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The road to Yiling was like a coiled snake nestled amongst blackberry brambles. Round and round, Lan Wangji felt as though he were going, without an end in sight. It wasn’t the magic that pervaded the air causing the confusion, either; that really was just how the residents of eons ago had crafted the road. He wondered if even then they had known what dark secrets this place would come to hold.

If not for the continuous urging of his uncle towards fitness and physical health—and the example set by Lan Xichen—Lan Wangji would most certainly have had to stop at an inn by now, but he really was quite a bit stronger than the average exorcist. He paid the throbbing of the soles of his feet little mind and continued onwards, onwards, into the mist.

When it got too thickly white to see, the rims of his vision defined only by spindly branches that beckoned him like skeletal hands, he held up a hand and drew from within himself a little blue light that cast shadows over the shadows, tugging him towards his destination. The glow wasn’t warm, but it got the job done, and he quickened his pace more subconsciously than not. Who knew what the Patriarch would do if his meal didn’t arrive on time, after all.

He happened upon a small town sooner rather than later. The residents were few and far between, all of them brittle with age or too young to provide a proper meal, which was probably the only reason the Patriarch hadn’t left the town a massacre in his wake. They leered at Lan Wangji with eyes as cold as starlight—their suspicion seemed to border on fear, oddly enough. He’d have thought nothing could frighten them more than what lived just beyond their hills.

“The castle?” he asked the least frigid observer, an elderly man with his scraggly gray hair twisted in a ponytail and hands affixed seemingly permanently behind his back.

The man looked him up and down—tall figure, broad shoulders, loose dark hair swept neatly behind his shoulders and the golden eyes of a hawk—before responding gruffly, “Ay. The Patriarch dwells in the sun’s cup and saucer.”

Lan Wangji looked beyond his guide’s crooked finger to the hillside, where he could just barely make out a dip in the landscape—a valley, then.

“You’ll not be coming back to our small town, then, I wager?” crowed the man.

Lan Wangji declined his cruel jest and continued on his way after the provision of a small token of thanks.

The road uphill was steep, though less trying than the spirals he’d navigated previously. As he walked, the landscape morphed, again and again, regressing from torqued and half-living forests to thick, unforgiving foliage colored a glossy deep green, each leave edged with razorlike tips. And again, to nothing but stones and soil, like the earth was a cut in someone’s flesh that had scabbed over without the will to heal the rest of the way.

He watched the sky above his head shutter closed, the sinful reds and oranges of sunset bleeding into night, and realized he could see the stars clearer than he could at home.

A month. Half a year, perhaps. To enthrall the Patriarch and slay him, and then return home victorious. That’s all. Lan Wangji told himself again and again, till every word fell from his mind with a thudding footstep.

And then he saw it. Without even realizing it, he’d crested the hilltop and now stood atop it, able to survey the Patriarch’s palace in full view. He’d be the first to describe what it looked like—the first to leave its clutches in his own boots and coat instead of curled limply in a coffin.

But how to describe it? Twirling spires stretched for the sky like cat claws reached for a dangling offer of food, but the base spread out low and vast, rooms upon rooms illuminated with the faintest of burnished yellow light. Every inch of it that Lan Wangji could see was coated in thick black, and with every passing moment, it sank deeper and deeper into the summoning tendrils of the night.

He felt no impulse to turn and run, oddly enough—his brother had warned him that he might, and to fight it with every pinch and sprinkle of light he had in him. But now, here and now, Lan Wangji only felt a rush of adrenaline, the kind that always surged within him in the instants before the most brutal of battles.

He hurried onwards. The pain of his journey he left on the top of the hill and the case in his hand swung by his side now as he walked ever quicker towards his destination.

The door was a vast and garish thing. He couldn’t make out specifics, but he ran a hand over its surface and felt the knobbles and dips of some ornate carving. Lan Wangji, despite himself, wondered what kind of artistic sensibilities the Patriarch must have had, to put such a degree of thought into only the entrance of his abode.

He took the gargoyle head knocker between his fingers and his palm and knocked once, twice—felt the reverberations from the impact shiver through his hand and the surface of the door as well—and waited, and waited.

And didn’t have to wait very long, for the second he released the knocker from his grasp, one of the great, arching doors was flung open as though it were a sheer curtain, and a voice like sloppy, slippery silk sauntered giddily from its depths.

“Dinner time, at last!”

“Is that what you thought I’d say? Did I fulfill your expectations, exorcist?”

Not once since Lan Wangji had been dragged by the edges of his sleeves into the haunting Patriarch’s palace had he stopped moving. Nor had he been allowed to speak a word—not out of fear, but due to the simple fact that the person gripping his clothing ever-so tight had been burbling a stream-like speech since the moment their eyes had first met.

“Did I scare you? I meant to, so it’s good if I did! But, of course, you’re an experienced exorcist, so then perhaps I didn’t. Oh, can you see, by the way? I can see just as well in the dark as I can in the light—you know that, naturally—so generally I keep the lanterns off. But I can get my attendants to light the hallways if you like! Do you?”

As it happened, Lan Wangji really couldn’t see a thing, but it hadn’t been an issue thanks to this person—could it really be the vicious Patriarch, who left merciless trails of blood and vampire epidemics wherever he went, Lan Wangji was listening to now?—pulling him every which way.

They’d stopped walking. Just then, Lan Wangji looked down and found himself not hardly an inch away from an indistinguishable presence—indistinguishable, that is, apart from the pair of large, moon-wide eyes peering up at him, colored a succulent scarlet.

He jerked backward violently without thinking (or perhaps he did think; the thought in question being danger, recede immediately ). The mouth below the eyes let out a laugh that tickled Lan Wangji’s spine.

“Wen Ning! Light a lamp or two for us, won’t you?” the Patriarch called someway beyond his back, though his eyes never left Lan Wangji. Moments later his request was granted, and the area the pair of them inhabited was illuminated with an effervescent golden glow.

Lan Wangji had no frame of reference for what the Patriarch actually looked like. Those who really did see him never lived to tell the tale, and the descriptions of those who claimed otherwise varied far too vastly for any of them to be taken under serious consideration. Sometimes the Patriarch was a vivacious demon woman with claw-like fingernails and a shorn head, or a blind old man who relied on the blood he drank to become young and beautiful once more. Sometimes he was a gleeful child, sometimes a winged creature as tall as a house or hardly anything but a wisp of blackened smoke.

As it happened, he was far from any of the tall tales Lan Wangji had been preparing to meet. Aside from those glimmering red irises, he presented as almost insultingly humanlike. The Patriarch was nothing but a young man, much like Lan Wangji himself—despite his obviously frail stature and expected vampiric pallor, he stood tall and his skin was smooth and honeyed. Unabashedly full eyebrows arched naughtily over his eyes, and thick black hair was tied loosely at his nape, curling down over one shoulder and the red and black robes that hung from him like a bedsheet.

Frustratingly, Lan Wangji couldn’t peel his gaze away from the man before him, even as the man gazed back.

“Like what you see, now that you can see?” The Patriarch grinned.

That got Lan Wangji to move, finally, and he turned to face the wall in a sudden fluster. He resisted the urge to cover the rush of blood that had certainly tinted his ears pink.

“Ah, I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean it that way, I mean. Well, I guess I did, but it was just a joke! I promise!”

Lan Wangji didn’t have to look back to see that the Patriarch was apparently just as flustered as he was, for some reason. Thus, he still didn’t face him, instead eyeing the troublingly baroque wallpaper that appeared to be some hue of poorly chosen puce.

“Oh, please don’t be mad. I really am sorry. I don’t have those kinds of intentions, honest. I know it must be just dreadful for you, being a symbol of peace between me and, well, all exorcists, and I’m sure you want nothing less than to be here! So, I promised myself, I said, ‘Wei Ying, you’ll be good to this peace offering, as good as can be, and nothing less!’ and I’m good at keeping my promises. When I remember them, that is—which is often enough!”

Lan Wangji still hadn’t moved, but he’d started to want to.

“A-anyway,” the Patriarch continued a little bashfully, “what I mean is, there’ll be no question of this contract being like other vampire-human contracts, with all the… you know. The lovemaking constituents and so forth. I don’t need it, anyway! Other vampires sometimes have a little trouble with different flavors and textures of blood, and doing that helps a little bit, so I’m told. But I’m not picky, and you’re being good enough just to submit for the sake of your family, so I really, really won’t ask you to do anything like that! I swear!”

Even after speaking this much, the Patriarch didn’t seem in the slightest bit winded. Lan Wangji couldn’t help but be impressed enough that it cut through the embarrassment of the subject matter they had fallen upon. Then he realized he was still being watched anxiously, almost in desperation for a response, and so he relented at last, turned away from the wall to face his foe head-on once more.

“The specific terms of the agreement between my family and you were expounded to me long ago. I know you cannot go against them, so don’t concern yourself with this matter.” He stated succinctly. His voice just barely echoed in the hallway—apparently the dim lighting didn’t even begin to touch the chamber’s true heights.

The Patriarch’s shoulders fell in limp relief once Lan Wangji spoke, his complexion immediately softening into the joviality of the moment Lan Wangji had first seen it properly. He gestured for Lan Wangji to follow him as he turned to continue onwards to wherever their destination resided. When he spoke again, however, he seemed a touch irate, in a playful sort of way.

“Come now, exorcist, it’s not as though I’m only going along with the rules because, yes, technically,” two fingers of each hand crooking sarcastically as he spoke the word, “you and your family would come after me like a pack of wolves if I broke them. I won’t say that isn’t a part of it, but it’s only a teensy part. Honest! It’s not as though I don’t have any morals at all. Ever thought I wouldn’t hurt you or do something unnecessary just because I really don’t want to?”

Of course not, Lan Wangji thought coolly. He kept a steadfast distance of two or three steps between himself and the Patriarch, despite being conscious of the fact that, with the difference in the lengths of their strides, he could easily overtake him. Regardless, he’d fallen into step with him without even realizing it.

“I bet you just thought that there’s no way I’d not want to hurt you, right?” laughed the Patriarch again. Lan Wangji had already lost count of how many times he’d laughed since flinging open that door. “You’ve got a lot to learn about vampires, exorcist! Hey, that’s right.”

The Patriarch stopped short, seemingly entirely randomly,—Lan Wangji halted only a moment after he—and flung open the barely visible door on his left in a single graceful motion.

“This is your room,” he said, and spun around to face Lan Wangji with his hands folded behind his back, “But more importantly. I don’t even know your name! How is it that your family didn’t even bother to add a bit about that in our contract, huh?”

Lan Wangji didn’t answer.

“So? Care to let me in on the big secret, then? What can I call you, exorcist?” the Patriarch wheedled, cocking his head to the right like an odd and entirely unique red and ebony bird.

“You may call me Lan Wangji,” came Lan Wangji’s terse response—far terser than he’d intended it to be, as it happened, and he averted his eyes once again.

The Patriarch didn’t seem to mind; indeed, he chuckled. Again .

“Come now. Lan Wangji? I mean, I like it, don’t get me wrong, but… I don’t know. It feels a little formal? My name is Wei Wuxian, but everyone I like calls me Wei Ying. You can, too, so might I be allowed to call you something special too?”

Lan Wangji could have refused. A part of him—his uncle’s favorite part, probably—really did want to.

But instead, he found himself muttering, “Then, Lan Zhan. A name from my childhood. Will that do?”

He wasn’t looking at the Patriarch—at Wei Wuxian—but he’d already gathered enough about the man to know he was surely grinning from ear to dainty ear at that moment.

“Goodnight, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian murmured, and slithered into the darkness with as much silky grace as he had shown childish glee only moments ago, leaving Lan Wangji in the somber lantern light on his own.

Lan Wangji slept fitfully, more so than he had the night before his first solo mission, or the night Lan Xichen had returned home limping and covered in his own blood. The moments he slept were deep and thick, like he was drowning in a liquid he knew but was afraid to put a name to, and the waking ones he spent pacing back and forth across the plush (if dusty at best) carpets tossed across every inch of the chilly stone floor.

But the room wasn’t too bad, once he’d grown accustomed to the difference in architectural and interior design tastes. If he’d been paying closer attention to the corridors Wei Wuxian had led him through, he would have recognized long before that he would be staying in a tower chamber, but the circular shape of the room tipped him off of its location regardless. The walls were dotted with large, garish tapestries embroidered with gilt threads in a dozen once-rich, now faded colors, interspersed with heavy cherry red curtains that could only hide windows. The broad fireplace, with its all but hideous marble mantel, mysteriously became alight during one of Lan Wangji’s periods of slumber in the night, which unsettled him a little—then he wondered if Wei Wuxian had requested a servant to do so, out of kindness or at least a veneer of something like that.

He was nothing like Lan Wangji had been prepared for. He could never have been prepared for him.

He couldn’t tell what time it was when he woke again and decided to stay that way, but it was most likely early. His internal clock had been finely tuned, after all. He noticed the gloom peering out from underneath the window curtains as he dressed—gray slacks and a thin, sky blue silk shirt tucked into the waistband—which confirmed his expectations. It couldn’t be later than six in the morning, and that meant he should explore his temporary home with a healthy dose of caution. Most vampires retreated to the safety of their dark hovels well before sunrise, but it remained unknown as to just how resistant the Patriarch was to sunlight.

Surprisingly enough, though the lights had not been lit in the night, the windows in the corridors of the castle remained uncovered. This being due to a simple lack of foresight in the Patriarch’s household was impossible—at least, not probable. Anyone serving the most powerful vampire lord known to both heaven and hell had to be a little more skilled than that, surely.

So Lan Wangji remained careful as he left his dwelling and began to explore—examine—the hallways of his new home. His relatives had instructed him to do at least this much as soon as he could.

“His coven won’t take the assassination of their leader lightly, as you surely know,” Lan Qiren had told him again and again. “You must come to know that place if it were this childhood house of yours, know every trap and trick and entrance and exit possible. This isn’t a suicide mission, Wangji. Remember that.”

And he did remember it, along with every other lesson that had been instilled within him by his family since he was a babe. But, as he meandered further and further into the castle’s depths, he couldn’t help but begin to doubt this particular reminder, if only by the slightest degree.

For a start, Wei Wuxian’s rumored coven of equally seductive and salacious vampires, who supposedly drank from hundreds of humans a night and had conquered whole mortal armies with as little as a wink or a nod, seemed altogether more of sensationalized fantasy than anything close to reality. Every step Lan Wangji took echoed, but not once did he encounter anyone coming to scold or severely maim him for disturbing their slumber. With trepidation that lessened each time he tried, he opened door after door only to be greeted by clouds of dust and dismal gossamer arrays without so much as a living spider left in them.

