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Rover had meant to leave Xuanfang that morning.
It had been several days since the last corrupted Autopuppets had shuddered to a halt in the streets, yet the city still carried itself as though bracing for another blow. Scaffolding climbed the Resonance Beacons and outer walls, stone and brass stitched together by its pale framework; mechanists called to one another from platforms overhead, their voices rising above the clamor of hammers and other tools striking metal and stone. And beneath it all, indifferent to the destruction above, the great gears buried deep within Xuanfang continued to turn, and the outer rings of the city moved through their endless rotation as though nothing had happened at all.
Rover had wanted to check the surrounding settlements herself, Xianling Village especially, but there was always someone who needed her before she could make it past the gates. Wounded soldiers still crowded the infirmaries, recovered belongings needed returning to their new owners, supply routes had to be reopened, stray Autopuppets hunted down before they wandered into the smaller villages beyond the walls… and for the past several days she had allowed herself to be pulled from one task into the next with barely enough time between them to sleep.
Perhaps it was simply easier that way; if she kept moving, she had less time to think about everything that had happened.
About him.
She was crossing the Verdant Court when she heard the name, beneath the greenery trailing from the high arched walkways above, softening the brass and pale stone beneath curtains of hanging vines, cherry blossoms stirring loose in the afternoon breeze to spin around her boots. Water murmured nearby beneath the quieter mechanical hum of the city, and Rover might have passed straight through if a burst of conversation from beneath one of the shaded galleries hadn’t caught her attention.
It was not his name, not exactly…
“Yes, yes, out of the collapsed pavilion, I saw him myself!”
“The Cat of the Netherlamp, what would he be doing here?”
“It was him, I swear it! Had a hood over his head, but there’s no mistaking those eyes…”
Rover’s step faltered.
So, he was alive.
The relief came first, then, almost as quickly, everything else she had been trying to keep at bay since the battle…
Jingran grinning as though his plan to crash an airship into a barrier were nothing more dangerous than some half-baked wager among friends in a tavern.
Him flashing the coin at his chest to catch her attention, then lifting two fingers in a careless salute while the fog closed around him, swallowing whole both man and machine.
Jingran, what are your odds?
Ha! Ninety percent shot I get you two inside.
No. I mean, what are the odds you come back alive?
He hadn’t given her a straight answer. And that, more than anything, had been the part that bothered her the most. Not standing opposite him in the Tian Realm and pretending they had never met, not the sight of him nearly folding when she helped him stand, before he straightened and went on fighting as though stubbornness alone might keep him together.
No, it was the carelessness with which he spoke of trading months, years, of his own life the way a gambler spent coin – one bargain for the pendant, another to open a path for her and Qingxiao, and whatever else he had surrendered after the two of them were forced to leave him behind.
Of all the things Rover understood, she understood sacrifice most of all.
There was always another person who needed saving, another danger no one else could face, another path that had to be taken simply because no one else was capable of walking it. Once, hearing Jingran speak in much the same way had made her feel understood, as though she had found another soul who knew exactly what it meant to keep spending pieces of yourself simply because someone had to, but… it was also why his bargains angered her now.
She knew how easy it was to mistake being able to pay the price with having an obligation to do so.
Still, she reminded herself, he was alive, and – if what he had told her before he fell into the abyss still held true – likely in Xianling Village, recovering beneath Granny Yanshu’s watchful eye.
Before Rover could formally decide to abandon the schedule she had been handed that morning, her feet had already carried her toward the city gates.
The cloud ride purred to life beneath her with a faint, resonant hum, carrying her out over Yunling Valley where the whole landscape unfolded in color beneath the afternoon sun. Kites drifted over distant terraces, gardens glowed green and gold between the waterways, the translucent skybridge curving above it all.
Just to make sure he’s all right, Rover told herself as the wind caught her hair, and return his pendant.
By the time she reached Shaftpost Yard and passed through its bustle of merchants, offices, and freight workers, the architecture of Xuanfang proper had begun to give way. Bamboo crowded the road beyond the main yard, slender trunks shifting in the breeze with a gentle clatter, and the air smelled increasingly of damp earth and leaves rather than hot metal and machine oil.
Rover left the cloud ride at the outskirts of Xianling Village and continued on foot. Stone became a raised wooden walkway across the marsh, then packed earth beneath her boots as she passed through the round gate set into the village wall. The place was quiet at this hour, most of the people still away tending the surrounding fields and orchards or working at the market.
Smoke rose in thin ribbons from low grey-tiled roofs and unraveled in the cooling air. Somewhere behind one of the houses, a dog barked twice and fell silent; farther off, someone split wood in a steady, patient rhythm, the crack of the axe cutting clean through the afternoon.
Rover found herself trying to imagine Jingran growing up in a place like this. A restless, sharp-tongued boy in a village built around slow seasons and familiar routines, forever slipping away toward haunted ruins or whatever forbidden place someone had been foolish enough to tell him not to explore.
No wonder he had spent half his childhood causing trouble, she thought, fingers curling unconsciously around the pendant in her pocket.
The gate to Granny Yanshu’s courtyard stood open when Rover reached it, old trees leaning over the wall and dappling the packed earth with shade. Herbs hung drying beneath the eaves, filling the courtyard with a clean, bitter-green scent that mingled with woodsmoke from somewhere inside the house.
Yanshu paused halfway through sweeping when Rover stepped through.
“Oh! You came back,” the old woman’s weathered face brightened immediately. “You must have heard, then. My Jing came home two days ago, a little worse for wear, mind you, but walking on his own two feet, bold as ever. And do you know the first thing he said to me?”
Rover smiled. “No, though I can only imagine. What did he say?”
“‘What’s for dinner?’ Can you believe it?”
A laugh escaped her. “Sounds about right.”
“Three years without a proper visit,” Yanshu went on, shaking her head as she planted both hands atop the broom handle. “Half of Xuanfang thought he’d finally killed himself in that whole business, if the rumors were to be believed, and then he just strolls up the road as though he’d only stepped out yesterday. That boy will be the death of me, if he doesn’t manage to be the death of himself first.”
Rover’s fingers closed more tightly around the pendant inside her pocket, the edges of the coins biting into her palm.
If Yanshu noticed, she gave no sign.
“But enough of that. You didn’t come all this way to listen to an old woman complain about a boy who’s never listened once in his life, and isn’t like to start now.” Her eyes sharpened. “You came to see him, didn’t you?”
“I…”
Rover paused.
It was absurd, really. She had fought Tacet Discords and Threnodians without hesitation, stood between entire cities and their extinction, planned battles alongside magistrates and Sentinels and made decisions that would have broken most people beneath the weight of them.
Yet now she stood in a quiet village courtyard before one elderly woman and discovered she had not prepared a single sensible explanation for why she had come.
“Yes,” she said at last. “If he’s here. I only wanted to–”
See him with my own eyes. Make sure he really is alright…
“–return something.”
She drew the pendant from her pocket, its copper coins catching a glint of late-afternoon sun filtering through the bamboo.
Yanshu looked first at the pendant, then back at Rover, and her smile deepened in a way that suggested she had heard the words Rover had chosen not to say.
“But if he’s gone, I can leave it with you,” Rover added, suddenly aware of how awkwardly she was holding it out. “Just tell him I stopped by.”
“Nonsense. He hasn’t gone far, only back the way you came a little, toward the Goldsong Woods. But if you’re going after him, wait here a moment and make yourself useful.”
Before Rover could ask what she meant, Yanshu set the broom against the doorframe and disappeared inside.
She returned carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle still warm enough for Rover to feel the heat through her palms when it was pressed into her hands. The scent came next, rice and sugar, soft and sweet and light. And when Rover lifted one corner of the cloth she found a steamed, snow-white cake decorated with thin strips of jewel-bright candied fruit.
“Frosty Moon on Brocade,” Yanshu said proudly. “His favorite since he was small enough to steal pieces off the cooling rack. He’ll pretend it isn’t, of course; Jing likes pretending he doesn’t care about most things. But you watch him. He’ll eat every bite and lick the sugar off his fingers if he thinks no one’s looking.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“And don’t you let him keep it all to himself; tell him I said he has to share.”
Rover looked down at the cake, and another memory rose before her – a battered cooking pot over a low fire, steam carrying the scent of ginger and rice into a cold stone chamber, Jingran presenting her with a chipped bowl as he bowed before her.
She had wondered then how a man who insisted so strongly that he cared about very little had learned to be so effortlessly kind.
Knowing what she knew now, the answer seemed rather obvious.
“Thanks. I’ll make sure he gets it.”
Yanshu waved the gratitude aside and retrieved her broom while Rover tucked the bundle carefully against her side.
She had just turned toward the gate when the old woman added, with a suspicious sort of innocence: “He’s never once brought a girl home, you know.”
Rover paused with her hand on the gate, while behind her, the broom resumed its steady scrape across the courtyard.
“Not once,” Yanshu continued. “The village boys used to tease him for it. No time for sweethearts, that Jing, too busy wandering through haunted ruins and chasing ghosts. I’d nearly given up hope of seeing the day… and now here comes a woman asking after him twice inside the same week.”
Heat climbed Rover’s neck, settled beneath her collar.
“It isn’t–” She cleared her throat. “Ah. It’s not quite…”
“No, of course not,” Yanshu replied, in the easy tone of someone who believed no such thing. “Whatever it isn’t, you’d best go and see him before he disappears again. He’s never been an easy one to keep hold of.”
Then she paused, meeting Rover’s gaze across the courtyard, and the humor in her expression softened.
“Though I suppose a good many people could say the same about you.”
“You’re not wrong,” Rover admitted, finding she had neither a deflection ready nor any real desire to invent one.
Then she smiled, lifted one hand in farewell, and turned back toward the gate with Jingran’s favorite cake tucked against her side.
“Thanks again, Granny.”
The plateau rolled away west of Shaftpost Yard in a long shoulder of tawny grass, scattered with trees whose leaves had deepened to the burnished gold of the turning season. Beyond the woods, the land simply ended, the earth shearing away into a vast chasm where mist filled the depths like a second sky, curling around enormous stone pillars veined with jade.
At the very edge stood a tree larger than the rest, its trunk twisted by years of mountain wind, its branches sheltering the lone figure who knelt beneath.
His hood was down, the braid at his nape trailing between his shoulders, dark hair fading to white at the end. His lantern rested in the grass beside him, its green flame dimmed in the afternoon light. Before him stood two low headstones of dull grey stone.
Rover slowed as she approached, then stopped some distance away and leaned against the trunk of a smaller tree.
There was a stillness to Jingran she hadn’t seen before. Not the easy, deceptive stillness of the man she’d met in the ruin, lounging in shadow, one eye on her and amusement behind every every smile. Nor was it the tense concentration of the man she had encountered in the Tian Realm. This was something quieter and heavier, the stillness of someone who had returned to a familiar place and set down, for a little while at least, a burden only he could carry.
And Rover realized, standing there beneath leaves gone gold with autumn, that for all that had passed between them, she still knew remarkably little about him.
She knew the taste of his mouth and the warmth of his skin, knew the roughness of his palms and the way his hands had felt at her hips, knew the low register his voice dropped into when teasing gave way to something more serious. Those things were intimate, certainly, but they were not the same as knowing him – the boy he had been, the roads that had shaped him, the people he had loved and lost long before their paths had ever crossed.
Here, beneath the tree, some hidden piece of that life had been laid bare without his meaning to show it to her, and Rover found herself suddenly reluctant to step any closer.
“Well, Rover, what are you waiting for?”
His voice carried over his shoulder before she could decide whether to announce herself or retreat, almost as though he had known she was there from the moment she entered the grove.
“Think you’ve snuck up on me this time?” Jingran asked. He rose in one smooth motion and turned toward her, then folded into a polite bow, one hand pressed to his chest while the other swept out to his side.
“I know better than to think that’s possible.”
Rover moved to approach, but her step faltered.
A black patch covered his right eye, the narrow strap disappearing into his hair. She also saw the rest of the damage the battle had left behind – bruises darkened one side of his jaw, he looked thinner than he had weeks ago, and there was an unmistakable care in the way he held his left side, as though he believed posture alone might persuade her that nothing was truly hurt.
Overall, he looked exactly like a man who had driven an airship into a barrier and fallen into an abyss.
But, he was standing, and alive, against all the odds with which he couldn’t help but flirt.
And when his left eye found hers, the green warmed in a way that changed his whole face, the solemnity she had seen beneath the tree slipping away behind that same crooked smile she remembered from the ruin.
