The Chained Ghost
As usual, Wei Wuxian’s ducks, or rather in this case it was his hundred ducklings, were not in a row.
He’d only managed to squeeze in one terrifying week of boggart training before end of term exams hit, and everyone involved with Defense Against the Dark Arts was dealing with either first degree or secondhand PTSD. Janice Evergreen, the school’s nurse, was passing out hot chocolate and greek yogurt like candy—the first to stave off fear-induced chills and the second to suppress the effects of Wei Wuxian’s homebrew remedy for the yin chills. (It was his infamous Red Congee, of course. Really good for just about any time anyone needed a boost of yang energy! And he had tried to not bother Nurse Evergreen too much, seeing as she was waddling around with an especially salty attitude that he would do such a thing in her last few weeks before going on maternity leave.)
So the end of term exams and related sports ventures were a whirlwind for him as much as they were for his students—except he had to grade all the exams. Fortunately, most of them were practical, and he put more weight into daily coursework and participation than he did on the final tests, so he saved himself a little, but clearly not enough.
However, Friday finally and blessedly arrived with some extra snow dusting the castle grounds and making the Great Hall feel exceptionally cozy. Kara Silvers, the charms professor who apparently moonlighted as the chief interior decorator, had hung twinkling garlands along the eaves, and hanging from the staircase railings were sparkling unmeltable, unbreakable icicles. The students seemed to especially enjoy the frosty sprigs of mistletoe hung on various semi-sneaky locations, tied up with velvety, cranberry-colored ribbon.
He was admiring one such sprig with Kara, when a gaggle of dramatic, gossipy fourteen year olds stopped and openly stared at them.
“Oh my god, Professor Wei,” Ursula Tadpole gasped, throwing a hand to her neck as if she were clutching her non-existent pearls. “Again with you and ProfessorSilvers?”
“Cringe,” Krystal Ball said beside her, making a face. Walter Melon just frowned, his green eyes flicking between Wei Wuxian, Kara Silvers, and the mistletoe. Beside him, fifth year Jordan Parker started to grow a terribly devilish grin. It was the kind of grin that rumors grew from.
Wei Wuxian, adult that he was, made a face right back. “You’d better not be bullying me before I’ve graded your final exams,” he retorted, crossing his arms across his chest.
Ursula shook her head and looked past him. “Just, um, Professor Silvers? You can do better.”
Wei Wuxian made a little strangled noise of shock as his mouth dropped open, and Kara just raised one eyebrow at the teens. Jordan’s facial expression appeared straight out of that meme with Leonardo DiCaprio toasting to white supremacy or whatever, and Walter elbowed her as his own shit-eating grin started forming.
“Ohhhh, so you think Professor Wei and I are dating now? Because we’re standing near the mistletoe?” Kara asked, suppressing a laugh.
“They probably want us to leave so they can make out,” Krystal suggested with a smirk.
“Double cringe,” Ursula agreed.
It was at this moment the fifth year Gryffindor boys loudly passed by the hallway. “HE’S GAAAAAAY,” Blake Gilmore, eldest son of the Herbology teacher shouted directly in Ursula’s ear. Jared and Jimmy, his sidekicks in good-natured crime, high-fived and Jared added, “And totally married, so go do your weird Slytherin thing to someone else.”
The boys didn’t even slow down, jostling each other through the hallway and holding out their fists as they passed Wei Wuxian so he could… fist bump them, which he did, both awkwardly and somewhat reluctantly. “Have a good break, bro!” Blake shouted and Wei Wuxian frowned but the boys were already tackling each other dangerously close to the staircase before he could so much as open his mouth to remind them he was definitely not their bro.
“Well, thank you very much for the advice, Miss Tadpole,” Kara said dryly, staring at the group that remained, and then began waving at them, even though they hadn’t moved other than to flinch at the shouting boys.
They just shook their heads again, Krystal whispering something under her breath as Ursula rubbed at her ear and then dragged her bestie off. Walter was peering at Wei Wuxian as if trying to decode him.
“We’re not with them,” Jordan explained, as if that really explained anything. He had figured as much anyway—although all the kids had been sorted into the same House, Jordan was in a different year than the other girls and he knew Walter didn’t think very highly of the rest of his year.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize we were holding up the line,” Kara teased the pair with a laugh. Though with that kind of prankster’s attitude, perhaps Wei Wuxian really could have kissed her!
Jordan laughed, “Oh please, that’s funny. Obviously not,” even as Walter looked a little bit like a rabbit caught in the eye line of a fox. He chirped out a laugh and Wei Wuxian felt a familiar pang of pity for the boy.
