There is a woman in the Cloud Recesses. She lives in a house, deep within the trees, where fog curls across the ground from noon til night. There is a woman in the Cloud Recesses and she is a secret.
Jin Guangyao died with many secrets. Some he hid in himself, where no one could find them. Some he hid in the world, because they were too big to swallow. Some, he gave to Lan Xichen.
There is a house in the Cloud Recesses and it is where Lan Xichen goes when he needs advice. Not for him, not really. He goes for the woman who lives there, and who cannot see anyone else. For you see, the woman in the house is dead. Or, at least, she should be.
Lan Xichen is not sure if what he is doing is right. Is he protecting her or keeping her prisoner? Is she his mother and he his father or is this something entirely different. He does not love her, he does not think, and she has not borne him children. Is he his father?
There is a woman in the Cloud Recesses who was saved by a man who had killed her family and then protected by one who had fought it. Her jailer is honourable and does not hurt her. He tells her she can leave, but where would she go? The world hates her for who she is.
There is a woman who should be dead living in a house in the Cloud Recesses, deep in the trees, where the fog lies thick on the ground from morning to evening. No one knows she is there, aside from Lan Xichen.
Is it truly a lie, to keep such a secret? Is it so terrible to keep such a person alive, when all others want her dead? When Lan Xichen is in seclusion he visits her often. It's not breaking seclusion if the person is meant to be dead.
Lan Xichen bends many rules these days. Sometimes he wonders if he's pushed them so far that they have broken. Sometimes he wonders if he broke instead.
Sometimes he considers taking off his ribbon and leaving this place, becoming one more wandering, sectless warrior. Perhaps he would find the tentative peace his brother had known, before light returned to him. One evening, several months into his seclusion, he is taking tea with the woman and he tells her this. She asks him why he does not go. He turns this question over in his mind like a pebble.
'Lan Xichen,' she says, 'take me with you when you go.'
The Lan Sect do not know their sect leader is missing for days. His brother tells them not to look.
'Lan Xichen will return,' says Hanguang-jun, his face unreadable, set in stone.
The woman is resourceful, she points out many things that Lan Xichen would not have thought of himself. They trade their fine robes for sturdy, common fare, and start wearing their hair without the decoration that Xichen was accustomed to.
It was freeing, to answer to no one. They travelled wherever they wished, hunting and night hunting as they wished. It was simple. It was hard. Lan Xichen had never been more attuned to a warrior at his side. They fought together like they could read each other's mind.
It is a year later when they return to the Cloud Recesses, floating in on the night breeze like they had never been gone at all. She returns to her house, he goes to visit his brother.
Wei Wuxian is there. Lan Xichen is happy for them. He cannot help but wish he were not. His brother is happy, he wants to leave. His uncle asks him to stay.
They leave the next morning.
They avoid all the major sects, but they still run into people sometimes. The day they run into the Ghost General is the first time they fight.
He hunts on his own for a few months. It is different. He does not like it.
He returns home for his brother's wedding. Lan Wangji is radiant in red. Lan Xichen returns to wearing blue.
She finds him again, the Ghost General tagging at her heels and Lan Sizhui by his side. He apologises. For keeping everything from her, for not listening to her, for leaving.
She takes his hand. No one ever does that. 'That house in the Recesses, could I have left at any time?'
He blinks. 'I would not have stopped you.'
She smiles at him. 'I want to show my brother my home.'
There is a house in the Cloud Recesses, among the trees, coated in fog, and the woman who lives there is called Wen Qing.