Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Save him.” He demands, prepared to beg if necessary.

The queen is as beautiful as she is terrifying, or perhaps she is beautiful because she is terrifying. There’s an ethereal quality to her that he has never actually seen anyone possess, the kind that he has only ever heard about but never been able to envision.

He should never have bothered trying: nothing he could think of could possibly match it in the flesh.

Her smile is wicked, her teeth just sharp enough to be noticeable, but there’s a curve to her lips that he recognises all too well from his own reflection in the mirror. Unlike his own wicked grins, however, there is no teasing behind this.

“And what,” she asks, smile curling into a sneer, “would you give me in return?”

Hua Cheng does not bow, will never bow to anyone in his life ever again, but he tilts his head forward as his hands move to the knot of the bandage at the back of his head.

He knows what he is, has had it spat at his feet since he was old enough to listen, has hidden the evidence every day since he could tie the bandages himself. What thrums beneath his veins is unmistakable, no less subtle than the yearning for the forest that has haunted his dreams for years, a knowledge as vivid as the memory of the day a boy snatched him out of the arms of the dark and dangerous being standing before him.

Hua Cheng is not human, he never has been. But he will trade away what little humanity he has been able to gather if it helps him in this.

He unwinds the last of the bandage from his face, pulls it down even as it snags in his hair, throws it aside as he looks up and meets her gaze head on.

The brand in his eye burns.

“I will return, if you save him.”

A hand reaches out to snatch his forearm, sharp nails splitting the skin. If her beauty is cold and distant, then her touch is the bitter gale of a winter blizzard, and it snatches the breath from his lungs. Whether the warmth leeches out of him, or if the cold spreads from the point of her touch, he does not know.

His heart thuds once, twice.

And stops.

He has always been an abnormal child.

His mother has yelled at him enough about it. He knows all about how as a baby, he did nothing but scream the house down every night, keeping up his parents and siblings with hours upon hours of screeching. He knows, because his mother has never let him forget it.

Changeling, she spits at him. Cursed thing. He is small, like a changeling should be, she hisses, too wise for a child and too aware of what is going on around him. No child should sit and observe as quietly as he does, and she thinks it proves her point.

He is small, he thinks, because he is malnourished, starved by a woman who refused to feed him from the start. He is wise, he thinks, because he has been raised to know how to avoid the next beating.

He is quiet, he knows, because he has learned that opening his mouth to speak will get him slapped faster than keeping it shut.

And so up he grows.

It goes like this.

He is not human.

He knows this, because his mother screeches it at him every time something goes wrong in their tiny little shack.

He knows this, because the bandage that he wears over his eye hides a mark of ownership clearer than any bruise, an eye of pink sclera and a bold, bloody red peony in place of an iris and pupil. He is not allowed to take the bandage off, because it scares everyone who sees it, but he knows it is there.

He knows he is not human, because the forest calls to him in his dreams. He can feel the dead and dying roots of the trees that were cut down to build Xianle, hear the anger of the forest every day that Xianle stands on ground it does not own.

With every summer that passes, the call of the forest grows, trickling through his veins into his heart until it creates an emptiness that cannot be filled, a certainty that it will only be filled if he returns to the trees and the wilds.

His mother has never named him, only given him sharp nicknames created to remind him of what he is, but he knows he is not human because the dying ground whispers it to him. When the name Hua Cheng first curls its way into his ear, he feels it sinking into his bones and settling on his shoulders like a well-worn cloak. His mother has never named him, but the forest claims him in her stead and moulds him as it sees fit.

He knows what he is. Even without his mother’s vitriol, he knows.

His family are convinced he will be the death of them.

He’s not sure he disagrees.

“It’s rotten.” He says once, aged eight, his hands deep in the soil of the tiny vegetable patch in front of their shack. There are no vegetables, only yellowed leaves and browning stems.

The patch has been slowly dying for months.

There will never be any vegetables ever again.

His mother smacks him upside the head and yanks him away, pushing him towards the fence.

“And whose fault is that? Probably cursed the soil yourself, you wicked child.”

It’s not just their vegetable patch: it’s the whole ground, a darkness that lurks beneath every home and grows, deepens with every passing season. He’s not sure how the priests haven’t noticed it, but it’s dying. The city is dying.

He keeps his mouth shut, and goes to feed the chickens.

One day, aged ten, the beatings go from bearable to too much, and the forest calls him.

It chimes a soothing lullaby into his head, the soft tinkling of wind chimes on a breezy spring day, calling across the city for him to come home.

He thinks of his mother and his father, beating him for catching him trying to catch a glimpse of his own eye in the mirror, thinks of the brothers who will not speak to him, the gnawing in his stomach every night when he goes to bed hungry, and thinks I don’t have a home.

But he follows anyway.

It is a slow, confident urging, directing him through the streets of Xianle in the middle of the afternoon, ensuring he does not get lost. No one stops him, no one even sees him as he walks through the rear city gates and up, towards the hill and the forest line.

He hesitates only briefly, when he’s standing at the tree line facing down a forest wrapped in darkness, despite the height of the sun in the sky.

Then, he thinks of the darkness in his shitty little room in the shack, and crosses into the forest.

He is twenty steps into the tree line when he sees her, a terrifying vision of black and white hidden amongst the trees. White hair is piled high into an elaborate updo that makes the sharp, otherworldly features of her face even more intimidating. That thing in his chest pulls him towards her, the thread that urges him daily to just go to the forest. There’s something familiar to her, the shade and shape of her dark eyes, the bow of her lips as she smiles and holds out her hand.

It strikes him, then, that she’s his mother. It comes to him like the knowledge of his name did, a surety that unfurls in his mind and sticks.

He stumbles through the underbrush, the rags of his trousers catching on vines, and reaches out to take her hand. If he takes it, if he is one of them, he can be free.

Free to choose, free to return and show his family how right they were, darken the rot beneath the city even further and watch as it tears itself apart.

And if not, well, he's hardly living anyway.

His fingers curl over hers, as a surge of energy courses through him, ice spreading down his fingertips, and then-

-and then the hilt of a sword smacks his hand out of her own, hard enough to bruise.

“Run!” Another hand, a different one, engulfs his own and drags him bodily away. He stumbles from the inertia of it, but has no chance to fall before he is scooped up into a gangly pair of arms. Fingers tightening automatically into pristine white robes, he looks over the shoulder of his unwitting saviour and peeks through the mess of dark hair and white ribbon.

She is furious. Her outrage sparks along the edges of his senses, and without even thinking about it he buries his head into the shoulder of the boy who holds him, trying to hide from the inevitable beating that usually follows such anger.

But the boy is fast, his sword hacking through the vines that try to keep them in, and they’re out of the forest in seconds. The boy doesn’t stop, keeps running for another minute or two right into the fields of silver grass, and doesn’t slow until the forest is no longer visible.

Predictably, that’s when his own anger at being snatched away from freedom begins to kick in.

“No!” He struggles against the grip that the boy has on him, kicking his legs and lashing out, and the boy tries to lift him away to get a better look at him.

“Are you crazy?! I’m taking you home!”

“No! Take me back!”

He’s thrashing so much that the boy has no choice but to put him down on the ground, where Hua Cheng promptly begins slamming his fists against the boy’s legs.

“Hey, stop! She was going to kill you!”

“Then let her! I want her to!” His wail is almost a babble, a pathetic high-pitched whine full of pain and anger.

“Hey, hey! Calm down!” He’s gripped by the shoulders as the boy gives him a once-over, an almost-horrified expression on his face, and Hua Cheng is finally stunned into silence.

It may be the first time that someone has ever grabbed his arms without the intention to hurt.

The explosive tears that follow are violent, his breakdown a snotty, agonising thing. He clenches his fists so hard that his nails break the skin of his palms, and the boy kneels down in front of him with shock on his face.

“Ah, no, it’s okay, don’t cry. She can’t get you, you’re safe now.” There’s a hand rubbing gentle circles into his back, a comforting gesture, but so unfamiliar that he flinches away from it before he’s even registered it. The older boy just smiles at him, and uses his sleeve to wipe away the hot tears that he can’t stop.

They stay like that for a few minutes, until Hua Cheng’s sobs turn to sniffles, his tears exhausted, and the older boy gives him a warm smile and gets to his feet. He takes Hua Cheng’s hand in his own, sword still in the other hand, and turns towards the city.

“You can’t stay out here, and I won’t let you go back to the forest.” He says, voice soft. The boy gives his hand a gentle tug, and Hua Cheng finds himself following, still a little dazed at how he’s not being punished for such excessive emotion.

“I don’t want to go back.” Hua Cheng murmurs, eye fixed firmly on the floor as the boy uses his sword to cut away the grass in front of them.

“Why not?” His tone is soothing and gentle, as though he’s scared that any inflection will send Hua Cheng running.

“…don’t want to.”

There’s silence for a moment, broken only by the swish of the sword as he moves it.

“Do you have a name?” If there’s a touch of concern there, Hua Cheng doesn’t recognise it. Nor does he have an easy answer for that question - most of the names his parents call him probably shouldn’t be repeated in polite company, and the one that the forest gave him is… too personal, too revealing. He takes a second to cycle through them, settling on the most innocuous of them.

“…Hong.”

“That’s a nice name!” The boy says, smile a little brighter. Hua Cheng would agree, but he’s completely, utterly certain that his mother doesn’t mean it in a nice way. “My name’s Xie Lian, I come out here often to train.”

Xie Lian smiles down at him, friendly and almost as though he’s letting him in on a secret. “I’m not supposed to come out here, but they rarely let me leave the palace because, well.” He grabs the stem of one of the tall pieces of grass with the hand that holds the sword, closes his eyes for a moment, and Hua Cheng feels it.

Power, energy, whatever it is, surging from Xie Lian into the grass and changing it from root to stem, thickening it until a bud blooms on the end and then bursts into a beautiful, white peony. He breaks it from the stem and hands it over to Hua Cheng. “Because I’m like you.”

They walk in silence for nearly a minute, Xie Lian happily cutting away at the grass as Hua Cheng stares at the flower in his hand, holding it so carefully it’s as though he’s afraid it will crumble to ash before him. Finally, though, he summons the courage to speak.

“How did you know?” He asks, knowing already that Xie Lian has mistaken him, has looked at him and found a witch and not one of the forest folk, lost amongst humans.

“Seven year olds don’t usually pack so much energy behind their hits unless they’re powered by something.” Xie Lian says, a little wryly. He motions down to the lower part of his robes, where dirty marks have been left by Hua Cheng’s fists when he was upset.

