Page 130 of The Immortal’s Mark

“I’m scared,” I say into the darkness.

His arm tightens. Just slightly. Just enough.

“Of what?”

Everything, I want to say. Tomorrow. The palace. The way you look at me like I matter. The way I’ve started thinking in we instead of I. The way eight hundred years of running didn’t prepare me for the terror of standing still.

“That this ends,” I say instead. Close enough.

He’s quiet for a long time. Long enough that I think I’ve said too much, that I’ve ruined it somehow, that tomorrow will come and he’ll remember who he is and I’ll remember who I’m not.

“It does not have to.”

“Ren—”

“The road ends. The journey ends.” His hand finds mine in the dark. Interlaces our fingers. “This does not have to.”

I turn in his arms. Face him. It’s too dark to see his expression, but I don’t need to. I know what it looks like. I’ve been memorizing it for three weeks.

“The court won’t accept me.”

“The court will adapt.”

“Chancellor Feng—”

“Chancellor Feng can explain his objections to Tianlong. I am told the explanations would be brief.” His voice is dry. Almost amused. “And heated.”

“You can’t just—”

“I am the Emperor.” Simple. Not arrogant. Just true. “I can do a great many things I have chosen not to. Perhaps it is time I started choosing differently.”

“Choosing what?”

His hand cups my face. Gentle. Deliberate. The way he does everything.

“You.”

I kiss him. Because I don’t have words for this. Because eight hundred years wasn’t enough to prepare me for someone who looks at the impossible and says yes, anyway, I choose this.

He kisses me back. Careful and hungry and certain, all at once.

And then—

He hesitates.

It’s so small I almost miss it. A catch in his breathing. A tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there before. His hand on my waist, steady as stone, except for the finest tremor I’ve ever felt.

I pull back. Just enough to see his face.

“Ren.”

“I should tell you something.” His voice is controlled. His hand is not. “Before we—if we—I haven’t ever—”

Oh.

Oh.

Twenty-two years on a throne. Twenty-two years of being untouchable, unreachable, the dragon-blessed emperor that no one approaches without permission. Twenty-two years of choosing duty over want until he forgot he was allowed to want at all.