7. Please #2
The anger drains out of me all at once. What’s left is something softer. More dangerous.
“You,” I say. “I want you. Have wanted you since—I don’t even know when. Somewhere between that first inn and now. It crept up on me. I tried to talk myself out of it. Told myself it was proximity, convenience, shared circumstances. Doesn’t matter.” I swallow. “Doesn’t work. I want you anyway.”
He’s staring at me like I’ve said something incomprehensible. Like the words don’t translate into any language he knows.
“I don’t—” I stop. Start again. The words are harder than killing has ever been.
“I don’t know how to be chosen. I know how to be useful.
Convenient. The tool someone wields until they don’t need it anymore.
I know how to be temporary.” My voice cracks on the word.
“But chosen? Just for me? Without the bloodline or the immortality or any of the things that make me useful? I don’t have a playbook for that. ”
“Liàn—”
“I’m not finished.” Deep breath. I press my palm against the swell of my stomach without thinking.
For a second I believe I can feel her, though the physicians say it’s too early.
“You’ve been carrying that speech around for a week.
Revising it. Practicing it with a dragon.
Making sure it was adequate.” I hold up the crumpled paper.
“Three attempts on the page. Three more that never made it past your mouth. How many did you throw away before this one?”
“…Tianlong critiqued most of them.”
“Of course he did.”
“I wanted you to know,” he says slowly, “that this was not obligation. Not duty. Not the court’s expectations or the empire’s needs.” His hand moves—he draws out something small. Glinting. “I wanted you to know that I am asking because I want to. Only because I want to.”
The ring sits in his palm.
Jade and silver. Old. The kind of old that means generations, means history, means this belonged to someone who mattered. The edges are worn smooth from wear—someone touched this often, turned it between their fingers, held it close.
“My mother’s,” he says. “She wore it until—”
He stops. The muscle in his jaw jumps. For a moment, I think he’s not going to finish.
“Until she couldn’t anymore.”
He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t need to. I know what loss looks like when it lives in the silences between words.
“Ren—”
“I had a speech,” he says, and it’s clearly a redirect, clearly him pulling back from the edge of something he doesn’t want to fall into.
“Twelve versions of a speech explaining why you should say yes. Fourteen reasons. Six historical precedents. A rather elegant metaphor about jasmine that Tianlong said was overwrought.” That almost-smile again, fragile at the edges.
“But you’ve already said yes. So perhaps I should simply ask you to wear it. ”
The jade is cool against my palm when he presses it into my hand. Smooth from decades of touch. The silver is tarnished in places, worn thin where the band meets the stone—someone twisted this ring when they were thinking, turned it around and around, held it like an anchor.
His mother wore this ring. Loved it. And now he’s giving it to me.
I slide it onto my finger. It fits perfectly. Of course it fits—he would have figured out my ring size somehow, weeks ago probably, the same way he figured out which tea I actually like and which blankets I prefer and a hundred other small details I didn’t realize he was tracking.
“This is real,” I say. The words come out smaller than I expected. Like if I speak too loudly, it might dissolve.
“Yes.”
“We’re actually—”
“Yes.”
“I called you an idiot. During your proposal.”
“Twice, if I recall correctly.” There’s warmth in his voice now. Amusement, maybe, or something softer. “Quite loudly.”
“That’s not how proposals go in poems.”
“No.” He reaches out. His hand cups my jaw—careful, always so careful, like I’m something precious instead of something deadly. “But I find I prefer this version.”
I kiss him.
His hand slides into my hair. The ring is cold against my finger, his mouth is warm against mine, and somewhere in the back of my mind a voice is saying this is real, this is real, this is actually happening—
He kisses me back like he’s been holding his breath for seven days.
He pulls back first. Already thinking—I can see it in his eyes. The door. The guards. The court.
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t think about logistics right now.”
“The door is not locked.”
“Then lock it later.”
“The guards—”
“Already heard me yelling. Damage is done.” I pull him back down. “Later.”
He resists for exactly half a second. Then his mouth is on mine again, and his hands are—
Oh.
