Page 35 of The Immortal’s Mark

She says nothing. Waits.

“Tianlong cannot reach here.” I pause. This is a secret. This is my secret. The one thing in the empire that is mine alone. “Something about the stones. The bond does not penetrate them. When I sit here, my mind is entirely my own. No dragon commentary. No observations. No presence but my own thoughts.”

I do not say: I have needed that. I do not say: The weight of the bond is a gift, but even gifts can be heavy. I do not say: Sometimes I come here just to remember what silence feels like inside my own skull.

She looks at me. That look again—the one that sees beneath.

“You’ve never told anyone this.”

“No.”

I do not know why I am telling her now. She is an assassin. She tried to kill me four days ago. She is dangerous in ways I am only beginning to understand.

And I am showing her the only place in the empire where I can be alone.

“Why?” she asks.

I do not have an answer.

She does not press. Instead, she walks to the bench and sits, her movements careful, as if the space is fragile. As if she understands what it costs me to share it.

“It’s quiet,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I don’t usually like quiet.” She looks up at the closed jasmine, the winter sky above. “But this is different.”

I sit beside her. Not close. But closer than strategy would advise.

The silence is not uncomfortable. It is not the silence of the court, where every pause is measured. It is not the silence of strategy, where words are weapons waiting to be deployed.

It is simply quiet.

I did not know I needed that.

We walk back eventually. The palace demands attention; the investigation waits; the empire does not pause for emperors who sit in gardens with assassins.

But something has shifted.

She walks beside me through the corridors, and I am aware of her in a way that has nothing to do with threat assessment. Aware of her breathing. The way she moves. The quiet that has not quite left her.

“Thank you,” she says, as we approach the wing where her chambers wait. “For the garden.”

“I did not do anything.”

“You did.” She stops. Turns to face me. “You showed me something real.”

I do not know how to respond to this. I have spent twenty-two years showing people only what the empire requires. The strategic face. The measured words. The emperor-shaped performance that leaves no room for the man underneath.

She is not asking for the emperor.

“The dragon’s words,” I say. “About being significant.”

“Yes?”

“I do not know what they mean. I do not know what any of this means.” I pause. Honesty is uncomfortable. I offer it anyway. “But I find that I want to know. With you.”

Her face does something complicated. Cracks, then seals, then cracks again.