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The mood of the immortal alliance conference was exceptionally tense this year. There had long been opposition to Huan Hua’s palace mistress due to rumours that she’d violently deposed her former master. Many outsiders thought the accusations she’d made against him when she’d assumed control of her sect too lurid to be true. It was easier for many cultivators to imagine that head disciple Su Xiyan had proffered an elaborate excuse to justify her premature ascension than to admit that they’d harboured a predator in their midst for decades, had overlooked the several warning signs and called him a great man. 

The former palace master’s heir had gone from sect to sect, spreading tales of Su Xiyan’s perfidy. She’d gathered up enough support among the foolhardy to lead an action against Huan Hua. That assault had failed—as it had been bound to, given that Huan Hua was backed by imperial demonic forces. Su Xiyan’s marital and martial alliance with the lord Tianlangjun was another great source of unease among cultivators. Brash young gongzis from smaller sects called the lawful empress of the demonic realms a yaoguai’s whore—but only where they were sure no one who might forcibly object would hear them.

Nonetheless, the fact that human troops had even been mustered against Huan Hua had exposed still-active faultlines in the cultivation world which many had assumed long dormant. It had shaken up the status quo, which rested on a de facto acceptance of Huan Hua’s unique position as an orthodox cultivation sect that worked in collaboration with the governing regime of the demonic realm. Qi Qingqi sourly noted that all these bellicose gongzis and their masters had as much of an issue with a female sect leader as they did with Su Xiyan’s marriage, or the manner of her ascension. And even though Su Xiyan had indisputably won her succeeding disciple position by cleanly outperforming all competitors for the role, Shen Qingqiu had known that Qi Qingqi had a point.

Given all this, Shen Qingqiu was hardly surprised when Su Xiyan announced her intention to marry off her son, Huan Hua’s current head disciple and the crown prince of the demonic realms, to a human cultivator of standing. She forbore mentioning recent events, instead expressing her wish “to increase cooperation between sects and strengthen the bridge between our realm and the imperial powers that regulate the demonic realm—and in so doing, to promote the welfare of humanity.” Her announcement at the conference podium merely confirmed rumours that had been circulating for months. It was a reasonable plan, but not one the young, half-demon prince at her side looked happy about. 

Well, Shen Qingqiu considered, why would he be pleased? At all of eighteen, he was staring down a political marriage that would promote the welfare of human cultivators (i.e. the same group of people who’d recently laid siege to his home), if only those cultivators were reasonable enough to see it. 

This was Prince Binghe’s first Immortal Alliance Conference as a competitor. It would be Shen Qingqiu’s last. Soon after his return home, the newly-guaned head disciple of Qing Jing—the youngest of the rising cadre of peak lords, by a considerable distance—was due to supplant his master. For his part, the young prince had probably looked forward to this contest as a chance to test and show off his hard-earned skills. Now everyone was walking on eggshells around the boy their attention had been so conspicuously called to. A thousand shijiemei gawked at the prince as though he were a Peking duck hanging in the roastery window, all salivating at his royal position and his handsome face. They wanted ‘Prince Binghe’ without knowing him in the slightest. However inspired Prince Binghe’s performance was, it would only be a garnish to the grand theatre of his matrimonial arrangements. This would probably be Prince Binghe’s last such outing, as well: a married man was unlikely to compete among youths.

Shen Qingqiu felt a pang of sympathy for the lad, who was bearing what must have been be a severe disappointment rather bravely. When Prince Binghe left his mother’s side after her opening remarks to make his preparations for entering the field, Shen Qingqiu made a point of cutting through the throng of whispering maidens to introduce himself and welcome the boy. At first Prince Binghe’s expression was civil, but wary and cold. Tactfully, Shen Qingqiu avoided addressing everything the boy’s mother had said and not said. Instead he offered some hints from his own experience of the previous conference. Shen Qingqiu had a particular interest in zoological demonology, and so he shared the information he’d forearmed his own juniors with. Off-handedly, he complained that no one seemed to realise that due to their being herded, captured and forced into unaccustomed proximity and strange new habitats for the conference, the low-level prey they’d be tracking wouldn’t behave as yaoguai did in the wild: the event wasn’t a terribly accurate guide for field work. 

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Prince Binghe said with a frown that managed to look looser and more natural than his earlier polite smile. “Though it makes perfect sense. When I’ve run into ghost-head spiders back home, they’ve behaved much less aggressively than you suggest they do here. I’ve never known them to swarm, except in breeding season.”

“You know about that?” Shen Qingqiu asked, enthused. “I should have realised you’d been reared partly at your father’s palace. So few cultivators have ever been to the demonic realms proper. The things you must have seen! Oh, I want to know everything, your highness!”

Prince Binghe flushed. “You needn’t call me that. You’re my senior, after all. Mama says you’ll be named a peak lord soon.”

“Well,” Shen Qingqiu said with a self-depreciating laugh, “you’ll have to forgive me for having spoken to you like I do my shidimei, when you have experience we couldn’t dream of.”

“No!” Prince Binghe said emphatically. “Not at all, I appreciate ge taking care of me!” Something about what he’d just said seemed to embarrass the poor boy further. Prince Binghe’s already high colour darkened. (God, he really was adorable! Such an upstanding, bright-eyed little thing!) Eighteen, Shen Qingqiu thought from the lofty heights of twenty-two, really was a tender age, wasn’t it? 

Shen Qingqiu impulsively leaned forward and ruffled the cute child’s curly hair, just as if Prince Binghe really were one of his own shidis. He knew it was scandalously forward of him, but he really couldn’t resist. “Happy to do it,” he reassured him. 

When Shen Qingqiu returned to the Cang Qiong delegation, his soon-to-be zhangmen-shixiong Yue Qingyuan wished him luck. Yue Qingyuan’s sharp-eyed husband, however, cast his glance back towards the knot of Huan Hua cultivators. 

“Be careful with that,” Shen Fuzhao had offered. 

Shen Qingqiu had rolled his eyes and muttered “yes, furen”. He counted himself lucky to have escaped sharper criticism from his senior and imminent sect-mother. Every sentence exchanged with Shen Fuzhao threatened to scrape a week off a man’s life. 

In the main, Shen Qingqiu counted himself lucky to have good relations with his elders. Su Xiyan’s revolt against her master had caused tension in the cultivation world, but no full-blown crisis had arisen from that or any other quarter to shake the current generation of lords and force their hands when it came to retirement. The process hadn’t been rushed. Shen Qingqiu knew that the current generation of peak lords had thought of ascending rather earlier, but there had been a gap in Qing Jing’s ranks (brought about by the lack of a suitable candidate therein). When Shen Qingqiu come of age to enrol, he’d quickly shown himself to be a strong candidate for the position. Still, he remained inconveniently young. Even at twenty-two, they were pushing it. It was a strong argument against the simultaneous generational ascension that Cang Qiong had observed since time immemorial, but what could the rising lords do? The other ‘Qing’ holders might well have resented Qingqiu for lagging behind and slowing them down, but on the whole they’d been good about it. Cultivators could afford to be patient, after all. They had long lives before them.

Shen Qingqiu and Shen Fuzhao shared a surname-clan in the loosest sense, and looked a little alike. They were otherwise entirely unconnected, and such had different personalities that no one ever confused one for the other. When he’d been young, Yue Qingyuan, the head disciple of Qiong Ding, had absconded from the peak one night. He’d returned weeks later, carrying an injured younger boy in his arms. After both had been given medical attention—and after a great deal of scolding and discussion—Shen Jiu, as he’d been known then, had been enfolded into Qiong Ding. The young cultivator had struggled, having started later than his peers, but his cleverness, grit and excellent natural cultivational abilities had enabled him to catch up to the best of them and exceed all expectations.

