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Ruoye is born a tiger, with pale gold fur and rounded ears. His form shifts, after that, as all the form of all children’s daemons do—he preens himself as a brightly-colored pheasant, tosses his horns as a shaggy-furred ram, and splashes giddily in the palace ponds as a koi. When he settles, however, he settles into his first form. It is thereafter a common thing to see the Crown Prince of Xianle strolling through the city streets with a broad-shouldered golden tiger at his side.
Ruoye is a glory to the people: he is often draped in clinking jewels and festooned in crimson banners. He is mild and sweet-tempered, but he fights with all the ferocity of a mighty predator. His claws are sheathed more often than not; when unsheathed, they dig cruel gouges into the earth. His roar shakes the hearts of those around him.
The day of the God-Pleasing Festival, Ruoye is as decorated as Xie Lian. As Xie Lian spars with Mu Qing, Ruoye grapples with the dog Zhan Madao. Zhan Madao is a wiry, wily thing; the bites she lands sting and bleed. But in the end it is Ruoye who prevails, pinning her to the earth under massive paws before seizing her throat between his jaws. The crowd howls with delight.
Then the boy falls, and Ruoye is just as distracted as Xie Lian. He abandons his play with Zhan Madao and bolts to Xie Lian’s side, his eyes wide and his ears pricked: the boy smells like blood and disease, but he clings to Xie Lian with startling strength. Ruoye searches for the boy’s daemon, eager to check that it is safe after such a fall. He finds nothing.
This, more than anything else, is what alarms him.
Even when Xie Lian carries the boy back to the palace, no daemon shows itself. Ruoye can’t smell one on him, either; he will not understand why until weeks later, when ghosts flood to Taicang Mountain. He hears the whispers, then: the boy is cursed, daemonless, a freak and a monster and a creature best avoided.
Fuck that, Ruoye thinks, and seizes the scruff of the first daemon to growl in the boy’s direction. He shakes it roughly before tossing it across the room and setting himself between the boy and the crowd, his fur bristling and his tail lashing and his teeth gleaming yellow in the lantern light. None dare cross him. Behind him, he hears Xie Lian embrace the boy and whisper comfort.
Daemon or no daemon, the boy is their citizen—more importantly, he is a person, a child, and thus intrinsically worthy of their care. It is infuriating to see him mistreated so. Ruoye doesn’t stop growling until Xie Lian touches his flank, petting softly. “It’s alright,” he soothes. “Ruoye, that’s enough now, they understand.”
The boy regards Ruoye with a single wide, frightened eye, and Ruoye—well, Ruoye knows how impolite it is to touch any human besides his own. But that sort of rule is for humans with external daemons, isn’t it? If a human doesn’t have a daemon beside him, then it stands to reason that that daemon is within him. Ruoye decides that, logically, he can greet this odd human-and-daemon blend as he would any other daemon.
He leans forward, chuffing warmly, and licks the boy’s hair out of his face.
The boy tastes like sweat and slumwater, but the way his eye lights up makes it worth it. Ruoye rumbles, drawing the boy close to his chest and beginning to groom his matted hair. He cracks fleas between his teeth. “Ruoye,” Xie Lian says, fondly. “Don’t scare him.”
Ruoye doesn’t think the boy is scared at all, anymore: he buries his hands in the thick fur of Ruoye’s ruff and clings. Ruoye wraps a paw around him, claws carefully sheathed, and glares daggers at the other daemons. Xie Lian can do the smiling for them, if he likes—but Ruoye has never been anything less than honest with their emotions.
To his disappointment, the boy flees from the mountain later that night. Ruoye grumbles his discontent all morning, and only settles when Xie Lian rubs his ears and coaxes him to sleep on the cool palace floor in a patch of sunlight.
Ruoye changes after their ascension: his paws glimmer with starlight and his eyes shine like liquid gold. If he was a glory before, how much more so he is now! He and Xie Lian could not be more highly exalted.
Ruoye changes after the war: his shoulders and chest grow broader with deadly muscle, his throat aches with the violence of his roars, and his breath tastes like blood more often than it does not. There are notches in his ears and scars ripped through his skin beneath his golden armor.
Ruoye changes after the plague: in his stress, he loses clumps of fur and paces until the pads of his paws crack and bleed. There is a haggard weight around his eyes. Xie Lian frets to let him be seen; he refuses to allow their people to know how distressed they really are.