And as for traps, well. While they existed, it seemed as though they were located in the deepest pits of the palace and had all been triggered long ago. Even then, their remnants left quite a bit to be desired. Pits in the ground could be easily crossed with a wide step of Lan Wangji’s, and any and all spiked surfaces were far too dull to cause more than an uncomfortable twinge of pressure against flesh.

By the time Lan Wangji had found his way to the main staircase and down into the main hall, the sun was well on its way in the sky. Ironically enough, however, it was then that he stumbled across Wei Wuxian.

“Lan Zhan! Good morning, right? It’s been so long since I’ve said that to anyone,” he said, a little shamefaced at his uncertainty but seemingly as energetic as ever beyond that. Lan Wangji wondered just how much power it took him to remain as excitable as he was even in the light of day—if it even touched the depth of his magics in the slightest.

“Good morning,” was all he offered in response.

It seemed to bother Wei Wuxian. He twisted his hands over his stomach—encased today in another flowing ensemble of red and black, this time leaning more towards red—and seemed to be thinking desperately about what to say next.

Lan Wangji waited.

Finally, Wei Wuxian seemed to think of something. He asked eagerly, “Are you hungry? I’m sorry about my manners, I don’t know where I left them! It’s been a few hundred years since I’ve had to use them after all… Um, there’s food in the kitchen, though. It’s fresh, and there’s plenty of it. My friends still like to eat it every now and then, though I can’t anymore.”

“Your friends?” Lan Wangji asked immediately—the rumored coven, was it?

Wei Wuxian’s entire expression lit up at the question, and for some reason or another, it stirred Lan Wangji’s heart—ruffled his feathers, if only by a modicum.

“Yes! I didn’t have a chance to introduce you last night, but I’d hoped you’d want to meet them today. They don’t have trouble in the sunlight, I’ve made sure of that, so we can greet them right now, shall we?”

Lan Wangji nodded quickly. His head was reeling, so much so that he didn’t even feel it—mostly—when Wei Wuxian grabbed him by the cuff of his sleeve once again and began drawing him in the presumed direction of the aforementioned kitchen.

What had he meant, ‘made sure of that’? To what extent had Wei Wuxian finagled with dark magic in order to prevail over even the first and greatest vampire weakness? Was he planning to perform that magic on more, or all the vampires? For what purpose?

And most of all, why did it sound as though he hadn’t given himself the gift of imperviousness to sunlight along with his so-called friends?

The kitchen was warm, a sort of cylindrical shape with every surface heaped with an array of both food and cooking implements, with a fire already crackling away. Wei Wuxian ushered Lan Wangji in ahead of himself, prodding him sharply in the small of his back—Lan Wangji jerked forward and into the well-lit space. Two pairs of eyes, nearly identical in their almond shape and maroon coloring, fluttered up to meet his own.

“Did Wei Wuxian send you?” the woman asked curtly—even seated over a plate piled with bread and fruit, she cut an imposing figure, all lithe lines and sharp features. In response, Lan Wangji found himself nodding obediently the very same way he had on the rare occasion his tutors reprimanded him as a small boy.

“I’m here! Wen Ning, will you close the curtains for me? It’s awful ticklish this early in the day,” Wei Wuxian called out jauntily. He’d spread himself against the door that stood ajar and now blocked him from harmful rays.

The second unknown—Wen Ning, whose name Lan Wangji now vaguely recalled from a moment belonging to the previous night—cut a figure just as impressive as the woman, though to the opposite effect. Everything about him was limp and frigid, shoulders drooping and slick bangs dripping so far over his eyes that they became all but invisible. Nevertheless, he moved quickly at Wei Wuxian’s request. The curtains were closed within an instant, the room sinking into a darkness full and fuzzy as a winter’s evening.

“Thank you! Much better. Ah, that’s Wen Ning and this is Wen Qing. Siblings, as I’m sure you’re able to surmise from the names. They’re…” Wei Wuxian trailed off, uncertainty passing over his face like a cloud over the sun.

Lan Wangji waved that analogy from his mind with a speedy internal hand.

“We’re your servants? Attendants? Take your pick of lingo, exorcist,” Wen Qing supplied rather snidely. Her tone dipped harshly on the word ‘exorcist’.

Wei Wuxian stamped his foot rather childishly. “You know I hate words like that, Wen Qing! We’re… We’re roommates . And it just so happens that I’ve done you and your brother a few good turns, so you take care of most of the housekeeping and all that. It’s not like I’m any good at that, anyway.”

Wen Qing snorted. “Funny how that works. I would’ve thought someone who’s lived as long as you have would’ve figured out the mechanics of sweeping eventually, and yet, here we are!”

At that, Wei Wuxian stuck out his tongue, and she curled her lip.

And Lan Wangji observed.

Eventually, it was sorted out that Wen Qing would make Lan Wangji breakfast.

“I don’t need it,” he tried to say twice, but she shot him suspicious glares on both occasions that shut him up well and good.

“Don’t pay her any mind,” Wei Wuxian coaxed, pulling out a chair for Lan Wangji at the large wooden table that served as the centerpiece of the room amidst all the foodstuff clutter. “She’s irritable by nature. She’ll warm up to you, and you’ll get used to her, so don’t worry about it.”

Lan Wangji didn’t know what to say, so he nodded again. He couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps someone more… effervescent would be more suitable for Wei Wuxian. For this job, that is.

While he was caught up numbly in his thoughts, Wei Wuxian took the seat next to him and folded first his arms atop the tabletop surface, and then his body over them. He affixed his eyes to Lan Wangji’s profile and waited, waited until Lan Wangji realized that he was being watched and met his gaze.

“So, Lan Zhan,” he said eagerly, “Is there anything you need? Wait, actually, how did you sleep? I completely forgot to ask! Is the room to your liking? I know it must be hard being away from your family and your home like this, but I tried to make it comfortable. I had Wen Ning light a fire while you were sleeping. I thought it might help. Did it?”

Stiffly, “I don’t require anything. I brought my supplies from my ancestral home. I slept sufficiently.”

“Ahhh, sufficiently? Is that enough, though? Really, if you didn’t like the room, I can find you another. Or you can choose! Would that be fun? Yes, I think it would be, wouldn’t it? Okay. Okay, we’ll do that, then. After you eat, I’ll take you on a tour round this old place and you can pick any room you like, alright?”

It certainly wasn’t as though Lan Wangji could tell him he’d already searched the place from top to bottom. He bobbed his head once more and waited for his breakfast, hands wound tight in the fabric of his trousers.

Wei Wuxian really did take Lan Wangji through every nook and corner of his castle. He moved like a serpent or a goldfish, shying away from the brightest beams of light seeping past the half-closed curtains, but not once did he move to darken the corridors or any of the rooms he entered, and on and on he chattered, giving Lan Wangji a rundown of the history of each room’s interior and hints as to why he’d decided to decorate them the way he had.

“I don’t know that I really even like all this old stuff, you know? But it wouldn’t feel right, having a bunch of modern things knocking about in a big stone castle like this one. It’s less authentic?”

Nothing about any of this décor is authentic, either, Lan Wangji thought to himself.

He did notice, despite himself, how Wei Wuxian subtly steered them both away from the darkest hallways—he already knew what they contained, traps and weapons that could hardly be considered anything unsafe even for a child anymore, but Wei Wuxian brushed off any potential questions with vague excuses.

“Those places are boring. And this place is so rickety, who knows what might come crashing down around us if we explore back there! So, promise me you won’t go poking around in those places, Lan Zhan. It’s not safe.”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“No, no. Say it! Speak the words! Give me your promise, properly, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian persisted, halting his pace to peer up at Lan Wangji with those simmering crimson eyes.

“I promise,” came the words unbidden. Lan Wangji caught hold of himself too late and resisted the urge to frown.

Wei Wuxian grinned. “Thank you! I trust you’ll keep to your word, right? I’ve always found exorcists to be pretty trustworthy, actually, so I don’t even really need to ask!”

Something needled thinly at Lan Wangji’s heart, which he pointedly decided to ignore.

Noon had struck on several grand grandfather clocks by the time Wei Wuxian had finished tugging Lan Wangji from place to place. They ended up back at his original quarters.

“So?” Wei Wuxian rounded on him expectantly. “Which room would you like to change residency to?”

The original purpose of this—second—tour had long since escaped from Lan Wangji’s mind. Now, more than ever, with food in his stomach and the so-called Patriarch in front of him acting like an eager child, he suddenly felt exhausted, and craved sleep as he hadn’t been able to the previous night.

And if he thought about it, he really hadn’t preferred any room in the castle to the one Wei Wuxian had given him.

“This room suits my needs. Thank you for providing it for me,” he said. It only sounded soft because he was too tired to edge his tongue with the usual silver lattice, but the elation in Wei Wuxian’s expression at his change of tone was bright and something akin to tender.

“You look tired. I guess last night’s sleep wasn’t so sufficient after all?” he asked gently, clearly trying to control the obvious jauntiness he felt, for some unknowable reason, at Lan Wangji’s behavior.

“Indeed. But I am unaccustomed to sleeping during the day,” Lan Wangji replied. It was true. Lan exorcists didn’t nap, not even when they would be out for whole nights at a time on the hunt. Sleeping during the day was too intertwined with vampirism for their taste.

“Well, it’s never too late to try something new, is it? Just close the curtains and get some rest. I promise, it’ll be as dark as night, you’ll have no trouble!” Wei Wuxian was already backing towards the door, and every fiber of Lan Wangji’s body was telling him to do as he was instructed.

“Just come find me when you wake up, all right? I have more to show you. I think you’ll like it, too.” Wei Wuxian murmured.

Lan Wangji offered one final nod before the door to his quarters slipped shut and he let himself collapse into the cool embrace of slumber once more.

He really did sleep for the rest of the day. When he awoke, shame blanketed his shoulders. He couldn’t help but think of what his uncle would say upon hearing of him already sleeping like a vampire upon his very first day under the Patriarch’s thumb.

Lan Wangji got up quickly, ignoring the fact that he really did feel better having slept properly. He ran a comb through his hair before tying it back with the usual white and blue ribbon and changed his shirt before taking a seat at the small desk just below the largest window of the room. Lifting the shade, he saw the remnants of an auburn sunset trailing below the horizon—evening had arrived.

Then he scrounged around in his small briefcase for a paper and quill.

Uncle,

I’ve arrived at the Patriarch’s home safely. There are no signs of an ample coven here—his attendants number two, insofar as he’s told me and I’ve surmised from my primary investigation. he has yet to feed, nor has he engaged the contract to surrender me to his will at any point. My next letter will find you within the week with further details. I hope you and the family are well.

                                 Lan Wangji

It only took him a few moments to scribble down, but he sat and stared at the words for more than ten minutes, the silvery feather of his quill tapped to one cheek.

Perhaps the Patriarch was only trying to gain his favor, in order to use him without sparing the effort to invoke the contract’s customary clauses of enforced obedience, but Lan Wangji couldn’t imagine why someone supposedly as powerful as he would worry about crushing the will of a puny human in the palm of his hand.

At last, he folded the letter, sealed it with gray wax, and exited his quarters, putting his unnecessary musings out of his mind again.

He encountered Wen Ning at the top of the stairs, almost as if he were waiting for him. The thin man wrinkled in on himself as soon he spotted him, though Lan Wangji stopped moving the instant their eyes met.

Warily, he held out the hand in which the letter was enclosed.

“Would you post this for me? Tonight, if possible. Or you may instruct me on how to do it myself,” Lan Wangji spoke, clear and silvery in the grim dark.

Wen Ning shivered involuntarily, but he took the letter all the same. Then he crooked one thin white finger at Lan Wangji before gesturing down the stairs.

“Master Wei would like to see you in the gardens, sir,” he murmured. Unlike his gaunt figure, his voice was surprisingly high-pitched, rustling like cattails along a silent river. As soon as he got the words out, he vanished in the dark, to where Lan Wangji couldn’t see. He wondered if Wen Ning was capable of moving as a shadow.

If so, he told himself while descending the staircase, it meant that he couldn’t be underestimated. As expected, even if his numbers were few, Wei Wuxian would only associate with the highest circles of vampires. Shadow traveling was a rare, near-mythical gift—but perhaps he’d given it to Wen Ning himself, along with resistance to sunlight?

“Lan Zhan!” came the triumphant shout. Lan Wangji looked up and through the smudged glass panes of the conservatory walls to see Wei Wuxian just there, beyond the boundaries of the castle, with his sleeves rolled up and hands waving ecstatically in the air.

Now that night had fallen, it seemed a moonlit glow had overcome the Patriarch. In the midst of an entirely miserable excuse for a garden, overgrown and uncared for, his pallor remained evident—but now his complexion seemed lit from within as though he were a specter. And his eyes, too, glittered brighter during these waning hours, like cherries in the summer or rubies encased in diamond brackets.

This is the true visage of a vampire, Lan Wangji thought.

“Good evening,” he said, once he’d exited the castle and come within speaking distance of Wei Wuxian. “I gave a letter to Wen Ning just now, for my family. I wanted to let them know that I am safe for now.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows shot upwards and into the drapes of his unkempt hair. “ For now? Goodness me, Lan Zhan, you speak like I’m some frightful beast just waiting to tear you apart,” he chided without a trace of malice.

Aren’t you? “I apologize. I spoke out of turn.”

Wei Wuxian had already turned away and waved a hand absentmindedly, both ridding the air between them of the remark and beckoning Lan Wangji closer still.

“Never mind, never mind. I know what you exorcist types think of me and the rest of my kind anyhow, so it’s not like I’m surprised if you really do think I’m as good as a bloodthirsty hound. Ah, come here! They’re about to bloom!”

He grabbed Lan Wangji by the arm—the sudden physical contact and the thrilling cool of his flesh sending a shudder through him spreading outwards from the point of connection and down his spine—and pointed towards a hedge beyond the tangled weeds of the rest of the garden.

He couldn’t focus for a moment—couldn’t think beyond the sensation of fingers wrapped around his bicep, something that had, discounting touches laden with killing intent, had happened perhaps a handful of times in his life. But as Lan Wangji’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he began to see just what Wei Wuxian had wanted to show him. Stars.

No, not stars. A hundred or so starlike somethings, speckling the dark underbrush just as the balls of fire above their heads did the deep blue sky. As they watched, the glow became stronger, spreading outwards from each centrical dot into five or six wide, oblong heart-shaped petals.

"Flowers?” Lan Wangji asked, forgetting his composure at the sight. The light was so strong, so blue—it reminded him of home all of a sudden, and his heart twinged.

