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Chapter Text

“Er-ge, have you heard from Hanguang-Jun since he left for the Burial Mounds to meet with the Yiling Patriarch?” Jin Guangyao asked as soon as he entered the room. 

Something in his voice made Lan Xichen’s head snap up in alarm. “I haven’t. Why?”

“Because we have received a very disturbing package.” Jin Guangyao held out a long bundle, loosely wrapped in cloth, as if it had been unwrapped and then hastily rewrapped.

Lan Xichen took the bundle curiously and laid it on the table to unwrap it. Inside was a pile of pale blue silk, torn and half covered in rust red stains. His nose wrinkled at the smell of old blood as he unfolded the mess of ruined silk. A robe. A Lan robe.

Lan Xichen’s heart pounded in his ears. 

Wrapped in the blood soaked robe was a white and silver sword, almost as familiar as his own Shuoyue.

No…

There was a note. In simple, scrawled characters, it read: “Don’t send anyone else.”

Lan Xichen reached down with shaking hands to pick up Bichen.

“What does it mean?” Jin Guangyao asked, as if the message weren’t blindingly, horribly clear. 

“It means,” Lan Xichen replied, his voice sounding as hollow as his chest felt. “That Wangji is dead.”

“I don’t understand.” Jin Guangyao’s slender hands twisted together in agitation. “Why would Wei Wuxian kill Hanguang-Jun? I thought the two of them were, uh… friends?”

Lan Xichen closed his eyes and ran his fingers over the carved jade hilt of his brother’s sword. “Wangji thought so as well.” 

That was why Wangji had walked into the unknown horrors of the Burial Mounts alone. It was why Lan Xichen had allowed him to go. Why he had backed Wangj’s argument that he and only he should go to Yiling, despite Jin Guangshan’s indignation and Nie Mingjue’s concern.

Wangji had trusted in that old friendship to keep him safe in the lair of the Yiling Patriarch. And Lan Xichen had trusted Wangji’s judgment of Wei Wuxian’s character and intentions. They had been wrong.

Oh, little brother. 

Lan Xichen shook his head helplessly. “I should never have let him go alone.”

“You didn’t know.” Jin Guangyao laid a gentle hand on Lan Xichen’s arm. “You couldn’t have known that this would happen. That Wei Wuxian would…”

Murder Wangji. Who had come to him in peace. Had he killed Wangji on sight? Had he tried to drive him away and then killed him when Wangji, stubborn since birth, would not leave? Or had Wei Wuxian lured Wangji in with a pretense of friendship, played on his affection and then put a knife in his back?

“I knew that Wei-gongzi was unstable.” But he had believed that Wei Wuxian was a good man, at heart. Maybe he had been, once. But he had gone too far, been too corrupted by the resentful energy that he toyed with. And Wangji hadn’t realized it until it was too late. “I should have been more careful. I should have protected my little brother.”

Wangji had been blinded by his love for the boy. What was Lan Xichen’s excuse?

Jin Guangyao began hastily scooping the horrifying display back into its bundle, as if hiding the evidence of Wangji’s death might ease Lan Xichen’s pain. It didn’t, but he appreciated his friend’s gesture. 

As Jin Guangyao picked up the tattered robe, something white fell out and clinked against the table. Jin Guangyao reached to gather it up.

“ Don’t touch that .” The tone of Lan Zichen’s voice made Jin Guangyao freeze like a startled deer. Lan Xichen closed his eyes and took a breath.

“Er-ge…?” Jin Guangyao’s eyes were wide and frightened. 

“That is Wangji’s ribbon,”  Lan Xichen explained tightly. It should have remained with his body, so he could at least be buried like a Lan. But someone had taken it from him, just to make a point. To emphasize his humiliation. No, not someone , but Wei Wuxian , whom Wangji would have given it to, if he’d let him. Along with his heart.

Wangji’s ribbon lay on the table, dirty and bedraggled, the ends stiff with blood. There was a muddy shoe print across the temple. Lan Xichen swept the ribbon back into the bundle and braced himself on the table, feeling dizzy with rage. 

 “I am going to kill Wei Wuxian.”

“I know, Er-ge, I know. And I’ll help you. But right now, you need to breathe. Please sit down.”

Lan Xichen sank into the chair that Jin Guangyao guided him to and put his face in his hands. Jin Guangyao brought him a cup of hot tea and made him drink it and stayed with him until he managed to collect himself.

“Thank you, A-Yao,” He murmured, patting Jin Guangyao’s cheek. He levered himself out of the chair and pulled the role of Clan Leader Lan around himself. “I need to go talk to your father, now.”

The plan to negotiate with the Yiling Patriarch had failed. Now it was time to hunt him down like a rabid dog. 

*      *      *

The market was bright and bustling. The sun was shining and Wei Wuxian was haggling over the little stack of talismans that he’d brought to sell so they could buy rice. Wen Ning stood in a corner, nibbling tentatively at a sticky bun that a motherly, middle aged baker had given to Wei Wuxian because he had flirted playfully with her. Wei Wuxian had given it to Wen Ning.

He managed to haggle the merchant up to a price that would cover both a bag of rice and a couple of soup bones and left, feeling pleased with himself. 

Through the muddle of overlapping conversations, the phrase “Yiling Patriarch '' caught his attention and he drifted closer to the knot of gossiping people. 

“No. What did he do now?” A man’s voice asked. 

“They are saying,” A woman replied in the hushed tone the people use to talk about things that scare them, “That the Yiling Patriarch has murdered Hanguang-Jun!”

What? Wei Wuxian stopped in his tracks, heart suddenly hammering.

“We’re going to have cultivators crawling all over the place now. There is no way they will let him get away with this ,” An older woman grumbled. 

“That could be good for business,” Replied the man. “All those cultivators will need food and places to sleep and supplies for their... ”

Wei Wuxian grabbed the woman who had first spoken by the sleeve. “What was that?” He demanded. “What happened to Hanguang-Jun?”

“Let go of me, you freak.” She shook him off irritably. “Hanguang-Jun was killed by the Yiling Patriarch.”

...Hanguang-Jun was killed…

Wei Wuxian didn’t even notice as the group moved on down the road. The world was closing in on him. His ears rang and he couldn’t seem to breathe.

Lan Zhan.

His legs must have buckled, because he was on his knees in the dust. 

Killed?

Lan Zhan…

“Wei-gongzi? Wei-gongzi!” Wen Ning was shaking him urgently. “You’re, uh, smoking.”

Dark wisps of resentful energy were curling around him and people were staring and giving him an increasingly wide berth.

“Get away from me!” He growled. He knew, dimly, that it was unfair, even as he shoved Wen Ning away. 

Wen Ning, startled, fell on his butt in the road. He scrambled up again and came back, more cautiously. “Wei-gongzi, please. We need to get out of here.”

Wei Wuxian relented to Wen Ning’s panicked pleas and allowed him to pull him to his feet and half drag him from the marketplace. 

The walk home was a blur. All Wei Wuxian can think about is things he should have said to Lan Zhan when he had the chance. 

He was taken aback by the intensity of his own reaction to the news. He felt absurdly guilty about it. Lan Zhan wasn’t his to mourn, after all. And yet…. And yet.

He had hoped, once. Back before everything had gone to hell and he and Lan Zhan had found themselves standing on opposite sides of an irreconcilable divide.

Back in the Tulu Xuunwu’s cave, he’d been sure that there was something growing between them. Something new and fragile and wonderful. And he’d wanted so much to find out what it could grow into. But then he had sacrificed his golden core, been thrown into the Burial Mounds and taken up demonic cultivation and Lan Zhan had started treating him like a bomb that might go off at any moment. And now Lan Zhan was dead and it felt the way losing his golden core had felt. Like something bright and precious and vital had been torn out of him. He felt cold and sick and weak.

What right did he have to be so gutted by the death of the man who had taken every opportunity to chastise him for the wickedness of his cultivation method? Even if they had been something like friends once. Even if he had longed for more. 

Lan Zhan had a family and a clan who must be mourning him bitterly. Lan Xichen had lost his brother. Lan Qiren had lost a nephew. The Lan Clan had lost its Second Jade, the peerless Hanguang Jun, their shining champion. Wei Wuxian had lost only… What? 

What had Lan Zhan ever been to him? What had Wei Wuxian hoped he might be?

It didn’t matter anymore.

Hanguang-Jun was killed...

It took until they reached the edge of the Burial Mounds for his mind to process the “By the Yiling Patriarch” part. It was both preposterous and completely unsurprising. The cultivation world would happily blame him for anything. And who else could be powerful enough to have killed Hanguang-Jun?

Ever since Wei Wuxian had dragged himself out of the burial mounds, roiling with resentful energy and trailed by ghosts, he had been afraid that he was going to end up having to fight Lan Zhan one day. But if and when that day came, he had expected to die. Never had he imagined such a fight ending with him killing Lan Zhan .

The idea made him feel sick. Lan Zhan was… Lan Zhan! He was noble and righteous and the world needed him in it. 

There were, apparently, still some things Wei Wuxian would not do.

Not that it mattered. It only mattered that the cultivation world believed that he would murder Hanguang-Jun. And that he had. 

Now he was going to have the Lans hunting him as well as the Jins. And Nie Mingjue would probably support Lan Xichen in avenging his brother. The only one of the major clans that might not be coming to kill him was the Jiangs. At least, he thought –hoped– that Jiang Cheng would stay out of this.

Back inside the Burial Mounds, Wen Ning began shouting for his sister as soon as they reached the village. 

Wen Qing appeared, drying her hands hurriedly on a scrap of cloth. “Wei Wuxian! What happened? Are you wounded?”

Mortally, Wei Wuxian thought and mumbled, “He’s dead…”

“Who?” Wen Qing’s voice was tight with worry. “Who’s dead?”

“Hanguang-Jun,” Wen Ning explained. “People are saying that Wei-gongzi killed him, but that isn’t true! You didn’t, did you, Wei-gongzi?”

“Of course he didn’t,” Wen Qing snapped and seized Wei Wuxian’s wrist to check his pulse. “Wei Wuxian, look at me. Do you know where you are?”

If he didn’t answer her, she was going to start sticking him with her needles.

“Yeah,” He muttered. “I’m in hell.”

Wen Qing and Wen Ning looked at each other. 

“Does that mean he knows where he is or not?” Wen Ning asked.

“I know where I am,” Wei Wuxian snapped, pulling his wrist out of Wen Qing’s grasp. “I’m in the village at the Burial Mounds. You can both stop fussing over me. I just… I just need some time alone now. I need to think.” Wei Wuxian shook them off and stalked toward his cave. Blessedly, no one tried to follow him.

Only once he was alone did he start to cry.

Lan Zhan.

Memories flooded him. Lan Zhan, cool and collected. Lan Zhan, recoiling in shock from the book of porn that Wei Wuxian had snuck into his reading. Lan Zhan’s tiny, soft smile at the rabbit lantern Wei Wuxian had made for him. Lan Zhan, holding him in the Tulu Xuanwu’s cave, singing softly to him, anchoring him as he burned with fever and slid in and out of consciousness. Lan Zhan, tense with horror, lecturing him fiercely on the dangers of demonic cultivation. Lan Zhan, in the rain at Qiongqi Path, stepping aside to let Wei Wuxian and his raggen ban of escaped prisoners pass. 

Lan Zhan, dead.

It was as if the moon had fallen out of the sky. 

The old woman in the market was right. There was no way that the cultivation clans would let the death of Hanguang-Jun go unpunished. They would come for Wei Wuxian in force and they would kill him. And anyone who stood with him.

*      *      *

Some time later, when Wen Qing came to his cave with a pot of tea, Wei Wuxian was packing frantically.

“What are you doing?” She set down the tea tray and folded her arms.

“I have to leave.” He picked up a stack of papers, flipped through them and dropped them on the bed. “They are going to come after me. If I’m here, then I’m putting everyone in the village in danger.”

But, if he was seen to be elsewhere, then maybe the clans would focus their attention on finding him and leave the Wen refugees alone. He was the threat, after all, not them.

He could hope, anyway.

Wen Qing’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not thinking of surrendering yourself, are you?”

“No.” He shook his head and curled his fist around the cool weight of Chenqing.  “I’m going to find the person who actually killed Lan Zhan.”

“And when you find them, what are you going to do?” Wen Qing demanded.

Wei Wuxian smiled grimly and fingered Chenqing. “What I do best. Apparently.”

*     *     *

Wei Wuxian left the Burial Mounds on foot, with no direction in mind except “away”. Away from the Wen village and away from the Lotus Pier. Away from everyone that he cared about. It was the only thing he could do to protect them now, with the cultivation world about to come down on his head.

Everywhere he went, he was haunted by rumors of things that he had supposedly done to the noble Hanguang-Jun.

“...ambushed him on the road…”

“... torn apart by an army of fierce corpses…”

“...with his own sword…”

“...fed him to his cannibal followers…”

“...tortured him for three days…”

“... four days. With a branding iron.”

“... with wrathful ghosts…”

“... until he slit his own throat…”

“...tore his heart out…”

“..forced Hanguang-Jun to kneel before him and…”

Over and over, Wei Wuxian fled from lurid tales of the Yiling Patriarch’s brutality, but the images they painted in his mind haunted him. Along with the question of what really had happened to Lan Zhan and at whose hands.

At night, he would find somewhere to hole up –a cheap inn, a barn, a hollow tree– and try to get the images out of his head long enough to fall asleep. It helped if he kept walking until he was seeing double and tripping over his feet by the time he stopped for the night. 

He made sure that he was seen playing Chenqing, conjuring dark smoke and wind and minor spirits, in several towns along his way, trusting that reports of it would get back to the people hunting him and draw their attention away from the tiny camp of refugees huddled within the grim protection of the Burial Mounds.

It was, therefore, not exactly a surprise when he found himself ambushed by a large and heavily armed group of Jin cultivators. Very large. It was flattering, really, how many people they thought it would take to take him down. 

They had chosen their ground well, a remote stretch of road, as devoid of corpses or ghosts that he could call to his aid as it was of living people who might question the sight of a brigade of cultivators attacking a lone man.

None of them was more than a decent cultivator and Wei Wuxian liked to think that, in the past, with his sword and his golden core, he could have held his own against them. But as it was, he soon found himself exhausted, bloody and surrounded. He was out of talismans and Chenqing dangled limply from fingers that wouldn't move right. He thought one of the bones in his arm might be fractured. Then someone struck him from behind and he went down.  

He lay on the rocky ground, pretending to be more unconscious than he was and watched a pair a stupid, beige boots approch. 

“Is he dead?” One of the stupid, beige boots prodded him in the shoulder, treating him to an excellent view of the unnecessarily fancy double loop stitching around the edges of the sole. 

Who puts decorative stitching on the bottom of a shoe ?

“No.” Someone else answered. “He’s bleeding too much to be dead.”

“Good. I want to bring him in alive.” The voice was vaguely familiar and it grated on Wei Wuxian’s nerves.

