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Shang Qinghua’s boring, busy workday is interrupted with a knock on his door around mid-afternoon, and he yells “Come in,” glancing up briefly and catching a glimpse of Shen Qingqiu’s face as he opens and closes the door. 

Shen Qingqiu looks uncharacteristically empathetic, behind his fan. He also seems a little awkward, potentially even embarrassed, if Shang Qinghua is reading him correctly. It’s the empathy that really stands out, considering that most of the time Shen Qingqiu’s favorite activity is calling Shang Qinghua a talentless hack, and they’ve both grown pretty used to that aspect of their working relationship. Generally, Shen Qingqiu only visits him at work when he’s really got something to yell about—protagonist dick size or sex pollen caves or weird poisons that Shang Qinghua forgot to invent cures to, or something. Today, he says, “Look, there’s news and I thought you should hear it from me.”

Shang Qinghua doesn’t look up from his papers at first. “Okay, sure,” he says, absently— how much money are they spending on incense again? Absolutely fucking absurd—and glances up when Shen Qingqiu remains silent. “What is it?”

Shen Qingqiu folds the fan and taps it nervously against his palm. “Mobei-jun’s getting married,” he says. 

“Ha,” Shang Qinghua says. “Hahahah.” The monotone laughter gives way to real laughter; he sits back in his chair and ignores the slight hysteria rising in his stomach. “That’s a good one. What is it, really?”

“Airplane,” Shen Qingqiu says, gently. “I’m not fucking with you.”

“That’s impossible,” Shang Qinghua informs him. 

“It is very much not,” Shen Qingqiu says. His eyes are very, very wide, and very concerned, as if he thinks Shang Qinghua is going to start stabbing people or throwing his papers around his room, or screaming, or crying, or—

“Married,” Shang Qinghua says, and forces another laugh. Bends down again over his papers. Prods at the rage in his chest, the stubborn ache that settled in three years ago, and has not budged since. “I never thought he’d find someone that could put up with him. He’s very—” Beautiful. Astonishing. Belligerent and stubborn and spoiled out of his mind and so, so brilliantly alive, so far removed from the clumsy things Shang Qinghua had once written. He shakes his head. “Anyway, why did you come all the way here just to tell me that? It’s not like it’s my business anymore.” His hand is too tight around the brush; he can’t write entirely neatly in the best of moments, and this will make it even worse. 

What are marriage rituals like in the north? Will Mobei-jun make bows? Had he written that? Or will there be some giant bloody fight, some sort of semi-public or completely public orgy, something ridiculous and humiliating and debasing and—

He swallows hard and stands from his desk. He’s kidding himself. He knows what marriage rituals are like in the north. He wrote it all out on a secret document buried in three different folders, a million years ago, just so he’d have something to imagine. “Let’s get something to eat, all right?” he says, to Shen Qingqiu, who is still looking at him like he is a bomb seconds from going off. “I’m starving.”

When Shang Qinghua left Mobei-jun, his king was beaten bloody and sharp with new power, having just consumed the strength and memories of his line. Shang Qinghua himself had vague, almost dreamlike memories of most of those seven days, vaguer and vaguer as the time had stretched on, because he hadn’t been eating or sleeping, just sitting crawled into the rafters, and his only thoughts had been a steady stream of fuck fuck fucking shit balls fuck and the certain, gut-deep feeling that he had to protect his king, somehow, from the treachery that he knew was coming. It was a very familiar feeling, the strength of it, and the urgency: it hadn’t been dulled even when Mobei-jun screamed at him, and when he’d left, his king’s roar of you still dare? ringing in his ears. 

He hadn’t been lying when he answered—truly, what didn’t he dare? What dignity did Shang Qinghua even have left when it came to Mobei-jun? So he had shouted back, miserable and tired and ready to leave, forever, and then he had said somewhat nonsensically that Mobei-jun was just as handsome as Shang Qinghua had imagined him being, and then he had gone—and the days had passed and passed as he wandered and then, eventually, on an uneventful afternoon in early summer, he had returned to An Ding, and sat down at his poor unused desk. Mobei-jun had not been lurking in the room and waiting for him like Shang Qinghua had guiltily hoped he would be. 

He had thought—well, he hadn’t known what he’d thought. But whenever something had gone wrong before, Mobei-jun had always come back, irritable and spoiled and stubborn, like a cat batting at a favorite toy even when the toy flew under the fridge. Mobei-jun did not cling like Luo Binghe, but he had his things, and he liked them where he could see them. That had been why Shang Qinghua had moved into his stupid ice palace in the first place. So Shang Qinghua had—well, expected was the wrong word, maybe. Assumed? He had assumed that Mobei-jun would simply come and find him when he was needed again, and they would agree silently to forget the whole thing, and Shang Qinghua would go back to clinging to his thighs and doing all of his work for him, as was the natural order of things, and then—

Then he hadn’t. 

Shang Qinghua was four months into running An Ding Peak and only running An Ding Peak when it clicked, in a sudden horrible jolt to his stomach: he was not going to be hunted down and dragged back. Mobei-jun was not going to come fetch him. The only possible reason for this (quite logical when Shang Qinghua really thought about it) was that Mobei-jun was powerful enough now that he no longer needed a servant, slash spy, slash logistics expert, helping him run his kingdom. Shang Qinghua had become expendable the second Mobei-jun had finished the ascension ceremony, and Mobei-jun had let him go with his life—which was surprisingly generous considering demonic views on severance packages—but would never need him again. 

Shang Qinghua took a few minutes to contemplate this—the stretch of his second life ahead of him without Mobei-jun, that person he had built said second life around for as long as he could remember—and decided that there was no solution except to get very drunk. He emerged from his room four days later (with several dozen pages of exceedingly trite and mercilessly sappy fiction written, sloppily proofread, and shoved in a box under his bed) to Shen Qingqiu sitting in his office. 

“You’re not who I want to see,” he remembered telling him, mulish and hungover. 

“Airplane,” Shen Qingqiu had sighed, and produced water from somewhere, looking at him critically until he drank it all. “You’re still here.”

“I am not wanted anywhere else,” Shang Qinghua had said, with as much dignity as he could muster, and held the empty, cool cup against his forehead for a few seconds. 

“Hmph,” Shen Qingqiu had said, in the way that meant it’s your funeral, or maybe you’re the dumbest motherfucker alive, which were his general sentiments when it came to Shang Qinghua’s welfare. “You didn’t answer my letters.”

“You sent letters?” Shang Qinghua had said. 

“Obviously I did,” Shen Qingqiu said tartly, “if I asked about them.” 

Shang Qinghua, still hungover, had considered this. It was a fair enough assessment of the situation. He knelt down at his desk and breathed an annoyed sigh at the messy pile of papers that filled it. “Well?” he had said, looking up. “Can I get you something? What were the letters about?”

“You’re just—” Shen Qingqiu had said, and then shaken his head, opening his fan and hiding a frown behind it. “Right.”

Shang Qinghua suddenly realized that the unfamiliar look in his friend(?)s eyes was pity. Abruptly, he despised it, which was surprising; he had never had any qualms about being pitied before. Until this point, he had made his living off of pity. But something about Shen Qingqiu’s twisted mouth and sorry eyes nauseated him. “Listen,” he said, “go back to your husband, all right? I’ve got a peak to run.”

Useless, he’d thought, he was useless now to Mobei-jun, and that was fine, but it would—he would show him, he remembered thinking, picking up one of the many letters he’d neglected over the past few months of waiting and wondering and the past four days of being drunk. 

Over time, the thought grew, like an indignant little shouting voice at the back of his mind. Useless his ass! He could be useful! There was nothing he was better at than being useful! How dare Mobei-jun leave him behind! Or not come after him! Whatever it was he had done, Shang Qinghua deserved better treatment than this, at least! He’d been the best servant a demon king could ask for for over half his second life! To just be dumped like this, so unceremoniously—it was too cruel! Mobei-jun had always hunted him down before!

The indignance shifted into anger as time went by, and as Shang Qinghua paid closer and closer attention to the workings of the peak, something he hadn’t had time for in years. Which was another thing! He had (or he’d used to have) two jobs! Mobei-jun had always just assumed that An Ding didn’t matter, which was bullshit! Sure, An Ding wasn’t fancy or cool, but it was important! Much like Shang Qinghua himself! A little small, a little ridiculous, but he got the job done! All of it was such fucking bullshit, he’d worked hard, hadn’t he? He’d been loyal, and he’d meant every stupid little word he’d said, and—

And. That was what it came down to, every time he ranted to himself. He had meant it, and. He had tried, and. He had done the best he could, and.

It hadn’t been enough, apparently. 

Fine. 

Shang Qinghua could live with that.

“It could be a wife plot,” Shen Qingqiu says, later. They are still at An Ding Peak, though Luo Binghe has appeared to sit in the gardens like a lost puppy. Shen Qingqiu had been leaving, straightening his robes by the door, pulling on his boots. He had paused in the middle, and looked up, eyes gentle. 

“Bro,” Shang Qinghua says, weary and headachey and achingly, burningly jealous of the way Luo Binghe had appeared from thin air after just a few hours, asking for his beloved shizun with big wet eyes. “Don’t, all right? I’ll see you at the wedding.” 

And then he shuts the door, and goes to sleep.

When Shang Qinghua had been alive for the first time, despite all of Shen Qingqiu’s insinuations, he’d had a life. One he’d liked, even. It had been a small life, with a narrow scope, but it had been his, and he’d enjoyed it for what it was. A little apartment, and a story that gave him rent money if he could only write it fast enough. A little shop on the corner, where he went to get essentials and groceries and to talk a little with the ayi who ran it. There were shows to watch, books to read, music to listen to, and more every day. An endless stream of entertainment to play in the background while he shoveled out words, day in and day out. And there had been his other stories, his more secret ones, that he worked on more carefully whenever he had time and inspiration, the ones he didn’t publish—the ones he thought might mean something, someday, something more than a monthly rent deposit or a few million hits online. They weren’t good, exactly. He was self aware enough, also despite all of Shen Qingqiu’s insinuations, to know that he was not really a very good writer. But he did know his way around a setting and a character arc. It was just that sometimes such things needed to be abandoned in pursuit of writing thousands of pages of sex, so you could get some food money along with the rent money, and maybe even buy something other than noodles. 

