Street Food and Poor Decisions #2
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.”
He considers this. Doesn’t deny it. “It was very good.”
“I know.”
“I would like to have another one tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
“And perhaps the day after.”
“We can discuss it.”
“He’s going to want them every day now,” Tianlong says. “I hope you understand what you’ve done. You have created a monster.”
I have.
That’s the problem.
The market sprawls in the way market towns do—organized chaos, stalls bleeding into each other, the permanent shops along the edges and the temporary sellers crowding every available inch of the square.
It smells like cooking oil and incense and something rotten that no one wants to investigate too closely.
I navigate. He follows.
We pass a silk merchant hawking bolts of fabric in colors that would cost more than most people make in a year.
A fortune teller with clouded eyes and a suspiciously accurate-sounding spiel about crossing paths with destiny.
A weapons dealer whose wares look good but would shatter on the first real impact—pretty steel for pretty boys who’ve never actually fought anything.
Ren takes it all in with the intensity of a man seeing a new country for the first time. Which, I suppose, he is. The empire is his. But this—the grit of it, the smell, the press of ordinary people going about ordinary lives—this is foreign territory.
A stall catches my eye. Mostly junk—cracked pottery, produce that’s seen better days, a caged bird that looks personally offended by its existence. But there’s a basket in the corner.
Books. Water-damaged, dog-eared. The kind someone loved once and then lost—old bindings, older paper. The sort of collection that ends up at market stalls when estates are cleared or debts are called.
Ren’s hand goes to it before he can stop himself.
I watch him. I shouldn’t. There’s nothing tactical about this, nothing useful. Just an emperor touching the spine of a cheap poetry collection like it might bite him if he’s not careful.
He pulls one out. Thumbs through it. Something crosses his face—not quite pain, not quite longing. Something between.
“You can buy it,” I say.
“I do not need it.”
“When was the last time you bought something you didn’t need?”
He doesn’t answer. Which is answer enough.
The book is small. Worn. The binding is coming apart at the corners and someone has written notes in the margins in handwriting too faded to read. It costs four copper. I have four copper. The math is simple.
I buy it. Press it into his hands before he can object.
“Read it tonight,” I say. “Tell me which one you like best.”
“Lián—”
“Consider it an assignment.” I pause. The word is sitting right there, waiting. I’ve said it before—cover story, convenient fiction, necessary lie. But this time my mouth is doing something my brain didn’t authorize. “From your wife.”
He goes still.
Not emperor-still. Not the controlled stillness of a man who’s learned to give nothing away. Something else. Something I can’t read, which is terrifying because I’ve spent centuries learning to read people.
“Say that again.”
“What?”
“The last word.”
I should deflect. Make a joke. Retreat behind the armor that’s kept me alive for eight hundred years. That’s the smart play. The safe play. The Lián play.
“Wife,” I say instead.
Something in his face cracks open.
“Again.”
“I’m not going to keep—”
“Please.”
I’ve never heard him say please.
Not to his advisors. Not to his guards. Not to the ancient dragon currently living in his pocket who has been offering unsolicited opinions about his life for two decades.
Please isn’t a word that emperors use. It implies asking, and emperors don’t ask.
They command, they decree, they pronounce.
They hold the Mandate of Heaven and the fire of dragons and the weight of a thousand years of empire.
They don’t say please.
He’s saying please.
His eyes are dark. Darker than usual. There’s something raw in them, something stripped of all the careful control I’ve watched him maintain since the moment I met him.
Like I’ve found a crack in the wall that’s been holding him together and reached inside and touched something he’s never shown anyone.
“Wife,” I whisper.
He kisses me before I can say anything else.
It’s not graceful. Not planned. Not anything like the careful first kisses in the stories I’ve read—and I’ve read a lot of stories, waiting for stories to be over, hoping the next chapter would be different.
His hands come up to frame my face—careful, desperate, like he doesn’t quite believe I’m letting him—and he kisses me like he’s been waiting eight hundred years for permission.
Maybe he has been.
Maybe we both have.
I freeze. One heartbeat. Two. The world narrows to the pressure of his lips, the warmth of his hands, the impossible reality of this is happening, this is actually happening—
Then my hands fist in his collar—force of habit, except this time I’m pulling him closer instead of trying to snap his neck—and I kiss him back like I’ve forgotten how to breathe and don’t care.
He tastes like green onions and urgency and something underneath that’s just him.
My back hits something—a stall post, maybe, I don’t know, the whole world has narrowed to the heat of his mouth and the pressure of his hands and the way he’s making a sound in the back of his throat that’s doing terrible things to my composure.
His fingers slide into my hair. My hands are still fisted in his collar.
Neither of us seems capable of letting go.
Somewhere, distantly, I’m aware that we’re in public. That there are people. That this is extremely unwise for approximately seventy different reasons.
I don’t care.
“Finally.” Tianlong’s voice cuts through the haze like cold water, dry and ancient and impossibly smug. “I was beginning to lose faith in both of you. Three thousand years I have observed humanity. This has been the most exhausting courtship I have ever witnessed.”
We break apart. Breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine—an intimacy somehow more devastating than the kiss itself. His thumb traces my cheekbone—just once, just barely—and even that small touch sends sparks cascading down my spine.
“Well,” I manage. My voice sounds like someone else’s. Someone who hasn’t spent eight centuries building walls. “That complicates things.”
“Does it?”
“We still have to share a room.” I swallow. Try to find something like equilibrium. Fail completely. “For two more weeks. Pretending to be married.”
The implication lands between us, heavy and inevitable. Two weeks. One room. One bed. And now this.
His thumb moves again. Traces the edge of my jaw. His eyes haven’t left mine. “Yes,” he says. His voice is rough. Lower than usual. It’s doing things to my pulse that should probably concern me. “That is going to be complicated.”
From the basket still hanging on my arm, Dumpling yowls.
Of course. Perfect timing. Exactly what this moment needed—an angry cat who’s been jostled one too many times and has decided to express his displeasure vocally.
I step back. Check my surroundings. The market continues around us, oblivious—or politely pretending to be. A few people are definitely looking. None of them seem alarmed, just mildly interested in the way people are always mildly interested in public displays of affection.
“We should go,” I say.
“Yes.”
Neither of us moves.
“Ren.”
“Yes.”
“We should actually go.”
He blinks. Something shifts in his expression—the emperor sliding back into place, the control reasserting itself. But not all the way. There’s a crack now, and I can see something soft underneath.
I don’t look at it too closely. Looking at it too closely feels dangerous.
“The inn,” he says. More to himself than to me. “We should return to the inn.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I was processing.”
“Process faster. We’re making a scene.”
“You are both disasters,” Tianlong observes. “I want this noted for posterity.