Archive of Our Own

Wang Yibo, with his eagle eyes, spotted the small delegation as soon as they cleared the gates of Kaifeng.

Just the two riders, the one in front in white astride a tall white horse, and another behind him in black, holding aloft the distinct yellow banner of the imperial line.

Great General Han's herald had bellowed from atop the gates that the traitorous hoards should move back ten li in order to receive the Emperor's envoy. He was still mid-shout when Yibo rode out from the ranks and let an arrow fly.

There had then been an audible collective gasp when the man fell, those manning the walls too stunned and afraid to even take potshots back.

After the third city had fallen to Yibo, rumour began to say that the rebel leader was a demon who could not be hurt by arrow or spear. Nonsense, of course. All he had was a good set of armour, and a lot of scars in the gaps. But the rumour helped, so he encouraged it along.

The next herald took a much more conciliatory tone about just how far his army should move back from the city walls.

"Why should I be interested in what this envoy has to say?" Yibo called out.

"The Emperor wishes to - to discuss an end to the siege," the herald called back.

Yibo laughed in genuine astonishment.

The only end possible was the one he'd sworn before the bodies of his family - the end of the man sitting cosy in his palace. And that man knew it.

"A plea? Then the envoy should show appropriate deference. I will order the army back one li. No escort, unless he wants them to lose their heads."

So this envoy had already disobeyed him once, which was the exact number of chances most people got with Yibo. But one man was hardly an escort, and it was already shocking to see a titled prince riding into the enemy's territory so unaccompanied.

His men had seen plenty of blood during a long, hard siege, and it showed in the thick killing intent that emanated from the ranks assembled to give the Emperor's envoy a suitable welcome.

The man in white seemed entirely undeterred. He hopped off his horse and strode straight toward the wall of spears, so upright he might have been gliding over the dirt. Before Yibo could even give an order, his well-drilled, battle-hardened men parted all on their own to let him through.

He was wearing a weimao, his features obscured behind light silk, but Yibo had no trouble recognising him at a single glance. Would have recognised him in a crowded market, fully armoured up, or in rags.

The face under that veil was said to be so fine it could give the most famous courtesan in Kaifeng a run for her money, and yet it came with the kind of aura that blunted the edges of men who had bathed in blood, natural authority in every steady, graceful step.

In this one way, Xiao Zhan was very like his father.

The first time Yibo met the man who was now his sworn enemy, he'd been a young boy, too awed to speak, and the Emperor had patted him on the head and smiled.

A little general to succeed your father, hmm? Will you guard great Qi with your life too?

He hadn't been able to speak then, cowered by something bloodless and chilling lurking in the man's eyes.

Even for a family like Yibo's, the Emperor was only ever to be regarded from below, on his knees. The princes, too, of course.

Unlike his father, the veneration Xiao Zhan commanded was not born of fear. Yibo had grown up around the older sons of the Emperor: the oily, doddering Crown Prince, first born son and only child of Yibo's aunt, the original Empress; Prince Huaquan, second born, who cared for gold and women and little else; wily, mean Prince Dingwei, third born, child of the current Empress; and the fifth born son, later given the title Prince Chengan, who Yibo had once called Zhan-gege.

He had always thought Xiao Zhan far more princely than the others, even though he was of lesser birth. Their authority had been built up with gold and force and posturing. He was a temple relief of Guanyin come to life, so far removed from the mire not even specks of dust dared touch him.

An interesting choice of envoy.

When Yibo first raised his banner in rebellion, he'd been treated as little more than an annoyance. Then he'd taken his first town, and his second, and his third. By the time the much larger host came to the gates of Kaifeng, they'd earned the attention of Great General Han as a serious threat to the peace.

Yibo knew better than to think that the Emperor would sincerely bargain with a traitor like him. Maybe when his army broke the gates of the capital, but not before then. Which suited him just fine. His rage had been carefully nursed and had sustained him through the long hard years of exile; it was far from spent.

The Emperor was clearly up to something. Unfortunately for him, Yibo had no intention of playing games. The enemy was the enemy, no matter what face it wore, and a man's offences were to be borne by his entire family. That was exactly how Yibo had lost his.

"Kneel," snapped Zhang Yixing, his great ally and fellow general, as Xiao Zhan and his attendant approached the command tent.

The young attendant stirred in outrage. "Why would a prince bow to a traitorous mob?" he yelled back, heedless of Xiao Zhan's restraining hand on his shoulder.

An answering rustle of displeasure ran through Yibo's lieutenants.

He held up his arm. Unclenched his jaw.

"No need. We wouldn't want to dirty up those pretty robes, would we."

"Many thanks."

A timely gust blew Xiao Zhan's veil aside, just long enough for Yibo to catch what might've been the shadow of a smile. Just that was enough to freeze him in place for the space of a breath.

He could have slapped himself for the lapse.

Once, he'd hoarded those smiles like a bandit with his treasure. But he was no longer that carefree child, and the man standing before him was no longer his precious Zhan-gege. Why would Xiao Zhan smile at his mortal enemy, who had broken the peace and brought so much turmoil to the realm and suffering to his people?

"Prince Chengan," Yibo said, when he trusted his voice again.

Once he would've gone to his knees in greeting and called Xiao Zhan dianxia despite Xiao Zhan's insistence that he forgo the ceremony, and Xiao Zhan would've smiled and tugged him up by the arm.

Now he sketched a bow not nearly low enough for propriety, just enough to be insulting, and Xiao Zhan merely nodded.

"General Wang."

"I feel slighted. If the Emperor wishes to plead for mercy, he should've sent the Crown Prince."

"The Emperor-my-father thought you might have a rush of blood to the head and decapitate him at the gates," Xiao Zhan said.

Yibo laughed so riotously and for so long that even some of his men looked disturbed.

"Why would I do that?" He asked at last. "Unlike him, I still have some sense of mercy. I'd let the Crown Prince speak."

"Would you? Like you let Great General Han's herald?"

Of course, Xiao Zhan would have been witness to Yibo's efficient brutality. He might even have seen the arrow pierce the man's throat from up close.

And that was for the best, Yibo told himself. Any illusions Xiao Zhan might've held about the Yibo he'd known should have been smashed to pieces long before now.

"You saw how rude he was," he said, deliberately nonchalant. "A proper man cannot let an insult to his honour pass unanswered."

"Should a proper man forsake fealty and drown half the realm in blood for his personal feud?"

Xiao Zhan's voice still had the same sticky-soft cadence Yibo remembered, and yet each word felt like a dagger plunged into his heart. If Xiao Zhan of all people couldn't understand why he had enough rage and despair in him to burn the entire realm down, then no one would.

He took a deep breath so that his voice would not shake in anything but anger. "You were the one who begged the Emperor to preserve my life. You're as responsible as I am."

"And how have you repaid me?" Xiao Zhan asked quietly.

The Emperor's fifth son liked to wear white. It used to put Yibo in mind of the first snow of winter, glinting under the sunlight. Now for the first time he felt the chill.

Suddenly it was unbearable that he couldn't see Xiao Zhan's face through the veil. Yibo drew his sword and sliced through it.

Scraps of fine silk fluttered to the dirt amidst a collective intake of breath, not least from Yibo himself. He had slain many before his guan ceremony. His sword arm never wavered after the first, and he never thought it would again, in excitement or terror. And yet.

He'd drawn blood, a fine line of it marring the column of Xiao Zhan's pale throat.

His memory held a cherished image of Xiao Zhan as he'd last seen him, those wide bright eyes swollen from crying. His face had still had a little of the roundness of youth then. Sometime in between, he'd shed it all and grown into himself, and reality was a hundred times more potent than Yibo's feeble memory.

Xiao Zhan's position as a lesser son of the Emperor was so precarious that it was common to hear gossips in the capital lament he should've been born a princess instead. He could have at least then been married off to some foreign king or warlord, and would surely be good for at least a hundred years of peace.

The first time Yibo heard the joke, he nearly decapitated the person saying it. To imply that any clever, learned, well-spoken man was only good as a bauble to be bargained away in exchange for tribute was the height of degrading insult, he thought. Let alone when applied to a prince.

All he could think now was that a hundred years of peace was too low a price.

He'd been staring too long; it was up to Xiao Zhan to break the sudden hush.

"Impressive improvement in swordsmanship, as with your archery." A deadly pause. "I cannot say the same for your judgement."

This time there was barely a pause before the eruption of outrage from his men.

"Use him as flag tribute! Spill his blood!"

The shout rang out from one of his lieutenants. It was taken up by the masses in front, until Xiao Zhan was surrounded by men slamming their spears against the ground, baying for his blood, each shout echoed by the next.

Just as well the Emperor hadn't sent the Crown Prince; that useless lump of meat would've wet himself with terror by now, whereas Xiao Zhan seemed as unruffled as the surface of Lake Tai during night time, not a hint of fear on that perfectly composed face.

Fortunately for Yibo, Xiao Zhan's guard was agitated enough for both of them.

"When two sides are at war, envoys should be spared death!"

Barely more than a child himself, and already such a loyal guard dog. Handsome, too, and a decent swordsman judging by his build and stance. Xiao Zhan could really pick them.

Yibo could hardly recall seeing him without a retinue of admiring young men gathered around him like stars circling the moon at night. He never had to wonder why. The younger Xiao Zhan of his memories would blush at an effusive compliment and always seemed infinitely gentle, with his honey-sweet voice and easy charm.

Yibo was as weak to it as anybody else. Just as he couldn't help but admire the fortitude and grace of the older version, even as the tactician in him recognized it as a problem.

Xiao Zhan couldn't be allowed to come into his army camp, under the eyes of the world, without a crack in his composure, without a single concession to his authority. He needed to do something, or risk blunting his men's fighting spirit.

Yibo waved his officer in charge of discipline over.

"Prince Chengan may come into camp unharmed - " he raised his voice to be heard above the murmurs of discontent - "but only if he will wear these."

Xiao Zhan eyed the shackles on offer - the kind for captured soldiers, a thick, solid metal ring that closed around the neck, linked to wrist cuffs by heavy chains.

"Only if you put them on me," he said.

"A prince will not suffer the touch of a commoner, I see," Yibo retorted, but he was already holding his hand out for them.

Xiao Zhan smiled, a secretive little thing, enticing in an entirely different way to the moon-bright smiles of his youth.

"Would you really let anyone else?"

Yibo told himself firmly that this was for the best. Some of his men may well have been too nervous to put them on properly, conscious that touching someone so exalted in disrespect might bring divine punishment. Even those who'd killed plenty of the Emperor's soldiers might baulk when asked to put their hands on a prince.

Xiao Zhan's pulse raced under Yibo's touch as Yibo pushed up his long sleeves and closed the shackles around his wrists, but Yibo was the one who felt as if his usual composure had entirely deserted him. His hands, so used to brute force and the handle of his spear, were pitifully unsteady against the dramatic arch of Xiao Zhan's collarbone, the elegant line of his neck.

Xiao Zhan was right, damn him. He didn't want it to be anyone else.

The stark contrast of glinting metal against skin so smooth Yibo fancied he could bruise it just by pressing down too hard was deliciously perverse. Like he'd taken an immortal from one of the heavenly realms prisoner and dragged him down to earth.

But the Xiao Zhan under his hands was warm, solid. He could be hurt, marked, cut down. Touched. He'd all but asked Yibo to do it. Surely then Yibo was free to think what he wanted, what he'd never quite dared to before: about catching his lower lip between his teeth, putting his hand on that throat. Tugging the ribbon from his hair and letting it spill loose.

He pulled on the chain. Xiao Zhan stumbled forward, and his eyes met Yibo's.

"I missed you," he whispered, so faint it could have been an illusion, a trick of the wind, like the faint hint of jasmine on the air.

The whole thing lasted barely more than an instant, but Yibo fancied he saw a fire burning in those startling eyes, dyeing their long tails red.

The first time Xiao Zhan looked at him, he'd felt it like this too - as if he'd fallen into a great chasm from which there was no escape.

*

Zhang Yixing had joined Yibo right when he needed it most, coming to his aid with his own small force and turning the tide of a desperate pitched battle. He was an odd sort, and prone to extremes, but he'd proven himself an excellent commander and Yibo's equal in one-on-one combat.

Yibo trusted him entirely, but he didn't know Yibo, not the way his second in command Li Wenhan did. That couldn't be helped - Wenhan was the only one who knew Yibo from his past life as the favourite child of Great General Wang, who had laughed and played and trained with him in the capital.

So when Wenhan caught his eye, Yibo stepped to the side and beckoned for him to speak.

"Just…be careful around Prince Chengan," Wenhan said in an undertone, his eyes narrowed on the sight of Xiao Zhan's steady strides, seemingly undisturbed by the sizable escort of soldiers leading him toward the command tent. "I remember how you were about him, before."

"That's long past," Yibo said quickly.

"Yes, and he's not how you remember, is he?"

Yibo considered himself an enigma to most, his stone-still face revealing nothing, but clearly that did not apply to his closest comrade. Or perhaps it was the sudden appearance of Xiao Zhan; it had been too long since Yibo had to try and rein in what he had repeatedly been told was plainly written on his face whenever he was in Xiao Zhan's presence.

"What do you mean?"

"Gossip in the capital insists Prince Chengan spends all his time indulging in earthly pleasures. Supposedly he hasn't displayed a hint of ambition in six years."

Yibo couldn't help a grin. "Really."

Wenhan returned it with one of his own. "I see you also doubt their veracity, having seen him today."

Yibo had heard the rumours too, how Prince Chengan had excused himself entirely from the contest for the throne and spent most of his time befriending poets and writers in tea houses and restaurants, hosting parties, and engaging in all the other frippery the capital had to offer.

He was far past the age for a guan but still wore his hair down, with just a plain jade pin and ribbon, like some reclusive poet who had detached himself entirely from the strife of mundane life.

It was even said that he'd been rebuked by the Emperor at morning court for being spotted in the capital's foremost pleasure house, keeping company with its most popular lady, and had been entirely unrepentant, uncaring of the damage to his reputation and prospects.

One particular wag swore up and down that he'd seen the prince get up and perform a dance himself after a few too many cups of wine.

The people of the capital seemed not to mind, in any event: he never abused his authority, the shops and tea houses enjoyed the generosity of his patronage, and everyone enjoyed the wealth of gossip that trailed him like a cloud.

It was widely known that Prince Chengan was a fantastic guest for a banquet, with his own considerable talents in poetry and music, and very pleasant company, but no one would ever ask him to head an army, or preside over court.

"I don't know what to believe," Yibo admitted. "But I'm going to find out."

The Xiao Zhan he remembered was nothing like the dissolute pleasure-seeker of those stories, led solely by base appetites. Even as a youth, tracts he'd written circulated widely in literary circles under false names, much admired for the beauty of the writing as well as the degree of learning and proper morality on display.

Great Qi may have the mandate of heaven, but as the great sages say, it can be lost much more easily than it was won. Many have had it, and lost it, through a lack of care, or greed, or incompetence, or cruelty.

In all the time Yibo had known Xiao Zhan he'd never seen those fine eyes dark with anger or avarice; never known him to be anything other than the model of a learned gentleman, courteous and proper.

Perhaps he was twice a fool to think anything pure could survive in the mire of court. Something had ground that jade-bright boy down to dust.

[then]

"Yibo! Yibo, it is you!"

That was Xiao Zhan's voice, but - Yibo looked up, and up, and then he finally spotted the fifth son of the Emperor perched on a sturdy tree branch, his fine clothes scratched up and covered in stains.

"What are you doing up there?"

"I had to rescue Jianguo," Xiao Zhan said, smiling down at him. "But she ran off, the ungrateful wretch."

"And now you can't get down."

"You?" Xiao Zhan repeated, all puffed up with mock offence.

"And now my lord can't get down," Yibo amended. "What would my lord have done if I hadn't come along?"

"Waited for you," Xiao Zhan said, so certain that Yibo's heart leapt.

"I'm here now," Yibo opened his arms. "Go on, I'll catch you."

"Are you sure?"

Yibo couldn't help puffing up in indignation. "A gentleman doesn't speak in jest. Mother says I grew another handspan this year."

Xiao Zhan tilted his head consideringly. "You’re catching up. I better try and grow a little more."

"Zhan-gege. Jump."

Xiao Zhan grinned, and then he leapt. The tree shook and he fell, accompanied by a shower of leaves and flower petals into Yibo's arms, laughing all the while.

Yibo's world shifted at his first glimpse of that laugh, so bright it made dying moons of his wide eyes.

Surely there was no more precious treasure under heaven than the one he held. He felt dizzy with delight, a rush stronger than his first cup of wine. If Li Wenhan hadn't come along then, he might have continued holding Xiao Zhan and grinning at him until his arms went numb.

Of course, Wenhan didn't let him hear the end of it.

"Wu-Dianxia has been taught basic martial arts since he was born. Do you really think he couldn't get down?"

"It's not for us to inquire into the thoughts of princes," Yibo said loftily.

Wenhan gave him the scathing look that deserved. "Funny you should say that. Don't harbour any illusions."

Yibo felt his face heat. "I have no idea what you mean."

"Keep it that way if you don't want to lose your head. Plenty of more suitable candidates out there for someone like you."

Yibo had already acquired a reputation among the amorous young ladies of the capital as the unsentimental sort, as precocious in this as he was in everything else. It was no deliberately cultivated image, no matter what Yibo's fellow young gentlemen said; he was simply incapable of summoning up a facsimile of interest when he didn’t feel it, whether it was the dreary teachings of the ancients or fluttery, shy girls peering at him from behind pillars.

Not that he was entirely free of sentiment. If he were, his sleep wouldn't be troubled by hazy visions of Xiao Zhan beckoning him closer with that smile of his, of those artist's hands on him; the kind of dreams that had him jerking awake overheated with his heart pounding, his entire body alight with yearning.

