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Jiāng Wǎnyín was being cagey, and Lán Wàngjī didn’t like it. In all the time he’d known her, a secretive Jiāng Wǎnyín spelled trouble, and it was up to Lán Wàngjī to figure out what was going on before things got too far.
It helped that there were fewer hiding places for her now that Jīn Líng was at Carp Tower for his annual three months time spent in the sect he would be inheriting. It also helped that Jiāng Yuàn had just started training properly, so Jiāng Wǎnyín couldn’t keep taking him and Jiang Lěi on ‘excursions’ around Lotus Pier and surrounding lakes just to avoid Lán Wàngjī.
But he’d thought they’d gotten better at it, was the disappointing part. These last few years, ever since he’d helped her through her tumultuous pregnancy and childbirth, ever since he’d promised to marry her to avoid suspicion raining down on her sect and Wèi Yīng’s baby, he’d thought they at least could stop hiding things from one another.
The guilt of that assumption bit away at him—because there was something that Lán Wàngjī wasn’t telling Jiāng Wǎnyín, and he knew it would certainly change the way she saw him, and he wanted to savour what they had, unmarred, for just another day. One more day of sharing her chambers and her bed, and being surrounded by the children they’d raised, though none of them were his biologically, and then he’d say it.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad secret. It wasn’t even the first of its kind that Lán Wàngjī had harboured.
And that should’ve been a lesson to him, if he were honest, because if he’d confessed his feelings to Wèi Yīng, would things have gone as badly as they had? He couldn’t ever know.
Lán Wàngjī preferred to stick to a strict schedule, and though Jiāng Wǎnyín deviated from hers far too often to call it routine, there were only a few options of what she could be doing at any given point in the day. Now that it was midday, just after lessons had paused for lunch, she should be returning to the office to get through paperwork before daylight ran out, but she could potentially be out with the juniors either on the pier, or in the training grounds.
But it’d been almost an hour of wandering, with no luck. He didn’t want to ask any of their children and alarm them—not that they had been raised in a way that bode badly if one parent was looking for the other. It just seemed like something ingrained within both Lán Wàngjī and Jiāng Wǎnyín, that there were certain things the children would never see from them, for better or worse.
Finally, Jiāng Rénměi took pity on him and nodded in the vague direction of the private family chambers. “She’s in there,” she said. “Knock before entering.”
That was strange. Lán Wàngjī blinked a couple times at her to let her know it was confusing, but she had already turned back to the group of six-year-olds she was overseeing, one of whom had taken the millisecond of distraction to prod at his partner with his wooden sword.
Jiāng Wǎnyín was never in the family quarters before at least nightfall, not even on significant days. She confined herself to the office, but never to her quarters.
Lán Wàngjī hurried inside, trying not to let it seem like he was running. Not until he passed Yú Dàifu, who had just closed the door behind her.
She evidently hadn’t expected to see Lán Wàngjī either. She hesitated, glancing inside, and then bowed, excusing herself without another word.
Lán Wàngjī almost burst into the quarters he shared with Jiāng Wǎnyín, but he remembered Jiāng Rénměi’s instructions at the last minute, and forced himself to knock. Mentally he was running through every nighthunt Jiāng Wǎnyín been on recently, any spills or incidents or even the slightest of upset stomachs.
He’d recalled her throwing up a week or so ago, when he’d returned to their chambers for a quick change of his outer robes after one of the younger disciples had thrown up on him. But she’d said it was just food disagreeing with her—and they had gone with their children to the markets just the previous day, so Lán Wàngjī had only nodded, and made sure there was a glass of water for her.
She had been suffering from a persistent headache, though, but that was very normal for Wǎnyín. She got stress headaches, particularly when her period hit, and Lán Wàngjī could always tell where she was in her cycle based on forehead-rubbing and general crabbiness. Not that he’d ever tell her this.
The strangest part of how he’d gradually fallen in love with Wèi Yīng’s ex-betrothed was certainly that she was a woman, and Lán Wàngjī hadn’t realised he could fall in love with a woman. The love he still had for Wèi Yīng was different, of course. He’d first fallen in love with this family of theirs, this strange group of three children they’d somehow amassed.
