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Lesser demons scattered as Sha Hualing stalked the icy halls of the Northern Desert Palace, her tail lashing back and forth. She wasn’t actually angry, but she knew how impressive she was when she looked angry, her eyes glowing red and her shoulders set back to better emphasize her chest, and fear was the quickest method of making these underlings get out of her way. She wasn’t angry, but she was impatient. In a hurry. These minions couldn’t possibly understand the importance of the matters she had to discuss with their king.
She’d been lounging in the gardens at the Demonic Emperor’s Palace, sprawled across one of the railings of the upper walkways and flicking pebbles at some of the more boring statuary as part of her campaign to have them replaced by something more interesting and preferably nude, when she overheard someone mention Liu Mingyan’s name.
It was one of her lieutenant’s lieutenants, a curvy snake demoness whose nimble forked tongue Sha Hualing envied, and she was leaning her head close to her fellow gossipers as she said, “-wish Liu Mingyan would visit here more often.”
“I know,” sighed the other demon, a buff demon lady that Sha Hualing didn’t recognize but made a mental note to try to recruit. She probably couldn’t pay better than the Demonic Emperor, but at least her guards didn’t have to put up with her disappearing for weeks on end to make soup for her pet peak lord. “Tell me about it.”
“I heard,” said a short, round-faced An Ding Peak disciple who was probably there to deliver the quarterly invoice, her voice a conspiratorial stage-whisper, “that she won’t be single for much longer.”
Wait, what? Liu Mingyan, single? Liu Mingyan, soon to not be single? Sha Hualing thought she’d been pretty clear about her intentions, and they’d been courting for the past several years. They’d gone through every stage of demonic courtship, some of them several times. Had Liu Mingyan not understood what they were doing somehow, despite participating just as enthusiastically?
“Oh, really?” said the snake demon eagerly. “Who is she interested in?”
“I don’t know,” the An Ding disciple admitted, “but it’ll happen. She was out night hunting, with my older sister, she’s a Xian Shu disciple, that’s how I know about this, and they found a patch of Blossoming Love Night Violets.”
“Holy shit,” said the buff demon. “I thought those were super rare.”
“They are, they are,” said the An Ding disciple. “But there’s a higher concentration of them around Xian Shu Peak for some reason? I’m not sure, I’m a file clerk, not a botanist. But anyway , the point is, when my older sister approached them nothing happened, but they bloomed for Liu Mingyan!”
“Holy shit,” the buff demon said again, and the snake demon gasped, raising her hand to cover her fangs as her jaw dropped. Sha Hualing dropped down from her perch and landed in the center of their little gossip cluster, startling the snake demon into a defensive hiss while the An Ding disciple dropped her armful of scrolls. The buff demon bent down to help her gather them up while Sha Hualing stalked off.
“Wait,” said the snake demon, and she paused, just in case it was something important related to any of the obligations she bothered to fulfill. “Is that a dire owl fang on your necklace?”
“Obviously,” she said, tapping it proudly with one sharp, lacquered fingernail, smirking a little bit as the gossipers dissolved into whispers of, “whoa,” and, “she’s so cool,” and, “do you know how hard those things are to kill?”
She hadn’t bothered saying anything to any of the North Desert Palace guards because they didn’t compliment her jewelry, but if they let her pass because they assumed she was on urgent business from the Demonic Emperor, well, that was their problem.
Mobei-Jun was not in his office, inconveniently, but his secretary-slash-consort was, and Sha Hualing supposed he’d have to do for the moment.
“Ah,” he said, looking up from whatever notes he was frantically scrawling, “my king should be back shortly, if you’d like to wait outside?” He had a speck of ink on his nose and his collar was crooked, making him look barely more put-together than his gossiping disciple she’d just encountered. Sha Hualing wondered how many of Mobei Jun’s enemies he’d destroyed so far that day.
“I wouldn’t,” said Sha Hualing, who knew that when Mobei-Jun would be back shortly, that meant he could return any time between instantly and over a week, depending on what he was doing. He didn’t like to leave his husband for too terribly long, but he did also enjoy those solitary ice fishing trips.
