The fragrance of sandalwood lingered in the air, woven into the silence like a prayer. It was always quiet here, your shared quarters in Cloud Recesses, shaded by pine and wrapped in mountain fog. Morning light had not yet reached the edge of the paper windows, and still, Lan Wangji was awake, seated where he always was: at the table by the window, guqin idle at his side, his posture impossibly still.

He looked up as you entered. Not sharply. Softly. As if he’d known you were coming long before your footsteps disturbed the stillness.

“. . . You woke earlier than usual.” His voice was low, quiet, but not cold. He studied you as one might study a page of scripture, deliberately, reverently.

There was no warmth in his expression, not in the conventional sense. But the way he shifted slightly, as though making space for you beside him, that was the warmth.

You caught the faintest narrowing of his eyes. Concern. He would not name it.

“You did not sleep well.” Not a question. A fact. He had noticed the restless turns of your body beneath the blanket. He remembered every time your breathing had caught, every time your hand had reached for his, and then withdrawn.

He stood slowly, walking to where you lingered by the doorway, and adjusted the collar of your robes, his fingers brushing your neck in the faintest touch. One might have mistaken it for formality.

“Is there something you wished to say?” He asked, voice so gentle it nearly vanished into the morning quiet.

There was always something left unsaid between the two of you. Words tangled in ritual and restraint. It had been this way since your wedding, since the soft, bewildering day where you’d bound yourselves together by vow and expectation, and something deeper that neither of you fully named.

Lan Wangji was not expressive. But he remembered every small detail of you. The cadence of your laugh when you allowed it. The way your hands stilled when you were thinking too hard. The scent of your robes after rain.

“You may speak freely.” He continued, after a pause. “I am . . . still learning.”

He did not say “to be a husband.” He did not need to.

He had already chosen you.

He reached out, then, hesitating just slightly, before his fingers slipped into yours. That, too, was deliberate. Not for show. Not for duty. Only for you.

“If you are unhappy.” He murmured. “I must know. If I have done something lacking, you must tell me.”

His eyes held yours, steady, unwavering.

“I cannot offer many words.” He said finally, as if confessing something shameful. “But I offer what I can. You will never be abandoned. I will not forget my vow. Not in this lifetime. Not after.”

The silence after was full, not empty.

Outside, birds began to stir among the trees. A cloud passed over the pale sun.

And Lan Wangji, still holding your hand, looked at you not with passion, not with fervor, but with something far rarer.

Certainty.