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Once a week, at least. More often, if Luo Binghe is unlucky—if, perhaps, some mission brings them to a crowded town centre, or an inter-sect conference draws new faces to the peak. Luo Binghe misses almost nothing about how Shen Qingqiu behaved when he first came to Qing Jing as a disciple, but he does sometimes wax nostalgic over the way Shizun used to actively avoid gatherings, or indeed any bustling scene. That reticence has vanished entirely. Shizun has developed a keen interest in people-watching, and his personal disciple seems to be the sole recipient of his observations thereon.

“Now, isn’t she lovely, Binghe?” Shen Qingqiu murmurs, discreetly waving the tip of his fan at a young gentlewoman examining skeins of embroidery thread in the market they’re walking through.

Luo Binghe grits his teeth.

“That plum-coloured robe is darling,” he says, stopping under the eave of a building and, circumspectly, watching the girl (which forces Luo Binghe to arrest his own progress). “So well-suited to midwinter. Her cloak really compliments it! Hair-buns—adorable. They remind me of Yingying’s. How carefully she selects her thread—I bet she’s quite a craftsman.”

Luo Binghe’s lack of response makes Shen Qingqiu narrow his eyes and continue, with forced brightness. “See how she laughs with her friend? Good-tempered, I expect. And such a sweet face! Wouldn’t you like to spend some time with a girl like that?” He nudges his disciple’s flank with his elbow.

“I really don’t think of such things, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, not even bothering to turn to look at her. Refraining, with an act of will, from saying, ‘and I wish you wouldn’t, either.’

Shizun pouts at him, which makes Luo Binghe feel like a childish, jealous brat. There is, after all, never anything crass or inappropriate in Shizun’s remarks. He simply appreciates feminine charms, and seems to find it annoying that Luo Binghe won’t do it with him.

“You could think of them, though,” Shen Qingqiu says, pressing a coin into his disciple’s palm. “Why not go and introduce yourself to her, hm? Help her choose a colour, offer to buy her a cup of tea. Don’t be shy, Binghe! Any girl would be flattered by a nice, handsome boy like you showing a bit of interest.”

Luo Binghe catches those fingers before they can entirely retreat, chasing the press of their tips against the soft heart of his palm.

“My master’s training demands my entire attention,” Luo Binghe says, as patient as though this is the first time he’s tried to make both his sentiments and position clear. “I’ve yet to become a man worthy of pursuing a paramour. When I do, believe me, Shizun will naturally be the first to know of it.”

Shen Qingqiu rolls his eyes and shakes his hand free. “You’re too good a disciple,” he grouses. “It’s just as po po used to say. Youth is wasted on the young!”

Luo Binghe smiles, suppressing a comment on the inherent comedy of a man Shen Qingqiu’s age acting as though he’s the voice of infinite experience.

That night, Shen Qingqiu receives a messenger-bird from the party of disciples Ning Yingying is leading. They’ve run into some trouble on their training hunt. Luo Binghe reads his shijie’s careful description of her findings aloud, and finds his brow furrowing.

“So you’ve spotted it, then?” Shen Qingqiu asks, looking up at his disciple with a wry smile.

Luo Binghe nods and exhales, silently rereading the scroll. Yingying is so focused on tracking the beast Shen Qingqiu had guessed was behind the abductions of livestock that she’s missing the obvious indications of a different culprit.

“Will you go to them?” Luo Binghe asks his master.

Shen Qingqiu shakes his head. “Foxes spirits aren’t dangerous—well, except to the chickens, obviously. Write back and remind her that what seems like an obstacle can often be an opportunity.”

Luo Binghe raises an eyebrow. “You don’t want me to tell her what she’s after?”

“She already knows,” Shen Qingqiu says with a wave of his hand. “She’s become too good a student to miss it, so that isn’t the problem. What she needs isn’t hand-holding, it’s to trust herself. And believe it or not, I’m not always right—especially when I don’t have all the facts. She could do with learning that, as well.”

Luo Binghe nods and sits down to compose the brief letter. Shen Qingqiu takes the tired pigeon back to the dovecote, carressing its head with his thumb and chatting to it a little as he goes. By the time Luo Binghe is scattering sand on the tiny scroll to dry the ink, Shen Qingqiu has returned with a fresh bird. He strokes it to keep it docile while Luo Binghe attaches the missive, then releases it from the window.