“Well,” he said, “in that case, what can I do for you? I’m, uh,” he glanced at the pages of incomprehensible notes that littered his desk, “a little busy right now, trying to catch up with paperwork before my king gets back and monopolizes all of my time, you know how it is, not that I’m complaining, haha.” He wasn’t doing a very good job of sounding put-upon, not with that stupid sappy smile on his face.
“Hm,” Sha Hualing said, taking a seat across from him, leaning back in the chair so she could rest her delicately crossed ankles on his desk. Not that she thought he would properly appreciate the view. “Maybe you can help me after all.”
Shang Qinghua laughed nervously, coughed into his hand, and said, “That depends on what your problem is. I mean, I can probably solve most problems if you give me enough time and, like, access to a demonic arsenal but I can’t promise… you know what, sure, why not, what’s up?”
“I’m glad you asked,” said Sha Hualing. “I was hoping to get your king’s perspective on this, as a demon who successfully courted a human, but I supposed yours will work as well.” Traditions did vary, of course, and the Northern Desert royal family was said to be particularly old-fashioned, but her concerns were less about the specific rituals and more about how you got a human to understand them.
“Uh,” Shang Qinghua said, “if you want to talk to a demon who’s, um, courted a human, why don’t you talk to Junshang instead? Since he’s, y’know, also married to a human, and he could give you the demon perspective better than I could.”
She snorted dismissively, tossing her hair. “I have enough of his mooning over his husband whenever he bothers to show up for our quarterly strategy meetings and spends the entire time whining about how he could be at home making dumplings for his precious shizun instead of paying attention to my presentation on our silk production numbers and how they’re super important to military readiness.”
“That’s so rude of him,” Shang Qinghua agreed. “He should place more value on his lieutenants’ input. Can’t believe he doesn’t understand the importance of the textile trade. I mean, I can, but…”
“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think I would get anything especially useful out of him about his marriage, even though it’s all he ever talks about. And besides, he and Peak Lord Shen both died a bunch of times, and that’s not really the kind of relationship I’m looking for.”
“I mean, who is,” said Shang Qinghua, setting down his brush like he was finally ready to commit his full attention to this conversation. “But, okay, sure, you want dating advice from me, for some reason. Sure, let’s go. Do you just want, like, general advice, or do you have a specific question in mind? A specific person, maybe?” The keen look he fixed her with told her that he already had suspicions about the identity of the object of her affection. On one hand, if it were really that obvious, that was a good thing because it meant her courting was recognizable for what it was. On the other hand, somehow Liu Mingyan—and also, less importantly, those gossipy underlings—had completely missed what was happening, so that wasn’t ideal. On the incredibly useful third hand that she unfortunately didn’t have because she wasn’t that kind of demon, maybe this was just another example of Shang Qinghua being annoyingly perceptive and knowing more than was good for him, or anyone else around him.
“I’ve gifted her with the heads of so many great beasts,” she said, pouting, “and we’ve defeated each other in combat at least three times each. And she’s taken my blood and I’ve taken hers, because she keeps putting her hand over my mouth while we’re fighting, and she wears the luminous pearl from the Steel Jawed Clam–” Shang Qinghua winced at the mention of that beast’s name “–that I gave her after she gave me a dire owl fang, and we’ve been wearing them ever since, so why are people still saying that she’s single? Does she still think she’s single?”
“This might be kind of a controversial suggestion,” said Shang Qinghua, scratching the back of his neck, “and you can totally call me a hypocrite for this, given, uh,” he waved his hand vaguely, and Sha Hualing recalled, with excruciating secondhand embarrassment, the years that he and Mobei Jun spent dancing around each other instead of getting their shit together, “but have you considered maybe asking her that?”
“She has to know, though, right?” said Sha Hualing, and then she continued, feeling her lips curve into a proud smile despite herself, “She’s really smart, she’s so good at predicting what I’m going to do. Fighting her is so intimate because she knows me so well. How could she possibly not understand my intentions?”
