1. The Biological Betrayal #2
I am surrounded by people who care about me. They express this care by hovering, researching, guarding, and occasionally committing preemptive murder. I have never been more annoyed.
I have never felt more loved.
These two things are not mutually exclusive.
I escape to the garden.
Not ‘escape.’ Strategic retreat. There’s a difference. The difference is that one makes me sound like a coward and the other makes me sound like someone with a tactical understanding of when to leave a room before she says something she’ll regret.
The Moon Garden is quiet at this hour. The jasmine is blooming—which is unfortunate, because apparently my nose has also joined the rebellion and now certain smells make me want to die—but Ren moved our bench to the corner, away from the flowers, where the air is clean and the palace feels far away.
He has been very practical and calm throughout this process. Ladies of the court have mentioned how lucky I am. It doesnt stop me wanting to stab him when he breathes funny sometimes.
I need silence. Just five minutes of not being fussed over, worried about, or handed documentation about my own bodily functions.
Naturally, silence is not what I get.
The first indication of trouble is the hissing.
It’s coming from the garden wall—the low stone wall where the afternoon sun pools warm and golden, the spot that’s been claimed by every palace cat for three generations. Except today, it’s not a cat sitting there. Well. Not just a cat.
Today, it’s a dragon.
Tianlong, in his small form—the size of a large snake, scales catching the light like liquid gold—is coiled on the wall. His eyes are ancient furnaces, older than dynasties, older than the empire itself. His expression is what I can only describe as offended dignity.
And sitting directly on top of him, with the serene confidence of a creature who has never once in his life read a room, is Dumpling.
My cat. My fat, orange, absolutely shameless cat. Seventeen pounds of warm entitlement arranged in a perfect loaf shape directly on top of a three-thousand-year-old celestial being.
“The creature,” Tianlong says—out loud, which he almost never does, which means he’s truly upset— “believes itself a predator.”
Dumpling yawns. Shows all his teeth. Settles more comfortably into his spot.
“He’s... adorable.”
I sit on the bench. I should intervene. I should definitely intervene. A dragon—even a small one—versus a cat is not a fair fight, and Dumpling has no survival instincts whatsoever, and this could end very badly for everyone involved.
I don’t intervene.
This is the best thing that’s happened all day.
“I am three thousand years old,” Tianlong announces. His voice carries the weight of millennia, of watching empires rise and fall, of counseling emperors and witnessing histories. “I have counseled dynasties. I have witnessed the birth and death of civilizations. I have—”
Dumpling begins to groom himself. Loudly.
“—UNDIGNIFIED.” The dragon’s voice rises with outrage. “This is beneath me. I am a celestial being of immense power and wisdom and—”
Dumpling, still grooming, shifts his considerable weight. Tianlong makes a sound that I’ve never heard from a dragon before. It’s somewhere between a wheeze and a complaint. It’s beautiful.
“Your cat,” he says to me, his ancient eyes narrowing, “is sitting on an ancient being.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you going to do something about it?”
“No.”
Tianlong’s eyes narrow further. “I could incinerate him.”
“You could.”
“One burst of flame. He would not even have time to regret his choices.”
“Probably not.”
“He is pressing on my wings. He weighs approximately the same as a small boulder.”
“He’s a very inconsiderate cat.”
“You are enjoying this.”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. My smile is answer enough.
Dumpling finishes grooming. Settles more firmly into his spot. Tucks his paws under his chest and becomes a perfect, immovable loaf. Begins to purr.
Tianlong, ancient dragon, counselor to emperors, witness to the rise and fall of civilizations, lies beneath him like a very expensive, very offended heating pad.
“I will remember this,” he says darkly.
“I’m sure you will.”
“When you need my wisdom, my counsel, my—”
“You’ll still give it. You always do.”
A pause. The dragon’s pride wars with the dragon’s genuine care. Care wins, grudgingly, as it always does.
