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Chapter Text

In the early hours of the morning, as the sun paints the pools of the Dihua Marsh in shimmering gold, the lofty halls of the former Wangshu tea house see their first human occupant in twenty years. 

Verr Goldet walks around her new business—her new home—for the first time. She runs her hands over the slopes of dusty bannisters, relishing in the little trails her fingers leave behind. Oh, how wonderful this place will be, she thinks, and when she smells the heady scent of age and pinewood she also smells possibility.

She giggles, despite herself, and thanks the Archons that the workers are still downstairs with her new husband, and not up here where they can overhear their boss (not boss lady, just boss) laughing like a schoolgirl. 

As she makes her way up the stairs from the main terrace, she wonders what her parents would think of her now… running off to travel the world, to see sights strange and horrible, to learn the many tongues of Teyvat, to learn to fight and barter and lie… and in the end, settling down in Liyue with a (frankly gorgeous) young man to open a business all their own. 

She wonders what they’d think of her now, wandering around a dusty old wreck of a building in bare feet, her skirts tied up around her legs and her hair loose and tangled from a day of heavy lifting.

How far you’ve fallen, they might say, from the proper young lady we raised… but as Verr finally reaches the stairs to the upper balcony, the steps creaking below her, and sees the countryside of the Land of Geo begin to splay out in front of her like a verdant cradle, she cannot help but feel like she’s risen instead. 

That is until her lovely new view is blocked by a person.

“Hey.”

She manages to stop herself from yelping but still takes a staggering step back at the intrusion, wide eyes snapping to the origin of the voice. 

Standing in the doorway to the upper balcony is… A young man?

(A boy, really, because he’s got the pouty frown of every teenager she’s ever known and their less-than-optimal height too.)

His clothes immediately strike her as strange. Verr hasn’t been in Liyue very long, but even she can see the manner of this boy’s dress is an intriguing mix of old-fashioned and weird. He’s speckled with haphazard armour and draped in asymmetric cuts of fine, cool-coloured silk, with one long sleeve and one exposed shoulder that swirls with bright tattoos. As he rocks on his heels in the doorway, the copious number of beads, chiming metal ornaments and jewellery dripping from his person ring out almost musically. 

Not to mention that terrifying mask strung to his belt. What’s the point of that thing anyway?

He has choppy dark hair cut through with striking streaks of turquoise that shimmer almost as bright as the beads adorning his clothes. His skin is milky pale in the dim of the doorway, but the lack of light doesn’t stop his mora-gold eyes from flashing in Verr’s direction, narrowing in a silent yet unmistakable challenge.

Well isn’t that dangerous, says the dumb part of her brain.

Verr puts a hand on her hip. 

“Hey there,” she says. She lets it hang. 

The boy frowns as if he’d been expecting some other reaction, but Verr isn’t going to give it to him. No sir, no fear from her, even if he did just shock the living daylights out of her. 

“What are you doing here?” The boy asks. 

Verr takes a moment to push down the laugh threatening to bubble from her throat. What is she doing here? In her house? She’s been asked that same question by a lot of self-important people in places much less hers than this treetop, and her answer is always the same; I am where I want to be, and that is exactly where I should be. 

But the boy stands stiff and steady as if the absurdity of his question means nothing to him. There’s odd energy to him; In terms of size, he could not be described as anything but short—but nothing about his stature seems small. He seems to fill the space in the arching doorway as if he were seven men instead of one, and as comfortably as if he’d been here his whole life. 

“My husband and I recently purchased this building,” Verr says calmly and begins to climb the stairs again. “As its owner, I think I have every right to be asking you the same question, Mister…?” 

He ignores her subtle request for a name. “I was here first,” he says, then: “I live here.” 

She reaches the landing. They stare at each other for a long moment. 

“Well… I live here…” Verr says. “...Now. I live here now.”

“It appears so,” the boy says. He doesn’t move. 

“Are you… going to leave?" Verr hasn’t known this boy for longer than a minute but even she knows what his answer will be. Still, it’s worth asking. 

“No,” the boy says, face twisting into a frown that has the audacity to look confused. “I live here.”

“Bit of an impasse then,” Verr says carefully. 

“Indeed,” says the boy in a level voice, though his eyebrow quirks a little angrily. That pleases Verr. 

Though… has he blinked? She ponders. I don’t think he’s blinked this entire time.

Whatever.

“I’m not the biggest fan of law enforcement,” Verr says. “But this is my property you’re trespassing on.”

“I fear no human warriors you might call to deal with me,” the boy says, inferring her meaning. At least he’s not totally stupid. “And certainly not the Liyue Qixing.” 

Verr feels her spine tingle. It’s a wholly irritating feeling. “Who said anything about the Qixing?” she says, trying not to sound too defensive. “Also what do you mean human?"

He ignores her second question and instead narrows his eyes at her, simply saying, “You stink of business," as if that isn’t a completely insane thing to say.

He turns on his heel and waves her off, and Verr almost snaps at him for it before she sees the small turquoise crystal embedded in his glove—a tiny Anemo Vision, cut in the square style of Liyuean allogenes. 

Then he teleports away and—

Wait. What? 

Verr blinks, gawking out at the now-empty balcony, watching wisps of black and green wind dissipate where the boy had been standing mere moments earlier.

Verr has never been the most faithful person, but even she knows her lovely new squatter’s status as a favoured of the Archons—not to mention one that can apparently teleport—probably rules out throwing him off one of the balconies, lest she invites some kind of celestial charge of heresy.

“Well,” she mutters to herself, blowing her wind-ruffled bangs out of her eyes, “there goes Plan A…”

“You’re still here.”

The trespassing allogene shows up again a few weeks later, reeking of monster blood and raw anemo. There are red smears on his mask and the white expanse of his shirt that Verr charitably ignores. 

She huffs a strand of hair out of her face and puts down her broom. She’s in the middle of sweeping the dust from the newly laid floors, hoping to finish in time for the painters to arrive tomorrow. Construction has been going well, especially since Boy Wonder here hadn’t shown his face for most of the process. 

Oh well, the Seven giveth and the Seven taketh away…  

“Once again: I live here, kid,” she says, deciding to take a break. “You might want to get used to it if you’re going to keep squatting in my construction site.” 

She walks past him onto the balcony, stretching her arms up until she hears the joints pop pleasantly.

“I am not a kid,” the boy says, suddenly right next to her. “I am far older than you.” 

Verr highly doubts that. She likes to think she looks pretty good for her twenty-seven years, but the kid before her can’t be older than nineteen—and that’s being very generous.

“Scary,” Verr teases, wondering why she’s teasing someone who has clearly just freshly murdered something. “You got that disease that makes you age backwards or something?” 

“No.” The boy’s brow furrows. “Is that… a real disease?” 

“Sure is. Everyone in Sumeru is riddled with it,” Verr hums as she turns back to pick up her broom; break time suddenly isn’t so fun when she has a freaky homeless allogene breathing down her neck. “That’s why all their travelling scholars are so young and attractive—they’re all in their eighties, they just don’t look it.” 

“Oh.” The boy frowns. “This is a joke.”

Verr laughs and begins to sweep while the boy drifts around her. She can’t hear his footfalls, which is both unnerving and intriguing, but she can feel an odd shift in the air current behind her that lets her know he’s following her.

She’s not sure what had spurred her decision to not call the Millileth on the kid—maybe the fact that it had seemed like he was gone for good until about ten seconds ago. Or maybe it’d been because of the big puppy dog eyes Huai’an had given her when she’d told him… Oh Verr, he’d said, he’s probably been here for a while without anywhere else to go… let’s at least get him on his feet. 

Operation “rehome the human hurricane that’s squatting in our house” had been slow going until today when said human hurricane had shown up covered in blood. It looks mostly dry… Verr just hopes it doesn’t get on the floors. 

“Maybe you could earn your keep here by helping us get it ready for business,” she offers. “I see that Vision on your wrist, you know…”

The boy looks down at his glove with an off-guard expression, which serves to make it look like he’d only just realised he had a Vision. That, at the very least, is a little funny. 

Verr decides to push a bit harder. “There’s an old adage about those favoured by the Anemo Archon making the best housekeepers,” she says. “It would make getting the dust out of the rafters a real breeze.” 

Something in that sentence has the unintended yet hysterical side-effect of turning the boy’s face beet red. Oh wow. 

“I will not be reduced to your maid," the boy splutters. “Furthermore I am not favoured by that… that underqualified jester, Barbatos. You would do well not to insinuate it.” 

The statement is so unexpected, with such an absurd level of informality, that Verr almost laughs again. 

“What an entirely fascinating choice of adjective,” she notes, leaning against her broom thoughtfully. “You’re a really weird kid, kid.”

“I am not a ‘kid’,” the boy spits, drawing himself up to his full height of whatever feet and nothing inches. “The name given to me is Xiao , though some mortals know me better as the Conqueror of Demons—” he throws his head back defiantly, which is adorable, “—I am a yaksha in the eternal service of the people of Liyue, favoured by Rex Lapis, not some glorified troubadour.”

Verr blinks. 

“Wow you’re... you’re an insane person, aren’t you?” She says. 

Xiao’s expression can only be described as tortured at this point. Verr is so caught up in how funny his little forehead diamond looks when his eyebrows screw up in disgust that she doesn’t really think about anything he just said. And when Xiao opens his mouth to retort she cuts him off immediately. 

“My name is Verr Goldet, by the way, owner of the soon-to-be-opened Wangshu Inn. Back in Mondstadt, they called me the Conqueror of Dirt, so if you don’t mind—” she bumps the broom against his foot, making him jump like a startled cat “—if you’re not going to help, could you move?”

And who would have bet? He does.

In her defence, she didn’t know. 

Correction: In her defence, she kind of knew, but he’s really really short. 

It is not Verr’s first time meeting the soon-to-be Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing, but it is her first time in the Jade Chamber. The palace’s vaulted, gilded ceilings shimmer above her like rivers of precious stone; dominating and wealthy.

If she were a more self-conscious woman, she might feel uncomfortable in this room, but Verr Goldet is made of stronger stuff. 

Usually.

“Excuse me?”

The maids stationed at the wings of the room flinch at Verr’s casual tone, but Lady Ningguang remains as steady as stone through the abrupt interruption. She stirs her tea calmly, her spoon never touching the sides of her delicate cup. 

“Now that you have spent some time at the property,” Ningguang repeats, “am I right in assuming you have made contact with the adeptus known as Xiao? He may have also introduced himself as a yaksha, or as the Conqueror of Demons. He takes the form of a young man; Short of stature… one could conceivably place him anywhere from sixteen to twenty—”

Verr puts her tea down with a clang. The maids wince. Ningguang looks up inquisitively.  

“He… he wasn’t lying?” she says in a hoarse voice. 

Ningguang raises an eyebrow. “You have met him, then?”

“I… have,” Verr says carefully. “However… I was under the impression he was merely an allogene…”

In her defence, the closest things Mondstadt has to adepti are legends of Barbatos and his Four Winds, the latter of which Verr is pretty sure are all giant animals and a fucking dragon —and not the kind of dragon that allegedly turns into a person, either—and none of whom hang out in inns looking like waifish teenage boys. 

In her defence, the first time she’d even heard the word ‘yaksha’ had been three weeks ago, when Xiao choked it out during a very milady-doth-protest-too-much rant that had only served to make it sound like he’d been through a messy break up with the Anemo Archon. 

Oh… oh Gods, had he, though? Verr forces the thought out of her mind before it kills her right then and there in the office of one of the most powerful women in Teyvat.

Ningguang takes a drag off her pipe, twirling it delicately in her fingers as she exhales the spicy smelling smoke into the air. She doesn’t look mad; rather the opposite.

“An honest mistake. He does look quite human, after all,” she chuckles. “I must say, I am interested in what you might have said to him.” 

“I… I tried to get him to sweep my floors,” Verr says. 

The little blue-haired secretary taking notes in the corner lets out a sudden, strangled cough. 

“Ganyu?” Ningguang turns in her seat slightly. “Is something the matter?”

“No, Lady Ningguang!” Ganyu says, ducking her face behind her hand.

“Well… Regardless—” Ninguang twirls her pipe for a moment before setting it on the table and picking up her teacup, “—Adeptus Xiao is… an interesting case. I know you have not spent much time in Liyue, at least not as a permanent resident, but can I assume you are familiar with the adepti of yore?”

Verr nods. Ningguang continues.

“Unlike the other adepti who mostly live reclusively in Jeuyen Karst, Adeptus Xiao could be considered more nomadic. He has no permanent base of operations, but has frequented Bishui in particular for as long as the Qixing has been keeping tabs on him.”

“How long has that been, milady?” 

“About two-hundred and fifty years, though he himself is much older.” 

Oh no. Verr threads her fingers together nervously. “And Wangshu…?”

Ningguang gives an elegant shrug. “Likely just as long, and perhaps even before the original tea house was constructed. My predecessors theorised he favours the tree of Wangshu because it gives him ample lay of a significant portion of northern Liyue.”

“Maybe he just likes the view,” Verr offers dryly, her mind reeling at the fact the kid on her roof is centuries older than her.

Ningguang smiles and leans forward.

“His continued presence in Liyue is, as far as we know, motivated by a quest to smother the potential development of demonic entities imbued with negative energy leftover from the Archon War. There is much… colourful speculation… regarding the origin and eventual waning of the yakshas—warrior adepti tasked exclusively by the Geo Archon with the eradication of these demons—but as far as we can tell Xiao is the only yaksha still in the mortal world.” 

“The others? What happened to them?” 

“We believe they perished during their respective missions,” Ningguang says plainly. “Though the exact circumstances are unknown.” 

Verr thinks back to the blood staining Xiao’s clothes. She’d known, instinctively, that it hadn’t been his. “So… Xiao hunts demons… by himself?”

“Indeed, and he is quite efficient at it. But he does not care to mingle with humans—even though he does so far more often than his colleagues—and this is something of a barrier.” Ningguang takes a sip of her tea. “You will be seeing him around quite a bit, I assume, so I would like to give you a second task if you choose to accept it.” 

Verr nods.

“On top of acting as the Qixing’s eyes in Bishui, we humbly ask you to assist Adeptus Xiao in his duties.” Ningguang punctuates her statement by putting her tea down on the table. 

Verr blanches. “I—pardon me, Lady Ningguang, but huh?!”

The maids flinch, the secretary coughs again, but Ningguang is still amused.

“I am not asking you to take up arms and help him in battle,” she says. “I am simply asking you to allow him to remain at your inn, and to make sure he is comfortable and able to move freely to and from it. This fight of his… this perpetual war… it is in the best interest of the people of Liyue that he continues it unabated.” 

“I… I suppose,” Verr concedes, though the thought of the adepti in question running around her place of business like a bloody ghoul sends her blood boiling. 

“What legends of him that remain are not exactly a part of the common public story cycles, but he is known by many names. One, in particular, is the Guardian Yaksha, a vigilant protector of the people of Liyue.” 

Ningguang smiles and takes another languid drag off her pipe. 

“But maybe he needs a little guarding in return, no?”

Verr returns from Liyue Harbour in the early hours of the morning. As the great tree rises from the marsh before her, the washed-out light of pre-dawn casts cool shadows over the darkened windows and dim lanterns decorating Wangshu’s façade. She yawns. 

She knows she should go straight to bed; the inn is still a few days from opening and Huai’an will still be asleep. She’s well within her rights to crawl in next to him and curl up for the next couple of hours before the workday starts. 

But she doesn’t do that at all. 

Verr is not from Liyue, which is a fact she is open about and tells many people. If you continue to believe what she tells you, you will also know she is from Mondstadt—a land of freedom and song, and one whose hands-off Archon has fostered a people who don’t always play by the rules of sanctity as much as their southern neighbours.

“Morning, Sunshine.” Verr slinks up to the upper balcony with two plates of fisherman’s toast. For the first time in memory, she’s actually happy to see the familiar silhouette of Xiao perched on the balcony railing. “Sleep well?”

“Verr Goldet.”

Xiao doesn’t turn around as he addresses her so Verr sits next to him, arranging her skirts so she can slip her legs over the edge beside him, carefully balancing the plates on her lap.

Xiao’s golden eyes flicker to the food and his nose wrinkles. 

“I read you’re supposed to give offerings of food to the adepti,” Verr says, and relishes a little in the staggered expression that draws from Xiao. “I don’t know what you like, though, so I just made my usual breakfast.” 

She holds out one of the plates and Xiao huffs with disinterest. “I have no need for human food.”

“Are you familiar with the expression ‘offering an olive branch’?” Verr asks. 

Xiao looks at her quizzically for a moment, his eyes darting from her to the toast and back again. 

“That is bread,” he says. 

Verr sighs. “Nevermind.” 

She takes a bite out of the first piece of toast, and the silence that falls is a tense one. 

“Listen. I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she says after a moment, realising she’s going to have to be the one who starts the conversation. “I should have probably realised you weren’t human, but, to be fair, you buried the lead a little.”

“I told you exactly who I was.”

Verr sighs again. “Yeah but… when I think about gods and adepti I think about… big statues and reclusive spirits and dragons, you know? You’re just a person and—no offence—you’re pretty young-looking.”

Xiao looks contemplative for a moment, like he’s about to let it slide, but then he furrows his brow. “Wait… You said you are from Mondstadt, no?” 

Verr takes another bite. “That’s certainly what I said.” 

Xiao makes an odd expression. “And yet you are… confused by my appearance…?” 

“Yes?” Verr says slowly, but Xiao only looks more confused. Huh? “Hold on, what are you getting at?”

“I will never understand humans,” Xiao says with a sigh, ignoring her. Verr frowns into her next bite of fisherman’s toast. 

“And I won’t ever understand you if you keep being vague and mysterious,” she retorts. “But maybe I’ll wear you down—looks like we’re keeping you after all.”

This makes Xiao actually take a pause. He finally makes sustained eye contact with Verr, which shouldn’t feel like an accomplishment but does. His eyebrows furrow in silent query. 

“I have been tasked by the Liyue Qixing with a special objective,” Verr explains, because she’s pretty sure Xiao already knows this place is affiliated with Liyue’s ruling power, so she can cut to the chase. “I am to observe and aid the activities of one Guardian Yaksha, Conqueror of Demons, Xiao of the Liyue Adepti.”

Xiao scoffs. “I do not need the aid of the Qixing.” 

“Ha!” Verr throws her head back and laughs sharply. “I actually agree with you on that one!”

If Verr didn’t know better, she might say Xiao looks shocked. His gaze goes a little unsteady for a moment, but he doesn’t flinch. If anything, he looks even more focused now. 

“You do?” He inquires. “I thought you agents of the Qixing made your business in meddling?”

“I’m sure some of them do,” Verr says. “But me? I’m here for me—so what if I ferry a little intelligence here and there on behalf of the Qixing? I’m here first and foremost because I wanted to open a business. Huai’an and I… we wanted to make something ourselves, with our own hands.”

The sun begins to rise over Jueyun Karst, the floating islands cutting sharp shadows in the mists that catch the warm light like sheer veils. 

“The road from Liyue Harbor to Qingce is long, and to Mondstadt even longer,” Verr muses. “Dihua is dangerous, especially these days, and while I’m not too bad in a fight there’s not much I can do to help on that front. Not like you, I suppose.” 

She watches Xiao give her a quick once over out of the corner of her eye, but doesn’t let his scrutiny phase her. 

“This place used to be a tea house, you know,” she says. 

“I know,” Xiao retorts. “I live here.” 

“It used to be a rest stop between Mondstadt and Liyue Harbour, a place for people to cast off the worries of travel. It hasn’t been that in a long time.”

“I know, I—”

“Yeah, you live here, okay. Gods. ” Verr rolls her eyes. “My point is that while I can’t purge the roads of hilichurls, I can give all those weary travellers who wander them a safe place to rest their heads. That’s my mark on the world. That’s my purpose here. To care for them.”

Xiao turns his face to the sun, his eyes flashing like coins. For once, he takes his time with his reply. 

“You are an ambitious woman,” he says eventually. “I do not understand you.”

“I’m not asking you to understand me, Adeptus Xiao,” Verr says. “I’m asking you to make a deal with me.”

Xiao nods for her to continue, so she does. 

“You’re a big boy. I’m going to go out on a limb and say a thousand years kicking around Liyue is more than old enough time to know what you’re doing, Adeptus Xiao. And seeing as the world hasn’t been consumed by demons yet, I’m almost positive you don’t need my help to do it.” 

“I am two-thousand nine-hundred years old,” Xiao says wryly. He doesn’t smile, but Verr gets the feeling he enjoys the way her face pales. “But I will admit, for once, that you are making sense. What is this contract you propose?”

Contract.

So Liyuean of him. 

Verr grins and shuffles so she’s turned to face Xiao. 

“You know how to kill demons,” she says. “But I do know how to run a business. I know the best way isn’t to have creepy guys with masks dripping blood all over the halls. You’ll frighten my guests! That’s not good for my line of work.”

“And your hospitable hovering is not particularly good for mine,” he says. “The monsters that concern you concern me too. But unlike you, I don’t aim to get rid of them through innkeeping and toast— ” He somehow manages to make toast sound like a curse word. “—I will bathe all four corners of Dihua in blood if it is what I must do to honour my contract with Rex Lapis.”

Verr swallows a particularly difficult piece of toast. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

“Not if nothing gets in my way,” Xiao says. 

“Well then. Good thing I don’t intend to.” Verr clears her throat, sticking out her hand. “Let’s agree: I won’t step on your toes if you don’t step on mine. I won’t hover and you won’t terrorise. We stay out of each other’s way. Deal?”

Xiao turns to face her fully. He grasps her hand tightly. His palms are cold. 

“On my honour as Xiao of the Liyue Adepti, fifth yaksha of Rex Lapis, I accept this contract with you, Verr Goldet of Wangshu. May it be set in stone until we are dust, and linger on the wind forevermore.”

He tugs his hand from hers, leaving her fingers hanging loose and dazed in the air. She watches him stand in a swirl of cool-coloured silks. He hops onto the balcony rail in a smooth motion.

“Where are you going?” she asks. 

“Out,” he says simply. 

“Then… one more question,” Verr says, “before we start ignoring each other forever?”

Xiao keeps his impassive gaze fixed on her, which is probably as good a go ahead as she’ll get.