Shen Yuan, as he’d then been, had seen his senior only a handful of times in his youth. Driven Shen Jiu seemed able to adapt to whatever environment he landed in. He’d clawed a gentleman’s education out of Cang Qiong, yet in and of himself he cared little for the conspicuous elegance and artistic accomplishment a peak like Qing Jing prized. Shen Jiu had never cared to waste his time or effort attending lessons that didn’t forward his goals at Qiong Ding (and which would take him from his sworn-brother’s side). Shen Jiu had always focused on he and his now-husband’s interests: namely, the sect Yue Qingyuan had been appointed to inherit. Shen Fuzhao was certainly the coldest bitch Shen Qingqiu knew (and Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t have trusted him alone with so much as a houseplant), but he was Cang Qiong down to his bones. He always acted with the sect in mind: you could rely on Shen Fuzhao to protect Cang Qiong, as an extension of himself, in the same way you could always rely on a scorpion to sting.

But even knowing that—and making allowances for Shen Fuzhao’s general Fuzhao-osity—Shen Qingqiu still winced through the cool, formal pre-conference exchange of best wishes between the representatives of his own sect and Huan Hua. In three frosty, unobjectionably polite sentences, Shen Fuzhao managed to convey deep disdain for their fellow sect. He accepted and handled Huan Hua’s presentation gift like it was half a dead mouse the cat had dragged in. Liu Qingge, the young War God of Bai Zhan, hardly made things easier. He actually snorted in the face of Prince Binghe’s sportsmanlike praise of the Bai Zhan disciples in his charge. 

Shen Qingqiu knew that this was because Liu Qingge was disappointed in the battle-readiness of the students he’d brought along, none of whom were actually his personal disciples. Despite his position as incumbent peak lord, Liu Qingge never took any on. But for one thing, whose fault was any of that but Liu Qingge’s? And for another, how was Prince Binghe supposed to read such a rude dismissal—and at such a charged time as this? A peak lord ought to be gracious and diplomatic for the good of a sect, not just really great at punching! Come on Qingge, Shen Qingqiu thought, stop letting the side down!

“You know,” Shen Qingqiu said, stepping forward to address Prince Binghe (and thus interrupt the awkward moment), “I’m very much looking forward to seeing you in action!”

“You yourself performed admirably, four years ago,” Su Xiyan answered for her suddenly tongue-tied son. Shen Qingqiu thanked every god going that someone on this dias knew how to sustain a normal conversation: Su Xiyan extended the next bit of small-talk like a rope to a man being swept down-river. “I particularly remember your successful dispatch of the water drake—a performance worthy of a rising peak lord. My Binghe was still confined to the stands that day, but I recall how impressed he was, watching you on the monitor.”

“Mother,” Prince Binghe hissed.

“It was a matter of recalling that only directed energy can penetrate the drake’s scales. Another spiritual beast has appropriate qi in spades of course, but even our best blades are useless. That’s what makes the scales such a rich prize,” Shen Qingqiu said with a wink to the prince. “They’re invaluable to common merchants looking to armour caravans against bandit attack, or the elements. Actually, I made enough out of that haul to keep me in trashy adventure novels for a decade,” he confided.

“You like that sort of book?” Prince Binghe managed. (Shen Yuan was a little proud of him for rallying: shaking off the chilling effect of Shen Fuzhao’s effort to intimidate him.) “Papa loves human novels. We read a great deal of them at home.”

“The more ridiculous, the better,” Su Xiyan confirmed with a groan. 

With an insistent flap of his hand behind his back, Shen Qingqiu shooed his fellow soon-to-be peak lords away; no thanks for all the lack of help, guys. They were both monumentally stubborn, so very likely only went because they themselves didn’t want to be there. Shen Qingqiu, meanwhile, spent a pleasant incense-stick’s span ensuring that Huan Hua didn’t assume Cang Qiong was out for their blood. Su Xiyan politely entrusted her (no doubt very capable) son to Shen Qingqiu’s (probably unnecessary) care in the arena. 

When Shen Qingqiu returned, Yue Qingyuan thanked him for his efforts. He spared his husband a slight frown. “But as for you, Xiao Jiu—I wasn’t aware you wanted to provoke a diplomatic incident. If you want me to garrison the mountain, you do have to tell me beforehand.”

“Don’t you ‘Xiao Jiu’ me!” Shen Fuzhao snapped, unphased by his husband’s calm sarcasm. “Bad enough that Qingqiu put his foot in it! Do you realise that if we’re too civil, they’ll think we’re eager to offer up a shimei to that little beast?” 

Qi Qingqi—evidently disinterested in being said sacrificial shimei—couldn’t stop a frown from crawling over her features. If his choice of bride summarily rejected him, the demonic prince could easily feel he’d been insulted. Qi Qingqi thus might feel she had to say yes if asked, regardless of her own preferences. 

Shen Qingqiu gave her shoulder a conciliatory bop with his own. “Don’t worry about it, Shijie. The prince doesn’t seem at all unreasonable. And whatever happens, your martial siblings will always support you!” 

“Gee,” she said with a roll of her eyes, “thanks.”

Shen Qingqiu thought she was worrying over nothing. Prince Binghe would almost certainly pick someone who wanted to be picked; there hardly seemed to be a shortage of candidates. The Tianyi Outlook girls were practically throwing their under-robes at the poor child. Shen Qingqiu was going to have his hands full, chaperoning the boy. But keeping company with such a good kid couldn’t really be accounted a hardship. 

Qi Qingqi cornered the Palace Mistress, skipping the formalities with her old conference buddy. 

“You still remember I’m only interested in women, right?” 

Su Xiyan rolled her eyes, taking a swig from her hip flask. “It wasn’t that forgettable an evening, dear. Besides, there’s a limit to what a mother and son ought to share. It’s a political marriage, of course,” she waved a dismissive hand, “but some people are—simply unsuited, to the compromises involved. Besides, I have my eye on someone quite different for my Binghe.” 

Su Xiyan cast an indulgent look over at her brat. Binghe and his new companion were limbering up with casual sword drills, chattering happily all the while. She watched her son slide an appreciative gaze over the older cultivator’s turned back, then swiftly affix a vacuous smile when the man swung around to speak to him. Su Xiyan snorted. 

Stepping away from her friend, she curled her hand in a beckoning gesture. One of her husband’s demonic servitors came forward. 

“My Queen?”

“Find out everything you can about that one,” she said in a low voice. “He used to be called—” a frown crossed her lovely features. “Now, what was it? Oh yes, I remember. ‘Shen Yuan’.”

Prince Binghe had initially submitted to his mother’s plans to marry him off with terrible grace. The rebellion brewing in his breast had been barely restrained by filial respect for the most capable person he knew. He wanted to marry for love, like his parents had. He’d long understood that he might be unable to, due to his position, but he’d always been very clear on the dream of his heart.

His own mother didn’t take him seriously in this. She rolled her eyes and said that a demonic emperor—or even a rich man, if it came to that!—could take several spouses, if he liked. But she knew better than anyone that her son had been reared on sweeping love stories, and had yearned for one (and only one) of his own. It had been, Prince Binghe thought, especially cruel of his mother to comment that he had no sweetheart waiting in the wings, who he might marry instead. To further observe that in fact, there was no greater impediment to Prince Binghe’s marriage than one measly crush in eighteen years, on a boy who’d done well at the last Alliance Conference and who wouldn’t even know Prince Binghe in a crowd. 

Well, how was that Prince Binghe’s fault? He’d been very willing to fall head over heels for someone, as well his mother knew! It was just that he’d never yet managed to find anyone suited to being the object of his adoration! Su Xiyan grandly offered her son a great deal of choice in the imminent selection of his bride, but what did that matter if there was no one he particularly wanted to imminently select? 

As it turned out, Prince Binghe had worried for nothing. He sailed through the conference, buoyed up by thrilling new sentiments. After days in the gorge he found himself back on the starting podium, blood-splattered and preening under Shen Qingqiu’s ample, ungrudging praise for his performance. 

“You threw yourself into the path of a black moon rhinoceros python to save me,” Prince Binghe reminded the cultivator, because of the two of them, it was Shen Qingqiu who’d been remarkable for heroism. 

“Just instincts,” Shen Qingqiu dismissed (though he’d realised a cultivator of Prince Binghe’s prowess was in no real danger, despite his youth, and cursed himself for a fool even as he’d been overtaken by said instincts). “You’re my shidi, after all!”

