Page 57 of The Immortal’s Mark

Chapter 10

The Cost of the Throne

Emperor Ren

Cold water. Face, neck, wrists. The ritual of morning, stripped to its essentials. I stand before the basin in my chambers as dawn seeps through the paper screens, turning everything the color of old parchment, and I do not think about the garden.

I do not think about jasmine opening in darkness. About silence that felt like conversation. About the way she said ‘same time’ before she left, casual as breathing, like it was already understood. Like we had already become the kind of people who made plans.

I am the Emperor of the Jade Throne. I do not make plans with assassins.

The water runs down my jaw. I reach for the cloth.

You showed her the garden.

Tianlong’s voice curls through my thoughts like incense smoke—present everywhere, impossible to ignore. I continue drying my face.

The only place where I cannot watch you.

I do not respond. The response would only confirm what he already knows.

Interesting choice. A pause, weighted with three thousand years of observation. For a tactical debriefing.

It was appropriate to the conversation.

The conversation where you told the entire imperial court to go hang themselves? That conversation?

The jade comb sits on my desk where it always sits. I do not look at it. I do not think about why I showed Lián the garden—the only private space I possess, the only silence in an empire that never stops listening.

The investigation required privacy.

Mmm. Tianlong’s amusement is a physical sensation, warm and insufferable at the base of my skull. And the court? When they learn you’ve been meeting an assassin in moonlit gardens? Will you tell them that also required privacy?

I reach for my robes. The weight of silk settling on my shoulders is familiar. Grounding. This, at least, I understand. The costume of empire. The performance of power.

The court will learn what I choose to tell them.

The court, Tianlong says, notices everything. As does your spymaster. As, I imagine, does your general. As do the servants who tend the Moon Garden and wonder why flowers have been disturbed on a bench that has not been sat upon in thirty years.

I still.

He is right. Of course he is right. Dragons do not lie, and Tianlong has been watching courts rise and fall since before my dynasty existed. The Moon Garden is not as private as I pretend. Nothing is.

I am merely observing, he continues, tone innocent in a way that fools no one. You showed her the one place where I cannot reach. You told her she could call you by your name. You watched her sleep in your chambers after she died for you.

I do not respond. There is nothing to say that would not be a lie.

I observe, he says. I’ve been observing you since you were twelve years old and on fire. I observed you bury your brothers. I observed you build walls so high even I couldn’t see over them. A beat, almost gentle. I would very much like to observe something different. If you would stop being such a coward about it.

The robes are settled. The face in the bronze mirror is composed. The emperor looks back at me: sharp jaw, tired eyes, the kind of stillness that comes from years of being watched.

Coward, he called me.

I do not argue.

The training grounds sprawl beneath the eastern balcony like a wound in the palace’s elegance—packed earth, wooden dummies scarred by ten thousand practice blades, the smell of dust and effort rising in the heat.

I come here to review guard rotations. That is what I tell myself.