“What do you eat, my dear adeptus?” She asks. “If not fisherman’s toast?” 

Xiao stares at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he turns away, back to watching the view. The rising sun gilds him like a statue. 

“I used to eat dreams,” he says. 

Verr doesn’t find it in her to ask what he means before he drops out of sight.

Verr crawls into bed as the sun rises, dragging her travel-weary limbs under the covers and curling up at Huai’an’s side. 

“There’s an adeptus on our balcony,” she murmurs into his shoulder. “There’s an adeptus on our balcony and I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

“Whazzat, hun?” Huai’an mumbles into the pillow. 

“Nevermind,” she sighs. “I’ll tell you later.”

They manage to go just over a year.

In the grand scheme of things, that’s probably a good record. A year of no real incident. A year of mutual ignoring. A year of letting each other be. 

(A year of maybe a little too much blood on the upper staircases. A year of complaints from the guests of strange noises on the marsh. A year of unease every time she sees those colourful silks dive off her tree into the dark.

But Verr remembers Ninguang’s words. It is in the best interest of the people of Liyue that he continues. With every letter back to the Tianquan, she wonders how long she’ll be able to keep telling herself that.)

In that year, Verr Goldet’s dream takes shape. Funds from the Qixing as well as their own savings allow her and Huai’an to transform the decrepit old tea house in the southern marshes into a flourishing inn. Shopkeepers set up stalls amidst the roots of their great tree, and travellers come from far and wide to stay in the safety of its branches. 

They thrive. The marsh thrives. Everything in Verr’s life is thriving. Until—

“There’s been reports of increased Hilichurl activity in the region, ma’am,” the Millelith soldier says. 

“An increase?” Verr says. “That’s… wh—Hey, you put that down!” 

She snaps at another passing soldier, a young guy who’s dragging one of her road signs away. He blanches at her tone, freezing where he stands. 

“S-Sorry, boss lady,” he says. “Uh, ma’am, rather… This is just standard procedure.”

The summer sun beats down on the roots of the Wangshu tree. For all intents and purposes, it’s a beautiful day. If Verr’s life hadn’t been falling apart thanks to a surprise visit from the Millelith, she’d be happily strolling along the inn’s lower decks, or perhaps its bridges, watching guests roll in and out, children play in the water, and merchants serve up the finest teas in Dihua. 

As it happens, though, Verr’s life is too busy falling apart for any of that to happen. 

“First of all it’s ‘boss’ not ‘boss lady’,” she snarls. “Second of all, why not just sick the guild on them like everyone else does? Surely they can handle a few more hilichurls than usual.”

The older soldier sighs like this is more tiring for him than her. As if, she thinks. He’s not the one having his entire business forcibly packed up and moved inside like they’re waiting out a hurricane instead of a few measly monsters.

“The monsters in this region have a history of rising in number and aggressiveness from time to time,” he says, with the tone of someone who’s said it a million times before. 

“I’ve never heard of anything like that!” Verr growls. 

“And yet it remains true,” the man says dryly. “Sorry, ma’am, but we have to close the roads.”

“If you close the roads we’re going to lose business.”

“I’m sorry about that, ma’am. But there’s nothing we can do. Even the guild won’t take on monsters this tough with this little warning. It’ll be at least a week until we can get boots on the ground out here.” 

Verr wants to scream. She wants to stomp her feet and pull her hair like a stupid little girl. She wants to point her finger in the Millelith soldier’s face and tell him how she really feels. 

But she doesn’t. She simply grits her teeth, balls her hands into fists at her side, gives a stiff bow, and stomps back up the tree without saying goodbye. 

When she reaches the top, sweaty and out of breath, Huai’an gives her a weak smile from where he sits on their main terrace—their terribly empty terrace in their terribly empty inn.

“We have an elevator you know,” he says. 

“Stairs… b-build character…” Verr stumbles over to his chair and leans heavily against the back. “ Fuck .”

“How did it go down there?” Huai’an asks. He starts to stand to give Verr his seat but she waves him off; she’s far too worked up to sit down. 

“Those… bastards,” she hisses, “are closing the roads… all the way to Stone Gate.”

Huai’an frowns. “They’re not closing the whole Gate, are they?”

Verr shakes her head and begins to pace back and forth—just to do something besides stew. Her trajectory gives her an upsetting partial view of Guyun Stone Forest, where she can almost convince herself she sees boats coming to and from the harbour; Merchants she won’t be able to put up in Wangshu because—

“They’re closing the southern roads too,” she growls. “All the way through Guili.” 

“Well. There goes our profit goal for this quarter,” Huai’an sighs. Verr is almost offended at how calm he’s being, but the alternative is both of them being incandescently angry and that won’t be good for anyone. 

“I take it the Guild won’t be dispatched for a few days?” He asks.

“A week!” Verr reports. “I hate all this—this Liyuean bureaucracy!”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know what we would’ve done in Mondstadt?”

“I get the feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“Nothing! ‘Cause it would’ve already been taken care of!” And on fire or in the lake or dropped off a sufficiently tall cliff, but Verr isn’t about to let any Liyuean snobs tell her how the City of Freedom should be running its law enforcement so she doesn’t say the specifics.

“Okay. Sure.” Huai’an pinches the bridge of his nose. “Verr—I don’t think this is productive. You’ll wear yourself out like this.” 

Verr stops pacing and sighs. “I know, I know… just…”

“Why don’t you talk to Adeptus Xiao?” Huai’an suggests as gently as possible. “He might know what to do.” 

Verr hates that idea. “I hate that idea.” 

Huai’an shrugs. “Didn’t you say his whole reason for being here is monster extermination?”

“Demons, I think.”

“Same difference,” Huai’an wagers. “I saw him take the head off a hilichurl a few months ago. If we don’t want to wait for the guild to be deployed, I think he’s probably our man.”

Verr grumbles. “Why are you always so right?”

Verr gives up on trying to organically encounter Xiao after two days of trying to catch him. She resorts to putting Huai’an on her non-existent deskwork and dragging a chair from one of the vacant rooms up to the upper landing. She takes a seat with a hefty pitcher of that scam-imported Dawn Winery vintage by her side, the newest volume of Moonlit Bamboo Forest in her hand, and waits. 

It takes the better part of the day, but eventually the wind picks up, slipping through the doorway like the waves of the fabric partitions they put up during the winter. Verr puts her glass of wine down as she looks up.

Xiao materialises soon after in a flurry of black miasma that cracks loud enough to make Verr jolt. Xiao’s back is to her as he stumbles a little on the hardwood, and Verr opens her mouth to call his name, but stops as she realises he’s… whispering?

“I’m sorry--I’m trying--just—”

He walks towards the railing. Verr puts her book down and watches. The adeptus grips the wooden bannister, his gloved fingers digging into the wood hard enough to make it creak. 

“I just—”

“Adeptus Xiao?” 

Xiao jolts at the sound of Verr’s voice. He turns to look at her, his posture stiff, and Verr sees a tacky streak of blood dripping down his front, as well as the hem of his sleeve. She’s not sure if it belongs to him or not. 

She wonders if she should ask if he’s okay.

“What did I say about tracking blood through my inn?” She asks instead, rising from her seat in the doorway. It’s unkind, maybe, but she’s too annoyed to stop herself.

At this point, she’s become desensitised to the blood that sticks to Xiao like his own shadow. She can’t say the same about her guests who, on the off chance they see Verr’s reluctant tenant, are far less inclined to stay the night. 

Verr would bring that up, but she tries not to talk to Xiao if she can help it. He’s not very approachable and seems single-minded in his quest for violence, plus she promised him she’d leave him alone if he did the same for her. 

“And what did I say about getting in the way of my work?” He replies. His voice wavers slightly, but his expression is stony. 

Verr frowns. “You’re obviously not working. That’s why I’m here.”

“I am working, actually,” Xiao says through gritted teeth. “I’m just here for a rest. I will be leaving now.” He looks odd—Verr notes that he’s holding his shoulders in a strange way, like the muscles are stiff and he can’t move them, but he seems to move them just fine when he turns back to the balcony and begins to climb. 

“Hey!” She calls, stepping forward through the partition. The wind on the balcony is biting. “If you’re working then why am I hearing about a dozen new hilichurl camps cropping up in the marsh?”

Xiao turns to her with a scowl. “I am not your maid.” 

“But you’re supposed to hunt monsters, right?”

“Sure.”

“You not hunting those monsters is interfering with my business.”

“Horrible. My deepest condolences.” Xiao rolls his eyes, making him look so much like the teenager he appears to be that it almost makes Verr forget to get angry. Almost.

“We made a deal, Adeptus Xiao,” she snaps. 

“We did, but I just—” Xiao’s expression shifts suddenly, becoming unreadable. He cuts himself off and stares straight ahead for a moment. 

“You just what?” Verr prompts. Xiao gives the tiniest jolt and turns his head away. 

“It… doesn’t matter. I am leaving.” He straightens himself up, stiff and awkward, and clambers onto the balcony railing. “I’ll hunt your monsters, Verr Goldet. But do not presume me to be at your beck and call.” 

He disappears in a flare of black wind. After a moment, a low whistle pierces the silence. Verr turns to see Huai’an standing in the doorway, polishing a glass from the kitchen. 

“He didn’t look so good,” her husband observes. 

“What do you mean?” She asks. 

Huai’an shrugs. “Did he look injured to you?”

Verr turns back to where Xiao had been standing like he’s going to materialise again. Only empty space meets her. 

She frowns and decides not to think about it.

In the morning, Verr wakes up to reports of massacred hilichurls lining the road south, blood painting the trails like rainfall. The water that rolls through the inn’s waterwheel is stained red. 

I will paint Dihua’s four corners red if it is what I must do, he’d told her once. 

They don’t make their profit goal that quarter. Verr knows she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, an inn whose path is lined with the ichor or slaughtered monsters is not one most people want to stop at.

It gets hard to corner Xiao after that. 

He disappears for a month, then never seems to linger for longer than a few hours at a time. After a while, the reports of monsters in the area dwindle slowly and steadily, with business resuming as usual before very long. But there’s a strange feeling in the air that lingers—an overbearing pressure, like the moments before a storm. At first, Verr thinks she’s imagining it—that the chilly air rolling in with summer’s end has her on edge—but then she notices changes in her guests too. 

She gets… yelled at more. Tempers seem shorter—patience thinner—among her guests, especially long-term ones. Merchants hike prices and refuse good-natured deals. Customers get angrier at the rates Verr is forced to increase to make up for lost profits. Even the Millelith who patrol the roads by the inn start pushing people around a little more than necessary. 

Verr even finds her own calm mind slipping at times…

She gets short with Huai’an too often—and he gets mad at her more frequently as a result. It’s unlike them, and in the clarity that follows these outbursts they can only stare at each other in confusion. Verr watches reports of monsters roll in again, and squeezes Huai’an’s hand. There are a few times when she finds herself having to remind herself, for the first time in her life, that she loves him. 

The monster attacks are stranger now. The hilichurls, they say, are not so much increased in number as they are in violence and daring. 

Fear spreads through the Marsh like a poison.

Verr thinks of herself, two years ago, when she’d first laid eyes on the Wangshu Tree. She thinks of when she and Huai’an had signed the lease. She’d had dreams for this place… not grand ones, maybe, but dreams all the same. She’d wanted it to be a safe haven. She’d wanted it to be peaceful. 

She can’t help but feel like it’s slipping through her fingers a little. 

Xiao appears as Verr is watering the plants on the upper balcony. They both flinch—her at the sudden rush of wind, and him at his glorified landing pad being unexpectedly occupied. 

“Archons—” Verr hisses. “Give me a little warning, would you?”

Xiao says nothing as he staggers over to the railing. He heaves a shuddering breath as quietly as possible, his shoulders quivering with the effort. 

Verr watches out of the corner of her eye as he collects himself. Now that it’s been a little while she can see what Huai’an had meant. Xiao looks ill, and whatever it is has only become noticeable recently. If she could bring herself to care a little more, she might wonder what’s wrong with him, but she can’t seem to do it. 

“You seem… less talkative, Verr Goldet,” Xiao says suddenly, his voice tight. 

Verr scoffs. 

“You don’t seem up for talking right now, Adeptus Xiao,” she replies. “I figured you might want a break from me.”

Xiao turns around, visibly schooling his expression and heaving breaths into something more regular. He looks pale and drawn, but just as irritated as normal. At least he still has that. 

He looks her up and down. 

“Is something wrong?” He asks. His voice wavers, and if Verr didn’t know better she’d almost guess Xiao is talking because he’s trying to distract her. 

Lucky for him, something is wrong. 

“Is something wrong?” Verr almost laughs. “Oh, the usual. We’ve got crazed monsters on the roads scaring everyone in the region, we’ve got merchants who won’t pay their fees and customers who think I’m lower than dirt, I keep yelling at my husband for some reason I don’t understand, and for the life of me I can’t stop yelling about it!!”

She puts her face in her hands and turns back to the plants, trying to ignore Xiao’s presence at her back. The pressure is building behind her brow. The stress, the fear, the anger. She tries to beat it down, her only consolation being that Xiao is not her customer, and cannot sue her for acting like a whining child in front of him. 

“Sorry, I… I don’t know what’s been wrong with me lately,” she mutters. “Please excuse me.”

Xiao is quiet. 

“I must’ve done something awful in a past life to deserve this, don’t you think?” Verr laughs. 

She doesn’t expect an answer. She gets one anyway. 

“Not… you,” Xiao says. Verr freezes.  

“I apologise that I have caused you trouble, Verr Goldet,” the adeptus continues. “It was not my intention. I am… sorry for your misfortune.”

It’s grumpy and stroppy and typical, but something in Xiao’s words makes Verr take pause on her way out. 

She turns around slowly. 

The sky outside is dark and the wind is cold and dry. There is no rain here, just… dark. Verr feels a chill. 

“What do you mean by that?”

“What?”

“You said you… caused us trouble?”

Xiao says nothing. He just affixes Verr with that infuriating stare. The one that pretends to find her confusing and boring and below his consideration. 

“What do you mean, you’ve “caused us trouble”?” She asks again, more firmly this time. Xiao looks away. 

The pieces click together. Slow, but sure. 

“Is… Is this your fault?” Verr asks incredulously. 

The attacks on the road. The misery in the air that followed. 

Xiao keeps looking away, his teeth gritted. “The high rate of monster activity was likely, in part, a response to the negative karma I’ve accumulated over time. Yes.”

The black miasma that sticks to Xiao’s skin like oil… the same that roils through the monsters on the roads… The awful, poisonous aura that has settled over the Inn… that ever-present dark cloud that seems to follow them around… It’s all him. 

“K-Karma?”

“Yes. Karma. It draws the monsters and these… mood changes… I… it’s been a long time since this place was inhabited but… I suppose my proximity might be an inadvertent stressor—”

A curse? A sickness? No one told her about this. Does Ningguang even know? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s Xiao’s fault. Every destruction wrought to her business—her home—her family—it’s all been him. 

His fault, the nasty part of her brain says. Who cares if the Qixing want him here? It’s his fault!

“Out.”

Xiao frowns. “Excuse me?”

“Get out,” Verr repeats. “I want you out of my inn, now.” 

She steps forward, and right now she does not see reason—she does not see the Guardian Yaksha, she only sees the architect of this disaster, standing on her balcony like he owns it. 

“I was willing to put up with your presence in the beginning, Adeptus Xiao,” she says sternly. “But I made a deal with you that you would stay out of my business if I stayed out of yours. But this? Your presence is endangering my customers, my husband and myself! I don’t care what sort of divine fucking mission you think you’re on, I will not allow you to bring harm to the people I care for! So get out!”  

Verr’s chest heaves with the force of her declaration. Xiao stands there for a long moment, shock morphing into rage, before speaking. 

“I ask myself every day… Why do I even bother?” He growls. His expression is stormy and aching. “You’re all such worthless, ungrateful, brief things and I will never, ever understand you! Why do I do what I do for you when you do not want me? Why have my kind died just to bring yours passing comfort?!”

Verr simply clenches her fist. All she can feel right now is the wave of ugly anger threatening to toss her to pieces. She doesn’t trust herself to speak. 

“I will go,” Xiao says. “This place is a waste of my time anyway.”

He summons his spear and strikes the ground. Verr has barely half a second to start feeling threatened before he snarls his parting words. 

“Farewell, Verr Goldet. Let us not meet again.” 

And with that, he is gone. The balcony is empty. The air, in his wake, is suffocating and quiet. 

Verr Goldet stares across the marsh, then walks back inside. 

When she wakes up in the morning, the feeling is gone. The anger. The fear. The dark. 

“Where’s Xiao?” Huai’an asks. 

All Verr is left with is regret.

Chapter Text

It is in the winter, five months after Xiao leaves her life by no insignificant fault of her own, when Verr falls pregnant. 

She is twenty-nine. Some of the older ladies that frequent the inn tell Verr she and Huai’an should have started trying earlier and Verr has to bite back the retort that they wouldn’t have an inn to sit and gossip at if she had, so she simply laughs along. 

Life, for all intents and purposes, goes on. 

She works as long as she can before the doctors tell her to stop (and a little longer after that until Huai’an steps in). They paint the walls of a nursery. They make supply deals that keep their kitchens stocked and legendary. They think of names. They win their first hospitality award. They write to Huai’an’s mother with the good news. They become something resembling the greatest inn in Liyue.

Verr avoids the upper balcony as much as possible. The level of vacancy is nothing drastically different than it had been when Xiao was in and out, but the lack of possibility makes it feel more empty. The first few times she dares to ascend the stairs she half expects to hear rustling silks or clacking beads. The silence is oppressive. The silence leaves her guilty. 

The monsters don’t pick up again. She’s certain Xiao is still out there, taking them down, the only difference is that he’s not coming back to the inn when he’s done. The northern winds are just as refreshing as always, but everything seems a little less… magical. 

(Huai’an hires exorcists to look over the property. They confirm, in less direct words, that the dark energy that had been hanging over the tree is gone. Verr keeps her mouth shut, but all she can think of is Xiao, hunched and quiet on the balcony, wondering if it could have been prevented differently.)

In the spring, the lantern rite descends upon Liyue once more to signal the new year—the third year of Wangshu’s life. It is here, under daylight lanterns and a clear blue sky, that Verr feels the brush of the world of the adepti through the air once more.

Or rather, through her front door.

“Hello?” 

Verr’s eyes snap away from her book with a jolt. A young woman is standing in the arching doorway. She has long blue hair that curls around a conspicuous headpiece in the shape of horns. Verr recognises her from that feature alone—it always catches her eye during her meetings with the Tianquan.

“You’re… Lady Ningguang’s secretary,” Verr realizes. “I-I’m sorry, your name was…?”

“Ganyu, ma’am,” the secretary says with a small bow, stepping forward across the threshold. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Ms Goldet.” 

She’s dressed in very elegant travelling clothes—a long blue and white coat that clasps over a similarly coloured bodice, and the strange hairpiece. But what really draws her attention is the adorned Cryo Vision that bounces at her hip as she strides forward. She’s never noticed it before.

(Verr is quite embarrassed that her first thought at the sight of an allogene in her lobby is “oh no”)

“Apologies if I don’t get up to greet you, Miss Ganyu,” Verr chuckles, indicating her vaguely pregnant self. She’s not far along enough to properly show, but the doctors have been insistent all the same. “I’ve been prescribed bed rest.” 

“I see you are still working, however,” Ganyu says with a smile. 

“Sure am,” Verr chuckles. “No doctor is keeping me away from paperwork that needs filing.”

“Oh! I know exactly what you mean!” Ganyu says emphatically, trotting to the desk. “And, before I forget, I must congratulate you and your husband. A child is a great blessing!” 

Before Verr can thank her, Ganyu is digging through the satchel on her hip. With a soft “a-ha!” she pulls out a small box wrapped in plain red paper and holds it out. 

“For me? Oh, Miss Ganyu, thank you—but I couldn’t possibly—”

“No, no! I insist,” Ganyu urges, bouncing on her heels a little. “It is my pleasure, Ms Goldet.”

Verr nods and leans forward, taking the small box in both hands. “Thank you very much,” she says. “Uh, please, take a seat.”

As Ganyu pulls up a chair, Verr hesitates slightly. There’s etiquette about gift-giving in Liyue she’s not entirely familiar with yet. She looks up at Ganyu’s expectant stare. 

“Should I open it now?” She asks.

“Oh! Yes, if you would like!” Ganyu nods.

Verr peels back the folds of the paper carefully, trying her best not to rip it. She sheds the paper layer, revealing a simple brown box, and eases the lid off to reveal a stone carving laid on a soft fabric within. 

A little dragon, carved of Noctilicous Jade.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” Verr breathes. It had to have been enormously expensive. She wonders if this is from the Qixing as a whole or just Ganyu. She isn’t sure which one would make her feel less undeserving. “Thank you so much, but I couldn’t take this—”

“No, please do!” Ganyu chirps again. “Think of it as a gift for the Rite, too, if you wish!” 

Verr lays the dragon on her lap. Its glimmering eyes look up at her. Shining. 

The air seems to grow a little colder. 

“Forgive me for cutting to the chase, Miss Ganyu,” she says abruptly, “but I’m sure you didn’t come all this way during a holiday just to congratulate me.”

Ganyu flushes at that, which does a lot to endear her to Verr. Gone is the residual, untouchable allure of Ningguang’s secretary. Verr smiles, but the expression falls as Ganyu speaks.

“I’m here about Xiao, actually,” she says quietly. As expected. Verr feels her heart sink.

“The Qixing’s finally here for my head, then?” She chuckles wryly, feeling her guts twist at the same time. She’d known this day was coming… but that isn’t making it easier.

But Ganyu just blinks. “Huh? Oh—Excuse me—What exactly do you mean?” 

“Lady Ningguang asked me to make sure Xiao continued operations,” Verr says. “I’m not convinced the Qixing aren’t aware that is no longer the case. Xiao and I got into a heated argument last autumn that ended in him… leaving. He hasn’t been back to the inn since, from my knowledge.”

Ganyu looks down at her hands. “The Tianquan is indeed aware,” she admits. “But this is actually more of a… personal visit.”

Verr raises an eyebrow. 

