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The choice had been easy, Ming Fan would realize in the days after, still numb with the horror of it all. He spent these days in the infirmary on Qian Cao as Mu Qingfang stripped the demon seal of command from his meridians—a slow, torturously painful process, but Ming Fan had welcomed the pain lighting up his body almost as much as he welcomed the slow dark sleep he fell into in fits and starts. Ming Fan was in the infirmary for twelve days, and never once was he visited by his husband. After the fifth day, he stopped asking.
On the seventh day, Ning Yingying came to visit. She dropped the box of pastries she had brought onto the table at his bedside and immediately swept Ming Fan up in a painful hug. “I thought you were dead,” she sobbed into his hair. Ming Fan patted her back and resisted the urge to tell her that things might have been better off if he was.
It was only when Ning Yingying had pulled herself together and dried her eyes—after a good half-shichen of bawling—that she asked the question he had been dreading.
“Where’s Jin Rusong?” She peered around the bare room curiously as she asked, as though Ming Fan had been hiding him under a pot. “Is he recovering in a different room?”
“I don’t know,” Ming Fan says, which is the truth. It hurts to think about—hurts to even hear her say his name. “He has probably returned to Lanling.”
“Oh,” says Ning Yingying knowingly. “Sect leader duties already? Or is it that the hospitals there are simply—”
“I don’t know, okay?” Ming Fan startles himself with the vitriol of his outburst.
Ning Yingying blinks in surprise for a moment, and then, mercifully, hurries to chatter about something else, about how the disciples from other peaks will be pleased to hear of his recovery, so on and so forth. Ming Fan isn’t listening. His stomach hurts. His head hurts. Everything hurts when he thinks about Jin Ling and the look on his face from the cave—the horror, the anger, and worst of all, the uncomprehending shock . That had only lasted a few instants before the soul-baring hatred had set in.
The cave. Ming Fan rolls onto his side away from Ning Yingying and shuts his eyes. The cave, the flickering wall of fire behind him, illuminating Luo Binghe’s demonic sharp-fanged smile and the two bodies at his feet. Ming Fan’s husband, the noble sect leader of Lanling Jin, his beloved Jin Ling, whose political marriage to a Qing Jing disciple had been cold at first but had turned into something real and warm over time over the course of a thousand tiny moments, small touches, tiny smiles, disastrous attempts to make pork lotus soup, cups of tea after long days of political meetings, late night talks about living up to expectations, about living in the shadows of the living and the missing—Jin Ling had been slumped over, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth. And next to him—
The very first time Ming Fan had met Jiang Wanyin, he had been terrified out of his wits. He had heard the stories: the three poison sword, the lightning whip, and worst of all, the frosty hair-trigger temper of the fantastic Sandu Shengshou, the young sect leader who built the Yunmeng Jiang back from nothing and was now the most fearsome uncle in the jianghu. In person, Jiang Wanyin had been nothing short of intimidating, glowering at Ming Fan over dinner and then yanking him aside afterwards for what he would later realize was a very terse shovel talk. It had actually left Ming Fan fearing for the bones in his legs.
Only later, when he watched Jiang Wanyin’s face melt into a smile as he listened to his nephew speak at a conference, did Ming Fan realize that Jiang Wanyin hid his love behind that ruthless facade. He loved fiercely, furiously, and with an unrelenting frenzy that Ming Fan couldn’t help but be a little jealous of. Jin Ling deserved every iota of that love, of course, and Ming Fan was often grateful for the terrifying rumors swirling around Jiang Wanyin when the man stood up for him at political meetings, shouting down naysayers who hinted that Jin Rulan was too young, too inexperienced, too foolish to know the real way things worked in the world.
Once, after a particularly hard day early in their marriage, Jin Ling and Ming Fan had gotten into a huge fight. It had been about nothing important at first—the gold ornament Jin Ling had wanted Ming Fan to wear in his hair for the evening banquet, in place of the Qing Jing design he usually wore to events. Ming Fan, young and homesick and very tired, had shouted back that he wouldn’t erase his whole past just to be a pretty thing on Jin Ling’s arm, and Jin Ling had shouted back that it would ruin the Jin sect to parade the new sect leader’s spouse around as an outsider. Then Jin Ling had said some ugly things about peak cultivators and their brutish couplings with demons, and Ming Fan had sniped back with something terrible about the Jin sect’s reputation for promiscuity.
Jiang Wanyin had entered the private Jin family chambers intending to greet his nephew before the banquet, and he’d found Jin Ling and his new husband in tears, shouting at each other like being loud enough could fix their problems. With deft, practiced efficiency, he separated the two of them, delivered steaming cups of tea into their hands, and demanded they recount what had led them to this point. Then, after they had explained the situation, he had pointed at both of them and said, “Okay. What’s the real problem?”
After decades as a sect leader, weathering political and personal crises including the destruction and rebuilding of his home, Jiang Wanyin was good at that. Good at cutting through to the heart of the issue, peeling back the layers to find the truth at the core. As he listened judiciously, Jin Ling had poured his heart out about his insecurities regarding his first big social event as sect leader, and Ming Fan had tearfully disclosed how badly he missed his peak. By the time the banquet started, the two of them had apologized to each other, worked out a compromise (Ming Fan would wear all-golden robes with the Qing Jing hairpiece), and even promised to discuss future disputes as they arose rather than bottling their emotions up.
Even as Jin Ling and Ming Fan had grown closer and learned how to work out their issues on their own, Jiang Wanyin was still a kind, comforting presence in their lives. He made Ming Fan think of Shen Qingqiu, and how it might have been nice to have grown up with a mentor who listened to his problems more often and offered him advice and encouragement. He felt guilty for thinking such a thing, but Jin Ling disagreed.
