Chapter Five: “Mine, In Every Way”

Morning light slipped through the high windows of the crimson mansion, delicate and golden, warming the silk sheets tangled around two bodies lying close together.

Xie Lian stirred slowly, eyes fluttering open to the sight of a bare chest, pale skin kissed with scars, rising and falling with soft, even breath.

Hua Cheng was still asleep.

The realization made something warm and soft bloom inside Xie Lian's chest. He allowed himself a moment—just one—to reach up and trace the edge of his jaw with featherlight fingers. The contrast between Hua Cheng's sharp features and his peaceful expression felt… unreal. So much power, and yet he looked like a man at peace, not a Ghost King.

Not a calamity. Not a soldier. Just his.

The memories from the night before came flooding in slowly. The first kiss. The quiet gasps. The pain, the tenderness. The way Hua Cheng had held him after—like something fragile, like something worth guarding even in sleep.

Xie Lian flushed down to his chest, turning away slightly.

His body still ached faintly in unfamiliar places. His limbs felt heavy but… right. Not bruised, not used. Just full. Like something inside him had shifted and was still settling into place.

"Running away already, gege?"

Hua Cheng's voice, low and warm with sleep, curled around him like smoke.

Xie Lian blinked, startled. "You were awake?"

"I woke up the moment you moved," Hua Cheng murmured, slipping a hand around Xie Lian's waist and pulling him close again. "Can't let my beloved escape after a night like that."

"Hua Cheng—" Xie Lian protested gently, but there was no real conviction behind it. His voice was too soft, his body too willing to melt into the embrace.

They lay there for a long while in silence, sharing body heat, fingers idly wandering over familiar skin now made unfamiliar by new meaning. There was no awkwardness. Only an odd kind of calm.

Xie Lian had expected to feel shy—maybe even guilty. But what he felt was something deeper.

Whole.

Eventually, he sat up, brushing his hair back, already disheveled beyond repair. "We should get dressed before—"

Before anything else could leave his mouth, the doors to the room burst open with all the grace of a thunderclap.

"YOUR HIGHNESS!"

Nan Feng stormed in, righteous fury in his every stride.

Fu Yao followed immediately after, arms crossed, eyes narrowed into sharp, gleaming knives. "Unbelievable. We turn our backs for one day—one day—and you let a ghost king defile—"

"Enough!" Xie Lian clutched the bedsheet instinctively to his chest, mortified. "W-what are you two doing barging into someone's private chambers?!"

Nan Feng's face was red for entirely different reasons now, and he immediately turned around, hand to his forehead as if trying to erase the mental image. "I—we thought you were missing!"

"You were missing!" Fu Yao snapped, clearly refusing to look anywhere but the ceiling. "You didn't leave the mansion all day, and when no one could find you this morning—"

"—we assumed you'd been kidnapped!" Nan Feng added.

"Which, in retrospect, might've been preferable!" Fu Yao snapped again, glaring daggers at Hua Cheng over his shoulder.

Hua Cheng, for his part, was calm as ever, reclining against the headboard with a sheet draped very strategically around his waist. His eye glinted with barely-contained amusement. "Good morning, gentlemen."

Nan Feng let out something between a growl and a strangled wheeze.

Xie Lian, still pink-faced and mortified, tried to compose himself. "Look, this… was not how I intended for you to find out, but… I'm not a child. I made a choice."

Fu Yao scoffed. "A poor one, clearly."

"Enough," Xie Lian said, quiet but firm. "He didn't take anything from me. I gave myself."

That shut them up. For a moment.

Nan Feng looked like he was going to faint.

Fu Yao exhaled through his nose. "So it's true, then."

"Yes."

"And your… virtue?" Fu Yao gestured vaguely with one hand, as if even mentioning it would smite him from the heavens.

Xie Lian gave him a flat look. "I said I gave it willingly. Why are you both acting like I was stolen from an altar?"

"Because you are an altar," Fu Yao snapped, voice rising. "You are the Crown Prince of Xianle, a god, and you—!"

"—deserve happiness," Hua Cheng finished smoothly, reaching over to take Xie Lian's hand and press a kiss to the knuckles. "Which, in case you missed it, I've been giving him for centuries."

Xie Lian flushed all over again but didn't pull his hand back.

Nan Feng looked like he had eaten an entire lemon. "This is… not proper."

"I've never been proper," Hua Cheng said with a lazy smile. "And Xie Lian doesn't need your approval."

Fu Yao opened his mouth again, but Xie Lian raised a hand, voice calm but sharp. "Enough. I appreciate your concern. But I am not a relic, and I am not ashamed."

There was silence after that.

Eventually, Nan Feng let out a long, deflated breath. "…I need tea."

"Strong tea," Fu Yao muttered.

They left without another word, closing the door behind them with a loud thud.

The silence that followed was filled with the sound of Hua Cheng laughing quietly, utterly unbothered. "They really thought I seduced you under the veil of night like a villain in a cautionary tale."

"You did seduce me," Xie Lian muttered, hiding half his face behind the blanket.

Hua Cheng leaned close, lips brushing the shell of his ear. "Then I'll take the title proudly, if it means waking up next to you."

Xie Lian rolled his eyes, but the smile tugging at his lips betrayed him.

Because for the first time in a long, long while… he felt no weight on his shoulders.

Only warmth. And love. And the quiet certainty that this was the beginning of something new.

To be continued