The idea for the character that had been Mobei-jun, eventually, had started as one of these stories. Shang Qinghua’s secret stories, his babies. The ones he actually liked. And then he was stuck one afternoon, really stuck, and then he was thinking about the idea he’d had about a kingdom to the north and a tumultuous ice king who ruled it and before he knew it he had written in a side character, a lieutenant, handsome and stubborn and faultlessly loyal, too cold-hearted to be interested in causing conflict over Luo Binghe’s many wives. He’d thrown it in for a bit of filler. A little nod to himself and the stories he actually wanted to write. And then people had liked him, liked Mobei-jun, wanted to see more of him, and—

It wasn’t just giving the people what they wanted. It was the sheer excitement, the joy, of realizing that something he’d liked so much could be well received, that other people might be interested. He was careful. He didn’t detract from Luo Binghe’s plots. But he put more and more of the north in, and Mobei-jun, and in his spare time—what little there was—he wrote more and more and more, endless pages of backstory that never made it into the real thing, the history of the northern kingdom and its rulers and the ascension ceremony, and Mobei-jun’s own fractured, difficult history with his uncle. The ways of life of the north, and how they were different to the other demon kingdoms. The foods they ate and the games they played.

One afternoon he’d gotten an innocuous comment. Why doesn’t Mobei-jun have his own harem?

Airplane-Shooting-Towards-The-Sky had gone to great lengths to establish that, in the demon world, having a harem was as common as having a single spouse was in the human world. Most everyone did it—Luo Binghe’s was unique for its size, but not for its existence. It would have made sense to dream up some icy beauties that Mobei-jun could fuck, even if it was only for stress relief. So Shang Qinghua attempted, for a few hours, to try to make up a wife for Mobei-jun. She would have to be clever, he decided, or at the very least clever enough to run his household, to organize logistical details that the king was too impulsive and uninterested to worry about. She would have to be agreeable, or he wouldn’t have picked her. She would have to be the sort of person who could make him laugh, or at least smile, to break the icy countenance a little. He would warm up around her, he’d decided. She would be the only thing that could make him soften. 

And then he’d scrapped the idea, even as he was typing it down. It wouldn’t make sense for Mobei-jun to be interested in building a harem; it would create conflict with Luo Binghe, surely. So he’d saved the wife document and put it away, somewhere in one of his many folders, and written a few paragraphs of bullshit about how Mobei-jun had difficulty trusting anyone too close to him because of his uncle, and so he had never taken a wife, though perhaps he would in time. 

Shen Qingqiu had been attempting to be kind, when he’d said it was a wife plot. And it was, in a way. It just wasn’t one of the wife plots Shang Qinghua had written for Luo Binghe. 

They arrive at the northern palace in three days’ time. They could have gotten there in two—Shang Qinghua knows this, still, in the back of his mind, burned there from all the trips he’d once taken back and forth—but Luo Binghe had insisted on resting far more often than Shang Qinghua ever had, which was part of his ongoing agenda to wrap Shen Qingqiu in bubble wrap for the rest of his life, and Shen Qingqiu’s ongoing agenda to allow it, in the name of true love. Shang Qinghua had considered bringing representatives from his peak with him, but then decided against it. The north cared very little about the human world; there wouldn’t have been any point, even if there was a part of Shang Qinghua that wanted to seem very impressive, very capable, so that Mobei-jun might feel the odd flicker of regret at losing such a good servant. That part of him was a little more pathetic than the rest of him. He shushed it, and went alone with Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe, who both clearly resented his presence in the way that most married couples did when you were with them—silently, and absently. It wasn’t strictly that they didn’t want him there, but that they would rather have been alone. 

Now they’re here, Shang Qinghua wrapped in his old fur cloak and leather gloves, his nose red and ears cold. His hair, longer than it was back when he lived here, whips around him in the wind. 

“He needs to get a hold of himself,” Luo Binghe mutters to Shen Qingqiu, who half-heartedly shushes him. “It can’t snow the whole time, Shizun, you’ll catch a cold.”

“This master will be fine, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says patiently. He’s leered at for his trouble. Shang Qinghua walks faster; he doesn’t want to be in the middle of any conversations about how they could keep each other warm. 

This, of course, means he half-jogs into the receiving hall, and into Mobei-jun. 

There’s little more to do than to squeak, and fall into a bow. Not the entrance he’d wanted to make. Probably the only kind of entrance he could have made. He shivers, not from the wind, and takes stock of himself, his cold hands in the gloves, Mobei-jun’s booted feet in front of him. Prepares himself for what he’ll see when he looks up. 

“Peak Lord Shang,” Mobei-jun says, his voice like gravel. 

Shang Qinghua lifts his chin, a little, as he rises from the bow. “Mobei-jun,” he says, in as polite a tone as he can manage. Mobei-jun looks wonderful, just as handsome as he looked when Shang Qinghua left, just as handsome as he’s probably looked every day since. His hair is longer, too, maybe. Shang Qinghua struggles to find a difference. When you see someone every day you see the minute elements of them, the small pieces they hide in public. Once, Shang Qinghua had been allowed that close. He is not anymore, and that is fine.  

Mobei-jun’s icy eyes only get colder. “Are you well?” he says. 

Is he well? Is he fucking well? What kind of a question is that? Of course he’s not well. Mobei-jun wouldn’t be fucking well either, watching the man he has devoted his life to, his favorite character, his favorite person, marry someone else —

“Very well,” Shang Qinghua says. “This Peak Lord offers congratulations on your marriage.”

“Mobei-jun!” Luo Binghe says, arriving at last, eyes twitching between Shang Qinghua and his former king. Shen Qingqiu stands a few feet behind them, lost behind his fan, except for his sharp eyes, which have fixed on Shang Qinghua, too. 

“Thank you,” Mobei-jun says. His face doesn’t change. He is still looking at Shang Qinghua, still with that sharp expression. Outside, the storm wails and beats against the walls, as if begging to be let in. 

Don’t bother, Shang Qinghua wants to tell it. It’s colder in here.

He’s stopped before he gets to his rooms by one of his contacts in Mobei-jun’s court, an old toddering demon about a foot shorter than him and probably fifty years older with no patience and a short temper. Shang Qinghua nicknamed him Xiyi, for his reptilian grin and his big eyes. Mobei-jun himself is already gone. He and Luo Binghe have vanished into one of the war rooms, which are just big fancy rooms used for sitting and grunting at each other. Shang Qinghua used to take notes in there as they spoke and cringed whenever he made too much noise and got glared at. Good times. 

Shen Qingqiu blinks at him, and then at the demon, and raises his eyebrows in silent question. 

“You’ve got a report, then?” Shang Qinghua says. “It’s not really the time, is it? And why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”

“About what?” Xiyi and Shen Qingqiu say, at the same time, and then glance at each other, his contact glaring. 

“Never mind,” Shang Qinghua says, and tugs at a part of his bangs, once, for his own peace of mind. “Any news about Linguang-jun?” Shang Qinghua asks, and Shen Qingqiu’s head whips around to look at him again. Xiyi seems unsurprised. 

“None since you last asked,” Xiyi tells him, and gives a shallow, insincere bow before scurrying off down the hall. 

“I’ll find you later in the week, then,” Shang Qinghua yells after him. He tries to keep walking; Shen Qingqiu keeps pace with him and catches his arm. 

“What the fuck was that, Airplane,” his friend hisses.

“Well, you don’t think I had no one left here that was speaking to me, did you?” Shang Qinghua said, grumpily. “He can blow all his money on his own terms for all I care, but I don’t want his uncle to murder him. I’m not that upset. So I kept some contacts. I check in. That’s all.”

“You kept some contacts? ” Shen Qingqiu says. “ You? ”

“That’s not very nice,” Shang Qinghua tells him. “I was a spy for a long time, I’ll have you know. I wasn’t completely terrible at it.” He glances around, and lowers his voice. “They just—they keep me informed.”

He hadn’t been able to let go. Not completely, not ever. There was always the old rush under his skin, even as he ran his peak, that this was his second choice. That he belonged somewhere else, with a cold dark gaze staring him down, freezing his fingers off and watching his tea freeze in its cup if he left it alone too long. That as awful as the north had been to run, it was, in the end, what he wanted. 

Shen Qingqiu is giving him that look again. The look of pity. 

“Informed,” he says. 

“I won’t be able to do it any longer after this,” Shang Qinghua says, “but I—”

He cuts himself off. I want to keep looking after him. For now. Stupid, pathetic thing to say. He suddenly feels he is worthy of every ounce of the pity in Shen Qingqiu’s expressive look, and it makes him angry all over again, that hot embarrassment mixed with unfamiliar rage. 

“Let’s just go to dinner,” he says, forcing his voice to stay even. “All right?”

Shen Qingqiu eyes him, and opens his fan to duck behind it. “It’s up to you, Airplane,” he says. 

The fiancée, as it turns out, is a cousin of Sha Hualing’s named Zhao Xin, with a thin face and dark eyes, hair to her waist, and a strong, tall body from what looks like hours of training. She has at least two inches on Shang Qinghua, which still doesn’t make her as tall as Mobei-jun. Shang Qinghua keeps his head down and gathers from gossip that they’d met because of Sha Hualing ages ago, although it had only been recently that Mobei-jun had made her an offer, just as some other poor soul to the south had been trying to worm his way into her affections. Apparently they had been friends, before that, of a kind; Mobei-jun stopping in to see her when he was in the south on business, and with her coming to visit sometimes. No expense was spared during these visits. They hunted together, usually, and came back grimly pleased. 