“My uncle is the best,” he’d said stubbornly, lip jutting out in that adorable pouty way that made Ming Fan badly want to kiss him. “But it’s not unreasonable to wish you had more guidance when you were younger.” He hesitated and glanced at Ming Fan out of the corner of his eye. “I wish I had known you when you were a junior disciple,” he mumbled. “We could have been friends.”
Ming Fan loves his husband. He loves his husband’s uncle too, and even if he doesn’t always like the Jin clan, he loves his place by Jin Ling’s side, which had started to feel… right. All of this had made it even more unthinkable when Luo Binghe had dropped into his life and snatched Jin Ling out of it.
No one had actually believed a heavenly demon could kidnap a sect leader—not until Luo Binghe did it, leaving a note in Jin Ling’s blood telling Ming Fan exactly where he could find his husband. Ming Fan would have flown off in a panic immediately if it hadn’t been for Jiang Wanyin, also pale with worry but with a steely set to his jaw that was steadying. They had collected a task force to assist them—practically an army, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. They had been picked off one by one by poisoned sleep darts as they circled the mountain Luo Binghe was lurking in.
Ming Fan had been knocked unconscious only to wake up in a cave, one end sealed by fire. Luo Binghe stood at the back over the slumped but still breathing bodies of Jin Ling and Jiang Wanyin.
“Choose,” Luo Binghe had said without preamble, fangs glittering in the light. “They share blood. Enough blood from the heart will break the array and release you. Your Jin cultivators will be safe and sound. You and the one you select will go free. You only need to kill the other.”
Ming Fan had drawn his sword and tried to run at Luo Binghe, of course, but it was like a housefly pestering a dragon. His qi had been sealed with demonic power. Luo Binghe had actually laughed as he flicked Ming Fan’s blade away.
“You’re running out of time,” he’d said, delighted. “Look! The fire’s getting closer.”
It was. The wall of unnatural flame was advancing, slowly but steadily.
“Why are you doing this?” Ming Fan choked out. The fumes were making it harder to breathe.
Luo Binghe shrugged. “If you want to waste time talking… you can all die, if it pleases you. It doesn’t make any difference to me.” He curled his hand into a fist and offered a truly terrifying grin up. “As long as you suffer. That’s the only thing I really want.”
“Ming Fan,” rasped Jin Ling from the floor. His breathing was shallow, but he was awake. Ming Fan dropped to his knees and cradled him in his arms, tears mingling with the ash streaking his face. “You–you—”
“Shh, don’t try to talk,” Ming Fan urged him. “Save your energy.”
Jin Ling had shook his head and grasped at Ming Fan’s sleeve. “Please,” he said urgently, more clearly. “Do it quick, so you can escape.” With a shaky hand, he reached out and—to Ming Fan’s horror—grasped his sword handle, drawing it from the scabbard. “It won’t hurt me. You’re gentle, I know.”
The sob that had wrenched through Ming Fan’s body had shaken him to his core. He shoved Jin Ling’s hand away and lowered his husband to the ground.
“I won’t,” he gasped. “I can’t—I won’t hurt you.”
“Ming Fan.” Jin Ling’s eyes were pleading. “You have to.”
“No, you don’t,” said a voice from behind him. Ming Fan spun around to find Jiang Wanyin had struggled to his feet. A bloody gash on his forehead had glued his hair to his temple, but he still managed to look regal as he gave Ming Fan a familiar impetuous look. “You’re going to kill me, Ming Fan, and you are going to take my nephew far away from here.”
Jin Ling thrashed on the floor. “No! ” he howled. “Ming Fan, don’t listen to him!”
Jiang Wanyin took a staggering step forward and clasped Ming Fan’s shaking hands in his. “You can do it,” he murmured, and met Ming Fan’s terrified gaze with his own. “For his sake. For Jin Ling.”
In the end, it hadn’t been hard. The blade was familiar in his hand. Even with tears blurring his vision, Ming Fan still knew how to strike true. Jin Ling’s sobs were almost drowned out by the crackling of the flames, but as soon as Jiang Wanyin’s blood spattered on the ground, they vanished—along with Luo Binghe, though his laughter still rang in the air. Ming Fan had scooped Jin Ling up in his arms even as his husband howled with grief, beating his fists against Ming Fan’s chest. He hadn’t been able to leave Jiang Wanyin’s body there, so that was how the Jin cultivators found them—Jin Ling in Ming Fan’s arms, Jiang Wanyin’s body on his back, Ming Fan staggering with exhaustion out of the cave system.
The Jin cultivators had moved to lift Jin Ling away, but Ming Fan had brought up a protective arm and snapped at them to stay back. Jin Ling clawed at his chest, all his strength drained from him.
“Ming Fan,” he’d said in a dead, cold voice that Ming Fan would never forget. “I won’t ever forgive you, you know. Not for the rest of my life, and not after.”
The words struck Ming Fan with a numbing shock. “Jin Ling,” he’d whispered.
Jin Ling shut his eyes. “Don’t,” he said tightly, and Ming Fan didn’t protest this time as Jin cultivators swarmed forward to take their sect leader away.
Now, Ming Fan lies in the hospital and thinks of the blankness in Jin Ling’s eyes. He thinks of the way his sword had slid into Jiang Wanyin’s body, so easily. He thinks of the blood on the ground, of the dancing light in Luo Binghe’s eyes, and then he thinks again of Jin Ling. Of the grace with which he draws back a bowstring, body a perfect arc of focus. Of the secret smile he offered Ming Fan in bed on soft, blue dawn mornings. Of the way he lit up when Jiang Wanyin nodded at him, his whole body glowing with happiness.
The choice had been easy. Ming Fan would make it again a thousand times.