12. Pre-Wedding Nerves #3
I lean against a fence post, breathing smoke-thick air, and take stock. My silk robe is destroyed beyond recognition—burned in places, soaked in others, the careful embroidery lost beneath ash and mud. My hands are raw from bucket handles. I have not felt this tired since the war.
It is, somehow, magnificent.
Lián finds me there. She is equally destroyed—her sleeping robe torn at the shoulder, her face streaked with soot, her hair escaping from what was once an elaborate arrangement. Ash clings to her eyelashes. She is smiling.
“The village elder wishes to thank us.”
“We should go. Before the sun rises.”
“He insists.” Her smile widens. “Apparently we cannot leave until we drink his mother’s tea.”
“His mother’s—”
“She is ninety-three years old and makes terrible tea. He was very clear about both facts.”
I should refuse. I should return to the palace, to the preparations, to the ceremony that begins in—
“Where is the tea?”
The grandmother’s kitchen is small, warm, and smells of smoke and herbs.
She has not stopped talking since we entered. She is perhaps the oldest person I have ever seen—her face a map of wrinkles, her eyes sharp and knowing, her hands steady as she pours dark liquid into cups that have clearly been in her family for generations.
“Sit, sit.” She gestures at benches worn smooth by decades of use. “You are soaked. And covered in ash. What were you doing out there?”
“We saw the fire from—” I hesitate. “From the road.”
“From the road. At midnight. In silk.” Her eyes move to Lián’s ruined robe, then to my own. “Pregnant?”
The silence stretches.
“…Yes.”
“Young people.” She shakes her head and places cups before us. “Drink. It is good for the lungs.”
I drink.
It is, without question, the worst tea I have ever tasted. The leaves are bitter beyond reason, the water not hot enough, and there is something floating in it that might be medicinal or might be a mistake.
“Good?” the grandmother asks.
“Excellent,” I lie.
Lián’s expression suggests she is experiencing similar revelations. She drinks anyway.
“Now.” The grandmother settles onto a stool, her joints creaking. “How far along, dear?”
Lián’s hand moves to her stomach, instinctive and protective. “Pomegranate, apparently.”
“Good size. My daughter was a melon by this point. Gave her terrible backaches.” Sharp eyes find mine. “You are being attentive? Rubbing her feet? Bringing her whatever she craves at strange hours?”
I have armies. I have a dragon. I have commanded campaigns that reshaped borders.
No one has ever asked if I rub feet.
“He is… learning,” Lián says, and the amusement in her voice is barely contained.
“They all learn. Eventually.” The grandmother pats my hand. The gesture is patronizing and somehow comforting. “You will do fine, young man.”
Young man. I am thirty-four years old. I have ruled an empire for over two decades.
“Thank you,” I manage.
She refills my cup with more terrible tea. I drink it.
“The wedding is tomorrow, you said?”
“Today, technically.” Lián’s voice is soft. “This morning.”
“Ah. Pre-wedding nerves. That explains the flying.”
We both freeze.
“The—”
“The whole village saw the dragon, dear.” The grandmother’s smile is knowing and kind. “Beautiful creature. We thought it was a wedding blessing for the emperor. Very auspicious.”
I have no words. Beside me, Lián has gone very still.
“We thought—” I try. “We were trying to—”
“Hide?” The grandmother laughs. “A dragon is not easily hidden. But do not worry. Your secret is safe here.”
“Our secret.”
“The emperor helped put out our barn fire.” She pats my hand again. “Do you think we would repay that with gossip? We are farmers, not fools.”
“I am not—”
“Dear.” Her eyes meet mine, and there is nothing foolish in them.
Nothing blind. “I am old, not stupid. I know what a dragon bond means. I know what silk of that quality costs. And I know that only one man in this empire would have organized my neighbors like a military campaign and then looked uncomfortable when I offered him tea.”
Silence.
“More tea?”
“…Yes. Please.”
