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A woman burns in Jinlintai, her body ruined and dressed in red. But it is not Wen Qing.

Wen Qing, instead, finds herself awakening from drugged sleep in a lightless room with her wrists and ankles bound. The air tastes like stale rock and distant ashes. In a moment she will rally her senses, try to identify the poison lingering in her veins, try to remember how she got here—but all she knows now is that she is alone. Instead of a martyr's death, she is simply a prisoner again. Her single, harsh sob echoes off the walls of the cell.

"Welcome, Lady Wen," says a smooth voice from above her. Wen Qing twists backwards, coiling against the wall, but the speaker does not reveal themselves. "I think we can both agree that your death would have been a waste. I've taken the liberty of rectifying the situation."

Years under Wen Ruohan have trained Wen Qing not to say stupid things like what do you want? Her voice comes out pleasant and even. "It seems I must thank my faceless rescuer."

"There will be time enough for that," comes the voice, equally pleasant. Wen Qing can just make out a grate in the ceiling, shadows moving across the shards of light. "Your skills are indeed worthy of respect, and good use will certainly be found for them. For now, your life is enough." Then there's a sound of chains scraping on stone, and a different voice calls out.

"Jiejie!"

"A-Ning!" Wen Qing scrambles upright, trying to climb the walls, to reach that dear familiar voice. "A-Ning, are you hurt?"

"Jiejie, they promised," says Wen Ning. "They promised they'd keep you safe."

Wen Qing wants to scream. How could she have let this happen? How could she have been stupid enough to believe that simple vengeance would be enough for these people? Knowing how they hunger for power, how could they not see what her brother has become and seek to harness it for themselves? She should have let them come for him in the Burial Mounds, let the Yiling Laozu and the Ghost General rip through all their forces like paper.

"A-Ning," she says again. She can just barely see his face peering down at her from the grate above, round and worried. "Be strong, didi."

"That's enough," says the other voice. The shadowy face of Wen Ning disappears from her view. "Know that your brother is safe in our care, Lady Wen. Goodnight."

"You—" She stops herself. The footsteps are fading away in any case, as are the scraping chains. Wen Qing is alone again in her cage.

At least her brother is alive, whatever that word means for him. At least the world was not quite cruel enough to leave her here with Wen Ning gone. She just needs to come up with a new plan, that's all. Wen Qing is very good at surviving. Better than even she realized, it seems. Someone clever in the Jin Clan has plans for her and her brother, and if she can be clever enough in turn, perhaps she can use that to their advantage.

If she can't—well. Wen Qing has had enough of cages. Next time, she will make sure their death sticks.

For two days and two nights, Yanli sits in front of her husband's tomb. Sometimes Jin Ling is in her arms, crying or sleeping or clutching her robes; other times he too is taken away, attended by wet nurses while she sits and stares into the fires left burning to give Jin Zixuan's spirit safe passage.

"A-Li, the night grows long," says Madam Jin's gentle voice beside her. She has kept vigil here nearly as long as Yanli has, grief carving new lines in her face. "Surely it would be no discourtesy to strengthen the body with rest?"

Yanli has long since learned the art of obeying suggestions before they become commands. Still, a part of her resists the thought of standing up, of looking away even for a moment. Somehow, the very sight of Jin Zixuan's coffin feels like it protects her from the reality that he is lying inside it.

"A-Ling will need his mother now more than ever," adds Madam Jin.

Yanli bows her head. "I will see if he has woken up," she answers through numb lips.

But when she rises to her feet and leaves the Pageant Hall, her feet do not take her back to her own quarters. They don't take her anywhere at all, except faster and away. With her long white veil and bloodless face, she feels like a ghost herself. There are few lanterns on the path she follows, and no sound of anyone else moving through the night. By the time Yanli blinks and takes in her surroundings again, she's in a secluded part of the palace grounds that she's never seen before.

Beyond a low wall, there is a shrine that catches her eye. If she hadn't walked right into it, Yanli doubts she could have found this place on her own. The Jin Clan is known for being ostentatious, but the decoration here is much simpler, subtle in a way nothing else in Lanling has been. Yanli follows her curiosity for the sheer novelty of an emotion that is not sadness. Her trailing robes catch on a decorative grate in the floor, making a dull clank.

"Hello?"

Yanli spins. The moon behind her is nearly setting, and she is quite alone. A shadowy thought clenches her heart—but no, the voice was female, and not one she knows. Wasn't it?

The silence lasts long enough for her to doubt she heard anything at all. Then the woman speaks again: "This humble one would ask that if you've come to collect your debt, you make your request promptly."

"What debt?" asks Yanli, turning around again, still seeing no one. She hears a rustling noise from under her feet and looks down.

"Who's there?" says the other woman, in quite a different tone, and Yanli sees the faint pale circle of a face between the bars of the grate beneath her.

She drops to her knees with a gasp. "Are you hurt?" she asks, willing her eyes to pierce the dark, fingers clutching the grate. "How did you come to be down there?"

The face below her stills. In almost a whisper, she hears: "Lady Jiang?"

Yanli's fingers tighten. "I'm sorry," she says, "I cannot see your face. Do you know me?"

Even in the dark, she can tell the figure below her brings its arms up into a low bow. "Please forgive us for your loss, Lady Jiang," says the woman. "I promise you, the last thing my brother intended was to cause your family harm. We thought that to surrender ourselves would be repayment enough—that a sacrifice from us could keep your shidi safe. It was not by my choice that I am still living before you."

The words take a long time to percolate through her understanding. Not many try to protect her shidi these days. She thinks of the invitation her husband sent to the Burial Mounds, her own innocent anticipation as she waited for Wei Wuxian to return to her. How, instead, a disciple came to her shouting of the Ghost General, commanded by the fearsome Yiling Laozu, shattering her world to pieces.

She looks down, down, down. "Wen Qing?"

Another bow from below. Wen Qing says, simply, "I'm sorry."

Yanli rocks back on her heels. Jin Guangshan had been almost unbearably proud to announce the capture of the Wen siblings, those forsworn chieftains of the Wen, murderers of his firstborn beloved son. Their bodies were very publicly burned for their crimes. How can Wen Qing be here, alive, hidden beneath a shrine that Yanli didn't know existed?

"Who put you here?" Yanli asks slowly. She has not forgotten that Wen Ning killed her husband, but nor has she forgotten that the Wens hid her and her brothers after Lotus Pier burned. Yanli would not have chosen exile for Wei Wuxian, but Wen Qing and her family have given him something like a home in the Burial Mounds, and she cannot begrudge them that. Somewhere in her mind, even the Ghost General is simply a pale boy in an overlarge hat who bows and stutters when she brings him soup.

"I don't know," says Wen Qing. "Someone spoke to me when I first woke up—a man, I think. He has my brother too. I can't guess his reasons."

"Oh," says Yanli. It seems that the grand gestures of the Jin Clan, the promises of strength and justice, ring as hollow now as they had when they cast out her brother. "I see."

For the first time in their acquaintance, Wen Qing seems to struggle with her words. "You have every right to be angry with us," she says. "But please, Lady Jiang—don't allow my brother to be used by these people. He is powerful, and dangerous, and nothing good can come of those who want to claim that power in secret. Kill us if you must, but let us be free of these machinations."

