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Shang Qinghua had known that she would be clinging to Mobei-jun’s thighs by acting as a spy in An Ding Peak: after all, she’d written the story. And for years, she followed the outline pretty closely, pulled back and forth between her peak duties and helping Mobei-jun become the demon queen of the Northern Realm and all that. It was after that last bit that the plot diverged.
In the book, right, Mobei-jun became queen and Shang Qinghua kept on spying for her at Cang Qiong Mountain, occasionally having to steal some kind of plot-relevant herb from Mu Qingfang or throw a wrench into some other Peak Lord's plans. So that's what she expected.
And that’s how it started. But Mobei-jun just kept insisting on Shang Qinghua taking on more and more work around her court, and Shang Qinghua definitely wanted the sexy demon queen she’d created to have everything run smoothly, and yeah, most of the demons at the court were pretty shit at logistics (which was her own fault), so she didn’t have much choice.
She was at her desk in the middle of the night, writing a third version of a letter to send to the demons of the Outer Isles because they were so absurdly touchy that they’d start a war over a misplaced brushstroke, and Mobei-jun stormed into her office and loom over her from behind, one hand on the desk on either side of her body, and growl into her ear, “We need to hold a royal hunt.”
“M-my queen?”
“I want to hold a hunt. To strengthen ties between the neighboring kingdoms.”
“Ah, okay, my queen.” Shang Qinghua’s hand tightened on her brush. She could feel Mobei-jun’s cold breath on her cheek, and the chilly presence against her back. This must be what it was like to be a little rodent targeted by a demonic saber-toothed cat, but if the rodent was also kind of turned on by being menaced. “And you … want me to organize that?”
“Yes. Of course.” Mobei-jun leaned in even closer somehow, and growled, “I know you will get it done.” Meaning: you’d better get it done or I will rip your arms off.
So Shang Qinghua had to stay for another month to compile a list and send invitations and make sleeping arrangements indoors and set up pavilions outdoors and get enough food together and write up the menus and make sure all of the servants were briefed and and and. And then she had to be there for the hunt, of course, to take care of all the little things that came up during an event — smooth over a disagreement between two kingdoms’ representatives, see that the most impressive kills were skinned and butchered, all of that. Arrange the final ceremonies and the leave-taking, and Mobei-jun always required her presence at those for some reason …
Then as soon as everything was wrapped up, Mobei-jun grabbed her by the hair, yanked her close, and growled, “Something is wrong.”
“My queen?” Shang Qinghua tried to move slightly closer to relieve the pressure, but Mobei-jun only used that as an opportunity to dig her claws more firmly into Shang Qinghua's hair, twisting them to gain an unbreakable grip and making Shang Qinghua have press her thighs closer together against the ache between them. Fuck, why did she have to write Mobei-jun as the rough domme of her dreams? Why hadn't she thought about the possibility of being sucked into her own story and having to deal with it?
“There is …” A long pause, and Shang Qinghua only writhed when she absolutely positively had to in it. “A spy in the palace. Among the servants.”
“Really?” Shang Qinghua asked doubtfully. That was the sort of thing she figured she was on top of, as she was always dealing with the servants. At first, they'd thought they could easily browbeat their queen's little human advisor, and she'd had to show them that she they didn't scare her — and that she had the full backing of Mobei-jun. After two of them were disemboweled in front of the court and Shang Qinghua herself poisoned three more, the ones that remained fell in line. “Are you sure?”
Mobei-jun's only response was to use the grip on her hair to knock Shang Qinghua into the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of her.
“Okay, my queen.” It was a feeble wheeze, but it was enough to get Mobei-jun to release her and cross her arms with a forbidding glare. “Yeah. I'll get right on that.”
It took another week and a half to interview all of the servants, and the best she managed was a maid with gigantic tusks going to pieces in her office. “I'm sorry, Madam Shang! During the hunt, I told one of the demons from the Western Flame Kingdom about our queen's preferences in furs because he wanted to know what to catch to impress her the most! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!”
“Er, well, don't do it again, I guess.” As far as spying went, that was pretty minimal, so Shang Qinghua dealt with the floods of tears and then sent the maid away to continue crying somewhere else. So that mystery was solved, and this time Shang Qinghua was able to slip away and get back to Cang Qiong Mountain before Mobei-jun could corner her again.
There was a massive pile of work waiting for her there, of course, despite her head disciple's best efforts. Some things needed her attention specifically, not just her personal seal. Ahh, wasn't there anywhere Shang Qinghua could go to escape endless paperwork and calls on her time? Couldn't she get a chance to go to bed at a normal hour or sleep in? It was the greatest irony in either of her two lives that she created an entire fantasy world and then had to spend all of her time in it writing expense reports and doing research on trade routes.
There was always Cucumber-xiong to have a drink with, but he spent way more of his time getting railed by his demonic boyfriend than he did on sect leader duties, and it just wasn't fair.
“You should have written yourself a demon boyfriend too, Airplane-jie,” he pointed out over a cup of very decent rice wine he'd brought to her office to make her take a bit of a break. “It's not my fault there's no-one for you.”
“Girlfriend,” she said sourly, and Shen Qingqiu choked on his wine and had to hide behind his fan for a minute.
