Chapter Text
Wei Wuxian hears a rhythmic sort of thumping that has to be his body hitting the rocks. It doesn’t match the dull ache spreading out from his bones, but he’s disappointed that pain is something he can feel at all now that he’s dead. He’d thought that was one of the things he’d be able to leave behind.
Maybe he just hasn’t earned a pain free afterlife. He can’t fault the universe there.
“Lady Mo! Oh, er, I meant Jin! Lady Jin! We have breakfast!”
What?
Why does he need breakfast now that he’s dead?
Softly enough that he almost can’t make it out, a different voice says, “Why are you bothering? Just go in, it’s not like she ever answers.”
He’s aware of a heat and softness that doesn’t match falling off a cliff and he opens his eyes to see a room with more gold than should exist in one place. The only pleasant gold in it is the warm sunshine streaming in through the open window.
He bolts upright just as the door opens and two servants each holding a tray enter. They freeze, meeting his gaze and then awkwardly standing there before going into a shallow bow and shuffling forward. He continues staring at them, not understanding what’s going on, where he is or what’s happening or why they’re here.
They start setting up the various dishes. His stomach clenches in hunger, another familiar pain.
“Is she slow?” whispers the first girl.
The other one glances at him. “Probably just crazy. Serves him right, if you ask me. He’s walked around like he’s better than everyone else for years. Getting stuck with Mo Xuanyu for a wife serves him right.”
She frowns, glancing at him again. “But what about her?”
“Who cares?” the second servant scoffs. “She’ll live in more luxury than we’ll ever see. Don’t waste time thinking about her. Worry about yourself.” She shoots Wei Wuxian a glare then stomps off.
The other girl lingers, going into a short bow and meeting his eyes apologetically. “Let me know if you need anything, okay, Lady M-Jin? Don’t take her too seriously.”
It’s not until she’s backed out and shut the door behind her that Wei Wuxian says, “Wait, are you talking about me?”
He slaps his hand over his mouth, blinking. He’s done a lot of questionable things to his body throughout the years and has heard his voice in varying levels of exhaustion and pain and joy.
But it’s never sounded like this!
He pushes himself upright, or tries to, but his left forearm throbs and refuses to cooperate and his legs get tangled in the sheets and he has to wrestle them off, but the relief is short lived. His calves are pale and thin and they had been starving in the Burial Mounds, but he doesn’t think they’d gotten this small. He’d definitely had some muscle on there that seems to be missing. He scrambles to his feet, swaying dangerously as a wave of dizziness crashes through him, but he manages to stumble over to the polished mirror in the corner of the room and freezes.
His calves are the least of his concerns.
He sticks out his tongue and the girl in the mirror does the same. He tilts his head and she tilts her head. He waves and she waves back.
Huh.
At least he’s cute.
He’s a lot shorter than he’s used to, and skinny to the point that he’s pretty sure that whoever this girl is – Lady Mo? Lady Jin? Mo Xuanyu? – she hasn’t eaten properly in a long time. Her skin is pale and her eyes and hair are both a dark grey, just a couple shades off of being black. She’s got a nice face, an angled jaw and full lips, although the dark circles underneath her large eyes probably mean she’s sleeping about as well as she’s eating. He pulls the robe tight against himself, revealing the soft curves of hips and chest, both of which are ample enough, even when half-starved, that she probably sent seamstresses in angry muttering.
None of which explains what he’s doing in her body instead of being dead.
Wei Wuxian looks around the room, which based on them calling him Lady Jin and the level of garishness, has to be in Jin Tower. It’s all tacky and boring and tells him nothing. He goes rifling through the wardrobe, which yields nothing besides a bunch of robes that would have benefited from being saved from the embroiderer before they resembled sitting cushions.
He trips on the edge of the bed and curses, hopping twice to regain his balance now that his center of gravity is significantly lower than he’s used to. He goes to kick it back in place, but peeking out from the edge is the dark brown of dried blood streaked against the floor.
Just what he’d been looking for.
He pushes the bed carefully, shoving the bedding out of the way as he attempts to not mess up any of the sigils that have been left there. He steps back, walking around the array. Most of it is legible and what isn’t, he can fill in for himself.
It’s his work, after all. Although he hadn’t ever considered using demonic cultivation to do this. Maybe he should have. Giving up his body would have been easier than having his golden core removed.
Okay, now he knows what she did. But he doesn’t know why she did it. There has to be some sort of binding agent, some anchor or some sort of directive keeping him tethered to a body he doesn’t belong in –
He stares at his throbbing left arm and slowly reaches out to pull up his sleeve.
It’s almost unremarkable, except for the cut a hands width long across the center of his inner forearm. It’s red and irritated, looking like a half healed blow from a sword that she was too slow to block. He presses his right hand against it and flinches back, pain burning up his arm and the faint sulpher scent of demonic cultivation clinging to his fingers.
It’s a curse mark.
This is what’s anchoring his soul to her body and when it’s complete then he’ll return to whatever afterlife he’d been pulled from. He wonders if after death there’s really nothing, or if it’s just something that he can’t remember while on the plane of the living.
There’s another option. The curse mark could grow, could weaken and corrupt her body until it can’t support a soul any longer. When her body dies, the connection between it and his soul will be severed. Whichever goes first doesn’t really matter. Either way, he’ll die again. But Mo Xuanyu died for a reason, killed herself for a reason, and he should probably at least attempt to complete the task she summoned him to do.