“I-I have known Xiao for a long time,” Ganyu explains. “I would hesitate to call us friends—I would perhaps liken him to a mentor, of a sort, though he might disagree.” 

All at once, the pieces click into place.

“You’re an adeptus,” Verr realises suddenly. Ganyu nods. “Pardon me, but, I thought the adepti lived reclusively?”

“Many of the adepti do live outside of human settlements,” Ganyu says. “But I am quilin, er, that is, half-adeptus. I find I draw the most satisfaction from helping Liyue from within its heart, so to speak.” 

Oddly, the realisation isn’t that strange. Her year with Xiao, as strained as it had been, had done a lot to relax any qualms Verr might have had about interacting with gods and spirits and all things in-between—right now, when she looks at Ganyu, she simply sees a woman who takes pride in her work and cares enough about her friend to hike all the way from the city during the busiest time of the year. 

Definitely real horns, though, Verr thinks. That’s kinda fun.

“Am I going to have to watch my back then?” Verr half-jokes. “If Xiao is out there telling all his adeptus friends I kicked him out?”

Ganyu shakes her head. “He does not speak with us often; he is as reclusive from the world of the adepti as he is the world of men, and my position between both puts me at an extra disadvantage when it comes to tracking him down. I could not tell you what he has told the others.”

She sounds very sad about it, and Verr can’t help but feel for her a little. She wonders, then, if Ganyu has simply assumed the course of events from her position within the Qixing. She must know Xiao well, to have discerned the nature of this conflict with little to no information.

“I don’t know exactly what happened, Ms Goldet,” Ganyu continues. “But when it comes to matters of the adepti there are always going to be forces at play that are difficult for humans to understand. In the same way, there are human matters that will always elude ones as ancient and… distant as Xiao.”

“His explanation of those matters sounded like a threat,” Verr says quietly, tightening her unconscious grip on the stone dragon. “I didn’t… I didn’t handle that well, as you might assume.”

“And that is a fault of our own,” Ganyu says. It’s true, but it still stings. “As it is his fault, expecting you to disregard your concern for your home and your people.”

“Miscommunication,” Verr huffs weakly.

“Indeed.”

Verr traces the spines of the stone dragon idly. “He’s in quite a lot of pain, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Ganyu agrees sadly. “His… condition, if you were to call it that… is chronic. There is not much that can be done to stop it, I fear. He is usually quite good at mitigating it… but the incident surrounding his departure…”

Verr can fill in the blanks. Whatever is wrong with Xiao had gotten worse, enough to start affecting the inn as a whole, the way ink bleeds through paper. 

“Why does it happen?”

“It is not my place to say,” Ganyu replies quietly. She twists her fingers together. “But it… it is not his fault. That is what I came here to tell you. I… I am not asking you to take him back, I am just asking you to understand it is not his fault what happened to him, or your inn.”

Ganyu looks desperate now, desperate for Verr to understand. Verr sighs. “I know that,” she says. “I… I regret the way I left things with him. If I were to do it all over again I would not throw blame at him as blindly as I did.”

The other woman smiles. “I think he would appreciate that.”

That startles a laugh out of Verr. “Would he really?”

Ganyu looks a little bashful. “Well, perhaps not but, nevertheless, I appreciate it.” She smiles. “Thank you, Verr Goldet.”

“I can’t see much I deserve thanks for, but… you’re welcome.” 

After that, they share a cup of tea and talk of other things—performance reviews, office gossip, and potential baby names (the latter of which Ganyu is incredibly eager to offer suggestions towards)—before Ganyu gathers her things to leave. 

Verr walks her out, stopping her before she boards the elevator. 

“If you see him, Miss Ganyu, could you… could you tell him we added a new pond to the balcony garden? And… and that the marsh still looks very lovely at night?”

She doesn’t know what makes her say it. Guilt, maybe, or maybe just the echoes of Ganyu’s earlier words. 

I’m not asking you to take him back.

How dramatic, like a breakup, she thinks, but she can’t help but picture an occupied upper balcony—rich-scented wind fluttering through the chimes and a steady presence over the marsh. A home for someone she’s sure doesn’t have one. Safety. 

Ganyu smiles brightly. “I’ll keep that in mind, Ms Goldet.”

Life goes on. Things do not go to plan. 

They rarely do, but it is not always that they falter so spectacularly. As such, this instance is notable. 

It is a fact known to the people of Teyvat that the gods are fickle things—some are protective, some are distant, some are a guiding hand, and others are commanding fist—and while all of them are capable of kindness, they are not, by nature, merciful creatures. 

High above the marshes of Dihua sits an inn in the boughs of a great tree. The dregs of spring shake the final flowers from the sturdy branches. New summer sunlight shines into a small nursery with silk flowers painted on the walls and a jade dragon on the windowsill. 

Mercy is a privilege. 

The nursery will never be used. 

For the first time since its opening, Wangshu Inn is closed.

Huai’an stands just outside their bedroom door—the doctor had wanted to speak to him privately, downstairs, but Huai’an had been loathe to leave his wife’s side. The compromise puts a door between them, thick enough to block the light but not thick enough to block their hushed conversation. 

Verr listens to the doctor spin horrible truths. She wonders, staring at her hands curled atop her crumpled, thin blankets, why the doctor won’t say these things to her face. Why won’t he just look her in the eye and ruin her life himself?

Verr Goldet is made of stronger stuff, but only most of the time. 

Maybe him not telling her is a good thing. For at this moment, with dirtied sheets six feet from her starched sickbed and an ache settling deep in her bones, she has never felt more hollow. 

Eventually, the doctor leaves. Huai’an comes back in to sit with her for a while, holding her hand in the silence, letting her cry in his arms. The doctor says she’s lucky to be alive, he tells her. She thinks if this is what luck is, she’s not so sure she wants it. 

Huai’an leaves to finish closing up the inn. Sometime later—exactly how long, she can’t be sure—the door to Verr’s room opens quietly. The person who enters is usually silent as a soft breeze but makes his presence known now, purposefully dragging his feet over the threshold. The mask on his hip clacks dully.

“Adeptus Xiao,” she whispers.

“Verr Goldet,” he says, and for the first time in the years she’s known him, Verr hears a tone of concern in Xiao’s voice. 

She hears him walk forward slowly and sit down on the end of her bed. He does his best not to jostle her, but she pulls her legs up all the same, curling further into herself. She doesn’t have the energy to look at him.

“I had just returned…” He says. “The inn was closed.”

Verr says nothing, she just lets him speak. She doesn’t need to reply. These are facts, easy things that mean nothing at all. 

“Huai’an told me what happened,” he says. “I am sorry for your loss.”

The way he says it is so stilted that Verr would have laughed if she had a single wisp of humour left in her body. The words are stiff in his mouth and she cannot possibly think he truly means them. 

Never before has his human guise stretched this thin in Verr’s eyes. At the foot of her sickbed, the façade of a young man crumbles, and in its place sits something ancient and disconnected. Distant. Distant from her and the idea of human empathy. Human anything. 

“You’re not sorry.” She is too weak now to raise her voice above a whisper. “You’re just saying what you know you’re supposed to say.” 

He is quiet.

“But for the life of me… I can’t figure out why you’re trying,” she continues. “I can’t figure out why you’re here after how I treated you.”

Xiao sighs but doesn’t rise to it. Verr doesn’t know what she’d been expecting… for him to snap at her? Would she have wanted that? She doesn’t even know if she wants him here or not. Her mind feels like putty. She feels frail and hollowed out. She’s cold. 

She feels Xiao shift on the end of the bed. For the first time that night she sees him, in a swish of washed-out silks, pale skin, and softly rattling ornaments in the dim light. It’s been just over two years since she met him, almost one since she’s seen him in person, and he hasn’t changed a bit. He leans over and places something on her bedside table before sitting back and crossing his legs under him in silence. 

He’s placed something right where she can see it, where she doesn’t have to muster the will to lift her head, and even in the dark the petals of glaze lilies shine like diamonds. 

“Oh, Xiao…” 

“I do not know the etiquette for situations like these,” he says carefully. He is slow with his words, like he’s balancing on ice. “Gifts and… condolences… they are not my realm. But I am truly sorry for your loss.” 

It’s a small pot of three lilies. Verr recognises the design as one of the pots from the upper balcony—likely emptied and refilled. 

“I knew someone many years ago who liked these,” Xiao says. “She found comfort in them and you remind me of her somewhat.” 

Verr doesn’t say anything, she just stares at the flowers. 

“Smart, resourceful, and strong of mind…” Xiao continues, almost to himself. “And like you, she experienced great suffering.” 

Verr looks sideways at him. “Was she also terrible?” 

“Never,” Xiao says. “But she… she was protective of that which was hers.”

Verr waits a moment, wetting her dry lips before speaking, hoping the words are strong enough. “What happened to her?”

“She was killed during the Archon War.”

“The Ar—" Verr huffs out a humourless laugh. "You’re not very good at this comforting thing, are you?”

Xiao, thankfully, takes it in stride. 

“I’m not… equipped,” he murmurs, “to fight problems where there isn’t something to kill.” 

He holds his mask tight in his hands, his fingers running in small trails over its bumps and ridges, tracing the cracks in the surface. The eyes stare like beacons of ill light, staining the soft angles of his face an unearthly green. 

“There are many blameless cruelties in the world,” Verr whispers after a moment. “They are not our faults to bear.”

“Mm. Such cruelties… they’re the worst kind,” Xiao continues. “The injustices where nothing can be done—doomed to remain unjust.”

He releases the mask, letting the poor, ghastly thing fall into his lap. He reaches down, clumsy and slow, to clench his fists in the sheets. He still won’t look at her. She thinks that’s probably okay.

What he’s talking about is futility, and Verr sees for the first time, in true clarity, how intimately he must know such a feeling. 

Ningguang had told her of Xiao’s purpose… of his mission of divinely sanctioned, unending violence. A solitary, never-ending war. 

She is supposed to aid him—but what had she done beyond the bare minimum? Snapping at his wanton destruction? Turning a blind eye to the blood he tracked onto their upper balcony in the same way she turned a blind eye to the stiff lines of pain that ran through him when he sat up there alone? Ever-vigilant, ever-hurting. She’d driven him away. And now he’s back—she’s never felt less deserving of forgiveness if that’s even what you’d call this. She doesn’t know. She’s not sure he knows either. 

“Do you fear that, Adeptus Xiao? Do you fear futility?” 

“I can’t afford to fear my own reality,” he says. 

“That’s not what I asked.” 

“...”

“Come here,” she says quietly, lifting her hands from the covers and holding them out. He doesn’t move. She feels her hands start to shake. “Please, Xiao.” 

With tears swimming in her eyes, Verr senses Xiao shift off the bed again. She hears the swish of sashes and clacking of beads, and then his hands are over hers.

She wonders how she ever could have thought, upon their first meeting, that he was human. Because right now it’s so painfully obvious that he has no idea what he’s doing. He doesn’t know how to hold her hands, how hard to do it, where to lay his fingers. He crouches stiffly at her bedside, eyes swimming with uncertainty. 

His hands are warm, though, and steady. Verr chides herself for thinking they wouldn’t be. Because no matter how much she used to tease Xiao for his connection to the wind—no matter how red he went when she hummed bawdy, hip-twirling ballads from the scriptures of Lord Barbatos—Xiao has made it ever clear that if he belongs to anyone, it is to the Land and Lord of Geo. 

He’s like a stone now; an ancient black rock rising above a tumultuous sea for her to anchor herself to. He doesn’t know how to hold her hands, sure, but it’s okay because he’s there. She is finally tethered and for just a moment, through shaking hands, she feels the stillness of the warm earth in him. She lets herself cry, tears spilling down her cheeks and landing softly on the rumpled sheets. She cries for a long time—great, shaking sobs—until she’s empty.

Xiao exhales and squeezes her hands. It’s too light; he’s trying too hard to be gentle.

“I will tell you what I have just told Huai’an,” he says, and it carries the air of some great proclamation, even though it’s being whispered to her at the side of a sickbed. “As a protector of Liyue and its people, I am also a protector of you.” 

Verr doesn’t trust herself to speak, so she just looks at him. Determined golden eyes flash like a cat’s. 

“If you cannot bring yourself to kill—cannot bring yourself to fight—call my name,” he says. For the first time, Verr sees the ancient warrior thing inside him peek through the cracks.

“You’ll hear?” She breathes.

“I hear all the pleas of Liyue. You are of Liyue. I will be there.” 

“Is that hard?” 

“It is my purpose.”

She huffs a laugh. “That’s not what I asked.”

Xiao’s lips form a tight line. He says nothing else. He’s quiet in the way Verr has come to know means what little human procedure he’s come to know by rote has run out, leaving him adrift in foreign space. 

“Thank you,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not apologise to me when you are the one in pain.” 

“But you’re in pain too,” Verr says. “Don’t pretend you aren’t. I see you… and… and I’m sorry I pushed you away for something that wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry for not trying… f-for not letting Wangshu be yours too.” 

“My faults are nothing you can help with,” Xiao says. “And should I stay, there is only more of a chance such karma will befall this place again.” 

“Not if we help you. That’s what I’m supposed to be here for. To help.” 

“How often must I warn you not to meddle in the affairs of the Adepti?” 

“Oh, Xiao,” she says, with something close to a laugh. She squeezes his hand just the right amount, hard enough to make his golden gaze snap to hers. “At least once more, I fear.”

He sits with her quietly for another twenty or so minutes before he leaves. Verr only realises after he’s long gone that she no longer fears his absence. 

Wangshu Inn opens after a month’s leave. When guests return, it is to the sun streaming in through the windows, verdant greenery bursting from every corner, the warm glow of lanterns, Huai’an’s greetings, and Verr’s smiling face behind the front desk. 

The glaze lilies, tucked neatly away on a windowsill in the innkeepers’ chambers, are closed and tired. 

Verr receives many flowers. She is given windwheel asters for new beginnings, cecilias for love, and calla lilies for sympathy. The Qixing sends qingxins for peace. The Guild sends silk flowers for mercy. They wilt and die after a few weeks. Verr throws them away. She does not throw away the weak, half-bloomed glaze lilies in her bedroom. 

After three months, Verr’s smiles start to reach her eyes again.

After four months, she no longer flinches at the sound of children’s laughter.

After five months, Xiao returns. 

She finds him on his own one night, when sleep cannot find her. 

Verr wanders up to Xiao’s balcony—which has always been his, really, no matter how much she’d protested in the past—and is surprised to see him sitting by the potted lotus pond, trailing his fingers through the water. His hair is stained bright green in the moonlight, the silvery light of which only accentuates the stiff set to his shoulders. Once again, he is unchanged under the light of the moon, as young as he had been the day she met him. She wonders how different she looks to him. 

“It’s good to see you again, Adeptus Xiao,” Verr says quietly. The adeptus doesn’t move, except to carefully extract his hand from the water and pull it into his lap. 

“Likewise, Verr Goldet,” he says. 

“Are you… well?”

“I am fine.”

He does not take his eyes off the marsh.  

Verr wraps her shawl around herself as she steps out into the open air; the chill of winter hangs in the air. After a moment, she sits down next to Xiao. 

He gives her an odd look and she doesn’t blame him for it. After all, the last time she sat down with him like this they’d made a mutual contract to ignore each other forever. She supposes it’s been voided now. 

“What are we doing?” She whispers. 

“Listening,” he says after a moment. 

Verr doesn’t hear much of anything other than the wind in the leaves above, a soft hushing not unlike gentle waves on a faraway shore. She wonders what he’s listening to. 

“Are you… also… well?” Xiao asks suddenly. Verr smiles.

“I’m better,” she says. “Thank you for asking.” 

He hums in response, and says nothing more. Verr follows his gaze out to the marsh, which gleams like hammered metal in the moonlight. 

“Can I get you anything?” She asks softly. “Some tea?”

“I don’t require anything,” he says. 

“How about a proper apology?” 

Xiao starts, just a little, and his golden eyes flit to hers quickly. It’s the first time they’ve made eye contact all night. 

“You mean… apologise to me?”

“Yes.” 

“What for?” 

Oh, he actually doesn’t know, Verr realises. She huffs in amusement. 

“For driving you away last year. I was out of line to talk to you the way I did, and I was horribly unkind, too. I wasn’t seeing things from your perspective, or respecting what you go through, and because of that, I blamed you for something that wasn’t your fault. I want to apologise for that especially—for not helping you when I should have.” 

“You do not need to help me, Verr Goldet.”

“No. But I would like to,” she admits.

Xiao sighs, drawing up his knees and resting his chin atop them. He looks young. 

“I accept your apology,” he says finally, with a steady look in her direction. “I apologise also. I was unsympathetic as well—empathy does not come so easily to me.”

“That’s okay, Adeptus Xiao. We’re all different in that way.”

He just hums, closes his eyes, and falls back into silence. Verr sits for a while, sipping her tea, enjoying Xiao’s company for the first time in her life. What a strange day. 

“So what are you listening for all the way up here?” She asks softly. He seems quieter than usual, so she lowers her tone accordingly. 

“Hm. Sometimes I think I don’t even remember anymore,” Xiao murmurs. He doesn’t open his eyes. Verr wonders if he ever sleeps. 

The cold breeze blows gently from the north. Xiao inhales slowly, and Verr watches the lines of tension in his shoulders relax a fraction. His brow furrows a touch, but it seems to come more from concentration than pain.

“The wind,” he says in a tired voice, “is a good substitute.” 

Later, Verr returns to her room, gathering a pile of blankets to take to the upper balcony. She doesn’t care how much Xiao protests—she’s not letting one of her guests go cold. 

She’s halfway out the door when a glimmer of blue catches her eye. 

There, on the windowsill, the glaze lilies bloom wide in the moonlight. 

After eight months, the lantern rite festival comes around again, as it does every year like clockwork, and Verr lights the first lantern she’s ever wished on in earnest. Wangshu is lit from within by a hearth fire that glows like ten thousand captured stars. She finally feels, in some small way, like she’s healing. 

Later that night, when Verr climbs the steps to the upper balcony, balancing a plate of Jade Parcels in one hand, she stops before she reaches the landing. 

“—sure you don’t want to join—”

It’s Huai’an.

“—I am fine—”

And Xiao. Verr creeps a little closer. 

“—would make us feel better if you would at least try it,” Huai’an is saying in a low voice.

“Your concern would be best placed elsewhere,” Xiao says. He sounds strained. “This cannot be fixed.” 

“But it could possibly be mitigated,” Huai’an says. “We are more than willing to try.” 

“Why? What is the point?”

“The point is you’re a guest in my inn, Adeptus Xiao, and until the day you leave us for good I will do my utmost to care for you.” 

Verr feels herself smile at her husband’s words. 

There is a rustling of fabric and the sound of something being pushed along the ground. 

“To use a childish turn of phrase, I am not the boss of you, Adeptus Xiao,” Huai’an says. “I can merely offer suggestions. But I hope you will consider them.” 

There is no audible response. Instead, Verr hears Huai’an’s steps approach the doorway—louder and louder until they round the corner onto the landing. He looks a little surprised to see her, but the two of them move closer instinctively.

Verr glances over Huai’an’s shoulder then back to his face. 

Is he okay? Her glance asks. 

Not even a little, says the grim shake of Huai’an’s head. He reaches out to squeeze her unburdened hand. “It’s… particularly bad today, I fear,” he murmurs. 

After realising the true reason behind Xiao’s late-night seclusions atop their balcony, Verr and Huai’an have both found it hard to stop noticing. Huai’an had confided in Verr that he had seen similar behaviour in Millelith veterans—a full-body kind of ache that developed from years of injury, shock and stress. 

Verr privately thinks Xiao is a little bit of a different case—that his pain, which waxes and wanes like the phases of the moon, has a much less tangible cause.  

It’s changed it all, a little. It’s changed the way they both watch the stiff line of his shoulders as he paces the upper balcony, or the shake of his hands when he curls under the awning on rainy days. 

He refuses rooms when they offer, telling them he must be ready to leave in an instant—and the balcony is an optimal place to survey Liyue’s northern expanses. Verr often wonders if he simply doesn’t know how to live somewhere. 

She steps through the archway onto the upper balcony, taking stock of Xiao’s position before she approaches. He’s sitting by one of the potted trees, a woollen blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a cup of tea in his hands. It smells more medicinal than the typical jasmine or osmanthus brews they try to force down Xiao’s throat. Verr moves forward slowly. 

“Do you not want to come downstairs?” She asks. “There’s a delightful partial view of the sea. You can almost convince yourself you can see Liyue Harbour…”

“As I have just told Huai’an,” Xiao drawls. “I do not like crowds. I am fine here.”

“Well… that’s quite alright.” Verr settles down next to him. “I think Dihua is at its most charming at night anyway. It would be a shame to miss it.”

Xiao sighs. It’s all very put-upon, but he doesn’t ask her to leave. Instead, he simply says, “Do you have nothing better to do than hover over me, Verr Goldet?”

“Nope.”

She unfolds a blanket from the pile Huai’an had evidently brought up for Xiao, draping the thick wool around her shoulders, and joins Xiao in his peaceful silence. She lays the plate of Jade Parcels between them and takes one, saving the others for him even though she knows he won’t take them.

From this angle, there aren’t many lanterns in the air. Just a faint glow on the horizon, likely from Qingce Village, and a few smatterings of lights from homesteads across the marsh. The wind is mild tonight, allowing the few lanterns that are around free reign to twist lazily into the sky. Like stars on earth, Verr thinks. 

There’s a small hitch in Xiao’s breathing, just for a moment, but it’s accompanied by a twitch that catches Verr’s eye. He shivers. 

“It’s bad again, isn’t it?” She asks. 

Xiao takes a sip of his tea, averting his eyes. “It is ever-present. There is no need to concern yourself with me.” 

“Too late,” Verr says, which makes Xiao grumble. She sighs. “You know… about a year or so ago… I spoke to a lovely young woman by the name of Ganyu—”

“G—?” Xiao’s eyes go wide as he whirls to face Verr, almost spilling some of his tea in the process. He splutters for a second. Verr can almost see his brain restarting. “I—Oh no...”

The reaction is so… casual… It makes Verr chuckle. She’s fascinated by how quickly Xiao can seesaw between ancient warrior and emotionally-stunted teenager. 

