Page 22 of The Immortal’s Mark

Duty must be enough.

But the page remains open. And the pen remains in my hand. And somewhere in the imperial library, surrounded by histories and conspiracies and the debris of her competence, she is still working. Still finding patterns. Still being something I cannot name and cannot stop noticing.

The pen touches paper again.

Tomorrow I will observe from appropriate distance. Tomorrow I will remember what duty requires. Tomorrow I will be the emperor the empire needs.

Tonight I am only a man who cannot sleep, writing about a woman who should mean nothing.

She does not mean nothing.

This is the problem.

I close the journal. I do not close my eyes. Outside, the palace sleeps. Inside, something has shifted—something small, something unnamed, something that will not fit back into the careful architecture I have built around myself.

The jade comb sits on my desk.

The journal holds my confession.

And somewhere in the library, the assassin who should have killed me is finding patterns in the dark.