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Chapter Text

I.

The end of Jiang Yanli’s life arrives with a messenger. But first, there is this: 

The blinding embellishments of Jinlintai at high noon. The heat of clear skies tugging at the edge of mourning grief. The white funeral silks they have wrapped her in. The whispers of the servants silenced by the fierce woman at her side, her grip on Jiang Yanli’s wrist tight enough to bruise. The boy she is meant to marry, unable to look at the yawning vacancy of who remains.

There is kindness, in the dizzying days after. There is noise, in the cataclysm of silence.

She is not the fool many make her out to be—they see a young maiden raised in the heart of a great sect and they think she does not understand the way of the world. But Jiang Yanli has seen the scars on her brothers’ skin, and she has listened to her mother’s whispered warnings in the quiet night of the darkness of monsters who wear the faces of men. Jiang Yanli is not a warrior but she has been raised by them, loved and protected by them, and she is many things but naive is not one of them.

Jiang Yanli has known people cannot live forever. She has never known grief like this.

It is worse, she thinks, that she cannot see it for herself. It has been lost in a horrible wave of movement, in the ways tsunamis swallow villages whole. She drowns in the secondhand details told in voices she does not know—Lotus Pier fallen, the blood of her parents soaking into the wildflowers. Her brothers, missing. Her home, to be left as little more than cinders and ash and memories she will never get back.

Jiang Yanli is a ghost in a family now made of phantoms. They do not have the bodies of the people she loves most in the world. She thinks of her mother’s defiant smirk and the way she would have died fighting. The first night, when the quiet of Jinlintai was too much to bear, Jiang Yanli screamed until the sound ripped her apart. She cannot swallow without feeling the hysteria at the back of her throat.

She drifts. She thinks, later, that will make her angry. How easy it is to exist without much at all. How she spends the first days of drowning grief in a haze she cannot feel. How it is simple, in the beginning, to lose oneself rather than reconcile the loss.

She drifts. And then.

And then, there is a messenger.

The guards escort him in. Jin Zixuan, for all he is a stranger to grief, sees something on his face that makes him stiffen. He shifts close enough to her that she can feel the heat of his arm, the twitch of a hand that does not think to reach for the sword that is no longer at his side, but for her. Jin Zixuan, she thinks, might have been a warrior if he had not been raised in the shadow of this place. 

The messenger sees Jiang Yanli, shrouded in her funeral clothes. He drops to his knees and bows deep. He does not even look to the Jin royalty at her side, even when Jin Guangshan bristles at the affront.

Now, even in the haze, Jiang Yanli has not been wont to hope falsely. She has not held denial for what so many people have sworn as fact. But there has been a lingering defiance in her chest, a strength she has not been willing to relinquish. She has held it since learning her brothers are missing. She has clung to it from the moment she has heard their bodies were not found among the horrors. Jiang Yanli is not foolish but she has been a fool for this last broken prayer in the dark, knees scraping against stone.

She hears the voices around her. The whispers, the mutters. Irritation. Caution. Confusion. And then she sees what is in the messenger’s hand.

She is on her feet and across the room in half a moment. Jin Zixuan catches her wrist and moves to stand between her and the messenger, as if he can see the storm on the horizon. As if he helplessly hopes to shield her from it.

If Jiang Yanli were one week younger, she would have been grateful—now, as she is, as she has become, she uses both of her hands to push him as hard as she can away.

She sees Jin Zixuan’s eyes fly wide as he stumbles. She hears the sharp inhale of everyone in the chamber. She feels the burn of touching him in her fingertips for the flash of a second, the quick existence of a girl she once was and knows, suddenly and horribly, that she will never be again.

She falls to her knees in front of the messenger. She hears Madam Jin say something loudly behind her. She hears Jin Zixuan, softer, tell the guards to stand down.

She is breathing hard. She hears it loudly in her ears. She feels the tears on her cheeks. She doesn’t know what else to do with her hands so she reaches them out, tentatively, to what she knows she is not ready to face.

“What,” she whispers, “is in your hand?”

They both know. They both know. The messenger opens his fingers.

She knows that handkerchief. She can still remember stitching the lotus flowers into the corners and lace like blue tidewater, sitting on the dock with her feet in the lake and the warm breeze in her hair. She remembers presenting it to her little brother with a sweet smile.

It had just been her and A-Cheng, then, when they were still achingly young. She remembers how his nose crinkled at the lace, already at the age where delicate things are seen as weakness, and how she offered to make him a different one. She remembers the way he pulled it close to his chest, cheeks pink, and muttered that he liked it because Shijie made it for him. She remembered the echo of her laugh when she pulled him into a tight hug and kissed a cheek that would not stay chubby for much longer.

She had not even realized he still had it. But she would know those stitches anywhere. She would know her brother’s love from galaxies away.

It is covered in blood and dirt. A noise rips out of her that might be a sob if she were willing to cry in front of all of these strangers. She might have fallen to pieces if there were no quiet strings of dignity remaining.

The messenger says, “There was a young master. In a marketplace, a few villages from Lotus Pier. He wore a Jiang bell at his belt and a red ribbon in his hair.”

She lets out a quiet, wounded sound. A-Xian.

The messenger holds out the handkerchief with shaking hands. She reflexively reaches out to take it and realizes too late that there is something nestled inside. 

It slips out between her fingers, and the sound of it hitting the marble floors of Jinlintai crashes against the walls. She watches it spin and roll toward her, rattling as it settles. She stares at it and feels frozen down to her bones.

She barely hears over the sound of her heartbeat when the messenger whispers, “He said to tell you he was sorry. He said to tell you goodbye.”

Jiang Yanli’s fingers shake as she reaches for the ring, as she holds it up to the light as if there is a question of what it is. As if there is anything else her little brother would risk his life to bring to her. 

Zidian glitters in the golden room, caked in dried blood. The sparks crackle at her fingertips. And she knows her brothers are dead.

When she screams, Jiang Yanli hopes she shakes the heavens. She hopes the gods tremble with the weight of her grief. She hopes her scream is loud enough to echo in the minds of these great men for years and years to come, haunted by the ghosts that will trail at her heels until the day she joins them in the afterlife.

When she screams, she hopes it rattles the mountains. She hopes the wind carries it to Qishan. She hopes Wen Ruohan shivers in the chill.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Later, there is clarity like waking up from a heavy sleep. Lethargy, unrealness in the shape of her limbs, dryness in her mouth and a rasp in her throat. Jiang Yanli stares at the shadows across the ceiling and decides, tonight, she will let it drown her.

It is a horrible grief to reconcile. Jiang Yanli has never been alone in this world before.

She touches a fingertip to Zidian. She does not remember putting it on her ring finger but it is there now, casting a soft glow against the moonlight. Her golden core has always been a gentle spark to her little brother’s wildfire but there is lightning at her knuckles when she reaches for it, crackling in the empty air. 

She thinks of the gentleness of A-Cheng’s smile just for her. If she listens hard enough, she can hear the lilting melody of A-Xian’s laughter.

Her mother would not have given Jiang Cheng this ring if she had not been certain she was going to die. A-Cheng would not have given this ring to Wei Wuxian if he had not been certain he was going to die.

And Wei Wuxian, fiercely loyal and wholly devoted, would never have given this ring to a messenger unless he was certain he would not live long enough to present it to her himself.

She did not need to see the blood in the streams to know her parents had fallen in the siege, protecting their home and their people, buying her brothers time to run. She has no doubt that her brothers had run with the flames licking at their heels until they saw the end and turned to face it with their chins held high and a challenge in their smiles.

So, she is alone. And she does not have a single body to put to rest.

Jiang Yanli’s life sits in ashes at the bottom of the lake she swam in as a child. The casualties of a war they hadn’t even known had begun.

Her chest is too tight. Tears, unbidden, stream down into her hair. Her sob sounds hauntingly loud in the quiet of the warm Lanling night.

She can cry now, she decides. Private, secret. No one has to know how this new world chokes her. They do not have to hear how she whimpers and thrashes, sinking into the helpless grief of how scared her brothers must have been when they died.

Tonight, she can fall into an immeasurable loss. She can imagine her mother sending A-Cheng away, knowing she will never see him again. She can imagine her father fighting his way to her side and staying there until the bitter end. She can wonder how far her brothers made it and if they died together. She can scream into her pillow wondering if Wei Wuxian thought of what her face would look like when she realized what he had sent her, if the grief choked him when he gave one last message to his Shijie.

The Jiang family died at the hands of tyrants and she had not even been there to die with them.

She burns with a deep, vicious hatred. Hatred is new—Jiang Yanli does not think she has ever hated anything before but she hates this, hates the Wens, hates that they killed her parents, hates that they burned her home, hates how they hunted her brothers down before taking them from her—

She remembers the first night Wei Wuxian had come to live with them. How her brothers had cried together and A-Cheng promised to chase away the dogs and A-Xian promised to never run away again. How she had slogged under their combined weight, sore and winded, but the hope had burned bright. How she had loved them more than she had ever loved anything, and she had carried them the entire way home.

Her arms feel empty now. She can no longer carry them.

Tonight, in Jinlintai, it is dark. It is quiet. And she is alone.

~*~*~*~*~*~

In the morning, she dresses herself in mourning white. She braids two ribbons into her hair, red and purple. Her sword, largely ornamental, is strapped to her side. She takes the time to rogue her cheeks, to tap color onto her lips until they shine like rubies.

She had not taken much with her when she arrived—she has always had doubles of what she needs, split between her childhood home and the gilded tower she is meant to marry into—but she packs what she can into the small bag. She watches lightning flash over her knuckles, the warm burn of her core in her dentian. She breathes in and it hurts a little less this morning.

She is the last to arrive in the grand dining room. Madam Jin looks up when she enters and she sets her teacup down at whatever she sees on Jiang Yanli’s face. It draws the attention of Jin Zixuan and Jin Guangshan, who had been speaking quietly amongst themselves. Jiang Yanli bows to them in greeting and, before her gaze dips, she thinks she sees Jin Zixuan’s jaw drop.

“Jin-zongzhu,” she entones. “Madam Jin. Young Master Jin.”

“Yanli,” Madam Jin says, a little sharply. Before, Jiang Yanli might have been cowed—now, she feels a bright burst of grim satisfaction. “What is this? What are you—”

“Jiang-guniang,” Jin Guangshan interrupts, sighing in the way men do when they think they are being patient. There is annoyance around his eyes, derision in his tone. Jiang Yanli wonders how she was so blind to it before. “You cannot truly believe leaving Jinlintai is safe.”

She stands and waits. He is looking down on her, but she thinks she sees relief in the curve of his shoulders. She is a liability now, she realizes with a spike of anger. Without her powerful parents and the promises they have made to each other, Jin Guangshan may look at her now and see the burning of Lotus Pier, might think of GusuLan and its missing Sect Leader and the way they are desperately trying to rebuild despite it.

She is the last of a dynasty. She is worth less than she was yesterday. She is worth more than she was yesterday. 

Madam Jin, however, had once been her mother’s closest friend. Her tone is fierce, but her eyes are soft as she tells her, “You do not owe anything to anyone, Yanli. You are in mourning.”

“I am,” Jiang Yanli agrees, “but there is much to do.”

“The war will be at our doors sooner than later, Jiang-guniang,” Jin Guangshan explains as if she does not understand. As if she is foolish. As if any beautiful girl must be in want of his guidance. “I will be able to keep Jinlintai safe. There is nothing to worry about.”

Jiang Yanli draws herself up to her full height, shoulders straight, chin up. Sword in her hand. Just as her mother taught her. “Jin-zongzhu is right,” she pacifies. “War is fast approaching—and I do not intend to spend it hidden away with you in a gilded tower.”

Jin Zixuan chokes on his tea.

Jin Guangshan turns red in the face. Jiang Yanli smiles as if she does not know why. The murmur of the servants and advisors in her periphery hum under the domed ceiling.

But it is Madam Jin who watches her carefully, who had fought and trained with and loved her mother—Madam Jin, for all her husband has tried to smother her under his infidelity and flaws, has yet to smolder. She has learned how to appear fanciful but it is a folly to pretend as if she had not been a warrior first. That, as much as Jiang Yanli’s own mother had been tucked away in a pretty marriage in a pretty place, both Madams had more calluses on their hands than their husbands.

Jiang Yanli has been raised to be gentle and sweet and polite. To marry into this beautiful, gaudy place with golden cups and red-painted lips. She has been raised to sleep on the softest silks and to give another family heirs. Her place was meant to be perched at the side of a husband with great political power.

Perhaps it is the grief. Perhaps it is because she is her mother’s daughter. But Jiang Yanli is growing acutely bitter of letting the pages of her life be written for her. 

She is the last of the Jiangs and she will do whatever it takes to keep the name from dying with her.

As if sensing the fight in her blood, Jin Guangshan curls his hands into his fists. Snaps, “Jiang-guniang.”

Smiling, Jiang Yanli sweetly corrects, “Jiang-zongzhu.”

The room goes quiet.

Jin Guangshan stares, stunned, face still red from a beautiful girl finding her voice. And then he leans forward, his food and tea forgotten, his hands curling into fists against the wood. She wonders if he feels splinters under his nails. She wonders how weak the Jin Sect must be, to have at the helm a man so easily thrown into uncertainty by the power of one woman.

As if she can read Jiang Yanli’s mind, Madam Jin raises her hand to her mouth. Her eyes crease with a grin.

A series of expressions cross Jin Guangshan’s face as he evaluates her, as if he has never seen her before. He certainly has never paid attention—his eyes dart over her face as if searching for the self-confidence she wears under fatigued shoulders. She has simply been a girl with a beautiful face, a good match for his son, a wife who will wait for him to come home at night and raise his children and never ask any questions. One week ago, Jiang Yanli was that woman. She wonders if he is looking for a sign of that woman now, if he is second guessing if she had ever existed at all.

Jiang Yanli is tired and heavy. She is broken in irreplaceable ways. She hurts —with every single breath, with every hulking barrier she must climb, with every memory at the back of her mind. There is a large part of her that wants to crawl back into her room with its soft silks and warm furs and lay there for the rest of time, to let the darkness drag her under. There is a brighter part of her that reminds her that she is worth more than the sum of the part they wanted her to play.

Her brothers would not have backed down from the challenge of this man. Jiang Yanli is stronger than the will of a man who has only ever tried to save himself.

Slowly, Jin Guangshan echoes, annunciating each syllable, “Jiang-zongzhu. I see.”

Irritation, dark and brackish, runs down her back. Jiang Yanli knows she is not much—a fragile daughter, a devoted sister. They do not see something to be feared when they look at her. She is not strong in the way they expect, in the way they think she needs to be. Jiang Yanli, in the long nights since her world fell apart, no longer cares.

“I will not allow my father’s legacy to die with him,” she announces, and she hopes the servants will carry it in whispers. There is an ember in the ashes. There is a beginning in the end.

Jin Guangshan watches her for a moment, and then smiles. It is a little slimy, a little unkind. She thinks that is politics, in a way. She hopes she learns quickly how to play their silly little games.

“I trust you to do what you need to do,” Jin Guangshan says, sitting back and spreading his hands. “However, you must tread carefully, Jiang-zongzhu. The war will be upon us before we know it.” He smiles wider, unkinder. “And when it is, please know that Jinlintai will be open for you to weather the storm.”

Jiang Yanli bows. When she rises, she is aware everyone is looking at her. Madam Jin is battling between amusement and fear. She doesn't know how to read the look on Jin Zixuan’s face.

“I hope that when the war comes,” she tells him, “you find a window with a great view of it.”

And at that, she turns and exits the hall. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jiang Yanli is almost to the edge of the sprawling Jinlintai complex when she hears the rush of heavy footfall, and she is turning around as he closes the distance between them. 

She has been in love with Jin Zixuan since before she ever knew what love meant. She’s known since she was young that she would marry him someday, that their mothers had sworn so when they were both in the cradle. It had not been a chore, not for her—he is a handsome young master of a prosperous sect. She has been paying attention to him throughout the years, even as he tried his hardest to pretend as if she didn’t exist at all, and she has seen the gentle kindness under his arrogance. She has studied the ways in which she can make him a better man. There was once a time where Jiang Yanli had accepted that as her duty.

Objectively, she knows Jin Zixuan better now than she ever has. Even still, she does not quite know the expression on his face, caution with a twist to his mouth she does not recognize. It is still a good face, she thinks sadly, even if she is fairly certain it is no longer hers to covet. If he ever had been to begin with.

He takes a few steps toward her and hesitates a healthy distance away. He flexes his hand as if he is missing the weight of his sword, as if he doesn’t know what to do with his grip without it.

Jiang Yanli has never been able to tell if Jin Zixuan likes her. She knows he does not love her, but she has been pathetically desperate to have him so much as notice her. He has treated her as an inconvenience for a long time now despite those brief flashes of humanity and kindness he has tried to hide from her—the kitchens serving her favorite meals, the new trinkets at her bedside, the gentle but firm way he will pull his father’s attention back to him when Jin Guangshan has been drinking.

It has been an exhausting push and pull. She thinks she understands now, tiredly, why her brothers have been so offended on her behalf. Jiang Yanli feels minutes from falling apart and Jin Zixuan has chased after her but stares at her as if he doesn’t have a clue what he wants to say.

She is tired of compensating for him. She will meet him halfway or she will not meet him at all, and she lifts her chin a little higher as she waits. Lifts her eyebrows to know it is him who she is waiting for.

Red creeps up his throat and he clears his throat as if that will be enough to expel it. He flexes his hand again and she does not let her own delusional mind think that he might want to reach for her.

“I am sorry,” he says so softly it is almost lost in the wind, so sadly she almost cannot comprehend it at all. “For your family. For all of it.”

She doesn’t expect this to bring her so much grief but, all at once, it is crushing. She practically gasps under the crushing blow of it against her sternum, pressing into every one of her ribs. She presses her lips together for a moment lest a sob rips out of her ruined throat.

“I can’t stay here,” she tells him as if he is here to beg her to come back. As if she thinks he ever would. “I don’t know what to do, but I know I have to do something.”

He nods. He does not beg her to go back with him. Jiang Yanli’s heart hurts enough and she cannot fathom what she wants from him. He watches her, eyes tight in what she thinks might be distress, and she thinks he might not know what she wants from him either.

It is awkward in a way it always has been between them. The sad, pathetic girl who wants this man to love her more than anything. The cold, aloof young master who feels condemned by a decision that was never his. They have never known how to exist in the same space without the uncertainty seeping into every corner. Jiang Yanli doesn’t know who she is anymore but she doesn’t think she cares if it’s in a shape Jin Zixuan might want.

For a moment, she considers saying as such. She almost opens her mouth to tell him the engagement is off. She thinks he might laugh at her if she does, but she cannot leave this end loose with all of the others. Jiang Yanli is already caught in the dangling threads of all the things she did not get to say to the people she loves the most before they died. She does not think this could rest in peace, either.

She doesn’t get the chance to find the words before Jin Zixuan blurts out, “It’s brave. What you’re doing.”

Jiang Yanli doesn’t know what to say. She watches the blush creeping up his neck. Maybe he likes her after all, she thinks, and it is devastating. She almost wishes he had never chased after her. She almost yearns for the loose end.

But she is sick of hiding the prominent, loudest pieces of herself. Jiang Yanli is not the woman she was one week ago. She does not have the safety to be. She does not have the peace.

“There is no other choice,” she tells him, but that’s not true, is it? Jiang Yanli is leaving a beautiful fortress. A gilded cage. Her mother had set her up for a safe future in those walls. She had died believing Yanli would stay there, never having known the disquiet in her daughter’s soul. The nightmares she will have for the rest of her life. The questions she will never be able to answer.

There are so many other choices, so many safer paths. Maybe that is why Jin Zixuan smiles like she has charmed him. Maybe that is why he is looking at her like he finally understands her, even a little bit. The defiance in him sees the fire in her. All Jiang Yanli had needed to do to get everything she had once wanted was become the woman who could not afford to stay.

Jin Zixuan’s mouth flickers with a smile he does not grace her with, but that is enough. It is enough when he says, “If you need anything, I will do what I can to assist you. If that is what you would wish.”

A compromise. A surrender. Jiang Yanli thinks she can live with that, although she does not know how to hold that particular shape of Jin Zixuan’s favor now. She can’t fathom the space she needs to leave in her chest for it.

“Thank you, Jin-gongzi,” she says, and bows. Formal, polite. He has earned her respect even if he has not always cared to have it. She thinks it is the least she can give him. He can keep that hidden piece of her safe.

He bows back, a little deeper, and entones, “Jiang-zongzhu.”

He flashes a grin at the surprise on her face and, just as quickly, he is turning back for Jinlintai as if he has not acknowledged this new title she has made for herself, as if this is not the first time in their lives where the power imbalance is tipped in her favor. Jiang Yanli feels off-kilter as she realizes she outranks Jin Zixuan, that he has acknowledged she outranks him with a respect his own father would not appreciate. 

She watches him walk away from her for another long moment before she turns away. One day, she promises herself she will close this halting, lilting chapter with Jin Zixuan. 

For now, there is a war. There is a sect to rebuild. Jiang Yanli has plenty of work to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jiang Yanli is lost.

It’s dark when she has to get off the road. The Wen soldiers were lighting the way up ahead, a sun in the middle of a harrowing night, and the panic that clutched in her chest sent her sprinting frantically for the underbrush. She goes deep enough into the woods to lose the lamplight, but deep enough not to know which way she has gone. 

The skin of her arms are scattered with scratches from the wild branches and her feet ache from all of the walking and she is lost. The panic comes in sharp bursts in her chest. This is not a place she has ever been before.

She doesn't know how to read the stars through the tears in her eyes. She forces herself to a stop and digs her fingers into the bark of a tree. She lowers herself down to her knees, leaning forward and desperately attempting to hold onto the air ripping in and out of her lungs.

She has never felt panic before like this, either—steady and all-consuming, burning through her skin like a brushfire. It is hard to breathe and the trees feel too close, like they will press together and trap her here even more than she is already trapped. She is cold and tired and raw like an exposed nerve. 

Jiang Yanli wishes her mother were here.

She chokes on a sob, clapping her hands so hard over her mouth that her jaw aches. She cannot be found—she refuses to be heard. She did not come all of this way to fail on the first hurdle. She is stronger than to stumble on the very first step of her plan.

She lets her head fall back against the trunk of a tree. Lets her hair get caught in the bark, lets the foliage rip and pull at the sensitive skin of her hands.

She knows she has to be strong. All of this will fail if she is not strong. But Jiang Yanli has not been considered as such throughout her entire life. She has always been the weakest of her siblings, her core small, her little brothers overprotective. Jiang Yanli has never had to fight for herself before, not like this, and she almost doesn’t know where to start.

Her heart is racing painfully in her chest. She is certain it is going to burst into pieces. She wonders if she has enough power in her veins for a qi deviation, if this frenzy is what it feels like to go mad.