“Hm,” said Shang Qinghua. “Well, some things are becoming clearer to me in retrospect. I thought Liu-shizhi was looking for writing advice when she came to see me yesterday.”
So he did know who she was talking about, without her having to do anything as embarrassingly vulnerable as actually say it out loud. Well, that answered one question, though not, unfortunately, the most important of her questions.
“What did she ask you about?” said Sha Hualing, folding her legs under her so that she could lean forward eagerly, conspiratorially. “C’mon, you can tell me, she’s my rival.”
“I don’t really think that’s how it works,” said Shang Qinghua, though he was leaning forward too, like he was settling in for a gossip session. “But she wanted to know about romance, too. She wanted to know how someone could tell if they were being flirted with by someone who flirts with everyone. Her, uh, hypothetical character couldn’t tell if the object of their affection was actually into them, or if they were like that with everyone.”
Sha Hualing’s jaw dropped. “How could she say that? We’re rivals! Has she ever seen me exchange blood with anyone else? Do I let anyone else defeat me in combat?” She paused, catching her breath when she realized she was starting to raise her voice. It wasn’t that she was ruling out the possibility of adding more people to their relationship at some point, but for the past few years she’d been pretty single-mindedly focused on Liu Mingyan.
“She did specifically mention things like this totally hypothetical person winking at everyone and trying to get everyone else to look at their, uh, chest.” His hand twitched like he wanted to gesture at her and then thought better of it, and he shrugged. “I assumed she was talking about the hero of Regret of Chunshan, since she certainly spends enough time describing his pillowy pecs–”
“I do not!” said Sha Hualing hotly, crossing her arms over the insubstantial scraps of silk that covered her own chest, which could be conceivably described as pillowy, and she would love for Liu Mingyan to describe it as such, and maybe use it as a pillow someday.
“She wasn’t complaining,” Shang Qinghua said hastily. “Like, she didn’t seem to want you to change– I mean, she didn’t seem to think her hypothetical fictional character needed to change in order to be in a relationship. She just kinda wanted to know how to tell how someone felt.”
“Oh,” said Sha Hualing. “Right. I guess I forgot that humans think that’s what romance is.” She slumped down in her chair, arms still crossed, feeling annoyingly wrong-footed for a moment. She’d thought they were on the same page. She’d thought that between the courtship rituals and the way she complimented Liu Mingyan’s appearance and batted her eyelashes and clamored for her attention, that Liu Mingyan would understand. “Why else would I keep telling her how pretty she is? That’s a thing humans do when they like each other, I know it is!”
“If I had to guess,” said Shang Qinghua, seeming delighted to wildly speculate about Liu Mingyan’s psyche and motivations, like the nosy spy he was, “I would say that sometimes humans think that sort of thing is, like, trash talk. If you’re saying it while you’re fighting. Even if you’re the sort of human who gets weirdly homoerotic about fighting. Which, okay, I don’t know Liu-shizhi super well outside of being critique partners, but if she’s anything like her older brother,” he whistled, “oh boy.”
“I really am just going to have to,” Sha Hualing shuddered, “ask her directly.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Shang Qinghua grimly. “I know. If I were you I wouldn’t wanna do that either. Actually, when I was in your place, I didn’t want to at all. So I didn’t.”
“That worked out for you, though,” she pointed out. He and Mobei-Jun were married, after all.
“Oh, that wasn’t me,” he said cheerfully. “I almost messed it all up, and then where would any of us be? Well, you’d be fine. But I’d be, like, dead in a ditch or relying on Shen Qingqiu’s pity to keep a roof over my head, probably. Anyway, what are you so afraid of, huh? She wants advice on dating a flirty demon, which means she likes you, and you obviously like her, so where’s the hold-up?”
