Page 38 of The Immortal’s Mark

He purrs once. It sounds like agreement. It also sounds like victory.

I turn away. My stomach growls, and I remember—breakfast. A servant brought something earlier. A single pork dumpling, still warm, left on the side table while I was busy catastrophizing.

The plate is empty.

The cat is licking his whiskers with the deep satisfaction of the utterly unrepentant.

“You ate my dumpling.”

He blinks at me. Slow. Golden eyes utterly empty of all remorse.

Something in my chest does something. Something inconvenient. Something that is absolutely not fondness, because I don’t do fondness, I do violence and sarcasm and leaving before anyone can leave me first.

“Fine.” I glare at him. He’s orange. He’s round. He just ate my breakfast and he’s looking at me like I should be grateful.

“You will forever be known as Dumpling. You look like one and you just ate one. Congratulations.”

He doesn’t acknowledge this. He’s already asleep.

In my lap.

I don’t know when I sat down. I don’t know why I’m not pushing him off. He’s warm. Heavy. Purring like a small engine of absolute self-satisfaction, and I’m sitting here like an idiot because apparently I’ve forgotten how to make my body move.

In the stillness, it creeps back.

Significant.

His voice. The garden. The way he couldn’t explain what he meant, like the word had surprised him too.

I move the cat.

He makes a sound of profound betrayal—a warbling cry that suggests I have committed an act of violence against his very soul—and then immediately curls back into a ball on my pillow. Fine. He can have the pillow. I don’t need a pillow. I need to not be sitting here thinking about emperors who use words they can’t define.

Investigation. The money trail. Numbers are safe. Numbers don’t laugh or show you secret gardens or look at you like—

I don’t look back at the cat as I leave.

I absolutely don’t think about how warm he looks.

The archives are quiet in a way that feels like a dare. Rows of scrolls and ledgers stretching back further than the dynasty, and somewhere in here, a trail someone thought they’d buried.

This is what I’m good at. Following money. Money always leads somewhere, and that somewhere is always the answer.

I’ve been here since just after dawn, cross-referencing the payment trail with trade manifests and harbor records. Jing hovers nearby—helpful and nervous, bringing tea I don’t drink and asking questions I half-answer. She means well. I’m not built for people who mean well.

“The second intermediary,” I say, mostly to myself. “Merchant house with court connections. They’re good at hiding things.”

“Which house?” Jing asks.

“Still working on that.”

The records are creatively maintained. Someone with skill set this up—layers of legitimate trade masking the payments underneath. Loans dressed up as leases. Leases dressed up as loans to hide the trail. Professional work. I’m almost impressed.

Almost.

I find what I need by midmorning. A name. A connection. A thread that leads to somewhere physical.

I bring the findings to Ren.