“Mm, flowers. Wen Qing breeds them for medicinal purposes, so I sort of picked up an interest and, well, it’s not as though I can exactly frolic about and admire them in the day, can I? So, a touch of magic here and there—nothing too fancy, it really was easy enough—and I made these. They only bloom at night, but they shine ridiculously bright and never die. Or, at least they haven’t yet.”

Wei Wuxian’s tone was soft, melancholy. Lan Wangji spared him a glance, and then another, pausing to gaze at the cool light concurrently catching and darkening the dips and swells of his face in ghostly harmony.

“I don’t mean for you to take this the wrong way, but,” Wei Wuxian said after a long pause, hesitantly—he seemed not to have felt Lan Wangji’s stare, but Lan Wangji tore his eyes away all the same. “I did—sort of—plant these for you. I know blue and white are the traditional colors of your family, so I made them this color on purpose. And I thought. I mean, I can’t give you much as…thanks. For all of this. So, I thought if I could do a little thing, to bring a little beauty into your life here, it might help the transition and all.”

This was the Patriarch. The all-powerful, all-knowing prince of darkness, the shadow even where there should be none, sovereign of all the evilest things—standing at Lan Wangji’s side, arms wrapped tight around his slim torso in the loneliest hug Lan Wangji had ever seen, trying to make sure he had some source of solace in his new life as a reusable bag of blood.

That was all he knew Lan Wangji to be. He thought his family had abandoned him, left him for dead or worse just to strike up an accord of peace, and he cared.

“The flowers are beautiful. Thank…thank you, Wei Ying,” fell the words one by one like raindrops from Lan Wangji’s lips. The name tasted like bitter rose petals on his tongue.

Wei Wuxian walked him back to his room, pace unhurried. This time, Lan Wangji kept only a single step behind him, and he listened, really listened to Wei Wuxian’s cheerful conversation. He didn’t seem to mind that it hadn’t become any less one-sided after a whole day at Lan Wangji’s side, and Lan Wangji was grateful for that, somehow. He had no way with words beyond the necessary ones.

“Well, this is your stop, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said as they neared the tower quarters. “Though I shan’t expect you’ll sleep very well tonight either, seeing as how much you did so earlier! I’m sorry about that. I’m really not trying to accustom you to a vampire’s sleeping schedule—you should sleep when you should, not when I do!”

“Don’t you require my services?” Lan Wangji asked.

He’d surprised even himself, but Wei Wuxian was the one to jerk to a halt, shoulders stiffening so violently it sent ripples down the draping fabric of his robes.

After a tense pause, Lan Wangji opened his mouth to apologize. Wei Wuxian beat him to the punch.

“I apologize. I thought you’d been informed of this, somehow—then again, it’s not as though anyone besides me knows, so that makes no sense.” He’d had yet to hear such a frigid tone emit from Wei Wuxian’s throat.

“When I drink, it’s… intimate , Lan Zhan. I can’t control it. I can’t make it otherwise. The blood goes to my head, quite literally. I’m sure even an upright exorcist such as yourself knows what that means, so I’ll leave it as delicately as that. Anyway, I don’t, so no. I won’t require your services now or ever.”

Lan Wangji’s ears were hot. Nevertheless, he persisted.

“While I am aware of the various feeding proclivities some vampires possess, it is also my duty here to serve this purpose for you. It is my only duty. If I don’t fulfill the conditions outlined in the contract, the agreement between our houses may as well be void, should it not?” He asked. His throat had dried like plaster by the time he finished speaking.

“I never had any intention of fulfilling that condition in the first place! It was your family that suggested the idea, not me, Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, rounding back around to face him at last. He stilled, however, when he realized Lan Wangji had taken two steps closer.

“So, in accordance with my family’s wishes, I will supply you whatever you need. Whatever the cost.”

The air was tense, tight, gripping the pair of them like a pair of hands squeezing ever closer. Lan Wangji didn’t know if it was some kind of glamor or charismatic charm, something unnatural toying with his mind and forcing him to speak as he did at the behest of Wei Wuxian’s hungry desire, but he didn’t resist. This was a good opportunity to draw closer to Wei Wuxian, after all—make him trust him fully and completely.

“Fine.” Wei Wuxian muttered at last. He swept the tails of his robes behind him in a single gesture and continued onwards, past Lan Wangji’s room and into the depths of the castle. Behind a ruby red tapestry, he revealed a door shut tight that Lan Wangji had only tried once to open without success.

With a single breath of Wei Wuxian’s—he leaned over, pursing his lips a hair’s breadth from the keyhole—it swung silently open.

Onwards they walked, up a spiral staircase crafted from wrought iron that looked thin enough to shatter at the weight of a single person but didn’t shudder even under two. It took them to the tallest spire of the castle, a place too small, Lan Wangji would have thought, for a person or vampire alike to inhabit.

He was wrong. Though there was only enough space for the two of them to comfortably reside, the rest of the place was stocked full of tomes containing both light and dark magic, parchment and quills, scrolls from all around the world tossed haphazardly to the ground. The floor was carpeted in a lush violet; above their heads, a loft cut the standing room in half, and beyond that stretched a narrow ceiling spinning higher and higher until it reached the tiny, pointed spire visible from the castle grounds below.

“Make yourself comfortable. I need to get something before we…”

Wei Wuxian trailed off, then took his skirts in hand and clambered up the ladder and into the loft.

Lan Wangji couldn’t spare a thought for his behavior—he was too consumed by the appearance of the space around him. He turned immediately to the books—ancient things containing any manner of magical knowledge both true and false, evil and light—and half-finished writings in chicken scratch handwriting he thought could only belong to Wei Wuxian. He’d crafted spells, recipes, and reminders for himself. Here was evidence of all his magical, demonic doings, alongside the material progressions of his everyday life too.

“Did you expect it to all be plots for overthrowing the exorcists and taking command of the world?” Wei Wuxian’s voice came scattering down from above. Lan Wangji raised his head to meet his gaze. “I keep telling you people, I’m really not interested in all that.”

He took to the ladder again, something clutched in his left fist that emitted the faintest of hissing noises, and continued, “I mean, have I theorized how I’d personally go about it, just for the hell of it? Sure, but that doesn’t mean—ah!”

Wei Wuxian had lost his balance amidst his robes. And thoughtlessly, recklessly, Lan Wangji had darted forward and rescued him.

They stared at each other, one above, the other below. One grasped in the other’s arms, the other clinging to his waist with long, slim fingers.

“…”

“…”

Lan Wangji moved first, bodily righting Wei Wuxian’s posture himself and stepping away, eyes downcast. Wei Wuxian coughed and graciously allowed himself to be slung about as such, but embarrassment had never been too much of a damper for him. Instead of letting the silence continue, he thrust the hissing object in his hand towards Lan Wangji’s chest.

Only up close could Lan Wangji make out the shape, and the reason for the faint whistling—now he could see the steam and the red burns already pervading Wei Wuxian’s palm.

He snatched the ornate handheld silver cross and pressed it over his heart.

“This is an exorcist’s cross,” he snapped, without even particularly meaning to.

Never mind the burns, he told himself.

Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes. “Come now, Lan Zhan. You already how the oh-so-powerful Patriarch must have gotten one of those. Or can’t you figure it out for yourself?”

He sounded sharper than usual all of a sudden, voice colored and flushed, but whether it was out of thirst or anxiety, or something else altogether, Lan Wangji couldn’t tell.

“Why would you keep it?” he asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Research purposes. Sentimental value. You can think of it as a trophy, if you like—if it would make you hate me a little more in this moment.”

Perhaps Lan Wangji had raised an eyebrow. His face felt too numb and hot to tell all of a sudden, with Wei Wuxian coming closer and closer still. Whatever expression he wore, it must have been a questioning one, because Wei Wuxian curled his lip.

“Just for now, Lan Zhan—just till I’m finished. Hate me enough to touch me with the cross if I lose my mind. When I lose my mind. Hate me enough to knock me out if need be, with all your exorcist strength. I won’t hold it against you, so long as you don’t really kill me, all right?”

They were so close that Lan Wangji could feel chill breath against his throat and glide up over his jawline and cheek. He’d been stepping back, back, and now he was against the wall, arms splayed at his sides, one hand gripping the familiar cross in a fist all but slick from perspiration.

And then, he was bitten.

Lan Wangji had read descriptions upon descriptions of the sensation of being fed on by a vampire. The experiences varied greatly, because no two vampires were exactly alike and thus many drinking patterns could be found amongst the species. Some used venom to numb or enthrall their victim, or glamours to remove the memory of any pain. Some used glamours to make the pain worse. The cruelest vampires tore their victims from limb to limb and lapped the blood from whatever was leftover on the pieces—the gentlest took from papercuts and the prodding of a needle, preferring to waste away slowly rather than run the risk of taking a life.

Wei Wuxian was a vampire of the rare and particularly dangerous sensual kind. From the moment his dainty fangs touched the flesh of Lan Wangji’s flesh, he could smell the poison that would enter his bloodstream—a scent distinctly reminiscent of cornflowers and dust, tickling his nose and his eyes and trickling down the back of his throat like honey.

Logically, he could describe every inch of an encounter with a sense-based drinker. He knew every physical reaction and sensation like the back of his hand, the pages of his worn textbooks engraved beneath his eyelids from days and days of repetition and study. But nothing could have prepared Lan Wangji for those textbook words come to life.

His body was alight like a flame. His mind, woozy, floating back and forth like a kite on a string set free of his hands—it moved too fast for him to catch up, and he could only watch with arms outstretched as it rapidly escaped from the safety of his embrace. The pit of his stomach felt like molten stone.

Wei Wuxian was pressed up against him in every sense of the word. His hands clung to Lan Wangji’s back through the fabric of his shirt, crystalline nails digging into his flesh. With Lan Wangji up against the wall he could treat him as any other surface, sliding together their thighs and torsos and hearts, beating and not, up against one another as he drank, drank, drank. The sucking sound made Lan Wangji feel even worse.

Or better, perhaps. He couldn’t think anymore, so instead, he wrapped his broad arms around the trim little waist anxiously pushing up against him again and again and raised one hand, his free hand, to cup the back of Wei Wuxian’s head through those dreadfully unkempt tresses.

Wei Wuxian moaned into flesh, beside himself with the sensation even more so than Lan Wangji, it seemed.

“You taste—ah—you taste like strawberries, Lan Zhan, has anyone ever told you that?” he mumbled, watching Lan Wangji with shimmering, glassy eyes, before taking another bite hot and hard. Lan Wangji resisted the urge to gasp.

“N-no,” he hissed into the pain, living it, breathing it, welcoming it. He was beginning to lose his head entirely.

“Oh, let me, then, let me tell you how you taste, Lan Zhan,” insistently, eagerly, “you taste like strawberries, like heat, like the way blood should always taste—don’t you know that blood should always taste this sweet? It’s no good otherwise, not for me, and your blood is the sweetest I’ve ever tasted, oh…”

If Lan Wangji hadn’t—forgetfully—clenched the cross in the fist curled against Wei Wuxian’s waist so hard that it cut him, without any of the demanding pleasure of a vampire’s venom, he would have done unspeakable things to the man at his throat.

But the cross did cut him, and it brought him back teetering just on the very edge of his rationality, just enough to take Wei Wuxian’s throat in his hand and squeeze, hard.

There was a sudden intake of breath, a moment of struggle—then the Patriarch fell limp in Lan Wangji’s embrace, lips stained jewel red. Strawberry red.

Lan Wangji’s red.

Suddenly reeling from blood loss, it was the exorcist’s turn to collapse.

“Lan Zhan? Lan Zhan, wake up, won’t you? Please, please wake up!”

He woke up, blinking and bleary-eyed. The first thing he felt was an uncomfortable throbbing spreading outwards across his throat from the left side—the next, a cool hand passing something damp and soft across his forehead.

“Thank fuck— how do you feel? How is the pain?” Wei Wuxian asked. His voice dipped and swelled unnaturally for someone so ancient and grand.

Otherwise, he looked like fruit ripe for the plucking and tasting. His skin had lost most of the pallor that Lan Wangji had believed to be innate, cheeks rosy. The red of his eyes had faded to a glassy purple overnight and it softened his entire appearance. His hair shone too. After having performed the least humane act possible, he’d never looked more human.

“I’m all right,” Lan Wangji rasped, tugging his eyes away from the sight with some difficulty. He wasn’t, however—his throat and tongue scratched like sandpaper, the light in the room blinding him. For a delirious moment, he wondered if the Patriarch had turned him on accident.

“You aren’t, not in the slightest. Have some water, won’t you? It’s cool, fresh from the cellar. And I have oranges and bread here—are you hungry?”

Lan Wangji shook his head. Wei Wuxian bit his lip, sitting back on his heels—why he was kneeling on Lan Wangji’s bed, or indeed, how they’d gotten back to his room in the first place, Lan Wangji didn’t know.

“I’m sorry, Lan Zhan. Really, really sorry. Please believe me. It wasn’t… I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to take it that far. I told you I lose my mind when I feed, didn’t I! But I shouldn’t have let you let me, it was my responsibility in the first place and I—”

“I said I’m all right,” Lan Wangji cut in, drawing himself up in the bed till he could lean seated against the ornate mahogany headboard. He avoided Wei Wuxian’s large lavender gaze. He wasn’t quite used to him like this. “I am not accustomed to saying things I don’t mean. I only performed the task I was sent here for. I’ll recover eventually, so don’t trouble yourself.”

Wei Wuxian’s expression twisted in disconcertion.

“I-if you say so, then I guess it’s fine,” he replied in a small voice, clearly unsatisfied. A heavy silence fell, in which Lan Wangji stared out the window and Wei Wuxian, at the damp towel in his hands.

The window?

“The sunlight no longer causes you harm?” Lan Wangji queried. He glanced back at Wei Wuxian and then towards the light again—not a flinch or a hint of discomfort was displayed even with dappled streams of afternoon sun hitting his flesh without abandon.

“Oh, that. No, not at all. I’m pretty much human when I’m full, but like I said. I don't like what drinking does to me, and it puts others in danger, so…”

“How many times have you fed?” He couldn’t stop the questions, for some reason, though speaking still hurt his throat. Lan Wangji reached for the tin mug of water—Wei Wuxian beat him to it, placing it in his outstretched hand. He was mindful not to let their skin touch, and Lan Wangji noticed.

“I don’t know exactly—it’s been so long since the last time. Twice? Thrice, perhaps. When I had to in order to complete the turning, and after that only when I was mortally wounded. Told you I don’t like it.” This with a wry smile in response to Lan Wangji’s obvious (for him) surprise.

“Isn’t it…” he didn’t even know what he was trying to ask, even less so why he wanted to know.