She forces herself to breathe. Lets it leave her body shakily when she lets it back out.

She will not fail. She cannot fail.

She rubs the tears away impatiently. She does not have the time to cry, simpering on the ground like the weakling the world sees her as. She thinks of the look on Jin Guangshan’s face when she declared herself Sect Leader and feels the burn of rage start to overtake the panic. She breathes in hopelessness and breathes out spite.

She will not be what they want her to be. She refused to be holed up in a beautiful tower, watching the rest of the world fight this war for her.

She listens carefully to the world behind her, but there is no sign or sound of anyone else in the woods. She sits in silence for a long time to be sure, sitting comfortably with the ambiance of the forest around her. She tilts her head back and stares up at the blanket of stars, reminding herself of how she is only a small part of a great big world. Reminding herself, again and again, that there is so much work to do.

Eventually, she forces herself onto her feet. Touches her fingertips against Zidian until it sparks to life, awakening to the quiet rage and burning grief in her bones. She holds the lightning in her hands, thinks of the storms over the lakes in Lotus Pier and the way the lightning illuminated the whole world in a flash, or the warm summer nights where the sky lit up in calm flashes, streaks of brilliant color against the night sky.

Jiang Yanli takes a deep breath in and out that does not catch in her chest. She forces herself onto legs that do not shake, and she holds the lightning in hands that do not hesitate as she strikes.

A fissure appears through the bark of the tree. The static energy of the purple lightning buzzes against her hands. She feels the power deep in her stomach, coming alive in her dantian. She presses her hand there and watches the lightning jump between her fingers.

She will not get stronger by hiding in a forest. She will not be able to rule a dynasty hiding in the dark.

She thinks of her brothers, of the exercises she watched them do every single day. She thinks of her mother and her severity as she wielded Zidian, and she thinks of her father and how he would meditate on the water so he can feel the breeze against his skin. It is an acute grief. It is a guiding light.

She strikes again, a wayward strand. And again. And again, until her muscles ache. And again, until she is panting, until she is fairly sure she is going to fall over if she tries to strike again. And then she does it anyway, feeling the pull in her muscles, ruminating on the practice it will take until she can catch up, if she ever can.

But she knows it will never get better until she tries. She will never catch up until she starts to run, until she pushes herself harder. Jiang Yanli is sick of being soft and letting everything fall into place around her.

Today, she is strong. From this night onward, she will not be afraid.

So she strikes, the night flashing in purple and black, and she lets it burn.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Yunmeng is much the same as it had been before, which is almost surreal. Part of Jiang Yanli had expected it to be a burning husk, crawling with soldiers, unrecognizable—but the outskirts look as if nothing terrible has happened at all. The war has not scorched this place yet.

She avoids the town, picking through the forest lands and the farm roads until she finds her way to the doors of the local sect. They do not recognize her as she asks for help at the gates. If they had, she doubts they would have been so quick to let her in.

They lead her through the halls, and ultimately leave her in a small throne room off the main hallway, lined in beautiful tapestries dyed in rich purples and blues. She knows this is an offshoot of the Jiang sect, a place that has always welcomed and respected her father. She can only hope to receive the same treatment.

She kneels at the low table. She looks down at her hands shaking against her knees and feels, for not the first time, like she is in over her head. Like she has waded into waters deceptively deep, so far down that the sun is a mere speck through the murky waves.

The ring on her right hand sparks. A gentle reminder. Her mother’s unsubtle coaxing.

She has long caught her breath again when the sect leader joins her.

Xu Conghai is older than her father, silver dusting his dark hair, eyes curved down with the weight of his sinking skin. He is wearing neat robes, but no adornments—so they did not recognize her after all. They must have mistaken her for a local girl in need of help. Jiang Yanli chokes on the hysterical feeling in the back of her throat, figuring they are not wrong.

He takes several steps into the room, smiling pleasantly—and then stops, eyes flying wide.

There it is. She smiles and it is perhaps more watery than she would like. Jiang Yanli figures she will not become as strong as her brothers, as her mother, in mere days.

“Xu-zongzhu,” she greets and bows, deeply. “My apologies for bringing trouble to your door.”

“Jiang-guniang, my dear,” he sputters, stumbling a few steps. “When I heard—I figured—”

“I am no ghost, if that assures you,” she tells him with a smile that feels false on her face. “I was not present for what happened at Lotus Pier, but it is why I have come to your sect.”

“Of course,” he replies, kneeling down at the table with her. He pauses, and then admits, “I almost didn’t recognize you, Jiang-guniang.”

She imagines what she looks like—sallow and pale from loss, dirty and torn from her trek through the forests to Yunmeng. Her clothes are plain, a far cry from the beautiful robes her father gifted her, and her hair hangs down her back instead of held up with handcrafted hair sticks and combs.

Jiang Yanli is sure her face is dirty, her arms bloodied. She did not pause for vanity on her journey, even if it has been a hard habit to break. The only thing that kept her from stopping was knowing time was against her.

Jiang Yanli does not have the time to be beautiful.

“I apologize for my appearance,” she says anyway, because it is what is expected, and she is playing by the rules for the moment. “I have something to ask of you, Xu-zongzhu. I know my father trusts—” she pauses, swallows acid. “My father trusted you dearly.”

His eyes shine with sympathy. This man is a beast hunter, but she has always considered him to be a gentle, sympathetic man. She almost hates that he is the first she must ask to be bloodthirsty. He is the first she must beg to be brutal.

She has rehearsed what she will say but she almost doesn’t know where to start. It feels like such an incredible burden, staring down this man. It feels like an unfathomable act, to ask so much of him.

She swallows it back. Thinks of her parents' bodies, burned or at the bottom of the lake she called home. Thinks of her brothers’ bodies, gone to the wind, dumped somewhere like common trash. Thinks even of Jin Guangshan’s face as he sneered, opening the invitation to hide away in his beautiful, cowardly tower.

Jiang Yanli tells him, “As the sole heir of the Jiang clan, I am taking control of the sect. And so, I must ask you to join me in retaliation against the Wens.”

The man starts, leaning back onto his ankles. He reaches up to put his hand over his mouth, rubbing at the skin around it as if to keep in the words he would like to say. His eyes are impossible to read as they stay on her, taking in whatever she looks like, absorbing the stubborn jut of her chin and the lightning dancing along the knuckles of her right hand.

“The Wen army approaches closer every day,” he tells her calmly. This is something they have long since accepted. “They do not consider us to be threats—we know that any who fight back will be destroyed. What you are asking is dangerous.”

“Yes,” she says. She has nothing else to say. She knows what she is asking.

His hand reaches up to cover his mouth, but this time she thinks it’s to hide a smile. When his hand drops, there is no sign of it. “I admired your father very much,” he tells her slowly, “and respected your mother. Your brother had such incredible promise, and your head disciple was spirited and loyal. I do not know as much about you, my dear, but I know how to calculate the sum of parts. That you are here at all, that you would risk walking into Yunmeng with the enemy at every corner, I think I know what I am looking at.”

He places his hands on his knees. He does not once look away from her.

“What is your plan?” he asks.

She replies, “I will attempt the impossible.”

She will amass an army and rebuild the sect the Wens had burned to the ground. She will gain allies one by one, soldier by soldier, until she has personally asked them all to die for her. She will find allies among the sects that remain.

And when they meet Wen Rouhan on the battlefield, it will be his turn to beg for mercy.

~*~*~*~*~*~

She works to improve her cultivation, tirelessly running through exercises and methods she learned as a girl. She practices with Zidian every night until her muscles are so sore that she drops into dreamless sleeps. She can feel her core building, coming alive in a burning haze when she reaches for its power.

She goes from village to village, spreading whispers as she goes. The YunmengJiang Sect is rising again. The Sect did not die with those at Lotus Pier. There is a new scion, determined to see their might restored. Determine to find vengeance for those they have lost.

There are Wen soldiers at every turn. She learns how to evade them, how to be unnoticed. She has had many years of practice in being unremarkable.

The army rises. Slowly but surely, her numbers climb. Slowly but surely, the remaining sects and soldiers of Yunmeng and the territories around it lay down their swords at her feet.

She sleeps at the base of trees, rolling in the dirt and mud. She cleans her face in fresh spring water. There are new scars on her hands now.

Jiang Yanli has never felt more alive.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Soon, Jiang Yanli does not travel alone.

Xu Conghai spreads his cultivators far and wide to help spread the word of her cause. The borderlands sects do the same, small tendrils of missionaries spreading gospel of a rising inferno. Weeks pass and the thought of an army no longer feels insane—it is tangible, names and sects at her fingertips to command. There are faces to the soldiers she has dreamed off.

Jiang Yanli travels to spread her message. She is no longer alone.

Zhang Heng is a rogue cultivator she met in the early days, when thoughts of an army were dreamlike and odd. She is resourceful, and loyal—her family lived in Lotus Pier, and she has not heard from them since. Jiang Yanli and Zhang Heng quickly connected with the same kind of lingering grief, the same inexplicable understanding that comes with having lost everything.

They are in a town to the south of Yunmeng when Zhang Heng returns to their meeting spot, her face twisted in thought. Jiang Yanli follows her deeper into the trees until they are sure they are not about to be overheard.

“I heard something interesting in town,” she murmurs once they are sure they are alone. “About Lan-zongzhu.”

Jiang Yanli’s eyebrows lift, surprised. She is aware of the fate of the Cloud Recesses, burned to cinders and their Sect Leader left behind to die. She is aware they took Lan Wangji with them, and Lan Xichen has been lost to the wind. With so little evidence to the contrary, it has been easy to believe he is dead. 

She should have known better. People are incredibly survivable in this world, despite the injustices, despite having lost everything. She knows a little bit of that. She imagines Lan Xichen is doing what she is—rebuilding, piece by piece.

She thinks Zhang Heng is done, but she continues, “There is a rumor that the Great Sects are going to meet to discuss the war ahead.”

“It is finally happening,” she says, surprised. It is almost surreal. It must have been months, now, since her family died. It is a gaping hole inside of her, but she has been able to fill it with vengeance, with movement. She cannot crumble when there is so much to do, and they have finally reached the next step.

She knows her own numbers, and she knows they are formidable. She does not know what those sects will think of her family name anymore, but she knows there is no other place for her to be.

This is the beginning of the end. It feels a little like relief. Like leeching the pus from a festering wound.

Zhang Heng watches her with trusting eyes. She has become a little bit of a friend on this journey, almost a mentor. Jiang Yanli thinks, for not the first time, of her mother’s handmaidens, of her father’s advisors. 

“Are we ready?” she asks her friend, gently. The smallest sliver of her own doubt, manifested.

Zhang Heng sees it in her, and she does not ridicule her. She is not afraid of Jiang Yanli’s weakness—perhaps because she has seen her strong, or perhaps because she sees something more in her than Jiang Yanli sees in herself. 

“You have an army,” she reminds her, “with the numbers of your father’s sect. You have done something amazing in very little time, Jiang-zongzhu. You do not have to prove yourself further.”

Jiang Yanli knows that is not true, but she lets it go. She is a woman in a world that does not know what to do with strong women. She might not be as strong as her mother, but she will be proving herself until the day she dies.

She tugs at the ends of her hair. A bad habit. A tell.

She does not feel ready to face the other sects. She doesn’t want to see their judgement of what she has accomplished with so little—she does not know if she will be strong enough to withstand it all, so raw and tired and the grief as strong as it had been the day she saw the ring in that messenger’s hand.

She knows what A-Cheng would do if he was here. She knows what A-Xian would do.

She takes a deep breath and faces her friend. She’s already smiling like she knows what is about to come out of Jiang Yanli’s mouth next. Like there has never been another option. It helps, even a little, even enough.

“Let the word spread,” she tells her friend, her second, her handmaiden. “We are heading north.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jiang Yanli climbs every step to the Cloud Recesses.

The mountain air is harsh in her lungs—absent, as if she is taking lungfuls of absolutely nothing. She goes it alone, so she takes breaks where she must, and she can feel the acute burning in her calves by the time the heights get dizzying, when she knows she must be getting close.

It feels like a lifetime before she rounds the bend and finds the gates waiting for her.

She is almost surprised to see them, having heard of the destruction that was wrought here. She figured much of it all had been lost, like Lotus Pier—burnt into ash and ember, until nothing but the scars of the land was left. But the entrance to the Lan Sect looks untouched by the horrors of the past. As if it never happened at all.

The guards at the gate draw their swords. When they see her, they pause.

Before she left camp, Zhang Heng assured her she looked like a “warrior princess”. Jiang Yanli has never heard of such a thing, but she knows what she looks like now, and she cannot contest it—her robes are finer than anything she has worn in a few months, lavender with dark purple lotuses embroidered along the velvet hems. The robe is pulled tightly with a leather belt, where a Jiang bell dangles—and a sword, newly minted with a hilt of dark purple and red, humming with energy at her side like an overeager child. It reminds her of Wei Wuxian, so full of energy and reckless loyalty.

Her hair is pulled into a harsh bun at the top of her head. And, before her hair, is a golden crown.

She thought the addition to be overkill, but many members of her circle decided it was a must if she was going to be recognized and respected. They argued that it should be approached with the dignity of a Discussion Conference, and she couldn’t find it in herself to disagree. She remembers sitting at her father’s feet, watching him put on his finest robes for what seemed to be a normal visit from an allied sect, and him grinning and tapping her on the nose when she suggested so.

Clothes are a weapon, sweet Yanli, her father had told her, and she considers them to be true now, especially as these warriors pause at the sight of the queen before them.

She offers them a soft smile. Zhang Heng painted her lips blood red for this meeting. She imagines it is a striking image—golden crown against strands of black, bloodied lips against a flash of pretty white. She must look like a ghost to these men.

She bows to them. They are so surprised they almost forget to bow back.

“I am here for the meeting,” she tells them with confidence she does not deserve to command, her smile sharpening as their guards come back up. “My name is Jiang Yanli, and I am the leader of the YunmengJiang Sect.”

One of them starts, and the other glances at him. They share a long look—they are young, she notices, not much younger than her brothers. She wonders, suddenly, if they knew each other when they studied here—she wonders how many people beyond those gates have memories of her brothers that she has never known.

It hurts like a new gash. She swallows it down, lets it bleed out in her chest.

One of the guards bows and disappears into the Cloud Recesses, likely to grab a senior. The other offers her little but doubt and suspicion, though she cannot blame him. If the war has been as destructive to this world as it has to her own, she can only imagine the horrors this young man carries.

They wait there for a long time in a tense, uncertain silence. And then Lan Qiren appears at the gate.

He looks the same as he always has, despite everything. His goatee is shorter than it once was, but his robes are ornate and neat as always, his forehead ribbon firmly in place. His expression is pulled into a scowl, even when he sees her and dips into a polite bow. She bows back and, when she rises, his expression is more curious than angry.

“Jiang-guniang,” he begins, and pauses, eyes drifting up to the crown on his head. He tilts his head curiously, but amends, “Jiang-zongzhu. We did not expect your presence at these talks.”

“I heard of them by rumor, so I hoped they were accurate,” she tells him, and watches the way that changes his face into something a little more uncertain, worried. “I assure you that my sources are trustworthy—and quiet.”

“I hope, for all of our sakes, that is true,” he tells her wryly. He steps back, allowing her room to enter. “I cannot guarantee, Jiang-zongzhu, that there will be room for you in these discussions. The last we heard of the Jiang Sect, it was of its demise. My condolences for your family.”

A flash of irritation, of grief, before she offers him a smile. She walks through the space granted to her, determined to take all of it up. “I assure you, Teacher Lan, that I have far and away earned my seat.”

He does not ask further or offer more commentary. He simply leads her into the ruins of the Cloud Recesses.

They are in the process of rebuilding, which makes her heart ache for home more than it has in a while. Many pieces of the Cloud Recesses have been leveled, while others are construction projects or have been newly finished. She thinks it is optimistic of them to assume the war will not touch this place, but it is already such a surprise that it made it here at all.

She surveys the damage as she passes and does not allow herself to think of the process it will take to return Lotus Pier to the splendor it once had. She can only imagine the work, and pain, it takes to rebuild somewhere so precious.

Lan Qiren navigates the construction and brings her to a pavilion, newly rebuilt by the cleanliness of the wood, the newness of the plants. He approaches the building before her and holds the door open.

She hesitates at the bottom of the stairs. Considers, for a selfish moment, that it is not too late to leave.

She enters.

Her presence is not announced, which further explains the surprise on the faces around her. Lan Xichen leans back, and Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows shoot up, incredulous. Jin Guangshan’s face is doing a great many things before it smoothes away into a knowing smirk, as if he has expected her at all. As if it was his plan, for her to be in power.

Lan Qiren closes the door behind them and slips to the side of his nephew. He is not the only family member present—Lan Wangji is perched next to his brother, and Jin Zixuan is next to his father, straightening as he catches sight of her, surprise flickering across his face at whatever he sees. 

There is no seat set for her. 

She bows. The whisper of her robes is loud in the silence. It is as if no one is breathing, as if they do not know what to expect. None of these powerful men know her in this shape. None of these powerful men know her much at all.

“YunmengJiang asks to be included in your meeting,” she announces when she straightens. She hopes her crown glitters in the light. She hopes her lightning dances around her delicate fingers.

For a moment, it is as if they do not know who should speak. And then Lan Xichen stands, and bows back. He is young like she is young, but there are new lines on his face, around his mouth. There are shadows under his eyes like a man who does not need to sleep has completely forgotten how to.

“Jiang Yanli,” he greets. He is formal but kind. “We have been unsure of your whereabouts for the last several months and feared the worst. It is reassuring to see you now.”

“I have been building an army,” she tells him, and hears the ripple of shock in the room. She folds her hands in front of her and smiles pleasantly. It is a smile that does not sit as easily on her face as it once did. “I have a sect to look after.”

Lan Xichen tilts his head curiously. She sees Nie Mingjue sit up behind him, as if he is suddenly on guard. As if he has suddenly recognized her as a potential threat.

Lan Xichen, though, is curious. “I have heard the entire sect was destroyed. You have managed to remake it in such little time?”

“Yunmeng is strong. We will not allow the Wens to take what is ours.”

“In that, we can agree.” He inclines his head. “What numbers would you be able to provide for our efforts?”

She tells them a number. Nie Mingjue meets Lan Xichen’s eyes, and Jin Guangshan cannot hide his surprise. Good. She is happy she surprised this man who expected so little of her. May he continue to underestimate her, and may she continue to defy him.

“That is an incredible effort,” Nie Mingjue says, “for you to have rebuilt your sect in so little time.”

“I have little else to do,” she says. It’s a joke, but a bitter one. It is true—there is nothing else left for her.

Nie Mingjue’s mouth twitches as if in a smile. She thinks it looks nice on such a severe man’s face. Lan Xichen crosses to the door and steps one step out before an attendant appears before him, and he tells them, “Please bring a seat for Jiang-zongzhu. I dare say there is much for us to speak about.”

“Lan-zongzhu,” Jin Guangshan begins, as if to chastise him. Lan Qiren sends him a chilly look that silences him, though he does not seem very eager either.

Jiang Yanli keeps her hands folded in hopes these great, powerful men won’t see them shaking. “I know I am not what you are expecting. I know I have not been known for much of anything. But I will not rest until I see revenge for what the Wens did to my family, to my sect. Their crime is unforgivable and if war is the way to see them pay for what they have done, then so be it.”

“War is not so easy,” Nie Mingjue tells her, not unkindly. “The loss of your own men is a heavy burden, and it will require horrible decisions.”

“I am prepared to make them,” she announces as they bring in her seat, as they set her place at the table. “And if I am not prepared, then I will make them anyway.”

“Very good,” Jin Guangshan remarks, and smirks. “Perhaps there is some of your mother in you after all.”

Jiang Yanli ignores him. She thinks she hears a breath of laughter from Jin Zixuan, but it is hard to tell when she will not, cannot look at him. She takes her seat at the table for the great sects, a sudden and unexpected leader, the carrier of these burdens soon to follow, and she tries not to let the weight crush her. She tries to control the shaking in her hands and the quickness of her breath and she wonders if they will go away with experience, or if she will always be afraid of the woman she will be forced to become.

She knows they do not know what to think of her. Perhaps they will think she is the weakness in their armor, the spot where the Wens will blast through and conquer with little effort. But she knows the cultivators that she has found along the way. She knows they are formidable. She cannot make up years of training in mere months but she is more powerful and strong than she has ever been.

It will have to be enough.

It will be enough.

Lan Xichen takes his seat again. His brother watches her curiously through golden eyes, and she thinks of the stories her brothers told of him. He looks tired now, like his brother, and he inclines his head toward her in welcome. She wonders if, perhaps, there is more her brothers did not tell her about this young man.

There is a large map at the center of the table, and many carved pieces of wood and ink pots surrounding it. There is much to be marked on this map, and Jiang Yanli knows she is the least experienced of those in attendance. She knows that means there is only more for her to learn.

Lan Xichen leans forward. “Now that we are all here—let’s begin.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

And so, at the beginning of the day in clear sunlight, on a lonely plain between Lanling and Qishan, the war begins.

Chapter Text

Jiang Yanli thought she would be ready. She never was.

It begins with battle cries, and excitement and bloodlust. It is the cry of something wild, of something brutal and unkind that lives in those who thirst for the fight, the blood, the violence. She understood those things in theory, in a way that one understands unicorns and rainbows. She knew war would be horrible.

She was not ready.

Soon, the cries fade away into screams. And men begin to die.

Her forces have been split between fronts, and none of them are controlled by her. At first, it had felt a little bit like an insult, but it soon became a relief—she does not have to directly decide the fates of these cultivators. She must live with bringing them into the conflict at all.

They put her in the Qishan-Lanling front. The first morning, she stays in the camp as requested. Her cultivation is not strong, and the camp has a high ground overlooking the plateau where the forces are meeting in the distance. Jin Zixuan, the day before, warns her that the first day is often one of the worst. He warns her not to watch.

She watches.

Men fall in mists and sprays of blood. Screams echo up the canyon and find their way to her vantage point. Zhang Heng stays with her for the first day, watching with her mouth pulled thin. When silent tears begin to roll down Jiang Yanli’s face, she reaches out to squeeze her hand, but does not bother to say anything.

There is nothing she can say to make this less horrible. There are no words to soothe the balm of the battlefield, the symphony of men finding their deaths. There is no way to reconcile how death lingers, a haze in the air. Blood, she realizes later, standing on the battlefield with a copper taste on her tongue, grit on her teeth.

She does not fight. It does not matter. She thought that would matter.

Trauma, she will discover, comes to anyone. It is not just for the soldiers on the battlefield—it is also for the ones who bear witness, the ones who can do nothing while they watch the others do everything.

Men die, their lives snuffed out and strewn over the battlefield. Familiar colors clash—reds and golds and white, greens and purples. It makes it easier to see the ways that they are winning, and it makes it easier to see those dead on the ground, dirtied and stepped on as soldier after soldier replace their martial brothers in the fight.

