In the private compartment of the bulletrail, Ziyuan wrung the wet crimson from a torn cloth. It was nearly midnight, the landscape pitch outside, having passed the life of the cities. Only the moon could be spotted beyond the window, a lonely, halved circle in the sky.

Ziyuan sat beside Anjie on the lower bunk bed, their water bowl vibrating gently atop a pull-out table. The liquid refracted the soft lights of their strange room. What should have been a mellow orange was hued red, a thick dilution of blood that was beginning to thicken. The bleeding should have stopped long ago, but still it continued to saturate the air.

Ziyuan could not bear it. An uncommon condition: Ziyuan was not a sentimental person and could tolerate a great many things. With Anjie, who was far stronger than they were, the need to fret rarely presented itself. But tonight a spell had been cast, and it felt as if the invulnerable First Guardian was only a withered leaf of the new season.

At last Ziyuan swallowed and said, “Did it have to be your eye?”

No response.

Ziyuan patted the torn flesh. The skin was healing already. The socket still gaped. Seeing it was suffocating—brought back the lifeless horror Ziyuan had felt when the blade speared into Anjie’s eye. How many cranes had Ziyuan seen die in that same manner?

Too many to count. A blade through the vulnerable openings of the skull, a direct tearing of their organic brains, was the only way in which a crane might be killed on the battlefield. The Yulai soldiers took Ziyuan’s father with a spear through the right eye. They took Ziyuan’s sister with a bullet through the left.

“If you had miscalculated, Anjie…”

“They asked for an eye,” said Anjie.

His voice came out dry. Torn along the edges, as if he had screamed for hours. But he had been silent ever since leaving the palace.

Ziyuan shook their head. “They didn’t. She did. He…” Ziyuan paused, rethinking what they were about to say. No, it wouldn’t do any good for Anjie to hear it.

But too late, Ziyuan watched a red drop slide down the Lord Guan’s cheek. This drop did not have the viscosity of blood.

Ziyuan hesitated.

To press that tear away? To leave it? Would Anjie resent his weakness, no matter how momentary, how private? He was the First Lord after all, and he had always taken such care to uphold that image.

But no. It was not fair to leave him upon his pedestal in moments like this.

Ziyuan set the cloth aside. Slid their arms over Anjie’s shoulder and pulled him into an embrace.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Ziyuan.

Anjie was silent. After a moment, he lowered his head to Ziyuan’s shoulder.

“I do not understand,” he whispered. “How can he still do this to me?”

“Your heart is only human, Anjie.”

Fingers curled against Ziyuan’s sides, like a child grasping for comfort.

“When I saw that scar on his face, all I could think about was...was…”

A hitch. Another. And then the compartment was quiet, thrumming with only the mechanical lull of the engines. It was like this for a long while.

At last Anjie pulled away and wiped his face with his sleeve. The left half was soaked red again. Holding his back straight, he said, “I am not sure if the message was sufficient for the new empress. We will need to make preparations when we return to Guilin.”

“You made it audible—red from Yincheng to Mosanguo. If Quan Caihe makes a move, she will have to deal with the apprehension of a whole empire.”

“That may buy us time,” he said. “Perhaps not indefinitely.”

Ziyuan handed over a roll of gauze they had picked up at the night market.

“What will you do?”

“The same thing we did for the last battle with Yulai, if it comes to it.”

Ziyuan frowned. “Anjie…”

“Only if it comes to it.” Anjie glanced sideways at Ziyuan with a single eye. By the end of the week, it would be two again. “I do not know if Quan Caihe will heed my warning. But I do keep my promises.”

It was a week before Anjie returned to the estate.

The house received a message that light matters were occupying the two guardians beyond Guilin. Without details, the innocuous words seemed ominous—and then Sanhai had left to meet them in the exterior town of Duling, saying nothing about why the two needed her escort. Wenzhan paced the outer gardens the whole afternoon, frantic, untameable, until he finally saw his brother appear on the dirt path.

He took two steps forward. Before the third, a small shadow dropped off the edge of the estate wall and bolted past him. A smile broke on Anjie’s beautiful face as he caught a distraught little girl.

“An-Ge! An-Ge! Y-you were gone s-so long!”

“I’m very sorry, Ah-Bo. I did not like it either.”

Little Wenbo gripped Anjie’s kneeling form and continued to sob.

Wenzhan finally made it over, sauntering at a hard-controlled pace. Anjie saw him and smiled a different smile, a little more apologetic. His heart skipped a beat at those soft copper eyes.