“Well,” Prince Binghe said with a slow smile, emboldened by adrenaline, “I like gege’s instincts a lot.” 

An embarrassed Shen Qingqui coughed and redirected the conversation back to the technical aspects of Prince Binghe’s sword wushu. Qi Qingqi and Mu Qingfan arrived to drag Shen Qingqiu off for a bath and a meal. Two senior cultivators, who knew his foibles and were uninterested in indulging them, were about all that could have dragged Shen Qingqiu away from enthusiastic shop talk. 

Loose-limbed from battle, Prince Binghe sauntered off to his mother’s side. The various sects had brought along pavilions in storage rings and enchanted chests. These treasures warred with one another for sophistication and elegance, and the camp around the gorge looked positively palatial. He found his mother about as he’d expected to find her: mired in papers concerning the man who’d just been forcibly taken off for a dunk. Prince Binghe could see the corner of his own marriage contract, tucked under an open volume on land registration. 

Prince Binghe fell to his knees before his mother, tilting up his biggest, brightest eyes. “Can I have him, mama?” 

Su Xiyan snorted, cupping her son’s chin in her hand. “All your father’s bad habits, I swear.” 

“Mama,” Prince Binghe stressed, because that wasn’t an answer.

“He seems a good boy,” Su Xiyan conceded, “from a sound, well-connected family. Not cultivators, but respected. Cang Qiong is strongly behind him, and Yue Qingyuan isn’t opposed. Besides, he seems to like you very much. We could have made do with far less. We’ve gotten lucky, in this.” 

“I think I’m the luckiest man in the world,” Prince Binghe enthused. 

Su Xiyan snorted. “You’re barely even a man. Now get off me before your drippiness musses my robes. And have a bath, why don’t you? I’m not going to admire your artful blood splatters.” 

“No,” Prince Binghe admitted with a sigh, “but my gege admired them enough for everyone, so that’s all right.”

Su Xiyan mock-gagged a ‘gege’ at her son’s retreating back, wondering how long he planned on being unbearable about all this. 

Shen Qingqiu barely had a chance to clean up before Shen Fuzhao was rapping on the door of the room Qi Qingqi had told him he could use. 

“My worse half wants a word,” Shen Fuzhao said when Shen Qingqiu opened it. He then left, waiting for neither Shen Qingqiu’s response nor his company on the walk back. Shen Qingqiu snorted. Typical Fuzhao.

A short while later, a damp but properly dressed Shen Qingqiu entered the central chamber of Cang Qiong’s mobile headquarters and bowed to his zhangmen-shixiong.

“Congratulations on your performance!” Yue Qingyuan said. “That’s several spots up from your last effort.” Shen Qingqiu had managed to attain second place. He’d put a considerable distance between himself and the next candidate, Gongyi Xiao, as well.

“Trailing in the frontrunner’s wake offered a carrion-bird like me plenty of opportunities,” Shen Qingqiu demurred. Throughout the week, he and Prince Binghe had acted as a team. Prince Binghe had often taken point, and thus come into technical possession of more successful hits than his partner. But if Prince Binghe lacked Shen Qingqiu’s experience, Shen Qingqiu knew that his junior far outpaced him in terms of sheer power. He didn’t seek to compete with the boy on this score: like his mother before him, Prince Binghe was clearly the finest cultivator of their cohort.

To Shen Qingqiu’s slight discomfort, he registered that the other members of the ‘Qing’ generation, Shen Fuzhao not excluded, were all gathered here as though they’d been waiting for him.

“Has something happened?” Shen Qingqiu asked, wondering if this was some kind of emergency summit.

“Yes and no,” Shen Fuzhao said, wafting the lid of his gaiwan over his tea. “I did warn you about cozying up to Huan Hua.” He pursed his lips. “Still, you had a point: there are certainly benefits to keeping the peace. And the dowry arrangements they’ve suggested are—sufficiently respectful. I must confess, I’ve almost been brought around to it.”

A marriage offer had evidently been tendered in Shen Qingqiu’s absence. And judging by Shen Jiu’s contentment, the bride-price had been eye-watering. But that was like Huan Hua’s opulence, and the demonic realm certainly had rare treasures enough to shore up any bid their human-facing branch put forward.

“I didn’t think they’d make an approach while the man in question was competing,” Shen Qingqiu said, wondering (with some indignation) whether Prince Binghe could even have been consulted. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

A particularly strange silence descended. Shen Fuzhao sighed. Dramatically, even for him.

“Ah,” Shen Qingqiu said thinly, getting it. 

“Naturally it’s up to you, shidi,” Yue Qingyuan said delicately. “Though I agree with my husband that the match has several advantages.”

“Don’t worry, shidi,” Qi Qingqiu deadpanned. “Your martial siblings will always support you.”

“Oh fuck off,” Shen Qingqiu snapped before he could think better of it. Shang Qinghua snorted in the corner; Liu Qingge elbowed him in the gut.

“But what about Qing Jing?” Shen Qingqiu demanded.

“What about Huan Hua?” Shen Fuzhao snapped back. “The great lady of the demonic realms is still a cultivator, in case you missed that for all your mooning at her son, and the mistress of her sect besides. I don’t think you need worry: somehow, Cang Qiong will manage to survive your occasional absence.”

“What my husband is failing to convey is that you’d be able to spend a great deal of your time with us,” Yue Qingyan assured Shen Qingqiu. “The demonic court has access to transportation methods we can’t equal. Su Xiyan has assured us you’d have full use of their portal talisman magic.”

“And she’s been a joy to negotiate with this week, I can tell you,” Shen Fuzhao snorted. “I hate worthy opponents. Oh quit looking like a kicked dog—you’ll have Qing Jing’s established set of masters to support you. And if needs must, I can always lend a hand with running your little poetry club in your absence.”

Shen Qingqiu gave Shen Fuzhao an unimpressed look. “You asked me for help choosing a courtesy name.”

Shen Fuzhao shrugged. “I’d order a horse to carry me to town, too. It only means that I don’t care to expend the effort—not that I can’t walk, or that I greatly esteem the animal.”

“Has anyone ever told you what a charmer you are, Fuzhao?”

“Hm, and lived? No,” Shen Fuzhao said. 

“My sister,” Liu Qingge put in, grudgingly breaking up the incipient catfight. “She could help.” 

“Yes, my head disciple could use the training,” Qi Qingqi agreed. “And she can actually do calligraphy, and everything.”

Shen Fuzhao bristled at the implied insult. “I can do it, when I wish to.”

“Yes, but you never really wish to, my love,” Yue Qingyan said, patting his husband’s knee. “Administrative slack, you can address with consummate skill. Children, however—” he winced. “Well. There is a reason we haven’t sought out a blessed bamboo-grove.” 

“Oh god,” a thought suddenly occurred to Shen Qingqiu, “I’m going to have to though, aren’t I? A crown prince will want an heir. That’s the whole idea of the thing, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes,” Shen Fuzhao said, really relishing this bit. “Almost inevitably. And soon, too! Enjoy motherhood, shidi.” 

Trying to strike back at Shen Fuzhao was like trying to inflict a stab wound on a knife. Annoyed as he was, Shen Qingqiu didn’t even bother. Shang Qinghua had once described the signal difference between the two of them as ‘fun bitch Shen’ versus ‘you know, BITCH bitch Shen’. At the time, Shen Qingqiu had pretended not to hear him. Privately, he couldn’t really disagree. 

That very same Shang Qinghua currently looked more amused than Shen Qingqiu thought appropriate. Shen Qingqiu, who didn’t like to be anyone’s sport if he could help it, spared a moment to smile sweetly at his shixiong (who, unlike Fuzhao, presented a target soft enough to land a hit on). 

“I’m surprised to see you looking so pleased. Tianlangjun took his empress to wife in secrecy. Now, who do you think will have to coordinate the cultivation world’s first full interspecies wedding? Oh! And then the baby’s hundred-days!”

To Shen Qingqiu’s satisfaction, Shang Qinghua began to look really, truly nervous. He paled at the prospect of having to collaborate with the most fearsome members of the demonic nobility on colour schemes. Well, Shen Qingqiu thought, brightening a little, it was something! 