First had been Jīn Líng, though not by a very large margin. Then had been A’Yuàn, rescued from the Burial Mounds by the two of them. Lán Wàngjī wouldn’t have even known there was a third—Wǎnyín and Wèi Yīng’s child—had he not collapsed when they had fought one another at the Burial Mounds, the wounds on his back far too painful to hold on after everything he’d put his body through.
When he’d offered to marry Jiāng Wǎnyín, he hadn’t considered her—or rather, she had ranked third, possibly fourth, in his mind. His first thought had been for Wèi Yīng’s unborn child. His brother had been present when she’d had a miscarriage during the Sunshot Campaign—from stress, was what the general consensus had been—and he’d been struck with the fear that this last remaining part of Wèi Yīng would be gone if Jiāng Wǎnyín couldn’t handle the stress, particularly after gaining custody of her nephew.
A’Yuàn had been the second factor, and the location—being in the place where Wèi Yīng had grown up—had been the third.
But now, Lán Wàngjī couldn’t think of his life without these four people in it. He couldn’t think of waking up without Jiāng Wǎnyín beside him, couldn’t imagine going on a nighthunt without Zǐdiàn being matched with Wàngjī. She’d crept up on him, and he knew she didn’t know it.
“Yú Dàifu?” Jiāng Wǎnyín called out from inside at the sound of his knock, her voice confused. “Did you forget something?”
“It’s me,” Lán Wàngjī said. His hand itched to open the door, to see if she had any gaping wounds on her body that she would hide from him before allowing him in. “May I enter?”
“Ah,” there was the shuffle of cloth, and Lán Wàngjī took a few calming breaths, “yes, yes, come in.”
When he opened the door, he half expected to see bloody rags or something. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. Jiāng Wǎnyín was fixing up her outer robes when he walked in, eyes darting up to him and then back to her hands.
“Is… everything alright?” Lán Wàngjī had no idea how to broach the subject any more directly.
Jiāng Wǎnyín chewed the inside of her cheek. “Depends on how you look at it?” she offered finally.
“Wǎnyín,” Lán Wàngjī said, trying hard not to sigh. Wèi Wúxiàn wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, he just brushed it off like he always does, with a cheery-arse grin, she had ranted to him once. He hadn’t said, you two are alike in that regard but her words crossed his mind every time a situation like this arose. “Is something wrong?”
She blew out a breath, standing up. “No, not wrong, just…”
He waited her out. Sometimes that was the only way to get Jiāng Wǎnyín to talk.
“You weren’t there when I lost my first baby,” she said.
The suddenness of the subject change caused Lán Wàngjī to blink.
She continued. “Not that you should’ve been—only my sister was there with me, and a couple of field doctors. No one expected to have to deliver on the field. I hadn’t expected to deliver on the field; I’d only realised I was pregnant a couple of months before I lost him. My periods had never been regular; you know that.
“But I always wondered… he wasn’t—okay, I can’t say he wasn’t happy at the thought of the child, but he wasn’t not happy? His mood about the child would flip, constantly, like some days he was overjoyed and giddy and he wouldn’t stop touching my belly or trying to talk to it.
“And then other days it’s like he couldn’t even look at me, and he’d disappear onto the battlefield even though he’d never told me where he was going, wouldn’t report back to me after he returned—hell, I wouldn’t even know he’d returned until someone else came and told me.”
Lán Wàngjī had never been as still as he was at that moment, nor as silent. He hardly dared to breathe, lest it break whatever it was that was making Wǎnyín talk of Wèi Yīng like she never did. He couldn’t see her face; she was still facing the back of the room, her arms folded across her chest.
“And when I lost the baby,” she said, “it’s like part of him expected it to happen? Like he was relieved and devastated but he wasn’t surprised. I saw him twice—I don’t think I’ve actually told you this before—after he defected from the sect. Although you probably figured that out, what with the timing of A’Lěi’s birth. I asked him then, if he’d broken off our engagement and fucked off because I lost the baby.”