Shang Qinghua gives himself exactly five minutes to morosely imagine the two of them fucking each other’s brains out for days at a time on one of these ‘hunting’ trips— fuck this stupid story, he can’t believe he wrote it—before he steels himself and tunes back into the conversations around him. He steals a glance at the head table—he can claim to be looking at Shen Qingqiu, because it’s not as though he knows anyone here, really—and sees her and Mobei-jun with their heads bent, turned carefully towards each other, immersed in conversation. She says something, and he answers. Shang Qinghua can imagine the rumble of his voice, the flatness of it. Maybe with her, there’s warmth. She pats his hand, clumsily. So Mobei-jun has found someone just as awkward about showing affection as he is. Somehow this detail makes things worse. If she was perfect, she wouldn’t seem real, but this is—

Shang Qinghua tosses back a cup of wine and stares at his unappetizing plate. He thinks about the wife he’d written, the agreeable clever one, the one who could make Mobei-jun soften. Zhao Xin. He’d written about her, and the system had filled in the blanks, given her a shared awkwardness with Mobei-jun, a passion for hunting and training, the ability to join with him for his interests and share his life. To marry him. 

He looks around at the palace he used to run. The life he used to live. He is suddenly, all over again, angry. 

He downs another cup of wine. The banquet is close to being over. He wanders clumsily to the balcony, and tucks his cloak tighter around him, curling against the wall to stay warm. He wonders briefly how bad it would be if he left, if he never saw Mobei-jun get married. He is honestly not even sure if he was even invited, or if Shen Qingqiu brought him along in a misguided attempt at—something. Shang Qinghua doesn’t know what. Reconciliation? Not that Shen Qingqiu has ever cared about that before. He sighs, and presses his forehead to the cold wall. His head is pounding. 

“Peak Lord Shang,” a voice says. He turns. 

Zhao Xin’s voice is low and pretty, a little raspy, which takes him by surprise. She is wearing far more substantial clothing than her cousin ever does, cut to show off her muscles. Despite being a southern demon, she seems unaffected by the cold. Her eyes are black, her mouth pursed. “I didn’t think you would show your face here.”

“I almost didn’t think I would, either, Zhao-guniang,” he says, hoping this confuses her. She doesn’t blink. Maybe she’s used to trading words with mousy humans who want more than is good for them.

“You should not have come,” she says, with an odd finality. 

“Take that up with Shen Qi—Peak Lord Shen,” Shang Qinghua says. “I had no say in any of this. I was dragged here. In case you worry that I—”

He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say; he stops. He’s painfully aware of the two cups of wine. Strong, northern wine, that’s supposed to warm you up. He doesn’t feel it in his fingertips, his nose, the places where cold settles; he feels it in his tongue, behind his eyes. 

“You are very small to have caused so much trouble in this place,” she says. 

“Zhao-guniang, if you don’t like my inventory systems, now is not the time to bother me about it,” Shang Qinghua says. 

She scoffs. “And a fool,” she says, decisively, “but he said you were a fool.”

Shang Qinghua’s stomach drops. Then something in him hardens, crackling through him like ice. He said you were a fool. So they’ve spoken about it, about him. “Was there a reason you came here to speak to me?”

She is silent, watching him. Her eyes are dark as stones, like the black edges of rocks amid snow-whipped mountain peaks. She’ll fit right in, here in the north. Silent and deadly and terribly cold. Shang Qinghua suddenly feels all of his soft places, his underbelly, his red ears and pale, cold hands, as if they are beacons shining out, and proclaiming how little he belongs here. 

“I wanted to see you,” she says, “and understand.”

“Well,” Shang Qinghua says, “if you’ve finished?”

“I have,” she says, and tilts her head, “but I understand nothing.” 

“Well, good,” Shang Qinghua says. Frustrated. It bursts out of him coldly; he hadn’t expected it to. She seems to approve of this in some odd way, or at least she’s interested in it. Her mouth softens. “That makes two of us. If you’ll excuse me,” he adds, and hurries to his room, which is a guest room in the east wing, about as far from his old rooms next to Mobei-jun’s in the west wing as you can get. The storm is whipping outside, still, wailing and wailing. Shang Qinghua strips from his robes and dives into a pile of furs, thinking of Zhao Xin going back into the hall and walking calmly across the floor to Mobei-jun’s side, where she belongs, now, and the wails go on, and on, and on. 

He hadn’t written a wife for Mobei-jun because—

Because it wouldn’t make sense with his established character traits. Because it would cause conflict with Luo Binghe’s harem. Because it would be annoying to make up more names. Because it would be complicated to write harem politics in two places at once.

Because he had been Shang Qinghua’s favorite. Because he’d written all of those thousands of words about his kingdom and his people until he felt he knew everything about them, because he’d written about the northern wedding ceremonies and the consort’s duties until he knew those back to front, too. Because—if he’d wanted Mobei-jun to stay something he’d written for himself, a guilty daydream, a stupid fantasy of cold hands and a hot mouth—no one would ever be the wiser, would they? 

In the morning, the storm has cleared, and Shang Qinghua is still miserable enough to want to be alone.

He sneaks up a back staircase, aiming to stop for a while at an old haunt where no one will think to look for him. Specifically not Shen Qingqiu, who no doubt saw him leave early last night and will be forming some kind of opinion about it. He emerges at the top of the stairs to the clean, crisp shock of fresh air, icy and bright in his lungs. And to an empty watchtower, except for Mobei-jun, who is sitting on the ledge of the balcony, one leg stretched out on top of it, and the other hanging down into the open air. 

“Oh,” Shang Qinghua says, eloquently. Mobei-jun is too dignified and cool to startle, probably, but he does turn, cutting off Shang Qinghua’s view of his elegant profile. He really is too handsome, what was wrong with Shang Qinghua for writing him like this? Of course he never thought he was going to see it—

Mobei-jun doesn’t say anything. Of course he doesn’t, why should he? This is his palace, it’s Shang Qinghua who’s wandering around nostalgically like a creep—it was just that he’d loved coming up here, to this watchtower, hardly used, and standing here as long as he could stand the cold, looking over the bright, snowy world he’d created. He loved seeing the machinations of the castle from above, the demons training in the courtyard, the flashes of light from inside the windows. In the winter kingdom’s summers, when light came for over half the day and the snow melted down to a few feet, sometimes you could see out to the town at the foot of the hill, and there were small specks, like ants, moving about their lives. All of them are real. All of them had been in his head, once. It made him feel frightened and powerful, looking at them moving. Look at all this he’d done.

“I’m sorry,” Shang Qinghua manages, when Mobei-jun doesn’t stop looking at him. “I didn’t think anyone would be here—I needed some air.”

“Air,” Mobei-jun echoes.

“And I always liked—well, anyway,” Shang Qinghua says, cutting himself off. No need for all that. Mobei-jun will be angry either way, as he should be. Shang Qinghua doesn’t like seeing him, not in person. He doesn’t like being close enough to trace the line of his nose, the knot of his throat, with his eyes. He doesn’t like remembering that sometimes Mobei-jun’s chest gets a blue flush to it, presumably from the cold. All of it just makes him feel—stupid. A little miserable. A little angry. “I’ll go.”

“You don’t need to go,” Mobei-jun says. “You are my guest.”

“That doesn’t mean I have free run of your palace, my lord,” Shang Qinghua says, a little snappish. “I remember the rules for your guests.” He had not been a guest then. He had sometimes, perhaps, taken a little too much enjoyment in throwing guests out of private rooms, rooms he could enter, rooms his king could enter, and no one else . . .

Mobei-jun’s face darkens at this. Right, don’t tell him how to run his palace. That’s not your job anymore, stupid!

“Until you leave,” Mobei-jun says, as if speaking to a child, “you are a guest. Your needs will be provided for. If you need air,” he jerks his chin at the open space at the top of the watchtower, “there is air.”

Then he pushes himself off the balcony ledge and comes closer. Shang Qinghua stays stock still, staring up, tightening his jaw against saying—something. He doesn’t know what he wants to say. He had forgotten the exact span of their height difference; now it is all he can think about. Mobei-jun standing right in front of him, his collarbones bare and level with Shang Qinghua’s nose. His handsome face tilted down. 

“You’re a good host,” Shang Qinghua says, quietly, finally, when Mobei-jun does nothing but stand in front of him, a foot away, his face blank and eyes burning. With rage, most likely. At Shang Qinghua once again invading his space, making his presence known when he is unwanted. “But I can go.”

“Shang Qinghua,” Mobei-jun says, through his teeth. 

Shang Qinghua looks up at him. He feels curiously blank; not angry and not afraid. Not sorry, either, or longing. He wishes he had something left. He remembers getting the news that Mobei-jun was getting married, and feeling bitter, and then getting up to get dinner. He remembers drinking himself sick in his room when he realized Mobei-jun was not coming back, and wishes suddenly for the intensity of that feeling—betrayal, and longing. The cleanness of it. Not this muddle, this distance between them. His king. Standing just there, and so far. 

“Zhao Xin,” he says. “She’s—is she good to you?”

Mobei-jun looks away. Out over the palace, over his lands, over this place that Shang Qinghua wrote about in another life, and slaved over in this one. He wonders if they still use his inventory system for the storehouses. He wonders if someone else has been put in the rooms where he used to live. He wonders if Zhao Xin is good to Mobei-jun, if she is kind to him, if she plays around with him. If she can manage to make him smile, which is certainly more than Shang Qinghua ever managed. 

