“You know, this look is different from what I expected, the first time.”

Ming Yi leaned against a tree-trunk with her arms folded. “I look exactly like myself.”

After some badgering, Ming Yi had relented to Shi Qingxuan’s desire to stop by a creek to rest from the sun. It was usually easier just to give Shi Qingxuan what she wanted, but Ming Yi still made her work for it.

Shi Qingxuan sat on the bank with her trousers rolled up around her knees and her skirts bunched in her lap, and dipped her bare feet in the sluggish stream with little hesitation, considering how little could be seen in the dusk light of what might be lurking beneath the surface. Despite her claims that she had wanted to stop to enjoy the scenery, Shi Qingxuan’s attention was focused on Ming Yi. “I think I expected you to look a little more like Ling Wen Zhenjun does. All black... serious…”

Ming Yi turned her impassive stare from the darkening horizon to Shi Qingxuan, who only laughed.

“Well, are you going to make me say it? You’ll really make me say it?”

Her gaze poured over Ming Yi, whose skin rippled with uncomfortable frission in its wake.

“You didn’t have to make yourself so pretty!”

Ming Yi straightened her spine and uncrossed her arms, folding her hands behind her back instead. Unfortunately, this posture also made her feel like her bust was overly emphasized, so after a few minutes she gave up and went back to standing how she had in the first place. She always stood like this, in any body. Let Shi Qingxuan try to make something out of that.

By proper nightfall, Shi Qingxuan was back on her feet, and they resumed their journey to Banyue Pass. Carefully indifferent, Ming Yi asked, “Aren’t you worried about what your brother’s going to say to all this?”

Ming Yi wasn’t worried about any spiritual ne’er-do-wells they might encounter—between the two of them, there wasn’t much they couldn’t handle—but if Shi Qingxuan’s suspicions were correct, the aftermath could be messy. Even so, that was Shi Qingxuan’s problem. No one expected Lord Earth Master to lift a finger in matters of Upper Court politics, and Shi Qingxuan had no compunctions with taking things into her own hands.

Shi Qingxuan snorted. “I’m not scared of Ge. They’re his friends, so it’s his fault if he gets embarrassed by them. Besides, you’ll be there to back me up.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“If it was up to you, you’d just let General Pei shove it back out of sight?”

When Ming Yi didn’t reply, Shi Qingxuan flicked her whisk smugly.

“See, this is what I like about you. Most heavenly officials will say whatever they think will get them ahead. But you don’t care about what anyone thinks. You’ll do the right thing.” Shi Qingxuan ran her fingers through a tangle in her hair. When she tossed it back over her shoulder, her eyes creased in a look that was too knowing for someone who knew little. “And when you say nice things, I know you mean it.”

“When do I ever say nice things.”

Shi Qingxuan grinned. “Next time you do, I’ll point it out.”

« Hey, Ming-xiong. »

What is it.

« What have you been up to? »

Work.

« Already? We just got back! »

He Xuan had been ready to leave the desert well before Shi Qingxuan had finished her little investigation. It wasn’t the sun, or the sand, though both were unpleasant, but Crimson Rain’s stupid voice on the private communication array: « Oh, sorry, are we walking in on something? If I knew there was a dress code I would have gotten done up. » And if it wasn’t that, it was the tinkling of jewelry in Shi Qingxuan’s hair as she moved, or the meaningless asides that were disorienting in the scale of their inanity: “Isn’t this fun? I love having fun with you.”

« Come over to my palace. »

Just because you don’t have anything better to do with your time doesn’t mean I live similarly.

He Xuan had been looking up at the ceiling in the dark in an attempt to reach a state of mental clarity (with limited success.)

« Then come over when you’re done! I know you won’t be hanging out with anyone else. »

There was no reason to go. Was there ever? And they’d just spent days and days together, by the end of which He Xuan felt like an animal contemplating chewing off its own leg.

« I worry about you sometimes. I don’t know what you’d do without me, I swear. »

But there was no good reason not to, either. What did it even matter, at this point? What did it ever matter? If Shi Qingxuan hadn’t grown suspicious of Ming Yi by now, He Xuan didn’t know what it would take.

l’ll get there when I get there.

« Aww, so reliable. You always come through in the end! »

Ming Yi entered the Palace of Wind and Water without knocking. The Water Tyrant’s wing seemed empty, and the halls were silent but for the soft click of Ming Yi’s boots.

Shi Qingxuan would be where she always was. She wasn’t a particularly complex person to understand.

As Ming Yi approached the Wind Master’s side of the palace, Shi Qingxuan’s voice pealed like laughing bells. « Come in, come in. I made sure there’d be dinner. »

When Ming Yi came into view, however, Shi Qingxuan gasped.

“You’re still a girl?”

“I was busy.” Ming Yi pushed past her, into the room that Shi Qingxuan always used for entertaining. A few paces on, she muttered, “You’re the only one who cares.”

Banyue wasn’t the first time, but it might have been the longest. It used to be only here and there, behind closed doors, to shut Shi Qingxuan up whenever she was really intent on it, but it had become habitual whenever they left the Heavenly Capitol together. It wasn’t worth digging her heels in about it. Ming Yi hardly noticed, unless someone made her notice. Which Shi Qingxuan was insistent on, lately.

Ming Yi took her usual seat at Shi Qingxuan’s table. Opposite her, Shi Qingxuan ensconced herself in a pre-existing dip in the sofa cushion, and then reclined, a book in one hand—a prop; Ming Yi had never known Shi Qingxuan to be much of a reader. She was missing an outer robe. Her feet were bare and crossed at the ankle. Black hair curled loose down her shoulders and the small of her back.

As a man, Shi Qingxuan had a naive, chaste quality, despite the drinking, but when they were alone in female form together, she lost all sense of modesty. Ming Yi refused to lift her gaze off of her plate.

The details of the meal were lost on her; food in the Heavenly Capitol was always passable-to-good, anyway, since gods only ate for pleasure. Ming Yi was prodigiously hungry this evening—Shi Qingxuan had successfully intuited that much—so she was more concerned with volume than nuance. Between placing a newly clean bone onto a stack of others and picking up the next spare rib from the small mountain in front of her, Ming Yi asked, “Was there a reason that you asked me to come here?”

“What are you in the mood for?”

“I thought you had something in mind.”

“But I’m asking you. What do you want to do?”