Hua Cheng feels a rush of indignation, but not for the dirt.

“…I’m ten. Not seven.”

Xie Lian stops, whirling around to look at him with wide eyes.

“Ten?”

Hua Cheng can feel his gaze as it runs over him, takes in his malnourished frame and his pale, mottled skin, his tiny stature and short, matted hair. For the first time in his life, he feels self-conscious about something other than his eye.

“You’re ten? But you’re so…” He pauses, wincing. “Small.”

Hua Cheng can’t help the scowl that appears when he hears that, and Xie Lian gives a soft laugh in surprise. His eyes are still searching him though, and he knows that the gears are turning in his head, connecting the dots, realising what must make a ten year old look so small and tatty that he’s easily mistaken for a seven year old.

He lowers his face, keeping his eye on the flower even as the hand around his own gives a gentle squeeze.

It takes him a moment to realise the feeling welling in his chest is safety.

“I can take you someplace safe, if you want. You don’t have to go home.” Xie Lian’s voice takes on that careful tone again, as though Hua Cheng is a spooked foal likely to bolt at the first chance.

Hua Cheng shakes his head, but Xie Lian tightens his hold on his hand and starts walking.

“You say no now, but just wait. I’ll tell you all about it whilst we walk, and you can decide then. You said you were ten? I was the same age when I entered the Royal Pavilion. I’m sixteen now, of course, but nearly seventeen! They don’t openly talk about it, but they train anyone from the royal family who shows an affinity for witchcraft.”

Xie Lian looks down at him with a smile, but Hua Cheng is currently too holed up on royal family, royal pavilion. He tries to pull his hand away on instinct.

“Are you royalty?”

He certainly looks it, clean and dressed in white, well spoken. But he’s also kind, and Hua Cheng has never encountered someone of higher status who possesses that quality. Xie Lian’s eyes crinkle at the edges, surprise on his face.

“Ah! I didn’t tell you, I’m sorry. Yes, I’m the crown prince. That’s how I know you’ll be safe in the Royal Pavilion, they’ll take you in if I ask, I’m sure of it. They’ll clothe you, feed you, teach you to use your power.” He swings their joined hands as he walks, the last of the grass being cut down in front of them before the city walls are visible.

It takes a lot of effort for Hua Cheng not to stumble from the momentum.

“And,” he adds, voice softening again, “you’ll be safe from whoever is treating you like this.”

Hua Cheng nods, uncovered eye finally lifting to meet Xie Lian’s gaze. He looks sincere, earnest, and for the first time in his life he thinks he might actually trust him.

But he doesn’t believe him.

He doesn’t think Xie Lian is lying to him, no. He’s certain that Xie Lian really believes what he’s saying, but Hua Cheng has grown up learning to understand that the people who are bigger than him cannot be trusted to keep their word, that they’re more likely to lie in the short run and hurt him once prying eyes are no longer focused on him.

He thinks the Royal Pavilion will take him in when Xie Lian is there, and kick him out the moment he is gone.

At his nod, though, Xie Lian brightens immediately. “Ah, brilliant! I’ll take you straight there.”

Hua Cheng looks back down at the flower in his hand, content to keep quiet and listen to Xie Lian’s excited babbling as he leads him back towards the city.

He’s made his decision. He won’t go home, refuses to go back to the little shack with his parents and his older siblings. If he’s going to be beaten and starved, he’d rather do it on the streets.

He cherishes the kindness of the boy who holds his hand within his own, knows that this encounter will be branded on him as the first time someone looked at him and did not find him wanting, but he cannot go with him. He’s not human, does not trust adults at all, and he thinks the moment he’ll arrive there they will know what he is.

The fear of what lies in the forest is so strong, he’s not even sure they’ll let him leave alive.

He holds on tightly to Xie Lian’s hand as they cross through the gates, into the huge and bustling marketplace of the southern quarter. He waits until they’re in a particularly busy row of stalls, and then he acts.

With one hard, jerky movement, he pulls his hand free.

Whispering an apology no one will hear, he gathers as much power as he can in his fists and shoves hard enough at Xie Lian’s legs that the boy stumbles into a stall.

And then, Hua Cheng runs.

(He takes to the streets. He doesn’t thrive, no one thrives on the streets, but he survives.

The call of the forest grows with every day that passes. He spends his nights with his hands clamped down hard over his ears, teeth gritted, trying to block it out.

He resists, if only for the chance to see the crown prince again.)

When they meet again, Hua Cheng is fourteen.

It is not a planned meeting.

Life has hardly been kind to him. He has it better than most, he knows. He may be nigh-on illiterate, but he’s smart, knows which heartstrings are worth pulling. In winter, when he’s at his smallest from lack of food, he assists the maids in the central quarter’s brothel with the laundry, using his abilities to dry the silks quickly even on the iciest days in winter. The maids don’t ask, he doesn’t tell, and in exchange they let him curl up by the fire in the kitchen.

In summer, he loses that leverage, but there is more food, an accessible stream outside that runs into the city from the forest, and it’s a little easier to survive when the weather isn’t working against him.

And here, now, it’s just another monthly market day, and his bag is getting full.

He’s wandering the food stalls in the southern district, fingers nonchalantly peeling the skin off an orange that he stole from the first stall near the gate. He washed in the stream this morning, using the last of the soap he pilfered on the last market day, and his clothes aren’t bad, given to him by one of the maids at the brothel after her own son outgrew them. With a stray dog following him in hope of getting a slice of the orange, he almost looks like a normal young boy who’s been sent to the market.

And most importantly, there’s something about him that does not invite others to look too closely. He knows he’s always had the look of the fae about him, but it’s more obvious when he’s clean, when his skin is just a little too pale even for a malnourished child, his visible eye too wide and cheeks too sharp, and when his canines came in they came through just sharp and long enough to be unnerving when he smiles.

None of the stall owners look twice at him, used to seeing the small teenager who flits between stalls, obnoxiously leaning over to look at their wares with a dog by his side and his hands clasped behind his back. They’re used to thieves, and thieves don’t tend to put themselves front and centre of the stalls.

And Hua Cheng, well, he does what he needs to in order to survive.

He takes a slice from his orange, biting down along the flat edge until the skin is split and he can loudly suck the juice and the flesh from the gap. The stall owner of the stand he’s currently leaning over rolls his eyes at him, ignores him as he lowers his hand and chucks the skin of the segment to the dog, hand passing over a basket of steamed buns.

As he moves back, he hides one in his palm, unnoticed…

…until a hand wraps tight around his wrist just as he slips it into his bag.

“Found you!”

Hua Cheng looks up sharply, ready to fight, to attack, to protect himself, and stops short at the sight of the crown prince looking down at him with a satisfied smirk on his lips. He seems proud, as though he wasn’t expecting to surprise Hua Cheng.

Before Hua Cheng can say anything, however, he turns to the stall owner, placing down a small piece of silver and picking up the basket of buns. “We’ll take these.”

The basket is shoved into Hua Cheng’s arms, and he’s pulled away by the bicep before the stall owner can tell him that he’s just paid far too much for them.

“I knew I recognised the feel of my own power here.” Xie Lian says as he starts walking, Hua Cheng following and holding a basket of buns that he’s not sure what to do with.

He feels a bit bewildered.

“The flower I gave you, I guess you kept it? I can feel echoes of it, as though you’d preserved it.”

Hua Cheng swallows, a little nervous now that he’s face to face with the crown prince. He did keep the flower, pressed it until it dried and he could hide it away in his pockets, a reminder of the first time someone showed him kindness.

“You remember me?” The question is out of his mouth before he can stop it, and he feels his cheeks flush pink as he shifts the basket to one arm. Xie Lian smiles down at him, and he’s frustrated to find that he’s still quite a bit shorter than him.

“It’s hard to forget a ten year old who shoved me into a soup stall. If you’d heard the lecture I got off Mu Qing for sneaking out and returning with stained red robes, you’d remember the kid that did it too.” There’s a wry smile on Xie Lian’s lips at the thought, but Hua Cheng flinches and turns away.

“I’m sorry.” The words come out haltingly, unfamiliar on his tongue, though there is a rush of shame within him for being so underhanded with the first person who’d ever been nice to him. Xie Lian sees all of this in his expression, and immediately speaks up.

“No no, it’s fine! I have plenty of robes, ha! I’m just glad to find you safe, I hung around the forest edge for a few days because I was certain I’d find you trying to sneak back in.” Xie Lian reaches into the basket and plucks out a steamed bun. He tears it in two, lifts Hua Cheng’s free hand, and places one half into it. “Eat. I’m not sheltered enough to wonder why you felt the need to steal bread.”

Hua Cheng does as he’s told, taking a careful but pointed bite. Xie Lian beams at the sight, and follows suit.

They wander in silence for a few minutes, or rather Xie Lian wanders and Hua Cheng follows the hand that is wrapped around his bicep, weaving him through the crowds. Xie Lian keeps handing him half of the steamed buns, as though trying to fatten him up now that he has him in his hands.

(He’ll fail, Hua Cheng knows. He’s overeaten, too used to a winter living on scraps, and he’s probably going to vomit it all back up in a few hours.

But the crown prince is smiling at him, and it makes him feel funny.)

“Are you living on the streets?” Xie Lian finally breaks the silence, and Hua Cheng is not blind to how the hand around his arm tightens, and he can’t even be resentful of being thought of as likely to bolt.

“Since I pushed you into that soup stall.” There’s a tiny smirk to his lips as he lifts his eye, meeting Xie Lian’s only to immediately look away. Years ago, he’d thought the crown prince was pretty, but time has made him handsome, and he’s not used to thinking things like that.

“Hah. That’s what, four years?” Xie Lian reaches into the basket and hands him the last bun.

(He’s definitely going to be sick. Is the stone in his stomach from overeating or nerves?)

Hua Cheng is about to answer, cheeks stuffed with bread, when he realises he’s been manoeuvred to the gate between the southern and central quarter.

“Don’t worry.” Xie Lian says softly when he feels Hua Cheng stiffen. “I’m not going to force you to go. But will you at least hear me out?”

He straightens automatically as he nods, still not looking up, and he looks almost as though he’s standing to attention. “If his highness wants me to go, I’ll go.”

“No, I want you to go because you want to go. Just, ah, listen. You’re young, and you have a lot of power behind you, I can feel it even now crackling along the edges of my own. You need a home, food and shelter, and the pavilion can give that to you. You’d be safe. I won’t be with you, I aged out this year, but I really think the training would help you.”