The owner of the annoying voice crouched down and grabbed ahold of Wei Wuxian’s hair to pull his head up. “Do you remember me, Wei Wuxian?” He asked, in a tone that implied that Wei Wuxian should remember him. But, honestly, he didn’t. There were a lot of Jins. And Wei Wuxian had pissed off most of them at one time or another. It was a talent.

“Where is the Stygian Tiger Amulet?” The man demanded. As if Wei Wuxian would have been defeated so easily if he’d brought it with him. Wei Wuxian hung limply in his grip as the man patted him down.

“Young Master Jin Zixun, be careful!” A Jin disciple urged anxiously. “Remember that he killed Hanguang-Jun singlehanded.”

Jin Zixun. The peacock’s even more obnoxious cousin. Right, then. 

Jin Zixun scoffed. “Hanguang-Jun was a pompous idiot who could barely put three words together and who couldn’t take a drop of wine without passing out in his soup. And I’m not afraid of this glorified gutter trash. Look at him!”

Rage flared through Wei Wuxian’s veins. He dragged himself up to his knees to snarl in Jin Zixun’s face. “Lan Zhan had more wits in his little toe than the whole pack of you beige cowards between you!” 

Jin Zixun kicked him in the ribs, knocking the breath out of him.

Wei Wuxian curled himself into a ball, protecting his head with his arms and endured the inevitable beating until he mercifully passed out.

When Wei Wuxian came to again, he found himself bound and gagged and thrown across the withers of Jin Zixun’s horse, where he took a certain petty satisfaction in bleeding on Jin Zixun’s fancy beige robes as much as possible. 

Chapter Text

Of course the Koi Tower had a dungeon. Why wouldn’t it? Jin Guangshan was exactly the sort of person who would have a dungeon under his palace.

As dungeons went, Wei Wuxian had seen worse. It was clean… ish.  They fed him on a regular basis. And, best of all, there were no giant, starving dog monsters in here with him. Just one inquisitive rat. 

“Rat-gongzi, what are you doing in this place?” He asked, watching the little creature make its way across the floor. “Don’t you know that the Jin are filthy creatures and have fleas?”

The rat twitched its nose and peered at him with its beady, black eyes. 

Wei Wuxian clicked his tongue disapprovingly at it. “If you stay here, you will surely catch a disease!”

The rat stood up on its back legs and stretched its neck out to catch the smell of Wei Wuxian’s breakfast.

“Ahh, I see how it is. Rat-gongzi only visits me for my food!” Wei Wuxian plucked a glob of cold rice from his bowl and flicked it at the rat.

The rat jumped backward in surprise, then crept back to sniff at the rice. After a few careful nibbles, it picked the rice up in its tiny hands and ate it daintily.

Wei Wuxian flicked it another morsel.

This game lasted until the rice was gone, then the rat scuttled away into a crack in the wall, abandoning Wei Wuxian to his own thoughts. 

How could he find Lan Zhan’s killer when he was locked up down here?

Now that he’d been caught, would the Jin turn their attention toward the Wen refugees?

Had news of his supposed latest crime reached Jiang Cheng and Shijie at the Lotus Pier yet? Did they believe it? Surely Shijie, at least, wouldn’t believe that he had killed Lan Zhan!

Would she…?

Even if Jiang Cheng didn’t believe the accusation against him, he couldn’t afford to defend him. To do so would put the weakened Jiang clan in direct conflict with all three of the other major clans and Wei Wuxian wasn’t even a member of the Jiang clan anymore. 

He could only hope that he and Jiang Cheng had made enough of a show of severing the ties the ties between them to keep the Jiang clan from being caught in the backlash of Wei Wuxian being accused of murdering the Lan clan heir.

Lan Zhan…

Silent, steady, reliable Lan Zhan. 

Anyone who thought Lan Zhan was slow because of his reticence or who judged him weak because of how alcohol affected him was an idiot of the first order. Lan Zhan had always been the best of them. 

Anger sizzled under his skin at the memory of Jin Zixun mocking Lan Zhan’s weaknesses when he’d captured Wei Wuxian. How had he known that Lan Wangji passed out at the smallest drink of alcohol, anyway? When had Jin Zixun ever had the opportunity to see Lan Wangji drunk?

A dark wave of protective anger washed over him at the thought of that pretentious Jin son-of-a-bitch seeing Lan Zhan soft and sloppy and vulnerable as he had been that night in Wei Wuxian’s guest room in the Cloud Recesses. No-one should see Hanguang-Jun like that. Least of all someone who wouldn’t have the decency to protect him while he was vulnerable and keep him from embarrassing himself.

As if preserving Hanguang-Jun’s pride mattered now. He was dead. Lan Zhan was dead, and everyone believed that Wei Wuxian had killed him. 

Despair clawed its way up through his chest, trying to choke him.

Some time later, the sound of footsteps on the stairs interrupted his brooding. His heart lurched at the sight of a swirl of Lan blue and white rounding the corner, then crashed as he recognized the strong, angular features of Lan Xichen.

Wei Wuxian sat silently, staring at his hands, as Lan Xichen stalked toward his cell. He didn’t know what to say to Lan Zhan’s brother. I’m sorry for your loss? I’m innocent? Let me find the actual killer and I will make him live every nightmare he’s ever had before he dies, screaming? Hi?

Lan Xichen stopped an arm’s length from the bars and stared at him. Out of the corner of his eye, Wei Wuxian could see the grim set of his jaw and the cold fury in his bloodshot eyes. He was suddenly very glad for the iron bars between them.

“I have only one question for you, Wei Wuxian,” Lan Xichen said in a dangerously even voice. “ Why?”

How was he supposed to answer that? He kept his eyes down and kept studying his hands. Long fingers, callused and ragged from work, ink stained, and double jointed in a way that Jiang Cheng had informed him was “creepy.”

“Wangji came to you in peace,” Lan Xichen bit out. “He trusted you !”

The words hit Wei Wuxian like a kick in the chest. He looked up slowly. His voice came out half strangled. “He… what?”

Lan Xichen’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Wangji would never have hurt you. He only wanted to help. He lo…!” Lan Xichen cut himself off abruptly. His hands clenched, white knuckled at his sides. “Why did you kill him?”

Wei Wuxian sighed. His eyes flicked up to Lan Xichen’s face and away. “If I told you that I didn’t, would you believe me?”

“ Did you?” Lan Xichen replied in a voice like brittle glass.

“No.” 

Lan Xichen’s voice took on an urgent edge. “Then tell me what happened .”

“I don’t know! I haven’t seen Lan Zhan in months.”

Lan Zhan, standing alone in the rain. “Wei Ying, where are you going?”

Lan Xichen frowned. “He was going to Yiling to meet with you.”

He was? The idea made Wei Wuxian’s heart do complicated things, torn between pleasure at news that Lan Zhan had been coming to see him and guilt that the trip had somehow cost him his life. He shook his head, his voice heavy with might-have-beens. “He never made it to the Burial Mounds. I don’t know what happened to him. I’m sorry.”

Lan Xichen eyed him suspiciously. “So, you never received the message Wangji was carrying?

A message. Of course. He was delivering a message. Not Lan Zhan coming to see Wei Ying as a friend but Hanguang-Jun coming as an emissary to the Yiling Patriarch on behalf of the cultivation world. Still, Wei Wuxian would have been glad to see him, whatever message he carried. “What message?”

“It was a proposal of terms,” Lan XIchen replied. “Amnesty for the Wen civilians in return for destroying the Stygian Tiger Amulet.”

“Ah.” Wei Wuxian looked down and smiled sadly. Had Lan Zhan known that destroying the amulet would likely kill Wei Wuxian?

Wei Wuxian might have agreed to the terms anyway, if he had trusted the clans to keep their end of the deal once he was gone. If he hadn’t been sure that they would destroy poor Wen Ning as an abomination. It would have been worth his life, to guarantee the safety of the people he protected.

But Wei Wuxian did not trust cultivation clans. 

He didn’t say any of this. “Destroying the amulet? I’d have thought there would be a lot of people who would rather claim it for themselves.” He cocked his head in thought. “Maybe someone didn’t want Hanguan-Jun to deliver his message?”

Lan Xichen’s lips pressed together in displeasure. “The matter of what should be done with the amulet has been a subject of fierce debate. But I cannot believe that any of the clans would go so far as to have Wangji killed over it.”

I can. He didn’t say it aloud. Instead he tried, “Maybe they didn’t intend to kill him. Maybe someone was trying to stop him and it went wrong?”
Lan Xichen considered this. “Maybe.” It was impossible to tell from his voice whether he believed that or not. 

They were both silent for a few minutes, contemplating how far people would go for power. 

“How…” Wei Wuxian finally choked out the question he did not want to hear the answer to. “How did… he die?”

Lan Xichen’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Wei Wuxian sharply. “It was a stab wound, I believe. To the chest.”

That was… less horrible than most of the rumors he’d heard, Wei Wuxian supposed. But somehow, knowing made it feel more real. He realized that his fingers were curling helplessly against his own chest, where the resentful energy inside him boiled.

Focus.

“Have you buried him yet?” If Wei Wuxian could manage to get a look at… at the body, maybe it would tell him something about what had happened. And who to kill for it.

Lan Xichen blinked slowly. “We do not have Wangj’s body,” He replied flatly.

Wei Wuxian looked up. “Who does? What happened to it?”

“I don’t know.”

Wei Wuxian frowned. “How do you know that he was stabbed, then?”

“Someone,” Lan Xichen’s eyes flicked over Wei Wuxian. “Sent me his sword, his headband and one of his robes, torn at the chest and soaked with blood. Along with a note warning us not to send anyone else.”

“His headband?! ” Wei Wuxian’s hands clenched until the nails bit into the skin. He didn’t entirely understand the significance of the Lan headbands, but he knew that Lan Zhan had treated it as an intimate thing. The image of someone stripping it off of his helpless corpse made Wei Wuxian sick. 

Lan Xichen was looking at him strangely. 

“Zewu-Jun,” Wei Wuxian said bleakly. “I didn’t kill Lan Zhan.”

“I believe you,” Lan Xichen said softly. 

“What?” Wei Wuxian blinked. “You do?”

Lan Xichen nodded.

“Oh.”

“But this is not the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Xichen continued. “I cannot release you on my belief alone. I will require some proof that I can bring to Jin Guangshan and the other clan leaders.”

“It’s all right,” Nothing was all right. But it wasn't Lan Xichen’s fault. He was trying to be kind. “I wasn’t expecting you to get me out of here.”

“Perhaps you can still help me to discover what happened to my brother.” Lan Xichen said thoughtfully. “If we can find the real killer, that would clear your name. Will you help?”

“Anything I can do,” Wei Wuxian vowed. For Lan Zhan.

*      *      *

The next time Lan Xichen visited him, he was carrying an awkward bundle. 

“What’s that?”

“This is the package we received, containing Wangji’s belongings.” He laid the bundle down on the ground and unwrapped the cloth. “I would like you to take a look at them. Perhaps you can find some clue that I have missed.”

Wei Wuxian nodded jerkily and came to sit by the bars of his cell. 

Lan Xichen removed Bichen from the pile and tucked it into his belt beside Shuoyue before sliding the bundle into Wei Wuxian’s reach. 

You believe me, but you still don’t want to hand me a sword, huh?  Under other circumstances he might have been affronted, but he was staring down at a pile of Lan Zhan’s bloody robes and he couldn’t bring himself to care about Lan Xichen’s lingering distrust.

His fingers hovered over the headband. It looked so forlorn, so wrong, crumpled and dingy in the bundle. It looked like someone had stepped on it . The shape of a boot toe was clearly outlined by the prints of the double looped stitching around the sole. There was dried blood caked into the cloud pattern of the metal. Wei Wuxian longed to smooth the ribbon and fold it neatly, but he withdrew his hand without touching it, aware of Lan Xichen’s eyes on him. 

Improper. 

Tears pricked at his eyes. 

He blinked hard and turned instead to the note. “Don’t send anyone else,” It said, written in a messy scrawl on a sheet of fine, white paper. Very fine.

“This is really nice paper,” He mused, rubbing it between his fingers and then holding it up to the light to look at the grain.

Lan Xichen blinked at him in polite incomprehension. 

“I don’t think you can even buy paper like this in Yiling. Who would use such expensive paper for a message like this?”

Lan Xichen shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Either it was what they thought that the Yiling Patriarch would do,” He spit the title out like it was bitter. “Or they weren’t thinking about their choice of paper.” Either way, he thought. Whoever wrote this is an idiot.

Lan Xichen had grown up as the heir to a wealthy and respected clan. He had probably never had to think about the cost of paper in his life. So Wei Wuxian added “If they used fancy paper without thinking about it because that’s what they had on hand, that suggests that this was written by someone who has money to flaunt.” 

Like the Jin clan, whose dungeon they currently sat in. Or the Lan clan. Another thought best kept to himself, for now. Zewu-Jun would definitely not appreciate the insinuation that his brother might have been killed by one of their own. 

Who was Zewu-Jun’s heir now, with Hanguang-Jun dead?

Wei Wuxian unfolded the ruined robe. The whole front was dark with dried blood. He had to close his eyes and swallow against the queasy knot in his throat. He didn’t have a problem with blood, per se. He used his own blood to write spells on a regular basis. It was the story that the bloody robe told that made him sick. It was the image of Lan Zhan with a sword in his chest, his serene face twisted in pain. Struggling stubbornly to stand as his life bled out into the dust. How long had he kept fighting, mortally wounded?

A horrible, new thought occurred to him. Had Lan Zhan believed that Wei Wuxian was responsible for the attack on him? 

Oh gods. Did he die thinking that I had him killed?

“Wei-gongzi?”

Lan Xichen was watching him with a worried expression. Possibly because he was shaking. Or because he had his face pressed into the comparatively clean shoulder of the robe. Beneath the smell of blood it smelled of smoke and sandalwood and Lan Zhan. 

He set the robe down. “Sorry…” He choked. 

Lan Xichen’s expression softened. “You care about him.”

Wei Wuxian looked away. “Doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters.”

Wei Wuxian let the subject drop, too busy pulling himself back together by sheer, bitter force of will to argue. 

He drew a studying breath. “I think I could use the blood on these to make something to find… uh.. Find the body that it came from.”

Lan Xichen’s face spasmed. “Being able to take my brother’s body home would be a comfort to me.”

Yes. Lan Zhan would want that. To be laid to rest in the peace of the Cloud Recesses, beside his mother and father. For his brother and his uncle to have something to bury, to say goodbye to. 

Wei Wuxian wrenched his attention back to the task at hand. “And maybe finding his body will help us find his killer.”

“What do you need?”

“Hmm. A compass. A brush. Talisman paper. And water.” The blood on the robe was too long dried to use to write with. He would have to dissolve it in water first. Fresh blood would have been easier, but Wei Wuxian would make this work. For Lan Zhan.

Lan Xichen nodded. “I will bring them for you.”

*      *      *

Lan Wangji floundered up toward consciousness again. He was still in the same small, dark room where he had woken before. A sliver of sunlight seeped in under the door, so it must be daytime again. 