“Painful? Less so than dying, I expect.” Wei Wuxian ducked his head, tugging at loose strands in the washcloth he held. “I don’t mind. I got used to it, eventually.”

Then he looked up, finally, finally, and locked his gaze onto Lan Wangji’s golden eyes.

“But it was nice to drink, you know. I’m really… grateful to you, Lan Zhan.”

Something stirred in the pit of Lan Wangji’s stomach—something undefinable and frightening. It made him want to trace the curve of this vampire’s face and draw him close.

“You’re welcome,” was all he managed to stutter in response. It seemed to sate Wei Wuxian, however, because he looked like he could tell Lan Wangji meant his words even if they were a little sparse.

“Well then. There shouldn’t be any lasting side effects from the. Drinking. So I’ll let you recover. Eat something, drink something—just take care of yourself, okay? Please?” he offered, his questions trailing off almost meekly. Lan Wangji nodded, and Wei Wuxian left.

It couldn’t be that there were no lasting side effects. Either Wei Wuxian was lying or he really didn’t know the extent of his powers. Lan Wangji could hear his uncle’s scoff at the latter, but considering that Wei Wuxian had only fed a handful of times in his life—if he were to be believed, that is—then perhaps it wasn’t so odd that he really might not know about the sensations he left behind.

Because sensations were most definitely left behind. The trembling of Lan Wangji’s nerves every time Wei Wuxian had leaned closer or pulled away from him; the feeling of his flesh, hot and sweat-soaked, still throbbing in Lan Wangji’s memory from the night before; the astringence of his every sense as though he’d been awoken from a foggy slumber.

The intoxication, whatever it was, was dangerous—it screamed for Lan Wangji to jump from his bed and find Wei Wuxian again this very instant. Let him feed again.

Lan Wangji did rise from his seat, but he didn’t follow Wei Wuxian. Instead, he wrote.

Uncle,

The Patriarch fed off of me last night. I have recovered safely, but I am experiencing side effects, nevertheless. Please write back with any potential clues as to what type of venom he may possess as a sense-based vampire type, how these side effects are categorized, and what I might do to attempt to remedy them.

I hope you and the family are well.

Lan Wangji

Having focused on something besides the thought of Wei Wuxian’s waist between his fingers for a little while, Lan Wangji found that his symptoms had already expired somewhat. Nevertheless, he folded up the letter and, after changing into a loose white ensemble, stored it in one pocket to hand off to Wen Ning later.

When he exited his quarters, Wen Qing was waiting for him.

“May I help you?” Lan Wangji inquired stiffly. It hadn’t taken any sort of outstanding observational skills the day prior to pick up on the fact that Wen Qing had some sort of severe distaste for him.

“No. But you can help Wei Wuxian, probably,” she replied with twice the frigidity. “That is, if you aren’t planning to kill him in his sleep with your little exorcist family.”

Lan Wangji was good at maintaining a façade. It wasn’t only what he’d been raised to do—it was natural for him, for one reason or another. Despite that, Wen Qing’s proclamation took him by enough surprise that he shifted backward a half step.

She didn’t drop her gaze to watch the movement. “Yes, yes, what a surprise! I actually haven’t quite found it in myself yet to believe that you exorcists have suddenly had a big enough change of heart to go so far as to make a pact of everlasting peace with the most renowned and feared vampire in our shared lands!” Wen Qing scoffed. “It’s not as though you lot formed a contract with me, so I’m under no obligation to trust or like any of you, as I see it.”

“I didn’t say you are,” Lan Wangji threw back. His mind was moving quickly, quietly, running through every phrase that left her mouth to gauge how much she knew.

“I didn’t say you said I am. I just think, since we’re living under the same roof and all, we’d better get a few things squared away. Without my silly little pacifist of a friend drumming his fingers about it.”

Wen Qing wasn’t quite as tall as Lan Wangji, but she might as well have been. Her overbearing presence and sharp maroon eyes seemed to lift her beyond the few inches she lacked, oppressing Lan Wangji into agreeing whether he wanted to or not.

He inclined his head in approval.

“This is all hypothetical, I trust you realize,” she said. “Hypothetically speaking, if you really are a symbol of unity and forgiveness between your kind and mine, and you aren’t here to slaughter everyone in this castle— all three of us —and burn the place to the ground. Hypothetically speaking, if you’re prepared to be what Wei Wuxian really needs you to be in order for this sick scenario to play itself out without anyone from either side getting crushed underfoot.

“In this hypothetical, I think you could protect him. Help him. If he’s willing to be protected and helped that is, which, judging by the fact that he actually ended up drinking from you last night, it seems like he might be.”

“He told you?” Lan Wangji’s heart thudded in his chest, hard and stolid—the thought of Wei Wuxian bragging about him like a conquest to his vampire friends was far more hurtful than he’d thought possible. Another side effect, perhaps.

“Moron. You have all five senses, don’t you? I could tell the second he walked into the kitchen this morning he’d drunk from someone. I heard his footsteps, smelled his blood and his sweat, saw his features all plump and healthy. He’s not wasting away anymore in the most literal sense of the term. It’s not as though he thinks of you as a conquest or something.”

Lan Wangji did, of course, have all his five senses. He felt rather silly all at once and shook his head just a little—as though he could shake the silliness from his mind like salt from a teaspoon.

Wen Qing crossed her arms and fell back against the wall behind her without a sound. “Wei Wuxian hasn’t drunk all that much. I’m sure he told you as much, and I’m sure you know what that means for any vampire, no matter how powerful they are.”

“Blood is a vampire’s weakness and source of life. They reach the peak of their power just after drinking, and without it, they slowly revert to a state as good as death—their senses and mind dull, their appearances demonize,” Lan Wangji recited automatically.

Nodding along impatiently, she continued, “Yes, yes, we’ve all read the textbook.

“Naturally, these rules apply to the oh-so-tremendous Patriarch just like the rest of us. Well, not my brother and I—but just like any other vampire you’ll meet, Wei Wuxian needs blood. He craves it. It’s only a testament to his integrity how long he’s managed to survive without it without going rabid—not his power or his will to destroy or anything of the sort.”

At last, Wen Qing looked elsewhere from Lan Wangji. Her dark eyes touched the floor and lingered there, at a faded spot in the carpet that she rubbed back and forth, back and forth with the blocky toe of her boot. Her voice was smaller when she spoke again; more tender.

“Wei Wuxian saved me and my brother when he turned us. He never would have done it if we weren’t in danger. Back then, our town was being razed to the ground by exorcists, though you lot preferred the term vampire hunter at the time. Wen Ning and I were to be burned for harboring a vampire, just because we let him stay the night in our barn because of the rain. He turned us instead, and took us away with him to his castle.

“That was a hundred and twenty-three years ago. In return, we helped him with his work. The work he did to try to change our kind, to save us. I used my medical knowledge to make sure all his odd potions were safe; Wen Ning was the test subject. And when the magics finally worked, he gave them to us as gifts. We don’t need blood to survive, my brother and I—the sun doesn’t hurt us either. He even gave us a spell to remove our immortality, if the time comes when we’re tired of living forever and want to seek out normal lives again.”

The air felt thick, too thick to breathe, and tasted like wool against Lan Wangji’s tongue.

“And that’s where the hypothetical you comes in, Lan Wangji,” Wen Qing finally looked up again, and her gaze was as cold as ever. “You, who could take care of Wei Wuxian. Feed him. Talk to him—or let him talk to you, at least. Be his friend, his lover, his whatever he needs you to be.”

Silence.

“What about his spells?” Lan Wangji asked haltingly.

“They don’t work on him.”

Lan Wangji blinked.

Wen Qing sneered at whatever odd expression he must have shown. “Pretty sick, right? He can do anything—heal the sick, sicken the healthy, make vampires as good as human—and none of it can be for him. And before you ask if we’ve tried anything , I promise you, we have. Wei Wuxian is our friend. We’d do whatever it takes to save him. We just can’t.”

Strangely enough, a corner of Lan Wangji’s heart twinged. Something about her expression—about the thought of Wei Wuxian constantly giving without ever receiving—caused him pain.

But even so…

“I am aware of the contract. I’m willing to follow every clause within the pact. But I…”

“Don’t see why the hell you should become a stinking vampire’s pet?” Wen Qing supplied.

Lan Wangji frowned, but she only laughed and stood up straight, crossed arms swaying with every lithe movement. “Okay, maybe not that. And I’m not heartless, you know. I’m not pretending like it isn’t cruel to ask you to give up your life for your family, and offer up your heart to the vampire who now owns your life along with it.”

She took a step, then another step, and prodded one finger fearlessly into Lan Wangji’s broad chest. When he tilted his chin to meet her eyes again, it was as though a subtle flame had been lit within—something not altogether unlike Wei Wuxian’s appearance the night before.

“But I’m still asking, aren’t I, exorcist? Which I think puts in perspective pretty clearly just how much Wei Wuxian means to me. My brother too. So, you can dispense yourself over to him fully, completely, or you can run right back to your lying little family. God knows if you try the third option—if you lay a hand on him—I’ll rip you and every exorcist from here to the coast apart.”

After saying her piece, Wen Qing pulled away primly, tucked any loose strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ears once more, and left Lan Wangji alone in the mid-morning light.

Lan Wangji wasn’t hungry, not anymore. Instead of pursuing a meal, he turned in the opposite direction of Wen Qing’s footsteps and hurried, hurried to find Wei Wuxian.

He couldn’t quite remember where the entrance to his quarters was located…no, wait. Yes, he did. This tapestry was familiar, worn and so very red, crafted from the reddest thread Lan Wangji had ever seen. He wondered if it was magic and ran a hand down one seam. The wool caught on his fingertips, but there was no singe of otherworldly forces against the stake-calloused flesh of his palm.

When he tilted his weight against the door behind it, he found it stood ajar, and took advantage. Lan Wangji swept the tapestry aside and ascended the staircase. His footsteps were quiet, but he knew—with his blood slickening and sharpening Wei Wuxian’s senses—they’d signal his arrival.

“Lan Zhan! You’re already up? It’s only been a few minutes since I left, hasn’t it?”

Lan Wangji’s throat felt tight at Wei Wuxian’s singsong tone, for some reason. All he managed was an “Mm,” in reply.

Then he retroactively realized what Wei Wuxian had said— “I mean, no. It’s nearly been half an hour,” he corrected himself.

Wei Wuxian laughed, then called from across space that separated them, “I’m smiling right now! You can’t see it in the mirror, but I am.” He was seated at a vanity, his hands caught in his own dreadfully wild and dark tresses. A red ribbon trailed from one set of fingers.

“Shall I help?” Lan Wangji offered before thinking better of it.

“Would you? I mean, only if you don’t mind! I can pretty much figure out where the top of my head is based by feel and the sight of the ribbon in the looking glass, but I’m not used to my hair being this thick. Comes with the drinking, I guess.” He shifted in his seat to glance over his shoulder at Lan Wangji, crooking the finger of his ribbon-holding hand. “Your arms aren’t quite long enough to reach me from over there, are they?”

Lan Wangji’s heart felt dark, dirty—but he closed the distance between them in three steps and took the ribbon. His fingers lingered on Wei Wuxian’s palm for a breath of a moment. Damned side effects.

Up close it was even more obvious just what an effect Lan Wangji’s blood had had on the Patriarch—the faintly sweet scent Lan Wangji had picked up on the night of their first meeting had grown stronger and sweeter still now, and his raven hair shone as it ran through Lan Wangji’s fingers like water, like dark gems.

Silence fell. It was unlike any silence Lan Wangji had encountered. At his home, his stiff ivory manor, silence was all he ever met, only stilted by hushed discussions over ornate marble tabletops that Lan Wangji had peered over as a child long before he could possibly comprehend what words like ‘vampire’ and ‘exorcist’ really meant. The quiet surrounding him and Wei Wuxian now—sunkissed, auburn—made him ponder the old quiet, and whether it had always seemed so unyielding in his memory.

Wei Wuxian lifted a hand just then to his scalp. “A braid? What on earth are you doing up there, Lan Zhan?” he queried, amusement lavished upon every word.

Lan Wangji realized what he was doing, and his hands stilled even as they trembled at the notion. “I apologize—I only know how to do this in accordance with the traditions of the Lan family.”

Wei Wuxian gasped. “ My hair? Like an exorcist’s? Oh, finish it, please! This will be a riot!”

Only, as Lan Wangji nodded cordially and returned to his task, he wondered if there wasn’t another reason altogether for the excitement in Wei Wuxian’s tone.

His pace was quick, fingers nimble—he could have tied Wei Wuxian’s hair into place in his sleep. When he was finished and stepped away, hands still itching from the caresses of thin strands, he raised an eyebrow.

“You won’t be able to see it,” he stated, a ridiculously late afterthought. Wei Wuxian only chuckled.

“That’s okay. I can just feel it with my hands. And besides, my memory isn’t so bad that I can’t remember how you looked when you first arrived here. It’s the same, isn’t it?” His hands trailed over his own scalp, the neat twists and swathes of hair falling over his temples shining even darker black against the warmth of his skin.

“That’s right,” Lan Wangji said haltingly. Then, as if in a rush, before his mind could get the better of him— “I would like us to form a mutually beneficial relationship, Wei Ying. I… I want this pact to work in favor for both my family and you. If we can become close, I think it would be for the best, do you not?”

Eyes wide, Wei Wuxian swiveled around. His glistening rosebud mouth had formed a little O that was desperately, dreadfully pleasing to the eye.

After a little pause, the O became an elongated sideways C, the smile lighting up his face from his chin to the tips of his narrow brows.

Lan Wangji nodded gently in response.

We’ll become close—close enough for me to end you, once and for all, just as I promised my home.

++ 

The days and the nights passed quickly, quicker than Lan Wangji would have expected. The castle was enormous and old and rotten, but from the moment he’d stepped into its borders he’d had the overwhelming sensation that it had nothing left to offer. That it had seen its finest years and its emptiest ones too—now it just stood, stolid and still, shrouded in memories. And despite that initial doubt, Wei Wuxian managed to pass every day (and night) entertaining Lan Wangji in some shape or form. He enjoyed larking about, as he himself proudly proclaimed, and going wherever his very first urges told him to.

“I know this place seems boring. As a matter of fact, it is boring! But all we can do is make it a little less so, right?” he asked Lan Wangji in a way that made it impossible for him to disagree, somehow.

So, they gardened and they went on long walks and Wei Wuxian handed Lan Wangji piles and piles of scrolls, tomes, books from all around the world, anything and everything he thought might interest him. He noticeably shied away from loaning him anything too heavily involved in dark magics, but it wasn’t entirely avoidable, so before long Lan Wangji found himself reading things he’d only ever seen the titles of on the lists of banned works in his textbooks from home.

