#qingheng-jun loving her so desperately and never knowing what she truly feels for him - if she'd have married him if she had a better choic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ibijau · 3 years

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another extra for Worst Engagement (possibly the last one since at least now everything from the main story is wrapped up)(though I’m still fond of the idea of jin guangyao misunderstanding things and thinking jzx and nhs are having an affair, so who knows!)

anyway: Nie Huaisang wants to surprise his husband by learning to play a certain song. Lan Xichen doesn't take it well. (Also on AO3)

It has been a quiet day, at least for Nie Huaisang. He spent the morning reading letters and sorting them out before answering those that he could, redirecting those that needed the attention of someone else. He didn’t see his husband at lunch, which happens sometimes. As long as they manage to have dinner together at home, Nie Huaisang won’t need to remind his husband that he promised to not let work take over his life.

For once, Nie Huaisang has his afternoon entirely free, which means he has to decide what to do. He could paint, of course, but Lan Xichen should have an empty slot in his schedule tomorrow, and they can paint together then, which is far more fun. He could go for a walk, but the weather isn’t so great. He could meditate, but that’s boring. He could do nothing, only that’d be a waste of some precious free time, when helping Lan Xichen run things leaves him so little.

Nie Huaisang’s eyes wander around the main room of the Hanshi, before stopping on the guqin hanging on one of the walls. That decides what will fill his afternoon.

Out of the few instruments Lan Xichen helped him try in the few months of their marriage, the guqin is, so far, the one for which Nie Huaisang has shown the most taste. His skill is debatable, and he doesn’t expect he’ll ever be particularly good at it, but he enjoys learning anyway. He particularly enjoys it when Lan Xichen is there to teach him, but practicing on his own is nice as well.

So Nie Huaisang does practice, carefully playing a simple melody, paying attention to his own movements, to the position of his fingers. It is only his personal opinion, but he believes he’s getting rather good with that particular song, and hopefully Lan Xichen will soon give him a new one to work with. The Lans have a lot of scores for beginners, and there are also a lot of non-Lan melodies out there. Nie Huaisang wonders if he’ll be allowed to make requests regarding what, exactly, he might learn next.

There is, after all, one song he’d love to learn to play someday. It’s not exactly meant for the guqin, not as far as he can tell, but Lan Xichen is so clever that he can probably find a way to adapt it for that instrument. Or better yet, Nie Huaisang might ask Lan Wangji, so that he can learn the song as a surprise to his husband.

That idea is so exciting that Nie Huaisang finds he cannot wait. Humming the song to himself, he starts carefully plucking at the strings, trying to reproduce the melody as best as he can. It doesn’t go too badly, and it is pretty fun to do, so Nie Huaisang soon loses track of time the same way he would when working on a painting. He doesn’t notice that the sun has started going down, or that his husband has come home, until he lifts his eyes from the guqin for a moment and notices Lan Xichen in the doorway.

It’s anyone’s guess how long he has been there, but he looks frozen in place, staring at Nie Huaisang and his guqin with wide eyes.

“That song,” Lan Xichen mumbles.

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Nie Huaisang pouts, before chuckling. “Well, at least you recognised it, right?”

Instead of answering, his husband continues staring. Or rather, glaring might be a better word, Nie Huaisang starts to realise. It’s always rare to see Lan Xichen angry, but it seems he is. It can’t have anything to do with Nie Huaisang, so probably something annoying happened during the day and Lan Xichen, as agreed between them, is making efforts to not bottle up his emotions when they’re together.

“Did I play it so badly?” Nie Huaisang tries to joke. “I guess I’ll just have to practice harder. I just thought…”

“Never play it again,” Lan Xichen hisses, in a way that leaves Nie Huaisang unpleasantly breathless because that tone is…

The young man in front of him isn't his loving, devoted husband. He's the Lan Xichen of before, the cold, angry one who thought that Nie Huaisang was an idiot. It has been years since Nie Huaisang has heard that tone.

He hadn’t missed it.

"A-Chen, don't be like that," Nie Huaisang pleads, unsure yet what’s wrong exactly. "I just… I've always loved that song. I'm sorry if I butchered it. I've just always loved this story. A romance like that… I used to dream it would happen to me, and someone would love me like your father loved your mother. Well, I got my dream in the end, right?"