This gave Ming Yi pause.

“I guess I’ll be eating and then going back home.”

“Such a terrible guest. Always taking advantage of my hospitality.” She shut her book with a theatrical snap and set it aside. “You said you were going off to take care of Earth Master business right away, so I wanted to hang out a bit more before you do. Sometimes you’re gone for so long and I miss you! But I’ll let you think it over—hey, did you hear about—”

Shi Qingxuan proceeded to update Ming Yi on a list of gossip items from the Upper and Middle Courts. Between her shells and her informants, most of it Ming Yi already knew, but there was something to be gleaned from how information was framed, and Shi Qingxuan was sometimes unwittingly useful in this regard, if for no other reason than being frank to a fault. Shi Qingxuan knew when to pause to give the impression of a real conversation, even when Ming Yi wasn’t giving her much to go off of. Ming Yi ate, and listened with both ears.

Eventually, Shi Qingxuan ran out of news; she yawned, and then got down from her sofa to sit on a cushion at a perpendicular side of the table to Ming Yi. She picked a green bean off of Ming Yi’s dish and munched on it contemplatively.

“I was thinking,” Shi Qingxuan begun, and then paused for another bite.

“Were you?”

“I was thinking,” Shi Qingxuan continued, looking completely unbothered, “About how much I don’t know about your human life.”

“There’s not much to know.”

Shi Qingxuan hadn’t been eating besides the bites stolen out of Ming Yi’s bowls, but she refilled her own portion of wine readily enough, despite Ming Yi’s cup being mostly full. They each outpaced each other in their own areas.

“You can’t expect me to believe that. Obviously you were exceptional back then, too, or else you wouldn’t be here!”

Ming Yi made a noncommittal noise and stowed away the kind of thoughts about her time among the living that she could ill afford in present company.

“And it doesn’t have to be about anything important you did. Just, like, your life, you know! Your friends, your family. Your first kiss. Stuff like that.” Shi Qingxuan’s voice was misted with the melancholic false thoughtfulness that comes over people who drink too much, but it dipped lower, a little sly. “Did you have any lovers before you ascended?”

Ming Yi looked up, a prawn dumpling halfway to her mouth. “What?”

“Or were you married? I bet you were married.”

A faint ringing started in her ears.

“I wasn’t.” They never got that far.

“I wasn’t married either.” She said it like a sharing of confidences, as if Ming Yi didn’t know things about Shi Qingxuan that Shi Qingxuan didn’t know about herself.

Ming Yi met Shi Qingxuan’s eyes. “If something was worth telling you, I would have told you. It’s only been hundreds of years.”

Shi Qingxuan was immune to chastisement from anyone but her brother, but Ming Yi hoped that she was currently being severe enough that Shi Qingxuan would take some kind of notice. It seemed possible; Shi Qingxuan flapped a hand and replied, “Alright, alright. But can you really blame me for being curious? Anyway, there’s lots of things from my life you don’t know about, either. Sometimes things just don’t come up!”

There were a few minutes of blessed silence wherein Shi Qingxuan twirled a pillow tassel around her finger and followed Ming Yi’s hands with her eyes. Eventually, she set it aside and scooched further down the side of the table to the corner separating her from Ming Yi.

“Like… You know when I was a kid and I had to be a girl?” Her tone was casual and a touch wistful.

Ming Yi glanced at her quickly and then away. Unnecessary, anyway. She was close enough that Ming Yi could still see her movements even if she kept her eyes to herself.

“I didn’t have a lot of friends, but I’d hang out with the other girls sometimes, even though they didn’t, like, know.” Shi Qingxuan braced an elbow against the table and rested her chin on the heel of her palm. “Ge didn’t like it, so I had to sneak around behind his back. Lucky for me, he was busy a lot.”

She laughed, and it sounded a little abashed. Ming Yi’s nostrils flared.

“But there was this one girl whose older sister was also training with the cultivators, so we saw each other pretty often. She mostly liked to sit around and study, so that was kind of annoying, but we had fun sometimes.”

Despite her best attempts, Ming Yi found herself caught up in the story. It was one she hadn’t heard before, which was rare. She ought to listen, then, really, in case it proved useful. A few times, Ming Yi caught herself stalled in the middle of eating, and had to see herself through the motions mechanically.

“And one day the two of us were playing house, and... I don’t know who suggested it first, because it felt like it just happened so naturally.” Shi Qingxuan glanced at Ming Yi sidelong, and then away. “But that was the first time I ever kissed someone.” Her fingertips tapped fractiously against her flushed cheek. “Anyway, I don’t know why I’m thinking about it it now. I don’t even remember her name.”

Ming Yi flicked her chopsticks through the contents of her bowl irritably. It wasn’t wise to be seen as having any more than passing dislike for the Water Tyrant, but it was sometimes a struggle, and today she lost.

“Your brother shouldn’t have done that.”

Shi Qingxuan blinked. “What?”

“Told you not to spend time with people your own age.”

It was almost funny that, despite everything Shi Wudu had done on Shi Qingxuan’s behalf, Ming Yi didn’t trust him to treat her decently. He was a contemptible man in every respect.

“Oh, he was just looking out for me.” Shi Qingxuan laughed, the sound grating and harsh. “You like to be hard on him, but he means well. And he always has his reasons.”

She has to know how rotten her brother is, Ming Yi thought. She doesn’t trust his friends. Some part of her must sense it.

Not that it mattered. But, at times, Ming Yi wondered.

Enough. Ming Yi returned to the meal, but she didn’t have a chance to swallow before she felt Shi Qingxuan’s hand caressing her lower arm.

More subdued, Shi Qingxuan added, “Ming-xiong is always thoughtful of me, even when she pretends not to be.” She had a magnanimous, conciliatory look on her face, which soured Ming Yi’s mood further. “See, you do say nice things.”

Shi Qingxuan crept on her knees around the corner of the table until she knelt behind Ming Yi. Despite her heavenly metabolism, Shi Qingxuan’s movements were ungainly, and she was intruding further into Ming Yi’s personal space than she would sober, which was somewhat of an accomplishment.

“Your hair looks amazing right now, even though this hairpin is totally wrong for your face shape.” Shi Qingxuan reached over Ming Yi’s shoulders to pull the bulk of it towards herself and begun finger-combing stray tangles out of the ends. “I think you have the darkest hair I’ve ever seen. And you keep it so shiny!”