Xie Lian’s smile is still soft and careful, earnest, and Hua Cheng knows that he’s not wrong, but…

Hua Cheng loves his freedom, has spent the last four years doing whatever he wants, when he wants, with little consequences aside from fist fights and frequent stints in the city’s prison. Life in the Royal Pavilion would be stifling, too many rules and boundaries to obey, almost impossible for one who belongs in the forests amongst the trees beholden only to himself. He would have returned to it already, if he could bear to emotionally address the idea of coming face to face with the Queen of the Fae.

He doesn’t particularly want to go to the pavilion.

However.

He’s stubborn, but he’s not an idiot. He loves his freedom, yes, but the world becomes more dangerous the older he gets. He’s still relatively safe for now, still small for a fourteen year old, and the people who do confront him or demand his food see him as a small child, hardly a threat and not worth more than a quick beating.

Hua Cheng knows, though, that the older and taller he gets, the more of a threat he will appear, and it won’t be long before those fists will turn to knives.

“I’ll go with his highness.”

“Excellent!” Xie Lian’s smile is brighter than the sun, and Hua Cheng burns in its light. He threads his arm through Hua Cheng’s, pulling him in the direction of the gate to the central quarter. He has no care for how dirty Hua Cheng could be, that as a homeless teenager he could smell or be half-feral.

He’s not, but that’s not the point. The crown prince seems to have an appalling lack of regard for his own personal safety.

Xie Lian chatters to him as he half-drags him through the gates, and considering they’ve only met once before, it’s easy. It feels familiar, in a way that Hua Cheng can’t quite describe, but it loosens some of the ache in his chest.

Hua Cheng stops him only once.

"Your Highness, I-" He pauses, tries to swallow the anxiety in his chest. "Why are you doing this? Why me?"

Xie Lian's smile falters, replaced with a strange abashed look. "I ah, well. Why not you? I promised myself, years ago, that I would help the common people, but I learnt the hard way that it's not always possible. But you - I've never known anyone willingly try to enter the forest, but you did, even as young as you were. I know I can't help everyone, but if I can help you, even just a little, then I'm keeping my promise."

And that's, well. Hua Cheng is stunned into silence by the sincerity of it, even as he feels admiration begin to grow for this man. He could have ignored Hua Cheng when he'd seen him, could have reported him to the city guards, but instead he'd approached to try and help him.

It's admirable, brave, slightly foolish as literally any other street rat could have shivved him for it, but mostly brave.

He’s shooed inside once they reach the pavilion, Xie Lian by his side, as the crown prince emphatically tells the guoshi about the depth of power he’d felt emanating from Hua Cheng, how he could help with Xie Lian’s impossible task.

He doesn’t find out what that task is, because the crown prince is cut off before he can reveal secrets in front of a street rat. There is surprise on the guoshi’s face when he reaches out with his spiritual energy to Hua Cheng, and is immediately repelled before he can gauge how much Hua Cheng can control.

Xie Lian smiles through it all.

Hua Cheng sees what he does not.

He sees the looks that pass between the priests, curiosity warring with uneasiness. It’s a look he’s intimately familiar with, having seen most people trading it once they’ve had so much as a five minute conversation with him.

It only worsens once he tells them his date of birth.

He’s certain that they’ll kick him out by morning, once Xie Lian has returned to the Royal Palace.

And, as always, he’s right.

The third time they meet, Hua Cheng is in the middle of getting his lip split open, cornered by a gang of three young men at the bottom of an alley.

He is getting better at fighting back, usually winning if it’s two against one, but three is a struggle, and the crown prince appears just as he is beginning to lose.

Hua Cheng registers movement at the mouth of the alley, a flash of white and a whispered curse, and then all four of them are hit with a wave of spiritual energy powerful enough that his three attackers collapse in a heap to the floor. Hua Cheng absorbs it easily, but combined with the adrenaline rushing through him it sends him reeling back against a wall, weakening his knees until he sinks down to the floor.

The crown prince rushes forward, his hands tightly clutching the strap of a bag across his chest.

“Are you okay?” He falls to his knees in front of Hua Cheng, one hand reaching out to steady him. “I saw them hit you, but I couldn’t stop them without it getting you too.”

Hua Cheng stares up at him, still a little dazed from an earlier punch to his face that has swollen his right eye shut. The movement causes the crown prince to tilt his head at him, and Hua Cheng sees the moment that recognition shines in his eyes.

“You’re the boy I saved from the forest, the one I took to the pavilion that time. Hong-er?”

Hua Cheng nods slowly. “Your highness.”

The crown prince frowns, something akin to sadness pulling down the corners of his mouth.

“Did you not want to stay at the pavilion?”

“Got kicked out.” Hua Cheng says, flinching as the crown prince leans closer, one hand delicately pressing around his bruised eye socket. He is beyond thankful that his eyelid has swollen shut.

“What? I told them to look after you! Why did they kick you out?” There’s no accusation in his tone, only a desire to understand. Hua Cheng looks down to the floor, shoulders tensing.

“Said I was born under the Star of Solitude. Bad omen, so.” He looks back up, a wry smirk on his lips. “Better safe than sorry.”

The crown prince looks at him then with a strange mix of anger and compassion, and Hua Cheng can do nothing but look back down at his fists. He starts wiping at the blood on his knuckles for lack of anywhere else to look, but a hand covering his own stops him.

“I’m sorry, I should have checked up on you. I thought you’d be safe in there.”

“Mn. There aren’t many safe places left for someone like me, Your Highness.” He’s aware that it probably makes him sound like a dramatic piece of shit, but it’s true. The fight that had been interrupted was only one of many that he faces every day, though he more often than not comes out the winner these days.

“If you meant that to be comforting, it wasn’t.” The crown prince lifts his hands, tracing out a number of characters over his skin before he taps twice, and the wounds on his hands knit themselves shut.

A hand moves back up to his face, bringing with it the scent of an expensive perfume oil and something earthier, ginseng and licorice root. The crown prince is even more careful with his face, gently tilting his head to the left and right to get a good look at the cuts and bruises there.

“Some of these look like you’ve had them for a bit longer than twenty minutes.” He says, a knowing look in his eyes as he tilts Hua Cheng’s head back. He brushes a thumb over his lip, and the numb puffy feeling disappears. “You’re a witch aren’t you? Why haven’t you been healing yourself?”

Hua Cheng finally looks back up at him, his gaze sliding to meet the crown prince’s, and he once again is stunned into silence. He’d done that when he was ten, he knows, because he’d thought his rescuer had been pretty. Now though, seven years later, it’s because he thinks he’s beautiful.

Ah, that way madness lies, he thinks.

“Can’t heal.” Hua Cheng mutters, but does not add not a witch either. He’s too entranced by the dark eyes above his own, by the kindness of those fingertips as they sink healing energy into his bruised and tender eye socket. The last time someone touched him without intending to hit him might very well have been when he was ten years old, being led through a field back to the city by the man who stands in front of him now.

“You’re as powerful as I am. You could be more, I think.” The crown prince says, clucking his tongue at Hua Cheng as the last of the swelling over his eye goes down. Hua Cheng blinks a couple of times, instinctively turning his head away to hide the view of his eye. “Oh, I think you’ve scratched your inner eye, let me-“

He’s cut off by the full-body recoil that shivers through Hua Cheng, accompanied by his hand coming up to slap against his eye and hide it from view.

“No! It’s fine, I, there’s a bandage somewhere…” Hua Cheng trails off, remembering that one of the boys who attacked him had managed to tear it off before he could stop him. He’ll have to track him down later, maybe choke the guy with it before he leaves.

A tearing sound makes him look up again, this time in horror. The crown prince tears at the cuff of his sleeve with a little knife that looks like it was made for chopping very small ingredients, cutting out a long strip the width of his palm. Hua Cheng knows he should stop staring, but he can’t tear his eye away even as the crown prince folds the strip in half and then leans down to carefully wrap it twice around his head.

“I’m sorry.” He says, tying the knot off at the back and acting like he hasn’t just kicked the wind out of Hua Cheng’s lungs. “I forgot that you don’t like it to be seen. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t.” He says, too fast, too earnest. “It’s not pretty to look at.”

The crown prince shakes his head. “That wouldn’t make me think any less of you.” And then he cocks his head to the side, confusion clear on his face. “Have you really had no training, ever?”

Hua Cheng’s wry smile returns to his lips.

“I’ve never needed it.”

Instead of clucking his tongue at Hua Cheng, like he expects, the crown prince only smiles at him as if he’s bemused by the statement.

“Except you can’t heal yourself.” It’s not a rebuke, but it’s pensive. “Do you remember when we first met, I only found you because I’d been training in the space between the fields and the forest?”

Hua Cheng nods but furrows his brows, uncertain where this is going. The crown prince looks up to the mouth of the alley to be certain they’re not being overheard.

“I still go there, every week. Meet me there tomorrow afternoon, after three, and I’ll try and teach you some basic stuff.” The smile on his face is sad, as though he’s disappointed in himself. “Even if it’s just so you can heal yourself after incidents like these.”

Hua Cheng’s almost certain he should be saying thank you, but he can’t, because he’s too busy staring. He had known the crown prince to be kind, their last two interactions being some of the only kindnesses he has ever received in this wretched city, but this goes beyond even that.

“This…” He starts, struggles to find the words, and swallows thickly. “This lowly one would not presume-“

He doesn’t get to finish, because the crown prince immediately reaches out to grip his shoulders.

“No thank you, none of that! Aha, I’m just one witch helping another.”

Hua Cheng only nods, keeping his eye cast low as the crown prince lets go of him and gets to his feet. He is surprised when a hand is extended out to him.

“Come on, you shouldn’t stay here.”

Hua Cheng allows himself to be pulled up, and both of them share a moment of surprise when they realise that he is a little taller than the crown prince. At the crown prince’s raised brows, Hua Cheng smirks.

“I wasn’t going to say child-sized forever, Your Highness.”

“Ah, no, of course.” There’s a moment where Hua Cheng regrets being cocky, seeing this turn from teasing to awkward, but then the crown prince grins and reaches up to pinch his cheeks. “But little Hong Hong-er was such a cute little child! Where has he gone? Now you’re a tall, lanky teenager.”

Hua Cheng is mortified. He’s going to die. His mother spat the name Hong at him when cursed child would have raised eyebrows, but no one has ever tried to be cute and call him Hong Hong-er. He half-wishes he’d let the bastards from earlier knock him out.

