Page 80 of The Immortal’s Mark

“I will be an eight-inch lizard.”

Silence.

The phosphorescent crystals hum. Somewhere in the depths of the cavern, water drips against stone. Dumpling continues to stare.

“…Ah,” I say.

“Indeed.”

“He won’t—” I stop. He might. He absolutely might. This is the cat who once stalked a visiting dignitary’s prize falcon for three hours and only gave up because the falcon left the province. “I’ll keep him contained.”

“You will not.”

“I’ll try to keep him contained.”

“You will fail.”

“He’s just a cat, Tianlong.”

The dragon’s exhale stirs my hair. Warm and dry and carrying the faint scent of ash.

“He is an apex predator inhabiting a body too small for his ambitions. I recognize the type. I have eaten the type.” A pause. “Not cats specifically. But the energy.”

I look at Dumpling again. He’s resumed grooming, moving on to his other paw, completely unconcerned that a three-thousand-year-old dragon is discussing him like a threat to be neutralized.

Seventeen pounds of orange confidence.

We’re going to have a very interesting three weeks.

The Moon Garden is quiet.

It’s always quiet—something about the stones, Ren said once. Some property of the jade embedded in the ancient foundations that also blocks the dragon bond. For a man who lives with an ancient consciousness threaded through his thoughts every waking moment, this is the only place in the palace where his mind is entirely his own.

I wonder what that costs him. The silence after so much not-silence. The absence of something that’s become as natural as breathing.

I don’t ask. There are some things you don’t ask, even after you’ve exchanged the kind of secrets we’ve exchanged.

Night-blooming jasmine opens in the darkness, white petals unfurling like small surrenders. The scent is sweet and heavy, the kind of perfume that gets into your clothes and your hair and your memory. Three hundred years from now, I’ll smell jasmine and think of this garden. This bench. This particular quality of moonlight.

Him.

The bench is worn smooth by centuries of waiting—centuries of other emperors, other meetings, other silences. Now it’s ours.

I sit on one end. He sits on the other. The space between us has been shrinking for days.

I’ve been pretending not to notice.

“Three weeks,” I say.

“Yes.”

“Pretending to be married.”

The jasmine-scented air sits thick between us. His shoulder is close enough that I could lean into it without trying. I don’t. Very specifically don’t. I focus on the white flowers instead, counting petals like threats.

“Yes.”

“Sharing rooms.” I stop. The night is too warm. His presence is too there, too solid, too much. Eight centuries of training in emotional detachment, and I can feel every inch of the space between his shoulder and mine. “Sharing… everything.”