The path from the cultivator dormitories down toward Luanshi’s inner gates was quiet. The morning rendered the compound in reality’s details instead of the dreamy phosphorescence of Jiling’s swarm. Still, their surroundings were beautiful. Nature reclaimed every old world surface: ivy on rebar, morning glory blooming on pitted slabs of cement.

As they walked, Jiling offered the young prince the black lacquer box she held in her hands. In its black silk interior nestled a pair of identical hematite spheres.

“They sang for your visitor,” Jiling said. “It is time he and his brother reclaimed them.”

“Why are you giving them to me rather than to Ren Li? Didn’t he go with you this morning?” The middle prince looked down at the box in his hands. He was curious about its contents, but was not impertinent enough to open something that was not meant for him.

The mountain’s leader was quiet for a moment, delft blue eyes watching the silhouette of the buildings and terrain against the clear grey sky. “Neither of the artifacts you hold is for Ren Li.”

“Then who is coming to see me if it is not Ren Fei?” Yuhui looked up to Jiling, confusion knitting his brows. Even though he’d heard the rumors of Fei’s dubious parentage, the boy was fairly confident when he added: “There is no other Ren brother.”

The pair passed through a monolithic arch, a monument of stone with trees lining the top edge. There were shouts at their backs, playfight sounds drifting down the mountain from the mess at higher elevation.

“Not all brothers share the same surname, my Prince, just as not all brothers share the same blood,” Jiling replied. Her voice always flowed like water, filled every space with her delicate sound; she was ever a spring creek trickling through winter snow. “Laike has two sisters, yet he is an orphan with no family alive. Zao Beiguan had many brothers; he brutally murdered them to consolidate his power. Is this the behaviour of brothers? I ask, my Prince, your opinion: is a brother or sister merely a label applied to birthright’s chance or is there more?”

“No, I believe in brotherhood and fraternity,” Yuhui responded, “But even in that light I am struggling to think of someone who Fei would consider his brother. I doubt even I’d make the cut.” He laughed softly, solemnly, recalling the difficulties so woven into his best friend’s life, their prior fight and subsequent make up; how he found him, how he left him.

“And you?” she queried. Their low grade descent met a few narrow stairs before cutting in another direction. “Do you only feel a fraternal or sororal bond toward your blood siblings?”

Yuhui shook his head. “No.”

“With whom do you share this bond?”

“The Rens, I suppose.”

“If you look upon the Rens with familial love, then why would you say Ren Fei would not consider you his brother?” Jiling paused at the bottom of the step and turned toward Yuhui expectantly.

“I think I disappoint him a lot.” Yuhui shrugged, reaching the landing a moment after the priestess. He met her eyes with his own of impenetrable night. “Recently I’ve been wondering if he might see me as something different than a brother.”

“If it is Ren Fei that greets you at the living Buddha’s gates, the gate that stands between the nascent hall, the orphan village, and the pugilistic world past the foot of Yunji, then perhaps you should let Ren Fei decide who he considers a brother and who he considers something different than a brother,” Jiling said as she looked toward the path Yuhui would continue down. “But I humbly remind you, Young Master: I never indicated that Ren Fei was the rider who would greet you this day.”

At the mouth of the gate, a man with his hair in a long braid over his shoulder led a chestnut mare into the main clearing. He froze upon seeing Yuhui’s form, even from afar. He was struck dumb, suddenly incapable, inexplicably wordless. All the practice scripts he’d run in his head during his journey were worthless—

what could Gui Lin’ai ever say to Tian Yuhui to account for three months of silence?

“This is where our paths will part,” the Priestess said, head bowed graciously. “Please conclude your business before nightfall; Hua Jin will need time to inlay your new artifact and the mountain can change when the light fades.” She paused as she turned, taking her first step away from Yuhui, eyes cast to the ground. “I fear Laike of the Shadowed Vale will worry for your safety after dark. Be well, my Prince.”

