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When Yu Ziyuan first wakes up, she wishes she were dead.

The pain is excruciating, overwhelming. She ought to be screaming, but her body is beyond screaming, beyond movement, beyond even opening her eyes—it feels like someone has torn her meridians from her body. A thought occurs to her in that suffocating fog of agony that she should have killed herself first, killed herself to deprive that latrine-licking cur of a Wen and his gutter-born wench the satisfaction of torturing her.

But then she hears her son’s name, and it pierces through the miasma like an arrow of purification.

“—Jiang Cheng and Madam Yu both?? What were you thinking!” It’s an unfamiliar woman’s voice, not Wang Lingjiao’s, but still those words fill Ziyuan with horror; she’d sent her son away from Lotus Pier! She’d paid with so much blood, with her own life and the lives of her disciples, all to hold the Wens off from the chase as long as she could, was it not enough?

There’s a soft voice she can barely hear through the rushing in her ears. “I’m, I’m sorry, Jie, but—”

“Blame me,” says a third voice, which Ziyuan recognizes with annoyance as Wei Wuxian's. “I forced him to rescue them both.” Rescue? What does that misbegotten pest mean by that? Is she no longer at Lotus Pier? They can't be at Lotus Pier though, not her son too, he cannot, she can’t bear it if her son were being held captive too, she can’t—

“I certainly blame you,” the woman snaps, “I blame you both! Do you really think I can hide them from Wen Chao if he really comes looking?”

A desperate hope grows, and then grows further when she hears her daughter say, “We’ll leave as soon as we can, Wen-guniang, but in the meantime we beg for your kindness.” That’s her daughter, her daughter sounding worried but alive, and Ziyuan clings to that, because the only alternative is that her daughter and son are both prisoners of Wen Chao with her, and that would be completely unacceptable.

“…very well,” says the unfamiliar woman’s voice, while Ziyuan struggles to open her eyes, to move, to do anything at all. “Bring them in.” Then someone jostles her body, and the rushing in her ears drowns out everything else as the pain tows her under.

###

When Yu Ziyuan wakes up again, she thinks that she is dead. She’s alone in the dark and can’t feel her body, and the absence of pain is glorious. That midden-faced Wang bitch must have accidentally killed her with her incompetent torture methods, which means Ziyuan has surely become a vengeful ghost that exists solely to destroy her and her sneering little boytoy. Excellent. In life, Ziyuan had resented being a third daughter, but now she’s grateful her parents had never bothered paying for the soul-cleansing rituals that would have prevented her from becoming undead.

Then she hears her son’s name again.

“—Jiang Cheng, come on, don’t be stubborn. Eat something.” That wretched Wei Wuxian’s voice again, bothering her even in the afterlife. Does this mean she’s not haunting Wang Lingjiao? Surely this can’t be Lotus Pier, not if Wei Wuxian is here trying to nag her son to eat.

“Please, A-Cheng,” says her daughter. Ah, of course Ziyuan’s spirit is trailing after her children even in death. “I made this soup just for you, so you can get better. Wen-guniang says you need to build your strength.”

Wen-guniang? A few memories shake loose. No, she’s not dead…had there been a rescue…? But her daughter had been speaking to a Wen-guniang…does this mean they’re all still held captive by the Wens?

Ziyuan struggles to open her eyes, but she can’t feel her eyelids. She can’t feel the rest of her body either, a smothering numbness that she belatedly recognises as the effect of an anaesthetic tonic in her veins. She’d been very familiar with it as a child; the Yu sect physician liked to trap her in the infirmary with it whenever she’d been more seriously injured, and would pour it down her throat while she was still half-conscious so she couldn’t storm out of the infirmary before she was fully healed.

Well she knows how to deal with that. She regulates her breathing and sends her senses inward. To her surprise, her golden core isn’t entirely depleted, which is a minor miracle considering how she’d burned herself out during the battle at Lotus Pier, and then barely clung onto life as she was tortured after. It’s not much, but that little flicker of her qi is enough for her to circulate through her meridians in precise pulses to carefully unravel that artificial numbness.

And as expected, once the numbness goes, the pain comes crashing back with a vengeance. But it’s nothing she can’t push through. She takes grim, measured breaths until the burning from her right leg and her back subside into something more bearable, and after far too long, she finally masters herself enough to open her eyes.

The first thing she sees is her daughter. Despite having already heard her voice, seeing Yanli with her own eyes fills Ziyuan with such overwhelming relief that she doesn’t even mind that Wei Wuxian is also there, standing right next to her. She scans Yanli for injuries with a practised maternal eye: Yanli is kneeling next to a bed with a tray in hand, looking pale and worried but otherwise uninjured, thank all the heavens.

And then Yanli fusses with a bowl of soup on the tray and says, “A-Cheng, please…” and Ziyuan realises that there’s someone lying motionless on the bed beside them, and that someone is Ziyuan’s son.

Before she can think better of it, Ziyuan is pushing herself up towards them—her vision goes grey the moment she sits up in bed, and when she forces herself to stand up anyway, excruciating pain stabs through her right leg and sends her crashing to the ground.

Through the renewed roaring in Ziyuan ears, she hears something shattering, and her daughter crying out, “Mother!” And then her son’s voice as well, a whisper of “…Mother…?” that she can barely hear. It takes her a moment to push through the pain, to realise that she’s collapsed on the floor and is looking down at her own leg, blood seeping through plain white cloth, a spreading pool of red, red, red, and the roaring in her ears becomes screaming instead: the screaming of her disciples, dying around her. The furious and agonised yells of Jinzhu and Yinzhu as they throw themselves against overwhelming numbers at Ziyuan’s orders and fall, one after the other. The shout her husband gives as he bursts through the doors, and the horror Ziyuan feels hearing it, knowing he’s come to die with her. Why did he come? Why didn’t he stay with her children? Is it not enough for her to give up her own life? She’d meant to give up her own life, to die honourably with the man and the sect she’d chosen, and she meets Zhao Zhuliu’s eyes and knows he’d let her—but then Wang Lingjiao’s voice rings out, “Wait! Don’t let her die! She owes me for this scar!” And then—

“What is going on?”

A clear stream of qi pours into Ziyuan’s meridians, briskly pushing back the pain and the dark. When she blinks her vision clear, Ziyuan finds herself looking at a beautiful, unfamiliar woman in bright red robes.

A Wen, Ziyuan thinks with a snarl, clenching her fists and bracing to lunge, but then her daughter says, “Wen-guniang, my mother has woken up!” with an undisguised thread of relief in her voice, and Ziyuan pauses.

“…yes, I see,” the woman replies. “Which is a surprise, considering how much tonic I gave her.”

Ziyuan narrows her eyes. There is an open door behind this woman, but neither of her children have tried to make a break for it. Ziyuan gives a quick glance at them and sees that her daughter has a hesitant smile on her face while her son is sitting up in bed and looking away from them entirely. Even Wei Wuxian is looking more relaxed, a simpering smile growing as if the sight of a pretty face has knocked the few thoughts out of his foolish head.

The pieces fall into place—this must be Wen Qing then, who was at the Cloud Recesses at the same time as her children. She’d already been more accomplished than some cultivators thrice her age then, and even Lan Qiren had admitted that she could one day outshine all the physicians of their generation. And of course they learned later that Wen Qing was Wen Ruohan’s personal physician, in addition to being his distant relation. Yet in person she looks nothing like him: her eyes are as wide and long-lashed as a doe's, and her hands are soft as a pampered merchant’s daughter’s, and Ziyuan would have summarily dismissed her as trivial if not for the way those doe-eyes are studying Ziyuan as intently as Ziyuan is studying her.

Do you really think I can hide them from Wen Chao? Ziyuan now remembers hearing Wen Qing say. So either Wen Qing has turned traitor to help her children, or this is some sort of double-cross, but either way Ziyuan intends to gain the upper hand first before finding out.