But Ruoye never changes more than he does after the temple.
He is chained to the floor beside the altar, his muzzle wrapped in cloth until it is a struggle to breathe. Xie Lian is bound on the altar itself: his screams will echo in Ruoye’s mind until the day they die. Ruoye screams with him until his own throat is ripped and ragged and when he swallows he tastes blood. He unsheathes his claws and cannot, will not, resheathe them.
Jun Wu’s own daemon, Zhu Xin—a tiger like Ruoye himself, but with stripeless white fur and pink eyes—sits before him and rumbles soothingly. “It’s alright,” he says, rasping his flat pink tongue across Ruoye’s skull to clean away the hot drops of Xie Lian’s blood. “It will be alright. Only a little longer, now. Hold on only a little longer, Ruoye. You’ll be better after this.”
Ruoye is not better.
Ruoye shrieks until he chokes on his own blood—until Xie Lian has gone quiet and still—until the people depart and Zhu Xin leaves him behind with one last, loving blink. He slumps to the ground and wheezes for breath through his trapped muzzle, groaning softly. Xie Lian? he cries in his mind. His human does not respond. Xie Lian?!
Fire crackles around them: the ghost, a pit of wrath and depthless hurt before them. Ruoye snarls at it when it approaches Xie Lian, fighting desperately against his chains. They’ve already torn clumps of his fur and rubbed his skin raw in strips. The ghost drops to his knees before the altar and howls—a feral, wounded sound very much like the ones Ruoye himself made.
“My god, my god,” it chokes, “what have they done to you, my god—”
Ruoye’s head drops heavily to the ground. His flanks heave. He watches warily as the ghost approaches, snarling when its cold fingers touch his fur. The ghost flinches back.
“Forgive me,” it whispers, but does not leave him alone. It reaches forward again: it ignores Ruoye’s vicious snarling, this time, tucking its fingers beneath the chains and snapping them cleanly. They fall to the ground with a clatter, and Ruoye springs to his feet. He presses the ghost to the floor with heavy paws, snarling into its face. His claws leave gouges in its shoulders. It does not struggle.
Satisfied that it will not hurt them for the time being, Ruoye draws away from it and claws the cloth muzzle off of himself. He races to Xie Lian, after, springing up onto the altar. His paws soak through with congealing blood. Xie Lian is unrecognizable: there is no part of him that looks human and whole anymore. Keening with grief, Ruoye lays beside him long into the night. Xie Lian’s body slowly knits itself back together; his mind does not.
The ghost tries to approach, once and only once. “Ruoye,” it says softly, its head bowed. “Ruoye, please, let me help you, let me see him, let me—”
Ruoye rises and roars, standing possessively over Xie Lian. Haven’t they been hurt enough? Haven’t they been frightened enough? Why can’t everyone just leave them alone?! No one is ever going to come near them again! Ruoye will tear the world apart if it tries to take a single thing else from them! Prince or not, they do not belong to anyone and everyone who calls upon their name. They are not a sacrifice to be made. They are not something to be tied down and broken open again and again and again.
Ruoye is so sick of being broken open.
The ghost, wisely, does not push him.
When dawn comes, Ruoye licks the blood from Xie Lian’s skin. Xie Lian groans as he stirs, reaching up to tuck his fingers into Ruoye’s fur. After several minutes, he is awake enough to recall the night—awake enough to scream, and weep, and curl himself into a ball small enough for Ruoye to lay protectively over. He bares his fangs at nothing while Xie Lian sobs himself sick.
Ruoye’s golden fur falls out in patches, after that.
It grows in white.
Zhan Madao and Fengshen Gong still walk beside him, but he smells the fear on them whenever he approaches. Zhan Madao will playfight with him no longer, and Ruoye suspects that is for the best: he doesn’t think he is capable of fighting not to kill. There is an ache that lingers between his teeth, now. His claws are never sheathed. Fengshen Gong, being herself a leopard, often lay with him to groom when they were cubs; she avoids this now, at first on account of his healing wounds and then on account of her own uncertainty. He can’t blame her. It’s him, after all, who pins his ears and lifts his lip when she approaches.
He is not surprised when they leave.
He is not surprised when Xie Lian’s parents kill themselves.
He is not even surprised when Xie Lian tries to do the same.
Ruoye tries to stop him, the first few times, pawing desperately at his legs and begging him to lay down and rest. “Xie Lian,” he says, “Xie Lian, please, please, doesn’t it hurt? Xie Lian, it hurts me too!”