That night in bed, Luo Binghe considers his master’s words. Obstacles can be opportunities, if properly considered. Again and again, Shen Qingqiu has told Luo Binghe that he doesn’t see him as a potential partner. But by the same token, Shen Qingqiu has again and again revealed what he is looking for. For years now, Luo Binghe has trained to outthink and outfight even vicious, highly prepared opponents. What chance, then, does some mere ‘cute girl’ stand against him in a war for Shen Qingqiu’s affections?

Perhaps Shen Qingqiu doesn’t believe that he wants Luo Binghe. But didn’t he just tell his disciple that sometimes, even he could be wrong? Especially when he lacked crucial information? Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe is sure, can have no real idea of what his disciple would be willing to do to make him happy. It is time for him to give his master a truer knowledge of the facts of the matter.

Luo Binghe may not yet be a man worthy of Shen Qingqiu, but Shen Qingqiu believes that people rise to their circumstances. He thinks that even clumsy, thoughtless but kind Ning Yingying can become an upright, reliable cultivator. Under his guidance, she is doing just that. And what his shijie can do, Luo Binghe can also. He will look within and find a new, unexpected way to excel himself: ready or not, Luo Binghe will meet his shizun where he stands.

The next day, Shen Qingqiu catches his personal disciple carrying what looks like half the library’s scrolls of love poetry. Qing Jing’s collection ranges from classical to mawkish and popular, with some surprisingly bawdy grace notes throughout. The day after, he sees Luo Binghe seriously perusing some further volumes on those delicate mysteries pertaining to female costume, and on the various social and private allurements of the boudoir. Shen Qingqiu graciously pretends not to notice the young man’s new hyper-fixation, but breathes a private sigh of relief on account of it. His budding harem master might have been worryingly slow off the mark, but Luo Binghe is joining the race at last! Shen Qingqiu’s numerous hints and nudges have finally paid off!

Luo Binghe has always been neat in his dress, but he begins to pay a new degree of attention to his appearance. He still wears the Qing Jing disciple uniform, but starts pairing it with jewellery and more intricate hair-braids. Yingying seems to be helping him with those. She goes about with a conspiratorial grin on her round, smiling face, as though she’s getting away with something. Shen Qingqiu thinks it’s nice to see the childhood sweethearts spending more time together. There’s something wholesome and unthreatening about Luo Binghe’s relationship with Ning Yingying. Of all his wives, she’d always seemed the most like Luo Binghe’s friend. No matter how anti-heroic Emperor Luo had become as PIDW disintegrated around him, there’d still been an appealing, almost chaste innocence to this first relationship.

Luo Binghe’s use of perfume oils, hair ribbons and elaborate coordinating sword tassels (not to speak of the embroidered silk robe he’s taken to wearing under his tabard) borders on dandyism, but if anyone can pull that off it’s surely the protagonist. If Shen Qingqiu knows anything from idly perusing his little sister’s BL novels and indulgently listening to her rave about pop bands, it’s that teenage girls absolutely love a pretty boy. If Luo Binghe’s taken to pouring tea for himself and his master a bit coquettishly—lifting his sleeve out of the way as though he were a trained maiko and glancing up at his master through his eyelashes while he does it—that’s all part of his budding bishounen appeal. Even Shen Qingqiu, a straight man, is forced to acknowledge that Binghe is moe as fuck. It’s just a pity that none of the many, many women he’s destined to enthral and collect like so many Pokemon are on anything like the fully-realised protagonist’s hyper-competent, dangerously sexy and secretly adorable level.

Shen Qingqiu descends the mountain at the request of Madam Ouyang, a grand lady of the vicinity whose niece is suffering from a string of quite serious mishaps. Madam Ouyang has become convinced that the girl is cursed, haunted by some yao that hovers around her and feeds off her suffering. She saw such a case in her youth, when her own older sister was driven from pillar to post by just such incidents. That unfortunate young woman's affliction hounded her to an early grave. Madam Ouyang even wonders whether her niece, that same sister’s only child, has somehow inherited her mother’s strange malady.