His hands were still bound, though he had made some progress in working the knot loose with his teeth. It was slow and undignified, but it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.

Worse, his spiritual power was sealed. If it hadn’t been, then the ropes wouldn’t have been a problem. Neither would the door. It had been long enough since the first time he had woken here, confused and hungover, that the sealing should have worn off by now if it weren’t being regularly renewed while he was unconscious. 

On the more promising side, he had food and water. He had a blanket and a chamber pot. Someone came in once a day to empty the chamber pot and leave fresh food and water. He had not seen his jailer because these visits begin with a stick of drugged incense shoved under the door. From these things, he concluded that whoever was keeping him here wanted him alive and healthy. While he appreciated this, it did raise the question of why?

None of the possibilities were good. 

He could be being kept alive to be used later as a sacrifice in some dark ritual or fed to a monster. That was not very likely, but it was possible. 

The more likely scenario was that he was a hostage, to be used in some way against his clan, against his brother. He worried about what Xichen might agree to, for his sake. 

The other likely possibility was that someone had not wanted him to reach Yiling. If that was the case, then he might simply be released, unharmed, at some point without ever having seen his captor’s faces. Otherwise, why would they bother with keeping and feeding him rather than killing him immediately? 

That would have been a hopeful prospect, except that the thought of what might be happening in Yiling while he was locked up here made his blood run cold. If someone wanted to delay his arrival at the burial grounds with his message, it meant they were planning to go after Wei Wuxian. 

Lan Wangji had been on his way to Yiling to try, once again, to persuade Wei Ying to give up the Stygian Tiger Amulet and the strange, dangerous power it gave him. Lan Wangji had thought that he might be willing, if a deal could be made to trade the surrender of the amulet for the safety of the Wen survivors. Wei Ying had already given up so much to protect them. If he wouldn’t give up the Stygian Tiger Amulet for his own sake, maybe he would do it for them. If only Lan Wangji could find the words to persuade him.

But Wei Ying did not trust Lan Wangji. 

The last time they had parted, Wei Ying had raised his flute like a sword, with tears in his eyes and challenged Lan Wangji to fight him. 

“Lan Zhan, if I finally have to fight with them, I’d prefer to fight with you,” He’d said. ”If I’m doomed to death, at least I could be killed by Hanguang-Jun. That would be worth it.” And Lan Wangji had known that he had lost him. 

Was it possible to lose something that had never been his to begin with? 

But he had hoped... He had wanted. Oh, how he had wanted.

Lan Wangji had let them go, of course. What else could he do? He’d gone there to keep Wei Ying from ruining himself, not to fight him. He had never felt so helpless.

If Lan Wangji had offered to go with him, would Wei Ying have allowed it?

Probably not. He would have argued that he couldn’t let Hanguang-Jun throw away his reputation, or that Lan Wangji’s clan needed him, but the truth was that Wei Ying did not trust him. 

Had Wei Ying really believed that Lan Wangji would fight him –would kill him– for trying to rescue a ragged group of Wen civilians from the mistreatment of the Jin clan? Does he think so badly of me?  

He’d had a second chance, with this mission, to save Wei Ying. But he had failed again. He had never even made it to Yiling. 

On his way, he had run into a group of Jin and Nie cultivators who were on the trail of a particularly vicious demon bear that had been terrorizing the local villages. Some of the cultivators had asked for Hanguang-Jun’s help, and so, despite how anxious he was to get to Yiling and find Wei Ying. he had joined the night-hunt.

It had been a difficult fight and there had been many injuries, but they had managed to take down the demon bear without losing any of the cultivators. Afterward, the night-hunters had retired to the nearest town to rest and tend their wounds and celebrate their victory with rowdy enthusiasm. 

Since it was too late in the day to continue traveling, Lan Wangji had been forced to join them in the crowded little inn. There had been wine, of which Lan Wangji had not partaken. And food, over spiced and greasy, but nourishing. And some sort of little cakes with peaches in them, which he had politely accepted. 

The cakes had been moist and sweet, with an odd, sharp flavor that evaporated on his tongue. It wasn’t until his thoughts began to turn fuzzy and his eyelids grew heavy that he realized that the cakes were soaked with wine.

He hadn’t made it to his room before he fell asleep.

After that, his memories are blurry and disjointed.

Laughter.

Someone prodding him.

Voices.

Rough hands hauling him up. 

The bone-jarring bouncing of a cart. 

A voice sneering, “Behold! The Second Jade of Gusu! You’re pathetic.”

Lan Wangji had felt inclined to agree.

*      *      *

Wei Wuxian sat on the floor, surrounded by slips of talisman paper, chewing thoughtfully on the handle of his brush. Lan Xichen sat outside the cell with his back against the wall, apparently meditating. He probably needed it. He looked like hadn’t slept much recently. 

Wei Wuxian hadn’t slept much since being captured, either. Without the weariness of walking all day, he couldn’t quiet his mind enough to fall asleep. At least today he had something to focus his attention on besides his grief and thinking about all the people that he had failed.

He smeared his bloody finger along the compass needle and tried again to activate the talisman. This time, the needle snapped around to point toward him. 

“Ah HA!” He crowed and scrambled to his feet to try walking around the modified compass. Sure enough, the needle swung to follow him as he moved.

Lan Xichen opened his eyes and looked at him curiously. 

“It’s working!” Wei Wuxian told him. “Look.”

Lan Xichen got to his feet and came over to watch Wei Wuxian walk around his cell as the compass needle tracked him. “I’m impressed,” He said. “Though not surprised. You always have been brilliant, when you applied yourself to something.” 

“Alright, now I need some of your blood.,” Wei Wuxian told him. And not just to see how Lan Xichen would respond. He held a bowl out through the bars.

Lan Xichen frowned at the bowl. “Why do you need my blood?”

“To test the talisman. I’ve tested it with my own blood and it works, but now I need to test with someone else’s blood to make sure that I haven’t just made a Wei Wuxian locator. Which wouldn’t be very useful right now, since I’m stuck in here.”

Lan Xichen looked at Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch, heretic, traitor, demonic cultivator, possible murderer, asking for his blood to test a new talisman that he’d just made up.

Wei Wuxian tried to look trustworthy.

Come on. Do it for Lan Zhan.

Finally Lan Xichen nodded. He drew Shuoyue to nick his hand neatly and squeezed several drops into the bowl.

“Thank you, Zewu-Jun.”

He cleaned his blood off the compass, pulled out a fresh slip of talisman paper and dipped his brush in Lan Xichen’s blood. He repeated the characters of the directional spell he had used. When he was finished, he slapped the talisman paper onto the compass and painted the compass needle with blood.

As he finished, the needle swung to point at Lan Xichen.

“It works,” he announced, a little smuggly.

As he cleaned the compass again, it occurred to him that, having invented this locator compass, he was going to have to find a way of warding against it, if he ever got out of the Jin dungeon alive. He didn’t especially want to have everyone who’d ever stabbed him be able to track him down again.

But that was a problem for Future Wei Wuxian. Present Wei Wuxian had work to do.

He pulled Lan Zhan’s robe from the bundle. The cloud medallion of headband twinkled in the flickering light of the lamp, reminding him of the night in the cave of the Tulu Xuanwu. Blood on white silk in the firelight. Two injured boys, trying desperately to keep each other alive.

Together, they had survived and killed the Tulu Xuanwu. Together, they had won. And Wei Wuxian had hoped that now they were finally going to really be friends.

But, in the end, Lan Zhan had died alone. Except for his killer, who had torn his headband from his forehead, ground it beneath his foot and sent it to his brother as evidence of the murder.

He looked over at Lan Xichen. Why did you let him go alone? Why weren’t you there? Why wasn’t I there?

It was stupid to be angry at Lan Xichen. Pointless to wish that he himself had been there to watch Lan Zhan’s back. He’d made his choices when he’d drawn Chenqing on Lan Zhan and told him that he could let them go or fight him to the death. He’d turned his back on everything that Lan Zhan represented. They weren’t friends. It was just that… he was Hanguang-Jun and the world was a darker place without him in it.

Wei Wuxian took a fold of the robe near the tear in the front, where it was entirely stiff with blood and dipped it into a dish of clean water. Rust red swirls drifted out from the fabric.

The result was a small dish of very red water, thinner than blood, but dark enough to serve as ink. He used it to paint a new talisman. It was easy to do now, on the third repetition, but he took his time, drawing each stroke with care. Because this one needed to work perfectly. And because this was probably the last thing he would be able to do for Lan Zhan. 

When he activated the talisman, the compass needle swung to point toward the back wall. Wei Wuxian’s head turned to follow it. He wasn’t sure which direction that was, but somewhere in that direction was Lan Zhan’s dead body, stripped of his sword, his robe and even his headband. His beautiful face gone still in a cruel parody of its natural expressionlessness. 

Wei Wuxian closed the compass and held it out through the bars to Lan Xichen. “Here. It’s finished. You should hurry. I don’t know how long this enchantment will last.”

“Thank you, Wei-gonzi.”

Wei Wuxian nodded, not trusting his voice.

For Lan Zhan. 

He collected his materials and returned them to Lan Xichen as well. There were still blood smears on the floor, which would probably alarm the guards, but in Wei Wuxian’s defense, most of it was his own.

As Lan Xichen turned to leave, Wei Wuxian swallowed hard and spoke. “Zewu-Jun?”

Lan Xichen turned back. “Yes?”

“Please find the bastard who did this to Lan Zhan.”

Lan Xichen’s jaw set in an echo of the deadly fury from the first time he had come to the dungeon. “I will do my best.”

Wei Wuxian nodded. 

He watched Lan Xichen go and then flopped down on his blanket, exhausted from more than the energy he’d used in making the talismans. He flung his arm over his face and let out a sigh that was half sob. 

The smell of blood lingered in the stale air, carrying with it the image of the bloody slash in the chest of Lan Zhan’s pale blue robe. His headband, that he had guarded so carefully, ground beneath the heel of someone’s stupid, fancy shoe.

Fancy shoe…?

The pattern of the stitches imprinted into the silk. It had been complicated. What a dumb place for decrative stitching. Just like…

Jin Zixun.

Wei Wuxian sat straight up, heart slamming against his ribs. 

Jin Zixun? The peacock’s stupid, beligerent shadow? He couldn’t possibly have beaten Lan Zhan! Not in a fair fight. Or even an unfair fight. But…

How had Jin Zixun known that Lan Zhan passed out after a single cup of wine?

Had he seen it happen?

Had he used the opportunity to murder Lan Zhan while he was unconcious?

The shape of a pattern began to take form on his mind: Kill the messenger. Stop the message he carried from being delivered. Prevent the destruction of the amulet. Blame the killing on the Yiling Patriarch. On Wei Wuxian, whom Jin Zixun hated. Use the accusation as an excuse to arrest Wei Wuxian and execute him. Secure the amulet for his uncle. Or for himself.

Jin Zixun was absolutely the kind of idiot who would write his forged note on expensive paper without thinking about what the man he was framing had access to. 

It all fit. It made sense . And Wei Wuxian knew, with absolute certainty, that no one would believe him.

Even Lan Xichen, who was apparently willing to give Wei Wuxian the benefit of the doubt, would be suspicious if he tried to plead his innocence by accusing a man he was known to have clashed with publicly and repeatedly. But Wei Wuxian was certain, in his heart, that Jin Zixun had murdered Lan Zhan, He had somehow gotten Lan Zhan drunk and then stabbed him to death while he slept in order to get possession of the Stygian Tiger Amulet. And it was going to work unless Lan Xichen managed to work out for himself what had happened. Because no one would believe Wei Wuxian. 

Wei Wuxian’s vision went dark. Resentful energy screamed in his veins, but the talismans plastered to the walls of the dungeon and the suppression spell laid on his person prevented him from using it. He might be able to make himself spontaneously combust, if he kept pushing resentful energy against the suppression, but that was about all. 

If he could take Jin Zixun out with him, it might be worth it. 

But Jin Zixun was not here. And so Wei Wuxian sat with his back to the cold stone wall and breathed carefully, in his memory, he heard Lan Zhan’s voice, low and urgent, telling him to “Concentrate”. So he concentrated. For Lan Zhan. 

He was shaking and sweating by the time the roil of resentful energy beneath his skin settled to an angry thrum. 

So, it turns out that I am responsible for Lan Zhan’s death, in a way, He thought bitterly. Jin Zixun had killed him because Lan Zhan had been coming to see Wei Wuxian. Because they were… what? Friends? Rivals? Comrades? Zhiji?

Well, it wasn’t like it mattered anymore. Lan Zhan was dead and it was Wei Wuxian’s fault. Just like the Jiang clan. 

You destroy everything you touch, Wei Wuxian. 

Maybe it would be better for everyone if he did die here, in a Jin prison, like the Wens he’d been too late to save. But not before he figured out a way to take Jin ZIxun down, too. 

He could try to nudge Lan Xichen in the right direction and hope he would put the pieces together. And hope that when he did, he would be able to stand against the Jin clan and demand justice for his murdered brother.

Wei Wuxian knew better than to depend on hope.

He would just have to find some way to get close enough to Jin Zixun to destroy both of them with an explosion of uncontrolled resentful energy. He would avenge Lan Zhan and Wen Ning. That would be worth his life.

He lay back down and wrapped himself in the course blanket.

It was comforting to have a plan.

Chapter Text

The device that Wei Wuxian had created was a variation on the Compass of Ill Winds that he had designed to seek out malicious spirits. Only simpler, Wei Wuxian had said. Because it only has to be able to find one thing. Neither of them had wanted to say aloud what that one thing was. 

Lan Xichen drew Shuoyue, preparing to mount it to fly toward Yiling. But rather than pointing south-east, toward Yiling, as he had expected, the compass needle swung to the east, pointing deeper into Lanling. Lan Xichen followed it, puzzled. 

Did that mean that Wangji had never even made it out of Lanling?

Maybe the compass wasn’t working right. Maybe it was leading back to the blood on the robes rather than to the body. Or maybe, he thought with a queasy twist in his stomach, there wasn’t enough left of Wangji’s body for the thing to find.

The compass led him back to the Koi Tower, but not to the guest room where he had left the bundle of Wangji’s belongings. Instead, he found himself winding his way through the part of the grounds that housed the servants quarters and outbuildings.

“Clan Leader Lan? Can I help you?” A girl in the livery of the Koi Tower’s servants bowed deeply and shot him a confused look. “Are you lost?”

Lan Xichen folded his hands behind his back as he turned to the servant girl. “No, thank you,” He replied with a gentle, reassuring smile. “I’m just taking a walk.”

The girl frowned at him, clearly questioning his choice of places to stretch his legs, but she only bowed again and scampered off. 

Lan Xichen opened the compass again and followed its steady pointer until he came up against a wall surrounding a courtyard behind the kitchen. He circled the wall until he found a gate, unlocked at this hour. 

The movements of the pointer were getting more extreme now, as if it were getting close to the thing it was drawn to.

Wangji’s corpse.