Unless it’s something like slaughtering a whole bloodline or starting a war or something. Unfortunately, that’s probably exactly what it is, because he can’t imagine someone summoning the Yiling Patriarch and dying for anything less.
He continues snooping through the room and thinks he’s finally going to get some answers when he finds a slim journal tucked at the edge of the bookcase with runes that match the ones painted on the floor. He flips through it, looking for something helpful like a hit list, but instead it’s just the array that summoned him, over and over again with slight variations, until landing on the one she’d used. Nothing personal, no names, no tales of heartache or vengeance.
It does contain one thing of use.
Dates.
He lightly brushes his thumb over the numbers, trying not to smudge the ink.
It’s been thirteen years.
He’s been dead for thirteen years. It had felt like nothing, just moments between death and waking in Mo Xaunyu’s body, but instead it’s been over ten years of moments that he’s been dead for.
Just then his legs feel as weak as they look and he slowly sinks to the ground, the enormity of it all hitting him just then. He thought it was over and maybe it was, for thirteen years, but if his soul got any rest in that time, he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t feel like it did. Now he’s here, in Jin Tower, where the worst thing that ever happened to him occurred and where he died and he has to help this girl do something that she couldn’t even be bothered to tell him about. By the way the servants were talking, Mo Xuanyu is engaged, about to be married off to someone important and rich. He knows a lot of important and rich people are terrible, but surely that’s not worth killing herself over. Running away could have gotten her out of the marriage just as well and if she’s good enough to summon him, she’s good enough to be a wandering cultivator. So why do this, why summon him, why put him in a position where he has to live in the world he’s already left?
Well. He doesn’t have to. He could run and just wait for the mark to take him. He could slit his wrists so Mo Xuanyu’s body is as dead as her soul and he can return to whatever he was pulled from.
But she must have been so scared, so desperate, to give up everything for someone like him. It would be cruel to not even try to help her, and while he’s been accused of cruelty often enough, it’s never something he wanted. His cruelty was all forced upon him through circumstance rather than something he sought out and chose for himself. He doesn’t want to start now.
He's so tired.
There’s a knock at his door and he’s scrambling upright, grabbing the edge of the bed and yanking it back over the array and then stuffing her journal underneath it, haphazardly throwing pillows and blankets back into place so it doesn’t look too suspicious.
“Lady Jin?” He goes completely still. He’s not even sure he’s breathing. “Can I come in?”
A pillow falls from his numb fingers. It can’t be. It’s been so long, but it doesn’t feel that way to him, and his stupid, stupid brain is playing tricks on him.
The door is pushed open and he has to be dead, because she’s right here in front of him, except he can’t be dead because she’s right in front of him. He wouldn’t be lucky enough to end up by her side after everything he’s done.
“Lady Jin,” Jiang Yanli says, smiling at him with a polite kindness that makes his eyes burn. She’s older. He never thought he’d see her get older. “Your fiancé and his delegation have arrived and they’ve invited you to get breakfast with them. I know you’ve already eaten,” her eyes shift towards the plates, which are completely untouched, and her eyebrows briefly dip together. She always hated when he didn’t eat. “Well, this is cold anyway. The kitchens are preparing something hot for our guests.”
He opens his mouth to say – something, he doesn’t know, but instead what comes out is a sob.
He saw her die. She died in front of him, after taking the blow that meant for him, and without his elder sister who had always loved and protected him there had seemed nothing good left in the world, nothing good enough to outweigh her loss.
And now she’s here, in front of him, alive even though he was so sure that he saw her die.
He slaps his hand over his mouth to try and muffle the sounds, but he can’t help it, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks and his breath hitching in his chest.
Mo Xuanyu has given him the chance to see his sister again.
He has to help her now.
“Lady Jin!” Jiang Yanli rushes forward, hesitating when she reaches him. They don’t know each other here, of course, and he tries to get himself under control before Jiang Yanli is just as convinced of his madness as the servants were. She puts a hand on his shoulder as he takes what should be deep, steadying breathes, but keep breaking halfway through his inhale. Jiang Yanli’s grip tightens and then she’s pulling him forward and into her, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.
He crumples, pressing his face into her and breathing in her familiar scent. It’s really her. She smells like home. She rubs a soothing hand down his back, just like she used to do when he was a child, and it calms him now just like it did back then. “S-sorry,” he stutters, but still doesn’t let go of her.
“It’s alright,” she says, low and soothing. “I know that this has to be scary for you. It’s all happened so quickly, you’ve only been here a week, and – this isn’t how I wanted this to happen, I hope you know, but I didn’t have any say in it.”
“It’s okay,” he says, even though he doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. She’s here. Everything is okay.
“It’s not,” she says firmly. “But it will be, I promise. I know you’ve heard terrible things about him, that there are so many rumors about him, but they’re not true. Lan Wangji is a good man.”
Now he’s even more confused. Why would anyone think that Lan Zhan isn’t a good man? And what does he have to do with anything?
“He’ll be good to you,” she continues. “I’ve known him since we were kids. You don’t have to be scared.”
Wei Wuxian blinks once, then twice, the pieces slowly sliding together.