“Your Highness.” He tries to sound outraged, but knows he fails when the crown prince steps backwards, one hand to his chest as he laughs.

“I’m only teasing, my apologies.” The crown prince gives him a comforting pat on the shoulder, and then nods towards the mouth of the alley. “Promise you’ll meet me tomorrow? I’d really like to help you.”

Hua Cheng knows it’s a terrible idea. Right now his crush is harmless, a tiny spark of light in a seventeen year-old’s heart. More time spent together will give him chance to nurture it, until it grows out of his control and begins to control him. It can put them both in danger, if the crown prince discovers that he is not human, not a witch, if the fae queen spots them on her forest edge and makes a move to claim him back. It’s a reckless, stupid idea.

He makes the promise anyway.

The next afternoon, Hua Cheng arrives at the edge of the forest less wary than perhaps he should be, but the crown prince is already there and spots him as he leaves the field of silver grass.

“Hong-er!”

He sounds genuinely pleased to see him, and Hua Cheng takes a moment to enjoy the simplicity of the feeling. He approaches as the crown prince grabs his wrist, tugging him over to the tree line where he’s laid down two weapons.

“Here.” The crown prince says, handing him a beautifully crafted sabre, wickedly sharp with a blood-red ruby set into the hilt. “It’ll make most people think twice about trying to hit you.”

And twice about how worth it that it might be to rob me, Hua Cheng thinks dryly. He looks at the ruby, the same colour as the brand in his eye. “Why a sabre?”

The crown prince smiles. “It seemed like the kind of weapon that would suit you.”

And so it goes.

Hua Cheng meets him once a week without fail, leaving the fields and making the trek out to the city.

Xie Lian teaches him many things, starting small. He teaches Hua Cheng how to heal his own scrapes and bruises, how to harness the energy that the earth has given him and direct it outwards. Hua Cheng has always been able to do things with his power, but it’s always felt off-kilter, a stream redirected down to the wrong field.

(He doesn’t know that it’s because the forest wants him back. He doesn’t know he’s being held back, until the day he’ll cross the threshold once more, and then it will do whatever he wishes without even needing to think. He doesn’t know.)

Hua Cheng never goes hungry again, as he coaxes a peach tree into full bloom under Xie Lian’s careful instruction, as he places his hands over Hua Cheng’s and teaches him to bring a dead basket of vegetables back to a perfectly ripe state. He takes to it easier than the healing. Between learning how to make any tree give him what he wants, and Xie Lian’s habit of bringing meals with him when he sneaks out, Hua Cheng begins to fill out. He gains one last growth spurt as Xie Lian gives him martial training, teaching him sword forms at the end of their sessions, until Hua Cheng goes from a lanky late-teenager to a tall and broad one.

Through it all, Hua Cheng falls in love.

It’s so easy to do so, after all. Xie Lian is kind and gentle, friendly with a confidence that his years of being hidden away has not managed to erode, and for one as affection-starved as Hua Cheng, it’s inevitable that he takes the time to look into that bright light and find that he likes what he sees.

Every sunlit afternoon burns itself into his memory as one year rolls into two, the two of them growing more comfortable with each other as the weeks blur into months, until Hua Cheng is certain of only one thing.

He is wholly, irrevocably in love with Xie Lian. Not the crown prince, not the man who is forced to hide what he is and rarely leave the confines of his palace. Not the man who has come to his aid thrice now, a saviour who he hero-worshipped.

No, none of those.

He is in love with the man who is so kind that he makes the effort to pick up a tired bee and place it amongst the flowers, who feels sad when he accidentally steps on a snail, smiles at Hua Cheng as though he is a precious thing. The man who does not think anyone is beneath him, who has enough power in him to bring down the city and those who cage him in, but who only wants desperately to save it.

He is in love with Xie Lian, who blushes at his rare touch, whose gaze lingers on him when he practices his sword forms, whose smile is sometimes more than friendly and veering on lovesick. Xie Lian never reaches out to him, fears to make him uncomfortable, but there are times when they sit in the field sharing a meal that the air seems to feel heavier, the two of them standing on the edge of a confession, neither of them brave enough to jump.

But he knows he is in love.

And he knows, deep in his heart, that he would do anything for Xie Lian. He’d do anything to free him from the clutches of a city that does not appreciate his talents, would sell his soul to ensure his safety when they live amongst zealots who would drain his body dry if they thought the blood of a witch would save their hides.

Anything to keep him safe, alive, happy.

Hua Cheng just doesn’t think that choice would come so quickly, but when it does…

…they’ve run out of time.

Because that’s when the plague hits.

It is beyond anything he has ever seen.

The first day it appears, it’s infected an area of the city no smaller than three square miles. No one dies that day, but it’s a close thing.

The first symptoms are innocuous, fevers and chills, standard flu symptoms that don’t initially raise any eyebrows.

Overnight, stomach pains and blackened skin enters the equation, and it spreads another three square miles. The first victims are dead by morning.

It’s an abnormally fast-spreading plague, doubling its infection area every day, until one morning Hua Cheng wakes to find he’s one of the few left alive in the eastern quarter of the city. The few who remain are all witches of some kind, spared from the plague by a twisted stroke of luck. Those of them who openly dabbled with their powers are cut down before the week is out, blamed for the fast spread of the disease.

Hua Cheng meets Xie Lian at the end of the first week, out in the fields. He’s thinner, lips red and sore where he’s chewed them in his anxiety. His hair is limper, skin paler, his spiritual reserves all but drained where he’s been trying to infuse healing energy into the earth to purify the air and contain the disease.

Hua Cheng can’t heal, but he lends as much of his own energy as he can, and Xie Lian’s fingers linger on his wrists before he leaves, with an agreement to meet the next week if they can.

And then, the riots start.

The eastern and western quarters have been cut off, a pointless notion considering that those left alive don’t seem to be able to catch it, but the northern and southern quarters have begun to think long and hard about what a similar treatment may mean for themselves, and unlike the poorest in the outskirts of the city, they have men, weapons and money in abundance.

It’s hard to tell what kills faster: the plague, or the infighting between the central quarter and those on either side of its entrance gates. The pyres for the dead begin to grow higher, people dying faster than they can be burned.

It’s utter chaos.

And then, on the fourteenth day, the central quarter falls. The Royal Palace goes up in flames, and Hua Cheng, unable to get through, heads to the only place he can think of.

Up to the forest.

He waits for what feels like hours, long enough that he considers trying to find an alternative route to the Royal Palace. It’s only as the afternoon begins to fade into early evening that he finally hears that familiar rustle through the silver grass, and Xie Lian appears looking far worse than he had the week previously.

“Dianxia!”

Xie Lian stumbles as he gets closer, and in a rare moment of weakness he allows Hua Cheng to hold up most of his weight when he reaches him.

“I don’t - Hong-er, I don’t have much time.” Xie Lian half-babbles, fingers gripping Hua Cheng’s forearm tightly enough to bruise.

“Dianxia, what-“

“The city, I know how to save it. But I- I had to see you, if only to say goodbye.”

It’s funny, how one sentence can rip a heart in two so easily. Hua Cheng knows immediately that Xie Lian is not talking about a temporary goodbye.

They’ve discussed blood sacrifice plenty of times, Xie Lian talking him through the process but never showing him it, claiming it was too dangerous to use even once. It amplifies everything if used correctly, and given Xie Lian’s usual aversion to using it, it's safe to assume he plans on doing something so drastic that he can only use it once.

Hua Cheng feels like a weight has been dropped into his stomach, and his reply comes out in a visceral snarl.

“Fuck the city. What has it ever done for either of us?”

“It’s our home, Hong-er.”

No, Hua Cheng thinks, his repulsion visceral. It is not his home, has been a den of misery for nineteen years, a horrid dark place that only lit up when Xie Lian became a more permanent presence in his life two years earlier. The city can burn for all he cares, he will light the fires himself.

“Leave with me, dianxia. This city has never deserved you.” And it hasn’t, keeping their crown prince locked inside out of fear that his power would bring the royal family down. His parents may have been loving and generally kind, but a golden cage is still a cage.

He feels his heart begin to crack as Xie Lian shakes his head.

“I can’t. I can save them, I know I can.”

Hua Cheng steps closer, reaching out to grab his wrist.

“Dianxia, you can’t.” He knows what his beloved is not saying, the true price of that salvation. What do his two idiot friends think of this plan? Surely they cannot approve of this.

He says as much, and Xie Lian smiles sadly.

“I sent them to Xuli for aid. By the time they realise…” It would be too late, Hua Cheng thinks. But why lie to them, but come to him and tell him the truth?

Hua Cheng’s grip tightens, desperate.

“Are you going to try and stop me, Hong-er?” Xie Lian asks, and he doesn’t sound combative, but exhausted.

Hua Cheng feels it like an icicle in his heart. Xie Lian knows he’s not going to physically stop him, would never hold back his beloved or restrain him. All he can do is beg.

“Dianxia. They’re not worth your life. You’re worth so much more.”

That awful little smile returns to Xie Lian’s face, and he steps into Hua Cheng’s space smoothly. He doesn’t react as his beloved reaches out, both hands gently cupping at his jaw and his fingertips settling in at the fine hair at the base of his skull.

“It’s my choice to make, Hong-er.”

Xie Lian drags him down and kisses him.

Hua Cheng does not need a moment to react, his hands flying down to wrap around Xie Lian’s waist and drag them flush against each other. The kiss is desperate from the outset, as he tries to pour every ounce of love he possesses into it. He nips at Xie Lian’s lower lip, swallows the gasp as he slides his tongue in, before Xie Lian lifts up on his tiptoes to deepen the kiss further. They’re pressed together hard enough that it hurts his lips, messy and wet, probably atrocious as far as first kisses go. It’s painful, consuming, as Xie Lian tries to say everything he could not say before, and Hua Cheng tries to give him something he would change his mind for.

It’s their first kiss, and it feels an awful lot like a final goodbye.

Xie Lian pulls away first, separated only by millimetres, his breath coming out in shallow pants against Hua Cheng’s mouth. It drags a moan from his throat, but Xie Lian doesn’t react to it as he lets go of Hua Cheng’s jaw, running his fingers down his arms until they find his hands on his waist.

The contact sends a hot shiver down Hua Cheng’s spine.

Xie Lian’s power is a strange thing. He’s the most powerful witch the world has likely seen in the last century, second to no other human around, and his energy can cut as sharply as any blade should he wish it to.

