Lies hung thicker than fog in the air around the docks when the navy sailed into Sutao's harbour.

The crowds wanted to hear that the Jade Sea was pacified, that the great ships would be the third wall around their beleaguered city, and the rock to finally break the demon Horde on. The sailors did their best to fill the ancient port with loud music and colourful banners. The multitudes cheered and applauded in response, agitated by the brush of military glory, the taste of victory after so many losses.

Xi, already giddy with anticipation, allowed the atmosphere to fool him into happiness.

I want to see him, he thought to Fenghuang who soared above the crowd like a golden kite. Even if it's just for a moment.

She let him join her mind without a word of protest.

As he searched the resplendent sailors for the familiar cast of shoulders and features -- had they been recruiting scores of men who looked like Minh into the navy on purpose to frustrate his efforts? -- her disposition became strained.

While I am human, let me do human things. There will be time to untangle what you and I are to one-another after my ascendance.

Yes. The grudging word changed nothing in her demeanour.

He turned her eyes back on the swirling crowd, zeroing in, and looking away, again and again, disappointed.

There. Another man with the rich skin tone like Minh's stretched up to take a flower from a child riding an old man's shoulders. The Imperial officer's robes did not go with Minh of his memories, but the face...

The moustache was gone, and Xi did not know the scar that took part of the ear and bit into the cheek, the side of the neck. He needed to know if it hurt -- Of course, it hurt, he upbraided himself -- and if he could take the pain away.

Yes, Xi recognized the face, despite the scar, despite the new lines, despite the deeper fold by the lips, but it was not enough. He no longer wanted to just see for himself that Minh had returned alive, he needed to hold him... that is if Minh would have him.

His story, his excuses, his doubts - Xi's went through them so many times.

There was no chance for letters: the best craftsmen of the Empire asked for eight months to build the Forge after seeing the schematics.

The Ageless Empress gave them three.

"A thousand men die to buy each day for your," she said to the crestfallen guildheads.

Emperor Tingkung's lips trembled precariously, but he added clearly enough, "Make sure everyone, down to the last apprentice know that."

Jealousy stabbed Xi in the gut when the Ageless Empress beamed at the boy. Here he was, her own flesh and blood, announcing his readiness to turn into a mystic creature to save the Empire, and she took it in stride, while a few rehearsed words from an eleven-year old's mouth... The Son of Heavens is an eleven years old orphan! Xi reminded himself with a renewed sense of shame.

Xi came to the site - a sacred lake nestled against the faery's Hill of the Five Seasons- before the first light, and worked each day long after the clumsiest apprentice left behind to clean after the day's work as punishment was done and gone.

There was no chance for letters, for visits. And for a while, Xi was not even sure if had the right to seek Minh's attention.

Today the victorious Fleet sailed into Sutao, and the Emperor declared three festive days, leading to the starting up of the Radiant Forge, the Imperial appeal for a dragon. Xi's work was done, he was free to do as he wished.

Are three days enough?

For years and years, Xi was trained to deal with how much longer a mage lived than the other humans. The fear of a too short life-span that preyed on him now, was unique to him, among the mages at least.

Fenghuang harrumphed in the back of his mind. The Ascendancy is not your end, it is your beginning... et cetera.

Instead of rehashing their argument, or even listening to it, Xi pushed through the jubilant crowd, using his elbows like a man with three days left to live and a lover to win.

From the bird's view, he had no concept of his immediate surroundings, just the awareness of where Minh was, and that he was moving towards him. Minh's eyes widening in surprise through the distorted bird-and-his vision clued Xi in that Minh noticed his approach.

Xi yanked himself free of the bond, just as Fenghuang whispered, good luck, human. He turned around in a circle, dizzy, nearly blind while his own eyes were taking over the looking.

Minh steadied him, then jerked his hand away from his shoulder. The corners of his brows tilted upwards, inviting Xi to say his piece.

"I missed you," Xi blurted out the first truth that popped into his head.

Minh's brows climbed even higher. "I see."

"I should have written, but there was no chance for letters."

Minh winced. "No, no... the word you've sent with the bird about returning alive from your mysterious errand was good. Your first letter, ah, it lasted me a while. I am not ready for another one yet."

It felt great to chat like this, but the time, the time! "Please, I do not have time for long preludes. I am missing two years that you've lived through--"

"Am I too old for you now?"

"No!" Xi touched the sleeve of that Imperial officer's robe, so incongruous on Minh. "I am still raw from our parting, and I love you."

Minh squinted at the summer sun. "Is not it too early in the day for talking about love, Xi?"

"Not a single day passes that I do not regret saying it, just as I regret every day not staying with you back then."

There must have been enough longing in his voice for Minh to crack up a smile. "We would have had fun. It would not have lasted long, but it would have been fun..."

The crowd jostled Xi so near Minh that he could have put his cheek on the other man's shoulder. He wanted to. Minh looked down into his eyes and asked quietly, "Then why had you disappeared 'beyond Understanding' the way your beloved Rustam Bei put it in the first place?"

How droll, Xi was once begging his mother to answer a similar question. One would have thought he'd prepare an answer it in advance, knowing that it would come up, knowing how badly one needed to hear an answer that washed away the doubts.

And he did not have it.

"I love you and I left," he confessed. That was the best he could do.

Minh's glance flattened, but he did not walk away. "What is it that we are celebrating today? I am not a scholar, but I am not fooled by the tales. If Celestials could have sent us a dragon, they would have done so a long time ago. Your ilk walks around looking like they'd swallowed a stinging jellyfish. Your magic bird took to giggling. It makes me uneasy."