“She had a lot of nice things to say about you.” 

“Do not lie.”

“I’m not lying! She did! She said you were a friend!”

Xiao rolls his eyes and turns back to the darkened marsh. The weak smattering of lanterns in the air beyond reflects in his golden eyes. He shakes again and Verr knows it’s not from the cold. 

“She also told me you’re ill,” Verr admits. “Not in so many words, of course, but I read between the lines a little. Is that why you are in pain so often?”

“Do you really need me to answer your questions when you seem to know the answers already?” Xiao asks. 

“I’d like to know a little more,” Verr replies. “If you’d permit me, of course.”

Xiao straightens up a little. “If you must know something, know that I have lived a long life full of terrible deeds and I am simply paying recompense. It is nothing that can be changed.”  

“But it’s worse sometimes, isn’t it?” Verr prods. “Like now?”

“It is… worse in the cold,” Xiao admits. “And worse over time. I am taking precautions to prevent the misfortune of the year before last, so—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, Adeptus Xiao.”

“Whatever. The fact remains that you cannot control these things so I do not see why it is important to you.”

Verr sighs. “What is it?”

Xiao narrows his eyes. “You toy with dangerous truths, Verr Goldet.”

“Really? I feel like I’m just being a good host.” 

The wind from the north blows lazily against them, the chilly air catching Verr’s auburn locks and Xiao’s black ones and twisting them in chaotic little eddies. It reminds Verr of Mondstadt, for just a moment.

Xiao sighs, looking out into the night. 

“The history of these nations is a bloody one, fraught with conflict and death,” Xiao begins, and Verr has to physically stop her jaw from dropping as he actually answers her. 

“The Seven now rule Teyvat’s lands, skies, and oceans…” he continues, “but their nations are built upon the graves of bygone, slaughtered Gods.” 

The air seems colder all of a sudden. Verr wraps her hands tighter around her mug of tea, her eyes locked on Xiao. “From the Archon War?” She asks. 

“Yes.”

“You were there?”

“I was.” He says carefully. “We… the yaksha… were all there. After we were given names by Rex Lapis we served as his vanguard. We waged holy slaughter in his name—and it was the extension of his will and contract with us that we continue to protect Liyue from the consequences of that war...”

“Consequences?”

“Gods die,” Xiao continues. “As much as it seems like they cannot. But despite their mortality, they do not disappear so easily. Their wrath lives on, seeping out into the living world. Morax alone buried many of his foes beneath the very earth he would build Liyue upon, and the other archons were just as vicious. The blood of their opponents watered the earth as their bones fertilised it. Demons thrive from the malignance of these vanquished deities, and it is here that the yakshas… that the yakshas thrived.”

“But you’re the only yaksha left,” Verr says. “Is that…”

“Karma,” Xiao says in a strained tone. He closes his eyes. “It builds within you—a punishment for eons of wholesale butchery and carrying the weight of that wrath on our shoulders. It draws corruption to you like a moth to a flame, and eventually, it consumes you. Corrupts you. I suppose if you spend so long fighting monsters you are in danger of becoming one too.”

“But you’re not a monster.”

Xiao’s eyes flicker out to the marsh. 

“Not yet,” he admits. “For now, I am simply the only one who lived. Who was… lucky enough.” 

He sounds like he’s reciting something someone’s told him—like the words aren’t his own, but he’s desperately trying to make them his.

Lucky. Verr has been told that before. You are lucky to be alive, they had told her, and while she believes it now she hadn’t at the time. When one is steeped in grief on all sides—drowning in it, chained by it—what sort of luck is living?

She thinks she understands Xiao a little better at this moment—or a part of him, at least. She cannot compare their two wildly different modes of suffering, but she can see common ground between them where there was none before; A weight to living she has seen in few others. 

“Who told you that?” She asks quietly. When his eyes dart to hers she tries her kindest smile.

“People have told me the same thing,” she says in as steady a voice as she can manage. “It’s a tough break—trying to convince yourself they’re right.”

After a moment, Xiao replies. “A friend.”

That’s a first. Verr smiles. “They must have been a special person.”

Xiao huffs and looks away, his face going as red as a Jueyun Chilli. Oh? “I suppose,” he mutters. “Though I have not seen him in some time.”

He doesn’t look sad exactly, Verr observes. She wonders if this person is dead or merely far away. She hopes it’s the latter because Xiao’s blush is telling her a lot of information his pursed lips aren’t and she’d feel bad if such a person were no longer in his life. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” She says. 

“Do not be sorry,” Xiao says. “It is by his incompetence and not yours that he eludes me.”

Ah. The latter then. Good. 

“My husband was the same before I finally convinced him to marry me,” Verr sighs happily. “Once you catch someone like that they’re forever, though, you know?”

“Yeah…” Xiao hums, before abruptly snapping to attention, face burning in the low lantern light. “Wait, wh— what is that supposed to mean?!” 

Verr can’t help the laugh that follows. 

After nine months, Xiao’s visits become slightly more frequent. He never stays for longer than a night or two at a time and never does so for consecutive weeks, but his presence is somehow ever so slightly… more. 

An elderly female guest commends Verr on the “polite young gentleman” she’s hired to tend to the plants on the upper balcony. She’s seen him up there, straightening a few of the pots, and she can only assume he’s a new hire. 

“He’s doing a lovely job with your plants,” she says. “They always look so nice when I come by.”

Verr is about to tell the woman that it’s Huai’an that tends the plants when she catches a flash of purple silk on the upper stairs. 

Oh.

It keeps happening, in a thousand little ways. 

“Didn’t encounter a single Hillichurl on the way here! Whoever you have running security is a keeper!” 

“That lovely young assistant of yours helped me with my bags!”

“Miss! Tell that grumpy boy thank you for getting my ball out of the water for me!”

There are weeks between his visits but Verr has no problem with this. In the early days, she’d thought of Xiao as something of a pesky cat who’d pop in and out as infrequently as he pleased, and that behaviour still rings somewhat true. 

She doesn’t know where he goes when he’s not at the inn. She assumes it’s not all fighting because sometimes he’s gone for over a month and even he couldn’t fight that long. Sometimes he comes back from long absences with that perpetual, painful stiffness somewhat eased. On days like these, he’s more willing to talk, more willing to engage, more willing to be seen.

On bad days they give him space. They leave blankets and tea at the top of the stairs and come by once he leaves to collect them—regardless of whether or not they were used. 

On one of the days that are somewhere in-between, Verr receives a package. 

A courier from the city meets her at the base of the tree with the usual mail—bills, letters from the Qixing disguising more important letters from the Qixing, a missive from the hospitality guild about their late fees, a stack of boxes with new crockery orders… and a plain, brown paper package. 

There’s a small note on top addressed to her, which she pockets in favour of examining the package. It’s about the size of Verr’s palm and when she gives it a gentle shake she can feel something shifting inside. She turns it over, taking a second to translate the single character written on the bottom. When the meaning clicks, her eyes widen a fraction. 

It’s addressed to Xiao. 

Huh. 

“Mail for you.”

“Pardon?”

Xiao is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the balcony, which is the perfect position for Verr to toss the mysterious package at the back of his head. 

Xiao doesn’t even flinch as he twists around to snatch it out of the air. 

“Shit,” Verr huffs. 

“What is this?” Xiao asks. 

“Mail. For you.” She walks over to turn the box right-side-up in his hands so he can see the single character of his name written on the top. 

The calligraphy is very elegant. Xiao’s eyes go wide as he takes it in. 

In a split second, the paper exterior of the package goes flying, torn to pieces by violent hands, revealing a small bundle inside. Xiao stares down at it quietly.

“What is it?” Verr asks after a moment. 

“Medicine,” he says. “It’s medicine.” That’s all he says. 

“Oh,” Verr says back. That’s all she has to say. 

The sun shines down on Xiao’s hunched form. The lines of pain are strong in him but, unlike before, Verr has the feeling something here might be… fixable. 

With a tenderness she has never seen from the adeptus, Xiao lifts a small envelope out of the nest of crumpled paper, unfolding it to reveal a measure of grey powder. The second thing that is revealed is—

“Sweet-fucking-Barbatos, what is that smell?!” Verr cries, clamping her hand over her mouth and nose. The air, almost instantly, had been filled with the smell of firewood, tilled earth, and chemicals. It’s overbearing enough to make her eyes water immediately. 

“Medicine,” Xiao says again. “I have to drink it.”

“Gods, okay,” Verr makes for the door. “I’ll get you some water.” 

If the medicine truly helps Xiao, Verr will be the first to thank this mystery medicine sender—but could they have made it a little more palatable?

Verr dashes down to the kitchen and grabs a glass of water, but hesitates on her way back out, eyes drifting to the chill-compartment by the stairs where she keeps her drinks.

You soft-hearted idiot, she thinks. You know he won’t drink it. 

By the time Verr returns to the balcony, the smell has spread to the stairs. She tries to breathe through her mouth as she hurries forward.

“I got water,” she announces as she ducks through the partition, “but… I thought you might want something that tastes a little better—to keep it down.”

She sets the water down on the floor, sitting down a few moments later and holding out her next offering—a tall glass of apple cider with fresh fruit and a little umbrella (for vibrancy). Not half bad, she thinks. 

Much to her consternation and fascination, Xiao leans over and honest-to-gods sniffs the drink.

“What is this supposed to be?” He asks, his lip curling. He takes it from her hand gingerly, like it’s going to bite him. 

“Apple cider and fruit,” Verr explains. “I get it imported from Mondstadt. It’s expensive so don’t spit it out.”

“I don’t know which of these smells worse,” Xiao grumbles. 

“The medicine smells worse,” Verr answers in a dry voice. “You asked for something to wash it down with, you goon, now take it.”

“You do not command me, woman,” Xiao snarls, tipping the powdered medicine into the glass of cider as he speaks. All bark, no bite. “The only person with that privilege is Rex Lapis himself.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not here,” Verr tuts. “So drink up, kid.”

Xiao ignores her small flirtation with heresy in favour of knocking back the entire glass all at once. He eats all the fruit chunks and the little umbrella too, but Verr is too caught up in the shock of him actually eating something she prepared for him to be fussed with telling him he shouldn’t have done that. 

“How is it?” She asks quickly.

The adeptus frowns, chewing the umbrella slowly, then swallows laboriously. His response is preceded by a violent shiver. “I… I did not like it.”

”Is that stuff going to work?”

”I… I do not know. Perhaps.” 

Verr sighs, sliding along the floor until she’s laying on it, looking up at her resident immortal weirdo. She pushes the glass of plain water closer, and Xiao wastes no time in loudly washing his mouth out with it. Gross. 

“Apologies,” he says after a moment.

“No apologies,” Verr insists, an idea beginning to burn at the back of her mind. “How about I make you something else instead?”

“Why?”

“Why not? They say the fastest way to a man’s heart is his stomach.”

“I’m not a man,” Xiao says confidently. “I’m an adeptus.” 

Verr sits up, resting her hand on her chin. “Your brain fascinates me.” 

“Yours confuses me.” 

Verr doesn’t give up. “There must be something you like to eat. Huai’an and I have been pulling our hair out over it for months, ever since you came back, you know?”

“A wasted effort.”

Verr sighs again and gathers Xiao’s empty glasses, along with the torn package paper. “You told me around the time we first met that you eat dreams. I never did find out if you were telling the truth.” 

“I do not lie,” Xiao replies. Okay, Verr thinks, good enough answer. 

“That’s a start!” She declares. “What does a dream taste like, my dear adeptus?”

Verr expects him to brush her off. To scoff or roll his eyes or say something about how a mortal like her could never understand. But the question makes him pause, and he scratches his chin thoughtfully. The diamond on his forehead crinkles as he furrows his brow. 

“Soft,” he says finally. “The good ones are soft and… gentle. I miss them, sometimes.”

“And the bad ones?” 

“Cold,” he hums. “I… miss them too. In a different way.” 

“Why don’t you eat dreams anymore?”

“It is not who I am,” Xiao says simply, he taps a gloved finger on the floor, tracing a whorl in the wood. “I, as Xiao, am no longer a dream eater. To eat dreams is to sever them from the minds and hearts that bore them, and it is my contract with Rex Lapis that I protect the people of Liyue—to consume their dreams would be an act of unimaginable harm.”

They fall silent. His words, like they so often do, give Verr much more to think about than she’d gone into their conversation prepared for. She turns his statements over in her head as she finishes wrapping up the remnants of the drink, like a fine stone she’d picked up on a riverbank, and turns back to Xiao when she’s done. 

“I’m sure we’ll find a food you like,” she says in as kind a voice as possible. “Don’t worry.” 

“I guarantee you will not,” Xiao insists. “And who said anything about worrying? I am not worrying.”

“It’s an expression, Adeptus Xiao. And you’re our oldest guest. What kind of hosts would we be if we didn’t look after you?” 

“I was here before you, Verr Goldet,” Xiao says lightly, spinning the broken umbrella stick between his fingers. Oh good, he didn’t swallow it after all. “I should think you are my guests.” 

Verr grins and snatches the stick back. “Start bringing us breakfast in bed and I’ll consider it. Until then, we’re happy to have you, Adeptus Xiao.”

Xiao does not laugh. Verr has never seen him smile and doesn’t think it likely she ever will, but she’d like to think he looks a little lighter when she stands to leave. 

Verr makes it all the way back down to the kitchen before she remembers the letter. She tugs it out of her pocket, unfolding the parchment. It’s an exquisitely fine paper, thin-yet-sturdy, and embossed with small… butterflies? The calligraphy itself is elegant and precise, sweeping and immaculate on the pale paper. However, despite its grandeur, the words are few:

‘Thank you for looking after him.’

“Uh… no problem,” Verr says quietly to no one, before heading back upstairs. 

(The earth, deep below and unnoticed, hums contentedly)

That night, Verr leaves a pot of oolong tea at the entrance to Xiao’s balcony, knowing it will be empty when morning comes. She wakes next to her husband, with the sun shining through their curtains, a soft northern breeze tapping at the window frame, and a pot of glimmering glaze lilies on the windowsill. 

It is here, in the spring of Wangshu’s fourth year, in the warm boughs of a great tree, that the world Verr Goldet has built around herself seems to click a little bit more into place.

Chapter Text

The years pass, marked by lantern rites, summer rains, moonchase festivals, and winter storms. 

And most importantly, chefs. 

The Wangshu Inn steadily gains a reputation. Several, actually. Its first reputation is that of a respectable establishment—a bastion of peace, luxury, and safety in the heart of Dihua Marsh. 

Its second reputation is a smaller one, shared among Liyue’s hospitality community at first, though over time it spread beyond the nation’s borders. From Mondstadt’s beer gardens to Fontaine’s bistros, everyone seems to know one thing:

The Wangshu Inn is where good chefs go to die. 

Not literally, of course, though proximity to the Guardian Yaskha probably doesn’t do one any favours in that department. No, rather, the Wangshu Inn is where careers are killed. 

Verr disagrees of course. The Wangshu Inn’s remote location, in her opinion, has a tendency to draw bad, strange, or high maintenance chefs to its kitchen, where they are subsequently chewed up and spat out by the demands of catering to an inn of its size and locale. There’s no curse, no matter what the hospitality guilds in the city say. 

By the fifth year of operations, the longest a chef has managed to stay employed at Wangshu is seven months. 

It’s eight in the morning on the day their eleventh head chef walks right out the door. The stuck-up bitch hadn’t even waited until the breakfast rush was over to hand in her resignation and tear off into the sunrise. Verr sighs as she thumbs through the eight-page letter the woman had left behind. It’s all in cursive. 

“Damn high-strung Fontainiennes,” Verr sighs. 

Xiao slams a dead rat onto the reception desk. 

Verr screams and slaps the adeptus’s hand away, sending the letter flying as she does. The rat tumbles to the floor with a muted thump. 

Xiao frowns. “Why did you do th—”

“Get that thing out of here!” Verr shrieks. “Now, Xiao! NOW!” 

Xiao picks up the rat by the tail, looks at it for a moment, then walks to the door and chucks it off the terrace into the dawn-lit sky. It’s almost scenic.

Almost. 

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Verr hisses when he returns. “What part of no dead things inside makes you think I didn’t mean animals?! That’s incredibly unhygienic!”

“Your chef is unhygienic,” Xiao says calmly, crossing his arms. “She was leaving food open and it’s attracting vermin. That was on my balcony.” 

Verr grits her teeth. “I knew I should’ve hired that guy from Inazuma instead…” 

“But he couldn’t cook tigerfish as well as her.” 

“How do you even have an opinion on that? You’ve hated every piece of food we’ve ever given you.” 

As she says it, Verr internally admits that the observation is unfair. It hasn’t been every piece of food; he’d once eaten some vegetable dumplings an old lady had made for the staff as a thank you. Sure, he’d waited an hour for them to cool down and refused any seasonings or sauce, but he’d eaten it with minimal complaint and thanked the guest after. 

Other than that, though, their forays into feeding their resident yaksha have been a bit… fruitless. And not just because he won’t eat fruit. 

“I know what a good tigerfish looks like,” Xiao continues without further explanation. Predictable, honestly. 

“Well, whatever,” Verr grumbles. “She quit this morning anyway.” 

“Good riddance,” Xiao huffs. “However that does not change the fact she has left her rats behind.”

“Then catch them, Guardian Yaksha,” Verr teases. “I pray it's not too trying a task for you.”

It’s ten in the morning when Xiao drops a little black and white cat onto Verr’s desk. She jumps, but hey, at least it isn’t a dead thing this time.  

“This is for you,” Xiao says. 

Verr blinks at him incredulously. The cat wriggles, attempting to jump to the floor, and Xiao shoots his hand out to hold it down without breaking eye contact. 

“Okay, okay! Stop!” Verr yanks the cat out of his vice grip, taking the poor thing away from the mean old adeptus. It mewls indignantly. “For the love of all that is sacred,” she sighs. “Please tell me you didn’t steal this from someone’s house.” 

“Tch. Don’t be absurd,” Xiao retorts. “I found it wandering around downstairs. It is a good fighter. Quick. It can get rid of the rats.”

There’s a scratch on his face, running the length of his cheek from his eyebrow to his jaw. The cat, if possible, looks smug. 

“What’s its name?” Verr asks. The cat meows softly at her. She scritches its chin. 

“Are you right in the head, Verr Goldet? It does not have one,” Xiao reports. “It is a cat.”

Verr smiles and holds the animal out to Xiao, who takes a half-step back. “Want to name it then?” She asks. 

Xiao frowns. “I am… not good at naming.” 

“Come on!” Verr chuckles. 

“Mrr,” the cat agrees. 

Xiao reaches out, gathering the cat in his arms tentatively. He’s holding in all wrong—in such a way that its legs stick out in all directions—but it meows mildly up at him. 

“Just pick the first thing that comes to your head,” Verr urges. 

Xiao stares at the cat for a long moment, unblinking. 

“Rex Lapis.” 

“Pick the second thing that comes to your head.” 

“Excuse me, Miss?” 

Verr looks up from petting Wei—who, after a few months of successfully crusading against the rats in the inn’s kitchen, is far too fat to do anything but sit on her desk—to see… nothing. An empty lobby. 

She briefly considers ghosts and whether that kind of thing is in Xiao’s wheelhouse before her attention is once again redirected by a clearing of a small throat. 

“Miss? Down here.” 

Verr looks down where, sure enough, a small tuft of pale blue hair pokes over the top of her desk. 

She stands up and leans forward. Wei mews inquisitively. 

A little boy looks up at her over the edge. He’s clearly no older than ten or eleven and very diminutive, sporting a pair of baleful blue eyes and wearing odd white robes covered in beads and other strange accoutrements.

“Hello,” Verr greets automatically, because she’s a good, non-judgemental host, and maybe this is just a kid who needs help or a small adult wanting a room. She doesn’t judge. She has a demigod on her roof who regularly falls off it without dying—she’s pretty much incapable of being surprised anymore. 

“Welcome to Wangshu Inn, how can I help you?” 

“Is this the Domain of the Conqueror of Demons, Adeptus Xiao?”

Or maybe it’s much more complicated than that and she is still very much able to be surprised. 

“The D— Excuse me?!” 

The boy frowns slightly.  “Oh. If I am in the wrong place please forgive me.”

Verr shakes her head quickly. “No, no, no! You’re not in the wrong place, I just haven’t really… considered this an Adeptus’s Domain before.”

“What would you consider it?”

Verr blinks stupidly. “An inn?”

“Oh,” the boy says. He looks at Wei. “I like your cat.”

“Thanks.” Verr rubs her temple. “I’m sorry—How did you even find this place? Who are you? Where are your parents?” 

“Apologies. My name is Chongyun. I’m a junior exorcist and I sensed Adeptus Xiao’s signature karmic imbalance in this place as I was passing by. It is subtle yet distinctive. I am here to seek an audience with him as a courtesy before moving through his Domain. Oh, and my parents are downstairs talking to your husband. Is the Conqueror of Demons in?”

Is the Conqueror of Demons in, he asks. Like this is some sort of house call.

Verr figures there’s no point pretending Xiao isn’t here seeing as this kid already seems to know exactly who he is, so she clears her throat and says, “Oh, uh… alright… I’ll go see if he’s up and… then… what are you doing?”

Chongyun’s little arm has come snaking over the top of the desk, reaching fruitlessly towards the small bowl of free mints. 

“May I please have a mint?” He asks.

Verr wordlessly pushes the bowl into Chongyun’s hand before standing up and heading upstairs. 

Chongyun and Wei follow at her heels. 

Verr reaches the landing leading to Xiao’s balcony and raps on the doorframe. “Adeptus Xiao? Are you in? You have a… visitor.”

Xiao seems to snap into existence in the doorway. He leans forward, golden eyes flashing up at Verr indignantly. “If it is a child named Hu Tao, tell her I am still not interested.” He catches sight of Chongyun and stops “…What is that supposed to be?” 

Chongyun wastes no time in bowing alarmingly low, the beads on his clothes rattling as he does. 

“Good afternoon, Adeptus Xiao. It is an honour to enter your Domain.”

“My… Domain?” Xiao looks taken aback, eyes flicking to Verr briefly, then back again. Oh good, she thinks, at least he thinks it’s weird too. “Are you some kind of clown?”

“I am a junior exorcist.” 