He did read them. All of them. And he walked with Wei Wuxian, and he let him teach him how to garden, and he nodded. He hmmed. Sometimes he even replied to the Patriarch’s prattling with a few phrases or more.

Yes, Wei Wuxian was a vampire, innately evil, unforgivably so. But it wasn’t all that bad, passing the time by his side like this. He was immensely interesting. His stories of the world stretched wider than its limits, even beyond the vast blue sea that had always been Lan Wangji’s horizon. Anything and everything Lan Wangji wanted to know, Wei Wuxian could tell him about it—on the rare occasion he wasn’t sure, they traipsed upstairs to his quarters and found the answers together in one of the pieces of writing he had stashed away, often even in his own hand.

“You keep journals?” Lan Wangji had asked one afternoon, clutching an age-blackened leatherbound notebook in one hand. The laces that bound it trailed over his knuckles and he turned page after page as he skimmed their hastily scrawled contents.

Wei Wuxian had blushed palely. “Well, I’m pretty old, you know. And I…all I have are memories, in the end. It’s nice to keep them somewhere I know will always be concrete, away from all the other thoughts I have buzzing around up here constantly.” He’d rapped one side of his head bashfully. “It’s really boring, I wouldn’t—”

“I don’t find it boring,” Lan Wangji had replied simply. That had earned him another blush.

He’d quickly found it was remarkably easy to make Wei Wuxian do that. Even at his palest, if Lan Wangji said just the right thing at just the right time, he could always conjure a pink flush that kissed the outer corners of Wei Wuxian’s eyes before trickling downwards and spreading out across the plush swells of his cheeks…

Lan Wangji’s family had yet to respond to his letters, though he handed off one nearly every day for Wen Ning to post. He’d suspected that Wei Wuxian was perhaps going behind his back and halting their passage towards home, but dismissed the idea nearly the moment it arrived in his head. Continued and unrestricted communication between Lan Wangji and the other exorcists was an established clause in the original contract, and besides. It only became more obvious with every passing hour at his side that Wei Wuxian was simply naturally incapable of behaving so underhandedly.

It didn’t mean that he wasn’t wicked or dangerous. Nothing had changed in their time spent together—not Lan Wangji’s original goal, nor his commitment to it. But there were facts to be considered here. One of these was that Wei Wuxian was—or perhaps had been, as a human—a genuinely noble, intelligent, and lively person. Lan Wangji had seen the silken lies vampires wore with pride, their promises of good nature through seduction or flirtation. He understood the difference between truths and falsehoods.

Wei Wuxian was not a falsehood, for better or worse.

Perhaps it was the side effects fogging up Lan Wangji’s mind, encroaching upon every sensibility he had in him until it felt the teachings of his family would be lost on him forever. It was getting harder and harder to distinguish between his own thoughts and the ones placed in his mind—instincts more than thoughts, now—by Wei Wuxian’s teeth and saliva and sweat. It seemed Wei Wuxian didn’t need to feed consistently for the side effects to layer and grow in strength. He had yet to request a meal from Lan Wangji again, and yet Lan Wangji could feel his nerves burn brighter every time their hands brushed, feel his stomach lurch when Wei Wuxian called his name.

He didn’t offer his neck, not again. He waited for Wei Wuxian to crave it, to desire it—to lose his mind with hunger. But he never did. Lan Wangji wasn’t simple; he heard the subtle gasps emitted whenever Wei Wuxian got close enough to smell the blood running through his veins. He knew Wei Wuxian’s want, and still, the subject was never broached by Wei Wuxian first.

“You can ask,” he told him one night, as Wei Wuxian bid him goodnight in the hall. Lan Wangji had stood with one hand planted on the frame of his door, head tilted over his shoulder just enough to catch Wei Wuxian’s fleeting expression of surprise. “I told you it’s my job.”

“Ahhh,” Wei Wuxian had mumbled, eyes bright, cheeks flushed. “It’s fine, Lan Zhan. I will ask! When I need to—er, when I want to. Don’t mind me. Just get some sleep.”

But how could he? Lan Wangji had begun to toss and turn as weeks flitted past like butterflies. How could he sleep with these eons of distance between himself and Wei Wuxian, while his family waited for him to save them, to save all?

How could he, as his body spun on its axis and raged and raged at the empty space that enveloped him, turning against his own mind to desire the closeness of the vampire’s embrace?

It was easy to write off these feelings as side effects in the blinding light of day—but the night was cold and long, and Lan Wangji’s thoughts were like tumbleweed through the desert of his mind, ragged and forbidding.

Lan Wangji knocked hesitantly on the arched frame of Wei Wuxian’s quarters once, then twice. His silvery fingertips weren’t shaking, but they might as well have been. He balled his hands into fists.

“Lan Zhan?” there was the sound of a scuffle, and then Wei Wuxian’s all-too-familiar sunny disposition was peering over the edge of his loft, hands grappling the banister to display his delicate reddened nails against fingers whitened by pressure. “What are you doing up at this hour? Dawn won’t be for another hour, at least. Couldn’t you sleep?”

Lan Wangji’s stomach jerked at his concern—just then, another made themselves known.

Wen Ning. Next to Wei Wuxian in the loft, lonely expression shifting out of the darkness like the waning moon.

In the loft? In the bed?

Ugliness seeped through Lan Wangji’s field of vision like rain trickling down a glass windowpane.

“I couldn’t sleep. However, if you are busy…” he turned to go, feeling like a fool at the persuasion of both halves of his brain—the half that reminded him that he was an exorcist, a murderer of creatures like this Patriarch, and the other half, the unspeakable one. The half that reeled in equal parts blurry dismay and fury at the thought of someone else so close to this Wei Ying he had been bound to.

He had been bound to. No one else. Not supposed to be.

“I’m not busy! Not in the slightest! Wen Ning was just leaving, anyhow—come up, won’t you, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian interrupted the sentence Lan Wangji hadn’t even realized he never got around to finishing and beckoned twice. Once for Wen Ning to vanish, and the other, for Lan Wangji to come.

And despite the ugliness, Lan Wangji came.

Wen Ning did vanish, slinking one final sullen stare in Lan Wangji’s direction—or was it simply observant? Lan Wangji couldn’t read him, try as he might—and left the exorcist and vampire pair alone.

“I don’t believe either of your friends have taken to me,” Lan Wangji said as he awkwardly pulled his form up the slight stepladder leading to Wei Wuxian’s sleeping loft. It wasn’t that he wasn’t graceful, or that the rippling muscle honed tight to his frame disabled him in any way, ever—but the space was small, made for someone quicker and leaner. He was out of place.

He thought it suited his mood. It felt as though his soul was displaced from his physical form by half a step to the left, and if he looked down at his hands, he would see two familiar pairs spread before him—one sheer, one solid and hard—instead of the usual singular.

Wei Wuxian let out a burbling laugh. “No, I don’t believe they have either,” he admitted sheepishly. “But I didn’t exactly expect either of them to get along with you right away, or vice versa. They’re very protective of me, and you’re, well, you know…” a feeble flailing of the wrists supplemented any further words on the matter.

“I’m an exorcist,” Lan Wangji pushed, simply and clearly, if only because he didn’t know why Wei Wuxian sometimes acted as though calling him as such was an insult.

He flinched. “Yes, yes, I know, but that’s not exactly something you want to go about flaunting, is it? Not in a house full of vampires. How can they ever trust you if you still cling to your past?”

Lan Wangji curled his lip without thinking, “I don’t cling. They’re my family.”

“Ah, no, I know! I know why you do it, I don’t expect any different from you. I only mean, that’s what they think—that you’re clinging. And they want you to be like us, not the vampire part, but the…resignment to your fate part, perhaps. I didn’t mean for that to sound the way it did, Lan Zhan, honest.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes were wide, the sultry almond lines reduced to frail circles that watched Lan Wangji’s every move. Lan Wangji resisted the urge to trace his thumb around the watchful circle closest to his reach.

Without thinking, as they spoke, Lan Wangji had sat beside Wei Wuxian on the small velvety couch that stood up against the only section of wall in the loft that wasn’t stacked high with shelves or blocked by the unmade bed. Now they were close, impossibly close—and too far all at once. Inches felt like miles marked by worn silver buttons dotting the purple cushions beneath them.

“I know you don’t share their sentiments, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said softly, letting his gaze fall from Wei Wuxian’s face and down, down the expanse of his taut form till his line of sight reached the floor and stayed there.

A beat, then, “You’re too kind, Lan Zhan,” came the utterance from those pert rosebud lips.

Kind?

Something like fire licked the inner walls of Lan Wangji’s chest. It started at the base of his spine but quickly coiled and sprung upwards, spreading from his lungs to his sternum and coagulating at the center of his heart like melting, dripping iron.

“You think I am kind?”

It seemed to reflect in his tone. Wei Wuxian’s observance became alert—wary.

Is it kindness that I show you? Kindness that I feel? Kindness that your venom has poured into the capsule of my soul and forced upon me, for me to shower you with despite the very worst of intentions I hold?

He didn’t know what he was feeling—jealousy, frustration, confusion, they whirled up from the desert splayed out within the platitude of his mind, collecting every tumbleweed until not a thought was left beyond, Take him.

When Lan Wangji lunged to his right, Wei Wuxian seemed to be prepared, for he outstretched both arms and caught Lan Wangji around the throat. His grip was not harsh, but firm nevertheless, and he glared at Lan Wangji’s apparent discontent with nothing but worry in those soft eyes. Eyes that had become maroon after half a dozen fortnights without blood.

“Lan Zhan? Lan Zhan, what’s gotten into you?” he asked, urgent and low.

Lan Wangji shook his head. He could feel his pulse beating rapidly against Wei Wuxian’s palms as the twist of his neck pushed their point of contact even closer, and it cleared his mind, if only for a moment—a moment was enough.

“Your venom…” he managed, gripping the back of the couch with one white-knuckled fist. “It’s doing something to me. Changing something in me.”

Something flickered in Wei Wuxian’s expression, something small and light. Lan Wangji couldn’t place it, exactly, but bewilderment seemed an apt enough description.

“My venom? My venom?” Wei Wuxian asked.

Lan Wangji stared. The fire was cooling off already, shameful emotions sealing themselves beneath the surface once more, but Wei Wuxian’s hands were pliant and cool. He couldn’t bring himself to tear away from their hold. Just for a little longer, he told himself, to soothe this heat.

“I’ll fix it, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian cooed suddenly. His lips were glossy and trembling, voice reedy with sudden nerves. “I can fix it, so…”

Lan Wangji didn’t know how he knew what Wei Wuxian meant—perhaps it was just because he’d become so attuned to the question he knew would never come that, when it eventually did come, he didn’t need to hear it aloud to understand.

“So fix it,” Lan Wangji said. Now he could hear his pulse in his own ears, ever louder as Wei Wuxian’s touch slid from his throat and up to twine within the strands of his hair for a better purchase to tug down Lan Wangji’s throat into the gently widening lips.

The hours of the early morning were long and heady. When Lan Wangji awoke—at dusk the next day—he could hardly remember the goings-on in his mind. But his body maintained every sensation, every lick and bite and kiss that Wei Wuxian had pressed upon him as they’d stumbled from the couch and into the bed, writhing upon its surface as one until neither could stand to embrace consciousness any longer.

Indeed, the venom’s side effects seemed to have lessened, somehow. When Lan Wangji glanced down and saw Wei Wuxian’s freshly plump and rejuvenated form occupying the pillow next to him, the now-familiar frustrated warmth reared its head as usual, but it was sleepy now, somehow. Satisfied, perhaps. As counterintuitive as it seemed to Lan Wangji for the treatment for his ailment being the very thing that caused it was, the relief that filled him at the fact that it worked at all surpassed his queries for the time being.

Only…

Lan Wangji continued to stare. Hesitantly, with the wispiest of movements, he pulled the thin bedsheet away from Wei Wuxian’s form to reveal the aftermath he himself had left on the vampire in much a similar fashion as the vampire had left upon him.

His kind healed much more quickly, naturally, but it had been less than a day. The sweet patches of red left by Lan Wangji’s own breathless, desperate mouth still bloomed across the expanse of Wei Wuxian’s throat and shoulders and down the front of his chest—Lan Wangji only just now noticed he’d ripped Wei Wuxian’s red silk shirt to expose more skin and fought the blush that threatened to surge across the tops of his ears. Marks left by rigidly symmetrical teeth and even shallow lavender bruises dotted the faintly amber flesh as well.

He couldn’t help but be embarrassed beyond belief.

It was just then that Wei Wuxian awoke, however, and whatever mortification Lan Wangji had previously been enduring increased by tenfold the moment he happened to glance upwards and encounter those violet eyes watching him, watch him.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, twisting his neck till it hurt to escape Wei Wuxian’s bleary, dripping gaze. “That was very rude of me.”

Wei Wuxian resisted the urge to caress those hot red ears and only giggled.

“I didn’t find it rude. I liked it,” he murmured. “I like the way you watch me, Lan Zhan—your eyes are expressive enough that I don’t need you to say anything at all. Keep doing it, won’t you?”

His tone dipped in his own embarrassment by the end of the question. Lan Wangji didn’t have to look back to know that he was blushing now too. He did anyway.

After a heated pause in which the pair of them attempted desperately to rein in their shyness, Wei Wuxian asked haltingly, “Do you feel better?”

“Mm.”

“I’m glad. I hoped that would help,” came the reply, softly, fragmented by some pensive emotion Lan Wangji couldn’t place.

Instead of pondering it, he pulled down the sheets draped across his legs and sat up properly, running his hands down the many now-haphazardly undone buttons of his shirt. Feeling Wei Wuxian continue to eye the contours of his back below the silken fabric, Lan Wangji proceeded to check that the ribbon that held his hair in its proper place was still on his head—

“Where’s my hair ribbon?” Lan Wangji hissed. The sudden panic spreading through him sent jolts of adrenaline to his fingertips—he resisted the urge to shout, instead standing a little too quickly and turning back to examine the surface he’d just left. The bouts of dizziness sent his vision swimming into pixelated tendrils for a moment and he put a hand to his head.

“Your hair ribbon…ah, here! Under your pillow.”

And there it was, twined between Wei Wuxian’s fingertips, pale blue cloud pattern against honeyed flesh.

The sight of a damp-eyed, loose-limbed Wei Ying, half his chest bared underneath torn red silk, with Lan Wangji’s own ribbon touching his skin sent enough of a jolt through Lan Wangji that he forgot all his panic and his fear. All he could do, all of a sudden, was stare.