The Romance of Qingheng-Jun is, after all, a very popular song in spite of how recent it is. Nie Huaisang knows he can't be the only bad cultivator to have sighed and dreamt at that tale of love and dedication. It's what anyone could want, and…

And the way Lan Xichen glares at him with cold fury nearly makes him cower in fear.

Lan Xichen who doesn't even grace him with an answer before he turns around and leaves the house, slamming the door behind him. Nie Huaisang remains frozen where he sits, his guqin in hand, music sheets before him, trying to understand what he did wrong this time.

It's a little past curfew when Lan Xichen returns. From the bedroom, Nie Huaisang hears the front door open and close quietly. He wants, desperately, to run to his husband and ask what that earlier incident was about, but thinking of the way Lan Xichen stared at him, as if he were something repulsing, stops him. If he wants to talk, his husband will know where to find him.

And find him Lan Xichen does. He knocks on the bedroom door almost shyly before slowly opening it. Nie Huaisang, sitting on the ground in a vain attempt to meditate, doesn’t open his eyes. If Lan Xichen is still angry, he doesn’t want to see it.

Keeping his eyes closed gets a little harder when Lan Xichen comes to kneel next to him.

“A-Sang, I’m sorry about earlier,” he whispers, sounding truly sorry indeed. “I was… I was upset.”

“I noticed, yeah,” Nie Huaisang replies, careful to keep his tone as neutral as he can. He opens his eyes, and finds that Lan Xichen’s eyes are a little red, as if he’s been crying, or close to it anyway. “Why, though? I know I didn’t play the song too well, but…”

Lan Xichen’s hands clench into fists. “It’s not about how you played it, it’s the song itself,” he confesses, glaring at the floor in front of his knees. “It’s… it’s a lie. That song, and all the stories that people tell, they’re just lies and I hate them so much. My parents’ marriage wasn’t like that. They… as far as I could tell, they weren’t happy. How could they have been?”

Nie Huaisang’s eyebrows rise at the news. Madam Lan died some years before he became engaged to her son, so he's never met her. He knows the story, though. Everyone does. The Romance of Qingheng-Jun got immensely popular a little after her death.

According to the song, Madam Lan was a rogue cultivator. Qingheng-Jun and her fell in love at first glance and got secretly married. It had to be a secret, because the Lan elders had heard she was of delicate health and they disapproved. Indeed, she was so often unwell that she never appeared in public after their marriage, and died after just a few years. Her husband was so heartbroken that he became unable to attend his duties and entered seclusion.

Nie Huaisang has always liked the story, and the song even more. Being loved like that, in spite of weakness, in spite of expectations… in the early years of his engagement he sometimes dreamed that he’d meet a Qingheng-Jun of his own and be stolen away from all this politics that scared him and just be kept safe and loved somewhere.

It’s unpleasant to find out that things might not have been as nice as the Romance says, though ultimately not surprising. Nothing is ever like in the stories.

“Did your father resent her bad health then?” Nie Huaisang asks.

“My mother’s health was excellent, aside from the illness that took her life,” Lan Xichen replies in a sigh. “She was a strong-willed woman and, as I’m told, an exceptional cultivator.”

“Oh. Then what was the problem? If you feel like talking about it,” Nie Huaisang adds quickly when his husband throws him a pleading look. “If you don’t want to explain, I’ll ask your uncle or your brother tomorrow.”

At that proposition, Lan Xichen only looks more alarmed.

“Uncle won’t speak about it,” he claims, looking back down at the floor. “And Wangji… he was very young when mother died, I don’t think he ever fully understood, not even to this day… and I’d rather keep it that way. He shouldn’t have to bear the weight of that knowledge I guess I have to…”

He sighs deeply and goes to sit on the edge of the bed, looking at Nie Huaisang to silently ask him to join him. Nie Huaisang obeys, carefully leaving a little space between them in case that’s what Lan Xichen needs at the moment. It tells him a lot about his husband’s mood that Lan Xichen doesn’t shuffle closer or take his hand as he usually does whenever given a chance. Instead, he continues staring at the floor ahead of him, his hands neatly on his knees, his back perfectly straight, as if he were at some official meeting rather than sitting on their own bed.

