Page 156 of The Immortal’s Mark

Someone sent word. Of course they did. Jing, probably. She’s efficient like that.

A horse is waiting. Saddled. Provisioned. The kind of horse built for speed, not comfort, because comfort doesn’t matter when you’re riding toward something that wants to kill you.

Wei is there. Lady Mei. A handful of servants who don’t know what to do with themselves. They stand in a ragged line like a honor guard for a funeral procession, and maybe that’s what this is.

I don’t say goodbye.

There’s nothing to say. They know what I’m doing. They know why. They know I probably won’t come back, and if I do, I’ll be different—I’m always different when I come back—and the woman who rides out of these gates might not be the same woman who rides back in.

If she rides back at all.

Jing presses a package into my hands. Supplies. Research. A map with three locations circled in red ink.

“The thread will guide you,” she says. “But if you lose it—”

“I won’t lose it.”

She nods. Steps back.

Wei doesn’t salute. He bows. Deep. The bow of a soldier to a superior officer, and I want to tell him I’m not his officer, I’m not anyone’s anything, I’m just a woman who’s been dying for eight hundred years and finally found something worth living for—

But I don’t. Because I don’t have the words. Because the hook in my chest is pulling, pulling, pulling, and if I stop to explain myself I might not start moving again.

The gates open wider.

I ride.

The road is dark.

It’s been dark since I left the palace, even though sunset was only an hour ago. The sky above me should be purple, streaked with the last gold of day. Instead it’s grey. Flat. Like something has drained the color out of the world.

Or maybe the color is just gone for me.

The thread pulls.

Every mile is a mile closer to Ren. Every mile is a mile closer to the thing that took him—the ancient hunger, the grief made flesh, the monster that used to be a man who loved someone the way I—

I don’t finish that thought.

The horse runs. The road unspools. The thread hooks deeper into my chest and I let it, welcome it, because pain means he’s still there. Pain means the bond hasn’t broken completely. Pain means I still have a direction to run.

I’ve spent eight hundred years running from things. From people. From anything that might make me want to stay.

Now I’m running toward.

For the first time in eight centuries, I’m running toward.

The irony isn’t lost on me. The universe has a sick sense of humor—always has—and here I am, the woman who couldn’t stay for anyone, riding hell-bent through the darkness to save a man I’ve known for less than two months.

A man I tried to kill.

A man who makes me laugh.

A man who writes terrible poetry and thinks it’s good.

A man who said stay like it meant something, and I said yes, and I meant it, and now some ancient monster has stolen him away because love is a weapon and the Hungering King knows exactly how to use it.

I think about Ren’s hands.