When he realised who he'd dared to dream of defiling, the cold rush of shame that followed should really have been more than enough to douse any remaining embers. But all it did was etch the half-remembered images more deeply into him, allowing them to resurface at the most inopportune moments of weakness.

Yibo spent a lot of time firmly telling himself that he deserved a caning - or worse - for his unseemly dreams, not to mention the even more disgraceful workings of his waking imagination. Surely he was tempting the wrath of the heavens.

[now]

Yibo stopped just inside the shadow of his command tent.

"I will see the Emperor's envoy in private."

Xiao Zhan's little attendant went to open the flap as if Yibo hadn't spoken.

"In private," Yibo repeated.

"But - "

"You heard the General, Guangguang."

The boy made a face that Xiao Zhan laughed at so fondly that Yibo bristled before he remembered himself.

"He's not going to eat me," Xiao Zhan added.

"Not much of a meal," Yibo said, deliberately casting his eyes down Xiao Zhan's willowy form.

His men hooted, and Xiao Zhan's good cheer evaporated. It didn't feel much like a victory.

That was how it should be, Yibo reminded himself viciously, as the clink of chains followed him inside the tent. To waver now would be poor thanks for the many who had already died for his revenge.

One thing he was certain of: Xiao Zhan would want an end to the fighting. The quickest way to achieve that would be to cut off the head of the beast, and that meant taking Yibo down.

Whatever they had been in the past should be left there, if Yibo didn't want to lose everything.

He drew the tent flaps down, leaving the vast space in semi-darkness, illuminated only by flickering lamp light.

That felt better; he couldn't see the reproach in Xiao Zhan's eyes so starkly this way.

Xiao Zhan took off the remains of his weimao and carefully placed it on the bench behind him. "I had hoped that if the heavens were kind, I'd see you again one day. But not like this."

"I'm alive and I have an army behind me, ready to trample all of Qi. What more is there?"

The threat of Yibo's anger was usually enough to send seasoned warriors to their knees, but not even his coldest glare was enough to deter Xiao Zhan from speaking. Yibo didn't know whether to label him brave or foolhardy.

"Is that all?"

They were standing too close; at some point Yibo had brought himself within reach of Xiao Zhan despite himself, and the dismissive quirk of his mouth was unbearable. His hand moved of its own accord.

A dull roar between his ears at the sight of Xiao Zhan's chin in his grip, tight enough that he could see a red flush coming up beneath the skin.

Wenhan's earlier warning echoed in his ears, but Yibo had never been any good at not reaching into the flame. And why not? Before his hands had been bound by fealty and propriety, and now he had no use for such things. He'd already done far worse.

Xiao Zhan's brows drew together and his lips parted, but he didn't protest, just stared back at Yibo evenly. Those sharp eyes lingering on his face as if he could peel back Yibo's skin and read what was written on his heart.

"Aren't you scared?"

"Of you? No. Never."

Fear from Xiao Zhan might've been enough to calm Yibo. Seeing him so composed only inflamed him further.

"Whatever your little servant said - "

"He's not - that's the grandson of General Who Pacifies the North. His name is Xia Zhiguang."

The grandson of a great general, clearly destined for military command himself, and still willing to play attendant to an unfavoured prince on a dangerous mission. Yibo had been correct to see his own shadow in the boy.

"Then he should know that trite sayings have no power in the midst of war. I could do whatever I want with you."

"You could," Xiao Zhan said agreeably, his eyes dipping, a perfectly executed parody of obsequious obedience that made something itch beneath Yibo's skin.

His sword stayed on his hip. Yibo took up a brush from the bench instead and dragged it in a line across Xiao Zhan's neck, right where his blade would pass.

Xiao Zhan stayed impossibly still, holding his breath as the brush passed over his skin, his gaze never wavering from Yibo's face.

The brush slipped out of Yibo's grip and hit the dirt with a clatter, and Xiao Zhan swallowed, his throat working. If Yibo leaned forward even a little, their mouths would brush.

The sudden rustling of the tent flap startled him into stepping back.

Yixing marched right into the tent.

"My apologies for interrupting, General Wang," he said with studied insincerity, before turning to Xiao Zhan and executing a very proper bow. "Prince Chengan."

"This is?"

"General Zhang Yixing."

Xiao Zhan's face brightened in recognition.

"Ah, I've heard much about you, General Zhang."

"Likewise," Yixing said with a thin smile, accompanied by a strange intent stare. Not the kind of slightly dazed look Yibo remembered from young men who were dazzled by Xiao Zhan's charm and his smile; something much more evaluating. "Enough to make one wonder why you were sent to Kaifeng."

Xiao Zhan smiled back. "General Zhang is far from the only one wondering."

Yixing cast a significant glance at Yibo, a fairly unsubtle cue.

"Surely Prince Chengan has some idea," Yibo said.

Xiao Zhan held up his hand and began to count on his fingers. "As the Crown Prince, Da-ge isn't allowed to leave the capital. Er-ge - of course you don't know, er-ge was executed last summer for how he handled that scandal over the imperial examinations. And San-ge was the one who suggested that I should be sent."

The brutal fall of Prince Huaquan was news to Yibo, although it wasn't particularly surprising given the little he knew of the man. Prince Dingwei - Xiao Zhan's San-ge - recommending him for anything other than a beating, though, that was a surprise.

"Was he hoping I'd do the job for him?"

"I'm sure that was his thinking. But why the Emperor-my-father went along with it, I couldn't say."

Yixing's sharp eyes narrowed. "Really."

Xiao Zhan only smiled wider in the face of his scepticism. "Really."

Yixing turned to Yibo and sketched a very proper military man's bow.

"You are the commander of the Green Banner. What happens with the envoy is a decision for you alone."

"But?"

"It seems obvious that this is part of some scheme. Be careful, General Wang. Like mother, like son. Or so I've heard it said."

Yibo barely suppressed a flinch. He couldn't bring himself to look at Xiao Zhan.

When he did, Xiao Zhan's face had emptied of all expression. "Sufficiently scandalous rumours carry as far as the border, I see."

His tone was so cold it could have frozen the great river.

Noble Consort Zhen had been executed for bewitching the Emperor into bestowing favour on her and her son. It was said that she denied it to her dying breath, even under torture, but she was a woman of Shu and they were well known for witchcraft in those parts.

Yixing gave another very proper bow. "This one meant no disrespect. General Wang's personal affairs are none of my concern."

So long as it remained a mere personal affair, a man taking the opportunity to scratch an itch, having had the object of his formerly impossible, outrageous base appetites fall right into his lap. So long as he didn't allow it to become more than physical, and sentiment didn't enter into it.

Yibo should've been offended that Yixing thought him capable of such a thing, and he might've been if not for what Yixing had almost walked in on.

He clapped Yixing on the shoulder. "Nonsense, how could us peasants have any personal dealings with a prince? Let us hear what the Emperor's envoy has to say."

Xiao Zhan's shoulders straightened and when he spoke again, it was in the formal, clear, ringing tones of a morning court session.

"The Emperor demands that the rebel Wang Yibo surrender forthwith. If he turns himself over to Great General Han, he may yet be shown mercy. That is my message."

His distant, rigid formality stuck like an arrowhead in Yibo's chest.

"That's it? He sent you for that?"

Xiao Zhan let out a low, unamused chuckle. "I suppose he thought that I might be able to work some kind of miracle and persuade General Wang to reconsider his foolish path."

"Not unless you can teach me how to live under the same sky as the killer of my family."

"You've never needed me to teach you morality before," Xiao Zhan retorted.

"That's not what I asked. Go on. Tell me."

Yibo kept the edge of a plea out of his voice with an effort.

If he could have let go of his earthly entanglements, his grief and rage and pain, and lived a long blameless life without making any ghosts and grievances of his own, if it was ever possible, no one had taught him how. All he had to go on were the phantom voices of his family demanding justice and vengeance, and the only hope he had left when his entire world went dark, that soft voice telling him to go and don't look back.

And now that same voice was telling him he'd been wrong, that he should've laid down and submitted to fate rather than taking up arms. Absurd. Maddening.

"I can't," Xiao Zhan finally said.

His unapologetic, defiant manner only poured oil on the flame.

"Then what good are you?" Yibo demanded.

Xiao Zhan bowed his head, acknowledging the rebuke. "Will General Wang allow me to return to Kaifeng?"

It was obvious by the way he asked that he already knew the answer.

"The accommodation and food in an advancing army is not up to palace standards. I hope Prince Chengan can lower himself to finding it acceptable," Yibo said coldly.

A hint of rueful amusement. More defiance. "I'll cope."

Yibo could hardly think through his fury. At least he could only call it fury, throbbing like a knife wound in his chest.

"Have him and that attendant of his watched," he snapped at Yixing, as soon as Xiao Zhan had been escorted out. "I want a report of every single word they utter to each other. Don't let them wander around camp unaccompanied."

*

Yibo spent the rest of the day meeting with his lieutenants and reviewing what he knew of Kaifeng's defences. The great city was renowned as a fortress; it had hardly ever fallen in its long and storied history, and could easily withstand a force much larger than Yibo's.

He had achieved most of his previous victories by guile, taking advantage of others' arrogance, their assumptions built on his youth and inexperience. That was now in much shorter supply. Attempting to take Kaifeng by force would mean heavy casualties, and a long siege, potentially fatal for Yibo's plans. He had to find another way.

At the end of the day, Wenhan came in with a report about his new prisoner. Yibo had assigned Xiao Zhan and his attendant their own tent out of caution as much as courtesy, and he was unaccountably irritated to hear that aside from the attendant having a short stroll through camp, Xiao Zhan seemed perfectly content to stay where he was put, and to say nothing of consequence to his companion.

Yixing turned to Yibo as soon as Wenhan left. "He's up to something. However out of favour he is, he'll have knowledge we need."

"We just need to - " Yibo's stomach squirmed. He forced it down. " - to shake it out of him."

Yixing gave an approving nod. "I'm glad you agree. Say, those nice white robes aren't very suitable for the dust of a marching army."

It took Yibo a moment to understand what Yixing was saying. Xiao Zhan was the gold branch and jade leaves of the imperial tree. Petty humiliation might get to him more readily than intimidation.

"Find Prince Chengan some replacements from the supply master. I'm sure he has something appropriate for camp followers."

Xiao Zhan had spent a long time out of favour but he was still a prince, with the trappings of one. Yibo knew him to prefer simple elegance to garish extravagance; the white robes he had on were a perfect example, each layer slightly less translucent than the one above it, four or five of them together creating the illusion of plain, sombre white that floated like a cloud when he moved.

The idea of putting him in something fit only for entertainment sent an odd shiver through Yibo, guilt and thrill both.

It was no more wrong than anything else he'd done, he reminded himself, and all for the same cause.

*

Yibo didn't bother dedicating a spy to observe how his command was received; he sent himself to lurk outside Xiao Zhan's tent and peer inside through the half-open flap instead. With his chi concealed, he could do so unnoticed so long as he didn't make any noise or step into view.

That trick he'd learned his first year in exile, when it was all that enabled him to hunt and feed himself. It had kept him alive in the wilderness, driven by nothing more than ghosts and the notion of revenge.

He'd expected offence, anger, possibly even hurt from Xiao Zhan, something to echo his own turmoil. Not near-hysterical vehemence that made his voice almost unrecognisable.

"No."

"Dianxia - "

"I'm not putting that on. I'd rather be paraded around camp naked."

That seemed to distressed the little guard dog more. "Dianxia, you can't - Xiao-Yue-ge will beat me to death if he found out I let this happen to you."

Yibo could hardly blame him; the prospect distressed him just as much. He crept closer to the tent flap, where he could see a slice of Xiao Zhan's face, set in cold determination.

"I can." Xiao Zhan pulled at his jade belt with a clink of chains, frowning when it wouldn't unravel with his limited range of movement. "Help me with this. Servant's work, I know, but you're the only one here."

"I don't mind," Xia Zhiguang said.

Of course he wouldn't, any chance to put his grubby hands all over Xiao Zhan -

"Guangguang is so good to me," Xiao Zhan replied, the wild edge to his voice replaced by affection.

Yibo took a deep, steadying breath. He would've barged straight into the tent if not for Xiao Zhan's next words.

"Did you have a look around? What do you think?"

"For a mob, they're well organised," Xia Zhiguang said with clear reluctance, all his attention on undoing Xiao Zhan's belt. He moved with a light, careful touch that approached reverence; it seemed to take an inordinately long time for the belt to fall to the ground. "No wonder Great General Han is struggling so."

"Yes, and San-ge's supply trains haven't been very reliable," Xiao Zhan replied. He shrugged his topmost outer layer off into Xia Zhiguang's waiting hands and moved onto the next. "With food running low in Kaifeng, even a man like Great General Han might take a few risks."

Outside, Yibo's head snapped up. Supply problems so severe that they might cause the notoriously conservative Great General Han to change his ways - that was a golden opportunity not to be missed. Suppose Yibo could tempt him with rumours of a rebel supply train, potentially within his reach and worth mounting a raid to steal.

Xiao Zhan had just inadvertently handed him the keys to Kaifeng.

When Yibo made himself known at the door, Xia Zhiguang physically placed himself between them.

"General Wang."

Perfectly respectful, all the way down to the angle of his bow. The kid was smart.

For his part, Xiao Zhan barely paused in the act of shrugging off his second and third layers to nod a greeting.

"Move aside, Xia-gongzi."

"I don't take your orders, General."

Xia Zhiguang deflated like a kicked dog when Xiao Zhan placed a restraining hand on his shoulder, and moved aside with reluctance evident in every line of his body.

"It's fine. General Wang won't hurt me." A mocking note crept into Xiao Zhan's voice. "When I knew him, he fussed over me even more than you do now."

He still had on one thin silk layer, wrapped tightly over his inner robes. Without the billowing outer layers, he seemed very slender, almost frail. Like the legendary Empress Zhao Feiyan, Yibo thought, said to be able to dance on a space no bigger than a palm span, her waist small enough to be encircled by her Emperor's hands.

He was also shivering and trying hard not to show it, standing there with all the afforted dignity and poise he could manage, which was an impressive amount.

He'd been like that the first time Yibo saw him too, bruised, wet and shivering and seeming all the more inviolable to make up for the violation of his body.

The memory drove Yibo to speaking.

"Put your robes back on. If you catch a chill, all under heaven will accuse me of mistreating my prisoners."

"I won't, they're dirty," Xiao Zhan muttered, for some reason determined to pretend that he'd stripped down in the cold voluntarily.

Neither of them mentioned the abandoned pile of gauzy red and pink cloth on the cot behind Xiao Zhan.

Yibo privately conceded defeat. He took off his own wolfskin cloak and draped it around Xiao Zhan's shoulders. "I'll have them washed."

Whatever he saw on Yibo's face seemed to make Xiao Zhan relent. "Fine. What about you?"

"I'm used to cold."

Out near the border, he'd been so cold he’d forgotten what warmth was, and still kept going, because someone had told him not to look back.

[then]

The imperial decree to commute his sentence from death to exile came late enough that Yibo had already stopped struggling, stopped cursing all those responsible, and could do no more than stare, paralysed and dazed, at the sight of his father and his mother and the concubines lying beside him in their own blood, the smell of it thick in the air.

The last remnants of a snow storm drifted down, blanketing the ground in white, but Yibo could no longer feel the chill.

They'd just started on Yibo's siblings, a long line of them, some only children. The wailing and screams rang in his ears. He wished desperately for the executioner's axe to fall on him next more than he could remember ever wanting anything, just so he could stop seeing and hearing and feeling.

The shrill voice of Head Eunuch Zhao barely penetrated the fog.

"Halt!" The wailing and the whistle-thump of axe swings ceased. Yibo tried to raise his head; he could barely manage a twitch. "The first born son is to be spared. Carry on with the rest."

Yibo opened his mouth. No sound came out but a croak. He forced out a wet, convulsive cough, and finally managed to speak.

"K-Kill me too."

It came out barely a whisper; Head Eunuch Zhao had to shuffle closer and lowered his head. "What did you say?"

His entire bearing was reluctant, as if Yibo was afflicted with some curse or disease that might spread if he stood too close. Just last week the same man had offered him a plate of cakes like a doting uncle as he waited outside his aunt's central pavilion.

"Kill me too. Please."

Head Eunuch Zhao shook his head disapprovingly.

"How dare you spit on the Emperor's mercy? You have your life still only because Wu-Dianxia got on his knees in front of the entire court and begged the Emperor to spare you. Cried enough tears to fill the Great Lake, poor thing."

Xiao Zhan. Of course he would have tried to save Yibo, though Yibo's imagination baulked at the idea of someone so proud in such a state.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Wu-Dianxia asked me not to say, but I thought you should know the one you owe your life to," Head Eunuch Zhao said, already turning away, dismissing him as no longer of use or interest.

One of his cousins, still in her pigtails, was next in line. The executioner hefted his axe once more; Yibo forgot the chains around his arms and ankles and the injuries he'd sustained from struggling and tried to go for him.

The guards hauled him back. The axe swung again.

Yibo's legs gave out. His ears rang like a bell had been violently struck between them, the rest of his body frozen rigid like he'd been hit by a curse. Time passed in a blur.

He didn't realise Xiao Zhan was there until he was being drawn into a warm embrace.

A few days ago he would've been delighted, trembling in his boots at having those arms around him, the faint intoxicating hint of jasmine when he inhaled.

"I hear I have you to thank for my life," Yibo said listlessly.

Xiao Zhan reared back as if he was physically repulsed by the suggestion. "Don't. None of this should have happened."

"I'm aware."

"I'm sorry, Yibo."

Yibo coughed out a bitter, ugly laugh, too loud in the ringing silence. Who was Xiao Zhan to apologise for an imperial decree?

"Can you bring my father back? My sister?"

Xiao Zhan went still against him.