Mo – Jin? – Xuanyu is engaged. To Lan Zhan.
And since he’s in her body, he’s now engaged to Lan Zhan.
“Come to breakfast,” she says encouragingly. “I’ll help you get dressed and then we’ll go together, okay? It won’t be so bad once you’ve met him.”
“Okay,” he says faintly, mind racing even as he lets Jiang Yanli lead him over to the wardrobe.
What mess has Mo Xuanyu gotten him into?
~
Lan Wangji does not want to get married.
He has only loved one person in his life and the idea of bowing to another is repulsive to him.
“You don’t have to do this,” Xichen says, shifting uncomfortably next to him. “There’s still time. It was always intended for me.”
However, standing there and watching his brother marry someone he doesn’t not love would be an even worse sort of pain.
They’ve discussed this before, at length, so Lan Wangji just presses his lips together and shakes his head.
Jin Guangshan will not ruin his brother’s life with his schemes if Lan Wangji can prevent it.
They hadn’t been greeted by Jin Guangyao for the first time in over a decade, probably by order of Madame Jin, who seems convinced he and Xichen would do something dishonorable, like elope. Lan Wangji thinks it would serve them all right, after they’ve spent months negotiating the alliance and marriage contract between the Lan and Jin, one that was supposed to end with Xichen married to the man he loves, was to end with Jin Guangyao finally escaping Jin Tower for good.
Instead Jin Guangshan had hastily legitimized his bastard daughter – one of many, Lan Wangji assumes – and offered her for the marriage instead of Jin Guangyao.
Lan Wangji doesn’t know exactly why Jin Guangshan got cold feet about letting Jin Guangyao go and he doesn’t care. He will not allow this marriage to turn into something that keeps Jin Guangyao and Xichen apart more than they already are.
The door slides open and in walks Jiang Yanli. He inclines his head to her and she offers him a tight smile that he doesn’t take personally.
She’d been just as upset over this as he was. She’d argued against it, but her influence is limited, and hadn’t done anything to sway Sect Leader and Madame Jin.
After her steps in the woman he’s agreed to marry, Jin Xuanyu.
She’s young.
Not terribly young, not inappropriately young, but closer to his son’s age than his own. She has on the many gold and ivory robes of the Jin, but she shifts uncomfortably, as if not used to their weight.
She reminds him of a calligraphy brush. Skinny and pale and her hair and eyes the muted grey of a brush head nearly out of ink.
Her hand goes to her hip before she bows to them, arms outstretched, as if she’s used to reaching for a sword. The marriage wouldn’t be an acceptable match if she wasn’t a cultivator, which may have been why she was chosen over Jin Guangshan’s other bastards, but if she’s not even carrying a sword then her skills have to be mediocre at best. She looks so weak that he doubts she could do much damage with any sort of blade.
Not that it matters. This marriage isn’t about compatibility.
“Lady Jin,” Xichen says, bowing, “it’s wonderful to finally meet you.”
A bit of an exaggeration, considering a couple weeks ago they hadn’t even known she existed. Lan Wangji mirrors his brother, waiting.
“Um, yes, same,” she says, biting her bottom lip. If nothing else, her voice isn’t unpleasant. “You can just call me - uh. Just Xuanyu is fine. Please.”
Her nose is scrunched in distaste. From the nervousness of her tone, he’d expect her to be fidgeting or shifting her weight, but she’s standing tall, almost improperly.
Jiang Yanli’s frown deepens as Lan Wangji is reminded that they might not have known she existed a two weeks ago, but two weeks ago she didn’t know that she was going to be legitimized and forced into an arranged marriage. She doesn’t seem especially pleased about it.
At least they have something in common.
“Lady Xuanyu,” Xichen says. She rolls her eyes at the title, which Lan Wangji decides he doesn’t find endearing. “I’m Lan Xichen. This is my brother, Wangji.”
Xuanyu’s gaze flickers in his direction before quickly returning to Xichen. “Hi. Um, nice to meet you too.”
There’s a beat of almost awkward silence before Jiang Yanli says, “Why don’t we eat? I’m sure you’re all starving.”
Xuanyu automatically turns to Jiang Yanli, offering her arm to help her down to her knees even though Xuanyu is the skinnier one between them. Jiang Yanli’s expression shifts minutely, softening even further as she gracefully takes Xuanyu’s arm and lowers herself to her seat.
In contrast, Xuanyu falls in a mess of limbs, one knee propped up with her arm balanced on her knee, flicking her hair out of her face like a horsetail swatting away a fly. A moment later she seems to realize her impropriety and she jerks into a more proper seat, pale skin flushing as she rubs her nose with the edge of her thumb.
Lan Wangji can’t breathe. His chest expands and contracts, but it seems like he can’t get any air in his lungs.
It’s just because Wei Ying is on his mind even more than usual. She’s just sitting and trying to cover her blush. He’s being ridiculous.
“Excuse me,” he says, forcing his voice to stay even. “I’m tired from the journey and would like to rest.”
“Wangji,” Xichen starts, but Lan Wangji ignores him as he stands, briefly bowing to them before sweeping out of the room.
He’s not exactly sure where they’re staying – he’s used to Jin Guangyao handling those details – but maybe a walk in the gardens will clear his head.