“Ah-Zhan.”

“An-Ge.”

What kept you so long?

“No greeting for me, boy?”

Wenzhan glanced at Ziyuan and scratched his head. “Hey, Da-Yuan.”

“That’s better.” Ziyuan held out a bag. “Go carry these inside for the children.”

“What’s in it?” said Wenzhan, taking the bag.

“Treats.”

Little Wenbo finally stopped sniffling and eyed the bag.

“Go on,” Anjie said to his sister. “Have your pick first.”

She rubbed her running nose. After a moment of what looked like difficult deliberation, she shook her head and latched back onto Anjie. Her words muffled in his robes. “Don’t wanna.”

Anjie laughed. “I’ll be here, Ah-Bo. The treats won’t.”

Wenbo still refused. Wenzhan would have too, but he didn’t have the excuse of youth to keep him clinging to Anjie’s side. It seemed shameful to do so when Jinyue, occupied with overseeing the household affairs, had not even been spared the time to greet their elder brother. Impatiently, Wenzhan waited for dinner to press his questions—to have his time with Anjie, whom he so viscerally missed.

But dinner didn’t happen that night. Instead, Anjie called a full house meeting in the central hall that lasted for several hours. Only the children were exempt. Sitting between the western pillars alongside Jinyue, Aunt Baisun, Sanhai, and the recently returned Liutian, Wenzhan listened in silence as the house made preparations for an imperial invasion.

“It’s not certain,” said Anjie, “but we must be ready.”

The next afternoon, Wenzhan found Anjie in his training room, sparring with Ziyuan. He was hesitant to interrupt their extraordinary dance, but both of his elders noticed his lingering shadow within seconds. Ziyuan arched their eyebrow, eyed Wenzhan’s rare training clothes, shrugged, and left. Anjie hesitated.

“I’ve not seen you come here in months,” said his brother.

Wenzhan slid off his shoes and walked closer. Not too close. “I...I don’t want to be a burden.”

I don’t want to see you soaked in blood.

It seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Anjie’s lips trembled before he turned away. “No, Ah-Zhan…”

Wenzhan took another step closer.

“Will you help me train?”

After a moment, his brother’s uncertainty evaporated to a smile. “Of course.”

It had been a while since Wenzhan held a sword against Anjie. The warriors of House Guan practiced this fluid, weaponized martial art because their battles mandated swift kills—one after the other, relentlessly, until their small numbers overwhelmed armies. For Anjie, who possessed the engineered muscle propulsion and reduced cellular weight to sweep crowds, Wenzhan’s heavier motions must seem viscous. But Anjie made no mockery of it, interspersing their practice with the occasional praise or constructive comment.

Clean strike. Too far left. Overextending—watch your arm. Good, clean pivot.

It was all so contained that every word, every syllable lacerated his lungs.

At last, parried hard for the hundredth time, Wenzhan dropped his wooden sword.

Anjie frowned. “Ah-Zhan?”

Not a bead of sweat on his brother’s skin. By contrast, Wenzhan’s chest was heaving, pained, soaked.

“I’m not good enough.”

“That is not—”

“I’m not good enough to protect you.”

He hadn’t meant to say it like that. The words had just come out, rasped.

For a moment, Anjie appeared confused. Then he lowered his sword and stepped toward Wenzhan, reaching for his shoulders. “Oh, Ah-Zhan. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“But I do,” whispered Wenzhan. “When I have nightmares about—about that, you’re always alone. Always.”

Anjie pulled him close. Wenzhan shut his eyes.

“I’m never alone,” said Anjie. “I have Ziyuan, Sanhai, Aunt Baisun. I have the cranes. And whether you are beside me or not, I have you and your brother and sister.”

“Make me a crane.”

Anjie pulled away.

“A crane like you,” said Wenzhan.

A frown flickered across his brother’s brow. “I can’t do that, Ah-Zhan.”

“Why not? I want it. I’m ready for the risks. We need it now, more than ever. The new empire is four times the size of Yulai—”

Anjie shook his head.

“No, Ah-Zhan. I can’t do that.”

“Why not? We’ve always done it—”

“Because—”

Anjie hesitated. He looked so vulnerable as his eyes searched for words, as his lips held half-parted, the delicate curves soft and moist. The afternoon sunlight painted the long, slender shadows of his lashes over his fine cheeks. Wenzhan’s pulse picked up, thundering his skull dizzy.

Then Anjie looked at his brother and said, “Because I can’t lose you. Because I love you.”

