Page 21 of The Immortal’s Mark

“I have had eight hundred years to rest.” Her mouth curves—that sharp, bright thing that is not quite a smile. “I am tired of being tired. This is better.”

I leave. I do not look back. But I feel her attention on me as I walk away, and the weight of it follows me through the darkened corridors, through the silent hours, into the restless night.

She showed you something no one else found in twenty years.

I do not respond.

Interesting, little flame. Very interesting.

The library lingers.

Her voice. Her pattern. The way lamplight caught her face when she looked up, when she caught me watching, when she did not look away.

I pace. I do not sleep. The guards outside will note another restless night—another tally mark in whatever record they keep of their emperor’s private madness. Let them. There are worse things than pacing.

I touch my mother’s comb. The jade is cool beneath my fingers. It does not help. It never helps. I touch it anyway, and I think of choices that cannot be unmade, of thrones built on graves, of the brother I could not save and the crown I never wanted.

The journal waits on my desk.

She showed you something no one else found in twenty years.

She is competent. I think the words more than speak them. This is why I kept her.

If you say so.

A pause. Tianlong’s presence shifts in my mind—receding, but not gone. Never truly gone.

Sleep well, little flame. Tomorrow will be interesting. She will find more patterns. You will find more excuses to be near her when she does.

His presence recedes like a tide pulling back from shore. I am alone.

The journal waits.

I open it. The leather is worn beneath my hands—familiar, constant. The pen is where I left it. The page is blank.

I should write about the conspiracy. The trade routes. The three families eliminated over twenty years. The pattern she found that my scholars missed, the implications for the investigation, the political ramifications if this trail leads where I suspect it leads.

I should not write about the way lamplight caught her face. The corner of my mouth that curved without permission. The way she saw it, and said nothing, and the silence was not empty.

I should not.

The pen touches paper.

Entry 8,147.

She found a conspiracy that my advisors missed for two decades. She did this in one night, surrounded by chaos, following instincts eight centuries have honed.

I should be writing about the implications. I should be planning the next steps. I should be thinking of the empire.

Instead I am thinking of her.

This is inconvenient.

This is—

The pen lifts. The entry remains unfinished. I stare at the words on the page—my own hand, my own admission—and I do not know what to do with what I have written.

Duty is enough.