Page 64 of The Immortal’s Mark

The evening debrief is in an hour. The Moon Garden after. The bench where we sit in the jasmine-scented dark, not quite touching, saying nothing and everything.

I’ll go. I’ll keep my mouth shut about burning villages and old guilt.

Chapter 648 and I’m still a coward.

Some things don’t change, no matter how many times you die.

I find myself in the Moon Garden for the fourth night in a row.

I should be in my chambers. Dumpling is probably yelling at my door right now, outraged that his favorite furniture isn’t there to be kneaded into submission. He’ll make me pay for this tomorrow. Probably knock something expensive off a table while maintaining eye contact.

Instead I’m here. Walking stones I’ve memorized by now—which ones wobble beneath my feet, which ones hold the day’s warmth into the evening like they’re trying to comfort someone.

He’s already here.

I don’t announce myself, and he doesn’t look up. This is the ritual now, the one we’ve built without ever naming it, without ever acknowledging that it exists at all. Four nights of this. Four nights of pretending we haven’t chosen each other’s company over sleep, over duty, over common sense.

I sit at my end of the bench. The stone is cold through my clothes, familiar now in a way that should concern me. The space between us could fit two hands. Close enough to touch if either of us reached.

Neither of us does.

The jasmine is heavy in the night air tonight, thick and sweet, the kind of scent that gets into your hair, your clothes, your dreams. I’ll fall asleep breathing it later. I’ll dream of this garden, probably. Of moonlight on white petals. Of the space between us that keeps shrinking, night by night, inch by inch.

The jasmine. The garden. The bench. Him.

Dangerous thoughts. I shove them aside. They don’t stay shoved.

“The archives.” His voice is quiet, pitched for me alone. “Did you find anything?”

I shouldn’t tell him. The symbol. The memory it dragged up from some locked room in my head. The guilt I’ve been swallowing all afternoon like broken glass.

“A symbol,” I hear myself say anyway. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “Circle. Eight-pointed star. Serpent eating its own tail.”

He’s still beside me. Listening. Not moving, not interrupting, just—present. The way he always is when I’m trying to find my way through something ugly. It shouldn’t be as grounding as it is.

“I’ve seen it before.” My fingers find a loose thread on my sleeve, something to do that isn’t looking at him. “Three hundred years ago. Southern provinces. There was a village.”

I stop. The words taste wrong. I start again.

“They came asking questions. About me.” The jasmine smells too sweet suddenly, cloying. “They burned the village to flush me out. Fourteen people died because I stayed too long. Because I made friends. Because I forgot what happens when I let people know me.”

The silence stretches between us. Not uncomfortable. Just heavy, the way grief is heavy, the way old guilt settles into your bones and stays there.

“The same cult,” he says. Not a question.

“Same symbol. Same questions.” I stare at the jasmine vine climbing the garden wall, white blooms glowing pale in the moonlight. “Three hundred years and they’re still hunting. Still leaving ash behind them.”

“The Hungering King’s followers.”

“Apparently he inspires loyalty.” The joke fails. I don’t try to save it. Some things aren’t funny, not even for me.

“We’ll find them.” His voice is certain. Imperial. The voice that commands armies and expects to be obeyed by the universe itself. “We’ll stop them.”

“You can’t stop people who believe they’re saving the world.” I’ve seen it too many times. Too many fires. Too many bodies. Too many true believers with eyes like furnaces. “They just keep coming back. Different faces. Same symbol. Same fire.”

We sit with that for a while. The weight of centuries on one side of the bench. The weight of empire on the other. Somehow, inexplicably, the space between feels like the only safe place in the world.

I should stop coming.