Lotus Seeds
Jiang Cheng sat at his dressing table in the light of a single candle. It was so early in the morning the twilight of dawn had yet to brush the tips of the flowers outside his window. He sat there in silence pulling his hair up into its sharp style and thought of nothing as he did the same motions he had done a thousand times before. He felt hollow and almost numb as he sat there.
He leaned forward to grab his hairpiece and settled it neatly at the base of his knot, pausing to glance at his own eyes in the mirror and for a moment he stared at the pale blue eyes that looked back at him and that quiet emptiness faded as a rush of emotions roared up inside him crashing through his heart; anger, devastation, insecurity, betrayal, love, regret, guilt, hatred and oh how he hated.
He hated so much sometimes he thought he’d die with all the hate in his veins. He hated the Wens, he hated the world and he hated Wei WuXian. He hated him with crippling intensity, a hate so profound it matched the devastating love he still had for his brother. And he hated that too. He laid a trembling hand on his abdomen where that pulsing core sat, that awful, powerful, stolen core and what he would give to not know it was Wei WuXian's.