But his Xie Lian, once so gentle and compassionate, only shoves him away and reaches for the hanging cloth again. After the sixth attempt, Ruoye is so, so tired. He lays down on the floor. The stink of acrid vomit and blood sinks into his fur. He watches, his eyes glazed and half-lidded, as Xie Lian’s body twitches and refuses to die again and again and again.
He thinks, maybe, that things would be better if they could succeed.
He thinks, maybe, that he wants to die too.
What is there for them in this world, anymore? They have no parents. They have no friends. They have no kingdom. For them, there are only the White Clothed Calamity and Zhu Xin. These two, at least, have never left them, and Ruoye thinks, with an exhausted sort of sickness, that they never will.
“I just want to die,” Xie Lian sobs, clutching his face and curling up on the floor. “Why can’t we just die?”
Ruoye does not move to comfort him.
It is only anger that brings them to their feet, after that. Perhaps they cannot die, but they can still have their revenge. They can still make others understand their hurting. They can still rid the world of the bastards who have tormented them for so long. Ruoye prowls out of the house with his head low and his claws cutting earth. Xie Lian strides beside him with Feng Xin at his hip: Ruoye swears he can still smell godblood on the black blade.
The ghost finds them, again, on the battlefield. Ruoye puts himself between it and Xie Lian, snarling viciously when it kneels before them. It pledges its service. Service! As though anyone’s service has ever meant anything to them! As though loyalty has ever been worthwhile! Xie Lian looks down at the ghost, his eyes cold behind his mask.
The ghost extends its hand, and Ruoye lashes out. His claws snag the back of its wrist. Cold, sluggish blood trickles across the back of its hand. It does not flinch. When it raises its head, Ruoye feels its power: young and strong and full of loathing. That kind of power can be used. Ruoye flicks his tail thoughtfully and licks the blood from his paw.
“What is your name?” Xie Lian asks.
“I don’t have a name.”
“Without a name makes one Wu Ming.”
“Your Highness may call me whatever you desire.”
Ruoye does not trust Wu Ming—who would be foolish enough to trust a ghost, of all people?—but it proves itself useful in spite of this. It has no daemon that he can see. He suspects it to be something shameful and easily hidden: a snake, perhaps, or a spider. The daemon of a manipulator and a traitor. The daemon of someone who will, inevitably, turn on them the way the rest of the world has done.
But Wu Ming, it…
It doesn’t turn on them.
Even when they are at their worst, snarling and sick and superfluous, it does not betray them. It dies for them: it dies because of their mistakes. It dies smiling.
A grief that Ruoye thought himself dulled to rises again: he screams and claws his own eyes while Xie Lian sits and weeps into his fur. Everything they do hurts someone. Everything they do ends in tragedy. Why can’t they die? Why can’t they just die? There is nothing left to live for in this world. There is no one here to live with them. They are alone—painfully, sharply desolate—and so hurt it feels like they cannot breathe through it, sometimes.
They cannot die, and they have no idea how to live.
But time drags itself forward—irrepressible, inescapable thing—and drags them with it. Ruoye’s fur grows smooth again, although it remains starkly black and white. His eyes belay his age, steady and accepting. Life is never good (mostly, in fact, it’s very bad) but it is survivable. After everything that has happened to them before, anything is survivable.
The coffin is...difficult. The most difficult century since the altar, probably. After several days, Ruoye cannot control his own panic and claws Xie Lian to shreds beneath him. Xie Lian insists that it’s alright, after his body knits back together, but Ruoye knows it isn’t. It happens again, anyway, until there is no one who knows the sting of Ruoye’s claws better than Xie Lian himself.
Eight centuries pass, dull and painful as a scabbed wound, before Ruoye meets E-ming. Ruoye is lounging in the back of an ox cart, his head in Xie Lian’s lap, when a mischievous teenager leans around the haystack to speak with them. There is a dog beside him—a small black dog with bright eyes and quick paws.
“You can call me San Lang,” the teenager says, smiling.
“San Lang,” Xie Lian repeats, smiling back. “And your daemon?”
“Oh, this trash? You can call it E-ming.”
E-ming yips at the sound of its name, its tail wagging fervently. Ruoye likes it intensely and immediately. When they arrive at Puqi Shrine, it darts between his paws and licks his chin and shows him its belly anytime he so much as glances in its direction. “Ruoye-gege!” it calls him, in a bright and happy voice. “Ruoye-gege, please let this E-ming know if you need anything at all!”