“Lan Zhan? Your hair ribbon, it’s here. You need it, right?” Wei Wuxian spoke again. Lan Wangji blinked, and with a fervent nod, he snatched his possession away from Wei Wuxian, shattering the spellbinding image despite the calls in the back of his mind telling him to keep it, treasure it—cherish it.

“Thank you,” he managed. “It’s a sacred item in my family. I only have this one.”

“Really? What’s so sacred about it? Ah, excuse me—I should probably get up too,” Wei Wuxian said rather mournfully. He unceremoniously clambered across the bed and slid past Lan Wangji into the wider space of the loft—whether he purposefully let his and Lan Wangji’s chests and thighs touch as he moved, Lan Wangji didn’t know.

“It’s a symbol of our restraint,” Lan Wangji offered after a moment of thought. He had a feeling he shouldn’t tell Wei Wuxian the precise intricacies of the ribbon’s meaning, lest it lead to another bout of shamefaced flushing and stammering on both their parts. Luckily, Wei Wuxian didn’t push the issue, only letting out a knowing sound while he situated himself at his desk.

“Lan Zhan, you should get something to eat, okay?” he urged, thumbing through the first stack of scrolls he laid eyes on. “I know it’s a little late, but you’ll end up sick or malnourished if you don’t take care of yourself, especially when—ah, if, I mean, if I drink from you.”

His words were abrupt—caring, but abrupt. Lan Wangji couldn’t help but feel as though he were being verbally escorted out of Wei Wuxian’s quarters. He rather hated the feeling.

“I see. I’ve troubled you. I’ll see myself out,” he replied, suddenly frigid though he did his best to swallow the feeling of the side effects.

He made his way down the ladder, out into the main space, and to the exiting door, when he heard Wei Wuxian call out once more.

“And when you’re done with your meal, come and see me, all right? I have a few documents I think you might enjoy!”

They were warm, those words he dallied out without a care. He was warmth.

Ears and temples on fire, Lan Wangji offered a jerky nod in response before fleeing the Patriarch’s domain.

Every part of him felt like it was breathing, pounding, pulsating with Wei Wuxian. For the first time since Lan Wangji had allowed himself to be drunk from, he could feel just how deeply immersed he and his trustworthy conscious had become in the side effects—he felt as though he were in a vast pool, and these feelings he’d thought would always be unknowable to him were reaching from its depths with blooming black tendrils, twining around his limbs and pulling him deeper still.

He couldn’t tell what belonged to him and what belonged to the desires, this morning, and he couldn’t even find it in himself to care.

“Master Lan Wangji?” uttered the shadows to Lan Wangji’s left as he turned a corner. He didn’t startle—Lans had cultured that instinct out of themselves long ago—but he looked towards the sound sharper than he might have if he weren’t so very caught up in his thoughts all the same.

“Wen Ning,” he breathed, and nodded politely in the direction of the lanky vampire’s silhouette. “Good evening.”

He’d never wished a vampire a good evening before. The experience nearly made him giddy—with absurdity, with deliriousness, he didn’t know.

“…Good evening to you as well,” came a hesitant reply. Wen Ning’s face expressed every thought that passed through his mind without having to move an inch—or perhaps Lan Wangji was just good at reading people as stoic as he was. As Wen Ning moved forward to allow the fading sunlight to capture his pallid face, he seemed as about as surprised at Lan Wangji’s unprovoked manners as Lan Wangji was.

“Sir, there’s a letter here for you. From your family,” Wen Ning continued. He offered his right hand as he spoke.

It was like a pane of glass hitting the ground, miraculously, without even breaking—the sudden burst of adrenaline, spiking up and down through Lan Wangji’s nerves and leaving him breathless at the realization of a disaster narrowly escaped, felt just the same.

Wen Ning raised his hand higher, as though perhaps Lan Wangji hadn’t seen the letter in his grasp. “Sir?”

“Yes,” came the stiff reply—stiffer and colder than ever before. “Yes. Thank you.”

Each word felt like a scalpel against Wen Ning’s skin, and he retreated back into his shadows as quickly as he could. He didn’t miss how Lan Wangji avoided touching his fingers, simply holding out his palm face-up until Wen Ning dropped the letter into his embrace.

Wangji,

Until now there have been no known side effects from vampire venom, beyond the temporary numbing of pain while the victim is being fed upon. We’ll arrive in a fortnight with reinforcements. Stay well.

Lan Wangji didn’t need a signature to recognize his own brother’s script, rushed as it was—no one else besides his brother and his uncle referred to him by his first name, anyway.

They were coming, then. The first reply to his letters was a rebuttal of the duty bequeathed to him and him alone. A rejection. A change of mind.

No, no . That isn’t what’s wrong .

He couldn’t bear it. His flesh grew numb, the sparks of adrenaline dying out one by one at his fingertips first, then spreading across the expanse of his body until all that was left was a sole flame burning deep and hot in the very center of his chest. So hot.

Not side effects. Not side effects at all.

For only the second time in Lan Wangji’s life—the second time since his mother had died—he desperately ached to run as far and as fast as he could, away from the walls surrounding him, away from the pounding footsteps of the family he could already practically see on the horizon, and away from the terrible, wonderful, terrible vampire who seemed to have claimed his heart and body and soul.

 +++

The sweet—bitterly sweet—mornings and evenings they’d spent by one another’s sides were no more. Lan Wangji couldn’t bear to even think of doing such a thing any longer, now that he knew, that he understood.

Ah, how blind he’d been. To even wonder if his feelings had been anything but just what they were and would forever be.

He was branded into Lan Wangji’s flesh, burned into him with searing certainty. He couldn’t trace back to the beginning of it all. He couldn’t even begin to fathom why. All he’d ever known in his life were the teachings of his family, his cherished ancestors, and the way of righteous exorcism. To deal with evil, to destroy it. That was his purpose. That was all he’d ever wanted to do—all he’d ever known how to want to do.

But perhaps Lan Wangji had never really known desire until he encountered the Patriarch, after all.

Could it have been that first night? From the very moment Wei Wuxian took his sleeve and ran him here and there, his speech so overly bright, so arrogant, fringed with feathers of a life lived freely. Or the first time he called him “Lan Zhan!”, impertinent beyond belief.

Or could it have been the time Lan Wangji gripped his waist between his own two hands and felt every inch of the both of them melt as he did?

Flowers in the garden, laughter sparkling in a pair of red or velvet lavender eyes, evenings spent reading at one another’s sides.

Like a fragile paper pinwheel, Lan Wangji couldn’t help his mind from spinning on and on. He was the minute rod, lonely as anything, and the memories served as delicate, colorful paper, creased and stuck to him with glue. His conscience was the wind that kept the whole thing reeling round on repeat.

Time passed hour after hour, day after day, night after night—in succession, just as it always had. But Lan Wangji’s mind ran amok. He didn’t respond to anyone’s knocks, of which there were many. Harsh taps in threes came from Wen Qing, reticent rattles from Wen Ning.

Wei Wuxian knocked like he spoke and moved, all over the place, burbling like a stream too big for the path it had carved out for itself in the ground. He called Lan Wangji’s name, left him magical tomes, invited him out for a walk around the gardens, but Lan Wangji couldn’t offer him a thing in return.

Loving a vampire was one mortal sin enough—but to know that his own family would be coming to slay that very vampire in a matter of weeks, and go against them to protect him, too. That would be genuine blasphemy.

He couldn’t warn Wei Wuxian. He couldn’t do anything but wait. It was a defilement of an affection marked with tragedy before it had even begun.

That is, unless Lan Wangji was willing to fulfill the task he’d been given to the utmost and kill Wei Wuxian as was right. As was proper.

Only he wasn’t willing. Time and time again he thrust open his suitcase, observed the selection of stakes and silver and holy relics with a glinting yellow eye—only to shove the array before him under his bed once again with a disgust he couldn’t even hide from himself.

He knew he would have to fight when the time came. He told himself so again and again, trying to drain the time he’d spent in this castle out of his mind until nothing was left but the righteous and proper goal. When his family came for him, then he would break out of these oppressive chambers and join them at his brother’s side, stake in hand, to lay slaughter upon this devil’s palace and be done with it once and for all.

But, if only till then, all he could bear to do was cherish those syrupy, salty memories between his teeth.

“Lan Zhan!”

Lan Wangji awoke like a seaside storm had burst upon him, equal waves of bewilderment, anticipation, and trepidation setting themselves upon his heart the moment he came to. He didn’t dare open his eyes for a moment, knowing—praying—it could only be a remnant of his unspeakable dreams.

“Lan Zhan? You’re awake, aren’t you?”

He was indeed. He didn’t move, however, let alone make nary a sound. That Lan Zhan lay as still as could be, and prayed Wei Wuxian wouldn’t notice his discomfort, the way he could barely restrain his arms from outstretching and wrenching him into his embrace.

“Lan Zhan, I know you’re awake, silly,” there was nothing but light and laughter in Wei Wuxian’s voice. Lan Wangji felt sweet addiction to the sound soaking his veins with every word.

“Can you…will you tell me what’s wrong? If I ask nicely, you know? I mean, of course, I know something has to be wrong, or else you wouldn’t have been avoiding me and Wen Ning and Wen Qing and all these past. Week. This past week.”

If only I could, in a way that wouldn’t make either of us loathe and despise me entirely, Lan Wangji thought, wanly, allowing himself half a moment of self-pity.

Wei Wuxian continued to fill the heady silence, just as he always did. “I’m not blind. I know this started after…you know. When we did this and that together,” he cleared his throat, daintily, hastily, “and then I told you to come back to my room when you had finished getting something to eat, and I don’t know, maybe you felt pressured, or thought I was trying to invoke the contract or something, but I didn’t mean anything like that, honest, I just—I thought, how well we were getting along in so many ways, and maybe, maybe, you were starting to understand a little about why I do the things I do for you, beyond just wanting to keep a silly peace agreement and—”

Just once. Just once, and then I’ll go. I think he’ll let me, just this once.

Lan Wangji had never kissed anyone before. Not even in that hot and heavy early morning he and Wei Wuxian had shared did he dare allow their lips to meet, for fear of reasons he couldn’t name at the time and now understood all too well. He knew it was clumsy, knew it was rash—and above all, he no longer had excuses for it. This wasn’t an action induced in the thrall of a side effect from vampire venom. This was just what he wanted.

He bit Wei Ying’s lips selfishly, coveting his tongue and teeth and the way they harshly responded to his every gesture. Wei Wuxian didn’t seem to mind the roughness—he responded to it without a second thought, almost as though he’d been expecting it, not startled at all by Lan Wangji’s form tossing aside the bedclothes and looming over the vampire who’d occupied his bed without so much as a please. He hissed through the pain of the sudden embrace, cupping that severe, silvery jaw in his fingers, and guiding until their mouths were fitting together properly, sending shudders through the pair of them till knees and elbows weakened.

It felt better than anything they’d done before, and seared Lan Wangji’s heart like a cattle brand.

Lan Wangji broke the kiss first, pushing Wei Wuxian flat on the bed and away from his seeking lips. He sat up on the other side of the bed, one leg curled underneath him, and gripped the lower half of his face with a trembling palm. He squeezed, tightly—trying to remember what grace and hostility felt like, why they mattered more than the man glinting so invitingly just inches away from him.

Wei Wuxian wouldn’t let him go so easily, of course. After he caught his breath he slid onto his knees and made his serpentine way across the gap between them. He wore nothing more than a scarlet robe and, in Lan Wangji’s embrace, had allowed one shoulder to slip oh-so-sweetly from the proper hold of his garb. He still had enough blood in him for his tanned skin to reflect the moonlight as though it were sun, hazy and amber.

“Lan Zhan, why…why stop?” he murmured, and—despite the shy shivers corroding the carnal implications of his words—reached for Lan Wangji, draping his arms over his shoulders like a cape of red and gold. He hesitated, then pressed a cool kiss to the nape of Lan Wangji’s frigid neck.

Caught up, desperately so, Lan Wangji grasped one of the forearms he could reach and pulled Wei Wuxian over his legs, taking his mouth again and again, till Wei Wuxian was allowing painfully delicate moans to escape from between his lips; but how could he go any further than this, still?

No matter how much he desired, the faces of his brother and his uncle and every human he’d ever met hovered in the darkness just beyond Lan Wangji’s line of sight, beckoning him, begging him. “Kill the Patriarch, Wangji! Do your duty, for all our sakes!”

He could only push Wei Wuxian away from him again, and this time he stood, not pausing for even a moment before leaning over to haul his suitcase out from underneath his bed.

“Ah? Lan Zhan, what…”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes, hazed with desire, cleared the moment he realized Lan Wangji was beginning to pack.

“What? What are you doing? Lan Zhan, why are you packing?”

He couldn’t give him anything, not even an answer.

“Lan Zhan, I’m…I’m so sorry, I pushed you again, I’m sorry, but please, please, for the love of your own Gods, don’t just go like this! Please, let me—I’ll, I’ll do anything, just let me make amends!”

How few things he’d brought, after all. Lan Wangji was grateful for it. He’d never wanted to hear Wei Wuxian’s voice quaking as it was now.

“You don’t even have to say anything—I’ll know, if you just let me look at you! Just let me look at you and see if I can fix this, please, if you’ll let me fix it! But don’t just leave, don’t just, just leave me here like this!”

“There’s a letter on my desk. You’ll understand when you read it, perhaps.” Lan Wangji didn’t know who was speaking. He thought it must have been him, though he couldn’t recall a time when his voice had ever sounded quite so thin or so weak. And his own mind was so far from here—how could he speak such words?

“A…letter? Lan Zhan, I don’t want to read a letter, I want you too—Lan Zhan!”

His childhood nickname trailed after him as he thump, thump, thumped his way down the halls, as he descended the staircase, and finally through the doors of the Patriarch’s castle—reverberating back and forth through his body and coagulating at the very center of his carved out chest.

By foot was how exorcists had gotten around since time immemorial. As it was so, it didn’t take long for Lan Wangji to escape the limits of Yiling and, eventually, encounter the small squadron of capable Lan sect exorcists making their way to his rescue. Lan Xichen was at their helm, naturally, and he greeted his brother with the tenderest of smiles—edged in the kind of concern that only reared its head when the probability of a family member being injured past the point of return was far too high for comfort.

It was no wonder, considering Lan Wangji’s appearance. He hadn’t given a thought to how he was dressed as he’d fled the Patriarch’s castle, so he still wore thin gray pajamas under his traditional sweeping white cloak. His hair cascaded freely down the frame of his icy silhouette—he only realized when he caught sight of his brother’s hair ribbon proudly displayed as usual that he’d forgotten or lost his in the escape.