Part of him regrets walking out on Xuanyu so soon after meeting her, but the rest of him can’t bring himself to care.
They’re going to spend the rest of their lives together, regardless of what either of them thinks about it. And if he spends that time seeing the ghost of Wei Ying in his wife’s actions, it will drive him mad where all else failed.
Wei Ying was the man he loved.
Xuanyu is just the woman he’s going to marry.
He does himself no favors by attempting to compare them.
~
Lan Xichen wants to go after his brother, but he doesn’t want to make an even worse impression on his soon to be sister in law.
He shifts his apprehensive gaze onto her, expecting anger and offense and indignation, but instead she just raises an eyebrow and asks, “Something I said?”
That pulls a smile out of him and Jiang Yanli’s face relaxes from the carefully neutral position she’d been keeping it. He inclines his head. “Apologies, Lady Xuanyu. It was a tiring journey.”
By the flat look she sends him, she knows he’s lying, but she just says, “Yeah, of course, don’t worry about it.”
She’s instantly more at ease now that Wangji is gone. Perhaps she’s just extra nervous around the man that’s to be her husband. Or she could sense Wangji’s reluctance and disinterest in the proceedings and took it as a personal judgement rather than a situational one. He starts uncovering dishes, glad now that servants are all waiting outside the room so that they missed the particulars of the last couple minutes, although seeing Wangji leave the room so early will generate plenty of rumors on its own. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Lady Xuanyu?”
She winces, like he’s asked her something terrible. Maybe he has. A-Yao’s experience as Jin Guangshan’s bastard had been far from pleasant. He should have thought of that before speaking. Before he can change the subject, she says, like an accusation and with her eyes narrowed, “I thought there was no speaking during meal times.”
Jiang Yanli raises her sleeve to cover her smile and Lan Xichen doesn’t bother. Another thing that he should have remembered is that survival doesn’t tend to breed docility. “We are not in Cloud Recesses, Lady Xuanyu. You may speak freely.”
“Oh.” She takes a large gulp of her tea like she’s swallowing something more bracing. “There’s not much to say. I’ve lived a boring life. What about you, Lan Xi - er, Clan Leader Lan? Tell me about yourself.”
“I’ve lived a boring life too,” he says, straight faced. The Mo family may have kept her isolated, but unless they kept her locked in the basement, she knows better than to believe him.
Jiang Yanli lifts her gaze to the ceiling.
Xuanyu grins, large and lopsided and improper. “Well, it’s nice that we have something in common. Tell me about Cloud Recesses. Or is that boring too?”
“I suppose it would depend on who you ask,” he says, a small well of delight beginning to settle within him that’s tempered by the wariness he can’t quite shake.
They had absolutely no expectations for the person shoehorned into this marriage at the last second. A-Yao had told him to be careful of Mo Xuanyu. He’d said that their father had taken an unusual interest in her, that despite showing promise as a cultivator, she’d been thrown from the tower for no reason he’d been able to find.
Jin Guangshan’s interest had only piqued after that.
Lan Xichen pushes that thought aside and instead starts describing Gusu, the way the seasons pass through the land and the cities and towns surrounding Cloud Recesses and finally the place and people she’s marrying into. He’s talking about the disciples back home when her expression sharpens and she interrupts him. “Nephew?”
He stares, confused, running back what he’d just said through his head. Ah, he had been talking about Sizhui.
“Yes,” he says, suddenly uncertain. “Wangji’s son.”
Her eyes widen. “His,” she starts, then cuts herself off. She turns to Jiang Yanli and gestures sharply to him, her eyebrows saying everything that her mouth isn’t. Something about it tugs at him, like he’s seen this scene play out before, but of course he hasn’t. He’s meeting Xuanyu for the first time, and Jiang Yanli’s interactions with the girl are probably still in the single digits.
Jiang Yanli places a comforting hand on her arm. “It’s nothing inappropriate. He is adopted.”
It’s not inappropriate, but it could pose a problem. He’d assumed she’d been told about Wangji, she certainly should have been if she’s some sort of spy or saboteur, but perhaps not. Sizhui isn’t the child of a concubine or lesser wife, instead adopted directly into the family’s main line. Xuanyu would still be within her rights to demand any children she and Wangji have to be placed in the lines of inheritance before his adopted child, to take the place of clan heir as blood descendants and children of a legitimate marriage.
Wangji will never agree to it. He’d barely agreed to the marriage.
“Oh,” Xuanyu says, shoulders lowering. Instead of anger or indignation, there’s a melancholy there that he doesn’t understand.
Jiang Yanli squeezes her arm. “He’s a good boy. He’ll treat you properly and won’t make trouble.”
Lan Xichen can’t even imagine Sizhui causing trouble for the woman that’s to be his mother, legally speaking. There’d been some concern through the clan on how much they’d be able to protect Sizhui from her without encouraging him to break the rules of propriety and filial obedience, which Sizhui would refuse to do. After meeting her, Lan Xichen isn’t as worried about that.
Xuanyu forces a smile. “Oh, no, it’s okay. Really. I like kids.”
“He is fifteen,” he says, because it seems as if she really has been told nothing. “More adult than child these days.”
The age difference between Sizhui and Xuanyu puts them closer to siblings than parent and child. Another reason there were concerns that she’d shun him.
