Page 133 of The Immortal’s Mark

“That’s creepy. That’s a creepy distinction.”

“Noted.” His arm tightens. Just for a moment. “We should move.”

“I know.”

Neither of us moves.

Dumpling breaks the spell by yowling directly into Tianlong’s pot, because he has no respect for emotional moments or personal boundaries. Tianlong’s response is unprintable. I take this as our cue to start the day.

Ren is efficient when he packs. Military training, probably—or maybe just twenty-two years of never being allowed to be slow at anything. I watch him move around the camp, rolling bedrolls and checking saddlebags, and I think about his hands on my skin last night. The way he touched me like I was something worth being careful with.

I think about the fact that I let him.

“You’re staring,” he says without turning around.

“I’m admiring the view. There’s a difference.”

He glances over his shoulder. The almost-smile. The dangerous one. “Noted.”

The gates rise in the distance when we crest the last hill. Gold and red against the morning sky, catching the light like a promise or a threat. The same gates I climbed over eight weeks ago with poison in my pocket and nothing to lose.

I have something to lose now.

He rides beside me. Close enough that our knees almost brush. He hasn’t spoken since we mounted, but his hand found mine for a moment before we started—a reminder, a promise, a mine that didn’t need words.

I didn’t pull away.

The palace is waiting. The court is waiting. The conspiracy we uncovered, the traitors we’ll name, the monster in the shadows who’s been hunting my bloodline for seven hundred years. All of it, waiting behind those gates.

I could run. I’ve done it before. Eight hundred years of practice makes perfect.

I don’t run.

I ride toward the gates beside a man who chose me—who chose me, in the dark, with his hands and his mouth and his “always”—and I choose him back, and I don’t look behind me.

Not once.

Chapter 644: In which our heroine discovers that the hardest part of staying isn’t the staying. It’s believing you’re allowed to.