“Did you come all this way just for me?” he asked, spreading his hands as though inviting her to admire some spectacle.
Rover wanted to answer with something equally light, but found herself having to put more effort than usual into keeping her voice even.
“That back there wasn’t quite how I imagined us running into each other again, you know.”
“Ah, wasn’t my first choice, either, to tell the truth. I’d pictured something a little more dashing. A touch mysterious, perhaps even romantic.” Jingran gestured vaguely toward the eyepatch, the bruises, the entirety of his battered condition. “This is… not my finest showing.”
“I don’t know…” Rover let her gaze travel over him, playing into the familiar rhythm of their banter, hoping it might ease some of the tightness beneath her ribs. “The eyepatch is very mysterious.”
“Is it?” He brightened shamelessly. “Good, good. Be sure to tell everyone you think so.”
His grin drew an answering one from her, but beneath it stirred something else…
For days she had followed the trail left behind by the Cat of the Netherlamp, a Nethermancer working in Muyu’s shadow, who left just enough evidence to suggest his loyalty lay elsewhere – a pendant here, a trail of Resonance there, ledgers and records filling gaps in the narrative she couldn’t quite see. Then she had stepped into the Sanctum and seen him, wearing the role of Muyu’s lackey with such casual irreverence that her surprise had lasted only a heartbeat before amusement took over.
Of course the nameless man with whom she had spent a stormbound night, trading banter and kisses, was the double agent playing both sides in a city-wide conspiracy, slipping messages beneath Muyu’s nose and gambling that Rover would understand what he could not outright tell.
She still hadn’t known his name, not even then. Yet when he winked at her across the battlefield and surrendered with that infuriating grin, she had trusted him.
Rover wondered whether Jingran understood how much she owed him, not only for his help against Muyu, but for the smaller kindnesses before it. Fire when she was cold, food when she was hungry, directions when she needed a road.
Whatever uncertainty might remain between them, Rover found she had no patience for it. Perhaps she had been only a momentary indulgence to him, an interesting story for a man who collected strange experiences the way others collected souvenirs.
But they had shared a night together nonetheless, and whatever it wasn’t, as Granny Yanshu had so neatly put it, Rover couldn’t pretend she didn’t care what happened to him afterward.
Let me look a little foolish, if that’s the cost of my concern.
She crossed the last stretch of grass, shifted Yanshu’s bundle into one hand, and slipped her other arm around him.
Jingran went still for no more than a heartbeat, then his arm came around her waist, careful of the dish caught between them, more careful still of his injured side, and his breath left him in a long, quiet exhale as he drew her close against his chest.
“I’m glad you came,” he murmured.
“You sound surprised,” Rover said, smiling as she nudged her head beneath his chin, where she could feel the faint movement of his laugh through his chest.
“I’m always surprised when something good happens to me.”
She had no answer for that, not one that wouldn’t immediately pull them into deeper water, toward questions she suspected neither of them were quite ready to ask, so Rover only held him a moment longer and let the silence stand in for everything she didn’t yet know how to say.
When they finally drew apart, neither went very far. Jingran’s hand lingered at her waist while hers slid to his shoulder, and for one suspended moment his green eye dropped to her mouth just as her own gaze flicked toward his.
It was ridiculous; they had woken tangled together after a storm and parted without promises, yet standing here in the daylight… the possibility of a kiss felt as though it would expose far more than anything they had done in the dark.
Back then, they had been strangers, and strangers didn’t have to concern themselves with what came after.
Besides, Rover had not come here to throw herself at him, especially when she had no idea where his thoughts had settled in the weeks since that night.
Maybe his curiosity has already been satisfied.
The possibility stung enough that she disliked herself for even thinking it, and Rover cleared her throat and stepped back.
“It’s nice,” she said, “to finally know your name, Jingran.”
It still felt strange, saying it now. But she watched the effect of hearing it move over his face, his smile softening, something unguarded flickering briefly through his eye before his familiar smirk returned.
“It’s nice,” he admitted. “Hearing you say it, I mean.”
Then, apparently finding sincerity intolerable for more than a few seconds, added, “Say it again.”
“Don’t push it.”
“Just once more, for my health!” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I’ve had quite a week, you know.”
“Speaking of your health…” Rover lifted the cloth-wrapped bundle between them. “Granny Yanshu sends this.”
“Is that–”
Jingran leaned forward, caught the scent beneath the cloth, and his visible eye widened with recognition.
“Oh. Frosty Moon on Brocade.” Both hands came out at once. “Give it here.”
She surrendered the bundle, and Jingran carefully folded back the cloth to reveal the cake, the candied fruit catching the light filtering through the grove and shining like bits of colored glass.
“She always makes it too pretty to eat,” he said, his voice softening with affection as he looked down at it. Then the corner of his mouth lifted. “Well. Almost.”
He reached absently for the eyepatch as he spoke, hooking one finger beneath the lower edge and lifting it just enough that Rover could peer underneath. She caught only the faintest glimpse of muted gold beneath the dark cloth before his expression tightened, and he let the patch fall back into place.
“About your eye…”
“Hm?” Jingran immediately redirected his attention toward the cake. “Been staying up too late, reading too much. Nothing Huaxu’s miracle eyedrops won’t fix.”
“Jingran.”
“What?”
“Be serious. You’re not fooling anyone.”
He sighed and tucked the cloth more securely around the dish. “It’s nothing. I just… told the old cat to collect a little extra this time, that’s all. Not the first time, won’t be the last. It’ll pass.”
There it was again, that careless little shrug in his voice, as though the price were so insignificant it barely deserved mentioning.
Once again, he spoke as though the cost of each bargain belonged only to him, and therefore couldn’t possibly matter to anyone else.
Later, she decided, there would be time to scold him later. She hadn’t come all this way to sour the first few minutes of their reunion.
“So how does it work, exactly?” she asked instead, keeping her voice light, curious nonetheless. “The lamp, the deals... Does using it simply mean you die younger, or does it actually age you? If I run into you a year or two from now, am I going to find you grey-haired, bent over a walking stick?”
“Nice try, Rover.” The corner of his mouth curled. “Still not telling you my age.”
“That wasn’t what I was–” She stopped, seeing the satisfaction already gathering in his eye, and surrendered with a smile. “Fine. I suppose I’ll just ask Granny Yanshu.”
His head snapped up, and he gasped dramatically.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I absolutely would. She’s probably got decades of material on you, too; an entire childhood’s worth of embarrassing stories.” Rover tapped one finger thoughtfully against her lips. “Actually, I’d wager she even has pictures.”
Some of the color seemed to leave his face.
“Oh no, please. Don’t.”
“Little Jing, crawling down haunted wells–”
“I will throw myself into that gorge, Rover. I mean it.” He pointed toward the cliff. “Straight over the edge.”
Rover laughed. “You could barely reach for a hug without wincing.”
“I’ll manage through spite alone, I swear.”
The image only made her laugh harder, and Jingran narrowed his eye at her with the suffering of a man whose reputation was being destroyed in real time.
“She did tell me one thing already, though,” Rover said as she crossed her arms, watching as his expression only grew more suspicious.
“She said she never thought she’d live to see the day you brought home a girl.”
Jingran once again became suddenly, deeply interested in examining the cake.
“And I haven’t,” he said with great dignity, clarifying, “brought a girl home, that is. You came here entirely of your own volition. Nobody brought anybody anywhere. If anything, you brought yourself. And then you brought this cake here, which I appreciate.”
“Ohhh, I haven’t brought anything.”
Before he could react, Rover snatched the dish from his hands and tucked it behind her back.
“In fact, I think I’ll give it to someone a little more appreciative...”
“Hey, give that back, Rover!” Jingran reached for it. “Granny Yanshu makes that especially for me.”
Rover stepped away, and he tried again, but for a man reputed to slip unseen through Mirage Realms and emerge from places most people could not even enter, he was making an embarrassingly poor showing. His injured side betrayed him almost immediately; she saw the quick tightening around his mouth and the slight hitch in his movement before he disguised both beneath another grab for the cake.
“Give it up,” Rover said, keeping the bundle safely behind her while her other hand came to rest against the center of his chest, holding him at bay. “We both know I could take you. Especially right now.”
Jingran’s gaze lowered to her hand, and only then did Rover become aware of their positioning, his steady warmth beneath her palm, the muted beat of his heart through the layers of clothing, the distance that had vanished between them while they were joking.
Then he looked up, and a slow grin spread across his face.
“You’re not wrong,” he murmured. “Not that I’d complain.”
His voice dropped into a register Rover remembered from stormclouds and firelight, and her breath caught.
“That business the other day,” he continued, clearly delighted by her reaction, “you pinning me against that pillar with your shield at my throat, all that lovely violence in your eyes…” He clicked his tongue softly. “Real shame there were so many people around. Killed the mood.”
Warmth gathered beneath Rover’s collar, her pulse suddenly loud enough that she became certain he must be able to hear it, too.
“You did seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“Hm. Almost as much as the last time we met.” His grin sharpened. “For what it’s worth, though, I appreciated you playing along.”
“It was rather fun, wasn’t it?”
Her admission made something flare in his eye, and Rover had the sense that if she gave him another few seconds, the conversation was going to wander somewhere considerably less innocent.
Then she felt the subtle sway beneath her palm as Jingran shifted his weight.
“Come on.” She slipped one arm beneath his and steadied him before he could protest. “Let’s sit down before you fall down. As you keep reminding me, you’ve had quite a week.”
“I wasn’t going to fall,” he insisted, allowing her to guide him toward the roots of the tree anyway.
“No, of course not. We’re just doing this for my benefit, clearly.”
He cast her a suspicious look at the dryness in her voice, but whatever complaint he might have made disappeared into a breath of relief as he lowered himself.
Rover waited until he was properly settled before returning the cake, then sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders brushed. Jingran balanced the dish across his knees and gradually let his weight ease against her.
The warmth of his shoulder through their clothes drew Rover back to the ruined chamber once more – fire dying, rain battering the mountain, while Jingran slipped an arm around her as though holding a stranger in the aftermath of what they had done required no thought at all.
At the time, she had assumed the ease between them came from knowing there would be no consequences. They would take what comfort the night offered, walk in different directions come morning, and think back fondly when the weather turned bad.
Sitting beside him now, beneath leaves burning gold in the evening light, Rover couldn’t help but think how thoroughly wrong she’d been.
Jingran broke off a piece of the cake and held it toward her without comment.
Rover accepted it just as silently, their fingertips brushing for a moment before she took a bite. The steamed rice was soft and springy, delicately sweet rather than cloying, while the candied fruit dissolved on her tongue.
They passed the dish back and forth beneath the old tree at the edge of the gorge, and for a while, that was all there was between them, the silence holding certain things more gently than words ever could.
When the last piece was gone, Jingran set the empty dish aside and let his head come to rest against her shoulder. Rover tipped hers lightly against his in return, smiling when he released a low, contented sigh.
Beyond them, the mist filling the gorge caught the sinking sun and burned rose-gold and orange between the pillars, golden leaves loosening overhead to turn lazily through the evening air.
And only a few paces before them, the shadows behind the two headstones stretched longer through the grass.
“My parents,” Jingran said at last, sitting up from her shoulder and tipping his chin toward the stones. “Or, where they ought to be, anyway.”
The lightness had gone from his voice, though the words didn’t sound broken when he spoke them. Whatever grief lived there had been worn smooth by years of handling, its sharpest edges dulled without disappearing.
His parents, he told her, had been artisans in Mengzhou, ordinary people caught in the violence when a batch of Zhuojun Atelier Bladepuppets went haywire and turned on the very people they had been built to protect.
“I wanted to go back,” Jingran said, gaze fixed somewhere beyond the graves, “find whoever was responsible and slice them open.”
A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth before he sighed.
“Course, I was just a kid. Scrawny, half-starved, angry at just about everything. Then my Shifu found me – Zhu Sandao, absolute lunatic, best man I ever knew – and dragged me here before I could get myself killed trying.” His expression softened. “He had me build these. Told me, ‘Kid, worry about walking forward first. You can settle scores when you’re older.’”
Rover could picture it: a furious, half-feral boy digging at the earth until his hands were raw, tears on his face perhaps more from rage than from grief, while an old man waited nearby and refused to let vengeance become the only thing keeping him alive.
“Ever since,” Jingran continued, “whenever I start losing my cool, I come out here and just…” His gaze lowered to the grass between his boots. “Sit.”
After a moment he cleared his throat and went on, telling her how, years later, he had finally returned to Mengzhou and dug through old patrol records and reports until he found the thread that led to Muyu, the Reverberation marks on the Bladepuppets matching work he had spent years learning to recognize.