He isn’t so vindictive as to want Mobei-jun to be miserable, he thinks. Hopes. He isn’t sure. Even asking the question has made that clean feeling of rage rise in his chest, the same rage that floods him whenever he thinks of some other person, any other person, wrapped in Mobei-jun’s arms, ruling his kingdom, sharing his bed. All along it was supposed to be a stupid, self-indulgent daydream, only it turns out that at the end of things, Shang Qinghua really had wanted it. Wasn’t that awful? 

“Is she good to you?” he repeats. 

Mobei-jun looks back at him. “I would not marry if she wasn’t,” he says. 

Shang Qinghua feels it hit like one of the kicks Mobei-jun used to enjoy giving him. “I see,” he says, and, unsure what to do with a pronouncement like that, opens his mouth again. “That’s very lucky,” he says. “To find someone good to you. It’s lucky.”

Before he can embarrass himself more, he flees down the stairs again, and doesn’t look at Mobei-jun’s face as he goes. 

There’s a hunt in the afternoon, a celebratory event. Shang Qinghua can trace the rest of the week out in his mind, all of it pulled from the old documents on his computer, the half-finished worldbuilding he’d done about northern courtship rituals. The marriage celebrations would contain a hunt. The spouse who was not marrying into a new family would hunt for the other. With Mobei-jun and Zhao Xin, of course, this means Shang Qinghua’s king is heading out with a hunting party to take down some nonsensically powerful beast and Zhao Xin is obligated to stay behind and wait to be provided for, a position which does not suit her at all. 

Shang Qinghua catches the edge of a complaint from her, as he and Shen Qingqiu are walking down. Something about it being ridiculous, and she’d rather go, and then the twitch of Mobei-jun’s mouth, not quite a smile, but enough of one to burn a hole through Shang Qinghua’s chest. She sinks into the throne at the head of the room with a similar lazy, catlike grace to Mobei-jun himself, and then is bold enough to make a face at him as he takes a knife from a nearby stack of weapons and sticks it into his boot. 

“I will let you skin it,” he tells her. 

She barks a laugh. “The least interesting part of a hunt,” she says. “My betrothed is so generous.”

Shang Qinghua can’t see Mobei-jun’s face, but he might roll his eyes back, if Zhao Xin’s second laugh is any indication. 

Next to him, Luo Binghe is pouting at Shen Qingqiu, who is refusing to kiss him goodbye. 

“We’re in public,” Shen Qingqiu says. 

“Shizuuun,” Luo Binghe whines. “For luck?”

“Hm,” Shen Qingqiu says. “I thought Binghe wouldn’t need luck. Surely he’s powerful enough to take down some weak northern boar without my help.” Luo Binghe has taken hold of his waist, by now, and Shen Qingqiu’s fan is resting against Luo Binghe’s chest. 

“Nonetheless, it’s an honor to have Shizun’s aid,” Luo Binghe says gravely, which makes Shen Qingqiu blush, which means a kiss isn’t far behind. Shang Qinghua rolls his eyes and tunes them out. 

“Did you get your air?” Mobei-jun asks, from far too close to him. Shang Qinghua’s poor heart is going to give out one of these days, it really will. 

“What?” Shang Qinghua asks, stupidly. 

Mobei-jun squints at him. His mouth is flat, unhappy. It seems unreal that just a second ago he was turned, smiling faintly and rolling his eyes, towards his fiancé. “You needed air,” he says. 

Shang Qinghua traces back over their conversation from the morning and gulps. “I didn’t go anywhere I wasn’t supposed to,” he says. 

A muscle in Mobei-jun’s jaw twitches. 

“I appreciate your hospitality too much to—”

“The rules are different,” Mobei-jun says. “For you.”

“Wh,” Shang Qinghua says. 

“You lived here once,” Mobei-jun says, as if this explains things. (It doesn’t.) “You can go wherever you wish.”

“I really don’t think that’s,” Shang Qinghua says, helplessly, and then the horn sounds to signal the gathering of the hunters, and Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu stop kissing to his left and Luo Binghe seems to notice that Mobei-jun is there, narrowing his eyes at him. Shang Qinghua doesn’t fucking know what to do. Mobei-jun is still looking at him, dark eyes boring into his, too-tall and infinitely distracting. How did he ever cope with this look every single day? Just a few seconds is making his knees weak. “Thank you, my lord,” he says, instead of protesting further. Then he clears his throat. “Good luck.”

Mobei-jun’s eyes burn. He nods once, sharply, before he turns away, sweeping towards the door. He doesn’t look back at Shang Qinghua. He doesn’t look back at Zhao Xin, either. She doesn’t seem to care, but it’s all Shang Qinghua can think about for the next three hours as they all keep themselves occupied. He spoke to Shang Qinghua last, but he didn’t turn back. He keeps telling himself this, hoping it will make a difference to his traitorous heart. Just like before, he didn’t look back. He doesn’t do that, he doesn’t come after people, he doesn’t—why would he even have any need for that—

When the hunting party returns, Mobei-jun’s eyes find him again, standing there in his worn Peak Lord’s robes, someone else’s colors in a king’s court, and for a hazy, terrible, wonderful second, Shang Qinghua imagines himself in different colors, standing at the front of the room. He imagines that Mobei-jun is going to cross the hall and lay the carcass slung over his shoulders at his feet, vile-smelling and bloody and meaningful. For a moment, he thinks that Mobei-jun’s stride stiffens, like he’s about to change directions. He sucks in a breath.

And then Mobei-jun nods to him, and walks to the front of the room, laying the un-skinned beast at Zhao Xin’s feet and handing her the dagger, handle up. She takes it with a rabid, gorgeous smile, one which makes it clear just why Mobei-jun must have fallen for her. She’s terrifying and lovely, just like him. 

Shang Qinghua takes another deep breath, in and out. He watches as Zhao Xin stabs the boar’s eye, pulling it out and eating it. He doesn’t let himself think about anything. 

He skips the banquet, later, to go to the servant’s chambers and look up Xiyi again, still just as toddering and ill-tempered as ever. Shang Qinghua won his affection ages back with a well-placed extra piece of meat at dinner, once (to get his attention), and then with a series of favors, performed over time, each a little more extravagant than the last, until he would only stomach talking to Shang Qinghua about palace matters and scowled at anyone else who looked at him. He’s probably only still employed because no one can figure out how to fire him. Shang Qinghua certainly couldn’t, which was why he’d made use of him instead.

Shang Qinghua tugs him into a little-used hallway and leans back against the wall, crossing his arms. “You said you had other news,” he says, with no preamble. 

“Yes, my lord,” Xiyi says, the lord insincere, almost an insult. Shang Qinghua shrugs it off; he’s not used to much better, even at his own peak. Xiyi then launches into an impressive rant about how no one at the palace has any respect for him anymore, and how nothing is ever done properly, which Shang Qinghua ignores in favor of running through his mental list of Things That Could Be Wrong In The North, which is half made up of unfinished plotlines for Proud Immortal Demon Way and half made up of his own paranoia related to the snow-covered mountains that are behind the palace, waiting to crumble down in an avalanche after the next storm that’s a little too strong. He tunes back in around when Xiyi is saying something about how even Mobei-jun no longer seems interested in the workings of his own castle, which isn’t a surprise considering he’s about to get married, he probably has greater concerns—

“Please, I don’t have much time,” he says, at the next lull in the conversation. “What did you—”

He freezes before he can finish the sentence. The window behind Xiyi’s head is icing over, and Xiyi himself has turned an impressive shade of pale blue. 

Shit, Shang Qinghua thinks, and turns. “I wasn’t—”

“With me,” Mobei-jun says, voice at its most silky, icy-calm and dangerous, and grabs the neck of Shang Qinghua’s robes. 

Xiyi has already scurried completely out of sight, vanishing into one of the many rooms or staircases that lead out of the servant’s quarters. He’s probably well into the kitchens by now, maybe even outside. Shang Qinghua thinks longingly of freedom, even outside in the bitter, violent winds that have not let up since he set foot back in the north. He tries to wiggle out of Mobei-jun’s grip, but there’s no luck with that, and instead he just ends up wiggling; like a snake or rodent being carried out of a garden bed. 

His feet are scrabbling against the floor, the short heels of his boots trying and failing to find purchase against the stone floors as he’s dragged into another, even more deserted hallway. Here, he can’t hear anything: just his own panting breath and the whirling wind outside, and then the clatter of his feet when Mobei-jun pushes him unceremoniously up against the wall. It’s impossible not to notice him, here in this tucked-away corner, the breadth and height of him, the stony, crystalized look on his face, all terrifying, mind-boggling power. 

“You’ve got no right to drag me around like this,” Shang Qinghua snaps, because he has a death wish. 

“ I have no right?” Mobei-jun hisses. “You come here, organize meetings with my servants—”

“I wasn’t doing anything, it’s none of your business—”

“The north is my business,” Mobei-jun says. “It is no longer yours.”

Well, what’s that supposed to mean? He fucking knows that. “Just let me go, I don’t even know why I thought—”

“You thought, ” Mobei-jun snarls. “Shang Qinghua, what you think is no longer any of my concern. You dare—”

His hand is still at Shang Qinghua’s collar, and Shang Qinghua feels it tighten—his big hands, his black claws, winding in closer and tearing at the fabric—and he’s so close, closer than he’s been in years, looming above him and so angry, so close, and something cracks in Shang Qinghua’s chest, something that has been growing larger and larger since he arrived here, and now feels like a bomb going off. 

“What don’t I dare?” he snaps back, a mirror image of that time five years ago when Mobei-jun told him to get the hell out, but this time he’s closer, and he has a little more time to speak before Mobei-jun inevitably takes his head off. “What don’t I dare, when it comes to you—”

Mobei-jun snarls something that might be a word, and then Shang Qinghua’s face is between his palms, and they’re kissing. Actually kissing—deep and electric and hot, despite the ice of Mobei-jun’s fingers against his cheeks. Shang Qinghua considers, for about half a second, pulling away, and saying something appropriately scathing, and then running off, but then Mobei-jun crowds him closer against the wall and drops his hands to Shang Qinghua’s hips and everything blurs into white noise as Shang Qinghua reaches up to grab the back of his neck, hands knotting into his hair, drawing him closer. 

