Page 46 of The Immortal’s Mark

She chose that. She chose me over herself, and I do not know why, and I am terrified that the choice itself has changed something. That dying for someone carries a cost that dying alone does not.

Three hours, Tianlong says quietly.

I do not respond. I am watching her face.

I am holding my breath.

The water clock drips. The silk rustles beneath my grip on the chair arms. My nails have cut crescents into my palms. I did not notice.

And then—

Something changes.

Color, first. The grey pallor that had settled over her skin shifts toward warmth. The change is subtle—I would not notice if I were not watching her with the intensity of a man who has forgotten how to look away. But I am watching. I have been watching for three hours. I notice everything.

Her lips, which had gone the color of ash, begin to pink. Her cheeks flush with returning blood. The waxy quality of death—I have seen it before, too many times—recedes like frost melting from glass.

I lean forward. I am not breathing. I do not remember when I stopped.

The wound. I cannot see it directly—her shirt is dark, ruined beyond salvage—but something is happening beneath the fabric. Movement. Not her breathing, not yet. Something else. Something impossible.

I reach toward her shirt. Hesitate. My hands hover over the blood-stiffened cloth, and I am aware that this is improper, that touching her this way without permission violates every protocol I was raised to honor.

I need to see.

I ease the fabric aside, just enough. The wound—

The wound is closing.

Flesh knits before my eyes. Muscle that was torn reforms, fibers weaving together with a speed that defies understanding. Blood vessels seal themselves. Skin spreads across the damage like silk being drawn over a frame, pink and new and unmarked.

I have read the theory. I have never watched it happen. I have never seen the body remake itself from ruin, cells multiplying in seconds that should take weeks, damage that should be permanent erased as if it never was.

It should be horrifying. It should remind me of what she is—something other than human, something that death cannot hold, something dangerous.

Yet, it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Her chest rises.

One breath. Shallow. A gasp, really—the sound of lungs remembering their purpose, of a body startled back into motion.

Then another breath. Deeper.

Her eyes open.

She looks around—disoriented, searching, the automatic assessment of someone who has woken in danger too many times. Her gaze finds mine.

“Ren.”

My name. Not Your Majesty. Not Emperor. Just my name, spoken in a voice still rough from resurrection, as if checking that I am real.

Something in my chest that was clenched very tight releases all at once.

“How many times,” I say, and my voice is not steady and I do not make it steady, “have you done that?”

She sits up slowly. Tests the space where the wound was—pressing fingers to unblemished skin beneath the ruined fabric. Her eyes find mine again.

“Died for someone?”