She and Qingxiao had not quite killed Muyu, apparently, he added with a crooked smirk. As far as Jingran was concerned, that had worked out rather well; it meant he had been the one to finish the bastard himself. Muyu was gone, the core had been entrusted to Qiuyuan, and the purpose that had drawn Jingran back to Xuanfang after so many years was, at last, complete.
He hadn’t owed her his story. He could have hidden behind another joke, offered her some carefully edited version of the truth, and she would never have known. Instead, he let her see something of the boy beneath the Nethermancer, the grief beneath the arrogance, and found herself grateful for the trust of it, for the chance to know him by something more than the scattered fragments he had allowed her before.
She reached for his hand.
Jingran startled, ever so slightly, before his fingers tightened around hers.
“Thank you,” Rover said, glancing toward the stones. “For telling me about them. For trusting me enough to share this with me.”
For once, he did not immediately turn her sincerity into a joke. He drew their joined hands into his lap instead and thumped their tangled fists lightly against his thigh, the movement pulling her closer until Rover let her head settle against his shoulder.
She expected him to lean his against hers in return, but instead, his lips brushed her forehead, gently enough that she wondered whether she had imagined it.
“Who wouldn’t trust you, Rover?” he murmured against her skin.
By the time she looked up, he had already turned toward the gorge. And though she couldn’t see his expression, the flush creeping slowly up the back of his neck was evidence enough.
They stayed that way while the sun sank between the distant mountains, the gold slowly draining from the mist below until the gorge deepened toward violet and blue.
Eventually, Rover asked, “So, what will you do next?”
Jingran exhaled through his nose, his thumb moving almost absently over her knuckles.
“With Muyu gone…” He paused. “I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life.”
For one reckless instant, Rover nearly answered for him.
Come with me.
She could picture it so clearly: Jingran walking beside her along some overgrown trail, lantern swinging over his shoulder while he complained about her sense of direction; the two of them picking through another ruin, sharing another fire and another meal, waking with his warmth beside her rather than carrying it away as memory.
But she still didn’t know what this was between them, whether it was anything more than the recognition and desire of two wanderers pausing along the same road, whether Jingran had ever imagined the same thing…
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she said. “Or maybe find something new. Xuanfang will need time to rebuild its defenses, and I doubt it’s going to be a while before anyone trusts an Autopuppet without at least three inspections and constant surveillance. There should be work here if you felt like staying.”
“Pft. We both know I can’t sit still any more than you can.” His mouth twisted thoughtfully. “But I suppose I could see what Qiuyuan’s doing. I gave him the core. Maybe he’ll return the favor by finding something interesting enough to keep me occupied.”
Qiuyuan was one of the people Rover had intended to seek out once she made her way to Mengzhou. And now that he had the core… she was curious to learn what he planned to do with it, and whether he had uncovered anything useful from it.
But there would be time for that later.
For now, Rover withdrew her hand and reached into her pocket.
“Speaking of returning things…”
She held out the pendant, its copper coins glinting faintly in the dying light, the green cord coiled around them.
“I believe this belongs to you.”
Jingran looked down, his expression unreadable.
He reached out, but instead of taking it, his fingers folded hers around the coins, then gently pushed it back toward her chest.
“Keep it.”
“Jingran.”
“It’s not worth anything now; the Resonance I put into it burned out days ago.” His familiar grin returned. “Call it a souvenir, something to remember your handsome, mysterious companion by.”
Rover gave him a look.
“Or…” He tilted his head, calculating, as though they were haggling at the market. “I could charge it up for you. Wouldn’t cost much.” He held up three fingers. “Three months, tops.”
Her hand clenched around the coins, their edges biting into her palm.
She had told herself she would leave it alone today…
But perhaps she had only been waiting for him to give her a reason.
“Knock that off,” she snapped, the sharpness of her voice startling them both.
Jingran blinked, and now that the first words were free, Rover saw little point in swallowing the rest.
“You keep spending your life like it’s loose change.” She straightened, turning fully toward him before he could disappear behind another joke. “You’re sitting here with a patch over your eye because you already shaved off a year or two too many, and now you’re offering me three more months so I can have a prettier keepsake?”
“Rover, I–” He raised a placating hand.
“No, I’m not finished.”
The anger came hotter now that she had allowed it air, yet beneath it was something much harder to admit.
“I appreciate everything you did for us,” she continued, her voice quieter now but no less firm. “We couldn’t have defeated Muyu without you, and maybe then the price really was something you had to pay. But it shouldn’t always be the first answer you reach for, Jingran. Not when there might be another way. Not when you barely even stop to look for one before deciding your own life is expendable.”
Silence followed, and Jingran’s gaze dropped to her closed fist before drifting toward the gorge, where mist, stone, and sky alike had cooled into shades of blue.
“You really don’t like it,” he said eventually. “My deals.”
“No. I don't.”
He looked back at her.
“Are you asking me to stop?”
Rover didn’t even need to think about it.
“For a little while, at least.”
A faint crease appeared between his brows, as though the possibility that someone else might care how much life he spent had never entered into his thoughts.
Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth turned upward.
“Careful, Rover. You start asking me for things like that, I might get the wrong idea…”
Heat rose into her face, and though dusk had gathered around them and Jingran was looking at her through only one eye, she knew he noticed. But his gaze returned to the graves beneath the tree, and his smirk softened into something more thoughtful.
Darkness settled quickly once the last of the blue drained from the sky, swallowing the western ridge and drawing out the first stars above the gorge. The cold rose with it, sinking through Rover’s clothes, and she had just begun to think they ought to start back when Jingran stirred beside her and reached into his coat.
“Before we head back, there’s one more thing I’ve been meaning to do,” he said, drawing out a small glass vial, its contents glowing faintly blue between his fingers. “Didn’t much fancy doing it alone, if I’m honest. But seeing as you’re here…” His gaze lifted to hers. “I don’t know. Feels right.”
Jingran stood, and Rover followed him to the edge of the gorge, where mist seemed to begin at their feet. He held the vial over the drop and pulled out the cork.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a single mote of blue light drifted free, trembling once in the wind before continuing upward. Another followed, then another, until dozens became hundreds, spilling upward toward the stars in slow spirals. They did not scatter as sparks ought to; they climbed as though each one remembered where it was meant to go.
“What are they?” Rover asked softly.
Beside her, Jingran said nothing at first. Blue light washed over his face, sharpening the line of his jaw and turning the green of his visible eye almost black, and the expression he wore was one Rover had only seen in fragments before, sorrow held so tightly in check that it seemed to have become part of his stillness.
When he finally answered, his voice caught.
“They used to be people.”
Jingran would never call himself heroic; he would laugh at anyone foolish enough to try, make some joke about grave robbers and ghosts, and turn the whole thing into an entertaining story before anyone could look at him too closely. Yet here was the truth beneath all of it: He walked willingly into places most people feared to enter, so the dead would not remain trapped there alone. He gathered what little remained after the world forgot them, carried their Reverberations through darkness and danger, through places that charged him in years rather than coin, and released them somewhere quiet, somewhere they could rest.
The last of the motes vanished among the stars, and without them the gorge seemed larger, an immeasurable hollow opening beneath the night. Somewhere far below, unseen water rushed through stone channels with a deep, ceaseless roar, while overhead the wind loosened leaves from the old tree and sent them turning into the dark.
How many forgotten dead had he carried out of places that would otherwise have swallowed them forever, paying their toll himself so someone else’s ending could finally be put to rest? No one thanked him for it; no one knew.
But now, Rover knew, and that knowledge sat heavily inside her, threaded with the same anger that had flared earlier when he spoke so casually of the years he spent. If the world would not count what Jingran gave away, she would.
Jingran drew a slow breath, slipped the empty vial back into his coat, and scrubbed one hand down his face as though physically wiping away whatever had just passed through him.
“So,” he said, his tone returning to normal so abruptly that Rover couldn’t help but smile, “where are you staying?”
She understood the turn for what it was. A person could only spend so long staring into the dark before grief became deep water, and sooner or later the choice was to keep sinking or reach for air. And tonight, apparently, Rover was the shore toward which he swam.
“Inviting yourself back to mine already?” Rover asked, arching an eyebrow. “That’s bold, even for you.”
“I let you stay at my place,” Jingran replied, looking faintly wounded. “Seems only fair that hospitality should go both ways.”
“Your place.” She let the pause lengthen. “You mean your cave.”
“It was not a cave,” he responded with the same weary emphasis. “It was an archaeological site, one of great importance!”
Despite his attempt to sound indignant, the twitch at the corner of his mouth gave him away, and Rover had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
“And, let me remind you,” he continued, warming to his defense as he stepped closer, “I was a most gracious host. I built you a fire, cooked you a meal, lent you the clothes off my back, shared my most excellent wine–”
“Shared?” Rover snorted. “You’re the one who drank most of it.”
“Well, of course I did. How else was I supposed to get through the night? I was nervous.”
“You? Nervous? I didn’t think a man who trades away his lifespan could be frightened by much of anything.”
Once again, Jingran didn’t answer with a joke.
“Rover, look at you,” he said, and the sincerity in his voice caught her off guard. “Everyone knows who you are. Who wouldn’t be nervous?”
Her smile softened. Looking back, she’d seen it in the glances he’d stolen when he thought she wouldn’t notice, the flush whenever she turned his flirting back on him, the way he’d looked away too quickly when she caught him staring. Like a boy with a crush, caught between wanting to make it obvious and wanting just as desperately to look unaffected.
“Aren’t you staying with Granny Yanshu?”
He gave her a long, flat look out of his one good eye, then said, with an enormous amount of patience:
"Seriously?"
"What?"
"Do I have to spell it out for you?"
"Spell what out?"
“Rover, you cannot possibly be this dense.”
She folded her arms, hoping she was able to hide, at least a little, how much she was enjoying herself.
“Either explain whatever it is you think I’m missing, or stop looking at me like I’m stupid.”
A grin began at one corner of his mouth, slow and wicked, and he stepped into the space between them until the warmth of his body pressed along her side. He lowered his head so his mouth was close to her ear, close enough that his next words brushed warm across skin gone cold in the cool night air.
“You know perfectly well what I’m suggesting,” he murmured, his voice dropping into that low register once more, “and if you imagine I’m doing that under my Shifu’s wife’s roof – with Granny’s hearing being every bit as sharp as she pretends it isn’t – you have grossly underestimated how much I want to stay alive.”
Rover turned her face slightly toward his, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing the warmth she could already feel gathering beneath her skin.
“Who says we’re doing anything?”
The wounded expression he gave her was entirely worth the mischief.
“Rover, come on… I nearly died. I can barely see.”
“Well then, all the more reason for you to rest.”
His hand settled at the small of her back, loose enough to remain teasing, though she could feel the pressure of his fingertips through her clothes.
“I came out of that fight,” he continued, “with exactly one piece of treasure worth the whole miserable ordeal, worth far more than the two measly years I traded. The rarest, most beautiful thing I’ve turned up in my whole life standing right here before me… and she won’t even do a dying man the kindness of easing his suffering.”
“Jingran. You’re not dying.”
"I'm a little bit dying. Look, I’m even wearing an eyepatch. What else would you call this?”
“I don’t know, accessorizing? Come to think of it, you’d fit right in with a certain troupe of pirates I know back in Rinascita.”
He laughed, and Rover realized that for all that had changed since the ruin, she was thankful the rhythm of this was still familiar.
“How about this,” she offered. “Xuanfang’s not far… let’s get a room there.”
Jingran wrinkled his nose. “Too many people.”
“You’ve spent more than half your life sleeping in places full of ghosts and Tacet Discords, but an inn is where you draw the line?”
“Ghosts don’t ask when the next chapter is coming out. Half of Xuanfang wants the next installment of Mirage Seeker’s Tales, and my editor is undoubtedly among them, sharpening his quill. If I show my face in the city, I doubt I’ll make it out of there alive.”
“Oh, how terrifying. You poor thing.”
“Besides,” he added, more casually, “I heard you’d been staying somewhere around here.”
“Ah, well.” Rover smiled wryly, thinking that just as Jingran wasn’t eager for them to spend the night together under the same roof as Granny Yanshu…
“The place Liangyu’s been letting me use… I’ve been sharing it with Yangyang, so…”
“Ah.”
The hand at her back disappeared.
“You and Yangyang.”