“Really?!”
“We've talked about this!”
“No, we haven't!”
“We definitely have!” It had probably been when they were extremely drunk. Shang Qinghua was ninety percent sure it had really happened. “Anyway, with the way you changed the story, it doesn't matter what I should have written, does it?”
“Fixed the story,” he corrected. “Hey, do you think you being … you know, like that, is why Binghe turned out to be gay?”
“You're so fucking stupid.”
“What? It's a valid question!”
He was probably right, but she wasn't about to admit it. Or to admit that she had written herself a demon girlfriend who was never going to even remotely be interested in her as anything but a combination punching bag, chew toy, and majordomo.
The next day, she woke up at the crack of dawn to find a magically-delivered letter sitting on the pillow next to her head. Come back. Now, it read, written in Mobei-jun's imprecise but bold hand, and, well. It didn't do to ignore that sort of message, so she started packing.
***
Mobei-jun burned.
Not literally. Her temperature was always cold, inside and out, and a day that struck humans as a bit hot was painfully sweltering for her.
No, she burned metaphorically, and specifically for Shang Qinghua.
It was something about how small and weak Shang Qinghua was, a tiny creature that could be easily ripped limb from limb in the hands of a demon — but combined with her ruthlessness, her ability to order or even directly cause a death without flinching, sometimes while even looking bored. And on top of that, her complete mastery of legends, weapons, botany, and things of that nature, such that Mobei-jun could express a need for some kind of strange power and she would promptly respond, “I know a pill to do that, my queen; just send someone to collect this-and-such flower from that-or-another gorge in the Outer Isles and make a white jade cauldron for it to steep in,” and would see it done. She knew things, and she had believed in Mobei-jun since she was a small demonlet, and the older and wiser that Mobei-jun grew, the more she became aware of the great strength of her need for the human.
Shang Qinghua was impossible to captivate, however. She cared nothing for the gifts of beasts Mobei-jun laid at her feet, merely calling for servants to serve the meat at dinner and place the pelts in Mobei-jun's own bedroom, returning them coolly and without a hint of pleasure or personal interest. Mobei-jun showed her physical affection constantly, grabbing her and tossing her and sometimes even cherishing her with a playful bite. At this, Shang Qinghua would reject her by either going still and quiet or cringing and shouting. Still, Mobei-jun persisted.
During one of the mercifully short times that Shang Qinghua was out of her kingdom, she spent some hours deliberating on new strategies. It might be best to attempt a new method of courtship, one that was more deceptive and thus more human. As soon as she had formed the plan, she wrote a note to summon her advisor and future consort home.
When Shang Qinghua returned, Mobei-jun was seated in her throne. She watched as Shang Qinghua scuttled into the presence chamber, wrapped up in her traveling furs — one gift she'd accepted, at least — and then dropped her bag. “My queen,” she half-panted (and oh, how Mobei-jun liked to hear the exhaustion in her voice when she said that), and bowed. “I've come, as you ordered.”
“Good.” It was good that Shang Qinghua had obeyed: it implied that she was either eager to be in the Northern Realm or that she truly cared about pleasing her queen, or both. “I have come to realize that my court is not complete, and I lack … something required for my status.”
Shang Qinghua’s shoulders sagged. “Of course, my queen. I’m — I’m sorry. Is it the sword of the Wuyuan Wastes? I think that one’s still out there. Or maybe the trophy from that evil sorcerer in the east … oh, wait, no, he doesn’t exist because this version of Luo Binghe never destroyed his village. Ahaha, my queen, I bet it’s tribute from the cat-people? We can get on that for sure, I know they know we went easy on them —” Mobei-jun, as usual, didn’t understand half of what she was going on about, but if Shang Qinghua said it, she knew they must be real things and people. Regardless, none of those tangible things were what she intended to bring to Shang Qinghua’s attention.
She shook her head, and Shang Qinghua fell silent. “I do not have,” she said, with a portentous pause, “a harem of concubines.”
There was an even more portentous pause after she finished the sentence, and for a moment the Queen of the Northern Realm feared that she’d gone too far. Finally, Shang Qinghua shook her own head as though clearing it.
“Ah. Yes. A harem — concubines. You definitely need that, as such a magnificent and powerful ruler in this world. Those things are really very, very normal, aren’t they? My queen, that’s — that’s — when you say ‘concubines,’ are you thinking of pretty young girls or strapping young men?”
Allowing herself the barest hint of a smile at the success of her gambit (in that the advisor certainly seemed to have been knocked off-kilter at the suggestion of a harem for her queen), Mobei-jun stared directly at Shang Qinghua as though she could plant her desired end result directly into the human’s head, but otherwise refrained from answering.
“Aha, of course. Both!” There was something twisted in Shang Qinghua’s expression, something glassy to her eyes. “I get it, my queen. Well, you want the best, and I can put together a list of the best for you to choose from. And I’ll start getting a rear palace put together, rooms with some more creature comforts and that kind of thing since they’ll be coming from places that aren’t as … well, that aren’t like this. Okay. Okay?”
Of course Shang Qinghua would put her considerable skills into preparing an impressive harem for her queen. Mobei-jun would truly enjoy watching her work, even though it would have to go almost entirely to waste.