"I'll - I'll make it up to you somehow," he said hesitantly. "I swear it before heaven and earth."

"You can't."

Yibo tried to free himself from Xiao Zhan with the last of his strength. The strong arms around him tightened, as if reluctant to let go, before withdrawing with a final pat to his shoulder.

"I mean it. You better get out of here before the Emperor changes his mind. I won't be able to write, or they'll suspect you're up to something. Take care of yourself out there."

Yibo was still close enough to see his own pale, expressionless face reflected in Xiao Zhan's wide eyes, already swollen from crying, filled to overflowing with the sorrow he could no longer bring himself to feel. He staggered back another step, set his gaze on the bloodstained dirt.

"Should I steal a living while they lie dead and unburied?"

A warm weight landed on his shoulders. Xiao Zhan had taken off his white fox skin cloak, draped it carefully around him and tied it closed.

Under the cloak, he pressed a dagger into Yibo's hand.

"Do what you need to do, even if you have to bathe in blood to do it. Go well. Don't look back."

He spoke very quietly. Still each word rang in Yibo's ears like thunder. He took the dagger and tightened his grip on the ornate hilt until it hurt.

[now]

Yibo went, and he didn't look back.

"Summon General Zhang," he told Wenhan. "I hear Kaifeng is running out of supplies. We're going to set Great General Han a trap he can't resist, lure him out, and take the city while his back is turned."

*

When Yibo returned to camp after two days of hard fought battle, having taken Kaifeng, there was an upright figure in white waiting for him at the gates, wrapped in his wolfskin cloak.

Xiao Zhan's gaze moved over Yibo in increments, pausing at each rip and scratch and dent in his armour, every splash of crimson fading to brown.

"You're back," he breathed.

"Were you worried about me?"

Yibo's tone was over-familiar, but in the first flush of a glorious victory it was difficult to care. His anger felt remote, tucked away somewhere he couldn't reach.

Xiao Zhan shook his head. "I didn't worry. I knew."

He still wasn't smiling, but it was there in the corners of his eyes, the little curve that alway made Yibo think of fishhooks, the sharp edges lodging themselves deep in Yibo and pulling with every glance.

A smile that held secrets close, and offered them to only a select few, like he had offered Yibo the secret to Kaifeng. Yibo hadn't suspected in the moment - if he had, it might have made him more reluctant, wary of a trap. But now he was certain. For whatever reason, Xiao Zhan had decided to help him.

*

Yibo left a sizable garrison camped outside Kaifeng and led the rest into the city.

It had been a long time since any of them last slept in a real bed, with four walls around it rather than a draughty tent, and the battle to take the city had not been straightforward. They all deserved the rest.

The people who came out to see his army enter the gates looked lean, on the edge of hunger. Xiao Zhan had correctly gauged the desperate state of the granaries. Perhaps that was why he'd helped Yibo take the city, to save the people more suffering, staking their lives on Yibo's fledgling sense of mercy.

That bet he'd won handily. Yibo wasn't capable of looking into the faces of these people and betraying their trust.

He took over the governor's residence, an opulent estate grander than most he'd seen in his youth in the capital. Much easier to keep an exalted prisoner in comfort and secure in such a place. Easier also to ensure that a private meeting was truly private.

If Xiao Zhan was at all concerned by that prospect, it didn't show as the door slid closed behind him, leaving him alone with Yibo in the governor's elegantly appointed study.

His gaze flicked over Yibo from head to toe, and Yibo felt suddenly exposed sitting there in his simple robes, armourless. He fought down the urge to fidget like a boy.

"I'm glad to see you well," Xiao Zhan said finally, with such sincere, familiar warmth that it stirred even the numb depths of Yibo's heart.

Once, he'd drowned himself in Xiao Zhan's warmth. Even after all this time, with all that had changed, it still made him want to let down his guard, to let himself drown again. Something about those bright, honest eyes.

Xiao Zhan had loudly disapproved of what Yibo was doing, and yet that hadn't stopped him helping Yibo strike a vital blow against his own father. Yibo didn't dare believe that he'd done it out of sentiment. Whatever sentiments existed between them had surely been extinguished when Yibo raised his banner with the aim of overthrowing Qi. Surely.

And yet Xiao Zhan had said, so softly Yibo thought he'd imagined it - I missed you.

"I missed you too," Yibo said quietly. "I didn't say it before, but it's true."

You, not Prince Chengan, not my lord.

The corner of Xiao Zhan's mouth twitched into a smile, small but real, not one of those pretty fakes. "Did you really."

Those phoenix eyes were beguiling when lowered in a smile, and somehow even more so when fixed on him with provocative directness.

Except Yibo wasn't a naive, lovelorn child anymore. He couldn't afford to be reeled in, no matter how appealing the bait.

"Gege got even more beautiful when I wasn't looking," he said, in lieu of something more revealing. "I didn't even know that was possible."

Most men would have taken such a comment from Yibo as a deadly insult, or at the very least improper provocation. But Xiao Zhan never seemed to mind his unseemly flattery, had always allowed it with nothing more than some playful admonishment.

"Looks aren't much good for a man in my position. Some might even say it's vulgar to show any interest."

"Surely my opinion on the matter is the only one that matters."

"Impudent," Xiao Zhan said, but his eyes sparkled.

He seemed to have endless patience for Yibo's youthful impertinence, and a talent for unearthing more.

"That's what you like about me," came out of his mouth before he could think better of it.

Xiao Zhan's lips curved with what seemed like genuine amusement. "I see becoming a general hasn't curbed your tendency for empty flattery."

"How dare you impugn my honour. It is merely that I am brave enough to say what others only dare to think. Do you remember when that foreign prince wanted to carry you off?

"Gazi-ge wouldn't believe I wasn't a princess," Xiao Zhan said, giggling. "And I've never let him forget it."

His tone cooled, the affection leaching out of it so quickly that the room felt colder. "The emperor my father might've disguised me as a woman and shipped me off three times over, if it wouldn't cause a war when the groom undressed me after the wedding feast. Imagine how disappointed you'd be!"

"No."

Xiao Zhan blinked at him like a startled baby deer. "No?"

"No, Dianxia," Yibo repeated.

He could not imagine disappointment being the foremost emotion of anyone who unwrapped the many layers of a bride's wedding silks to find Xiao Zhan underneath them, all long coltish limbs and coy eyes.

The Emperor was a wily old bastard, and Yibo had never hidden his affections well. Perhaps he'd remembered, and that was why -

"I'll ask again. Why are you here?" His tone was appropriately hard and demanding, despite the scattered state of his thoughts.

Xiao Zhan spread his arms. The heavy chains clinked, the sound drawing Yibo's gaze to the shackles around his wrists, hidden by long sleeves. "Perhaps he wished to kill two birds with one stone. The emperor my father does not enjoy the sight of me. I look too much like my lady mother, you see."

Noble Consort Zhen, famous for her heart-stopping beauty, who had been executed as a witch.

"My father once said you were the very image of her," Yibo said quietly.

Not a single trace of the Emperor there, poor lad.

But that was precisely the danger. It was too easy to look at him and forget that the blood of the enemy ran rich through his veins.

"Yes, that's what everyone says. Last year during Qingming I put on powder and rouge, dressed up like her and went for a wander through the emperor my father's bedchamber. He thought it was her ghost, come to take his life." Xiao Zhan laughed. "It gave him such a fright he couldn't sleep soundly for an entire month."

Yibo couldn't help a smile. "You might have frightened him into an early grave."

"Yes," Xiao Zhan muttered. "What a pity that would be."

Yibo's gaze slid to the two massive white flags that dominated the command tent, hung up behind Yibo's central seat; not his own name, but the characters for grievance and hatred, a constant reminder of his oath.

"You shouldn't joke about such things," he said stiffly. "Not in front of me. You shouldn't - "

Xiao Zhan took a step closer, stopping less than an arm-span away.

"I'm profoundly aware of what I should and shouldn't do. But men are not blades of grass, to be free of sentiment. Not even the infamous General Wang, I'd wager."

The intensity of those eyes on Yibo felt like the first midday sun after a long winter, coaxing seedlings to life under the earth.

"That's not what my lord used to call me."

His voice came out low, far too intimate. Xiao Zhan's response matched it.

"You're not who you were. Or so I've been led to believe. Or so you'd have me believe, hmm, Yibo?"

It had been so long that a shudder went through him hearing his name said out loud in affection rather than spite. Nothing to do with the intimacy of hearing it from Xiao Zhan, of course, so close he could see his lips shaping the soft bo.

Yibo swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

"Zhan-gege knows me too well."

A strange fog descended over him, stealing away what remained of his good judgement. Xiao Zhan's parted lips looked so soft. Felt it, too, against his calloused fingertips, when he gave in to the sudden, piercing urge to touch, to press his thumb to the beauty mark that had taunted him for so long.

"You know, face readers say that a mark below the mouth means an unfulfilled debt of affection from a previous life."

"The palace face reader didn't say anything about that to father," Xiao Zhan said, very softly, each syllable a torturous brush of his lips against Yibo's fingers. "But he did say I had a rebel's bones, because he was being paid off by your aunt, the Empress."

Yibo drew his hand back as if he'd been scalded, so quickly that Xiao Zhan flinched, and only then did he notice the faint dots of fading blood around the collar of Xiao Zhan's robe.

Only a few, but enough to make him feel a hot flush of shame.

"Let me get these off you," he muttered.

He undid the shackles and lifted them from Xiao Zhan's neck with all the care he could muster. Still Xiao Zhan hissed, and then Yibo saw why - the metal had worn a lurid ring of bruising into his skin, vivid as paint on porcelain. He'd shown no signs, made not a single noise of complaint. He even smiled at Yibo as he threw them down, as if he was a puppy that had done a pleasing trick.

"Don't be sorry. I knew you wouldn't hurt me."

Yibo had never known what to do when faced with that smile, but at least back in his youth he wouldn't have turned tail and run away. Some fearsome general he was.

*

Yibo paid for a set of new robes to be made by the best tailor in town.

The man was clearly used to inane demands from rich and powerful locals. He didn't even bat an eye at Yibo's increasingly confounding instructions.

"In the best white fabric you have. Something hardy but comfortable. Nothing gaudy - he doesn't like gaudy things - but not so plain as to be boring either."

Yibo was happy with the end result, which was doubly a miracle as he'd been filled with warring impulses: to dress Xiao Zhan up in the kind of finery fit for his station and his beauty, or to attempt to smother his too-bright light and thereby make him safe. In the end, the former won. He could hardly picture himself offering Xiao Zhan anything less than his best, before or now.

Xiao Zhan's eyes lit up when presented with them, which made the whole embarrassing affair worth it.

"What did I do to deserve such a gift?" he asked, in such a teasing tone that Yibo could feel his ears heat, but it was clear that he knew and didn't expect Yibo to put any of it into words. "Please give my compliments to the tailor. I hope business in Kaifeng has a chance to recover, now that it's no longer cut off from the rest of the province."

A prisoner should never be so presumptuous as to tell his captor what he should or shouldn't do with his spoils. Except Xiao Zhan clearly was, in the most artful way possible, telling Yibo to slow his march for the benefit of the people now under his rule, rather than draining them dry to fuel a rapid incursion north.

Yibo had just come from a war council in which Yixing had urged the opposite, pushing Yibo to leave a small garrison in Kaifeng and march on via the shortest route to the capital. He'd been tempted, too. With Great General Han's army defeated and the man himself presumed dead, it would take the Emperor some time to scramble together another force to bolster his defences. But he also had supply problems of his own to worry about, and an army who'd been fighting non-stop since the first light of spring.

The way Xiao Zhan spoke, it was as if he'd been in the room, listening to Wenhan argue with Yixing. Yibo didn't dare trust him so far, not when his loyalties were still unclear, but surely it was a waste not to at least seek his counsel.

"That depends on what the Emperor decides to do next."

Xiao Zhan looked up from admiring the needlework on his new over-robe, which he'd thrown on over the plain inner layers he'd come to the door wearing.

"I expect you've caused quite the panic by defeating Great General Han. Father might have no choice but to send San-ge now."

His San-ge, Prince Dingwei, son of the noble consort who'd lately been elevated to Empress after the unfortunate death of Yibo's aunt. A devious, clever sort, but not exactly a frightening prospect on the field of battle.

"I bet he's still afraid of me," Yibo couldn't help saying.

"After the beating you gave him? He probably still sees you when he closes his eyes."

Good.

"He's always been in need of one."

"He'll see this as a heaven-sent opportunity to cement his position over Da-ge," Xiao Zhan said. "He's been getting more shameless about it, going about like he's the Crown Prince already."

Some of Yibo's earliest fuzzy memories were of the Crown Prince complaining bitterly to Yibo's father about the many infringements and petty humiliations he had to endure thanks to being bested at every turn by his younger brother, and his ever-present fear that he would be found wanting by the Emperor and replaced.

Many years had passed since, Yibo's father and aunt had fallen, and yet the Crown Prince was still the Crown Prince. If Prince Dingwei was really as smart as he seemed, he would know what that meant. Perhaps that was why his machinations were getting more blatant.

"Unwise, under the eyes of the Emperor."

Xiao Zhan let out a sharp laugh. "Yes, Mother used to say to me that it was far better to be foolish than clever in front of Father. But there's the Wolf of the South to deal with now. You've given San-ge quite the opportunity."

Yibo leaned in, across the luohan bed, and grasped Xiao Zhan's chin. "What if I brought you his head, gege?"

A test, to see how far Xiao Zhan was willing to bend. After all, whatever resentments lay between him and his brother, in Yibo's experience blood was reliably thicker than water.

He expected Xiao Zhan to demur, conjure up at least a show of outrage, protest his loyalty to his family. Not for Xiao Zhan to turn into his grip, meet his gaze squarely and smile.

"I have no doubt you could. But I have so little to offer to General Wang in return."

[then]

The first time Yibo met Xiao Zhan, he was being beaten in a lotus pond by his third oldest brother, already a man and built like one, with his cohort of reading companions looking on, muttering comments about witchcraft and common birth.

Xiao Zhan was tall but slim, like a tilting willow, and with his round face and loose hair Yibo initially thought he'd come upon the prince trying to force himself on some poor unwilling servant girl.

If he'd been a little older he might've paused to think about the consequences of throwing himself at a prince. As it was, he just saw an injustice and leapt to correct it.

Prince Dingwei was well-built, but Yibo has been trained to succeed his father on the battlefield practically from birth. It wasn't much of a contest. Yibo dragged him off the girl, threw him aside like a sack of rice, and gave him a kick for good measure.

His reading companions were even more pathetic. None of them made more than a token effort to engage him and, as one, quickly turned to fussing over the tears in Prince Dingwei's robes and muttering in feigned outrage.

Prince Dingwei shoved them away and spat out a mouthful of blood, his face comically twisted in humiliated rage.

"You have no idea what you just meddled with," he snarled. "Do you know what happens to busybodies?"

Yibo barely resisted the urge to kick him again. He was in enough trouble.

"Loser dogs shouldn't bark," he said instead.

Their victim drew himself up slowly, and it became obvious that rather than playing saviour to a lowly servant girl Yibo had saved a fine-featured boy, and a noble at that, judging from how fancy his soaked robes were, and the jade piece swinging from his belt.

A long scrape on his forehead had started to bleed, and he had a split lip. Even so, Yibo thought, it was a face a hundred times more appealing than Prince Dingwei's.

The boy blinked his wide bright eyes.

"San-ge, don't you know who that is? That's the first-born son of the Great General Wang, the Empress' brother who commands the entire border force. I don't think our father will be very happy if you order that man's son beaten."

He had a very soft voice and never raised it, but somehow Yibo felt a chill race down his spine.

Prince Dingwei spat again and turned away. "That's all you ever do, A-Zhan, hide behind those stronger than you."

He strode away without a backwards glance, leaving his cohort scrambling to follow. Yibo noted with vicious satisfaction that he had a bit of a limp.

"Thank you," said the boy, bringing his attention back to the pavilion.

"Are you all right?"

The boy waved away his concern. "I'm fine. San-ge just likes to play games."

Yibo's heart, which had started to sink at San-ge and our father, gave another nervous lurch.

One of the first things his father had impressed upon him was that he should not allow himself to be dragged into conflicts between the royal family.

But isn't the Crown Prince -

Precisely because the Crown Prince is our relative, his father had said. They're all snakes, the princes, even the least of them. They have to be, to survive in that family.

He dropped to his knees. "Dianxia."

Warm hands cupped his and gentle fingers grazed his scraped, bruised knuckles.

"More importantly, is my saviour unharmed?"

Somehow that single small point of contact was more disabling than being held down and pummelled. A streak of heat raced through him, all the way to the points of his ears.

Yibo had to clear his throat before he could speak.

"I - it's nothing. Dianxia need not worry."

The young prince smiled down at him. "My saviour can call me Zhan-gege."

Yibo found himself smiling back helplessly. That smile was worth a few bruises, and even the scolding from his father when Yibo told him what had happened.

"I told you not to involve yourself in the affairs of princes."

Yibo couldn't imagine someone as gentle and kind as Xiao Zhan having a single evil thought.

"But father, have you not taught me to assist the weak and fight the wicked?"

His father tousled his loose hair, forever slipping out of its tie. "Smart mouth. That's your mother's influence. Do you even know who you're calling weak?"

Yibo glared. "Of course! He said his name was Zhan, so he's the fifth born, and his mother is Noble Consort Zhen. Have you met her, father?"

"How would I meet a member of the rear palace?"

"So you have," Yibo said.

His father nodded. "I met her when the Emperor did, in the campaign against those rebels in Shu. She appeared in front of our camp one day and asked for an audience with the Emperor."

"Just like that?"

"Said that if he spared the city, she would give herself to him."