“Yes, but–”
“No, no. I understand.” Jingran stepped away and began collecting his lantern, his staff, Yanshu’s empty dish, all with the dignity of a man who had just suffered a noble defeat. “I’ve heard the rumors, after all, everyone has. I’m very happy for you, Rover, both of you. Truly. But you should be getting back, hm? Thank you for coming all this way. Your concern is greatly appreciated…”
She couldn’t help but roll her eyes as he began to walk away, as though tragically compelled toward exile.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jingran. Yangyang and I are not together.”
Jingran paused and glanced over his shoulder, expression perfectly flat.
“There is nothing romantic going on between us,” she explained. “We are staying under the same roof because Liangyu offered us the house. That is the beginning and the end of the arrangement.”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
Rover narrowed her eyes.
“You already knew that, didn’t you? You’re just messing with me.”
“Maybe…”
He had scarcely managed to smirk before Rover’s patience snapped. She crossed the space between them, caught the front of his shirt in one hand, hauled him back toward her, and kissed him.
He laughed, stumbling willingly into the space she had closed between them, but the sound dissolved almost at once beneath the press of her lips.
For a moment he simply yielded, all the theatrical jealousy and wounded dignity going out of him in a soft exhale against her mouth. Then his hands found her, one settling at her waist while the other slid beneath her hair to cradle the side of her neck, and whatever distance the past several weeks had placed between them was gone.
Rover tasted the lingering sweetness on his tongue, felt the shape of his smile when she pressed closer. Jingran gave ground for one step, then another, until some instinct for mischief, or perhaps simply the need to reclaim a little control, made him turn them, and Rover’s back met the trunk of the tree.
Jingran followed her into it, bracing one forearm across her collarbone as his body settled against hers, nowhere near enough to restrain her, but deliberate enough that her pulse jumped. Cold bark pressed at her back while his warmth crowded out the cool mountain air in front of her, leaving her caught between the two sensations.
She gasped, sharper than she meant to, and his eye flickered with recognition.
The corner of his mouth curved, but rather than tease her, he let his attention drift elsewhere, brushing his lips along the line of her jaw and down toward the sensitive place beneath her ear. His teeth grazed her there, just enough to make her breath hitch, before the touch softened, sending a slow shiver down her spine.
Rover tipped her head back against the tree, granting him more access, her hips shifting toward his…
And he paused.
“Well, well, well…” His breath stirred against the shell of her ear, his forearm remaining firm across her chest. “You like this too, don’t you?”
Rover could have denied it simply to frustrate him. Ordinarily, she might have enjoyed making him work harder for the admission.
But there was something intoxicating about the fact that he could hold her there only because she allowed it. She could have broken his grip without effort, reversed their positions before he managed another breath, and they both knew it.
Her fingers slid into his hair.
“What if I do?” she murmured, letting the strands wind around her knuckles. “Would you press me harder?”
The sound that escaped him was low enough that she felt more than heard it.
His weight against her increased, answering her before words could, but this time the contact carried less surprise and more certainty. Her hands wandered over shoulders she remembered beneath firelight, then down the lean planes of his chest and abdomen, reacquainting themselves with a body they had once explored almost blindly.
The first time, she had known his body more intimately than she knew the man inside it. Now, she knew his name. She knew whose graves stood only a few paces away, knew who had raised him, knew something of the childhood that had sharpened him into the man beneath her hands. She knew the kindness he disguised beneath mockery and the loneliness he treated as though it were merely another road he chose to walk.
Rover slipped one hand beneath his shirt, fingertips meeting warm skin–
And Jingran flinched, his entire body going rigid beneath her palm.
“Jing?”
She pulled back and brought both hands up to his face, careful of the patch as she framed his jaw.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” His hands remained at her waist, and he summoned a crooked smile that did not quite reach his eye. “Besides, I like it rough.”
He leaned toward her again, but Rover kept her palms where they were and prevented him from closing the space.
“That doesn’t make you any less hurt.” She searched his face, taking in the bruising, the exhaustion. “You’ve had a rough few days. A rough few years, if we’re being honest. It’s all right to give yourself one evening where you just take it easy.”
Rover lowered her hands, but Jingran caught her wrists before she could pull away.
“But what if you–”
His voice trailed off, his gaze dropped between them, no joke arrived to fill the silence.
Rover understood anyway.
What if you’re gone tomorrow?
For a man whose entire life was a series of disappearances, Jingran suddenly looked terribly afraid of being the one left behind.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said quietly.
His gaze lifted, hopeful.
“Not right away,” Rover amended, because she wouldn’t promise him what she did not know. Honesty, at least, she could give. “I’m staying in Xuanfang a little while longer.”
The faint tension in his fingers eased.
Rover stroked her thumb once beneath his cheekbone, then, because the uncertainty in his expression made her feel as though she had looked through an open door he had forgotten to close, she pulled him back toward safer ground.
“Come on. Let’s find an inn. One with a comfortable bed, a door that locks, and not a single grandmother listening through the walls.”
His grin returned, shamelessly.
"Right now?" His hands settled once again at her hips. "This very minute?"
“We’ve already waited weeks to see one another...”
“Exactly.”
“That means we can survive another hour.”
“You say that…” Jingran muttered, dropping his forehead dramatically against her shoulder, “but you’re not the one who’s suffering.”
Rover laughed and stepped away from him, intending to head back toward the main road, but Jingran hesitated, crossing his arms and leveling her with a look.
“You mean to pay for the room,” he said, voice flat.
“Well, yeah, of course…”
"Right… See, here's the thing: I don't like you paying for me."
Rover regarded him for a moment, then understood.
“Then don’t think of this as me paying for you. Think of it as payment, for services rendered.”
Jingran’s brow lifted.
“That whole disaster in the Tian Realm would have gone very differently without you,” she continued. “Half of Xuanfang could be dead or worse, and Qingxiao and I might still be trying to break through that barrier, assuming we hadn’t gotten ourselves trapped in a Mirage Realm first.”
He considered that, head tilting slightly.
“Well,” he said at last, “if it’s payment for a job well done, I suppose refusing would only insult you…”
“Yes, yes it would.”
“And fees, when it comes to professional work, are generally negotiable.”
Rover hid a smile.
“Depends,” she said, “on what you’re trying to negotiate.”
"Can we get noodles first?"
“That’s it?”
“What?”
“That’s your negotiation? I was expecting something outrageous.” Rover shook her head, feeling, if anything, let down. “No wonder you keep giving so much of your lifespan away. You’re terrible at bargaining.”
“I’m a simple man.” Jingran shrugged, and although the words were light, Rover caught the truth beneath them. “I don’t want much. And I’m not exactly accustomed to getting what I do want, certainly not this easily.”
For a second she considered teasing him about calling her easy.
Then she remembered who had just dragged him into a kiss, not to mention who had dropped herself into his lap, and decided answering would’ve been walking directly into a trap.
“But noodles,” she said instead, “after you just ate an entire plate of dessert?”
“You and me, we’ve always done things out of order, haven’t we?”
Rover shook her head and caught his arm, drawing him back to her side and toward the skybridge leading into Xuanfang.
“Fine. Noodles. Then a proper room, where you are going to rest.”
“All right, all right.” Jingran fell into step beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. “Maybe I’ll even let you tuck a poor, helpless thing like me in.”
“Oh really?”
“On one condition."
"Of course there's a condition.”
His voice lowered.
“Say my name again.” The teasing remained, but beneath it was the same vulnerable want she had glimpsed earlier, the hunger of someone who wanted to be chosen and still seemed half-convinced it had happened by mistake. “The way you did before. My nickname. Just… say it.”
Rover could have given in, she wanted to… which was exactly why she didn’t, instead adopting the same fond, scolding cadence of a certain grandmother with a broom.
"Now, little Jing," she began, "don't go talking back to your elders."
Jingran recoiled in horror.
“Ugh, no. Absolutely not,” he gagged, clapping both hands over his ears. “You’ve ruined it. Completely ruined it.”
"Little Jing," Rover repeated, delighted now, "make sure you eat your vegetables, little Jing. Don't go climbing down any haunted wells…"
“That’s it.” He turned dramatically back toward the gorge. “All deals are off. I’m going to make every possible attempt to shorten my life as fast as I possibly can. Starting now, with throwing myself over the edge and–"
Rover caught him by the arm and pulled him back, and before he could come up with another threat or complaint, kissed him again.
When she drew away, Jingran’s gaze had gone warm, his grin softer at the edges but altogether more dangerous to her composure. Rover tightened her grip on his hand, turned them toward the road, and pulled him after her.
Despite all the obvious disadvantages to being dead, Jingran had to admit – it did wonders for a man’s reputation.
Alive, he had generally been regarded as a grave-robbing, deadline-missing nuisance whose chief talents were telling a good story. Most of the citizens of Xuanfang had spent years regarding Nethermancers with the suspicion reserved for people who made their living digging through Mirage Realms, conversing with the dead, and emerging with cobwebs clinging to their cloaks and artifacts tucked into their sleeves.
But let word spread that he had gone and died – quite heroically, by all accounts – or nearly died, now that rumor of his emergence from the collapsed pavilion had spread throughout the city, and suddenly he was no longer an unsavory grave robber with questionable judgment.
He was a figure of local importance.
It was insulting.
Jingran had been engaging in thankless, ill-advised, life-threatening stunts for years. Yet apparently all he needed to do to earn the public’s appreciation had simply been to die, or at least, appear to.
Still, the strangest part of the evening wasn’t all the stares, it was her.
Rover walked beside him as though there was nothing remotely remarkable about doing so, unhurried despite the crowds shifting around them, close enough that her shoulder brushed his every few steps whenever someone forced them nearer together. Each contact was brief, probably accidental, but Jingran nevertheless remained absurdly conscious of every single one.
He doubted he’d ever become accustomed to this, even if fate allowed him to encounter her again after tonight – on another road, perhaps, or inside some forgotten ruin, or across a battlefield where they might once again have to pretend they’d never met while quietly sabotaging someone else’s plans.
Because she was Rover – the Rover.
He had grown up with that name belonging to stories larger than anything he had ever expected to be a part of – military reports and teahouse tales, whispered accounts of sudden appearances on battlefields and impossible victories, of Sentinels and cities and disasters that were miraculously averted all because one woman had arrived at precisely the right moment.
That name did not belong to someone rain-soaked and barefoot beside his fire, wrapped in his cloak, eating food he had cooked for her, arguing with him about maps, directions, and his own increasingly shameless attempts at flirtation.
Yet he had met that woman, too, and had expected nothing more of her than being permitted the privilege of carrying the memory of that night for the rest of his tragically short life.
He certainly hadn’t expected the woman herself to come back.
Surely she had better things to do than seek out one half-dead Nethermancer at the edge of an obscure village.
Yet she had done so, and was now walking through Xuanfang at his side as though this were merely the next chapter, instead of a continuation of so improbable a storyline he was tempted to reject it as indulgent writing.
No one here knows…
The thought surfaced as they passed beneath rows of lanterns swinging gently in the evening breeze.
To everyone moving around them, Rover and Jingran were comrades who had recently returned from battle, perhaps discussing Xuanfang’s reconstruction or some equally respectable matter.
No one looking at them would guess that she had once settled onto his lap beside a fire while thunder shook the mountain overhead. No one looking at Jingran would imagine that the legendary woman half of Huanglong regarded as a savior had once looked at him as though she intended to devour him, then kissed him until he’d been breathless and delirious with disbelief.
And unless he had misread the evening so far, she intended to do something very similar again.
The realization made him feel ten years younger and at least twice as foolish.
What would any of them think if they knew?
That question was entertaining, but more dangerous still was the one that followed:
What does she think, when she looks at me?
He tried not to focus too much on that one.
Someone pointed, two someones, actually – a pair of young clerks standing beside a stall, their heads bent together, one nudging the other and jerking his chin toward Jingran.
He gave them a small, gracious nod, the sort an infamous writer might bestow upon his admirers, and watched both of them redden and lean together once more, whispering.
“Seems the word’s spread,” Rover observed. “People are excited to see you.”
“Tch. No sense getting used to it.” Jingran tugged his hood a little lower, though hiding himself was probably pointless with Rover walking beside him. “Give it a week. Two, if I happen to publish something quickly enough to distract them. If not, they’ll be back to hounding me for updates like I robbed them instead of a grave.”
“I don’t know, I think they might give you some grace this time. You did almost die.”
“That remains to be seen.” Jingran sighed, casting a mournful look around the market. “Being forgotten has its advantages, you know. A man can accomplish a great many things when no one thinks he’s worth paying attention to. Or when they think he’s dead. And now I’ve gone and ruined it by becoming a hero. Amateur mistake, really.”