Wei Wuxian says something inane to Wen Qing, and Ziyuan feels her focus narrowing down as Wen Qing says something unimpressed in return. Wen Qing still has her hand wrapped around Ziyuan’s wrist, fingertips resting lightly against Ziyuan’s pulse, but that still leaves Ziyuan's other hand free. And the moment Wen Qing turns towards Wei Wuxian, Ziyuan lunges for a shard of the shattered porcelain bowl that’s lying next to Jiang Cheng’s bed and swings it towards Wen Qing.

She almost manages to bring the sharp edge of the shard to Wen Qing’s neck, but a sharp burst of qi shoots down her left wrist from Wen Qing’s fingertips just as Wen Qing’s head snaps around to her. Ziyuan’s arm muscles seize up briefly. Behind her, she hears voices crying out in alarm as Wen Qing draws a needle out of her sleeve and stabs it dead centre in Ziyuan's forehead.

Ziyuan’s entire body freezes up. Ordinarily, she would immediately redirect her qi around that blocked acupoint, but her core is still critically weak, and instead she is left helpless as Wen Qing swiftly stabs her with more needles: one in her neck, two behind her ears. Numbness spreads through Ziyuan all at once. She teeters in her frozen half-crouch and begins to topple to one side, but Wen Qing just as smoothly catches the dead weight of Ziyuan’s body and eases her gently to the ground.

Distantly, Ziyuan hears her daughter saying, hushed, “Did…did you just knock my mother out…?” and then her son muttering, “Holy shit you did, you really did.” And then, as her senses start to fade, she hears Wei Wuxian say, “Wen Qing, you are the bravest person I’ve ever met in my life.” Ziyuan almost finds the strength to get up again if only to slap him, but Wen Qing doesn’t bother to reply. Instead, she slides a final needle right above Ziyuan’s upper lip, and as Ziyuan’s vision tunnels, the final thing she sees is Wen Qing’s dark eyes pinned coldly on her, her delicate face tight with ruthless concentration.

###

The third time Yu Ziyuan wakes up, she finds that she’s as good as dead. She is once again unable to feel her body, though this time she’s able to open her eyes and turn her head. She tries to reach for her golden core, but something is blocking off her inner senses.

So this is the skill of Wen Ruohan’s personal physician. It pisses Ziyuan off, remembering how easily Wen Qing paralysed her, but her irritation is laced with grudging respect—she’s heard that Wen Qing doesn’t cultivate with weapons, but clearly not having a sword hasn’t made her any less dangerous.

The question, then, is how dangerous is she to Ziyuan’s children? Has Wen Qing betrayed her sect, and if so, what are her reasons? Ziyuan supposes the fact that she’s still alive should reassure her, but she can’t see either of her children in this sickroom anymore. If this is some sort of double-cross, and Ziyuan is trapped in this bed, helpless…The way Wen Qing had looked yesterday, focussed and cold, rises in Ziyuan’s mind again, and her gut begins to fill with dread.

Before Ziyuan can decide what to do about it, Wen Qing herself walks into the room. Yanli and Wei Wuxian follow close behind her, and Ziyuan feels some of the dread dissipate at the sight of her daughter, still looking unharmed. Wen Qing says something to Yanli in soft, conciliatory tones, but Ziyuan knows better now, and notices the way Wen Qing’s eyes have immediately fixed on Ziyuan, as if Ziyuan is still a threat to her despite being unable to move.

Yanli turns to Ziyuan a moment later. “Oh, she’s awake!” she says, and rushes to Ziyuan’s side. Behind her Wei Wuxian mutters some kind of excuse and hastily backpedals out the door (Ziyuan also notices the fond eye-roll Wen Qing makes at his retreating back, and begins to form an idea about Wen Qing’s reasons). “How are you feeling, Mother?”

“How should I know?” Ziyuan replies, glaring at Wen Qing. “I can’t feel anything from the neck down.”

Yanli falters, but Wen Qing only meets Ziyuan’s glare squarely. “I wouldn’t have to keep you paralysed if you hadn’t tried to kill me.”

“I wouldn’t have tried to kill you if your cousin hadn’t tried to kill me first,” Ziyuan retorts.

“I’m not my cousin,” Wen Qing says evenly, while Yanli flinches between them and murmurs, “Mother, please, Wen-guniang is helping us.”

And why is that, Ziyuan wonders, even as she snaps, “We wouldn’t need her help if her sect hadn’t massacred ours.” She turns back to Wen Qing. “Are you going to stand there in those robes and claim you’re not a Wen either?”

Ziyuan expects her to renounce her sect and all her murderous relations whether or not she means it, because words are cheap, and she assumes Wen Qing must already have said something of that sort to earn her children’s trust. But instead, Wen Qing says nothing, her face a tightly controlled mask, and it’s Yanli who breaks the silence. “Please let me apologise on my mother’s behalf,” Yanli begins, dipping a low bow, and sounding so much like her father that Ziyuan’s gorge rises. “She’s—”

“Don’t you bow to her, A-Li!” Ziyuan interrupts, snarling. “And don’t you dare apologise when I’ve spoken nothing but the truth!”

In Ziyuan’s head, her husband sighs. Ah, San-niangzi, is this really the best way to find out more about—

Shut up, Ziyuan replies savagely. You chose to die in Lotus Pier instead of staying with our children, you have no say in how I talk to anyone!

“Are the Wens not to blame for every single life lost at Lotus Pier?” Ziyuan continues, when Wen Qing continues to say nothing, her face still closed off. “Should I not have tried to kill you? Or are you claiming to not belong to that accursed sect?”

“Does it matter what sect I belong to,” Wen Qing finally replies, “if I’m willing to treat you?”

Ziyuan barks out a disbelieving laugh. “Does it matter! Does it matter where your loyalties lie, when your cousin wants me and my children dead? Does it matter where your loyalties lie, if your uncle is dabbling in the demonic arts and slaughtering entire sects with the thinnest of excuses, including innocent women and children?” Wen Qing flinches, a tightening around her eyes so subtle that Ziyuan might have missed it if she weren’t looking so closely. “Does it matter, Wen Qing, if you’re the personal physician of Wen Ruohan, if—”

“Yu Ziyuan.” Wen Qing interrupts, and Ziyuan is struck momentarily speechless at the audacity; this woman who’s her children’s age, daring to address her as if they're equals? Even Yanli gasps, hands flying up to cover her mouth. Wen Qing’s expression has gone flat again, but Ziyuan thinks she can hear a trace of bitterness in her voice when she says, “As you say, I am a Wen. I will never not be a Wen. But right now, I’m not my uncle’s personal physician; right now I’m yours, so I’ll thank you to let me carry on with my work.”

And just as abruptly, Wen Qing sits down on a stool at Ziyuan’s bedside, then unceremoniously pulls open the bottom of Ziyuan’s robes.

If Ziyuan had any control of her body, she might have reflexively slapped Wen Qing’s hands away like a scandalised maiden; whoever dressed Ziyuan in these plain, undamaged robes hadn’t given her pants underneath them, and her modesty is only barely protected by the drape of the cloth. As it is, Ziyuan’s body stays completely still as Wen Qing begins to remove the thick bandages wrapped around Ziyuan’s now-revealed thigh. Ziyuan opens her mouth to yell, then shuts it again abruptly when the bandages fall off and a thick stench hits her nose. Yanli gasps again, but Wen Qing looks entirely unfazed, a look of cool concentration drawing across her face. “Jiang-guniang, my brother should be done brewing the salve now. I need it, please tell him to bring it here.”

Yanli nods and leaves the room at speed while Wen Qing pulls out a surgeon’s kit of some sort from her sleeve. This time, Ziyuan doesn’t try to interrupt; she can barely see her own wound while lying down frozen like this, but what she can see is awful enough to shake her. When Wang Lingjiao had cut Ziyuan’s leg open just to hear her scream, Ziyuan hadn’t had the presence of mind to track the size of the wound, but now she can see that it stretches from above her right knee almost all the way to her hip, all of it splayed open in a mangled mess of blood and pus and exposed bone. Ziyuan’s been badly injured many times in her life—she didn’t become the Violet Spider by peacefully playing weiqi—but it’s never been this bad.

