"I'll be home in a fortnight if that," Mimi promises, holding on to Lan Xichen with all her might.
"I will hold you to that promise," Lan Xichen winces a little at the fox spirit's strength, but that does not stop him from pressing his lips to hers.
Surprised at the public display of affection, Mimi wraps her arms around his neck like ivy and returns his kiss with ferocity. One night with him would never be enough. Had never been enough.
When the clan leader breaks them apart for breath, he cups her cheek, "You will have to think where you would like to go for our honeymoon."
"Honestly, once everything settles down after we come back, I would like nothing more than to spend time with you at the lake. We can relax with our cubs," Mimi nuzzles his nose with her own, and he returns it. "I should warn you, though. They are spending time with Daiyu's clan. Daiyu's aunties are spoiling them as we speak."
"They deserved to be spoiled," Lan Xichen grins, "but it will give us time to move their belongings to our residence. I wish for them to remain close."
"Me too," Mimi looks down at his robes, trying to memorize the feel of his arms around her.
The clan leader kisses her cheek, "Don't make me wait, Lady Gusu."
"I am going to need some time to get used to that," Mimi watches as her husband tenderly appraises her light blue robes, the Gusu sect symbol embroidered in the fabric around her shoulders.
He rests his new forehead ribbon against his old one that still adorned his new wife's brow.
"You guys are cute, but you also kind of make me want to puke," Qiaolian's cheery voice breaks through their bubble.
Qiaolian yelps as Daiyu smacks her in the arm, "They are newlyweds, let them be!"
Mimi pulls away apologetically, her hands still lingering in his long black hair.
"I think . . . when we get back, that I don't want to share you quite yet," Mimi whispers to him.
The clan leader's cheeks bloom with color, and Mimi gently strokes her claws across his warm skin.
"As I said," he breathes unevenly, "don't make me wait."
"You just got him! You don't want to break him," Qiaolian's voice came from nearby.
Mimi lets out a territorial growl at her sister before the clan leader hugs her close.
She breathes in the smell of mint off his clothes, "I really hate long goodbyes. Before I go," Mimi finally leans back to look him in the eyes, "I just want to say . . . that I love you. You don't have to tell me yet if you aren't ready, but I just needed to know that you know," Mimi kisses him on the lips, lingering only for a moment before finally pulling away from Lan Xichen. Mimi steps backward to join her sister and Daiyu.
"Just a fortnight," Mimi promises before Qiaolian impatiently pulls her and Daiyu into the shadows.
Lan Xichen touches his lips with his fingertips.
Appearing from the shadows, all Mimi can smell is blood. Qiaolian stumbles the few steps out of the shadows before Daiyu yanks her back.
"We don't know what's out there," Daiyu hisses. Mimi can tell she is petrified.
"We won't know until we find out," Mimi says, peeking through the trees.
They had appeared just behind the territory's boundary line. Mimi presses her claws to where she knew the protection barrier would be, but her hands pass through. The barrier is down.
"Can you tell how long the barrier has been down?" Mimi asks, pressing her hands into the dirt, trying to get a feel for the magic within the soil.
Scenting the air, Qiaolian shakes her head, "A few days, a week, possibly. The smell of the blood is blocking everything."
"This isn't good," Daiyu frets, fingering the numerous knives on her person.
"I say we go through the front door," Mimi steps over the territory line and breathes in the pine trees.
The smell brought her back to the night she killed Yuanjun. The pine scent headily mixed with the smell of his corpse. Fighting back nausea, Mimi treads through the forest, flanking her sister and Qiaolian. At least, she thought, she would not be alone this time.
Lost in her thoughts, she doesn't realize Qiaolian is looking at her oddly until her eldest sister's nose is pressed into her hair.
"What are you doing?" Mimi asks, decidedly against this new quirk of her sisters'.
Perplexed, Qiaolian does not answer, and the trio continues walking until they reach the koi pond. Mimi bends over, and dry heaves into a bush. Puking her guts out. The koi pond is filled to the brim with fingers and toes. The remaining koi were fighting each other for the best ones.
Fascinated, Daiyu bends over the pond to such an extent that Qiaolian keeps a hand hovered over her back.
When Mimi is done wiping vomit from her mouth, she finally takes a better look, "Are those . . . human?"
"Human and fox spirit," Qiaolian growls, "Look at the one koi with the butterfly pattern. Do you see what it's got in its mouth?"