“When my parents met, my father fell in love and my mother didn’t,” he explains. Even his voice is the one he uses on older sect leaders or on the Lan elders when they pester him about this or that tradition. “It could have stopped at that. It should have. But my mother, for reasons of her own, killed a respected Lan elder. She ought to have been executed for her crime, but my father offered her the alternative of marrying him and living under his protection. She agreed, although from what I’ve been told, she still held no affection for him. In fact, Uncle once hinted that my mother thought even worse of my father for the way he was willing to compromise his sect’s rules. Then again, this being Uncle, he has always been one to think ill of her, so who knows?”

Lan Xichen smiles, his eyes still far away, his hands clenched on his knees.

“I never saw my mother a lot. I saw my father even less. I’ve heard some people say that love of some sort blossomed between them over the years, and I’ve heard others say that she could never bear the sight of him, that my brother and I were only born because it was the price to pay for her to stay alive. I don’t know which is true. I don’t think I want to know. I just remember that she was good to me and Wangji, and that she looked sad when she thought we couldn’t see her face. She was…”

Lan Xichen gasps when Nie Huaisang, unable to restrain himself a second more, grabs his robe to pull him into a tight hug. Lan Xichen tenses at first, then relaxes all at once, melting into his husband’s arms.

“I hate that song,” he whispers, burying his face in the crook of Nie Huaisang’s neck, clinging to his shoulders. “Nobody ever plays it here, but after her death I started hearing it everywhere. I hate it, it’s nothing but lies. My mother wasn’t some delicate and powerless woman, my father wasn’t some kind and noble man. She was a murderer and he was selfish and I hate that I have to pretend otherwise just to save my sect some face.”

It’s always rare for Nie Huaisang to be at a loss for words, but he simply can’t think of anything to say in reaction to this. He knew that Lan Xichen held some sort of grudge against his late father, but he’d thought it was just the normal sort of complicated feelings any son might have about his father. Nie Huaisang himself is never too sure what to think about his father, except to hope that he wouldn’t be too disappointed in what his second son has become, even if he’ll never be a real Nie.

This though.

This is something else, and Nie Huaisang just doesn’t know what to say. For once in his life he keeps silent, holding his husband as close as he can, his heart bleeding over how much this must have hurt Lan Xichen. This is at least as bad as Jiang Cheng’s parents, and at least they were never passed off as an idyllic person couple, nobody wrote songs about them.

And Nie Huaisang told him that he thinks what they have is the same.

“You’re not like your father!” he hisses, pulling Lan Xichen closer against him, as if he could protect him from all the things that have already hurt him. “I didn’t mean that, I didn’t know! But you’re not like him, you would never take advantage, you…” he gasps as a realisation hits him. “You tried to end our engagement. Xichen, husband, was that why…”

“I did not want to trap you,” Lan Xichen whispers against his neck. “I couldn’t, I love you so much, I could not bear to see you end up like my mother.”

Nie Huaisang holds his husband so tight that Lan Xichen probably can't breathe, not that he's protesting. His husband, his Xichen, who’s had to listen to people speaking lies about his parents for years, unable to say the truth because it would have damaged Gusu Lan’s reputation too much. Nie Huaisang’s family life hasn’t always been the best, not after his own mother died, but at least nobody ever made up false songs about it.

“You know what we need?” Nie Huaisang decides. “We need a new song. A better one.”

“Nobody can know,” Lan Xichen sighs, clinging to his shoulders. “Least of all now, when we’re still recovering from the war, it would be…”

“Not a song about them. Who cares about them? They’re both dead. No, we need a song about us.”

That suggestion startles Lan Xichen enough that he pulls away from his husband’s embrace, too puzzled now to continue being upset. That, of course, is exactly what Nie Huaisang wanted, so he grins.

“Yes, don’t we deserve a song?” he asks. “I think we’d make good material for a story. It would have all the elements of a great romance! Two enemies, forced into an alliance…”

“We were hardly enemies,” Lan Xichen objects with a frown. “Our sects have been on good terms for generations, our fathers were friends… just because we didn’t get along doesn’t mean…”

“From enemies to lovers,” Nie Huaisang insists. “Fighting against our instant mutual attraction…”

“You were terrified and I was full of myself,” Lan Xichen corrects, fighting a smile. “Also, we were children. I don’t think much attraction could have been possible.”

“Forced by a cruel elder to live together, learning to know and respect one another…”

“An incense stick’s time per week is hardly living together,” Lan Xichen cuts him, fully grinning now. “And you were a pest, refusing to let me learn anything about you no matter how much I tried!”