Huan Hua made Cang Qiong a formal proposal at the banquet that followed the Immortal Alliance Conference, with the best part of the cultivation world still present as witnesses. The demonic contingent had already secured Cang Qiong’s written answer, so this was more of an announcement than anything else. When Shen Qingqiu had spoken with his sect-siblings, the whole question had seemed primarily logistical: ‘what will Cang Qiong gain from this, and how will the common people benefit from stronger ties between the realms? How will I teach classes if I’m gone for half the year?’ But with stupidly-handsome Prince Binghe standing before Shen Qingqiu in his full royal regalia, holding out a bethrothal gift and asking Shen Qingqiu to accept it, the cultivator really had to wonder, why him? 

It wasn’t entirely incomprehensible. His sect was the strongest, and the most respectable. Qing Jing was second among the peaks, and Shen Qingqiu was the closest soon-to-be peak lord to Prince Binghe in age. He’d tried to be decent to the young man. But had that really been all it took to ensure that Shen Qingqiu succeeded where ravenously willing, far more sexually experienced, gorgeous men and women had failed? 

Perhaps Prince Binghe really just wanted someone trustworthy, who he felt safe with. They’d watched one another’s backs well enough over the course of the past week. In recent days, many fetching young things had approached them to try to get to know Shen Qingqiu’s companion. Prince Binghe had stiffened up in their company, cleaved to his chaperone and employed several dozen polite variations on the basic theme of “ge and I are busy, so fuck off.” For all that a monarch was constantly scrutinised, Prince Binghe had seemed unused to, and even uncomfortable with, the personal nature of their attention. Did Prince Binghe have many friends his age? It might, Shen Qingqiu considered, be hard to get to know people when you were a famous and powerful half-demon. 

If Prince Binghe simply wanted someone who’d care about him and be reasonably nice to him, then really, that was one of the most sensible ways of going about an arranged marriage, wasn’t it? Shen Qingqiu could do that. It’d be very easy to care about Prince Binghe, and to be kind to him. In fact, Shen Qingqiu would find it almost impossible to do otherwise. Prince Binghe was just so bright and curious! So impressive in the field! So devastatingly attractive—even Shen Qingqiu, who’d quite limited experience with amorous affairs, could tell that much.

They swore loyalty to one another before the crowd. Prince Binghe’s hand rested on the hilt of his sword, and Shen Qingqiu’s palm covered it. As they pledged themselves, Shen Qingqiu gave the boy’s hand a reassuring squeeze. Prince Binghe’s breath faltered mid-sentence, and Shen Qingqiu smiled encouragingly at him: go on! You can do it, Binghe! 

The young demon seemed to take heart. Binghe’s voice, when he finished his oath, was strong and deep. Shen Qingqiu felt an odd anticipation at the thought of seeing what kind of man his betrothed would grow into. 

They exchanged sword-tassels, and, once home (over the months of planning that followed the betrothal), letters. Newly-crowned Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu wrote twice a week: notes on how the preparations for the ceremony were coming along, funny stories about his life on the peaks and remarks on what he’d read, thought or fought lately. Prince Binghe churned out long, careful epistles, at volume. He seemed not to have had either Shen Qingqiu’s access to calligraphy masters or formal composition training, but his accounts were lively and charming nonetheless. Each brimmed with earnest good intent, and that was what truly mattered. It was an arranged marriage, yes. But Shen Qingqiu really thought they were making the best of things!

For his part, Prince Binghe studied his fiance’s letters like a man desperate to pass the human imperial exams studied the classics. He wanted to learn everything about his fiance’s life. He stayed up late, pouring over Shen Qingqiu’s missives in bed: reading and rereading each cherished word. 

Prince Binghe remembered the first Immortal Alliance Conference he’d been allowed to watch from his mother’s box. He’d been fourteen, restless and excited, and he’d watched then-eighteen year old Shen Qingqiu entice a firebird to attack a waterdrake. After the beasts’ titanic battle, the cultivator had dispatched both weakened combatants without taking so much as a single hit. Shen Qingqiu’s unusual strategy meant he’d only been awarded partial points, but Prince Binghe had found that ludicrous: a win was a win, however you managed it! Shen Qingqiu had brought down two legendary opponents by himself, and he ought to have netted the highest score in the Conference’s history!

“Now that one’s smarter than he is flashy,” his mother had said with approval—but Prince Binghe had thought the graceful older boy plenty attention-grabbing as it was. The way Shen Qingqiu smiled when he’d taken down the wobbling drake with a mere buffet of his fan lit a spark in Prince Binghe. It had him twisting in his bed that night, thinking and thinking of the satisfied curl of the older boy’s lips.

And then, when they’d finally, properly met, Shen Qingqiu had brushed aside all the slight, trivial girls who were vaguely interested in Prince Binghe: had cleared a path, made his way to the prince and boldly announced himself, as though declaring the thronging suitors unworthy. Shen Qingqiu had offered him guidance and protection in the coming hunt—had gently, firmly asserted his status as the prince’s elder and mentor. He’d established his seniority over Prince Binghe and his dominance as a mate in such a sweet, subtle way, guaranteed to appeal to any young demon. When Prince Binghe had described the scene to his father, Tianlangjun too had thought it very romantic. His mother had only rolled her eyes, but mama never understood these things as papa did: it was, papa said, a human foible that they mustn’t blame her for. 

Prince Binghe kissed his letter shamelessly and thought of being the one to put that curl of a smile on Shen Qingqiu’s face. The one to lick it off his pretty mouth. The one Shen Qingqiu wrote his confidential, intimate letters to, whenever they had to be apart. 

The emissaries Shen Qingqiu’s new in-laws dispatched could hardly have been more accommodating. What the head of the delegation—a northern demonic prince called Mobeijun—lacked in volubility, he made up for in sheer utility. He instructed them on the use of a limited form of portal talisman and collaborated graciously with Peak Lord Shang, deferring to Cang Qiong’s logistics master on most points of order. He seemed admirably curious about human courtship and marriage customs, as well. His questions were curt, but searching. Apparently Mobeijun had been fostered in the Imperial Court as a young man, and had continued to serve there after coming of age. The emperor’s sending a close-held member of the household, and such a high-ranking demonic noble, had made even Shen Fuzhao nod approvingly at how seriously they seemed to be taking their alliance with Cang Qiong. 

The ceremony itself was held on the peaks as a concession to that sect, given that the ensuing coronation would naturally be celebrated at Tianlangjun’s palace. After the banquet, the marriage procession deposited Shen Qingqiu and Prince Binghe at the bamboo cottage Shen Qingqiu had inherited from his predecessor and since made his own. Disciples and masters now answering to the new peak lord had pitched in to clean the place and spruce it up, both for Shen Qingqiu’s ascension and his wedding. Their efforts couldn’t, however, greatly alter the essential humility of the abode. The cottage was elegant, but small—and it looked even smaller than it was, for being crammed full of Shen Qingqiu’s substantial personal library.

Shen Qingqiu turned to Prince Binghe to apologise for all of that, but found the younger man looking about him eagerly as he stepped further into the main room. 

“It’s just as you described in your letters,” Prince Binghe enthused. “Look, there are the new shelves! For all that it’s a sect leader’s residence, it’s a real, proper home for a married couple.” 

Shen Qingqiu coughed, chagrined. “It’s—cosier than you’re used to, I know.”

“Yes, I’ve never lived anywhere like this,” Prince Binghe admitted. “It was always rooms in my father’s palace, or a disciple’s cell at Huan Hua when mother was overseeing things. Places like that, where you’re part of some vast organisation and nowhere is really just yours. Not that I mind sect life!” Prince Binghe said, whirling back to face his new husband. “I have been raised as a disciple, and I think I could be a good shimu, with your assistance.”

He was nervous, Shen Qingqiu realised. More voluble than usual. Prince Binghe wanted to make a good impression, because Prince Binghe wanted to please him. The idea warmed Shen Qingqiu. Something about it tugged at him strangely, moving him in a manner in which he’d hardly let himself be moved in his life. But he supposed it was all right to feel such stirrings, now: as of about two hours ago, this was his husband, after all. 