A tear rolls down Yanli's cheek, following the same trail as the others. "There has been enough bloodshed, I think," she finally replies. "I will free you, Lady Wen, and your brother too, if I can. The debt to be repaid is mine."

Mianmian stands firm at her post outside Jin Ling's rooms, one hand on her sword, and tries to calm the storm in her mind.

Sometimes she thinks she would have left the Jin Clan behind a long time ago, were it not for Jiang Yanli. The Jin shamed themselves in the aftermath of the Sunshot Campaign, first in their treatment of the Wen prisoners and then in their self-righteous calls to place all the blame on Wei Wuxian. The strain it placed on the Jiang Clan was all too clear to see—Sect Leader Jiang clenched his jaw harder with every meeting and nearly rivaled Hanguang Jun in his pointed silences, while his sister was quieter, turning her face away whenever someone spoke ill of the Yiling Laozu in her presence. Mianmian wonders if she was alone in seeing the defiant tilt of Jiang Yanli's chin in those moments, the spark of anger that she holds under all her propriety. The new young Madam Jin was not so docile as her new family seemed to think. In a private moment, early on, Jin Zixuan had confessed that it's what he liked about her.

Jiang Yanli. The girl in Cloud Recesses, smiling indulgently at her brothers and their antics; the fearsome sister, staring down Jin Zixun and demanding an apology for his insults against her family; the woman in the war camp, bringing food to her former-betrothed out of sheer kindness. The one whose innate goodness was enough to send the firstborn son of the most powerful family in the cultivation world wading into mud, trying to plant lotuses, because Jin Zixuan had finally realized that her smile was worth everything. And Mianmian, forever at his shoulder, having the same realization. All her noble intentions must count for very little when she's fallen in love with her best friend’s wife.

Mianmian has tried without success to harden her heart on the sidelines. If Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli made each other happy, surely she could be happy for them, and not want for anything more. At one point, heartsick from the recent wedding arrangements and chafed by a particularly obnoxious banquet, she considered simply packing her things and walking away—but picturing a lifetime of never seeing Jiang Yanli's face opened a pit in her stomach much worse than the thought of seeing her grow old with Jin Zixuan. Instead, she swore an oath to herself: as long as Jiang Yanli remains with the Jin Clan, Mianmian will stay by her side. If she cannot love her, then she will protect her, and remain as devoted as the sea is to the moon.

And now Jin Zixuan is dead, and Mianmian is left to stand guard over their son, and listen to Jiang Yanli weep in the middle of the night.

"Mianmian! I need your help!"

As though summoned by her thoughts, Jiang Yanli appears, hurrying towards her in a flutter of white. "Yanli?" says Mianmian blankly—then, cursing herself, corrects to: "Young Madam Jin, how may I assist you?"

Jiang Yanli grasps her arm, then glances to the rooms beyond. "Is Jin Ling safe?"

"Always," says Mianmian, tightening her grip on her sword. "I would die before I let harm come to him. What's the matter?"

Her shoulders slump. "Please, come with me," she says in a whisper. "It will be difficult to explain."

Quickly, Mianmian sends a spiritual message to another senior disciple to take over her post. Jiang Yanli's fingers are still resting on her elbow. "Please lead the way."

The path they take is an odd one, winding through one of the smaller gardens and past the rooms where Jin Zixuan stayed as a child. Jiang Yanli ducks her face behind the white mourning veil whenever they pass by open windows or lantern lights. Eventually they come to a secluded doorway that leads to a small, darkened shrine, and Jiang Yanli stops her before they cross the threshold.

"Lady Luo," she says, formal in a way she so rarely is outside the council rooms. "It may be that I am about to ask something difficult of you, and I beg your forbearance. But the truth is, here in Lanling, there are few others that I could ask to help me in the present situation. Please know that I have always trusted you as my husband does—did." She bites her lip.

"You are the lady of my house, and this servant is honored to be so trusted," Mianmian replies, equally formal, though her heart is pounding. "I would gladly do what you ask of me."

Jiang Yanli lowers her voice even more. "There is a prisoner here," she says. "Secret from the clan; possibly even secret from Jin Guangshan. And I—I do not believe her captivity should be allowed to continue."

"Captivity by whom?" says Mianmian, scrambling to adjust to this revelation. How could Jiang Yanli know about a prisoner kept secret from Sect Leader Jin? Then the second part of the sentence filters through. " 'Her'?"

Jiang Yanli enters the shrine and goes to her knees. Mianmian follows in kind, lowering her face—but this is not a prayer. Between them is a small circular grate in the floor, and Jiang Yanli leans down to speak into it.

"I apologize for disturbing you again at this time of night," she whispers to the darkness. "I've brought my trusted friend, Luo Qingyang."

There's a rustling noise, and a dry voice answers back from beneath the stones. "Believe me, Lady Jiang, you are a vast improvement over my night so far."

"Lady Jiang has a kind heart," Mianmian says, warning in her tone. From this angle, it's nearly impossible to see who's speaking, or indeed where they may be hidden in this secluded place. "It seems we find you in an unfortunate predicament, miss…?"

There's a long silence from the prisoner. Jiang Yanli lets out a quiet "Ah," and seems about to speak, but the woman under the floor answers for herself.

"My name is Wen Qing," she says, quiet but clear. "My brother, Wen Ning, is the Ghost General of Yiling. I'm afraid the execution we received at the hands of the Jin Clan was... incomplete."

"You!" Mianmian reels back, hand flying to her sword. "You killed Jin Zixuan!"

"You're right," Wen Qing snaps. "Strange to find us both still living, then, isn't it? After my brother put his fist through the Jin heir's chest." A shadow of a face appears in the gloom beneath them. "A knife in the sheath is still a knife. I wonder, then, whose hand is on the hilt now?"

"The Ghost General is alive?" Mianmian turns to Jiang Yanli, and notices for the first time how drawn and unhappy her lady's face has become. Some of her fervor ebbs. Jiang Yanli introduced her as a trusted friend, yet here she is, threatening the one they came to help.

"I don't know where he is," Wen Qing answers. "But I know that someone in Lanling is hiding him, and I know that when he is not himself, he can be controlled by others."

"Controlled by the Yiling Laozu, you mean," says Mianmian. Isn't that why the cultivation world fears Wei Wuxian so much? Everyone knows the Ghost General only answers to one master's call.

Jiang Yanli steps forward, arms politely raised, though her jaw is set. "Mianmian," she says. "I could never ask you to forgive Jin Zixuan's death. Remember that it is no trivial matter to his wife, either. But the fact that Lady Wen and her brother are both still here, after they were publicly killed, tells me that more is going on than we know."

Mianmian bows her head, chagrined. Her initial reaction, she's sorry to realize, sounded more like Sect Leader Jin than herself. She has seen all too clearly these past years how the clan leaders will twist the facts of the matter to suit their own opinions, especially where Wei Wuxian is concerned. Hadn't she spoken out against that very thing, early on, only to be condescended to and ignored? Now it seems she has become so accustomed to letting others speak for her that she lets their words come out of her own mouth.