Oh. That’s happening now, apparently.
My body, which has spent the last two weeks rejecting food and demanding sleep at inconvenient hours, suddenly has very different priorities.
“Bed,” I manage against his mouth. “Bed would be—”
We don’t make it to the bed. We make it to the desk. Dumpling’s diplomatic correspondence scatters across the floor and I can’t bring myself to care because Ren’s hands are working at my clothes and I’m pulling at his robes and they’re complicated, why are imperial robes so complicated—
“This would be easier,” he says against my mouth, “if you stopped pulling.”
“This would be easier if you dressed like a normal person.”
“I am the emperor.”
“Right now you’re the man taking too long to get undressed.”
He laughs. I feel it against my lips—that rare, unguarded sound—and something in my chest cracks open.
My fingers find his hair. I meant to push it back from his face, but I miscalculate—or maybe I don’t—and my grip tightens instead, pulling his head back.
He makes a sound.
Not a laugh. Not a word.
A sound. Low and rough and completely involuntary.
Oh.
“Interesting,” I say.
“That was—” He’s breathing harder. “I don’t—”
I do it again. Deliberate this time. Fingers twisting, pulling just hard enough.
His eyes close. His hands tighten on my waist.
We make it to the bed. Eventually. His robes end up on the floor. My clothes join them. And then it’s skin and warmth and his mouth learning me like he’s memorizing territory he never expected to own.
He’s thorough. Meticulous. Controlled even now—
I pull his hair again.
Control shatters.
Better.
There’s a point where he’s mapped every inch of me and I’m shaking with it, I’m wound so tight I can barely breathe. His mouth is everywhere—throat, chest, hip, lower—always moving, never staying long enough.
“Ren—”
He slows down. Deliberately.
“What do you want?” His voice is rough. Wrecked. But there’s something in his eyes—a question. A dare.
“You know what I want.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m not going to—”
He does something with his mouth that makes my vision blur. Then stops.
“Tell me.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” Almost smug. Almost. If he weren’t shaking too, I’d kill him for it. “Ask me.”
I don’t beg. I’ve never begged. Eight hundred years of survival and I’ve never once—
He does it again. Barely a touch. Just enough to remind me what I’m missing.
“Please.”
The word comes out broken. Desperate. Nothing like my voice.
He goes still. Looks up at me. And the expression on his face—
Not triumph. Not smugness.
Reverent. Like I’ve given him something sacred.
“Good girl,” he says.
I come apart.
Later—much later—I’m sprawled across his bed, thoroughly ruined, wearing nothing but his mother’s ring. He’s tracing patterns on my hip like he’s writing poetry on my skin.
The door is still unlocked.
I can’t bring myself to care.
“If you ever tell anyone I said please,” I say to the ceiling, “I will end you.”
“I would never.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I am not.”
I turn my head. “That’s a smile. That’s definitely a smile. I can see it.”
“You are mistaken. I am the emperor. I do not smile about—”
“You’re gloating.”
“I am doing no such thing.”
“You are. You’re lying there gloating because you made me—”
“Made you what?”
I grab a pillow and hit him with it.
He catches it. Still smiling. Definitely smiling.
“I have no idea what you’re referring to,” he says, perfectly serene.
“I take it back. The engagement is off.”
“You cannot take it back. You said yes. Loudly. The guards heard.”
“I’ll say no louder.”
“You also said please.”
I hit him with another pillow. He’s laughing now—actually laughing—and I’m trying to smother him and somehow we end up tangled together, my head on his chest, his hand in my hair.
“I hate you,” I tell him.
“You said yes.”
“Moment of weakness.”
“You said please.”
“Moment of extreme weakness. Temporary insanity. I want it stricken from the record.”
His chest shakes with silent laughter. His fingers trace my spine.
“I am going to remember that sound for the rest of my life,” he says quietly. “The way you said my name. Just before.”
I don’t have a joke for that. My throat tightens.
“Unfair,” I manage.
“What is?”
“You. This. All of it.”
He presses a kiss to the top of my head.
“Yes,” he agrees. “It is.”