Yibo drew in a shocked breath, picturing the scene - a woman walking into an army camp alone, saying such an outrageous thing. He couldn't help picturing Xiao Zhan's unusual eyes in her face.

"She must be very daring, and very beautiful."

His father grinned. "Your aunt says she's a witch."

That was Yibo's aunt, the Empress.

"But that's - "

A terribly scandalous thing to say about a consort of the Emperor. If proven, a charge that would lead to death.

Yibo's father shushed him playfully. "What did I just say about the affairs of princes?"

[now]

In retrospect, it had been rather hypocritical of his father to caution him about entanglements with the imperial line, when the fortunes of their family had been elevated not just by his own prowess as general but also by his sister's carefully engineered marriage to the Emperor. Their destined part in the great succession struggle was cemented the moment she gave birth to the Emperor's first son, an ever-present fire that threatened to spill over and burn them all to cinders at any moment.

The most surprising thing about the Wang family's downfall, when it came, was that it was mostly unconnected with the covert war of the princes which had claimed so many lives, not least the lives of several of those princes.

Blood was thicker than water for mere mortals, but the same was not true for royal siblings.

An unpleasant chill crawled down Yibo from head to toe; he let go of Xiao Zhan and sat back.

"What are you up to, really? Why would you help me? Don't bother denying it."

He kept his tone light, but evidently not enough to fool Xiao Zhan, judging by the way his shoulders stiffened with straight-backed, icy dignity, the fond amusement disappearing from his face.

"My father sent me to you because he knows that you have… a certain weakness for me."

The unpleasant chill spread to Yibo's guts. "What kind of weakness?"

"Here are three better questions: how desperate and depraved must he be to gift his own son to a sworn enemy as a catamite?"

Yibo winced at the word; Xiao Zhan ignored him and carried on, unrelenting, the harshness of his words transformed into something even more perverse by his lovely, even voice.

"What kind of father would do it? How would his son feel being used this way?"

In his place, Yibo would've flat-out refused to accept the imperial decree, and probably lost everything for it. Better that than this abject humiliation. He couldn't conceive how Xiao Zhan could stand to speak of it so baldly, as if it was nothing.

"He must know that if he went too far you wouldn't stand for it," he managed.

Xiao Zhan shook his head. "Father is a very clever man, but even the cleverest man has blind spots. He doesn't think me capable of any resistance."

Then he must have turned into a fool in his old age, Yibo thought, but before he could say so there was a sharp rap on the door, followed swiftly by Yixing.

Yixing, who eyed Xiao Zhan as if he could scent tension lingering in the air even as he made his bows.

"General Wang. Prince Chengan."

"What was so urgent you had to barge in?" Yibo said, only half in jest.

Yixing glanced sidelong at Xiao Zhan, and then back to Yibo. He might have been a little lacking in graces, but he knew how to take a hint.

"Scout report. The Emperor has sent a replacement for Great General Han to take command of the forces at the front. They've been tasked with retaking Kaifeng."

Yibo didn't hesitate this time before showing Xiao Zhan the brief, terse report from his spy master, detailing what he could glean of the advancing forces.

"Is it Prince Dingwei?"

"Let me see - " Xiao Zhan drew in a sharp breath. "This doesn't look like San-ge. He wouldn't - " His guarded expression lapsed briefly into open confusion before smoothing out again. "I'm not sure."

Out of the corner of his eye, Yibo caught one side of Yixing's mouth twitching up, although the look in his eyes was as far from mirth as it was possible to get.

"May I ask Prince Chengan to excuse himself," he said with a very proper bow.

Xiao Zhan drew himself up and very deliberately settled his new robes about him, the epitome of princely dignity. Nothing but superior disdain in the tilt of his smile.

"Still don't trust me? All right."

Yixing's needle-bore stare followed the graceful line of his back all the way to the door before snapping back to Yibo.

"The one leading the army is the ninth-born prince."

Yibo's heart gave a sickening lurch. That was his old playmate, with whom he'd crossed toy swords, who surely couldn't be much more than a child still. Or at least that was how Yibo remembered him, a mischievous didi who seemed blissfully unaware of his low born status and difficult future.

"A talented swordsman, but untried as a commander," he said coolly. "Odd move by the Emperor."

Yixing shook his head. "Medicine is often bitter, General Wang, and poison may be sweet. You know why he's been sent."

"Speak plainly," Yibo snapped.

"They say he and Prince Chengan are close."

Yibo's palm stung. He looked down, surprised, to find a cut from his dagger's edge where he'd been slipping it out of its sheath and sliding it back in again, a nervous habit he'd long thought himself free of, leftover from his years in exile.

He had killed his first man with that dagger. Xiao Zhan's dagger.

"I know what I must do," he said.

"Do you? Even though he'll hate you for it?"

More blood oozing from the cut on his palm. He'd clenched his hand into such a tight fist that it was making the wound worse. The edge of the dagger had been specially treated; the cut wouldn't stop bleeding for days.

"He should hate me already."

"So long as you're clear."

"I am." Yibo made himself meet Yixing's gaze, pulling up from within himself the ruthless, relentless Wolf of the South Yixing had first met and been so impressed by. Whatever Yixing saw there was enough to make him nod, satisfied. "A-Lei is a hot-blooded child. Easy to lure into a mistake."

"What if we follow one scheme with another, then?" Yixing said. "I bet the little prince wouldn't be able to stand seeing his precious older brother mistreated in the enemy camp."

Yixing was more right than he knew. Half of Yibo's memories of A-Lei were of sparring and playing; the other half were of the kid running around after Xiao Zhan, just like Yibo.

The only question was whether Yibo could stand to do it.

He had to do it. What else was his life for?

*

The little attendant had good instincts. He could tell something wasn't right.

"Where are you taking him?"

"It's a surprise," Yibo said blandly, just to make Xia Zhiguang glare and place a restraining hand on Xiao Zhan's arm.

Xiao Zhan simply shook his head and stared him down until he slumped, defeated, and then turned and followed Yibo up the ramparts without another word. The implicit trust in it could have broken Yibo's heart in two if he had any of it left to break.

Xiao Zhan had entrusted Yibo with his dignity when he came into his army's camp. Now Yibo would cast it down the city walls.

Kaifeng was known for the strength of its fortifications, for being easy to defend and hard to break. That was how it had troubled Yibo's army for so long, and only fell in the end to a ruse. Atop the ramparts Yibo had a commanding view of the immense advance guard massed under it, neatly arrayed in arrow formation. Clearly well led.

The young man at the head of the army was nothing like Yibo remembered. A-Lei would likely never be tall enough to be imposing, but the fine armour he wore didn't seem out of place, and the long, heavy polearm looked like it belonged in his hands.

No longer a child. Old enough to kill and be killed. Yibo himself had started much earlier, out of necessity.

Yibo's distinct gold armour marked him out. A-Lei was close enough that he was spotted the moment he appeared.

"General Wang!"

No longer the light tones of youth either.

"Jiu-Dianxia," Yibo called back, but he was only half paying attention, most of his focus on the stock-still man beside him.

Usually, Xiao Zhan's face was an opera mask, the fine features obscuring his true thoughts lest they land him in any trouble. Yibo had never seen it shatter into shock and despair and remain that way for so long, as if he was too caught up in turmoil to remember how to put his features back together.

But even as he watched, Xiao Zhan collected himself, the mask sliding back on.

"You were right. I am surprised," he said quietly.

He didn't look back at Yibo once. That was what made it bearable.

Beneath them, A-Lei was getting restless; he had stirred the moment the tall figure in white appeared beside Yibo, obvious enough to Yibo's sharp eyes.

A-Lei gestured with his polearm up at the gates. "Even when two sides are at war, envoys shouldn't be mistreated. Return Prince Chengan to me first."

Yibo laughed. "Return him?"

It was blustery so high up and Xiao Zhan had come prepared, in the wolfskin cloak Yibo had gifted him. Yibo stepped close and pulled at the trailing ends of the ribbon tied at Xiao Zhan's neck until it drew the collar tight against his throat. Xiao Zhan looked back at him steadily, eyes bright and hard as jewels, even as his breath came short.

Yibo's stomach twisted. He dropped his gaze to the knot and untied the ribbon, letting the cloak fall to the ground.

"If you have to ask, little general, you've already lost."

Underneath the cloak Xiao Zhan had worn his own robes, not the new set Yibo had bought him.

Good. Such fine work deserved to last longer than a fortnight.

Yibo took half a step back. Drew his sword out of its scabbard in a flash, the tip coming to rest a mere hair's breadth from Xiao Zhan's throat.

He could hardly hear A-Lei's alarm and fury, even though that was where his attention ought to be. Impossible to look away from Xiao Zhan, the rigid way he held himself as if he'd fall apart otherwise.

There would be no pleas for mercy, no matter what he did next. Xiao Zhan was a prince. Princes didn't beg commoners for mercy; he would cut out his own tongue first.

Yibo lifted his sword and made the first cut. He had been taught swordsmanship from childhood by the best the capital had to offer. He could bisect a hundred leaves in flight, or slice apart five layers of silk without hurting the man in them, so long as the man didn't try to run.

Xiao Zhan wouldn't. Of that Yibo had never had any doubt.

He stayed perfectly still as Yibo made the next three cuts, until the only thing that remained was the fine cloth of the inner layer, and even that was hanging on by a thread. One more cut would bare him to the waist. Another, to the ankle.

Still he didn't make a single sound, just gazed at Yibo steadily, calm and chilly as an iced-over lake. Silently daring him to continue, as if he knew -

As if he knew that Yibo couldn't. Not for anyone else to see.

At least the display was having the intended effect on A-Lei, whose shrieking now sounded a little like the outraged shouts of their youth whenever Yibo cheated to win.

"Stop! You - you animal!"

Yibo felt like one. Xiao Zhan standing there in his shredded robes, still as a fine gilded sculpture, was enough to drive any man to madness with conflicting desires: to hide him from the world, or to ruin him completely.

He set the flat of his sword to Xiao Zhan's shoulder and pressed down until Xiao Zhan folded down onto his knees. Took a step forward and slid his hand into his hair, yanking his head back.

His gauntlet caught in the smooth strands when he pulled; it must hurt, but Xiao Zhan didn't flinch.

Yibo leaned down with no idea of what he was about to do or say, only that whatever it was would be irretrievable.

A breath away, Xiao Zhan whispered, "do what you want to me. Or…would you rather I was unwilling? I can be unwilling, if that would be more satisfying."

They were so close that Xiao Zhan had to feel it when Yibo shuddered.

"Zhan-gege - what - "

"I owe it to you," Xiao Zhan said, and Yibo's heart turned to stone.

He tried to pull away, only for Xiao Zhan to intervene by placing his hand on Yibo's arm, holding him in place where no one else could see.

As a youth, Yibo had counselled himself against thinking of Xiao Zhan in inappropriate, treasonous ways. Any idle fantasies had been swiftly followed with recriminations - how dare he dream of defiling remote, jade-like figure, let alone imagine that he could ever submit to it willingly?

He'd never even dared to imagine anything like this. But to be offered it as some twisted form of penance for Xiao Zhan, the dutiful son taking on the crimes of his father, that was a greater punishment than anything he could've devised.

Yibo's grip on his sword slackened. He barely rescued it before it slid off Xiao Zhan's shoulder, turning the motion into something that looked deliberate.

"Up, get up," he said, a little desperately, suddenly unable to bear the thought of pulling out a single strand of Xiao Zhan's hair.

"As you say," Xiao Zhan murmured.

He made it look good, like he was being yanked along, until they were well out of sight.

"All that to try and lure Leilei into a reckless raid?" he asked. Yibo was carefully untangling his grip from his hair, and he almost undid all his hard work in surprise. He should have known that Xiao Zhan would read his heart as if it was an open book. "What if he doesn't care what you do to me?"

"He will," Yibo said. If he was sure of anything, it was that. "I saw how he looked at me. If he gets a message from you now, what do you think he'll do?"

A crack in Xiao Zhan's mask.

"From me?"

"I won't make you do it. Wenhan is a skilled mimic, he can fake your hand. You don't have to be involved."

The light went out of Xiao Zhan's eyes.

"Aren't I already?"

His robes were still hanging off him in pieces, revealing flashes of pale skin when he moved. Yibo quickly took off the green cape he wore on top of his armour and handed it over. It was flimsy and dusty with the debris of battle, but better than nothing.

"Zhan-gege - that wily old bastard sent A-Lei on purpose. You know that I - "

Xiao Zhan shook his head firmly, cutting off Yibo's cheap, insincere apologies before he could make them.

“Do what you must. What happens when he comes looking for me?"

"They won't actually get far into the city," Yibo said. "I'll assign you protection."

"I'm not worried. I just - please, please try - "

Both of them knew what he wanted to ask - for Yibo to spare his favourite brother's life. And Xiao Zhan knew what the answer would be, too.

"I can't promise you that," Yibo said, hating every word. "Some things I can't help."

"There is nothing decreed by the heavens that cannot be overcome by men. You know that as well as I do," Xiao Zhan said.

The last time he’d looked at Yibo like this was when he'd handed Yibo the dagger at their parting. The weight of it staggered him.

"If I die, I hope you take it as payment of my debt to you," Yibo said unsteadily. "If that's not enough, I'll pay you back the rest of what I owe you in our next life."

Finally, a hint of a smile. "I'm not giving you that long. If you die, you'll die with the debt forever unpaid."

"Zhan-gege is so cruel," Yibo countered before he could help himself, too delighted for caution.

Xiao Zhan looked down pointedly at himself. "Am I really the cruel one between us?"

He didn't fling the words like an accusation, even though Yibo too would've stood there and taken the blow without flinching.

*

The message said Jiu-di, I will open the Earthly East Gate after nightfall three days hence. Take only a small force. Make sure you are not detected.

Combined with their display on the ramparts, it made for irresistible bait. When A-Lei and his strike force entered by the correct side gate, they were greeted by Yibo on his imposing red horse, spear at rest, his men arrayed behind him.

The mere sight was enough to make the average imperial soldier quake, after his earlier exploits. But A-Lei didn't quake. Nor did he look perturbed when the gate swung shut behind him, which was Yibo's first hint that something was wrong.

His second was the scout who rode straight to him like a demon was on his tail and began his report as soon as Yibo was close enough to hear.

"Report! The South Gate has been breached!"

Yibo's ears rang. He thought he might have misheard.

"What?"

In front of him, A-Lei wore a hard grin.

"There's no such thing as too much deception in war, Wang Yibo. You taught me that."

Yibo dragged his focus back to where the scout was having a hushed, urgent conversation with Yixing. "Well?"

"Sounds like a small band of saboteurs got in. I'll go deal with it," Yixing said, already peeling off from the group.

Yibo nodded. "All right. Take care."

He followed Yixing's horse until the trail of dust from his troop swallowed him up before turning his attention back to A-Lei. Slowly, letting him see Yibo's blithe lack of concern for the scale of the threat in front of him.

"Is that all you have, kid?"

His voice dripped with contempt, and a rustle of outrage went through the imperial ranks. For his part, A-Lei's face remained set.

"The son of heaven is the one you must answer to. If the Emperor asks his subject for death, the subject must die," he snapped, and then his horse charged, and Yibo urged his own forward. The blades of their weapons clashed, a teeth-rattling clang that he felt in his bones.

"On the word of a wicked ruler? I don't think so," Yibo bit out.

"At least I can get Wu-ge away from you. You're worse than animal, you traitor, ungrateful bastard - " A-Lei retorted, all venom.

Each word was accompanied by a swipe of his polearm. He was fast, too; Yibo could barely get his spear up to block in time.

His warhorse, well used to combat, kept pace easily with A-Lei's mount with barely any prompting. He feinted a chest-high stab. A-Lei leaned back to avoid it, and that made enough room to put them beyond arms' reach, giving Yibo room to regroup.

"You really think he wants to get away?"

A wild downward slash. Yibo swung his spear horizontal and blocked easily with the shaft, pushing back with all his strength as A-Lei pressed the blade of the polearm down.

A-Lei's eyes bulged with exertion and rage, just before he took another wild swing.

"Why wouldn't he? After what you did?"

And another, each more ferocious than the last, the sharp edge coming perilously close to his chest plate.

Yibo's arms were starting to go stiff. He gritted his teeth. A-Lei was strong, fast, and as good a rider as Yibo. He needed to rattle him more.

"What if I told you he asked me to do it?"

"What?"

That instant of unguarded shock was enough.

Yibo gathered all his strength and heaved upward. An opening while the polearm was raised, enough for him to swipe up with the other tip of his spear. The bladed edge sunk into the gap between arm and shoulder where the plate was thinnest.

In all his years playfighting with A-Lei, he'd been careful never to hurt him. He was old enough by then to understand that a prince's body was sacred, and what punishment awaited a commoner who did it damage.

Every night, Yibo fell asleep imagining his spear embedded in the Emperor's chest, and the entire royal family trussed up like pigs for the slaughter just like his own had been. But he'd never imagined this: blood gushing from A-Lei's torso, his polearm falling to the ground, his body following suit, one foot caught in its stirrup. Gasps and howls from one side of the arrayed forces, raucous cheers from his own.

A-Lei's mouth opened. Whatever sound he made was drowned out in the commotion. Yibo was dismounting and crouching down to hear him better before he knew it.

"You - liar - " A-Lei croaked.

Yibo leaned all the way down and spoke quickly, right into his ear. "If I took all your lives, it still wouldn't be enough to pay for my family, but I'll spare his. That's not a lie. May your restless spirit come for my soul if I go back on my word."

It was the height of foolishness to rip out a tree without fully severing its roots. It was sure to bring trouble; even if Xiao Zhan didn't nurse resentment and plot revenge, others would rally to him as a matter of course and use his name in opposition to Yibo's rule.

But Yibo meant it.

Somehow A-Lei found the strength to clutch at Yibo's arm, his nails digging in hard enough to break skin.