He came to a small building with fragrant smoke curling up from vents in the roof. It took him a moment to recognize it as a smokehouse. They didn’t have such things in the Cloud Recesses, since slaughtering any animal within the grounds was forbidden. 

He tried to go around it, but the compass needle swung to point back toward the smokehouse as he walked. He made two full circles around it, just to be sure, the stood, eying the building with suppressed horror. He had expected to be digging up a shallow grave in Yiling. Was the prospect of finding his brother’s body stuffed into a smokehouse like a side of meat really worse than that?

It was. There was something chillingly deliberate about it. If someone was keeping Wangji’s body like that, what were they planning on doing with it? And, perhaps most alarming, why were they keeping it here?

Lan Xichen pulled all of his courage around himself and pushed the door open. The smell of raw meat and blood assailed his nose and he swallowed a wave of nausea. He looked around frantically, blinking against the smoke, until his eyes adjusted to the dimness.

Mercifully, none of the shapes hanging in the smokehouse was human. 

None was his little brother’s desecrated body. 

He didn’t know if he was relieved or discouraged. His breath came in quick, deep gasps that filled his lungs with smoke and made him cough. 

Once he got his breath and his eyes stopped watering, he realized that the compass was pointing resolutely to the carcass of a deer that dangled, upside down, from the ceiling. Lan Xichen frowned at the deer and waved the compass slowly back and forth in front of it, then walked around it. The needle remained pointing at the deer carcass. 

What did that mean?

If the talisman that Wei Wuxian had made using the blood from Wangji’s robes had been drawn here, that must mean that the blood on those robes had come from this unfortunate animal. Not from Lan Wangji.

Why would Wangji’s robes be soaked with animal blood? It made no sense.

A small, wild hope flickered in Lan Xichen’s chest. 

If the blood on the robes was not Wangji’s, if the robe had been deliberately soaked with blood from a butchered deer to make them appear battle bloodied, then maybe…

Maybe Wangji wasn’t dead.

*      *      *

Lan Wangji sat in lotus position with his attention focused inward, on the flow of his qi through his body, testing against the restraints that kept him weak and helpless. Like the ropes, he could work his way free, with enough time.

He didn’t have time.

If he could focus enough power against the suppression spell, he would be able to simply break it. To do that, he needed to gather his strength and fill his golden core. So he focused on the flow of his qi , diverting it from the unnecessary task of healing his chafed wrists and drawing it in, concentrating it and storing it.

Worry and anger and guilt would not get him out of this cellar. They would only drain his energy. Energy that he needed for breaking his restraints. He held each of the emotions and examined them, thern set them aside until his mind was clear and there was only the flow of his qi.

His heart pumped. His breath rose and fell. His qi flowed. 

His hands and feet began to feel the cold from the stone walls around him. That did not matter either.  

The sound of footsteps outside the door jolted him out of his meditation. 

He sprang up, stumbling a little as his numb feet found the floor. He quickly scooped up the water jug and soak the edge of his sleeve with water as the familiar, cloying scent of incense smoke began to fill the small room. He covered his nose and mouth with his wet sleeve, hoping to filter out some of the drug in the smoke. 

It was difficult to see the burning stick of incense against the bright line of sunlight coming in under the door. If he could get to it and stamp it out before it produced enough smoke to knock him out, he might be able to take his captor by surprise. 

He would need surprise. He was at a severe disadvantage, with his hands bound, dizzy with the smoke and unable to use his spiritual power. Which was, no doubt, exactly the point.

He braced against the wall with his free hand and focused on climbing the narrow stairs to the door.

The smoke was thicker near the door. The smoldering tip of the incense stick glowed faintly against the ground. He brought his foot down on it and crushed out the burning ember, then leaned against the wall, coughing with the smoke. 

After what seemed like a very long time to his hazy perception, the door opened and a cloaked figure stood silhouetted against the light. 

Lan Wangji lunged.

The figure yelped.

“Oh fuck ! He’s awake !”

They grappled in the doorway.

Lan Wangi was taller, stronger and more skilled than his adversary, but he was lightheaded and clumsy. He was forced back, step by step until…

His foot hit empty air.

His balance shifted. His adversary shoved and he was falling. 

He clenched his hands in his attacker’s robes and yanked, pulling the other down with him as he fell.

Lan Wangji might be drugged and suppressed, but his body still reacted with a lifetime of training, curling up to protect his head and neck, taking the edges of the wooden stairs on his shoulders and legs and rolling as he hit the floor below. 

There was a sharp cry from somewhere nearby as his captor hit the ground as well. Lan Wangji scrambled toward the sound, reaching, grasping. His hand met cloth, then skin. An arm. He clamped his hand down around it, digging his fingers in as hard as he could.

His opponent fought back with the strength of panic. The arm was wrenched loose from his grasp and he smelled blood. His fingertips were wet with it where his nails had gauged the other’s skin. His opponent bolted for the stairs. 

Before Lan Wangji could get his feet under him to pursue, the door slammed closed. As smoke began filling the room again, he had time to think that he should have gone for the stairs and freedom rather than for the enemy before he lost his grip on consciousness.

*      *      *

The sound of approaching footsteps sent Wei Wuxian bolting to his feet with his heart in his throat. Had Lan Xichen found Lan Zhan’s body already? Horrible images flooded his mind.

But it was not Lan Xichen who rounded the corner, flanked by Jin guards. It was Jin Guangshan. 

“Good morning Clan Leader Jin,” Wei Wuxian greeted him with a formal bow. “Is it morning? I think I’ve lost track. This room doesn’t get much sunlight. Maybe I could move to something with a southern facing window?”

Jin Guangshan pinned him with an unamused glare.

“Wei Wuxian, I will give you one final chance.” Jin Guangshan informed him. “Surrender the Stygian Tiger Amulet to me and I will say that you were under the influence of its power and that Lan Wangji’s death was not your fault.” 

“I dropped it in a lake,” Wei Wuxian shrugged. He’d had time to work on his lie since he was captured. “If you want it, you can take it up with the fish.” 

Jin Guangshan’s eyes narrowed. “After you are executed, I will have your body searched, inside and out.”

If Jin Guangshan wanted to scare him, Wei Wuxian thought, he should have put those in the other order.

They wouldn’t find the amulet, though. No matter how thoroughly they searched his body.  He’d left the thing back at the Burial Mounds, where it belonged. He had debated himself long and hard over whether leaving the Stygian Tiger Amulet with the Wens would make them more of a target and eventually realized that, once it was found that Wei Wuxian wasn’t carrying it, everyone would assume that the Wen refugees had it and it wouldn’t matter whether it was there or not. But actually having it might at least give them a chance of defending themselves. 

Jin Guangshan continued, “And then I will take an army to the burial mounds and deal with your little sweetheart and the escaped prisoners.”

“With my… what, now?” Wei Wuxian wrinkled his face in confusion, thrown off his stride.

“Wen Qing must be fantastic in bed for you to be willing to betray your clan and turn your back on your friends for her.” Jin Guangshan smirked. “I look forward to getting to know her better.”

Anger prickled under Wei Wuxian’s skin at the implied threat, but he laughed dismissively. “Oh, no, no, no. Wen Qing isn’t my type.” He shook his head and shuddered a little. “I’m afraid of doctors.”

I hope Wen Qing sticks those needles somewhere really unpleasant if he tries to touch her. 

“This doesn’t have to end with your death, Wei Wuxian.”

This was always going to end with my death.

“What do you think will happen if you take an army into the burial mounds?” He asked Jin Guangshan. “Do you really think you’ll be able to just walk out again? Do you know what kind of place it is?”

Jin Guangshan eyed him like he was something the clan leader had scrapped off the bottom of his show. “ You seem to have made it out just fine.”

Wei Wuxian smiled his sad, secret smile and slid his eyes over to meet Jin Guangshan’s. “ Did I?”

He laughed softly and shook his head as he turned away. “I guess you’ll find out.”

Jin Guangshan didn’t react, beyond a slight deepening of his glare, but the guards with him looked unnerved, so Wei Wuxian counted it as a win. 

He walked over and flopped down on his blanket, stretched, yawned and folded his arms under his head. He was done with this conversation.

“It seems our guest is reluctant to talk,” Jin Guangshan said to his guards. “Convince him.” Then a single set of footsteps –Jin Guangshan’s probably– receded down the hall. 

A few minutes later, Wei Wuxian  heard the sound of a key turning in the lock, then footsteps and the sloshing of water. He opened his eyes a crack to see two of the guards carrying a laundry tub between them into his cell. He eyed it suspiciously. Somehow, he didn’t think it was there for him to take a bath. Though he could certainly use one. 

Then he was being seized and hauled up from his blanket. 

“Hey!” He yelped, indignantly.

“You know what Clan Leader Jin wants,” One of the guards said, flatly, as they dragged him toward the tub. 

“I told you, I threw it in… glurg!” His protest was cut short as his head was thrust under the water. He fought reflexively, trying to get his arms free and his head above water, but the guards had numbers and angle on their side. Panic shot through him as he struggled against the impulse to breathe in. 

Then he was pulled up by the hair. He spit and coughed and blinked water from his eyes. 

“A lake, ” He finished, when he could speak again.

The hand on the back of his neck shoved his face back into the water, but this time he was ready. He managed to suck in a good lungful of air before he went under. He’d grown up swimming in the lakes of Yunmeng. He could hold his breath longer than anyone he knew. 

He hung limply in the grasp of his tormentors, letting out occasional bubbles of air and tried to pretend that he was under the lake back home, beating Jiang Cheng at a breath holding competition.

Distantly, he could hear the guards’ voices, garbled through the water. Silly of them, he thought, to try to talk to him when they had his head under water. 

His chest began to ache the need to breathe. He tried blinking his eyes open in the water to distract himself, but there was only darkness below and blurry light above. Soft, white light that swirled and shone like…

A knee to his stomach forced the air from his lungs. He gasped, got only water, tried to force it out again, flailed and panicked. 

Drowning! Drowning drowning drowningdrowningdrowning!

His head broke the surface and there was air again. He gasped at it, choking.

The guard not holding him by the hair leaned in to look him in the eyes and sneered, “You ready to talk yet?”

Wei Wuxian spit water in his face. Mostly by accident, but he hoped it looked like defiance. 

“I’m… told…” He wheezed. “I do nothing… but talk.”

The guards looked at each other for a moment, then shoved him back into the water. 

When he was hauled again, retching and shaking, one of the guards leaned in to ask “Where is the Stygian Tiger Amulet?”

“I… don’t…,” He wheezed, when he could get enough air to speak again. “I don’t know. Have you checked your clan leader’s ass? He’s obviously got something shoved waaaay…”

He barely had time to gulp in a breath of air as he was plunged back into the water. The edge of the tub cut bruisingly into his chest. Something struck him in the back. In the ribs. 

He couldn’t keep the air in his lungs. The light was gone There was nothing but water and darkness. 

I’m going to drown like a fucking landlubber. He thought, with startling clarity as darkness swallowed him up. I hope Jiang Cheng never finds out.

*      *      *

He came to again to the sound of angry voices. 

“Idiot! you’ve gone and killed him!”

“What does it matter? He was going to be executed anyway!”

“Clan Leader Jin wants to know where that amulet is. He can’t tell us where it is if he’s dead.”

Dead? Yes. Dead sounded good. Dead men didn’t get dunked in laundry tubs. He would just lie here and be dead. 

His body had other plans. Plans that included a racking spasm of coughing and gasping for air. 

Traitor, he thought accusingly at it.

“See there? He’s all right. I told you cultivators like him are hard to kill.”

Wei Wuxian thought that “All right” was a bit of an exaggeration.

He closed his eyes and let the darkness have him again. 

*      *      *

When he woke again, the guards and the tub were gone and  he was lying on the floor of his cell, wet and shivering and alone. He lay there for a long time, breath heaving in and out of lungs that burned, muscles aching, mind foggy with exhaustion. 

Without a golden core to warm him, his sodden clothes sucked the heat from his body.

He tried to remember if he’d said anything about where the Stygian Tiger Amulet was in between bouts of near drowning. Not that it mattered. The Wen village was a target either way. But there was a matter of principles involved. 

He was very cold.

He wondered whether Lan Xichen had found Lan Zhan’s body. He was pretty sure that the blood compass would work, but he didn’t know for how long. 

After a while, the shivering stopped. 

That was… not actually good, since he was still wet and lying on the cold stone on the dungeon floor. 

He picked at his belt with clumsy fingers until it gave way, then crawled across the floor to his blanket, leaving a trail of sodden clothes as went. He wrapped himself up in his blanket and shivered until he fell asleep. 

*      *      *

Back in his guest rooms at the Koi Tower, Lan Xichen paced restlessly, trying to figure out what to do with his new, wild, hopeful suspicion.

He made tea and forgot to drink it. 

Was it only desperately wishful thinking that made it seem possible that Wangji might be alive?

Who would want to make it look like Wangji was dead, if he was not? To make it look like Wei Wuxian had killed him…?

Wei Wuxian was going to die unless Lan Xichen could find some solid evidence of his innocence soon. And, living or dead, Wangji would never forgive him if he allowed that to happen. 

He remembered all too well Wangji’s desperate, relentless search when Wei Wuxian had been missing after the massacre of the Jiang clan. Lan Xichen hadn’t known which he was more afraid of: What Wangji would do if he found proof of Wei Wuxian’s death or what he would do if he never found anything.

Instead, and against all odds, he had found Wei Wuxian alive. Alive, but changed. Twisted. Wangji had wanted so badly to save Wei Wuxian from himself, from the demonic cultivation that he practiced, from the inevitable backlash of the cultivation world against him, but Wei Wuxian had rebuffed him at every turn. Wei Wuxian had clearly not wanted to be saved. Or, not by Wangji.

There were times when Lan Xichen just wanted to shake that boy by the scruff of the neck, to try to shake some sense into him. But, of course, that wouldn’t have helped. 

At least he was fairly certain now that Wei Wuxian had not killed Wangji. If Wangji was dead, at least he had not died at the hands of the man that he had secretly, silently loved since he was fifteen. 

And if Wangji was alive…

After those months of searching for Wei Wuxian, not knowing whether he was alive or dead, Lan Xichen did not think that Wangji would inflict that same uncertainty on his family if there was any way for him to send word to them. And he would never have let Wei Wuxian face imprisonment and execution for a murder he hadn’t commited. If his brother was alive, then he must be being held captive somewhere or be badly injured or both. 

If there was the slightest chance that his little brother was alive out there somewhere, alone, imprisoned and possibly hurt, then Lan Xichen would turn jianghu upside down until he found him and brought him home. But how? He didn’t even know where to begin looking. He couldn’t search every town and village between the Koi Tower and Yiling and also prevent Wei Wuxian from being put to death. 

The compass that Wei Wuxian had made would have been able to find Wangji, alive or dead, if the blood on the robes had actually been his. If he’d been home, in the Cloud Recesses, it might have been possible to find something in the Jingshi stained with Wangji’s blood, but not here. 

