Jiaojiao. Well, perhaps you could. Want to test it?”

And then he presses the knife down, and a line of scarlet blood leaps up and runs down Wei Ying’s neck, and Lan Wangji cannot move.

“Wen Zhuliu will be walking through that door any minute,” Wen Chao continues, letting up on the knife (the blood still runs). “You stand no chance against all three of us.”

That is true. Wen Chao might be bluffing about Wen Zhuliu’s imminent arrival, but Lan Wangji cannot risk Wei Ying’s life on the possibility.

“Why don’t you give Jiaojiao your pretty little sword and lock down your spiritual energy and then we’ll talk.” When Lan Wangji hesitates, Wen Chao lifts his voice. “Do it or I’ll kill him now.”

There is nothing else to do. He had hoped that Jiang Wanyin was right behind him, that he would have used the tracking talismans that the two of them had set up when they were searching together. But in this moment, Lan Wangji is alone, and Wei Ying’s life is hanging in the balance.

Lan Wangji lifts his arm, ready to hand over his sword, but suddenly Wei Ying’s eyes are on him, intense and begging, and despite the blood running down his throat (pooling in the pit of Lan Wangji’s stomach), he gives a minute shake of his head. (He is staring at Lan Wangji just like Lan Wangji used to stare at him, his whole soul behind it, like he’s certain that if he tries hard enough, he can convey whatever he is thinking directly to Lan Wangji’s mind.

It doesn’t work. Lan Wangji does not know what plan he is trying to communicate. But he knows Wei Ying, and he knows Wei Ying will always come up with a plan. And of all the powers in the world, Lan Wangji trusts Wei Ying the most.)

So. Lan Wangji will stall. He retracts Bichen right before Wang Lingjiao can take it. “What would stop you from killing me too?” he asks.

Wen Chao raises a brow as though he had not considered that Lan Wangji might not acquiesce. “Oh come on, Lan-er-gongzi. The Second Jade of Gusu is a much better hostage than a servant’s get who used to be a cultivator. You think I’d waste an opportunity like that?”

He wouldn’t. Wen Xu would have executed Lan Wangji right away, but the younger Wen brother has always been wilier. He would delight in using a chained Lan Wangji to torture Xiongzhang.

Lan Wangji wonders for a second why Wen Chao had not done that with Wei Ying. He could easily have sent a message to Jiang Wanyin, dangling his shixiong’s life in front of his eyes. But Wen Chao had said it already. A servant’s get who used to be a cultivator. As far as he is concerned, Wei Ying is worthless now, and his selfish mind could never comprehend that Jiang Wanyin might feel otherwise.

No, he had not kept Wei Ying as a hostage in the traditional sense. He had kept him as a prize of war, a statement to his own troops, not to his enemies. Look at this defanged, declawed thing. This once-untamed creature made pathetic, all his light doused by the Wen’s black sun. Every time he hauled Wei Ying out in chains, used him as a piece of furniture, Wen Chao had been flaunting his power.

And when he tires of that, Lan Wangji has no doubt that he will indeed slit Wei Ying’s throat or toss him into the Burial Mounds like so much rubbish.

“Give me your word,” Lan Wangji demands.

Wen Chao scoffs. “You want my word?”

It is a reasonable reaction. Lan Wangji trusts nothing less than he trusts the honor of the Wen. But Wei Ying wanted him to stall, and perhaps Wen Chao will believe that Lan Wangji is sincere. There are times when a reputation for righteousness is advantageous.

Wei Ying is twisting in Wen Chao’s grip now, small movements, like he’s trying to wriggle away instead of fight his way free. “You really want my—stop moving!” Wen Chao jerks Wei Ying closer, silencing the rattle of chains, the bloody knife right up against his neck again. “Oh, fine. I give you my word.”

As he says it, Wei Ying looks straight into Lan Wangji’s eyes, determination blazing bright. When he moves, Lan Wangji is ready.

It is clever, so clever (as Wei Ying always is). Lan Wangji doesn’t know how Wei Ying managed to get a length of chain behind Wen Chao’s foot, but he did, and a single, sudden yank (even from arms as weak as Wei Ying’s are now) wrenches Wen Chao’s leg out from under him. Even as he loses his balance, Wei Ying throws his weight back against Wen Chao’s body and slides down. There is a clatter of chains and curses, a tangle of chains and limbs, and by the time they hit the ground, Lan Wangji has reached them.

He cannot swing Bichen, not without risking Wei Ying’s life. Instead, he grabs onto a black-clad arm and tries to haul Wei Ying clear. He sees a flash of glinting red—Wen Chao’s knife must have done some damage as they fell. Despite the chains, Lan Wangji manages to pull Wei Ying aside right before Wang Lingjiao leaps at them with a hiss like an angry cat.

For a moment, the confusion is so great that all of Lan Wangji’s strength and training and cultivation is useless. Wen Chao is waving around the knife in one hand and his sword in the other; Wang Lingjiao’s distraction was enough to let him climb to his feet. Wei Ying has scrambled as far away from the fight as his chains will allow (not far enough). Lan Wangji had managed to repulse Wang Lingjiao’s first attack, but now both she and Wen Chao come at him.

Lan Wangji can handle them. It is not arrogance to know this; it is a lifetime of disciplined training and the adrenaline fueled-assurance that comes from knowing that he must save Wei Ying. He must, and so he will.

And so, of course, it is at that moment that Wen Zhuliu barrels through the door, and all Lan Wangji’s assurance melts away. For less than a heartbeat, despair surges up inside him before determination shoves it aside. He cannot win against all three of them even with Wei Ying yanking his chains back and forth to batter at Wen Chao’s legs and kicking at furniture to try to trip up Wang Lingjiao. (If Wei Ying still had his golden core, if he had Suibian in his hand, if he and Lan Wangji were fighting back to back, there would be nothing that could stop them. Lan Wangji knows this as surely as he knows the precepts of his clan. But Wei Ying’s hands are bound together and the space behind his lower dantian gapes hollow, and they have no chance. Even if Lan Wangji manages to hold all three of them off for a time—even if none of them remember that the best tactic is to grab Wei Ying again—there will be more guards streaming through the doors at any moment. Lan Wangji had not been able to kill them all.)

Well. Then Lan Wangji will die protecting Wei Ying.

He fights with all the desperation that had fueled his three-day (three months, one week, and four days) search, but part of his mind races even as he does. If he can take out one or perhaps two of his opponents before he goes down, that will at least contribute something to the Sunshot Campaign’s efforts. He will not be able to save Wei Ying, but at least he can do that much to bring an end to this hated war and to protect the innocent. And then he can die beside his love.

Just as he reaches this conclusion, a shout of “No!” rings out, punctuated by Zidian’s distinctive hiss, and hope leaps to life again.

Even with Jiang Wanyin hurling himself into the fray wielding both Zidian and Sandu, it is not an easy fight. Even back to back, two against three would be dire, and they cannot fight back to back because one always has to position himself between Wei Ying and danger. Wei Ying is still flailing his body around, trying to contribute something (but he is weak now, weak with months of captivity and malnutrition, weak without a golden core), but his efforts do little beyond adding to the general pandemonium of the room.

The chaos suspends for the space of a breath when Bichen finds its way into Wang Lingjiao’s gut. Lan Wangji plunges it into her, wrenching it out at a sideways angle, trying to do as much damage as possible. (Cultivators have been known to survive stabbings, but not this stabbing. Not this cultivator.) Then Wen Chao gives a furious cry and Wang Lingjiao tumbles to the ground, and the tumult resumes as abruptly as it had paused.