As if reading her mind, Wen Qing says matter-of-factly, “It’s gotten this bad because your core was depleted so thoroughly that your body hasn’t been able to mend itself. I’ll do my best to keep the infection at bay, remove all this necrotic tissue, but only once your core recovers will it begin to truly heal.”

Wen Qing sounds just like every healer Ziyuan’s ever had, enough that Ziyuan finds herself asking, “But it will heal, right?”

“No reason it shouldn’t,” Wen Qing replies absently, putting aside one blood-stained scalpel and picking up another. Ziyuan watches as Wen Qing’s blades cut through her flesh painlessly, blood oozing onto the soiled bandages. There’s something almost morbidly hypnotic about the steadiness of her blades, enough that Ziyuan almost misses the sound of approaching footsteps.

The door opens, and a boy in Wen robes walks in. “Jiejie, I brought the salve,” he says—Wen Qing’s younger brother then. “Is this okay…? I just took it off the fire and—” he glances over at Ziyuan's unclothed leg, then whips his head aside. A blotchy flush rises in his cheeks, and Ziyuan finds herself caught between amusement and aggravation at his expression, as if her open robes are more horrifying than her gaping wound.

Wen Qing is rolling her eyes at her brother herself as she takes the pot of salve from his outstretched hands. He sits himself down behind her (eyes still averted from Ziyuan), and she uncaps the pot and takes a deep sniff. “You’ve steeped it for too long again,” she scolds, “and we’ll need twice this much, you’ve seen her back too.”

“What’s wrong with my back?” Ziyuan demands.

“Nothing time and rest won’t heal, once your core recovers,” Wen Qing replies, which is exactly the sort of non-answer Ziyuan hates hearing from physicians. Before Ziyuan can shout, however, Wen Qing glances at her face and continues, “Just flesh wounds from a discipline whip” —Ziyuan doesn’t quite recall getting those wounds, which is just as well— “but they’re cut deep and might scar. Hopefully the salve will help.”

“Why do you care?” Ziyuan asks, and, recalling Wen Qing’s fond eye-roll at Wei Wuxian, adds, “You think saving me a few scars will make that Wei Wuxian like you any better?”

She half-expects Wen Qing to blush and protest, and fully intends to goad her into saying more. But Wen Qing only blinks at her in momentary incomprehension. Then her eyes dart briefly sky-ward before looking back down at her work on Ziyuan’s leg. “I’m not doing this for Wei Wuxian.”

There’s enough annoyance and exasperation in Wen Qing's voice that Ziyuan can’t help believing her. But that means Ziyuan still doesn’t know why Wen Qing is doing this. “Out of an abiding friendship for my children then?”

Ziyuan highly doubts any friendship could be so abiding, especially since neither of her children have kept in touch with anyone after coming back from Gusu, and indeed, Wen Qing just gives a non-committal hum and doesn’t look up from her work.

“Then what are you doing this for?” Ziyuan continues. “Yourself? Trying to soothe your conscience?”

Wen Qing’s hands hesitate briefly over her work, though her face gives nothing away. “I’m doing this so you’ll get better, and then you can get out and leave me in peace,” she says crisply, and carries on working.

Perhaps a little diplomacy instead, San-niangzi, Fengmian sighs in her head.

That’s your job, Ziyuan thinks bitterly in return, if you wanted to do it, you shouldn’t have died.

Well, if you don’t want to be diplomatic, another voice murmurs fondly in her head, you can always aggravate people until some kind of truth comes out.

That memory gives Ziyuan pause; she hasn’t been reminded of Tingting like this in a while. And now she can’t help wondering what Tingting might say about what Ziyuan has done, about Lotus Pier and— Ziyuan shakes her head sharply, then says to Wen Qing, more savagely than she means to, “You’re doing this so we can get better and leave, so we'll die by your cousin’s hands out of your sight, is that what you mean? As long as you can close your eyes to the murders done in the name of your sect, you think your conscience is clean? You think just because you don’t cultivate with a sword, your hands aren’t as stained with red as your Wen robes? And I’m supposed to grovel and be grateful for your help?”

“I've never asked for your gratitude,” Wen Qing fires back, her eyes still fixed on Ziyuan’s leg even as her hand goes white-knuckled around the handle of her scalpel. “And it wasn’t my idea to help you.”

“So let us die then,” Ziyuan snarls. She hates it when people act like they aren’t responsible for their own actions. “You think it makes a difference to have patched us up, after your cousin has killed the rest of our sect? You think that helping us now somehow makes you a good person? Makes up for all the cruelties and crimes your sect is committing? All the murders—”

“What do you want me to do about it!” Wen Qing snaps, springing abruptly to her feet. Her stool falls over in a clatter behind her. Behind her, her brother jumps while still seated—Ziyuan had nearly forgotten he was there. Ziyuan frowns at him, then back up at Wen Qing when she continues, “It’s a war, people die! It’s—”

“Bullshit!” Ziyuan shouts back. She can’t spring to her own feet, much as she wants to, so she settles for giving Wen Qing her fiercest glare. “It’s not a war! Your uncle is slaughtering his way through the cultivation world in his mad quest for power! And your cousins are happy to do the dirty work for him! And you, you stand there in your Wen robes and pretend you’re just a simple physician, trying to save lives? You think saving us erases the fact that you’re a Wen?”

Wen Qing inhales sharply, colour rising in her cheeks, her fists suddenly clenching tight even though she doesn’t look away. Her brother remains silent, but he bites his lip and curls into himself. For a long moment, Ziyuan waits for Wen Qing to choke out some kind of denial, or to simply storm out, but instead she only says, surprisingly evenly, “No, nothing erases the fact that I’m a Wen. But if you’re holding me accountable for the actions of others, then what about you, Yu Ziyuan? Are all the deaths at Lotus Pier your fault, for letting Wen Chao get away with it? Are you responsible for that too?”

Guilt boils through Ziyuan, burning away the words that were on the tip of her tongue.

Wen Qing’s chin lifts up at Ziyuan’s silence, her face closed off and remote. “Wei Wuxian told me about how you sent him and Jiang Cheng away from Lotus Pier when battle broke out, tied up by Zidian. Why would you send your strongest disciples away with your spiritual weapon unless you knew you were going to lose, unless you were only planning to buy time? And if that’s the case, if you want to talk about responsibility, then—”

“Then I am responsible, yes,” Ziyuan retorts, and Wen Qing stops. “Did you think I would be too cowardly to admit it? Yes, I knew that all of us who stayed behind might die at Lotus Pier, and still I made us stand and fight! Yes, the deaths of everyone at Lotus Pier are Wen Chao’s fault but still my responsibility. And it’ll be my responsibility to kill him with my own two hands too! But I was willing to give up my life—to bear the burden of everyone’s lives on my conscience—to save my son. To save the sect heir of the Jiang sect. And what about you? Who are you trying to save? What—”

Wen Qing’s gaze darts suddenly towards her brother at those words, and Ziyuan pauses. She meant that last question as a goad, meant to continue by asking if Wen Qing is willing to let other innocent people die just to save her own skin, but Ziyuan knows a tell when she sees one. Well done, Tingting says in her head, now use this information wisely, I know you can.

But Ziyuan’s never been a bastion of wisdom, unlike Tingting; all she has is an unerring instinct for blood. “So yes, I’ll take responsibility for what happened at Lotus Pier—I wanted to save my children’s lives no matter the cost, and I did. And you, Wen Qing? Do you even know what you want? And are you willing to bear the cost?”

And there, Wen Qing looks away at last.

The satisfaction of seeing it is somehow tinged with sourness. As the silence drags on, and emotions Ziyuan can’t parse flicker across Wen Qing’s face, Ziyuan becomes painfully aware of where she is again; lying motionless and defenceless on a sickbed, her entire mangled thigh exposed, the stench of infection heavy in the air, Wen Qing’s brother fidgeting in his seat with a scalpel fallen at his feet, the blade small but still potentially lethal—

Wen Qing suddenly bites out. “I told you we need more salve, didn’t I. Go get some.”