So many die so quickly. And she is one of the ones who led them there.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Before, there is this:

In the end, Jiang Yanli does watch the war approach with Jin Guangshan at her side. His son is down on the front lines, but she’s lost sight of him in the chaos. By the way his eyes move, she knows he is tracking him. It is almost a relief to know he is still alive, even if very many other people are not.

“Your seniors are on the way to Lotus Pier,” Jin Guangshan tells her through the melee of battle, through the brutality of human nature. “If they can hold the front there, we will see relief at this one.”

“I would like to see them retake my home.”

He pauses for a long moment, and then sighs. “This is not something any of us wish for in leadership, Jiang Yanli. No one wants to see those we know die so needlessly. But men with power can only be stopped one way. They will throw their pawns onto the spikes until there are no more victims. And we can only be forced to do the same.”

She does not know what to expect, so she replies, “We will do what needs to be done.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

And after:

Jin Guangshan asks her, “Is war what you expected?”

Jiang Yanli stands in a pool of blood on the battlefield. She feels the mist of it in her eyes. There are still bodies everywhere. It smells like death and decay.

She bends at the waist, and vomits.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The second day is not better, and it is.

The fighting is still fierce, but she knows this is when the war of attrition begins. The camps are building up, tents rising on the horizon, and trenches are being built. There is a no-man’s-land now that the dead are gone, and Jiang Yanli hopes this means the horrors will slow. She hopes this means there will be a break.

There is no real break, not in war. When the sun rises, the fighting begins.

She learns something about herself on the second day—she cannot bear to watch. She is not strong enough to witness the atrocities and she hopes she will never tolerate it. She feels weak for it but she simply cannot bear to face so much suffering, so much inhumanity.

She sees the bloodshed and all she sees is her family’s last stands. She cannot stomach looking at it any longer.

She finds herself in the camp, everyone bustling with a purpose except for her. Jiang Yanli has spent so long wandering the woods and paths of Yunmeng that she has forgotten what to do with herself. She is not used to a war camp. She does not know the bones of it.

So, she wanders. She knows where some of it is—her tent is small but has a bed roll, which is more than what she set out on her quest with, and the Jin camp is several feet away and consists of the largest tent she has ever seen, lit in bright gold and the inside lined with furs. One of the meal tents is down the way, and then begins the endless rows for the cultivators.

She has been avoiding one of the tents. A part of her doesn’t want to react badly and upset anyone inside, but she knows it is the result of her own cowardice. Jiang Yanli does not know yet how to face the wounded that she has forced to fight.

Jiang Yanli does not know how to face the suffering.

She tells as much to Zhang Heng, who has found herself a worthy position as a runner, spreading information between commanders on the battlefield. She is in a string that is not fighting today, so she lingers at Jiang Yanli’s side, shadowing her footsteps through this foreign, desolate place.

Zhang Heng considers, and then replies, “I don’t know how to, either. I just do.”

Jiang Yanli has never been that kind of strong. Part of the reason she was never minted as an actual disciple was her aversion to needless suffering, which seems so childish and sheltered now. She feels like that now, too, as she paces uselessly through the camp.

“I should do something,” she tells Zhang Heng. “I can’t stay here without assisting. I cannot just be a figurehead.”

“Why not?” Zhang Heng counters, and then grins at the bitterness on Jiang Yanli’s face. “Perhaps you can join the laundry, zongzhu, or help shovel the stables.”

Jiang Yanli swats at her. “I am a good cook, you know. I can join the kitchens.”

“You could,” her friend, her ally, replies, though she doesn’t sound very convinced. When Jiang Yanli shoots her a questioning look, she explains, “There is an idea of you that the soldiers have, Yanli. They believe you to be a savior, a good omen for what is to come. They have seen your strength in rebuilding the sect and they regard you highly for it. While you might find it fulfilling work, there are others who will think it is beneath you.”

“It should not matter what they think, as long as I am content.”

“You would think that is true,” she replies with a hum, and she does not have to say the rest. Jiang Yanli already knows what she will say next—now that she is a sect leader, the perceptions have changed. It is imperative to make sure the Yunmeng cultivators know she is treated well, and fairly.

She sighs. Politics is an exhausting game, and she is only at the starting line. She cannot imagine the invisible pitfalls she will fall into in two months, two years, two decades—if she makes it that far, at least. She knows better now than to take time for granted.

She knows the politically motivated place to go. It is the one place she fears the most.

“I’m sure they need help in the medical tent,” she says slowly, almost hoping Zhang Heng will talk her out of it but knowing she won’t.

Zhang Heng knows the same—she nudges her on the arm before bowing and hustling away, off to find her own duties. She has guided Jiang Yanli to the correct answer to her query, and now her job is done.

Jiang Yanli knows she is being selfish.

She walks toward the medical tent, and before long she can hear the moans.

The medical tent is a white monolith at the edge of the camp closest to the battlefield, sprawling nearly as large as the mess hall, one of the few structures with an elevated foundation for the rains. Some of the soldiers are largely able to heal themselves, but those with lower power—the majority—must be brought here in hopes of a healer.

Jiang Yanli climbs the steps and stares at the carts outside that carry the dead, a black shroud laid atop the buggy. She saw plenty of it on the battlefield but it is harrowing to see how far death will chase at someone’s heels. It is terrifying to know that death can even find them here, where it is supposed to be safe.

She pushes open the flap and ducks inside.

The medical tent is a hub of activity, urgency at every inch. There are a series of nurses and doctors, both regular people and those with the power to heal with a singular touch. She freezes at the sheer volume of it, breath catching in her chest.

Men are laid out in long rows, back to back. Some are sitting up and speaking to those in the bedrolls beside them but others are writhing in pain, screaming for help, their yells echoing up to the top of the canopy. Worst of all is the smell, Jiang Yanli thinks—death and blood and burnt skin, human waste and festering flesh. She desperately holds back the gag that sits in her throat.

A woman notices her, and straightens in surprise. She is wearing the whites of the doctors, though there are dark stains of vomit and blood on her skirts, a violent tableau. She doesn’t even seem to notice as she crosses the space between them, bending into a respectful bow.

“Jiang-zongzhu,” she greets. She is a little taller than Jiang Yanli, her neck long and proud. She holds herself with confidence and seems entirely unbothered by the horror raging on around her. Practiced. Controlled. “Is there something we can help you with?”

“I came here to assist,” she tells her, and sees the surprise on her face. It gives way to hesitance, and she thinks bitterly of what Zhang Heng mentioned—that there are now jobs that others will consider insultingly beneath her.

The hesitance passes after a moment, and the doctor offers a small smile. “We would appreciate all the hands we can get, zongzhu. Are you versed in healing magic?”

“I am not averse to learning, though I doubt there is much time right now.”

“No,” the doctor agrees, and hesitates again. There is so much to do, and yet she seems to struggle to find something for Jiang Yanli to do. Jiang Yanli wants to throw her hands up and shout. She almost wishes, right now, that she was simply her father’s daughter—a girl from a powerful family who just wants to help.

Jiang Yanli takes a look around. Everything she sees makes her stomach dip. Blood stains the wooden floor, soaking into the board and leaving impressions and stains. She wonders if the blood will be there for the rest of the war. She wonders if that is the last impact some of these warriors will leave.

There is a shout, a name—Fang Lian—and the doctor looks over her shoulder. She is needed, busy. There is much to do, but clearly Jiang Yanli is inserting herself into somewhere she does not fully belong.

The helplessness is a bitter taste at the back of her throat. Jiang Yanli keeps finding hurdles to clear everywhere, expectations to overcome at every single corner. She is a sect leader, but she is not much of anything at all.

“Go,” she tells Fang Lian, offering her an encouraging smile. “You are needed.”

The doctor hesitates for only a moment longer before she rushes a bow and darts off, deeper into the tent of brutal suffering. Jiang Yanli watches her go, heart panging for something like that—an urgency, a destiny. Passion for something a little more tangible than the unattainable.

She hesitates there in the doorway, feeling foolish and out of place. And then she hears, softly to her right, “Jiang-guniang?”

She turns. A boy her brothers’ age is lying in a bed, his face splattered with blood, his hair tangled in dirt and mud. There is a moment where she doesn’t recognize him, until she suddenly does—a martial brother of her brothers’, a boy named Su Ping.

She remembers A-Cheng playing with this boy when they were little, before A-Xian. He is one of the boys her brothers trained with, shooting down kites over the bayous and bays of Lotus Pier. When she thinks of him, she imagines laughter. She thinks of her brothers.

His leg is missing. The wound is open and festering. His skin is sallow and sunken, and she knows without asking that this boy is dying.

She crosses to him in a rush and lowers herself down next to him, offering him what she opens is a pretty smile. “A familiar face—what a welcome sight.”

He grins. His lips are white, and his eyes are bloodshot. She sees a boy diving into the lakes. She sees a man surrendering himself to death.

It kickstarts the ache inside of her, the empty place where her brothers should be. The grief feels overwhelming now, when she thought she was learning how to live with it. It is torturous to know she is about to lose so many of the few things left of her home, her brothers. 

She reaches out and takes the young man’s hand and squeezes. “I didn’t think any survived Lotus Pier.”

“Some of us got away,” he tells her, and the defiance in his eyes is the same she has felt inside of her every minute since she learned of her brothers, every minute since the trajectory of her life changed. “A few of my martial brothers bought us time, and we knew we had to do something to keep the sect alive. It was a relief when we heard of you, Jiang-zongzhu.”

“I’m not much, but I am my family’s daughter,” she says, and he shakes his head. Some more of the blood leeches from his face at the movement.

“It was hope,” he tells her. His eyes dip and he forces them back open. There’s blood on his teeth but he is still so handsome and cheeky when he smiles, like a little kid. “We are proud that you will keep the sect alive.”

“With everything I have,” she promises. It is a small comfort. She reaches out and brushes the hair off of his forehead. He closes his eyes again and lets out a strangled breath. He sounds like he is trying not to cry. Tears spring to her eyes at the realization, choking her.

“Good,” he murmurs. “I think I’m falling asleep.”

“Get some rest,” she tells him, squeezing his hand so tight it must be painful, but she wants to make sure he knows she is there. “You did a great job. You deserve to rest.”

He makes a sound like he is trying to say something, but he is drifting away before he can bring it to his lips. She watches his breathing, gripping his hand, and only chokes on her sobs when the rise and fall of his chest ends. She only lets her tears loose when she is certain he cannot see her anymore, when it is already too late.

So weak. She has always been so weak.

But he called her hope. He saw her as something to believe in, not just because of her name but because of what she was doing to bring back the sect that so many of them called home. She might be weak, but she symbolizes something far deeper. She is the sole survivor of a massacred family, the remaining heir to a war-torn sect—and she has never considered that, for some, she is a familiar face. She is a sister to martial brothers. She is the daughter of a legacy that she has inherited and grabbed with both hands.

There is not much Jiang Yanli can do yet. She cannot heal wounds or lead armies. But, for all she thirsts for revenge, she knows kindness just as acutely. She knows family. If anything, she knows how to be left behind, and how to build from the ashes left behind.

Jiang Yanli might not be a warrior, but she is a face many of them recognize. If she can doom them to die, she can do this too.

So she says a prayer over the body of her fallen shidi and lets a doctor know that his pain has passed. She wipes her tears with her skirts and swallows back the grief threatening to drown her.

In this, she can help. In this place, she can be a hand to hold, a small figurehead. She can offer these cultivators kindness and encouragement. She can support the staff who work tirelessly here, and she can do it in a way that people will not think of as debasement.

Jiang Yanli can help here. Even in the small, inconsequential ways. 

So she moves onto the next bed, and the next. She watches cultivators heal and die. She holds their hands on whatever journey they are about to take. She shows them that she cares, for whatever it is worth for either of them.

And, for today, it is enough.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The weeks pass, and Jiang Yanli finds a rhythm in her work in the medical tent. Slowly, the doctors lose their uncertainty around her, and they begin treating her as a nurse—asking her to hold wounds for them to stitch, having her scrub bandages and floorboards, holding the hands of the dying when they are too busy to guide them onto the next life.

It is hard. It is fulfilling as little else has ever been in her life. It is horrible and Jiang Yanli wakes up screaming, even worse than before.

She puts off sleeping sometimes. She does little chores around the camp, things they are too short handed for. Usually it is for the medical team, as it is tonight—she sits at a campfire with a cauldron of boiling water, cutting scraps of cloth to use as bandages and tourniquets. There is a small laundry line behind her for her to hang the cloth, swaying in the breeze like little flags for surrender.

She is absentmindedly stirring the bandages in the water when she hears the footsteps approaching. She looks up, hoping for one face—and finding another, far more unexpected face instead.

Lan Wangji bows in greeting. He is a stoic boy, so serious and steadfast, as if he skipped childhood and became an adult overnight. She has seen him fight, and he is brutally effective, not a movement out of form. She has seen him play his guqin for the wounded in the medical tent, his face unchanging even as the emotions pour out from his strings and heal the spirits of all those around him.

He is a valiant, kind young man. She thinks of A-Xian moaning and groaning about how serious the second Lan brother was, and she thinks she understands that too, but there is kindness underneath of a very thickly built skin. There is a lovely sweetness buried within those walls.

She finally remembers to bow back, and offers him a seat at the campfire. He sinks into it, laying his weapons down beside himself. He folds his hands in front of him, sitting straight and proper, and she remembers her brothers telling her of the strict values of the Lan clan.

Jiang Yanli smiles fondly at his awkwardness and asks, “Is there anything you would like to speak to me about, Lan-gongzi?”

“Yes,” he says. He is short of words, but never rude. She presses her lips together so she won’t laugh, watching him patiently find the words. “There is something I would like to tell you, and ask you.”

“Go ahead,” she gives him permission.

She does not at all expect what he says next.

Lan Wangji tells her, “I believe your brothers may be alive.”

She drops the stirrer into the cauldron. The boiling water swallows it up, daring her to burn her fingers. Daring her to remember what it is like to drown.

For a moment, it doesn’t sink in. It lingers there in the air between them, cushioned from surprise and uncertainty. And then she is collapsing down onto her log, gasping for air she can no longer find, gripping the skin over her heart so tightly that she might dig into the skin and rip it out just to make sure it is still breathing.

Lan Wangji’s eyes widen at her reaction and he rushes to amend, “I cannot be sure.”

“How?” she gasps desperately, finally finding her voice. “How do you know this?”

He hesitates. “Have you heard of the Lan clan method of Inquiry?”

When she shakes her head, he explains it at its base—it is a guqin song that they can use in order to conjure and communicate with souls who have passed on. The greater the skill level of the player, the more spirits and easier the communication. Lan Wangji admits that he is of the users who can target the souls, who can call for them even when they are very far away.

“I asked for Wei Wuxian,” he admits slowly, as if this is a truth she is ripping away from him. As if it is not information he is freely giving. “I summoned him with a song I knew he would know, but there was no sign of his soul. I attempted the same with Jiang Wanyin and did not receive a response, either.”

“Are you sure it was working?” she asks, unsure of the process. Her head is spinning wildly. She thinks she will pitch into the flames if she dares to stand. She thinks she might start screaming if she dares to open her mouth too wide.

He nods. “I attempted a few others I knew had passed on. They answered my call.”

She throws decorum out the window and hangs her head between her knees, desperately sucking air into her too-full lungs. The spots reserved for her brothers are growing now, threatening to swallow her up. She doesn’t know if she would feel worse if it turns out they have passed on, or that they have been alive this entire time and she hasn’t looked for them.

Jiang Yanli forces herself to sit back up. Beyond their campfire, she sees Zhang Heng in the shadows watching, her hand on the hilt of her sword. Three campfires down, Jin Zixuan is half out of his feet, scowling darkly at Lan Wangji’s back.

“There is a rumor,” he tells her softly, “from the Wen soldiers. One that speaks of the Jiang heirs dropped into a dangerous, unholy place.”

“Where is it?”

“I do not know,” he says. Yet goes unsaid.

She reaches out and grabs his sleeve, and Lan Wangji jumps. She lets him go, muttering something that sounds like an apology, before she manages to say, “If they are alive—”

He nods as if he understands. As if he understands. “I would like your permission to leave the front and search for them.”

“I do not know if I have that authority,” she tells him uncertainly, even as her heart pounds. Her eyes are swimming in tears she doesn’t even mean to cry. It is all so much at once, as if the world has ended and begun again. Hope, too strong and messy, where there was once despair.

“You do,” he tells her confidently. He inclines his head to her, as if to remind her that she is important.

Perhaps she does have that authority, as a sect leader. His brother is on another front, so Lan Wangji only has one person he can reasonably ask. He is an asset on the battlefield, but this is a far more valiant thing. He has given her a gift and a curse wrapped together, something with the power to heal or break her.

She forces herself to breathe in and out evenly, expanding the space in her chest. It is like the panic she felt in the days after Lotus Pier. It is like the spiral she tripped into after her brothers left her Zidian, and she knew it would be the last thing they had ever done.

She knew her brothers were strong, though not even a part of her had dared to hope they were still alive. It would be a gift that would not be meant for her. It was a kindness from a universe that has never been kind to her.

“It is a large request,” she says.

He nods. “I am needed here.”

He is. He is an intrinsic part of their strategy, a valuably strong soldier on their front. She does not know if she has the authority to dismiss a man who is so intrinsic to their strategy, someone who may make this fight harder and more dangerous for the others.

Jiang Yanli has already watched many people die. Enough of them have been her fault.

As he watches her struggle, Lan Wangji awkwardly holds his hand out and pats one of hers. And she knows her answer.

“Please,” she whispers, hoarsely. “If they are out there, please bring them back. And please forgive me for how I act if they are not.”

“I will find them,” he promises her. “One way or another.”

He stands and bows, deeper than before. He is about to walk away when she asks, “Why?”

He turns. She grips the side of the log she sits on so hard that splinters bite painfully into her skin, ones she knows she will have to pick out later. He takes a moment to consider his answer, to pick his words carefully. She waits.

“I have much to repay Wei Wuxian for,” he decides. She notices the careful, practiced way he says her brother’s name, as if he is trying not to let something show. As if there is something there he wants to hide from her.

A suspicion builds in her chest, something soft and sad, and she buries it down. Her brothers’ lives have always been their own. She will not dig into them now.

She stands on shaking legs and bows back even deeper, until she considers prostrating before this boy. He is offering her the closure she has never hoped for. He is offering her a potential that she has known better than to dream of.

He disappears into the camp. Once he is gone, Jin Zixuan takes his place.

“What is it?” he demands. He reaches out to touch her and then pulls back just as sharply, his eyebrows pulling together into a deep frown at the tears that roll down her face. “Jiang-guniang, what is it?”

She puts a hand on her chest. Breathes through it, the same way she has breathed through so much already. Tilts her head back to the sky and lets out a small laugh that is the first she’s laughed since.

“Hope,” she says quietly, “is so painful.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lan Wangji is gone by the next morning. Jin Guangshan is incensed, even as she and Jin Zixuan attempt to calm him. They tell him it is for an intelligence mission. They tell him it is something only a Lan would be able to accomplish. They tell him it is something that can win them the war.

He calms, and then leaves for his golden tower that night.

He does not return to the front.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Months pass. The war rages. She does not hear from Lan Wangji.

~*~*~*~*~*~

One day, two and a half months after Lan Wangji, she has dinner with Jin Zixuan.

The Jin tent is beautifully decorated, more of a temporary structure than most of the others in the camp. There are many rooms, where Jiang Yanli’s is one—a meeting room, a bedroom, a privy. Tonight they are meeting in the living space, in front of a table that is built for up to four people. She is closer, physically, to Jin Zixuan than she has been in months. Perhaps years.

A servant brings in the food, but it is not much more than what the rest of the soldiers are eating—rations of rice and proteins, though rarely ever meat. Herbs and berries from the outskirts of camp, and whatever else they can bring in from the surrounding areas.

The best part is the wine, white and sparkling in the thin, beautifully made glass bowls. Jin Zixuan pours their bowls, and she watches him cautiously, suddenly feeling very much like this dinner is more than it was meant to be.

They have not said much, and he begins the night by asking, “How are you handling everything?”

“Please do not treat me like a fragile maiden,” she remarks, though he has been nothing but kind. But Jiang Yanli is in her nicest robes, with rogue at her lips and no crown on her head, and she is beginning to feel as she once was. Pampered and protected and caged, like a beautiful bird that only knows how to sing.

He grins wryly up at her and replies, “I am simply being kind, Jiang-zongzhu. Do not tell me you’ve forgotten kindness.”

They both know she has not, but the Jin Zixuan of her past did not know kindness in the same way she did. It is unnerving, to see him so changed—but the Jin Zixuan of her past did not have these scars on his arms and hands. He did not look sleepless and weighed down by stress and expectations, and his mouth is curved now in a way that is not as haughty.

He pours her wine and says, “I have seen grown cultivators losing their minds over the last few months, Jiang Yanli. I would not look down on you if you need a break just as badly as I do.”

“Cultivators are used to fighting, are you not?”

“Monsters,” he points out. “We fight inhuman things. Fighting other humans is something that already many of us do not know how to live with. It is different in ways we were expecting, but could not possibly prepare for.”

It is an impossible thing to ask her, the same way she knows he would avoid the question if she challenged him in return. Of course she is not okay. Of course she is more alive than she has ever been.

It is broken, isn’t it? She has found more in war than she did before, like she was sitting in a home with none of the lanterns lit, like she didn’t know how many rooms and halls she could walk down and discover. It is the worst place she has ever been, but it is the most free she has ever felt.

Jiang Yanli is not a soldier. She has learned that she does not have to be.

There is worth in other things, even if it is holding the hands of the dying, or simple kind words when the healing process is painful. She can help stock cabinets and pick herbs, and she can return to her tent covered in other people’s blood and know she did something incredible with her day.

She hates war. She does not know who she would possibly be without it.

He has asked her how she is handling things, like he expects she is a beautiful glass object about to break under the pressure. He has asked her how she is handling things, and she doesn’t know how to tell him how she is doing better than she ever was.

“I am handling it,” she tells him and little else. She does not know where she stands with this man. She doesn’t know how to explain something so complicated and incredible, something that is almost monstrous. “How is the front?”

“Surviving,” he replies, and sighs. She is not giving him an answer, and he is not giving her one. Speaking through a wall, awkwardly unsure of where the line between them is. Jiang Yanli is grateful to have found another future, though there is a small part of her that revels at being at this dinner table.

“I want to understand,” she tells him honestly. “About war. About how to direct and run one. Is that something you would be willing to teach me?”

“Think of it as a game of Shogi, but with living pieces,” he tells her, bitterness in his own disregard for human lives. “There is so much at stake and none of it is allowed to matter, because the only thing that is going to decide the next step is the move we make.”

She considers that. “I still want to understand. If I am going to lead my sect, I need to know how.”

