diff --git a/CHANGELOG.rst b/CHANGELOG.rst
index f593e1a9e..bbd92bd6e 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.rst
+++ b/CHANGELOG.rst
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ Deprecations and removed features
   
 Scripting improvements
 ----------------------
+- Quoted command substitution that directly follow a variable expansion (like ``echo "$var$(echo x)"``) no longer affect the variable expansion (:issue:`8849`).
 - ``math`` can now handle underscores (``_``) as visual separators in numbers (:issue:`8611`, :issue:`8496`)::
 
     math 5 + 2_123_252
diff --git a/src/expand.cpp b/src/expand.cpp
index 7a2aa30e7..49e588f84 100644
--- a/src/expand.cpp
+++ b/src/expand.cpp
@@ -758,7 +758,9 @@ static expand_result_t expand_cmdsubst(wcstring input, const operation_context_t
             whole_item.reserve(paren_begin + 1 + sub_res_joined.size() + 1 +
                                tail_item.completion.size());
             whole_item.append(input, 0, paren_begin - have_dollar);
+            whole_item.push_back(INTERNAL_SEPARATOR);
             whole_item.append(sub_res_joined);
+            whole_item.push_back(INTERNAL_SEPARATOR);
             whole_item.append(tail_item.completion.substr(const_strlen(L"\"")));
             if (!out->add(std::move(whole_item))) {
                 return append_overflow_error(errors);
diff --git a/tests/checks/cmdsub.fish b/tests/checks/cmdsub.fish
index fca2b6b45..16ab9e92b 100644
--- a/tests/checks/cmdsub.fish
+++ b/tests/checks/cmdsub.fish
@@ -63,3 +63,6 @@ echo "($(echo A)B$(echo C))"
 
 echo "quoted1""quoted2"(echo unquoted3)"$(echo quoted4)_$(echo quoted5)"
 # CHECK: quoted1quoted2unquoted3quoted4_quoted5
+
+var=a echo "$var$(echo b)"
+# CHECK: ab