Rover laughed beneath her breath.
The sound immediately dragged his attention back toward her, and Jingran caught himself smiling, almost spellbound. He looked away almost as quickly, unwilling to let her see how pathetically pleased he was by something so small, and in doing so spotted a familiar blue-robed figure moving through the crowd ahead with a thick stack of papers tucked beneath one arm.
His stomach dropped.
“Oh, no.”
Rover followed his gaze. “What?”
“That,” Jingran said, already turning them toward another street, “is Shou Ci, and unlike the rest of Xuanfang, he does not care that I nearly died. In fact, I suspect he’ll be personally offended I survived without finishing the next chapter.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I assure you, I’m not. He will tie me to a chair, put a pen in my hand, and use my hide to bind the manuscript if I complain about it.”
Rover barked a laugh, and Shou Ci looked up.
Jingran immediately caught her hand.
“This way.”
He pulled her into a narrow side street between a merchant displaying embroidered coats and another stall bedecked with bright paper kites, moving quickly enough to escape recognition but carefully enough not to aggravate his side more than necessary. Rover lengthened her stride to match his, still laughing as he led her through several more turns, away from the main thoroughfare and into one of the quieter market districts.
Here, a craftsman bent over a chunk of jade beneath a hanging lamp, while another vendor spun molten sugar into delicate shapes. Jingran ducked behind a stall selling mushrooms, peering through baskets overflowing with white jade beauties, until he was reasonably certain the editor had not followed.
“Clear,” he announced, pulling her out of hiding.
Rover shook her head at him.
“You laugh now,” Jingran said gravely. “But you haven’t seen what that man does when you miss a deadline.”
He led her into the little plaza beyond, where lanterns stretched between the stalls in loose golden chains, their light glancing from the great chunk of jade standing at the center and warming the evening haze above the market. The air was thick with competing scents – ginger and caramelized sugar, roasted meat and vinegar, smoke and enough chili to make Jingran’s mouth water before they had even reached his favorite stall.
The proprietor knew him well enough not to bother asking, and within minutes, a dish of Flavor Under Heaven appeared on the counter in all its glory.
Rover took one look and appeared to consider several life choices at once.
“You eat that… willingly?”
“Gladly.”
She leaned every so slightly closer.
“It’s very bright, very… red.”
“That’s how you know it’s good.”
“For something called Flavor Under Heaven, it looks more like it’s crawled out of the depths of hell.”
Rover ordered something “that wasn’t actively trying to kill her,” and they carried their bowls to a small, scarred table tucked behind a row of potted plants.
The noodles were just the way he liked them, slicked with oil and pepper until heat bloomed across his lips, numbed his tongue, and settled pleasantly into his chest. The liquor they’d ordered had its own sharper warmth, sliding down beneath his ribs until the persistent ache there receded into something distant enough to ignore.
Across from him, Rover’s cheeks had taken on a bright flush from the combination of spice, drink, and the warmth trapped beneath the market awnings, a sight Jingran found deeply endearing.
They talked while they ate, and the first thing Rover asked about was how he had come to know Suisui.
Jingran nearly inhaled his drink, and managed to conceal the resulting grin behind a cough, one hand raised, then took an unnecessarily long sip of water while a deeply satisfying possibility unfolded...
Was she jealous?
Surely not, not someone like Rover… at least, probably not?
Still, the thought pleased him far more than it had any right to.
He explained that the renowned Lady "Chongming Zhehua" had simply hired him for a job, mapping some hidden place she dared not walk into blind.
Rover appeared satisfied, and Jingran breathed a sigh of relief.
From there, her questions turned to the Xunyou Wanderers and the work Nethermancers did beyond the stories people told about grave robbers, then farther backward into his years in Mengzhou and, eventually, how he had come to know Qiuyuan.
Jingran explained that their masters had known one another long before either of their disciples had been born.
“I used to pester Shifu constantly for a chance to spar with him,” Jingran admitted, turning his cup slowly between his fingers while the liquor flashed amber along the rim. “Bothered him about it for years. Every time Qiuyuan’s name came up, I’d ask again. Every time, Shifu said ‘no.’”
“And?” Rover prompted, leaning forward slightly.
“And… Eventually I saw Qiuyuan fight, and decided perhaps Shifu had been protecting me from myself.”
From there, the conversation wandered without any real structure, each story opening into another. Rover told him about the Sonoro Sphere she’d encountered in Septimont where past, present, and future folded over one another until memory and possibility became impossible to distinguish, entire lives rewritten and layered like pages laid one atop the other. Jingran answered with Mirage Realms that had swallowed streets whole and returned them decades later, with abandoned cities whose lamps still burned despite having no living hands left to light them.
One memory opened another door, and before he quite realized how they had arrived there, Rover was asking about his writing.
Perhaps Jingran would have brushed the question aside if he were entirely sober. He had any number of easy answers prepared for curious readers – money, boredom, vanity, the persistence of children – but the liquor sat warm beneath his sternum, the market had softened into gold around them, and Rover watched him with those eyes that had seen centuries worth of stories he could never hope to experience.
And suddenly, his thoughts were not so indecent, nor even selfish.
Would that I could be the one to write down every one of yours.
He shoved the impulse aside and told her instead how writing had never really been something he decided to do; it had simply been something he had always done, first for himself and then, gradually, for the children who waited near a particular alley whenever he returned from a Mirage Realm.
They would spot him coming home dusty, bruised, sometimes limping, usually trying very hard to sneak back before Sandao or Yanshu or anyone else saw what condition he was in, and immediately descend upon him. They would tug at his sleeves, demanding to know what he had seen and whether there had been ghosts, or monsters, or treasure.
Sometimes he told them the truth, other times he invented everything. But most often, the stories landed somewhere in between.
A lake became deep enough to hide an entire city beneath its waves; figures glimpsed moving along a distant shore became pale ghosts wandering under moonlight; an ordinary relic acquired the ability to bestow impossible strength on whoever dared to claim it.
“They reminded me of myself,” Jingran admitted. “When I was their age, I didn’t have stories like those. Mostly I just had hunger and winter, adults telling me which chores needed doing, which places I wasn’t allowed to go. Which, as you can imagine, only made me want to go into every single one.”
He had wondered before who that half-frozen child might have become if someone had handed him a book full of impossible places instead of leaving him to discover them himself. Perhaps the hunger for the unknown might have been satisfied through stories, and he could have chosen some safer profession, one involving a roof, regular meals, and fewer things trying to kill him.
Then again, knowing himself, probably not.
“And then one of the little pests learned his letters,” Jingran continued, “and informed me that if I insisted on disappearing for months at a time, the least I could do was write everything down so they had something to read while they waited.”
“Smart kid,” Rover said with a smile.
“Terrible kid. Far too clever for his own good…”
“Hm. Almost like someone else I know,” she commented, all too innocently.
“So, anyway,” he continued, “I let him help. Mostly because he was never going to stop talking otherwise.”
The first manuscript sold to a printer for enough coin to feed him for a month, and Jingran assumed that would be the end of it. Then Shou Ci appeared asking whether there was more. Apparently readers wanted another story, and then another, and a few years later Jingran discovered that half of Xuanfang took great pleasure in the collected misadventures of a grave robber with poor judgment, while his editor had built an entire professional relationship around increasingly inventive threats when he missed his deadlines.
He half expected Rover to suggest the obvious; if he had enough experiences behind him and imagination to spare, perhaps he no longer needed the Mirage Realms. He could stop risking his life and simply write.
But she never did, and he knew it was because she understood, and that she would never ask him to abandon a part of himself she had already recognized in her own reflection.
Somewhere in the trading of stories, the bottle emptied.
The plaza thinned around them until the remaining vendors began pulling closed their shutters, voices fading one by one while the lanterns overhead burned lower and lower. Only then did Jingran realize how much time had passed.
He had been sitting there for well over an hour, handing Rover pieces of himself one story at a time, and had enjoyed every moment of it.
More unsettling still, he had not thought about dying once.
Not morbidly, of course; death was simply one of the facts his life had been built around, no different from weather, or provisions, or the condition of the road ahead.
Yet sitting here slightly buzzed, his injuries softened to a distant numbness, smiling like an idiot while lamplight moved gently over Rover’s face, some small and treacherous part of him had begun considering something else different…
Not how much of his life he had left, not even how to spend it, but how to get more of it.
Another meal, another conversation, another night…
I could want more of this. I could want more of this for a very long time.
“You’ve gone quiet.”
Rover watched him as she drained the last of her drink, her expression softened by liquor and lamplight into something that made the unease inside him simultaneously worse and yet easier to bear.
“That’s unlike you,” she added, setting her cup aside. “Should I be concerned?”
“Just thinking,” Jingran replied, summoning a mischievous smile before she could see too much.
“Hm.” Rover propped her chin in one palm and regarded him with those golden eyes. “And what were you thinking about?”
For one reckless moment, he almost answered:
About you.
About tomorrow.
About whether three months really is far too much to spend…
Instead, Jingran chose the kind of truth he trusted best; the sort that could be hidden safely beneath a joke.
“I was thinking,” he said, pushing away from the table and rising, “that it’s getting late, and you promised me a room.”
He offered her his hand. And if he wasn’t holding himself entirely steady, he chose to blame the hour, the liquor, the injuries… anything except the realization that Rover had not simply chosen him before just because he happened to be there.
Because she wouldn’t have come back if that was all it was. She sees something in me, she…
Her fingers folded through his. She rose and led him out of the last fading circle of lanternlight and into the quiet midnight streets, and Jingran followed willingly, trying very hard not to think about how easy it would be to follow her, wherever she might lead.
The room was nicer than anywhere Jingran had slept in years, nicer than anywhere he’d ever slept, if he were being honest.
Even so, he suspected Rover could have afforded better and had chosen not to for his sake, either because she knew enough about him to guess that something ostentatious would make him uncomfortable, or because this particular place struck some balance between comfort and anonymity.
Dark wooden panels lined the walls, their polished surfaces catching only the dimmest amber from the bedside lamp. Beneath the curtained window stood a low table and two cushioned chairs, while a washstand occupied the opposite wall. The bed took up most of the far side of the room, piled high with layers of linen and an unreasonable number of pillows.
From the street below came the last scattered sounds of Xuanfang – a vendor calling a final price before shuttering his stall, cart wheels rattling briefly over stone, a burst of laughter somewhere farther down the road.
Rover closed the door behind them, and Jingran heard the bolt slide home.
For the space of several breaths, neither of them moved, and Jingran became aware of the fact that he had no idea what he was supposed to do. Which was ridiculous – he knew how these things went – and he’d spent a considerable portion of the evening flirting, bargaining, and generally arranging for precisely this outcome.
More importantly, they’d already slept together. There was no uncertainty, no suspense over whether she would want him, no mystery about what might happen if either of them crossed the distance first.
Maybe that was the problem.
Back then, he had been a stranger, nothing more than a nameless man with mismatched eyes and a dangerous mouth, offering himself up for whatever she wanted because sunrise would shine a light on who they were and where they belonged. She could take pleasure from him, he could take pleasure from being wanted, and they could go their separate ways with nothing to carry except a memory.
Rover seemed to sense his hesitation, because although she stepped close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body at his back, she did not reach for him.
“We don’t have to, you know,” she said softly.
Jingran turned to face her, narrowing his one good eye as though he didn’t understand her.
“Don’t have to what?”
“This.”
Her gaze moved over him, lingering first on the patch covering his right eye, then the bruising at his jaw, then down toward the side he had been favoring all evening.
“You’ve had a week that would’ve killed most people. Several times over, in your case. If you’d rather sleep, in a real bed for once, well...” Her mouth curved faintly. “That's a perfectly good use of a room.”
Her expression held no disappointment, no pressure, there was no expectation that he owed her anything simply because she had spent money on him, or because they had already spent the entire evening circling toward this.
There was only concern.
He could’ve said ‘yes’ – probably should have, given the bruising in his ribs and the faded sight in his right eye – but the alcohol had dulled his aches and, more importantly, he had learned long ago not to trust in the promise of other nights.
Other nights were for other people.
For those who had more time.
But Jingran knew better.
A winter storm could swallow the road before you reached shelter.
A lamp could burn lower faster than expected, leaving you lost in darkness.
Someone could sit beside you one evening, talking and laughing around the fire, their body cold come morning.
When something bright appeared before you, beautiful and unexpected and wholly undeserved, you did not ask the world to keep it safe for you.