Xi checked around to make sure nobody was listening, then whispered into Minh's ear, "We found a way for a mage to ascend to dragonhood. That is what is going to happen in three days at the Radiant Forge."

"A mage?" Minh did his sums in a blink of an eye. "You?"

Xi nodded.

This was where Minh would turn on his heel and storm away for good. Maybe this would be for the best, maybe---

Invisible to the jostling crowd, Minh's hand found his. The warmth spread out from the calloused palm over his softer skin. The energy he had never sensed in all his years of studying magic energies shot up through Xi.

"We should talk in private, Xi," Minh said after a moment of silence.

"If you do not mind staying with me... it is only an apprentice cell, but the city is overcrowded—"

"Sharing room and board with mages, I am overjoyed," Minh muttered, but Xi felt no frustration through their linked hands. Which reminded him that he had never explained his ability...

"Minh, I should tell you—"

"One thing at a time. We walk first, we talk later."

Xi smiled and curled his fingers around Minh's, enjoying the heady brew of emotions in secret for the time being.

His cell did not change since he'd left it this morning. In fact, it did not change in fifteen years, but with Minh inside it, he became aware of just how small it was and devoid of comforts. He walked through the palace chambers without once thinking about it, now that Minh filled it with his presence, he coughed to cover up his embarrassment.

"This is not much, I am sorry."

"I would not have found better," Minh said indifferently, dropping his bundled possessions on top of Xi's clothes chest. He walked to the wall that displayed the only decoration in the room, a pair of mounted butterfly swords forged from metal not found on Tiandi, darker than bronze. His hand reached for the blades, tried the edges.

"They made me think of you... of us." Xi hurried to explain. "When I thought we could never be together, I kept looking at them."

Minh put his hands behind his back, fingers locked so tight they whitened. "By rights, I should hate your melancholic guts."

Xi swallowed what felt like a pound of cold lead. "Do you?"

"No. Tell me about this dragon business."

He did. It was not easy to explain by the end, but he tried. "I am not a martyr, Minh. I only tapped the power I could grow into. Magic is my calling, the only thing I want to do. I had just found my family. All I want is to keep on living this way, see what comes out of it.

The war would not let me, as it would not let anyone else. Look at all those misplaced, remember those killed, think of those who haven't been born because of it.

Perhaps the demons are no worse than the human Emperors, but Yu was the mildest of the Blood, and he was forever terrified of himself, so..."

"So..." Minh patted Xi's bedmat. He appropriates it midway through the story.

Xi unglued himself from the window frame, coming to sit next to Minh, hands folded helplessly in his laps. "And so I shall ascend to dragonhood and safeguard the Empire. I will assure our ultimate victory."

"I could see it in you." Minh cupped his cheek. Xi now knew every little crease of his palm and looked forward to feeling it. "This crazy stuff of epic tales."

"Unlike the epic tales I will not end up as a fearsome dragon by day, and a perfect gentleman by night," Xi warned him, a bowstring tightening in his chest. "It is going to be hard on you."

The familiar amused quiver touched Minh's lips, though the scar changed the tick a little. "When was loving you easy?"

Thinking that, perhaps, Minh was right all along, and doing two things at once was a recipe for disaster, Xi ventured to capture the tempting upper lip between his.

It tasted salty and fresh, like the Jade Sea, the best thing on Tiandi as far as Xi was concerned. He slipped his mouth down to compare the lower lip to the upper, tasting everything he could reach.

Minh's heartbeat resonated in his mind, faster and faster, drowning out the confusion, the resentment, the amusement, the surprise and leaving the unmasked desire all on its own.

"I am empathic through touch," Xi mumbled a belated admission between the kisses. "It is fainter than it used to be, but I can still feel what you feel when I touch you—-" he slipped his hands under the fabric of Minh's shirt, to enjoy the movement of muscles under the tight skin.

Minh groaned, discarding the garment, and stretched by his side.

"If it gets too unsettling for my hsin, I would have to ask for a moment to collect myself," Xi whispered, unable to take his eyes off his lover. "Though I don't think sanity matters much to dragons."

Minh shot up to his elbow in alarm, his hand finding Xi's knee. "Do you... do you know what you've brought me here for? Had you taken a lover before?"

"I am a mage!" Xi exclaimed indignantly, suppressing the temptation to ask Minh the same thing. They had three days, not three years. "But recently I cross-referenced various works to form a clear idea of what physical expressions of love entail."

"I am not a bookish man. If you find notable omissions or inconsistencies, tell me after." Minh dropped to the mat, laughing, but tossed his head back to not lose the sight of Xi's eyes.

"We'll keep you sane, I promise."

The way Minh took the bursts of laughter under control reminded Xi the way he fought down all his emotions, by taking deep breaths in. He wrapped his arms around Minh, waiting for the tremors to subside out of habit, but Minh did not settle down into the stillness of meditation.

Instead, his mercurial nature turned to the happiness of the other kind, freeing Xi from the rest of his clothes, breathing hotly into his neck to unexpectedly send goosebumps through his body.

Tell me you love me, Xi thought greedily, even though he felt it through every inch of his skin where Minh cleaved to him, even though intuitively he had always known it... he still wanted to hear it, ten thousand times if possible.

"I love you," Minh said, and then nothing in existence could keep them apart.