Page 90 of The Immortal’s Mark

I can feel her heartbeat from here. Slow. Steady. Trusting.

Mei-Ling’s heartbeat sounded like that. Before.

I move closer.

I can feel him too—the emperor, his arm around her, his breath in her hair, his body curved toward hers as if even in sleep he cannot bear distance between them. Possessive. Protective. As if she is something precious. As if she is something he has the right to keep.

She is not his. She is Mei-Ling’s blood. She is mine.

The door to her room. Wood and iron, worn smooth by generations of hands that were not mine. Nothing. I could dissolve it with a thought. I could step through it like mist through a window. I could—

The hunger howls.

TAKE HER. END THIS. EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS IS ENOUGH.

I reach for the handle. Everything is cold against my palm now. Everything has been cold since the day she died.

I turn the handle.

And then I remember.

The ritual.

The requirement I have spent centuries trying to circumvent, trying to rewrite, trying to find exceptions to. The law that binds me tighter than any chain, written in blood and starlight by powers older than empires, older than dragons, older than memory itself.

A sacrifice freely given. Blood offered, not taken.

I could take her now. I could drag her from that bed, from his arms, into the darkness I call my home. I could keep her in shadows until she forgot the sun. I could break her slowly, methodically, the way centuries have broken me. I could wait for her to surrender.

But surrender is not sacrifice. Compliance is not willingness. The ritual does not care what I want—it cares what she chooses.

If I take her by force, I get nothing but her body. And her body is not what brings Mei-Ling back. Her blood is not enough. Her death is not enough. I need her choice. I need her to offer herself willingly, freely, with full knowledge of what she is giving and why.

I need her to love something so much that she would die for it.

The way Mei-Ling chose. The way Mei-Ling offered herself to save our people, smiling, certain, peaceful in her sacrifice because she was dying for something that mattered.

I need Lián to love like that. To find something worth dying for. And then I need her to give that death to me.

She is not ready.

I can see it in the way she holds herself, even in sleep. The walls she has built around her heart. The distance she maintains even from the man whose arms are wrapped around her. She is learning to love him—I can see that too, the softening at her edges, the way her body curves toward his. But she would not die for him tonight. Not yet. Not truly. The love is too new, too fragile, too uncertain.

She needs time.

They need time.

I need to give them time.

The hunger screams. The void yawns. And I stand at her door with my hand on the handle, and I cannot turn it, because turning it accomplishes nothing.

I have built a trap so perfect that I am caught in it alongside my prey.

I release the handle.

The metal is warm where I gripped it. It will cool. Everything I touch cools eventually.

I step back. Once. Twice. The shadows welcome me like disappointed children—they wanted violence tonight. They always want violence. I have taught them nothing else, and now they know nothing else. Perhaps that makes me a poor teacher or perhaps it makes me honest about what I have become.