Page 106 of The Immortal’s Mark

Chapter 18

Peaches and Osmanthus

Chapter 644: In which our heroine attends a party, wears silk, and remembers why she doesn’t do this. Also why she might want to start.

The silk is the color of twilight.

I hold it in my hands like it might bite. Which is ridiculous. I’ve been bitten by worse things than fabric. Poisonous snakes. Feral dogs. A very angry goose once, in Dynasty Three. Still have complicated feelings about geese.

But this—this is different.

“You need to blend in,” Ren says from across the room, where he’s doing something competent with his own transformation. Merchant robes. Simple. Dark gray. The kind of thing that costs more than it looks but knows better than to brag about it. “The contact won’t meet with us if we look like—”

“Like an assassin and an emperor on the run?”

“I was going to say ‘travelers.’“

“Your version is less accurate.”

The contact is a merchant’s wife named Yuen who’s been feeding information to Mei for three years. Her husband laundered money for the cult before they killed him for asking questions. According to Mei, she knows where the temple records went—the ones that might explain what the Hungering King actually wants with my bloodline.

She’ll only meet in public. Crowded places. Festival night, wine stall by the canal, look like newlyweds or don’t bother coming.

Hence the silk.

Dumpling, curled on the bed, yawns with the exhaustive judgment that only cats can achieve. He’s been watching this entire preparation like we’re putting on theater for his amusement. Which, honestly, we might be.

The silk slides through my fingers. I haven’t worn anything this fine in fifty years. Last time was for a job—some minister’s wife needed to die at a garden party, and the dress code was specific. That silk was green. Jade green. I remember the weight of it, how it caught the light, how the blood barely showed.

This one is blue.

Blue like twilight. Blue like bruises. Blue like the sky just before darkness takes it. Blue like the exact wrong color to be wearing when you’re trying not to feel things.

“The hairpins are on the table,” Ren adds. “Silver. They should complement—”

“I know how to dress myself.”

“I wasn’t suggesting otherwise.”

“You were hovering.”

“I was being helpful.”

“Same thing.”

I gather the silk, the pins, the small pot of rouge someone has thoughtfully provided. The rouge smells like roses. Of course it does. Because tonight isn’t complicated enough without smelling like a garden.

I step behind the screen.

The transformation takes less time than it should. I’m out of practice with powder and rouge—haven’t bothered looking decorative since Dynasty Six—but muscle memory is muscle memory. Even eight hundred years later, I remember how to paint a face that gets let into places.

The rouge goes on. Light. Just enough color to suggest I haven’t spent the past week in inns that smell like regret, sharing a bed with an emperor I have kissed exactly twice while Dumpling sprawls between us like a furry chaperone and a tiny dragon offers unsolicited opinions from a ceramic pot.

Three inches of space. Every night. Neither of us crosses it.

I’m fine. This is fine.

The powder follows—smoothing, concealing, creating the illusion of someone who hasn’t seen centuries of violence.