This, their promise. Wei Ying's own rite, fledgling and ill formed, a child nearly aborted. How Lan Wangji hungers for it, stomach cadaverous and rib bones piercing skin, through stench of damp and stale and old, through storm of mote dusts and crackled burning, through the marks and sounds and blurry stirrings of life within-after Yiling. How he wants novelty without heritage, without burden, without blood.
Twice married or betrothed or pledged, or merely intended. Once fated. He nods, less to seal the cinnabar of Wei Ying's calligraphy on their shared lives, than merely to acknowledge the inexorability of his conquest. Wei Ying wishes it so, the Patriarch has wispily rasped, and through his will, the earth quakes, the throbbing pulse of a land simmers and quickens and is.
He does not rip the red string off Wei Ying's wrist, but nooses two fingers within and around it once, and again in a second loop, and tungs to release the tie — to forcibly seize it, war spoils and fairly won, Lan Wangji's won. "I claim this as my binding price. Find another."
A beggar's sole possession, thieved. To remember this day by. Shivered, he remembers the correction, "This, your flute in name, and my children."
no subject
Twice married or betrothed or pledged, or merely intended. Once fated. He nods, less to seal the cinnabar of Wei Ying's calligraphy on their shared lives, than merely to acknowledge the inexorability of his conquest. Wei Ying wishes it so, the Patriarch has wispily rasped, and through his will, the earth quakes, the throbbing pulse of a land simmers and quickens and is.
He does not rip the red string off Wei Ying's wrist, but nooses two fingers within and around it once, and again in a second loop, and tungs to release the tie — to forcibly seize it, war spoils and fairly won, Lan Wangji's won. "I claim this as my binding price. Find another."
A beggar's sole possession, thieved. To remember this day by. Shivered, he remembers the correction, "This, your flute in name, and my children."