Page 102 of The Immortal’s Mark

I strip off the merchant’s tunic. The undershirt. My boots, my trousers, until I am standing in only my underclothes on the riverbank, and the sun is hot on skin that has not felt unarmored air in—

I cannot remember.

The water is cold. Shockingly, blessedly cold. I wade in until it reaches my chest, and then I stop thinking entirely and simply let myself float.

As I float on my back, I notice how blue the sky is. Has it always been this blue? The river carries me, gentle current pulling at my limbs, and I am weightless. I am nothing. I am not the emperor, not the dragon-bonded, not the third son who should never have worn a crown. I am just a body in water, and the cold seeps into me, and the fire that always burns beneath my skin—the dragon fire that chose me, that marked me, that made me—goes quiet.

I did not know it could go quiet.

I float. I breathe. The sky wheels overhead, and for the first time in longer than I can name, I am not performing.

She is watching from the bank.

I can feel her gaze like warmth, tracking my movement through the water. She has dismounted. The horses drink downstream, and she sits on a flat rock with her arms wrapped around her knees, and she is looking at me like she is trying to memorize something.

I should be concerned about this. I should analyze it, control my response, consider the implications.

I float on my back and watch the clouds instead.

After a long moment, she stands. Moves to the water’s edge. I watch her from my position in the current, and there is something uncertain in her posture—something almost afraid.

“You have survived six hundred and forty deaths but you do not swim?”

She does not answer. Her jaw tightens, and for a moment I think I have pushed too far, crossed some boundary I did not know existed.

Then she sits back down on the rock. Pulls off her boots. And slowly, carefully, she puts her feet in the water.

It is not swimming. But it is something.

“Six hundred and forty-four deaths,” she corrects.

I drift closer, until I am near enough to see the way her toes curl against the cold, the way her breath catches and then steadies. She does not look at me. She looks at the water like it is an enemy she is choosing not to fight.

“You do not have to explain,” I say.

“I know.”

We stay like that for a long time. Me floating, her with her feet in the water, the horses patient in the shallows. The sun moves across the sky. Nothing changes, and everything does.

When I finally wade out, her eyes follow me. Trace the water dripping from my shoulders, the scars on my chest from battles I wish I could forget. I should feel exposed. I should reach for my clothes, cover myself, restore the distance that has always kept me safe.

I stand in the sunlight and let her look.

Her smile, when it comes, is small and wondering and worth every century she has spent alone.

Well, Tianlong says, and for once there is no joke in his voice. There you are.

The tea house is crowded. We sit in a corner, gathering what intelligence we can about the road ahead, and I am trying very hard to focus on the conversation at the next table—something about a lantern festival, something about trade routes, useful information I should be cataloguing.

The owner’s son is refilling her cup.

This would not be notable, except that he has refilled it four times in the last half hour. And each time, he lingers. His hand brushes hers as he pours. He leans close to murmur something about the festival, about the lights, about how a woman like her should not miss it.

I take a sip of my own tea. It tastes like ash.

Little flame. Your jaw is doing something concerning.

I am fine.