Nie Huaisang looks at him. ‘You are confusing me, Clan Leader Jiang, perhaps I misunderstand, but…’ ‘You didn’t misunderstand. You don’t misunderstand. You understand all of it.’ For six months Jiang Cheng has been mulling this over, and now with Nie Huaisang in front of him he can’t figure out if he most wants to knock him down or kneel at his feet. What he does is try and breathe. Clench his hands at his sides. ‘And now I am going to ask you to do something for me. You have to do something for me. You have to help Jin Ling.’

Lurking behind covered windows after curfew, all three of them are well on their way to passably drunk when Nie Huaisang lays his current volume down on the table, scattering peanut shells, and sighs. “I wonder what it would be like,” he muses, and Jiang Cheng obligingly makes an inquisitive sound and looks over. The book is open to a woodcut image of a man with a woman bent over his lap, her mouth around him, both of them looking as if they’re enjoying themselves immensely.

“I would still like to be kissed,” Wangji says, and his hand is very hot on Lan Xichen’s cheek. Perhaps one of them has a fever, or they both do. He opens his mouth to ask if they should open the window for some cool air. His brother kisses him as if that is what Lan Xichen had intended. He will not be sure, later, whether it was.