“Thank you, Lady Jiling.” Chin dipped, with his eyes focused on the ground, Yuhui split his movement from the mountain’s keeper and carried himself forward, trudging off with a head full of thoughts, a mind occupied by the past. He looked at the ebony box he’d been tasked to deliver, then beyond, to the tips of his boots and the shadows that always touched them. He thought of Laike. What was it like to be a sliver of reality so thin that nature passed one by? To be so vast and yet so compact, to be spun from the black fabric of their material world? To be antithesis everlasting? He thought of Fei—if this was not him, then where was he? On his way? Was he okay?

Halfway between where he stood and where he was going, Yuhui looked up to his unannounced visitor.

The world fell silent. All the rustling of Yunji’s trees ceased, every chirp and chime of nature was muted for the deluge of his heartbeat, his suddenly hollow head and hurting heart, his nerves tingling like electricity in the trembling of his fingertips.

The box smashed into the ground but Yuhui didn’t hear it. He was frozen, petrified by the vision of his lost love suddenly found.

Lin was startled out of his fight or flight freeze frame when the box clattered to the ground, moving forward and closing the distance between them. He could hardly look at the prince, daring only to graze him with his dark gaze. Lin was afraid of the look in his eye, the grief, the mourning horror that only belonged on the face of a widower.

Lin’ai quickly knelt, meekly picking up the pieces of Yuhui’s shattered moment.

Yuhui’s sight followed Lin’ai’s every movement, hawkish and consuming, twin suns forever blotted by an apocalyptic eclipse. He took two steps back.

Lin’ai swallowed hard as he placed both artifacts back in the broken box, covering them with the split lacquer ware top, broken off its hinges. When he stood, he forced himself to look Yuhui in the eye. Even in his uncertainty, even with the back of his neck aflame from the sunless searing of Yuhui’s everdark eyes, Lin’ai managed to eke out a crooked trickster smirk. He held the box out for Yuhui to reclaim.

“You dropped this,” Lin said playfully. The mercenary was hopeful yet afraid; he was overjoyed despite the sick feeling wringing out his stomach. His breath held his heart tight, trying to keep it from flying straight out of his chest.

Turnip, by contrast, seemed disinterested, pulling her reins out of Lin’ai’s hands so she could graze in a nearby patch of green.

“We sent all the palace birds to look for you,” Yuhui answered a different question, carried on a parallel conversation built of responses to statements that were yet to be said. He made no move to take the artifacts into his possession once more. The day was becoming damp—or maybe that was just his eyes, shining in a section of sun, tear-filled over a quivering lip. “We harmonized every palace bird to your frequency and they came back with nothing.”

“Please don’t cry,” the sellsword requested, soft and pleading. He continued to hold the box but his hands trembled. “Tian Yuhui-whose-name-I-know, don’t cry ’cause of me.”

“I mourned for you!” Yuhui cried out, unfazed by polite requests and unwilling to take suggestions on how he should express his feelings. “I waited and waited and I grieved your loss when there was nothing but silence and emptiness and cold in the place you once filled!”

“There was an avalanche,” Lin’ai said, still trying to sound cavalier and collected despite his own upwelling of emotion in the face of Yuhui’s outburst. He looked down and kicked at the dusty old stone paving the empty square. “I woke up in a nearby village. The storms were so intense. I must have been out for a few days. The first thing I did was hunt for Loquat but she was nowhere to be found. Yu’er, I’m…” Lin squeezed his eyes shut before he dropped to his knees before Yuhui, placed his hands on the ground and bowed his head. “I’m sorry you thought I was dead. I’m sorry I caused you pain. I’m sorry I left you alone. I thought of you every day. Every moment that passed, I longed for your voice and your words and just… just you.”

“I know there was an avalanche! I watched it!” The prince tucked his face into his hands, sniffling, swiping fingers across red eyelids. He dropped to his own knees, grinding silk already dusted with the memory of his morning duel into the ground, and threw his arms around the returned mercenary, holding him tighter than a tragedy of snowfall ever could. “I missed you so fucking much. Don’t you know? I missed you.”