Jin Zixuan eyes her across the table, and she wonders what he sees. She has grown and changed so much. They both have, to the point she is sure he feels the same thing when he looks into his own reflection—that he does not know the person staring back at him. That person is unrecognizable.

Finally, he says, “We have books here I can give you to study. Once you learn the basics, there are meetings I can invite you to, intelligence I can share. There are many things I do not even decide, but it is part of an heir’s training to learn these things. You are right when you say it will make you a better leader.”

It is a peace offering. They do not know each other well at all anymore. This is an olive branch to bring them a step closer. This is an alliance that will teach her more of who she needs to be, who she must become.

Jiang Yanli is not the girl she once was. She never thought she would be so grateful for that.

“Please,” she says, bowing her head. “I would appreciate it.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “We are allies, Jiang-zongzhu. It is the least I can do.”

She knows that is not true because she cannot imagine his father offering her the same. She could not imagine where the conversation would be if his father was on the other side of the table, but she knows it would not be so generous. She did not win the favor of that man when she threw up at the first sign of the bloodshed, even if his own face was white as a painted ghost.

He tilts his head to the side and says, more honest than she thinks he has ever been, “You’ve changed, Jiang Yanli.”

“Yes. I have.”

They have seen terrible things. They wake up with the screams of death in their ears. They wake up choked on their own cries, with the same desperation to escape. They have both found their place in this hellscape, and they are both the better for it.

He raises his cup for a toast. She mirrors him, the scent of the wine sweet in her nose.

“To the people we were,” he toasts, “and those we will become.”

She drinks, and hopes they both come out of this alive.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jiang Yanli reads books on military strategy, and she is surprised how easily it comes to her. Despite his bitterness, it is true—it is almost like a game, moving the pieces in the way that will guarantee the most likely path to victory. The worst parts are the sacrifices, the pieces that must be removed from the board as bait. She cannot imagine doing the same with human people, but she imagines it comes with depersonalization. It comes with learning how to live with it.

She plays strategy games against the soldiers in their off time, learns their names and the stories of their lives. They teach her how to win, how to find the little hints of a victory in a hopeless board. They laugh with her, and she notices now that more soldiers bow when she passes them by.

Jin Zixuan teaches her things, too, about diplomacy and leadership. He lends her history books of the sects and teaches her methods of cultivation that work for her, that help her core feel stronger every day. She meditates before she sleeps and practices with Zidian every morning.

The weeks pass. And then.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It is a breezy night, the first sign of the incoming chill. Jiang Yanli sits in her tent at a low table Jin Zixuan gave her, studying some of the recent battle plans and meeting notes from the elders of the front. It is slowly coming together for her, a puzzle with all of the edges sharpening. It does not feel as far as it had before.

She’s feeling proud of herself when she hears Zhang Heng enter, her footsteps a telltale and comforting noise, and she turns to tell her—

And freezes.

Zhang Heng is pale as moonlight, like she’s seen a ghost. She opens her mouth but no words come out. Jiang Yanli is on her feet in a heartbeat, grabbing her friend’s arms tightly. Something terrible has happened. Her heart is pounding so hard in her chest she almost cannot hear herself asking what has happened.

So many possibilities fly through her mind—an ambush, the Wens pressing forward, an assassination. She is so drawn into thoughts of the front, terror for what could be coming, that she almost cannot understand what Zhang Heng says next.

“Lan Wangji has returned.”

Jiang Yanli waits for the blow, for the realization that they are doomed, and it does not come. After a moment of a tense, uncertain silence, it hits—just not in the way Jiang Yanli had braced herself for.

“He has?” Her heart stutters, and then picks up at double pace. Her breath is ripping in and out of her lungs. “Did he—has he said—”

Zhang Heng uses Jiang Yanli’s grip on her to tug her a step forward, then two.

“Here,” she says, dragging them step by step out of the tent. She is still so horribly pale. “Over here.”

Zhang Heng points. Within moments, Jiang Yanli is running.

There is so little hope. There is so much hope. It is the dissonant crescendo of a symphony, a lingering note that reverberates in her teeth, blistering in the chill of the evening.

The soldiers are still out in force, dinner time, but they part as they see her coming, and she knows it is something terrible. She sees they are as pale as Zhang Heng. They know she is about to walk into something she does not expect. She knows she is about to walk into something that will break her in some indistinguishable way, as permanent as the wounds she has lived with for months, as real as every scar she counts before she goes to bed at night.

She doesn’t know how she knows, but she runs to the southern entrance to camp. It is the furthest from the front, the closest to home, and she knows instinctively that that is where Lan Wangji would have gone. She rounds the corner, kicking up dirt, and sees Jin Zixuan first. He’s got his mouth open like he wants to ask a million questions, his dark eyes blown wide. He turns to look at her slowly, and his hand twitches to grab her as she passes, as if to hold her back. As if to stop her from whatever she will see next.

The soldiers scramble back. And she sees.

A visceral scream rips out of her throat, a rattling noise of grief and surprise and something she cannot possibly ever understand. Maternal instinct, maybe. She can tell by the turn of the wind and the thrum of the air what she is about to see, and it is incomprehensible.

Wei Wuxian sees her first.

He’s thinner than he’s ever been, wearing dark clothes stained with dirt and blood. His eyes snap away from Lan Wangji moments before she screams, like he can sense she is here, and his face shifts from a sneer to—a boy. A wide-eyed boy on her father’s arm, introducing himself quietly to the siblings he will soon call his family, dirty and sweet and with a smile to light up the entire galaxy.

He cries, “Shijie!” 

She sees her brother next, Jiang Cheng so often within steps of Wei Wuxian. He whirls around and, when he sees her, breaks into a bright, boyish grin. He is always so severe but she can see even in the distance that his shoulders drop. She can see his comfort of coming home.

Within seconds, all three of them are sprinting.

They collide somewhere in the middle, and Wei Wuxian reaches her first. He’s laughing as he grabs her, swinging her around and directly into Jiang Cheng, who catches her by the waist and snaps at A-Xian to be more careful. She laughs, hysteria at its edges.

It is a dream. It must be, because this is kinder than reality has been to her in so long. It is a miracle only the gods can grant, and the gods have long since turned their backs on her.

Wei Wuxian buries his head in her shoulder. Jiang Cheng squeezes her so hard she thinks her ribs will shatter. She has her arms full of two dead men who are alive after all, and it feels as if her chest is bursting open.

She is babbling. Even later, she will not know what she is saying, but she will remember the steady stream of tears down her face and Jiang Cheng wiping them away softly and Wei Wuxian trying to crack jokes to get her to smile. She will remember being collapsed there in the dirt with them, their legs giving out from the weight of holding each other up. She will remember the entirety of the camp watching them, but she will never care. It will never matter. It will never be more important than this.

There is one other thing she will remember, though. Later, she will know why it is important. She will know why her brain remembered it at all.

Lan Wangji is standing where the brothers had left him, watching them like all of the others. But there is something different on his face. He is watching them carefully, but like he might step in at any moment. He is staring at Wei Wuxian’s back like he is someone he does not recognize. His hand is hovering over his sword like he might need to use it. Coiled and ready to pounce.

It will not matter until later. It does not matter now.

Jiang Yanli’s brothers are alive.

For now, that is enough.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Once the shock has worn off, once the eyes become too heavy, she brings her brothers back to her tent.

They let her drag them away, knowing as well as she knows that in the middle of that swarm of soldiers is not where this conversation needs to take place. They know this is not the kind of moment that needs witnesses.

It is easier to breathe, once she brings them into her tent. It feels less like a dream, because she has never once imagined what her brothers would look like in this space. Her lanterns are lit and there are papers scattered around her low table that are very important, and her brothers are taking her in the same way she is absorbing them.

They are pale and dirtied, as if they have been living the same way she had for months—off the beaten path, sleeping in the roots of trees. They’re thin enough that her fingers itch to sneak into the mess hall to make their favorite dishes—soups and dried meats and crispy grilled vegetables. They’re paler now, too, than they had been—no more leisurely days in the sun, spent on the banks and piers of beautiful lakes.

Her hands itch to hug them again, to tell them that they are safe now and she will take care of them. But they are not safe, and she cannot begin to know the horrible things that they have gone through, the ones written onto their faces in exhaustion and grief.

“Sit down,” she urges them softly, smiling. “Tell Shijie what happened.”

Jiang Cheng shakes his head at the same time Wei Wuxian replies, “I don’t know where to start.”

“I have Zidian,” she tells them, and something in Jiang Cheng’s shoulders relaxes. She eases the ring off and offers it to her little brother, only for those shoulders to stiffen back up again. “Would you like to have it?”

He hesitates, and then says, “You keep it, Shijie.”

She pauses with the ring extended, surprised. There is a part of her that always knew she was not the rightful heir to their heirloom, but she thought she was the only one left to keep it. It is a surprise to hear that her brother, back from the dead, would not want it back. 

Jiang Yanli slowly takes it back, puts it back on her finger. Her core is sharper and stronger now, so the sparks light up as if in greeting, in relief. Her brothers watch it in surprise, and then look at each other with an expression she does not understand.

It is awkward and strange. She doesn't know how to speak to her brothers, as if they are strangers. As if she is a stranger, looking in from the outside.

A bad feeling is beginning to settle into her stomach. There is something wrong.

“There is something different about you,” she says, because she has learned there is no value in keeping those thoughts to herself. “Both of you.”

“It’s been a long couple of months,” Wei Wuxian answers with a grin. He looks tired, like the smile takes something out of him. Like he’s forgotten how to smile much at all, and it is a mask he must rebuild piece by piece.

“Shijie,” Jiang Cheng calls, and she looks to him. She has always thought it is funny that she calls him that, always martial sister and not elder sister. As if he has always seen her as someone strong, someone worthy of the respect of being called a warrior. He asks, uncertainly, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she says, surprised. She grins. “Even better, now that you two are healthy and alive and here. I thought you were dead for the longest time—it feels like I can breathe, now.”

Wei Wuxian starts to speak, but he does not get the chance—a voice chimes from the front of her tent, a voice that calls, “Jiang-zongzhu—my apologies, but I have the reports you requested from Yunmeng.”

“Come in,” she urges, standing. He does, a servant of the Jins she knows, and she smiles. “From Elder Xu? Good—I was hoping to hear updates on their supply lines.”

“It’s in here, Jiang-zongzhu,” he says, bowing as he offers her the stack of paperwork, which she takes eagerly. He eyes her brothers awkwardly, and then dips into a deep bow for all of them before excusing himself.

She returns to her side of the table, setting the stack on top of the very many things she has to do, smiling at the familiar scrawl of Xu Conghai. It is always a reassurance to know he is alive and well enough to write his reports to her, but there is something far more important in front of her—she returns her attention to her brothers.

To find them staring at her in shock.

“Shijie,” Wei Wuxian says slowly, uncertainly. “We’d heard a rumor on the road—of you becoming Sect Leader.”

“Yes,” she replies easily. “When it seemed I was the only of the Jiang family left, it was the decision I made in order to bring our sect back to life. We have reached the numbers from before the fall of Lotus Pier, which I hope to reclaim for our family and rebuild.” She grins again. “Ah, there is so much to tell you.”

They look at each other again. There is a part of her that has always hated that—how they can speak to each other without words, how she cannot understand them when they do. 

“Lan Wangji told us, but we weren’t sure what to believe,” Jiang Cheng admits slowly. “It’s a big responsibility, Shijie.”

Irritation blooms where there should be relief, happiness. Of course her brothers have underestimated her, the same as everyone else always has. She knows they love her but love is not always understanding, and it is disappointing to have worked so hard but to still see the tentative doubt on their faces.

She sits up straighter. She puts on a little bit more of her official airs, as best as she can with the two people she loves most in the entire world, and tells them firmly, “I am aware of the work, A-Cheng. I have accepted it with both hands, and in the absence of any other choice. I have learned and am comfortable with my choice.”

Her brother has been the heir to a great sect for a very long time. She wonders, suddenly, if it is strange for him to think he will come into power now only to discover he is an unlikely heir again.

When his face changes, contemplative, she quietly asks him, “Would you want to be Sect Leader, A-Cheng?”

He considers it. Really considers it, in a way that someone who has never thought they had a choice thinks about the new fork in their road, the escape hatch they never knew was there. He looks at Wei Wuxian again, who tilts his head curiously as if he is waiting for the answer as well, as if he will follow his brother’s lead the same way he always has.

“I don’t know,” he ultimately admits. She thinks that is as honest of an answer she has gotten from them all night.

“I am certain of my path in life,” she tells him. “I am stronger than I look, and I have survived through losing my entire family and rebuilding my sect from nothing. I will ignore disrespect from others, but not from the two of you.”

Wei Wuxian yelps and shoots upright. “It’s not disrespect, Shijie! We just… are you sure?”

“I am sure.” She has never been more sure.

Jiang Cheng does not seem convinced, but there is a mounting exhaustion that is weighing him down—she can tell, as well as she knows her own thoughts. Her brothers are tired, and this is all new information to them. They have been through an ordeal that she cannot even bear to imagine, and this is not what is important to be discussing right now.

She waves her hand as if to dispel the entire awkward air away, as if it is ever that simple. “We will deal with that some other time, didi. The sect is not what should be important to you right now—not when I do not know what happened to you two.”

“I don’t know if you really want to know that, Shijie,” her little brother tells her. It is not disrespect—it is honesty. Jiang Cheng looks as if the smallest wind could blow him away.

She pauses, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t look like he has anything to add, leaning back from the table and reaching up to rub at his eyes. They are safe, and it is as if that is only just hitting them—something is coming loose inside of them, bringing the relief and exhaustion to the forefront. They both look like they could fall asleep sitting up.

Her heart eases. They may be keeping this secret, but they are still her little brothers. They might not be everything she remembers, but neither is she, and it would be unfair to judge them for something they have simply learned how to survive.

She sighs and stands up. “It has been a long few months, and everything will be different from today forward. You two look tired and hungry—I will find you two a place to stay and a nice, hot meal. My questions can wait, and so can our explanations. I am just so, so glad that you are both alive.”

Jiang Cheng grabs her up in another hug. She leans into him, familiar and warm and alive, all of the grief bubbling over and spilling out of her chest. He puts his chin on the top of her head, the same way he always has since he was tall enough, and he murmurs, “Thank you.”

She isn’t sure what he is thanking her for—the hospitality, loving them, perhaps even taking up the mantle of Sect Leader so he does not have to. She cannot imagine the things that they have seen or lived in the last several months, and she knows when trauma takes root, it will require excavating the story bit by bit. She is relieved that they will have that time. She is happier than she has ever been, knowing she is no longer alone.

She runs her hand over Wei Wuxian's hair, and he looks up to smile at her like a little kid.

“You are very welcome,” she tells them, and means it in every way.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jiang Yanli is not a fool. She knows something is wrong with her brothers, something soul-deep. She would know them in the dark, by scent and feel alone. She would know them in every rebirth of every universe. She knows their souls better than she knows her own.

She knows something is terribly wrong.

Mere days pass, and their story does not come out. She gives them time and space, which is not hard to do when she has so many tasks—the medical tent, the leadership meetings, the juggle of news and intelligence from the front and beyond. It is almost too late when she hears that her brothers have asked to join the fight, and she manages to run into them right before they are leaving camp for the battlefield.

“Just a few days, Shijie,” Wei Wuxian tells her, squeezing her hand. “We want to help.”

“You’ve only just gotten back.” I cannot lose you again, she doesn’t say, but she thinks they know. Jiang Cheng offers her a crooked smirk, looking for all the world like this is just another day and not the one where they go to war.

“We’ll be fine,” her little brother tells her. It sounds less like assurance and more like a fact, like he knows more than she knows. Like she hasn’t held the hands of so many men who have died, like she doesn’t know a thing about what happens on that battlefield.

She bites her tongue like she always has. She knows it isn’t personal. She knows it is kindness, their instinct to protect her, and she does not have the heart or time right now to tell them that she does not need protecting.

It is a habit they do not likely know how to break. It is a relationship so uncertain right now that she does not dare. Her brothers are about to walk into war after being presumed dead for months and she is strong now, but she is not sure that she is strong enough for this.

The commander calls for them, and she must watch them walk away anyway.

She returns to the medical tent, aimless, but every soldier who comes in makes her jump and look for a familiar face. She watches some more men die, but the flow is slower today. It is reassuring to know that her brothers picked a quieter day, something with a little less death. It is nice to know they are as safe as they could possibly be.

She thinks as such until midday, when Jin Zixuan bursts into the infirmary.

For however many days she has spent here, she has not seen him here even once. He is usually too busy, always bouncing around camp or fighting on the battlefield until the early morning. He has sent other people here to send for her, but has rarely had the time to bring himself here—which is the first hint.

The second hint is the look on his face.

She sets down the bowl of bloodied water she is holding, so hard she thinks she has broken the bowl for a minute. She doesn’t pay it a second glance before rushing across the room toward him, but this time he is the one who reaches out for her, gripping so hard onto her wrist that she can’t help but to wince.

His grip loosens, but his tone is hard when he demands, “Did you know?”

“Know what?” she demands, confused. The pounding heart in her chest lessens—the urgency in his eyes is less because of a disaster, and more because there is something he clearly doesn't understand. Something has happened, and thus her heartbeat picks up again, ripping her breath in and out of her lungs.

When he doesn’t immediately respond, she grips his wrist in response. He pauses and looks down at it, and then lets out a very long breath.

“I,” he begins, and has to breathe again. “I don’t know where to begin. I think it is best that I show you.”

“Has something happened?” she demands. “Did something happen with my brothers?”

Something dark crosses his face. He looks back down, searching for something in her face, but she cannot begin to know what. When he decides that there is nothing for him to find, he takes her hand gently and begins to pull her away from the medical tent.

“Yes,” he says slowly, cautiously. “Something has happened.”

She lets him guide her through camp, toward the overlook onto the battlefield that she once stood at with his father, watching the beginning of the war. She is disoriented to find herself back, trapped in a memory, overwhelmed and confused to see that so many other people have gathered here, and that they scramble away from her like she is something monstrous. Like they do not dare touch her.

Jin Zixuan brings her to the edge of the overlook. She looks down.

First, she sees the shadows.

They seem to take up everything, blotting out the sunlight, bleeding off of the wind. They curl sharply in every way, like tendrils of mist off of a morning moor, settling on the grounds of the battlefield like smoke. It’s as if night has come to the middle of the day, the darkness bleeding out of every movement like whispers of a wildfire.

She sees the fighters on the battlefield, fighting through it. They kick up the shadows as they move like a haze of dirt and dust, the shadows dancing at their ankles, threatening to drag them down.

And then she sees her brothers.

A-Xian stands in the middle of the field, shadows dripping off of his clothes, soaking into his hair. He has a flute raised to his mouth, and he is playing a hurried, dissonant tune. For a moment, it is so surreal that Jiang Yanli isn’t sure what she is even looking at.

And then she sees the dead coming to life.

As quickly as they fall, on either side, she watches them rise again. The battle has picked up into a chaotic crescendo but the dead simply do not rest, rising and turning against the Wens. It would almost be impossible to tell that they are dead if not for Jiang Yanli seeing men rise and fall with her own eyes. It is even more incomprehensible to reconcile it with her little brother, standing in the middle of the chaos like a conductor, playing a tune on his flute like it is a quiet morning on the pier.

The flute is so loud that she does not immediately notice the humming.

Jiang Cheng moves with incredible confidence with his sword, but it is not a regular sword. It leaks with shadows, murky as a muddy pond, darkness dripping like dense sludge off of the blade. He hums as he moves, quiet and steady, and the sword pulses and shudders, the blade shifting to accommodate anything he needs or wants from it.

It is a surreal, indescribable picture. It is a strange, otherworldly thing.

“I don’t understand,” she says aloud. There is nothing else left to say, nothing else that makes sense. She doesn’t understand. She is looking directly at it but it does not add up, and she does not understand.

“This is no cultivation I have ever seen,” Jin Zixuan replies, watching them move without looking at her. He looks disturbed, horrified. She can’t blame him—she is not sure the look on her face is anything better. 

“He’s bringing the dead to life?”

“Yes,” he murmurs as if he doesn’t want anyone to hear him. As if everyone around them is not seeing exactly what they are seeing. 

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” he confesses. His mouth pulls thin, and the dip beneath his eyebrows is deep and contemplative. “This is nothing I have ever known.”

Jiang Cheng whistles sharply, and an arrow of shadow pierces a Wen’s chest. He moves his grip, and she realizes the hilt of his sword is made of polished bone.

She stares and cannot comprehend. It is too big. Too impossible.

They watch the bloodshed below them. And slowly, with the light bleeding away into shadow, Jin Zixuan whispers, “Yanli—what have you and Lan Wangji brought into this camp?”

~*~*~*~*~*~

That night, she finds her brothers at a campfire alone and demands, “What was that?”

They look up, startled, but she doesn’t bother to sit. She stands over them with her arms crossed, angry for their secrets but mostly scared out of her mind. Her hands are shaking and she thinks, in moments, her knees will be too.

What she watched them do was unnatural. What she watched them do was terrifying.

Wei Wuxian sighs, as if they have been caught, as if what they did today wasn’t going to reach her and they would be able to keep it a dirty little secret. As if what they have done is not world-changing in the most disillusionary fashion.

“We learned it while we were away,” A-Cheng tries to tell her without telling her anything at all, the same gentle way she has been treated her entire life. 

Irritation flares. She feels the sparks snaking up her arms, curling protectively around her wrists as if to protect her from what she is about to learn, as if even the lightning wishes she would turn around and leave it alone.

The Jiang Yanli of several months ago would have worried from afar, but she would not have asked questions. She would have cried herself to sleep from anxiety and held her tongue. Jiang Yanli is no longer the woman who can turn and allow horrible things to happen as long as she is not looking at it.

Her brothers watch the lightning flicker along her skin. A-Cheng reaches for it, something quiet and longing in his face, but the sparks dance and fade away at his touch.

“We didn’t want to drag you into this,” Wei Wuxian tells her slowly. She knows he has always loved her, fiercely protective, but he is the one who holds a hand out for her to sit, quiet sorrow on his face. “You won’t forgive us when you know, Shijie. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to walk away.”

She could. She could walk away now and be none the wiser. She could hear all of the rumors and stories and pretend as if she hadn’t. She could watch them tear through the battlefield, bringing the dead to life, and think it is nothing more than a parlor trick.

Jiang Yanli is not so weak as to need protection anymore. She is not so naive that she can turn her back on abomination.

She sits slowly between them and she does not take the hands they offer her. A-Cheng turns to stare at the fire with a wry, bitter smile on his face, as if he cannot watch whatever happens on her face when she knows. Wei Wuxian stares right at her, searching desperately for something and only smiling warily when he doesn’t find it.

“They’ve said you are different, Shijie,” A-Xian murmurs. “I believe them now.”