“Huh,” Xiao sighs, a little wisp of pent up anemo swirling out from between his teeth. “And why is it you reek of yang energy, boy?”

“I have a condition.”

“Tch. Obviously.”

Verr scowls. “Xiao!” 

“What?” 

Chongyun pipes up. “Excuse me, um, Miss Wangshu—”

“That’s not my name, kid, but go ahead.”

“—Are you aware that it is this adeptus’s karmic imbalance that is increasing monster activity around your inn?” The little exorcist reports this fact blithely, with very little emotion, like he’s telling her about the weather in Qingce. 

Xiao stiffens slightly as the topic of his… monster problem… is broached once again. It’s rarely talked about it these days. That’s not out of shame, but rather the fact Verr believes that, through communication and empathy, they’ve both soundly moved past any misunderstandings that once stemmed from that knowledge. They’re both very different people than they were when they met four years ago. She’s not about to let this little comment drag the mood down. 

“I am well aware,” Verr says decisively. “But he always takes care of them. I don’t see a problem. This is part of our arrangement.” 

(The ever-sporadic deliveries of terrible-smelling medicine from Celestia-knows-where also help, but that’s even less Chongyun’s business than it is hers.)

“Indeed.” Xiao narrows his eyes. “Tell me, exorcist. Are you getting paid to come in here and bad-mouth me?” 

“I work pro bono,” Chongyun says.

“Why don’t you… I…” Xiao splutters, “How about you work pro-go-away— ”

“Xiao!” 

“What?!” 

Chongyun begins to rifle through his bag. 

“I apologise if I’ve upset you, Adeptus Xiao,” he says. “It was not my intention. I will be on my way shortly. I have an offering for you before I go, though.” 

Chongyun produces a strange object from his bag that Verr takes a moment to realise is food—frozen, flavoured ice like they make in Snezhnaya. It’s blue and stuck on a stick for portability. Verr won’t say she isn’t intrigued.

“I do not want it,” Xiao says. Verr sends him a dirty look.

“It’s rude not to accept offerings,” she says, unable to keep a bit of a teasing tone out of her voice. “Go on.”

Xiao visibly withers. 

“Go on,” Verr urges again. “It’s cold, right? You said you like cold.” 

Xiao takes the popsicle between his thumb and forefinger, staring at it like it’s about to explode.

“I feel like I’m socialising a stray cat,” Verr sighs. Wei meows in agreement.

“Do not patronise me, Verr Goldet,” he says haughtily, and then he puts the entire popsicle in his mouth and bites down. 

Chongyun’s eyes fly wide and he reaches out towards Xiao but it’s too late. Xiao’s expression twists and his eyes begin to water. He coughs pitifully. 

“Coald,” he says in a pained mumble. He coughs again, sending the pieces of popsicle flying, and winces miserably. Verr slaps her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. 

“Brain freeze,” Chongyun says severely. “You have to lick it, not bite it.” 

“Ow.”

Chongyun reaches up to pat Xiao’s shoulder. Xiao coughs. 

Verr can’t hold back the laughter anymore. 

In the spring of Wangshu’s sixth year, Verr reaches out to Ganyu.

It’s something she knows she should have done a long time ago. After all, it’s been almost exactly three years since she’d first met her properly—and though the Qixing’s secretary never came to collect, so to speak, Verr has a feeling she owes her a little for her probable hand in Xiao’s return to the inn. 

She feels a bit bad when she receives Ganyu’s reply; it’s cheery and polite and so very kind. The secretary shows up a week later on a sunny morning, expression as earnest as her earlier words.

“I brought food,” she says with a smile, holding out a small ceramic dish. “For sharing.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Verr says, taking the dish from Ganyu’s outstretched hands. She lifts the lid a little—not enough to see what’s inside but enough to know it smells amazing. 

“Oh well, perhaps, but I wanted to,” Ganyu says. She grins a little wider. “Thank you for inviting me, Ms Goldet.”

“My pleasure, as always.”

The windchimes sound in the distance, and Verr hears the creaking of the stairs before she hears the sound’s cause. 

“Ganyu?” Xiao grips the railing a little tighter, staring at the newcomer with an unreadable gaze. 

Ganyu turns to face him with a calm smile. “Good morning, Xiao,” she says. “It’s good to see you.” 

“It’s been a while,” he says. “I thought your… work with the Qixing would be keeping you busy these days?”

“It does,” Ganyu says, and her smile looks a little more unsteady now. “But I take a few half-days off where I can. Ms Goldet invited me for tea, you see.”

“She did?” Xiao eyes Verr questioningly. Verr shrugs.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her too,” she says pointedly. “It’s always good to catch up with friends.” 

Verr casts a quick look between them. 

“You should join us, Xiao,” she says. He levels a glare at her. She rolls her eyes. 

“Oh, h-he doesn’t have to join us if he doesn’t want to,” Ganyu assures her. “I’m sure he’s busy and—”

“I will join you for tea,” Xiao says quickly. Verr smiles. Predictable. 

Before long they’re settled up on the balcony, a pot of osmanthus tea steeping away between them. Xiao entertains a modicum of small talk about the state of the balcony from Ganyu as they sit, taking it all with a stifled respect and strain he rarely even reserves for Verr and Huai’an. It’s interesting, to say the least, to see the way his demeanour skews in Ganyu’s presence. 

They are both adepti, after all. Verr wonders if perhaps Ganyu could provide Xiao with the steadiness she struggles to give him on her own. She certainly hopes so at any rate. 

Verr is barely seated when Huai’an comes striding in through the doorway. 

“Sorry to bother you, love,” he says, putting his hand on her shoulder. “But there’s been an incident with Yuhua that needs your attention.”

Verr sighs. “That girl…” 

“Do you need help?” Ganyu asks pleasantly, concern swimming in her gaze. Verr shakes her head. 

“We’ll be fine,” she assures. “Just a minor issue with one of the new hires. Though, I’m afraid you’ll have to get started without me.”

“We will be fine waiting—” Xiao begins, but Verr cuts him off with a wave. 

“It’s alright,” she laughs lightly. “I’m sure you two have things to catch up on anyway! Go right ahead.” 

She leaves before either can say anything further, bustling down the stairs after Huai’an. They don’t stop walking until they reach the second terrace, and don’t talk until they’re on the elevator when Verr slinks up to Huai’an’s side and wraps her arm around his waist with a very un-boss-like giggle.

“Oh, my devious husband…” she croons. “Always exactly where I need you…” 

“I got the impression you were trying to get them alone,” Huai’an chuckles, “and I am but your humble servant, boss...”

Verr rolls her eyes fondly. “How long before they realise I’m not coming back?”

“Oh, I’m sure Xiao already knows. I think the more important question is how long until he gets fed up and comes looking for us.”

“Guesses?”

“An hour minimum. I’d like to wager he’ll stick around Miss Ganyu longer than he thinks he will.”

“Me too.”

“Any ideas on how to kill an hour?”

Verr hums, throwing her other arm around Huai’an and pulling herself close. One step back and he’s pressed against the shady wall of the descending elevator. Her eyes glimmer up at him in the dim. 

“I can think of a few things,” she says.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mhm.” Verr leans forward and rests her chin on Huai’an’s chest. “That Yanxiao guy had his goons steal some of our plaustrite from the storehouse again,” she whispers coyly. “I want to beat him up a bit before we call the Millelith on him.”

Huai’an sighs, but he’s unable to keep a slight smile off his face. “Always work-mode with you, huh, boss?”

Verr reaches up to boop his nose. “Always work-mode,” she agrees with a grin. 

Xiao, contrary to their prediction, does not come to find them after an hour. It’s Ganyu that they run into, actually—crossing paths on the lower decks as she’s leaving and Verr and Huai’an are coming back with bruised knuckles and a sack of plaustrite almost too big to carry.

“Productive drinks?” Verr asks as they approach. 

“Oh yes. You are much more conniving than you let on, Ms Goldet,” Ganyu says. Verr throws up her hands like she has no idea what she’s talking about, really! “We got to talking about many things. It was… nice. I haven’t had a chance to sit down with Xiao in a while.”

“I hope you decide to do it more,” Verr says. “Forgive me for being presumptuous but… it makes me happy to see him with friends. He doesn’t… have any, really.” 

Ganyu looks over her shoulder, up at the distant swaying branches of the Wangshu tree above them. A small smile graces her features. 

“Friends,” she says, almost to herself. “Yes, I… I like that. I think so too.”

She turns back to them and bows. 

“I want to thank you for looking after him. You may not think you are doing much, but… you are. Please, keep supporting him as you have been. It means a great deal, to me and to—” Ganyu trails off as she rises from her bow, finally seeming to take in the appearances of the innkeepers, “—A-are you both alright? You look quite… erm… ruffled.”

“You should see the other guy,” Huai’an chuckles. 

Verr laughs like a bit of a crazy person at that. Good thing Ganyu is nice enough not to say anything. She hopes she sees more of her soon. 

“Verr Goldet,” Xiao hisses, zipping forward to the desk in a flare of anemo. A stack of letters gets blown to the floor. Ever since Chongyun’s visit a year ago, Verr has been keeping more mints at the reception, which unfortunately end up on the floor too. 

“You’re down early, Adeptus Xiao,” she greets calmly. “What have I said about Visions in the lobby?” 

“I apologise but I have no time for idle chatter,” Xiao hisses again, and Verr realises it’s his attempt at whispering. He looks oddly panicked. It puts her on high enough alert that she subtly reaches for the butterfly swords hidden under the desk—the set Ningguang has them all carry for situations such as these. 

“What’s the problem?” She asks sternly.

There’s a clang from the kitchen. Xiao goes pale. “I don’t have time,” he gasps. “If you have ever held a single shred of honour in your body you will make good upon the contract forged with your Tianquan and help me.” 

Verr closes her hand around the hilt, the swords making no noise as she slips one blade from the sheath. “With what?” She urges. “I don’t—” 

“Mister Xiaaaooo?! ” 

At the call of his name, Xiao looks ill, which almost startles a laugh out of Verr because a second later a young girl, no older than thirteen, comes thundering into view from the direction of the kitchens. Verr lets go of the weapon and swiftly clasps her hands in front of her chest. 

Her hair is dark and coiled into small, bouncing pigtails. She jingles as she dashes towards her prey; her yellow dress and half-apron are covered in colourful charms and small bells. Verr has the idle thought that it must be very hard for her parents to lose her in crowds. 

She hones in on Xiao like a hawk on a vole. “There you are! I have another dish for you to try so—Oh!” She stops, catching sight of Verr. “G-Good morning, Mrs Boss!”

Verr smiles. “Good morning,” she says. “You must be one of Huai’an’s trial chefs.”

“I am! My name is Xiangling.” She bounds the rest of the way over, hip-checking poor Xiao out of the way and extending her hand to Verr. “Thanks for having me!” 

Verr takes her hand. “Thank you for coming. I know this place is probably quite far from your home.”

Xiangling winks. “I’m just eager for the experience, ma’am!”

Verr sends Xiao a covert look as he tries to subtly extract himself from Xiangling’s vice-grip. Oh, if this isn’t just adorable. 

“What are you getting our lovely taste-tester to try, might I ask?” Verr asks, relishing in the look of utter betrayal on Xiao’s face.

“My signature Boiled Fish with Pyro Slime sauce!” 

P… Pyro Slimes…? 

Verr forces a smile. “That sounds—”

“Disgusting,” Xiao growls. “I will not eat it. Monsters are to be slaughtered, not eaten.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it!” Xiangling pouts. 

“I refuse to put anything you make near my mouth, beast, ” Xiao spits. 

“Alright now, let’s not get mean,” Verr placates. “How about I try it, Miss Xiangling?”

She can practically see the hearts appear in the girl’s eyes. “Oh, would you!? That would be wonderful Mrs Boss! I’ll go get my tasting platters! Wait here!”

Xiangling dashes off toward the kitchen and Verr catches sight of a Pyro Vision bouncing on her hip. 

Oh dear, she thinks. Must all allogenes I meet be such personalities? I suppose it comes with the territory.

“Verr Goldet,” Xiao says in a level voice, drawing her back to the present. “As a citizen of Liyue it is my duty to protect you—you have no such obligation to protect me. I cannot allow you to take harm in my place.”

“I’m not going to die, Adeptus Xiao, it’s just some fish.” 

“I do not know if you are brave or mad.”

“Seriously. It’s just fish.”

“I owe you my life.”

The fish is… surprisingly good, in the end. They don’t end up hiring Xiangling, but Verr makes a private promise to be first in line for dendro slime clafoutis when the girl inevitably takes over Liyue Harbour’s restaurant circuit.

Let it be known that Verr Goldet has no real problem with allogenes in her inn.

There have been many over the years—some, obviously, are more permanent than others—and Verr has come to study and observe them like she does all her guests. Though, unlike news about suspicious merchants and poorly hidden Fatui, this particular information doesn’t go to Qixing. It’s more of a hobby. 

They all seem to be genuine characters, no matter where they hail from, and while the acknowledgement of Gods is not something that particularly interests her in regards to herself, Verr finds herself curious every time she sees one of those little gems on the hip or back or wrist of a guest anyway. What had they done, to draw the eye of something so powerful?

“When did you get your Vision?” She asks one morning when she comes to swap the teacups on Xiao’s balcony. 

The Vision-wielder in question grunts thoughtfully, but doesn’t look up from the still water of the potted lotus pond he’s using as a mirror. 

“Why do you want to know?” He asks, sweeping his finger under his left eye, smearing a thin trail of red pigment along his waterline. 

“I dunno,” Verr shrugs. “Thought it might make for good conversation—I can get you a mirror, by the way.”

Xiao grunts again. “I am fine,” he says, using his other hand to wipe the pigment away and start over. “I don’t remember in any case.”

Wait… 

“Huh?”

“I…” Xiao looks to her with a quizzical tilt to his brow, like he’s checking if she’s joking. “I don’t remember when I got my Vision,” he repeats. 

“How is that possible?” Verr inquires, trying to keep her tone normal. “All the allogenes I’ve ever met say it's the most memorable day of their lives.”

“I have had a lot of days in my life,” Xiao murmurs, turning back to face his reflection. “I am what humans refer to as an allogene, yes, but I am first and foremost an adeptus. I have always resounded with the element of anemo—Barbatos’s contrived blessing simply gives me more… refinement, when it comes to shaping that element.” He sighs and swipes another trail of pigment under his eye. “It happened sometime after I came into the service of Morax, though I could not say when exactly.”

He seems content with his left eye and moves on to his right one. Verr watches for a moment, the cogs in her head-turning.

“I get the impression you don’t like him very much,” she says finally. 

“Who? Rex Lapis?” Xiao frowns, looking more perturbed than his usual baseline of ‘slightly perturbed’. “What about my words gave you that impression?” He asks tightly. “Tell me now, I will—” 

“No! Not Rex Lapis,” Verr rolls her eyes. “I meant Barbatos .”

Xiao’s finger slips, streaking a fat line of red pigment up the side of his face. 

The silence that falls is as domineering as it is brief. 

“What?!” Xiao whirls on her, his stammering cry sending a pair of roosting birds squawking into the upper branches. “N-no, I—I do not… not like him.”

“So you like him?”

“I did not say that.”

Several years ago, on a much more sombre day than this, Verr had learned that Xiao had loved someone once—That he still loved someone—though he never told her in so many words. Right now, the pieces are starting to click into place, and the picture they are forming is a truly disarming one. 

“Is he the one you told me about? Your special person?”

The one who told you you were lucky? Verr thinks. The one you’re trying to believe, just like me?

“You remember that?” 

“I do,” she says softly. Xiao looks away. It’s enough of an answer. 

There are a million things Verr could say here. The gossiping Mondstadtian in her wants to coo and laugh and ask for all the details. The part of her that’s still the barest hint of pious wants to drop the subject immediately because this is Barbatos they’re talking about—one of the Seven … She thinks of the statue that rises high above the cobbled streets of Mondstadt, and then she looks at the flesh and blood boy beside her, desperately rubbing makeup off his face, and she wants to scream. 

But the biggest part of her—the part that is Verr Goldet, boss of the inn and practical human being—knows that Xiao’s trust is as fragile as a hollow-boned bird, and when he offers it to her like this it is no small thing.

What she asks is: “When was the last time you saw him?”

Xiao narrows his eyes at her. “You meddle in—”

“—the affairs of demons and adepti, ya-da, ya-da.” Verr waves her hand dismissively. “I’ve heard this one. Let’s move on, shall we?”

Xiao scoffs through his teeth, and looks back down at the pool, thumbing the messy streak on his face fruitlessly, though Verr thinks he might be looking more at the Vision, now reflected in shimmering turquoise in the rippling water.

“When was the last time you saw him?” She asks again.

“Five hundred years… give or take a few, I suppose.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Indeed. Even for beings such as us.” He scoops a palmful of water from the pot to wet his face. “A long time…” he muses. 

Verr hums, and follows Xiao’s eyeline out to the horizon—north from the balcony, where the natural gateway between Liyue and Mondstadt sits snugly on the horizon. 

“Can I tell you a story?” She says. “I promise it’s short.”

Xiao grunts.

Verr casts her eyes back north, farther than Stone Gate, to the hazy hills she can pretend are Mondstadt. 

“When I was thirteen I had a crush on this boy who worked at the market,” she says. “I’d go every week to buy fruit from him, even though I didn’t really like it, but just so I could see him. One day, I didn’t have any money for fruit, but he gave me a whole bag on sunsettias anyway, and then he told me all he needed in return was a kiss. Great deal, all in all, so I happily paid—”

“That sounds like entrapment.”

“Gods, you’re a right barrel of laughs, aren’t you?”

“Continue your tale, woman.”

“I’m just… saying tha—nevermind. The point is, the boy stopped working at the market after that. But whenever I saw him around with his new friends, he’d pretend he didn’t know me. I didn’t see him much but… Oh, Xiao… it broke my little heart in two, if you must know…”

Xiao pauses his violent face-scrubbing to shoot her a quizzical look. “I’ve come to expect your terrible anecdotes to have better endings than that, Verr Goldet.”

“Did I say it was the ending?”

“This is fair. Apologies.”

“Thank you.” Verr clears her throat dramatically. “Anyway, he eventually came back and he started hanging around me again like nothing had happened! Even though he’d been so dismissive before… So you know what I did?”

“What?”

“I invited him outside the walls for a picnic. I took him up to a little cliffside where a nice crop of dandelions was growing, and when he’d gotten himself comfortable? I threw him into the lake.” She laughs at the memory. “By the time he was fished out he was all apologies, and when I saw him at the market the next day, he gave me a bag of sunsettias for free… said he was sorry… I almost kissed him again.”

Xiao huffs something close to a laugh. He dips his finger back in his little container of pigment and begins applying it with a steady hand.

“I believe I understand what you are getting at,” he says. “But I suppose I must defend my… I must defend him by telling you that it is not entirely his fault that he isn’t here. There are things beyond both of our control. I would not punish him for that, even if I am angry.”

“So just a little bit his fault then?”

“Yes.”

Verr smiles. “Sometimes even the people we love deserve to get thrown in lakes once in a while. That doesn’t mean you have to stop loving them. Maybe they just need a wake-up call, even if their proverbial sunsettias are good.”

Another amused huff. 

“Sunsettias taste like dirt.”

“You’re the worst, did you know that?”

“So are you, but your counsel is interesting as always.”

“I’ll take it,” Verr grins. “And, hey—looks good, by the way.”

Xiao meets her eyes, the red around his lids is shining warm and bright in the dawnlight. The gold in his irises glitters. He does not smile, but he seems lighter all the same.

“Thank you, Verr Goldet.”

Captain Beidou is unfairly gorgeous. Verr had spoken to Huai’an about such matters the night before, after the infamous leviathan-slayer had unexpectedly shown up in their lobby requesting a room. They’d both concluded that, if they were single, Beidou would be at the top of the list, despite her being entirely out of their league due to the fact she kills sea-beasts for a living. 

“—and you know, I don’t even think he’s missing an eye at all. I think he just wears it to look mysterious,” Beidou says. “I’m not trying to be an eyepatch gatekeeper or anything, but at least mine’s doin’ something, y’know?” 

“Absolutely,” Verr agrees. 

“Yeah well, regardless, it was an interesting trip all in all. You’re from Mondstadt too, right?”

Verr shrugs. “That’s what I keep telling people.” 

“Ha! Good answer.”

Beidou starts to launch into another story involving an unlucky group of Inazuman pirates and a misplaced python when a clatter of porcelain and rattling beads ring out from the upper stairs. 

“Slayer of Haishan.” Xiao’s voice calls out from above. Verr looks up to see him carrying a tray of empty teacups. “State your business here.” 

Beidou sends a bemused glance to Verr before turning around to address the newcomer. “I caught some hilichurls setting up a camp just north of here,” she replies. “I was on my way back to port—figured I could take ‘em out while I was here y'know? The boss here was nice enough to give me a room.”

“Looks like she’s stealing your job, Xiao.” Verr grins. Xiao, for once, doesn’t rise to the bait.

“She ended the leviathan, Haishan.” He trots down the rest of the steps and places his tray by the kitchen entrance before striding over. “This is acceptable.” 

Beidou huffs a laugh. “That was a lot of cups, kiddo.” 

Verr leans over, trying to draw the heat off Xiao a little. “Oh. He doesn’t like food— The food here, but he does like our tea.” 

Beidou chuckles. “Oh? You’re a guest then? And a picky eater at that, huh?” 

“I care not for the food of men—” Beidou sends an incredulous smile over her shoulder at Verr, who winces one back “—though tea is… adequate.”

“Uh, this is Xiao,” Verr introduces hastily. “He’s a live-in contractor—takes care of monsters out on the roads for us.”

“All by yourself!? I wish some of my crew had guts like that.”

“I do not wish to be recruited by you, Bane of Haishan.”

Beidou puts her hands up. “All good, kid. I’m just saying… but hold on a second… you don’t eat any of the food here?”

“No.”

“Would you eat my food?”

“No.”

“You sure? You know, I’m not too bad at cookin’, kiddo,” Beidou says, leaning back against the desk. Usually, Verr might kick up a fuss over just a gesture from a guest, but this situation is too interesting to interrupt. “Maybe I could whip something up for ya right now? Sounds like a challenge!” 