Ah, to be fifteen and pining for your oblivious best friend…. Not that Wei Wuxian would know about that personally, of course, having been the oblivious best friend.
“But for reals, you two gonna go somewhere or do you just like standing under the mistletoe? Are you chaperoning it or something? I mean, sure, it’s festive, but like, no need to be weird about it,” Jordan continued, and the more she spoke the weirder she made it.
“For the record, I’m an adult and I can kiss whoever I want,” Wei Wuxian grumped.
Kara snorted.
“Okay, no actually, I’m very married and I can not kiss whoever I want,” he backpedaled immediately in guilt as he turned to look directly at Kara as she laughed at him. “But it really is cute! I wish we’d had these kinds of traditions when I was young.”
“Wait, so you’ve never kissed someone under the mistletoe?” Jordan asked, her tone implying that his lack of mistletoe-induced kissing would make him completely lose what little face he had.
Wei Wuxian stuck out his tongue. “Well have you?” And Kara snorted again as Jordan’s grin turned a little red and Walter now looked rather alarmed. “Maybe we’ll leave you both to it?” he teased, grabbing Kara by the arm and spinning them away. “We won’t even look—leave you both to your privacy and all!”
Kara was cackling as he dragged her down the hallway.
“I’ve never seen Jordan so flustered,” she was saying, “it’s truly a Christmas miracle!”
Wei Wuxian glanced over his shoulder to see if indeed Walter had plucked up some courage, but instead saw that Jordan was apparently recording a video of him arm-in-arm with Kara. He made a dumb face for the camera but figured it wasn’t worth it for anyone to get provoked further.
“She’d better not post that,” he said with a sigh, and Kara tried to struggle free of his arm.
“She’s recording us?”
Wei Wuxian clung tighter to Kara’s arm. “No! Don’t run away! That just makes you look guilty! Or maybe, uh, makes me look desperate….” He frowned slightly, letting Kara have her arm back as she straightened her robes and rolled her eyes at him. “I guess as long as it doesn’t get posted where Lan Zhan sees it….”
Kara raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you said it was a closed network at Hogwarts?”
He nodded. “It is. But Jordan leaves for break tomorrow morning. Remember in the real world, people have this thing called the internet….” he intoned dryly.
Kara smacked him. “You’re out for winter break, too, right?”
He nodded. “As you can see by the way these kids are treating me, I desperately need a vacation,” he complained. But it wasn’t really a complaint. He actually really liked being a teacher at Hogwarts, and he liked his students—even the fourth years annoying ones!
“We both know they only tease you because they like you,” she reassured, and then, much more characteristically added, “and because you’re just so damn easy to tease.”
He pouted at her. “All my friends are against me! Am I going to have the worst Christmas ever?”
“Wuxian, do you even celebrate Christmas?” she asked with a laugh.
“Haha, no.” He shrugged. “I mean, sure I do, in a non-Christian way? I spend time with Lan Zhan and we give each other gifts. Last year he tried to give me a donkey, and it was cute, because in China we give apples at Christmas and I used to have a donkey named Little Apple, so actually Lan Zhan was being very cute and thoughtful and very funny, which are all things I like, but what was I supposed to do with a donkey?”
He spun to turn back to face Kara, who had stopped walking.
“Just… how are you even possible?” she laughed, doubling over. “I’d question why you had a donkey previously in your life but on the other hand, it maybe explains something about you.” She paused in her laughter, shook her head, and then asked, “But what did you used to do with your donkey? And what does a regular person do with a donkey?”
He pressed his lips together sheepishly. “Uh, well, I mean, I rode it? Or had it carry my things? Which is what people do with donkeys. Little Apple was kind of mean most of the time, honestly, but for the kids that didn’t like the rabbits, it was nice to have a mean-spirited old donkey around I guess?”
Kara just laughed harder at this information, until Wei Wuxian just threw up his hands and had to walk away.
“You are the dumbest smart person I’ve ever met,” she said breathlessly when she caught up with him.
“I won’t say thank you because even I can tell that’s not a compliment!” he sniffed.
“Yeah, obviously,” She waved off his fake hurt feelings, and changed the subject. “So, you and your husband are headed back to China for the break?”
