Page 141 of The Immortal’s Mark

“The staff will talk,” I say. Because someone should acknowledge the elephant in the room, and it’s clearly going to be me. “If I stay. They’ll talk.”

“They already talk.”

“They’ll talk more. Specifically. With details. ‘The emperor’s mysterious woman stayed the night’ becomes ‘the emperor’s mysterious woman stayed another night’ becomes ‘the emperor has a mistress’ becomes—”

“Consort.”

I stop. “What?”

“The word you’re looking for is consort.” He’s not looking at me, rearranging papers on his desk like this is a normal conversation about normal things. “Or companion, if you prefer something less formal. The court will need a term eventually. They’re already trying to decide what to call you.”

“They could call me ‘that woman who keeps lurking around looking suspicious.’ Very accurate. I’d answer to it.”

“Lady Mei suggested ‘the Emperor’s Shadow.’”

“That’s ominous. I like it.”

“Tianlong suggested ‘little dawn.’”

Something catches in my chest. The dragon’s been calling me that since he first met me and decided I was worth naming. I still don’t know what to do with it.

“I like that less,” I say. “Too soft. Doesn’t match my aesthetic.”

Ren finally looks at me. His eyes catch the lamplight, dark and steady, and I feel that look in my sternum like a physical weight. He’s always looked at me like that—like he’s seeing something I don’t know how to show anyone else, like he’s reading a language I didn’t know I was speaking.

“Stay,” he says.

Simple. Like it’s easy.

Eight weeks ago I would have made a joke and left. Four weeks ago I would have made a joke and stayed but pretended it meant nothing. Two weeks ago, outside the capital, I stopped pretending.

I’m running out of jokes.

“The whole night?” My voice comes out rougher than I intended. “Not just—you know. The fun part. The whole thing. Sleeping. Waking up. Breakfast with your ministers knowing exactly where I spent the night.”

“Yes.”

“That’s… a lot.”

“I know.”

“People will assume things.”

“Let them.”

“They’ll assume we’re—” I gesture vaguely, which is not my most articulate moment. “Serious. Official. A thing that has a future.”

“Yes.”

The word hangs there. One syllable. All that weight.

I’ve spent eight hundred years not having a future. Not planning more than a few months ahead, because what’s the point? Everyone I’ve ever cared about has died and I haven’t, and the math on that never changes. You learn to stop thinking in terms of next year or someday or when we’re old. You learn to take what you can get and leave before you have to watch it end.

Ren is watching me figure this out. Patient. Like he has all the time in the world to wait while I wrestle with eight centuries of survival instincts screaming at me to run.

“You’re doing it again,” I say.

“Doing what?”