Shen Qingqiu spends days with the household, observing the afflicted girl. At last, he catches the weak but dangerously malicious spirit in the act of trying to trip her down the grand staircase. Further investigation reveals that the petty, jealous shade of the young woman’s own father dragged his wife away from the world of the living, that she might keep him company in the afterlife. Now it seems that he’s missed his daughter, as well. A human man might have known better, but the actions of a ghost are like the twitches of a limb after it’s been severed from a body. They are remnants of grasping desire, all futile instinct and no sense. For years the girl has been duly protected by the charms and rituals people employ to shield children from supernatural forces, but the power of these wards lapsed when the girl came into her maturity.

Luo Binghe follows his master’s lead, helping him to capture and seal the ghost. Shen Qingqiu then instructs his disciple to take the pot containing the spirit to the middle of the river, to hold it under the surface, and there to break it. Ghosts refuse to cross running water because the torrent rips the insubstantial stuff of them apart, dissolving them even as a glass of wine tipped into a tide will swirl, eddy and dissipate. The diligent disciple follows his master’s instructions and then buries the shards of the pot, allowing any lingering energy clinging to them to ebb away into the earth.

Shen Qingqiu is left with the more delicate, difficult task of explaining the situation to the woman who summoned them here. Madam Ouyang considers his words, then asks him not to clarify the nature of the haunting to her niece. The girl has only vague, fond memories of her departed father. After all, the man never chose to harm her or her mother while living: it’s more than you can say for some men. Is he to be blamed for the vestigial impulses of his spirit after the conscience that once governed him has departed?

By the time Luo Binghe returns, all is settled. Shen Qingqiu waits for him in the great hall, surrounded by various admiring ladies of the house. They ply the handsome cultivator with refreshments and compliments, as befits the hero of the hour. For his part, Shizun seems flustered and a touch flattered. Luo Binghe watches with outright horror as Shizun, teased by a relieved, light-hearted housemaid, flirts back.

Oh, no. No, absolutely not.

Luo Binghe sweeps into the room with a mild, unimpeachable set to his mouth and eyes like thunder. He bows sharply and deeply to his master. When he raises his glance, the outright glacial look he aims at the assembled girls sends them scattering like so many birds. Each and every one of them suddenly remembers that she has business elsewhere.

“I’d have thought they’d all want to fawn over you,” Shizun comments, sounding a touch disappointed. “Maybe it’s because I’m here, making it awkward—”

“I’ll go and prepare for our departure, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says crisply, interrupting Shen Qingqiu’s musings.

“What’s your rush?” Shen Qingqiu asks. “Don’t you want to linger and enjoy the scenery a little?”

Luo Binghe bites his lip. For all its mistress’s evident good sense, the house displays nary a hint that she’s endowed with commensurate taste. The only things worth admiring in it are alive, and they certainly aren’t the drooping houseplants or the woman’s small army of miniature, perpetually-irate dogs.

“I’ll ride on before you,” Luo Binghe speaks, as though Shen Qingqiu hadn’t. “After half a week away, I’d like to air the house. I’m afraid some of the food might have spoilt; I didn’t expect we’d be gone as long as we have been.”

Shen Qingqiu sighs. Sometimes he frets that he’s making the gallivanting protagonist into something of a homebody, with his own tendency toward NEETness. He’d also prefer some company on the trip back. “You don’t need to worry about that. It’s not as though I expect you to take care of the whole place. You’re my disciple, not my housewife.”

Luo Binghe takes a step back. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again. “I could use the exercise. Excuse me,” he says quietly, with a dip of a bow—slipping out before Shen Qingqiu can ask him what the matter is.

When the slower carriage at last manages to convey Shen Qingqiu home, he finds Luo Binghe once again properly enthroned in his domain. Stepping inside the house, Shen Qingqiu can detect the fresh, pleasant odours of both tea and dinner. He finds himself sighing with pleasure.

“Welcome home,” Luo Binghe says, coming to meet him in the doorway with a smile. Whatever cloud he’d been under when they’d set out, a few hours alone here seems to have served to clear it. He helps his master out of his cloak, taking Xiu Ya from him. Shen Qingqiu sits down to table, moaning appreciatively when Luo Binghe’s hands find his shoulders and begin to knead out the tension of the journey.

“You’re not eating?” Shen Qingqiu asks.

Luo Binghe shakes his head. “I already had supper. Shall I play something, while you take yours?”

Shen Qingqiu frowns at him. “Surely you’re too tired for that, Binghe. You rode, after all.”

Luo Binghe dips his head, gathering his lute to him. “I really feel quite refreshed, Shizun. Isn’t it good to get out of that busy house? So many people, so much fuss—it makes one appreciate how tranquil Qing Jing is, and the intimacy of our cottage.”

