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Jin Guangyao had seen how the brothers and eldest son of Sect Leader Ceng had looked at the baby.
To anyone else, it was easily passed off as indifference, as having other things on their mind (as anyone would) during the middle days of a cultivation conference where everything was just settling in to new leadership, new alliances, new standards. But Jin Guangyao could see the disdain and the sneers, the surety that soon enough, something wrong would out him and his tainted low blood, even if no one else did. (And they had looked at his wife just afterward, too; did they notice how the arch of A-Su’s brow looked nearly identical to his own, in one of the few places his face didn’t clearly resemble his mother’s? Was their disgust all the stronger for knowing his son was damned twice over?)
He shivered, and smiled brightly at the next sect leader and young master approaching to offer him congratulations in words and gifts, while behind his back, his thumb drove hard enough into the flesh of his hand to make the muscle scream. He could have some gifts sent to the servants in their employ soon enough; perhaps reassign a few of his informants within Koi Tower for the time being - it was fine.
It would be fine.
Qin Su joined him after the last few delegations of guests had been addressed and sent on their way, stepping down from the dais their twin thrones had been set on and crossing to the front of the now-emptied Glamour Hall.
“Fujun,” she murmured, laying a hand over his arm. He tried, and mostly succeeded, in not flinching. “I haven’t heard a single complaint of any import today. Everything’s been going as well as we could have hoped. Has it been different for you?”
Jin Guangyao’s hand tensed over hers. “You must know how many sect leaders here preferred the way my father ruled. You’ve heard of what they say about me, even if none of them have said it in your earshot.”
A flicker of a frown tightened Qin Su’s forehead. “And someone was saying such things today, in yours?”
“Ceng-zongzhu’s brother was watching a-Song earlier, when you handed him off to the nurse,” he replied instead, feeling a familiar tightening in his chest. “They hate me. They’ve hated me since I first started attending Father’s private councils, making the suggestions he knew they’d object to so he could offer the better compromise. If they get word of anything to make them suspect -”
He couldn’t even verbalise the full terror of what the dark shapes of his mind imagined - it would sound absurd, to anybody gentry-born, who had never truly understood such things when he tried to tell them. They will know he’s not walking soon enough; someone will have told them he doesn’t always respond when spoken to; they will know and they will tell everyone and they will burn our corpses and scatter our ashes as abominations.
The warm, soft palm of Qin Su’s hand closed around the back of Jin Guangyao’s neck, solid and jolting, and his eyes widened. He looked down at her face, sweet and lovely as always, but set now with a firmness and concern that he had never seen her wear around anyone else.
“A-Yao. Stop thinking. Can you trust what I tell you?”
He swallowed deeply, and tried to breathe in time with the gradual fading of his thoughts from abyss to whirlpool to eddy. He focused on her question, on her face, on the pressure of her hand against his nape. Qin Su had believed they could marry, despite their parents’ objections. She had believed they could remove his father, for his years and years crimes against them all.
“Yes, I can.”
She smiled, radiant like polished jade, and Jin Guangyao’s heart clenched again. “I promise you, nobody I’ve chosen to watch a-Song has been selling any rumors about him to the other clans, and there’s nothing they could find to say if they had been besides. Anyone who dislikes your succession can be dealt with - but we can wait and see if they’re willing to act on it, first.”
He wouldn’t argue. That was part of their understanding. And yet - “It doesn’t need to be anything real. They’re going to make his life miserable, on the flimsiest justifications, because they know who his father is, who his grandmother was -”
Qin Su’s fingers laced into his hair, and she drew his eyes back to meet hers. She stared, unblinking, even as Jin Guangyao knew how she rarely liked to look at others this way for more than a fleeting moment. He quieted, with a shaky exhale. “People are quick to praise those who benefit them, and to forgive the sins of the powerful. Give it a year or two, love. You know how to make yourself spotless. It will pay off; a-Song will be fine; we’ll all be fine.”
She blinked, and smiled again. “Do you believe me?”
Jin Guangyao clasped his hands together within his sleeves, and closed his eyes, and imagined floating, free from the worries that stalked him between heaven and earth, enclosed in the untouchable safe cocoon of his wife’s touch, her words, her expectations. She had not been wrong yet. And he so wanted to be all the good things she saw in him.
He opened his eyes. “I do.”