We leave as the first light touches the eastern sky.
The grandmother presses packages into our hands—wrapped dumplings, still warm, and some kind of sweet bread she insists is good for pregnant women. Lián accepts them with a grace I cannot manage.
“Thank you,” Lián says. “For the tea. For—” She stops. “For treating us like people.”
The grandmother’s smile is gentle. “You are people. Title or no title, emperor or farmer, you are still just a young man who cannot sleep before his wedding and a young woman who went with him anyway.” She reaches up to pat Lián’s cheek. “Be good to each other. That is all anyone can do.”
We walk into the forest.
Tianlong awaits in the shadows, his dignity largely recovered, his scales gleaming in the early light. “I have been waiting in shrubbery for an eternity.”
“They were kind.”
“The tea was undrinkable.”
“I know.”
“You drank three cups.”
“I know.”
A rumble that might be laughter. “You are an extremely strange human, little flame.”
Lián walks beside me, the grandmother’s packages clutched to her chest. The forest is quiet, the birds just beginning their morning songs. Somewhere behind us, a village is waking up to assess the damage and begin rebuilding.
“When did we last do this?” she asks.
“Do what?”
“Just… exist. Without titles. Without threats.” She gestures vaguely at the trees, the lightening sky, the distant sound of water. “Without everything.”
I consider. The temple journey, months ago, feels like a lifetime. Before the engagement was announced, before the court politics intensified, before everything became about ceremony and security and the weight of what comes next.
“Too long.”
“We should fix that.”
“Honeymoon.”
She stops walking. Turns to look at me. In the dawn light, with ash still streaking her face and terrible tea on her breath and the grandmother’s dumplings pressed against her heart, she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
“Is that an Imperial command?”
“It is a promise.” The words come easier than I expect. “After the wedding. After the political dust settles. We disappear. Just us.”
She is quiet for a moment. The light is growing stronger, gold touching the trees, and somewhere far below the palace is waking to prepare for a ceremony that will change everything.
“I would like that,” she says.
Four words. Worth more than any confession.
I take her hand. We walk.
We reach the palace as the servants begin to stir.
There is a passage—one of dozens I know, the secret ways of emperors—that lets us enter without being seen. We emerge in the corridor near our chambers, ash-covered and exhausted and inexplicably happy.
Dumpling is waiting outside the door. He sits with the patient certainty of a creature who has always known exactly where his humans would be, even when his humans did not.
“How did you—” Lián starts.
The cat does not answer. The cat never answers.
She scoops him into her arms. He permits this with the air of a king accepting his due, then fixes me with a look of profound judgment.
We step inside together. Our chambers. The bed we have shared for weeks, still rumpled from where I tried, and failed, to sleep. The lotus scent that has become as familiar as my own breath.
“We should sleep,” I say. “The preparations—”
“Begin at dawn. Which is now.” She sets Dumpling on the bed, where he immediately claims the center. “We have perhaps two hours before someone comes knocking.”
“Two hours.”
“Enough to rest. Not enough to think.” She turns to me, ash still streaking her face, the grandmother’s dumplings abandoned on a side table. “Stop thinking, Ren.”
“I am not—”
“You are. I can hear it.” She crosses the distance between us. Stands on her toes—she is shorter than I am—and presses a kiss to my jaw. Brief. Soft. Tasting of smoke and bad tea. “Today.”
“Today.”
“I am ready.”
“So am I.”
She pulls me toward the bed. Dumpling relocates with an offended huff, settling at the foot. We collapse onto the mattress still wearing ash and rain and the night’s adventures, too tired to change, too happy to care.
Her head finds my chest. Her hand finds mine.
Tonight we flew. Tonight we fought a fire and drank bad tea and were just… nobody.
Today we become Emperor and Empress.
But under that, beneath the ceremony and the witnesses and the weight of empire—
Today I marry the woman I love.
That is everything.
That is enough.