You let me go, he thinks, you never came to find me, I wanted you to so badly and you never—

They’re kissing wet and sloppy and with zero finesse, on either side, Shang Qinghua opening his mouth and biting back an undignified whine when Mobei-jun takes the invitation and licks into it. And it’s a bad, bad kiss, sloppy with spit and over-eager and clumsy, and Shang Qinghua fucking loves it, wants a million more like it, startles himself with the depth of his longing, a feeling he thought had calcified. He gets a bite on his lip; he rolls his hips up angrily, and then Mobei-jun groans into his mouth, and that’s it. That’s it. He realizes he’s saying it out loud when Mobei-jun presses his legs apart with one of his, sliding his thigh between them. “That’s it, come on—”

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun mutters, and keeps kissing him, the two of them frantically gaining a little finesse, finding out through rapid experimentation what works. Mobei-jun’s big hands are pulling on his body, pressing them flush together, holding onto the small of his back, the back of his head. He feels claws scratch at the back of his neck, behind his ear; he feels teeth digging into his lower lip. There’s a loud rushing in his ears blocking out all other sound.

My king, Shang Qinghua swallows back, my king, my king. He wants to call him by the old title with every stupid, horny bone in his body. He wants to kneel down and suck his cock right here in the hall. He wants to say my king and have it mean mine, mine, his favorite, his Mobei-jun, his terrible, beautiful king. He wants to be in the throne room in three days with him as they make their vows—

This thought is enough to shock him into sense. He pulls back.

Mobei-jun’s face above him is well-kissed, his mouth a little blue, his pupils wide and black. His hair is a wreck above his right ear where Shang Qinghua grips it. Experimentally, he pulls; Mobei-jun moves his head where Shang Qinghua leads, easily. Trusting. 

He lets go as if he’s been burned.

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun says, low, dangerous.

“No,” Shang Qinghua says, wildly, legs unsteady from the best and only kiss of his life, and the heady feeling of Mobei-jun’s head moving where he directed it. “No, I have—I have to go.”

Mobei-jun smiles. It’s not kind. “Yes,” he says. “You’re good at that, Peak Lord Shang.” And then he goes first, sweeping off down the hall and dissolving into shadow. Shang Qinghua leans back against the wall on his unsteady, human legs, and rams his fist into it several times. 

“Fuck,” he says, to no one. “Fuck!!”

Did that really just happen?! Did Mobei-jun really just—a few days before his wedding, what the hell—could it be possible that it was all real, that it wasn’t just another of Shang Qinghua’s guilty fantasies, imagining the perfect weight of Mobei-jun’s hands, the rock-solid feeling of his body pinning Shang Qinghua in place—

“I’m dead,” he says to himself, bewildered. The rage in Mobei-jun’s face, the hot snarl of his breath. The fucking kiss. Ever heard of mixed signals, Mobei-jun?! How unfair! Shang Qinghua had just been getting used to the whole idea of pining pathetically forever, and now Mobei-jun had thrown him the biggest fucking lure in the history of lures! Didn’t he know he couldn’t do that? 

He realizes he’s at Shen Qingqiu’s room at about the moment he’s pounding on it.

“Bro,” he says, feeling crazed, forgetting to use titles. “Bro, you have to help me!”

Shen Qingqiu tugs open the door and stares at him, unblinking. “Shang-shidi, what did you call m— mmph, ” he says, as Shang Qinghua grabs him by the elbow and drags him forcibly into the room, slamming the door behind them.

“What the hell, Airplane,” Shen Qingqiu hisses, once the door is shut. “You’re lucky Binghe isn’t here—”

“Mobei-jun kissed me,” Shang Qinghua says, panicked. 

This shuts him up pretty nicely. He gapes at him, fully gapes, which is an expression Shang Qinghua has never seen on Shen Qingqiu’s face before. Even when he’s been shocked, it’s all been internal—this is a full, no-holds-barred what the fuck. He quickly schools himself, and shuts his mouth, but the damage is done. 

“Well!” Shang Qinghua says, just as panicked as before. “You always have something to say, so say it! Go and tell me how stupid it was, or something!” 

“It wasn’t stupid if you wanted to do it,” Shen Qingqiu says. He’s using that tone again, the soft one, the one he used when he said Mobei-jun is getting married.  

“Of course I wanted to do it, what the fuck are you talking about,” Shang Qinghua snaps. “But he’s getting married and—”

“You were the one who insisted on writing about a world where demon harems were no big deal,” Shen Qingqiu says, and the slight acid in his tone is familiar enough to bring some semblance of comfort back to the situation.

“It was a fucking sex novel,” Shang Qinghua says hysterically, “it was for the plot, not for me. It was for my rent money. ”

Shen Qingqiu opens his mouth and then closes it again. “Ah,” he says. 

“ Ah! ” Shang Qinghua mimics, still feeling somewhat crazed. “Look, if you’re not going to be any help—”

“Who said I wasn’t any help?” Shen Qingqiu says, affronted. “I’m just adjusting to new information.”

“You thought I wanted a harem?”

“You wrote the rest of your fucking kinks into this story, so my apologies for assuming —”

“I hate you,” Shang Qinghua says, and sinks onto the floor. His legs are still trembling from the stupid kiss, what the fuck. How is anyone meant to recover from this? Is this what Shen Qingqiu feels like all the time when Luo Binghe kisses him?

“Here,” Shen Qingqiu says, fluttering around the room, then bossily handing him some water. “Drink this.”

Shang Qinghua drinks. For a while there’s only silence between them, silence and the sick thud of Shang Qinghua’s heart in his own ears, still racing. He puts the cup on the table and stares at it, for a while. Now that he’s here, he doesn’t even know what to say. He’s thinking about Mobei-jun’s voice, his mouth so close to his. You dare—

What don’t I dare?

He puts his face in his hands and takes a deep breath. 

“Airplane,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Say something.”

He’s thinking about standing there, after his many years of loyalty and service, telling Mobei-jun you were just as handsome as I imagined. The months after, making excuse after excuse not to hit the restart button until he was back at his peak, realizing Mobei-jun would never come, and he would have to live with that.

“Did you ever get the, you know.” He pauses. His throat hurts, surprisingly tight. “The end game button?”

“Two options,” Shen Qingqiu says, and shrugs. “Restart, or dismiss. I dismissed.” He looks at Shang Qinghua, fan folded away, nothing between them. “You did, too, or you wouldn’t be asking.”

“It’s still there,” Shang Qinghua admits. “It has been for years now. I didn’t click either of them. Sometimes I think about it. Sometimes I want—”

His voice cracks, embarrassingly. 

“What do you want?”

“That’s a good fucking question, bro,” Shang Qinghua says. “I want—see, I wrote this plot,” he says, and gestures at the air around him, “I wrote—I wrote that Mobei-jun, eventually, he would find someone who made him open up, and he would marry her, and she would be consort in the north, and she would be this—clever, pretty, talented person. Someone worthy of him, you know? And then I scrapped it. I just couldn’t give him to anyone. The whole book was for everyone else. He was mine.” He presses his palms to his eyes. Mobei-jun had been so angry, and then he had kissed him. It didn’t mean anything—it couldn’t—not when it had happened like that. But he wanted it, so badly it hurt. To be chosen. 

“Airplane,” Shen Qingqiu says, “I think you should—”

There’s a noise behind them. Luo Binghe has come back. Shang Qinghua watches his friend’s face as the armor of Shen Qingqiu comes up over him again, as he turns his soft eyes to his husband. Quietly happy, warmed by his own personal sun. 

“Never mind,” Shang Qinghua says, hastily. He can’t watch this right now, not after everything. “Don’t let me keep you, Shen-shixiong. It’s late.”

“Shang-shidi—”

“Never mind,” he says, then, “I think I missed my chance. Isn’t that funny? Two whole lives, and I still—” He laughs, so he doesn’t cry. The door shuts softly behind him. 

He avoids Mobei-jun successfully for all of the next day, sticking to his room, ducking into the kitchens for a late breakfast—a handful of melon seeds, tucked in the back of a pantry with rice and dried herbs, comfortingly sweet and not at all filling. Then he makes himself scarce—he goes for a walk outside, in the freezing yard just outside the sight of the castle’s windows, and lingers out in the wind, still howling, and the cold, until he can’t stand it any longer. Then he sneaks back in, avoiding the sounds of other people, struck by the thought that it’s only days before the wedding, that somewhere, people are making robes, setting up the banquet hall, getting ready for the ceremony. It makes him feel vengeful, angry. Even violent, in a way he’s not accustomed to, at the idea of Zhao Xin drinking Mobei-jun’s blood, joining his household, becoming his first wife, his consort. 

He finds himself in an inventory room for treasure, his body sinking right back into old habits. This was always his task, back when he lived here; he hadn’t talked about it much, to anyone, but he’d liked seeing the treasure come in, organizing it, looking at all these things that had once only existed in his mind. No matter how stupid they were, how plot-convinient, how patently ridiculous—they were real now, and it was enough to look. Just like standing in that tower, awash with delight at everything he had written about. He revamped the inventory system all over the castle in the name of being able to go in and have a look. 

There are new things here, filed away carefully with everything else. Shang Qinghua sits down, and just looks. He feels—close to tears again, for no reason. They’ve kept up his painstaking inventory system. He doesn’t feel flattered, although he thinks another person might, seeing something like this. He just feels—used. Scrubbed out of the palace, despite every mark he’d left here. They kept using everything he’d left, but he had become unnecessary. Old news. 