“I have no idea what you mean, mister I-don’t-have-a-favourite-colour-it’s-forbidden,” Nie Huaisang retorts, turning up his nose. “I was so delightful that you fell in love with me after all.”

Lan Xichen bursts out laughing, and Nie Huaisang is struck once more by how different his husband is, now that he no longer tries to always be in control. Now that he’s allowing Nie Huaisang to really see him, instead of hiding behind some ideas about propriety… though it makes sense now, how bad Lan Xichen was at romancing him, if that’s the example he’s had to live with. His poor husband, who has put up with so much...

Nie Huaisang lacks the words to express how much he loves that man, perhaps because no word could ever be strong enough for it.

“I fell in love too, of course,” Nie Huaisang feels compelled to say.

It worries him sometimes that Lan Xichen might not fully understand it, because of the way things used to be. It feels particularly urgent that night that Lan Xichen knows he is loved, that Nie Huaisang chose this, that he would choose Lan Xichen again and again if given the opportunity.

“Unwillingly,” Lan Xichen teases as he takes his hands, laughing again. “A-Sang, I think your song would be just as filled with lies as my parents’ one.”

“Maybe,” Nie Huaisang concedes, leaning closer and kissing his husband’s cheek. “But at least it wouldn’t lie about us choosing each other, and I think that’s all that matters.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes go soft when he hears this. Nie Huaisang is almost blinded by how beautiful his husband is, and desperately wants to kiss him. He will, in a moment, but first…

“Also, in the song, I’ll be taller than you,” he announces. “I think I deserve that.”

"You are ridiculous," Lan Xichen declares, laughing so hard now that he's started crying. "Fine, I'll write you a melody if you care so much, and you can put any words you like on it. Or I’ll take care of those too if you prefer, though it’ll probably be very stupid."

And he will, too, Nie Huaisang knows that. Lan Xichen will write him a song, exactly as cliché and ridiculous as described, but because he's Lan Xichen it will still be amazing, and with a few coins well spent here and there, Nie Huaisang is sure he can arrange for it to completely replace the Romance of Qingheng-Jun.

Nie Huaisang can’t erase years of pain, but he might be able to make sure nobody ever plays again the song which causes his husband such distress, and that’s close enough.

#xisang #nie huaisang #lan xichen #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #jau writes #worst engagement au #I can now remove ONE item from my list of wips yay

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stiltonbasket · 4 years

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chancellor of the morning sun: lecture (adulthood)

In which Lan Xichen throws down with Jin Zixuan; or, part 6 of the nielan au that has completely taken over my brain.

At the risk of offending her little brother, Lan Xichen often reflects on the fact that Wei Wuxian would probably love to break every last one of the Lan sect precepts, simply for the sake of doing it.

Wei Wuxian—Jiang Fengmian’s ward and adopted son, and coincidentally the same little boy who threw roses at Wangji’s head during that discussion conference in Qishan—is exactly the sort of person her uncle would run a li or two in very tight shoes to avoid, still not ready to contemplate the fact that Cangse Sanren was no longer among the living. An unfortunate incident in Caiyi (with some tea served in a cup that had previously held heavy liquor, and not been washed well enough later) had told Lan Xichen all she needed to know about that, especially when Shufu revealed that he still saw the flare of Cangse Sanren’s bright sword in his dreams when he thought of her before sleeping.

“Why did you not declare your suit then, Shufu?” Xichen asked, praying that her uncle would forget the conversation entirely when he sobered up in an hour or two. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

“I was seventeen, and she was four-and-twenty,” he replied. “I was a child to her, as Jiang Fengmian was, and I was unsuited in another way, though I did not know it then.”

But Lan Qiren had truly grieved on that dark night thirteen years ago when word came from Yunmeng Jiang announcing the deaths of Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze, and it was the only time save the morning of her mother’s passing that Xichen ever saw her uncle cry.

(He had not cried a drop when her father died; his brother’s fate had filled him with such wrath at the men who forced it on him that all Lan Qiren said after Qingheng-jun was buried was that he would not let the elders touch Lan Huan, or little A-Zhan, even if he had to tear himself apart for it.)

Lan Zhan is much like their uncle, now that Lan Xichen thinks about it. He has the same intolerance for lawlessness and disorder, the same helpless weakness for people who are bold, and brash, and free—so is it really any wonder that he seems to have fallen desperately in love with Wei Wuxian?

