Page 158 of The Immortal’s Mark

Chapter 26

Willing to Burn

Emperor Ren

I wake in shadow.

Not darkness. There is a difference. Darkness is absence—the simple lack of light. Shadow is presence. Something lives in this dark, something patient, something that has been waiting longer than empires rise and fall.

My first instinct is to assess. Count exits. Map threats. Years of war and rule have made this automatic, the constant vigilance that keeps emperors alive past their coronation.

I cannot move.

The shadows hold me. Not chains, not rope—just darkness made solid, thick as honey, binding my wrists behind my back, my ankles to the floor. When I test the restraints, they tighten. When I stop, they ease. The prison learns.

I am in a chamber of some kind. Ancient stonework, worn smooth by centuries. Columns rise into darkness above me—I cannot see where they end. The air smells of incense long burned away and something older beneath it. Dust. Grief. The particular stillness of places where terrible things have happened and been forgotten by everyone except the stones.

I reach for Tianlong.

This is instinct too—a lifetime of never being alone, of a presence curled at the base of my skull, of a voice that comments on everything I do and most of what I think. The bond is there before I am aware of reaching, the way my lungs reach for air.

Nothing.

I try again. I reach harder, push against whatever barrier separates us, strain toward the thread that has been my only constant companion since I was twelve years old.

Silence. Complete. Absolute.

The place where Tianlong should be is hollow. Not gone—I would feel that, would know if the bond had severed—but muffled. Smothered. Like a hand pressed over a mouth.

For the first time in twenty-two years, I am alone in my own head.

Something cold moves through my chest. I name it: fear. Not for myself. I have survived assassination attempts, battlefield wounds, the slow poison of court politics. I am difficult to kill.

The fear is for her.

Because if I am here, wherever here is, then someone wanted me taken. And if someone wanted me taken, then Lián will come for me.

She will walk into whatever this is. For me.

I close my eyes. Breathe. The meditation techniques I have practiced since boyhood offer nothing.

I think of her anyway.

Not the assassin. Not the woman who poisoned my wine. I think of the woman who laughs at her own jokes before anyone else can, who fills silences because silence means thinking and thinking means feeling. I think of her hands when she is nervous—the way they move, finding things to touch, to rearrange, to occupy. I think of the way she looks at me sometimes, when she thinks I am not watching, as if I am a puzzle she cannot decide whether to solve or to flee.

I think of her laugh.

I would do terrible things to hear that laugh again.

This thought should alarm me. I note that it does not.

“You are not what I expected.”

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere—soft, measured, patient. I open my eyes.

He stands before me. The Hungering King. The Hollow Crown. The Grief That Walks.

He looks like a man.