Lan Wangji doesn’t know how much time passes before he hears Zidian make a different sound, a sucking hiss (it sounds pleased. Satisfied) and when Lan Wangji pivots to block another blow from Wen Chao, he catches a glimpse of Wen Zhuliu, bound by a rope of purple light. The sight sends a fresh surge of energy through Lan Wangji’s veins and only a few moments later, he has Wen Chao disarmed and on his knees, Bichen leveled at his throat.

The blur of motion and color halts, all except for the heart thundering in Lan Wangji’s chest. And then Wen Chao starts to beg. Lan Wangji can feel a sneer spread across his own face. Not even the most righteous Hanguang-jun could find a scrap of mercy for the one who hurt Wei Ying. He lifts his sword—

—and is stopped by a single, terse, “No.”

Lan Wangji pauses and looks over at Jiang Wanyin. His ally’s face is flushed, whether with anger or exertion (probably both, judging by how Zidian pulses with furious energy with every heaving breath he takes. Wen Zhuliu suffers in silence, not a sound escaping through his clenched jaw, though he has fallen to his knees and visibly twitches with every pulse of Zidian). Wei Ying’s brother’s eyes hold the same fury that burns inside Lan Wangji. “He’s Wei Wuxian’s.”

Yes. That rightness of that settles something inside Lan Wangji. The choreography is complicated, but it ends with Jiang Wanyin sending more pulses of energy crackling through Zidian even as he holds Sandu to the throat of a still-begging (and now weeping, Lan Wangji notes with disdain) Wen Chao. Once that is accomplished—

Finallyfinallyfinallyfinallyfinally, Lan Wangji goes to Wei Ying.

There is blood and there are chains and Lan Wangji almost hesitates, overwhelmed, before certainty settles him and he bows to remove the gag, his face chi from Wei Ying’s burning eyes.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says as the gag falls to the ground, and his voice is not bright with wonder and glee as it usually is when he says Lan Wangji’s name. It is rough (how dry must his mouth be?) and weary. Wary and tinged with shame. (At the sound of that shame, Lan Wangji’s heart begins to seep blood, but there is no time now to address it. Not now, in the enemy’s camp, with Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu still living.) But it is Wei Ying, speaking his name. (It is what Lan Wangji’s soul has hungered for.)

“Wei Ying,” he answers, the old call and response (and always, they have been able to convey entire conservations through that simple exchange. Lan Wangji tries now to imbue the syllables with everything he feels—always will feel—for Wei Ying.)

He snatches the gag up from the ground and presses the fabric to the wound on Wei Ying’s neck (a second later, he realizes perhaps he should not have. It is not clean, and Wei Ying is vulnerable to infection in a way he never was before, but it is done now, and the bleeding must be stopped). “Hold it firm,” he says, ready to hand it off to Wei Ying.

But Wei Ying does not take the rag from him. Instead he winces (shame again, darkening his eyes). Confused, Lan Wangji looks down at his arms.

Here is why Wei Wuxian was not able to use a blood-sketched talisman or his clever fingers to escape. His wrists are bound together in ugly shackles, but that was not enough (not for Wen Chao, the monster who lies whimpering on the ground). Someone pulled small, rough sacks over Wei Ying’s hands and fastened them in place with those same shackles. Where it emerges from the shackles, the sacking is stiff with blood and pus, and Lan Wangji’s stomach heaves at the sight.

He forces himself to hold tight to the thought of how close Wei Wuxian must have come to escape (how many times? Wei Ying would never have given up) before Wen Chao figured out that he had to still Wei Wuxian’s tongue and hands.

“You fucking bastard,” Jiang Wanyin snarls from behind him, and then Lan Wangji hears fabric shifting, a wail from Wen Chao, and a thud—Jiang Wanyin must have kicked him over. (Lan Wangji is glad.)

“Hold them out,” he says to Wei Ying, straightening but still holding Wei Ying’s (shamed) gaze. To Lan Wangji’s satisfaction, Wei Ying does not look away, just raises his bound wrists. His steady (shamed) eyes do not move from Lan Wangji’s face even as Bichen flashes between them.

The shackles hit the ground with a clang, and Wei Wuxian finally looks down at his hands. Lan Wangji wants to rip the sacking off of them, but he knows Wei Ying, and so he holds himself back as Wei Ying fumbles, both of them wincing as the rough fabric is peeled away from the raw wounds encircling his (fragile, so fragile now) wrists. Then Lan Wangji swings Bichen once more, and the chains around Wei Ying’s ankles are shattered too.

Slowly, slowly Wei Ying rises to his feet (it looks painful, in so many ways) and stands free.

(The expression on his face is so unsure it makes Lan Wangji want to weep. But he is standing, and he is alive, and he is free.)

“Lan Zhan,” he says, then looks over at his brother. “A-Cheng.” He hesitates. “You’re here.”

“Of course we’re here,” Jiang Wanyin snaps. (It took Lan Wangji a long time to realize that that sharpness is the way he shows his affection. It is irrational, but that has never bothered Wei Ying.) “Where else would we be?”

Wei Ying’s face cracks open with some emotion Lan Wangji cannot name. He does not have time to identify it, because Jiang Wanyin is still talking.

“But now that we’ve found you, I’d really rather be anywhere else before the guards Lan Wangji and I didn’t kill come running in, so will you kill that fucking bastard so I can kill this one and we can leave?”

Wei Ying’s gaze darts to the knife that had been held at his neck. It is lying sticky with blood on the floor. Then he looks over at Wen Chao, hate shining in his eyes. (Lan Wangji has never seen Wei Ying show hate before. But now.

Oh, now.)

“You deserve to do all the things to him that he did to you,” Jiang Wanyin says, voicing the thought of Lan Wangji’s own heart. “But we don’t have time—”

He cuts off. Wei Ying’s eyes go wide. Lan Wangji is holding out Bichen.

“He can’t wield that now, idiot, he doesn’t have—” Jiang Wanyin snaps, but Lan Wangji violates a Lan precept (at this moment, he thinks he would violate every Lan precept for Wei Ying) and interrupts.

“A single blow,” he says.

A heartbeat of silence and then, “Will it even let him…” Jiang Wanyin starts to ask. He trails off when Wei Ying, gaze steady on Lan Wangji’s face even if his eyes are unsure, reaches out and takes the sword with both (free) hands.

Through his connection with Bichen, Lan Wangji feels the sword’s first, shocked recoil at the touch of someone who is not Lan Wangji. Perhaps in surprise, Wei Ying’s grip tightens, and—yes–Bichen goes quiescent, like a horse recognizing its master, and accepts Wei Ying’s hold. (Of course it does. Bichen is part of Lan Wangji, and no part of Lan Wangji could ever reject Wei Ying.)

Wei Ying staggers as he moves towards Wen Chao, whether because of the weight of the sword he is struggling to hold or his body’s own weakness. Lan Wangji reaches out to catch him, but he keeps his feet and takes another step. As everyone in the room watches (even Wen Chao, who has stopped begging and sobbing and is only whimpering as Wei Ying approaches), he stations himself in front of Wen Chao and looks over at Jiang Wanyin.

“He’s yours,” Jiang Wanyin says, like a vow. “This one is mine.” A curl of his lip and a jerk of his head towards Wen Zhuliu. “And Wangji got the other one.”