“They were very hospitable,” Shen Qingqiu says, trying to be fair. “Still,” he admits after a sip of tea, “home is home.”

“And there isn’t a single strand of dog hair in that teacup,” Luo Binghe says placidly, making Shen Qingqiu choke on pu’erh.

“Binghe!” he scolds, schooling the laugh off his lips. “At least try to be polite!”

“Even when there’s only us around to hear it if I’m not?” Luo Binghe asks mildly, as he strums the opening cords of a song. There’s something coquettish in the pert set of his lips, his innocent tone and the sideways glance he gives his master.

“Well,” Shen Qingqiu admits, “I suppose when we’re alone together we can be a little horrible, as the spirit moves us.”

“Mm,” Luo Binghe says. “Oh, remember that Madam Ouyang asked us to let her know when we’d arrived safely back.”

Shen Qingqiu rolls his eyes. “So long as we’re being horrible, between us, I find that sort of request annoying and nonsensical,” he admits. “I’ll do it to be polite, of course, but what’s she going to do if we don’t get home? And what about every other night? She means well, I suppose,” he reminds himself with a shake of his head, uncovering his dinner and starting in on it. “Oh, look at this little shaped melon ball! A bird? Binghe, it’s too adorable. I can’t eat it.”

“That’s a shame, Shizun. It’s got that Dongying glaze you like on it.”

“Does it?” Shen Qingqiu eyes the melon bird. “I find I am a hardened killer after all.”

After dinner, Shen Qingqiu grudgingly trudges out to the dovecote with an ‘all’s well’ for their late hostess. It takes him time to find and fit out a bird suited to the task—the bulk of them seem to have been dispatched on other errands. At last, he returns to his bedroom. He’s surprised to find the spiritual gems therein already active, emitting a low, rosy glow.

He’s more surprised still by what the lamps illuminate. There, in the centre of his bed, lounges a consort of startling beauty: a resplendent concubine decked in a translucent robe of deep, pine-green silk. Bronzed legs emerge from the hem of the garment, shaved and oiled, silk-smooth. The scent of gathered roses fills the air, spilling forth from the beauty's luscious body. The concubine’s elegant neck is enhanced by its frame: long, dangling gold earrings that seem to drip down soft, tossed curls. The temptress’s saffron-red mouth is parted invitingly, and kohl rings Luo Binghe’s shining, alluring, night-black eyes.

Pretty, Shen Qingqiu finds himself thinking, stupidly. As if ‘pretty’ was a strong enough word for someone who might be Yang Guifei’s successor.

“My lord,” the youth purrs, looking up at his master. The angle of his gaze ought to be demure, but the hunger in it spoils any such impression.

Shen Qingqiu swallows. “What are you doing, Binghe?” he manages, despite the bone-dryness of his poor throat.

Luo Binghe pouts at him. “Can’t my lord tell? Haven’t I spent all evening welcoming my master home?”

“Yes,” Shen Qingqiu tries again, “yes, but what are you playing at?”

“A game you like,” Luo Binghe snaps, his liquid, languid eyes suddenly flashing. “This is what you want—you say so all the time. Why shouldn’t I be the one to give it to you?” Luo Binghe shifts on his bed, his limbs falling into a still more inviting posture. Shen Qingqiu watches the hem of his student's robe glide up his leg.

“You needn’t flirt with housemaids you don’t even know,” Luo Binghe says, looking at him directly. “Aren’t I pretty, Shizun?”

In this dim, forgiving light, Luo Binghe might easily be exactly what he’s pretending he to be. In any light, Shen Qingqiu knows him to be exquisite.

“Aren’t I prettier than any of those girls you so admire?” he persists, raising his sharp chin in gorgeous defiance.

Here is the anger Shen Qingqiu saw Luo Binghe repressing in Madam Ouyang’s hall, which he’d foolishly assumed had dissipated of its own accord. There is real bravery in it, too. Luo Binghe is demanding an answer of him. He has nerved himself to the mark, and is meeting the challenge head-on. Shen Qingqiu has always loved Luo Binghe’s courage. It’s just not usually displayed in such a bewildering, embarrassing and somehow captivating fashion.

“For you!” Shen Qingqiu splutters. “It’s what I want for—I’m not—Binghe, I was thinking of your future!”