“E-ming,” San Lang snaps, and E-ming huffs at him. “Don’t pester him.”
“E-ming is not pestering!” E-ming declares, then looks up at Ruoye. Its front paws dance with energy. Hopefully, it asks, “Not pestering?”
“Not pestering,” Ruoye agrees warmly, and E-ming yaps in delight and playbows at him. It has been a long, long time since Ruoye has played with another daemon—he looks at Xie Lian, concerned, and gets only a fond smile in response. Timidly, Ruoye reaches forward to bop E-ming over the head. E-ming’s tail whips even faster, and it lunges at him.
San Lang and Xie Lian talk quietly inside of the shrine as their daemons tussle in the grass outside. Ruoye takes care to keep his claws sheathed: E-ming is brave but, compared to him, so very small. It, too, is careful with the blows it lands. Its snapping, sharp little teeth never break skin. When the two of them eventually collapse into the grass, panting, its tail is still wagging.
“Gege is very good at fighting,” it says, its eyes squinted shut in a doggy grin. “He will have to teach E-ming some tricks.”
Ruoye doubts E-ming has, or ever will, see a true battle: its pelt is too smooth and scarless, its eyes too bright and innocent.
What a fool he was to think so.
It does not take long at all for he and Xie Lian to form suspicions: San Lang is not quite San Lang, and E-ming is not quite E-ming. When those suspicions are proven true after the events of Banyue Pass, Xie Lian asks to see Hua Cheng’s true form. Ruoye asks to see E-ming’s.
“E-ming can be anything,” E-ming declares, its pink tongue lolling as it grins up at him. “E-ming can be anything gege wants it to be! Just ask!”
“But what are you, really?” Ruoye asks. “What did you settle as?”
E-ming cocks its head, its pointed ears flopping to one side. “Settle? Ah, gege is mistaken. E-ming is not settled.”
“But you’re an adult,” Ruoye says, his whiskers twitching in confusion. “You’re almost as old as I am.”
“En, yes! But not settled.” E-ming’s tail wags hard enough to sway its haunches. “E-ming can change itself. Whatever pleases gege, that is what E-ming will be.”
It doesn’t sit well with Ruoye—but who is he to tell E-ming what it can and cannot be? If it doesn’t want to settle, then he can hardly force it. Besides, it seems to enjoy its many forms. One of its favorites is a fox with crimson fur and black eyes, bouncing around Ruoye’s paws and playing crafty tricks on other daemons to make him laugh. Another favorite is a fuzzy macaque monkey with clever, tugging fingers that likes to ride on Ruoye’s back. Yet another is the form Crimson Rain Sought Flower is best known for: a tiger, much like Ruoye himself, but with fiery fur. In this form, E-ming likes to entwine their tails and rub their heads together until Ruoye grooms it.
“I made it myself,” Hua Cheng explains, one day, gripping the scruff of currently-a-cat-E-ming and hefting it into the air. It pins its ears and hisses at him. “When I was in Mount Tonglu.”
“What happened to your original daemon, then?” Xie Lian asks, his brow furrowing with concern.
“I never had one.”
“How can that be?”
“Cursed, gege,” Hua Cheng says, shrugging. “I was born soulless.”
“You were not,” Xie Lian says fiercely, grabbing his hand. “Don’t say things like that.”
“E-ming isn’t even a real daemon.” Hua Cheng shakes E-ming, and it yowls. Ruoye climbs to his feet and crosses the room, huffing until Hua Cheng drops his poor daemon. Ruoye scoops it up in his mouth and carries it away from him, sitting down to lick its bristling tabby fur soothingly. Each swathe of his tongue covers most of its small body. “Why do you think it’s never settled? There’s nothing real there.”
“That isn’t true.” Xie Lian swings a leg over Hua Cheng’s, settling into his lap and glaring at him. “San Lang musn’t say such things! This gege won’t hear it.”
Hua Cheng laughs, setting his hands on Xie Lian’s hips. “Okay, okay, gege. Apologies.”
“Is it true?” Ruoye asks. E-ming rolls onto its back, batting playfully at his muzzle with its claws sheathed.
“True, yes,” E-ming says, purring noisily when Ruoye licks its belly. “Master made E-ming. But, Master is wrong because E-ming feels real anyway.”
