Page 28 of The Immortal’s Mark

“K-kitchens.” The word comes out waterlogged. “I was s’posed to stay but I wanted to see the f-fish and now I can’t find—”

“I know where the kitchens are.” He says it like he’s offering her a secret. “Would you like me to walk you back?”

She stares at him like he’s offered her the moon and stars and a pony besides.

He stands. Offers his hand—palm up, patient, no pressure.

She takes it.

Her small fingers disappear into his, and something in my chest does something I don’t have words for.

I watch them walk away. The Emperor of the Jade Throne and a cook’s daughter, hand in hand, his dragon-embroidered robes trailing in the dirt behind him. He doesn’t look down. Doesn’t brush off the soil. Doesn’t seem to notice or care that he’s ruined silk worth a small fortune because a four-year-old needed someone to hold her hand.

The girl’s crying has stopped.

I can hear her voice now—small, chattering, the way children do when they’ve decided someone is safe. She’s telling him about the fish pond. About her doll, whose name is Lili. About how her mama makes the best dumplings in the whole palace, even better than the head cook’s, but he’s not allowed to tell anyone.

He answers. I can’t hear the words, but I can hear the tone—patient, warm, genuinely interested. The voice of someone who has all the time in the world for a lost child’s rambling.

I have no jokes available.

No armour. No deflection. No clever observation to file this under so I can stop feeling it.

Just this: the emperor kneeling in dirt for a cook’s daughter. Unperformed. Unwitnessed, except by me.

Children are protected.

It’s the one rule I’ve never broken. Not once in eight centuries. I’ve killed rulers and kingmakers and men who deserved it and men who didn’t. I’ve lied, stolen, burned cities, started wars. I’ve done things that would curdle milk and things that would make demons flinch.

But children are protected. Always. No exceptions.

I had a daughter once.

The memory surfaces like a splinter—quick, sharp, there and gone before I can grab it. Dark hair. A laugh like water. Gone before I could—

Don’t.

I shove it down. Lock it away. That door stays closed.

But here’s this emperor, with his dirt-stained robes and his patient voice. Same rule. Same unbroken line. Like it’s not even a choice for him, just the way a person moves through the world.

I can’t explain this away.

Can’t call it politics, because there’s no one here to perform for. Can’t file it under strategy, or loyalty-building, or any of the other comfortable categories I’ve been using to keep him at arm’s length.

This is just who he is.

The dusk settles around me like a judgement, like honey, like something I can’t outrun. I stand very still in the kitchen garden with dirt under my boots and the smell of basil in the air, and I let something crack that I’m not sure I can repair.

That I’m not sure I want to repair.

And that—

That’s the most terrifying part.

The journal is the only place I do not lie.

Centuries of habit. Different books, different languages, different names-but always this: pen to paper, truth bleeding out where no one else will see.