He rubs at his face with the edge of his sleeve. 

“Okay,” he says to himself. “Okay, just—just get through today. And tomorrow. And then you can go—”

The word home sticks in his throat. His peak isn’t home; it hasn’t been home in years. He thinks, then, about his conversation with Shen Qingqiu, his friend’s easy dismissal of the Restart button that has haunted Shang Qinghua for so many years. Maybe—maybe that—maybe that’s an option, now. Now that Mobei-jun is—maybe the safest thing to do is just to leave. Leaving the North wasn’t enough, clearly, he still has all these horrible feelings, and they’re probably never going to go away, so—

He blinks ahead, staring aimlessly at the wall of things, registering none of it. Maybe he should just leave. 

“You’re here,” Mobei-jun says, from behind him. 

Shang Qinghua yelps, scrambling to his feet. “My—Mobei-jun,” he says, catching himself before my king can fall out, like it used to. “You—”

“Junshang’s husband said you would be,” Mobei-jun says. 

“Traitor,” Shang Qinghua mutters. Mobei-jun twitches. 

“Why are you here,” he says, stiffly. 

There are a lot of excuses Shang Qinghua could make. He can’t think of any of them, though. Not now that Mobei-jun is here again, just a few feet away from him. 

“You still use my inventory system,” Shang Qinghua says, instead, mouth dry. He can’t stop looking at Mobei-jun’s mouth, wondering if he’ll kiss him again. He could hit himself in the face, he really could. 

“Yes,” Mobei-jun says, giving him a weird, burning look of his own. 

Shang Qinghua can’t look away. He’s an idiot, he’s such a horny fucking idiot. “Why?”

Mobei-jun steps closer. Shang Qinghua should move away. He doesn’t. “You made it,” Mobei-jun says, and what the fuck does that mean, he made it, what does it mean that Mobei-jun seems to have kept everything but Shang Qinghua himself, and he’d never even come after him, he’d never even appeared in his typical cloud of smoke to glower in a corner and ask where the hell he thought he’d been for three months, that’s what he was supposed to do, collect his things, place them near him where he could keep his eyes on them—

Shang Qinghua spent so long waiting. So long. Mobei-jun kept everything except him. All of these things are true, and Mobei-jun is still stepping closer, eyes dark and dangerous, looking at Shang Qinghua’s mouth. Shang Qinghua is desperate enough that all of this seems like a very good idea. 

He closes his eyes when Mobei-jun leans down to kiss him, gentler than yesterday, a little more practiced. Keeps them closed when Mobei-jun pulls back, so Shang Qinghua can’t see his face when he says, agonized, “You can’t just do that.” 

“Why not,” Mobei-jun says. He’s still so close, Shang Qinghua can feel his breath. 

“Because I want you to,” Shang Qinghua says, desperately, “and you—”

He’s cut off with another kiss, harder. Mobei-jun’s hands, scrabbling at his back, then at his thighs, encouraging him to put his legs up, pulling him forcibly into his arms and against the wall when he doesn’t move fast enough. Shang Qinghua pulls on his hair, weakly attempting to get a handle on this, to get them both to stop, to maybe not break his own heart any more than he already has, but Mobei-jun just moans into his mouth, an honest noise, bitten-off and delicious. It makes heat rush from his gut all the way to the tips of his fingers, a flash all over like being thrown into hot water. Mobei-jun’s hand is on his ass, Shang Qinghua is pulling his hair, and Mobei-jun likes it, and it’s that—that feeling, that powerful heady feeling of being desired, for a second, that makes Shang Qinghua think fuck it.

After this, he tells himself. Just once, he’ll have him, he’ll know what it’s like. Then he has the restart button, a way to escape whatever mess he leaves behind. It’s the coward’s way out, of course, but Shang Qinghua has never been accused of not being a coward. 

He knots his other hand into Mobei-jun’s hair.

They get to Mobei-jun’s rooms somehow. Magic, probably, teleportation if Shang Qinghua had to hazard a guess, but he isn’t actually paying much attention at that point, more focused on the teeth against his neck.  Mobei-jun’s biting a little too hard. It hurts in the way everything else hurts—desperate and scrabbling, making Shang Qinghua even more painfully aware that there will be no time to refine this, only now, this one moment before Shang Qinghua has to watch tomorrow as Mobei-jun gets married. It makes him greedy, hollowed out with lust. He starts struggling out of his clothes before they’re even properly in a bed. 

His rooms are cold. Shang Qinghua shivers, not sure whether it’s the temperature or the tongue on his neck that’s making it happen as he’s laid down. Maybe the temperature of the tongue on his neck, hot where everything else is cold. 

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun mutters, distracted, helping him tug off most of his robes, leaving him in just his trousers, shaking and very clearly already hard. Like the too-sharp bites, the embarrassment of being so easy is something he’ll feel later; right now he can only think as far as the next few seconds, Mobei-jun’s hands on him, nearly spanning his waist, moving up to flick at his nipples just to watch him squirm a little. 

If Shang Qinghua were a little braver, he’d tell him don’t fuck around, but he isn’t. His hands are moving, tugging at the loose robe around Mobei-jun’s shoulders, gasping into his neck when his big hands slip down again, cupping his ass through his trousers and pulling him closer. It’s a good feeling, good and overwhelming, just like everything else, like the snowstorm outside still rattling Mobei-jun’s windows. Shang Qinghua thinks this is what it would feel like, to walk out into the snow. Cold and blinding, and terrifying, the wind and the depth of it encircling you until you can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t do anything except go with it. 

So he goes with it. He is kissed, and kisses back, pressed down against the fabric and furs of Mobei-jun’s bed. His trousers are tugged off, his dick leaking against his stomach. Body willing, flesh weak—there was some kind of saying like that in English, back in his first life, or maybe it was mind willing, flesh weak, something about the flesh being weak, something he can’t remember but all the same it seems to make sense now, with Mobei-jun wrapping his big hand around Shang Qinghua’s dick and jerking him off, slow and careful, held aloft over him, braced on one arm. Shang Qinghua trembles when Mobei-jun touches him, feels on the edge in seconds, or maybe it only feels like seconds, but it’s embarrassing either way, not lasting long. The flesh, weak. 

Mobei-jun’s dark eyes are fixed greedily on Shang Qinghua’s face, his mouth a little open. Shang Qinghua struggles up onto his elbows to plant a clumsy kiss on his parted lips, moaning when Mobei-jun pushes him down again, tongue in his mouth, taking back control as easily as breathing. If they’re doing this he wants to kiss his king. If they’re doing this he wants to pretend. If they’re doing his he wants—

“Fuck,” he wheezes, breaking off, breath hitching, “your clothes, please, I want,” nonsense, but it works, Mobei-jun growling and sitting back and tugging his clothes off, impatient, his spoiled king. Shang Qinghua’s thoughts reach him in fragments, not quite words. The fact that they’re doing this at all is enough to overwhelm him.

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun says again, robes strewn around, working his own trousers down his thighs. Shang Qinghua’s eyes are helplessly drawn to his cock—where else can you look, really—and immediately, embarrassingly, his mouth waters. What a strange thing, to ask for something and be given it so readily. Like Mobei-jun moving his head under Shang Qinghua’s hand, when he pulled his hair a few days ago. Shang Qinghua feels drunk on power, like he’ll be given whatever else he asks for, too. 

“Come here,” he says. Like a test, of sorts. Here’s something easy. Let’s see if you’ll do it. 

Mobei-jun does, crawling back up his bed and leaning down over Shang Qinghua to kiss him hard and deep, a kiss that melts Shang Qinghua’s spine. 

“What do you want,” Shang Qinghua asks, when they break the kiss. He can’t think much farther than Mobei-jun’s naked front pressed to his, the chill of his skin, the heat of his breath. Shang Qinghua has one leg hooked up around his thick waist; he doesn’t remember how that happened, which of them initiated it. 

Mobei-jun’s hand is on his ass, firm, helping guide Shang Qinghua’s hips in a slow roll that’s only a little awkward at first. “Like this,” he says, mouth against his neck. Shang Qinghua fists his hand back into Mobei-jun’s hair and puts his other palm to his mouth, licking it sloppily, and then reaching down to grip Mobei-jun’s dick. His hands aren’t big enough to effectively jerk them off together, but if he’s being selfish then he’s going to get a hand on his king’s dick, at least, before they really start rubbing off against each other like animals. Mobei-jun makes a noise, loses his rhythm for a few seconds, helplessly chasing the pressure of Shang Qinghua’s hand. 

“Qinghua,” he says, almost beseeching suddenly. Not quite a plea, yet, but something that could eventually take the shape of begging. Shang Qinghua nearly dies from how hot that gets him. 

“Okay,” he says, gives Mobei-jun’s dick another stroke, just because he can’t help himself, now that he’s given in he really can’t stop himself just doing whatever he wants in a way that is going to get him in trouble, probably, but Mobei-jun has one arm braced against the bed and the other on Shang Qinghua’s hip and they’re actually fucking up against each other in earnest, now, sloppy and uncoordinated. Shang Qinghua briefly imagines proper fucking, Mobei-jun’s dick splitting him open, in a way that would be wholly inadvasable with just spit (Shen Qingqiu has chewed his ear off several times about the immense impracticality of huge demon dicks, he gets it) but that he wants anyway, wants to feel Mobei-jun inside him, forcing himself in, carving out space for himself there. 

He thinks, next time, digs his teeth into the muscle of Mobei-jun’s shoulder in a way that makes his king’s hips stutter, and feels ridiculously proud of that. Then, next time, again, letting himself lean into the fantasy of this being a repeat act and not just something Shang Qinghua is doing for one night before they go their separate ways. Next time he’ll be prepared with tons of lube and shit like that, maybe he’ll even stretch himself out beforehand, for the moment when Mobei-jun will inevitably become impatient and just stick it in, get himself ready and then present himself like a gift. 