Xichen believes that it isn’t, especially now that her precious didi is doing the Wangji equivalent of wringing his hands—that is, white-knuckling his sword, whose hilt usually suffers most whenever her brother is out of sorts—and pleading with her to speak to their uncle and lessen Wei Wuxian’s latest punishment, which seems to have been the result of an all-out brawl with Jin Zixuan the previous evening.

“I was informed that Young Master Wei ‘left a bruise the size of his fist’ on Jin Zixuan’s face, and struck him unprovoked,” she says, lifting a curious brow at him. “Last I heard, all Shufu told him to do was kneel in the courtyard outside his receiving chamber and reflect on his ill temper. What is so harsh about that?”

“Shufu has summoned Jin Guangshan and Jiang-zongzhu here to discuss the matter with them,” Wangji insists. “And—I was not there, but Wei Ying’s third disciple brother reported that Jin Zixuan slighted Lady Jiang before his whole delegation, and that Wei Ying began fighting with him for that reason. Surely that cannot be such a grave offense that Wei Ying must be expelled from the Cloud Recesses, Jie?”

Lan Xichen feels her heart melt. “No, it is not. But since Jiang-zongzhu and Jin-zongzhu are both here, then it must be about the marriage between Jin Zixuan and Jiang-guniang, and not anything to do with Wei Wuxian. We had already invited Jiang-zongzhu, remember?”

Her brother nods. “Yes, A-Jie. This brother shall take his leave now, then, and disturb you no further.”

“Wait, Wangji. You mentioned that Wei Wuxian’s third shidi witnessed the encounter between the boys?” she asks, her mind already on other matters now that Wangji seems to have cheered up a little. “Would that be Yu Zhenhong, or Dai Lingyi?”

“Yu Zhenhong, I believe. He is in your cultivation history lecture, is he not?”

“I had rather hoped it would be him,” Xichen confesses, rising to her feet. “Wangji, I must trouble you to go and fetch the boy at once, and then bring whomever among the Jin disciples you deem most trustworthy. I would hear an account of it all from them, if it is possible.”

Wangji bows before hurrying off, as he began doing the very day she was instated as Sect Leader Lan four years ago; Xichen had tried to argue with him, insisting that he was still her precious baby brother and ought never to bow to her except when they were in public, but their uncle claimed that Wangji must not fail to show her full deference even when they were alone. The elders would leap upon even a spark of discourtesy from Wangji or even from Shufu himself and use it to undermine her, he said, or press her into yielding her seat to Wangji before she married and moved to Qinghe, or worse, before Wangji was ready, which would leave the council in power yet again.

But what none of the council knows is that Nie Mingjue has been the recipient of many midnight letters detailing Lan Xichen’s predicament, and that he even asked his father to move their wedding from Xichen’s eighteenth year to the seventh year after that. Nie Huangyin wanted to see his son with a child of his own as soon as Gusu Lan would permit it, not knowing that they would have sent Xichen away before she turned eighteen if he dared voice his wish—but Mingjue begged him to postpone the marriage on bended knee, telling him that it would break her heart to leave Wangji behind when he was only fourteen, and to never have the chance to lead her clan when she fought so valiantly to earn the standing a man would have commanded by the fact of his birth.

It was this last that softened Nie Huangyin’s resolve, since his respect for the place Xichen would someday have (as his heir’s wife, and the mother of his grandchildren, as well as the future of his line) was surpassed only by his regard for the place she already held as the first heir to Gusu Lan and its future sect leader.

And then Nie Huangyin died two years before Xichen ascended as Lan-zongzhu, and Mingjue’s first state journey as Sect Leader Nie had been to the Cloud Recesses, to demand that the betrothal contract be altered to permit him to wed Lan Huan as soon or as late as he liked.

“But your father stipulated that it should be no later than—”

“I am in mourning. It may take a very long time before I can emerge from my grief well enough to look after a wife and children,” Mingjue interrupted, stopping the first elder who dared voice an objection dead in his tracks. “Perhaps it will be ten years from now, instead of nine. Or maybe twelve. I have not yet realized the depths of my sorrow, for it grows worse every day.”

“Surely you would not leave the most precious flower of our sect unwed for so long!” another elder jumped in, looking completely outraged. “Wedding her at twenty-five was bad enough, but for you to come asking to wait longer still! What is wrong with Lan Huan, in your eyes? Would you have her watch all the maidens her age gain the titles of wife and mother, while she must remain an old maid until you see fit to marry her?”