“The hatchling is developing well,” he says, changing the subject with all the subtlety of a rockslide. “I can sense her through the bond with Ren. Strong lungs. Adequate proportions. She will be formidable.”
“You’ve mentioned.” Three times today. Tianlong has opinions about fetal development now. Add it to the list of things I never expected from an ancient celestial being.
“I am merely making observations. Dragons notice things.”
“Dragons never shut up about the things they notice.”
“I am being supportive. This is what support looks like.”
“This is what harassment looks like.”
“The line is thin.” He shifts under Dumpling’s weight, dignity still in tatters. “Your hatchling—” Something changes in his voice. The humor drains away, replaced by something older. “Will be... significant.”
I don’t ask what he means. Tianlong always knows more than he says, and right now, with my stomach still churning and a cat sitting on a dragon and the whole world feeling strange and new, I don’t want prophecies. I don’t want significance.
I just want to get through the day without throwing up again.
Dumpling purrs louder, as if to emphasize the point. Or possibly just because he’s comfortable. With Dumpling, it’s hard to tell.
Tianlong’s tail flicks—he’s sensed him before I have. Then the familiar weight of footsteps on stone. The particular rhythm I’d know anywhere now, even half-asleep, even in the dark.
Ren.
He doesn’t say anything.
He finds me on the bench, post-dragon-chaos, post-nausea-round-three, probably looking like something the cat dragged in—which, given Dumpling’s gift economy of dead mice and stolen objects, could be literal.
He sees all of this. Notes it. Files it away in whatever careful, analytical part of his brain tracks me now.
Then he just... sits.
Not next to me. Not quite. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of him, the solid steadiness that I’m still not used to, that still makes something in my chest go tight in ways I don’t want to examine. Far enough that I have room to bolt if I need to.
He knows I might need to bolt. He leaves me the space anyway.
Twenty-two years of ruling an empire. He’s learned patience.
“The tea is the wrong temperature,” he says.
I look down. There’s a cup in his hands—ginger tea, from the smell of it. He’s brought me tea. The wrong temperature, apparently, but tea nonetheless.
“I know,” he says, before I can respond. He doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t explain. Doesn’t make excuses. “I am learning.”
“It’s ginger tea, isn’t it?”
His face makes an expression somewhere in between fear, panic and guilt.
“Jing made me. Apparently it’s good for—”
I reach out and touch his hand. Warm. Rough. Familiar now.
“That woman,” I say. “She will literally be the death of me.”
He looks at me in that way he does and something in my chest does a complicated thing. I ignore it. I’m getting good at ignoring it.
“You don’t have to sit here.”
“I know that too,” he says.
“I might throw up again.”
“I have ruled an empire through a civil war, a drought, and a dragon with opinions.” His voice is steady. Measured. The voice of a man who has learned to be careful with every word because every word carries weight. “I can handle nausea.”
“The dragon’s opinions are worse.”
“The dragon’s opinions are always worse.”
From the wall, Tianlong makes an offended sound. Dumpling is still sitting on him. Neither of them has moved.
I don’t tell Ren to leave.
He doesn’t leave.
This is either a very good sign or a very bad one. I’m too tired to figure out which.
We sit in silence—the comfortable kind, the kind that doesn’t need to be filled.
The jasmine blooms somewhere beyond us, but the wind has shifted and I can’t smell it, which is a small mercy.
Dumpling purrs. Tianlong radiates injured dignity.
The palace goes on about its business somewhere beyond the garden walls.
“I’m disgusting right now,” I say, because someone should say it. Because the silence is getting too comfortable and I’ve never known what to do with comfortable.
“You’re carrying my heir and you haven’t killed anyone today.” He takes a sip from his own cup—the wrong temperature, I notice, the same as mine. He’s drinking bad tea so I won’t have to drink it alone. “That is the opposite of disgusting.”
“The day is young.”
“I have faith in you.”