Gao Suilian was rarely ever up before half past eight and always rose with the unapologetic insistence of her militant father. He, trained by a life lived between Yunji and the conflicts Luanshi raised him for, always rose at dawn and banged around their shared home with little consideration for things like beauty sleep or five more minutes.

“Daaaaaaad,” she groaned from beneath her cave of blankets, freckled cheeks crinkling with the scrunching of her discontent. “It’s too eeeeeeearly uuuuuuggggghhhhh.”

“It’s never too early to start a good day’s work,” Gao Erxun replied, voice steadfast and foundation firm as he flung the windows open to let the morning light transform his daughter’s somnolence into a fit of enraged hissing. “If we didn’t live on the Tian estate, you’d’ve been up two hours ago—up with you.”

So began Suilian’s day: a quest for petty revenge to soothe the burns of a bad start.

She began by taking tea and breakfast with Miyan, empathising with the Princess’ left-behind misery. While Miyan missed both her brothers, Suilian wore a sour face knowing the elder Prince was gone and she wouldn’t catch a single glimpse of him for the whole week—a whole lifetime if the Millipede challenge ended in failure. She took her frown to the market and haggled extra aggressively for three bolts of fabric for new matching clothes for her and Miyan. She demanded the stablehand prepare a horse for Ren Fei with her dry voice and her deadpan eyes. She prepared a travel pack for him herself and placed a small confection inside for Tian Xiaoxu.

It was mid-morning by the time Gao Suilian got around to taking her early-to-rise misanthropy out on the sleeping Ren boy occupying Tian Yuhui’s bed.

“Get up,” she demanded, ripping the covers off the wounded boy’s body. She stood over him like a judgemental pillar, unwavering, shadow cast long over Fei’s bedside. “Ugh, how are you still sleeping.”

Gods, Suilian wished she was still sleeping.

“Suilian!” Fei shouted as he bolted upright, ripped from his slumber with a high strung force that nearly reached the pitch of a shriek. “What the f—what is the m-meaning—”

“Your horse is ready,” the girl replied, unphased by the noble boy’s indignance. “You’re going to Yunji to train with everyone else, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“No buts,” Suilian said, brows set stern over sleepy eyes. She tossed Fei the pack she’d prepared for him. “There’s a present for Young Master Tian Xiaoxu in there. Get dressed and make sure he gets it.”

x x x

It was noon by the time Ren Fei was setting off on one of the Tian clan’s black mares, riding past The House of Endless Dawn on his way out of Fanxing City to join his brother and their friends.

Inside, Feng Quan excitedly slapped at Ma Yixun’s arm, nearly knocking over his own teacup in the hurried and incautious movement, the wide sweep of his robe’s long sleeve.

“Yixun, Yixun!” Quan leaned forward in his upper-story study, face nearly flush against the window set with the perfection of upper-class clear glass. Noontime conspired with the overhang of the house’s roof to fill the room with a wealth of shade, dampening the bright vermillion accents of his clan’s influence to a deeper red. All of his gold treasures were similarly dimmed. Curios full of possessions acquired and priceless baubles kept tucked away from the world lined the Feng son’s walls sat in a swathe of passive shadow. “Tian colors on that horse but it’s not one of the princes—who the fuck? Oh! Wavy hair! Yixun, it’s Ren Fei!”

Yixun withstood his friend’s assault with his tea almost to his lips, carefully holding it aloft as he waited for Quan to get his enthusiastic attention scrabbling out of his system. Growing tired of waiting, Yixun slapped the blonde’s hand away so he could finally drink his goddamn tea.

“So?” The words were terse in the puppeteer’s mouth. He squinted at his friend. “Who cares where that runt is going?”

“I do! He’s obviously on his way to Yunji to go train with the Tians and his brother. You know what that means, right?” Quan pulled himself away from the window, giving his friend a quick but hard look before he was on his feet. “We can nab him before he joins up with them and use him for our own benefit.”

The platinum blond stomped off toward his door, ready to abandon his steaming tea. “Come on, if we get the horses ready now we can intercept him outside of the city.”

“Or we could get started early on our training with Ban,” the younger of the pair said, quickly downing his tea before Quan had a chance to come back for him. “We could focus on our techniques and develop some strategies to counter the maneuvers we know the princes will throw at us.”