“I think far too highly of Sect Heir Lan to bring her to a household still darkened with the pain of the previous Nie-zongzhu’s passing,” Nie Mingjue said flatly, throwing Lan Xichen a conspiratorial look that none of the council but Shufu could see. “When I bring her to the Unclean Realm as my bride, it will because I, and she, have both agreed that it is the proper time.”

What a blessing of fate it was, that I was promised to Mingjue-xiong, Xichen thinks now, pondering over the matter between Jiang Yanli and her intended, who seems to struggle with showing the poor girl even the barest courtesy. If it had been anyone else—anyone, at all—

“A-Jie?” Wangji calls from outside the door, pulling her out of her musings as she hurries to let him in. “I have brought Yu-gongzi and one of the Jin disciples, as you requested.”

But for some reason, Wangji seems to have brought three disciples along instead of two. One is Yu Zhenhong, who looks like a paler, sharper-faced version of Jiang Wanyin, and the second is the Jin clan’s head disciple, Luo Qingyang; but the third is a young girl from the Jiang clan, who seems to be the only one among the three with a weapon at her waist. Xichen quickly places her as Wei Wuxian’s first shimei, Li Shuai, and realizes with amused surprise that this is the maiden who smuggled Emperor’s Smile into the Cloud Recesses last month so that her da-shixiong and er-shixiong could have a forbidden party with it.

“Lan-zongzhu,” the disciples chorus, making her a deep, formal bow before Yu Zhenhong steps forward. “Zewu-xianzi, how may we be of assistance? Second Young Master Lan informed me that you needed us for something.”

“I do,” she says, inclining her head. “I would have your account of the disagreement between Young Master Jin and Young Master Wei, up until the point they were interrupted by Wangji and Maiden Jiang.”

The three accounts coincide exactly, though Luo Qingyang has more to tell regarding the remarks Jin Zixuan made about Jiang-guniang before Wei Wuxian arrived on the scene. Xichen listens to them all in some distress before sending the disciples back about their business, and then she fights the temptation to down a whole pot of tea before turning back to her brother. “Where is Jin Zixuan now, A-Zhan?”

“Kneeling in a courtyard across from the one where Wei Ying is,” Wangji says, confused. “What of him?”

“Go bring him to me,” she orders. “I rather fancy his betrothal will be dissolved before the day is out, but I must speak with him first.”

Wangji makes off without a word, reappearing again five minutes later with a very irate Jin Zixuan beside him. It is impossible to tell that the two of them are three years apart, by now; Wangji and Jin Zixuan are of the same height, and Wangji’s collected calm belies his age to the point where he looks closer to Lan Xichen’s two and twenty years instead of eighteen.

“You may go, A-Zhan,” Lan Xichen says gently, favoring her brother with a tender smile as he bows and slips out again: probably to comfort Wei Wuxian, if she had to guess. “And you, young master Jin—you may sit at that table there, and reflect while I brew some tea.”

Much confused, Jin Zixuan does, trying to keep his eyes fixed on the table in front of him while Lan Xichen heats a pot of water and lays out her favorite xiangqi board. Once the tea is ready, she calls Jin Zixuan up to her table and watches as he fills her cup and the one she put aside for him—and then she moves her first piece and directs him to do the same, trying not to sigh as he glances uncertainly at the board and moves his chariot.

“Um, Lan-zongzhu, what—”

“I was informed that you have some objection to your future marriage to Maiden Jiang,” she interrupts, cutting him off so smoothly that he scarcely seems to notice. “I find myself curious as to your reasons why, since I have known Jiang Yanli for many years and never run across any defect in her character at all.”

Jin Zixuan’s face goes purple. “Zewu-xianzi, that…”

“Is it that she is too kind for you?” Xichen muses aloud. She moves another piece, and looks at Jin Zixuan with lifted brows until he does the same. “Or, perhaps, that she smiles too much?”

“I—”

“I would like to hear you out fully, Jin-gongzi. What objection do you have to Jiang Yanli?”

His cheeks go even darker, and he lowers his eyes back to the xiangqi board before speaking again. Lan Xichen knows all his reasons in full, of course, and finds herself thoroughly disappointed in them; she began to have a better opinion of Jin Zixuan when he treated Meng Yao with courtesy the last time he visited Qinghe Nie, despite knowing full well that he and A-Yao are half-brothers and that A-Yao is the elder between them, but if matters proceed as Xichen fears they will, that good opinion might not even last the day. “Jin-gongzi!”