Mianmian drops her hand from the sword-hilt. "I'm sorry," she says after a long moment. "You warned me this would be difficult, and I did not prepare myself. Please continue."

Jiang Yanli lets out her breath in a sharp huff. "I only discovered Wen Qing here earlier tonight. I admit, she was the last person I expected to find when I left Jin Zixuan's tomb."

"Who put her here?" Mianmian lowers herself to the ground again, casting her gaze over the stone floor, the understated ornamentation of the altar space. She has spent much of her life in Jinlintai, but its layout changes often with the whims of its lords, and these designs are unfamiliar to her. "And why?"

Wen Qing laughs, a bitter echo. "My brother can wield a terrifying force," she says from below. "The man holding his chains doesn't need Chenqing to control him when he could simply threaten me."

"It's not right," cries Jiang Yanli, beautiful in her righteousness. Either of her own brothers would do anything to protect her, of course—Mianmian knows the feeling. Jiang Yanli's eyes flash in her direction. "Do you see now? Why I can't leave her here, and pretend to know nothing?"

The Jin Clan's treatment of its Wen prisoners is an old sore spot, one that Mianmian has never quite forgiven; perhaps she should be less surprised at this newest subversion of justice. "I do."

Among the many anxieties Jin Zixuan shared with her about becoming a sect leader, the one Mianmian had found most unnerving was the idea of a coup from within. She's a straightforward person, or tries to be, and Madam Jin raised her son to be honest to a fault. It galled them both to think that one of their companions, the men and women raised under Jin Clan's protection, could smile and smile and one day turn to sink a knife into their leader's back. Who would keep the Wens alive, having killed the sect heir, unless it was to overthrow the clan? And what other way to find out, but to set Wen Qing loose and see who came looking for her?

"I'll help you," she says to Jiang Yanli. "As I promised. You have nothing to fear from me." She won't make that same reassurance to Wen Qing just yet, but Mianmian does lean down to meet the other woman's gaze. "Whatever becomes of you next, Lady Wen, we will get you out of this place."

"Then I am in your debt as well, Lady Luo." This time, when Wen Qing brings her arms up to bow, Mianmian can see that her wrists are tied together. Wen Qing holds the posture a beat longer than propriety demands, then looks up at them both. "But if I may ask—how?"

The process of freeing Wen Qing proves more difficult than Jiang Yanli and Luo Qingyang seem to have anticipated, not least because Wen Qing, in the hours she's spent down here, has yet to find any door or opening other than the one above her head.

"It would help if I had any light," she says after their fruitless searching from above. "Or better use of my hands, but—oh!"

A golden butterfly of spiritual energy floats down through the bars of the grate and reverberates with Luo Qingyang's voice. Where?

"I—the walls, if you please," says Wen Qing. The butterfly's shape reminds her of A-Yuan's favorite toy, and she blinks fiercely to keep the upwelling memories at bay. It seems impossible that only a few days have passed since she left him behind.

But Wen Qing has more pressing matters to attend to. The butterfly obligingly flaps its wings, revealing the rough-hewn stone walls that she so carefully ran her fingers along in the dark. As she feared, there are no seams or holes anywhere to be found, not even cracks where water might flow. As the light moves upward again, though, she notices a faint shimmer on the underside of the grate.

"I see something," she calls, and the faces of Jiang Yanli and Luo Qingyang appear above her, illuminated gold. "It looks like—there are words."

From her vantage point, the characters are almost too small to read, and they would be impossible for anyone to see from above. By the butterfly's glow, she reads:

明亮而黎 Bright and black,

冬天返回 Winter's back.

Luo Qingyang makes a face through the bars. "It sounds like a riddle. I've never been any good at those."

"I wish A-Xian were here," says Jiang Yanli softly. "He was always so good at wordplay."

Wen Qing does not tell Lady Jiang that her shidi has spent the last three days trapped in his own bed, paralyzed by Wen Qing's needles. At least he's still safe there, she supposes. Perhaps if she gets out of this place, she'll be able to apologize.

"That word for 'black' is an odd choice," she muses instead, squinting upward. "Why use lí instead of hēi?"

There's a sound of robes sweeping over stone and a sword being unsheathed. "This was definitely the work of a cultivator," says Luo Qingyang, her voice further away now. "I can sense spiritual energy in the metal. Bright and black…something about the iron, maybe?" Energy crackles for a moment around the grate, then fades away without any change. "Damn."

"What time is it?" asks Jiang Yanli abruptly. It occurs to Wen Qing that, for her own part, she's not even entirely certain what day it is.

"I haven't heard the bell, but it must be nearly morning," says Luo Qingyang. "Look, see how the sky is getting lighter?"

"I think the first part means 'dawn,' " Jiang Yanli explains. "Think of the letters the other way around, do you see? Lí with míng." Her voice gets faster when she's figuring something out, which is strangely endearing to someone who's spent the last three years listening to Wei Wuxian think out loud. "Maybe there's something we need to do, something new we can see, once the sun rises."

" 'Winter's back,' " mutters Luo Qingyang. "Back, returning, turning back, turn—"

"What if it's not meant to be winter?" Wen Qing says. She has always had a good sense of direction, and she turns now to face the dark corner where, somewhere outside, the sun is about to emerge over the horizon. "Lady Jiang is right; these words are deceptive. Listen to the sounds. What if dōng instead meant 'east'?"

"Turn east," Jiang Yanli says, "at dawn." She gets to her feet. "Mianmian, look at that column. Do you see something carved in the stone?"

Wen Qing is always suspicious of good fortune, but a small flicker of hope takes its place in her breast. Please, she thinks, to anyone who may hear her. Give me this much. I just want to see my brother again.

The other two move away from the grate, and Wen Qing hears them discussing in low voices. Down in the dark, she moves to the eastern wall and places her hands against the cold rock. Is Wen Ning trapped somewhere like this, waiting for their mysterious captor to arrive and demand the price for their lives? He doesn't like the dark, her a-Ning. She hopes that wherever he is, he can see sunrise too.

"Got it!" Luo Qingyang crows, and then there's a flash. The stone around Wen Qing starts to rumble. She ducks down, covering her head as best she can with tied wrists, and another flash lights up the metal grate. With a deep grinding noise, the entire roof of her cell starts to turn on an invisible axis, until at last something behind the wall gives an almighty thunk. The rumbling stops.

Wen Qing peeks out, cautious of the pebbles still tumbling down from above. A small stone door has suddenly appeared out of the wall before her. "I think it worked," she calls.

The previously-hidden door handle gives way as Wen Qing pulls on it, revealing a narrow spiraling staircase. She climbs the steps as fast as her hobbled legs can carry her and emerges, blinking, into a small shrine-room where Jiang Yanli and Luo Qingyang are waiting for her.

"Well done," Wen Qing says into the suddenly awkward silence. She raises her bound hands into a proper bow and waits there, head low. "You both have done me a great service, and I thank you for it."

"You did me and my family a great service too, once," says Jiang Yanli. There's no reproof in her tone, but Wen Qing feels her cheeks redden anyway.