Ziyuan blinks at her in confusion. But then Wen Ning rises to his feet a moment later, and Ziyuan realises that comment wasn’t directed at her. “But, but Jie,” he begins, “are you sure—maybe I should—”

“Forget it, there’s no need to mix up another pot,” Wen Qing interrupts. “The Eight Hundred Breath poultice will do for the patient’s back. Well, what are you waiting for?” she adds, when her brother doesn’t move. “I said, go.”

“Alright, Jie. I’ll—I’ll be right back.” Wen Ning turns slightly towards Ziyuan as if about to look at her, then does a full-body flinch away and blushes as if suddenly reminded of propriety, of all things. It almost makes Ziyuan laugh.

But then he leaves, and Ziyuan is left alone with Wen Qing. Wen Qing, whose face has slid back into a mask of neutrality. Who then proceeds to right her stool and sit back down, pick up another scalpel, and go back to work on Ziyuan’s leg in silence.

What are you doing this for? Ziyuan wonders again. Since you do know saving our lives won’t be enough to soothe your conscience, won’t be enough to matter. What do you want?

But at least she has a conscience. Unfortunately, it seems that she also has a burden of someone to protect, and for that, Ziyuan finds that she of all people can’t blame her at all.

###

It takes barely half a day for Ziyuan to reluctantly conclude that she’d let her temper get the better of her; even if everything she said was true, perhaps her words were…undiplomatic. So Ziyuan can’t help but be silently, begrudgingly grateful that Wen Qing still lets Ziyuan’s children wander around freely, even if Ziyuan isn’t (Wen Qing has decided to keep Ziyuan pinned in place by needles, a decision that Ziyuan regards as highly aggravating, but unfortunately sensible). And she can’t help but be more begrudgingly grateful that Wen Qing continues to treat Ziyuan’s injuries like a simple physician.

Honestly, Ziyuan expected it to be more infuriating, having to accept medical treatment from someone in Wen robes (even if that someone seems to disapprove of the Wen sect’s actions). But it helps that Wen Qing carries herself like the physicians Ziyuan likes best, the ones with experienced hands and a straightforward manner, who’ll tell you what they think of your condition to your face instead of trying to put pretty words around a bad situation. It helps, too, that Ziyuan can see her leg improving dramatically within just a few days, to see it resembling an actual limb again instead of a piece of rotting meat.

(It helps, too, that after the first time Ziyuan wakes up from screaming nightmares by jerking awake so hard she sprains her neck, Wen Qing tells her in no uncertain terms that she needs to drink a calming draught, if only so her body can actually rest while she sleeps. They argue about that for half a shichen, which was perhaps not Ziyuan’s most diplomatic moment either, but in the end Ziyuan gives in after another screaming nightmare, and Wen Qing doesn’t even say anything like I told you so when she carefully feeds it to Ziyuan, after mixing up a portion that very night.)

Ziyuan still does try to warn her children to be watchful of danger, of possible hidden agendas. But Yanli is convinced that Wen Qing means well, and Jiang Cheng…after the first day, Jiang Cheng is nowhere to be seen.

Ziyuan endures four days of this. Then she is forced to ask, “What’s wrong with my son?”

Wen Qing pauses, one hand hovering over Ziyuan’s half-bandaged thigh; Ziyuan chose to time the question for when Wen Qing is nearly done, in case the conversation ends with Ziyuan yelling and Wen Qing storming out. “What have you been told?” Wen Qing asks, sounding too neutral.

“If I’d been told anything at all, would I be asking you?” Ziyuan snaps. Diplomacy, curse it, she’d forgotten. Moderating her tone, she adds, “So something is wrong. What is it?”

Wen Qing frowns. She wraps another layer of bandage around Ziyuan’s leg, stalling for time, and Ziyuan chants diplomacy, diplomacy, in her head like a mantra until Wen Qing says, “His injuries have all been healed, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s entirely well in his body.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” Ziyuan retorts, though something in her relaxes at hearing Wen Qing confirm it. “Yanli says you told her the same thing. Yet she also says he’s not eating, not drinking, not sleeping. And he’s clearly trying to avoid me so I won’t find out what’s wrong!”

“Or perhaps he’s just avoiding you,” Wen Qing returns blandly. “I’d avoid you if I could.”

“Would you? And yet you're here, so are you lying to me, or to yourself?” Ziyuan shoots back. Wen Qing’s lips twist, and Ziyuan curses inwardly. Thrice-damned dog-rotting diplomacy. “So there’s nothing wrong with Jiang Cheng’s body, did you say? What then? Is there something wrong with his mind?”

A shadow crosses Wen Qing’s face, but she remains silent as she begins to put her tools away. Stalling again. Ziyuan grits her teeth and manages to swallow down her impatience until Wen Qing says, “Perhaps you should ask him yourself.”

“Certainly I’ll do that, if you drag him in here for me. Or pull out these damn needles so I can go find him myself!” When Wen Qing only continues to tidy up, Ziyuan’s patience snaps. “He’s my son! If something is wrong with him, I should be the first to know! If it were your brother, wouldn’t you deserve to know too? Wouldn’t you deserve to have a chance to help him? Wouldn’t you—”

Wen Qing exhales hard. “Perhaps. Perhaps…” Wen Qing closes her eyes for a long moment, and when she opens them, it’s to pin Ziyuan with a hard look. “Will you swear not to hurt me or my brother if I take my needles out?”

Ziyuan’s anger fizzles out in surprise. Take the needles out? So that Ziyuan can…can go out and ask Jiang Cheng herself? Would it not be easier for Wen Qing to simply tell her, especially since she clearly still has concerns for her brother’s safety? And indeed, when Ziyuan says, “I swear I won’t hurt you or your brother while we’re here,” Wen Qing only frowns, looking not the least reassured. “You could just drag Jiang Cheng in here instead,” Ziyuan adds, because surely that would be more acceptable to Wen Qing.

But Wen Qing only shakes her head, looking briefly aggrieved, before she turns and walks out the door without another word.

Ziyuan stares at the closed door. She’s well aware that she’s not the best at diplomacy, but she’s spent her whole life with people capable of much more subtlety, and she would swear that Wen Qing had come to some kind of decision before she left. Ziyuan’s just at a loss as to what decision that is. Perhaps Wen Qing really will come back with Jiang Cheng dragged along behind her. After all, her brother had brazenly poisoned the entire Wen contingent to carry Jiang Cheng and Ziyuan out of Lotus Pier, or so Yanli had told her. She’d wager that if Wen Qing set her mind to it, she could do the same; in fact, Ziyuan has known enough refined, ruthless poisoners to suspect that if Wen Qing did choose to doctor Wen Chao’s wine, she wouldn’t stop at a sleeping draught.

She’s like you, Tingting, Ziyuan thinks, and then stops short at the thought. No one has ever been like Tingting, to Ziyuan—no one has ever come close to approximating Tingting’s space in Ziyuan’s heart. And yet. Perhaps it’s just the way Wen Qing’s dark, intelligent eyes stay fixed on Ziyuan even while Ziyuan shouts; perhaps it’s the way Wen Qing holds herself, head held high and shoulders squared against the world, despite having soft hands that have never borne sword calluses; perhaps it’s simply the way she has surprised Ziyuan. Or perhaps Ziyuan has spent too long in enforced meditation in this quiet hut, and it’s stirring up some sort of foolish nostalgia for her past.

Whatever it is, Ziyuan doesn’t like it. She tries to push it all aside, but is still testy and unsettled when Wen Qing comes back again. Wen Qing pauses for a moment in the open door to give Ziyuan a look of grim resolve, and Ziyuan looks back at her delicate features, her willowy silhouette haloed by the sun, and can’t help thinking, she really looks nothing like you, Tingting, and yet—

And then Wen Qing steps inside, with Yanli behind her, and Wen Ning right behind her holding his sword to Ziyuan’s daughter’s throat.

