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Fire roared behind Cheng’s eyes. Stirring and tossing, he could never remove those images from his memories and dreams. Up, up, up the flames blazed, engulfing all of Lotus Pier.

And there they were.

Fengmian was propped up on his knees, the sword piercing directly through his abdomen and leaving him as a feast for the crows.

Zuyian’s corpse lay on its side. What was once the most domineering, outstanding woman of the Jiang clan, was now nothing more than another body piling up.

Mountains of bloody bodies, blank faces, and dark energy.

And he was powerless against it.

There was nothing he could do as Wei Wuxian held him back, preventing him from running to Wen Chao and tearing his head off. The ring on his finger was his last living memory of his parents, but now it was replaced only by grim thoughts.

The thoughts of their death, their untimely, gruesome death clouded his dreams.

Shooting up from the bed, Cheng gasped for relief from the tightness in his chest. He could feel his heart racing and leaping up to his throat, the throbbing from its strength reaching to the tips of his fingers. The room was impossibly still, amplifying the sound coming from beneath his midnight robes.

“Cheng?” came a whispery voice from beside him. “Cheng, did you have the dream again?”

His silvery eyes drifted to his wife of three years, eclipsed in the silken sheets of the bed. She was on alert, locked in a gaze towards him of heartened concern.

“Y… Yes, I did,” he stammered, twisting the ring along his pointer finger in a force of habit. “It was worse than the other times. In this one… I hated Wuxian more than ever. I hated him so dearly I could hardly see straight.”

“But you don’t hate him,” she reminded her doting husband. “You only hate the Wens. They’re the ones that…” Her voice trailed off as she realized that her comments were certainly not helping his mental state.

“How could I have forgotten? You’ve no need to remind me,” Cheng snapped, rising from the bed and facing the window. She fell harshly silent, her enthusiasm to speak to him nipped in the bud.

“I-I’m sorry,” she whispered, facing away from him in despair. Cheng released a heavy sigh before crawling back into bed. His body fit the curve of hers, nestling in tightly and pulling her close. Her blossom scented hair flowed in the breeze of the open window, dancing across his vision and pulling his mind back to a tranquil peace.

There was no reason to worry.

The Wens’ dastardly crime was no longer to be in his mind.

Not when he had his new family right here. Ever so lightly, he traced a hand across the soft outards of her stomach, feeling the newly formed bulge of their, as he hoped, new son.

“I love you, (y/n), and I apologize for being so harsh with you,” he whispered. But she had already drifted back to sleep in his loving arms.