The stars must be aligned, thank the Seven, because Xiao actually looks interested. Verr holds her breath. Could it be—?

“What kind of food?”

Oh, Rex Lapis, you truly do cast your gaze upon us today! 

“I make a mean flash fillet—jeuyen chillies, seared meat, fresh veggies—” Beidou counts the ingredients off on her fingers. “It’s all cooked quick and hot! Might put some hair on yer chest if we’re lucky!” 

She playfully elbows the adeptus, who doesn’t seem to notice. 

“I—Hm…” Xiao clears his throat, looking pensive. Verr keeps holding her breath. “Perhaps, for the slayer of the leviathan… I will try your offering.”

“By the Seven, you’re weird,” Beidou grins. “I like you.”

Xiao narrows his eyes. “Your opinion of me is no concern of mine, Captain Beidou.”

Beidou laughs and slaps a hand on his shoulder. “Awesome! Let’s get started then, huh? Just wait until Xiangling hears I cooked her recipe at the Wangshu Inn! She’ll totally—”

“I change my mind.”

“W—Huh—What?!” Beidou splutters. Xiao turns away and begins to stalk back up the stairs. 

“I will not consume a meal tainted by that beast,” he says simply. “Goodbye, Beidou of The Alcor.”

Beidou laughs, full-bodied and loud. “Damn, Goldet,” she chuckles once Xiao is gone. “Your kid is a weird one, in’he?” 

Verr smiles. “He is, isn’t he?”

She doesn’t realise she didn’t bat an eyelid at Beidou’s misunderstanding until the woman is long gone.

Over the course of the years, Verr becomes well acquainted with Teyvat’s magic. She begins to recognise the swirls of the elements in the natural world around her and the feeling of the arcane, buzzing on her skin when mages and adepti alike pass through her doors. Be it witches from far-off Sumeru, eccentric sorceresses from Mond with a penchant for mischief, or a pair of funeral workers who seem to know a little too much about everything except paying for their food… Verr starts to feel like she’s seen everything. 

She’s wrong, though. 

The greatest kind of magic Verr thinks she will ever see comes to visit, and to stay, during her seventh lantern rite. 

Xiao, like he always does this time of year, comes back in the wee hours of the morning drenched in blood and dark energy. Verr has tea ready for him at the front desk, which he clumsily empties a packet of that gods-awful medicine into and chugs like a madman. He leans heavily on the desk as he allows himself a moment of reprieve.

The same as ever, really. Except this time, something is different. 

“I have found you a new chef,” he says between sips of his second cup of tea. 

“Oh?” Verr raises an eyebrow. “Well good, because that guy from Snezhnaya left a month ago.”

‘Left’ is a softer way of saying Verr hung him off the edge of the lower balcony until he confessed the locations of his Fatui contacts, but either way, he doesn’t work here anymore. 

“The man I have found is a bandit currently operating along the road through Guili. I saw him while I was hunting.”

“Exciting.” Verr doesn’t look up from her ledger. “Who’s your guy?”

“His name is Yanxiao.” 

Verr looks up from her ledger.

“Wait… Yanxiao as in Smiley Yanxiao?!” 

“You know him?” Xiao ponders.

“Smiley Yanxiao?” Huai’an calls out from the terrace, ducking his head through the door. “I thought he was in prison?”

“Apparently not anymore!” Verr squawks. She stands up in a panic, gathering her ledgers frantically.

“We can’t have him on the road,” Huai’an says, striding forward. “There’s too much traffic during the rite.”

“Agreed,” Verr says with a nod. “Let’s go sort him out right now.”

Then, Xiao grabs her arm. Verr freezes. 

“Wait,” he says. “You have to hear me out. His… His food did not smell… completely awful.” 

Hold on a second. Xiao admitting a type of human food isn’t actively poisoning him? 

Verr stares at her oldest patron in complete shock for a moment, unable to speak or move or do anything except gawk. Eventually, she drags her eyes to Huai’an, who is making much the same expression. 

Oh. Screw it all. She needs this guy.

“Okay,” she says. “Fine. I’ll take this into consideration because of your tenure here.”

“Thank you.”

“Where is he now?”

“They are camped in the north of Guili, just past the Millelith towers by the river.”

“Okay. Can you take out his guys before you bring him here?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I will not kill humans,” Xiao says, ignoring Huai’an’s strangled cry of who said anything about killing?! and straightening his shoulders very officially. “So one of you will go. It will not need more than that.” 

“That’s very hands-off of you, Adeptus Xiao,” Verr says. “I thought you could only solve problems with violence?”

He thinks about it for a moment. “I am… facilitating violence.” 

“Alright. Fair enough.” Verr turns to her husband. “Huai’an?”

“Been a while since we’ve had a good fight, hasn’t it?” He says, cracking his knuckles. 

“Best of three?” 

Verr wins, of course. Huai’an always picks scissors on the third go, so after she wins the first round it’s a done deal.

The walk to Guili is nice this time of year, when the sun is hot but not too hot and the smell of wildflowers and sandbearer trees is heavy in the air. 

Verr waves to the Millelith as she passes their outpost, and takes a sharp turn to follow the river. It doesn’t take long for her to come across the beginnings of a small hoarder camp tucked up against a ruin. There look to only be a handful of men milling about, which is good news. 

“Good morning gentlemen!” Verr calls out, giving the bandit troupe a wave as she gets closer. 

All of them look up, immediately on guard. One of them is Yanxiao, Verr notices, down the back by the cooking pot. She’s so busy grinning in anticipation she almost misses the reply from a young man in a bandana. 

“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” He calls back. 

“My name is Verr Goldet,” Verr says. “I’m the owner of Wangshu Inn.”

She points over to the Wangshu tree, towering above the marsh in the distance. 

One of the bandits, a scrawny man with a scar over his eye, sneers. “What d’you want then, boss lady? Gonna offer us some room service?”

The group cackles, and Verr feels her eye twitch. 

“I’d like to speak to one of your men, actually,” she says pleasantly. “He’s a fellow I’ve had dealings with before. Smiley Yanxiao? I can see him in the back there so no use hiding him.” 

Yanxiao looks at her closely for only a moment before his face pales. “You… you’re that crazy inn lady, ain’t you?” 

“I’ve never been called that before,” Verr laughs dryly. “But I suppose I didn’t exactly give you the best parting impression, Mister Yanxiao. Apologies for that, but I’m here to make up for it now.”

“No way lady, get outta here!” Yanxiao levels a spoon at her and shakes it like a weapon. There’s some kind of soup going on here and, what do you know, it smells pretty damn good. 

“Not until I talk to you,” she says. 

The scrawny guy speaks up again. “Get outta here!” He snarls. 

Verr scowls at him. “This conversation does not involve you, sir.”

“It involved all of us as soon as you came in here to my camp talkin’ to my boys!” A bigger guy who looks to be the leader says.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Verr says, drawing herself up to her full height. “Because this camp is not yours, Sir Bandit. You see, Guili belongs to no one, least of all the likes of you .”

“Watch your mouth!” the big one says, stepping forward and smacking his fist into his palm. The young one and the scrawny one follow suit. 

“Guys, hold on—” Yanxiao pipes up from the back, but no one listens. 

Verr widens her stance and takes a deep breath in. 

Watch my mouth? How about you watch your step, she thinks. This land runs with the blood of the gods who fell on its soil—and yours will just as easily water it. 

Then she thinks: That’s very cheesy. I’m glad no one heard that. 

“Come and get it, assholes,” she mutters, because that’s a little less cringe-worthy.

The fight ends very quickly, with the bandits unconscious and sprawled in the grass like sleepy and bloodied lambs. Verr flips her hair over her shoulder, blowing a loose strand from her face as she presses her knee a little harder into Yanxiao’s back. 

“I yield! I yield!” He cries. 

“You make a good chair, Yanxiao!” Verr says brightly, ignoring him. “Better than a bandit, in any case!” 

Yanxiao tries to free himself, but to no avail. “What—What the hell do you want, lady?” He cries. 

Verr laughs. 

“Want? Hmm, lots of things, honestly,” she twists his arm, eliciting another pained cry. “A thousand mora, a dog, a dress with pockets—the list goes on! As for right now though?” 

She leans in close, plastering her best hospitality industry smile on her face. Yanxiao meets her gaze with a terrified one of his own. 

“I’d like to offer you a job!” 

Xiao is waiting at the top of the tree as Verr saunters up with Yanxiao in tow. 

“Verr Goldet. You have returned.” 

“Indeed I have,” she teases, “and I see the young gentleman has decided to stay as well.” 

“I am taking a break. The heavy wheels of demonic ill will be settled enough for half an afternoon.”

Yanxiao looks like he’s making a concerted effort to ignore Xiao’s words and focus on Verr’s. “The young—huh? He yours or something?”

Verr puts a hand on her hip. “How old do I look, Yanxiao?” 

Yanxiao, apparently smart enough to know when he’s entered dangerous waters, starts visibly sweating. “Uh… can I pass?” 

“Smart,” Verr notes. 

“I am not hers, Yanxiao of Liyue,” Xiao says, his offended expression a mirror of Verr’s own. He draws himself up in that stern way he does when his adeptus cred is being threatened. “I am Xiao, Conqueror of—”

“—Inn security!” Verr cuts him off quickly. Yanxiao seems too on edge to notice her panicked tone. “He’s our oldest patron, you see; lives here part-time to rout Hillichurls and such in the marsh! So you’ll be seeing him often!” 

“Oh, well, uh, pleasure t’meet you, Master Xiao.” 

Xiao nods stiffly, then turns to Verr. 

“It is pertinent we test him immediately.” 

“I couldn’t agree more.” 

Yanxiao laughs nervously. “Is it too late for me to—”

“Yes,” Verr and Xiao say in unison.

“Okay,” Yanxiao says miserably. 

Verr lets Yanxiao bathe and change clothes before she puts him to work. This gives her time to prepare the kitchen. 

Wangshu’s kitchen use typically well-stocked, but due to their current lack of a head chef and the short notice, the pantry is looking a bit more meagre than Verr would’ve liked. Still, she lays out the knife set and tool kit Xiangling had left on her last visit and hopes it’s enough. 

Xiao watches her the whole time, perched on the counter like a cat. When Yanxiao comes back down he stays firmly rooted where he is, watching the chef with a calculating eye. 

Verr walks Yanxiao through the process. He’ll be on trial until she says he isn’t, he can use anything here, and his first test today is to help settle an old dilemma: to make Xiao a food he’ll actually eat. 

“What kind of dish are you looking for?” Yanxiao asks almost immediately, tying an apron behind his back. He looks at home in the kitchen, Verr notes, leaning against the prep table to watch.

Xiao briefly looks at Verr with a questioning glance and she forces down a smile. 

“You said you liked the smell of his food—enough that you came to find us,” she offers. “This guy has the best chance of finding something you like, but you have to help him.”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Just tell him what you told me a few years ago—about the texture you’re looking for.” 

Xiao looks from Verr to Yanxiao, his expression unreadable. Yanxiao, to his credit, doesn’t flinch. He seems focused, Verr thinks, comfortable in a way she hasn’t seen from him yet. 

“…Soft,” Xiao says eventually. “Something that is easy to eat. It falls apart in your mouth, but it is still solid.”

Yanxiao nods, looking completely understanding.

“We tried mushrooms and some soft meats a while ago,” Verr adds. “That was a dead end.” 

“How flavourful are you wanting it?” Yanxiao asks. Verr stalls; she’d never thought to ask a question like that before… 

“Mild,” Xiao says simply. He has a strange expression on his face as he says it, like he too hasn’t considered that factor before.

“Thought so,” Yanxiao says. “Sounds like something tofu-based might be a good place to start. I can whip up a basic stir-fry, maybe some Jewellery Soup? Nothing too crazy on the flavour side of things. Other than that, we could try something like mint jelly. We’ll have to see what we have here, though.”

“I will… try them,” Xiao says firmly. 

“Let’s get started then.”

Verr can’t help but be impressed by Yanxiao’s fluidity in the kitchen—he moves like he was born to do it, jumping from station to station with grace and burning intent. 

By the time Yanxiao is done, Xiao is seated at a table in the corner with an array of soups, stir-frys and rice dishes laid out before him. He tries each one in turn, his face screwing up each time to the disappointment of everyone watching. Verr tries not to let it show on her face.

Yanxiao only looks more determined. “Okay well… if tofu is a dead-end…” he says. “I could try almond tofu?”

Xiao pushes a bowl of tofu curry away from himself. “We have established that I do not like tofu,” he says. 

“It’s not actually tofu,” Yanxiao explains. “It’s a jelly dessert I usually make for my nephew. It’s got a really subdued flavour... sweet but not too sweet… and it’s got a similar consistency to tofu, without the taste.”

“Worth a try,” Verr says. Xiao nods. 

The anticipation is palpable as Yanxiao sets about making almond tofu. They even amass a bit of a crowd as staff start to filter in on their breaks, technically staying a little longer than usual, but Verr will excuse it this one time; Yanxiao is a bit of a sight to behold, if she’s being honest. 

Eventually, Yanxiao places a plate of gorgeous looking jelly-like squares in front of Xiao, drizzled with osmanthus honey and glistening in the lantern-like in a way that makes Verr’s mouth water. If nothing else, she’s hiring this guy for his presentation alone. 

Xiao looks up at the group of lingering staff members, eyes narrowed.

“I am not a sideshow for you people’s entertainment,” he says. Yuhua, the newest Qixing hire, looks ready to faint at the criticism. 

“I agree,” Verr says, kicking his chair leg. “This is the main event for sure. Now hurry up and eat.” 

Xiao forgoes chopsticks entirely and grabs a piece of almond tofu with his bare hand, which Verr thinks she probably would have cringed at five years ago. Now it’s just par for the course. 

He puts the piece in his mouth and starts to chew. As soon as he starts though, he stops. His expression goes still. 

Too still. His golden eyes waver, widening imperceptibly. Oh no. 

“Oh—Huai’an,” Verr snaps her fingers with an exaggerated sigh. “I just remembered, I was supposed to send a group down to sign for those new crockery orders. You remember?”

She sends him as subtle a look as possible, which only takes him a moment to discern. He nods. “Oh, yes, of course.”

“Maybe you could take Yuhua and the boys down to see if it's arrived?”

The gaggle of gathered staff let out a chorus of protests. Yuhua looks downright bereaved. “B-but—Boss!”

Verr only has to start shifting her expression into a glare for the young staff to bolt back upstairs, Huai’an following at their heels with a chuckle. 

When everyone is gone and the space is quiet, Verr kneels next to Xiao, who hasn’t moved an inch. He looks distant and wistful and vulnerable. Tears are welling at the corners of his eyes, ready to tip over.

“Are you alright?” Verr asks. “I’m sorry they were here. I should have known you’d be uncomfortable with that kind of attention.”

“Is something wrong with the food, Master Xiao?” Yanxiao inquires nervously. “I can change—”

“N-no,” Xiao blurts out. Verr and Yanxiao freeze as golden eyes drift up to them. He scrubs at them a little furiously, smearing the red of his under-eye pigment across flushed cheeks

“It’s perfect,” he breathes. 

Yanxiao’s face splits into a disbelieving smile. Verr is quite sure she looks the same. 

“It-it is?” Yanxiao says. “That’s—great! Thank you! I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it—”

Yanxiao is cut off by the sound of Xiao’s chair scraping back as he bolts to his feet. Verr is about ready to jump into whatever fight the kid starts, but it turns out there’s no need, because Xiao simply lowers himself into a ridiculously low bow, low enough that Yanxiao looks about ready to jump out of his skin. 

“I owe you a great debt,” Xiao says with a wavering voice. “You cannot understand the service you have provided for me, but know it is no small thing.”

Yanxiao raises his hands placatingly. “H-hey now, kid, it’s just a—”

“If it would be alright to trouble you further,” Xiao looks up, his eyes rimmed red and bottom lip trembling in a way Verr has never imagined from him, “Is it possible for you to make more of this?” 

“Of course,” Yanxiao says. “If the boss will hire me, that is...”

“Are you stupid?” Verr scolds. “Of course I’m fucking hiring you. You start right now. I’ll have Huai’an allocate some expenditure so you can get this sorry kitchen properly stocked.”

Then she turns to Xiao. “Told you we’d find something you like,” she says. 

“You are the craziest woman I have ever met,” Xiao says. He doesn’t smile—he never smiles—but his lips are doing something that isn’t a frown, and it makes Verr’s heart soar. 

She slaps Yanxiao on the arm, making him stagger a little. 

“Rev up those fryers, Yanxiao!” Verr declares, planting her hands on her hips triumphantly and nodding to the half-empty plate of almond tofu. “Looks like we’ve found our new house special!”

“A-actually, almond tofu isn’t fried, so—”

“I said rev them, Yanxiao!”

“Y-yes, boss!”

That night, Verr watches the barest hints of lanterns float over the partial view of the harbour, and then she walks upstairs with a pot of osmanthus tea and a plate of freshly made almond tofu. 

Xiao is sitting on the balcony, listening to the wind roll in over Dihua. He’s curled up in the way Verr knows means he’s certainly in pain, so she takes it slow as she sits next to him. 

“I brought you some food,” she says, then chuckles. “It’s going to take a while to get used to saying that.”

“Thank you,” Xiao says in a strained voice, taking the pot and plate from her slowly. Verr nods, and leaves him be; today was loud, and he likes his quiet. 

“Goodnight, Adeptus Xiao,” she says. 

“Goodnight, Verr Goldet” he replies. 

When she comes back in the morning, both the teapot and the plate are empty. 

Just like magic, Verr thinks.

Chapter Text

It is very hard to pinpoint the exact moment it all falls apart. The moment the world starts ending. 

From within the maelstrom, one could look back and say it started in a thousand different places, with a thousand different incidents and choices and inconsequential turns of the hourglass. 

For the people of Liyue, the most common answer might be the day Rex Lapis’s corpse falls from the skies above their city. 

But that is much later. This is now, and one cannot blame a fire for the destruction it brings without first blaming the match.

“What do the Snezhnayans need a bank for?” Yuhua asks. She’s sitting on a stool in Verr’s office, alternating between polishing off a bowl of white-fish dumplings and biting at her nails. Verr ignores the urge to swat her hands down. 

“The Fatui have been trying to solidify their presence across the seven nations for some time now,” Huai’an muses from his own desk. “They’re already rustling feathers in Mond.”

“Only an idiot is gonna take a request like that at face value,” Yanxiao snaps, weaving between his closely huddled coworkers to lay out a new bowl of rice on the table.

“All true… but the Qixing can’t deny a legitimate business venture on a hunch,” Verr says with a sigh. “As much as I hate the idea of Zapolyarny Palace sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong, nose-sticking isn’t exactly a crime.”

“Is it going to be approved?” Yuhua asks. 

“There’s the million-mora question,” Verr mutters. “I’d say it’s almost definite... So we should expect an increase in Fatui forces over the coming year. 

“We may even see a harbinger,” Huai’an grouses, “if their wider patterns are to be trusted.”

“Tch,” scoffs Xiao from the open window, halfway through climbing over the sill. Yuhua is the only one who jumps at his sudden entrance. “Harbingers are little more than a self-important troupe of painted fools, cloying for godly favour. I doubt they’ll pose much of a threat.”

“Would it kill you to use the door?” Verr asks. Xiao ignores her and makes for Yanxiao, who is already pulling a bowl of almond tofu from his tray to hand to the adeptus. 

Yuhua bristles a little as Xiao brushes past her, ever-nervous, despite the years of quiet equilibrium the Wangshu spies and their guest have settled into by now, the winter of their eighth year together. “Easy for you to say you’re not scared of the Fatui,” she grumbles at Xiao as he takes his bowl with a small bow. “You’re not scared of anything.” 

“I fear plenty,” Xiao retorts stroppily. “Just be thankful that which I fear is enough beyond your comprehension to spare you the madness of knowing it.”

Yuhua goes a little pale at that. “D-don’t say stuff just to freak me out!” 

Verr sighs. “Xiao. Stop teasing her and eat your food.”

As she wraps up the meeting, Verr keeps an eye on Xiao in the corner, picking steadily at his almond tofu. The set of his shoulders is stiff, and his eyes dart to hers more than once. He wants to speak to her, she knows, but she gets a feeling it’s not going to be about something as lighthearted as she’d like. 

When the room has finally cleared, save for herself and Xiao, Verr raises her eyes as the adeptus steps away from his little shaded corner and approaches her desk. 

“Did you need something?” Verr asks, pushing her paperwork aside. “Sorry we’ve been so busy lately.”

“All is well,” Xiao says, shaking his head. “Your work for the Qixing takes precedence.”

Xiao is hard to read on the best of days. Verr has known him for the better part of eight years now, and still she can only claim to understand him slightly better than not-at-all. She hopes, then, that the flash of disappointment she sees in his face is simply a twitch of something else. 

“I will have to be away for a while,” he says. “I wanted to let you know you will not be seeing me for some time.”

“That’s very courteous of you, Adeptus Xiao,” Verr says with a tight smile, ignoring the pang in her heart as she straightens some useless knick-knacks on her desk. She looks up at him, and finds him predictably stiff-shouldered and stern. 

Karma still ravages him in inconsistent bursts, ebbing like the estuary tides. His medicine is a treatment, not a cure. It always has been.

Prolonged absences are not uncommon for Xiao, nor unexpected. Verr knows it’s a protective measure—to keep the foulness that accumulates on the yaksha’s skin and bones and soul away from the people of Liyue, before it taints their psyches as it has in the past—but that reality doesn’t make his stretches of self-exile any more palatable. 

“Will you be alright?” she asks. She can tell he thinks it’s a useless question. She’s inclined to agree, but finds it passing her lips anyway. 

“I will return when the imbalance is purged,” he says. 

Verr clears her throat before silence can settle. “Well, uh, thank you… for letting me know…” 

Xiao simply nods, and then he is gone. 

Verr stares at the empty air for a second before turning back to her paperwork. The parchment flutters weakly in the cold wind from the open window. She can’t remember what she was going to write. She wonders if it even really matters.

Time rolls on like the tide. 