You reached out, and held onto it for as long as you could.
“I’m fine,” he said quickly, then added, “Mostly fine. The liquor’s done wonders.”
He let his grin return, if only because smiling was easier than admitting that the possibility of only sleeping beside her felt somehow more intimate than what they’d planned to do instead.
“Can barely feel my ribs anymore. Best I’ve felt all week.”
“That’s not saying much...”
“Ah, here I am trying to be optimistic, and you have absolutely no appreciation for it, none whatsoever.”
He stepped closer, set his hands at her waist, and drew her in.
“Tell you what,” he said, lowering his voice. “If it’ll ease that pretty little conscience of yours, I’ll let you take care of me afterward, how’s that? Fuss over me all you like, once I’ve thoroughly disgraced myself.”
The corner of Rover’s mouth twitched, and she laced her hands behind his neck.
“Disgraced yourself, huh?”
“Mhm… that’s what I plan to do, anyway.”
She gave a small hum of consideration, then reached for his hood and pushed it gently back, her fingers grazing the line of his jaw.
Jingran saw the question forming in her eyes and, before she could voice it, leaned close enough that his mouth nearly brushed her ear.
“But before that, Rover…” he murmured, “I want you to do whatever you want to me.”
Something bright and wicked flashed behind her eyes, and she didn’t answer him with words. Instead, her fingers slid along his cheek and into his hair, tilting his face precisely where she wanted it before her mouth met his.
Last time, there had been a challenge in nearly everything they did; every touch dared a response, every shift in control became part of the game, and pleasure came tangled with the question of which of them would make the other yield first.
Tonight, Rover kissed him as though there were nothing to win.
She lingered over his mouth with a patience that made Jingran all the more aware of every little detail – the softness of her lips, the faint bite of spice and liquor on her tongue, the careful angle of her hand where it rested against the side of his jaw that was not bruised.
She caught his lower lip gently between her teeth and tugged, and a weak sound slipped free before he could stop it.
On any other night, he might’ve cared, might’ve tried to recover some shred of dignity, turned the reaction into a joke, or a dare…
But not tonight.
He let her guide him, and the surrender came with such unexpected relief that he forgot to even try at cleverness. He didn’t push back, didn’t shift the balance or provoke her into chasing him; he simply let her lead.
Her hands moved to his clothing – belts and buckles, straps and pouches, all the practical little pieces accumulated over years of needing everything within easy reach – and dismantled them with a steady, maddening sort of patience that left Jingran far more aware of the process than he would have liked.
He could’ve helped, could’ve undone the complicated mess of gear and armor and clothing in half the time, could’ve made some joke about her efficiency or whined that she was taking too long.
Instead, he focused on every small, gentle touch – the warmth of her mouth when she paused to kiss him between fastenings, the brush of her knuckles along his side, the slow drag of her fingertips down the center of his chest when another layer loosened and fell away.
Anything except the fact that every piece she removed seemed to strip off something less tangible with it.
When the final dark layer slipped from his shoulders and joined the rest in a quiet heap near the bed, Jingran stepped free of the rest and found himself meeting Rover’s eyes.
They glowed bright gold beneath the room’s softened lamplight, and the sight reassured him. He had walked through enough Mirage Realms to know how convincing false things could appear, but no illusion he had ever seen could have reproduced this particular combination of warmth, hunger, and quiet attention.
Her gaze moved over him more slowly now than it had the first time they were together, when darkness, haste, and half-removed clothing had left little room for examination. This time she took in the lean lines of his body, the old scars, the newer bruising blooming dark along his ribs, all the visible evidence of a body he had spent most of his life treating as little more than another piece of equipment – useful so long as it kept moving.
A faint unease tightened beneath his sternum.
Because the layers Rover had peeled away were no longer only leather and cloth.
People saw the Nethermancer, the storyteller, the fool dangling a leg over the precipice and grinning at death…
But Rover saw him – the half-starved child left alone in Mengzhou, the furious adolescent hell-bent on sharpening himself around revenge, the man who jumped headfirst into the unknown…
He braced himself for revulsion – or worse, pity – but what he saw instead was want, quiet and unmistakable and unsettling. Rover looked at the useless wreck of him as though none of it reduced him in the slightest, as though every scar and bruise were simply another story she was eager to learn.
Jingran reached up, and pulled off the eyepatch, tossing it onto the pile of clothes.
Rover’s brows lifted. “Shouldn’t you leave that on?”
“It’s not doing much. Vision’s blurry, but it’ll clear. Mostly keeps the glare from giving me a headache.” He glanced around the dim room. “Not exactly a problem here.”
“Hm,” Rover murmured, stepping closer. “I suppose not.”
Her palm settled over the center of his chest and pressed gently, guiding him backward until the backs of his knees met the bed and he sat. She continued, unhurried, until he eased down against the pillows, the mattress giving beneath him so softly that every bruised place in his body loosened at once.
A sigh escaped him, and Rover smiled knowingly.
Then she followed him down, settling over his hips with one hand braced against the carved headboard, the other still resting above his heart, and whatever unease had been coiled inside him moments before began, slowly and inexorably, to warm into something far more urgent.
Rover kissed him again, deeper this time. There was nothing hurried about it at first, she simply settled more firmly over him, one hand still resting against his chest as though keeping track of the heartbeat beneath her palm. But then, she began to rock her hips along the length of him with a slow, deliberate rhythm he recognized from their last encounter.
He didn’t need the encouragement; he’d been halfway gone the moment she’d bolted the door, and this… this threatened to undo him entirely, especially when she made a soft sound against his mouth that suggested she was enjoying his helplessness every bit as much as he was.
His hands tightened at her waist as he twitched against her, pulling her body closer, chasing warmth and pressure with considerably less dignity than he would have preferred, and the answering curve of her mouth told him she noticed.
Her hand drifted from the center of his chest to his collarbone, traced the line of his throat, then disappeared into his hair, fingertips scraping lightly over his scalp in a way that sent another shiver through him. Jingran wanted the same fairness of it, wanted skin rather than cloth beneath his hands, wanted her stripped of all her defenses.
He reached for the fastenings of her clothes, albeit with a little less grace than she had demonstrated with his, and Rover laughed softly into the next kiss when one buckle refused to cooperate.
“Oh, don’t start,” he muttered against her mouth.
“Well, I can’t say it’s your first time...”
“Hey, you’re the one who tracked me down; weeks later, I might add. Whether you think me inexperienced or not, I’d say that speaks rather highly of my performance.”
That only made her laugh again, but she took pity on him, leaning back to help as layers of fabric joined his discarded clothes in the shadows beside the bed.
When she straightened over top of him, looking down, the sight of her amid the muted glow of the room nearly chased the breath from his lungs.
Her hair was loose around her face, her cheeks still flushed from wine and spice and their kiss, her chest rising and falling in time with her rapid breath.
He’d heard stories of Rover long before he’d laid eyes on her, most people had. But none of those stories had prepared him for this – for the quiet hitch in her breath when his hands traveled slowly along her sides, or the way her eyes drifted shut when his palms lingered at her breasts, or the fact that someone so legendary could lean into his touch and become, for a little while, simply a woman who wanted to be held, who wanted to be held by him.
Why me?
Because he had been dumb enough to pretend not to know her?
Brave enough to flirt with her?
Lucky enough to occupy the right ruin during the right storm?
Surely it wasn’t because he was anything special…
He felt that old certainty beginning to tighten around his chest again, the familiar instinct to reduce good fortune into coincidence before it could become something he might grieve…
But Rover bent and kissed him, even slower this time, lingering over his mouth before letting her lips wander along the line of his jaw, down his throat, over the scars crossing his chest, and then lower still, each kiss unhurried enough that Jingran had far too much time to realize where she was going.
His breath caught as understanding dawned, disbelief spreading through him almost as swiftly as the heat gathering beneath his skin.
Surely she was only teasing – judging by their last encounter, Rover seemed to enjoy making him suffer – surely she wasn't actually going to…
Then her hands wrapped around him, followed by the warmth of her mouth, the pressure of her tongue, and every thought that had been threatening to strangle him simply… vanished.
For a while there was nothing beyond sensation, nothing beyond Rover and that slow, devastating patience of hers, but even through the haze of pleasure, some part of him remained helplessly aware of the care she was taking with him. She wasn't rushing him towards the inevitable conclusion, nor did she seem interested in reducing this to another contest between them; instead, she lingered, seemingly content to learn every change in his breathing and every involuntary tightening of muscle, every reaction he could not control, until Jingran was left with the dizzying realization that she was treating his pleasure as though it were something worth taking her time over.
Surely he wasn’t worthy of this type of treatment.
He’d only ever meant to be an option for her, a safe if somewhat insufferable one, interesting enough to serve as a temporary distraction, willing to let her take whatever she wanted from him without asking for anything in return.
But this attention, the tenderness threaded through something that should have been nothing more than pleasure… this fit nowhere within the bargain he’d written in his own head, and he couldn’t help but wonder once again what it might mean, what Rover thought…
Don’t think about that, not now, he admonished himself, letting his head sink farther into the pillows as another shudder moved through him. Don’t think about anything right now.
His hand found her hair, the loose strands soft as they slipped through his fingers, not to guide her so much as to anchor himself to something tangible while sensation gathered beneath his skin. At his touch, she paused and lifted her gaze to his, and when his palm drifted almost helplessly to the side of her face, she surprised him by leaning into it.
There was something unbearably tender about it, something that had nothing to do with what they were doing and yet somehow made every sensation sharper – the warmth of her cheek against his hand, the softness that shone in those luminous eyes, the fact that she wanted to acknowledge his touch rather than simply accept it. Jingran stared down at her, momentarily caught somewhere between disbelief and an emotion he had no intention of examining too closely.
Then she lowered her head again, and thinking became substantially more difficult.
His fingers tightened in her hair as he followed the rhythm she set, while his other hand curled into the pillow beneath his head. He wanted this to last, and not simply because it felt good – though, gods, it did – but because moments like this didn’t belong to him.
His life was a series of thresholds and unmapped roads, of wagers that went wrong more often than not, of bandages drawn tight through gritted teeth and sunrises admired briefly from some lonely mountain pass before he shouldered his pack and moved on toward whatever waited beyond the next horizon.
Good things tended to be temporary, to be appreciated only because he understood they would not remain. But this was warm, and safe, and dangerously easy to want, and he found himself wishing he could stretch the night thin enough that morning might never quite arrive.
As though she had sensed how little control remained, Rover's patience sharpened, becoming decidedly less merciful.
Jingran's breath caught, then broke as pleasure climbed with startling speed, his body answering her before his pride could intervene. His hips shifted helplessly toward her, and the fingers tangled in her hair tightened despite his effort to remain gentle. When she answered with a pleased little hum, the vibration of it rolled through him, and whatever remained of his composure frayed another precious thread.
A groan escaped him as his head sank deeper into the pillow. He wasn't going to last much longer; he had already been half-drunk on liquor before Rover ever touched him, and now he was thoroughly drunk on her.
“Hey, Rover, wait–” he said, his voice rough, his breathing ragged.
Rover relented, leaning back to look at him, and Jingran had to stare for a moment before his scattered thoughts arranged themselves. Her hair was loose and tousled around her face, her mouth damp, her breathing no steadier than his own, while those impossible golden eyes regarded him with a mixture of heat and unmistakable amusement at the state she had already reduced him to.
The sight very nearly erased the thought he had worked so hard to grasp.
“That was…” His breath caught, forcing him to begin again. “That’s incredible, truly, no notes, but… what do you say we change positions?”
She gave him a keener, slightly suspicious look, and asked, “Well, what did you have in mind?”
“Come up here.”
“Come up where, exactly?”
He tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, drawing confidence from the alcohol lingering in his blood and the knowledge that, after the sounds she’d already drawn from him, he probably had very little dignity left to defend.
"Come sit on my face."
"W– what?!"
He pushed himself up onto his elbows to meet her gaze and couldn’t help but grin at the lovely flush spreading across her cheekbones, her lips parted as though, for once, she had nothing to say.
Somehow, his shameless suggestion had rendered Rover completely speechless.
"But then I can't…" She gestured vaguely down at him. "I can't do this."
"Sure you can. Just… turn around."
“There’s no way that’s going to work–” she started, her blush deepening as she forced the words out.
“Of course it will,” he said, grinning wider. “We're almost the same height, aren’t we? It'll be perfect."
She bit her lower lip, and Jingran could practically see her going over the logistics in her head. Then, sensing her weakness, he played the last card he had at hand…
He let his head fall back against the pillows and exhaled dramatically.
