Street Food and Poor Decisions #3
”The inn is exactly as we left it—small, clean enough, the kind of place that doesn’t ask questions as long as you pay in advance.
Our room is on the second floor, at the end of a narrow hallway that smells like old wood and other people’s cooking.
It contains one bed, one basin, one window that looks out over the stable yard, and absolutely no pretense that we’re anything other than exactly what we’re pretending to be.
Married.
The word sits different now.
I set Dumpling’s basket on the floor. He emerges with wounded dignity—the journey has not been kind to his sensibilities—and stalks to the window to judge us from a safe distance.
Tianlong emerges from the small brazier pot we’ve been carrying for him, stretching his miniature wings in a way that would be majestic if he weren’t currently the size of a rat.
“Do not,” he says aloud, his voice like wind through ancient trees, “say anything.”
“Wasn’t going to,” I say.
“I can feel you thinking it.”
“Thinking what?”
“That I am small.”
“You are small.”
“I am compact. There is a difference.” He settles on the windowsill, tail curling around his feet, ancient eyes fixed on the darkening sky. “This form is strategic. It allows for discretion.”
“It allows for Dumpling to hunt you.”
“The creature and I have reached an understanding.”
Dumpling’s ears perk up at his name. He turns from his window-judgment to fix Tianlong with the patient, unblinking stare of a predator who has all the time in the world.
Tianlong’s tail twitches.
“The understanding,” he says with great dignity, “is ongoing.”
Same room. Same bed. Same ancient dragon bickering with my cat. Everything different.
Ren stands near the door, hands clasped behind his back in the posture I’ve come to recognize as his default—control, containment, careful distance. But there’s something uncertain in the set of his shoulders now. Something that wasn’t there this morning.
“I can take the floor again,” he says.
“You’re the emperor. Your spine is a national resource.”
“That is not—”
“Just get in the bed.” I hear the words coming out of my mouth and want to recall them immediately. Too late. “We’re adults. We can share a bed without—” I stop. Regroup. Try again. “Without making it complicated.”
He looks at me. I look at him.
Neither of us mentions that we made it very complicated approximately one hour ago against a market stall in front of the Heavens and everyone and possibly a fortune teller who definitely saw the whole thing and is going to have opinions.
“This is going to be a disaster,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Get in the bed anyway.”
He does. I do.
We lie side by side, still in our traveling clothes, staring at the ceiling. The bed is not large. It might have been large enough for two strangers who had never kissed in a crowded market square. It is not large enough for us.
Not touching. Very aware of not touching.
The space between us could fit a whole other person, but it feels like nothing at all.
I can feel the heat of him. Hear his breathing.
Smell the faint remnant of jianbing grease and road dust and something underneath that’s just him—sandalwood, maybe, or whatever it is emperors smell like when they’re not being emperors.
“I enjoyed today,” he says quietly. To the ceiling.
“The part where you traumatized a rice merchant, or the part where a jianbing made you question your entire existence?”
“The part after.”
I don’t ask which part after. I know which part after. My lips still feel the ghost of it.
“Me too,” I say. And then, because I can’t just leave it there, because vulnerability without armor is a wound waiting to happen: “This is still a terrible idea.”
“I am aware.”
“We have a mission. There’s an ancient evil hunting us. We’re pretending to be married as part of an investigation into a conspiracy that’s already claimed three noble houses.”
“I am aware of all of this as well.”
“So we should probably be professional.”
“Probably.”
Silence.
“Ren.”
“Yes.”
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“I am looking at the ceiling.”
“I can feel you not looking at the ceiling.”
“That is not possible.”
“And yet.”
Dumpling, disgruntled by the reduced sleeping space and the complete lack of attention being paid to him, relocates from the window to the pillow above our heads.
He turns three times before collapsing with a sigh of feline contentment, one paw draped over the edge of the pillow in a way that brushes Ren’s hair.
His purring is the only sound in the room besides our breathing, which is too loud, too obvious, too there.
Tianlong watches from the windowsill. I can feel his ancient, knowing gaze even with my eyes closed. He doesn’t say anything. Somehow that’s worse. Three thousand years of wisdom, and he’s choosing now to be subtle.
The moon traces patterns on the floor through the gap in the shutters. Silver light on worn wood. Ordinary. Beautiful in the way ordinary things are beautiful when you’re lying next to someone who kissed you like the world was ending.
I don’t sleep.
Neither does he.
Chapter 644, continued: In which our heroine discovers that sharing a bed with a man she’s just kissed is significantly harder than killing one.
Why did I tell him to get in the bed.
Why did he listen.
Why do I want him to kiss me again.
Sometime in the small hours, Dumpling descends from the pillow and settles in the narrow space between us, collapsing with a sigh of feline contentment.
I turn my head. In the moonlight, I can see Ren doing the same. His eyes catch the silver light—dark and deep and full of something I can’t name.
“Your cat,” he says quietly.
“He’s not my cat.”
“You brought him from the palace. He sleeps on your pillow. He allows you to carry him in a basket, which is more tolerance than he shows anyone else.”
“Fair.”
“He seems to approve.”
Dumpling stretches between us, kneading the blanket with his claws. His eyes are half-closed, but I catch it—the slow blink. The one that means trust. The one cats give to people they’ve decided are theirs.
He’s never given me that blink before.
I look away before Ren can see whatever my face is doing.
“Two more weeks,” I say to the ceiling.
“Two more weeks,” he agrees.
“We should probably talk about what happened.”
“Probably.”
“Are we going to?”
“It seems unlikely.”
I almost laugh. Almost. Instead I close my eyes and listen to Dumpling purr and feel the warmth of another body close to mine and try not to think about how long it’s been since I let myself want something I couldn’t walk away from.
The poetry book is on the nightstand. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll ask him which one he liked best.
Tonight, I just breathe.
Chapter 644: In which our heroine lies awake in the dark and admits, just to herself, that she doesn’t want these two weeks to end.
There. I’ve said it.
I’m never saying it again.