Thinking of the blood and the deer, it occurred to him that, if the deer that the blood on the robes had come from was here, in Lanling, then maybe Wangji was being held nearby as well. 

By whom?

An unpleasant prickle went up Lan Xichen’s spine. If someone in the Jin clan or their staff was keeping Wangji prisoner, then he dared not let on that he suspected that his brother might still be alive. Which meant that he could not discuss this with anyone. Not even Clan Leader Jin. And that meant he couldn’t tell A-Yao, either. It would be cruel to ask him to keep secrets from his own father, to whom he was still trying to prove himself. And he couldn’t say anything to Wei Wuxian, because anything he said in the dungeon might be overheard by the guards and who knew who they might be reporting to. He was on his own.

If Wangji really was alive, then a Jin messenger butterfly should be able to find him and deliver a message, but he wouldn’t be able to reply without a butterfly talisman of his own. And if he was in a position to be able to send a message, he would have done so already.

Maybe he should send a butterfly, anyway, to let Wangji know that his brother was looking for him, that help was coming. On the other hand, the appearance of the messenger butterfly might alert whoever had tried to fake Wangji’s death that their ruse was unraveling and that might drive them to actually kill Wangji. He couldn’t risk that.

Unless… he stopped short as a new thought struck him. Could he follow the butterfly, the way he had Wei Wuxian’s blood compass?

It was worth trying. He silently blessed A-Yao for the little box of messenger talismans he had given to him to send messages back to Gusu as he opened the box and drew one out. He picked up his brush, dipped it in the ink and carefully wrote the characters of his brother’s name on the black space on the talisman. 

蓝 Lan. Indigo blue. The clan name that connected them to each other and to their ancestors, all the way back to Lan An.

湛 Zhan. Deep. Clear. Like the still water of a lake. The name their mother had given to the chubby cheeked baby she had laid in Xichen’s arms and said “This is your brother. You must always look after him.”

Did anyone realize the depth of feeling that hid beneath his stillness?

忘机 Wangji. Free of worldly concerns. The name he shared with his spiritual guqin. Given to him in recognition of his dedication to his studies and in hope that he would remain above the petty pursuits that dragged down other men.

And he had. With one exception. 

One exception that may have gotten him killed.

Lan Xichen blew on the ink to speed its drying, then tucked the prepared talisman into the folds of his robe. He slid Bichen into his belt beside Shuoyue and headed out through the halls of the Koi Tower. 

Once he was outside, he activated the talisman with a touch of spiritual energy and spoke his message into it, “Wangji, where are you?” 

Lan Xichen held his breath as the paper began to glow and shimmer. He regretted that he had never thought to ask what would happen if the recipient named on the talisman was dead. 

The paper devolved into sparks of golden light in the shape of a butterfly. Instead of setting it free, Lan Xichen caught the butterfly and held it gently caged in his hands. It beat its wings against his fingers like a tiny heartbeat. Like the flutter of hope in his chest.

He turned his body until he was facing the direction that the butterfly was trying to fly in and followed its pull, letting it lead him, he hoped, to Wangji.

Following the spirit butterfly was harder than following the compass had been. He spent the morning laboriously working his way through the streets of Lanling, stopping at every corner to check the direction that the butterfly was pulling toward. 

Surely, he thought, the fact that he had to keep changing direction must mean that Wangji… that whatever the butterfly was trying to fly toward was close by. If it had been heading for Yiling, it would be pulling steadily to the south-east and not leading him in circles around Lanling. Or maybe the butterfly messenger was just trying to get out of his hands so it could start it could take flight properly. Or maybe it was flapping around aimlessly because Lan Wangji was dead in a ditch in Yiling and it had no one to deliver its message to. 

Lan Xichen’s fingers were aching from the effort of holding the butterfly tightly enough to keep it from slipping free but gently enough not to crush its wings. Shopkeepers that he’d passed more than once were starting to watch him with the awkward unease of people who suspected that they were looking at a madman, but were too polite to say anything.

Look at Zewu-Jun. He thought bitterly. Gone mad with grief, wandering the streets like an unquiet ghost.

He was working on what he was going to say to CLan Leader Jin to explain his strange  behavior when he saw the blood. Smears of it, drying on the cobblestones at irregular intervals, forming a trail. 

He stopped and stared down at the rust-red smears. There were a thousand reasons why someone might be bleeding on the street. Most had nothing to do with him or his purpose here. But this was the first out of the ordinary thing he had seen as he combed the streets. And whoever had left this trail might be in need of help. He turned away from the pull of the spirit butterfly and followed the blood trail. 

After only a few blocks, the trail petered out in the middle of the street, as if the bleeding had stopped. That was probably good for whoever had been bleeding, but defeated Lan XIchen’s attempt to identify the source of the blood. 

The butterfly fluttered against Lan Xichen’s fingers, pulling back toward the direction he had come from. He turned around and traced the trail back the other way, past where he had noticed the blood, up the street and around the weathered shell of a burned out house. The blood trail was heavier here and there were scuff marks on the ground. 

The nudging of the butterfly in his hands had grown no stronger nor steadier, but it followed the trail. The back of Lan Xichen’s neck prickled. 

He followed the blood and the butterfly until he found himself facing a door. It looked like an ordinary, wooden door on the type of cellar used to store vegetables except that it was plastered with talismans as if someone was trying to keep something in.

His heart lurched. 

Lan Xichen eyed the door warily and released the butterfly. It flew to the door and fluttered against the wood until it found a crack and slipped under the door. He thought about calling out, but he didn’t want to alert whoever or whatever might be guarding this prison. Or whatever was being imprisoned in there. He drew Shuoyue and broke the lock and kicked the heavy door in.

The cellar was dark, but he could see a splash of white against the dark floor at the bottom of the stairs. A crumpled figure in white robes. 

“Wangji!” Lan Xichen took the stairs in two light leaps and went to his knees beside his brother. Wangji lay motionless and bedraggled on the cellar floor. Stripped of his outer robe and his headband, he looked very young and very vulnerable. 

But he was breathing.

*      *      *

When the guards came for him, Wei Wuxian was still asleep and still naked. As the guard who ripped the blanket off of him discovered with a disgusted curse.

“Get dressed, you pervert,” The guard snapped.

Wei Wuxian stretched ostentatiously and grabbed the robe nearest to him. He found that his under robes were mostly dry, but the heavier outer robes were still unpleasantly damp. They stuck stubbornly to his inner robes as he tried to pull it over his arms and he shuddered at the clammy weight of the wet fabric.

He dressed slowly, just to irritate the guards, until they finally threatened to drag him outside half dressed if he didn’t hurry up.

“All right, all right, I’ll hurry,” He placated. “But a young gentleman has to look his best when he goes out. Pretty girls don’t like it when a man looks like he’s just been drowned in a bucket, you know.”

This won a flinch from one guard, who Wei Wuxian thought was probably one of the two from last night. 

“So, where are we going?” He asked brightly, as he tied up his hair.  Not that there were very many possibilities. And none of them were good.

One of the junior guards snickered.  

The leader fixed him with a cold, unfriendly stare. “To the execution yard.”

Of course the Jin had an execution yard.

*      *      *

Lan Wangji was dreaming, vivid, drug induced dreams of the things that his mental discipline kept at bay while he was awake. 

He dreamed of his mother’s hands, sure and gentle as she brushed his hair and re-tied his headband. Her arms, warm as they enfolded him. Her voice, calling him her serious baby as she pinched his cheeks. He’d hated having his cheeks pinched, at the time, but he’d missed it, later.
The Gentian House, in his brief, cherished visits there, had been a refuge, a place where he was not the clan leader’s second son, nor the strange, silent boy with no friends. Not the disciple whose skill made all the other disciples jealous. Not the Second Jade of Gusu. Not Hanguang-Jun. There, he’s been only A-Zhan, and loved.

It had been such a long time…

He dreamed of Wei Ying, bright and boisterous, as he had been when they were boys, before he’d turned to demonic cultivation to avenge his clan. Running, always just out of reach, looking back over his shoulder at Lan Wangji and laughing at him.

So beautiful. Fascinating and frightening. 

He dreamed of his bunnies, with their soft, warm little bodies and their uncomplicated needs. They never expected words from him, never cared that he was cold and rigid and silent. They simply accepted food from his hands and snuggled into his lap. 

The bunnies trusted him, but Wei Ying did not. Wei Ying always flinched away when Lan Wangji reached out. Wei Ying was not his to hold and never had been.

The dream turned dark and confused. Bunnies lost and scattered on a stormy night. Lan Wangji hunting through the underbrush in the dark, calling and coaxing, as the wind tore his voice away. Rain pouring down his face like tears. The sound of hoofbeats, fading into the distance. 

“Wangji?” Xichen’s voice drifted through the haze that enveloped Lan Wangji’s mind. He sounded worried. That was probably bad. 

Soggy fur slipping through his hands as he tried to catch them to bring them back to the safety of their hutch.

“Didi, can you hear me?”

He could, but his body seemed very far away and words were out of reach completely. 

“Lan Zhan, are you here to stop me?”

Kneeling in the snow outside his mother’s empty house, staring at a door that never opened.

Someone was shaking him. Insistent. Urgent. “Wangji! You need to wake up. They are preparing to execute Wei Wuxian.”

Lan Wangji’s eyes snapped open.

Chapter Text

I guess I’m going to die now, Wei Wuxian thought wearily as he was marched across the grounds of the Koi Tower. 

It was not exactly a surprise. He had known that his days were numbered ever since he’d rescued the Wen prisoners and made himself the enemy of all the clans. Ever since he’d crawled out of burial mounds as a newly minted monster. Ever since he’d begged Wen Qing to take his golden core to save Jiang Cheng. Ever since he’d found himself on the streets, fighting feral dogs for scraps. He had always been living on borrowed time. Death had always walked beside him. But he had hoped to go down fighting. He had intended to protect the ones who depended on him to the very end. Instead, here he was, a prisoner, unable to protect his little village, unable to avenge Lan Zhan. Helpless. Useless.

He was taken to one of the Koi Tower’s courtyards. It looked like a parade ground or training field. Stark, utilitarian (by Koi Tower standards, anyway) and big enough for the small group of spectators who had come to see the Yiling Patriarch die. Lan Xichen was not among them. 

Jin Guangshan sat, enthroned in a high backed chair that must have taken four servants to drag it out to the courtyard, flanked by his son and his… well, his other son. Though he treated Jin Guangyao more like a servant than a son.

“Wei Wuxian,” Jin Guangshan intoned. “You have been sentenced to death for the brutal and unprevoked murder of Lan Wangji, birth name Lan Zhan, of the Gusu Lan clan, called Hanguang Jun. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“I didn’t do anything to Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian raised his head to meet Jin Guangshan’s eyes. “But we both know that doesn’t matter. You’re here to kill me and you aren’t going to let a little thing like the truth…”

“Silence!” Jin Guangshan cut him off. 

One of the guards drove the end of his scabbard into Wei Wuxian’s gut, knocking the wind out of him. He doubled over, wheezing and grimly satisfied at having provoked Jin Guangshan. 

After all, it wasn’t like he could make things any worse for himself at this point.

“Father, shouldn’t we wait until Zewu -Jun returns?” Jin Zixuan said, shifting uneasily where he stood beside Jin Guangshan . “After all, Hanguang Jun was a member of his clan. He was Zewu-Jun’s brother! Isn’t this his judgment to render?”

 “ Zewu -Jun is too soft-hearted for his own good,” Scoffed Jin Guangshan. “Who knows if he will have the stomach to do what needs to be done in regards to the Yiling Patriarch? And don’t forget that this traitor has killed cultivators of ours as well.”

Jin Guangyao spoke tentatively from his place behind Jin Guangshan’s chair, “Making such a decision would only grieve Zewu-Jun. Wouldn’t it be better to handle this before he returns?”

“Father,” Jin Zixuan began, looking unhappy. “He is A-Li’s brother…”

Jin Guangshan turned his glare on his son. “If Jiang Yanli does not understand the need to uphold justice, regardless of personal feelings, then she is not fit to be the wife of a clan leader.” 

Jin Zixuan’s posture went rigid and he dropped his eyes. “Yes, Father.”

Shijie…

Was this going to disrupt the plans for Shijie’s marriage to Jin Zixuan? Did Wei Wuxian want it to? He wasn’t exactly happy about his beloved Shijie marrying into the clan that had summarily executed him, but he also hated the idea of being the reason that she couldn’t marry the man that she –for some inexplicable reason– loved. 

He wished that he had gotten the chance to ask Lan Xichen to convey a message to his family. Lan Xichen would have done it for him, he thought, in return for his help in locating Lan Wangji’s body. 

But what was there to say? Except I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, Shijie. Jiang Cheng. I’m sorry A-Yuan. Wen Ning. Wen Qing. I’m sorry, Lan Zhan.

I tried. 

But I’ve failed everyone . 

“Let’s just get on with it,” Grumbled Jin Zixun. “I’ll do it myself, if I have to!”

Wei Wuxian’s attention snapped to Jin Zixun and he smiled his slyest, most mocking smile. The Yiling Patriarch’s smile. “You, Jin Zixun?” He sneered.  “You don’t have the guts!”

Jin Zixun’s face turned a gratifying shade of red. He put his hand on his sword and took a step toward Wei Wuxian. “I’ll show you my guts!!”

An unfortunate turn of phrase, that. 

“Your guts?” Wei Wuxian wrinkled his nose. “Eww.”

There were a few stifled snorts of laughter and Jin Zixun’s face turned red. 

Wei Wuxian’s smile broadened. That’s right. Come and get me, you filthy coward. 

Jin Zixun was stopped by Jin Zixuan’s hand on his arm. “Zixun, he’s baiting you.”

Why did Shijie’s peacock have to choose now , of all times, to show good sense? 

Where were you when he was murdering Lan Zhan? Wei Wuxian thought bitterly.

Aloud, he said, “Listen to your cousin, Jin Zixun. He’s the only one of you Jin who’s worth a rat’s ass.”

Jin Zixuan stared at him, apparently shocked by this uncharacteristic praise of his person coming from Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian met his eyes steadily. Take care of my shijie or I will fucking haunt you to the ends of the earth.

Jin Zixun took advantage of his cousin’s distraction to break free of his restraining hand and close on Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian laughed at him. Come on.

We Wuxian did not resist when the two Jin guards forced him to his knees. 

Resentful energy surged through him. He couldn’t use it to do anything, bound and suppressed as he was, but he didn’t need to. All he needed was to gather enough power within himself that his death would release a storm of resentful energy large enough to tear Jin Zixun apart. 

He bowed his head and smiled to himself.

For Lan Zhan.

He heard the metallic hiss of Jin Zixun’s sword being drawn. There was a pause as the sword was raised. Long enough for him to think, This is probably going to hurt.

And then…

The ring of metal on metal.

What…?

A blade flicked between his bound wrists, cutting through the rope without touching his skin,

Lan Xichen’s voice cut through the gasps and murmurs. He sounded out of breath. “I have brought proof of Wei Wuxian’s innocence!”