Xuanyu tilts her head to the side, looking at him with an expression that makes him want to sit straighter even though his spine is already perfectly upright. “I don’t know about that, Sect Leader Lan. Don’t you remember being fifteen? There’s still quite a long of growing up to do.”
He aches to think of himself at fifteen, before the war, before everything started to crumble around them and they had to build up a life from the ashes the Wen left behind. “Very true, Lady Xuanyu.”
Lan Xichen doesn’t doubt A-Yao about much. But if Jin Guangshan has truly chosen to send someone into the Lan clan to spy or ruin them, he thinks that Mo Xuanyu seems an odd choice.
Then again, perhaps that’s the point. That she’s someone they don’t expect.
~
It’s not the most awkward meal he’s ever shared with someone, or even with Lan Xichen, but Wei Wuxian is glad when it’s over and he’s escorted back to his room by Jiang Yanli, who tells him that he did well and that she’ll see him after dinner for a final fitting with his wedding robes.
He’ll get to see her again after dinner.
What Wei Wuxian wants to do is follow her around, to keep her in his sight and listen to her voice, to never have to let her go again. But that’s not realistic and would leave him looking as crazy as everyone thinks Mo Xuanyu is. Or maybe was. It’s not like necromancy via suicide is a course of action taken by the most mentally stable of people.
Besides, he has work to do. He has to figure out exactly what’s going on here and hopefully what Mo Xuanyu – if she hated her father and the marriage he arranged for her enough to kill herself, he’s not using his name – wanted him to do. Preferably before being faced with another shock like his alive older sister or being engaged to Lan Zhan.
He really would have appreciated some more lead time with all of this. The wedding is tomorrow! Then they’ll be going to Cloud Recesses and what does Mo Xuanyu expect him to do from there? Unless whatever she wants done is there rather than Jin Tower.
She’d damn near mastered demonic cultivation and she couldn’t do something like leave a note? Maybe she thought that he’d just be able to tell, somehow.
Wei Wuxian pauses, turning the thought over in his mind. Can he tell? He focuses his attention inward, poking at the energy surrounding the curse mark and the threads of power wrapped around it. Those threads have to lead somewhere, and if he can figure out where then maybe what he’s supposed to do about it will be obvious.
He does his best, reaching out his senses, which is going smoothly until he reaches too far and is overcome with a wave of dizziness so intense that he has to lean against the wall to keep from falling over. Okay, a possible solution, but he’ll need a much stronger golden core before –
His thought stutters in its tracks, his eyes widening as he presses his hand to the space below his ribs.
Everything has been happening so quickly since he woke up, he hadn’t noticed. He’d known, but he hadn’t noticed.
He doesn’t just have Mo Xuanyu’s body. He has her golden core too.
Wei Wuxian is used to a body that’s weak, that’s sore, that’s hungry. That’s the body he lived in for months in the Burial Mounds and that those same sensations are in the body belonging to a daughter of a clan head explains a lot of about why she felt compelled to summon him in the first place.
What he hasn’t felt in years are those same sensations blunted by the warmth of a golden core.
He breathes in deeply, holding the air at the top of his lungs before letting it out slowly, doing his best to keep himself grounded in this body that isn’t his, to keep himself from suffering another round of tears.
It’s not very impressive, not compared to the one he used to have and not compared to the disciples he used to train. It’s probably why she turned to demonic cultivation in the first place, since it didn’t depend on the power of a golden core. But it’s there, dense and soft and working to repair every ache he’s been ignoring.
Demonic cultivation won’t help with this, but if he can grow her golden core, he can use it to track power of the curse mark and figure out what it is he’s supposed to do. Hopefully before the curse mark kills him and he loses the ability to fulfill Mo Xuanyu’s last wish.
This is a gift, he tells himself firmly. He gets to see his sister alive and well and to live for a little bit as someone that Lan Zhan doesn’t hate and to feel the comforting weight of a golden core once more.
None of it is his to keep. It will kill him one way or another, but that’s okay. It’s more than he’d thought he’d ever have.
He owes Mo Xuanyu and he always pays his debts.
~
Jin Guangyao wishes Madame Jin hadn’t bothered with the pretense and just locked him in his room rather than insisting he needed to double check his last two years of accounting. As if every inconsistency isn’t something he’d left there deliberately. He could be reading his books or painting and he could have looked out the window and kept an eye out for all those arriving for the impending wedding.
Instead he’s just lying here, is a random storage room in some abandoned corridor surrounded by his meticulous record keeping and wondering if Xichen is here yet and who he bothered to bring with him and if Zixuan has given up attempting to argue with their father and how much property damage Jiang Cheng has caused –
The door slides open and he looks up to see Jin Xuanyu staring down at him, head tilted to the side and decidedly less feral looking than he saw her last. Jiang Yanli’s doing, he assumes. “Woah,” she blinks. “Why are you lying on the floor in a heavily warded room?” She picks up the nearest book, thumbing through it and wrinkling her nose. “That’s way too much for black salt.” She pauses, then mutters, “Guess it could just be inflation.”
Jin Guangyao stares.
It is too much for black salt, he had been blaming inflation, he’s surprised she’s familiar enough with bulk salt prices considering the Mo family hadn’t exactly let her assist in house management, and, “How did you get in here?”