"What we owe you is beyond reckoning," she says. "All I can do is apologize, again, and swear that my brother did not mean for your husband to die."

"That doesn't do Jin Zixuan much good," retorts Luo Qingyang. Wen Qing keeps her face towards the floor, where she was so recently imprisoned, and does not answer. After a moment Luo Qingyang huffs and steps forward. "Let me get those off you, at least," she mutters, and quicker than Wen Qing can flinch away, her sword cuts through the ropes tying her wrists and ankles.

Wen Qing rubs at the red marks on her skin and raises her eyes. "What would you ask of me in return?" she says, because her life is a series of debts she did not ask for.

"What I would ask, you cannot give," says Jiang Yanli. Her hair is still hidden under the long white veil of mourning. "What do you intend, Lady Wen? To go back to Yiling?"

"I need to find my brother," says Wen Qing firmly. "I’m not leaving without Wen Ning."

"And for my part, I would ask that you help us find the person responsible for faking his death and taking the Ghost General for their own purposes," says Luo Qingyang. Her sword is held at her side, but not yet back in its sheath. "So that works out well, don’t you think?"

Wen Qing looks to the sky, gone pink with the sliver of sun peeking over the palace roof. "If you have any idea of where to start, perhaps we should go there before the rest of the clan wakes."

As she's speaking, another golden butterfly—smaller than the one that helped Wen Qing—appears and lands on Luo Qingyang's shoulder. Its wings flap urgently as Luo Qingyang bends her ear down to hear it. When it finishes delivering its message, the little butterfly dissolves into mist, and Luo Qingyang looks up with pale cheeks.

"Mianmian?" says Jiang Yanli. "What's wrong?"

"Sect Leader Jin has called for a mobilization meeting," says Luo Qingyang. "All the clans are summoned to Nightless City in Qishan, tonight. Some have already left." She looks from Jiang Yanli to Wen Qing and back again. "They want to go after Wei Wuxian."

Jiang Yanli wavers on her feet. In an instant, Luo Qingyang is at her side, a steadying hand on her elbow. "I'm alright," says Jiang Yanli. "I—oh. I suppose it makes sense, from a certain point of view."

"Wei Wuxian is still in the Burial Mounds," says Wen Qing, though she's struck with a terrible uncertainty. She knows the paralytic she used on him should have lasted three full days, but what if she lost more time in that prison than she realizes? What will Wei Wuxian do once he's free?

Luo Qingyang bites her lip. "Begging your pardon, but he isn't," she says. Her fingers tighten on Jiang Yanli's arm. "The urgency of the meeting is because the guards saw Wei Wuxian in the courtyard of Pageant Hall just before sunrise. Lady Jiang—they think he was looking for you."

"He's here?" Jiang Yanli starts forward immediately, stopped only by the hold Luo Qingyang still has on her.

"He flew away as soon as he was spotted," she says apologetically. "Back to Yiling, or somewhere else, no one knows."

"They said they would leave him alone if we gave ourselves up." Wen Qing clenches her fists in the dirty cloth of her robes. "He was supposed to be safe if we let them kill the rest of us!"

Luo Qingyang looks startled at this, though Wen Qing can't imagine why. Did she think her fellow cultivators could have subdued Wen Ning by force? That the Yiling Wen were too dishonorable, too powerless, too ashamed to make such a sacrifice for the man who had given up everything he ever had for them?

"Thank you." Jiang Yanli reaches out a hand to Wen Qing. "For being a sister to him, when I could not."

A sudden lump closes Wen Qing's throat, one it takes many attempts to clear. It's horrible. "I could never compare myself to his shijie," she says. "Wei Wuxian has always loved you most of all."

Jiang Yanli nods, bright-eyed. Something changes in the way she holds herself, a straightening of the shoulders, a steel to her face. "It seems I will be making a trip to Qishan," she says. Luo Qingyang starts to speak, but Jiang Yanli cuts her off: "My brother risked a great deal to see me, and I wasn't there. You may accompany me, if you wish, but please don't try to stop me."

"I wasn't going to stop you," says Luo Qingyang quietly. "I was going to say that Wen Qing should come too."

It's Wen Qing's turn to be stunned silent. Until this very moment, her odds of dying on Luo Qingyang's blade had seemed rather high. "Me?" she manages. "Why?"

"Because I'm willing to bet that the one who imprisoned you will be at that meeting," she says, meeting Wen Qing's eyes. "And if I were that person, preparing to fight the Yiling Patriarch, I would bring my newly-captured Ghost General with me. You say that your brother did not want to hurt Jin Zixuan, and Jiang Yanli says that Wei Wuxian would never give such an order. If you two aren't lying, that means someone else did." She takes a deep breath. "Jin Zixuan was the closest thing I had to a brother. I owe it to him to find the truth."

Quietly, Jiang Yanli slips her hand into Luo Qingyang's. After a very long silence, Wen Qing offers hers to the other.

"Then let us go to Nightless City," she says. "I know the way."

They travel all through the day and into the night. It pains Yanli to leave Jin Ling in someone else's care, but her worry for Wei Wuxian is stronger than the desire to stay and weep over her son for another night. Urgency throbs in the back of her head as she watches the sun sink down again, overruling the exhaustion that all three of them feel trying to make such a long journey under their own spiritual power. The white cloth of her mourning veil flutters behind them as Mianmian's sword and its passengers cut through the sky.

The air is thick with ash when they land on the volcanic peak of Qishan, and the stairs to Nightless City seem to grow taller the more desperate she becomes to reach their summit. Yanli hears the battle before she sees it—ringing swords, cries of pain, and above it all the dark trill of a flute that seems to freeze the very marrow of her bones. She hardly remembers that Mianmian and Wen Qing are following at her back; the only thing filling her mind is that music, and the need to get to her brother.

In the courtyard there is chaos. Jin archers fire at shapes of dark smoke, while Jiang disciples huddle together with their swords out; Nie and Ouyang and Yao and Lan are all tangled together in the throng of battle. Yanli balances herself against a stone column. Suddenly, the flute stops.

"A-Xian!"

Again her feet move without her. All these people are here to kill the Yiling Laozu, but he's her brother, her own little a-Xian, the boy who once got lost up a tree and was too scared to come down. If she can only reach him, he can explain. He can tell her what went wrong, why her husband is dead, why Jin Ling still hasn't met his uncle, why everything fell apart again. He would never have hurt his shijie on purpose. Wei Wuxian just needs someone to listen, she's sure of it. Isn't that what a sister is for?

"A-Xian?" she calls again. The Jiang clan is here in force, and that means both her brothers are somewhere in this mess. "A-Cheng?"

A sword slashes through the air in front of her, and she barely ducks in time; the blade snatches her mourning veil clean off her head. Yanli quickly loses it to the shifting crowds.

"A-Xian!" She dodges another blow. The air feels thick, like moving through a nightmare. "Where are you?"

Just as abruptly as it ended, the flute trills again, turning the wind in a new direction. Someone over her shoulder shouts: "Wei Wuxian has come down! Quick, kill him!" Yanli turns, but all she sees are more soldiers, more ghosts raking through their defenses.

"A-jie!"