Oh, Wei Wuxian thought numbly. He let his store of resentful energy bleed away into the ground. He didn’t want to catch Lan Xichen in the blast he’d been preparing. Lan Xichen was innocent. And Lan Zhan’s brother. And trying to save Wei Wuxian’s life, apparently. 

He supposed he should be grateful for that.

“Zewu-Jun! What is this!?” Jin Guangshan demanded indignantly.

Wei Wuxian closed his eyes and waited for them to decide if they were going to kill him or not. 

A hand touched his shoulder. Gentle. “Wei Ying? Are you hurt?”

Wei Wuxian’s head snapped up. 

White robes. A strong, elegant hand, still resting on his shoulder. Full lips, parted on an in-drawn breath. Golden eyes, wide with concern. 

“ Lan Zhan??” 

He was dressed in what looked like just the inner layers of his robes, rumpled and dirty. His headband was missing and his hair was in disarray. Whatever had compelled the impeccable Hanguang-Jun to appear in public looking like that ??

And what did that matter when he was alive, and here, and not dead?
Without thinking, Wei Wuxian flung himself at Lan Zhan and embraced him. He was solid and warm and alive. And very rigid in Wei Wuxian’s arms. Because this was Lan Zhan. And Wei Wuxian was hugging him. In public. And he probably hated that. 

Reluctantly, he let go and tried to pull away. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I…” The apology died on his lips as he realized that Lan Zhan’s arms were locked around his back, holding him in place. 

“Ah?” He craned his neck backward so he could see Lan Zhan’s face. 

There was a tiny line of concern between his brows and his eyes were very wide and strangely soft. The tips of Lan Zhan’s long fingers brushed across Wei Wuxian’s cheek and came away glistening wet. Wei Wuxian realized that was because he had tears streaming down his face. 

“Am I hurt?? I thought you were dead, Lan Zhan! Everyone was saying that you were dead.”

“They were mistaken.”

“I’m glad to see that!” Wei Wuxian said with a wet laugh. “And not just because these people were about to cut my head off.”

Lan Zhan’s face went hard and his grip on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder tightened painfully. 

Wei Wuxian was trying to figure out what he had said wrong when he realized that Lan Zhan’s gaze had slid past him, to the shocked onlookers.

“Hey, Lan Zhan,” He said softly. “Let it go. It’s all right.”

Lan Zhan gave him a look.

“I can’t really blame them,” Wei Wuxian responded with a twisted little smile. “They thought I’d killed you, after all.”

Lan Zhan blinked. His face was still hard and angry, but his attention was back on Wei Wuxian, which was good. “ Idiots ,” he concluded.

Wei Wuxian laughed. Possibly a little hysterically.

Lan Zhan’s face softened. It made Wei Wuxian’s heart twist strangely.

“What sort of trick is this??” Jin Zixun shouted. “The Yiling Patriarch has made Hanguang-Jun into a corpse puppet!”

Uh oh. Wei Wuxian’s hand flexed at his side where Chenqing was not.

“Lan Zhan,” He murmured urgently. “It was him. Jin Zixun set this up.”

Lan Zhan glanced at Wei Wuxian and gave a small nod.

A clamor of confused shouting followed. 

“He’s going to kill us all!”

“So, attack them!”

“YOU attack them!”

“Gentlemen, please,” Lan Xichen called. “I assure you that this is unnecessary. If you will listen for a moment...”

Lan Zhan released Wei Wuxian to turn and fix the crowd with the most scornful expression Wei Wuxian has ever seen on his face. Which is saying something, since he had long made a hobby out of provoking Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan swiped his left palm down Bichen’s blade and held the bleeding hand up so that everyone could see the bright red, living blood dripping from the cut onto the marble paving stones. 

“As you see,” Lan Xichen continued, “Hanguang-jun is very much alive. Which renders this execution invalid.”

Wei Wuxian kept his mouth shut and did his best to disappear behind Lan Zhan. The smell of blood, sweat and Lan Zhan –who was still standing very close to him– took him dizzyingly back to kneeling on the floor in the dungeon, pressing his face against Lan Zhan’s bloody robes, imagining him bleeding to death.

“Lan Zhan! You’ll get blood on your robes. Here, let me.” Wei Wuxian pulled the red ribbon from his hair and wound it around Lan Zhan’s hand. It was cleaner than anything else he had on him and, unlike Lan Zhan’s white robe, it wouldn’t show bloodstains.

Lan Xichen watched them with thoughtful expression. 

“Thank you,” Lan Zhan said gravely. Then he turned toward Jin Zixun with such an air menace that Jin ZIxun paled and took a step back. 

“Jin Zixun,” Lan Zhan said, glaring at him.

“Ah… Hanguang Jun… It’s uh, good to see you safe.”

“You imprisoned me.” Lan Zhan said steadily, taking another step forward. “You made my brother think I was dead. You framed Wei Wuxian for my death. And you tried to have him executed for it.”

Lan Zhan took another step forward and Jin Zixun ducked behind Jin Zixuan for shelter.

Jin Zixuan spread his arms to shield his cousin and scrunched up his dumb, pretty face in confusion. “I don’t understand. What qurrel does Zixun have with Hanguang-Jun?”

“Not with me. With Wei Ying.”

“You think I staged your murder just so I could blame it on him? ” The argument might have been more convincing if Jin Zixun had not spit the last part at Wei Wuxian like a spitting cobra.

“Yes.” Lan Zhan’s grip on Bichen’s hilt tichented, knuckles turning white.

“Wangji!” Lan Xichen called. Lan Zhan ignored him, continuing to stare daggers at Jin Zixun.

“Wangji.” Lan Xichen stepped forward and laid a hand lightly on Lan Zhan’s arm. Lan Zhan looked at him and Lan Xichen gave a little shake of his head. “Not like this.”

After a long moment, Lan Zhan nodded once and turned away from the Jins and rejoined Wei Wuxian. Lan Zhan didn’t touch him again, but he stood strangely close. So close that Wei Wuxian could feel the heat of his body through thin layers of his under robes. 

He was glad to have the reassuring solidity of Lan Zhan back by his side again, but he was also very confused. What has gotten into Lan Zhan today?

He narrowed his eyes at Jin Zixun. Had he drugged Lan Zhan? Or used some sort of spell on him? He must have. There was no way that he could have kept Lan Zhan captive, otherwise. And it would explain why Lan Zhan was acting so weird.

It was something to check for after they were out of danger and out of the public eye. Or, rather, to tell Lan Xichen to check for. He doubted that Lan Zhan would want to be examined in his vulnerable state by Wei Wuxian!

“Clan Leader Jin,” Lan Xichen bowed formally to him, “My brother may have been out of line, but I stand behind his accusation.” 

Wei Wuxian turned to Lan Wangji. “You ran into Jin Zixun on your way to Yiling, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Said Lan Zhan. “In Baixi Town.”

He looked at Jin Zixun. “What were you doing in Baixi Town?”

“Baixi Town is in Jin territory.” Jin Zixun folded his arms obstinate. “Why shouldn’t I be there?”

A stocky man in Jin robes spoke up. “Night hunting. We were called in to take care of a demon bear.”

Wei Wuxian turned a smile on the man. “Did you see Hanguang-Jun there?”

“Of course. Hanguang-Jun helped us take down the demon bear.” He bowed to Lan Zhan. “Without his help, we would have had many more casualties.”

Lan Zhan inclined his head in acknowledgment of the implied thanks.

Jin Zixun made a sour expression. 

Wei Wuxian turned to Lan Zhan. “Hanguang-Jun, what happened next?”

“Dinner.”

“Always the best way to end a night hunt,” Wei Wuxian nodded approvingly. 

“It isn’t my fault that Hanguang-Jun got plastered and passed out on the table!” Jin Zixun blurted. His face had turned an interesting shade of red.
“Wangji…?” Lan Xichen looked at him in surprise.

“Apologies, xiongzhang.” Lan Zhan bowed to his brother. “I did not realize that the cakes were soaked in wine until I felt the effects.”

Behind him, Wei Wuxian mouthed cakes? In astonishment. Lan Zhan had gotten falling down drunk on cake? That was definitely something he was going to have to tease him about sometime. But not here. 

“It’s all right, Wangji. These things happen to the best of us from time to time,” Lan Xichen assured him. 

This was evidently true, Wei Wuxian thought, since Hanguang-Jun was the best of them. 

Wei Wuxian turned his attention to Lan Xichen, “Zewu-Jun, do you still have the note that you received?”

Lan Xichen pulled a folded paper out of his sleeve and handed it to Wei Wuxian. 

Wei Wuxian unfolded it, glanced at it and then laid it on the table in front of Jin Guangshan. “Do you recognize the writing?”

“This… does look rather like Zixun’s calligraphy,” Murmured Jin Guanyao. 

Jin Guangshan and Jin Zixuan both leaned in to look and the sudden tension in their faces said that they recognized it, too. 

“This is ridiculous!” Jin Zixun protested. “Uncle, Zixuan, you can’t seriously believe that I wrote that! Are you going to take the word of that whore’s son over mine?”

Jin Guanyao went rigid.

Lan Xichen twitched. His eyes sought Jin Guanyao’s but Jin Guanyao’s gaze was fixed resolutely on the ground.

“Clan Leader Jin…” Lan Xichen began, clearly eager to redirect to conversation

Jin Zixun turned and tried to stalk toward the gate but Lan Zhan was too fast for him. He seized Jin Zixun by the collar and hauled him back so hard that Jin Zixun stumbled, nearly falling. Lan Zhan’s expression never faltered, but somehow grew colder and harder.

Wow, Thought Wei Wuxian. He is scary when he’s really angry! It sent a weird little shiver through his belly. 

Lan Zhan yanked Jin Zixun’s sleeve back, revealing four deep, parallel scratches across his wrist surrounded by bruising in the shape of finger marks. Without releasing Jin Zixun, he held out his own right hand to show the blood under his nails.

“Hanguang-Jun?” Jin Zixuan said, in a shocked tone. “You and Zixun fought? When?”

Lan Zhan nodded. “This morning. In the cellar.”

“Cellar?” Jin Zixuan looked confused.

Lan Xichen stepped forward. He glanced at Lan Zhan, who nodded. Lan Xichen explained, “I found Wangji tied up in a cellar in Lanling. He was drugged and his spiritual energy had been sealed.”

Now Wei Wuxian was angry. He wondered how many ghosts he could call up who had a vendetta against Jin Zixun. Enough, surely... 

Except that he was still wrapped in suppression spells.

“Uncle, I…” Jin Zixun began. Wei Wuxian was genuinely curious, around his anger, what excuse the stupid weasel was going to make for abducting and imprisoning the heir of another sect, but he didn’t get to find out. 

“Silence, Zixun!” Jin Guangshan cut him off. “You’ve made enough trouble for one day.

He turned to Lan Xichen and went on in an entirely different tone. “Zewu-Jun, I know you don’t have much experience with high spirited youths,” Somehow, he made that sound like an insult. “But boys will be boys. They fight. They play pranks. Fortunately, Lan Wangji is not hurt. No harm was done. But we will be glad to pay for the robes that were ruined and for any other damage caused in my nephew’s little prank.”

“I do not want your money.” Lan Wangji turned on his heel and walked out of the yard. 

Lan Xichen closed his eyes and took a fortifying breath. 

Wei Wuxian heartlessly abandoned him to his diplomatic situation and darted after Lan Zhan, calling “Lan Zhan! Wait for me!” 

*      *      *

Wei Wuxian trailed Lan Zhan through the halls of the Koi Tower, strangely reluctant to let the man out of his sight. He reasoned that it was because no one could credibly try to accuse him of having murdered Hanguang-Jun when Hanguang-Jun was standing right there , and so, with Lan Zhan was the safest place he could be. 

Also, he was still having some trouble believing that this was real and not a hallucination he was having while dying of hypothermia on the dungeon floor.

A lanky boy dressed as a Koi Tower servant turned to look at them and then did an impressive double-take and stared at them. Or, rather, at Lan Zhan.
“H-h-hanguang-Jun…?” The boy stood frozen, looking like he didn’t know whether to prostrate himself or run. 

Wei Wuxian had to admit that Lan Zhan, dressed in his thin, white under robes, with his hair flying loose around him, did look rather like his own ghost. Wei Wuxian was only sure he was solid because he’d hugged him. 

The boy stared, saucer eyed. “But, you’re… dead…?” He squeaked.

“I am not,” Lan Zhan replied. “Is there a room I can use?”

The boy’s training caught up with him and he bowed deeply and said, “Follow me, please. I… I will take you to the room next to Zewu-Jun’s.”

“Thank you,” Said Lan Zhan, impeccably courteous as always. 

The room that the servant led them to was large, airy and furnished to impress important guests. Wei Wuxian plunked himself down on one of the cushions at the table before anyone could get any ideas about him leaving,

He just needed a little time to rest and collect himself before he headed back to the Burial Mounds. And this was the safest place for him to do that. At least for as long as Lan Zhan would let him stay.

He leaned elbows on the table and considered the idea of putting his head down on it. Just for a minute. It had been a trying day and he was tired.

Lan Zhan stood across the table from him, frowning down at him. “You are wet.” 

“Ah, yes. Sorry.” Wei Wuxian scooted off the cushion, which was wet now, too. The front of Lan Zhan’s robes was also damp, he realized now, where Wei Wuxian had hugged him. “I had a bit of an… involuntary bath…? earlier.”

Lan Zhan’s brow furrowed infinitesimally and he turned back to the hovering servant. “Please have two sets of clean robes and a pot of tea sent here.”

“Yes Hanguang-Jun!” The boy bowed and, somewhat nonsensically, added, “Thank you, Hanguang-Jun!” Then scampered off. 

“I bet you’re going to get really tired of explaining to people that you aren’t really dead,” Wei Wuxian predicted, after Lan Zhan had closed the door.
“I already am.”

That made Wei Wuxian laugh, but he quickly sobered again. “Ahh, Lan Zhan. I’m really glad you’re alright.”

“Likewise.”

Wei Wuxian began to fidget under that steady regard. “Hey. Thanks for your help back there.”

“No thanks are necessary. You were in danger because of me.”

Wei Wuxian frowned. “It’s hardly your fault that everyone wants me dead!”

Lan Zhan scowled. “Not everyone.”

“Maybe not,” Wei Wuxian brushed off the correction. “Still not your fault.”

“I was careless.” Lan Zhan said stiffly.

“Don’t be hard on yourself, Lan Zhan. You couldn’t have known what would happen. I knew that Jin Zixun was an asshole, but I never thought that he would do something like that to you!”

Lan Wangji fixed him with a look so intent that he started to squirm uncomfortably without being quite sure why. 

“The look on Jin Zixun’s face was priceless.” He chortled, hoping to break Lan Zhan out of his strange mood. “He’s really scared of you!”

Lan Wangji’s expression went steel cold. His hand clenched around Bichen. “He should be.” 

Wei Wuxian’s humor evaporated. He was very glad that the expression in Lan Wangji’s eyes just then was not meant for him. Even so, he quailed a little at deadly anger so plainly visible on Lan Wangji’s normally impassive face.