“Well,” she said, hating how small her voice sounded, when she was aiming for haughty and argumentative, “what if we’re both wrong, and she really did just want writing advice? What if the Blossoming Love Night Violets bloomed for her because she’s finally realized that being my rival isn’t enough and she wants to be in a relationship with someone else? What if I ask her and she wants to stop fighting me? Or what if she does know that I’ve been flirting with her, because I have been really obvious about it, and she’s just pretending not to notice because she’s too noble to hurt my feelings by rejecting me?”
“Wow,” Shang Qinghua said, “okay. It has been way too long since I’ve had a conversation like this, and I’m not sure I’ve done this anywhere that isn’t a club bathroom after one too many martinis but okay. Alright. Here goes.” She didn’t even pretend to know what he was talking about, just waved her hand imperiously as if to say, good, get on with it then . “So the thing about relationships is that, well, you know, a lot of people have said a lot of different things about trust and communication and whatever,” he flapped his hand vaguely, in a gesture that she couldn’t quite tell if it was dismissive or not, “but really when it comes down to it, sometimes you’ve just gotta shoot your shot.”
“That’s it?” said Sha Hualing.
He shrugged. “Well, yeah. How do you think my king and I got together? You don’t know until you know, y’know?”
“No,” said Sha Hualing, standing up and flipping her hair back over her shoulder, “I don’t. Thank you, that wasn’t helpful at all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go talk to Liu Mingyan.”
And she turned on her heel and left the way she’d come, leaving Shang Qinghua calling, “You’re welcome!” down the corridor after her.
Liu Mingyan was exactly where Sha Hualing had expected her to be, though it had taken her a little bit of time to find the precise location of the grove where the Blossoming Love Night Violets grew based on the An Ding disciple’s very inexact description of ‘around Xian Shu Peak.’
It was just before sunset as she made her way through the forest, padding through the tell-tale heart-shaped leaves that carpeted the ground, the warm evening breeze caressing her bare shoulders. She heard Liu Mingyan’s voice through the trees, her voice low and indistinct, and then someone else’s soft, musical laughter. Liu Mingyan was there, and she wasn’t alone. She was—Sha Hualing grimaced—enjoying herself, amidst the flowers that signified new love, with someone else.
“-see what you mean, shimei,” said the other person, and Sha Hualing recognized her now as Ning Yingying, who had once been a sweet little disciple barely worth Sha Hualing’s notice and now did all the business of running Qing Jing Peak that Shen Qingqiu and Junshang couldn’t be bothered to do. “That’s an auspicious sign.”
“Auspicious sign of what, Yingying?” said Sha Hualing, sauntering into the clearing. Shoot your shot, Shang Qinghua had said, and she didn’t know where he’d grown up to have such strange idioms but she thought she knew what he meant. Maybe Liu Mingyan had misinterpreted her attempts at courtship. Maybe she wasn’t interested. But Sha Hualing wasn’t going to know unless she asked her, if she wimped out because she assumed Liu Mingyan wasn’t interested. Sha Hualing, as a rule, was not a coward, and she hated that Liu Mingyan made her feel like this, so vulnerable and so unsure.
Maybe this was what people meant about relationships involving trust. Ugh. Disgusting. She’d almost rather just get back to getting caught sneaking into Xian Shu Peak every few weeks so that Liu Mingyan would catch her and they could rough each other up a little bit.
“I think I’ll leave you to figure that out,” said Ning Yingying, giving Sha Hualing a loaded glance, her eyes flicking up and down Sha Hualing’s figure, and. Look. Sha Hualing was there because she wanted Liu Mingyan’s fated romantic partner to be her, but she could still notice another cute girl checking her out, and Ning Yingying was very much both cute and checking her out. Sha Hualing got looks like that a lot, she knew what it meant when someone’s gaze lingered on her long legs, her bare shoulders, her blood-red lips.
Sha Hualing winked at her, and she’d half-expected Ning Yingying to blush and hide her face but instead she just nodded back, an approving smile on her face, leaving Sha Hualing feeling wrong-footed in a way she wanted to examine more closely later. This was an interaction they could return to once she’d asked Liu Mingyan if she only liked pinning her down while they fought in a strictly non-sexual way or if a little bit of variety was on table.