The most Shen Qingqiu had managed to acquire by way of experience was a few fumbling adolescent hand jobs with members of his sect. The situation had always been a oddly weighted. From very early on in Shen Qingqiu’s career, it had been clear that he would ascend to leadership of his cadre as head disciple, and would thus become heir presumptive to the entire sect. So while Shen Qingqiu had never lacked for friends, when it came to more, both he and potential partners had hesitated. Despite their being peers, there was a disparity between their positions. That gulf only ever promised to widen. 

Shen Qingqiu had thrived under the responsibility; it had been the making of him. How could he regret what it had asked of him in return? The obvious response would have been for him to seek companionship outside of Qing Jing. But he’d had so much work to do in catching up with the other head disciples—his generational peers—and preparing to take up his mantle. There hadn’t been time, and no one had so caught Shen Qingqiu’s attention as to force him to make it. 

Prince Binghe, though, was the sort of person who commanded everyone’s attention. He’d been first in the conference, natively powerful and dazzlingly good at wielding that power. He was objectively gorgeous in his red wedding robes, which mirrored the red of his gleaming eyes and his huadian. Prince Binghe stood in Shen Qingqiu’s tiny house and made it look smaller and shabbier for his own grandeur and glory. But if Prince Binghe was willing to graciously overlook such a jarring disjuncture, then it would be gauche of Shen Qingqiu to belabour the point. 

“I’m certain you’d be good at anything you turned your attention to,” Shen Qingqiu offered. 

He was, too. In his letters, Prince Binghe had asked a hundred careful questions about what might be expected of him, and how he might help his partner. It had surprised Shen Qingqiu, who’d expected spousal assistance to run in only one direction: downstream, with all the energy he could spare flowing into the greater current of Prince Binghe’s imperial river. 

“They’ve set out tea for us,” Shen Qingqiu said, gesturing towards his low table with a wave of his hand, which was draped in the long sleeves of his own wedding robe. “Shall we—”

“Oh!” Prince Binghe said, rushing to pour out two small cups and gather them in his hands. “Yes, it’s done like this, isn’t it? Mother told me, once.” He crossed his arm with Shen Qingqiu’s, pushing a cup into the man’s hand. “And then we drink?”

Faced with Prince Binghe’s earnest expression, Shen Qingqiu couldn’t find it in himself to tell the boy that people generally used wine for this rather than tea. And while this rite was associated with marriage, they were already about as unified as it was possible to be—save for observing one remaining rite of rather a different nature. The negotiations had dispelled any notion that the marriage would be chaste merely because it was political. The demonic embassy had not been crass about stipulating heirs and such conjugal relations as the couple found appropriate, but they’d been clear in defining their side’s expectations. (Brusque Mobeijun had said such disclosures were a common demonic practice when arranging noble alliances, “to avoid pointless trouble.”)

“You really are lovely,” Shen Qingqiu said instead, without having intended to say anything of the kind. It was just that the serious, determined expression on the prince’s fine features was, well, precious. Shen Qingqiu didn’t have time to do more than internally wince at the odd looseness of his normally restrained tongue; the way Prince Binghe froze up at the praise like a startled deer was too distracting to allow for wallowing. 

“Drink up,” Shen Qingqiu advised, pushing through the beat of silence. Prince Binghe did as he was told, and when Shen Qingqiu bent to set his cup on the low table, Prince Binghe, who’d just finished doing the same, caught his hand and twined their fingers together. When they’d risen to stand upright, Prince Binghe very deliberately brought Shen Qingqiu’s hand to his lips and kissed it while holding his gaze. 

“Will you show me your bed, ge?” Prince Binghe asked. 

Smooth, Shen Qingqiu thought. Direct without being crude—Prince Binghe was good at this. With a nod, he drew Prince Binghe with him by their joined hands. And before Shen Qingqiu’s suggestively red-draped marital bed, it seemed easy to pet at Prince Binghe’s luxuriant robes while he unfastened them. When he finally reached the equally-fine skin beneath them, it was easy to stroke that, too—especially given how Prince Binghe’s breath caught and his muscles shook at the touch. 

With mingled alarm and interest, Shen Qingqiu realised that lines aside, Prince Binghe must be about as inexperienced as he himself was, if he was reacting to these simple touches as though they were monumental. That surprised Shen Qingqiu, but it was nothing to the shock he got when he managed to fully open Prince Binghe’s robes and caught a glimpse of the young man’s endowment. Good lord. Was that a demon thing? Was that even possible? Prince Binghe wasn’t even fully hard yet!

“Is something wrong?” Prince Binghe asked, biting his lip. “Do you not—like it, ge?”

Shen Qingqiu drew in a shuddering breath. “You’re bigger than—” anyone I’ve ever seen or heard of, Shen Qingqiu did not say, “most men. I’m just—a little taken aback, that’s all.”

“It’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Prince Binghe asked, looking a touch worried. “From how people talk, I assumed it would be.”

“It may well be,” Shen Qingqiu admitted. “But I think it might take some working up to. My husband must forgive my inexperience with these things.” 

He’d had lectures on his marital duties from clinical Mu Qingfang and horrible Shen Fuzhao, the self-nominated voice of connubial experience. Fuzhao had mostly seemed to want to enjoy Shen Qingqiu’s nervousness. He’d shared cautionary horror stories he’d heard god only knew where—tales that made Mu Qingfang frown deeply, and stress up the low probability of this or that gut-churning catastrophe. But lectures (well-intentioned and otherwise) couldn’t wholly prepare Shen Qingqiu for the night, and for all the nights to come. 

“Oh,” Prince Binghe said. “No, I—it’s better that we’ll learn from one another. I prefer fumbling with you, to your having become proficient with anyone else. Perhaps ge should take a husband’s role tonight? I wouldn’t mind at all.”

That startled Shen Qingqiu, who had expected the prince’s rank to afford him dominance in private matters as well. “You wouldn’t find that an imposition?” Shen Qingqiu checked, not venturing suggest that it might be taken as an insult. 

“No,” Prince Binghe assured him quickly. “No, I’d like it very much, ge.” Prince Binghe bit his lip. “I like you very much,” he confided, pulling Shen Qingqiu into an unsure but hungry kiss. 

Kissing Prince Binghe was easy—not because the boy was good at it (at first, he decidedly wasn’t), but because he so evidently wanted to be, and was a quick study. He worked Shen Qingqiu’s robes down his shoulders so that he could suck at the older man’s neck—a move Shen Qingqiu found surprisingly effective. Shen Qingqiu pulled them down to the bed to avoid their stumbling and tumbling onto it ingloriously. Prince Binghe writhed back along the mattress eagerly, tugging Shen Qingqiu along with him and over him. He gasped when Shen Qingqiu stroked his stomach as they kissed—and fully engorged, Prince Binghe really was an intimidating spectacle. Or he would have been, if he weren’t so disarmingly pink-lipped and pretty: like a delicate, gorgeous porcelain doll with an incongruous, fat cock. 

“You’ll need to turn over,” Shen Qingqiu tried to explain, grabbing something he’d self-consciously laid out on his nightstand that morning. “That position should make it more comfortable for you.”

“But I want to see you,” Prince Binghe said with a pout. And as embarrassed as Shen Qingqiu was by the prospect of having to make eye-contact during all this—as prickly as being uncertain made him, and as worried as he was about doing this wrong, or hurting his husband, Shen Qingqiu nonetheless found Prince Binghe’s desire for intimacy and reassurance endearing. “Here,” Prince Binghe said, grabbing the discreet pot of oil right out of Shen Qingqiu’s hand. “This, I practised.”

Shen Qingqiu swallowed hard as he watched as Prince Binghe, infinitely obliging, open himself up for Shen Qingqiu. Prince Binghe twitched and breathed shallowly, holding Shen Qingqiu’s gaze all the while. After a minute he tried to rush it, and Shen Qingqiu tsked and took over. 

“Be patient,” he scolded his over-hasty junior. 

“Sorry,” Prince Binghe murmured, not sounding it at all. 