How many times had Wenzhan dreamed of hearing those three words, from those lips, like this? Of feeling them brush his skin at their proximity, touch his bones at their sincerity? They curled around his lungs, suffocated him. No oxygen to his mind.

He grabbed Anjie’s face and kissed him.

For one moment, one beautiful moment, all he knew was the sweet, tinged warmth of those lips.

And then Anjie jolted back.

They looked at each other. His brother wore an unguarded shock, confusion.

“I...Ah-Zhan…”

Wenzhan turned around and ran.

He ran beyond the estate, past the fields, out of Guilinhe village. When he could feel neither the bile in his lungs nor his lungs anymore, he still kept running. If he stopped, he might scream down the valley mountains, and he was so afraid that Anjie would hear him and find him and look at him again.

Somehow, he ended up in front of a familiar apartment. The door opened.

Suzha stared at him. “Wenzhan?”

Wenzhan stared at her.

“I kissed him,” he said.

Help me.

Suzha didn’t ask who. She only swept her gaze over his exhausted body and pulled him inside. She pushed him toward the cheap, beaten couch, where he slumped and cradled his head. A few moments later, the tea table thumped with a bottle. A cork popped.

“Here. Drink.”

Wenzhan took the liquor. He poured it down his throat. Suzha had to tear the bottle away from him.

“Hey—you idiot boy, that isn’t what I meant. You trying to kill yourself?”

He dropped his head in his hands again. “I kissed him,” he said again.

“Who? Your big brother?”

Wenzhan looked up, briefly shocked out of his misery. “You knew?”

“Anjie, right?” Suzha downed a quick gulp. “You say his name in your sleep.”

A silence.

“Fuck,” muttered Wenzhan. “What the fuck?”

Suzha handed him the bottle again. “Drink. Slower this time, or the rest is mine.”

Wenzhan drank.

A long time later, perhaps hours later, he found himself sprawled naked on a bed, an utter mess beneath the yellow night lights and cracked ceiling. Fingers stroked his head like he was a wounded dog. And why not? It seemed like he had the proclivities of one. As if it wasn’t enough to dream of his brother—to say his name, and Wenzhan shuddered to think in what voice—he had dared to kiss those lips. To sully him with this wretched longing.

“Shouldn’t,” he slurred. “Bed’ll dirty.”

“What?” A pause. “Oh. Bit too late for that.”

“Don’t you think...think I’m disgusting?”

A sigh. “You were out of sorts the day I met you, Wenzhan. A bit like you were stuck in a tragic novel.” The fingers threading his hair paused. They drifted to his cheek, tracing dried tracks. “Maybe it’s why I picked you.”

Wenzhan tried to look up. “What?”

Suzha pat his cheek. “Nothing, handsome. Let’s get you home, shall we?”

“N-no…”

A pause.

“Your brother will worry if you’re not back tonight. And I don’t want him barging into my place.”

“Can’t see him. Can’t.”

Suzha slipped off the bed and began to hoist Wenzhan upright. “We’ll sneak around. Come on, Wen-Gege, don’t be a baby…”

Wenzhan was not coherent enough to resist. He barely processed their hitched ride and slow stumble into the Guan estate. The familiar plum and begonia scent enveloped him with an instinctive comfort and an swallowing guilt. Vaguely, he pointed Suzha toward the side entrance, toward the private chambers. A pair of soft footsteps interrupted their navigation, as intimately familiar through the haze as his own name.

“Ah-Zhan?”

Wenzhan clutched at Suzha’s sleeves, panicking. “No. No, not him.”

The footsteps came closer, stopping before the two of them. Wenzhan saw white robes in his vision, a slender hand in his peripheral.

“Don’t look at me,” he whispered. “Please don’t look at me.”

A pause.

In a strange, cold voice that Wenzhan did not recognize, Anjie said, “Bring him this way.”

Like a brutal slap, the chilled distance of those words jolted him out of his drunken stupor. Wenzhan glanced up at his brother, who truly did not look at him. That untouchable elegance seemed oceans away now, further than it had ever been before. His heart felt suddenly broken.

What have I lost? What did I ruin?

They set him in his room. No—not, they. Suzha did. Anjie didn’t touch him.

“See you later, Wen-Gege,” murmured Suzha.

Undone, Wenzhan only laid limp on his bed, unmoving as the footsteps retreated and the door slid shut.

The wooden door was smooth beneath her fingertips, a stasis for her rapid pulse.

Like winter, the gaze on the back of her neck filled the dim-lit corridor. Suzha breathed. Pulled on a smile, as ever she did on this mask, and turned around.

