Page 176 of The Immortal’s Mark

It doesn’t work.

The pull slips through his grip like water through a sieve. Like something’s in the way. Something he can’t see.

“This is impossible.” His voice is rising now, cracking at the edges. “The blessing—willing sacrifice—I had everything I needed. Everything. I have waited—I have studied—every word of her mother’s protection, every passage, every clause—”

“Don’t look at me.” I’m talking faster now. My mouth doing what it always does when I’m scared—filling silence, making noise, pretending everything’s fine. “I did my part. I died very willingly. Excellent sacrifice. Top marks. If there’s a problem with your ancient ritual, that’s a you issue.”

“You’re joking?” His ancient eyes fix on me. “Now?”

“I’m dead. What are you going to do, kill me again?”

For a moment—just a moment—something almost like amusement flickers across his face. Recognition. Like he’s seeing someone else in me. Someone who joked in the face of death a thousand years ago.

Then it’s gone, and he just—looks at me.

Those eyes that have seen empires rise and fall, that have watched the world change for eleven hundred years while he stayed the same, hungry and hollow and waiting. They search my face. My form. Whatever I am in this place.

And then—slowly—his gaze drops.

To my midsection.

To something I can’t see.

I don’t have a body here—not really—but he’s looking at where my stomach would be with an intensity that makes the not-flesh crawl. Like he’s seeing through me. Like he’s counting something that shouldn’t be there.

His face cracks.

It’s the only word for it. Like stone splitting. Like something ancient finally breaking under a weight it was never meant to carry.

“No.” The word comes out barely a whisper. “No, that would require—she would have to be—”

He can’t finish. Won’t finish.

“What?” I’m reaching for him now, which is stupid because I can’t touch anything and he can’t hold me and we’re both just shadows arguing in the space between living and dying. “What is it? What do you see?”

He pulls back. The darkness gathers around him like a cloak, and for a moment I see him clearly—not the monster, not the villain, but the man underneath. The king who loved someone so much he unmade himself trying to get her back.

Fresh grief floods his features. Not the ancient kind he’s been carrying for eleven centuries. Something new. Something raw.

He looks at me again. Looks away. Can’t look. Can’t not look.

“Her mother’s blessing.” His voice breaks. Actually breaks, like a man’s voice and not a monster’s. “I studied it for eleven centuries. Every word. Every passage. I memorized it. I dreamed it. I shaped my entire existence around understanding how to break it.”

“And?”

“Except the parts I couldn’t bear to read.” He meets my eyes, and there’s something in his gaze that might be pity. Might be horror. Might be grief so fresh it hasn’t learned how to be old yet. “The parts about—”

He stops. Shakes his head. His hands are trembling—I can see them now, the hands that have killed and built empires and reached for a wife who’s been dead for too many years. Trembling.

“About what?”

The magic is pulling harder now. I can feel my edges blurring, feel the void losing its grip on me. Whatever is protecting me is stronger than eleven centuries of hunger. Stronger than his need. Stronger than both of us combined.

“I will find out.” His voice steadies. Hardens. The man disappearing back into the monster. “I will understand what stopped this. And when I do—”

“Let me know when you figure it out.” I’m being pulled apart, stretched thin, the darkness tearing like old cloth. “I’m curious too.”

His face is the last thing I see. Those ancient eyes. That fresh grief he can’t explain.