Page 160 of The Immortal’s Mark

He tells me about Mei-Ling.

I do not want to listen. I do not have a choice.

He tells me how they met—a prince and a wandering scholar, seven hundred years ago. How she stayed. How she made him immortal through a ritual of binding, their lifespans tied together like threads in a single cord. How they ruled together, loved together, built an empire together.

He tells me how she died. Saving their people from a plague. Burning her own life force to heal thousands, giving too much, fading in his arms while she smiled and told him it was worth it.

“The bond should have killed me too,” he says. “It did not. Some flaw in the ritual. Some cruelty of fate.” His voice does not change, but something in the air grows heavier. “I lived. I live. And she is gone.”

I understand, despite myself. The particular horror of surviving someone you were never supposed to outlive. The way time stretches when forever suddenly has an ending you cannot accept.

“The ritual,” I say. “The one your cult has been working toward. It requires her bloodline.”

“Her blood, willingly given. A sacrifice freely offered.” He looks at me, and for a moment I see the man he must have been before—thoughtful, careful, someone who weighed consequences. “Not forced. Not taken. Chosen. The magic requires consent.”

“The last of Mei-Ling’s direct line,” he continues. “Hidden by her mother’s curse, concealed from my sight for eight centuries.” A pause. “Until she walked into your palace and dragon fire illuminated what the curse had hidden.”

I think of the night I should have died. Tianlong’s fire erupting from my chest, burning through the poison. The way she stared, frozen, as something ancient and impossible happened before her eyes.

“You needed her to love someone,” I say. “Someone she would die for.”

“Someone who would make her want to die for them.” He nods. “A willing sacrifice, fueled by love. That is the mechanism. That is what the ritual requires.”

The trap crystallizes in my mind. Perfect. Elegant. Eight centuries in the making.

I am the bait.

And her love for me is the weapon he will use to kill her.

“There is something I do not understand,” I say.

He pauses. Waits.

I have watched him speak of Mei-Ling. The way his voice changes. The way the hunger in his eyes dims to something older, softer, more broken. This is not a monster who has forgotten how to feel. This is a monster who feels too much—and has been running from it for eleven centuries.

Grief is a weakness. I know this. I have watched men destroyed by it, watched kingdoms crumble because rulers could not see past their pain.

I can use this.

“You said her mother’s curse hid her from you,” I say. “For eight centuries. But you have been hunting Mei-Ling’s bloodline for longer than that. How did one woman succeed where all the others failed?”

He is silent for a moment. When he speaks, there is something almost like respect in his voice. “You ask the right questions, little emperor.”

“I am trying to understand my enemy.”

“Fair.” He moves to one of the ancient columns, runs a hand along the stone as if remembering something carved there long ago. “After Mei-Ling died, I hunted her descendants. Her children. Her grandchildren. Every branch of the bloodline, scattered across the empire and beyond.”

“They ran.”

“They ran. They hid. They changed their names, married into obscure families, fled to distant provinces.” A pause. “They died rather than give me what I needed. Generation after generation. The women of Mei-Ling’s line are... stubborn.”

I think of Lián. The way she threw herself between me and a crossbow bolt without hesitation. The way she fights, jokes, refuses to break.

Stubborn is one word for it.

“Lián’s mother was the last guardian of the bloodline,” he continues. “The last who knew what they were—descendants of the House of Ascending Dawn. A celestial house, fallen now, destroyed when I began my hunt. She carried the old knowledge. The old magic.”

“Celestial.” I turn the word over. “Lián carries celestial blood.”