And then, he tells her everything.

Her brothers ran from the horrors of their burnt home, and they find themselves in an unknown town in the outer stretches of their land. They knew they did not run fast enough, wounded and hunted, so they took a stand. Wei Wuxian knows the end is coming, so they turn to face it bravely, sending Zidian to Jiang Yanli as one of the few things they were able to save from the fire.

Jiang Cheng is captured—and his core destroyed.

Her head whips to look at him. He has not spoken since A-Xian began his story, but he turns his head toward her now. He reaches out and puts his hand on hers, squeezing.

“It does not get better,” he tells her softly, and she braces herself.

Wei Wuxian manages to get Jiang Cheng away from the forces but, without a core, he is a liability, slowing them down. Wei Wuxian takes them to an unexpected ally—two members of the Wen family, one of them a doctor. He begs the doctor to help them, and she offers them an unexpected option—a golden core transfer.

“The operation failed,” Wei Wuxian tells her quietly, pain flitting across his face. “My core just—imploded. As if it had never been there at all. And now we were both horrifically human, and the Wens were catching up. What other option did we have to stand and fight and die?”

So they do, and they are captured. The brothers expect to be executed, but Wen Chao, the second son of the dictator, has a worse fate for them in mind—he drops them, half-dead and core-less, into the Burial Mounds.

Jiang Yanli has heard of this place, the same way she has heard of stories and legends. She knows it is haunted and cursed, where the dead have been buried in large mounds until the earth has swallowed them whole. She knows the hills are made of the dead and decayed, and there is nothing there that lives with a soul. It is a home for monsters and ghosts. Anything that enters does not leave.

She stares at her brothers, the exception to the rule, and she starts to understand.

“You had to survive,” she says, cautiously. She knows a little about that, but not like this.

“It turns out,” her little brother murmurs, “vengeance fills a lot of empty bellies.”

“And survival is a lot about spite,” Wei Wuxian says and laughs. His soul isn’t in it, the smile not bothering to touch his eyes. “We had to survive, and all we had were our own minds and the energy of the dead—so I used it.”

It is ingenious. It is the most hideous thing she has ever heard.

“I call it demonic cultivation,” Wei Wuxian tells her, wiggling his fingers so the shadows dance around him like smoke. “Old Teacher Lan once yelled at me for my theory, but it worked. Cursed or not, it was what kept us alive, and we clawed our way out.”

Her heart hurts. She doesn’t realize tears are rolling down her face until A-Cheng reaches out and gently pushes them away.

“It was a lot to turn our backs to,” Jiang Cheng tells her, “but we knew it was the only way to get back to you.”

He means it to be reassuring, kind. It hits her like a gale-force blow, unforgiving. It is an abhorrent curse to shoulder. She knows it will hit her later, the realization of what her brothers were willing to do to make it out alive. She knows she will blame herself for it forever, come what may.

The brothers do not notice, or do not understand how to read these thoughts on her face. Wei Wuxian watches the shadows sit on his skin, covering his hands like gloves. Jiang Cheng reaches out and touches the bone sword at his waist, tracing his finger softly against the razor-sharp edge.

“Lan Wangji,” she manages to say, and watches the darkness settle into Wei Wuxian’s expression like glass shattering. “How did he manage to find you?”

“Wen Chao,” he says like a curse, mouth curling back into a snarl. “Once Jiang Cheng and I made it out, we went gunning for him. We heard bits and pieces about the war, but we knew he wouldn’t be found at the front. He picked up that he was being followed and got more evasive, but we managed to track him down anyway.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng says. He is not apologetic. He even grins, as if the memory of it is a happy one. A chill crawls up her spine, ripping out an involuntary shiver.

Wei Wuxian sighs. “He almost got in the way, but he showed up just a little too late. He told us about the war, about you and the sect, that what we are doing is not the right path—blah, blah, regular Lan drivel. We only went with him because he promised to take us to you.”

“Is it dangerous?” she asks. “What you are doing?”

“Not if we are careful,” Wei Wuxian assures her, and this time his smile is real. “And we will be careful, Shijie. We will help them win the war with whatever it takes.”

That is precisely what she is afraid of, but it is almost an unfair thought. She knows there is no way to know if her brothers are able to control this new magic they have learned, but she knows they will use it on the front lines anyway. She knows it is unholy, but she knows now that it is unfair to blame someone for the actions of the dying, for the things people will do for the sake of survival.

“The others are worried for you,” she tells them. She does not admit that she is one of them, but they are smart boys.

Frustration passes across Wei Wuxian’s face. “They’ll be holier-than-thou and terrified,” he says, “but they will use us all the same.”

She knows he is not wrong. She hates that they speak of themselves like weapons, as if they are not her little brothers. As if she knows anything about the young men she sits with now, humming bone and whispering shadow.

“I will protect you the best I can,” she tells them slowly, cautiously, “but I do not know what this will bring, A-Xian, A-Cheng. This is a monstrous, otherworldly power. I can only hope that you are both able to control it.”

“We would not have survived this long if we hadn’t.”

Wei Wuxian laughs at his brother, and reaches around her to thump his shoulder. “We’re fighters down to our bones, Shijie. There is nothing you need to worry about.”

She will worry all the same, because this is a power she does not understand, something that no one has ever known. Her brothers have created this based on survival and hunger, and it does not feel out of line to wonder if it will learn how to eat them alive.

Jiang Yanli has worked to cultivate power, and she will use it to protect her brothers. That does not mean she will understand at all what she is protecting. But they are her little brothers, and they are alive, and she will do some horrible and reckless things in order to keep them that way.

She has so many questions. She does not want the answers.

“Be careful,” she tells them. Of the Elders, of the Sects, of themselves. They are no longer cultivators, and they carry a warring darkness now. She does not know how to reach them. She does not know how to protect them, even if she would die to make sure they make it to the end of this horrible war.

They each take one of her hands. Zidian flares as if it does not know them at all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

She watches her brothers fight.

She is terrified of them. She loves them dearly.

Nothing will ever be the same.

~*~*~*~*~*~

One day, weeks later, Lan Xichen arrives at their front.

He arrives with little fanfare, and she doesn’t even know he is there until he is standing in the doorway to her tent. It is late at night, nearly supper, and she nearly jumps out of her skin when she turns and finds him there. He smiles in apology and dips into a low bow. There is no one accompanying him. She immediately wonders what is wrong.

“Jiang-zongzhu,” he greets. “My apologies for dropping by unannounced, but I would like to request you and Jin-gongzi for a meeting.”

“Of course,” she says, standing. “He will likely be in his tent—allow me to accompany you.”

He smiles and bows again, and she sees now that he looks older than he once had. There are shadows under his eyes, and his smiles are not as sincere, as if he is too exhausted to bring them all the way to his eyes.

She leads him to Jin Zixuan’s tent down the way, and the servant sees her and bows. They lead them to the meeting room, where Jin Zixuan emerges from the door to his study. He and Lan Xichen greet each other as they take seats, and the servant disappears.

Jin Zixuan wastes little time before asking, “What brings you here, Zewu-Jun? Is something wrong?”

Lan Xichen says, “I received a message from my brother.”

They know. Jin Zixuan looks at Jiang Yanli, and she doesn’t turn her gaze away from Zewu-Jun. As if sensing her gaze, he meets her eyes, and offers a wry smile. She presses her lips together unhappily.

“It must have been extraordinary news,” she says leadingly, “to bring you all the way here.”

“I prefer to speak candidly regarding this matter,” he announces, and then says: “Is this something we should be concerned about?”

“What did your brother mention?” Jin Zixuan asks. He does not look at Jiang Yanli, as if it will all fall apart the moment their eyes meet.

“He was concerned,” Lan Xichen replies, which is not much of an answer at all. “He says that they are displaying concerning behaviors on the battlefield. Demonic cultivation, I do believe he called it.”

“It is a new form of cultivation coined by my brother,” she admits. They do not need to ask which brother would have such an idea. “It is a form of fighting that is winning us large gains.”

“I have come to see it for myself,” he tells them, and her stomach drops. “For my brother to write to me with concerns, I know this is something I must understand.”

“My brothers have not hurt anyone on our side.”

“Raising the dead is a concern,” he tells her, and she flinches. “To access a kind of cultivation that would allow that to be commonplace—”

“While I understand why Zewu-Jun is concerned,” Jin Zixuan says, “I must emphasize their accomplishments on the battlefield, despite the methods used. My father is concerned as well, but they have been invaluable assets.”

“It is inhumane,” Lan Xichen tells them, shedding decorum. “It is unholy to bring the dead back to life like puppets.”

She sits back, surprised by his vehemence. Lan Xichen has always been a gentle, kind man, and she is not used to the frustration. Jin Zixuan’s eyes dart between the two of them, acting as the veritable peacekeeper.

“Zewu-Jun,” she says slowly. “It is my impression that we would like to win this war. My brothers, I believe, are the key to that.”

“Can we be sure they will not stray from the best path in order to do so?” he demands. “Can we be sure they have not already?”

“We cannot,” she confirms softly, and sighs. Jin Zixaun sits back, as if he is surprised to hear her admission. “My brothers have taken a path none of us have ever seen before—I will not pretend that isn’t true. But their method is working, and we cannot know the long-term effects until we observe them for ourselves. I think it is unfair for my brothers’ sense of control to assume that they are not able to decide that for themselves.”

Lan Xichen sighs, but does not immediately argue. He closes his eyes and clasps his hands on the table as if he is praying. She understands—her brothers are doing something they have never known. The unknown is always a frightening, otherworldly prospect.

But she can do little else but believe in them, so she admits softly, “They scare me, too, at times. Their abilities are something I do not always agree with. But that does not mean they have not accomplished incredible things, and that they are miraculously alive despite the odds. I can only believe them when they say they are alright, and they have not shown any behaviors to make me think otherwise.”

He sighs again but admits, “My brother is coming from a place of genuine concern. I would like to see it for myself, but this is not a trial, Jiang-zongzhu.”

She does not tell him that he will not like what he sees. “I will stand behind them, if the need arises. Please keep that in mind, Lan-zongzhu.”

“I hope it will not come down to that,” he says, but bows his head in understanding. He is here in a formal capacity as a sect leader, and these are the games they must play. Her brothers have done something dangerous, and it is her cross to bear.

She knows she will bear it, too. She will do whatever it takes to keep her brothers at her side now that they have returned, no matter their shape or choices. She knows Lan Xichen is not enough to keep them apart, and she thinks he understands—he is an elder sibling as well, after all. 

Jiang Yanli knows her sect should come first, but she is simply human. She will protect her brothers with her last breath, the same way she always has. She imagines, if Lan Xichen’s sad smile tells her anything, that he knows what that feels like.

They live in a political, unkind world. Jiang Yanli knows this will ask much of her, in the years to come. She knows, of all the battles, this is one she will happily fight.

Lan Xichen spreads his hands. “Let us both hope this is something we will never have to discuss again, Jiang-zongzhu.”

She knows this will not be the last time they discuss this, but she smiles as if it will be. She offers him tea as if they have not been arguing with two lives on the line. She offers to ask for dinner as if this is not a turning point in this war, one she feels down to her bones and her teeth.

Jiang Yanli has long learned what she will fight for.

~*~*~*~*~*~

She finds Wei Wuxian that night, whistling as he paces camp, and asks him to come with her. He follows happily, unsuspecting, and obliges when she asks to braid his hair. It’s only when she is sectioning out the strands, when he is at her feet and at her mercy, that she whispers, “There are people worried for you.”

She feels his spine straighten against her legs. She continues braiding.

“That is their business,” he counters, but he sounds tired. As if this is something he has already fought for a thousand times before. She scratches his scalp, and he relaxes slightly, familiarity settling into their bones.

She can’t count the amount of times they talked like this, her hands braiding and his voice soft. It is a tradition of sorts, something familiar to the times where, when they looked out at the world, they saw lotus lakes instead of the canvas of her tent. Whenever one of them needs to be honest, they do it like this, where they cannot see each other but they can understand each other nonetheless.

She whispers, “They are starting to ask me if you two are truly in control. If you are something to be afraid of.”

“I’m sorry we have become Shijie’s problem.”

“I will happily shoulder it,” she tells him, “as long as you are both honest with me in return.”

He sighs and sets his head back on her knees, curling his up toward his chest. “It is different, and it is darker. It is not something we would have done if we didn’t have any other choice. But I do not regret the choices we have made, Shijie. We have made it back and we are of use to your army. There is little more I can ask for.”

“I am sad for what you have lost.”

“I am too,” he whispers. “I will mourn it for the rest of my life. But the darkness is not something to be afraid of, Shijie. It is just something we do not understand.”

“I worry for you. For both of you.”

“We are okay,” he says, and then sighs. “We are doing the best we can with what we have. Right now, we are focused on winning the war. We want to win back Lotus Pier and return home. We want to follow Shijie to the ends of the earth and make the Jiang Sect back into what it once was.”

“I am more worried,” she says kindly, “for my little brothers.”

“We are okay,” Wei Wuxian assures her again, but she doesn’t believe him the second time either.

She loops his hair together, turning it into tiny braids that twirl into a crown on his head, like a prince in a fairy tale. “I will do what I can from a Sect Leader standpoint but, as a sister, I cannot help but to be afraid for you. I know only time can tell, but I am worried that you are both on a dangerous path where I cannot follow.”

“You cannot,” he agrees softly, “but we know what we are doing. There is an anchor to our humanity, and we will not be so quick as to let it go. There is nothing the shadows can offer us that would be better than what we have here on the ground.”

“I do not want the sects to vilify you.”

“They will,” he says, and laughs bitterly. “They will use us as weapons while we fight their war, but they will fear us when it is all over, when there is nothing else left to be afraid of.”

“I won’t let them.”

“Shijie,” he says seriously, tilting his head up to look at her. “If it comes between keeping the sect alive and us—”

“I will choose my family,” she says soundly, “the same way my parents chose to protect their family in their final moments, and the same way the two of you will protect me. Yes?”

He takes a breath through his nose and then must admit, “Fine. And we will—whatever it takes.”

She runs a hand through the tails of his hair. She knows. She has always known, and perhaps that is part of why their loss had been so devastating, so lonely. She knew that the two people who would stand by her against everything were gone, and she would always have to stand against the world on her own.

But they are back, and she is not alone. She has gathered enough power around herself to protect her brothers, and she is not afraid to use it. She knows what it will take to win this war of politics, for better or for worse.

“Do not listen to the opinions of a Lan,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, eyes sliding closed. “Pig-headed, sanctimonious little brats, if you ask me.”

She taps him on the nose. “They are allies.”

“They are brats,” he argues, “who need to keep their noses out of my business.”

She laughs, because he is just so silly. The world might see the danger in his actions but she sees her little brother in moments like these, where his guard is down and he knows he does not need to be a threat. It is moments like these that make her certain that she does not need to be afraid of them, that she knows she will know when it is time to step in and save them from themselves.

She finishes his braid and nudges him to stand, dragging him to the looking glass in her room. She holds it toward him with a grin and says, “I will do what I can for the both of you, A-Xian. I only ask that you are honest with me.”

“Of course,” he says, grinning. He bows to her, to the reflection he will not look into, and says, “We are okay.”

She knows better than to push him, so she lets him go back to his tent. But she knows there was a lie in his smile, in the quietness of his eyes. She knows her brother as well as she knows herself, and she knows this will not be the end of her worries.

She can only let them go, and hope.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The news arrives: Nie Mingjue is missing in action.

An ambush, they say in hurried whispers, eyes flickering around to make sure there is no one around to overhear. The warrior was caught in a simple moment of weakness and taken beyond enemy lines. The Nie faction is waiting for any sign of their leader’s head to be displayed on the horizon. The Nie sect is worried that they will have to crown Nie Huaisang their leader.

She watches this news churn through camp, turning faces grave and uncertain. She watches it sink into Lan Xichen like a blade, his oldest friend gone without a trace. She watches it eat him alive until he arrives one night at Jin Zixuan’s tent and excuses himself from the front. 

He bows to her, and she bows back. She knows it is not as real as it once was, that both of them are waiting for the knife to gleam before it sinks into their backs.

“Jiang-zongzhu,” he asks softly, “have you given it consideration?”

She knows what she is asking. She knows how to answer.

“I will stand with my brothers,” she tells him, because there is no other option. She does not understand their power but she will not condemn them. She will not destroy something, someone, simply because they do not understand.

He smiles wryly and replies, “I hope that will not be a mistake.”

And, as quickly as he arrived, he is gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The news arrives: Wen Ruohan is dead.

Nie Mingjue survived his capture, rescued by Meng Yao. The bastard, the whispers say, of the Jin clan. The bastard who killed the tyrant, the whispers say a little louder, because it is something to be marvelled. Something to be celebrated and respected.

The Wen attacks on their front slowly begin to fall apart. Her brothers lead the charge, the dead heralding the end. She watches at the top of the bluff with Jin Zixuan at her side, the shadows under his eyes a deep violet.

She is busy staring at him one day, studying the new wrinkles around his mouth, when he says, “Well, would you look at that.”

She turns. She watches the slow ascent of a white flag. She watches the Wen soldiers lay down their arms, their faces twisted in fury and shock as if they cannot believe it. She turns to Jin Zixuan, shocked because she cannot believe it either.

He is smiling. It has been a long time since he smiled.

“Finally,” he murmurs, and she breathes again.

~*~*~*~*~*~

And, with a whisper, the war is over.

Chapter Text

Lotus Pier is so empty, and so beautiful.

There is so little of it left. There are ruins still left from the fires, structures that have survived despite the odds. She has not been back since it burned and it is a horrible ache, a terrible reconciliation. She faces the place where her parents died, where her family last had peace, and it is an acute pain in her chest. It is an unfairness that she will simply never understand.

There is so little left. The war is over. There are so many memories and ghosts to grapple with, so it is only natural that they decide to rebuild it the exact way it had once been.

It is, in part, in honor of their parents, of the others who died in the fall, of those who fell on the battlefield to win it back. They will make it into a home they all recognize and loved deeply, a home that was ripped out of their hands until they had nothing left but ashes and memories.

Rebuilding is easier said than done.

They combine their memories, her and her brothers, until Wei Wuxian has sketched every inch of the palace and beyond, every little nook and cranny that they can remember. They add adjustments and small changes, mostly to shift around the residential wing of their home and to add space more conducive to a growing sect. They add new branches to the piers, more places to wander, more room for foot traffic. 

It is painful to travel down those lines of their memories. It scrapes against scars and scabs. They speak of the dead and then trail off, lost. They speak of the way it once was and are forced to imagine if there is a better way.

It is sometimes easier to start over. It is never easier to start over.

Slowly, they build.

Many of the soldiers help. Some have backgrounds and know what they are doing, but others are desperate to keep their minds and hands busy, desperate to find something to do with themselves after the restlessness of the battlefields. There are so many ways to deal with trauma.

Her brothers take over the run of the groundwork, directing crews and getting down into the dirt. 

She picks up the pieces of a broken sect.

There is so much work to do, more than she ever would have imagined. Xu Conghai is a helpful hand, a reliable Elder—he helps her sort out what is left behind, dividing it by importance and educating her on the delicate politics that exist outside of wartime. They order parchment and ink, find Elders to rewrite histories that were lost to the flames. There are old death rolls that were not replaceable but they begin their own now, disciple rolls starting anew.

There is so much to learn. Jiang Yanli had no idea how much needed to be completely remade.

Destruction as a concept had weighed on her heavily, but watching the progress now is daunting. It is heartbreaking as a concept to know her home is gone, but it is another strange pain to watch it slowly come alive again. She thinks of GusuLan, rebuilt to perfection following the raid, and wonders how the cultivators have learned to live with it.

YunmengJiang is rising again, the same as it had once been, and Jiang Yanli was not prepared for how many ghosts it would invite.

There are memories, facsimiles, hidden in the new walls. They are close enough to pass but she sometimes looks at a building and knows the angles are off. It is the same but it will never be the same. It is home, but it is nothing she has ever known.

She swallows back the feeling of drifting on an open sea. She drowns in it when she sleeps, waking up gasping and clinging to the edges of her bed as if she is on a boat out to sea, a storm rising in the swells. She restlessly walks the streets until she is certain she will remember them all next time, if she were to fail and they were to fall again. This time, she knows she will be able to draw it all from memory.

“Trauma,” Zhang Heng tells her one morning, when they are sitting at her new low table in her new office, one of the few finished rooms of the palace. She doesn’t look up from where she is writing, but she senses the scrunch to Jiang Yanli’s nose because she continues, “You don’t have to be a soldier to know it.”

“I know,” she tells her. She does. She fought enough of her own demons during the war.

Zhang Heng turns a page, quill scratching against the parchment. “You weren’t here when your family fell. It is only natural to want to save it—even while considering it a graveyard.”

“It’s my home.”

“And a graveyard.” She finally looks up, dark eyes earnest and kind. She is always kind, even when Jiang Yanli is not sure that she deserves it. “Lotus Pier will always be a place that you could not save. There is no shame in learning how to live with that, as long as you remember that you are stronger now.”

Jiang Yanli hates when she is right, especially because she often is. She has selected the right person for an advisor—her head handmaiden, sworn to keep her on the right path, determined to keep her from falling apart at the seams. Jiang Yanli does not feel like much these days but it is easier knowing that there are people who rely on her to keep going, even if that seems like an impossible, daunting task.

“I will learn to live with it,” she swears. There is no other option.

Zhang Heng nods, and then says, “By the way—can you ask your brother to stop recruiting corpses as entertainment? It’s starting to scare the civilians.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Soon enough, Lotus Pier rises from the ashes, and it is livable again.

The day that people begin to move back in, Jiang Yanli stands at the center of the city to watch the ebb and flow. The crowd pours in like floodwaters at first light, chattering anxiously as if they do not expect to find this place as it once was. She is witness to those who find their homes standing again, the mothers who weep when they find a place to house their children, those who pause to take in the familiar sites as if they cannot believe their eyes. Some of them recognize her as they pass and dip into bows, and she inclines her head back with a smile.

She watches the town come back to life, piece by pieces. Houses reclaimed, business doors flung open to inspect the blank slate inside. Those who live on the outskirts slip into the city as well, loudly exclaiming their surprise at its pristine condition.

At midday, her brothers join her sentinel, one on each side. They watch with her in silence as life bleeds back into this place that was once destroyed beyond recognition, this place that they have all given pieces of themselves into rebuilding.

This place that was once empty but for the building crews is now brimming with cries and laughter. This place that was doomed to fade into obscurity has returned to life, reanimated like one of her brother’s bodies, recalled from the horrors of a past that they can finally move away from.

She puts her head on Jiang Cheng’s shoulder, and Wei Wuxian takes her hand. She breathes in, and it feels like the first breath she has taken in a long time.

“We did it,” she tells them quietly.

