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When Vein first found Xia Fei beaten and bruised in the forest, he still wore starlight in his hair and dawn’s first stretch of daylight in his eyes despite being in the maw of the Underworld. A child blessed by the heavens, some celestial body deboned from a named constellation and forced into dirt — a fallen deity. A fallen prince, Vein learns when he feels Xia Fei’s heart underneath his palms for the first time, and it sounded so very tasty.
Vengeance, hatred, sorrow, guilt. Such dark things for a beautiful boy donned in golden splendor, born for greatness. What an interesting thing. Something foreign and delectable — something akin to delight — simmers beneath Vein’s scales.
“So you want revenge,” Vein tells him in more of a statement, a fact, than an assumption. He looks down at Xia Fei in his lap, and Xia Fei looks back at him, obstinate, determined, confident. Sired from regality; meant for the crown.
“I want them to suffer,” he says, low, in a voice born to command. “For what they’ve done to me.”
And yet, nothing in Xia Fei has it in itself to make anyone suffer. For Xia Fei, Vein observes, is born kind, as are most humans. Kind to a fault, imperfect as he is emotional. And herein lies his weakness: the inability to be cruel.
Vein sees how he hesitates when trying to take his first kill of an assassin sent for his head — the pause in his limbs, the slowness from a delayed waiting, the abrupt halt to the curve of his blade cleaving through quiet air — still human, still empathetic, still soft. So Vein wears the color red for him instead, smiles at him all pretty and bloody and takes Xia Fei’s trembling chin with his claws. He remembers this part clearly, because there was such life and something close to awe in those golden eyes that Vein momentarily forgot he was a creature of nature.
“Are you scared, sunshine?” Vein asks, smudging a lovely scarlet over Xia Fei’s cheekbone in false blush. He drags his talon in a crimson streak down the curve of Xia Fei’s jaw, the bump of his throat, the dip of his clavicles. Almost puncturing skin. And then, stopping right over it. Right over the flushed skin exposed by his parted neckline dipping low. Right over his beating heart. And, oh, how it hiccups so wonderfully underneath Vein’s hand that he is so, so tempted to seize it from the little prince before him and devour it, red and pulsing like a star’s own collapse into itself. “If you’re scared, I could help take it from you.”
He expects Xia Fei to flee this time. Run with Vein’s shadow at his heels and terror locked within every joint as prey does from a trap. But Xia Fei stands before him like the silence before war, closes in, and offers himself. Human and whole and entire. Every tendon and sinew and bone. Presses into Vein like Vein had already possessed him from the beginning.
“Take it,” Xia Fei says. There’s no waver to his voice, just as there’s no waver to his heart. Truthful, honest; pure. Vein’s claw twitches. “You can have it.”
Vein doesn’t take it, no, because it would be such a tragic waste of vitality and youth if he coveted it from the world by his teeth. He doesn’t take Xia Fei’s heart, no. Instead, he seats Xia Fei on the throne of his ancestors, and makes him wear gold.
He places the emperor’s crown on Xia Fei’s head with his own two hands, watching as the cold metal catches the light and traps it in its luster with a perverted desire. Jagged aureate icicles plucked from the sun’s rays adorning a prince meant for the throne. A beautiful boy donned in golden splendor, born for greatness, finally where he belongs. Vein grins.
Before Xia Fei kneels the traitors who’d driven him from the kingdom and made him taste the bitterness of desperation. Vein stands idly at the side of Xia Fei’s throne, awaiting orders. Because if all it takes for Xia Fei to be crowned is for Vein to wear red, then Vein would bathe himself with all its hues.
“Kill them.”
Vein lunges.