Shen Qingqiu had the steady hands of someone trained to calligraphy and given over to the qin from a young age. His chest thumped like a cage someone had trapped a feral animal in, but his hands still didn’t betray him to imprecision. 

At last Shen Qingqiu guided himself into his young husband. Prince Binghe made a high, thin sound at the press of his husband’s cock inside him. Shen Qingqiu grabbed the prince’s hands with his own, palm to palm with Prince Binghe’s knuckles digging into the mattress, knitting their fingers to still his own shaking as he rocked his hips, burying himself deeper. Prince Binghe’s eyes widened at the sensation of being pinned, and he looked up into Shen Qingqiu’s hazy, slack-mouthed expression with a trace of awe on his own face. 

“You’re so handsome,” Prince Binghe whispered. “You’re so good to me. Letting me see you like this—I knew you wouldn’t be mean to me, ge, I knew you’d let me have you like I wanted. Isn’t it nicer like this? This way, you can see how much I like it.” He crossed his heels behind Shen Qingqiu’s back and tugged his husband deeper into him. 

Shen Qingqiu had had no idea that he’d like being spoken to like that, let alone that he’d be so affected. His head swam as though he’d jumped into deep water and sunk right to the bottom—like he was trying to swim back to the surface.

“Harder,” Prince Binghe whimpered.

“Shh,” Shen Qingqiu said, smoothing the boy’s disordered curls off his face. “What ‘harder’? Maybe you feel fine now, but you can’t know if your muscles will ache for this tomorrow.”

Prince Binghe opened his mouth to answer back. 

“Don’t be pert,” Shen Qingqiu chastised, leaning on the familiar role of  ‘shixiong’ to give himself a moment to think in the face of Prince Binghe’s overwhelming everything. “Just take what I give you, all right? You can have more when I know you’re ready for it. There’s time, isn’t there?”

“Yes, ge,” Prince Binghe admitted, sullen. But when Shen Qingqiu pressed into him with even strokes, his ‘yes, ge’ came threadier and more enthusiastic. Shen Qingqiu’s stomach brushed the massive erection between them, and Prince Binghe shivered.

“Can I?” Prince Binghe asked, reaching for himself and darting a look up at his husband. Really, he didn’t need to ask! Shen Qingqiu wasn’t actually his shixiong, and even if he had been, it was Prince Binghe’s own dick, after all! He could touch it if he wanted to!

Rather than say as much, Shen Qingqiu bent to kiss the man he was still inside. He took a trace of the lotion they’d already employed to good effect. Using a finger, he drew a thick line of the stuff up his new husband’s cock. There: like this, he wouldn’t hurt himself. “Now, Binghe,” he said, not realising he’d dropped the boy’s title. 

Prince Binghe stroked himself in time with Shen Qingqiu’s measured thrusts. He cast a desperate look up at Shen Qingqiu, as if to ask whether he was doing any of this right. They were, Shen Qingqiu knew, both in this disorienting, wholly new situation together, with only one another for company. He was the elder: he had to offer what limited guidance he could. And Prince Binghe seemed to fare better for being given something to do.

Shen Qingqiu lifted Prince Binghe’s legs up over his own hips, rendering the angle of penetration deeper and more direct and the friction sharper and starker. “Clench down for me, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said. “I’m not just using you like a toy—I need you to help me to come, all right?”

“Yes, ge,” Prince Binghe said again, nodding and trying to rock against his husband, to work his strongly-developed thighs around the older man. The prince thought to wrap his qi through Shen Qingqiu’s and applied some queer internal force to his own muscles that had them almost massaging Shen Qingqiu’s cock. The effect was devastating: another top-grade performance from perhaps the most impressive combatant Shen Qingqiu had ever seen. 

“Fuck,” Shen Qingqiu cursed, feeling himself suddenly slammed to the edge of his limits. “Yes sweetheart, that’s—God you’re clever, you’re being so good for me, didi. My darling, pretty Binghe—”

Prince Binghe came with a wounded noise, painting himself with copious spend. He tipped his head back as though he were offering Shen Qingqiu his neck for a mating bite (and given his heritage, Shen Qingqiu wasn’t sure that he wasn’t). Shen Qingqiu couldn't help himself from following the prince and leaning into his surrender—from fastening his mouth around the bob in Prince Binghe’s throat and sucking out the boy’s thin scream at its source. Shen Qingqiu came, and in the aftermath he found his fingers mindlessly trailing through the spend on Prince Binghe’s stomach. Found himself cooing “there you are, you did so well” to his shivering husband. 

Shen Qingqiu winced upon hearing himself, hoping that Prince Binghe hadn’t found that patronising. 

They’d been told to address certain points of hygiene after such couplings. Sleep came swiftly, once they’d managed to do so. The day had been as long as a measuring snake, with robe-fittings, elaborate hairdressing and one formal toast after another. In the morning Shen Qingqiu was surprised to find himself alone in bed, and muted sounds coming from the house’s small kitchen. He blearily pulled a robe over himself and stumbled into the room, only to find a slightly upset looking Prince Binghe, evidently trying and failing not to make noise. 

The vexed expression vanished off the prince’s face when he realised he wasn’t alone. “I’m sorry,” Prince Binghe said. “I thought to have all this done by the time you woke, but I don’t know where things are yet. Actually, I can’t find anything I’m looking for.”

“That’s because there’s nothing in here to find,” Shen Qingqiu admitted, forbearing to mention that they were expected at some sort of public wedding breakfast, much later in the day. If this was when Prince Binghe woke up (and woke up hungry), then it was. “I mostly forget to tend to the kitchen.” He could have assigned himself a personal disciple, but he hadn’t known Prince Binghe’s plans for their time in the coming months. It had seemed unfair to the post-holder to consign them to his own uncertainty.

Prince Binghe looked as though he might have had something to say about his husband’s inattention to his domestic arrangements, but it seemed that he, too, knew when to choose discretion. 

“We can get something from the disciple kitchens, if you’re hungry now,” Shen Qingqiu said. But Prince Binghe just shook his head, striding over to a lidded barrel with a determined expression. He removed the cover and smiled. 

“The kitchens here aren’t good, you’ve told me that yourself. But where there’s rice, there’s hope.” He cast his eyes around and spotted a desiccated piece of ginger in a bowl, and a few elderly garlic cloves and shallots (all left over from a handful of garnishing materials Shen Qingqiu had brought back for his noodles, weeks and weeks ago). 

“It’s simple,” Prince Binghe said when he was finished, handing his husband a bowl of congee and a pot of tea, “but it’s what I can manage for now. I’ll have all this seen to; your people really ought to do better by their lord.”

The congee was, bizarrely, one of the best things Shen Qingqiu had ever eaten. He told Prince Binghe so in tones of complete bafflement: he’d seen what the man was working with, and it had literally been pretty much nothing. As they ate, Prince Binghe told him about his childhood nanny Miss Luo, who still worked at the palace as an honoured senior housekeeper. She’d happened upon and sheltered Empress Su Xiyan when her master had pursued her, threatening to kill her unborn, tainted child. It was Miss Luo who was used to making something out of nothing, like this. Miss Luo had taught Prince Binghe everything he knew about cooking, and more: not about cultivators and courts, but more fundamental human things. She had been another mother to him, and had been part of the wedding entourage.

“I’d like to introduce you,” Prince Binghe said. “I didn’t get a chance, last night.” They had, after all, been following imperial ritual etiquette, which was extremely strict about who stood where and who honoured who. Even in the demonic realms, improperly-conducted rites were thought to cause massive environmental unheavals: flood, famine and plague.

Prince Binghe sounded authoritative. If Shen Qingqiu didn’t care to mix with a housekeeper, that would be his failing and not Prince Binghe’s for suggesting it. Never Miss Luo’s, for being what she was. Shen Qingqiu found he liked Prince Binghe all the better for demanding his decency.

“I’d be honoured,” Shen Qingqiu said. (And inside Prince Binghe a secret knot of uncertainty dissolved, unplucked by his husband’s easy assurance.) They spoke more of the palace Prince Binghe had grown up in, and Shen Qingqiu expressed interest in the northern desert steed the boy had written him of. Prince Binghe kept a fair few animals, having limited tolerance for solitude.