(It is the first time Jiang Wanyin has ever called him anything so familiar, but Lan Wangji does not have time to consider how he feels about that or what it might mean. All he is thinking of is the rightness of it, the three Wen generals struck down by himself and Jiang Wanyin and Wei Ying.

For Lotus Pier and Cloud Recesses. For Jiang-zongzhou and Yu-furen. For a burnt library and months of fear and for everything, everything they did to Wei Ying.

Yes. This is right.)

Something hardens in Wei Ying’s face even as Wen Chao’s screamed pleas rise to the heavens. His arms tremble as he lifts Bichen, but he plants his feet and swings with the full weight of his body.

Lan Wangji does not notice the sudden cessation of Wen Chao’s shrieks, the blood that fountains out, or even the way that Bichen falls to the ground. Instead, as Wei Ying’s eyes roll back in his head, Lan Wangji launches himself forward to catch him.

When Jiang-guniang opens the door and slips out, pulling it closed behind her, her eyes are red with weeping. This is alarming—the last few days they’ve been red with exhaustion, but Lan Wangji hasn’t seen them swollen like this since the day he and Jiang Wanyin brought Wei Ying back to camp. She had wept then over Wei Ying’s unconscious body, over Jiang Wanyin’s stuttered description of how they’d found him and what had happened to his core. It had helped, somehow, to see her weep. He told himself that this was because it was good to know that someone cared enough about Wei Ying to weep for him, and that was true enough. But it is also true that Lan Wangji has not been able to do his own weeping. He’d held Wei Ying’s limp (weak) body in his arms and, against the backdrop of Jiang Wanyin taking his revenge on Wen Zhuliu, a single tear slid down his cheek.

It is the only tear he has been able to cry. He does not know why. He has never been one for crying, not since after his mother died (once he finally accepted that the door would never open again, he had wept himself sick, alarming Shufu so much that he had been allowed to spend several days in Xiongzhang’s bed. But once those tears finally ran out, he has never found them again). He had not cried when Cloud Recesses fell nor when he was worried for Xiongzhang’s life. He had supposed himself in shock (or perhaps, he worried, he truly was as cold and emotionless as everyone said he was), and there had been no time to process and grieve.

But now the Wen have been dealt a fierce blow, three of their most powerful leaders killed in one action. They are reeling so much that the Sunshot Campaign felt confident enough to withdraw to winter quarters at Qinghe a few weeks earlier than they otherwise would have. Here in the Unclean Realm, Lan Wangji has his own room and few responsibilities (he would give much for some responsibilities now to distract his mind). Now, surely, would be the time to cry.

But he does not, the riverbed of grief clogged with fear. Because the days keep passing and Wei Ying does not wake up.

The healers have assured the Jiang siblings that his wounds are superficial, that treatment for malnutrition is straightforward (once he wakes up and can take nourishment again. Lan Wangji doesn’t want to think about what his coreless body is doing to itself on only what water and broth Jiang-guniang has been able to coax down his throat). That even without a golden core, he should recover from wielding Bichen. (Lan Wangji burns with guilt. The texts in the Lan library said that, if a sword and its owner both allowed it, a non-cultivator could wield a spiritual weapon. They would not be able to access or direct qi through it, of course, but a sword is a sword. Bichen should have been inert in Wei Ying’s hand, but his unconsciousness proves that it was not. Lan Wangji’s theory is that Bichen recognized Wei Ying—recognized Lan Wangji’s feelings for Wei Ying—and tried to give him all it had. The irony is bitter. If only Wei Ying would wake up and laugh at it and set his formidable mind to the task of understanding what happened. Lan Wangji knows he would love this puzzle.)

But though he is not in danger (the healers swear), he has not recovered consciousness either. The Jiangs have allowed Lan Wangji to play for Wei Ying every day, even though he has no core to cleanse and so far it has done no good. (Lan Wangji suspects that Jiang Wanyin allows it because he feels grateful to him for finally finding Wei Ying but doesn’t know how to otherwise convey this. Jiang-guniang welcomes his visits, he thinks, because she feels sorry for him that there is nothing else he can do for Wei Ying. Or perhaps both siblings share both motives.) Every day he has brought his guqin and played to Wei Ying’s prone form. Every day, the knot of fear has grown in his throat.

It almost chokes him now, seeing Jiang-guniang with tear-stained cheeks. “Is he—?” (He’s afraid to finish that sentence, no matter how Shufu would scold him. There are so many things Wei Ying could be now, and his nightmares have not let him forget that.)

But she shakes her head. “He’s awake.”

Lan Wangji’s heart leaps. “Then why—?”

She gives him a sad smile, wiping at her face self-consciously. “He has suffered so much. And he and A-Cheng have been fighting already.”

That is no surprise. For all Lan Wangji still finds the dynamic between the brothers difficult to understand, there is no denying that the two of them spatting is evidence of things returning to normal. (If Wei Ying has the strength to argue, he must be healing.)

“May I…see him?” It feels greedy to ask, but he is incapable of not asking.

“Of course.” But she hesitates before turning to open the door. “He still has a great deal of recovering to do, Hanguang-jun.”

Lan Wangji knows a warning when he hears one. But Wei Ying is on the other side of that door, awake (alive). As soon as she slides it open, Lan Wangji hurries inside.

Wei Ying is lying on the bed, eyes open and directed at the ceiling. He looks over as Lan Wangji comes into the room, alert in a way that Lan Wangji finds heartening.

“Wei Ying.”

For a moment, there is something vulnerable in Wei Ying’s expression. But then he sits upright, and the vulnerability disappears, replaced by something hard-edged and dark. Lan Wangji’s blood chills.

“Lan-er-gongzi. I suppose you’re here for thanks?”

Lan Wangji recoils. No blow could hurt more than the polite address. It is all his mind recognizes at first, and then it connects, what Wei Ying actually said. The pain of it leaves Lan Wangji reeling.

“No!”

Wei Ying quirks a brow. “No? Well, you have it anyway. This lowly one thanks Hanguang-jun most humbling for saving his life.”

His voice drips with sarcasm, ugly as the gore of battle. He bows as best he can while sitting down. Wei Ying long ago mastered the art of turning a bow into an insolence, but now his mastery reaches new heights. (The fact that he does not rise from the bed tells Lan Wangji that he is still so very weak.)

“Wei Ying—”

“Jiang Cheng says you searched a long time. I don’t get why, but as Shijie seems glad to have me back, I’ll thank you on her behalf.”

Slice after slice, Wei Ying’s tongue as sharp as a knife. Lan Wangji flounders.

Wei Ying nods, like he expected as much. “I suppose the war is going badly enough that you thought even a single cultivator might help. Too bad for you that what you found wasn’t a cultivator at all. Such a waste of Hanguang-jun’s time and energy.”

Finally, something Lan Wangji knows how to respond to. “Not a waste,” he snaps.

“No?” He shrugs. “Well, Jiang Cheng has been harping about talismans and inventions, so I suppose I’m not totally useless.”

“Wei Ying could never be useless,” Lan Wangji manages to insist, and he’s grateful that his tongue found the words because that vulnerability flickers back into Wei Ying’s eyes.

But it is gone as quickly as it appeared. “Oh, I suppose I’ll find something to do that might help out a bit. And at any rate, you accomplished your mission. I’m back and three of the Wen’s generals are out of commission. A real victory for the Sunshot Campaign. They must have thrown a great banquet in celebration of the mighty Hanguang-jun and Jiang-zongzhu.”

They had. Lan Wangji had not attended, and he suspects Jiang Wanyin did not either.