"A-Cheng!" Perhaps if she finds Jiang Cheng, the two of them can find Wei Wuxian together. She'll carry them both out of here on her own back if she has to. But a Nie disciple shoves past her, blade slashing through a restless spirit, and Yanli loses track of where Jiang Cheng's voice was coming from.

She's lost her companions too, she realizes. Mianmian can take care of herself well enough, but Wen Qing has been locked in a cage these past days, and carries no sword. Hopefully no one recognizes the erstwhile leader of the Wen Clan in their midst. Has Yanli freed her only to bring her to the slaughter?

The flute music—turns. She can think of no other way to describe it. What felt cold before now stings in her ears, a new and harsher melody reaching across the mountainside. To her horror, she watches as the body of a fallen Lan twitches before her and then crawls back to its feet, black veins reaching up the bloodied skin to its empty, ink-pool eyes. The puppet dances to the music of the flute, skittering on broken limbs, and sinks its sword into the heart of a fellow disciple.

Yanli covers her mouth to keep from screaming. This wasn't supposed to happen—this isn't him, not the brother she loves; this isn't what he meant when he demanded justice and then stormed out of their lives. "A-Xian, where are you?" She just needs to see his face again. He isn't a monster. He can't be.

Finally, finally, she sees Wei Wuxian across the whirl of battle. She sees his mouth forming words, and though she can't hear them, she recognizes the shape of shijie. Yanli starts to smile in relief. And then a terrible, blinding pain slices into her back and knocks her to the ground.

"Jie!"

It hurts.

She should...get up. Someone is calling her, someone needs her. Her mouth is full of blood. That wasn't there before. Where did a-Xian go? Her ears are ringing. His flute has stopped again, or maybe it hasn't. She should stand up. She can't.

Strong hands grab her arms and pull her backwards, and then Yanli is staring up at Jiang Cheng, his terrified face looking younger than she's seen it in years. She takes a shaky breath as he cradles her against his chest. "A-Cheng?"

"Please," says Jiang Cheng into her hair. "Please don't. Please." Yanli tries to move her hand, manages a clumsy pat on his forearm. He's wearing Zidian, just like their mother.

A figure all in black slides to its knees before her, face paler than funeral robes, eyes wide and rimmed with red. Wei Wuxian, come to see her at last. His fingers shake as he reaches for her blood-stained shoulder.

As soon as Wei Wuxian touches her, Jiang Cheng knocks him back. "You said you could control them!" he shouts. "You did this! It was your own damned puppet that did this to her!"

"I didn't!" Wei Wuxian's voice cracks. "I didn't tell them to kill anybody, I swear, it wasn't me!"

Jiang Cheng ignores his brother entirely, pulling Yanli closer. "This is nothing," he says to her. "It's fine. You're fine, you'll be fine. It's only a small wound, right?"

Wei Wuxian, for his part, seems unaware that words are still coming out of his mouth. "I can't control them anymore," he babbles, staring blankly at the carnage around them as his grip tightens on Chenqing. "I don't understand. I don't want this! Why can't I control them anymore?"

They always do this, her brothers, talking over and past each other until someone makes them see sense. Yanli swallows another mouthful of blood and reaches forward. "A-Xian."

As distant and manic as he seemed only a moment ago, he looks at her now like Yanli is the only thing he can see. No one else has ever looked at her quite like he does. "I'm here," he says.

"Xian-xian." Her little brother, her unexpected gift. A whirlwind of heart and laughter and impossible achievements. She reaches up to touch his cheek, to brush away the tears falling there. "Xian-xian, I wanted to see you. You didn't stay—"

The words suddenly catch in her throat. A soldier in red is standing right behind Wei Wuxian, sword held high and murder in his eyes, aiming straight for the heart. Yanli thinks, no, and uses one last burst of strength to push Wei Wuxian out of the way—

She watches, as though time itself slows down, as the sword continues its journey towards her own chest—

And then there's a burst of light, and another sword catches that one, and someone new turns the blade away. A shining cultivator in golden robes steps forward to stand between her and danger.

"Jiang Yanli," says Mianmian, looking down at her with heaving breaths. "Please don't leave my side again."

She's bleeding, Mianmian thinks stupidly. Yanli is bleeding. You failed.

From the moment they arrived here, things had started going wrong. Perhaps that's to be expected; the very nature of this battle is perverse—even with spiritual weapons, there's only so much the cultivators could do with sword and bow against the tides of resentful energy battering them against the mountainside. Mianmian had recognized her fellow Jin disciples fighting off the Yiling Laozu's resentful spirits, and felt the pull of duty telling her to aid them. Even as the thought crossed her mind, though, Jiang Yanli was running into the battlefield on her other side, calling for her brother. Mianmian's spiritual energy was nearly exhausted just from the effort it had taken to get them all to this mountain, and in the time it took to deflect a ghost bearing down upon her, she turned around to find Jiang Yanli gone.

She's lost Wen Qing too, though that might have been her own fault, panicked as she was to find her lady amongst the mob. No doubt Wen Qing, too, had gone to find her wayward brother somewhere across the battlefield—though if the Ghost General were in this fight, his presence would probably be hard to miss. Mianmian hopes everyone else is too distracted by their own troubles to recognize a woman who's supposed to be dead.

Then again, the dead are rising all around them.

"It's him! The Yiling Laozu!" shouts the cultivator who just nearly stabbed Jiang Yanli through the chest. "Quick, get out of the way!"

Mianmian turns to him in a fury. "If you're going to think only with your sword, then do us all a favor and put yourself on the other end of it!" she snaps. "Get lost!" With a jab and a twist, she yanks the man's sword out of his hand and sends it spinning across the stone floor. He yelps and chases after it, vanishing back into the crowd.

"If you hadn't done that," says Wei Wuxian behind her, "I would have killed him." His voice is eerily calm.

Mianmian grips the hilt of her own sword tighter, watching a shadow sweep across the moon. "If she dies because of what your puppets did," she replies, "I will kill you."

"She's not going to die," growls Sect Leader Jiang, still clutching Jiang Yanli against his chest. Purple sparks skip across the ring on his right hand. "You're going to be fine, a-jie, right?"

Jiang Yanli gives a wet-sounding cough, and blood appears on her bottom lip. "You worry too much, a-Cheng," she murmurs.

Wei Wuxian crawls towards her on his knees. "Shijie," he says. "Shijie."

Mianmian senses movement out of the corner of her eye, and sweeps her blade around again to cut through a demonic puppet that was lurching towards her. Her golden core can't take much more of this—it cost nearly everything she had to reach Jiang Yanli in time to stop that sword going through her. Clearly there was already another blade that she was too slow, too unobservant to prevent. "Wei Wuxian!" she snaps. "Call them off!"

Wei Wuxian ignores her, cradling Jiang Yanli's face in one shaking hand while she smiles at him and touches his hair. Mianmian is nearly sick with her desire to do that exact same thing—but around them people are still screaming, bleeding, dying in the clouds of resentful energy or at the hands of black-veined puppets. She limps over and gives Wei Wuxian a kick in the shins.

"I said, call them off."