“What the blazes do you think—” Ziyuan begins, voice rising with every word.

“Please, Mother,” Yanli interrupts, her expression determined and unafraid. “Please hear Wen-guniang out.”

“Thank you, Jiang-guniang.” Wen Qing dips her head to Yanli politely, as if Yanli is passing her a cup of tea instead of standing there with a blade at her neck. “I’ve explained my concerns to Jiang-guniang, and she has agreed to a plan that I think might have a positive outcome.”

“What fool plan is this?” Ziyuan yells. Wen Ning’s face is a picture of obvious reluctance, but his sword is steady, and even if Ziyuan could move she doesn’t know if she could leap across that distance and disarm him before his blade slices her daughter’s skin. She doesn’t know if she would stop at merely disarming him; yes, Ziyuan swore not to hurt him, but he’s threatening her daughter—

Wen Qing steps forward, blocking them from Ziyuan’s view, and gives Ziyuan with a look that seems to see right through her. “I swear I won’t hurt your children,” Wen Qing says quietly, “and I’ll keep to my word if you keep to yours. Now, I’m going to remove your needles. Jiang-gongzi is outside, if you wish to speak to him.” And while Ziyuan is still processing that, Wen Qing kneels beside her and swiftly extracts her needles. One, two, three, and then Ziyuan’s muscles are seizing up painfully as they come back under her control.

It’s frustrating how long it takes her to remember how to move, to remember where each of her limbs start and end. Wen Qing watches her impassively throughout, only reaching out to catch her when she tries to stand and nearly topples to the floor when her bad leg gives way. And before Ziyuan can snarl that she doesn’t need help, damn it, Wen Qing has already stepped back again. Ziyuan teeters alarmingly for a moment before steadying herself, and hears her daughter make a stifled noise. Ziyuan looks over, and her gut churns furiously to see that naked blade at her daughter’s throat; even if she’s almost certain Wen Qing and Wen Ning don’t want to harm her children, it’s only almost certain, and now that she’s free to move she can’t help gauging the distance between them again—she has enough qi to reach Wen Ning in a single leap and rip the sword from his hands and—

Wen Qing steps in between them, blocking Wen Ning from view. “Don’t,” she says savagely, that familiar look of cool, ruthless concentration on her face. “Don’t make me do it, because I will.” And in this, Ziyuan has no trouble believing her.

Slowly, haltingly, Ziyuan takes a step away from her daughter, towards the door. It’s one of the hardest things she’s ever done.

Wen Qing takes a slow breath. There’s a flash of silver in the corner of Ziyuan’s eye, a needle held at the ready in one of Wen Qing’s hands. The look on her face doesn’t waver. “I’ll keep my word if you keep yours,” she repeats, and somehow Ziyuan believes her about this too. “Now you should go to Jiang-gongzi.”

Right, yes, her son. Who’s unwell despite being entirely uninjured, according to Wen Qing. Ziyuan takes another step to the door without quite turning away from her daughter. “Where’s my son, then?” Ziyuan snaps when she’s at the door, not quite ready to step through.

“Jiang-gongzi is sulking underneath a tree due north of here,” Wen Qing replies drily. “You can’t miss him.”

And still Ziyuan hesitates. She takes another look at her daughter, who looks solemn and unafraid. “Wen-guniang thinks you can help A-Cheng,” Yanli says quietly. “I…I hope so too, Mother, I really hope you can.”

Ziyuan exhales sharply. Her son needs her, and Wen Qing thinks she can help. Her daughter trusts Wen Qing not to harm her if Ziyuan leaves. And some part of Ziyuan must trust Wen Qing too, because she manages to turn around, open the door, and finally take her first step out into the light.

###

She finds her son exactly as Wen Qing says: sulking underneath a tree.

“What’s wrong with you,” she asks, even as she kneels beside him, fumbling in her haste to lift his face up so she can look at it properly. His cheeks are gaunt and his colour too pale, and his eyes aren’t focussed on her at all. “A-Cheng,” she demands more urgently, “what’s wrong?”

“Mother,” he says, dully. And then a little bit of life comes into his eyes. “Mother? You’re…out here?” Slowly, he lifts a hand to cling onto her sleeve, just like he used to do when he was younger, and Ziyuan’s heart wrenches in her chest in an overprotective furor. Then his eyes widen, and he jerks away from her, nearly braining himself on the tree trunk. “How did you get out here? Did you…did you kill Wen Qing…??”

“What? No,” she snaps. “She’s holding your sister hostage, so that she can let me come out here to find you, because you’re worrying your sister and you’re worrying me! Now tell me why we’re all worrying about you!”

Jiang Cheng’s eyes widen further. “…she’s holding A-jie hostage?”

Ziyuan makes an aggravated noise. “Your sister’s not in actual danger unless I threaten Wen Qing’s brother. But it’s no thanks to you, sitting out here with your head in the clouds! You know her cultivation is poor and she needs your protection! Why are you just sitting here instead! What’s wrong?”

Usually, the reminder that she’s counting on him to protect Yanli is enough to spur him into action and get him to focus, so it takes Ziyuan completely by surprise when he flinches away like she’s hit him, and then curls into himself.

In alarm, she reaches for him again, cradling his face gently in both her hands. He lets her lift his head up, but refuses to look at her. “A-Cheng, what’s wrong with you? Tell your mother what’s wrong!”

He stays silent, but his lip trembles before he presses them together hard, and she watches in horror as a tear wells up in his eye, then slides down his cheek. Despite Wen Qing’s reassurances, Ziyuan finds herself patting down his robes and scanning his body for injuries, then snatching up his hand to take his pulse and check on his qi—it takes her three tries, because Jiang Cheng starts to struggle weakly against her, pulling his hand back and trying to turn away until she snaps, “Stay still!” And then he does, body frozen and trembling like a sighted hare as she takes his pulse, as she feels its reassuring beat and senses the reassuring warmth of his—

Of his—

“What’s happened to your golden core??”

Jiang Cheng tries to tug his wrist out of her grip. “I’m sorry, Mother, I—”

She shakes his wrist, interrupting him. “I asked, what happened?” But the culprit is obvious, the moment she thinks about it. “It’s Wen Zhuliu, isn’t it? He did this to you. How?? How did they manage to catch up to you??” Didn’t she buy her children enough time? Didn’t she pay with enough blood and pain and lives to buy their safety, to send them to her clan?

Or perhaps the price had been even greater than she thought.

Forcing her voice not to waver, she asks, “Did they catch up to you at your grandmother’s, then? Is your grandmother…Is the Yu clan… Tell me what’s happened to the Yu clan.”

For long moments, Jiang Cheng doesn’t even seem to hear her question. Then he stutters, “I…I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

Jiang Cheng’s face crumples further somehow. “We…we didn’t go to grandmother’s. I wanted to…I needed to know what happened to you and Father, and so I made us turn back and…”

“You went back. To Lotus Pier.” Ziyuan’s terror morphs into rage, expanding so fast within her gut it seems to be crushing her organs. She’s been annoyed at her children before, irritated or frustrated before, but this vicious, black fury feels like something else entirely. “You went back. After I told you to go, after I sacrificed everything just so you could live, after I—”

“Enough.”

Ziyuan spins around at the sound of Wen Qing’s voice, but as she tries to stand, her bad leg gives way again and she finds herself once again caught in Wen Qing’s arms. And when she opens her mouth to keep yelling, she almost chokes on blood, coughing out red splatters onto Wen Qing’s robes.

“I should have known this would happen,” Wen Qing mutters, readjusting her grip so she can take Ziyuan’s weight and send her a brief, bracing transfusion of qi at the same time. Somehow, this ends with Ziyuan’s head resting against Wen Qing’s shoulder and Wen Qing’s arm around her waist, and the white-hot uproar of her emotions settles just slightly.

“Mother, are you alright…?” she hears her son say behind her.