“And Wei Ying. Wei Ying struck down Wen Chao.”

Wei Ying scoffs. “Hardly.”

Lan Wangji understands the implication—probably no one who was not in that room would credit Wei Ying for actually defeating Wen Chao when Lan Wangji was the one to disarm him and drive him to his knees. But he could not have done that if Wei Ying had not pulled the trick with the chains. He would not have been there if Wei Ying had not been there. And—

“Anyway, you’ve had your thanks. You can get back to whatever very important things Lan-er-gongzi has to take care of and Shijie can come drown me in more broth.” His eyes sharpen, at odds with the cool and detached expression that settles on his face. “Unless Hanguang-jun wants this one to go down on his knees?”

Lan Wangji would not have believed that anything Wei Ying could say could hurt as much as what he has already said. He was wrong.

Choking (bleeding out), Lan Wangji gropes for the support of a nearby pillar. “Wei Ying.” It is all his mouth (his heart) knows how to say, pleading, begging (broken).

“This patient needs his rest,” Wei Ying says, lying back down. “He requests that you leave.”

He closes his eyes, and there is nothing Lan Wangji can do. He stumbles to the door and into a haze.

(And a child, kneeling at an unopened door, weeps.)

The haze hovers, clearing only for a moment now and then when Xiongzhang gives him a task that requires actual thought. Then, he can fumble his way into something like focus for the time it takes to complete the assignment. But afterwards, the fog descends, and Lan Wangji floats through a world of pain (emotional, not physical. He would prefer the latter). His body moves automatically to sleep, feed itself, meditate, practice sword forms, train the new recruits that have found their way to the Lan. To those who do not know him, perhaps he appears as unaffected as ever. But nothing can penetrate the cloud around him.

He tries to see Wei Ying again, but Wei Ying barricades himself in his rooms for the next month. When Lan Wangji asks to speak to him, Jiang-guniang shakes her head, sympathy written all over her face. “I’m sorry, Hanguang-jun. He has requested no visitors.”

Every day, Lan Wangji returns, and every day, her answer is the same. “But he’s recovering,” she reassures him. “He’s eating and he’ll get his strength back. I promise that.”

One day, Lan Wangji corners the head healer, a dour woman of few words, and after a judgemental look, she confirms Jiang-guniang’s assessment. “He is young, and the young recover rapidly. His body will soon be as fit as that of any young man you pass in the street.”

Lan Wangji hears what she does not say. She says nothing about his spiritual power, so there must be nothing she can do about his golden core. Lan Wangji had suspected as much (so he does not understand his own disappointment. Denial, again?)

But it gnaws at him, the way she spoke only of Wei Ying’s body. A woman like that chooses her words carefully; she knew exactly what she was implying. Wei Ying’s body will recover. But his mind…his spirit….

Lan Wangji cannot bring himself to care about maintaining a serene face. Habit does most of the work for him, but those who truly know him can see how heavily this weighs on him. Xiongzhang’s eyes follow him with an anxiety that Lan Wangji wishes he could soothe, but he has no energy (or hope) to do so. One day he overhears Chifeng-zun say to Xiongzhang, “I’m worried about Wangji. He looks so bleak these days.”

Lan Wangji does not linger to hear how Xiongzhang replies; he does not need the guilt of that. But if Chifeng-zun is bringing it up, his misery must be unignorable.

Jiang-guniang’s face is somber now, too, all the time, though she tries to give Lan Wangji a smile when she sees him. She can offer him no hope, though, for all she tries.

“He is still hurting,” she confesses to him one evening, exhaustion curving her shoulders. “It’s not just the loss of his core. I think he could endure that. It’s all the rest of it, his time with the Wen…”

More than three months as Wen Chao’s footstool. More than three months of emotional torture. Lan Wangji cannot even imagine the kinds of insults Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao must have hurled at him, the indignities they must have subjected him to. He is only beginning to understand how Wei Ying’s pride must have been affected.

Wei Ying has always worn a cloak of cheerful arrogance, the kind that most infuriates people like Wen Chao (or even Lan Wangji’s own uncle). It is a protective armor, Lan Wangji has slowly realized, a way for a servant’s son to keep from appearing vulnerable. It has been some time since Lan Wangji had believed that arrogance was real, but now he sees what he had not before: underneath that showy facade, there had been a layer of real pride—pride that Lan Wangji, at least, sees as well-earned. Wei Ying is too astute not to have known his own strength in cultivation and intelligence. The discipline he lacks in his manner he had more than demonstrated in training his body, and his quick mind has no equal that Lan Wangji has ever encountered.

For all his displays of frivolity, Wei Ying has worked hard, and the son of a servant, one dogged by indelicate rumors about his parentage, had raised himself up to be the fourth-rated young master of the cultivation world. He was brilliant in both mind and cultivation skills. And he had known that, had stood firmly on that knowledge in a way that Lan Wangji can only see now that it has been ripped away from him.

Perhaps Jiang-guniang is correct. Perhaps he would have been able to accept the loss of his core, if it had been only that. But the loss of his usefulness, his ability to protect the innocent and those he loves, his pride…yes. That is what has broken Wei Ying.

And yet Lan Wangji’s mind rebels. (Denial. Always denial.) He cannot be broken. Not Wei Ying. Even in his pain, he had lashed out (at Lan Wangji, and his heart is still swollen with the pain of that) with an insightful precision that proves that his mind is still whole. That glittering cold expression that he keeps fixed on his face as firmly as mask, the louche yet coiled arrogance he projects once he emerges from his rooms—Lan Wangji can see that it, too, has been meticulously constructed, like one of his most intricate arrays. Surely if he can slouch around the Unclean Realm, needling the most pompous of the other cultivators, deflecting any attempts to reach him, he must not be broken.

Lan Wangji’s heart keens as he watches Wei Ying. He still spends most of his time alone, but—no doubt at the pleading of his shijie—he makes appearances now and then. When he does, sauntering into a room, twirling a bamboo flute, he projects a cold hostility that Lan Wangji cannot reconcile with the laughing boy he once knew. Yet he cannot blame Wei Ying for guarding himself against the attacks or (worse, in Wei Ying’s opinion) pity of the rest of the cultivation world.

They do attack him, sideways, clumsily, or with truly cruel subtlety. Just as many express sympathy (whether feigned or genuine) for what he must have suffered. But the situation is not nearly as bad as it could have been. Everyone knows his core is gone. Everyone knows he was held captive by the Wen. But no one who really knows what went on while he was in Wen Chao’s clutches reveals anything.

Lan Yufei and those who had been in the tent when he reported preyed at Lan Wangji’s mind at first, but he had gone to Xiongzhang, ready to beg. Xiongzhang had stopped him after only a few words. “I will take care of it, Wangji. No Lan will speak of what Lan Yufei said on pain of expulsion from the clan.” It is the harshest punishment Lan Wangji can imagine, but he is grateful that Xiongzhang understands how necessary it is. (He does not allow himself to acknowledge that Xiongzhang is showing favoritism towards himself. That would be in violation of the precepts.) “I’ll talk to Mingjue-ge, too. He will lay down the law with his own people and the others.”

He is true to his word, and Chifeng-zun must be to his as well, because as far as Lan Wangji can tell (and he does not believe anything has escaped his sharp attention—the only time he fully emerges from the fog of his pain is when he is monitoring the way the other cultivators treat or speak of Wei Ying) none of those in the tent ever speak a word of what they heard, and Lan Yufei avoids Lan Wangji’s eyes whenever they cross paths.

