Page 70 of The Immortal’s Mark

She sidesteps, blade singing, but this one is trained—professional, not some amateur fumbling with borrowed steel. The assassin matches her pivot, redirects, strikes low. She blocks. The impact rings through the corridor.

I circle left, looking for an opening. The assassin is good. Lián is better—but in close quarters, with bad footing, against someone who clearly came prepared—

She’s magnificent, Tianlong observes, utterly unhelpful. You should tell her.

The assassin feints high, goes low. Lián catches the blade on her forearm guard and I see my opening. I step in, knife angled for the assassin’s exposed side—

Dumpling.

The cat has wandered into the doorway, and chooses this exact moment to stretch… luxuriously. Front paws extending. Back arching. And then he flops directly into the assassin’s path with the boneless grace of a creature who has never once considered that the world might not revolve around him.

The assassin trips.

It is not dignified. It is not dramatic. One moment they are a lethal threat; the next they are sprawling across the floor, thrown off balance by a ball of furry orange indifference, and Lián’s blade is at their throat before they finish sliding.

“How does it feel? To be thwarted by a cat?”

The assassin doesn’t move.

I straighten. My knife is still in my hand, angled for a killing stroke that is no longer necessary. I make myself set it down. The assassin is contained. The threat is neutralized. By a cat.

Dumpling, utterly unbothered, begins grooming his other paw. His work here is apparently done.

I adore him, Tianlong says. We should keep him.

The cat is not ours to keep.

Everything in this palace is ours. You’re the emperor and I am your dragon. Have you forgotten?

I do not respond. Because Lián is looking at me now. Then at the doorway I came through. At the position that makes it very clear where I was—before the shadow appeared.

“How long,” she says, “were you listening?”

I could lie. I have been trained in diplomacy since childhood; I know seventeen different ways to sidestep a direct question, at least four of which would technically be true. I could tell her I heard a noise and came to investigate. I could tell her I saw the assassin and followed. I could give her an exit from this moment that lets us both pretend.

I do not want to pretend.

“Long enough.”

Her jaw tightens. The blade does not waver from the assassin’s throat—her arm is perfectly steady, her breathing controlled, every inch the professional—but something in her eyes flickers. Vulnerability into anger into something harder. Something that looks like a door closing.

I have made a mistake.

Yes, Tianlong agrees. You should have lied.

“We’ll discuss this later.” Her voice is flat. Emptied of everything I heard through the door. “Guards.”

The word carries down the corridor. Footsteps respond. And whatever was cracking open between us seals shut again, buried beneath protocol and professionalism and the assassin sprawled on her floor.

Dumpling yawns, stretches again, and begins washing his face.

The interrogation takes place in a lower chamber, far from prying ears. Stone walls. No windows save narrow slits near the ceiling, where the first grey light of dawn is beginning to seep through. A room designed for conversations the empire would prefer to forget.

The assassin is bound to a chair at the center. Seated. Silent. Professional to the end.

Lián circles them.

She has changed—practical clothes now, hair pulled back, blades visible at hip and thigh. All trace of the woman talking to her cat erased beneath the assassin who has killed more people than most armies. She moves like water finding the edges of a bowl. Patient. Inevitable.