She smelled like sea breezes and orange peel. Her breasts brushed against Ming Yi’s back as she moved. Ming Yi fought not to twitch away from the feeling.

The rest of the steamed rice and half a tureen of oxtail soup remained on the table. Then she could leave. And she did have concerns to see to elsewhere. She ought to check on things at the manor. Lingering with Shi Qingxuan was an easy bad habit to fall into, but Ming Yi would be out of the Heavenly Capitol by morning.

Shi Qingxuan let go of Ming Yi’s hair and wound her arms around Ming Yi’s waist. Ming Yi’s knuckles went white.

“You should drink some water,” Ming Yi said brusquely. “It seems like you need it.”

“Mm, I don’t think so.” She stuck her pointy little chin on Ming Yi’s shoulder, hummed, and murmured, “It’s too bad you never got married. You would’ve been a really good husband.”

The chopsticks in Ming Yi’s hand snapped. When she stood up, the force sent a handful of bowls smashing into bits on the floor.

Shi Qingxuan tucked her legs up against her chest, a flush high up on her face, and giggled shrilly. Ming Yi had heard it before, whenever she’d given Shi Qingxuan reason to fear abandonment.

“Oh, Ming-xiong, don't be like that... Look, you’re going to let your food get cold...”

Ming Yi looked down at Shi Qingxuan, wordless, and headed for the door.

Pat, pat, went Shi Qingxuan’s feet behind her, and what clothing she had on swished. Ming Yi had no control over her awareness of these things; if she were a tiger, her ears would have twitched.

“I’m sorry, I went too far. I know you’re a private person. I'm sorry.”

Ming Yi sensed Shi Qingxuan’s outstretched hand before it had the chance to curl in her sleeve, and her body moved as it would towards any other anticipated enemy.

The scraping of shoes and the thud of Shi Qingxuan’s shoulders against the wall were muffled by the capaciousness of the palace. The bones of Shi Qingxuan’s wrist were rigid where she was pinned in place by Ming Yi’s grip. Ming Yi could smell the spike of alertness in her sweat.

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry.”

Shi Qingxuan laughed again; she was trembling. “I really am, though.” Her voice was contrite, and hushed, as if they weren’t in her own palace.

Lady Wind Master was right about one thing: Ming Yi’s food was getting cold on the table.

“You always do whatever you want,” Ming Yi replied through clenched teeth.

She needed to steady herself before she went too far. The line was thin, but there were things that He Xuan would do or say that Ming Yi could not.

Shi Qingxuan had smacked Ming Yi countless times for spurious reasons, but now she was limp against the wall. “Then tell me how to fix it. Whatever you want.”

There was nothing inside of Ming Yi but the need to fill herself with something. Wanting was a weak word.

“Careless.”

Shi Qingxuan’s neck and cheeks were reddening like they’d been roughly handled, though Ming Yi still only pinned her in place by one wrist. “What?”

“Whatever I want? Don’t give things you can’t take back.”

Something warm and nourishing, like flesh.

“I’m always asking you what you want, and you never tell me. Just name it, Ming-xiong, Ming-jie. I’ll do it.” Shi Qingxuan tilted her head back; her skull tapped the wall. Ming Yi could hear the throb of arteries under the warm expanse of her throat. The corner of Shi Qingxuan’s mouth quirked in an infuriating precursor to a smile. “I want to make you happy.”

Ming Yi leaned in closer, and through the citrus fragrance she could detect the iron tang of Shi Qingxuan’s blood. It would have been so simple to spill it. Shi Qingxuan was hardly afraid, and she would never learn how to tell when she should be.

“And you think you can make me happy?”

“I know I do.” Shi Qingxuan placed a hand on Ming Yi’s upper arm. Her tone was exasperated. “Don’t you think I know you by now?”

Ming Yi wanted to do something so vicious that Shi Qingxuan would struggle to rationalize it. Ming Yi wanted to see the look on Shi Qingxuan’s face when she realized that she could not. That she was a fool, and it was her own nature that allowed this to happen. She invited the monster into her home. Ming Yi never even had to ask.

Her stomach flipped with something between excitement and nausea.

Ming Yi dropped her hold on Shi Qingxuan, and retreated a step. A bracelet of red circled Shi Qingxuan’s wrist from Ming Yi’s fingers. Ming Yi clasped her hands behind her back, and dug her nails into her palm.

“Next time, you should mind your own business,” Ming Yi said, after a moment when nothing better came to mind. It sounded just as tepid aloud.

“Okay,” Shi Qingxuan replied. Her other hand traced the red marks on her wrist. The look on her face was almost disappointed.

When he entered the great hall, He Xuan lit extra incense on top of his usual offerings. It didn’t help. After several silent minutes spent kneeling in front of the altar with a gnarled feeling in his chest, he leaned forward to prostrate himself on the ground.

He was used to facing his family with guilt, but disloyalty was new.

He Xuan tried to conjure memories of them in his mind. Some things were easy to recall, and not only the way they all suffered at the end: he could remember that he taught his sister to read, because their parents didn’t have the time, though he couldn’t remember the contents of the lessons. He knew that their parents and the parents of his bride-to-be had gone through all the motions of making sure everything was done correctly to formalize their engagement, as if their families hadn’t known each other since they were born, and that He Xuan had still been nervous when his parents went to meet with the astrologer to pick out a date, in case they back saying the whole thing was inauspicious and had been called off.

But try as he might, he couldn't recall the colour of his parents’ modest house in Fu Gu, or what the weather had been like on the day he took the imperial exam. The details slid away faster the more desperately he grasped for them. Even with those memories he kept hold of, he felt trepidation; he feared that, should he spend too much more time handling them, they would become like a knife too chipped to hold an edge.

It wasn’t the first time he had felt this fear; it was, however, the first time he acknowledged that the process may have already begun.

He remained there, knees and forehead pressed against the stone floor, until his limbs, already cold and lifeless, went numb.

He Xuan eventually left the manor to take care of the rest of his housekeeping: he made sure the prisoners were fed, and that nothing had washed ashore and gone unnoticed by the minions, et cetera. He went on foot around the island to check that all of the wards were functioning, though he’d never had problems in the past. The various servile lesser ghosts that saw him scurried out of sight or made squeaky obeisance, which he ignored.

