Page 183 of The Immortal’s Mark

She does not wake.

The road continues.

She wakes when we are an hour from the palace, blinking into the late afternoon light like someone surfacing from deep water.

“I fell asleep.”

“You did.”

“On a horse.”

“Also true.”

She is silent for a moment, processing. I can feel her becoming aware of the situation—my arms around her, her back against my chest, the intimacy of the position. I wait for the deflection. The joke. The armor snapping back into place.

“This is undignified,” she says.

“You died yesterday.”

“I have died before.” A pause. “I walked it off.”

“You are not walking anything off. You are sitting here, and you are letting me take care of you.”

I say it without inflection. A statement of fact. She could argue. She could demand her own horse. She could remind me that she has survived long enough without my assistance and does not require it now.

She does not.

“Fine,” she says.

The word is quiet. Almost soft. She settles back against me, and something in my chest does something I cannot name.

That was almost romantic, Tianlong notes. By your standards, that was practically a declaration.

I do not dignify this with a response.

She said fine. She never says fine. She argues. She deflects. She makes seventeen jokes about your riding posture. She said fine.

I noticed.

You noticed. Good. I was concerned the obvious had escaped you.

Tianlong.

Yes?

Be silent.

As you wish. I will simply observe silently. With my eyes. Which are watching you. Silently.

Lián’s voice cuts through the exchange, sleepy but amused: “He is doing the thing again, is he not? The running commentary?”

“He is.”

“Tell him I can hear him thinking.”

Tell her I can hear her deflecting.

“He says—”