Page 71 of The Immortal’s Mark

She has not looked at me since we entered this room.

I stand against the far wall, arms folded, watching. This is her interrogation—she knows these people, this world, in ways I do not. But I am not here as decoration. I am here because someone tried to kill her in my palace, and I need to understand why.

You’re here because you can’t let her out of your sight, Tianlong corrects. But the strategic justification is charming.

“Who sent you?”

Silence.

“The cult? The Hungering King’s faithful?”

Nothing. The assassin stares ahead, face blank as unmarked stone.

“You were heading for my chambers specifically. Not his.” She stops circling. Tilts her head, a predator catching a scent. “That’s interesting. Three weeks ago, I wasn’t worth killing. What changed?”

My mind catches on this. Three weeks ago, she tried to assassinate me. Now she is the target. The conspiracy is shifting—adapting to her presence, to her survival, to whatever threat she represents that I have not yet identified.

Someone is afraid of her, Tianlong observes. More afraid than they are of you. That should concern you.

It does.

The assassin smiles.

It is not a pleasant expression. There is something final in it, something that settles into the room like the cold before snowfall, and I am stepping forward before I understand why—

“Lián—”

The crunch of a false tooth. The assassin bites down, and foam begins forming at the corners of their mouth. Convulsions. Eyes rolling back. The body jerks against the bindings once, twice, then goes still.

Dead in seconds.

The silence that follows is absolute.

Lián stares at the corpse. Her expression does not change—not shock, not grief, not anything I can name. Just assessment. Evaluation. A merchant examining goods that have failed to meet expectations.

“Inconvenient,” she says.

One word. No sympathy. Eight centuries of death have taught her to evaluate corpses the way others evaluate weather—a condition to be noted, adjusted for, moved past.

I find myself wondering what that costs her. Whether there was ever a time when death meant something to her beyond inconvenience. Whether the woman who talked to her cat about sincerity and the woman standing over this body are the same person, or if one is a mask for the other.

You’re asking the wrong question, little flame, Tianlong says quietly.

The guards enter. Remove the body. The chamber empties in efficient silence—no one questions, no one lingers, no one meets my eyes.

And then it is just us.

Through the high slits, the darkness has begun to thin—not dawn yet, but close. The interrogation chair sits empty, leather straps hanging loose. Somewhere in the palace, servants are beginning to stir, and the empire is waking to a day that does not know what has happened in this room.

Lián still has not looked at me.

The distance between us is ten feet. Stone floor, empty air, the ghost of a confession I was never meant to hear. It feels wider than the empire.

Say something, Tianlong suggests. Preferably something that is not catastrophically stupid.

I open my mouth.

She speaks first.