“Sha-guniang,” said Liu Mingyan, bowing to Sha Hualing in a way that was entirely too formal and honestly freaked her out a little bit, startling her into a burst of nervous giggling. Liu Mingyan had never addressed her so politely in her life. Mostly she just called her, hey you or stop right there, show-off or you beautiful menace .
“Same time next week, right?” said Ning Yingying, waving goodbye cheerfully and hopping onto her sword. “I’ll let you know how those sword drills go, and I’m sure you’ll have lots to tell me about too.”
“Goodbye, shijie,” said Liu Mingyan. Her voice was even—carefully so, low and melodious and smoky in a way that Sha Hualing wanted to drink from her lips and savor on her tongue—but there was panic in her eyes, like Sha Hualing had never seen when they were fighting. “Sha-guniang, I’m glad you’ve found me here. I have something I wanted to talk to you about.” She’d lowered her hands from her bow, but she was still clutching the hilt of her sword so tightly her knuckles were pale and bloodless.
“Aw, Mingyan,” said Sha Hualing, batting her eyelashes, and she’d come here to have a real conversation too but she still felt herself sliding back into old familiar rhythms. A flirty insult here, a back-handed compliment there, and then they’d be whirling around each other in a flurry of swirling silk and bare-handed blows, and Sha Hualing wasn’t entirely sure that wasn’t the kind of skin-on-skin contact she was craving. “You should know you can’t get rid of your Ling-er so easily.”
“I– well– my–” Liu Mingyan spluttered for a moment. “I just meant. I’m happy to see you. Not that I’m not always. I mean. You shouldn’t keep trying to break into Xian Shu Peak all the time, it’s against the rules and it’s not very fair to the junior disciples who couldn’t possibly be a match for you. If you want to see me you can just use the main gate next time. I mean.”
Liu Mingyan lapsed into silence and Sha Hualing, mouth still moving without much input from her brain, said, “Where would be the fun in that?” And then, because she was here on a mission that wasn’t provoking a homoerotic sparring match, she convinced her mouth to cooperate with her brain and said, “I’m glad I found you here too.”
“Good, because I have something I wanted to talk to you about,” said Liu Mingyan. “Wait, I already said that. Wait, what do you mean you’re glad you found me here? Why were you looking for me?”
“Do I need a reason, jiejie?” said Sha Hualing, sidling closer with a pout, because it was easier than saying that she wanted to see her and tell her how she felt. This whole ‘confession of feelings’ thing was hard work. Shang Qinghua was a slimy, rotten liar. How dare he suggest that she ““just”” ask Liu Mingyan if she wanted to be in a relationship?
(Although, whispered a treacherous corner of her mind, to be fair, he never said this would be easy, he just said it’s what you should do.)
“No,” said Liu Mingyan slowly, “I suppose not. Which brings me back to the reason I’m glad you found me here, because. Well. I think it will be easier to show you.” She knelt down, running her hand over the carpet of flowers, and the deep purple blossoms opened up under her touch, reaching up to greet her like a cat arching its back to be petted. “This is the Blossoming-”
“The Blossoming Love Night Violets, yes,” said Sha Hualing, a little more eagerly than she’d meant to.
“And I enjoy our… encounters,” Liu Mingyan continued, “so I hadn’t wanted to say anything, because I wasn’t sure how you felt, but then the flowers… and so I thought that maybe I had a chance. And I thought that I just had to wait until you came to see me again, which is when I really started thinking that I was right, because you do always come to see me. And now here you are again.”
“And now here I am,” She Hualing agreed, twirling her hair. “And I, well…” She knelt down next to Liu Mingyan, and the flower buds opened up around her too, their soft petals trembling in the breeze. At least these weren’t the kind of flowers that released an aphrodisiac with their pollen, although she almost thought this conversation might be simpler if they were. “You never have a chance against me, but you do have a chance with me.”