She waves a hand towards the doorway. “I was looking around, saw a locked room, decided to open it.” Maybe she will get along with Lan Wangji. “I didn’t really expect a person to be in here. The talisman wasn’t designed to be undone from the inside. How were you planning to get out?”
Zixuan or Jiang Yanli would have come for him eventually. A-Ling even, if only because he’s mastered the art of throwing a tantrum at precisely the correct moment and Madame Jin would do anything to keep her precious grandson happy, including releasing him to teach A-Ling weiqi or whatever excuse he’s come up with.
He’d like to claim that A-Ling got that from him, but he’s pretty sure it’s a trick Jiang Cheng taught him. Those Jiang are unexpectedly slippery. Jiang Yanli is delightfully subtle in her subterfuge.
“You’re talented at talismans,” he says. None of his spies had reported that, but then again they’d managed to unearth depressingly little about her.
She’d come and gone from the tower during one of his trips to Cloud Recesses and kept to herself the entire time. He couldn’t even pin down what she’d done to get thrown out of their ranks of cultivators. He’d assumed that Madame Jin had just got sick of seeing another illegitimate child of her husband’s running about. Then she’d gotten recruited into what was supposed to be his place in this marriage alliance and now he’s a lot less sure that her departure was something that innocent.
The Mo family says she’s mad. Jin Guangyao is unsure if it’s true or just a cover she was using to get them off her back. On one hand, having to grow up in that house would drive anyone to insanity. His own mother may have lacked social status, but she’d loved him and taken care of him. On the other hand, Jin Xuanyu seems rather sane right now.
Which one is the act? He supposes he’ll just have to wait and see. She’ll give herself away eventually.
She scrunches her nose and shrugs. “I guess. Um, do you want to leave? I can put the wards back up, but then you’ll be stuck here…”
Madame Jin will be pissed. But he’s going back to Cloud Recesses with Jin Xuanyu to help her ‘settle in’ or whatever bullshit Jiang Yanli had said when she’d arranged for it with her very large, guileless eyes and soft voice. A woman after his own heart, really. Madame Jin will probably have gotten over it by the time he returns. Or at least found something else to hate him for. Still, considering everything, it’s hardly be to his benefit to borrow trouble.
“If you’re leaving, can you take me to the kitchens?” she asks hopefully.
One of the things his spies had been able to tell him is that Jin Xuanyu had often been fed scraps when she was fed at all. His mother had worked hard to make sure he never went hungry, even if she did.
He pushes himself to sitting, staring skeptically at the hand she holds out to him. He’s on the smaller side, but he’s still wider and taller than her by a fair amount. He takes her hand anyway and for a moment he thinks that she’s going to fall on top of him as she wobbles, unbalanced, before she throws herself back and hauls him to her feet with a determined frown.
Interesting.
“What are you hungry for?” he asks as they step outside.
She shrugs. “Oh, anything really. I had breakfast with Jiang Yanli and Sect Leader Lan, but I was so nervous that I didn’t eat much.”
So Xichen is here. He glances up and down the hall for anyone waiting to go tattle to Madame Jin that he’s escaped his imprisonment.
Jin Xuanyu follows his gaze and frowns. She bites her thumb, blood welling at the end, and reaches out to the closed door, reactivating the talisman with two dots of blood. Now anyone that walks by will assume he’s still inside. She’d known what he was concerned about and had taken actions to rectify it.
Even more interesting.
~
Jiang Yanli feels miserable about how all of this has turned out.
Enduring the machinations of Jin Tower is something she’d become accustomed to these past fourteen years, and even good at. Zixuan’s earnest affections and having raised an accomplished heir for the Jin provided one layer of protection. Being the sister to the sect leader of the Jiang provides another, when Jiang Cheng has made it clear on many occasions that he won’t stand for her being bullied.
The first few years of marriage were the hardest, when the Jiang had been on rocky standing and Jiang Cheng had felt the minor clans circling the Jiang land and Jiang influence like sharks with blood in the water and every misstep had felt like it could be their last. The loss of the Wen and desecration of the Jiang had left a power vacuum and if the other major clans had backed a minor clan taking power instead of closing ranks to maintain the status quo, things would be very different.
But things are different now. More solid. Easier.
And even still she feels just as helpless to do anything that matters as she had on the worst day of her life, when she almost died and she’d thought that Zixuan already had and Jiang Cheng broke and Wei Wuxian –
Things are different now.
She shouldn’t still be this useless.
But Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen are being kept apart, despite their best efforts, and Jin X- and Xuanyu is having her entire life upended, shuffled from being the ignored and neglected illegitimate daughter of Jin Guangshan to the legitimized pawn in a marriage alliance she doesn’t want with people she doesn’t know for the benefit of a man who’s never given her or her mother a second thought.
Xuanyu is so young. Jiang Yanli was her age when she married Zixuan, but she’d spent nearly her whole life engaged to him, had known him since they were children and through war, and he’d asked her, in the end. Xuanyu doesn’t have any of that. This whole thing has almost nothing to do with her, and even if she is Jin Guangshan’s spy, then Jiang Yanli can’t bring herself to blame her for it. Why shouldn’t she be, after all? They’re all strangers to her.
There’s a knock at her door and a servant’s voice calls out, “Lady Jin for you.”
