Page 72 of The Immortal’s Mark

“So.” Her voice is light. Too light. “Do you make a habit of listening to women sleep, or am I special?”

“You were not sleeping.”

“No.” Her arms cross, armor rebuilding piece by piece. “I wasn’t.”

“I heard a sound. I was concerned.”

“Concerned.” She tastes the word like something she’s considering spitting back at me. “And then you stayed. Listening. To me talking to my cat about—” She stops. Redirects, hard. “About taxation manifests. Very boring. You missed nothing.”

She is lying. We both know she is lying. The air between us hums with everything she actually said.

“How much,” she says, and the lightness is gone now, “did you actually hear?”

I could lie. I could offer her the mercy of pretending I heard nothing of consequence, that her confessions to a cat named Dumpling remain hers alone. I could give us both an exit.

“Enough.”

Something flickers across her face. Vulnerability, maybe. Then it’s gone, shuttered behind an expression I cannot read. She looks away. In the growing light, I can see the tension running through her shoulders, the way her fingers grip her elbows hard enough to bruise.

She is furious. She is mortified. She is something else beneath both that she is fighting very hard not to let me see.

I should apologize. I should explain. I should—

“Would you like to walk with me?”

The words come out before I have decided to say them.

She looks back, surprise cracking through the mask. “Now?”

“The palace will be waking soon.” I keep my voice even. Practical. As if my pulse is not hammering against my throat. “I would prefer to avoid explaining to the morning shift why their emperor and his shadow are emerging from an interrogation chamber together at dawn. The rumors would be… creative.”

The corner of her mouth twitches. Not a smile—not yet—but an acknowledgment. A crack in the wall.

“Where?”

“Somewhere I go when I cannot sleep.” The words feel heavier than they should.

She goes still. She understands what I am offering—I can see it in the way her eyes search my face, looking for the trap, the angle, the hidden motive. Her centuries of survival have taught her that gifts come with prices.

Finally. Tianlong’s voice curls through my mind, warm with something that might be approval.

I do not respond. I do not close the connection either. I am too focused on her face, on the war playing out behind her eyes—suspicion against curiosity, self-protection against something softer.

“This is a terrible idea,” she says.

“Yes.”

“You realize I’m going to mock your secret brooding spot.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

Another pause. Her arms are still crossed, but the grip on her elbows has loosened. The wall is still there, but there’s a door in it now. Cracked open. Just barely.

“Fine,” she says. “But if this is some kind of imperial murder dungeon, I’m going to be very annoyed.”

“It is not a murder dungeon.”

“That’s exactly what someone with a murder dungeon would say.”