“I might not be up for riding, on days like today,” Prince Binghe said, casting his eyes down. A faint hint of colour on his cheeks allowed Shen Qingqiu to take his meaning.

“No?” Shen Qingqiu asked. He maintained the placidity of his voice, but felt his stomach tighten at the suggestion that he’d done that, to Prince Binghe. The idea was so embarrassing. So—

“As I said, that horse is still an unbroken brute I’ve yet to tame. Now, if my mount were very gentle with me—that would be another matter.” 

Prince Binghe raised coy eyes with the calculation of a seasoned concubine and met Shen Qingqiu’s blown gaze. Shen Qingiu found himself putting his bowl on the low table without looking at it and guiding the boy down to the rushes. He’d never have thought he’d be shameless enough to do this in broad daylight—even before midmorning! Rutting on the floor, like he didn’t know what.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked as he took Prince Binghe from behind (despite the boy’s weak protests about still wanting to look at him, because it was gentler!). 

Prince Binghe was very much all right. It felt so good to work his sore muscles. He loved how deliberately Shen Qingqiu wrapped his hands around Prince Binghe’s lean waist, and used that firm grip to fuck his husband down onto his cock—Shen Qingqiu’s slender, elegant manhood, which felt so much better inside Prince Binghe than his own fumbling, eager fingers ever had. Shen Qingqiu slammed forward into his husband and drew back, hitting with the precision of a drummer keeping time. His husband was a talented musician, after all, and Prince Binghe found that he loved being played. 

Familiarity did not stale the pleasure of it, either. When they made love in the demonic palace, Shen Qingqiu would call for a bath afterwards. He was always fussing over whether Prince Binghe had had enough to eat, and he never failed to visit and greet his mother and father in law appropriately. He was a fine husband, and a worthy mate, and Prince Binghe was a teenaged boy discovering sex: one either blessed or cursed with a heavenly demon’s stamina, to boot. 

Prince Binghe touched his husband constantly, like a child absolutely obsessed with a new toy. If they were in public, he clung to his husband’s hand as if they’d been cursed always to touch. If they were alone, they were in one another’s laps. Prince Binghe’s youth and vigour ensured that he could hardly let a day pass without jackrabbiting into Shen Qingqiu, all lithe hips and furious pace. He came quickly, having yet to learn much in the way of self-control in that respect. It hardly mattered, given that he had no refractory period to speak of and a ravenous appetite. Shen Qingqiu assumed that his young husband was very pent up, and so indulged him. It was hardly a hardship, either: Prince Binghe was quick to pick up positions and tricks that left Shen Qingqiu feeling restless and deprived when his husband so much as left on some errand for a string of days.

Prince Binghe watched his husband like a hawk, and thus came to understand that Shen Qingqiu valued equality in a union. Sometimes his husband was very much ‘ge’, but on other occasions it fell to Prince Binghe to care for Shen Qingqiu, and to exert a degree of control. To, for example, take his husband as Shen Qingqiu liked to be taken: sweetly and thoroughly. Shen Qingqiu’s brow furrowed in a cross little frown if his husband stopped before the demon prince was panting with exhaustion. He’d make some coaxing comment about how he could endure a little more—he was just sure Binghe wasn’t satisfied yet. It wouldn’t do, for Binghe to go without for his sake.

Exhausted as being used to even Prince Binghe’s limits left him, Shen Qingqiu was so smug when he got every last drop Prince Binghe had to give in him, too. “There now, isn’t that better? Though you really have worn me out, Binghe!” And that was the prince’s cue to coo insincere apologies, just as though Shen Qingqiu hadn’t essentially ordered his toy to pleasure him until he dropped—as though Shen Qingqiu weren’t training his young husband to his own tastes. Prince Binghe loved every step of the playful, evasive dance. 

Even the young prince’s expectations of married life had not been so wonderful as this. In the stories in his father’s library, romance had seemed such an epic thing. Prince Binghe had never thought to hope that his husband might be his greatest friend as well as his grand passion: might be far more his confidant than any Huan Hua acquaintance, or duchess Hualing (all of whom he’d been schooled with). Might feel closer to him even than his tangge Zhuzhilang or his biaoge Gongyi Xiao.

Prince Binghe found Shen Qingqiu admirable in ways the other man didn’t seem to highly esteem, or even to see. Shen Qingqiu was wry and gracious, funny and thoughtlessly brave. Casually knowledgeable, with keen interests and good instincts for deflating conflict. He was deeply decent. That seemed to come as naturally to him as power did to Prince Binghe, who had always had to strive after decency, to calculate and weigh what he ought to do. He was learning so much from his husband, just by watching how Shen Qingqiu thought and acted. And on top of all that, Shen Qingqiu was painfully endearing. When Binghe so much as heard the man laugh, he felt a throb in his cock and another in his heart. 

Almost from his first conversation with Shen Qingqiu, Prince Binghe had seen arranged marriage as a means to this end. If anything were to happen to Binghe’s crown prince consort, he’d raze the kingdom responsible to the ground. 

Tianlangjun had welcomed his new son in law to his palace enthusiastically, which Shen Qingqiu was grateful for. The excitable and eccentric emperor’s approval, however, could be difficult to deal with in and of itself. Su Xiyan was forever pinching her husband discreetly when he said something inappropriate (so incessantly); this seemed to put the man off not at all. At every shared meal, Shen Qingqiu was granted this odd insight into the origin of the various component elements of Prince Su Binghe’s personality. 

Over the course of one dinner, Tianlangjun entertained Shen Qingqiu with a blow-by-blow recounting of the entire plot of a particularly juicy Strange Tales-style novella (complete with a castration, undertaken for love, that somehow resulted in a full sex change?) while his wife feigned deafness and his son squirmed like the embarrassment was doing him physical damage. The emperor wanted to know whether human men could truly do that, because it sounded most interesting! And some lizards could, after all. (Alas, Shen Qingqiu was forced to disappoint him.)

“Of course I only have an outsider’s perspective on human art,” Tianlangjun said with a sigh. An entire, spit-roast glacial-berry elk, the height of two human men, rested on a vast platter in front of them (Shen Qingqiu presumed the staff would descend on the carcass the moment the departing emperor waved his hand). Tianlangjun reached forward and pulled a leg off it, easily snapping clean through the bone as though he hadn’t noticed it was there.

“Carve it,” Su Xiyan said, in a tired voice. “Use cutlery. At least before our poor son-in-law, who doesn’t know what you’re like yet.”

“Hm, dear? Oh yes, sorry. But as I was saying, I’ve never had the opportunity to study your art systematically.” Tianlangjun obediently minced at the huge leg on his plate with a comically dainty knife and chopsticks, eating in what he clearly thought of as ‘human fashion’ (as though Shen Qingqiu was used to seeing a knife on the table, either). 

“And Huan Hua’s arts education is nothing to Qing Jing’s,” Su Xiyan admitted. “My predecessor wasn’t greatly interested in the curriculum. I’ve done what I can about the atrocious gaps in our students’ combat-readiness, but we haven’t the staff or the expertise to address the scholarly arts. Disciples receive some preparation from their families—” 

“But only if those families can afford it, and value it,” She Qingqiu finished. “As usual. If you’re ever inclined to address that, I’d be happy to help you source and select qualified masters.”

Sy Xiyan regarded her son in law with a raised eyebrow. “That is good of you—cultivators are generally more wary of any possible competition one sect might offer another. Every trivial snatch of information must be protected,” she said sarcastically. 

“Oh but that’s stupid,” Shen Qingqiu said, with the ease of a man who’d been raised on proud, confident Cang Qiong, where peaks were expected to collaborate internally. He didn’t really understand the caginess of lesser sects, and had long been expected to teach his shidimei. “I hate the waste of it. Imagine being threatened by someone else knowing this kind of thing—how much technical development and mutual benefit do we sacrifice on the altar of secrecy and presumed bad intent? Did you study all this, Binghe?” he asked his husband, turning towards him. 