Oh. Lan Zhan… What did he do to you?

Other than kidnap him while he was drunk and lock him in a cellar and then make his brother think he was dead. Maybe that enough to make the unshakable Hanguang-Jun look like he was contemplating murder.

This happened to him because he was coming to meet with me. Wei Wuxian thought unhappily. Because Jin Zixun wanted to get to me. 

“Lan Zhan… I’m sorry that you got dragged into this.” He smiled sadly and forced himself to say, “It would probably be safer if you just stayed away from me from now on.”

“I will not put Wei Ying at risk again,” Lan Zhan said grimly.

“What? No. I meant safer for you! ”

Lan Zhan gave him an inscrutable Lan Zhan look. “I am not afraid of Jin Zixun.”

“Of course not! He’s no match for you. And he won’t take you by surprise again, now that you know exactly what a slimy little snake he really is. But he’s not the only person looking for an excuse to kill me.”

Lan Zhan blinked slowly. “Mn.”

A tentative knock heralded the return of the servant boy, with a bundle of cloth under each arm. Behind him was a middle aged woman carrying a tea tray. 

Lan Zhan thanked them and took the bundles of clothes. The woman placed the tea tray on the table and the servants departed. 

Lan Zhan turned to Wei Wuxian and held out one of the bundles. “Change.”

Wei Wuxian took the clean clothes without argument, because wearing damp robes was really very uncomfortable. He ducked behind a screen painted with –surprise– white peonies and changed. The new clothes were dark, nondescript gray but they were nice fabric. He wondered if he could get away with leaving in them. His own clothes were all decidedly the worse for wear these days. He hung his damp robes over the screen to dry.

He returned to find Lan Zhan redressed and carefully fixing his hair. His clean robes were Lan white and blue and he looked almost normal again, except for the absence of his headband. Without it, he still looked strangely naked. 

Wei Wuxian’s face felt hot. 

“Well, I should get going before it gets dark,” He said awkwardly. He didn’t want to leave the comforting calm of Lan Zhan’s presence just yet –or ever, really– but he didn’t want to be traveling at night though actively hostile territory either. 

Lan Zhan shook his head. “You are tired. You should sleep. Leave tomorrow.”

“I can’t sleep here, Lan Zhan!” He protested. “Someone would probably murder me in my sleep!”

Lan Zhan’s expression darkened. Wei Wuxian braced himself for an argument over slandering the honor of the Jin clan. He’d said it like a joke, but he absolutely did believe that it wouldn’t be safe for him to fall asleep in a guest room of the Koi tower.

“Sleep.” Lan Zhan said firmly. “I will watch.”

“What?” Wei Wuxian blinked at him in confusion. Why would Lan Zhan want to watch him sleep?

“I will not let Wei Ying be murdered in his sleep.”

Wei Wuxian laughed. “Ah, Hanguang-Jun is so chivalrous! But shouldn’t you sleep, too? You were just freed from being held prisoner. You must be tired.”

“I was drugged,” Lan Zhan said, as if that were a counter argument. “Have slept enough. I will play for you.” And with that, he pulled out his guqin –Wait. Where had that come from?– and began adjusting the strings.

Wei Wuxian hesitated. But it was an offer he could not afford to pass up. It might be the last chance he got to sleep in safety. And he always felt better after Lan Zhan’s music,

He sighed. “All right,” he said softly, and went to lie down on the bed.

*      *      *

Wei Ying fell asleep very quickly. He must have been exhausted. 

Lan Wangji allowed his gaze to drift up from the familiar movements of his fingers on the guqin strings and come to rest on Wei Ying’s sleeping face. He was too thin, too pale, the shadows under his eyes too deep. Lan Wangji’s heart ached at the sight.

He selected a song for restful, healing sleep and let the spiritual energy he’d been hoarding for breaking free from suppression flow into the music and over Wei Ying. 

Slowly, the tension lines in Wei Ying’s face began to relax. Lan Wangji found himself smiling softly. He watched Wei Ying’s body uncurl from its tight, protective position and begin to sprawl across the bed. Lan Wangji’s bed.

Lan Wangji’s ears heated and his fingers stumbled on the strings as his mind drifted treacherously into imagining untying Wei Ying’s belt and sliding his hands under the folds of his clothing…

He laid his hand on the guqin strings to still the sour notes and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. 

Discipline. 

Wei Ying had trusted Lan Wangji to watch over him while he slept. To be lusting over him while he lay, sleeping and vulnerable, was unbecoming in the extreme. He would kneel in penance when he was done here. In the meantime, he would keep watch and he would play healing music to help Wei Ying rest. It was all that he could do for him.

Wasn’t it?

Wei Ying had nearly died today. The memory of Jin Zixun’s sword, raised above Wei Ying’s bowed neck made Lan Wangji’s blood run cold and hot by turns. He had wanted to kill Jin Zixun. He still wanted to kill Jin Zixun. He wanted to take Wei Ying back to the Cloud Recesses and hide him away there, where he could protect him, heal him, love him…

But he would never do that without Wei Ying’s consent. And Wei Ying would never come willingly. He had thought that that was because Wei Ying didn’t trust him, and yet, here Wei Ying was, sleeping peacefully under Lan Wangji’s watch.

Wei Ying had hugged him. It had felt good.

The last time –the only other time– he had held Wei Ying, he had been dragging him unconscious out of the water in the cave of the Tulu Xuanwu. Wei Ying had been cold and limp and terrifyingly still, then. Today he’d been warm and full of life, flinging his arms around Lan Wangji with heart-wrenching enthusiasm. 

That had been because he was happy to be rescued. Lan Wangji knew this. Happy to be rescued and, yes, glad to see safe Lan Wangji alive after the rumors of his death. But it was easy, so treacherously easy, to imagine that enthusiasm being for Lan Wangji himself. Because Wei Ying was just happy to see him. 

Lan Wangji had held on for as long as he dared. But it now occurred to him that, knowing how it felt to hold Wei Ying in his arms and feel all that vitality pressing against his body, he would never be able to un-know it. Now it felt like there was a Wei Ying shaped hole in his chest. Perhaps there always had been and he was only now recognizing it. 

And now he was going to lose him again. Wei Ying would leave and go back to the horror of the Burial Mounts, back to the people he had taken upon himself to protect, because no one else would, and Lan Wangji might never see him again. 

If Nie Mingjue , or even Brother had made an effort to insure that the civilian prisoners were being treated humanely, if anyone had dared to challenge Jin Guangshan or recognized Jin Zixun’s petty cruelty, then Wei Wuxian would not have been forced to sacrifice everything he had and stand against the entire cultivation world to protect a ragged group of non-combatants. 

Now tell me: who’s strong, who’s weak? Who’s wrong, and who’s right?

Lan Wangji realized that he was angry. This was not just or righteous. None of this should have been allowed to happen. 

He knew that he himself was not blameless, either. He might have made a difference, if he had spoken out. But words had never been his strength. He could recognize the times when he should have spoken, but not the words he should have said to change the course of events. 

What would happen, he wondered, if instead of waiting and watching and regretting, he acted? What if, like Wei Ying, he threw caution to the wind and just did what his heart told him to do?

What if?

He dropped his eyes to his hands again.

He couldn’t take Wei Ying back to Gusu, couldn’t shelter him from the consequences of his own choices. He couldn’t even hold him. But he could do this. He could keep watch and he could play for him tonight. 

Lan Wangji breathed deeply, felt his heartbeat slow and let his thoughts settle like ripples in a lake fading out into glassy stillness. Then he put his hands on his guqin and began to play again. 

*      *      *

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen greeted him. “We missed you at breakfast.”

Which meant I was worried.

“Apologies, brother.” Lan Wangji bowed. “I was playing for Wei Ying to help him recover his strength.”

“He slept in your guest room last night,” Lan Xichen observed.

Lan Wangji’s ears flushed. “Wei Ying believed that the Koi Tower was a dangerous place for him.”

“Ah. It’s good that you were able to help him feel safe enough to sleep.”

As if Wei Ying were a child afraid of the dark. The thought itched under Lan Wangji’s skin. He knew that his brother meant well, but sometimes he wondered if Xichen saw what was happening around him. Maybe he didn’t want to see. 

“Brother,” Lan Wangi said slowly, not looking at him.  “If Wei Ying was accused of killing me, why were the Jin carrying out the execution?” 

The slight tensing of Lan Xichen’s shoulders told Lan Wangji that he had struck true. 

“It was Jin Zixun who captured Wei-gongzi and he brought him back here for us to deal with. I wanted…” His brother glanced sidelong at Lan Wangji and seemed to change what he’d been going to say. “I wanted to avenge you, of course. But when I spoke with Wei-gongzi, he insisted that he was innocent and I… found that I believed him. I told Sect Leader Jin as much. Perhaps he mistook my doubts for reluctance to act and decided to take matters into his own hands.”

Lan Wangji glanced at him. “Sect Leader Jin wants the Stygian Tiger Amulet.”

Whether Jin Guangshan had been involved in his nephew’s plot to incriminate Wei Ying or had merely seized the opportunity as an excuse to kill him so he could take the Stygian Tiger Amulet, there was no doubt in Lan Wangji’s mind that both of them wanted Wei Ying dead.

The fact that they had tried to use Lan Wangji as a means to their end filled his veins with a burning cold that was part guilt, part rage.

Lan Xichen’s voice was wary. “What are you suggesting?”

Lan Wangji raised his eyes to meet his brother’s steadily for the space of a breath, then two. 

Lan Xichen shut his eyes and sighed. “Even if you’re right, there is no way of proving that Sect Leader Jin was trying to take the Stygian Tiger Amulet for himself. All we have for certain is that Jin Zixun abducted you and staged your apparent death.” His voice was calm, but his hands clenched at his sides for a moment.

“He tried to kill Wei Ying.”

“And that. Yes.” Lan Xichen shook his head. “Sect Leader Jin is calling the whole incident a childish prank.”

Lan Wangji had felt the force of Jin Zixun’s sword strike against Bichen’s blade. He knew it had been intended to kill. 

“He insisted on paying reparations.” Lan Xichen reached into his sleeve and pulled out a purse embroidered with the Jin clan’s white peony and held it out toward Lan Wangji. 

Lan Wangji eyed the purse with distaste. He did not want the Jin clan’s money. Then he remembered the gauntness of Wei Wuxian’s face and the patches on his robes. “Give it to Wei Ying,” He said. “He was the one most harmed.”

Lan Xichen inclined his head and tucked the offending puse back into his sleeve. 

“I want to talk with Mingjue-xiong about this incident as soon as I can.” Lan Xichen told him, as they walked back toward the guest quarters. “Before I leave, maybe I can ask A-Yao to keep an eye on Jin Zixun and let me know if he thinks he might be planning to do anything… unfortunate. Be patient Wangji.”

Lan Wangji did not want to be patient any longer. What he wanted was to run Jin Zixun through with Bichen to make sure that he would never again plot against Wei Ying’s life. He wouldn’t of course. That would violate at least five of the Lan precepts. Perhaps four, if he did it quietly. 

He did not say so. He merely unclenched his teeth and turned to look at his brother’s gentle, dignified face and asked “And if Sect Leader Jin is involved?”

Lan Xichen looked pained. “I can’t ask A’Yao to spy on his own father .”

“Mn.”

Lan Xichen shrugged helplessly. “I don’t like this either. But what more can we do?”

“I can protect Wei Ying.”

His brother turned to look at him. “You want to bring him back to Gusu with you?”

“No.” 

“No?” Lan Xichen sounded surprised.

“Wei Ying has people to protect.” Old men and women. Healers. A child with tiny, pudgy, hands. Innocents. “People who have no one else.”

“No,” His brother sighed.” I suppose they don’t. Such an unfortunate situation.”

“I want to go back to Yiling with him,” Said Lan Wangji.

Lan Xichen stopped walking. “I… see,” He said, his voice carefully neutral. “What does Wei-gongzi say about this idea?”

“He does not know yet.” Lan Wangji had not yet figured out how he was going to convince Wei Ying that his intentions were true. 

“Ah.” Lan Xichen considered this for a long moment while Lan Wangji’s stomach twisted itself into anxious knots.

What was he going to do if his brother –his clan leader– forbade him to go? He honestly did not know.  

“You were supposed to be going to meet with him, before… this incident.” Lan Xichen said at last. “If you can convince Wei-gongzi to let you go with him, I will tell the elders and the other clan leaders that I have sent you to Yiling on diplomatic reconnaissance. I have not given up hope on finding a diplomatic solution to the situation there, but recent events have complicated the problem. Negotiations may take some time.”

“Thank you, Brother,” Lan Wangji murmured fervently .  

“They will not wait forever,” Lan Xichen warned. “They will expect a report from you on what you find there.”

Lan Wangji nodded.

They walked in silence for a time. 

Finally Lan Xichen turned to him and asked, “Do you trust Wei-gongzi?”

Lan Wangji’s head snapped around to eye his brother sharply. “ Yes .”

Lan Xichen smiled gently. “Then tell him how you feel.”

Lan Wangji had the distinct feeling of having stepped into a trap. He gave his brother a dubious look. 

“Talk to him, Wangji. He might surprise you.”

Lan Wangji had no doubt of that. Wei Ying constantly surprised him.

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian strolled through the streets of the Lanling marketplace, radiating casual ease and watching every shadow and every passerby for signs of attack. 

Justified paranoia aside, he felt good. Better than he had any right to feel, after days of walking himself to exhaustion followed by a beating, then a stay in in the Jin dungeons, being drowned unconscious and then nearly beheaded as he prepared to turn himself into a resentful energy bomb. He whistled to himself as he walked, a sweet, wistful tune.

He had forgotten again to make Lan Zhan tell him the name of that song.

Lan Zhan, who was not dead. 

And, unexpectedly, Wei Wuxian was not dead either. Any day when he was not dead was a good day, right? 

Tucked into his shirt was a heavy little purse of Jin coins that Lan Xichen had said that Lan Zhan had refused and had told him to give to Wei Wuxian on the grounds that he was the real injured party. Wei Wuxian’s first impulse had been to refuse the money as well, but the truth was that the contents of that purse could mean the difference between survival and starvation for the Wen refugees that winter. And that was more important than Wei Wuxian’s pride. 

Since he was here and had money, he’d decided to risk lingering in Lanling long enough to buy a few things that were difficult to come by in Yiling. Medicines, mostly; everything he could remember hearing Wen Qing lament not being able to get. Talisman paper. Good ink. And a little, carved wooden bunny for A-Yuan, because the child had been hysterical when Wei Wuxian had left and he wanted to make it up to him.

He bounced the bunny along through the air, making hopping sound effects under his breath.
“Wei Wuxian.” That was not a friendly voice.

He palmed the bunny and turned around slowly.
Jin Zixun stood in the street, with his head cocked arrogantly back, looking at him contemptuously. “What are you still doing here?”
“Shopping.” Wei Wuxian opened his hand to display the wooden bunny and was amused to see Jin Zixun flinch at the motion and reach for his sword.

