Page 74 of The Immortal’s Mark

“I survived.” The next words are harder. “My brothers could not forgive me for it.”

The city is waking below us. Smoke rising from morning fires. The distant sound of temple bells.

“They were older. Stronger. More suited to rule. They expected to be chosen—Feng, the eldest, had been preparing since childhood. When the fire passed them over—”

I stop. The words taste like ash. Like the smoke that hung over the capital for years while my family tore itself apart.

“They went to war. Not against me.” My voice has gone rough. I cannot seem to smooth it. “Against each other. Over which of them should take the throne instead. Over whether dragon fire could be wrong.”

She does not speak. Does not try to fill the silence with comfort or platitudes. She simply exists beside me, waiting. I find myself grateful for that in a way I do not know how to express.

“My father died before it ended. Shame, they said. He could not bear to watch his sons destroy what he had built.”

I close my eyes. Open them.

“My brothers died on the same battlefield. Fighting each other.”

The word comes out splintered: “Over me.”

The confession feels like bleeding. Like finally lancing a wound I have kept sealed for twenty-two years and letting the poison drain.

“My mother gave me her jade comb the last time I saw her. She told me to remember who I was before the fire. Before the crown.” My hand finds my pocket, closes around the cool jade. “I promised her I would.”

A pause. The sun is fully above the mountains now.

“I lied. For twenty-two years, I have lied.” I make myself say the rest. “There is no boy who wrote poetry about the moon. There is only the emperor who killed his family by existing.”

The silence stretches.

The city breathes below us. The sun climbs. The moment holds, heavy as stone.

Then—a shift. Her grip on the railing loosens. She exhales, long and slow, and when she speaks her voice is quiet.

“You didn’t kill them.”

I look at her.

She is watching me with those ancient eyes—centuries of death and survival and learning exactly what guilt looks like from the inside. The sunrise catches the angles of her face, the scar through her eyebrow, the softness she tries so hard to hide beneath the sharpness. She is beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with beauty.

I note this observation. I cannot make myself look away.

“You survived,” she says. “There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

“I’ve spent eight hundred years trying to prove there isn’t.” Her voice is matter-of-fact. Almost light. As if discussing the weather rather than centuries of seeking oblivion. “You’ve been trying to earn a life you didn’t choose. I’ve been trying to end one I didn’t ask for.”

Something shifts in my chest. Recognition. Understanding.

“We are the same,” I say.

“Just different directions.”

“Just different directions.”

The terrace is awash in gold now. She is standing close enough that I can see the light catch in her hair, the fine lines around her eyes that speak of laughter she rarely allows herself.

My hand is on the railing. Hers is inches away.