Wei Wuxian squeezes her fingers so hard that it hurts. Jiang Cheng leans over and kisses the top of her head, but she can feel the satisfied curve of his shoulders, the relief radiating off of them. They have done something right. They have all done something their parents can be proud of.

The war is over.

It is enough for now.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The work is not over, but it feels easier now that the city is bustling again. Storefronts are occupied, commerce flowing into the city from the outskirt farms and villages. With the flow comes carpenters, who volunteer their time to teach the cultivators how to better their crafts.

Jiang Yanli sits with her brothers and learns how to braid thatched roofs, how to treat the wood meant for pier planks, how to set the foundation for the buildings on solid land.

More than anything, they learn how to talk to each other again. Every day, it gets easier. It feels like a step forward.

It is enough.

~*~*~*~*~*~

They saved their home for last.

It felt right, to only do the pieces that they needed, focusing on the town around them first. It is more personal, more raw, to visit what needs to be built of the home they grew up in. It is a whole new pain, to realize just how much of their memories have been lost to the wind.

The walls come up faster here, with so many hands to help. Architects take the paintings her brother made and turn them into tangible walls and pathways through the water, rebuilding everything inch for inch from the siblings’ memories. It is terrifying, how similar it is. It is bittersweet, how it will never be the same.

She redesigns a bedroom unlike their parents’, one that is on a wing out to the water so she can see the lotuses whenever she wants, where she can linger with the sound of the moving water. She sits at the window on the nights she can’t sleep, and it is a relief that it is nothing like what her room once was. It is a kindness to know she is not sleeping directly on the ashes of her dead parents, in a pavilion that is once what they had known.

Her brothers choose new rooms as well, but those from the original design. Jiang Cheng chooses a space closest to the practice fields, taking ownership in his position as heir once again. Wei Wuxian builds one on another pavilion, closer to the guest quarters, with a sloping roof perfect for the way she catches him sitting out at night, flipping his flute around his fingers, staring up at the night sky.

They save the throne room for last. It is almost like an afterthought, that she even needs one at all. A formality. It is simply a piece of her duty now, though it is the most surreal of them. Jiang Yanli is meant to sit on a throne, and it feels like such a waste to have the space saved for her.

One night, sitting at her desk in an office that now belongs to her, there is a knock at her door. She smiles, knowing it is Wei Wuxian before he even pushes the door open, sticking his head inside with a secretive little grin.

“Shijie,” he says. “We have something to show you.”

She sets aside her writing and stands, tucking the loose hairs back into her braid. “Well, this I must see.”

He leads her through the hallways toward the throne room, where they find her brother waiting for them. They insist on tying her eyes, insisting that they don’t want the surprise to be ruined, and she is so tickled that she allows it. It has been a while since they have looked so excited—who is she to ruin their fun?

Wei Wuxian leads her by the shoulders as Jiang Cheng leads the way. Their footsteps echo in the cavernous space, and she wishes her eyes were open so she could see the frescos her brother painted on the ceiling, lotus flowers and sunny skies and beautiful ivies. She stumbles, and A-Cheng takes her hand, murmuring to be careful.

They stop where she knows the throne must be. Jiang Cheng lets go of her hand, and Wei Wuxian moves around her, telling her to keep her eyes closed. The cloth falls from around her eyes and her middle brother tells her, giddily, “Okay, open them.”

She opens her eyes.

She remembers the throne room well. She often spent her girlhood here, practicing her painting and embroidery at her father’s feet as he held his meetings. She used to race her brothers from the piers to here, the throne as their finish line. Her father used to find their shenanigans funny but she remembers the severe pinch of her mother’s mouth, as if she were trying her hardest not to ruin their fun.

The floors have been made of brilliant sandstone, bleached in the sun and carved with a large lotus in bloom, then finished in a resin to make it smooth. The walls are covered in beautiful commissioned tapestries of purples and greens, depicting their sect’s symbols and the lovely piers they stand on.

And on the dais, where there was once nothing left, sits a throne.

It is a perfect replica of their father’s throne. The lotus blooms spread out along the back but, where they were once made of wood, now they appear to be steel, as if they too have been sharpened by the change in times. The layers are intricately carved, with lines on the pedals and swirls along the edges to give it a realistic, imperfect finish. The seat holds a plush purple cushion, stitched in a rich blue like the lakes in summer. Curtains of purple, green, and gold frame the extraordinary throne, and the fresco behind it is in brilliant lavender and indigo, overlapping lotuses as if the throne itself has come alive.

She puts her hands over her mouth. She is already crying.

“We hope Shijie likes it,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, a little nervously, but he’s smiling. “We thought we would surprise you, since you seemed like you weren’t sure what you wanted.”

“Come on,” Jiang Cheng says, offering her his arm. “Sit.”

She pauses to stare at it again, astonished that this is something for her, and takes his arm. He leads her to the throne, right to the seat, and lowers into a bow like the gentleman he has always been. She touches his hair and he looks up with a crooked grin, stepping away so she can have this moment. Jiang Yanli takes a breath, and sits.

The room is so much bigger from here. So grand and elaborate. It is a throne room, and she is the one who wears the crown.

At the foot of the dais, her brothers dip into deep bows, foreheads against the glittering floor.

“Zongzhu,” they intone reverently. Smiles on their faces.

The tears come heavier this time, but it is not just surprise. It is grief, too, because she should not be the one on the throne. It is sadness, because this is a fate she has been forced into, and she might as well allow herself to mourn for what could have been. It is joy, because her brothers love her so much that they would create something so beautiful in her honor, that they would bow before her and pledge their loyalty to her without a second thought.

She pushes herself from the throne and stumbles down to them, catching them both in her arms. 

She hates herself for ever being afraid of them. She hates the world, and herself, for seeing them as weapons first and boys second. She hates that they will be outrunning their choices for the rest of their lives, always waiting for the next shoe to drop.

She has already put her name in their protection, but she will do more than that. She will die first if they come for them. She will always put herself in front of these boys, her little brothers who have returned to her despite all of the odds. She will make sure they are safe and happy for the rest of their lives because it is the least they deserve. 

Jiang Yanli will protect her family with everything she can. She will build them a world where they can live without persecution. She will protect them from everyone who dares to come for them. She knows they will do the same for her, the way family is always supposed to. The way their family always has.

For now, she just holds them on the floor of the throne room, not thinking of the future or the past—living here, now, and reveling in the love she has found in the places where she has needed it the most.

Jiang Yanli is not afraid.

~*~*~*~*~*~

In the months after the rebuild, a letter arrives.

She reads it first on the throne, presented by a messenger wearing white robes and a forehead ribbon. She reads it again, aloud, to her brothers that night as they eat dinner together around the low table in her room, watching the way their faces change the further she makes it into the summons.

“The Lan clan is always sticking their noses where they don’t belong,” Wei Wuxian mutters when she is finished, and Jiang Cheng simply sighs, defeatism written into his shoulders. Emotionality and reason—always the two extremes of her brothers.

“It’s a summons,” her little brother says, predictably. “There is no other choice.”

“They are of the same station,” Wei Wuxian points out, stabbing his soup spoon at A-Cheng. “She would be within her right to give her excuses. Don’t they know that we are busy down here? We have a sect to rebuild, even if the buildings are standing.”

“It would be impolite to refuse. The Lans are allies, whether you like it or not.”

“Boys,” she scolds, and they turn back to her and out of their argument, in various states of chagrined. She smiles at them. “A-Cheng is right—I cannot refuse this summons. It appears informal, at any rate, though I do not think this is a show of power on Lan-zongzhu’s behalf. The war separated the sect leaders on different fronts, and there is a new Chief Cultivator now. There are many things we must talk about.”

“We’re going with you,” Wei Wuxian decides stubbornly. He’s taken to wearing black robes since their return from the war, as dark as the shadows he sings, but she cannot help but to think that they suit him. His hair ribbon is purple, and he wears his bell at his waist—a tiny allegiance to home for all who know where to look.

She shakes her head. “You will both stay here, where you are needed. I will bring A-Heng and Elder Xu, as I assume there will be many diplomatic meetings to be had.”

A-Cheng looks as if he might argue, and Wei Wuxian is already opening his mouth, but she waves him off with a placating smile. Her brothers want her to be protected, but Jiang Yanli knows there is nowhere safer for her than the Cloud Recesses. She might not know Lan Xichen very well, but she knows he is not an enemy.

“Trust me,” she tells them kindly, running a hand through A-Xian’s hair because he is the closest, and the most bothered. “I can handle myself these days, remember?”

They complain plenty more until it is time for her to set off, and A-Xian only acquiesces when she allows him to add some of his undead to the travel party. They follow at the sides of the procession like regular soldiers, but there is something off about their footfalls. There is something eerie about the way they do not need to breathe, how they sit awake at night when the others rest. Jiang Yanli assumes it will take time to get used to it.

The soldiers fall away when they arrive at the Cloud Recesses, standing guard at the bottom of the mountain. She will have to thank her brother later for acting kindly toward her hosts.

When she arrives at the gates, there is a retinue waiting for her, alerted by the cultivators who watched her scale the mountain stairs. Her legs burn but this is not her first journey, so she smiles through it, bowing and relishing the stretch of the unused muscles.

She expects to be taken to the guest wing first, left to her own devices until the sect leader is ready for her. Instead, she is brought to Lan Xichen.

He’s in the same pavilion as the first meeting, the one that decided the war. It’s in bloom this time of year, with gardenias and lilies dotted along the edges of the pavilion. Inside is calm and quiet, the curtains pulled to let in the fresh air off of the mountains. Lan Xichen is sitting at a low table with Nie Mingjue, and they are speaking quietly when she enters, cups set out in front of them made of jade with spirals of gold.

They look up when she enters, and Lan Xichen stands. Nie Mingjue follows him less than a breath later, dipping his head in respect. She bows to them in return, the skirts of her dress whispering quietly in the breeze.

“I did not expect our meeting to be so urgent, Zewu-Jun, Chifang-Zun,” she greets, smiling so they know she doesn’t mean it reproachfully, because men trust when women smile. “If I knew I was needed, I would have made haste.”

“Nonsense,” Lan Xichen tells her, gesturing for her to join them at the table. “We are merely meeting in a friendly capacity, Jiang-zongzhu.”

She wonders if they are lying, but she knows better than to look for the lies on their faces. She takes her place across the low table, thanking Lan Xichen as he pours her a glass. It is only when she is about to take a sip that she notices the smell, and she pauses.

Nie Mingjue grins. “That carafe is for us.”

“Rules can be overlooked for our guests,” Lan Xichen replies, “though I should have checked to make sure it was to your liking.”

“I have grown up with my brothers,” she reminds them and takes a sip. The wine is soft and smooth, tasting of honey and hibiscus. She wonders if this is one her brother so covets from Caiyi, and she thinks she will stop and get him a few bottles before she finds her way home. “I suppose you meant it when you said informal.”

“We are friends,” Nie Mingjue replies, “as much as we are allies. And I don’t know about you, Jiang-zongzhu, but I am exhausted.”

She smiles, because she is too.

They discuss their rebuilding efforts first. Nie Mingjue’s capital was not touched but the outlying lands did not find mercy, and he has been focusing his efforts in providing them the personnel and materials to rebuild. Lan Xichen has managed to rebuild the Cloud Recesses, and she shares their progress as well, how Lotus Pier is nearly how it once had been. They toast to that, Lan Xichen with his cup of tea and her and Nie Mingjue with something stronger.

It is familiar. The three of them have lived through the same reality on different fronts, all of them living the same horrors and coming out of the other side. She wonders if Nie Mingjue still has the scars from his captivity or if time and cultivation has washed them away. She wonders, this time aloud, if she will stop seeing blood on her hands when she looks down.

“No,” Lan Xichen says grimly, quietly. “You will not.”

“It’s a shame,” she replies, “that wars never end.”

“Not for the ones who fought in them,” Nie Mingjue agrees, and tops up her glass.

They discuss their siblings, too. At first, that is her favorite part.

Nie Mingjue bemoans that his brother has returned to his slovenly habits now that the war is over. Unmotivated, Nie Mingjue says, though he moves on to tell stories of the lovely pieces of art his brother makes for their home, his voice gentling. There is a piece of Jiang Yanli that is happy to know art still exists in this world, that there are still men of the war with the heart to hold it in their hands.

Lan Xichen is not worried for his brother, except:

“I fear my brother has no friends,” he admits sadly. Nie Mingjue nearly chokes on his drink and roars with laughter when he can breathe again.

“Yes,” he replies, “that is what happens when there are three thousand rules—”

“Four thousand,” Lan Xichen corrects, “since my uncle met Wei Wuxian.”

It is Jiang Yanli’s turn to choke.

“Fine, four thousand, and he’s a stickler for all of them. And he’s your brother besides.”

Lan Xichen is insulted. “What’s wrong with me?”

“You’re their sect leader, and venerated to boot. The two of you probably intimidate all the recruits.”

Lan Xichen turns to Jiang Yanli, searching for a supporter, and she cannot help but to giggle into her hands.

“My brothers have had no problems making friends,” she admits, “but they are of a different breed than Hanguang-Jun”

“They’re very different,” Nie Mingjue agrees, and snaps his gaze to Jiang Yanli with a new kind of calculation, the stare of a general. “Your brothers—how are they doing?”

She senses the subtle shift of the air and puts her drink down, curling her hands together on the table. Nie Mingjue notices her change in posture and shifts as well, sitting up straighter with broad shoulders, an intimidation tactic that has likely worked on many men—but she is not one of his men. Lan Xichen glances between the two of them, uncertain, but he does not step in.

“My brothers are fine,” she replies icily. She knows, logically, that it is too defensive of a response. But the alcohol has loosened her tongue and her mind, and she does not like the suspicious glint in Nie Mingjue’s gaze, as if he thinks she is lying. “They have been focused on rebuilding Lotus Pier and recruiting for our sect. They have been their usual selves, and there is no reason for Chifeng-Zun to worry for them.”

“I will anyway,” he says, brow creasing in a deep frown. “The abilities they have adopted—it isn’t natural, Jiang-zongzhu. I know you are not ignorant of its strangeness”

“I can only trust my brothers, and if they say they are fine, then they are fine.”

“Have they continued practicing their demonic cultivation?” Lan Xichen asks. His tone is kind but she sees the same unhappiness in his eyes.

She knows her brothers’ secret, and she knows it is a trusted one. That is nothing she would say now, either, to these men, to matter how much she trusts them. She does not need to tell them sect business, family business. She loves her brothers and she will protect them, and this is simply another piece of it.

“Yes,” she admits, stiffly. “They have also been working on their swordplay, as they always have, and have learned how to build very many things. I am proud of them for their progress from transitioning from soldiers back into my brothers.”

At that, Nie Mingjue’s eyes soften, if only a little. “I am not attacking you, Jiang Yanli. I am concerned for you.”

“Neither of you have to be,” she tells them, though she knows she will not be so easily believed. She never has been. “My brothers may be who and what they are, but they are still my brothers, and I know them better than I know my own heart. I am only concerned how they will recover from the war, as we all are concerned for our brothers.”

Nie Mingjue inclines his head in acknowledgement, though she is certain that is not the end of this conversation. She is certain they will be dodging these questions for the rest of their lives, and she is not afraid.

“They are under my protection,” she announces though, in this room of elder siblings, she knows they do not have a doubt about it. “I only ask that you trust me.”

“We will do what needs to be done,” Nie Mingjue says. It is not agreement.

Lan Xichen puts his hand on his best friend’s arm and assures her, “We are only concerned, Jiang Yanli. This is something we have never seen or known before—it is only natural for us to be cautious. Your brothers were formidable before, but now they are something unlike anything we have ever known.”

“They are my little brothers,” she says as if it is that simple. Even the churning in her stomach knows it is not.

“I know,” he says, and he understands. She can tell by the pain around his eyes that he does. It does not take the sting out of the way he adds, “If there is ever a moment where they lose control—”

“They will not,” she snaps. Her hands curl into the table. She thinks, if she was as strong as the two other men in the room, the table would crack under the pressure of her fingertips. “I know my brothers. They are in control.”

Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue look at each other, a silent conversation. Nie Mingjue is the first to lift his hands in surrender, offering Jiang Yanli an apologetic grin. She does not fully believe it, but she lets her shoulders relax. She forces her hands to let go of the table, to take a deep breath out that sweeps the awkwardness away with it.

“If you are not concerned,” Lan Xichen says, “then I will attempt not to be, either.”

“They are good boys,” she pleads. “They are.”

“We know,” he replies, and even sounds as if he believes it. “We only worry.”

“This is an informal conversation between friends,” Nie Mingjue assures her, “and not sect leaders. If you are willing to stand behind them, I will respect that. But you know you can come to us if you ever need the assistance.”

“I will never condemn my brothers.”

“You will not need to,” Nie Mingjue replies, and she is surprised by how vehemently he means it. He tilts his drink toward her. “I want to believe that this change has not turned them into enemies, though I cannot agree with it. But, if it goes for the worse, we will be there to help.”

“I appreciate that,” she says slowly, but she thinks they all know that she will never call them. 

Lan Xichen smiles. “We are three of a kind, Jiang-zongzhu. We must stick together.”

The conversation moves on, but there is a part of Jiang Yanli that stays behind, transposed onto the walls of this pavilion as if she is the only one who cannot jumpstart her way back to the present. She relaxes again, but only by degrees, and she cannot help but to think about it for the rest of the night—the way Nie Mingjue unconsciously reached for his sword, the way Lan Xichen’s hands curled as if for a fight.

As if they thought her formidable. As if they thought she would fight them if it meant to keep her brothers safe.

It is the greatest kindness they could have ever given her. It is the most worthy friendship she has ever had.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The Cloud Recesses are too quiet.

Jiang Yanli has become used to falling asleep to the sway of the dock, to the lapping of waves against the shores. She is used to the sound of the wind as it whistles softly around the palace, catching in the eaves and fresh as it ruffles her sheets. But the Cloud Recesses is cold, the wind harsher at the top of the world. Her mind is full of everything at the meeting earlier, her heart racing with a newfound friendship and the quiet shimmers of a threat on her brothers. Her head is still light from the wine but she cannot fathom sleeping, not even in such a beautiful place.

Sometime deep in the night, she slips her shoes back on and slides through the door like a ghost.

She wanders quietly through the walkways, the soft sound of the rocks underneath her feet the only company. She grabbed her outer robes before she left and she folds herself in the familiarity of home, breathing in the smell of the ocean air clinging to her lapels.

She finds a clearing as she walks, quiet as the rest of the sect at this time of night. She slips into the grass and onto her knees, tilting her head back so she can see the stars.

They are brighter here, closer. She almost feels as if she can reach out and pluck them from the skies, keep them for herself in a jar or in her pockets, spilling out from between her fingers. Her mouth twitches at her own silliness, a soft laugh at her own selfishness.

Jiang Yanli has had a very long day. She has too much to think about.

She has made incredible friends. She has made formidable enemies.

She sighs. She wonders if she would prefer her life to go back the way it had once been, quiet and uncomplicated, sold off to the highest bidder and promised a soft, sedentary life. She does not think so—Jiang Yanli has known too much since then to know how to settle for peace.

Jiang Yanli is just beginning to relax her shoulders, to consider meditating in this moonlit clearing, when she hears the rustle of robes.

She turns her head. She has not seen Lan Wangji in many months but it is always surprising to remember how much he looks like his brother, though his face is so stony and strict. He bows to her, his moves silent and graceful, and she can’t help but to smile.

He made noise so she knew he was there. What a small, lovely kindness.

“Hanguang-Jun,” she greets, standing. “My apologies.”

“It is against the sect rules to be out this late, Jiang-zongzhu,” he reminds her kindly, folding his hands into his robes. She thinks of Lan Xichen lamenting that his brother is lonely, and she thinks she can see ghosts of it even now, a beautiful boy standing all alone against the backdrop of a nighttime sky.

She bows. “I couldn’t sleep. I hoped I wouldn’t bother anyone, but it seems that I was found.”

“Mn,” he replies, not unkindly. She cannot help but to smile. Somehow, some way, he reminds her of her brothers.

“My brother told me plenty of stories about the strict rules of the Cloud Recesses curfew,” she teases, unable to help herself. “It seems as if he were right about Hanguang-Jun’s supernatural ability to find rulebreakers.”

Lan Wangji pauses, for just a moment, before he hesitantly asks, “How is he?”

“Wei Wuxian is well. Flourishing, even, under the challenge of rebuilding our home.” She pauses, judging the look on his face that is so hard to read. “He is learning to heal at home, as we all are.”

Something loosens in his shoulders and he nods, as if relieved by what he is hearing. A suspicion that has curled in her mind for a very long time takes root.

Hmm. How interesting.

Perhaps, on another night, she would not meddle. She would simply excuse herself and return to her guest quarters, properly chastised. She is feeling mischievous, though, from the wine and from her newfound friendships. She is feeling stronger and stranger than she has in a very long time. So, instead, she turns to Lan Wangji and asks, “Would you like to see for yourself?”

He blinks at her, owlishly. She thinks she sees a hint of something on his face like surprise, like embarrassment. She wants to pinch his cheeks and coo at him. She is not nearly foolish enough to try.

“Come to Lotus Pier,” she tells him, smiling. “As your brother’s liaison, if you must, but mostly because I think my brother would appreciate the sight of a familiar face. Hanguang-Jun can rest assured, and my brother can have the opportunity to show you around our home.”

He is a very hard man to read. For a moment, she thinks he is going to refuse—and then he nods once, abruptly, as if his own head has acted against the will of his brain.

“Perfect,” she says, leaving him no room to take it back as she begins to stride from the clearing. “I will send you an official invitation when the rebuilding is over, but please consider the welcome extended. I think Hanguang-Jun will enjoy Lotus Pier.”

He stares after her, as if stunned. She thinks his mouth is open as if he might argue or take it all back, but he doesn’t make more than a sound. Finally, after a long moment, he bows—reluctant acceptance.

She doesn’t know how her brother feels, but poor Hanguang-Jun’s crush is written all over his face. She wonders how his brother doesn’t see it, if it is the genders of the parties involved that hide it, or if he knows as well as she does. 

It is sweet to know that there is someone who cares for Wei Wuxian outside of his own family. It is so charming to know that it is an honorable, well-intentioned person. 

She bows back, and gives her last excuses before bustling off. She barely makes it until she’s around the corner, just out of sight, before she claps her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

This will be very interesting indeed.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The training fields are ready for disciples.

Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng lead the drills. Jiang Yanli has largely left them in charge of training the disciples, as she has never been through training herself. She does not have the time to stand there all day but she slips away after lunchtime to spy, lingering at the edges and watching as her brother leads them in sword movements, Wei Wuxian shouting them through target practice at the other end.

She knows, numerically, how many disciples they have. It is astonishing to see them like this, all in one place, all working in unison as they practice their cultivation. It is incredible to see how far they have grown, from ashes into phoenixes.