The tasks had not brought the clarity of mind he sought. His thoughts returned to recent interactions with Shi Qingxuan despite his best efforts. By the time He Xuan completed the circuit around the island’s edge, he was wroth, restless, and tired of the sun.

These were his waters, so He Xuan was not constrained by the rules that limited trespassers, not least because Ming Yi’s form had sloughed off when He Xuan approached his lair, and along with her heartbeat, He Xuan had abandoned the need to breathe. He could walk the seafloor like dry land. Unfortunately, even the depths were not infinitely peaceful: a few bone dragons nosed their way over to him inquisitively, but He Xuan shoved them away by the snouts, because he hadn’t brought them any treats and was in no mood for their disappointed begging.

He was not yet far from shore, but light already struggled to penetrate. Living sea life was hard to come by, but every so often a shape would move near the horizon of the deep—either one of his creatures, playing or on patrol, or the stalks of giant kelp that stubbornly grew even in such inhospitable conditions. Time slowed, he felt both heavy and light, and his hair flowed through the water like spilled ink on black clothing.

Nothing in He Xuan’s life had given him a connection to the water, but he had formed one with every lesser water ghost he devoured—jilted women who had thrown themselves off riverbanks, bridge monsters that preyed on travelers, mutinous sailors cursed by their betrayal, and all the rest. Each had their own taste: silt, or salt, or blood, or, once, the clearest of mountain springs. What was left of them were the dregs—their memories or powers—that he could dip into as he chose. Their hungers and grudges had no mastery over him, but when He Xuan felt around at the edges of consciousness, he could feel the remnants of those urges throbbing in time with his own.

He was unsure he’d ever felt desire this violently when he'd been alive. He had been worn down to the bone—where would he have found the energy? If he had, the experience was so far away that it might as well have happened to a different person. And it was different, because back then he had been in love.

This was only another form of hunger, so He Xuan should be well-equipped to bear it, but he had learned long ago that even with practice, the pain of starvation only softened up to a point.

He Xuan made his way out to the deepest trenches of the South Sea. Ahead of him loomed the great ribcage of a long-lost ship, sailed to its doom by a foolhardy captain who now rested here, nameless, with no one but Ship-Sinking Black Water to witness.

Though He Xuan had only acquired an affinity with the sea, he intrinsically understood the deep. If Shi Wudu was the wave, He Xuan was what lay beneath: the abyssal nothing that went beyond hunger. Just lack.

Upon returning to land, He Xuan bolted the door to one of the countless empty rooms of Nether Water Manor and set about learning how women masturbate.

The body she had chosen for the task was closer to her true form than to “Ming Yi,” but bore some resemblance by force of habit. Shi Qingxuan made He Xuan perfectly aware of how much she enjoyed looking at Ming Yi when they were women, but she would probably be unnerved by the way that He Xuan looked now, which was good. She needed to hang onto that.

He Xuan could not remember a time she hadn't been exhausted, and this was no different, but she had reached the end of her patience for distraction. She wasn’t in search of pleasure, but an exorcism of manic energy. He Xuan huffed in frustration, leaned her back against the door, and tugged her robes open across her chest enough to reach her tits.

She had never spent time studying the intricacies of bodies she could exchange at will, and this wasn’t something she’d done after death, in any form. The thought had seemed both perverse and pointless. Even as the centuries progressed, and Shi Qingxuan’s cloying attentions got harder to avoid, He Xuan had refused to cede ground in her own imagination. And before that—He Xuan never married, nor touched any other women. Some schoolboy fumbling comprised the entirety of her experience.

Eventually she abandoned the detour to her breasts, not because the sensation was unpleasant, but because having her chest touched inquisitively invited the wrong kind of thoughts. She turned around to brace her left forearm against the door and press her forehead against her sleeve, eyes squeezed tight, with her right hand moving punishingly between her thighs.

Their bodies had been so close. They could have pressed closer still, if she’d let them. Ming Yi could have had a knee between Shi Qingxuan’s thighs and a hand on her throat. Shi Qingxuan would have let her do it. That was the worst of it, the thing that brought He Xuan this low: she had looked into Shi Qingxuan’s eyes and seen nothing but guileless expectation. If Ming Yi tried to kill her, Shi Qingxuan wouldn’t realize what was happening until she was most of the way there.

Back at Shi Qingxuan’s palace, Ming Yi’s pulse had raced. Now, He Xuan’s body surged with terrible, wanton force, but without any signs of life. If it could be described as physical at all, it was like the dizziness of falling from a great height.

He Xuan tried to hang on to the image of Shi Qingxuan struggling under her hands, but it was difficult to hold in place; she had spent centuries at Shi Qingxuan’s side more often than not, and He Xuan had learned that Lady Wind Master had a knack for avoiding suffering. It was far easier to imagine her laughing in Ming Yi’s face: Oh, if I’ve really been that bad then I guess Ming-xiong can punish me, but make it quick, okay?

The day after their return from Ghost City, Shi Qingxuan paid Ming Yi a visit. If it were anyone else at the door, he wouldn’t have even let them in, but there was no point in delaying the inevitable.

Ming Yi was interrupted in the process of completing a report for the Palace of Ling Wen explaining how his undercover operation in the Ghost Realm was exposed. It wasn’t difficult to come up with the words, but it took time to make his calligraphy more brusque and workmanlike than what came to his hand naturally: more like the real Ming Yi would write. His own style was too obviously that of someone who had entertained scholarly ambitions, and unlike most heavenly officials, Ling Wen had enough brains to notice.

Upon entering his study, Shi Qingxuan grabbed at Ming Yi’s upper arm and gave it a violent shake before chastising him for being at work when he should be resting. Ming Yi needed to maintain the front that his injuries were severe enough to temporarily incapacitate a heavenly official, so he didn’t attempt to deter Shi Qingxuan from doing the caretaking on which he’d set his mind.

Shi Qingxuan’s nurturance mostly entailed fluffing pillows and tutting his tongue. At one point, he produced a hot compress from who-knows-where and placed it on Ming Yi’s forehead. Ming Yi immediately took it off, which prompted a short lecture. Eventually, Shi Qingxuan settled himself enough to sit by Ming Yi’s bedside and push spiritual energy through his meridians by a hand on his wrist. It was a waste of time, but it was none of Ming Yi’s concern how Lord Wind Master saw fit to use his ill-gotten strength.