“Zewu-xianzi, I…”

“I will spare you the disgrace of having to speak such words again, then,” she says, motioning him to pour her another cup of tea. “Yu Zhenhong of Yunmeng Jiang—your intended’s cousin, and nephew to her mother—has already been to tell me about them, along with your own head disciple, who has always been devoted to you, from what I know of her.”

“Mianmian was here?” Jin Zixuan asks, finally looking up with something close to shame in his eyes. “She—told you everything?”

“That you think Jiang-guniang is too plain for your tastes, that her cultivation is too low for you, that her character is too timid and too weak, that she is too foolish over her brothers, that she is too attached to you, despite having known you since infancy, and that you would be her husband for exactly as long,” Lan Xichen counts off. “Luo-guniang told me all that, and more, but I would rather not say such things myself. Especially not about such an admirable girl as Yanli is.”

Jin Zixuan shuts his mouth again. A wonderful improvement on his usual state, Xichen thinks, even if she won’t say so.

“Jin-gongzi,” she says instead, “surely you must know that Jiang-guniang has no more choice in this marriage than you do, since it was contracted by your mothers even before they were married?”

“She likes it!” Jin Zixuan protests at last, goaded past the bounds of courtesy. “All our lives, she—even when we were children, she was always trying to make me soup, and get me to play with her brothers, no matter how much I tried to put her off! It might as well be a marriage of choice, on her part, and even though my mother will not hear of me breaking the engagement, Jiang-zongzhu would do it in a heartbeat if Jiang Yanli asked him to! She knows I want nothing of it—she has always known—but never, never has she had the courtesy to say so!”

Lan Xichen only raises her eyebrows at him. “Lan-zongzhu,” Jin Zixuan appends hastily.

“I see,” she observes. “What is it that Jiang-guniang likes about you, then?”

“...What?”

“Luo-guniang told me what you dislike about Maiden Jiang. So I must ask, Jin Zixuan—what does she like about you?”

The boy seems more confused than ever, somehow, and Xichen holds back a sigh before framing the question differently. “What advantages do you believe she would gain upon marrying you?”

“She would become Young Madam Jin, second mistress of the wealthiest sect after Qishan Wen,” Jin Zixuan replies at once, looking stunned that Lan Xichen even asked. “Once I took my father’s place, she would become the wife of a sect leader.”

“And?”

“She would...never want for anything?” he says uncertainly. “Not jewels, nor silks, nor any of the things that are dear to women. Her children would want for nothing, and she would be assured of their future.”

“How is that any different from what she is assured now?”

Jin Zixuan only looks bewildered again. “As the Young Mistress of Yunmeng Jiang, she…”

“Jiang Yanli has little fondness for material things,” Lan Xichen dismisses him. “She wears only plain jewels and a single ornament in her hair, and I have never seen her pass a beggar in the street without giving out enough coin for a day’s food. Nor has she any desire for power, since most of her work in Yunmeng concerns the education of children whose parents cannot teach them, and apprenticeships for women without family to care for them.

“And even if she did care for gold, and for power...her brothers worship the ground under her feet, as does her father, and I doubt there is anything Jiang Fengmian has ever denied her. Or that Jiang Wanyin ever will, when he becomes sect leader. With things between you two as they are, does she not have more power in Yunmeng Jiang, with her family supporting the ventures she chooses, than she could ever hope for as the mistress of Lanling?”

“Mother would give her that power, she wouldn’t have to ask me for it,” Jin Zixuan protests weakly. “Mother adores her, because she and Yu-furen have been friends since they were children.”

“But when the reins of the Jin sect lie in your hands alone, what then? Would she humble herself so, to ask anything of a husband whom she must know dislikes her?”

Jin Zixuan opens his mouth and then shuts it again. He looks very lost, somehow, as if he had wandered into a forest expecting to find rabbits before being accosted by a flesh-eating tiger instead.

Xichen drains the last of her tea and pointedly clears her throat. “So now that we have established that the greatest virtues of Lanling Jin hold no charm for Maiden Jiang, what do you have to offer her?”