Dry heaving Mimi looks away. The koi has half a fox paw in its mouth—a small one. Mimi follows her sister's gaze to Shen Castle; it had been reconstructed with more battlements than before. The bright colors on the flags were faded and torn.
Daiyu rubs her mate's back, pulling her from the koi pond.
"Look well, sister," Qiaolian says severely, "this is the madness of fox spirits that partake of human flesh and the flesh of our kind. This is why humans fear us so."
Mimi shivers and looks over at Daiyu, whose face is stony. Her eyes seemingly thousands of years away.
"Let's get this over with, Qiaolian," Mimi rubs her arms nervously.
The three slowly approach the house, but they need not had been as stealthy as they had been. When they reached the front door, there were no guards. Only sticky blood that had leaked from under the door.
Qiaolian hesitantly moves to push the door open, her nose twitching violently at the overpowering stench. Daiyu finally nudges her aside and kicks the door down.
Vomit creeps up her throat, but Mimi holds back as the smell barrels into her skin.
"I'll never be clean again," Daiyu says as they look upon the chaos of the front hall.
Not comprehending what she sees at first, Mimi thinks that the roof must have sprung a leak. The puddles on the floor were the color of rust. The ghosts about the front hall rolled and danced in the pools. Some were even licking delicately at the liquid.
It was not until Qiaolian systematically burned every ghost in the front hall that Mimi saw the shadows of feet hanging freely from the ceiling. Mimi dry heaved and refused to lift her eyes to see the dozens of figures, fox spirits, and humans alike hanging from the ceiling's wooden beams.
"We need to cut them down, Qiaolian," Daiyu breathes, unable to look away.
"Later," Qiaolian promises, her voice shaky as she tucks the petite woman into her side.
"Do you remember the rooms?" Qiaolian asks, and it took Mimi a moment to realize that Qiaolian is talking to her.
"I am sure I could. Where should we start?" Mimi does not look back as her mind forever remembers the hollow creaks of the ropes.
Summoning her foxfire, Qiaolian throws the globes into the air, and they disperse through the house looking for survivors, a brooch, or a mad man.
"I remember his office being down this hall," Mimi whispers, her voice sounding extremely loud. She refused to look down at what squishes beneath her feet.
Daiyu and Qiaolian follow Mimi down the winding halls. They systematically check every room before Qiaolian seals it permanently shut.
They reach the door to the office, and Mimi feels her heart beating like a thunderstorm. She reaches hesitantly for the doorknob but violently pulls back at the immediate stickiness. There is blood here too. Daiyu nudges her aside and once again kicks the door down.
The trio approaches the room cautiously, they quickly locate the figure of Lord Shen lying in a pool of blood behind his desk.
He laughs weakly, all his tails, but one had been neatly torn from his body. The last tail barely held on to him.
"Well, now. The prodigal daughters return to the fold," Lord Shen laughs haughtily.
"Why did you do this?" Mimi growls, brandishing her claws, Qiaolian doing the same beside her as Daiyu kept an eye on the room with all of her eyes.
"You tell me," Lord Shen says weakly, "I am here, enjoying a meal in my office. I press my knife into the fish's belly, ending its life. I swallow my first mouthful. But lo, my dead son appears before me on this desk!"
"That is not my fault," Mimi growls, not repentant for her actions, "Your son was going to roast my cub! It is eat, or be eaten in this world, is it not?"
"Where is the brooch?" Qiaolian growls, pulling on the last tail.
"What do you mean?" Lord Shen's eyes bugged out, "I kept it hidden. Can you not see how weak my body is from supporting these tasks?"
His eyes glint strangely as he stares at Mimi, "Did you think you could offend my wife and destroy this family without retaliation? Will you use The Reverent against me now?"
Mimi growls, her tasks splaying across her mind in a bloody mess. It became quite apparent that he didn't have it, "What I have done should have been done many years ago."
Tired of this, Qiaolian kneels before her father and cuts his head off.
Mimi doesn't realize she is crying until Daiyu enfolds her in her arms. It was enough just to be held.
"I don't want to listen to any more monsters," Qiaolian says, looking away from them before reducing the body to ash and stomping atop it.
"The Reverent is protected by magic. It would not be damaged by foxfire. I say we burn the manor to the ground and sift through the ashes. That would be the easiest way," Daiyu suggests.
"But first, let's go through the house and search for survivors," Mimi suggests, knowing her sister's foxfire spies had not returned yet.
The three move through the rest of the house, finally stopping at what Mimi remembers to be her mother's room. They push the unlocked door open and see their mother lying on her bed, reading a book.