There are still rumors, of course, a continuation of the ones that had tortured Lan Wangji during those long months of searching. But somehow, another stream of speculations emerges and slowly becomes dominant: that after Wen Zhuliu had crushed his golden core, Wei Ying had been thrown into a dungeon to rot, considered so lowly after the destruction of his core that the Wen did not even bother to execute him. Lan Wangji does not understand where these rumors are coming from—they seem to have originated with the Nie, but beyond that he cannot trace them—but he is grateful for them. At least Wei Ying does not have to endure the rest of the cultivation world knowing the truth.

But there is little comfort there, not when Wei Ying avoids him. It is obvious that he is doing so—more than one of the more indecorous cultivators comments on it. Whenever he sees Lan Wangji, Wei Ying turns on his heel and leaves the room. On the rare occasions when he cannot (usually when his sister is clinging to his arm—he does not seem capable of shaking her off the way he does Jiang Wanyin), his words are cool and dismissive. He holds Lan Wangji’s gaze for one bone-chilling moment, then smirks and looks away.

Lan Wangji almost wishes that Wei Ying would say cruel things to him as he had upon first waking (at least then he would be acknowledging Lan Wangji’s presence) or even fight with him as he does with Jiang Wanyin. The new Jiang sect leader is even more of a thundercloud than usual, scowling more than ever before, and though he has enough dignity to try to keep his arguments with Wei Ying behind closed doors, everyone knows about them.

An understanding had grown between Lan Wangji and Jiang Wanyin during their search, a singleness of purpose that Lan Wangji had thought might actually lead to friendship. But that is dissolved now, both of them ignoring each other as much as possible. It hurts too much to see his own confused pain in Jiang Wanyin’s eyes.

It is easier, somehow, to see it in Jiang-guniang. “You saw A-Xian in the worst possible circumstances, Hanguang-jun,” she says one afternoon after the brothers storm off to argue somewhere else. Wei Ying had shot Lan Wangji a cold, dismissive look when he approached them, and Jiang Wanyin shouted at him about his lack of respect. They had devolved into argument so quickly it made Lan Wangji’s head spin, and then Jiang Wanyin had dragged Wei Ying away. “He has always respected your opinion so much. Can’t you understand why he would not be able to stand knowing that you saw him like that?”

Lan Wangji does understand, as much as anyone who has not experienced it can. The shame that he saw painted all over Wei Ying in the supervisory office haunts him every moment. The shame is hidden away now, but Lan Wangji cannot forget it. It is that shame, huge and dark, that makes Wei Ying treat him this way (and if he treats Lan Wangji this way, how must he be treating himself?). And Lan Wangji cannot think of a way to dispel it.

It is past hai hour, but Lan Wangji is awake. When he had readied himself for bed, he had been certain he would fall asleep quickly after the previous night full of nightmares and a day full of training new recruits. Instead, he has lain here for a long (lonely) time, mind moving too furiously to surrender to sleep. Moving furiously, yes, but in circles, stumbling through the same paths over and over, never arriving at answers. No, it is more than that: he feels stuck, mired in anxiety and guilt and longing.

Earlier in the week, a group of porters had abandoned a cart in the thick, knee-deep mud that seems to be everywhere in the Unclean Realms in the winter. Lan Wangji had been on his way to a meeting for which Xiongzhang demanded his presence (in truth, he requested, but in such a way that it was the emotional equivalent of a demand), so he made a mental note to return to free the cart later. When he went out the next morning, he found that deep cold had taken hold during the night and the mud had hardened to ice. Even his superior arm strength could not free the cart. He had made a heating talisman and melted the mud, moving the cart with only the sacrifice of a few drops of blood and an outer robe. But if he, a cultivator with a talisman, had not been there, the cart would have remained in place till spring.

This is why you should not put off the task at hand, Shufu’s voice said in his mind. When it comes to you, complete it right away. If you had moved the cart at the time, it would have taken less work and been ready for use sooner.

The words are true, and it is a testament to the fog (of grief, of guilt, of longing) still swaddling him that he had not remembered sooner.

He feels like that cart: made for a purpose but trapped in a bog of mud, unable to move. He has been stuck since Wei Ying’s return, and he does not know how to free himself.

What is the talisman that would melt his emotions, set him free? There is none. (If his problems were fixable by a talisman, he would go to Wei Ying. If the talisman did not already exist, Wei Ying would invent it.)

Everything returns to Wei Ying. And now there is no opposing force to pull Lan Wangji away. While Wei Ying was missing, there had at least been a war to fight to keep his mind and body in motion. Now, in the depths of winter, waiting for the spring to thaw and the hostilities to resume, there is nothing but Wei Ying and all that Lan Wangji feels for him.

He sits up, pushing the blankets aside. His room is cold as he dresses and ties his ribbon in place, the brazier burned down to embers. Outside, it is colder still, the night clear with the cold, the stars frozen to a blue-black sky.

He wastes time searching the rooftops before he realizes that of course Wei Ying will not be there. The Wei Ying of before (before Lotus Pier burned, before he lost his core, before…) would brave the cold, slouch on the tiles with a jug (or two or three) of wine and the strength of his own core to warm him. But that core is gone now, and Wei Ying hates the cold. When Lan Wangji approaches his door, it is framed by a line of light.

Shock flickers across Wei Ying’s face when he opens the door, and Lan Wangji feels a stirring of satisfaction (it is the only real response he has gotten from Wei Ying in so long. How can that be, when Wei Ying was once the most expressive person he has ever met?). Then a blankness settles in place and for one wild moment, Lan Wangji understands why others find his own affect so frustrating. On Wei Ying’s expressive face, that blankness is like a door slamming shut.

Then Wei Ying leans against the doorjamb, his face falling half into shadow. “What could the esteemed Hanguang-jun want with this humble servant so late at night?” he asks, and Lan Wangji is so caught up in the continued use of his title (he had been indifferent to it when it was bestowed upon him, but he is growing to hate it more every time Wei Ying uses it as a barricade between them) that he almost does not hear the noun Wei Ying used to describe himself.

“Wei Ying!” He had prepared himself for Wei Ying’s cruel tongue (or at least he thought he had). He was unprepared, it seems, for Wei Ying to use it against himself.

“If you’re here for talismans, you’ll have to see Jiang Cheng about joining the waiting list. Mine are much in demand.” He adds the last with a defiant tilt of his chin.

Of course they are, Lan Wangji wants to say. No one has Wei Ying’s talents with talismans.

But Wei Ying doesn’t give him time to say it. “If you want to poke and prod at me, you’re too late. I’m done with that. You can ask Lan Bocheng for his notes.”

Weariness must be impeding the workings of his mind, for he is slow in interpreting this. Once he does, a protective surge of anger fills him. Have the research-minded among the healers been trying to study Wei Ying? He should have known they would—it is rare for a cultivator to survive an encounter with Core-Melting Hand. The scholars no doubt see Wei Ying as invaluable.

But how dare they? How dare they treat Wei Ying as a specimen? The anger is a relief after the fog, sharp and white-hot. Lan Bocheng will be hearing from him tomorrow.

He opens his mouth to respond, but Wei Ying is not done with being cruel. “Or perhaps this peerless cultivator is seeking something…else from this one.”

The significant pause, the way he runs his eyes over Lan Wangi’s body, the tone of his voice—they are so suggestive that even Lan Wangji cannot mistake his meaning. His cheeks flame.