Every so often, Shi Qingxuan would test the waters with comments that were obviously preludes to questions about Ming Yi’s apparent stint as a spy in Ghost City, but he held himself in check when Ming Yi returned with only stony responses.

He had once had a sweetheart. If it weren’t for Shi Qingxuan, he would have had a wife. As it was, no one outside of his family had ever known where to find things in his home, or touched him with such familiarity. Except for Shi Qingxuan.

Neither of them had mentioned any of the events of the last evening they had spent at the Palace of Wind and Water, for which Ming Yi was relieved, but his skin prickled when some of Shi Qingxuan’s loose hair brushed his forearm as he reached for something on the bedside table. At least Shi Qingxuan had come in his second-best form, so the memory wasn’t quite so palpable.

From now on, Ming Yi wouldn’t go along with that kind of transformation unless he had good reason. It was too distracting, too susceptible. It made it too easy to forget himself. To forget who they both were.

His gaze drifted away from Shi Qingxuan’s face to the plain but tasteful furnishings of the Earth Master Palace. It was decorated with belongings he’d selected over the years as the trappings of a god who didn’t exist. Early on, He Xuan had been careful to select things that were, essentially, in line with the person that he had been, because to withstand scrutiny, one should limit one’s lies to the necessary. What resulted was this place and this body: both empty houses, but occupied nonetheless. At times, it became too easy to live within that margin of pretense, but no longer.

“I can’t stay much more,” Shi Qingxuan eventually said, after he had already been at Ming Yi’s bedside for far longer than was necessary. “Ge wants me back before too long, and he’s still annoyed with me for all that stuff with Little Pei, so I’m trying not to cause trouble for a little bit.”

An idle consideration in the back of his mind was at the forefront of it again; Ming Yi considered whether there was any way that Shi Qingxuan’s eyes could someday be opened. He had yet to come against the edge of Shi Qingxuan’s trust, and he had certain qualities that most heavenly officials lacked, such as a sense of decency. It was out of the question to try and turn younger against elder, but if there was a chance, however small, that Shi Qingxuan could be made somewhat more… cooperative, then Ming Yi thought it was only reasonable to pursue it. Time was on his side.

“Leave, then.”

Shi Qingxuan’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, Ming-xiong, that’s no good. The more you tell me to leave, the more I want to stay.”

« Hey, Ming-xiong. Are you up? »

Obviously.

« Oh, you don’t know how happy I am to hear that. »

Awake doesn’t mean available.

« Sure, sure, whatever you say. But come over, will you? »

Now?

« As soon as you can. »

I don’t think I’ll be doing that.

« This is not the time to prove a point by deciding to be difficult! »

You have low standards for difficulty.

« You’re lucky I’m good-natured, because sometimes you are so annoying! »

He was already heading towards the front door of the Palace of the Earth Master, but Shi Qingxuan didn’t need to know that.

The attendants at the Palace of Wind and Water knew Ming Yi on sight, so no one questioned him, even at the late hour. On his way to Lord Wind Master’s quarters, Ming Yi could hear laughter coming from the other side of the palace. Several of the Water Master’s windows were lit up, and from the muffled echo of voices off of walls, he thought it was the Three Tumours, but the tone seemed unusually heightened, even for them.

Shi Qingxuan was not to be found in any of the usual rooms; Ming Yi eventually found her in her bedroom, sitting at the window seat with the panes open, drinking alone. He hadn’t expected to see her in her female form while her brother was home, so soon after the incident at the Mid-Autumn Festival, but Shi Wudu was preoccupied, so Ming Yi guessed that she was willing to take the risk.

“Ming-xiong! What took you so long!” Despite the chastizing tone, Shi Qingxuan patted the cushion beside her.

They didn’t usually sit so close together when Shi Qingxuan was the only one in female form, but Ming Yi didn’t want to draw attention to it, and there was no one else in sight, so after a moment, he followed her direction.

After he took a seat beside her, she turned away to stare into the moonlit palace garden.

“How many Heavenly Tribulations have you had? Just the one, right?”

He frowned. “Just one.”

“What was it like?”

It had been Ming Yi’s, the real one, and as thunder crashed and the skies lit up, He Xuan had watched and waited for the propitious moment.

“Like any other.”

“What about your ascension?”

Ming Yi pointedly took his first long sip of the wine she had poured him before he’d even arrived, and Shi Qingxuan sighed.

“I'll get it out of you one day, don’t think I won't.”

What a pair they made: two frauds, though only one bore the burden of knowing it. Shi Qingxuan had already forgotten her lesson, it seemed, about not prying.

Ming Yi set his empty cup back down on the window-ledge, but Shi Qingxuan didn’t move to refill it. She turned away from the view to meet Ming Yi’s eyes. Her movement brushed her warm forearm against his side, and he shifted imperceptibly away.

“Do you ever think about how lucky we are?”

“What?”

“It’s easy to forget, but then sometimes things will remind me. We’ve got a lot to lose, you know.” She huffed, embarrassed with her own seriousness. This degree of self-reflection was rare from her, and added to his sense of foreboding.

He was considering this when Shi Qingxuan coughed and said, “Ge is up for his third tribulation soon.”

Ming Yi’s vision went temporarily blank.

“Is he.”

He amended what he had thought earlier, about whose side time was on.

“I know I can’t bother him right now. It’s too distracting, not when he needs to focus!” She laughed, high and piercing. “It’s not like I’m nervous. He’s pretty amazing, so of course it’ll go well. But...”

Shi Qingxuan chewed her lip, and then nestled her head on his shoulder.

She generally treated his body as she liked, but this was a first. Ming Yi redoubled his efforts to prevent his frame from going rigid. Shi Qingxuan spoke, her voice muffled against his robes: “I know you and Ge don’t really get along, and it’s not like I’m happy about that or anything, but sometimes I think that half the time other officials hang out with me, it’s because they’re hoping I can get them in closer to Ge. But not you. That’s why you’re my best friend.”

Shi Qingxuan’s left hand found Ming Yi’s right, where it was clenched over his knee.

“Ming-xiong, it’ll be alright, won’t it? Tell me I’m being stupid, and it’ll be alright.”