"Mother," Qiaolian says softly.
Their mother looks up from her book, her eyes wary, and Mimi realizes in horror that her stomach is now flat. There is no baby to be seen.
"Is it done then?" she asks softly, not looking at Mimi or Daiyu as she glides across the floor to Qiaolian in her bare feet.
"Do you even know what he's done?" Mimi growls angrily as her mother looks at her for the first time.
She tilts her head and sniffs the air, a smile appearing on her pallid face, "I will pass this world to live with my kin in the south where the air is clean."
Before either of them could question her, she disappears into the shadows, never to return.
"It was mostly mother's kin that was slain downstairs," Qiaolian murmurs to the all too quiet room.
"Did you see Shun?" Mimi asks, her voice small, knowing she would be unable to look at the hanging figures.
"No," Qiaolian whispers, and Mimi feels herself being tugged against her side, "but I don't think he could have gotten extremely far. We are too late."
They stayed in a small inn for nearly a week before deciding to go with Daiyu's plan to burn the fortress to the ground. The inn is almost twenty miles away, but Mimi felt she could still smell the scent of blood and hear the ropes' rhythmic creak. True to her word, Qiaolian had cut down the bodies from the front hall and diligently buried them in a cemetery nearby. She had not asked for any help.
Mimi picks up the book her mother had been reading when they walked in. It was an anthology of romance stories. Mimi throws the text on the bed and enters the library with disgust. Mimi opens the satchel she is carrying and sets it on the floor. With a wave of her hand, every book in the library enters the sack. Mimi smiles. It would be an excellent addition to the Cloud Recesses library pavilion. She could not wait to show Lan Xichen. When the shelves were empty, Mimi quickly lifts the small satchel and places it securely in a pocket of her sleeve. With her task accomplished, Mimi curiously stares at the spotless shelves.
"It's hard to believe, huh."
Qiaolian steps into the room, and Mimi reaches out to hug her eldest sister. The older fox spirit had not been herself in the last week. Her mood was more thoughtful, and less likely to laugh.
"What's hard to believe?" Mimi asks, still holding on to her sister as if either of them would spontaneously combust.
"That she took more care of her hundreds of shelves than her own children," Qiaolian says, finally wrapping her arms around Mimi.
"I don't remember her very well," Mimi confesses, "I was out of the womb and shipped to live with countless nannies before I can even remember. She was beautiful then too. I remember her eyes, most of all."
Mimi looks up and sees the same pair of eyes. But she trusted this pair with all her life and the life of her cubs. The difference is remarkable.
"Do you feel like if we had gotten here, earlier things would have been different?" Mimi asks, the fingers in the pool still haunted her,
"I don't know," Qiaolian says, "possibly. But why think of that now. There is no changing it."
They stayed like that for a couple more minutes before Qiaolian drops the bomb.
"You smell weird," Qiaolian puts her nose on the top of her head, and Mimi finally swats at her.
"Everything smells weird here," Mimi heads for the door, and Qiaolian follows at her heels.
"No, I noticed it before. It was more subtle then. Now I know for sure," Qiaolian does a little jig, and Mimi begins to feel more and more unnerved by the stranger than normal behavior of her eldest sister.
Qiaolian moves around her and blocks the door. Mimi stares at her in disbelief.
Putting her hands on her hips, Mimi growls, "Okay, what do you want to tell me?"
"You have two scents!"
Had something downstairs attached itself to her without her knowing? Mimi wonders if it possible for a spirit to be possessed. That movie about the girl who had an exorcism floats through her mind, and Mimi feels like she will be ill.
"Look, I am tired. If something is attached to me, just let me know. I just want to get home," Mimi pauses. It was the first time she had referred to Cloud Recesses as home.
"Oh, something is attached to you, alright," Qiaolian is practically bouncing on her heels.
"I'm going to get Daiyu," Mimi finally says, trying to get around her sister.
"No, sorry, don't get Daiyu yet. I want to share this moment between us. I am just so excited," Qiaolian squirms before she repeats her previous words slowly, one syllable at a time, "You. Have. Two. Scents."
Mimi is about to argue with her once more about how unhelpful she is when the realization hits her like lightning, her jaw drops, "That is impossible."
Qiaolian squeals and hugs her sister tight, her fox tails wrapping around her protectively. Mimi can feel her snuffling her hair happily.
Still recovering from her shock, Mimi braces her head on her sister's shoulder. What the hell was she going to do now?