Page 89 of The Immortal’s Mark

Ten.

I stop at the threshold.

Not because I choose to. Not because wisdom or mercy or any virtue stays my hand. I stop because she is there suddenly—Mei-Ling, in my mind, in my heart, in the hollow space where my humanity used to live. She is always there when I am about to do something she would not approve of. After so many years, I can no longer tell if it is memory or haunting.

Perhaps there is no difference.

Seven hundred years. That is how long I had her. Seven hundred years of waking beside her, of hearing her laugh echo through palace halls that no longer exist, of feeling her hand in mine as we walked through gardens I burned to ash the day after she died. Seven hundred years of learning that eternity is not a sentence but a gift, that immortality is not weight but wings, that forever means nothing if you have no one to share it with.

She taught me patience. She taught me that even an immortal can learn to hope. She taught me that love is not a fire that consumes but a hearth that warms.

She was wrong about that last part.

A plague. That is what took her from me. A plague swept through our provinces, killing thousands, and she could have hidden behind the palace walls—we were safe there, together, untouchable, immortal in our ivory tower while the mortal world suffered below. But she was never very good at watching others suffer. She never learned the distance that makes eternity bearable.

She burned her own life force to heal them. Thousands of our people, saved by her sacrifice. She gave too much. She always gave too much. She gave until there was nothing left to give, and then she gave more, and I held her in my arms as she faded like morning mist, smiling, telling me it was worth it.

It was worth it, my love. They will live because of me. Is that not beautiful?

It was not worth it.

Nothing is worth this.

Nothing.

The bond should have killed me too. That was the design—that was the promise we made to each other, the ritual we spoke beneath stars that have since gone dark. Together in life, together in death. Forever, in whatever form forever takes.

But I did not die. Some flaw in the ritual. Some cruelty of the universe that takes and takes and never explains why. I lived. I live still. And the forever we built together stretches ahead of me now, empty and endless and wrong.

The jade comb.

I can feel it even now—the boy touching it in his sleep, his fingers tracing jade and silver filigree, plum blossoms he does not understand etched along the spine. I gave that comb to Mei-Ling on the first anniversary of our marriage. She laughed when she opened the box. Said I was being extravagant. Said she would wear it every day just to embarrass me in front of the court.

She did wear it every day. In her hair when we held court, catching the light like frozen starlight. On her pillow when she slept, because she could not bear to be parted from it even in dreams.

It passed through her bloodline after she died. Mother to daughter to daughter, the only piece of her that remained in the world. Down and down through the centuries, through women who did not know what they carried, until it reached one who married into a royal family.

Ren’s mother.

The boy does not know what he holds. Does not know that every time he touches that jade, he is touching the ghost of my only love. Does not know that the comb was carved from stone I gathered myself, from a quarry in mountains that no longer exist, that I spent three years learning the art of jade-carving just so I could make her something with my own hands.

She said it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

She was wrong. She was the most beautiful thing in the world. The comb was just jade.

Everything is connected. Everything has always been connected. The bloodline, the curse, the comb, the emperor who carries it without knowing why it calls to him. I have been weaving this web since the day she died, and they are all caught in it now—every thread in place, every piece on the board exactly where I need it to be.

And I am ten feet from the last daughter of her blood, and I cannot—

I can. I can take her. I can end this. Eight hundred years is long enough.

I reach for the door.

The door opens without sound.

The inn is quiet. Sleeping humans, dreaming human dreams, safe in their beds because they do not know what walks among them. They do not feel me pass. They do not feel the cold that follows in my wake, the absence of warmth that marks my passage through the world. I am a hole in the shape of a man. I am hunger given form.

Her room is at the end of the hall.