It is borderline insanity to know that there are more disciples still, children dropped off by their families to live in the new dorms, elders who have taken it upon themselves to teach them until they are old enough. There are others who fought in the war and earned other spots among the sects, guards and patrol, archivists and tacticians. There are elders now, when they had long lost the ones they once had trusted and loved, men and women who sit with Jiang Yanli in very many meetings and give their wisdom and guidance.

Jiang Yanli knows, internally, that she has accomplished a great deal. It is a manifestation of this, now, to see it with her own eyes like this. She can barely fathom the volume of it, the intrinsic bones that keep the sect running. She remembers how hard she worked for this, how hard she still works for this, but it is another to see how many people truly rely on her.

It is disarming. It is an incredible honor.

She watches them for a while, Zhang Heng quiet at her side. As they move through their drills, she finds the voice to say, “It is incredible.”

“It is yours,” Zhang Heng reminds her quietly. A rebuke and amusement.

Jiang Yanli sometimes cannot comprehend the scope of everything she has accomplished. Seeing it now is harrowing, but it relieves a pressure inside of her chest. It feels like hard work and skill. It feels like she has made a brilliant impact, even in the moments she has fumbled helplessly in the dark, even in the moments where she could do little else than be her father’s daughter.

She waits to approach until her brother calls for a break, releasing the disciples. Some of them crash directly into the ground, sweating and breathing heavily, while others move automatically toward the water barrels, talking and laughing among themselves. Camaraderie found in the beginning of their new futures.

Her brother sits where he had once been standing, closing his eyes as if to meditate amongst the noise. He must sense her approach, or the shift in the murmurs alert him, because his eyes open as she crosses the field toward him.

Jiang Cheng smiles at her. There is always a part of her that will see him as a little boy, all smiles and too-big feet and a little bit of a brat but always bending over backward to listen and love her. He is a man now, though, grown much taller than her and wider, the stature of a warrior. He still has the same boyish smile, though, right where she knows to look for it. She smiles back, an automatic reaction, and sinks into the grass beside him.

The ground is warm from the sunlight, and she is sure it is likely to stain. She ignores it and runs her hand over the dirt, rubbing it between her fingers. She looks out at the milling soldiers and says, “You seem to be taking to teaching nicely.”

“They’re a good bunch,” he replies, looking toward them as well. “Decent at fighting. Even the worst of them shows a lot of good promise. Soon they’ll be worthy of the robes they wear.”

She rolls her eyes and nudges him in the ribs. “People do not have to earn anything here, A-Cheng.”

“They’ll be standing side by side with soldiers,” he counters, puffing up his chest. “They must learn how to be worthy of it.”

“How is A-Xian doing?” she asks. He is still off to the side at the target range, instructing one of the archers in the best way to stand. As they watch, the disciple pulls back and looses an arrow, thudding into the target at one of the inner circles. The other disciples burst into applause, and Wei Wuxian snorts in laughter.

“You know him,” he replies, because they do. “He’s thriving under the attention. He’s always been good at being the head disciple, so he’s good at being the instructor. A natural progression.”

“He always had such high expectations for himself.”

“Mother had them for him as well,” he reminds her softly, and then sighs, reaching up to rub his face. “Sometimes it’s strange being out here and she’s not. I half expect to turn around and see her standing there, telling me something I’m doing wrong.”

She rubs his back, warm and sweaty in the hot sun. “Something else is bothering you, A-Cheng. Don’t think that Shijie can’t tell.”

“Shijie can tell way too much,” he mutters. “Fine—it’s strange seeing new disciples, sometimes. I can’t help but to think of the war.”

The war lingers in them all, Jiang Yanli has noticed. It is a phantom they cannot exorcise, a ghost they cannot spirit away. They will only outgrow it, but they will never outlive it. The worst of their memories will make a nest inside of them, its size unknown until the memories find them again.

Jiang Yanli understands—she looks at the fresh faces of the disciples and thinks of the soldiers who died holding her hand.

“You watched your friends die,” she murmured, and Jiang Cheng winces. “Or you found out their fates long after, when there was nothing to do to help. Those kinds of things will stay with you. There is nothing we can do but live with it.”

“It is so strange to see their faces next to each other,” her little brother admits quietly. “The war-torn ones and the fresh ones. It is strange to realize how much it changed us. Sometimes I do not recognize my own reflection.”

“We are different, and yet we wear the same bones.”

Jiang Cheng looks at her in relief. “Yes.”

“I did not see the battle, but I saw the aftereffects. I heard the screams and the cries and I watched them die all the same. I hold that with me every day as well, but I cannot let it anchor me in space. I can only move on and experience the life they could not live, and be grateful that I can live in their honor.” She puts her hand on his head, as if he is still the little boy smiling up at her. “It is the least we can do, and the most we can do.”

Jiang Cheng stares at her for a long moment before he hangs his head, a strange smile on his face. When he looks up, it is more chagrined, a little uneasy. “You have changed, too, Shijie.”

“I have,” she agrees. It would be foolish to think she has not. She barely even knows the person she once was, as if she were nothing but a mirage in a dream. “I like to think I am wiser for it—but I refuse to lose my kindness.”

“You have always been the best of us,” Jiang Cheng tells her, and it is a kindness. It is an honor.

She lets her forehead fall onto her little brother’s shoulder and murmurs, “I wake up and hear them screaming. I reach for them and cry when I cannot find them. But if we let it sit inside of us, ignoring it like a dark shroud, it will only learn to fester. The only way to overcome the resentment of the past is to dare to live despite it.”

Jiang Cheng, not a stranger to resentment, breathes out. And then he sets his head on top of hers. 

“It will be a long journey,” he admits after a moment, as if the words rip a small part out of him as they do. He does not admit that he does not know the way forward. He does not have to, because she has seen the torment in her brothers. She has seen the resentment and the ways it manifests on their fingertips.

She pulls back to smile at him. He is still so young. Still so sweet and kind.

“Well,” she says, “it is a good thing we have plenty of time.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jiang-zongzhu,

It has come to my attention that you and your brothers have rebuilt your sect beyond the splendor of what it once was. Please accept my deepest congratulations, and my hopes to see it for myself some day. I write to you now, though, not in an official capacity, but as myself. I cannot help but to miss our dinners and discussions, though I do not much miss the danger and peril. But that is not why I have chosen to write to you.

Much has occurred in Lanling since our last meeting. Some of it you may have heard, but I will tell you again—my brother has been officially recognized as such, and has shed the name of Meng Yao and adopted as Jin Guangyao. He honors our father in doing so, though you can only imagine how much my father cares about such things.

My mother sends you her regards and beseeches you to visit some day soon. I think she misses the female companionship you provided, but mostly she likely misses the way you speak to my father now. I do appreciate how you manage to keep him humble.

I would like you to visit as well, though I know you have your own responsibilities. Perhaps I will carve the time out of my own duties. Please allow me the privilege of knowing when would be the most convenient time for you.

Warm regards,

Jin Zixuan

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jin-gongzi,

I brought up the matter of a visit to Lanling with my brothers, who protested vehemently. When I mentioned your presence here in Lotus Pier, the sentiment was, and I quote, that “we do not have a space big enough for him to place his ego”.

Good thing my brothers are not in charge of these lands, and I am. You are welcome here at any time. In fact, I have reason to believe we will be welcoming guests far more often here, though you’ll need to see it to believe it. I do enjoy a good love story.

Please remind your mother that I learned my words from somewhere. It is not from thin air that I gathered this fighting spirit.

I do miss our debates. My favorite memory was the time you lectured me and I threatened to hit you with the nearby crockery. Your face in that moment was quite memorable, and it almost made me laugh as if I didn’t mean it.

Pardon the rush of this letter. You are correct—I do not have much time these days. However, I do very much mean my invitation for your visit. My brothers worked very hard on the guest quarters.

With all the best,

Jiang Yanli

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jiang-zongzhu,

A love story, you say? Those just happen to be my favorite.

I look forward to seeing you again. I’ll make sure to leave my ego at the door.

Jin Zixuan

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lan Wangji arrives in Lotus Pier on the winds of a soft spring breeze, bringing the soft chill of the mountains with him under the span of an endless blue sky. 

She meets him at the edge of the palace, wearing the soft purple she so very loves, as relaxed as she has ever been. It is a beautiful day, and he is the first of their visitors to this place that they have so lovingly rebuilt. They exchange bows once he dismounts his sword and she thinks that, when he straightens, something has relaxed in his shoulders.

She knows he is not a man of many words but, as he looks around, he says, “It is a beautiful home.”

“Thank you,” she tells him, and bows again, because she knows he means it. “Allow me to guide you, Hanguang-Jun.”

She sweeps him away on a tour, as courtesy must. He has brought a handful of disciples with him, who bow in thanks when she drops them off at their rooms and are dismissed. She shows him the piers and the water, clearer than the waters of Caiyi Town at the bottom of his mountain. This time of year, they can see the fish flitting through the soft ripple of the waves, and Jiang Yanli casts aside her decorum to show Lan Wangji how to catch them, though he does not seem very taken with the skill.

She shows him the places they have rebuilt, the new spots that they have crafted. He doesn’t say much, but there is curiosity in his gaze, a quiet assessment as he takes it all in. She is almost relieved that this is the first Lotus Pier he has ever seen, that he does not have room in his memories to make space for the way things once were.

She saves the training fields for last.

They can hear the swords clashing as they approach, echoing in the peacefulness of the day. The training fields are a small walk from the main palace, but it does not take long before they turn the corner and find it waiting for them, spread out with more room than they had ever once needed, and somehow no longer enough room at all.

There are several practices happening along the field, but the main event is the spar happening at the heart.

Wei Wuxian laughs as he dodges one of his shidis, barely even raising his sword to parry. The shidi whirls around to counter again, but Wei Wuxian dances out of the way with fleet footwork, twisting his sword in his hand as if he doesn’t even need it to win. The shidi attacks and they clash, only for the shidi to stumble back. Wei Wuxian laughs again, carefree, as he hovers back another few steps, his smile big and eager.

She glances over at Lan Wangji and finds him transfixed. She sees something in his expression that he knows he will want to have hidden, so she doesn’t point it out, but she knows what yearning looks like. She knows what it feels like, how it burrows deeply into a heart and takes root. She will not tease this man for holding her brother deep in his chest, somewhere nothing terrible can touch him.

She still smiles, though, as she murmurs, “He does not need his sword much anymore, but he is fantastic at teaching them. It has been very good for him, I think, to have that companionship again.”

“I am glad to see it,” Lan Wangji responds. He says so much in so little. She wonders if the world has trouble understanding him, but she does not. Even so, he says, “I worried your brothers would take the wrong path.”

“Perhaps at first,” she allows, because the young men she knows now were not the same as those from the early days of camp, where the darkness still held them tight, where their cruelty outweighed their humanity. “They have improved a lot in the last several months. Healing, as we all have been.”

“Yes,” he says. He does not need to say more.

She takes his arm again and squeezes his arm, feeling the tension there relax as his eyes follow Wei Wuxian as he spars, as he remembers again how to smile and laugh and live. “I do not fear them or for them anymore,” she tells him softly, little more than a whisper. When he looks down at her, she offers a smile. “I know I am there to remind them who they are, and to guide them away from the shadows and back into the light. As their sister, and as their sect leader. They will not walk a dark and twisted path as long as I live, Lan Wangji. Of that, I can swear to you.”

“I believe you,” he says, looking back to Wei Wuxian. “I trust he will save himself, as well.”

It is a lofty promise from a man like Lan Wangji. It is an incredible insight, from a man who so loves her brother.

She squeezes his arm again and lets go. “That is all I have wanted to hear, Hanguang-Jun.”

Wei Wuxian finally stops playing games with the shidi and disarms him, letting the sword flip haphazardly before he plucks it out of the air, bowing as if he had just put on a show. The shidis applaud and laugh, and Wei Wuxian straightens with a boyish grin, at home in his skin more than he had been so many months ago, freshly returned to life, a darkness in his eyes hungering for death.

“A-Xian,” she calls over the cheers, and he manages to hear her voice as always. His head snaps around to find her and he grins again when he does, before his expression falls in surprise at who is standing beside her. He hands the swords to a nearby shidi and cuts through the crowd toward them, shaking off the pats on the back as he goes.

Once he is close enough he cries out, “Hanguang-Jun! How dare you come all the way here without warning me? It’s not good for my heart to look up and see such a splendid visage watching me across the field!”

“Ridiculous,” Lan Wangji says as if this is his lot in life.

Wei Wuxian laughs again, loud and bright, before turning to Jiang Yanli. “You didn’t warn me he was coming to Lotus Pier, either, Shijie.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” she tells him innocently. “I know the two of you are friends.”

“Only the best for Hanguang-Jun,” he professes, and shoots a grin at Lan Wangji. “How do you like the new palace, Lan Zhan? I put very many hours into making those piers, you know. My own blood is probably on those planks of wood. It’s a lot harder to nail those together than I thought it would be.”

“Mm,” he says. “It is a beautiful home.”

He tries to play it off, but Jiang Yanli sees the blush crawling up her brother’s neck. “Good! I’m glad all of my work wasn’t for nothing, if it can impress the resplendent Hanguang-Jun.”

“A-Xian,” she interrupts, amused, and his blush darkens just slightly as if he had completely forgotten she was here. “I have quite a few things to do—would you mind showing Lan Wangji around town? He has told me that he has never been, and I am sure he would like to hear about some of our favorite places.”

He immediately brightens and shoots a fairly evil grin toward Lan Wangji, though he tries very hard to play it off as angelic. “Hanguang-Jun, I will show you all of the most scandalous places. I’ll make even your snowcapped face flush. The Cloud Recesses could never dream of the hospitality of Lotus Pier. Leave it all to me, Shijie!”

She needs not say another word before Wei Wuxian grabs Lan Wangji and carts him away immediately, as if making sure Lan Wangji doesn’t have the time to protest. She watches them go, amused as her brother practically hangs off of his arm despite being about the same height. She raises her sleeve to hide her grin, watching them go with a warm feeling in her chest.

She senses the presence beside her before he speaks, but she would know the familiarity of him even in the dark, even in death. “Shijie,” her little brother sighs, “why would you do that to poor Lan Wangji? That moron is going to take him to horrible places in the name of our great sect.”

“Oh, let him go,” she chastises him, laughing. “I haven’t seen him have that much fun in weeks.”

Jiang Cheng sighs heavily, as if dealing with Wei Wuxian every day is the greatest burden of his existence. “Since when have you become a matchmaker?”

“Everyone needs a hobby,” she tells him, leaning her head on his shoulder. He leans to the side to put his head on top of hers, both of them watching as their brother disappears into the distance. “I think they’d be good for each other. Do you see it?”

“I see something,” he replies sardonically, but she knows he doesn’t mean it. Jiang Cheng might not understand all of the way, but she knows he loves their brother. He will accept everything Wei Wuxian loves, no matter the price.

She taps him on the nose, and he mumbles his unhappiness before slinking back to leading the shidis’ exercises. She turns back to where her brother and Lan Wangji have now disappeared into the distance and rubs at the spot over her heart, swallowing past the gentle disquiet lodged somewhere behind her sternum every time she considers her future, and what she wants most.

Love stories are her favorite, too.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jinlintai is much the same as how she left it.

Jin Zixuan meets them himself as they approach the edges of the city, smiling real enough that it shows the dimples on his cheeks. Her brothers stand on either side of her and do not seem very amused, but she ignores them and accepts his arm when he offers it, letting him guide them through the familiar path up to the tower. He takes them on the long route, as visitors do, and they bask in the splendor of the great sect.

It is sickening now, knowing what they know. It is ostentatious and out of touch. Jiang Yanli meets Jin Zixuan’s eyes and he sighs quietly, knowing just the same as she does, and she cannot help but to grin in agreement.

They are offered a grand guest quarters with very many rooms, decorated with fine dyed silks and vases blooming in the springtime air. Jiang Cheng takes one step into the suite and sneezes, so many of the arrangements end up on the front steps, a riot of color as if they had bloomed underfoot.

The Discussion Conference begins the next night.

It is Jiang Yanli’s first, at least from an official standpoint. Jin Guangshan did not elaborate why they were invited, but she knows him enough to warrant a guess—it is because he can, and because he would like to show off the wealth of his sect. She is seated closest to the main table, across from Nie Mingjue, who meets her eyes during Jin Guangshan’s welcoming speech and makes a face that nearly makes her choke on her tea. When she meets eyes with Lan Xichen a short time later, next to Nie Mingjue’s party, he widens his eyes as if asking for help.

It is nice to have allies and friends in such an unlikely place. Jiang Yanli is grateful that they have invited her into the fold, that she has found such companionship in such unlikely, unbelievable places.

It is routine and unexciting—until Jin Guangshan mentions the hostages.

He is in full form tonight, dripping in splendor and speaking loudly, keeping the wine poured. Jin Zixuan is sitting quietly beside him, looking for all the world like he is imagining he is somewhere else, and even Madam Jin’s impatience is showing on her face. Jiang Yanli has made a habit to patiently nod at whatever he says, quietly sipping at her wine and picking at her food, letting the great leader speak himself into circles. Even her brothers, sitting at either side of her and one step back, mutter to each other about escaping at their earliest convenience.

“—spoils of war, as some say,” Jin Guangshan is telling Nie Mingjue when she tunes back in. “I simply have no idea what to do with them and was hoping for Chifeng-Zun’s assistance in the matter.”

Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow. His brother beside him hides his face in his fan, watching carefully. “What would I possibly be able to assist the Chief Cultivator with?”

“Well,” Jin Guangshan says, “there are just far too many prisoners.”

Jiang Yanli, in surprise, lets her drink hit the table far too hard.

“Soldiers?” Lan Xichen asks, surprised. They have all been under the impression that the soldiers have been dealt with, or otherwise exiled as penance. The news of prisoners at Jinlintai is unexpected.

Jin Guangshan sighs. “No, no—the civilians.”

Wei Wuxian, who has been largely silent for the whole production, exclaims, “Why would the Chief Cultivator be imprisoning civilians?”

“Wens,” he says, as if that is at all an explanation. “They are largely clans who lived on the outskirts, but too close to the fighting. What if they were going to cause problems for our war efforts? So they were brought here. But now that the war is long gone, I don’t know what to do with them.”

The civilians of the Wen empire were largely left to their own devices, for those who did not have any connection to the war. They exist as they once did, but cultivation is largely banned for now while they all decide what the best course of action is. Jiang Yanli is struck speechless at the idea of prisoners, civilians, being stuck in confinement in the long months since the war ended. It has been nearly a year.

One glance beside her confirms Wei Wuxian is just as astonished as she is. Jiang Cheng is silent, his face neutral, but she sees the surprise in his eyes. It is almost a knife in her heart to see that he is not nearly as concerned as they are.

Nie Mingjue’s face is carefully neutral. She fears she knows what he thinks, as well. “If they do not hold any useful information, there is no need to keep them locked away.”

“You’re right. Perhaps we’ll use them as target practice.” He laughs.

And the laugh cuts short as Wei Wuxian vaults to his feet, shadows twisting around his hands, pooling around his feet. His hand twitches for his flute. Nie Mingjue’s hand, in turn, reaches for his saber.

She’s on her feet before she can think to stand, snapping, “That is enough.”

The room goes silent. She has nary spoken a word tonight, letting the men speak pleasantries and nonsense in her stead, but she has had enough. Rage curls her fists, lightning flashing up and down her arms. Her table still stands between herself and these men, but she feels limitless as the whole room cuts into silence, every eye snapping toward her in surprise.

It bubbles up in her to scream, to rage. She manages instead to speak through her teeth. “I did not appreciate that joke, Chief Cultivator.”

Jin Guangshan is no longer jovial. His tone could freeze fire as he replies, “It was not a joke, Jiang-zongzhu. What use is there for a Wen?”

“You have said yourself that these are not soldiers.”

“They lost the right to their lives the moment they were brought into our war. They cannot be trusted.”

“Why? Because their last name is Wen?”

“They are people,” Wei Wuxian snaps, unable to control himself any longer. He stares down Jin Guangshan, fearless and strong, not at all nervous that he is facing down the leader of their world. “They are not prisoners—they are hostages.”

“I do not see what difference a word makes,” Jin Guangshan counters monstrously. His wife sits silently at his side, but her mouth is pinched as if she is trying not to speak. His eldest son sits at his side, and he is observing as if he has nothing to say at all.

Jiang Yanli had witnessed much of what people are prepared to do in times of war. She had met many of the prisoners of war, people who spit on her and those who apologized quietly for their wounds, as if they were embarrassed to have found themselves injured on the wrong side. She has seen the wounds on the soldiers who fell and she has seen the blood of those who made it through the night. She knows that war is inhuman and monstrous.

But Jiang Yanli is not a monster.

She has fallen into familiar prejudices, familiar fears. They lived under the heavy hand of a dictator for many years, a man who was not afraid to flourish the power he held over their heads. She bowed down to him because she was afraid. She will not bow down to another dictator in a different sect’s colors.

“People are people,” she agrees with her brother. She surprises herself with how calmly the words come out when all she wants is to scream. “They have done nothing wrong, and I will not see them punished for trying to live their lives in wartime.”

“Then what will you see for them, Jiang-zongzhu?” Jin Guangshan snaps, a condescending smile on his lips. He leans back and grabs his jar of wine, lifting it up in a toast. “It seems to me that the Jiang Sect has volunteered to take my problem off of my hands.”

“Yes,” she says. “I will accept them as refugees.”

This catches them all off guard, though she does not know what other solution they could have possibly seen. She doesn't know what kind of person they could have ever thought she would be, if not for this one.

She looks at Wei Wuxian, whose shoulders are relaxing by degrees. “A-Xian, please go to the Wen camp and gather a list of names and occupations. Let them know that we will match them as well as we can in Lotus Pier, but they may be forced to start anew. We will give them everything we can.”

“Yes, Shijie,” he says, and bows. It is deeper than it usually is, reverential in a way that shows he really means it. She wants to reach out and rub her hand through his hair, just to mess it up.

Jin Guangshan stands. His face is turning red, but he has made a grave error in assuming she would stand down. Jiang Yanli is not afraid of this man, powerful though he may be. She smiles at him innocently, as if she doesn’t understand. The way he seems to want women to be. His face twists in fury before smoothing back out again.

“Hm,” he says. “Jiang-zongzhu will be liable for their actions, then, from tonight onward. Let us hope the Jiang Sect is prepared in case their intentions are not as kind as she seems to believe.”

“They do not deserve to be treated like animals,” she tells them, tucking her hands back into her sleeves. Her nails bite crescents into her palms. “I will accept responsibility.”

Jin Zixuan watches her, expression unreadable.

“Then there is nothing more to say,” he tells her, and sits again. He is still red from his anger, but he is smiling as if he was never angry at all. He turns to the nearest servant, who springs forward to fill his glass, hands shaking.

Jiang Yanli follows suit, slowly lowering herself back into her cushion, ignoring the pressing gazes she can feel biting into her skin from all around the room.