Ming Yi rarely lied to Shi Qingxuan outright. Wherever possible, he gave her an appropriate portion of the truth. It wasn’t Ming Yi’s fault that she failed to consider any inconsistencies. Shi Qingxuan dreamed up the Ming Yi that she wanted to know, and then acted as though that was the one she faced in reality, no matter how harshly Ming Yi rebuffed her. Never once had Ming Yi asked her to stick around.

Her palm was hot against his knuckles.

“That depends on whether you can keep yourself together,” he replied, caustic even to his own ears, but she sighed with relief, slumped against his side.

Ming Yi turned his mind away from her to map out the necessary courses of action before him, but before he could get very far, Shi Qingxuan lifted her head to look up at him.

“Can we be girls together again? Only for a little bit. I just kind of want you to hold me.”

Ming Yi looked within for a reason to deny her now. What she found was nothing, all the way down.

When she stiffly embraced Shi Qingxuan, Ming Yi glanced away. Shi Qingxuan quickly burrowed in closer, wrapping her arms around Ming Yi’s waist. Warm puffs of damp air condensed against Ming Yi’s skin where Shi Qingxuan’s face came to rest on her shoulder.

Over Shi Qingxuan’s head, Ming Yi’s eyes bored into a mirror on the opposite wall. Lit only by a few candles and night pearls, Ming Yi’s features in this body, already on just this side of strange to her own eyes, looked gaunt and ravenous.

Eventually, Shi Qingxuan came back to herself enough to laugh, sheepishly, and shove Ming Yi back by the shoulders.

“You’re too strong. I thought you were going to squeeze me to death!”

Ming Yi felt a muscle jump in the side of her neck.

She had concealed things from Shi Qingxuan for hundreds of years. She ought to trust in her ability to continue. Even so, Shi Qingxuan bore a searching expression, and they were close enough to one another that Ming Yi saw her own dark shape reflected in the light playing on the black of Shi Qingxuan's eye.

Shi Qingxuan’s mouth parted, her lips pursing in an approach to speech, and then she blurted, “How are you always so pretty?”

The line of Ming Yi’s mouth tightened. She meant what she’d said the first time: she did look exactly like herself, in the sense that she wasn’t trying to look like anyone else. Shi Qingxuan made it sound like Ming Yi set out to do something on purpose.

Ming Yi would have heard a moth’s wings from the other side of the room. She was sure that, in life, she had never felt as though her desire would tear her open. Blood flowed through her veins with shocking urgency. If she didn’t know better, she could have forgotten she was dead.

Shi Qingxuan leaned in closer, and placed a hand on Ming Yi’s wrist. Her eyes were wide and unrepentant. “You want it, too, right? Even if you don’t say anything, I can tell you think about it too. But you’re waiting. You don’t have to hold back with me. You know that, right?”

Ming Yi took Shi Qingxuan’s face in one hand, gripping tight enough that Ming Yi’s fingertips dug into her flesh. This had the effect of squeezing her cheeks together, and when Shi Qingxuan’s brow furrowed and she protested, “Ming-xiong,” it made her look like some kind of absurd fish. Her hand dropped, and tiny red scythe-marks lingered on Shi Qingxuan’s perfect skin from Ming Yi’s nails. Shi Qingxuan’s eyes glimmered with silent laughter.

There were things, she thought, that Ming Yi could do, even if He Xuan wouldn’t.

With one hand, Ming Yi fumbled for the window shutter; the other pulled Shi Qingxuan into her lap by the front of her robes. Shi Qingxuan went “Oh!”, but planted her knees in the cushion on either side of Ming Yi’s hips before running her own hands up and down the length of Ming Yi’s torso. Ming Yi hadn’t imagined that someone else’s weight bearing down on her would make her feel lightheaded.

If she hadn’t already known, the way that Shi Qingxuan kissed her told Ming Yi that Shi Qingxuan was scared to be alone. She had little finesse, her lips searching and restless, and she held Ming Yi in place with a hand on each side of her face. Her body rocked against Ming Yi in slow waves, together and then away, lifting herself up and then resting back down against Ming Yi’s thighs. Ming Yi gripped her waist, not to slow her down or speed her up, but to feel the squishiness of the flesh under Shi Qingxuan’s clothes. She had always suspected that Shi Qingxuan would give herself a body like that — soft and welcoming to touch. A body with no greater purpose than looking beautiful and having fun.

Minutes later, Shi Qingxuan broke away to lean back as far as Ming Yi would let her. Ming Yi’s nails snagged in the fine baby hairs over Shi Qingxuan’s nape. Shi Qingxuan was out of breath and a trifle sticky; she pushed some flyaways back off of her face. “You’re too much, you know. Always stoic, and then…”

“Stop talking,” Ming Yi said, and then pulled her close to bite down hard on Shi Qingxuan’s bottom lip. Shi Qingxuan gasped, and Ming Yi tried to lick the sound out of her mouth.

Before long, however, Shi Qingxuan pushed herself away again, giggling, “Hold on—you have to let me go—”

Shi Qingxuan smacked Ming Yi’s hand off her hip, and then crossed the room to her sumptuously curtained bed, which she flounced onto ungracefully before arranging herself cross-legged, facing Ming Yi, and beginning to take her hair down. She paused in the middle of removing her earrings to dart a look in Ming Yi’s direction that was both mischievous and shy. If Ming Yi didn’t know her so well, she wouldn’t have recognized the latter expression.

“It’ll be better over here. And this way Ming-xiong can take some time to decide what she wants to do, hmm?”

Ming Yi was too preoccupied to reply. She thought that she could continue what they had been doing for hours without feeling satiated, but her body was impatiently calling out for escalation, though she had only a theoretical understanding of what that would entail. Hands folded behind her back, she slowly rose to her feet, but didn’t take a step. Shi Qingxuan glanced at Ming Yi, bashful, and then her eyes darted back to an unremarkable spot on the far wall as she reached down to the belted sash at her waist and began to tug—

Without any conscious thought, Ming Yi crossed the room in three strides. She was kneeling on the edge of the bed, and then kneeling between Shi Qingxuan’s thighs, and then staring down at Shi Qingxuan, on her back beneath Ming Yi, as Shi Qingxuan first squealed like a toppled little pig, and then laughed.

