12. Pre-Wedding Nerves #2
“Little flame,” his voice wraps around us both. “Little dawn.” The name he has given her, unprecedented in three thousand years. “You wish to fly.”
“Is that acceptable?”
“Acceptable.” His great head lowers, and something in his posture shifts—anticipation, perhaps. Eagerness, even. “I have been waiting for you to ask. You have both been insufferably dull lately.”
“We have been planning a wedding.”
“Exactly.” He extends one massive wing, creating a ramp of golden scale and membrane. “Ceremony. Protocol. Tedium. Tonight, we fly.”
Lián climbs first, her movements sure despite the silk robe, despite the darkness, despite everything. She settles against the ridge of his spine as if she has done this a thousand times, her hand finding a natural grip among the scales.
I follow. I have done this a thousand times.
The difference is her warmth against my back as Tianlong rises. The difference is her arms around my waist, her breath against my neck, her body pressed close for stability.
Your heart rate is elevated, Tianlong observes, privately, as we climb toward the lair’s hidden exit.
Wind resistance.
That is not what that is.
The night sky opens above us.
And we fly.
There is a place high in the mountains I have told no one about.
A waterfall that feeds a pool so clear the moonlight reaches the bottom. A grove of plum trees that bloom out of season, fed by steam from hot springs beneath the rock. A silence so complete it feels like the world has forgotten this corner exists.
I have come here alone for twenty years. To think. To breathe. To be someone other than the emperor for an hour.
Tonight, I bring her.
The flight takes longer than it should. Tianlong is not hurrying—he circles the peaks, dips through valleys, finds thermal currents that send us soaring until the palace is a distant glimmer of light.
Lián’s grip tightens during the first dive, loosens as she learns to trust the motion, and eventually her hands rest easy against my chest.
She is warm. The wind is cold. The stars are infinite.
You could kiss her, Tianlong suggests. I would not object.
I am focused on navigation.
I am navigating. You are sitting there projecting extremely distracting emotions.
I apologize for my emotions.
You do not mean that. A rumble that might be laughter. I do not mind. It is pleasant to feel you happy.
The waterfall appears below us—a ribbon of silver in the moonlight, the pool a dark mirror reflecting stars. Tianlong circles once, twice, then descends in a spiral that leaves my stomach somewhere in the clouds.
We land on a shelf of rock beside the water. Steam rises from hidden vents, warming the air despite the altitude. The plum trees are bare—winter has stripped them—but their branches make patterns against the sky like an artist’s brushstrokes.
Lián slides from Tianlong’s back before I can offer assistance. She stands at the pool’s edge, head tilted back, and for a long moment she simply looks.
“This is beautiful.”
“I used to come here. When the weight became too much.”
“Alone?”
“Always alone.”
She turns to look at me. In the moonlight, with steam rising around her and stars reflected in her eyes, she looks like something from a legend. Something that should not exist in the same world as security reports and protocol and the careful machinery of empire.
“Not anymore,” she says.
The rain begins without warning.
Not gentle rain. Not the soft drizzle of spring that patters against windows and makes poetry possible.
This is mountain rain—sudden, cold, absolute. It falls in sheets, turning the air to water, soaking through silk in heartbeats. The waterfall roars louder as new streams pour from the rocks above, and the pool churns with impact.
Tianlong huffs in annoyance. “I will wait in the trees. This is undignified.”
“This is rain.”
“Exactly.” He launches skyward, a brief shelter against the downpour. “Call when you wish to leave. I will be sulking.”
We are alone. Soaked. Standing in the dark with water streaming down our faces.
Lián laughs. Full, real, startled—her face turned up to the rain, her ruined silk clinging to her body, her hair plastered to her skin in dark ribbons.
I have never heard her laugh like this.
“We should—” I begin.
“What?” She spins, arms wide, and the motion sends water flying. “Find shelter? Preserve our dignity?” Another laugh, breathless and bright. “I have died six hundred and forty-five times. And you want me to run from rain?”
“I want—”
The word catches.
She stops spinning. Looks at me. The rain falls between us like a curtain, and through it I can see her expression shift—from joy to something quieter. Something waiting.
“What do you want, Ren?”
You. This. Us. Everything.
The words are too large. Too true. I have spent too long not wanting, not reaching, not allowing myself to imagine that I might deserve—
I am crossing the distance between us.
One night apart. Six hours, technically.
