The wind was rustling through the field of tall grasses as a woman’s raspy wail, perturbing the sprawling sea of stalks and wildflowers from their lazy swaying. Across the strip of clouded sky there loomed the craggy hillside, curving as the spine of a beaten beast. The textured greenery unfolded as far as the eye could see.
“Just a little more, Jiang Cheng!”
Wei Wuxian halted and looked back.
Behind him, Jiang Cheng was trudging up the winding dirt path, pausing to catch his breath when he judged Wei Wuxian distracted. Which was often—not that Wei Wuxian could forget about his precious charge, but if Jiang Cheng figured out Wei Wuxian tracked his movements with a hunter’s vigilance he’d feel belittled or worse, coddled. Hurting Jiang Cheng was the last thing Wei Wuxian wanted.
“You said that five li ago.”
“I did, didn’t I,” Wei Wuxian laughed reflexively, “but now we’re even closer. Almost there.” He spun in place searching around: the rocky ground was covered in untamed vegetation that had never known a gardener’s hand, weeds and shrubbery, brambles and bushes with red fruits hanging from their branches as beaded strings, nectarous and deadly.
They were in the heart of Yiling, in the middle of nowhere.
“We’re on the right track,” Wei Wuxian said.
The location didn’t matter, just that Jiang Cheng believed the ruse. And it was now time for the last precautionary step.
“Wei Wuxian, what’re you doing.”
Wordlessly, Wei Wuxian unspooled a strip of black fabric from his bracer and tied it over Jiang Cheng’s eyes. His lashes were trembling, sweeping in a dark fan against his cheek.
“From now on I cannot go with you,” he said. He touched Jiang Cheng’s stiff shoulder and some of that tension melted away. “Follow the path until you hear a bell; you should reach the sect in about half a shí.”
From where it had rested on Jiang Cheng, his hand slid upwards cupping the curve of Jiang Cheng’s cheek, running a thumb just beneath the blindfold. Wei Wuxian kissed his covered eye, then his other one, light as a mothwing.
Jiang Cheng’s mouth parted slightly; he wetted his lip. Swallowed. Wei Wuxian wanted to swipe the pad of his finger over that glistening, bitten lip, or pinch his cheek, or kiss him until his mouth ached. “Don’t get off the trail,” he told him instead. “And be more careful! This is your only chance. I won’t be able to help you again.”
“Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng said. He looked pitiful, slight and still weak, and Wei Wuxian’s heart lurched. The sooner Jiang Cheng returned as the sect leader he now was, at the height of his power, the better.
Jiang Cheng’s fingers curled on Wei Wuxian’s lapels. “We’ll meet at the foot of the mountain,” he said in a rush, tinged with desperation and—hope, his voice was suffused with such agonising, bone-deep hope Wei Wuxian’s breath hitched as if struck by a sword’s hilt.
“I’ll wait for you,” Wei Wuxian promised.
Jiang Cheng made a small grunt of assent and straightened his shoulders, bracing himself, and leaning on the staff he staggered upwards on the trail. Determined and brave—but the blindfold and simple robes cinched around his thin frame made him look as vulnerable as he was. Bird-boned, sylphlike; wan and waifish. One could gather him up and crunch his bones in their fist.
“A-Cheng,” Wei Wuxian called, seized by a sudden, nameless worry.
Without looking back, Jiang Cheng gave him a little careless wave. Wei Wuxian stopped himself from screaming at him.
In the distance a bell tolled, faint as a memory, and the birds hidden in the grasses took flight.