“Wei Ying!” Guilt snakes up his throat, warring with indignation. He is hurt by the accusation, even as he knows that his inmost thoughts are guilty of it. (Yes, he always wants Wei Ying. Yes, even after seeing him laid low, made weak, humiliated, he still wants Wei Ying. He will never not want Wei Ying, even though that is not what Wei Ying wants from him.)

“I should have seen this coming, I guess. Once you’ve gone down on your knees for one man, everyone thinks you’re easy. I wouldn’t have thought it of you, but you highborn men are all the same.”

No. It is not like that. Lan Wangji would never make such assumptions, would not dream of it. (And if his nightmares have blended his old fantasies with the images of what his eyes had actually seen, that is not his fault. Is it?) To have Wei Ying throw the distance in their positions in his face—as he himself has never done, would never consider doing—

“No? Of course not. A Jade of Gusu wouldn’t pollute himself with trash like me.”

Lan Wangj feels as though the ground has been yanked from under his feet. How can Wei Ying turn it around like that? If he came for physical favors, he is making assumptions about the son of a servant. If he did not come for that, it is because he thinks himself too far above Wei Ying. He cannot begin to address all that, but one thing must be said: “Wei Ying is not trash.”

If the light of the waning moon were brighter, perhaps he would be able to identify whatever it is that flickers in Wei Ying’s eyes. But the lamp is behind him, and as it is, Lan Wangji just has to hope (desperately) that his words have touched Wei Ying.

But he does not know, because Wei Ying just shrugs. “If it’s not one of those things, then there’s nothing here for you. Good little Lans should be in bed this time of night anyway. Goodnight, Hanguang-jun.”

No. He cannot let Wei Ying walk away after that, not until he knows— “Wei Ying, please.”

Whether at the plea or the desperation in Lan Wangji’s voice, Wei Ying’s shoulders slump as he sighs. “What do you want, Lan Zhan?” he asks, and he sounds so weary, wearier even than Lan Wangji. (But: Lan Zhan. The syllables, spoken by Wei Ying, sound like hope.)

Lan Wangji wants so much, so much more than he could ever put into words. He swallows, trying to find them. When Wei Ying shakes his head and starts to turn away, they burst out: “I would speak with you.”

Wei Ying just stares at him for a long time. He wonders, almost hysterically, what Wei Ying sees. The white moonlight and the golden lamplight are both touching his face, and he feels transparent. He has wondered, again and again since they met, what Wei Ying actually sees when he looks at him. There has never been a moment when he felt sure.

Abruptly, Wei Ying turns away, and the hope that had been kindled wavers before Lan Wangji sees: he leaves the door open behind him.

Lan Wangji hesitates for a moment in the entrance. He can feel that what happens next will shift things between them (for good or for ill). He does not know what he will say—he does not feel ready. (In one way, he has never been so scared. But Wei Ying is brave, braver than anyone he has ever known. Lan Wangji would be ashamed not to offer his own courage in return.)

He steps into the room and closes the door behind him.

It is warm inside, almost hot, with braziers and lamps both lit. The desk is covered with a few open books. Sheets of paper are covered with hasty scribblings, and crumpled pieces litter the floor around Wei Ying’s seat. Lan Wangji feels another flash of hope—he has been working! And not just making talismans, for the cinnabar and talisman paper are pushed off to the side. Lan Wangji recognizes his note-taking setup from the Cloud Recesses library and their journey to find the Yin Iron, and the messiness is heartening. If he is working on something besides stamping out talismans for the campaign, that can only be a good thing.

The rough flute he has been twirling whenever he emerges from his rooms is also there, perilously close to rolling into the ink dish. It is a crude thing, and Lan Wangji suddenly wishes that he had a finer instrument to give Wei Ying. (It would be good, so good, to offer him something he actually wants.)

Wei Ying spins around to face him, propping up his hands on his hips. “I thought Hanguang-jun didn’t speak anymore. This one is flattered to be offered what words he deems suitable. Speak,” he invites with a dramatic gesture.

It is true, Lan Wangji has been even more silent than usual during the last few months. He had not realized how far he has pulled into himself until Xiongzhang, visibly worried, brought it up. The rest of the army is talking about it, he said (couching his own fears in the concerns of others so as not to make Lan Wangji feel guilty. It is an old tactic, and it never works. No one makes him feel guilty the way Xiongzhang does), about how Hanguang-jun speaks less and less as time passes till, the speculation goes, one day he will no longer speak at all. (The way Wei Ying makes the reference now holds hope: he had not known that Wei Ying was paying attention.)

But it is not so simple, to speak. Words have always seemed insufficient to convey what Lan Wangji feels, like trying to hold a river in a teacup, and just as unwieldy. Do the words even exist for what he wants to make Wei Ying understand?

But he must try.

Start with a question, Xiongzhang has advised when he struggles to know what to say. People like talking about themselves. (Lan Wangji, who does not like talking about himself, had found this advice baffling, but on the occasions when he has actually tried it, it works. Xiongzhang is wise.) He casts his mind about for a question and comes up with too many, all inappropriate. (Even if he voiced them—?What are you feeling? Why are you avoiding me? Are you sleeping? What do you need? Do you miss me at all?—he knows Wei Ying would not answer truthfully.) His desperate eyes land again on the desk. Innocuous, even banal, but it is better than standing here in dumb silence while Wei Ying grows restless.

“What are you working on?” he asks and feels a dull relief that he managed to say anything at all.

He had hoped the question would ease things between them, but Wei Ying crosses his arms. “So that’s why you’re here. Checking up on me to make sure I’m not up to evil tricks?”

Why must Wei Ying take everything the wrong way? He is infuriating. “No,” he snaps. Wei Ying brightens (not like he used to, open and sunny. This is like the glint of moonlight on a knife) and Lan Wangji realizes, This is what he wants. To fight. With difficulty, he shoves his irritation down. “I am not,” he says, and when confusion wrinkles Wei Ying’s forehead, he clarifies. “I am not concerned about that. Wei Ying would not.”

Wei Ying’s eyes narrow. “So…?”

“Wei Ying has been working hard.” He hopes Wei Ying understands that he is implying that this is why he has kept to his room for so long. (Lan Wangji fears that that is not the explanation.) “He must be working on something important.”

Wei Ying studies him with still-narrowed eyes, as though he is looking for some hidden trap in the question. But Lan Wangji waits, and when nothing else is said, Wei Ying sighs. “I’m going over everything we know about the Yin Iron.” Of course he is. (Here is a challenge worthy of Wei Ying’s innovative mind, his pursuit of justice.) At Lan Wangji’s nod, he continues. “I’m trying to figure out if there’s some way to combat it or…neutralize it or something.”

Months’ worth of frustration bleed out in that last word, and Lan Wangji can see from Wei Ying’s bleak look that his efforts must have been fruitless so far. Still, it is the best course of action for Wei Ying—suitable to his talents.

“Some of the texts Xiongzhang saved from the Wen may contain relevant information. I will ask him.”

The surprise on Wei Ying’s face stings, but Lan Wangji does not let it show. But Wei Ying shutters it quickly. “If you want. There’s probably nothing in the Lan texts about something as dark as this.”

Lan Wangji disagrees. Not only are the restricted texts full of exactly the kind of “darkness” Wei Ying assumes the Lan are too stuffy for, but Lan Yi was one who dealt with the Yin Iron in the time of Wen Mao. There might indeed be relevant information. “I will look.” (It would be good, so good, to help Wei Ying, even in this way.)