“I thought she died—” Lin’ai caught the prince, caught his still-grieving lover, and held him close. He buried his face into Yuhui’s neck, breathed him in—all his silk and suffering, his skin like rain. If these were the last breaths he ever took, Lin would be satisfied; he could die here if Yuhui wished it so. His voice wavered but didn’t break. “I love you, I thought Loquat died in the avalanche. I’m so sorry—I’m so sorry you had to see that. I’m so, so sorry you watched me die.”

“Why didn’t you send me any other birds? Any letters? Why did you leave me not knowing? Why did you leave me assuming the worst?” If the questions cast doubt on the voracity of their bond, it didn’t translate over into the prince’s grip: ever staunch, a forceful reacquisition. He gasped to catch his breath, full of foreign flowers from faraway lands. The taste of Lin’ai’s cigarettes touched the back of his throat and Yuhui swallowed. “Is this payback for me being dishonest with you?”

“No, no, Yu’er, never,” Lin soothed. He was crying now too. The mercenary took Yu’s face in his hands and pulled away so he could see him from forehead-to-forehead proximity, too close but always too far away. He wiped his lover’s tears away with his thumbs, sputtered a grin back onto his face to cover up what almost sounded like a ragged little sob. “Ao got arrested twice trying to steal another bird—couriers couldn’t ride through the storm. I’m sorry, Yu’er, please forgive me. Please believe me when I say I tried.”

Yuhui nodded, seeming to accept the answer he’d been given. He sat back to better catch his uneven breath, sitting on his heels and using his own hands to wipe his eyes again. The prince’s cheeks were blotched cherry red—he always felt so much, he always felt too much.

“… Those artifacts are for you and your brother,” he said after a moment, calmer in tone more than appearance. “I’m sorry I broke the box.”

“That doesn’t matter right now. None of that matters.” Lin grabbed the Prince by both wrists and pulled him forward, meeting him halfway with his lips parted. When they were reunited, Lin’ai breathed in sharply. His shoulders shook with the smallest shudder of sorrow or relief or desperate need; he was a deep well of pathos boiling over in tiny hiccups, restrained sighs, murmurs and croons.

Yuhui placed his palms atop Lin’s chest as if to further test this iteration of their existences. Oh, how they coincided, how their energies were confluent. The multiplicity of their many woes, for the moment, felt as one—Yuhui, halved but having learned to live with the great emptiness of his missing lover, felt once again whole, compressed into unison by the great pressures of their universe. He kissed Lin’ai. The present moved forward; he sought the past on that traveling boy’s tongue.

They were grappling with a unity begging to remain despite the continued march of time. They were once more they, once more only,

and nothing else mattered

in the depths of

Yuhui’s

kiss

.

“Do you wanna go somewhere? Do you have time for me?” Lin’ai asked when he finally broke away, looking down at his lover through crossed lashes. “I missed you desperately.”

“I…” Yuhui sighed, gentle breath calmed by the storm of their kiss. “I don’t know. I really have to win this Millipede challenge, Lin. If I don’t, then Xiao is going to abandon his claim to the throne and I’ll have to take his place. He said that the artifact would be really useful for me, but I don’t even care about that anymore. I just don’t want to be king.” He turned his chin down, eyes focused aside. “Also, I slept with a boy the night before last.”

“That’s easy. You can skip a day. I’m being forced into the Feng team. Ao and I won’t fight, not seriously. You and your brother will be fine.” Lin redirected Yuhui’s gaze till it fell once more upon him. He didn’t want to lose Yuhui’s attention, hated seeing his vibrant boy dulled by shame. “Yu: I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care who you’ve been with. It’s okay. If I’m yours, don’t turn me away. If you love me still, please: don’t send me away.”

“I do love you, but I don’t want to hurt him. He’s really nice, he said he was going to fall in love with me.” The prince was slow to meet Lin’ai’s eyes, remaining contemplative and sullen even when the connection was made. “I’m not sending you away, I just… I dunno.”

