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Yu Ziyuan couldn't remember what true happiness felt like.
Oh, she was confident she had been familiar with it once. Her wedding day, perhaps, when Jiang Fengmian had pulled away her veil and she had her first real look at him bedecked in red. Or after giving birth to A-Li, when she had finally been allowed to lie down after hours of back labour and they had placed the squalling little girl in her arms. Or even when A-Cheng had joined them, a much easier birth than his elder sister's, appearing between one breath and the next as though he couldn't bear to wait in her womb a moment longer.
But all that had preceded the deaths of Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze.
For nearly two weeks out of every month over the last year, Fengmian had left Lotus Pier to go in search of their son, convinced that as the boy's body had not been returned alongside that of his parents that he still lived. Yu Ziyuan had tried to be reasonable about it. Had even given her blessing the first few months of his search if only to set his mind at ease. But it had been a year of YunmengJiang suffering without the consistent presence of its clan leader.
The responsibilities fell to her.
And she was so tired.
Their latest argument had likely started over something ridiculous. She couldn't even remember the inciting event and had no desire to muster up the recollection of it in case it wasted her precious few reserves of energy on renewed outrage.
"Perhaps if you cared as much about your sect as you did the offspring of your former servant we would be better positioned!" she had snapped. Not a scream. She refused to raise her voice although there were days she wanted to do nothing more. She had been raised with poise and elegance and to poison her words instead of blasting them into the world like a hurricane.
"What would you have me do? Forget about him?"
Yes, she wanted to scream. Yes, yes, yes. Fengmian had only met the boy once, and probably wouldn't recognize him unless he had truly grown to resemble one of his parents. Any opportunistic street possessing an ounce of guile would end up written into the Jiang family records if they weren't careful. But anytime she said as much the words fell on deaf ears.
This time, at least, he managed to see the wisdom in her counsel though it had taken longer than it should have to drive the message home.
"If I lead this nighthunt in your place, Fengmian, Wen Ruohan will consider it a grievous insult. You need to be the one heading our disciples this time." The excuse she had used for his forrays into innumerable small towns looking for the Wei child had always been nighthunts, and Wen Ruohan had explicitly requested his presence for one at the edges of their overlapping territory to 'observe his mettle.' A transparent excuse to see if Fengmian could now equal his strength.
"I am waiting for word from one of my contacts," Fengmian insisted.
"Then you will wait longer. You cannot lose us face when Wen Ruohan is already determined to find the smallest fault."
"Then he will doubtless find one, my lady."
She hated when he called her that. It seemed a mockery of the affection she had entered their marriage hoping for. Her voice iced over. "As sect leader it is your job to mitigate that."
He finally saw some sense and departed before dinner.
Now well past sundown, Yu Ziyuan felt as though she could sleep for a year. And would have if she hadn't found a bundle of unanswered correspondence waiting for her in Fengmian's office.
"A-Niang?" She looked up at A-Cheng, stood in the doorway with his newest acquisition hanging awkwardly from his arms. He and Little Love had somehow mastered the same, wide-eyed expression. "I had a nightmare."
Life is a nightmare, she refused to say.
He approached her and reached for her hand. Yu Ziyuan pulled it abruptly out of his reach. Her children were of MeishanYu blood and her son was too old to require such infantile comforts.
"Go back to bed, A-Cheng," she ordered. His lower lip trembled and she tried not to sigh impatiently. The day had already been long enough, and this new crisis threatened to deplete what willpower she had left before her work was done.
Deep irritation followed the thought and she called for Yinzhu.
A-Cheng pouted down at his feet.
"You may keep Little Love with you in your room tonight," she allowed as Yinzhu arrived to whisk him off.
This, at least, brightened his spirits. "Thank you, A-Niang."
He boldly darted in to kiss her cheek and then scampered off before she could scold him for it.
Yu Ziyuan had never learned to be a good parent. She loved her children as best she could, but with Fengmian's attention constantly divided it was more important for her to be a strong leader and she did not have sufficient personal resources to do both. Once they were grown, they would need to appreciate the necessity of prioritizing the sect.
She made her way through the majority of the work when Jinzhu interrupted her. Anyone else and she would have used Zidian to emphasize the importance of not disturbing her, but her maids knew well enough to understand what warranted interruption.
"A messenger has arrived for Jiang-zongzhu," Jinzhu told her.