“Are you connected?” Ruoye asks curiously. “The way humans and daemons are?”
“E-ming feels what Master feels, and hears what Master thinks,” E-ming says. “Is that how it’s supposed to be?”
Ruoye blinks lovingly at his little friend. “Yes. That’s exactly how. E-ming is clearly real.”
E-ming yowls joyfully and squirms out of the circle of Ruoye’s arms, its form shimmering into that of a little bantam rooster. It struts proudly towards Hua Cheng, flapping its wings. “Did you hear that?” it crows. “Master is wrong! E-ming is real, real, real! The realest!”
“Look, now you’ve given it ideas,” Hua Cheng sighs, propping his chin in his hand.
“Stupid Master,” E-ming says, pecking Hua Cheng’s knee. “Stupid, stupid, stupidest—”
Hua Cheng smacks it away with a flurry of feathers. It squawks.
“San Lang, be nicer,” Xie Lian scolds. “It isn’t good to treat your daemon that way.”
“It’s not really—”
“It’s close enough,” Ruoye says, huffing. When E-ming rolls onto its feet, it’s in the shape of a vicious little dragon. It spits fire but settles quickly when Ruoye loops a paw around it, drawing it close again. He huddles protectively over it, his tail twitching irritably when Hua Cheng looks their way.
“Bleh,” E-ming says, sticking its forked tongue out. Hua Cheng sticks his tongue out at it in return. Toddlers, the both of them. “Dummy Master! Be nicer to E-ming!”
“Don’t tell me what to do, you worthless brat,” Hua Cheng grumbles, but subsides when Xie Lian coos indulgently and pets his hair.
Gradually, gradually, Hua Cheng does become more tolerant of E-ming. There are still some things he refuses to accept from his daemon, however—namely, any form that doesn’t suit his own tastes. He sneers whenever E-ming adopts any form smaller than that of a crow or rat. Mice and shrew are disdainful. Insects are entirely off-limits.
“Stop that,” he snaps, the very second E-ming buzzes around Ruoye’s ears as a honeybee. “You’re going to get yourself stepped on.”
Soft forms, too, are things Hua Cheng does not allow in his daemons: rabbits are greeted with distaste, and hamsters with disbelief. “The representation of my entire inner reality and person,” he hisses once, trapping a very small E-ming between his palms, “is not a fucking gerbil.”
Ruoye asks, once, what E-ming would want to be if it settled.
“Hm,” E-ming says, padding to his side. It’s a tiger, today, and it bites the back of Ruoye’s neck playfully before rolling bodily across him and swatting at his muzzle. Ruoye nips at its paws until it settles down beside him, their striped legs tangling and their tails coiling lazily around each other. “E-ming would want to be a tiger, like gege!”
“Really?” Ruoye asks, amused. “E-ming isn’t just saying that because it thinks it’s what I want to hear?”
E-ming looks sheepishly at him, beginning to groom the ruff of fur around his cheeks. “But Ruoye-gege likes E-ming as a tiger, doesn’t he? We can play together this way.”
“We can play together with E-ming’s other forms, too,” Ruoye says, tipping his head up to allow E-ming’s raspy tongue to lick its way across his throat. “I want to know what form makes you happiest.”
E-ming is quiet, for several long seconds—a rarity.
“E-ming does not know,” it confesses, eventually, raising a paw and pushing Ruoye’s head down so it can lick his ears. “E-ming has never thought about it.”
“And if you think about it now?”
“Master would not like it,” E-ming says, looking warily around them. “He will beat E-ming for saying so.”
Ruoye growls. “I won’t let him.”
“Then...then, if E-ming could choose…”
E-ming’s form shifts, shimmers, and shrinks between blinks. When Ruoye looks again, there is a small butterfly perched on the back of his paw. Its body is covered in fuzzy gray fur, and the wings of its veins are white between patches of iridescent silver. It waves its antennae cheerfully at him.
“E-ming,” Ruoye says, laughing. There is not a hint of mockery in his voice. “Look at you.”
“E-ming likes Master’s butterflies,” it admits shyly, fluttering its wings. “It thinks they’re very pretty. And! And they like flowers, like how Master likes Xie Lian-gege. It seems right.”
“It does. This is a very lovely form.” Ruoye dips his head, touching the pink tip of his nose delicately to E-ming’s powdery wing. “You can stay this way, for a little while. Xie Lian and San Lang will be busy a while, yet.”