He whips his head around, and for a moment, Mianmian experiences the raw fear behind every tale of the Yiling Laozu. Then his expression shifts into something less angry, though still just as uncanny. "I can't call them off," says Wei Wuxian. "I didn't call them on. They're out of my control."

"You—" begins Sect Leader Jiang, but Mianmian stamps the ground and cuts him off.

"If you aren't doing this," she demands, "then who is still playing the flute?"

A moment after she says it, though, the eerie music in the air cuts off. Wei Wuxian looks as surprised as she does. The puppets don't stop moving, exactly, but they seem more disorderly in the silence, and some of the remaining cultivators begin to rally their strength again.

From atop the stairs of Nightless City palace, a voice calls out, "I think I can answer that."

All four of them look up. A man wearing dark clothes and the mask of a ghost stands there frozen in place, a bamboo flute held to his lips. Behind him, one sharp needle between her fingers, is Wen Qing.

Sect Leader Jiang makes a strangled sort of noise. Wei Wuxian is silent, but he gets to his feet very, very slowly, and starts to walk towards her as though in a trance.

"Sect leaders," calls Wen Qing. "Cultivators. My name is Wen Qing, and despite what you may have been told, I am not dead."

"She killed my son!" shouts Jin Guangshan, seemingly infuriated by the pause in violence. "She and her brother! They killed Jin Zixuan, and Wei Ying told them to do it!" One of the men beside him shoots in Wen Qing's direction, which she dodges just in time; the arrow shatters on the stone steps behind her and the ghost-faced man she holds.

Wei Wuxian rounds on him, eyes flashing red. The black flute flies to his lips and utters one high, piercing note, a sound that goes on longer than it seems possible for him to draw breath. Everyone claps their hands to their ears as one by one, all but the very strongest cultivators fall struggling on the ground, pinned flat. Mianmian sinks to her knees with a thousand needles buzzing in her brain. At the same time, though, she sees the black clouds of resentful energy start to pull away into the night. The puppets twitch and writhe and then, for the time being at least, turn back into lifeless corpses. The battlefield thus immobilized, Wei Wuxian lets the flute drop, and points it at Jin Guangshan.

"You burned her," he says. "You hung her family from the walls."

"A-Xian." Jiang Yanli's voice is faint, but it's enough to catch his attention. Wei Wuxian looks down at her, still bloody and cradled in her brother's lap, and she shakes her head. He lowers his instrument, poised in stillness. His hands are shaking. In a blur of white robes Hanguang-jun lands beside Wei Wuxian, sword raised protectively in front of him. Zewu-jun gestures to Chifeng-zun and the others still standing to hold.

Wen Qing continues addressing herself to the assembly at large. "Yes, I still live," she says. "Of course, we remnants of the Wen Clan have learned to not expect justice from you. But perhaps you will listen to the truth." Across the battlefield, Wen Qing's eyes meet Mianmian's. Mianmian returns her gaze with a nod.

"Lady Wen," calls Zewu-jun, respectful as he always is, even to his enemies. "I would be curious to hear your tale. Who is this man you hold before you?"

The man in question twitches, unable to shake his paralysis. Moonlight glints off the needle in his skin. "He is a demonic cultivator," says Wen Qing. "He has been manipulating this whole battle from the shadows, using the flute you see in his hands. I believe he is responsible for the crimes of which you accused Wei Wuxian."

"Ridiculous!" blusters Sect Leader Ouyang from the back. "The Yiling Laozu commands powers unknown by other men!"

Hanguang-jun steps closer to Wei Wuxian, his sword unsheathed. "I watched Wei Ying." His voice is quiet, but it carries across the entire battlefield. "I saw him lower his flute. Yet music continued to play from another source."

"That's right." Wen Qing straightens her shoulders. "While you all were fighting each other, I saw this man and his instrument turning your fallen comrades into puppets. He can control fierce corpses, just like Wei Wuxian does. And that includes the Ghost General."

"Lying witch," spits Jin Guangshan, though he stays well clear of Wei Wuxian and Hanguang-jun. "You think you can show us a man with a flute and say he commands your brother? What proof do you have?"

Mianmian is impressed by how steady Wen Qing can be, staring into the face of the man who threw her ashes to the wind. "For one thing," she says, "he already has."

"What!"

"That day, when Wei Wuxian and my brother came to Qiongqi Path, their only intent was to attend Jin Rulan's one-month celebration," says Wen Qing. "Along the way, a group of cultivators ambushed them, led by Jin Zixun. During the battle, something sent Wen Ning berserk, causing the death of many people there—including Jin Zixuan."

"Because of Wei Wuxian!" roars Jin Guangshan. "He wanted my son dead, and used his dog to do it!"

"You're wrong!" It's lucky for both of them, probably, that Hanguang-jun is there to put a hand on Wei Wuxian's shoulder and stop him from reaching Jin Guangshan. Even so, Wei Wuxian's voice shakes almost as much as his hands. "All I wanted was to meet my own nephew. All I wanted was for shijie to be happy. He made her happy, idiot that he was, and the last thing I would ever do is take that away from her!"

Mianmian may be one of the few to hear it when Jiang Yanli lets out a hushed sob. "I knew it," she whispers, so quiet that it's almost a secret. "I knew."

"Wei Wuxian," Wen Qing calls to him, soft in her own way. "It wasn't your fault. The flute that drove a-Ning mad was not yours." She points to the man in the ghost mask, raising her voice again. "The conflict began because Jin Zixun claimed Wei Wuxian had placed a curse on him, is that not so?"

"It's true," says Mianmian, pushing herself upright. Though there is little strength left in her arms, she takes up a guarding stance over Jiang Yanli anyway. "Jin Zixun spent days complaining of the thousand-holes curse until he heard that Wei Wuxian was on his way to Jinlintai."

"You all thought the curse came from the devious Yiling Laozu," says Wen Qing. "But wicked sorcery leaves marks on the one who casts it. Wei Wuxian, do you have any such marks?"

For the first time tonight, Mianmian can see some of the old mischief in Wei Wuxian's smirk, though his laughter borders on hysterical. "My skin is as smooth as a newborn lamb's," he replies, and pulls his robes open almost to the waist. "See?" And indeed his skin is blank, unsullied. Beside him, Hanguang-jun's mouth twitches ever so slightly.

"So what?" wheezes Sect Leader Yao. He has, thus far, remained flailing on his back like a turtle. "A demonic cultivator like him could use any sort of trickery to hide something like that!"

A brief grin passes over Wen Qing's face as she trades glances with Wei Wuxian. "The only sufficient proof would be to find someone else with the curse mark instead," she agrees. The man in the ghost mask gives a muffled cry as Wen Qing reaches around to his neck. "Will this do?" And she drags open the man's robes, revealing a horrible constellation of pock-marks across his bare chest.

The assembly erupts into chaos. "Lies! Tricks!" cries Sect Leader Yao, as someone in Lan robes yells, "My cousin died in that fight!" The cultivators on the ground flop like fish, robes and swords tangling as they try to get up. The hubbub grows louder and louder until Chifeng-zun swings his blade around and shouts, "ENOUGH!"

Everyone shuts up.