Would she never have peace?
"Fine. I will be there directly."
Jinzhu bowed and left Yu Ziyuan to collect herself. She tidied the hair which had fallen out of its severe coil and straightened her robes. Once she could call herself presentable she made her way to the main receiving room.
The messenger looked ragged but relieved to see her. He held out a carefully folded piece of paper.
"Tea for this one," she ordered.
Jinzhu nodded and fetched it up as Yu Ziyuan broke the seal to read over the contents.
A child matching the description of the son of Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze has been spotted living on the streets of Yiling.
Her blood ran cold.
In this past year of searching it never occurred to her that Fengmian had been right.
The boy was alive.
This could be the worst disaster to ever befall YunmengJiang.
She knew Fengmian, though certain people—including Fengmian himself—would doubtless insist otherwise. He would bring the boy here under the banner of doing honour to his friends. From that point onward, everything would be to show Cangse Sanren that he would have been the superior choice of husband. He would coddle and praise and spoil the Wei child, swaddling him in affection and favour all with the aim of proving to the deceased object of his affections that he would have been an excellent father. Because for all Fengmian conducted himself as a moral, upright man, he desperately wanted to have the last word and did not always possess the necessary articulation. Taking the boy in would be his last chance to prove his superiority to those who had left him behind.
He would be an ideal father to a child who was not his own. And he'd do it to the neglect of his own children.
But what to do now?
Her fingers tightened on the missive.
If she destroyed it, she would just be delaying the inevitable. Fengmian had been convinced to pause his search until completing the joint nighthunt, but he would not halt it entirely until the Wei boy was found. His ventures would eventually take him to Yiling; one, five, even ten years hence. And doubtless if the boy was brought back when he was older, Fengmian would do everything in his power to try and catch him up to his peers, taking him completely away from the necessary running of the sect.
The child might even prove of use if she responded herself and sought the boy out in an effort to appease her husband and win back some of his lost favour. But she knew her temper. Yu Ziyuan could suddenly imagine all the rest of her days stretched out before her and the escalating hate controlling her until it blackened every action. It had happened before, with her sister's husband, when he had diverted Yu Yueyin's attention away from Ziyuan. She came to hate him so intensely that her once beloved sister would no longer speak with her beyond distant gentility and Yu Ziyuan wasn't sure she could bear the same thing coming to pass between her and Fengmian.
Worse, still, if Fengmian singled out the boy for special treatment. Zidian sparked on her wrist at the thought of anyone being elevated above her children, who had only trespassed against their father in being born to a woman he did not love. She would be unable to bear it. All her worst inclinations would seem increasingly reasonable until the very sight of the boy would drive her to rage.
She could send Yinzhu and Jinzhu to…
No.
No matter her desperation, she couldn't order the death of a child.
Perhaps there was another option?
Shortly after word of Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren’s death reached them, she had joined Fengmian at a discussion conference in Qinghe. It had been her way of showing support, determined to insinuate herself between Fengmian and anyone who might wish to drag up bad memories either because of misplaced sympathy (Nie Niubai) or love of unnecessary drama (Yao Bang).
She was not expecting to see someone else in mourning white.
Lan Qiren wore the sash with dignity and moved as though he had aged a full five decades since the last time she'd seen him only a year prior. She'd wondered at first if Qingheng-jun had finally done them all the great favour of passing away and allowing Lan Qiren to officially assume the mantle of leadership instead of sitting on it like the grimmest, most miserable placeholder. But then she noticed Fengmian glaring at him as though Lan Qiren were the principal enemy in an exaggerated drama and realized the truth ran much deeper.
Everyone assumed the Wei child had died with his parents, and YunmengJiang made no effort to circulate word to the contrary. Yu Ziyuan hadn't bothered to wonder why, before; children of rogue cultivators rarely merited any particular attention until they made names for themselves. She expected Fengmian to announce his intention to seek the boy out and adopt him into the Jiang sect—against her wishes, though when had that ever stopped him from doing something he actually cared about?—but something about the sight of Lan Qiren's white sash stopped him from speaking.
SShe wondered why he hadn't enlisted this other man in the search. Yu Ziyuan did not understand the relationship between Lan Qiren and Fengmian's friends, and Fengmian only spoke of it with cool disdain, out of character enough for her to remember it as a thing of significance. She knew Lan Qiren to be a fastidious bore and couldn't guess at any sort of tenderness which might exist between him and the two departed. But surely Fengmian would welcome any assistance in finding the boy?
