10. Chapter 10

Zhao Yunlan throws himself forward in the dark, trusting his instincts to find Shen Wei.

It’s easy, when he does find him, to fall on his ass and pull Shen Wei to his chest. He wraps his arms around him, holding him tight as Shen Wei gasps for air, his cries rough and wet. Even through his robes and cape, he’s cold, and Zhao Yunlan feels the zing of dark energy plucking at his nerves. Shen Wei’s face is plastered against his neck but he’s holding his hands out to his sides as if scared to touch, his whole body shaking with the force of his sobs.

Zhao Yunlan sits there for a minute, reconfiguring everything he’s ever been told. He thinks about what he was taught as a boy, what his father has shared with him over the years, what he’s read in books. He thinks about Shen Wei earnestly petitioning for peace via the treaty even at the price of keeping his people literally in the dark. He thinks of ten thousand years of loneliness and longing, and what that could do to even the sanest mind. He holds Shen Wei to his chest as tightly as he can.

“Shhh. Shhhh, Xiao Wei, please listen to me. I was stupid and cruel when I said those things. I was wrong. I didn’t know you. I never questioned what I was told, I didn’t even try. Then you said no and I thought you hated me, and that made me angry because I’m a petty bitch sometimes. I was so, so wrong, Shen Wei.”

There is another strangled sob and Shen Wei shudders. Zhao Yunlan feels a tug and realizes that Shen Wei is biting into his leather jacket, even with his hands still held out to the sides, shaking.

“Shhhh, baby, please come back to me, I’m right here.” He pets Shen Wei’s head, gets his fingers tangled in the impossibly long strands of hair and tries again. And again, this time kissing the skin just in front of his ear, his cheek, any place his lips can reach.

“Zhao Yunlan—” Shen Wei whispers and his hands slowly, gently, come to rest on Zhao Yunlan’s hips.

“Yeah, that’s me. Right here, I’ve got you. My Shen Wei.” He stops, tightens his hold, whispers. “My Black Cloak Envoy.”

Shen Wei shudders again but then goes completely still. In the dark, in the cold, it’s like holding death in his arms.

“Brother Black, my love. My everything. I’m sorry you had to wait. I don’t know why you had to wait, but I’m sorry. No, you know what? I’m angry! I’m angry that you were alone all this time. I’m pissed off that no one loved you the way I do. You are a good man. I know this. When you talk about Dixing, I hear your yearning for your people’s freedom and happiness. I didn’t, ah, know they are your people but I knew you wanted the best for them. I love you for that. I love you for you. ” He tips his head forward to whisper in Shen Wei’s ear. “My Envoy. Mine! You belong to your Lord Guardian. I swear this to you.”

“Kunlun,” Shen Wei cries the word, some strange archaic nomen that could be a person or a title or a place, and clamps his arms around Zhao Yunlan, rocking his whole body into his hold. Zhao Yunlan feels something snap — the air, sound, time, his heart, he doesn’t know what, but it hits his nervous system like an electrical charge. It’s a cold, dark, deep-water charge that strips his nerves and leaves him gasping, clutching the man in his arms with all the strength he has just to anchor himself. He feels time move through him, he sees stars shifting in the skies, and next to him is a fathomless void of darkness that he wants to fall into headfirst. He thinks he should be panicking at this out-of-body experience or whatever is happening to him but he cannot stop leaning into it, letting the darkness envelop him down to his atoms, a welcome companion, a counter to the bright light he feels bursting out of his own heart.

“Zhao Yunlan!” Shen Wei gasps, the sound of shock discordant in his voice. His fingers are tendrils of ice against Zhao Yunlan’s back, his body a core of frozen steel in his arms. Shen Wei takes a deep breath and kisses his neck. “Ah-Lan,” he says, gusting out a heavy sigh and rubbing his wet cheek against Zhao Yunlan’s neck. “Ah-Lan, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Zhao Yunlan buries himself if Shen Wei’s everything, his darkness and his fears and his love. It’s all there, somehow, like an old emotion he forgot he once knew. “Sorry for what? Why? Oh, Xaio Wei, no. There is nothing to be sorry for.” He grabs Shen Wei’s chin by feel and kisses him, soft and gentle, little more than a press of lips tasting salt and grief.

Shen Wei shakes his head, breaking the kiss. “The bond. Our connection, it is in place. It cannot be broken, not again.”

“Oh. That, uh, isn’t normal?”

“No.”