He shook his head, a real grin settling onto his face. “No, we got an invite to go on a little tour in Scandinavia. Lan Zhan has some kind of political dinner, and then we’re gonna go take a train up to where it’s dark all the time to look for reindeer and little gnomes or something.” Finally! A real vacation! His very belated honeymoon trip around the world with Lan Zhan had begun with a stop in Europe, and it was during their presumably brief stay in London that Lan Zhan had been approached by a fellow cultivator to step in as her replacement. Someone with a sense of responsibility that ran as deep as Lan Zhan would never say no to that, so he’d agreed to do it for a year while the outgoing cultivation ambassador headed to some conferences in America. Of course, they would be meeting up with her in Sweden, and Wei Wuxian could only imagine that the dinner in Stockholm would be akin to the politicking cultivation conferences of old that he generally more or less despised. But hopefully he could just sit next to his husband and enjoy some Swedish vintages?
A hectic evening of procrastination packing and trying to cling to his husband despite said husband’s desire to actually do some work later, the two cultivators arrived in Stockholm and were ushered into a very fancy limousine that drove them directly to their even fancier lodgings in some kind of royal Swedish hotel for visiting dignitaries and royal entourages.
And, for possibly the first time in Wei Wuxian’s life, the dinner with important political figures was not terrible. As it turned out, Jin Xinghuo had organized the entire party, and although the dress code was suffocatingly formal and the whole event took place within a palatial hall that seemed closer to a Disney movie than real life, it seemed the Jin cultivator had chosen the guest list with extreme care. In short, she’d left all the assholes out and somehow still allowed Wei Wuxian to attend as the esteemed Hanguang-jun’s plus one.
Even knowing he was a welcome addition, it was still a pleasant surprise to be introduced to a Swedish prince as Jin Xinghuo’s uncle—because she was, technically, little Jin Ling’s granddaughter, and he’d been a kind of uncle twice over to the boy. Whatever the relation she claimed to him, he didn’t really care as the mere fact that anyone would claim him as kin—especially through Jin Ling of all people—was still apt to give him warm fuzzies.
An hour into the cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and Wei Wuxian was certain that Jin Xinghuo and the Swedish prince were more than political acquaintances, and clearly more than friends, too. He whispered as much to Lan Zhan, to which his husband just mm’d in agreement and then let his eyes do that sparkly thing where Wei Wuxian knew that he was being messed with.
“Ugh, don’t tell me you already knew!” Wei Wuxian hissed, turning his smile back on a moment later as a waiter offered a pâté-smeared crostini from a silver platter. “Ah, tack,” he thanked the waiter in garbled Swedish. He nibbled at the snack and gestured with the ever-bubbling champagne in his other hand towards the Jin woman, dressed in a very sparkly golden gown.
“Jin Xinghuo spent five years in Sweden before moving to London. Her affection for Prince Johann is no secret, and building lasting ties with the Nordic wizards would greatly benefit the Jin right now.”
Wei Wuxian flashed his husband a sour look. “What do you mean ‘right now?’”
“The Lan focus on education and entertainment has provided us with stronger holdings abroad, but the Jin were hit hard by the Cultural Revolution,” Lan Zhan explained, switching to Mandarin to avoid being overheard by the waitstaff or any foreign officials. Wei Wuxian preferred his husband’s soft Gusu lilt to the harsher British English intonation, anyway. “Now that things have settled a bit more politically, and the Party is more lenient towards cultivator society acting with some of the independence of the old days, it’s a very good time to solidify bonds with magical societies in other nations. If Jin Xinghuo marries into the Swedish Second Family, it would likely offer the Jin Sect some protection against any future moves by the Party, as well as open up a clear avenue for cultural exchange.”
Wei Wuxian didn’t exactly like to follow politics anymore—what was the point in being immortal if one had to pay so much attention to which random person was in charge and where their sphere’s of influence settled? He preferred occasional juicy gossip to international intrigue—the former gave his imagination something to play with but the latter was frankly too much for his poor decrepit memory to keep track of. So he kept his response simple.
“Married?” he teased, placing his hands in front of himself and drumming his fingers against each other like a comic book villain. “You really think she’ll marry a non-cultivator? Ah, will there finally be an extravagant Jin wedding I can attend? She did call me Uncle, after all.”
Lan Zhan smiled at him, and moments later the waiter ushered them towards a cozy side room apparently just large enough to fit a grand table, high-backed chairs draped with plush furs, floor-standing silver candelabras with flickering amber flames, and of course scurrying waitstaff with an unending stash of wines.
There were nine different courses over the evening, and Wei Wuxian was comfortably tipsy by the time the main arrived, having started a silly game with a blond and blue-eyed server who seemed determined to keep his glass full despite Wei Wuxian’s best efforts to empty it.
