fruitjuicer

Tang Fan is looking at him — hasn't stopped looking at him once, really, in some way, since Sui Zhou stepped over the threshold and into his room — but he's looking at him, now, with a wonder so holy it's encroaching on worship. As though Sui Zhou has shot down a sun for him instead of something else infinitely less incredible.

Longing makes the world bright and the yearner blind, he knows, but even without his want soaking through and staining it, he thinks— he would be sure.

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.

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.

The spark of it starts small, well beneath Jiang Cheng’s notice, but builds steadily.

Jiang Cheng takes a dagger meant for Nie Huaisang. In the rapidly ensuing aftermath, bleeding out in the middle of the Unclean Realm becomes the very least of his concerns.

Sect Leader Nie has still not returned to the main hall over half an hour after the agreed time.

However could he run from Nie Mingjue, after all, when it is always and only ever will be Nie Mingjue that he runs to?

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

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.