Page 76 of The Immortal’s Mark

Chapter 13

The Only Way Out

Chapter 644: In which our heroine learns that the only way forward is through—and the only way through is out.

The tea has gone cold.

I’ve been staring at the same map for three hours. The ink blurs, reforms, blurs again—rivers that might be roads, mountains that might be metaphors, and somewhere between the Western Pass and Jiangzhou, a temple that might actually contain answers instead of more questions.

My ribs ache from sitting too long. I shift, and the chair creaks. Palace furniture wasn’t designed for assassins who can’t hold still; it was designed for ministers who’ve perfected the art of ornamental presence. Everything in this room is mahogany and jade inlay and uncomfortable.

I’ve died six hundred and forty-four times and this is what stops me. Paperwork.

Jing found it—the lead, not the answer. Buried in a requisition manifest from thirty years ago, cross-referenced with a trade route census that no one had touched since the last dynasty. The girl’s good. Terrifyingly good. She’d presented her findings two days ago with the kind of quiet triumph that means she hasn’t slept in weeks.

“A temple,” Ren had said, studying the documents with those careful emperor’s eyes that miss nothing. “Three weeks south.”

“The Jade Serpent Temple,” Jing had confirmed. “Abandoned now. But the records suggest it was the origin point. Names of founding members. Ritual texts. A complete accounting of the original brotherhood.” Her hands had trembled slightly, the only sign of what this discovery had cost her. “Everything the cult has been trying to bury for three centuries.”

Everything we need.

The problem isn’t finding it. The problem is getting there before whoever’s watching us burns it to the ground.

I push back from the table, boots scraping against stone. The war room smells like cold tea and frustration—mine, mostly. The braziers have burned low, casting everything in bronze and shadow.

“Every lead we’ve followed has turned to ash,” I say, though Ren already knows this. I need to hear it out loud. Need to remind myself why I’m about to suggest something monumentally stupid. “The warehouse—emptied before our soldiers arrived. The merchant contact—vanished the day after we identified him. Someone inside is watching. Someone with access to our dispatch orders, our route plans, our—”

My knife stops mid-flip. The realization lands fresh, though it shouldn’t.

“Everything,” I finish. “They have access to everything. The moment we send soldiers to Jiangzhou, that temple will be ash and empty rooms before they’re halfway there.”

Ren stands by the window, silhouette sharp against the paper screens. He hasn’t moved in twenty minutes. That particular stillness means he’s thinking—the dangerous kind of thinking, the kind that preceded every successful campaign of the civil war.

I’ve started recognizing his silences. This one is frustrated.

“Lady Mei has narrowed the possibilities,” he says. “Four names.”

“Four names in a court of thousands.” I count the scroll cases stacked on the table. Twelve. None of them useful. “And the moment we investigate any of them directly—”

“They’ll know we’re close.”

“And the evidence will vanish. Again.” I resume the knife flip, needing the motion, needing something to do with my hands that isn’t throwing something. “We’re chasing smoke, Ren. Every time we get close to the flame, someone snuffs it before we can see what’s burning.”

Silence. The braziers crackle. Outside, rain has started—soft and persistent, drumming against roof tiles with the patience of something that knows it will eventually wear through stone. Somewhere in the palace, a pipa player is practicing scales—mournful notes drifting through rice-paper walls like the ghosts of songs that used to mean something.

I say it before my brain catches up to my mouth:

“We go ourselves.”

The stillness changes. Not frozen anymore—listening. The way a predator listens to movement in the brush.

“Quietly,” I continue, because I’ve already jumped off this cliff and I might as well enjoy the fall. “No retinue. No announcement. Two people traveling to a temple. By the time anyone realizes the emperor has left, we’ll already have the evidence.”

Ren turns. The lamplight catches his face—sharp jaw, tired eyes, that particular expression he gets when someone has said something either brilliant or catastrophically idiotic. He hasn’t decided which yet.

“You want the Emperor of the Jade Throne to sneak out of his own palace.”

“I want to catch whoever’s trying to kill you.” I meet his gaze. Hold it. “If you have a better idea, I’m listening.”