“But I am in love with you, Yuhui—fuck being nice. I’m yours!” Lin argued sharply. He winced at his own voice, the shrill crack running right down his center. He sighed, placing Yuhui’s palms along his jaw, looking deep into those bottomless black eyes. “Yu’er, I came back to Fanxing as quickly as I could. I came up here as soon as I knew where you were. Please, I… if you command me to go, I’ll comply. If you tell me you don’t want me anymore, if you’ve truly moved on, I’ll leave you alone. I won’t complain. I swear. I won’t fight. I won’t do that to you. But, Yu’er, if you still love me, if you still need me, if you still want to be with me please… come away with me. Just for a few hours. We won’t go far, I promise. I just… just…” Lin’ai shifted, eyes closing as tears dropped hot and quick down his cheeks. “Just hurry and tell me if I fucked everything up. Please: just tell me if I lost you.”

Yuhui shook his head, weak to Lin’ai’s pleas, weak in the resurgence of his love for that red-headed wildling. It barely took him a minute to make his decision—Laike was a fresh blossom on a budding vine, beautiful and new; Lin’ai was a thorn reopening wounds scabbed over by time, tried and true. Tian Yuhui loved Gui Lin’ai. To the dark depths of his chaotic core, he loved that boy.

“Calm down,” the prince said, looking upon Lin’s tears. “You didn’t lose me. I’ll talk to him but you HAVE to promise me that you won’t put me through this again, Lin’ai. I can’t watch you die again. I can’t mourn you a second time. You need to either stay in Fanxing where we can be together, or travel only to places where I can reach you if I need to. I know you’re in a lot of debt, but you can’t make money if you’re dead.”

“We’ll figure out a system,” Lin promised as he kissed his lover’s palms, kissed the riverrun map of veins sprawled along the inside of his wrists. “Tian Yuhui, I won’t leave your side. I won’t leave Fanxing again until we find a way to keep in contact. Aah Yu’er—I love you. I promise I won’t make you bury me again.”

“Okay. I love you,” Yuhui replied, wiggling an arm free from his captor’s grasp. He grabbed Lin’ai by the chin and stole a quick kiss from that boy again, drive-by affection in the grip of his unmoving digits. There was a wealth of lost time to make up for; changing seasons and the strain of old distances be damned. Yuhui tilted his head when he pulled away. “Would you really have just left if I told you to go? Would you really have not complained?”

“I respect your ability to make your own decisions. If you sent me away, what choice would I have? I can’t go back to being dead.” Lin’ai’s words were playfully cast but remained serious beneath their mischievous veneer. He grinned as he stood, pulling Yuhui up with him. “Maybe I would’ve left today but I’d always be yours. I will always fight for you. As long as I’m alive, I will always seek you out, Yu’er. I… don’t think I could be at peace without you—but losing you isn’t something I have to worry about today, is it?” That ruffian boy with his sun bleached hair was a vision of summer in mountain spring, tugging Yuhui toward where Turnip grazed at the edges of the clearing.

“No.” Smiling as he was pulled to his feet and across the open space of Luanshi’s yawning entranceway, Yuhui’s eyes were a reflection of the love he felt for that boy, soft in the sway of his dreams manifested into a reality. His footsteps were light, attentive to the direction he was being taken, an active participant in the schemes of the hoodlum before him.

Lin’ai led the way to his grazing horse, placed the box Yuhui had given him in the saddlebag on Turnip’s haunch, then helped Yuhui up into the saddle. Soon after, he swung himself up behind. Arm about his reclaimed lover’s waist, the sellsword scanned the surrounding cliff faces, briefly searched the pathways leading in and out of the heart of Luanshi, a wary habit from his life on the road. Only a few disciples were visible traveling on the stone paths and stairs, looking out the windows of prayer halls and dormitories carved directly into the mountain itself.

Satisfied no danger was present, Lin’ai kicked Turnip into a trot back through Yunji’s orphan village toward the woods, eager to make up for lost time.

At the top of the path high above, between the dormitory and the mess hall, Laike was frozen. He was stuck, body temperature vacillating between death’s chill and a violent fever. Jaw tight, fist closed, the boy closed his eyes.

How fucking stupid was he?

How naïve and gullible

and stupid was he?