That was what they’d taken to calling it: an escape, of ‘miraculous proportion and ability.’ Sumptuous rumors about Lan Wangji’s time as a peacekeeper had made their way around the squadron by the morning after he woke up despite Lan family rules about disavowing gossip of any kind. The rumors made Lan Wangji out as a hero, a victor, who triumphed over the Patriarch in a head-on battle and just barely managed to take back his freedom without a moment to spare.

The fact that, if this really were the case, Lan Wangji had all but failed his mission seemed of little consequence. Such was the might of the great and fearsome Patriarch was all.

“You should eat, Wangji,” chided Lan Xichen gently. They’d settled down in a nearby copse of trees yet to be mangled by the dark magics seeping into the land from Yiling and the castle. Lan Xichen had insisted on a day or two of rest before they made their move on the Patriarch, now that Lan Wangji was safely back in their midst, and his subordinates had been all too happy to comply.

Lan Wangji didn’t want to eat. The porridge provided for him, light and sweet as he knew it was from days upon days of consuming it when sick or injured, felt grotesque against his tongue. Whenever he made to take another bite his mind conjured memories of the warm, coarse food he’d been forced to settle for by Wen Qing—the food that hadn’t really been all that bad, come to think of it, when it was accompanied by the sounds of Wei Wuxian’s teasing laughter.

He didn’t want to eat.

“I’m all right, brother,” Lan Wangji said softly, tearing himself out of his memories, heart convulsing as he did. “Just tired.”

Lan Xichen was no fool. He said as much, then continued, “I’ve seen you at your worst, you know. The way you look now surpasses those times by tenfold. What happened, Wangji?”

“Nothing. Nothing happened,” rushed the words unbidden. Lan Wangji paused, only speaking again when he’d caught hold of some semblance of composure once again. “I stayed with the Patriarch. I couldn’t kill him, he…he was too powerful. I left.”

Lan Wangji had never lied before. It tasted like salt, putrid and harsh, and he could see his distaste reflected back at him in his brother’s light, oh-so-concerned gaze.

He took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I asked about side effects. You told me there are none. But there were for me, brother. There still are. Not side effects from venom, or poison, or anything else. Just from Wei Ying.”

The second journey there was defter than Lan Wangji’s first. It almost amused him just how much so it was—how the curve of each tree branch forced him to recall a memory, a glance, a barren touch, each curdling in the pit of his stomach till they were sourly tinted.

Lan Xichen had always been more expressive than Lan Wangji. The confusion and, dare Lan Wangji say, disillusionment was clear on his face for days after Lan Wangji’s confession. Indeed, who could have thought that Lan Wangji, of all exorcists, would be the one to fall for a vampire’s succulent charms, let alone the charms of the very vampire he and he alone had been entrusted to do away with?

Nevertheless, he didn’t curse Lan Wangji, as their uncle would have, nor did he send him straight home, as Lan Wangji thought he might have.

“It will be good, I think, if you remain on this voyage with us. Perhaps you will be able to correct these notions at the most critical moment,” Lan Xichen supplied vaguely when Lan Wangji asked why he was still traveling with them. It was a harsh reply, but Lan Wangji wondered himself if it might be true.

If he could only find himself again when the time called for it. Make the right choice, as it were—would he rest easy then?

The spires of Yiling greeted them on the horizon on the second day of walking. They conjured a lump in Lan Wangji’s throat and a stone in the pit of his stomach.

Lan Xichen ordered seven exorcists to care for the villagers. The remaining thirteen, along with Lan Wangji, would stay at his side and confront the Patriarch.

As they strode up the hill—that scablike hill—Lan Wangji’s mind was ablaze. He wanted to turn back, to run, and also to hurry forward and get it all over with once and for all. And a third dimension of his mind was eager, almost, to witness Wei Wuxian in all his glory again.

But then again, Wei Wuxian had read the letter Lan Xichen had sent. He knew of Lan Wangji’s distrust and of his family’s plans. What glory could greet Lan Wangji then? What shameless grin, what hand to grip his sleeve and drag him up and down till he couldn’t tell which was which?

Lan Wangji was surely hated, now—by himself and by Wei Ying.

The castle arched above their heads as they crested the hilltop and surveyed the land below. The valley seemed gloomier than ever, despite the hot orange sun descending into its depths. Lan Wangji suddenly recalled what the suspicious villager had called this place when he’d asked for directions back then; the sun’s cup and saucer. He thought he knew why it had been affectionately dubbed as such, now.

“Arm yourselves, exorcists,” Lan Xichen called to the sky, and resounding from behind his broad shoulders came the rustling of white capes as his fellows reached into their cases and pockets and did just that.

“Wangji, stay close to me, do you understand? Take this.”

Into Lan Wangji’s outstretched palm he placed an exorcist’s cross. Its familiar shape grated the curves of Lan Wangji’s flesh, sharp enough to slice the skin if he wished it so, the edges smooth silver but the center points encrusted with diamonds and pearls.

An exorcist’s cross.

Wei Wuxian had given Lan Wangji an exorcist’s cross, once upon a time—to guard him from himself. To protect a mere stranger, a false promise of peace. A gesture of goodwill he hadn’t even asked for, but accepted with everything he had in him nevertheless, if only to show his own sincerity and the truth of his heart.

If Lan Wangji’s pain and lust intermingled in fiery depths, the sudden clarity that overwhelmed him then was like a cool winter breeze.

In a moment, his mind was clear again, clearer than it ever had been, he thought. It was extraordinary—more than extraordinary. It was something akin to a blessing from above.

He took off running without a glance behind him, not even stopping to tap his brother on the shoulder in farewell. Lan Xichen’s shouts and the calls of his comrades fell on ears that no longer had the will to hear. There was no time for them, right now. Only just enough for Wei Wuxian.

He reached the doors in what felt like hours but was most certainly less than a few minutes; he flung them both open with his own two hands, not even pausing to knock that hideous knocker.

Breathing heavy, he saw him there at the foot of the stairs. Despite everything, it was like the full moon gracing the world with her presence once again.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian breathed. He was curled at the lowermost step, draped in miles of black silk, and looked as weak as the day Lan Wangji had met him—weaker. He made to get up as soon as their eyes met, but only succeeded in shifting his weight onto his knees before dizziness seemed to overcome him and he slouched to one side again.

Lan Wangji crossed the cavernous foyer in five steps and was at his side, gently guiding Wei Wuxian’s temple onto one shoulder.

“Wei Ying, you…” he couldn’t finish. Where even could he begin? Wei Wuxian’s skin was clammy but his palms were hot and blackened, cracked as though they were charcoal. Lan Wangji felt for a pulse or a fever, but realized too late that of course such symptoms of illness wouldn’t exist in a vampire. Foolish.

“Lan Zhan, you’re…so very cruel,” Wei Wuxian gasped. His voice was reedy with pain, and whether it was physical or instigated by Lan Wangji’s arrival, Lan Wangji couldn’t tell. Not a trace of malice accompanied his words, however, despite their inherent coarseness.

“I’m sorry,” Lan Wangji uttered. He’d never apologized like this—in humble humiliation—in his life. He wished he’d had more practice. “I’m sorry, Wei Ying. I’m sorry.”

“I should have known. I should have known, shouldn’t I? That none of you could really see beyond what I am and the things I did so long ago. I was so…so very silly, to think anything could be different now.”

The severity of Lan Wangji’s betrayal grasped him for a moment. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, so guttural was the agony in his chest. He found himself gripping Wei Wuxian tighter, pulling his cheek into the crook of his neck and curling a hand around the base of his skull, the other arm circling his shoulders.

“I’ll keep you safe. I’ll send them away, A-Ying, I swear. Just hold on.” Lan Wangji murmured into that thick, dark hair, smattering desperate kisses between every word. It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t be enough for Wei Wuxian, couldn’t say enough—couldn’t convince him of his own convictions.

“You should just…get lost, Lan Zhan. Just go. It’d be better for everyone if I became what they want me to be, and they got rid of me once and for all.”

It hurt. It hurt terribly. But Lan Wangji didn’t let go. Instead, he let Wei Wuxian’s mumblings fall into background noise, focusing all his energy on reading just what was doing this to Wei Wuxian’s body.

Dark magic, of course. Something ancient and decrepit, unstable at best but certain to destroy Wei Wuxian along with whoever else got in its way. It didn’t want to be inside of Wei Wuxian—it was sapping at his heart and soul in a desperate attempt to kill him and seek its freedom. He had chosen to become the only barrier between this thing and god knows how much of the rest of the world it would seek to obliterate.

But its instability could only be beneficial for an exorcist. In the wake of holy powers, it would most certainly fall short. But such holy powers couldn’t be applied anywhere near Wei Wuxian, lest they harm him along with the powers he’d ingested. So now, it was just a matter of successfully stealing the dark energy from Wei Wuxian’s body and placing it somewhere with enough light energy to suppress it and, eventually, conquer it entirely.

If Lan Wangji had been the man he was eight weeks ago, he would have exorcised the vampire containing the energy right along with the energy itself without a second thought.

“Wei Ying,” he murmured into Wei Wuxian’s ear, tremulously, tenderly, “where are the Wens? Can they be sent away?”

Wei Wuxian let out a grating cackle. “I already did, stupid—I sent them away long ago, soon as I read your letter, with their medicine and supplies and everything they’ll ever need to be happy. I took care of them as I always have. What, did you really think I’d forget all about them just because you lied, because you betrayed me? Though I suppose it doesn’t even really count as a betrayal, since we never made promises of any sort with one another beyond that ridiculous fucking contract.”

They can’t have gone far, though, Lan Wangji decided. They clearly cared too much for Wei Wuxian to abandon him just like that—it was far more likely they were hiding out somewhere in the distant forests of the surrounding mountains, just far enough away to avoid danger but return to Wei Wuxian’s aid if need be. They’d almost certainly only gone along with Wei Wuxian’s offered aid to appease his hurt and his rage at what Lan Wangji had done.

He pulled his chin away from the top of Wei Wuxian’s head and took his cheeks in his palms, gently urging their gazes to meet. Wei Wuxian’s eyes had never looked so red, and their glow was burnished vindictively.

“Wei Ying, I’m going to take this darkness from you,” he began, urgent and low, “I know how to do it, so just—”

“Wangji!”

The cry was colored in equal parts shock and outrage. Lan Wangji’s ears twitched, but he refused to look away from the man curled in his arms for even a second longer.

“Hanguang-Jun is…with the vampire? With the Patriarch?”

“How can he be holding him as though…”

“What is the meaning of this!”

These clamors belonged to voices Lan Wangji knew and loved—they belonged to friends and family, to his peers and his cousins and his respected, adored teachers. He could place every single one of them, and each, in turn, possessed a piece of his mind or his heart, had taught him something once or shown him kindness when he thought there was none.

“Leave us,” Lan Wangji shouted, voice echoing through the bleary distance between him and the family he’d known. “Leave me with him, before he turns this magic on all of you. I will not hesitate to defend him, should any of you refuse to do so.”

Despite how crowded Wei Wuxian’s mind was in that moment, he heard the words—really heard them. He shuddered in Lan Wangji’s arms.

“Wangji, you cannot do this! Think of what to do this would mean! You will be an outcast from the Lans, an exorcist departed from the holy path to protect one of the greatest evils humankind has ever faced!” Lan Xichen’s voice was despair incarnate, fraught with helplessness. Lan Wangji felt as though his heart were flaking into tiny pieces, yet he continued to grip Wei Wuxian tight.

“I know what this means. I know it! And I’ll do it, now and again, till we all stop raging against this man.”

He finally met his brother’s gaze, letting Wei Wuxian sink into his shoulder.

“He is a good man, brother,” Lan Wangji said, as feeble as a lamb. His mind screamed at him to say it all, to speak of Wei Wuxian’s kindness, his cleverness, the rambunctiousness of his wild, good man’s heart—but he felt as though if he started, he would never stop, so couldn’t even manage to begin.

With that, Lan Wangji bowed his head and took Wei Wuxian’s lips for his own. Wei Wuxian let out a gasp at the sudden contact, but it wasn’t a kiss, though it thrilled some part of the both of them as much as a kiss would. Instead, he was actively drawing the demonic magics from wherever they lay within Wei Wuxian, coaxing them from every nook and cranny and willingly inviting them to take up residence in him.

Wei Wuxian’s mouth was like ice, but with every breath of dark energy Lan Wangji’s insides lit up like he was swallowing hot coals—he was imbued with holy powers, merely a vessel for them, and Wei Wuxian’s magic despised him for it. Though it couldn’t resist his call, it screamed as it went, searing him from the inside out, until his own powers were doused entirely in wicked flames to the point where he could barely tell if what he’d done was actually working as he’d hoped it might.

“What have you done, Wangji?” Lan Xichen shouted, most unlike his usual composure—he took two or three staggering steps closer, but his brother suddenly rose from the floor, laying an unconscious Wei Wuxian down on the steps behind him.

His eyes were dark blue, blanketed in darkness, glaring at Lan Xichen and the other exorcists with thinly veiled rage.

“I told you to go. Go! Before these magics turn me against you.”

His voice was as gentle, as frigid as always, but it had escalated by decibels and thundered through the empty foyer, bounding off the stone walls and cracking into the exorcists’ ears like punches to their jaws. Several let out hisses of pain.

“Zewu-Jun…” came a doubtful voice. Lan Xichen held up a harsh hand, shutting up any more complaints.

“He’s my brother. I’ll not go without him,” he said sternly.

“You must,” Lan Wangji interrupted. “You must go without me. Never return to this place, brother. I won’t let any of us return to this place.”

Lan Xichen had always marveled, seeing his brother all grown up, at how Lan Wangji’s childhood stubbornness had been successfully drawn out of him. After their mother’s death, he’d staunchly refused to admit she was really, truly gone, but that had been the last incidence of any such persistence towards impossible matters. He’d matured, become someone capable and reliable, always more than willing to bow his head to matters of duty and honor when the time came.

Now, all of a sudden, Lan Xichen realized perhaps that persistence had only gone into hiding, lying in wait until Lan Wangji found something else he loved enough to refuse to release from his grasp.

“I’ll come back for you, Wangji,” Lan Xichen uttered, chest wracked with grief. “I swear, I’ll come back and save you.”

Lan Wangji lowered his head in farewell. He didn’t raise it even when Lan Xichen and the rest of his troops had turned to leave—in their own anger, confusion, disbelief, they didn’t bother to say goodbye.

But when Lan Xichen glanced back just once, just to see any trace of regret on Lan Wangji’s face, he found his brother had already kneeled to the Patriarch and captured him in his embrace once again.

