Aumerle doesn't seek absolution.

For hours, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have walked with little words and less hurry, and the peace rakes itself down Wei Wuxian’s back like an itch baiting a scratch.

Tang Fan is susceptible to long jaunts into his own self-preoccupation at the very best of times, as is needless to say, but waiting brings out the worst of his whiling.

Sui Zhou is the first of them to wake, as he so often is.

He may not always be the most patient man, but Sui Zhou has come to be good at waiting. He has taken well to the lessons Tang Fan has taught him.

That night, Nie Mingjue dreams of Qinghe, but it is a Qinghe that is far from home.

“I’m sorry,” he says, breathless and utterly unrepentant. He kisses at the corner of Sui Zhou’s mouth, petting down the column of his throat, tracing his fingers along the kick of his pulse. “Guangchuan, you poor thing, my good boy, come here.”

Sui Zhou was never made for precisive work with frangible things, but that has not once stopped Tang Fan from taking him in hand and seeing him put to that purpose.

They are not in Zhoujiatai anymore. Tang Fan can tell that much from this little. Whether they've come north into the mountain, or gone south into the plains, though — or ended up somewhere else entirely, east or west by providence — he'd need to see the stars, first, to even have a hope of a guess at it.

So much for simple and for supposed good fortune. What a day they've had, and what a night it's apparently promised them.

Nie Mingjue wakes, and he is not within his guest rooms at Koi Tower.