E-ming creeps up to nestle in the crook of Ruoye’s elbow, fanning its wings out to soak in the sunshine. Ruoye lays his head down, sighing in contentment, and closes his eyes. He only stirs when he hears footsteps in the shrine behind them: Hua Cheng and Xie Lian are stirring. E-ming flutters into the air and hovers there, its antennae waving frantically.
“Best change forms now, if you don’t want San Lang to see,” Ruoye advises.
“E-ming is trying,” E-ming says. Its voice is tense.
Ruoye sits up, alarmed. “It isn’t working?”
“No!” E-ming’s wings flutter more rapidly. “Gege! Gege, E-ming can’t settle this way! E-ming can’t be like this! Oh, no no no—!”
“E-ming—E-ming, it’s alright.” Ruoye sits on his haunches, reaching up with his paws to carefully gather E-ming back to himself. “Stay near me. It will be alright. You’re happy this way, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
“Master is going to kill E-ming!” E-ming wails. “Master is going to stomp E-ming to death and feed it to crows!”
Ruoye shows his teeth. “I already told you I wouldn’t let him. Trust me, E-ming. Xie Lian and I won’t let you be hurt.”
“Ruoye, E-ming,” Xie Lian calls cheerfully, waving to them as he exits the shrine. “Come on! We’re going into town for some things. Eh? Ruoye, where’s E-ming?”
Ruoye stands, and E-ming huddles down between his ears and clamps its wings tightly together. This way, it can barely be seen—this way, Hua Cheng absolutely cannot hit it without hitting Ruoye, too, which Ruoye knows well that he would never dare to do. They’ve barely convinced Hua Cheng that it’s alright for him to touch Ruoye. Needless to speak of striking him!
“E-ming?” Hua Cheng follows, as always, a mere step behind Xie Lian. There’s a sullen frown on his face. “E-ming! What are you—”
He freezes, his eye widening when he spots the butterfly atop Ruoye’s head.
“I’m sorry!” E-ming cries, before Ruoye can even begin to speak. “Master, E-ming is so sorry, the sorriest! E-ming can change! E-ming can be better, just wait!!”
“E-ming is fine the way it is,” Ruoye says firmly. “It likes this form.”
Much like Hua Cheng refuses to disrespect Xie Lian, he refuses to disrespect Ruoye—they are, after all, one and the same. So it is a shocking thing indeed for Hua Cheng to curl his mouth around a snarl as he says, “Give that trash to me now.”
Ruoye pins his ears. “No.”
“That form is too useless,” Hua Cheng snaps. “It’ll get itself killed. E-ming! Change back now!”
E-ming is quiet, for several long minutes, though Ruoye imagines it is obeying its master and trying very hard to change. It cannot. It’s settled. It must know that as certainly as Hua Cheng himself does—Ruoye simply can’t comprehend why they’re trying so hard to fight it.
“San Lang,” Xie Lian says gently, touching Hua Cheng’s elbow. “If it’s settled…”
“It hasn’t settled,” Hua Cheng says, his eye narrowing sharply. “It’s just fucking around to piss me off. E-ming, goddamn you, come here.”
Ruoye feels the shift of tiny legs on his head as E-ming shrinks away from Hua Cheng. It fans its wings anxiously, brushing them across Ruoye’s pale fur. “Ruoye,” it whispers plaintively. “I don’t want to go.”
Ruoye has never feared for a daemon around its master, before: what master, after all, would ever willingly harm their own soul? What master would ever willingly kill it, and in doing so kill themselves and tear asunder their reincarnation cycle? Even suicidal people rarely harm their daemons, and find other ways to end their lives.
(See, case in point, Xie Lian.)
But Ruoye fears for E-ming, now.
Hua Cheng’s eyes glitter with a fury Ruoye hasn’t seen since it was last aimed at Jun Wu. His knuckles are white, his fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of his scimitar. How easy it would be for him to crush E-ming! Ruoye already knows how little he thinks of it. To him, it’s only a made-up and worthless thing. If it doesn’t work properly, why wouldn’t he just stomp it out and start over?
So, when Hua Cheng takes a threatening step forward, Ruoye snarls.
“Hey!” Xie Lian says, putting himself between them and spreading his arms to block Hua Cheng’s advance. Hua Cheng pulls up short—as ever, unwilling to disobey His Highness. “That’s enough, both of you. Ruoye, E-ming belongs to Hua Cheng. If he calls it, let it go.”