It can also be the gentlest experience of the receiver’s life. Hua Cheng knows from experience that it’s like dipping his hand into a beautiful forest stream at the height of summer, gentle warm water running over his skin. It can be a lovely, soothing feeling, like having all of his cuts and bruises swaddled up in warm blankets.

Given the situation, Hua Cheng can be forgiven for interpreting that shiver as arousal.

And half of it is.

But the other half…

Heat floods through his body, like being dunked into that beautiful summer stream, and Hua Cheng discovers his error at the same moment that Xie Lian’s power turns his muscles to lead.

“No!” He manages to force the words out before his jaw locks, and Xie Lian carefully lowers him down and props him up against a tree.

There are tear tracks running down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry.” Xie Lian’s inhale is wet and hoarse, as though he desperately wants to sniffle but won’t allow himself to. He rubs at his face with his sleeve instead, but only succeeds in smearing his tears around. “I’m sorry. It’s selfish, to do this to you now. But - but I love you, Hong-er, and I don’t want you to see me like that.”

Hua Cheng is devastated, to hear such a confession and be unable to speak, shout back at Xie Lian that he loves him too.

He leans closer, pressing his lips against Hua Cheng’s hard enough to bruise. Xie Lian cradles his jaw again, this time with one palm, and his thumb wipes away the tears that are falling from Hua Cheng’s eye. “When the spell wears off, you need to flee. I don’t want them to use you as a scapegoat.”

Xie Lian looks down at him, as Hua Cheng tries to beg with his gaze, beg and pray and hope that he will change his mind.

And then, turning on his heel, Xie Lian leaves. He does not look back.

His spell is powerful, and had Hua Cheng been a normal witch it might have held him down for hours, kept him trapped there as he watched his beloved stride to his death.

But Hua Cheng is no witch. His power comes from an entirely different source, and though he is on the edge of the forest it still lies there, ready for his call if only he calls it.

Grief rises in him, roars in his ears as he fights the tightened muscles in his throat. It aches, like the pain that comes on the edge of tears, radiating out as he tries to overcome the spell. His body reaches out for that power that lies just beyond his reach, waiting as it rises up to meet him, rumbling up through the earth like the early shakes of a volcanic eruption.

Like the lifting of a silencing spell, his scream breaks free from his throat in a rush. He lets the pain fuel him, heedless of the stress on his vocal cords as he fights the spell, desperate to thrash but unable to will his body to move. It has taken ten minutes for his throat to relax, the same amount of time it takes to walk back to the city wall. Each second is precious, a cruel countdown to the point of no return if he does not break free.

But the forest is not answering his call.

It could be the result of Xie Lian’s spell, after all Hua Cheng has never been unable to physically move when accessing his power, but he doesn’t think that is it. He can reach for it, it’s just unable to reach through, as though something is holding it back.

Or, someone.

Ah, of course.

Hua Cheng stops screaming, ignoring the stinging in his throat in favour of trying to listen. The screams from the city are easy enough to tune out, and the forest is silent to those who aren’t standing within it. There is a sound, though, and he tries to look around as well as he can to figure the source out.

It’s a strange one, reminiscent of leaves being dragged along a forest floor, of fabric snagging and pulling on branches and thorns. It’s whisper-soft and barely audible, but it is there. Hua Cheng tries to speak, to attract their attention, but the spell holds him back and stops his lips from forming the words.

His entire life, Hua Cheng has known things. His name, when the forest whispered it into his ears as a young child, giving him what his mother would not. The innate knowledge of his power, the ability to call it and shape it at will: there had never been any accidents from uncontrolled power, he had simply known. Known he was not human, known he was fae, known that the crown prince was and is the love of his life, that there is no room for anyone else.

And now, he knows that his mouth will not form any word other than one.

It is frustrating, infuriating, the knowledge that his mouth won’t move unless he tries to say it. He hasn’t said it since he was a toddler, to another woman who would slap him every time he even whispered it. He is painfully aware of the irony, knowing that the one word he was terrified to say as a child, the word he learned very quickly should never leave his mouth, is now the only one that will help him save Xie Lian.

The rustling sound moves ever closer, and he thinks of his beloved willingly throwing his own life away for a dead city and swallows his pride.

“Mother.”

There is no struggle to say it, the word coming easily despite Xie Lian’s spell.

The volcano erupts, the spell shattering as his power surges into him with such force that he sees stars. His lungs expand, take in the air and the smoke and the ache in his throat, and he coughs so long and hard that he’s briefly worried he might cough one of them up.

Long white tresses make their way into his vision, curling in the wind and stark against the black and white robes that the Queen of the Fae wears as she kneels down in front of him. She does not smile, only tips his head up to get a better look at him, eyes skimming over his cheekbones and over to his bandaged right eye.

Her fingers tighten, and though it is not cruel, there is nothing gentle about it either.

She rises to her feet, motions for him to do the same, and Hua Cheng grits his teeth as he obeys. Doing so does not come easily, after nearly a decade of fighting anyone who tried to order him around.

He is surprised, once he’s up, to realise that they are the same height. Where he is tall and getting broader with every day that passes, she is long and willowy, but there is an old and ancient strength to her bones that leaves him with little doubt that she could punch him clean through to the other side of the forest if she so wished.

But it’s her face that is the most surprising.

He had noticed it, as a child, that she had shared some similarities with his own features. It was how he had known she was his true mother from the moment he saw her. But now, with the loss of the childish roundness to his face, he sees it all too clearly. Her cheekbones, high and wide, the long sharp jaw and the straight line of her nose, and dark eyes that are just a little too big for her face in a way that could be unsettling if looked at too closely. Inhuman, steel-grey fae eyes.

It’s a face that he sees every time he catches sight of his reflection.

She looks at him, the child she bore and then swapped out with a human child for the tithe to hell, if the folktales are true. He sees her look at him, and watches as her lips curl up into a smirk.

He wonders if his own smirk is capable of eliciting such indignant outrage, knowing that it must since the shape of her mouth matches his.

“Why have you called for me, Hua Cheng?”

“Save him.” He asks, bandages falling from his face, the forest rising up before him, and the queen laughs.

She takes his warmth, his heartbeat, the fragile little glow of his humanity. She takes his arm, forcibly redirects his power, down, and they’re in the city between one blink and the next.

Hua Cheng will never forget the sight.

She glides like water through the smoke, her white hair and pale skin contrasting with the black of her robes, exuding enough power that the smoke and the dirt doesn’t touch her.  Hua Cheng notices none of it.

No, his gaze is on the floor in the middle of the square, where his beloved begins to keel over in robes more red than white, the flesh of his throat torn open as a sword clatters to the floor. His skin is ashy and mottled, his pulse fluttering madly like the frenzied, dying beats of a butterfly’s wings.

He has no more than a minute left, if that.

“Hurry.” He snaps, dropping to his knees at the crown prince’s side. Hua Cheng tries not to fret, but as strong as he is he does not know advanced healing, has no idea where to place his hands, which wound to try and staunch first.

Sharp nails dig into his shoulder, yanking him back and sending him sprawling across the ground. It takes more control than he knew he possessed to keep from retaliating, and he nearly bites off his tongue to keep his mouth shut.

It is the only time he will admit that keeping quiet is worth it. The queen drags two of her nails through the slitted skin on Xie Lian’s throat, and Hua Cheng watches in terrified relief as the wound knits together. It’s hard to see for the blood, and it’s closed in such a jagged way that it is certain to leave a scar. 

“Pick him up.” She demands, her voice sharp enough to cut through his thoughts. He moves quickly, his arms gently pushing underneath the crown prince’s body and tilting him into his arms. His wrists are still bleeding, weeping blood with every faint pulse of his hummingbird heartbeat, half of it smearing into his robes and the other seeping onto Hua Cheng’s.

The queen reaches out, tilting his beloved’s head back to open his airway, before she moves her hand to Hua Cheng’s arm once more.

The drain on his spiritual power leaves him winded, causes him to stumble and tighten his grip, and when he looks up they’re far, far deeper in the forest than he has ever been. He struggles to catch his breath, sends a glare in the queen’s direction, only to be greeted by her smirk.

She had known, of course. He may be one of the most powerful fae to have graced this forest, second only to her, but moving three people between locations at once is havoc on someone who has been trained, never mind one who has been left to his own devices for nineteen years.

No doubt it was on purpose. If he had any idea of fleeing, not that he does, she has ensured he does not have the capability to outrun her.

“Get on with it, then.” He bites out, too aware that even with whatever the queen has done to stabilise his beloved, he is still hanging on by the tattiest of threads.

“I want your word.”

Hua Cheng pauses, looks up at her with what he’s sure is incredulousness.

“If you think I’m scared enough to go back on my word-“

“I think you’re not scared enough. That will serve you well, later. I want your word now.”

Hua Cheng grits his teeth, hears the disgusting creak of his back teeth clenching together, and closes his eyes.

“If you save him, I will return to this forest and take my place.” He feels it settle behind his ribcage, a vow made to the Queen of the Fae that he cannot break. Words are powerful, vicious little things, and she has secured him.

“Good enough.” She scoffs, leaning across and moves to take the crown prince from his arms. He steps back, unwilling to hand him over. Her laugh is cruel. “Have it your way. Such a devoted lover. Follow me then, son of mine.”

Fortunately, she has already turned away, and does not witness the violence of Hua Cheng’s flinch.

It is probably the first time in his life that someone has acknowledged him as their son.

He refuses to mull on it, refuses to let her believe he thinks it an honour rather than the means to an end that it is. He does follow her, though, and realises that she has brought them to a long road bordered by red maple trees. There’s no end to the path ahead, and when he looks back over his shoulder the path continues for as far as his eyes can see.

A protection charm, then. Ensuring that any who come across the path that are not welcomed are doomed to walk it with no end in sight.

She dismantles it with a wave of her hand, the length of the road ahead shortening so abruptly that it makes his eyes hurt. The forest around them dissolves into mist as they walk, a dozen charms buckling and bowing the further they go, until the last of the maple grove falls away.

The hall that they stand in front of is unlike anything he has ever seen. There are columns and curved gables made from darkened wood, arches formed from dozens of intertwined trees, heavy moss and leafy foliage allowing it to blend in with the dark of the forest. Thousands of little lanterns light up the exterior, giving it an otherworldly glow that almost takes the breath from him.

When he looks back to the queen, she is smirking at him over her shoulder.

“Not the prison you were expecting?”