++++

Lan Wangji had been right from beginning to end. He’d circulated his light magic through his body again and again, faint as it was by the time he’d finished consuming Wei Wuxian’s stolen power, and slowly but surely it had staved away the dark till it was nothing more than a quiet murmur in Lan Wangji’s chest, soon to dissipate on its own. Through it all he remained by Wei Wuxian’s side, gripping his hand tight enough to snap it in two.

When his legs regained their strength, he scooped Wei Wuxian’s slight figure into his arms—taking care to lean his lackadaisical head against his shoulder—and carried him up the winding staircase. Down the halls they went, until at last Lan Wangji reached his own room.

He’d half-expected it to be destroyed beyond repair, but it was only disorganized to the extent he’d left it on that fateful night; the doors to the cabinet where’d he’d stored his belongings remained ajar, the desk where he’d written letters strewn with paper and ink as must have been Wei Wuxian’s doing when searching for the letter, but otherwise it was tidy enough to rest in. He set Wei Wuxian down on the bed and tucked him tightly between the sheets.

Then Lan Wangji retrieved a basin of water and several soft cloths from the kitchen. He placed them in his room, winding one damp towel around Wei Wuxian’s forehead, before heading to Wei Wuxian’s room and collecting several texts applicable to his condition.

Lan Wangji didn’t know anything about caring for ill vampires, but he wanted to learn.

The Wens returned three nights later. Wen Qing found Lan Wangji tending to Wei Wuxian with shaking fingers and gentle eyes—nevertheless, she yanked him away from Wei Wuxian and into the hall with every bit of strength she possessed. Lan Wangji let her.

He let her slap him resoundingly across the face, too, accepting the glittering hatred in her maroon eyes as a natural given.

“I should have known better than to expect anything of you,” she hissed. Wen Ning had remained in the hallway. For once, his gloomy grey eyes were lit from within, just as his sister’s.

Lan Wangji couldn’t offer a response to that, so she continued, “I’ll never forgive you. Neither of us will. Just leave us alone, won’t you?”

To that, Lan Wangji calmly supplied, “I do not seek either of your forgiveness. Nor do I need it. I only desire his.”

He bit his tongue in a moment of anguish, then continued.

“Even if he doesn’t forgive me, I won’t leave. I’ll look after him.”

He was hated, surely, but neither of the Wen siblings would do so much as to bring him harm, especially without Wei Wuxian’s explicit permission. Thus, their cohabitation resumed, if even quieter and colder than before.

A year passed.

Lan Xichen never did come back for Lan Wangji, but he sent letters, most likely to the deep chagrin of their uncle. Lan Wangji responded to every single one. He hadn’t stopped caring for his family, after all—but Wei Wuxian was simply someone he couldn’t give up, for better or worse.

Another eight months, sending them deep into the pits of winter, before Wei Wuxian woke up.

“Lan Zhan…” came the hoarse whisper. Lan Wangji was wrapped in a thick, slightly moth-eaten sweater and curled over his desk penning a notice to Yiling’s magic shop about their lacking selection of herbs, but he moved like a gunshot at the first peep from Wei Wuxian’s lips.

He kneeled at the bedside, reaching out to clutch Wei Wuxian’s pallid fingers in his hand. “Wei Ying, I’m here.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes had yet to split open, but he let out a low, throaty chuckle. It was the sweetest sound Lan Wangji had ever heard.

“Ahh, Lan Zhan. I’d forgotten how foolish humans can be…” he murmured. “Why…why are you still here?”

Lan Wangji brought Wei Wuxian’s hand to his forehead, closed his eyes. With his fingers interlaced so, to an outsider’s gaze he might look as though he were deep in prayer.

“I never should have left,” he choked out. That icy tone he’d cultivated so carefully had shattered completely, leaving only a desperate, humbled man in its place.

“Don’t do it again. I’m begging you, don’t leave me again.”

“I won’t. I won’t leave you. I swear.”

His recovery was rapid after that. Lan Wangji began coaxing him into drinking—minuscule amounts, just from the tip of a finger or two—and the blood did more for Wei Wuxian than any of the magics Lan Wangji had tried on him during his slumber. His poor, charred palms had healed completely after his first meal, and by the fifth, he was sitting upright and speaking as clearly as he had during those first few weeks together.

Not that the way he spoke to Lan Wangji, or the way Lan Wangji spoke to him, was at all the same. Though his pleas on the night of his awakening were remembered by both, the pair were conscious in their own ways how they meant little when both were fully sound of mind. There was more work to be done on both their ends in order to find what they’d lost once more. Nevertheless, conversations occurred—small ones, as Lan Wangji wiped the clamminess from Wei Wuxian’s brow or set about combing his forever tousled hair. Wei Wuxian told Lan Wangji about the magic he’d meant to use to protect himself, while Lan Wangji explained how he’d gotten rid of it. Sometimes, too, they spoke of their pasts and childhoods with wry eyes and mortified smiles.

Through those conversations, Lan Wangji learned that, long ago, before the exorcists had divided into distinct organizations, Wei Wuxian had once dreamed of becoming an exorcist himself. He was talented, superbly talented, far superior to his fellow dreamers. It was how he’d gotten the exorcist’s cross he’d loaned to Lan Wangji the first night he drank from him—not with violence, but with his own prowess.

But superiority enjoined with jealousy, and he had been sabotaged by a classmate—thrown to a pack of rabid vampires one night as a deadly prank.

“I was angry, for a while, and I took it out on them. But then I just got…tired, I guess. Tired of drinking, of fighting, of winning. I wanted peace. And then I met Wen Qing and Wen Ning, and decided I could retire with them at my side.”

A wan smile offered to the hands twisting in his lap, lit only by faint candles sprinkled around the room. Lan Wangji waited.

“But it wasn’t enough. I always felt guilty, I guess, for having saved them the same way I died. Even if the scenarios aren’t comparable, they are to me. So, I became more despicable.”

“You are not despicable,” Lan Wangji said, unable to help himself. “You are their hero.”

Wei Wuxian had only pulled a face, ending the conversation there.

After this conversation in particular, as time continued onwards and the halting strangeness of their relationship at last began to let up, Lan Wangji became acutely aware of his mortality. He was yet to reach his thirtieth year—though not so distant now—and in the back of his mind, he began constantly imagining a future where Wei Wuxian would be forced to take care of him as an old man. That wasn’t what Lan Wangji wanted. It was his choice, his desire to care for Wei Wuxian.

The tomes and scrolls and books were of no help. Nowhere could Lan Wangji find a source that told him how to achieve a longer life without actually giving up his life and thus his blood. Becoming a vampire was out of the question, not only for his own reasons, but for Wei Wuxian’s as well. Vampires could drink from one another, seeking pleasure, perhaps, but there was no value in it beyond that. They were unable to sustain themselves without the life force of a human.

He asked Wen Qing as a last resort, who glared at him with furrowed brows.

“You want to do what? Without doing what?” she snapped. Lan Wangji had taken over the cooking in the castle as it was mainly he, after all, who really needed to eat, so these days, Wen Qing busied herself in the library poring over human medical texts. Now she sat wrapped in a flannel shawl at one of the overbearing mahogany desks, arms wrapped around her torso, no less intimidating seated than she was standing up.

“Immortality, without requiring the loss of life,” Lan Wangji supplemented.

She scoffed. “Don’t you think the vampire species would have entirely died out by now if that were possible? The only reason most of us exist is because humans are so terrified of death’s kiss that they’ll succumb to any dark magic necessary to avoid it. Not like I’m any different.”

“I can’t become a vampire. Wei Wuxian will still need to drink after I’ve turned. As will I, but neither of us will have any access to doing so.”

“Want my advice? Talk to him about it. See if he doesn’t lose his mind and kick you out again faster than you can get on your knees and beg,” Wen Qing said, and returned to her reading with as sour an expression as Lan Wangji had seen.

Lan Wangji understood full well that she meant to mock him, but the idea of asking Wei Wuxian was a good one. He was the most knowledgeable of any of them by far when it came to the limits of magic, good and evil, and would surely have some sort of information about such a spell or procedure.

It was only Lan Wangji’s fear that kept him back, despite the ease of their old relationship, whatever it was, returning little by little every night. Fear of rejection, and fear of treading on Wei Wuxian’s boundaries to the point of no return.

“Wen Qing told me what you mean to do,” Wei Wuxian said suddenly. The few leaves on the barren trees outside were well on their way to burnished hues of auburn and orange. The starlight flowers Wei Wuxian had created just for Lan Wangji were in full bloom. Just over three years had passed since they’d met, and this was the first time he’d spoken to Lan Wangji the way he had back then.

The proclamation—and the easiness with which he’d spoken—took Lan Wangji aback, but the fact that Wen Qing had revealed his private desires didn’t, somehow. He understood well by now how his feelings for Wei Wuxian exasperated her beyond words—whether her intention with this reveal had been to push them together or drive them apart, however, he had no idea.

Lan Wangji pondered his choice of dialogue carefully before at last admitting slowly, “She’s correct. I’m seeking immortality.”

Not too much, not too little—just enough information to be honest.

Wei Wuxian was fully capable of moving about as the average man was, now, though he still grew tired at dusk. He’d only just awoken from a nap and now lay splayed out like a starfish in Lan Wangji’s bed, hair braided and slung out to one side, body clad in black silk. Lan Wangji didn’t know why they’d continued sharing a room even after Wei Wuxian had recovered enough to move back to his own quarters, but he wasn’t about to refuse anything of him now.

“I won’t let you go through with it,” Wei Wuxian replied promptly.

Lan Wangji replaced his exorcist’s cross—which he now used as a bookmark—in the tome he was reading and clipped the book shut. He ran a hand through his own hair, dark and loose, before sighing faintly.

“I understand your misgivings, but I hope you aren’t saying such things for my sake and my sake alone. I won’t go through with it if need be, but only if you…”

His throat squeezed tight around the end of his sentence in cowardice.

Wei Wuxian sat up slowly, luxuriously.

“Only if I…? Hmm? Say what you mean, Lan er-gege,” he wheedled softly, in a way he hadn’t for an excruciatingly long time.

Lan Wangji could only gaze at him.

After a long pause, Wei Wuxian stood on his knees and leaned over the side of the bed farthest away from Lan Wangji, revealing smooth honeyed thighs in the process. It took a moment of rummaging, in between the sounds of which Lan Wangji was certain he heard the clack of floorboards being lifted, before Wei Wuxian raised his—now delectably flushed pink—face again.

Now, in his right hand, he held Lan Wangji’s exorcist hair ribbon.

The sight of it sent an old thrill of possessiveness through Lan Wangji, but now it was fraught with the desire to first verify its very existence, and then wind it tight around some part, any part of the man holding it now. He stood in a flash, without even realizing he’d done it.

“I’m sorry! For keeping it. Though in all fairness, it wasn’t as though I thought you were going to give me a chance to give it back to you.” Wei Wuxian seemed to have misread Lan Wangji’s movement as some form of anger, because he slid backward on the bed and held out a hand palm-first in a gesture of stop right there, scoundrel .

“And, also,” this continuation in a rush, “to be honest, I just…didn’t want to give it back to you. I wanted it to be mine.”

Lan Wangji raised an eyebrow ever-so-slightly.

“…Because it’s an exorcist’s ribbon?” he asked tentatively.

Wei Wuxian dropped his hand and let his knees collapse underneath him as he let out a tremendous sigh.

“Because it’s your exorcist’s ribbon, fool,” he muttered.

Lan Wangji’s ears felt hot in a way they hadn’t in a very long time.

“But!” Wei Wuxian continued in a rush, “But, that’s why I’m telling you now, I won’t tell you how to reach immortality. And I won’t turn you into a vampire, either, no matter how desperate you might be. I’m not going to give in to your guilt.”

The idea that, by now, all Lan Wangji offered Wei Wuxian came only from a guilty conscience was like a tiny spear skewering his heart.

“If there is a way, I will find it,” Lan Wangji said simply, trying the calm the battle of greediness at Wei Wuxian’s declaration and pain at his continued misunderstanding going head to head in the center of his chest.

“Why? Lan Zhan, you don’t need to do anything for me, not anymore. You should go back to your family, shouldn’t you? Fulfill your duty? You don’t need to nurse me back to health—I’m nursed! I’m well, so just—”

Wei Wuxian’s voice was pitching in frustration, in some unknowable hurt, and at its peak Lan Wangji interrupted.

“I will always take care of you, Wei Ying. My family can flourish on their own. I worry that you cannot. I won’t let you suffer alone.”

His words were disjointed, weak in comparison to the pounding of his heart, but they were all Lan Wangji could manage.

Wei Wuxian didn’t say anymore, so Lan Wangji returned to his seat. He’d long since picked up his book and returned to his page when, at last, at last, Wei Wuxian opened his mouth.

He said, meekly, “But I’m in love with you, Lan Zhan.”

All the blood in Lan Wangji’s body rushed to his head.

“I’m sorry, but I am. And I know—I know, believe me—that it’s impossible for you to love me back. I should be grateful enough that you decided to protect me and look after me, in the end, and that you treat me like a human, but I…I just can’t. I like everything about you, everything you are, I just. I love you.”

Lan Wangji met his gaze, searing gold against tender mauve.

“So it’s hard for me, you see, when you stay here and say you’ll become immortal for my sake. I don’t want you to do anything without the right…conviction, I suppose.”

I can say it now, can’t I?

Lan Wangji rose from his seat again, slowly this time, and made his way with halting steps across the room. Wei Wuxian’s wide eyes never left his, not for a moment.

I can tell him? I can tell him why I want this life at his side?

He sat on the bed, reached out with trembling fingers. His heart had never quaked nor jerked about quite so wildly in his own chest.

I’ll tell him. I’ll say it now.

With an uncharacteristically roguish grip, he dragged Wei Wuxian across the space between them and into his arms, pulling his ear to his chest and gripping him impossibly tight.

And Wei Wuxian could hear it—he could hear the wild beating of that heart of Lan Wangji’s.

“I love you, Wei Ying,” came the words from between his teeth, white-knuckled and raw, torn from his throat at long last.

“I know. I know! I can hear it, Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian crowed aloud, voice still cuttingly bright even as muffled as it was by muscle and fabric.

He pulled away suddenly, only to ask, “Kiss me, Lan Zhan. Please kiss me?” eyes bright, cheeks flushed. Lan Wangji did as he was bidden, again and again, till neither of them could think beyond the draw of each other’s tongues and hands and flesh.

In the earliest hours of the morning, Lan Wangji, as he gazed at the Patriarch’s love-bitten form beside him, murmured, “Is this conviction enough for you to allow me to stay by your side, forever?”

Wei Ying, drowsy with a saturated, saccharine sleepiness he hadn’t experienced in a century but still unable to take his eyes off his very own exorcist, whispered in reply, “More than enough.”