“He’ll hurt it,” Ruoye spits. “Xie Lian, you know he will.”
“He won’t.” Xie Lian sets his jaw and glares up at Hua Cheng. “Will you, Hua Cheng?”
“If it doesn’t listen—”
“You won’t hurt it while I’m around. I’m not—” He shakes his head. “I’m not asking this time. If I see you hurt that daemon, I’ll be very upset with you.”
“It isn’t listening!” Hua Cheng explodes. “It hasn’t settled, gege, it hasn’t settled like this! I’ll kill it first! If I have to tear out another eye and try again, I’ll—”
Xie Lian grabs fistfuls of Hua Cheng’s robes and yanks him down to eye level, making a point of his martial god strength. “You will do no such thing. E-ming is your daemon, San Lang. You can’t treat it this way. If you hurt it, you hurt yourself. If you kill it, you kill yourself. I won’t allow it! So what if it’s settled? What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s wrong,” Hua Cheng says, although his voice falters. He has, undoubtedly, been thrown off of his rhythm by Xie Lian’s sudden anger. “That form is wrong.”
“What, the butterfly? San Lang, that’s exactly right. Doesn’t it make sense?”
“No! Gege, it can’t be like that. How is it supposed to fight?” Hua Cheng pleads. “How is it supposed to help us do anything? How is it meant to protect Ruoye? To protect you?”
“Master is right,” E-ming whispers. “E-ming is not good this way. E-ming is useless. E-ming is—”
“Stop it!” Xie Lian says, shaking Hua Cheng gently. “E-ming is perfect. You are perfect. I don’t need your daemon to protect me, do you understand? I don’t even need you to protect me.”
Hua Cheng flinches. “Gege—”
“No, listen. I like that you protect me, but I don’t need it. I only need you to love me, San Lang, E-ming. You can both do that in any form. So, if this is what E-ming is, you don’t need to be upset about it.”
“‘m upset anyway,” Hua Cheng mumbles.
Xie Lian sighs and pulls him into a hug, swaying with him. Hua Cheng looks miserably at E-ming before squeezing his eye shut and tucking his face into Xie Lian’s sturdy shoulder. His hands come up to cling. As his killing intent fades, Ruoye allows himself to relax.
“E-ming,” he says softly, reaching up to coax the butterfly onto his paw. He sits back again, holding E-ming in front of himself. “Xie Lian said it all, so I shan’t repeat it. Do you understand?”
“En,” E-ming says. “Ruoye-gege and Xie Lian-gege, they...like E-ming this way?”
“Very much so,” Ruoye agrees. “You don’t have to change for us—for anyone. If this form feels most comfortable to you, then stay in it always.”
“Master is upset.”
“I will bite him if he hurts you.”
“Really?” E-ming flicks its wings in excitement.
Ruoye chuckles. “No, not really. I love him too much to do such a thing. But Xie Lian and I will give him a very stern talking-to!”
“Oh, he would not like that.”
“No, I don’t imagine he would.”
Hua Cheng does not say another word to E-ming about his form that night. For this, Ruoye comes and sits beside him after dinner. He leans over, rasping his tongue over Hua Cheng’s hair: Hua Cheng shudders at the tender touch of his husband’s daemon. Tentatively, he brings his hands up.
“It’s alright,” Ruoye rumbles, and Hua Cheng curls fingers into his fur. He leans his head against Ruoye’s chest and sighs shakily. “Good, San Lang.”
Across the room, E-ming flits into Xie Lian’s palms. Ruoye can hear his human cooing: “Oh, E-ming, E-ming, look at you! What a darling! You’re so pretty, you know that? Even prettier than all Hua Cheng’s other butterflies.”
“Pretty,” E-ming agrees giddily. “Gege likes me?”
“Gege likes you very much,” Xie Lian says, smiling brilliantly. “Gege loves you.”
Hua Cheng makes a soft, kicked noise and wraps his arms fully around Ruoye’s neck. Ruoye lays down, pushing Hua Cheng down beneath him, and sprawls across his chest: his weight, he knows, has always soothed the ghost. Hua Cheng’s fingers trace his stripes, and the echo of emotion between the four of them is almost overwhelming:
From Xie Lian, delight and wonder.
From E-ming, joy and pride.
From Hua Cheng, hope and fading fear.
From Ruoye, compassion and protectiveness.
From the four of them (always, always from the four of them) there is an abundance of love.