“What is that?”

“Do you need your eyes checked? It’s clearly a rabbit!”

Jin Zixun eyed the figure in Wei Wuxian’s hand as if it might be venomous. Wei Wuxian resisted the impulse to menace him with the bunny. He didn’t really want to get into a fight with Jin Zixun in the middle of the marketplace. He tucked the little rabbit into his pocket so he would have both hands free to defend himself if Jin Zixun felt differently. 

“Take your stupid toy and get out of Lanling before I change my mind about letting you go,” Jin Zixun growled.

“I intend to!” Wei Wuxian retorted. “You think I want to be here? Now go away and let me spend your uncle’s hush money in peace.”

Jin Zixun glowered in confusion. “What?”

“The money that Clan Leader Jin gave to the Lans as ‘compensation’ for your abduction of Hanguang-Jun. Zewu-Jun gave it to me.” Wei Wuxian smirked at him. “Your uncle might succeed in sweeping this under the rug, but we all know what you did and why.” He let the smile drop from his face. “Don’t try it again.”

Jin Zixun bristled. “Are you seriously trying to threaten me? Here, in the Lanling? I am the second heir of the Jin Clan!”

“Threaten you?” Wei Wuxian laughed softly and shook his head. “No. I’m warning you.”

“Don’t push me, Wei Wuxian,” Jin Zixun sneered. “You’ve had a taste of what I’m capable of. You would be dead now if the Twin Jades hadn’t turned up when they did.”

Wei Wuxian folded his arms and tapped Chenqing against his lips thoughtfully. “You are the cousin of my Shijie’s betrothed. For the sake of peace between our families, I’m willing to overlook the fact that you tried to kill me. 

“But,” Wei Wuxian smiled, soft and dangerous, as he stepped forward into the other man’s space and murmured “If you ever lay a hand on Lan Zhan again, you are going to find out exactly what I am capable of.”

Before Jin Zixun could respond, Wei Wuxian turned his back on him and walked away, twirling Chenqing.

As soon as he rounded the corner, out of Jin Zixun’s sight, he strolled into an open shop door. He flashed the girl behind the counter a blinding smile, glanced conspiratorially over his shoulder and said “I’m being followed. Is there a back way out of here?”

The girl stared at him and pointed mutely toward a corner of the shop.

Wei Wuxian winked at her and ducked out the back door. 

His nerves were still jangling from the confrontation with Jin Zixun when he reached the edge of the city. It was a relief to leave the bustle and crowd of the market behind for the open road. He’d used to love the excitement of a busy marketplace, he thought.

Of course, he hadn’t had as many people trying to kill him, then. 

He put his hand into his pocket to feel the smooth lines of the carved bunny and reminded himself why it was worth it. For A-Yuan, who was hardly more than a baby and had done nothing in his short, little life to deserve the suffering and loss that had been heaped on him. For Wen Ning, who was still the same sweet, shy, fiercely loyal boy he had always been, despite having been murdered and then revived as a feirce corpse, animated by resentful energy. For Wen Qing, who once risked everything to shelter Wei Wuxian and his siblings. Who had helped him save Jiang Cheng with the core transfer and kept his secret afterward. 

Someone stepped out of the trees into the road, blocking his way.

It was Lan Zhan.

*      *      *

Wei Ying looked up with a surprised expression, then grinned at him. “Lan Zhan! What are you doing here? Have you come to see me off?”

Lan Wangji shook his head. 

“Oh.” Wei Ying’s face fell a little. “So, what are you here for?”

“At Qiongqi Path,” Lan Wangji said carefully, reaching for the words he had prepared for this moment. “I made a mistake.”

He should never have let Wei Ying ride away alone. He realized that now. What use was it to be the Light Bringing Lord if he let the one he loved go into the dark alone? 

For a moment, Wei Ying looked… stricken. Then his face set, like he was preparing to argue. But Lan Wangji was not going to back down. He would not let Wei Ying talk him out of this. 

“I have come to correct it,” Lan Wangji said firmly. 

And he would begin by getting Wei Ying back to his charges as soon as possible. He drew Bichen from its sheath, preparing to mount it. He still didn’t know why Wei Ying refused to use his own sword, but Lan Wangji could carry him on Bichen, if Wei Ying would allow him to do so.

“It will be quicker if…” He broke off mid sentence as he turned back toward Wei Ying and saw that he had backed away from him and was holding Chenqing defensively between them. The expression on his face was heart wrenching.
Lan Wangji froze, alarmed. “Wei Ying?”

Wei Ying’s eyes flicked from Lan Wangji’s face to Bichen’s blade and back again. “I’m not going to surrender the Stygian Tiger Amulet. I can’t . And I won’t let you take me prisoner. Not even you, Lan Zhan.” He sounded close to tears.

Oh. The conversation shifted sharply as Lan Zhan suddenly saw it from Wei Ying’s perspective.

Wei Ying, he remembered with a pang, did not trust him. He had thought that Lan Wangji had followed him to Qiongqi Path that day to fight him. Maybe to kill him.

And now, Lan Wangji had come after him again. And then he’d drawn his sword.

He slid Bichen back into its sheath and held it out on his palms, offering. “It’s quicker to fly.”

“What?” Wei Wuxian stared bewilderedly at him with, Chenqing still held before him like a sword.

“To Yiling,” Lan Wangji clarified. How had this meeting gone so wrong, so fast? As soon as he’d opened his mouth, he’d gone wrong. This was why Lan Wangji didn’t like to talk.

Wei Ying frowned. “I don’t have Suibian with me.”

Lan Wangji had assumed as much. “I can carry you.”

“You came here to… give me a ride?” Wei Wuxian asked incredulously. 

“To go with you.” But what were the chances that Wei Ying would allow that now? Whatever fragile trust had allowed him to sleep under Lan Wangji’s watchful eyes last night had been shattered the moment Lan Wangji drew Bichen. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying’s face contorted with dismay. “The Burial Mounds is no place for someone like you.”

“Like me?” Did Wei Ying think that Lan Wangji would not be able to handle the harsh conditions of the Burial Mounds? The people that Wei Ying had taken to seek refuge there had been mostly non-cultivators, old men and women, even a child. If they could survive in the Burial Mounds, then Lan Wangji could, as well. Did Wei Ying think him more fragile than a child?

Wei Ying laughed, a little uncertainly. “Okay, I don’t think there is anyone else like you, Hanguang Jun. But you can’t go to the Burial Mounds. It’s a filthy place. Spiritually, I mean. Also literally. And you’re you. You’re noble and pure and so good.”

This seemed like a strange objection, especially coming from the most unfailingly compassionate and self sacrificing person he’d ever known. And yet, it was also utterly typical of Wei Ying, to disregard his own safety while trying to protect others. As if he existed to protect everyone else by taking all harm upon himself, like a lightning rod. 

Lan Wangji was done letting him bear that burden alone. Lightning was less dangerous when spread between two bodies and Lan Wangji was going to the Burial Mounds.

“Wei Ying is good . ”

Wei Ying smiled a sad, twisted little smile. “Well, you’re the only one who thinks so.”

No, Lan Wangji thought, he wasn’t. “Luo-guniang.”

“Who?”

“ Mianmian.” Lan Zhan tapped a finger on Wei Ying’s chest, over his heart. Right where the Wen crest was scarred into his skin. 

“Oh! Mianmian!”

“You took a brand for her.” At the time, Lan Wangji had thought that willingness to sacrifice himself had meant that Wei Ying had feelings for Luo-guniang and had been bitterly jealous. Later he had realized that that was just who Wei Ying was. He would put himself on the line for almost anyone. 

“Well, that vicious bitch, Wang Lingjiao, was going to brand her on her face!” Wei Ying bristled with remembered fury, even though Wang Lingjiao was thoroughly and deservedly dead now. 

“You offered to carry me when my leg was broken,” Lan Wangji continued.

“Well, yeah.” Wei Ying shrugged. “You’re my friend. Right? And you were hurt.”

“You protected the Wen civilians when no one else dared to.” Wei Ying had given up everything he had to save the lives of the last remnants of the clan that had murdered his own adopted clan. Because they were innocent and no threat to anyone. Because it had been the right thing to do. Because he was Wei Ying. 

“I had to. I owed Wen Qing and Wen Ning a debt.” Wei Wuxian’s expression was confused and wary. “And didn’t you try to stop me?”

“I was afraid for you.” He’d wanted, desperately, to be able to stop Wei Ying from throwing away everything he had worked so hard for. Stop him from making himself an enemy to all the clans. Stop him from getting himself killed. But he had failed. His arguments had failed to deter Wei Ying because Wei Ying had already known full well the consequences of what he was doing and had chosen to do it anyway. And Lan Wangji had stood in the rain and watched him go, like a coward.  “I should have gone with you then.”

“No, you shouldn’t have! It’s one thing for me to ruin my own reputation. But you… You’re Huanguan-Jun. ” Wei Wuxian shook his head. “You let us go. That was enough.”

“It was not. Let me correct my mistake.”  If Hanguang-Jun’s reputation truly carried any weight, then he would use it to shield Wei Ying and his refugees. If not, then it had never been worth preserving to begin with.

“Wait. Is that what you meant when you said you made a mistake at Qiongqi Path? That you should have gone with me ?”

“Mn.” He was glad that Wei Ying understood now. Lan Wangji had never intended it to sound like a threat.

A complicated series of expressions flashed across Wei Ying’s mobile features. Surprise. Confusion. Guilt. Affection. Anxiety. How did his face do that? Every emotion, vividly displayed in his eyes and mouth and the crinkle of his nose. There to be read by anyone who cared to look. Lan Wangji watched, fascinated. 

“People will think I kidnapped you,” Wei Ying protested, sounding a little desperate. 

“They will be wrong.”

“What will your brother say?”

“‘Diplomatic reconnaissance’,” Lan Wangji answered.

“What?”

“Brother is calling it ‘Diplomatic reconnaissance’,” Lan Wangji explained.

“Zewe-Jun knows?” Wei Ying squawked.  ”And he’s okay with this??”

Lan Wangji considered the question. Resigned was, perhaps, a better word for his brother’s response. “Brother understands my reasons.”

“Well, I don’t! ” Wai Ying practically wailed. “Why, Lan Zhan? Why do you want to risk your life, your reputation, everything, by following me to Yilling? Why is this so important to you?”

“ Wei Ying is important to me!” The words felt torn out of him. 

Wei Ying blinked at him, looking stunned. He opened his mouth. Closed it again. His eyebrows scrunched up like he was confused by this. “That’s… sweet.”

“Wei Ying,” He said again, stepping closer, because he didn’t think that Wei Ying had fully understood. “Is important to me.”

“Ah, Lan Zhan. You’re important to me, too. I don’t think I realized how important until…” His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Until I thought you were dead.”

“You hugged me.” Lan Wangji said softly. It didn’t mean anything, he told himself. Wei Ying was a physically affectionate man. And he had just been rescued from execution. He’d been overwrought. 

“Ah. Yeah.” Wei Ying looked at his feet and shifted uncomfortably.  ”I’m sorry about that. I was just really…”

“Don’t be.”

Wei Wuxian looked up. “What?”

“Don’t be sorry.”

Wei Ying stared at him. “But you… hate being touched?”

“Not always.” Please touch me. Hug me again. I want to hold you. I never want to let you go.

“Oh.” Wei Wuxian blinked several times and then grinned. “Uh, good to know.”

Do you trust Wei-gonzi? His brother had asked. How could Lan Wangji expect Wei Ying to trust him if Lan Wangji didn’t didn’t show that he trusted Wei Ying?

And what better way to demonstrate trust than to make himself vulnerable? To give Wei Ying the means to hurt him and trust that he wouldn’t. That he wouldn’t throw Lan Wangji’s love back in his face like a dirty rag. That he wouldn’t use it as a weapon to destroy him. 

And maybe, if Wei Ying understood that he carried Lan Wangji’s heart with him, he would allow Lan Wangji the chance to defend it.

Tell him how you feel. But speaking did not come easily to Lan Wangji and he had no idea how to put into words something as complicated and profound as the way he felt about Wei Ying. He would have to show him. 

He reached out slowly. Wei Ying did not pull away or move to stop him. When Lan Wangji’s hand touched his cheek, Wei Ying’s breath hitched and his eyes squeezed shut in a way that reminded Lan Wangji disturbingly of that day in the courtyard at the Unclean Realm, when Wei Ying had felt Bichen brush against his throat and had just… waited. Bracing himself. 

Lan Wangji pulled his hand back, but Wei Ying turned his face into the touch, following his hand as it started to withdraw. Lan Wangji froze.

Wei Ying’s eyes slowly unscrunched and opened. “Lan Zhan…?”

Lan Wangji did not know how to answer the question in Wei Ying’s face. So he did the only thing he could think of and kissed him.

Wei Ying let out a startled squeak and then melted into him like hot wax, soft and searing. His hands twisted in the front of Lan Wangji’s robes, holding on, pulling him in, deepening the kiss. 

Lan Wangji’s world shrank to the softness of Wei Ying’s mouth and the smell of his skin and the urgency of his grip. Far too soon, they broke apart and stood, staring at each other, breathing hard. 

Wei Ying murmered dazedly, “You… just kissed me.”

“Mn.”

“Why?” Wei Ying’s voice had a desperate edge to it, but he was not pulling away from Lan Wangji. He had not, in fact, let go of the front of his robes. 

Lan Wangji had thought the kiss itself had been very clear. And Wei Ying had kissed him back, hadn’t he?

 “It’s just that… I really need to know, because I think… I think I might be, um, sort of a little bit completely in love with you.” He finished in a rush. “So if that kiss didn’t… I need to know what it means.”

“Love you,” Lan Wangji echoed hoarsely, “ Love Wei Ying.” 

What did Wei Ying think the kiss had meant? What else could it mean? 

Wei Ying tilted his face up to look at Lan Wangji. His eyes were wide, pupils huge. Lan Wangji wanted to kiss him again. “Lan Zhan,” He breathed. “Do you mean that?” 

Lan Wangji gave him a reproachful look. If he hadn’t meant it, he would not have said it. 

“Right.” Wei Ying laughed nervously. “It just seems hard to believe! I mean, I’m loud and obnoxious and possibly evil and…”

Lan Wangji did not like this line of reasoning. He silenced it by kissing Wei Ying again, softly, carefully and very thoroughly. Whatever it was that Wei Ying thought made him unworthy of being loved, Lan Wangji is not having it. Wei Ying was beautiful and brilliant and good and Lan Wangji wanted to cherish him in every way that he would allow. 

“Lan Zhan, ” Wei Ying looked at him slyly. “Is this why you want to go to Yiling with me? So you can kiss me?”

“To stand with justice,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “To protect the innocent. And to kiss you.”

Wei Wuxian laughed and it was bright and warm and good and Lan Wangji had made him laugh like that.

“All right, Hanguang-Jun,” He said, tucking his arm through Lan Wangji’s. “Let’s go back to Yiling.”