Lán Wàngjī drew in a sharp breath, unable to stop himself. But Jiāng Wǎnyín didn’t seem to have heard him; or if she had, she ignored it.
“He said no, of course,” she said, finally turned around to face him. It didn’t escape his notice that her eyes were red. “But I never told him when I was pregnant again, even though me and A’Jie both knew when we saw him next.”
“Wǎnyín…” Lán Wàngjī had no idea what to say. He stepped closer, because he knew she took comfort in physical contact, but her arms were still tightly bound.
“All of that to say,” Jiāng Wǎnyín huffed a watery laugh, “I’m pregnant.”
Pregnant.
Lán Wàngjī’s first instinct was to wonder whose? But there had only been one person in Wǎnyín’s bed since they’d been married.
His eyes darted up to hers, wide. “You’re pregnant?” he repeated.
Wǎnyín nodded, watching him carefully. “I know we both tried to be careful,” she said, her voice already sounding tired, “and I don’t even really know when, but… I’m keeping it. Even if you don’t—”
“Stop.” Lán Wàngjī needed for her to pause for a moment, but he couldn’t leave it on that note. “Of course I want the baby.”
She nodded hesitantly. “Okay, good,” she said. “Are you mad?”
“Mad?”
Jiāng Wǎnyín had relaxed fractionally since he’d spoken. “I know another baby wasn’t in the plans, like, at all, and you love the kids but none of them were planned by you either. Or me. You married me for Wèi Wúxiàn’s baby, but you never really—”
Lost for ways to get her to stop spiralling, Lán Wàngjī kissed her. It was chaste, intended just to get her to stop throwing words out there when Lán Wàngjī really needed to be thinking about fast-tracking his own confession.
When he finally moved back, Jiāng Wǎnyín was peering at him with a frown. “Okay, I know I’m oversimplifying things and worrying about you not wanting it was definitely a me problem than a you thing, since the kids are certainly your favourite thing about Lotus Pier.”
“I love Wǎnyín too,” Lán Wàngjī said immediately, more as a rebuttal than anything. And then he processed his words—and Jiāng Wǎnyín’s silence—and needed to add more. He hastily tried to remember the fragments of a speech he’d scrounged up, over these last few months. “You were right, when you said I didn’t marry you out of any love for you. I married you for Wèi Yīng’s child, and for A’Yuàn, but I’ve come to love A’Líng as if he were mine as well. And I’ve come to love you.”
Jiāng Wǎnyín’s frown grew. “You don’t have to say that, y’know. Nothing has to change between us just because the baby came from you instead of him. You don’t have to force anything—and, fuck, I thought we raised those three pretty well, don’t you?”
Lán Wàngjī had no idea what she was going on about. “Nothing has to change because of my confession,” he said, echoing Jiāng Wǎnyín’s words. “That, more than anything else, is what stopped me from speaking them to you earlier. It’s not just because of the child.”
Jiāng Wǎnyín stared at him, searching for something on Lán Wàngjī’s face. Lán Wàngjī hoped he read like an open book. “Nothing has to change,” she said, the words like a promise as she kissed him this time, deeper than the first kiss. She pulled back, though keeping him within arm’s reach, and her face was much lighter now than it’d been this entire last week. “Fuck, that’s a relief. I was going insane trying to hide it. It’s a good thing your experience with pregnancy was just the shitfest that was having A’Lěi.”
But now that the idea of children had occurred to Lán Wàngjī—why hadn’t they thought of this before?—he couldn’t let it go. “I love the children,” he said, and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “I want all the children.”
“Uh,” Jiāng Wǎnyín’s voice seemed to come more like a vibration than sound, “no, thank you. You can adopt as you like and go play with the baby disciples, but have you ever tried giving birth? It’s fucking painful. No way am I doing that again after this one.”
Lán Wàngjī nodded sombrely. “I will pray to the gods for quadruplets,” he said, placing a hand on Jiāng Wǎnyín’s stomach.
“Oh, fuck off—out of my chambers!” she said even as she placed a hand over his.