She lifts her head from Wen Qing’s shoulder, her vision still swimming with rage and weakness and rage at her weakness and rage at his weakness too, and she opens her mouth to yell—

“Stop,” Tingting says, her voice of gentle command startlingly close to Ziyuan’s ear, and it shocks her enough to stop her tongue.

But no, it’s not Tingting’s voice, but Wen Qing’s. Wen Qing, who goes on to tell Jiang Cheng calmly, “Your mother will be fine, but she needs rest. And she needs to stop stressing her body out with worry for you.” Ziyuan watches as her son looks away at the rebuke, hands clenching into shaking fists at his side. He’s standing up now, but other than that he looks no better than when Ziyuan first found him—still too pale and too gaunt, shoulders too bowed in defeat. The rage recedes, as quick as it came, and when Wen Qing adds, “I’ll bring her back to the sickroom now,” Ziyuan cannot find it in herself to argue.

###

Even with Wen Qing half-carrying her all the way back to the sickroom, Ziyuan only manages to stay on her feet through sheer force of will. Yanli and Wen Ning are no longer there, so the only one who sees her ungracefully trip and fall back onto the bed is Wen Qing. Somehow, Ziyuan cannot bring herself to care.

“You’ve overexerted yourself,” Wen Qing says briskly. As if to prove her right, Ziyuan’s body chooses that moment to seize up with hacking coughs that end with her spitting out more blood onto the floor between them. With a click of her tongue, Wen Qing eases Ziyuan to lie flat on the bed with steady hands.

Then she reaches into her sleeves and pulls out her needles.

For a moment, Ziyuan considers fighting back. She’s sick and tired of being held prisoner in her own body, of being kept from her children against her will, of being stuck in this sickroom with only the voices in her head—whispering and screaming and accusing—that she can only silence with constant meditation. She doesn’t know where Yanli and Wen Ning are, but she’s certain that he doesn’t still have his sword held against his daughter’s throat.

But Ziyuan knew what Wen Qing thought she was risking, letting Ziyuan speak to her son. And now Ziyuan knows what’s wrong with Jiang Cheng, and as much as this knowledge is too awful for her to fully contemplate yet, she’s still grateful to know. Grateful that Wen Qing had found a way for her to know. So when Wen Qing comes closer and aims her first needle at Ziyuan’s neck, Ziyuan forces herself to lift her chin and bare her throat and stay still, even if her hands claw into the sheets automatically when she does so.

Wen Qing raises her eyebrows but says nothing, sticking another two needles into Ziyuan’s temple. To Ziyuan’s surprise, she can still feel her hands in the sheets, and when Wen Qing reaches for her arm to feel her pulse, Ziyuan can even unclench her fists voluntarily to let her.

“I’m only trying to rebalance your qi, not paralyse you,” Wen Qing says tartly, after checking Ziyuan’s pulse.

“Are you going to paralyse me after, then?” Ziyuan asks. She means for it to come out with some bite, but instead it only sounds like a genuine question.

Wen Qing gives her a long look, then puts Ziyuan’s hand back down at her side and sits on the edge of the bed. “Shouldn’t I?” she asks eventually, and it sounds like a genuine question in return. “Your daughter makes a poor hostage if you don’t think I’ll hurt her, after all.”

“I swore not to hurt you and your brother, and I meant it,” Ziyuan says. “But if you don’t trust my word, then you would be a fool not to take precautions. And I know you’re no fool.”

Wen Qing presses her lips together, and doesn’t stop Ziyuan as she struggles to sit back up. “Am I not?” Wen Qing asks, once Ziyuan has fought down the wave of weariness and is holding herself upright. “You’re worse off than you were. Jiang-gongzi is no better than he was.”

“You’re not a fool. But why on earth did you expect my talking to him to have helped at all? My son has”—Ziyuan’s hands claw weakly in the sheets again—“lost his golden core. How on earth could anything have helped?”

Wen Qing makes an exasperated noise. “His lack of a core isn’t what’s wrong with him. Not eating and not sleeping is what’s wrong with him! I thought you would at least yell at him to eat. You got him to move before; when you were still unconscious, all he would do was lie in bed.”

Ziyuan makes an exasperated noise of her own. “You physicians! As if physical health is all that matters! He’s the Jiang sect heir!” The Jiang sect leader now, a voice in her head points out, and Ziyuan has to shake her head hard to dislodge the cold lump suddenly blocking her throat. “How can he be the sect heir without his cultivation? What other life can he lead now? What life can he even have, how will he even live, now that he can’t protect himself, and the Wens—”

Her air supply cuts off, the world goes dark and tilts abruptly, and Ziyuan barely feels Wen Qing’s hands catching her before she topples off the bed.

“Breathe with me,” Wen Qing says, with so much brisk authority that Ziyuan’s body automatically does. “In. Now out. In again. Out.”

Ziyuan doesn’t know how long they sit there, breathing together. At some point, Wen Qing shifts so that Ziyuan is leaning on her shoulder again, so that she can wrap one arm around Ziyuan to hold her up as the other reaches for Ziyuan’s pulse to send a warm, steady stream of qi. Some tiny, guilty part of Ziyuan wishes she could stay here forever. It’s been so long since she’s had someone to lean on.

But her children need her. Her son needs her, and she can’t indulge in foolish sentiment, especially not about a woman who still wears the colours of a sect that wants to set the cultivation world on fire.

With difficulty, Ziyuan lifts her head off Wen Qing’s shoulder. With even more difficulty, she forces herself to look Wen Qing in the eye, and say, “Thank you.”

Their faces are close enough for Ziyuan to see the slight widening of Wen Qing’s eyes, the faint flush in her cheeks, even in the dark of the sickroom. To see the way she swallows hard, before saying quietly, “Please don’t thank me. Not when it was my…it was my sect, my cousin, who did this to your son.”

Ziyuan gives a humourless snort. “As if your incompetent fool of a cousin could use his own chamberpot without someone holding his hand.” Wen Qing lets out a sharp, startled laugh. “No, this is Wen Zhuliu’s fault, and I fully intend to also make him pay. I’ll show him that honour and mercy he’s always prattling on about.”

Wen Qing blinks, a flutter of unreasonably long eyelashes. “Is he always prattling on about honour and mercy? I don’t think I’ve even heard him…talk.”

“He didn’t ever say much, but all of it was ridiculous. Why do you think he spent half his life cultivating that core-melting technique?” Ziyuan sneers bitterly at her memory Wen Zhuliu—or Zhao Zhuliu, as Ziyuan had once known him, back when they were both young and he was one of the very few men who would train with her. Back before he’d thrown his own name out like so much wastewater. How he would pontificate about honour and righteousness, and yet look at him now. “That self-righteous fool trained so long and so hard just so he could spare the lives of his enemies, so he could never have to take another life. And look at where he is now.”

Wen Qing frowns. “I didn’t know that. That makes a strange sort of sense, I suppose.”

“Does it? Do you know how many of his enemies would rather have chosen a truly honourable death instead? I told him he was choosing a greater cruelty, just to salve his own conscience”—Wen Qing winces slightly at this, only perceptible because she somehow still has an arm wrapped around Ziyuan—“but the fool was in love with a non-cultivator and thought a mundane life was some sort of paradise. He even swore he would melt his own core someday so he and his lover could grow old together. Pah! What’s left of his vaunted principles now? Nothing, is what. He doesn’t even have his family name anymore.”

“…no, I suppose my uncle took that from him too,” Wen Qing murmurs.

“Wen Ruohan didn’t take it,” Ziyuan snaps. “It’s Wen Zhuliu who chose to throw his own principles and his own name away. He’s a man with his own free will, not a dog—or at least, he was.” Ziyuan pauses, then can’t help asking. “What did your uncle even do for him?”

For a moment, Ziyuan thinks Wen Qing isn’t going to reply. Then she says, “Obtained extremely expensive medicine and expensive healers, for a man with a rare, wasting disease. I went along with…with my parents to treat him once,” she adds, her voice wavering a little.

“Zhuliu’s lover,” Ziyuan realises. “Did the man live? Is he…is he being held hostage?”