There, he can almost hear Xiongzhang say. You instigated conversation, and look at the results. A new course of action, and no argument broke out.

Wei Ying shrugs. “Suit yourself. But you didn’t come here long after Lan bedtime to offer me books. Say whatever you really want to say and then get lost.”

Again, a surge of irritation. They had been speaking like reasonable adults. Why must Wei Ying be so combative? Fine then. Lan Wangji will be direct as well. “Wei Ying is avoiding me.”

One of those flickers of too-fast-to-identify emotion races across Wei Ying’s face before it settles back to stoniness. “Finally figured that out?”

“Wei Ying!”

“What, Lan Zhan? Yes, I’m avoiding you! Why won’t you take a hint?”

“Because I am worried about you!” (That word is so small, too pale by far for what Lan Wangji feels. He is not worried for Wei Ying. He is terrified.)

A sneer breaks out on Wei Ying’s face, one that reminds Lan Wangji disturbingly of Wen Chao. “Of course. Hanguang-jun is so good, to be concerned about this pathetic one.” He doesn’t give Lan Wangji time to argue with that characterization. (Why does he say these things about himself?) He holds his arms wide and says, “As you can, I’m just fine. Not that it’s any concern of yours.”

(How can Wei Ying say that when all Lan Wangji is is concern for him?) “Wei Ying—”

“Hanguang-jun doesn’t need to worry himself over the former disciple of another sect.”

Former? Lan Wangji does not accept that. “Does Jiang-zongzhu know Wei Ying no longer considers himself a Jiang disciple?” He cannot imagine Jiang Wanyin agreeing to that. Perhaps that is why they have been fighting so much.

“Oh, he’s very aware that I don’t have a golden core anymore.”

Why does that reminder feel like a calculated stab? “The presence of a golden core is irrelevant.” Lan Wangji fights to keep his voice steady. “The new recruits of all sects become disciples while possessing no golden core.”

“Yeah, because they’re children,” Wei Ying snaps with all the fury of an argument made multiple times before. Yes, this must be the cause of his battles with his brother. “They’re accepted on the assumption that they will develop one. That’s the point of being a cultivator!”

“Many develop only small cores despite disciplined work,” Lan Wangji points out. “They are not expelled.” True, most go back to the world outside of jianghu, but not all. Some remain, focusing on scholarship or administration. This is true across all of the sects; Wei Ying must know it. “They make other use of their talents.” And then, because he wants Wei Ying to understand that he has not forgotten this: “Wei Ying has many talents.”

“What the fuck.” Wei Ying’s tone is flat but crackling around the edges with anger. “Did Jiang Cheng ask you to talk to me about this?”

“No.” But the question confirms Lan Wangji’s suspicions. (Jiang Wanyin is refusing to let him go. Good.) “Wei Ying is brilliant. He will continue to be an asset to Yunmeng Jiang.”

Wei Ying throws up his hands in exasperation. “Fine! You’ve convinced me! I’m not useless.” (Lan Wangji is not at all convinced that Wei Ying actually believes this, but he is certain it will prove true.) “Are you happy now? Will you just go?”

“No,” Lan Wangji says (a vow).

“Why?” Wei Ying yanks at his hair, face contorting. “Why do you keep following me around? Why won’t you stop asking Shijie if you can see me? Why are you knocking on my door in the middle of the night? Why can’t you get lost?”

“Because I miss my zhiji!”

Silence, as absolute as any Lan Wangji has ever heard despite the heaving of their breaths, the hiss of a lamp. They stare at each other, frozen in place.

He had not meant to say those words at all. They are not—they reveal too much, so much that he had not wanted to burden Wei Ying with. But now they are said, and they are true.

Wei Ying shakes his head infinitesimally, conflict on his face. Perhaps Lan Wangji is only seeing what he wants (most) to see, but he thinks there is yearning in Wei Ying’s eyes. For a heartbeat, Lan Wangji can feel a flicker of hope that he has gotten through to him. But then his face goes blank again, and he says, “Well, you’re just going to have get used to missing him. Because he’s gone.”

“No—” He can’t help it—he starts forward, his whole body a protestation, but Wei Ying halts him with a violent gesture.

“Yes. He is gone.”

“No! He is standing right in front of me!”

“I’m not the person I was, Lan Zhan! I can’t ever be that person again!”

Lan Wangji wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake sense into him. “I already said that the loss of your golden core is irrelevant.”

“It’s not about the golden core! For fuck’s sake, Lan Zhan, how can you not see that?” Wei Ying is quivering with emotion, yanking at his hair, his clothes. “I can’t be your equal ever again. I can’t…give you anything! You’re good, so you still care about me, but it’s not the same! It can’t be! I don’t want your pity!”

“It is not pity!”

“It doesn’t matter! What matters is that I can’t stand beside you anymore! You’re Hanguang-fucking-jun!” He gives a sharp wave of his hand, indicating Lan Wangji from head to toe. “You’re—you’re you!”

So. That is what this is. He had wondered how he looked to Wei Ying’s eyes. He had never dreamed the answer would be so heartbreaking.

(As much as he hates the title of Hanguang-jun, he hates the Twin Jades appellation more. He knows how the world sees him: righteous. Pure. Pristine. Above worldly concerns as the clouds are above the earth. Untouched and untouchable.

It has always amazed him, that he can be so misunderstood. That simply because he does not show everything that he feels, people assume that he does not feel anything at all. There has never been any use in trying to convince them otherwise. Even if he could explain it to them, they would not believe the depth of what he feels. The intensity of it. The darkness, lying cheek-to-cheek with light.

Lan Wangji is a maelstrom, even if everyone else believes he is ice.

He had thought—he had hoped—that Wei Ying saw through that. That he saw the person Lan Wangji really is. That he saw it, and recognized it, and accepted it.

He had not known it could hurt so much to be wrong.)

“I am not made of jade.” I am human. (I am so, so human.) “Anything Wei Ying is, I am too.”

“No you fucking aren’t! You’re everything! I’m nothing, Lan Zhan!”

The words strike Lan Wangji like a blow. Ears ringing, he can do nothing but stare in horror. (He had known that Wei Ying was still suffering. But he had not known he was suffering this).

All the furious energy has gone out of Wei Ying. He stands there staring at Lan Wangji with an open, empty face. His shoulders lift in a small, helpless shrug, and his voice is devoid of all feeling. “There’s nothing left.”

Fury explodes in Lan Wangji’s heart, and he wishes that Wen Chao was here. That he had not let Wei Ying kill him, but instead had insisted on dragging him back here. That he could have poured pain into him, made him a stool for Wei Ying’s feet. That he could have visited everything Wei Ying had endured—every second of it, and more—back on Wen Chao. That he could have rained down retribution such as the world has never seen.

Even that would not have been enough. Not for what he did to Wei Ying.

The fury twists, suddenly, changes direction. Now it is aimed back at Lan Wangji himself. No. That is a betrayal of Wei Ying. To even think that is to accept what Wen Chao has done, and Lan Wangji will not. That worm will never be allowed to destroy Wei Ying. Lan Wangji will not abide it.

He looks Wei Ying straight in the eye.

He rips off his guan. (It hurts. He doesn’t care.)

Wei Ying’s mouth drops open. (Good.)

Lan Wangji throws the hair ornament to the ground, not looking away from Wei Ying’s shocked face. Then he starts to yank open his robes.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei YIng’s voice is strangled. (It is very gratifying.)