Hua Cheng only narrows his eyes at her.

The interior is even more beautiful than the outside. Where the outside is made from different shades of dark wood, the interior is light, wide and open. It’s clearly a receiving hall, and the throne at the very end of the room is carved into the thick trunk of a living, blooming red maple tree. The steps up to it are bordered in long hanging curtains of crimson ivy, pulled back for the moment, and he begrudgingly admits that it’s a tasteful look.

He might keep that, when he’s done.

There’s no roof, dappled sunlight filtering down to light up the space, and he has to hold his tongue to stop himself from making a comment about the rain. There’s probably a charm there, too, or perhaps the queen just forces the trees to bend and cover the hall.

There are a few people milling about, gossiping in hushed whispers, and he’s struck with the realisation that they’re all fae, that this is truly a city, a full Unseelie Court hidden deep in the forest.

He catches some of the murmurs, hears the word prince bandied about a few times, and is hit with an uncomfortable suspicion that they’re not talking about his beloved.

The queen leads him up and around the back of the throne, through an archway behind it, and out into a private courtyard.

“Lay him down.” She demands, pointing to an area in front of a large, tiered fountain. Hua Cheng obeys, gritting his teeth as he does so, the instinct to fight against the order easily overridden by his fear for Xie Lian. He lowers him gently to the floor, careful to support his head so that his neck wound does not reopen.

The moment Hua Cheng lets go, fingers trailing down his jaw before he sits back, hundreds of thin vines snake their way out of the earth and wind their way around Xie Lian.  They cover him almost completely, winding around him and up over his neck, stopping just below his chin, and only loose enough to let him breathe. Peonies burst to life on them, blooming heavy and fragrant, and Hua Cheng watches as they seem to shimmer for a second.

Hua Cheng starts, alarmed.

“Oh, calm yourself.” The queen admonishes, tone brusque.

And then, one flower dies.

It’s an interesting way to heal someone, he thinks, realising that the energy to heal Xie Lian is coming straight from the forest itself. A second peony begins to wilt, the petals curling in on themselves and then dropping down to scatter around his prone form.

Before he can reach out to touch, or open his mouth to say anything, there’s a hand wrapped around his bicep, pulling him up and away from Xie Lian. He resists, tries to tug his arm out of her grip, but in a heartbeat she transports them outside the hall into a grove of red maple trees, and he feels the dip in his energy.

“Take me back to him.” Hua Cheng demands, voice hard, but she waves him off with a soft scoff, circling him as though she’s a cat that has caught something amusing.

“We need to discuss the price of healing him.”

Hua Cheng whips around to look at her, following her as she moves with his brow furrowed in fury.

“I’ve already given you my word. What else could I possibly give you?” There’s a sneer to his voice that he knows he should probably keep in check, but the nerve of her is infuriating.

The fae queen clucks her tongue at him. “You asked me to save him, and so I did by taking him from Xianle. But I am not the one healing him, the forest is. There is a price for that.”

“Then I’ll pay it.” He says, without hesitation. She shakes her head at him, her smile cold and detached.

“He already has. It has taken his knowledge of anything to do with the forest. Having grown in Xianle, his memories will now be full of gaps. He’ll know where he’s from, his friends, his family, but nothing to do with this place. Legends, folktales, all gone.”

This time, it’s Hua Cheng who scoffs. “Hardly a loss.”

Something strange passes across her face, and for a moment he could almost believe it is pity. It passes quickly, and her voice is steely when she speaks. “You forget, but you are the son of the Queen of the Fae, a child of the forest. He will forget everything to do with this place: that includes you.”

For a moment, he struggles to understand, but once he realises what she means he feels the early ache of grief begin to seep into his bones. There is rage there too, indignation and terror that leaves a bitter taste in the back of his throat.

“There’s more.” She continues, still circling. “He performed a blood ritual to save that city. He did so thinking he would not survive.”

“I’m aware.” He snaps, one hand lowering to the hilt of his sabre. And then he pauses, mind stuck on those words, blood ritual. They’re vicious things, and even for someone of Xie Lian’s skill, blood alone does not seem to have been enough for what he was trying to do.

The fae queen watches him, sees the moment he connects the dots, and inclines her head slowly.

“He sacrificed almost all of his energy reserves alongside his life. Nothing can give back what was willingly sacrificed. He is now almost wholly mortal.”

Hua Cheng feels nausea begin to roil in his stomach, the thought almost unbearable. Only witches with huge reserves of spiritual power are able to extend their lives through repeatedly using it. Low and middling level witches have lifespans that match that of a normal human. With almost all of it gone, Xie Lian is unlikely to live even a tenth as long as he would have expected.

It’s devastating.

“You tricked me.” He keeps his tone unusually calm, eyes on her as she finally stops circling him.

Her laugh is like the sharp stab of an icicle through his chest, callous and cruel.

“I said I would save his life. His memories, and his spiritual power, were not included.”

Hua Cheng inclines his head. This is a game he knows all too well how to play. “Of course.”

He did not clarify that Xie Lian should be kept alive in the state he was in before he slit his throat, but he should have known, should have realised that word choice is the most important part of the dealings with the fae.

He did know that, in fact. Hua Cheng had known to be careful with his words, but the fear had been overwhelming.

His mistake, one he will be sure that he pays for, later.

Fortunately, when he made this deal to save Xie Lian’s life, he didn’t swear loyalty either. He had promised to go back and take his rightful place.

Hua Cheng rather thinks his rightful place is as king.

When he unsheathes his sword, anticipation glints in her eyes, and her smile is off.

He knows there is no point trying to fight her on even ground. She is powerful, vines easily batting away his sword as he tests her, unwilling to waste his energy and open himself to being disarmed. After a minute or two of him striking at her, only to be easily rebuffed at every turn, he gives in to the irrational urge that is tearing through him and lifts his hand to his face.

He has had plenty of opportunities to scream during his life, terrible throat-tearing screams that would be wrenched from him during the worst of his parents’ beatings, until he learned that keeping quiet made them stop faster. Earlier, at the forest edge, he’d screamed out his power until his ears bled to get past the joint-locking spell that Xie Lian had placed on him.

It all pales in comparison to the inhuman noise that leaves him as he digs his fingers into his own eye socket. He pushes his energy into it, but all the spiritual power in the world will not numb a pain like this, hot and sharp as his fingers slip, struggling to grip as blood begins to stream. It is agonising as he pushes on, fingernails clamping down and slicing through the muscles and nerves at the back of his eye as he chokes on the bile that forces its way up out of his stomach.

It pulls free as his scream reaches a crescendo, and Hua Cheng pulls his sabre up to slice through any remaining nerves, sending his energy to his now-empty socket to try and staunch the blood.

The queen stares at him in disbelief.

He slides his eye down the sharp edge of the blade, splitting it in two as he infuses his energy into it and feels the power double, triple, expand tenfold until the sabre is shaking with the force of his energy.

It’s the most powerful thing he will ever have the ability to create, short of sacrificing his own life for it. Blood sacrifice is not easily performed, you have to mean it. Slitting your wrists lightly will no more power a spell than spilt red wine, but ripping your eye from its socket? There’s no turning back from that.

The sabre burns hot in his hands, vibrating wildly in his hold as the blade lengthens and forges itself even sharper. It thirsts for blood, as dark as the forest it has been awakened in, and Hua Cheng feels it settle in tune with his wants and his urges the same moment he notices the ruby is gone.

In its place, his blood red eye, still branded with a peony.

The fight does not last long.

The queen may be an immortal being with the power of a forest behind her, but Hua Cheng is angry, has fuelled his energy with his own blood and forged his sword from it. He is the fae child born under the star of solitude, fated to bring misfortune but not suffer from it himself. He cannot, will not, lose when so much is on the line. A vine tries to distract him from the left and he turns right, sword arcing up and into her belly.

Silence falls.

Even with a sword through her stomach and a bloody bubble of saliva popping at the corner of her lips, she’s still terrifying. There is no shock on her face, only a grim satisfaction as she reaches out with both her hands and cradles his jaw. His eye socket is still bleeding, and she gathers the blood on her fingertips to swipe it across his cheeks.

“You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“Freed myself from your clutches, I should think.” Without her there, he can do as he wishes, no longer bound to his promise to return.

Her laugh rings through the forest, sharp and cruel enough that the trees themselves seem to bend away from it.

“You didn’t give your word to me.”

Uneasiness prickles at the edge of his awareness, as he narrows his eyes at her. She tries to swallow, chokes on her bloody spit as she does, and when she sneers her teeth are stained red with her own blood.

He does not ask her to elaborate, knowing she will tell him anyway, knowing there is a part of her that finds this amusing even as she’s dying.

“Fae children who are born under the Star of Solitude are to be sacrificed to Hell. I swapped you with a child of Xianle to save you from that fate, but it ensured you grew to be as powerful as you are. Why would you ever think the forest would let you go, now that it has you back?”

“Nothing is absolute.” He snaps, irritation rising in him. “With you dead, whatever it is that keeps me here will break.”

That cruel laugh returns, cuts through him like shards chipped off a block of ice. “Did you think I was keeping you tied to this forest?”

Something ugly curls in his stomach, a dark mix of dread and grief. “Why should I have believed it wasn’t?”

“You came back willingly, took your place willingly. The forest had you from the moment you first felt the chill of winter coursing through your veins. You think you can leave? The only way you can leave this forest is when it burns to the ground, and your ashes are taken on the wind. You can only leave with him, because he owes you a life debt, but he has no idea who you are.” Blood overflows from where it is gathering under her tongue, spills out through her teeth and over her lip to drip to the floor in strings of red drool.

In one sharp movement he twists the sword, and another flood of blood pours over her lips. It does not abate the smirk.

“I’ll find a way out. I will.”

She does not need to breathe, but she still exhales slowly as he lowers her to the ground. The white linen of her robes is blooming red even as he pulls out the sword, and she reaches up a hand to clutch at the front of his robes.

“You belong to the forest now, child.”

The queen dies slowly, and with every minute that passes he can feel his energy growing, something sticky and dark encroaching its way along the borders of his consciousness. He stays with her, allows the enigmatic being that crawls along his skin to continue doing so as the Queen of the Fae passes from this world to the next.

When the darkness bites down and secures its hold, he does not scream.

He’s screamed enough today.

He returns to the hall, still bleeding, to find Xie Lian almost healed.

He wants to reach out, to comfort him, but he knows he can't, shouldn't...

But it may be the only chance he ever gets, and so he takes it.