She opens the door to see Xuanyu, arms crossed, the scowl she’s giving the servant making her look approximately three years old. Jiang Yanli can’t help the swell of fondness. She’s never had a sister before. She wonders if maybe it would feel something like this.
She smiles at the servant and steps back so Xuanyu can step in, the girl now focused on looking at her room. “Come on, don’t you want to see what you’ll be wearing tomorrow?”
“I guess,” she says, for some reason very interested in the calligraphy Zixuan had been working on earlier. Jiang Yanli takes her hand, immediately getting all of her attention, and guides her to the connecting room where everything’s set up. Xuanyu looks around in interest, but when she sees her wedding robes, she turns to her with a disgusted expression. “Really?”
They’re more gold than red. Madame Jin had selected them.
Jiang Yanli has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “They are very ornate.”
“That’s a word for it,” she mutters.
“Here,” she grabs her shoulders and pushes her into the chair in front of the mirror. “This is the fun part anyway. You get to keep these.” She starts opening boxes, showing her jewelry and hair ornaments and ribbons. “These are all pulled from the Jin vault. Take whatever you want.”
She should get to have a little bit of fun in all this, after all.
She should get to choose something, even if it’s not her name or her husband or any of the things that should be up to her.
“This one!” Xuanyu reaches out, snatching one of the hair sticks to her chest while Jiang Yanli is still opening boxes. “I like this one.”
“You can have more than one,” she says gently, trying not to think of how little Xuanyu was raised with, of how little it would have cost Jin Guangshan to see that the child he’d created had been properly taken care of, if not claimed. But he hadn’t bothered with Jin Guangyao, so Jiang Yanli can’t say she’s surprised. “Here, I’ll put it in your hair for you, then we can choose the others.”
Xuanyu reluctantly hands it over and Jiang Yanli keeps her expression warm and pleasant and tries not to let her surprise show. She doesn’t want Xuanyu to feel like she made a bad choice.
The hair stick is gold and dainty, not nearly as ostentatious as the other, and topped with a delicately formed lotus blossom. She pulls Xuanyu’s hair in a high ponytail, just to start before they put it into something more appropriately intricate, and slides the ornament in at the base of it. Xuanyu turns her head one way than the other, her eyes lighting up at her reflection.
Jiang Yanli hadn’t met the girl before she was brought back to the tower and quickly, quietly legitimized. Jin Guangyao seems convinced she’s up to no good or somehow working with Jin Guangshan, and Jiang Yanli doesn’t have evidence to the contrary, exactly, it’s just that -
She likes her.
Xuanyu reminds her of someone, or something, she feels familiar in a way Jiang Yanli can’t explain. Maybe she just reminds her of her own clan, her casualness and warmth something that calls to mind the Jiang disciples she grew up with, while there’s very little about Xuanyu that marks her as Jin.
She doesn’t even want to be referred to with her father’s name. If she’s working with Jin Guangshan, she’s doing an excellent job of hiding it. Which she could be doing on purpose, to make them all less suspicious.
Hm. She might be spending too much time with Jin Guangyao.
~
Wei Wuxian tries to get some sleep, fails, and shimmies out of his window mostly just to see if he can. If Mo Xuanyu could. Getting around the patrols is pathetically easy and he wonder again why she didn’t just run away, why she found death to be a more acceptable option than escape.
His investigation had revealed surprisingly little, but he supposes that major sects aren’t just going to leave incriminating evidence lying around. Luckily, eavesdropping had been significantly more productive. These Jin servants are far too comfortable gossiping in the halls. That would never happen in the Jiang. Shit like that is done behind closed doors, where the people you’re gossiping about can’t hear you.
Okay, they probably hadn’t considered the hearing enhancement talisman he’d made, but still! There are foreign disciples in the tower, they shouldn’t be so sloppy about it.
It hadn’t given him any clues on what he’s been summoned to do, but it did tell him why Jin Guangyao had been locked away and why Lan Zhan had agreed to an arranged marriage even though he’d been so grumpy about it, but that hadn’t been the most surprising thing he’d learned.
Jin Zixuan is alive.
Wei Wuxian hasn’t run into him, but gossiping servants haven’t failed him yet. He doesn’t know why that surprises him more than Jiang Yanli, but it does.
In the heat of battle, with everything happening around them, maybe he and Jiang Cheng had misjudged Jiang Yanli’s wound. Her core had always been weak, they could have missed it. Maybe. But he saw Wen Ning shove his sword through Jin Zixuan’s chest. That must have killed him.
Wei Wuxian has survived worse injuries. But he’s had a lot more practice at it. Even if it hadn’t killed him, he’d seen Jiang Yanli wearing mourning clothes!
But he seems to be alive. People are talking about him like he’s alive. And Jiang Yanli’s room had certainly looked like someone else lived there. He wishes he could remember Jin Zixuan’s handwriting but he’d actively done his best to not think about him at all.
Now he can’t stop.
They’re saying he can’t fight well, anymore, or maybe it’s just that he can’t fight for long. That part hadn’t been clear, but the derision from the minor clans is obvious enough that servants are gossiping about it. Then again, it’s not like the Yao and Ouyang have ever been subtle. He had expected better from the Yu.