Shi Qingxuan had hardly made progress on undressing herself when Ming Yi had pushed her down, so Ming Yi fought to steady her hands as she made short work of the sashes around Shi Qingxuan’s waist. She was not gentle as she pulled Shi Qingxuan’s robes apart at the collar; when her exposed skin hit the low light, Ming Yi could make out lines that her fingernails had scraped just below Shi Qingxuan’s collarbone, above her breasts.

She didn’t dwell on any one part of Shi Qingxuan’s body until the last of her clothes had been tossed over the side of the bed. Shi Qingxuan pushed herself up by her elbows to look up at Ming Yi, who still knelt, looming, between her legs; she made an unflattering pout and tugged at Ming Yi’s sleeve. “What, I don’t get to see you? Jiejie is too cruel.”

Ming Yi was starting to feel uncomfortably warm, but didn’t want to slow down for long enough to get undressed. Rather than indulge any of Shi Qingxuan’s babbling, Ming Yi pushed her own hair back over her shoulders, pushed up her sleeves, held Shi Qingxuan down by a hand on the clavicle, and then lowered her head to bite into the inner curve of her right breast.

Shi Qingxuan gasped. Her legs twitched as she ground against Ming Yi’s hipbone, trying to find a rigid surface. Even though clothes, Ming Yi could feel that she was wet.

Ming Yi released her bite to lick over the angry flesh, and then she moved down to the underside of the same breast. Her left hand squeezed the other one, alternating gentle and firm. Shi Qingxuan’s hands were in her hair, petting, running her fingers through it, holding it out of Ming Yi’s way. Ming Yi’s right hand, on Shi Qingxuan’s clavicle, migrated up to the base of her throat, but her grip was no longer tight. Ming Yi just wanted to feel her pulse.

When Ming Yi pulled back, kneeling upright between her legs, Shi Qingxuan went still for a moment, and then wriggled impatiently.

“You can keep it up, even though it does hurt... You’re too strong, you know that?”

Red splotches were forming on her skin in the shape of Ming Yi's fingers and teeth. Her hair and face were unsalvageable. Ming Yi wanted to kiss her again, harder this time, until Shi Qingxuan was limp and breathless.

She did not. What Ming Yi did was trail two fingers over the space between Shi Qingxuan’s legs. Shi Qingxuan was soaked and burning hot, and she shook at the touch.

Ming Yi brought her fingers to her mouth. Shi Qingxuan tasted like salt and a tangy vitality.

“Don’t tease me—”

“Who’s teasing?”

Ming Yi looked down at Shi Qingxuan with what she hoped was enough disdain to quell further incessant commentary, but Shi Qingxuan shivered, smiled lopsidedly, and then drummed her fists against the bedspread. “Then come on—”

Ming Yi had reached the end of her patience. She pulled Shi Qingxuan closer by a firm grip on her legs, backed up enough to lay down on her own front, and sunk her teeth into Shi Qingxuan’s inner thigh. Shi Qingxuan cried out, sounding almost distressed but for the way her limbs melted into the bed.

She wasn’t sure how long she spent with her head and hand between Shi Qingxuan’s legs. It might have been hours. Shi Qingxuan quaked against her tongue, and the ease with which her body opened up on her fingers defied logic. A renegade part of Ming Yi's mind put forth the question of just how much of her hand she could fit inside, if she tried. The thought made her faint.

Shi Qingxuan came three times before she pulled Ming Yi up and away with one hand on Ming Yi’s upper arm and the other in her hair. The yanking sent a ticklish ribbon of sensation down Ming Yi’s spine, from the base of her neck to her cunt.

When their faces were roughly level, Shi Qingxuan pressed her lips against the corner of Ming Yi’s mouth, hard and clumsy, and then murmured, “Doesn’t it feel so good like this?”

Ming Yi thought she knew what Shi Qingxuan was referring to, but wasn’t sure. It all felt good. It was hard to imagine it feeling any less, now that they were finally doing this—and Ming Yi ought to slap herself for a thought like that.

It was good, in a way, that Ming Yi’s hand was being forced into bringing things to a close; there wouldn’t be time for the consequences of this rashness to be felt.

She pulled out of Shi Qingxuan’s embrace enough to sit astride one of Shi Qingxuan’s thighs and push up Shi Qingxuan’s other knee. This way, there was enough of the tender skin of her inner thigh exposed for Ming Yi to deliver a loud, open-palmed smack to her inner thigh. This produced a shocked gasp and more frantic wriggling, so Ming Yi slapped her again. Her palmprint lingered like a brand.

Shi Qingxuan brought her hands up to cover her face, but her eyes were peeking between spread fingers with one part nervousness to two parts glee. If Ming Yi didn't already know, this would have tipped her off to the fact that Shi Qingxuan had never known real consequences for anything.

She had tried her best, but Ming Yi’s own desire had become too demanding to be ignored any longer. Ming Yi let go of Shi Qingxuan, leaned back, and begun to free herself of her clothes. The knot on the belt at her waist came undone quickly, and she let it fall away onto the sheets. She rid herself of trousers and constricting undergarments, but didn’t bother to remove her robes, instead leaving them hanging open at her sides. Shi Qingxuan’s eyes were full moons, and though she had been boneless a moment ago, she struggled to get up, to come closer to Ming Yi, until Ming Yi pushed her back down, straddled her thigh again, and grabbed Shi Qingxuan’s left wrist.

Ming Yi held Shi Qingxuan’s hand in place and angled the heel of Shi Qingxuan’s palm so that every motion Ming Yi made above her brought her clit grinding over its surface. The pressure had Ming Yi’s heartbeat funneling through her chest into her abdomen, until all the blood in her body may as well have been in her cunt. She was dripping wet to the point it was impractical, sliding against Shi Qingxuan’s hand with less precision than Ming Yi would have preferred, but her hips hitched forcefully to make up for it.

Her own thighs were taut with strength; Ming Yi wasn't often made aware of the particularities of muscle shifting beneath her skin, but it wasn’t an unpleasant observation. To what degree she had consciously designed any aspect of this form, it was that she had wanted to appear, if anything, less approachable than Ming Yi already was as a man. With Shi Qingxuan as the notable exception, she thought that the effort was successful; this body felt supple, powerful, and full of submerged animus.

Shi Qingxuan watched Ming Yi with luminous fascination. She looked a catastrophe; her lips were flushed and bitten, and her body was similarly bruised with evidence of Ming Yi's appetite. Despite the mess she was making of Shi Qingxuan's hand and the moderate damage done to her own appearance earlier, Ming Yi's cunt fluttered at the contrast between them. Her breathing was heavy and her lips had parted, but she had otherwise maintained control of her expression.