Consciousness is not far off. He gently takes his beloved’s hands, holding one in each of his, and presses the lightest of kisses against those awful jagged scars. The scars glow, a soft silver light, and he feels the energy siphoning out of him. It isn’t a lot, not compared to the ocean of it that he has had access to since coming into his own, but it is enough to sustain his life, for as long as he chooses to wander this earth.

It is all he can give him.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, covering Xie Lian's hands with his own for only a moment before he releases them. Hua Cheng gently lifts him up into his arms, ensures his head is supported against his shoulder, and begins the awful walk to the forest edge.

With every step he takes he becomes more aware that he may never see the crown prince again. With a shattered memory of who he is, he may never return to this area of the world. All he can do is wait and hope that one day he will be drawn back to the forest.

There is a part of Hua Cheng, almost as strong as the desperate wish that he will return, that hopes he does not. If he was unworthy of his beloved before, when he was nothing more than an inhuman street rat, he is most certainly unworthy now that he has this darkness running through his veins.

Grief claws its way through his chest when he finally reaches the tree line, a bitter thing that feels like a knife rummaging around in his innards. A day earlier, and things had been so different.

Now, he can’t leave unless it is with Xie Lian, but he cannot remember Hua Cheng.

In the distance, he can hear shouting, full of anger and fear, and he knows those two friends of Xie Lian’s must have returned from Xuli. He shifts Xie Lian in his arms, reaching out a palm to the nearest tree and forcing it and ten others to grow tall, boughs bursting with white flowers.

There’s a cry of alarm.

Hua Cheng gently lowers Xie Lian to the ground, unwilling to let go but knowing he has no choice. He can’t keep him and he cannot go with him. He takes his hand one last time, clasping it between his own and holding his fingers to his lips like he’s making a vow.

“I’ll always be here, dianxia. If you ever come back, I’ll be waiting.”

Part of him hopes for a miracle, that he’ll feel that hand tightening between his own and look up to find Xie Lian awake and smiling. He checks, his heart aching, but Xie Lian is still unconscious. Hua Cheng presses a final kiss to his knuckles, and finally lowers his hand to lay over his other one.

He waits, hidden in the trees, and watches as Xie Lian is found by Feng Xin and Mu Qing. For once, the two seem able to get along long enough to recognise the need to get Xie Lian far from here. He watches them go, relieved that Xie Lian is safe, but hating them for taking him away.

“Goodbye, dianxia.”

The transformation is… more than he had expected.

The queen had said the forest had him. Hua Cheng had envisioned it as a dark being of nature that perhaps he could learn to shake off, something that would take a hold of his heart and trap him like a bird, but nevertheless something that could be broken free from.

He was wrong.

He is the forest. Every river, every babbling brook and icy stream runs through the veins in his body, a keen awareness of every single inch of the place. His senses extend long beyond anything he had been capable of before: all he has to do is reach out, and he knows the location of every fae in the forest, which parts of his territory have faery rings placed down on them, knows every footstep put down by every animal in there.

What he cannot feel, the butterflies will see for him. He can’t actually comprehend how many there are, for they seem to be in endless supply and always the right amount for whatever he needs. He learns to use them to disguise himself, to transport him across the forest when he does not wish to use his spiritual energy. He uses them to spy, which helps when he discovers that thirty-three fae of the upper Unseelie Court are not to be trusted.

He has the butterflies cut them all to ribbons at the foot of the dais, lounging over his throne and looking all the while like he’s bored utterly shitless, which he is. He stops at the thirty-fourth member, a forgettable-looking youth who bows low and allows himself to be demoted to servant without batting an eyelid.

He does not rebuild the court. He may be the fae king now, but he will not rule.

Three weeks after his beloved nearly died to save the city, Hua Cheng returns.

The air is warm and sickly, damp where it meets his skin and clinging to his robes. He’s not sure if it’s the heat or the lingering smoke from the last of the funeral pyres that causes it to be so warm, but it’s accompanied by the cloying sweet smell of the dead and the dying.

Fuck, he thinks. He really fucking hates this place.

Nearly everyone is already dead. The plague has clearly run rampant through the population now that the crown prince is no longer there to try to hold back the resentment from the forest, and what few humans remain will not be here for much longer.

He saves only three: a group of frail, malnourished street rats no older than seven. He doesn’t do it out of mercy or pity, but because he thinks that if Xie Lian were here, he would like to see them saved.

Whether condemning them to the forest is considered saving them, he does not think too much on it, only holds their wrists until the disease is flushed from their bodies along with the lingering warmth of their heartbeats, and then sends them stunned and silent through a faery ring.

He takes a moment to imagine Yin Yu’s likely stunned, definitely exasperated reaction to three newly-fae children appearing in the middle of the forest.

His humour does not last long, once he reaches the square.

The white flagstones are stained the colour of rusted metal, blood that once was an alarming red now dried to a burnished brown. Visible in the centre is the hole that Xie Lian smashed through to get access to the soil beneath, his direct route to the rot that grows beneath the city.

Hua Cheng swallows thickly, and forces the water from the nearby fountain to wash the stains away.

He can feel the rot as he kneels down to the floor, a lurid aura that ebbs and flows beneath his feet, stretching out from the centre. The forest may not have been the cause of the plague, but the rot beneath the city had aided its spread, carrying it through the soil and infecting the water supply, sending it up to curl along the leaves of the meagre harvest, releasing its spores into the air and relishing in the death that followed.

He remembers, then, being eight years old and feeling the malcontent for the first time, the year that the vegetables first failed. The forest has been slowly killing the city for years: the plague only gave it the chance to finish it off.

Xie Lian could have bled himself dry a thousand times over: he would never have cleansed it.

Heaving in a breath he no longer needs to take, Hua Cheng plants himself down in the spot where the crown prince slit his own throat, lays his palms flat across the space where the crown prince sunk his fingers into the soil, and does what his beloved could not.

He knows exactly where to look, guided by the forest and the echoes of what he could feel as a child. Deep beneath the rot, where the devastated roots of an ancient forest still grow, he reaches out for the spark of life that has caused all this misery and misfortune. He finds it, catches it, and floods it with his energy.

With a thunderous crack, the flagstones in the square break apart as a hundred trees burst through with enough violence that Hua Cheng is covered with chips of stone and clumps of soil. Dawn redwoods, red maples, saffron gingkoes and blooming dove trees reclaim the square in minutes, growing taller and thicker until Hua Cheng is plunged into shadow as the sun is finally blocked out by the foliage.

Half of these trees shouldn’t even be in bloom, he thinks, but he wonders if that might sort itself out within a season.

Beneath him, the rot dissipates, dissolves into the roots of the trees and back into the forest, and Hua Cheng feels his power grow even stronger as the land is reclaimed. He closes his eye, pushes down harder, and extends his reach further.

The cacophony of sound tells him he is successful. Roof tiles clatter to the floor as the buildings in the city begin to crack apart, wooden beams and clay bricks and marble statues tumbling apart as the forest reestablishes itself, takes back the land that was stolen. It comes from all directions, a deep rumble combined with the sounds of a human encroachment being dismantled for good. With every tree that erupts from the ground his power grows, until nothing remains of the city but a carcass of ruined mortar and smashed up building materials. He continues outwards, reclaims the farmland to the south of the city and the tall fields of silver grass that covers the land to the north, until he has cleansed the land and hidden it away forever.

Years to build a city, to clear the forest and lay the foundations, years to sit and watch it rot, and minutes to take it all back.

The seasons pass, syrupy slow at first, blowing by faster with every year, until Hua Cheng cannot accurately count how long it has been since that fateful final day in Xianle.

He reshapes the Unseelie Court, takes away the structure until it is only him at the top, lets the rest of them be left to their own devices, free to wander the thousands of miles of forests if only they stay well out of his way. Some come and go to the Hall that he keeps as his own, and some days he may even be found lounging on the throne, but he never holds court. He only involves himself in the petty disputes of the fae if it’s becoming annoying or starting to threaten his authority, though he gains a reputation as a man whose decisions can be unpredictable, siding with whatever side takes his fancy that day. In an increasingly odd turn of fate, he finds that the more aloof he appears, the more they seem to adore him.

His powers grow with every year, as he expands the forest further past the ruins of Xianle until he knows that dark rumours about it have spread, ensuring that the people of the south have no wish to try and visit the ruins of the city nor cross the tree line. As an unintended side benefit, it also ensures that the people of the north see how the forest grows, and understand that someone new is in charge. They rarely tried to pass through before, only ever did if they wanted a shortcut to Xianle, but now his only visitors are humans with too much bravado who wish to test how haunted the forest really is.

He enjoys those days the most. He erects a charm over the entirety of the forest to ensure that no matter which route a mortal tries to take through the forest, they always end up on the illusory road to his hall, where he’ll deal with them himself.

And everyday, he thinks of Xie Lian. Wonders how and where he is, if he is still with those friends of his who talk too much and too loudly. He hopes he is happy, now that he is free from the burdens of the city, from people who wanted too much from their crown prince.

Xie Lian had never confided in him that he was required, daily, to pump his energy into the city the last few years it had existed, in an attempt to keep it alive. When he had cleansed the city of the resentment and the rot that had simmered below it, he had felt those echoes of Xie Lian’s own power. He had taken it all back, locked it away from his own where it could be returned one day, if Xie Lian ever found his way back.

At the very least, he knows for certain that he is alive. The butterflies infused with his power that he had placed within Xie Lian’s wrists have not returned to him, and he can sense it well enough to know that they’re doing their job in keeping him young and healthy. Whether he has noticed it is a different matter entirely, but he suspects it is a topic that Xie Lian prefers not to think on too much.

And then finally, after a year with a long and hot summer which seemed to roll on for months, he feels a mortal presence move into the land occupied by the dilapidated cottage that still resides within his domain. Its appearance is sudden enough that he sits upright on his throne, eye unfocused as he tries to locate it, figure out what they’re doing.

Whoever it is, they’re slight, taking a circumspect route to the front of the house. He suspects that it might be to avoid the garden bushes, which have been growing wild for centuries.

He wants to send the butterflies to see, but he daren’t, can’t stomach the thought that it could be someone other than Xie Lian. Equally, he can’t bear to think about what to do if it is.

It has been so long, years of waiting and yearning, and now that he could possibly be here he’s at a loss for what to do.

“Does Hua Chengzhu need me to close up while he’s gone?” Yin Yu asks from his right, voice toneless and facial expression carefully blank.