"C-count on it. Yibo-ge, I'm going to - "

No one had called Yibo that since he was sent away. He never thought he'd hear it again. In his last moments A-Lei was that small boy again, the one who called Yibo ge and ran after him, except instead of his high childish tones, every second word was now accompanied by a bloody gurgle.

Yibo's eyes stung. His chest hurt as if he was the wounded one. He took in a deep breath that tasted of copper and coughed to set his own voice to rights. "Good."

He took A-Lei's free hand in his and groped for his dagger with the other, in case it was needed to give him a clean end.

"Wu-gege, where are you?" A-Lei's eyes were still fixed on him, pupils wide and unseeing. "It hurts. Wu-gege?"

"I'm here," he said quietly.

A-Lei's grip slackened, and then he went very still.

Yibo vowed there and then that Xiao Zhan would never find out that A-Lei had asked for him at the end, ahead of his father and mother and any of his full-blooded siblings. Xiao Zhan might never forgive himself if he knew.

He would certainly never forgive Yibo.

*

The rest of the modest imperial force scattered into a pile of sand after their commander fell. Yibo was barely needed to mop up. He left the scene to his lieutenants and rode in the direction of the South Gate.

Wenhan intercepted him halfway.

"The Emperor's men, they've taken Prince Chengan," he panted.

"Let him go," Yibo said heavily.

Wenhan looked at him as if he had sprouted wings. "I don't think he went willingly. Xia Zhiguang's gone after him."

Yibo had promised Xiao Zhan safety. And now -

"Which way," he gritted out.

Wenhan told him, and he then had to pull on his reins hard as Yibo sped off like the wind.

*

The South Gate was in chaos. A-Lei had clearly dedicated the majority of his resources to this surprise strike, and it was only with the arrival of Yibo and his men that the tide began to turn decisively. Yibo ordered his best men to secure the gate and restore its defences, and dove into the fray.

There was no other way out of Kaifeng. If whoever had Xiao Zhan wanted to leave with him without being noticed, the chaos was the perfect opportunity, and their window was closing rapidly as Yibo's men re-captured the gatehouse.

In the end Yibo stumbled upon them almost by chance, his keen eyes spotting a small group of men in black going in the opposite direction of all their fellows, sneaking out through the still partly-open gate.

Yibo cut the plumage off his helmet and tore his green cape and wrapped it around his torso to conceal the distinctive gold of his armour. Without those markers, he could be mistaken in the dark for a common officer for either side. It would be easy enough to run them down on horseback, but he needed enough of them alive to lead him to the rest of the group.

Turned out he needn't have worried. Outside all was chaos. Clearly news of their commander's death had started to filter through. Strangely, the men he was tailing didn't attempt to join up with the rest of their army, but headed off in the direction of a patch of woods nearby.

Once they got near enough for Yibo to spot dust and other signs of fighting in the woods, he urged his horse forward suddenly and cut his involuntary guides down with a few swipes of his spear.

That done, he rode toward the source of the shouts and clangs of weapons clashing.

The first thing he glimpsed was Xiao Zhan's little attendant Xia Zhiguang, chest heaving and covered in blood, fighting two men at once, clearly beyond his limits but unwilling to give up his precious charge.

All Yibo could see beyond him was a pile of white robes, stained with dirt and streaks of blood and heaven knew what else.

As he watched, one of the men feinted toward Xia Zhiguang and used the gap to twist past him, heading straight for that pile of white.

Yibo's heart leapt into his throat.

Not enough time to close in. Yibo drew his bow, nocked an arrow, and asked the unmerciful heavens to have pity on him, just once.

His arrow lodged in the gap between the man's chest plate and arm guards, and the man fell, sword sliding out of his grip.

Xia Zhiguang gave a ferocious yell, his sword flashed, and the other man also fell.

By the time Yibo caught up to them, Xia Zhiguang had dragged himself to Xiao Zhan's side and was cradling him with absurd care, heedless of the blood pouring from his own leg.

"Is he - "

Yibo didn't know what he would do if his careless mistake had killed Xiao Zhan. Burn the whole realm down, probably, and himself with it.

"His qi is steady," Xia Zhiguang breathed in pure relief, and Yibo's legs almost gave out. He took a deep breath and willed his heart back down his throat.

Xia Zhiguang then seemed to recall who he was speaking to and tried to rouse himself to shield Xiao Zhan's prone form from Yibo. Yibo couldn't be offended; his spirit and loyalty were admirable, and he'd saved Xiao Zhan's life.

His voice lost much of its battle harshness. "Let me take him on my horse. I won't hurt him."

Xia Zhiguang laughed harshly. "Have you not hurt him enough already?"

Now that was precisely the kind of thing Yibo would say if their position was reversed. Shaking with fatigue and pain and still glaring murder at his enemy.

"I won't hurt him again. I swear before heaven and earth." Yibo took a careful step closer, sword lowered. "Please. He needs a physician."

Xia Zhiguang's mouth twisted. "I hope you don't think this will be enough, after what you did."

"That's none of your concern," Yibo retorted, although both of them could probably tell that his heart wasn't in it.

Despite his harsh words, Xia Zhiguang didn't stop Yibo from picking Xiao Zhan up, just watched him narrowly as he did it.

"He knelt in the snow for a full day and night to plead for your life. Did you know that?"

Yibo forced himself to keep moving, although he adjusted his grip to hold Xiao Zhan even closer.

"I didn't. But I'm glad you told me. Come, you need a physician too."

*

The aftermath of a battle, even a rousing success, left much to do, and Yibo busied himself tending to it all, although his thoughts kept straying to the man being examined by his personal physician, safely ensconced inside the most secure part of the governor's residence, and what they would have to say to each other next.

Despite his dread, Yibo could not be anything but relieved when the physician reported that Xiao Zhan was largely unharmed, and glad when a little later a servant came and told him Prince Chengan wished to see him.

Wang Yibo was no coward. If he had the courage to do something, he also had enough to answer for it.

His conviction lasted long enough to get him into the room - his room, because that was the easiest to guard - and face to face with Xiao Zhan, who slowly rose from the large canopy bed to greet him.

He had clearly just come from the bath and was wrapped in only a few light layers, his long hair in a simple ponytail, still dripping water and a little flushed from the heat. A few new cuts on his face, one high on his cheek, like cracks in porcelain from careless handling.

"No, don't get up - " Yibo rushed forward and settled Xiao Zhan back on the bed before sitting down gingerly beside him, a careful arm's length away. "I - I'm sorry, I said you'd be safe and you weren't. It won't happen again."

"I'm just glad you're unharmed," Xiao Zhan said, unbearably soft.

Yibo's gut clenched. This was comfort he did not deserve.

"I mean it. How are your wounds? I can call the physician back."

"I'm fine. Guangguang is the one who needs the physician."

"He's been seen to," Yibo said.

"Thank you. He really…" Xiao Zhan shook his head. "If there was a debt because of the little I did for him years ago, it's long been repaid many times over. I keep telling him so, but he refuses to listen."

In his place Yibo would, too. Xiao Zhan was very perceptive, but Yibo fancied that he understood Xia Zhiguang better. A man's devotion to his lord did not simply end.

"Do you really think it's debt and obligation that binds those who follow and support you?"

"Sometimes I wonder. What about Leilei? Is he…"

Yibo swallowed and still couldn't bring himself to speak it out loud, the words lodging in his throat. He nodded.

Those bright eyes seemed to lose their lustre all at once.

"Whenever San-ge bullied him, he'd come running to me. I've patched him up more times than I can count." Xiao Zhan’s chest heaved. "And - and now… Leilei, I'm sorry. Forgive me."

"Zhan-gege - "

Yibo reached out, not knowing what he meant to do, and Xiao Zhan flinched back so hard his back hit the bed frame.

"Don't come any closer."

His voice shook and his eyes weren't dim any longer; they burned with something more disquietening than simple grief. Something that seemed to be eating him up from the inside, like it might engulf Xiao Zhan whole and leave only ashes.

Yibo had known this would be the result. Known and gone forward regardless, but he now found that he was incapable of peacefully accepting Xiao Zhan's rejection. It only fueled the rage and resentment that had sustained him all these years. He pulled Xiao Zhan into his arms, heedless of his struggling and protests.

"You know it was either him or me."

Yibo regretted it immediately, but it was too late. At least his callousness seemed to awaken something in Xiao Zhan. He stopped shaking and sobbing and began to fight in earnest.

"Let go of me. Get out, how dare you - "

His flailing arms hit a large bruise on Yibo's back. Yibo gritted his teeth and held on tighter. "I shouldn't have said that."

"Don't touch me, don't - "

Xiao Zhan's voice died in his throat as Yibo kissed his cheek, right over the cut.

"I'm sorry, Zhan-gege. I really am."

He knew even as he said the words that they were inadequate. Still, the laugh Xiao Zhan let out was so cold and bitter it cut right through him. "What are you sorry for?"

"I shouldn't have used you as bait. Will you forgive me?"

A long exhale. "There is nothing to forgive, on my part."

On his part. But the death of his favourite sibling, the chaos he'd caused for his own private vengeance -

"I can't apologise for the rest. Even if you hate me for it."

"I don't hate you," Xiao Zhan said.

"You just can't accept me. This is why your father sent him, you know. He wants you to hate me."

A despicable note of self-pity had crept into his voice, but he couldn't be ashamed when it made Xiao Zhan soften. His warm hand stroked down Yibo's back soothingly.

"I know that. What do you want? For me to say what you're doing isn't wrong? You don't need me for that."

Yibo drew back to look at him. Xiao Zhan’s eyes were swollen and red from crying, so heartsick and tired and furious - so like how Yibo felt underneath - that all his anger drained away.

"I don't care if it's wrong. I can't sleep without seeing them. Asking me why they died and I lived. Asking for me to take revenge. My sister, the way she looks at me - "

He took a deep breath to suppress a sob and rubbed angrily at his eyes.

Xiao Zhan stopped him with a hand on his arm. All his prior fury seemed to have melted into tenderness. He dabbed carefully at the corners of Yibo's eyes with the edge of his sleeve.

"Ssh. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please don't cry."

"That's my line, Zhan-gege."

It slipped out before he could think about it, and Xiao Zhan's face softened even more, until it seemed like they had stepped back in time to the youths they'd been.

"Look at you. If only your men could see their fearsome general like this. I hear the way they talk around camp, you know."

Yibo stiffened. He knew, too, and had been hoping it wouldn't filter through to Xiao Zhan. It was all but inevitable after their display on the rampants.

"Point out the next one and I'll cut off his head."

"Why? I'm an enemy captive. You've fed me and kept me safe. I can handle a little talk."

"It's an insult to their commander."

"An insult to say that you could want me?"

Yibo had to clear his throat before he could speak. "No. That you might accept."

"I told you, Yibo. Whatever you want," Xiao Zhan said.

No trace of the coy note in his voice from last time. There was something almost chilling in his level stare. It seemed like he could see all the way inside Yibo, read every profane and lustful thought he'd ever had.

"Do you really think that I could accept it as some form of penance?" Yibo demanded.

"Why not? There is nothing perverse or immoral in you that is not in me in equal measures, Wang Yibo."

Xiao Zhan tried to shrug off his hold again. This time it was Yibo who was too dazed to resist. Maybe he'd stumbled into one of his shameful old dreams.

Xiao Zhan's hands went to his jade belt. Entirely unabashed, as easily as if he were alone, his layers of white began to fall, fluttering to the ground in a heap, leaving him in only thin trousers. Then he stood before Yibo, shivering a little in the cold air.

Yibo stared.

Unlike Yibo, whose body told the story of his years in exile and on the battlefield, Xiao Zhan was as pale and fine as porcelain under those layers, like he'd never seen a day's sunlight growing up inside the great walls of the palace. A large purple patch of bruising on his side and the fading welts in pink around his wrists and neck stood out in sharp relief. A flush crept up his chest and neck as Yibo watched, like the first bloom of peach flowers in springtime.

His eyes didn't know where to go; they darted from Xiao Zhan's prominent collarbones to his dark nipples to the trail of hair that disappeared into his trousers. It felt impossible, illicit, to be offered even this much; an intruder furtively sneaking a glimpse at a bathing immortal through a half-closed screen.

The only safe place to rest his gaze was Xiao Zhan’s familiar, lovely face, entirely calm save for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. So open, nothing but honest want on his face, in the curve of his eyes, his soft parted mouth.

"Gege, are you sure - "

"Anything. I meant it."

The Xiao Zhan he knew would never waver from a path once he'd set his mind on it. Still, of all the times - 

Perhaps that was why. Who was Yibo to question what someone made of their grief?

"Do you even know what you're saying?"

Xiao Zhan smiled. "I've never - not in this fashion - but I know Yibo will be good to me."

Not in this fashion. Of course not. Even if a prince were to lie with a man like he would a woman, it was inconceivable that he would be the one on his back, receiving. Even the preparation would be up to servants. Other than someone like Yibo, who would dare to turn the Heavens upside down?

To be allowed this after so much time spent in furtive longing - Yibo wasn't strong enough to say no. No one could be. Something inside him gave way.

He could only pull Xiao Zhan to him as if he could mould them together, and kiss him with no finesse at all, like he was still a boy, fumbling in front of the object of his first tender affections. Too desperate to be tentative, or even careful. Xiao Zhan's lips were even softer than he'd imagined, and Yibo hadn't dared imagine him so fiercely responsive.

He had imagined much, despite himself, and it helped not at all now that all of it was on offer. He felt lightheaded, clumsy, a man gouging himself at a feast and still greedy for more. For once there were no howling ghosts in his ear; he forgot all about all that now lay between them and all that was sure to come. Everything else fell away but the man in front of him.

Xiao Zhan shivered when Yibo slid his hand down his chest to grasp his waist. Yibo's lips brushed his ear and he let out a high whine. Surely Yibo had never heard anything lovelier; it was better than any melody. He applied himself to encouraging more, and Xiao Zhan's hands grasped at his back, his shoulder, digging in hard enough to bruise, as he panted and pulled Yibo closer and picked at the fastenings to Yibo's robes, deftly undoing them, sliding his warm hands underneath, making Yibo's breath hitch, every touch setting his skin alight.

Yibo pulled fruitlessly at the strings at the waist of his thin trousers until Xiao Zhan batted his hand away and picked them apart himself. Then he raised his gaze, a blatant dare. Yibo rolled the clingy, soft fabric down with shaky hands, leaving his long legs bare.

Before he could do anything more than look, Xiao Zhan dived into the depths of the bed and scooped up a pot of ointment which he offered to Yibo. He then laid down on his back and fixed Yibo with those eyes. Asking without words, biting his lip like a parody of a shy maiden.

"Where did you get this?" Yibo asked.

"Asked your camp physician for it earlier," Xiao Zhan murmured. He was blushing. "He said it should…make things easier."

Yibo almost dropped the pot opening it, his sure touch suddenly deserting him with nerves and anticipation. This was nothing like his youthful fumbling in the border forces, more for warmth and company than anything else. This had been so long awaited and longed for that it felt as momentous as a wedding night.

When he finally judged it safe to press the tip of his finger inside Xiao Zhan, Xiao Zhan made a helpless little startled sound, little more than an exhale, and heat lanced down Yibo's spine.

"Is it - should I stop?"

"Keep - keep going," Xiao Zhan said, letting his head fall back against the bed, his grip on the fine sheets so tight Yibo could hear them tear. Leaving himself entirely in Yibo's hands.

The sight alone was enough to make him dizzy with desire. Too much. Not something he should get to see, let alone do.

Xiao Zhan didn't lay there passively. He was playful and impatient by turns, with a touch of the casual imperiousness of the young prince Yibo had once known, pushing him to get on with it.

Yibo ignored him, even when Xiao Zhan’s demands melted into pleas, so sweet and deadly they made his hands shake, even though he was no longer wound tight as a bowstring, was now pushing up against Yibo's fingers, trying to get them deeper.

Those who spoke of Prince Chengan's beauty from afar didn't know the least of it, Yibo thought. Songs and poems would be written if they saw him like this, with all the trappings of his rank stripped away, all his decorum and noble bearing lost to pleasure.

Every gasp and moan wound Yibo up tighter, threatening to burn away all his restraint and reduce him to hunger alone. He was so hard now it was almost unbearable. But he'd been thinking about this for so long. He wouldn't be rushed into hurting Xiao Zhan. There'd been enough of that.

"Why so impatient, gege? Let me be good to you," Yibo said, pleased when his voice didn't shake, and rubbed soothingly at Xiao Zhan's hip with the hand he was using to hold him down.

No response.

"Zhan-gege?"

Xiao Zhan's ponytail had come loose and a spill of dark hair hid his face from Yibo, and he was trembling all over, panting like he couldn't quite catch his breath.

Yibo withdrew his fingers carefully and brushed the shining waterfall of dark strands covering Xiao Zhan's face aside with his other hand.

He found agony and joy at war in Xiao Zhan's expressive eyes, the corners tinted red like he was on the verge of tears again. He had bitten his lip bloody to stay quiet, his usual composure and control scattered to the winds.

Like a wounded beast, Yibo suddenly thought, caught up in the battle. A shiver ran through him.

"Gege?"

It seemed to take Xiao Zhan a great deal of effort to find words. "I'm fine."

Whatever brave front he put up, this was new territory for Xiao Zhan. Yibo couldn't forget that. In truth, he could hardly stop thinking about it.

"It's not too much? We can - "

"No." Xiao Zhan's watery gaze flickered, down and away, and just as Yibo thought he'd finally pushed too far, he spoke. "Please."

His voice shook, but when he nudged Yibo aside and turned over onto his front, it was with his typical lack of hesitation, all that tension unspooled to leave him boneless and pliant from waist to ankle, the line from his shoulder blades to his waist a perfect graceful curve.