But Wen Qing only shakes her head slowly, her eyes drifting away from Ziyuan’s as if caught by a memory. “No, the man died. But they kept him alive longer than he would have managed and helped him die painlessly. My parents said…that there are people we will never be able to save, but that doesn't mean we don't try, nor does it mean we leave them to suffer.”

“So they didn’t manage to grow old together.” Something twists in Ziyuan’s heart, thinking about the way Zhao Zhuliu had been so quietly, consumingly in love. She’d been envious of the two of them then, when she’d been younger and pining after Tingting herself, the way they’d been so sure they could push aside the expectations of society and cleave to each other. She’d almost believed that they could. Bitterly, she says, “So there’s no excuse after all.”

“No.” Wen Qing’s mouth opens, shuts, then opens again to say, “I suppose you’re planning to kill him, then. And Wen Chao, too.”

“Yes, of course.” Ziyuan says, then pauses. She’d said as much to Wen Qing before, but it feels different now, saying this to Wen Qing while being not-quite-held in her arms. When Wen Qing’s arm falls away, and Ziyuan feels a flutter of loss in her chest. Ridiculous. She’s annoyed enough at herself that she bites out without thinking, “What, you think I shouldn’t?”

And then she’s even more annoyed at herself, especially when Wen Qing doesn’t reply immediately. Ziyuan can already hear in her head the way her husband would sigh, it doesn’t matter what I think, you’ll do whatever you want anyway; can already see in her head the way Tingting would purse her lips and say, well, I’m not sure that’s the best way to go about things; is already preparing herself to snarl. But then Wen Qing juts her chin out and gives Ziyuan a fierce, almost defensive look, and says in a soft but resolute voice, “No, I think you probably should.” And before Ziyuan can respond, she stands up and walks out the door.

###

That look on Wen Qing’s face haunts Ziyuan for the rest of the day, making it difficult for her to meditate and push back the memories that are constantly threatening to surface. A lifetime’s worth of discipline helps her force her way through the rest of the day, but that night, despite Wen Qing’s calming draught, Ziyuan wakes up screaming from dreams of her children's corpses being dragged behind Zhao Zhuliu as he walks through the blood-stained hallways of Lotus Pier, as Wen Qing wraps her arms around Ziyuan and they stagger along behind him and are shot through with arrows.

When she wakes up, Wen Qing is already there. She doesn’t say anything about the tears still on Ziyuan’s face, merely perches on the edge of Ziyuan’s bed and hands her yet another disgusting bowl of medicine. It doesn’t taste like the usual calming draught, but Ziyuan chokes it down anyway, and only as she is passing the bowl back to Wen Qing does she think to ask, hoarsely, “What was that?”

“Thousand Root Blossom elixir. To re-stabilise your core,” Wen Qing explains.

That makes Ziyuan think of her son, of Zhao Zhuliu dragging Jiang Cheng’s corpse down—no. Ziyuan forces that thought away. “Where’s my son?” she demands instead.

“Outside, sulking under another tree,” is Wen Qing’s reply, and she only raises her eyebrows but doesn’t argue when Ziyuan decides to go out to find him.

Jiang Cheng is indeed under a tree, but so is Yanli. Jiang Cheng’s face is shadowed and pale, his eyes staring unseeing up at the morning sky while Yanli kneels next to him with a tray of food in her hands, untouched. The enormity of the loss of his golden core hits her all over again, seeing this silent, washed-out version of her spirited, determined son—as if his soul is gone and his body is waiting to die—no. Her son is not dying, not if Ziyuan has anything to say about it. She’ll think of some way to fix this, somehow.

But right now…I thought you would at least yell at him to eat, Wen Qing had said, and for the lack of better ideas, Ziyuan snaps out, “A-Cheng, eat your food!”

Jiang Cheng startles. It takes his eyes a moment to focus, but then they fix upon her, and a little colour comes back into his cheeks as his eyes widen. “Mo—mother!”

Yanli also startles, but she immediately gives Ziyuan a small, relieved smile. “Mother! You look better!”

“I am, which is more than I can say for you, A-Cheng. Well, aren’t you going to eat? You’ve already made your sister bring your tray out for you!”

“I…I didn’t…” Jiang Cheng looks away from her to Yanli, then back up at her. “I don’t…”

“Eat,” Ziyuan says, and when Jiang Cheng doesn’t move, she kneels down to take the spoon from Yanli’s tray to shove it into his hand. He looks down at his hand, then at the bowl of congee on the tray, then back up at her. “A-Cheng,” she growls, “you listen to your mother right now. I said, eat.”

With stiff, almost unpracticed motions, he scoops up some congee and slowly brings it to his mouth. Yanli’s resulting smile could light up the whole sky on its own. “Yes, that’s it, it’s good isn’t it,” Yanli says, voice wavering. “Have some more.”

Jiang Cheng blinks at her words in something like incomprehension, but eventually takes a second mouthful, and then a third. Under Ziyuan’s watchful eye, he eventually finishes the entire bowl, and then looks up at her hesitantly. “Good,” Ziyuan says, because what else can she say? To her surprise, his lower lip trembles, and his eyes grow wet.

“Mother…” he says, voice very small, and without thinking, Ziyuan leans in to scoop him into a bone-crushing hug.

“You’ll be okay,” she tells him firmly, as he begins to sob in her arms, “everything will be okay. Mother is here.” Beside them, Ziyuan sees tears quietly streaming down Yanli’s cheeks, and she reaches out to gather her daughter into her arms too. “I’m here now,” she repeats, as her children cling to her robes, “everything will be okay, I’ll make sure of it. I’ll make things right.”

###

Of course, it’s one thing to say it, another thing entirely to do it. There are things she can never make right ever again, blood stains that she suspects will never come out of hallways even if—even when—she reclaims them from the Wens. But those things don’t bear thinking about now; it’s bad enough that they haunt her dreams. Thinking about her son’s lost golden core is almost preferable to all of it, if only because it seems like a far more possible impossibility for her to achieve.

“There must be some way for A-Cheng to get his golden core back!”

Wen Qing blinks. Then she closes the door behind her and pulls up a stool to Ziyuan’s bedside. “It’s not possible for him to re-cultivate his golden core,” Wen Qing says with blunt certainty. “It’s not merely a qi depletion, what the Core Melting Hand does.”

“I’m well aware,” Ziyuan says, glaring down at her hands. “I was there when he was first developing this crack-brained technique.” She was there, arguing with him through the impossibilities and sparring with him for training, and oh, how furious she is at her past self now.

“You were there?”

“He was a rogue cultivator trying to develop an impossible technique that every other cultivator thought was shameful or weak. Who else was there for him to train with? Pah, I should have killed that dog-licking coward when I had the chance.”

“You’ll have that chance again, I’m sure,” Wen Qing says drily, and it surprises a bark of laughter out of Ziyuan.

“I damn well will. Maybe that’s what I have to do; find the man and force him to cough out the secrets of his technique. There must be some way to reverse it or overcome it! He—” Wen Qing’s eyes flit aside, and Ziyuan pauses. And when Ziyuan stares at her, a furrow grows between Wen Qing’s brows, as if— “Do you know of some way to reverse or overcome it?” Ziyuan asks, heart pounding.

Wen Qing says nothing, but the way she presses her lips tightly together says everything for her.

“You do. You do.” Ziyuan lunges forwards to grip Wen Qing’s hands in her own. Wen Qing’s gaze snaps up to her in surprise. “I have to know.”

“It’s not…It’s not a cure. And it’s dangerous. There’s no guarantee it will work.”

“What is it?” Ziyuan demands, her voice harsh with the hope clawing at her throat; she knows physicians well enough to hear the yes in Wen Qing’s no.

“A transplant,” Wen Qing says, with obvious reluctance. “Wei Wuxian reminded me of a technique written in the scrolls of the Silent Wanderer of Jun. It lays out the possibility of transplanting a golden core from one person to another. A dangerous, untested possibility.”