This time, though, Mobei-jun just bites him back, little bites down his neck that sting just enough to feel real, and then pulls back so he can press their mouths together, another sloppy, unpracticed kiss that makes Shang Qinghua feel like the two of them are at the center of their own weird little universe, like maybe nothing else has to matter. 

Shang Qinghua pulls back and gasps into the air between them, suddenly on the edge again—overwhelmed with the intensity of all of it, the kissing and the fucking and the way Mobei-jun is giving him whatever he asks for, the way he’s wanted him for so long and now he’s right here. His right hand is tight in Mobei-jun’s hair, nails of the other scraping over his broad back. He has never felt like this in his life, lit up from inside with lust, and held, and wanted, and it’s that thought that makes him hiss out another breath and come against Mobei-jun’s stomach, a rush that makes his ears ring for a second.

That was it, he thinks, mind soupy, hips stuttering more weakly than before, coming down from the high. That was it, it’s almost over now. But he doesn’t want it to be over, he wants there to be a next time and a next time, this feeling a million times over. He can’t say all this, so he just tightens his grip, smearing kisses wherever he can reach. Mobei-jun keeps rutting up against him, sweet and claiming: bruising his hips and the backs of his thighs, with his big hands. 

“My king,” he says, low, pressed into Mobei-jun’s neck, wondering if he can hear it, torn between hoping he can and hoping he can’t. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for, what he wants, besides for this moment to never end. “My king, ah, please —”

Mobei-jun makes a noise, an almost-painful sound of his own, and comes. Shang Qinghua keeps his leg wrapped stubbornly around his waist, holding him there, breathing hot against his neck. Mobei-jun bites into his shoulder, a little bit playful, or a little of something else, something Shang Qinghua doesn’t want to address or he’ll lose his mind, probably. Even the playfulness is so strangely sweet it makes Shang Qinghua’s heart throb. Then Mobei-jun clumsily rolls them over, so Shang Qinghua is laying across his chest. 

God, his pecs. His everything, but mostly his pecs. Shang Qinghua cautiously rests his cheek against one. He’s made his peace with being pathetic; he fully plans to stay until he’s kicked out. Mobei-jun still has a handful of his ass, so maybe he’s not planning on making him leave yet, either. 

“Sleep,” Mobei-jun mumbles. Half-into Shang Qinghua’s hair, which he self-consciously tugs out of the way. 

They’re sort of gross—sticky with sweat and with come—and Mobei-jun’s skin is cool against his flushed cheek. Shang Qinghua pulls away enough to grab something to wipe them up with, and ends up with a corner of one of the bed linens. He pauses, uncertain. Mobei-jun had made a soft, displeased noise when he rolled away, and is now balanced on his elbow, blinking at him like a cat.

Cute, Shang Qinghua thinks, despite himself. He hadn’t known Mobei-jun could be cute. He’d known he could be scary and painfully sexy and cool, but not cute. His heart lurches again.

“I’m just,” he says, and reaches out to wipe off Mobei-jun’s stomach. “Um.”

Mobei-jun gets it then, and flops back down onto his back, letting Shang Qinghua wipe him down, only marginally less clumsily than when he jerked him off earlier. His face is weirdly still, weirdly soft, his dark eyes fixed on Shang Qinghua’s face. Shang Qinghua makes the mistake of looking back once, and it just makes him want to kiss Mobei-jun again, so he looks back to what he’s doing and tries not to blush much harder than he already is. 

He wipes himself down in a perfunctory way, and then takes a deep breath and lays back down, pressing his face into the exquisite bend of Mobei-jun’s neck, draping his arm over his beautiful torso. Just for a little longer, he thinks. Just while he’s allowed. 

Mobei-jun makes another noise, pleased this time, a little agreeable hmm. After a little bit of shifting, and snaking his arm under Shang Qinghua’s body so he can grab his ass again (which, okay!! okay!!!!) Shang Qinghua can feel Mobei-jun’s chin tucked neatly against the top of his head. 

“Sleep,” he says again, more authority in it this time. He’s dragging one of the non-ruined bedcovers up on top of them—mostly on top of Shang Qinghua, really—and, well, Shang Qinghua really is tired, he hasn’t been sleeping well these last few nights. Shang Qinghua is trying not to think the phrase we’re cuddling to himself, because if he does he thinks something’s going to crack in his brain. Not that something hasn’t already cracked. Frankly, he thinks it’s a miracle he can still form thoughts at all. 

He shifts again and just looks at Mobei-jun, whose eyes are still closed, and who for all he knows might even be asleep already. Maybe Mobei-jun is one of those annoying people who can just close their eyes and be sleeping seconds later. Shang Qinghua has never slept with him before; he wouldn’t know. But he looks peaceful, his face a little slack and a little—yes, cute, like this. Shang Qinghua’s spoiled ice king. He sighs and tucks his face back into his cold neck, burying his burning cheeks there. 

In the morning, he thinks, he’ll hit the button. He’ll do a system restart. Mobei-jun will get married, and Shang Qinghua will have had him once, like this, strangely cute and sleeping, the two of them wrapped up in each other. In the morning. For now—he tucks his free arm closer around Mobei-jun’s torso, holding him tightly, tight enough that it would probably alarm a human, but Mobei-jun doesn’t seem to notice. For now, they’ll sleep. Shang Qinghua will be selfish.

In the morning, Shang Qinghua climbs all those stairs to the tower once more. This time it’s empty. Mobei-jun is still sleeping, down in his room where he belongs, and Shang Qinghua is here at the place that used to be his favorite in the palace, staring at the two System buttons, overlaid against the backdrop of the North—the sky finally calm, after a week of storming, the snow settled and fresh. The sun hasn’t quite risen, but it will soon, and then the world will be washed out with white, too bright to be believed.

It’s a good day for a wedding. Probably. Maybe Mobei-jun would prefer a storm. Shang Qinghua has no idea. Maybe he’ll wake up and scowl out the window at the peace of the bright sun and glittering snow, squinting his eyes against the glare. 

He’ll wake up and Shang Qinghua will be gone. For good, this time. No complications.

“Really I’m doing him a favor,” Shang Qinghua says, out loud, to no one. He is! It would be so complicated and awkward for Mobei-jun to have to deal with the aftermath of—whatever the fuck that was, the two of them having sex— and get married on top of it. It’s almost like Shang Qinghua is getting one last chance to do his job—loyal servant, steward of the North, cleaning up messes before Mobei-jun can even see them. He’s helping. He’s good at that. He made himself good at that; spent years and years figuring out exactly how the north worked and then applied it, he—

Mobei-jun is going to wake up, and Shang Qinghua will be gone. His hand shakes, poised in the air, ready to hit the Restart button. Just one click and then all his problems will be gone. He might even be able to start over. Do it right, next time. Find some way to worm himself into the fabric of Mobei-jun’s life so completely that he’ll never get kicked out, or forgotten, that maybe Mobei-jun will chase after him this time. It’s better for everyone if he leaves. Shang Qinghua will hit this button, and then Mobei-jun will get married. It’s clean. It’s simple. It makes sense.

He turns and knocks his head, not too gently, against one of the stone pillars that holds up the watchtower roof. “Why can’t I fucking press it? ” he yells. “Stupid! Stupid fucking coward—just do it!” 

He hadn’t pressed it before because there had been a chance. Because he’d wanted there to be a chance. Now Mobei-jun is getting married and there is no chance, so why can’t he just press it?

The stone is cold against his forehead. It reminds him of leaning into Mobei-jun’s chest, because all his synapses are fried and cold is now more comforting than heat. 

“It makes sense,” he says, more weakly this time, into the cold morning air. “It makes sense, I should just make it easy for him and go—”

His throat clicks when he swallows. There are tears building in his chest. If it’s really the simplest thing, it shouldn’t be so difficult, should it? And then, as if in Shen Qingqiu’s most judgemental voice, he thinks, who are you making it easy for, exactly?  

“Shut up, Cucumber-bro,” Shang Qinghua mutters to no one. “Easy for you to say. I’m making it easy for both of us. He didn’t care enough to come after me the first time, why would that change?”

He tells himself, standing there trembling in the cold as the morning breaks, that Mobei-jun didn’t come after him when he left. And that Shang Qinghua had wanted him to. Surely everything that just happened—the kissing, the sex—is a fluke, something weird he had to get out of his system before he got married? Blowing off pre-wedding steam?

But, he thinks, then, but Mobei-jun isn’t like that. He doesn’t trust people enough to let them get close, he doesn’t blow off steam. Shang Qinghua hadn’t written him that way, so he’d have an excuse not to give him a harem. He wouldn’t let someone into his rooms unless he trusted them. Unless he wanted them there. 

But he didn’t come after me! Shang Qinghua tells himself, more weakly than before. It’s as if this simple realization—Mobei-jun wouldn’t do something like this unless he wanted to, how obvious, ugh—is sparking a whole host of other realizations, making Shang Qinghua’s head hurt. Mobei-jun hadn’t come after him, true, but it had been Shang Qinghua who left, Shang Qinghua who would be leaving again, this time to a place where Mobei-jun couldn’t follow him if he tried. And all this week—Shang Qinghua yelling what don’t I dare, Mobei-jun kissing him, then finding him and kissing him again, having sex with him just because Shang Qinghua had admitted he wanted it—

Has he been being chased?  

“Oh, fuck,” Shang Qinghua says, abruptly terrified. Suddenly it feels much easier to hit the button, which is a weird trick of adrenalin, probably. But he doesn’t; he curls his hand into a fist and puts it to his side. 

I have to go. You’re good at that.

“Oh, fuck, ” Shang Qinghua says. Not only has Mobei-jun been chasing him, Shang Qinghua has been running away.