Hua Cheng narrows his eye, his gaze sliding across to look at his assistant.

It’s not a challenge, Yin Yu would never dare, but it does force him to confront his uncertainties. His eye flashes as he nods.

“Keep the outer settlements open.”

“Of course.”

Hua Cheng leaves quietly, each step a hammer against his heart as he carefully makes his way towards the forest edge. He’s both nervous and petrified, feels sick from it, the emotions so unfamiliar to him now that feeling them again makes his head hurt.

What on earth will he do if it is Xie Lian?

He hasn’t been to this border of the forest in a long time, but the landscape beyond is unchanged once he reaches it. It does make sense in a way, for the land beyond the border still belongs to him for at least another six or seven miles, though he has no idea why the forest never reclaimed the cottage and the land it sits on. For now, though, the only home for those six miles is the cottage, meaning that he can’t blend in as a friendly neighbour.

It makes him certain that he will have to change his skin to scout around, and so before he leaves the tree line he slips down into his fox skin.

The fox is his favourite animal form, one he slips into seamlessly these days, often easier than some of his second skins. It had been a terrifying one at first, a transformation that only came about because he sat on his throne and wondered hm, if I can shift skins, can I shift species? The mayhem of that day will not be forgotten easily, though there is a mortifying unspoken agreement between himself and Yin Yu that it will never, ever be spoken about, again.

But it’s the obvious choice if he needs to move about where there is a risk of being seen, and he’s less likely to be stabbed with an iron stake if he just looks like a wild animal.

He’s aware that he could probably just send the butterflies out for this, but he’s too curious, too eager to see which soul has decided to relocate to the cottage on the edge of the forest. There’s a hope burning in his chest which he dare not acknowledge, cannot acknowledge until he has seen the face of his newest neighbour.

He lurks around for an evening or two, knowing that he can’t be seen just hanging around staring in the window waiting for a glimpse. It might be easy to break apart his bones and shift down to a fox, but remembering to actually act like one is strange given that most of the humans he comes across these days are little shits from the surrounding villages who think they’re brave enough to enter the forest.

Even then, the whole point of letting himself be seen is to make them shit themselves, so acting like a normal wild animal is not something he need concern himself with.

But finally, the second evening, he squeezes through a gap in the stone wall and creeps through the darkness to hide beneath a rose bush that faces one of the windows. He doesn’t plan to stay long, ten minutes or so, but the inside is well lit from what must be numerous candles and the fire, and there’s smoke coming from the chimney. There’s a burning smell too, of something being left on a stove for too long, but it’s such a long-lost scent to him now that it takes a moment to place it as overcooked congee.

And then, the man inside steps into the frame of the window, a bashful look on his face as he stares down at whatever he is cooking.

Hua Cheng startles so violently that the whole bush rustles.

It’s the crown prince, his beloved. It has been too many years of hoping, waiting, locking that hope away to burn long and slow but hidden within the depths of his long-dead heart. He doesn’t know how long it has been, decades, definitely a century and probably two, but his beloved is back. Hua Cheng would recognise the bow of those lips and the curve of those cheekbones even if he had been struck blind-

-Xie Lian looks up, and spots him in the bushes.

Shit, Hua Cheng quietly thinks, and then feels a sharp stinging pain sink into his front leg. Instinctively he tries to pull it away and out, only to feel the pain scrape up his leg and clamp down deeper as the thorny vine from the rose bush catches in his fur.

If he’d been human, he thinks his blood would probably freeze in his veins when he hears the door to the little house open.

He tries one last time to pull his leg out, and is rewarded with the thorns sinking deeper and tearing out some of his fur.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright, calm down.” And then he’s there, kneeling down in the grass next to him, voice soothing and gentle, looking exactly like he used to all those years ago, and Hua Cheng yearns.

Xie Lian swiftly goes back into the house, and Hua Cheng has a moment to reflect on the situation.

He’s the King of the Fae, a terrifying figure used in stories to instil a fear of the unknown, a dark presence that puts off even the bravest of humans from entering the forest. He’s horrifying enough that villages for miles refuse to entertain strangers out of fear that it could be him in disguise, powerful enough that he could take the forest and cover the earth with it if he so chooses, and…

…and he’s stuck in a rose bush whilst wearing his fox skin, dumbstruck at the first sight of his beloved in over a century.

It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so mortifying.

He briefly considers changing back whilst he’s out here alone, but realises that it could go very wrong, very fast if Xie Lian comes back quickly enough to catch sight of him. A fox caught under the bushes is innocuous enough, but a grown man? There’s a rake leaning against the well nearby, and he has no wish to discover how it feels to be struck with it.

Xie Lian returns with a pair of scissors and a bowl of congee, and Hua Cheng is subjected to what is probably the most surreal ten minutes of his life since becoming the fae king.  His beloved must suspect something is amiss, because he spends a minute carefully explaining to Hua Cheng what he’s going to do before he reaches into the bush and cuts him free.

Hua Cheng is entranced as he prattles on, staring as gentle hands pluck every thorn from his fur, and then there’s a warm rag wiping away the drying bits of blood.

“I’d try and heal them myself, but I’m more apt to make them worse.” Xie Lian says, and oh, Hua Cheng had wondered, years earlier, if time would return his power to him. It hurts to hear that it has not, because he had been so good at it, his natural energy boosted by his kindness and compassion.

He’s dragged out of his thoughts by the shock of Xie Lian running his fingers down his back, scratching as he goes, as though he’s a pet cat. Hua Cheng viscerally clamps down on the wave of relaxation that shivers through him even as he arches up involuntarily, biting down on his tongue to fight off the urge to transform back. If his guard drops then he is more likely to shift before he can stop it, but the fingers brushing through his fur feel so nice.

Xie Lian laughs.

Hua Cheng is tempted to change right there and then, if only to relish in the inevitable shock that would proceed from it.

Instead, he follows his beloved up to the little veranda when he’s finished, curling up nearby but keeping an eye on him. He should go back, he knows, only arouses more suspicion by hanging around, but it’s been years, and surely an hour or two can’t hurt.

Beside him, Xie Lian leans back on his hands, crossing his legs beneath him as he looks up at the stars. Like this, lit by the moon and the soft glow from the lanterns hanging from the veranda, he looks beautiful. It’s almost painful to look at him, to realise that after all these years he is finally here, in this little dilapidated house on the edge of his realm.

What brought him back? Hua Cheng desperately wants to believe that it was a memory of him, perhaps, or something deep inside him that drew him back, but he knows that his memory was nigh on unrecoverable, and if he’s drawn to the place then the fault for that lies in his wrists, where Hua Cheng can still feel the fragments of his own power thrumming with Xie Lian’s every heartbeat.

He stays for what feels like hours, until Xie Lian curls up on the veranda and throws him a sleepy smile, until the only sound is the warm wind and the chirping crickets and his beloved’s soft snores. Only then does he change back, gathering up the rag and the congee bowl and washing them out in an old trough, before he puts the bowl and the scissors on a stool by the door.

When he approaches it, he immediately feels the instinctive repulsion that he only ever feels around iron, and realises that the door handle and the grate must be made from it. It’s smart, a fairly effective way of keeping the supernatural out, and he wonders who was responsible for it.

It couldn’t keep him out forever, of course, but it will certainly keep the lesser fae from bothering Xie Lian.

He silently steps away, pinning up the rag on the clothesline and taking off a couple of the woollen blankets. Xie Lian doesn’t move when Hua Cheng carefully drapes them over him, loose enough that he won’t tangle in them but tight enough to keep him warm if the temperature drops any further.

And then, against his better judgement, he reaches out once to run his fingers through his beloved’s hair.

Hua Cheng stays until the sun begins to rise.

Two whole weeks.

That’s how long it takes Xie Lian to brave the forest.

Hua Cheng is going mad with anticipation and trepidation as he wanders the northern boundary of the forest, erecting diversion charms and protection spells to keep Xie Lian safe if he does come through this way. He sets a powerful transportation spell up around ten miles in, one that will automatically bring him to the road to his hall if it looks as though he is getting lost, or wandering too close to some of the flightier fae.

None of them would hurt him, none would dare after seeing Hua Cheng putting so much in place to keep him safe, but fae are fae, and tormenting travellers who trespass is in their nature. They’re more apt to find Xie Lian intriguing, but no one likes to feel they’re being watched.

Fortunately, the three children he saved from Xianle inhabit the northern borders, and though they’ve long grown into adult fae, they’re also uncannily loyal to Hua Cheng. He’s confident that they’ll rein in any tiresome behaviour, and that the worst Xie Lian may face in this part of the forest is the sound of laughter dogging his footsteps.

Hua Cheng is near the outlook when he feels it.

The faery ring that he’d placed outside Xie Lian’s home is harmless, a transportation ring that won’t activate unless Xie Lian actually intends to do so. Hua Cheng is acutely aware of it though, and his footsteps pause as he feels Xie Lian edge around it, walking confidently in the direction of the tree line.

Sitting down on the bench at the outlook is almost entirely involuntary, an unfamiliar fear settling into his heart as the back of his knees hit the cold stone. He’s torn between two different anxieties. What if, by some twist of fate, Xie Lian has remembered everything, and resents him for the role he played in stopping him from trying to trade his life for the city?

What if Xie Lian remembers nothing, but finds his presence too strange and weird to wish to spend any time with him? If he remembers nothing, will he ever learn to love Hua Cheng without knowledge of their shared history?

These are questions that he agonises over as he sits there, changing the path through the forest until the one that Xie Lian walks will lead directly to this outlook, to him. As painful as the answers to the questions may be, he knows that he needs to know. He has spent decades wondering of the what ifs and what could have beens, and he thinks he deserves to at least try.

He shifts his skin, shortening his height by a couple of inches whilst he carefully cultivates the appearance that he had when Xie Lian had saved him from that alley, only cleaner, with his ears whittled down to rounded edges and with two eyes instead of one. He feels along his face to be sure he’s done it correctly, and is appalled to feel how young he had looked back then. He is ageless, immortal, but he had been a soft-skinned youth once, and it’s easy to forget that.

The boundaries of the faery ring that surrounds the outlook warns him that someone has crossed it, and Hua Cheng shifts on the bench until he’s sure that he looks as casual and nonchalant as he does in his own hall.

He waits.

The birds have stopped singing, weighed down by his own anticipation.

Footsteps round the bend in the path, quick paced before they come to an abrupt stop.

Hua Cheng slides his gaze over, and smiles.

Their second chance starts now.