"Please," he said again, and smiled, reaching for Yibo, and Yibo found himself incapable of pondering anything further.

*

It took Yibo a long time to summon his soul back into his body and catch his breath. His muscles had turned to liquid and he felt dazed with happiness. Not even the aftermath of a hard-fought victory came close. Contentment had remade him as light as a cloud, like he could scale the Heavens.

Xiao Zhan stirred feebly under him. "Ah, would you - "

"Sorry, sorry," Yibo said hastily.

He pressed a kiss to the back of Xiao Zhan's neck, the smooth skin there still flushed pink, and heaved himself up off him.

His much vaulted restraint had fled, leaving only a creature of ravenous greed. There were teeth marks on Xiao Zhan's shoulder, starting to redden, finger shaped pink bands on his waist and hips. He had sweated so much he could've stepped straight out of a bath and looked like an erotic painting come to life.

Xiao Zhan shifted again, frowning. "Ah - that's - what a mess. Is that why you - "

He trailed off, biting his lip, which was still swollen from Yibo's earlier enthusiasm. There was no hint of recrimination in his voice, and yet something about it made Yibo's face heat.

He'd retained enough presence of mind to pull out before he finished inside Xiao Zhan, though it had taken willpower he didn't know he possessed. But now he hardly dared glance at the spun-silk canvas of Xiao Zhan's skin painted with his spend for fear of what it might drive him to do next.

"I - I thought you might be too tired to bathe again. Stay there, I can - "

In lieu of a suitable cloth, he picked up his own discarded inner robe, wet it with the pitcher of water by the side of the bed, and wiped carefully at the backs of Xiao Zhan's thighs and between his legs, until there was no further evidence of his disgraceful daring. Xiao Zhan turned languidly and allowed Yibo to clean his stomach and hips too with a hum of contentment.

He only stirred again to place a hand on Yibo's arm as Yibo sat up again to discard the robe.

"How considerate. I'm fortunate that Yibo is so good to me," he said, tilting his head to press his lips against Yibo's palm.

Unaccountably, Yibo felt his eyes welling up at that familiar gesture. It was as if he had broken Xiao Zhan open and found that the sweet, kind young man he remembered was still there inside that hard shell. The unfamiliar, other Xiao Zhan of before was gone as if it was an illusion.

Before this Xiao Zhan, Yibo was reduced once again to the blushing, stuttering youth who would go to the ends of the earth in return for a smile.

"If you let me, I'll try. I won't hurt you anymore - "

No matter what happens, he'd been about to say, when Xiao Zhan leaned forward and kissed him, pressing him back into the bed.

"Stay here."

He put one foot down and paused, the wince so imperceptible that anyone not finely attributed to his every move might have missed it.

"Did I hurt you?" Yibo asked.

Xiao Zhan turned and smiled at him. "You did nothing that I did not want. Now stay."

He picked up a discarded robe and threw it around his shoulders carelessly. It hid just enough to draw the gaze as he padded on bare feet to the door and asked for the incense burner and a brazier to be lit.

"Are you cold?" Yibo asked, eyeing the sweat still gleaming on his neck and throat as Xiao Zhan made his way back to the bed, still walking a little gingerly.

"No, but you were."

Yibo hadn't even realised. It was only that Xiao Zhan took all the warmth with him as he left, and brought it all back with him.

The wide grin he wore felt odd on his face after so long without and no doubt lacked the appropriate dignity of his station, but Yibo couldn't find it in himself to care. He was certain that he would remember this day until the day he died.

Xiao Zhan patted the curve of his cheek.

"What? What's this for?"

Yibo pulled him back down and wrapped his arms around Xiao Zhan, determined that no force under heaven would make him let go. "Gege is still the same gege."

Xiao Zhan huffed. "I'm glad you think so."

His hands roamed all over Yibo under the coverlet, pausing at each divot and scar as if he wanted to wipe them away.

"If you don't hate me, why were you being so awful to me?" Yibo murmured sleepily.

"I can't say," Xiao Zhan said.

Something about his voice made Yibo open his eyes again. He realised with a lurch that there were fresh tear tracks on Xiao Zhan's face.

"Zhan-gege - "

Xiao Zhan silenced him with another kiss. "Not today. How about I tell you a story, hm?"

Yibo couldn't bring himself to say no to those eyes. He didn't know how he'd ever managed it.

"All right."

"When my mother was with child, she suffered from a mysterious illness," Xiao Zhan began. His melodic intonation was perfect for storytelling. It lured Yibo in as surely as an enchantment. "This was when the Emperor still greatly favoured her - Zhao-gonggong said he went to her almost every night, even just to have a meal together and talk."

Yibo never met Xiao Zhan's mother, Noble Consort Zhen, as it was improper for boys to roam in the rear palace. But he could well imagine what she might have been like: a woman so alluring it seemed like she had employed witchcraft, who had borne a son famous for his beauty.

"Rumour reached the Emperor of a legendary physician who lived on an isolated mountaintop, who could cure almost any illness. But the physician could not be coaxed off his mountain."

"Let me guess, the Emperor ordered the physician captured and brought before him in chains?"

Xiao Zhan laughed. "No. My father went himself."

It was the first time Yibo had never heard him refer to the Emperor with affection.

"He asked the elder for assistance like a commoner, and the elder gave it, moved by his sincerity. Hard to imagine, isn't it?"

"He must've really cared about her," Yibo said reluctantly.

"I thought so too. But mother was never fooled. When she was accused of witchcraft, she knew not to expect any mercy." Xiao Zhan let out a soft, unamused laugh. "He regrets them, you know, the Emperor. His fits of paranoia. But it's too late by then, and he can't admit error."

Was accused, Xiao Zhan said, as if the accusations had sprung up from the very air, when they both knew differently. Yibo stirred uneasily.

"My aunt. She - "

Xiao Zhan placed a finger on his lips.

"I know what the Xiaoming Empress did. I don't hold you responsible," he said easily. "That's not why I told the story. You should know, Yibo, there's no such thing as sentiment for those who live within the four walls of the palace."

Nothing changed in his voice or on his face, and yet Yibo felt a distinct shift in the air. He tried to lift his arm and found that his limbs were so heavy he could hardly move.

"Zhan-gege, what - "

"Careful, you'll catch a chill," Xiao Zhan said. He slithered out of Yibo's suddenly lax grasp and pulled the bedding up, carefully tucking Yibo in. "Sleep now."

Yibo tried again. His body remained unresponsive and so sluggish it became a battle to keep his eyes open. He dragged in a deep breath and tasted orchid and agarwood.

The incense. That must have been it. But if it was the culprit, then Xiao Zhan should have been affected too.

"We've been drugged," Yibo said, or he tried to. The words came out slurred.

"Yes, we have," Xiao Zhan said serenely.

He reached into the pile of Yibo's robes, pulled out his dagger and had the tip buried in his own shoulder before Yibo could make a sound. Blood dripped onto Yibo's cheek as Xiao Zhan pulled the dagger free, biting his lip against a pained gasp.

"Aah, that helps. I took the antidote, but we had to up the dose to make sure we'd get you," he explained, in the mischievous tone of one imparting an amusing secret.

"Zhan-gege, please - why - "

Xiao Zhan bent his head and kissed Yibo's brow, heedless of his own blood, so tenderly that the ache in Yibo's chest eased.

"Because Zhang Yixing is working for my father, and your rebellion is doomed."

The last thing Yibo saw was those beguiling eyes, still red-rimmed from crying, as dark and unfathomable as the depths of the sea.

*

Yibo woke all at once. At first he was disconcerted by the lack of nightmares; it had been a long time since he opened his eyes without a scream trapped in his throat. Then he remembered why he'd slept so deeply, and had to suppress a shudder and calm his breathing lest it alert anyone watching.

But his surroundings felt empty, and there was no one else in the room when he opened an eye cautiously to confirm.

He was unrestrained, dressed in clean clothes, on a bed even bigger and more opulent than the one in the Kaifeng governor's residence, white silk drapes drawn up over a canopy of lacquered wood, carved with dragons.

Yibo sat up slowly and examined the rest of the room, although he already had a fair idea about where he'd been taken. The rest of the furniture was made out of the same lacquered wood - a dressing table with a large bronze mirror, cabinets holding a jade mountain and other trinkets, two round stools and a small round table bare of everything but a fine tea set. An altar with plates of fresh fruit and little cakes before it, and a large painting on the wall of a woman dressed in fine robes staring at him with familiarly beguiling phoenix eyes. Every bit as striking as he'd imagined her to be.

A neat pile on the bed turned out to be his own robes, washed and folded. Yibo got his first shock when he shook out the pile and his dagger fell out, complete with its holster and strap.

He dressed as quickly as he could without making too much noise, settled the dagger in its proper place on his waist, and crept to the door. No one here either, not even an attendant, although he could hear two voices in the courtyard beyond.

The intricate lattice patterns in the sash windows were covered over with the most sturdy paper Qi could produce. Yibo carefully cut a small hole with his dagger so he could peek out.

A sudden wave of dizziness overtook him at the familiarity of the sight that greeted him. He had never been in these sleeping quarters, but he once knew this courtyard like the back of his hand. They were in Xiao Zhan's Yongan Palace. Next to it was the Crown Prince's residence, the East Palace, and beyond it the palaces of the Emperor, the Empress, the consorts and various other young princes and princesses.

Xiao Zhan had captured him and brought him back to the capital. For what, Yibo couldn't fathom. Perhaps he didn't want to.

The first speaking voice belonged to a pretty young woman, dressed in the finery of a prince's consort, her hair piled up high on her head and pinned with a phoenix headdress. Her elegant bearing put Yibo in mind of his late aunt, the Empress.

"My father will support you, on the conditions we discussed."

As he'd expected, the other voice belonged to Xiao Zhan, who was wearing a genial smile.

"Thank you, Qin-jie."

Qin-jie was awfully familiar. Surely if Xiao Zhan had taken a consort, Yibo would have heard about it? Someone would have told him.

"No thanks are required," the woman said evenly. "We had a deal, did we not? If I married A-Lei, my lord would guarantee my safety and the safety of any children we had."

So this was A-Lei's consort, Grand Chancellor Li's oldest daughter, who rumour had frequently linked with marriage to either the Crown Prince or Prince Dingwei before she was surprisingly married to A-Lei, nine years her junior and unfavoured. It was such an odd match that word had even reached the border.

Xiao Zhan inclined his head. "But what if I could promise more than that for A-Xin? What if I made him my heir?"

Li Qin's peach-blossom eyes narrowed.

"If this servant may be so bold, how is that any improvement over what he already has?"

Xiao Zhan leaned closer. Yibo strained to hear his next words, spoken in a whisper that seemed as loud as a shout.

"Because I will leave him a greater inheritance than lordship."

The implications of those words should have made anyone quake, but Li Qin simply regarded Xiao Zhan steadily, with what seemed like genuine affection.

"But what will you leave for yourself, Dianxia?"

"One day, I would like to see Yibo smile at me again," Xiao Zhan said. "It used to make me think of the sun coming out, did you know, the way he smiled at me."

Ridiculously, Yibo felt a bubble of protectiveness rise in his chest at the soft uncertainty in his voice, and the uncomplicated fondness making curves of those eyes. That was his playful, doting Zhan-gege all over. Surely that couldn't be a lie. If it was, Yibo might as well throw himself on the Emperor's mercy now and extend his neck for the executor's axe.

Even Li Qin's mouth twitched before she pulled her expression back to studied neutrality. "This servant has never seen Dianxia fail at something."

"Sometimes my desires conflict."

"Then cut down the conflict, and march forward," said Li Qin.

She tapped him on the chest with her round fan. He let her, once, before taking a step back and giving her a very proper bow, far deeper than he owed her.

Yibo drew back from the door, positioned himself next to it, and gripped his dagger.

All this time he thought he'd had Xiao Zhan in his power, unaware that a leash might be pulled from either end. His father had tried to tell him all those years ago: They're all snakes, the princes, even the least of them.

Xiao Zhan had been exquisitely clear himself, that night: There's no such thing as sentiment for those who live within the four walls of the palace.

If Yibo was still fooled by a sweet smile and some pretty words after all that, he truly deserved to die an unrestful death. He shouldn't even give Xiao Zhan a chance to cast his enchantment over him again. Slit his throat or at least render him unconscious before he could weave any more pretty lies.

Still, Yibo hesitated. A voice inside him that sounded like the boy who had asked Xiao Zhan for a way forward all those years ago insisted that he had to know why. How much of it was ever real. That was enough to stay his hand when the door swung open slowly and Xiao Zhan stepped over the threshold.

Xiao Zhan barely startled when his wrists were captured and the dagger's sharp edge came to rest at his throat.

"I'm glad you're awake."

"Please don't lie to me," Yibo said.

He meant it to be cold, authoritative, and instead it came out as a shaky plea. His hands were so unsteady that a pinprick of red appeared where the tip of the dagger pressed against Xiao Zhan's skin, and he readjusted his grip hastily.

"I have never lied to you," Xiao Zhan said quietly. "Unlike others who had the gift of your trust."

One of the last things he told Yibo had been -

"Is it true, what you said about Yixing?"

"Didn't you wonder how I was stolen out of Kaifeng during A-Lei's attack? He's been taken care of, if that's what you're concerned about. I wouldn't leave such a formidable opponent behind us."

"Am I supposed to bow down in gratitude?" Yibo slammed Xiao Zhan against the door by his collar and wrapped his fingers around his long, pale neck. "Don't be so certain I won't hurt you."

He could feel each minute movement of Xiao Zhan's throat as he swallowed. Unbearably intimate, almost as intimate as being inside him.

"I'm not. But I know I can take whatever you do to me, and I know you won't kill me," Xiao Zhan said.

Yibo's grip tightened convulsively. "So willing to stake your life on my pitiful sentiments?"

"Yes," Xiao Zhan gasped out. "Don't pretend you never suspected a thing. How far is your hidden assault force, the ones you diverted away from Kaifeng with General Li?"

He really did know Yibo far too well. Yibo heaved a long sigh and carefully set him down.

"I did say I'd bring you your San-ge's head."

Rather than make any attempt to get away, Xiao Zhan wrapped his arms around the back of Yibo's neck and smiled, a perfectly guileless match for the smile he'd worn the day they met. "Poor San-ge. He's always been afraid of me."

Yibo's arms wound themselves around his middle, hands settling at his waist by instinct.

"Is that what he was?"

"Whatever his other faults, he's a clever man. He saw through me before anyone else and never bought my useless act. I was going to have to pretend to be sick next." Xiao Zhan slanted a sly look at Yibo from underneath his lashes. "You were meant to kill him for me in Kaifeng, you know."

"Your father is the one who - " Yibo winced and clamped his mouth shut.

"The one who sent Leilei instead, yes," XIao Zhan agreed softly. "He out-manoeuvred me. It won't happen again."

Xiao Zhan's debauched drunkard act, his public rebukes of Yibo and private assistance in Kaifeng, even his betrayal -

Yibo was a traveller making his way through treacherous terrain under a heavy fog, and now the fog was lifting at last to reveal the remarkable scenery that had been there all along.

"Why didn't you just tell me?"

"So that Zhang Yixing and the other spies could tell my father? When he sent Leilei, it wasn't just so that I wouldn't help you. It was a warning. Next he'll use Qin-jie or A-Xin against me."

"A-Xin?"

Xiao Zhan pulled Yibo over to a side window and tilted his chin at it. In the garden, an infant in red and gold stumbled, laughing, into Li Qin's waiting arms.

"Leilei's son. I intend to raise him as my own. Unless, of course, you kill us all first," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"I wouldn't kill you, I made A-Lei a promise," Yibo protested. He left out all the other reasons. It was clear that Xiao Zhan knew them as well as he did. "And I'm not going to kill him, not if he's yours."

For all that he'd done to see the Emperor dethroned and to seek repayment in kind for the deaths of his family, Yibo hadn't hardened his heart so far as to be able to contemplate condemning an infant to death.

Perhaps if he had never met the child, and it was all mere numbers. Most likely when they told the Emperor that Great General Wang's entire family had been executed on his orders, all fifty-seven of them, he never bothered to ask how many of them were women or children. How young the smallest had been.

"You'll have to kill us all, if you're serious about replacing the line," Xiao Zhan said relentlessly. "Yibo, have you thought about what you'll do if you succeed? You can't replace great Qi with yourself, you won't be able to hold it for longer than the turn of a season before one of my distant uncles rallies an army and starts another war."

If Yibo had imagined the future past the completion of his vengeance, he might have agreed. But he hadn’t. Whenever he closed his eyes and contemplated the end, he pictured his own death. His task was near impossible, and so he would die trying, and in doing so fulfil his duty to his family.

"I - I don't - "

The words wouldn't come. Yibo strode away from the window, and the innocent son of the man he'd killed, and sat down heavily on one of the round stools. Xiao Zhan sat too. Rather than prompting Yibo to continue, or speaking to fill the silence, he busied himself making tea.

He hadn't tried to tell Yibo that the mandate of heaven could not be displaced, or that no commoner - even an exalted commoner - outside the royal line should even dream of elevating himself. Both of them knew very well that Liu Bang had been a peasant, and the late Emperor Gaozu a governor before he turned the heavens upside down.

Xiao Zhan spoke as if Yibo's success was still a real possibility.

"What is it that you want, Wang Yibo?"

That was easier to answer.

"Justice. Simple justice," Yibo said with a dry laugh. "Not so simple against the most high."

"Even the most exalted should be subject to someone's authority," Xiao Zhan replied.

"Whose? With what power?"

A quirk of his mouth. "Ours."

Few would imagine that the unassuming hedonist Prince Chengan was capable of saying such a thing, let alone doing it. That, Yibo supposed, was the entire point of the ruse. The question was whether he was willing to pay Xiao Zhan's price.

"Why would you help me against your own father? Why do any of this?"