He spins back towards the Restart and Dismiss buttons, hanging there in the air. They feel like they’re hanging there judgmentally. Shang Qinghua maybe, sort of, deserves it. Ugh. Character development is the fucking worst.  

He resists the urge to thunk his head against the pillar again, groaning to himself quietly instead. 

“It’s not like I don’t know I’m a coward!” he says defensively, again, to no one. “I just didn’t realize—I was just so angry. ” So angry, and so broken-hearted, and so stupid. Shen Qingqiu is going to get so much mileage out of all this. 

He takes a deep breath, and turns back to the buttons. He knows what he needs to do. 

“Okay, System,” Shang Qinghua says, clicking the Dismiss button. Behind him, the sun is starting to rise, thin shoots of gold staining the horizon. “Either he’s going to kill me for this, or Zhao Xin will kill me, or—” He laughs, breathlessly. “Or I’ll be happy,” he says, watching as the screen in front of him dissolves, leaving only the view of the north before him. “How about that?”

A few seconds pass, a few seconds where the only answer to his question is the soft sound of wind on snow, light wind, nothing compared to the days before this. The sun keeps creeping up, more and more light spreading over the courtyard. 

“Who were you speaking with?” Mobei-jun says, from behind him. Shang Qinghua yelps, and turns.

“My king!” he says, before he can think much about whether he should say that or not. Mobei-jun flinches, almost imperceptibly, but Shang Qinghua can tell from the twitch of his jaw—it’s not an angry twitch. Startled, instead. “Um, I wasn’t, there’s no one here. I was talking to myself.” He winces. “How much did . . . did you hear?”

“Very little,” Mobei-jun says. There is a very faint purple-blue bite mark on his shoulder. Shang Qinghua stares at it. 

I did that, he thinks. I did that and he let me.  

“You’re here,” Mobei-jun says, when Shang Qinghua doesn’t fill the silence. 

Shang Qinghua nods. “I’m here,” he says. 

Mobei-jun doesn’t answer, just swallows and looks at the horizon. 

Shang Qinghua recalls the last conversation they had here. Because his brain to mouth filter is zero, he blurts, “You said she was good to you.” 

Mobei-jun turns back. Arches an eyebrow.

“Zhao Xin,” Shang Qinghua clarifies. “You said she. I thought you. I mean. You’re marrying her.”

“She has a suitor,” Mobei-jun says. “She would like to be rid of him.”

“So you don’t,” Shang Qinghua says. “Love her, I mean.” There had been no trace of another person in Mobei-jun’s rooms, last night, no sign that someone other than him ever slept there. It makes sense, now. He feels so light and hopeful, brimming over with it. It all makes sense. 

“No,” Mobei-jun says, like Shang Qinghua is some kind of idiot. Which, fair. He clears his throat and keeps talking.

“When I left, after you ascended, you never came after me.”

“You asked me not to,” Mobei-jun says, simply. “You said, even if you are angry, don’t come looking for me.”

“And you listened? You never listen to things like that,” Shang Qinghua says.

Mobei-jun shrugs. “I would give you,” he says, “whatever you asked of me.”

Shang Qinghua spins away, pressing his hands to his rapidly reddening cheeks. He keeps thinking about the bite mark, the way Mobei-jun moved when Shang Qinghua pulled his hair, the intensity of his gaze on his back this whole week. “Whatever I asked?” he repeats, muffled by his palms. 

“Shang Qinghua,” Mobei-jun snaps. Shang Qinghua turns around and he’s—sharp around the edges, puffed up like a crow. Is this how he gets when he’s flustered? Has Shang Qinghua made him flustered? This is too much power for one person, it really is. Fuck a protagonist halo. Shang Qinghua can embarrass Mobei-jun. 

“Call off the wedding,” Shang Qinghua says. “Would you do that if I asked?”

“Why,” Mobei-jun says, though there’s hope in his eyes, suddenly, or at least Shang Qinghua thinks there is. “Why, so you can leave again? Why should I continue to make room for you if you’re going to leave—”

“Because I want to marry you!” Shang Qinghua says, abruptly tired of dancing around it, of playing. This is what he wants. This is what he’s wanted this whole time, since before his stupid second life even started. “This Peak Lord offers himself!”

Mobei-jun’s lips part, and then he just fucking stands there. 

“Well?” Shang Qinghua says, losing a little steam, spreading his arms out clumsily. “I’m no Zhao Xin, I admit, and I won’t bring you a—wealthy southern kingdom or a hunting partner or whatever else she’s bringing you, but don’t think I haven’t noticed the staff are being run into the ground again—” He’s nervous, now, which only makes the babbling worse. “—and if nothing else I can certainly handle that, and you know I’m good at inventory and running the household, I certainly did it for long enough when you were dragging me around by my hair—”

Before Shang Qinghua can figure out what the end to that sentence is supposed to be, Mobei-jun finds his ability to move again, and very quickly crosses the watchtower floor, cutting him off. 

“Say you mean it,” he demands, in his perfect, sexy voice, raw at the edges. Desperate. Shang Qinghua flips wildly between shock and horniness for a second as Mobei-jun grips his shoulders and stares down at him with a wild gaze that Shang Qinghua knows well, one he can feel burning in his own face. 

“Of course I mean it,” Shang Qinghua says, and reaches up to thump weakly against Mobei-jun’s chest. “I’ve loved you since—”

“Since,” Mobei-jun says, wondering.

“Oh, I don’t know, my king,” Shang Qinghua says helplessly, the epithet slipping out again before he can check himself. This time there’s no flinch, just a little shudder that makes Shang Qinghua feel powerful all over again. “A long time, I think.”

“Say it again,” Mobei-jun says, nearly begging, cradling Shang Qinghua’s face between his hands like he is precious, like he is coveted. Wanted. Loved. Shang Qinghua wants to run and he wants to stay, to burn alive in this light. “Say it again.”

Shang Qinghua turns his face and kisses one of those cold, rough palms. “I love you,” he says. “I want to marry you. Do you want that?”

Mobei-jun kisses him, pressing him against the stone ledge that encircles the watchtower platform, hands on the sides of his face and mouth hungry, demanding. Which is answer enough, in its own way. 

When they eventually find Zhao Xin, she’s sitting sprawled in one of the chairs in the conference hall, sharpening a knife with her claws (or maybe she’s sharpening her claws with the knife. Shang Qinghua can’t actually tell). 

“Hmm,” she says when she sees them standing in the doorway together, and then her eyes light on the bite mark on Mobei-jun’s shoulder and she full-on smirks, which is an uncomfortable expression to see on any demon, but especially on the one whose fiancé you just fucked and then confessed to. 

“I assume you no longer wish to join our kingdoms, Mobei-jun,” she says lightly. 

“You still have an unwanted suitor,” Mobei-jun says. “If Shang Qinghua is willing, I will keep the promise that I made to you.”

Shang Qinghua is not willing, as surprisingly nice as it is for Mobei-jun to offer, but before he can voice this Zhao Xin surprises Shang Qinghua by smiling wryly, her smirk softening into what is actually quite a friendly expression. “A broken heart will serve as an excuse just as well as a marriage. And if he does not lose interest, I will call you to the south for a . . . hunt.”

Mobei-jun grins back, a far more frightening smile than Zhao Xin’s. 

Shang Qinghua vaguely recalls a different, Luo Binghe related wife plot as they speak—Luo Binghe faking a marriage to a cousin of Sha Hualing’s to get her out of an unwanted marriage in the south. The marriage had been fake because the cousin hadn’t been interested in men; it had predictably ended in a threesome where she and Luo Binghe shared one of the other wives. It had also been a draft, abandoned because attempting to figure out where everyone’s limbs had been was very bothersome. He hadn’t ever named the OC, at the time. 

So she wasn’t the Mobei-jun wife plot OC? What the hell, System? Is Shang Qinghua going to have to sit here waiting until that OC shows up, and fight her off, or something? Actually, that might be sort of cool. A real protagonist moment. 

“Couldn’t you just have killed him before if he was causing you so much trouble?” Shang Qinghua wonders aloud, because he has no tact.

“Ah, but then I would not have been able to offer my friend companionship,” Zhao Xin shrugs, abandoning her nail filing and sitting up. “We both gained something from it; I shook loose the burr on my side and he convinced the North it had a stable future after you abandoned it.” 

Shang Qinghua chokes. “After I—”

She eyes him. “Perhaps next time you abandon your place here you might consider appointing a steward first,” she says. 

“I won’t be leaving again,” Shang Qinghua says, eyeing her back, “so I don’t see how that’s necessary.”

She smiles again and gets to her feet. “Just so we understand each other, Peak Lord Shang, if you do leave, I will kill you,” she says, and bows before he can sputter an answer. “Mobei-jun, farewell.” 

After she sweeps out of the room, Mobei-jun says, just as conversationally, “I will not allow her to kill you, even if you leave.”

Shang Qinghua squints at him. The corner of his mouth is soft and his brow is soft, too; on Mobei-jun that’s practically a laugh. “Well, my king, aren’t you going to marry me? How will I leave after that? And, clearly, your palace falls to pieces without me, so that’s another reason to stay.”

“Careful, Shang Qinghua,” Mobei-jun says, just barely a growl. 

Shang Qinghua steps closer, heart in his throat. He thinks he understands, now, finally. He hopes he does. “You don’t need to worry,” he says. He tilts his face up to meet Mobei-jun’s gaze. “I don’t plan on ever leaving your side again, my king.”

Mobei-jun reaches out, almost thoughtfully, and cups Shang Qinghua’s chin in one of his big hands. He runs his thumb over Shang Qinghua’s lower lip, and hums.

“I won’t,” Shang Qinghua says again. He hopes Mobei-jun can feel the weight of it when he says it, and understand just how much Shang Qinghua means it. 

“No,” his king says. Certain, now, assured. He understands, too. “You won’t.”