"Enough," says Chifeng-zun again. "I have no love for your sect, Lady Wen, but you've given proof enough to back your claim. Remove this man's mask and let him speak on his own account."

Wen Qing bows. "There is a mild toxin in his system that will prevent him from moving," she cautions. "But he should regain his power of speech in only a few minutes. Do with him as you will." With those words, she unties the ghost mask and reveals the man's face.

After hearing of his crimes, Mianmian was expecting someone clever-looking or villainous. The face she sees instead—a hangdog mouth and heavy brows—is both unfamiliar to her and disappointingly forgettable. The man's eyes dart wildly back and forth among the crowd and land, wide and panicked, on the Lan cultivators.

Zewu-jun steps forward. He has seemed stern before, but this is the first time Mianmian has seen him look truly angry. "Su She."

Su She, whoever that is, glares and tries to speak. The huff of unformed breath blows through the flute still stuck in front of his mouth. At the sound, one of the corpses on the ground twitches. The sect leaders recoil.

"Lan Xichen, who is this?" asks Chifeng-zun. "Is he truly a demonic cultivator?"

Zewu-jun clenches his jaw. "That, I cannot answer," he replies. "But I know the man called Su She, who was once a disciple of Gusu Lan, was cast out in dishonor. During the siege of Cloud Recesses, he revealed our clan's secrets to the Wen armies. I was nearly killed trying to escape in time."

Mutters travel through the crowd. The Lan Clan has always been evasive about what happened to their sect during the Sunshot Campaign, but it was often remarked upon how very many cultivators had died, and how unusual that all the Lan's secret ancestral protections fell. Now it becomes clear: they had a traitor in their midst.

"He should be glad of your mercy, to have escaped the blade that day," Chifeng-zun says. "Why is he here now?"

"Please forgive my interruption," says a new voice. "But I believe I may be able to shed some light on this situation."

Heads turn to face the speaker. Mianmian, though, has kept her eyes on Wen Qing as she stepped back from the man in the mask—and so she sees now how the other woman tenses up suddenly, a flash of fear crossing her face and then just as quickly gone.

"Su She has approached me in Jinlintai more than once," continues Jin Guangyao, stepping neatly over a splatter of blood. "Moling Su is a close ally of Lanling Jin, so of course, I would not think to turn away an audience. But now that you have revealed the truth of his character, er-ge, some parts of those conversations begin to take on a more troubling cast."

Chifeng-zun scoffs, hefting his saber. "Speak plainly."

"As you know, Su She was always very concerned with the threat posed by the Yiling Laozu," Jin Guangyao says. "Whenever the topic came up, he encouraged the four clans to take more aggressive action against the settlement in the Burial Mounds. But I also happen to know that, in private, he was trying to continue the study of spiritual music after his departure from Gusu Lan."

Mianmian has always considered Jin Guangyao something of an unknown quantity. Jin Zixuan seemed mostly unruffled by his father's sudden acknowledgement of a second son, and certainly the two were disparate enough that they never appeared to be in competition. Perhaps his feelings would have been different if he had known he would die in his son's infancy and leave a total newcomer as the sect heir. Only now does it occur to Mianmian how well these last weeks would suit someone ambitious, were they in Jin Guangyao's position.

Su She grunts, drawing another discordant noise from his flute. He still seems to be having trouble forming words. Wen Qing has drawn away from him now, and while the men are distracted with talking, Mianmian tries to subtly gesture her down to join Jiang Yanli and the rest of them.

"Surely it would take no great stroke of brilliance to realize that Wei Wuxian would be blamed for any deaths brought about by his fearsome Ghost General," says Jin Guangyao, stepping closer to Su She. He looks back at Zewu-jun, then at Jin Guangshan. "If such a death included my beloved brother Jin Zixuan, would the Jin Clan and its allies not bring the great might of our swords down upon the one responsible? Indeed, here we are! And yet, it seems, we were misled."

The closer Jin Guangyao comes to the stairs, the more still Wen Qing goes. Her hands are tucked back into the sleeves of her red Wen robes, and Mianmian suddenly wonders how many more of those needles she has hidden away.

"I don't believe Su She wanted to remove the Yiling Laozu," Jin Guangyao concludes sweetly. "I think he wanted to become him."

All at once, the paralysis on Su She ends. He drops his flute and lunges towards Jin Guangyao, shouting, "You–!"

There's a flash of metal. The rest of the sentence cuts off. Su She wobbles, looks down at the blood dribbling from his throat, and collapses to the ground in a heap.

Wen Qing watches as though in slow motion as Jin Guangyao, the man who threw her in a cage and promised future use for her, finishes the sweep of his bloodied sword. A perfect O of shock appears on his face as Su She's body hits the ground.

"Meng Yao!" bellows Chifeng-zun, and Zewu-jun cries "Mingjue, wait," and as the three of them converge, Wen Qing bolts.

She doesn't know where she's running, really, except that she needs to not be near him anymore, so she is not prepared for an arm to catch her waist and knock the breath out of her. Luo Qingyang pulls her closer and hisses, "Don't!"

"Let go of me," Wen Qing snarls back, though she keeps her voice down too—miraculously, none of the others seem to have taken notice of her flight yet. Jin Guangyao has dropped his weapon and is gazing up at the assembled sect leaders with large, soulful eyes.

"Please forgive me," he says, bowing low. "Su She came to attack me, and I acted instinctively. And yet—" He looks down at the lifeless body at his feet. "While I regret the unanticipated haste of this result, I also cannot find remorse in my heart for Su She to meet such an end, knowing that he caused the death of Jin Zixuan and Jin Zixun. And that his past actions put you in danger, er-ge."

"It's him, isn't it?" whispers Luo Qingyang. "The one who imprisoned you?"

Wen Qing clenches her fists and gives a single nod. "I know that voice. He has Wen Ning."

Luo Qingyang watches the scene playing out on the stairs, where Jin Guangshan is loudly proclaiming that justice was served by the quick thinking of his right-hand man. "I don't want to have to say this," she says, "but if you expose him right now, I think he will just find another way to twist the situation to his advantage. That man is dangerous. Some battles can only be won if you wait for them."

"I don't care about winning," says Wen Qing. "I just want my brother back."

Luo Qingyang nods. "In that case, come with me."

She leads Wen Qing back to Jiang Yanli, whose white mourning robes have dark stains of red across them now. She's conscious, at least, and half-sitting up, but it's difficult for Wen Qing to truly assess the extent of the damage when Jiang Cheng is clinging to his sister and staring at her like that.

"Wen Qi—I mean, Lady Wen," he says. "I thought you died."

An absurd part of her is glad that she was wearing her formal robes, when she went to Jinlintai to be executed. "I didn't."

"Right. Obviously." He shakes his head. "That's good."

Jiang Yanli smiles up at her from Jiang Cheng's lap, face pale. "Hello again, Wen Qing."

Thankfully, Wen Qing's medical instinct takes hold of her then, and she can approach the pair of them without her expression giving anything away. The stab wound in Jiang Yanli's back seems to have missed any vital organs, but not by much, and it's caused an imbalance in her spiritual energy. Wen Qing takes Jiang Yanli's hand and begins circulating some of her own qi through the injury.

