Page 94 of The Immortal’s Mark

“Just eat it,” I say. “It’s not going to bite you.”

“What is in it?”

“Does it matter?”

He considers this question with more gravity than it deserves. “I suppose not.”

He takes a bite.

He stops walking.

For a long moment, nothing happens. He just stands there, jianbing in hand, people flowing around us like water around a stone. His expression does something I can’t quite read. Processing. Calculating. Then—

His eyes close.

And the look on his face—

It’s not dignified. It’s not imperial. It’s not the careful expression of a man who’s spent two decades learning to give nothing away. It’s just… joy. Pure, uncomplicated, almost reverent. The kind of joy I haven’t seen on anyone’s face in longer than I can remember.

“What is this?” he asks, and his voice is different. Softer. Wondering. Like a child discovering snow.

“Breakfast.”

“I have never—” He takes another bite. Chews. Swallows. Opens his eyes and looks at me like I’ve handed him a religious experience wrapped in paper. “Why was I not informed this existed?”

“You live in a palace.”

“The palace has failed me.”

Something catches in my throat. A laugh, maybe. Or something else. Something that has no business being there. I turn it into a cough because turning it into the truth would be worse.

He’s eaten half of it already, approaching each bite with focused attention. Grease shines on his fingers—the emperor’s fingers, the hands that sign death warrants and peace treaties, now decorated with street food oil like any common traveler. There’s a green onion stuck to the corner of his mouth. The most powerful man in the empire is standing in a crowded market square getting crumbs on his plain traveling robe and looking like someone just explained the meaning of life.

“He has eaten food prepared in the palace kitchens by seventeen chefs for his entire reign,” Tianlong observes, his voice carrying something that might be amusement. “None of them ever thought to give him this.”

I don’t respond. I’m too busy watching.

Eight centuries of armor.

Undone by a man who’s never had a jianbing.

I’m in so much trouble.

The vendor is watching us with the kind of knowing look that makes me want to check my exits. Old women always know. It’s one of the universal constants—gravity, death, and old women seeing straight through your nonsense.

I ignore her. I eat my own jianbing—good, fresh, exactly what I needed. I do not look at the way he’s savoring every bite like it might be his last, like no one’s ever given him something this simple and this good.

I definitely don’t notice when he finishes, wipes his hands on his robe without thinking, and immediately looks around like he might be able to find another one.

“Later,” I say. “We have things to do.”

“What things?”

“Supplies. Provisions. Not standing in the middle of a market looking like—” I gesture at him. At all of him. “—that.”

“Like what?”

“Like someone who just discovered the meaning of existence and can’t quite process it.”