When their paths finally crossed, despite their mutual efforts to the contrary, Fengmian greeted Lan Qiren with exquisite manners, all the while glowering at the white sash as though it personally offended him.
"You should not disrespect their marriage any further by wearing that," Fengmian stated, too quiet for anyone save her and Lan Qiren to hear, and she imagined she merited not a moment's worth of consideration.
“What right have you to question me about my grief?" Lan Qiren demanded. His lips pressed together and his shoulder straightened. When he continued, his voice had leveled out into gruff neutrality. "I've no desire to continue this dance with you when they're no longer here to laugh at us.”
"Me," Fengmian replied. His voice came out in a low growl, a sound she had never heard him make. His voice did not rise, her husband donned good humour the same way she did anger, but something about Lan Qiren slipped through the armour as though it had been made of joss paper. "They were laughing at me."
Anyone with less self-regulation than Lan Qiren would have sighed. "Not to be cruel, Jiang-zongzhu, but I promise you rarely entered into the conversation."
"You never had a claim on them the way I did," Fengmian said. "You cannot begin to contemplate what I have lost.”
Yu Ziyuan painted in the empty spaces Fengmian sketched: his best friend (who he still called zhiji even while coveting his wife), the woman with whom he had dreamed of a future, a child he wished had been his.
“That has always been your problem: thinking of them as things to be claimed.”
Fengmian took the words like a blow and finally allowed Yu Ziyuan to usher him away. When she chanced a look back at the acting Lan sect leader, his eyes had slid shut and he looked as though he had no wish to open them again.
Fengmian had stepped up his search efforts as soon as they returned home.
That interaction had to have meant something and she decided she was desperate enough to grasp at the thinnest straws.
Yu Ziyuan realized she'd been staring at the paper so long her eyes had dried. She blinked and returned her attention to the waiting messenger, silently awaiting her instructions.
A child matching the description of the son of Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze has been spotted living on the streets of Yiling.
"Take this to Cloud Recesses, to the attention of Lan Qiren." She refolded the note and passed it back. "Should I ever hear it was initially brought to Lotus Pier, I will personally demonstrate to you why a daughter of MeishanYu is a woman to be feared."
The messenger bowed a dozen times between the base of her seat and the door.
The paths of YunmengJiang and GusuLan had cause to cross three years later at the investiture of Nie Mingjue as Nie-zongzhu. He was barely eighteen, a mere nine years older than A-Cheng, and held himself with all the grief-stricken dignity of a man who knew his duty but felt unprepared for it all the same.
Lan Xichen, just fifteen, led the disciples from GusuLan, though his eyes never strayed far from Nie Mingjue. Word of their great friendship had already spread amongst the other sects, quickly becoming a sore point for QishanWen apparently; Wen Ruohan's eldest was of age with the two of them and felt it a snub to be discluded from their intimacy. It merited careful observation; the Wen did not do well when they believed themselves denied.
Lan Qiren stood firm behind Lan Xichen, a wall of silent support for his nephew. He settled his right hand upon the shoulder of Lan Wangji—a slight, dour little thing attending his first official gathering in support of his elder brother—and held tight the hand of a boy roughly the same age with his left.
A boy Fengmian had never stopped obsessing over.
Fengmian seemed determined to pay the Lan no mind save for the perfunctory moment of politeness he paraded out when he and Lan Xichen greeted one another. He spared no attention to Lan Qiren or his charges, and therefore missed the familiar brightness to the second boy's eyes. The way he fidgeted with the hem of his sleeve, the same way Cangse Sanren had. The way he constantly leaned into Lan Wangji's space, whispering to him even during moments of solemnity up until the moment when Lan Qiren huffed quietly and squeezed his hand, and he fell back into a silence which seemed barely capable of containing him (and didn't for more than a few minutes.)
How very like Fengmian, she decided, to ignore what stood directly in front of him.
Obviously envious of his peers, A-Cheng reached for Fengmian's hand. Fengmian did not welcome the touch, his hand hanging listlessly at his side until A-Cheng sighed and released it.
Satisfied with the knowledge she’d made the correct choice—for herself, her children, even for the boy standing across the hall from them—she casually allowed her hand to drop down and did not pull away when A-Cheng reached for her.