“I...I…”

She finds herself losing her patience, then. “Do you remember the day we first met, Jin Zixuan? I had just recited twenty minutes’ worth of poetry at a discussion conference, as part of an elocution contest held among all the maidens past ten years of age who were present. Jiang Yanli performed first—and did very admirably, I might add—and she glanced towards you once hoping for a smile or a nod to encourage her, which she did not receive. But she held her own and finished her recitation magnificently, and I took the stage after her—and then I saw you looking at me, and I thought you were enchanted by the piece I had chosen. It was a fine one, written by my uncle when he was a youth, and I was glad that someone approved of it, even if it was only a boy of nine who would not even try to be friends with his betrothed.

“And then, after the contest was over, Qin Su invited me to come and take tea with her and her mother, so I stepped into the room next door to attend them,” Lan Xichen says icily, watching Jin Zixuan quail before her with a savage sort of pleasure. “The moment I was gone, you turned to your father, and asked if you could marry Maiden Lan, since you thought she suited you better than Maiden Jiang. Can you imagine what reason you gave him, Jin-gongzi?”

“Zewu-xianzi, please—”

“It was not the elocution I was displaying that night, or any perceived superiority in character. Rather, the only reason you gave for wanting a new maiden over the one you had known for years, and who had been nothing but kind to you, was that you thought the second one was pretty. Two girls, both feeling and thinking and breathing beings, reduced to nothing but the comeliness of their features, and the worst thing was that you said it as if it were the most natural idea in the world.

“I was called the jewel of Gusu Lan, accomplished beyond anything my sect had hoped—or even wanted—for my age, but when I heard you ask your father for me, like I was a bauble on a shelf and not a person, I nearly buried my head in my arms and cried. And then I admired Jiang Yanli even more than I already did, for having stood such treatment time and time again from the boy who was meant to be her husband and the father of her children, for all the rest of her days—without so much as a tear, or a frown.

“You forgot the thought of marrying me soon enough, thank Heaven, and you were always respectful towards me after that. But your treatment of your intended never improved, though it has been twelve years since then—and you would have me believe that Wei Wuxian was in the wrong, for challenging you?”

Jin Zixuan bows his head and says nothing. His lips are quivering, Lan Xichen notices, and his cheeks are flushed in sheer mortification; if he were five or six years younger, he might have burst into tears on the spot, and she feels her heart twinge a little at her harshness as the quaking of his mouth grows more obvious.

But then she remembers the look on Jiang Yanli’s face last night, and Wei Wuxian’s insistence that he only forgot his entrance token that first afternoon because the Jin delegation had ejected him and his martial siblings from the inn they were staying at, despite the fact that there were five or six empty rooms after the Jins were accommodated.

If Wei Wuxian spoke truly—and Lan Xichen highly doubts that he did not—Jin Zixuan turned his own betrothed out into the street when there were no inns remaining but the one he had taken rooms in, simply because he did not wish to share an entire house with her, and Jiang Yanli bore it with nothing but a reminder to her brothers to maintain their dignity before outsiders.

“Your betrothal contract will be dissolved by tonight, if my knowledge of Jiang-zongzhu holds true,” she says at last, pouring herself a fourth cup of tea. “Any change in heart will be too late for Maiden Jiang, or your engagement with her. But you will marry someone sometime, so perhaps that maiden will have better luck with you than Jiang-guniang did.”

Lan Xichen looks at the candle-clock burning on the table, and then at the sky outside her window. Jin Guangshan ought to have finished discussing the betrothal now, which means that it must be time for her to go explain the appearance of the Yin iron to Jiang Fengmian—but there is still something more she must say to Jin Zixuan, though it might just go over his head entirely.

“You are dismissed, Young Master Jin. But before you leave, consider this—when Nie Mingjue was betrothed to me, the engagement was settled by my clan and the previous Nie-zongzhu, and neither Chifeng-zun nor I had any choice in the matter. We had not met at the time, but all he wanted to know about me was whether I would be kind to Huaisang, and once his father said that I would be, Nie Mingjue was content.

“Perhaps you will have a good answer for what you seek in a wife, when the time comes for you to find one again.”

And then she gets up and sweeps off down the corridor to her uncle’s chambers, leaving Jin Zixuan frozen at the xiangqi board in her wake, and hopes that he will remember at least something of what she has told him—for his sake as well as Jiang Yanli’s.

#nielan #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #lan xichen #nie mingjue #nielan arranged marriage au #chancellor of the morning sun #my fic

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