“But it is possible. You could do it.”

Wen Qing exhales sharply, almost angrily. “I’ll tell you what I told him, which is that the risk of the procedure failing is fifty percent. And the risk of failure is the loss of either, or both, their lives.”

“Both their lives? Where does that Wei Wuxian’s life come into this? Has that wretch gone and lost his core as well?”

Wen Qing’s gaze goes flinty. “No. ‘That wretch’ is the one who found a way to give your son his core back. And ‘that wretch’ is offering to give your son his own core.”

Ziyuan reels, a whirlwind of thoughts buffeting her backwards: so he knows what he owes to the Jiang sect after all, she thinks, and also, how dare he act as if his core is good enough for my son, and also, he’s to blame for all our suffering and he should damn well pay for it. But Wen Qing is pinning her with a piercing gaze, as if she is somehow judging Ziyuan’s judgements; if Wei Wuxian is to blame for the calamity of Lotus Pier, how much more to blame is Ziyuan herself? And in that case—

“No. My son will have my core instead.”

Wen Qing blinks. “Your…You realise that means you’re giving up your own cultivation. For good.”

Ziyuan’s hands clench in her robes. The phantom weight of Zidian is heavy on her wrist. “I meant to give up my life in exchange for his. Giving up my cultivation is nothing.”

“And what if you give up your cultivation and your life? Forget dying from the procedure, your injuries—”

“Are healing well, are they not?” Ziyuan demands. When Wen Qing says nothing, Ziyuan yanks aside her robes to reveal the wound on her right thigh, now but a lattice of jagged lines and stitches instead of the maw of necrosis it used to be. “You said yourself it didn’t need bandaging anymore.”

Wen Qing’s eyes jump down to Ziyuan’s thigh, and just as quickly jump back to her face. Ziyuan is surprised to see a faint flush rise in her cheeks. “That…that doesn’t mean you’re entirely healed.”

“But if I should not— If I should not have a core,” Ziyuan returns, forcing her words past her reflexive flinch, “I’ll still heal eventually, won’t I?”

“Yes, but…” Wen Qing takes a deep breath. Then she shakes her head, and narrows her eyes at Ziyuan. “Your life is one thing. What about your revenge?”

It’s Ziyuan’s turn to have to take a bracing breath. She’s imagined decapitating Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao and Wen Zhuliu so many times they feel almost like memories. She’d said to Wen Qing right at the start that she intends to take responsibility for what happened at Lotus Pier, and if she gives that up, gives up her golden core…

But the memory of her children crying in her arms is all the more real than her revenge. And her first responsibility has always been, and always will be, to her children.

“So be it,” Ziyuan says. She reaches out again for Wen Qing’s hands, grips them tight. “Help me help my son.”

Wen Qing’s eyelashes flutter as she looks down at their hands. “You do understand this might not work, right? He might die. You might both die.”

“I’d rather we both died under your hands than your cousin’s,” Ziyuan retorts, and Wen Qing lets out a startled, humourless breath of laughter. “And I’d much rather we both lived under your hands. Please,” Ziyuan adds, her voice cracking for a moment on that unpracticed word. “I would owe you a debt.”

Wen Qing closes her eyes. Then she sighs acquiescence, and Ziyuan feels relief flooding through her even though all Wen Qing says is, “What could you possibly give me, anyway?”

What could Ziyuan give Wen Qing that could be worth as much? When framed like that, the answer is surprisingly obvious. “Your brother’s safety.”

Wen Qing startles, her hands spasming under Ziyuan’s own. “What do you mean by that?” she asks sharply.

“Your brother isn’t safe and you know it. I’m grateful for his rescue of my son, but it was entirely unsubtle—Wen Chao is a blithering idiot, but even he should have realised your brother is to blame.”

There’s a subtle tightening around Wen Qing’s eyes, a hurt already braced for. “As long as my uncle needs me, Wen Chao won’t dare move against me. And as long as Wen Ning stays with me, as long as he doesn’t anger our uncle, he’ll be safe.”

“As long as Wen Ning listens to you, you mean, which he doesn’t always, does he?” Ziyuan catches another minute flinch in Wen Qing’s face, and gives Wen Qing’s hand a squeeze—cold comfort, but Ziyuan can’t help but empathise with the struggle of trying to protect people who refuse to be protected. “No, he’ll run off again the next time he decides he needs to do what’s right. And nothing your uncle and cousins do is right by his lights, is it?”

“…no.” Wen Qing’s voice is tight. “And what do you propose I do about it instead? Kill my uncle and my cousins before they can kill my brother, is that it?”

Ziyuan opens her mouth on a denial. Then she shuts it again. Honestly, she’d only meant to offer Tingting’s protection for Wen Ning; Tingting loves Ziyuan in her own way, which is why Ziyuan trusts her to protect Ziyuan’s own daughter, to be a good mother-in-law to A-Li. And if Ziyuan asked her to protect Wen Ning and Wen Qing, she’s sure Tingting would agree (in fact, she wouldn’t put it past Tingting to figure out a way to have it all benefit the Jin sect either). She’d offer her own word to protect Wen Ning as well, but she’s under no illusions as to how much her word would be worth if she no longer has her golden core.

But Wen Qing’s idea…“Yes, actually, you should kill them,” Ziyuan says, the idea growing in her mind as she talks. “After all, if the Wen sect isn’t trying to make enemies of the entire cultivation world, no one would be trying to hurt him.”

“Except in revenge,” Wen Qing retorts, “as you’ve reminded me every day.”

Ziyuan makes a dismissive noise. “You’ll have the rest of the Wen cultivators at your disposal to protect him. After all, you’ll be head of the sect then, won’t you?”

Wen Qing’s mouth falls open. After a moment, she says, “Surely you’re joking! You aren’t suggesting I assassinate my uncle and my cousins just to make myself sect leader!”

Ziyuan hadn’t in fact suggested assassination, had vaguely imagined killing them all in various duels, but assassination does seem like a better idea. “Of course. Jin Guangshan’s father did the same, and no one batted an eye.”

“I’m not a Jin,” Wen Qing says with some indignation.

“No, you’re a Wen, and your uncle and cousins are dragging your family name through mud and filth. Whereas you clearly have more honour and sense than all of them put together. Are you going to keep standing by while they do it?”

Wen Qing’s mouth falls open, soft and a little vulnerable. Then after a moment, she shakes her head briskly, as if she can’t quite believe she’s having this conversation. “I’m a physician, not a sect leader. I wouldn’t know the first thing about running a sect.”

“I do,” Ziyuan says. “I’ve been married to a sect leader for twenty years. I’ll help you.”

Wen Qing’s eyes widen. The faint flush that had been fading from her cheeks returns with a vengeance. Ziyuan pauses, repeats her own words back in her head, and is hard-pressed not to blush herself. The idea of marrying Wen Qing is ludicrous, and impossible, and yet—

“What I meant is that I can give you advice, that’s all,” Ziyuan snaps out hastily, and immediately realises how unnecessarily defensive she sounds.

“I…of course that’s what you meant,” Wen Qing says, eyes still wide. “Obviously you didn’t mean…”

“Obviously, yes. By which I mean, no! No, I didn’t.” And now Fengmian and Tingting are both laughing at her inside her head.

“Yes. No. Obviously.”

But Wen Qing continues to look at Ziyuan, and Ziyuan can’t look away. Can’t help but wonder, imagine…Of course, they’ve known each other for barely a week, and have been civil for even less time, and yet Ziyuan feels like she already knows the steady, shining core of Wen Qing, feels like she already…

“I’d…like your help,” Wen Qing says slowly, interrupting her thoughts. Wen Qing’s cheeks are still pink, but her face has grown serious. “I’m not sure what I might want, what I might do, but…But I’ll help you with the core transfer, and I want your help in return.”

“Yes,” Ziyuan says immediately. “You have my word.”

Wen Qing nods. Then she flips her hands over to clasp Ziyuan’s hands tight, and it feels like a quiet, implacable tremor running right through Ziyuan’s core.