Page 118 of The Immortal’s Mark

The monk goes absolutely still.

“Where did you get that?”

“My mother. She gave it to me before she died. It was an heirloom—her grandmother’s grandmother’s, passed down through generations.” The jade catches the dim light, glowing faintly green. “Why?”

“That comb,” the monk says, and his ancient voice trembles, “was the Hungering King’s wedding gift to Mei-Ling. He carved it himself.”

The temple is silent.

I look at the comb in my hands. At the object I have treasured for twenty-two years. Every time I touched it for comfort, I was touching the ghost of the monster who wants to consume the world. Every time I thought of my mother’s love, I was holding proof that seven centuries of fate had been arranged to bring me to this moment.

“Everything is connected.” I do not recognize my own voice. “He has been moving us toward each other for centuries.”

Lián’s face is pale in the dim light. Her hand has dropped from my arm; she stands apart from me now, a careful distance that I recognize. She is calculating. Assessing. Deciding whether to run.

I have seen this look before. After our first kiss. After the night we held hands without sleeping. Every time something draws her closer, she measures the distance to the door.

“Does that change anything?”

The question hangs between us. A blade waiting to fall.

I think of what the monk has told us. A ritual that requires willing sacrifice, fueled by love. The Hungering King has been cultivating this for nearly eight hundred years—the curse that preserves her bloodline, the dragon bond that would illuminate what her concealment magic hid. Every thread of fate, every coincidence that brought her to my palace and my life, woven by hands that have been moving pieces since before my dynasty existed.

I should feel manipulated. Trapped. Used.

I look at her. At Lián. Not Mei-Ling’s echo. Not a bloodline. Not a ritual component. At the woman who makes jokes when she is afraid, who counts exits in every room, who falls asleep holding my hand and pretends not to notice in the morning.

“No,” I say. “It does not.”

Her expression flickers. Something cracks behind her eyes—disbelief, hope, fear.

“You didn’t even think about it.”

“I have been thinking about it since the moment I met you.” I close the distance between us. “The answer has always been no.”

The attack comes without warning.

One moment the temple is silent; the next, figures pour through the broken walls. Cult members in black robes, faces covered, blades drawn. They move with the coordination of soldiers, flanking, cutting off exits.

Seventeen. Tianlong’s voice is sharp in my mind. At least seventeen. More coming through the eastern breach.

“Behind you!” Lián shouts.

I do not have time to respond. My body moves before my mind catches up—years of training taking over, muscle memory that does not require imperial approval. I spin, parry, feel steel screech against steel. Lián is already moving, her knife clearing its sheath as she flows into the first attacker like water finding cracks in stone.

We fall into position back to back without discussion.

Her spine against mine. Her breathing, harsh and controlled, syncing with the rhythm of combat. I know where she is without looking, can feel the shifts in her weight as she pivots, strikes, kills.

We have fought together before. The warehouse ambush, but that feels like a lifetime ago. That was chaos, desperation, two strangers thrown together by circumstance. This is something else. This is trust.

She is a blur of violence. Efficient. Brutal. Beautiful in a way that makes my chest tight with something that has no place on a battlefield. I watch her kill a man with a movement so economical it seems almost gentle—a redirect of his own momentum, her blade finding the gap between armor and helm—and I forget to watch my own angles.

“Focus!” she shouts.

“I am focused.”

“You’re staring at me!”