Jin Guangshan, the only one in the room who did not participate in the war, calls them back to order. It never goes back to the way it was.

~*~*~*~*~*~

She is standing in the moonlight when Jin Zixuan finds her. He is still wearing his clothes from that night, though he is rumpled as if he has been busy. He leans against the wall several strides away from her, and she can tell by his silence that he is not happy. She ignores him as best as she can, bundling up in her coat and waiting for the fallout.

Finally, he murmurs, “That was a dangerous decision.”

“I am not afraid of refugees.”

“That is only part of it,” he argues, turning to look at her. It is a beautiful night, and the wind ruffles his hair. She thinks he is beautiful like this, exhaustion lining his eyes, bathed in the starlight of a clear sky. “The Wens are unpredictable. My father, even more so.”

She turns to him, mirroring the way he has squared his shoulders, the way he has positioned his feet into a fighting stance. “The Wens are civilians being kept in a prisoner of war camp like soldiers. I will not sit by and let them languish in their ancestors’ mistakes, whether they are complicit or not. They do not deserve to be treated like animals.”

“They are fed and watered. There are tents. They are not corralled in a cell.”

“It is not much like living, is it? You cannot pretend like what we did on the front was living, and it was in much the same circumstances. Was it not?”

He is quiet, eyeing her. It is too dark to see the emotion in his eyes, his brows tight. She wants to touch the place between them where they furrow, where his frown pulls deep crescents into his face. She wants to fight with lightning and fire, wants to scream until she is deemed as crazy as she feels sometimes, like the rest of the world is moving backward as she does everything in her power to trudge forward.

“We do not know what they are capable of,” he finally admits, his voice quiet. “We do not know if they are actually civilians. It is impossible to know what they truly know of the war effort and if they were actually there to sabotage us. You are willing to risk letting the enemy into your front gates?”

“There is no way of knowing if they are guilty, and thus I will prove that they are innocent. Even horrible people may find their consciousness when presented with a second chance.”

Jin Zixuan stares at her for a while, and then shakes his head. “You believe too much in the good of people, Jiang Yanli. I can only be afraid that your kindness will be taken advantage of.”

“I would rather be kind than cruel.”

“I am not trying to be cruel. You have only just rebuilt your sect—I do not want to see it destroyed again, this time with you in the ashes.”

“We are not so weak as to see that fate again,” she replies, but her breath catches in her chest. “My brother is the best of us at reading the hearts of people—if he looks at them and sees civilians, I will trust him with everything I have. I do not believe people are inherently bad, and so I will be kind. It is the least I can do, in a world that would see them chained.”

“You may attract more of them. The Wens.”

“And we will welcome them with open arms, as they deserve.”

He runs a hand over his face, and laughs softly to himself. It is frustrated, mirthless. She waits, knowing that this man has more to say. Knowing that this man does not agree with her, and not knowing where in the world that leaves the two of them.

He tilts his head back and murmurs, “Fine. I know I have been acting out of spite. I know that makes me a bad person, or at very least a worse person. I cannot consider a world where a Wen is not my enemy. I do not know how to look at one and not think of my dead friends, bodies trampled on the battlefield. I am not made of the kindness that you are, Jiang-zongzhu, to know how to forgive them.”

“I do not forget,” she whispers, “but I forgive. And these people are innocent.”

“I hope they are, or I have hated them for nothing. That is almost worse to reconcile, I think.”

“It should be,” she tells him, mercilessly. “We cannot lean into our trauma to guide us the rest of our way. We must learn how to live despite it, and honor it—but move on.”

He nods, slowly, and finally cracks a smile that he means. “You have matured very much in the last years, Jiang-zongzhu. It has been an incredible honor to know you.”

She smiles back, tired, weighed down by the new lives she shoulders, by the ones she has lost. She turns back to the sky, tilting her head back up so she can trace the constellations and think of all of the stories they tell, of all the unknown places they could lead her. “It is not always easy, but it is the better way to live. I would rather be guided by kindness than with hatred. I cannot live with the mindset of never forgiving the things and people I don’t understand.”

“Your brothers,” he guesses correctly, stepping closer. He is close enough now that she feels his body heat in the space between them. “You were never afraid of them, I don’t think, not like the rest were.”

“Are you?”

“Not anymore. I trust you, Jiang Yanli. If you believe them to still be guided by goodness, I will believe it as well.”

“You are allowed to think for yourself. Your feelings are still valid.”

“They are,” he accepts, “but I am allowed to change, am I not? I can learn how to see my flaws, though it might take me a while—I have my father’s voice in my head, and my father’s legacy at my heels. It will take me longer to catch up with you. But I am determined to do just that, and I am fascinated in seeing the world through your eyes.”

Jiang Yanli feels her cheeks heat, and she is grateful for the moonfall, for the little quiet place they have carved out for themselves in this mystical moment. “I do not rule with the eyes of an heir. I think that is a large part of it.”

“It is your heart,” he disagrees, “and your mother’s strength.”

She laughs. It sounds choked, wet. Emotion clinging to the back of her throat. “I do my best to honor my parents. I think this is what they would want.”

“I admire that, and I can admit when I am wrong. I am sorry to have contributed to their suffering. I know they will find a better, happier home in your sect. I will believe the best in them because I know that is what they deserve, and I will try to be better going forward.”

“Good,” she says, “because I will not forgive you again.”

He smiles. “You do not need to forget, either.”

“I will not.”

He laughs, turning back to the sky. He reaches a hand up and gently traces a constellation, stars burning in his eyes. Jiang Yanli has not known a love so limitless until now; she has not known how strongly it shines, how bright it glows.

She whispers, “You have changed too. Years ago, you would have never admitted you were wrong. You would have let those people die as targets and you would have never thought you’d done anything wrong.”

“I like to think I am different,” he admits softly, a little shyly. “You have influenced me very much, Jiang-zongzhu. Jiang Yanli.”

She knows there is more to say. She does not forgive him, but she knows she will, because it is not so easy to unravel the abusive, horrible words that he has known his entire life. She will never forget but she knows that she is accepting a risk she has not truly calculated, but she knows she would make the same decision again and again. She would always stand up from that table. She would always turn to her brother and know he is one step behind her, ready to do the right thing.

Jiang Yanli has changed very much in the passing years, and Jin Zixuan has as well. He is nearly unrecognizable from the proud man she was once betrothed to, the one who would have laughed at others’ suffering and looked down from the war from his golden home. He is not the same man, and perhaps that is where she can find forgiveness—in learning, and in unlearning. 

Jin Zixuan is not a perfect man. She is glad to know him anyway.

They trace the stars in silence. The air is soft and quiet and, later, she will think it tastes like hope. Like a new beginning.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Two days later, she meets Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue at the top of the world.

They are already waiting when she arrives, a common sight when it comes to the two of them. They are leaning over the edge of Jinlintai, looking out at the vast spread of land beyond them until it feels like they will be able to see the end of the world. She joins them quietly, finding her place easily at their sides, and they do not have to look at her for her to know she is acknowledged. She traces the horizon with the tip of her finger, thinking of starlight and quiet, ever-changing hearts.

“Jin-zongzhu is still angry,” Lan Xichen tells her. “It has been wise to avoid him.”

“I am not avoiding him at all,” she argues, frowning. “I have been busy preparing the arrangements for the Wen tribe to join us in Lotus Pier. My brother is nervous about leaving them, so he will be staying behind until they are ready to depart. There is much to consider, between transportation and housing.”

“If you need help,” Nie Mingjue says slowly, “we will be there.”

Jiang Yanli understands their concern. She has seen it on so many faces, even her littlest brother, and she knows now that it is not always judgement. Sometimes it is concern, misguided as it might be, but well-intentioned all the same.

She sets her chin on her hands, looking out into the sprawling blue sky, squinting as if she may see all the way home. “During the war, many of my own people were refugees. The survivors of Lotus Pier had nowhere to go, and it is only the welcoming culture of Yunmeng that kept them from being vilified. I can only offer these people the same kindness that my own people were offered. A karmic balance, if you will.”

Nie Mingjue sighs and shakes his head, but his smile is fond. He knows there is no talking her out of this. He knows her heart is too big, her mind too wild. Jiang Yanli will not live by the constrictive walls the other sects have made for themselves, and she will begin with forgiveness.

She admits, just for the three of them, “I know this sort of thinking is what killed my parents. But I also know that, if they were to do it all over again, my father would still choose to help people. I can only honor him by doing the same, to whatever end.”

“I think that is noble of you,” Lan Xichen says, surprising her. He smiles. “I think, if they were to find a kind fate for themselves anywhere, it would be in Yunmeng. Of all of us, in humanitarianism and in empathy, you by far have us beaten, Jiang-zongzhu.”

“Perhaps I am a fool,” she says, and Nie Mingjue snorts.

“Better a fool than a coward,” he tells her, kindly. “Jin Guangshan is always a man who will live in fear of his own shadow, trying desperately to outrace his inevitable end. He is not a man to be trusted or revered.”

“You speak of treason, Chifeng-Zun.”

“I will do what needs to be done for my people,” he tells her, “but I know who the Chief Cultivator is. I can only hope karma finds him before his own demons do.”

Lan Xichen sighs and shrugs away from the wall. “Can we stop speaking in treason, please? This is supposed to be a Discussion Conference to bring us together.”

Jiang Yanli laughs, and Nie Mingjue huffs indignantly but says little else. She smiles, tilting her head back toward the sky, and she is thankful to be where she is. She is thankful for this sect, and for her friends. She is thankful for her choices and all the unexpected places that it will take her.

“It will be a heavy process, though,” she admits. “Getting the Wen refugees settled, and finding them new occupations. It is a large project to put my brother in charge of when he already has so many other duties. I worry that I will overwhelm him.”

“Hm,” Nie Mingjue says, amused. “There’s only one way to fix that.”

He shares a knowing look with Lan Xichen, who smirks. He folds his hands and says, with a complete air of innocent dignity, “On behalf of the Lan clan, I do know of someone who is available to assist. He has even been to Lotus Pier recently, and knows your brother well besides.”

Jiang Yanli understands, and is immediately amused that they know too. Her mouth twitches into a smirk but her voice is humble and airy when she says, “That would be incredible insurance from the Lan Sect, Lan-zongzhu. It is within my duty to humbly accept and to offer our visitor the warmest of welcomes to my sect.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes glimmer with mirth. He winks at Jiang Yanli and she grins back. It is nice to be a little mischievous. It is nice to have a friend.

“Then it’s settled,” Nie Mingjue says, and laughs. “Oh, this will be interesting.”

“I’m having visions of red,” she jokes, and Lan Xichen huffs out a loud, barking laugh.

“My brother will not know what hit him.”

“I dare to say, Zewu-Jun,” she tells him mischievously, “that he already doesn’t.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

When they return to Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian immediately gets to work settling in the refugees, making sure that they have the bare basics of what they need. Many civilians in the city offer their own homes for their new residents, opening their hearts and minds. Wei Wuxian offers them stipends for food, and half of them don’t even bother to accept.

Lan Wangji arrives a week later, and he throws himself into his own duties. Together, Wei Wucian and Lan Wangji find most of the men professions around the city, or apprenticeships in their various trades. Some of the younger men and women volunteer themselves for the sect as disciples, and are assigned dorms and welcomed kindly, if cautiously.

Jiang Cheng warms up, shedding his prejudices as time passes. He volunteers some of the time, but he has much to worry about on his own, the heir to a great sect once again. After a few weeks, she finally sees him smile at one of the Wens as he passes them, and she feels something in her chest relax.

She watches it all fall into place—the acceptance of her people, the rebuilding of her sect, even the futures of her little brothers. It is starting to make sense again. It is starting to feel, achingly and lovingly, like hope.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The ancestral hall is rebuilt in the same blueprint as it once was. There is only so much they are able to fix it into what it once was but they try their best, and they add the tablets of their mother and father to the hallowed halls. That is where she finds herself now, wreathed in the darkness of a beautiful summer night, breathing in hope and moonlight and every warmth in her chest.

She prostrates before her parents’ tablets. She straightens up only when she feels it is right, when the wind ruffles her hair and she is certain she can hear her father’s laugh. She bites back tears, always hating this part—when their loss feels real.

Jiang Yanli, ever the loyal daughter, visits them once a week. She is surprised that it does, indeed, get easier.

“I do not have much to say,” she admits to her parents, hanging her head. “We have been doing well here. The world is changing little by little, and I am pleased with the way it is moving. The refugees are settling in one by one, and our people have been so loving and welcoming. There is nothing I can complain of—not in this world where I feel so loved.

“I only wish you could see it,” she tells them, smiling. “I do not know if every decision I have made is the right one, but I can only trust my own judgement. I can only hope that I understand my own heart. I can only do what you have taught me and trust that it is the best way forward.”

She bows again, deeply. “We miss you very much. There is so much that I have done that I know you could have done better. But I hope to continue your legacy. I hope to lead with hope, and never let fear and hatred guide my heart.”

There is no answer, of course. They will never be able to answer. But she sees little pieces of them everywhere—in the lotus blooms on the lake, in the gusts of wind that tear through her hair. She sees her mother in the thunderstorms in the summer, in the heat lightning that dances through the sky on the warm nights.

She smiles softly, because her parents are everywhere—in her brothers’ love and her love in return, in the throne room, in the waves and in their hearts. She knows they were not perfect but they were hers. 

It is sad to live without them. She knows she never would have grown to be who she is with them.

She prostrates one more time before she whispers, “You don’t have to worry about us. I have it all under control.”

She does, and she doesn’t. She cannot know if Lan Wangji’s feelings will be returned, or if it brings a rift between their sects that will never again be repaired. She cannot know if Jiang Cheng will ever find happiness. She cannot know if she will find it, either, in this world that changes so unpredictably.

She thinks that is the best part of life—not knowing. She doesn’t know. It will all be an adventure. Isn’t that simply the best part?

She stands and departs the hall. She swears she can feel her father’s hands on her back. She promises she can feel her mother’s electricity in her hands.

It is a beautiful legacy. Jiang Yanli cannot wait to see where she takes them next.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jiang Yanli watches quietly as the disciples run through the last of their drills. It is deep into the summer months and they are dripping with sweat in the misery of midday, but they move uniformly all the same. Her brother is at the front of the group, barking orders in a voice that travels. They follow unerringly, swift sword strikes and diligent practice.

Her brother calls for a break, and she emerges from the shade. He smiles when he sees her, dipping into a bow with the rest of the recruits. She crosses the fields toward him, and he offers her an arm for her to twist around, her favorite way to talk to her little brother.

“We have dinner later,” she reminds him, and he groans.

“I have never missed a dinner,” he grumbles. “I don’t know why you always feel the need to remind me.”

“An excuse to see you,” she admits, “but also, we have a guest.”

He sighs but says little else, which is an improvement. She laughs and pats his arm patiently, which he takes with as much grace as he is willing to allow.

“Best behavior,” she reminds him.

He rolls his eyes, and she reaches up to tap his nose. He lets her go and she strides back across the field, waving hello to the familiar faces of the recruits, ones she has taken great pains to know their names. Zhang Heng meets her at the edge of the field, patiently waiting despite the exasperation of her expression.

“There is a missive from Chifeng-Zun,” she reminds her as they begin to walk, “and an order from Elder Xu regarding the bridges—”

“Yes, yes,” she agrees, and leads the way back to her office.

Lotus Pier is a hub of activity as they pass through, markets bustling and her people happy. She smiles at everyone who bows on their way past, her heart warm that so many people love her as a leader, so pleased that she cannot distinguish between the faces of the Wens she has accepted beyond those from the prison camp.

The shadow of war is banished, as much as it ever will be. Jiang Yanli looks around at her people and does not see desperation, starvation. She looks at her people and sees a beginning. She looks around at everything she has built and sees a lovely conclusion.

She is proud of everything they have built, and everything they have continued to build.

She signs what she needs to sign and writes no less than eight letters to various nearby sects and allies, assuring their worries or verifying what is correct, and by the time she is done, her wrist aches. Zhang Heng frees her with promises to fetch her if she is needed, and Jiang Yanli immediately flees to her favorite pier.

She finds Jin Zixuan there.

He wears the gold of his sect, but he looks at home as he leans over the railing, resting his chin on his arms as he watches the bob and sway of the lotus blooms. It has been a long time coming but he has finally made his way back to her—to Lotus Pier—and she pauses halfway up the swaying pier, astonished at how well he fits among the lotuses and swells, astonished at how it fits him better than a gilded tower.

She makes sure to make noise with her feet so he will turn and see her coming, and she wishes she could bottle his smile like seawater, like shells and seaweed and everything else people covet from the ocean. 

He smiles when he sees her, and waits until she joins him at the railing. She leans over it in the same pose as him, and he smiles again. He is more free here, like he can finally let loose a true breath. She thinks he is better this way—free in the summer breeze, happy in the creeping heat.

“I apologize for being a poor host,” she tells him, “to keep you out here with little else to do.”

“This has been good for me,” he argues with a smile. There are dimples in his checks, and a slightly hysterical part of her wants to touch them. “It’s nice to get out here and see the progress you have made for yourself. It is incredible, Jiang-zongzhu. You should be proud of everything you have done here.”

“I am,” she admits because she is above ducking her head at the incredible praise, at pretending like the kind things she does are not for her to be proud of. She settles into the pier so close to him that her sleeve brushes against hers, and she smiles.

“Have you heard from Jinlintai?”

“From my brother,” he says, and it is obviously awkward on his tongue, a word he is not used to yet. “Everything is standard and quiet.”

“How is he faring?”

“Well, as far as I can tell. He is not from my world but he is better for it, clever and wise. I think he will be able to guide us into a better future for the Jin Sect, and for that I am grateful.”

“Positive change is good change, especially if your father is not receptive.” 

“No,” he agrees, “but he is often outnumbered. That makes it easier.”

“It happens in pieces,” she reminds him for not the first time. 

He smiles. He truly is brighter than the sun here, freer than the breeze. She can only imagine, secretly, how beautiful he would look in purple. “I know I’ve already said it, but I cannot emphasize enough how impressive Lotus Pier is. You not only brought it back from ruin, but you gave it a new life. A new spirit. It takes my breath away.”

Jiang Yanli feels her cheeks burn. A part of her wants to slap her hands over them, but she knows by the twist of his smile that she has already been caught. She hangs her head with a smile, but turns it toward the water, tilting her head up to catch the wind in her hair.

“I have put a piece of my soul into this place. I am glad Jin-gongzi finds it impressive.”

His smile widens. He takes a step toward her but she dances away, because this is a game she has learned how to play too, somewhere between the war games and the rebuilding, somewhere between the end and the beginning. He laughs as she dodges him and she hears it up to the sky. She drinks it in like her favorite song.

She looks over her shoulder as she strides away, finds him watching her, and calls, “Aren’t you coming?”

“Dinner,” he replies obediently, and laughs again as he picks up his pace, letting her lead the way. She thinks she can get used to that.

The dining room is a few piers away, in a wild courtyard of ivy and water lilies. It is decorated in blues and purples, the epitome of her home, silk swaths of cloth and curtains, a wooden table made from her brothers’ own hands. Jin Zixuan catches up to her at the threshold, and offers her another relaxed smile.

The smile quickly drops when he moves the curtain aside for her, and they discover what awaits them inside.

Wei Wuxian springs away from Lan Wangji like a startled cat, reaching up to put a hand over his lips as if they don’t know exactly what they have walked in on. Lan Wangji is stony-faced as always, but she knows now to look for the blush at the tips of his ears, a quiet tell. For a moment, they just stare at each other, speechless.

And then, Jin Zixuan sighs. “Again?”

“Yesterday was definitely just a spirited debate,” Wei Wuxian snaps, “with our faces close together. We all know Hanguang-Jun speaks quietly.”

“You know that we have eyes, right? And functional brains, besides.”

“My Shijie is the smartest woman in the world,” Wei Wuxian immediately agrees, before adding, “I am not sure you have a brain at all, though.”

Jin Zixuan would have, in the past, argued. As it is, as the days have passed, he just rolls his eyes and lets Jiang Yanli lead the way to the table. It is already set with their best dishware, a gift from one of the Wen refugees with incredible talent. She takes her seat and Jin Zixuan sits in the spot beside her, across from the guilty parties.

She aims her finger at her brother when he opens his mouth to say more, and he shuts it immediately. She knows her smile underscores her stern tone when she reminds him, “You have rooms in this palace, A-Xian. Use them.”

“Yes, Shijie,” he says earnestly, though they both know this will happen again.

She can’t help but to shake her head with a laugh. Her brothers will always be predictable, tiny troublemakers with hearts bigger than their chests can carry. She cannot be angry when her brother’s joy is so abundant, contagious. 

Wei Wuxian’s cheeks are still pink, but he turns to Jin Zixuan with a sneer and asks, “What were you doing alone with my Shijie? I thought we talked about this yesterday, peacock.”

“Is your memory so poor?” Jin Zixuan snaps right back, falling into the trap with ease. “Your sister is precisely the one who reminded you to mind your own business—”

“I will not sit back and let you sully my sister’s image—”

“I have not—”

“—all the while strutting around like a big, goofy bird—”

“I only see you three times a day, and it is on request of—”

She tunes them out, used to their bickering. It has been mere days since Jin Zixuan’s arrival but every meal has been the same, and Jiang Yanli cannot even pretend to hate it. She pours herself a bowl of wine, meeting Lan Wangji’s gaze across the table with an amused grin. He rolls his eyes a little, exasperated, and she bites back her laughter.

Jiang Cheng slips into the dining room right on time, shooting her an apologetic smile. He sinks into the seat next to Wei Wuxian and immediately joins in on the argument he was not even present for the beginning of, catching the rhythm and enjoying any opportunity to make fun of Jin Zixuan.

She puts her hand on her palm and watches her family with a fond, soft smile.

They are a table of warriors and dreamers. They are a family of persistence and kindness, of broken hearts and mended smiles. They are a patchwork of peace and chaos, of people who dared to believe in the impossible and grab it with both hands. She has found a collection of lovely souls and hallowed hearts, loyal and fearless and warmhearted.

She watches them bicker as the table is set, a warm meal and sweet wine, a beautiful night and all of her favorite people in the entire world. Jiang Yanli takes a sip of her wine and smiles into her cup.

It has been a long, unrelenting road. It is only right that they have finally found the peace they have so fought for. It is only fate that they have finally found themselves here, their fates forged in fire and cooled in contentment.

Jiang Yanli has fought tooth and nail for this wonderful future. She is so glad that they have finally found it.

The past is unchanging. The future is unpredictable. But there is always this, and Jiang Yanli will hold onto it with both hands. She will keep it close to her chest and let it grow until she cannot contain it anymore, until it is too big to keep for herself. She will love until she feels like she will explode from it.

She takes in the warmth of her family, the happiness she has found, and she cannot wait to see the world they create.