Verr keeps her ear to the ground, shifting the inn’s focus towards the interception of Fatui intel. She’s glad Ningguang made the call in the end, because the opening of the Northland Bank is like the breach of a proverbial floodgate. As winter turns to spring and a lantern-painted sky rings in a new year—the ninth in the inn’s life—the Fatui weave their tendrils through Liyue under the banner of diplomacy and good business. It is all the spies of Wangshu can do to keep their heads above water.

Spring makes way for summer’s arrival, hot and bright, and a harbinger comes to Liyue.

Tartaglia is not the end of the world itself—he is too loud and too inefficient, if Verr’s spies in the city are to be believed; too free with his money and his time and his loose lips—and good ends of the world are much more inevitable than one man. Perhaps he is simply a portent of the end. The end’s messenger. A sign of things to come. ‘Harbinger’ is an apt term. 

The Northland Bank’s foothold in Liyue only grows with him in play; a painted fool, Xiao might say, but an undeniably savvy one. 

The dog days of summer grow long and humid, and it is on such a night that Verr finds herself curled under a blanket on the north end of the inn’s balcony, working long past closing on the latest batch of reports from her scouts. The Fatui’s movements are nonsensical—dancing the borders of legality and diplomatic immunity—and she knows it is a futile job, but mindless paperwork seems to be the only way to stop her hands from shaking anymore.

And maybe, just maybe, if she can find some sort of breakthrough they’ll be able to be done with it. What a lovely daydream that is… a break from the mounting sense of dread that only festers with each passing day… 

She sighs and looks up from her scrolls for just a moment, casting her gaze past the ring of lantern light surrounding her, past the low boughs of the Wangshu Tree, and out at Stone Gate in the hazy distance. In the sky beyond, a dark storm boils above Mondstadt, like an ink smudge against midnight blue sky. It’s only growing stronger as the days grow longer, strange and unending. Some of the more whimsical merchants are whispering about dragons in the old city. She hopes it doesn’t become yet another thing to worry about. 

Verr feels her hair catch in a new, unseen breeze. The sound of clacking ornaments rings out above her. 

“Adeptus Xiao?” She asks to the empty air.

There’s a grunt from above, and Verr is used to her oldest patron’s whims enough by now that when Xiao drops from the roof to stand before her, with no more fanfare than a small gust of wind, she remains unflinching. 

“What are you doing with my dog?”

Xiao is indeed, upon closer inspection, holding her dog in his arms with its legs wind-milling in the air. “He was sleeping on my balcony,” Xiao reports. “I did not realise you had replaced me with such an inferior substitute.”

Verr thinks that might be his attempt at a joke, so she huffs and gently takes Richie’s squirming form from his arms. He’s gotten better at handling animals over the years, but he still isn’t very patient about it. 

“He is new.” Xiao notes, nodding at the dog. 

“We got him while you were away,” Verr confirms. “I… hadn’t realised you’d returned. It’s good to see you.”

“Hm.” Xiao gives her a bare nod and casts his eyes to the horizon. Verr settles Richie in her lap, scratching behind his ears. 

“How are you?”

“As well as can be. I got some almond tofu from Yanxiao earlier in the evening.”

“That’s good. Earlier, though? I didn’t see you come in.”

“You were… preoccupied.”

Verr sighs. “Sorry… Work has become… unexpectedly troublesome...”

She’s ready to hear some sort of grunted, half-hearted reply, or perhaps the flutter of the wind as Xiao leaves. Instead, she hears the creaking of the floorboards beside her, she sees the flutter of silks in her peripheral vision, and finally she sees Xiao sit down beside her.

Richie squirms at the motion, and Verr loosens her hold to let him run back into the inn. 

“You’re watching the storm,” Xiao notes. 

However long Verr has been away from the land of her birth, it stirs something in her heart to see it this way—fear, uneasiness, pain—to see the land of Freedom lashed by violent winds. 

“Just one more thing to worry about. All our plates are full to the brim with this Fatui shit, not to mention the Abyss… and now that thing? The merchants swore up and down it was a dragon before Stone Gate was shut. Now there’s no news at all.”

“Hm. Dragons make for difficult foes,” Xiao remarks in the plain tone he seems to reserve for saying things Verr feels much too mortal to hear. She sighs. 

“Any tips?” Her tone is dry but she watches Xiao for his answer all the same. He seems uncharacteristically upfront today, after all.

“Dragons are esoteric creatures, even by the standards of spirits and gods,” Xiao says. “It is hard to draw generalisations about them… no two are the same.”

“You know a lot of dragons?”

“Need I remind you that Rex Lapis himself takes the form of a dragon?” Xiao retorts, almost scolding, in that way he does whenever Verr fails a spontaneous little test of historical or spiritual knowledge. She refrains from rolling her eyes and simply shrugs. 

“Regardless,” Xiao continues, “Yes. I have known several dragons over the years… If I had to draw a common link between them, I would say they are all creatures of great confidence… and they are profoundly territorial. It is likely this dragon will not come south to Liyue. Not if it is of the usual sort.”

“Usual?”

“We live in strange times,” Xiao says by way of an answer. “Anything is possible. Technically.”

“Great,” Verr sighs. “Let’s just add an unusual storm-dragon-thing to the list of things I have to worry about.”

Xiao narrows his eyes. “Why worry? I thought your Tianquan assigned you to other matters.” 

“Doesn’t stop the matters from mattering,” Verr murmurs. “Feels like all I can do from up here is watch the storm roll in. It’s like nothing I do is enough.”

Not for this place. 

Not for you.

“I’ve told you before, Verr Goldet, these concerns are affairs beyond the scope of mortal means. Your help is not required.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to give it.” She squeezes her eyes shut and sighs. “I feel like… I can’t just do nothing, Xiao.”

She crumples the parchment in her hands, fingers digging into the ink-wet edges. 

Xiao sighs and shifts next to her. She doesn’t expect him to speak, but speak he does. 

“When Guili was whole,” he says abruptly, “its lands stretched far past here, almost all the way to the northern edge of Bishui. This tree was one of many planted in its heart, in the fertile soil tended by the gods who kept the Assembly at peace. It is the only one that survived its destruction.”

Verr knows as much about the ancient civilization of Guili as the next person, which is to say not very much at all. Scholars from the Akademiya come through from time to time, but even they spend most of their time arguing the fine points of anthropological theories and saying nothing of real substance. 

“Did you live here then?” Verr asks. She doesn’t know where he’s going with this, but finds herself unable to do anything but listen. 

“No… I… I came to Guili in the dusk of its life and the early centuries of mine,” Xiao says. “I was not there long enough to call it home, just long enough to watch it fall. I knew others who remembered it better—it was from them that I learned the true breadth of what was lost.”

“It’s hard to imagine you being too young for something, Adeptus Xiao,” Verr teases weakly. Xiao huffs in a way she hopes is amused . 

“Too young for Guili, maybe,” he says, and Verr pretends not to see the way his throat bobs before he continues, “but I was old enough for Liyue… Yes… Liyue was my home— is my home. And if the Gods are willing and kind, it always will be.”

“After the harbour was settled, it became clear its borders were smaller and weaker than those of its predecessor,” Xiao recounts. “The adepti who had enjoyed Guili’s prosperity saw to pay it back in kind—to protect the fledgling Liyue, to let it prosper. With Rex Lapis we forged these debts into contracts, each loomed of different thread and branching like rivers. Mine led me here, to the last steward of Guili.” 

He raises his hand to the branches above them, where a sudden breeze shakes a scattered shower of twirling leaves from the boughs. “Do not think Liyue so weak it cannot weather the storms coming for it. Whether that be the storms my ilk chases or the storms the Qixing sets you upon. So long as this nation is stewarded it will stand. We will hold fast.”

We, he says. 

Nine years ago, Verr might have agreed with him—that her post here, as spymaster for the Qixing, was that of a protector. Now, she wonders if the idea is actually laughable. How conceited it is to call herself a steward in the same breath as a monster slayer like Xiao, when all she seems to be able to do is to count the thunderous peals of a distant storm in the dead of night. Count and count in a worry-borne insomnia while the branching rot of another, different disaster spreads through the city at her back. 

Against all odds she’s been made more than the sum of her parts, but how well can she say she’s served her home, when the rising tide of danger does nothing but drown her?

It feels ridiculous to claim she is here as a steward, as Xiao says. If she is, she’s not a very successful one. She is no adeptus. She is no god. She is no warrior. 

Xiao is old. He’s wise, in his own way. But he’s not all-knowing. 

Verr says nothing. Eventually, Xiao leaves her alone again, watching the sun rise over Dihua.

Autumn, as it often does, sneaks up on the people of the plains. One minute, the weather is fair and the air is warm, and then next it is replaced with an immovable chill and the daily task of sweeping golden leaves from the inn’s balconies. 

In the spaces between, Verr watches the storm over Mondstadt grow darker every day with a heavy heart. She spends her evenings up to her neck in reports, sinking into the mire of the rumours; of Abyss order sightings closer and closer to the city; of closed trade routes between here and the north; of the cold, grasping fingers of Fatui business spreading ever further; of rumours of unrest on the distant shores of Inazuma, spilling into the ports of Liyue Harbour; of whispers from the halls of the Akademiya, formless and all the more frightening for it. 

On a clear night at the beginning of the season, Verr goes for a walk on the marsh.

She lets her feet carrying her aimlessly down the beaten paths between wetlands and salt-flats, Richie dashing out ahead of her, chasing birds in the grass and sniffing at roadside plants. She lets the air hum around her and the earth crunch under her feet, until she finds herself staring up at the Statue of the Seven in the centre of the plains. 

She looks over her shoulder, to Wangshu and the hills beyond, the tree glowing like a lighthouse over the ocean of silken, wet fields that stretch between them. 

Verr turns back to the worn-down statue. The stone pillar is wrapped in ivy and weeds, choked by tall grasses and windblown soil. Above it all sits the throne-bound figure of Rex Lapis, featureless face cast towards the object in his hand, robes splayed around him. 

Call her nostalgic, but she’s always preferred the ones of Barbatos—with his wings outstretched and arms held out in a gesture of generosity and welcome—to the regal, aloof depictions of a lounging Rex Lapis that dot her nation of choice. 

“You’d think on a road so well-travelled they’d clean you up a little more,” Verr murmurs. The statue, of course, does not reply. 

In Mondstadt, the worn-down statues of Barbatos are sooner used as the jungle gyms of precocious children than they are any sort of place of worship. As a result, they’re rarely overgrown, instead smoothed by years of touches both gentle and firm. In Liyue, however, despite their God’s closeness to his people, depictions of him seem… untouched… revered to the point of disrepair. A little ironic. 

A little sad.

“So, uh, h-hello there,” Verr says abruptly. She’s met with silence, of course—just the rustling grasses and the chirp of insects in the shrubbery. “I-I don’t think I’ve ever come to see you before…” she murmurs. “I’m… sorry… about that.”

The Statues of the Seven used to have eyes, Xiao had told her once. 

She hadn’t asked, of course, but he rarely divulges information on demand anyway.

What happened to them? She had asked. 

They were taken by birds, the legends say. The creatures of the mortal realm were fearful of the oversight of the gods, so they sent their smallest and quickest birds to pluck the eyes from their faces and scatter them across the land, so they could not see them.

Did it work?

Xiao had looked at her funny. Rex Lapis descends each year, he had replied brusquely. These are just legends.

Verr thinks back on that conversation now, and wonders why he hadn’t just said no.

“It feels like the whole world is on edge” She murmurs, looking up into the Geo Archon’s sightless face. “Like a hammer is about to fall and—and I’m sorry if I’m not doing a good enough job to fix it o-or help it, I guess… I just feel…”

Is this praying? As she loses her thought she’s not sure. She doesn’t expect a response from the cold, stone man. Maybe she just wants him to hear. 

“I worry for Xiao, you know. More than I should.” She lets her quiet words float up to the lounging man of stone above her. “He cares about you a great deal so I hope you worry for him too. It’s just that… he seems so lacking in fortune already. I can’t imagine the toll if that burden increases. If something really is coming… I don’t feel… qualified… to aid him. To aid Liyue...”

She sighs, resting her hand against the cold pillar. Richie whines, sniffing at her heels. 

“Maybe I’m not needed at all.”

The skies above Mondstadt clear, eventually. It had been a dragon, in the end; Stormterror, one Barbatos’s Four Winds, gone mad. The saviour had been an outlander; adept in the art of the sword and command of Anemo. Verr has to hear about it from a travelling wine salesman of all people. 

Xiao is gone for a month.

He returns with a certain heaviness to him; there’s sadness in his eyes that’s a little more pronounced than before. Verr knows it’s not her place to pry, so she watches on as she always does. She leaves blankets and tea and Yanxiao’s freshest almond tofu at the top of the stairs. 

There isn’t much more she can do. 

At night, she looks out her window towards the north, where the glow of the Statue of the Seven is visible in clear weather. She stares out at it, one beacon on the dark marsh to another, until she’s too tired to look anymore. 

Sometimes, the end of the world walks right through your front door. In these cases, it can still be hard to notice them for what they are. 

Verr already has reports of the mysterious traveller on her desk before the outlander steps foot through Stone Gate. The information is sparse, but paints an interesting picture; A girl. Young. Adept in the art of the sword and the command of Anemo. The saviour of Mondstadt. Vanquisher of Stormterror. 

Verr wonders if prodigies ever get tired. 

The traveller bypasses Wangshu the first time they pass by, which Verr can’t help but be a little annoyed by. They’re making for the city, Yuhua tells her, having managed to catch them in a conversation before they’d moved on. Gods know why…

She isn’t expecting the mysterious saviour of Mondstadt to walk into Wangshu Inn on the evening of the Rite of Descension, a few days later, swept in on the crisp winter breeze.

The young woman is pale in every sense, with short blonde hair and white clothes and eyes like muted copper. She strides in accompanied by some kind of flying elf, which would be the most interesting thing about her if Verr were less travelled. To Verr, the most interesting thing about the young woman is the purpose with which she walks. She strides into the inn lobby, right up to the reception desk, skirts swishing and head held high. 

“I’m looking for Adeptus Xiao,” she states clearly. Her voice is gentle but firm. 

“I always find it’s going to be an interesting day when someone comes in asking that,” Verr says with a wink. The little elf makes a sputtering noise, but the young woman seems unfazed. “What’s your business with him, if I may ask? I might be able to help you.”

The young woman and the elf share a nervous glance. It catches Verr’s attention, but not enough for her to break her pleasant smile just yet. 

“We, uh… we have some news for him from the city,” the young woman says. “We’ve been sent to meet him.”

“It’s urgent!” The elf adds, spinning erratically in mid-air. 

“We were told he lives here.” 

“It’s adeptus kinda urgent!” 

Verr puts her hands up and chuckles. “I don’t doubt it! But I will say it’s hard to get Xiao to agree to meet with people. Most adepti don’t make it a habit of interacting with humans.” 

“And yet he lives at an inn,” the young woman notes. 

Verr narrows her eyes and smiles. The young woman holds her gaze steadily. How interesting. 

“Xiao is a… special case,” she says finally, “but he’s still very particular.”

“Any suggestions on how to get his attention, then?” The young woman asks.

“An offering wouldn’t go amiss,” Verr suggests. “He’s a little stuffy, so formality will help smooth things over. If he’s here he’ll be on the top floor balcony.”

The young woman nods, begins to dip into a Mond-style curtsy, then corrects into a Liyuean bow. Verr laughs and dips into a Mondstadtian curtsy of her own, ankle-over-ankle, enjoying the flicker of amusement in the young woman’s eyes as she does. There’s something likeable about her, in between all the cracks in her poised demeanour. 

“Good luck…” Verr leaves the end of her sentence open as she straightens up, nodding to the young woman. 

“Lumine,” she offers, before her expression strains just a little. “And, uh, thank you…?”

“Verr Goldet,” Verr offers in turn. Lumine’s expression catches her attention again, a little red flag, waving in the back of her mind. 

But she’s gone before she can look closer. Lumine, swathed in white and gold, drifts up the stairs to the balcony, her little elf fluttering after her. Verr watches them go. 

She wonders if being so interesting ever gets boring. She makes a mental note to ask Xiao what they’d been there to tell him, and then goes back to her work. 

Here comes the beginning of the end, to some; a fire lit by a dozen strikes of a dozen disparate matches. It’s strange, almost, how all roads seem to have led here; to Rex Lapis’s corpse, falling from the sky above his city. 

The sun has barely finished sinking below the horizon when Lumine and her elf leave the inn. 

They’d been up on the balcony for all of twenty minutes, and they leave much more quickly than they’d arrived, offering Verr only a polite nod before disappearing down the steps. Almost as soon as they do there’s a clatter from outside, a panicked murmur, and a man running into the lobby, his hat askew and tears in his eyes. 

“Rex Lapis is dead,” the messenger gasps. “Th-the Exuvia… at the Rite of Descension— He—”

For one shining moment, Verr feels the world go utterly still around her. It’s as if everything just… stops. She doesn’t hear what he says next. He’s said enough, and now the only thing she can hear is a ringing in her ears. 

Rex Lapis is dead. 

Chaos is an understatement, but Verr’s vision tunnels immediately. She bolts out from behind the desk and dashes for the stairs. Her shoes slide on the lacquered steps a few times,in her haste, and she clings desperately to the railing as she thunders towards the upper floors. Murmurs and cries and shouts from the lobby ring out in her wake, fading as she bursts into the dimness of the upper floors. Lumine and her elf had just been here. They’d come from the city. They’d had news. They’d been looking for Xiao. 

Verr bursts out onto the upper balcony. The sun is dipping below the horizon, casting the sky in blood reds and winter-dark blues. 

“Xiao!? Xiao what did they tell you?!” She gasps, stumbling out onto the hardwood. “So help me if they did anything to you... You tell me where they’re going right now and I’ll… I… Xiao?” 

The small rock garden that usually sits on the balcony is on the floor, pottery shattered and pebbles strewn across the wooden boards. 

The balcony is empty. Verr pauses in the stillness of it all, so high up that the murmurs from below cannot reach. 

“Xiao…?”

The wind from the north is mournful, chilled. It whips at her hair and she lets it draw her gaze upwards. 

High above her, in the branches of the tree, a shadow shifts. 

“Leave me,” Xiao hisses from the gloom. 

Eyes the colour of freshly minted mora, glowing just as bright, meet Verr’s. For the first time in her life, she sees tears falling from them. He’s curled in the branches of the tree and clutching his hand to his chest, blood seeping from cuts in his palm. Verr looks down at the broken pottery at her feet. It’s not hard to put it all together. 

“No,” she says, and she feels for all the world like a woman staring down a hurricane.

“He’s dead,” Xiao breathes. “Rex Lapis is dead.” 

Verr had known that Xiao knew the Geo Archon. He mentions him often, always lauding him and praising him. She’d known, of course, that Rex Lapis was the one who let slip the yaksha upon the demons of the world… but she supposes it hadn’t quite sunk in that Xiao would have an emotional connection to the hand that raised him from Dream Eater to Guardian. 

But of course he would. Of course he would.

And now he’s dead. She knows that Gods die, but that doesn’t mean she’s ever attempted to fathom it. The Seven are older than her grandparents’ grandparents, after all, and though human history remembers much, the sheer length of godly tenure often threatens to outlive it all. For them to just die…? No… there would be time to unpack that later… 

“Xiao ,” she says in a strong voice, throwing pretence to the wayside for the moment. She hoists herself up onto the roof, careful not to slip on the tiles as she approaches the low branches Xiao has caged himself within. “Are you okay?” 

“I don’t… I don’t know…” He’s clearly not ; staring at her with wide, distant eyes and a frozen expression. Like a deer too confused to know whether it should run. Verr does not enjoy pitying Xiao, largely because she knows he’d hate that kind of attention, but she can’t control the wave of sadness that grips her heart at the sight of him here, looking so much like a lost child it’s hard to keep watching. 

“I want you to breathe,” she says, and she starts to approach him again, slowly. Wind whips at her hair. “Can you focus on breathing?” 

He grits his teeth and shakes his head. “I do not need to be coddled by you, woman.” 

“No. But you do need to be calm, because I like having a roof on my inn—remember our deal?” 

Mention of their old contract—so many years old now—seems to refocus him a little. He lets out a shaking breath, anemo swirling from the corners of trembling lips. 

Verr reaches him and puts her hands on Xiao’s arms slowly, so he can stop her if he wants, but there seems to be no need for that caution. She grips his arms in a gesture she hopes is steadying, and feels him slump slightly in her hold. 

“What happened? Tell me.” 

“That outlander… she says the Exuvia fell dead at the Rite of Descension. She said it was murder.” 

“Rex Lapis?” 

“Yes!” Xiao snaps. “Are you dense?!” 

“That’s—” 

“You… you humans,” he spits, bringing his hands up to grip Verr’s arms. “Such callous, selfish creatures you are! And yet I am bound in service to you, and for what?! For what now that he’s GONE!?”

Angry tears start to drip down Xiao’s cheeks. They catch on the corners of his mouth, in stretched, cracked lips that frame a sharp, wrathful snarl. Verr wonders how long he’s been holding them back.

“How dare this happen. How dare someone touch divinity without claim—without contract—”

“Xiao, please— ”

“—First Barbatos’s wings are stripped and dragged through the streets like carrion… ” he hisses. “Now blind eyes are turned to the murder of Morax… my… he was my…” 

Verr has seen people panic before, but never like this. The air around them trembles in concert with Xiao’s breaths. The miasma of his element quakes in a kind of fear and rage that raises goose flesh on Verr’s arms. The wind whips at her hair, rattling the roofing titles and the chill-stripped branches of the tree. 

“Xiao, please,” she urges. “You’re making no sense.”

“What am I!?” Xiao forges on, his fingers pressing harder into Verr’s sleeves, hard enough to pierce fabric and skin, blood smearing on the brocade. “The tempered steel of… of a dead God!? Morax… he gave me my name! My home! He gave me everything I am, every purpose I could possibly have! What am I supposed to be now that he’s dead?! He was the first of us—the prime of the adepti—he’s always been here, always, and now what?! He’s just gone?! He can’t be gone, I—!”

“ Xiao! You’re hurting me!” 

Xiao’s eyes widen. He lets go of her like he’d been burned, leaving Verr with only the phantom sensation of his sharp fingernails digging into the flesh of her forearms. The winds fall as he pulls back, and Verr lets him go too, dropping her hands to her sides. 