On his left, he could lean comfortably into the crisp white fabric of Lan Zhan’s suit, which was unfairly beautiful with its subtle cloud patterns in an almost invisible silver thread. On his right was a Swedish noblewoman, attending the party with her fiancé, an Estonian wizard who kept peering over her to check Wei Wuxian’s glass with utmost respect. Duchess Anna was an excellent conversation partner when new dishes arrived at the table, as it seemed she had a very detailed understanding of her native cuisine and the Swedish royal chefs, but she was less fun in between courses as she had the tendency to steer the conversation towards the troubling influences of American and British-led politics. Even Wei Wuxian considered for a moment that no talking during meals might be preferable.
Fortunately, her fiancé recognized Wei Wuxian’s discomfort and managed to steer them towards a delightful conversation on birdwatching in various parts of the world.
“And of course, if you’re looking at the sky in the next week, you’ll want to keep an eye out for the reindeer,” the wizard said seriously. “They’re very rare but if you are headed up north to Santa’s village, there’s a good chance you can spot some of the flygande renar—the flying reindeer. You’ll see plenty of the flightless ones no matter where you go, but the magic deer are easy to spot if the aurora is behind them.”
Wei Wuxian blinked, digested a moment, and then nodded and promptly turned to interrupt Lan Zhan, where he was engrossed in a conversation with Prince Johann, Jin Xinghuo, and an elderly woman who he’d been told was a highly decorated Sámi shaman and clan matriarch.
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” he whispered, tugging at his husband’s sleeve until Lan Zhan finally looked at him. “Apparently there are flying reindeer this time of year and we can see them if we go to Santa’s village. Santa’s village.”
It was very important that he impress upon Lan Zhan that Santa was apparently real and so were his magical flying reindeer. He supposed it made sense that Santa Claus was a magical person, given the logistical impossibilities of his job, but he’d never really considered it until this very moment!
Lan Zhan’s brow furrowed for a moment. “Mm. You can confess your sins to Santa.”
Wei Wuxian frowned, leaning back in his seat. “I’m not sure that’s quite right….”
“It’s a little late for you to get off the naughty list otherwise,” Lan Zhan intoned mildly, before casually turning back to his prior conversation, leaving Wei Wuxian spluttering.
He whipped his head back around to Duchess Anna and her fiancé. “Where’s Santa’s village?” he demanded, trying to stave off the rising blush on his cheeks. He could blame it on the wine! Just a normal flush of alcohol! Not his horrible mean husband teasing him!
“Oh,” said Mattias, leaning back in his seat and cupping his hand around his mouth while he dropped his voice, as if that would keep his pretty fiancé from eavesdropping. “The Swedes will tell you he lives in Tomteland in Mora but most of the time he lives in Rovianemi—in the north of Finland. If you go tomorrow, you should be able to catch him before he heads to the Korvatunturi to load up the sleigh.”
Wei Wuxian nodded exuberantly and then leaned forward again, catching the bemused expression on Duchess Anna’s face. He gave her a lopsided grin. “He’s not just teasing me, right? There’s really a Santa Claus?”
Anna sighed in exasperation but nodded nonetheless. “Santa is the title for the head of the Claus family, but other than perpetuating the legends and fulfilling their Christmas duties, they’re not particularly forthcoming. Though they are all recognized as specializing in spatial magic and they have a secret method of scrying.”
Wei Wuxian continued nodding vigorously as their dishes were removed, only to have them replaced a moment later with yet another small plate of food. At least this one seemed to be dessert! He was already quite stuffed full of snacks and wine and roast birds and medicinal-tasting fish and possibly a whole loaf of rye bread.
“We’re definitely going to try to meet Santa then!” he announced gleefully, taking his tiny fork to nibble at the lime-green and pink marzipan-covered cake. “And see the flying reindeer.”
The cake was followed by stronger alcohol and coffee—things which Lan Zhan should know by now to not mix in his husband this late in the evening—and by the time they said their goodbyes to retire to their stupidly ritzy suite in the guest wing, Wei Wuxian was fiddling with the silver buttons of his husband’s jacket with very clear intentions.
But even after a delightful round with Lan Zhan on the fluffiest cloud-like bed he’d ever had the pleasure of burying his face in, he was still a bit wired. Staring at the squared ceiling tiles through the bed’s gauzy canopy was not conducive to rest, so he tucked the blankets around his sleeping husband, tossed another log on the coals of the bedroom’s fireplace, and threw on a robe to wander around their rooms until his restlessness was eased.