He suspects that’s all he’s going to get out of the Envoy on the topic, at least for now. He pulls them close together again, swaying them a little as if he is rocking a child to sleep, his hand rubbing up and down Shen Wei’s back under his cape. He is wearing a lot of layers, Zhao Yunlan realizes with surprise, as if he is indeed still a warlord wandering the cold depths of Dixing in his robes. He wonders just how miserable life is in Dixing, that a man so impervious to the natural elements would wear such an outfit. He puts the thought aside, for now, to think about what Shen Wei just told him. Their bond .

“Does this mean we’re married now?”

There is a long pause, then Shen Wei nods. Zhao Yunlan pulls him down so that his head is cradled against his chest.

“Good. Good! Ah, any particular reason why? The Hallows decided we are meant for each other after all?”

“The Hallows saw that we have been meant for each other all along. Why this acquiescence on their part required me to reveal myself to you in this...manner? I do not know. They are mysteries greater than I comprehend. I cannot give you an answer, for I do not know their reasons.”

Zhao Yunlan is just a little perturbed that Shen Wei is talking about the Hallows like they are people, but that is also a topic for another time.

(Zhao Yunlan feels like that is going to be a long list of things to talk about when another time comes around.)

“Is me seeing, like, all of the cosmos around us a normal thing? Because it’s a little spooky.”

“You...you see?”

“Not usually like this, no,” Zhao Yunlan says mildly, understating the case by a hell of a lot. “Usually I see things? Like normal? People and hallways and stuff. Not all of this stardust and mirror images and...expanse.”

“You share my vision, then.” Shen Wei finally sounds like Shen Wei again, with his professorial pedantic tone. “Unusual.”

Well, that’s just horrifying, thinks Zhao Yunlan. “You see things like this all the time? How do you walk?”

“Zhao Yunlan,” Shen Wei says with a small, adorable huff of breath, and lifts his head. Their lips brush against each other again and Zhao Yunlan chases after the taste of Shen Wei. “Stop, Ah-Lan. I need to concentrate.”

“Yes! Yes you do. Concentrate on me. Go ahead. At your service!” He tries to kiss him again but Shen Wei turns his head so Zhao Yunlan’s efforts land on his jaw.

Another small huff of fond irritation. “No, I need to concentrate on if I can...actually, just hold on.”

The universe is broken apart and spun upside down and just before he thinks he’s going to puke, Zhao Yunlan is standing upright in the undamaged hallway with the lights on and the Black Cloak Envoy, mask in place and glaive in hand, standing way too far away from him. He moves to step toward him, hands outstretched.

“I cannot believe you!” His father hisses at him, grabs his arm and yanks him backwards as hard as he can. “You cannot demand to marry anyone you want!”

Zhao Yunlan is so surprised that he lets himself get shoved behind his father, who bows to the Envoy. “My son speaks out of turn, your highness. Please disregard—”

Zhao Yunlan pushes at his father and walks past him, wagging a finger at the Black Cloak Envoy standing imperiously in front of everyone in the hallway.

“Did you...did you just turn back time?” He feels like he’s squawking. From the look on his father’s face, he probably is.

The Envoy tips his head. “A little. I cannot do much along those lines, and only rarely.”

His expression, what can be seen of it under the mask and hood, is stoic, but Zhao Yunlan feels Shen Wei’s amusement bubbling up inside his chest.

“You are playing us, Your Royal Insufferableness,” Zhao Yunlan says with a smirk.

His father blanches and tries to rush forward again. “Your Highness, please forgive my—”

“No need to apologize on my consort’s behalf, Zhao Xinci.”

Everyone in the hallway freezes, then turns to stare at Zhao Yunlan.

“What he said,” Zhao Yunlan says, waving a hand at Shen Wei and hoping against hope that everyone takes it at face value.

“What? How?” His father barks in a very unflattering way.

So much for that thin shred of hope. Zhao Yunlan shrugs. “The Hallows have spoken! Who are we to question the great mysteries of the universe?”

“Zhao Yunlan!” His father turns on him, incredulous. “What did you do?”

The Envoy slams the butt of his glaive onto the ground, sending sparks of ice and dark energy flashing, tendrils of pitch-black shadows reaching out from where he stands. Everyone scrambles away, a few running flat out for the exits.

“The Lord Guardian of Haixing and I have come to an agreement. Our union is sealed. The treaty stands.”

And with that, the cowardly son of a bitch flat out disappears.