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i.
Lin Shu had wings of fire, as had his father and uncles before him, and their father and uncles before them.
Not all the time, of course, because that’d just be troublesome; but set them upon a battlefield and the reds would smoulder and the yellows catch aflame, like some legendary fires of justice.
As if the very heavens themselves had sent them down to protect the lands of Liang, people used to say – not that they dared anymore, though.
(That’s just because they haven’t met the women of this house, his father had told him once. I swear I’ve seen your aunt Yueyao spit fire more than once.
Lin Shu hadn’t seen Consort Chen for what felt like an eternity, by that point. He believes it anyway.)
ii.
Lin Chen has the wings of some foreign angel, white feathers that match both the pigeons and the only kind of robes he seems to even own, swan’s down that looks for all the world impossibly soft to the touch.
Mei Changsu has only done so once, and then only because he’d accidentally brushed up against them during a routine checkup.
He’d drawn his hand back on reflex, hissing slightly from the icy cold.
Lin Chen hadn’t apologised.
Changsu almost had, until Lin Chen glared him into silence and stabbed the next acupuncture needle in harder than was probably strictly necessary.
(He hadn’t apologised for that, either, unless an irritated mutter of just can’t keep your hands to yourself, can you? counted.
Then again, this was Lin Chen. It probably did.)
iii.
Fei Liu does not have wings, and never will, from what the very best of their combined knowledge can tell, but he moves like he doesn’t need them anyway.
(“Another medical mystery for you to investigate, then,” Mei Changsu says in a too-mild tone, one he knows will exasperate Lin Chen – one Lin Chen knows he knows will irritate him, and yet that will stop exactly nothing anyway.
Changsu listens to the young master of Langya explain the impossibility of this in increasingly aggrieved tones, ignores the way Lin Chen’s wings rustle tense against his back every time Fei Liu leaps between rooftops further than he should be able to, the way his own try to flare under his heavy cloak when that wingless figure lands safely anyway.
It’s of no use, after all. They could not be more different – Changsu’s back is bare only because Lin Shu’s wings burned to ash on frozen cliffs. It aches, still, but no more than any other hurt in this body.
Without wings Fei Liu seems weightless; without his, Changsu is flightless, though he suspects even a phoenix’s span would not be enough to lift the infinite weight of the lives he carries.
No matter. He will descend to the depths of hell before this is entirely over; the skies belong to better hands than his.
Above them Fei Liu jumps again, higher and faster than the untrained eye could catch, while Lin Chen grumbles threats to grab him for real this time.
It’s almost too easy. “Fei Liu!” Mei Changsu calls. “Your Lin Chen-gege thinks he can catch you, is he right?”
“No!” the blurring shadow calls back even as Lin Chen turns a wordlessly annoyed jab of his fan on him before whirling away in a frigid blast.
Changsu raises a hand to shield his eyes as he watches them chase each other across the rooftops, and if he lets the sun’s glare fool itself into gilded gold it could almost look like another place, a lifetime away.
He doesn’t. The boys who raced each other across Jinling’s rooftops are long gone, in more ways than one, but – here, at least, there is this.)