Page 155 of The Immortal’s Mark

“I can give you something.”

His voice is stronger than before. Not strong. Just stronger.

“A thread.” Ancient eyes, wet and tired, that don’t quite meet mine. “Of the bond. Enough to find him.”

I stop. “You can do that?”

“The bond is not completely severed. There is still—” He pauses. A breath that shudders through his entire massive body. “—a fragment. A connection. Damaged but present. I can extend a piece of it to you. Let you feel where he is.”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“Because it will hurt.” Now he looks at me. Those furnace eyes, dimmed to embers, full of something I’ve never seen on his face before. Fear. “Not me. You. Carrying a piece of a damaged bond is not—it will feel like a hook in your chest. Pulling. Constantly.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know.” Something that might be a smile, if smiles could be made of grief. “That is why I am offering.”

He lowers his head. The tip of his snout touches my forehead—cold, wrong, how is a dragon cold—and then something shifts.

Inside me.

A thread. Thin. Fragile. Pulling toward something in the darkness.

Toward Ren.

It hurts exactly like Tianlong promised. Like a fishhook buried behind my sternum, tugging with every heartbeat. But beneath the pain, beneath the wrongness, there’s something else.

Him.

Faint. Distant. Muffled by shadows and ancient power.

But there.

“Bring him back.” Tianlong’s voice cracks. When he speaks next, the humor is gone. The ancient dignity is gone. There’s nothing left but a creature who has loved the same person for twenty-two years and is watching him be stolen away. “He is the only flame I have left to guard.”

I can’t answer. There’s nothing to say that isn’t a promise I might not keep.

Something winds around my ankles. Warm. Insistent.

Dumpling.

He looks up at me with eyes that don’t understand anything—don’t understand why the palace feels wrong, why everyone is scared, why I’m armed to the teeth and standing in a dragon’s lair at sunset when I should be eating dinner.

I pick him up. Hold him too tight. He permits it.

“You’re in charge of Tianlong while I’m gone.” My voice breaks on the last word. Stupid. Eight centuries old and I’m crying into cat fur. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything dramatic.”

Dumpling mrps.

“Good chat.”

I set him down. He pads across the gold and curls against Tianlong’s massive forelimb. The dragon doesn’t protest—just shifts one great claw to curl around the cat like he’s holding onto the last warm thing in the world.

Maybe he is.

I leave before I can change my mind.

The gates are already open when I reach the courtyard.