"You're not the only one seeking repayment for a blood debt," Xiao Zhan said.

Yibo realised he had never known what true venom sounded like in that pleasant voice until that moment, backed by anger that didn't burn like his, but instead ran cold and deadly. He couldn't help glancing at the altar and the large portrait of Noble Consort Zhen above it.

"She was innocent, I'm sure of it."

"Of course she was. So was your father. But that counts for nothing." Xiao Zhan paused meaningfully.

"What will I owe you?" Yibo asked, the words falling into the gap.

"Nothing much. When the dust settles, I want to be the one sitting in that chair in the Hall of Heavenly Harmony," Xiao Zhan said.

Yibo's mouth dropped open. He had begun to suspect, after overhearing Xiao Zhan's conversation with Li Qin, but to hear it said so plainly -

He had spent so much time looking at Xiao Zhan, and so little seeing him.

Xiao Zhan reached across the table and took Yibo's hand in his. He had an artist's hands, even with calluses formed from the qin and sword, elegant and warm against Yibo's.

"I'm a very greedy man, Yibo. Your heart, the throne, vengeance…I swore I'd have them all, no matter the cost."

He smelled faintly of the plum flowers that bloomed in his garden even in winter, dripping in snow, and when he smiled he reminded Yibo of them too, with a layer of frost that only enhanced its brilliance.

"Did I ever know you at all?" Yibo asked.

Xiao Zhan only smiled wider. The sweet crescent curve of his eyes made him seem like a boy again.

"The one that I would give my life for. A sharp blade for me to wield. Which do you think you are?"

It seemed obvious, when he put it that way. Xiao Zhan knew how to care for his treasures. He would keep them well and use them right.

"Two things can be true at once."

Xiao Zhan nodded. "You know me better than you think. So? Your assistance, in return for mine."

"Gege is asking a lot and not offering much in return," Yibo said, and tried a smirk. A weak feint at best, when they both knew the weight of what was being asked for and offered.

Surrender was not within Yibo's nature. Being handled like a weiqi stone was even less so. It should have been infuriating. It was infuriating.

"What I've already given you, I've never and will never give to another," Xiao Zhan said.

There was only one man living who could play games with Yibo and expect to survive them, and that man had known, or he'd gambled and won, because he could transmute Yibo's fury into helpless affection with a single fond glance. Xiao Zhan knew that Yibo couldn't bring himself to regret or take back what had happened between them.

"I remember very well," Yibo replied. Too well, in truth. It was a constant distraction just being in the same room. He willed himself not to flush. Judging by the wicked slant of Xiao Zhan's lips, he didn't succeed. "You know what will be said about you."

"That I came to the throne by immoral means, that I'm corrupt and weak, a mere slave to the man who indulges my perverse carnal desires?"

Yibo flinched, hearing the words drip like poison from that lovely mouth. "No one wise will believe it."

Xiao Zhan's answering smile was all teeth. "It's better that they think little of me. Can you imagine how they would all hate and fear me if they knew the truth?"

"I don't. The things I've done, Zhan-gege - "

Anyone else would've run away from Yibo as soon as he could, after the hundreds he'd killed by his own hand, and the tens of thousands who had died in his name. After what he'd done to Xiao Zhan in the army camp and in Kaifeng. After A-Lei.

"Do you still imagine I've done any less? Neither of us were born for polite affections, thank the heavens and earth," Xiao Zhan said.

Perhaps that was the answer. Both of them had carried the copper tinge of blood in their mouths for too long not to seek it out in others. All along Yibo had been searching for something to fill up the hollow places inside him, and now he had his answer.

Yibo, who had long believed himself abandoned by the heavens, was not in the habit of crediting anyone other than the living. But he could still be thankful that the fates had given him this gift, tangling their red strings together so hopelessly that they could not be parted except with fire or the blade.

"Whatever you want to do, Zhan-gege, I'm with you."

Xiao Zhan lifted the lid of one of the teacups and inhaled. Then he gave a satisfied nod and offered it to Yibo, who drank without hesitation.

"So trusting, after what I did?"

Yibo grinned. "I'll drink whatever gege gives me. I'm not afraid."

His heart, long ill-used, was fit for no other. Xiao Zhan could reach right into his chest and pluck it out, to cradle or take apart as he fancied. After all, he was the one who had breathed life back into Yibo, once when he saved his life; the second time when he had given him purpose, and again by offering him a way to fulfil his vow that might not end in ruin and failure.

Yibo leaned across and captured Xiao Zhan's lips, more a bite than a kiss, and Xiao Zhan bit him back, hard enough to break skin. The sting only made his blood sing with the same excitement that gleamed, knife-bright, in Xiao Zhan's eyes.

*

Xiao Zhan left to make the necessary preparations. It was vital for their purposes that Yibo's presence in the capital, let alone in Xiao Zhan's palace, in his own sleeping quarters, was kept secret, so Yibo resigned himself to waiting.

He was doing a few light rounds of practice with his sword, which Xiao Zhan had taken care to smuggle all the way to the capital, when he sensed a new presence at the door.

Yibo had hidden the sword away by the time it opened and Zhang Yixing entered silently.

Yixing looked like a man who had escaped death by a hair, grimy and caked in blood. Cold fury in those hunter's eyes, sword up and ready to strike. Genuine shock flitted across his face at the sight of Yibo sitting at the table.

"Yibo? What - I see. Come on, let's get you out of here."

Yibo didn't get up. "What are you doing here?"

"It's a long story," Yixing said impatiently. "I was lucky to escape Kaifeng with my life. The forbidden regiment, they listen to Prince Chengan."

"What?"

The forbidden regiment was headed by a young general who was notorious both for his temper and his antipathy for the strife between the princes. That was what had earned him the appointment as head of the palace guard, the surety that he was the Emperor's man through and through.

"The force that captured me wore black and gold and Peng Chuyue was at its head," Yixing said through gritted teeth. "I'd lay a wager that his hostility toward Prince Chengan is nothing more than an act. What did that snake tell you?"

"He said you were going to sell me out," Yibo said casually.

"And you believed it? You don't know him. He's - " a strangled gurgle. "A snake, just like his father."

Yibo smirked. "I know all I need to," he said, right before pulling the dagger back out of Yixing's gut.

"You…are a fool," Yixing gasped. "Do you think…he'll really help put you…on his family's throne?"

"No. I'm going to put him on it," Yibo said. He would carry Xiao Zhan all the way into that chair with his own hands, if he had to.

While he was puzzling over what to do with the body, there was a knock at the door, a short pause, and then two more knocks before Xia Zhiguang appeared.

"Need a hand?"

"I take it that means I've passed the test," Yibo said drily.

Xia Zhiguang laughed. "I'm not here for that."

"No?"

"I'm here to back you up. When Wu-Dianxia trusts someone, he doesn't doubt them."

*

The Emperor of great Qi sat in a gold-draped luohan bed in the cavernous imperial study, reading by lamp light.

In the time since Yibo last saw the face of his enemy, it had acquired more marks of age and care. They might have made him seem like a kindly grandfather, if not for the way his eyes gleamed.

"A report from the front, Bixia."

"Speak."

Even that single word was imbued with the casual authority of one who had never known anything other than total fawning obedience.

"Prince Dingwei's forces met a rebel ambush and suffered great losses," said the scout.

Silence. Then: "Where is Prince Dingwei now?"

"Unknown."

"That overconfident, useless…" the Emperor muttered. "What other news from the front? Do they still not have the whereabouts of Wang Yibo?"

The opportunity was too good to pass up.

"I'm right here, Bixia," Yibo called out. "Why don't you come down here and meet me, one man to another?"

He had the satisfaction of seeing the Emperor go still, before he visibly regained his usual icy calm.

"Why would I? Insolent boy."

Yibo stepped out of the shadows, dragging Xiao Zhan along with him by the hair, sword slung across his neck.

"What about in return for your son's life?"

"Do it."

It took Yibo a moment to hear him, and then to be sure of what he'd heard.

"What did you say?"

"A clever bluff, but a flawed one," said the Emperor, as casually as if they were discussing the ripeness of fruit. "I know my son. No one can force A-Zhan to do anything he doesn't want to do."

Xiao Zhan was right. There really was no such thing as sentiment within the walls of the palace.

Yibo let Xiao Zhan go and pointed his sword at the man in the chair instead.

"What if you had been wrong?"

"I wasn't."

"He doesn't think that way," Xiao Zhan said. "He's never wrong, and when he is, the consequences are not of his making."

The Emperor peered down at Xiao Zhan. Then he began to laugh, a light, airy thing.

"So it was all an act, A-Zhan? I'm glad. It disappointed me to see my cleverest son so lacking in ambition. But you, little General Wang... Your father's spirit must be ashamed."

"I don't think so," Yibo said. It was hard to speak with those snake eyes on him. Each word felt like it was pulled out from some deeply buried part of him, raw and bleeding. "Every night he asks me for your head."

"Does he? Tell him, Prince Chengan, what does fealty and honour demand of a subject?"

Xiao Zhan gave a shallow bow. "Mengzi said that if a ruler is unjust, if he is free of virtue and responsibility, he is an outlaw and not a sovereign, and the people who murder him have not murdered a ruler," he replied, in the singsong cadence of a scholar reciting from a text they knew all too well.

The Emperor snorted. "My son is so learned he must also know the words of the Sage: let the ruler be a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father, and the son a son."

"Don't give me that," Xiao Zhan said. "How did the previous emperor die, father?"

The air in the room seemed to freeze, and the Emperor's eyes darkened into chips of flint. "The sheer unfilial impudence to question your father and your emperor!"

"My father should not have murdered my mother."

"And that chair, Bixia, is just a chair," Yibo said. "Come down and face me."

The Emperor didn't move. "By what power do you intend to compel me?"

"Why don't you ask Zhao-gonggong, father," Xiao Zhan said.

The small, stooped figure of Head Eunuch Zhao melted out of the shadows, startling Yibo.

"Ah, here you are. Where is my forbidden regiment? General Peng?" The Emperor demanded.

"Just outside," reported Head Eunuch Zhao, in the tones of one detailing what dishes would be served for the evening meal. "Awaiting Prince Chengan's orders."

A deadly pause.

"I see," said the Emperor.

"That was all, Zhao-gonggong," Xiao Zhan said. "Leave us."

Head Eunuch Zhao gave a very deep bow and backed out of the hall, carefully closing the great doors behind him.

"How long has Zhao-gonggong been yours?"

"Where you're wrong, father, is that people's hearts aren't so hard to discern," Xiao Zhan said. "You just have to know what they want. Zhao-gonggong always greatly admired my mother."

"And Peng Chuyue?"

"Not difficult at all, once one gets to know him. Very sweet, actually. Fond of poetry and a tune."

The Emperor shook his head disdainfully. "Do you intend to govern the realm with these… women's tricks?"

"The Emperor-my-father is the one who taught me that my chosen methods don't matter, only the result," Xiao Zhan replied calmly. "Isn't that what you thought when you had Great General Wang's entire family murdered simply because you wanted him to give up the military forces at his command?"

All these years, Yibo had known it to be true, and never heard it said aloud by another, let alone to the man who had done it.

"What else was I to do?" said the Emperor, in seeming earnest, and Yibo couldn't hold himself back any longer.

"Asked him!" he shouted. "Asked him! He would've obeyed, because he believed in the teachings of the sages. In you."

Yibo didn't realise he was shaking until Xiao Zhan grasped his hand and held it, tight enough that the pain grounded him.

"I couldn't have taken that chance. A-Zhan's learned his lesson about what happens when you leave things to chance. Remind me, did A-Lei not die by that very hand you're holding?"

"A-Lei was my miscalculation. I should not have allowed it to happen," Xiao Zhan said. The smallest of cracks in his mask of calm, a fine tremor that went all the way through him.

"That's a lie. You don't even believe it, I can tell," the Emperor retorted with great relish, rolling each syllable around in his mouth. "Just what did you have to give the mad dog in return for his support?"

Yibo opened his mouth to protest the gross insinuation, and shut it again abruptly as Xiao Zhan pressed close and wrapped an arm around his middle.

"Exactly what you wanted me to offer by sending me to him," he said pleasantly. "You didn't seem to have an issue with it then."

The Emperor's gaze went from Xiao Zhan to Yibo and then back, before he started to laugh, harsh and loud and raucous.

"How did I not see it all these years? You really are my true heir," he said, once he'd regained his breath from laughter. He turned to Yibo. "He never even cried as a child, did you know?"

Absurdly, he seemed proud.

"A child learns not to cry because no one will dry his tears, Father," Xiao Zhan said. "Abdicate."

"Will you spare my life if I do?"

Yibo's hand crept toward the hilt of his sword.

Xiao Zhan moved too, reaching for a pouch on his belt. He took out a small jar, poured the contents into a cup, and placed it on the table in front of his father.

"Yibo deserves blood for his blood," he said, and Yibo had to squeeze his eyes shut to keep back tears.

Was that not what the sovereign should be? A man who could disregard family relations in order to deliver justice, who tried so hard to minimise bloodshed and suffering, and who chose to suffer for crimes committed by others.

The Emperor gave the cup a sceptical look.

"In your place, A-Zhan, I would have lied."

"I don't have to lie. Just leave you no other option. This, or the blade." Xiao Zhan picked up the cup and offered it to him. "Father. A toast to your health."

"A toast to the dead, who have waited long for justice," Yibo said.

The Emperor snatched the cup out of Xiao Zhan's hands and drained it in one gulp. Then he lowered it and set his dark eyes on Xiao Zhan. "It was exquisitely done, I'll give you that much. But one day you'll be in my position, A-Zhan. I look forward to seeing it."

Xiao Zhan took it from him, almost gently, and guided him down to lie on the bed.

"I'll be sorry to disappoint you, then."

When the Emperor began to cough and convulse, Yibo strode forward to hold him down. He turned his body so that Xiao Zhan wouldn't have to see, but Xiao Zhan came forward as well.

"I'll be patient where you were hasty, kind where you were cruel, constant where you were capricious," he said. "My achievements will be so much greater than yours that you'll be nothing more than a prologue, Father. Forgotten."

When it was done, Yibo dropped to his knees and made three deep bows, his forehead touching the ground on each. Beside him, Xiao Zhan did the same.

Regicide was the greatest sin possible. Patricide a close second. They were crimes so severe that they rendered the sinner beyond redemption. Yibo couldn't find room in himself for anything but fierce joy and relief; relief that his work was done, and that he had Xiao Zhan by his side.

Father, mother, everyone. I fulfilled my duty. You can pass on now.

Xiao Zhan took a silk cloth from his sleeve and gently wiped his father's face clean of blood. Then he covered his head with it.

"Where is Zhao-gonggong?" he called out.

Head Eunuch Zhao opened the door immediately and stepped through. "I'm here, Dianxia."

"The entire realm mourns the sudden passing of the Emperor. Call a court session to announce his final decree."

"And the submission of the rebel Wang Yibo - " Yibo added, smirking.

Xiao Zhan's mouth twitched. "Oh, really."

" - to the authority of the new Emperor."

*

The usual morning court session was overtaken by the news that the Emperor had suddenly began to vomit blood and passed in the night. His final act, said Head Eunuch Zhao, was to summon his Grand Chancellor and decree that he was to be succeeded by his fifth-born son Prince Chengan.

A surprising decision, muttered the officials high and low gathered for morning court, but Head Eunuch Zhao was known to be the Emperor's man, through and through, and the Grand Chancellor had served the dead Emperor and his father before him, and had nothing to gain from dissembling in favour of Prince Chengan.

The other news was even more surprising. The rebel Wang Yibo, who had so vexed the best military minds the realm had to offer, defeated Great General Han and killed a prince in combat, had journeyed to the capital alone to offer his surrender.

If he hadn’t been standing in the Hall of Heavenly Harmony, it would have been hard to believe such a thing was possible.

"General Wang. What is it that you wish to tell the court?" asked Prince Chengan from atop the dais.

"I wish to present evidence of crimes committed by Prince Dingwei," Yibo said.

Gasps in the hall.

"What crimes?"

"Treason, my lord. He offered an alliance if I would eliminate his enemies at court and help him onto the throne."

More gasps; some really far too theatrical, Yibo thought. In the capital, even the children on the street sang rhymes about Prince Dingwei's ambitions. There was hardly anyone who didn't know, let alone the high officials standing in the hall, half of whom had probably conspired with him.

"A serious accusation, and San-ge isn't here to answer for it," Xiao Zhan said solemnly.

Yibo bit back a grin. "But he is. Bring him in."

Wenhan dragged Prince Dingwei into the hall. He looked a mess, his fine armour covered in soot and dirt, his face red with fury under the mess of his unbound hair.

"What is the meaning of this? A-Zhan, do you really believe I'd do such a foolish thing? On the word of a reprobate like him?"

"I have evidence," Yibo said. "And you are being imprudent. That is not how you should address your Emperor."

Xiao Zhan inclined his head. "Not to worry, San-ge. I intend to fully investigate everything you've been up to before I decide what to do with you. Take him away."

Two men in black and gold entered the hall and began to drag him out, heedless of his thrashing.

"Wang Yibo! You lying scumbag! You'll get what's coming to you!"

Yibo sneered. "Loser dogs shouldn't bark, San-Dianxia."

Just as before, Prince Dingwei did not heed his advice. "Do you really think he'll spare the hunting dog once its most cunning prey is dead?" he called out.

Yibo strode down the hall, grasped Prince Dingwei by the collar, and hissed his reply into his face. "Unlike you, he rewards those who serve him well… and remembers those who've done him wrong."

He waited for the man's face to flicker from outrage to realisation and finally to fear before throwing him aside and striding back up the hall.

Prince Dingwei scrambled after him, only to be held back once again. "A-Zhan! Just think! You'd do this to your own flesh and blood?"