Pausing, Quan glanced back, quizzical brow bending the line of his typical harshness. “What? Why would we do that, Yixun?” He leveled his stare on his friend with two-tone hair, expression shifting as if his own intentions were obvious and culminated in a much better plan than that suggested. “If we have Fei, then we have any ability that is pulled on us. We have all the counters instantly. And the Tians and Ren Li will be so hurt by Ren Fei’s betrayal.”

Yixun was always ready to go along with his best friend’s worst laid plans even when his mouth played devil’s advocate. He rose slowly, setting his teacup on the table. “What if they get one of Xueyu’s crazy disciples to replace him since they’re up there?”

“Does it matter? Fei can just mirror it. If they bring it to us, then we can just use it against them.” The platinum haired deviant tilted his chin sidelong, frown threatening to rain on his malicious parade. “Gods, Yixun, it’s like you don’t even want to do this with me.”

“You know I want to,” Yixun replied as he found his way to his best friend’s side. He bumped the blonde’s shoulder on his way out the door, waiting for the more regal boy to follow. “Just gotta make sure that in ten minutes, you’ll still want to do this too.”

“I don’t back out of my own ideas, Yixun.” The statement was a partial truth. The reality of Quan’s situation was that he remained perfectly content to turn-tail for the sake of his own convenience, willing to betray as long as it suited his needs in the immediate moment. His friendship was a liability. It always had been and it always would be. As long as the boy continued to value money and items over the needs and feelings of others, himself raised upon a pedestal high, high above everyone else, then his days would continue as usual: flippant, subject to the tossing of his duplicitous whims.

He hurried after his friend, gathering his long hair into a jumble with an even longer segment of bright, golden ribbon. It shimmered even in the shade of the hallway as he passed the Ma boy, shone brightly even as he shouted down to the courtyard for a servant to prepare a pair of horses.

Quan glanced back to Yixun, confidence augmented by platinum sobriety. “I only have good ideas. You should know that by now.”

x x x

The sun was high above the pebble-strewn road, blocked by nothing, hot and beaming. Behind the pair of riders from The House of Infinite Dawn, Fanxing City shrunk into a distant perspective. Every noise was now natural, grasshoppers and the chirp of crickets long replaced the sounds of civilization.

“Ugh, we lost so much time,” Quan griped.

“If you didn’t complain about your tack chafing your ass so much, we’d have caught him by now,” Yixun grumbled, trawling words somewhere between a complaint and a taunt. “Fuckin’ wounded rabbit outrunning that expensive warhorse.”

“Shut up, I did no such thing.” The blond shot a look aside, glaring as intense as the day. “You were the one who was wasting time back home, drinking tea and hemming and hawing.”

“Owwww Yixun,” the two-toned boy whined in a tonally accurate, cruelly exaggerated imitation of his platinum friend. “Slow down up this hill, my taint can’t take the rub of this plebeian saddle–“

“Fuck off.” The noble steered his horse nearer to his friend simply for the satisfaction of reaching a leg out and nudging the man. “That doesn’t even sound like me. This saddle is FAR from plebeian.”

“That’s funny, it’s not made of solid gold. It doesn’t even have any emeralds or jade on it. This is definitely tack made for Poors, Quan.” Yixun’s mockery carried an air of curious disbelief as he leaned over, as though he had an actual interest in inspecting the saddle. Instead, the puppeteer utilized his proximity to smack his friend’s horse in the hindquarters, sending the startled stallion galloping through the trees.

“That’s a better pace!” Yixun shouted as he kicked off after his friend. “Let’s get that Ren!”

In an instant, Quan was little more than the flutter of branches trembling in his wake, leaves rustling in memory of the body that was sent tearing through their shadowy spaces. A few feet ahead, he was battered by twigs. The blond boy possessed a network of small sticks in his hair, hangers on too clingy to let go and the remnants of a low-hanging bird’s nest worn like the world’s saddest, dullest crown.

The Feng son gathered up the reins after a few rapid, harried moments and pulled his horse back into a controlled canter but he was fully scowling now, determined to pay back his best friend at some point, vendetta lovingly sworn in the solemnity of his silence.

There was no one left to observe Feng Quan’s displeasure; the sound of galloping hooves drowned out his petty huffing. Ma Yixun was gone, a memory dashing far ahead, a pariah dog hot on a wounded rabbit’s blood trail.