“Come on, Rover. I nearly died.”
He peeked up at her to see that her expression had hardened at once, eyes narrowing.
"And I'm beginning to suspect you almost died on purpose just so you could use that excuse for the rest of your life."
"Who's to say," Jingran said, replying as serenely as he could.
That earned him the reaction he really wanted; a glare that wasn’t even remotely angry, the corners of her mouth threatening to betray her amusement.
She muttered something under her breath as she climbed off of him and kicked off the rest of her clothing.
“What was that?”
“I said,” Rover repeated, “that you’re very lucky you’re as cute as you are.”
"Cute, that’s it?" Jingran placed a hand over his heart, doing his best to sound gravely wounded. "Last time you said I was handsome."
"Don't push it."
He had intended another retort, but whatever wit remained deserted him entirely the moment she shifted over him and settled into place, knees braced on either side of his chest, slender calves sliding beneath his arms as his hands came up to steady her, palms pressing into the warm, generous curve of her hips. And for one dizzying moment, he was once again aware that she had met his shameless suggestion not by laughing it off, but by indulging him.
“I won’t, I swear,” he said, softer than he’d intended, his voice laced with none of his usual teasing. “Best behavior from here on out, I promise.”
Rover gave a quiet snort that suggested precisely how much faith she placed in that promise, then adjusted herself, and whatever answer Jingran might have offered dissolved beneath the heat of her mouth, her rhythm, the press of her fingers against the exact spot that caused his hips to jerk helplessly up off the bed.
He forced himself to focus on her – he’d talked her into this position, after all – relearning the language of her body rather than losing himself completely in what she was doing. He moved carefully, parting her with his fingers first, then his tongue, following the subtle reactions Rover could never quite conceal no matter how formidable her self-control might be – the shortening of her breath when his touch lingered in just the right place, the twitch of her hips when he hooked his fingers just so, the tightening of her grip whenever he found something she particularly liked. Each response sparked a ridiculous flare of satisfaction through him.
When the flick of his tongue drew a full-body shiver from her, Jingran stayed there, pleased enough with himself that he might have laughed if Rover had not chosen that exact moment to become considerably less merciful.
There was something profoundly satisfying about the symmetry of it. What he drew from Rover sharpened everything already burning through him; what she drew from him seemed only to encourage her in return, until sensation folded back upon itself so completely that Jingran could scarcely tell whether he was responding to his own pleasure or hers.
Her hips shifted against him, a moan escaping her, and he could only imagine how she must look – hand tightening around him, cheeks hollowing – his own answering groan was immediate, the sound dragged from him before he could think to swallow it.
He had always considered himself reasonably adept at adjusting to unfamiliar circumstances. This, however, was quickly exceeding even his considerable talents.
Before long, he could do little more than hold her steady and concentrate on her warmth, her sweetness, on every tremor and breath and movement he managed to coax from her while his own control steadily unraveled.
The liquor had already dulled his aches and loosened all those careful restraints he normally kept cinched tight, the exhaustion of the previous days had left him with precious little strength to rebuild them, Rover’s earlier attention had already brought him dangerously close to the edge before they had even begun this particular experiment, and now, with this sheer excess of sensation…
He pushed her hips up, trying to find breath enough to speak.
“Hey, Rover–”
She didn’t stop, didn’t even slow.
“Hey.” A breathless laugh escaped him, though there was no humor in it now. “I’m serious, you can stop, you don't have to–”
But apparently Rover had no intention of listening to him. And that, even more than the pleasure tightening through him – the knowledge that Rover had heard the warning in his voice, understood exactly what he meant, and chose to remain with him through the moment rather than pull away from it – was what pushed him over the edge.
His hands tightened around her hips as the last of his control gave way, his breath catching sharply while the room seemed to contract around him and he surged up into her, reduced to nothing but the pounding of his own pulse and the overwhelming heat and pressure of her mouth and her hands as she worked him even harder, seemingly intent on swallowing every last drop. Some last wicked impulse survived even in this thoughtless state, enough that he leaned up and sank his teeth into her. Rover jolted and yelped in surprise, the sound muffled with him still in her mouth, and Jingran released her with a breathless laugh that dissolved almost immediately into another broken exhale.
He sank back into the pillows with his heart still racing and his vision pleasantly soft around the edges, feeling as though someone had removed half his bones while he wasn’t paying attention.
Rover disentangled herself and curled up against his side, her cheek settling into the hollow of his shoulder while one hand wandered lazily through his hair, and only then did the room begin to reconstruct itself around him, piece by piece – the low flame of the lamp, the curtains over the window, the faint murmur of Xuanfang beyond the walls.
For several breaths, Jingran did nothing except lie there beneath her hand and remember how to exist.
Rover sighed and tucked herself closer, and a dangerous warmth unfolded within his chest. Not desire this time, though plenty of that remained, but something quieter and infinitely more troublesome – the sense that this moment was not merely something they chose, but something that might, under different circumstances, belong to them.
Something they could keep.
But then, his still-scattered thoughts caught up with one important detail.
He pushed himself onto one elbow, ignoring the complaint from his ribs.
“Wait, Rover, you didn’t–”
“Nope,” she hummed lazily against his shoulder, sounding entirely unbothered. “But it’s fine…”
Jingran stared at her.
“Oh, no it’s not, no no no…”
One golden eye opened, and something in the quiet amusement behind it told Jingran she was teasing him, waiting to see what he intended to do about it.
“That won’t do at all.”
Before she could react, he set one hand against her shoulder and pushed, rolling Rover beneath him so that he could look down at the brief surprise that flickered across her face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“What does it look like? I’m finishing what I started,” he said with a grin, then, more softly, “Please let me. You took care of me.”
There was something in her gaze Jingran couldn’t quite name, and before he could think on it long enough to frighten himself with possibilities, he kissed her, letting his mouth wander along the curve of her jaw and down the line of her throat, following the familiar contours of her body with considerably more patience than he had possessed the first time they’d been together.
He lingered at her breast when her breath hitched beneath his mouth, noted what made her tense and then slowly soften, intent on returning the same care she’d given him.
The room seemed to grow quieter around them as he worked his way lower, until Xuanfang was reduced to little more than a distant murmur beyond the curtained window. In that hush, every reaction Rover gave him felt magnified – the whisper of sheets as she writhed beneath him, the soft sounds she tried to swallow. Jingran found himself listening for each one, absurdly pleased whenever he managed to draw another from her.
He settled between her legs and looked up at her, at the dark spill of her hair against the pillows and the flush beneath her skin, and thought – not for the first time tonight – that he had spent his whole life hunting treasures far less remarkable than the woman who had chosen to place herself in his hands.
So he touched her slowly, gently, taking his time; his life might be short, and he might have spent most of it rushing headlong from one danger to the next, forever measuring time by how much of it he could lose, but here, for her, he had all the time in the world.
Her eyes drifted closed as her head tipped back, and the soft, contented sigh that escaped her sent an unexpected warmth through his chest. She leaned into his touch, hips pressing into his hands, and Jingran remembered how responsive she could become once that formidable control of hers began to loosen.
What he had not remembered – perhaps because the first time had been too fast, too wild, the both of them too intent on challenging the other – was how beautiful her surrender could be.
Not because she was helpless; Rover was never helpless – not even now, soft beneath him and half-undone, her breathing uneven – she could have reversed their positions before he registered the movement.
What thrilled him was that she trusted him enough to be this soft.
Jingran kept his touch gentle even as he gradually increased the pace, coaxing rather than demanding, finding the rhythm that made her sigh and go still beneath him, then tightening it just enough to keep her chasing.
When her breathing quickened, he smiled against her skin and pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh before moving slowly higher, alternating tenderness with just enough teeth to make her gasp and then laugh softly beneath her breath, fingers twisting in the sheets.
“Please,” Rover whispered, her head thrashing sideways, her voice thinned almost to breaking. “I’m so close, Jing, I’m–”
He nearly gave in, just for the sound of his name. But there was something wickedly satisfying about discovering that even this legendary hero could be reduced to a whimpering, pleading mess beneath his hands. Jingran eased back just enough to let the intensity loosen rather than crest, watching the realization cross her face.
Her eyes opened.
“You are cruel,” she breathed, somewhere between accusation and disbelief.
“Me?” Jingran tilted his head with exaggerated innocence. “Cruel?”
“You’re teasing me. I didn’t tease you earlier.”
“Hah. Well, that was your mistake,” he said with a grin. “I said you could do whatever you wanted with me… you should’ve taken me up on it.”
“All night–”
She tried to speak, but the circles he pressed against her became a little more firm, the fingers he slid inside her hooked, ever so slightly, and she gasped, body jolting beneath his hands.
“You’ve been… you’ve been whining about being half-dead.”
“Pft. And you believed me?” He leaned down and pressed another kiss to the inside of her thigh, his hands keeping her suspended in that delirious, absolutely delicious middle ground. “I told you I like it rough. You’re the one who decided to be gentle.”
“Well, I won’t–” Her next breath caught sharply, and she gave him a look that might have been threatening if her eyes weren’t starting to glaze over. “I won’t be making that mistake again. Wait… and see.”
“Wait and see what?” Jingran said as he deliberately slowed his touch, just enough to make her frustration obvious. “I can’t quite hear you, Rover.”
“Next time…” she managed faintly.
His smile remained in place, but something underneath it shifted.
“Careful,” he murmured. “You shouldn’t go saying things like that, Rover. A man might start getting ideas…”
“About what…”
“About how you might actually like me or something.”
He meant it as a joke, but there was a truth to it. Because she had liked the nameless man in the nameless ruin, the stranger by the fire, the reckless flirt.
But that didn’t necessarily mean she’d like the person himself, once she knew him.
Rover’s expression changed, sadness flickering in her eyes for only a heartbeat before it was overtaken by mischief, and she knocked her knees against either side of her head.
“Ow– hey!” Jingran recoiled, more startled than hurt, while Rover relaxed back against the pillows with a grin, looking entirely too pleased with herself. “What the hell was that for?!”
“For being an idiot.”
He gave a resigned nod while rubbing at the side of his head. “Alright, fair enough. But maybe could you provide more with a little more detail, please, preferably before I incur another assault?”
“You don’t need details. You need enough blood back in your brain to start using it properly.”
Then her teasing softened, and when she spoke again there was no mockery in her voice.
“Would we really be here like this if I didn’t like you?”
Jingran had told himself any number of sensible things since she’d appeared at Xianling – that Rover worried about everyone, and had sought him out because she was kind; that she had bought him dinner because she believed in repaying debts, listened to his stories because she was polite, offered to let him sleep because he was injured.
But she’d also sat with him beneath the old tree and held his hand while he spoke about his parents and his Shifu and the dead that he carried, then asked him to stop spending pieces of his life as though no one would miss them. As though she would…
“No,” he said softly. “We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t like each other.”
Rover’s eyes widened at the admission, enough that Jingran wondered what she heard beneath the words. Before he could allow either of them to examine it too closely, he resumed his work, pressing his fingers against her, inside her, grinning as she gasped.
“Now,” he said, as another shiver moved through her, “I’m choosing to believe that was the truth, and not merely an attempt to get me to stop tormenting you.”
Rover tried to glare at him, but there was very little conviction in the expression when her cheeks were that flushed, her breathing that uneven, the composure she wore so naturally far beyond her reach. And when he found the rhythm that made her head sink back into the pillows, the glare disappeared.
“Jing…” she whimpered, biting her lower lip and cutting herself off. “Please.”
He really did intend to tease her a bit more. Perhaps he would ask how desperate she was for it, insist she prove how badly she wanted it, or maybe remind her that she had once been the one not playing fair.
But then she said his name like that, and Jingran discovered he had his limits after all.
He glanced up to see Rover watching him through half-lowered lashes, those golden eyes stripped of everything legendary until what remained was simply human and hungry. For an instant he remembered seeing that same impossible glow burn through the fog of the Mirage, as she’d slammed her shield against his chest.
Whatever game he had been playing was over.
He was done keeping her balanced on the edge simply for the fun of it, and devoted himself instead to carrying her across it, letting her lead, following every restless movement she couldn’t control, every moan and soft cry she couldn’t hide.
She unraveled so fast when he replaced the teasing with something far more deliberate. One hand tangled in his hair while the other caught at the sheets, the tension in her body wound tight. Hips began to move, wilder now, seeking more friction, and he drew his hand away.
He might have teased her for the soft, frustrated sound she made. Except that there was something so intoxicating in being trusted with this version of her...
