Page 61 of The Immortal’s Mark

“When?”

“Fifteen years ago. Plague swept the eastern provinces. She was seven.” This is the first time I have seen genuine emotion from Lady Mei. It humanizes her. It also makes her more dangerous. People with nothing left to lose often are.

“I am sorry for your loss.”

“As I am for yours, Your Majesty.” She inclines her head. “Your brothers. Your father. Your mother. We have all paid the price of service. That price does not stop being paid simply because we have earned our places.”

I turn to leave. At the door, her voice stops me.

“A word of caution.”

I wait.

“The court notices everything. The fact that you carried her through the palace after she died. The fact that she was in your chambers overnight. The fact that you meet her in the Moon Garden.” A pause. “Secure does not mean invisible.”

“The Moon Garden is protected.”

“From dragons, perhaps. Not from servants. Not from soldiers who wonder why their emperor visits an empty garden every night.” Her smile returns, sharp and knowing. “As I said, Your Majesty. I am not your enemy. But I may be the only one honest enough to tell you: whatever this is, the empire is watching.”

I leave without responding.

There is nothing to say.

She is right.

Evening.

The Moon Garden.

The jasmine is opening—white petals unfurling in the darkness, releasing sweetness into the cold air. I arrived early. I will not examine why. The stone bench is cold beneath me, and I have been sitting here long enough that the cold has become familiar.

She arrives exactly when she said she would. Not early, not late—precise, as if she has been counting the minutes the way I have been counting them, as if the interval between afternoon and now has been something to endure rather than use.

This should not please me as much as it does.

“Your Majesty.” She drops onto the stone bench without ceremony, legs stretched before her, head tilted back to study the jasmine. The moonlight catches her profile—sharp features, sharper eyes, a face that has seen eight centuries and still looks surprised by silence. “Miss me?”

I do not answer. The answer would be too honest.

“I spent three hours in the archives,” she continues, filling the quiet the way she always does, noise as armor, words as walls. “Your filing system is a crime against reason. Did you know there are seventeen different classifications for ‘suspicious financial activity’? Seventeen. I found supply manifests from Wei’s quartermaster corps buried under tax records from the Year of the Ox.”

“Did you find anything useful?”

“Define useful.” She pulls a scroll from her sleeve—sleight of hand so casual I almost miss it. “Wei’s manifests have discrepancies. Money flowing somewhere it shouldn’t. But the pattern predates his command.”

I take the scroll. Open it. The numbers confirm what Mei told me, but there is more here—a thread Mei did not find, or chose not to share.

“Someone was using military infrastructure before Wei was appointed,” Lián says. “A third party. Someone who had access for years. Decades, maybe.”

She has been investigating independently. This is precisely what I asked her to do. I should not be surprised.

I am not surprised.

I am pleased.

“Lady Mei reached similar conclusions,” I say. “She has names. Mid-level officials with supply chain access.”

“The cult’s funding?”