Page 87 of The Immortal’s Mark

“You survived ascending the throne at twelve. You survived immolation in dragon fire. You survived a civil war you didn’t start. You’ll survive having a morning off.” A pause. “Probably.”

“Your confidence is overwhelming.”

“I’m told it’s one of my best qualities.”

Despite everything—the disorientation, the strangeness, the profound uncertainty of existing without structure—I feel the corner of my mouth threaten to move. It does not quite become a smile. But it is close.

She sees it. Her own expression shifts, a flicker of something that might be satisfaction.

“Now,” she says, throwing back the blanket with a decisiveness that startles Dumpling from his sleep, “we have distance to cover. Figure out your existential crisis while we ride.”

The second dawn comes differently.

Another inn. Another room. Another night survived. The grey light filters through thin curtains, and I am awake before the light has fully formed, watching shadows become shapes become furniture become the ordinary details of a life I do not recognize as mine.

Lián is still asleep, her breathing slow and even, her hair spread across the pillow in dark tangles.

I am watching her.

I should not be watching her. There are many things I should be doing—preparing for the day’s travel, reviewing what we know about the temple, planning contingencies for the investigation ahead. Productive things. Imperial things. Things that do not involve cataloguing the way the early light catches the scar through her eyebrow or the curve of her mouth in sleep.

Her mouth. I am looking at her mouth.

You’re staring.

Tianlong’s voice, from the windowsill. He has emerged from his pot at some point during the night, reclaiming a position where he can observe both the door and the room. Eight inches of iridescent dragon, golden eyes catching the grey light, watching me watch her.

I am keeping watch.

You are keeping watch of her face.

The room has two entry points. I am monitoring both.

The room has two entry points, and you have been looking at neither. You have been looking at her mouth.

I cannot argue. The observation is accurate, and Tianlong knows it, and I know that he knows it, and the pretense of denial has grown too thin to sustain.

Her mouth. She is sleeping, and I am watching her mouth, and somewhere in the accumulated silence of twenty-two years of careful control, something has cracked beyond repair.

I look away. The window. The door. Anything but her.

We should wake her. We have distance to cover.

Coward.

I do not argue.

The grey light strengthens, bleeding into something warmer. Dumpling stretches on the pillow, yawns, and begins to purr. The sound fills the room—rumbling, content, oblivious to the weight of what hangs in the silence between a man and a dragon.

She stirs. And the moment ends, as all moments do, with the weight of what I did not say pressing against my ribs.

But the light is turning gold. The cat is purring. And I am learning that cowardice and patience are not always the same thing.

You are still a coward, Tianlong observes.

I am aware.

But perhaps, he allows, grudgingly, a coward who is learning.

It is not absolution. It is not encouragement. But from a three-thousand-year-old dragon who has watched me avoid my own life for twenty-two years, it is something close to hope.

Three weeks. I have three weeks to figure out the difference between caution and cowardice.

The light reaches the bed. She opens her eyes. And somewhere beneath the weight of empire and duty and carefully constructed walls, something new is growing.

I do not name it. Not yet.

But I do not look away.