“Sorry, Master Guan, I—”

The blade was at her throat before she heard the swish. The words drained out of her lungs.

Past the glinting metal were the fierce metallic eyes of the First Lord Guan. This was but the second time she had seen him, but like instinct, Suzha knew that the burning quality was not often found on the face of the man who had appeared so gentle before the Guilin people, who held Wenzhan’s heart at his nails. It was terrifying to behold: in a glance, Suzha could imagine the white of his robes blood-soaked, his loose silken hair wet in strings of gore. The brutal tales she had grown up hearing at night echoed against her skull.

The Lord Guan spoke first.

“How bold of you to cross my land with the face of Yu Ling.”

Her father’s name ghosted her skin like a death sentence. Was this it? How she would end? A dream of retribution snuffed out like it was never anything to begin with. With all the nerve she had left, she bared her teeth. Spoke quietly, so the words wouldn’t reach Wenzhan.

Why did she think of that foolish third brother in this moment anyway?

“Why shouldn’t I be bold?” said Suzha. “You slaughtered my family. I have nothing left to lose.”

“Do you imagine that makes you invincible?”

The Lord Guan took a step closer. The blade point stung. Wet liquid dripped down her throat.

“I have a great many things to lose,” murmured the First Guardian. “Would you like to test the scale?”

“Go on,” said Suzha, false bravado. “Kill me. It’s the only thing you’ve ever done to outsiders.”

“It very well should be.”

A silence hung between them. At last the Lord Guan removed his blade and stepped back. He gazed down at her like a frigid mountain eagle, and she was but a crippled rat unfit for dining.

“Our conflict with Yulai concluded nine years ago. I will let it be done, Lady Yu. But the boy you touched tonight is more precious to me than life. So if I see your face again—if he sees your face again—I will be taking your life. Do I make myself clear?”

Suzha took a step back. Without another word, she fled the Guan estate.

In the morning, Wenzhan remembered pieces. Mostly, Anjie’s cold voice.

He collected some things and wandered out of the estate before dawn, wanting to wash the grime of his desires in a place less sacred. In the front courtyard, a small voice stopped him.

“Where are you going?”

Wenzhan looked toward the plum tree. Little Wenbo was sliding down the trunk. She had kept her distance from him since declaring that she hated him last month, but two weeks ago, she had begun speaking to him again. Not kindly, not warmly, and not frequently—the forgiveness came slow, and this was only her fourth question for Wenzhan since that time.

He wished he could give it its proper due. Instead: “I’m going for a walk.”

Wenbo pointed at his bag. “With that?”

He frowned. “What are you doing? The sun’s not even up.”

Wenbo fished out some freshly-picked plums from her pocket. “I’m getting breakfast for An-Ge.”

Anjie. The mention of him made it difficult to breathe.

“I’m...I’m going to the shrine,” said Wenzhan.

“In Rizhai?”

“No…”

“Where? Why are you going to a shrine?”

“I just want to visit.”

Some old memories. Old gods, immortal foxes and their curses.

Wenbo kept frowning.

Wenzhan tried to smile. “I’ll be back in a few days, okay? See you, Bobo.”

He was halfway out the courtyard before she called to him again.

“Did you eat breakfast?”

He looked over his shoulder. Wenbo picked out a plum and tossed it to him. He caught a small, hard lump—speckled yellow, still half-ripe.

“I can’t find the ones you get,” she said. “They don’t grow on the tree.”

This time, Wenzhan did not have to try so hard to smile. “Because you pick them too early, Bobo.”

His sister glanced at the ground. She mumbled her next words.

“Come back soon.”

Wenzhan paused. Before he could respond, Wenbo turned and ran inside. Wenzhan watched until her little silhouette was swallowed by the shadows of House Guan, and then he walked out of the estate gates.

Out over the horizon, the sun bled into the sky.

...

On the fifth day after the inaugural imperial dinner, a guest came knocking on Quan Caihe’s palace doors. He claimed he had an affiliation with the Lord Guan, whose appearance in Yincheng had spread well across the empire, precisely as Caihe had intended. Hopeful, she invited this man into the hearing hall, where he presented as a scruff, unappealing workman. He looked like he had not brushed nor cleaned his hair in weeks. From even a distance, he smelled like rotted smoke and putrid wine. Eyes bloodshot with madness, spite—fury.

“State your name,” she said to this man.

The man had the sense to bow his head.

“Chang Dazhe, Your Grace. I’ve got a debt to settle with House Guan.”