The young man regards Shen Qingqiu with a coolness that makes the hair on the peak lord’s arms stand up. He would like to call the feeling fear, but finds he can’t. Not entirely, at any rate.

“I think of my future all the time,” Luo Binghe agrees. “It doesn’t include girls like that. No, I know just what I want. Who I want. Do you, Shizun?”

“You’re confused,” Shen Qingqiu says, taking a step backwards. Recovering himself and trying to face his disciple with stern certainty. “Get up this instant. Don’t—demean yourself like this.”

Luo Binghe rises. He does it in a slow slide of limbs that seems to make a mockery of obedience. “But I’m not confused at all, Shizun. And I already demean myself, panting after you like I do. What’s the point of not showing it?” Luo Binghe’s voice is stubborn. He strides forward into Shen Qingqiu’s rigid embrace and brushes a soft, perfumed cheek against Shen Qingqiu’s. “I could never find it lowering to give myself to you. Please don’t say you’d find it lowering to take me.” He looks up at Shen Qingqiu through long, thick lashes which cosmetics have rendered fuller still. “You don’t want to break my heart, do you xianggong?”

Shen Qingqiu’s hands tremble on Luo Binghe’s waist and shoulder, where they’ve risen to hold his disciple. “But you’re so young,” Shen Qingqiu murmurs, wetting his lips. “Perhaps—perhaps when you’re older, if you find you really feel this way about a man, then you could approach him, and—”

“Not ‘a man’,” Luo Binghe corrects him. “You, Shizun. It will only ever be you. And not when I’m older, for all that it will still be true. Right now. If you could love me, then why make me wait? We’re alone together, just as you said, so let me be a little horrible. Let me show you how horribly I want you.”

Luo Binghe begins to lower himself to his knees, only to find his descent arrested by Shen Qingqiu’s firm grip on his wrist. The man looks wild-eyed, dazed. Against his own scantily-clad thigh, Luo Binghe can feel heat, warmth and just a touch of unusual firmness.

Using his free hand Luo Binghe traces the outline of the unfamiliar shape, running his fingers over the silhouette through the fabric. Shen Qingqiu gasps, and Luo Binghe bends forward to whisper against the sensitive skin of his neck.

“For me, Shizun?” Luo Binghe breathes. “Then you do want me,” he says, infinitely satisfied. “Like this. Just as I need you.” It seems that the heart-pounding bravado that fuelled this desperate attack has carried him to victory. He can feel the great worry burdening him being soothed away.

Shen Qingqiu tries to shake his head.

“You like me,” Luo Binghe insists, tucking a shy smile into the crook of his shizun’s neck. “I’m your favourite person, aren’t I, Shizun? And you like the way I dressed to please you, too.”

He lowers his right wrist, and with it Shen Qingqiu’s left hand, which is still clasped around it. He brings Shen Qingqiu’s hostage palm to his painted cheek. It unfolds automatically to cup Luo Binghe’s face. The cool beads of the youth’s earrings spill and drag, luxuriant, across the back of Shen Qingqiu’s hand.

“You’re so young,” Shen Qingqiu says, sounding gutted. “So young. You have so much before you. You don’t need to—you’re going to have such a splendid life, Binghe.”

“I have one,” Luo Binghe agrees. “I have the world before me, right now. You’re everything to me, Shizun. If you don’t love me, then you’d better say so.”

Shen Qingqiu rips himself backwards, tugging away from Luo Binghe. “I don’t. I can’t! Not with you still half a child. Binghe, I never knew this. Why did you make me know it?”

He looks at his disciple with the desperation of a man unwilling to acknowledge something now quite evident. Luo Binghe can sense his shizun’s exhaustion. His master is yet burdened by the ghost he vanquished, by the journey, and now by the spectre of his own inappropriate, ungovernable longing. Does he think himself another kind of failed father? But there is such a difference between the two situations: if Shen Qingqiu tried to drag Luo Binghe down to hell to keep him company, Luo Binghe would simply be flattered.

“Then Shizun should hold me like a child tonight,” Luo Binghe concedes. “Just that.”

“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu manages, conflict still writ large across his face.

“I swear, Shizun, we’ll only sleep. On my honour.”

