Page 14 of The Immortal’s Mark

“You’re telling me the escape routes.”

“You would have found them within the hour. I’m saving you the effort.”

Eight hundred years of dealing with powerful men, and not one of them has ever just… handed me the information I would have happily stolen. It’s like he’s playing a game where the rules are different from anything I’ve encountered.

Dangerous, I think. This one is very, very dangerous.

“The connecting door leads toward my chambers,” he adds. “For proximity.”

For surveillance, I don’t say.

“Second bell,” he says. “Archives. Don’t be late.”

Then he’s gone. Walking away with those measured steps, that impossible stillness in motion, leaving me standing in front of a door that leads to a cage made of silk and sandalwood and the emperor’s absolute certainty that he can keep me where he wants me.

I step inside.

The day passes.

Second bell comes. A nervous young woman arrives to escort me to the archives—she introduces herself as Jing, junior archivist, and her hands are shaking almost as badly as the guard’s were. Apparently word has spread about the immortal assassin. Wonderful. Just the reputation I was hoping for.

I don’t bite her either.

The archives smell like old paper and dust and the accumulated knowledge of centuries. I spend hours there, pulling records, tracing payment trails, following the money backward through the bureaucracy that keeps an empire running. Three intermediaries. Anonymous drops. But nothing is really untraceable. Not if you know where to look.

The payment was too high. That’s the first thing that bothers me. Standard assassination rates, even for an emperor, don’t reach numbers like this. Someone wanted him very dead. Desperately dead.

And then there’s the escape route. Someone talked. Someone knew where I’d be, when I’d be there, which corridors I’d use. That kind of information doesn’t leak by accident.

Someone inside the palace fed information to my contacts.

And someone inside the palace made sure I’d be caught.

Same person? Different factions?

I make notes. Fold them into my sleeve. Say nothing to the nervous archivist who hovers nearby, ready to fetch whatever I need.

The emperor doesn’t come to check on me. I tell myself I’m not watching for him.

I’m lying.

Evening comes. Servants bring food to my chambers—delicate, beautiful, the kind of meal I would have killed for in some of the hungrier centuries. I eat without tasting it. My mind is elsewhere, chewing on the edges of the conspiracy like a dog with a bone.

Night falls.

I don’t sleep.

The bed is too soft. The silence is wrong. Too long sleeping with one eye open, one ear tuned for danger, and suddenly I’m supposed to relax in silk sheets while the emperor sleeps somewhere nearby?

Not happening.

I lie in the darkness and stare at the ceiling I can’t see and wait for morning.

And then I hear it.

Footsteps. Through the wall. Measured, steady, repetitive.

Pacing.