Shi Qingxuan passed her free hand under the layers of Ming Yi’s robes, where they hung open by her sides. It landed softly just below Ming Yi’s right asscheek, and then moved upwards, feeling the contours of her haunches, her hip, the curve of her waist, until finally arriving at the swell of Ming Yi’s breast. Shi Qingxuan’s touch wasn’t hesitant, but it was gentle in a way that Shi Qingxuan rarely was; Ming Yi couldn’t think of a time this body had been so carefully handled. Two of Shi Qingxuan’s fingers toyed with Ming Yi’s nipple, and Ming Yi remembered how she had fought not to envision Shi Qingxuan doing this to her, that time that Ming Yi had attempted to learn how her body could work. Just as she’d imagined then, Shi Qingxuan felt her breast with an unselfconscious curiosity, and when she begun to roll Ming Yi’s nipple in tight circles between fingertip and thumb, Ming Yi’s core tightened.

“What do you need?” Shi Qingxuan whispered, and Ming Yi fucked herself desperately on her hand. The grip she had on Shi Qingxuan’s wrist ought to cut off circulation. “Oh, you’re, like, the prettiest person I’ve ever seen, you feel so good. Just tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you. ”

She could feel herself clenching on emptiness not once, but again and again, in devastating waves of sensation that washed from her cunt to her fingers and toes. It went on for longer than she’d imagined possible. She felt her own slickness running down the inside of her leg and sweat beading on her hairline, dripping down the small of her back, pooling under her breasts.

When her breath stopped coming as the panting of a frantic animal, she let Shi Qingxuan’s wrist go. “Can you go again?”

“I don’t know?” Shi Qingxuan met her eyes, and Ming Yi could make out her blush even in the near-dark. “Maybe? I think so? Let’s try!”

Ming Yi got down off of Shi Qingxuan’s thigh, pushed Shi Qingxuan’s legs apart, and smacked her swollen clit hard with the flat of three fingers. Shi Qingxuan gasped and flinched. Her arms flew up to Ming Yi’s back, but she didn’t push her away, just clung to her like a drowning woman to a rock at sea.

By the time Ming Yi had brought her over the peak a fourth time, Shi Qingxuan was crying from overstimulation. Ming Yi wanted to lick up Shi Qingxuan’s tears with a fervour she usually associated exclusively with hatred, but before she had the chance, Shi Qingxuan lifted her own shaking fingers and began to wipe her cheeks. She kept having to stop because she was laughing too hard, and when she saw Ming Yi’s stony expression, Shi Qingxuan covered her face with her hands, her shoulders quivering.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Ming-xiong,” she said between giggles, “Has anyone ever told you that you have a really scary face?”

Shi Qingxuan wanted to hold her, afterward. Ming Yi didn’t fight this too hard, because it meant that Ming Yi didn’t have to look at Shi Qingxuan.

They lay on their sides, Shi Qingxuan’s chest pressed up against Ming Yi's back. An unsteady finger swirled patterns on Ming Yi’s midriff. Shi Qingxuan was quiet for a long time, but eventually her hand spread out flat on Ming Yi’s stomach.

“I wish I knew you back then.”

Ming Yi thought, I wish I never met you.

She lifted her head off of the pillow just enough to make her voice heard: “What?”

When she spoke, Shi Qingxuan’s lips dragged across Ming Yi’s nape. It muffled her voice, but Ming Yi could still make out her words.

“When you came to heaven. I bet when you ascended it was really beautiful.”

Ming Yi took a deep breath in, and then out. Taking refuge in a pair of illusory lungs.

“You had your own. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

“I don’t believe that. My brother’s was a lot cooler than mine.”

“Life isn’t fair, is it.”

Clarity was setting in at last, and she felt satisfaction to the point of sickness, like a tick glutted on blood. Before laying down, Ming Yi had finally gotten too hot to stay clothed, so with every breath Shi Qingxuan took, her soft breasts pressed into Ming Yi’s bare back. Ming Yi shifted, and one of Shi Qingxuan’s sweaty knees gently pushed in between Ming Yi’s thighs; Ming Yi didn’t think she was trying to fuck again, but couldn’t be sure. The end result was the same, with Ming Yi trapped further in Shi Qingxuan’s stifling embrace.

If Ming Yi sifted deep enough through the midden of ghosts she’d swallowed, she could unearth the shade of a memory of the scraps of Shi Qingxuan’s despair that the Reverend of Empty Words was able to get from her. They were just as tender and delicious as one would expect—vastly more so than what the creature was able to get from He Xuan, which was gamey and unsatisfying. She knew what her own suffering tasted like, because she had absorbed it back into herself when she fed on the thing that had fed on her so many years ago. She wished that it had been clever enough not to be fooled by the Shi family’s cheap tricks, that it could have sucked Shi Qingxuan’s sweet young soul dry and moved on to the next. He Xuan could have gone her whole life without having had to—

She gripped Shi Qingxuan’s forearm with the points of her nails, preparing to extricate herself, but Shi Qingxuan sighed and squeezed her arm tighter around Ming Yi’s middle. It was the thing Ming Yi hated the most about her: her stubborn refusal to take a hint. Why believe that something meant her harm when it could be interpreted as benign?

“Don’t go back to your palace yet, Ming-xiong. You’re really warm.”

That warmth was illusory, too, and she couldn’t imagine that Shi Qingxuan would be so eager to cuddle with a corpse. That was Ming Yi’s consolation as they lay together in the dark: there would come a day, sooner than she had reckoned, when she would no longer have to maintain this farce. Ming Yi would be relegated to infamous memory. Shi Qingxuan would know herself for a fool. And He Xuan would know herself for…

Shi Qingxuan yawned, disrupting the path of her thoughts. Ming Yi resigned herself to not being able to extract herself from Shi Qingxuan’s arms for now. That was acceptable. She still had a little time. But tomorrow, there was work to do. Pieces to set in place. Conquered spirits to puppet. Spoiled little girls to frighten.

Ming Yi released her fingernails where they still dug into Shi Qingxuan’s arm. As an afterthought, she smoothed her thumb over the marks left behind, willing them to fade.