Xuanyu’s wedding to Lan Zhan is tomorrow, the curse mark on his arm is bigger than it was when he woke up, and he still doesn’t know why he’s here. Part of him wants to do what he wishes Xuanyu did, and just run. He can strengthen his – her – his, for now, golden core anywhere. He can figure this out and do what she wanted done without subjecting himself to the farce of being Lan Zhan’s wife even though when he’d died they hadn’t even been friends.
But if he does that, then who will they make Lan Zhan marry instead? He’s sure Jin Guangshan has more illegitimate children to shove into this marriage that he’s determined to keep Jin Guangyao away from. At least if he marries Xuanyu, then Wei Wuxian can just leave him alone and then he’ll die and it’s not like anyone will expect Lan Zhan to marry again after that.
Besides, he’s pretty sure that whatever it is Mo Xuanyu wants him to do is going to require him being part of larger cultivation society and not on the run. He has to believe that, because it’s the only reason he can think of why she couldn’t have just done it herself and kept her life in the process.
The night air is cool and refreshing after the stuffiness of the tower, but he’s walking without a real destination in mind. He came out here to clear his head, which he can’t do surrounded by the obsessive gold draped over every inch of Mo Xuanyu’s rooms.
He really hadn’t expected to stumble across his little brother drinking underneath the gazebo.
Wei Wuxian runs his eyes over Jiang Cheng eagerly. His face hasn’t changed much, but his presence has. He seems more centered, like a lotus with its roots buried in the earth rather than cast upon the current.
Or course, he doesn’t look like much sitting on the ground, his robes dirty and rumbled and a wine bottle held in a white knuckled grip, but Wei Wuxian has seen him in worse shape.
“What are you looking at?” Jiang Cheng snaps. He’s been drinking for long enough that his cheeks are red with it.
He considers and discards several appropriate responses before holding out his hand and saying, “It’s rude not to share.”
He should leave. He should turn around and go back to his room and he shouldn’t talk to the brother that hates him and he shouldn’t endanger Mo Xuanyu’s reputation by being alone with a drunk male sect leader the night before her wedding.
But he’s missed his brother. Even if he didn’t feel a moment of those thirteen years passing, he feels them now, when his brother is older and different and so, so far away even though he’s so close, sad and bitter enough about something to be making a mess of himself like he hates to let anyone see. Wei Wuxian couldn’t turn his back on him if his life depended on it.
He’s proven that to himself before. Several times. He might as well give in to it.
Jiang Cheng’s eyes narrow, but then he snorts and holds out the bottle. Wei Wuxian grabs it eagerly, tipping his head back to swallow three large mouthfuls and rubbing his sleeve over his chin to catch what had managed to escape.
He holds the bottle back out to him, but Jiang Cheng just stares at him. He shifts his weight self-consciously. “What?”
“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head as he takes the bottle back.
Wei Wuxian sits down across from him, sprawling in a way that he probably shouldn’t in Mo Xuanyu’s body, but it’s not like anything about this interaction is proper to begin with. “I know why I’m drinking, but why are you?”
“Same reason, probably,” he snorts. Wei Wuxian only has a moment to panic over Jiang Cheng and Mo Xuanyu’s star crossed romance before he continues, “I can’t believe he’s getting married.”
“Lan Z-Wangji?” he asks, hoping his brother doesn’t notice his slip up.
“The way he carried on after, and he won’t even fucking speak to me, but now he’s going to bow to you?” His sneer melts into a frown. “No offense.”
“None taken,” he says faintly. “Um, so you - you and Lan Wangji were-”
“No!” Jiang Cheng’s disgust shouldn’t be comforting. It wouldn’t even matter, really. His arranged marriage to Lan Zhan is going to be short. He’ll be free to marry whoever he likes once his wife is dead, including Jiang Cheng.
Except he really, really doesn’t want it to be Jiang Cheng. Not that it’s any of his business. But still, the idea of it is just too weird.
Wei Wuxian clears his throat, pushing that thought away. For both their sakes. “Okay.”
“It’s a long story,” Jiang Cheng mutters, hugging his legs and resting his chin on his knees like he used to when they were kids and Madame Yu had paid him too much attention or Uncle Jiang not enough.
Wei Wuxian wants to lean against his side and mess with his hair and promise to fix whatever is upsetting him. But he’s not Wei Wuxian, he’s Mo Xuanyu, and Jiang Cheng wouldn’t accept that from him even if he knew the truth. There aren’t any cliffs around here, but the Jin’s stupidly long stairs would probably work well enough with how thin and weak this body is.
Something of his dark thoughts must show on his face, because Jiang Cheng says, “You don’t have to - he won’t hurt you, or anything. He’s not like that.”
It takes him several confusing seconds to figure out what Jiang Cheng is talking about, then he’s leaning back to look at the stars and so he doesn’t have to look his brother in the eye while he lies to him. He’s always hated doing that. “Yeah, no, of course. I’m sure he’s really nice.”
It’s not going to be Lan Zhan’s fault. But he’s pretty sure this is still going to end up hurting him.
Jiang Cheng snorts then sends him a guilty look. He drinks from the bottle then passes it over to him.
If he was getting married as himself, this is how he’d want to spend the night before his wedding, with his brother, the two of the drinking wine on a beautiful, crisp clear night.
Wei Wuxian takes a long swallow and decides to pretend for a little bit that this is real.
It’s not his to keep. But he can enjoy it while he’s here.