He lowered his head, and sealed his mouth on her instead.
She jolted beneath him; her fingers tightened in his hair and his name slipped from her again, broken somewhere inside another soft cry, and she wrapped her legs around him.
Maybe it was instinct, to pull him closer, but he needed to focus, he needed her still.
He pinned her down, holding her open beneath his hands, and the tension in her snapped, pleasure flooding through her in a series of helpless shudders that left her gasping for air, and a ridiculous surge of pride went through him.
Jingran stayed with her while the intensity subsided, gentling each touch and sensation slowly rather than withdrawing all at once, until Rover finally gave an overstimulated laugh and squirmed away from him.
Only then did he relax and let his cheek rest against her thigh, looking up at her. She lay sprawled against the pillows with her hair damp around her temples, her breathing still uneven, and despite the ache beginning to creep back beneath his ribs, Jingran couldn’t stop himself from grinning.
“There,” he said once he trusted his voice again. “How was that?”
Her fingers loosened from his hair and began combing through it instead, pushing the strands gently back from his face.
“Perfect,” she said, her voice still rough around the edges.
The answer pleased him far more than it should have.
“Good.”
He nuzzled closer into the soft warmth of her leg and, because self-restraint had never been among his better qualities, allowed himself one last playful nip.
Rover gasped and laughed, reaching down to tap him lightly against the cheek.
“Hey! Easy now, I’m–”
"Yeah, yeah. You almost died,” Rover said, cutting him off before he could finish.
“I was going to say half-blind,” he said in a huff.
“Just get up here.”
She tugged gently at his hair, and Jingran sighed as though she had asked him to endure some terrible hardship before dragging himself back up the bed, his ribs beginning to protest now that the liquor was fading and sensation had returned to every bruised place he had spent the last hour pretending didn’t exist.
When he finally dropped onto the mattress beside her with a long exhale, Rover turned toward him, fitting herself against his chest until her cheek found the space beneath his shoulder and one hand settled loosely across his midsection. Jingran drew her closer and kissed her again, slow and warm, almost lazy, and Rover answered with the same unhurried softness as her hand slipped behind his neck.
Eventually even that faded into stillness, and Rover rested her head against him while her fingers continued to move idly through his hair, leaving Jingran beneath the low amber light with nothing to do but hold her, listen to the distant hush of Xuanfang beyond the window, and breathe.
The room settled into that particular quiet that follows intimacy, when every sound seemed softened by the warmth still lingering between two bodies. Rover’s breathing had evened against his skin, her heartbeat a slow, steady pulse at his side, while the occasional rustle of sheets and the low hiss of the lamp seemed impossibly loud in comparison. Beyond the curtained window, Xuanfang finally went completely silent, the last carts and voices swallowed by the hour, until the city felt very far away.
For a while, Jingran was content to simply lie there. But eventually, practicality reasserted itself. He thought of the basin across the room, of clean cloths and water for them both, and began carefully pushing himself upright.
He made it perhaps halfway before Rover moved. One of her legs slid over his hips, followed by her forearm settling across his chest, and a moment later she was leaning above him with dark hair spilling forward around her face and those impossible golden eyes catching the lamplight.
“And where do you think you’re going?”
Jingran blinked up at her, then gestured rather uselessly toward the washstand.
“To clean up. Get some water. You know, be a good host.”
“You are not the host here.”
“Technically…”
“I believe we had an arrangement,” Rover reminded him. “You said I could do whatever I wanted with you, and that included fussing over you afterward.”
Jingran narrowed his eyes. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Very much.”
But her amusement gentled as she looked down at him, her hand easing where it rested over his chest.
“Let me, just this once. You can go back to being reckless and impossible in the morning.”
There were several arguments he could have made, but he had promised her…
So Jingran allowed himself to sink back against the mattress while Rover slipped out of bed and padded across the room. He busied himself with straightening a pillow that didn’t need straightening, and tugging the blankets back into some semblance of order, trying not to look too obvious about the fact that he was really just watching her.
Rover had dampened a cloth with warm water and cleaned herself with the same practically as before, prepared another, and was pouring two glasses of water when she called over her shoulder, “You’re staring.”
Jingran grinned and stretched out more comfortably against the pillows he’d just straightened, lacing his hands behind his head.
Of course she would turn his own words against him.
Well, two could play that game.
“I’m… appreciating,” he said thoughtfully.
“Hmm… your work?”
Rover approached the bed and sat beside him, handing him one of the glasses.
She was thoroughly covered in bite marks this time, but…
“No.”
He met her eyes over the rim as he drank, and a flush immediately spread across her cheeks once more.
Rover looked down before he could enjoy it too openly, or tease her about it, concentrating on him instead. The warm cloth moved over his skin with careful, unhurried strokes, skirting the worst bruising along his ribs.
Jingran set the empty glass aside and closed his eyes.
He told himself he was relaxing. In truth, he was trying not to dwell on how strange it felt to have someone care for him without being asked, or demanding payment afterward. There was nothing dramatic in what she was doing; perhaps that was why it reached somewhere he did not expect.
By the time she rose to put everything away, a quiet ache had opened inside him that had nothing to do with his injuries whatsoever.
He suddenly wanted her back beside him with an urgency that was almost embarrassing.
So when Rover returned to bed, he didn’t wait for her to settle. He turned toward her almost immediately and tucked himself against her, pressing his face into the warm hollow beneath her throat before she had even managed to pull the covers over them.
Only after her arms came around him did he realize what he’d done, how childishly he was behaving.
But she didn’t tease him; she just tightened her hold and drew him closer.
For a long while they remained tangled together beneath the blankets, Jingran listening as his heartbeat gradually slowed to match her quiet rhythm beneath his ear. The ache in his side faded again into a distant throb, exhaustion settling heavily in his limbs now that there was nothing left to distract him from it.
He should have slept.
Instead he kept his eyes open in the darkness, unwilling to surrender even this small piece of the night, because sleep felt too much like losing time.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Rover murmured eventually, her fingers moving idly through his hair. “Which means you’re thinking again.”
Jingran almost declined to answer. The questions pressing against the back of his throat were simple enough, yet asking any of them aloud felt somehow more dangerous than stepping blindly into a Mirage Realm.
Where are you off to next?
How long before you leave?
When might I see you again?
“Just wondering where you’ll end up next,” he said, keeping his tone casual, as though the answer were nothing more than idle conversation to fill the dark. “What stories I might hear through the grapevine. Or from you yourself, assuming we cross paths again, either here, or elsewhere, out on the road.”
Rover didn’t immediately answer. Jingran listened to the low hiss of the lamp and the quiet rhythm of her breathing, and began to regret saying anything at all.
Then she said, “I’m not sure, honestly. I usually don’t plan very far ahead.”
“You too? Another thing we have in common,” he said with a laugh.
“I’d thought about Mengzhou,” she continued. “I do know people there I’d like to check in with. But lately…” Her fingers slowed slightly in his hair. “New Federation has been on my mind.”
Jingran lifted his head enough to look at her.
“New Fed? From everything I’ve heard, that place promises to be its own special brand of hell.”
“That’s more or less why I’m considering it.”
“Of course it is.”
Rover smiled faintly, then went on, “But wherever I end up, there’s always a chance I’ll need to break into another Sonoro Sphere. Or get trapped inside one. Or find something else that requires someone who knows how to open doors other people can’t.”
Jingran’s heart gave one stupid, hopeful beat. One he crushed immediately.
“Well, if you ever find yourself trapped in some impossible realm, you know who to call.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “Although, you might want to reconsider letting me charge that pendant. Could come in handy.”
He expected her familiar glare, but instead, Rover paused. Her fingers found the white strands above his right eye and rubbed them slowly between thumb and forefinger, her expression thoughtful in a way that made his pulse stumble all over again.
“What if you came with me?”
For several seconds, Jingran simply stared at her. He’d heard the words perfectly; understood them, even. But even so, they didn’t belong to any future he’d bothered imagining.
“Me? But I–” Jingran opened his mouth, found nothing useful was coming out of it, then shook his head as though that might put his thoughts back into order.
“Rover, that’s a terrible idea, you realize that, don’t you?”
She arched an eyebrow.
“And how is it terrible?”
“Because I’m a terrible investment.” He gestured vaguely toward himself. “I have a creature in a lamp that’s slowly eating my lifespan, a penchant for dangerous stunts that only further shorten it, and, at the moment, just one fully functioning eye. That was always the entire point of me, to burn bright, burn fast–”
“Then stop.”
Her words cut cleanly through his argument, and he paused.
“Stop what?”
“Burning it.” Rover’s gaze held his without wavering. “Burning yourself.”
There was no indulgent amusement in her gaze now, no annoyance or even anger, only that maddening steadiness that seemed capable of seeing through every clever philosophy he’d spent years turning into armor.
“Let me ask differently,” she said. “Do you want this to continue?”
Of course he did – what idiot wouldn’t? – but he couldn’t just say that…
“I thought you’d want to go alone,” he said instead.
Her smile became touched with a sadness old enough that Jingran suspected it had very little to do with him.
“I think I’ve spent enough of my life alone.” Her hand drifted slowly down his back. “Besides, we make a pretty good team, don’t we?”
He’d had the same thought, hadn’t he? Walking up to her on the airship after they had fought wave after wave of Autopuppets, tapping his fist against her shoulder, thrilled at how naturally they had moved together.
“Heh, impressive… we really clicked there, didn’t we?”
“Alright,” he said, retreating instinctively toward coyness. “Suppose I said ‘yes.’ Suppose I did want this to continue.”
Suppose I want to go with you.
“Then stop throwing your life away,” she said firmly. “Stop making ridiculous bargains that only hasten the inevitable.”
It had once been so simple.
What was a season against reaching some place no one else could go?
What was a year if it bought another person a way home?
The sooner he burned through himself, the less opportunity there was for life to become tedious, ordinary, dull…
He had never feared the end because there had never been anything he cared about losing.
Except now, the sooner he died… the sooner he lost this.
This was an unknown, too, no less uncertain than any Mirage Realm and the same thrilling plunge of not knowing what waited on the other side.
Except now there was no need to wonder whether he might find anything worthwhile at the end.
And all he had to do was stop being fool enough to burn the bridge beneath his own two feet before he had the chance to cross it.
All he had to do was reach out, and take the hand being offered.
"So it’s that easy, huh," he murmured, mostly to himself.
Rover frowned.
“What?”
A laugh nearly escaped him, born less from amusement than sheer disbelief.
“Nothing, nothing.” Jingran shook his head, though the wonder remained, tangled hopelessly with fear and a warmth so unfamiliar he scarcely knew what to call it. “It’s just… when you put it that way, I suppose it is a fairly easy request. And… maybe I finally have a reason to do it.”
Her hand tightened against his back.
“Do what?”
Jingran looked at her.
“Stay alive a little longer.”
The words hung between them. He’d intended them to sound light, another clever little line he could retreat behind if the moment became too earnest, but even he could hear the truth in them.
Rover’s expression shifted from startled to warm, becoming far too tender for him to stomach.
Her hand slid to the side of his face, thumb brushing gently beneath his overworked eye before her fingers slipped back into his hair. Jingran fought the humiliating urge to close his eyes, lean into her touch, and purr.
What am I, some damn cat?
“Careful,” Rover murmured, and there was a familiar gleam of mischief in her eyes again. “You shouldn’t go saying things like that, Jingran. A woman might start getting ideas…”
There she is, turning my own words back on me yet again…
A laugh burst from him, and before Rover could look too pleased with herself, Jingran leaned into her, burying his face in the curve of her neck and catching the skin playfully between his teeth. She yelped, then dissolved into laughter as he pressed closer and let their combined weight carry her back into the mattress.
“Good.” He let his eyes close as he settled his head against her chest, listening to the steady beat beneath his ear while Rover’s arms folded around him. “I hope she does.”
He’d spent most of his life believing there was some sort of virtue in burning brighter simply because his flame could never last – if his years were always going to be fewer than most, then the most sensible thing was to make them fierce enough to matter.
But, with Rover’s heartbeat beneath his ear and her fingers moving lazily through his hair, he began to wonder whether he had mistaken burning quickly for burning well. That perhaps there was just as much virtue in tending the flame, keeping it alive long enough to see where the road went next, to push back the darkness for another year, another season, another dawn.
Whatever the rest of his life became, tomorrow morning wouldn’t find him standing in the shadows, watching Rover disappear down another mountain road, with nothing to hold but the fading warmth of a night that had already become a memory.
This time, when she left, he’d be walking by her side.