Page 7 of The Immortal’s Mark

“I will question her myself.”

The room goes still. A different kind of stillness than I command—this one is shock, poorly masked. Emperors do not question prisoners. Emperors give orders and receive reports. The work of interrogation belongs to professionals with specialized tools and fewer constraints on methodology.

Wei recovers first. “Your Majesty, the risk—”

“Is mine to assess.” I stand. The movement silences whatever objection was forming in his throat. “Continue your work here. I want the eastern guard rotation revised by morning. The funding investigation begins at dawn—Chancellor, you will coordinate.”

I do not wait for their agreement. I do not need it. The door opens before I reach it; the guards have learned to anticipate.

The corridor swallows me in its cool, torchlit silence.

You are going to see her.

Tianlong’s observation is not a question.

I am going to question a prisoner.

Liar.

I ignore him. The dragon bond does not allow for true separation, and Tianlong has never believed in respecting boundaries. But I have twenty-two years of experience pretending his commentary does not affect me.

I walk faster than usual. The guards stationed at intervals snap to attention as I pass; I do not acknowledge them. Acknowledgment invites questions, and questions invite delay.

The air changes as I descend. Colder. Damper. Stone stairs worn smooth by centuries—prisoners going down, sometimes coming up, often going nowhere ever again. The sweet incense of the upper palace fades, replaced by torch smoke and something older.

Fear. The dungeons smell like fear.

I have walked these stairs before. I do not like it. I do not pretend that disliking it absolves me of responsibility.

The guard at the dungeon entrance blanches when he sees me. His bow is too hasty, the bow of a man wondering if he has done something worthy of imperial attention.

“Your Majesty. The prisoner is in cell fourteen, but—”

“I know where she is.”

I know because I gave the orders. Standard containment, but not standard conditions. Fresh straw. A blanket. A cell scrubbed of the worst of what previous occupants left behind. I told myself it was practicality—a prisoner who dies of fever is useless for questioning.

I did not examine why I cared whether an assassin was comfortable.

Cell fourteen is at the end.

The guard reaches it first, fumbling with his keys, and then stops. His face goes pale in the torchlight—a specific shade of pale that I have learned to recognize. The pale of a man confronting something that does not fit his understanding of how the world works.

“Your Majesty, the prisoner—she—”

He does not finish.

He does not need to.

I step past him and look through the bars.

The cell is not empty.

The corpse is not a corpse.

She is sitting on the stone bench—not lying where they left her body, but sitting—and she is examining the chains around her wrists with the focused attention of a scholar studying an interesting text. Her wounds are gone. The bolt-hole in her throat, the blood that should have stained her clothes—gone. Her skin is whole, unmarked, as if death is merely an inconvenience she has decided to decline.

She is alive.