"Halt!" Xiao Zhan said, almost lazily, with a sly edge to his smile that Yibo wanted to taste. "San-ge is right. We are still brothers, aren't we?"

Prince Dingwei had many faults, but being slow was not one of them. He struggled into a proper kneeling position and prostrated himself. "Of course we are, A-Zhan - that is, my Emperor."

Xiao Zhan nodded. "I'm glad to hear that. I give you my word that your life will be spared, no matter the outcome of the Ministry's investigation."

Prince Dingwei gave another stiff, unwilling bow. This time, he allowed himself to be led away without complaint.

Yibo spared a glance for the ashen face of the now former Crown Prince, who couldn't meet his gaze. His cousin, his only remaining living relative, who had chosen his own hide over that of his mother's family. A coward through and through, not even worth killing. Not even enough of a threat to make an example of, like Prince Dingwei.

Like himself.

Xiao Zhan waited until every face in the hall had turned back toward him before beckoning Yibo forward.

"Wang Yibo. Listen well to my decree."

Yibo bowed his head. "My Emperor."

"By imperial decree, the rebel Wang Yibo, having committed countless unforgivable crimes against the realm, is hereby sentenced to death."

Yibo had to bite back a laugh. The things he'd done to outrage the dignity of the new Emperor were enough to have him dismembered by horse cart, and that was without taking into account the offences he'd committed upon the sacred body. Xiao Zhan was probably still wearing the evidence in blooming colour over his skin under all those layers.

"Kneel."

Yibo slid to his knees easily. He'd hardly ever been more willing.

Xiao Zhan came down from the raised dais, and leaned in so close that Yibo thought for a wild moment he was about to be kissed in front of the entire court. Instead, Xiao Zhan merely plucked the gold pin out of his guan, pulling his ponytail straight with a grip so tight it hurt. With his other hand, he drew the dagger from Yibo's belt and sliced neatly through the base of the ponytail.

A symbolic beheading, for a very real crime of treason. Yibo bowed down until his forehead thumped against the floor.

"This vassal is grateful for the Emperor's mercy. May my Emperor have ten thousand years of life."

The rest of the great hall dropped to their knees as one and echoed his obeisance.

"May my Emperor have ten thousand years of life!"

Xiao Zhan had stayed standing through the entire audience. Now, for the first time, he made his way up to the golden throne and sat down.

"Rise. Where is my Secretary of the Ministry of Rites?"

A surprisingly young man stepped out of the ranks.

"Here, Bixia."

"The late Great General Wang and his family, being guilty of no offence, should have their names and resting place. Plaques are to be erected for all fifty-six members of the family at Taiji Temple and regular offerings made, to be funded out of the treasury coffers."

A ripple of surprise through the ranks, quickly halted as they stole glances at Yibo, still standing in the middle of the hall.

Taiji Temple, where fallen heroes were honoured, right next to the temple that held the plaques of the royal family.

Yibo had to squeeze his eyes shut again. His fearsome reputation would be ruined if he started sobbing.

*

The morning of the coronation ceremony, Yibo opened his eyes at the crack of dawn and found Xiao Zhan already awake and gazing steadily at him within the circle of his arms.

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"You were sleeping so soundly, I didn't want to."

Dream-free nights were still a novelty, although Yibo suspected sheer exhaustion was part of the reason. Perhaps in time he would cease to feel such an urgent, insatiable hunger, fueled by Xiao Zhan's teasing, half-hearted denials, and shameless, capricious demands, but he couldn't imagine it.

Couldn't imagine feeling any other way than this, needing to take Xiao Zhan apart, to have Xiao Zhan empty him of all resentment and anger and worldly cares; take everything there was to take from him.

"If the Emperor desires something, he should simply take it. That's his right."

Xiao Zhan's light, breathy laugh shook through Yibo's chest. "Whatever right I have to you, Wang Yibo, that has nothing to do with the will of heaven. Will you not admit it?"

Yibo smirked. "Then I'm free to leave?"

"Always. What say you to a royal marriage? The Princess Royal Anle is a suitable age." A brush of soft lips against his throat, followed by the pad of Xiao Zhan's fingers, a touch that started gentle and turned into a tight, firm grip around his neck. "She's a lovely girl, carefully brought up. Much nicer than any of her brothers."

"No."

"No?"

"I don't want your sister, Zhan-gege," Yibo said, with not a little petulance.

"You should at least see her first."

"Why? It would be futile. I don't want anyone else but you."

No one else could drive him to distraction with one scornful flicker of their eyes.

"Are you going to refuse an imperial decree?" Xiao Zhan said, in mock outrage.

Yibo reared up and rolled them, pinning Xiao Zhan beneath him. "I don't dare. But Bixia shouldn't test me like this."

Xiao Zhan wound his arms around Yibo's neck and smiled. "I told you, I'm not nearly as nice as she is. If you really won't, then I suppose you'll have to settle for me."

He hadn't shifted to using the imperial honorific 'I' in front of Yibo, not until that moment.

"This humble one is honoured."

Honoured that careful, calculating Xiao Zhan could be imperious and wilful with him. That he could make Xiao Zhan unreasonable.

Yibo drew Xiao Zhan in and kissed him like it was more vital as breath, wound his hands into the silky waterfall of his hair, and felt utterly at peace. Xiao Zhan let him for a long moment before pushing him away.

"Get up, then. Help your emperor dress."

The new Emperor's formal robes, hastily made, were laid out on a stand. Yibo draped the robe layers over Xiao Zhan and wrapped them tight around him, black over yellow, the long red bixi tied around his waist to drape down to below the knee, then the leather and silk belts to secure all three layers. The black over-robe embroidered in gold with the sun, the moon, the three stars, the sacred mountains, the pheasant; dragons in flight over the sleeves.

Xiao Zhan raised his arms when Yibo asked, resettling the large sleeves so that both dragons were visible. He narrowed his eyes at the man in the bronze mirror. "I made a vow to myself, when Mother was executed: I'd wear mourning for her until I could replace the white with this."

To do what he did, Xiao Zhan had had to hold his rage and grief so close that no one knew, and he had expressed it the only way he could.

Yibo wrapped his arms around Xiao Zhan from behind and squeezed. "It looks good," he said, because Xiao Zhan would prefer it to any words of comfort. And because it was true.

The black over-robe was long, the fabric heavy. Xiao Zhan looked imposing in it, like he was born to be venerated.

Next Yibo brushed his hair out, drew it up in a single long tail and wound it around a small guan.

"I imagine in the capital teahouses they'll say that the Wolf of the South is the true ruler of this land and the Emperor is just his puppet," Xiao Zhan said to his reflection. With his hair up, his face lost its residual softness. He looked serious, authoritative. Like he could cut a man down with a flicker of his eyes. A little closer to his true self.

"They'll say, why did the Wolf of the South give up his ruinous rebellion in the first place?" Yibo countered. "The Emperor was the one who coaxed him into surrendering. The only one who could."

Yibo placed the Emperor's mianguan on Xiao Zhan's head, over the smaller guan, and fastened it with a long emerald hairpin. Next he took up a red silk cord, and tied it to both ends of the hairpin, leaving plenty of slack. Xiao Zhan tilted his head up so that Yibo could tuck the cord under his chin.

The set of twelve jade tassels at the front and back of the mianguan, long enough to reach his shoulders, rustled as he moved.

"Will you be my sword, my shield? Root out my enemies and slaughter them before they even realise they've been discovered?"

Yibo picked up a long gold hairpin from the dressing table and used it to brush the curtain of tassels aside. Like a groom lifting the bride's pearl veil on their wedding night, he thought. He kissed Xiao Zhan's forehead, his eyelids, and finally his lips, before he let the curtain drop and went to his knees with a thump.

"Yes, of course, without question. If the world turns against you, I'll oppose the world."

"Don't," Xiao Zhan said, though he looked shyly pleased. "I can't stand to see you suffer, you know that."

Yibo rested his cheek against the fall of fabric covering Xiao Zhan's thigh and breathed in agarwood and orchids and jasmine, his own private garden to shelter him from the world. "A warrior dies for his zhiji. To do so for Bixia would be my honour."

It would be worth it, he thought. For the one who had given him back his life.

Xiao Zhan cupped his face, forcing him upright with his grip. "No. Live for me. That's my decree. That's all I've ever wanted for you. Live well, and love me."

Yibo was the one on his knees, and yet Xiao Zhan was the one imploring, his grip strong enough to hurt, and giving him a smile that started as a tentative, tremulous thing and slowly grew brillant, like the first light of spring. Enough light to burn everything else out of him.

"I do," Yibo said. "I will."

抛去江山如画 换她笑面如花

I'd throw away this picturesque realm, for her smile lovely as a flower

抵过这一生空牵挂

Better that than to pine fruitlessly for this lifetime

心若无怨爱恨也随他

Would that I had no enmity in my heart, I'd cast aside love and hate

天地大情路永无涯

The world is large and the path of love is endless

只为她袖手天下

Only for her I would hand over all the land under heaven

- 天下 (Under Heaven) by Zhang Jie

Notes:

1. I made a family tree to help you keep track of the royal line:
2.  
3. Six sons and one daughter of the Emperor Xiao Guoan are mentioned in this story. 1) the Crown Prince born to the first empress (posthumously styled Xiaoming), Yibo's aunt; 2) Prince Huaquan (华全王), second born, 3) Prince Dingwei (定魏王), third-born, son of the consort appointed empress after the first empress was deposed and killed; 4) Prince Chengan (承安王), fifth-born, son of Noble Consort Zhen (贞贵妃), 5) title-less A-Lei, ninth-born, son of Consort Zheng, and 6) Princess Anle (安乐), also born to Consort Zheng.
4. A Noble Consort (贵妃) is ranked just below the Empress in the rear palace hierarchy and is usually a person of noble birth.
5. This story is written to be true not to actual history but to the palace intrigue novels and dramas of my youth. I have maintained roughly era appropriate historical accuracy as much as possible, give or take 100 years. The setting is a fictionalised Northern and Southern States period. Fun fact, the Southern Qi emperors did have the surname Xiao (although it's not Xiao Zhan's Xiao, which didn't exist back then).
6. Prince Chengan (承安王): Princes have personal names of course, but few get to use them. Before they're granted titles they're usually referred to by their inferiors (which is almost everyone) as [birth order]-Dianxia (殿下)/Wangye (王爷). (A-Lei in this story is an example of a young prince who doesn't yet have a title.) Dianxia is an honourific for princes, princesses and empresses, similar to "your highness", and Wangye simply means "prince". So Wu-Dianxia/Wu-Wangye is "Fifth Prince", and Jiu-Dianxia is Ninth Prince, etc. Chengan/承安 means to ensure peace.
7. Kaifeng is a real place! It's one of the great ancient capitals and it's in what is now Henan.
8. Great General (大将军): Typically the highest ranking military officer in the realm.
9. 里 (li): Unit of measurement for length. A li is about 3 miles.
10. Weimao (帷帽): A wide-brimmed hat with a shoulder-length veil.
11. Guanyin (观音): A Bodhisattva of mercy/compassion and a major goddess in Chinese cosmology. Sometimes depicted as male.
12. Ancient China adhered to kin punishment, where family members were also held liable for crimes depending on severity. The term 族诛 (family execution) refers to crimes so severe that the entire family were executed for them, most commonly for plotting against the rule of the Emperor.
13. Guan (冠) is the umbrella term for headgear. Here the first reference is to the guanli (冠礼), the Chinese coming of age ceremony where men will literally have a guan placed on their head.
14. There are multiple references in this story to the practice of 和亲 (marriage alliance), the political strategy of appeasing neighbouring states by marrying minor princesses to their rulers.
15. When two sides are at war, envoys should not be executed (两国交兵，不斩来使) is an old norm of warfare dating back to the Warring States period.
16. Stars around the moon at night time (众星捧月) is an idiom used to refer to someone who is surrounded by people who respect and admire them.
17. General Who Pacifies the North (平北将军): Title for senior military figure.
18. Where someone has multiple older siblings of the same sex, it's common to refer to them as [birth order]-ge/jie. E.g. Xiao Zhan calls his oldest brother da-ge, his second oldest er-ge, his third oldest san-ge etc, and he himself is referred to as wu-ge by A-Lei.
19. Shu (蜀) is the old name for the Sichuan region that Xiao Zhan is from.
20. Witchcraft (蛊术): Here witchcraft specifically refers to gushu, which was largely practiced by women in areas like Sichuan and Yunnan. Witchcraft of all kinds was strictly forbidden under most regimes and anyone found guilty of practising it in the palace (usually by trying to curse someone) was severely punished.
21. Gold branch and jade leaves (金枝玉叶) is an idiom used to refer to direct line descendents of the royal family.
22. Xiao-Yue-ge (小粤哥): What Xia Zhiguang calls Peng Chuyue.
23. Gongzi (公子): Title used to refer to men, typically men with a little status.
24. Zhao Feiyan: Legendary Han dynasty empress known for her beauty and for being very slender and graceful.
25. Gazi-ge: Gazi is Ayanga's nickname.
26. Qingming: Chinese festival for honouring the dead, still celebrated today.
27. Men are not blades of grass, to be free of sentiment (人非草木，孰能无情) is a saying derived from a passage in Water Margin, which makes it very anachronistic for this story but I really like it. You may also recognise it from CQL. It's a lament that however much one might want to be free of sentiment, their very nature as people makes that impossible.
28. Face reading and rebel's bones (反骨): Part of Chinese folk belief is that a person's character, past lives and even their future could be read off their face, and that a particular bone structure meant someone would be lucky, or that (as in this case) they might be inclined to disloyalty.
29. Succession in ancient Chinese royalty was determined by two things, depending on the dynasty in question. In some the norm was that the oldest son should inherit, although this often not followed, and in some the determinative factor was whether they had been born to the Empress. There was often a big difference in status between sons born to the wife and sons born to minor concubines.
30. A luohan bed (罗汉床) is the kind of daybed you see in shows like CQL which can be used during the day as a sofa/couch and also doubles as a bed.
31. Rear palace (后宫) is the Chinese term for the imperial harem. It refers both figuratively to the Emperor's harem and literally to the palaces where the Emperor's family live (as opposed to the palaces where official business is conducted).
32. The most well known and often depicted succession struggle in Chinese history is probably that between the sons of Kangxi Emperor. The man had a lot of sons and many of them wanted to be the next emperor. This led to factionalism and intense scheming and strife for many years, with a very surprising outcome that's still a subject of heated debate today. Some of the events of this story were inspired by that struggle.
33. Polearm: A-Lei's weapon here is a ji/戟, kind of like a cross between a spear and a halberd.
34. No such thing as too much deception in war (兵不厌诈) is an ancient idiom meaning that in battle one has to be flexible and use ruses/deception if necessary to achieve victory.
35. If the Emperor asks his subject for death, the subject must die (君让臣死，臣不得不死) is a well-known idiom first derived in the Han dynasty from Confucian philosophy, to reinforce the idea that the vassal's loyalty to the sovereign had to be absolute and unquestioning.
36. A note about top/bottom politics in ancient China, especially around this time period: it was fine and even trendy to have a male lover, but there was very much an expectation that if a powerful man had a male lover, the powerful man would top.
37. Gonggong (公公) is a specific title for addressing eunuchs.
38. There's no such thing as sentiment for those who live within the four walls of the palace (最是无情帝王家) is a line from a Tang dynasty poem by Bai Juyi about the nastiness of palace politics.
39. Before the invention of glass, windows in Chinese houses were covered over with specially made paper.
40. The Grand Chancellor was the most powerful official in the imperial government.
41. Liu Bang was the founding emperor of the Han dynasty. He did indeed start out as basically a peasant leading a rebellion.
42. Weiqi (围棋) is a very very old board game invented in China about 2,500 years ago, the mastery of which was seen as a necessity for a proper scholar. You may also know it by its Japanese name go.
43. Thank the heavens and earth (谢天谢地) is basically the Chinese version of "thank God", except much stronger.
44. Forbidden Regiment (禁军) is the Chinese term for royal guard, for the army whose specific purpose is to protect the imperial palace.
45. Bixia (陛下) is an honorific title used to refer to an emperor.
46. Xiao Zhan is quoting from The Mencius, the book which contains the teachings of the philosopher Mengzi. The people-first ideas that he's advancing for good governance may sound modern but they are in fact more than two thousand years old.
47. "Let the ruler be a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father, and the son a son" is a quote from the Analects of Confucius.
48. As soon as the cunning hare is caught, the hunting dog is boiled (狡兔死，良狗烹) is an old idiom dating back to the Record of History, cautioning those who toil on behalf of the powerful of their fate once they serve their purpose.
49. Emperors called themselves 朕 (zhen). I couldn't render this properly in translation so I've left it as "I" in the story.
50. The emperor's formal robes (冕服) have a very specific prescribed look. I've described only some of it here - there are actually 12 decorative elements which must be present, aside from the black and yellow robes themselves. The bixi (蔽膝) is as I described a special item of clothing that goes over the robes.
51. White is the colour of mourning in China. A person might wear mourning for their parent for up to three years or more.
52. The emperor's "crown" is a special guan called the mianguan (冕冠). It also has a very specific prescribed look. The most iconic elements are the red ribbon that goes below the chin and the set of jade tassels at the front and back which form a veil. The number of tassels is significant too - twelve is the number required for the Emperor.
53. In wedding ceremonies of this time, instead of the bride being covered in a red cloth veil, it was also common (especially for rich and/or important people) for the bride to wear a very fancy guan with a curtain of pearl tassels instead. The groom would ceremonially "raise" the curtain by brushing it aside with a small staff/stick.
54. A warrior dies for his zhiji (士为知己者死) is an idiom originally from the Record of History, meaning that a person was more than willing to die for the one who understood and trusted him. You may have seen zhiji translated elsewhere as "soulmate". It essentially means "someone who knows you" in the deepest possible sense.