“Not so deeply as I could have wished,” Prince Binghe said. Over Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder, Su Xiyan raised an eyebrow at a boy who’d always hated dizi practice: who had stopped at “Hot Cross Bao” and ‘lost’ his instrument in the acid river, and who had once run away into the Bai Lu forest because he’d been told off for refusing to memorise the Analects. (“It was unjust of you to yell at me,” he’d insisted at the time—all of nine. He had been uninterested to learn that the Analects took quite the opposite view of things.) Rather than respond to his mother’s silent but blatant call-out, Prince Binghe blythely pretended he’d gone blind. 

“Well,” Shen Qingqiu said, setting his hand on his husband's knee, “luckily for you, I’m an experienced teacher.”

Su Xiyan was fairly sure that her son’s making a soppy expression at the prospect of being forced to discuss poetry every night was going to drive her to drink. In fact what managed it, in the end, was her own son entering a belated pretentious adolescent phase and developing educated, unbearably keen thoughts on fu: the worst poetical genre in history. The very last nail in the coffin was certainly her husband’s joining in, and then trying to talk to Su Xiyan about philosophy, and other things she did not care about. 

“The kids find this stuff very sexy, I can tell—might spice things up for us Old Marrieds too, eh Yanyan?” 

Hitting Tianlangjun only provoked him to more egregious offences. It was off the table, unless Su Xiyan herself wanted to be on said table for the next several hours while her husband fucked her (whining insincere appologies for having provoked her all the while). Su Xiyan wasn’t a martyr: she had and enforced firm time-limits on sexual escapades for the sake of her spine. The best way to keep Tianlangjun obedient and focused was not to rile him up like that (unless it was his birthday or some other special occasion). The empress liked her new son-in-law perfectly well, but right now, faced with her husband trying to get her to provide ‘human insight’ into the nuances of Cao Cao as a writer (clearly understanding that he was awful, and being especially so on purpose), she hoped that Shen Qingqiu’s afternoon was proving just as annoying as her own. 

“You’re not getting out of it like that,” Shen Qingqiu said, pulling Prince Binghe off his softening cock by the hair. 

Prince Binghe grinned at his husband unrepentantly. “But only a moment ago, my consort had no such objections. Has the afterglow faded so quickly? Must I try my hand at softening your heart once more?” 

“You can best please me,” Shen Qingqiu said primly, leaning back against the headboard of their box bed and arranging his robes around himself, “by reciting the poem you chose. You’re the one who wanted to improve your memorisation, Binghe.”

“My husband is right, as usual,” Prince Binghe said, still supporting himself on his elbows above his husband’s legs. “Your student has selected ‘Che Xia.’ Do you know it, Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu raised an eyebrow at both the sarcastic title and the idea that there was a poem in the Shijing he didn’t know. Prince Binghe chuckled. 

“Well, then,” he began, “‘In her proper season, that well-grown lady, with her admirable virtue, is come to instruct me.’” 

Prince Binghe pulled himself up as he recited, boxing his husband in against the wall. 

“‘We will feast, and I will praise her. 'I love you, and will never be weary of you.’”

Prince Binghe dipped his head to kiss his husband, interrupting the bridal ode. Shen Qingqiu’s hands found their way into Prince Binghe’s robes. He clutched at the material, and Prince Binghe’s lazy kiss turned into a fervent, desperate thing—as it was always liable to do. 

The way he’d spoken—Shen Qingqiu thought as they kissed, as own hand found Prince Binghe’s erection and cradled it—Binghe had meant that. That declaration of love, that promise of constancy: it had only been offered in someone else’s words because Prince Binghe, who knew himself to be less well-read than his husband, likely didn’t think his own fine enough to suit the occasion. 

For the entirety of the next day, Shen Qingqiu avoided his husband on a pretext while he considered his position. He wandered through the palace distracted, attending to his duties with only what jangling fragments of his mind he could spare. All else was given over to the rude, intrusive realisation that he had failed to appreciate his own situation. 

Prince Su Binghe loved him. Loved him. ‘And will never be weary of you.’ Well, for however long ‘never’ lasted, for princes—no, that was unfair of him. Look at Tianlangjun: he might play the light fop, but he’d never taken so much as a concubine after marrying Binghe’s mother. Tianlangjun, who always tried to make severe Su Xiyan laugh, and who smiled like a little boy—like Binghe, at his most carefree—whenever he managed it. Say, then, that ‘never’ might well last until the end. 

Hours slipped away while Shen Qingqiu untangled what it would be to stop thinking of this as a political arrangement that was working out nicely, and to instead let himself see it as his actual marriage to the young man he would be with for the rest of his life. His marriage to Binghe, who loved him. Bright, brave, Binghe. Cunning, easily-hurt Binghe, who wasn’t a prize because he was a prince, but rather because everything about him was so rare and fine that it would have felt stupid for the whole world not to have recognised his glory by such material signs. 

If he’d had his choice of all the world, with Binghe before him, would Shen Qingqiu ever have chosen another? Who else could Shen Qingqiu imagine being with, like this? He’d assumed that Prince Binghe had been boxed into their union, but his husband was surely too wilful and wily to be caught by common snares. Huan Hua’s problems might have been met with force rather than coercion. Prince Binghe might have gone to his father in either a pleading or a bellicose mood and said that he wanted to marry for love—because of course romantic, passionate Prince Binghe must have done. Whatever would have ensured his ends, Binghe would have done: he never stood on pride, where pride stood in the way of what he wanted. 

Binghe might well have had his choice of all the world: and perhaps he had. Perhaps he’d exercised it, in choosing Shen Qingqiu. The fledgling lord of Qing Jing, who even his friends called pretentious. Shen Qingqiu, who was middling in combat. Neurotic, and helplessly fixated on the most trivial things. Who was easily embarrassed, and by turns bossy and indecisive. But Binghe knew all that, and Binghe wanted him anyway. Because Binghe had found a way to love him. 

And he—Shen Qingqiu’s breath caught in his throat. He—

He waited until the evening. He was withdrawn through dinner, and silently endured the concerned glances of his husband. Simply squeezed Prince Binghe’s hand when Prince Binghe asked if everything was well, and where he’d been all day.

“You only gave me part of ‘Che Xia’,” Shen Qingqiu reminded his husband when the door was closed, and they were once more alone together. “What’s the point of memorising one stanza and hoping I’ll forget you lacked the rest? Hm? Whatever happened to—‘I ascend that lofty ridge, and split the branches of the oaks for firewood’?” 

Shen Qingqiu pulled Prince Binghe into his arms as he recited; with a heart so full as his was, looking directly at Binghe would have been unbearable. “‘I split the branches of the oaks for firewood, amid the luxuriance of their leaves. I see you,’” Shen Qingqiu drew a deep breath, and continued, “‘whose match is seldom to be seen. And my whole heart is satisfied.’”

Prince Binghe’s hand spasmed where it lay curled around his husband’s waist. “Oh,” he whispered into Shen Qingqiu’s hair. “Oh.” 

He’d known Shen Qingqiu was very attracted to him, and very fond of him. He’d been trying to win more—to gain all of his husband’s attention and approval, the way Shen Qingqiu had so naturally won all of his. He’d thought it would take years to push himself into the core of his husband, and to make himself absolutely necessary to Shen Qingqiu. But it seemed he had already managed it: they’d already won one another’s hearts, as well as one another’s hands.

Shen Qingqiu nodded into his husband’s shoulder. “You’ll get there, Binghe. It takes time to master poetry. People spend their whole lives trying to know and feel the meaning of it. It measures the breadth and the depth of what it is to be a person, and to live in the world. I can think of few worthier endeavours.”

“God, I love you so,” Prince Binghe whispered. “To think of what I’ll feel for you in ten years—in a hundred. Oh, ge. To think of how richly I’ll love you then.”

And to Shen Qingqiu’s surprise, he could feel some trace of moisture dampening his own cheek. It could only have been from his husband’s tears, where their faces were pressed together. But Shen Qingqiu knew that they were tears of the best kind, and so he said nothing. He just held Binghe until the storm subsided somewhat, and it was possible to live and breathe as well as cherish one another.