"I can help heal her," she says to Jiang Cheng, recalling this same conversation in the Yiling Supervisory Office a lifetime ago. "But not here. Someplace safe."

"Anything," he says.

"And—" Wen Qing glances back at Luo Qingyang, who has gone to whisper something to Wei Wuxian. "I may need to ask for something in return."

A moment later, Wei Wuxian joins them, Lan Wangji trailing behind like an inverted shadow. Wen Qing finds she can't read the expression on his face as Wei Wuxian looks her over. "Was it true?" he says bluntly. "Did Su She really take control of Wen Ning?"

She lowers her gaze. "We talked that night, he and I, while you were asleep," she says. "He told me there was something in the music that day that changed him. Like blowing out a candle—nothing was left but the rage. And he said, no music from Chenqing has ever made him feel like a puppet."

Wei Wuxian folds to the ground all at once, alarming Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng, but Wen Qing recognizes it as relief. "Shijie," he says. "Shijie, I didn't do it. I thought—I had ruined everything."

"Oh, a-Xian," sighs Jiang Yanli. "I knew you didn't."

"That's not all," says Wen Qing. Seeing Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian together has always been unbearably familiar, and right now it's making her teeth hurt. "Wei Wuxian. It wasn't just me who lived through the Jin Clan's judgment. Wen Ning is still alive, and they're holding him prisoner."

Wei Wuxian goes still. Then, troublingly, he begins to smile. "Excuse me," he says, and stands up again. He starts walking towards the huddle of sect leaders.

"This is not what I had in mind," mutters Luo Qingyang, but her voice is soon drowned out.

"Chief Cultivator!" cries Wei Wuxian, twirling Chenqing with his most insouciant grin. "It seems I should thank you for finding the man who stole my inventions and sullied my name! You must be relieved to know the truth of what happened in Qiongqi Path, no?"

Jin Guangshan's jaw clenches, but some of the other clan leaders exchange nervous glances behind his back. The cultivators had not been winning this battle when it was interrupted. "What do you want?"

Wei Wuxian grins. "Oh, nothing much," he says. "Just the return of something that was taken from me." And once more he raises his flute, and he plays.

Wen Qing has heard this song before. This is the song that played day and night while Wei Wuxian was barricaded in his cave, scrawling talismans with his own blood; this is the song that sounds when something threatens the Burial Mounds and they need their protector. The slides, the stops, the melody punctuated with trills: this music was created to call someone forth.

Beneath the song, there's a sound of stone cracking. Then, in the dark, a figure more dear to Wen Qing than anything else she knows: wrapped in black cloth and silver chains, his hair loose in a halo behind him, Wen Ning emerges from the distant palace and comes to stand beside his master once more.

Chenqing's music dies. The silence that follows is deafening.

"We'll be on our way," Wei Wuxian says to the sect leaders, meeting each of their eyes in turn. Wen Ning is a silent, black-eyed presence beside him. "I'm sure Wen Ning and I have lots to catch up on."

After a long, tense moment, Luo Qingyang steps forward and bows to the assembly. "Young Madam Jin is badly hurt," she says, gesturing to Jiang Yanli. "Now that Jin Zixuan’s murderer is dead—" she pointedly looks towards Su She, not Wen Ning— "perhaps this is a good time to regroup, and attend to the wounded."

Jin Guangyao bows to her, smiling. "What an excellent suggestion, Lady Luo. Father?"

Jin Guangshan is glaring daggers at Wei Wuxian, but he and Wen Ning meet them stare for stare. Lan Wangji stands behind them with his sword unsheathed, his allegiance clear.

Jiang Yanli, daughter-in-law to Jin Guangshan and mother of his only grandchild, gives a loud and rattling cough, spitting blood delicately into her hands.

"Shijie?" Just like that, Wei Wuxian’s attention shifts, and it’s like Jin Guangshan doesn’t exist anymore.

"I’m alright," she says, smiling at him. "Only—will you help bring me home? I feel very weak." Wen Qing looks down at her patient, a suspicion forming in her mind. Jiang Yanli blinks up innocently.

Very carefully, Jiang Cheng transfers his sister to Wen Qing, with Luo Qingyang stepping in to help support her from the other side. With blood on his robes, he stands up and squares his shoulders.

"I’m taking my sister back to Lotus Pier," he says, in a tone that brooks no argument. "While Jinlintai is in mourning, she deserves a peaceful and familiar place to recover. And to be attended by the best possible physician." He looks down at Wen Qing, and her heart thuds. "No cost is too dear."

Not for the first time, Wen Qing wonders what her life would have looked like if she’d taken the offer of protection from the other Yunmeng brother. "I would be honored," she says quietly, "to return what your family has done for me."

He nods. She nods. They are in agreement.

"Shijie asked me to go with her, you know," says Wei Wuxian after a moment, twirling his flute again. His question hangs in the air unasked.

Jiang Cheng scowls. "Are you going to turn her down? Look at her!" He crosses his arms. "And it’s not like we’re done rebuilding, you know!"

"Well!" says Wei Wuxian, blinking rapidly. "Good! I know a lot more about growing lotuses now, you know!"

"If you're comparing that pile of muck to Yunmeng—"

And as the two of them start bickering, Jiang Yanli makes a softer noise that Wen Qing eventually realizes is a laugh.

"Thank you," she says to Wen Qing in an undertone. "I knew you came back to us for a reason."

It’s hard to admit, even now, but it’s the truth: "You saved me," says Wen Qing. "Nothing I can do would repay that."

"Perhaps we should stop speaking of repayment, then?" Jiang Yanli smiles at her. "Perhaps, instead, we can merely call this—friendship."

Wen Qing’s face heats up, which is horribly embarrassing. "Mn," she manages.

Jiang Yanli takes pity on her, and turns to Luo Qingyang instead. "Mianmian, if I’m going to Yunmeng—"

"I’ll bring Jin Ling," she says immediately. "And I’ll pack your things, and bring the nursemaid and people to attend you. We’ll take care of you, Lady Jiang."

"Thank you." Jiang Yanli takes another breath, her exhaustion more genuine this time. "I couldn’t do this without you, you know."

Luo Qingyang doesn’t say anything at all, just takes Jiang Yanli’s hand and holds it tight. Wen Qing looks away.

"Jiejie?"

While Wei Wuxian is preoccupied with his own brother, Wen Ning has come to see her. Wen Qing stands up. The black veins still crawl up his pale face, but his smile is the same as ever. "A-Ning," she chokes out, and throws herself into his arms.

Their troubles are far from over, she knows. The cultivation world will stay wary of Wei Wuxian as long as he continues to wield power they don’t understand—and that includes Wen Ning. It’s clear now that others are capable of learning how to do the same things. Jin Guangyao wanted the two of them alive for some reason, and she doubts they’ve seen the last of him, however far his secrets may spread. But they’re alive, and for the first time in a long time, a fragile bloom of possibility seems to be opening before them.

Wen Ning lifts her gently off her feet, then sets her back down again. "I’m glad you’re here, jiejie."

Behind them, the red sun appears over the mountains, sky turning from darkness to light.