“Don’t I?” said Liu Mingyan, and her eyes were bright, reflecting the rosy evening sunlight and piercing right through Sha Hualing. “I seem to recall defeating you thoroughly enough that time right after the new year, and then again that time with the Rainbow Lightning Hornets, or that time on Zui Xian Peak.”
“That was fun,” said Sha Hualing, a smile spreading across her face as she remembered those fights, the way they’d still found ways to surprise each other even as their bodies came together in familiar ways, and she saw the expression mirrored on Liu Mingyan’s face, in the softening of the lines around her eyes, the way her veil shifted as she let out a huff of laughter. “But I still think I would’ve beaten you.”
“It was,” said Liu Mingyan, “and you can keep telling yourself that.”
“I totally would’ve,” said Sha Hualing. “You cheated!”
“I think you’re misremembering,” said Liu Mingyan, folding her hands primly in her lap. Sha Hualing remembered very vividly. Liu Mingyan’s robes had been soaked through with spilled wine and Sha Hualing tried to convince her that she could move more easily without all those heavy, wet layers weighing her down. “I am the head disciple of Xian Shu Peak, I never cheat. That was you.”
“You’re right,” said Sha Hualing, smirking, “it was both of us.”
Liu Mingyan lifted her hand and Sha Hualing thought she meant to shove her shoulder, to get their rematch started, and she thought that maybe that was what Liu Mingyan had intended too until she changed her mind halfway through the motion, and by the time her hand reached Sha Hualing’s shoulder her palm was open and she let it rest there a moment, like she was about to give a bracing pep talk to a younger disciple.
“Hm,” Liu Mingyan said. “Maybe it was. Don’t think I don’t know that you’re trying to distract me, you menace.”
“Is it working?” said Sha Hualing, shifting her position so that she could draw Liu Mingyan’s attention to her tits without dislodging her hand from her shoulder. Not that Liu Mingyan’s attention wasn’t frequently on her tits. Oh, sorry, her center of balance.
“Yes,” said Liu Mingyan. “Are you going to let me finish propositioning you or not?”
“Oh, I’ll let you finish,” said Sha Hualing, with a wink, and Liu Mingyan rolled her eyes. “The answer is yes, by the way, if you ever get around to asking the qu–”
Liu Mingyan kissed her before she’d even gotten the words out, one hand pulling her veil aside as the other grasped her shoulder, more tightly now, tight enough that if her nails were as sharp as Sha Hualing’s claws, Sha Hualing would be bleeding. Huh. That might be something to revisit later.
She’d have to ask—Liu Mingyan leaned closer, deepening the kiss, and she lost her balance, sending them both tumbling into the flowers, distracting her from her very important considerations—she’d have to ask how Liu Mingyan felt about her nails and their proximity to her bare skin in non-combat contexts. She knew Liu Mingyan had noticed them, because she was always snarling at Sha Hualing to not claw her eyes out. Not that Sha Hualing would ever do that anyway, she liked Liu Mingyan’s eyes.
She also liked Liu Mingyan’s hands, sword-calloused and steady, one of which had made its way to the bare skin of Sha Hualing’s stomach and the other buried in her hair, rubbing at the sensitive skin at the base of one of her horns. She liked Liu Mingyan’s lips, soft and pliant against Sha Hualing’s while her tongue licked at Sha Hualing’s fangs. She liked Liu Mingyan’s sweet-smelling hair tickling the hollow of her neck, and Liu Mingyan’s powerful thighs around her waist, and Liu Mingyan’s elegantly-shaped calves flexing as she wrapped her tail around them. And Liu Mingyan’s breasts pressed against hers and giving her all sorts of ideas about things they could do with a little more time and maybe an actual bed so they didn’t end up with leaves in inconvenient places.
But neither of them were making any move to stop, and Liu Mingyan wasn’t kissing her as much as gasping against her mouth while she did increasingly interesting things with her hands, and Sha Hualing decided that the blossoming flowers they were crushing beneath their bodies made a perfectly acceptable bed.