He puts his face in his hands. 

Verr waits. 

“Gods die, right? E-everything dies… y-you said that,” she says weakly. This is a fact. They both take comfort in facts. 

“Not him,” Xiao says into his fingers, and he’s never sounded more like the young person he appears to be than right now. “That was never supposed to mean him.” 

Rex Lapis is not Verr’s god. Barbatos was, perhaps, hers by birth, but she has travelled the lands of Teyvat too extensively to really feel like she’s from any one place. Maybe, in time, as she grew to see Liyue as her home she would have come to see the Lord of Geo as her own protector, but that will not happen now. 

She doesn’t think she’ll be able to grieve the way the people of Liyue will grieve these coming days. The death of a God is a great and existential thing, but she has enough practicality to know she can put any crisis brewing in her brain to the side for now. There are more important things to be done. 

“Wait here, okay?” Verr says slowly. “I’ll be right back.” 

She slowly climbs down off the roof, gripping the tiles carefully. She pauses in her descent and looks up at Xiao. “I mean it, Xiao. Please don’t leave.”

He doesn’t react. 

Verr rushes downstairs, passing the lobby where groups of guests are embroiled in dark and discussions bordering on panic. She tries not to look, merely sending Huai’an a purposeful nod before heading further down into the kitchens. 

Yanxiao is not in today—or perhaps he is upstairs, wheeling through grief like the rest of his countrymen. It wouldn’t be surprising. Shaking her head, Verr casts the thoughts aside and begins to gather the ingredients for tea. She works through any rising tide of terror she might be feeling, heating the water just right and collecting blankets from the linen cupboards while the pot brews. After she’s done and the smell of firm, smoky pine tea is permeating the air, she collects the pot and the blankets and makes her way back upstairs, grabbing a medicine kit from storage as she goes. 

Xiao is exactly where she left him, crouched up on the roof, staring out over the marsh. 

Verr climbs slower this time, carefully balancing the teapot and depositing her cargo carefully on the edge of the awning before hoisting herself up. She approaches Xiao from the side, laying the blankets down first, then the teapot in the crook of a branch, and keeping the medicine kit in her hands. The boughs of the tree are not the most comfortable, but Verr finds a steady place to sit by the adeptus all the same.

“Xiao,” she says. 

He turns to her, expression dead and resigned. 

“I’d like to see your hand,” she says, then holds out her own. It’s non-negotiable. 

Xiao, against all odds, silently lets her work. She isn’t entirely sure how much help she’s being—Xiao never seems to stay hurt for long when it comes to benign injuries such as these. But it’s not just about physical healing. Verr recognises this as she cleans the last chip of pottery from his cut palm, feeling him flinch but ultimately lose a little bit of tension. She winds the roll of soft bandages around his hand—once, twice, three times—and ties it off gently. 

“How does that feel?” She asks. 

Xiao closes his fist slowly.

Verr moves on to pouring out two cups of tea, which is likely over-steeped by now. She passes to Xiao, making sure his fingers are closed around the cup before she lets go and picks up her own. 

Xiao stares at the tea for a long time, so long that Verr wonders if she’s messed up somehow, but then he slowly brings it to his lips and takes a sip. 

They sit for a long time like that. The wind rustles mournfully through the upper leaves of the Wanghsu tree, like a distant funeral dirge. Verr casts her gaze out across the marsh, north. On clear nights such as these, one can almost convince oneself that Mondstadt’s lands are visible on the horizon. Verr wonders if that is why Xiao is so fond of his balcony, or if, like her, he is simply captivated by the sight of the moonlight spilling like cold silk across the shallow waters of Dihua. 

She watches, as they drink and sit in silence, the distant lights of homesteads and Millelith outposts grow brighter in sequence as the messengers thunder their way north along the trade roads, the death of a God on their tongues. How many more mourners will there be upon the next rising of the sun?

And how strange it will be, that the world beneath their feet will still be turning though its God is dead?

“What am I supposed to do?” Xiao whispers, voice hoarse, but loud enough to draw Verr back to reality. 

“I really… truly don’t know,” she replies honestly. “What do you want to do?”

“Rend the flesh from whatever madman did this,” Xiao murmurs, squeezing the cup so tightly Verr is worried it might crack. “But…” 

His pain is, as it always is, difficult to watch, but Verr finds that she cannot look away. “You told me you struggle with tragedy when there is no one at fault," she says. "That you find it easier when there is something to kill for it...”

“This is not the same, Verr Goldet," Xiao rasps sharply. "Here… here there is something to kill—” 

“But the ending will be the same, won’t it?" Verr murmurs. "You’ll come back here and—” 

“He will still be gone." Xiao's knuckles are white around his cup.

“He… he won’t be gone ,” Verr pleads weakly. "The people we... the people we love don't leave us when they die... not really. The gods can't be much different."

Years ago, she'd felt a loss that had hollowed her out and left her empty. She'd had to force herself to believe she still had something—she's not sure she believes it. But the look in Xiao's eyes, empty and hard, is too familiar for her to just give up.

Xiao is quiet for a long time, a stone breakwater against her lapping half-truths. There is no other sound, even the rustling of the leaves is quieted.

“I’m really going to be the last one left, aren’t I?”

Verr’s veins turn to ice water. The smell of pine becomes sour. 

“Some… sometimes I think that’s my real curse…” Xiao continues, “...that they’re all dead… and I’ll never die.” 

Verr doesn’t know what that means; she could never really hope to know the enormity of the creature before her, and that's eaten at her in the past—her inability to know him, to understand the weight of nearly three thousand years of a life, lived. But what she does know now is that she’s moving. She’s leaning forward and putting their tea aside and wrapping her arms around Xiao and pulling him closer and it’s easy. It’s easy because despite his age and grandeur and the power that thrums beneath his skin like a coursing underground river he is small. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, voice muffled in her shoulder.

"Just... let me... okay?" She whispers.

Xiao does not hug her back, but he doesn’t pull away either. 

“Why do you people try to care for me like this?” He asks. “I have done nothing to warrant it.” 

“But of course you have,” Verr pleads softly. “And the fact you can't see that breaks my heart, Xiao.” 

“The only thing I have ever offered the people of Liyue is violence, Verr Goldet,” he says. “My actions do not deserve your mercy or your pity.”

Verr thinks of the pot of glaze lilies that have sat in her window for years now, steadily blooming. She thinks about a small, unprovoked act of kindness at the lowest point of her life, from a being that believes so strongly he cannot be kind that he hadn’t recognised his own actions for what they were. Of his unpracticed hands in hers, of his glowing promises and quiet resolutions.

She thinks that she would care about Xiao even if all he could offer was violence—even if he didn’t make the birds feel safe enough to nest in Wangshu’s branches, or keep the roads clear for their guests travelling by night, or delight the children at the inn without even trying, or make Yuhua laugh and Yanxiao feel needed and their guests feel at home and Huai’an feel like a—

Make her feel like a—

She purses her lips. Focus, Verr.

“You’ve lived a long time,” she says, “but there are many things you’ve yet to understand about people.” 

“Perhaps,” he admits.  

“You’ve been lonely for a long time too, right?” She murmurs. “But you’re not alone now.” 

She pulls back for a moment, reaching up to tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear. He lets her. She smooths his tangled locks down and smiles. He lets her do that, too, only staring up at her with an unreadable expression until she’s finished.

“I cannot walk your path with you and that pains me every day,” she continues. “I want to help you, so so badly—to take away all the pain you’re carrying—but I can’t, Xiao, and that cuts me to my core and I’m so sorry. But if nothing else I want you to know that you will always have a place here, as long as I live. I promise you that.” 

Xiao’s eyes flicker downward. It’s not exactly bashful… it strikes Verr simply as an aversion to being seen. But he doesn’t move away.

“So grieve,” she says softly. “You are not cursed, Xiao... and you are not alone. Not here.”

On the roof of the Wansghu Inn, Verr Goldet sits under the vast night sky, holding in her arms an ancient and unfathomable thing. Xiao, the last of the yakshas, who has seen nations fall and mountains rise and Gods die, is sheltered from it all as he cries. 

He cries in utter silence, like he doesn’t deserve to do it, like he fears the universe might strike him down if he’s heard. 

He has warned her so many times about her proximity to the world of the adepti, about how much danger it allegedly brings to insert herself into his life the way she does. The world is so very big, and the boughs of Wangshu could not possibly hope to reach its top. But at this moment Verr Goldet does not care. She thinks if the karmic balance of the universe sees fit to strike Xiao down for the crime of grieving—or mourning the loss of a loved one as should be his right—then she is more than willing to sit here with her arms around him and make the universe go through her first. 

She is no adeptus. She is no god. She is no warrior. 

She is an innkeeper, a shelter for the weary. She cannot do much, but she can do this. 

A few days later, the sky above Liyue Harbour goes dark. The sea writhes and rises. This particular end of the world tastes like salty water and ozone. It looks like the violent sea, come to life. 

While closing up the inn’s shutters against the brewing storm, Verr sees a lone figure standing on the middle terrace, staring out at the boiling sky.

“Adeptus Xiao,” she says. 

He turns. His expression is steely and determined and, for the first time since his Archon’s death, Verr sees a spark inside his mora-gold eyes. His mask is unclipped from his belt, sitting primed on his brow.

“Verr Goldet.” 

“Where are you going?” Verr asks.

“Out,” Xiao says, and he brings the mask over his face. “Osial demands culling.”

“Don’t stay out too late,” Verr says. “I hear Yanxiao is making almond tofu tonight.” 

Xiao sends her one last look over his shoulder.

“Save some for me.” 

And then he is gone.

Chapter Text

Osial rises from the depths, a shrieking, animalistic relic of the past.

Xiao slips his mask over his face, tasting his own hot, karma-poisoned breath on his tongue, and dives. 

In the early hours of the morning, as the sun paints the pools of the Dihua Marsh in shimmering gold, a young yaksha sits in the boughs of the great ginkgo tree that looms over Bishui Plain. It is winter and the war is finally over.

He can still taste it, a little. The great dying of it all. 

Xiao is young. He was born in war and very nearly died in it, so the prospect of peace is a foreign one to him. Liyue Harbour, stewarded by the adepti, is a second attempt at what Guili had tried to be—peaceful, harmonious, prosperous. 

In this respect, Xiao thinks his younger perspective is a valuable one.

The Guili Assembly had been glutted on peace, concerned only with itself. There had been no one watching its flanks. The eyes of its people and protectors had turned inwards. In times of war, such naivety is rewarded only with bloodshed and destruction.

Xiao was born in war, and so his eyes are turned outwards. Guili will not happen again. 

Years pass, and generations of those brave enough to stake claim in homesteads and farms across Liyue’s northern reaches live and die under the steady shelter and watchful gaze of the great ginkgo tree. Xiao sits curled in its branches and looks farther. 

Birds nest in the tree’s nooks and hollows, year after year. Xiao watches the borders of the nation, but in the spring his eyes turn, sometimes, to the downy wings of newborn finches. 

Soft, clean, delicate feathers. They’ll fly away at the end of the season. 

He tries not to make a habit of looking for too long. 

Xiao instead watches the moon shine at night in the silken pools of Dihua like hammered silver, cut only by the grand shadows cast by the ginkgo’s towering branches. 

Sometimes he thinks he can still hear the war, on quiet nights, but most of the time he hears the wind singing. Soothing his tired bones. 

The cold winds from the north are his favourite.

It happens again, nearly. The Cataclysm is almost the end of everything. 

The yaksha dwindle like flies, dropping in the heat of enemy blades and their own poisoned spirits as the seven corners of the world are torn to pieces by a different kind of butcher’s blade. In Liyue, disease and demons spread across the fields like a rolling tide, and the Chasm opens like a hell-mouth.

Through it all, Xiao fights. He waters the roots of the great ginkgo with his own blood and the ichor of monsters. He loses himself in it, days blending into years. 

Bocasius is the last to die, and he dies in the dark. Xiao hadn’t been with him, what with Liyue’s protectors scattered to the winds in their desperation, but there’s something different about a distance born from duty and a distance born from the permanency of death. He remembers little before he heard the news, and even less in the aftermath. Only blood. Only fear. Only anger. 

There’s no wind on the day Bocasius dies. The air is stagnant and still. The leaves of the ginkgo are quiet, grasping fingers. Xiao can barely stand to look at them.

“Your song isn’t over,” Barbatos says, near the end. “Though I can’t be the one to play it for you. But… I think you’re lucky to be alive, Xiao. I’m glad you are.”

“I didn’t ask,” Xiao spits. Barbatos sighs. 

They’re sitting in the boughs of his ginkgo tree. Xiao has his knees tucked to his chest, back against the sturdy trunk, while Barbatos sits in the dip of another branch, legs swinging under him as he spins his flute between his fingers, unplayed. His wings are relaxed at his back, long and downy and white. Xiao tries not to look at them too much. 

“I have to return to Mondstadt. The destruction is too great for them to handle on their own.”

It’s too little, Xiao thinks bitterly. He has never agreed with Barbatos’ philosophy, his logical extremes on the matter of freedom. A god should protect their people. Why should Morax and the adepti bleed and die for the people of Teyvat while Barbatos lingers here, at the fringes of his nation, and just wait until it’s almost too late?

“We might not see each other for a while,” Barbatos says lamely. 

Xiao doesn’t say goodbye. He has more important work to do. 

He doesn’t see Barbatos again after that. No one does. 

Xiao is the only yaksha left alive on Teyvat’s sun-burned soil when the dust settles. The Cataclysm comes to an end, Liyue holds fast, and the world spins on. Each little war is won at terrible, terrible cost. 

When the sun finally rises on this newly quiet world, Xiao fills the empty spaces himself. He screams into the blood-humid air of Bishui—into the hot, formless air—tearing at his ginkgo’s bark as if it were his own flesh. He cries and rages, sobs and bleeds. Karma roils in his chest but does not kill him. It won’t.

Morax tells the adepti that it will not happen again. Xiao tries to believe him, but for the first time in his life, he finds such a task difficult. 

He manages, though, eventually. If the promise is not true then he will make it true. He won’t be weak again. So he curls into the branches of his tree—Guardian, always—watching the sun rise and set over Dihua’s pools. Every year, finches are born in the boughs and fly away.

The wind doesn’t sound like anything anymore. That doesn’t stop him from listening.

Osial sinks back beneath the waves, defeated once more, and the world spins on. 

Xiao stumbles away from the aftermath—the celebrations, the revelations, the deaths reversed and debts forgiven—wanders until his feet sink with aching familiarity into the sand of the Bishui estuary, and kneels.

Rex Lapis, the god, is dead. Zhongli, the man, lives.

The people of Liyue have decided they no longer need the adepti’s protection, and the adepti have agreed. 

Xiao kneels, heavy in the sand.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, with the great ginkgo tree behind him and the ocean before him, the lapping ebb of the tidal flats rising and falling with the lazy crawl of the celestial bodies above. All he knows is that his grip is slack on his spear, pierced into the ground beside him more for support than anything else, and that for the first time in centuries, his back is turned to the threats beyond Liyue and his face is turned to its heart.

He watches the boats fill the harbour. He does not watch the marsh or the plains or the mountains. He watches the little boats and the little people and the city they call home. He lets himself rest. He lets himself be. 

What does being mean, for a creature like me?

He inhales the taste of salt and clean air. 

A yaksha is a blade, pointed outwards, sharp and singular. What use does such a tool have, in a world of self-determined men? In a Liyue under its own protection?

He has always been given freedom at the whims of others. Plucked from chains and named by Morax, favoured by the free winds of Barbatos, and now set loose from his contract of protection by the people of Liyue themselves. Change has always been something that is thrust upon him from blind spots in his own hazy periphery. He does not know if he wants it, this time. 

They are building a teahouse in his tree. 

The first proprietor is a portly man who treats business on the marsh like some kind of frontier, and maybe it is, with the number of monsters that roam its roads. It doesn’t stop the fact that his attitude is as bad as his dress sense, and he doesn’t have the decency to even ask Xiao before he starts laying foundations in the ginkgo’s lower branches. 

Xiao sabotages them for a while, as much as he can—blowing their construction materials from the roof and throwing their tools into the marsh waters—but he is forbidden to kill humans without just reason, so his veritable haunting remains just that… a haunt; easily persisted through by cocky men and their braindead schemes. 

The teahouse opens on a balmy day in autumn to a full crowd and there is not a single quiet nook of the tree for Xiao to run to for the next week.

Morax, of all beings, ends up liking the place, which is the only reason Xiao doesn’t rip like a whirlwind through the building’s upper floors within the first month. 

The teahouse goes under. The owner had been embezzling, and not even gracefully enough to get away with it. The teahouse goes bankrupt and Xiao hopes that’s the end of it, but of course it isn’t.

It is summer, years later. The teahouse opens again, under new management and a new coat of paint that pricks at Xiao’s nose as it is brushed along the bannisters. This owner is actually two; an older woman and her son. They run the place with military-like precision, so efficiently that Xiao worries they’ll never fail and he’ll be stuck with them and their silly arguments forever. 

They do fail, though. The woman dies a decade and a half later and her son has no family to help him continue on with the business. Morax is sad, of course, to see the tea shop close. He’d liked how strong their jasmine brews were, but Xiao is happy to see it gone. The tree is quiet again. 

The quiet is broken years later, after Liyue has blossomed into something beautiful and strong and the Tianquan’s palace floats high above the Harbour like a glimmering stone.

That’s all the more reason to leave him alone, he thinks. Liyue should focus on its gleaming pearl of a city and leave the country’s fringes to its protectors. 

But suddenly it is spring again, and there is someone downstairs. 

“Hey,” he snaps.

The human—a woman—staggers back a step, looking shocked at Xiao’s sudden appearance. 

He expects her to run. He doesn’t show himself often to the people who linger about the tree, so his appearance should be a shock. But she doesn’t run. Instead, she just puts a hand on her hip and stares back.

“Hey there,” she replies with a crooked smile. Her words are odd, Liyuean spoken with a tinge of an accent Xiao has only ever heard from the likes of Barbatos’ wayward people. 

Xiao frowns. This is going to be a difficult one. 

“Xiao?!”

At first, he thinks it’s in his head—a call of his name, a cry for help, from somewhere far beyond—but then he hears the splashing of water and the crunching of sand, and he’s on his feet in an instant, whipping around to face the north. The tree. The rising sun. 

The innkeeper is running towards him, her hair wild and fluttering and her skirts hiked up around her knees as she stumbles in the sand. Her boots sink and splash clumsily underfoot in her hurry—she almost falls—but then she keeps running, running until she’s close enough to throw her arms around Xiao, hard enough to make him fall back into the brackish water. 

It’s the second time Verr Goldet has held him like this, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be used to it—to the sheer audacity of her. Her arms are impossibly tight, and her hummingbird heartbeat is so incredibly loud

“We thought you were dead,” she wails into his hair, warm and loud. “You didn’t come back and we thought you’d died!”

He wriggles a little, but she shows no signs of letting go, so he stops. “I’m not dead,” he says dumbly.

“I know that now, idiot!” She snaps. 

She pulls back, her fragile human hands coming up to press against the sides of his head. Her eyes are mournful, desperate, as she searches his face for something. She pushes his hair back, wiping the ichor that is surely still smeared across his temples from his skin. 

“You’re okay?” she wonders aloud, her baleful gaze is as piercing as a blade. 

He nods. “Yes. We won.”

Her expression twists and dances in all the ways it so often does that he cannot understand. “Yes, but… you’re okay?” She urges.

The time of contracts between gods and Liyue has long since passed. Now is the time of contracts between Liyue and its people.

“I…”

Verr Goldet’s expression tightens, eyebrows knit together. Her brown eyes dart around, searchingly. 

“I will be,” Xiao says firmly. Even if his heart feels directionless now, he can at least promise it will not remain that way. The realisation—that he’s telling the truth—is something of a shock to him.

Verr Goldet sighs sharply, the tension is not gone.

“Okay, a-and… physically? You’re not hurt?”

Xiao knows he must look like a mess, covered in the grime of a fight now several days past. He snorts, feeling a curl of amusement. 

“It would take more than a glorified sea snake to put me down, Verr Goldet. Frankly, I should be insulted that you’d think otherwise.”

He expects her to do her usual fare. He expects a laugh, a snort, an exasperated roll of her eyes. But she does none of that. 

Instead, she lets go. She kneels next to him in the sand, her skirts muddy and crumpled, and begins to cry. 

Xiao flinches at the sudden burst of emotion, scrambling upright. Great, heaving sobs come from the woman in front of him, shaking her entire body. He hadn’t anticipated this and he doesn’t know what to do about it. 

“Are you… upset…?” He says weakly. 

“No! Xiao, I’m—” she laughs, an unfettered, ridiculous sounding thing. Tears run like rivers down the curves of her cheeks, but she grins. “I’m so damn happy, Xiao! I could cry—!” 

“You are crying.”

“I am, aren’t I!” 

Xiao doesn’t know what else to do, so he settles down next to her in the sand and places a hand on her shoulder. 

He doesn’t get Verr Goldet, he doesn’t get her audacity and her lack of propriety and her disregard for tradition. He especially doesn’t get why she embraces him so tightly, with no care given to the ills in his heart of the fact he’s usually covered in blood and guts and all manner of other disgusting things…

He’d known she’d be difficult. He’d known that from the beginning. 

The other things though…? Maybe he hadn’t known about those—hadn’t foreseen the facets of this woman and of the people she surrounds herself with… but he likes them all the same.

Maybe things don’t have to change. Or maybe they already have. 

You’re lucky, someone had told him once.

It’s a tough break, Verr Goldet had admitted once, with a level of understanding he couldn’t have fathomed from a human, trying to convince yourself they’re right.

The realisation he lets himself finally entertain is years, perhaps even centuries, in the making; This is not the end. It is not the end of Liyue and it is not the end of him. 

The last of the yakshas kneels in the sand, quietly, as the shimmering tide laps at his ankles and an incomprehensible woman cries because she’s happy under his tentative hand, and the sun shines as it always does above the great ginkgo over Bishui Plain. 

And the crisp winds, rolling all the way from the mountains to the heart of the harbour and back again, sound like a song.