He tiptoed silently out of the bedroom, tucking the robe around himself tighter and circulating his qi to his toes to try to stave off the chill of the marble floors. It was beautiful, to be sure, that floor, but it was very cold in a palace in Sweden on a late December night! Moonlight speared through a gap in the heavy green curtains in their sitting room, catching sparkling dust motes before it lit the floor and draped across the back of a floral-patterned chaise like spilt silver.
It was very eye-catching, though Wei Wuxian also felt something stir at the edges of his consciousness. He padded towards the window, his breath puffing into the air as he approached. In the bedroom, the fire crackled comfortingly.
He frowned. It should not be this cold.
Wei Wuxian stepped towards the window, staring down from the second-story room into a serene, snow-covered courtyard below. Someone was walking down one of the straight, shoveled pathways, ignoring both the moonlight and the manicured blobs of frosted and potted trees. Something about the way the person moved seemed terribly familiar, and he had to suppress the urge to call out. He couldn’t see any details at this distance—was it someone he knew?
No, Wei Wuxian thought to himself as he watched the figure approach, not someone, but something.
He double-checked to make sure he was wearing underwear, tightened his robe, and opened the window. Shoes or at least socks would have been nice, but there was no time for that.
What was a ghost doing in the middle of the Swedish palace?
It was clear upon his landing in the courtyard why the ghost had seemed immediately familiar: it was covered in chains, and as soon as he’d opened the window he’d heard the iron clinking that had become so familiar from all of his adventures with his Ghost General Wen Ning.
But this, although definitely registering as a ghost to his cultivator’s senses, was definitely not his old friend. This ghost was taller, with an imposing presence, and was, now that it was fairly close, somewhat translucent in the harsh moonlight. This ghost was very much non-corporeal—a wizarding ghost.
Wei Wuxian shifted on his bare feet in the snow, arms wrapped around his thin robe. The only wizarding ghosts he knew were the Hogwarts ghosts, and the crew of the Vengaza del Cuervo, but all of them seemed to recognize his prowess in ghostly cultivation in some fashion. He sighed in consternation and gave a low whistle.
The shuffling chained ghost turned towards him immediately.
“My lord…” it croaked in what turned out to surprisingly be English.
Wei Wuxian sighed, and then shivered. “What are you doing out here?”
“I bring a warning, my lord,” said the ghost cryptically, wheezing and clanking its way towards Wei Wuxian, who was torn between wanting an adventure and wanting to rewarm himself under the covers with his husband.
“Warn away then,” he replied, hiding a teeth chatter behind a disarming smile. Wei Wuxian’s strange yet natural affinity for ghosts had only seemed to increase tenfold after his ascension to immortality, and wizarding ghosts appeared to be no exception to this rule. All of the ghosts at Hogwarts were friendly, if not downright deferential—though why they acted as such or how they knew of his innate talents remained a mystery to both himself and the ghosts. For Wei Wuxian, it was a constant source of confusion as to why they all seemed to naturally expect him to be some kind of nobility or refer to him as a lord.
As such was the case, Wei Wuxian felt very little danger in the presence of even this towering, Viking warrior of a ghost, wrapped in ominous chains and bearing tidings of a warning. He had found wizarding ghosts especially to be rather benign at worst, and more often incredibly fun and helpful.
“With these deathly eyes of mine, I have seen tidings of the future,” the ghost said in the pretty sing-song of a Swede speaking English. “Yuletide blessings can be counted only by a light that you do not carry. My lord, a great darkness follows you, and into darkness now you go. Seek peace, and light, and warmth will follow.”
Wei Wuxian frowned, trying to fluff his thin robe around himself. His feet were really getting quite cold and the ghost’s words were so obscure as to be very bland. Of course he was swathed in darkness, and it was midwinter in this very northern land. Everywhere was dark, and apparently the sun didn’t even rise this time of year in Rovianemi. “Is that meant to be a riddle?” he asked, sighing out a puff of air that fogged in the frosty moonlight.
The ghost’s black eyes bored into him balefully. “You must not let the darkness consume you, my lord. If you do, all will be lost! Take care, and remember this: when all that is before you is only your heavy shadow, the light is behind you.”
Wei Wuxian blinked, and then held his chin in his hand, tilting his head thoughtfully. “I’ll do my best,” he said after a moment. “But is this riddle really meant for me?” he asked curiously. “Do you even know who I am?”
The ghost nodded solemnly. “Only by these words to you may I be someday released from these chains.”