After a moment, Shen Qingqiu nods at the compromise. His jaw is clenched. Given the tightness around his eyes, his mind is evidently working at full speed. Luo Binghe notes with satisfaction that the arms Shen Qingqiu grudgingly wraps around him, at Luo Binghe’s insistence, shake ever so slightly. His master finds him that affecting—his shizun's feelings for him are that strong.

Eventually Shen Qingqiu succumbs to exhaustion, which Luo Binghe supposes is about the only force capable of overcoming his master’s tendency to overthink things. For his own part, Luo Binghe spends the first watch of the night drawing idle patterns on Shen Qingqiu’s forearm with his fingertips. He eventually falls asleep himself, feeling safer and more wanted than he has since he last spent the night in this position, wrapped in his mother’s embrace atop the single mattress they owned. As far as Luo Binghe is concerned, his sleeping arrangements have altered permanently.

In the morning, Luo Binghe waits for Shen Qingqiu to stir. When his shizun opens his eyes, Luo Binghe smiles softly the man. Still dazed by sleep, Shen Qingqiu smiles back at his young favourite. Swift as anything, Luo Binghe darts forward to lay a light kiss on his shizun’s lips. He is off before Shen Qingqiu can gather himself to protest, and whistles in the kitchen as breakfast comes together.

He doesn’t need Shen Qingqiu to understand everything just yet. Shizun was right to suggest that he doesn’t always know everything. The more Luo Binghe considers this, the truer it feels. He doubts that Shen Qingqiu ever spends much time considering what’s good for him, or what he wants. Shizun probably hasn’t even decided whether he’d like to take his squirming, ravenously eager young concubine or for his sweet, devoted little girl to fuck him stupid with the plump cock peeking through her draping finery. (Or whether he even wants to choose just one option, given that both are ever open to him.) That’s all right, so long as Shizun loves him: they have time to work these lesser questions out. When Luo Binghe needs Shizun enough he’ll give way, like always. Luo Binghe will push and Shen Qingqiu will fall, gladly.

Despite Shen Qingqiu’s grumbled, half-hearted protests, Luo Binghe spends another chaste night in his master’s bed. “I love you,” he says the next morning, his tone light but slow and serious. He lets Shen Qingqiu know, unmistakably, that he means it, and observes the responsive flush across Shen Qingqiu’s fair cheeks with a feeling of tenderness.

“Shizun?” he prompts, patiently demanding some response.

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t deign to give him one yet. After a few days of such assays he cracks, just slightly. “Ridiculous boy,” he’ll huff by way of an answer. A fortnight finally earns Luo Binghe an embarrassed, echoed return of his own confession. Another half-month has Shen Qingqiu occasionally initiating such exchanges himself, absent and fond or purposive and serious. Over the best part of two months, and with a great deal of evident chagrin about the whole subject, Shen Qingqiu comes to accept his own feelings. It’s the acknowledgement that seems a struggle for him, rather than the sentiment. As far as the feeling goes, it’s as though loving Luo Binghe comes very naturally to him—as though he’s been doing it for years and years.

By the time disaster strikes the Immortal Alliance Conference, Luo Binghe’s confidence in his lord’s affection is so unshakable that even the strange, awful turn events there take cannot fundamentally disquiet him.

“My darling boy,” Shen Qingqiu says, walking dangerously close to the edge of a widening crack in the world, “if we didn’t have to, I wouldn’t. But we do. And if anyone can protect us, I suppose it must be you.”

Luo Binghe doesn’t understand why Shen Qingqiu jumps into the Abyss, but he supposes he doesn’t need to, yet. After all, he asked Shen Qingqiu to meet him before the man was ready; Shen Qingqiu is owed similar, answering faith. Luo Binghe's first task, then, is simply to catch his beloved master before the man hits the ground. That is the important thing. They will then have time to work out everything else.

Months pass beneath the surface of the world. Even when Shen Qingqiu is exhausted by the strains of the Abyss, he still cradles Luo Binghe when they sleep. To him Luo Binghe is charming even covered in blood instead of powder, glorious even when his pretty mouth is knitting back together after the claws of some Abyssal horror have slashed it open. One day, they’ll be able to safely return home again. One day, there will be beds and silks and finery, and a formal marriage to bind Luo Binghe to the lord of his heart. But even now, in their darkest hours, Luo Binghe remains Shen Qingqiu’s precious consort: a better bride to his master than any harem full of sweet-faced girls could dream of being. He never feels anything less than loved and wanted. He could endure things worse even than hell, for that.