It should not feel like deprivation. We have shared a bed for weeks now—her cold feet against my calves, her hair across my pillow, the curve of her spine fitting against my chest in the dark.
I know the rhythm of her breathing when she sleeps.
I know exactly how she curls into me when she dreams.
Six hours should not feel like starvation.
And yet.
Her hands are in my hair. The rain is cold and she is warm and the familiarity of her mouth against mine does not diminish the want—it sharpens it. Every kiss we have shared has led here. Every night tangled together has only made the hunger worse.
When we break apart, we are both breathing hard. The rain continues to fall. Her hands are still tangled in my hair, and mine have found her waist, pulling her close despite the water, despite the cold, despite everything.
“That was—” she starts.
“Yes.”
“We should probably—”
“Yes.”
Neither of us moves.
The rain gentles, just slightly. Steam rises from the hot springs nearby. Somewhere in the grove, Tianlong is waiting, and somewhere far below, the palace is preparing for a wedding, and somewhere in the next few hours the sun will rise and everything will change.
But right now, in this moment, there is only this: her in my arms, rain falling around us, and the certain knowledge that I would burn empires for this feeling.
Then she stiffens.
“Ren.”
“Mm.”
“Is that smoke?”
I follow her gaze. Beyond the waterfall, past the ridge of mountains, an orange glow pulses against the clouds. Not lightning. Not starlight.
Fire.
Tianlong responds before I call.
His shadow passes overhead, blotting out stars.
“A village,” he calls as he descends. “Three miles to the east. Barn fire, spreading.”
“We have to—”
“I know.” Lián is already moving, climbing onto Tianlong’s offered wing with the efficiency of a woman who has lived eight centuries on instinct. “Come on.”
We are airborne in seconds. The rain has softened to mist, and through it I can see the fire more clearly—orange and angry, consuming a structure at the village’s edge. Figures move in the light, small as ants, passing buckets in a line that is clearly failing.
“Put us down at the treeline,” Lián says. “We cannot be seen arriving on a dragon.”
“You wish me to hide,” Tianlong says.
“I wish you to not announce the emperor’s presence to a village that thinks we are no one.”
A pause. Then, with exquisite offense: “…The treeline is acceptable.”
He sets us down between two ancient oaks, their branches heavy enough to conceal even a dragon’s bulk. The fire is closer now—I can hear the roar of it, smell the smoke, see the panic in the villagers’ movements.
“Stay hidden,” I tell him.
“I am an ancient being of immeasurable power.”
“Please stay hidden in the trees.”
“You are asking me to hide in shrubbery.”
“I am asking you to trust me.”
Silence. Then, quieter: “…I will remember this indignity.”
“Good. So will I.”
We run.
The fire is worse than it appeared from the air.
A barn, fully engulfed. Hay storage—the flames are feeding on months of dried grass, sending sparks into the wet air. The bucket line is disorganized, the villagers shouting over each other, no one directing the effort.
I do not think. I simply act.
“You—” I point to a large man near the well. “Station yourself there. Fill buckets. Nothing else.” Another man, younger, fleet-footed. “You run them to the line. Do not stop.” A woman standing frozen with shock. “Get the children away. Upwind. Move.”
They obey. They do not question. There is something in my voice—years of command, the expectation of being followed—that cuts through panic.
Lián is already at the far side of the barn, directing three villagers to wet the neighboring structure.
“Soak the walls. If sparks catch, we lose everything.” Her voice carries the same authority, different in texture—sharper, more urgent, the voice of someone who has survived catastrophes I cannot imagine.
A bucket reaches my hands. I pass it. Another. Pass. The rhythm becomes automatic—bend, lift, swing, release. My muscles remember this from campaigns, from sieges, from the years when I fought beside my soldiers and ate what they ate and bled when they bled.
My arms ache. The heat is tremendous. Beside me, farmers and merchants work in silence, following instructions they do not question from a stranger in ruined silk.
Lián appears at my side, soot-streaked and breathing hard. “The neighboring building is secure. We need more water on the east wall.”
“The well is struggling. Too much demand.”
“There is a stream. South. I saw it from the air.”
Of course she did. She sees everything, always.
“Go. Take—” I point at two of the faster runners. “They will follow you.”
She goes. They follow. And I continue passing buckets until my shoulders scream.
The fire dies an hour before dawn.
The barn is lost—nothing but charred beams and smoking ash. But the houses still stand, and the granary is untouched, and no one has died.