“Are they bothering you?” Wei Wuxian gestured towards the chains, which seemed to be black iron and quite heavy, except for the part where they were oddly translucent and semi-corporeal.
“I did not live a respectable life, my lord. I am thus burdened by the weight of my sins, and tasked with helping those I refused to help within my lifetime,” the ghost confessed, dropping his eyes mournfully towards the snowy ground.
“So…. you’ve come to me in hopes of lifting your curse?” Wei Wuxian hazarded, raising one eyebrow. The ghost didn’t look at him.
“Alright alright, I’ll see what I can do,” Wei Wuxian returned with a grin anyway. “You’re hoping to move on to the afterlife, right? Heaven or a cycle of reincarnation or whatever it is you’re into?”
The ghost took a wary step back. “My intention is to warn you, to atone for my sins, not beg your assistance.”
“Well maybe my way of avoiding this darkness is by providing you with assistance. Did you think of that?” Wei Wuxian countered with a mischievous gleam in his gray eyes.
“I… well… no, my lord. But… is that really… something you could do?”
“How long have you been wandering about?” Wei Wuxian asked curiously, now starting to walk an appraising circle around the chained ghost. He left softly crunching footprints through the snow, the bottom edge of his robe becoming damp.
“I know not, my lord. Perhaps ten years, perhaps a hundred.”
“Hm. Well,” the cultivator drawled alongside a lazy shrug, “it probably doesn’t matter.” Having been dead himself, Wei Wuxian was quite familiar with how the passage of time really didn’t make sense after death. Ghosts were terrible at timekeeping, especially the longer it had been since they were living. “I’ll get rid of your chains, but after that I think it’s up to you as to whether you linger here or move on, okay? And I don’t really want to come back later to perform a real exorcism, you understand?”
The ghosts nodded vigorously, his hair swinging across his shoulder.
Humming a little to himself, Wei Wuxian reached a hand out to grasp the chain that looped over the ghost’s right shoulder and wrapped around his wrist. The metal was colder than ice and rather heavy, but was indeed tangible to Wei Wuxian. The ghost gasped when Wei Wuxian gave a little tug on a black link.
Wei Wuxian grinned. He wasn’t called the Ghost Immortal without reason!
It was only a few minutes of struggling and maypole-like twisting to uncoil the long chains from the ghost until finally the massive spiritual chains lay on the ground in a dark, brooding heap. The ghost, freed from his burden, now floated gently into the air in wonder.
“I don’t believe it…” the ghost said, continuing to mutter to himself in what Wei Wuxian assumed was Swedish. He stared at his transparent hands and then at the cultivator who had freed him. “It was really so easy?”
Wei Wuxian shrugged, rolling his shoulders. “Those were pretty heavy! I’m not sure I’d call it easy!” He glanced down at the chains, wondering how he might collect them somehow rather than let them lay in the snow, and then gave the ghost a lopsided smile and a graceful bow with his palms cupped towards his chin. “You’re free to go now. I hope you find peace.”
“Thank you…” the ghost said, bowing his head and then simply floating up higher and higher against the stars, becoming more and more see-through as rose. The stars twinkled through him, and then the blue-green glow of the dancing aurora flashed and faded across the sky.
Shivering and cursing at the ice crystals forming at the edge of his robe and hair, Wei Wuxian picked up the heavy chains, slung them over his shoulder in a few loose coils, and dragged them back into his open window, heaving the length of it up through the window like he was hoisting a ship’s anchor, before finding an appropriate spirit trapping pouch and snugging the chains inside. Who knew what use they might have someday?
He crawled into bed to warm his frigid body against his husband’s toasty warm one, eliciting a terrible gasp and a very concerned and confused expression from Lan Zhan. He shushed any worried whispers with his cool lips, and before he knew it was removed from his frosted robe to be lovingly rubbed all over with very large, warm hands. By the time he was prepared for what Lan Zhan deemed “a necessary transfusion of yang energy,” Wei Wuxian was already flushed and overheated.
“Ok ok, that’s enough, have mercy on me,” he whined sleepily afterwards, snuggling into Lan Zhan’s chest. He could hear the rhythmic thumping of Lan Zhan’s heart right under his ear. Lan Zhan petted his back soothingly, and tucked the comforter up to his chin.
Wei Wuxian drifted off to sleep, wondering what the ghost really meant with his riddle.
Darkness? Consume him? How ridiculous!
Nothing of the sort could happen when he was safe in his Lightbearing Lord’s arms.