Lan Wangji rips off the outermost robe, balls it up, and throws it on the ground. (He has never done that before, not even as a child. In this furious moment, it is strangely satisfying.)

Wei Ying’s eyes go wider than Lan Wangji had known was possible. (Also satisfying.) “What the hell are you doing?” He lifts his hands as though to stop him, takes a half step forward before jerking to a halt.

Lan Wangji ignores him. He pulls the second layer off with as much force as the first. (Something rips. He does not care.) It he also throws down, and then he starts on the third. Wei Ying keeps making distressed noises, reaching out and then pulling back. Even in the lamplight, his cheeks are stained scarlet.

Two more layers join the others on the floor (a hem may trail into the ink on the desk, but he doesn’t care), and then (after the barest hesitation), his shirt. He kicks off his boots, adding them to the drifts of white strewing the floor. Now he is standing barefoot and bare chested in his thin trousers. He wishes he had rough homespun to change into (he would pull it on eagerly, welcoming how it would chafe at his sensitive skin), but this will have to do. (This will have to be enough.)

Still staring into Wei Ying’s face (Wei Ying’s eyes keep darting from his face to his chest to the silk on the ground, never settling anywhere), Lan Wangji reaches up and begins to untie his forehead ribbon. Wei Ying goes silent. (Good.)

Unlike the clothes, which he had removed roughly, he is careful with the ribbon. Deliberate. He does not know if Wei Ying knows the true meaning of it, the symbol of restraint, its intimate nature, but from the way his gaze is now riveted to it, he knows it is important. Lan Wangji draws out the untying as much as possible, and when it is free, held in both hands, he goes down on his knees.

Wei Ying stares at him. His throat jerks in a swallow, and his hands are trembling minutely. “Lan Zhan,” he says, voice raw (like something out of Lan Wangji’s filthiest dreams). “What are you doing?” His voice breaks on the last word, the wail of it catching at Lan Wangji’s heart like burrs in silk.

“I am not Hanguang-jun.” People can call him whatever they want to, he cannot stop them. But they do not know him. (Wei Ying must.) “I am not made of jade.” (He is human. So, so human.) “Everything Wei Ying is, I am too.”

He holds out his ribbon.

Wei Ying’s uncomprehending eyes move slowly from Lan Wangji’s face to his outstretched hands. He swallows again, throat clicking. “Wha—?”

“For Wei Ying.”

Wei Ying still stares, so Lan Wangji lifts the ribbon higher. “For Wei Ying.” (For none other.)

“Lan Zhan. I can’t. You—”

“For Wei Ying.”

It is indescribable, what he feels when Wei Ying finally reaches out. (Tentative, a word he has never associated with Wei Ying.) His calloused, ink-stained fingertips brush against Lan Wangji’s palm as he takes the ribbon. It glows white as sunlight on a snowbank against Wei Ying’s golden skin. (Lan Wangji’s heart settles into place.)

Lan Wangji nows curls his hands into fists and presses his wrists together. They are still held up to Wei Ying, the gesture unmistakable (an offering), but Wei Ying continues to stare, so Lan Wangji says, “Bind me.”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying looks horrified (horrified and something else that makes Lan Wangji’s blood boil).

“Bind. Me.” Lan Wangji almost never uses that tone, commanding and sharp as the snap of a whip. When he does, he has never once been disobeyed, not even by terrified men in the heat of battle. He is not disobeyed now.

But Wei Ying’s hands (his beautiful, capable hands) fumble as they wrap the ribbon around Lan Wangji’s wrists. Lan Wangji wants to grab those hands in his, cover them in kisses (or at least press a single kiss to the pulse pounding in Wei Ying’s wrist). He does not, holding still, allowing Wei Ying to clumsily tie his wrists together.

When he is done, Wei Ying’s hands fall helpless to his sides. “What is this?” His voice is so rough. “Lan Zhan, you have to tell me, I—”

“Wei Ying.” Lan Wangji has said his name thousands of times. Never has he said it like this. “There is no shame here.”

Wei Ying looks down at him, gaze moving from bare forehead to loose hair hanging hanging over his naked shoulders. To bent knees and bound hands. The lamplight reflects in his wet eyes. “It’s not the same,” he whispers.

No. It is not the same. Lan Wangji chose (is choosing, will forever choose). Lan Wangji is giving freely (the way he has wanted to since they sent lanterns up to the sky, lifted by a shared vow). Nonetheless.

“Everything Wei Ying is, I am too.” The way Wei Ying opens his mouth is shaped like a protest. Lan Wangji does not allow him to voice it. “Everything I am, Wei Ying is too.” If I am good, you are good. If I am pure, you are too. If I am everything, oh, my love, so are you. “If Wei Ying wishes.”

For a moment, Lan Wangji thinks that Wei Ying will reject this. That it will not be enough. (He has feared, since that evening with the lanterns, that he is not enough. If this is the moment when he finds that he was right….)

Lan Wangji will understand if it is not. All that Wei Ying has suffered, Lan Wangji cannot erase. He cannot wipe the memories from Wei Ying’s mind or his body. He can never undo what has been done. Even after he heals, there will always be scar tissue on Wei Ying’s spirit that Lan Wangji cannot eliminate.

He still has a great deal of recovering to do. Jiang-guniang’s wise eyes see much. Yes. A great deal of recovering. And though he would trade away his whole soul in order to do so, Lan Wangji cannot do that recovering for him. Wei Ying must face the pain himself.

But oh, Lan Wangji wants to be beside him as he does. To help him in any way that he can (all his offerings will be paltry, so much less than what Wei Ying deserves. But they will freely given).

This is all Lan Wangji knows how to give (his whole self), and he knows it may not be enough. (Oh, how he knows it.) Even if Wei Ying understands, even if he accepts, the road in front of them is very dark and narrow. (But oh, he wants to walk it together.)

The hesitation in Wei Ying’s eyes echoes all of Lan Wangji’s swirling thoughts. He will turn away. He will tell him again to get lost, and Lan Wangji will have to go. After all Wei Ying has endured, those violations of choice, he must obey if he is sent away. If that is what Wei Ying chooses.

But then Wei Ying’s knees hit the ground, tears streaming down his face. (And if Lan Wangji had thought he could never again feel the relief he felt when he saw Wei Ying alive in that supervisory office, he was wrong. He feels it the same way now.)

“Lan Zhan,” he says, and yes, it has always been right that Wei Ying calls him that name that no other voice has spoken since his mother died. (He is not Hanguang-jun. He is not the Second Jade of Gusu. Sometimes he is Wangji, said in his brother’s fond tones, in Shufu’s approving voice. But always—always—he is Lan Zhan.

He had wondered what Wei Ying sees when he looks at him. If it is this, then that is all Lan Wangji can ask of the universe.)

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying sobs again, and Lan Wangji’s eyes drop shut as Wei Ying’s fingers run across his forehead. Wei Ying’s hands keep roaming, cupping Lan Wangji’s face, smoothing down over his shoulders, sliding down to clasp his wrists. (Wei Ying’s hands and the ribbon. Lan Wangji is bound. Just as he has always wanted.) Wei Ying leans forward, pressing their foreheads together. “Zhiji….”

Lan Wangji leans into him, glorying in the warm brush of Wei Ying’s breath against his own lips, the hot splash of tears dropping on his arms, the rightness of Wei Ying’s hands still holding his wrists. “Wei Ying. Zhiji.” My love.

When their lips meet, Lan Wangji tastes salt and Wei Ying and the fire of hope.