Page 188 of The Immortal’s Mark

Her voice is steady. Clinical, almost. The voice of someone who has had too long to think about something and has worn the edges smooth.

“I should have stayed dead. That was the deal. Willing sacrifice. Love-fueled. Permanent. The ritual should have worked. The Hungering King should have gotten his wife back and I should have been—” She pauses. “Not dead. Ended. My essence used as a vessel. No resurrection. No coming back.”

“But you did come back.”

“Yes.” She finally turns to look at me. Her eyes are dark, confused, searching. “He saw something. In that void between death and resurrection. He looked at me and saw something that stopped the ritual—something that made it reject me as a sacrifice. And he could not say what it was. He looked at me like I had broken something he forgot he owned, and he could not make himself speak.”

I consider this. The Hungering King, who has pursued his obsession for eleven centuries. The Hungering King, who has read every word of the blessing that hides Lián from his sight. The Hungering King, who saw something that stopped his ritual and could not name it.

“Do you know what he saw?”

“No.” Her laugh is short, frustrated. “Everyone keeps looking at me like they know something I do not. Tianlong. Lady Mei. Even the cat. They look at me, and then they look at—”

She stops. Her hand has drifted to her stomach. She stares at it, surprised by its position, and does not move it.

“You keep doing that,” I say.

“I know.” She shakes her head. “I do not know why.”

The silence stretches. The jasmine blooms around us, pale flowers glowing in the moonlight. I think about Lady Mei’s lingering gaze. Tianlong’s cryptic observations. The cat’s protective positioning. The puzzle pieces arrange themselves in my mind, form a shape I am not certain I am ready to see.

I do not push. If the shape is what I suspect, she will understand soon enough.

“Perhaps your body knows something you do not,” I say quietly.

She looks at me. Studies my face in the darkness.

“That is very philosophical.”

“I am a very philosophical person.”

“You are a very annoying person.”

“Also true.”

Something eases in her expression. The tension bleeds out of her shoulders. She leans against me—a slow motion, deliberate—and I shift to accommodate her, my arm settling around her waist.

“The Hungering King will come again,” she says.

“Yes.”

“He will figure out what stopped the ritual.”

“Probably.”

“He will try again.”

“Then we will be ready.” I pause. “We.”

She catches the word. I feel her attention snag on it, turn it over.

“We,” she repeats.

“Is that objectionable?”

“No.” A pause. “It is… unfamiliar. I have not been part of a ‘we’ in a very long time.”

“Neither have I.”